Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or History's Strongest Disciple. I've got a fever. And the only prescription is the rights to one of these two series. So doctors, get me a prescription for the rights to Naruto or History's Strongest Disciple. You guys do that and have it be legally binding, right?
Chapter 36: The Other Side of the Fence
Naruto would have rather fought five Berserkers at once than deal with what he currently had on his plate; Berserker's badass teacher, who was also Ryuuto's badass teacher. When it rained it poured, because Naruto was tired, not that being at full strength would have helped him much more.
"If you're gonna whup my ass or something, could you give me like… five minutes to get my wind back," Naruto asked, trying to give himself as much of a miniscule chance of survival as he could muster, "I'm wiped. Caving Berserker's head in was way harder than I thought it'd be."
And there went Naruto's penchant to mask his nerves with snarky comments. It might have just set the table for him to get killed.
Because that was a great idea, talking smack about the guy you only recently trounced that was under the tutelage of the infinitely scarier person standing right in front of you. But the tall white-haired man just continued to smile at Naruto in a rather unnerving manner.
Most people didn't smile at you when you took out their student's legs and then proceeded to beat them to a bloody pulp. They definitely didn't smile at you when you ran your mouth about it afterwards.
"God, you look so much like your parents…" The man said, walking closer to Naruto. His lone comment froze the boy solid, keeping him from taking off like a spooked deer, "I really did like them you know. They were part of the reason I didn't fear being cast out by Ryouzanpaku when it happened. Even when I followed the Katsujinken, I held a respect for your father. I wanted to fight him."
"You knew my parents?" Naruto asked before shaking his head to clear out some latent cobwebs. He knew this already. He had heard the story from Hayato. Ogata had been taught by Ryouzanpaku long ago, meant to be their first disciple.
"Not as well as some other members of Yami. I didn't gain membership until long after their deaths," The man said with a flippant 'oh well' kind of hand gesture, "But like I said, I knew them. Ryouzanpaku's masters at the time and your father clashed on several different occasions before you were born, while I was still training there."
"So you're Berserker and Ryuuto's master?" Naruto asked. For a Yami master, this person seemed… kind of cool. Oh, he was certain that the pleasant demeanor he was seeing was holding back a whole lot of violence and craziness, but that alone did not a bad person make, "…This 'Kensei' guy I've heard about? That's gonna get confusing, because I already know a Kensei."
'Kensei's' smile grew wider as he waved off his own alias for the sake of simplicity. It wasn't like he had anything to hide about himself, "It's just a designation that I enjoy. You can call me by my name Uzumaki-san," He said with a bow, "Ogata Isshinsai, of Yami's One Shadow Nine Fists. But, I still have another disciple's battle to watch. Would you like to join me?"
That was right. Kenichi was still throwing down with Ryuuto. That was the main event. He and Berserker merely decided to step away and duke it out because they really didn't like each other, and really, what better reason for getting into a fight was there?
Regardless, for some reason, and Naruto had no idea why, he felt that if nothing else, he could trust Ogata. "I was going back there anyway. I guess I'll get there faster with you."
Apparently this answer made Ogata's day, as he clapped his hands together one time, pleased by Naruto's willingness to go with him, "Great! And while we watch, feel free to ask me what I can remember of your parents," He offered, "There are quite a few things I think you have the right to know."
XxX
(Meanwhile – With Shigure – Queensland, Australia)
Shigure had been used to fighting multiple high-level martial artists. She spent a lot of her time going after highly valued, treasured weaponry that some would say were priceless, and traps were oftentimes lain for her when she went after them. So she was quite experienced in doing battle with people capable of killing her.
Taking on two people capable of killing her at once though was something she didn't experience that often.
As she battled with Raki, she had to make sure to keep an eye out for Mildred Lawrence as she darted around the battlefield, trying to maneuver herself into Shigure's blind spot. If Shigure ever let that happen, she would be dead. It was as simple as that. Whenever Mildred Lawrence took her openings to shoot, Shigure swore that she could see them coming before hearing them.
It was a strange dance. As she fought Raki, she had to keep moving in a circle to keep from allowing Mildred a chance to shoot her without being seen. It would have been so much easier if the ground weren't perfectly level. If they hadn't been fighting in such a flat portion of Australia, she would have used the terrain to her advantage, but there was nothing for her to use.
It was simply her talents and abilities against the two of theirs; one an archer and one a bladed polearm user, both of them grandmasters, as if the odds hadn't been stacked enough.
No matter how fast Raki stabbed at Shigure with her naginata, Shigure was able to maneuver the blade away from her with her sword, sending each stabbing motion past her body safely. Still, despite how she handled the well-dressed martial artist's lightning-quick assault, she couldn't find an opening to counterattack.
Raki's range with the naginata was impressive. With every stab she covered the absolute maximum amount of space her weapon could reach without losing a hint of speed or rhythm in her movements.
Shigure stabbed her nodachi into the ground, using the length of it to block one of Raki's angled stabs and stop it cold. Putting her body behind the defense, Shigure then yanked the sword out and reached her target in the stride of one step.
Before she could finish her swing, she had to change her motion into a blocking one in order to stop five arrows aimed at her vitals. All of them would have hit at the same time, and anyone else would have had to choose what part of their body they wanted to sacrifice in order to protect the others.
In the distance she swore she could spot the smirk on Mildred's face as the speedy archer did her best to keep out of Shigure's line of sight, "So you can stop that kind of shot. That just means I have to make sure you absolutely don't see the next one coming."
Shigure shifted her stance's position to try and keep the lethal archer within her 45 degrees of vision while simultaneously dealing with Raki, who was not letting up again after Shigure had given her a pass once in order to block Mildred's arrows.
"You can't overwhelm me with your techniques," Raki told her, "Even if you were more powerful than me, I've already seen moves like yours before from Tachibana-kun."
Once again, Raki brought up that name. One that Shigure knew very well. That a member of Yami knew someone like the man that also trained under her master an adoptive father, and so fondly, didn't sit well with her. Despite her best efforts it slowly began renting space in her mind, which was already split two ways to try and deal with two grandmaster-level enemies.
Shigure switched to a one-hand grip and pulled out a kunai. Raki saw it emerge and immediately disarmed Shigure of it with her naginata, knocking the tiny blade from her hand into the air, "No sleight of hand that cheap is going to work on me," She said, transferring into a stabbing motion.
A shine came to Shigure's eye the moment the kunai flew into the air. Timing her movement precisely with where she could feel Mildred moving behind her in the distant background, Shigure launched herself into the air and nimbly backflipped, using the movement to kick the kunai right at where Mildred was going to be.
Mildred hardly moved out of the way in time, the kunai only cutting through one of the straps of her training bra, "Whoa!"
Shigure landed on the pole portion of Raki's naginata that had just finished the stabbing motion that she had avoided with her surprise move. To an untrained eye, there would have been no expression on the face of the young weapon mistress as she rested like a cat on the thin surface of the weapon.
If any of the Ryouzanpaku masters or Naruto had been there though, they would have known full well that this was Shigure being smug.
