Chapter XVIII
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
A/N: Note-no one dies. Please don't freak out. Thank you!
Naruto looked around at he three training posts and the trees that seemed to press in on the small clearing, leaning in conspiratorially. The last time he had been here in training ground seven, Sasuke had been with him and Naruto had gone into his mindscape and forced the Kyuubi into a pseudo-human shape. He still squirmed with shame on remembering the gung-ho attitude with which he had handled his tenant.
This time, however, not only was Sasuke here, but so was the rest of team seven, minus their sensei, of course. None of them had expected anything else from Kakashi. Sasuke, who was sitting leaning against one of he training posts, spotted Naruto hovering by the trees and gestured him to get a move on. Naruto smiled inwardly; there had been a time when Sasuke would have just pretended not to see Naruto. Sakura, in contrast, scowled and jerked her chin at Naruto in some odd facsimile of a nod. Naruto wandered over to them and sat down.
"Where's Oscar-kun?" Was Sakura's first question.
"Hello Sakura, good morning to you, too. To answer your question, to my knowledge, Oscar-kun is still in bed."
"Why didn't you wake him up?" Sasuke asked.
"Hey, if you want to try and wake that child up first thing in the morning, be my guest, duck-butt. Then you can come back and show me your scars. I, on the other hand, have grown rather accustomed to having ten fingers and-"
"Okay, fine, I get the picture, dobe."
"Good." Naruto stretched lazily and laid down on his front, elbows propping up his head and his feet waving in the air. "So, how are you two on this fine sunny morning?"
"Fine," they both replied.
"What do you think Kakashi-sensei will teach us?" Sakura asked.
"Haven't the foggiest," Naruto said casually.
"Of course, you're both assuming that he'll bother to show up today," Sasuke pointed out.
"He can't not turn up completely," Sakura reasoned.
"No, but he can be three hours late, which is almost as bad," Naruto said, "Unless he decides to show up early today. Or rather, not as late as usual."
"You don't think he will, though, or you would have shown up on time instead of an hour and a half late," Sakura pointed out. Naruto rolled onto his back and stared at her through upside-down wide blue eyes.
"Is that why you're pissed? Because you got out of bed at six this morning and I slept until eight?"
Sasuke smirked, "That's not the only reason. She's pissed because she was sitting here for an hour with no one to talk to and nothing to do. I only got here a little while ago," He explained.
Naruto laughed, but quickly stopped and sat up when he heard a rustling among the trees. A bleary-eyed Oscar pushed his way through the braches, rubbing at his eyes with one fist. He dropped down in the grass next to Naruto and hugged his knees to his chest, chin resting on top. He blinked slowly at Sasuke and Sakura, both of whom were looking at him in respectful silence. "Oh good," he said blurrily, "Everyone's here but the teacher."
"Good morning, sunshine," Naruto said, and aimed a slap at the back of the darker boy's head. Oscar growled warningly.
"Um, Oscar, your shirt is inside out," Sakura said, giggling a little.
"What?" Oscar twisted around trying to see the tag of his shirt before it occurred to him to check the seams, which were, in fact, on the outside. "Oh, hell," he growled. He stood up and took hold of the hem of his shirt to pull it off.
"Wait!" Sakura said. All three boys turned to stare at her incredulously. She blushed but went on defiantly, "You can't just do that here!"
"Sure I can. Anyway, it's not like you haven't seen a boy shirtless," Oscar said, glancing over at Sasuke, who paled and stiffened, casting Sakura a frightened look. "Grow up a little. If it bothers you so much, don't watch."
Sakura scowled and crossed her arms but looked away, defeated. Oscar rolled his eyes and turned his shirt right side out before sitting down again.
"So, how much longer have we got to wait?" Oscar asked, his voice and manner almost up to human standards by that time.
"Well, if sensei stays true to form, he should be here in a little over an hour," Sasuke replied.
"I bet all of the other groups are training by now," Sakura muttered crossly.
"Yeah, I wonder what they're doing," Naruto said. "For that matter, I still want to know what the reward for that training exercise is."
"You mean the one where we got handcuffed? I guess we'll find out on Monday," Sakura said. "But why do you care? I thought you ended up carrying your partner the wrong way."
"I did," Naruto confessed. Oscar snorted quietly. "Hey, at least I knew that I was going the wrong way! And it's not like she didn't put up a fight," Naruto said defensively. Oscar glowered.
"Shut up. That was not my fault."
"Was so."
The conversation continued in this vein for some time until it finally wore itself out and the four genin gradually fell into a sleepy silence. That is the way Kakashi found them, slumped in the grass and almost asleep. He shook his head. "Alright team, time to get up."
Naruto sat up with a start and grabbed Oscar's wrist to check his watch. As the other three genin roused themselves around him, Naruto looked at Kakashi accusatorily. "You probably think this is really funny. This doesn't count as being early!" the blonde boy said.
"Why," Sasuke asked, standing up, yawning, and brushing grass off of himself, "How late was he?"
"Two hours and fifty-five minutes exactly," Naruto said, still giving Kakashi an annoyed look. The gray-haired man eye-smiled.
"Actually, I do find it kind of funny," Kakashi admitted.
"Why are you so late?" Sakura asked.
Kakashi wave an airy hand. "Oh, I got lost on the road of life."
"Did you turn right at the Mountains of Indecision?" Oscar asked, finally sitting up and taking an interest in the conversation.
Kakashi was slightly startled and bemused. "Well-"
But Oscar talked over him. "Because I'm always turning right when I should have turned left. Or did you end up in the Shadowland of Portents and Significant Events? Did you meet a Long Forgotten Friend?"
"No," Kakashi said flatly, "As welcome as that would have been."
