Oh boi! Review time!
panjangya: Mwhahaha! Yes, that cliffhanger was evil indeed. Ok! First, Naruto will not be getting a sharingan implant. I plan something that, imo, is better! Second, Danzo will indeed train Naruto. But not to be OP as fuck, he will train him in the same way he teaches his ROOT, at least how I will interpretit in my fic. Third, Kushina, and later Minato's, influence over Naruto will be heavily limited. Meaning that they will not be his absolute moral beacon.
MoonlightDoom: At this point in my story's timeline, Sasuke had already known about the Kyuubi. I'm working on completing and flushing out the chapter in where Naruto and Sasuke bond to the point where there's no secrets between the two.
dreadix: Sorry to see ya go man / I plan on going over the backstory of Naruto's kidnapping during the chunin exams arc, because I'm not too fond of just explaining everything exactly when it happens. I'd prefer to have a little mystery and see how different people interpret my story.
AvatarUzumaki: I love your reviews! They give me motivation to write because I can see that you like reading them so much! And I'd like to explain my reasoning in the last chapter. In my opinion, Ino and Shikamaru should be wary of Naruto. Ino, because she's a very emotionally driven person. She saw the amount of negative emotions that Naruto held, even if they weren't actually his, inside himself. Which would lead to Ino being very cautious, scared, and holding a good amount of anger towards him. Shikamaru, because he's a logical driven person. He doesn't fully grasp what it means to be a jinchuriki, all he knows are that, 1) he lost control and hurt Ino and 2) most of the villagers shunned him because of him containing the Kyuubi. He would, logically or illogically depends on your viewpoint, assume that the villagers were in the right.
Onto the chapter now!
Chapter 18: Visions and More Training
"Hello Naruto Uzumaki, it's a pleasure meeting you."
"...Right, hi. So whatcha want gramps?"
Danzo let out a chuckle as he stood up. "As improper as ever, Uzumaki-san."
"Eh, just Naruto is good."
"Uzumaki-san," Naruto rolled his eyes at being ignored. "You have exceptional skills in the ninja arts once you're pointed down the right path, as seen from your academic records. Once you have a proper tutor, you'll grow and surpass their expectations." Naruto raised his visible eyebrow and motioned for the weird man to continue. "Ahem, right. I have a proposition for you."
"And that is?"
"To be the shadow that protects the light." Naruto's face took on a much more serious look, letting the man know that he was truly listening now. "My organization protects the citizens and shinobi of Konoha from her enemies by attacking from the shadows, without them being all the wiser. As they say, ignorance is bliss. We get our hands dirty so theirs are clean, we protect our loved ones and Konoha by eliminating our enemies."
Naruto stared at him, contemplating on what his answer should be. "...what happens if I agree or disagree?"
"If you disagree, our encounter will be erased from your mind. However, if you agree you'll be instated into my personal anbu branch."
"Wait wait. So you're telling me that I'll go from genin straight to anbu?"
"No. My branch is separate from the anbu division. In there, there are no ranks, there is no glory, and there is no honor in our work. There is only the mission with one single goal. To protect Konoha. We are the roots that protect and nourish the tree, but we are hidden from the public's view. My branch is called ROOT."
"Ah, alright. But question. How will I work here if I also have my team?"
"Let me take care of those details, Uzumaki-san. So are you interested in protecting Konoha from her shadows?" He readied his implanted sharingan, as a precaution in case the jinchuriki denied his offer.
After a couple moments of thinking, Naruto nodded his head. "Sure, I think it'll be good for me to protect Konoha from the shadows. I'm not too currently liked by the majority of the populace anyways."
The man nodded his head in a sorrowful manner. "I'm afraid that is true Uzumaki-san." The man stood up and looked down at the blonde boy. "We will go over mission protocol and begin your training after you have rehabilitated. From now on, you will report to me about any and all information you think would be useful for me to know."
"Uh, yessir. Oh I didn't get your name… sir?" Naruto asked awkwardly.
The bandaged man turned around, his back now facing the boy, and spoke. "My name is Danzo Shimura, but you will address me as Danzo-sama when speaking to me here. If we happen to meet outside of this base, I am a complete stranger to you as we haven't actually met prior to this."
