Author Note: Oh wow, I was right! The manga's ten times better and I'm still in the Wave arc. Not only that but Tsunami's definitely a looker in the manga. On a totally unrelated note, pocky and porn (whether in story, picture, movie, drawing, or whatever other form) are a combination that will lead mankind to world peace.

Author Note 2: Oh FFNET soooo infuriates me, I'd have posted a week ago but the site would not allow it. Well... here it is anyway.

At Any Cost

Chapter Eleven

Moses ain't got shit on me.

-

The ninja turned away from his current work, breathing heavily and obviously exhausted, and regarded the little boy. "What did you say?"

Inari looked back at the older boy, a boy perhaps only five years older than him but who was already a man in the eyes of his own village. A boy old enough to kill and be killed, know and make love, to live free and become strong. His eyes narrowed slightly as he repeated his demand. "Teach me to be strong like you, I want that power, I need it… As I am I can't avenge anyone, not even my father, who fought so hard to protect us."

The ninja paused, then snorted. "Revenge? That won't get you anywhere, that's for people who live in the past. You can't become strong for the sake of revenge, there's no power in revenge."

"Then why are you strong? What purpose do you have power for?! WHAT'S THE POINT IF YOU CAN'T GET YOUR REVENGE?!"

"Revenge isn't everything. Didn't I just say that?"

"BAH! What do you know anyway?!" Inari turned and began to stalk away from the ninja, eyes shut tight as he recalled his father, tied against a post, knives slicing into the flesh, the blood…

In a flash the ninja was before him again, wire and shuriken already in the air, pinning the boy to the ground while he came closer, and looked down at him with hard, unreadable eyes. "I may know a lot more than you think. Don't judge people until you know their history. I watched my entire family die. My father and mother, my grandparents, my aunts, my uncles. All the friends I had made in my clan, my cousins and people I'd never even met. They were all killed by one man, he never even broke a sweat." The ninja sighed slowly and closed his eyes. "I wanted to kill him, it was my sole purpose, the reason I lived and grew, because I wanted to kill him. Staying away from people and burying myself in training, I became skilled, and maybe intelligent, I was the number-one rookie in my class. But I wasn't strong, I had no reason to truly live. That kind of life… I don't think people should live like that." He looked down to the little boy.

"What made you think that way?"

The ninja shrugged, unsure of himself. "I guess my teammates really. They're both always so damn happy, it pissed me off at first, I thought, what idiots, playing at being ninja. But Sakura really understands what it means to be a ninja, she's weak, and she's powerless, but she has cunning and intellect beyond what you would think, she knows that ninja are hard-bitten and jaded people so she's doing her damndest to enjoy her youth… Kakashi has the pain of losing someone, I can see it in him, and he has overcome the need for revenge."

Inari inclined his head as he regarded the other ninja. "What about the other one?"
Sasuke winced slightly and yanked his weapons and wire back before sitting down in front of the kid. Inari unconsciously rubbed his arms where the wires bit into them as he sat up and looked at him. "Naruto… Naruto's the guy who influences me the most, I guess. When I first met him I thought 'what a loser' he was the worst in the academy's grades, and he hardly ever came to class. But then he introduced himself, as the vessel of the nine-tailed fox that attacked our village almost thirteen years ago. His life was lonelier than mine, and harder than yours, but he did what I did, threw himself completely into his training, foregoing friends and anything that would have made him any less powerful in his eyes. He never knew anything else and so he made himself enjoy it, he was hurt by people and no one helped him so he just wants to kill everyone. He's the ultimate avenger because he can't complete his revenge." He sighed and threw a hand towards the house they were all staying at. "When we got here, I heard about people who were suffering, and couldn't fight back and I thought 'someone should help them' and Naruto just snorted, he probably thought 'they're so weak they can't even stop this guy Gatou on their own'"

Inari looked away, feeling suddenly sheepish. "Well… y'know we can't so he's not really wrong."

