Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. But operation GLOMP is underway. we may see a change yet!
Claimer: The plot, scenarios, and any other introduced characters and elements are mine, but I'll share if you ask
Notes & Foreword: this is my first fic so… yeah…
Takes place slightly ahead of current manga arc. Diedara's dead, Sasuke is still rouge and Naruto is still naïve. After the trails the last two Uchiha are lost Sakura begins to lose hope, Naruto refuses to quit and tries to renew her determination as his promise obliged him to; despite his personal wishes. I intend this to be long, and ill try too keep my chap's coming as best I can.
Please remember to review, constructive criticism welcome and needed. Flame if you want, but remember that if you do, I'll kill you and rape your father in prison, BADLY.
Beware of strong lemons later: pairings are: NaruX?? And NaruX??
Like I'm gunna tell you
Regular speech
Inner thoughts or flashback speech
Kyuubi speech or general yelling
Kyuubi thought
--------------------- Related change of character focus or place, short changes is time
………………….. Long passages of time, unrelated change of character focus
Without any further ado, the main Presentation, Bitches!
Chapter 2 "The Renovation of the konoha Library
It was slightly creepy looking on the inside, and Naruto didn't find that helpful. Everything in the large building was made from old but well polished wood. A high ceiling gave a sense of space despite the dense collections of towering shelves that occupied it. The light poring in from the large, high-mounted windows reflected off anything and everything, giving the room an ambient golden glow. But the constant flow of dust gave the entire place a foreboding sense of great age, and the utter silence was nothing less than deathly in degree.
As nothing had leapt out to kill him, and the books tamely lay on their shelves, Naruto walked further in, towards the desk that stood in the middle of the vast room. He whispered a somewhat timid "hello?" but received no response. His worry grew at this and he approached the situation like a ninja, instead of as a craven coward. He summoned several clones and dispersed them around the building. After about a minute he felt one dissipate, and he and his clones all moved in a tactical pattern to the location of the disappearance. From between the shelves he listened to a pair of voices, muffled by the dust in the air.
"I'm sure I heard someone just now," one said. Naruto determined it to be a female voice, but couldn't tell to whom it belonged. He pulled away, and his clones mimicked his action. But he heard one fall, and as it dispersed, he knew that, in its (or his own) clumsiness slid on a layer of dust. He retreated quickly and turned at the end of the aisle, hoping to outflank whomever it was he heard. But he looked up to see a ninja clad in white, with a mask over their face and a bandana over their head, wielding a long tool with a scalpel-like blade at the end. Completely outmaneuvered, he transformed into a log, hoping to trick his foe into thinking he'd replaced himself. His foe screamed and turned around. He was up in an instant holding a kunai to his opponent's throat, and the arm wielding the tool restrained behind their back.
"N-N-N Naruto-Kun?" Hinata whimpered. A pair of now quite teary white eyes were looking at him tremulously. At last his brain caught up with the situation and he let Hinata go, both of them looking beet red.
"Gomen!" he yelped out, embarrassed of is assumption, "Ano… no one was here and I thought you were an enemy ninja, or something," he trailed off.
Hinata gasped lightly (for multiple reasons) and gathered herself enough to say "I guess I could say the same". They shared a nervous chuckle that became a general laugh at the sheer stupidity of the scenario.
Naruto had sobered up first. "So why are you in this dusty old place? I thought you'd have a mission or something now" he asked with his trademark grin.
Hinata, who had finally calmed down, realized fully who she was talking to, and promptly lost her composure. "Ano… this actually is a m-mission," she stuttered out, "I'm here restoring some of the older b-books and scrolls here, and doing general maintenance". The general look of the place indicated that this was needed, but Naruto still didn't know…
"But who requested the mission?" asked the boisterous ninja. Who'd wanna fix a bunch of old books anyway?
"That would be me," said a voice from a nearby doorway. Naruto stepped forward to get a look at its source. He was greeted by a smiling yet somewhat sickly looking Udon. Naruto was surprised to se that he'd grown since they last met, taller and with an almost mature air about him. Maybe this was his "I'm not with Konohamaru" persona. Naruto could not help but notice that he looked not entirely unlike the traitor Kabuto, bearing a nonchalant smile and glasses on his visage.
"Let me explain the important details for you,"
...
Udon explained, to a
Naruto-appropriate level of detail, his involvement with the library.
Udon's family acted as the keepers of the knowledge that was
compiled in the village. The Nara's who dedicated themselves to
processing and acquiring the knowledge, had entrusted them to its
storage, so that they could be free of the hassle of organizing it.
Udon seemed to be passionate about his work, but still the library
had been seeing less and less use as time passed. Udon's parent's
already had enough to manage of the Hokage's private volumes that
were lost in the sand-sound raid, so extra help had been needed here.
"So…" the Hokage-to-be began "the library needs to be fixed up, this I can do! We'll have it done in a few hours". Taking only what he needed to from the conversation, he jumped into action, without a second thought, and possibly without the first one either. "So, what can I do, and what is the deal with the crab-opener?" The tool Hinata held indeed looked like a crab-claw, and seemed completely unfit for your average library.
"We were repairing some of the old books that had deteriorated…" Udon began, but before he got started on what was sure to be an enlightening and thorough monolog, Naruto asked if he could help.
