Here's the second chapter to Rise of the Imperial, hope you guys like it. I know it's kind of choppy, but I'm somewhat rushing the beginning to get to the main story, so bear with me. Yes I know it's only been a few days since the first part came out, and no, I wont always be updating every few days…I simply had a fast idea with this one, next time it could take two weeks or so, that should the normal time.
And for those of you who asked, Konan will be a main character soon, for now I'm simply trying to get the story moving.
As always, review and enjoy. If you're going to say it's crappy, give a damn logical reason.
-Three Months Later-
"Focus, keep your concentration, Naruto-san!" yelled an elderly man, as he lifted his cane to straighten the blonde's back. "Structure of both the mind and the body are key elements to this style, and unless you master both, you will never be able to beat Tayuya-chan!" he added.
"I'm trying! But you keep pretending to hit me with the cane and it makes me flinch!" shouted Naruto, as his frustration continued to build.
"Ignore my voice, and let only your mind flow...become one with yourself...relax your muscles and body, and bring tension only when the impact is felt, right at that very instant!" ordered the elder, as he began to pace the sweating blonde.
"Fine!" snapped Naruto, as he slid both his feet to shoulder distance, and crossed his arms infornt of himself, in an X-like pattern. He quickly snapped them back into position, by pulling them to his sides.
"Good, now close your fist gently, relax your fist, then concentrate just a small bit of chakra into your fist...thrust your body forward, and release all the chakra right when you and the training dummy make contact" directed the man. Naruto nodded, before lunging forward, he closed his eyes, and slowly waited for that connection.
Relax my muscles...tense my fist only when I make contact with the dummy...NOW!
Just as Naruto's fist connected, he released all the chakra he had stored, cuasing the wooden dummy ionfront of him to shatter, and explode, shooting the shard of wood outward, piercing the surrounding wall.
"H-holy...holy..c-crap...uhhhnnn..." Naruto never managed to finish the sentence, before he collapsed on the ground, his right arm now completely numb and drained of energy.
"...you...old...geezer...you never...said anything about...side...effects..." he huffed, taking shallow breaths.
"I didn't, because you have to learn on your own...as your body slowly adjusts to this basic form of the attack, you will enable yourself to manipulate it, to stylize it to your own unique attack..." replied the old man, as he kneeled beside Naruto's limp form.
"Un-unique...attack?" asked a confused Naruto.
"Yes...think...that attack, you use with your chakra...that spiral ball, what is it called again?" asked the old man, yet again.
"The...R-Rasengan?..."
"Yes...take into account...how you form the Rasengan...then add the style of the punch I have been teaching you..."
Naruto closed his eyes for a moment, gathering himself deep in thought, as he tried to somehow fuse both the elements of the Rasengan and the explosive punch.
The Rasengan requires me conentrate my chakra into a ball shape...while keeping it swirling in different directions...so...if I apply the punch basics...I could focus my chakra to swirl withing my fist...then letting it out upon impact...which means that I could constantly apply it to my punches, possibly even my kicks...I would, in essence, have the same physical limite as Oba-chan, while adding the internal damage of the Rasengan, to each hit...amazing!
"Amazing!" he shouted, out of nowhere. He suddenly had a burst of energy and hype, ready for another session of training.
"Ah, ready for the next session? You will actually be learning one of the basic stances, to which you can again evolve to your own style" smiled the man, having regained his posture, after Naruto's outburst.
"Yeah! I'm ready! Let's train!" he laugheed, fist pumping the air above him.
"Okay, okay, calm down...now then...see this, here?" asked the old man, as he drew a straight line in front of him. Naruto nodded.
"Now then, put each foot to either side of it, keep them at shoulder length distance" he instructed, sighing in relief as Naruto followed his instructions without questions. "Follow this up, by spreading your dominant foot forward, but only to a comfortable distance, and slid your other foot to the a similar appropriate distance...now, angle your feet at an outwards angle, yet again, only to a comfortable degree...good, you're doing good...slid your rear foot inwards, so that the line is under the arch of your foot, and raise your heel a bit...now bend your knees slightly...too much, too much! Bend them less...a littl less...perfect!...now, bring your non-dominant hand to just a little in front of your chin...angle your elbow to cover your ribs...now bring your dominant hand just below your chin, and relax it...good...now try standing still like that for an hour" smiled the man, causing Naruto to bust into a cold sweat.