"Yes… Danzo-sama."
"I am aware that you are a shadow clone. This is quite an ingenious way for us to secretly meet without anyone catching on. From now on, you'll only send shadow clones here unless specified. You may now dispel and send the original your memories."
The clone nodded but before he dispelled, he asked his new leader a question that was bugging him. "How come Kakashi-sensei and Asuma-sensei didn't see the root member?"
Danzo let a hint of a smile across his face as he answered the question. "You were placed under a very subtle genjutsu the second you entered this village."
The real Naruto was awake, lying down on the hospital bed that he was forced onto. They had taken out what remained of his damaged eyeball out of his eye socket and then cleaned it. After disinfecting and patching up the rest of his wounds, Naruto was left there to sleep and rest. However Naruto wasn't sleeping, instead he chose to reflect on the most recent mission and the choices he could've made.
'I could've- no should've let Kurama take over… but my pride and ego got in the way.' Naruto closed his eye in frustration. 'Dammit! I'm such an idiot!' His eye snapped open in anger. 'And I allowed myself to let the anger take over, resulting in Ino getting hurt by me.'
After a few moments of letting his anger flare, he calmed down. 'Ok getting mad over the past feels great, but won't accomplish anything… my taijutsu and ninjutsu were useless against a jonin, so I'll need more training in that. Oh I need some training in genjutsu as well. Fuinjutsu I got covered-'
"Fuinjutsu!" Naruto shot up and yelled out. "How could I have forgotten that…? Oh wait, I didn't have anything useful except storage scrolls… and I couldn't seal him unless I had him trapped. Dammit." He laid back down, wincing from the pain. 'Before I do any work, I need to get healed.'
Hinata was located in a hospital room a few rooms away from Naruto. She had her arm bandaged up in a cast for a week before she'd be able to remove it. This left her in the same position as Naruto, no strenuous activities with that arm till it was healed. She however had another arm and could freely use her chakra, except for her broken arm, unlike Naruto. But for now, she was ordered to rest. She laid down on the bed and cradled her arm. Hinata recalled a thought that she had after all the fighting had finished.
'I need to find a way to upgrade the gentle fist.' She had a brief image of the clan elders frowning at her, which in turn caused her to frown. 'The elders won't approve of me changing the art of the gentle fist…' She shook her head from annoyance and she resolved herself. 'No. I'm going to enhance the gentle fist, regardless of what they think.' The Hyuga Heiress closed her eyes and let the sweet embrace of sleep take her, forgetting about her issues with incorporating her clan's taijutsu style with her chakra nature.
After a couple minutes of nothing but darkness, a flicker of light appeared in the distance. Hinata walked towards the light, after a closer look she saw that the flicker of light was a lit candle. She felt herself being pulled towards it. When she got close, she quickly saw that the wick of the candle wasn't normal. She crouched down to be at the level of the candle and leaned to get a closer look. At first all she saw was random colors flashing in the wick but when she leaned closer, she saw that it was really images flashing on it. She saw what appeared to be a shadowed silhouette of a woman with long hair fighting against a man, but the silhouette soon started to change. The shadow of the woman started to gain color. First was the woman's hair, the familiar dark blue tint it had reminded Hinata of her hair. Next was the color of her skin, then the clothes, shinobi sandals, and then her weapon. Hinata saw what she thought was a bow made out of chakra. In the back of her mind, many speculations of how the bow had been made. She was starting to suspect the identity of this person and when her eyes were revealed to be a byakugan, she was convinced that the woman was her future self.
The longer she stared at the picture the wick displayed, the more it moved. It soon started to play like a movie, and it showed older Hinata dodging a cyan beam of light. She glared at her opponent who was still a silhouette. Older Hinata closed her eyes for a second and when she opened them, they were now blue pupils filled with what resembled overlapping white flower patterns. She felt compelled to touch the wick, despite the pain it would cause. When her finger touched the flame, she felt no pain from the fire. However she wasn't surprised by it, she was too enraptured in wanting to touch the wick. Once she had made contact with it, she was blinded by a white flash of light. Her vision quickly came back and she was now in the illusion. Older Hinata had dodged another cyan beam, and had quickly enveloped herself in a cyan chakra cloak. She ran towards the shadowed figure when it suddenly changed.
