Death Battle: Naruto Uzumaki vs. Ryu Hayabusa

Ray: Alright, the combatants are set. Let’s settle this debate once and for all.

Steel: It’s time for a NINJA DEATH BATTLE!!!

--

Vast Forest in the Land of Fire…

Amidst the towering trees in the land of fire, there was only the green of leaves and the brown of bark to be seen for miles. That changed when something landed on the branches and sprang off, yet it was so fast that all to be seen  as it landed was a blur that disappeared to the next branch just as swiftly.

It raced through the treetops until it came to the edge of a vast clearing with a lone stone pillar right in the center before coming to a halt. By now, it was possible to make out just what this speeding object was: a teenage boy clad in a black-and-orange jacket and pants, traditional Konohagakure sandals, and a headband that bore a plate of metal with a leaf-shaped symbol carved into its surface. The most distinguishing features about him were his spiked, blonde hair, striking blue eyes, and whisker-like markings adorning the sides of his face.

This person was none other than the famed Knucklehead of the Leaf and bearer of the Nine-Tailed Bijuu, Naruto Uzumaki.

Naruto had been issued a challenge to face, supposedly, the greatest ninja that the world had ever seen. Because of his efforts in the Fourth Ninja War, he was a select candidate to represent the Hidden Leaf Village. And as his gaze slowly scaled the stone pillar at the center of the clearing, his eyes landed at a small, almost-unnoticeable figure at the very top of it, standing atop a very narrow point as though casually standing on the floor.

The figure moved suddenly, springing off like he was on the hi-dive and dropped like a falcon. He landed, catfooted, on the ground, which was impressive as he dropped what must have been several stories and didn’t even have a scratch to show for it. Mentioned figure turned out to be a young man clad in a sleek, black, bodysuit that almost looked like kevlar, a scarf around his neck that flowed with the gentle breeze, and a metallic helmet of sorts that gave him the appearance of a bird of prey. A mask obscured all but his eyes and strapped to his back was a katana.

Even to Konoha, this man was well-known: the Dragon Ninja, Ryu Hayabusa.

Ryu stood to his full height, his green eyes meeting Naruto’s blue as the atmosphere seemed to condense around them. To Ryu’s confusion, though, Naruto’s face broke out into a determined grin as he coiled his entire body, ready to spring. If an opportunity came up to prove his worth, he would seize it. And who better to prove his mettle against than the famed Dragon Ninja himself?

Ryu had heard tales of the Nine-Tails Jinchuuriki, yet if he was excited or intimidated by the boy’s reputation, he was doing a good job of not showing any of it. Years of physical, emotional, and psychological training ensured that his composure was focused and ironclad. He reached up to grip the handle of his katana, his eyes not leaving Naruto’s as he braced himself for what was to come.

The ninja duel of the century was about to begin.

Believe it.

FIGHT!!!

Ryu sprang backward and hurled three shuriken at Naruto, who strafed to his left and rushed at the Hayabusa prodigy, lobbing a few shuriken of his own at him. In a move befitting any sword-bearing action flick, the dragon ninja unsheathed his katana and with three expert strokes, he cut each shuriken down, leaving them in metal shards on the ground.

By the time he was done, though, Naruto was already in his face and had pulled a kunai from a pouch on his belt. Just as Ryu swung in retaliation, Naruto raised his kunai and the sword forged from a dragon fang halted before it could reach his throat.

With a push, Naruto shoved Ryu away from him and lunged with the kunai in hand. The knife blade didn’t even come close to hitting Ryu, who simultaneously ducked and twisted his body to plant a whirling kick to Naruto’s side. Naruto staggered, but didn’t fall and sidestepped to avoid a thrust from the dragon sword. He backflipped away from a sweeping kick from Ryu, then decided that soloing this guy was probably not the smartest move…

Fortunate then, that fighting Naruto was literally like fighting a one-man army.

Naruto put his hands together in a quick handsign…

“Shadow Clone Jutsu!”

In a few bursts of smoke, one Naruto turned into ten. Yet Ryu was completely unmoved by this sudden appearance and, when the clones advanced on him, he was already well into the game and adjusting for a different kind of fight.

Two clones rushed forward, one going at him headlong while the other was attempting to flank him from the side. Both hurled a pair of shuriken at him, yet Ryu jumped and twisted his whole body so acrobatically that the star-shaped blades whistled past his body. He landed on all fours, yet rose to his feet and drew his sword at the same time the twin clones were within punching distance of him.

