I don't own anything related to the Naruto franchise
Chapter 10 - Barbecue and Interviews
After leaving the ninja examinations and walking down the village's main thoroughfare with his friends, Naruto stood between the entry gates of the Nara Compound, where he found himself gawking at what he found happening inside. It looked like the village's security was taking a huge hit this afternoon, because a lot of their most accomplished ninja were here and enjoying a barbecue.
In an immediate reaction to this new information, Naruto halted right there at the threshold of the Nara property, dropped down into a squat just inside of the gate, found the security Fuinjutsu tags that were built into the wall, and got to work. If the people who were present this afternoon were to remain on the property and not ruin Naruto's plans for Mizuki, then the anti-eavesdropping wards needed to be beefed up in a massive way.
As Naruto's friends stood in a semi circle around his newly crouched form and stared at him in their confusion, Naruto rerouted any excess chakra that he could find within the security Fuuinjutsu into the privacy wards, to make it so that anyone walking by would see only vague shapes inside of the Nara property, rather than distinct people. Then, when he was done with the more detail oriented work, he assured that the system would continue working at full power all afternoon, by affixing a small, fully charged chakra storage tag atop the relevant calligraphy.
Just half a minute after beginning his work on the Nara compound's wards, Naruto was finished with his task, and he sighed in relief as he stepped just outside of the wards again, and nodded his head at the results. At exactly the same time, all of his friends started giving him looks meant to convey that he definitely had some explaining to do. Of course, Naruto immediately nodded his agreement, but he also waved his hand in a way that conveyed he'd explain himself later, when they were finished meeting with every single one of their future bosses…
And that was exactly what was happening right now within the Nara compound, as the lawns out front of Shikamaru's house currently looked like a Ninja Council Meeting. Alsea had Ino's mom Yua Yamanaka and Choji's mom Akari Akimichi busy on the front deck gossiping and drinking saké. Might Guy, Cat and Dog, were representing the Anbu near the barbecue, while Inoichi Yamanaka, Shikaku Nara and Chōza Akimichi, hung around telling old war stories and representing the current Ina-Shika-Cho team up.
Naruto was all but certain that Ino, Shikamaru and Choji, would be a ninja team to continue a winning formula spanning several generations of their families. Truly, while he'd have loved to be on any of their teams, he had to admit that he really liked the idea of them keeping each other safe. With that in mind, it was actually Hinata that Naruto was hoping to team up with, along with literally anyone but Kiba. One thing was for certain however... If Naruto ended up on a team formation with Kiba and Sakura, he'd make a break for the border and live in the woods again.
There was one other person that was currently sitting amongst the Anbu contingent that had Naruto's undivided attention, and he was the real reason why Naruto had all of the security seals humming with extra power. Hiruzen Sarutobi was present at the Nara Clan's celebratory barbecue, so at some point this evening Naruto and the powerful old shinobi needed to have a little 'chat'. A course of action that Naruto didn't need to rush headlong into, because Mizuki would still be stuck with Iruka testing the V,W.X,Y and Z names within his class, before helping his sensei rank everyone's exam results and then reporting their findings to a functionary working within the Hokage's Residence. By now, Mizuki would have no idea where Naruto and his friends chose to go after leaving the Academy, and if he did figure out that they were all at the Nara compound then he wouldn't be able to see anything within their newly beefed up privacy wards.
Needless to say, Naruto's solution wasn't perfectly perfect, as he hadn't had any advanced notice, but since Cat was already sitting next to the Hokage, the man probably knew that Naruto had been attacked and why, knew that he had a story to tell, and likely had a security team monitoring the entire neighborhood, just in case.
By the time those thoughts finished running through Naruto's head, he and his friends were walking deeper into the compound, and Alsea was running over to greet them all with a smile and a series of enthusiastic waves. "Shikakun! You didn't disgrace the family name after all! I'm so proud of you!" Then she was enveloping her son in an extremely tight embrace, forcing Shikamaru to awkwardly pat her back in return.
"Mooom, enough with the childish nickname," Shikamaru groaned piteously. "And just who thought I was going to disgrace the family?"
"Oh, only anyone who's ever seen either your grades or your work ethic, Shikakun." During moments like these, Alsea could be completely relentless, so when she was poking fun at her son's lazy attitude it was best to just let her get it over with. Sure enough, she soon ran out of steam, looked up at the rest of her son's friends and then beamed at all of their new headbands (even though only Choji was actually using his as a headband). "Well done all of you! I want to hear all about the tests and who did what?!"
"It's going to be one hell of a story then, unless Cat's already told it," Shikamaru replied dryly.
"Cat's not the talkative type, honey. I couldn't get anything out of her." Alsea looked at Naruto with a concerned expression on her face. "How bad was it, Narukun? What did they try to pull?"
"Everything that they could conceivably try," Ino replied, when Naruto didn't answer fast enough. "They tried to sabotage literally every test Narukun took part in, and then when that didn't work like... at all... they just attempted to outright kill him. It wasn't even subtle."
"That bad huh?" Alsea shook her head in long suffering before she rebounded and smiled at everyone. "Okay let's gather everyone around some food and we'll get you guys describing what happened."
Fifty nine minutes later…
"...and then we came here," Ino finished, with a little flourish of her hair.
"How did you pass the Stealth test Naruto?" The question had popped out of Dog's mouth immediately after Ino finished speaking, and everyone else around the table nodded their instant agreement. Naruto's fight with Zan had been exciting enough, especially in light of his age, but at this point it had also been described in great detail. The one thing they didn't know about now was how Naruto had finished the stealth test, in the face of two proctors determined to cheat.
"I ran into the forest before the test began, where I prepared a trick I learned just recently," Naruto began, with a mischievous look upon his face.
