Foreword: Soundtrack, ahoy!
Scene One: Ghost in the Shell - Fish Silent Cruise
Scene Two/Three/Four: Hack Sign - Key of the Twilight
Scene Five: Fullmetal Alchemist - Brothers
Scene Six: Samurai Champloo - Bracelet
Scene Seven: Outlaw Star - Melfina's Song(English, though Hiro no Tsuki will do)
Part Five: Render a Repetition
Suicide Sunrise
Naruto could do nothing but watch as it happened. The colossal kitchen knife-shaped blade of Gama Kensei slammed into his own samurai sword, and almost on impact, Naruto's weapon shattered, taking his spirit right along with it. Mere moments ago, he had been the king of the hill. He had clawed his way through a city, battled an enemy who wielded lightning as if it were his personal play thing and struggled back in spite of being handicapped by injuries that were as mental as they were physical. He had survived fear and terror, but through it all, his spirit had always remained strong.
Now, it was in as many pieces as the sword he was holding.
In a way, the shards of metal were beautiful. They danced through the air in a cascade of blue, silver, orange and red, and somewhere in the midst of seeing them, Naruto became aware of a jarring sensation rushing through his entire arm.
His footing gave way. The hilt left his grasp and flew through the air to his right. Shards of metal rained down across his chest and shoulders, unable to do more than scrape across the threads of his jacket. Behind them, Kensei was still poised in mid-swing, both hands grasping the hilt of his sword as its tip came to point right at him. The great toad's black eyes, with their yellow-rimmed pupils, were narrowed at him. Its expression was one of unbearable contempt and disappointment.
In the past three years, Naruto had never truly feared death. He had feared defeat, yes. He had feared the deaths and losses of others, but rarely outside of his own private thoughts.
Now, before him, Gama Kensei had become the embodiment of death. A giant bullfrog Shinigami with a Yakuza's glint in his eyes.
In the split second that Naruto had to register -- truly register -- the loss of his sword and the futility of the effort that went into it, Gama Kensei taught him what it really means to fear death.
It was the most terrifying thing he had ever experienced in his life.
"IT AIN'T OVER YET!"
Time snapped back to normal. It was all he could do to sidestep the thrust of Gama Kensei's sword. Even one fraction of a second slower and it would've probably torn his upper body in half.
"This isn't fair!" He finally shouted out, only to take a backhand across the chin for his worries.
Gama allowed him to land on his back, rolling up to his feet almost reflexively. When he looked at the toad again, the expression on its face was even more disgusted than it had been before.
"It doesn't matter if it's unfair or not, shitsqueek. You drew, you die. That's how this goes! IT'S OVER WHEN ONE OF US IS DEAD!"
For the first time, it was starting to set in that Kensei had really meant what he said. It wasn't an attempt as psyching him out. He was serious.
When Kensei attacked again, Naruto was once more forced to dodge the blade or be cleaved in two. As the sword swept in, he ducked to the side and performed the fastest Kage Bunshin of his life. A Kawarimi later, the doppleganger ceased to exist and Naruto was airborn, flipping over the huge bullfrog as it finished kicking his mirror image. Kensei was onto him though, and without missing a beat, the frog looked up. His webbed fingers then went into an intricate looking dance around the hilt of his sword, pulling into a familiar seal and--
"SUITAIHOU!"
The toad swordsman's mouth flew open and a great ball of chakra-charged water flew out. It was all Naruto could do to summon another Kage Bunshin and have it yank him out of the way in time to avoid being smashed to a pulp by the attack. On instinct, he grabbed the clone's neck and--
"HENGE!"
A giant six-point shuriken went flying at Kensei. Naruto spun away and landed hard on both feet to the toad's right, turning around and pulling his hands up to his mouth in the familiar Tiger Seal. The toad blocked the shuriken with his sword, and in that instant, he was unprotected...
Naruto fried him. Chakra clustered into his lungs and an instant later, blew out in his breath, igniting on contact with his fingertips. The resulting stream of fire hurtled at Kensei so quickly that not even a legendary swordsman would've been able to dodge it.
The only problem with Naruto's lack of a plan was that Kensei didn't dodge it. Instead, he used his sword to leverage the Henged Kage Bunshin into the way and lashed out, not with a weapon, but with his tongue.