"A-an hour?" he stuttered, almost wanting to yell. The man nodded, before walking over to get a cup of tea.
"It will acustom your body to this stance, allowing you to slide into it by nature...the stance itself is an all around, developed long ago, during the era of technology, long before the Rikkudo Sennin even came into existence" stated the man. Naruto's curiosity suddenly peaked, before he asked his question.
"Who is this 'Rikkudo Sennin'?"
"A man...well, to be more precise, a mythical man...he was the first to discover 'chakra' and 'jutsu'...they say his eyes could copy and read whatever he looked at, and could stop ninjutsu and genjutsu instantly...he is said to have died centuries ago, long after he sealed the ten-tailed demon, the Juubi, within him" explained the old man. Naruto merely stayed quiet, taking in everything as he began to ask a different ententity about this.
There was a ten tailed bijuu?...why didn't you mention this furball?
It's pretty obvious, brat...think...the Ichibi...Kyuubi...Hachibi...Nanabi...all our human-given titles end With 'bi'...now, looke at 'bijuu' and disect the word...bi, the suffix to our titles, and 'juu' which stands for 'ten'...reverse it and you get 'juubi' the ten tailed demon, who is composed of all nine primary demons...ignorant, little fu-
Ahh! I get it, I get it! You hate humans, whatever...and hey, furball...
What? And make it quick, I grow weary of this pathetic training...
Just relax once in a while, neh?
Suddenly, as Naruto was thrown back into reality, he managed to hear the final words of the old man's story.
"...and that's how the two clans formed" he finished. He suddenly looked at Naruto, who was now eyeing him restlessly.
"Hey, sifu...let's start sparring" he grinned, as the old man stood in front of him.
"Very well, we shell see how you have improved these last few months..."
As he said those words, he lunged at Naruto with a right jab.
The blonde easily smacked it away with his lead arm, before raising his front leg to block a kick from the old man, who leapt up with a spinning kick.
Shit! The old coot is faster then I thought!
He bent his knees quickly, ducking down, just in time to dodge the kick, and came back up with his own knee, hitting the old man right in the back of the leg, before he could turn away.
"Ahh! My leg! You little punk!" he growled, clutching his 'dead' leg. Naruto merely grinned, before shuffling his legs front and back like a boxer, almost mocking the old man.
"C'mon, sifu, you can't be that old and ancient" he smiled, bringing the old man a smirk.
"Let me show you what your sifu can do, brat..."
As Tayuya sat in the onsen, she sighed happily, almost in joy. The skin care mud technique here, was absolutely amazing...and the fact that she could train at the same time was a double win.
"Ahh...this is definitely worth dealing with that shithead blonde..."
Suddenly, there was a loud series of cries in pain, followed by a loud,
"My arm!"
Tayuya merely shrugged, before smiling as she placed a cucumber slice over each of her eyes.
"Definitely worth dealing with blondie" she smiled.
...
"You know...I get the feeling that Naruto's perfectly safe..." stated Jiraiya, at complete randomness.
"Naruto?...who's that Jiraiya-san?"
"Hmm?...oh, nobody you know...now, how about that little trick you did for me earlier?"
"Ooooh, Jiraiya-san, you're so naughty, mmm, but I'll do it happily"
"Heheheh"
As the old Toad Sage continued to do what he normally did when he was in a town with a bag of money, he looked up and sighed at the sign.
'Tanzaku Nighthouse, for your pleasure'
*Two Hours Later*
"You know, you're not a very good spy" said a raven haired woman, as she tossed Jiraiya a small package.
"And how am I not a good spy?" asked Jiraiya, with a smirk.
