The sealed kunai

Chapter 60: Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

The following morning found quite a sight for those stationed at the base that sat just a stone's throw away from the front lines of the Yu no Kuni/Shimo no Kuni border. A pair of rather disheveled looking, bloodstained young shinobi walked into camp dragging a captive just before dawn.

Now this by itself admittedly was not abnormal at all. They were after all sitting on the front line of the most dangerous battlefield of the ongoing war between the G.S.A. (Grand Shinobi Alliance) of four of the five major hidden villages and the C.N.F. (Continental Ninja Federation) comprised of every other upstart hidden village in the Elemental Nations. Every single day people came walking into their camp looking like crap.

The people that came slogging into camp looking like crap were never a pair of male and female jinchuuriki from both Konoha and Kumo respectively. Nor did most people walking into camp come walking in carrying a prisoner that looked like a cross between a plant and a human being.

Covered in blood that didn't look like it was his, Naruto dropped a heavily bound plant man right in the middle of camp amid the eyes of his late-watch Konoha comrades who much to their credit moved to take the hybrid creature into custody, "You went kind of nuts back there Yugi-chan." Naruto commented as they both continued to walk through the camp, "I said we needed to take one of them alive."

"I left one alive." Yugito said, pointing to the plant man that was being carried off as they spoke.

"I had to stop you from killing him by putting my own body in your way." Naruto replied dryly. Apparently the Nibi, or as Yugito said the name of the biju was Matatabi, wasn't one to let prey get away when Yugito was angry, or when the equivalent of a cold bucket of water was thrown on a potentially hot situation. Naruto had been put off by it too, but it didn't make him all homicidal either, "I don't like getting interrupted either but seriously."

Yugito just stuck her tongue out at Naruto in return before she looked down at herself, "I'm a total mess and we haven't even gotten started working yet. I'm going to find the barracks and clean up."

Nodding in consent to the idea, Naruto decided that then was as good a time as any to split off from her for the time being while they prepared for their eventual move to try and get her home, "Go ahead. I'm going to go try and find Ero-kyofu and let him know we're here. I'll catch up in a bit after I do." Yugito took his travel pack for him since they were at the base as she started looking for the temporary showers.

He and Yugito went their own separate ways and split up for their own reasons. But all the while as Naruto walked around the camp and looked at the embattled state of the people there he had to think back to the battle that he had fought the previous night with Yugito.

Where did those plant guys come from? They were all naked, so there was no way of identifying the village they were from by uniform. They didn't even seem human for the most part. But they were going to slip into the Konoha camp in their transformation disguises and tear it apart from the inside. So they had to work for one of the enemies of the alliance, but who?

That was why he captured one to begin with. The information was going to be pried out of him and that would be that. Until then he had to find Jiraiya and prepare a plan to slip past the watchful eyes of the enemy on the line.

It didn't take him long to find Jiraiya either, as he found his godfather standing on a bluff covered in thickets and trees looking out into the deeper forest with his telescope, probably trying to get a better point of view of the battlefield before the sun came up and it became dangerous to be exposed like that, "How's the eye?" Jiraiya jibed as he felt Naruto's presence come up from behind.

"How's the arm?" Naruto shot back in return. For some reason it was good to see Jiraiya in the thick of things again. For someone like him living out the rest of his days doing nothing because he was missing an arm just didn't seem right. The man was supposed to be a lion, and he wasn't meant to live like a mouse, "You look like crap. Don't you sleep?"