I do not own Naruto Shippuden or any of the characters.
History
Ryuu stared at the floor helplessly. Preliminaries. they were going to have a Preliminary round before the finals because too many genin had made it through the second exam. And Hayate was the proctor, as he was for the third exam. Ryuu had only trained with him a couple of times total, but he liked Hayate. And seeing Hayate looking so sickly and coughing ever couple of sentences was unpleasant. Hayate had offered anyone who felt they would lose their fight the chance to quit. Kabuto took the offer, turning and walking out of the tower, Ryuu using his Sharingan to guess at his chakra levels. They were fine for a single battle, plus he knew Kabuto was skilled, easily chunin level, if not higher. But, he was sure Kabuto had his reasons. After all, Kabuto had volunteered to be the one to help him with his rehab.
After Kabuto had quit, everyone else had been taken to the balcony on one side of the room or the other, clearing the lower floor to be the battle area. Ryuu wasn't looking forward to fighting. He had taken a bit of time examining the room, hoping to find some way to gain an edge over an opponent, obviously neglecting to even try to figure out how to beat Fu. The front of the room had a statue of a pair of hands forming the Ram hand seal with five wooden panels set into the wall, two per side and one behind the statue. The upper left panel moved out of the way, revealing a screen that would randomly generate their names. Basically, there was no advantage to be had. The room was a flat square with the statue being the only exception besides the observation balconies on either side of the room, which were off limits to combatants.
Ryuu sighed. He was about to half to fight Fu. He just knew it. His luck dictated he would be stuck with her. He couldn't even challenge her alone on a good day. With his ribs the way they were, he was pushing it not giving up already. A face that Fu was still giving him the stink eye for.
The first match had been short. Sasuke had fought someone named Yoroi Akado. One of Kabuto's teammates, a man who wore a purple bandanna with his forehead protector, a purple cloth hanging from the front of his face, a white short-sleeved shirt under a purple vest, a white cloth around his waist, fingerless purple gloves, and purple pants. The fight had started out with Yoroi beginning to absorb Sasuke's chakra, only for Sasuke to adapt and use a new combo he had thought up and dubbed "Lion's Barrage," consisting of kicking the opponent into the air, jumping up behind them, kicking them in the side, smashing a back fist into their face from the other side, then slamming an axe kick into their gut. In this case, the axe kick had come at the same time as Yoroi hit the ground, making it that much more devastating. The only bad thing about the fight was the fact that Sasuke's Curse Mark had started to activate in the middle of the combo, though Sasuke managed to reign it in.
The second fight had been shorter. Shino against Zaku. Zaku had been using the hand Sasuke didn't break, but in the end, Shino had surrounded him, so he revealed his other arm was healed. Then, his arms practically exploded as he tried to use his air tubes. Shino then took a moment to explain he had plugged them with insects before Zaku was carried away.
Ryuu sighed, looking up at the screen just as it showed Fu and Kegon's names. He sighed in relief. He didn't have to fight her. He felt bad for Kegon though. Both walked to the ring and for several minutes, Kegon put up an impressive fight, using Water Shuriken in time with close range attacks, all the while keeping himself restricted to roughly chunin level. Eventually, though, Fu had knocked him out with a quick chop to the side of the neck. Ryuu grinned. She really was frighteningly strong. He looked up at the screen, his stomach dropping. He was up. Against Kabuto's other teammate, Misumi Tsurugi. He was dressed the same as Yoroi, except that where Yoroi wore sunglasses, this one wore spectacles.
Ryuu walked down to the bottom floor and stopped opposite Misumi, who he could tell was grinning behind his mask.
"Ready?" Hayate asked, looking to Ryuu.
Ryuu nodded and Hayate returned the gesture.
"Begin!" Hayate said, jumping backward to the stand as Misumi shot forward.
Ryuu leapt backward, hurling a shuriken. Suddenly, Misumi's body distorted, head stretching to the side to avoid the shuriken and one arm shooting outward, extending like rubber until his arm wrapped around Ryuu's chest, yanking him back and beginning to squeeze. Ryuu shrieked in agony as his ribs all but collapsed under the very light pressure, one rib even puncturing a lung. Misumi stared at his ribs before up at him.
