Dia duit, a léitheoirí daor!
How's everything going? Hope you're doing ok.
HUGE shout out to The ultimate deity, Ishimaru Taiki, Uday Sra, geraldsha, guest110, LeviDragon and Tohka123. You're all incredible people :)
Special thanks to puzahx2 for your wonderful review. You gave me some combat ideas. And to answer your question, yes, Lio is an original OC.
These past few days have been…taxing. More so than usual. But all of your reviews and messages help make my day. I also want to thank everyone that's giving this story a chance; I appreciate all of you.
I've got an important announcement by the end of this chapter.
Now, concerning this chapter, here's a WARNING: this chapter contains graphic depictions of violence, suffering and a general disregard for another's health. There will also be a small flashback that would feature reckless endangerment of a child and child abuse on a psychological level. If you find this uncomfortable, then I'll stamp a WARNING before and after that slice of Naruto's past. It's pretty small but I don't want to risk of triggering anyone.
Regarding the overall violence of this chapter, I've already given a fair warning.
I had fun writing this chapter and I hope you have even more fun reading it.
Enjoy.
CHAPTER 3
Naruto blazed left and Minato burned right, converging on the Sannin in a scuff of dirt and snow.
The boy feinted a low kick to Orochimaru's shin, baseball sliding under a hand reaching to grab his neck and snagging one of the Snake summoner's ankles as the man swung his poison soaked sword at Minato's gut, barely unsettling the older man's footing for Minato to leap above the swipe and smack a knee into Orochimaru's face.
Crunch!
Naruto flinched at the chilling sound of a nose getting crushed and the deep arch when the snake man bent backwards. Minato deftly rolled and bolted to his left, vanishing in a stuttering blur of yellow.
Hissing when the Kusanagi blade swiped down to him, the CORE ninja hastily switched places with Minato's discarded pouch of tri-prong kunai and exhaled when all he received was a nicked sleeve from the Sannin's long sword.
The souvenir seller Minato bought Kushina's snow globe and Naruto got his glasses started screaming, alerting the city of the fight.
Meanwhile, Orochimaru righted himself and raced to Naruto, who was crouched on the ground and snarling.
A smirk crawled up the man's face and his golden yellow eyes became elated, crazed.
"Ungrateful little boy."
Naruto crossed his forearms, fingers curled around a pair of Hirashin kunai in a reverse grip and diverting a heavily weighted stab to his chest with the blades, squinting at the spark of metal scraping metal as Orochimaru unintentionally flew past the child.
The Sannin gaped; putting his weight and focus on that debilitating stab wouldn't have possibly been blocked, not with those kunai, but he didn't anticipate that Naruto was aware of that to turn away him to the side, thinking the boy was cocky enough to want to take the full brunt of the attack.
The world slowed down to a crawl as Orochimaru flew past Naruto, sword outstretched and feet grinding to find purchase on the ground. Turning his eyes, he bared his teeth when the boy sent a glimmering smirk from behind his crossed blades.
His wide eyed distraction didn't allow him to see a third tri-pronged kunai the boy laid flat on the snow.
Minato's punting kick connected on the side of the older man's face.
Boom!
Orochimaru careened away, bouncing on his back once and digging his free hand into the earth to slow himself down.
His jaw hung loose.
He saw red, watching Naruto stand up and Minato drop his foot.
Without looking, the two blondes exchanged a fist bump; their opponent wasn't someone either could beat alone, not at their current stages of combat awareness, but their teamwork was somewhat passable.
Minato shook his head for Naruto to keep the two tri-prong kunai in his possession.
If they wanted to defeat the rogue Sannin, they needed to do this together.
Orochimaru discarded his sword and the sheath, reaching up and snapping his jaw back into place.
"Seems like I have no choice." He mumbled, understanding the disadvantage of fighting Konoha's brightest star and ROOTs very best all by himself. "Let's get serious, kids."
Minato's brow twitched at the searing glare boring in their direction and his stance tightened when the Sannin relaxed into a loose stance, flowing into his personal fighting style.
Blazing Mamba Striking Fists.
The CORE Operative sealed Minato's blades and flashed through a set of hand seals, slapping the ground. A wall of solid rock rose up from the snowy ground, and Naruto grit his teeth as it was promptly blasted apart, barely diving away from four blistering fingers when they made to cut into his shoulder.
Naruto narrowed his eyes and his Byakugan activated with a rippling thud.
He ignored the tingle on his shoulder, the one he could have lost if he hadn't dodged.
Minato shifted his head to the left, missing Orochimaru's fingers, swept underneath a roundhouse kick and buried a fist into the Sannin's unprotected side, only for the Sage to inhumanly bend around the blow and drive his knee into the older blonde's elbow.
Minato blinked away to a kunai marker and Naruto surged to the grinning Sannin, hopping up and smacking a pair of scissors kicks into the man's guarding forearms, swiftly substituting when Orochimaru's arms shifted into two white snakes and bit into a log of wood, shredding it to pieces. He snapped around and backhanded an unfinished Rasengan to his face, ripping his other elbow into Minato's face but wincing from a palm strike to his lower back from Naruto, completely winding around after his last counterattack and breaking a left hook into a substituted log of wood.
The twenty year old Namikaze, with a purpling bruise blooming on his right cheek, flashed away and Naruto tagged in, running a barrage of knuckles into Orochimaru's gut, yanking his hands out and wheezing when an unfazed Sannin crushed his knee into the nine year olds chest, catching the airborne boy by his neck with a light chuckling.
"So much for getting serious, hm." He squeeze his hand, tightening his chokehold on Naruto's neck, licking his lips at the boy's blue, air deprived face. "Now go to sleep, child, I'll attend to you later-"
"Oi!"
And a horse-sized toad barrelled past them, dispersing in a large plume of smoke.
Orochimaru's grip momentarily loosened, braced for the toad to slam into him, and Naruto inhaled precious oxygen, melding his fingers into some twenty seals and exhaling fire over his captor just as the Snake Sage hardened his hold.
'Fire release: Great Fireball jutsu.'
Red tongues of fire washed over Orochimaru and the utter unexpectedness of it forced an agonized wail from his lips, releasing the boy.
Naruto landed, maintaining the stream of flames for three more seconds before he cancelled it and rushed away.
The man on fire, Orochimaru, bellowed vengefully and gave chase.
" Come here, brat! "
The Sandaime surely won't mind if a few fingers and toes went missing on Konoha's lost son, maybe some inches of flesh and several severed tendons; Orochimaru and Tsunade could always heal those injuries.
Another toad, the same size as the first one, spat out its tongue and stuck it on Orochimaru's back, reeling it back in with a sharp snap. Minato, on the toads back, dispelled his summons when the burning Sannin rocketed to him.
Minato flipped through eight seals and pushed his hands into the ground, raising a rock wall for Orochimaru to faceplant into. The irked Sage pushed off, only for his head to be kicked right back into the wall, forming a spider web of cracks from the solid wall.
Naruto, foregoing the inferno coating his opponents form, planted his sneakered foot onto the man's head and bashed Orochimaru's face into the wall five more times, more frustrated that he couldn't shatter Minato's wall, if anything.
Then the Sannin flared his chakra.
The sheer power blasted the CORE ninja off his feet, obliterating the rock wall and denting the ground. The windows of the supermarket broke under the pressure and the souvenir stand wouldn't have stood a chance if the seller hadn't long since fled.
Naruto regained his centre and shook away the cobwebs blanketing his senses, substituting mid-air with a flying piece of debris and bouncing from one chunk of pavement to the other, falling to the earth in a catastrophic shower of stone and thick dust.
The boy's Byakugan stared down to the centre of the mayhem.
Orochimaru of the Sannin rose out from his smouldering body, shedding his skin and glowering with renewed energy.