The first clone lost its hand, followed swiftly by its head. A split-second later and the second clone was bifurcated straight from the midsection. Both disappeared in puffs of smoke.

Ryu had little time to rest and re-plan for the other clones were already upon him and piled on top of him. For a moment, it was a dogpile of orange and black suits...until a powerful whirling strike knocked them all back. At the center of that strike was Ryu, now holding a wicked-looking scythe worthy of the Grim Reaper himself.

Every clone disappeared, which was odd to Hayabusa. If he knew his ninpo techniques, the caster would not have disappeared like his doppelgangers. So, where was he?

Something burst from the ground and uppercut Ryu so hard that the dragon ninja flew back in a slight arc. He quickly regained himself and saw that Naruto was the thing that hit him from below. The boy had somehow managed to hide away underground, emerging when Ryu was least suspecting it.

Clever. But Naruto would have to try a LOT harder than that to stop the legendary Hayabusa.

More clones of Naruto appeared on the battleground, yet they had just charged when Ryu swapped out his scythe for a bow that bore ornate, dragon-shaped carvings in its wood. He pulled back an arrow that bore a unique, dual-pronged arrowhead, then let it loose. It pierced a clone clean through the chest, causing it to vanish in a puff of smoke.

Three more clones vanished, each taking a shot from the Fiend’s Bane Bow, but by now Ryu was in striking range of the Naruto clones. He closed his eyes and focused his spiritual energies, then snapped them open.

SLISH!

A clone disappeared in a puff of smoke and a motion of silver. Where once stood only one Hayabusa ninja, now there were two identical copies (one was a lighter hue of color, though). Both moved, swords drawn, into the horde of Naruto clones and, and eight clashed against two. Blades flashed, punches and kicks flew, and bodies vanished in clouds of smoke, yet the twin Hayabusas remained completely intact.

Another Naruto clone came at the Hayabusa clones only to be cut down for its naivete. So, why did it have a smile on its face?

BAMF!

Another cloud of smoke, only this one revealed that this clone was actually disguised and its true form was a log...with a strangely-sparking parchment attached to it.

With an explosion, both were sent flying backward and, while the doppelganger disappeared into nothingness, the real Ryu Hayabusa flipped back to his feet and sharply raised his forearm to block a flying kick from Naruto, then lashed out with the Dragon Sword. The stroke missed as Naruto used the block to spring back out of Ryu’s reach. When on the ground, Naruto was still bearing his trademark confident smirk.

Ryu swapped out the dragon sword for another sickle, though this one was smaller than the infamous Eclipse Scythe and had a long chain on the end. Ryu took the chain and began to spin it with one hand while the other gripped the sickle. The chain swung at Naruto’s head with a wide stroke and Naruto, surprisingly, caught the chain around his forearm.

This earned a raised brow from Ryu, and he gave the chain a jerk, pulling Naruto towards him and following up with a strike from the sickle in hand.

WHAM!

From the ground burst another Naruto clone who slugged Ryu hard across the face before the sickle could connect with the other one. Using this moment of pause to his advantage, Naruto used his forward-going momentum to plant a hard kick into Ryu’s midsection, forcing the kusarigama from his grip.

Ryu regained his senses quickly thanks to his ninja training, then glanced back up to see Naruto with a massive four-bladed shuriken in his grip. He gave it a good spin before hurling it at Ryu.

Ryu sprinted at Naruto, leaped clean over the Windmill Shuriken, then caught Naruto in the chin with a vertical kick. The fox ninja flew clean into the air like a rocket and Ryu chased after him, grabbed onto Naruto, then fell hard to the earth in a drill-spin. While Naruto wound up planting his head into the ground, Ryu caught himself on a hand a split-second before impact and sprang away after performing his famed Izuna Drop.

POOF.

Naruto disappeared in a blast of smoke causing Ryu to groan in his head. Another clone, but the thought entered Ryu’s head. Where was the other?

Then it hit him and he turned with a swift strike. In his hand were a pair of sickles bound together by a chain and with a whirling nunchaku-esque motion, two shurikens bounced harmlessly away from him. Naruto stood not too far away and his teeth were gritted, as though he was hoping that some tactic would work and didn’t.

