A little bit of hope
It had been years since I killed the 7 tails jinjuriki, since the second shinobi war ended due to a reluctant truce. About three I guessed, It got hard to tell, hiding in mud for days at a time, living off stolen food and assassinations without cause. I wasn't supposed to be alive really, wasn't supposed to exist anymore, Danzo had seen to that.
Official guidelines says once you are behind enemy lines the Leaf consider you dead. You come back and you are screened, tested, interrogated, but that's a day or two missing. Years? Wouldn't even think of it.
But I was stuck, then and now, Iwa placing so many troops on the front line everywhere you went stunk like dirt. Half of Grass was theirs, so was a major part of Taki. Their line was strong, thick, large.
The truce they had made with the Leaf was made for power, for preparation for the next war. In the previous one, every side had been together, allies against Konoha, but those relations crumbled by the end. The only smiles they would share would be at a dead Leaf nin, but soon after they would be at each other's throats again. The next war, the 3rd, would be a true world war, every side trying to kill the other, and the Leaf experiencing the worst of it. I wasn't worried, I know they would win, but the fatigue weighed on me as much as it did everyone else.
How long until peace? It was a few years since the last war and it was clear another would reign, for years.
Would his team's deaths even been for anything?
One thing, only one. For Danzo to stay in power, but it seemed impossible. We all knew, every single one what he did. He couldn't stay in ANBU, I know that, but ROOT? Maybe.
Maybe Hiruzen's weakness for his old friend would cause even more to suffer. Maybe something worse than ANBU. But what did I care?
My friends were dead, the ones even a small part of me admits I loved, gone. And nothing I could do would bring them back. Well maybe the rinnegan, but would I die for them to live? That wouldn't let me see them again, let me be with them, so it would be pointless. No reason thinking of such things.
And I had too much to think about these days, to ponder, too much time and too much space. Plans were minimalistic given minimal intel, and decided easily, so I had nothing to do but think about home, about my team, about the locker room back at ANBU headquarters as smelly and desolate it was. And how the only thing stopping me was this line.
I burst through, I die. They chase me down for miles and miles, carrying each other to make up for their lesser stamina, and I die. They just tire me out. I needed an opening, and maybe that opening would be the start of another war but damn it I needed a way out!
So there I was, thinking to myself, because it takes a while for even a ninja to wake up, tied to a chair. When he did, I was cloaked in shadow, and I let him look around, let the tension build up like a dam, bit by bit until it was at its breaking point, until in the final moment I stepped out.
I was intimidating, I realised. If I was strong before, I was monstrous now. Muscle upon muscle, packed tight and neat in corded wire of flesh, coiled around my bone like a snake, constricting. I was tall, taller than most, 6'1 and 18 years I guessed. The system told me my strength, my agility, but not my age for some reason. It always lacked that kind of information. Maybe it considered it useless.
I barely looked at the stats now though.
The man looked up, and the terror than ran through his eyes felt electrifying, a rare island of meaning in the ocean of apathy I lived in. I smiled.
He broke easily.
…
Strength: 190
I kept up my regime, kept training, working, making myself stronger day after day, going to bed with sore limb and stretched muscle and waking up renewed. It took more to get to a higher skill level, so I guess that was why stockpiling skill points was a good idea. I would get to 200 one day though. Soon.
Agility: 150
That seemed to be a plateau of sorts. I wasn't sure how to get it higher without breaking my limbs completely, maybe that was part of it. Maybe I needed to be a snake, literally, like my old master Orochimaru. I didn't want to be like him though. Not the same, I swore.
Perception: 170
Another plateau, though because of others, not myself. The stat increases most when spotting the attacks of others, you know your own kunai's trajectory, so it obviously requires less skill, and less skill means less gain.
Intelligence: 110
That was disappointing, but it was still high, exceptional. It took a lot of books back when I still had them to increase intelligence, and now I had few. It wasn't fruitful to read the Iwa instruction manual for the 500th time, and the bingo book whilst helpful, never gave you a key to a new jutsu, told of history or the past, politicking and lore. The desire to use points got higher and higher, so why didn't I?
Chakra: 350
Whenever I had free time I would try to drain my reserves utterly and completely in order to improve, bit by bit. The number I could tell wasn't actually how much chakra I had, but a level to quantify it. I would guess the level of chakra I gained from each day of draining was about the same proportionally, but in bigger amounts. Day by day it got harder and harder to get rid of all of my chakra, to the point where my reserves were utterly monstrous. I might even rival the kage.
Luck: 234
Luck was still a mystery. It rose to 200 after I killed Ru, but it failed to increase after. I assume it is related to you surviving impossible situations, and it rewards you luck, though how it works I have no clue. I tried guessing a dice's role about a 100 times and I got it right about a 6th of the time, did it another 100 times, got 1/6th again. I couldn't figure out objectively, so I kept my ruminations buried. There was no point in trying to identify the unidentifiable.
