The Pathless Sage
Beta read by 'I before A except after K'
A/N: Inari-bashing. Dark chapter. Like, very dark. I'm actually wondering if I should up the rating because of this chapter.
-sigh- People stop hating, the Rinnegan will be coming into the story soon. Even I can't just give Naruto full control of the Samsara eye right off the bat without making him uber OP.
On with the story!
The next morning dawned bright and cheery, the complete opposite of how Kakashi was feeling. Kakashi's mood was quite gloomy, and while that wasn't unusual for the war veteran, it was unusual of him to be feeling that way because of something that transpired recently. It was usually him reminiscing about the past that got him all sad and sentimental.
Kakashi was currently laying on his futon, unmoving. His body was currently stuck in place, almost as if he was getting rigor mortis, due to the overuse of the Sharingan. Honestly, he had been using the Bloodline for years now, and even after all that practice he had in using the thing, he could never use it for a long time without serious repurcussions.
He was also thinking about that hunter nin that took Zabuza away, and he couldn't help but feel that something was wrong in that situation. Years of living on the edge had given him a sixth sense, he could feel it on his skin when a situation was suspicious. If his instints were anything to go by, then they were still in mortal peril.
He was still trying to figure out a way to train Sasuke and Sakura up to a point where they could live for more than a few seconds if Zabuza came after them, and he still needed to fix Naruto's problem with not being able to control his movements and Zaraki's lack of formal training.
Kakashi sighed, this was going to be a long mission for the temporarily paralysed Jounin.
-TT-
It had been a few hours since Kakashi had woken up, and the residents of the entire house were now awake as well. Tsunami went about her business in the kitches, preparing breakfast for he lot. Tazuna got his things prepared, he wanted to go check up on the progress on the bridge now that he was back from collecting supplies in Konoha. Inari was still sitting in his room, moping about how depressing life was. The Gennin were currently with Kakashi, discussing their current situation.
"Say, Kakashi, did something strike you as weird about that hunter nin that came to take Zabuza away?" Naruto asked. Kakashi had been pleasantly surprised to find that his sensei's son was far more mature and intelligent, not to mention stronger, than any of his files dictated. He was still ticked off about the boy not using honourifics or showing him any visible respect. Naruto was treating him as an equal.
"Yes, there seemed to be something weird going on. If my hypothesis is correct ..." Kakashi trailed off, ignoring Naruto's apparent disrespect for now. It wasn't the time to fight over something so trivial. He may not seem like it, but Kakashi was a highly calculating man and he thought his actions through at all times.
Sakura and Sasuke stiffened at Kakashi's words. They were expecting terrible news from their sensei, news that they knew they wouldn't like. Zaraki seemed to be grinning though, he thought he was going to get another good fight coming his way. Naruto only gave a resigned nod.
"Yeah, Zabuza's probably still alive and now has a partner. This is going to be a hard situation to deal with," Naruto said, but sighed when Sasuke, Sakura and even Zaraki started giving him weird looks. "Last time, Zabuza was fighting alone, so Kakashi could fight him while we looked after the client. This time, if Zabuza has a partner, then one of us will have to fight. Kakashi will be in no position to fight another opponent on top of Zabuza when the time comes."
"Yeah, but last time, you and Zaraki held your own against Zabuza, so what makes you think that you can't handle his partner?" Honestly, how did Sakura ever manage to score so high in her Academy exams? She was so dense!
"Because last time, Naruto was fighting clones. They weren't nearly as strong as Zabuza and nowhere near as intent on his death as the real one would have been. I was fighting him while he was stuck on the spot, so you can't really call it a fight," Naruto was right in thinking Zaraki was the only one in the group that had any brains, and certainly was the only one with any real combat experience. He sounded disappointed about something when he said it wasn't much of a fight, though.
"Correct. If I fought Zabuza's partner without my weights on, I would get slaughtered by fighting so sloppily. If I am to fight any opponent that is concentrating on me and has the resolve to kill, I will eventually wind up dead," Naruto continued Zaraki's explanation.
"So what do we do?" Sasuke asked.