Like a slimy whip, it plowed through the fire and slammed into Naruto's face, dead-center on his nose. The blow left him seeing red, and ended his attempt at burning the toad on the spot. He staggered back, and Gama withdrew his tongue back into his mouth, leaning forward and then leaping with such speed that the ground literally exploded behind him. Again, Naruto dodged the blade by inches, ducking under both it and its owner as the two passed overhead.
When he stood again, Gama Kensei had landed and shot back up into the air. He looked up and the huge bullfrog was backflipping overhead, almost fifty feet above him.
"YOU CAN'T RUN FOREVER!"
"What happened to your Ninja Way?" Jiraiya piped up snidely in the background. Naruto spared him only a glance, and the look on the man's face made him want to commit murder. He had a cocky smirk, and his arms were crossed as he leaned back against a rock.
"I'M GONNA GET YOU FOR THIS!" Naruto screamed at him, finding it so much easier to focus on the man rather than the monster bearing down on him.
"YOUR OPPONENT IS ME, SHITSQUEEK!" Kensei bellowed from overhead.
When Naruto finally looked back up at him, the bullfrog had somehow stopped in mid-air, sword held up and laid flat across his left shoulder as he started to descend...
A second later, the ground where Naruto had been standing was completely ripped out by the pass of Kensei's weapon. The toad landed with a loud thump in front of the trench he had just carved out, and Naruto had again been driven to leap back.
"Is this the full extent of your Ninja Way?" Kensei demanded. "It's nothing!"
"Shut up!" Naruto bit back.
"It's just the boastful stupidity of a child! Nothing but bullshit!"
"Shut up!"
"Then make me! Prove this Ninja Way crap and show me how wrong I am!" Kensei challenged, pointing his sword's tip right at Naruto's face.
"Fine," Naruto replied, not even knowing what he could do at this point.
And then it occurred to him: He still had the sheathe.
Without thinking, he drew it from his belt and flipped it up like a sword. Both hands gripped tightly around it, and with that, he charged forward again.
This time, Kensei lashed out first. Naruto again dodged, jumping up onto the blade, leaping off of it and slamming the sheathe down between Gama's eyes with everything he could bring to bear.
The sheathe broke on impact.
Naruto flipped several times and landed with a skidding crouch behind Kensei, jolting upright and turning around only to recieve a backwards spin kick to the chest. In the same way it had the first time, Kensei's kick seemed to temporarily implode his entire body around the point of impact, leaving it to violently ripple back to normal as he was thrown back. Forty feet later, he hit the side of a dead tree and bowled it over, snapping the thing in two.
When it was all said and done, he didn't even bother tallying up his injuries. He simply sat upright and looked at his opponent.
For all the effort behind the blow, the sheathe had done nothing. Kensei didn't even have a bruise.
"Was that it?" He asked disappointedly.
Naruto forced himself up and shook his head. It hurt just to breathe, but he had experienced worse.
"I'm just gettin' started," he replied, forcing his voice to remain steady and strong. The last thing he needed to do right now was show weakness to an enemy.
"No. You're through," Gama replied.
An instant later, the toad was hurtling at him all over again.
Without thinking, Naruto whipped out a handful of shuriken and threw them forward. Then, his hands flew together and performed a remote Kage Bunshin -- not on himself, but on the pack of weapons he had just thrown.
The ensuing shower of three inch razor blades was just enough to make Gama pull his sword in front of his face to protect it. The rest hit without incident, though they did little more than to cause a mess of small scratches that didn't even result in bleeding. In spite of the minimal damage though, it gave him an opening, and he took it.
Naruto lunged in, performing another Kage Bunshin and creating six seperate copies of himself. At once, all seven Narutos slid under Gama Kensei and kicked up into his stomach, sending the huge frog flying up into the air. One after the other, the bunch stood up and started jumping and transforming. First three jumped at three others, turning into giant shuriken of varying sizes. Then the three remaining hurled them at Kensei.
Then the three Kage Bunshin still remaining jumped at Naruto and started transforming as well. Two became giant shuriken, another became a giant kunai. He caught the shuriken in one hand each and the kunai with a foot through its hoop. With one hard jump and a spin, he hurled all three at Kensei in rapid succession.
