I do not own Naruto.
Speaking/Thoughts
"How's the roof coming Zale?" Satsuki asked the boy who was on the Uchiha compound roof hammering away on the hottest day of the year, and because of a decree of the council unable to use Manipulation. "I can't believe you volunteered to do that today of all days."
"You tricked me!" Zale yelled at her, and she laughed Kurumi doing the same. Both of them were drinking ice tea. 'They never told me that this was the hottest day of the year, and how much damage there was to the roof.' Zale wiped the sweat from his bow frustrated. "How did you live here for the last six years?"
"My room doesn't have any holes, or ceiling damage, and if things get too bad then I just hire a roofer, but they always do a half assed job." Satsuki said.
"Why didn't you call them this time?" Zale asked pulling out some more tiles from the bag he had brought up with him, and hammering them in.
"What's a husband for if you can't make him do things around the house?" Kurumi asked stirring her drink, and she was forced to dodge a tile he had thrown. "Oh come on Zale it's not like you had anything else to do today, and you said that you felt useless ever since you moved in."
"That doesn't mean I wanted to become a slave!" Zale yelled back angrily. "Can I at least get drink?"
"Yeah I'll go get it." Satsuki said walking inside, and Zale found himself accompanied by Kurumi up on the roof.
"So how's the training with Tsunade been going?" Zale asked as Kurumi had asked or more blackmailed the slug princess into training her.
"It's been going alright so far, and Tsunade said that my chakra is naturally potent, so healing is made easier. She's even taught me the basics of that super strength of hers, so don't make me mad ever again." Kurumi said sipping her drink. "You know Zale I like the way you look in a tool belt."
"Careful Kurumi I'm a married man." Zale joked, and they found themselves wrapped around each other, but unfortunately the intimate moment was interrupted by a swirl of fire. "I just finished patching up that god damn roof Kira, whatever the hell you wanted to tell me better be important!"
"Sorry, but Aria told me that I needed to tell you about something weird going on outside the village." Kira said, but he was met with glares from both Zale, and Kurumi. "She said that it may be something that would be worth looking into. It's about a thousand meters south of where we are." Zale let out a sigh before pulling away from Kurumi who scowled. He pulled off the tool belt, and handed it to Kira. "What's this for."
"You messed up the roof, so I'm going to make you fix it. Don't worry I'll send back Gaara to help, but remember no Manipulation because of that stupid village policy the civilians came up with. I'll be back as soon as I can." Zale leapt off leaving Kira to fix the roof.
"Oh hey Kira, where's Zale?" Satsuki asked coming out with a tray of new ice teas.
"Oh he had to go, and take care of some business, and I'm going to help out until he comes back." Kira said, and he eyed the ice tea on the tray. "Oh is one of those for me?"
"I believe she was making those for Zale, and the two of them Kira." Gaara said appearing out of nowhere causing them all to jump. "I hope you don't mind sharing one with Shiki while Kira and I get to work." Satsuki nodded giving the other drink to Shiki who sipped at it happily while she and Kurumi took the other two.
While they were on the roof pounding away they spoke in hushed whispers. "What did you and Aria see out there that Zale needed to check out so quickly anyway?" Kira asked grabbing a tile.
"There wasn't much to see that's what made it odd, and we decided to check it out before Konoha decided to conduct their own investigation. The area was completely wiped out, and had a hundred meter radius of destruction. All in all it didn't seem like something that a normal shinobi or even a powerful one could do. We assumed that Manipulation had to be a factor." Gaara answered barely missing his thumb with the hammer.
"Manipulation gets weirder and weirder the more we know about it." Kira said shaking his head.
-Scene Change-
Zale launched through the trees at a high speed. "Where is it from my position?" Zale asked into the communicator he had gotten from the land of snow.
"Keep going for another ten minutes, and you should get here." Aria said before the communicator cut off unnaturally with only static.
"That's never happened before." Zale said putting away the communicator into his pocket, and continuing his preset path. After only five minutes he came to the large field completely destroyed by whatever had done it. "They were right to call me in there's nothing, but Manipulation that could cause this much devastation in such a short amount of time. Aria, where are you?!"
He didn't get a response, but his instincts screamed at him to jump up in the air. Immediately beneath him a jaw like thing clamped down around where he was catching the tip of his sandal. "All these years Zale and you haven't missed a step." Someone said, and Zale landed on the ground looking for the source of the voice. "Come on don't you remember me?"
"Get out here, and fight me." Zale said, and he was forced to put up a dome around him to protect from several tree spikes. "Plant Manipulation, that's a new one." Zale said making a note to stay away from the foliage of the forest.
