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Insanity's Ending
Chapter Nine: Amitié
Naruto and his white-haired companion walked through the dense forest that made up Konoha's outskirts. Naruto's eyes were glued to the sheet of paper he held in his hands as Jiraiya talked about various things to no particular person.
Naruto's eyes came to rest on a tournament divider, showing each individual competitor and the so-called lane they would take into victory of the competition.
"I'll be facing off against…" Naruto mumbled, catching Jiraiya's attention. "Hyuuga Neji."
Jiraiya nodded his head, his eyes closed and an eyebrow arched.
"He's famous as last year's top ranking pupil and number-one rookie. He's also, like every other Hyuuga, stuck up and a steadfast narcissist, from what I've heard."
Naruto folded the paper up neatly and calmly slotted it into a pocket in his white trousers.
"The Hyuuga are known as mainly dependant on their specialized taijutsu, the 'Gentle Fist', or Jyuuken." Naruto began.
Jiraiya nodded sagely as Naruto continued.
"Would it be wise to concentrate on long ranged tactics using Shuriken?"
"No. I've fought a few Hyuuga and I know from experience that they'll chew long ranged specialists up and spit them out." Said Jiraiya.
"Because of the 'Hakkesho Kaiten', right? I thought so. I won't be able to use any elemental techniques, either, because of my chakra control…hmmm…"
Jiraiya sighed.
"A Hyuuga's going to be your worst enemy at your current condition."
Naruto nodded, his eyes closed.
"I could always use their famed overconfidence against them."
Jiraiya smiled.
"Heh. Yeah."
Naruto suddenly looked over to Jiraiya.
"Jiraiya-san, I need you to look over something I attempted while in the sealed room. I had a lot of free time, and I'd read a lot about seals and how they function…"
Jiraiya gasped as Naruto unclasped and removed his lower-arm guard to reveal an extremely intricate web of seals that were seemingly painted on in blood.
"That's Kuchiyose no jutsu… Are you expecting to use THAT in the exam?"
Naruto replaced the arm-guard.
"Well, no…I just wanted to check if the seals wre in the right places."
Jiraiya sighed.
"I can't help you with that. You have a different contract from mine, so I don't know the seal make up that would be most accurate for you."
Naruto nodded.
"I don't think it'd be very useful, especially since the falcon wouldn't have full flight range. But that wasn't the only trick I've picked up."
Jiraiya rested his chin on his thumb.
"You remember that I've learned the Hiraishin, right?"
Jiraiya nodded.
"Well, now, I've honed it a bit, until I can do this!" Naruto said, as he backtracked a number of steps.
Naruto stopped about twenty feet away from his previous position. He disappeared suddenly and reappeared instantly once again, next to Jiraiya.
Jiraiya gasped. Naruto had managed to perfect the usage of the Hiraishin! He was almost as proficient at its usage as it's inventor!
"So, what do you think I can learn that doesn't require any chakra control at all?"
Jiraiya mulled the question over for a while.
"I've learned, over my years of travel…an art of Taijutsu that is usually used by the Toad summons. It requires little to no Chakra control and is relatively easy to pick up. It's a mixture of hand-to-hand combat and swordplay, though the former is used less frequently. I've discovered various ways to adapt the style for use by humans, and I think you'd greatly benefit from it."
Naruto grinned.
"However…You won't be using that sword." Jiraiya said, pointing to the Raijin strapped to Naruto's belt.
Naruto looked at Jiraiya strangely.
Jiraiya pulled a scroll out of his pocket and unfurled it, biting his finger to draw blood and running it across the parchment. With a 'poof', two moderately long Katana swords fell into his hands. He held them out to Naruto.
Naruto glanced sadly at his Raijin sword and reached out, taking the two swords from Jiraiya. His hand immediately fell to the ground, and the swords smacked into the ground with a dull but loud 'thud'.
"They're heavy…It's really the basis of the style…hehehe." Jiraiya chuckled, as Naruto struggled to lift each weapon in individual hands.
Naruto sighed.
000
Naruto collapsed wearily onto his couch. It had been the third night since his training had begun and he was still worn out at the end of each day. The swords, as he had discovered, were made of a very heavy metal, in order to provide the proper leverage for the techniques practiced in the style he was learning. They were also significantly wider than normal swords, a fact that he had not noticed when he had first seen them.
Naruto stretched out, and swung his head left and right, hearing satisfying 'cracks' at either side. He immediately reached to the side of the couch and pulled out a rather hefty scroll.
