As they reached the northmost point of the land of lightning, they came to a halt.

"Let's set up camp here, brat. They should be about another 5 miles north, on a small island. It is one of the only pieces of land the barrier crosses," the old man speculated.

And indeed, in the distance you could see an area where the curious blue light was at its most noticeable. You could see the blue light slowly spreading from that point, becomming lighter and lighter the further it spread.

"Shouldn't we keep going? We could be there in about another 7 minutes and take a soldier pill before engaging them. They should be quite exhausted themselves by now, shouldn't they? It is after all the.. what? Twentieth hour of their assault?" Naruto was itchy to rush in; he wanted to protect everyone of the devastion that would hit them if indeed there was a demon out there, stronger than even the Kyuubi, just waiting for its chance to destroy them all.

"Rest for now. In another three hours or so the reinforcements i asked Tsunade-hime for via summon should arrive; troops from Suna and Iwa should be here by then, too, I'd estimate.

Kumo will already have had the area scouted, so we can count on some of their shinobi, as well as some information. Trust me, brat; there are two things every nation has a vested interest in, a) how other nations deal with the demon attacks and b) the continued existance of the barrier. They shall be here."

So they settled down, taking the time to eat some and meditate. The latter point had been one of the hardest disciplines to become aquainted with to Naruto; it was also one of the first things he had been tought in order to 'find his center', i.e. calm down some.


As the war-hardened shinobi had predicted, not three hours later, their reinforcements arrived which included quite a few ANBU, the rest of the Rookie 12 and their former teachers.

"As many as possible without weakening the village protection," one ANBU quoted the Godaime Hokage. Likewise, shinobi from the other great nations appeared – each force about as strong as their own –, settling down within sight.

One shinobi from Kumo approached each group, telling them how many enemies they should expect and the enemies' names and appearance. They didn't actually discuss strategies as time was quickly running out if the blue colour that now spread as far as the eye could see, was any indication. They would have to attack head-on.

They didn't actually have superior numbers, as it seemed as though Akatsuki had anticipated interferance and had quite a few low-ranked missing-nins watching their seemed, in fact, as though just about every missing nin was there – though some to be somewhat absent-minded, their eyes glazed over. Luckily, most of those missing-nins wouldn't a match even for the weakest of the as of yet resting forces.

Within half an hour of the last expected troop's arrival – which was about 5 hours after Naruto and Jiraiya's arrival – they set out, intending to stop their enemy.


Even though they slaughtered the missing-nins as fast as they could and managed to get just about all of the Akatsuki members involved with the fight, the enemy took every opportunity they got to attack the barrier in-between or even during fights.

Against those odds, they didn't make it and the barrier crumled, causing the fight to cease for a moment.

The resulting silence was broken by Naruto's shout, "WHY? Why the fuck did you do that? Do you know what dangers you might have just unleashed? WHY?"

One of the last three surviving persons who called themselves "Pain" answered monotoniously, "Everyone has their own agenda. Some of us want to test themselves against the magicians of old, some just wish to experiance something new and some do it just because they can. Regardless of their motivations though, it was the final part of my plan," here his voice became passionate, "my plan to bring about true peace. Now that we have the same enemy, now that we as a 'race' if you will face the same threat, we will unite. In fact.. just look about you. Here are forces of Iwa, Konoha, Kumo and Suna, of their smaller allies and even a few Oto shinobi fighting side by side.. Now, we as the shinobi race can truly.."

He was interrupted by an allmighty screach that caused everyone to wince. Suddenly the already rather toubled water became even more of a hazard to the few shinobi who still stood upon the water; and it kept getting worse.

As one everyone turned to the new threat – which just had to be the Juubi, the demon stronger even than Kyuubi.