The new mental image had a silhouette of a long, spiky haired man fighting against a long, curly haired and slim woman. The man's shadow quickly gained color like Hinata's had. His hair was colored golden yellow and glowing, he was covered by a golden yellow jacket, and black pants and shirt which had a golden circle in the center of his stomach. His pupils were slitted like when he uses Kurama's chakra, but there was also a horizontal bar intersecting with his slitted pupils. She concluded this was Naruto, but this older Naruto had two eyes, and the right one seemed to be a bit different from the other. There appeared to be faded tomoe's and an enlarged iride surrounding the pupil. Surrounding him were pure black spheres that were hovering close to him. One of the balls went towards his right hand and extended into a staff. He grabbed onto the staff and gripped tightly. He lunged towards the shadowed woman and swung his staff towards her. Before it made contact, the vision faded once again.
The next illusion showed a less spiky haired man, whose face was framed with two long bangs, fighting against a man with longer and spikier hair. His image gained color fast, painting his hair a black with a tint of blue. He was wearing the usual jonin uniform, and had his right eye colored blood red with a black silhouette of an atom with a three point shuriken as the pupil, while his left was purple with ripple rings surrounding the pupil along with six tomoes. The younger man was wielding a ninjato while the older man was wielding what appeared to be a battle fan. She concluded that this was Sasuke as he had the same styled hair as him as well as having the sharingan. The older man crouched down and launched himself towards Sasuke. He retaliated by sending out a black flame from out of thin air. The vision faded before the black flames could touch the silhouette of the long haired man.
The new picture is of the moon in the sky. When color starts to bleed in, she quickly figures out something is wrong. Instead of the normal dark-grey, it was red with six black tomoes painted on the moon. When she saw the completed picture, she felt imminent dread and panic. She wanted to run, even though she didn't know why. And like the others, this picture started to move. With the tomoe spinning, a bright white light blinded Hinata, who was screaming from panic and terror.
Hinata woke up screaming, still on edge and unaware of her surroundings. She quickly looked around, and saw that she was still in the hospital room. She let out a breath of relief and fell back to lie down on the bed. She looked out of the window, directly into the now night sky with the moon high in the sky, still dark-grey and white.
'What was that?'
After a 2 weeks of forced bed rest, Naruto was able to finally train with his team again, as long as he didn't overdo it by doing chakra excessive exercises. He had reluctantly agreed to do light training while his body recovered. It was morning and Naruto had just gotten dressed and walked out of his door. When he got to the stairs, he walked down without grabbing onto the railing. Naruto missed a step and almost fell down the stairs, if he hadn't managed to grab the railing first. He let out a sigh and walked down the rest of the staircase. When he reached the bottom, he turned and took a look at the stairs. He let out another sigh as he turned around and walked towards his team's training grounds.
He placed a hand over his bandaged eye and thought back to the conversation he had with the man. 'To be the light that protects the shadows… hmph, at this rate I'll be the one needing protection.' Naruto dropped his hand from his eye and stopped walking. He stared at the ground while he was feeling a storm of emotions whirling up inside him. 'I can barely use my chakra, which means ninjutsu is out of the option, hell I can't even walk down the damn stairs right! How the hell will I work as a shinobi?'
"Oh Naruto! I've been wondering where you went!"
Naruto turned to the person that called out to and spotted Ayame. She motioned for him to enter the ramen stand with a worried face once she took in his appearance. After he made his way over and took a seat, she made her way from behind the counter to sit next to him. She placed a hand on his shoulder as he emptily stared at the countertop. "Hey Naruto, is everything alright? What happened?"
Naruto placed a hand over his headband which was covering his eye. "I lost my eye in a fight with an enemy Ayame. I… I also damaged my chakra pathways badly. I can barely use my chakra and even then it hurts a lot."
Ayame hugged Naruto after he finished explaining. Naruto hugged her back tightly, he wanted to protect her, her father, and several others. How would he be able to protect them if he was weak? In his weakened state, he wouldn't be able to protect them as well as he could've. Naruto let out a deep sigh as he let go. "I'll be alright Ayame. It just sucks that I have to get used to one eye."
