Disclaimer: Ok the house is cleaner than it has been in a long time. Amazing what gets done when the power goes out. But unfortunately I still don't own anything Naruto except my own little dribble drabbles. In other words this story and the others I have written belong to me but Naruto and crew do not. Hubby isn't commenting tonight because he's at work so blame him for any errors please. Heehee. . .
Chapter Twenty: Found Out?
At the cabin, the special operations people from ROOT finally noticed, along about the same time as the council members, that their target wasn't there and that they were soundly getting their backsides handed to them on a silver platter. The platter might have had a few dents, scratches and smudges of tarnish on it but it didn't alter the fact that it was holding ROOT backsides. Curtesy of the famous or in Danzo's opinion, infamous Rookie Nine plus Three. That damned Sand Trio weren't helping matters any either. Growling in frustration, Danzo, still bleeding heavily from the gash in his side, called his troops off. Slowly, the ROOT people faded away from the scene. They even took their downed comrades so that Tsunade wouldn't have anyone she could point out as being part of the group let alone question. Unknown to Danzo every member of the expedition had promised each other to make sure no one was left alive on the battlefield. None wished to face an angry Hokage or Ibiki's famous interrogation. Each knew their injuries would be healed by either the Hokage herself or by one of her two apprentices and then they would be turned over to Ibiki for questioning and he had a reputation that was almost as feared as his apprentices. Those two girls were each scarier than he ever had been.
The two councilmen had already beat a hasty retreat. They definitely didn't want to face Tsunade now that she had won the confrontation. Even though they were still convinced the boy she sheltered and protected as always was a dangerous threat to their beloved home they would not willingly stick around to face her wrath. Though they were councilmen, they could still be put in front of Ibiki and questioned just as easily as Danzo's soldiers. Both Koharu and Homura were retired nins and Tsunade held within her power the ability to re-instate them to active roles if she so chose for whatever reason she chose. As active ninja, they would be forced to resign their seats on the council and, as active ninja, they would fall under her command. Therefore, being questioned by Ibiki's interrogation squad was definitely in their thoughts as they fled the scene. Both sought for ways to cover their backsides and keep their positions as they scurried through the throngs of shoppers looking for a place to hide.
Tsunade growled as she saw the ROOT people vanish from the yard, each carrying a downed comrade. She and her comrades were guarding the entrances to the cabin but their posture was too relaxed for the boy to have been inside, a fact Danzo had noted and which was the true reason he had called his troops off. He really didn't care how many of his force had to die in order to accomplish the objective. In fact, Gaara had told the defenders the minute Naruto left and so they had known he wasn't in any real danger.
Once the attackers were gone, Sakura gave a nod in Tsunade's direction and bowed low to Hinata. In a quiet voice she said, "If you need me, I will be helping at the Tsu residence. Mrs. Tsu needs help with her gardening and I am finding it good therapy while I think but I will come immediately if you need me again. Is anyone injured before I leave?" She was trying very hard to remember who she had been once upon a time. The friend Ino still saw her to be. The student, Tsunade had gladly taught all her tricks. The daughter her parents had loved. The girl Naruto had seen her as, although that might not have been who she really had been either.
She received negative shakes and nodded once more in farewell before she left. Behind her Anko and Kakashi left. Kakashi had a wall that needed some serious sanding and Anko was his supervisor. He said nothing to either of his former students on his way out. He'd meant what he had said to Danzo during the confrontation. He had been rethinking things and seeing them in a new light due to Anko's snorts of barely concealed rage and/or amusement whenever he had tried to tell his side of events.
The Rookie Nine began to move off also, though they moved slowly. Most didn't want Naruto to feel forced into seeing them but all of them wanted him to know they would fight for him if he needed them to and each was hoping to be stopped by his cheery voice calling out to them. Hinata and Shikamaru moved through their numbers thanking them for coming and promising to let them know as soon as Naruto was ready to see them. They carefully explained they were going slowly at re-introducing people to him as when he had returned he honestly hadn't remembered anyone.
Kiba was more than a little upset. "Why won't he see me, though? He knows I'd never hurt him," he loudly whined, hoping the sound of his voice would bring Naruto out to say he could stay.
Neji fielded the question and complaint, which surprised everyone. "Kiba it's simple. Can you sit still for five minutes? If not, you have too much energy for him right now. He needs peace and quiet."
"Huh?"
"She said he didn't remember any of us when he returned. That means they're trying to help his mind recover. His mind. Not his body. Physically he's probably fine but his mind was traumatized and that kind of injury takes a lot longer to recover." Hinata nodded as did Shikamaru and Shino.
