Naruto: Kung Fu Guardian
Chapter 16: Aftermath and Mystery Person
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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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KABOOM!
The rumble and decimation spread out from the point of impact, clearing away the luscious vegetation along the waves of its ripples. A cloud of dust mushroomed into the air that could be seen for miles. The booming sound could be heard even farther than that.
The dust cloud slowly lifted, gradually revealing an enormous crater. In the center of the crater crouched Naruto, unscathed save a few minor scratches from the flying debris all around him.
Despite looking like he had just escaped from the belly of the Shinigami, he suffered no major injuries. His hair was disheveled, his face covered in a layer of dust, his bare chest red from windburn, and his pants shredded at the legs. If it wasn't for the dust caked on his sweaty face, the painful windburn would be visible there as well.
Naruto's rough appearance was not reflective of the euphoric calm he was savoring at the moment, breathing in and out, feeling the awesomeness of Qi's resourceful exhilaration and basking in the comforting warmth surrounding him.
Naruto took a deep breath, just as he had while flying - or falling, anyway - through the air, only this time he was testing how long he could continue inhaling before reaching a limit.
The air rushed into his lungs while forcing out the toxic carbon dioxide simultaneously. He continued to breathe in for twenty minutes. At that point, even though he felt no real need to exhale, he finally let the breath out. He could probably have breathed in for even longer, but he finally gave in to the nagging ingrained perception that he must breathe out. Though there was no physical need for it, his body's instincts told him that he would pass out if he didn't exhale.
The intoxicating high he was feeling at the moment could not be described. He felt completely peaceful, as if he was blissfully asleep, but at the same time, he felt alert and rejuvenated, as if he was on constant adrenaline rush.
The boy who had once thought chakra and shinobi art was the end-all and be-all of power and strength and of paving his path to become Hokage had just learned that nothing could ever compare to Qi. Nothing. Well, he did miss chakra's the ability to do jutsus, but practicalities aside, Qi felt better. Hands down.
Looking around, Naruto could see he was standing in the center of a crater as wide as the Chuunin Battle Stadium and as deep as the height of the Hokage tower.
The air around him felt heavy, saturated with Qi, much like how it felt when he was fighting Kisame, though not nearly a tenth of the intensity.
Most of the once luscious vegetation had been blown away by the explosive impact, but there remained few tree branches and debris. Naruto saw them floating in air and gradually gliding their way down much like weightless feathers.
Everything seemed so surreal.
'What's going on? Things moving slowly, or is my mind much faster than my eyes?' Naruto thought to himself, trying to reconcile the unfathomable scene before him with what he had always excepted as Common Sense.
He reached out to touch one of the floating tree branches to make sure it was real. It felt real, solid, just as it should be. But it also felt weightless, which was not real. Couldn't be.
Naruto lightly tapped the tree branch playfully and watched it glide into a collision with a smaller floating tree branch and then both gradually drift to the ground.
"Well, this must have something to do with Qi," concluded the still baffled thirteen-year-old as he stood up. "Screw common sense. Nothing makes sense anymore. I shouldn't even have survived this fall."
He returned his sword back to its sheath, which was still miraculously secured to his back.
"Yoohoo! Anyone here?" shouted the discombobulated boy, hoping someone was somewhere nearby waiting for him. "Any-one?"
No answer. Finally coming to terms with the fact that he wasn't going to find answers standing there, he decided to get out of the crater and look for the person Wu said would be here waiting for him.
Taking his first step was when he questioned the reality of things again.
"Whoa!" he exclaimed, wobbling to keep his balance as his mind struggled to register that his first step took him further than a mere step normally did. Instead of advancing the mere distance of a normal stride, Naruto now stood five yards away from where he'd been when he took the step.
How did he manage such a huge leap when all he did was take a step? What would have happened if he had been actually going for a leap instead?
Excited by the possibilities, Naruto took one leap, putting about half of his effort into it.
And that was when he realized that he must be either dead or dreaming.
Because there was no way a half-hearted leap could have turned into a GIANT leap out of the massive crater.
Naruto didn't even think he could have done it if he were actually trying to leap out of a crater of that size while using chakra.
"Damn!" concluded Naruto. Although he was anticipating something extraordinary, he was not expecting this size of a gap between what he considered reasonable and the surreal phenomenon before him.
Standing at the top looking down, Naruto finally began to comprehend the magnitude of the devastation caused by the impact and the gargantuan size of the crater. The fact that he could have died was a sobering thought, yet he had somehow survived it.
A cry for help from his four o'clock brought him out of his shock.
Naruto turned toward it, but saw nothing. He was just about to dismiss it and return to examine the crater some more when he heard it again.
