A/N: This technically the second half of the last chapter, but I think an 18k word chapter is a little overbearing. Next chapter is Sasuke, then Kakashi's perspective. Please excuse my very liberal use of italics in this chapter, it just sort of…happened.
A/N 2: I've also decided to add a bit of lore to the preface the following chapters. They won't all be as long as this, but I was inspired by OmgImPwnd's blog to add lore in the form of books actually written, that our characters would have actually read. They'll be marked by [ brackets like this: with text like this. ] and religious lore, which I've used in a previous chapter, which will be marked by { brackets and text like this }. At some point I will probably add a bit of lore preface to earlier chapters and well, actually edit them, but that's a project for later. Anyway, enjoy!
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The Place Where Hell and Earth Meet Part III
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[The Konohagakure Shinobi Ethics and Regulations Field Book, Third Edition:
(Chapter 8 / Advancement Within the Ninja Ranks)
The incubation period between the genin and chūnin rank is of the utmost importance to the development of healthy ninja. An Academy graduate of Konohagakure can expect to be well below genin qualifications for several of the other prominent Hidden Villages, specifically The Village Hidden in Sand, The Village Hidden in Stone, and the Village Hidden in Waterfalls. This is because most villages, including those listed above, impose a mandatory minimum graduation age of fifteen or older. Konohagakure emphasises growth within the three man cell, and allows our students to graduate earlier and develop alongside their teammates to exemplify and solidify the Will of Fire and the importance of teamwork within our ninja ranks. Students of the Academy are allowed to apply for graduation as early as their tenth year (or the fifth grade) to be placed in a three men cell, and as early as their eleventh year (or the sixth grade) if they wish to apply for a specialist division apprenticeship, though most graduate after the eighth grade at the age of thirteen.
Academy students are not to engage in combat with other squads for the first year after graduation. Should your three man cell encounter any hostile activity within or near the perimeter of Konohagakure, operation procedure should be as follows: 1) Determine the location of your teammates and verify identities under Shinobi Identification Protocol (See index xiii). 2) Assess threat level and modes of escape. 3) Jounin on site will give the order to flee, and means of operation for doing so. 4) If your squad should encounter any sensor ninja within the Land of Fire, protocol is to fire a flare immediately and attempt to cover ground between your squad and the nearest Konohagakure outpost. Newly minted genin are not to engage hostile forces under any circumstances.
During your first year as genin your duties will not require you to leave the village for any duration greater than or equal to ten days or two hundred and forty hours. Any mission assignments requiring action outside of Konohagakure proper will not require travel outside of the Land of Fire and all such missions will meet the fifteen kilometer mandated leash. Under unusual circumstances, if a team is especially exemplary and their jounin commanding officer signs for it, they may take up to two missions outside of the normal parameters. The Jounin Council must sign off and review all such ventures. These special exemptions are uncommon, especially so during times of peace.
After the year long incubation period genin teams may begin taking C-rank missions outside of the Land of Fire, for as long as three-months per mission. Genin are still required to maintain a one-to-one ratio of time spent inside the village to time spent outside of the village. B-rank missions within the Land of Fire can be assigned to a genin squad that has shown superior competence through their mission history, though jounin supervision and active support will be required at all times for these endeavors. You can review all that will be expected of you as a genin in the previous chapter: Chapter 4 / A Genin's Duties and Daily Life.
The average duration of genin tenure in Konohagakure is five years with most Konoha genin graduating to chūnin at the age of eighteen. Promotion to the rank of chūnin occurs in one of four ways:
Field Promotion: A genin ninja has shown promise, bravery, and an ability to lead under duress that inspires his or her commanding officer to recommend her or him for immediate advancement into the chūnin ranks. This is the most common form of advancement.
Completion of Specialist Apprenticeship: Standard Specialist Apprenticeships span four years or eight thousand hours of study. A mentor can extend the period of study for up to one year or two thousand hours of additional study. Upon completion the division of specialty will honor the genin apprentice with the rank of chūnin as well as their divisional markings (Research and Development don ceremonial earrings in remembrance of the Second Hokage, Cryptanalysis receive a patch of the Language Stone, etcetera).
Exceptional Showing at the Chūnin Exams: Held twice annually in rotating villages, the Chūnin Exams act as a substitute for war between villages and allow genin teams a chance to experience live combat in a relatively safe setting. An individual genin who exemplifies the qualities of chūnin and brings pride to his or her village will receive the promotion during the post-finals ceremony. Specialty flak jackets embroidered with the symbol of the Leaf will be given to those select few who graduate through this path.
Promotion By Confidence of the Hokage: The Hokage may promote any ninja they deem competent to the rank of chūnin at any time. No such promotions have occurred since the days of the First Hokage at the time of this text's creation.
The rank of chūnin provides a ninja with the opportunity to take on solo missions of C-rank or lower, and receive tenure at one of the specialty divisions of Konohagakure's military. Chūnin ninja will still primarily operate with their three man cell, however they will be tasked with additional duties and are expected to take a leadership role within the squad. Novice chūnin are prompted to learn leadership skills and techniques from their jounin commanding officer. Supplementary lessons at the upper divisions of the Academy are required.
All novice chūnin have a period of two years to complete the necessary coursework or face official reprimand. The coursework varies between disciplines, but we have prepared an example schedule below. Please note, all chūnin are required to attend Military History 103 as well as Effective Leadership 100-104.
[Senju / Shiro] : F : 19 : 165cm : Black : Blonde
[Division]: Tactical Support : Novice
[Course List]:
Effective Leadership 101 through Maito Haruto
Strategic Combat Analysis 005 through Nara Suimin
Medicine Under Duress through Uzumi Hana
Chakra Theory 397 through Hyūga Hizashi
Military History 103 through Kato Yuka
[Term 2058-2059 Era of the Righteous Daimyo]
Each course holds one two hour lecture per week, each lecture is repeated twice throughout the year so ninja whose missions might prevent them from attending the first lecture have no excuse for missing the second. Extracurricular studies are expected up to no more than three hours per week per course. It should be noted these courses must be worked around your allotted three-man cell training periods and missions. Chūnin are expected to manage their time expertly and be strong of mind, body, and spirit to exemplify the Will of Fire.
