Naruto: Kung Fu Guardian
Chapter 11: Visitors
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Disclaimer: I borrowed Narutoverse from Kishimoto and two techniques from Jin Yong. Everything else, including the explanation of how those techniques work, though, is mine.
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Naruto looked away as tears swelled up in his eyes and asked, "How long will I be gone?"
At this moment, Anko came back with Naruto's favorite ramen orders. In tote were Tenten, Sakura, and Hinata; all of whom had looks of disbelief on their faces.
Naruto's ears and nose had lost some of their sensitivity without the Nine-tailed Fox's influence, and with his vision blurred by tears, he was unable to discern who had just walked in with Anko. He had to turn aside and wipe the tears off to get a better look.
Although they had followed Anko to the room, the three girls were still standing near the doorway, clearly intimidated by the strong commanding auras of the adults present.
It was heart wrenching for Naruto to look at their expressions, especially the sadness on both Hinata and Sakura's faces. He and Tenten did not really have that kind of closeness yet, but he knew he would miss her as well.
Meanwhile Anko had left Naruto's orders on a table next to his bed. It was an order fit for three persons, but such small amount was peanuts compared to the blond's normal intake.
For a moment the lackluster twelve-year-old seemed to have come alive to the savory smell of his favorite food. He exhibited strength and agility that did not seem possible before. He grabbed the food, unwrapped the packaging, and was digging in like there was no tomorrow.
Wu raised an eyebrow at Naruto's sudden surge of energy and mentally filed it for later.
On the other hand, Anko and Asuma looked each other with a worried face when they saw Naruto's pace slowed down after the first bowl, though he was still on target to finish the rest.
They would know. Both had taken Naruto to Ichiruka's frequently enough to know not to offer to treat too often. They would know how much the blond could put away before this waterfall incident – even when he wasn't feeling well – 10 bowls minimum.
They thought to themselves, 'Must be another side-effect of Kyuubi's dormancy,' if one could call not having a ferocious appetite for something as unhealthy as ramen to be a 'side-effect.'
"Three years in all," answered Hizuren with a smile as he watched Naruto down his last bowl of ramen. He didn't take Naruto out to eat as frequently as Asuma or Anko because of his busy schedule so he didn't notice the little nuance that they had. "But you'll be back for the Chuunin Exam, though, which is just six months."
Hinata and Sakura let out a gasp when they heard that answer. Tenten, who was standing between the two, reached her arms around them both and gave them a comforting hug. It was easier for her to act nonchalant about it; however, inside she wished he would be around for her to get to know him better.
"Hehe," Wu pretended to hold in his laughter, which only drew more attention. "With three young ladies needing your attention, you better learn from your dad's mistake … not to neglect any of them … or there will be hell to pay."
Naruto's face flashed a blush and quickly turned into one being extremely annoyed. He wanted to give Wu a piece of his mind, but Anko was faster.
"Shut your traps Wu! Only I can get away insulting my 'Suma-kun."
Asuma glanced back and forth between his former KungFu ShiFu and his soon-to-be fiancée and sighed. 'Things will never get dull with her, will it?' His mouth formed a small smile as he thought about proposing tonight. 'Maybe that's not a bad thing after all.'
"What are you smiling about?" Anko suddenly snapped at him. "You'd better not be thinking about taking after the gaki's dating habits."
"I was not!"
"I don't have … I'm not dating!"
Anko ignored the respective, simultaneous shouts from the adoptive father and son. She walked up to her beau and twisted his right ear while saying, "Now that your son's awake, you have no more excuses," dragging him behind as she passed the three blushing girls and exited out of the room, heading to the nearest hotel room.
After an obviously-exaggerated act of shuttering in fright, Wu looked at Naruto and said, "Just think," tilting his head toward the three fan-girls while winking, "you got three times the problem."
Kakashi gave way to his perverted giggles as he came across a favorite scene of his in that infamous Icha Icha in his hands. The giggle coincidentally happened right after Wu's comment and caused the blush on the girls to deepen in shade.
Tenten thought to herself, 'Four if you count the absent Ino.'
Hizuren inconspicuously cleared his throat. Making eye contact with the remaining adults in the room, he said, "Since that Naruto is awake and already on his way to recovery, it's time for us grownups to return to our posts and tend to those items we had been neglecting."