"For one, I heard about you before you even spent thirty minutes in Tanzaku"
"My my, aren't you the detective"
"I honestly sometimes miss the old Jiraiya, the one who wrote the same book that inspired Minato"
"That Jiraiya vanished a long time ago...sadly, there's nothing left to do, but mourn"
"It's a sad thing, I actually could have fallen in love with that Jiraiya"
"Whoa, let's take things slow here...oh Kami, see what you have me saying woman...jeez...let's stick to business"
"Right, anyway, I found your package, what are you going to do with?"
"Hey, I do what I do, and I happen to be a babe-magnet, the Toad Sage among men, the one and only, SUPER PERVERT!" Yelled the Toad Sage, causing the woman to sigh.
"Sure, that explains why Kushina kept kicking your ass" she dead-panned.
"I wasn't trying to peek at her! I heard Tsunade was there, so I dropped in to see if it was true!" he yelled in retaiation.
"Whatever, anyway, I found out that Naruto was last seen walking towards the west, away from shinobi lands" she replied, putting up a serious face.
"Away from here? Why?" he asked, doing the same.
"Nobody knows, but I do know that some old farmer saw a blonde boy with a disgustingly orange jumpsuit was headed eastward, with a red head girl, who had a nasty mouth for cursing..."
"Hmm...he vanished after the fight with Sasuke..."
"Fight! What fight! Naruto-kun and Sasuke-kun fought! Why didn't you tell me earlier!" screamed the woman, smacking the old Toad Sage loudly.
"Ahh! I didn't find out till just yesterday! I was on a mission in rice country, and it took me longer then it would have!" he explained, shielding himself. Suddenly, the woman stopped.
"...fine...what about this red head? Is she an.."
"No, she's not an Uzumaki...not that I know of, anyway...ironically enough, there's a raven haired girl that likes him, though" he grinned.
"Ugh...it's like me and Minato all over again..." she sighed.
"Yeah, maybe...anyway, I heard your youngest son was seen in Suna just a month ago, and again in the Tea country just a few days ago...seems like he's getting around"
"Why would Sasuke do that?"
"Word is that he's trying to trace Itachi's footsteps, and trying to see what made him so powerful"
"Oh, Sasuke..."
"Don't worry about it, Mikoto, it's not your fault you lead your eldest son to kill his entire clan, and managed to ignore your best friend's son, while he was getting abused by the world..." smiled Jiraiya, before being hit with a chair.
"Do NOT bring up Naruto!...I will castrate you, so that next time you show up here, you don't have anything to perform with!" she screamed, as Mikoto threw another chair at him, causing him to fall down a flight of stairs.
"It's not my fault, the Sandaime wouldn't let me adopt him!" she continued to yell, as she slung the table at him.
Why do women hate me so much? he thought painfully.
...
"They said this was going to be difficult...it was nothing more then mere bandits" grumbled Sasuke to himself, as he dragged a haevy chest behind him.
He had been paid sixty five thousand ryu for the bounty, so he had assumed it would at least be a chunin, maybea weak jonin...not a gang of useless bandits.
"Hey, smile! It's not healthy for you to be all moody!" cheered a girl with minty green hair, as hopped from foot to foot, in front of him.
This girl seriously has a demon sealed in her?...she acts just as annoyingly happy as Naruto...
"Why are you following me anyway? All I did was kick some dude's ass for you, and you act like I'm some celebrity..."
"Because, you saved me, not everybody saves or even cares about Fū" she smiled, causing the Uchiha's eye to twitch in shock, irritation, and confusion all at once.
She just said some depressing stuff, that nobody cares about her or would even try to save her, with a SMILE? She's just as clueless as Naruto!
"And no, I'm not naive, I'm just a happy person, so don't try to take advantage of my innocence" growled Fū, as she made a famous 'creeper' face.
Where the hell does she get a fucking flashlight to shine under face!
"You're crazy! What are you!" He shouted, before breaking into a full-speed sprint, carrying the chest behind him as if it was lighter then a bag of apples.
"Come back! Fū hasn't finished her scary face!" screamed the girl, chasing him.
