Another week, another chapter, another overused opening sentence.
I guess you don't care about my rantings, and I don't have much to talk about this week, so lets move on to the story.
Disclaimer: in case you forgot, I'm not Kishimonto, and I'll never be, so there's no apparent chance I'll own the Naruto manga. But if something changes and I suddenly do, I'll be sure to tell you about it.
Chapter 9: Naraku
{
Rasengan number 6 variation: multiply chackra focus points.
Desired affect: multiply blasts one after another for large amounts of enemies or to wreck places up.
Training notes:
Day 1: "this shit doesn't work"
Day 2: "the chackra spins are getting in each others way, not stable enough"
Day 3: "can't multiply the inner walls, can't separate the spins"
Day 4: "using two hands doesn't work and so does cloning, the spinning motion is too uncontrollable"
Day 5: "almost killed Lee, need to find a better place to practice"
Day 6: "talked to pervey, doesn't agree to show me the 4th's notes, moving on to plan B"
Day 15: "Plan B failed, got new mission: to clean the offices all day for the next month. Temporarily stopping the research"
}
"What's this scroll all about anyway?" Karen asked in her mind.
"well, that's one of your father's failed tries to further develop the Rasengan, he wanted to be able to blast through entire building in order to catch his enemies off guard, it didn't work out much, he tried to steal the original scrolls of this jutsu and got severely punished, then he got so depressed that he failed even after planning everything through that he didn't feel like working more on it" the Kyubi explained.
He remembered how much pride Naruto had in his plan, it was one of his first ninja-like pranks, he learned the configuration of the lock and memorized the changing times of the guarding shifts, he even had an alibi with a ramen eating shadow clone that he replaced every twenty minutes.
Everything should have worked great if Kiba wasn't there to challenge his clone to a fight, and Ino was there as well to watch, his clone could avoid all the blows for only ten minutes, and then the uproar started when Kiba realized that the real Naruto never was there to fight him, in less than a moment, an overly angered mob of Kiba's friends were looking for him, they didn't find him, but all the mayhem woken up the 5th and she found him going through a highly confidential pack of scrolls.
"so it goes like this, right? Focus the chackra on one point in my palm and have it spin around without escaping my grasp?" Karen asked, she didn't wait for an answer, she marked an invisible point on her hand, then she began imagining water in her hands, she slowed her breath, with each inhale she would move the imaginary water, it was fairly easy, she quickly switched the calm motion into a stormy one, "storm, clouds, lightning, thunder…" her hand began shaking.
*Boom!*
Karen was thrown 5 meters back, she opened her eyes to find that over half of her body was buried in the sand she could see that in the place she stood before was now a black pitch hole, she couldn't even see it's ending.
"What the hell are you trying to do?" the demon shouted at her, "I was trying to do this Rasengan thing you talked about.. I'll just try it again!" she said, the damage that a failed attempt could bring was immense, even more than the demonic jutsu the kyubi taught her.
"Like hell you aren't! The Rasengan is deadly when used correctly, it's dangerous when practiced in the normal way, it's suicidal when you try to do the final stage without the first two, and it's stupid beyond words when you try it when you have our kind of chackra! You're lucky the kickback pushed you away from the area of the blast, even from this distance you're bleeding like hell itself, you know?" the Kyubi screamed at her.
Karen's arms and legs were full with open wounds and she didn't even notice it, it did make him grin, though, Naruto was also like that, always back on his feet even after getting beat to dirt.
"Damn it! He must have been a real blood lusted freak…" Neji said, the scroll was left untouched, so it was either that the attacker had the same scroll already or that he didn't mind the scrolls all together, the stone jounin was still mourning over his student, she lost her leg first and then was burned to death.
"There's at least one of those guys at each exam, the sad part is that they grow to be the best shinobies around if you don't stop them when they're young…" Reilla said, she remembered her exam, a grass genin planned on killing everyone at the first exam and to get the title by being the only contestant, luckily for everyone, he wanted her as his first victim.
Needless to say, he met a very unpleasant surprise when her silent lightning jutsu trap got him and fried his nervous system, from that point on, he experienced everything tenfold their original "power", from what she learned, that genin quit the life of ninjas and become a gourmet chef.
"Look at this, Hob, what kind of demon left these footprints?" Doro asked, Neji immediately turned to them, he lived at the leaf ever since it was destroyed, and he knew at the absolute point of knowing that demons did *not* leave tracks behind.
"You should come and see it, it's bad news" Reilla said – those were the footprints of a beast, and a rather large one, she highly doubted that a genin could summon a creature of that caliber.
"Well, they look like those of Shu-al's, so I guess it's another fox" Hob said, he knew that Karen left Shu-al at the sound village, and the footprints were a bit smaller than the ones Shu-al had. Neji quickly performed a series of seals, he didn't like to use the Byakougan eyes these days, demons gave him a headache.
"Oh, shit… kids, you should really get moving with your exam. Reilla, I need to have a word with you" he quietly said with a shacking voice, he closed his eyes and tried to drive the feeling he had away, it didn't work.
"This thing that was here… it's a fox alright, and a demon that belongs to this plain, even his footprints have traces of chackra on them, there are two possible options, none of them are positive" Neji whispered.
"One: there is another colony of demons, and they were born at this plain, and they came here for the chunin exam" Reilla said.
"And two: this demon was here all along, and now he decided to show himself and happened to go after a blond female ninja that's 12 years old" Neji completed her thought, both of the options were disastrous, and he wasn't sure which one was the lesser evil.
"Or perhaps both are true… a pup of the nine-tailed demon that was here and hid from you" the blonde child said to himself, he had to fight the urge to say it loud and expose himself to them.
