Perfection
I don't own Naruto.
"Nii-san, when are we going to stop?"
Naruto frowned at the question, glancing downwards. They were currently flying over a sparse forest, the shadow of the dragon clearly visible on the ground. His chakra was ebbing away at a small but constant rate, the sky was gradually darkening, and he knew that they needed to find a place to land, if they wanted to avoid a repeat of their last flight. The problem was, he couldn't see any towns for miles, and he was feeling quite hungry.
Dammit. Why did Konoha have to betray him right before the Academy were about to go through the survival courses?
With a sigh, he nodded at the forest below. "I guess we'll have to stop there for the night."
Sayuri stared down at the forest, her eyes wide. "Outside? But what if it rains?"
Not going to admit that he hadn't thought of that, Naruto quickly improvised. "I'll use the scrolls to build a shelter."
Sayuri frowned, looking confused. "Doesn't paper get soggy in rain?"
"My paper's special" Naruto said confidently. True, he actually had no idea of the paper's properties once it had been infused with his chakra apart from the fact that he could shape it to his whim, but Sayuri didn't need to know that.
Before the puppet could ask anymore questions, Naruto began gently guide the dragon down, careful that its wings didn't catch on any trees. The last thing he needed was for any of the scrolls to be torn after all - the knowledge contained in them was priceless after all.
This time, they actually landed quite nicely, with barely a jolt as the dragon touched the ground. Sayuri got off as quickly as she could, looking around curiously. They were standing in a small clearing, with barely enough room to fit both them and the dragon. The trees were spaced quite close together, providing a thin canopy, but Naruto still hoped that it was not going to rain. It was probably going to be uncomfortable enough as it was.
They really needed to see about getting some provisions. Until then, however, they would just have to make do.
Taking off his jacket, Naruto folded it up, intending to use it as a pillow, while Sayuri settled down with her back against a tree, her eyes closed as she began to 'recharge.' However, try as he might, he just couldn't get to sleep. Perhaps it was the fact that he was feeling hungry, maybe it was simply the cool night air, but he just couldn't drift off. After fruitlessly counting sheep for a whole hour, he sat up, feeling annoyed. Well, if he couldn't sleep, he might as well do something productive!
Rolling over, he saw the pile of scrolls, ready to be moulded back together for their transport in the morning. Naruto reached for the nearest one, not caring what it was.
He felt the smooth texture of the scroll under his fingers, and picked it up, unrolling it as he began to scan it with interest. There were quite a few jutsus listed, a few of them looking very complicated. However, there was one that caught his eye straight away.
Kage bunshin.
Jiraiya slumped down in front of the Sandaime's desk, looking very tired. "I couldn't find him, Sarutobi-sensei. I searched the entire base, but he'd already escaped."
The Sandaime closed his eyes, trying to hide his disappointment. Once again, Naruto had gone, only this time, even Jiraiya had no leads as to where he could be. He'd like to think that Naruto could find his way home, but he was still a young child, and the likelihood of that happening was slim. They'd just have to continue to search for him, despite the enormity of such a task.
Outside the door, Koharu straightened up, her face pale. 'Uzumaki? Escaped? But...but...HOW?'
Well, the 'how' didn't matter. Right now, she needed to find Homura, to warn him and get his help in figuring out a way to stop Uzumaki from coming back and telling Sarutobi just who had given him to Orochimaru in the first place.
Quickly, the elderly kunoichi began making her way towards Homura's home, intent on telling him all that she had heard. Unfortunately for her, that meant she also missed the rest of the conversation between Jiraiya and the Sandaime.
"Orochimaru had Naruto for three years, Jiraiya. What did he do to him?"
The Sannin took a deep breath, withdrawing a picture from his pocket. The Sandaime gasped as it was turned over, exposing the full view of the unconscious child on a metal table. "Is that-"
Jiraiya tapped the glossy surface of the photograph, his finger positioned by Naruto's head. "The greyish colouring, the ripple pattern...Yes, sensei. I think it's the Rinnegan."
Sarutobi glanced sharply at his former student. He had been one of the few that Jiraiya had told about the orphans he had taken care of in Ame, about the young, scared boy who had held the most powerful of the dojutsus. Orochimaru's experiments with DNA grafting were well-known after all..."
"How do you think Orochimaru got hold of...the materials needed? And even if it truly is the Rinnegan, what are those tomoe? They look almost like-"
"The sharingan," Jiraiya finished, looking grim. "Orochimaru was obsessed with that bloodline, back in the old days. He liked the thought of getting power quickly, and his goal is to get his hands on every jutsu in the world. If he could use the sharingan, he would."
"But how would he even get his hands on the genetic material? You told me that young Nagato was dead, and there isn't exactly a ready supply of Uchiha bodies."
Most bloodline-wielding clans preferred to burn the corpses of their dead, to prevent exactly what Orochimaru was trying to do, and the Uchiha had been no exception. After the Uchiha massacre, the bodies of the Uchiha clan had all been destroyed at once, and as far as Sarutobi was aware, Orochimaru hadn't been anywhere near the village during that period.
Jiraiya shrugged. "Maybe he managed to get his hands on some Uchiha DNA before he left. Or perhaps he's had a run-in with Itachi. It doesn't matter how he got it, but what he's done with it."
The Sandaime peered closely at Naruto's eyes. "If he's managed to merge the sharingan with the Rinnegan...then he's created a kekkei genkai with practically unlimited potential. But why would he do such a thing to Naruto? Surely he would want to have it for himself?"
Jiraiya's gaze darkened. "That's just it. He did do it for himself."
Sarutobi stared at him. "What do you mean?"
"Orochimaru's managed to perfect that immortality jutsu of his. It allows him to leap from body to body, stealing their lives and powers as he does so. And it seems that Naruto was lined up as his next form, once they had managed to extract the Kyuubi from him."
The Sandaime was torn between outrage at the thought of Orochimaru trying to steal the body of the boy who had been practically a surrogate grandchild for him, sadness at what his student had become, and confusion over what Jiraiya had just said. "But surely extracting the Kyuubi would kill him? I thought Orochimaru needed a body to be living before he could take it over."
Jiraiya pulled out a file, carefully placing it down in front of the Hokage. "Prepare yourself, and take a look."
Slowly, the Sandaime flipped through the pages, his face growing paler with every word he read. Finally, he reached the end, and looked up at Jiraiya, his expression unreadable. "So...we have a jinchuuriki wandering around, a jinchuuriki with an unstable seal, who cannot be killed, who can steal the hearts of others, who can turn our shuriken and kunai against us, who can turn paper into weapons, who can cause tremendous explosions...and to find him, we'll be racing against Orochimaru's forces who want to drag him back to Oto so that Orochimaru can possess his powers."
Jiraiya nodded, not knowing what else to do, and the elderly kage exhaled. "Find him, Jiraiya. I don't care what you have to do, but find him. We cannot afford to let Orochimaru get hold of him...or anyone else, for that matter."
Kushina shivered as she ducked inside the shack, one hand clutching her left arm, around which a bandage had been hastily knotted. The shack was tiny, barely the size of her bathroom back in Konoha, and rainwater was dripping through the leaky roof, but it was still a shelter, and she was reluctant to leave it. She was barely a day's walk from Kiri, and her chakra was still close to being depleted after she had performed that jutsu to escape.
But she had had no choice. It was her son's life that had been at stake, not hers. And Kushina would gladly give her life for her son, despite the fact that she hadn't seen Naruto in over seven years, despite the fact that he was jinchuuriki.
At that thought, Kushina's eyes darkened, and she gripped the handle of the chipped knife she had found lying amongst the overgrown weeds around the shack. She had accepted Naruto as a jinchuuriki, had known that he was still her son, and not the Kyuubi...but that didn't stop her feeling a surge of bitterness and hatred whenever she thought of what Naruto's status as a jinchuuriki had meant for their family.
She and Minato had never really talked about marriage, neither comfortable with the idea of exposing their relationship to the scrutiny of the ever power-hungry in Konoha, such as Danzo, who seemed to believe that it was Minato's duty as a shinobi to breed, using a suitably loyal Konoha-born kunoichi of course, and raise a generation of prodigies that would be trained as ninjas from before they could even walk.
However, both had known that they wanted something more permanent, and when Kushina became pregnant, Minato had been so excited, so happy about getting the family that he had always longed for. Though they were still uneasy about baring their relationship to the village, they had decided to get married, before the baby was born, and raise it in the happy, stable home that neither of them had as children.
But the Kyuubi spoiled it all.
When Konoha had learned of the Kyuubi approaching the village, Minato had immediately thrown himself into researching how to stop it, but had found to his horror that the only way was to seal it within a human child. As chakra coils were not properly formed until the age of three or so, any child under that age would have sufficed, but Minato was appalled at the idea of asking anyone to give up their child.
Anyone but me.
Kushina had not known about what her husband had planned - she had been in labour for two days, and all she was aware of was the terrible pain, and the horrible, malevolent aura of the Kyuubi seeping through the air as the creature tore through the shinobi fighting it outside the village. She had barely sensed Minato as he took her baby aware, had barely heard his tearful promise that everything would turn out alright.
It didn't.
Kushina was shocked to find out her son was a jinchuuriki, but that didn't matter so much to her as the fact that Minato had sacrificed himself to make Naruto into one. The man she had loved, the father of her child, was dead, and she had not only lost him, but also his protection.
Naruto might have saved the village, but they were not grateful. They had screamed for his death, demanding that the 'Kyuubi' be put down like a rabid dog. The Sandaime had put a halt to that, but there had still been attempts to destroy 'the demon brat and the witch that bore it'. Though the Hokage had assigned an ANBU squad to be on permanent bodyguard duty, it had still been very stressful, and Kushina constantly worried about leaving her baby alone while she went out on missions, afraid that one day she wouldn't come home to him.
So it wasn't really that surprising when she was ambushed.
The red-haired jounin shuddered, remembering the day with crystal-clear clarity. Whoever had been the one to order her capture had clearly wanted her a lot, because her three ambushers - Chiseigyoki Taishuu, Raiga, and Hoshigaki Kisame - had all been members of the Seven Swordsmen of Kiri.
One Swordsman, she might have been able to defeat. Two, she could have escaped from with a bit of luck. But three, especially a three that included Kisame and his sword that greedily drank at her chakra, sapping her strength and giving it to the shark-man, was impossible.
Kushina shivered, trying to shake herself out of her memories. Her strength was gradually returning, and soon she'd be back in Konoha, back with her son. Not only that, but she had some very important information for the Hokage...and something else.
Almost unconsciously, her hand went to the pouch on her hip. Normally, it would have held kunai or shuriken, but those had been taken off her long ago. Now, what it held was a simple scroll, the sort that any ninja would carry, with the kanji for 'Four' written on it in dark green ink.
When Sayuri 'woke up' the next morning, it was to find Naruto hanging by his feet from a tree as he folded a piece of paper, quickly crafting it into a graceful swan with arching wings. To a stranger, this might look like a great accomplishment, but the puppet knew that, for Naruto, a thing like that was so easy that it was practically instinctual - he probably wasn't even aware of what he was making. So she was rather puzzled by the smug grin he was sporting, as if he'd done something so fiendishly clever that everyone should be in awe of him.
"Nii-san? Why are you smiling like that?"
Naruto dropped the swan, but he'd clearly put some chakra in it as it fluttered through the air before diving towards the ground, unfolding back into a sheet with tiny, looping writing scrawled across it. The blonde then reached up and grabbed the branch his feet were clinging to; releasing his chakra and allowing himself to swing for a few moments before dropping to the floor, his normal mischievous grin on his face. "Oh, no reason."
Possessing the intelligence of at least the average seven-year old, Sayuri wasn't going to be fobbed off by that - and besides, it was obvious to anyone looking at him that Naruto really wanted to say - or, rather, boast about - something.
"Come on! What have you done?"
Naruto sat down, his legs stretched off to the left, and glanced at the scroll that had been a swan a few seconds previously. Sayuri followed his gaze, and her eyes widened. "You learned a jutsu from there?"
Naruto nodded, and she instantly started firing off excited questions. "Which one? How did you learn it? When'd you learn it? Can I do it? Are-"
Naruto smiled indulgently as she continued to pester, fully intending to show off his jutsu as he had always longed to do back in Konoha, but willing to put up with Sayuri's stream of questions until she ran out. He wasn't, however, going to admit that he had actually barely snatched a wink of sleep, so absorbed had he been in trying to make the jutsu work, even when his eyelids had felt as heavy as lead from lack of sleep. He was still feeling a bit tired, but he was also full of triumph, because just as dawn began to tint the sky red, he had managed to finally get the jutsu to work.
Finally, as Sayuri slowed down, waiting for him to actually show her, Naruto put his hands together to form a seal. "Kage bunshin!"
There was a puff of smoke that filled the clearing, briefly obscuring Sayuri's vision. When it cleared, she blinked, and blinked again, wondering whether her eyes had failed her.
Standing next to Naruto was a perfect replica of the blonde, with every detail identical from the wild silvery hair to the whisker marks on his cheeks to the dagger strapped to his hip. The clone smiled cheekily, and gave a little wave. "What do you think, Sayuri-chan? Cool or what?"
The puppet nodded slowly, reaching out to touch the clone's hand. Her eyes widened as she felt his fingers. "He's solid, nii-san!" She looked thoughtful for a minute. "It must have been really hard to learn it!"
Both Narutos nodded, beaming at the praise. Naruto was certainly not going to admit that there had actually been at least basic instructions about going through the jutsu - though he didn't know it, the scroll had been a relic of Orochimaru's jounin days in Konoha, and thus had contained the necessary information for anyone who actually needed to learn the jutsu.
"Can you teach me?"
Naruto shrugged, looking up at the sky. "Maybe later. Right now, we've got to keep moving - they've probably sent people after us, and I really don't want to get caught."
Not needing to ask who 'they' were, Sayuri nodded, watching as the scrolls began to shape themselves into the dragon once again. She frowned, looking at a scroll that was folding itself up into the tail of the dragon. "Nii-san...shouldn't you be a bit more careful of them? They're the only jutsus we've got..."
Naruto frowned, considering her point. True, the scrolls were beginning to get a bit creased from the constant folding, and he could tell that the damage would grow after a while, but it was the only paper supply they had available. Then again, it shouldn't be that hard to find more paper...he'd have to look into it.
"We'll see. Now, come on! We have to find a town!"
Sakon grimaced as he peered carefully through the silent trees, his fingers twitching as his curse mark twinged with pain. "Any sign of him?"
Next to him, Kidomaru shook his head, his four arms folded against his chest, looking like a macabre insect. "The kid knows the game; he'll be long gone by now."
The leader of the Sound Four gritted his teeth, spindly fingers drumming a tattoo against his leg as he looked around. The ruined base was a trail far too cold to pursue, but they had no other leads as to where Orochimaru's future vessel might be. Some shinobi had reported seeing a white beast with two children on its back flying through the air, but the direction that it had gone differed with each account, and tracking every suspected path could take months.
Unfortunately, they had no choice. Orochimaru was furious over the loss of Naruto, and he was determined to get the boy back by any means necessary. Finding him would actually be the easiest part - if the rumours that Sakon had heard were true, then getting the boy back to Oto could involve confronting Sannin-level ninjas, or even an actual member of the legendary three. However, the two-headed boy ignored the fear coursing through him at the thought of tackling a ninja far beyond his level (he was arrogant, but not that arrogant) and focused on the task at hand.
He could see no hint of where Orochimaru's future vessel had run off to, meaning that the Sound Four would have to simply comb the land until they found him. And while it would be three more years until Orochimaru was ready to transfer again, he knew that the Sannin wanted Naruto captured as quickly as possible, and they wouldn't be able to cover as much ground if they were together.
"We're splitting up. Jirobo, you search east, Tayuya, take the west, and Kidomaru, go south. I'll look in the north."
Tayuya glared at him, her flute dangling from her fingers. "This is going to take too fucking lon-"
Sakon glared at her, feeling Ukon twitch under their shared skin. "Orochimaru-sama wants this Uzumaki kid, and he's going to get him. But if he doesn't get him as soon as possible, he's going to be very unhappy. This is the fastest way to find him without any leads, so shut up and move out!"
The red-head muttered a few curses under her breath, but she obeyed, stomping off in the direction that Sakon had directed her to. Sakon let out a sigh, before setting off on his own path. This was going to be tricky, no doubt about it, but they would find the Uzumaki brat. Orochimaru would not accept anything less.
Kabuto smirked as he knelt before the Hoshikage, though his bowed head and submissive posture suggested that he was showing nothing but respect to the village leader. However, the silver-haired 'genin' couldn't help but feel amused. He had been in the presence of many kage-level ninjas, had fought some members of the Sound Four, had met jounin and missing-nin, all of whom could wipe the floor with the man who presumed to call himself 'kage.'
Hell, he wasn't sure if Naruto wouldn't be able to defeat him. The boy might not know any jutsus, but he had been mercilessly drilled in taijutsu and kenjutsu by Guren, was pretty nifty with those black threads, showing signs in becoming very skilled in both creating puppets and using them in combat - and, of course, he couldn't die. It would be...interesting to pit him against men like the one sitting before him, who had ninja education, but lacked the raw talent and drive Naruto had to succeed.
"Are you sure that this will work, Yakushi-san? The star is very valuable to us, and we are going against Konoha by allowing your master's work to continue here."
Kabuto gave him a friendly smile. Truthfully, Orochimaru could not have cared less about the trouble that Hoshigakure would be in were Konoha to discover their dealings with the missing-nin. However, the bigger village didn't have any spies planted in Hoshi, as it was such a minor village that they didn't think it was worth wasting their valuable spies on. A mistake that would cost them.
"I am sure, Hoshikage-sama. We have healing techniques that will negate the harmful effects of the star, allowing your shinobi to rise to their full potential."
Wariness and greed warred in the Hoshikage's face, the instinctual distrust of a man such as Orochimaru battling against the desire of the vision Kabuto had presented to him; one filled with the proud, powerful shinobi of Hoshigakure taking their place as the top ninja on the continent.
Where they belonged.
At last, the aged 'kage' nodded, spreading his brittle hands. "Very well. What do you require?"
After about an hour's worth of flying, Naruto spotted a clump of glowing orange lights in the distance, the crescent moon above him illuminating the inky outlines of some small buildings clumped together. Quickly, he urged the dragon downwards, knowing that as impressive as it looked, flying a paper monster into the middle of a town was not the kind of entrance he wanted to make. They had to keep a low profile, after all.
As soon as they touched the forest floor, Naruto caused the dragon to dissolve into hundreds of scrolls, making a special effort not to crumple them more than he had to. Sayuri then got to work sealing them into the elaborate seals that dotted her skin, while Naruto began his efforts to disguise himself.
Even before he had been abandoned by Konoha, he had not been one to fade into the background. He had been loud, desperate for attention, and his bright golden hair and whiskered cheeks were something that stood out in a crowd. But back then, he had been able to bow his head, to be quiet, to slip through the crowds and vanish among them. Now, it was not so easy.
Squatting on his haunches, he dug his fingers into the dark, moist floor of the forest, his nails scraping against the twisted root of some overgrown tree. Then he pulled his hand up, his fingers now caked in the wet earth, which he proceeded to rub into the pale side of his body, trying to darken it.
It wasn't anywhere near the calibre of a henge, or the work of a good make-up artist. However, it did level the skin tones, and you wouldn't be able to spot that anything was wrong without looking very closely. His hand-mouths and stitches were covered by his clothing, but he couldn't really do anything about his eyes apart from brushing his fringe over them, trying to cover them up. It didn't really work, but it was better than nothing.