Chūnin will be assigned a division at the time of their promotion, if they have no specialty preselected they may be given up to a three month period of time to finalize their decision or their jounin commanding officer or the sensei they were apprenticing under will chose their path in their stead. Academy students are encouraged to begin considering which division or specialty they would like to pursue as soon as possible (See Chapter 13 on Specializations and Divisions Within the Ninja Ranks, page 130)...
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It was a heat far beyond pleasant warmth that plagued the day, baking asphalt until it sizzled and scorching every bird from the skies. Even the stones seemed to find their way into shade where they could. It was a late summer's heat, back with a vengeance to make up for every day in the last year it had been cool. It was the blistering, burning kind of heat that melted the plastic on fans and had men and women sweating in tubs of ice.
On the horizon, one could barely make out above the rolling waves of heat a small town of no more than fifty inhabitants, including the twelve sheep, two pigs, and the milking sow. In fact, there were more flies buzzing about that cow than there were men, women, and children in that small town on the edge of the Land of Tea.
The day prior the men had spread fertilizer over the fields, and the heat was picking up and carrying the scent right into the nostrils of every poor son of a bitch within twenty miles. It was the kind of day you just couldn't escape.
The Sage of Flowers stepped languidly through this rustic village. The houses were made of decomposing wood and bits of recycled tin stacked up, with roofs made mostly of draped shawls and blue plastic tarps with the occasional tile. Trash was littered about here and there, nobody much minded to throw anything away, and the town latrine had been full for a few days. All in all, it was a squalid village, but the people there loved it dearly, the Sage of Flowers knew.
When they saw him, the inhabitants of the village stopped and pointed. Some stared, and some even wept openly at the sight of him.
A man stood in his path, feet frozen in place. The Sage of Flowers approached with an even gait, watching impassively as a young girl ran out from a shack to pull on the man's leg in a desperate attempt to get him to move out of the way.
"Dad, move! Move Dad, he's coming. Don't… Urrgghh," she tried with all her strength to move him. The man was old, in his late 50's with greying hair and tanned skin and gnarled hands that spoke of countless days in the field. The Sage of Flowers smelled the man's urine before his daughter did.
Perhaps she was too frightened to notice.
The Sage of Flowers stopped in front of the man, his thin woven sandals slapping the dirt with authority. The sound snapped the farmer from whatever haze he had been caught in. His eyes began to dart around intelligently, looking for any chance of escape. He did not try to run, or even move his body more than inch; to do so would invite death.
No one ran from the Sage of Flowers.
The Sage patted the girl on the head twice, she flinched both times though made no move to distance herself. Then the Sage of Flowers stepped around the stupefied pair and resumed his walk, he still had many miles to cover before he could rest.
"Stop. Don't move you bastard."
There was a lone shinobi in his path. Tall, lean, skin lightly tanned with bright eyes, his chakra was alive with energy and it was furious.
"Sage of Flowers, for crimes against man and natural world, for the massacring of innocents, the destruction of consecrated grounds, and for attempting to incite war among friendly nations I hereby sentence you to death. I'm going to make you pay for all the pain you've caused!"
His chakra was bright, pure.
"What is your name?" The Sage of Flowers rasped.
"My name…" but it was lost in the wind, " And I'm going to take you down, believe it!"
His chakra grew, massive, swirling like a maelstrom and at its epicenter he stood, a vassal of justice.
The Sage flinched, only for a moment. Then the two figures charged at each other in a show of speed, each trying to land the first strike.
The young shinobi took it, his kunai piercing the Sage's chest, a geyser of blood gushing from the wound.
Only it wasn't blood.
The Sage collapsed into a thousand crimson petals each more beautiful and delicate than the next. The young shinobi did not see the razor thin coating of chakra and thought for a moment that he was caught in a genjutsu when the petals passed through him as though he were nothing but empty space.
He lay bleeding on the dirt. The sun roasted his body and vultures pecked at his eyes, from nature to nature. His last thoughts were of home, of the friends he had lost, of the lover he had left behind.
The petals reformed and the Sage of Flowers offered a passing prayer for the fallen boy who reminded him tenderly of himself from very, very long ago.
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Sakura studied the bodies. There were three of them, face up on separate operating tables in the small room, a harsh artificial lamp over each of them.
Kabuto was explaining the operation she was about to perform in brutal detail. The basic idea behind the procedure was relatively simple, being that she needed to learn how to infuse her chakra into the patient's chakra pathways so that she could heal them internally without having to dilute her chakra through the purification process. Normal medical techniques were performed by synthesizing chakra outside of the body and molding the 'medical' element, or the intent to heal. Without this property the patient's body would reject the foreign chakra and no healing could be accomplished. Properly applying the intent to heal to chakra would result in said chakra taking on a luminescent green glow and even this technique could take years to master, and the less adroit the medic nin, the more chakra that would be wasted in the process. Kabuto was having her bypass this training-extensive process by having her infuse her chakra directly into the subjects chakra pathways and manipulate it internally.
The only problem was that—technically speaking—this was highly forbidden. If she were caught performing this technique by anyone who knew what she was doing, she would be barred from medical practice entirely, she might even have her chakra sealed permanently. Why? Because acclimating your chakra to some else's chakra system was very, very difficult to do without killing the patient. In fact, Kabuto had laid these three out with the expectation that all of them would die whilst Sakura attempted to learn the technique.
Sakura told him in a quiet voice that she would master the technique without killing any of them—one of the patients looked suspiciously like Mizuki though she couldn't be sure due to the breathing apparatus that covered all of the injured men's faces. Kabuto had laughed at her.
"If you manage to keep even one of them alive I won't break any of your fingers."
Then he showed Sakura where the tenketsu point she would be working from was: at the junction of the thumb joint and the wrist, just below the palm.
Once he was sure she was holding the tenketsu properly (between her thumb and forefinger) he slashed the man's gut open with a scalpel that had appeared seemingly from thin air.
Sakura analysed the wound for a full second. Deep gash, midsection. She pulled the skin back to inspect the wound. There! Punctured spleen. Blood was sputtering from the cut at an alarming rate, the man had maybe fifteen minutes before he bled out on the table.
Sakura tried to start by putting pressure on the wound but Kabuto slapped her away.
"That's cheating Sakura-chan. You can't cheat while I'm watching you, do it again and I won't be so gentle."
She adapted. Sakura always adapted. She went back to the tenketsu point on the palm and started to pour her chakra into it. Immediately the man began to seize, his whole body violently fighting the foreign chakra.
