Hey! So here's chapter 10!
As always, I hope you like and if not, remember that you can leave your feedback in the review section.
Disclaimer: I do not own DB nor do I own Naruto, all the credits go to Akira Toriyama (DB, DBZ, DBS) and Masashi Kishimoto (Naruto, Naruto Shippuden, Boruto).
Itachi knew he'd made a mistake when he joined the organization in his desperate try to accept his new life, but no one could rewind time, no one could fix their mistakes. That day, an urgent meeting, that's what Pain said at least, was being held. All of the members of Akatsuki were there, even Deidara and Sasori, who just some hours prior had been fighting against one of the strongest shinobi in the entire world. Itachi was silent and expressionless, as he always was, and next to him was Kisame, his partner. The humanoid shark was annoyed by the fact that the clearly most important members of the organization were on Pain's side, while the others like him and the Uchiha were standing in front of them.
The reunion was held inside a secret room right under the tallest building in the Village Hidden in the Rain, where the original Akatsuki once met, although it appeared to be more of an abandoned room rather than one that had been used just some years ago. Itachi was quite curious about the place where the meeting was being held as it normally was in a cave and never a physical meeting, but a meeting in which the members projected themselves with chakra. Pain, the leader of the Akatsuki, was the first to speak up.
"You may be wondering why I asked all of you to meet..." Pain said with his deep and intimidating voice, making Deidara nervous of what he could possibly say. "Our mission is to capture all the jinchuuriki... but it seems that we are not the only ones with this objective." The members on the opposite side of Pain were either intrigued or surprised about such a statement, except for Deidara and Sasori, who were the ones that gave the leader such information. "Konoha... The Village Hidden in the Leaves is trying to gather all of the tailed beasts for their egoistic desires. The corrupt Hokage and his servants are working to gather the most dangerous weapons of our world." Itachi frowned at this last statement, as he doubted that Sarutobi would be capable of such thing as provoking another Ninja War. "Recently, one of our spies found that a mysterious kid fell down from the skies and they have already recruited him as shinobi."
Itachi was curious of that last statement, but right before he was going to make his question, someone else raised his voice. "A spy? Since when do we have a spy inside Konoha? Who is this spy? I have many questions, honestly, and I would really appreciate if you'd answer them, sir." One of the masked members on the same side as Pain asked, lowering both his voice and energy as his questions progressed. A blue haired girl turned to him with an angry expression, but Pain grabbed her shoulder and stopped her from doing anything. Pain now turned to the man, who was already looking at the leader.
"Those surely are many questions, but I will gladly answer them." Pain calmly said, keeping his deep and intimidating tone. "We have paid several shinobi in every single one of the five great nations, and unfortunately, I cannot answer your last question as we can't afford to lose our spy in Konoha." The redhead man turned back to his previous position, inducing the blonde masked man to do so as well. "I called you all here because we need a way to end the Village Hidden in the Leaves before they are able to stop us. It would be easier if Orochimaru hadn't left us, but I believe that Itachi should be enough help to us."
The Uchiha hesitated for some seconds before nodding, to which Pain responded by nodding back. He didn't want to have anything to do with the village after what he'd done and as he remembered that Sasuke was still there, his hands started shaking, gaining the blonde masked man's attention. Now another masked man was speaking, this one had long black hair that for some reason reminded him of his little brother. He didn't pay much attention to it as he just started thinking of a way to deal with the possible invasion of Konoha and the probable death of his brother. "That's why we have to attack in 4 years from now." Itachi snapped out of his thoughts, giving a confused look to Kisame, who ignored him.
"It's settled then." Konan said with the cold tone that was typical of her. "You all have been assigned a specific jinchuriki. You already know what happens if you fail." Everyone else except for Pain nodded in understanding, making her nod back as a way of telling them to leave. Itachi broke the genjutsu he'd made and went out from one of the corners of the room as Kisame turned into water, revealing that he was a water clone. Hidan laughed at this as he tried to pat the Uchiha in the back, making him explode into smoke.
