When the Sky Cracked
The desert wind howled over the dunes, brushing fine sand against the cliffs of Sunagakure. A thin crescent moon hung above like a crooked blade.
Far from the village walls, in the fields of small plateaus, two figures stood atop a jagged sandstone outcropping. Cloaked in black and red, their arrival had been silent and peaceful. Their purpose, anything but.
"The walking is finally over," Deidara said, voice hushed beneath his long blond bangs.
"Was it really so bad of a journey?" asked Sasori.
"The return trip, flying, will be much more bearable," groused Deidera.
He retrieved his ocular device and placed it over one eye, before surveying what they had to work with. The plan was to go in, hit fast and hard, grab the Ichibi, and fly out of there. Well, that was his ideal plan. There were plenty of backup options.
He began laying them out.
"Perimeter's thin. I can blow a hole through their wall before they even know we're here." he Suggested.
"Wholly unnecessary." dismissed Sasori. "I would suggest drawing the enemy out. I can draw out the peons, while you go in for the target."
"Oh, an old bull strategy vs my young bull strategy?" joked Deidera.
Even through it was not his true face, but a puppet body, Deidera could see confusion in his posture as his sensei glanced at him.
"You don't know the story of the old bull and the young bull?" asked Deidera incredulously.
He readied to tell the joke, when every hair on the back of his neck stood on end and he crouched low. Based on how Sasori crouched at the exact same time, he must have felt it too. Neither of them were even sensory types, so what the hell were they feeling.
"Is that Shukaku?" asked Deidera. "I'd heard that tailed beasts chakras are so potent and strange that even non-sensory types could feel it, but not form Jinchuuriki?"
He imagined more bloodlust and cruelly. But he felt was more like a chaotic storm of glee and childlike brawling. Like an entire battlefield shouting directly into his soul.
"Not unless they unleash it, can you see a conspicuous giant demonic raccoon rising over the city?" asked Sasori.
Deidera turned his occular device and checked. The city looked fine. Nobody was panicking. There was no mass death or destruction. He did see shinobi on the ramparts looking around themselves in a panic, no doubt feeling the same sensation Deidera was.
"Shukaku is not unleashed." reported Deidera. "And I don't think it's coming from the village. It feels more like..."
Before he could say "above it" the source made itself visible.
The sky ignited, and far above Suna in the atmosphere a fireball descended upon the earth.
The streak of flames ripped across the heavens, trailing molten shards like bleeding stars. It streaked high over the village and flew far to the east towards the land of fire. It then did the strangest thing. It started to slow down, rather suddenly, and curved northward. He'd never seen a comet or asteroid this big or close, but that struck Deidera as odd behavior for a cosmic object.
It vanished over the horizon and the world was silent. The world remained silent as a large plume of light, fire and earth flew kilometers in the air. The impact blazed with a flash so bright it turned the night into day. Despite the bright show, the silence all the way up until the shockwave, carrying with it great winds and sand, washed over them like a tsunami.
The ground buckled beneath their feet at the same time. Between the scalding hot winds,
A mushroom cloud of dust and fire climbed into the sky. From this distance, it looked like the heavens themselves had been pierced.
"…That's new," Deidara muttered, stunned into silence. Then his hand twitched. "Wait. Do you… feel that?"
Sasori, standing motionless in his ornate puppet body, didn't answer immediately. But even he turned his head toward the distant crater.
"Mission's ruined," Sasori said flatly.
Below them, Sunagakure had burst to life. Torches ignited. Shadows flickered along the walls. Ninja scrambled into defensive lines like fire ants pouring from a kicked nest. He was right. As powerful as they were, the chance of success with every single person in Suna on high alert was severely diminished. He was arrogant enough to believe that they could still get the job done despite this article, but not to think they should.
Deidera sighed.
"Let the walking commence again," he bemoaned.
"No. Let the running begin. We need to report this to the entire Akatsuki post-haste." said Sasori.
"Our failure?" asked Deidera.
Sasori looked at him.
"The impact, and whatever it brought with it. Best case scenario this is some Hoshigakure star bullshit." reasoned Sasori.
Deidera noticed a strange hopefulness in his sensei's voice. Like he wanted that to be the case but had a worse case in mind.
He didn't dare ask.
Gaara stood upon the highest tower of Sunagakure's central citadel, his gourd already slung over his shoulder. The red glow from the horizon painted his pale skin like war paint. Behind him, the village roared to life.
Seals ignited along rooftops. Messengers blinked out of existence in flashes of light. Falcons launched from aviaries with scrolls strapped to their legs. Wind-surfing scouts glided low across the sand dunes, their boards trailing wake like ships over water. It was not panic — it was war protocol.
"All field squads to forward staging positions," Gaara ordered.
His voice didn't rise, but it carried over the noise and the jonin around him obeyed like thunder to lightning.
The sand shifted unnaturally as he lifted into the air on a swirl of grains and dust. Beneath him, hundreds of Suna shinobi poured toward the desert's edge, mobilizing faster than any civilian nation could dream. They had been born of the sand. The desert would not claim them easily.
The trip was short, and their heading clear. Not thirty minutes later they arrived at the edge of the crater.