Fuck fuck fuck. This isn't going to work!
Sakura tried to pull out her chakra but it was too late, the man had bit down on his tongue and was currently choking it and Sakura knew better than to try to pull it out—Kabuto was watching her with smug satisfaction as if he had been rooting for her to fail. 'Shit, he's going to die, but I can at least learn something from this,' she thought as she moved back to the tenketsu point on the dying man's palm and began to channel her chakra through it again—this time much slower.
It was a strange feeling. She wanted to throw up from the sight of the man. Tears of blood of were pouring from the wound on his gut, from his cheeks, his nose, his eyes, his ears. Every orifice was bleeding and she almost panicked. But Sakura couldn't afford to lose her cool, there was a tacit understanding between them that if she disappointed Kabuto—if she failed—he would kill her. Of that she had no doubt. There was fear dominating her, wrenching her gut and freezing her movement, and yet, part of her, a part that she didn't want to admit existed, was excited.
She was learning something that would never be taught inside of Konoha. She was learning medical techniques that only a handful of people in her generation would ever even attempt and she was going to master them and exceed Kabuto's expectations. Sakura always adapted. Sakura always survived.
She felt for the opening to the chakra circulatory system and was rewarded with a numb tingling sensation as if she'd been hit with a minor electric current. Slowly, very slowly she began threading a nascent string of chakra through the small tenketsu and was rewarded with an intensified shock to her system as the dying man's chakra instinctively backlashed. Sakura persisted, threading her chakra further and further through his pathways, contouring blindly to the walls of his circulatory system.
His chakra had identified hers and was treating it as a foreign threat, an antibody to be destroyed as quickly as possible. His body seized once again while his chakra instinctively purged itself, rolling out of every pore in his body in waves, smothering Sakura's chakra and forcing it out in the process. Then, with a final spasm the man went still.
The body was dead but the mind was still there, and Sakura did not have time to be picky about her opportunities. She surreptitiously slid another tendril of chakra through the tenketsu in his wrist and explored his chakra circulatory system completely. His chakra was loose and unresponsive, so she wasn't able to get a feel for how it would react any more so than she already had, but she was able to map out a mental diagram of the pathways; where his chakra center was, the thin twisting passageways from the spinal vertebrae to the cranium, the bronchial branches extending at the hands, the oversized tenketsu near the heart, lungs, and navel. Sakura felt it all. Then she began to heal the corpse, sending her chakra to the spleen, forcing the heart to beat with physical pumps of her energy, tightening and relaxing the diaphragm to force the lungs to operate.
By the end of it she was gulping down ragged breaths and her hair was matted almost black with sweat, but the wound was closed, the spleen was healed, and the body was cool to the touch.
The second soul did not go so gently as the first. It clung to life even as its body seized and spasmed against the invasive chakra, pushing wildly, clawing apart its own circulatory system in a manic attempt to free itself from the probing fingers of Sakura's chakra. His wild chakra overran the tenketsu supplying his heart and it collapsed in on itself. On his chest he had a tattoo with the kanji for 'Demon', and Sakura found his death at her hands ironic in a detached and clinical sense—her attempting to learn medical procedures that would one day save lives (and how many hundreds of texts and songs had likened healers to Angels?).
She was able to gleam from his death, however, a little more insight into how the body reacted. 'I've killed two men, I should be ashamed, I should hate myself.' And yet, she did not. She could rationalize everything—she wasn't killing these men, Kabuto was, she was doing everything in her power to save them, in fact. It wasn't a good enough lie to fool herself, though she wished it had been; at least then she could excuse the hollowness in her chest where her guilt should have been.
The problem was blockage. The chakra circulatory system could only detect her chakra when it filled up enough of a chakra pathway that the native chakra could no longer flow through freely. That was when the body identified then native chakra and went into 'panic mode'. If Sakura could figure out someway to determine the width of all of the chakra passageways and carefully mold her chakra so as to not cause any blockages, or if she could somehow navigate the native chakra through a secondary method and prevent it from coming into contact with her own than she could complete the technique. But as of yet she had no idea how to accomplish either of those options.
Kabuto was smirking in the corner, though as always, it fell short at his eyes. They were icy and professional, scientific and unforgiving.
'If you manage to keep even one of them alive I won't break any of your fingers.'
Already he he was moving to stab the third man, "Wait!" she called. He turned and leveled her with an unamused stare. "Just—just give me a second, I think I've got this figured out."
"Don't feel bad on their behalves, Sakura-chan, I promise you this is a much better death than any of them were expecting." his eyes were black and impenetrable as a still pond on a cloudy night, "Stop worrying about it, just try again and accept your punishment."
This guy's a fucking psycho.
Think. Think. 'I need a method to find out the width of the chakra pathways so I can make sure I'm not blocking them. My chakra will expand to fill the space naturally like water if I let it flow freely, but doing so will undoubtedly cause a blockage. The chakra doesn't just react negatively to a complete blockage, but whenever the chakra is jarred back. I need to create an algorithm for moving my chakra inside the circulatory system witho —'
"Sakura-chan," Kabuto said in a faux mocking sing song tone, "he's going to bleed out soon if you don't hurry."
"Hold on," she snapped. He was bleeding now, okay, worry about that later. 'If I can funnel his chakra around my chakra like a spiral, I can keep it from ever hitting a blockage. That's it, I just need to create a spiral. Or, not a spiral, but—yeah a corkscrew. I've got this.'
Sakura moved over to the body. She shuddered. It was Mizuki, there was no doubt. She hesitated only for a second before plunging her chakra into his body, creating a flat, wide string of it, then slowly rotating it as she pushed ever further into his chakra system. There was a small shock, at first, when his chakra ran into hers, but then it slid past, winding its way through the corkscrew maze her chakra had created, while her own string pushed deeper into his system. The focus it required was almost nauseating. Maintaining such a complex shape, while allowing a very specific part of the strand to expand and contract and the rest to stay completely rigid, while constantly moving and twisting it, was mind numbingly difficult.