A drop of sweat went down the Senju as two members of Akatsuki stood right in front of his eyes, smiles on their faces and fear hidden deep inside the experimented jounin. Shit. He had to stop them so his teammates could survive and complete the mission. He never really was a creative man, but he still found ways to defeat enemies stronger than him; this wasn't the case now. The blonde man noticed the concern hidden inside his eyes and started laughing at what he perceived to be a pathetic old man scared of death, scared of his destiny. "What's so funny, punk?"
Sasori's eyes hiding in his puppet suddenly widened as the sound of a punch and his partner's complains for pain reached his ears. Yuichi had taken impulse to give Deidara a hit in the stomach, strong enough to have him out of the fight for a while. As the blonde man fell down from the branch of the tree he was standing on, Yuichi turned to the ugly man with a more serious and confident expression. "H-how..." Was all he could say before the Senju quickly attacked him, using the kunai to create several holes in his body, confirming the fact that he didn't bleed.
"What are you?" Yuichi quickly blocked the attack of his opponent with his arms as he finished his sentence. The man threw a barrage of kunai at the Senju, making this last one use a substitution jutsu in order to survive. The ugly man charged once more against the Senju, this time going directly for physical confrontation, to which the Jounin answered to by trying to kick him, easily being dodged. "Air style: Hurricane!" His opponent was thrown away deep into the forest as a giant tornado appeared from Yuichi. "This is my chance -no, my teammates..." The Senju turned to the direction where his teammates had gone, moving in the same direction.
Some of the Uchiha's hair was cut as a long-haired man aimed a kunai at his forehead, being able to narrowly avoid it thanks to his sharingan. Sakura watched horrified as Naruto jumped into the fight with the knowledge that the man was perfectly able to kill all of them. The blonde boy threw several shuriken at the man, only achieving to cut some of the man's hair and getting his attention. As the man revealed his snake-like face to Naruto, he created several shadow clones, trying to distract him as he thought of some other way to beat him. Sasuke stood up and saw Orochimaru destroying the last shadow clone of the blonde kid, making both Genin scared.
Pink hair suddenly was the first thing he saw as the green-eyed girl jumped into him, nailing a kunai in his shoulder. The girl's eyes widened as she actually was able to do what she wanted to, but she wasn't able to celebrate for much time until Orochimaru grabbed her and threw her directly at the floor. Naruto was enfuriated by this, which caused him to charge irrationally against his clearly stronger opponent. Unsurprisingly, the blonde boy was easily thrown back with just a kick right in his face, making the Uchiha the only one who wasn't knocked down.
As Sasuke's nerves got worse, the man in front of him threw up a considerable amount of blood, creating an image that would easily leave a normal kid of his age with a severe trauma. "S-sh-shit..." The man's words acted as a signal for Sasuke's attack to begin. Unfortunately, his opponent quickly regained his composure and grabbed the Uchiha by the hair, leaving him suspended in the air. The man gave the Uchiha some strong hits in the abdomen to make sure there would be no resistance, and then proceeded to bite the boy's neck, leaving a black mark on it.
The snake-like looking man threw the kid away as he quickly ran away from the place, not without telling Sasuke that he could give him the power he needed to defeat Itachi. Sasuke finally went unconscious as he saw Sakura stand up and check on Naruto. The pink-haired girl made sure Naruto was alright before checking on the Uchiha. Sakura was the first to notice the black mark on the Uchiha's neck, telling Naruto, who was sitting next to his friends despite the pain caused by the battle against the man. The Haruno started to laugh out of relief as she confirmed that Sasuke was also alright, catching the blonde's attention, who joined her.
Then, as she continued to laugh, tears started to go down her face right to her chin. Her laugh had now turned into crying, which made Naruto instantly stop laughing and want to comfort her, although he didn't really know how to do it. "This was just too close..." The girl managed to say, tears still flooding her face. "We could've been killed like we were nothing... and-and" She wasn't able to finish the sentence before crying a bit louder.
