My name is Uzumaki Naruto. I am and was a shinobi of Konoha. I was eighteen years old when Uchiha Madara killed me. I died as the Gama Sennin, the strongest loyal Konoha shinobi in my generation- Tsunade's heir apparent, if the rumors that always seemed to be floating around were true. I died defending the village I loved, the village that had come to love me. I'd do it again, too, no questions asked.
So I died. And then I woke up, sans puberty.
Go figure.
I've been on the go a lot since then. Relearning this stocky little frame of mine, getting a handle on the tangled mess that is my chakra system, and beating myself to death via shadow clones. I've been busy. I've learned a few things leading up to and after my death, but there's still so much I don't know. My journey is far from over.
My name is Uzumaki Naruto, and I'm here to save the world.
"It's a big popsicle for just one person, i-is all I'm saying. D-don't get the wrong idea."
My name is Uzumaki Naruto, and I have no idea what the fuck is going on.
I looked pleadingly to Kakashi, but he was conveniently busy accepting our client's thanks for our job well done. I turned to Sakura, but all she had to offer me was a wondering shrug of her shoulders. And then, with nowhere else to go, I settled on Sasuke, and the popsicle she was bashfully holding out to me. She'd picked it up from one of the local vendors in Haru to stave off the heat, and was determined to share it. With me.
I shivered.
There was something wrong with this timeline. I didn't know what it was, and I didn't know if I had the Rikudou Sennin or myself to blame for it, but there was something wrong. I knew of two Uchiha Sasuke- one was a girl that didn't care about anything but killing her genocidal older brother, and the other was a woman that didn't care about anything but driving me insane. Sexually. This new Sasuke, this imposter, was like nothing I've ever seen.
She was cute. Not just cute in appearance, because she had always been attractive, but in behavior, too. She was demure. The Sasuke I knew forced eye contact whenever she could because it made twisting my head into knots with genjutsu easier. This new Sasuke looked away when I tried to meet her eye.
She made bento, engineered indirect kisses, and snuck into the wrong bath just to catch my attention. And when I finally confronted her about it the next day, what was her response?
"I don't l-like you or anything, i-idiot."
She started stammering and denying any interest in me so poorly even I realized what was going on. She had a crush on me. Uchiha Sasuke had a perfectly normal crush on me, and was embarrassed because of it.
She hadn't even tried to stab me once. Something was wrong.
"You know, Sakura looks like she could use a popsicle," I pointed out, because mentioning my pink-haired teammate has been the only way to get a familiar response from Sasuke since we walked out of the village gates. Also, Sakura actually was looking pretty frazzled by the heat.
Full, pink lips twisted into the briefest of snarls before smoothing out into a pout. I saw it, though. I saw it. "Don't make me say it," she said, not pleading so much as demanding. She wiggled the fruity treat enticingly, but I made no move to take it. I didn't trust that popsicle.
Sasuke stomped a sandaled foot, fed up, and maybe I jumped a few inches off the ground in response. Maybe.
"I want to share it with you!"
"Okay, okay! We'll share it!" It was too much. I've gutted armies and gone toe to toe with bijuu, but flustered Sasuke was just too much. I snatched the popsicle out of her hand, took the top half of it off in one bite, and promptly offered it back.
"You took too long," she said accusingly, splaying the fingers of her now empty hand to show off the sticky orange juice from the popsicle. "Clean them off."
"With what?" I asked, kicking myself as soon as the words left my mouth. What else?
Her lips twitched again, this time into a wicked smirk, before transitioning into an embarrassed grimace quick as a flash. I saw it all the same. You can't fool me, Sasuke. I'm on to you. I'm-
"Use your- your mouth," she mumbled.
Alright. Time for a tactical retreat.
"-you think, Naruto?"
"Wha-?" I blinked, coming back to my senses just in time to run face first into the back of my sensei. Being the littlest of shinobi, physically at least, I bounced right off of him. Twisting in midair, I quickly latched onto a nearby tree branch and swung myself up onto it, casting wildly around for a threat. It's not happening yet, is it? It can't be, can it?
But no, we've just stopped. I coughed, turning away from Kakashi's pointed gaze. "What was that?"
"I asked if you wanted to take a quick detour. There's a monument close by that I thought you might like to see."
Oh. Oh. "Yeah, definitely!" I cried, a little more loudly than I intended in my haste to correct my mistake. I can't believe I almost missed this. What if they had decided against it while I was wrapped up in my thoughts and ruined everything?