She felt a dribble of something hot run down her nose and into her lip. Drip. Drip. It trickled into her mouth but she could not lose focus for even a second. She sent the chakra down his circulatory system and towards the whole in his gut, and then slowly, carefully, with trepidatious reserve, began to heal his wounds. It wasn't hard, in comparison to actually getting her chakra there, but it was still a feat to blindly pull her own chakra through some else's tenketsu and heal them. The healing itself was rather simple, all she had to do was supply chakra to the cells near the wound and increase the patient's natural metabolic reaction rate to produce rapid healing. It was the most basic form of medicine, but Kabuto assured her that they would be learning actual medical techniques to be performed from inside the body soon enough.
Sakura couldn't help the errant thoughts from floating around in her mind, 'He doesn't deserve to live.' 'He tried to kill you.' 'If you send him back there, he could hurt Sasuke and Naruto.' 'He's not your teacher.'
He had the eyes of a mad beast. There is only one thing to do with that kind of sickness.
He was healed. Her task was done and she had done it. Exceeded Kabuto's expectations. She should have felt proud but she didn't, watching Mizuki's chest rise and fall all she felt was a frigid fury. 'He shouldn't live.' She glanced at Kabuto out of the corner of her eye, he was studying his own journal, not paying attention to Sakura's procedure.
She made a decision. She wasn't going to kill him, that would be wrong, sick. Instead she would just perform a little experiment to see what would happen if she were to block the tenketsu over his heart. Her own heart was hammering out a staccato beat as she pushed her chakra through the tenketsu in his wrist for a second time. She stepped back from the body, maintaining control over the chakra remotely was difficult, especially when it was muddied in someone else's chakra system, but she could do it. She formed a miniature corkscrew and sent it winding its way to the tenketsu over the heart. 'And fill,' she commanded. Her chakra pushed out to block the tenketsu completely.
Mizuki sprang upwards then sank back down, his lungs no longer pulling oxygen, his heart no longer beating. That was all it had taken, a tiny thread of chakra, a single touch, and Mizuki was dead on the operating table.
'I'm a monster.'
You did what was right.
Sakura almost jumped out of her skin when she turned to find Kabuto standing right behind, appraising her with a calculatory smirk. Then he reached into his labcoat and pulled out a ring, handing it to her.
It was a chakra ring. Silver, with a delicate engraving of a snake eating its own tail.
"You know what this is?" Kabuto asked. Sakura nodded dumbly, not trusting herself to speak. "Good. You've impressed me Sakura-chan. We're even more alike than I thought was possible."
Sakura suppressed a shiver. Kabuto walked out of the room, not looking once at the corpses. Sakura wiped the blood from her nose. She slid on the ring. She followed his footsteps down the hall, away from the failures screaming for mercy, for daylight in the shadow of her triumph.
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"Do you ever wish it was different?"
"What do you mean?"
Naruto heard the crunch of the beast's bones as his foot drilled a spinal column into the ground. There was so much blood.
He sidestepped a swipe, rolled under a gaping jaw and stabbed at the beast's flank with all his might, bone sliding through flesh, tender blood gushing in the rhythm of a frantic heartbeat. The taste of iron and copper waltzed on his tongue as he plunged the makeshift blade again and again into thick hide and past cracking bone.
"Like, if we weren't like this. Shinobi, I mean."
"It wouldn't be different for me, I was destined to be this."
The beast was slowing down. It's lunges came fewer and farther between, panting breaths and dragging footfalls foretold its fate. It snapped at Naruto again, teeth clamping shut with enough force to crush steel. Naruto was faster. He wove around the creature, letting his tooth dagger penetrate flesh whenever he had the space to do so, always staying parallel to the beast, on it's side away from its jaw and its colossal tail.
"We could be friends." His eyes were glass.
"No. Not us."
"If we didn't have everyone watching, if you didn't have… just us. We're the same."
Lifewater, it ran red and danced about the arena. Naruto painted the world with it. Slice. Slash. Stab. Stab. Wrench. He pulled skin open and pried the blood out and it sang to him, free of the prison of flesh. He was covered it in, slick with the beast's juices and its fur. His chest trembled, shuddered against the intake of air—his lungs were too greedy.
"Everything that's happened, it was decided before we were even born."
"So what?! You're just going to give up? Fate is a bunch of bullshit."
Again the door opened. This one was bigger, meaner, its face wore the scars of a dozen battles and its eyes were not frightened. It hissed—a vicious sound like a pierced lung deflating.
Four lumbering steps and it was in the center of the arena, not bothering so much as a glance in the direction of its fallen brethren, five of them still warm and pulsing their guts onto the rocky surface.
"It's not a trap. We're not trapped by fate. We are fate, made up of a thousand decisions that predated both of us. It's not like," he paused to chew his bottom lip then said, "He didn't just snap. He was going to snap for a very long time, it wasn't some accident."
Naruto felt a trill crawl up his spine. He could feel every drop of its blood, he could feel it running thick and heavy through the creature's veins. There it was: the heartbeat. Thu—mp, da thump. Thu—mp, da thump.
Thu—mp, da thump.
"That doesn't mean we can't fight it! That doesn't mean that we have to live a certain way, just because you think that's what fate wants of you!"
Thu—mp, da thump.
"I'm so cold, Naruto."
His diaphragm was pumping doubletime trying to refill his lungs with oxygen and his heart was working doubletime trying to pump that oxygen into his brain. He knew this, instinctively, but all he could focus on was the taste of it; the blood. It played sweet melodies to him; little lullabies. Naruto thought he heard his mother's voice.
"We could be friends, brothers even."
It struck. Neck snapping forward with impossible speed, its beaked jaw catching Naruto's gut and tearing his stomach open. He leapt back, stumbling on another corpse behind him. Slitted yellow eyes dissected his every moment, a sickly tongue poking out of a twisted half-beak between the rows of razor sharp flesh-rending teeth to wipe away the crimson smear. Oh Sage, his stomach was open and he could see…
"I don't want another brother."
His whole body shook. His fingers could barely keep a grasp of the blade in his palm and he felt so cold, like the hole in his abdomen was a vaccuum and everything was just pouring out of him. How long had he been in the arena? A day? A month? He couldn't remember anything but the battle; the feathers and fur and blood that embroiled around the pit, he couldn't even remember his own name.
His eyelids were determined to close no matter how he fought to keep them open and he wondered how death would feel. The beast moved again and his body reacted without his telling it to, diving to the side of the beast and pumping chakra through his arms. Too much he was using too much and he could feel it now, when he pulled his chakra out again the muscle would be shredded and he didn't have much chakra left—it had been bleeding out of him for so long. There was so much blood.