"Have you seen... that before?" She taunted slowly, staring right in Raki's surprised eyes.
XxX
(Meanwhile – With Naruto)
The first thing Naruto took note of after Ogata landed at the vantage point overseeing Kenichi's fight was the present company he immediately found himself in.
"Dude, really?" Naruto asked, staring right at several members of YOMI's armed and unarmed divisions who attended his school. The dangerous group of teenage martial artists had noticed their arrival, "You brought me here? What the fuck?"
"No one will attack you Uzumaki-san," Ogata said with an easy smile as he set Berserker on the rooftop, "You're my guest for the time being."
The way he spoke was pleasant enough, but there was something about it that left no mysteries as to whether or not this was a hard ruling or a loose guideline that the others could choose to ignore. The one thing about Yami, at least their disciples knew where they stood as far as taking orders went.
Rachel looked from Berserker, to Naruto, back to Berserker, and to Naruto once more before saying anything, "You beat him?" Naruto nodded with a smug look, silently basking in the awe that he felt he should have been receiving, "Huh… I thought only the weapons disciples could challenge you. Those were the rules of the bet."
"Bet?" Naruto didn't know anything about that. All he knew was that Berserker's face had been pissing him off. Berserker called him out, and then they went off to throw down. If there was anything more to it than that, damned if he knew, or cared for that matter, "Hey, I told you assholes to just bring it! I didn't say to gamble on who could put me down first!"
If there was a bet on him and he couldn't clean up from it, it didn't need to exist.
Any tension mounting from Naruto's abrasive statement was quickly lost when someone's phone randomly went off with a very uncharacteristic tone for a group of martial artists.
"Oh, hold on," Hyougo pulled out his phone as his fellow kodachi disciple Yui silently rolled her eyes.
Ogata chuckled, leaning his body over the side of the building they were on, his eyes locked on his student doing battle with Shirahama Kenichi, "Hyougo-san, you really should be watching this fight. It's very interesting."
"I am, I am. I'm just texting Makoto-chan," Hyougo replied before seeing Naruto glare at him, "Is something wrong, pal?"
There was, and Naruto shared it with him immediately, "You're not good enough for Makoto-chan."
Hyougo laughed and raised an eyebrow in return, "And you are?" The short-sword user asked.
If he was expecting that to top off the riling up of Naruto, he was sorely mistaken, as Naruto merely raised an eyebrow as though to say, 'Absolutely not.'
"Hell no. I'm worse," Naruto said bluntly in return instead of getting fired up the way Hyougo had incorrectly anticipated he would, "I could never take care of a girlfriend. I have you jerks after me, trying to kill me all of the time," Looking at the amassed members of YOMI, Naruto found a disparity that he hadn't been expecting, "Hey, where's pigeon-boy? I'd have thought he'd want a front row seat to watch somebody try and kill Kenichi."
"Pigeon-boy?"
Naruto fixed them all with a squinted-eyed look before realizing that no one else used his stupid monikers for other people he didn't like, "You know. Ol' what's his face... err, Kanou Shou," Everyone's eyes snapped to Naruto out of sheer shock for calling the leader of YOMI by such a blatantly disrespectful name, "Heh, I almost forgot his name. I call him pigeon-boy too much."
He laughed out of embarrassment at all of the blank stares before walking up to the ledge with Ogata to get the best look possible at his best friend's fight against Ogata's best student. Anything to get the attention off of him, and he never thought he would ever think that way.
XxX
(With Kenichi)
Shirahama Kenichi had a problem.
He hadn't had to worry about giving into his sentiment again the way he had when he hesitated on an attack that would have devastated Ryuuto and possibly ended the fight. There hadn't been another situation like it since.
Ryuuto had been in full control from that point onward, and nothing Kenichi did could turn it around. It hadn't even been a slow progression. One moment they were evenly matched, and the next Kenichi didn't seem to have a leg to stand on any longer.
Every time he tried to break Ryuuto's advantage with any sort of move of his own, he was hit before he could even begin, as though Ryuuto could read his mind. It was maddening.
'I can't be telegraphing my movements that badly!' Kenichi thought to himself, focusing more on trying to guard and counter with the least amount of useless motion possible. It still didn't work, "Oof!"
Ryuuto's favored palm strike method of hitting his enemies slammed into Kenichi's stomach doubling him over. As he stumbled back, he clenched a fist to strike back with a surprise attack, but wound up taking another palm strike to the face. He couldn't even think of attacking without being struck first.
"Gungnir (Invincible Spear)!" Ryuuto hit Kenichi repeatedly with swift palm strikes wherever he found the openings. Even with Kenichi's Seikuuken, even with his immaculate defenses, he was unable to prevent a single one from landing.
It seemed automatic. The second Ryuuto's hands flew at Kenichi it was already a foregone conclusion that they would land. There was nothing he could do to stop them.
Kenichi's back slammed against the train platform, sending him bouncing off, hitting facedown on the gravel of the track. It hurt so much. If even one shot had missed, he wouldn't have known which one it was.
"You have a particular pattern, Ken-chan. One that you can't comfortably change, no matter how hard you try," Ryuuto said, a smile on his face as he caught himself out of habit trying to adjust his glasses that were no longer on his face, "No matter how fast you come at me, as long as I can see you, I can read you like a book."
On their side of the tracks, the Shade Alliance cringed in unison at the impact of Kenichi hitting the ground.
Ukita's mouth hung open, gaping at the beating that Kenichi had been taking, "God... it's like he isn't even trying to defend himself."
He had been a member of Ragnarok, but he had been a fairly low-tier member in his time with them. Most of the other members of the Shade Alliance had been higher up, as in they had been close enough to Ryuuto to know that this was simply who he was.
Kisara spoke up to correct the large judoka, "No, he is. It just doesn't matter," She told him, "It's like Odin's figuring out how Shirahama's trying to protect himself before he even tries it."
"That's the power of Odin," Thor continued, unable to tear his eyes away from the man that had been his leader back in Ragnarok, "There's a reason none of us ever questioned his being the First Fist. He was the strongest."
He still was. Thor didn't have any delusions that if it were him down there fighting Ryuuto instead of Kenichi, the same thing would be happening, only at a quicker pace and with a meatier target to pulverize instead.
Takeda chewed on the shorter than normal strand of grass in his mouth, having bitten off bigger chunks of it as the fight had progressed. As much as he wanted to believe he could stand up with Kenichi and battle YOMI right alongside him, the disciples he had seen from that organization were terribly strong. He hadn't expected less from Ragnarok's former man in charge, but seeing it firsthand was jarring.
"He's seeing right through everything," The young boxer said, "I don't get it. Odin's barely letting his muscles twitch before he's already figured out what's going to happen."
All of this started to sound far too familiar to Miu. The girl could be a walking textbook of martial arts after the lifetime she had spent living the life, and more things had passed through her ears and into her brain than she could readily recall without prompting. What she was seeing, coupled with what everyone was saying started to connect with her.