"You can defeat Gatou. I feel pretty confident that all you guys need is the courage to stand up together, unified, make a statement." He gave a kind of pitying sigh, "But I guess, you could always hire some ninja to help finish the bridge and pray Gatou doesn't buy the bridge when you finish it. Anyway. I found out after that just how strong Naruto is, he's impossible to kill and he never gets tired, if he decides to kill you he will channel power unlike anything you've ever seen before and will never see again, and he won't stop until you're dead or he can't go on. First time I saw him fight his leg was severed at the knee, his gut was blasted open, one of his arms was gone and his face was half gone. He was in perfect shape again after a second or two." Sasuke let the horror of the image sink into Inari's brain. "After that, he started acting up, bossing Sakura and me around, I fought him because I wanted to take him down a peg, and he almost broke my rib cage with only his own power. On the way here he tore a ninja apart with his bare hands and chakra, fought with a crushed heart and lung, got an arm cut off and invented two new techniques that made me violently sick. He's not even human, and he doesn't have a direction, and that's the path I almost took."

He shook his head, clearing the memories of Naruto's disturbing power from his thoughts. He knew its source, and hated to think what he would have done to match it, there were ways that humans could find power like that, and he had no desire to know what they were, not anymore at least. There was quiet for a moment in the forest as his companion seemed to be thinking too, Sasuke was only partially grateful for that. After a long while, the child intruded on his thoughts again. "Then… Then teach me, show me how I can protect my family and my friends!"

A grin split the Uchiha's face, it was an unnatural and abominable expression on him, didn't go well at all with his black eyes or his dark hair or his pale skin. Inari was frightened by it. "If that's the way it is… Then go do fifty push-ups, fifty sit-ups, and then run around your house a hundred times, no using the bridge either, you have to jump across the creek." Inari stared at him in shock as he stood up and focused his chakra before sticking to the trees. "Go on, I've got training to do too!"

Inari wondered, briefly, if he could change his motive back to revenge.

-

With an undignified grunt, Haruno Sakura lowered the third steel I-beam she'd been carrying into position, sliding it up flush against the next part while a pulley system held the other end in mostly the right place. This was something of a routine for her now in the second week of their stay in Wave country (1), the two boys would run off to train and she would guard Tazuna and help the bridge builders. Sasuke seemed odd, soft almost in the past few days, whatever it was, Sakura wasn't entirely sure she liked it and Inner Sakura was entirely sure she didn't like it.

As her mental image had described him, he was turning into a plushie version of himself, but without the cuteness or huggability. That was simply disgusting to Inner Sakura, who was much more attracted to the blonde sociopath. Why? Well… That would be a question for Inner Sakura, not the author. Sakura herself was partially disgusted with the shallowness and total emotional blankness her teammate exhibited, even Sasuke had never been that heartless. Then again they were different people with upbringings in different levels of pain.

Not that that excused him in any way of course.

Shaking herself from her reverie, she lowered another steel beam into place and smiled at the ease and simplicity of the motion, it had been much harder when she'd been doing it at first, but now there was almost no effort involved in holding it while one of the more skilled individuals fixed the supports into place. The land was close by now too, Sakura had to consider why exactly she was upset that the job would be coming to a close soon, but she accepted it with a minimum of grumble. Although one thing she wouldn't miss was that rat-bastard who had the audacity to grab her ass… On the construction site no less. Luckily she'd been holding a steel I-beam at that moment and used it to throw him off the bridge (or as she had related it to Sasuke, 'launched his pervert-ass into next Tuesday'. Sasuke had not shared her enthusiasm).

She was still surprised that Giichi, one of the workers who'd been Tazuna's friend for some considerable length of time, had been the only one to back out of the work. Tazuna had refused to let her pick a fight with him, since he'd been a friend and his fear was understandable, instead she had redoubled her 'training' efforts. It paid too, even if she lost the already debatable femininity of her figure, strength would impress both Sasuke and Naruto, not to mention that she could beat Ino-pig senseless next time they argued. Inner Sakura and her outer self shared a malicious laugh at the mental image of beating Ino up and having her two crushes throw themselves at her.

The bridge-builders gave her a wide berth when she had these spells.

-

"Aaaaaaa…. Ng.. aah… eheh…" The very disturbed blonde held his arms wide apart, red, evil chakra poured out of his body into the massive walls of water on either side of him, and they cast a crimson light over the misty beach. He began to laugh as he held the jutsu up now for at least ten minutes, and kept his eyes on the seafloor all the while, after all it hadn't seen daylight in millennia, he should bask in the sights he could. His arms began to shake as his chakra threatened to give out, and he eased the water back down, towering ten meters over him he didn't want to know the kind of impact he'd get from it. At two meters his arms collapsed and he was crushed into the sandy beach again by the wave. The subsequent ebb and flow lifted him from his spot and carried him up into the grassy area beyond the sand.