And it sang to him.
"You're a good person, Sasuke. You don't have to hide from me."
It rained from the beast as he slashed and stabbed and bit and clawed. Its tail caught him and sent him flying into the wall of the arena but he got up. The crimson ichor was singing to him, commanding him like a puppet and he obeyed its call—slashing and stabbing and stabbing and screaming and raking flesh from bone and he could feel the weight behind his eyes and they weren't even seeing anymore but he didn't care he could smell the rusted copper tang of blood and he tasted ecstasy.
"I hide from everyone. It's the only thing I'm really good at."
His arms were broken and his muscles were torn to shreds but he couldn't feel the ache, nor could he feel the gaping hole in his midsection where his guts were starting leak. The hideous creature just wouldn't die, but it had to die. So he bit down on it with his teeth, poured all of his chakra into his jawbone and clamped down on its neck, right where the artery should have been.
Its colossal birdlike arms found their way to his chest and tore through him but he did not stop. His teeth clamped together with a loud 'crack' and he felt them break and chip away. He let the chunks of tooth and bile and sticky red ichor leak from his mouth and he fell to the earth and the beast roared a sound like reinforced steel under grindstone — a sound like victory and defeat.
"Eh?! Are you kidding! You're the goddamn 'Rookie of the Year', you kick my ass in taijutsu, ninjutsu, genjutsu, hell everything! If hiding is the only thing you're good at, then where the hell does that leave me?"
The hint of a smirk cracked Sasuke's stone countenance, "Well, that's a depressing thought now isn't it."
It clawed its way towards him, its talons displacing the earth as it pulled its miserable body closer to its prey. It was so hungry—it felt as if worms were gnawing out its intestines—and just wanted to feed. As a fledgling the beast had found a mate, the most desirable of his species, pruned with red and gold feathers that danced in the early moonlight of the hunt and rustled with intense focus when she answered his mating call. Her mucus was thick and coagulated faster than any other he had ever seen. He had cried out then as he cried out now, the call of victory, the call of hope.
Then he found her with a black hole in her and he smelled his children starving inside her belly. He tried to eat them out of her, get them to freedom, but they were too small, too weak to make the journey and days later he was found there by the slavers with a beak full of blood, matted on his fur and feathers and singing the song of agony. They took him from his grief, directed his anger towards the same naked monsters that had taken his mate, he would kill every last one of them, and he would sing the song of victory again—though it always rang false.
"You bastard."
His body was distant and numb but he managed to stand anyways, the beast was pulling itself towards him still but he would not make it. Naruto wouldn't make it either, but he would last the fight. He would die showing the world that he could surpass their expectations. He was Uzumaki Naruto, named after the late Kushina of the Uzumaki clan, wife of the Fourth Hokage. He was the orphan boy who ran away to live on the streets, who sold information for bread and could clean a pocket faster than you could shout 'thief!', who joined the Academy with no sponsor, no textbooks, not even a place to sleep at night. He held on, no matter how bad things got he never gave up, never gave in to the pressure to quit, even when the world told him he would never be a ninja. He embodied the Will of Fire and invited the world to walk in his light.
And yet, darkness came.
"Dead. Last."
Naruto leaned back, content. Thoughts began to play about the back of his eyelids and he tilted his head towards the Uchiha once more.
"I've got a secret you know."
"Are you coming onto me?"
Naruto paused, hearing Sasuke actually joke with him was a pleasant change of pace. "You've probably heard the rumors. Everyone has."
Sasuke's eyes were pools of oil.
"October 10th, the day the Kyuubi attacked." Naruto fumbled. "He—he was supposed to die, but there was also this newborn. Born just two minutes before the Kyuubi died."
"Some of the nurses, they say they saw the Fourth, the Yondaime, drawing seals on the body in his own blood. Right before he killed it."
"Stop. Don't be an idiot, Naruto."
"I always thought they were idiots, really. But—after Mizuki, after being here. I can feel it, Sasuke. I like it, Sasuke. Something about the blood, it just makes me go crazy, like endorphins, I feel so alive and it's wrong but... but I think they were right.
"You're the first person I've ever told this to."
"You think you're the Kyuubi."
"I' know I am."
"Naruto, you're too stupid to be evil."
.
.
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'There you are," a gruff voice called as rough hands pulled him to his feet. "Come on, everyone is waiting.'
'Where are we going?' asked Naruto. Trees rose all about him, twisting at impossible angles with branches forming kanji that he could never quite make out. Leaves shone like beacons of light wherever the moonlight felt them, the grass at his feet leaving tall shadows for him to fall into.
The air was wet and pouches of dew licked at Naruto wherever the shrubbery caught him. The man in front of him was silhouetted by the silver glow of the celestial bodies above. Naruto thought he looked familiar but he could not place a name to the man in the same way he could not name the kanji forming and reforming at the edges of his vision.
There was a large rip in Naruto's shirt as if it had been caught on a fence while he was running. Several smaller holes poked through the shirt on odd places like counterfeit constellations. The wind bit at his flesh. 'You were out here training again, weren't you?'
'I can't remember,' said Naruto.
'You're pushing yourself too hard, kid,' said the man. He had an air about him that made Naruto think he had seen many battles. 'You don't want to burn out so soon.'
'I won't,' said Naruto.
They did not speak for a while and the night filled in the silence with its own sounds: detritus compacting underneath his feet, the rustling of small animals chasing bugs, the snap of branches under unseen weight, the round and unfinished scent of lavender painting the nightscape.
'They're going to make you return it,' the man said.
'Return what?' asked Naruto.
"What you stole," he said.
The man knelt low to the ground and lifted some earth to his nose. 'Quiet.' He did not move a single muscle, trained so rigid Naruto would believe that he was a statue if he had not been walking with him only moments ago. Naruto's legs grew tired from standing in one place for so long and his knobby knees began to shake. He should have worn pants. The wind was burning his ears and he had to put his tongue between his teeth to keep them from chattering.
The man had a very serious look on his face. Naruto had never seen him make that look before, it made him seem much older and more grizzled. The only movement he made was the steady contraction of his nostrils.
There was no motion, but Naruto could see the steady rise of tension, building in the man before him until just when it seemed as if he would explode…
Tap. The sound was a snapshot. A frozen moment that ricocheted against the walls of his mind again, and again, and again. His heart was pulled into that vortex of fear and misstepped just as the world collapsed into movement.