In Ryu’s mind, the gears were turning and he had figured out what had happened. It was the windmill shuriken: the real Naruto must have transformed and let his clone throw him, knowing Ryu would evade it at least. It almost worked, too.

Almost, though.

Ryu focused his spirit and an aura of flame slowly began to flow from every pore of his body. He snapped his eyes forward and put a hand forward, as though giving the charge, and the fiery aura around him took flight, scattered, and took the form of multiple flaming birds.

Naruto, having seen something slightly similar in Sasuke’s Phoenix Flower Jutsu set to evading the fiery projectiles, ducking and hopping so that each one flew right past him. One could imagine his surprise when the firebirds actually made wide turns and began coming at him from multiple angles. He upped his evasive game, but it proved a little harder than he thought, especially when Hayabusa was coming at him again, this time armed with a set of steel claws strapped to the backs of his hands.Equipped with the Falcon’s Talons, Ryu pressed his assault with fast-paced strikes to the point that his weapons of choice were little more than steely blurs. Naruto evaded as best he could, but could only do so well with the flaming birds still coming at him.

One firebird grazed him, scorching part of his outfit. He bit back pain and leaned back just in time to avoid a swiping kick from Ryu. There was a sting on his cheek as a cut appeared. A quick inspection revealed a set of steel claws strapped to Ryu’s boot, giving it a taloned appearance.

His ninja training kicking in, Naruto made a quick tactical retreat towards the trees. By this time, the flaming birds had all dissipated, but Ryu was intent on finishing this fight as much as Naruto was and quickly gave chase, springing into the trees just as Naruto did.

Naruto needed to do something to shake Hayabusa and, in midair, he made a quick handsign.

“Multi-Shadow Clone Jutsu!”

The segment of forest was soon engulfed in a cloud of smoke and Ryu had sprung right into it. When his vision cleared, at least thirty Naruto clones were making their way through the wood with a few coming right at him to slow him down. Quick as a flash, Ryu had swapped out the Falcon’s Talons for a massive, golden broadsword as long as he was tall. The blade had to weigh at least a hundred pounds, yet the Hayabusa lifted and swung it like it was weightless.

The Dabilahro destroyed any clone that came at Hayabusa, cleaving them in two. Those that weren’t bifurcated by the blade were swatted away like flies. All vanished in puffs of smoke.

Any other ninja would have been lost in the flow, with a seemingly endless horde of clones coming at him and their primary target nowhere to be seen. It was fortunate that Ryu Hayabusa was not “any other ninja”. He closed his eyes and let his Ninja Sense guide him.

There.

Ryu swatted away a few more clones, then dashed through the maze of wood, branches, and leaves. He trusted this ninja sense to take him right to Naruto, wherever he might be.

--

Elsewhere, Naruto sat meditating on a branch. He did not move in the slightest, not even when a bird landed on his shoulder to investigate him. The clones were not to ensure he would run away. He just needed time to gather Nature Chakra and, to do so, he would be required to sit absolutely still for a while.

Slowly, the energy gathered within him began to change him slightly, his shut eyes gaining a red coloration around them. He had enough now, he felt, to turn the tide.

He felt Ryu coming and rolled to his side just as the Hayabusa ninja swung down hard with the massive gilded blade. The blade embedded itself in the thick wood and Ryu just dislodged it to look Naruto in the eye.

Naruto’s eyes were now bright yellow with horizontal pupils, like a toad’s. He had transformed slightly, but the powers he received from Sage Mode spoke in and of itself when Ryu swung again. Naruto reached up and actually caught the Dabilahro’s blade. The strength with which Ryu swung would have cut off Naruto’s hand...and completely bifurcated him from the shoulders-up. Yet Naruto was not only completely unharmed from the blade’s edge, but actually matching Ryu muscle-for-muscle.

With an almost casual toss, Naruto flung the massive blade from Ryu’s grip. Mentioned blade whistled through the air like a boomerang and eventually just embedded itself in the trunk of a tree with an audible “thunk”.

Next thing Ryu knew, Naruto’s fist collided with the side of his face and he was sent flying backward like he was fired from a catapult. His insane ninja skill let him turn his backward-going momentum into a tight roll as he landed, feet-first, on the trunk of a tree. He gathered strength in his legs, his muscles tightening like springs, then sprang off it so fast that he appeared to be a blur.