Once he was finished, Naruto felt uncomfortably sticky, and his hair was tickling his eyes, but at least he was somewhat disguised. Sayuri swore that it looked brilliant, but seeing as she was a six-year old child, he was rather disinclined to take her word for it. Still, it wasn't as if they were going to run into any Oto nins - he didn't think that anyone could have come after him that quickly.
The shinobi flowed silently through the trees, their stride quick but smooth as they travelled through the forest, the sunlight reflecting off their porcelain masks. If one was going to get poetical about them, then they could be described as 'living shadows' or 'ethereal warriors', so strong and fluid were their movements.
But none of these shinobi were remotely poetic. Any emotion that had the potential to make them so had long since been stamped out of them, leaving empty husks that lived only for orders.
ROOT had been sent out to find Uzumaki Naruto. They would not fail.
The town was longer away than Naruto thought, and hidden by the swathe of forest, which got thicker and thicker the further they travelled along the dirt path that snaked its way through the trees. However, he was determined to reach it within the hour, and so he set a fast pace, forcing Sayuri to jog quickly in order to keep up with him. Her clicking limbs and quiet grumbles filled the air, disguising the sound of footsteps and the crunch of brittle leaves.
But it didn't disguise the sound of a knife whistling through the air, heading straight for Naruto.
The blonde turned around, and the blade froze, hanging motionless in mid-air. With a narrow of his eyes, it spun around and shot backwards, flying towards whoever had thrown it.
There was a muffled curse, and five shapes blundered out of the shadows, one bleeding from a wound in his thigh. Sayuri looked alarmed, but stayed where she was, while Naruto calmly assessed their attackers.
They didn't seem to be ninja, but these men - for all five of them were male, though some looked to be in their late teens - were definitely not peaceful civilians. They were dressed in outfits designed to blend into the forest, and some had swords strapped to their backs while others held nasty-looking clubs and axes. Their eyes glinted greedily as they looked at the two children, and Naruto had a nasty feeling that they wouldn't be showing any mercy.
Good.
He didn't need any.
"Well, well, well! What do we have here? A couple of kiddies having a stroll?"
Naruto raised an eyebrow, not impressed by the man's baby-talk. Kabuto had been ten times as scary to him, and the blonde hadn't trembled before him either. "Who are you?"
The speaker, who seemed to be the leader, scowled, seeming to be offended by something Naruto had said.
"You walk in our forests, and you dare not know who we are? This group is the collection of most feared men to walk the land, and I am their leader, Akanimaru, the feared 'Bloody Death'! With this weapon," - he brandished an axe with a scratched blade stained with a reddish-brown hue - "I have killed over a hundred men, and tonight, I will add the blood of a boy to it!"
Naruto was beginning to wonder if he and Sayuri had accidentally wandered into the scene of a particularly bad movie, because there was no way that anyone could call themselves the most feared person in the land when there were people from Oto wandering around. And for that matter, who the hell had given that bandit his title? It was flamboyant at best, at worse, the unimaginative creation of someone with a very large ego.
He was betting on the latter. "Well, if you have no respect for our group, then I guess we'll just have to teach you some, eh boys?"
The other men nodded, brandishing their weapons as they drew closer. Naruto shifted his weight onto one foot, waiting for them to get close enough. Once he judged the distance to be close enough, he struck.
Black threads shot out of his body, and wrapped themselves around the throats of the throats of the two nearest bandits, blood trickling down their necks as the threads cut into their skin as they tightened. Choking, one of the men reached up, trying to yank the threads from his throat as his face turned purple. The other was a bit smarter, hacking at them with the knife in his hand. After a bit of resistance, they gave way, letting the man drop to the forest floor.
The other man tried to do the same, but he was already dizzy from the lack of air, and before he could raise his own weapon, Naruto yanked the threads back sharply, snapping his neck with a loud crack.
The three men who had not attacked him, clearly hanging back to watch what they thought would be an easy victory, stared at him in horror, their weapons limp in their hands as they tried to comprehend that what was meant to be an easy target had just killed one of their comrades, and temporarily incapacitated the other. In the time it took for their minds to process this, Naruto had already drawn his own weapon, and lunged forward, plunging it into the throat of the nearest of the befuddled trio before twisting and yanking it out, the scales now shiny with blood.
Was it his imagination, or did he feel a sense of satisfaction emanating from the blade?
The final two men, finally roused out of their horrified stupor, threw themselves at him, their faces twisted with rage. A chain shot out, wrapping around the legs of the man on the left, dragging him down, before a whirring noise filled the air. Naruto spared a grateful glance at Sayuri before slamming his foot into Akanimaru's chest, while forcing his metal axe to fly out of his hands. Akanimaru stared at the weapon dumbly, and Naruto made it shoot backwards - right into the man's face, cleaving his skull in two.
Something wet and pink slapped the ground amid a shower of blood. Grimacing as some of the red liquid trickled down his face, Naruto lowered his dagger, and noticed that it seemed to have grown a couple of inches to his bewilderment. But that wasn't the most worrying part - it was that the scales on it were now raised up slightly, creating a blade of jagged spikes. Naruto grimaced. There was no way he could carry that on his hip now - his leg would be torn to shreds.
Yessss..."
Naruto blinked, looking around. He thought he had just heard a strange, scratchy whisper, like that of an old man, rustling in the wind. But then he shook his head, certain that it was just a trick of his mind.
"Nii-san?"
Naruto straightened up, and turned to look at Sayuri, who stood with the bodies of the two he hadn't butchered at her feet. Naruto could see from the weak ebbing of their chakra that they were injured badly; perhaps beyond the help of medical care. If he wanted to, it would be easy to finish them off. It would be just as easy to show them mercy by performing a medical technique on them, heal them, and leave them with the scars they no doubt would have littered over their bodies as a permanent lesson.
He did neither.
Instead, he turned and walked away with Sayuri following at his heels, listening to their moans fade away as he strode off, feeling disgusted that all they could do was lie there, waiting to either die or be found by someone with a kinder soul than theirs. If he had been injured, he knew that he would never have just wilted like a cut flower, trusting himself to the whim of the gods, if there were any.
Naruto would never have given up.
Never.
The man gasped as he lay on the futon, his sweaty face wracked with pain and fever. A sickness had swept through the land, a nasty one that had already killed three out of the twenty-five people who had caught it. Desperate, the villagers had turned to their powerful and wise priestess for help, knowing that she could heal them when their ordinary doctors could not.
This was nothing new to Shion - many came to see her mother with afflictions like this, some which her mother could cure, some which were beyond her. But today was different, for now she was going to perform the healing instead./ppIt had been a great shock for the young girl when her mother had unexpectedly announced that she was to begin her training as a priestess. Shion knew that she was supposed to have begun it earlier, from the day she had received her first vision, but for some reason, her mother had delayed this, citing excuses that Shion needed to be a child, that becoming a priestess was a burden that could be bestowed later, when Shion was more mature. But suddenly, she had changed her mind, and had begun to train her daughter, with no explanation as to why she had changed her mind.
It was hard. Shion had had to learn how to control her chakra, how to bind demons, how to heal wounds, how to create shields of her own chakra, how to ease pain, how to smile politely at someone when she knew they were going to die, how to accept that there were some things she could not change, even with her gift to foretell them.
Those latter lessons were the hardest to learn.
The strange thing was, though the list of powers Shion now had under her belt were impressive, they were not as hard as one might have thought to learn - even though the girl had often strained herself to exhaustion as she practiced them, it was nothing more than the tiredness of a normal young kunoichi who had trained too hard perfecting the academy jutsus. However, her mother told her that she still had far to go, because she was nowhere near as powerful as she had the potential to be.
When Shion asked her mother how she could go about reaching that potential, Miroku's face had gone a bit funny, and she had told her daughter that she would simply have to 'grow by walking the path the future had set down for her, no matter how hard it got'. Shion didn't know exactly what her mother meant by that, but the look on her face had told her to not as further questions.
Now, the young girl knelt down by the futon, soft pink chakra shimmering in her palm as she held it just above the man's skin, before letting it flow into his body, soothing and healing it.
It took a lot of chakra to heal him, and Shion was left feeling exhausted by the end, but then again, that was what priestesses were meant to do - to heal, to bring goodness and light to a time where there was precious little of either. The Land of Demons did not have a ninja village, but Shion knew that there were thousands of the warriors running around, and the thought of them both scared and excited her. Scared, because everyone told her that ninja were ruthless people who cared for nothing but killing. On the other hand, they sounded exotic and exciting, and part of her longed to meet one.
The rest of her thought that it would be a good idea if she never met a single ninja in her life.
"Foolish boy! You dare to challenge us, on our-URK!"
Naruto yanked out the dagger, noting dispassionately that it almost seemed to be growing longer as he used it more and more to kill. Well, if that was the case, it seemed like it was going to get a lot bigger, as the forest was riddled with bandits who seemed determined to try their luck against the pair.
Really, could none of them hear the screams of the others?
He was almost considering just abandoning the attempt to reach the town at all, and just flying off to look for another. However, he could smell something cooking, along with the tangy scent of wood smoke, and knew he was getting close. It would be a waste to turn back now.
Sure enough, after a few more minutes of walking, he saw a group of buildings rising above the treetops, along with what looked like a hastily-erected wall that seemed to be on the brink of collapsing. Clearly, the townspeople were trying to keep something out.
With Sayuri following him, Naruto walked up to the large door set in the wall - or, to be more accurate, the gap in the wall that had been barricaded with planks of wood. He was just about to peer through one of the gaps between the planks when a spear was suddenly thrust out of it, prompting him to jerk back in alarm.
A hoarse voice issued from behind the wood. "Go away, thieves! This town shall not submit to you!"
Sayuri looked offended - Kami help those who insult the honour of a six-year old child. "We're not thieves!"
The voice sounded indignant. "Liars! If you're not here to rob us, then why does he have a weapon?"
Naruto glanced down at the incriminating dagger in his hand, which was stained a vivid crimson from the blood he had drawn. Squashing the guilty urge to hide it behind his back, he glared up at the barricade. "Because we had to fight our way over here!"
"Fight? Two little children against the droves of bandits in this forest? Don't make me laugh! I know what you really are - some spies that they sent in, to learn our weaknesses and-"
"Oh, knock it off, Jin, and let them come in. I doubt that they'd be a match for us, even if they were spies. They're just kids."
Naruto bristled at the second voice - if these people were really afraid of the bandits he had slaughtered, then he didn't think that they'd be a match forhim - but Sayuri looked excited as the planks were slid to one side, revealing the owners of the voices.
One was an old man with white hair, who was stooped with age and had beady, mistrustful eyes. The other one was a girl, a few years older than Naruto, with short black hair and keen amber eyes, presumably the owner of the second voice. She looked them over from head to toe and sighed. "See, Jin? They're not bandits."
The old man shook his head, looking determined. "Just wait and see, Moriko! This is just another one of Akanimaru's tricks! We'll be dead before dawn if we let them stay!"
Moriko sighed, looking weary. A quick glance around told Naruto why.
The town looked quite rundown, with quite a few damaged buildings and from what he could see, quite hungry towns-people. An air of quiet desperation hung about them, like a black cloud, and they were staring at the newcomers with distrust in their eyes.
Moriko noticed his expression. "It's the bandits, I'm afraid. They came to this area about six months ago, and since then, we've pretty much been under siege. Anyone who goes out gets robbed if they're lucky, and if they're not..." She lifted her shoulders in a shrug. "They're food for the dogs. How did you manage to get through them anyway?"
Despite her light question, her tone was guarded, and Naruto felt decidedly nervous about the large number of townsmen, all of whom were clutching some nasty-looking weapons. Perhaps it would be best if he were honest.
"We killed them."
For a moment, Moriko merely looked at him, her eyes wide. Then she shook her head, slender fingers drumming against the large pocket knife tucked into her belt. "Well, that's quite a morbid joke. So, how did you really get through them?"
Naruto felt annoyed. "I just told you!"
Moriko glared at him. "Enough's enough, kid! If those men could be taken down by kids, we'd have gotten rid of them a long time ago! We've sent out men against them, we've posted up a reward for every dead bandit, we've even hired ninja-"
Naruto blinked. "And the ninja couldn't get rid of them?"
Scowling, Moriko folded her arms. "Well, they never came. The nearest ninja village to us is Kusagakure, and they've got so few ninja to spare that problems like ours get shoved under the more 'important' things. Itsuki hired a team to escort him to another town near Kiri for trading - that's a higher ranked mission, so they should come here, and hopefully kill off a few of them on the way, but they'll only be here by next week at the earliest. Until then, we're stuck - there's a giant camp of them up north, and anyone going near there just gets slaughtered."
Naruto considered this. On one hand, while he couldn't die, it was still pretty painful to get turned into a human pincushion, as he was pretty sure would happen if he attacked a bandit camp with just him and Sayuri. On the other hand...
"You mentioned...a reward?"
Moriko looked at him with narrowed eyes. "One hundred and fifty ryo for every bandit brought in, yes. Don't tell me you're thinking of going after it, kid. Maybe you'll get lucky, maybe you could take down a couple if you're better than you look, but you couldn't take down every last one of these guys all at once."
Naruto smiled, his rippled blue eyes gleaming in a way that once might have been innocently childish.
"We'll see."
Kushina staggered forward, the air burning in her lungs as she pushed herself at a speed that her muscles simply weren't used to coping with. The chakra coils in her leg felt like they were going to burst from the violent waves of chakra surging through them, the strap of her sandals were digging painfully into the back of her heels, and she desperately wanted to rest, but she couldn't make herself stop. Though Kirigakure was now days behind her, to the former ANBU, every shadow was a hunter-nin, every snapped twig the signal for an ambush.
Suddenly, she heard voices, and halted herself by grabbing onto a tree branch, dread coursing through her as she tried to peer through the trees to see where they were coming from. Her hand curled weakly around the handle of the single kunai she had, while she desperately tried to stop the ragged breaths that felt like they were clawing their way out of her chest. She could not fight - now that her mind had been drawn out of the comforting monotone of just springing from tree to tree, pushing herself closer to her goal with every time her trembling foot struck the ground, she found that she barely had the strength to stand.
"This is the Sixth Squad of Konoha's ANBU! You are trespassing on Konohagakure's land! Surrender now, or suffer the consequences!"
Though the voice that had just echoed through the forest definitely did not sound friendly, to Kushina, it was as if Minato himself had called from the trees. Falling to her knees, she answered.
"This is Uzumaki Kushina, former ANBU Captain. Please, take me to Hokage-sama."
Moriko's face paled as Naruto dumped the bodies down in front of her, giving a sigh of relief as he let the last corpse thud into the dusty ground. Next to him, Sayuri smiled up at the woman. "See? Nii-san said he could do it!"
The older girl didn't answer, instead squatting down next to Akanimaru's body, gingerly poking at the collar of his stained shirt with a nauseous expression on her face. "You...killed him? But...but..."
"That'll be one thousand, five hundred ryo" said Naruto proudly, having run the calculations through his head all the way back to the town from the place where he had left the bodies of the bandits that he had already killed. He was only just getting started, but already he could see food for himself, money for inns, and whatever else he and Sayuri might need - and just from killing a bunch of men that, in his opinion, were only wasting valuable air by breathing.
He liked doing this.
Moriko straightened up, and a troubled expression crossed her face for the briefest of moments, before she nodded, and smiled brightly. "I...see. Tell me, are you going to go after the rest of the men?"
Naruto thought about it for a moment, before nodding. "Yeah. It's more money then, isn't it?"
Moriko's voice was odd as she turned away. "Yes. Yes, it is."
Sarutobi walked down the grey corridor of the hospital, the cheap light above his head flickering ominously as he neared the room of one Uzumaki Kushina. It had been a week since the squad of ANBU had happened upon the redhead, and yet, he had delayed this meeting for as long as he could, citing whatever reason he could think of - that his paperwork was simply too much to just leave on his desk, that he didn't want to disturb Kushina, that he thought the woman was still too sick from the damage she had received to be distressed by the truth of her son. But truthfully, he did not want to have to face a mother and tell her that he had failed her child.
Unlike her.
Sarutobi's eyes flashed as he remembered the report from the medics. Kushina had undergone great physical torture, it seemed. Bones had been broken repeatedly, she was physically malnourished, her body was laced with a network of scars, her pale skin was dark with bruises and burns. And despite that, she had not broken. If she had, then she would not have been set free - instead, she'd have been disposed of, and there would be another village flaunting Minato's work.
Of course, Kushina would have to be questioned about her disappearance, probably by Ibiki himself, to make sure that there had been no foul play on her part when it came to her disappearance. The kage doubted it - Kushina had been far too devoted to Naruto to even think about leaving him to fend for himself in a village that hated him - but still, there would always be those who would maliciously whisper that of course she had slipped off into the night, for who would want to be the mother of a jinchuuriki?
But before then, Sarutobi had insisted on being the one to break the news to her about Naruto's disappearance. He could do nothing less - Kushina had suffered so much already, and he would be damned if she learned the truth from a taunting stranger.
Steeling himself, the Sandaime knocked lightly on the door, half-hoping that she was asleep.
"Come...in..."
With a sigh, the aged kage pushed the door open.
Kushina was lying on a hospital bed, her long red hair, now washed and carefully combed out by a kindly nurse, trailing over the pillow. She looked thin and wane, and her skin was the tell-tale too-healthy-pink that came from extensive chaka healing. Though it was almost a decade since Sarutobi saw her last, she seemed to have barely aged at all, a fact that did not surprise him, considering her clan. However, something about her had definitely changed, deeper than the wounds she bore. She seemed harder...and at the same time, as brittle as glass. Despite that, her violet eyes were bright and alert, and they locked onto Sarutobi's the moment he stepped into the room.
A smile spread over her face as she saw who had just come in. "Sandaime-sama!"
Forcing a smile on his face, Sarutobi nodded at her. "Kushina. It gladdens me beyond words that you have returned to this village."
Kushina nodded weakly. "Me too. I can't tell...you how horrible it was in...that place, Sarutobi. It was...like hell, to put it nicely. But I don't want to talk...about it. I want to know...where's Naruto?"
Though her voice was raspy and weak, it had a desperate tone to it, a need, not a want, to see that her child was safe.
And Sarutobi couldn't give that to her.
"Kushina, I'm so sorry..."
Noboru grinned when he saw the large stock of sake that had been piled up in the middle of the camp. "Sweet!"
"Damn right!" his friend agreed, looking eagerly at the stash. "Good thing Akanimaru's not come back by now, otherwise he'd be grabbing it all for himself."
Noboru nodded, reaching for a bottle. He had an exciting lifestyle, money, dozens of women, and alcohol. Life was good.
He didn't notice the eyes fixed on him from up in the trees.
"Nii-san? How are we going to do this?"
Naruto leaned forward, pondering Sayuri's question as he stared down at the bandit camp. There were a lot of people there, about fifty of them, and they were clearly enjoying themselves, with lots of laughter, sake, and scantily-clad women lying around. Whether the women were bandits or not, he didn't know, but they didn't seem to carrying weapons, and some were looking very uncomfortable about being there, so he decided that he would focus on the bandits instead.
Making a decision, he turned to Sayuri. "Unseal the puppets."
A look of understanding appeared on her face, and with a puff of smoke, she brought out the six human puppets they had, though she didn't look very happy about it.
Pale chakra threads shimmered as they flew through the air, attaching themselves to the bodies of the puppets. They had split them up, three for both of them, which was about as much as they could control at once. With a grin baring his sharp teeth, Naruto set his puppets forward, their bodies already shifting to reveal their weapons as they landed among the alarmed bandits, ready to carve a path of destruction before he and Sayuri actually fought themselves.
Six - well, technically seven - puppets and Naruto against no less than fifty fully grown armed men.