"So we train," Kakashi said, with his trademark eyesmile. "Zaraki, we need to do something about that Kenjutsu of yours. While it is good, we need to fix up the kinks and give you an actual style and some attacks to learn. Sasuke, Sakura, the best I can do for the two of you right now is teach you better Chakra control so that you are ready for future Jutsu I will be teaching you. As for you Naruto, we need to do something about that Taijutsu of yours."
"Don't worry about me, Kakashi. Go train your students, I am not your liability," Naruto replied standing up to walk away. "Besides, if what I am about to train in works out, I can probably beat Guy in a pure Taijutsu fight, provided he doesn't use the Eight Gates on me. Besides, I doubt you have enough knowledge on my Bloodline to train me."
Kakashi's visible eye widened at the insinuation. A mere Gennin beating Maito Guy at Taijutsu? Prepostrous. Kakashi knew first hand just how monstrous that man's strength was. Even among the Jounin, he was considered in a league of his own when it came down to Taijutsu, just like Kakashi was revered for his skill in Ninjutsu.
It was his last comment that made him curious, though. Naruto had a Bloodline Limit? One that Kakashi couldn't help him with? Now that was funny, Kakashi was probably the one with the highest chance of being any help with a Bloodline, considering he had one of his own.
"You mean that fire Jutsu you showed off in the Academy?" Sasuke asked scathingly. He was still annoyed about the other boy not teaching him such a powerful technique, one that could help him beat Itachi.
"No, the Azure Dragon's Wrath wasn't a Bloodline Limit, just a Jutsu from my Clan. I figured that out after I realised that I had an actual Bloodline Limit, not just a Jutsu," Naruto said, turning his back towards the group and starting to walk towards the door, thinking of his encounter with Itachi.
Over the months, Itachi had been telling him about the Rinnegan when he could find the time. Though Itachi had seen the Doujutsu first hand before, he was still unaware of the full extent of the Rinnegan's abilities, but he had a slight idea as to what the Bloodline had to offer.
"Before you go to train, out of curiosity, what kind of a Bloodline is it?" Kakashi asked, at least with a hint of mild interest in his voice. It wasn't everyday that Kakashi Hatake was interested in the abilities of a Gennin, but Naruto had caught his attention.
"It's a Doujutsu," Naruto said, before walking away to train.
Sakura was still contemplating if Naruto really had a Doujutsu like her sensei, while Sasuke was seething. He thought he was the only one with a potential Doujutsu in that room, bar Kakashi, though he was still convinced that no Doujutsu could be as great as the Sharingan.
Oh how wrong he was.
-TT-
Naruto was walking towards the forest near Tazuna's house, intent on training alone for the day and letting Team 7 deal with guarding the client for the day. Since they had just fought the enemy, he doubted anyone particularly strong would be showing up any time soon.
Naruto was thinking about whether he could really use that part of his Rinnegan just yet. According to Itachi, the Rinnegan was a more powerful version of the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan, and had quite a few perks that went with it. The ultimate form of the Doujutsu, as far as Itachi knew, had all of the abilities that the Sharingan had, but further enhanced, and it also had the ability to use the signatures Jutsu of the Mangekyo, the Tsukuyomi and the Amaterasu.
While the Tsukuyomi and Amaterasu were powerful Jutsu, Naruto had no illusions of grandeur. He knew he was far from using such Jutsu, let alone master them, as he still had to even master the Bloodline enough to use it without having his Chakra eaten up within a moment.
He wasn't currently interested in the more powerful Jutsu that came with the mastery of the Rinnegan, nor was he interested in trying to figure out what other Jutsu the Rinnegan enabled him to use that Itachi hadn't known about.
No, Naruto was now interested in the most basic of the Rinnegan's enhancements. The drastic improvement in his eyesight and his brain's ability to quickly process the information his eyes were sending to it. He honestly knew, with Kisame's brutal training, he was already a force to be reckoned with, if only his lack of co-ordination hadn't gotten in the way.
Deciding he had gone far enough into the woods to not get interrupted, Naruto activated his Rinnegan and sat down to meditate. His advances sight came automatically with the activation, that wasn't the problem. The problem was that he needed to first learn how to properly utilise the more powerful sight and the second problem was that as he was now, even with his massive reserves, his Chakra was far too quickly drained for it to be an effective ability in battle.