"The Inner Eye of martial arts!" Miu suddenly exclaimed before fitting over her worry quietly to herself, "...Oh no."
A short distance away, Ryuuto's ears burned at Miu's identification of the technique he was using. He let out a laugh. It figured that the girl who inspired him to take up martial arts would figure out how he was fighting while it was still going on, "If you know what this is, you know why Ken-chan couldn't ever win after he pulled back from his one opportunity."
Niijima simply stood calmly with his arms crossed at the front of the Shade Alliance lineup. He wasn't looking at Kenichi in concern. Instead, the master manipulator of the alliance stared Ryuuto down directly, "Odin, you shouldn't think this is over just yet. That idiot is too tough to put away just like that. I've seen it. If it were that easy, what use would he be as the prime pawn to my hopes, dreams, and schemes!?"
Ryuuto turned his head to regard the insect with his own opinion on the matter, but he never got the chance.
"Niishima, shut up," Kenichi's voice said in a strain, "...But he's right. Don't say stuff like that before it's actually over."
Kenichi stood back up, looking worse for wear, but still ready to fight. His face and body bore the brunt of Ryuuto's abuse, and he still had no idea what he would do to fight back against his former friend. Despite what he had said, he knew that Ryuuto was right. He had never fought against a real friend in such a serious situation before, and he had ignored how strong Ryuuto clearly was, instead finding himself petrified of hurting him permanently.
The feeling clearly hadn't been mutual in the slightest. Even if Ryuuto's Gungnir smashed through his defenses every time and made full contact, Kenichi had still been able to protect his vital areas. His injuries were more of an accumulation of damage instead of taking a true critical blow.
"Oh, you got up," He said, surprised at Kenichi's ability to stand up after landing his favorite attack, "I'm glad. I didn't want this to be something that would end quickly. I've been waiting ten years for this."
He might have been waiting ten years for it, but Kenichi just wanted it to end. If he did, he would have to take the steps necessary do it himself. Even if he couldn't save his old friendship, and it didn't look like he could, he would lose it anyway in death, and also Ryuuto's respect for holding back out of sentiment.
'I should know this by now. The resolve of a martial artists is to fight to win. Otherwise there's no reason to do it,' Kenichi thought to himself shamefully. It didn't matter if it was a Katsujinken or Satsujinken philosophy driving a fighter. They were in it to defeat the enemy, to be expected to pull out all the stops to do so, 'If there's anything to apologize for, Ryuuto. I'm sorry for that.'
He was apologizing internally to someone who was trying to kill him, and he meant it. Either he was much more polite than he realized, or training at Ryouzanpaku must have screwed him up more than he could have ever imagined.
"I did promise to fight you, Ryuuto. But never expected it to end up like this," Kenichi said, "I get it though. I'm the one with the bullseye on my chest for everyone in YOMI. So I'll just have to fulfill our promise, and show you how wrong you are all at once."
"Just when I thought you couldn't make this any better for me," Ryuuto said, casting aside his suit jacket, "Words like that... they're the best to hear from someone you're about to crush."
It was still hard to believe that this was what had become of what had formerly been his closest friend. Ten years was an eternity, but for things to have changed so drastically.
"Nothing's getting crushed here!" Kenichi shouted out, resetting his Seikuuken, "I don't care if you don't miss another attack! I don't care if I go down again! You can hit me with Gungnir as many times as you want, and I'll keep getting up! All I need is one shot to keep you down!"
Ryuuto raised a curious eyebrow, but found his spirit of victory stoked at the prospect of taking that kind of confidence and belief and grinding it underneath his heel, "Okay then," The YOMI representative said, pushing back his purple hair while standing at the ready again, "My resolve against yours. Let's see which one has gotten stronger with time and effort!"
He didn't waste the time setting up his Seikuuken. If he needed to, he could stop and set it up at a moment's notice. No, with Inner Eye and Gungnir, he could push right through Kenichi's defenses, or cut off any attack Kenichi would try to launch first. Whatever Kenichi's trump card was, he would never get the chance to use it. His tells before making any sort of move were ingrained into Ryuuto's mind.
Only Kenichi didn't attack. He once again tried to defend and counter Ryuuto's palm strikes, only to fail and take a single powerful blow over the left side of his chest, "Shintoukei (Sleeping Strength)!" The ruthless attack on the heart's side of his chest caused him to gasp in potentially mortal pain.
Ryuuto grinned and continued his onslaught, or would have if Kenichi's opposite hand hadn't come around and smashed him in the jaw with the bottom of his fist.
The remaining members of Ryuuto's entourage were stunned.
Rimi couldn't believe it, even as she saw the object of her affections fall onto the tracks, his dress shirt torn apart by the gravel and the metal rails. Ryuuto had taken a blow. A significant one. Meanwhile, Kenichi remained standing. More injured than ever and clutching his chest as though he were about to fall into cardiac arrest, but still standing.
"How did he do that to Ryuuto-sama?" The exuberant girl asked to the darkly dressed boy standing with her, "Lugh, did you get that?"
Lugh's eyes never opened for a moment, but he had never missed a moment of the fight. Even more so, he was able to see in a way that others simply couldn't and analyze portions of battle similarly, "Odin wasn't able to adjust because he never saw it coming, and he wasn't able to feel it with the Seikuuken because the enemy's motion was due to Ryuuto's own actions. Shirahama-san only put his own force behind it at the last moment."
Rimi was stumped by how something like that was even possible, and how someone like Kenichi would even know that it would work, "That's impossible!"
Things weren't any better on the other side. Takeda's mouth opened so widely, the piece of grass he'd been chewing the entire time fell right out, "I swear, I've never seen him use that before!" The boxer said, "What the hell was that supposed to be?"
Freya pursed her lips in thought, easily coming up with something she knew of to compare Kenichi's move to, "It's as if he tried to use a counterattack sort of like Siegfried's... only he didn't escape the damage. He still took every bit of Odin's attack."
"Not quite," Miu said, smiling in relief to herself on the other side of the tracks, 'Kenichi-kun adjusted Ma Kensei's Sha Gi Shou Jin (Flowing Water Headbutt). For the technique Kenichi hit Ryuuto with, his own rhythm doesn't matter, because it's not up to him,' She thought to herself, keeping the reasoning behind why it worked inside, 'Whatever way his opponent winds up hitting him to activate the movement behind his counter, that force is the only thing that affects how he moves.'
Ryuuto didn't need an explanation though. It ran through his head of his own deduction right after his vision had blurred from the blunt impact off of his jaw, 'It wasn't that I failed to read Kenichi's rhythm! It was that my own attack changed his to mine!'
And it was done faster than Ryuuto could have possibly adjusted to, even if he would have been able to feel it with Seikuuken or see it coming. Even though it was his own, how often did you get to fight against your own combat rhythm? It was a difficult nuance to identify in someone else, that they were using your rhythm, because people usually didn't get to see the exact way that they fought.
None of it made a difference. It was one hit, albeit one that did quite its share of damage. He wouldn't take another even half as devastating. Not a chance. Kenichi still couldn't dodge his attack. He hadn't been able to avoid anything!