Whatever combat-worthy ninja Tin City had descended on them, diving headfirst into the dust to apprehend whoever was causing the disturbance.
'Time to get lost.' Naruto concluded to himself, landing with a neat roll and dipping away from the chaos through the noise of fighting and smoke, excusing himself by disappearing completely from human detection. His arms behind him and his head lowered as he pelted into the city, he jerked at the condescending voice humming to his right.
"Do you have somewhere to go?"
Not needing to even use his doujutsu to confirm who the person was, Naruto blasted chakra to his feet, much too much chakra for it to simply stick to the surface, and the ground beneath him exploded, propelling him over the elongated limb aiming to coil around him.
It sounded like a crack of lightning.
Bang!
The boy's arms windmilled in the air and his legs cycled, flying at dangerously high speed and feeling the cold air lash across his face. Peering back, he frowned as the reptilian Sannin doggedly slithered beneath him; the dark haired Sage looked ten feet longer than Naruto remembered, with his legs joined together underneath his pants and his arms, neck and torso more rubbery.
Orochimaru licked his lips.
The man shot his arms up ahead of the child, curving them back to wrap around and restrain sad blonde, and Naruto turned mid-air, using the back of Orochimaru's right hand as a brief perch and hopping to the man's left hand, racing up to the elbow, flipped to the other lengthened arm as it warped into winding circles, bound back to another arm and running up to the Sannin's wrist, forcing more chakra to his feet.
Bang!
It was like grabbing at air.
Orochimaru winced, both at the dizzying footwork and the explosion, tearing his rubbery wrist and losing his hand.
All done in the air and while both of them were careening faster than a horse could run, one sliding on the ground and the other soaring in the air.
Naruto couldn't fly, of course, and not many CORE drills could prepare a person for this type of reactionary mid-air fighting.
It came down to pure instinct.
Finally, their hectic game met a concrete wall and Naruto's hands pawed at it, scrambling up the building and muffling a blistering curse when the Sannin stubbornly followed him, even increasing in speed.
Apparently, capturing the rogue CORE ninja would bear more fruit than killing his fellow Hokage candidate; doing both would have assured his seat but taking the blonde child back to Konoha would raise the already high opinion of the Sandaime in the Snake Sage's favour, convincing the powers that be to support his ascension.
Danzo, Kohoru and Homura, along with the backing of Hiruzen Sarutobi would make his rise into the seat more smoother.
Minato might have the constant support and admiration of more than a third of the village, a staggering number of Shinobi and civilian vying for him to take the seat of power, but Orochimaru could attain the good graces of the people that counted in one fell swoop if he could somehow get this brat back home.
Back at the front of the supermarket, the dust settled and the Tin City guards realized they weren't fighting anyone, turning their eyes to the sound of shuddering pops of chakra. They saw hazes of distorted light barrel up the side of a five story, one chasing the other.
Naruto withdrew a Hirashin kunai and vaulted to the top of the building, sending a scathing look to Minato when he got to the middle and the man flashed to Naruto's seal tag, who smiled apologetically as the boy whizzed past him to the edge of the building.
"I'm still getting the hang of that jutsu." He threw an uppercut and Orochimaru swerved away from the accurate attack for his chin, going too fast to stop at a dime and properly counter the blow. "It's not as easy or cool as it looks; it's technical!"
If Naruto could yell, he had a few handy swears ready to hurl at the Namikaze, settling for a burning glare with his pale Byakugan eyes.
" Geez." Minato huffed, rolling his eyes and surging into some hand seals, Naruto did the same from Orochimaru's front at the edge of the building. "Wind release: Great Vacuuming Wind."
The older blonde inhaled and the younger blonde exhaled, blowing large gusts of wind to push the Sannin away and get caught in Minato's wind vacuum, effectively stopping Orochimaru in his tracks.
Minato closed the distance and stabbed a kunai into the Sannin's lower back, wedging his tri-prong kunai between a spinal column and the pelvis, and then placed his right hand on the pained man's neck.
"Got you."
A complex seal warped into Orochimaru's skin, expanding and spreading across the pale man's head and upper torso in a complicated spiral of high level seals.
"Fuinjutsu: Drain and Restrain."
Minato dragged Orochimaru's chakra into the seal, separating it into a Storage seal and freezing the Snake Sannin's muscles in place.
The blade in Orochimaru's back was just to stun him and make the contact seal hurt more.
And it did.
It hurt.
It hurt a lot.
A blood curdling wail ripped from the Sannin's throat and Minato roared, bellowing to the remorseless CORE Operative as the nine year old skirted over to the frozen Sannin.
"Mess him up!"
A second Hirashin kunai found itself in Naruto's other hand and the boy spun them in his palm, closing in to his target and leaping forward. He impaled both of Orochimaru's shoulders with the two ninja knives, using his weight to drag it down and ultimately severing the tendons there, effectually making the Sage's arms useless. His feet flattened on the roof of that five story building and he swiped at the Sannin's lower stomach, splitting through the Konoha flak jacket with the first two cuts and opening the man's stomach with the second two.
His Byakugan lit up like a blazing white inferno.
His body became a blur of lethal cuts and vicious strikes.
Minato clenched his teeth, concentrating on holding down Orochimaru for Naruto to whittle him down, but he couldn't help marvel at the precision behind each slice and jab.
Vital tenketsu, tendons and joints, the boy found them and tore them.
Rising from below, Naruto cut Orochimaru's toes, stabbed his ankles and ripped clean through the Achilles tendon, racing up and slicing across and into the calves, pushing into the back of the knees and swiping around to the kneecaps, bashing the base of his kunai there thrice, tearing slashes up Orochimaru's thighs and briefly left the two tri-prong kunai impaled into the Sannin's hips, backtracking half a step and roaring back with a rising knee to Orochimaru's crotch.
Crunch!
Minato felt it in his soul.
Whatever second wind Orochimaru was mustering was violently knocked out of him; Naruto was still yet shorter than the two men, so he couldn't comfortably use his foot to obliterate Orochimaru's balls.
Although a knee to the groin was just as bad, or probably worse, than a foot.
"Five seconds!" Minato called, visibly struggling to keep Orochimaru down. "Make this count, kid!"
Naruto exhaled and retrieved his blades from Orochimaru's hips, continuing his crippling journey upwards.
He lined ten stabs through each rib, ending that chain by stepping up Orochimaru's weakened knees and fitting his knives into the Sannin's chest, using his weight to drag them down through two ribs, cracking the base of his kunai into the sternum not unlike a mad person banging on a wooden door, softening the bone for him and splintering the lungs with bone fragments, finally driving one kunai into the heart and the other into Orochimaru's neck, swiping left and opening his throat. He pulled himself up with the blade in the Sannin's heart and slammed the last knife into the man's temple, falling down and stepping back twice, blazing back and moving up Orochimaru's knees once again, this time with a earth rocking uppercut.
Crack!
The sound of neck bones popping chilled Minato the core, watching Orochimaru's neck dislocate and flop back bonelessly with the staggering punch.
The only thing holding the Sage upright was Minato's kunai in his spine.
One second to spare, Naruto stood on Orochimaru's destroyed shoulders and stared down at Minato; his pale eyes illuminated by the city lights coming from below and panting lightly, the rogue CORE ninja signed.
"How's that hip, old man?"
Unlike what happened, bones weren't so easily breakable, especially that of an adult's as opposed to the force of a child's strikes; Naruto merely applied the right amount of pressure in the right direction to the right place, aided by releasing his weight on that part of the skeleton.
It also helped that CORE Operative had some muscle conditioning and stamina to carry him through the fight.
The Namikaze's words stuck in his throat, stunned still by what he had just witnessed.
A whispering smirk lifted a corner of Naruto's lips.
More and more, Naruto resembled Sakumo Hatake.
The Hatake's spirit lingered behind the blonde boy, and Minato saw it.