"Ossu," replied Kakashi and Yuugao jointly with a short bow. They exited the room, one heading toward Inuzuka compound looking for Sasuke, and the other heading toward the ANBU headquarter to pack for that assassin mission she had been putting off.
Wu and the Sandaime were to last to go, and the Taoist priest had only left because of Hizuren's persistent insistence.
Once the adults were gone, the room became awkwardly silent, save the noisy hospital equipments humming in the background. The girls remained near the entrance door, having not quite made their way fully into the room yet.
Naruto couldn't quite comprehend why that was so. It seemed as if they were afraid of him. He put on his infamous false smile and said, "Don't worry. You can't catch what I have."
That broke the ice and got a light chuckle from the girls as they moved in closer to Naruto. Having just witnessed so many accomplished ninjas (and one weird looking foreigner with a commanding presence) in one room – all caring for their favorite blond – had been not only intimidating, but had also made their presence and any childish romantic notion seemed out-of-place and insignificant.
As they got closer, Naruto squinted his eyes and thought, 'What is this!?' His hands frantically went to his eyes and rubbed them as if to make certain that he wasn't seeing a mirage of sorts.
'What happened to my eyesight?'
He could not comprehend why the girls looked slightly but noticeably blurry when they stood by the doors and why their image became clearer once they got closer. When the Nine-Tails was still active, he never had to experience any blurry images, especially with distance of a room so confined as this patient room. 'Kyuubi …. That must be why….'
Before his thoughts could delve further into the vast amount of adjustments he would now have to make due to what that despicable Wu had done to Kyuubi, he was interrupted as he caught Sakura's words mid sentence.
"… do you feel, Naruto-kun?" asked Sakura, the first of the girls to speak. That was the line that she had been rehearsing since her arrival at the hospital. It wasn't that she didn't know how to talk to Naruto, like the blue-haired Hyuuga next to her. It was just that if she hadn't plan for at least something to say, she wouldn't know what to say to someone in a hospital.
"Dunno yet," replied the blond honestly, though slightly annoyed that his thoughts were abruptly interrupted, "I think I'm … normal."
'Why do I have the feeling that he didn't mean that in a good way?' mused Tenten while turning her head to see if Naruto's classmates had picked up the same vibe. 'Hm… I guess I'm overthinking things.'
Normal.
That used to be what Naruto wanted to be more than anything in the world when he was younger … when he was an orphan, ignored and unloved … when everyone thought of him as something to be shunned.
But now ... he would give anything to turn back the hands of time so as to reverse his own acts of stupidity in the mindscape. At least before Kyuubi's current dormancy, he knew he could always count on her chakra to heal him if and when he had to go all out to protect his precious people. With his security blanket gone ….
"Why are you leaving us, Naruto-kun?" asked Sakura. "If you go, what's going to happen to Team 7?"
Even though the three Genins on the so-called "Team 7" had just barely made their row call – they had only met once, and that was a mandatory introduction meeting with their sensei, had no experience together in doing any missions and did not even have a skills assessment – Sakura still had not gotten over how she scored not only one but both of the co-Rookies of the Year, Sasuke and Naruto, on the same team and subconsciously took every opportunity to remind other fan-girls, and herself, of her good fortune.
Perhaps she was also worried how embarrassing it would look in front of all the other fan-girls if Naruto's departure lead to the dismemberment of Team 7, which would mean her losing not only Naruto as a teammate, but Sasuke as well.
Naruto briefly furrowed his brows slightly at Sakura for interrupting his thoughts again, but quickly reassembled his fake smiling face and replied, "Well, Sakura-chan, I'm sure Anko-sensei will be more than adequate to fill in my spot during my absence. Plus, I heard she'll be your personal sensei; you should be happy."
"Wow, I wish I can get a personal sensei," whispered Tenten with an obvious tone of disappointment that one of her competitions for Naruto's affection would receive what seemed to her an unfair advantage to get stronger. Plus, she had heard about Anko and her mastery in a few of the weaponries that she had been dying to get Gai to show her.
Hinata was about to speak up when she heard Sakura hogging the air waves again.
"Why do I need another sensei anyway?" asked Naruto's teammate while shrugging off comment about how elated she should have been toward this rare privilege. "Isn't Kakashi-sensei enough?"
Tenten was about to give the bubblegum head a speech on the seriousness of being a Kunoichi ….