"Naruto, I've been waiting all day... Have some mercy." At this point, Shikamaru looked infinitely long-suffering.
"Okay, okay I get it..." Naruto sighed then and steepled his hands. "First, I ran into the forest ringing the school, grabbed a log and Henge'd it into a Kunai. After I figured out that there were sensor tags placed at the beginning of the test, I threw the log turned Kunai through a small hole in the sensor net, and then I ended the Henge so that it became a log again as soon as it slipped through. Then all I had to do was Kawarimi myself with the log before it hit a pillar or fell to the ground. From that point on, I just wall sprinted along the pillars to the end zone, because I knew the proctors weren't looking anywhere near me." Naruto shrugged. "The proctors were underestimating me in the extreme."
"No, no they weren't. The proctors weren't underestimating you at all," Shikaku replied immediately. "What you did this afternoon was a completely unprecedented variant of one of the three Academy jutsus. Normally a Henge is just a light illusion and the object only looks different. It sounds to me like you massively overpower your Henge until it's essentially an entirely different Jutsu. The object you target has begun taking on a real physical transformation. Naruto... No one here but you, could throw a log Henge'd to look like a Kunai and actually expect it to be the least bit aerodynamic..."
All of the adults around the table just nodded their heads in agreement.
"There's one thing I don't understand though," Shikaku continued. "If you made it through the test uncaught... Why did both of the proctors suddenly feel all of their sensor tags go off?"
After giving Hinata a look and receiving a nod in return, Naruto turned towards the rest of the ninjas at the table and asked an important question. "Is anyone here in possession of fuuinjutsu tags of any variety?"
All around the table, everyone shook their heads, as they weren't armed or armored up at the moment. Dog, Cat and Might Giy revealed their weapon storage scrolls, but since they spent quite a bit of time in close proximity with the boy, they were already prepared for what he was about to do.
With that taken care of, Naruto began molding chakra inside of his body, until it began to feel like a bit of a strain. When he'd built up just the right amount of chakra pressure within his body, Naruto released it all at once in a widening dome of power.
Most of the adults sitting around the table stiffened as they suddenly felt an intense wave of chakra pulse out from within Naruto's body, and then race off at incredible speeds in every direction.
"All of the sensor tags tripped at exactly the same time, because once I was at the exit of the test, I directed a wave of my chakra at them using an ability I've discovered," Naruto explained while shrugging at all of the stupefied expressions he was receiving. "It's a sensory ability I've learned to perform that uses my chakra like a highly sensitive sonar ping."
"If we can get you within two hundred yards of an enemy Fuinjutsu armory, you can blow up the entire damned building with that," Shikaku instantly pointed out.
"Probably even further," Naruto explained, with a small smile and a shrug. "I wasn't pushing for full power just now... The only drawback is that the effect my ability causes on Fuinjutsu tags is indiscriminate. I've had to redesign all of the tags used by the people around me to only activate when they are being physically touched, instead of when they're merely immersed in chakra. Otherwise, I'd blow myself up with my own explosive tags. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go broke designing and distributing my own Fuinjutsu tags to any teammates that I eventually have, just so that I can safely use my ability."
"If you give me the new configurations that you've designed for all of the standard tags, I'll make your failsafes a standard from now on, Naruto." Hiruzen was being completely serious at the moment, and he wasn't being generous. Naruto's new tags were eliminating a risk that he hadn't even known existed, and he intended to give the boy designer credit for it.
"You're capable of designing your own tags and making changes like that?" This time it was Inoichi who asked the question, and he sounded just incredulous enough to be insulting.
"Narukun is an advanced Journeyman Fuinjutsu developer and well on his way to becoming a master," Alsea responded in Naruto's stead. She also gave the Yamanaka head the stink eye.
Chōza leaned forward and scrutinized Naruto for the very first time. "Isn't Naruto san extremely young to have that kind of advanced training in such an unpredictable and volatile specialty?"
"He started studying the art the day after he started the Academy," Alsea explained, with a small frown growing upon her face. "We decided that it was necessary, because Naruto Kun was already innately capable of decrypting Fuinjutsu coded books and documents using only his chakra and strong focus. We wanted to see if that skill was a sign of great talent."
"Was it?" Might Guy was leaning both elbows on the table because of his mounting curiosity. "I mean no offense Alsea. Fuinjutsu just looks like impossible to understand, roaming squiggles to me, so I have no point of reference here."
Alsea nodded her head and smiled at Might Guy. "I am one of the four people in this village including the Hokage here, who can use Fuinjutsu at an advanced Journeyman level, and yet I have nothing further to teach him. At this point, Naruto Kun is more advanced in the art than I am, so there's nothing more that I can offer. If he's going to learn from this point forward, it'll either be self-study or under the direction of a true master."
Naruto almost blushed as everyone at the table including his friends swiveled their attention onto him as if he were a lab animal. He also started wishing that he'd leveled with his friends about how good he was at Fuinjutsu, because now they were giving him the evil eye. "I uhh... I'm good at Fuinjutsu, yes... but so far, I'm not doing anything too dramatic. I can make small practical changes to improve on any Fuinjutsu tag or seal that already exists, but making anything truly innovative requires a process that I don't know yet and wouldn't be able to describe in words."
Hiruzen and Alsea nodded their heads in understanding, but everyone else at the table looked lost. Fuinjutsu was an extremely rare form of chakra manipulation, because it took years and years of dedicated practice before it could become the slightest bit practical.
"Can you try to explain what the process might be?" At this point, Inoichi looked interested rather than judgmental.
"I can try sir." Naruto steepled his hands and looked up at the sky for several moments. "I'm good at Fuinjutsu partially because Alsea is a wonderful teacher and partially because I'm gifted at it. What I mean when I say gifted isn't like the word prodigy because it's not like a child who picks up playing the piano really quickly. I think it's more accurate to compare it to the way some people are aligned with an element and some people aren't. I appear to be aligned somehow with Fuinjutsu and that alignment allows me to access and link together patterns and connections in my mind that even geniuses like Alsea can't see. I am NOT a genius and yet I can see more... With me so far?
