Naruto X
AN: So yeah. That happened.
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"Report." Pein said as he stared at the holograms of the other Akatsuki members, particularly Itachi and Kisame. "The nine tails container is drastically different from our initial reports. He is no longer an idiot, but rather seems to be the leader of his squad as he was able to not only command them efficiently, but even assist them when they needed his help most.
He has shown himself to be immune to jutsu. What type is unknown however, I used Tsukuyomi on him and the jutsu failed. Whether he is immune to bloodline jutsu, genjutsu or just any jutsu in particular is unknown, but his physical strength is also amazing.
His teammates are also to be noted. Sasuke Uchiha has shown incredible strength and speed while his teammate has shown herself to be very proficient with a sword. The both of us sustained a few injuries before making our escape and we had yet to even fight the nine tails." Itachi said which made the other members glance at each other in question.
"I have some information that might be relevant to all of you now." A man with a white half and a black half stepped forward. "Speak Zetsu." Pein said and the black half began to talk. "The container of the one tails is no longer in Sunagakure. He seems to have ditched his village in favor of Konohagakure. Stranger still is his control over the sand seems to have dropped significantly and he no longer seems psychotic and deranged. I believe his seal may have been strengthened as Jiraiya of the sennin was in Konoha at the time." He said.
Itachi spoke up at this point. "I also bring news regarding a few other things. Konoha technology seems to have boosted since the last time I was there. New devices are everywhere and no longer are most stores using gas or electricity. I do not know what is running these locations now." Pein gave a nod.
"Also, it would seem that our old accomplice Orochimaru is now deceased. He died in the invasion of Konoha." He said, which got a few laughs from the other members of Akatsuki. "That snake was always in over his head. About time someone severed it." A man that was hunched over replied.
"From this point on, Deidara and Sasori will be traveling with Itachi and Kisame. If the one tail is in Konoha, then it is inevitable that you all will need to go there, and if the nine tails is stronger than his teammates, then the precautions will be needed. I want those containers brought back alive and as soon as possible. We cannot allow them to become stronger." Pein ordered, the four shinobi gave a nod.
"This meeting is now over. Only contact if you have something noteworthy to report." And with that the holograms vanished.
-Naruto-
Jiraiya was surprised to find the boy still up and reading, and if he guessed correctly, the boy hadn't turned the light on at all throughout the night. "You know, a good nights rest would have done you some good." The sennin said as Naruto flipped a page. "I don't sleep." He said which made the sennin frown.
"I don't suppose breakfast would be appealing to you either?" He asked and the blonde gave a small "Hn." before he closed his book. "I don't eat either. But if you want food I can go get some." He said which made the sennins frown deepen.
"If I didn't know better, I'd swear you were completely machine." He said and the boy looked at him with a weird grin. "Maybe I am." he said which didn't help put the older man at ease.
At this point, Naruto's teammates woke up and seemed to ignore the fact that Naruto was still awake and went about putting their gear back on. Jiraiya didn't know what to make of this. Either he was very distrustful of the boy because he didn't know him or the blonde was pulling the wool over his and everyone else's eyes.
'None of this is right, it's not natural.' The sennin thought as he got up and put his own equipment back on. He noticed that the girl, Sakura was it? Her eye patch was really strange to look at. In fact, the only normal looking one of the group was Sasuke, and he was wearing clothing that didn't normally accommodate a ninja.
In fact, none of them were wearing their chuunin vests now that he thought about it. He'd have thought they'd be ecstatic and proud to wear the vest, but none of them were wearing it.
"So why aren't you kids wearing the vest? I thought you'd all be showing off the fact you're chuunin." He asked and the others gave a look at each other before shrugging. "It's a nice vest but it hinders my mobility." Sakura said, which made Sasuke nod as well. "Too heavy. It would get in the way." he said, and Jiraiya's frown returned.
'Maybe I'm just getting old.' He thought as they left the hotel and continued on their way down the road. It was looking to be a boring trip when Sakura glanced over. "Hey Naruto, you said your digital eye can find out information on people, right?" she asked and he nodded back at her.
"Yeah." He answered and she continued. "What about jutsu and fighting styles?" she asked and he nodded again. "If the information is there, I can find it." He answered again and she seemed to grin. "So can you get more detailed information, such as how those techniques are performed?" she asked.
"Hrm…lemme see." He said before his eyes seemed to take on a far away look. After a few minutes he seemed to snap out of it. "Yeah, I can." He said and the girl looked ready to squeal. "So…so...please tell me you scanned some people who know how to use a sword." She said, the hope high in her voice.