...
"Alright, so what's the next step in training, sifu?" asked Naruto, as he slurped the broth left from his ramen soup.
"On a year's travel from here, eatward, is an abandoned temple, where the original Order of Shinobi used to hold rituals, after the Rikkudo Sennin passed, many of his disciples gathered and continued to train there, but nobody has stepped foot in there, in almost over a century..."
"And you want me and shithead to get some kind of artifact from there?" asked Tayuya, causing the old man to furrow his eyebrow.
"How did you know?" he asked. Tayuya merely shrugged.
"Eh, it's always the case with old temples, its either an artifact or a bunch of missing people that turn up dead and butchered" she replied, making Naruto cringe slightly.
"Well, in any case, the temple itself is perfectly safe...or at least it was, last time somebody walked in there...but that was around one hundred fifty six years ago, so who knows"
"So what's the dangerous part about the temple, sifu?" asked Naruto.
"Well, seeing as how its been over a century since the last visit...it would most likely be falling apart, ready to crumble to the ground, crushing your feeble fleshy body under tons of stone and boulders, ensnaring you in a certainty of painful death...that and that once you get in there, you will be forced to see a nightmare, in which you will be forced to see the once you care about the most die...again...and again...and again..." he answered. Naruto and Tayuya subtely exchanged glances, although neither managed to see the other.
"So...we have to...watch them...die?...that's...fucked up..." she said.
"Well, if you have the mental and emotional strength, you can escape the trap...in the old times, those who completed the 'nightmare' and escaped it, were trained to levels that even the Rikkudo Sennin would acknowledge...the shinobi of the eastern lands operated in ways far different form your shinobi...our training produced far more powerful ninja, albeit there were far less, due to that same training..."
"When...do you want us to go...sifu?" asked Tayuya, forcing a complete attitude change. She wasn't exactly attached to the idiot Naruto, but she's be damned if she watched someone like him get killed. The moron was loud, annoying, and stupid as hell, but he was a good friend, and usually the one who forced himself to stay up late to listen to her childhood problems.
"You can start the journey tomorrow, for now, pack your supplies, and go get ready for tomorrow...I taught you the basics of what you need to know...Naruto, I taught you the ways of combat at close range, and now it's time you put that to use...Tayuya, you've never truly needed my help, only for physical training did you need me...now listen, when you two come back, I will not be here...this trip will not only take a long time, but it will also push your bodies and mind to places you will wish you never even knew...when you leave the temple, you will be different people...head back to your home land, you will both be needed there..." smiled the old man, leaving behind a confused Tayuya and Naruto.
"What...do we do...now?" she asked, only to receive a confused shrug.
"Get ready I guess?...it can't be that difficult..."
...
"It seems rather unorganized, don't you think?" asked Itachi, as he walked alongside Pein down a long and dark corridor.
"It may seem that way, but this idea has been planned for years now, we never intended to actually launch it, though...however, with the recent turn of events involving the Kyuubi and your brother's attachment to the Nanabi junichuuriki...we're changing directions...instead of following Madara's idea of extracting the bijuu, we're going to enlist the jinchuuriki, and recruit some of the smaller countries to aid us"
"You want to merge the surrounding nations, to form a great big nation, to combat the current political super-powers?" askede Itachi. Pein nodded, before stopping in front of a black door.
"Like Orochimaru, I've been conducting my own human experiments, however, unlike him, I've been doing them for an actual greater good...after I managed to kill Salamander Hanzo, I extracted his actual salamander gland, that he put in his body...using that as a basis for the experiment, I created a series of mini-glnds with the same potency and effects...I created a way to make shinobi immune to most known poisons..." stated Pein, as he opened a door that lead to a laboratory, where Itachi managed to see Konan getting up from a metal table.
"You used Konan as a test subject?" he asked. Pein shook his head.
