Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I'll trade Kishimoto a home-prepared grilled cheese sandwich for the rights. I make killer grilled cheeses... laced with heroin.
It's the pepper-jack, American, and Monterrey cheese blend that'll pull you in. It's the smack that'll keep you coming back. Until you trade your money-grossing manga franchise to me for just one more sandwich.
Here's the thing. I have no idea why anybody would want to live in the desert.
It is the most miserable climate to live in on the planet. I've been in arctic places, and I've been in the desert, and when it's really kicking, the desert sucks. Call me dumb or whatever you'd like, but I'd rather freeze to death than die of thirst. That's just me. Then again, it's really hard nowadays for the cold to affect me, but I think even when I was a kid I would have felt that way.
Towns in the desert are perfectly fine. But I think that might be more because of the fact that you've spent days travelling over nothing but sand, rationing your water, eating food that gets sand in it, and shaking sand out of your shoes until you finally find a nice little place with people, and water, and those nice little houses built with that thick stone or clay stuff that keeps it cool inside.
The Sand Nomads are total badasses though. Those are the ninjas that live out in the desert. All they do is move around and travel, getting work wherever they can across Kaze no Kuni. But they don't venture outside of the country very often. The one thing they all share though, is that they are bound to the deserts. They can't leave you see. Honor bound not to.
It's not just some custom the way everybody outside of their culture used to think. There's actually a VERY good reason for it, and I really wish I hadn't had to find out what it was the way I did when I was ten.
They're called Sand Nomads because it's really just a blanket term for ninjas in the desert. Unlike the rest of the world, even in families they don't recognize clan affiliation and those not directly related don't acknowledge one another as anything other than rivals for business.
They're small families, sometimes no bigger than three or four, very close-knit so that they can maximize the amount of money they make for the work they do. Because of the small numbers involved in any family feud and the fact that most of Kaze no Kuni is desert, their constant state of warfare wasn't as widely destructive as the ones you'd find anywhere else, but there was more of a chance of a single lineage getting wiped from the planet if things got too much out of hand.
Also, going back to the thing I mentioned before as to why they never left the desert; there was one big factor that kept them from wasting too much effort in fighting each other, and it was none too pleasant at all.
Uzumaki Naruto – 'End of Clan War Era Memoirs'
Chapter 6: Follow the Buzzards
"It's hoooooot." Naruto whined, from the beating he was taking from the unforgiving sun. He and Tenten were seated up front in the cart with Kakashi driving while Teuchi who usually drove took a rest in the cart interior… which was somehow climate controlled, "Can we go back inside?"
Tenten was slouched up against Naruto in the seat, looking half-awake and red-faced from the heat, "I think… I hate Kaze no Kuni." She said, getting Naruto to nod in agreement as they both groaned pitifully.
"Come now. We're the guards of this transport, which means we have to stay vigilant. So no, you can't go inside." Kakashi said, seemingly unfettered by the sweltering heat of their surroundings despite wearing his facemask and hearing his kids groan, "It's not that bad. You're both over-exaggerating."
"WE'RE IN THE DESERT!" Naruto and Tenten both yelled at the same time, the open-air echo of their simultaneous cry was drowned out by a howling of the wind blowing sand from the tops of surrounding dunes.
"It's a dry heat." Kakashi rebutted, "Besides, you've both got on plenty of sunblock, so you won't get sunburned. I thought you two were grown up enough to handle a little desert climate. If you've got enough energy to waste on yelling, you're not that bad off."
Tenten didn't know that the desert would be so hot (so sue her). When she said something about hearing of Minato going west she didn't think they'd go that far west. That was a long way outside of her comfort zone for someone that grew up around one village near the middle of Hi no Kuni for her entire life.
She would never complain about a summer in that country ever again either, as even a spring in Kaze no Kuni was brutal. Just wait until summer. That was when the sandstorms would kick up.
As they continued to ride, eventually Naruto perked up from looking out along the distance, "Ooh! Ooh! Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" Quickly popping a clone into existence he sent it out with express purpose, "Oasis! Go!" Saluting obediently, the clone went off to check on the fresh, pristine water source only for Naruto to frown thirty seconds later and sit back down in his seat, "Nevermind. Another mirage."