"What...the hell...happened to you?" he gaped.
Ryuu held a hand out, coughing up blood onto Misumi's face before blasting him with a Gale Palm. Misumi shot away from him but his arm untwisting also sent Ryuu spinning into a wall, breaking more ribs. Misumi stood, wiping the blood off of his face as Hayate began to walk forward.
"F...Fire...Style...Block...buster," Ryuu said, one hand on the ground and Sharingan staring at Misumi.
Then, the floor below Misumi exploded, everyone shouting in fear and shrinking back from the debris. When the smoke cleared, Misumi was lying on the ground, badly burned and groaning, but alive. Ryuu drew his tanto, creating himself a Vacuum Blade and using it to push himself to his feet, barely staying there.
"The winner is Ryuu Uchiha!" Hayate said.
Medics rushed in instantly, two moving to check on Misumi as four went to save Ryuu, who had collapsed again. Fe felt pain as they rolled him over and stared up at the ceiling, the lights seeming to turn slowly. Then, they began to heal him, pain making his vision flare white as the rib in his lung was removed and reset. Then, they sealed his lung, doing what they could to repair his ribs before rolling him onto his side. Suddenly, he began to cough, blood splattering across the ground each time.
"Just get it out," one of the medics said.
Finally, his coughing fit subsided.
"We need to get him to the hospital," one of the medics said.
Ryuu tried to argue but they ignored him, setting a stretcher down and setting him onto it, lifting it and carrying it out of the building. A short while later, he was lying in a hospital bed, a heavy cast around his torso and upper arms and an IV drip with pain killers hooked up to him. He lay there, arms perpetually stuck slightly off the bed, though not supported enough to be comfortable, and stared at the ceiling.
"Well...fuck," Ryuu sighed. "Looks like I'm out of the Chunin Exams by default then."
"Well look who it is," Kabuto smiled, walking into the room. "What happened to you?"
"I fought Orochimaru and ended up having my ribs broken," Ryuu said. "A friend was able to heal them enough for me to continue, but then they got re-broken during my fight."
"I see," Kabuto nodded. "That's got to be painful. Well, at least you can try the exams again later this year."
"I suppose," Ryuu sighed. "It sucks though. I won my fight and still failed the exams."
"Wait, you won the fight?" Kabuto asked. "With broken ribs?"
"Yeah," Ryuu nodded.
"Well then you might be able to continue," Kabuto said. "There's usually a month long wait before the next phase, that way anyone who's made it that far can be at their peak condition and train up for it."
"Really?" Ryuu asked. "Awesome! I'll have a full week to train!"
"Wow, you're in that thing for three weeks? My condolences."
Ryuu chuckled, only for it to turn into a groan. "Dammit. It hurt less to laugh before those butchers tried to fix my ribs. Some doctors they are."
Kabuto laughed, nodding. "Here. I can numb the pain a bit. Maybe even help speed up your recover, though not much. Broken bones are difficult." He held his hands out, green chakra flowing out of them for a moment before he sat back.
"Thanks," Ryuu smiled. "So, how come you quit when we both know you had plenty of chakra left to win?"
Kabuto stared at him in shock.
"I know you had a good reason," Ryuu said. "You always do. So, why give up when you were so close?"
"I...I guess...I just didn't want it enough this time," Kabuto said. "I got to that point and the thought of continuing to fight today just...didn't appeal to me."
"Giving up when the going gets tough huh?" Ryuu asked. "Doesn't sound like the Kabuto I know. Then again, quitting at all doesn't sound like the Kabuto I know. Kabuto, do you remember what you told me during my rehab? About knowing who you're talking to?"
"Not particularly," Kabuto said.
"Well, you said that the easiest way to be a pacifist is to run away from combat, but to be a pacifist and run toward combat, you have to learn to read the people around you, analyze everything about them in moments, and then use that information to your advantage. At the time, I told you that's not how a pacifist works. That's how a skilled fighter, or an expert assassin works. Or a spy."
Kabuto nodded slowly.