The rest of my team watched, bemused, as I conjured up a pair of kage bunshin to slap me harshly across the face, one after the other.
"Get your head in the game," Naruto clone on the left snapped. I nodded.
"Yes."
"And watch your eight o' clock," Naruto clone on the right advised. Sasuke, from her place at my eight 'o clock, raised an eyebrow. I nodded, more firmly this time.
"Right," I said. Then I grabbed them both by their wild blond hair and slammed their heads together, dispelling them in one big cloud of chakra smoke. "So! What about that monument, sensei?"
"It's a bit less than an hour off the beaten path, if we stick to the treetops," Kakashi said, ignoring my hysterics with practiced ease. "Follow me, you three, and try to keep up!" And then he's off, leading us away from Konoha just as suddenly as the first time around.
As we raced through the trees I found Sasuke stutter-stepping so as to match her pace to mine, glancing at me with muted concern in her bottomless midnight eyes. "You okay?"
I laughed lightly, shaking my head. All this agonizing over my master plan and Sasuke's strange behavior, I hadn't even noticed that I was slipping up, myself. It was... something of a bad habit of mine. Being a sage, especially my kind of sage, meant a lot of things. It meant you had a certain understanding of nature- a connection, say- that gave you a unique perspective of...
Well, everything.
The best example I could think of was suddenly looking out through the eyes of Hyuuga after a lifetime of blindness. Being a sage wasn't a simple jump from normal to exceptional perception. It was something entirely new. If the average civilian had five senses, and the average shinobi had all those plus a sixth sense for chakra, I had seven.
I could be in a thousand different places at once, experience a thousand different kinds of life in ways that still boggled my mind to this day. I could get completely and utterly lost in the simple flow of nature for minutes, hours,and on and on if I wasn't paying attention and there was no one around to keep track of me. It was frustrating as hell, honestly. And eventually, as I spent more and more of my time wrapped up in the throes of mother nature, that absentmindedness started to bleed over into my day to day life.
I've never been the most focused guy in the world, but sometimes it's just ridiculous how off track I get.
Like right now. Fuck.
"Sure, sure!" I said. "Guess I'm a little bored with how the mission's been going so far, you know?" Sasuke hummed in vague agreement. "But yeah, I'm fine. Thanks."
"Good," She said absently, before seemingly coming to a realization and gasping. "D-don't get me wrong, I wasn't w-worried about you or anything!"
"Stop that!" I cried, pushing off the next branch in my path with perhaps a little more force than necessary in my indignation and snapping it cleanly off the tree it's connected to. Sasuke expertly changed her flight through the air to land on a different branch, resuming her pace alongside me a moment later with an adorable scowl on her face.
"S-stop what? Idiot!"
"That! That thing you're doing with your personality! Cut it out!"
"What's wrong with my personality!?"
"It's all wrong," I jabbed an accusing finger at her. "You were acting cutesy yesterday, and today you're all flustered. Like you're some girl fresh out of the Academy!"
For the briefest of moments, Sasuke looked unsure of herself. "Aren't I?" I opened my mouth to loudly deny her, and then snapped my teeth together.
Wait. Wasn't she?
That, I realized, was the crux of my discomfort with the situation. Up until now, I've been working with certain expectations in mind when it comes to my team, and Sasuke especially. Certain expectations like, say, them acting the way they're god damn supposed to at this point in time. This sudden shift in the way the old- young?- love of my life was treating me was throwing me off something fierce.
The issue was, while Sasuke may have technically been a beautiful young girl fresh out of the Academy, she definitely hadn't acted like it the first time around. She had been icy, distant, and in constant control of herself. On the rare occasion she was pushed outside of her comfort zone, she was pushed towards wrath, not embarrassment. So why the sudden change? It wasn't like I had made any big changes, yet.
Was treating her a little more kindly all it would have taken to win Sasuke over, the first time? No, no, I refused to accept that. Sasuke had no shortage of boys and girls pining after her in the Academy. I was far from the first.
Which meant one of two things. Either the Rikudou Sennin had made a mistake and I had gotten lost somewhere in my transmigration, making this some bizarre alternate reality where Sasuke had a crush on me and was shy about it, or... Or?
I stiffened. "Or," I murmured, glancing over at Sasuke. "Did you-?"
She tilted her head, looking away from the path ahead and locking eyes with me. "Did I what?" Her expression was still vaguely huffy, but not in the same over the top way she had been projecting her emotions for the last two days. Her pitch black gaze bored into me, prodding me for my secrets- I've always thought her eyes were more striking without the sharingan.
