"Shit! Yoroi!" shouted a young man with spiky brown hair and a pair of circular glasses resting on the ridge of his nose. Behind the glasses a pair of eyes lacking iris and filled with fear looked on as his partner burst into a flesh ridden torrent of blood and organs.
Turning his head to the cause of his partners demise, he saw the crimson eyes of a young blonde as a red aura formed around him, giving off the impression of a fox with nine tails, before the being flicked it's wrist and the spectacled man's world bled to darkness.
XXX
"AAARRRGGGHHH!" the young blonde screamed as he jolted upright from his nightmare.
After Tayuya had recovered they had had a little argument and Naruto had eventually agreed that it wasn't a good idea to go anywhere that he had been before, after all those ROOT ANBU would look in those places first, so he would be safer if he avoided those places until he was sure he could defend himself.
So the duo had set off to Umi no Kuni, where they ended up taking a contract to stop a monster from terrorising the land. Things had turned out slightly more complicated when the redhead had informed Naruto of the existence of one of Orochimaru's labs, run by a man called Amachi.
The pair had a run in with a pair of Oto genin who had been assigned to the area, after a difficult battle, the Oto shinobi managed to escape, though his travelling companion managed to show them to the research centre, they ended up getting into another fight with the duo, except this time, they managed to piss the blond off enough for him to reveal his secret project that he had kage bunshin working on while they were walking, which was the reason for his nightmares.
The sheer brutal efficiency of his technique was sickening in his mind, and it made him fear for his humanity as he couldn't help but compare himself with the beast in his stomach.
Eventually the pair managed to complete the mission and earn a bit of money, which was spent on getting groceries and new clothes for the girl since she only had the pair of pants and jacket she bought at the village the Suna siblings trained Naruto earlier.
The blonde had been having the same nightmare for weeks, and even with the genjutsu mistresses harsh words concerning the reality of shinobi and mercenary life, he was still having difficulty sleeping.
As he sat there panting, the flap to his tent opened, revealing a dishevelled redhead with murder in her eyes.
"Will you shut the fuck up! I'm trying to get some fuckin sleep and your fuckin screaming is pissing me off!" she shouted at him as he regulated his breathing.
"Sorry, but that wasn't exactly a normal first kill," he said quietly after his breathing returned to normal.
"Tough shit, now shut the fuck up or I'll rip your fuckin balls off!" she threatened him before leaving the tent and heading back to sleep.
"Damn, she's a fuckin psycho," the blonde muttered to himself before attempting to get back to sleep.
After what seemed like eternity, the sun rose and with it, so did the blonde who couldn't relax enough to sleep.
After waking up his companion, earning a punch to the gut, the duo performed their morning routine, which involved getting some breakfast and doing some warm-ups while some bunshins packed up their camp.
When they had finished their warm ups, the pair started walking towards a small town they had picked on a map. After some discussion, the pair (well Tayuya) had decided that they should avoid anywhere that the blond was known, since the chances of those ROOT shinobi searching for him in such places was VERY high and he was NOT ready to face those people yet.
XXX
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" the blond asked as the duo entered a small town in Kiba no Kuni1.
"Look shithead, there is no fuckin way I'm going to lose anymore fuckin sleep because of your pansy ass having nightmares just because you killed a pair of motherfuckers!" the redhead practically shouted at him.
"But how is killing more people going to help?"
"It's fuckin called desensitization, it's the most fuckin important thing for a fuckin shinobi or mercenary."
"Uuhh what does desensitization mean?" Naruto asked causing Tayuya to pause, before turning to face him.
"Are you really that fuckin stupid?"
"Hey! I'm not stupid! Just poorly educated!"
"So you're saying that I have to fuckin educate you, great, that's just what I needed, to fuckin teach some retard," the former Oto nin muttered under her breath, "anyway, desensitization means to get fuckin used to something so it doesn't fuckin affect you."
"Wait! Are you trying to tell me that you're trying to get me to enjoy killing?!"
"No, I'm fuckin trying to get you to not care about killing people!"
"…"
"But isn't that wrong?"
"Just shut the fuck up before I rip your fuckin balls off," she growled out as they reached the outside of the mayors office, before the duo entered to see if there was anything that needed doing.
XXX
"So our job is to save some villagers from a group of bandits that are hiding out somewhere in the area?" Naruto asked the redhead as the pair started to search the area.
"Yeah… but then you gotta kill the fuckers so they won't kidnap another fucking person," came the more subdued than usual reply from the former oto-nin.
"Oh… HEY! What do ya mean I gotta kill them!" the blond shouted out as soon as he realized the wording of the statement.
"You're the one that fuckin needs to get fuckin used to killing, not me."
Looking at the redhead for a few seconds, Naruto had to concede the point, she had no problems with killing, while he had nightmares from it.
"So… what's the plan?" he asked after several seconds.
"Isn't it fuckin obvious?"
"Huh?"
"(sigh) think about it shithead, what sorta shit can each of us do?"
