Chapter Text
The Hidden Village of Shoes had announced their invasion at dawn.
No declaration. No messenger hawk. Just the sound of metal striking stone as dozens of shinobi dropped from the treeline surrounding Konoha's outer wall, their boots catching the early light like drawn blades.
The Hokage's office had barely finished processing the first report before the alarms rang.
By the time Naruto arrived at the eastern district, three blocks were already rubble.
---
They moved nothing like he expected.
That was his first real thought, cutting through the initial disbelief at the name, at the uniforms, at the absurdity of an entire hidden village built around footwear. He had been ready to dismiss them. He wasn't dismissing them anymore.
The Shoe ninja fought low — lower than any style he had faced before. Their center of gravity dropped as they engaged, their bodies almost horizontal in their charges, everything funneled into the legs. The kicks carried chakra-forged weight behind them, metal-reinforced boots erupting on impact with the force of small detonation tags. A Konoha chunin had taken one to the chest forty feet away and hadn't gotten back up.
Naruto blurred forward.
*Shadow Clone Jutsu.*
Twelve of him scattered across the street, each one reading a different vector of attack, routing toward a different cluster of Shoe shinobi. The real Naruto surged toward the largest group — four of them moving in a coordinated formation, their steel sandals already spinning off their wrists on chakra-wire like bladed discs.
He ducked the first volley on instinct, felt one graze past his ear close enough to sting, and drove his palm forward.
The Rasengan took the lead ninja in the sternum.
The detonation of compressed chakra sent the man through a market stall, through the wall behind it, and into the street on the other side. Naruto was already spinning, chakra pooling into his next hand before the debris settled, and met the second Shoe ninja's flying kick mid-charge. Boot against Rasengan. The boot lost.
*Two down.*
The other two broke formation — smart, he noted — and flanked wide. One of them slammed both palms to the ground.
"Earth Style — Iron Sandal Burial!"
The road erupted. Huge stone slabs shaped unmistakably like flat-soled sandals tore upward from beneath the cobblestones, crashing together in a closing vice. Naruto threw himself upward, barely clearing it, and felt the shockwave buffet him as tons of rock slammed into each other below.
He hit the rooftop in a crouch.
From above, he could see the full scope of it now. The invasion had spread across at least six blocks, maybe more. Konoha's jonin were holding, but they were holding hard — their faces tight, their movements conserving chakra in the way veterans did when they didn't know how long a fight would last.
He closed his eyes.
The Nature Energy came easily now. It always did, since the war — as though the world itself had grown more willing to lend itself to him. He felt it settle into him like a tide coming in, the markings spreading around his eyes, every sound and scent and tremor in the ground sharpening into something vast and immediate.
Sage Mode.
He opened his eyes.
And then he moved.
---
It didn't take long after that.
It never really did anymore, and he was aware of that in a way he tried not to sit with too closely — the awareness that the gap between him and most opponents had become something almost uncomfortable. The remaining Shoe ninja in his sector were capable. Creative, even. Their Clog Barrier technique had genuine structure to it, layering hardened chakra into interlocking soles that formed a surprisingly resilient defensive wall. Their Wind Release channeled through specially-crafted heel chambers produced blades that curved in unpredictable arcs.
But Sage Mode read the shape of every attack before it fully formed.
He moved through them like wind through tall grass. A Rasengan into a barrier that cracked it like ceramics. An uppercut that sent a man twenty feet skyward. Two clones catching fleeing ninja and bringing them down with clean efficiency. By the time Sakura and Kakashi arrived in his sector, the last Shoe ninja was folding to the ground, his metal boot ringing off the stone.
Sakura landed three paces away, kunai still drawn, and assessed the scene in one sweep.
"You've been busy," she said.
"They were tougher than they sound," Naruto said, letting the Sage Mode recede. The markings faded from his face. He flexed his hand — the knuckles were raw from punching reinforced steel, which even chakra hardening only softened so much. "The boot kicks especially. That Earth Style jutsu cracked my landing on that roof."
"I saw it." Kakashi touched down without sound, hands settling into his pockets. His eye moved across the unconscious Shoe ninja with the quiet, cataloguing attention he never quite turned off. "Whoever trained them understood leverage. They're not improvising."
"Shoekage's orders, they said." Naruto almost smiled despite himself. "Still can't believe that's a real title."
"It's not the strangest thing we've fought," Sakura said.
"It's pretty close."
A beat of quiet settled over the street. The distant sounds of combat were still audible — other sectors, other jonin — but here, for this moment, it was still. Morning light was starting to properly break over the rooftops, catching the dust still hanging in the air from the fight.
Naruto exhaled slowly.
He was tired — genuinely tired, in the deep way that Sage Mode always left him after heavy use, the kind that reached past muscle and chakra reserves into something harder to name. But it was the good kind. The earned kind.
He opened his mouth to say something — he wasn't sure what, something about getting medical teams to the injured chunin he'd spotted two blocks over — when Sakura's expression changed.
He saw it before he understood it. Her eyes dropped to his arm. The color left her face in a single, complete motion, the way it only did when she was looking at something medically wrong.
"Naruto."
Her voice was barely sound.
He looked down.
His right hand was gone.
"Wha — *what?!*"
He grabbed at his own wrist. His fingers closed on nothing. He grabbed again — harder, like force would fix it — and again there was nothing, just air where his hand should be.
"Hey — *hey* — what is—" He shook his arm. The fragments scattered and kept rising. "SAKURA—"
She was already there, chakra blazing at her palms, pressing both hands straight through him. She staggered.
"I can't — there's nothing—"
"THEN DO SOMETHING—" His voice cracked. He spun to Kakashi, eyes wide and wild. "Kakashi-sensei — what is this, *what is this—*"
"I don't know—"
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON'T KNOW—"
His shoulder was gone. He couldn't feel his legs. He looked down and made a sound he would have been embarrassed about any other time — something between a shout and a breath punched out of him — and he *thrashed*, throwing chakra at it, reaching for Kurama—
The fox was distant. Getting further.
"No — *no, no—*" Frantic now. Completely frantic. "I'm not — someone — *fix this*—"
His voice distorted. Split.
Gone.
The street was silent.
Sakura stood with her hands still outstretched, shaking, reaching into empty air.
Kakashi said nothing for a long moment.
Then, very quietly — "Find Tsunade. And Shikamaru."