"If there was an oasis anywhere, there would be a settlement of some sort around it." Kakashi told Naruto as this had been the fifth time he'd done that in the last three hours. He pretty much knew that certain aspects of the jutsu would be abused due to how easily Naruto could perform it, but this was still rather absurd, "We have water inside you know."
"…Let me get some water from inside then."
"Hmm, no. We'll drink at lunch. We have to save it in case there's nowhere for a while to get more."
Save it? They had a full tank! The stand hadn't had any customers since they'd left a border village where they resupplied and did some business. They refilled after they'd closed shop, and in the last day and a half since travel in the desert began they couldn't have had more than ten full glasses worth of water each. Teuchi and Ayame had less since they didn't train outside during breaks and were able to stay inside the significantly cooler cart for most of the day.
"I'll tell you what." Kakashi said, drawing the oxen dragging the cart to a stop before making a showy exit onto the dunes with a Shunshin. He figured now was as good a time as any for some impromptu training, "If you can beat me I'll let you alternate shifts outside with each other. If you can't you have to stay out here and you both have to resituate to the top of the cart so we can get a better view of what's around. Or we can just keep going and you'll get no consequence for the choice made."
Both Tenten and Naruto had to stop and think about that quite heavily. Leaning in to Naruto she started to try and whisper out of range of Kakashi's hearing, "What do you think? We'll travel until sundown, and the sun doesn't go down for a longer time out here."
So if they lost they'd be on top of that cart for a long, long time yet.
On the other hand, it didn't really matter if they wound up on top of the cart or not. Pretty soon since the sun would keep moving in a westerly direction and they were facing west, it would be beating them right in the face with no chance for shade, so doing nothing would still result in a sunbath from hell.
Naruto was also looking at the pros of the situation, "If we win we can go back inside. Or at least one of us can and then we can switch. I swear, it feels like it's climate-controlled in there. It can't be any warmer than 70." Outside it was closer to 105, "And I think Kakashi's got a tube behind that f'n mask of his that he's got hooked to a water pouch or something. There's no way he's not thirsty too."
Yes, they had flasks with water on their persons. For emergencies only. You didn't drink that water to sip whenever. It was for when there was nothing left. Kakashi had expressly rapped Naruto's knuckles with the flat end of a kunai for trying to drink it at his leisure.
"Well?" Kakashi asked, waiting out on the sands for them to make their decision to fight or not, "I know what my name stands for, but I'm not going to stand out here all day and shoo the birds away. Buzzards don't really scare easily."
With a nod to one another, Naruto and Tenten jumped up onto the roof of the cart before both were concealed in a puff of smoke.
"Very well." Anticipating the forthcoming attack, Kakashi didn't even bother to reveal his Sharingan to take them on. It was just training after all, "The lesson is about to begin."
XxX
(Central Hi no Kuni – Senju Clan Main Headquarters)
Upon Tsunade's return from the summit with the Uzumaki Clan she was immediately set upon with news from the mainland by the other high-ranking members of her own clan. Most notably that the Uchiha Clan had recently taken part in a battle on the western side of the country.
The first thing she wanted to know was how bad their casualties were, not if they had been victorious or not. Offensives in the never ending war with the Uchiha had to be measured in how many lives were taken during the course of the battle, and opportunities to strike at the heart of the enemy had to be set by measuring their own manpower against the enemy's.
Apparently the Uchiha had lost nothing worth thinking that an attack against them would end any differently than the last major battle they had fought four years ago that had ended in a stalemate.
So that left everything at the regular status quo that it had been for years.
In other words, no new business had come forward since she had left. As disappointing as it was to find that nothing more had swung in their favor, it was reassuring to know that nothing had gone wrong either.
As Tsunade wandered about the main building of the compound, she attracted attention due to the guest she had with her. A representative on behalf of the Uzumaki Clan's Nagato, who was surprisingly not an Uzumaki. His nigh expressionless friend Konan.
"Tsunade-sama." One of the Senju Clan shinobi said, taking it upon himself to question the odd woman's presence with their leader, "What is this woman doing here?"
