{new disclaimer StandardDisclaimer = If you recognize it, I probably don't own it. Naruto is owned by Kishimoto-sensei, Jump, and probably some other people too. One-Punch Man is owned by One. I don't even know what I'm doing here.}
One-Punch Ninja
Chapter 1 - Unleash My Fist!
Don't wanna hear you calling out my name
I'm not here for fortune and fame
I'll fight knowing nobody knows my name…
Six years after the Kyuubi decimated Konoha, one young orphan would make a delightfully naive decision and embark on the Shinobi world's most lambasted training regimen…
~OPN~
"C'mon, I wanna grow up to be a strong ninja! Just lemme read one training book!" Naruto knew he was on his last option, shouting at a bored librarian, but no-one would take him seriously that he wanted to train! Everyone just laughed at him or shouted that he should be kept weak if anyone didn't laugh, or just plain ignored him. The librarian, at least, couldn't ignore him, or else Naruto could just sneak by and read whatever he wanted.
"Can you even read, kid?" the librarian asked without even looking up from his own book.
"I- shut up! I can read fine! Just gimme a book!" How hard could it be, reading? Everybody did it, even the civilians! He was Uzumaki Naruto, he'd figure it out!
The librarian behind the desk sighed, looked at the clock, then back at Naruto. He was silent for a long time, but just as Naruto started to take a big breath to yell again the man tucked a slip of paper into the pages of his book, placed it on the desk, and stood. "Do not move from that spot. If you are anywhere else when I get back here, you will not get any books."
Naruto promptly dropped onto his butt and clapped his hands over his mouth. The librarian raised one eyebrow in a look that Naruto could almost believe was amusement before he vanished. Ninja librarian! So cool-dattebayo! The man reappeared a few minutes later with just as much abruptness, dusting the cover of what looked like a very old book with one hand.
"Here. This is a very basic training guide, but it is appropriate for your age and current skill level. It was written by the…apprentice… of a…great hero…from the time before Shinobi rose to power. Do not damage it."
The man handed it to Naruto as though it was a great treasure, and he took it reverently. It looked more like a journal or diary than a real book, but when he flipped it open he could see that it was printed, not written. Weird, but it was a book! And it was all his! He quickly scurried out with a squawk of thanks before the librarian could change his mind, ignorant of the snickers that erupted into full-blown laughter as soon as Naruto was out of earshot.
~OPN~
As it turned out, reading was quite difficult, and letting anyone else see the book to ask for help was dangerous as it might get taken away. Instead, he had to actually start paying attention to the reading lessons they gave at the orphanage every day. It was slow going, but thankfully most of the book was written using kana instead of kanji. After only a few months, he had learned enough to read the first few pages of a chapter called "Training Secrets of Master Saitama".
'Above all, you must commit to this hard training! You must complete it every day without fail! It took Master Saitama three years of this training to become strong, you must bear with it!
One hundred sit-ups!
One hundred push ups!
One hundred squats!
And lastly, a ten-kilometer run!
Every day, hot or cold, rain or shine! Do not use your heat in winter! Do not use your air somethingsomething in summer! Mental toughness must come first!
Eat three good meals every day! (Just a somethingsomething is fine in the morning, but the other two must be a complete meal!)
You will have terrible days where you are tempted to skip a day, to question what would be the harm? You must push through! Even when you spit blood, even when your body creaks and pops, even when your muscles burn and your bones ache! Never stop, and you will become Strong!'
Naruto closed the book gently and put it back in his hiding place. He wasn't sure if he could count to one hundred, let alone do that many exercises, and he had no idea how long one kilometer was, let alone ten. But it would make him strong! After a quick peek around the corner to make sure no one was looking for him, he dropped onto his back, grabbed his head, and lifted into his first sit-up.
"One, two, three…"
~OPN~
Saitama got strong in three years. It took Naruto almost seven. In fairness, he was barely six and a half when he started. And it wasn't until he was ten and in the academy that he learned how to measure and pace a kilometer, so really, he hadn't been doing the whole training regimen until then.