He unfurled it and began to read, his eyes scanning through the long lines of text, occasionally punctuated by the odd picture of a symbol or marking.
Naruto looked up suddenly as knocks were heard from his door.
He stood up and placed the scroll to back onto the small table from which it had been taken, and walked to the door, wincing slightly as a strained muscle not fully healed caused pain to shoot up his leg.
He opened the door.
"Sakura-san!" He said in surprise, as the pink haired girl in front of him looked up at his face.
]
"N-Naruto! Hi! You're back! I…heard you'd been discharged and…and…" She stuttered, and blushed as Naruto looked at her, confused.
There was a silence.
"Oh, how rude of me. Please, Sakura-san, come in." Naruto finally said, with a dazzling smile, despite his aching body.
Sakura smiled back at him, and stepped through the door.
"Naruto…uh…this is for you." She said suddenly, holding out a fruit basket.
Naruto took it from her hands and walked into his kitchen to place it somewhere.
The first thing Sakura had noticed was the neatness prevalent in the room. It was positively spotless, and everything was in its rightful place, the scrolls were all placed neatly onto labeled scroll-racks, the books were placed in alphabetical order on labeled shelves, and what an amount of shelves indeed! The walls of the living area, even the ones below the windows, had all been made into shelving space for books and the like.
Sakura noted two couches around a lacquered wood table and promptly sat herself down on one of them, all the while admiring the orderliness present in the space she was in.
Naruto soon walked in carrying a small tray with a teapot and two bamboo cups placed neatly on top of it. He placed it down on the lacquered table and poured some green tea into both cups.
"So, how have you been, Sakura-san?" Naruto asked cheerily as he calmly sipped his tea.
"I'm alright. I was in the hospital for therapy for a little while, but it was nothing serious. I heard you were put into some treatment for something. What happened?"
Naruto tensed a bit at the question and the statement preceding it.
"Well…it was really nothing serious. Just a…bit of trauma…Do you remember anything after Orochimaru?"
Sakura shuddered a bit at the mention of the Sannin.
"I…fell unconscious after he threw me into something and woke up in the hospital. I'd guess that Sasuke-kun helped bring me there."
Naruto nodded.
"Speaking of Sasuke, How is he?"
Sakura smiled a bit.
"He turned out almost woundless, though he had to attend the same therapy as the one I attended."
She paused.
"He also wanted me to thank you for getting us the chance to fight in the final round."
"…How did I help in getting us into the final round again?" said Naruto, a confused look on his face.
Sakura giggled.
"Oh, you. You got a scroll all by yourself and gave it to the examiners soon after Sasuke and I arrived, then you collapsed!" Sakura said, a smile on her lips.
There was a short silence.
"Must have been a decoy or something…" thought he, as he immediately smiled again.
"Ahaha. That's right. I must be having amnesia! Hehe" Naruto said, sipping again from his cup.
They sat in silence for a while, Naruto pondering the circumstances and Sakura simply enjoying her tea.
Suddenly, Sakura sighed dejectedly.
"I've been training nonstop with Kakashi-sensei's friend Kurenai…It's tiring."
Naruto smiled.
"I'm sure you'll be able to make it through. You'll be a force to be reckoned with for sure during the matches!"
Naruto paused for a moment.
"Why can't Kakashi teach you himself?"
Sakura sighed again.
"He's training Sasuke up in the mountains." She said, sipping on her cup.
Naruto nodded, thanking his lucky stars for Jiraiya's help.
000
Soon, Sakura had to go, and finishing one final cup of tea, she soon found herself standing up to leave. They had talked about many things, form how to brew green tea to her worries on the chuunin exam.
Sakura was pleased to have someone willing to listen to her, and Naruto was simply pleased to have someone to talk to.
"Bye, thanks for the tea!" she said, turning around.
She walked out of Naruto's door, unknowingly giving Naruto a full view of her behind as she went.
Naruto blushed profusely, remembering his 'other's words, and hitting himself inwardly for a long time afterwards.
He could have sworn he heard a soft laughter echoing from the back of his head as he slept that night.
000
Naruto found himself at training field thirty-two with Jiraiya the following morning. Jiraiya had set up various wooden blocks around the area, with many more stacked up near there.
"I'm going to teach you one of the Toads' Trademark attacks."
