And, "Peace of Mind" by GreatGoogilyMoogily again, so yes carry on now…
Chapter's done.
11/27/09 – Day after Thanksgiving, so it's a bit late to say this but happy Turkey day everyone.
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There were two things Tsubasa Sato loved in life, money and power, and to him the pursuit of all other aspects of life was secondary.
Money could be used in an amazing variety of ways, from buying stocks in business and hiring assassins to dispose of your enemies to bribing people to look the other way or make a slight slip of the mind when recording something.
However, money couldn't always get what one may want, which is where power came in. With enough force, and liberal use of fear and numbers, one could destroy the faith of zealots and kill the hope of the largest optimists.
When he had still lived in Kumogakure, he had been Jonin, and while not particularly powerful in the physical sense he was renowned for his ruthless nature and lack of any form of moral code. He took jobs that other ninjas wouldn't even begin to consider, and did them quickly and effectively.
All without even the slightest trace of remorse.
To him the details were inconsequential, if some children were to be killed it didn't matter to him. If he was to abduct a woman so she could become a slave for a dirty man then so what? She would have had ended up having sex sooner or later.
The world was unfair and full of shit already, so who would care if he heaped a bit more onto the ever growing pile?
With the pay for these awful deed being so much greater than some of the more clean duties a shinobi could perform his wealth grew to great heights, taking his power along with it.
Soon he had invested the money he earned into businesses all through out the country, and his political pull increased. No longer was he just some ninja, he had a council chair in his village and respect from all the citizens.
The power he gained was, however, not enough. He had an insatiable desire to increase his influence even further, and no matter where he got to it would never be enough. Contrary to what one may think, the higher he got the more it grew inside of him, until it was so strong that he made a terrible decision.
He decided that no matter what he had to do, or who he had to kill that before his life was done he would be the Raikage.
However, there were a multitude of problems with this. First and foremost he most certainly wasn't the strongest ninja in the village. If he were to be quite honest with himself he was actually only a decent Jonin, and all the things he gained he did so with using underhanded methods and deceit.
Unlike a large number of his colleagues he was not so stupid as to try and use flashy techniques and fight with honor. He was a ninja who struck from the shadows, kidnapped friends and relatives, or poisoned his targets, but he never engaged in direct combat unless necessary.
The second problem was a slightly less serious one, but still a very large issue to consider. It was his heritage. He did not come from a large and prestigious clan, nor was he the sun of a famous ninja. No, the family he came from was mostly farmers, and the last ninja to come out of it was his great grand uncle, who got to the rank of Chunnin before suffering an injury in his knee that forced him to retire.
And of course the there was the third and final issue of the current Raikage. He was a brute of a man who suffered no slights to his person or close friends without serious repercussions. If he were to openly challenge the massive man for the position he had no doubt in his mind he would be a smear on the ground within seconds.
These issues begged the question, how was he to do it? All the chips seemed stacked against him and he knew that he would have to use his brain to it's fullest here.
So he waited patiently, waiting for an opportunity to present itself to him. When it came he would grab it with everything he had and gain what he sought.
And finally, four years ago a small glimmer of hope shone through to him.
The Raikage had made a very large mistake. Putting his brother's safety before that of the village he sent a group consisting of over fifty Jonin and one hundred Chunin to hunt down the errant man and return him to the village.
And this group ran right into the three remaining member of Akatsuki in a confrontation with their target.
The resulting slaughter led to the death of the disgusting plant man named Zetsu, that however was the only success. When the ninja returned to the village they had succeeded in their goal, but the cost was great.
Eleven Jonin and twenty six Chunin returned, all the others had died for the sake of returning one person to the village.
While many had recognized that it was necessary to save the demon host of the eight-tailed beast, there was a much larger group of the population that had been furious. The loss of so much life had left many families and friends displeased with their current leader. Plenty who hadn't even lost friends in the battle were upset over the favoritism shown towards the Kage's family.
And he had taken full advantage of that.
If he couldn't gain the position through the normal means then he would have to take it by force.
