Ninja Chef Naruto
By ______
Chapter Nine: Medicinal Soup With Ramen
#Top Secret Akatsuki Headquarters – Uzugakure#
Waking up, Kisame came to a startling and terrifying epiphany. "Hey, that brat was trying to eat me!" He then realized that his partner had dropped him off in his room...
But Samehada was missing!
#Top Secret Akatsuki Meeting Hall – Uzugakure#
"...And I simply suppressed the sealed creature's power with my Sharingan and fled." Itachi's voice rang blandly from behind closed doors, reaching Kisame's surprisingly existent ears just before he burst through them. The doors that is, not his there-but-shouldn't-be ears.
The shark-man immediately froze upon making eye-contact with numerous, slitted red eyes shifting and swirling about in a black shadowy mass that writhed on the wall. His entrance brought the attention of all twelve other ninja in the room, their cloaks whirling about them as they turned to face him. Yahiko snorted and turned away.
"So now that I know why you jackasses screwed up the distraction, it's my turn." Their illustrious leader pulled three folders from his cloak. "So, here's what I found." He flipped open the first folder. "The Yondaime Hokage had at least three aliases, including Minato Namikaze, Arashi Kazama and the Golden Flash. He married Kushina Uzumaki and eventually she gave birth to a set of twins, one Naruto Uzumaki and one Tatsumaki Uzumaki. On the day of their birth he sealed the kyuubi into one of them." He closed the folder, flipped through the second one and grimaced. "We'd assumed it was the boy, Naruto. The fact that he was the jinchuriki was common knowledge. We knew it, the villagers knew it, every file reports it. Hell, other nations knew it, with the civilians blabbing about it everywhere. But..." He closed the file with a flourish, throwing it violently at one of the others who shredded it long before it reached them. "He's dead. Alucard."
The red eyes lurking in every shadow of the room swiveled their focus onto the Akatsuki leader. "Hmm..." A sardonic voice grunted from a tall, long haired ex-Ame-nin. The disinterested gaze of the man himself didn't shift from Kisame in the least.
"The kyuubi, Alucard." Yahiko shouted, throwing a brace of kunai into the man's chest. "Pay attention you undead freak!"
Smirking arrogantly the man slowly plucked the knives from his chest. "Hmm... It's power has been fluctuating recently, becoming almost totally diluted and undetectable within the host... At least with biju kami active in the same area as well. I feel remnants of both the kami and oni Nibi, and another kami I never felt before. They must be growing at a faster rate. Hn, yes, it's still there, alive and recovering back to its usual power."
"Biju kami?" The quiet, feminine voice of their newest member inquired, looking bored with the meeting and sipping tea.
"The kami biju are a group of tailed gods Igudo began making when the oni biju appeared. The Tenkukai, the celestial realm of this world, was obsessed with themselves and holding supremacy over the Makai, or netherworld. When the oni biju first appeared they attempted to destroy them and failed miserably, effectively halving their numbers and limiting their influence on the world. Rikudo Sennin appeared around the same time and stole the reins of the human world from their control. They still maintain a presence in the spirit world that is practically unopposed, desu. Ultimately to maintain their perch, they created the kami biju as templates and left them to grow on their own, but have no means of control or influence over them, expecting fellow gods to simply fall in line with their own." An unexpected voice butted in, followed closely by... "Isn't Tobi smart! Praise me, praise me, praise me!"
Yahiko snorted. "Is the idiot right, Alucard?"
The man in question smirked and inclined his head slightly, gazing dangerously over the edge of his round sunglasses. "You expect the undead to know anything about the spirit world? The only thing I know about of any of this is that someone named Alexander, Lord of Destruction, decided to ditch the monstrosities here instead of giving them to Zetta and Salome as a wedding assassination attempt and I only remember that because the guy wouldn't shut up about it. That was the first time in memory I survived on the whim of my enemy and not the other way around." A wicked grin cut the man's face, showing his oversized canines to the room as he leaned backwards and laughed like a maniac. "But he'll learn what a mistake that was. Ga ha ha ha ha ha!"
