AN: Apologies for the wait, real life and writer's block got in the way of this chapter
"talking"
thoughts
Bijū talking/jutsu
empowered talking
scene changes *
A Memory Remembered
You might have taken that a bit too far. Kurama spoke up, as he and his host watched the cleaning crews remove the dead body from the arena. Natsumi had been declared the winner of the first match a few seconds ago. She had not even begun to move.
Maybe, but in the end, he was my prey. And you always say to kill one's prey, never leave them alive to come back and potentially make you their prey. She replied back as she began to walk back to the stands, her body still glowing from the Fox's chakra flowing through her.
You learn well, young one. However, in this case, it might have been to your detriment. Now the rest of the pathetic humans will be on high alert. And as you know, an alert target will be harder to kill. Kurama responded with sage advice.
Very true. Natsumi conceded, as she looked around the stands from her place on the arena floor. She took note of the looks of shock and horror. Still, you always say, prey should know their place. She stopped dead in her tracks when she looked at Gaara. You also mentioned a predator must protect their hunting grounds, correct?
You are correct kit. And yes, I do agree, he must be dealt with at some point.I am not fully certain, but that particular human reminds me of Shukaku, the one tailed Tanuki, The Ichibi. Kurama growled, clearly not liking the implications of facing a fellow Bijū.
Natsumi merely glared at Gaara. An action which got the notice of everyone. Gaara looked back at Natsumi with disdain, the air seemed to chill. The thought that ran through everyone's mind was; what was going to happen if these two ever fought. For a few more seconds Natsumi continued to glare, until suddenly gaining a smirk, turned her head and continued to walk back to the stands.
Kit, hold up a second. I am going to cut off the chakra flow since you are no longer in a fight. I am not sure what will happen. Kurama spoke up.
What, do you mean? I should be fine. Natsumi rebutted.
Don't be arrogant! You trained for years in your mind, sure that taught you control. But that does not mean you body can handle the strain.
Natsumi stopped short at that. What should I expect?
My guess, something a kin to chakra exhaustion.
Great, this is going to suck ass. She thought with disdain, as she felt Kurama's chakra leave her body. And as soon as her body stopped glowing, her arms and legs felt like ten ton bricks in her opinion. She dropped to her right knee, and had to place her right hand down to maintain some of her balance. Yep, this sucks. Note to self: train to make this never happen again. Natsumi thought as she heaved.
After a few deep breaths, she placed her left hand on her left knee, and attempted to push herself back up on to her feet. The first attempt failed, she tried again a few seconds later, met with another failure. Damn it, this isn't working. She thought as she hanged her head down.
"Need some help, Natsumi?" Kakashi said, causing her to jolt her head up. There he was standing in front of her. She could tell from his tone, he found the situation slightly funny for some reason.
"My pride would say no, but even I can see that, yes, I do need some help." She grumbled out.
"Swallowing one's pride is a good lesson to learn." He said as he extended a hand for her to grab.
After getting to her feet with Kakashi's help, the two slowly walked, with Natsumi leaning on him for support, back up to the viewing platform.
"Set me down away from everyone else. I am too tired to deal with what ever shit they might ask." She grumbled out about haft way up the stairs.
"You do know you will have to face them eventually." Kakashi quipped.
"Like I give a shit." Was her eloquent response.
The two fell into silence the rest of the trip up the stairs. Kakashi wanted to press the issue more but experience told him that Natsumi was not going to budge, and considering her outlook on the village and all who lived there, he knew that would be the last mistake he would ever make.
"Here is good. You can just let me down here." Natsumi said, they were half way between the stairs and the group of Genin.
"You are absolutely sure?" Kakashi questioned. Her nod was her response. He let out a sigh then proceeded to lower her to the ground. When he was done, she was sitting on the ground her legs laid straight out front and side by side each other, her hands folded on her lap, and her back was supported by the wall.