"But ya know? I think you might have been right," Ryuu smiled slightly as he watched Kabuto relax subtly, Kabuto having tensed near imperceptibly when he said spy. "Knowing the people around me has been invaluable. Naruto's good at changing people, not because he understands them, but because he's got so much working against him, and yet tries so hard. He puts everything he has into everything he does, and he refuses to stop until he succeeds. He defeats opponents who are a dozen times more skilled just by his persistence alone. I can't change people's hearts the way he does. And I can't simply put more effort into a task to solve it. Because of my Sharingan, my brain is automatically geared toward analyzing and reanalyzing everything everyone does."
"Okay," Kabuto said. "Well, I'm glad my advice was able to help."
"Kabuto," Ryuu said, Kabuto stopping as he was turning to leave. "Tell me your story."
"You already know my story," Kabuto smiled.
"No," Ryuu said. "I know your cover story. I want to know your real story. Not the one of a child raised by doctors. The one about a boy taken from an orphanage by Danzo Shimura."
"How do you know about that?" Kabuto snarled.
"Sai and Shin told me that the Foundation recruits orphans," Ryuu said. "Earlier, when I said the word spy, you tensed. I know you're a spy. And I'm assuming it's for Danzo, for reasons I doubt anybody could ever fathom. However, I know that it's probably hard to find spies who are unquestioningly loyal outright. So, what is it Danzo had over your head to recruit you?"
Kabuto stared at him in silence. Then, he sat down, placing his fingertips together in front of his face. "You're too observant for your own good. To think I can keep from detection by even the Hokage, but a genin is the one to figure it out. Fine. I'll tell you. Yes, I'm an orphan. I have no memory of my family. All I remember is waking up as a child at the orphanage. The person in charge of the orphanage, Mother Nono, found me and brought me back to the orphanage. There was a child there, Urushi, who like to joke around. When he heard I had received a head injury, he gave me a helmet to protect me. Mother Nono decided to name me Kabuto because of it. That night, I got out of bed after curfew to thank her for taking me in. When she found me, she scolded me for being up past curfew, but when I asked what time it was, she realized I had poor eye sight. She gave me her glasses so that I could see." He raised a hand, touching the glasses he was wearing. "My eyesight had been so bad that I couldn't even read a clock. As time progressed, I began to help out with injured Konoha shinobi. Mother Nono was a skilled Medical Ninja, and helped pay for the orphanage by helping the shinobi who were wounded in battle. As I grew older at the orphanage, I learned Medical Ninjutsu from her, trying my hardest to earn the orphanage money, doing my part to repay the debt I thought I owed her."
"It wasn't enough, was it?" Ryuu asked.
"No," Kabuto said. "Danzo came to the orphanage one day, demanding one of us as a recruit in the Foundation. The money we got from helping shinobi wasn't enough for the orphanage, so it required direct funding from Konoha still. Danzo had the authority to withhold the funding. He threatened to if Mother Nono didn't give him what he wanted."
"So you volunteered," Ryuu guessed.
Kabuto nodded. "I was naive. I thought that if I did what Danzo wanted, Danzo would allow Mother Nono to keep the orphanage. In the Foundation, I was trained in espionage. I was turned from a young aspiring Medical Ninja into a spy. And I was good at it. I successfully infiltrated the Cloud, Mist, Sand, and Stone villages, gaining invaluable intel for Danzo each time. However, in the Hidden Stone, I was discovered. I fought the ninja who had discovered me and defeated them. It was only after I had fatally wounded the ninja that I realized it was, in fact, Mother Nono. After I had left, Mother Nono had pleaded with Danzo to have me released from the Foundation. Danzo had agreed on the condition that she, a former member of the Foundation and one of its most successful spies of all time, return to it. Naturally, she agreed. Except, Danzo didn't release me. He tricked her. He sent falsified photos of me to her, the photos of myself slowly being replaced by photos of another boy."
"He brainwashed her to not recognize you," Ryuu said.
Kabuto smirked and nodded. "You'd make a decent spy yourself. You're sharp, attentive. You just lack killer instinct. Yes, he slowly brainwashed her over the course of years to no longer recognize me, making her believe that I was safely at home at the orphanage, just as I believed she was. When we fought, it was because Danzo had ordered her to tie up a loose end. He had intended for one of us to kill the other, while one of his other underlings killed whoever survived. We both knew too much, you see."
