Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Street Fighter. After January 1st of the next year I'll probably have to start dodging loan sharks at some point. They call them collection agencies, but that's just a nice way of saying loan shark.

I'm tempted to not do it, just to see what would happen... you know, aside from my credit being ruined for life right out of the gate?

Bring it on loan sharks. You can't get blood from a stone. It's even harder when that stone is punching you in the throat for trying to get blood from it.

Chapter 51: Life as You Know It

Staring straight ahead at the figure who was returning his stern look, Sasuke finally opened his mouth to address the silent solicitor that had come to his place of business to assail him, "…Stop it," He said firmly, but nothing came of his demand, "…Stop it. Stop giving me that look dobe! I mean it!"

Who knew that Naruto had such a scary deadpan expression in his repertoire? Somehow it was creepy on him. Naruto made noise and moved around, he didn't stay dead silent and as still as a statue. Any deviation from the standard expectations of his attitude was cause for alarm. On this day the reason for such a deviation could be summed up in one word.

"Kirin."

Sasuke didn't flinch so much as allow his eye to twich as the look on his Naruto's face slowly morphed to one of annoyance.

All Sasuke could really do in return was roll his eyes, finally understanding why Naruto had walked into Genhanten, sat down, hadn't budged or ordered a thing despite being asked by waiters and waitresses, and waited for Sasuke himself to come down and speak to him once it became outright loitering, "What about it?"

"You had a jutsu like Kirin in your back pocket this whole time, and you didn't think to break it out in the middle of our fight?"

Naruto was insulted. He was outraged. He was affronted by the slight that was Sasuke refraining from busting out the big honking lightning bolt from the sky in order to kill him during the Second World Warrior Tournament. God, he was sick in the head for actually wanting his enemy to use the strongest technique in their arsenal on him, but he did want Sasuke to have used it on him.

If only to say that he'd either dodged it or endured the devastation of the jutsu. Yes, he was sick.

"I don't need to explain myself to you," Sasuke said, crossing his arms over his chest and turning his head away from his blond friend/rival/bane of his existence.

As the seconds of silence dragged on, Sasuke knew better. He did have to explain himself to Naruto, because being slighted in battle pissed Naruto off as much as he knew it would have upset him.

It was his pet peeve and he had done it to someone else, therefore it irked him to have that hanging over his head, "Okay, do you know how much setup that jutsu takes? It would have taken too long to put together!"

That was not a good enough excuse for Naruto, "I saw how you set it up! You're acting like I would have seen it coming!" He had been in half of a combat-high during their battle. He would have never paid attention to what happened in the aftermath of the setup move as long as it didn't hit him, "Don't give me that crap! You know full well if you'd have set it up you'd have blown my ass away!"

"I didn't want to use my trump card on worldwide TV."

It was a weak excuse and Sasuke knew it, but you could sell anything with a strong enough voice and a straight enough face, and he had the best two of those things going today.

Sadly it was a no-go.

"We blew out the feed by the time we were busting out the kill moves!" Naruto said, abruptly standing up from his table and pointing boisterously in Sasuke's face. The patrons of the restaurant were paying rapt attention to the goings-on of the dark, handsome restaurant manager and one of the most prominent figures in Aohura City, "You sandbagged your shit in that fight, just admit it! What pisses me off more than anything else is the fact that I caught you, and you're still lying to my face about it!"

Despite himself, Sasuke found his ire raising enough to engage in the shouting contest. From what Sasuke saw in Las Vegas, someone had very little room to talk about holding back, "Sandbagging? Look who's talking Mister Six-Tails! Where was that during our fight? It's good enough for Seth, but I'm not worth ripping limb-from-limb?"

"I just found out I could do that and not go totally black-out genocide-berserk!" Naruto then stopped and realized that they had an audience. An audience that became noticeably unnerved when Naruto referenced a Kyuubi-induced blood rage, "…Oh don't worry about that. It's totally not that big of a problem anymore. I fixed it with a technique that makes me schizophrenic to split control of my psyche, so it's cool now."

Yes, because that was a much more reassuring thing to say to people.

"…We're fighting again Sasuke. You know that right?"

"Tch. Get out of my restaurant dobe."

From the corner of the stairs that led upstairs to the apartment level and the office, Gen simply smirked at the sight of the two young fighters. If they stayed alive long enough, by his view they had a chance of winding up being the strongest ever.

…If Sasuke thought he was ever going to kill him though, he'd have to keep waiting. Even with leukemia he had too many decades on that boy to fall so easily.

XxX

(Elsewhere in Town – Karin's Personal Manor)

Rolling his eyes upon finding Karin in her underground training facility, Naruto just stood at the door of the strength and conditioning room as he watched Karin do hanging crunches in a weighted vest, a dogged focus to her actions, "Rin-Rin, stop training all the time."

"Do not presume that you can tell me what to do," Karin stated bluntly, continuing her exercise without surcease, "I will never show such weakness and vulnerability in a time of crisis again. It was absolutely reprehensible."

If training was her way of coping with the things that had happened to her while being held captive by S.I.N., there wasn't really anything wrong with that, as at least it was productive, but she was overtraining. Shibazaki had in so many words expressed his concerns ever since Karin's return to Japan. For that person to express concerns to Naruto of all people, someone that he had never kept any secrets about holding absolutely no love for, he had to mean it.

Karin had gotten her fire back, and then some, but it seemed that she'd regressed in some manner and had clammed back up to a degree. It wasn't that she'd turned cold once again, but she seemed to be determined to attend to her own concerns solo.

…And it had taken so long for everyone to show her that it wasn't a problem to let others help out.

