Naruto : Struggle Of Childhood

Aftermath

He wasn't sure who he was, or what he was doing, but the motions somehow came naturally to him. Almost on sixth sense alone, he dodged the kunai and kicked. It was fluid, natural feeling. Something moved behind him. White. Jiraiya. His...friend...enemy...teammate. Not a threat. He was attacking from the other side. Back to back on a strange surface.

Orochimaru was either not quite conscious or not quite sane. Jiraiya wasn't sure which. Still, he was moving, and standing back to back with him was at least better than having to defend the idiot. Hopefully, he would be able to tell the difference between friend and foe.

"Rasengan!" Jiraiya called as he summoned his student's weapon and pushed it into the stomach of the man who'd just managed to jump on Gamabunta's back. The ball of swirling energy caused the fabric of the ROOT uniform to come apart as the man fell. If he had survived the fall, he didn't survive Gamabunta jumping on him in his attack on the army.

Gamaken was also cutting through, but one of Orochimaru's stray snakes seemed was attacking the toad, probably more out of the traditional rivalry than anything else.

"Oi, Hebi-kun, call off your summon!" Jiraiya said to Orochimaru.

Orochimaru turned and blinked at him once but didn't say anything.

Yeah.

There was an explosion and Jiraiya's mind went other places. They just needed to hold out a little longer.

As a Jinchuuriki, Yugito was used to some pretty bad situations, but facing down an army with nothing but one of the Sannin, some psycho with a sword who probably would have happily charged the whole army alone, and some guy from an organization that was supposed to be tracking her kind down for some unknown reason was pretty ridiculous.

Still, she supposed that she could still be in that cage.

It was clear that they were acting as a buffer, so that the rest of the...whatever they were...could get out with their lives. Honestly, Yugito didn't expect to live to see the next morning. ROOT just kept coming. When one was killed, three more seemed to appear out of nowhere, and the Hokage himself hadn't even bothered to come. Then again, Danzou rarely actually fought. From what Yugito remembered from various scraps of information that she had found, Danzou more or less only appeared in battle when necessary. It was unusual, since a ninja leader usually was at the head of a battle, but it had been done during the time before villages.

At least, that was what Bee said.

And Bee was usually someone who should be counted as being right. After all, he learned a lot of things from his brother.

The Akatsuki guy suddenly appeared next to her. He was holding a katana and looked strangely tired.

"Yugito-san, are you able to summon your tailed beast again?" he asked.

Yugito tested her levels of Chakra, while throwing a kunai with a chain for three exploding tags attached to it towards a cluster. They dodged, but the thing exploded before they'd gone too far.

"I'm not sure. Nibi's not the easiest thing to summon up at the best of times. I can keep her out for about five minutes, tops."

Itachi sighed, "If we are not called on to retreat, both of us will need to unleash our strongest techniques."

Somehow, she noticed for the first time that they'd been moving closer and they were suddenly back to back, almost surrounded. As they both prepared to spring apart from one another and attack, ignoring the fact that the sword guy was running around, slaughtering everything that moved without even thinking about getting too deep into the army, a signal flare erupted. It looked like a fireball.