The Clone That Got Away: Part 1, Chapter 4

The Clone That Got Away: Part 1, Chapter 3

"W-w-what's g-going on h-h-h-here?" stammered Naruto as Gouzu and Meizu begun to fume with the blackest of chakra like how a fire would fume with smoke. As Gouzu and Meizu's vile chakra diffused throughout the area, neither Dachi nor Naruto could prevent himself from retching as Gouzu and Meizu's chakra nauseated them with a sensation that was most similar to taking a big whiff of the putrid odor of a long-dead corpse. Gouzu and Meizu snickered at Dachi and Naruto's discomfort with their chakra and then begun to form hand seals with one another's uncovered hand.

"To make a long story a short one; they're immortal ninjas with unlimited chakra," explained Dachi just as Gouzu and Meizu finished their mutual string of hand seals. As Gouzu and Meizu each separated his uncovered hand from the other's uncovered and then moved his uncovered hand further away from the other's uncovered hand, a stream of oddly red water begun to form in the air between their uncovered hands.

"Immortal ninjas with unlimited chakra?" exclaimed Naruto as Gouzu and Meizu commenced to move away from one another in order to lengthen their stream of water. Dachi narrowed his eyes at Gouzu and Meizu's cursed seals. With a snort, Dachi took a firm hold of the back of Naruto's collar and then utilized that hold to drag Naruto with him as he backed away from Gouzu and Meizu. "What in the world are we supposed to do against that?"

"Simple," as he finished backing Naruto and him to what he considered to be a safe distance from Gouzu and Meizu. Dachi then let go of Naruto's collar with enough abruptness to unintentionally make Naruto fall flat onto his butt. While Naruto rubbed his butt and glared at Dachi, Gouzu and Meizu stopped moving away from one another and thus finished lengthening their stream of water. "We bind them tight enough to prevent them from taking any further actions. Easier said than done, we don't have any other choice. Any ideas on how we can accomplish that with your arsenal of jutsu?"

"None whatsoever!" ecstatically answered Naruto with a Nice Guy Pose; rigidly straight posture, shiny and toothy grin, thumbs up, and all. Naruto's answer dropped an exasperated Dachi face-first into the ground, prompting Gouzu and Meizu to suddenly charge in hopes of taking full advantage of Dachi's face-fault. By the time Dachi managed to push himself onto his knees, Gouzu had already managed to utilize Meizu and his stream of water to quickly flail Meizu at Dachi as if Meizu was the sickle part of a chain-and-sickle. Before Dachi could so much as lift his head, Meizu arrived right above Dachi and begun to thrust the claws of his metal gauntlet down upon Dachi's neck.

Only a moment before Meizu's claws would have mangled Dachi's neck beyond any medic nin's ability to repair, Naruto tackled the airborne Meizu into a bear hug and then body-slammed Meizu with enough force to crater the ground. Without delay, Naruto immediately followed his body slam with a left hook to Meizu's jaw. Naruto's left hook shattered Meizu's rebreather across the ground, yet it didn't faze Meizu himself. As a frustrated Naruto reeled his left arm back for another left hook, Meizu raised his the arm of his uncovered hand. As soon as Meizu did so, Naruto found himself being literally overshadowed by an elevated Gouzu. Right before Meizu could bring the arm of his uncovered hand down, Dachi grabbed the back of Naruto's collar for the second time and then yanked Naruto away from Meizu.

No later than the exact moment Naruto was beyond the confines of Gouzu's shadow, Meizu's slammed his uncovered hand onto the ground and consequently brought Gouzu down upon the area that Naruto had been standing at. As Gouzu crashed landed with a punch of his metal gauntlet, Dachi and Naruto screamed in unison as the sheer force of Gouzu's punch quaked the ground to the point where Dachi and Naruto found themselves being swept away by a tidal wave of dirt. After a minute or two of flow, the tidal wave settled into a mound that Dachi and Naruto comically popped out of.

"Is it me, or are these guys a lot faster?" asked Naruto as Dachi and him dug themselves out of the dirt mound.

"It's that stream of water. It's got an insane degree of elasticity and they're using it to slingshot one another at record speeds," explained Dachi as he dusted himself off. As soon as his clothes were tolerably clean, Dachi warily eyed the currently snickering pair that was Gouzu and Meizu. "And they're augmenting their blows with the sheer velocity of their slingshots. Man; that's some collaboration jutsu they got there,"

"Definitely," agreed Naruto as he performed the shadow clone hand seal in order to conjure a pair of shadow clones. Naruto was about to order the shadow clones to assist him with a Rasengan, but Meizu thrust his uncovered hand in the direction of one of the shadow clones before Naruto could do so. As a direct result of Meizu's thrust, the steam of water slung Gouzu towards the shadow clone with all of the velocity of a bullet fired from a state-of-the-art firearm. Not long after Gouzu rammed the shadow clone with enough force to send the shadow clone rocketing into the sky, Naruto's mouth dropped into a gape as he looked over his should to see his shadow clone become a twinkle in the sky. "T-t-that's just not fair!"