" Ehem." The blonde Namikaze coughed, willing his composure to return; he knew CORE weren't ordinary kids. Not by any stretch of the imagination, but that previous display rattled him more than he wanted to admit. The amount of training someone had to undergo, Byakugan or not, to be able to reach such speed, skill and efficiency was unheard of. Inhuman and inhumane. He cleared his throat. "Ah...good thing you didn't…crap yourself. I didn't want to be the one to change your diapers."
Naruto scoffed. "Shut it, old man."
Minato then frowned. "He's...still alive, y'know." For that, Naruto's shoulders drooped, less disappointed and more exasperated.
Orochimaru's lungs were perforated and his throat was cut wide open, so he definitely couldn't breathe. The blade stabbed between his eyebrows and his literally bleeding heart meant his brain couldn't signal his heart to beat, and even then the heart wouldn't be able. The dislocated and slashed shoulders and legs cancelled any hope of movement till the near future.
So how was this man still alive?
"Maybe it's like that thing where snakes are alive even after losing their heads." Alive for a little while but alive till then nonetheless.
"I doubt it's like that."
"It could be a Sage thing…? Nature chakra...maybe." Jiraiya always pestered it how important his Sage training was and pressed down harder for Minato to master the Sage Arts.
Minato flashed them away by the time Tin City's ninjas swarmed them, unable to catch a glimpse on the people causing the disturbance.
The Namikaze reappeared with Naruto and the restrained Sannin on a barren, snow covered dirt road, likely still in Snow country because the CORE ninja could see the lights of Tin City shine southwest of them.
Getting his bearings, the boy hopped off Orochimaru's shoulders, shrugging and shaking his head. "Dude, I have no idea."
The only Sage the boy and his siblings studied and we're gathering information on was Jiraiya, the easiest of the trio to uncover, after that would have been Tsunade Senju, who was more difficult to investigate and build reasonable intelligence on, and then the most secretive Sannin came last, Orochimaru, of whom reportedly had no family name to deem worthy of mention; as a countermeasure against betraying the village and to put forward a long term seat-warmer for if any of the Sannin died or were incapacitated, until another person outside of ROOT at the Sannin level of skill came forward to replace the fallen Sannin.
The Legendary Sannin were charismatic characters among Konoha's ninja force.
War heroes that stood toe to toe against Hanzo the Salamander and accorded the overpowered Amekage's open respect.
Enemies wavered on hearing their names and Konoha ninjas were bolstered to reach their height.
It wouldn't do to lose such fearsome Shinobi.
This battle made it clear that taking down a Sannin was easier said than done, and replacing one was a near impossible feat that Danzo was doggedly working towards.
Minato, refusing to release the contact seals on Orochimaru's person or pull out the knife from the man's spine, hummed. "The only thing I can think of is sealing off his chakra and tie him down with my Tailed Beast Suppression seals, but I don't know how long that'll hold him."
"We could always burn him." Naruto suggested, tossing a thumb over his shoulder to the city and gesturing. "I can run over and get petrol, gather some firewood, douse the guy, set him up on a stake and set him on fire, see if he really is immortal."
"Now there's an idea…" the Namikaze trailed, tripling the seal when he sensed Orochimaru's chakra struggling for a foothold in his chakra network, scattering the man's chakra control and absorbing the little chakra in his reserves. "What if we cut him up and then do all that?"
"Good idea. Make sure he doesn't go resurrecting on us and coming back for revenge. Smart." And that was a reasonably logical possibility, as nearly nothing was known about the Snake man, only his exploits in the world of science. Little to nothing of the man's personal life or hidden scientific breakthroughs were made public, not even to his supposed friends. "Just for good measure, we find ourselves a goat to eat Orochimaru's ashes, mixed into its food, of course-"
"Of course." The older blonde bobbed his head in agreement. It wouldn't entice any goat to be munching on human ashes by itself.
"-Get some pigs to eat the goat shit, and that should do it."
"It's not a perfect plan, but it's something."
The frank crudeness and grim certainty of their planning on how to dispose of a Sannin would have looked ridiculous to outsiders; a twenty year old man bouncing ideas back and forth with a nine year old boy on murdering and ensuring the death of an apparently immortal-or semi-immortal-Snake Sage.
Morbid and ruthless.
It was an unusual scene.
In their defence for how straightforward they were being, both blondes didn't have conventional upbringings.
Naruto was just about to rush off and get himself a sizeably jerrycan of petrol and a sharp enough axe to begin lopping off Sannin body parts, though Minato stopped him with a groan.
"Wait. Hold on." The boy raised an eyebrow, a bit surprised by the newfound hesitation on Minato's part. "What am I going to tell Lord Sandaime and the rest of Konoha?"
"Who says you have to say anything?"
"An inquiry says so."
For all they knew, Danzo knew of Orochimaru's journey to Snow as well as the Snake Sage's plan to kill Minato and capture Naruto. The elder could spin a story about Minato betraying the village and seniority meant that Danzo's tale would be more trusted than Minato's statement.
Naruto ran a hand through his hair, muffling a breath as he dragged his palms down his face.
"As terrible as this sounds, we have to let him go. No. Wait. Hold on," He hastily added when Naruto marched up to him, pointing a spiteful finger at the Namikaze for going back on their plan. "Hey, hey, I know. I. Know." Minato shifted Orochimaru, placing the breathless Sannin between himself and the irate child. "I can get Inoichi to give me a mind probe, prove Orochi came for me and I defended myself."
That infallible evidence would effectively kick the Sannin out of Hokage candidacy. The Sage and his powerful supporters would appeal for more Yamanaka mind probes and the same result would come out; if they pushed to ignore the attempt at Minato's life, then the people of Konoha would vocalize their dissent. Most clans, except for the Uchiha for obvious reasons, backed Minato, clan heads included, and clanless represented on the Council would rise up too.
The powers that be-The Sandaime and the elders-could do whatever they wanted but if somehow, someway Orochimaru became Hokage, then he wouldn't have the support of the village.
That was dangerous.
In every sense of the word, the Hokage was a dictator.
A super powerful dictator that could hold their own on the battlefield, but a dictator was nothing without an army or other valuable human resources.
Selecting the next Kage was entirely up to their predecessor and yet still choosing a successor needed to be done considering the person's popularity in the village.
Sannin or not, Orochimaru wasn't very popular. Or at least, not close to Minato's popularity.
Fugaku Uchiha, the only other candidate, respected one and not the other.
"We can still have our pound of flesh."
And Minato could always tag Orochimaru to keep him in check.
A collar for the snake, if you will.
"How's that sound?"
Naruto claimed possession of Orochimaru's kneecaps, hacking and carving them out himself, messily smearing his bloody hands on his pants when he was done sealing his gruesome trophies.
He wasn't much in the mood for talking anymore, so he left.
Minato gave him his space to cool off; somehow, it felt like the issue with Orochimaru didn't just start tonight. The boy was good at both concealing and falsifying his emotions, but the Byakugan kid took particular anger at not taking this chance to execute the Sannin once and for all.
All alone on that empty dirt road, as Naruto was long gone, Minato released the seals and yanked out his blade, letting the Sage clatter in a scattered heap on the ground.
Deep down in his heart, the Namikaze hoped sparing the scientist wouldn't come back to bite him in the ass.
He nudged the man onto his back and retrieved his Hirashin kunai from Orochimaru's head and chest, then he radioed back to Konoha where the Sannin was for them to come and get him and subsequently left the Sage to his devices.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Naruto walked into his cave hideout and passed Lio, curled up in his sleeping bag and breathing quietly as she slept.
He went to his ROOT backpack and took out a single candle along with a box of matches, soundlessly heading to the other end of the cave, a short distance from the campfire and away from its crackling warmth.