Kiba looked doubtful, mainly because he didn't understand a word of what Neji had just said. Akamaru barked and growled and Kiba listened to his pup, who wasn't really a pup anymore. When the dog quit, he sighed and hung his head. He thought it over turning to look back at the cabin once again before Ino grabbed his arm and started tugging him off. The rest of the rookies fell into step and they followed Kakashi away from the cabin. Soon, the only one of the rookies, still standing in the yard, was a glaring Sasuke.
"So this is where you hid him, huh? Well, it seems like I've found him now so you might as well let me in to see him. I'm not leaving until I do," he said.
"Actually, Sasuke, he isn't here," answered Hinata. She had grown bolder during her tenure as one of Naruto's caregivers. For him, she would speak up and do what she felt was best to protect him from everyone. Including his self-proclaimed brother.
"What do you mean he isn't here? Of course he is. Why else would the council show up here to arrest him? And if he isn't even here why were we fighting to protect him? Move aside, Hyuuga."
But the five self-appointed guardians held their posts. Gaara stood glaring into Sasuke's eyes, silently begging him to try and force him to move, while Hinata stood as tall as her spine could make her at his side, which unfortunately didn't make her even come up to Gaara's shoulder. Jiraiya, Tsunade and Shizune each just stayed relaxed, knowing that, even as strong as he'd become, Sasuke was no match for them. Hiashi stood behind the arrogant young man at the garden gate waiting for his daughter so he could walk her home. If necessary, he too would step in to stop the prideful Uchiha from forcing his way where he wasn't welcome.
"The council had the wrong location. This cabin is my get-away location, Sasuke. It's where I come when I don't want to be found for a bit," said Jiraiya calmly looking around at the destruction the fighters had made of the yard. To Hinata and Gaara he said, "We're gonna have to get this mess cleaned up. Can't have my neighbors thinking I'm killing people in my front yard."
Gaara raised an eyebrow as if to say, "Me? Do yardwork? Are you serious?" while Hinata just nodded after she also took a quick look around. She definitely didn't want Naruto coming back to this mess.
"Naruto hasn't ever been here. We leaked it to the council's people that he was recovering near this location and let them see us come and go to force their hand," added Tsunade.
"Like I'm gonna believe that. Why don't you just open the door and tell him to come on out here? Unlike the rest of the idiots, who call themselves his friends, I know he's in there."
Before anyone could say another word, Gaara solved the issue. He opened the cabin door and waved a hand inside, letting his special itching sand reach out and rub against Sasuke as he, in his usual brisk fashion, brushed past him and into the empty cabin. Sasuke absently brushed clinging sand off his arm as he surveyed the room, not noticing as the sand coiled around his ankles and began climbing up the inside of the pants he wore. Some granules worked themselves into the fabric of his socks and, through his own movements, would find their way into his shoes. Sasuke saw an untidy stack of writing material covered a desk under a window. A small stack of breakfast dishes could be seen piled clumsily around the sink. And both the doors to the bathroom and bedroom stood open showing an untidy bit of a mess awaiting cleaning up also. But nowhere was there any sign of anything orange or any other evidence of Naruto. It truly looked as if he had never been inside the cabin at all. Sasuke frowned, beginning to feel itchy, and spun on his heel.
"Ok, if he isn't here, then where is he?" He was angry. He absently scratched at his arm where he had brushed against Gaara on his way in. He'd thought he'd found him. Finally. But he wasn't here. He was so mad if he hadn't been an Uchiha he might have screamed. "You're hiding him somewhere and I will find him eventually so you might as well just tell me now. And don't even bother trying to tell me again how he doesn't want to see me. Or that he might kill me if he does. I know Naruto better than you ever did and I know he wants to see me. He wants to fight me just as much as I want to fight him." His eyes narrowed in challenge as he drew blood on his arm he was still scratching. "He always preferred to fight someone who could actually give him a challenge and a reason to keep working. You're the one trying to change who he is by only letting certain people see him now. People who are soft and weak and who you can manipulate into telling him what you think he should know."
Tsunade was getting tired of his little temper display. His little bit of a temper didn't scare her one little bit and everyone there knew it. Several of the watchers winced as Sasuke lost control of himself. They knew their Hokage well enough to know her own temper was rising and it was sooo very much more. . . potent. There was a reason she was considered a legend where temper tantrums were concerned. Hinata looked to the floor trying not to see the fallout when she saw Tsunade draw back her shoulders and she knew she had narrowed her eyes. The two actions went hand in hand and she'd seen it often enough to know there was no stopping things now. Tsunade would have her say and the Uchiha would be lucky if he walked away in one piece.
