Summary: Recca, Kagero, and a SI are placed in the world of the Nine Tails
Crossover: Flame of Recca, Naruto
Disclaimer: I don't own what other people do. I do own me, though.
Feedback: Sure thing... I like hearing how I can improve :) I also like hearing people's opinions on things.
Pre-fic Comments:
If you want a sneak peek as to the inspiration for a few (very!) future fights, check out chapters 6-8 of the Rurouni Kenshin manga. (Yes, I do have a Sanosuke action figure with a zanbatou standing by my monitor. Sanosuke is cool, even after his weapon is destroyed.)
The bass in 'Dry County' by Bon Jovi is unbelievable - it feels like it's making your whole body resonate, even with headphones. (Quality studio headphones, mind you.)
ranma hibiki: That sounds like an embarassing story... want to share it?
GandalfTG: Thanks for the compliment :)
Alex DarkFire: When I get bored and tired, I get shitty with people. That's coming through, somewhat, in this fic.
Kakashi's eyes half-closed themselves as the sharp kunai sunk into Tazuna's head, then both Kakashi and Zabuza gasped with wide eyes as the Tazuna figure showed itself to be a Kage Bunshin, disappearing into black puffs of smoke.
"Looks like I've underestimated you brats," Zabuza laughed.
Zabuza-clone darted forwards, elbowing Sasuke sharply and knocking him backwards. Once Sasuke was on the ground, coughing up blood, Zabuza-clone hit him on the chest with a knife hand, causing Sasuke to cough up more blood.
"Hehehe... moron," Naruto grinned. "The fog has gone... 'niisan can use his jutsu, now."
Indeed, all the mist Zabuza had created to cover his clone making had gone, dissipated. Kakashi's eyes swung about crazily as he tried to sense where Tazuna was.
There!
Up in a tree, with me beside him. I was making hand seals for all I was worth, frantically changing seal as I manipulated chakra. My hands were going to bitch at me later, but meh. I hold a bit of pain to be a pittance beside the permanent state of being, you know, dead.
"What are you doing," Zabuza-clone asked, running forwards with his huge cleaver ready to swing.
I opened my eyes as I completed the last seal. "Mindrape no Jutsu!"
The watery prison holding Kakashi fell into the lake, releasing our silvery haired Jounin into the lake as Zabuza clutched his head.
"No... this isn't real," he said, eyes jammed closed. "But... but..."
Kakashi held him in a headlock as I sweated, holding the jutsu. The missing nin had a very strong and determined mind, and had a clarity of thought that was somewhat disturbing in it's insight. This meant that it was hard to mislead him too long, as his mind questioned what it was fed.
"Knock him out," I shrieked, trying to concentrate at the same time. "I can't hold him too long!"
Kakashi hit him with the blunt end of a kunai as he dragged him on shore.
"What was that," Kakashi asked me.
"Something I made up," I said weakly. "Is the world supposed to be spinning?"
"No, teme," Sasuke said, scowling. He hadn't tested his strength against the missing nin! How would he know whether he could kill Itachi if he didn't know how strong he was?
"Oh," I said. "Naruto, think I'm gonna-"
And with that I fainted, falling off the tree branch where Tazuna and I were perched.
"Chakra exhaustion," I heard Kakashi saying as the world went black.
"What was that jutsu," Haku asked Zabuza.
"... I don't know," Zabuza admitted. "The world had gone crazy... I collapsed under the weight of the Cleaver, my muscles reduced to nothing."
"Nothing was wrong with you physically," Haku pointed out.
"Genjutsu, then."
"And he had had to wait until the mist had cleared. Physically, he looks like nothing."
"That genin won't be a problem when I recover, then."
I woke up to an unfamiliar ceiling. And no, it wasn't steel grey and inside a Geodome. I was lying on something soft, with a blanket over me.
"Are you alright," I heard a voice ask.
"I dunno," I croaked. "Come back in a week."
"He'll be fine," Kakashi put in. "A good meal and he should be fine - he isn't exhausted, just unused to that jutsu by the look of it."
"What was that jutsu," Sasuke asked.
I levered myself up against the wall to look at the others. Tazuna was lying on the wooden floor, Kakashi-sensei was on a mat as well, Sasuke and Naruto were sitting, and an unfamiliar woman was standing in the middle.
"Sorry, who are you," I asked, politely. "I'm Hanabishi Matora."
"Nice to meet you," the woman said, bowing slightly. "My name is Tsunami. I am Tazuna's daughter."
"Nice to meet you," I returned.
"That jutsu is my brother's greatest creation," Naruto said proudly.
"No, Naruto, I won't teach it to you," I yawned.
"What is it, though," Sasuke persisted.
"Genjutsu," I replied. "Well, a mix of it and what the Morino clan uses."
Kakashi's visible eyebrow rose, impressed. "You know Morino Ibiki?"
"Kinda," I said. "I know Morino Shinji better. I had to develop that jutsu all by myself, with hints from the old guy."
"Well, we defeated that strong a ninja this time," Tazuna said happily. "We should be safe for a while!"
"What happened after I was knocked out," I asked.
"A Hunter Nin from the Hidden Mist took the body after killing him," Sasuke said.
"Aaa, I see."
"Oi, oi, what are hunter nin," Naruto asked.
"They destroy the body of ninja who die and also of missing nin to ensure that secrets belonging to a village or clan aren't discovered by other nin," Kakashi explained. "For example, if I died, the secret of the Sharingan could be revealed. If you don't be careful there's a chance that the enemy could steal your jutsu. No sound, no smell... that is a ninja's ending."