The boy turned his back to the fire and sat down on the ground with his legs crossed, swathing the general area he was in with his shadow and blacking out the end of the cave. He set the candle on the ground and struck a match, lighting it. Instead of tossing away the spent match, he clenched it in his bandaged right hand and his cheek twitched at the low sizzle of his palm against the cooling match stick.
He tipped some candle wax on the floor and secured the candle on it, steadying it until the wax dried the candle in place.
Then he rubbed his palms together, crushing the spent match stick between his bandage wound hands, and shifted his fingers into the Ram seal.
He caught himself before he could begin to recite a prayer.
Rather, he meditated.
A pair of hazy neon pink eyes stayed on her benefactors form, drooping shut moments later.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The pair tread carefully in the snow covered ground far up north of their cave hideout, so close to the ocean that freezing cold sprays of water smashed down on the rocky beach several feet from them.
Lio shivered and Naruto sniffed, holding a ninja blade in his right hand and slowly scanning the thick white earth before him for what he was looking for. The girl stalked close behind him, gripping the hem of the back of his shirt with her thumbs and pointer fingers.
"Thanks for the jacket, sir." Naruto bobbed his head without turning to her, pursing his lips and creasing his brow in concentration, not wanting to activate his doujutsu as he scoured the freezing landscape near the Snow country's northern shore. Lio smiled hesitantly and the cold-reddened tint of her cheeks turned a deeper shade of rosy red, lowering her lips to hide behind the high collar of her white and blue camo parka, while a wool beanie protected her bald head from the elements. Somehow, her wings passed through the parka and stayed folded on her back, as if those large leathery, skeletal things on her back wafted through the molecules of the coat but still managed to remain solid, scraping the snowy ground. He might not have been able to get her any other footwear than a pair of thick socks and rubber shoes, and she still wore her knee-length white shorts from her time in Hidden Star, though the parka was long enough to reach the middle of her thighs, she was very appreciative. "It's very warm. Thank you."
The boy was grateful she wasn't one of those snooty, spoiled noble kids.
Then again, he didn't know if she was a noble.
She certainly spoke like one; it was very hard not to head into assumptions with how she spoke.
But then again, he didn't know any noble that would encase their child in a glass case for who-knows how long and have who-knows how many terrible things done to her.
Naruto didn't encounter them much, but the ones he met were either sheltered beyond reasonable hope or spoiled to their very core, or both; the Lightning Daimyo's only son, for example, was both, known to often beat the palace servants for flimsy reasons and then subsequently cry to his royal parents for them to be sacked, or worse.
All in all, it wasn't his business if she was from a royal bloodline.
She held the bottom of his shirt tighter in her fingers.
Lio cleared her throat and he bobbed his head, encouraging her to speak as he bent down and dusted soft snow from a plant, digging his kunai into the earth and gently carving out the plant along with its roots, storing it in a Storage seal and rising back to his feet to continue his search. Lio innocently did so as well, refusing to let go of his shirt as he dug up the medicinal herb and got back up.
"I don't want to be a bother." The blonde boy held his voiceless tongue; by all definitions, she was being a bother, following him around like a lost puppy and unwilling to let him go for even the shortest moments. Eventually, she would get a hint. He settled on a shrug, seeming to not mind whatever she did and digging up another herb. "I can do things too, sir. Like…like chores." She nodded to herself and spoke firmer. "I can do the chores."
The boy glanced over his shoulder with an incredulously raised eyebrow, asking without asking what possible chores were there to do in their current situation, seeing as neither had a permanent base of operations to maintain.
"I-I…I can carry your bag and gather firewood and wash clothes and…and clean the cave and wash dishes and-and I can learn how to cook and lots of other things." Naruto found himself amused by her stumbling words and her blubbering offers, hiding his smile as he found and crudely uprooted another plant, a different on from the first two and needed less care; this one could be cleaned and used for cooking to cure stomach aches and provide some nutrients, while the former were for medicine. She kept talking, offering her services in the best sales pitch an articulate seven year old with nowhere to go could provide; she wanted to earn his kindness and not for him to feel obligated to watch over her. "I can be of help, sir."
He went down and stabbed the earth with his blade, bringing out a notepad and pen. She copied him and sat down on the snow.
They've been looking for herbs since sunrise, with little success; might as well take a short break.
As she didn't want to let go of his shirt, he sat cross legged in such a way that his side faced her front, scribbling his response to her appeal.
[You just described being a maid]
"I can be a maid." She accepted immediately, not faltering, stammering or mumbling her consent, talking clearly despite her soft tone. "I can definitely be a maid."
[I don't need a maid]
A stubborn insistence died on her tongue and she pouted, gazing down to spot on his shirt she was so dearly holding.
Naruto explained. [If you're a maid, then that will make me your master]
She flushed, ears tinged bright red and her neon pink eyes swirling in embarrassment.
He laughed at her shame. [Thought so]
Her next admittance choked whatever enjoyment he was deriving from her tomato-red face down his throat. "I…don't mind…master."
Naruto blushed, recoiling from her.
Lio looked up to him, confident.
[Wipe that look off your face]
It was her turn to smile. "Why?"
Ignoring her teasing, he wrote. [I don't need a maid]. Not now, anyway. [I need a helper. Someone that can pull their own weight]
"I can do that." She nodded quickly, sparing a hand to adjust her beanie and returning it to his shirt.
His pale eyes trailed down and his eyebrows knitted, peering up at her with his next written words. [I've given up on running away, y'know]
"…I know." She confirmed in her soft voice. She chewed on her bottom lip and the boy lifted an eyebrow, now more curious.
[Let's hear it. What's wrong?]
" Uhm…" Naruto's brows ascended up his forehead into his hairline when he wings fluttered. "I don't know how to repay you…for the sleeping bag and…this jacket."
[Don't worry about it]
"No."
[No?]
"No." she curled her small, thin fingers tighter on his shirt and puffed out her cheeks. "I want to thank you properly."
Naruto's stomach sank as Lio bashfully puckered her lips, so red in the face he was partially worried she had caught a cold. His right hand came up and instead caught her face as she came in for a kiss on his cheek.
His left hand scribbled a note.
[No]
"Then-"
His writing hand pushed the end of his kunai into her gut, simmering in his amusement in spite of the light shadows of embarrassed colour on his cheeks. He nodded his head and encouraged her to take it, carefully retaking his right hand from her face when she took hold of the blade with one of her hands.
Using his right hand, he wrote.
[Catch us a rabbit for lunch]
He slowly released the kunai at the disappointed dip of her face, somehow feeling remorseful that he shot her down but he held strong; it wouldn't do to enable her that much.
She pouted and collected the blade in both hands, getting up with an irritated flutter of her mighty wings.
Not intimidated by the display and meeting her hot pink eyes with a cool pair of pale lavender, Naruto pointed off to a field of waist height frozen grass several metres from them, getting up as well and patting her head with a half-smile. He closed his eyes with a small laugh when she blushed, shaking his hand off her head.
Lio jogged away from him, steam billowing from her ears and gripping the ninja blade with both hands close to her chest. She willed her hammering heart to calm down, just so her expressive wings could stop flapping and twitching.
His eyes followed the winged girl in the camo parka and wool beanie as she headed to where he wordlessly directed her, tracking her mortified escape with a shallow smile.
Naruto then rubbed his neck and cleared his throat.
Suddenly the wind picked up and dozens of golden chakra chains erupted from beneath him, snapping and clanking around him, only for them to pass through him as the real Naruto replaced himself with an illusionary clone.
"He's underground!" Kushina yelled, unravelling her knotted chains and dispelling them. She ran out from Yoshino's camouflage genjutsu, looking like she rose up from the ground, and tore to the place she sensed the nine year old boy was racing to, taking a subterranean path opposite from where he had sent the little winged girl and running to the beach. "I got him! I got him! I got him!"