So now, Naruto just sat there, meditating, and trying to partially stem the flow of Chakra to his eyes so that that his eyes didn't overload and he didn't run out of Chakra too quickly. Naruto was pleased to find that even a minute amount of Chakra kept the Rinnegan running at full power.
Now, he just had to build up his concentration and control so that he could use the Doujutsu in battle effectively without passing out from Chakra exhaustion in ten minutes.
-TT-
Sasuke and Sakura were having a hard time with their training.
They were currently climbing trees. That in itself wasn't all that difficult for a ninja, even a Gennin, but the fact that they had to do it without the use of anything other than their feet, was a little more troubling.
The aim of the exercise was to build Chakra control, or in Sakura's case, to expand her reserves a bit more, by having the practitioner focus their Chakra at the sole of their feet in a steady stream to stick themselves to the tree trunk and walk up vertically. Though it sounded easy, maintaining a steady stream that didn't fluctuate was surprisingly difficult. Too much Chakra, and they were blown off, but too little and they didn't stick to the tree in the first place.
While Sakura was having an easy time actually climbing the tree, she was quickly getting tired. Her aim was to build stamina, but she didn't see how this could help her. As for Sasuke, while he was having a hard time getting very far up the tree, he still wasn't breathing hard.
Zaraki was training on the water. Standing on the water was far more difficult, as one not only needed a greater stream of Chakra to stay afloat, but also needed to adjust the amount of Chakra as the water moved beneath them. While this in itself was a form of training, Zaraki's actual training consisted of some movements with his sword to cut out the sloppiness in his technique.
Kakashi was relaxing and reading a certain orange book, while looking at his students, hard at work, from the corner of his eyes. He allowed himself to relax for a while. His students were training hard, his charge went off somewhere to train on his own and his Shadow Clone was keeping an eye on the bridge builder.
Not the best of his days, but certainly not his worst.
-TT-
It was late evening and Kakashi, along with his students, was heading back to Tazuna's house. His students had a fairly productive day in the training fields, Tazuna hadn't been attacked and he took a good day of rest, even if he did have to watch over his students.
Surprisingly, not a single argument broke out that day. Sasuke was keeping his big mouth shut, Zaraki didn't care for picking a fight with Kakashi and Sakura didn't try to steal Sasuke's heart, which scared Kakashi to an extent. She never went a day without going at Sasuke.
Walking through the door, with his team following behind him, he saw that Tazuna had just gotten back from a hard day of work from the bridge. He looked tired, but happy. Working on the bridge seemed to rekindle that fire of hope he had inside him.
Once everyone had gotten their outdoor clothing off and they had freshened up from their day training. Everyone sat around the dining table, ready to have dinner, which Tsunami was currently serving. Kakashi was the only one that noticed the absence of a certain blonde.
"Has anyone seen Naruto?" Kakashi asked, looking towards his students first then towards their clients. Everyone shook their head.
"Now that you mention it, we haven't seen him since he left to train on his own," Sakura said, though she didn't sound the slightest bit concerned. Naruto may have earned a slight bit of respect from her, but she was still a hopeless Sasuke fangirl.
"This is bad, he might have been attacked!" Kakashi wasn't one to panic, but he knew that if they were going to survive the second battle with Zabuza, Naruto would be a key asset. Sure, Zaraki and Sasuke could hold their own in a fight, but frankly, they were no match for a Naruto primed for combat.
Kakashi's worries were quenched, though, when he heard a strained voice from the doorway.
"I'm fine, stop panicking," Naruto said feebly, his voice telling them he was everything but fine. Kakashi quickly rushed towards him and supported his weight as he slowly limped his way over to the dining table. Kakashi slowly lowered Naruto into an empty chair.
Zaraki was the first to notice something odd with Naruto. His eyes were closed tight, as if his eyes hurt for some reason. It wasn't obvious, but there seemed to be some traces of blood underneath his eyes as well.
"Oi, what happened to yer eyes?" Zaraki asked.