The landscape around it was vitrified, and still hot, glass for ten whole kilometers in every direction around the thing that impacted. He lacked the words to describe it.
It almost looked like a ship, say that it was an order of magnitude larger than Sunagakure. They could fit the entire population of the the great villages in it and do so comfortably. It was it's make that baffled him.
The sprawling, broken husk was of twisted metal thicker than the walls of Sunagakure. It was also wholly unsuited to the water, being all right angles and hard edges, no curves. It looked more like a giant cannon than ship. Entire towers jutted at impossible angles.
"Wind release users, cool the glass!" ordered Gaara.
They did so, stepping forward, and strong wins wafted heat away from the battlefield. What remained was hard, smooth, cold ground to walk on. And so they walked along in, weapons drawn and at the ready.
As they got close, they saw new details.
Rotting, spore-covered fungal growths sprouted from gaps in the hull, gaps that hissed steam and smoke into the atmosphere. Green mist bled from broken hulls like the breath of some sick god. The air around it stank of corrosion and blood.
And it was alive.
Gaara looked up to the squads above, the elite scouts riding desert hawks who now circled the craft.
He signaled for them to go in for a closer look with his electric torch and they obliged.
They didn't last long. There was a loud bang, followed by dozens more, and one scout vanished mid-flight in a spray of red mist, his hawk spiraling down aflame. Another exploded in midair, hit by something loud and impossible — a roar, a flash, a streak of crude metal from a weapon too primitive to work… but it did.
Then the screaming began.
Green-skinned monsters poured from the wreckage, each one the size of two men, howling in laughter and rage. They carried massive weapons that roared with sound and light. Some were armored in scrap-metal plate and leaking pipes. Others wore bones, chains, and fungal grafts.
It was all very familiar, and Gaara thought Temujin had returned with his army of artificial soldiers. But no, this wasn't them.
"They have firearms! All shinobi incapable of supersonic speeds Fall back!" barked Baki, leading the next wave from atop a glider, sand swirling beneath him.
Most of the chunin and all of the genin did as instructed, not yet able to pass the movement speed tests Jonin were required to pass. Some were reduced to fine mist as they fled. Some Jonin had already fallen to the weapons, not expecting high caliber firearms.
A few nearly hit Gaara, save that his defenses caught them in time. Or at least, deflected them. One grazed his cheek and were it not for the stronger sang covering his skin it would have drawn blood.
He raised both hands and forged a large wall of sand between the retreating shinobi and the bullets, he also doubled the sand barrier protecting him.
"Form anti-siege lines! Use the wind wall jutsu! Contain the enemy!" Gaara ordered.
But the monsters didn't slow. They charged through kunai, through chakra-enhanced traps, through wind blades and fire storms — laughing the whole time, as if the act of being killed was just another punchline in a cosmic joke.
And then one spoke.
Not in a language. Not exactly. But in sound, in force, in belief.
"MORE HUMIES! MORE DAKKA!"
The initial shock had worn off and his soldiers were no longer flatfooted.
The chunin and genin who retreated to safe distance created a line of defense while the Jonin charge forth. They blurred from cover to cover, most only able to maintain such high speeds in short bursts. Thankfully there was enough debris from the crash upturned outcropping to hide behind between bursts.
His men dodged the supersonic projectiles with preternatural grace by reacting to the sound and flicker of fire before the crude bullets ever arrived. But not all were so quick.
A young Chunin raised a sand shield too slowly and vanished into a red mist. Another tried to counter with a flame bullet, only to take a jagged hunk of metal through the shoulder — and then the chest — before he hit the ground. Blood soaked the dunes. Screams painted the wind.
Gaara focused his attention on grabbing and pulling away the injured, mostly Chunin whose skill was just below what they thought it was. They would be reprimanded terribly when they recovered, but for now they would be saved.
And the monsters only laughed as they were cut down.
Long-distance ninjutsu lit the battlefield. Firestorms roared through the gaps. Lightning cracked. Wind razors whistled like banshees across the lines. But the green things did not slow. Many burned. Many fell. None hesitated. Pain, to them, was like music.
The Suna lines buckled.
And then they reached melee.
That was when things turned truly grim.
A jonin blocked a blow with a chakra-infused kunai — only for the blade to snap as a massive, jagged axe cleaved through his arm and ribcage in a single stroke. Another fell beneath a wild green brute who bit through his shoulder and used the corpse to beat back his squad.
No amount of taijutsu seemed to matter when a single creature could shrug off a dozen shuriken and crush a shinobi with its bare fists. His men aimed true, delivering killing blows to vitals, but these things died slowly. He saw many, indeed, die from the wounds but they didn't slow down until death took them, and this allowed for them to achieve individual pyrhhic victories against their slayers.
"Retreat!" someone screamed. "Fall back! Regroup!"
But there was nowhere to go.
At the heart of the chaos, Gaara stood unmoving — sand already swirling high around him, his gourd long since broken. Shukaku's chakra bubbled up from beneath his skin, a writhing storm of malevolence and ancient power. But there was no transformation. Not this time.
Gaara raised both hands.
And the desert answered.
