NS – 1
Sakura sucks in her breath as a figure takes a seat beside her. Clad in a black hooded traveling cloak, it makes no noise as it takes a menu from the end of the counter, scanning thoughtfully through the list of drinks. Sakura nonchalantly shakes her sake bottle, listening to the rice wine swish inside. Although there is a meager variety of items available at Kichida's, the new customer spends another six minutes observing the choices, causing Sakura's bottom eyelid to twitch in anxiety.
The bar is dark and gloomy, lit only by a candle here and there, and the melancholy drizzle outside only adds to the effect. Tonight's business is slow. Besides Sakura and the newcomer, only a small group of gamblers quietly play poker in the back. Sakura cherishes these kind of nights, without the drunken, rambunctious men and loud female prostitutes, but she is wary. The atmosphere feels unsettling with a restless disposition.
The figure signals the bartender over and orders. "Radish and sake." Sakura's clay cup falls right out of her hand, landing onto the floor with a resonated crack. Mumbling apologies to Kichida-san and slapping down several coins in compensation, she bends under the counter to retrieve the broken cup. But when her hands scour the floor, they find only spilled sake, not one chip of clay. Sakura straightens to find the stranger stacking the broken pieces atop one another. How did he get there so quickly? He slides his sculpture to Kichida-san who sweeps it into a wastebasket and disappears into the backroom.
"Thank you," Sakura says, blushing ashamedly and moving a stray lock of hair behind her ear. She reaches for her bowl of pickled vegetables.
"No problem." She freezes. It's the voice. Male. He has a medium tenor voice, not the richer, developed sound of a middle-aged man, but more of a younger adult. It has a rough texture to it, strongly bringing back old memories. "Sakura-chan."
Sakura finds herself standing behind the sitting traveler, one arm blocking his chest and arms, the other holding a kunai knife to his throat. "Who are you and what do you want."
"Relax," he states. "Sakura-chan."
The figure disappears in a poof of smoke. A kagebunshin, a shadow clone. Cold steel rests against Sakura's throat, digging slightly into her skin. The kunai in her hand clatters to the ground. A firm arm holds her close to her attacker. She finds herself in the exact same situation seconds before – only in the alternative positions. They stay that way for several minutes, Sakura furiously sweating, the stranger calmly still. She suddenly feels him relax and channeling chakra into her arms and legs, bursts out of out of his hold and escapes through the exit. The kunoichi sprints into the gravel path, preparing to disappear into the trees until –
"Chakra Chain Jutsu."
Sakura faceplants into the ground as chains tightly weave themselves around her arms and legs. She screams in frustration, trying to channel chakra into her wrists. If she can draw enough strength, she can break free. But the chains tighten further and her the chakra streaming to her hands abruptly stops.
"I wouldn't move so much if I were you." The hooded stranger looms over her with his arms crossed.
"Bastard!" she spits. "You cut my chakra flow, you fucking b – "
Another set of chains wrap themselves over her mouth, muffling her words.
"Aw, Sakura-chan, don't say that. You don't have to be so mean." Her attacker's voice is almost teasing as he hoists her over his shoulder.
Memories flood into Sakura's mind of the old days in Konoha. Realization strikes her like a lightning bolt. Her muffled screams resonate through the night as her captor leaps into the forest.
Naruto glances up at the bar. Kichida's Bar and Poker.
"Heh," he mutters softly. "Sakura-chan's really taking on after Tsunade baa-chan."
The blonde shrugs, unsure if whether it's a good or bad thing and glances up into the drizzling, grey sky. Raindrops pat down his spiky hair, eventually flattening it to his scalp. Naruto's gaze shifts to a nearby puddle on the gravel road.
"That's what I'd look like if I had Ma's straight hair," he muses, posing a grin. "Not bad at all."
Naruto breathes deeply and make his way to the bar entrance. As the shinobi reaches for the door handle, he hesitates. After two entire years of searching, he's cornered Sakura-chan in this dingy, old bar. A year of venturing through ambiguous swamps, treacherous mountain ranges, and even peeking through hot spring baths. Naruto fights the urge to storm in, snatch his one and only love, and drag her back to Konoha. Or that's what he said he would do two years ago.
"Sakura-chan. You walk out that door, and I'll find you and I'll drag you back here whether you like it or not," he snarled through gritted teeth, anger boiling under his skin.