"Normally yes," replied Naruto, unknowingly cutting off Tenten's initiatives, "but … well … this way, he'll be able to give Sasuke-teme some one-on-one."
Hinata giggled timidly, relieved that Naruto was feeling up to some of his classroom antics.
Sakura, however, did not find it funny. Twitching her lips in annoyance at Naruto and Hinata, she shouted at the blond, "Hey! What do you have against Sasuke-kun, anyway?"
"Uh… nothing, Sakura-chan," replied Naruto while his left hand scratched his head, not really sure why she was yelling at him, since this was not the first time Naruto called Sasuke a teme in front of her. "Sasuke-teme" and "Naruto-dobe" were what Naruto and Sasuke called each other, respectively. In truth, they were good friends, or at least Naruto would like to think they were.
All this talk about Sasuke was making Sakura feel as if she had forgotten something. Her eye widened, and she quickly made her exit while waving goodbye. "Naruto-kun, Tenten, and Hinata, I have to go. I just remembered that Sasuke-kun told me to meet him somewhere for lunch."
She left too quickly for Naruto to stop her, and he had not recovered enough strength to chase after her, or so he believed. There were some things he wanted, no, needed, to tell her about their Uchiha teammate. Things that he had found disturbing, especially the evil stare that Sasuke had used against Ino when Iruka-sensei was announcing the team placements.
Alas, he no longer had a reason to strain his voice. She was already too far away to hear him.
"Um, N-naruto-k-kun."
The said blond stared one last time at the door where he last saw Sakura leaving abruptly before turning his eyes to the speaker.
"Yeah, Hinata-chan?"
Staring at her hands and pressing her index fingers together, Hinata managed to voice, "You s-still haven't answer the qu-question why you need to leave."
Tenten nodded in agreement and gave her a wink before saying, "That's right Hinata. He almost weaseled out on us."
"Oh, hehe," chuckled the blond who was hoping that they would not have noticed. Naruto could not really answer that question without divulging two SS-ranked secrets, namely his being the jinchuuriki of Kyuubi and the candidate of someone very important, if he was to correctly understand that weirdly dressed, but creepily fast Wu guy.
It was not that he was afraid or lacked the desire to share his secrets. Kami knew that he of all people wanted to open up and connect with people. Although the brunt of his loneliness had been fronted by the Sarutobis adopting him, he still felt like an outsider, unable to drop his mask completely or trust that any in his age group would see him as human if they were to find out about the Nine-Tails.
Naruto sighed and said, "My dad said that Master Wu taught him a few skills when he was away on his own training mission. Er … I think it must be a Sarutobi tradition."
It was the best nonclassified answer he could come up with.
Hinata might be timid, but she was far from stupid or gullible. Although her Hyuuga training detected no falsehood in Naruto's statement or body language, she was able to tell that Naruto was not disclosing everything.
She sighed after him, knowing that her crush was far from ready for a relationship, not that she was brave enough to approach him about one … yet.
While the Hyuuga heiress was talking with Naruto, Tenten was staring at the sword leaning against the nightstand – the same one that she had seen Naruto carry when they first met. Though it was not as masterfully crafted as Wu's was, Tenten could still see that the sword was special in its own right.
She picked it up like someone who knew how to hold one and twirled it in her hand, checking out its lightness. Impressed, she stepped into her own little world, oblivious to the fact that she was holding Naruto's sword or that others might be watching her. Smiling, she pulled it out of its sheath and performed two quick rudimentary slice strokes.
"Jiji gave that to me on my tenth birthday," the sword owner said to her, impressed by the way she was examining it.
Tenten, awaken from her own stupor, blushed that she had been caught committing such a gross faux pas.
Most ninja combats were won because one side underestimated its opponents or failed to retain the element of surprise, which mostly stemmed from unique clan techniques, Kekkei Genkai, or special weaponry. Thus, things attributing to that "surprise" were usually guarded secrets and not looked at kindly when someone, even from the same village, snooped around, which was essentially what Tenten was doing.
Downplaying her mistake, Naruto asked, "So what do you think of it?"
Gingerly Tenten placed the sword back into its sheath and returned it to its place, leaning next to the nightstand.
"Sorry about that. I get carry away sometimes when I see an unusually rare weapon. Your sword looks like it's been passed down through quite a few skillful swordsmen. It has very few recent scratch marks, which means either the one that had it before you either didn't use it very much, or he was very good with it. I believe it's the latter."