Against the assault, Gama faired upsettingly well. With three lightning-fast cuts, he struck down the first wave. The fourth shuriken was caught in hand, and the fifth was smashed away. The kunai, for all its size and potency, was grabbed by its ring with Kensei's tongue.
Both of the surviving dopplegangers returned to normal. Kensei wasted no time in dispatching them, literally squeezing the head off of the one in his hand and eating the second before belching out a cloud of smoke as he landed.
"What's it gonna take to beat this guy?" Naruto thought, staring at the frog as it took a moment to look itself over. "Nothing I've done has even hurt him..."
And then it occurred to him: Almost all of his attacks had been blocked or somehow hindered by the sword.
Two-step kill.
The phrase ran through his mind like a stampeding elephant, and Naruto finally knew what he had to do.
"I'm tired of wasting my time on you, kid," Gama stated. At once, the huge toad heaved up onto its back legs and aimed its sword tip at him. "I'm gonna end this now."
"Me too," Naruto announced, smiling viciously as he put his hands in front of himself and started gathering chakra between them.
Before long, the air around him was a whipping frenzy, tinged with yellow and blue. The Rasengan coalesced like a dream in his grasp. It lacked form and substance, but it glew brighter than a small star in his hands, consisting of energy that whipped into a sphere that whirled and writhed with all the intensity of a miniature tornado.
Gama Kensei's eyes narrowed. For an instant, Naruto thought he saw something like recognition flashing through them.
Then Kensei hurtled forward again, the ground exploding behind him.
Naruto charged forward, screaming what could very well be his last battle cry.
It took five seconds.
One to close the distance...
One for the two to attack...
One for them to pass each other by...
One for them both to land...
And one more for them to register what had happened.
As the two had made it to point blank, Kensei had lashed out first. Naruto ducked and spun around, shoving the Rasengan into the flattened side of the sword's blade. Then he had somehow twisted between Kensei's elbow and knee, passing the toad by and landing on one hand before flipping himself upright onto both feet and skidding to a halt.
He was still alive.
Kensei was still alive.
The sword, however, was reduced to a rain of sparkling shrapnel, blowing through the wind and the morning sunlight as a million small sparks of solid light. A few seconds after the clash, a strung gust caught the debris and blew it back between Naruto and Kensei, whose back was still turned and whose hands were still wrapped tightly around the hilt of his sword -- literally all that was left of the once magnificent weapon.
Kensei let out a sigh and threw away what was left of his sword. Then he turned around and wordlessly drew his hands into the seal for the Suitaihou--
But Naruto was ready.
Kage Bunshin came first, and then another of him was standing by. Together, they rushed forward, side by side. Gama Kensei completed the seal and lurched forward. The cannonball of water -- large enough to consume a small building -- hurtled from the great toad's mouth like a speeding train.
But Naruto was ready.
Together, he and the doppleganger jumped around the huge ball of water, leaving it to blow right by and continue on into nothing. As one, they landed, and each one jumped at Kensei for all they were worth.
The frog didn't move.
The Kage Bunshin made it to within an arm's reach of Naruto and transformed into a familiar, albeit colossal, piece of paper with red and black markings on it.
At last, Naruto lunged to the side and slammed the giant Blast Note down...
The explosion that woke him was so loud that it had probably rattled the entire city to some extent. Before the noise had even finished blasting through his ears, Shunseito Kazuma had hurled himself out of the top bunk and landed on both feet. Before Ayane could sit up from where she lay in the bottom bunk, he had crossed the room, grabbed his sword and threw it onto his back. Like many rational ninja, he had gone to sleep in his 'work clothes,' right down to the vest, so that when he reached the ladder, it was simply a matter of pulling his mask up.
Ayane shouted something. He wasn't paying enough attention to her to make it out, but that was alright. He would just ask her later.
One hand shot up when he was nearly half-way up the ladder, shoving the hatch aside and leaping up onto the roof. The sight that greeted him was as familiar as it was upsetting.
Over the roofs of a dozen or more buildings, he could see a black cloud of smoke, mushrooming up into the sky. A fine cloud of dust and dirt ringed around it as it ascended, and though he couldn't quite see the cliff due to the number of buildings in the way, Kazuma had the distinct impression that a rather sizeable portion of it had been reduced to a smoldering crater.