Well, at least there is room for people to get by at least. Kakashi thought before asking. "You sure?"
"I am fine. Just let me rest." Natsumi aggressively sighed out, before closing her eyes, clearly trying to get some form of relaxation.
Kakashi merely sighed before continuing his trek. As he approached the group he could see many were swapping glances between him and Natsumi.
"Um… Kakashi sensei, is Natsumi okay?" Sakura surprisingly asked first.
"She will be fine, she is just a little tired. Just give her some space to rest and everything should be fine." Kakashi eye-smiled.
"But, why is she all the way over there?" Ino spoke up.
"Trust issues are my guess." Asuma replied. "Natsumi is probably unsure of who she can truly trust at this point, all things considered. And I honestly can't blame her." He continued to say. After the past seven years of being in that seal, I too probably wouldn't trust anyone.
"I know we would all like to focus on this topic more, however, we are in the middle of the preliminaries. We should probably focus on that." Kurenai tried to focus the group on the task at hand. Kiba looked like he was about to yell something but a hand on his shoulder from Shino told him to keep his mouth shut.
Had anyone from the group looked over to Natsumi, they would have seen the faintest of smirks on her lips, she had clearly not fallen into too deep a sleep yet and had heard what they had said.
Interesting, I might, need to, reconsider, some, things. Natsumi's last thoughts slowly faded from her mind as she slipped into slumber.
Natsumi's mindscape *
When Natsumi opened her eyes, she did not see the usual sewer that represented her mindscape. Instead it was the Leaf Village, but she noticed everything was a dull gray, like a photo taken by an old fashioned camera.
"What the?" she asked, clearly unsure of what was going on, at least until, she saw a very familiar young girl passed by her, heading in the direction she was looking at. "Wait, is that me?" She questioned as she saw a girl of about age seven with what seemed to be grayed out red hair in pig tails and a simple white shirt and grayed blue shorts walk towards her. Natsumi tried to get the girls attention but the girl just kept on walking and even walked right through her, as if she was not even there.
"Okay, that was freaky." Natsumi shook off the weird feeling. "But, I am starting to think that this might be something else, maybe a memory?" She talked to herself as she followed what she assumed was her past self.
As they progressed down the memory. Natsumi noticed that many of the people and buildings were just outlines filled in with gray.
"Clearly, I don't remember a lot of details." She commented as they continued on their journey. "Though, it appears that I can still clearly remember all the glares." She noted that the one thing to pierce the gray was the very detailed eyes and their ever present fury.
"Just the usual shit, I see." She commented with disdain.
The two continued their trek, it took a while but Natsumi started to make out a few of the noises. The majority were the same old hushed questions of her existence or some jack ass calling her a derogatory name either in relation to her gender or the Demon Fox she held within or some combination of the two.
"They need new material. This is getting old." The older Natsumi commented. Hidden within the usual fair, she heard somethings that gave her a clue as to when this memory took place.
"You notice the demon bitch is limping." a male voice sneered.
"Yeah, I hear that the sparring instructor went hard on it today. Like went for the kill." another male voice responded.
"Clearly they did a piss poor job. The bitch is still alive." A female voice this time commented.
Hearing this Natsumi said mostly to herself. "Now I remember. That bastard of an instructor tried to kill me. Which was a cherry on top of an already shit three weeks. What was the deal anyway for those three weeks. It seemed like everyone that hated me, all decided to coordinate and just screw my life in any which way possible all at the same time."
As she thought back to three weeks of non stop harassment; from store owners either jacking prices to nearly five times normal price or just plain out right attacking with brooms. To grocery stores and restaurants just selling her spoiled or straight up poisoned foods. A few days kids and adults would throw rocks, bottles and in one case a literal kitchen sink.
She even had to dodge kunai rigged with explosive tags at one point. Though she did admit she probably would not have survived that incident had it not been for a timely intervention by the ANBU. She heard later that the Chunin responsible was executed for the attempted murder. So there was that bright side.