"Suiton: Oni Kyoudai no Akaiito (Kanji: 水遁: 鬼兄弟の赤い糸; English: Demon Brothers' Red String). This jutsu is a physical and spiritual burden. It's quite difficult to protect oneself from the resultant friction and impacts, and it's even more difficult to aim with any degree of accuracy. There is also the matter of it being very taxing on one's chakra as well. Worst of all, the name is downright embarrassing! Meizu and I never completed this technique in life, but in death we managed to finish what we started! Our immortal bodies make the physical difficulties a moot point! The cursed seal improves our mental capacity to the point where our aim is flawless! And let's not forget the fact that we have UNLIMITED CHAKRA!" gloated Gouzu. Naruto snarled at Gouzu's boast and then attempted to kick Gouzu. Unfortunately for Naruto, his foot met air as Meizu pulled Gouzu back to him within the blink of an eye. "You should have learned how to use that technique without the help of your little clones, because there is no way we're going to give you enough time to work with them!"

"We might not even be able to defeat this technique. How are we supposed to seal these guys without so much as a single jutsu that is designed to do so?" asked Dachi with clenched teeth and balled fists as Gouzu lifted the arm of his uncovered hand in order to effortlessly sling Meizu into the air. Without hesitation, Dachi took one of Naruto's hands into one of his own hands and then burst into a sprint at a speed which forced Naruto to either run side-by-side with him or be dragged along the ground. Needless to say, Naruto chose to rune alongside Dachi. As Naruto did so, he whispered a plan to Dachi. Meanwhile, Gouzu couldn't help but to smirk as he made the assumption that Dachi believed he couldn't hit a moving target. With a grunt, Gouzu diagonally dropped the arm of his uncovered hand in a manner which whip-lashed Meizu towards Dachi and Naruto. To Gouzu's surprise, even though Meizu descended upon Dachi and Naruto with all of the haste of a peregrine falcon's swoop, both Dachi and Naruto somehow managed to skid to a halt in time to extend one another's held hand towards the incoming Meizu. Much to Meizu's horrow, Dachi and Naruto opened their held hands to reveal a miniature and oddly red Rasengan in-between the palms of their held hands. "You were right Naruto. All it took was a Rasengan, bitch!"

"Gouzu pull me-" was all Meizu managed to say before the stream finished slinging him into Dachi and Naruto's miniature Rasengan. In spite of the fact that Dachi and Naruto's Rasengan was one of the smallest — if not the smallest — Rasengan to ever be formed, the entirety of Meizu's body was nigh-instantaneously grounded into scraps of the most impure of paper by the Rasengan. Ironically, it was the extreme velocity that Meizu had been slung at that did most of the grounding.

"B-b-but how!" spluttered a thoroughly confused Gouzu as he witnessed Meizu's destruction at the hands of Dachi and Naruto's Rasengan. "T-t-that's impossible! Simply impossible! There is no way the two of you could have spontaneously developed the reaction time needed to-"

"Who needs to react to a pitch when you know the speed and time that the pitch is coming at? You can't use the same jutsu over and over again without making it bloody predictable!" explained Dachi as Naruto performed a hand seal which transformed his leftover shadow clone into a lengthy rope. Gouzu's eyes dilated with fear as Dachi and Naruto quickly wrapped the rope around Meizu's body as it regenerated. As soon as Meizu's body was fully regenerated, Dachi and Naruto tied the rope into a myriad of interlocking knots. Afterward, Dachi and Naruto each triumphantly crossed his arms and victoriously placed a foot onto the immobilized Meizu. "I'm sorry to say this, but completing that Suiton: Oni Kyoudai no Akaiito of yours was a waste of your undead time. Because it's no match for our Rasengan: Uzumaki Kyoudai no Akaiito (Kanji: うずまき兄弟の赤い糸; English: Spiraling Sphere: Whirlpool Brothers' Red String)!"

"He was right, you know? That name is embarrassing," noted Naruto as he sheepishly rubbed the back of his head at the sheer corniness of their collaboration Rasengan's name.

"Yeah. That name is way too homo-erotically suggestive for something that has absolutely nothing to do with homo-eroticism. Even for someone as openly gay as I am," agreed Dachi with a nod that Naruto returned.

"You brats!" roared Gouzu as the cursed seals on his body advanced to level two...

The Clone That Got Away: Part 1, Chapter 5