Could she have-?
First I lost him to that woman, and now I've lost you to myself? I won't allow it. I'll never allow it!
I shuddered and jerked away from her, onto a different branch, suddenly unable to look at her for even a single second more.
"Never mind," I said, shaking my head and furiously banishing the errant memory. Couldn't dwell. Never dwell. "Ne, Sakura! Spare me some water?"
"Why didn't you buy some while we were dropping the client off!?"
"I forgot!" I cried, forcing a grin into place and speeding on ahead to catch up to my pink-haired teammate. "Have mercy on me, just this once!"
I didn't look back to Sasuke for the rest of our impromptu detour. I knew that if I did, it would be the end of me. One way or another.
The Valley of the End was pretty imposing when it was intact and not completely destroyed.
"Wow," Sakura breathed, and I quirked an actual smile at the awe in her voice.
Kakashi had taken us the side route, so that we came out at the bottom of the waterfall looking up at the two titanic statues that had given the man-made valley its name. There were still a few hours of pure sunlight left before dusk, so both legendary shinobi were lit in all their shining glory. I raised a hand against the light, gazing up at Senju and Uchiha with a funny combination of emotions roiling in my stomach.
"Who are they, sensei?" I asked for my teammates' benefit. I knew these two very, very well.
"The founders of Konoha," Kakashi said, pausing just long enough for Sakura to gasp in realization.
"I know them!" She said, her grass green eyes shining with excitement as she pointed from one statue to the other. "That's the Shodai Hokage, Senju Hashirama, and that's the first Matriarch of the Uchiha clan-" She immediately cut herself off, looking worriedly to the side, and I finally allowed myself to look to my other teammate.
"Uchiha Madara," Sasuke finished, her tone flat, inscrutable.
"Very good," Kakashi congratulated the both of them, dismissing the sudden tension as if it had never existed in the first place. Maybe it hadn't, to him. "Now, does anyone know their story? And more specifically, why those statues are here on the edge of Hi no Kuni and not closer to Konoha?"
Yes, yes I did. "Nope."
Sasuke shrugged.
"Sorry, sensei," Sakura apologized, and wow, she actually did sound sorry.
"Great!" Kakashi clapped his hands together, and with the motion disappeared in a shimmer of leaves. I crossed my arms while Sakura balked, squinting up into the sunlight. If I remembered correctly, he'd be right...
"There," Sasuke murmured, pointing to the Shodai's armored right shoulder a moment after I alight on Kakashi, waving down at us invitingly.
"He wants us to go up there?" Sakura squeaked. Ah, right. We hadn't known tree walking yet, so we'd been forced to maneuver our way up the various bits of armor and weaponry jutting out of the Shodai's statue. It had taken a while, and I don't remember enjoying it all that much.
Yeah, not twice.
"Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"
"Wah! Naruto, what are you doing!?" Sakura cried as one of my clones scooped her up in his arms, bridal style, and took off for the Shodai's statue.
"Hold on tight, Sakura!" I called as my other clone wrangled Sasuke into an appropriate hold. "And try not to break him on the way up!" She screamed something incomprehensible in reply as my clone leaped up onto the statue and started scaling it vertically.
Hm, now that I thought about it, I probably could have taught her how to do the tree walking exercise in a minute or two. Her chakra control was pretty much perfect, even now.
... Ah, well.
A pained grunt and an influx of memories alerted me to my other clone's swift death a bare second before Sasuke deposited herself on my back, wrapping her shapely legs- thirteen years old, thirteen years old- tightly around my waist. She settled her chin in the crook of my neck, her arms hanging loosely over my shoulders, and sighed contentedly. I twitched.
"If you want to carry me, you can do it yourself," she whispered into my ear. Hnngh. Fine. Be that way.
I hit the statue at a run, and when I turned vertical Sasuke tightened her hold on me accordingly, molding her body to mine. I made this sort of strangled noise low in my throat as I felt her chest press up against my back, but did my best to otherwise ignore it and work my way up the Shodai's oddly styled armor. Sasuke spoke directly into my ear again, just as softly as before, her breath hot on my skin.
"When did you learn this, dead last?"
I hummed, casting around for a believable answer. What to say, what to say.
"I forget, actually."
Nailed it.
"Idiot," she said, almost fondly. I flashed her a wry smile, jumping from the pommel of the Shodai's blade to his voluminous sleeve.