"Oh, shit, if this is that week, then that means this memory is of that day." She said out loud as they came up to her old apartment, which was on the ground floor of a three story apartment building. Which was about 5 blocks from the start of the clan compounds and roughly 2 blocks from the main commerce section of the village. In other words, the exact opposite of her current apartment in terms of location and livability.
"What the fuck!" her younger self final spoke up, as she tried her keys but clearly was not working.
"Right, the bitch of a landlord changed the lock on me." Natsumi sighed out. "Which means in about five seconds." She began to say.
"What the hell, an eviction notice. What the fuck man!" Her younger self interrupted her thoughts. Her younger self was now griping a piece of paper that she had ripped it from the door.
A second later, the younger version of the duo bolted for the road and headed down the road before taking a right turn down another, heading for the main office of the building manager/landlord. Natsumi followed behind knowing what was about to happen.
"Open the damn door! You old Bitch!" her younger self shouted to the high heavens while beating on the closed door to the office.
Natsumi merely sighed, she knew how this song and dance would go. It had happened five times prior and it never truly deviated from the usual talking points. The land lady would spout some shit about either late rent or damage to the property and her younger self would refute the claims. Eventual the conversation would devolve to petty insults till an ANBU would show up to resolve the issue, usually a threat to the land lady in the form of a T visit if she didn't cut the crap.
This time was different however. Why was this time different one would ask? The answer was simple: there was a new voice in her head at this point.
She had started hearing it shortly after unlocking her chakra the first time in the academy, which was the first thing all second year students learn to do. At first she would hear it intermediately at random times, but the longer it went the more she noticed the voice was only there when she was really angry.
The voice would tell her to kill the person making her angry or to just destroy everything in sight. This confrontation with the land lady was no different, the voice was in full force today and it was saying:
Burn this mortal to ash! Kill her! Let your hate flow!
I would if I could. Her younger self thought to herself and unknowingly giving past Kurama an idea.
Then let me show you how. With that said, her head was suddenly filled with knowledge of hand signs and in a particular order and how to preform the jutsu. The hand signs were something that the academy had covered about three weeks before unlocking the students chakra, it was to ensure that the students had them memorized before they tried to actually do any jutsu. She did notice one hand sign was different than the ones taught in the academy but that new one came with a mental image of how to form it.
Over and over the hand signs repeated in her head. Rat, Ox, Fox, Dog, Horse, Monkey, Boar, Tiger, Fox.
As if possessed, her body started to preform the hand signs while taking in a deep breath and mold her chakra. As this was happening the land lady was yelling at her to just leave before slamming her office door closed not having noticed the young girl making hand signs. When she finally reached the last hand sign, the voice spoke again.
Now breath out and unleash. Demon Fox Style: Fox Hellfire Jutsu!
While not as impressive as the one preformed in the Forest of Death, this instance was destructive. It blew the office door in, but the door some how held up long enough for the land lady to jump out of the way and some how only survived with second degree burns and shrapnel wounds from the door exploding.
It continued to scorch a path straight through to the opposite wall. Burned through that wall, busted through the main storage supply closet of the building and actually hit the main gas line which resulted in an explosion, which destroyed the majority of the building.
The blow back from the gas line exploding and chakra exhaustion had knocked out the younger Natsumi. Which resulted in the memory becoming a black void for the older Natsumi to just float in.
This lasted for what appeared to a second. When the blackness faded into something more visible.
"uh… wha -WHAT THE FUCK!" Her younger self stirred from the black out only to find herself in what appeared to be a sewer of some kind. A ceiling lined with pipes that stretched beyond her sight, ankle deep water in a fairly wide channel. It also being dimly lit added to the drab ambiance.
"Seriously, what the fuck! How the hell did I get here." She raged. After a few minutes of huffing and puffing, with random kicks to splash water around, she started to walk forward. "Better find a way out of here." The younger version grumbled to herself.
