Another week passed since the last update, and we're already at chapter 10… I got so many reviews so I won't waste time about ranting, I'll just say that I'm finally finishing the Ranma 1\2 anime, almost a year after I started watching it.
Special note: I was in a really weird mood when I wrote this chapter, it was after my English teacher's son died in the Lebanon border, so I had some issuses to think about, and it reflects in the story.
Chapter 10: To fight a losing battle
"Ealla, there's a woman here to talk to you" Konhamaru called his wife, he knew the woman that wanted to talk with her, Reilla, a cloud shinobi "it's about Karen, isn't it?" he asked her, he hoped she remembered him, he was a chunin when they met, "in some ways it is, you're that chunin kid that was around last time I came here, right?" Reilla asked, she noticed how he changed. After what happened to the leaf he changed his approach and become a Jounin and a scientist, all the flash bangs were created by him.
"You're Ealla, right? My name is Uzumaki Reilla, and I'm here to discuss one of the genins in your team, her name is Uzumaki Karen" she said, Ealla looked at her and signaled her to come inside a large tent. Reilla looked around, she recognized all of the tent's habitants, "Uchiha Sasuke, Sakura, and the guy from the Ramen stand where we met Sasuke" she said coldly.
"Close enough, he's the sound Kage, and I partly remember you, so why are you here?" Sasuke asked, Ealla still reminded him of Naruto in many ways, she was also the one who carried him to the leaf by force.
"Officially, I'm part of the hidden cloud freelancing jounins and my mission is to be here in case anything goes wrong" she said, "and un-officially?" Sakura asked, although she already knew the answer, "Karen" Reilla replied, "I'm here to recommend that she'll be removed from this exam as soon as possible".
"that way, it's her smell for sure" Hob said, he and Doro were looking after their third teammate and crush target, they had to tell her the news about Neji and Reilla, even if she never complained about her lack of family, they both knew how much it hurt her, she wandered around the sound village just because she didn't want to go back to her empty home most of the day, "she has the right to know them" they decided immediately.
"Her scent ends here, so she should be close" they looked around, the night has already fallen but they could still see a blue light from below the cliff on their right, they ran towards it.
"you - two, she – pro-tected - you" Naraku said, his words were cut since he never tried saying something like that before, he looked like a 16 years old, twice than his true age, he cursed himself for not noticing their approach before. "Who are you talking about? Where is your team?" Doro asked, in his opinion, the teenager was talking strangely, and suffered from a serious lack of fashion sense.
"more importantly, where is your forehead protector? We have to keep them visible at all times" Hob continued, his nose itched, the boy reeked a strong scent of death and smelled awfully like the demons they met before. "I – do –not –have a fore-head pro-tector, I am – not a ninja".
Doro suddenly snapped, "this guy, he has no pulse… he is dead" his voice shook the words out, "that is right, now – where is Karen?" Naraku continued, he laughed inside about the two, he knew from the memories he collected before that they were friends of her, he just hoped they'll tell him fast and leave.
"what are you planning to do to her?" Doro asked loudly, Hob was already charging towards Naraku from behind. "whatever it is, we won't let you harm her!" he shouted, his hands hit the ground, blasting sand in his enemy's eyes, his fist stretched out to deliver the blow.
Nothing
"Do- not force me – to kill you" Naraku said, he wondered how could it be possible to be as weak as them, the memory from his parents appeared, both of them, she was considered inferior even to her small sister, and he was the last one at everything. Even with the memories, weakness was something that he couldn't understand; after all, he never met someone that he couldn't destroy with a wave of his hand.
Slam
Hob's body was thrown back, a slight touch was all that Naraku needed.
Blink
Now he was next to Doro, he decided that he should scare them enough so that they'll call her for him. He raised his left hand and begun spinning the chackra in it, a ball was formed, he raised his right hand and touched the ball, the ball started to shake when the chackra from the right hand entered it, the ball changed it's color from transparent yellow to a black red one, just like Naraku's eyes.
He held up the ball of chackra, Doro tried to land a punch on him but his efforts were in vein, his speed wasn't a match to his enemy, and his sound waves couldn't harm those who didn't live and didn't have normal ear drums. A shockwave went through the ground when the ball of chackra fell down, it was felt by everyone at the exam, but only Hob and Doro saw its effect. The rocks started to shake, one after another, they exploded into dust.
"Doro, we probably don't stand a chance, but we have to do it"
"Exactly, we can't let him touch Karen, no matter what"
"Leadership" Neji entered the conversation "I asked Shikamaru once something" all the eyes turned to him, Sasuke and Sakura haven't seen him since he asked them to watch over Karen, "It was after he was promoted to a chunin, I asked him why he allowed Ino to lead their team instead of him. He answered to me that leadership isn't telling people what to do, he said that even kids can command others, he also said that knowing to think ahead and to plan a successful mission was just strategizing, leadership, he said, was to be able to choose what to do in a desperate situation that can't work out well no matter what, and to stand behind that choice with no regrets", he sat down.