This time he knew it wasn't his imagination.
Stretching out his Qi kinesthetics, he sensed five people a good distance away. There was an old man struggling to limp away on his cane while four men wearing patchy sackcloth robes in the likeness of beggars chased behind him.
Naruto knew right away he had to help.
Never mind that he should be surprised that his Qi kinesthesia had become refined to the point that he could detect those small details and cover an even wider area, or that his hearing had become sharper, capable of hearing the four beggars shouting out profanities of all sorts to get the old man to spare them some change or some dry goods.
Having made a decision to help the crippled old man, Naruto leaped into action. He was wanting to test his new condition and thought the opportunity had just presented itself. Naruto was also glad for the opportunity to assess himself before meeting up with the Wu's arranged mystery person. After all, if the person was going to give him more training like Naruto was hoping, he surely didn't want to jump in not knowing anything about his own limits and capabilities that evidently had gone through drastic changes.
Putting forth his full effort, he dashed toward the cry, bathing in the exhilaration as he ripped into the air.
"Wow! This is awesome!" Naruto shouted like he had just won a lifetime supply of ramen. That was his fifth leap now, and he had managed to cover one mile without breaking a sweat.
Naruto concluded that he was covering more ground in his current condition than he would have had he resorted to pumping chakra into his jumps. It was then that he remembered how a few days ago he had also covered a surprisingly long distance chasing Wu blindfolded in front of the WuDang temple.
'What brought this about anyway?' pondered the blond as he continued rushing toward the direction of the crippled old man. 'Could it have anything to do with that wonderful feeling I felt before crashing into the ground?'
It must be. It had to be related to the euphoric feeling after Naruto had surrendered to Qi during the skydive.
Soon, much sooner than the pensive boy was expecting, Naruto found himself closing a distance that could easily have been two miles.
"Stop bothering him!" the speeding blond shouted as soon as the beggars were in sight, not realizing that his eyesight was much better than they were without Qi, meaning that the beggars were actually farther than they appeared to Naruto. But his booming voice too seemed to have been enhanced by Qi and was able to cover the longer distance without Naruto knowing the differences.
The beggars were now surrounding the old man, and only one paid the approaching lad or his shouting any mind.
"Go fuc---," the attentive beggar was in the midst of saying before Naruto rendered him unconscious with a blow to the head. He was evidently the youngest, or the least experienced, of the four beggars.
Naruto was expecting the other three to attack him, or at least acknowledge his intrusion, and when neither happened, he stood there dumbfounded at how engrossed they were debating amongst themselves. Since neither party chose to acknowledge his presence, Naruto could only stand there and listen, trying to make heads and tails of things.
As Naruto listened in, he noted their appearance. The old man was leaning his weight on a cane in his right hand. He wore a straw hat covering most of his peppery-gray hair and an outfit typical of a farmer. In front of the old man, the beggar on the left was the shortest but also the plumiest of the three. The man next to him, standing in the middle of the three, was tall and skinny. The one on the right had a body that looked like an average between the other two, but definitely the ugliest.
"Er, Big Brother, are you sure that this wimpy old fart killed your brother?" asked the chubby beggar. He was very uneasy about attacking someone defenseless.
Before the ugly one had a chance to answer, the tall beggar chimed in, "Yeah, I agree. The only way a wimpy old fart could have killed your brother is if your brother was even more of a wimp. Was your brother a fucking son of a turtle?"
"Why you motherf ..." fumed the ugly beggar, pulling in his arm to hit the beggar that had just disrespected his late brother. But before his punch reached its target, Chubby grabbed hold of Ugly's elbow and retarded the blow.
"Ta-ma-de," Chubby said with genuine disapproval in his voice, "you know better than to call your own brother a son of a turtle, Big Brother."
Naruto wasn't sure what "ta-ma-de" meant; it couldn't be anything good coming from their mouth. But he was almost certain that "son of a turtle" roughly meant "gutless bastard."
"Hey, if he calls his own brother a son of a turtle, doesn't that make him a son of a turtle also? And what does that make his mom and dad?" asked Tall while scratching his head pensively.
Both were oblivious to how their remarks were making their leader's eyebrows twitch.
"Ta-ma-de, if that's true," Chubby said as a revelation dawned on him, "then isn't he also calling us sons of turtles because we're with him most of the time and because Master said that 'we are whom we associate with'?"
"Yeah, Big Brother," shouted Tall sounding hurt and upset. "Why are you calling us sons of turtles?"
The ugly one brought his right hand up and buried his face in it. He could not believe the stupidity of those two. Why had he taken these imbeciles with him on this trip?
