The Groundhog Exam
Chapter Thirty Seven
by Lionheart
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Author's Prequel: Yes, I am afraid that having Lee
appear, after his death, was an error. Now I'm all depressed, having
SO FEW errors when I've written enough material to represent a
significant fraction of the original!
I OBVIOUSLY NEED MORE!! Yes!! That will fix everything! People shout about my errors because they STAND OUT! I've only got a handful! That will change when I willingly introduce HUNDREDS OF THEM!!
----
Since this was a 'get Kakashi fired' reset, Naruto didn't have to wait for an opportunity to approach Kurenai, as she was already his teacher.
Currently her eyes were wide and her jaw hanging open as she regarded the insensate toad sannin who was covered in his own drool. And she'd watched that happen.
Once she'd recovered herself a bit from the amazement and cleared her throat, she said, "Brilliant use of illusions, Naruto. Ninja are trained to be resistant to fear, but they aren't trained to resist pleasure, so they really would find this more difficult to fight against. And it's use as a bribe is really outstanding. Would he really give you a summoning scroll if you asked?"
Those were among the most precious and well guarded of techniques.
Naruto's only answer was to grin and summon a toad as big as a horse to sit on.
The jonin's eyes widened yet further. "So he has."
The blond boy was giddy. "We're also using pleasure/pain illusions to help train our clan tigers, to reward or punish behavior respectively. It works until we have better methods worked out."
"Clan tigers?" she blinked at him several times.
Naruto popped to his feet, eager to tell her, "Oh yeah! They've got ones as big as horses over at the Forest of Death! They're better fighters than most chunin, and would probably BE that grade if they could use jutsu! So, we're training them! Did you know that Konoha tigers happen to be a social animal? They hunt in groups, like lions! Hana is really impressed. She says that will make everything a lot easier."
"What easier?" The jonin was, admittedly, having a touch of trouble following all of his thoughts, he was introducing new concepts so quickly.
Naruto sighed, slowing down the pace of his explanations. "Hana Inuzuka has joined a small study group I've formed. We're all agreed to share all of our techniques, and in return for a bunch of secret Wind techniques and weapon use and a whole bunch of other stuff, as her contribution Hana is sharing her clan's Beast techniques."
"That's against the law!" Kurenai began sputtering. "Clan techniques are..!"
"Perfectly acceptable for sharing among spouses. Think of it as a harem, if you will, but I've married a ton of girls, and as part of my new family we are acting to strengthen each other's techniques and fighting styles, and that includes sharing those restricted jutsu."
That put Kurenai back, and she unintentionally blurted out her first thought, "Hinata will be crushed."
"Why?" Naruto returned, honestly puzzled. "She was the first member of it, and would have been the ONLY spouse I had if she hadn't gone and recruited a second all by herself, just to boost her own confidence in her ability to handle me. That opened up room for a third to volunteer, and a handful have decided since then that this arrangement suited them."
Yes. He might have... encouraged, such decisions on their behaves, such as by administering the odd massage or creating an outfit or two. Still, those decisions had all been theirs.
He'd just provided input to help those decisions along. That's all.
The boy put his arms behind his head and casually examined the sky. "In fact, Hinata made me promise to offer you a chance to come down and check in on all of us, sort of be our den mother. The girls wanted to have an older woman to confide in, and you could make sure that nothing inappropriate was going on at the same time. That is, if you wanted to..?"
Inappropriate? The jonin blinked. The kid had a HAREM!! The whole thing was inappropriate! Well, technically legal, she supposed, suddenly recalling the various bloodline protection laws in place, put in there by Konoha's major bloodline carrying clans and bolstered by some others for fast recovery in cases of catastrophe (as nobody could be sure that what happened to the Uchiha could only ever happen just the once, or that a sudden loss during a war might not do effectively the same thing to an unlucky family), but still!
Shoving those scattered thoughts aside for the moment, the illusion mistress firmed up her resolve and nodded. "Yes, Naruto. I'd like to come down and see if anything inappropriate is happening. Your 'girls' might need counseling, after all."
Naruto grinned.
----
Illusions could be used for torture. Kurenai knew this. She also knew, from having seen his demonstration, that they could be employed for pleasure as well. Once she'd had a second to think on it, it had become apparent to the jonin that what Naruto could possibly be doing was something awfully similar to what he'd openly said they'd been doing to tigers, using pleasure or pain illusions to reward or punish behavior, brainwashing those girls that way.