Ryuuto leapt back to his feet and launched himself at Kenichi, his hand drawn back for another use of Gungnir. The same thing wouldn't work twice against him. Kenichi still hadn't found a way to actually defeat his Inner Eye. He just found a way to take advantage of it once, in a way that wouldn't help now that Ryuuto was aware of it.
Still, Kenichi didn't move an inch, yet again standing his ground.
"Ken-chan, just die!"
One moment, Kenichi was there, centimeters away from having his nose shoved into his brain with Ryuuto's never-miss attack.
The next, his head was no longer in the way.
Ryuusei Seikuuken's thin layer of ki around Kenichi's body allowed him to dodge at the absolute last moment. Ryuuto committed fully, putting him in position for Kenichi to immediately aim with his hands and let him counter with an attack that Ryuuto also couldn't read, not because it altered Kenichi's rhythm, but because there was no rhythm to it at all.
"Mubyoshi (No Beat)!"
Kenichi let his own original punch fly with the intent to put his hand through the target. The result wasn't quite that drastic, but it was enough to put Ryuuto away. His body flew away from Kenichi's fist and slammed chest-first off onto the edge of the train platform, the momentum of the impact sending his top half swinging forward to bounce his head off of the cement floor.
Ryuuto's reasoning had been correct. He hadn't taken another attack that did even half as much damage as the Sha Gi Shou Jin. He took one that did more than double that, and not just because of the punch itself.
Kenichi's arms dropped limply to his sides in exhaustion, "There was no way I could get the better of you with my timing, no matter what I tried. So I stopped trying," He said. If he was going to take a hit no matter what, he figured he would try something that would let him fire one off immediately afterwards in return. He didn't think it would be a technique that would directly counter Ryuuto's combination of Inner Eye and Seikuuken, "But then I knew you would try to attack me again and force me to react, which would let you get my new rhythm down. I guess you weren't expecting an attack with no rhythm at all."
'He... I... no,' Ryuuto wanted to get back up and use his trump card. He still had something left that he knew without a doubt that Kenichi couldn't handle. No disciple-class martial artist could. But he lost all conscious feeling and everything went dark before he could, "I... couldn't have...'
"Ryuuto-sama!" Rimi ran over to him and kneeled down by his head. Turning it to the side, she found his eyes wide open, along with his mouth, expression frozen in a state of sheer disbelief and shock, "Ryuuto-sama, you have to be alright! You can get up! You can win! Rimi knows you can!"
Lugh came over and kneeled down with her, laying a hand on Rimi's shoulder, "He's done for today,Atlantae," He said to the distraught girl who seemed set to burst out in tears.
"But... but..." The energetic blonde girl said with watery eyes, "He didn't even get to use the-."
"Shhhh..." Lugh warned her, holding his finger up to shush her. Rimi realized that she had been about to say something important in front of the enemy and quickly covered her mouth with her hands, mumbling out an apology behind them, "I'm sure Odin will want to keep that to himself for the next time."
"Next time?" Kenichi asked, his body wracked with pain after the conclusion to his challenge match, "T-There's going to be a next time?"
Lugh simply picked Ryuuto up and smiled, "Of course. Probably after the rest of YOMI gets their turn against you, myself included. I hope you survive that long. Devouring your future as a martial artist seems like it would be an interesting experience."
Kenichi had been knocked far too loopy to actually comprehend how disturbing Lugh's comment had been at the time, "Uh... huh?"
XxX
(With Naruto)
Positioned in a crouch at the edge of the building, Naruto drummed his hands on the ledge rapidly, a grin on his face at what he had just seen, "That's! My! Man! Whoo!" He stood and threw his hands in the air, turning around to face the others when he remembered where he was, "...Ahem. Yay."
He didn't know what portion of his own dignity he was trying to save with that response. It wasn't as if any of them thought very highly of him in the first place.
Ogata laughed, both at how outstanding the fight was, and at Naruto's reaction to it. Despite the fact that Ryuuto had lost, it had just affirmed that Ryouzanpaku had a disciple in Kenichi worth inheriting their techniques and their title. That would make it all the more better when he was defeated and had it stripped from him.
The others that had watched the fight had taken their own conclusions away from what they had seen.
Having received more than what he needed to analyze his soon-to-be prey, Tirawit Kokin's eyes never left the victorious Kenichi down below as the rest of the Shade Alliance gathered to see to it that he was alright, "Shirahama is a slow starter," He identified, "Would I be wrong in saying that he's the type that needs to feel his life in jeopardy to fight his best?"
Naruto didn't confirm or deny it, instead glaring at the dark-skinned boy with the strange tattoos on his face, "Why do you think I'd even say anything about that? Come to think of it, why the hell am I still here? Fight's over," He turned and prepared to leap off of the roof for another high-up position so he could start making his way back to his friends, "See ya at school, or the next time somebody tries to kill me, 'ttebayo."
All of the members of YOMI just stared him down, except Hyougo who had been texting with Makoto during the fight, and Rachel, who waved exuberantly to him, "Bye Uzumaki! Snap your neck like a twig later, 'kay?"
"'kay," Naruto responded automatically to the downright chipper threat against his life, before shaking it off, "I mean, bring it on... later."
Before he could leave, Ogata stopped laughing and wiped a tear away from his eye as he spoke up, "I told you I'd tell you something about your parents for giving me the pleasure of your company, didn't I Uzumaki-san?" His remark got Naruto to stop before he could swing his arms forward to complete takeoff, "I'm a man of my word."
Naruto paused in his jump motion and spared a glance at his friends down below, then one to Ogata and the amassed YOMI members. There was so much he didn't know about his family. So much that Ryouzanpaku's masters couldn't tell him because they had been at odds with his father for some time.
Jiraiya was good for telling him stories about how Minato was as a genin under his watchful eye, but not for anything significant from his time as an adult.
"Alright," Naruto said in a guarded tone of voice. There had been a question that had been on his mind ever since Fuurinji Hayato told him his side of what he knew of Minato and Kushina's eventual demise. With a member of Yami here, maybe now he could get a decent answer, "My parents were in Yami before you were there, but maybe you can help me with this."
"I'll do my level best to answer any question you have," Ogata said earnestly and with the utmost seriousness, "I don't want you to misunderstand our side. You don't seem to have any personal enmity for Satsujinken, and I'd like to keep it that way."
Naruto nodded calmly, but in his head it was a different story, 'Goddamn it, why do I feel like I can trust this guy so much?' "Okay... well, in that case. I want to know, what was the last order they were given as members of Yami?"
Before it could go any further, Kokin spoke up, "Why are you telling him anything?" None of it made sense to him at all, "He's an enemy."
"Kokin, this isn't any of your business," Ogata said coolly, though a visible shiver went down Kokin's back at his words. He had been sufficiently cowed without a single direct order, reflecting his fear of this man, "This is Uzumaki-san's right to know. If you have an issue with what I'm doing, take it up with your master and maybe I'll listen to him."