"Yeah, Zabuza knew a silent killing style, Orochimaru knew a style. Itachi surprisingly had a sword style and that Kisame guy had a style and you know Hayate's style. Kakashi sensei had a style and that sound guy with the bones popping out of his arms had a style. If you wanted, I could teach you wh-" he didn't even get to finish the sentence as the girl had glomped him and was hanging off of his neck laughing.
Jiraiya blinked in shock. He could find out stuff about people without actually SEEING it? That went above and beyond the sharingan. Hell that was the ultimate spying tool since security meant nothing now. He was about to pipe in when Sasuke beat him to it.
"Any particular taijutsu or fist attacks you pick up? Or am I just out of luck?" he asked and Naruto seemed to blank out again. Once he snapped back to reality he gave a nod. "Yeah there's a few. I'll teach you those as well." He said which made the boy grin.
"I'm more concerned with how many people you know information about." Jiraiya said which made the boy glance at him. "Pretty much anyone I come into contact with I scan. You never know when the information will be useful." He answered with made the sennin nod.
"Information is power in a ninja's line of work. You realize that you're painting yourself out to be a pretty big target?" he asked to which the boy shrugged. "Only five people even know I can do it and I wasn't going to tell you." He said which made the man wince.
"So long as you don't say anything, I don't care that you know." He said. "So who else knows?" the sennin asked and Naruto shook his head. "Not saying." He said, which only made the sennin angry.
"Now see here you brat." He started, which got all of their attention and immediately they stopped and looked at him. "Do you even realize the danger you're in? The danger that you're exposing your teammates to? You can't use chakra, you refuse to accept any type of training and you just don't seem to even CARE that your parents made enemies who would love to just kill you out of spite for him. I thought we could do some kind of bonding to make up for all the years I've been gone but you're making that difficult." He said, to which the blonde blinked in surprise before he huffed.
"First off, we're ninja. Danger comes with the payroll. I've always been in danger and I've had nobody to help me and I could never figure out why. Adults would flat out ignore me and never pay attention to me at all, even my academy teachers would ignore me until Iruka came along. The only way people would pay attention to me was if I pranked them.
Second off, my teammates are more than capable of taking care of themselves and have already encountered danger. Sakura fought a member of the seven swordsmen while Sasuke is trying to fight his older brother Itachi Uchiha. Considering both of these guys appeared together and were wearing matching cloaks, I don't think it was just a social visit." He said, which made Sasuke grunt and look angry at the thought of his brother.
"Third, I don't NEED chakra. What, do you think that just because I'm not throwing around flashy ninjutsu like the rest of you that I'm defenseless?" he asked "I didn't say-" Jiraiya started but a hand held up from Naruto stopped him.
"I told you already that there is nothing you can teach me so answer me this, why are you being persistent with that?" he asked and the sennin raised his arms in annoyance. "Because it just seems stupid to me that you won't learn how to defend yourself! Do you know how many people would jump at the opportunity to learn from one of the sennin, and you're turning it down because you feel like it wouldn't be efficient to you. That's just something I don't get at all." He said, which made the others glance at each other before looking back at Jiraiya.
"He's not lying when he said that taijutsu would be a nuisance." Sakura spoke up. "His body cannot gain any muscle and he can't wear weights to increase his speed. His body is at its limits, the only thing he can do to get stronger is increase the power of his buster gun and his z-saber." She explained which made the man look more frustrated.
"Elaborate. What do you mean he's at his limits?" he said, and the three gave out a sigh before Naruto dropped his hologram. "Because I can't train to make my body stronger, I can't fulfill most taijutsu requirements which require some form of speed or power. My body is at its limits and there's nothing I can do about that." He said and the sennin let out a sigh.
"So what, you rely on those other two things? What happens if they don't work?" he asked which made the boy shrug. "Do you know anything that can resist super heated plasma or a weapon made out of light itself? Because so far, everyone I've fought hasn't been able to." He said and the sennin once again looked bewildered.
"Plasma? Light? I swear you kids are doing this just to confuse me." He said which made the three chuunin laugh. "Plasma is a type of liquid that can reach temperatures of over thousands of degrees. It's so hot that anything it comes into contact with is incinerated instantly into nothingness." Sakura explained.
"If it's so hot, then how come Naruto is standing there?" he asked which made the girl sigh. "I don't know the full mechanics behind it, but Naruto doesn't carry that stuff around with him. He has some kind of setting in his weapon that generates energy and when he fires the buster gun, the energy is turned into plasma." She explained.