"Oh. Well, I can't say I ever have either. Did you get stuck in the Bog of Habit, or maybe you were forced to swim through the Sea of Forgetfulness via the Path of Vices. Or perhaps you took one of the tunnels through the Valley of Hindsight and forgot to do the skipping trick for the Board of Important People In Your Life Who May Come Back to Haunt You. Is that what you meant when you said you got lost on the road of life? Or do you mean-"
Here Naruto cut him off, much as he would have liked to hear what come after the Board of Important People In Your Life Who May Come Back to Haunt You. "What will we be doing today, Kakashi-sensei?"
"Well, I have these little tests for you. They're not written tests, though," Kakashi said, pulling out a few slips of blank white paper, "So don't worry about that."
Oscar reached up and took one of the pieces of paper almost before Kakashi had finished speaking. Watched by his teammates and sensei, he tore off a tiny corner of the paper, examined it, and then placed it on his tongue. After a moment he frowned and spat the paper into his hand. "Either I don't have the gene that you need to taste this chemical, or this is just normal paper." Everyone just stared at him. "What?"
"That was an elemental affinity test," Kakashi said numbly. Naruto couldn't tell if Kakashi was trying not to laugh or was simply stunned. "I have never seen anyone put one in their mouth before."
"Well, no one ever accused me of being a conformist," Oscar said unconcernedly. "Will the test still work?"
"It should," Kakashi said, still staring at Oscar in disbelief. "Here, the rest of you take your papers." When each of the genin had a strip of paper, Kakashi said, "Good. Now, channel chakra into the papers. The way that the paper reacts will determine your elemental affinity."
"What do you mean, 'The way that the paper reacts?'" Naruto asked, but Sasuke, wasting no time, had already begun to channel his chakra.
There was a loud sound of paper crumpling and the piece of paper in Sasuke's hand crinkled up. Sasuke stared at it as if it was a vial of poison. He looked up at Kakashi with eyes that seemed dead and hollow. "That means I have a lightning affinity, right?" he asked hoarsely. Kakashi nodded. Sasuke's shoulders slumped. "Great," he spat.
"What's wrong?" Sakura asked.
Sasuke turned his blank eyes to her anxious green ones. "Itachi had a fire affinity," Sasuke said softly.
"So?" Oscar asked, "I though you wanted to be stronger than your brother. If you had a fire affinity, you would be constantly working to reach his level. Since you have a different affinity, your attacks will be powerful in a way that's different from his. And anyway, it's not like you can't use fire jutsu just because fire isn't your specialty."
"What you say is true," Sasuke said slowly. He seemed to mentally compose himself and pull himself together. "Very well, I will think about it later. What's your affinity, Oscar?"
The dark boy seemed to concentrate for a moment before his paper, too, crinkled up. He beamed and threw himself on Sasuke, yelling, "Looks like we're lightning buddies!"
Sakura, not wanting to be outdone, channeled some of her chakra into her own paper. To her disappointment, it did not crumple up, instead turning to dirt and crumbling away between her fingers. She brushed her hands together to dislodge the rest of the dirt. "Oh, goody, looks like I have an earth affinity," she said sourly.
Naruto realized that all of the others were looking at him expectantly. He quickly channeled some chakra into his piece of paper. To his confusion, a clean slice appeared in his paper and the half he had not been holding fluttered to the ground. He quickly picked it up and looked over at Kakashi. "Was that supposed to happen?" he asked.
"I assume so," Kakashi replied. "It seems as though you have a wind affinity."
"Is that good?" Naruto asked anxiously.
"Yeah, it's really cool," Oscar said, grinning.
"Why's that?" Naruto asked, confused as to why everyone was still smiling at him and a bit unnerved by then.
"Because it's the least common of the five basic elemental affinities seen in Konoha and is the most destructive type of elemental chakra," Sakura said at once, slipping unconsciously into know-it-all-teacher's-pet mode.
"Oh," Naruto said, "cool."
"You seem slightly disappointed," Kakashi said.
"Oh, I'm not. I do think it's really cool, I just can't get all that worked up about it," Naruto said lazily.
"Who are you and what have you done with the real Naruto-kun?" Sasuke asked before realizing that Oscar was still hugging him and trying to prize the darker boy off. "(Get off!) Naruto wouldn't not get worked up over something that cool."
"Actually, now that you mention it…." Naruto said, as he slowly reached up with his hands. He balled them into fists just above his forehead protector and to the astonishment of his team, began to peel downward, pulling off the skin of his face like a rubber mask and revealing a radically different face beneath. This one was red and furry with glowing scarlet eyes and slit pupils. The teeth that filled the creature's mouth were long and white and razor sharp and two serrated fangs protruded crookedly from the upper jaw and hung an inch or so below the thing's thin bottom lip.
The beast took one hand away from the limp rubbery folds of skin that had once been a face and used that hand to drag back the mop of spiky blonde hair as if it were a hood. As it did so, two long rabbit-like ears sprang upright and seemed to twitch and swivel independently. The beast next held both hands up in front of its face and flexed the fingers until long steel-gray claws punched through the fingertips. Looking decidedly odd in a tee shirt and cargo pants, the beast hunched over, contorting its furry face into a look of painful concentration until four spindly dragonfly wings burst through the back of the tee shirt.
The whole transformation had lasted no more than a few seconds. Hunched over, the beast tipped back its face, drew back the corners of it mouth and narrowed its scarlet eyes to slits, its face drawn into a bizarre imitation of a smile. Then it laughed, or seemed to. The sound was hoarse and guttural, as though there was a blade stuck crosswise it its windpipe.
