Refuelling on sweet beans and a gluey mochi was exactly what the doctor ordered, justifying my decision to support a humble business over avoiding any place Danzo got his slimy paws on. The waitress was a lovely young lady named Chika, too, reminding me of two of my favourite anime girls Takami Chika and Fujiwara Chika from Love Live Sunshine and Kaguya-sama: Love is War, a pleasant surprise.
Feeling content with my visit to the Ikeda Family Tea house, I bid farewell to Chika, the sweet daughter of the owner. The warmth of the tea and the friendly atmosphere had lightened my spirits, and I was determined not to let the encounter with the Sharingan-stealing slimeball cast a shadow on the rest of my day.
A sudden commotion caught my attention as I strolled through the village, contemplating how to spend my time before the upcoming sealing training. Turning swiftly, I witnessed a man sprinting away, leaving behind an unpaid bill (if the cashier attempting to give chase was anything to go by)—a classic dine-and-dash situation.
I considered intervening since even I could make out his movements, indicating he was most likely only a civilian but someone else beat me to the punch, blurring into view with impressive Chunin-level speed and flattening the dine-and-dasher with a full-body tackle. "Oh no you don't!"
"That voice," I muttered to myself. It hadn't broken yet considering he was in his adolescence but I could still identify it even though it had a higher pitch. Peering closer at his upraised brown ponytail from behind left no room for further doubt. The beating heart of the Naruto series had sped onto the scene and apprehended the theft, passing him over to what looked like an Uchiha, if I wasn't mistaking the white and red symbol on the back of his dark blue shirt.
'Oh, right. The Uchiha clan were given the role of police officers.' Mostly only by name, I noted. Most of the important assignments fell on the Anbu, slighting the Uchiha even more. A pity Danzo had to be invented to be the fall guy for the bad happenings. A darker, or greyer side of the holy pure land of the village would've been interesting to read. Tobirama relegated the Uchiha-clan to the role of 'deputy police' to the Anbu's main sheriffs not because he was evil, but because he was an inherently flawed character that couldn't look past the prejudice he held against the Uchiha from childhood.
That's a lot more compelling than 'shadow Hokage Danzo being the root (haha, get it? The progenitor of everything wrong in Konoha was the head of an organization called the root. Wow, Kishimoto. What witty writing.) of all evil.
Naruto's future academy instructor bid the deputy officer a bow before watching him leave, catching my eye right after, "Rin-san." San – hadn't that attached to my name yet. Honda and Kushina-sensei always referred to me with the chan suffix because of their motherly urges to dote on and protect me, and Hiruzen called me Rin-kun in a professional setting since I wasn't on his level, seniority or status.
I smiled at his politeness. "Hello, Iruka-kun." I greeted, offering the same courtesy. Rin and Iruka never interacted in canon to my knowledge but they were in the same grade according to Obito's 'what if he returned to Konoha with Kakashi that night of Rin's death instead of going Darth Vader vision.'
They had to be acquaintances.
"It's been a minute, huh?" Strange he still had his recognisable scar engraved just above his nostrils. I always assumed he got it during Kurama's attack on the village.
"You're telling me." Iruka smiled softly, "It's been, what? Four years since we graduated from the academy. How've you been?" A glum clouded his eyes. "I heard about Obito-kun. I'm terribly sorry for your loss." A bow.
"It's alright, really." I assured. "I'm getting by, trying to get stronger and live life a little more optimistically. Obito would've wanted us to move on and carry on his optimism."
The chunin's gaze softened, "That's a good way to look at it."
I nodded in agreement and switched gears before the conversation could peter out, "Hey, you busy?"
"Not particularly," answered Iruka, blinking. "I just finished my round of D-ranks for the day. Why do you ask?"
"Perfect. I was thinking if you weren't busy maybe you'd like to spar on the training grounds for a bit." I suggested, propping my arms behind my back and rocking on my heels. "I finished my D-ranks already and my training doesn't start for a couple of hours yet, so, interested?"
"A sparring session, huh?" Iruka pondered my request over, brightening. "Why not? It's been a while since I last trained. I could use the practice."
The sun dazzled brilliantly on my glowing face.
"Awesome!"
With the sun casting a golden glow over the village, Iruka and I made our way to the training grounds, chatting amicably along the path. The warmth of the afternoon sun infused the air with a sense of tranquillity, easing the tension that had lingered in the wake of our recent encounter with the dine-and-dasher.
A breeze gently whistled through the growing bright green grass of team seven's training field, sweeping my view to a sparking river reflecting the sun's beaming radiance. Warm memories of playing the Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm games and Ubisoft's Rise of the Ninja and Broken Bond series blossomed through my mind like a field of cosy, colourful flowers.