Walking all the way past the other equipment and leaning against the place that Karin had suspended herself upside-down from, Naruto sighed as he watched her work, "Stop being upset about the whole Seth thing. There was nothing you could've done."

"You did something."

Well that stung. The truth was known to hurt from time to time, but it wasn't supposed to hurt after you did something that was actually right. She hadn't even intended it to. She was simply making a point. She held herself to the best standards, so why couldn't she hold herself to Naruto's standards when it came to vanquishing freaks and baddies?

Somehow going into ego mode and saying something like, 'Well yeah, of course I did something. I'm awesome,' didn't seem like the right thing to say despite the fact that it was on the tip of Naruto's tongue.

"I don't count. I'm kind of broken if you haven't noticed," Naruto argued lightly, patting his stomach for emphasis before ticking off things on his fingers, "I'm kind of hard to kill or keep down, I've got a super-strong source of extra energy inside of me, and I still had to go into a berserk blood rage to finish the job," Naruto could swear he still had some black residue from Seth's Tanden Engine on his hands after ripping it out, "It's been like that since day one."

"And what does 'day one' constitute to you Naruto-san?"

"Since birth, or my first real mission as a ninja. Whichever one drives the point home better."

Karin paused abruptly in the middle of one of her sit-ups and stared at Naruto intently, an eyebrow raised before sighing it off and unhooking her feet. Planting her hands onto the ground, she nimbly landed on her feet where a towel was promptly presented to her by Ishizaki to wipe herself off, "I do not care what sort of unnatural powers people like you or Sakura-san, or anyone else for that matter happen to possess. I refuse to acknowledge anyone as my better merely because of that. I can be better."

At that, she took off her vest and gloves, letting them drop to the floor with heavy thuds that shook the floor, much to Naruto's interest. They didn't seem to inhibit any of her movement or even hinder her much at all, "How much did those weigh?"

"The vest was 250 pounds, the gloves were 150 each," Karin stated nonchalantly, taking some measure of satisfaction from the impressed expression on Naruto's face, "It was a light day."

'A light day she says,' Naruto thinks to himself. Sure, he could pull a damn jeep behind him across town at twenty miles per hour by now, but that was him, and he was a freak.

"Do not look so surprised," Karin said, running a finger lightly along his jaw, "It is just as I told you; I will never show such weakness and vulnerability ever again. The next time I may just be the one rescuing you."

Naruto just watched her retreating form as the girl left the room. Shooting a look over at the rotund butler Ishizaki, he heard the man let out a sigh once as he looked at her discarded training equipment that he couldn't clean up in Karin's departure. He couldn't pick those things up. Maybe the gloves one at a time, but not the vest.

"Karin-ojousama is still extremely rattled from her ordeal with that horrid creature Seth," Ishizaki said to Naruto, "I know that it is highly unprofessional of me to ask this of you as her bodyguard, but as of now you are the person that is closest to her. I would ask that you stand by her and allow her to heal."

"You didn't have to ask me to do something like that," Naruto said, heading on his way now that his visit was concluded, "I've been doing it anyway. You should have known that already. Whenever I'm around, Shibazaki's been hovering around us like an f'n hawk."

There was admittedly a good reason Shibazaki's increased vigilance that Ishizaki couldn't question the validity of, and Ishizaki went red-faced at the thought in embarrassment. It was quite clear in the reasoning why by now, as the two of them had been around for long enough to obviously know how Karin felt about Naruto.

Speaking of which…

"By the way, Karin-ojousama wished for me to inform you that she would be in her private bath after she concluded her exercises," Ishizaki said, sputtering at having to report such a thing to Naruto, "…She said that you could choose to process that information however you wished."

Naruto simply stared at him for several seconds before fishing a coin out of his pocket and setting it in the position to flip, "Heads or tails. Whichever one you pick, if it comes up I'm going to go be nosy-, I mean go put in some bodyguard hours."

"I think I should also inform you that Shibazaki has snipers posted with their guns trained on each of her windows, and a heavy guard team he's personally overseeing posted right outside of the door to her quarters and patrolling the adjacent halls… with directions to shoot you on sight."

"…I'm gonna take that as you saying 'tails never fails'."

XxX

(A Few Days Later – Tamagawa Minami High School)

"This year, the year-end school trip will be to Brazil!"

The homeroom teacher said this with no lapse of happiness at being gifted with such an amazing trip to go on, even if it was school-sponsored. It also had the effect of waking the entire class up thoroughly. It took a matter of seconds for all of the students present to begin chattering excitedly at being taken to a place so far away. Normally they only went to mountain resorts up north or to Okinawa.

Karin didn't seem to care one way or another. It seemed like a decent way to end the school year before summer. When it came to Naruto, Sakura, and Kei however, they all simply had the same reaction to the news, responding with a flat, "What?"

Ibuki was simply beaming at the news however, as if everything was coming together for some reason.

"Brazil?" Sakura said quietly to herself, mulling around the idea in her head. Not that she had any problems whatsoever with going to a place like that on a school-sponsored pre-summer break vacation, but it was weird, "Our school has the budget to fund a trip for all of us to Brazil?"

Naruto's eyes slowly turned Karin's way only to see her giving him a dry look in return, "And why exactly would you think of me first as the sponsor behind this school's upgrade in terminus on its excursion?" She asked in regards to the unspoken question.

"Really?" Kei asked incredulously, "Maybe it's because the money it would cost someone like you to do something like this would be the equivalent of dropping a twenty on a restaurant tab for regular people."

"As true as this may be, I am not the person responsible," Karin insisted with a bit of a pout. She wished she would have thought of it though, because it would have been an outrageous way to get her ego boosted, "I was honestly planning to skip the retreat to whatever pedestrian, domestic destination the school had planned before this turn of events."