"Just the sort of thing we wanna hear," I bitched.
Kakashi's body language expressed deep thought, and worry.
"What's wrong, sensei," Naruto asked.
"Huh? Well, body erasing teams usually dispose of the corpse there and then," Kakashi said.
"So we don't know that Zabuza's body actually was destroyed," I said, leaning against the wall.
"Yeah... if he needed proof of his death, he could have taken the head," Kakashi pointed out. "And the weapon he used to kill Zabuza..."
"No way," Sasuke said, eyes wide open as he sweated slightly.
"Yeah, exactly," Kakashi said.
I wondered what they meant, before realising. Acupuncture.
"What are you guys talking about," Tazuna asked, puzzled. He dealt with bricks, cement, and steel, not ninja.
"Most likely, Zabuza is still alive," Kakashi said.
Naruto and Tazuna freaked.
"Figures," I said, resigned. "It just figures."
"What the hell do you mean," Naruto yelled. "Kakashi-sensei, you checked and said he was dead!"
"Yeah, I did," Kakashi agreed. "But that was most likely a momentary death."
Our jounin-sensei then went on to explain that senbon were used by doctors for acupuncture, and the detailed knowledge needed by a hunter-nin ensured that the kid that had claimed Zabuza's body had probably resurrected him.
Just what we needed.
The next morning found us three students being escorted to the forest by our sensei, who was hobbling along on a pair of crutches. Once we were deep in the forest, Kakashi stopped and turned to face us.
"Okay, now we start the training," Kakashi said.
"Hell Yeah," Naruto roared, excited.
"Okay, before that, I want to talk to you about the shinobi ability, chakra," Kakashi said.
"Ummm... ummm... what's chakra," Naruto asked.
After a brief scolding, it was explained to Naruto how chakra was produced by ninja, made of body energy and spiritual energy and mixed in the body to form chakra, which was expelled to produce a jutsu.
Naruto counter-attacked with the idea that they didn't need to know how it worked, only how to do it. (Naruto got along famously with Recca, who was of the same mind as him when it came to things like that.)
"Naruto is right," Sasuke said. "We can already use chakra."
"Nope," Kakashi said gleefully. "You guys are not using chakra correctly."
He then went on to explain that neophyte ninja often were imprecise, and wasteful of their chakra production, resulting in exhaustion settling in faster, meaning that they got killed by ninja who lasted longer.
"So... what should we do," Naruto asked sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head.
"Learn how to control it," Kakashi said. "Through very tough training."
"Well, it isn't as if you'd tell us the easy way even if there was one," I observed.
"Correct! And as for how... Tree Climbing!"
The jounin then walked up the tree next to him, almost exactly like Jareth the Goblin King in his labyrinth.
"You understand now," Kakashi asked. "Gather the chakra in the soles of your feet and climb up a tree. This is something you can do once you control chakra well."
"Okay," Naruto said, giving a 'V for victory!' handsign. "Watch me do this, bro!"
I sat on my haunches as Naruto tried to walk horizontally up the tree like Kakashi-sensei. He got about a meter along and then fell to the ground, getting a sore head. Three kunai then landed in the ground, one beside each of us.
"Use those kunai to mark how far you get up the tree," Kakashi said. "Then use that mark as your goal and try to surpass it."
"This training is nothing to me," Naruto bragged. "I could do this before breakfast!"
"So do it, already, and impress me," I said.
"You're talking a great deal, but I don't see you climbing a tree," Kakashi said from where he was standing upside down beneath a particularly large branch.
"Alright," I said.
I gathered chakra to my feet, hoping really, really hard that the chakra would get through the soles of my boots, and walked to the nearest tree. As my foot landed on the bark of the tree, I added more chakra until it became sticky. Experimentally, I added more until the bark cracked around my foot. A somewhat forgiving margin, then, but one that Naruto would be unlikely to be able to walk.
Having established the limits, I slowly walked up the tree using the control necessary for the Mindrape to ensure that I would not fall from my path, whether due to over or under chakra-ing my feet.
"Suck on that," I said triumphantly, past the lower leaves and invisible to my two team mates.
"Aaaa, sugoi, Matora-niisan! Good one, bro," Naruto called up to me.
"It looks like the best at controlling chakra right now is Matora," Kakashi said.
"To be fair, though," I added, "Naruto and Sasuke have a great deal more chakra than me, so it evens out."
"Ma, ma, it looks like Matora is closest to being Hokage... unlike a certain someone I know," Kakashi said slyly. "I guess the Uchiha clan isn't worth much either."
"I wouldn't be Hokage if you paid me," I shot at our sensei cheekily as I made my way back down. "Too much paper work. But... Sensei, while those two work on their control, can I talk to ya for a moment?"
Kakashi, back on the ground as well, nodded as we walked away from the two rivals.
"I need to work on my physical stuff," I said. "Strength, speed, stuff like that."
"I'm no expert on taijutsu," Kakashi admitted. "You need to talk to Maito Gai about stuff like that. I'd advise you to run, do push ups, curl ups, stuff like that."
"Okay," I grinned. "Time to work on that chick impressing physique, eh, pervert-sensei?"
"Does your mother know you talk like that," Kakashi asked, eyebrow raised.
"She'll think that you've corrupted me," I said smugly.
OW! Another backhand.
Worth it, though.
Hehehe.