"what we have here is the same, the daughter of the nine tails fox demon at the place most crowded with demons on the face of the earth. We can decide to bring her to the vortex and to run the risk she'll awake the demon, we can also send her away and let desperation take over her and wait until she becomes a missing nin with the power of the Kyubi and watch hopelessly while she releases her anger on everyone she meets, the last option is to kill her and go on the risk she'll survive and go take revenge on all of us, which of the three do we take?" he explained, they all silenced.
"I suggest that we'll leave things as they are, postpone the decision until we have more information" Ealla said, she felt the ground shaking as well, that was what led to this meeting.
"won't do us any good, no matter how much time passes, non of the options will be discarded, Naruto was missing nin, a respectable member of the leaf and it's destroyer in his life, non of those were predictable, it just happened overnight, one day he was a smiling kid…" Sakura added "the next time we saw him he was a depressed man that couldn't smile, next time he was a cynical missing nin that chased after Hinata, after that he was living with us as a black haired Hyuuga, and then he blew off some steam and turned the leaf to nothing" she concluded.
"So what do we do? Risk it on a dice?" Sasuke presented the question again, if it was up to him, he would let Karen do whatever she wanted, he owed at least that much to her father. "No, the two of you are going to keep her as much as in good state until the exam is over, and after that, the four of you are going to have a long honest talk to her about everything she asks, got it?" Tsubakerou finished the conversation with the power of authority.
Karen woke up with a strange feeling, her right arm was touching something rather hairy and her legs were in the same condition, at any other day she wouldn't have paid any attention to it, since it was Shu-al's sleeping position "but… Shu-al can't be sleeping near every part of my body" was her first clue that something was wrong, the second and more important clue was the fact she was in the middle of the chunin exam in the leaf village and Shu-al was back at the sound.
Karen slowly opened her eyes and remembered how she got to that position; "I came back and a tried that Kage Bunshin jutsu…" "and then you collapsed from tiredness in the middle" The fox demon finished the sentence in her mind. She felt one of the furred creatures moving a bit, the dog then looked at her with red eyes and stood up on his four without further reference to her.
"He didn't attack" she said, "well of course he didn't, you are his alpha male.. female, you can probably even order him to jump from the roof and he'll do it" the Kyubi said, Inu-injiyuu were just beasts, even when he was in his demon form he couldn't get them to do anything better than the things dogs did on their own. "I should really head back and find Hob and Doro, they must be worried as hell about me, those two are so useless without me around" she said to herself.
"You o.k.?" Hob asked, he was surprised to see that he was in a fairly good shape, "I'm great, considering what that guy could do to us" Doro said, his ears ringed in a strange way, it was like when his father trained him with the sound moving taijutsu, it was like being hit by a constant wave of chackra to his ear drums. Hob looked around, it was foggy, which was out of the ordinary, because Hob knew the smell of fog well and he didn't smell any thing close to it in that moment.
"Good, you-'re awake, where is Karen?" a hole was ripped in the fog, a small boy walked through it, he had blonde hair and a red eyes, he was much shorter than the boy they met before, but his smell was identical – no body smells, just a strong smell of blood and fox hairs, that was what led them to him. His voice was hollow and empty, but the most distinguishing part was that he spoke in an odd matter. "Come on, Hob, this is out chance!" Doro begun to run, they didn't think a kid nearly half their age could be any problem.
Mistake
Once again, Doro and were fighting a lost battle, they didn't understand what was happening, they were both fighting at their full strength but for them it seemed like the fists were performed in slow motion while Naraku simply danced between them, he didn't even try to land an attack of his own on that point, he had a similar memory from his parents; "The best way to get people to listen to you is to show them they can't effect you at any way" was what he learned from it, he wanted them both to see how useless their efforts were so that they will cooperate with him.
Naraku sighed, he didn't expect his enemies to still have stamina or motivation to fight after the first ten minutes, it wasn't hard for him but it was getting annoying, after eight years on his own he lost all of his patience, he had to stop himself from just finishing the two sound nins in one hit. "tell me when you get serious" he teased them in hopes they'll burn off the energy faster.
"So now what? Are you going to practice the Kage Bunshin all day?" the kyubi asked, "no, the boys are probably worried to death, so I'll go see them, maybe we'll try to get one of the scrolls that we need" Karen said, she figured that if her father wanted to be the Hokage that much, the least she could do was to pass the chunin exam. She walked out and saw a large amount of smoke near the cliff.
"Wow!" the Kyubi yelled, "there's some intense fighting over there, at least a jounin level moves, someone burning up that much Chackra has to be quite a thing to see".
