Hunted or Busted: A Side Story
Dusted 4: Flash Origin: In A Flash
And now that I've made a chapter with a terrible pun, I'm happy.
((((((((Hunted))))))))
"Tsunade, hey, sorry to bother you. Uh-huh, heh, yeah I guess it is kinda weird to get a call from me. But it's pretty important. I was training with Minato today and helping him get his forms down for his classes. Huh? Oh yeah, he's doing really well in school. He's pretty much the teacher's pet when it comes to classes and he's getting better in his combat training. But what has me really worried is just how awful he is at making friends. I mean I watch him try and it's - it's just painful. Anyway, that's not why I called. We were training and suddenly the kid activates his Semblance! Yeah, I was excited too. What kind? Get this - Teleportation. Yeah, pretty cool right! It's definitely gonna come in handy in the future. But see when he activated it he started disappearing and reappearing all over the place. He'd stop for a little bit but it'd start happening again, and it'd just gets worse with how stressed it made him. He's being teleporting all over the place since. How long? Uh...two hours?"
"JUST-"
"-KILL-"
"-ME!"
Jiraiya looked over and saw the young man continued to vanished and return into being with flashes of yellow light. He'd appear in the air before landing on the ground then hitting a tree before returning to the air with some leaves on his person. Jiraiya sighed, "Yeah it doesn't look like it's going to get any better anytime soon. What have I done? Uh...I told him to calm down. Grab the branches if he could to stop himself, but he kinda just ended up ripping the branch off with him. What do you mean I suck? What the fuck else am I supposed to do? What do you mean grab him? Did you not hear the part about him sporadically teleporting all over the place?"
"HELP ME YOU SON OF A BIT-"
"-CH!"
"Oh boy, he's actually swearing now." Jiraiya sighed, "Alright, I guess this is the hands-on approach. I'll get on it. Talk to you later - oh wait, hey could this be considered a booty- she hung up." The toad pocketed his Scroll and stepped up to where Minato continued to vanish, "Minato, have you gotten any better control of this thing yet?"
"WHAT DO-"
"-YOU THINK!"
The Faunus rolled his eyes, "Guess that's a no." The Huntsman started bouncing on his feet and watching carefully where Minato continued to flicker from existence. He spotted him landing by the base of a tree and charged over to grab him. Minato looked up and desperately reached out for his hand before flashing again. Jiraiya groaned and slid to a stop before dashing aside again.
He watched the young teen continue to flash around the area, just barely escaping his reach each time he got close. The Faunus growled, sprinting and diving each time he got close but missing by just an instant. Each time he got closer and closer but just failing to make contact with the frightened young man. Minato disappeared from the side of a tree to the air above their training ground.
Jiraiya yelled, releasing a Shockwave with both hands and sending himself flying through the air. He turned and slammed into Minato before he could disappear again, wrapping his arms around the boy and carrying them both back down into the dirt.
"O-Oh god, t-thank you." Minato gasped, rest his head back against Jiraiya's chest as the two caught their breath on the ground. The blond inhaled air desperately as his heart finally started to slow down, "I didn't think I'd ever hit ground again."
"Haha, that's one crazy Semblance you got kid." Jiraiya patted his ward's shoulders as they looked up at the sky, "But I think we have it under-"
The forest around them vanished, and they were surrounded by pure white.
The blond boy and white-haired man blinked in confusion...before gravity applied itself and their hair started to whip around violently.
"OH MY GOD!"
"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!"
Falling from the sky after breaching the clouds and finally seeing the ground again, the two were hugging each other and screaming desperately. Jiraiya shrieked, "DO SOMETHING MINATO!"
"WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?!"
"TELEPORT US SOMEWHERE ELSE!"
"I CAN'T CONTROL IT!"
Jiraiya looked around in a panic before spotting a blue body, "WATER! WATER OVER THERE! AIM FOR THE LAKE!"
"I DON'T KNOW HOW!"
"JUST DO SOMETHING BEFORE WE-"
They suddenly appeared over the surface of the lake and hit it hard enough to make the water explode from their impact. They breached the surface a moment later, gagging and spewing water before gasping for air. Jiraiya slapped the water in anger, "What the hell is with your Semblance?!"
"I don't know!" Minato spit up a little, "You think if I knew how to stop this I wouldn'-"
And then Jiraiya heard a curse from the trees behind him. The Faunus shook his head before swimming over to the bank of the lake and pulling himself out. He wrung out his clothes and emptied his boots as Minato continued to flicker out of existence around him. Jiraiya looked around and watched the teenager teleport all around the wooded area as he could only sigh and run a hand through his hair. He leaned back in the grass and looked up into the clouds.