"That Naruto boy must've had something to do with it," he thought.
He could hear Ayane scrambling towards the ladder to try and get up to the roof. She must have wanted to stop him...
But he still had a job to do. And with that in mind, he kicked the panel back into place and sealed her off from his world. A moment later, he pulled the mask up over his face and fastened it with the forehead protector, sealing himself off from everything else in the process.
Not long after that, Chimi Tensho hurtled towards the crater with murder in his eyes.
"... Shit..."
Somewhere in the background, Jiraiya was laughing. Naruto slowly scraped himself up out of the dirt and dusted himself off, looking at where the bloody mess that called itself Gama Kensei was currently situated. The once imposing bullfrog was now spread out across its back, a full eighty feet away. His kimono had been blown off, and the entirety of his body was covered in blood and burns.
"He's a firecracker, ain't he?" Jiraiya asked, somewhere between stomping around and holding his sides in laughter. The man looked like he was about to fall over.
"At least the last one had the decency to cut me," Kensei replied, trying -- and failing, miserably -- to sit up.
A few seconds later, Kensei finally rolled over onto his belly and stood up in the usual froggish manner, heavily favoring his left arm. As Naruto dusted himself off and started walking forward, the toad heaved up onto unstead hind legs.
"It isn't over, shitsqueek," he stated, left arm hanging limp while the right one drew up in a pose similar to a boxer.
"Yeah," Naruto countered. "It is."
"Eh?"
"You're already beaten," he pointed out, his walk turning into an unsteady run.
"It's over when one of us is dead, damnit!" Kensei shouted back, his fist rattling.
Naruto replied by forming a small Rasengan into his right hand. The air literally cleared itself around him, forming a visible path through the thin layer of smoke left over from his Blast Note.
Kensei smiled.
"Then you do understand," he said.
Naruto still didn't reply. Instead, he jumped.
A few seconds later, his left hand smashed into the great toad's chin and bowled him over. Naruto landed on Kensei's chest and neck, arm held back and Rasengan spiraling. Then...
Another explosion went off.
When it was over, his arm rested directly between Kensei's eyes, laid flat across the toad's head. A crater, small and smokeless, was positioned beneath his still open hand.
"You lose," Naruto told him, then stood up and jumped off.
"... Damn it," Kensei spat. As Naruto took a few steps away, the huge bullfrog started to flail and, for all intents and purposes, throw a temper tantrum. "This little shitsqueek is just as bad as the last one!"
"Isn't it great?" Jiraiya cut in, suddenly standing behind him and slapping a hand into his hair. Almost instantly, as Naruto began pondering ways to rip Jiraiya's intestines out and strangle him with them, the man started scruffing his hair. It was almost affectionate, like what he had always figured a grandfather or a well-liked uncle might do.
"... Well. Won't be the first time I've had to live with losin' a Trial," Kensei replied, calming down enough to roll onto his side and give Naruto a once-over.
"You might not look like much, but you're gonna make a good Hokage someday."
And with that, he exploded into a puff of pinkish smoke and was gone. Naruto finally pried Jiraiya's hand out of his hair and turned around with a glare.
"What was that about?"
"Oh, nothing," Jiraiya replied with a smirk on his face. "It's just that the only other person to ever beat Kensei in a Trial was the Fourth Hokage. He used a sword," he pointed out.
The surge of emotions Naruto felt from that was one that couldn't quite be described. At once, he wanted to start cheering, question Jiraiya as to how the Yondaime had won, savagely beat him with a large blunt object for making him go through all of that, lie down and take a nap, go get some ramen and move on to those promised lessons he was to be given upon beating Kensei...
But, as with so many other decisions in the life of a ninja, the choice was made for him by someone else.
"I had a feeling one of you was behind this."
His landing had been silent. They had noticed him anyway though, and when they did, he didn't bother trying to be stealthy anymore.
"Damn right," the Sage replied, grabbing Uzumaki by the shoulders and steering him between the two.
For a long moment, Kazuma and the boy stared at each other. The kid wasn't as scruffy looking as he had been during their first encounter, now that he could get a good look. At night, when they had last fought, it had all been so hectic that he couldn't even get a good view of him. Now though...