Just like the book said, he only let himself have one meal of ramen a day. Most days that meant cup ramen for breakfast, but on some lucky days, his jiji would treat him to some Ichiraku! He usually had to skip the ramen the day after, because he never knew in advance and so he'd have two ramen meals on the special days, but he never skipped the exercises and those were what were really important, right?
He knew it had worked though when all of his hair had fallen out. The book said that was the final and most important sign of achieving Saitama-sensei's strength, and that he could never again strike a human with his full power unless he wanted them dead. Naruto was pretty skeptical about that part; he was pretty sure any ninja could stand up to his punches even if trees and training logs couldn't, after all, they all trained just as hard didn't they? The strange green man who ran with him some mornings certainly did, but he also ran too much, so maybe that's why he still had his hair?
The only real downside, Naruto thought, was that without his bright blond hair everyone seemed to forget he was around. It was nice because the other kids and especially the adults mostly left him alone now unless he specifically got their attention, and even then he was just "that weird bald kid" instead of "that demon brat".
Well, that and the fact that since he didn't know how hard it was safe to punch other kids, his taijutsu scores were crap, and it was better not to ask about his ninjutsu at all. Still, he was sure, this was the year. He was going to graduate, and nothing was going to stop him!
~OPN~
OK, nothing except failing at henge, kawarimi, and bunshin right in a row. Even Mizuki couldn't let him pass at that point. But! But! His now second-favorite-sensei (Iruka bought him ramen sometimes, so that was an automatic win) had told him there was another way to pass! All he had to do was grab some scroll from jiji's place, learn anything from it, and show Mizuki at the secret training ground before midnight. He knew that his bright-orange suit (a wonderful, shinobi-style spandex thing that Youth-Guy gave him with teary eyes one morning) was no good for stealth, so he just ran in, found it, and ran to the training ground as fast as he could. He was pretty sure that jiji saw him, but jiji had been so surprised that he dropped his pipe and caught his robes on fire so Naruto knew he had gotten away.
Now he just had to learn something…
"Kage bunshin? Crap, not another clone technique-dattebayo!"
~OPN~
"Iruka-sensei!? I thought Mizuki-sensei was gonna be testing me!"
~OPN~
"You are the demon fox!"
~OPN~
Iruka watched, dumbfounded, as his hard-working-but-hopeless student suddenly seemed to transform before his eyes. Gone was the bland appearance and the baggy attire; replaced by sharp lines of defined muscle and cold blue eyes hard enough to cut steel. Naruto's voice seemed to drop an impossible half-octave and dripped with restrained anger.
"I will not let you hurt Iruka-sensei. So what if it's a demon inside my fists instead of a god? I'll still pummel you into the dirt!" Naruto brought his hands up into a strange hand seal, the first two fingers of one hand crossed against the first two of the other. "Kage bunshin no jutsu!"
In a flash of orange, every spare inch of space in the clearing and for a good distance beyond was filled with perfect, healthy, real copies of the bald wonder. Their voices overlapped in a barely-understandable tumultuous rumble, the anger no longer restrained in the slightest.
"One kage bunshin is supposed to have only half of my strength. Maybe with this many, you'll even survive this. Consecutive shadow punches."
~OPN~
Mizuki did not survive.
Naruto thought he should be more upset by this, but Iruka was actually proud of how strong he was, and had given him Iruka's own hitae-ite to mark him as a graduated genin. Jiji had been the more upset of the two, given that his robes had been ruined and his hat singed, but he too was proud of Naruto for defending his sensei once he'd learned the truth. It was probably the longest lecture on responsibility and restraint that Naruto ever had to listen to, but jiji didn't take his hitae-ite away and actually smiled before mentioning that it would be interesting to see his new sensei's reaction when they met.
~OPN~
Hatake Kakashi took one look in the classroom when he finally got around to collecting his latest victims, screamed, and passed out mumbling about the disease spreading. Never one to let unusual circumstances hold him back, Naruto rifled through the pockets of his new sensei until he found the only things of interest the Jōnin had on his person - a weird orange book that he discarded once it was clear contained no training information, and three papers detailing some sort of test he'd have to take with his new teammates the next morning. He passed those over, nodded, and headed home for the day without further thought. There was a sale at the market he didn't want to miss.