"so there's someone out there that can stand his ground against me? Then this is a great chance to test all this shit you've teaching me on a real enemy" Karen was exited, she knew that ever since she discovered the demon inside of her, she was getting stronger in an amazing speed. She started jumping over the roofs, avoiding the demons who roamed the village.
-----Chapter 10 – To fight a losing battle – End-----
as I said, a messed up chapter, so here's some things I want to clear out
Naraku's age: 8, the teenager appearance is just another form of him, I kinda forgot why I wrote that part, and I wasn't sure whether to edit it out or not, I decided to take the lazy road and keep it as it is.
Naraku (general): Naraku is supposed to be a mystery guy, he's revealing himself chapter after chapter, the best way to find his 'real' identity would be to go by Sherlock Holmes rule "when you dismiss everything that isn't right, what you have left, impossible as it may seem, is probably the truth".
And now to my favorite part..
Shout outs (!):
HMR: I updated a new chapter each week for about 5 months now, I'm not gonna stop now, and though I haven't worked on the story this week, I still have a few chapters in reserve. And Naraku? A secret!
Babowonsuni: I'm glad you liked the story, but there's still more to come… And Naraku? A secret!
Orlha: don't worry, no offence taken, it's true that the name Karen isn't really Japanese, but I noticed that when I'm reading fan fiction stories I usually can't remember names such as "waturasamaru" or other Japanese names, so I decided to use an 'English' name instead. You probably noticed, but I also don't use 'chan' 'kun' and other suffixes, those things are good for anime, but when writing stories, they usually are interrupting.
X2DarkLord: it's not only that they are coming out in masses, it's also that most of them jump right into the chunin exam and leave us waiting for 13 chapters before revealing anything (I'm not referring to any particular story, of course… even though there is only one story that match that standard). Dragon is nice, but splitting it into six words will be too troublesome, I'll just use 'star force' or something.
Synaptix: the Rasengan looked cool in the manga when Naruto was learning it, but it isn't as impressive as the chidori, I hope that a few other forms of it will be raveled in time… Karen doesn't have enough time to learn Kage-Bunshin and stuff, but she had a few months of learning from the Kyubi before, it's because he was never interested in 'normal' jutsu and sticked with demonic ones, you'll see a few cool ones in later chapters. And Naraku? A secret!
Eikou: yep, Naruto should be a criminal, he just needs to lose his morals and then join Akatsuki and lead a massacre against everybody who angst's out too loud, especially Sasuke. Mirc fserves are really slow, but I like bots, I get 30-90 k from them, which is very high. I haven't seen Fushigi Yugi yet, so I don't read fanfiction of that section, but I can give examples from the inuyasha section: 1)all the kag\sess romance stories, they all start with Kagome seeing Inu and Kikyo together and then she runs off to Sess, and meanwhile she discovers her demon blood. 2) high school fics, not much to say, there all the same, just that some are good, and some aren't. Valantines day? I refuse to believe that holiday exist until I find someone to be with on that day…
Shadowcriminal: thanks, I'm happy you think so highly of this story, it's really a good ego stroke! I had to kill Naruto cuz 2nd generation fics that involve battle are usually stupid if there's some super invincible parent around that can kill everyone without problems (basically, I made Naruto to be superman in "Shadow of life"), as much as I'd like to have this story end with a happy family reunion, I can't see myself writing something as "great dragon, I want to wish everybody back from the dead", it'd be too anticlimactic for me… Britain and USA took out Italy (though it's not really hard, the Italians always give up in the middle) and landed on Normandy, it's true that they didn't break German's defense like the soviets did, but they helped around, and they sent money and military equipment to Russia.
Hattuteline: that's one serious explanation to Karen\Kyubi relationship, but I'm afraid I wasn't thinking about that, I just thought that the Kyubi wouldn't want to waste his time on being a sensei and would rather make sarcastic remarks and sleep (Note: somehow, when I write demons, I always write them like cats, they always sleep and are always lazy… it's probably cuz I'm always tired). Haku's sage was more to get the audience hooked up to the story, kishimoto didn't want to start the chunin exam right away and decided to have an introducing sage before. About the other countries, in the original manga, they don't have any reasons to turn to the leaf, the all have ninja's in their country, the only chance for the leaf to get involved will be through some A rank mission, which isn't something that naruto does yet.
Basically, you won't see much demons sprouting out now, their part was to introduce Naraku (who is to Karen what Gaara was to Naruto… sorta) and to build up the tension, there will be another mentioning of a grand demon in the next chapter (you should be able to figure out who Naraku is after that part) but that's it. Berserk is one of the best mangas I've read so far, I'm waiting for the 27th volume to be released, it should be so great!
Next chapter; a grand flashback, and a few other stuff, look forward to it.