Miles of sand heaved as if breathing. The battlefield shifted — no longer passive, no longer dead weight. Chakra flooded every grain, every particle, binding them together in razor cohesion. The sky darkened as entire dunes lifted into the air like ocean waves.
The Orks didn't pause. They only screamed louder.
And Gaara crushed them.
Not with a blast. Not with a single technique. But with the entire desert.
Walls of sand closed in like jaws. Tunnels swallowed the screaming hordes. Buried alive, limbs snapped and bones shattered. He ripped them apart like the lefs of insects. All were engulfed. Those too strong were compressed under ten thousand tons of chakra-hardened earth. Screams became muffled gurgles. Blood soaked into the sand — and vanished.
In minutes, the front was silent.
Only Gaara remained standing at the edge of a battlefield turned mass grave. His hands trembled, but he did not fall. Around him, nothing stirred but the wind. A few moments later, his own men, dug themselves out of the shallow sands.
He had buried them too but not shredded them.
Sunagakure had survived the first day.
But at a terrible cost.
The desert was silent as the sun rose on the next day.
Only the wind stirred now — hot and dry, as always — but even it seemed cautious, whispering low across a field of death.
Jonin squads moved through the aftermath like ghosts. Sand and glass crunched beneath their feet, but it was no longer just sand. The very earth had been changed — vitrified in places, molten and refrozen into twisted sheets of glass laced with blackened gore. Splintered bones jutted from dunes like broken stakes. Shattered teeth, slivers of metal, and scraps of green flesh were half-buried, scattered like confetti from a nightmare.
"Is this all… from last night?" a Chunin whispered, kneeling beside what looked like a torn arm — the fingers still twitching.
"There were more," his captain muttered. "The sand took them."
They had not seen the full scope in the chaos of night. Now, under the sun, the crater loomed.
They had never seen destruction like this, or at least never incurred in such a short amount of time— a jagged scar in the earth where the alien vessel had struck. The ship itself was less a ship and more a floating city, now embedded in the land like a rotting god's corpse. Fungal growths coated its sides, some pulsing faintly with sick green light. Pipes belched thin trails of steam. Metal plating creaked and groaned like something alive.
The entire crater was surrounded by high walls and soldiers. They had worked overtime through the night to contain the threat.
Had it landed even a few kilometers east… Sunagakure would have been glass and ash.
"I don't like this," one of the older shinobi murmured. "This thing wasn't just built. It's grown. Like a tumor with a forge inside."
Gaara arrived at the perimeter on a platform of floating sand, flanked by Baki and two ANBU. His eyes swept the carnage without emotion.
"No one enters the vessel," he said.
The order rippled out instantly.
"Expand the perimeter. Ten layers deep. Nothing goes in. Nothing comes out. Kill anything that tries."
"But—"
"If something survived that," Gaara said, his voice like sand over stone, "you wouldn't survive it."
The teams obeyed without further question.
They raised wards. Traps. Summoned scouts and detection webs. Seals were etched into the very glass, and sentries patrolled in shifts, eyes ever trained on the dead steel mountain that still hissed and steamed beneath the desert sun.
The world had changed overnight.
They had no name for what they had fought. No understanding of what had arrived. For now, the enemy was just mulched meat and bone in the sands, and no longer a threat.
Notes:
Yup. They are so screwed.
As you no doubt guess, this story starts at the beginning of Shippuden. I did this because I wanted as many of the Naruto characters as possible to be alive and kicking. And useful. I may wind up making the story a little AU by having the sound shinobi and maybe even Haku still be alive, but we'll see.
There are some pairings besides the Naruto love triangle, but they're minor characters. Like Kakuzu and Kuromo(Who you probably don't remember). Actually a lot of pairings but they're not the focus of the story.
A fair warning about my Naruto fanfics. I count NOTHING after the 5 kage summit as canon aside from characters and kekkei genkai. Rinnegan being an evolution of sharingan? No. Juubi tree and fruit? No. Kaguya? No. Aliens? No. All of Boruto? No. Obito creating the Akatsuki when he wasn't even around yet when Nagato made it let alone in time to give Nagato the rinnegan? No.
I also always count all filler and movies as canon, aside from Naruto the last.
Concerning 40k I actually was too generous to the setting at first, before I went deeper into the NAruto lore and realized how competetive they are with things in 40k.
Slight spoiler:
Arc 1: Barely surviving an Ork invasion
Arc 2: Unification and militarization of the elemental nations while some shinobi go out to explore the stars for recon.
Arc 3: Minor necron invasion, or maybe some other faction, and near extinction.
Arc 4: Full grimdark, finally in the 40K universe at large and behaving accordingly.