"That is not the way out, wish I knew that then." The older Natsumi said more to herself than her past self. Even if she could have told her past self this, there was no changing what was to come.
For what seemed like hours the younger version walked, her frustration had steadily grown during the walk. Now muttering obscenities under her breath, she had failed to truly notice the giant cavern she had stumbled upon.
So, finally decided to show yourself. The voice she had heard earlier rumbled all around her, the tone highly condescending.
The sound of a new and powerful presence, shook the girl out of her rage induced trance, shock and awe replaced it. Before her was, what to her seemed to be, a giant ornate gate. To her it seemed to be made of metal, since she doubted any other material could be shaped so smoothly, as some of the bars of the gate, seemed to twist and bend in unique ways that she could not describe. She also noted that the shade of red chosen was a good choice as well.
However, it was the large, red, slit pupil eye, that seemed to glow from the darkness beyond the gate that truly caught her attention.
"Wh-What a-are you?" She stuttered in shock.
To an insignificant speck of dust such as yourself. I am power beyond reckoning. A walking calamity. But you, tiny speck, you may call me …. Kyūbi.
"K-Kyūbi, but all the adults said you died." the younger version stated in shocked confusion.
Your elders tell many lies, but then again all you humans do that. Either to others or yourself. It is revolting to bear witness to such things. The past incarnation of Kurama side-stepped the unspoken question. And no, you are not dead. He preemptively answered her next obvious question.
"Then, where are we?" the past version of Natsumi asked.
Is it not obvious? We are in your mindscape. Was the reply.
"What's that?" Natsumi might have been arguably smart for her age at the time, there where topics that even she could not understand.
With a sigh and a mutter of something along the lines of 'humans being morons', the previous version of Kurama said: While even I don't fully understand it myself, from what I have gathered, is this place is merely an illusion made up by your mind to help you better communicate with me. As for why it's a sewer, no clue on that. But if I had to guess, I would use the human saying of: your mind has been in the gutter.
The younger Natsumi just merely nodded her head. With nothing else to really talk about the two past versions fell into silence with the future version passively observing as always. Nothing seemed to happen until the future version noticed the memory began to slowly fade out.
Real world *
Slowly her eyes opened, and she let out a yawn. Blinking a bit to focus her vision, Natsumi noticed she was still sitting where she first lay down.
I wonder how long it has been. She wondered to herself.
Finally up? Kurama rhetorically asked. Also, to answer your question, it seems you have been asleep for about thirty minutes maybe an hour. Hard to say.
Groaning as she slowly started to pick herself up from the floor, she decided to, rather reluctantly, converse with her sensei to see how much longer this would be going on for.
Luckily for her, everyone was focused on the match. She was able to sneak up to her sensei without anyone particularly noticing. Or so she thought.
"Glad to see you are awake, Natsumi." Kakashi eye-smiled.
With a sigh, she decided to jump to the point. "How many matches are left?"
With a slight hum before answering, Kakashi merely stated. "This is actually the last match. Fairly quick this time around."
"So, who are my potential opponents?" She inquired as she looked down to the arena. It's the Ichibi Jinchurriki against the bowl cut green clothed weirdo...Lee, I think is his name, if I remember correctly. She thought to herself.
"Neji Hyuga, Shikamaru Nara, Shino Aburame, the two Sand shinobi Temari and Kankuro, a Sound shinobi by the name of Dosu, and of course Sasuke." Kakashi listed off.
Doing a quick math check in her head, she stated. "Wait, shouldn't there be one more name, not counting this current match?"
Her answer did not come from Kakashi, but from her teammate. "Sakura and Ino knocked each other out and both were eliminated from the tournament. It was very pathetic." Sasuke said with his usual tone.
"Ah, well maybe this will be a learning experience for the both of them. I honestly doubt it but you never know." Was her response, as she turned her attention to the fight. She had to admit Lee was putting up a good fight, though Gaara's sand was keeping him at bay.