Team seven, which had until that point been standing frozen to the spot, was galvanized into action by the sound of the mutated thing laughing at the death of their teammate. Sakura screamed as she drew out a kunai, her actions mirrored by Sasuke and Oscar. Kakashi for some reason did nothing but pull down the hitai-ate that he had pushed up when the transformation began. Sasuke got to the beast first, kunai flashing out for a clean jab to the heart. The beast's head jerked back, eyes widening in panic as it caught hold of Sasuke's wrist just before the kunai touched its chest.
"Hey, take it easy, Sasuke-kun!" The beast said in a surprisingly familiar voice.
"How dare you use Naruto's voice?" Sasuke snarled, wrestling for control of his hand. "Let go!"
"Activate your sharingan, dumbass!" the thing snapped, tightening its grip on Sasuke's wrist.
Sasuke stopped struggling for the moment it took for his eyes to flood red. When the black tomoe had settled into place, he took a new look at the grinning beast. He slumped and his grip on the kunai relaxed slightly. "I still have a half a mind to stab you for that stunt, dobe," he growled.
The thing dropped Sasuke's arm and rolled its slitted eyes. "Don't be such a prima donna."
"Me? What about you?"
Oscar raised a tentative finger, cutting off the confusing flow of dialog. "Sakura and I still appear to be missing something. Care to fill us in? Didn't that thing just kill Naruto?"
In answer, there was a large puff of smoke and Naruto was left standing whole and unharmed exactly as he had been before the transformation, except that he was grinning all over his smug face. When he caught sight of the look on Sakura's face, halfway between confusion and anger, he burst into laughter. "Best- prank- ever!" he choked.
"Baka!" Sakura yelled. "Apart from scaring all of us half to death, we could have killed you before Sasuke realized what you did!"
"No, I bet I could've dodged if it came to that," Naruto said, still chuckling. "The hard part would have been fighting and maintaining the transformation at the same time, but I bet I could've pulled it off. Anyway, what did you expect?"
"That-" Kakashi cut in, "is an excellent question. Now, what were we saying before this vexed interruption?"
"We were asking Naruto why he wasn't more excited about having a wind affinity," Naruto said helpfully.
"Well, why aren't you?" Oscar asked.
"I am excited, I'm just not showing it as much as usual because, I don't know, I still kind of think it pales in comparison to the fact that I'm a Jinchuriki."
Sasuke nodded reluctantly. "Yeah, I can see the sense in that. I just wasn't expecting it from you of all people."
"Want to come over here and say that to my face, Uchiha-teme?" Naruto baited.
"I am saying it to your face, dobe," Sasuke deadpanned.
"Oh." Naruto backed up a few steps to put some distance between himself and Sasuke. "Now do you want to come say it to my-"
"Yes, yes, we get it. You want us to know that though you refuse to become excited over having a wind affinity, you are still capable of lighthearted banter," Kakashi said dully, rolling his eye. "If we can return to the subject of your elemental affinities-?"
"Yes Kakashi-sensei," Naruto said, returning to the group and curtseying, earning himself a slap upside the head from Sakura. "Ow!"
"You deserved it," She said curtly before giving her attention to her sensei.
"Now that you all are aware of your affinities, I have separate exercises for each of you. Oscar and Sasuke, you are lightning elementals so I want you to take a leaf each and hold it like this," Kakashi demonstrated, holding his hands with his palms together and a leaf sandwiched in between. "Lightning deals with piercing, so I want you to try and create small bolts of lightning between your palms. The lightning will have to travel through the leaf to reach the other hand, so if you do it right, you should be left with a leaf with many little perforations. Go ahead now and practice." Oscar and Sasuke moved off a little ways to collect leaves before each placed his palms together. When they began to converse in low voices, Kakashi turned back to his other students.
"Now, Sakura, you have an earth affinity, which usually deals with crushing or building walls and barriers. Use your knowledge of those characteristics to help draw out the earth chakra. When you have sufficient chakra, attempt to crush this leaf into shreds, and do it successfully to more than one leaf before you come and show me." Sakura nodded her understanding and moved off to find a space to work.
"Naruto, air chakra is the type I know least about, but I can at least set on some basic training exercises before I need to get outside help for you. Take this leaf and try to cut it cleanly with wind chakra. Visualize two pieces of your chakra grinding against each other until they are as thin and sharp as you can make them before attempting to make a cut. Air chakra mostly deals with slashing and cutting, so most of the attacks use some form of blade. Get to it."
Naruto backed off a short ways, found himself a suitable leaf before sitting down and leaning against a handy log. He bowed his head in a moment of silent prayer before quietly creating several dozen clones and sending them out into the forest, as the clearing wasn't large enough for all of them. They all moved off to gather leaves but were soon back and ready for instruction.
Naruto quietly communicated to them what he wanted. "Alright, all of you try to cut the leaves the way Kakashi said. If you have any success, stop working and dispel so that the rest of us get the memories and experience."
Naruto set to work. It took him several minutes to grasp the concept of visualizing his chakra and another few to get it to a remotely workable state. He was reminded of when he had first been trying to find a way into his mindscape to talk the Kyuubi. That had taken even longer than this was taking. It also occurred to Naruto to wonder if the Kyuubi would give him all of his clones' memories immediately. He would need them for this training strategy to work out. With a twinge of guilt, Naruto remembered the state he had left Kyuubi-kun in the last time they had come face-to-face. I promised to visit him. I owe it to him to make it up to him for treating him like a slave. I'd better go talk to him soon. I wonder what he does inside my head when I'm not around. The main reason for Naruto's concern about Kyuubi-kun was that he had seemed disoriented in a smaller body and that he had claimed that the new form was affecting his personality and thought processes. If it was true, it was Naruto's fault.