Long story short, if the entire planet of Naruto came together and developed with the intent of competing in the 40K universe, they do both terribly and well. I will be as fair and canon to both settings as possible but please, no fanboying. I'm doing tons of research into orks to make sure their scaling to Naruto characters is accurate and am actually buffing them up a bit because 40k fanboys can be unbearable if I don't make squigs capable of killing super Saiyan god 85 Vageto with one punch.Last edited: Saturday at 12:11 AM Like ReplyReport Reactions:Laundromat2.0, Johny P, OrkKaptin and 52 othersNonsensicalRantsJun 13, 2025Add bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Chapter 2: Spores Over Suna View contentNonsensicalRantsI trust you know where the happy button is?Sunday at 2:00 AMAdd bookmark#15Chapter 2:
Spores Over Suna
The desert stretched endlessly beneath them, cracked and shimmering, but Naruto's eyes were locked on the thing in the horizon — the thing that made the air feel heavier just by looking at it.
They'd read the message scrolls en route. A celestial object. A battle. Casualties. But the words hadn't done it justice.
Now they could see it and even from this far away, it looked wrong.
A jagged crater ripped into the land like a wound in the earth itself, at least ten kilometers wide. And in the center, slouched and still steaming, lay a half-buried metal carcass — a ship, maybe, but twisted and hunched like a war machine that had died angry. Smoke bled from ruptures in its skin. Fungal masses bloomed across its surface like cancer. And around it, green mist drifted through the air, faintly pulsing.
"I was expecting something like with Haido's land ships, but that's way bigger and nowhere near as pretty" he said quietly.
Sakura hummed.
"Say what you want about that psycho, at least everything he made was beautiful." she said.
Naruto swallowed.
They moved faster after that. Whatever that thing was, they didn't want to be near it. It was noone by the time Suna's gates came into view, and it was sweltering.
When they reached Sunagakure's gates, the guards barely said a word. They recognized the Leaf headbands and waved them through with urgency. The city beyond was eerily quiet — no merchants, no children, no idle chatter. Just squads of shinobi moving in perfect coordination, seals glowing on rooftops and hawks circling above.
They were taken straight to the central citadel, where an elite ANBU ushered them into the war tower.
Inside the lobby they met the other delagates from rival villages. That there was a trio from every major village spoke volumes.
Closest to the door stood a trio in with headbands declaring their loyalty to Stone Village.
"I'm Kitsuchi," he said with a stiff nod direted at Kakashi in particular. "Represening Stone. This is my daughter, Kurotsuchi, and this is Akatsuchi."
He indicated a girl that looked like Sasuke if he were to use the sexy jutsu and a man that made Choji look svelte. The girl looked down at her feet with a slight nod and the Akatsuchi guy gave the biggest, warmest smile Naruto had ever seen in his life.
Next to him, an older woman with folded arms snorted. She was blonde with a short skirt. Her teammates were a dark-skinned woman with red hair and a white-haired swordsman.
"Samui. These are my teammates, Karui and Omoi. Representing Lightning."
The redhead waved friendily, eyeing Naruto and Kakashi's clothes.
"Karui." She said simply.
A third figure stepped beside her — a tall man with a sword strapped across his back and an easy grin.
"Omoi. Also Lightning. And yes, I've already imagined seventeen ways this meeting could go horribly wrong. I'm not sharing any of them yet."
Naruto blinked at the man, who reminded Naruto somewhat of Shikamaru in a way he couldn't explain.
The last trio stood farther off and weren't a trio, but a duo. Their Mist headbands gleamed under the torchlight. One of them was a man with hair like a rhino's horn and an eye patch. He bowed slightly.
"Ao." He said simply.
His companion seemed more social, and closer to his age with what looked like a bandage pair of giant scissors on his back.
"Chōjūrō. Team Mist. Acting representative of the Mizukage," he said.
Naruto looked around and scratched the back of his head.
"Wow, you guys all got here before us?" he asked.
"They were probably out on missions nearer Suna when they requested aid. Whereas we were in Konoha and requested by name." Kakashi said, amused.
Before Naruto could ask more, another figure stepped into the room — tall, red-haired, and wrapped in Kazekage's robes. He looked so much more at ease than last time Naruto had seen him.
"Welcome," Gaara said, his voice even. "Thank you all for answering the summons. If you would please come with me."
"Hey, Gaara!" Naruto grinned, raising a hand.
Gaara nodded, faintly.
"Naruto. Sakura. Kakashi. You're just in time. Jiraiya is already inside."
"Sensei is here?!" Naruto brightened.
They were led upstairs to a large room with a circular table. Half of it was already filled with elderly war hawks and advisors to rival the grouchiness of the elders in Konoha. And sure enough, Hiraiya was seated in the middle of the empty half.
He turned around when they came in and smiled at them, pulling out the chair next to him for Naruto to sit in, which he did.
Everyone else settled around the war table. Seals glowed on its surface, and above it, a scroll projector had already been activated — floating illusory diagrams of the crashed object, symbols, even rough sketches of the enemy. Naruto's stomach churned at the sight of them.
"Let's begin," Gaara said. "Two nights ago, this object — possibly a ship, possibly a weapon — entered our atmosphere and landed near our city. It was not a meteor. It adjusted course mid-descent."
An aide stepped forward, flipping scrolls to display crude field sketches of the creatures within.
Naruto leaned in.
The green-skinned monsters stared back at him with too-wide mouths and iron-filled fists. Their weapons looked like junk — scrap and pipes and motors welded together — but in the sketches, those weapons were shredding shinobi.