Naruto knew this was a natural reaction, he also was horrified about how close this was to being their last battle. He stood up, not minding the pain, and sat down closer to his teammate, as he just offered a place for her to cry. The girl accepted his hug and cried on Naruto's chest, which reminded the Uzumaki of the times when Iruka stood by his side when he cried, always there for him. "Don't worry, we'll get over this soon." This words calmed her down more than they should have, maybe because of his tone or maybe because of the security both of her teammates gave her after the mission at the Land of the Waves. She had to admit that she had never even though of one day being comforted by the guy he once saw as stupid and immature.
The girl moved away after some minutes, wiping her tears away once she did and finally smiling at the Uzumaki, who gave her one of his wide smiles back along a thumbs up. Sakura laughed softly at this before she remembered they were in the Chuunin Exams. "We should get moving, but who will carry Sasuke?"
"I will, Sakura." Naruto reassuringly answered, keeping a serious expression as he kept talking. "But then you'd have to protect both me and Sasuke." Surprisingly for him, the pink-haired girl gave him a nod, followed by a determined expression.
"It's you and me now." She said as she helped Naruto grab the Uchiha, getting him into the blonde's back, where he would be easier to carry. They surely were fast to leave the place, but a different Genin team was also quick to arrive at the place where Team 7 had just been in.
Konoha's security for this Chuunin exams was higher than it normally was, maybe due to it's ally, Suna, participation on this edition of the exams. That's why one of the proctors was quick to tell Anko, the main proctor of this phase, when he found the corpse of three young Genin laying down at the floor. He wouldn't normally mind as this phase of the exam was meant to be the perfect simulator of an actual battlefield, so killing was both allowed and expected, but what made him actually mind those corpses was the way they seemed to have been killed and that they were Daichi Uchiha's rookie team. One of the corpses lay headless and dismembered, as the one next to it was just unrecognizable due to the way it's face had been destroyed, leaving the other body laying on a tree, apart from the rest, as it just appeared to have died from bleeding out.
It didn't take long for him to reach the entrance to the forest, where Anko was. As soon as he arrived, he got a raised eyebrow thrown at him by the dark purple-haired woman, who just heard what he had to say. The proctor's eyes widened as they filled with fear and desperation.
The assistant noticed this and became nervous and a bit concerned of the situation. "Should we order the exams to be cancelled?"
Anko just glared at him before raising her voice. "Do you think we can allow ourselves to show such a bad image? We cannot afford to lose our alliance with Suna because of someone infiltrating in the exams." She immediately thought of the possibility of it being Orochimaru, which only made her more nervous and desperate than before. "Take me to the bodies, quickly."
They arrived at the spot quickly, which made Anko looked horrified at such a scene. She was sure that there was no Genin capable of doing such a thing to any other Genin. Anko ordered him to inform the rest of the assistant proctors as she herself would enter the forest in search for the legendary Sannin. Her assistant nodded before leaving for his partners as Anko started her search for the man who raised and trained her.
Gohan had stopped guiding the group due to Shikamaru's disagreement with it, which meant that Gohan wouldn't pay attention to the energies close to them. Ino and Chouji had a neutral position on the subject, so they didn't really care whether Gohan guided them or not. The main concern Gohan had was Ino's exhaustion, as it would probably affect their possibilities of achieving the next phase of the exam. The Nara wasn't worried at all, though, as he was ready for any possible attack, as well as he was ready to attack if they were to find another team on their way.
All that planning was thrown down at the moment a rain of kunai and shuriken appeared out of nowhere, causing Gohan to create an air blast to deflect the weapons that were about to hit his teammates, but getting several nailed on his own body. Shikamaru widened his eyes in desperation as he would never have predicted a strategy like that while being in a forest, which caused his mind not to think effectively of any other plan to counter attack from that. Gohan was probably unable to fight after receiving so many weapons on his arms and back.
Two figures quickly moved towards them, to which only Chouji was able to respond, and it was by receiving the hits with his expanded hands. "Shikamaru, someone's coming from behind, do something!" The Nara looked behind them, locating a green shade making quick moves towards them. Ino was about to do her signature technique, but Shikamaru grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her back, gesturing a familiar sign with his hands. A black shadow went out from his own, moving towards the green shade at a similar speed it moved towards the black shadow.
I hope you likes the chapter! Anyway, remember to leave any opinion or advice in the review section.
With that said, I hope you have a nice day!