And the Kyuubi jinchuriki punched the ground, blasting her fingers clear through the rocky beach floor and barely grabbing a few locks of the elusive boy's blonde hair, immediately clenching her fist as they were underground and manifesting her tailed beast restraining golden chains.
Out of the earth, Naruto shot out with a timed push of chakra to his feet, doggedly chased by Kushina's indestructible Uzumaki chains till he landed back on the ground with a crouch and smashed down a smoke bomb, snapping his teeth inside as the redheads chains zipped inside the white smoke.
A long shadowed line extended from Kushina's former hiding place and delved into the smoke.
Silence.
No one spoke.
Nothing moved.
Until the illusion hiding Yoshino melted off, showing the Nara woman in a ready stance, her knees bent with her torso tilted forward and her fingers maintaining the clan jutsu.
Her eyes narrowed. "Something's not right."
Kushina felt it too.
Whatever was inside the thick white smoke was smaller than the nine year old kid they had just seen. The Uzumaki lady blew away the smoke, wisely not coming too close, and to her horror what was formerly shaded by the smoke wasn't the blonde child but rather, her golden chains were contorted to fit his frame and Yoshino's shadow bind was instead restraining the chains.
"How in the hell…?"
She searched for him with her senses and found nothing.
Kushina wasn't deceived though; his smell was still in the immediate vicinity.
It was by the time Yoshino had been pulled into the earth did Kushina realize the boy had used Earth release: Double Suicide Decapitation Technique and squeezed his chakra core into an undetectable speck to evade them.
"Yoshino!"
Naruto leaped from the ground and drew his leg back, releasing it on a frazzled Yoshino's face in what could best be described as a soccer kick.
Ksshh!
"Guh!"
The concussing strike rattled the Nara's brain.
He released another kick and this one very nearly loosened her neck bones.
KSSSH!
Before another merciless punt could meet her chin again, Kushina finished a chain of hand seals.
"Wind Release: Drilling Air Bullet."
An air bullet clipped Naruto's left arm, destabilizing and knocking him away, and the rest of the bullets impacted the ground, softening it enough for Yoshino to escape by herself as well as toss up rocks to blindside the child, giving the Nara a chance to retreat behind her powerful teammate. Naruto rolled twice and fell into a guarded crouch facing the pair, brow twitching from the bothersome pain from his arm where he had been nicked.
" Fuuuuug." Yoshino swore with a hiss, going down on a knee and checking her face with one of the reflective sides of her kunai, cursing at her split upper lips, two missing top incisors and half a canine that were already halfway down her throat, three cracked bottom incisors, and the throbbing soreness of her jaw. "Loo' wuh he di' tuh ma mouf!" That wasn't all; her nose swelled up fat and blue-purple, dripping red liquid, one of her eyes were bloodshot and her left cheek was heavily bruised. Her lips began to swell too and she screamed at the broken monster reflected back at her from the kunai. "Loo' wuh he fuggin di' to mah' faic!"
"I can't believe I'm the one saying this, but calm down." Kushina mumbled as she deepened into a fighting stance, shifting her right foot forward and moving her hands up, palms open and primed for counterattacks. "Old man Sarutobi warned us."
Yoshino was breathing raggedly, hardly able to bottle her fiery rage at the damage done to her mouth. She spat out two of her bottom incisors into her hand, panting with a blistering look around Kushina's back.
To their alarm, Naruto adopted a familiar stance they had read about from textbooks in the Academy library.
Raining Thunder fist.
As far as they knew, any Hyuuga using a fighting style other than Gentle fist was taboo.
Also, the stance was too refined for his apparent age.
Raining Thunder fist was used by the reclusive ninjas of Hidden Rain; it was a deceptive style created by a long dead Amekage that utilized tricky footwork and unrelenting attacks, at the cost of exposing many vital cracks in their form.
Kushina and Yoshino mentally emphasized that Raining Thunder fist was a deceptive fighting style, meaning that whatever cracks or openings that were detected and seen were intentional. Initially, the visible holes were the styles weakness, until the ninjas of Rain adapted better over the years and the cracks gradually became something akin to bait.
And there were many holes in the boy's stance.
So full of holes that Might Dai would have been revolted.
Not many people wanted to learn Raining Thunder fist, and even if there were willing learners, not many people could learn it, because the body preparations ahead of training in the fighting style required training the muscles of the calves, stomach, shoulders and neck to the point of them shredding and naturally reforming. This wasn't taking into account the general unwritten rule concerning all relevant fighting styles that bones needed to be broken, or at least naturally remodelled to suit attacking and guarding.
Reportedly.
Raining Thunder fist wasn't popular in Konoha, or many countries across the continent, and though vague information of it was in the Academy library, as well as a rough method of training in this style was documented in the A rank section of the village library, it didn't necessarily mean anyone wanted to go near it.
"Feel free to jump in when you're ready."
Kushina Uzumaki was a powerhouse.
A chakra tank.
She could deal out tremendous amounts of attacks using her seemingly infinite well of chakra and also had endurance that allowed her to take an outstanding amount of damage without staggering or falling.
Kushina hardened her abdomen and covered her face with her forearms, clenching her teeth as the boys bandaged fists impacted her gut, hard and fast enough for her feet to barely lift off the ground, guiding each blow to her stomach with time bursts of chakra.
For Naruto, it was like repeatedly punching a block of solid concrete with his bare hands.
Alarms went off in his head as the redhead's clenched fist swept down to the back of his head. Instead of taking the blow in its entirety, because he couldn't dodge with how close she was, he followed the path of the blow and tucked into a roll between her legs, righting up with a front flip and missing a barbed chain aiming for his neck, landing and ducking a flaming haymaker and planting five punches to Kushina's side, grunting when she backhanded him into the ground and he once again rolled with the blow, blinking multiple times to get the flickering lights out of his vision.
Regaining his sight, he leaned back from a palm strike to his chest but the shockwave of the dodged strike charred a palm print to his shirt and unsettled the rocky earth of the shore, making the boy fasten himself firmly down with his chakra.
Boom!
An effigy of the nine tails hovered at the Jinchuriki's back and in place of her palm, held up there to his chest and framing the palm shaped burn print, was a massive Kyuubi palm, coming down on him with full intent on crushing him into pulp.
Kushina's purple eyes were on fire.
He saw his life flash before his eyes.
Out of all people he had killed, the seventy one brothers and sisters he executed during the graduation ceremony stood before the uncountable multitude.
The souls he claimed could dam the gates of the underworld.
The blood on his hands could flood a country.
Naruto gnashed his teeth, defiant.
The Kyuubi holder's killer intent was strong and her hope that it would be enough to bring the abnormally skilled child to his knees was well-placed; lesser people had their hearts implode under the unbearable pressure of her killer intent at even half blast.
The boy's doujutsu flickered and he slapped away her palm with his right wrist, swinging his left pointer and finger upwards to her elbow and meeting the joint with a tenketsu blocking strike, huffing at the infuriated knee to his gut and returning a mighty stomp on her foot, smacking his right elbow into her chin as she unintentionally bent down, shooting a left hook across her face, slamming his shin into her inner right thigh to forcefully part her legs and unsettle he stance, slamming another elbow into her chin when she ducked again, rising with a chin rattling uppercut.
The lady grunted, slamming chakra through what tenketsu Naruto had blocked and restoring functionality of her limbs with an out-of-breath pant; this process hurt and it wouldn't have worked if she didn't have enough chakra in her reserves but it was an effective measure against Hyuugas.
Kushina's foot soared up and lodged itself in the CORE Operative's gut, knocking the wind out of him, coming down for a knock-out chop to the back of his neck only to change her mind mid-strike and move her hands under her, intercepting an upward stab to her lower abdomen by grabbing the wrist of the blade wielding hand.
