A/N Sorry bout the wait for this one! All I want to say is at the end of the chapter, so let's begin and I'll see you there!
Two and the Same: Chapter 8 - Memories of the Past and Visions of the Future!
Choza yawned as for once, his two children didn't wake him up earlier than he would like to be up by. Groggily, he got up to start his morning training and stretches when a knock came from the door. Rolling his eyes at his luck, he opened the door. "Who is it?" He asked as an Anbu ninja gave him a letter before disappearing to wherever Anbu agents shinshun off too. Choza eyed the letter with a feeling of annoyance as he recognized the Hokage's symbol on it. He didn't even get to eat his breakfast or catch a snack first! Sighing at the missed opportunity, he sat down in his chair and opened the letter.
"Hello Choza, I know it has been a while since I have sent one of these letters to you, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I need to talk to you about your two sons. Meet me at the top of the Hokage summit by noon if you will, and don't forget that you are also a Jonin yourself.
-Sandaime"
Choza sighed as he read the letter before activating the attached seal to burn the letter completely. After sweeping the ashes into a nearby trash can, he looked at the clock and smiled. He still had more than enough time to eat and send Choji and Naruto on their way.
"So..." Choza said aloud, looking towards a seemingly random wall in the kitchen. "Want to explain why you're here?" He asked as the wall seemed to shimmer a bit, before Tenzo walked from it.
"How did you guess?" Tenzo asked, confused by it. Choza simply pointed to his nose.
"I can smell your scent you know? I may not be as good at tracking as the Inuzuka clan, but I can still make out the scents that make up my home. I don't think a scent of burnt tree is a part of that home." Choza explained, motioning to the singe on Tenzo's jacket. "What happened?" Choza asked as Tenzo shook his head. "I see..." Choza groaned. "I'm spending time with my family first, and then I will go, I will not make the same mistake as last time a mission like this was given to me, understood?" Tenzo nodded.
"That's probably for the best. Guy-san was looking for you earlier, said something about y-" Tenzo tried to explain as Choza immediately covered his mouth before looking at the door with a look of intense suspense before sighing in relief.
"I rather not summon him here if you don't mind." Choza chuckled sheepishly as Tenzo stared blankly.
"Anyways, he was saying something about you not telling Naruto and Iruka about your concerns." Tenzo finished his statement, "I'm not that dumb Choza-senpai, I know better than to say you-" Tenzo tried to say before covering his own mouth with a look of guilt.
Choza stared with a blank gaze before the two turned to the door.
A few seconds past before a knock rang at the door.
"I KNEW IT!" Choza yelled as he opened the door to see Kakashi.
"Yo. Knew what?" Kakashi said as Choza blinked in embarrassment before gesturing Kakashi inside, knowingly showing Tenzo's presence as well. Kakashi shrugged and walked on in before Choza shut the door again.
"Choza was fearing summoning Guy-san." Tenzo explained calmly.
"Ahh, I see." Kakashi acknowledged with a look of sympathy, "The rumors are true my friend." He said seriously.
"Y-You don't mean.." Choza said in shock before Kakashi nodded, "Oh thank Kami I was thinking I was going insane." Choza sighed as the last few weeks rolled in his mind. "How does that even work!?" Choza asked as Kakashi shrugged.
"It's like that Genjutsu, no one knows how it works, but it's why Guy is the best messenger, you just have to say youth and h-" Kakashi gave an eye smile as Choza stared in shock as a knock rang at the door.
"DID I HEAR SOMEONE TALKING ABOUT THE WONDERS OF YOUTH!?" Guy yelled from the door as Choza screamed.
Naruto yawned as he woke up to the yelling from downstairs. Rubbing his eyes he yawned once again.
"Please don't yawn again." Kurama groaned as he yawned from inside of Naruto. He had been a lot less active lately, calmly sleeping in the forest that now populated Naruto's Chakra Core. "Not me being less active, it's more me just not having anything to say." Kurama countered with an eye roll, "You might want to get ready, or else you might have to be subjected to the "wonders of youth." Kurama sarcastically said as Guy ran towards Naruto with a glint in his eye.