"The situation is really complicated, dattebayo. When the oni biju appeared, Tenkukai started losing control of everything, so for the last few centuries they've been focused on making shinigami and otherwise suppressing the Reikai natives. They now control the spirit world through the Seireitei, holding king Yama hostage and locking away all the other powerful spirits so that they have complete control over the fate of the dead. But recently that stopped being enough as all kinds of super ninja started finding ways to become immortal and a new overlord decided to move in to the previously unoccupied Makai, not to mention that the spirits who live in the Reikai don't particularly care for the occupation by the gods. So, the gods are desperate to find a way to deal with everything at once and labeled anything they think has defied them as 'mazouku'. There are seven mazouku in this room right now!" Tobi chattered excitedly, his mask spinning slowly around his eye.
"Where the hell are you learning this crap?" Yahiko shouted back, disbelieving.
"Tobi's other half told Tobi to use his Sharingan uber-ness to spy on everything beyond mortal comprehension, so Tobi does."
"Phef. Anyway, moving on." The orange-haired leader flipped open the last folder. "Virtually nothing is known about Tatsumaki Uzumaki. Her mother took her from the village within four months of her being born and traveled to a secret location to shake off all pursuit, being joined only by Jiraiya when her brother's remains were found. Even if Alucard can barely tell where they are outside of a country-sized guess, we can tell that the kyuubi's host started wondering around soon after the day Naruto Uzumaki was assumed killed, rather like the village backing her was suddenly aware that someone didn't want their weapon to grow up. Between all this, we've found the kyuubi jinchuriki."
With a genjutsu a semi-transparent, three-dimensional replica of the girl started floating in a slow turn in the center of the room. "Tatsumaki Uzumaki, known alias of Karyu Namikaze. Tobi, Kekko, you two will retrieve her at the earliest point you can. Itachi and Kisame, provide a distraction so they can get to her sooner. The last thing we need is for someone with her genetics to have any further time to develop into the weapon she's meant to be. If we're lucky, Jiraiya's sentimentality got the better of him and he'll have locked the kyuubi's chakra away and only lightly trained her. If we're not she'll have all her mother's skills, everything Jiraiya can teach in eight years and the kyuubi to fall back on." Yahiko grimaced at the illusionary girl.
"Not only that, but by convincing everyone the kyuubi was sealed elsewhere she'll also have the support and love of her village as the triumphant daughter of their greatest hero." Konan stated evaluatively. "Where the others will have to stop somewhere around their demon's level from the lack of support, she'll just keep growing and growing limitlessly. We'll need to take her down before she can reach such a state... Let's not forget how powerful Ed got after Nagato forgot to make sure he was dead."
"I cut off an arm and a leg, okay? Who lives through something like that and isn't crippled for life, huh?" Pein objected, his two surviving paths poofing into existence beside him.
"You lost four paths! Kami-dammit, who the hell were you fighting? Don't answer that. Alucard." Yahiko broke in.
"I only have two corpses on hand, a betrayed devotee of the god of war and another cursed warrior." The undead being replied lazily, tugging at the white gloves that kept his powers bound in service.
"A similar curse to the old ashura path's?" Pein asked suspiciously. The Nosferatu grinned, his mouth unnaturally wide and showing the full set of fangs. "So it'll be helpless in water, great."
The two forms slowly emerged from the writhing shadow, pale as death, but perfectly preserved. The Rinnegan gazed upon them and they vanished.
#Otogakure#
Soon after he arrived and ensured his students were accounted for, Naruto set about curing his new, adoptive little sister's fever. As he wasn't very much of a medi-nin personally, what with his absolutely monstrous regeneration and until recent lack of others to care for, his idea of how to fix such things often involved food. Well made, specifically cooked to be healthy food, consisting of ingredients that while alive are slightly to highly poisonous. In other words, Suna-nin, Kusa-nin or even, at rare times, Doku-nin.
As it was a fairly high fever and her entire face seemed to be bright red, he decided on Kusa-nin soup with ramen, just to be on the safe side.
He gently tilted her head, trying to ignore how creepy her glazed, unseeing eyes looked and carefully guided the spoon filled with broth to her lips.
As soon as she drank a sharp clarity replaced the dazed glassiness, which quickly narrowed in a glare even as the flush in her face turned atomic. Hanabi snatched the spoon and the bowl of soup from him, a truly remarkable feat given her obvious visual impairment.