"I sympathise with Kakashi here, overdoing it with a Doujutsu is not a good idea. My eyes are so tired I can't open them and I have never been so low on Chakra in my entire life," Naruto replied scathingly, his eyes still screwed shut.
"Naruto, are you sure your eyes are just tired or is there some kind of other injuries?" Kakashi asked, concerned. He had just noticed the remnants of blood.
"No, I am quite sure it's just tired. There was some damage to my ocular veins due to overflow of Chakra near the beginning of the training, but that was fixed by my tenant," Naruto said cryptically, so that nobody other than the experienced Jounin understood what he meant.
Kakashi nodded, did a couple of handsigns and placed his hands over Naruto's eyes, his hands glowing green. "I am no expert healer, but I can provide some relief for tired eyes. If there was some other kind of damage, I don't have the expertise to heal that," Kakashi explained his actions.
"Wait Kakashi-sensei, why don't you heal yourself then?" Sakura asked. Really, how had the girl been the top of her class?
"Because my eyes aren't tired Sakura, I am suffering from side effects of Chakra exhaustion. My body has stiffened up and you would need someone of around Lady Tsunade's level to heal something like that effectively," Kakashi said.
Once Naruto's eyes were healed up, everyone got ready for dinner. Even the resident emo, Inari, who could even give Sasuke a run for his money, came in to eat dinner with everyone else. He was however, still adamantly silent and refused to converse with anyone, but nobody minded the rudeness of the young boy of eight.
Everyone ate in peaceful silence, with the odd comments and questions here and there. All was peaceful, until Inari slammed both of his hands down on the table.
"What is wrong with all of you?" When everyone looked at him in confusion, he continued. "Why do you keep on fighting? Are you all suicidal? Can't you see Gato is too strong?" Inari was shouting as loudly as his vocal chords would allow.
"What makes you think Gato is strong enough to beat us?" Naruto asked, curious. The boy seemed to have a look in his eyes that Naruto was very familiar with, a look he himself had in his own eyes in his younger days, though Naruto's eyes had looked far more weary than Inari's.
"Stop playing hero, there are no heroes in this world. Gato is rich and he's strong, he'll kill you all!" Inari wailed, starting to rival a certain Haruno in volume.
Tsunami decided to step in an help out her son. "You'll have to forgive him, he lost his father and Gato's reign has been particularly hard on him." Though she was defending her son, her voice held an underlying tone of warning, directed towards Inari.
Inari, however, didn't catch the warning and decided to continue on his rant. "You don't know how hard life can be for some of us. All of you have parents, people that look after you. You live in a rich village and play with your friends, have good food to eat whenever you want. What right do you have to interfere with our lives?"
Zaraki had had enough crap out of the boy. He stood wordlessly and took the sheathed nodachi in one hand. He quickly drew the blade and aimed to behead the brat in front of him. An inch away from his target's neck, Zaraki found that he couldn't move his arm. Looking at his forearm, he saw Naruto's hand holding it in place.
"Why'd you stop me, Naruto?" Zaraki asked, only to receive a shake of the head from the blonde. With a grimace, he put his blade back into the sheath. "You of all people have more than enough reason to beat the brat to oblivion." Zaraki's comment raised a few eyebrows, Naruto's included.
"Leave the poor boy alone, he obviously has had a hard time," Naruto said sympathetically, letting the boy get away with unknowingly insulting Naruto in the most terrible way possible. He really was getting soft. "Zaraki, while we are on the subject, just how do you know about me having more than enough reason to kill the boy for his statements?"
"You aren't the only one that had to live on the streets after getting kicked outta the orphanage. I got kicked out a couple years after you did," Zaraki explained, much to everyone else's surprise. Both Naruto and Zaraki were thrown out of the orphanage? "I saw you on the streets a couple times, but we never actually met."
"That explains things," Naruto said.
"Just because you got kicked out of an orphanage, you think you had a hard life!" Inari obviously wasn't getting the message that his life wasn't, I repeat was not, hard in comparison to the ninja in front of him. Well, he was only eight and he was traumatised.
Much to everyone's confusion, Naruto and Zaraki burst out laughing. They continued to laugh for a minute or two, rolling around on the floor and cracking up like they just heard the best joke in years.