The training field had been so faithfully recreated in the aforementioned games.
"This'll be a one-on-one match," said Iruka, standing across from me with the crystal-clear river acting as our backdrop. "Kunai and other such ninja tools allowed." Naruto's future surrogate father continued like an official proctor, eliciting a giggle from me. He smirked. "Ready when you are, Rin-san."
"Okay," I nodded, tensing up into a simple stance with a knee bent and a clenched fist at my side. Iruka mimicked my simple stance predictably enough. The awful Ino vs Sakura fight would indicate he and the other academy instructors that taught the girls weren't exactly adapt themselves to the fine art of throwing hands.
The wind drew to a standstill, as though the atmosphere itself was dropping everything to bear witness to the monumental friendly spar of two underpowered Chunin shinobi. (it really wasn't that deep)
A breath of the humid, warm air gently slid up my nose; the breeze once more rustling between us like a referee ushering the start of a boxing match.
Iruka yelled a cry of war, exploding toward me with a significant speed advantage. (This was fine, I told myself, like the dog in the burning house meme. Even the least powerful men were stronger than the most powerful women).
Thankfully, I trained with Kushina, an anomaly even among powerful women. Iruka was faster than me but his speed wasn't enough that I couldn't react to, and I did, flipping into a handstand over his head as he gawked up at me flying over his stunned gaze, pirouetting mid-flight like a dilly flower spraying petals.
"…Wow," Iruka breathed. I imagined it must be quite a shock to his system seeing a former classmate – someone around if not beneath his level – exhibiting a pretty nifty skill. The thought made me giggle with mischief.
My feet touching soft grass switched Iruka's game face back on. "Not bad," he said, lunging forward with a straight jab aimed toward my face, though I telegraphed that, and, rotating my wrist, palmed it over my shoulder with the back of my hand. The momentum carried him forward and I shoved my foot into the back of his heel to help him on his way.
Setting up my first attack, I dipped my upper body down and lifted my leg, twirling on the spot like I was getting ready to unleash a Tekken character's signature technique. Iruka's cheek harshly met my spinning sandal, knocking him flat on his belly.
He groaned, turning himself over, "Wow, you really got me there." He dusted himself off, sheepishly scratching his cheek. "You did say you were trying to get stronger, but I didn't expect you to improve this much."
"Well, a girl can't hold her teammates back forever now, can she?" I replied, feeling all bubbly inside. It felt awesome to send someone else down on the ground after being thrown to the grass by Kushina's clone multiple times.
"I suppose not." He smiled in sympathy, soon turning that smile into a smirk, "But it's not over yet." He fired a bullet from his pouch and I was expecting that, instantly yanking myself away as though I had pressed a switch in my mind.
Puffy white clouds encircled a struck log briefly floating mid-air, an audible thud signalling it had successfully taken the blunt force of Iruka's Kunai.
"Kawarimi jutsu (Substitution Jutsu)!" He recognised. I leapt on his shoulders from behind, tying my legs around his neck and pulling myself over his back and through his legs, turning him over.
I rolled into a handstand, flipping off of an increasingly frustrated Iruka.
"Damn."
He flung another punch I diverted with an elbow angled over my head, palming his stomach like Ling Xiaoyu. A brief wheeze turned into a scream of desperate defiance from my opponent as he rammed into me like an enraged pitbull charging a child down. It knocked me for sevens, sending me skating across the grassy arena in a tumble. Ouch. A boy's larger bone density and greater physical strength were no joke. Just one simple shoulder barge was enough to have me slipping on ice.
"Gotcha now, Rin-san!" He bragged, closing the distance and springing upwards, arms and legs spread wide in a motion to flatten me with a belly flop.
He would've succeeded, too, had I never tagged myself out with my trusty wooden partner, retreating to the safety of the bushes to catch my breath. (Hey, this was a shinobi spar, after all. Girl was allowed to sheath it up if she wanted to, you know? Hmph.)
'Didn't expect him to no-sell my palm strike like that.' I mused, peering through a gap in the leaves I carefully created to avoid detection – Iruka shifted his head, frantically searching for me. 'But I guess I should've. We might be on the same 'level,' but he still has the biological advantage. I have to be smart about this If I'm gonna beat him.' Luckily, one of my favourite broken jutsus made the act of strategy so much simpler than it had to be and I was about to make use of them again.
Aiming carefully with fingers-crossed, I inhaled indistinctly, 'Shunshin no Jutsu (Body Flicker Technique).' The blinding momentum of the jutsu's speed propelled me forward at a speed comparable to a bullet. Iruka never saw it coming. Once he reacted to the noisy rustle of the rattling leaves, I was already crashing my head into his nostrils, flattering him instantly.