Though the way she kept throwing glances at him while he watched her eat was disturbing... unless...
"You can see!" He blurted out, nearly falling over from surprise.
Hanabi frowned. "Of course I -slurp- can baka! -slurp-." The soup was delicious.
"But, but... Imouto-chan, your eyes, they're all... white..." Naruto countered before staring suspiciously at the ramen sitting oh so innocently on the table. He knew his cooking was good, but getting rid of blindness? Taking out a set of chopsticks, he reached for it...
Only to suddenly be blocked off by a spoon in an aggressive offensive display of chakra control that broke clean through both sticks.
"That's mine!" The petite girl told before returning her attention to the soup. Why couldn't the branch house cook like this?
"Eh, imouto-chan..." The chef started, suddenly finding his recently adopted little sister pouting at him with just a trace hint of hope. "Uh... Nevermind."
The girl gave a haughty, arrogant sort of smirk nobles were well known for, except with a light, grudging undertone of actual affection beneath it. She finished one bowl and grabbed the other greedily, considering her situation.
She had been kidnapped by an unknown village. Arguably that was a bad thing, but since the guy who kidnapped her assumed she was blind and was treating her like a little sister was suppose to be treated when an overbearing father wasn't sabotaging the relationship, she was going to leave that as an undecided. Also, the guy who kidnapped her and was now pampering her had a certain something. A something that, were she older than she was, she would refer to as sexiness, or perhaps kitsune-charm if she was aware enough by then. As it was there was an unexplained impulse to call him 'mine!' and ignore any consequences.
But a clanhead could not be impulsive. Nope, even if the food said person provided was to die for, in a rather literal sense that she was presently unaware of, she wasn't going to base her decision on one factor. It was tempting though, the soup really was that good and she had never tasted anything as exquisite as the ramen. Her training kicked in and she started looking at this from more angles.
The shinobi appeared to have no real security towards holding her here, escape would be far too easy. Maybe a trap, though she was inclined to believe she wasn't being held here as a prisoner. Despite the feel of the base, experimentation on her seemed highly unlikely, as did forced breeding. Hmm...
If she, for whatever reason, did decide to stay here, what far reaching effects could be expected? ...Well, she wouldn't be getting a caged bird seal. Onee-chan would become the clanhead and heir... She, herself would never have to see that monster of a father again, though leaving poor onee-chan with him was unfortunate... She'd get to eat like this regularly... She'd get to stay with... Uh...
"Hey, what's your name?" Hanabi suddenly asked, realizing she was lacking a bit of information that might prove vital at this point.
"Eh? Oh, I didn't tell you yet did I? I'm Naruto. What's your name imouto-chan?" The guy said happily, before picking up a napkin and dabbing some broth off of her check.
"H, Hanabi..." She choked out, taking completely off guard by the surprisingly affectionate gesture. Her face grew hot all of a sudden.
"Tsk. Looks like the fever's back. That's really weird." Naruto commented, gently running a hand through her bangs to gauge her temperature from her forehead.
Flustered, she batted his hand away. "I'm fine, you jerk." Honestly, making her feel all... strange. Probably a genjutsu.
"Alright, alright. Let's get you to bed then, it's been a long day, neh?" The jounin told her before leading her off down a hall away from the cafeteria. "The village here doesn't have many personally owned buildings, so we'll be living in the barracks okay?"
That certainly didn't help calm her nerves like he had intended it to, but Hanabi wasn't one to let unease show. "I'd better have my own bathroom." She declared, internally berating herself for that being the best she could come up with.
"Each personnel room has a basic bathroom, but if you want to take an actual bath, you'll need to go to the bathhouse. The barracks only has showers." Her kidnapper told her, before stopping in front of a door. "This will be your room, okay? It's right next to mine and my genin team's so come to either of us if you need anything. Sweet dreams, imouto-chan."
Naruto gave the confused and slightly alarmed girl a light peck on the forehead before sending her off to bed. Once in her room, as the haze from a kitsune-charm enhanced kiss on the forehead faded, she decided that things were better off for her sister and clan if she stayed here. Surely her sacrifice wouldn't be in vain, right? And while she was far too young to even be aware of... certain things, the impulse to be close to her new big brother was still very strong.