She ruffled his hair and offered him words of comfort before she had to get back to work. She went on the other side of the booth and took his order, with her now heading to the back to fix up his breakfast, someone else came into the stall.
"Hello Ayame-san, Teuchi-san!" The feminine voice shouted out. Her greeting was followed by two more. The voices sounded familiar so Naruto turned around to see who had entered, and was surprised to see that it was his classmates. Reo, Maaravi, and Taavi. It didn't take long for the black haired female genin to spot Naruto in the stand, she smiled and made her way over, but the smile turned into a worried frown as she got close. "Naruto-kun, what happened?"
The two boys turned to look at the blonde boy and both had to hide a wince. "So I guess the rumors about Naruto were true. I wonder if the rest are true." Taavi said, trying to quietly whisper so Naruto wouldn't hear, but his efforts were futile.
"What other rumors?" Naruto asked, accidentally ignoring Reo's question.
Maaravi was the one to answer his question. "About your team and Shikamaru's team taking on a Iwa team of jonin. Supposedly Hinata had a broken arm and you had lost an eye. Guess those rumors were true huh?"
Naruto looked down at the table top of the stand and nodded his head solemnly. "We barely made it out of there alive. And it was only due to the jonin deciding to play around with us first. If they started off wanting to kill us, we wouldn't be here."
Taavi nodded his head as he put his hand to his chin. "Yeah you have a point, but you guys fought jonin and lived. You guys can look back on it and improve on where you lacked."
Maaravi saw where his friend was going with it and continued. "If you manage to build off of the experience, you'll be way stronger!" He yelled out excitedly.
Naruto smiled sadly at his two old classmates. "Thanks guys, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to do that yet. I damaged my chakra system." The genin of team 11 winced at hearing that.
"Don't forget you're missing an eye." Taavi chimed in, completely oblivious to Naruto's decreasing mood.
Reo scowled and lightly smacked his head. "Taavi, read the room remember?"
He rubbed the back of his neck and chuckled nervously. "My bad, I'm sorry dude."
Naruto waved off the concern and instead chose to eat his ramen that Ayame had just placed down. Maaravi decided that he should try to steer the conversation into an easier topic. "So Naruto, how are ya liking ya team?"
Naruto visibly perked up a tad with the new topic. "Really good actually. Sasuke is kinda still a bastard when he's teasing me. Kakashi-sensei is pretty cool actually, he gave me this book." He chirped happily as he pulled out the Icha Icha book Kakashi had given him. Taavi took the book and opened the first page to get a feel of how the book would be. After he read the first paragraph, Taavi was intrigued to read further. He handed back the book with a smile and a nod of approval. Naruto smiled back as he placed his favorite book back in his pouch. "Hinata's cool too. Turns out she almost likes ramen as much as me!" Reo's smile slipped as she stared at her ramen bowl.
"Really?" Maavari said from shock. "Huh. I would've thought she'd hate it, y'know with the 'I am way better than you' attitude."
Naruto nodded in agreement with him. "Yeah I thought that at first too, but when you get to know her better, she's actually much nicer than you'd think." He closed his eyes and scratched his cheek in remembrance of when he poked her stomach and when he had taken her on top of the Fourth Hokage's head. "She's also kind of cute." He said, unaware that he had spoken his mind.
Taavi smirked and threw his arm around Naruto's shoulder, missing the frown that was now dawning on Reo's face. "You my guy, have fallen in loveeee~!"
Naruto shook his head as he removed Taavi's arm. "Ahh shut up, I have not. I'm not even sure what love is."
"Don't have to know what it means in order to feel it." Maaravi chimed in.
"Oi, don't gang up on me like that guys. Reo, what do you think-?" Naruto cut himself off when he saw Reo. She was facing the opposite way and he could tell that she was crying due to the tear streaks he barely caught a glimpse of. "Hey Reo, are you alright?" He reached out, attempting to place a hand on her shoulder, and was caught off guard when one was on his . He turned to see who it was, and was surprised to see it was his sensei.
"Kakashi-sensei?"
The silver haired man nodded. "Naruto, how come you weren't at the training grounds?"
"Oh, I kinda got distracted." He admitted nervously.