Jiraiya grabbed Naruto's swords, drawing them and approaching a wooden block. Naruto noted that Jiraiya seemed to wearing different shin guards.
Suddenly, Jiraiya jumped high into the air, holding the swords aloft as he began to descend over the wooden block.
"Gama-Kata: Yatai Kuzushi!" He cried, as the retardation of his downward acceleration began to increase rapidly.
Just as he was about to reach the wooden blocks, he swung the swords in a wide downward arc.
Naruto shielded his eyes as a humungous cloud of dirt and dust appeared where the wooden block had been.
As the dust cleared, Jiraiya could be seen standing in an impressive crater, with two extremely deep gash marks on the ground under him. The block of wood had been reduced to nothing more than splinters.
Jiraiya turned and smiled.
"Your turn."
000
The shin guards, as Naruto had learned, were chakra-seal weighted, that is, imbued with the ability to suddenly increase in weight. They also didn't need any chakra control, just a bit of chakra pumped into them would activate them and send them to the specified weight.
Naruto was already formulating plans for the technique's use with the Hiraishin…
000
Naruto sighed, as he found himself walking a familiar road. The path back home was always deserted. His home was, after all, located in a somewhat run-down district of the otherwise beautiful village.
He understood that it was not out of spite or hatred that the Hokage placed him in such an unimpressive locale, but out of the desire to make his living place inconspicuous, after all, noone would be interested in attacking the Nine-tailed brat if they knew that he was living in such a disgustingly run-down place, probably content with the fact that he was obviously rotting in his decrepit cesspool of a home.
Despite the locale, the Hokage had secretly renovated Naruto's flat to the point of it being impressive, in terms of looks on the inside, and general practicality. The landlord had, also luckily been sympathetic to Naruto's case, and provided regular maintenance, an act that was heavily appreciated by Naruto.
Naruto looked around, taking in his environs. There wasn't a single person in sight. Though that was to be expected, from such an area. Nobody with half a brain would open any sort of respectable establishment within five hundred meters of this area, for fear of having to pay protection money, or the like.
What those people didn't know was that the ruffians had since moved off after many years of not having any businesses to raid, and this was actually one of the safer, albeit dingy areas in Konoha.
The thought made Naruto snicker. Reverse psychology was such a fun topic.
000
Naruto walked slowly to his door. He could have Hiraishin-ed back, he thought to himself.
Naruto shrugged as he walked into his house and closed the door behind him.
He walked into his bathroom and prepared himself for bed, walking out shortly after and collapsing onto said bed.
He lay in silence for a long while, until he slowly turned over and began to look at the ceiling.
"I still haven't answered that question…" he said aloud.
Naruto couldn't understand some things. Now he had to add one more thing to that list.
The concept of precious people.
After all, if Naruto couldn't decipher its meaning after so long a time, then who could?
000
The time had come. The training had been rigorous, but he had mastered the fundamentals of the Gama-kata.
He had been training for a mere two weeks, but he had picked the training up at a remarkable rate, and was probably ready for anything a pompous Hyuuga could toss.
Naruto and Jiraiya sat in a small ramen booth at the side of the road, a day before the chuunin exam final round.
"miso ramen for me and the runt, please!" shouted Jiraiya.
Naruto looked around at the booth's décor. It was rather plain, and the only thing resembling identification was a small sign up front with the words 'Ichiraku Ramen' painter on the front.
He sighed. Ramen wasn't his favorite dish…actually, it was somewhere at the bottom. It was unhealthy, had no vitamins to speak of and tasted like what it was supposed to be: fast food.
Jiraiya liked it, it seemed.
"Naruto, you have to learn to indulge yourself now and then." Said Jiraiya in a happy tone.
Naruto shrugged and pulled his bamboo chopsticks apart as his ramen arrived. The girl who had brought it had a pleasant smile on her face, something that was rather alien to Naruto.
"You're new here." She said, leaning on the counter next to Naruto as he began to slowly stir his ramen, to mix the various ingredients in.
Naruto turned to her, and nodded slightly, anticipating some sort of cynical insult or pained mention of a dead family member.
"I like you. You're cute." The girl said suddenly, almost making Naruto drop his chopsticks.
Naruto looked at her in stunned silence as Jiraiya slurped loudly at his ramen, seemingly oblivious to the events at hand.
It wasn't so much the declaration of affection that so shook Naruto, but the fact that she was actually talking to him civilly, and without profuse usage of four-lettered words.