As if in response to the blonde boy's turbulent thoughts, the two half-formed pieces of chakra he had been rubbing and scraping together slipped and one of them grazed the back of his hand, opening up a long, thin cut. Though it was shallow, a few drops of scarlet blood oozed out. As Naruto watched, however, the blood congealed and the new reddish scab quickly turned brown and flaked off before his eyes- not leaving so much a thin, pink scar. He traced one finger over the smooth skin and made up his mind to visit Kyuubi-kun as soon as was possible.
In the meantime- Naruto's mind was suddenly flooded with the chilling slither of invasive thoughts. A few of his clones must have succeeded. He turned, peering into the forest where most of his shadow clones had settled and made a few more. Then he turned back and observed his teammates, noting that Sasuke seemed to be having a limited amount of success poking holes in his leaf and that Oscar and Sakura were having almost no success at all. At first he could not find Kakashi-sensei, until he thought to tilt back his head and check the trees. Sure enough, the silver-haired man was perched on a sturdy branch, little orange book held in a vice-grip that defied anyone to pry it from him and his eye spread and crinkled in a way that suggested that he was smiling under his mask.
With a little shudder, Naruto returned to his own task. He cursed under his breath when he discovered that allowing his focus to shift had caused his chakra blades to go slack and dispel. He got back down to it, closing his eyes to better visualize the chakra and focus better on not overloading the technique. Before he could get too far into it, however, he made a few dozen more shadow clones with the vague hope that pouring a lot of chakra into that jutsu it would leave less for him to deal with while he tried to form chakra blades. He didn't have much hope that this would work, however. He always seemed to have so much chakra to work with.
With difficulty, Naruto once again pictured two bluish slabs of chakra, pausing momentarily as he felt several more clones dispel. When the new memories had settled comfortably alongside his own, he began to scrape the two slabs of chakra together at the edges as if scraping a knife along a sharpening block. He started out with long, slow swipes but quickly grew restive and progressed to rubbing harder in little jerky scrapes. He could sense that the chakra was growing thinner and sharper at the edges and he sped up even further, excitement building. He imagined that the blades were throwing up tiny blue sparks as he scraped them together. A few minutes later the blades were thin and long and deadly and Naruto was just going for one more pass before he moved on to cutting leaves when he seemed to hear a most disturbing noise.
If felt as though instead of the sound entering through his ear in the normal way, it had bypassed that step and resonated directly inside his brain. It was a sharp splintering and cracking sound, but Naruto was too preoccupied by the method of hearing to worry about that for a few moments. When he finally got the chance to observe the blades he had been carefully crafting, he saw two broken shafts, the edges of which were brittle and shattered looking. The broken blades fell from Naruto shaking fingers and dispelled. He stared at his hands for a minute, unable to speak from the shocking waste of effort. Then something clicked and slid inside his head as a dozen more successful clones dispelled and their recollections filled his mind.
The fact that his clones had succeeded where he failed caused him to snap. It was a very quiet snap, and the only way anyone looking on would have spotted it would have been to hear the low growl he gave. He stood up abruptly and ordered his clones to gather and hand him their leaves upon which they had been practicing. They did as he bid and he dispelled them. Then he approached the tree in which his sensei roosted. He quickly made his way up the trunk of the tree until he was standing on a branch in front of and several feet below Kakashi's. He cleared his throat loudly. Kakashi glanced up from his book at Naruto. It seemed to take him a moment to wrench his mind away from the contents of the book and remember who the blonde boy was.
"Yes Naruto?" He asked finally, when the haze of mild confusion had lifted from his eye. "Have you completed the exercise or do you have a question?"
"Well, this is the progress that some of my clones have made," Naruto said, handing him the leaves, some of which definitely showed signs of damage akin to that of a set of knives.
"Very well. And how did you personally do?" Kakashi asked.
"Well, I accidentally cut myself, so I know I got the blade sharp enough to sever skin," Naruto said, hoping that this would satisfy his sensei.
"May I see?" Naruto held out his hand and Kakashi examined it. Naruto suddenly became aware that he had caught the roving attention of his bored teammates who were still on the ground below him. He squirmed slightly, wishing they would look away. "Naruto," Kakashi said carefully, "I could be wrong, but there is no sign of a cut on this hand."
"Of course not. It already healed," Naruto said. Kakashi looked him in the eye. Naruto held his one-eyed gaze for a few moments before the silver-haired man nodded.
"I see," he said. "So, what do you need?"
"I would like to request your permission to move on to something else for the time being," Naruto said formally. He could practically visualize the gapes of his teammates as they heard his tone of voice and the wording of his polite request. He had to admit to himself that it was a bit different than the candor with which he usually addressed Jaitan-sensei. He had learned early on that Jaitan responded better to being treated like someone a bit closer to Naruto's age rather than being spoken to in the formal and wordy way that the four-eyed sensei himself favored.
"May I ask why?" Kakashi asked.
"I feel as though any progress I am going to make today has already been accomplished. To continue would be redundant and I would find it hard to concentrate, possibly hurting myself and my progress in the process."
"I see that the reading lessons with Sakura are paying off," Kakashi remarked with a wry smile. "Very well, you may stop for now, as long as you continue with some other form of training in the meantime. If you need ideas on what to practice, I'll supply a few."
"Thank you Kakashi-sensei," Naruto said devoutly. "It's alright, I have a few ideas of my own." He quickly clambered down from the tree, barely noticing that he had got his tree-walking down to a science. The water-walking training had certainly helped. When he reached the ground, he avoided the eyes of his teammates and paced off a short distance to give himself enough room. He formed four shadow clones and then carefully outlined the plan to them. They did not respond verbally, but then, Naruto's clones rarely ever did. They merely stood very still as if steeling themselves for something unpleasant. Before Naruto began, he wondered if it would be painful for them. In theory, it shouldn't be, but if it was, he would probably get the memories.