It happened so quickly his mind only processed that what was once dense forest was now sky. He was in the man's arms. They were running and there was utter silence all around them.
It was eerie to be moving so quickly, the man obviously panicked, eyes narrowed with singular purpose, and to know that they were being followed, and Naruto couldn't even hear the sound of his own breathing. 'Be brave, kid,' the man shuffled and suddenly he was holding five explosive tags. The real ones. 'I won't let you die.'
'Okay,' said Naruto.
The man's stubble started to rub Naruto's cheek raw. There was a crack so loud Naruto checked to see if the moon hadn't been snapped in half. Then they were pushed forward, jolted out of balance and Naruto fell from the treetops towards the dark blanket of earth below.
'Report,' another voice called from the darkness. Naruto turned to face it but couldn't see anything so he stared back at the moon. It was too bright now, too round, too perfect, it hurt his eyes to stare into.
'Report,' the voice was distant, removed. Naruto squeezed the fabric of his shorts and leaned forward in his chair. He had a stomach ache. It was a twisting, wrenching pain and he asked if he could go to the bathroom.
Naruto could hear voices in the next room. There was a woman screaming, 'It's his fault! No I won't calm down! Don't tell me to relax!' He had the impression that he was to blame for her anger, though he didn't know why. His stomach grew even tighter. 'I'm sorry,' he said. It was just a whisper and no one heard him.
'I'm sorry,' said Naruto. And then he couldn't stop saying it. He was choking down sobs and begging for forgiveness from whomever would listen.
'Shh, Naruto, shh my boy, it's okay,' a very old man was comforting him, petting his hair back. The old man was warm and safe and Naruto curled into his embrace, making himself as small as possible so as not scare the man off.
The most beautiful woman he had ever seen was staring at him, eyes glossy with fury. 'Don't tell him it's okay. It is not okay,' she spat. Her hair was a light blonde and she had a diamond in between her jeweled eyes. Naruto wondered if she was some sort of goddess. 'He killed my husband.'
Naruto didn't remember killing anyone. But there was a shuriken spinning in his insides and he just wanted to make her stop looking at him with those dreadful eyes. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I'm sorry.'
'Give him back. Give him back to me!' Saliva was spraying from her mouth with every word and her eyes had that crazed look of a cornered beast. 'Monster,' she spoke the word with a reverent whisper.
'Leave us, Tsunade,' the old man said.
'Give him back,' she said. "Give back what you stole from me!'
'You're going to have to give back you stole you know,' she chided with a sing song voice.
'What,' Naruto said.
'What you stole,' she smiled and her baby blue eyes glittered. 'I saw you, you know.'
'Oh,' said Naruto.
The air was thick with the fragrance and pollen of sunflowers, and behind the gay cries and laughter of children in the park Naruto could see squat bumblebees going about their work. 'Yup,' the girl shot him a toothy smile, 'you can't keep secrets from me!'
'Okay, I won't,' said Naruto, meaning it. The girl squinted at him, making a show of leaning forward and appraising him like some fine jewel—Naruto's cheeks flushed under the scrutiny.
'Hmm,' she rubbed her chin in a mock 'thinking pose'. 'Okay good! We can be friends then. I'm Yamanaka Ino, what's your name?'
'I don—Naruto, Uzumaki Naruto,' he almost said he didn't have a name. Then he added as an after thought, 'You're my first friend.'
'Good,' she winked at him, a move she had practiced in front of the mirror twenty times the morning prior after seeing her favorite actress do it, 'I'm the only one you'll ever need. Now come on, let's go play ninja.'
'Ninja isn't some game you play with your friends,' Iruka looked down at the boy with a frown. 'You can't freeze up like that every time you see a kunai, Naruto.'
Ino was with Sakura and their friends across the training ground, Naruto caught her worried glance and looked away immediately. It was embarrassing that he was always the last, always the slowest, and worst of all, he was a coward.
'Sorry Iruka-sensei,' said Naruto. He inspected the grime under his toenails while Iruka stared at him. 'What's the matter Naruto? Don't you want to practice with your kunai?'
'They give me a stomach ache.'
Iruka gave the boy a pitying glance. It wasn't uncommon for academy students to react negatively to the weapons courses, especially in the earlier years, but almost all of those who did would be forced out of the program and Naruto reminded Iruka so much of himself as a child, orphaned, yearning for attention, abandoned by the world. Iruka would do what he could to help the boy, maybe if he talked with the Hokage…
'Try this Naruto,' he leaned down to pat the boy's head, 'if you can hit the target even once from this far away I'll buy you ramen tonight.'
'As much as I want?' Naruto asked. They had served some kind of disgusting fruit porridge at the food kitchen that morning and even dirty Kada-san wouldn't touch the stuff. Iruka hesitated, wondering just how much trouble he was getting himself into. Then he nodded, if it would help Naruto he would do it.
'Does that mean you'll buy me ramen three times?' asked Naruto. Iruka stared in shock at the boy. Hitting the target once from this distance was no easy task for a third year, hitting it three out of five times put Naruto in the top 5% of the class.
'How about this, I'll buy you three bowls of ramen, cash them in whenever you want.'
'Okay,' Naruto nodded.
'Good, let's go kid.'
'Let's go kid,' came the mean invitation. 'Time for your beating.'
'Who the hell do you think you are!'
'It's okay, Iruka-sensei, it's just Mado-san,' said Naruto. He slurped down the last of his broth and thanked his teacher.
'You little monster,' Mado-san hiccuped and almost fell over, but Naruto caught him before he could fall. Throwing one arm around the man's waist Naruto began to slowly lead him out of the establishment.
'You know what you did?! My own little boy,' the man was blubbering now, tears pouring down his face, 'my own little boy.' He let Naruto carry him down the street and back to his house.
Naruto knocked on the door and Mado-san's wife opened it fourteen seconds later.
'Oh dear, not again,' she muttered to herself, pulling both Naruto and Mado-san into the one story house. She made Naruto jasmine tea and put extra honey in it while Naruto lead the bawling Mado-san to the stale red couch and brought him a tissue from the bathing room.
'How could you!? My poor boy...'
'Thank you Naruto-kun,' she said in her hoarse voice. Naruto always wondered if that scratchy property came from too much screaming or too much crying, she was too nice to have to do either of things he decided.