When we finally made it to the shoulder I found Kakashi waiting for us with a speculative air about him. Sakura was just off to the side with her arms crossed, listening to my clone's profuse apologies with barely contained amusement behind her glare. I rolled my eyes, walking over and smacking him upside the head. Pop.
"That's enough of that." I paused, shifting from foot to foot for a moment, and when I continued to be heavier than I should be at this age, I glanced over my shoulder. "You can get down now, you know."
Sasuke silently considered that.
"I-it's not like I want to stay like this-"
"Off, now!"
My name is Uchiha Sasuke. I am currently a shinobi of Konoha, though I was one of their more infamous missing nin up until my death. I was nineteen years old when Uchiha Madara killed me. I died as the Uchiha Matriarch, the strongest missing nin in my generation. I died avenging the man I loved, the man that had come to love me. I'd do it again, too, so long as I actually succeeded this time.
To recap, I died. Then I woke up roughly six years before the fact, sans puberty.
Hn.
My life has been an exercise in frustration since then. Teaching this pitiful young body of mine the proper way to move, wresting control back from the elements that I had bent to my will long ago, and driving myself even more insane than I already am trying to subtly regain Naruto's affections. I didn't do too poorly in my first quest for vengeance, but there are so many people that I haven't killed yet, and even more that I'll have to kill again. My journey has only just begun.
My name is Uchiha Sasuke, and I'm here to kill Madara.
"Off, now! Off, off, off!"
My name is Uchiha Sasuke, and I am rapidly losing my patience.
I hopped off Naruto's back with an annoyed huff, reigning in the urge to stab him for what might have been the hundredth time in the past two days. I had to remember that this Naruto wouldn't recognize that for the affectionate and inviting gesture as it was. He certainly wouldn't throw me down onto the stone and return the favor like he did the last time we met at the Valley of the End. Probably.
"Now that we're all here," Kakashi said, halting my thoughtful musings. "How much do you three know about Konoha's founding?"
All of it. "Hn."
"The guy we're standing on did stuff with, uh, trees, right?" Naruto asked more than answered. Kakashi nodded encouragingly, patting the Shodai's neck.
"Trees were part of it, but his bloodline was a little broader than that in scope. The wood release, mokuton, allowed him to combine his water and earth affinities- we'll talk about affinities later, don't worry, Sakura- in order to create wood. It gave him all the flexibility of suiton and doton with neither of their drawbacks." Kakashi glanced at Naruto ever so briefly, an action I would have missed completely if I wasn't exponentially more perceptive than I should have been at this age.
"His mokuton also had the unprecedented ability to restrain the nine Bijuu, which many would say is the primary reason for his legendary status."
He was wrong, of course. So laughably wrong that I scoffed a little in spite of myself, but I didn't press the issue. It hardly mattered, in the end- it was a simple technicality. Naruto would show them the truth in due time.
"Of course, there was much more to him than that," Kakashi continued, smiling lightly at me. I shrugged. "But maybe it would be best to start at the beginning.
"Uchiha Madara and Senju Hashirama were born in the Warring Clans Era, back when ninjutsu and other modern arts played minor roles in what was otherwise a setting dominated by taijutsu and kenjutsu. Madara was the first Matriarch her clan had ever seen, and was said to have the most powerful sharingan in existence. Hashirama-sama was, of course, the Patriarch of the Senju clan, and we've already been over his mokuton. They were... rather close," he finished wryly.
And what an understatement that was.
"I always wondered why that was. Weren't their clans enemies in the Warring Clans Era?" Sakura asked, puzzled.
"Doubtlessly," Kakashi agreed. "But something like bad blood generally isn't a concern when love is involved."
I rolled my eyes as Sakura gasped, predictably lighting up with prepubescent glee at the concept of forbidden love. I glanced sidelong at Naruto to see what he thought of the revelation, only to find him sitting cross legged on the stone, back to us. He was close enough to be clearly listening, but his attention was just as clearly fixated on the statue across from us.
Uchiha Madara's statue was every bit as intimidating and beautiful as the woman herself. Her anciently styled armor hugged her lithe form around her chest and legs, and hung more loosely around her arms and midsection to allow for unhindered movement. Her hair, so similar to how mine would be in a few more years, flared up in wild, defiant spikes at the crown of her head, and then cascaded down her back in frenzied, choppy waves.
I've been told more than once by people who would know that my hair is an affront to women around the world. Whenever the topic came up, though, Naruto said he loved it. So fuck those people.