"I was too," Naruto admitted with a big beaming look that drew an uncharacteristically warm smile in return from Karin, "I skip this thing every year actually. I used these school trips as extra time to train and work jobs."

"-Because Naruto is responsible," Sakura said, outright teasing him with a cheeky grin. Everyone knew that conventional responsibility wasn't Naruto's biggest personality trait, "Who needs vacations when you've got bills to pay?"

"Damn straight," He replied, high-fiving Sakura, their fingers intertwining in an almost intimate manner afterwards with his fingertips gently rubbing the back of her hand.

"Well don't skip it this year," Ibuki said, a little too quickly and stubbornly for it to be an offhand remark. She picked up on this due to how her friends reacted in suspicion and smiled brightly to cover up her hurried statement, "I mean… after all, it's Brazil right? Yay!"

This did nothing to get the accusatory eyes off of her from Naruto, Sakura, Karin, and Kei, who had a pretty stern look for a schoolgirl that didn't know how to throw a half-decent punch.

"What did you do?" Sakura asked before anyone else could. By now it was clear that she had something to do with what was going on, but how Ibuki could end up getting things changed to an extreme degree such as that was beyond their comprehension.

"No~thing." Ibuki sang, grinning and rocking side to side in her chair, eyes not meeting anyone else's, "Listen, I wouldn't throw too many questions around unless you all want to go to Kyoto for a week-long trip."

Kyoto? Was that where they were going to go before whatever happened actually happened to change where they were to go? To hell with that. They could go there literally anytime they wanted. That was a daytrip for the lot of them.

One would think that they would be tired of traveling after a while. After all, they did it quite often and they'd recently gone to Las Vegas of all places. But the fact was that they had never gone anywhere just to relax. It was always to do something that ran the risk of ending their lives, and even when they went to nice places they were never in any kind of condition to enjoy themselves after business was over.

So with that in mind… Brazil, fuck yeah.

"How do you even pack for a place like that? I guess Blanka or Dan would know." Naruto commented out of the blue before deciding on something right then. Vacation or not, "…I'm still bringing scrolls with weapons though. I'm not losing my stuff at customs."

No one had anything to say against that.

XxX

(Australia – Darwin, Northern Territory)

"You have to be absolutely certain about this Ken," Ryu said, speaking on his cell phone while checking in with his best friend and catching up on what he'd missed while being unreachable in the Australian outback. He had been informed on quite a few disturbing developments since he'd undergone his private training after his loss in the tournament, "Are you sure you're not mistaken on any part of what you've told me?"

"I'm telling you everything they told me after they stopped by my place to rest before heading home," Ken said over the line, "I even checked in with sensei afterwards when I heard he was still alive and in Aohura City of all places. Man, you've been missing out. Anyway, I spoke to him, and her little episodes don't sound so much different from yours."

Ryu was severely conflicted. He didn't know about Gouken returning, and that brought him great joy to imagine the man that raised him still being alive and well after Akuma presumably killed him, but he was also terrified at the thought of Sakura having a few brushes with the Satsui no Hadou.

Their fighting style was cursed. Anyone that grew to be skilled at it found themselves overtaken with a strong will for something. For him it was simple. In the endeavor to gain power and prove his strength as the best, his Satsui no Hadou trigger manifested itself in an obsession with obtaining the power to garner victory over the strongest enemies imaginable.

But Sakura never really seemed to be fixated on being the absolute strongest like himself or Akuma, so Ryu had no idea what her trigger would have been.

It didn't matter however. It was still something dangerous. So now he had two reasons to head on back to Japan; to see his teacher once again after he'd seemingly come back from the dead, and to try and determine if there was anything he could do to help Sakura.

Not that he necessarily had a handle on his own problems, but she was younger, so the danger for her was greater wasn't it? Younger people were more susceptible to their emotions getting the better of them, and with something as unstable as the Satsui no Hadou that was just too treacherous to ignore.

XxX

(Outside of Las Vegas – Mojave Desert)

"No sir, Seth left very little here to salvage," The suited Crimson Viper said for the umpteenth time on her phone as she watched government recovery crews pick through what was left of the obliterated S.I.N. base. She walked past a row of twenty-five other preserved, pristine Seth bodies, "The copies of Number 15 are useless to us completely."

All of them were defunct and were basically extremely well-defined mannequins. They lacked the most important thing to make them function; the Tanden Engine meant to rest within the abdomen. Without it, Seth simply did not function. There was nothing else in existence that could power these genetically engineered puppets.

For her entire tenure in S.I.N., Viper had been undercover in order to procure secrets of the organization. The U.S. had been tired of paying the exorbitant prices for S.I.N.'s technology, and she had been sent in to steal the information on anything prominent.

She saw the most potential in the Battle Suit project, and she actually wound up with the intel on that, but lost the BLECE Project data.

They had also lost the chance to obtain what could have been perhaps the biggest energy boon of the 21st century in the Tanden Engine. There had only been one, and there had been no data on it whatsoever to learn from. The only way to study it would have been to get it from Seth, which was an impossibility for her.

But someone clearly had the acumen to get the job done. She had been in the base when it had been attacked and found it prudent to make her exit before it was destroyed. She felt that she had made a good choice in that regard after all was said and done.

"I probably wouldn't have survived had I remained behind to see Uzumaki battle Seth. It's hard to believe that a human being could reach this much power, but I think that was what people like Seth and M. Bison had been trying to find or reach somehow all along."

The only thing left to study were the few BLECE afflicted bodies that they had been able to excavate from the caved-in base, and there wasn't anything to learn from them that hadn't already been known beforehand.