The sennin nodded. "So basically the energy can turn into anything he wants?" he asked which made the girl shake her head. "No, I mean…if he tampered with it, the appearance could be different, but it would always have the same effect. He can't change his buster shot. But if he were to gather energy from an opponent he defeated, he could copy that opponents power." She explained.
"Change the appearance?" he asked which made Sakura look at Naruto who began to do something to his buster gun before he aimed it at a rock in the distance and fired a regular shot, but instead of looking like a small yellow dot, it looked like a yellow cat made of energy that meowed as it flew.
The effect was still the same, the rock blew apart upon impact. Naruto changed his shot appearance back to normal as the sennin gave a nod. "I think I get it now." He said.
"But getting back on topic…" Naruto said as he put his arm down. "My parents enemies don't mean anything to me because there are far worse people out there that want me dead for literally no reason other than they feel like it. I don't want to sound overconfident, but if all Iwagakure has are regular ninja, then there's nothing they can do to me." He said which got a sigh from Jiraiya. "I really hope that overconfidence doesn't get the better of you kid."
Naruto shrugged before he stared hard at Jiraiya. "As for bonding, you had your chance and you screwed it up years ago." He said, Jiraiya was about to retort the but boy only raised his hand and shook it.
"I don't care what flimsy reasoning you had. You could have come back you know. You said you found out when I was like…four or something. I'm only now learning of YOUR existence and I'm fourteen. To me, you made your choice and now I'm making mine. I don't want anything to do with you beyond working as ninja." He said, which made the sennin sigh. 'I really screwed up huh?' he thought.
It was after another ten minutes that they walked into Tanzaku town and Jiraiya was directing them to a restaurant to get something to eat. Upon walking in however, Naruto immediately glanced up. "Found her." He said, which made the others blink as Jiraiya looked across the room. "Well I'll be, Tsunade!" he said and the blonde woman squinted her eyes as she looked up.
"Jiraiya? What the hell are you doing here?" she asked as they all walked over and got their own seats. "Looking for you actually, Sarutobi is calling us in." the toad sage said as he looked at the menu.
"And why on earth is he calling us in for? Doesn't he have enough ANBU to cater to him?" she asked which was slowly starting to get on the chuunins nerves.
"I'm guessing it has something to do with the recent invasion. Lots of people were injured and recently Itachi Uchiha attacked some of our jounin. Kakashi Hatake is down with a coma from genjutsu. You're the only one skilled enough to heal him." He said, which made the woman smirk.
"Why should I even go back? It's not like I care what happens to the village." She said and suddenly the temperature in the room got cold. "So you're just cutting ties with your village then? Just like that?" Naruto asked.
The blonde woman snorted. "Who is this brat? One of your pupils?" she asked to which the blonde boy laughed. "He wishes. Now answer the question." He said, which made Tsunade narrow her eyes.
"Why should I answer to you?" she said which made all three chuunin stand suddenly, Sasuke clenched his fists, Sakura had a hand on her sword and Naruto's hand changed to his buster. "Because I'm going to assume you're not dumb enough to become a missing nin directly in front of three Konoha shinobi." He said which made the woman snort before she burst out laughing.
"As if you brats could take me." She said, Jiraiya was making hand motions for her to stop but facepalmed when she said that. "So answer the question. Are you or are you not defecting from Konoha?" Naruto asked once more.
The woman shrugged. "Well I refuse to help the village so I guess that makes me a traitor." Before she had even had a moment to reflect on her words, she quickly dodged a yellow energy ball that flew by her head and cut off one of her ponytails.
Sasuke capitalized on this and gave Tsunade a punch in the face that sent her flying backwards and through the divider which smashed a table on the other side, the patrons immediately stood up and ran for it.
Tsunade opened her eyes and barely rolled out of the way as Sakura brought her sword down where Tsunade was laying and she quickly got back to her feet. "Alright you brats, that's all you get for free." She said before charging back in. She took a swing at Naruto who blocked the attack. To Tsunades' surprise, the boy didn't get sent flying but instead went sliding backwards on his feet with his arms crossed.
He stood straight up and moved his neck as if he were cracking it and smirked. "Is that all?" he said which only served to anger the woman as she charged him again and swung. Naruto quickly activated his titan armor under his hologram and let Tsunade hit him in the face which just pushed his head back slightly and he hadn't moved an inch, which made everyone's eyes widen in shock except Sakura and Sasuke.