It would have been close. But Naruto decided that he wanted to tip the scales a little more. He wanted to test out this new jutsu after all.
Kushina stared at him blankly, her violet eyes cold.
"Orochimaru. You let my six-year-old son be captured by Orochimaru."
Sarutobi winced. "Kushina-"
She sat up in her bed despite her weakness, hands gripping the side of her hospital bed so tightly her knuckles turned white. "You let my son fall into the hands of that monster? I was being tortured, being treated like an animal because I wouldn't betray Konoha, and you couldn't even keep my son safe in return?"
"Kushina, you don't understand. We thought that he was safe, but he just vanished one day, and-"
"Vanished" she repeated, her voice cold. "And tell me, Hokage-sama, just how long did it take you to notice that Naruto was gone? An hour? A day? Or was he simply so unimportant that you only noticed when the villagers complained that they had lost their venting target and wanted to find someone else to treat like a demon?"
Sarutobi bowed his head in shame. It was true that he had not noticed that Naruto was missing for a while, as his workload had been far too heavy for him to make his normal monthly trip to see the boy, and so he had not realized until it was too late. However, he knew that Kushina would not accept such a weak excuse, and so he kept silent.
Kushina folded her arms, slumping back against her pillow. "Tell me, Sarutobi. Do you know what was thought to be the worst act of cowardice in Uzu no Kuni?"
Surprised at the sudden change in topic, Sarutobi shook his head.
"It was the act of abandonment - leaving your comrades behind when they needed help. But when my village was being terrorized by Kumo shinobi, I was forbidden to go and help them by the Konoha shinobi who were meant to be helping us, but instead decided that we were a lost cause before they even arrived, and just sent the survivors back to Konoha. My family died, and I was just packed into your forces like a spare kunai."
"I don't-"
"Let me finish, Sarutobi. I spent years getting over the fact that my village - the village I had sworn to protect as a shinobi - had fallen, and I wasn't there to fall with it. Years to stop feeling guilty about living when my family had died, years to come to terms with the fact that I wasn't a Whirlpool shinobi, while at the same time, I wasn't a Konoha one either. I had years to build up my life again, and I did it, with Minato being a key part of it. But then I lost him."
Sarutobi was beginning to feel that this was getting out hand. "Kushina, Minato chose to sacrifice himself-"
"I know," the former ANBU hissed. "I know that he chose to leave us without any form of support, I know that he chose the village over his own son, I know that he knew what would happen to us in a village that had just lost so much to the Kyuubi. I knew that, and I accepted it - I didn't like it, but I accepted it, because I knew what Minato was like. But...I could never accept the way Konoha treated my son."
Feeling every one of his long years, Sarutobi shook his head sadly. "They were hurting, Kushina. They needed to be shown that he was not a demon-"
"Oh, that's all very convenient, isn't it? Konoha can't be bothered to see that the son of their hero isn't the demon they want him to be so that they get an excuse for taking their anger out on him, so it's up to him to prove that he isn't, and if they continued to be a crowd of ungrateful bigots, well, that just goes to show that he didn't try hard enough, doesn't it?"
"That's not what I meant," Sarutobi protested.
"But it's what Konoha interpreted that as," Kushina said, shoving her blankets off.
"What are you doing? The medic-nins ordered-"
"I'll tell you what I'm doing, Sarutobi-sama. I am going to get out of this hospital. I am going to find some proper clothes. I am going to go back to my apartment to see if there's anything worth salvaging. And then I am going to leave this village for good."
Sarutobi stared at her, horror-struck. "Leave? Kushina, you can't-"
"I can't what? Leave a village I have no proper allegiance to? Leave a place that scorned my son for saving them from a monster that would have crushed Konoha like an anthill? Find my son before your student gets his filthy hands on him?"
Sarutobi frowned at the mention of his student, but carried on. "Kushina, I know that the treatment Naruto recieved was far less than he deserved. But can you really deny him his heritage? His true home? His rightful comrades?"
Kushina howled with laughter, the sound wild and bordering on hysterical. "Deny him his heritage? As I recall, the Council ordered me out of Minato's home and refused to acknowledge Naruto as anything other than the bastard son of a foreign whore that had no doubt slept with a blonde ninja and was using that as a claim to fame. His 'home' was a tiny apartment with outrageous rent fees because keeping 'animals' cost extra. And as for his rightful comrades...Every friend Minato and I had deserted us once Naruto's condition became known - something that I told you was a bad idea and you ignored. No one acknowledged me as a comrade, they treated me like a leper instead. Even Mikoto and Hitomi-"
Sarutobi froze, dreading that he had to be the bearer of more bad news, even if it was slightly better than he described. After all, the true status and number of the Uchiha clan could not be spilled to just anyone; even young Sasuke hadn't earned the clearance yet.
"Mikoto's dead, Kushina."
Kushina stared at him, her face deathly pale. "What?"
"I suppose you wouldn't know, but two years ago, the Uchiha clan was attacked. They fought as best as they could, but their assailant...well, few in Konoha could stand against him. Only Sasuke, her youngest son, survived."
"Dead? B-but...Who?"
"The attacker was Uchiha Itachi."
It took a few moments for Kushina to pierce together her memories to work out just who that was. Her eyes narrowed, while her fingers tightened around her blanket. "That glorified shrimp? You're telling me that he killed his own mother?"
Pushing aside the amusing possibilities of Itachi's expression if Kushina ever called him 'a glorified shrimp' to his face, Sarutobi nodded sombrely. "Her, and the rest of his clan. As I said, only young Sasuke survived...after a bout of torture via genjutsu..."
"Must've been a pretty bad one..." Kushina mused quietly, her violet eyes flickering over to the window.
'You have no idea' Sarutobi thought sadly. If Kushina knew what had truly happened that night...Mikoto might have no longer called herself Kushina's friend (something that the kage had a feeling was more to do with Fugaku's strict control over his clan than having any grievances about the Kyuubi herself) but loyalty ran deep in the Uzumaki clan, and Sarutobi wouldn't be surprised if Kushina hunted down Itachi to show him precisely why messing with the friends of an Uzumaki was a Bad Idea.
"Always knew that brat was trouble," Kushina muttered, before a smug look broke over her face. "All the more reason to leave, if that's the sort of ninja you're turning out."
Seeing that he was making no progress, Sarutobi tried another front.
"But, Kushina! Even if this is not your home, it is Naruto's! What if he comes back, and you're not here?"
Kushina laughed coldly, managing to look dignified even as she struggled to stand on legs with atrophied muscles. "Right now, my son is out of Orochimaru's clutches, but we both know that snake isn't going to give up so easily. So I'm going to look for my son, I am going to tell him everything, and I will take him somewhere that does not sneer at him for saving them."
Sarutobi stiffened. "Another village, Kushina?"
"I am not a Konoha shinobi, Sarutobi. I was merely a Whirlpool ninja on loan from my country. As my true village no longer exists, any contract I have with Konoha is null and void, including the office of ANBU captain. Oh, by all means, you can imprison me, place me in the bingo book, or try and detain me in some other way. But at least I can comfort myself with the knowledge that none of it is legal, and that if you do that, you'll be violating every promise you ever made to Minato when he asked you to make sure that Naruto was safe."
It would have been a very simple matter for Sarutobi to do what Kushina had mockingly suggested - he could have called in the medics, summoned the ANBU, or even just shoved her - in Kushina's weakened state, she coldn't take a blow from a squirrel, never mind a shinobi like Sarutobi. But he didn't. Instead, he just watched her hobble out of the door, silently wondering just when things had spun so far out of his control.
Panting, Naruto looked around the camp, his lips curved in a vicious smile. He had known that he was capable of great destruction, but even so, he was pleasantly surprised at the results of his little battle.
Every single bandit lay dead, their blank eyes still holding some traces of the shock that they had felt, that outrage in the fact that two children, who by all rights should have been cowering before them, had just exterminated them like the rats they were, unworthy of even been given dignified, orderly deaths. Naruto had not been careful about how he killed them, instead, he had just blown through them with whatever he could.
Some corpses had long, thin gouges in them from where Naruto's threads had torn through them. Some had been stabbed with their own metal weapons. Some had been shredded with Naruto's scaly weapon. Some had been sliced, stabbed or crushed by the puppets. Some had been dismembered by paper weapons. However, the overwhelming majority had been simply blown to bits, odd bits of bodies scattered everywhere.
Of course, it would be unfair to say that he had done it alone. Despite her reluctance to use the human puppets, Sayuri had done pretty well, the puppets under her command darting in, killing, and moving out before the enemy had a chance to react, and he hadn't got out of it unscathed either - his sides were throbbing from several blows that would have broken his ribs if he hadn't stepped back in time, and there was an already healing stab wound on his leg - but it had been Naruto who had killed the majority, and he was feeling quite pleased with himself about it.
Sayuri let her puppets drop to the floor, and looked up at him tiredly. "Nii-san, are we done?"
Naruto nodded, glancing around. None of the bodies were moving, and the women had all gone, fleeing into the trees as soon as the bandits became preoccupied with the fight. "Yeah, I think so. I don't think there's any left alive..."
"There's not." Naruto glanced over at the sole remaining clone. He had been quite pleased with this jutsu. The clones had been able to utilize all his powers, and could apparently think and work together, but they unfortunately vanished after one solid hit. However, in light of the rest of the jutsu's qualities, he could see this become an often-used jutsu of his.
Sayuri, now bored, decided to get rid of the clone, and kicked it hard in the shins. It vanished in a puff of smoke, and Naruto whirled around. "Hey! You didn't need to kick that hard!"
Sayuri stared at him, confused. "How did you know?"
"Know what?"
"That I kicked him?"
Naruto opened his mouth to reply, but paused as he thought it over. He had been turned away from the clone, and he knew for a fact that Sayuri wouldn't kick him, but he had known for a fact that she had kicked the clone, and could even recall being kicked as if she had done it to him instead.
Hmm. This bore further investigation. But for now, they had some money to collect.
Moriko stared open-mouthed at the clearing, her breakfast threatening to leap out of her stomach. Never had she seen such carnage, not even with the bandits and their victims.
And the people who had done this...were children.
She glanced at them out of the corner of her eye, her fists clenched. When they had offered to clear out the bandits, she had felt guilty for allowing them to do so, thinking that they were just marching off to their deaths. But the town hadn't needed any more attention, and she hadn't liked what she had thought was the arrogance in the older child's tone.
Only now, she saw that it wasn't arrogance at all. What it was was the knowledge that he could do this, that he was capable of causing a massacre like this. She could see the amusement in his eyes, and she knew that he knew that she had not expected them to return alive.
She stepped away from the corpses, taking a deep breath. The town didn't have a lot of money - oh, sure, they had enough to cover what they owed the kids, but it wouldn't leave them with a lot at the end, and they had been planning on the kids dying against the bandits, leaving them free to keep their money. But the kids hadn't just defeated the bandits, they'd slaughtered them, and she wasn't sure what to do
Moriko knew what the town elders would insist on - give the kids less than half of what they had earned, and if they tried to push it, then beat them off. But looking around, she had a feeling that that would be a very bad idea.
"I'll...just go get your reward."
Naruto stared in awe at the rows and rows of green notes in front of him. Almost reverently, he reached out and touched the nearest ones, as if trying to assure himself that they were real. To his joy, he felt the crisp texture of money under his fingers, and he sighed happily.
It was as if he had been dying of dehydration, but had stumbled into an oasis at the last minute. To Naruto, nothing could be more peaceful than just standing there, gazing happily at the money he had earned, and there and then, he vowed to himself to make sure that he amassed a great deal more of the precious stuff.
Sayuri coughed, and reluctantly, he tore his gaze away from the cash. "Yes?"
"What are we going to do now?"
Naruto considered this. He didn't really want to hang around the town anymore, but on the other hand, he wasn't sure where else to go. They had money now, and that was a good start, but where should they head off to?
As if in answer, a man walked up to them, his stance hesitant. "Are you the children Moriko-chan was talking about?"
Naruto carefully scanned him. His chakra and general body build suggested that he was a civilian, and he could sense no weapons on him - at least, no metal weapons - and so he decided that it would be safe to talk to him. "Yes."
The man shuffled his feet. "I'm Itsuki. I was wondering if you'd be interested in another job?"
Naruto raised an eyebrow, and the man seemed to take that as his cue to continue. "I need to be escorted to Nagani - it's a small town near Kiri, but the trouble is, the team from Kusagakure that were going to come with me still haven't arrived, and I cannot wait any longer. So, I was wondering if you two would want to come with me on this trip? You could sort out anyone who might try and attack us, while I could arrange passage. It wouldn't take long..."
Naruto considered this. It sounded like a good offer - he had no set destination in mind, and helping the man would ensure that there would be a little less ill-will for them in this town should they ever decide to return.
He doubted they would, though. He was not blind, he had seen the cold glances that the villagers had given to them as they handed the money over. Well, that meant nothing to him. He wasn't really planning on returning anyway.
"-and I'll pay you of course!"
Naruto beamed, something that could be mistaken for a sweet, friendly smile were it not for the sharp, pointy teeth it exposed. "Now we're talking!"
Guren gritted her teeth as she pushed through the shinobi lingering around the halls in one of the Oto bases. She could feel their angry glares burning into her back, and she grimaced. Not because she actually cared for their opinions, but because the harsh looks reminded her too much of the disappointment she had caused her beloved Orochimaru.
Her fists clenched as she remembered how close she had been to becoming one of the chosen, how close she had gotten to achieving the ultimate honour - to give up her body to her master, to surrender her soul to him. When Orochimaru had needed a body, he had wanted her, she had been told, and if she'd only been faster, she could have given it to him.
But she had been too late, and by the time she arrived, Orochimaru had been forced to take an inferior host, a woman whose skills paled next to Guren's. The kunoichi had felt almost physically sick with envy as she stared up at the woman's body with its golden eyes, but that was nothing compared to the horror she felt at the fact that she had failed him - and he knew it too. Disgraced, Guren had been sent to another far-away base, left there to rot until she had redeemed herself in the eyes of Orochimaru.
Tiny crystal blades jutted out of her fingers as she closed her eyes, leaning against the wall. Truthfully, the blame could not be completely laid at her feet. No, surely some of it belonged to Orochimaru's original host, the one who was meant to be graced with her master's spirit, the one who had mocked the honour and spat in Orochimaru's face when he fled Otogakure.
Uzumaki Naruto.
Guren frowned as she thought of the boy. In her own way, she had become almost fond of him, feeling proud when he had grown stronger under her tutelage. She had been looking forward to seeing him reincarnated as Orochimaru, despite her envy. But now he was gone, and the disgrace had been passed on to her.
Well, not for long. Guren's eyes narrowed in determination. She would retrieve Naruto, and Orochimaru would take over his body, and she would regain the Sannin's trust. True, she didn't know where Naruto was, but she was sure that she could find him. She had to.
Naruto grimaced as he felt water drip down his collar from the canopy of leaves above his head. It had rained last night, rained heavily, and even though it had since cleared up, errant raindrops that had got caught in the leaves were still falling on them.
Sayuri was being very quiet, just trotting at his heels like a golden puppy, looking nervously at Itsuki from over her shoulder. Not very trustful of adults after her time in Oto, the puppet seemed to be expecting the man to attack them at any moment, and kept an eye on him at all times, despite the fact that she could probably break him without much trouble at all. The man hadn't seemed to pick up on this, and was chatting to her animatedly about various bits of nonsense that Naruto couldn't care less about. However, he did seem wary of Naruto himself, something that the older blonde was glad about.
Sighing, the jinchuuriki squinted up at the sunlight filtering through the darkness of the leaves, calculating how much daytime they had left. Judging from the rapidly darkening sky up above him, he doubted that they had long until night would fall. While he and Sayuri would happily keep on walking (living in the darkness of Otogakure had not only desensitised them to being scared of the dark, but also installed within them a pressing need to keep on running and put as much distance between it as they could) Itsuki insisted on stopping for the night - and they were further burdened by the fact that the man insisted on sleeping in a tent, which took more time to pitch up, as well as the cart that was being drawn by an old donkey that even Sayuri would be able to outrun.
Sayuri, sensing his frustration, nodded at her arm, which had the scrolls sealed inside. "Shall we study more tonight, nii-san?"
Naruto nodded, a smile crossing his features at the thought. Training was the one thing he'd enjoyed at Oto, and he intended to keep it up - not only would they look at the scrolls, but he intended to try out his taijutsu and kenjutsu, while Sayuri needed to get faster, both with her puppets and her own body. Yes, they had a lot of work ahead of them.
Naruto's thoughts were interrupted as he heard a twig snap. Stiffening, he fell into a stance, his eyes scanning the shadowy tree-tops for a flicker of chakra.
Sayuri and Itsuki stared at him, the puppet-user torn between her natural 'younger-sister-adoration' and her 'is-he-getting-a-bit-too-paranoid?' sense. "Nii-san-"
There came the sound of footsteps, and four people landed in front of them. Naruto gave Sayuri a smug look before turning to look at the new arrivals, trying to judge if they were a threat.
There was a short, muscular man with greying black hair, two identical boys with dark skin and wild mops of straw-coloured hair, and a girl that stood behind them nervously. She caught Naruto's attention because of her strange appearance. She had wine-red eyes and hair, but one side of her hair was neatly combed, while the other was wild, sticking up in all different directions. A pair of glasses shielded her eyes with thick glass, and she peered at him curiously, as if she didn't know what to make of him.
Itsuki cleared his throat - unlike his younger companions, he had never learned to fear ninjas, being rather isolated from shinobi apart from the occasional mission that crossed their path with his - and looked enquiringly at the quartet. "May we help you?"
One of the boys sighed impatiently, and the older ninja shot him a look before turning back to Itsuki. "We're the Kusagakure team that I believe you hired, Itsuki-san. One C-rank mission, a trip from the town of Kawa to Nagani?"
Itsuki nodded, but the annoyed expression on his face did not leave. "I received notice from Kusa that they could not spare any ninja for the mission, and so I would have to take the trip alone."
The ninja shrugged. "A space was freed in our schedule, and it was decided that we could accompany you for this. Unless, of course, you decide to reject the team?"
Itsuki's face cleared. "No, no, of course not! I was just surprised at your appearance, that was all."
The ninja nodded, before looking over at Sayuri and Naruto, both of whom looked back stoically. "You didn't mention that we would be accompanying three instead of one."
Itsuki's eyes flickered over the two children with him, before turning back to the ninja. "They were just tagging along. I didn't think that it would make much of a difference as we didn't know you would be coming after all."
The young boys accompanying the older ninja scowled, obviously resenting that this civilian had implied that they would not do their mission despite all evidence to the contrary. Naruto couldn't help but roll his eyes, wondering how they had expected this to go - were shinobi around here so respected that they expected no complaints for ignoring mission requests and then suddenly taking them up half-way through?
The ninja shrugged. "I suppose that it wouldn't make that much difference. But I suppose we should get moving, if you want to reach Nagani before tomorrow night."
Itsuki nodded, and they all began walking again, Itsuki's footsteps lagging slightly as the long journey began taking its toll, while Naruto tried to ignore the burning stare that the kunoichi of the team was sending into his back.
When she had set off on this mission, Karin had felt very annoyed. She and her team had all been set to go on a proper mission, off to stand guard over a daimyo's daughter, but the trip she had been going on had been cancelled, the daimyo having decided that his precious girl would do better to stay at home instead under the watchful eye of his samurai. With a lack of any other high-priority missions, they had been sent out here, to a backward little village to guard a single old man and his luggage while he went on a small trip from one boring town to another, and the redhead had not been happy to learn it.