Every penny he had was put towards the hiring of outside forces, while he concentrated on building up supporters within the village itself. He already held enough sway to bend away a few councilors, and with the growing forces that he had it reached a point where there was real hope for victory.
Four months in he he made a mistake. In his excitement he got hasty, wanting to get his plan to take off before the situation cooled off and the wounds caused by the incident lessened with time. He approached a high ranking civilian official with his plan,without any way to assure that he would join, and the man said he would consider the offer.
This was a lie. He reported Tsubasa to an ANBU commander, and a full investigation was launched into everything from the money he spent to the time he spent out of the village.
This led to him being discovered within a week, and everything he worked for was blown away.
Those who supported him were killed, his assets were seized, power revoked, and a bounty was placed on his head.
Of course, he had already left by the time that these changes were put into effect. The second he heard that his actions were being monitored and his previous activities investigated he knew he was going to be caught. Leaving behind everything but the money on his person he fled the village immediately.
For two years he laid low in the western regions of Earth Country in a small cottage. He would train himself to keep in shape and hunt for his food so he wouldn't starve.
The search for him had been over for quiet awhile by this point, but he took the lesson of caution from his experience and decided that he would err on the side of safety.
However, he was sick and tired of the poverty and powerless existence he held, and so he did what people who loose everything do.
He started from scratch.
There was no shortage of wandering thugs looking for a job, and with the right words and a small show of force he could start his life as a bandit.
There was no chance of him ever regaining the power he had, after an attempted coup no village would trust him and if Cloud was to discover he was operating anything larger than a bakery he would be assassinated within a month.
This is where we find him today, leading a band of highwaymen close to the border of Lightning Country. It was his own form of petty revenge, if he couldn't hurt the Raikage in any serious way he could at least do some damage to trade in the area and create some paperwork.
Tsubasa may have been smart, but even his rational thought process could be overwhelmed by anger every now and then.
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Naruto Uzumaki loved two things in his nomadic life, ramen and sake.
Ramen went without saying really. Anybody who had even a small amount of contact with him could tell that he had a borderline obsession with the food, though very few understood why. It was not simply the taste, because he would fully admit that, while it was certainly good, it was by no means an amazing dish.
He loved it because of the memories associated with it.
The meals he had shared with his friends, the old man, and Iruka had been among the happiest moments of his life, moments that he would treasure forever.
For someone who never had family, the time he spent with his friends in the dinky little stall called Ichiraku was like home.
It was really unfortunate that life was such a cruel bitch and had taken those friends away from him, and those that it left alive moved on. They were by no means not completely gone from his life, but their relationships were definitely strained.
Lee had a family. Yeah, shocker huh? He had met a civilian woman who didn't care about the atrocious way he dressed and talked. She loved him for his spirit and Naruto was happy for them.
Neji was the clan head of the Hyuga, which didn't exactly leave much time for friends. When he had nearly died on the mission with Ten Ten the job had been forced on him to keep him out of danger. He was engaged to some princess or another as a political marriage, and from what he could tell Neji hated the woman.
But when you're in such an important position sacrifices must be made right? He probably would have fought against it more had his only sane team mate survived. Try as he might to hide it there was no mistaking he had cared for her as more than a friend.
Then he would have his head chopped off.
Kiba was even more depressing then that though. He wasn't married, and wasn't likely to be in a long time with the way he was living. Shino had been close to him, and when he first lost him he threw himself into drinking like a maniac and sleeping with any street trash he could find.
Unfortunately he hadn't ever managed to get out of that. He toned it down as time went on but he was still drunk constantly when not on missions and was sleeping with random women he picked up at bars.
To put it simply he was a mess.
Sai was... well Sai. He was a cold, emotionless, wise-cracking bastard. That was pretty much the only constant out of the teams. No matter what happened Sai would always be Sai and when the apocalypse came around he would ask the four horsemen if they had penises under all that armor.
Then he would have his head chopped off.
The whole thing was just one big depressing mind fuck, and he would much rather ponder other things. Ramen and the memories he had before the Konoha 12 became what it was today fell into this category.