Or not. Either way, Kokin stepped back and didn't say another word, his attitude thoroughly regulated by the powerful master-class warrior.
With a welcoming smile, Ogata turned back to Naruto, "If you really want to know, your parents' last assignment was to take a disciple to stand in the upper echelon of YOMI. That would have been you," He gestured to the others, "You would have been one of them. Minato would have been one of the One Shadow Nine Fists."
"B-But I wasn't there," Naruto pointed out the obvious, somewhat jarred by the information he was being given, "I was being trained in the Homeland. I wouldn't have gotten out until I was fifteen."
"The One Shadow knew that. And that was all a part of the plan," Ogata explained with a shrug, "When you graduated and came back to them, the plan was for them to slowly introduce you to the freedom of Satsujinken, as opposed to your clan's ninja philosophy. He didn't think there would be anyone better served to inheriting all of the styles than a child of two vastly powerful shinobi, trained for his entire life in the strictest environment possible."
Naruto processed everything he'd heard, stopping once his brain had mulled around one particular portion of the explanation. It was something that the other disciples had all keyed in on the moment it had left Ogata's mouth if the looks on their faces were any indication. Eventually, it did click for Naruto, and his expression mirrored theirs, "No way. You're not sayin'-."
"Yes, you weren't meant to just be in YOMI. You were meant to be the sole disciple of all ten masters of the One Shadow Nine Fists," Naruto wobbled so significantly that he almost fell off of the rooftop, but he managed to balance himself at the last moment, "Kanou Shou was brought in to serve as the first understudy and God-Hand's disciple. He became the sole disciple after your parents left and later died. For obvious reasons, you weren't available anymore."
Naruto's mouth dried up. Every time he tried to say anything, his tongue felt as though it were covered with sandpaper. What did you say to that? The writing was clear on the wall of his mind. His parents left Yami, and the protection that their position there gave them when it came to their status as missing-nin for their deep cover mission, just so that he wouldn't be taken and turned into Yami's killing machine of the future.
'That's why they stopped their mission to infiltrate Yami? But... but... they could have...' His brain didn't want to work on the problem, the solution, or the reasoning any further, "I... I've gotta go," Naruto said weakly.
Ogata nodded in understanding, "Of course. Just remember, if you have any other questions you would like to ask me about your parents, I'm more than willing to try and answer them for you."
"Thanks," Naruto said, the spirit sapped right out of him as he finally jumped from the rooftop and went about his business. A part of his world had been upturned in a matter of seconds. It had been something in the past, but if he were to look at things in a manner of degrees of separation, there wouldn't have been two degrees of it separating him from being a factor in the death of his parents.
Even as Ogata watched Naruto leave, there was something different in the way he moved. His very posture seemed troubled as he made his way back down to the lower levels of the city to meet back up with his friends.
"Is that true?" One of the weapon disciples took the opportunity to ask, hardly believing what they had just heard. The sheer shock value behind Ogata's information hadn't just been a jarring revelation for Naruto, though it had been significantly more so for him than anyone else.
"The disciples of the One Shadow Nine Fists can ask their masters if they don't believe me," Ogata said as he reached down and picked up Berserker. He still needed medical attention after the number that Naruto did on him, "It's not exactly a mystery amongst us, though you all haven't ever been told. It never involved you. However, I don't like keeping secrets from my disciples."
Suddenly, Rachel started laughing, finally realizing what it was that Ryuuto knew that no one else did. It had clicked for her that the thing that had been causing the perfect, flawless sculpture that was Kanou Shou to crack internally, "Does Suparna know?" She asked through her laughter, as her brother loomed imposingly at her side.
Ogata turned around, his cloak billowing with the motion, "That's something you'll have to ask him when you see him again," He divulged cryptically, "If I were you I would be careful about it though. Whether he knows by now or he doesn't, I don't think poor Shou-kun is the type who would like to know that he was the second choice."
Kokin still didn't understand. It wasn't as though the other members of Yami and YOMI weren't gunning for each other as well to prove that they were the absolute best, still, putting something like this out there made little sense to him, "But why did you tell Uzumaki any of that?"
"Like I said before," The Ancient Martial Arts master said as he leapt into the air to retrieve his other students, "Simply because it was his right to know!"
And if there was a shot in the dark of him taking a second look at things, and which side of the fence he wound up on, it was only a byproduct of him doing what he felt was appropriate in the first place. Naruto's parents died to give their son a choice in how he walked his path in life, instead of stripping it away for themselves and the faceless, shadowy machine that bore them. That was something he respected wholeheartedly.
If he truly respected Minato, and what the man stood for even in his death, it would have behooved him to show Naruto all of the paths that were available to him or could have been available to him, regardless of where either of them stood now.
XxX
(Meanwhile – With Shigure – Queensland, Australia)
Both Raki and Mildred were bewildered at how Shigure was able to not only continue defending herself against their pair of attacks, but even managed to threaten the two of them with her counters. They were fighting too cautiously, and they knew it. Just because of who she was supposed to be. That wasn't how they got to where they were.
"Alright, that's enough," Mildred said, stopping her movements. By now, clearly her plan of trying to move around into Shigure's blind spot and hit her with a shot she couldn't avoid wasn't enough to get the job done, "She can be crippled, right? All we need her alive for is so she can tell us the secrets of steel."
Shigure raised an eyebrow in intrigue. So that was why they wanted to come after her. And here she thought it had just been because she had been a member of Ryouzanpaku. It didn't seem as though they had been fighting to kill her, despite the severity of their attacks.
It made more sense now though. If Yami was set on making its move, its members in the Armed Division would want to make sure that they had the best weapons available for the job. She was the last person alive that could actually create such things for them, so capturing her to pump for information would have been a good move.
"Not a chance," Shigure told her.
"Not a chance that you'll ever tell us, or not a chance that we'll beat you?"
"Both."
"Tch," Mildred bit her lip in aggravation before smiling grimly, "If that's the way it has to be… Raki, I think you're going to want to get yourself out of there. I can't promise you won't get hit by any of these."
Despite the warning, Raki had absolutely no intentions of backing out and giving Shigure an opportunity to focus on any of them, "You and I both know that you only hit what you're shooting at," She said, showing her faith in Mildred's ability. She was one of the Hachiou Danzaiba for a reason, because she was the best, "I trust your aim."
"Raki, you really shouldn't. Not for this," Mildred warned her again as she drew arrow after arrow to hold in her notching hand. The technique she planned on using wasn't about aim, "But hey, you're an adult, so protect yourself, okay? Just make sure she stays in that general area."
"She won't take another step," Raki assured her, the metal of her naginata's blade gleaming in the harsh light of the outback. To her credit, and to Shigure's surprise, she made good on that guarantee, managing to keep her corralled to a specific portion of the battlefield.
The sun overhead began to be blocked out, forcing Shigure to spare a glance up. Her eyes momentarily went wide before she sprang into preventative action. Arrows began to come down from above by the dozens, forcing both Raki and Shigure to trade their strikes through a downpour of them, deftly avoiding the deadly points of both the projectiles and of one another's blades.