However, it wasn't long before the girl realized that there was something funny about this mission. They had been within a hundred metre radius of their client when she decided to start practicing the Kagura Shingen, the ability being the main reason why she had passed her genin exam - chakra sensors were not extremely rare, but they weren't that common either, and there was no way Kusagakure would have allowed her to languish in the academy a day longer than she had to when she could be out on missions.
However, being a chakra sensor wasn't just something that came with all the benefits straights away. Karin had to learn how to distinguish between signatures, how to recognize which were familiar and which were not, how to tell which were animals and which were humans, how to tell the difference between civilians and ninjas. All of those, she was gradually learning, and she was fairly confident in her ability to recognize each one.
But this time, what she sensed was completely different. The signature was large - not the largest she had ever sensed, but very close to it - and unlike the Kiri shinobi who had claimed the title, the chakra didn't feel calm at all. On the contrary, it reminded her of a maelstrom, swirling and fluctuating with each beat, almost making her dizzy as she stood metres away from it, hidden by rows and rows of large trees. Not only that, but it seemed almost bi-polar to her, switching between an almost lazy warmth that reminded her of a lapping ocean on a sunny day and a chaotic, bone-chilling storm that reeked of an alien malevolence.
Her team had noticed immediately when she stumbled back, shaking in fear from the utter wrongness of the signature. When her concerned sensei asked her what was wrong, it had taken the scared girl a while to be able to put what she had sensed into words, and even then, her team were rather sceptical. They all knew about kekkei genkais that involved the warping of chakra, about villages far away that had sought to use items that could force alien chakra through their coils, and Karin had even heard rumours, muttered by the elderly ex-shinobi that squatted in the tea-houses of Kusa, about people who, in the Great Shinobi Wars, had decimated entire battlefields by themselves by use of strange entities inside them.
But while such creatures did exist, not only was the likelihood of running into them in a territory that was between an ordinary civilian town and the peaceful Kusagakure almost non-existent, people with such dark chakra tended to be bent on destruction - and as far as they could tell, there was nothing causing trouble up ahead, and Ataru-sensei was a skilled enough jounin to tell if there was a genjutsu blinding them to a threat as large as the one the chakra seemed to come from. Add that to the fact that Karin had made mistakes before about her sensor abilities, and the team was rather disinclined to believe that there was truly something so terrible up ahead.
But they were ninja, and no good ninja dismissed a threat, even if they were pretty sure it wasn't real. So the team had advanced cautiously, keeping their eyes peeled for trouble as they approached their client. Karin was on tenterhooks, not sure whether she wanted to be proven right or wrong, and beginning to doubt whether she had imagined the threat entirely, something that became easier to do when she shut down her Kagura Shingen to conserve energy.
Staring at the three people who were walking ahead of them, she still didn't know the answer.
Her teammates had shot her exasperated looks when they found the old man and the two children standing by the merchant's cart. None of them had made any threatening moves, though the merchant had been quite ungrateful that they came to complete their mission at all, and they were currently making good time, sure to reach their destination before tomorrow's nightfall easily. But that chakra, that terrifying, gut-wrenching chakra hadn't disappeared, and though her team seemed dismissive of her fears, she just knew that it was the clients of this mission who were responsible.
The man, she dismissed right away. He matched up to the description Kusa had given them of their original client, and his chakra was placid, docile. He was not a ninja, and even if he was, she doubted he could even imagine the cold chakra she had felt. But that left the two children walking next to him, and though Karin didn't really want to admit it, both made her feel quite nervous.
The little girl was pretty, reminding Karin of a doll with her china-blue eyes and long golden hair. But the way she walked, though at a fast pace (almost too fast for such a small child) seemed a bit...stiff for the lack of a better word, and though Karin could barely sense her chakra, it was there - wound tight as a spool of thread - and besides, the girl was far too young to be an active ninja, unless she was one of the freaky little prodigies that only came along once every generation or so.
Dismissing the child, she focused on the boy.
He was about the same age as her, but bigger, his lean form at least a head taller than her. His hair was a silvery-blonde shade she had never seen before, and it was long too, the strands covering both his neck and his eyes. His outfit looked like a shinobi's, but she knew that plenty of civilians thought it was cool to dress up as ninja, and so that didn't indicate that he was necessarily a shinobi - but his guarded stance and muscled limbs left her doubting that he was a civilian.
A slight blush darkened the redhead's cheeks as she looked at his face. The skin on his face was dirtied with mud, probably from doing some civilian activity, but despite that, she could see the delicate lines cutting through his cheeks, which, added to his hair, gave him a mysterious, exotic look that she had never seen before. His body was well-muscled for his age, and though she couldn't see his eyes, she could imagine them to be of a beautiful, bright hue. Already the type to swap toys for boys, it was very difficult for Karin to tear her eyes away from his form, part of her murmuring that surely someone who was almost better-looking than Junichi-kun (the prodigy of Kusagakure and the focus of its very large fanclub) couldn't be bad?
Still, despite her doubts and suspicions, there was only one way to be sure. Slowly, she let her footsteps lag, until she was drifting behind everyone else, close enough to the group for Ataru-sensei to not scold her about keeping up, but behind enough so that when she tilted her head, letting her hair fall over her eyes, no one noticed her concentrating to perform her jutsu.
The world around her spun into the familiar glow of the Kagen Shingen, and she relaxed as she straightened up, feeling far more at ease in this environment. The familiar chakra of her team shone out, and she let her eyes flicker past it, searching for the strange boy-
Karin stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes wide. Dimly, she could hear Ataru calling her name, but he sounded far off, and even if she had been paying attention, she wouldn't have been able to answer. There seemed to be nothing she could focus on now, nothing except that chakra.
Oh.
Kami.
The boy's chakra did not flow smoothly like the chakra of anyone else Karin had ever seen. Instead, it swirled around him in a maelstrom of energy, his actual body almost completely obscured by it. Not only that, but it didn't just flow in one direction like the chakra of everyone else she had ever seen. Instead, it clashed and twisted, some parts wild and fast, others moving in slow ripples. It was almost as if someone had taken the chakra of several different people and meshed them together...but even then, it wouldn't explain why the chakra was so chaotic, so...sinister.
And the colours...
The chakra outlining the blonde was a rich blue, a normal colour, albeit the brightest shade Karin had ever seen. But that was where the normalcy ended. Spreading out from the centre of his body were long filaments of red, a web of crimson chakra that stained the area around it, turning it a smoky indigo colour. The chakra was a vivid crimson, an intense hue she had never seen before, and yet...
It was dark. She could feel even from where she was standing; at such a close proximity, the evil reeking from the chakra was almost overpowering. She had never thought of chakra as being a separate entity from those who wielded it, but that chakra was definitely malicious - it seemed to scream of bloodlust and hate, of a twisted desire for destruction and death. The dark red of its chakra wasn't the warmth of an evening fire, it was the scorching blaze of the sun.
It was burning her eyes...
But that wasn't the worst of it.
At the very centre of the web, like a shadowy spider, there was a large orb of chakra, a chakra that was pitch-black. And Karin knew, just by looking at it, that compared to whatever the hell this was, the red chakra was nothing. This thing was far worse, for she didn't just sense bloodlust from this thing, but a terrible, alien intelligence that felt...cold, for the want of a better word, as cold as the lake in Kusagakure in winter, and as she watched in horror, the blackness began to spread, slithering up the red strands, darkening them as it went.
'This guy...he's a monster...'
Blackness seemed to drift across her vision as well, and her mind was screaming for her to look away, she couldn't. She was riveted to the spot, watching in fascinated horror as the swirling blackness enveloped her vision...
And then she was lost.
Naruto turned around, perplexed, as the redheaded girl he'd sensed eyeing his back fainted. Itsuki looked on in concern, while her team-mates sighed in irritation, and scooped her off the ground.
Sayuri stared at the unconscious girl, now slung over her sensei's shoulder. "Does she do that a lot?"
One of the boys snorted. "Not a lot, but too often for her to be reliable. She's dead-weight really...everyone knows that if it wasn't for her kekkei genkai, she'd never have passed the genin exam-"
"That's enough, Kensuke," the older ninja said sharply, though Naruto had a feeling that it was more to do with the fact that his student had blabbed about his teammate's abilities in front of strangers rather than any concern for the girl. "Karin seems to have been in the sun a little too long. We'll get to the town as soon as possible, and then get her back to Kusa."
Itsuki seemed satisfied by this, and turned back to the front. Naruto was about to do the same, but then paused, and turned to Sayuri. "Sayuri-chan, do I have anything on my back?"
Frowning, the girl leaned forward, examining the back of his shirt from every angle. Eventually, she pulled back, shaking her head. "I can't see anything, nii-san. Why did you ask, anyway?"
"...No reason."
The rest of the journey passed uneventfully, except for when the girl woke up. Her state of consciousness had remained for about three seconds, until she caught sight of Naruto, squealed in fear, and then collapsed again. Naruto was now beginning to get severely irritated with the redhead - he had had enough of being feared in both Konoha and Oto. He didn't need more of it from a weird girl who couldn't keep her eyes off him.
Thankfully, the town they were heading towards wasn't really that far away, and they arrived in the next morning. The team from Kusagakure quickly bid them farewell, while Itsuki lingered, looking at them in concern. "Have you got a place to go to?"
"Yes," Naruto lied. "We're meeting up with our sensei."
Itsuki still looked unsure, but handed over the money (which was quickly stored in Naruto's pocket) before wandering off with his wares. Naruto then turned to Sayuri, his rippled eyes gleaming. "So. What do you want to do now?"
Sayuri shrugged. "I don't mind."
Naruto considered for a moment. They had to get supplies, obviously, and probably a map - he had no idea about the general area after all, which he had to if he wanted to keep avoiding Oto ninjas. Oh, and he should probably see about-
And that was when the aroma hit him.
Naruto's stomach growled happily in remembrance as the boy slowly turned around, memories flooding back to him. Memories of a time when some people were kind to him, memories of a warm place where he was welcome, but most of all, memories of a culinary delight, of a sweet, sweet delight that must have fallen from heaven itself-
Sayuri watched in confusion (something she seemed to be a lot around Naruto) as he stared vacantly beyond her shoulder. Turning around, she looked for whatever it was that had caused him to be like that. But there seemed to be nothing there. Just a ramen stand...
That Naruto had just moved at what seemed to be the speed of light to sit at. As Sayuri watched in disbelief, Naruto proceeded to devour four whole bowels of miso ramen at a speed that made her feel nauseous, and then proceeded to ask for a fifth. It was at this point that the puppet came to her senses, and she lunged for the older boy, trying desperately to stop him from spending every ryo they had on ramen of all things. So busy were they, Sayuri in trying to stop him, and Naruto in trying to reach the bowels, that neither of them noticed that they were being watched.
The ninja had no name. He was a plain man, with short brown hair and dull grey eyes. He had no scars apart from a small red line on his thumb, a souvenir of the many times he had performed a summoning. His clothes, while typical shinobi wear, had a second-hand air about them, and looked as if they had been made in some cheap factory. His weapons consisted of a tip-less tanto, and a handful of shuriken, nestled in a pouch at his hip. In fact, there was only one thing that could make him stand out - the thick black bars on his tongue that formed the seal of ROOT.
The ninja had no name. He didn't need one. His mission was to serve Danzo in any way possible, and one did not need a name for that, apart from infiltration missions, upon which they would receive a temporary code-name. However, this was not an infiltration mission. This was a retrieval mission, the retrieval of Konoha's weapon.
It was a stroke of luck, really, that they had found the child so soon - having stopped off to get some food, the ROOT shinobi, who had been out on another mission and only received their orders by radio that afternoon, had been as shocked as they could be to find that the target described to them by Danzo-sama, who had managed to learn about it from another source. But they had adapted quickly, and a trap had been set.
Leaning forward, the ninja watched as the silvery-blonde boy squabbled with the small child, their conversation muffled by the background noise of the busy town. But that didn't matter. After all, it was not words that would capture the child - it was his jutsus that would, and he had plenty of those. However, now was not the place to use them. There were too many people, too many witnesses. He'd never be able to drag the boy off without causing a huge ruckus, a ruckus that could cause problems for Danzo-sama.
But that was fine. He would just wait. After all, his opponent was just a child. He and his team (five shinobi, a cell of elites) would be more than enough to handle any tricks Uzumaki had up his sleeves.
Takeshi shivered as he pulled the material of his thin jacket around himself, the damp air doing nothing to alleviate the fact that he was slowly freezing to death. He had no money, no hope of shelter, and he was feeling quite miserable about it all. Scowling as he felt a bead water trickle down his neck, signalling the beginning of a shower, the blue-head began looking about for a place for him to sit down and sulk about life in general. While he was normally quite a cheerful joker, he felt that, considering the circumstances, a want to act like the gloomy kids that had skulked around in the dark corners of the academy could be overlooked.
Sadly, Takeshi never did get to indulge in his little pity-party. For, in his haste to find a place to hunker down for the night, he unwittingly walked down a dark alleyway.
It only took a few seconds for him to realize what an idiot he had been and turn around, but by the time he had, the man lounging in the shadows had already stepped out into the dim moonlight, the blade in his hand gleaming dully.
The man wore ragged clothes, and the smell coming off him - a nasty mix of alcohol and the stench of public toilets - was none too pleasant either, but the thing that Takeshi noticed most was the desperate glint in his eye. Maybe this man was a typical nutcase, maybe he was just a starving homeless who wasn't going to listen to reason; either way, it was quite clear about his intentions. And while Takeshi might not have anything worth stealing on him, he certainly didn't like the thought of having a knife rammed into him. If he wanted to be gutted, he would have stayed in Kiri.
He shifted into his normal taijutsu stance, hoping that the man would get the hint and back off. Unfortunately, judging from the angry slurred sentences spilling from the man's cracked lips, it seemed that he was too intoxicated to care about anything else other than...whatever it was that he wanted.
Well, that suited Takeshi fine. He might not have completed his full Academy training, but he had only missed out on the last month or so, which really was just a stream of field trips to the abattoir and similar places to make sure that they would be able to stomach the kills that would be sure to accumulate once they made genin. However, while Takeshi didn't think that he'd mind killing, especially when it came to his own teachers, there was no need to kill this man. Just a simple chop to the head should do it…
And that was when the bag fell from the sky and smacked the man on the head, dropping him to the ground instantly. Takeshi blinked, wondering if the lack of food was making him hallucinate. The theory seemed plausible, for as he watched in disbelief, two kids came around the corner, a little younger than him. One was a small girl with curly blonde hair, who was looking quite smug about something. The other was a boy with spiky silvery-blonde, who stalked over to the bag lying on the ground, sparing not even a glance at the man it had struck, and picked it up carefully, peering inside.
"Hah! They didn't break" The girl folded her arms, looking annoyed. "It doesn't matter! I still don't think you should have spent so much on them, nii-san."
The boy waved a hand dismissively, shouldering the bag. "Don't be silly. We have everything else that we need."
Takeshi, now getting very confused, stepped backwards, his foot splashing into a puddle as he did so. The sound was quiet, but it was enough to distract the two from their bickering. The boy spun around to look at him, and Takeshi gasped.
He couldn't help himself. After months of being shut up in a cell, months of hiding in his own village, days of being on the run, and all because of his kekkei genkai - and this boy was just walking around with what was unmistakably a dojutsu, in a town that was barely a few days of civilian walk from Kirigakure.
Was he insane?
Naruto's time in the town had been useful. There were a lot of ninja milling around, some of them that looked like genin, so two children wandering around buying shinobi gear was not thought to be odd at all, though he had seen people giving them some funny looks whenever he looked them in the eye. Oh well, it couldn't be helped.
They had managed to get everything that Naruto thought they might need - plenty of kunai and senbon, material to both repair and create puppets, paper and ink for scrolls, several jars of clay that they had got from an arts and crafts store, some medical supplies, soldier pills (he had hated taking them when Kabuto doled them out to him, but he knew how useful they could be) a map of the region, a full cosmetic kit (genjutsu masters could create complex henges that were undetectable by all except Kage-level shinobi, but the rest of the population with poorer genjutsu skills could instead use the physical approach) and some plain grey clothes that were none the less tough enough to survive the colder seasons that Naruto knew were approaching. All in all, he was quite pleased with what they had, and was sure that, if needed, they could make more money.
So why Sayuri was so shocked at him buying a few dozen cartons of ramen, he had no idea. All he knew was that they had tussled over the bag, he had grabbed it, and in a fit of temper, Sayuri had used a chakra string to hurl the bag through the air, where it had landed in the alley.
Though it had been the closest they had come to a proper argument, it had actually been just general teasing - or, at least, the closest that either of them had had to the playful teasing of siblings. Naruto had been in a fairly good mood as he hunted down the bag of precious ramen. Only now, as he stared at the older boy who was looking at him suspiciously, he felt his good mood evaporate into thin air.
Takeshi himself was feeling very nervous about the way the other boy was staring at him. There was something markedly hostile about that gaze, like a wolf staring down a rabbit, and it was helped in no way by those eerie rippled eyes. Seriously, what type of dojutsu was that? Being the son of a Swordsman had seen Takeshi being dragged to a lot of diplomatic meetings between clans as a reminder that the Chiseigyokis were flourishing quite well, and he was pretty sure that he knew nearly every kekkei genkai wielder in Kiri.
This boy was not one of them.
But that beggared the question of just who he was, and what he was doing here. Surely anyone with a kekkei genkai wouldn't want to come anywhere near Kiri? Even people with unusual appearances were avoiding it, in case they got swept up in the bloodline purges. So, why had this guy showed up?
Naruto meanwhile was studying the stranger intently, feeling very concerned over the strange look the boy was sending him. It was not implausible, Orochimaru sending someone so young after him - there were many, many modifications this boy could have had to bring him up and beyond Naruto's own level. He didn't recognize him, but that meant nothing - there were dozens of new arrivals in the Oto base he had stayed at almost every day, and there were loads of bases in the five nations. On the other hand, Orochimaru would surely have given a description of Naruto to anyone he sent after him - and there was no recognition in the blue-haired's gaze, just wariness and confusion.
"Who are you?" Naruto asked quietly, shooting a look at Sayuri out of the corner of his eye. She slid her right sleeve up a few inches, freeing her hand to make it easy to slip out the saw hidden in it if she needed to, while a chakra thread, so dim that Naruto's dojutsu could barely see it, snaked its way to the boy's feet without him noticing.
If this guy had been sent by Orochimaru - it might be a bit self-absorbed, thinking that just because someone looked at him, they were after him, but paranoia had served Naruto well before - then they wouldn't go down without a fight.
However, though the boy's eyes had narrowed at his question, so far, he had made no hostile movements. In fact, he looked quite wary.
"I'm…Takeshi."
Inwardly, Takeshi cursed himself. He should have given a fake first name - if this guy was some sort of Kiri spy, possibly one who had sold out other kekkei genkai users in the hope of being left alone, it definitely wouldn't be hard to figure out who he was. But planning on his feet wasn't his strong suit…eh, make that planning at all.
Well, even if he didn't recognize the dojutsu, it was possible that he could have heard the name somewhere. And if he knew the name, he might know some weaknesses.
Alright, it was a long shot, but what did he have to lose?
"Who are you?"
Naruto's eyes narrowed. "Uzumaki Naruto." It might be foolish, giving his name to this Takeshi, but if he showed the slightest sign of recognition-
But Takeshi only looked puzzled, though still suspicious. "Okay…"
Despite his expression, Takeshi couldn't shake off the feeling that he'd heard 'Uzumaki' before. The name Naruto was unfamiliar to him, but he was pretty sure he'd heard the surname from somewhere before. But the memory was fuzzy, and he couldn't pin it down, no matter how hard he tried.
Shaking it off, he nodded at the man slumped on the ground. "Thanks for helping me out there, by the way."