"We don't know what they are called. For now we are simply calling them the Aliens, for that is surely what they are." Baki said, stepping to Gaara's side. "They arrived ready for war."
"They didn't just fight," Tamari said, frowning. "They enjoyed it. Laughed through it. Took wounds that should've killed them and kept going. We've dealt with berserkers before. These aren't just insane. They're… infected with war."
Naruto tensed.
There was silence for a long moment.
"Can we kill them?" Omoi asked, almost too casually.
"Quite easily, actually," Gaara said. "Even Genin can outpace them in speed, though their strength and toughness are far greater than any expected. Their tactics were equally unexpected."
Kankuro stepped in.
"Had we known to expect firearms, none of us would have died to them. Had we known how strong they were, none of us would have died from trying to block blows with too little chakra. Had we known they could take fatal blows and were immune to pain, none of us would have died from switching targets after killing one that didn't realize it was dead for another ten seconds." He explained.
Kakashi hummed.
"I have seen exceptional Jonin die to Genin due to overconfidence or misjuding the enemies abilities." He said.
"Exactly. And that is why we lost so many good fighters." Gaara said. "So, we tell you this, when you fight them be prepared for firearms, make certain to do enough damage that they cannot continue fighting instead of merely slicing a vital artery and assuming they'll go down. I also recommend foregoing blocks in favor of dodging, which is easy because of how slow they are."
Naruto, realizing there was blank paper and pens places in front of him, started writing this down. The others followed his lead.
"We're requesting each village assign a forward team to our quarantine zone," Baki said. "We need eyes, jutsu specialists, researchers, and backup. No one has entered the wreck yet, but we're preparing for infiltration."
Jiraiya nodded.
"Intel's the top priority. Before we can win anything, we need to understand what just walked out of the stars."
Then came the noise.
A thud of hurried footsteps. A gasp.
The doors burst open, and a sand-nin sprinted in, eyes wide with disbelief.
"Sir!" he shouted. "You need to see this—now!"
The council surged after Gaara to the citadel balcony.
Outside, the desert had changed.
It was cooler. Still.
Naruto stepped forward, and for a moment, he couldn't tell what was falling from the sky. The flakes were drifting, like ash… but not ash. Snow?
No. It was green.
Soft, glowing flakes fell through the air like shimmering pollen, settling on armor and rooftops. It melted on contact, leaving no moisture — only a faint tingle.
Sakura caught one on her glove and held it up.
"Pollen?" she asked herself in a whisper. "No. Spores."
Gaara stared at the sky, voice like stone.
Jiraiya muttered under his breath.
"This is either a biological weapon, or just a contagion they brought along, either way it is an emergency." He said.
He turned to Sakura and she took her cue.
"Prepare antifungal washes and inhalants." She said as she removed her headband and wrapped it around her mouth. "Steroidal to be extra cautious.
Everyone else followed her lead in masking up.
After that, the world moved fast.
One moment, they stood on the citadel balcony beneath a sky snowing green. The next, Gaara's sand surged beneath their feet, forming flat, rippling platforms that lifted everyone into the air. The desert wind roared around them as a dozen flying islands of sand carved a path eastward — fast and smooth, yet steady enough for each village's representatives to remain standing.
Sakura held tight to Naruto's sleeve.
Ahead, the massive outer wall of Sunagakure rose into view — fortified, covered in defense seals, and already crowded with shinobi. Gaara's sand arced them over the battlements before gently depositing the delegation onto the highest tier.
Dozens of Suna ninja were already there, forming lines and rallying formations.
Then came the noise.
A deep crack — like a mountain snapping open.
Everyone turned east, looking towards the crash site.
The dunes several kilometers away began to tremble. A few moments later, they erupted like a volcano. Massive rents tore open in the sand like wounds, geysering dust and heat into the air.
From the craters poured monsters.
The first wave looked like shark mouths on legs — giant, jawed things waddling forward on stubby limbs, their maws filled with rows of crude metal teeth. Behind them swarmed hundreds of tiny, green-skinned humanoids barely the size of children. They carried jagged knives, clubs, and crude guns, screaming in impossibly high-pitched voices.
"They're smaller than the last ones," Temari said.
"That doesn't make them less dangerous," Kakashi said grimly.
Gaara narrowed his eyes.
"They're coming directly at the wall."
He moved to leap off the battlement — his sand already forming into a lift — but Naruto stepped forward, hand outstretched.
"Wait!"
Everyone froze.
Naruto turned to Gaara.
"If it were me… and I could dig through the ground to attack a village…"
He pointed toward the approaching enemy.
"…I wouldn't stop just outside the wall and let the enemy see me. Unless it was misdirection."
Gaara's eyes narrowed, following Naruto's line of thinking.
"I'd make them think I stopped there… while I actually kept going…" Naruto slowly turned, keeping his finger in a pointed gesture as he turned around.
His finger stopped — not at the walls, but at the center of the village.
"Right… there."
As the word left his mouth, the center of Sunagakure exploded.
A massive plume of earth and green flame erupted from beneath the city streets, showering rooftops in molten glass and debris. A horde of the creatures burst forth from the ground like a geyser — the same jawed monstrosities, followed by swarms of screaming gremlins.