She only looks at him with a furious expression and exited the room, her pink hair whipping behind her, without a word.
Naruto's sapphire eyes mist over with a bloody crimson, slitted and feral. His canines lengthen to whetted fangs as he clenches his teeth tightly together. Sakura-chan. Her chakra signature is so strong chills run down his tense body, bringing for a newfound lust. He pants with anticipation, as an animalistic snarl rips out of his throat. Sakura-chan. Naruto reaches for the doorknob but pauses yet again at the sight of his reflection through the glass front door. His starved expression, trenchant whisker marks, bared canines. And his eyes; they're blazing for something. The jittering blonde presses a hand against his cheek. Fingers, clawed, shake hungrily for –
Naruto's self-control finally suppresses the Kyuubi's influence, leaving the blonde leaning on a shoulder against the door, gasping for air. What is wrong with him? Why can't he control himself as easily as usual? He faces the glass. A drenched, exhausted blonde with tired blue-gray eyes stares gauntly back, not the berserk monster he was a minute before. He inhales a deep breath of fresh air before pulling his hood over his wet hair.
Inside, Naruto's eyes adjust painfully to the dark. Surprisingly, the bar is quiet, quite unlike the various places the Ero-Sennin took him on their journey years ago. A small group of travelers like himself sit in a corner booth, dealing cards without words. But he stops in his tracks in front of the bar counter. Sitting close the to far right, next to a small candlelight, is her. Sakura-chan. She's lazily shaking a sake bottle in one hand while takes a sip with a small cup in the other. The Kyuubi's feral impulse begins to taint his eyes with red but he clenches his fists, exerting the most control he could muster. The instinct subdues. Naruto slowly makes his way to the pink-haired kunoichi, breathing slowly with control, as the animalism blazes inside of him. What if she tries to run? What if he scares her? After years of missions on Team 7, Naruto knows Sakura is a thin sheet of glass, emotionally easy to break. But she's eighteen now, she's a big girl, he thinks. He hopes.
Naruto senses Sakura tense when he sits beside her. A deer in the headlights tension, like she is being hunted. Nervous, he grabs a menu from the edge of the counter, pretending to scan through the items. From the edge of his hood, he watches her pale hand continue to gently shake the sake. He's so close to her. He wants to take her. The Kyuubi is restless inside of him. Minutes pass and Naruto is staring at a little leek graphic on the menu, trying his best to keep his labored breaths as soft as possible. Suddenly, he grabs the end of the counter, clenching tightly as his fingernails sharpen into claws. Wincing, he pierces the wood as easily as cutting through butter. But someone thankfully interrupts his impulse with a soft grunt. Shit, the bartender. He must have interpreted Naruto's hand motion as a cue to order. His eyes frantically scan the menu for something good until his mouth got the better of him.
"Radish and sake."
That was the Ero-Sennin's regular. Just as the bartender nods, Naruto watches, from the corner of his eye, Sakura's cup plummet to the ground. Crack. As kunoichi curses and digs in her purse for something, Naruto surreptitiously reaches down and scoop up the fragments with a lightning-fast body flicker technique. He presumes that Sakura-chan did not notice his action at all when she reaches down to clean her mess, so he begins awkwardly stacking the cup pieces into a tower. The pink-haired shinobi swears when she sits up but freezes at the sight of Naruto's stack. He gently slides it towards the gaping mouthed bartender who quickly sweeps it into a wastebasket and scurries away into the backroom.
"Thank you." The edge of Naruto's mouth jerks when Sakura speaks. She starts to reach across the counter for something.
Sheepishly, Naruto replies with a grin, "You're welcome, Sakura-chan." Dammit, dammit, dammit. He's blown his cover. Before he can react, Sakura has a kunai at his throat and her right arm crossed over his chest.
"Who are you and what do you want?" Her voice is low and dangerous as she pushes the steel deeper into his neck.
Naruto manages to form hand seals at rapid fire speed. First, a shadow clone jutsu which appears in a poof of smoke behind Sakura. Then, he pulls off the substitution jutsu, substituting the kagebunshin for himself. The blonde whips out a kunai, knocks Sakura's knife from her hand, and locks them in the exact same situation seconds before – but in alternate positions. He's much calmer now, the animalistic urges ceased. Sakura-chan on the other hand, is breathing frantically like a captured rabbit.