Gritting his teeth and quashing those thoughts, Naruto held up a hand and focused on it. Almost before he could ask, a clone was beside him, helping him gather chakra around that hand like a thin, invisible glove. When his hand was sufficiently suffused with chakra from his core, Naruto gently started teasing apart the clone that had helped him, quickly rendering it down to raw chakra and storing it in the arm sporting the chakra glove. He had to struggle hard not to allow the chakra to be pulled back into his core. Then he took hold of another clone with his normal hand and placed the chakra-infused one over the clone's stomach in the place that the Kyuubi's seal was on his own body. He gently released the chakra in his arm and let it flood into the clone. The other two clones held onto the first clone's arms and Naruto could tell they were helping it maintain it's shape which was forcing the chakra inside of it to condense and pack tighter inside of the clone's frame. When the raw chakra stored in Naruto's arm was all spent, he ordered the two other clones to release the altered clone.
His eyes connected with its. He could see no emotion behind its blue eyes. No welcome, no trepidation, no anxiety. Naruto drew back a fist and sunk it into the clone's gut, driving the breath from his surprised doppelganger's lungs. It doubled over wheezing and Naruto stared at it in astonishment. His idea had worked the first time! It hadn't dispelled! The clone collapsed on the ground, vanishing in a puff of smoke no sooner than it's face touched the soft ground. Naruto frowned. Guess not. He waited apprehensively for the memories to come, but after a moment, he realized that the memories were not forthcoming. He felt half relieved and half disturbed that, while he did not receive the memories of the pain, he could not choose otherwise.
He shook these thoughts from his head, focusing on what he had just done. Perhaps he should have planned a little more thoroughly before actually diving headfirst into this endeavor. Naruto pulled a scrap of paper out of a back pocket and examined it. Hm. Guess I should cash that check one of these days, he thought. He stowed back in his pocket and surveyed his teammates, deciding who was the best choice to ask.
Finally, he approached Oscar, who was still holding his leaf clasped between his palms as though praying. Oscar quickly busied himself with the leaf, trying to appear as though he hadn't been watching Naruto. "Oi, Oscar-kun," Naruto said, giving Sasuke a brief nod so the Uchiha would not feel he was being snubbed.
"Yes?" that dark boy replied.
"Do you happen to have a piece of a paper and a pencil I could borrow?"
"As it so happens, yes I do," Oscar said. He handed Naruto his leaf before plunging his hands into his pockets. Naruto looked at the leaf he was holding. There were a few tiny pinprick-sized holes near the wider base of the leaf. At the other side were moist-looking green smudges as if someone had scraped away the surface of the leaf in those areas. Looking closer, Naruto saw that the smudges were withered and blackish-brown around the edges. Naruto assumed that those were Oscar's earliest attempts, before he had succeeded in actually piercing the leaf.
"Here we are!" Oscar said triumphantly, pulling a crumpled sheet of paper out a pocket and a slightly leaky pen out of another. He looked at the pen narrowly before handing it over.
"Thank you," Naruto said. He passed Sakura on his way back to where he had been. He sat down on the ground and smoothed the piece of paper on his knee. Carefully holding the pen so as not to get ink on himself, Naruto began to scribble down ideas for forming a more durable a clone. He wrote down a rough list, putting in just enough detail to remind himself later of the ideas. Then he read it over, adding in words where more clarification was necessary. Then he turned the sheet over and, ignoring the little doodles of spiders and webs in one corner and what looked like a scribbly black eye, he proceeded to describe in shorthand what he already done to try and create a durable clone. Finally, after a moment's thought, he added a note at the bottom of the paper- 'Faster way?'
Naruto knew that whatever way he found to make a durable clone, he would have to be able to use it quickly in the heat of battle. However, that seemed to be a query for another day, as Kakashi was finally descending from the tree, stowing his book in a pouch as he came. He approached Sasuke and Oscar first, speaking to them briefly and examining their leaves. Then he progressed to Sakura, who was by that time standing just behind the silver-haired man. Naruto stood up, stuffing his notes into a pocket. He walked towards the rest of his team, arriving just in time to hear Kakashi-sensei dismiss them. The silver-haired man left, pausing only to nod at Naruto before Shunshin'ing away.
Sasuke came up to Naruto, pushing his way between Oscar and Sakura to reach the blonde-haired boy. "Oi, dobe. We're going for ramen. Care to join?"
Naruto wasn't really listening. Another idea had just occurred to him that he was itching to test out- or at least write down. He shook his head vaguely.
Sasuke gave him a startled look. Did Naruto just turn down ramen? What's going on with him today? "O-okay," Sasuke said. I guess we'll see you later, then." The three of Naruto's teammates left, casting many backwards glances at him, as though expecting him to come-to and run after them.
Naruto headed back to the apartment. He drew the crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket as he walked and consulted it, rereading everything he had written. He was actually in his apartment building in the hall outside his door before his head snapped up and the daze lifted from his mind. Did he say ramen? He thought. "Damn it!" He smacked his forehead against the wall beside his door. "Oh well. While I'm here-" Naruto opened his door, shutting it behind him as he entered his familiar apartment.
Settling down at a table, he pulled more paper toward him and started sketching, every once in a while consulting his notes. When he was satisfied, he put down the pen and scooted back until he was sitting leaning against the side of his bed.
No putting it off any longer, Naruto thought. He closed his eyes and focused inwards, arriving with a stagger in the sealing room of the sewer of his mindscape. He just had time to draw a chalk outline around his feet before he was caught by a flying tackle. The back of the blonde boy's head hit the concrete floor quite painfully hard. He saw stars. When his vision had cleared, he saw the hideous slit-eyed face of Kyuubi-kun grinning down at him, framed by the nine red-blonde braids.