It didn't add up with what she'd seen of the kid's character, or what Kakashi said about him. But she was enough of a ninja not to discount the possibility.
After having made the short trip to a ramen stand, then up the steps in the back of the store to the modest home above it (where Naruto explained they had been having most of their meetings), she had to admit that this was looking less and less like a typical cult all of the time.
For one thing, Naruto just didn't have that 'greasy preacher' feeling of a cult leader. Secondly, successful brainwashers are in control, it's a requirement, and from the number of requests, catcalls, ordinary conversation bits and other things to which he just replied "Yes, dear," in a humble tone as he was asked to deliver hairspray, or a massage, or to go get groceries, this was a fairly normal human relationship despite its odd angles.
That made Kurenai very curious indeed, as she was also enough of a ninja to look beneath the surface and to be able to discard wrong data, and her first thought of a brainwashing cult just didn't bear up under the barest scrutiny of the evidence.
In fact, it felt like she'd just walked into the home of a comfortable, well adjusted, normal (well, normal by ninja standards, anyway) family!
Which, should have been impossible, since he'd only known most of these girls for a couple of weeks. But, then again, the female jonin had to sigh and revise her beliefs yet again in favor of the evidence. People just did not act that comfortable around each other without LOTS of practice!
Seeing Ino, who was among the most status conscious young genin girls in town, lying down with her hair in a towel, just fresh from a bath, no makeup and only wearing a bathrobe, as one of Naruto's clones rubbed her feet and ankles... that sort of cozy domestic scene was very typical for husbands and wives, but NOT for blushing teenagers or girlfriends out to impress a person!
It was a 'I've seen you at your worst and love you anyway' scene of domestic love and bliss. That sort of harmony didn't come out of nowhere, and often didn't exist at all, even among older established married couples of many years. It showed a genuine bond of a sort that couldn't be faked, well, not well enough to fool her, at any rate!
She hadn't gotten her jonin rank out of nowhere, after all!
Kurenai began, only in that moment, to believe those girls might actually love the guy and not have married the village pariah out of some sort of duress like enslavement or brainwashing. No jutsu she knew of could evoke feelings of love and kindness, and Naruto was positively oozing joy over the privilege of rubbing Ino's feet!
Kurenai had once heard love described as "A feeling you get where it is a privilege to hold your wife's hair out of her face so it doesn't get in the way as she barfs in the toilet." She'd never actually seen that happen before, but this Naruto... she could believe it. He truly loved them that much, and would be happy, ecstatic even, to do exactly that.
It was a sort of tenderness, mixed with devotion, and a dash of good, solid affection (although that didn't half describe it adequately).
He cherished those girls!
And it didn't go only the one way, either. She could tell that each and every one of those girls would find themselves hopping up out of the skylights in glee over having morning sickness, as it would be a sign they'd have his child.
She shook herself out of that imagery, as there was nothing there to suggest that any of those girls had entered into a state of pregnancy. But it was a compelling image all the same.
Those girls would gladly suffer discomfort, bloating, and a whole range of other difficulties to make that boy happy, and the thing was that went the other way just as far, with him being honored to fetch and carry for them, treating each girl as if she was her own precious princess to him. Each one a jewel incomparable to the others.
It honestly made Kurenai a little envious. Asuma was, at best, an indifferent suitor. But he'd shone out when contrasted to the rest of her admittedly small group of admirers.
And she had to quash a jealous feeling, the urge to punish someone else for being happier than she had any hope of being. It was a momentary thing, and not all that strong, but it still surprised her. She'd thought herself above all that. Only, in that moment, she wasn't an instructor concerned about her shy and delicate student, or a jonin worried over possible illegal activities, but a cave woman who felt envious over another female having gotten a better catch, and about to reach for her club to try and take it from her, if only just to destroy it so her rival couldn't have it!
That thought was very unlike her, and she admonished herself sternly over it, all inside of her head.
And, in that moment, she had to acknowledge that what she'd been feeling was real, as that type of deep, gut reaction only came when deep down you knew that what you were seeing was real, and you'd never have the luck be so happy yourself.
The illusion mistress heaved a deep sigh, resolving to go out and seek Anko. It was time the two of them got drunk again. Usually it was the other woman who came after some disappointment or other and needed the companionship of a good friend as she went out and got plastered. This evening, it would be the other way around, with Kurenai doing the same thing, only as the active one out to drag the other instead of a semi-resisting participant going along out of friendly duty to be there with a shoulder to cry on - her usual role.