As the onslaught eventually subsided, miraculously none of the arrows had hit either woman, but now Shigure had a new problem. The entire area was littered with arrows, restricting proper movement. Upon realizing that this had been the aim the entire time, she turned her listless eyes to Mildred who also stood amongst her own arrows.
Mildred was extremely pleased with her efforts, momentarily flipping the scopes of her goggles up to grin at her quarry, "I wasn't really aiming anything at you specifically. Now you're caught in my Arrow Field," She picked one of the arrows up out of the ground for emphasis.
Shigure spared a glance around and realized that the lack of mobility not only made her an easier target for Mildred, it was a positive for Raki as well. Raki had her in range of her Naginata's stabbing and slashing attacks, while Shigure's nodachi couldn't quite reach.
Raki quickly took advantage of their new surroundings, ensuring that with Shigure's lessened speed, her reach came into play more frequently. She had no problems reaching out and taking precise stabs and swings at her adversary. It was a rarity when Shigure didn't have the ability to dart all over whatever battlefield she was fighting on. One of her main sticking points in combat was due to the fact that she used a sword, all she had to do was make sure that she made contact.
Speed was her forte, even amongst master-class fighters. To take that away was to take away a significant aspect of how she kept herself a step ahead of anyone she fought.
She tried to slowly navigate her way backward as Raki continued to assault her without pause. The entire time Mildred had been firing arrows, she had never stopped, never even seemed to consider the prospect that she would be hit, only focusing on the fight.
Shigure blocked a swipe aimed at her legs, straining against Raki's strength and leverage. A sharp 'thoom' prompted her to lean her body back, possibly saving her life as an arrow ripped through the front of her kimono and her chain mail underneath.
Her eyes moved over to Mildred who had taken a knee, another arrow already notched and ready to fire. Shigure looked at the arrow field and Mildred, realizing that if she allowed her to attack in earnest, she wasn't going to be able to avoid many of her shots. It just wasn't going to happen.
She had to make a move.
Raki was going to stay on her, no matter what. She wasn't going to give her a moment of space to herself if she could help it. She was going to smother her to keep her in place long enough to give Mildred a great shot. There had to be a way she could use that.
Shigure dragged her foot through the dry dirt and kicked it up into the air, causing Raki to wince. The slight opening wasn't enough for Shigure to attack, but it gave her the opportunity to try and break away, heading right for Mildred.
The top-level archer knew that eventually Shigure would try to get close to her, and was ready for it. No archer worth their salt wouldn't have had a way to keep close-combat specialists from getting close, and she was no different, "You won't get within five paces. Cross Scaffold!"
A semi-automatic weapon couldn't have reproduced the rate of fire with which Mildred shot her arrows, But Shigure kept her eyes solely on the prize, reaching Mildred at the end of her field of arrows. Trailing close behind, not missing a step, was Raki. To follow as closely as she could was just a sign of her talent. Unfortunately, Shigure had been counting on her staying close.
Shigure allowed Mildred to get a good bit of aim on her before moving as the arrow was fired. Raki had been moving according to Shigure's tracks, staying within them the entire time to keep from being at risk of the indiscriminate rate of murderous fire coming from Mildred Lawrence's bowstring.
Raki let out a yelp as one of Mildred's arrows would have struck her in the shoulder had she not stopped to block it. She had been following Shigure perfectly, when suddenly she seemed to kick things into a different gear, so much that she just seemed to vanish and leave her as the target instead.
She hadn't quite vanished though, instead waiting for Raki to either take the hit or shift her attention toward stopping it. Once it had happened, Shigure struck with no mercy.
One single downward slash with all of the poise, speed, technique, and power she could muster. Her signature maneuver, the Kousaka Slash.
Raki's eyes rolled into the back of her head as she lost consciousness. Her kimono and undergarments fell apart into two where they were split down the middle by the force of Shigure's attack and fell to the ground, compromising her modesty and signifying her defeat.
Mildred hesitated at the very moment she saw her comrade fall. They had been playing fast and loose for the entire battle with Raki being in harm's way. It hadn't come back to bite them until that exact moment. One mistake, and Shigure tore them apart.
Shigure stood up from her finishing slash and turned toward Mildred. They were still separated by sixty yards, but as far as the archer felt once Shigure's full and undivided attention turned to her and her alone, it might as well have been six feet. She began to fire again, repeatedly, nonstop.
At this point it was more to stall while she came up with a new way to approach the fight.
*THOOM! THOOM! THOOM! THOOM!*
Shigure would have none of it, dodging her way through the frequent shots with her teeth clenched in focus. She knew more than enough to consider herself a master of bow work as well. When volume shooting became the first choice, it meant you were out of options. Mildred moved away, but she closed the distance quickly, faster than anticipated after mapping a decent path to take through the field of arrows.
Counting her steps until reaching her target, Shigure reached into her clothes to pull out a second weapon to use.
A chain suddenly wrapped around the front of Mildred's bow and yanked it forward. Mildred wasn't about to allow herself to be caught so easily and steadied herself after being pulled a single step, but that was all it took. With a kusarigama in one hand, Shigure outright disarmed Mildred with one swing of the sickle, sending the bow to the ground.
Mildred didn't feel any pain, instead choosing to go for her bow, 'I dodged it! She missed!' Only once she bent down to make her move for the weapon, she realized that her body was completely numb and her vision was going dark, "...Damn..." She said aloud before collapsing face-first into the dirt.
"Kousaka Ryuu: Eiga (Kousaka Style: Shadow Fang)," Shigure said, standing right behind where Mildred had fallen. She gathered her kusarigama's chain and sheathed her nodachi with a breath of relief. It was the one you never saw coming that always hurt the most. Her attack exemplified that.
Whenever a weapon-user chose to duel-wield, their opponent as a rule knew to keep an eye on the smaller, faster weapon, as that was the one that everyone was taught from day one the true attack would come from. Shigure took that concept and broke that rule for the express purpose of that one technique.
She would make an attack with the smaller, faster weapon, only to attract attention away from the larger, slower one. The trick was to begin moving with both at the exact same time. The smaller, faster weapon would threaten first, no matter what, but the bigger, slower weapon would still be coming all the while.
Once Shigure had gotten as close as she had, it was too late. It wasn't an attack that you were going to simply block. If Mildred put her energy behind avoiding the nodachi, the kusarigama would have come too quickly for her to protect against at such a range. And trying to outpace the kusarigama in the same situation would only result in what wound up happening; Shigure adjusted her posture to swing through and cut Mildred from behind after she passed by the sickle blade safely.
Even if she had blocked the sickle instead of dodging, she wouldn't have had the strength left behind her defense to keep it up against the kind of power Shigure had been generating with the large sword in her other hand.
"Too bad..." Shigure said to herself, looking over her handiwork before beginning to make her way back to the jeep. Now she had to walk all the way back to a town with the person she had captured with her father's created weapon. All of this had been extremely troublesome.