"Shut the fuck up, you worthless rice buckets!" his volume muffled behind his hand, but his anger wasn't.
Again, another colorful derrogatory, but completely unfamilliar to Naruto. Rice buckets? He reasoned that since rice was their main stable, the term must have meant to mock a person's incompetency, that the only thing the mocked one was good at was eating rice. But then again, Naruto ate a lot of ramen, and he certainly wouldn't mind someone calling him a "ramen bucket."
It was during this pensive moment that the ugly beggar noticed Naruto's presence, which prompted him to point at the boy and wave his hands ostentatiously to get the other two's attention.
"We were so fucking busy arguing that we didn't notice you," the ugly beggar addressed Naruto and warned, "but get the hell out of here while you still can before I kick your ass back into your mother."
"Hohehe, that's too much!" laughed a doubled-over Naruto, who could no longer hold in the laughter he had developed listening to their bantering. The three beggars mistakenly assumed that Naruto was arrogantly laughing at their ability to handle a kid.
"Why you ...!" fumed Ugly through his clutched teeth as he swung his staff at whom he considered to be an indignant youth.
As Naruto continued laughing uncontrollably and doubling over, he involuntarily dodged Ugly's staff swung at where his head had been.
Rotating the staff through the missed swing around behind him to the other side, the lead beggar wielded the swinging weapon toward Naruto again, this time aiming lower at his legs.
This was a difficult combination to defend against or to dodge, especially when Naruto had doubled over to avoid the swing to the head. Naruto's center of gravity thus became quite low, and the momentum of his body already shifting downward wasn't helping. Plus, this combination attack was Ugly's signature swing, perfected through many successful tries.
But, somehow, the hit missed!
In mid swing, as the staff sped closer to Naruto's legs, Naruto kicked up his legs, narrowly escaped the sting of the hit, and rolled on the ground, continuing his laughter. Even though the sequence of Naruto's actions were purely coincidental reactions to his vigorous laughter, Ugly still felt the painful sting of a wounded pride. If anything, Naruto's good fortune only added salt to the wound.
"Get him!" Ugly ordered, already getting more and more livid by the second, especially when he saw Naruto wiping away tears from excessive laughter.
Tall and Chubby thrust their staffs toward the now heaving boy and maneuvered them through a few elaborate complex weaves of offensive combinations.
Unfortunately, Naruto was still too engulfed in the hysteria to notice and was struck in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him, and the face, sending him flying backwards, landing a few yards away on his back.
Getting the wind knocked out of him certainly ended his laughing spell. The feeling of a lack of air was short lived though, if Naruto had suffered any at all. The boy was still under the nirvanic effect of Qi breathing.
The feeling of being pissed, however, could not have been prevented by the Qi euphoria.
Naruto in one motion jumped to his feet and drew out his sword. A metallic hiss rang crisply in the air. He stood valiantly in front of the old man, facing the beggars.
"Be safe on your travels, old man," said the young sword wielder, who spoke without turning around to properly address his senior. With his eyes still fixed on the miscreants before him, Naruto declared, "I'll delay them."
"You won't be able to hold them off by yourself, but perhaps if we work together, we might stand a chance," offered the old man, sounding slightly worried.
"Don't worry about me, I'm stronger than I look," Naruto reassured him. Actually, not having the old man with a walking impediment there was an even greater help.
"Very well," said the old man, nodding his head at the youngster. Just when he was about to leave, he asked, "Whom may I have the pleasure of thanking?"
"Uzumaki Naruto Sarutobi," was the boy's reply, using his adopted name since he had long since considered it his real name.
Just then, Naruto felt faint blinking of some powerful energy coming behind him.
Before Naruto could ponder any further, he felt a heavy blast of killing intent coming from the three beggars.
"Hey! Don't ignore us!" the beggars yelled as they chased past Naruto, after the departing old man, only for Naruto to appear standing in front of them once more, having moved there with a speed that shouldn't have been possible for someone his age.
"Hn, don't ignore me!" Naruto declared with a hint of battle excitement while holding Yuutou samurai style in front of him.
"Fine, you little fart! And, since you insist, I'll go all out on you," Ugly said with a smirk.
Normally the codes of WuXia would deter most senior martial artists from fighting their juniors, but Ugly felt Naruto's continued outward disrespect deserved an exception, and as the senior martial artist present, he saw it as his duty to administer the needed discipline.
Channeling Qi all around him, the lead beggar thrust out his staff repeating his lethal top-then-bottom combination attack.
Having already activated Qi kinesthesia, Naruto could sense the staff ripping through air particles even before his eyes or ears registered its movement. He could tell that this attack was full of power and killing intent, unlike the last attempt that Naruto had accidentally dodged while laughing. There would be no haphazard dodging this time around.