"Woops!" I said, dropping to my belly and sitting up on my knees. I peeked over at a dazed Iruka, paling. Blood was splattered all over his lower face like a bad paint job. "Oh, my, Iruka-kun! I'm so sorry!" My palm glowed a lime-green with Rin's similar mystic palm healing jutsu. "Here, I'll fix you right away!"
"Wazzat?" He droned, doozy. I helped him up, palm easing the swelling on his nose.
"Um, I used the Shunshin jutsu to hit your nose at super speed."
A dead silence accompanied a lone breeze.
"…You, used the Shunshin jutsu in a combat scenario?"
"Um, yes." I resisted the urge to tuck nervously on my collar, "Is that weird?"
"Weird probably isn't the right word. Unorthodox, maybe?" He took a moment to breathe and ponder his words, allowing my chakra to soothe his wounds. A defeated, calm smile flowed across his lips, "I never stood a chance, did I?" He reopened his eyes. "You're really strong, Rin-san."
"Oh, no," I dismissed the compliment shaking my hands, apologising wordlessly when I realized had taken my healing hand off Iruka's nose. "You're much stronger than me. Honestly, If I didn't switch out when I did after you tackled me, you would've flattened me with that belly flop." I curled my finger against my cheek, sheepish. "No way I was getting out of that one."
Rin's academy schoolmate flushed, all too aware he was about to crush a smaller girl with his weight. "Sorry about that." He propped a hand behind his neck. "I was just trying to stop you from moving while I had the brief advantage."
I easily banished his remorse with a shake of the head, "Don't be. I was the one playing desperate." My smile didn't light my eyes nor did the laugh warm my heart. "Boys are so much stronger than girls. It's honestly not fair." Can I just take a minute to acknowledge how broken both the substitution and the body flicker techniques were? Because they really were! I couldn't blame Kishimoto for erasing them on the sly, or at the very least easing them out of the story until his audience forgot them entirely. They BREAK Naruto. The substitution jutsu worked the way it did in the Storm games. I could stockpile any number of switcheroo thingamabobs barely expending any chakra, then tag out when I feel something approaching me with anything.
It wasn't restricted to just logs. If you recall Team Seven's initial bell test against Kakashi, Naruto went one-on-one against the former Sharingan prince (in this timeline) and ended up slugging his clone when Kakashi switched himself out with it. This was actually just Sasuke's ultra-powerful rinne-sharingan technique Amenotejikara. Let that sink; a basic E-ranked jutsu was arguably superior to the deuteragonist's signature attack. They do the same thing, only the Substitution jutsu expends so little Chakra that even a Sharingan-equipped Kakashi could spam it like a machine gun.
The Body Flicker jutsu presented characters with another overpowered free get-out-of-jail card. Whatever characters were in danger, they could've effortlessly escaped simply by Body Flickering away. To further explain the danger this jutsu posed to Naruto's story, The Sasuke retrieval arc could've ended in either Orochimaru's or Konoha's victory if the Sound Four had just used their curse marks to Body Flicker away to the border instead of duelling Konoha's Jounin forces. Orochimaru would've had Sasuke's body there and then. Or Kakashi catches up to them with the Body Flicker jutsu and slaughters them, taking Sasuke back to the village.
Either way, the arc fundamentally changes with the implementation of this OP move.
Obito doesn't get crushed by that boulder either if the trio all knew (like they should've) and utilized the Body Flicker jutsu to escape the enemy's death trap.
Kishimoto evidently wasn't thinking things through when he pulled these absurdly broken moves from Japanese mythology and it showed.
"Yeah…" The mood changed around Iruka, turning a downward trajectory to the ruined earth.
A blink. "Um." Hesitating, I probed. "Iruka-kun, are you okay?"
He didn't answer and he didn't have to. His silence was enough, posture slumping and eyes darkening. Not "okay" was putting it mildly. He was devastated, overwhelming me with a deep sense of regret and guilt.
'Now I feel bad.' I just wanted to test my progress; to see how far I had come in such a short period under Kushina's tutelage. I didn't mean to destroy a Naruto character's confidence, especially one as kind and emotionally resonant as Iruka. Some of the series' greatest emotional moments had come from this currently teenage boy, particularly when he poured his heart out to his surrogate little brother Naruto in a note hidden in his headband, telling him his regret that he wasn't strong enough to protect him from the Akatsuki's grasp.
"Oh, Iruka." I murmured, my free hand drifting downward to his.
"No, it's fine." He assured, a look of resignation dimming his gaze that broke my heart. "I know, I've always known." He took a deep, shuddering breath. "That I'm weak." Another breath. "No matter how hard I try, no matter how hard I train, I just can't close the gap on any of our classmates."