The people listening at the table nodded their heads.
Naruto nodded but then he paused again before he continued. "The skill I think a master has that I don't have at the moment, is like seeing deeper rather than seeing clearer. Ninja's like to use the term seeing underneath the underneath. I want to do that with Fuinjutsu. There's a very real possibility that master Fuinjutsu users are just more aligned than I am and they can naturally see deeper than I can, but I don't believe that to be the case."
"I see... I always thought Fuinjutsu was a technical branch of Chakra manipulation, but I suppose at an advanced level it becomes pretty hypothetical and abstract..." Shikaku looked thoughtful.
"If it were just a matter of intelligence, then the Naras would be the best Fuinjutsu developers by far," Naruto pointed out. "There's a finicky bit of pseudo mind bending chakra-sensory psychobabble that makes it far more complicated than just using intelligence alone."
"I'm stealing that last line," Hiruzen declared immediately. "I've never heard the barrier to advancing in Fuinjutsu described so succinctly and accurately... a finicky bit of pseudo mind bending chakra-sensory psychobabble... it's perfect."
Alsea was nodding her head in rapid agreement, but everyone else was just sweat dropping. That nonsense was a succinct and accurate description?
Naruto held up his hands when he saw his friends giving him the stink eye again. "Okay, okay listen. At this point here are the questions I'm asking myself, to see if I can figure out what's blocking my progress. Is it a lack of raw knowledge that's stopping me? Is it the way my chakra works inside of my brain that needs to change or increase? Is it the way I'm perceiving the calligraphical runes involved and how they interact with each other, or is it the emotions that I'm feeling when I'm doing so that's the problem? Very frequently working with Fuinjutsu forces you to feel an emotional response, mold chakra in very specific ways, and bend your perception of the world in foreign ways, even as you carefully paint the calligraphy. You are, in essence, imbuing your chakra and the relationship between ideas in the form of symbols on paper. This imbuing is far more than just a math equation because it feels a certain way and has an opinion or a purpose. Bomb tags for instance get my heart beating quickly when I'm creating them and have a sense of unbridled potential. All Fuinjutsu is like that. That's why what I just said is accurate even though it's extremely vague."
"A finicky bit of pseudo mind bending chakra-sensory psychobabble," Hiruzen repeated with a smile.
"I'm never trying to learn that," Ino declared immediately. "I have waaaay too much psychobabble in my life already."
Inoichi simply nodded in agreement with his daughter because he'd made exactly the same decision back when HE was a fresh Genin.
"It sounds like a level of mental flexibility that I'd never attain," Chōza admitted, a few moments later.
"Troublesome," intoned Shikaku and Shikamaru in unison.
"Anyway, like I said, Narukun is very rare, even if he never becomes a master." Alsea smiled happily because as of now she'd taught the boy everything he knew, and she was just selfish enough that she found that fact extremely satisfying.
"How did you pass your Bunshin test?" Shikamaru only had this mystery left and then he was ready to have a nap.
"I can create shadow clones," Naruto replied casually. "They're called that because unlike normal clones they're solid, so they create a shadow."
"They also take a little less than half of your chakra just to create and are thus very, very dangerous to use Shikamaru... wait!" Shikaku's head swiveled back towards Naruto, and he began giving the boy a very funny look. "Did you just say clones... plural?"
Naruto immediately felt dumb for slipping up in such an obvious fashion in front of a Nara. He looked to Hiruzen for direction, because at this point he had absolutely no clue what to say.
"Naruto kun... Shikaku is the leader of my war council and Inoichi is the co-leader of my intelligence department. If there are any two people in the village that actually do need to know the full extent of your skills, then these are the ones." Hiruzen waved a hand towards the Nara's expansive yard in an inviting fashion. "Go nuts Naruto..."
Naruto gulped as he stood up and walked about fifteen feet away from the table. "Umm okay. This is going to be just a little bit dramatic so everyone keep your cool." Naruto raised his hands, performing four very rapid hand signs, while yelling out the words "Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
Poof X A LOT!
Dog's eyes widened immediately after Naruto completed the Jutsu, because the entire damned yard was currently covered in a thick white cloud of smoke. This was several times bigger than... but that wasn't even possible! "So many," he whispered to the people sitting beside him. Then the smoke was rapidly drifting away and all that remained was a little less than a hundred Naruto's standing at parade rest.
Naruto Alpha walked back toward the table, where he smiled softly at his overwhelmed friends. "Uhh yeah... I'm going to be pretty useful on whatever Genin team I end up on." He gestured to the army of Naruto's and then back at himself. Every single one of these clones has my intelligence to a certain extent and a portion of my chakra. While they're a little bit fragile, they can fight like I can and they can use any jutsu I know how to perform, so long as it doesn't exceed the chakra that created them..."
"So then... A Henge would be a simple matter for them," Shikaku pointed out, looking stunned, impressed and calculating in the extreme.
"Easy peasy," Naruto replied immediately. He pointed towards a nearby Naruto clone and that Naruto nodded his head in immediate understanding. The clone raised its hand and sub-vocally performed the jutsu. With a small poof of smoke and a stiff breeze there was a Shikamaru standing in the clone's place looking both bored and tired.
"Shikamaru clone, come closer please." Shikaku scrutinized the clone carefully as it approached, and he even stood up when it was in front of him. He ran a hand through Shikamaru/Naruto's hair and then tapped him on the shoulder several times. "You really do make your Henge targets physically change their shape, Naruto. You're both a little thinner right now and about an inch and a half shorter."