"Let's see… I can make a lot of copies of myself, make a spinning ball of chakra , cut people with chakra and make strings out of chakra… you can use genjutsu and… what else can you do?" he asked after thinking about it for a few seconds.
"You don't fuckin need to know anymore to make a fuckin plan dipshit!"
"Alright… let's see… if I just charge in then the hostages could get hurt, if I sneak in then how do I get them out without being seen? Unless I use Kage bunshin to cover their escape… but then I might need that chakra later… damn it, what else is there? There must be a way to hide the captives without them getting hurt… wait... GENJUTSU! Tayuya can use a genjutsu on them!" he thought to himself before forming the outlines of a plan in his head.
"Let's see, when we get there, you can cast a genjutsu on the bandits while I get the hostages out, before coming back to… kill the bandits," he said, his head falling at the last part.
"And how the fuck are you going to kill them all?" the redhead asked.
"Cut their throats while they're under the genjutsu," the blond said hopefully.
"Fuck no! You're going to use your little technique! Slicing some fuckers throat and killing 'em with that are two completely fuckin different things!" she shouted at him.
"But…"
"But nothing! You fuckin made that technique, you WILL fuckin well use it!"
"Hai Tayuya…" he claimed as his eyes dropped to the ground in despair.
XXX
When the duo finally found the bandits hideout, Naruto remembered something he had forgotten about earlier.
"Uh… Tayuya, your genjutsu is sound based right?" he asked cautiously, before she reached into her pocket and threw something at him.
Quickly catching the offending items, he quickly realised exactly what they were… earplugs.
"Uh… thanks," he said quickly before putting them in his ears and waiting for the girl to start playing.
After the flute touched her lips, the bandits began to fall to their knees all over the place, which Naruto took as his cue to rescue the hostages.
Fortunately there weren't that many, so it didn't take long for the blond to safely evacuate the prisoners thanks to the redheads genjutsu.
After everyone was safely removed from the area, the blond proceeded to meet the redhead to inform her of the stage they were at, at which point she stopped playing.
"Hey! Why'd you stop playing?"
"Two reasons shithead… one you can't use your fuckin technique properly against shit if they're like that and two… I'm fuckin tired! Now go and kill them already!" she shouted causing him to turn towards the 70 or so bandits that were currently getting readjusted with reality.
"Alright Naruto… you can do this… just focus chakra at the tip of your fingers and make a solid line joining each finger to the same one on the other hand," as he thought this, long strings of chakra began to connect his fingers, until there were five long chakra strings connecting his hands together, "alright… now just focus on making it small and fine… small and fine," the strings began to narrow until they were just a hair thick, "and now… just focus on converting it to Fūton… Fūton," and with that last bit of thought, the chakra strings had gone from ropes that could grasp things, to razor sharp wires that could cut almost anything.
Putting most of his concentration on keeping the strings right, the blond ran forward, shaping the strings to flow behind him as he charged, before flinging them at the now completely orientated bandits.
He tried to block out the carnage that followed as his technique sliced a person into nothing more than a pile of blood soaked chunks of flesh, before doing the same to each bandit that followed.
In less than a minute the bandit camp was reduced to nothing more than a blood soaked clearing, with countless slabs of flesh littering the maroon coloured dirt. Only two victims escaped the butchering.
When all the bandits had been slaughtered, Naruto couldn't stop himself from emptying the contents of his stomach at the massacre he had just committed.
"Fuckin hell… I wasn't expecting it to be THIS bloody," Tayuya claimed as she walked out of the tree line, looking a little paler than usual, obviously not used to the sheer brutality of the scene.
"At least you only had to watch... I actually did the damn thing," the blond said as he heaved his guts up.
"Well… think of it this way, after this it should be fuckin easy to kill the odd fuckin person here and there."
"Screw you," Naruto said quietly.
"Pfft, in your fuckin dreams shithead. Come on, you've wasted enough fuckin time as it is, stop fuckin spewing your fuckin guts up and get moving!" the genjutsu mistress shouted, causing the blond to get to his feet and shakily make his way back to the town with his travelling companion.
XXX
Walking into a town when your clothes are drenched in drying blood isn't as easy as you might think. Everywhere you go, you are either stopped by guards trying to make sure you aren't injured or going to cause trouble, or getting stopped by complete strangers attempting to see if you're injured and need help… especially if you're walking like Naruto.
"Why won't they leave me alone?" Naruto said irritably as the duo made their way towards the mayor's office with the former captives in tow.
"You're fuckin drenched in blood and walking like a fuckin corpse… of course people will see if you're alright," Tayuya stated irritably.
"But isn't it obvious I would've already been stopped by now?"
"Civilians don't normally think, they just do."
"…it's annoying."
"So are you, now shut up and let me do the talking," the redhead said as they reached the mayor's office to get their pay.
XXX
After receiving their 60,000 ryō pay check and getting something to eat, the duo rented a pair of rooms in a local inn and got some much needed rest.
That night Naruto's dreams were filled with the slaughter that had taken place earlier… though he didn't wake up from them this time.
1 Land of fangs