By this point, Naruto had been in Wave country less than a week (2), and it had been a very productive little bit of time at that. Then again, there were goals now, Naruto had to slay his foe and spill his viscera from a gaping wound in his abdomen. He had to feel the flow of warm and soothing blood so wonderful in color that it… Etcetera, Naruto's typical pseudo-lullaby after training to the point of exhaustion.

Kakashi had informed them when they arrived that Zabuza's injuries were likely faked, and momentary death induced to deceive them. For someone like Zabuza, he'd said, the recovery time should be about one week. Also the masked ninja who 'killed' him was likely to be an accomplice, highly skilled at that. The blonde looked forward to facing them again, killing the little, fake hunter-nin and wiping the floor with Zabuza for making him not enjoy his fight. And perhaps also for cutting off his arm and making him verge on angst.

In spite of his eagerness for a rematch, the blonde found himself remarkably calm in the almost groggy Wave country, the constant atmosphere of fear and depression from the people did nothing to spark his interest or disperse his good cheer. Which drew back to the question of where the blonde's brief angst had come from and where had it gone? His teammates would never describe Naruto as being an introspective or terribly deep person, and they would be right, mostly because he understood that he was happy as it was, and needed nothing greater or lesser.

What they wouldn't believe was that he knew for a fact that he could be 'better off' or indeed far 'worse off' according to normal people. When he slept, the blonde dreamt unsurprisingly of himself, though never his exact self. Naruto dreamt of other possible versions of himself, sometimes he wasn't even a he in the alternate times, although those visions frankly frightened him. One consistent dream involved another version of himself as a ridiculously stupid, hopelessly energetic more appropriate ninja.

The 'real' Naruto knew that his consistent dream self liked fighting, but hated the kill, he loved the Haruno girl and she was repulsed by him. Worst of all, dream-Naruto was still happy with everything, he had nothing and desired much, he wanted respect and love and would never receive either, and had already suffered pain from loss. He was ignored by Kakashi, and derided by his teammates, because he lacked power and strength. Dream-Naruto didn't even read Icha Icha!

Real Naruto saw his counterparts, and realized that his was the only true way, the only proper way, and he pursued it relentlessly and unquestioningly. He watched, as his dream-self competed with Sasuke, climbing trees with chakra, or trying to, just another sight of his own weakness, he even trained himself into exhaustion and was almost killed by-

Blue eyes flashed open and caught the hand over his face by its wrist. The eyes glinted subtly, expectant, until they took in the body the wrist and hand were attached to. Another kid, looking about the same age, with a nice face and a light, agreeable pink kimono. In a flash Naruto was on his feet hopping this way and that, seemingly blinking out of existence to reappear at other angles, examining the feminine creature. Appearing once more before her, he pulled out a little orange book and began running a finger along lines of characters.

The book slapped shut with a loud 'crack' and the blonde had a finger pointed in an accusatory fashion at the other individual. "AH-HAH! I know you! You're Mai! Waitaminute, Mai died in icha icha eight, after she seduced the god of death so that means… EEEEEE!!!! YOU'RE THE GHOST OF MAI COME TO HAUNT ME FOR NOT BUYING MY OWN COPY OF ICHA ICHA PARADISE VOLUME EIGHT: IN THE HANDS OF GODS!!" Though hearing the unflappable blonde scream in abject horror might have been funny, Haku simply blushed to a tremendously embarrassed red color, Hinata turned that color when she wore her mask around Naruto still.

"I think you're confused, my name's Haku, not Mai, and I'm fairly sure I'm alive, and I've never seduced the god of death," Naruto seemed unconvinced by the almost unemotional tone in the other's voice. Haku gave a depressed sigh and shook his or her head in an almost disdainful manner. "You're a ninja, right?"

The question, as Haku had hoped, quickly banished Naruto's delusional fear of her and he quickly turned in another, potentially dangerous direction. "Ninja? Well, yeah I guess I am, but I'm not a good ninja, I'm just unnaturally powerful, being the host of Kyuubi no Kitsune and all. You wanna fight me? I just finished my new technique, I call it 'Moses ain't got shit on me' and it's really awesome!" the girlish child blinked confusedly and shook his or her head again with his or her hands up in a placating manner.