So while ramen may have been a given, sake was another story.
He had first tried it when he was eighteen, Kakashi had taken him out to a bar for his birthday along with some of the remaining members of the group. It was there that he discovered that the healing powers he got from the Kyubi helped to burn alcohol out of his system at an extremely advanced rate.
In the end he drank five bottles all by himself before he fell off his stool and passed out in a puddle of his own vomit.
While it wasn't recognized on his first trip to the hospital, after fifteen drinking binges over a period of two years questions arose. For example, why his liver looked like it belonged to a man who had never even drunken a Zima.
It was one of the few benefits that having a demon fox trapped inside of you had. Right up there with healing fatal wounds in seconds and temporary bursts of power that could make an entire army shit their collective pants.
So he drank like a sailor whenever he felt like there was a need to celebrate or mourn something, usually the former, as with the lack of duties he had to suffer through recently there were significantly more happy times than there were sad.
It had been four months since he left Wave. While his original plan was to find a place to settle down, he had quickly been reminded of the joys of the road, and hadn't been able to get away from it. Tea country, Sea country, Water country, and a few smaller and less well known places were on the list of his visited locations, and he wasn't planing on stopping just yet.
While he didn't like having to pass through his former homeland to come here, there was plenty of reasons to make a visit and look around a bit. Kumo was right along Konoha in terms of military power, due largely in part the thriving economy.
Shipping on it's southern and eastern coasts brought in large enough revenues itself, but combined with the fact that there were literally hundreds of ore and diamond mines in the mountain ranges that stretched through the area and you had a very wealthy country.
The border was roughly five to seven miles behind him at this point, and he was thoroughly enjoying the weather that the lowlands had to offer. It was a mild day in early fall, the sparse trees around the road were losing leaves and the air had a slight chill to it that complimented the warm sun perfectly.
All in all he was in a very happy mood.
That is, until a kunai came out of nowhere and nearly ripped into his throat like a knife through butter.
By the time he had recovered the enemy was already on him, being trailed by a group of thirteen obviously weaker enemies that had all the grace of a seventy year old man.
A second later and a brace of shuriken sailed gracefully through the air, accompanied by some less graceful knives, rocks, and what he could of sworn was a bottle flying towards him.
It was quite obvious at this point who had talent and who didn't.
In a single fluid motion he swung a hidden kunai out from his sleeve and deflected four shuriken, grabbing the remaining two and knocking the more well aimed knives from the air, ducking under the remaining projectiles and hurling his weapon into a mans skull.
The men gave a momentary pause in their charge, which was all he needed to off two more of them with some well placed attacks.
Seeing this, the leader (or at least he assumed him to be the leader based on several glaring details) pulled back, being shortly followed by the remaining men.
"I can see you have some skill then. The prudent choice here would be to leave your possessions on the
ground and walk away, there is no reason for me to lose more men or you your life."
Naruto didn't even need to utter a single word. They were standing close to one of the fallen thugs, and if they had taken any time to observe the corpse they would have noticed something odd about the weapon lodged in his skull.
It was, for the most part, just a normal kunai with the only difference being the pair of prongs off the middle blade,and a small seal covered tag wrapped neatly around the handle.
A smirk covered the blond mans face, and before the assailants could move a single muscle in their bodies a flash of yellow enveloped the area, followed the blissful embrace of death.
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Hinata Hyuga loved her life.
For most people this would seem strange, as there was nothing very special about it. She lived in a small village in the Land of Lightning with no mother and worked in a flower shop her father had bought years ago.
Due to her father's age she had to run the shop by herself, and worked many hours every day to keep their heads above the water.
A flower shop though, does not bring in much money and her and her father just made ends meet every month. While not exactly poor, she certainly wasn't well off either.
But who was she to complain? There was a roof over her head and a meal on the table for her every night, and the routine she had suited her just fine.
Even through the hard work and the mediocre living conditions she loved it because of the simplicity and the happiness she got with her two person family, and never really aspired for anything greater.