"Madara and the Shodai?" Sakura asked excitedly. "I've never heard about that before! What happened? And how?"
Kakashi chuckled, but there was little mirth in it. "I can understand why your instructors at the Academy might have glossed over it. It isn't a very happy story, in the end." Naruto leaned forward, elbows settling on his knees as he contemplated the woman that had killed him in a world that I would never allow to exist again.
"They didn't admit it to one another until it was already too late. During the war, they were both too busy keeping their respective clans alive and well while forging an alliance in secret. Things were only further complicated when Madara's younger brother, Izuna, died at the hands of Hashirama-sama's younger brother, Tobirama-sama."
"The Nidaime," Sakura breathed. Kakashi nodded.
"Eventually, they both became so fed up with the status quo that they declared their clans to be allies, which came as a complete surprise to everyone but themselves. With reluctant help from both clans, though Hashirama is said to have done most of the work, they created Konoha.
"As it turned out, that was the spark the rest of the world needed to move past the Warring Clans Era, and dozens of different clans hurried to erect their own hidden villages in Konoha's image. We were the best example at the time, though, which is why so many talented shinobi clans decided to ally themselves with us in the beginning. Sounds like a happy ending, doesn't it?" He sighed ruefully, tapping his porn against his leg. "Unfortunately, that wasn't quite the end of it."
"Madara wanted to be Hokage," I murmured, because I couldn't not say it, such was the sheer force of my disbelief. I still couldn't believe what that idiotic woman had thrown away for some worthless hat and robes.
"She did. The majority of the village, however, preferred Hashirama-sama for the position. Even a portion of her own clan, although they never admitted it to her. Tobirama-sama was particularly vocal in his opposition, which swayed most of the neutral clans in Hashirama-sama's favor. And..." He shrugged, single eye quirking. "Well, you all know which of them is carved into the Hokage Mountain."
"What did Madara do, then?" Sakura asked.
"She didn't take it well." Understatements abound. "She defected, in the end, claiming that with Hashirama-sama as the Shodai Hokage and Tobirama-sama as his likely successor, the Uchiha clan would never receive the same considerations that the Senju did. And to be fair-" Kakashi paused, seemingly reconsidering his words, though I knew for a fact that he had only said exactly as much as he meant to say. "Well, anyway, Hashirama-sama pursued her all the way to the edge of Hi no Kuni, where they clashed..."
He hummed, squinting his single visible eye and pointing to some arbitrary point at the top of the waterfall. "There."
"To make a very long story short, they began their fight on a flat plain, and they ended it with this," he waved a hand at the valley below us. His voice was dry as he continued, "In case you hadn't made the connection, they were very powerful."
"Wow," Sakura whispered, looking upon the valley with new found respect. "Who won?"
"No one," Naruto said quietly. My eyes narrowed. How did he-
"Got it in one. Before either of them could deal a finishing blow, Madara confessed her feelings for Hashirama-sama." I closed my eyes, unable to look at Sakura's enraptured expression without being physically sickened. This was just some historical drama to her. It wasn't real.
"Hashirama-sama admitted that he felt the same for her, to her joy, but before she could whisk him off on a likely permanent honeymoon, he also admitted that he was already engaged to another woman." Sakura gasped in horror, and Kakashi nodded grimly. "Uzumaki Mito was the daughter of Uzushiogakure's clan head, as well as a master of fuinjutsu, making her an ideal wife for Hashirama-sama."
I didn't miss the way Sakura's attention flickered to Naruto at the mention of his surname. Oh, if only she knew.
"Hashirama-sama loved Madara, but he loved Konoha more, and in time he would come to love Mito-sama just as much. That, coupled with Madara's defection, meant they could never be together romantically."
"What did she...?" Sakura trailed off.
"She didn't take it well," I echoed.
"Not at all," Kakashi agreed. "The pain of his rejection on top of the events that had forced her from Konoha in the first place ended up pushing her over the edge. She experienced something of a mental break, and fled from Hashirama-sama, tearfully declaring-"
Naruto yawned explosively, leaning back and rubbing at his eyes with the palms of his hands. "Sorry, sensei. Heat's starting to get to me. I'm gonna take a quick dip, wake myself up a bit." He stretched his arms above his head, blinking blearily against the sun-
Was he tearing up?
He leaped off the Shodai's shoulder before I could get a good look, disappearing into the waterfall without a ripple to mark his passage. I frowned, running the brief flash I had seen of him through my head again and cursing myself for not having my sharingan active to burn it into my memory.