"Do you wish to learn about the wonders o-" Guy tried to say before being dragged away by an oddly frantic Choza. "I JUST WANT TO TEACH THEM ABOUT THE WONDERS OF YOUTH!" The two just stared with equal amounts of disbelief as they watched Choza kick the overactive Guy-san out of the house.
"No." Kurama said simply as Naruto opened his mouth.
"But-"
"No." Kurama repeated once more, "Try asking again and I will not let you sleep for the next week." Naruto pouted as he stopped trying to ask.
Naruto sighed as he snapped back to attention to see Choji yawning towards him. "Mornin' Naruto..." Choji said with a light wave. "What happened?" He asked, as Naruto shrugged.
"Apparently someone wanted to talk about the 'wonders of youth' or something." Naruto shrugged before the two yelled at Guy appearing in Naruto's window.
"RUN NARUTO!" Choji yelled as the two rushed down the stairs.
"You two, wait a moment!" Choza said as the two tried explaining what happened, only managing to confuse Choza more from how fast the two spoke. Eventually Choza sighed.
"Did either of you two say the Y word?" Choza said seriously as Choji pointed at Naruto.
Naruto nervously laughed before nodding. Choza groaned.
"There's a reason why every household bans that word, apparently Guy-san is summoned by the word." Choza explained to the two. "But that's not why I want you two to wait." Choza said calmly, noting that Guy waited at the staircase with a blinding grin of understanding before disappearing, presumably because someone had said youth under their breath.
"What is it Dad?" Choji asked as Choza smiled grimly.
"I don't know entirely, but it looks like I'm going to have to go away on another mission; however, you all are going to become Genin today and pass those tests of yours. Choji, I know you will be working with Shikamaru and Ino for your team and I hope you find the reason for you to fight. Naruto, you're working with Sasuke and Sakura if I remember correctly, and I know you're working towards visiting the remains of Uzushiogakure, but remember to fight for the future you wish to hold as well. I can't express how proud I am of you two, and I hope you listen to your senseis." Choza smiled, but his smile faded a bit from the confusion on Naruto's face.
"Kakashi-sensei? He was great before, but he seemed to avoid the three of us yesterday, what do you mean by tests?" Naruto asked in genuine confusion as Choza sighed.
"Leave it to Kakashi to do that...he was just here earlier, but he left in the chaos with Guy-san..." Choza groaned as he realize that eye smile he gave when he left was because of this happening.
"Kakashi-sensei was here earlier!?" Naruto asked in shock as Choza nodded. "Wonder why..."
"Maybe to do this?" Kakashi gave an eye smile as both Naruto and Choji jumped in shock to turn around towards him. Choza gave him a bit of the stink eye, having realized he was under a subtle genjutsu the whole time.
"I assume since Guy appeared?" Choza asked with a raised eyebrow as Kakashi shook his head.
"It was actually after I said the Y word, I got you with the Genjutsu when you were getting him out of the house." Kakashi explained as Choza blanked.
"Oh Kami he actually is summoned by the word." Choza realized with a cold jolt. Kakashi gave a sympathising nod.
Choji and Naruto watched in pure confusion as Naruto opened his mouth.
"Why are we avoiding the word you-" Naruto began to ask as the three covered his mouth.
"We avoid it because it summons Guy-san to try and convert young genin into little clones of himself. Choza-san was tramatised by him because of one of his own Genin teams.
"HEY!" Choza said in offense as Kakashi blankly stared at him. "I-It was...okay maybe a little bit." Choza looked down in a bit of dejection as Kakashi smirked a bit before deciding to break the news to Naruto a bit.
"Don't worry, I doubt anyone would have expected Honoke to become last generation's Guy-san disciple." Kakashi shrugged as he noticed Naruto's head shot up to look at him with a look of pure disbelief.
"Honoke-tousan was Guy-san's disciple?" Naruto asked as Kakashi nodded.