Marching right up to the arrogant Uchiha Tsunade let her temper take over as she put her face right in his and spat, " Are you quite finished now, Teme? You will see him if, and ONLY if, he wants to see you. All you want is to see if you are still stronger than he is but he has no need for such pitiful displays anymore. He knows full well that you were never his equal and he feels no need to stroke your little ego now. If he deigns to see you, it will be arranged, but I can tell you for a fact, so long as it is a power match-up you're looking for, it won't happen." She growled, "Naruto can beat me and he can beat Jiraiya. Do you honestly think you can take either one of us down? Even one at a time with a week between bouts to recover? He can beat us together at the same time in the same fight. I dare say he can take on the full Anbu corp though I am not willing to test that." She paused for thought and then concluded, "Now get out of here before I show you exactly why you are not now, nor ever have been a match for him. Her hands were fisted on her ample hips and her breasts were thrusting forward, heaving with her angered breathing, as if to say, "Come on. Let's us out. We can black his eyes for him so he'll never see the punch coming. Together we can give him real flying lessons."
Sasuke, as if he heard those actual words, blanched and then turned red, blanched and flushed again before he back pedaled and spun around the glaring Hokage, whose actual words he hadn't really even heard once she'd thrust her chest in his face, and zipped out the door. His blood pulsed through his veins keeping time with his pounding feet as he raced across the rooftops on his way to the safest place he knew. The blood kept pooling in his cheeks only to drain away again a few agonizing minutes later as he burst through his own front door at the Uchiha estate. Once inside, he slammed the door and threw every lock he had on it before rushing to every window on the main floor and locking them before pulling the curtains tightly closed. He definitely didn't want to see what would happen if she did turn those things loose. They were a menace, he thought, as he began to strip his clothes as he made his way straight to his shower, grabbing a towel on the way.
Back at the cabin, everyone stood in stunned shock. "What in the world got into him," muttered Tsunade with a confounded look. She didn't think she'd been that hard on him. She hadn't even touched him for Pete's Sake. Sure maybe she shouldn't have called him a Teme but if he was gonna insist on acting the part. . .
Jiraiya began to giggle while Hinata and Gaara just looked at her in surprised shock. Shizune was busy trying to look at anything except her employer while Hiashi was finding a sudden interest in the clouds that floated serenely overhead. It was Hinata who finally answered her. "Uh, um. . . Tsunade-sama, um. . ."
Tsunade looked at her in total confusion. "Well, what?"
"You had your um. . assets inhisface." She rushed through the rest of the explanation with a cherry red face, pointing to Tsunade's chest.
Jiraiya lost his composure. He belly laughed in glee. He could still clearly see Sasuke's eyes bugging out of his head. Between giggles he said, "At least we know he really is a red blood male though I think your girls might have just convinced him to swing the other way for a bit. He hee he. I think he actually thought he heard those beauties threaten him. Ho ho ho. He hee he." He held his sides laughing so hard tears were rolling down his cheeks. Even Gaara had a small smirk.
Hiashi was trying hard to keep his stoic upper class expression but he was seeing the image also and it was a losing battle as a small smirk turned up the corners of his lips. Before he could lose his private battle with decorum, he excused himself to tend clan business. When he was a safe distance from the cabin and noone was around to see or hear him, he let out a small quiet, but for any who knew him, loud chuckle and smiled the rest of the way to the Hyuuga Estates. He'd trust Gaara to see his daughter safely home. Air flight was not on his list of preferred ways to travel and if he'd stayed to wait for her, he might have found himself joining Jiraiya. His dignity might never recover from the experience but it had been a sight to see and he was glad he hadn't missed it. He had missed the days of being able to find amusement in the presumptuousness of the Uchiha clan.
Inside, Tsunade was advancing on a still laughing maniac. She stalked him and both Gaara and Hinata quickly stepped aside, clearing the runway for Jiraiya. Both knew he was about to take those aforementioned flying lessons courtesy of Tsunade's awesome right hook. Since he was standing, or rolling, in front of the open door when she connected, he went flying straight outside still laughing manically to the shout of, "Shut Up, you Overgrown Pervert."
At the training ground the Anbu were now watching in shock. They didn't even notice the sound of Jiraiya crashing to the ground in the next training area over, as they were too busy watching Naruto work out. They worked out hard but this kid was doing three times the workout they normally did and he showed no signs of being tired yet. Every time a clone would burst, he'd summon five more to take it's place. He was practicing lightening strikes and thunder fists and earth defenses at the same time he used his wind, nature, water and fire manipulation skills.
Thunder Fist, as they discovered, was an off-shoot of his lightening manipulation and something very few nins had the ability to perform. It literally required the lightening user to be moving so fast they broke the sound barriers in the battlefield. As in any thunderstorm, by the time you heard the thunder the move was named for, it was too late. Lightening would follow the sound of the thunder and, if you weren't down before it hit, you would be when it did.The injuries caused by the jutsu were felt only after he passed as eardrums would burst and your equilibrium was destroyed. Naruto was the only person either of them had ever seen use the ability before. Suddenly they found themselves very glad he was on their side and that they weren't fighting him. They had read of the move in books but never had they seen it. The kid was deadly with just his lightening moves but that was probably his least most destructive element.