The walk didn't take long, but when she made it back, she found a man in large samurai armor carrying various weapons leaning against the vehicle, seemingly waiting on her. Shigure slowly reached for the nodachi on her back once again, but stopped when he started clapping slowly.
His armor rustled with every clap, but there was nothing threatening about his posture, nor any killing intent coming from him, "That was great. You've gotten so much stronger, Shigure," He said, calling on her familiarly.
"Who are... you?"
The samurai took off his protective facemask and helmet, revealing his smirking face to her. He had long, black hair, scruffy in the front, with dynamically patterned eyes and several scars on his face, including three horizontal cuts on his left cheek.
Shigure's stance softened in recognition, "Rin. You-," She remembered that face in that sort of armor, heading to where her master and adopted father had lived in the past. This was a disciple of his from long ago, and right then her guard went back up, "-You smell… of blood."
He may have been taught by her adopted father, but he was Satsujinken, and she had just gotten through with quite the predicament against two others. It didn't take much of a stretch to figure that this man was a member of Yami, no matter who supposedly taught him.
"I'm not hiding anything. I'm in Yami's Hachiou Danzaiba, the same as the ones you just beat," Rin admitted freely. He hadn't come to fight in the first place, "I told them I wasn't going to help take you on. They seemed to be fine with that."
Shigure spared a glance back to where she left Raki and Mildred, not too far away, "Not anymore."
Rin grinned and let out an amused laugh, "Obviously," He said, pausing to just look at her, the smile never leaving his face as he did, making her a tad uncomfortable to be subjected to it, "Sorry. It's just so good to see you again. I wish it was as good for you as it is for me, but I guess it can't be helped the kind of light you see me in. You must hate me."
Shigure silently shook her head 'no'. Hating someone because they were Satsujinken and for nothing else was far too short-sighted. It was aimless and that sort of fixation simply was not good for anyone to be stuck on. It was a choice, and Rin had made it. That it put them on opposite sides of a fundamental conflict was merely par for the course.
"You know, you should join us."
On the other hand, suggesting something that ludicrous was grounds for immediate dismissal, which was just what Shigure did.
Without saying anything else, walked past Rin, grabbed the bundled weapon and her prisoner out of the jeep and started looking at the sky as he continued to speak. With all of the fighting and moving she had been doing, she had forgotten which way her jeep had been pointing after it had been forced to spin out and stop.
"Yami is going to make the ideal world for martial artists like us. A place where our skills will be in demand, where the most important thing will be the strength of your will and your body, the way things used to be when warriors were valued."
Shigure stared at the sun until she realized which direction east was in and began walking that way, passing by Rin without sparing him another glance.
"The Eternal Sunset is coming, Shigure. You shouldn't let those secrets inside of your head go to such waste," Rin continued to call after her as she calmly walked away, but she didn't turn around or stop, "I see you've made your choice."
"They won't be wasted. I have… someone," Shigure eventually did say to her brother disciple, just before she reached the range where her voice would have gone unheard, "Good to see you… onii-san,"
The stark dismissal of his offer to join Yami had left Rin a bit disillusioned, but at least it hadn't soured too much between them, judging by the way she addressed him. If nothing else, there was that to take away at least.
But he hadn't missed the other part either, where she said that she had someone to pass down her secrets to. That rumor had already been proved to be true, as the weapons disciples had already made contact with him in-person.
A disciple of her own. Well wasn't that cute? Rin couldn't imagine it, as he could still see her as the young girl he had first met. Unfortunately, that disciple of hers wouldn't live long enough to be introduced to Shigure's father's secrets of steel.
"Our weapons disciples aren't really sticklers on the formal challenge thing," Rin said to himself, "Your boy has more up against him than you probably even realize."
XxX
(The Next Day – Early Morning – With Naruto)
What Ogata Isshinsai had told Naruto the day before had sat heavily on his mind even after reconnecting with his friends and celebrating Kenichi's victory over Ryuuto. Even when he went home and wrapped up his patchy wounds from his own fight with Berserker and went to sleep, he was stuck thinking about it.
His parents abandoned their mission once it involved him. His parents chose certain death as traitors on their deep cover mission instead of going on with what the One Shadow wanted and making him the sole disciple. Naruto didn't need to be told the copious reasons that this would have been horrible.
He could have easily been used against them in a myriad of ways if they had allowed such a thing to happen. He was smart enough to break down that much of their reasoning at least. It was right there in his face to see.
Did that make it his fault? Was he responsible for it? If he had never been born, or had been born just a bit later so that he couldn't fit into Yami's plans and expectations, would that have kept his parents alive long enough to finish their work without having to worry about him?
He had a lonely walk on his way to school to think about all of it. He hadn't brought it up to Jiraiya because what if that changed Jiraiya's view on him. There were things about Minato's mission that Jiraiya clearly hadn't known. It was deep cover after all. Naruto was scared to even bring it up.
As he entered the school grounds and made his way past the front gate inside, someone waiting out front out of uniform caught his attention long enough for him to take notice and recognize that he wasn't a regular. Naruto wasn't about to give it anymore notice than that before he realized that he had gotten the strongest sense of deja vu when he'd seen the person.
Stopping and turning to take a second look, Naruto realized that he knew who it was very well.
The spiky, black hair, the aloof demeanor that never seemed to change too drastically on his face, and the poor disposition all looked far too familiar. He wore casual white pants and a dark blue button-up top, open to show a white shirt underneath, doing very little to hide the fact that this was a well-conditioned, athletic young man.
'Uchiha Sasuke,' Naruto thought to himself, remembering the person before him as much smaller, wearing the same ninja trainee uniform he had donned as well in their younger years, "...Do you remember me?"
He obviously did. He had to. Otherwise, why was he there to begin with?
…Because he was assigned the mission. With that realization, Naruto felt embarrassment at thinking for a moment that the guy who had been at the top of the class when he and Shikamaru had been booted out would remember who he was, even if they had been running neck-and-neck in the very beginning.
No, this was just another one of Konoha's genin sent to kill him. That was all it was. Naruto wasn't in the state of health, both physically and mentally, to fight someone who was significantly talented. This wouldn't be anything like Berserker, where Naruto would be able to win by exposing his lack of fundamentals.
But... he could see the recognition in Sasuke's eyes. He knew full well who he was, and not just as 'target'. Sasuke remembered who Naruto was, without question. Naruto could tell.
He could see the same disdain for his presence that Sasuke gave him when they were smaller and trying to battle it out for top dog position. It was the same disdain that worsened when Naruto started to lose his spot in the eyes of the students and instructors, only magnified even further now by his position as something worse than bottom of the barrel.
A dropout. A failure. Not worth the time and effort of coming out to deal with.
Even after years of never seeing each other, their unspoken enmity didn't need words for such information to be exchanged between the two of them. Still, Naruto knew that he wasn't any of those things. He had survived. He had downright thrived since being cast aside. Sure, things were hard for a long time, but they were looking up now, and he couldn't even imagine how he would have been had he remained student and graduated into a fully-fledged Konoha ninja.