Naruto smiled approvingly while saying, "Yeah, I believe he was too."
(Unbeknownst to them both, they were mostly correct about the sword's previous wielder. They were only wrong about her gender.)
"Really?" asked the elated weapon specialist, who then continued to ramble, "Did you notice this scratch on …?"
At that moment, Naruto suddenly blanked out briefly, during which a flash of blank nothingness surrounded him as he heard a muffled voice sounding out something incoherent in the background.
When his consciousness returned to him, he whispered, "Kyu?"
Tenten and Hinata looked puzzled at each other and mouthed Nine after Naruto.
"Ano, N-naruto, are you m-missing s-something?" asked Hinata, while activating her Kekkei Genkai, hoping to find whatever it was that had nine of.
That familiar welcoming voice brought him back to reality. Naruto covered his mouth and gasped as he realized what he had nearly said.
Seeing that Hinata already has her Bakyugan activated, the blond asked, "Hinata-chan, can you check on Sakura and Sasuke for me, please? Don't ask how I know, but I think they are in trouble."
The blue-haired girl nodded and poured more chakra into her eyes with a focused intent.
The room became silent again, save the faint beeping equipments in the background.
Hinata focused first on the training grounds, nearby which the hospital was conveniently built. Nothing. Her focus then shifted towards the few nearby restaurants such as Naruto's favorite ramen stand. Fruitless again. Finally her search took her to just outside the library where she saw Sakura running toward Sasuke, who was waiting under a tree out front.
"Found them," she announced. Just when she was about to end her technique and let fatigue overcome her ….
"Was there anyone lying in wait for them?" asked Naruto urgently.
Hinata made one last attempt and before long she gasped in shock and allowed her Byakugan to collapse with it.
"Naruto-kun …."
That gasp was the only confirmation Naruto needed. Not waiting for Hinata to finish her sentence, the blond flung the covers off of him, swung his legs to the side, and jumped on to the floor.
"… two of them …"
While Hinata continued explaining, Naruto quickly got dressed. When he was slipping on his sandals, he paused barely long enough to process an alarming detail of Hinata's report.
"… some cloak with cloud patterns."
Naruto's eyes widen and whispered, "No!"
Just as he was getting ready to run out the door, in the corner of his eyes, he saw his sword sailing towards him. He quickly caught it and said, "Thanks, Ten-chan!"
"But, Naruto …" Tenten started to say.
"Oh, don't follow me," he told them while making an extra effort to turn around just long enough to make eye contact with them to cement his seriousness. "Go and get the Hokage and tell him that Akatsuki is here."
Then he was out of the room, running at a pace faster than Hinata or Tenten ever thought possible for someone who just woke up from a three-day coma.
Tenten was in disbelief though, and Hinata soon found out why.
"… I didn't throw that sword to you," the bun-haired brunette whispered what she had originally wanted to say to the departed boy. "… it just sorta flew to you."
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Naruto was running as fast as he could physically manage after having been bedridden for the past three days, which was not fast at all. For every step he pounded onto the ground, he felt the ground punishing his feet. Pain from them shot to his knees. Although this was normal to anyone else exerting oneself running, this feeling was new to the changed Naruto and nearly had him tripped on his tenth stride.
Before the Kyuubi suppression, he would have pumped chakra into his legs and jumped out of the window from his room on the third floor. Now, still holding off on attempting to mold chakra, he was left with taking the flight of stairs.
He cursed at himself, "Damn! You had to tick that Wu-baka off before asking him if you could mold chakra."
Once he got to the first floor and seeing the big crowd of well-wishing fan-girls, however, all precautionary measures came off. He would rather be back in that damnable hospital bed for three weeks more than hoping to survive a female mob half the size of the Wave population.
Doing it out of impulse more than having carefully thought it through, he channeled energy into his legs and leapt over the crowd before him, somersaulting in mid air, and landed under the front doors of the hospital main entrance. He did not even take the time to be astonished at how he had managed such a feat. He continued running towards the library, unbeknownst to him, at a much faster pace.
The girls that had gathered were naturally disappointed now that their object of infatuation had just left the building. Something unusual caught the attention of one of the girls closest to reaching Naruto before he'd performed that acrobatic leap.
She bent down for a closer examination and found the ground where Naruto had taken flight was slightly crackled. From its epicenter, the crackling web rippled outward, forming an indentation on the floors.