"Come on Zale such a weak little barrier won't do anything to me." the person said, and Zale felt his barrier split a person that looked eerily familiar holding it open. "I thought that you were still powerful, but it seems like your Manipulation has weakened to the point of that girl from earlier."
"What did you do to Aria?" Zale asked his mind slowly piecing together who this person was. Suddenly the ground split under him opening up a chasm that he barely avoided. "I'm getting a little pissed at you right now, and if you don't tell me who you are then I will kill you."
"Oh that really hurts Zale we were such good buddies back when we were in that imprisonment camp, and you broke us out, or you did it first that is." The boy said, and Zale pieced it together. He was Cole the friend that had helped him almost conquer the world, but had been defeated by the hero. "You know Zale I can't believe that you would forget your best friend."
"How the hell are you here? I saw your body, and died next to it; I'm sure that you weren't holding on in spirit form." Zale said now standing quite a bit away from his former best friend.
"Come on Zale, you seem to be forgetting that Manipulation also gives you the ability to manipulate with time. Right before I died replaced myself with some out of the world idiot that died in my place, and I launched myself into the future. Took me a while to recover enough to move around, and about, but now look at me. I can beat down our former leader."
"What the hell are you talking about; I'm still the most powerful Manipulator in the world and you couldn't ever beat me before." Zale said ready to blast Cole, but he was still wary about the boy.
"Honestly Zale I'm surprised that you could hang on at all, and what the hell's with that body you're wearing. I mean I get that you were out of commission for way longer than I was, but hell you lost eight inches of your height, and your hair."
"I had to take a new body, and had to wait for a really long time to find this thing. Fortunately enough I've been able to harness Manipulation almost as well as I could before."
"You always thought that you were the top dog Zale, but you never learned how to use Manipulation to the full ability it could. Bending reality to your will is what a true Manipulation user can do." Suddenly the air seemed to shimmer, and everything except for Cole moved in slow motion.
'My body isn't moving like it should be, I can't even move at my normal speed.' Zale thought watching as Cole ran forward, and smashed his fist into his face sending him flying across the field into a rock that immediately shattered. "I'm going to ask you one more time, what did you do to Aria?"
"Come on Zale you've gone soft; who the hell cares about that weakling, she went down too easily. I'm not the only one that made it out Zale in fact I think you're the only one that actually died that day; think about it getting the old team back together. Of course you're probably the weakest out of all of us, so you're going to have to start from the bottom with me over you." Cole spoke in a confident tone that made Zale's blood boil.
"Listen to me you little idiot; none of you ever beat me in a fight, and I'm not going to sit at your feet like a dog because you think you're strong." Zale said holding his face where a bruise was forming.
"Oh you were always the stubborn one Zale." Cole said to him the area shimmering, and time slowing down once again. "I'll make sure that you'll never be a threat to us, because if I let you live now you'll get in the way when we try to rebuild what we started." Cole pulled back his leg, and stomped down on Zale's chest causing the blonde to scream in pain.
"I'll make you pay." Zale choked out as Cole stepped down hard on his throat.
"How are you going to do that little bunny rabbit when you can't even get up?" Cole taunted him by calling Zale "bunny" something he had allowed the girl that liked him back then to call him. "Your friends are too far to help, and those girlfriends you have are going to be next."
Zale struggled under his enemy's heel, but that one sentence was enough to break him out from his stupor. "You were always too confident for your own good Cole." Zale said bringing his hand up, and grabbing Cole's foot surprising the boy by throwing him to the ground. "You caught me by surprise earlier, but that's not going to save you now."
Cole found himself under Zale who threw one punch at him after another busting his nose, and giving him quite a few bruises before he was finally able to toss him off. "You should have just died." Cole charged forward slamming his palms into Zale's gut, and Zale felt his organs mesh around.
Zale had to keep his heart from quite literally popping out from his mouth, and head butted Cole sending a jolt of electricity through his body. "Crap that'll take some time to fix." Zale said aloud, and Cole twitched on the ground. "That was an impressive attack."
Cole suddenly sunk into the ground before reappearing in the wood work once again roots exploded from the ground forcing Zale to stop his healing, and dodge them. "You're weak, you're old sole doesn't do well in a young body." Cole said slamming his palm onto the ground, and the ground shook violently.
"Calm down, you aren't a god." Zale said appearing behind Cole, and delivering a kick to his back sending him flying to the ground. Zale finally used his Manipulation thousands of razor sharp needles forming in the air, and hurtling at Cole who disappeared. 'He's not using that time ability, so that means there has to be limits to what he can do with it.' Zale felt Cole slam his hands down on his skull, but the dirt under him turned to mud taking the oomph out of the attack.
"You're not getting away that easily!" Cole reached into the mud, and tried to pull Zale out, but Zale's fist met his chin instead, and he fell back. "That's so lame."