Naruto tracked him, then sprang after him...only to meet him on the branch and jump right into a swing from a long-handled, golden hammer. Unlike last time with the Dabilahro, he wasn’t expecting this and took the hammer-blow to the face. While he flew back and smashed into a tree to the point that the wood actually compressed under his weight, he didn’t appear that badly damaged.

Naruto fell to the closest branch, then shook the cobwebs out of his head just in time to see Ryu taking aim with a gigantic cannon that looked like an oversized matchlock gun. With a loud “BANG”, a massive ball of fire flew at Naruto, who only had enough time to jump.

The fireball hit the place where Naruto once stood and exploded like a grenade. Naruto so narrowly evaded it that he felt the pulsewave hit him in the back and give him a violent push through the air. He hit the branch of a tree hard and rolled on impact. He pulled himself together to quickly glance to see if Ryu was still there.

He wasn’t.

Naruto quickly got on his feet and ran to the side just as Ryu came down with twin katanas, leaving two gashes in the tree as Dragon’s Claw and Tiger’s Fang both missed their mark. The Bearer of Nine-Tails sprang onto the trunk of the tree and defied gravity by actually sprinting up its length.

Ryu, not wanting to lose sight of this kid again, mimicked him. Just as he was close enough to hamstring Naruto, the boy sprang at a nearby branch so fast that he was literally a blur. Ryu sprang after him with both swords poised to cut Naruto into ribbons, yet his first strike met with the steel of Naruto’s kunai and a follow-up stab hit nothing but air as Naruto swerved to the side to evade it.

Naruto swung with his free fist, only to miss when Ryu backflipped away and landed not too far away on the branch. At this point, the knuckleheaded ninja decided that it was time to pull all stops. He started gathering chakra in his hand that began to glow electric-blue and take on the shape of a sphere of spiraling energy.

At the same time, Ryu sheathed his twin katanas and began charging his own spiritual energy into his hands. This one gathered into a pulsating sphere of energy that started out blue, but quickly began to turn the color of fresh blood.

Naruto charged when the energy was done gathering and at the same time, Ryu finished gathering energy himself. The Hayabusa ninja thrust his hands forward just as Naruto extended his arm as though to slam the sphere into Ryu.

“Rasengan!”

A basketball-sized sphere of energy flew from the gap between Ryu’s hands just as Naruto thrust forward with the Rasengan. The two energies met in midair and created a blast so powerful that both were sent flying back from the resulting shockwave.

Shortly after Naruto ground to a halt from tumbling across the ground, his eyes lost their yellowish tint, returning to their original radiant blue. He got up and looked around for his opponent, only to see him coming at him at breakneck speed, now bearing a long staff with gilded, mace-like knobs on each end. He had just realized that he had to get out of the way when he felt the Lunar Staff slam into his side. He didn’t even have time to make a noise in pain when, with a quick spin of the staff, Ryu slammed the opposite end into Naruto’s chin in an uppercut that sent the Leaf Ninja clean into the air. To finish his combo, he actually let Naruto fall, then thrust with the staff to catch him in the gut, then turn a full one-eighty degrees and tossed Naruto, using his staff as a makeshift catapult.

Naruto tumbled across the ground like a skipping stone and fell with a limp flop. That had hurt...a lot. If he had to guess, he had broken at least five ribs if the pain in his chest was any indication.

Then, in an act that seemed to warp time and space, something happened in Naruto’s very soul.

--

In a vast, dark, and dank chamber, a massive figure crouched before Naruto. It was massive enough to view Naruto as a bug, had glowing, red eyes, and was doglike in appearance. The one exception were the nine flowing tails that fanned out behind it.

This creature was none other than the Nine-Tailed Fox Bijuu, Kurama. The creature chuckled, then spoke in a low, growling voice that echoed across the chamber.

“Looks like this Hayabusa ninja is tougher than you thought.”

“Can we talk about this later?” Naruto asked, then added, “I could use a hand here.”

“Very well. I shall grant you some of my chakra…”

The fox moved, taking a meditative pose as a bright-red aura began to emanate from his body, flowing into Naruto’s own in the process.

--

Ryu Hayabusa homed in on Naruto, who was only just now getting back to his feet, his Lunar Staff poised to paint the forest floor with Naruto’s brains. He swung, the staff poised right at Naruto’s temple.

A flash of yellow and the staff snapped like a twig, and the end that struck the side of Naruto’s head flew through the air to land with a “plop” on the ground.