"Yup, he was placed on a Genin team underneath Choza-san." Kakashi winked at Choza, but was unable to tell if Choza understood, Naruto didn't notice for he had already began pressuring Choza to explain.
Choza rolled his eyes with a smile of relief. "Yeah, each generation has at least one person that was like Guy, and Honoke was part of it. It scared me relentless because of the Genjutsu. No one knows why it happens, but if two Guy-sans get together, a huge sunset Genjutsu will come out. Honoke since snapped out of it thankfully, but still trained relentlessly in order to protect another one of his teammates." Choza looked a tad depressed at the memory before immediately shaking the feeling off with a fake smile, "But that's for a different day when I have the time to explain the full story to you two. For now, Kakashi here is probably going to take you to start your tests. Right?" Choza asked as Kakashi nodded with the two's attention on him.
"Yup. But first, you two need to get dressed and take a shower." Kakashi said, causing embarrassed blushes to show on both Choji and Naruto's faces from the fact that they were still in their pajamas. Kakashi rolled his eye as the two rushed off before turning towards Choza. Kakashi sighed. "It's still hard?" He asked as Choza nodded.
"Yeah...First Kishu and then Honoke..." Choza sighed, not bothering to hide his sorrow. Kakashi had no real words to help him, since he too knew the pain of losing your comrades. The two sat in a somber silence before Naruto and Choji ran back down.
"Ready!" They cried in union, twin grins on their faces. Kakashi eyed the two with a look before shaking his head.
"Using the Cleaning Jutsu doesn't count." Kakashi said as the two looked in shock.
"W-What do you mean Kakashi-sensei!?" Naruto stuttered out as Kakashi chuckled.
"The more times you use the Cleaning Jutsu, the more you're forcing your body to clean itself completely. It wears out the body and makes it less effective each time you do it in succession. That's why you're only supposed to use it on the field. I can still smell you two stinking so I suppose you two have been using it very often lately." Kakashi explained, causing the two to recoil back when they smelt themselves, before rushing back to take a shower.
"I'M FIRST!" "NO I AM!" The two fought for the right of first shower, much to the amusement of the three adults present.
"At least Iruka-san is still alive, and it looks like he did a good job raising them into fine Genin." Tenzo said with a smirk present upon his face as Choza nodded with a small smile of his own.
"Indeed he did, I trained that brat right." Choza grinned, "He reminds me a lot of Iruka when he was younger actually, always upbeat and pranking everyone. I remember when he decided to go prank the Yondaime and swapped all the seals with explosive ones." Choza bellowed in laughter, "The Yondaime just sent each and every single seal onto Iruka's head in return using the Flying Raijin Seal!" Kakashi smiled in memory, but soon the two sobered again.
"It's almost twelve you know." Kakashi said casually as Choza nodded.
"Yeah...take care of them, alright?" Choza asked as Kakashi and Tenzo both nodded.
"Don't worry about it, it's S rank you know." Kakashi winked as Choza laughed a bit.
"With how many S ranked missions surround Naruto, you would think that he was a Hokage already." Choza grinned as Tenzo couldn't hide his snicker at the joke as Kakashi rolled his eye.
"Not much we can do about it right now, we haven't been able to get Naruto alone to talk about the whole issue, we been too busy with the Academy in order to try and teach him a bit more about Hashirama to get more jutsu out of him. On top of that, while we got the main traitor to the Academy and managed to release the Genjutsu on the Academy kunoichi, we have yet to find out how they managed to get them all under the Genjutsu, or even who they are. It's a mess and all the other higher ups are going crazy by this." Kakashi groaned out, having been on the receiving end of multiple people ranting to him about the mess. "And in the center of all of this is Naruto and his so-called Fox Squad which has been giving the Chunnin a run for their money with how effective they have been at handling this mess." Kakashi continued, not even caring about how he was ranting to Choza at this point, Iruka still wore a grin whenever a Chunnin talked about them and wouldn't shut up about it. Choza merely smirked knowingly.