She gasped in an undertone, "Whoa!"
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'What should I do now?' the running blond thought to himself. 'I don't have Kyuubi, so I can't use any of the chakra consuming techniques, which means most of the B and some of the C-ranked techniques are out, not that I trust my chakra control now anyway.'
Seeing the crowd of merchants and civilians alike bustling in the path before him, he leapt to the roof and continued his run on the roof tops.
He was so deep in thought, weighing out his options, that he was completely oblivious to how he had managed to reach the rooftops without conscientiously molding chakra and priming his leg muscles with it.
Finally he got to the roof of the last building before the library. His left hand held tightly onto his sword as he whispered to it while leaping off to the ground, "Looks like it's just me and you, Yuutou!"
Once he landed he felt flying projectiles aiming at the back of his knees, his neck, and his shoulder blades. Having studied the pressure points from the manuscript of the Nine Lonesome Sword Stances, he knew that if those were to connect, he would have been immediately disabled.
'The guy that threw these must be either trained as a medic-nin or trained in the ANBU art of silent killing,' reasoned Naruto as his right hand drew out Yuutou and his body turned in synch with his sword movement to pare off the incoming senbons.
The sheath in his left hand knocked one senbon away as the sword in his left hand sliced through two, but the two originally aiming for his shoulder blades got through his defense, nailing him on each of his front shoulders instead.
'If only I weren't handicapped by what recently happened to me….'
Naruto had no time to further his internal musings. He quickly pulled out those two senbons and focused on calming his nerves for the ensuing battle ahead.
Before him stood a behemoth of a something, a blue skinned, half shark, half man entity carrying a caveman club-sized weapon wrapped in white cloth tape and a shorter Itachi look-alike.
Naruto squinted his eyes just to be sure. It was not an Itachi look-alike; it was Itachi, the one and the same double agent that he had met four years ago when he was moving his stuff from his apartment to the Sarutobi compound.
"Hello, you must be the Nine-Tails," spoke the stoic Uchiha.
'If he's here, then….' Naruto glanced from Itachi to the taller Akatzuki, 'That must be his partner … I cannot give away his cover….'
"Where are my teammates?" Naruto shouted the question vehemently to Itachi and Kisame.
"Hmph! This gaki is what Leader wants?" Kisame asked Itachi as he let out a belittling chuckle toward Naruto. "Don't you know your manners before your elders? Introduce yourself so my Samehada will remember what a Fox tastes like."
Naruto's mind blanked out for a second before he regained himself again. It was the same feeling of lost of control that he had experienced in the hospital, where right after which, he suddenly had a premonition that Sasuke and Sakura were in trouble.
This time Naruto knew that this was Kyuubi. It was as though his tenant was showing her disfavor at the blasphemous comment coming from the shark-like shinobi. True, Wu's Qi Suppression Technique had certainly brought the curtains down on Kyuubi's unchecked influence over Naruto – it most definitely had cut off access to Kyuubi's abundant chakra and healing powers. However, the bijuu refused to be denied and was still able to make her presence felt.
Albeit, at the moment, the unsatisfactory outcome on her attempts to connect with her host was more a hindrance than a succor to him.
"Kisame," called out the double agent, thus giving Naruto the name of his partner, "go but don't draw too much attention."
Naruto steadied himself behind the crisscross of his sword and sheath, trying his best to recall the sword lessons with Kyuubi in his mindscape and those chants of the Nine Stances.
As his mind desperately tried to catch up from past to present, he saw the shark-skinned shinobi and that club-looking weapon speeding toward him.
And as if he wasn't already under enough pressure, out of the corner of his vision, he saw Sasuke and Sakura lay unmoving under the tree outside the library.
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A/N: Hi! First I want to say thank you for those who have given me your input on whom to pair Naruto with and whether to do the Wave arc. Unfortunately, due to my current busy Real Life, I was not able to respond to all of your wonderful reviews, and for this, I am sorry.
Secondly, I had plans to take Naruto out of the village by this chapter, but as the chapter progresses, it took an unexpected turn on its own, so here we are. His departure will be delayed for another chapter or two.
Finally, a very special thanks to KyLewin for betaing my chapters. Unfortunately, due to us not being able to catch one another before press time, this chapter wasn't beta'ed. Hopefully the next one will be.