Tsunade stopped in the hall and chose to address the question, "This woman is intending to hunt for the jinchuuriki boy. Those rumors, they aren't rumors. He's real." She looked over at Konan who didn't seem to care one way or the other about the scrutiny she was getting in the strange place, "She's to be given full accommodations as our guest until she departs in pursuit, and we'll be sending her with a partner."
Konan raised an eyebrow in curiosity at this announcement, "With all due respect Tsunade-sama…" She began to say, "…There's no need to send a team of shinobi with me on this mission. I alone will be more than enough to kill the jinchuuriki, and I can assure you that I will carry out the will of both your clan and Nagato-sama's. At all costs."
The wizened Senju Clan leader could tell that this was not just being said to reassure her. This woman would do anything she felt she had to do to protect Nagato and everything that he stood for.
She would do anything for that man, Tsunade didn't doubt that for one moment.
Why this woman, a kunoichi not of the Uzumaki Clan, had such unconditional loyalty to Nagato, Tsunade did not know. Nor was it her business. But from her eyes, this was an extremely dangerous ninja.
"I'm not saying that you won't." Tsunade reasoned diplomatically instead of throwing her weight around as the head of the strongest clan in the world, "But I can assure you, I don't plan on sending an entire team to slow you down. I'm sending one man to assist you, and I can assure you that you'll find his abilities most helpful in dealing with anything having to do with the biju. You can't take too many chances."
Every Senju Clan member listening knew exactly who Tsunade was referring to. The only man in generations that had developed the bloodline of their strongest ninja ever, and he wasn't even a born ninja of the clan.
Tsunade waved her hand, summoning one of her female underlings to her, ready to take her order, "Go and tell Tenzo that he needs to prepare to be sent out on a possibly long-term mission."
Without wasting any words, she went off to perform the task sent to her. Even with the change in atmosphere amongst the clan, Konan was still skeptical about taking this person along, "Tsunade-sama, I'm a wandering ninja with no clan. I'm not used to working with others."
Tsunade was aware of that, but this was going to happen whether Konan was favorable to it or not. If this thing couldn't be contained, the Uzumaki Clan weren't going to be the only ones who lost face due to it. The forbidding of jinchuuriki was partially enacted by Senju Hashirama to begin with. If the Senju Clan, or their number one affiliate clan in the Uzumaki Clan went against this and didn't take the steps to fix it, the entire fabric of the system could fall apart.
War was rampant and seemingly permanent, but introducing a variable such as the allowance of the universal taboo of jinchuuriki would turn it all on its head. And the very first people the backlash would harm would be the Uzumaki and the Senju.
"It doesn't matter if you're used to teamwork or not." Tsunade insisted with a severe tone, "You will take Tenzo with you, and he will assist in taking down the jinchuuriki Uzumaki Naruto, whether it's necessary or not. Or are you really enough of a fool to look at the Mokuton (Wood Release) as a hindrance."
That got a reaction on Konan's face, "There's someone that is capable of that kind of power in this day and age?"
A smirk came to Tsunade's pink lips, "Yes. And there's nothing better for controlling the power of a biju."
XxX
(With Naruto – Deserts of Kaze no Kuni)
Kakashi stood atop a sand dune looking over at his two students who seemed to be down and out of it, "Are we done? I'm disappointed. This lasted all of twenty minutes." He then sighed and shrugged haplessly, "Come on, you both had a few good moves in that last rush!" He shouted at them.
"You're so weak. It hurt me to watch all of that."
'Shut up Kurama…"
"Seriously, you couldn't hit him once? Use the girl for a human shield or something to get closer, but for the sake of my reputation you could have at least hit him ONE TIME."
'Kakashi is really good.' Naruto thought to his tenant before coughing sand onto the ground where he was buried up to his neck, "…I hate his face. I want to punch it but I can't reach it. *cough* Tenten?"
One of Tenten's buns had been knocked out of her hair during the course of the spar, and she had been lying face down in the sand until Naruto spoke to her, "Plegh." She spat sand on the ground and wiped some off of her face as she looked over at her downed partner, "Yeah Naruto?"
As they spoke to each other, Kakashi shouted out at them again, "If we're done, get to work cleaning up all of these weapons that Tenten threw!"
"You want to do one more attack?"