Now, Kazuma saw someone who wasn't a child, but a ninja. A shinobi who, in another lifetime perhaps, would have been a suitable Cloud-nin. Perhaps even someone he might have tolerated to make advances on Ayane. The only thing that made him look like anything but a ninja was the fact that he wasn't wearing his forehead protector. Its gleaming metal was missing, and when Kazuma took note of the boy's bare forehead, he found it to be an oddly irritating sight.
"Your forehead protector," he stated simply.
Before Naruto could reply -- and he looked like he wanted to -- Kazuma's true target cut in.
"Did you come to finish the job?" The man asked, and Kazuma felt himself nod on reflex alone.
"Yes," he answered belatedly. "I did. I simply have to move your student out of the way and--"
"And nothin'," Jiraiya cut him off, smiling. "My chakra's already starting to return. Right now, I could probably summon a frog big enough to level this entire countryside and be gone before anyone can stop me."
Kazuma knit his brows in a frown. Even Jiraiya's student seemed partially taken aback.
"And what of your Leaf comrades?"
"They aren't my comrades right now. They're just people who happen to be in the crossfire," Jiraiya answered, only to continue. "And if you'll notice, none of 'em showed up to check out the blast."
That was true... Had Jiraiya and his student gone Missing-nin?
"But," the Sage said, again chopping off Kazuma's thoughts at the knee. "There's a way around this."
Kazuma's frown turned into an outright grimace. Without thinking, he reached up to grab his sword, only to spot Naruto drawing out a dozen or more shuriken in the same moment. Both of them froze in an instant.
"And that would be?"
"My student here really wants your head, and as I'm such a nice guy, I may as well give him the chance to take it," Jiraiya answered, smiling.
"And what does that have to do with anything?" Kazuma asked.
"It means a duel. Today at sunset. Right here. One on one. If you beat Naruto, I'll allow you to kill me in any way you like," the Sage said. the challenge in his voice and the confidence in his eyes were both readily apparent, though his student was less than thrilled at the option.
Naruto had been about to speak up, but the man clamped a hand over his mouth and held him in place with the other on his shoulder.
"Is it a deal?"
"And what guarantee do I have that you'll keep your word and not interfere?" Tensho bit back.
"You don't," Jiraiya answered, finally releasing Naruto and shoving him forward.
"You've got his."
"I'll kill you if you even think of doing that again!" Naruto spat back at the very man he was supposed to be protecting. While not exactly a ringing endorsement of the boy's 'Ninja Way,' the ease with which he spoke of killing Jiraiya for something so petty was enough proof to verify what the man had said.
"It's a deal then. Today at sunset, on this cliff. I will kill both of you," Kazuma said, and meant it.
Jiraiya just smiled at him.
Not long after the Cloud-nin had departed, Naruto and Jiraiya had left the site of the explosion too. Discretely, with the hermit in the lead, the two made their way back down the cliff and into the city. Not once were they spotted by other ninja -- there weren't even any others out on the streets, from what little Naruto had time to check out. None of the people currently wandering around seemed to carry the aura of a shinobi. Their shoulders weren't set, their eyes weren't hard and their voices and manners lacked the underlying edge he had come to associate with ninjas.
Underneath the underneath, it seemed that there was nothing. But Naruto knew better, and when they finally stopped at a hotel where the owner -- a still-pretty woman in her 40's with a daughter who Naruto was convinced was making eyes at him -- seemed to know Jiraiya. She greeted him with a slap across the face, both of them broke out into laughter and eventually hugged. Then Jiraiya had introduced Naruto, pleasantries and the like were exchanged and the woman's daughter had finally lead them to a vacant room.
There was one bed, a cabinet and a bathroom, plus a single window. Nothing else. In spite of familiarity, it seemed that the hotel's owner wasn't going to be giving Jiraiya the best for free just because they happened to be friends.
Jiraiya didn't seem to mind though. He ushered Naruto in, took the scroll from his back and slapped it down across the foot of the bad. It was so heavy that the entire thing rattled for a few seconds.
"Why weren't there any Leaf ninja out there? I'd've thought they'd at least come to check and see what was up with the explosion," Naruto asked. It was the first question on his mind, and the one that weighed the heaviest because of how much he missed everyone, but it wasn't the last.