"Tearfully declaring," Kakashi continued, his voice uncharacteristically somber following Naruto's outburst. "That she would not rest until she had wiped out the Uzumaki clan in its entirety for taking away the man she loved."
He paused for a long moment in the ensuing silence, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. "Or so the story goes."
Oh yes. I was going to kill that cunt good.
The real mission began abruptly.
One moment we were loping through the trees of Hi no Kuni in silence, Kakashi apparently content to let us process his story at our own pace, and the next we were ground to a halt by said jonin. I perched gracefully on one of the flimsier branches, eying the raised hand he had stopped us with. Contrary to the cool neutrality I was carefully maintaining, my heart began to pound. It wouldn't be long, now. Just another moment before he caught the trail.
"Someone just stumbled into an ambush," he said lightly, though he didn't move an inch. "A rather nasty one, if I'm not mistaken."
Sakura gasped. "Wha- who!? This is Hi no Kuni!"
"We're closer to the border than you might think, actually," Kakashi said, waving the hand he was holding up dismissively. "I can't tell who is who from this distance. I'd have to get closer. What say you three?"
It took me a moment to process the question. This was new. Kakashi hadn't bothered to ask us whether or not we wanted to help out the first time around.
"Let's help them," Naruto said immediately. Kakashi inclined his head, then turned expectantly to me.
I smirked, ever so slightly. "Hn."
"Sakura?" Kakashi asked the final member of the team, and perhaps it was only my own wishful thinking, but it sounded like a formality more than anything else. He'd already made his decision.
"We have to at least check, don't we?" Sakura responded nonetheless, nervous but resolute.
"Then we're decided!" Kakashi gave us all a big smile. "Follow along behind me, and try to keep pace, children!" And then he flickered and blurred off to the east.
"C'mon, guys!" Naruto bellowed, and I allowed myself to relax as life sprang back into him. "Let's kick some ass!"
It didn't take us long to find them at the pace Kakashi set. A scant handful of minutes after our abrupt halt I burst out of the treetops onto a civilian road, sharingan spinning to life in my eyes and throwing everything into sudden clarity. Naruto was seconds behind me, belting out kage bunshin before he even cleared the treeline.
There were just over a dozen shinobi present, in total. Five Konoha shinobi in standard chunin garb and eight in the washed out reds and browns of Iwa. Two of the chunin from Konoha were already down, probably dead- it didn't matter. The other two were fiercely railing against the Iwa contingency, naked wrath on their faces.
And then Naruto leaped past me, into the fray, and it all turned orange. I shook my head, smirking in full force, and pushed off just as Sakura touched down on the branch beside me.
"Sasuke-!" She cried, voice nearly drowned out by the cacophony of battle cries Naruto's clones were howling into the air. "What do I do!?"
"Watch."
I tore through the crowd of clones gleefully, and with every sweep of my chokuto my blood sang. Finally, I cut through a clone that had an Iwa nin on the other side of it. The tomoe in each of my eyes whirled in anticipation as he spun to face me, baring his teeth.
He was tall, standing head and shoulders above me. His hair was brown and cropped closely to his head, with a crimson Iwa headband tied snugly to his headband. He was also wearing some sort of flak jacket, but any further observations were dismissed in favor my lunging forward and burying my chokuto in his throat.
He dodged, naturally, and for a split second I was shocked. Then I remembered my sharingan was still immature, and smiled viciously. Oh well- it was more fun like this, anyway!
I drove him back into the throng of clones, allowing the flimsy copies to knock him off balance with gut punches and tackles whenever he looked ready to start a jutsu, but dispelling them with my dancing blade otherwise. This was my first real fight since my transmigration, and I was going to savor it.
It seemed he was a joint ninjutsu and taijutsu specialist, as after the first thirty seconds or so of being thwarted mid-jutsu, he abandoned the effort entirely and rushed me head on. My smile widened, showing teeth, and my sharingan whirled ever faster. I drifted onto the back foot as he pushed me out of the crowd, lashing out at me with big, flashy punches that reminded me of the Strong Fist. One part intimidation, one part crushing force.
All parts vulnerable.
I flicked my left hand at the wrist, sending a length of razor-thin wire lunging across the open air between us quick as a snake. It coiled around his right arm, overextended in a positively sloppy punch, and with a deft yank I threw his guard wide open. I opened my eyes wide and darted forward, spinning in a half circle to build momentum and punching my chokuto cleanly through his heart.