"Welcome back, Naruto," Kyuubi-kun said calmly, as if he had not just taken down someone nearly twice his size.
"It took a shorter amount of time than I expected to get in here," Naruto said, sitting up and rubbing the back of his head.
"Of course. It only took longer the first two times because you were unsure of how- or even whether- it could be done. Now that you have accepted that this space is an extension of your own thoughts and mind space, it has become as easy to get here as it is to speak."
"You seem to know a lot about this," Naruto commented wryly.
"Well, I know more than you do. You're the newbie in this situation, not me," Kyuubi-kun said with a half-grimace. "Anyway, I had a lot of time to think since you were here last."
"Yeah, I'm sorry about that. I ought to have visited sooner. There is no excuse for me not coming sooner, not now that we're partners."
"Partners," Kyuubi-kun said, rolling the word around as if tying to decide how it tasted. "I guess we are."
"So, what do you do all day?" Naruto asked.
"Well, when I haven't been sifting through the incredible amount of clones' memories that you receive on a daily basis, I've been working on this project," Kyuubi-kun said, his red eyes lit with enthusiasm. "Come and see it."
Naruto followed the diminutive figure to a point several feet from where Naruto had arrived. There, Kyuubi-kun knelt down, scooping up a number of narrow triangular tiles. He held them up for Naruto to inspect. Naruto saw that more than half of the tiles were a translucent scarlet and quite striking when held up to the light. The other three or four tiles were slightly smaller and were a clear pale blue. Looking past Kyuubi-kun's shoulder to where the tiles had been, Naruto saw a number of small, battered-looking hand tools, the purposes of which he could only guess at.
Finally, Naruto was reduced to asking, "What are you making here? What are these tiles?" He stirred them around with one fingertip.
"The red ones are pieces of my own Youki," Kyuubi-kun explained. "The blue ones are pieces of your chakra. Since you gave me partial access, I decided to experiment."
"What do you mean, 'partial access?'" Naruto frowned. "I gave you free reign."
"No, you gave me permission for full access," Kyuubi-kun corrected him. "That doesn't mean that your chakra reserves are actually allowing me full admission. That's what I've been working on. With any luck, this thing will give me better access, though I doubt anything could actually give me full access, unless you let me possess you."
Naruto nodded silently and Kyuubi-kun turned around a stooped down. As he did, Naruto watched him. Kyuubi-kun hadn't acted as though he desired to possess Naruto, but then again, he hadn't seemed completely opposed to it. He is not human, however he may appear or act Naruto reminded himself. I must trust him, and yet I must still be cautious. He has every reason to plan revenge against the human race and I wouldn't want to be stuck in anything he attempts.
Kyuubi-kun straightened up holding two tiny chips. Each one was less than half an inch in diameter and hexagonal in shape. They consisted of miniscule sliding panels made of incredibly thin versions of the tiles Naruto had already seen. The two chips were identical except that one was comprised almost entirely of red panels with one blue one nestled among them and the other was exactly the opposite.
"How will those help?" Naruto asked.
"Well, what I'm hoping to do it implant this chip," Kyuubi-kun indicated the mostly-red one, "Into you. In return, you must implant this chip," he waved the mostly-blue one, "Into me. If this works, it will allow me better access to your chakra and you better access to mine. In addition, I'm hoping that they will allow me to talk to you through a mindlink without you having to enter the mindscape. Are you willing to try it?"
Naruto hesitated for a moment. "First, can you explain to me exactly how they work?"
"Of course." Kyuubi-kun pulled Naruto over to the worn and graffitied bench that still stood in the middle of the room for their first encounter. When they were settled, Kyuubi-kun tipped the mostly-blue chip into Naruto's hand and pointed to it. "This is made almost entirely from fragments of your chakra with a piece of my Youki in it. When I go to access your chakra, the regulators should recognize your chakra as kin but identify mine as an invader. Therefore, they will tag me as one other than you, but since I will have some of your chakra in me, they ought to assume that I have your permission for access. As I said, this should give me better- though not complete- access."
Naruto nodded his understanding. "And the other one?"
Kyuubi-kun took the blue chip from Naruto and replaced it with the red one. "This it mostly made from my Youki and should help you reach my Youki without going through me the same way the other chip will work for me."
"And what about the mindlink?" Naruto asked.
"Well, I have no proof that the mindlink will even form, but I'm hoping the exchange of chakra will bond us closely enough for me to speak into your mind and vice-versa. After all, I am composed entirely of Youki and technically inside of you."
"I see. And where exactly are you going to be putting that chip?" Naruto asked apprehensively.
"Just here, right behind the ear," Kyuubi-kun said, pulling forward his own ear to show Naruto where he meant. "Then you will do the same to me."
"And you know what you're doing?" Naruto asked. "You know how to implant one of those?"
"Yes, I have fair idea. I won't be placing it that deep- just below the surface. Anyway, when you leave the mindscape and return to your body, the chip will not actually be implanted in your physical head. The connection is about six-to-seven-tenths symbolic and the rest it chakra."
"I'm not entirely convinced."
"Come on, the worst that can happen isn't really that bad and you won't feel it at all! Anyway, you owe me."
Naruto made a mental note of this use of leverage. But Kyuubi-kun was right, Naruto did owe him. Not wholly reassured, Naruto nodded. "Alright. I give you my permission. Is there anything you need?"
"Yes. Rubber gloves, a sharp, sterile scalpel, and perhaps some morphine for you. And of course a table, a chair for you, and a stool for me," Kyuubi-kun said quickly.