"Wait, is this guy your sensei?" Maaravi asked Naruto, who nodded in confusion. "So you lost your eye too?" Kakashi nodded his head slowly in confirmation. "So you can teach Naruto how to fight with one eye, can't you?" Kakashi once again nodded slowly, as if that was another obvious answer.
"Well that's the plan. Anyways, come on Naruto, we're losing training time."
"Right sensei! Bye guys, cya later!" Naruto called out, racing after his sensei with newfound determination.
Taavi turned to face Reo and grew confused once again. Taavi's childhood had been somewhat like Naruto's, they were both stunted in their emotional developments. However, Naruto soon grew to have a better grasp on them thanks to Iruka teaching him and his bond with Sasuke. Taavi didn't have people to teach him since he was an orphan who lived on his own like Naruto. Reo and Maaravi had been trying to teach him social skills, emotional cues and everything else but the progress had been slow. Back to the present however, Taavi was confused as to why she was crying.
"Hey Reo, why are you crying? Are ya sad?"
Reo smiled as she wiped away the tears. "I'm fine now, thanks for asking Taavi-kun."
Taavi smiled widely and clapped his hands. "Well great! Let's eat now!"
Hinata and Sasuke were waiting for the blonde friend to show up, but when it became apparent that he was either running late, or wasn't going to show up, they grew concerned. Sasuke was about to go look for him, grumbling angrily the whole time, but then Kakashi had shown up. After they told Kakashi that Naruto hadn't shown up at all, he went to look for him. Which now left Hinata and Sasuke alone. During the two weeks of Naruto's absence, Kakashi had given the whole team time off to recover both physically and psychologically. Today was the first team meeting since then, and Sasuke was a bit impatient for having to wait two weeks before he had a chance to train with his team again.
Sasuke had been training the whole two weeks off, he was too giddy from unlocking his Sharingan to rest. Though Naruto's condition did damper his mood a lot, he'd even end his training earlier than he normally would've. He'd managed to control his fire laser for a total of thirty seconds before the jutsu became unstable, and blew up in his face. Sasuke had to give Naruto's durability credit, the Uzumaki could tank through when his fire jutsus ended up blowing up in his face, but Sasuke didn't have his durability. He usually endured through two failed attempts before he had to rest.
Hinata had been training for the last week, since her cast had been removed and had been given the green light. Her progress in infusing the gentle fist with her lightning or water nature chakra had been at a snail's pace. It was mainly because she couldn't figure out which nature she wanted more, because she wouldn't know the outcome. So she sidelined that project, and instead focused more on improving her Byakugan's prowess. She had extended her vision from thirty meters to thirty five. Now, however, Hinata was hoping that since the team was now back into training, she'd have help in incorporating her chakra natures into her gentle fist.
Sasuke and Hinata turned to face Kakashi and Naruto as they approached the clearing. Kakashi had his book out while Naruto had a notepad out and he was jotting down whatever came to his mind. When Kakashi and Naruto got close, Kakashi lightly bopped Naruto in the head, letting him know that he wanted his full attention.
"Alright my cute little genin, today we're doing light exercises. Since Naruto and I have barely recovered, we're going to ease back into training. Everyone put these on and then go run around the training grounds as much as you can." He pulled out a couple of training weights that he had brought for his team. He took a few and put them around his arms, and legs. After Sasuke and Hinata had taken some, Naruto went to grab his but stopped when Kakashi placed a hand on his shoulder. "Naruto, since your chakra pathways haven't healed… we'll purely be working on strengthening your body. I've brought a few extra weights specifically for you." He said with an eye smile.
Naruto smiled and nodded his head in confirmation. After he strapped all the weights on, he started to run around the training grounds, right behind Sasuke and Hinata.
'I need to become stronger in order to protect others.' Naruto looked up into the clouds, with determination overflowing him. 'To become the strongest, I'll need to work harder than anyone!'