"I know." Shikamaru/Naruto smiled but then he shrugged. "Up until now, I've had no idea why my Henge came so easily, while my regular Bunshin, which is supposed to be a very similar skill, was completely impossible. Now I know why. It appears I've been doing something along the lines of a shadow Henge all along, and that's right up my alley chakra wise. It's a physical transformation rather than an illusion and it probably costs quite a bit more chakra than a normal Henge."
"How many different ninja have you perfected copying?" Shikaku was finally looking back at the real Naruto now.
"About a dozen people that I know personally that I can perform perfectly and several dozen more that I'm only acquainted with that I perform with some small imperfections," Naruto instantly responded. "If it's nondescript random ninja or civilians that you need, however, I've used hundreds of thousands of them over the years and I can make them on the fly. I like eating at restaurants and shopping unharassed by the civilians, which is why I've become quite good at quickly creating personas from scratch. These personas don't exist and they never have, so there's no way I'll run into the real deal by accident. I also always design them to be forgettable and easily lost in a crowd."
Shikaku's eyes had widened to the size of saucers at this point, and there was an out of character amount of energy in his voice when he made his next demand. "Show me as many random civilians as you can of both genders."
"Right away, but I'll have to do it one at a time to keep from overlapping." Naruto shrugged again because it simply couldn't be helped. "My clones are me after all. We think alike."
"Take your time but avoid similarities as much as possible." Shikaku immediately agreed, before collapsing heavily atop the nearby table, and staring fixedly at Naruto's clone army."
"Alright team! One by one and alternate genders! Avoid overlap but stay nondescript!" With that, Naruto pointed at the closest unHenge'd Naruto and the clone immediately performed the jutsu. Over the next five minutes, just under a hundred small poofs rang throughout the clearing one after another, and the Naruto army rapidly disappeared. In its place was a ragtag gathering of completely unremarkable and plain looking civilians that were very clearly different people with different clothing styles, facial features, body types and mannerisms. As the last few Naruto clones changed shape their transformations became a little weirder looking, but that was only because it was becoming harder to avoid overlapping features.
"Okay team! Now take a moment to memorize what you look like and where you are in the formation," Naruto yelled out. "Memorize the people on your right and left, and then try to create a picture of this entire group in your mind. Take your time and do a thorough job! The next time I do this, I'll want to try Henging everyone at the same time!"
The Naruto army nodded and then began carefully scrutinizing themselves and the people around them.
"Will that work?" Shikaku was shaking his head at the audacity of this kid. Memorizing approximately eighty six personas in just a few minute's time sounded completely impossible.
"You're forgetting that I'm going to learn what the formation looks like over eighty times from at least eighty perspectives," Naruto pointed out with a sly grin on his face. "I'm not a genius like your son, but with that much repetition, even I might get pretty close to remembering the details."
Shikaku just nodded absently, as at this point, he was just a tiny bit overwhelmed.
A few minutes later, Naruto began ending his Shadow Clones in groups of two at approximately ten second intervals from each other. It was as fast as Naruto could do this and not cause himself brain injury severe enough to leave him a twitchy mess for the rest of the day. Naruto had every reason to believe that without his regenerative ability using this many clones at exactly the same time would've eventually killed him, no matter how slowly he tried to dispel them. It was just waaay too much experience happening all at once and it seemed to stretch his gray matter beyond its breaking point every single time.
As Naruto finished dispelling the last two clones, Hiruzen walked up and stood at his side. "Tell me something, Naruto… Do you know why Shikaku just had you do what you did?"
"At some point in the near future, I'm most likely going to become a discrete, versatile army of spies slash infiltrators that no enemy will ever be able to catch or question... ever." Naruto looked up at Hiruzen and shrugged. "I understood Shikaku's intentions almost immediately, but I'm assuming my particular skill set won't land me on a standard Genin team."
"No... no, they most certainly won't. You've become far, far too valuable a resource to be squandered on D and C rank missions for the next year." Hiruzen smiled because he liked the way this was turning out. "You, Naruto, are going to be using those shadow clones of yours to train every moment of every day with a team of Jonin specialists that I'll be rotating in... You're also going to be acting as an auxiliary member for every Genin team that forms in the next two weeks."
At first Naruto simply nodded, but then he held up a hand for Hiruzen's attention. "After my ninja exams today, I was approached by an academy Sensei named Mizuki, who, as it turns out, is a traitor to the village and a real piece of shit. He tried to sell me some wild story and ironically enough it closely resembles what's actually happening to me. He said that I'd never be on a Genin team because no team would ever tolerate my presence. He said that you had a plan to make me an infiltration specialist so that I could work alone. He said that there was a test tomorrow in order for me to prove myself worthy."
By the time Naruto was finished speaking, Hiruzen's pupils had expanded to the point that they were almost eclipsing his irises, and his knuckles were white as he squeezed the living hell out of his staff. Then he was looking towards the wards with a newly worried expression upon his face, only to calm back down again after seeing a few quick hand signs from Naruto that conveyed the words 'Privacy assured'. "Good thinking with the wards, Naruto. Very professional… Now listen very carefully, and internalize what I'm about to say… You have several friends that would kill to have you on their team and everyone else in your class knows exactly how valuable you are. I'd have you on a Genin team next week and they'd be damned happy to have you, if not for this unprecedented and incredibly useful talent that you've revealed."
Naruto nodded his easy acceptance of Hiruzen's words and the man immediately deflated in relief.
"Now... Naruto... What was the "test" that this cretin wanted you to perform?" Hiruzen was ready to raise all Hell now, and all he needed was a half-decent reason.