"If Iruka is bothering you, just tell him that you know about the Sunset Incident, that should get him off your back" Choza winked as Kakashi raised an eyebrow. "Let's say Honoke wasn't the only one who went through a Guy phase within my squad..." Choza's smirk merely turned into a grin as he looked away. "As for the other matters, I assume that's the topic the Hokage's wanting to talk to me about, and I should get going 'less I'm forced to Shunshin, which I rather not if possible." Choza said before getting up and stretching, waving goodbye to the two. "Make sure to keep them safe, or I'll make platter out of you two!" He said cheerfully, as if not threatening their lives at the moment. Kakashi and Tenzo waved back with smiles lining their faces, mask in Kakashi's case, as Choza disappeared.
Kurama rolled his eyes watching the turmoil within Naruto's head, and it must have been obvious enough that even Choji stared at Naruto with a look of worry on his face.
"Yeah, I'm worried about him too Naruto." Choji said as Naruto's head peaked up a bit. "But he's Dad! He's a big tough Jonin that's not going to back down that easily! He'll come back to us, I just know it!" Choji grinned as he stated this, leaving a smile to dawn upon Naruto's face as well. Previous worry forgotten, Naruto grinned back.
"Okay! Then let's do our best to prove we're Genin!" Kurama smiled at the two as they ran downstairs. It looked like the masked man, Kakashi if Kurama remembered correctly, wanted to tell Naruto and Choji something, but they simply ran on past without a second glance. Kurama grinned as he noticed the groan that came out of him and let out a barking laugh about it.
Naruto stopped in confusion. "What is it K-AH!" Naruto tried to ask as Kakashi suddenly appeared in front of the two of them, causing them both to yell out of surprise. "B-But you were just over there a-and now you're here!?" Naruto stuttered from the surprise, both confused, impressed, and desperate to learn whatever it was Kakashi had done. Kakashi didn't look as pleased.
"Now as I was going to tell you, you're not Genin just yet. Unless you pass your tests, you will not be Genin and I will send you right back to the Academy." Kakashi stated as a matter of fact. Naruto looked terrified as he stepped back in shock.
"EHHHHHHHHHH!?" He yelled out in shock, with Choji blanking at the thought of his dad's reaction. Kakashi gave an eye smile.
"Your test from me is to find me before the day is over, but you can only enlist help from your team members, see you later Naruto." Kakashi said before vanishing into a puff of smoke, leaving a surprised, terrified, and annoyed duo of children that were but weren't Genin, behind.
Tenzo stood behind Kakashi, and while aware of his plan, was kinda shocked when both children turned towards him with glints in their eyes. "Hi." He said simply before also proceeding to vanish, leaving both to groan.
"Now what are we supposed to do!?" The two complained in union as Kurama snorted, but said nothing to help them out.
"I-I guess we should find Shikamaru and them, maybe they'll have an idea to help us!" Choji suddenly said as Naruto nodded with a grin.
"Yeah! Then let's go!" The two rushed off with grins atop their faces through the warm sunny day that met them.
Choza sighed as he casually walked on up the long walk leading to the Hokage faces, a national monument for the villagers residing the tree-hidden village. The four faces of the previous Hokage etched themselves to the wall via Earth Jutsu binding the rock carvings of the Hokage's face onto the mountain itself, cementing them into a permanent bind that would never leave. On the paved walkway, Choza walked up to a waiting Sandaime who merely glanced on over.
"Do I still have to leave the X and wait?" Choza smirked playfully as a way to ease the tension that befell the two. The Sandaime merely shook his head with his own small smile.
"Kakashi had let me know you were coming, and unlike him, I don't believe in waiting." The Sandaime finally joked on back, leading to a snort from the present Akimichi.
"You mean he wasn't three hours late?" Choza chimed on back, leading to a laugh sounding from the Sandaime himself, but soon the mood tensed once more. The once joyous face, instead looked towards the village before them, leading Choza to follow suit.