What was said in that dining room would leave Inari, Tazuna, Tsunami and Sakura scarred for the entirety of their lives.
There were many surprises in store for the group that night, one of which was Sasuke being the first to start the storytelling.
"Tell me kid, why do you think your life is hard?" Sasuke asked, knowing full well what he was going to say.
"My father, my hero, was killed in front of my eyes. He only tried to help the village, but he was murdered because of it!" Inari shouted. He definitely wasn't getting the message that it was about time he stopped. He ignored the warning looks of his mother and grandfather.
"So you think your life has been hard just because your village is poor and that your father was killed in front of your eyes?" Sasuke asked for confirmation, and getting it in the form of a nod. "Think about this, did you have to watch your entire clan get murdered in front of your very eyes in a single night? Did you have to watch your parents get killed in front of your eyes, knowing you won't have anyone in the world anymore? Do you have to live with the knowledge that the killer of your clan was none other than your very own brother, the brother that you loved, trained with, competed with, the same brother that bandaged up your ankle and carried you on his back when you were injured? Did you have to watch your parents die over and over again for three days straight, until your mind broke from the strain? Do you live with the knowledge that the only reason for you to still be alive is to kill that very brother of yours? No? WELL I DO!" Sasuke shouted, his voice rising in crescendo from the start of his speech.
Everyone with the exception of Zaraki, who didn't care for blood, gore or death anymore, Kakashi, who had seen wars, so he was no stranger to death or despair, and Naruto, who already knew more details about the Uchiha Massacre than even Sasuke, was utterly shocked beyond words. Here was a boy barely three years older than Inari that had gone through the same thing Inari had, only multiplied a hundred fold.
"Did you have your best friend, the girl you loved, your father figure taken from you, one by one as if Fate was playing a cruel game of Shougi with your life? Do you still live with the knowledge you could have prevented those deaths if you only weren't so weak or so arrogant?" Kakashi asked, eliciting a shake of the head from the young boy. Another man that knew true despair.
Zaraki went next.
"Did you kill to survive? Did you ever get so hungry that you had to eat the raw flesh of those you killed?" Zaraki asked. Some of those with weak stomachs, Tsunami, Sakura and Inari for example, looked green and ready to throw up. Sasuke and Kakashi looked sympathetic, while Naruto looked mildly interested. "Did your parents try to kill you because they were afraid of your strength? Did you kill your own parents to stop them from trying to kill you?"
Inari was starting to get the point that he lived in heaven compared to these guys.
Naruto sighed. "I guess it's my turn, huh? I will warn you now, if you have a weak stomach, you want to leave the room now. If Zaraki's story didn't make you puke, mine will." Sakura and Tsunami needed no further warning, they promptly left the room. "You tell me that your life is much harder than mine, right? You lost your father at a young age and you live in a poor village. You think that's a hard life?"
Inari was seriously starting to get scared. He was getting a taste of what life really could be for some people, he hated to imagine what it would be like to live a life far worse than his own.
"At the age of five, I was kicked out of the orphanage. I lived on the streets, going from trashcan to trashcan to find enough food to live off of. I usually had about one scrappy meal in five or six days, and that was when I got lucky," Naruto got up and started to take his jumpsuit and weights off. Sasuke, Kakashi and Zaraki hadn't noticed it before because of the mist and the situation, but not an inch of Naruto's skin was spared from scars.
"I have been beaten almost every day of my life. A normal adult would die three times over in a day if they had the same injuries as I did. Thankfully, due to some circumstances, I heal faster than any human alive," Naruto explained. "You tell me brat, have you ever been looked at like everything that went wrong in the world was because of you? Have you ever been beaten by adults, by other ninja? Have you ever had people stab you through the lungs, or the liver? Have you ever had people partially chop your limbs off? Have you ever been tied up and left to burn to death? Have you ever been electrocuted with enough electricity to power a district?"
Sasuke and Kakashi had seen and heard some bad things in their life, but this easily took the cake. Zaraki had lived a portion of his life by eating raw human meat, but even he looked green. Tazuna was already throwing up, and Inari looked to be about ready to follow his grandfather.
