The Daimyo rounded his horse back around, ready to carry both children on the already exhausted animal when-
"Aha!" Naruto beamed, holding out a pencil thin scroll and running up to them. "Found it!?"
"Found what?" Koutou asked.
"An-chan gave it to me! She said that if I was ever in danger and within ten miles of the border I could use it!" He began to unfurl the scroll.
"Why didn't you mention this before!?" Kyofu snarled.
"Guy's what the hell is going on!?" Ryoko had finally backtracked enough to reach them.
"I didn't remember." Naruto answered frankly cutting his thumb and channeling chakra into the seal array painted onto its surface. "It was a month and a half ago."
"What the hell do you mean you didn't remember!" Kyofu screeched, all but baring her teeth. "This is pretty goddamn important when heading to Iwa!"
"What are you all yelling about!?"
A pulse of chakra bubbled out from the seal array.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then, the faintest echoes on the edge of his expanded awareness, started coming closer.
He grinned. "We got backup coming now!"
His grin fell however when that presence that had been approaching them suddenly sped up, evidently that distress seal wasn't limited to Konoha sensors.
"Run!"
Koutou turned his horse, he Kyofu and Ryoko took to the trees above.
Like a dog snarling at their heels Naruto could feel that Jounin gaining at a frightening pace.
-0-
Orochimaru cursed, between the flames and the lava coated jinchuuriki the heat was going to become overwhelming soon.
It was getting difficult to even breathe.
None the less Sannin kept counting running as far as he could from the suffocating flames.
His foot landed on a branch that promptly gave way beneath his weight.
Shifting his feet latched onto the bark of the tree in reflex but before he could gain his bearing a lava covered foot smashed into his chest.
There were very few forms of pain he'd experienced in his life that could compare to the sheer agony of something at a temperature of 2,400 degrees burning through his chest.
With fingers emerging from the inside of his mouth and pulling his own jaw apart a new version of the Sannin emerged, flipping in mid air to rid himself of the sack of skin before he landed with a crouch on the forest floor.
He cursed. That had eaten up more chakra than he was comfortable with.
At Roshi's battle cry he glanced up, looking up at the fire coated Iwa jounin.
Then he threw the Kusanagi blade straight up.
The Iwa nin latched onto a tree for all of half a second it took to burst into flames at his touch, just enough to dodge the spinning blade.
Falling once more he launched another series of fireballs at the snake ninja.
He caught a glimpse of that smirk, and the thought that the Kusanagi wasn't exactly amiscalculation on the snake's part was just in time to feel the concussive force of the explosion of his own attack and another at his back.
With molten rock covering him from head to toe, it was obvious he couldn't burn, but concussive shockwaves from the blasts could be damaging in and of themselves, and trapped between both blasts Roshi felt the air pushed out of his lungs with brutal force, the lava armor vanishing in his lapse a second later before he fell to the forest floor with a solid crash.
-0-
Ryoko's thought's could be summed up thus-
He's fucking huge!
The red armored ninja chasing after them, held at bay only by a sheer horde of clones Naruto kept spawning had to be the most absurdly large man she'd ever seen. He had to be an easy eight feet tall! And the way he was plowing through Naruto's clones was a beastly, frightening sight.
Especially since, between the dodging, the fighting the weaving between attacks and clones he was still gaining.
"How much longer before our backup gets here!" She shouted, latching onto another tree as Koutou galloped past her. She sure hoped his horse could keep up the brutal pace.
"Any minute now...I think."
"That's not reassuring princess!"
Naruto grunted, quite frankly, if Han got any closer he was considering walking out of this forest with two broken arms from a wind Rassengan. He fought the Jinchuuriki before and even if one discounted the advantages of the Edo Tensei of healing and endless chakra, the man was a born powerhouse in Tai Jutsu and had fought pound for pound and gone blow for blow against Lee and Gai on several occasions.
No way could he let him get anywhere near his team, or the Daimyo.
"Kuchiyose!"
There were two puffs of smoke ahead of them, and Naruto rushed past just in time to see leaping lizards, each the size of a large dog, with a tail tree times as long rush out of the grey obscurity, fin like wings extending from their forelegs to their hind legs to let them glide through the trees as they hissed and joined the few Tsuchi Bunshin's that were still trying to stall the Iwa juggernaut.
Han grunted, raising his arm in time for a tail that had been looking to slice his face and eyes open to coil itself around his forearm.
He pivoted, twisting in mid air to land with his feet on a tree, using the new stability to yank.
Wood splintered and cracked beneath the beasts claws, sheer brute force tugging it free, up and over Han's head to crack its skull against the tree trunk on the down swing.
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