Naruto complied, taking his time over each item so as to prolong the time until he got his head sliced open. It's not that I don't trust him not to take advantage of me, it's that I don't trust him to know what he's doing, Naruto thought grimly. When he had finally produced all of the items that Kyuubi-kun had requested, Naruto sat down in the chair, watching the smaller boyas he arranged the tools on the small table Naruto had formed. Kyuubi-kun then pushed the table and stool over to the right side of Naruto's chair before hopping up onto the stool. He pulled on the rubber gloves and measured out a careful amount of morphine. Then, to Naruto's confusion, he added a tiny cube of the blue substance that he claimed was Naruto's chakra to the morphine. As they waited for the cube to dissolve, Naruto nervously asked what it was for.
"The chakra is to make sure that the morphine doesn't knock you out, kill your projection and slingshot it back into your body, trigger an allergic reaction, isn't rejected by your body's projection, and most importantly that it does its job so you won't feel me cut you open. You see, I'm not using much morphine at all, but I don't know the exact right amount to use on a tangible internal projection. The worst that could happen is that the morphine forces your spirit back to your body before I can perform the implant, but I doubt that that will happen, anyway."
Naruto said nothing as Kyuubi-kun poured the morphine-chakra mixture into a small, shiny syringe. He closed his eyes as Kyuubi-kun brushed back his hair and folded his ear forward out of the way. Naruto felt the needle prick him and a few moments later, a patch of cool, tingly numbness spread from the point of entry. Naruto's fingers gripped the chair's seat convulsively, but nothing else happened.
"How do you feel?" Kyuubi-kun asked.
"Fine," Naruto replied tersely.
"Alright then." Naruto did not know what happened next, but it was several minutes before he thought to open his eyes. He was in time to see Kyuubi-kun pick up a thin, floppy reddish patch.
"What's that?" Naruto asked.
"Youki patch," Kyuubi-kun said. "It should heal up the incision without even a scar and help stimulate and activate the chip into the bargain." Naruto didn't feel him place the patch, but he assumed it had worked when he saw Kyuubi-kun relax visibly and start stripping off the rubber gloves. He got down from the stool. "You're all done," he said.
Naruto raised a hand to the right side of his head. His fingers hovered above the skin until Kyuubi-kun told him it was safe to touch it. Naruto ran a finger over the smooth patch of skin behind his right ear. Of course, there was still no feeling in that skin, but his fingers were plenty sensitive. The bone structure there felt slightly more protuberant and more angular than usual under the skin, but apart from that, it seemed to be completely fine. He let out breath he had not known he was holding. "Thank you, Kyuubi-kun."
"Think nothing of it. It's my turn this time. I'll walk you through it, but first please create new instruments," Kyuubi-kun said, climbing up onto the chair Naruto had vacated. Naruto kicked the stool out of the way and created a new vial of morphine, syringe, pair of gloves, and scalpel and arranged them on the table. Kyuubi-kun handed him a red Youki cube and instructed Naruto to let it dissolve in the morphine. As they were waiting for the cube to dissolve, Naruto pulled on the rubber gloves.
"Kyuubi-kun?"
"Yes, Naruto?"
"Are you nervous?"
The small child froze for a moment. Naruto thought that the bijuu-child had been hoping that Naruto couldn't tell that he was indeed frightened, but Kyuubi-kun relaxed and instead gave a different answer. "How odd. I am nervous. Never felt that before. Unusual."
"Kyuubi-kun, you are more human now than you have ever been in the past."
"This is true." Naruto thought that was all he was going to say, but the smaller child spoke again. "Naruto, call me Shujin."
Naruto was slightly unnerved. "Prisoner? But why? We're partners now. Equals."
"That's not true. We may be partners, but we are fundamentally different beings and therefore we will never be truly equal. I am afraid of forgetting that and the fact that I am still imprisoned, no matter how good you are to me. For that reason, I request that you call me Shujin from now on. In any case, it has a better ring to it than Kyuubi-kun," he said with a brittle laugh.
"That it does, Shujin-kun," Naruto said softly, decanting the morphine into the syringe. "Now, instruct me."
Shujin told Naruto just where to inject the morphine and then described the next step. "Make a curved shallow incision about three quarters of an inch long about a quarter of an inch above and behind my ear." Naruto did as he was bid, making the cut smooth and shallow. "Have you done it?"
"Yes."
"Good. Now slide the knife under the flap of skin on the side of the incision facing away from my ear."
"Alright," Naruto said, complying. He held the scalpel very steady as he waited for the next instructions.
"Now slide the knife forward to sever the skin from the bone. Then remove the knife and repeat. Be careful not to elongate the original incision."
Naruto did so. "What next?" he asked, laying down the knife and picking up the mostly-blue chip.
"Gently pull my ear forward to hold the incision open wider. Then slide the chip into the cut so that it sits like a cap on the bone under the flap of skin you severed." Naruto carefully slid the chip into the flap and settled it over the bone.
"Now what?"
Now pick up the Youki patch and lay it over the incision." Naruto did so, watching as the small shiny strip was absorbed into Shujin's skin, healing the cut. He pulled off the rubber gloves. "Finished," he declared. "How do you feel?"
Shujin ran his fingers over the skin behind his right ear, then behind his left for comparison. "Fine, thanks. Let's just hope this works, or this will all be for nothing."
"Hey, at least we had fun," Naruto said.
"Yes, there is that to be considered," Shujin said seriously. He smiled as Naruto started to explain that he had been using sarcasm. "Just kidding." The smile faded. "However, we must first let your body adjust before I attempt to make contact or reach your chakra. I'll wait until tomorrow. It shouldn't take longer than that. After all, the Youki I implanted in you has been inside of you ever since I have." Shujin guided Naruto back to the chalk outlines and then shook his hand. "Goodbye, Naruto-kun."
"Goodbye, Shujin. Take care."