"I have lived alone for 8 years, I can do it for a few more days, I can't waste my only chance" he recited to himself, he knew both of them perfectly. Uzumaki Reilla: a cloud ninja, her father left her at the village, she was raised by the Reikage and was honored as a top shinobi since day one, has mastered over 1000 jutsu and developed them to the maximum, was defeated only once.
The male was Hyuga Neji: came from the leaf village, the branch house of the Hyuga clan, his father was sacrificed in order to protect the secrets of the bloodline, he was considered a genius, top student of his class, Chunin at 14, Jounin at 18, The boy spitted the names as fast as he could, even in his thought,
"Names are for those who other know about"
He reminded himself, and he just wasn't one of those people. When he was younger he toyed with the idea of having a name, but he decided against it, only parents had the right to name their sons, and if they weren't around, then the closet kin or the village committee. But he didn't even have a village to be an outcast of, nobody even knew that he existed and nobody could act as if he wanted him to disappear, he laid a finger on his neck.
Nothing
He laughed at his pathetic hope, his skin was cold as ever, even the flames he spitted before couldn't warm his body up. Even the demons he commanded were warmer than him, they knew where they came from and had others of their kind, he knew as well where he came from, knew too well.
8 years ago, the same spot where the nine-tails demon forged himself again out of his vessel, after the demon spirit escaped and created the vortex, the spirit inside of him sensed the danger around and gathered the two dead bodies, his soul took over them and combined with the bodies, if he wouldn't have done so then he would have died with his mother.
"No, dead is for the living, I just wouldn't have been born" he corrected himself, but he still wasn't born or alive, his cold skin was the proof, he was just the by-product of that couple, if she wouldn't have woken up in the middle of the night from her pregnancy sickness, then he would have people to call a family – a father, a mother, a sister, even a pet to play with.
Instead, he was stuck there, unable to even talk properly because he hardly had the chance, he couldn't have reveled himself to Neji, he knew that Neji could and would kill him on sight, he could count the number of times he talked on one hand, the girl that wasn't the one he looked after and three foolish ninjas that came to inspect what happened at the leaf and ignored Neji's warning not to wander alone.
"But this is going to change" he thought happily, it did pose a problem to him, how would he call himself? She needed a way to speck to him and think of him, the boy from hell needed a name for his reunion with her.
"Hell"
"Call me Naraku…" he whispered softly, tasting his new name, it rolled perfectly on his tongue, "I'm so-rry, mother, father, for not being a-ble to live with the name you would- have gi-ven me" he said to the ground, it was the sixth time he talked, he guessed that he would have to get used to it sooner or later, he doubted that she could understand him without help, after all, she didn't have the memories he had.
"It'll pass by the end of the week" Karen said, she covered her wounds with bandages, her arms were a mummified with paper just like Doro's arms.
"That's not the point; you are a ninja, in a middle of dangerous mission, totally on your own. You can't hurt and risk yourself like this, for your own sake, trust me when it comes to your father's past, and when I tell you not to try a jutsu that is completely wrong for you, listen to me!" the kyubi shouted in her mind.
Over the past months he grew to like her in someway, it was like a father instinct that passed from Naruto to him, it could also be the simple fact that both of them were abandoned, he drove that thought away, reminding himself that he is one of most powerful demons ever to walk the realm of the mortals, not a lost pup that was just born.
"Was, now I'm merely a voice in one girl's mind, can't get much lower than this" he corrected himself.
"Cut the self pity, you sound pathetic; now tell me, what jutsu do you suggest to learn?" Karen voice stopped his line of thought; she was holding a large pack of scrolls that Naruto wrote before the kidnapping, "well, why not start with a bang? He rewrote the scroll of Kage Bunshin somewhere when he tried to figure out how to divide chackra between the clones in a chaotic way in order to avoid detection, it's a great jutsu for anyone to have" he said, he wondered how many hours would take her to learn it, it took her father almost a full day.
"Kage Bunshin? Found it! now, I'm going to show you that I can master anything that my father could, and you'll have to teach me that Rasengan thing!" Karen yelled to him.
------Chapter 9 – Naraku – End----
Yes, another chapter is out, and now our mystery man has a name, Naraku (which means hell), and by the time you'll get to know his full name, you'll all be able to guess it already, cuz I've made it so fucking clear, even from this single chapter.
Anyway, some shout outs (!)
HMR: Kenshin rulz, its one great anime. I should be getting the manga soon, so it'll rule even more. "War of the last Wolves" was one great song, so was "Warriors suite".
Synaptix: I think this chapter answered the Rasengan question, didn't it? and Naraku will prove to be one angsting character, cuz we all like to angst over our lives. About jutsus? I've started writing a few battle based chapters over the past three weeks, so you can expect seeing a lot of new cool moves, but it'll take a while.
X2DarkLord: no more Kyubi fics? Too bad, there aren't enough original stories around, I swear, there's just a 'baby boom' of stories from the "naruto is coming back" genre, it's not that I hate them, but it's just wearing out the effect.
Eikou: Bad days, they just suck, I was out of anime today, IRC is such a bothering program, I've got no idea how many years it'll take me to get one damn file… how the hell did I get there? Anyway, I had a better week than last one, so don't worry, there's always an uphill after a downhill, or something like that…
Hattuteline: Hey, I don't write much cliffhangers! But I do leave a lot of things to guess, it's to keep the readers interested. The next chapters will go to a climax, then a small break time, and another climax, which I suppose will be the end, I'm not too sure about it, I'm having problems with how to end the story…
Oh, and everybody, I need your help, I need a name for an elite task force, you know, like the S.W.A.T or something like that, but I need a cool name, I've got one name, but I want to use it on another story, and I don't to use it twice. So if you got any suggestions, feel free to write them.
Hope you liked It, see ya next week.