"The world is changing Choza, and I fear I'm no longer equipped to change with it. Eventually I will retire, and I know that this village will need a new head. Naruto, for all his ambitions of becoming Hokage, is much too young and rash to even begin to be Hokage. Shikaku is still busy with his teaching duties and as the main advisory figure for the Academy and Hokage seat as a whole. That leaves only a few people I trust to lead the village in my stead." The Sandaime, no...Hiruzen, stared at Choza from atop his earth-shaped head.
Choza's eyes widened at the underlying message being sent his way. "Y-You can't mean!" He stuttered out, shocked at the mere idea of him as Hokage. Hiruzen shook his head.
"Instead of conforming to the village's desires, you set your personal grudges aside to take Naruto in, protect him and raise him. You didn't force the Akimichi gut upon him and even changed your way of living to accommodate him. You taught Iruka, who is still our best Academy Professor there, who could rival most Jonins in his field, Honoke, who taught Naruto the basics of becoming a ninja while acting as a landlord as well as one of the best defenders of the village next to most of our highest ranking Ninja, and...and Kishu." Both of their faces grimace at the memory that befell them. "The point is, you are a great teacher, and while not my first choice, I do trust you Choza. The only other one I would trust would be Tsunade, but with her still out there drinking her woes away and losing countless cash at casinos, I find it hard to want her back here." Hiruzen kept his grimace as Choza raised an eyebrow in confusion.
"How does she keeps getting all that money that she keeps losing?" Choza asked, having heard rumors of the legendary sucker and the millions that she had lost gambling. Hiruzen smirked.
"She still gets paid by us, and we use her as an...asset to spread the money around. After all, it costs to set up jobs, and with her losing so often, even people with terrible luck can still win against her. The wealth then gets spread around in a cycle of jobs, her losing, and the casinos paying us or the other villages the fees." Hiruzen explained.
Choza blinked in surprised, "Does she even know she's doing it?" He asked, noting that Naruto's curiosity was rubbing off on him somewhat. Hiruzen's smirk widened ever so slightly as he shook his head.
"She hasn't a clue, but her aide did find out and agreed to keep it a secret, but enough on the passerby conversations..." Hiruzen sighed, becoming serious as he turned to him. "Choza, I have a new mission for you." The Sandaime said curtly as Choza stiffly nodded. "While Naruto and Choji are off training with their respective Jonin-senseis, I want you to be on Recon duty, scouting out for information surrounding the Genjutsu Mistress that attacked the Academy. Jiraiya has picked up a trail about her from Pain's assistance-" The Sandaime explained.
"Wait! How does Pain know about that!?" Choza's outburst merely gained a sigh from the Sandaime.
"Pain had had the same happen within his own village, merely with different people involved, and using the same trick that we had done, got them cured. Apparently in total, four villages have been attacked by this Genjutsu. Jiraiya is currently in Kumogakure helping them through the Genjutsu and asking for information. Each village was hit the same way, through the smell of special white flowers covered with chakra. The villages are all out searching for info on this and I want you to help out, I've already sent Tsume alongside Shibi in order to recon trails that might lead to the culprit, but I want you there because of I feel you can help out by connecting with the villagers and asking around." The Sandaime explained.
"Hmm...what's the real reason? Tsume is much better with smelling out the traces, and Shibi's insects are more than good enough to keep her from getting infected and getting the chakra scent out of it, Jiraiya is just as good at getting the information out of the villagers than me, so why am I really getting sent on this?" Choza listed out, both confused and sceptical of why he was assigned.
The Sandaime merely laughed. "Would you believe me if I said it was because Jiraiya himself asked?" He grinned as Choza scoffed.
"Why am I not surprised..." Choza groaned slightly as the Sandaime handed him a letter, listing Jiraiya's request for his assistance, as well as a request to have Shikaku teach Naruto to control his handwriting in order for him to learn seals before he eventually heads to Uzushiogakure. Choza smiled. "Well in that case, I'll do my best to help out, but I still want to be around to help out Naruto and Choji. What time frame am I working with here?" Choza asked.