Having bade his new little sister good night, Naruto yawned and stalked to the next door on the right, ready to go to bed himself. Fighting summon bosses had really leeched his chakra and the fight with the ultimate sashimi had somehow screwed up his equilibrium, though the effect came mercifully late compared to the event in question. He felt a little off, but nothing a good nap wouldn't cure.
Now, Yugito wasn't much of a girl. She was first and foremost a jinchuriki, with weapon directly underlaying that and kunoichi filling in what bits were left, meaning that her views as a girl were limited almost solely within the range of being a kunoichi. Things like modesty, shame and embarrassment were outside her scope and had little effect on her world view, other than knowing that other people had them for some reason. Seduction and sex were simply tools waiting to be taken out and used in her opinion, not so much from personal experience as from lessons instilled in true kunoichi.
She had decided she wanted Naruto for various reasons and was going to go about it in a manner she was sure would succeed. Utilizing her training, about the only emotions she expressly felt was excitement and nervousness. She was excited by what she was doing, sneaking into his room and presenting herself and just a little nervous about the minute possibility of rejection. She did her best to ignore both.
So it came to pass that, upon opening the door to his room, Naruto was treated to the sight of a thong-clad Yugito lounging on his bed with nothing else on. On top of the sheets.
His eyes widened and he froze, equal parts dreading the beating to come and riveted by the view spread before him.
Yugito grinned cattily, knowing rejection was not going to be a problem. With a flowing grace that mixed the smooth movements of a cat with those of a kunoichi, she slid off his bed and stalked to him, her carefully neutral face betrayed only by two tiny nubs on her torso that practically shouted her excitement. Or that the room was a bit chilly, which could certainly be true for her, seeing how she lacked any clothes to keep her warm.
She leaned in once she was a bit closer, rubbing her cheek against his and purring in anticipation of her eminent conquest. He shivered, his cheek apparently just as sensitive as her own. Still purring, she rested her head on his shoulder and lightly wrapped her arms around his waist from behind, giving her the leverage to none-to-subtly press his back against her well formed torso. "Hmm..." She purred out lazily. "Let's go to bed."
The poor fool swallowed and shifted, rubbing against her without intending to. "Uh... this is... my room?" He quietly protested, completely overwhelmed.
If that wasn't ego-boosting...
"Oh sensei, I was just..." A new, feminine voice suddenly piped in from that doorway before admitting a lingerie-clad Kin into the room. She froze and frowned from the entryway. "Who are you?"
Yugito unhappily eased her grip on her new favorite toy to be able to face the new-comer she now had to deal with. Her slitted eyes narrowed slightly as they found the top-heavy kunoichi in question. Damn, those were big... And they were surprisingly perky for their size too, not sagging like physics said they would. The jinchuriki winced imagining the back pain those had to give. If not for the nekomata's assistance, her own comparatively small set would be giving her all kinds of problems and they weren't even half that large.
And while her enormous breasts distracted Yugito the girl in semi-transparent underwear stepped boldly forward and seized an ear.
"Gya! Hey, those are sensitive! Let go!" The relatively under-endowed jinchuriki was quickly hauled off her victim.
"You're coming with me. We need to set some rules." Kin replied, still tugging on the ever-so-slightly pointed ear to guide the practically naked girl out of her sensei's room.
Naruto watched as Kin's lacy, scanty-clad rear and Yugito's dental-floss thin, thong-clad butt disappeared around the frame of his doorway before the door closed. It was no longer bed time. No, it was now cold shower time.
And then the door peeked open again. "Onii-chan, I can't fall asleep. Can I stay with you for a while?"
Kami-sama must hate him.
#Bath House#
Yugito shrieked unhappily as she discovered the busty young girl was a lot stronger than she appeared. With a casual flick of her wrist, Kin had thrown the now nude kunoichi into the large, hot spring themed bath before starting to strip off her own might-as-well-be-naked underwear and joining her.
The cat jinchuriki fumed. If this girl was being trained by her chosen mate, then she couldn't just kill her. In her own life only the Raikage, Kirabi and her personal instructor had had any sort of affection for her. Given the way she was deprived love compared to normal people, student teacher relationships must run pretty deep. Trying to remain aloof, she observed the other girl curiously.