...
Why did they appear up there?
For the last two hours Minato had been teleporting across the clearing, falling in the grass and tumbling in the dirt before hitting the trees. Yet they just suddenly appeared so high up in the sky, and then when they saw the lake they appeared there next.
What was different?
Minato was still in as much of a panic then as he was now. Why didn't he just appear outside the forest or further among the trees? Why was he just teleporting around the area and not anywhere else? Why weren't there sudden reports about a blond boy appearing and disappearing all around Remnant? Teleporting came with a lot of possibilities, but being able to disappear and reappear anywhere in the world was a Semblance bordering on god-like power. So why was it only around here, and then up into the sky? They'd appeared up there after he had finally grabbed the boy...
Oh...
Jiraiya finally lifted himself up and waited for Minato to teleport again. The boy stumbled into a tree before he yelled, "Minato!" The blond turned around in time to see Jiraiya pointing aside, "The tree!" He followed where he pointed but before he could ask why he teleported again. Jiraiya was already near the base of the tree when the boy had reappeared.
Minato felt Jiraiya grab his arm and pin him to the ground without any chance to resist, "What are-"
"The ground!"
"Wha-"
"Look at the ground! Just look at the dirt! Don't let your eyes travel and just look down!"
After a moment to catch his breath Minato obliged and kept his gaze solely on the ground he was pinned to. After a few moments where there wasn't anymore flashing around, Jiraiya lifted himself off the boy and stepped aside - warning him to keep looking down. A full minute went by before Minato and Jiraiya both let out a sigh of relief and panted for breath.
"W-What," Minato mumbled into the ground, "What did you do?"
"Figured out how your ability works." Jiraiya groaned, "I couldn't figure out why you kept flashing around in our training spot, then up into the sky, before reaching the lake and then flashing around here. And then it hit me. It's because you were looking at them."
Minato coughed, "What do you mean?"
"You teleport to things within your line of vision." Jiraiya explained, "You kept teleporting on the ground or in the air because they were in your line of sight, and you kept appearing in the trees because they were blocking you from seeing anything else." The toad patted the boy's back, "You can teleport anywhere within your field of vision as long as it's a clear path. But if there's something in your way, you'll teleport into that instead.
"S-So that's why I kept hitting the trees? Or why we appeared above the lake instead of in it?"
"Exactly. And since you were looking up into the sky, which is pretty boundless except for clouds, we appeared all the way up there." Jiraiya pulled himself up and let out a dry chuckle, "So as long as you keep your eyes stuck on something you can't teleport through, you won't be flashing around the place."
"No trouble there." Minato groaned, "I'm never going to use this stupid power again."
"You don't mean that."
"Of course I do!"
The toad shook his head, "Kid, do you understand just how useful and powerful your Semblance is?"
"Yeah! But do you have any idea what it feels like to disappear from one place and then just arrive at another without any warning?!" Jiraiya looked down and noted that Minato didn't dare move his gaze away from the ground, "I couldn't catch my breath sometimes! I lost my footing and before I could find it again I vanished! I thought that was it! I thought that was going to be who I am forever!"
He was left gasping for air as Jiraiya sighed and ran his hand through his hair. Exaggeration aside he could see where the fear and worry stemmed from. This wasn't the first case of someone's Semblance manifesting and causing them problems. His Shockwave didn't leave him in an existential crisis but people sure did yell at him for all the damages he caused. Not being able to control where you teleported could definitely seem daunting for a boy who just discovered his power…
But…
"I think being able to appear wherever people need your help most sounds like a pretty great ability."
The blond teen refused to raise his head or entertain the idea, but Jiraiya noticed that his frantic breathing had slowed down after hearing that. He smirked, reaching over and tussling the boy's golden hair, "I know after today's little…experience that you might be disillusioned with what your Semblance can do. But once you calm down, and see the benefits it can offer you for being a Huntsman, then we can start figuring out how to make it work."
Minato didn't respond until he mumbled into the dirt, "That was a cheap manipulation." Good on him noticing it, but it looked like it had affected him nonetheless. The young blond actually risked peeking an eye out and looking up at the Faunus, "Will this get easier to use with time?"
"Absolutely. But it's gonna take a while… and unfortunately for you…" Jiraiya grinned, "Looks like it's another trial-and-error one for us."
"Well…I guess you've got some experience with that."
"You know I do."
((((((((Hunted))))))))
Done
The next chapter will be the end of the Flash Origin arc, and then after that it's pretty much free game for what comes next.
And for people who are worried, I'm still writing the other stories, I'm not just focusing on this. A lot of these were written ahead of time and I'm just releasing them now.
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Thank You and Bye