Zale didn't respond instead launching a barrage of punches that Cole was forced to duck, and block. He took the full brunt of those attacks forcing him to back up, and his arms to turn purplish. "I'll show you to never touch or threaten anyone that's important to me." Zale said sending one more punch meant to finish him off when suddenly Cole sunk into the ground beneath him, and appearing behind him.
He seemed to catch his second wind forcing Zale back with a fighting technique that he hadn't seen for a long time. Sending a counterattack Zale's arm was caught, and Cole tossed him over his shoulder on the ground pinning him to the ground with his arm behind his back bending back to the point of snapping. "Now what are you going to do?" Cole was shocked when Zale forced the arm out of its socket, and freed him of the grip. "You've always done whatever it took to win."
"It's not hard to do when you're up against a weakling." Zale said popping his arm back in and charging forward.
Cole brought up his arms a field of some odd energy blasted Zale back onto the ground. "Do you like it, we figured out how to Manipulate some kind of odd energy into a special barrier nearly impenetrable. It's not chakra, but it gets the job done." Cole said with a smirk. "Soon we'll have it working as a nice offensive attack."
Zale smirked drawing upon the seal that Chrome had improved upon when he came into the village a month ago, and that had made it much easier to draw upon Kurumi's chakra. "You have your attack and defense sure, but I have my own." Zale said, and a red cloak of chakra surrounded him surprising Cole who held up the defense as a large red claw descended upon his shield.
"It looks like we're not the only ones that picked up a few new tricks, Zale." Cole said feeling the intense pressure of the red chakra. "Still that chakra is something I've never seen before, how the hell did you come across it?"
"The boy that I took over had a few interesting powers of his own, and I've taken full advantage of them." Zale said feeling his wounds sizzle closed, and his second wind come up. "That energy that you're using won't stand a candle to what I'm packing, and guess what every one of my Manipulation users can use chakra because one of them knows what he's doing. Not like you idiots."
Finally the shield shattered, and Cole screamed when the red claw impacted on him as if it was a real claw, and it left slashes across his face. There was another claw that came from Zale's red chakra cloak that was ready to slice Cole across the middle.
"My, my, it seems that Zale was just a little too powerful for just one of us at a time after all." Time slowed down, and Zale saw Suzie still black haired beauty move naturally through the shimmering space. "This is an interesting development, but we're going to have to come back to take you out later. Rest assured my little bunny next time you're not going to live."
Zale watched them walk off, and he allowed the red chakra to fade as time returned to normal. Finally he could move at normal speed. Chrome arrived a few minutes later looking around at the destruction more than before anyway. "What happened boss?" Chrome asked helping Zale to stand.
"Some old friends reappeared, and they're going to be a big problem in the future." Zale said looking around finding no one. "I don't know what happened to Aria, she was gone when I got here."
"What are you talking about Zale; Aria's been at Satsuki's for the past ten minutes." Chrome said, and Zale hit the ground he couldn't believe that he had believed that those idiots had taken down one of his own. "Come on we need to clear out of here before Konoha shows up."
"Yes sir." Chrome said, and a few minutes later they stood in the Uchiha compound everyone except the girls helping with the roof.
"I'm going to freaking burn this roof!" Kira yelled out holding his hand that already had red marks, and a swollen thumb.
"If you do that then we're going to have to start all over." Zale said holding nails in his mouth. "Look we're almost done, so just suck it up."
"Why isn't Aria helping?" Kira complained.
"We're males, are you telling me that you are so weak that you need a girl to do your job for you (did that sound sexist)?" Gaara asked immediately infuriating, and then motivating Kira to get the job done. "There see it wasn't that hard."
"It did take a good chunk of the day." Zale said looking out at the setting sun. "Hey Satsuki we finished!"
"That's great; tomorrow we can work on the plumbing." she cried back, and they all sweat dropped. When they came down they began on dinner that Satsuki, Aria, and Kurumi had already started on. "Thanks for everyone helping with my house; I can see why Zale trusts you guys so much."
"Whoa this guy trusts us I thought that he wanted to kill me!" Kira said laughing the others taking the hint, and doing the same. The truth was that Zale did sometimes almost kill Kira. "Wow this stuff all looks really good."
"You know I heard there was some pretty violent explosion outside the village." Satsuki said, and Zale nodded spreading butter on a roll. "It's making the civilians a bit nervous."
"Forgive me if I the peace of mind of people that tried to have me brainwashed isn't on my top list of priorities." Zale said filling his plate, and taking a few bites. "This stuff is really delicious, so I assume you had nothing to do with it Kurumi."
"Hey I take offense to that." Kurumi said she had in face helped chop the vegetables.
By all means it was the most family like event any of them had, had in a long while.