NARUTO (c) Kishimoto Masashi ・Shueisha ・Studio Pierrot ・TV Tokyo. All rights reserved. Non-profit fun ahead!

Note: Alternate universe. Fluffy friendship. Lots of WAFF! No pairings. You have been warned.

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Down The Untrodden Path
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Chapter Twenty-Eight


"This is different from what we originally agreed on, Orochimaru," was Itachi's calm, monotonous answer to the question lingering in everybody's minds. He then straightened himself unassumingly, his eyes continually locked on Orochimaru.

In reply, Orochimaru - Itachi's supposed superior, smirked at him. "Itachi..." he spoke, raspily. "I see... the blood of the Uchiha truly does run in your veins, despite everything, hmm?"

A loud explosion interrupted Orochimaru from whatever speech he was about to give. All who were still present in the courtyards, as well as curious commoners peering out from behind the windows of the bricked walls they were now safely located behind, turned their attention to the source of the noise. It was made by a huge, hulking figure, currently masked in smoke and dust. As visibility slowly got better, the recognisable form of Jiraiya could be seen first. As he rose to full height, the creature he was now standing atop of quickly showed itself before the masses.

"Should you really be worrying about Uchiha Itachi?" Jiraiya spoke out to Orochimaru, now that they were on eye level, each standing atop their summoned beasts. The giant toad Gama Bunta eyed the huge Manda snake, understanding the situation quickly, even as Jiraiya continued, "Your opponent is me, Orochimaru!"

Orochimaru raised a brow. "No, I am not," he replied, shaking his head. "...when have you /ever/ won me in a duel, big or small, Jiraiya?" He asserted, and Jiraiya's shoulders jumped slightly at the trueness of that statement. "Never," Orochimaru leered, "in case you have forgotten." He shrugged. "And you certainly aren't going to start now."

"We'll never know until we try!" Was Jiraiya's prompt, riled up response. He made a set of seals. "Doton - Doryuudan!" He then pressed his palm on the head of Gama Bunta, who took the channeled energy and transmitted it into a massive Jutsu. A huge, towering dragon of mud ascended from beneath the ripped tiles of the palace courtyards, its eyes glowing with long-awaited action. With a wide open mouth, the mud dragon spewed out shot after shot of thick, slimey mud, tightly packed into huge balls.

Yet Orochimaru was unconcerned. He had made his own set of seals, and very rapidly unleashed them. He made a similar, watery dragon materialise out of the air, and with deathly speed and accuracy shot out several balls of water that quickly neutralised the balls of mud that came their way. Once the double shots knocked each other out, Jiraiya and Orochimaru both gave each other knowing grins.

That was merely the warm up.

The real thing had only just begun.

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Naruto was lost in the grand scale of the battle that next followed. While chaos continued to ensue around him, all he found that he could concentrate on was the battle between Jiraiya and Orochimaru. He soaked up in the atmosphere of the moment, looking at the Jutsu that were being used and committing them to memory without even realising what he had done.

And he would have continued to watch, if Sasuke hadn't grabbed him by the back scuff of his neck and started dragging him away from the hotbed of action.

"Sasuke, bastard! What do you think you're doing!" Naruto immediately screeched, struggling wildly to break free to no avail. Sasuke kept his hold firm, refusing to let Naruto have his way.

"We're getting OUT of here you little moron!" The huffed up Uchiha replied. "If we stay here any longer we'll be fried by the impact of the fight!"

"So lemme be fried!" The blond yelled, still struggling. "I wanna stay! I /need/ to stay!"

"What the hell is wrong with you!" Sasuke stopped dragging Naruto, as they had now reached the threshold of a fortification gate, which after they stepped through they would be relatively safe. All around them, there were still commoners rushing by, gathering themselves towards the gate, pouring out of the courtyards. In contrast, the stationery figures of Naruto and Sasuke were like pillars of unwavering will in the face of impending doom. "You wanted to be King, didn't you?" Sasuke softly reminded Naruto, after feeling slight regret over his outburst. "You've already decided to lead these people to where you want them to go, haven't you?" He gestured slightly. "If you go down here, now... then where will these people go?"