Now, one must understand that while Naruto is treated with respect and friendship by Konoha's active ninja population (Or those he's met, anyway), the civilian populace was generally unable to fathom how deep Naruto's story went, and usually stopped at 'hey, he's the Kyuubi vessel', and, therefore, treated him with annoyance or general animosity.
But now was when the previously mentioned declaration of affection jumped up and bit Naruto.
He blushed profusely as the serving girl laughed and went off.
Naruto shakily returned to his ramen, and began to eat it rather hesitantly.
Suddenly, he got nudged in the side.
"Hehehe, got a girl on you already, eh? What a charmer!" said Jiraiya cheekily.
Naruto blushed slightly, and went back to his ramen once again.
As they left, Naruto turned back and smiled, as the owner of the store and his daughter waved at him and Jiraiya.
Perhaps it was alright to indulge sometimes…
000
Naruto got up from bed the next day and dressed himself in his white shirt and black moderately loose trousers. It was the day of reckoning, he thought, as he slowly strapped on all of his equipment, until he got to his swords.
He lifted them with some effort, and strapped them both on his back, to form a rough 'X' formation with the scabbards crossing over each other, the handles of the weapons themselves visible behind Naruto's shoulders. He prepared bundles of runed kunai and placed them into his waist-pouches, along with other things. He hesitantly placed two syringes into the pouch, both wrapped in a shock-absorbing foam material.
He grabbed three apples and headed out of the door. He wanted to scope out the stadium ground for himself. This was the first day he would be able to see it, as it had been closed for modifications on the general landscape, and to prevent said scoping.
Naruto smiled, as he felt the familiar metallic coldness of his Raijin hanging from his side. He wouldn't be able to use the 'Tenken' style, but it would probably be a better weapon than a kunai.
000
Naruto entered the stadium and headed up to the competitors corner. Only two people were there. A red-headed sand-ninja and one of the Leaf ninja from his year, Shika-something, he recalled.
Naruto nodded in acknowledgement of their presences, and his former classmate returned it. The red-head, however, did not.
"How rude…" thought Naruto as he glanced up at who would be fighting first.
He cursed as he saw his own name and the name of his competitor.
He sighed resignedly and walked over to the viewing gap, surveying the area and making plans.
000
"Welcome Ladies and Gentlemen, to the Combined-affiliation Chuunin examination Final round!" cried the announcer, as wild cheers arose from the crowds gathered.
The Third Hokage and the current Kazekage were seated on a box seat with guards of their individual villages surrounding them.
Naruto looked around him and noted that Sakura had just entered. With a friendly smile and a polite nod, she went to speak with one of the proctors. Naruto noticed Hyuuga Neji sitting calmly in a dim corner, his arms folded and looking out the window.
Naruto found himself wondering about Sasuke's whereabouts, to fall upon the conclusion that Kakashi knew what was best.
He shot back to attention as he heard the Announcer mention his name, along with his opponents, and was soon ushered out by a nearby chuunin proctor.
He looked back a bit, and saw Sakura flashing him a 'good luck' smile, which he promptly returned.
000
Naruto entered the field to near complete silence. He looked around and was disheartened at the looks some of the audience were giving him.
He promptly shook it off and looked at the exam referee.
His face brightened, and he almost waved at his friend, but the man, Shiranui Genma, gave a prompt 'no' wave, and Naruto backed down, understanding.
He listened intently as Genma explained the rules, though he had already reviewed them multiple times.
The two competitors took their positions at opposite sides of the field.
Suddenly, Naruto pulled a syringe out of his pouch and stick it rather violently into his neck, eliciting gasps of shock and an incredulous look from his opponent.
Naruto felt the serum leak into his system and shook his head.
Genma nodded at him, and he nodded back.
"You may begin!"
Naruto dashed into action and threw a kunai above his opponent's head.
Hyuuga Neji smirked, but seemed on guard at the 'failed attempt', when Naruto suddenly disappeared.
Thank you for your reviews! Sorry for the cliffhanger!
Please leave suggestions and/or requests/questions and I'll do my best to answer them!
Q & A
Is the toad style canon?
No…
Do you still need a translator?
YES! Please help!
Why have we not seen Naruto's syringes before this?
He has to use them less often now, so you don't see him sticking himself as often as he popped the pills. It really lasts longer. He does it offscreen.
Why did so-and-so do s-and-so?
All questions will be answered later in the story.
000
To the rest of you, thank you and good night!