"You don't have to stay weak, y'know?" I took his hand, parcelling it around mine. He looked up, shocked, either due to my suggestion or because I initiated contact, I didn't know, but I pressed on. "You CAN get stronger, Iruka-kun."
"But how?" The sweet boy gawked. He shook his head, sobering, "I've explored all avenues. I feel like I've reached my limit already."
"You let me worry about that." I winked, turning his face red, "Kakashi and I came across a little power-up, though it's napping right now." Rin's partner in suicide appeared silhouetted in my mind, swinging three ominous tails, "Join me for dinner tomorrow. I'll explain the method to my madness. You can get stronger, I promise. You just need a little bit of innovation. That's where I come in."
An amused smile shaded the gaping astonishment blinding his face, "You're really something, Rin-san, taking the incentive to get stronger." Murmured Iruka, lifting himself up and dusting himself off, "And," The Peter Pan of Chunin continued, offering me a hand to my own feet in true gentlemanly fashion, "I must admit, I'm intrigued by this 'power-up,' If you're this sure about it."
"Sure am!~" I beamed once the taller boy lifted me up to his shoulder, pausing, "Though I should warn you it'll come with a pretty hefty stigma," he cocked his head, "but the pros significantly outweigh the cons, if you ask me."
"Okay, now I'm really curious." He laughed slightly, "So, tomorrow night? At…" I heard a lump sink down his throat. "…your place, right?"
"Yup!"
"…Okay, good," Iruka nodded with laboured breaths.
Sensing the opportunity to be the predator instead of the prey for once, I added brightly, "It's a date, then!~" Causing his face to drown in an explosion of dazed, reddened confusion. I could practically envision the steam popping from his ears, anime-style.
"Uhhhhh…" He stumbled back on his butt.
I giggled mischievously, "Sorry," I went on to explain, helping him to his feet, "I couldn't help teasing you a bit." Gotta say, it felt good to be the teaser instead of the teased for once. No wonder those meanies Kushina, Kakashi and even Honda-san (for today, at least) loved picking on me so much.
"You got me good." He was a good sport about it, though, and I rewarded him with a beaming smile. We exchanged pleasantries and agreed on a time to meet up for our big rendezvous tomorrow before I saw him off, pushing up on my tiptoes and elatedly swinging my hand above my head until he disappeared past the fence gate of Team Seven's training ground.
'Iruka's a really good guy.' A warm feeling of contentment settled in me. 'He really didn't have to go along with my silly request but he did anyway.' That was a testament to his friendly spirit. 'I hope I can help him.' My smile uncurled, my hand dropping to my heart. 'He deserved the world.'
A fire reignited my gaze. This can work but it all started with me mastering sealing in time for Isobu's reawakening.
"Rinnnnn-channnn!~" An eerily familiar voice abruptly sang.
I flinched, a frosty chill erupting up my spine like a ghost had phrased through me. I stiffly turned my head over my shoulder, realising my worst horrors at that moment in time. Kushina stood directly behind me like she had a front-row seat to A-1 pictures, arms folded behind her and an opportunistic sparkle in her eyes.
"O-Oh, hey there, Kushina-san. I-I didn't see you there." My attempt to feign casual ignorance failed like a ninety percent accurate move on Pokemon. 'Ugh, why now!?' We trained in the evening yesterday considering Minato had returned from a mission and she wanted to spend a bit of time with him. I just automatically assumed we would continue doing so for the foreseeable future. Lady Fate had other ideas allegedly.
Sensei retained her smug Cheshire smile.
"…How much did you see?" I asked with a deflated sigh.
"Oh, not much," The Uzumaki princess assured with a tone that implied she witnessed a whole bunch, and my hunch proved correct. "Just the part where you invited a boy to spar with you."
So she saw everything!
"It's not what it looks like!"
"Not what, what looks like?"
"Stop that!" I demanded.
"Stop what?" Her smirk widened.
"That thing you do that makes me tell on myself!"
"Ooh! Do tell indeed, girl." She snickered. "Cheating on Kakashi with another boy!"
"I am not cheating on Kakashi!" I hurried, blushing.
Wrong answer.
"Oh! So you are in a relationship with Kakashi-kun!" The demoness of teasing chortled, curling her arms around her stomach. "I knew it!"
"Kushina-san!" I wept, practically on my knees.
"Okay, I'll stop now," she finally, FINALLY relented. A loose tear was flicked away from her eye. "It's just so much fun teasing you."
I sighed in relief, though my cheeks were still burning. "You really enjoy torturing me, don't you?"
"Only because you make it so easy, Rin-chan," Kushina said with a wink. I pouted. "Now, let's get back to training. We have a lot to cover if you want to help Iruka-kun with his training."
I shelled up, "Uh, yeah. Of course."
Many thanks to Plume85 for the kind, lovely review.