Well, there was one thing to learn from all of this, even if it had nothing to do with weapons production.

"I don't know," Crimson Viper said before a short pause to listen. A frown crossed her face and she removed her sunglasses to rub at her eyes, "…How dangerous would I say he is? It depends," She paused again for another query from her superior, "'Depends on what' you ask? On whether or not you plan on leaving him be."

The thing to learn was something very specific. Something that had been learned in the past from other certain people over the course of modern history. Only a handful of people held this distinction, and you could count them on two hands and have fingers left over.

"If you're asking for my opinion on the matter…" She said, eyes staring down at Seth's warped corpse, the Tanden Engine they wished to recover above all else conspicuously absent. What it must have taken to rip out "…I would suggest that the CIA leave him alone… sir."

The lesson was; do not antagonize Uzumaki Naruto. Avoid him altogether if you can help it, because it was not worth the interest that you would develop in him. Even if he didn't know what you were doing until it was too late, he would still bring whatever it was down around your head regardless.

XxX

(A Few Days Later – Liberdade District of Sao Paulo, Brazil)

As his sandaled feet hit the pavement, Naruto looked at his surroundings while being led along. Wearing an orange shirt and brown cargo pants, his attire was extremely relaxed. That was because he'd packed expecting a damn vacation.

Any suspicions on what hand Ibuki had in the school trip to Brazil were renewed full-force upon the first full day of their seven day stay. Before anyone else had really even woken up in order to explore what the town had to offer tourists, Ibuki had dragged Naruto out and about. He had been expecting just some normal walkabout when he saw her pretty standard clothes of snug blue jeans and a tan shirt with red lettering of her name across the chest. Then again, that changed when she took him around.

Where to? Why to the ethnic Japanese district of the city of course.

What the hell? Seriously, if that was what Naruto wanted he really would have skipped all of the traveling nonsense and stayed back in Aohura City. Needless to say, pretty and pleasurable kunoichi company or not, Naruto was not a happy camper.

Finally deciding to dig his heels in, Naruto did just that on a crowded sidewalk, channeling chakra to his feet to make it nigh impossible for Ibuki to drag him any further by the hand. Her tanuki Don was still pushing him at his legs from behind doing absolutely nothing to move him, "Okay, just what's going on here?"

Ibuki tugged on Naruto's arm only to find him stuck fast. He wasn't going anywhere that he didn't want to go and she wouldn't be the one to move him. Not physically at least. As strong as she was, he was notably stronger. Relying on an old fallback that she hadn't had to pull out in a while, she batted her eyes at him.

In response, Naruto simply stuck a pair of sunglasses on her that he'd bought at the hotel that morning when they'd left. Pouting, Ibuki lowered them slightly on her face and allowed Don to set himself up on her shoulder again, "Okay, you know how you told me that you would help me if I just asked you? Well I need your help."

The two of them took a seat on the edge of a concrete planter by the road and Naruto waited to hear just what all of this was for. To his credit he was patient as Ibuki picked up Don and held him in her arms, an expression on her face as if there were butterflies in her stomach.

Eventually though, she gave him a gorgeous smile that still managed to be so despite clearly being fraught with nerves.

"This is it Naruto," Ibuki told him, "My graduation exam. My last test is here, and then I can do whatever I want, wherever I want," A nervous laugh sprouted from her involuntarily at that however, "Ehehehehe… if I pass of course."

So she was finally going through with it? Good for her. But that still didn't explain enough for Naruto's tastes, "So how'd you reroute the school trip to Brazil? I didn't think you guys had that much money at the Glade of Ninjas."

"We do. Trust me, we do," The kunoichi assured him, "It wasn't that hard. All we had to do was kick the cash the school's way. The principal jumped at it."

"I hate that guy," Naruto said, and the feeling was mutual, though they didn't have many run-ins lately, "…You know he probably kept what didn't go to the trip for himself."

"Probably," Ibuki mumbled, setting her head onto Naruto's shoulder and maintaining her hold on her pet for comfort, "I'm scared to death, you know? Like, this is it. After I graduate I can… I don't know what I can do."

Naruto sighed and pulled her closer to him for physical reassurance, "You can do anything you want. You said that you always wanted to finish your training so you could be free to do your own thing. Well after your test you can. I'm glad you finally accepted it, because I know you can do it."

"Really?"

"Of course. I thought you could do it a while ago. But why are we in Brazil for it? What do you have to do?"

"I have to find a certain person and fight them," Ibuki said gravely, "That's all. I have to fight them and that's my last test. A man named Oro. He used to be an ultra-strong warrior from Japan, and that was way back at the start of the 1900s. He moved to Brazil for some reason and disappeared. He's one of the big legends of martial arts."

Recent martial arts lore stated that Oro despite all of his skill, which was incomparable, had a tough time making a go of it with only fighting skill to his credit; something of a cautionary tale to those that figured they would make a living off of their muscles simply because they had a fair amount of talent.

Tiring of it all he eventually chose to leave it all behind and head off into the more mountainous areas of Brazil, keeping to himself and living off of the land as he practiced his art.

It was said that the particular mountain he lived on was devoid of any strife, completely at peace due to the mere presence of his ki. Animals didn't even hunt and kill on that mountain, from the most brutal constrictor snakes, to the most venomous spiders, to the most savage jungle cats.

"He's got to be older than dirt though, right?" At that comment, Naruto thought about some other old people he knew and frowned painfully. Most of the old people he'd know that were perceived as powerful fighters were all so strong it was scary. Sasuke's boss Gen, Gouken, the Sandaime Hokage… yeah, "Nevermind, it's probably gonna be rough."