Then another explosion tore through the market district. And another near the aviary. Then six more — all at once.
The city was under siege from within.
"They tunneled straight through," Kakashi said in disbelief.
Naruto's knuckles whitened.
Gaara stepped to the edge of the wall, sand swirling violently at his feet.
"They studied our defenses." he said. "More intelligent than they've let on.
And behind them, Sunagakure burned.
The explosions were still echoing when the shinobi turned to each other on the battlements, eyes sharp, jaws set.
There was no argument. No formal strategy. Only instinct — and the need to avoid getting in each other's way.
"I'll make clones and rescue people," Naruto said, already forming the hand sign.
"I'll bandage up everyone you bring me," Sakura replied, pulling her gloves tighter.
"I'll go out there and deal with the ones still approaching the wall," Gaara added, his sand rising beneath him like a living serpent. "Where no one will get in my way."
"We'll head to the crash site," Karui of the Lightning Team said, unsheathing her blades. "If they're prepping a second wave from there, we'll shut it down."
"Count on it," Omoi muttered beside her.
"We'll move to the underground entrances," Kitsuchi from the Stone Team said, adjusting his goggles. "Cave in their tunnels from below."
Mangetsu of the Mist gave a tight nod.
"We'll join you — flood the tunnels before you collapse them. Let's drown the rats before they surface."
Jiraiya was already flipping through a summoning scroll.
"I'll prepare the evacuation, but I need time. Civilians, academy kids, injured — get them to me so I can get them out."
Kakashi's eye narrowed.
"I'm heading to the streets. Wherever they're thickest — that's where I'll be."
He turned slightly, nodding to the Sand shinobi already arrayed behind him.
"They'll be joining me."
There was a pause as they digested what everyone else said. They had all spoken pretty much at once. It took them one heartbeat to process.
Naruto clapped his hands together.
"Brrrreak!"
And just like that, they all vanished — scattering like fire across the city.
The city was chaos.
Explosions roared across the rooftops. Screams echoed down the alleyways. The smell of blood and fire clung to every stone.
Naruto stood at the heart of the whirlwind — and he moved.
"Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
A hundred Narutos exploded into existence across the rooftops in a golden flash, each one already in motion.
"Clear the west streets!"
"Form a human wall at the outer market!"
"Evac route B is blocked — reroute through the academy courtyard!"
Clones scattered in every direction, barking orders, grabbing civilians, and mostly avoiding the combat in favor of rescue. The city might have been in ruins, but Naruto's will spread through it like wildfire.
One clone formed a Rasengan mid-run and drove it into the side of a horned creature as it charged down the street, its boar-thick skull already smokingt. The impact sent ichor flying, but not before the beast's jagged horn skewered the clone through the chest — it burst in a puff of smoke and gore.
Another clone caught sight of a civilian pinned beneath rubble, only to be tackled by a squat, oil-belching one of the creatures. The thing gurgled once — then spat a stream of black slime that ignited midair. The clone screamed as it vanished in flame, but not before another clone yanked the woman free and hauled her toward the triage line.
On the rooftops, several Narutos worked with sand shinobi redirecting their fire jutsu into the fungal towers erupting from chimneys and gardens. The towers screeched as they burned, splitting open and vomiting spores that clung like leeches to anything warm.
A Naruto clone spotted a cluster of Genin, covered in gook and blood from the dead enemies around them. They were trapped on a sagging footbridge and a bloated one of the creatures, balloon-like and pulsing, waddled into view below them. His view, not in their sight line.
It popped.
The explosion flattened two buildings and erased five clones mid-leap. The bridge collapsed. The real Naruto, breath tight, blurred forward and caught the first child out of the air before he hit the rubble. The other four did not make it, and this one was burned badly, screaming.
Elsewhere, a clone was ripped apart by a saw-jawed creature that flailed on stubby legs and left a trail of shredded masonry in its wake. It was only brought down when Kakashi hurled a lightning kunai through its bloated eye and a Naruto clone followed up with a Rasengan to its underbelly, splattering its acidic blood across the walls and onto swarms of little green humanoids who melted along with the clone.
Still more clones worked rooftop by rooftop — shoving civilians ahead of them, blocking passageways, and coordinating tunnel evacuations. Every time one clone was destroyed, another reappeared somewhere else, running, shouting and saving lives.
Naruto's chakra was thinning. He could feel it. But his clones fought like they had one soul. Or more accurately, didn't fight, and for that they were felled. This was fine. These aliens would get theirs when the civilians were out of the way.
And even as they carved paths of salvation through the chaos, the creatures didn't stop.
They just kept coming.
In the medical district, Sakura crouched beside a bloodied Chunin, hands glowing with chakra as she repaired a severed artery. Dust and screams filled the air.
"Pressure here!" she shouted to a Suna med-nin, who rushed to obey.
Dozens of makeshift cots had been set up in the remains of a stone plaza — now riddled with craters, half-sheltered by fallen statues and chunks of broken wall. The medical tent had already collapsed once and been propped up again.
A scream ripped through the tent's far side.