Sasuke sized Naruto up for several long moments before pushing his back off of the wall he leaned against, "I didn't come to fight. I came to watch you. To scout," He said, walking past Naruto before the missing-nin could even take his stance in response to the movement, "I haven't officially been given the mission to kill you yet. I came here to see what this whole 'Jinchuuriki Project' thing was about. I expected to see something odd."
Stumped by his words, Naruto stood up from his fighting posture and tilted his head in silent confusion. Jinchuuriki Project? Was that supposed to mean something? Naruto had never even heard the term before. What was it with this week? The hits just kept on coming. Couldn't he just go to class and take his mind off of everything with some good old-fashioned scholastic suffering?
"-But I didn't see anything impressive out of you."
The hair rose on Naruto's neck at the slight against him, his fatigue all but forgotten. More than five years, and he still wanted to mash Sasuke's face into the dirt just to say that he did it. It didn't help that time had made Sasuke's face progressively more punchable, "What did you say?"
One word from the guy, and he was riled up. It felt like he was ten years old all over again, and that wasn't right!
Sasuke had no problems speaking his mind and pouring gas on the open flame in front of him, "I said, I can see why you got dumped from the program in the first place," The genin-level Uchiha snapped before heading off to return home, irritated with the turn of events, "Tch. If I get assigned to you next, you'd better just jump off of a cliff and save us both the trouble."
Naruto bared his teeth in a violent excuse for a smile, "Sure, I'll jump off a cliff," He told him with a snarl, "Right onto your neck!"
Big talk. But it rang hollow for Sasuke. It didn't sound any different than it used to, and he rarely backed it up in those days either.
His aim from the day he had graduated and been shipped home had been to test himself and the limits of his ability. He took part in the most dangerous assignments that he could get his hands on, as frequently as he could get them. It was all to prove his worth and outpace his older brother's accomplishments.
He couldn't do it by age, as Itachi had graduated years before Sasuke had age-wise, so he had to do so by eclipsing every milestone Itachi had ever reached going by the time he graduated. He put his nose to the grindstone to improve, took in every aspect of the ninja arts, of combat in general to meet and exceed expectations by his family and by those in charge of Konohagakure's manpower.
The way Itachi had spoken of the so-called Jinchuuriki Project, and what it was supposed to have done to the ki of those who had undergone it, Sasuke had expected something absolutely incredible out of Naruto. Something that would have put his name in consideration immediately for promotion to chunin once he accepted the mission and killed him off. But that hadn't been what he had seen.
Naruto's fight with that overly muscled blond boy had done nothing to make him believe that this was the kind of person that would send him on the fast track to the next level. Yes, his opponent had been an absolute monster, but Sasuke had seen through how to beat him within five minutes. It took Naruto far longer, and he took far too great a beating in the process.
Sasuke had big shoes to fill, with his older brother's position on the Kage Council. He wouldn't ever catch up dealing with small-fry missing-nin like Naruto.
This had been a complete disappointment. And the worst part was that things were already in motion. Itachi was already working to get him lined up to assassinate this clown of a shinobi, "When Itachi told me what he'd seen out of you at that tournament, I didn't think it would be just for cleaning up trash."
He didn't see them as equals. He hadn't ever since Naruto had started to slip in the eyes of the instructors at the Homeland, and him failing out of the program altogether had only put him underneath the dirt as far as value went. Never mind everything that he had done since then. All he had survived, had achieved.
Naruto's fist opened on reflex and snapped into position for the Rasengan. He had even turned around to deliver the strike, as Sasuke hadn't gotten outside of a step past him, but he stopped before trying it, 'Wait, what the hell am I doing?'
He wasn't some murderer who just up and killed people because he was angry. He had pulled himself back from the brink against Sai, although barely. Trying to kill Sasuke now, without any real reason other than possible preemptive strike motives wasn't him. It wasn't who he was. It wasn't who he was going to let anyone make him into.
His mother told him to never let anyone change who he was, never let anyone control him. Uzumaki Naruto wasn't the kind of person to let anyone make him do anything. He made his own choices. No one else made them for him, and no one would turn him into something unfamiliar to him if that wasn't what he wanted to become.
"What's wrong, dropout?" Sasuke said, turning over his shoulder with a smirk on his face, "Not gonna try and take me out early? Or is it just that you know how this thing will end already if you do?"
Jiraiya would have kicked the hell out of him for falling into a battle that easily, especially after fighting another one that had already left him physically spent.
Instead of lashing out, Naruto threw his hands up behind his neck and backed away, "Nah. It's not that. It's just that if I kill you, I'm gonna need a better reason for it than just you pissing me off," He said with a wide grin, "You did that just from letting me see your face and your stupid hair again. So go home, kiss your mom, tell her you love her, give her a big, old hug from me, then come on back if you really do get that mission. I'll show you something impressive then."
Not that he had anything to prove to Uchiha Sasuke of all people. It was just that seeing the look on his face when he put him down, whether Sasuke saw it coming or not, just seemed like it would be damned therapeutic. He really hoped that the bastard did get the mission to take him out.
Naruto wanted a reason to kick his ass that was better than just saying, 'I don't like him,' because he was a shinobi. He wasn't some low-rent thug. Besides, he had used that card once on Berserker already. Earlier that day, not three hours earlier, in fact.
The two parted ways without incident, both swelling with confidence, but for different reasons.
For Naruto, it was just a matter of preparation and belief. Belief that he had been training his tail off, and that everything Jiraiya and Shigure taught him had sunk in and would be enough to handle anything thrown his way. He had good friends and great mentors. That by itself was worth more than its weight in gold, and that value meant everything to him.
For Sasuke, the confidence came from a different place, and it wasn't just because he had finished top-of-the-class while Naruto had failed entirely. It was much more practical than that, "Idiot," Sasuke said to himself regarding Naruto as he headed elsewhere, "...I've already seen your moves. You've already lost."
It was a waste of his time, and that wouldn't change even when he was sent word that the mission was a go and his team was assembling. But there was a part of Sasuke that was very excited to get the chance to mash Naruto's face into the mud before he killed him.
Even if Naruto was a disappointment of a target in the end, even if the whole Jinchuuriki Project thing Itachi warned him about was just a lot of hot air, there was something to be said for getting the chance to handle unfinished business.
Oh snap! Revelations on the origin story of our protag, and Shigure showed Yami that you can ambush her and she's still the baddest thing holding a sword! Plus, Sasuke's been creeping and watching Naruto drop a double-deuce asswhooping on Berserker, and in classic Georges St. Pierre and Matt Hughes fashion, he was not impressed by Naruto's performance.
(For anyone who doesn't get that reference, don't worry about it. I've seen way too many fighting related things. That's just classic to me.)
Also, Kenichi dropped one on his childhood friend. Apparently when you're a jack of all freaking trades with your fighting styles, you have an answer to everything, whether or not you're aware of it until you pull it off.
What the hell do I have up my sleeve next!? The answer to that is obvious, dear audience! I'm not wearing any damn sleeves!
I hope you all enjoyed, and I'll see you all around next time.
Kenchi out.