"N-no, no that's alright, I'm not a ninja, and I wouldn't want to fight someone as strong as you anyway." He/she carefully tiptoed around the proclamation that he was the vessel of the nine-tails, he/she not quite believing the real host would be so stupid. Haku cleared his or her throat and gave the boy an imploring look. "I am searching for a particular kind of herb, will you help me gather it for a while?" He/she held up a sprig of some plant or another for his inspection and he gave a shrug, obviously disappointed at the absence of a fight.

"Ehh, yeah sure I guess. Say, aren't people supposed to be careful out around this area?" Naruto, despite his firm belief that only the strong and powerful were worth anything, was too worn out right now to train. When he was exhausted he always let curiosity take over. So he calmly set about looking for the herbs the girl (or boy) sought.

Had Naruto trained more for the less violent work of ninjas, he might've easily spotted the herb, had he even trained more conventionally within that realm of combat, the same might have occurred. As it was now he was randomly picking through the ground brush for the herbs his new companion was seeking. Speaking of his new companion, she/he had just spoken to him. "What is your name?"

Naruto looked back at him/her and blinked in frank confusion before it clicked in his head. "Oh, Uzumaki Naruto, vessel of the Kyuubi no Kitsune. You can call me Demon, Monster, Naruto, or God, I've been called a lot of things so I don't much care. What's yours?"

"Haku," s/he answered simply, and the introduction seemed finished with that. Naruto went back to searching for the herb and the gender-neutral child did the same. For a while there were no communications between the two, then, as the first time, Haku spoke to question Naruto. "Do you have anyone precious to you already?"

Being as focused and tired as he was, Naruto's attention was solely on the ground before him. His/her words, thus, startled him. He once more looked back towards her. "Say that again?"

"Do you already have someone precious to you?" His or her tone was now significantly less warm, and Naruto was certain he or she wasn't hitting on him. He hoped.

His expression however showed a flicker of darkness before brightening. "No, I have only myself, and because I have only me, I am stronger and am even more powerful." However, his answer didn't seem to please Haku overmuch.

"Actually you're wrong. Because you have no one precious to you, you lack power. Because you stand alone you lack strength. When you protect someone you love, a precious person, you can become truly strong."

Haku's words dispelled Naruto's cheer dead away. His countenance darkened immeasurably and he placed a hand on his shuriken holster. "Precious people, loved ones, only die and leave us. In the time they live they hurt us and their death leaves an open, weeping sore in your soul. Luckily I have a spare." He looked up at him or her with fierce, animal eyes, the blue was vibrant, full of life in the same way a corpse is full of maggots and bacteria. His fetid blue eyes stared right through him or her. "I am indestructible, and I could slaughter the entire world if I thought they would be a challenge. I am Uzumaki Naruto, I fight for the sake of fighting, violence is my sex and the killing blow my high, pray you never see me again, Haku, for you have drawn my rage." Naruto was fairly sure that was his best bad-ass routine, and gave himself silent congratulations as he went back towards the house of the bridge builder, his stomach reminded him he needed food again. Stupid stomach.

-

Kakashi reflected that it was good to be team leader sometimes. He had the responsibility to wait around and grab a hold of Naruto when he saw him again to give him a training regimen, and the other two bought that with almost no convincing. Since Inari had sprung himself from the house as well, he was alone all day with Tsunami, this was something even better to the perverted Cyclops. So it was, with a little bit of alcohol-aided plying, that Tsunami sat beside him at the table, giggling her ass off at his ninja adventures, and obviously as drunk as she'd ever been, pouring the jounin another drink from the umpteenth bottle.

"So then Gai screams and says 'NO! Kakashi your hipness has once again bested my youthful passion, as I promised I would, I shall now run around the Hokage monument forty times before nightfall, on my hands, and if I fail to do that…' I was already gone of course, I had things to do that day, but I should have known running into Gai first thing in the morning was a bad omen for my mission."

"oh no! Kakashi-kun, what went wrong?" Although she wasn't quite coherent at the time so it came out in more of a drunken slur. The jounin however, understood the enthralled-widow dialect of drunken slur and did his best to look rueful from his one eye. Not hard really.