The ferocity of the swing didn't faze Naruto, who remained calm and collected under the euphoric effect of the continuous active circulating of Qi at ready mode.
Being calm and collected allowed him to realize the whole scope of things, because the swing, while vicious and lethal, was not the main focus of the attack. While Ugly executed his signature move, the two other beggars on either side of him were making a leap over Naruto, chasing after the crippled old man.
Instead of parring the staff away and risk letting the other two pass him, Naruto sheathed his sword and jumped backward. He extended both arms upward toward the two leaping beggars on each side of him, grabbed their ankles and pulled them downward while pushing off them to backflip a kick at the attacking staff, sending a loud thud and a vibrating jerk that nearly caused the leading beggar to drop his weapon.
Now twice as pissed, Ugly grabbed the staff firmly with both hands and raised it overhead. He leaped forward, preparing to smash the troublesome bugger's head into a bloody pulp.
Meanwhile, the other two beggars landed on their feet and were surprised that they had been pulled back by the mud-faced boy. They launched their own sequences of staff attacks, with Tall swinging for Naruto's back and Chubby thrusting toward the stomach.
Naruto unsheathed his sword before finally landing on his feet. Too flat-footed to ward off the three simultaneous attacks, he tightened his core with Qi to bare the brunt of the stomach jab and back whip and made an overhead crisscross sword-and-sheath to block the tomahawk swung.
Tall and Chubby had both landed their attacks; however, instead of hurting Naruto, both beggars felt a strong kickback from the protective Qi actively circulating within Naruto, much like an object bouncing off a balloon filled with air. So, when the two attacks landed on Naruto, they were bounced back with the same amount of power.
The sidekick beggars were forced to release their hold on their weapons, lest they risk injuring their hands. The wooden pieces flew 50 yards away from their hands.
To say that Tall and Chubby were surprised would be an understatement. A kid Naruto's age possessing such a well cultivated Qi? Unheard of! But there he was ... the mud-face boy ... standing as clear as day. But since they were technically violating two WuXia codes - never attack someone your junior and always fight one on one - they didn't feel it was right to use Qi. Had they known any better from the beginning, they might have reconsidered.
Their leader on the other hand cared less about fighting honorably and had channeled Qi into his attack. When his staff smashed onto Naruto's sword-sheath shielding cross, the Qi kickback from Naruto wasn't as violent as the other two's, though it was still quite formidable.
Ugly was able to hold his ground. With their weapons locked into position, and Ugly having height advantage over Naruto, the lead beggar channeled more Qi and brought his weight on Naruto, forcing the boy down into an one-kneed crouch. The pressure was so heavy that even the ground underneath Naruto began to crack.
"Go get that old man, you idiots!" shouted Ugly with uneven breathing as beads of sweat rolled down his banes. Tall and Chubby could tell that their leader was going all out and nearing his limit; while the boy's breathing, on the other hand, was even and calm. In fact, he hadn't even broken sweat yet. However it was still undeniable that Ugly had the upper hand, for the moment anyway.
It became evident that while Naruto might not have that much combat skills or experiences, he clearly had better Qi channeling technique. The beggars' Qi was like a passing powerful thunderstorm, all or nothing and all at once. Naruto's Qi, however, was like a quiet and lasting shower, slow and steady. In terms of strength, the beggars had the advantage in the beginning, but their experiences told them that the boy would gain the upper hand the longer the battle continued.
"You sure, boss?" asked Tall. "I think one of us should stay with you."
"Yeah," reflected Chubby, "I agree."
"Urgh!" Ugly yelled in frustration. "Too late!"
It was during their hesitancy that Naruto broke free from Ugly's hold.
Channeling as much Qi into Yuutou as he could manage, Naruto turned his wrist so that its edge was bearing the brunt of the staff and in one quick slicing motion pulled his sword as fast as he could, generating a sharp burnt wood smell as it sliced through the staff.
"What!" exclaimed the lead beggar trying to register what had just happened.
Naruto used the sheath to swat away what remained of the staff that was still in the lead beggar's hands and, in one swift motion, he stood up and kicked Ugly in the chest, sending Ugly flying toward the other two who had gathered behind their leader.
"Big Brother!" Tall and Chubby both exclaimed before they were knocked off their feet by the body of Ugly slamming against them, sending them flying back as well.
