Story Challenge: Gandalf hires ninja from Konoha to destroy the One Ring. Use of the following story prompt is optional:

Challenge details: Choose a team that Gandalf will believe will not betray Naruto, or at least will resist the One Ring's influence. (Hint: Sasuke with his cursed seal is a bad idea). Having one or more members of the team actually corrupted by the ring's influence is optional, but encouraged.

The team must face the Nazgul and Sauruman on the way to Mount Doom. Going through Moria and having Gandalf fight the Balrog there is optional.

The Kyuubi is evil. No "Fem Kyuubi" who loves Naruto in its own way. It's a demon. (It can take the form of a female for seduction purposes in order to help corrupt certain team members, like say, a certain super pervert if he is made part of the team, but not to humanize it or crap like that.)

No overpowered Naruto. All characters have the powers and abilities they have at the time of the Chuunin exam finals. That means Naruto can summon and Lee can use 3 gates, but that's the limit. No sage mode Naruto. (If you want him to learn Rasengan on the way, that would be alright, but that's the limit.)

No half-demon or whatever Naruto. He's Naruto.

There must be temptations from both the Kyuubi and the One Ring placed on Naruto, and the One Ring will attempt to corrupt the various team members.

 

Oh, I understand. Kurama is just a troubled...mass of malevolent chakra capable of creating tsunamis with a swing of its tails.

I stipulated the Nine Tails was evil because in the crossover it's a balrog.

 

Here, this has something similar:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8355614/1/The-Warriors-Three

It's almost average, I think, but it has Gendalf hiring three ninja - Naruto, Sakura and Sai. I think they are older in this fic, too.

In any case, it's nothing special.

It doesn't follow the standart LOTR plotline, so that might be a pluss.

Spoiler

The ninja go ahead and murder Saruman with some complications, and thus, no Moria - they go through Rohan instead and fight the fights there first

I think Naruto is weakened than his canon counterpart, despite being older. Since we don't see one man armies even when they would actually help.

Then again, 10k naruto's against 10k uruk-hai, I actually think it would be too easy...

 

Thanks for the link. Yeah, the author has definitely watered down the ninja severely. A decent guilty pleasure story and the writing has gotten better since the first few chapters.

 

You'd struggle with issues of overpowering characters regardless of the stipulations you've set.

How does an army fight clones, backed by an army? Heck, what about bunta? The ring-wraiths on their mounts alone were terrifying enough, a giant toad spitting thousands of galleons of oil however?

Ouch.

Not that I'd complain, i'm just pointing out the kind of damage that level naruto can still do, which kind of goes against what you intend, no?

 

No question that Gamabunta would ruin the whole day of any Middle-Earth army. But other than that, I think the Konoha genin would be at a power level within the point where it's not overpowered without Naruto dipping into the Kyuubi's chakra. So, perhaps Naruto pre-summoning would need to be specified. No Kyuubi-Naruto rental contract chat.

Typical orcs and uruk-hai would not be a serious threat, but the Nazgul and a few other major players would still be interesting encounters that could be handled in a way that didn't involve running and hiding at every turn.

And just imagine Kiba and Akamaru vs. Warg riders.

 

Naruto could make 1000 shadow clones by himself.

 

I get you shoehorning Naruto into the team but any other gennin seems like nonsense. As far as I could tell the entire purpose of founding the villages was so that kids didn't have to participate in such dangerous missions and on the front lines in wars. If Gandalf gets a choice in shinobi and he picks all kids then he and Konoha are being stupid.

 

To be honest, purely for the shenaniganery inherit in the idea, I kinda want to see this exact scenario... except post-series.

It would be a hilarious curbstomp unless a lot more of the Maiar (or even a couple of the Valar) got involved, but I kinda want to see it happen.

 

Yeah, he certainly could. However, Naruto's taijutsu was still subpar at that time. He could have overwhelmed a hundred orcs, but I don't think he could have soloed an army of 10,000 uruk-hai without using the fox.

By Shippuden, that had changed.

 

I think you've chosen the wrong fandoms to cross if you're trying to keep things balanced.

 

I agree. I wouldn't have him pick all genin. However, a team with Might Guy, Kakashi, Kurenai, and Asuma would walk all over Sauron's forces. I'd let just one of those lead the team--probably Guy.