"Ah. The bath really is the kind of place to have these discussions, isn't it?" Kin asked, lounging in the water.
Beneath the water Yugito subtly made the handsigns to disspell a genjutsu and pulsed her chakra. No reaction. Feeling inadequate, she turned her head away and tried to convince herself that some guys liked breasts of merely above average size. This was all the Icha Icha series' fault, the damn author drew almost every girl in proportion to that damn Tsunade. Oh, if she ever found him...
"Eh heh heh. So um... You won't happen to know anything about... er, forming and being in a harem, would you?" The Oto-nin asked, shifting her weight around and tracing a circle on the bath's rim.
Yugito considered that question. "Only in the capacity for slipping in and killing the lord in question."
"Ack, no. Not like that, I mean... Well, see, the young kunoichi's guide to seduction and romance-"
"Oh, you mean like that." Yugito tilted her head. "It means you'd have to share. And the one you were sharing would need lots of stamina... What are you trying to say?"
"Ah, well, stamina... right." Kin tried to stem the bleeding from her nose. "Yes, stamina. Stamina isn't a problem, sensei has lots of stamina."
The jinchuriki eyed the babbling girl. "Sensei? Hmm... Just who else is in this 'harem' that you're talking about?"
"Oh, well, there's me. And then there'll be you and once we find a few more girls..."
Yugito laughed, stretching out languidly. "And I would join you and a few others instead of taking him for myself because?"
"Obviously, with his stamina you'd never be able to satisfy him alone and once we have enough girls we can keep others away more effectively. Besides, everyone knows guys will go after the greater number of girls over any single one. All I have to say is that I'm open to it and you'll be left out in the cold." Kin stated evenly, blushing from her forehead to her chest.
Yugito silently admitted that the girl had a point. It certainly explained why lords and clan heads always had harems. But she couldn't admit defeat while it was still a one on one competition. "Oh? That maybe true, but it's still just you and me, so if I act first and tell him the exact same thing..."
Kin growled and stood up. "Do you want to fight?"
Yugito smirked, stood and took up a suggestive pose. "A young girl like you can't be expected to understand, but experience is often a deciding factor." She could tell by the raven-haired girl's face that she believed the bluff. Sucker.
Kin was devastated. Her plan, the ultimate strategy to get sensei and declare his greatness to the heavens was... was... Suddenly she gripped her left forearm tight and pointed the open hand at the former Kumo-nin. The kanji for 'pet' slowly faded into existence on her left palm. "You may not realize it, but you're a supernatural creature!"
"H, hey. Wait a second, let's just calm down." Yugito murmured placatingly. The nekomata in her head was yowling for her to run away. This wasn't good.
"I'll show you experience!" Kin cried, a wave of chakra building in the character on her hand. "Good girl!"
The chakra released and Yugito immediately clamped her thighs together, one hand automatically diving for her crotch, the other seizing one of her breasts as her back arched and her legs buckled. She shrieked in pleasure as her senses were overwhelmed and she whited out.
Yugito groaned as she fought her way back to consciousness. Her body was tingling and exhausted, but in a sort of pleasant, warm way. Afterglow, she mental labeled it, remembering being warned about the state in kunoichi training. It was a dangerous time, when area awareness and one's ability to sense their surroundings was sharply limited. Even a civilian could, if they were careful enough, sneak up and surprise a kunoichi in such a state.
With a lurch she focused on what she could feel, hear and smell before daring to open her eyes. She was laying in heated water still, doubtlessly the bath, propped by something soft and warm that partially wrapped around her. There wasn't much to hear, just the water flowing down through the heating system and back, though there was a rather strong scent of lilacs.
She opened her eyes was instantly struggling.
"Leggo." She managed to slur out, finding her body almost completely devoid of energy.
"If I do, you might drown." Kin told her warmly. "As it is, you're lucky I caught you when I did."
Yugito was sitting in the bath still, true. But somehow between the time she whited out and the time she came to she had ended up in the shorter kunoichi's lap and from there slumped against her with the younger girl's arm holding her in place.