Blood trickled down the corner of the boy's mouth and he coughed, battling his own lungs to reopen up to receive air.
Naruto hopped up and kneed the butt of his kunai, forcing it up a little more and pricking Kushina's stomach, trying again and getting the very point of the blade impaled in the jounin Uzumaki's gut. Not stalling to celebrate his small victory, he leaped up again to knee his kunai deeper into Kushina's abdomen, only to get swept off his feet once he came down. But she didn't let go of his left wrist, breathless and gritting her teeth from their former exchanges and also feeling the cut on her stomach patch itself up, so the boy immediately used that unbalance leverage her hands on his wrist provided to push off the ground, his right shin bashed into the side of her temple in a rumbling scissor kick.
It was her turn to blink away the popping lights in her vision.
She released his wrist and he fell down, gathering his wherewithal to hastily roll on his side from her blinded foot stomps.
Then a long shadow shot into his own and he froze.
His byakugan tracked Yoshino, on one knee and with her own shadow elongated into his own. The woman's elated expression shone.
He cursed himself for forgetting about her.
This pause was only momentary.
"Master!"
Lio.
A large shadow spread itself overhead, plummeting like a meteor.
Kushina turned her head up and squinted, feeling a flickering frown at the sight as her vision returned.
Naruto peered up too, lying on the ground and using his byakugan to get a good look.
Lio's wings were four times the size he last saw them, spanning wide enough to blot out the sun from the sky. Her pink eyes, wailing in insanity, bore down on Kushina and the compromised position of her apparent master.
She roared.
It was an ethereal sound of madness and paranoia.
The little girl dive bombed the Uzumaki, using her small body to tackle the redhead into the ground and eliciting rippling shockwaves across the landscape.
Thoom!
" Oof!" Kushina exhaled, hard.
A wide crater formed on impact and the rocking that small portion of the world. Yoshino manipulated her shadow, and Naruto, to get off the ground and flee to safety, as did she.
Pink and white light blasted out from the deep crater, beaming clear into sky with a shrill whistling sound, wind rolled around the light and manic energy reverberated across the rocky shores of northern Snow country.
" Leave him alone!"
Thud! Thud! Boom! Thud! Boom! Boom! Boom! Thud! Crack!
Made to kneel via shadow manipulation and get his wrists restrained behind his back, Naruto narrowed his eyes against the harsh winds, splitting his mind between devising an escape plan and watching the crater; his doujutsu couldn't penetrate the light to look into the crater but the reassuring, albeit messily uncoordinated, sounds of punches and kicks consoled him that Lio had the upper hand.
Until the pink and white light sputtered off abruptly, without warning, and a turgid silence fell down.
Naruto froze.
The Uzumaki jounin climbed out from the pit, hoisting a small cocoon-like bundle of thick golden chains wrapped head to toe around a feebly struggling Lio.
The lady breathed out and flicked her unique Whirlpool steel katana of the blood running down from the middle to its tip, sheathing it back into the holster on her hip; being a level ten seal master, it didn't really matter where the blade and sheath had come from, only that the urgency of her brief bout with Lio demanded she draw it. The speedily healing burn marks on her arms showed why she unsealed her S class weapon; Kyuubi jinchuriki regeneration could handle Pink Meteorite radiation, albeit from a mild, second-hand source much tinier and less powered than the original fallen space rock. "Maybe old man Sarutobi'd like to meet you too."
The boy wondered where her wings had gone.
Yoshino had him press his forehead to the ground, cuffed with his hands at his back and ankles bound, whereupon she cancelled her clan's jutsu in favour of pressing her foot onto his back and snarling under her breath.
"I'll mek you peh for whut you di' to mah faice."
Naruto's left eye twitched.
His heart raced.
His byakugan discovered that Lio wasn't struggling anymore, succumbing to the vitality draining effects of Kushina's chakra chains and lulled into a forceful slumber.
"Restrain' 'im quik," Yoshino said, unable to control her swollen mouthed lisp. "Les get 'ome before 'e gets any ideas. Am running ou' off shagra."
Kushina chortled. "You sound hilarious." She gently dropped the bundle of golden chains beside Naruto's kneeling form and he turned his head to the side, wincing when the Nara pushed down harder with her foot on his back. "Oh, oh, say this: misses misery misses mister miser."
"Shaddap." Her dark haired teammate swore. Her Shadow Paralysis jutsu stopped, ended with a hidden urgency that she was drastically low on chakra for maintaining the two Nara jutsus for longer than she was able, though with how his hands and feet bound and bent forward in that kneeling position on the ground, his ability to use an distracting jutsus were limited to nearly nothing. Yoshino Nara wasn't a hunter ninja, merely former Team Danzo's trapping expert, but she knew the compromising positions a subdued target could be in that would make them helpless.
The CORE Operative was partly paying attention to the bottled up anger of the Nara pressing down firmer on his back.
He tried to look through the chains to make sure Lio was alright but he couldn't.
His heart rate quickened.
His left eye trembled, harder.
He wanted Lio to get a taste of being physically hurt from hanging around him, not get captured and returned to that hellhole the stubborn girl, in a suicidal attempt at using brute strength against a superior force, came to his rescue.
Now she was restrained and possibly injured because of him.
What happened to her wings?
Where were her wings?
His mind ran a mile a minute.
He broke down his options.
His brain rolled out a flurry of plans, swarming his senses at once and quickly getting removed one by one when they didn't involve managing to get Lio to safety; his wellbeing was secondary.
Gears turned in his head.
Think.
Think.
Think.
Think…
…Think.
Yoshino's chakra tapered to a dribble and an idea sparked in his head.
'This is going to hurt.'
The boy snapped his wrists with a soft, imperceptible flick, dislocating his wrists, muffling his groan between his teeth and breathing out despairingly from his nose, puffing out his cheeks and controlling his lungs. He made sure the woman whose foot was on his back was looking at Kushina while the seal master brought out a brush and some ink to begin drawing a Forced Sleep seal on his neck; she could have used a contact seal, drawing fuinjutsu with her chakra on his skin, but the woman personally preferred sparing that amount of chakra control for an active battle.
"I kinda get why the old man wants him back so badly. Still," Kushina wondered, dipping her brush into the pot of ink and rattling to her teammate, temple crinkled in confusion. "I'm confused why I haven't heard about this kid before the mission; he's got too much skill to just…appear, y'know." Yoshino conceded to this with a nod, admitting that this blonde rat that damaged her face was yet another 'Kakashi case', the second one after Kakashi Hatake, where a young child came out of nowhere that their superiors claimed had been citizens of Konoha from their birth. "He smells like Mina too, which is even weirder. When we get back, we're getting answers."
"Dantho-sensai knos sumthin."
Naruto wiggled his hands from his restraints and suppressed a panicked shudder when he felt the cool, wet touch of ink on the base of his neck.
His eyes switched back to Lio, unmoving in her chain cocoon, and he bared his teeth.
He didn't want to do this to Minato's fiancée, out of respect for the man and what little camaraderie they had the other day, but nothing in hell was going to take Lio to Konoha.
Yoshino noticed his hands were no longer tied and opened her mouth to warn Kushina, but the boy had already snagged one of the Jinchuriki's ankles in his right hand while his other slid around to his chest, forming a half-ram seal and calling on the same personal Hiden jutsu he used on The Doctor back in Hidden Star.
The brush and ink leaped off Naruto's neck and Kushina started to dry up, starting from the point of contact, her ankle, and rapidly crawling up her leg. The Kyuubi holder's mouth fell open and she spoke in a demonic voice.
"You're getting a snow globe."
Kushina's mental connection to the chakra chains encasing Lio crumbled, leaving the seven year lying on the cold floor, unconscious and shivering in her parka and beanie.