Instantly excuses to keep Naruto away from the archaic tomes flew faster than shuriken in a shinobi war, and he was told to clean up the main floor of the library, while the door behind him snapped shut sharply. However, the cause was quite evident. Everyone except for Naruto knew this simple equation:
(Naruto + delicate items) x shadow clones equals bad squared
So Naruto, in his unparalleled inability to do subtlety, decided to tackle this new task in one fell swoop. They hadn't wanted his help in there, and he was a little miffed about it. There was nothing he couldn't do, and he decided had to prove it. Three hundred Kagebuushin later, the renovation of the Konoha library had unofficially begun.
The last vestiges of sunlight poured into the "rare books room". Nearly thirty volumes that were a soft breeze away from disintegration had been salvaged, and Hinata and Udon were exhausted. Hinata wondered what the point was of restoring a book that was written in characters that no one alive could read, but Udon had simply said that "no book was a waste". As the pair opened the door to what Udon lovingly called the "stacks" they were frozen at what they saw.
This wasn't the same library they were in a few hours ago. The whole room was brighter, despite the waning sunlight. Everything shined as thought it had been polished, and there was a massive domed window in the ceiling. New tables and chairs were placed on a second level that stood on pillars that looked like trunks of massive trees. Could Naruto have done all this? But the proof of the impossible was obvious.
Naruto sat idly at a table near the door, with a stack of books on either side of him, turning pages almost idly. The image, as it was, seemed normal, but to those in the know, they might as well have seen four flaming horsemen followed closely by The End of Days. It was so contradictory that anyone who knew Naruto would have felt heavily insulted, for no particular reason. Hinata stood gaping in a low grade state of shock. Udon was gawking like he did in his academy days. Naruto noticed them at last, asking if they'd finished, with no hint of concern at their gaping mouths or wide-eyed stares. Udon was the first to respond. "How, exactly, in the hell did you…"
"Well it wasn't really all that big a deal," Naruto said. unaware that his procession of shadow clones carrying lumber had caused a bit of a stir. "Hell I did it just to say that I did. And you didn't think I couldn't handle fixing up a library!" Naruto said with a hint of gloating. It was plainly obvious that while he was clever enough to pull this stunt off, and resourceful enough to do it in the span of a few hours. He was still, in the greater scope of things, an utter idiot.
Udon, lost in the sheer madness of it all, gave up and decided to go inspect his "newly renovated" library. Hinata however, felt brave enough to comment. "Naruto… what you did here is really amazing, but isn't this a bit much?" Naruto grinned his wide smile at her, "Well… the window might have been a bit much, but in the end I liked it. Here I was thinking that this library thing was gunna be a big deal!" This induced a nervous chuckle from Hinata. She shyly looked away at the stacks of books on either side of him. Basic Ninjutsu Theory, Origins of Ninjutsu, Chakra at a glance. Naruto had started perusing through these books, and was currently deep into a thick hard-bound volume with no title on its spine. Hinata's curiosity finally beat out her shyness. "Naruto-Kun, what is that?" She asked, intrigued by the books odd appearance.
"I'm not entirely sure… it's a research journal, made about twenty years ago. It seems kinda random. Theories about Ninjutsu, and some test results I think. I don't get too much of it. But whoever did this was a genius. There are some jutsu with names that don't make much sense… but this one here is kinda odd…? It looks like a movement jutsu… I wonder…"
Hinata had never seen Naruto actually concentrate to this degree. She looked closely at his stern focused expression, and found it… attractive. He had always seemed cute to her, but this wasn't cute… it was handsome… even sexy.
Hinata rushed herself back to reality. "Sorry Naruto-kun but… I HAVE TO GO, BYE!" before Naruto had looked up completely she was gone, charging towards home in a full chakra-enhanced sprint. She didn't know why she panicked; she just couldn't handle those thoughts… unless no one was around to hear her rwach down and…
No I shouldn't think like that!
…………………………..
Naruto had continued to read, unabashed by Hinata's awkward exit. The passage he was in was handwritten in quick but precise calligraphy, taking a brief history of some vague ninjitsu theory:
"A ninja must be skilled in stealth, combat strength, and infiltration, among many other things. The element of speed facilitates all of these and thus is a crucial ability to any ninja. A long sought skill, the ability to move at unlimited speed has been attempted numerous times with disastrous results. The theory for every attempt was sound, but every test ended with a shinobi exploding into a wall of flesh and blood. And I at last have found the cause and its solution. If a ninja moves at a high pace, the wind passing him slows him down. The faster he moves, the more force he feels. Assuming one went fast enough the air itself would injure him. The simplest act would be to slow down, and in this case the simplest is the most prudent. But this would limit any ninja's speed, and in fact does. To beat this flaw in ninja motion, a thin barrier of chakra can pierce the air and allow for freed movement (a wind affinity would be of use here). I call this infinite speed as a parody. By no means is the motion limitless, but it achieves as much as can be done to that goal.
Naruto leaned back and soaked in what he had read. I actually get it. It's so simple. Man this library thing is awesome! Dusk had gone and Naruto, as blunt as ever, took one last look over the list of seals and charged back in the direction of the memorial stone, there was a jutsu to learn and sleep would have to wait.