Mado-san was still crying, still slightly feverish from the alcohol. Naruto wished the tears would pool, they caught the light but offered no reflection stuck to Mado-san's face and Naruto was allowed to forget his shadow in this play. But the sobs reminded him plenty of who he was, and he wished that Mado-san would actually hit him for once, just to even the score.
Instead he drank tea and let the world crumble into dreams.
'Why don't you ever train seriously Naruto?' Ino frowned at the rosebush, watching as Naruto trimmed it.
'I get stomach aches if I train too hard,' he said. It wasn't the whole truth but it wasn't a lie either.
'You might fail, you know?' she gave him a huff of disapproval before retreating back behind the counter of the store. 'Hey, do you wanna do the chakra theory essay with me?'
'I thought you were going to do it with Sakura-chan,' Naruto said.
Ino looked embarrassed, and a little bit guilty. Naruto understood, sometimes you had to trim good leaves for the integrity of the plant. He had stranger relationships than this one. 'It's okay,' he said. 'I don't mind.'
'Sorry.' Ino said.
'Sorry,' he said. 'I know I'm not very good at this.'
'It's okay, you're better than you'd think.'
'It's never even close.' Naruto frowned at the shogi board, wondering how he was so thoroughly trounced every time. Mado-san's wife had taught him how to play, but Shikamaru was his 'sparring' partner.
Shikamaru leaned back to stretch his arms and back and shot a longing gaze at the clouds. 'I wish I could be one of them,' he said.
"What?' asked Naruto.
'A cloud,' said Shikamaru.
"Why?"
Shikamaru tore himself from the sky and met Naruto's eyes. Then he shrugged and grunted, 'Think about it, no work, no expectations, no troublesome women yelling at you, all you have to do is lay back and watch the world the go by.'
Naruto felt his stomach clench and almost said nothing.
Then, as if his tongue were an egg—cracked, and the words the yoke slipping out and into the world before he could catch them: 'That's why I want to be a ninja.' Shikamaru seemed to understand how important those words were to Naruto because he sat up to give him his full attention.
The wind whistled through the blades of grass outside of the Nara compound. A few deer were grazing contentedly a few hundred yards away, only the buck standing at attention, its face perpendicular to the two boys.
Eventually Naruto found the courage to speak again, 'I don't want to ever have to watch from the sidelines, unable to help my friends,' again went unsaid, but Shikamaru seemed to know even what Naruto did not say.
'You sound like the Hokage,' he said at last. Naruto fidgeted with the zipper on his jacket. 'Let's play again.' There was a glint in Shikamaru's eyes now, they looked more serious than Naruto had even seen them, pointed and deriving such a consuming focus that Naruto gulped. Then he smiled a big, face-eating grin.
'You're on!' said Naruto.
'I know what you stole,' a spectre whispered down his neck, taking the form of the chilly night breeze.
'You come here too,' he said.
'Mhn,' the girl said. She had short black hair and a boyish air about her. Naruto figured that she liked to play ninja.
'Aren't your parents going to get mad at you?' he asked her.
'No, they don't care,' she said. Her eyes were pools of oil catching warmth from the flickering lights of the village below them. The Hokage Monument offered no reprieve from the wind and Naruto was forced to huddle against her to keep warm. 'What about you, where are you parents?'
'Dead, I think,' Naruto said. She just nodded, never taking her eyes off the village below.
'I'm going to be a ninja one day,' he said, trying to impress the girl. He didn't really have any experience talking to kids his own age, everyone at the orphanage hated him just because he wet his bed.
'Me too,' she said. She frowned.
'What, you don't want to be a kickass ninja?' he asked.
'I don't want to hurt anybody,' she whispered, as if afraid the words would hit her.
'Don't worry, only weak ninja have to kill. The strong use their power to protect other people, 'ttebayo! I'm going to become a strong ninja and protect everyone and I'll be super famous and everyone will know my name!' He stood up and made his best 'hero pose'.
The girl gave a little giggle, her cheeks and nose pink from the cold, her eyes wide and hopeful. Naruto promised to himself that he would do anything to protect that smile. Though he didn't know then, he wouldn't see it again for many, many years.
'What is your name?' she asked.
"Naruto. Uzumaki Naruto.'
'Naruto.'
'Naruto!'
"NARUTO!"
"Mother be damned, Naruto, you sleep like a log!"
Naruto slowly opened his eyes and found himself in a shabby imitation of a hospital room.
"Come on, we've only got half an hour before they take you back," a female voice chastised. He recognized that voice from somewhere but he couldn't quite remem—
"Sakura-chan!" his words cracked. His mouth was dry and tasted like hot sand and his tongue felt fat and swollen. He swallowed the lump forming in the back of throat and had to bite back tears as it burned.
"Dont play with that!" she swiped his hand away from the IV drip in his arm. "You're very dehydrated, those fluids are really important right now. Don't give me that look, Naruto." He pouted and tried again anyways and again she slapped his hand away. He noticed that four of her fingers were wrapped up in splints.
"What happened to your hand?" he asked. She was taken aback for a moment, looked at the serpentine ring on her left hand, then the splints on her right hand and took a moment to decide which he was referring to, then she said, "I closed a door on it. Stupid mistake really."
"Oh," Naruto said. Then, "Am I dead?"
"No. Not anymore at least. Kabuto saved you," she said, taking another moment to inspect her injured hand.
"Okay," he looked up at the flickering ceiling light. "Who's Kabuto?"
"The doctor here, he's teaching me how to heal people," she said, trying and failing to keep the feather of guilt from her voice. "I'm really good at it."
"Yeah," he agreed, "you've always been really good at that stuff."
"I just have small chakra reserves so my control is a lot better—it's not very useful for anything but medicine, really." she said softly, sweetly.
"I wasn't talking about chakra or anything, I meant—what I mean is, you've always been good at helping people, Sakura-chan." Naruto smiled at her, but the pain in his throat and now in his gut as well made into more of a grimace.
"Oh," Sakura looked as if she'd been slapped. "Thanks Naruto."
"Don't worry about it," he tried harder to smile this time and it worked. "Really, it's okay. Sasuke and I are just glad you're safe." And it was true. Even if Sasuke wouldn't say it, Naruto knew his teammate felt the same way.