"I didn't pick Tsunade to be a better candidate for Hokage than me because her boobs're big," Jiraiya answered.
"But it was part of the reason," Naruto pointed out.
Jiraiya didn't argue.
"She's a smart woman. Maybe not quite the jutsu fiend Orochimaru is, maybe not quite as... Special as me, but still highly intelligent. Chances are, she's already figured out this whole mess perfectly and decided to avoid involving herself and Konoha in our troubles when we're all this close to the territory of a foriegn power. Wouldn't look good this close to a Chuunin Exam," the man pointed out, even as he was undoing the cord that held the scroll shut.
"Why can't I see them?"
"Because you're a marked man. Akatsuki may start moving at any time, and even if they don't, you're still marked because of your involvement in everything that's happened lately. It'd tarnish Konoha's reputation this close to the Exams," Jiraiya answered. There was something that bordered on apology in his tone, but he left any actual statement unsaid.
"Well... Why are we here?" He asked.
In response, Jiraiya opened the scroll. Almost as if it had a will of its own, it unrolled right up to the pillow on the bed, laying perfectly flat.
"Take out that scroll I bought you yesterday. It's about time I taught you some Sealing techniques," the man commented, reaching into his vest and drawing out a paintbrush like nothing he had ever seen before. "I don't know if any of it'll actually do you any good against Chimi Tensho, but it's far less taxing to learn than anything else I could teach you right now."
"What good'll it do if I don't use it?"
"The only reason I said that is because you're a think-on-your-feet type. Strategy ain't your strong point," Jiraiya replied without even looking at him. Instead, he drew the brush across his palm, then pulled it away to reveal that the whole thing was now dripping with blood without Jiraiya having ever been wounded in the first place.
"Then why should I learn it at--"
"The Fourth learned Fuuinjutsu and it saved Konoha. He didn't really like it anymore than you probably will, but he was damn good at it and you're alive right now because of it," Jiraiya bluntly cut him off, finally looking up and seeming to stare right through him. "As is everyone else you know and care about."
Naruto stared.
"Part of becoming a Hokage is doing things you may not necessarily want to. Even if it's of no immediate benefit to you, there are people counting on you to know these things. If you really want to protect and nurture them all, you'll have to be able to do it," the Toad Hermit stated, and not for the first time, his words were as galvanizing as the look in his eyes was piercing.
Without replying at all, Naruto pulled the scroll from his jacket and stepped forward.
When he looked up at Jiraiya after unfolding it, he almost thought he saw the faintest ghost of a smile on the man's face.
"Let's begin then..."
When Kazuma had made it back to the home he shared with his sister, he was greeted in the usual fashion: She hugged him, flailed at him, screamed at him for not being more careful and finally broke down, revealing that she was worried sick the entire time he was gone.
It was a kind of ritual. On occasion, he found it tiring beyond words. More than once, he had fought the urge to scream at her for being so emotional about what he took to be nothing, but ultimately...
Ultimately, it was something that kept Kazuma sane. Because of that, he didn't quite mind it so much.
After she had finished bawling her eyes out, Kazuma had helped her clean her face up and then sent her to the front to open shop for the day. She had smiled to him and somehow, in spite of the fact that she had only just been sobbing and conjuring up enough worst case scenarios to drive some people to suicide, she perked right up and bounced off like nothing had happened at all.
Kazuma often wondered if her mental health was okay. He had briefly considered studying psychology under an interrogator to figure her out, but though the offer was still open, he had decided against it. Interrogators were too cruel, too jaded and too casual about breaking spirits even for his tastes. Kazuma took a small bit of enjoyment in killing an adversary, but it was the enjoyment that came with knowing he was the one still breathing at the end of the battle. Interrogators seemed to either draw no enjoyment from anything or too much enjoyment from breaking people's minds and leaving them to live with the damage.
After Ayane had gone to the front though, Kazuma had stayed behind. Like on any other day when he wasn't on the job, handling local business for the village or otherwise busy, he picked up a book and started reading it.