His words seemingly broke the spell that Naruto was under. "Oh yeah," the boy blurted out immediately, much to Sasuke's surprise. "...I'm here to become King, ain't I?"

Sasuke tried to control his twitching brow. "Excuse me?" He politely queried with a dangerous voice.

"Aah, you see..." Naruto grinned like a fox, and as the floor behind him got ripped up by an amok fire Jutsu, he continued, "...I was rushing here and everything because I wanted to stop the execution because I didn't want you to die before I kicked your ass into next week or anything, and I completely forgot I was supposed to stop the coronation and become King too," his grin was, if anything, getting wider by the second. "Oops."

Sasuke could not take it any longer. Future king or not, this boy deserved a spanking that would put the most seasoned of nannies to shame. With that thought shining through in his eyes, Sasuke raised a hand. "Na... ru... to...!" He growled, ready to smack the blond any time. Naruto, sensing his punishment, quickly lifted both hands up to protect himself against the incoming chop.

Both their plans of offence and defence, however, came to an abrupt stop, when a massive chunk of wall came flying past their ears at breakneck speed. It crashed into the gate they were about to enter, crushing a few people who were still rushing to use it, and putting that particular gate in such a state of shambles that it could no longer be used.

Naruto and Sasuke turned back to the battle at hand. To their horror, before their very eyes, Gama Bunta disappeared in a puff of smoke, and Jiraiya fell from midair to the ground, hitting the collapsed tiles there; motionless - except for his heavy breathing and a single hand, pressing onto a wound on his side. Orochimaru alone still stood atop his summoned beast, his hair whipping about to cover his expression, but not enough to cover the complacent smirk on his face. The people who were still in the courtyards screamed. The people who were trying to use the gate Naruto and Sasuke were standing before also screamed. They then switched directions and now ran towards the next nearest gate.

The area cleared quickly. Only Naruto and Sasuke stood before the broken gate when everybody else had fled.

As if mocking them, Orochimaru turned their way, and sneered at the duo. Then he turned away, towards the direction of the pavilion, where Tsunade and Itachi were. Naruto shook with rage at what he deemed was the slight of his life. Without a word, he took a step forward, meaning to run towards where Orochimaru was, to give the snake-man the beating of his life. He would have succeeded, but Sasuke was in front of him before he even knew it, with one foot stuck out. Always eager to step forward but never knowing what laid ahead, Naruto fell spectacularly for the oldest trick in the book. He landed with a loud crash, head-first, on the ground.

"Stop trying to pretend as if you're some inhuman hero!" Sasuke scolded, now that he knew he had Naruto's attention. Grabbing the boy's shoulder and hauling him onto his feet, he continued, "You can't win Orochimaru! You /saw/ what happened to Jiraiya-sama! Why are you always so eager to send yourself to your doom! Can't you--"

"So what? So what!" Naruto shook Sasuke's hand off his shoulder. He turned and glared at Sasuke from the corner of his eyes, and Sasuke was immediately taken aback. Instead of staring at angry blue eyes, he found himself looking into furious red irises. As he pondered the possibilities of what it could mean, Naruto ranted on. "So I can't win that stupid snake - and that means I gotta stand here and watch Tsunade-baba die! Bullshit! We've been through this before, Sasuke!" Naruto growled, and his Chakra aura began to glow visibly. "You don't have to come along if you're such a scaredy-cat!"

That, of course, drew Sasuke back into reality. "What was /that!" He pushed Naruto on the shoulder, clearly offended. Naruto fell head-first into the ground again. "/Who/ was the one shaking in his pants when he first saw Orochimaru's grand display of powers, huh?" Sasuke withdrew his sword from his hilt, and turned his eyes upwards to the pavilion, where Orochimaru and his summoned snake was also slithering towards. "Come on, number one scaredy-cat. I got some scars to repay."