"You sure it'll work?"
Naruto tried to jostle himself free of the sand. At least enough so to move his hands closer together for a jutsu, "No. So what?"
"Good point." Tenten said, reaching her feet, "There's no way anything I throw is going to hit him though, so do you have any ideas?"
"No, but I trust you." He said to her, much to her confusion as to what he meant until the sand he was buried in exploded upward and twenty Naruto clones flew out of the ground, simultaneously freeing Naruto from where Kakashi had trapped him, "Just pick your shot! You won't miss!"
Kakashi raised an eyebrow at the dust trails flying up all around the battlefield, telltale signs of movement from Naruto's clones, "You really think you can make me pay enough attention to just you that I ignore Tenten?"
"Tenten's got this!" Naruto's clones chorused in unison, "Fuuton: Reppusuhou (Wind Release: Gale Palm)!"
Instead of directly attacking Kakashi, Naruto's clones used their wind jutsu to kick up sand all around the man, creating a gigantic cloud of the vision-obscuring substance, 'Not bad. Now where?' Hunkering himself down, Kakashi attempted to anticipate where a finishing attack would come from, but nothing ever happened.
When the dust cleared, Kakashi found himself all alone in that general area, with no Naruto or Tenten in sight. They were either really good at hiding… or they had just left.
But they wouldn't do that in the middle of a spar would they?
XxX
Ayame sat inside of the ramen cart just staring at the two chibi ninjas that had come barreling inside, heading straight for the copious water supply that they kept. Ninjas were weird. Even kid ninjas, as cute as they were.
"You two are going to hurt yourselves drinking like that." The teenage ramen waitress pointed out for their benefit, "Could you slow it down maybe just a tad?"
"Hurry up and drink!" Naruto beseeched Tenten as she took big gulps from the open faucet of the ramen cart's water tank, "I think I feel him coming this way!"
No way that b.s. trap they set was going to hold Kakashi for long. They were going to lose no matter what, but the prize for winning was water and the cold interior of the cart. So they were just going to take their spoils of war without having to directly defeat him.
Eventually a satisfied Tenten turned the faucet off, fully hydrated as she grabbed Naruto and threw him in front of it to take his turn, "There. Now at least we'll be good when Kakashi-sensei totally punishes us for running away."
Naruto stopped drinking for a moment to address that fact, "I say we have a minute or two before he gets back here." That meant that he had no time to beg Ayame for any ramen. By the time she finished making it, Kakashi would have long since dragged him kicking and screaming back outside.
"Just a minute or two?" Tenten felt almost offended at Naruto's estimation of when Kakashi would return, "How many Bakusaidama (Exploding Spheres) do you think I set?"
That question begged another one that was even more important, because Naruto knew that she didn't use all that she had just for this spar, "…How many do you have?"
Tenten started counting on her fingers before she quit that and started multiplication tables in her head, "Uh… more than a few?"
Naruto didn't need to hear anything else as a big smile started to split his face, "Oh, and I think I know what it's like to have a best friend now."
He would no longer be content with his time spent with Tenten unless by the end of it they'd had established at least twelve urban legends that spread from coast to coast. True or untrue, it didn't matter, just so long as they terrified the masses and were proclaimed from sea to shining sea as shining beacons of their awesome.
Also a nickname. He needed a nickname, full of alliteration. One that would strike fear into the hearts of thousands… or would look good on a t-shirt.
Marketing. It was a thing.
XxX
"Hmm." Kakashi's eye was closed in a pleasant smile as he could only have figured that Naruto and Tenten took their prize without actually winning it, "Well. I guess I'll go tie them both to the roof of the cart now."
Oh those brats were going to bake. It would build character though.
Kakashi took a single step forward and went wide-eyed in surprise. The reason being because upon the moment his foot sunk into the sand, a metal sphere with kunai welded into it bounced up into the air, spinning rapidly with an explosive tag attached to it.
As it rapidly spun around, Kakashi saw the tag rapidly burning down and only thought of one thing.
'When did she have the time to make that?'
BOOM!
Kakashi was somehow able to outpace the explosion through speed, sheer dumb luck, and well-honed reflexes and instincts that only years of experience could provide a ninja. All that dodging did however was prompt Kakashi to stumble upon another spiked ball mine.