~OPN~
The second time Hatake Kakashi saw Uzumaki Naruto, he was ready. The Sandaime's laughter was still ringing in his ears alongside echoes of "Yooooouuuuuuuth!" and "We must train you to withstand such sights! Come with me, my eternal rival!" that he knew would haunt him for weeks. He'd cast a genjutsu on himself to replace Naruto's current appearance with something a little less…Gai…and so far it was holding up just fine. He'd gotten through the speech he had not gotten to deliver the day before, deflated the hopes of two out of his three victims, and then scattered them to the winds with the command to 'start'.
Correction, he had scattered two of them to the winds. Naruto was standing right where he had been the whole time, a vaguely bored expression on his face, his head tilted slightly to the side, and his arms loosely crossed in front of him impatiently. "Ahh…you're a little bit off, you know."
"The only thing that's a bit off is your tardiness, Kakashi-sensei. I almost missed the two-for-one ramen sale yesterday, and I'm late on my three meals for the day today."
Kakashi stared at Naruto for a long moment, trying to decide if the kid was being serious. When he didn't flinch for a solid half-minute, Kakashi shrugged and reminded himself that some people needed to learn the hard way not to mouth off to a jōnin. "…The first of the Shinobi Arts, Taijutsu."
He stepped behind Naruto in a seamless shunshin, hands locked in the Tora seal and lips parted to deliver his first lecture, only to stop when he was faced not with Naruto's unguarded backside but instead a steady gaze returned from Kakashi's current eye level. He blinked. Naruto did not. Kakashi stood from his crouch, and Naruto unbent at the waist and resumed looking up at him lazily. Kakashi let the silence stand again for another long minute before he shrugged mentally and lunged for the kid's collar to chuck him in the river the boring way.
Kakashi's last thought was 'When did he put on the gloves?'
~OPN~
Some time later, Kakashi awoke with a pounding headache and a strange lightness on his face. He tried to reach up a hand to his forehead, but his limbs felt oddly heavy. He heard three young voices quietly chattering against a backdrop of softly clicking chopsticks and chomping jaws, and snapped his eye open to take in the sight before him. Three oddly content young genin-candidates, calmly eating out of the three bento he had brought, each with something small and metallic clasped in their non-utensil-wielding-hand.
"I'm pretty sure I said that only the ones who got a bell would be eating, and the ones who didn't would be tied to a pole and forced to watch as the others ate."
"You did," Naruto calmly retorted, and ate another mouthful of rice.
"Which is why you are tied to the pole," said the second brat.
"And we are eating," said the last.
Kakashi let that roll through his brain for a moment. There were multiple things wrong with this picture, starting with the fact that he was tied to the post, which is why his arms had felt heavy. More importantly… "But there were only two bells."
Naruto grinned, and Kakashi had a new inspiration for the next time he needed a demoralizing genjutsu to subject someone to. The bald terror slowly held up his left hand and let something dangle free. It took several moments for Kakashi to focus on the crumpled, moving shape long enough to recognize the material. It was the same strong steel that every Kōnoha hitae-ite was cast out of, crushed and twisted into a parody of a bell, no larger than the other two. It didn't ring so much as faintly clank when it shook and was so heavy that it only swung free for a few seconds after Naruto stopped waving it before it hung firmly at the end of a blue ribbon of some sort.
A soft breeze blew through the clearing, and Kakashi realized with a growing sense of dread that he could feel it on his entire face.
"So, we pass, right?"
A/N: I'm sorry. I've been completely stuck on the next chapter of Shinobi Without Fear for more than a week now. I know what needs to happen, and I have the whole chapter outlined, but I just can't seem to get the bell test scene into motion. And in the meantime, my music shuffle landed me on Jonathan Young's cover of Hero, the opening from OPM, and this just popped into my head. I have no idea how many of these I'm going to do, if anyone else has done it before, etc. I'm just doing this for fun.
Yes, that was bad, but I'm not apologizing for it.
Anyways. New chapter of SWF as soon as I can get my shit together. Unless something goes catastrophically wrong, you won't see another of these until I've gotten through the next several chapters of SWF. Hope you had fun reading it, I sure as hell had fun writing it.