Waking up after getting your ass kicked is never a very fun thing to do. Waking up after getting your ass kicked while stuck down under a pool of water? Well…
"*cough cough cough*"
Naruto emerged from an underground lake, dragging Sai to the rocky shore before collapsing on his back, clearing his lungs of the copious amounts of liquid he had ingested., "*cough cough* You alright Sai-kouhai?"
"…"
Naruto frowned and took Sai's pulse. He was still alive and well, but it was now abundantly clear that the pale ninja was indeed suffering from chakra exhaustion. Naruto checked to see if he was still properly breathing and the results gave his eye something of a twitch, 'How can I be the one that actually woke up and dragged us out of the water and yet he's the one that didn't get a drop of excess water in his lungs?'
Naruto sighed and let Sai be for the time being. He took the time to look around the cave they were stuck in. From the roof, the water from the whirlpool was coming through, obviously how they had gotten in, but where was all of the water going?
Naruto formed a Kage Bunshin and had it jump into the water to look for a path to move towards while he rested and took stock of the situation at hand. As the clone submerged itself under the lake, Naruto leaned against a rock near Sai. Well their mission was an utter failure he had to say. All of the things that they looked through brought them nothing but misery, pain, anger (if Sai could even get angry, Naruto wasn't sure), and a lot of wasted time. Before they could even check the last tower to see if there was anything of use in there the thing was blown to hell by Deidara, an explosives specialist.
After a short fight, Naruto had attempted to flee from the rooftop they had managed to be trapped on by jumping into the raging waters below, right into a whirlpool. Needless to say, the fight didn't go so well for the two Konoha ninja. Deidara's ability to keep the battle at a range that Naruto and Sai couldn't contend at was the real issue of the battle. Deidara and his clay bombs were far too versatile for them to attempt fighting him at a distance, and with their inability to close the distance it was only a matter of time. They had been fighting all day long, whether it be the traps they were forced to survive, or the soulless golem that tried to kill them in the first tower, by the time they fought Deidara they had been fighting all day long.
Naruto started checking his equipment, but when he reached for the ninjato on his back he got an unpleasant surprise, "Fuck! My sword is broken again?" Naruto's sheath and blade had been busted, possibly when he fell onto the rooftop from so high in the air during the fight with Deidara. A few explosions caught him as well when he attempted to flee towards the edge so there could have been another way they broke as well. Who knew where he had deposited the broken pieces? There was no way for him to repair it this time.
This was just not his day. He and his partner had been run ragged the entire time and were attacked by a fresh opponent with superior tactics and the means to execute his gameplan.
Naruto's body didn't really register the fatigue, the things he did for his own personal training saw to that. However Sai didn't have his level of stamina, nor his ability to instantly heal the wounds he suffered getting through the traps, and injuries accumulate.
Naruto sighed as he looked at Sai's unconscious form, "Damn it kouhai, I told you to tell me if you were hurt or overexerted..." Naruto checked himself over, he didn't have anything hurt on him, he was absolutely fine other than his pride. And that had taken a vicious beating, as he didn't land a single shot on Deidara the entire time. Even his new super-charged explosive tag wasn't enough to finish him off.
"Why didn't you use my chakra? That would have made the results of the battle an afterthought." The Kyuubi decided to chime in. Naruto couldn't say he was ungrateful for the distraction, there wasn't much he could do at the moment and reflecting on what happened with a second opinion until Sai woke up was as good a time waster as he was going to get.
Naruto checked his gear, 'Sai was right there and we were flying on one of his flimsy ink birds. Even if Sai was able to stand up to a decent amount of exposure to the chakra his bird couldn't. We would have dropped from the sky like a stone and died. I just have to face it, Deidara had our number up there.'
Kyuubi growled from inside Naruto's head, "If you had come alone you could have destroyed that fool." Naruto shrugged, mostly to himself, 'Maybe, but there's no such thing as a fair fight. Coming without Sai might have been easier, but he has his mission and I didn't see anything wrong with the help. Danzo-jiji wouldn't have sent him if he was weak. He just had a bad draw as an opponent. Deidara seems troublesome.'
Kyuubi agreed, Danzo was not one to undertrain his people. While he had a penchant for treating his ninja like pawns often, it couldn't be argued that he didn't make absolutely sure that they were ready for the missions that he planned to send them on. If he sent Sai then he thought that Sai was close to if not the absolute best that he had. Like Naruto said, Deidara simply caught them at the worst possible time on the worst possible terrain, "If you come across that man again I want you to eradicate him, no questions asked. Understood?"
Naruto scoffed, 'You don't control me. But you're right, if I see him again I'm going to drag him to the ground and rip his arms off, and not particularly in that order either. Where did he get all of those explosives from, and how did he have time to shape them? That's what I really want to know.'
"Get some rest. You cannot do anything while your partner is unconscious and weak. The bomber human must think you two died being thrown into the whirlpool so there is no one pursuing you at the moment. Take advantage of that and regain what strength you both can for the time being." Kyuubi said somewhat sagely.
Naruto hated doing nothing, but after flaring his chakra one good time eventually buckled and began to focus on the sound of the falling, crashing water to lull him to sleep.
XxX
"I'm so dead. I'm so dead, un!" Deidara repeated to himself as he flew over the whirlpool that the two boys fell into, looking for any sign that Naruto had survived and getting none, "I'M SO DEAD, UN!"
"Deidara get down here."
Deidara paled somewhat at the sound of the gruff voice calling his name. Looking down at the abandoned, ruined village, he saw a thick, hunched figure in a black robe with red clouds and the large straw hat that Akatsuki members are known to wear, "Deidara get down here now."
Deidara swallowed his nerves and landed his clay bird before pasting a nervous smile on his face, "Sasori no Danna! You made it down here at last, un!"
Sasori simply looked right at Deidara, "I thought you were going ahead to capture the jinchuuriki since you could move faster than I could through the air."
Deidara grinned apologetically, "Well you see, I did find him and fight him. He had another guy with him and we ended up getting into a little fight. They were kind of troublesome, but in the end they weren't that hard to beat."
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