Tsunade was so stunned that she hadn't even noticed Sasuke's right hook which knocked her off balance and she regained her senses and tried to hit Sasuke back who weaved out of the way.
Naruto looked at Sakura. "Blood. Now." He said and the girl who was about to charge, stopped before she suddenly sliced her own hand and flicked the sword at Tsunade, who immediately froze at the sight of blood and almost freaked once the blood splattered on her face and clothing.
Naruto nodded before looking at Tsunade. "We're nice people and we don't like violence if we can help it, so let's make a deal. You come back to Konoha and heal our teacher and see what the old man has to say or Sakura is going to separate your head from your shoulders and we gather the bounty on your head."
The blond woman was too frozen in fear to argue and simply nodded. "Good." Naruto said before he took a cloth from the table and wiped her face off as Sakura bandaged her hand.
Once the sight of blood was gone, Tsunade took a deep breath. Her and Jiraiya hated to admit it but the three chuunin had played her hard and didn't seem to have any remorse over their actions. The older man almost shuddered, afraid to see what the kids would have done to him if he had ever said he was defecting.
He felt many emotions honestly. Pride at the boy for standing up for his village, anger that they had resorted to Tsunade's weakness to get her to agree or threatened to kill her, annoyance at Tsunade for being so stubborn and just a bit of fear that Naruto took a fully powered punch from the woman and didn't react to it. Perhaps his claims that regular ninja couldn't do anything to him weren't so farfetched after all.
The trip back to Konoha was pretty quiet. Tsunade was reflecting on what had just happened, Jiraiya was choosing to remain silent, the chuunin were just walking while looking bored and Shizune was trying to talk to Tsunade, but the woman was being ignored.
The trip didn't take as long to get back since they had departed sooner in the day and once they were back in Konoha proper, the chuunin followed Tsunade to the hospital and watched in fascination as she healed Kakashi.
Once she had done that, they went to Sarutobi's office and with a grunt, she stepped inside and crossed her arms. "Alright, I'm back. What is it you wanted?" she said which took the older man by surprise but he just cleared his throat.
"Tsunade, I want you to take over as the hokage." He said, causing her to recoil in shock. "What?! You want ME to take over for YOU?" she said as he simply nodded. "No way, I refuse!" she said, which got sighs of relief from the chuunin and Sarutobi to frown.
"You're the only one left I trust. Jiraiya refused the position and that leaves you. With you in charge, you'll be able to push through that medical program you wanted." She said, which had caught her attention slightly before she shook her head. "Being the hokage is a fools job. Everyone who takes the position just dies for nothing." She said which made Naruto frown and inwardly he began to count to ten.
Sakura cleared her throat which got Tsunade's attention. "He's still alive." she said which made Tsunade stare at her blankly for a moment until she shook her head. "That's besides the point."
"No it's not." Sakura said. "You said everyone who took the job had died, but every hokage who had taken the position had died defending the village they loved. Even our current hokage recently fought for his life and survived to protect the village. So you're wrong. They died doing what they believed in. If that really means nothing to you then I don't think you deserve to even qualify to become hokage." Sakura said which made Tsunade frown.
"Hey, I bet I'd be great at the job!" she replied to which Naruto chuckled. "That's funny, considering you can't even handle three chuunin." which made the woman grumble in anger and Sarutobi to raise his eyebrows in question. Jiraiya whispered that he would tell him later.
"Why do you even care so much about the position?" Tsunade asked which made Sasuke and Sakura shrug and Naruto to smile. "I've always wanted to become hokage, being the hokage is my dream." He said which made Tsunade's eyes widen in shock as she got a flashback.
"And to give the position to someone who doesn't even care just frustrates me." He finished, which made Tsunade frown. "Fine then you brat, how about this." She said which got the chuunins attention.
"Let's make a wager, you and me in a one on one. If I win, you drop the issue and I'll be on my way." she said which made the blonde frown. "And if I win?" he said, which made Tsunade shrug. "Then I'll go under Sarutobi's wing and take over the position. I'll even throw in this thing." She said as she held up a blue necklace.
Naruto stared at it for a moment before shaking his head. "Don't want it, and I don't want YOU becoming hokage. Hell, it sounds more like a rigged condition for me to lose." He said which made Jiraiya and the rest of team 7 burst out laughing.
Tsunade scowled before she lobbed the necklace right at Naruto and slammed both her hands on the desk. "I'll take the job."
"Ah shit/shit/fuck!" were the replies of the three chuunin in the room.