Something massive moved between the craters — a full-grown green brute, easily eight feet tall and coated in rusted armor and fungal residue. Its yellow eyes locked onto Sakura.
It charged, yelling its war cry.
Sakura stood, walked towards it and crouched low to ground herself.
"I'm working, you piece of shit!" She yelled.
Sakura let fury fill her bones and chakra flood her limbs. She punched forward with all her strength.
The monster evaporated. Its chest exploded into meat and vapor, its lower body folding like a dropped puppet.
Blood and viscera sprayed across the walls of the building, but Sakura didn't flinch.
Within seconds, she was back with the wounded as shinobi reestablished the safe zone with fresh squads of Suna shinobi.
She didn't stop moving. Not for a second. Even as a Naruto clone dropped off a Genin covered in black burns before leaping away.
"Stabilize this one — lung puncture," she ordered, slapping gauze onto a torn chest. "Burns are third degree — rinse it now or the chakra'll react wrong—next!"
As the fires began to die down, Naruto — the real one — stood atop a crumbling wall near the city's heart. The wind blew ash across his face.
The streets still smoldered. Buildings were broken or in the process of collapsing. The scent of spores lingered in the cracks. Another clone dispersed in a puff of smoke beside him from a bullet he didn't see and whose firing he couldn't hear over the cocaphony of similar sounds.
He crouched clenched his fists. The enemies numbers had thinned, but only in the immediate area. He saw the stone and mist ninja crawling out of the nearby hole that the creatures had been swarming out of and htey gave the all clear.
"We beat them… right?"
A shape landed beside him — Kakashi, one arm bloodied, the other wiping dust from his flak vest.
He didn't look at Naruto.
"No," Kakashi said softly. "We bought time."
The battle raged for hours, and the sun was hanging low.
From one end of the city to the other, explosions lit the sky, smoke clogged the alleys, and green corpses littered the streets like discarded toys. Fires hissed against mist jutsu. Earth walls shattered under waves of green invaders, small and large. The larger brutes had mostly fallen, but the smaller ones kept coming.
They didn't stop.
They didn't think.
They just charged.
Naruto wiped his forehead, panting. Even his clones were slowing now, dispersing faster than he could cast them.
A swirl of sand dropped onto the roof beside him, and Gaara collapsed to one knee, chest heaving.
"Every direction," he said. "Tens of thousands. All weak. All easily killed. But… replenishing."
He swayed. His eyes were bloodshot. His hands shook.
Naruto froze.
He'd gone out alone and fought like the world depended on it. And now…
"Gaara…" Naruto said quietly. "Don't tell me you were going all out? It's a marathon not a sprint!"
"I couldn't stop," Gaara murmured. "Not while they were spreading. And new ones grow from the corpses."
The rest of them had noticed that too and took to burning the bodies, but they seldom had time to do so before new swarms came in.
A crash echoed across the rooftops as Kakashi landed beside them, dragging a wounded Suna shinobi over his shoulder.
"The shinobi can hold," Kakashi snapped. "Hell, we could win. But the civilians? They're dying by the hundreds. We're out of time."
Gaara looked up.
"Go." he ordered.
"What?" Naruto asked.
"Evacuate the civilians. Gather the foreign delegates. I trust whatever plan Jiraiya is cooking up. Once everyone is gone, I'll stay behind and finish the job. Without risking collateral."
Naruto's instincts screamed to argue — but the logic was airtight. It was the best plan. The only plan.
"…Okay," he said. "We'll come back for you."
They ran.
Kakashi moved like a phantom, his Chidori carving through a line of the shark-mawed beasts with a screech of plasma. Naruto and his clones didn't bother with the mouths on legs, merely stomping on the small green men and avoiding the large enemies. They turned a corner to find a wall of the gremlin-sized ones forming an organized phalanx in front of a troupe of spear and bolo throwers. The wall of spears lunged at them, he shattered them all with a rasengan that blew away the spears and stones before they could reach them. Of the survivors, he backhanded two, kicked a third into a wall, and flattened the fourth with a sweep of his heel.
"These things really are pathetic," he muttered.
Naruto and his clones flanked him, flitting from one path to the next, dodging known tunnel openings and sending shadow clones down each to spread the word.
"Evacuate! All civilians! Evac route Bravo!"
"Medical tents to the storage zone!"
"Grab who you can and MOVE!"
From every alley, refugees emerged, ushered by clones and shinobi alike. Suna forces fell into step with them, shielding flanks, directing flow. They were tired. Bloodied. But alive.
They reached the central tower where the battle had first exploded — and found thousands of people already waiting, huddled in waves of fear and exhaustion.
Naruto's eyes widened at the sight beyond them.
Jiraiya stood at the far end of the courtyard, arms folded, surrounded by dozens of bull-sized toads. They were pale bellied and marked with summoning seals, their backs bristling with spots and scroll-pouches.
Naruto recognized them immediately.
Storage toads. Not fighters. Not scouts. They were tanks for filling.
Some of them could hold entire apartment buildings inside their bellies. Naruto understood the plan.
Around the plaza, Suna shinobi had formed a tight defensive ring. The outer streets burned, but this final checkpoint held fast.
They waited, tense.