"She insisted on doing it, and to my relief and satisfaction, it was a success...the gland that is now located right next to her heart processes all posions in her bloodstream, and connects it to a small vein that splits and lead to her canine teeth"
"You added...a vein and major organ to her body...and essentially made her bite venomous...you literally created a human snake, without need of a jutsu...and you created a way to prevent posioning...incredible"
"I have transcended not only gifts in combat and philosophical insights, but even in medical accomplishments" stated Pein, holding a monotone ring to his voice.
"So, you're serious on this war proposal..."
"Yes, and your choice is right now, whether or not you side with me or Madara"
"The choice is far from subtle, Nagato, we both know that"
"It never hurts to be assure, Itachi"
"Well, if it does assure you, I'm targeting Madara...or at least whoever he claims to be" replied Itachi, confusing the orange haired man.
"What do you imply?" he asked.
"That is not Madara, I have seen the real Uchiha founder, and he is currently in Orochimaru's hands...my guess is that the snake is going to summon him with the Edo Tensei no jutsu"
"That could pose quite a predicament, as I would assume nobody alive could take him down alone"
"If what is said is true, I believe even you and me combined would be hard pressed to scratch him"
"We will see, for now, however, I believe you should be quite interested in some of our top recruits...I believe you will be impressed with their reputations..."
...
"Sakura...you've shown more then enough promise and improvement over just a small span of three months...I see you're taking Kakashi's training in strides" said Tsunade in a calm tone. The pinkette merely bowed, before speaking.
"Yes, Hokage-sama, I'm doing more then my best to improve, so that I can one day get revenge on Orochimaru-teme for the murders of Naruto and Sasuke...everybody is mourning their deaths..."
"Their deaths?...they're actually mourning Naruto's death?"
"Err...I may have over embellished Naruto's case..."
"...what did you say?"
"...that Orochimaru tried to kidnap Sasuke, but Sasuke refused, so he killed him, and that he attempted to take Naruto hostage, but when Naruto also refused, he said he would rather die a shinobi with honor, an drag the snake with him...I said that Naruto almost destroyed the waterfall in the Valley of the End, with a mass of exploding kunai, in an attempt to kill Orochimaru...but failed..."
"...wait...is that why there was a ramen memorial day the other week?" asked Tsunade, slightly shocked. Sakura nodded.
"Yes, Hokage-sama." Tsunade merely waved it off, before changing topics.
"At any rate, I'm promoting you to a new unit, one that I created"
"A...new unit, mam?" asked Sakura, confused. Tsunade now nodded.
"Yes, in response to Naruto and Sasuke's...er...deaths...I decided to start a new Anbu branch that specializes in retrieval missions, and will also be assigned to map out the surrounding areas around Konoha to ensure we know as many possible hideouts as we can"
"So basically a recon squad, Hokage-sama?" asked Sakura
"That is correct, but I will be enlisting only the most promising chunin and genin" answered Tsunade.
"And who did you have in mind, mam?"
"You're our first recruit, next on my list are Hyuuga Hanabi and Hyuuga Hinata, Inuzuka Kiba, and Aburame Shino"
"But...that's only four recruits including myself, Hokage-sama...that's nowhere near enough to start a new branch..."
"Don't worry about that, for now you'll simply be a team specializing in that area of missions, until I can find at least another dozen or so recruits" added the busty Hokage. Sakura nodded before bowing low, and stepping towards the door.
"I'll go get them then, so you can bring them up to date, mam"
With that, the pinkette disappeared behind the door, leaving Tsunade alone.
"I know you're there" she said to nobody in particular.
"You always seem to find me, Tsunade-sama"
"When you're teammates with Jiraiya, you learn every single trick a man can do to sneak up on people"
"That is true, the man is a genius if he wants to be, when it comes to peeping"
"So what did you need?"
"Word is that a blonde haired boy with a disgusting orange jumpsuit was seen crossing the western plains, north-east of Iwagakure..."
"Naruto left the shinobi nations?"
"That seems to be the case, Tsunade-sama"
"Hmm...how long ago was this?" asked Tsunade, causing Kakashi to break into a cold sweat.
"Er...uhmm...three months ago...we just got word of it..."