Her skin weakened on a microscopic level, becoming grey and motely until Yoshino's shout, kicking Naruto's hand off her friends leg and ending the fatal jutsu. Naruto rolled with the kick, swiftly removing a tanto from a Storage seal and cutting the binds around his ankles, scooping the little girl in his arms and fleeing to get some distance between them.
The personal jutsu he used was only to allow him speak but didn't give him bodily control, although the debilitating death of cells and the partial shutdown of brain function allowed him a varied time limit for using the victims caught in his technique either before they broke free or they died. He preferred using unconscious victims as that negated their chances of breaking free but that also meant they died quicker.
He set Lio down some dozens of yards from Yoshino and Kushina, tugging the girl's beanie over her red ears and frowning at the gentle breaths coming from her mouth. Aside from her scraped knees and sprained fingers, Lio was fine.
Naruto found himself sighing in relief, shoulders sagged and eyes closed.
She was fine.
Except for the two bloody splotches on her back where her wings used to be, Lio was fine.
As long as the little girl was breathing, that was what mattered; he could deal with her lost appendages later.
He patted her head and shifted so he was facing his two opponents.
The dead skin, muscle and bone cells in Kushina's body were being replaced by newer ones, regenerating what was lost and restoring her back to normal at a slackened pace; if she weren't a tailed beast holder, she wouldn't have been able to do this so quickly. The redhead was standing with a hunch, gasping tiredly, willing the disastrous noise of vengeance bellowing from the Kyuubi to quieten down.
The leg Naruto had grasped was taking its time returning to normal.
Yoshino, not sure what to do, was trying to make heads or tails of what happened. She was crouched before her friend; as a trap expert, her hand-to-hand and strength wasn't on par with Kushina's, and though this boy was posing a bigger threat than the Third spoke about, she would have to put herself between this unpredictable child until the Uzumaki got her second wind.
Remarkably, Kushina regained her composure fast, taking her place in front of the Nara.
There had to be a limit to what the Kyuubi jinchuriki could regenerate and heal, Naruto thought with an exhausted sigh. Coming back from depowered radiation was one thing, and bouncing back from cellular death was a completely other thing.
Kushina on her own was powerful but her abnormal regeneration was on its own overpowered level.
Still though, Naruto could see, plain as day, Kushina's fighting spirit was waning.
Physically and psychologically, she was drained as much as he was. And even as Naruto's Hiden jutsu targeted the brain, spinal cord, vocal cord and mouth, this feeling of not wanting to keep fighting bore down on her soul.
For the sake of the mission, she would keep fighting.
Reality overlapped her own sheer stubbornness alongside her teammate's whispered call.
"Kushina."
"I know."
The boy had shown that he could evade almost everything they threw at him and escape whatever he couldn't dodge, and now that he had that mind-possessing, cell-killing jutsu, they didn't know how many times he could summon it for the child was still tightening the size of his chakra core to that of an insignificant pebble; what they were certain of was how fast the blonde could perform it, having a vague clue on how long it would last and how destructive it was.
Touching him or getting him to touch them seemed more dangerous than it should be.
On Naruto's side of the battlefield, he wasn't sure how much longer he could keep going; his chakra wasn't very big to support him for any longer than another three minutes and with him safeguarding Lio, he would be stunted if he was forced to run away.
He didn't want to kill them, in spite of all the damage he had caused, but that was the likely option he had left.
Naruto wasn't dumb enough to think he could out-muscle or outlast her in a battle of attrition, especially since there was an injured trap expert staying away from his blows.
Bringing Kushina Uzumaki and Yoshino Nara down needed careful planning.
"Oi brat, give it a rest already." Kushina panted lightly, a bit winded but overall now analysing and adapting to the boys combat style. "This is crazy! Let's stop this and head back home; Lord Third and Danzo-sensei are worried about you."
Said brat pushed his left fist forward and lowered his centre of gravity, reversing the grip of that tanto in his other hand at his side.
His blazing white eyes narrowed.
Here goes everything.
"That's...not Gentle fist…" Yoshino murmured, more and more alarmed at the feats she'd witnessed from their target. Her mind worked to recall where she had seen this broken stance before, gritting her teeth as the boy directed a good, long look at her, hunkered down and protected by her Uzumaki partner.
Her eyes bugged out-
Naruto wilted, visibly losing strength in his legs and dropping to a knee.
His exhaustion from coupling the fight last night with that of the fight now mercilessly ran over him, and Kushina found herself slacking in her stance and resolve at the sight of his tiredness.
"See what I'm sayin'?"
He ran a drained hand down his face, stabbing his tanto into the rocky ground and shutting his eyes to centre himself for one more final push.
"Gimme a minute," he signed with a lazy swish of his hand. "This is so embarrassing."
"Oh, take yur tyme." Yoshino mocked sarcastically, she jabbed a finger in his direction and looked up to her red haired friend, losing her patience when the Uzumaki dropped her aggressive posture and let her head flop forward. "Wat ar' yu waitin fur? Thiss is clear-lee a trap!" the Nara felt herself withdrawing a little when the nine year old picked himself up again, ripping his weapon from the ground and returning to his former fighting stance. His arms barely trembled, Kushina noted, and he was breathing out more from his mouth. "See!"
"Alright, let's make this count."
"Stand down, kid. We can still be civil about this." Kushina warned.
"Says the two twenty something year olds that tried to ambush me, and the jinchuriki lady that chopped off my friend's wings."
"I…get how that's annoying, I really do." The Uzumaki promised, placing a hand over her heart. Cutting off a person's wings wasn't something Kushina usually did, literally. "You were having a moment with your friend, a nice moment. A…nice- ish moment…?" she allowed herself to divert the flow of the conversation a little, speaking her mind. "I'm just sayin', you could've handled that better. I mean, a hand to the face? C'mon man…" she was speaking from an honest place; Minato was a very clumsy, tactless man. Heaven only knows how or why they eventually got engaged. She loved him to pieces though, and that couldn't be faulted. "Anyway, we're sorry-"
"Whirr not thorry!" Yoshino whispered hotly.
" Shush!" Kushina whispered back. " We're sorry. We approached this totally wrong." She repeated, stressing her point and her sincerity. "And for the wings too; it was my basic instinct. In my defence, she came after me and I had to do something. You saw what she can do!"
"I did."
" Aha!" she shouted, triumphant she got him to admit something.
"Round two, you two versus me. Are we doing this or not?"
Kushina sagged. "Will you come back quietly?"
"…I won't."
"My hands are tied. We need to bring you back."
"Yeh!" Yoshino cheered in agreement. Suddenly, her radio crackled to life and she answered. The person on the other side yelled, panicked.
"Iwa Invasion! Hurry! Get back here! Lord Third's orders!"
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
There was a war coming.
Iwa was getting restless.
Konoha didn't want to look powerless.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Some moments after the fight in Snow country
It didn't need to be said but they couldn't hide in Snow country any longer.
He walked on the ankle deep snow, controlling his breathing and adjusting the little girl piggyback riding on his back. He hooked his battered hands under the back of her knees and heaved with his eyes narrowed ahead.
The boy staggered through the snow at an even pace, hoping his body won't give out like back with the two Konoha Kunoichi.
Lio tightly clamped her eyes shut and buried her face in his neck, wrapping her arms around his neck; she still couldn't walk after waking up and her regeneration was stunted because most of her injuries came from Kushina's Whirlpool steel blade.
Without her wings, her centre of gravity became odd and lopsided.
On her knees were two teddy bear band-aids and her hands were swathed in thickly wound bandages.
The silence between them was stifling.
She hadn't spoken since she woke up in the cave, getting patched up by her benefactor.
She failed to protect him.
She failed.
He found a farm and went straight to the barn. The horses didn't put up much of a fuss as the barn doors creaked open ever so slightly and two unfamiliar children crept inside. Naruto gingerly bent down for the injured girl to softly fall into a messy pile of hay. He made sure her beanie was properly covering her bald head, then he brought out his notepad and pen, writing.