Ibuki let out a pitiful moan, "I know. I mean, I've got to be able to find the guy first! No one can find the guy! He's a hermit! That's why I came here. He's ethnic Japanese, so I figured-."

"-You'd start trying to pick up on some rumors here," Naruto finished in her stead with a sageful nod, "Okay, look. I'm gonna help. That's what clones are for I guess. They'll ask around. In the meantime, we're going to go do vacation stuff with everybody else, and you're gonna stop worrying about this so much. I know how good you are. You'll be fine and you're as ready as you can be. I'll be right there with you the whole time."

God, that damned smile of his. It made no sense that he had no idea just how he affected her. It wasn't fair. She could tease him and play with him all she wanted, and he could still rock her to her core just like that.

There had been something about him, from the day that they'd met and how he'd taken to her assistance without a reason to do so when he could have kicked her out and left her to her fate. The kind of man he was, the way he treated her and so many others… it screamed for her to put her trust in him, because he would never let her down. He would never let anyone down if he could help it, and the lengths that he would go to for any of them had become evident after the entire S.I.N. incident.

Just looking at him, Ibuki couldn't think of anything other than how Naruto was the reason she found fulfillment in being a ninja.

Since it was what she had always been she had grown tired of her life, until quite some time back he showed her that there could be more to it than just training and fighting. Meeting him in her past bid to run away from her lifestyle way back when had in hindsight been the best thing she'd ever done.

She wondered how he'd react if she ever told him that he was the main reason she wanted that freedom he'd been talking about. There was probably a halfway decent chance that he somehow knew that already.

XxX

(Meanwhile – Aohura City, Japan)

It was a shame, but since Cammy wasn't a student due to having absolutely no interest in attending any sort of high school she wasn't allowed to come along on the trip to Brazil.

That meant that when the winner of the First World Warrior Tournament came knocking on the door of the new apartment she shared with Naruto, she was present to answer.

If she was surprised at seeing the stoic white-clad fighter on her new doorstep, Cammy didn't show it. Hardly even blinking her bright blue eyes in acknowledgment of his presence she barely had her door open wide enough for her face to be seen, "Naruto isn't here," She informed Ryu, who had somehow enlisted the services of the very uneager to be there Dan to show him where Naruto's home was, "He's on a school function and he won't be back for a week."

"I was looking for Sakura actually," Ryu said, a serious look etched on his face, as was his way, "She isn't at her home, so I thought of coming here."

Dan rolled his eyes and chimed in from behind, "You idiot. Sakura is in Uzumaki's class. She's gone on the same trip. Is that what you made me take you all the way out here for?" Seriously, he had an interview for 'Fighting Spirit' magazine on the growth of his dojo business to prepare for. He had better things to do than ferry Master Gouken's favorite student around town all day.

Ryu's brow furrowed in vexation. This wasn't good. From the sound of things from Gouken, he had been working with Sakura to try and embrace the path of the Surge of Power, but he had been unable to convince her to detach herself from her desires to properly walk down the path to the Power of Nothingness.

If she heard it from him however, that it was for the best that she abandoned her attachments, perhaps she would listen. Sakura had always heeded his directions before. She notably looked up to him and admitted to fighting in order to be recognized by him. If Ryu told her how to proceed, she would heed his words wouldn't she?

Ryu was working to lose the things that he attached himself to in his training even now, as his trip to Australia by his lonesome was a measure meant to clear his mind in a harsh environment and force him to focus on only what was necessary. He still had trouble with discarding his desire to fight the strongest and be known as the best, but everything else physical he had managed to do away with attaching himself to, not that there had been much to begin with.

It was the only way to deal with the Satsui no Hadou, and if that power wasn't dealt with it would eat away at your body and mind until you became Akuma.

The man had so much power it was horrendous, if you could even call him a man any longer. Ryu could never let anyone else ever warp themselves to that depth and draw upon the sort of power that came with that darkness.

Spending the time that she did around Naruto probably made her believe that she could control it, because Naruto routinely tried to control his own overwhelming power inside of him, but this was not like that. Unlike with Naruto's, there wasn't another consciousness that was the source of the Satsui no Hadou. It was your own most primal, base desires coming forth.

Not much of a talker, Ryu remained silent and in thought for long enough to even make Cammy uncomfortable, "…Well if that was the only thing that you wanted, have a nice day." She abruptly closed the door with little fanfare once their business seemed to conclude.

"How much influence does Naruto have over her?" Ryu wondered aloud as he aimlessly wandered away from the doorstep.

Dan smirked and pushed himself off of the railing that he'd been leaning on to head back down to his car with Ryu, "More than Master Gouken."

"She believes Naruto's words to be wiser than Master Gouken's?" That didn't make sense at all. Yes, she had known Naruto for longer, but why would she be influenced by anyone her age over someone with the years of life under their belt and actual experience in the department of the dark intent of their ancestor fighting style?

"It ain't about him being wiser or not," Dan said, shaking his head at a man who simply didn't get it, "It's about-. Ugh, you know what? If it's this hard for you to figure out what Uzumaki's got that makes him easier for a kid like her to listen to than you then it's not worth talking about."

This only confused Ryu more.

If you asked Dan about Naruto's fighting ability he would say that he was a bum. A no-good, cheap-shotting, dojo-trashing, b.s. artist. He would say that Naruto only beat him one time and one time only back when he'd had a 104 degree fever, AND the gout, AND after he had been doing tiring demonstrations all day.

Clearly they weren't necessarily friends. They shared mutual friends and acquaintances, such as Sakura and Blanka, and that was as far as their interaction went, because Dan refused to ever fight Naruto again and Naruto just didn't care due to routinely having bigger fish to fry.