"Mizuki said that tomorrow night I was to prove my infiltration skills by breaking into your tower and stealing a fake scroll of forbidden Jutsu from your office." Naruto leaned back against a low fence and gave Hiruzen a meaningful look. "Mizuki said that he'd meet me outside of training field number thirty-one, near a waterfall. I'm of the impression that this is a real forbidden scroll, and Mizuki wants to sacrifice me as a traitor by portraying me as the scroll thief. He wants to leave the village scrutiny free, paid for in my blood."
"Naruto... You saw through the man right away didn't you?" Hiruzen was smiling now.
"The nose knows old man." Naruto grinned. "Mizuki hates me with a violent passion, and he's definitely NOT looking out for my best interests. I played along for the information I needed, but I didn't believe a word that he said."
"You're already a ninja Naruto and you're going to be a really, really good one," Hiruzen breathed out with an openly feral expression upon his face. Mizuki was a dead man walking…
"You should let me handle the man," Naruto added, in a casual voice.
"No, why?" Hiruzen was stunned that Naruto would even ask that question.
"I want to provide the Ninja Council irrefutable proof that Mizuki is in fact a traitor," Naruto explained with a shrug. "Look, I'm not asking to go alone, but I want to be present in order to get Mizuki monologuing his evil scheme, and he's familiar enough with my chakra signature that he'd sense if someone else attempted to take my place under a Henge illusion. "Then there's the fact that I'm an expert tracker. If we let Mizuki 'get away with his scheme', I can help the Anbu track him to where his new compatriots are waiting for him."
"I... I see. A clone, or maybe I should say fifty clones, could take care of Mizuki if you really had to." Hiruzen mused as if to himself. "Not the real scroll though..."
"Why bother? That'd just be stupid." Naruto grinned mischievously then, and elbowed his Hokage lightly. "Hey, how about this... I'll take a big and official looking scroll that's really just made up of hundreds of explosive tags, and then, in the very unlikely event that Mizuki starts to actually get away, I'll blow him sky high from a safe distance using my chakra sensory technique."
Hiruzen Sarutobi doesn't often lose his composure. He's a diligent professional, so he lives his life as the Hokage with the utmost levels of dignity. That's why everyone at the table about thirty feet away swiveled in their chairs and stared dumbstruck, when the elderly man scoffed, coughed and then roared with out of control laughter. When he finally came down from it, Hiruzen saw the wide grin on Naruto's face, and he knew that he'd been had. "It's an entertaining idea, Naruto, except I desire that Mizuki be captured and then 'interrogated' to within an inch of his life."
Naruto sighed in a caricature of defeat even though they both knew that he'd been joking. "Well, okay. If we must."
"I'll have Dog discreetly meet you tomorrow morning with a final plan. This will be your official Genin test, Naruto, so I want you to approach it like a professional." An evil little smile formed across Hiruzen's whole entire face as he patted Naruto on the shoulder and then moved away to speak to Dog.
After being left to his own devices, Naruto started feeling two pairs of eyes burning into the side of his head, at which point he recognized what was currently required of him, adopted a very extroverted and thoughtful expression upon his face, and slowly wandered away from the barbecue. Soon enough, he found himself under the shade of an oak tree, leaning against its trunk and watching the festivities from a distance.
It wasn't long before Ino and Hinata casually wandered over, as if they hadn't been waiting for him to break away.
"I always knew but... woah... Narukun." Ino leaned against the tree on Naruto's right hand side and watched her father conspire with Shikaku in the distance. "The highest authorities in Konoha look like they're ready to bust a nut right now..."
"I knew you were s..strong as w..well, Naruto Kun... I can see it with my o..ocular jutsu," Hinata shyly admitted, before abruptly turning in place and triggering her chakra sensitive eyes. Then the woman's hands were gently laying upon Naruto's shoulders, her all seeing eyes were peering into his body, and she was biting her lip as she tried to explain. "You glow to m..my senses Naruto. You... burn like a f..fire, blood-red deep inside where it's h..hottest (stepping closer, Hinata rubbed Naruto's belly) and then bright-blue every..where else. The blue chakra contains the... red, but not perfectly. The..The red chakra seeps in and is... diluted slowly over t..time. Y..Your chakra system... swells with it, Naruto Kun, and it l..looks like your namesake. It's like a spiral or a... maelstrom of..of some kind... It's very, very out of the... o..ordinary."
Hinata was blushing a brilliantly bright red by the time she finished explaining all of that, because speaking of a person's chakra was a level of intimacy that her clan left for the bedroom. She was talking about seeing Naruto's spiritual essence in a way that was considered extremely inappropriate to most Hyuga.
"I have two types of chakra within me," Naruto slowly repeated.
"Yes and y..yet no," Hinata immediately responded, before gesturing for patience from her friends. For her, this was quickly becoming a marathon of speaking, and it was still outside of her comfort zone. It helped that it was Ino and Naruto, her closest... well... her closest everything, but she still had a stutter and it still sucked.
Naruto nodded his understanding and began rubbing discreetly at Hinata's lower back.
Hinata smiled softly at Naruto before diving into yet another monologue. "I..If you really did have two types of normal ch..chakra inside of you... you'd die very quickly. Chakra doesn't mix with d..different chakra at all. Under normal circumstances, your b..body's chakra system flushes foreign... chakra out of you very quickly, but if you... can't or are too weak to d..do so, it'll hurt you. Even healers... need to make sure their chakra is extracted from a patient's body after t..treatment, so that it doesn't burn or poison... them in their weakened state. Wh..Whatever this red power is it's… different... more elemental in n..nature. You're s..somehow converting it without hurting… yourself. It looks as if a violent t..tug of war is taking place inside of you... and it never, ever s..stops."
"No wonder Narukun's chakra control has always come so hard and so slowly," Ino added, from Naruto's far side. "He's not only containing far, far more power than normal, but it's also roiling around inside of him like a damned tornado."