[Wait here. I'm going to steal us a carriage]
Mutely, she nodded, drawing her knees to her chest and hiding her face.
Hiding her shame.
He looked at her, stony faced and unwavering pale eyes, before he scribbled more words, tapping her foot with his pen.
[What is it?]
"…I'm sorry…I got…blood on your jacket." She mumbled, referring to the parka he got for her.
[It's fine. It's not your fault]
"I'm sorry I wasn't much help."
[I did warn you]. Her head bobbed up and down. [Focus on getting better. I'll be right back]. He made to leave but she caught his shirt, unable to stand on her own feet but refusing to let him go.
Naruto's empty expression cracked with an invisible smile, almost lighting up the bags under his eyes and his pale, greying face.
[I promise, Lio]
Her bright pink eyes stared at him, reaching into his soul for any semblance of honesty. He looked back at her, eyes sagging from his own unattended injuries, till he unsealed his ROOT backpack and gave it to her.
[Hold onto this for me]
Remarkably, she let go of his shirt and hugged his backpack, swearing on her life to look after the contents; she might have failed in being her benefactor's protector but she could at least do this.
She waited for him.
She waited.
And waited.
Two and a half hours crawled by, hiding there in the cold darkness of the barn, and when he came back to get her, she cried.
Tears of relief.
Tears of joy.
She didn't care where he found that carriage or how he got it to the barn without the owners raising an alarm; he kept his promise.
That meant the world to her.
The carriage was shabby and old but the wheels looked new and tough, able to track through the snow. It was a rectangular structure that was big enough for Naruto to stand up with only a small slouch, as well as open his arms wide with his fingertips nearly reaching the walls. It smelled vaguely of incense, meaning whoever the carriage was stolen from was a travelling merchant of some kind.
The boy had draped thick blankets around the interior, hammering some to stay up against the cracks and edges in order to ensure the inside could somewhat retain body heat, making it bearably toasty against the drastically dropping temperatures of Snow's winter season. He set Lio inside and leaped in as well, making his way to the couch's perch at the front and grabbing the reins of the horse he stole from the same place he stole the carriage, snapping for the animal to begin their long journey to their next destination.
ROOTs first blind spot.
They would need to stop and hide away from the snowstorm from time to time just so the horse didn't freeze to death or perish from starvation. They would also have to brave dangerous lands, meet less than welcoming people, camp in less than desirable places, travel down unusable dirt roads and push through resistant borders, but they would get there eventually.
Naruto initially wanted to make this journey little by little but the inconvenient ROOT tracker on his tongue and the thought of more Konoha ninjas following his trail steeled his resolve to push forward at an increased pace.
ROOTs first blind spot would do its job and hide his, and Lio's, existence.
Perfectly.
After an hour of steady treading in a straight line, Naruto entered the warmth of the carriage.
He downed a few painkillers and tossed back a bottle of water, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. His injuries were internal; muscle tears and aching bones, nothing that couldn't be cured with time and sufficient rest.
That's what he told himself.
He decided to change the bandages of his hands and feet, seeing as they were looser and filthy from how he had stolen the carriage.
Lio unabashedly stared at the sickly looking purple bruises on his hands and feet, with dozens of black pinprick-like dots littered over the palms of his hands and soles of his feet.
"What's that?"
Naruto flexed his fingers and cracked his knuckles, sparing a hand to rub soothing circles over his sore feet and the other to answer her.
[It's what happens when you overwork tenketsu without giving them time to rest and heal. They pop and they burn]
That…was the crudely simplified way of explaining it.
The tiny black spots on his palms and soles were from overstressing the tenketsu there; this could also be from not using them at all, letting them shrivel in inactivity due to his chakra being locked away during the course of his training and then made to blast chakra from those tenketsu all at once instead of doing so little by little.
This outlawed exercise was to expand COREs chakra reserves, chakra control and improve mastery of their tenketsu.
"Does it…hurt?"
[When I think about it]
"I-I'm sorry."
[Don't worry about it]. He laughed. [Oddly enough, tying them up puts them out of my mind. Don't ask why]
Light-hearted silence flowed through the carriage, with the blonde taking a minute to check that the horse was sticking to the path. Until-
"Sir?"
He bobbed his head, telling her that he was listening as she stared at him wrapping bandages around his fingers and hand. It was clearer, on seeing his hands and feet, why he wound his paws so meticulously, but her curiosity equalled her master's; it just couldn't be contained.
"What happened to your voice?"
He didn't offer a reply for some time, tying his toes and feet with bandages. When he was done, he set his right elbow on his knee and perched his chin in his fist, blankly looking at the gradually apprehensive girl.
"I…I don't mean to pry."
Naruto hummed and shrugged.
[Got punched in the throat by my sparring partner]. This was considering the fact that what Naruto and his "sparring partner" were doing was more lethal than a simple sparring match. [Messed up my vocal cords. Danzo-the old guy that more or less trained me and my siblings-said I should suck it up]. Lio felt herself regretting her question. [Never healed properly]
Despite her regret and against her better judgement, the curious seven year old pressed on, wanting to know more and more about her idol. "What about the person you were sparring against?"
[Kakashi? Oh yeah, I still won. Beat the ever living crap out of him]. He scratched the back of his head, continuing. [I mean, my vocal cords were "tangled" up really badly]-for lack of a better word- [but when I was done with him, I was the one feeling bad]. The blonde boy laughed soundlessly and Lio's heart twisted at how fake it was. [He was giving me this kicked puppy look for the next five weeks. I felt so bad. I still do]
"…Did he apologize…?"
[He did and I forgave him]. He wrote it like it was the most natural, easiest answer there was in history, as if it was the simplest thing in the world to forgive someone for impairing them for life. At least, if it were any other person than Kakashi, the case would have been very different. [I know now that I should keep my chin tucked]. He joked with a wince and the girl smiled thinly at that.
WARNING
A five year old Naruto threw up blood onto the hard ground, wheezing and coughing for unattainable air to re-enter his caved in throat once again, while his Master stood over him with a disapproving frown.
"Pathetic."
You can look now
Back to the present, Naruto gave Lio a waning smile.
[It hurt like hell tho]
He left the warmth of the carriage for the couch, wrapping the horse's reins around his hands.
He needed to be alone with his thoughts, get himself ready for the journey ahead.
The road to Hidden Chill was not going to be uneventful, and it certainly wasn't.
With his companion nestled inside the warmness of the carriage, a blizzard brewing around them and the tireless resolve to keep moving forward, the pair disappeared into the snowfall.
Next time Naruto and Lio were seen or heard from again, the limitless roots of a great society had threaded itself clean through the heart and soul of the continent, conquering and controlling the criminal underworld, and spreading its influence to places no Hidden Village could possibly reach.
They did their jobs in absolute secrecy and lived their lives in complete privacy, reflecting the awe-inspiring personality and charisma of the Head of the Family.
It was the rise and dominance of the greatest crime family the world had ever seen.
Whisper Group.
Authors note
And thus the third chapter comes to a close.
…I've got an announcement.
Something important is coming up for me. It'll be a very busy time and I'm not sure I'll be able to upload another chapter for a long while. I want to say that you guys have been amazing. I'm always happy and grateful to hear from you personally; how you enjoy what I'm writing, what I'm doing wrong and where I can improve. I've gotten some confidence in myself and my writing has gotten a lot better cuz of all your supportive and constructively criticizing reviews.
Thanks for everything! I can't possibly tell you all how much I appreciate the love and support!
Enough of my jibber jabber.
What do you think of this chapter?
What do you think of this story so far?
Tell me what you think, I really want to know!
In these scary and uncertain times, I want you all to please stay safe. Wherever you are in the world, please and please, stay safe. And I will see you when I see you.
Foy.