"Relax, Sakura-chan."
Around them, sits an audience of soft noises. The poker players in the booth, stare astonished, cards and chips tumbling from their hands with soft whispers. The bartender drops a cup and clay shatters with little tinkling sounds. Rain patters outside. Naruto glances down at Sakura, his eyes softening for a moment, remembering the times they had together in the past. But he makes the mistake of faltering because the kunoichi burst out of his grasp, fleeing into the rain.
By the time Naruto steps outside, Sakura is almost to the trees. He swears under his breath and manages to form the bird, monkey, and horse signs before she escapes.
"Chakra Chain Jutsu."
Threads of chakra wrap themselves around the kunoichi's hands and feet the second she leaps. Naruto smiles discreetly and intensifies his force, thickening the threads into firm steel chains. His fingers still forming the triangular horse sign, he carefully makes his way towards a thrashing Sakura, breathing steadily to refine his chakra control.
"Thank's for leaving that for me, Mom," he breathes a quiet prayer.
Tsunade handed Naruto a small, musty-smelling scroll, yellowing with age.
"Baa-chan, why the hell would I want that piece of shit," he whined, eyes squinting and giving him a foxlike expression.
"Baka!" The Godaime chucks the scroll with violent force at the blonde. In self-defense, he covers his face with his hands and miraculously, the projectile lands cleanly into his hold. "That 'piece of shit' contains the secret to how to perform Uzumaki Kushina's Chakra Chain techniques!"
A new halo of golden light suddenly surrounds the smelly artifact. Naruto's eyes widened. "Mom left this for me?"
"She wanted to leave it to whoever could learn those techniques," Tsunade said, folding her hands. "And the only person who can, in this entire village, is you."
"Why?"
"First of all, when Kushina wrote this – um, she was rather . . . not very descriptive. No one. Not even your father, Jiraiya, or me could understand it." Tsunade said, looking down into her cup of tea.
"If you guys couldn't figure it out, how the hell can I?" Naruto scratched the back of his head.
"Well, Kushina said, 'Only those who can understand it can learn how to do the techniques, eh?' Let's say that she kind of wrote it in a different language. The language only you can understand."
Naruto stared blankly.
"You'll see when you study it! Anyway the second reason is because it seems you need a special bloodline chakra in order to utilize the Chakra Chain techniques to their full potential. The Uzumaki clan bloodline. You're the only living Uzumaki in Konoha and you're directly related to Kushina, so you're bound to be able to do this." Tsunade sighed. "Go away and leave me in peace now."
An hour later, Naruto sat on the floor of his bedroom, straining his eyes through his mother's handwriting and old ramen soup stains.
"You know how you get that feeling when you're, like, doing a Shadow Clone Jutsu? Just do that thing and think of chains but your thing thinner than a toothpick and the chains wrapping around the toothpick and do the chicken and monkey and horse hand things and you're all set to go." Naruto read slowly, nodding, understanding every word. He leaned back against his bed, concentrating, and formed the hand seals. Long chains of chakra exploded from under his feet, wrapping themselves around his alarm clock, squeezing until the mechanisms burst apart. The blonde grinned with satisfaction.
Back at the Hokage Tower, Tsunade sipped her hidden stash of sake and remarks, "I wonder how far up the ranks Naruto would be right now if he had his father's intelligence instead of Kushina's." She snorted and glared at the accumulating heap of paperwork on her desk. "But I still wonder what she meant by the
Naruto watches Sakura scream and try to wiggle out from the chains' hold. He exerts a tad more chakra into his jutsu and switches his fingers into the tiger sign, locking his chains in place. Hold on, Sakura-chan, he thinks, I'm cutting the chakra from your hands and feet and that's gonna hurt a little.
"Bastard!" Sakura-chan screeches. "You cut my chakra flow, you fucking b – "
Hearing the kunoichi in pain, breaks the blonde's heart and fills him with guilt. Naruto silences her with another chain. Sakura wails and screams harsh language through her muffler, her eyes hatefully pinpointed on Naruto. His heart aches.
"Aw, Sakura-chan, don't say that," he teases gently, remembering the old days. "You don't have to be so mean."
The kunoichi's eyes widen as hoists her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and takes her into the forest.