Dang it! She was too young to feel a spinster! But this happy scene of marital bliss before her made her feel twice her age, at least. No small part of that being due to the fact that she felt unable to match this happy picture on her own prospects.
No, Anko would get dragged out drinking tonight. Not that the special jonin would object, it would just confuse her, and only until she'd gotten Kurenai to confess the whole thing after the red eyed woman'd gotten herself smashed over it.
Sometimes it really stank, being able to predict yourself so well.
----
Temari was happy. She was married.
Those two facts were connected.
Oh, half the time they didn't bother telling the village anything, as over time it grew boring having too many weddings all on top of one another (something that, she supposed, set her apart from other women who thought that you simply could not have enough weddings sometimes. Well, they should try it! It got boring real fast!), but still, she knew it and was willing to ride along, let the village think whatever it wanted to!
Actually, the Sand kunoichi had never seriously considered the prospect of marriage in her immediate future, as she was an outcast in her own village because of her relationship to Gaara. So casual dating, and even most friendships, had been impossible for her across most of her life. Thoughts of marriage had been like thoughts of, well, any other impossible dream! NO matter how fancy or nice the illusion, you still had to wake up and face reality.
Well, it just so happened that now her reality included a husband.
Circumstances were a bit odd, it was true, what with the harem thing and the being caught in a time loop. As they had it, however, they didn't have it so bad. Naruto was utterly devoted to them, just as much as they were to him. And none of them had to suffer any of the loneliness he'd had to, as they had each other to commiserate to and be social with.
Naruto had actually confessed to her, at one point, that a big part of the reason why he'd let Hinata talk him into including more than one girl in this whole relationship and the time loop that came with it was that in his 'Great Girl Decode' as he'd liked to call it, he'd discovered that girls needed to talk.
For her that was like pointing out that birds needed air to fly. But to him that had apparently been some great discovery, that girls actually NEEDED to talk about their feelings and things!
He'd compared it to hunger. It was just there and had to be dealt with, nor was it optional. Going without good conversations was bad for girls, even if they didn't talk about anything important.
Realizing he'd had no sisters growing up, or no mother either for that matter, she could forgive him for not knowing something so obvious. But he didn't have to pretend like he'd just uncovered one of the secrets of the universe, or something!
Still, it was awfully cute for him to try.
So, he'd said, since girls had to talk, and those conversation couldn't afford to be unchanging, in order for any girls to be included, he'd had to include more than one, so they could talk about their issues during the whole time warp thing without going batty or having no one to understand them.
Well, she had to admit, that was considerate of him. It certainly made it easier to accept everything, once taken in that light. Not that sharing him was any hardship, mind you! If anything, they felt that HE outnumbered THEM! As, even with their Shadow Clones, they could only create about a dozen each at maximum, mostly just three or four to be safe, while he typically did THOUSANDS!
It was enough to make her feel like he could marry every kunoichi in the village and not only would it not cost her anything, it was possible she'd not even NOTICE until it came time to be selecting babysitters!
"Oh? You're married to him too? I had no idea."
Then drag the other girl off into conversations.
Temari felt almost embarrassingly hedonistic thinking of it that way. Then, in the very quiet depths deep inside her soul that she'd have to discuss with the others, she also admitted that she found his tail to be a major turn-on.
Shying away from those embarrassing topics, she saw one of him enter with Kurenai beside him. Eager to be talking to an older, experienced woman about important issues like how it felt and what it meant to be turned on by one's husband's foxy bits, she rushed over to assist in the jonin's assimilation into the group so such important topics could be broached in confidence!
"Hello! Have you seen Naruto's mindscape training technique yet?" She asked the older women with a brilliant smile gracing her own face.
It would only be one reset and the woman could be convinced of the truth of their story, and then such important secrets could be shared!
----
Kurenai stared out across the village of Konoha, unburned, unblemished, and unable to believe her eyes!
There! Over there! She'd SEEN a six-tailed demon tiger appear! She'd known she had! It was unmistakable! No jutsu, no technique, no NINJA had EVER caused such feelings of helplessness and horror in her! It had been a bad reminder of just how much she'd forgotten about how terrified she'd been on the night of the Kyubi attack!
She was an illusion mistress. She knew how to fake things, and, conversely, what could not be faked. And, frankly, anyone able to create an illusion THAT real was even more of a danger than the six tailed tiger itself was! Luckily, it was known to be impossible even among the strongest illusionists.