Her training covered men and men only, finding herself thrust into an unexpected situation like this with a woman was not something she was trained to handle. If you replaced kunoichi with shinobi she would have almost automatically started flirting and cooing in his ear, despite her weakened state. With her weakness and the drastic difference of gender, however... She was shocked out of her trained seduction mode and that loss knocked away the mask of secure, confident bravado that let her stand naked in front of other unabashed and unapologetic.
Naturally she was mortified.
"Don' ca' leggo." The poor jinchuriki tried to flail, but Kin was conspicuously stronger when both of them were in top form.
"Don't be that way, we're practically sisters now. If you let a little thing like sitting in another girl's lap in the baths get to you, how can you ever hope to act seductive during an orgy?"
Yugito made a choking noise but failed to articulate a response. Clearly the Oto-nin was insane.
"Exactly. Now, are you going to accept being in sensei's harem... or..." The Kumo-nin found the grip on her shifting and tightening slightly. She squirmed, decidedly unhappy with being in such a weak state. There was also a minor issue of really, really not wanting to think about what the squishy thing pressed against her ribs was. "...would you like me to try the punishment hand instead?"
This called her attention to the two palms being presented to her. One had a kanji for 'pet', the other, for 'sit'. Terrified of the implications, she quickly shook her head.
"Good." The girl chirped happily, suddenly hugging Yugito tightly. "I hope we can learn a lot from each other, onee-chan!" Kin squealed, rubbing her face against the taller girl's collar.
Taking a moment to make she could speak correctly, the jinchuriki then asked what could be the most important question of this entire encounter. "Why?"
"Well you were just saying how you were experienced and I saw the way you were ogling my 'gravity definite version one' technique, so we have things to exchange and..."
Yugito coughed to quiet her. "I mean... meant, why is your sensei having you form a harem for him?"
"Oh, sensei doesn't know a thing about it, I want it to be a surprise. See, sensei is... well, he's just so..." Kin sighed dreamily. "I mean, you know, he's... Sensei..." The love struck girl huskily finished, blood slowly dripping from her nose again. "One girl can't possibly be enough! How could I possibly hope to satisfy him without six or seven sisters to help me?"
"S, six or seven?" Yugito repeated in disbelief.
"Oh you're right! We'll probably need around nine of us, total." Kin misinterpreted just what her captive couldn't belief. Suddenly the mokuton user turned her focus back onto the girl in her lap. The mischievous smirk promised horrible, terrible things in the Kumo-nin's near future. "Hmm... You don't have a place to stay in Otogakure, do you? You can share with me, it'll help us get used to each other. The bed might be a bit narrow for two, but we'll manage, right? Oh, and you can tell me where you hid the rest of your clothes in the morning!"
Yugito mewled weakly as the Oto-nin suddenly stood, holding her bridal style as if she didn't weight anything at all. She was displeased to note that there was something very heavy, soft and warm resting on her stomach and thighs, but she absolutely refused to acknowledge what the something was, despite having a pretty good idea given the build of the smaller girl.
The jinchuriki really, really hoped this wasn't going where she thought it was going. Seductions she could deal with, she was in control and that made it okay. Being as weak as a kitten in the mercies of a clearly not-quite-sane kunoichi who seemed to be suggesting her first real time be sapphic was not.
Please let Icha Icha GXP have been a lie!
#Konohagakure#
"All the other summons have dispelled already, so why has that one not?" Hiashi demanded from the Hokage.
"Phef, I don't know? Does it really matter, it stopped walking around after Jiraiya swamped its feet so just rebuild out of its reach and we'll find out how to kill it when everything else is taken care of." Obito replied lazily, skimming some paperwork in the temporary command tent, looking to all the world as though he was even more disinterested than he actually was. A summons that never dispelled was an oddity he really wanted to look into, but as Hokage there was just too much for him to deal with.
"That creature is in the middle of the traditional Hyuga compound. We can not rebuild until it has been dealt with." The white-eyed man countered in a haughty, disdaining tone.
"I don't know, I kind of thought there were more important things for you to be dealing with. Your daughter, for instance." Obito focused a bit of fire-imbued chakra into the sheet and watched in satisfaction as it burst into flames before crumbling into ash and falling from his fingers.
Hiashi quailed at the suggestion. He was uncertain of how Hinata's sister had been kidnapped, but the girl had since avoided him. He had caught, at most, three glimpses of her since her last match in the finals. But it hardly mattered now, until a search team found and returned Hanabi there was no grounds to place the seal on her.