He noticed that the trio of Lightning shinobi were already returned.
"What happened at the crash site?" He asked.
"They have vehicles." Said Samui. "Fast ones. Big ones. Armored ones. Ones with VERY big guns."
"We evacuated to the safety of Suna thinking we could better defend here and leave the desert to Gaara." Said the redhead whose name escaped him.
The stone trio and Mist duo arrived moments later — bruised, tired, but intact. The Mist shinobi carried waterlogged scrolls and smelled of blood. The Stone ninja were covered in dust, eyes filled with fury, but alive and unharmed.
The younger Mist-nin, blood streaking his cheek, stopped short and frowned.
"Wait. Why are we retreating? These things are pushovers!" he said.
Heads turned.
Kakashi was in front of him before he realized it.
"It's not about how strong they are," Kakashi said, voice low but sharp. "It's their numbers. You're so caught up in the fight you can't see the battlefield. We are overrun, and we are leaving."
The young man paled, visibly shrinking back. Even Naruto winced. He'd rarely heard that tone from Kakashi.
There were no more questions.
Jiraiya stepped forward, raising one hand.
"Everyone brace yourselves," he said. "This next part is gonna feel weird!"
Naruto noticed the bumps on his face, the horizontal slits on his irises, and the orange markings around his eyes. He'd only ever seen the man use that power once before and he didn't like that memory.
He nodded to the storage toads.
And then it began.
The toads opened their mouths and began swallowing.
Like vacuums, they inhaled crowds of civilians, shinobi, and even equipment. Screams echoed as people were pulled into slick gullets. The Shinobi did not resist, but the civilians would be potentially more traumatized by this than the horrors from the afternoon.
One after another, the toads swallowed group after group. Rrows of villagers, full squads of ninja, and entire carts of supplies, all went down smooth.
Only Jiraiya and Naruto remained standing once the toads had finished.
The air was thick with smoke and silence.
Jiraiya glanced at Naruto.
"You ready?" he asked.
Naruto nodded once.
The toads all slammed their webbed hands into the ground and performed the signs in perfect unison.
"Reverse Summoning Jutsu!" They yelled as one.
In a burst of smoke, they all vanished — dozens of storage toads, and every soul inside them, teleported far from the battlefield.
Jiraiya and Naruto were left behind.
"So..." Naruto said. "Shall we get to work?"
Jiraiya chuckled at him as the barriers around them were overrun.
A sheer wall of the enemies, every type of the mouths on legs, little green men and the proper big ones, charged at them from every direction. They screamed as one. It sounded like the word "WAR!" but there were consonants in there that didn't fit.
"Not right now kid. We need to get out of the way for Gaara. We're leaving too." He said.
Naruto looked at him, utterly unconcerned with the club wielding maniac seconds away from splattering him.
"How..." he tried to ask, but the answer revealed itself a second later.
He felt himself cease to exist, like his entire body evaporated into a smoke. A second later, he rematerialized somewhere completely different.
It was a tropical place. Bright morning sunlight shone through croissant-shaped hills and giant versions of plants he knew to be small and to favor ponds.
Far to the south of Sunagakure, high atop a jagged sandstone outcropping, a lone figure stood beneath the darkening sky.
A breeze tugged at his cloak. Dust curled at his boots. War raged before him.
Obito's lone Sharingan stared unblinking through the hole of his mask, tracking the distant plumes of smoke and flashes of combat that lit up the early night sky. The city still smoldered across the horizon. From this height and distance, Sunagakure looked like a broken sun — flickering, twitching, bleeding green.
He said nothing.
Behind him, a figure peeled out of the rock itself like flesh from bone.
The two-chromed venus flytrap spoke.
"So," the white half muttered, scratching his chin, "I don't know what we were expecting…"
"I came here with no expectations," Obito said. His voice was as dry as the wind. "And I am still… well, not disappointed. I don't know what I feel right now."
"Existential horror?" offered the black half.
"Completely and utterly baffled?" suggested the white.
Obito didn't answer at first.
Then he exhaled, the breath barely audible behind the mask.
"Lost," he said. "We now have to drop everything and readjust. As to what we're going to do—"
A sound split the dusk.
A roar.
Low and primal. Ancient.
They turned back toward the dying light. From the heart of the desert, a mountain rose. But it was no mountain.
Shukaku erupted from the sands with a howl of incandescent rage, his form half-shifting and shaking with elemental fury. Sand twisted around him like a cyclone. His chakra boiled the sky.
He rampaged through the remains of the green tide, smashing twisted towers of fungal growth, devouring beasts whole, shattering the dunes with his claws. He didn't roar at enemies. He roared at the world.
The three observers watched in silence.
"…I," Obito said slowly, "have no. Idea."
It's been two and a half days since Gaara shredded and buried thousands of orks beneath the sands. Anybody familiar with how fast they multiply underground, knows how huge of a mistake that was. And this is the result.
And yes, there are a few more advanced orcs inside of the crash site directing all of this. I'm sure you already guessed.
The shinobi could have stayed and won the battle, but Suna was completely lost. It is now an eternal battlefield. Things only get worse from here. Like Reply