By this time, Naruto had gotten his head away from the ground. He stood, a wild, feral grin decorating his countenance. His eyes were still tinted with the dangerous red Sasuke thought he imagined. "Oh yeah," Naruto agreed. "Race ya to the bottom of the pavilion then! Last one there's a rotten egg!" The blond stuck a tongue out at the exasperated Uchiha, before dashing off with loud laughs of how 'Sasuke-is-a-rotten-egg', and several vernacular permutations of like insult.

Sasuke gaped for a whole moment, before realising that he really would become a rotten egg, if he did not try to catch up with the bustling blond now.

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"Itachi, Itachi," Orochimaru smirked at the stoic, wordless Uchiha, who was standing atop the roof of the pavilion. "...we had a deal, and our deal has not ended yet. And what is this you're trying to show me now? Betrayal at the most important part of our deal?"

"Hoh..." Itachi uttered, not a single muscle in his face twitching. "I'm surprised, Orochimaru. You still remember we had a deal."

"Do I look senile to you?" Orochimaru retorted, still smiling.

Although it did not seem like a rhetorical question, Itachi wisely refrained from answering. He nevertheless opened his mouth to say something else, "Our deal was on very easy terms, Orochimaru," he started, "and yet you have time and again tested its boundaries." The winds were strong high up in the air, but Itachi's stature never swayed. "Whether or not you are senile, I will remind you again what we agreed on." He closed his eyes, and slowly reopened them to reveal a pair of swirling Sharingan.

"Yes," Orochimaru purred, encouraging Itachi with a voice that was underlaid with what was undoubtedly a trap, "...remind me, please."

Itachi declined to acknowledge Orochimaru, proceeding as if the older man had never spoken at all. "In exchange for your word that the throne be untouched by you until the new monarch is crowned, I have fulfilled your condition to eliminate the Uchiha clan, save the renegade. To cover for that mistake, I pledged allegiance to your cause, until the new monarch ascends the throne. Our deal expressly states that I am free to carry out my own agenda so long as they do not come in direct opposition to yours. Tell me, then," there was a narrowing of Itachi's crimson eyes, "...why have you gone out of your way to breach the condition, that you are not to eye the throne until the next monarch ascends it?"

Orochimaru's smirk did not lessen in any way. "That is because," he said, in a sweet yet sinister voice, ".../I/ am going to be the next monarch!" He laughed, as if it was all very funny to him. "Just think about it, Itachi! If I become the next monarch, you won't have to switch loyalties at all! And you'll continue to be my right-hand man, knowing everything I do and commanding every single official in the land! I don't see what you're so upset about, my boy!" His tone now became slightly more serious. "This isn't about the Uchiha clan's silly pledge of allegiance to a line of kings that has already perished, is it? Huh?" The chortle that escaped Orochimaru's lips was dry and scoffing. "Coming from the boy who massacred the very clan itself to go against that king in the first place? You could have fooled me, Itachi!"

Itachi continued silent and unreadable. He did not deactivate his Sharingan. For that matter, the three dark dots within his irises began to swirl with a dangerous speed. "You do not understand, Orochimaru," he spoke, softly, calmly, "...what I wiped the Uchiha out for. You do not understand what I killed the clan to protect." Silently, he withdrew the sword from the sheath that was hanging upon his belt.

Orochimaru smirked at the challenge.

And then there were no more words.

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7/9/2005
tougenkyou . net / xd

...hmm... no more review responses in stories. well, we all saw that coming from ten miles away didn't we? XD anyway this new review reply feature seems neat. if you took the trouble to leave a signed review, i'll definitely use it to reply you. not sure how well it really works, though :O did any of you other folks from the previous chapter get my review replies?