First his wife, giving her life to try and stall the Kumo-nin so soon after giving birth to Hanabi. Then his brother, choosing to sacrifice himself for Hiashi's sake. Both lost because Hinata had been too weak to draw the attention of her sentries. Too weak to even fight back.
He had always resented the girl for that, driving away any comfort she could find and leaving her as weak as ever so that when the time came he could hand her off to wallow and suffer. Some part of him knew it wasn't truly her fault, that she wasn't intentionally mocking him by reminding him of his deceased wife. That sometimes life really was so unfair as to take everything from you, even a deserving target for your revenge.
But things moved swiftly and no matter how illogical, the resentment remained. Two of his closest, most precious people had sacrificed themselves so that Hinata could live. He knew that, yet still all her could see when he looked at the girl was a lack of gratitude or respect for the ones who died for her. An unwillingness and inability to grow strong on her own so that more protectors wouldn't have to die on her behalf. A mockery of what her mother and uncle represented.
"Ah, Hatake-san. I was expecting you. You can go Hiashi." The arrogant man who had somehow been made Hokage told him, shaking the Hyuga lord from his thoughts.
The white-eyed clanhead left, decidedly unhappy with the world.
"Now then." Obito quickly performed a few half-signs with his free hand and put up a privacy jutsu as another request for assistance was turned to smoldering ashes. "Would you care to explain why Sasuke was under a genjutsu to re-enact scenes from Icha Icha during the finals?"
Kakashi glanced over the cover of S-Icha-Icha-Ed. "Seemed like a good idea at the time." He shrugged, turning his attention back to the book.
Obito pinched his nose. "So somehow you got it in your head that putting a Sharingan reinforced genjutsu on a genin clanhead that basically compelled him to rape a kunoichi from a foreign village in front of various lords from across the elemental nations was a good idea. How, exactly?"
The cyclopes flipped a page. "The Mangekyo is activated by extreme stress, I figured attempting to perform such scenes in front of a vast collection of people would cause some form of anxiety and poof, free Mangekyo without the corpse usually involved." It was a very skillful save if the jounin had ever heard one.
Obito sighed and rubbed his temples. "In a perverse way you're lucky, Hatake. Between how disjointed and unevenly matched the fights were, the sleep jutsu used and the attack on our village, we were able to pass it off as part of a genjutsu designed to damage the Uchiha clan name. All the pet-nins the visiting lords had that might have disproved this were slaughter by the orange masked Akatsuki shinobi. But..." Obito slammed his palm on the desk as he stood, glaring at his subordinate. "You are not going to attempt to give Sasuke the Mangekyo again, understood?"
"Hai, hai." Kakashi murmured in agreement, turning another page.
"Because if you do, I'll have Jiraiya give me spoilers for everything he writes..."
"Yes, Hokage-sama. I understand completely." The one-eyed jounin closed his precious book and saluted.
"Good. There's another reason I called you here, though. As you can probably guess, the village is in a difficult position. While overall casualties were low, the complete destruction of the buildings that composed Konohagakure is an almost unbearable blow to morale and the number of injured is high. Not to mention the numerous Anbu corpses littering every surface that we'll have to clean up before we can rebuild. Given the circumstances, I'm sending out three genin teams with Jiraiya on an... evaluation mission. Currently our forces are down and the reserve force is tapped out, so one of the teams is going to have Jiraiya's apprentice added since we need everything we can get back in circulation again. The candidate teams are yours, Kurenai's and Gai's. The mission will be fairly simple and you're only along to evaluate how she interacts with everyone to find the best teamwork possible. Your mission will be simple, find Tsunade and get her to return here. By whatever means necessary. The Sandaime was too lenient and we're almost to a crisis point, we need our best medic home."
Kakashi swallowed. That, that was a suicide mission... "Ahem, the genin's name, sir?" But rather a suicide mission than having spoilers read to him.
Obito smirked. "Karyu Namikaze."
Suddenly the village was filled with a foghorn like cry of anguish and the ground rumbled.
"Dammit, I told them to wait until we had the resources to get rid of it." Obito shouted, disappearing from the office to make sure the apparently eternal colossus summons didn't break free and trample the partially rebuilt village. Again.