She didn't want to be the best or to own a large amount of land, or do anything else grand and memorable for that matter. Nor did she want to have large amounts of money and buy frivolous things like jewelry and clothes.
For Hinata, none of that mattered.
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Hiashi loved his daughter.
For her he would climb any mountain, commit any sin no matter how great, and destroy anything that so much as slightly annoyed her.
When her mother had died in childbirth his world had fallen apart. If not for her he would have likely lost himself to despair, and lamented how cruel the world was for everything it would continuously throw at him.
Instead, he worked for her.
It was what Natsume would have wanted. That was all the excuse he needed to devote his entire life to his daughters welfare.
His own love for the soft-spoken, beautiful, and unfortunately shy girl just made it that much sweeter when he got to see her face light up with joy at something he could for her.
That wasn't a regular occurrence though. Money was tight between them, and he had gotten up in his years, making it harder to put in that little bit of effort needed to get out with more money.
Despite it all though he would spend not a penny on himself and put everything he could into getting her something at every special occasion.
Hinata was a modest girl though, and would always tell him the same old piece about how he shouldn't be wasting the money on her and get himself something for once.
And every time he answered the same way.
'The best gift I can receive is seeing you happy.'
While others might have wanted more in life he was perfectly content were he was, spending days with aching bones and nights in front of a fire relaxing with a cup of tea.
If he were given a choice he would take his current life over all others, with not a hint of regret for the remainder of his days.
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Naruto was absolutely wasted.
After the debacle on the road he had taken all the things he could off the bodies of the bandits, and found a massive amount of money on their collective bodies.
Being quite frank, the only one with any kind of real combat prowess was the singular shinobi amongst them. The fact that they had gathered this much meant that they had to have been here for awhile.
The thought brought a bitter taste to his mouth as he thought about the people that died to line the pockets of some bastards. They hadn't even been spending it either, just collecting it up for some purpose or other that would now never be fulfilled.
He went to the nearest village and dropped the bag in the middle of an alley, hoping that some body who actually needed it would come across it at some time.
Because it wasn't like he did.
After Jiraiya had died, Naruto had found out that the perverted old man had left nearly everything he had to him in his will.
He owned six different houses throughout various countries, as well as enough money to buy twenty more.
Between his conservative spending of money and the odd jobs he picked up along the way he really didn't need to worry about a job for a long while, and he upon realizing how long he could last if just camped out every now and then he had decided it would be nice to spend a little more time on the road then he original had planned to.
Following his trip to the alley he decided to indulge in one of his two vices and dropped by a local bar. There he began pounding alcohol at an inhuman rate.
Which led to him getting buzzed.
Which led to him getting slightly more buzzed.
Which led to drunkenness.
Which, finally, led to his current state of being so smashed he couldn't remember what his name was anymore.
The bartender, being sufficiently annoyed by a certain loudmouthed blonde told him he wasn't going to serve him another drop.
...Which led to said blonde punching him in the face.
After a rather humorous situation in which three bouncers tried, and failed quite miserably, he left on his own. But not before yelling to the entire bar that the whole place was filled with a bunch of pansies and ugly ass broads.
Naruto was not a very pleasant drunk, as you may have guessed by this point.
Deciding that the hammering in his head was bad enough to call for some sleep, he wandered aimlessly looking for a bed. In his current state he didn't think much about the fact that weren't going to be any beds in the middle of the road and continued his doomed search for a place to lay down.
Eventually giving up on the idea of finding a bed in what he deemed a town full of insomniacs, he trekked a short way out of the village and plopped down in a field of flowers. Within three minutes he was out like a light and snoring so loudly not even a bear would be brave enough to come close.
It was seven hours before someone found him. This someone was there to pick flowers that she would sell in her fathers store that day.
When she woke him up, neither of them knew that they had found someone they would love more than their lives or all the ramen and sake in the world.
Tsubasa on the other hand found nothing that he loved. He did however find something that he hated very much.
Flies.
Or more specifically the maggots that came from those flies. You would hate them too if they were burrowing into your skin and eating away at you.
And end chapter 3! Peace!