The little girl spoke for the first time, her fingers tapping against her leg. "What do you mean?"
"The guy tried to…and you…oh, never mind." Takeshi was slowly beginning to relax. Standing around and chatting with your victims wasn't the Kirigakure way. They either charged right in or conjured up some mist and did it silently. But they didn't just indulge in semi-friendly conversations.
Naruto glanced up at the now dark sky. They still had enough money left for a hotel room for the night. After that, they would move on again, and find something else. Takeshi didn't seem to be a threat, and so he turned away with a shrug. "You're welcome…for whatever we did."
Takeshi nodded, already trying to think of a place to spend the night once the two were gone. It was a pity - it had been a long time since he'd had a chance to talk with someone outside a prison cell, and to be honest, he envied them a bit - they clearly had a plan, a place to go.
He had nothing.
But he knew he would have to get used to it, and so he turned around as well, ready to walk off in another direction.
But then it happened.
The ROOT shinobi were all in position, subtly crouching in the shadows as they observed their target conversing with two other children. The other two meant nothing to them. They were neither targets nor allies, they were only there. But witnesses could not be allowed to talk, could not be allowed to say how foreign ninja had snatched a boy from a town near Kiri, no matter if they could not identify which village they were from.
They had to be eliminated.
The alley that the three were talking in was long and narrow, not really ideal for flinging jutsus around in. But from what they had observed of the target, he seemed to be in no particular hurry to leave the town, and appeared to have the money to stay, at least for a little while. ROOT, however, had a deadline that had to be met. Missions could not be extended for too long, not even for such a prize as the Kyuubi. They had to snatch him, and soon, and this was the best chance they would get for a while. Just three children, and no one else near enough to hear them.
It would easy.
Sayuri was three steps ahead of him when the ninja dropped down on her back, knocking her to the floor. She gave a muffled cry of protest, which was silenced as the ninja grasped her head and jerked it sideways, in a manner that would have snapped her neck if she was a normal human.
Naruto was already moving the second the ninja touched Sayuri's back, but before he could reach her, two more ninja dropped to the floor of the alley, boxing him in back to back with Takeshi. Naruto spotted a panicked look on the latter's face, and wondered briefly what was going on. However, that thought vanished under the urgent need to deal with his attackers and find out why the fuck they had chosen to attack in the first place!
Black threads shot out of his body in a rippling black wave, and he heard Takeshi gasp behind him. He bared his teeth at the ninja - something that had never failed to get at least a disturbed reaction out of his opponents in Oto - but to his disappointment, they didn't so much as raise an eyebrow. Instead, the first ninja, stepping off Sayuri's 'corpse' spoke in a monotone.
"Uzumaki Naruto. You are hereby ordered to come with us."
Naruto stared at them incredulously. After they had just tried to kill Sayuri, and were even now drawing the tantos slung on their backs, did they really think that he would just come with them? Apparently so.
Next to him, Takeshi twisted around, staring at him. "They're after you?"
"Apparently!" Naruto snapped. He glared at the ninja. "Who are you?"
"We have no names," the ninja said, his monotone really beginning to get on Naruto's nerves. "We are ROOT."
"You are what?"
The ninja standing directly in front of Naruto shook his head, his face completely apathetic.
"You do not need to know more about what we are. We have been sent to retrieve Konoha's weapon."
A flare of bitterness flared up in Naruto at the mention of Konoha, along with no small amount of confusion. Konoha's weapon? What were they talking about-
He froze.
Kyuubi.
Jinchuuriki.
Him.
Naruto closed his eyes, his fingers curling into fists. Then they snapped open, and the ninja actually took a step back, because the once silvery-blue eyes were now a vivid crimson, the tomoe in them seeming to spin as he glared at them.
"I am not," he bit out, each word heavy with the fury he felt, "Konoha's weapon!"
Three shinobi against three children did not sound like a fair fight at all. But the scales were not completely tipped in favour of the ROOT ninja.
Naruto might not have been taught any jutsus, but he had been trained from a young age by Oto's best in taijutsu and kenjutsu. Sayuri was very young, but her hardy body, and the precise chakra control that let her use her puppets just as effectively as someone twice her age lent her an edge in the fight.
As for Takeshi, Kiri's training of their ninja was different than Konoha's. They were given no lessons in reading or writing, those well-off enough to need it having to hire tutors, nor etiquette, nor was there much focus on genjutsu - Kirigakure had more people who wanted to be shinobi than Konoha, meaning that they could afford to have a 'sink or swim' philosophy. If a shinobi then wanted to 'branch out' from what they were taught, they would have to learn on their own, or persuade another shinobi to teach them.
It was a flawed system, far from perfect, but it did allow the Kiri Academy students to focus on ninjutsu and kenjutsu that were far more advanced than what other villages learned - while Konoha students were fumbling through clones, Kiri shinobi were learning about nature manipulation and beginning to master weapons most Konoha shinobi didn't touch until they were genin.
There also happened to be the fact that ROOT tended to be second-hand shinobi, not having access to the sort of training and weapons that legitimate organizations in Konoha were able to receive. The whole purpose of ROOT was to be in the shadows, and they couldn't go unnoticed if their numbers included shinobi of Hatake Kakashi's calibre.
But even so, it was still three children against three experienced shinobi. Perhaps Naruto, if he drew on the Kyuubi and every power he knew, could have shredded them, but it would not have been without cost - if the ninja didn't kill Sayuri and Takeshi, being so close to Naruto when he drew out enough demonic chakra to massacre trained shinobi three times his age was a death sentence in itself.
However, Naruto didn't know all of his powers.
Naruto didn't think that he'd ever been this angry.
Konoha had treated him as a pariah, someone unworthy of being recognized as one of them, despite the fact that if it wasn't for him, the village would be nothing more than a smear in the ground, another victory for the Kyuubi. They had sent him straight into the jaws of Hell, allowed him to be experimented on like a lab rat, rejected him completely-
And now?
They had just attacked probably the person closest to him in the world, the person that he would always feel compelled to care for and protect because of what he had been forced to do. The fact that Sayuri was a small child had not appeared to even register in their minds when they tried to snap her neck. And then they had the gall to demand that he return to Konoha, to be an obedient little weapon for the village that had scorned him from the day of his birth.
The ninja that had just stepped off Sayuri's body gave a shout of alarm as her arm suddenly whipped around, metal claws glinting in the gaps between her fingers. A quick flip backwards had the ninja out of danger, but it also gave Sayuri a chance to roll to Naruto's side, where she quickly crouched next to him, glaring at the men.
Despite the fact that little girls normally do not get up again moments after their necks have been broken, the ninja seemed to be completely calm at Sayuri's movement. The tallest of them drew his tanto and nodded at her. "Kill her and the other boy. We only need the jinchuuriki."
At this threat, anger seemed to build up inside Naruto, his rage at Konoha combining with his need to protect both himself and others. He could actually feel the energy spawned by his anger convalesce in the chakra coils in his wrist, feel it overpowering his conscious thought - but at the same time, give him crystal-clear clarity on what he had to do.
Feeling as if he was in a trance, Naruto slowly raised his hand, his palm facing the ninja. A voice that didn't sound like his own echoed in the eerily quiet alley.
"Shinra Tensei!"
Takeshi had been very confused when the shinobi showed up. He had expected them to be after him, and was justifiably confused when they instead turned their attention to a boy he had only just met, a boy who had shown no fear in looking at Takeshi with his dojutsu active, as if he had no idea that there were hunter-nins seeking people like them even as they spoke.
That was what he had thought the strange ninja were at first - a division of hunter-nins sent to hunt down a specific kekkei genkai. There had been a few of those squads, assigned to deal with certain clans that would have demolished most kinds of opponents. But to his shock, they were actually from Konoha - and were apparently trying to retrieve their 'weapon.'
Well, that could have been anything - a kekkei genkai, a hostage, even the sword that was slung across Naruto's back, which had set alarm bells ringing in Takeshi's mind the moment he saw it, though his brain still couldn't figure out why. But then they mentioned that word again.
Jinchuuriki.
Takeshi was no closer to figuring out what the word meant that when he left Kirigakure. But whatever it was, it seemed to be highly sought-after, both by the man in Kiri and now these guys. He had hoped that either the men or Naruto would have given a hint about what the word meant, but no such luck. Either way, the word seemed to be linked to Naruto - and he wasn't happy about being asked to come back to Konoha on account of it.
Realizing that there was going to be a fight, Takeshi had began to quietly work through hand-seals. Suiton was the normal affinity for Kirigakure shinobi, but there had been a few exceptions, and he had been one of them. His affinity was for Raiton jutsus, and though his teachers had pounded some control over water into him, his uncle had taught him some Raiton techniques over the years, and his mastery over them was a lot better than his Suiton techniques.
Even so, he wasn't holding out much hope that they could defeat these guys. Unless either of his 'allies' had a powerful trick up their sleeves, they were pretty much done for.
But then Naruto had held up his hand, and Takeshi had felt a flare of hope, that perhaps the boy actually did know a jutsu that could get them out of this, perhaps a teleporting ninjutsu or something that could throw these ninja off balance?
The latter guess was closer - but it was far, far more than Takeshi could ever have imagined.
There was a quiet rumbling noise, the only warning the men received. Then, an enormous cloud of dust exploded into the air, obscuring the Chiseigyoki's vision, while a noise that sounded like a cross between an activated exploding tag and a snail being stepped on boomed so loudly, Takeshi was willing to bet that they had heard it in Iwa.
Once the ringing in his ears had faded, he waited for a few seconds, before slowly opening his eyes.
"Oh my Kami…"
Where the ninja had been standing, there was nothing left. Literally, nothing. A shallow crater seemed to have been scooped into the earth, skinning away the stone cobbles and leaving a gaping wound of wet dirt, with pools of suspicious red liquid.
But that wasn't all of it.
The back of the alley had been blown out too, leaving a clear trail of destruction that ranged about fifteen kilometres from what Takeshi could see. Where tall buildings had once stood, there was nothing but masses of crumbled stone and splinted wood, smoke was rising into the air, and he thought that he could make out bloodied limbs sticking out from under the rubble.
Feeling sick, he turned to look at the one who had caused it all.
Naruto was standing in the middle of the alley, just in front of the beginning of the destruction, his arm still outstretched. His eyes were wide as he looked at the destruction - and that was what scared Takeshi most of all. Because that suggested that he hadn't meant to do it, that it had just happened, like the time he had performed a Raiton jutsu that had ended up burning the fish he was trying to simply cook to a crisp. And if so, that probably meant that it was either Naruto's first time in performing whatever jutsu that was, or he was simply untrained in its use.
And if he had caused that much destruction from a simple accident.
Just what could he do once he had mastered its use?
But that was a thought for another time. Already, panicked cries were beginning to fill the air, as well as pained groans from those trapped under the rubble. This sort of destruction, sudden but devastating, tended to only be caused by ninja - and in a town so close to Kiri, the town would soon be crawling with hunter-nins trying to find out if it was linked to the fugitive kekkei-genkai wielders.
All three of them had to get out right now.
The small girl, who had been crouching behind Naruto, seemed to agree. Reaching up, she tugged on Naruto's arm. "Nii-san! We need to go!"
Nii-san? That was odd - they didn't look like siblings. Perhaps the boy's hair and eyes were all part of the kekkei genkai and hers just hadn't activated yet?
Naruto didn't move, probably still in shock - hell, if Takeshi didn't have first-hand knowledge of what the hunter-nins would do if they found them, he'd probably still be staring at the wreckage as well. As it was, he leaned over, and prodded the boy roughly on the shoulder. "She's right, you know!"
Naruto spun around, so fast that Takeshi nearly fell over, his rippled eyes staring at him intently. Though Naruto was both smaller and younger than the Chiseigyoki, Takeshi had an uncomfortable flashback to the time he had tried to sneak up on his father while the man was trying to take a nap. Though neither of them would ever admit the whole story - Takeshi because of the humiliation, Taishuu because he didn't want to be sleeping on the couch once his beloved wife learned of it - it had involved Takeshi nearly getting skewered by his father's sword, and several bowls of sukiyaki as bribery.
However, Naruto had clearly been woken up from his shock, as he immediately spun around, turning his back on the chaos behind him. "Let's get out of here."
Finding his logic reasonable, the other two followed him as he began sprinting out of the alley, ducking into the crowds that were already forming. People were screaming, rushing about as they headed towards the rubble, some searching frantically for their loved ones, others shifting through the debris to find personal items. It was easy for them to disappear amongst such a chaotic mess, and soon they found themselves outside the town's walls.
The little girl glanced over at Naruto. "Where do we go now?"
Naruto looked around, probably analyzing his options. Takeshi was trying to do the same…but he found himself coming up short for answers. He didn't know the land, and he had no idea how far he'd have to go before the hunter-nins decided it wasn't worth tracking him anymore.
Despite that, he knew he had to get moving - but first, there was something he wanted to know.
"Who were those people? And why did they attack you?"
Naruto looked at him, his expression unreadable. Then he shrugged. "I don't know."
He didn't know? The three of them had been attacked by strange ninja, one of them had nearly been killed (Takeshi's mind was currently doing its best to not focus on the fact that the little girl should be dead) and Naruto had retaliated with something that had destroyed half the town.
And he didn't know why?
Naruto was feeling tired. Whatever that thing was, it had sucked out most of the energy that he had built up in his anger, and he could just barely feel the reminments of it, sluggishly flowing along his chakra coils. Presumably, it would build up again, letting him use that technique again.
The trouble was, he didn't know if he wanted to.
Shooting that power at those ninja had been like trying to wield a fire-hose - certainly enough power to solve his problem, but it had been completely out of his control. His anger at Konoha's nerve had been enough for him to focus the power in those ninjas' direction - but beyond that, he had no bearing on the destruction.
What if it hadn't been enough to control it, though? What if it had turned on him, or Sayuri or Takeshi? (Not that he had the same worries about the blue-head, as, having only just met him, he didn't really feel the same urge to protect as he did with Sayrui). His anger had helped to control it, but getting that angry during a fight that was going badly enough to warrant the technique would not be a good idea.
Well, whether he wanted to learn to control that technique or not, the fact remained, he had to get stronger. Naruto refused to rely on chance reactions from whatever Orochimaru had done to him. If he was going to become even a half-way decent ninja, he wanted to do it on his own merit, not just relying on his kekkei genkai - or whatever the hell it was that he had.
But getting stronger would involve staying undetected, and he had a problem with that in the form of Takeshi. The boy had blue hair, for crying out loud, he couldn't be that hard to track on his own - and once he was found, he could be tortured, and give up information about him and Sayuri.
Realistically, there were two options open to Naruto at this point. First, he could kill Takeshi. He wasn't sure how easy it would be - the stance Takeshi had shifted into when the ninja revealed themselves had proved that he at least had had shinobi training, and Naruto wasn't sure about just how skilled he was - but Naruto couldn't die, and he refused to give up either. Plus, he had Sayuri on his side. The odds were pretty high in his favour.
On the other hand, he could just let Takeshi come with them.
That solution would solve a few problems, but at the same time, create some more. Takeshi was clearly trained to fight, and from the hand-seals he'd been forming, knew at least one ninjutsu as well, ninjutsu that he'd hopefully wouldn't mind teaching. He could prove himself to be an asset - but at the same time, he might prove to be a liability. He might give them away. He might betray them. He might run.
But, at the end of the day, Naruto could at least make the offer. Just tearing people apart before they had even proved themselves to be hostile, much less a threat, was Orochimaru's thing, not his. He would happily rip through those who tried to threaten him, or people like the Otogakure shinobi (by agreeing to fight under Orochimaru, they had marked themselves as his enemy, and thus fully responsible for what happened when they fought him) but he wasn't quite at the level where he considered everyone else to be ants to be crushed under his feet whenever he pleased.
"Do you want to come with us?"
The question took Takeshi off guard. In his experience, people didn't make offers like that unless they had something to gain from it - but he couldn't possibly see what Naruto thought he would gain from letting him tag along. From what he could see, the guy was pretty powerful in his own right, and thus wouldn't need him along to fight - unless he expected to be attacked pretty soon, and any extra numbers on his side would be welcomed?
Well, if that was the case, it would hardly be different to the situation Takeshi was already in - and he'd feel a lot better about having hunter-nins chasing after him if he had someone on his side who could defeat three full-grown ninja with a flick of his finger.
"Sure. Why not?"
There were a lot of things Sayuri didn't understand about Naruto.
She didn't understand why he had stopped to help a small child in Oto when he could have just walked off. Naruto was to be the vessel of Orochimaru, he was respected/feared, there were many who would have given their right arm to be given the chance to influence him - and yet he ignored all of them and stopped to help someone who had been doomed from the moment they arrived to die in some gruesome experiment.
She didn't understand why some of the guards whispered that he was a monster, that he could kill them all. There were some truly horrific things in Oto that were accepted as everyday life, things that were far more worse than her awesome nii-san. To call him a monster when there were curse-seal victims and Orochimaru running around seemed both unfair and unreasonable to her.
She didn't understand what was in Naruto that made him suffer so much at certain times. She knew that whatever it was was evil, and she knew that she disliked it because of the fact that it hurt Naruto.
She didn't understand where Naruto was from, but she knew enough that he didn't like the people there. While she had been lying on the floor, pretending to be dead, she heard that Naruto was apparently from 'Konoha' - wherever that was - and she instinctively disliked the place, if it produced ninjas like that.
But, the thing that she didn't understand was just what technique Naruto had just used. She knew that he knew no ninjutsu or genjutsu - he had grumbled about it quite a lot when they were planning their escape - but whatever it was, the people in Oto didn't know it. If they had, they would have used it.
So they had a weapon against Oto that Oto couldn't use! That was good, wasn't it?
She looked up at Naruto, hoping for some sign that he was thinking along the same lines as her. He smiled at her when he saw her glance, but he was obviously thinking about something else - she knew the signs of Naruto either planning something or thinking a lot about something. Knowing that he would want some peace and quiet to think over…whatever he was thinking, she decided to do the same.
Death was nothing new to Sayuri. She had killed a few times before - the matches between the children in Oto were never given any limits, and when you were up against those who had allowed the curse seal to eradicate their minds, you either left with their blood on your hands, or you didn't leave at all. However, those deaths had been as much as a part of Oto as the walls and the floor, and part of her had assumed that once they had left, that would be it.
Only now, she could see that it wasn't going to stop because this…'Konoha' were after her nii-san. And obviously they were going to have to keep on killing, because she and Naruto-nii had fought way too hard for them to just go back to being in cells.
Well…she could live with that. There was no question of leaving Naruto - he had been nicer to her than anyone she had ever met, and it would be very ungrateful to run off and leave him just because there were more people than expected who were out to get him, and besides, she didn't think that she'd last long on her own. No, staying with Naruto would be the best thing to do.
Her decision made, Sayuri smiled once again, and carried on walking.
Naruto had no idea how long they walked - after the ninjutsu he'd used, he didn't want to create another dragon, both in case the ninja that were probably already checking out the town saw it and decided to follow, and because he didn't feel comfortable using his chakra after what had just happened. But when Takeshi began to lag behind, and even his own legs began to ache, he knew that it was time to stop. They should be far enough from the town by now anyway.
Having found a spot under the shade of some slender trees not far from a river, they began to set up camp. Sayuri pulled out the field blankets, and Naruto was thankful that they had thought to buy spares, as Takeshi had no form of bedding at all. In fact, he was remarkably unprepared for someone spending a life on the move - and yet, he had shown no sign of having a house in the town. In fact, he seemed as eager to get away from it as Naruto.
Frowning at the thought, Naruto glanced up at the older boy, who was currently rolling out his sleeping-bag with the practiced ease of someone who had done it many times before. "Hey, Takeshi?"