"Thank you for going into such detail for me, Hinata. I know that chakra is an intimate topic for the Hyuga, so I appreciate everything you've said." Naruto sighed and then looked down at his hands. "The secret that's still being kept from me and this second chakra are one and the same. I know I need to find out what this secret is, but I'm afraid of what I'll find out..."
"It's going to be okay, Naruto. Neither this second chakra nor your secret are going to change who you are. You're our Narukun..." Ino almost moved in to hug him again, but then she remembered that her father was present at the last second, so she awkwardly patted his shoulder instead. She also began giving Naruto a truly pitiful look, and then she smiled when he grinned his understanding back at her.
"I appreciate both the comforting words and the fact that you're interested in my continued survival, Ino. I prefer my brain both whole and still attached to the rest of my nervous system." Naruto's joke was half-hearted at best, because Inoichi Yamanaka really was one of those scary dads, and they all knew it.
"M..My father isn't... here," Hinata softly announced, from Naruto's left side. With that said, she immediately began wrapping her arms around Naruto's waist and hugging him tightly. She even rubbed her cheek against his shoulder, laying on the cuteness to unbelievable levels. Then the lavender eyed bluenette was being hugged tightly in return, and she was mewling like a small, happy animal, directly into his chest
Naruto grinned partly because Hinata was being upper-level adorable at the moment and partly because of the melodramatic stage whimper that was currently leaking from within Ino's mouth.
Across the yard, sitting at the table with a still eating Choji, Shikamaru was just catching up with the math of it all. His father had warned him not to try the Shadow Clone jutsu because it would apparently leave him dangerously close to chakra exhaustion and shock. That warning was delivered just twenty seconds before Naruto created exactly eighty-seven Shadow Clones. The amount of chakra that Naruto would need to contain for every single one of them to take equal amounts of his power and then leave him both alive, energetic and capable of even relatively simple jutsus was...
Astronomical, as well as completely inhuman...
This was the secret. This was why Naruto was hated by the villagers... Shikamaru's brain was currently running through all of the seemingly disparate facts that he knew about Naruto, like an out of control cascade of information. The names that the villagers call him, the date that they target him the most and then his absurd strength and regeneration... Shikamaru started becoming a little pale, because he was picking up a pattern and it was frightening to even think about.
Naruto's birthday was on the tenth of October. The very same day the Kyuubi was said to have been destroyed...
For the last five minutes, Alsea Nara had been observing her son from across the yard. She saw the moment that the wheels started turning in his far too ingenious mind, and she saw the tell-tale signs of shocked, freaked out recognition growing within his eyes. That's the reason why she suddenly marched over to her son, and started pulling him inside of her home without a single word of explanation. Only when they'd moved through a series of doors and were standing within her living room, did she round on Shikamaru and cross her arms under her chest. "Spill!"
"I... can't possibly be right," Shikamaru slowly stuttered out. "Naruto just can't be the Kyuubi. He's never been anything but moral and kind in the entire time that I've known him."
"You're right Shikamaru, Naruto IS a good person and yes he IS morally sound... You're on the right track however." In the end, Alsea just admitted that fact quite candidly, because her son was a Nara and he'd figure it all out with or without her. "There's just one major flaw with your conclusion so far. Naruto isn't the Kyuubi. He's the prison for the Kyuubi. Naruto himself... his body... is like one of his sealing tags, only on an unbelievably massive scale. His body fights every single day to contain the demon..."
"But... why?... How?" Shikamaru collapsed back onto the couch, desperately looking at his mom for answers.
"I'm about to explain a slice of history that very few people ever talk about" Alsea began quietly. "Some of it is mere conjecture and some of it is classified death on dispersal if caught by Anbu. I couldn't tell you any of this, until you figured it out for yourself."
Shikamaru just nodded his head and waited for the explanation.
"First of all, none of the nine tailed demon beasts can ever be truly destroyed," Alsea began, as she sat down next to her son. "You might force a tailed beast's body to lose cohesion for a time if you pull off a miracle of destructive power like a Madara or something, but really, tailed beasts just aren't physical or mortal in a classical sense. If we'd leveled all of Konoha in a doomsday last effort and somehow physically destroyed the Kyuubi's body eleven years ago, it would've resurrected by now and destroyed us all in retaliation. The fourth Hokage knew that much, which is why... he made a great and terrible sacrifice."
"Naruto..." Shikamaru's face was white like a sheet. "Why him?"
Alsea nodded in approval because that was a good question and it proved that her son was still thinking. "No seal ever devised by a mere mortal has ever been perfect enough to contain all of a tailed beast's power. Not even our village's master Fuinjutsu specialist is capable of that, and he's most likely the best in the entire world. No matter what seal is used, there's always some spill over, so there's always chakra contamination within a host. In the days of yore, with less sophisticated seals, the people chosen to contain the tailed beasts inevitably slipped into madness and physical transformation day by day, as the beasts awoke inside of them. They were finally put out of their misery and replaced, and to do so was considered a kindness. Through trial and error, it was discovered that the people that lasted the longest were the ones that had the demon sealed inside of them at birth. This is because to a certain extent, a baby's body can adapt to the burden as they grow and develop. Bear in mind that the sealing techniques that were in use up until that point were only ever used on 'relatively' weak tailed beasts, such as the one through four. Historically, the nine tails has never been caught until it suddenly vanished sometime around a hundred years ago. I have legitimately no clue who's been containing the beast since then, but I don't envy them. No seal has a single hope in hell of containing all of the Kyuubi's pure destructive power... Thus, when the beast began ripping down Konoha's walls, they chose Naruto to be the newest Jinchuriki or human sacrifice... and I think they chose him specifically because he's an Uzumaki."
"Uzumaki," Shikamaru parroted, with a puzzled expression upon his face.