This was nothing like the Sage Mode, which only changed Naruto’s eyes slightly. This time, Naruto had changed completely. He had gained a golden aura adorned with black, ornate markings, and his eyes had gone from bright blue to crimson with slits for pupils.

Naruto threw a backhand at Ryu, who sprang back to avoid it…

Half a second later and Ryu was flying back and tumbling across the ground. After he caught himself and slid to a halt, he tried to piece together just what happened in that instant. It came to him. Just after he jumped back, Naruto had created an extension in the form of an arm made of the same material that now flowed across the surface of his very body.

The arm retracted back to Naruto and vanished within the energy flowing across him. Naruto, now sporting a confident grin, slammed his fist into an open palm. Time for round three…

Naruto vanished and, for a fraction of a second, Ryu almost paused in confusion. He moved quickly and was wise to do so, for he had just leaned away from a punch that was an inch from hitting him and driving his nose into his skull. The Hayabusa took an extra precaution and vanished in a puff of smoke.

Ryu reappeared just behind Naruto, the War Hammer poised to slam the boy’s head off his neck. Yet with a simple swipe of Naruto’s arm, the hammer’s head flew clean off its handle. Ryu flipped backward out of Naruto’s reach and discarded the now-useless grip of the hammer. He needed a quick moment to make a tactical retreat and he had a good idea how.

Ryu focused his ki once again, this time the aura forming into a small, black sphere that crackled with antimatter. It went from the size of a ping-pong ball to about the size of a softball, the crackling intensifying in both volume and visibility, then Ryu launched it at Naruto.

Naruto didn’t know what would happen if the Art of the Piercing Void hit him, but he didn’t want to find out. He dashed to his side and, when the black sphere hit the tree behind him, it crackled more violently, expanded to at least ten times its size, then vanished, taking with it a sizeable chunk of the tree’s trunk.

Naruto dashed at Ryu and actually seized the Hayabusa with a massive chakra arm before turning and throwing him like a fastball. Ryu flew through the air, but landed, cat-footed, on the nearest branch. The mere impact caused the branch to compress into a splinter-laden crater, but Ryu was unharmed for the most part.

The dragon ninja dropped to the ground, then reached into a compartment and pulled out a bluish-green stone carved into the yang symbol of the iconic yin-yang circle of balance. He took out his Dragon Sword, then turned it over and inserted the stone into a slot on the pommel of the katana. Once properly fitted, the stone began to glow and the curved blade also gained an ethereal coat of white light.

With the Eye of the Dragon equipped, the True Dragon Sword had finally awakened.

Ryu turned just in time to see Naruto take a swipe at him with a chakra-clawed open-hand strike. The hand hit the katana, but while any other sword would have shattered on impact, the True Dragon Sword remained intact.

Ryu pushed the hand away, then slashed at two extensions of chakra that were coming right at him. The hand-like chakra forms were cut in twain and slowly fizzled out like a dying fire since they were cut from their source.

Ryu’s green eyes gleamed in bloodlust and he rushed Naruto and took a swipe at him with the legendary katana. Naruto backed away and threw a punch at the Hayabusa, only to miss and meet the business end of the Dragon Sword.

Ryu thrust the sword at Naruto’s gut only to hit nothing but air. Naruto had moved so fast that he wasn’t even visible to the naked eye anymore. Yet Ryu saw right through it and turned to throw a kunai at where he most likely would turn up. Mentioned kunai had a strange, almost grenade-like attachment just below the blade.

Naruto, unsurprisingly, caught the oncoming blade. Mentioned kunai started to emit a series of sparks and, right there and then, Naruto realized that he made the wrong choice.

The incendiary kunai went off like a grenade. The explosion didn’t hurt Naruto at all, but the explosion and the resulting smoke and dust were enough to distract him for a little bit. In that little bit, Ryu crossed the distance and swung. Naruto stepped back, but so narrowly that the Dragon Sword made a long, thin gash across his chest.

This was new...a weapon that could actually cut through the Bijuu armor. Ryu was keeping up with him, barely, but it was enough for Naruto to realize that it was now time to bring out the big guns...the VERY big ones.

Immediately, Ryu gathered his remaining Ninpo and his hands were soon ablaze. After a brief martial arts display, he thrust his hands forward and from his outward-facing palms erupted a massive, serpentine dragon blazing with crimson fire. It circled Ryu briefly, then raced at Naruto, who had just closed his eyes.