Nameless Iwa nin stared down at me with roughly the same amount of shock and horror that any Iwa nin did when they saw me. Or any Kiri nin, for that matter. Hn, Kumo...?
A sharp push to his chest freed up my sword, and with one last flick of the wrist my wire came free, coiling obediently around my wrist. That was one. I peered into the chaos Naruto had dropped onto the fight, searching for enemy corpses, and came up with one, two, three, four-
Five dead, including my own. Already?
I quickly darted back into the fray. Like hell I was going to come away from this with anything less than three!
"Naruto, please calm down!" Sakura pleaded.
"Let me at her!" Naruto snarled, furious sky blue eyes locked accusingly on me. "Just this once, just for a second!" I raised an eyebrow.
"Not worth it!" Naruto clone on the right snapped, struggling to maintain his hold on the original.
"She'll make it weird," Naruto clone on the left agreed, struggling every bit as much to hold his creator back.
"She burned my stuff!"
"I'm sure she didn't do it on purpose," Sakura insisted. I was tempted to tell the truth, just to contradict her, but I supposed it was a bit too early to play my hand.
"Bullshit! The fight was over and she knew it," Naruto said, more to me than her. He paused in his thrashing long enough to shoot clone no the left a look. "Hey, that hurts."
"Ah, sorry boss." Clone on the left adjusted his grip. "Better?"
"Yeah, that's fine."
"I'm very sorry for burning your belongings, Naruto," I apologized, bowing my head just enough that I couldn't reasonably be accused of mocking him. Naruto understood, though- he always had. "Please, allow me to repay you however you see fit."
"You-" he ground out, and I had the sudden urge to laugh. Foolish mistake, dead last.
"You want me?" I asked softly, and when his clones began to loudly deny the fact, I allowed my amusement to show through. I had decided shortly after the detour to the Valley of the End that pretending to be a traditional love interest was far too much work for far too little reward, and moved on in my planning accordingly.
I could win his heart without any facades. It seemed I'd just have to be a bit more direct.
"Mah, could you three spare your sensei a moment?" Kakashi called from his place down the road, where he'd been conversing with the surviving Konoha nin and the reason for their ambush.
My eyes narrowed as they fell upon the client, a middle-aged, diminutive noble sagging beneath the weight of his expensive robes and jewelry. He was balding, and what hair he did have left was rapidly fading to gray. His eyes were green and sharp, but with paranoia rather than any sort of intelligence- in my modest opinion, at any rate. His weathered skin and peculiar fashion would have tipped me off to his origins even if I hadn't already met him the first time around.
"How about we introduce ourselves?" Kakashi suggested when we walked- or were dragged, in Naruto's case- over to the adults. "This is-"
Miura Akira. Noble of Kaze no Kuni. Loyal friend and one of many advisers to the Wind Daimyo.
Dead man walking.
"A pleasure to meet you," he greeted us cordially, once names had been exchanged. "It is certainly reassuring to see the next generation of Konoha's shinobi is so skilled! Why, I don't know what we would have done without your intervention."
Sakura did her best to wave the praise away for all three of us, and to my surprise she was the only one to do so. Naruto, bashful to a fault when it came to such things, just considered the foreign noble for a moment. I watched him watch Miura, getting the feeling that Kakashi was watching all of us at once, until he seemed to come to a decision. He nodded once, and the clones on either side of him went up in smoke.
"Is there anything we can do for your teammates?" He asked the three chunin hanging back, bypassing the noble entirely. One of them flinched, turning tear-stained cheeks away from his concerned blue eyes, and another laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. The third sighed.
"Nothing we haven't already tried. They're gone."
Naruto promptly bowed his head, a real bow, not the faintly mocking brand that I had given him moments before. "I'm sorry we didn't come sooner."
And he was.
I silently sighed, something inside me softening at the emotion in the gesture. He really made it far too difficult to mess with him, sometimes. But then again, I suppose he also made it just as easy to love him.
The three chunin hesitated for the barest of moments, but then the one that had responded to Naruto's first question bowed his head in return. "You did your best. We could not possibly ask you anything more." Naruto's jaw worked with the effort of holding back what he wanted to say in response. I could already hear it in the echos of my memory- 'Of course you can. It's my job to protect you, and I failed! You have to ask me for more.'
He really was a fool, even now.