As of late, he had actually become a fan of the Icha Icha books. Not for the pornography, but the humor and the style of the artwork. Laughter was another thing to help keep him sane, and if nothing else, Kazuma had always fancied himself to be an art buff.
Perhaps one day, if he lived long enough, he would retire from the business and work on his own art career. Ayane had kept all of the sketches he had drawn back to when he was three years old. There was even a stash of them he knew she kept under her mattress out of some outdated superstitious belief that if she kept a hold on the part of him that was still, perhaps, pure and innocent, he would be anchored to her and not die on a mission somewhere, face down in the mud.
Kazuma stopped believing in things like that when he saw his first corpse. It was a nice sentiment though, and he appreciated it.
"Kazuma!"
His hand clenched and the book immediately slammed shut. A moment later, the door to the booth pushed open and Ayane's smiling face greeted him.
"You'll never believe who showed up!" She said in a bubbly tone.
"Kenji," Kazuma replied, his voice iced over as he tucked the book into a crack between the couch cushions.
Almost on cue, the orange-haired samurai popped up behind Ayane, grinning idiotically and holding up a hand behind her head with two fingers extended out like bunny ears. She took notice, turned around and playfully swatted at him. It was really cute...
It made his stomach churn.
"Nice to see you're out of the hospital," Kazuma stated, though it was a lie passing straight through his teeth and the mask he had never taken off. At times, it was more comfortable wearing the mask than not. At least when he had it on, he didn't have to put so much effort into faking a smile.
"Well, I wasn't really hurt that bad... You shoulda seen Ichi though. His whole head was in a cast," Kenji pointed out, causing Ayane to actually -- quite sincerely -- gasp.
"... Pity," Kazuma replied. "You were hurt badly enough to lose your sword."
It was a subtle jab. He knew the importance of the sword in samurai culture. It was probably akin to feeling as if one's soul had been ripped away.
"... Yeah," Kenji answered him, suddenly sounding as if he felt dumb. Which was good, because in Kazuma's opinion, he was dumb.
"It's not his fault, Kazuma," Ayane piped up defensively. "That kid wasn't normal. You said so yourself."
At that, he really did smile, and was quite glad that no-one could actually see it.
"Right as always, Ayane," he admitted, just before standing up and motioning for Kenji to come in. "Could you go back to work for a while longer? I have some things I'd like to discuss with Kenji in private," he asked.
"... It's supposed to be the late afternoon rush hour and he was the only one to visit since noon," she replied with a tone as bland as watching paint dry.
About the only thing Kazuma really noticed was how much time had passed. When he got into a book, he may as well have buried his nose in it.
"It's okay," Kenji replied, stepping inside and patting Ayane on the shoulder with such affection that it made Kazuma want to rip his face off. "I'll be fine."
Kazuma took note of the fact that Kurosawa still had a wakizashi on him.
"Okay... But you owe me. I'm bored out of my mind out there," she grumbled, finally reaching up on her tip-toes and kissing the samurai on his cheek.
While Kenji looked ready to melt, Ayane stepped out of the room and shut the door.
Beneath the mask, Kazuma smiled.
When the session had finally come to an end, Naruto's hand had wreaked of blood and paper. His palm and fingers were all dripping, but his mind had indeed been put at ease.
Perhaps Jiraiya hadn't been too far off the mark when he had told, during training, that Sealing techniques were eerily relaxing. It wasn't that he had achieved any sort of resolution at all, but something about the things he had learned had calmed him down considerably.
When it was done, and when the transfer of things had been completed from Jiraiya's scroll to Naruto's, the man had given him a proud slap on the back and helped bandage his hand. He hadn't given any congratulations, but for some reason, when he had told Naruto to go out and get something to eat, it had almost been the same as if Jiraiya had called him God's own choice for Hokage.
Upon stepping out into the streets, Naruto had found them unusually empty all over again. There wasn't any hustle and bustle like before. Samurai were on patrol, shops were closed and even the red light district -- from what he could actually see of it -- seemed to have been shut down.
He recognized no-one, yet everyone looked upon him with a kind of fear and loathing. The difference between it and the things he had dealt with back home was that this was an indiscriminate kneejerk kind of response to all that had happened. They weren't bitter at him because they knew something. They were bitter at everything, even each other.
