Inheritance

CHAPTER 17

"Now now Hatake."Eiji spoke, smirk evident on his face as he stepped out of the stone wall he had created. "I told you before. Your fight is with us"

Kakashi glared holes into the man, although it was painfully apparent to the Konaha shinobi that he was more frustrated with himself than anything else. He wasn't as fast as he used to be, his lax attitude to his own training had seen to that in the years since he had left ANBU. And now, his comrades, a trio of Genin no less, were in danger because he was struggling with a pair of opponents that, should his own bingo book entry be believed, should be causing him no where near as much trouble.

"Naruto, you need to move, now!"

It had taken Shikamaru's strained cries to shake Naruto from his stupor. It took him less than half a second after that for him to realise he had frozen. Just shut his eyes and accepted death. Gritting his teeth, he scrambled back as Shikamaru's Kagemane no jutsu failed, allowing the statue's sword to slam into the ground where the blonde had been standing.

"Thanks Shikamaru!" Naruto shouted out, even as a pair of statues set themselves upon him, forcing him to leap over a horizontal slash directly into the chest of the offending statue. Planting his feet against it's stone torso, he bent his knees and flipped backwards, allowing the sword of the second statue to crash directly into the first, cleaving it in two.

Had he not been quite so shaken up, he would have remarked on how bad ass that probably looked as he landed on the ground almost perfectly. In truth, the statues movements were slow, and cumbersome, allowing for Naruto to take advantage with the increased mobility Yuugao's and more recently, Jiraiya's taijutsu training had afforded him. Even as the statue that had just been destroyed pulled it's body back together, Naruto created a trio of Kage Bunshin to cover Shikamaru who himself was now fighting a pair of the statues, and another two to aid in a plan that had just wormed it's way into his head.

"Shikamaru, do you have an explosive tag?" Naruto cried out, as the two statues re-converged on him. Shikamaru replied with a grunt in the affirmative as he once again extended his Kagemane, preventing the destruction of a Kage Bunshin. "Leave those statues to the Bunshin and get a bit closer, I have a plan."

Deactivating his Kagemane as one of the Bunshin's Fuuton jutsu's slammed into the head of the statue, shattering the faceless appendage into thousands of pieces, he moved closer to Naruto, into a position from which he could support the blonde in whatever plan he had come up with. Suddenly, another half a dozen Kage Bunshin popped in place, as the rest of the stone statues began to move forward, attempting to surround the pair of Genin. Already, the Nara was beginning to think moving closer to the blonde had been a poor tactical decision.

"I think these are made with fuuinjutsu." Naruto sounded innately confident with his theory, even as yet more clones burst into life to counter the growing number of statues attempting to join the battle. The Nara was lost for words at the feat, that until now, had barely registered with him. He was well aware of the Kage Bunshin technique, and the fact that any more than one of the solid Bunshin would have put him down with chakra exhaustion. Naruto was throwing them out for fun. He wasn't even out of breath. Then there was the fact that only a month or so ago, the blonde wouldn't have been able to tell you what fuuinjutsu was, let alone be able to identify it's use in the middle of a fight.

"I'm gonna try to destroy one again. Break it up enough so we can see what I thought was a seal. Then, when I do, nail it with the tag, okay?"

"I haven't got any better ideas, Naruto! Are you sure you can pull that off more than once? You're chakra has to be running out by now, and I haven't got the muscle to even stand a chance against more than one or two of these things."