"This next part is the conjecture part," Alsea admitted. "Until about thirty-five years ago, there was a village called hidden whirlpool and the leading clan of that village were called the Uzumaki's. They had a bloodline of sorts, but it wasn't overt like the Hyuga or Uchiha. They had frighteningly large chakra stores, they healed extremely quickly, and they had a propensity for sealing and Fuinjutsu that had them both respected and feared worldwide. Sounds familiar doesn't it..."
Shikamaru nodded his understanding, but he was still waiting for an explanation.
"The Uzumaki's frightening strength was the root cause of a betrayal that ended the Whirlpool village at the hands of the collected Cloud, Sand and Mist villages' armies," Alsea quietly continued. "That betrayal was the root cause of the second ninja war. It's also the reason why I think the hidden whirlpool's sole surviving descendent... Naruto... was the only viable Jinchuriki candidate. You see... I don't think the fourth Hokage had much of a choice in the matter, when he selected Naruto for this ordeal. Naruto was the only baby in this entire village who could potentially survive having the Kyuubi rush-sealed inside of his body at birth, without immediately dying or mutating from chakra saturation. His chakra retention and capacity is absurd and he's strong. Without that strength, Naruto wouldn't be a man by now. He'd either be a beast or insane beyond recognition..."
"How do you know any of this?" Shikamaru was breathless now, because his mother was speaking from experience.
"I was the only healer that the Third Hokage trusted enough to monitor Naruto's well-being. I was the only healer the Third trusted not to kill a defenseless little baby, as I administered medicine and tended to him." Alsea had responded quietly, but there was a huge wellspring of emotion pouring out inside her voice. "I was brought in, and I monitored Naruto daily for over a year, followed by regular checkups thereafter. There was a reason I was asked to do such a thorough job. The sealing that the Fourth performed on Naruto wasn't planned in advance. It was done in a state of emergency, it was rushed, it was done without our resident sealing master on hand, and it was done without many of the tools that they'd normally use to ease the transition."
With a sigh and a shake of her head, Alsea turned on the couch to face her son more directly. "I have legitimately no clue how the Fourth Hokage managed to perform a sealing of that magnitude with less than twenty-four hours notice, but I suspect he sacrificed his own life in order to make it work. The fact that the initial sealing succeeded however, wasn't going to change the fact that the Fourth was forced to skip steps and cut corners. The Kyuubi wasn't going to be asleep within Naruto's body after the sealing for anywhere near the length of time it would have under normal circumstances. In a matter of months, rather than years, the Kyuubi was going to rouse and it - was - going - to - be - pissed. When the Third Hokage tasked me with keeping an eye on Naruto, he was very concerned, and as it turns out, he had very good reason to feel that way."
The more Alsea spoke, the more her face took on a haunted quality, but she didn't stop because her son deserved to know... "I saw... horrors, Shikamaru. I saw baby Naruto struggle as his body was strained to the breaking point over and over. I saw him cry and scream, burn, swell and seep, lose and regenerate skin, go bald and then regrow hair, spontaneously bleed from scratches all over his body and then miraculously heal over night. I saw the demon take its toll on that baby until my own persistent nightmares almost made me quit tending to him. Then, finally, one day, I got to see baby Naruto survive... and it was all worth it."
Shikamaru couldn't look away from his mother to save his own life. "How? How does a baby survive all that?"
Alsea wiped some tears from her eyes and then smiled at her son. "Baby Naruto's chakra coils and core grew over time, as the Kyuubi roused from the brief slumber caused by the initial sealing. As the Kyuubi awoke inside of him, its power began leaking out into his chakra coils and his body had to either adapt or... be destroyed. Instead of breaking, Naruto's chakra core and coils slowly grew in order to try and contain the foreign power. For several months in a row, Naruto's body tried and failed to contain the power swelling within it. He failed over and over and it did him massive damage on a daily basis. If not for his own regenerative ability being bolstered by his steadily growing chakra core, he'd have died. Then, slowly but surely, Naruto's body began to learn how to subconsciously convert the Kyuubi's power within his coils into usable chakra, at which point his body used that extra chakra to power the seal containing the demon. As Naruto's strength increased, the seal became stronger, and in turn the demon's influence on his life lessened. This all happened by the time Naruto was just a two year old baby. Don't make light of Naruto's burden as if his struggle is over however. Naruto's body is fighting a war every minute of every day. If you want proof, just ask Hinata to describe it to you. Right this second inside of Naruto, is a chakra based arm wrestle of explosive proportions, and it's been going on for twelve whole years.
"If... if what you're saying is true... then why is Naruto reviled like he is?! People spit at him as he walks down the street, and we wouldn't even exist anymore without him!" Shikamaru was more pissed off about the villager's attitudes now than he'd ever been in the past, and that was really saying something because on a semi-regular basis he found himself wanting to commit violence over it. "Naruto's a hero mom! He's a Kami-damned hero, and he's scorned for it by everyone!"
"I'm very proud of you son... You're exactly right." Alsea agreed even as she sadly shook her head. "You didn't have to face the Kyuubi though, Shikamaru... You didn't lose your house or arm or sister or son or wife to its overwhelming madness and all consuming, apocalypse-like strength. You don't have to face your own demons like the villagers do, and you don't harbor the unyielding hatred that they do for anything even connected to the Kyuubi. The adult generation villagers had to face the Kyuubi and not one of them emerged unscathed. A lot of the villagers don't actually see Naruto as the Prison... They only see him as the demon wearing a human body. Some villagers do understand that he's the prison, but they also believe that they can hurt the demon by hurting Naruto, and in an extremely twisted way, that's good enough for them..."
"I feel... sick," Shikamaru admitted, in a choked out voice. "Naruto doesn't know... He doesn't have a damned clue why he was forced to flee into the forest. He has no idea why one of his first memories is being kicked out of the orphanage. He has no damned idea why he'd never experienced normal human kindness until he met us. Naruto is..." As Shikamaru's face dropped into his hands, he felt his mother's hands running along his back.