Honestly, Team 7 could do the mission themselves with little difficulty. If two hobbits could slip past Mordor's guards and get to their target, any team of Konoha ninja could do it. Most of the encounters that the Fellowship faced were bandit-level threats. The only thing really dangerous about Sauron's army was the massive numbers, and for the most part they would just be avoiding it altogether.

---------- Post automerged at 04:06 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:56 PM ----------

I get your point, but if you just go to the early chapters of the manga/early anime episodes, those genin weren't so powerful as to be beyond the story. It would be within the realm where you could at least suspend disbelief.

You can't really do that with Shippuden Naruto.

 

It goes a bit beyond that though. LotR and Naruto just aren't universes that mesh well together. Going beyond painting a world where Gandalf can travel to Konoha to hire ninjas, the attitudes inherent in each world don't lend themselves to a crossover. This is true of crossing most manga with a more serious literary piece, however.

Even if you did grab pre-Shippuden Naruto, you still have his team mates to deal with in regards to power. Someone like Jiraiya probably wouldn't be sent on a mission for anyone but the village at this stage, but even those just a step below him possess techniques capable of fighting armies.

If you want to ease the readers' suspension of disbelief, I'd try a different way of getting Naruto into Middle-Earth. Perhaps the Forbidden Scroll is more than just a technique repository, perhaps it contains seals an order of magnitude above what shinobi today can even dream of? Maybe Naruto, unwitting of what he holds, reads aloud a passage from the scroll and finds himself transported to Middle-Earth?

I think a pre-genin Naruto would fit in well enough with the Fellowship, as you'd have him with basic shinobi training and his base personality, but without techniques that let him take on more enemies than the rest of the Fellowship combined. This way you don't have to make people believe that Naruto can't just zerg rush his way past most of the enemies they encounter, and you also have a medium of conflict--Naruto wanting to improve himself despite being away from Konoha and anything resembling a ninja village.

Plus, you know, the complete absence of the ridiculousness of Gandalf fucking Greyhame wandering into Konoha to hire ninja.

 

It'd be interesting if it was spun in a completely opposite way.

 

Yeah, the Forbidden Scroll of Sealing (or any scroll for that matter), some random sealing array in the middle of Uzugakure ruins, or the Rasengan meets Chidori "bubble of WTF is that?" are the standard choice for transportation across realities when Narutoverse is the point of departure.

That's one way to go, but I prefer to just have the Elemental Nations be large island/mini-continent on Arda so far off in the ocean that few people have ever visited, and fewer ever returned. Much simpler, and oddly enough, less commonly used.

 

You could also say that it's much harder to access chakra outside of the Elemental Nations for some made-up reason.
Then you wouldn't have to deal with overpowered characters.

 

That would kind of defeat the purpose of hiring Konoha ninja to handle the task.

But there could be some handicaps imposed by the setting, like summons can only come from Middle-Earth, so no giant toads the size of a mountain. And there could also be a problem that chakra use will attract the attention of the Eye, the power of which is so disconcerting as to disrupt the concentration and making molding chakra extremely difficult.

 

Didn't you say naruto doesn't have the fox, but a balrog sealed in him?

Make it so he can't tap into its power, he's literally just a jailer with an evil being constantly trying to break free. Boom, no mass clones, no bunta (but smaller toads possible) a lot more balanced without contrived nerfs.

The coolest ninja techniques for me were always the academy basics anyway (and nara shadows), emphasis on the ninja.

A teen (15?) naruto with good grasp of basics, a few Elemental techniques, chakra control and the ability to summon some troll sized friends seems balanced enough to allow some good kickassery without being op.

Emphasise his traditional ninja-ness and ignore the dbzfest the manga turned into and anything should be ok.

 

I was saying the fox is a balrog.

And yes, I agree, I think anyone who does write this (I won't be, that's why I'm sharing the idea for anyone to take) that keeps the Konoha ninja to the sort of feats we saw before the time-skip can make this work.

I appreciate the comments from everyone who brought up issues that could ruin a story like this.

Just to note, I put this as a challenge instead of a plot bunny since I think there could be several different takes on the story, with several different Fellowship Ninja choices that would be fun. So, if you have an idea for this, write it up and let it loose on the world.