"So remember brat, never again tell Naruto Uzumaki that he doesn't understand what a hard life entails, or it's the last time you will ever say anything," Naruto warned, going up to the room he and Sasuke had been assigned. Sasuke followed the other male upstairs.
When they got up the stairs, they heard the distinctive voice of Sakura crying, but decided to ignore it for now. Naruto walked into their temporary room, followed by Sasuke. Naruto didn't know why, but he thought Kakashi had made a big mistake by putting him and Sasuke in the same room.
"Naruto," Sasuke started, referring, for the first time in his life, to Naruto by his given name, rather than some derogatory term. "What you said downstairs, was it all true?"
"Hmm? Yeah, all of it," Naruto answered, absentmindedly, getting into his futon and lying down. Sasuke had always thought that the carefree orphan led a free and worriless life, but was surprised to find that it wasn't that Naruto didn't have hardships, but rather he was just more resilient to mental and physical torture than Sasuke.
"You going to sleep?" Sasuke asked, lying down in his own futon on the other side of the room. He honestly didn't know what to say in this situation without either hurting the other boy's feelings, not that he would ever admit he cared, or just making the situation more awkward than it already was.
"No, just distracted," Naruto answered, turning to face Sasuke in his futon. "The old memories are kind of overpowering, I haven't thought about them in a while." Naruto seemed to be in deep thought.
"How did you survive it?" Sasuke asked, looking curiously at Naruto, who looked at him in confusion. "How did you manage to survive all of those injuries? A normal person would be long dead." Before Naruto could answer, though, they heard the door opening to their room, admitting Kakashi and Zaraki into the room.
"Yo, how's it goin'?" Zaraki asked with a little wave, though they had been away only for a few minutes at best. "Moping and drowning in sorrow? Guess all the four of us need now is some sake and some ciggarettes."
Naruto and Sasue scoffed, but otherwise ignored the comment as the two newcomers made themselves comfortable on the floor. Kakashi was on crutches since his body was still weak from the overuse of the Sharingan and took longer to get on the floor than Zaraki.
"Sasuke, are you telling the truth? Are you that fixated on killing your brother?" Kakashi asked, genuinely concerned for his student. He had seen people go down that path, and he knew better than anyone that vengeance never brought anyone happiness.
"Yes, I have no other purpose to live than to kill my brother and restore my clan," Sasuke answered, slightly stiff.
"Give it up Sasuke," surprisingly, it was Naruto that spoke. "There is little point in seeking revenge. It gets you nowhere and leaves you with nothing."
"How would you know Naruto? And I can't just forgive him like that, not after what he did," Sasuke said, he sounded tired rather than angry, like he wanted to sound.
"Don't scream and throw a tantrum when I say this, okay?" Sasuke got a guarded look about him, but nodded anyway. Zaraki and Kakashi were curious as to what the blonde could say that would rile the duck-butt haired boy. "What Itachi did wasn't wrong. He had a reason for doing it and no matter how horrible his deeds sound, he picked the lesser of two evils. You don't know the full details of that night, so you shouldn't be so quick to judge."
As expected, Sasuke almost jumped out of his futon to attack the blonde, but remembered his promise to not throw a tantrum. He reluctantly went back into his bed. "Why? Tell me, what do you know about the Uchiha Massacre?"
Naruto just shook his head. "It isn't my story to tell."
"Then how am I ever going to find out about it?" Sasuke asked, anguished by the prospect of never knowing the truth.
"For your own safety, if you promise me that you won't attack him on sight and try to kill him, I'll take you to see Itachi," the Uchiha's eyes became almost three times it's normal size, gaining size comically fast.
A/R: Oooh, is Itachi going to meet Sasuke? What will happen? How will Itachi react? Will Sasuke really try not to kill him? And what is going on with Sasuke being so friendly? Will Kisame and his bastardised shunshin be somehow involved in it all? That is a secret.
5k, the longest chapter yet by about 1k words. Next chapter: The Battle of the Bridge and possibly the conclusion to the arc.
Thank you to all those that reviewed, please continue to do so as it really motivates me to write more. The more you guys review, the more I write. Also, sharing the story with others through Facebook, Twitter or Email also really helps me out.