Kakashi's nerveless fingers dropped his book.
#Otogakure#
Zaku sighed, deactivating the green glow of a diagnostic jutsu. Kimimaro coughed deeply and a slight trickled of blood dribbled from one corner of his mouth.
"How is he?" His illustrious village leader asked, still in his borrowed body's natural form.
"As near as I can tell, every time he uses the seal it starts eating away at his coil. It's not accelerating a disease like Kabuto's notes suggested, it's... I think it's making his body devour itself." Zaku shuffled nervously, deeply hoping to impress his superior.
Orochimaru frowned thoughtfully, the expression coming across as something of a pout on the feminine face he was wearing. "I see. The same effect forces me to flee to a new body every three years..." For a brief moment the Otokage considered the problem. "Ku ku ku, so by applying a cursed seal I accelerate the process. No wonder the amount of time seemed to grow shorter with each new body."
He failed to realize, of course, that it was part of a hollow's nature to need to consume energy directly from an outside source and that translated into those he marked as a side-effect. But then he didn't really know what he had made himself into to become immortal either.
"Even with all the research notes we have, this is just beyond my abilities. I'm sorry I failed you Orochimaru-sama." Zaku bowed low.
Orochimaru took a moment to reply, putting some deliberation into his answer. Kimimaro and Naruto had both fought against forces far beyond anything he could have expected them to, illustrating a principle the Otokage had long forgotten. Valuable subordinates were hard to come by, exceedingly so if you wanted them to be truly loyal to you. No one was as loyal as Kimimaro and while the body would be nice, it was better to have support. There were plenty of exceptionally fit enemies to steal the bodies of, after all.
"Tell Naruto he will be joining me for a mission and needs to meet me at the gate in an hour." He had come to a decision. While subordinates were disposable, so was the body he was wearing. With either, the better care he took with it, the rarer he'd need to find a suitable replacement.
And there was only one potential medic he could expect to understand unique physiology quickly enough to save Kimimaro. Besides, wouldn't it just enrage Jiraiya and Sarutobi to know Tsunade still chose him over both them and the village? Ku ku ku...
How to seduce her though? Money? Knowledge? Those experiments he no longer needed in section 6? That girl he'd transformed in sea country? Perhaps reviving her dead brother and that foolish lover of hers as undead zombie servants?
There was so very much to consider, should he wear his actual face or the friendly mask she'd associate with as her old teammate? Should he kill her assistant to keep the girl from interfering? Should he pretend to like the stupid, flirty snake jokes she always seemed to make around him? Should he think of himself as whatever gender the body was or just stick to male at all times?
But more importantly, if he found out why the cursed seal kept killing the ninja who used it, he could probably find a way to tie that in with upping the survival rate and creating stronger, faster, more numerous cursed seal zombies for the inevitable day he'd need to unleash them. There was a world's worth of people out there determined to kill him, after all, soon or later there'd come a day he'd need to replace that world by clearing the slate.
It was about this time he discovered that his undisguised form had an evil laugh reminiscent of a giggling high school girl.
#Author's Notes#
Well I'm back. And a new quarter has started, so updates will be sparse. Very sparse. There are time I wonder just what I was thinking when I signed up for this, but meh. It'll pay off later on. Or so I tell myself.
So, anyways... This chapter really didn't want to be written. I mean, like, 'sitting at the screen and watching it flicker dimly in the onset of the dawn without having done anything' didn't want to be written. But now it's over.
And this chapter is, one hundred percent, completely, set-up for things later to come. Sad, isn't it?
There really isn't all that much I have to say and complain about now... Well, except that I doubt I'll ever read Naruto again... And that Gol can't possibly be Ace's father. If he is, that means Dragon may not come and we'll never get to see the revolutionary army in action!
But that's One Piece, so I don't expect many of you care.
And before we leave off on that note, ashura paths are always going to sink. Wanna guess why?
Desu/Dattebayo – Things added to the end of a sentence to emphasize whatever you said before it. Desu is something along the lines of 'that it is' and dattebayo was translated as 'believe it' in the Naruto dubs. I expect Tobi will be pretty much the only character to use such phrases.