"And that's when you met Orochimaru," Ryuu said, Kabuto staring at him silently, face a mask of emotionless, while his eyes shone with several emotions, none of them good. "I'd wager he was the underling who was meant to kill you, right?"
"He was," Kabuto nodded. "Well well. It would seem you really have got me all figured out. How'd you know?"
"Misumi," Ryuu said. "Very few people are capable of fighting the way he and Orochimaru do. Fewer still are capable of performing the surgery that grants that ability."
"I see," Kabuto nodded. "Tell me, how do you know so much about the Foundation?"
"Well, if you're being honest, I will too," Ryuu said. "As I'm sure you know, I was assigned an ANBU as a sensei, since I didn't have a real genin team. After Sai and Shin told me what they could about the Foundation, which wasn't much, I managed to work some more information out of my ANBU Master. Wasn't easy, but it was worth it. For example, I know that there are only four people with the authority to order the execution of an entire clan. The hokage, the Village Elders Koharu and Utatane, and Danzo Shimura."
"Very good," Kabuto nodded.
"Anyway, I'll let you skip telling me about all the...lovely things you've done as Orochimaru's right hand," Ryuu said. "But how did he recruit you?"
"After I was forced to kill Mother Nono, I tried to save her. But she didn't recognize me. not even when I gave her her glasses and told her my name. I was so confused and afraid, that I couldn't save her. Had I been focused, I might have been able to. Orochimaru found me and got me away from the Hidden Stone ninja that were responding to the sounds of our battle, taking me to one of his early hideouts, before he defected. Once there, he told me about Danzo brainwashing Mother Nono. He showed me the pictures. Believing that he was there to finish me off, as Danzo had wished, I attacked him. He defeated me with ease. Of course, I wasn't exactly thinking straight. After having lost the woman who was the closest thing I'd ever had to a mother, and after seeing that even my mother didn't recognize me, I was having a..." he stopped, searching for the right word.
"Identity Crisis?" Ryuu offered.
"Yes, thank you," he smiled kindly, his eyes never having changed from their much more dangerous and entirely negative light yet. "Anyway, I was having an Identity Crisis. Because of Mother Nono, I knew who I was, and where I belonged. If even she didn't recognize me, then who had I become? orochimaru gave me advice. He told me, if you are ever unsure about who you are, simply find something you like about someone else and make it a part of you. Build your own identity. Now, I know exactly who I am."
"Do you?" Ryuu asked. "Then tell me, who exactly is Kabuto Yakushi? What exactly is it that you want in life?"
Kabuto stared at him. "Kabuto Yakushi is a tool of Lord Orochimaru."
"What is it you want in this life, Kabuto?"
Kabuto stared at him yet again. "Why?"
"Because I want to know," Ryuu said. "Because I want to know the real Kabuto. Personally, I think he's a lot closer to the version that everyone in the village knows."
"That's not true," Kabuto growled.
"Then why am I still alive?" Ryuu asked, Kabuto freezing. "We've established, quite plainly, that I know you're a spy for Orochimaru. We've established that you're working against the Hidden Leaf, and yet you haven't killed me yet. Why?"
"I...Because...there's no harm in talking to you before I kill you," Kabuto said, but there was something new in his eyes: doubt.
"Oh come on Kabuto, you're smarter than that," Ryuu said. "Think Kabuto. Close your eyes and do what you do best. The hardest secrets to learn are the ones you hide from yourself. So look in deep and tell me. Who are you really?"
Kabuto stared at him. However, just as he opened his mouth to respond, a door burst open down the hallway and several doctors plus a surgical team sprinted past the door, shouting. Kabuto got up, hurrying to the door and looking out it.
"Kabuto," Ryuu said, Kabuto looking back at him. "I will save you. Naruto may be the one who's good at changing people's hearts for the better, but I will save you from what Danzo and Orochimaru have turned you into."
Kabuto stared at him for a moment longer before vanishing out the door.
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