However, when it came to preference of philosophy, Dan liked Naruto's infinitely more. What was in front of Naruto was more important than any concept like being the undisputed best fighter in the world. That was something that Dan could subscribe to, even though his thing was fame and money compared to Naruto's philosophy of fighting for his friends and loved ones. As far as Dan was concerned, at least Naruto's motivation was real compared to Ryu's.

What did that get you? When you were that motivated for such an abstract goal and you looked back on your life if you even lived long enough to reflect, and you dredged up memories of what you did in your glory days, could you say it was worth it? How would you determine that?

In the end, Dan could say that if he became an old man he could look back and say that his life was pretty fine, 'Sometimes it's actually pretty bitchin'.' No more delinquent loans and bills for him.

He avenged his father by 'defeating' Sagat, and he was making loads of money off of his dojos. You could see it in Naruto that simply being around people he loved was nirvana. Dan had little doubt that Naruto would have very few regrets if he lived long enough to grow old.

There was a bit of tension set between Dan and Ryu as they both reentered his car, only for Dan's cell phone to go off before he could start the ignition. From the number on the caller ID he was getting a call from an international line, "Yeah?" He answered only to quickly roll his eyes. Speak of the devil, "Wait, you want to talk to Jimmy? Why?" A short pause, "Alright. Fine. I'll call back from the dojo in an hour."

"Who was that?" Ryu asked, barely ever using his own cell phone for anything personal.

"Uzumaki. He wants a firsthand account of what you'll run into in the forests in Brazil."

That was an oddly specific request, "Why?"

Dan just shrugged his shoulders in confusion and started his car, "Beats me. Who cares? I'm more concerned with how much money it just cost me to take a call from Sao Paulo and what he's doing awake at 1 in the morning over there on a school trip."

XxX

(Some Time Later – Sao Paulo, Brazil)

Morning had come and the plan for later that day was to do some more sightseeing. The students were given the freedom to do their own thing as the only requirements the students had were that they couldn't leave before breakfast was served where roll would be taken, and they had to be back in by 9 pm or else they would be barred to the hotel for the remainder of the trip. Other than that, they could do whatever they wanted.

Jetlag kicked most of the students' tails on the day of their arrival and the subsequent day that followed as well. Into the second day of their stay, most of them were up and intent on making up for lost time. Being used to travelling all over and the shifting of time zones, Sakura was one of the few who weren't affected very much, therefore she had actually gotten to go around and get some things done on the first day.

Early on day two, Sakura sat for breakfast with Kei at an umbrella-shaded table in sight of one of the hotel pools. For the sake of her vacation she wore a short pink blouse and a flower-patterned white sarong, a pair of sunglasses sitting on her forehead in place of her usual headband.

Naruto, Ibuki, and Karin were all still taking their time to sleep. Naruto had always been slow to rise. Once he was up he was hard to put back to rest again, but getting him to move in mornings had always been difficult. Ibuki was used to getting up before the crack of dawn anyway and was taking advantage of the week's length of time where she simply didn't have to. Karin was normally a workhorse of an early-riser, but she'd been away at the moment to procure local transportation around the greater Sao Paulo area suitable to her needs.

One could only imagine what such a thing could wind up entailing before all was said and done.

Either way, they were waiting for the stragglers to wake up and for Karin to return from where she'd gone off to. Being without servants for the first time in a while to do these sorts of things for her, Sakura figured it could be kind of funny to see how Karin interacted with others to get what she needed in person and had wished that she'd waited to go until after everyone else had eaten.

As she sat and tried to skim through a help pamphlet on basic Portuguese phrases and tried to commit them to memory just in case, she looked up and noticed that she and Kei had the attention of a good number of the male population of the second year class.

A frown crossed her face upon noting this and finding the majority of them look down or away, just as long as they didn't run the risk of making eye contact with her, "Kei-chan, is there something wrong with what I'm wearing or something today?"

Kei raised an eyebrow and looked Sakura over, finding nothing wrong with her friend. Did she really not know why she was getting looks today? For someone basically at the top of the class grade-wise, Sakura could certainly miss some things when they required a little digging, "No, it's pretty much because now is the only time that any boys think they can sneak looks at you without getting Naruto on their case."

"What? That's kind of silly," Sakura professed, tersely eying her pensive male schoolmates ogling her from a distance. Was that really what they thought of Naruto? If so they were wrong, "Naruto wouldn't yell at anyone for asking me out. He definitely wouldn't threaten anyone."

Naruto only begrudged people in regards to Sakura when they tried to hurt her or flagrantly disrespected her, and barely even then because she could handle herself. He was loyal, but not to an overbearingly maniacal, possessive degree.

Sakura idly noted that her dark side could take notes.

"Don't give me that." Sakura said to herself inside, a playfully dangerous tone to her own thoughts, "You know he's ours just as much as I do. Why do you think I say we when I speak to you about yourself? I want what you want, and you want what I want. I am you. If you stopped fighting it you'd feel much better."

She almost found herself listening, until she remembered what sorts of things happened when she started listening to that part of herself.

As Sakura shook off her own piercing thoughts, Kei simply shrugged in return to Sakura's query that she'd actually voiced aloud before, "They don't know that," She said before taking a long sip of her drink and running some of her long brown hair back behind her ear, "Have you ever wondered why you've never had a boyfriend?"

Other than the fact that since puberty Sakura had never been interested in any other menfolk than just the two that Kei knew of, of course.

"Because I'm a good martial artist?" That had always been Sakura's bit of fear when it came to her fighting acumen, that it afflicted her femininity from the point of view of others. The recent 'Sunburned' Sakura episodes where she'd been markedly more aggressive and violent did nothing to prevent this line of thinking on her part.