The fight basically devolved into Lee moving fast enough for Gaara's sand to only be able to block Lee's attacks. It wasn't until Might Guy told him to "take them off".
Most of the audience was unsure of what he meant until Lee jumped up on the statue and removed weights from his legs. The weights themselves didn't seem all that heavy, at least until Lee dropped them and the two thunderous thuds were heard and the dust clouds kicked up were confirmation that they were much more heavy than they appeared.
Natsumi was in shock and if the cussing out she heard from Kakashi towards Guy was any indication, they were on the same thought: These motherfuckers were insane.
The match didn't last much longer. While the removed weight increased Lee's speed to the point he could hit Gaara, Gaara had a layer of sand as armor on him thus lessening the damage of Lee's attacks. The match came to a climax when Lee attempted to finish the fight with a technique called the Front Lotus, if what Natsumi had over heard from Might Guy was any indication.
But to everyone's surprise and Natsumi's mild indifference. Gaara had either cushioned the blow with sand or substituted himself with a sand clone. Either way the Front Lotus left Rock Lee open to a Sand Coffin to his left arm and left leg. Gaara was about to kill Lee when Might Guy stepped in saving his student but at the cost of disqualifying Lee.
This is why we will need to up your training. The Tanuki has gone mad, he must be put down. Kurama's voice was filled with determination and if Natsumi was correct a hit of vindictive excitement.
I guess this fight got your blood pumping, earlier you were hesitant, now you seem almost salivating at the prospect. Was her rebuttal. All she heard as a response was a deep chuckle.
"Will all advancing participants please come down to the arena." She heard Hayate call out.
After a few moments the winners of the prelims were lined up and waiting for further instructions.
"Now, one by one, come up and pick a number from the box." Hayate explained while gesturing to the box which was held by Anko. After that he continued. "Once everyone has a number, you will read it out for all to hear. This will determine your first match from the finals. Now, we will start from left to right."
One by one the finalist retrieved their numbers, and once they were all back in their original locations, they spoke out their numbers.
"One." Neji declared.
"Nine." Natsumi sighed out. This is ironic. She thought to herself.
"Three." Shino spoke just loud enough to be heard.
"Seven." Kankuro huffed.
"Two." Sasuke said with his usual attitude.
"Eight." Gaara said with little to no emotion.
"Five, this is so troublesome." Shikamaru groaned.
"Four." was Temari's response.
"Six." Dosu calmly spoke.
After a few moments of writing something down. Hayate refocused his attention to the finalists. "Now the first matches of the finals: Neji vs Natsumi, Sasuke vs Gaara, Shino vs Kankuro and finally Temari vs the winner of Shikamaru vs Dosu." He said as held up a mock drawing of the tournaments bracket.
After a few moments, Shikamaru spoke up: "What a drag, if that bracket is correct it implies only one of us will be promoted."
"That is a misconception." Hiruzen stated. "While yes as in any tournament, there will be one winner. In truth, the matches are merely a way for you all to show off your skills. The more matches you participate in, the more you can show off your skills, thus proving to everyone that you deserve or have the skills required to be promoted. But in truth, it could be possible that all or none of you could be promoted. It all depends on your performance."
After a few more minutes to let them absorb this new information. Hiruzen then continued. "Now, the finals will be held with in a month. Use this time to hone your skills and prepare."
"Why the delay?" Natsumi challenged with a hint of curiosity.
It was Anko that spoke up. "It's so the Daimyos of the lands can make it in time to watch, also these events bring in merchants and lots of business, but it all takes time to set up. So brats, take the time to prepare and put on a hell of a show." She finished with her trademarked smirk.
"With that you are all dismissed." Hiruzen stated then began to leave the arena.
And with that the preliminaries ended, the finalist began to leave with their teams. Each one thinking of what to work on over the next month.
This is going to be fun, I can feel it. Natsumi thought with a grin.