Sakura gave him a tight smile, not quite allowing herself to believe his words. She began inspecting the bandages on Naruto's arms, pulling them off slowly, applying a chunky paste over the wounds, and wrapping them snugly with fresh bandages, scrubbing off any excess blood she found. It was slow and rhythmic work and the two eased their way into a groove of nonvocal communication. A nod here, a frown there, a grimace, a smirk, a short laugh. When Sakura started working on his torso she had him sit up fully in the bed, and then struck up a conversation once more, "I saw your fight. Everyone did, really."
"Ahh," Naruto wasn't sure what he was expected to say. He couldn't remember much of it anyways.
Sakura wiped away some blood from a gash under his clavicle with a steady hand. "I—I was surprised. I didn't know you could fight like that, Naruto. It was…impressive."
She dropped the bloodstained cotton swab into a bucket with all of the other bloodied swabs and began to rub the antibiotic ointment over the gash. "I've never seen—I didn't know you could, um," she fought for the words to come to her, cheeks burning. "You're strong Naruto."
"Are you sure I'm not dead?" he asked. He had no trouble wearing his smile now. It felt like a great weight had been lifted from his chest as Sakura coughed to cover her embarrassment and resumed working.
"Ne, Sakura-chan," he began, "there was something I wanted to ask you about. You're really good with chakra control stuff right?" She nodded once, focusing on wrapping the gauze around his stomach. "Do you think you could help me with this technique?"
He explained to her what the scarred guard had showed him in their training session and the problems he was encountering with it. To no one's surprise, Sakura had an answer.
"Remember when we were in the Academy and we had to make a bridge out of only toothpicks and glue?" she started, entering her teacher mode."It's just like that. When you enhance something with chakra you can't just saturate it completely with chakra, that'd be like just piling up toothpicks and glue without order. You need to structure it. Build a structure with your chakra that supports your muscles, or whatever you are trying to enhance, so that the chakra structure does the majority of the work—not the object of reinforcement. The best structure uses as few toothpicks and as little glue as possible to get the most durable structure. You get it?"
"So you're saying I need to build a bridge. With chakra. In my body," he said incredulously.
"Exactly," Sakura affirmed as she finished wrapping the last roll of gauze around his waist. "Okay, they're going to take you back in about," she stopped to look at a strange device on the wall, "five minutes. Do you want me to try to smuggle you some food or something?"
Naruto shook his head. "Is that thing a clock?"
Sakura looked back at the mechanical contraption and shrugged, "Yeah, kind of. It's really a whole calendar from the land to the east of the great sea. That's where all these guys are from, I think."
"Oh," Naruto said. Then he thought for another moment and asked, "But why?"
"They hate ninja. They think chakra is unnatural or something, I haven't looked too much into it but I know it's part of their religion. I think it has to do with the establishment of the 'Righteous Daimyo' some two thousand years back when—sorry, I'm rambling."
"Mah, mah, it's okay Sakura-chan, it's just nice to hear your voice again," said Naruto. "By the way, we're totally going to bust you out of here…as soon as we figure out a plan." Naruto gave her a sheepish look and she shook her head knowingly. They would do their best, whatever it amounted to.
"At any rate, Taichou will realize we're missing at some point." Sakura didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the thought. It would take far more than one man to break them out of this place, and they both knew it. But still, hope springs eternal.
A few minutes later three guards Naruto had never seen before came into the room and escorted him down several long, narrow corridors that seemed to stretch forever. 'That has got to be a genjutsu,' Naruto thought to himself. They brought him out through one of the doors he recognized as leading to the arena, and then back through the prep-room, then through the mess hall, and finally back to his room where Sasuke was waiting for him with a scowl on her face.
"We've got trouble."
Naruto noticed the cut on her lip, and the bruise beginning to form along her jawbone and his stomach dropped. "What happened?"
Sasuke absentmindedly traced her fingers over the scrapes on her face, "Mhn. I killed one of Fuki's thugs."
"What happened?" Naruto asked again.
"He tried to get a little clingy in the shower," Sasuke smirked but it came out a frown, the brunette was obviously troubled.
"Sick Fuck," Naruto spat. "I don't blame you." Naruto moved to sit on his stone bed, facing Sasuke in the near darkness of early evening—or what he assumed was evening. The walls of their room were damp with groundwater, and the whole living quarter smelled of mold and arid bone.
Sasuke snorted. "It's not just him. Everyone's getting rowdy. We've lost four people in the last three days, including him. Fuki is pretty adamant that you and I are responsible for this mess, and has been vocal about getting 'even'."
Naruto chewed his thumb. This was bad. Fuki was an A-rank, which meant, at least here in the Pits, that he was about as strong as a chūnin. Naruto and Sasuke, however skilled the last Uchiha may be, were still barely out of the academy and not at all qualified to handle that kind of a threat.
"What do we do?" asked Naruto. He might hate Sasuke's guts, but she was strong, and she was usually pretty good about coming up with a solid plan.
She grunted, and leaned forward to rest her chin on the back of her hands. "If we're going to survive this, we need to play politics. If the others think we're going to slit their throats in the middle of the night, they'll just play the same game and unify against us. We need a backing before we — "
Then she stopped and stared at Naruto's feet. Sasuke's face was scrunched up in concentration. "What is it?" Naruto asked, a little nervous to know what Sasuke found so intriguing about his feet.
"There," she said. "Look at that."
He looked down and saw right next to his foot a particularly large cockroach shaking its back legs. "Holy shit!" he said, and immediately moved to stomp it from existence.
"Wait!" He stopped. "Sage you're an idiot. Look."
He looked again. At first, he didn't see what Sasuke was talking about. Then, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness of their room he was able to make out the subtle, precise movements of the cockroaches legs. 'It's speaking in code.' He made eye contact with Sasuke and nodded, then turned back to the roach.
"It's Basic," Sasuke whispered, just loud enough for Naruto to hear. Basic was a simple binary code where messages where assigned a value of either positive or negative, and the combination of the two in intricate patterns created a language. It was a very slow method of communication, and one of the easiest to decode, but every shinobi in the Academy knew it by heart, and Naruto was suddenly very grateful for something he had resented up until that very point.
He watched the bug again, timing the 1's and 0's, stopping at the repeat point, and mapping out the language in his head. REPORT. REPORT. REPORT...
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Thanks for reading!