"We've been discussing a few things," Kakashi gently cut in. "Kuboto-san, Yosano-san, and Tatsuno-san are part of a team that Miura-san hired to accompany him on his travels through Hi no Kuni, before escorting him back to Kaze no Kuni's capital."
"We had roughly two more weeks of travel time scheduled before the escort back to Kaze no Kuni," the clear senior of the three chunin said wearily. "However..."
"I am quite ready to return," Miura said quickly. "In light of recent events, I would rather not burden you any longer than is necessary." The senior chunin nodded in thanks.
"Which brings us to the current situation," Kakashi said, gesturing to the junior chunin. "Kuboto-san doesn't feel he's in the proper condition to finish the mission, and Tatsuno-san would like Yasuno-san to accompany him back to Konoha along with their teammates." Their corpses. "He's asked for our assistance in completing the mission, in case another incident occurs."
"I want to think this was just a case of us being at the wrong part of the border at the wrong time," the senior member, Tatsuno, explained. He ran a hand through his straight, shoulder-length hair, grimacing. "But I'd feel much better with Hatake-san present." He smiled wryly. "And yourselves, of course."
"So!" Kakashi clapped his hands together, thankfully not disappearing in a body flicker this time. "What do you say?"
I pondered how exactly to phrase my next words so as not to appear overly interested, but Naruto thankfully beat me to the punch. "We'll do it," he said with conviction, and Sakura's teeth clicked shut around whatever she was about to say. She shot me a questioning glance. Of course we were going. There was still so much left to do.
"Fine," I said. That seemed to be enough for Sakura.
"Wonderful, wonderful!" Miura cried. "You have my sincerest thanks, shinobi of Konoha. I won't forget this, I assure you." He wouldn't be in a position to forget or remember much of anything at all, soon enough, but I didn't say that. I wanted to, though.
"Yes, yes," Kakashi said, moving away from the group and gesturing for the two junior chunin to follow him. "I'm going to see if I can't provide a few guides for our friends before they set out for Konoha. In the meanwhile, why don't you three help Tatsuno-san find a suitable place to set up camp?"
"Yes, sensei," Sakura replied dutifully. Naruto got halfway through an obliging nod before he froze, eyes widening in fury. I felt a little thrill race through me at the sight of it.
"You burnt my tent, bastard!"
And so it was that hours later, after dusk had well and truly fallen on our little campsite, I decided purely out of the goodness of my heart to allow Naruto to use my tent for the night.
"Um."
With me still in it, of course.
"Well? Are you coming in or not?" I asked archly, sitting patiently inside my sleeping bag.
Naruto hesitated, eyes locked on the slim black undershirt I had stripped down to while he waffled around outside. He swallowed. "Y'know, maybe I'll just keep watch for tonight. Can't be too careful, ne?" He spun around, all but lunging through the opening in my tent.
"Naruto." My voice lashed out, a sharp whip crack that stopped him cold halfway through the opening. I sighed, softening my tone ever so slightly. "I burnt your tent. Please use mine."
"... Yeah, alright."
He ducked back into the tent with the air of a defeated samurai. It was only an individual tent, so there wasn't much room for anything aside from my sleeping bag, but that didn't stop him from trying to sprawl out in the corner. I rolled my eyes, amused in spite of myself.
"Just get in the sleeping bag, idiot."
"But- you- gah!" He threw his hands up. "Fine!" Tossing his jacket, headband, and sandals into the same corner he had just been trying to huddle himself into, my blond fool shimmied defiantly inside my sleeping bag with me. He promptly turned his back to me, straining to negate as much contact as possible. I shook my head and smiled.
There were a lot of experiences that weren't going to be the same between the two of us, this time around. Couldn't possibly be the same, considering the changes I was planning to make. Thus, the experiences that I could recreate, I was damn well going to. This was one of the earliest, back when there really had been nothing between us. I actually had burned his tent by mistake that first time, and he had all but forced himself into mine as a result.
It was slightly different this time, if only because I had already begun to change how I treated him, but it was enough. I shifted my bare legs, stretching them out just so and brushing them against him. He stiffened, and I stifled a laugh.
Eventually, Naruto relaxed and drifted off to sleep, and as soon as he rolled over I was there. I shifted and wiggled against him, amusing myself with thoughts of him waking up to the sensation of it, until I found myself more or less wrapped up in his arms. I buried my head in the crook of his neck, exhaling in hysterical relief as I melted into him. For the first time in I don't know how long, I relaxed.
Yes. This was more than enough.