"Hmm...I would have to ask Kakashi about it, but I figure you can help back during the weekends in order to...touch up on ingredients as it were." Hiruzen smiled on back. "I expect you ready by sundown, so go enjoy the day, I hear Naruto and them are about to begin their exam shortly." Hiruzen said, looking down to see a tiny orange figure jumping towards a slightly bigger gray-haired figure. Choza laughed.
"It still amazes me that Kakashi agreed to training Naruto, if only I could thank Honoke for that." Choza laughed a bit sorrowfully as Hiruzen sighed.
"Remember Choza, they will always live on in your heart, just follow your Will of Flame, and they will be there besides you all the way." Hiruzen reminded him as Choza nodded.
"I know...it just doesn't make it any less painful. One of the few things I sympathize with Kakashi over is the loss of comrades will never go away." Choza's right hand slowly curled into a fist, "Tell me...do you think we'll ever see a way out of these wars?" Choza looked up to Hiruzen, only to find him staring upon the village.
"Maybe. But it won't be you or me that brings us there. We're raising the children that will bring us there, launching them into a world of turmoil and hoping they don't break from it. It would be viewed as cruel from some, but if they will have any hope of saving the world, they will need to get stronger, learn from the turmoil in order to bring it to a brighter future." Hiruzen explained calmly, looking older than his years.
"And if they don't?" Choza asked back as Hiruzen slowly turned towards him.
"Then we would have to hope for the generation on after, and so on and so forth until there comes a generation that learns to live in peace. All we can do is place our bets upon our children, and our children's children, and hope that one day that peaceful day comes." Hiruzen sighed. "But enough about all of that depressing talk, it's times like these that we should celebrate. A brand new class of Genin are being brought up, and they include your two sons, so go on and watch Choza. We'll discuss other matters back here at sundown." Hiruzen scoffed before disappearing with a smile upon his face.
Choza merely smiled on back before jumping down into the trees of Training Field Seven.
A/N Bit of a smaller chapter, but I am back! I'm sorry about the radio silence for the last while since Chapter 7, but I did want to say a few things.
1. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone! I hope you all are having an amazing time and hope you have a great year on top of it!
2. I finally have an idea of where the entire series will go, including an idea for later events past this fanfic! Including some original arcs involved.
3. I still don't know what to do with wave arc tho, I'm mostly thinking of just key momenting that as the team goes by their life afterwards, since only some moments will change, but not enough to justify an entire arc.
4. Interesting fact for this chapter. For the longest time I was trying to find a good way to get Naruto and co. into the fight against Kakashi, and had most of the chapter revolve around that. However, it felt really forced and just bad to where I didn't have any route to write, so instead I decided to focus on the side-plot for the chapter, which revolved around Choza. As you can tell, his time with Naruto has affected him, and Hiruzen trusts him a good amount because of it. Honestly Choza was one of my favorite Naruto characters, but I felt like he was never on screen, so it's fun writing him as a recon/spy character alongside Jiraiya. I figure with his cooking, he can get into good relations with the village, and listen to them rant and the like info that would be of use to him, kinda like Jiraiya does with drinking and autographing.
5. Pain actually plays a more active role in the story here, because of his encounter with Jiraiya and Choza, it's implied within canon that Pain took control of Hidden in the Rain around the same time as the beginning of the series, and thus I had them take awareness to this.
6. Thank you all for the support! It really makes my day just looking at the insane amount of followers, favorites and reviews, and I take my time to read through them all, I can't wait to continue this story and I hope you follow me the whole way through. The next upload will be of the first part of me breaking Chapter 6 apart, it's still very similar to the first half of the chapter, since most of the changes will be done to the second part of it, but I want to focus on that since I did make some major mistakes within the chapter. Then after Chapter 6 is fixed, I will be focusing on the Bell Test with Kakashi, all from Choza's perspective, since he will be there as a judge of sorts, and we might see some familiar faces pop on in as well.
As always, thank you all and I hope you have a fantastic day, I've been Char and I'll see you next time on Two and the Same!