A brief vision came to Naruto’s psyche: one including a circle of nine creatures, all with long, flowing tails including Kurama, and an old man with an odd eye on his forehead and a long, ornamental rod strapped to his back. All of them looked at him, then nodded as the vision became consumed in nothing but whiteness.

The fire dragon consumed Naruto in a blazing inferno, the resulting fire trail being so bright and tall that it was impossible to make anything out. Ryu stood by and waited, his guard never dropping. If this boy had survived all that he had put him through before, odds were that he’d do so again. Ryu was ready for practically anything…

“Practically” was the key word in that moment.

Something colossal erupted from the fire, as though the flames were a gateway to Hell itself. It was a kaiju-sized, golden fox made of the same material as the aura that covered Naruto’s body. The fox had massive claws and teeth, white eyes that never blinked, black markings down its limbs and each of its nine tails that flared out from its body.

The Nine-Tailed Fox had returned and was ready to wreak havoc.

The Fox opened its mouth as energy began to gather just in front of its mouth, gathering into a sphere that was so dark-red that it was almost black. Once at a decent size, the fox lurched forward and launched the sphere at Ryu’s location.

The resulting explosion was MASSIVE and comparable to a meteor strike. The shockwave that it created totaled any trees in the general area and, when the blast cleared in time, the crater would likely span for miles.

Then, the impossible happened, something cleared the explosion, firing out of it like a bullet had been fired from within it. Ryu Hayabusa had just barely cleared the explosion and was currently hopping between boulders and tree fragments that were still falling after being kicked up by the blast.

Ryu scanned the monster, then made a spectacular dive at the creature’s head. The fox-like monster threw a massive fist at the oncoming Hayabusa, aiming to crush him like a bug. Ryu, with his mastery of air currents, maneuvered so that he came just above the creature’s knuckles, rolled down its hand, then returned to his feet to sprint down the length of the creature’s arm.

Ryu’s falcon-like eyes caught sight of something just on top of the Bijuu’s head: Naruto. The Hayabusa prodigy readied his True Dragon Sword, then sprang off the massive arm and onto Kurama’s head, aiming to sever Naruto’s head.

CLANG!

To Ryu’s surprise, Naruto actually raised a WEAPON to block his attack. Mentioned weapon was a rod of black material that Ryu guessed was likely his own spiritual energy.

Only now did Ryu notice some distinct differences in Naruto. For one thing, his body was a fine, even mix of glowing-gold and pitch-black. Second was that he had a series of black spheres encircled behind him that were most likely the same material as the dual rods he now wielded. And third was that his eyes now had cross-shaped pupils: a sign of mixing Nature chakra and Bijuu chakra.

Naruto had entered his final and strongest form, Six Paths Mode.

After a brief struggle that Ryu soon put together that he wouldn’t win, he fell back and began barraging Naruto with a series of strikes with the True Dragon Sword. Naruto, in response, evaded or parried with his chakra rods, which were so highly-condensed that even the True Dragon Sword could only make slight nicks in them.

Naruto was much faster, too, it seemed. Whenever Ryu got too close to catching him with a sword strike, Naruto would dash away fast enough to appear as though he was teleporting. And only a mad Blink Technique would keep Ryu’s own head on his shoulders.

After a bit of back-and-forth between Dragon Sword and Chakra Rods, Ryu finally gained some distance between him and Naruto. Atop the golden energy beast, the two gazes met.



The end was nigh…

Both rushed forward, their feet padding the surface of the beast as they raced towards each other for one final clash.

Both sprang into the air, weapons poised for the kill...

SHING!

Both landed, their backs turned to each other. For possibly the longest couple of seconds, all was quiet…

Then Naruto fell to his knees, clutching a wound on his arm that was still bleeding from a deep gash caused by the True Dragon Sword. Yet he smirked and called out…

“Hey, Hayabusa! You forget what you’re standing on?”

Ryu’s eyes suddenly widened in shock. He had been so caught up in the moment that he had forgotten the situation he was currently in. The gargantuan beast they stood on was made of the same chakra that coated Naruto’s body. Before he could make any effort to make a quick getaway, something seized him by the ankles, holding him down. He couldn’t run, he couldn’t jump, nor could he make any resistance when another pair of chakra arms reached up and seized him around the wrists, removing the Dragon Sword from the game.