The rasengan was deadly even in Jiraiya's hands but in Naruto's it was a force of nature that could only be described as "No Need For A Coffin Now" or "Mapmaker's Bane" ninjutsu. With him in control, it was a most destructive force and he was clearly trying to make it even more deadly. Just how dead did this kid think a person could get, each guard wondered? Just watching, as he worked to combine the elements into it, they knew there would be no survivors if he ever chose to level just one of them against the village. The ninja before them was a powerhouse that defined the word. So far, they saw he could command the water, wind and lightening into the sphere but he was having trouble bringing in the fire, earth and nature. He could also form a rasengan of those last three elements but when he went to bring in the first three, the sphere blew apart sending his clones back where they came from.
Every once in a while he would dispel a clone he'd had working with just one element and sit in quiet contemplation for a few minutes before standing to summon a new group. His guards took those moments to try and clear the shock that was clouding their minds. But his little breaks weren't really long enough for them to regain much of their composure. They had never seen a Master as powerful as he was and they were having trouble relating the boy they used to know with the man in front of them. In their minds, they echoed the other Anbu who had taken a turn at standing guard duty, as he practiced, and called him The Element Master.
After he'd been practicing for four hours, he divided his two thousand clones into six equal groups of three hundred and thirty-three. The remaining two clones stood beside him and helped him watch the rest. He now had one group of clones for each element he could control and that he wished to make into the perfect rasengan. He then divided each group in half again and had each half develop a different sized rasengan. Of group one, the wind group, he had half of them create the largest wind rasengan they could and see how long they could hold it. The second half had to create the smallest, most compressed form they could and see how long they could hold it.
He did the same with the other five groups. Each one hundred and sixty six clones were to be supervised by the one remaining guy who wasn't in a group and when they had the form as small, or large, as it would go and could hold it no longer they were to release the form against a rock or tree, with each group being assigned to their own area of the training field. Naruto wanted to study the results of the exercise and he didn't need clones exploding their rasengans where ever they felt like it. He wanted to see which form was the strongest, but by seeing the release he could also see the swirl patterns that told how it formed into the rasengan. From that he hoped to find the key to forming all six elements into the same rasengan. But he knew that would only be the tip of the iceberg. He would still have to learn the most effective form of his deadliest attack. Just because he could make a single elemental rasengan any size he wished it to be didn't mean he could do the same with one that contained all the elements.
He was unaware of the shock on his body guard's faces as he worked with the elements. He knew the time of the battle was growing closer and he still had a long way to go to be ready for it if he was to win. And he had to win. Losing never entered his thought for longer than it took him to tell someone the conditions under which he would lose. The conditions under which his lost was guaranteed. Other than that he thought only of mastering his abilities and earning the trust and love Kami had given him. He thought only of earning the sacrifice only he and Kami knew the Kyuubi had made. For the first time in his life he knew the reason for his lonely existence and he didn't want to disappoint those who believed in him enough to make sacrifices for him.
His guards were panting in exhaustion as they watched him clean up the battlefield after his clones were finally all dispelled. They were both leaning into the trees they'd chosen for camouflage, no longer even pretending to watch for signs of impending unwelcome intrusions. They were unable to see where this kid got his energy from and knowing that if the whole of the Anbu corp had worked out in the field they might have done the same amount of damage but there were over a hundred ninjas working in Anbu, counting those in the specialized fields. Might have. But there was absolutely no way any of them would have had the left over energy required to put the field to rights again. It would have had to wait until the next day and even then, none of them, not even their best nature manipulator would have been able to repair it like this.
The two watched as the same small flowers bloomed again in the field and the trees stood straight in their healthy bark coats. Remains of fallen trees were decomposed and absorbed into the ground to send tender sprouts forward. New life would grow where they fell. Leaves budded and grew to full bloom on previously bare branches, of trees he hadn't felled, and offered comforting shelter to the small shoots of green life beneath them. Even rocks were not forgotten as pieces, large and small joined with sandy residue as they reformed into resting spots for tired walkers. But what truly amazed them was seeing that he didn't even forget the small nuts and bits of stale bread that had littered the ground when they first appeared for his training time. Each piece was back on the ground just waiting for a hungry bird or squirrel to come by for dinner.
When he was satisfied everything was repaired as best it could be he walked over to where the two were waiting in the trees. He said, "I must find Tsunade and find out where I am to stay now." The guards barely managed to nod as they gathered the necessary chakra and shuishined, with him, into the tower office.