Then there had been the demon dragon as well. It had been mind boggling. The whole town had burned, Konoha was reduced to ashes and then those ashes pounded on relentlessly until there wasn't even a recognizable crater left!
She'd been on the outskirts, among the few survivors, out there on a run for their lives and being chased by Sand and Sound ninja.
And now... there wasn't a thing to indicate it had ever happened.
Even among ninja, whole villages don't get destroyed overnight and then the next morning no one noticed a difference! Konoha had been destroyed, and now it wasn't. That merited a talk with the Hokage. She'd even dragged the boy who'd explained it all to her along so he could explain it all to him.
That had gone fruitlessly. She'd pressed until they'd had to isolate Naruto for medical evaluation, withdrawing him from the chunin exams so they could determine his mental state (and if the demon fox was escaping, even just to cause her nightmares).
After having the boy committed to the psyche ward of Konoha's general hospital, Naruto's girls had come, some alone, others in groups, to tell her how they felt about that. Hinata had actually been bold enough to scold her for having done that to poor Naruto - a boldness that made Kurenai wonder if she wasn't the one to go insane.
But Ino and Tenten had formed an odd partnership, and simply taken buckets of smelly tar and brightly colored paint, splashing them all around her house.
Kurenai had chased both laughing girls out, but the damage had been done. It would have been months to fix it and clean everything, but...
Now it was a new morning. The paint and smelly tar were gone. Sarutobi had never heard her telling wild stories about the double demon attack or the destruction of Konoha. He'd never had Naruto committed to psyche evaluation on her recommendation...
... and what's more, he'd never listened to her explanations about Naruto's ability with illusions, or fired Kakashi, or given her permission to train the son of their previous Hokage.
It was too big to be an illusion, too complex, and she'd done everything she could to test for one or dispel it anyway, not wanting to believe that what she'd been told was occurring. But it was anyway.
It was all, exactly, every point, as the boy'd described it. Time was repeating, caught in a loop, everything resetting to the first day of the most recent set of chunin exams.
And only those who'd furnished bedrooms in his mind knew anything about it.
She turned to face him, the red-eyed jonin looking down at the much shorter boy's upturned face. He'd already, very obligingly, shown the village that he was bearing enough foxy accouterments to freak out any average member of Konoha. Their reactions had been real, and far too complex or complete to have been orchestrated by one human mind. It was too large and detailed to be any kind of dream or illusion she knew of.
And nobody, nobody at all remembered any of it the day after.
Even Sakura, Naruto's teammate, had gone from a simpering, weak-willed fangirl one moment, to seeking Naruto, 'her foundation', for support against having to marry Sasuke, back to fangirl obsessed over marrying the Uchiha, then over to a scornful, sneering turncoat glad 'that demon brat' had been contained, and now back to fangirl again. That alone was too complete a job to be faked. Girls may have mood swings, but that was ridiculous!
Kurenai sighed, then nodded. "Alright. You've got me convinced. Time is caught inside of a loop. Why haven't you brought the Hokage in on this?"
The boy scowled in frustration at himself. "I've tried, but the jutsu doesn't work on him for some reason. I'm exploring why, but for the present..." the child spread his hands to indicate how helpless he was.
Hinata's teacher had to nod in understanding. Some things you could do, and others you couldn't. It was clear the boy had invented the technique himself, so could hardly be blamed for not knowing why it had certain limits. Some techniques had been in use for centuries and still no one knew all of why they would do some things and yet not others.
Sighing again, she blew out a big breath of contained air, and her frustrations with it. "Okay, kid. You've got yourself a den mother. I'll look after your girls on all of their womanly issues, give them the advice they need, and assist you in training and planning, cover you with the other jonin, and so on."
She sighed again, shaking her head as the enormity of the task faced her. "Pity we don't have Anko in on this, she'd LIKE to be facing Orochimaru over and over again."
----
Naruto stood before Anko, grinning brightly.
Then she smirked, "Okay, kid, you've got my interest. Tell me what you know already. We'll see where we go from there."
He began to list them off. "My basic three are fully mastered, seal-less and almost traceless. Body Flicker and the traveling ten likewise. I also know ..."
...a few moments later...
Impulsively, Anko grabbed the kid's head and mashed his face into her bosom. She had a son! Boyfriend! Brother! Whatever you wanted to call it! Whatever he wanted to be! Train him? Heck! She'd gladly MARRY him!! If this kid was this strong at twelve years old just think of what he'd be at fifteen, or TWENTY! Her old teacher was doomed! Did you hear her? DOOMED!!!