Naruto, meanwhile put up his right hand and formed another blue sphere of spiraling chakra. This one was different, though. It was lighter in color, almost white, and was slowly growing four backward-curving chakra blades formed from wind-type chakra.

Then the fox began to shrink away, retreating back into Naruto’s body, though the arms that restrained Hayabusa remained and actually pulled him toward Naruto, who pulled back the spiralling, shuriken-shaped sphere just as they went into a dazzling free-fall.

“RASENSHURIKEN!!!”

Naruto slammed the glowing sphere into Ryu’s midsection the minute the Dragon Ninja was in range. The minute it made contact, the Rasenshuriken began to spin faster and faster as energy began to expand from it, engulfing Ryu Hayabusa completely.

It was a pain that Ryu had NEVER felt before. He had been a dragon’s chew toy on more than one occasion, been impaled to near-death, suffered under the Grip of Murder, and taken a beating from the most powerful Fiend Lords to have walked the Earth. Yet this was entirely new to him.

It felt like every cell in his body was being pierced by a white-hot needle. Every cell in his skin, muscles, blood, and bone were now on fire as the Rasenshuriken cut him on the microscopic level, engulfing him in a sphere of white-hot energy as he and Naruto fell all the way down to terra firma with a loud “THUD”.

When the dust cloud settled, Naruto (now back to his original self) stood over a grounded Hayabusa, the Dragon Sword embedded, blade-first in the ground just beside its owner. Ryu was face-flat on the ground, arms stretched out in front of him and fingers digging into the ground in both determination and frustration. He wanted to keep fighting, his spirit too strong to fully accept defeat, but his body was completely devastated by the Rasenshuriken.

Ryu painfully craned his neck to look up at Naruto, made one last attempt to crawl over to him, then flopped back to the ground in defeat. Among his many injuries were near-irreversible damage to his ninpo abilities, severe burn-like wounds all over his body, several lacerations, and torn ligaments in his legs. His days of fighting were over, it seemed.

Naruto walked away from his fallen opponent, instead approaching the Dragon Sword that stood up from the ground like a flagpole. He took hold of the handle, removed it from the ground, then placed it in front of Ryu. The Dragon ninja looked up again, first at the sword handle that was now in his reach, then up at Naruto again.

“I think you dropped this.” Naruto said with a sad smile on his face, “I don’t want it. I don’t need it. It's yours.”

Ryu weakly smiled underneath his mask. It seemed this opponent was willing to honor his loss and give him his weapon back. He reached forward and gripped the sword’s handle with what little strength he had left. He then rolled over on his back to gaze at the sky and crossed the blade over his chest.

As Naruto walked away, having given his opponent an honorable death, a falcon circled overhead as Ryu closed his eyes one last time.

Perhaps they would meet again, but as allies instead of opponents...

K.O.!!!

--

Steel: *sniff* DANGIT, RAY! First “Yuna vs. Lucy” and now this?!

Ray: Pull yourself together, Steel. Anyway, this was surprisingly close, especially early on. In base form, Naruto was actually very vulnerable, because his standard gear and weapons were simply outclassed by Ryu’s arsenal.

Steel: The minute Naruto started pulling out his ninjutsu, it would’ve made Ryu sweat a little, but nothing truly dangerous. The REAL game changer was Naruto’s transformations. Ryu’s arsenal proved effective against average ninjas and monsters, but Naruto’s Sage, Bijuu, and Six Paths modes boasted defenses too good for most of his weapons to penetrate.

Ray: The only real weapon that stood a chance against Naruto’s alternate forms was the True Dragon Sword, which is imbued with divine powers from the spirits, but it wasn’t enough. Ryu still had to match Naruto’s updated strength, speed, ninjutsu, durability, and destructive force.

Steel: Sadly, he couldn’t do it all. Ryu doesn’t have the destructive capability to destroy entire nations, but Naruto does. Ryu can be wounded by earthly weapons, Naruto’s transformations can’t. Ryu can’t spam his ninja-magic abilities, Naruto can and will. The only category he came close to was the speed factor, but even then Naruto still outdoes him.

Ray: Last but not least is that Naruto can heal even severe wounds thanks to Kurama’s chakra, while Ryu requires precious ki, time, and rest to heal similar wounds.

Steel: Ryu put up a good fight, but was simply outfoxed by Naruto.

Ray: The winner is Naruto Uzumaki.