"No, actually that turns some guys on," Honestly, Kei didn't know why Sakura had so much trouble with accepting the fact that many other people found her cute. She was a sweet person, very intelligent, and people knew that she was fully capable of being fun. The fact that she fought did very little to discourage that opinion, "It's because you spend the majority of your time around the alpha dog."

In other words; it was because of how she'd always been close to Naruto.

Kei would know this even when Sakura didn't, because she'd actually had some boys ask her out. When curiosity got the better of her and she asked about Sakura, it was revealed that for most regular students, Naruto put the fear of God in them, even though he'd never beaten up anyone that hadn't swung at him first.

Even if they knew he wouldn't hurt them. Even if history showed that the only time he'd ever gotten into fights at school with the student body had been back around the start of the first-year when delinquents from middle schools around Aohura City wanted to establish their pecking order and didn't know just how much of a bad idea it was.

That was the stigma that came with being the strongest when people were used to might making right and strength meaning abuse. Whether or not Naruto would harm a fly didn't matter. It was thought better to err on the side of caution and refrain from trying to take their chances with the lady friend that he'd marched through the front gates with every day since the first bell of freshman year.

Sakura was the only one that had received this specification straight-up.

Ibuki was approachable and had more than her share of suitors at first when she'd arrived in school because she'd been new, but she'd turned them all down herself. Karin simply put out that aura of being better than the rest of them and so far out of their league that you'd only be wasting air and time trying to get with her, thus rebuking any admirers before they could even begin working up the nerve to try her.

Kei's eyes cut to the entrance of the hotel where a groggy Naruto exited and quickly took a seat at their table, "Ruff," She barked, smirking at Sakura as she did so and eliciting a glare from the perky young fighter.

"I don't know what that means, but I'm sure it means something," Naruto droned in regards to the inside reference before yawning audibly, "What's at the breakfast spread?"

"Not ramen," Sakura said, answering the only question that she knew Naruto cared about. She grinned upon hearing him whine, "Why are you so tired?"

"It's 11 in the morning here which means it's 11 at night in Japan right now," Naruto said cryptically.

"And?"

"If I want to talk to anyone in the daytime in Japan I have to do it at night here, and Blanka doesn't wake up before noon," Naruto sighed, leaning back in his chair, "...Had to call Cam too and make sure everything was okay with her. Batsu's out of town on his school trip too, so I asked E. Honda if she could go spend a few days with him. He's got a sumo tournament to get ready for next week, but he said she could stay. That's where I told her to go until we come back so she isn't all alone."

Oh, well wasn't that thoughtful and responsible. Everything was explainable except for the Blanka thing. Sakura's curiosity was piqued, "You needed to talk to Jimmy-chan? Is something wrong?"

Naruto opened his mouth to elaborate on just what his phone calls the previous night had consisted of until he heard the specific sound of an aircraft coming closer, far closer than he expected something like that to get to the back side of a high-class hotel, "Shh. Does anyone else hear that?"

XxX

"Uhhnnn," Ibuki moaned, tightly holding a pillow over her head as a droning, beating sound filled her ears to a deafening level, "Someone stop that noise…"

Karin was her roommate, much to the latter's chagrin of having anyone as a roommate, period. After the morning that she'd had though, Ibuki wasn't a huge fan of it either. She had recently discovered the joy that was sleeping in. She'd never been allowed to do it before and after a few days of experiencing it she felt that she needed to pass her final ninja exam just for the freedom of possibly sleeping in alone. However from her standards of quiet, Karin was noisy in the mornings when she got herself ready.

Really, she wasn't. Despite never having had a roommate in any situation before, Karin was very courteous and quiet by nature due to her upbringing. It simply wasn't up to Ibuki's extreme standards of what quiet meant due to the nature of her own upbringing, and therefore she might as well have been an elephant fumbling around a bubble wrap factory when she had been putting her shoes on earlier.

After that ordeal had ended and Karin had left, she had more glorious time to sleep during daytime hours and did just that until that damnably constant loud airy beating noise first began and started growing louder and louder. Now it was absolutely deafening.

Hurling her pillow across the room against the wall, Ibuki sat up completely unamused, her long dark hair out of her usual high topknot ponytail. Blowing wild strands of hair out of her face as she got up and walked to the window she pulled open the curtains and promptly let out a scream at staring down the face of a large commercial helicopter hovering in the air in front of her room. Her temper was sufficiently lost at that moment.

Karin sat in control of the vehicle with Naruto in the front along with her, Sakura and Kei in the back. It was the latter's first time in a helicopter and it was clear that the common schoolgirl wasn't used to the novelty of the situation yet.

"Hey Rin-Rin does this thing work?" Naruto's voice blared out over the loudspeaker of the aircraft, answering his own question, "Oop, nevermind. Anyway, rise and shine Ibuki, let's go! I found the mountain you're looking for, so let's go mark it!"

Ibuki threw her window open and stepped out onto the balcony, holding the shirt of her pajamas closed lest it be blown off from the helicopter blades, "How!?" She shouted, yelling to try and get past the sound of the blades as well, "Nobody we asked in Liberdade knew where it was and we dug deep for that one!"

"Blanka and Google Maps."

Oh. Okay. Sure, because people did that sort of thing.

From behind the control stick of the helicopter, Karin took the loudspeaker radio from Naruto and spoke with a smirk adorning her proud visage, "Your day of sloth has come to an end my dear friend. If you would be so kind as to ready yourself and meet us on the lawn of the hotel. It is the only suitable place I have found to land. Within the next thirty minutes if you do not mind."