The blue-head looked up, his hands stilling on the fabric. "What?"
"What were you doing in the town?"
Takeshi paled slightly, and Naruto noticed with interest that his hands were shaking slightly as he smoothed out his bedding. "W-why?"
Naruto leaned back, watching Sayuri poke around a tree dubiously, trying to make sure that there were no insects wriggling around in the roots. "It's just that you didn't seem to have anyone with you, and I was wondering, if that was your town, we might have-"
"I'm an orphan," Takeshi interrupted forcefully, sitting back on his heels as he glared at Naruto. "What about you?"
The sound of Sayuri scrabbling through the dirt ceased as she waited to hear what Naruto was going to say. Naruto himself thought as quickly as he could. "We're runaways."
"Really?"
'Note to self: make up better story later.'
Naruto shrugged. "We weren't wanted."
Well, the first part of his answer was true anyway, even if it did sound a little flat in his ears. And while the second part was an outright fib - Orochimaru didn't just want him, he needed his body if he wanted to get Naruto's power - Naruto figured that it should sound reasonable.
Takeshi grunted, and rose to his feet. "Well, I'm going to see about dinner."
Sayuri poked her head out from behind the tree. "We have food."
Takeshi shrugged. "It's okay. I wouldn't want to…impose."
Naruto's eyes narrowed. 'That, or he doesn't trust our food. I don't believe his story - there's more to this guy than meets the eye.'
Out loud, he said "But how are you going to get food? There aren't any shops-"
Takeshi jerked his head towards the river. "There should be fish in there."
Wondering how Takeshi was going to catch the fish, Naruto rose to his feet. "Can I come with you?"
Takeshi glanced at him, the look in his eye suspicious. "I guess so."
They kept a careful distance between each other until they arrived at the river. Takeshi leaned over the side, one wary eye on Naruto, the other scanning the glittering surface of the river, while he leisurely prepared his hand-seals.
"Raiton: Jibashi!"
A wave of electricity cascaded into the water, crackling across the surface. Moments later, dozens of stunned fish bobbed to the surface, immobilized briefly by the jutsu's effects. Takeshi quickly swiped three of them from the surface, seconds before they started to flap around again.
Naruto stared at him in shock. "What was that?"
Takeshi glanced up. "What?"
"That technique."
"It's just a Raiton jutsu. It's good for catching fish without a fuss...why?"
"Can you teach me it?"
Takeshi was baffled. "It's C-rank, ya know. Don't you have better jutsus than that?"
"No."
Takeshi froze, staring at him in disbelief. "What? You just blew up half a town, and you don't think you've got better jutsus?"
Naruto gritted his teeth, disliking having to admit his weakness to a stranger. It just went against everything he had been taught in Oto - knowledge was power, and giving someone else power over him was not something Naruto was in the habit of doing. But a ninja's jutsus, no matter how lowly-ranked or common, were none the less their jutsus, and he didn't have the right to just demand training from someone.
"...That's not a proper jutsu. I didn't mean to do it, it just happened. And I don't want it to happen again."
Takeshi straightened up, looking at him doubtfully. "...Okay...But haven't you had training already?"
Naruto held out his arm. "In taijutsu and kenjutsu only. And I can't rely on them."
Takeshi fiddled with the fish on the ground uncomfortably. "Well..."
There was a quiet rustle, and Sayuri came to stand behind Naruto, who absently noted that he had barely sensed her. It seemed that her low chakra reserves did have some advantages after all. She looked up at Naruto, nodding at her arm, and he grinned.
"You know...we're willing to trade."
"Trade?"
Without bothering to give a flourish, Sayuri unsealed the scrolls. Takeshi stumbled back, looking amazed. "Kami - how many of them are there?"
Naruto shrugged. "Lots. And they've got hundreds of different jutsu in them. But we don't know how to use them."
He looked at Takeshi meaningfully. "We don't mind you using them - but it's an equal trade. Your jutsus for ours."
Takeshi mulled this over. His techniques were far from bad - but still, if every scroll in there contained even one jutsu - that was a hell of a lot of techniques to learn. Of course, they could just be lying to him - but there would be no purpose in that. They had enough power to threaten or kill him, but they hadn't used it - and, to be honest, it looked like a win-win situation.
So he nodded at them, letting the now dead fish fall to the floor. "Alright, then. But I only know Raiton and Suiton jutsus, really. Do you know what your affinities are?"
They stared at him blankly. "Affinities?"
Takeshi bit back a groan. 'This is going to be harder than I thought...'
The ROOT ninja hopped nimbly from tree to tree, their faces blank as they rushed, despite their confusion. What was meant to be a simple mission had turned out rather badly, and they needed to get to the nearest town as soon as possible to find a messenger bird.
Five of their number had been sent out on a mission that they had completed efficiently, as was to be expected. However, they had then received orders to look out for a person called Uzumaki Naruto, though the description given was far different than what the Kyuubi jinchuuriki had previously looked like. Naturally, they did not question their orders, and so when they had observed someone of his description entering the town, they had immediately arranged a strategy - three to capture the jinchuuriki, and two to wait outside the town, on guard against any other shinobi who might try to enter the town that could give them away.
It was a simple strategy, and it should have worked. But then a large explosion had rent the town in two, throwing the waiting ROOT shinobi in turmoil. One of the ninja who had gone into the town had been a skilled Futon user, and his attacks were capable of demolishing large areas - but neither of the remaining ROOT shinobi had ever seen anything like that, and besides, the plan had been to capture the boy without any fuss, not to send up a signal that any fool could recognize as ninjas fighting.
Their orders had been to remain where they were and wait for the others to bring the Uzumaki back. However, when fifteen minutes passed after the explosion with no sign of their comrades, they decided to investigate.
A thorough search of the place revealed no sign of Uzumaki or the other ROOT shinobi, but there was no way that the ROOT shinobi would have abandoned their mission, and the bloody smears on the ground forced the remaining shinobi to conclude that Uzumaki had killed their comrades and made his escape. And if so, they would need back-up to track and capture/kill him, hence why they were racing to get a message out.
So occupied were they in their journey that they didn't notice the shadowy figure trailing them until it was too late.
A sword flashed, and the first ninja's head hit the floor with a muffled thump, his decapitated body following a mere second after. The other ninja spun around, just in time to see his opponent forming hand-seals.
"Katon: Hihoppui!"
A fiery whip coiled around the attacker's wrist moments before it lashed out at the ninja's abdomen, cutting and searing at the same time. The ninja fell dying onto the ground, his eyes straining to see his attacker's face. His features went pale with shock and pain.
"U-Uchiha-"
A hand reached out, snagging the pouch holding the message scroll. Lazily, red eyes scanned the words, though as the owner read further, tgeur face grew grimmer. Finally, they clenched the scroll in their fist, allowing the fire chakra still smoldering in their palm to consume it.
With a sigh, the attacker leaped forward, travelling the path the ROOT shinobi had been taking before they were killed. It appeared that Konoha had a lot of secrets...and if they were correct, a certain foolish brother could be dangerously mixed up in them.
Having established that neither Naruto or Sayuri knew their elemental affinities, it became clear to Takeshi that if he was to train - it felt rather odd in his head, as he wasn't even an official genin yet, never mind a sensei - them in the jutus that made up the bulk of his arsenal, they were going to have to find out what their affinities were. To do that, they would need the chakra-testing paper, and to get that they would have to find a village that was preferably not one of the Five Great Villages, as not only would it be profoundly stupid for certain members of the group to enter at least two of them (not that either Naruto or Takeshi told each other that) but for most of them, you needed papers to enter, papers that they did not have.
Thus, the map was brought out, and the three of them knelt around it, trying to pinpoint exactly where they were, and how far away the nearest villages were. After some squabbling about their exact location ("I'm telling you, Sayuri-chan, that's a drawing of a rock, not a secret village symbol!), they then had to establish where to go.
The nearest village to them was Kirigakure, which Takeshi was obviously keen to avoid. Travelling over water in the opposite direction would bring them to Kumo, but while none of them had a personal reason not to enter, security was bound to be tight there, and besides, Orochimaru probably had spies in every big village, and Naruto really wanted the snake kept in the dark regarding his movements for as long as he could. However, there was a small village, quite a distance from it but closer than most, that looked promising.
"It's called Kinugakure," Takeshi muttered, his finger tapping on the symbol on the map. "It'll take us about a week to reach it though by walking-"
Naruto grinned. "Who said anything about walking?"
Takeshi rolled his eyes. "Look, I don't know about you, but I can't run for three days straight-"
Naruto flicked his fingers at the scrolls that had been piled innocently by Sayuri. Instantly, they formed themselves into a large paper dragon, prompting Takeshi to splutter loudly as he stared at them in disbelief. "I thought you didn't know any jutsus?"
Naruto stared at him as if he was a simpleton. "I don't. That's not a proper jutsu."
Takeshi massaged his temple. "Let me get straight. You consider a C-rank Raiton technique that makes a small wave of electricity to be a proper jutsu, but you don't think that something that can destroy half a town or a bloody dragon made of paper that you can fly on is?"
Naruto shook his head, and Takeshi rolled his eyes. "Alright then..."
Kushina sighed as she looked up at the building in front of her. A set of rather grotty-looking apartments, it had been one of the few places she had felt relatively secure in whilst in Konoha, thanks to the numerous traps she had set around it. But the traps were gone now; her apartment had been empty for nearly three years now. Apparently, when her lease on the apartment had run out when Naruto was five, Sarutobi had paid for another six years, so that by the time it ran out, Naruto could pay it with money from being a ninja, and the contract hadn't been cancelled when her son was kidnapped.
Opening the front door, she gazed up at the flight of stairs that led to the first floor and her apartment. It felt strange, as if she had just stepped back in time. The hallway hadn't changed a bit. There was the stain where someone had thrown a rotting vegetable at Naruto before she could shut the door, there was the tiny pencil marks where she had marked her baby's growth before he could even stand up, there was the corner that she had once determinedly hunted a mouse into until Naruto made a grab for it that had distracted her enough to let it get away-
"YOU! How dare you show your face here-"
There was the hateful old landlady that had delighted in depleting Kushina's savings in exchange for a tiny set of rooms that Kushina had been forced to use over fifteen jutsus to make habitable.
"Kaoru-san!" Kushina said cheerfully, one hand on her hip. "It's nice to see you again!"
The old lady hobbled forward, glaring at her. Her wispy hair barely covered the fragile skull that was only barely disguised by papery-thin skin, while her shaking hand clutched a walking-stick. Even in her weakened state, Kushina could have taken her out in one kick, so why she thought glaring at her and shaking her stick would do much good, the redhead had no idea.
"Don't you dare befoul my building with your presence, you filthy Whirpool slut! I've had enough of you monsters traipasing around my property!"
Kushina smirked. "Oh, don't worry. In a few minutes, I'll be gone, and you'll never have to worry about me or my money again." The only people who lived here were the truly desperate, and they could hardly afford to pay the ruinous fees the old hag had charged. Once Kushina was gone for good, she had no doubt that the landlady would find her salary dropping rapidly.
Kaoru sniffed, staring at Kushina disdainfully. "I can hardly imagine what you'd want in there. Ever since the little demon vanished, there's been no one going in or out."
Of course there hadn't been - countless vandalism had forced Kushina to apply seals all over the place that prevented anyone from entering if either she or Naruto weren't there.
"Of course," Kaoru went on, a nasty gleam in her eye that made Kushina stiffen, "I didn't think you'd come back - after all, who'd want to come home and admit to themselves that they carried a demon into the world-"
The woman's spiteful words were cut off by her gurgling scream as Kushina's foot slammed into her throat. It wasn't quite enough to break her neck, unfortunately, but the force of the blow sent her crashing into the wall, and she slid down to the floor, unconscious.
Kushina snorted. Konoha really needed to start learning about their mouths writing cheques their skills couldn't cash. As if she would allow that hateful woman to spread rumours about her abandoning her son because of his status as a jinchuuriki. Really, if that was the case, she'd have left him first thing after the Kyuubi attack instead of staying for months as his caring mother.
As she'd prefer to be out of Konoha by the time the landlady woke up, Kushina decided to get moving. Striding up the stairs, she fitted the key the Sandaime had given her into the lock, despite the fact it wasn't needed - the seals on the door would have let her in anyway, recognizing her as one of those keyed in to their system.
The apartment was cold, probably from the broken heater that Kushina had never been able to fix (she used ninjutsus to warm the apartment when she was there instead). There was dust everywhere as well, and Kushina grimaced as she stepped over the mouldering remains of several ramen packets. It seemed that no one had bothered to help Naruto apart from the Sandaime (though as he apparently thought that going out for ramen once a month was taking care of a neglected child with no orphans and the power of the Kyuubi within him, Kushina was rather disinclined to think of his aid as proper help) and he had had to do everything by himself.
'No more, Naruto. When I find you, I'll take care of you, like I always should have!'
Kushina was already thinking things out. She didn't know exactly what Orochimaru had done to Naruto, but knowing that snake, it would be something nasty. Well that was fine - if the Kyuubi wasn't enough to stop her loving her son, mucking around with his DNA wouldn't either (though Orochimaru was still going to die in a very painful manner for daring to hurt her son). Finding him would be difficult as well, and of course, there was no guarantee that he would want to come with her. After all, to Naruto, she would be a stranger.
Well, she would find a way to repair the damage, and if she could get him to come with her...Perhaps they would return to the ruins of Uzushiogakure. Even if there was nothing there, the land belonged to the former citizens, and even if they decided not to rebuild anything there, it would be good for Naruto to see his real heritage - that of a proud and loyal clan who stuck by each other, no matter what, unlike the ungrateful villagers of Konoha.
Perhaps they could become one of the wandering clans. There were still a few of those about, though they were getting rarer, and Kushina was skilled enough to be able to hide them from most of those who would want to try and get rid of them. Or maybe they could join another village - the last two Uzumakis would be an attractive prospect even without the Kyuubi. Add that, and she doubted that anyone would want to bar their entry.
She was so busy thinking about it all that she almost didn't notice the creaking of the stairs until the person climbing them was at the door. Gritting her teeth, Kushina stormed over to the door. If it was a villager trying to vandalize the aparment-
But when Kushina pulled the door open, it was to find someone she had never expected to see again.
"K-Kushina-chan."
Kushina folded her arms, glaring at the newcomers. Of all the people that she had neither expected or wanted to see again, Hyuuga Hitomi was very near to the top of the list, especially when she had a branch family escort.
"Can I come in?"
Kushina snorted, her lean body blocking the doorway. "I don't think so, Hyuuga. We have nothing to say to each other."
To her surprise, Hitomi for once did not imitate a wallflower, and instead stayed where she was. "Please, Kushina. There are some things we need to talk about."
Kushina eyed her suspiciously, before glancing at the branch house member. "I don't let strangers into my home. Even if I am leaving it."
Hitomi nodded calmly, as if she'd expected it all along. "That's fine. Kosuke-kun, would you wait outside?"
The branch member looked shocked. "But Hitomi-sama! Hiashi-sama explicity said-"
"I am aware of what my husband's orders were, Kosuke-kun, but I don't think that I'll be in danger if I just step inside for a few minutes, do you?"
From the branch member's expression and activated Byakugan, he did think that, but Hitomi sailed inside the apartment before any protests could be made by either Kushina or the branch member. Kushina slammed the door shut, and turned to look at her former friend.
Many years had passed since Kushina's genin exam, but she remembered it vividly. A poor attention span and lack of any training outside the academy had her placed near the bottom of the class ranking, not quite dead-last, but close. To balance out whatever team she was placed on, two high-ranking kunoichi had been placed with her: Uchiha Mikoto, and Hyuuga Hitomi.
Their personalities had clashed - Kushina was loud and fond of jokes, Mikoto was gentle but filled with the propaganda of the 'Uchiha superiority' , while Hitomi was impossibly shy. But after a few months (and many teamwork exercises issued by their maddened sensei) they had balanced out. Mikoto and Hitomi had helped Kushina calm down and instilled some manners into her. Kushina and Hitomi had, after several pranks, convinced Mikoto that being an Uchiha would not make her great on its own, and she had become a much better ninja and person because of it. Between the two of them, Kushina and Mikoto had managed to give Hitomi better confidence and she had blossomed into a kunoichi that even her stuck-up clan-members respected.
They each received war-time promotions to chunin, and actually managed to get through the Jounin Exams on their first try. Kushina already had ambitions for ANBU, and had assumed that her friends would follow her. But it turned out that while as part of Konoha's two most prestigious clans, Mikoto and Hitomi had wealth and privileges that Kushina would never have, they also had less freedom, and to Kushina's astonishment, both of her team-mates were married off to the clan heirs, the 'honour' of the marriages being their 'reward' for being one of the few kunoichi who made jounin.
Kushina had been fully prepared to march to the clan compounds and crash the wedding for her friends, but neither appreciated the idea - Hitomi was too scared to go against her clan, and Mikoto, who had been raised with the idea that it was her duty, thought that it would be a betrayal to the Uchiha if she did anything less than give up her shinobi career to be a house-wife. And, despite Kushina's best efforts, they had slowly drifted apart, until the weeks after the Kyuubi attack, where it had been made clear to Kushina by members of both clans that the matriarchs wanted nothing to do with the mother of the Kyuubi.
Hurt, Kushina had destroyed every aspect of her life that involved them, and had proceeded to systematically ignore them whenever she saw them around Konoha, something that was reciprocated whole-heartedly by both of them. So why Hitomi had decided to show up now, when Kushina was fulfilling everyone's wishes by leaving Konoha for good, she had no idea.
"How did you know I was here?"
Hitomi smiled softly, her hands clasped in front of her. "Being the wife of the Hyuuga clan head does have advantages, Kushina. One of the medics who treated you was a branch member, who then told me."
"Nice to see that the Hyuugas are above patient confidentiality," Kushina snarled, shooting a filthy look at the door that shielded the branch member. "I don't want to stay in this village a moment longer than I have to, so tell me, Hitomi, what do you want?"
Hitomi stared at her, her pale eyes narrowed. "You're leaving?"
Kushina sneered at her. "Why would I stay?"
Hitomi opened her mouth, but slowly closed it, shaking her head. "I suppose you have a good point, Kushina. I suppose I wouldn't want to stay here either."
"Yes, who would want to stay in a place where you get spat on for saving a village and your best friends turn their backs on you for no reason?"
Hitomi had the grace to look embarrassed. "Kushina, I never thought of Naruto as a monster-"
"Well, you treated him like one!"
Hitomi looked angry. "I'll have you know, Kushina, that not a single Hyuuga made any attempt against Naruto. Hiashi even pushed in his favour when the council were considering his death!"
"Oh, congratulations, Hitomi! Your clan actually gave my son the courtesy that was his basic right as a living being! But tell me this, Hitomi, did any of your clan bother to help him when I was abducted?"
"Abducted?"
Kushina stared at her coldly. "Did you really think that I would abandon my son?"
Hitomi was silent, and that was answer enough. Kushina shook her head in disbelief. "Well, it's nice to see that you think so little of me, Hitomi. I was actually being tortured day and night for this village's secrets, but that's no problem!"
Hitomi stared at her, horrified. "You were being tortured? By who?"
Kushina shook her head, turning around to search through a wardrobe. There were still some clothes in there, and she seized her favourite shirt in delight.
"Kushina?"
"It doesn't matter," Kushina said shortly. "I didn't give up anything about Konoha, which is all the village should be concerned about."
"Of course it matters! If other villages are kidnapping our ninja-"
"Trust me, Hitomi, it was me they were after, and I doubt they'll go after any more of your ninja now that I've escaped."
"You? But why you specifically? Was it Minato's techniques?"