The man had told me something interesting. A conflict, long standing, but with a single person, just behind the front lines. Apparently, they had been kicking up a storm, killing a lot of people. No matter who they sent, they came back in pieces.
Maybe I could team up.
…
It didn't take long to follow, the rapid warnings and alarms and reinforcements all across letting me chase after a group of chunin, lead by a clearly exhausted jonin, none of them noticing me. If ANBU made me a master at stealth, spending this long behind enemy lines made me unspottable. A god of shadows even.
I remember being wounded once, at night. I had a hard fight, one of the first after being discovered recovering from my initial damages. I didn't have a healer, and the month long wait would have to fail eventually. In the end it did, and I didn't want to fight, to beat back the inevitable horde of Iwa just for a minute, to do really nothing and help nobody when they come back in throes to destroy me. So I covered myself in mud, used a genjutsu kitsune told me about, one that would make people's eyes slide right off you, and they just walked past, a squad of 4.
I kept still though, good that I did, because a man, smoking a cigarette I remember, stepped on me. He took one last puff and dropped the stick on the ground, and its embers flickered in my face, a rare ray of orange filling the dead black of the night. The man grunted, and he walked forward, joining the rest of his team.
And I just laid there. A week later I recovered, found that same man, and hung his neck from a tree for his entire squad to see, then I killed them too.
Level 60
[5000/500,000xp]
Skill points: 1460
I had killed that many, levelled up that many times, why didn't I use any points?
The answer revealed itself when, in a split second I sliced of the jonin's head, turning and tossing it at one of his chunin, how reeled away from the skull, not noticing the explosive note stuck to it. Two looked at me, intent to attack, but were stabbed from behind, my clone's hands ripping through their spines. Then a slash did come, but too late, at it cut through a regular clone, myself above, kicking down and slamming the ninja's skull into the floor, the splatter of brain and viscera telling of his instant death.
The answer was, I found fighting too fucking fun to let it become a squash every time I fought.
My squad I had followed was dead, but there was still fighting going on, jutsus and death, and a unique kind of chakra I had felt before. I rushed ahead, past grass and tree, to find her.
Red hair, long and hip length, dancing with the ribbons of blood let out, each slash from her twink katana perfect, and precise. The steel flashed and a man was cut in half, and that was simply the truth of the world. She twirled and spun, and her hair spun with her, scarlet lengths, and green emerald eyes more clear, more beautiful than the gem could ever be. She had pale skin, her complexion soft and stunning even covered in blood and grime and muck.
And her face, soft tones and high cheekbones and a smile, vicious and cruel and oh so playful, her every move, expression, action a clear show of her adeptness at killing, her skill.
Golden chains, and they would be gold because she couldn't be adorned with anything else, lashed out, cutting and stabbing and slashing and gripping, ripping through all around her. She ended the battle, her chest heaving, surrounded by dead body after dead body.
And I wanted to walk over to her, to pull her to me and hug her, to lie there with her.
And so I walked over, my mask, cracked and marked and part black from the fire that had damaged it before, and she looked at me, and for some reason she didn't think I was an enemy.
"Hey! ANBU, my name is Uzumaki Kushina, and as you can see, I'm a really good ninja. You Leaf?"
I hadn't talked to an ally in so long the sounds took a bit to come out
"Yes. You want to partner up?"
And she gave a massive smile, that stretched from her mouth to her gums, stained with blood as they were, even to her eyes.
"Sure!"
And that was how I met Uzumaki Kushina.
…
A/N: Took a small hiatus, not sure if you noticed though.
Ok, new arc, timeskip. I tried to communicate the number of years Kizashi had been out. He himself isn't really individually threatened by Iwa, but if he exhausts himself he'll get caught and killed. That's the idea at least. So because Iwa have tight as fuck security, he finds it hard to get out. With Kushina as help, he gets to rest and have someone watch his back.
We also see the continuation of his apathy, his struggle for meaning. Kushina is another friend, but there are other feelings there. You can guess where I am taking this, but you might be surprised. There isn't a twist, just a turn.
He doesn't use points, because he values fighting too much. Nothing brings him happiness except fighting, and he fears if he dumps 1000 points into strength or something he would become too powerful to even fight. If any of you think his power gain was too much, be reminded he did grind for like 3 years. If you grinded for 3 in game years you would be ridiculous too. I used rough estimates but the mean average I decided on was about 25,000xp a week, so that for 156 weeks gets a lot of xp. If you want to know how the level system works
20-30, 20K xp per level, 20 points
30-40, 30kxp per level, 30 points
Etc
Either way, thanks for all the reviews, I hope you guys have a nice day, and cya next time.