"You can't tell him right now either," Alsea said, while pulling her son into an extra-tight hug. "It's a death sentence for you if you do. The Third has decreed that only he can officially inform Naruto about being the Kyuubi Jinchuriki, and only when he deems the boy ready."
"Why has Naruto never seen the seal itself on his skin anywhere?" Shikamaru had never seen anything even remotely resembling a seal on Naruto's body and it would need to be large if it was as powerful as they were describing.
"There is a second and far smaller seal on the back of Naruto's head covered by his hair that is designed to conceal any Fuinjutsu on his body. Under normal circumstances, the Fuinjutsu seal containing the demon would become visible on Naruto kuns belly every time he runs chakra through the area, but that would be far, far too obvious, so it was hidden."
Shikamaru shook his head at the lengths the village had gone to to deceive Naruto, and the contradictions that such an attitude presented. Then he turned back towards his mother with an extremely harsh look upon his face. "If the people of this village were always going to hate Naruto and cause him untold amounts of suffering for seemingly no reason... Why bother with this charade of normalcy at all?"
"It's as a mixture of two things," Alsea began, with a hand curled around her chin. "First, the Fourth Hokage was terribly naïve, because he desired that Naruto be seen as a hero in the village. Of course after his death, it immediately became obvious that such was NOT going to be the case. Secondly, the Third Hokage wasn't strong enough politically in the eyes of his councilors to stop the information from leaking. In the beginning the gag order was in an effort to stop Naruto from being scorned, but it failed because Hiruzen didn't have the political clout at the time to enforce his edict. He couldn't just wholesale slaughter the people that were ignoring his warning, because the village couldn't afford even one more loss of life. Ever since that day, the Third's been stuck doing huge amounts of damage control and it hasn't been easy for him. Almost every meeting involving the Civilian Council touches on Naruto in some way, and it's usually about either killing him while he's weak or imprisoning him to use as a weapon. Hiruzen can't defend Naruto politically if he appears to be too close to the boy on a personal level, so he keeps his distance despite the fact that he's extremely fond of the boy. Trust me when I say that Hiruzen's had it really rough since Naruto became a Jinchuriki, and I don't envy him that responsibility."
"So the Hokage's law about keeping Naruto's Jinchuriki status concealed has completely lost its meaning at this point, because all of the older generation already know the secret." Shikamaru waved his hands in a defeated way. "Why not level with Naruto now?"
"Naruto doesn't know that he's the container for the nine-tails," Alsea began slowly. "Due in part to the fact that he doesn't know about it, he feels... normal, or at least fully human like the rest of us. The day that he finds out about the nine tails, will be both the day that he finds out that he isn't just a man, and the day that he has to begin confronting the Kyuubi."
"Confronting the Kyuubi," Shikamaru repeated slowly.
Alsea nodded with a sad look upon her face again. "The Kyuubi is trapped inside of Naruto and it wants out more than anything. Naruto is safer in his ignorance than he'll be once he knows about the power dwelling within his body. Once he's aware of the power residing within the seal, the Kyuubi will have a foothold to try and coerce him into using it. It will want him to use its power, because along with the power comes an empathic connection that the Kyuubi can use to try and assert its will on Naruto's mind. That connection is a very dangerous thing to allow, if you're not in extreme control of your mind, emotions and body. Someday, Naruto will need to master and control the Kyuubi's power. He'll have no choice in the matter if he wants to survive to old age… but that'll be a road that's fraught with both danger and potential madness. The Hokage wishes for Naruto to enjoy what time he has, before he must begin shouldering that burden.
"Why does Naruto need to harness that power at all then? Why must he risk everything when he's already so strong?" Shikamaru was lost again. He felt like he was knee deep in quicksand.
"Naruto is Konoha's Jinchuriki," Alsea admitted candidly. "He is ours but he's also only one of nine. The Hidden Sand village has one, the Cloud has two, and other ninja villages also have their own. Naruto is... like it or not... a weapon of mass destruction that has safeguarded us from foreign invasion merely by existing here within this village. There is also the fact that Naruto is a ninja, and like it or not, he won't be able to live a peaceful life. At some point, someday, he will be determined enough or angry enough that he will harness the Kyuubi's power. It's all but inevitable. When that day comes, Naruto will become an inhumanly destructive and brutal existence, and it'll be a hard thing to look upon him as merely the boy that you grew up with and your friend."
"You think I'll be scared off," Shikamaru angrily accused.
"No..." Alsea shook her head slowly and her hand rubbed at her son's back again. "I actually don't think you will. I only said that it'll be hard. I'm trying to prepare you for what's to come."
"I... I understand..." Now that his mind wasn't driving him to pursue answers anymore, Shikamaru lay back against the couch in exhaustion, and thought he might just fall asleep for the night right then and there.
"You were supposed to go to Naruto's place tonight to celebrate," Alsea pointed out. "I know about the food, saké and beer that you stole, and I wasn't going to say anything. Are you going to skip this party now that you know?"
"Not fair mom. I wasn't planning on skipping out, out of fear... I'm lazy and it's been an exhausting day." In the moments that followed, Shikamaru grinned up at the ceiling when his mom couldn't contain the sigh of relief that slipped past her lips. Imagine that. Alsea Nara is happy that I'm only being a sloth.
"Get up Shikamaru. I'll make you some coffee." Alsea patted her son on the shoulder as she rose to her feet and walked into the kitchen.
To Be Continued…
Author's Note:
In the context of this story, Alsea is what's called an unreliable narrator. Not everything she's explaining to Shikamaru is fact, she's merely relaying what she thinks is the case based on recent history and conjecture.
Author's Note:
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