"Yes," Kushina muttered, scooping out a pair of baggy black pants. She actually had another suspicion about her abduction, but she'd be damned if she shared it with anyone from Konoha.
"But Kushina! If they were willing to go after you when you were part of Konoha, then surely you'll be in far greater danger when you leave? Shouldn't you stay here, where it's safer?"
"SAFER? SAFER? Oh, yes, Konoha's incredibly safe, isn't it? That's how Orochimaru managed to get his hands on hundreds of test subjects! That's how your own daughter was kidnapped during a peace talk! That's how my son was snatched within its walls! With such security, how could I ever want to leave?"
Seeing that she was making no headway, Hitomi sighed. "I think you're making a mistake, Kushina. But for what it's worth...I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry too, Hitomi. Sorry that I ever believed that you could be more than a shadow of the Hyuuga clan."
Takeshi shook his head incredulously, trying to ignore the fact that they were flying hundreds of feet above the ground. "Let me guess. Making bombs out of clay and puppetry doesn't count as jutsus either?"
Sayuri - he'd just learned her name - shook her head, her curls whipping about her face in the wind. "You don't use hand-seals for puppetry or bombs, so they're not proper jutsus!"
Wondering how you could make bombs without hand-seals but with chakra, Takeshi leaned forward. "Well, you use chakra with it, don't you? So that makes it a jutsu"
"That doesn't count!"
"Does!"
"Doesn't!"
"Does!"
"Doesn't!"
"Does!"
"Does!"
"Doesn't!"
"HAH!"
"..."
Naruto ignored their bickering, focusing on controlling the dragon. However, as he leaned over to check the ground beneath them, a thought occurred to him.
He controlled the paper the same way he shaped his clay - with his chakra. And if that was the case, could it be possible for him to create a flying creature out of clay instead?
It would be advantageous, as the clay would be stronger than paper, and the risk of damaging the scrolls would drop significantly - but first Naruto would have to make the dragon. And once that was done, they were going to have to keep reusing it, because there was no way in hell that Naruto was going to keep chewing clay or dirt every time they needed to fly somewhere.
Well, that was a thought for another time. Allowing himself to relax a little, Naruto settled back and continued to fly the dragon, confident that this was going to be a simple, peaceful journey. After all, surely the Fates couldn't hate him that much...
Aiko smiled merrily as she plucked another item of clothing off the rack, holding it against her granddaughter's small body. "Just look at that one, Kiyoshi? Don't you think you'd look nice in it? Or perhaps this one instead-"
Kiyoshi's answering stare suggested that she'd rather pluck out her own eyeballs than suffer a moment longer in the shop. Well, it seemed that soon she'd be blind, as Aiko had no intention of letting up any time soon. After ten years of raising her son's daughter, she was finally getting to enjoy one of the up-sides of parenting - forcing your socially awkward child into a long line of clothes that they really didn't want to wear, all the while playing the part of the sweet grandparent who only wanted the best for their little darling.
Only this wasn't just an ordinary shopping trip. It was traditional in Kinugakure for any would-be genin to be presented at the village hall every year so that they could be tested. If judged proficient enough in the shinobi arts, they would be declared a genin of Kinugakure and either put into an already existing team, or shoved with a group of other new genins. As Kiyoshi had just turned ten, the typical graduation age, she would be sent to the hall in the next week - and Aiko wasn't sure how she felt about that.
Oh, she didn't doubt that Kiyoshi could pass the exam. Her ninjutsu and taijutsu were weak, but her genjutsu ability was on par with, if not surpassing Aiko's own, and unlike the exams she'd heard about other ninja villages having, there were no set tests. You simply showed off your different abilities - and given Kiyoshi's skill in fuinjutsu, a rare skill in Kinu, she was almost guaranteed to pass.
No, it wasn't Kiyoshi's skill that Aiko was worried about. It was Kiyoshi herself.
The girl was very quiet and very shy - even without genjutsu, she could melt into the background, with no one noticing her. She didn't know how to properly interact with people - Aiko had the suspicion from several conversations with her that she didn't know what made most people tick, what she should say in response to certain things and what she should just let go. This, of course, wasn't helped in the slightest by the fact that most people in the village disliked her. Aiko had built up a good sense of communication with her over the years, helping her to understand Aiko's meanings and respond - but she doubted that her teammates would extend the same courtesy.
And miscommunication during missions could have deadly consequences.
With a sigh, Aiko watched her granddaughter duck into a changing-room, grumbling while she did so. Aiko had tricked her into thinking that they were simply going out to get some ink supplies, and she wasn't happy about being forced into trying on different outfits. But Aiko was not about to let her just march out into the field without proper clothes, and so she happily ignored Kiyoshi's angry mutters.
Finally, Kiyoshi came out of the dressing-room, wearing a dark grey jacket with matching pants, and a dark green shirt underneath, which had a pattern of leaves all over it, as well as a large scowl on her face, which only intensified when Aiko patted her white hair. "See, Kiyoshi-chan! That wasn't so hard, was it?"
Kiyoshi ducked her head. "...Yes!"
"Really? So you don't like the clothes? Well, we can always put them back and find some different ones-"
"No! I...I like these ones."
Turning her head so that Kiyoshi couldn't see her smirk, Aiko nodded. "Well, if that's the case, why don't you get changed back and step outside while I pay for the clothes?"
For the first few weeks after Mamoru's visit, she hadn't let Kiyoshi out of her sight, terrified of shadowy figures coming to steal her granddaughter away while she wasn't looking. But weeks had passed, and with no sign of the people Mamoru had warned her about, Aiko was beginning to relax. She wanted to get Kiyoshi accustomed to going out on her own without her, and making her just wait outside a shop was a small step in that direction.
Kiyoshi looked a bit unsure, but nodded, and slowly walked out of the shop, glancing at Aiko from over her shoulder. Aiko smiled reassuringly and turned to the front of the shop, wincing as the cool air that had drifted into the shop when Kiyoshi opened the door faded away. It was a hot, dry day, the kind that sprang up out of nowhere, too suddenly for anyone to properly enjoy it. As soon as she and Kiyoshi got home, they would probably just laze about, doing nothing in particular.
It was a hot dry day, the kind where nothing ever happened.
Nothing.
Kiyoshi bit her lip, shifting anxiously from one foot to another as she waited for her grandmother to come out of the shop. She didn't like being out of the house, she hated large crowds, and she loathed people staring at her - and right now, she was experiancing all three.
The streets of Kinugakure were currently bustling with people who were eager to take advantage of the warm weather (they'd been experiancing a series of rainy days for a while) and her senses were almost overwhelmed by the noise and sights around her. People shouting, the sickeningly sweet smell drifting from the dango shop, the throbbing music coming from the window of the house opposite her...it was disorentiating at best for her, making her feel almost claustrophobic at worse. It wasn't made any easier by the fact that people kept glaring at her as they walked past, and it made her feel very self-conscious.
The plants in the stone pot next to her swayed, one of them slithering up her wrist in an attempt at comfort. Kiyoshi shook it off, though her lips twitched in a smile. For as long as she could remember, plants had 'liked her.' They sprouted all over their garden (which had made Obaa-chan very cross when she had to do the weeding) they petted and tickled her (very painful when she fell into a nettle patch) and once or twice even followed her around (which had been very spooky when she was in the garden at night and was convinced that she was being followed by a large snake).
The plants did what she said sometimes, and she thought that with a bit of practice, she could perhaps get even better with them. But Obaa-chan had sat her down and told her firmly that the reason the plants were like that was because of the demon inside her - something she tried not to think about and generally pretended wasn't there at all - and so working with them would be a Bad. Idea.
Kiyoshi didn't think so, but obaa-chan was the only person who was nice to her, and she was very grateful to her because of that. And so she avoided plants when she could, and when she couldn't...she began looking for weed-killer.
"Stupid girl. To have such potential and then to squander it on the words of a human...Pathetic."
Kiyoshi stepped away from the plants. 'Go away.'
"As I have told you before...I cannot. We are bound together until you die."
'Thought you died if I died.'
The voice paused, the absence of its deep tones a welcome relief. Not expecting it to talk again - the voice rarely spoke, and when it did, it was never for long - Kiyoshi bent down to look at a caterpillar crawling over a flower-stem.
"That is...correct. But never forget, child, you need Me more than I need you. I am ancient, I have lived for hundreds of years, and exist for thousands more. But you...Your life was bound to Mine, your soul was part of Mine barely days after you were born. Your very existence is part of Me, and that is all it ever shall be. So, tell me child, when We die...what's to say that you won't just dissolve into My soul?
Kiyoshi scowled, unwilling to think about that. But it was too hot to be thinking about a reply or a denial for now, and so Kiyoshi leaned back against the wall of the shop, trying to get under the shade of the thin bit of roof that was jutting over her head. Feeling a bit sleepy, she shut her eyes, hoping that her grandmother would be out of the shop soon.
A ticklish sensation on her wrist alerted her to the fact that another plant had tried to climb on her. Feeling irritated now, Kiyoshi jerked her wrist back, hoping no-one had seen-
"Kiyoshi! Get over here now!"
Guiltily, Kiyoshi brushed off the remains of the plant stem and hurried over to where her grandmother was standing, looking quite cross. Feeling a need to impress the fact that the plant thing was not her fault, Kiyoshi tried to explain. "Obaa-chan, I didn't mean to-"
"Be quiet, Kiyoshi!" Obaa-chan snapped, and Kiyoshi reared back, offended. "But, Obaa-chan-"
"I said be quiet, Kiyoshi! We're going home!"
Angry now - Obaa-chan knew it wasn't her fault, but she hadn't even let her explain - Kiyoshi stalked off in the direction of their home. A pity, because if she'd looked over her shoulder, and perhaps looked a little deeper, she'd have realized that the brusque tone in her grandmother's voice came not from anger, but from worry, and that she was now looking at a doorway that had been practically opposite of where Kiyoshi had been standing, a doorway that was empty save for a few pieces of paper fluttering in the breeze.
Aiko had not been eager to linger in the shop, the stuffy atmosphere being no help in cooling her down. But once she stepped outside, she found to her panic that she couldn't see Kiyoshi anywhere in the crowds. Worriedly, she scanned the area, trying to spot that head of white hair. And though she didn't see it, her eyes did fall upon a rather strange figure.
She couldn't tell their gender from their general shape, as whoever it was was clothed in a large black cloak, decorated with red clouds - an odd style that Aiko hadn't seen before. Their head was covered too, with a straw conical hat that had long white strips shielding their face from view. In fact, the only part of their body Aiko could actually see was their hands, which were small and delicate, with nails that were painted orange and a small ring. To Aiko, it looked quite feminine, so whoever the figure was, it was probably female.
Were it just for the odd appearance of whoever it was, Aiko would have just passed them off as another visitor with an odd sense of style. But the way the figure was standing made it clear that they were staring at something. And as Aiko followed the line of their gaze, to her horror, she saw Kiyoshi lounging against the shop wall, eyes shut and looking completely unaware of everything around her. And then, as if to shout to the world what she held, a plant slithered up her arm, curling lovingly around the elbow.
And suddenly, Aiko remembered something. Mamoru had given her a warning the last time he visited, about Kiyoshi...
"If you see anyone wearing a cloak with red clouds, keep Kiyoshi hidden."
Icy terror flooded through Aiko. Kiyoshi was standing no more than ten feet away from someone who was after the Gobi, and if Aiko didn't move, she was willing to bet her life that Kiyoshi was going to vanish the moment she turned her back.The figure, who apparently hadn't seen the old woman, took a step forward, and Aiko immediately strode over to Kiyoshi, making sure that her body was between the figure and the jinchuuriki. The blasted child still hadn't realized that she was being watched like a rabbit observed by a hawk, and was even now just playing around with the plant. Was she trying to shout out what she was to the world?
"Kiyoshi! Get over here now!"
The girl jumped nearly a foot in the air, before hurrying over to Aiko, who was now scanning the crowds frantically for the figure, who seemed to have vanished. Kiyoshi stood in front of her, looking upset about something. Well, she should be! If Aiko was right - and she prayed that she wasn't - then the jinchuuriki could just have broadcasted her identity to someone who could very well want her dead.
"Obaa-chan, I didn't mean to-"
"Be quiet, Kiyoshi," Aiko snapped, unable to see the figure anywhere. Surely they couldn't have vanished so quickly without a jutsu - but there was a range to every transportation techniques outside of fuinjutsu, and if the figure had used one of them then they couldn't have left the village, meaning that Kiyoshi was still in great danger - in fact, she was now in far hotter water because Aiko now didn't know where her observer was.
"But, Obaa-chan-"
"I said be quiet, Kiyoshi!" Aiko twisted around, making sure that whoever it was hadn't sneaked up behind them. "We're going home." At least there, there were more hiding-places and security seals to keep Kiyoshi safe. Retreating would be better than staying out in the open.
Kiyoshi glared at her - what the child was angry about, Aiko wasn't sure - and stormed off. With a sigh, Aiko gave a final look around before following her.
Behind them, the paper fluttering in the doorway slowly reformed into the figure, who tilted her head, exposing a few strands of blue hair and piercing grey-blue eyes. The jinchuuriki had been locating, and was even now heading off with its guardian away from the busy streets, where Konan could not afford to draw attention to herself and thus the organization. Yes, it seemed that the first retrieval of a bijuu would go very well indeed.
Kiyoshi was still sulking when they got home, and went straight up to her room, determined to ignore Aiko for the rest of the day. Her grandmother, while normally amused whenever Kiyoshi tried to give her the silent treatment (it never worked; Kiyoshi would always end up saying something to her casually without thinking, realize her mistake, and then sulk for a while more before pretending that nothing ever happened) was just thankful that it kept her out of the way while Aiko investigated the possibilty of someone being after Kiyoshi.
She didn't want to think of the idea that someone could be trying to cause her granddaughter's death because of Aiko's own actions. And just because whoever it was was wearing a cloak with red clouds didn't mean they were from that organization. And Kiyoshi's somewhat feral appearance due to the bijuu inside her was fairly unusual, as was the way plants seem to try to hug the girl whenever they saw her. Perhaps the figure had just been surprised and stopped by to look...
Oh, who was she trying to fool? The woman was undoubtedly a member of the organization, and had probably being trying to figure out the identity of the village's jinchuuriki - and Kiyoshi had very obligingly put on a show. She couldn't have been more obvious if she tattooed 'JINCHUURIKI' on her forehead in bright red letters. And now, Aiko had to deal with the aftermath - and she didn't fancy their chances.
Kiyoshi was good when you evaluated her skills at genin level, but whoever they were facing wouldn't be a genin. If this organization was after the bijuu, they probably had some means of controlling them - and you weren't able to control the bijuu without some very advanced skills, far above genin level. And combat had never been Aiko's forte, even in her prime, and she was an old woman now.
To put it bluntly...They were pretty much screwed.
A knock on the door made Aiko jump, almost dropping the kunai in her hands. She backed away from the door, unsure of what to do. The door wouldn't hold back a ninja - the question was, did she try to unlock it and just attack whoever was behind it, or did she focus on getting Kiyoshi out of there and let the ninja batter down the door instead?
The knock came again, and Kiyoshi appeared at the top of the staircase behind Aiko, one clawed hand gripping the banister, another on her hip. "Obaa-chan, aren't you going to answer that?"
Aiko twisted around, her decision made. "Kiyoshi, you need to get out of here-"
And that was when the person outside decided that they had waited long enough.
Kushina gave a weary sigh of relief as she emptied the last of the items that had been sealed into the wall of the apartment into her bag. Always the cautious ANBU, she had made sure to put everything expensive and/or dangerous away whenever she was off on missions, just in case the seals on the outside of the apartment failed and she wasn't there to stop any vandals.
Sadly, this had had a detrimental effect, as when she vanished, no one knew where the items were, and thus Naruto was left without them, living in poverty whilst being unaware that a small fortune was waiting in the walls.
Satisfied that she had everything, Kushina slung the bag over her shoulder and stood up. She didn't even look around as she left, feeling no need to. There was nothing left for her in Konoha anymore.
The streets were bustling when she stepped outside, but Kushina used her skills as a former ANBU to evade the crowds, and jumped over roofs instead. She had no desire to meet anyone else from Konoha. Sadly, it was not to be. For as she landed by the gate, someone stepped out of the shadows, his long white mane and bright clothes somehow remaining hidden from her until it was too late to avoid him.
"Kushina," Jiraiya hissed quietly, his eyes darting about. "We need to talk. Badly. There's some things you don't know."
Kiyoshi stared at the unfolding scene before her in terrified fascination, unsure of what exactly was happening, but knowing that it wasn't good. Obaa-chan was scared, terrified even, and Kiyoshi had never seen her like this before.
A deep growl reverberated inside her head.
"Foolish child. She trembled before Me when I came to your village, and she wasn't even in My genjutsu. Your mother was - and she died because of it."
'Be quiet. I'm trying to listen.'
The stranger, who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, stepped forward into the light of the ceiling lamp, and Kiyoshi's breath caught in her throat. The woman was quite pretty, with short blue hair that had a paper flower pinned in it, and piercing blue-grey eyes. But her face was...not cold exactly, but eerily apathetic, and her eyes flickered around the room until they came to rest on Kiyoshi. Resisting the urge to back away, Kiyoshi leaned over the banister, glaring at her. "Who're you?"
The woman smiled grimly. "That does not matter."
This roused Aiko out of her shock. "It doesn't matter?" She glared at the woman, the kunai in her hand glinting. "You barge into my home, have the nerve to get paper everywhere" - she gestured at the sheets that were still swirling about in the air - "and I have to say, I don't particularly appreciate any of that. So if you would answer my granddaughter's question..."
The woman shrugged. "I am part of Akatsuki, that is all you need to know. We are building a new world..." She glanced back at Kiyoshi, who stood frozen at the top of the staircase. "And we require the power of the bijuu to do so."
Kiyoshi winced as the Gobi roared in her head. 'My power? She dares to lay claim to My POWER? THE ARROGANCE!"
Figuring that now was not the time to point out that Houkou was hardly one to talk about arrogance, Kiyoshi looked at her grandmother, silently asking her what to do. Aiko jerked her head, trying to convey the message that Kiyoshi should run back into her bedroom, where there was a window that had a large tree just outside it. If she could make it out of the house...well, the woods weren't far, and Kiyoshi knew them like the back of her hand. If she used genjutsu and was careful, then maybe she could escape-
Unfortunately, it seemed that the mysterious kunoichi was done playing. Lifting her hand, she pointed at Kiyoshi. "Kami shuriken!"
The paper that had been innocently swirling in the air - 'I should have noticed that they were staying up too long' - suddenly twisted into the shape of white shurikens, which hurtled through the air towards Kiyoshi. The jinchuurik yelped and ducked, jumping over the banister to land awkwardly on the floor.
'OUCH!'
But the shuriken's target had never been Kiyoshi. Instead, they slammed into the door, cutting into the lock and spaces. They wouldn't be able to open it again fast enough to escape. And so Aiko dug her nails into her thin skin, breaking it and causing pinpricks of blood to bloom on her palm. She smeared it over a tiny seal that had been scratched on the wall behind her. It flared white, activated the traps Aiko had set over the years.
Kunai seemed to burst out of nowhere in showers from the ceiling, crashing towards the floor with terrifying speed. Aiko had already yanked Kiyoshi behind the safety of the stairs, and put her mouth by Kiyoshi's ear. "Create a genjutu to hide us!"
Nodding despite her obvious fear, Kiyoshi began flickering through handseals, her eyes half-closed. "Kamereon no jutsu!"