"I don't really like to talk about that mission, it…"

"Ohh, Kakashi-kun you can tell meeeeeeeeeeeeeee."

He paused for a few moments longer and then looked over at her, a still sad look in his eye. "Well on that mission I lost the woman I loved, I still miss her today…" This brought about a whole new round of sympathetic weeping in slur-ese from the widow, Kakashi barely repressed his grin.

Works every time. (3)

-

Naruto watched the incoming ship, taller than the boats he'd seen up until now, but they wouldn't be able to resist him. From on deck he heard shouts of 'what's that?' and 'he's just standing there' along with cries of 'get him!' and 'kill him!'. His grin spread wider still as he looked over the people who were looking down at him where he stood, miles out from shore on the water. A part of him absently wondered why Kakashi never taught him how to walk on water, and another portion just said that it was easy as sin once you figured out tree walking.

But the inner monologue was a sub-plot of the sadistic grin on the blonde's face. He stared up at the men on the boat and called out to them in a sing-song voice. "IS THERE ANYONE STRONG UP THERE??"

A moment later there was much shouting and yelling, someone threw a bucket at the idiot blonde, clocking him solidly on the head. Unfortunately the bucket bent inward and caved around the blonde's skull. The crowded bow suddenly got quiet.

His grin didn't falter.

"OKAY THEN!" fingers interlaced, hands clasped together he entered his favorite seal and widened his stance. Red chakra boiled in his stomach and spilled out from his seal like fire from an open window. The red wrapped around him and then drew forward, together around his hands, more and more gathered and then he lifted his still linked arms up into the air, as if presenting the snake seal for inspection. "Akki Chishichuusha!" his hands broke apart and flung downwards, scattering away all the red sizzling energy into the sea. Streams of the crackling demon-energy whipped off of his arms and hands and flooded into the waters, mixing and fading away from sight, finally it seemed over and he released the pose. Gathering a breath for the next part.

The people on the ship seemed to think that was it though, and when he did nothing more for several minutes they began to, at first nervously, and then with greater enthusiasm laugh at the apparent ineffectiveness of his technique. Naruto looked up at them and smiled broadly, before his hands came back together with the fingers interlaced and palms pointed outward. "THAT WAS PHASE ONE!" He cried out to them, "NOW YOU GET TO SEE HOW EVIL REALLY WORKS!" Red spilled out of him once more, this time naked to the eye and went further into the water, deeper than ever before, straining and pulling, it activated the killing, corrupting streams already in it. The water began to glow an ominous orange-red around the ship.

He panted, heaving for air once more. Out on the open sea this job was harder, but he would do it, he opened his mind up and let the fox see what he was doing, the act opening up still more chakra for him, his body screamed in protest but he refused to back down just yet. A loud grunt and he began to pull his arms apart, a line forming slowly in the water as he did. "AKAI…" he began, another half-scream half-grunt. "UMI…" He dropped the act and grinned widely as he pulled his hands easily the rest of the way apart, and the massive boat fell, all hands aboard, to the sea floor, hellish red light illuminating as they crashed amidst other wrecks from today. "No jutsu." There were no bodies on the other boats, the surviving crew noted dully, before the sea walls crashed down around them again.

"Fufufufu…" Naruto was feeling much better now than he had when he met Haku four days ago. Now his jutsu was finished too, time to earn his keep and guard the old man. He grinned as he walked back across the water, Hinata would be so excited when he told her about his new techniques.

-

1: The attack hasn't happened yet, I'm giving the genin team time to train and Haku time to think of a counter to Naruto and a likely way to counter Kakashi since (s)he didn't see him fight much.

2: For those keeping track at home, Sakura's section is two weeks in and just before the attack, Naruto's section is a few day's into the stay. About when Haku shows up first.

3: For more on this one, encourage me to write Hatake Kakashi and the MILF.

Author Note: Sorry folks, for the delay. Stuff happens. Next chapter will be Wave arc final fight, and if I get to it, you'll see what the Akki Chishichuusha Akaiumi no jutsu will do. Kek.

Aidis: …… HAHAHAHAHAHA….. Kakashi and the MILF….. HAHAHA

Islagatt: (The author glares meaningfully at his beta) Hey, watch it, or I'll make it a tentacle fic! (The author pauses with a faraway look in his eyes) Kukukukuku… What you never wondered about my awesome Shokushu no jutsu?