Naruto's feet had already left the ground the moment he had kicked Ugly toward them. He arrived at where their bodies would land while they were still in midair. Not wanting to waste any more precious time on these three, the Qi-enhanced Naruto sped toward the incoming flying bodies and pressed a few demobilizing pressure points on them as their paths crossed. He wasn't as proficient in the Pressure Point Immobilization techniques as was Wu, but he knew enough from his studies of the diagrams in the Nine Lonesome Sword Stances manuscript to immobilize the three beggars, even if it was only for a very brief moment.
'There's something odd about that old man,' Naruto suddenly mused to himself.
It was one passing moment, but it somehow still managed to trigger Naruto's memory even now. It happened right before he told the old man that he would help delaying the beggars. Naruto had a sudden flashback of sensing the faint but acute spark of Qi coming from the old man when he waved good-bye. The acute Qi spark was a tell-tale sign of a Qi master. In this case, the level was higher than anyone Naruto had ever come across, even higher than Wu's, and much more masterfully concealed. The slipped up flare was brief, perhaps even intentionally, and it was for this reason Naruto knew he must find the old man again.
"Hey! Let us go!" Chubby yelled on the beggars' behalf.
He and his two companions weren't aware that Naruto might know of the Pressure Point Kung Fu, but he was far from mastering it; and thus without much struggle, the immobilization would wear off in a few minutes. That though would be more than enough time for Naruto to disappear.
Naruto looked at them and smiled weakly. "Sorry guys, but I have to look for the old man, and he's almost out of the range of my detection."
Ignoring the rest of their cries, pleadings, and curses, Naruto chased after the old man full speed.
For a brief moment, Naruto lost himself in the chase. The feeling of acceleration under Qi enhancement was liberating and quite additive.
When he focused more on his pursuit, he realized how much ground he had already covered and how much farther he had to go to catch the old man.
The old man was still a mile away, which would only take seconds for Naruto to reach, but still, Naruto had already covered three miles, and he refused to believe that the little time he bought delaying the beggars would have allowed an ordinary elderly man with a leg impediment to travel that far.
'I knew there was something off about that old man,' he mused with a heavy sigh, 'I hope I didn't aid a murderer, if he did kill that lead beggar's brother.'
And, now that Naruto had closed in on a view of the old cripple, he didn't see anything unusual to explain that mystery. The old man was doing what he had been doing when Naruto first detected him with Qi kinesthetics: inching along slowly on his cane as any normal cripple would do.
'I guess if he want to continue the act, I'll play along,' Naruto sighed. 'Besides, judging by that Qi spark, I doubt me and the three beggars working together could have lasted 30 seconds against this guy.'
With one last leap, Naruto landed next to the man and asked in as normal and non-suspicious as he could, "Are you all right, old man?"
"Yes, noble kind lad," the old man replied in with a benevolent smile. "Much obliged for your assistance."
"I ..." Naruto wanted to confront the old man, but the his own Qi kinesthesia was telling him that the old man, no matter how powerful or how much he was now concealing that fact, was still no threat to him. Naruto had learned that a master might be able to conceal his Qi level, but there was no concealing one's aura.
The old man's aura was one of soothing calm, with no trace of malice found in him.
"Yes?" the old man asked as he stood there waiting for Naruto to finish.
"Heh heh," Naruto chuckled nervously while rubbing the back of his head. "I was just wondering how you got here so quickly."
"Quick?" the old man asked with a quirked eyebrow. "You caught up didn't you, Fish Cakes?"
Naruto look at the old man in confusion. 'Where have I heard that before?' Then, when it came to him, he widened his eyes and asked, "Master Wu? But you couldn't be."
Instead of hearing the old man answering affirmatively, Naruto heard another voice coming from a tree branch behind him that said, "Aww, Little Fish Cakes missed me already?"
"Argh!" Naruto jumped as he turned toward Wu's familiar voice. "How did you sneak up on me again?"
"Ha! That's a secret," Wu replied smugly.
Shaking off the mental cobweb from his thoughts, he turned to look at Wu and back at the old man and asked, "If that's Master Wu, then who are you?"
The old man laughed heartily as he removed his facial and clothing disguise, revealing a bald monk with long white beard and long while eyebrows.
"I am Master Wong, the Grand Master Abbot of the Monastery of Ancient Manuscripts."
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Beta: KyLewin
A/N: Hi, sorry that this is a short chapter. I had it done a week ago and had intended to add a bit more, but my computer crashed. Fortunately I didn't save this chapter on my hard drive, or you'll still be waiting for me to retype it from scratch. But, unfortunately, that meant I had to decide to post this now as is or wait until I add some more to it, and I chose to post now.
Hope you enjoyed this, and I hope to get the next one out in two weeks.
Please make my day: Let me read your review. I need some cheering up from having to reformat my hard drive :(
Thanks.