The special jonin broke out in mad, triumphal cackling, still crushing the kid's face into her underclad bosom, and giving him an eyeful in the bargain, and it was a significant step up from the equipment on his wives. "Oh! Boy, we are going to defeat Roachy-chan and make his life hell! Come here and give me a hug!"
She gave a long, joyful cackle. Still holding the kid's head to her chest, she whispered gleefully in his ear, "Tell me, how'd you like to know the Temporary Paralysis technique?"
"Already know it," he responded into her fleshy pillows. "Good for fighting snakes, as they are especially vulnerable to it, and it gets harder for Roachy to summon more, as he's first got to dismiss the inactive ones, costing him chakra he'd rather use on more summonings."
Having thought she had already had the perfect student, Anko had to revise that one step higher. "Say," she asked, after blinking several times. "Have you ever considered sex with an older woman?"
She was going to KEEP this one by hook or by crook, and that was one of the traditional ways women got men into their clutches. It had never worked out that way for her, but you never knew, and had to keep trying your options.
Or so she thought, anyway.
Still, the moment after she'd said it she'd started to doubt herself, as that was some awfully heavy guns to be hauling out, and he was probably too young a kid to even be considering that yet. Still, just as she was about to draw breath to retract that question, she felt a pair of hands under her trenchcoat on her fleshy globes.
Naruto had shifted his face about to be staring up at her our of her cleavage. "Can I offer you a massage and let you think about it?"
----
Tsunade looked up at the official front gates of Konoha and sighed. Far from the only entrance, they remained the most symbolic one.
Shizune, beside her, spoke reassuringly. "Really, Tsunade. Bad thoughts now? Isn't this point a little late for that?"
The legendary medic mock-snarled at her apprentice of many years. "First name basis now, huh?"
"Well, it only seemed appropriate, what with everything else and all. Legally, you and I are sisters, and were ever since we both said 'I do' to the terrified priest in front of that young man you had in a headlock over the altar." The apprentice of many years giggled girlishly.
Rolling her eyes, the legendary medic had to admit she had a point. "Ok, sis. Now you tell me, what is an old crone like me doing with some young kid?" The crone in question doubted herself, the relationship, pretty much everything after the two days of walking it had taken them to reach the town.
"Well," Shizune put a finger to her chin, pretending to think about it. "I thought it had something to do with those massages..."
Instantly, before she had a chance to continue, her suddenly revitalized teacher had picked her up and dragged the much younger woman across the entrance way and past the gates of a town she had sworn never to return to.
Yet, even as they entered, both could swear they overheard a cry of, "Now give me BABIES!!!" in a woman's voice they didn't recognize.
Shizune was smiling, even in her teacher's adamant grip. Brightly, she chirped. "Well, now we know where to find him at least!"
Tsunade smiled, and chorused with her apprentice, "Follow those cries!"
----
Author's Notes:
Continuity errors? YEP! By the bucketful! I just re-realized that one of my most successful strategies for dealing with whining complainers before has always been to grant them MORE of whatever they bitch and moan about!
The other has always been the "unexplained, unwanted crossover" -and if you don't believe me, look up Exiled Jedi, where I put BUGS BUNNY into a Star Wars fic already several hundred pages into the plot.
If you think I can't perform a 'time-space jutsu' experiment gone wrong and suddenly dump this into a Robotech continuity, then think again!
And, if that doesn't work, there's always even more disturbing things to add.
You see, there is a true story of a hitchhiker who pulled a gun and tried to car-jack the vehicle giving him a lift. After the driver had pushed the pedal down, getting it up to above a hundred, then sideswiped a few concrete barricades, he informed his terrified passenger that he'd forgotten just who had the power in a moving vehicle, and after threatening to kill them both in a massive accident (which was also, incidentally, guaranteed if the guy shot the driver at that speed), the hitchhiker threw his gun out the window and gave himself up to be arrested, after they drove off to find some police.
As the Author, I have the power over this story. If you don't like it, only be reminded that if you're reading it, and hate it, I have every ability to make you hate it more.
I take a perverse glee out of ticking off people who nag me about making my stories better when they themselves have never written a thing! It's also so MUCH easier to have Konoha attacked by a 100ft tall marshmallow man than think up quality material! I am perfectly willing to trash a story they like, but say they hate, just to see them squirm!
I have done so on more than one occasion. In certain circles I am even famous for it.
You have been warned.