Naruto opened his eyes to see the blank wall of his room opposite him. He raised a hand and traced his fingers over the nub of bone behind his right ear. It felt no different than usual, nor did it feel different than the one behind his left ear.
"I hope you're right, Shujin," he said quietly.
That night, when Oscar had returned to the apartment building, Naruto sought him out and described in detail everything that had transpired between himself and Shujin.
"What do you want me to say?" Oscar asked finally.
"Well, I told you what he was like before I humanized him. Do you think the new body has affected him?" Naruto asked anxiously.
"Oh, definitely," Oscar said seriously. A note of professionalism crept into the dark boy's voice as he spoke. "Notice that Kyuubi-kun-"
"Shujin," Naruto corrected him.
"Shujin, then," Oscar amended. "He reminded you that you owe him when you were unwilling to let him put the chip in your head."
"So?"
"That is a thoroughly human method of thinking. He was playing on your kind nature and sense of guilt and rightness. In addition, he was subtly reminding you that you have the upper hand over him and are superior, as if suggesting that if you refused his request, you are too weak to be in charge."
"I don't know," Naruto said. "He insisted that I owed him a favor before I changed him, too. I just think he was banking on my guilt, but that's all."
"Hey, I'm just going by the books and your account. I've never met him. Shall I go on?"
"Please do."
"Well, when you asked him if he was nervous, he was genuinely surprised that he was. That makes sense. Before he was ever sealed in a Jinchuriki, he answered to no one and feared nothing. When he was locked up, I believe he would have felt anger and contempt, but never fear. Therefore, he would be unfamiliar with feeling nervousness, though he obviously has been told what it's supposed the feel like." Oscar paused for breath before going on.
"When he mentioned that controlling your body was one way he could take full control of your chakra, you were afraid that he would attempt to possess you. However, no bijuu can possess their Jinchuriki without the Jinchuriki's permission. In addition, he only brought it up once and did not seem to particularly want to possess you when he mentioned it. Finally, he did not try to persuade you in any way that having full access to your chakra would be beneficial. In fact, he did not mention that he was working on anything that would give him full access and he even implanted the chip, which he claims will only give him partial access."
"But the partial access it will give him is more than the degree of access he had before," Naruto pointed out.
"True, but if he wanted full access, he would not have performed the operation that gives him only partial access for fear that the operation would be irreversible and he would never be able to correct it and get better access."
"Anything else you noticed?" Naruto asked.
"Yes. Probably the most interesting thing that he did was to rename himself. The action of renaming in itself demonstrates a degree of independence- that there is most definitely a part of his mind that feels like you cannot control him and that it will not submit to you. Also his choice of name: Shujin. He is reminding both himself and you that the two of you will never be equal and that he will always feel at least a shade inferior to you."
"Well-" Naruto began, but Oscar cut him off.
"I'm not finished," Oscar said. "There is at least one last thing to be addressed. His old name, Kyuubi-kun, while less formal than Kyuubi no Yoko, was a constant reminder of what he was, what he had done and where he was in the grand scheme of things. If he had just wanted to remind himself that he was a prisoner, Kyuubi-kun would have sufficed. However, he chose to give himself the name of a human word."
"Kyuubi is a human word, too," Naruto pointed out.
"True, but he did not come up with it. Shujin is a human word of his own choosing. He is showing that he has changed and hopes to continue changing, getting farther and farther from who he used to be. He is ashamed of what he has done in the past and has picked a new name so as to disassociate himself from the Kyuubi no Yoko who killed hundreds of people thirteen years ago. He wants you to know all of this, too, or he wouldn't have asked you to stop calling him Kyuubi-kun."
"That makes sense," Naruto said slowly. "And it explains why he called himself 'Shujin.' He wants to reform, but he doesn't want to forget why he needs to reform."
"Exactly."
"Thank you for explaining it to me, Oscar-kun," Naruto said gratefully.
"No problem. After all, psych evaluations are supposed to be my specialty." Oscars voice was cheerful, but Naruto thought he could just make out a bitter undertone to the words.
As he returned to his own room, Naruto thought about that bitterness, not just Oscar's, but Sasuke's earlier that day when he found that he had a different affinity than his brother and Shujin's, too, of course. Shujin. "Perhaps we are all prisoners of one kind or another," Naruto whispered to himself, flicking the light off in his room and slipping into bed.
A/N: Finished! This is my longest chapter yet by over two thousand words! In fact, the total word count for chapter 18 IS OVER NINE THOUSAND! :D
A few things to address:
1)Sakura has seen Sasuke shirtless because she is a Sasu-stalker.
2)The odd comment Oscar made about not having the gene to taste the chemical on the chakra-test paper was based on the fact that there are certain chemicals that only some people can taste, depending on whether or not they were born with the gene. The way to test if you have the gene is to put a small piece of paper with the chemical on it in your mouth. If you taste something, you have the gene.
3)Naruto has gone too long without pulling a prank, so I decided to let him have one. You may have noticed that the description of the transformation was one or two things in common with the Kyuubi before Naruto changed his appearence. Kakashi immediately activated his sharingan and saw that it was only a transformation, but he did not hold the team back because he was annoyed at Naruto for interupting.
4)Naruto will have to do more work on trying to make a more durable clone, as though he doesn't have enough to do.
5)More to come on that mindlink.
6)I have never formally or informally studied psychoanalysis, though I intend to, eventually. There was more Oscar could have pointed out about what Shujin said and did, but I wanted to wrap up the chapter, so i had him just hit the high points.
I enjoyed writing this chapter. I hope enjoyed reading it. BYE!
TWENTY LESS WORDS AND THIS CHAPTER WOULD BE AN EVEN TEN THOUSAND! By the way, i recently went back and edited all of the older chapters. Check that out!