After Team 7 had finished running their laps, Kakashi had split them up and had begun working on where they needed improvement. For Naruto, it was purely taijutsu for now since his chakra system was too sensitive as of right now. For Sasuke, Kakashi had him continue the leaf exercise so he'll have better control over his fire nature, and made a shadow clone of his work on mastering his lightning chakra, so he'll be able to rely on that in case his fire nature is negated. And for Hinata, he put her to work on mastering her lightning nature, and had her clone work on mastering her water nature. After two hours of working on their respective improvements, they had taken a break to eat. It was then that Naruto spoke to his teammates.
"Hey guys, how've you guys been?" He asked a little awkwardly.
"I've been alright, thank you for asking Naruto-san."
"Yeah, I've just been training in my clan's training grounds the past week. Which reminds me, we haven't trained there in a while, Naruto."
"Well we've been mainly training here."
"Hpmh, sounds like excuses." Sasuke said with a smirk, purposely irritating Naruto.
"Fucking bastard." Naruto muttered under his breath. "Alright fine, we'll train there."
"Next week." Kakashi chimed in. "You two can do that next week. This week, we'll be working on what we did today. Which means, strengthening your body for Naruto, and elemental chakra exercises for you two. That'll be during the morning, after lunch, we'll be working on what I assigned you before we left to help out team 10. Fuinjutsu, kenjutsu, and medical ninjutsu."
After all of his genin nodded, they split up with a clone of Kakashi for Sasuke and Naruto while Hinata had the real one to practice her medical ninjutsu on. While Kakashi was getting constantly cut and healed from Hinata, and introducing Sasuke to the art of kenjutsu, Naruto was making new fuinjutsu projects with his teacher's clone.
"Okay so… if I can't use my chakra, then instead of being a liability, I'll be a chakra battery. I'll make a chakra transfer seal to pass some of my chakra to my teammates. Hmm, and since I'm only training my body, then I'll tweak storage scrolls to allow the weight to bleed through the seal."
"Okay Naruto, maybe one project at a time-"
"Hey Kakashi-sensei, how much would an operation cost for me to get another eye implanted into me?"
"...I'm not sure Naruto."
"Hmm, guess I'll ask the old man."
"Naruto, why do you want an implanted eye?"
"Why eles Kakashi-sensei? I want my sight back to normal. My hand to eye coordination is shit right now… plus I have a fuinjutsu project for it."
"Ah. There it is. You know Naruto, I was really hoping that I wouldn't have to tell you to not experiment on yourself." Kakashi said with a long sigh.
"Eh, it's my body, I can do what I want with it." He stopped writing his tag and studied it's features thoroughly, making sure that everything was correct. "Okay. If I'm right, then this should work."
Kakashi's clone stepped back a good twenty feet to make sure it was far out of the possible explosion range. Naruto placed the weights Kakashi had given him on the seal, and then sealed them into the seal he had drawn. Kakashi tilted his head to the side as he approached his favorite genin. Naruto slowly tried to lift his sealing tag, and when he had trouble lifting it, he smiled.
"It worked!"
"What worked, chibi?
"My own variant of sealing scrolls! It doesn't negate the actual weight of the sealed items like the regular ones do. So I can just create a sealing array on my chest, and it'll spread the weight all around my body, which will make me get stronger faster." Naruto said with absolute confidence.
Kakashi stared at Naruto and gave him a strained eye smile. "...okay. And just how exactly do you plan on getting the seal on yourself?" Kakashi's answer was a pained grunt and a poof. His eye snapped open to see Naruto laying down with one of his shadow clones drawing the seal on his chest. Kakashi let out a pained groan of annoyance that his blonde student caused him. "Naruto." He drew out. "You can't be using ninjutsu as long as your chakra system still needs healing, shadow clones included."
Naruto chose to ignore his sensei's wise words, and instead had his clone finish up the seal. When done, the clone poofed out of existence and left Naruto alone to activate the seal. He took a deep breath and winced as he channelled chakra into his new weight seal. Once activated, Naruto felt himself getting weighed down from the weights that were sealed into him. He smirked as he struggled to stand up, and when he was standing, he gave Kakashi a fierce and determined look.
"Bring it Kakashi-sensei. I'm just getting started."
Aaaaaand that's the end of that chapter! Sorry that it was shorter than the rest of them, but I just couldn't continue writing as of right now. But next chapter will be longer!
Let me know what you thought of this chapter, and what you think of my work so far! Till next time!