Aiko nodded in grim approval. It was a technique that blended the user into the background, but it could be undone if someone concentrated hard enough and was able to send a quick pulse of chakra. However, Kiyoshi was already going through other jutsus, placing illusionary dopplegangers around the room and layering them in half a dozen other genjutus. The good news was that that should keep the woman occupied, giving them enough time to escape. The bad news was that the effort of holding so many jutsus was taking its toll on the jinchuuriki, who was panting and beginning to tremble.
Quickly, the old woman grasped Kiyoshi's arm, pulling her along with her towards the kitchen. The back door was probably locked, but Aiko would kick it through if she had to. Kiyoshi just had to hold her genjutsu until they were far enough into the village to get back-up-
And that was when everything went to hell in a gift-wrapped handbasket.
Konan had received the news that she was to be the one to capture the first jinchuuriki with her natural stoicism. She was far from the strongest in the organization when it came to fighting - her abilities were far more suitable to espionage than attacking. But it was thought that, out of the ninja up to offer, she was the best to tackle the jinchuuriki. As they were not sure of its identity, she could use her abilities to spy on the population of Kinugakure until she found out, and then quietly abduct the jinchuuriki when no one else was looking.
Truthfully, she hadn't been completely sure about it. Every Akatsuki member would be operating with the assumption that their jinchuuriki would, if scenting defeat, transform into their bijuu. From what Konan knew about the Gobi, it was cruel and vindicative, but also, more dangerously, very intelligent. It was legendary for holding grudges, and on the off chance that the bijuu ever escaped the Akatsuki's control, she knew that it would hunt her down, waiting patiently until she was far away enough for her god to be unable to aid her in time before striking. But it was on those same god's orders that she was attacking the bijuu and so she had proceeded.
Right now, she was patiently examining the room, having used a shield of hardened paper to protect herself from the hail of kunai. She could see no less than three different copies of the old woman and the jinchuuriki, all fleeing in different directions. They were good, very good, and as it was no doubt the jinchuuriki that created them, the child would probably be a wonder with genjutsu, were she allowed to grow up. But sacrifices had to made for peace, and Konan had no qualms about ending the life of nine people if it meant that thousands more could be saved.
The kunoichi's eyes narrowed. There were three doppelgängers from three corners, but none in the corner shielded by the stairs. So either the jinchuuriki just didn't have enough chakra to sustain three seperate genjutsus, or-
Konan held out her hand, sheets of paper forming a deadly sword in her hand. She just needed a clear shot at the jinchuuriki's legs to cripple or at least delay her, giving Konan plenty of time to knock her out and transport her to one of the many bases Akatsuki had prepared.
There! The slightest shimmer in the air, showing where two separate things that looked the same were standing together, no doubt some kind of cloaking technique. Konan drew back, judging from the flickering shadows about the location of the jinchuuriki, and then struck at the back of the knees.
For a few seconds, silence reigned. Then it was shattered by a child's scream.
Kiyoshi had been terrified of the strange kunoichi. It wasn't so much for the fact that she was a dangerous opponent, though it was clear that she was - Obaa-chan wouldn't have looked so worried if she was a genin or chunin-level kunoichi. It wasn't so much for the fact that the woman had said that she wanted the power of the Gobi, which Kiyoshi knew currently resided in her own body - and as she didn't sound interesting in getting Kiyoshi to co-operate, the jinchuuriki had the nasty feeling that using the Gobi's power didn't require Kiyoshi to be alive. It wasn't even the fact that she was a stranger, and Kiyoshi had always instinctively distrusted strangers even if her grandmother liked them.
No, the reason Kiyoshi was so scared was the way Houkou was acting. The demon had told her that it would be wise to flee. Flee, not attack, not act as a wounded dog might, but flee. If it was that scared of being controlled, of being captured...
Then that didn't say much for her hopes of escaping, did it?
But Obaa-chan had ordered her to make genjutsus, as if there was still hope. She had come up with a plan that had sounded like it would work. She had sounded hopeful, and Kiyoshi, with the mind-set of a child who thought that her family could make everything all right, had hoped too.
But it hadn't worked. Just as they were stepping into the kitchen, the kunoichi had suddenly dove for them. Aiko had shoved Kiyoshi forward, but stumbled over a small tear in the linen floor as she did so. And when the kunoichi stabbed downwards with her sword-
Kiyoshi heard a wet schlik, and then a horrible gurgling noise. Warm liquid splashed on her back, and then her grandmother had slammed into her with her full weight, knocking Kiyoshi off her feet. The stunned jinchuuriki had lain face-down in the carpet for a few seconds, before she recovered and rolled onto her side, facing her grandmother.
What she saw would haunt her for the rest of her life.
Aiko was lying on the carpet, her eyes wide. Emerging from her throat was a pale blade made out of paper, and a detatched part of Kiyoshi thought that it was a sick twist of irony, that her grandmother should be killed by the material that she had worked with her whole life. But the rest of her was too busy being horrified, because her grandmother wasn't dead. Blood was trickling out of her mouth, gushing out of her nose, and still she wasn't dead. Her whole body was shaking horribly, while all that Kiyoshi could hear was a wet gurgling from her throat, as if Aiko was drowning in her own blood.
There was no dramatic last words, no last deep sigh - only the horrible gurgling noise of a slow painful death. Aiko was dying, but she wouldn't be gone for a minute or two, and Kiyoshi was too shocked to even think about reaching for a kunai to give the only person she had ever cared about in her entire life a merciful end. However Konan, taking pity on the woman, tugged out her sword, and severed Aiko's spine, ending her suffering.
The Akatsuki straightened up, staring down at the jinchuuriki. She had intended to knock the woman out before immobilizing the jinchuuriki, but things obviously hadn't worked out that way. However, the jinchuuriki seemed to be frozen, unable to move for shock. Konan reached down, intending to knock her out with a quick strike at the neck-
Only to be met with one of the heaviest loads of killing intent she had ever felt.
Kiyoshi's entire world had been shattered. She had had a simple, quiet existence living in Kinugakure, which was a rather isolated village in itself. She had based her life around her grandmother, her genjutsu, her status as a jinchuuriki, and the sancturary of her home. But now?
Now?
Her home had been breached. Her genjutsu had failed to protect what she needed it to. Her grandmother was lying dead on the floor, an ignoble, brutal death that she hadn't deserved, and all because she wanted to protect her. And it was all because of the woman in front of her, the woman who was even now reaching for her, as if she hadn't done enough.
It was enough to break someone's mind, especially seeing as Kiyoshi didn't exactly have a stable mind in the first place. Indeed, as Kiyoshi bared her teeth in a snarl, her pale blue eyes now a dark purple, she looked exactly as Konan remembered Chichi being when Yahiko stepped on his tail - small, supposedly unthreatening, but staring up with such emotion that the hardened S-Class shinobi actually felt a bit unnerved. But that meant nothing.
"I HATE YOU!"
Even those words, growled out in a tone Kiyoshi barely recognized as her own, did not seem to convey the anger she felt, the hot, seething anger that twisted in her stomach, her grief and rage over Aiko's death colliding with Houkou's desire to burn and slaughter until there was nothing left.
Her vision seemed to burn white with her anger, and she shut her eyes. And then, suddenly, she seemed to be falling, tumbling into blackness.
'A-Am I fainting? I can't! She's going to kill me!'
But then her feet hit solid ground - odd, because she didn't remember getting up from her kneeling position - and Kiyoshi opened her eyes.
She seemed to be standing into a forest, not unlike the one near the back of the village. But something was wrong. The trees were a lot darker than in her forest, and there were far more plants growing on the floor, tiny plants with spiky edges that looked like they'd be painful to step on. Not only that, but there was a strange white light glowing in the distance.
Slowly, Kiyoshi picked her way towards the source of the light, wrinking her noise at the smell, which like rotting meat soaked in some kind of sickly sweet perfume. She was almost gagging on it by the time she reached the source - but then she looked up, and all thoughts about the smell fell away instantly.
She was standing in front of a tree far larger than any she had ever seen in her life apart from pictures of the forests of Konoha. The inside of the tree was completely hollow, and most of the part facing her was missing, and instead blocked off by an enormous pair of dark gates, similar to the ones used in big gardens with an intricate design that formed the shape of a seal. From beyond the gates, she could see nothing but darkness...until something stepped forward, its violet eyes gleaming.
"Greetings, oh jinchuuriki of Mine."
Kiyoshi scrambled back, her eyes wide. "Y-you can't be here! You're sealed!"
The five-tailed dog - or was it a dog? It looked more like a wolf to her...oh, five-tailed canine then! - yawned, exposing large white teeth reminded Kiyoshi just what she was dealing with. "How disappointing. I would have expected you to realize that I have not been released...It is you who was drawn into your own mind. But humans are always so entertaingly slow."
"What do you want? I'm not letting you out!"
"Oh yes you are - unless you want to die."
Kiyoshi gulped, the sudden reminder of what was happening in reality. But she still shook her head, despite her fear. Obaa-chan had made her promise to not let the Gobi out, no matter what it said, and she couldn't break that promise, not after what had happened.
"Foolish girl. Tell me...do you know what she wants?"
Kiyoshi shook her head again, more slowly this time.
"She wants to have My power without the hassle of a jinchuuriki. That must mean she intends to extract Me from your body. Do you know what happens in an extraction?"
"...No."
"First, the seal must be broken. That takes no less than two days. Two days of purest agony for you, while they meticulously shred something that has been imprinted on your very soul since infanthood. Then, once the seal is shattered and My chakra begins to pour out of your body - taking your chakra with it, I might add - they will begin sucking it up by using some sort of device, but at the same time, forcing it to come out in a steady wave so that none escapes. While that happens, every cell in your body will be saturated with demonic energy, burning and healing over and over, until there is not enough of My chakra left to heal."
Houkou's black lips pulled back in what might have been called a grin on human features. "The pain produced by that will be beyond anything you have ever experianced, and it will only get worse as My chakra faded from you. And then, in the final hours of the third day, they will rip our souls apart, and drain the last of both of Our chakras. You will die, and I will be imprisoned, at the mercy of humans once again. Not a very desirable future, for either of Us."
Kiyoshi found herself nodding, while her knees shook. She felt as if she was going to collapse.
"And so, I propose a trade. Your life...in exchange for letting Me out."
Kiyoshi stared at it, wondering just how foolish it thought she was. "That would kill me as well! Or let you have my body, which would probably be worse!"
The Gobi gave a sigh of impatience. "Foolish child. The seal that binds Me to you is still too strong after ten years for Me to be freed without killing you. Perhaps in a few years...but that is of no consequence. No, I can only take My true form while using your body, which cannot sustain it for long, ten minutes at the most. But that will be more than sufficient to crush the threat to Us...And avenge your 'dearest' grandmother while I'm at it."
Ignoring the Gobi's sarcastic tone when talking about Aiko, Kiyoshi thought for a moment. She was low on chakra, her genjutsus weren't fooling this woman, and she had no weapon to defend herself with...apart from Houkou. The act was foolish, desperate, and she knew that her grandmother wouldn't have wanted her to do it...But she had run out of options.
"Do you promise that you'll go back into the seal once your time is up?"
Houkou inclined its head. "Yes."
"You give your word?"
"Unlike humans, who break promises as easily as snapping twigs, we bijuu are bound by our word. I shall return to this place once I have completed the task."
Kiyoshi let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. Closing her eyes, she reached forward, hardly able to believe she was doing it...and shoved the gate open.
A faint roar echoed, followed by a wave of killing intent that the group sensed far better. Naruto gasped as it hit him, the dragon rocking precariously. Takeshi gave a high-pitched scream, and clung to the dragon tightly. Sayuri threw her arms around Naruto and held on tight, ignoring the cracking noise and the groan that followed.
"...Sayuri-chan...can't...breathe..."
Sayuri loosened her hold a bit, but refused to let go completely. "What was that, nii-san?"
Gulping a little, Naruto peered over the head of the dragon. "I don't know...but I guess we're going to find out."
"WHAT? We're going TOWARDS IT?"
"Kinugakure's that way," Naruto said stubbornly, whilst inwardly cursing his own curiousity. "And look, Takeshi, we're on a flying dragon. We'll get close enough to see what it is from the air. If we don't like it, we'll turn around and fly back. If we can't see it from up here, we'll go a little higher and fly over it - we won't go down to see what it is, okay?"
"Or, we can all agree that we don't like it now, and save us all the trouble!"
Naruto shook his head. "There's not another village for miles around, and besides, I think I'd prefer to sleep in a bed tonight, don't you?"
Takeshi wilted. After months of a cold prison cell and sleeping outside, the prospect of a warm, soft bed was definitely appealing...
"Fine, but the instant we see it and agree we don't like it, we're out of here!"
"Agreed," Naruto nodded, and channeled more chakra to the paper beneath them. The dragon picked up speed, and Naruto turned around to face the other two. "We'll be there in ten minutes, twelve max."
Kabuto grinned as he looked over the prospective subjects in front of him - a small mass of Hoshigakure's finest genin. Newly graduated, they were all reasonably skilled for their age, and all had as much a chance as any of surviving the process. They stared back, some fooled by his friendly smile, some looking at him curiously, wondering who he was, some feeling nervous on account of the fact that the Hoshikage was standing next to him, and one was staring at him suspiciously.
Kabuto examined the latter student. He was of average height, but lean and looked strong for his age. He had long black hair in a short plait, almost aristocratic features, and deep brown eyes, and had the 'future lady-killer' look about him that Kabuto had often heard the nurses at Konoha hospital twittering about. Not only that, but he was the only one that seemed bothered by Kabuto's presence, which suggested either a good character reader, or simply a natural suspicion of strangers, both of which were good for a ninja to have.
Kabuto nodded to himself. If the experiment worked, then the power bestowed on the children would elevate them to candidates for Orochimaru's jutsu, probably above Guren and equal to Kimmimaro, though of course, they would only be silver medals compared to the prize of Naruto. And Orochimaru didn't just value power - he admired beauty, youth and skill, all of which this boy possessed in spades. Yes, Sumaru would be a very good candidate indeed - assuming he survived, of course.
The team drifted closer to the source of the killing intent, and Naruto was beginning to regret his decision. He had never felt such a dark killing intent before, not even with Orochimaru, and the screaming noises weren't helping either. But just before he could turn the dragon around, Takeshi tapped his shoulder.
"Up ahead!"
Naruto looked straight ahead, and saw a large white shape in the distance, which was jumping and crouching, but staying in one area, like a giant determined to squash an ant on the ground. The sky directly above it was covered in rolling black clouds, and he could see the drifitng smoke and orange tinge that signified a fire.
"Let's get out of here!"
Though Naruto agreed whole-heartedly with Takeshi's statement, the matter was taken out of his hands as a fierce wind blew out of nowhere, sending them careening towards the creature. It raised its head to look at them, and Naruto's breath caught in his throat.
It was a giant dog, about a hundred feet tall, with white fur and maddened violet eyes that were filled with rage. But that wasn't what drew Naruto's attention - it was the five tails that swung behind it, each one doing terrible damage as they smashed the ground below, which was little more than a black smear on the ground now.
'Oh Kami...It's a tailed beast! I'm looking at a tailed beast!'
And though he had nursed a grudge against the Yondaime ever since he learned the truth about his status as a jinchuuriki, for the first time, Naruto felt some grudging admiration for the man. The creature in front of him had five tails, and he wanted nothing more than to get away from it, despite having a more powerful one inside him. To have faced the most powerful of them all without having anything but your own skills to back you up...That must have taken some guts.
"'sgoingtoeatusit'sgoingtoeatus!"
While he hadn't lost control of his vocals like Takeshi appeared to have, Naruto had to agree that the thing didn't look too friendly. It was bringing up two of its tails, one of which was covered in flames, the other of which appeared to have a whirlwind swirling around it, and he reached out his hand, searching deep inside himself. He had had no control over the power in the last town, but it had been aimed at the ROOT ninjas and it had done its job in that direction...it just hadn't stopped at them. Well, there seemed to be nothing left of the ground beneath the beast but a crater, so he wouldn't be damaging anything else unlike last time.
But before he could even try to begin, the beast froze, its head cocked to one side. Then suddenly, its whole body shimmered before dissolving into white chakra that flowed in a downwards spiral, that ended in something small that lay unmoving inside the crater. The oppressing killing intent vanished, and the fire that had been burning along the rim winked.
Takeshi stared downwards. "What the fuck just happened?"
Naruto shrugged, looking in the same direction. "I don't know. But I'm going to find out."
"What? But we agreed that we'd go!"
"Whatever it is, it's gone, and I just want to check out the area to see what caused it."
"Nuh-uh!"
"Alright, let's vote. Sayuri, do you mind if I go down there? You and Takeshi can stay on the dragon."
Sayuri bit her lip before shaking her head. "You can go, nii-san. But - please, be careful."
Naruto grinned, urging the dragon down. "I'm always careful." He then shot a few threads around the dragon's thick neck and then jumped off.
"NII-SAN!"
The threads halted his momentum with a painful jolt, and they ended just near enough to the ground for him to land neatly on his feet. He retracted them into his wrist, waved to the two up on the dragon, and then looked around.
The area was scorched and covered in ash; he could still feel the heat through the soles of his boots. An area of what looked like to be a ten-mile radius had been transformed into nothing more than a smoky crater than was completely empty except for him.
'Wait a minute...'
There was something curled on the ground a few metres ahead of him. As Naruto drew closer he realized what it was - a girl, about the same age as him, with long white hair that was obscuring her face. She was in a kneeling positon, but her back was hunched over, and she had wrapped both arms around herself, making her difficult to see.
"Hey! Who are you?"
The girl didn't move. If it wasn't for the sound of her ragged breathing, Naruto would have mistaken her for dead. He crouched down in front of her, reaching out slowly. Behind him, he could hear the sounds of the dragon coming down - he had neglected to mention to the other two that to conserve chakra, he'd be bringing it down with him.
Slowly, the girl looked up. She looked dazed, as if she didn't know what was going on, and she was also trembling, like a rabbit that has just realized that it's going to be devoured by a fox. Recognizing the expression from several people in Oto, Naruto tried to speak as gently as he could. "I'm Naruto. Who are you?"
The girl suddenly scrambled back, looking terrified, and Naruto held up his hands, trying to show that he wasn't going to hurt her. Too late did he hear Sayuri's frantic shout.
"NII-SAN, behind you!"
Naruto twisted around. His eyes widened in shock.
"Step away from the jinchuuriki if you want to live."
I know that the chapter's late and all - those who read my AN in NotL will know why - but seeing that it's over 35,000 words, making it the longest chapter I've ever written, I hope that makes it up!
Notes on the manga: *Slams head against desk* Well that clears up a bit about Kushina...But you know, I thought that one of the major themes in Naruto was meant to be about the underdog rising up from poor beginnings to take his place at the top. But Naruto's gone from a poor orphan with a bijuu but no chakra control who grew strong despite that, to a guy who's the son of the Yondaime and scion of a great clan - who, apparently, are related to the Senju (Bet there's going to be a lot more Mokuton fics springing up now). 'Course I'm not one to talk as both my stories have Naruto with kekkei genkais...but still, to me, it's kinda proving pre-Chunin Exam Neji right. Oh, and I am not changing my story to suit the manga. From now on, for those who didn't get the subtle hints in earlier chapters, this fic is AU. As will probably be all my fics from now on.
Having received several reviews asking about the pairing, I will say now that I haven't made my mind up about any except for one ship which I've never seen before which is not Naruto. However, when I do, it's not taking over the story with everyone and their granny getting paired up, and it won't be showing for a while as the main characters are nearly all prepubescent kids. And finally, some people questioned the rating of the story, and asked about raising it. I'm not including any lemons, as they would probably be painful to read and humiliating for the characters to suffer through, but it may get a bit gory later on. What do you think?
And, finally, please review!