"You could just hover over something long enough for her to jump in like you did for us at the pool," Naruto offered.

"Kei-chan wasn't a fan of that one," Sakura pointed out in hindsight, "So, is the front lawn okay Ibuki-chan?"

Ibuki sighed and nodded before going inside to get prepared for the day, a small smile pulling at her lips despite her attempt to keep a frown front and center. She didn't know if they knew anything about her test aside from Naruto, but even if they didn't, they were still assisting her in her final exam regardless; heading out into the wilder portion of the country without need for convincing.

'Yeah, these guys are worth it,' Ibuki thought to herself as she gathered up her clothes and her fighting gear to bring with her, 'I may not let one of the others get Naruto without a fight, but even with fighting the others for him I still can't imagine having them elsewhere.'

It didn't matter how legendary, powerful, well hidden, or anything that this Oro person was. She'd find him and in the end she'd pass her exam by any means necessary, if only for the sake of staying with everyone. That was what Naruto would do, and he wouldn't let a little thing like trepidation stop him from getting a job he saw fit to see through done.

Well neither would Ibuki.

XxX

(Elsewhere - Isolated Mountainside in Brazil)

Solid red eyes opened in the extremely low light of the cave as the stationary figure they belonged to groaned and sighed, "That damned energy that's been flaring all over the place is coming this way," A withered, elderly voice said to the various small animals situated around his lair, "Damned young upstarts."

He stood up and puttered around his dwelling, checking to see if he had to go foraging again sometime soon. Perhaps a trip to town was called for. It had been quite a while since he'd come down from his isolated mountain.

That would have to wait however. Judging from how he could feel the extremely powerful energy source coming his way, joined by three other considerably strong ones, he would be entertaining company soon. He hadn't had anyone come around since that strange green colored boy that acted like an animal wandered around his mountain. That had been years ago though.

Indeed, it had been a while since anyone had come his way looking for something. Oro hoped greatly that what these folks would wind up coming to his neck of the woods for would be important… or at least entertaining.

How he hated being bored.

Character Profile

Name: Oro
Nationality: Brazil (Japanese ancestry)
Gender: Male
Age: N/A
Height/Weight: 5'2/123 lbs.
Bloodtype: N/A
Likes: Powerful fighters, turtles, sleeping, training, women.
Dislikes: Weaklings, being bored, evil.
Hobbies: His telepathy, going to towns to visit movie theaters, guiding people through the jungle when he needs money.
Rivals: Gouken (friendly), Akuma.
Fighting Style: Senjutsu
Current Techniques: Niou Riki (Twin King's Strength), Nichirin Shou (Sun Palm), Oni Yanna (Demon Dragonfly), Jinchuu Watari (Human Pillar Ferry), Hitobashira Nobori, Tenguishi (Tengu Stone).
Hyper Techniques: Kishin Riki (Fierce God Power), Kishin Tsui (Fierce God Hammer), Yagyou Dama (Night Traveling Soul), Yagyou Odama (Night Traveling Great Soul), Tengu Midareishi (Tengu Disorder Stone).
Background: Oro is an extremely ancient fighter of Japanese descent with a powerful combat philosophy known as Senjutsu. Formerly living as a martial arts instructor in Japan, he moved to Brazil in the early 1900s for a fresh start and a new platform to teach his style. Life in Brazil did not work out for him however, mostly due to the failure he found in trying to find anyone suitable to pass down what knowledge he had in Senjutsu at the time. Disappearing into the mountains for a multitude of decades he trained himself reclusively, rarely coming down from his domain and keeping himself company with his array of pets.

Eventually mastering everything there is to know of Senjutsu, Oro's strength grew to the extent that his ki signature apparently became one with the environment he surrounded himself with at all times, making him difficult for anyone to locate. His strength in combat is so great that when he does fight, he always keeps one arm bound in order to handicap himself, give other fighters a chance to show their strength, and to keep from accidentally killing his adversaries in battle.

Alright, a short reprieve chapter from all of the rampant destruction and whatnot, alluding to future troubles, and with a vital character introduction to boot.

So anyway, three months until my doomnable doom of first student loan payments are due, and I am terrified. 30k in debt for the next ten years. That's been my nightmare since high school. And was it even worth it yet? Hell no. And thus my minimum wage existence continues.

4 years of college, 1 year of actually working on a TV program before college, and I keep getting belted with the 'Oh, we're just looking for someone with more experience' excuse after getting to 3 interviews. And how exactly do you expect anyone to get 'experience' if they're not working you jackasses? Give me a legit excuse you spineless wimps so I can actually fix whatever deficiency I have.

And if that is the only reason, seriously what do they think? Do they think I spent 4 years learning everything I could aboue what the hell to do on the job only to get out and be helpless when you stick a camera or a video editing system in front of me? Fuck them, I practice editing constantly. What was the point of getting the degree other than a means to fuck my nonexistent credit? A really expensive piece of paper to wipe my ass with?

Kids, if you're going to go to college and your family isn't loaded, make sure that you actually know what you're going for and that you're really good at sports. I mean really good, otherwise you have to pay through the ass later. And I don't mean good at sports as in you can just get on the team, I mean good enough that you stay on the team, because if they can replace you they'll drop your scholarship. This all of course matters if you actually care about getting your 4-year degree.

…Unless you play a sport with a pro league comparable to the NFL or NBA. If you're that good to where experts tell you that you are, go get your money in the draft, but once again be sure you're really that good before you try to enter that or free agency. Otherwise you might wind up out of luck. Ask me how I know.

So far, it's turning out to be the worst mistake of my life.

Anyway, I'm done, I'm broker than ever, and I hope you enjoyed. Kenchi out.