Hands in his pockets, Naruto walked alone, favoring the sidewalks with their easy access to back alleys and other visual obstructions. He couldn't see any ninja at all. Not even shinobi from places other than Konoha.
"I guess this is what it's like when a ninja has to terrorize people," he thought, mentally flashing back to his time in the Wave Country. Before the bridge was built, everyone had been like beggars. Hopeless, easily frightened beggars with so precious little to lose that Gato had them utterly cowed into submission.
Naruto was going to be glad to get out of here. Being the hero was one thing, but being the villian...
"You look hungry!"
The words jolted him out of his brooding just as easily as if someone had slapped him. With a start, he turned to the side and found himself staring at something that stood out like a beautiful beacon of hope, joy, love and endearment in this suddenly desolate place...
A ramen stand.
"... Are you an angel?" He asked without even thinking. Before the girl at the stand could even giggle at him, he was sitting on one of the stools, hunched over and skimming through the menu before-
"Pork ramen."
It was so automatic that it might as well have been pure muscle memory on the part of his mouth and throat muscles. Even as she was giggling and snickering at him though, the girl behind the bar went to work.
Within a minute, she had slapped down a bowl in front of him, bowed her head and then took to watching him eat. When he had half-finished the entire bowl in under a minute, Naruto paused and wiped his mouth -- manners he had learned purely by virtue of the time he'd spent with Jiraiya.
"This is some of the best ramen I've ever eaten."
"They say hunger is the best spice of all," the girl replied with a smile. "You looked like you hadn't eaten in days."
... Which wasn't too far off the mark. Naruto honestly couldn't remember the last time he had eaten.
"With all that's been going on, I just didn't have the time," he pointed out. It was a mark of how long he had spent training with Jiraiya that he could tell the truth and yet give away nothing, doing it all without so much as a second -- or even a first -- thought.
"Tell me about it... You're actually one of the only customers I've had at all today," she said, grimly surveying the street behind him. One of her hands came to rest on the counter, the other bracing against her hip.
"Really?" He asked, suddenly becoming very aware of the fact that his waitress was extremely pale...
"Yeah. My last customer came in at around... Noon, I think?"
... And blue-haired...
"Though..."
... With cloudy grey eyes.
"Kenji did come in a little while ago. Kazuma and he are talking about something or other, I don't know what."
Naruto felt his stomach drop through the seat, hit the ground and keep going. It was a mark of his resillience that he didn't actually show it. At least, that was what he thought.
"Is something wrong?"
She saw right through him.
"Oh? Oh, it's nothing. I just remembered I don't exactly have much money, that's all," he answered, fighting the nervous urge to run away now.
The girl just smiled at him again.
"Then it's free."
"Free?"
"Yeah. It's nice just to have someone here, you know?" She asked, glancing longingly over her shoulder at the door.
In spite of the charity -- or perhaps because of it -- Naruto's appetite had vanished as soon as it had come. Still, he ate. If only to keep up appearances. For the rest of his meal though, the two didn't really speak much to each other. She watched him contently, he tried to look at anything but her, and when he was finally done, he stood without the usual pomp he had once reserved for the people at the Ichiraku.
Even so, he bowed appreciatively.
"Thank you--"
"Ayane."
He winced. She couldn't see it, but he winced.
"Thanks then, Ayane. It was some of the best food I've had in ages," he said, and meant it.
With that, he turned and walked back out into the street.
The sun was starting to set, and behind him, the girl named Ayane suddenly realized that she had never gotten his name.
Perhaps that was for the best...
While I didn't get to point it out: Yondaime wasn't actually the first to beat Kensei, technically. Jiraiya bested him in a drinking contest, which is how the two became such friends in the first place. Yondaime simply beat him in a battle, using a sword to put the largest of Kensei's scars on his stomach/chest. Unlike Naruto, Yondaime had the brains to avoid driving his sword into Kensei's.
And I've always assumed Jiraiya used a penname for writing the Icha Icha books. It seems like only a few people(Kakashi, Naruto, etc) actually know he writes them. Kazuma isn't one of those people, so he doesn't actually know he's trying to kill the author.
And I hope I showed some of the reality of shinobi warfare with that ending scene. You never know if the guy you give a free meal to is actually the guy your brother is trying to murder in cold blood.