BOOM!
Oh, those stupid kids used that temporary dust storm like pros. Just how many did she set? He was not unveiling his Sharingan just to deal with a trap set by an 11 year-old girl. And as he tripped yet another one set into the sands, he wondered just how well he'd be able to hold up to that declaration.
XxX
"You think he's out yet?" Naruto asked, eyes darting across the sands suspiciously as he leaned his head out of the back of the ramen cart. He simply couldn't enjoy the awesome cool air because of the fear of retaliation from Kakashi that he just knew was coming their way.
"Well if he isn't-." Tenten said as she stopped eating a bowl of ice cream and slowly weaved her way through hand-seals, "Ushi, Saru, Tatsu. Sougu: Koushin Ranka (Manipulated Tools: Steel Needles Wild Flower)."
A rippling chain of explosions rattled out from a short distance away where they had been sparring with Kakashi. Naruto just stared at where he could see the ruckus kicking up in the distance. Meanwhile, Teuchi and Ayame just stared at the pair of preteen terrors; one watching multiple small explosions go off, and the other eating ice cream as if she hadn't just remotely detonated them.
"I really hope that didn't kill him." Naruto said, grimacing at the thought of taking out Kakashi in such a manner, "You said those exploding sphere things shoot kunai and shrapnel chunks?"
"Yep."
"…We just killed somebody."
Teuchi wisely chose to ignore the potentially homicidal munchkins for the time being, while Ayame chose to try and show some sort big sisterly traits to try and curb them before they both became uncute and insane, "We don't celebrate death or the maiming of others in this establishment."
Naruto just blinked in his beloved ramen-providing host's direction before stepping outside, "So if I'm standing outside can celebrate it then?"
"Not quite." Kakashi whispered from the top of the cart, hanging just above the door and above Naruto's head, effectively scaring a few years off of his lifespan, "You two are horrible, evil children and every adult should be afraid of you both." Then came the disengaging eye-smile, "Good work. But you still didn't hit me, and you know what that means. Thanks for waiting Teuchi-san. I'll start driving the cart again. You and Ayame-san can remain inside."
"Aww." The deflated junior ninja pair dropped their shoulders at the unsaid order to assume the position on top of the cart.
"Oh, you're both just so adorable." Kakashi said with a delightfully detached and bright voice, fully meant to patronize, "You both should know that your frustration and disappointment are, and always will be, like fuel to me. It only makes my fire burn stronger. Now to the roof you big fat failure turtles. Get on up there."
In a matter of moments, the cart was moving again, and Naruto and Tenten were donning turbans to protect their heads from the sun beating down on them. All the while, Kakashi had managed to hide a cut on the underside of his elbow that had been given to him via the tandem trap they had used.
They weren't the only ones that could use sleight of hand.
XxX
(Elsewhere – Hours Later)
"I spy… something yellow."
"Oh, let me guess. Is it SAND!?"
"Yeah, you got it!"
"They'll never find your body."
"Well sorry for trying to make this fun."
"You're not making this fun Kankuro. You're just annoying me."
The two sources of the conversation were a young brother and sister walking through the desert, dragging deep trails in the sand. The specially prepared staffs they used for the process left black marks on the surface that remained in place even as the sand moved.
For what reason they were doing this, it couldn't be told, but both of them seemed extremely bored by the process.
"This is boring as fuck." The brother of the pair said. He was a young teenager wearing a black baggy bodysuit with a black hood that seemed to have cat-like ears to it. On his back he had a bandage-wrapped bundle with a tuft of hair sticking out at the top of it. His face was painted with sharp purple patterns and the scowl on his face at the boring job he and his older sister were doing, "We've been doing this shit all over the place for the last four months."
The older teenage girl just rolled her eyes despite feeling the same way, She had sandy blonde hair in four spiky ponytails and wore a single lavender shoulder-cut battle dress with a red sash and mesh under her clothes that went down to her left thigh as well as a separate mesh legging around the lower part of her right leg. On her back she had an extremely large metal fan just as big as she was.
"You know why we have to do this Kankuro." The girl, Temari, said, "This is the only thing that keeps the you-know-what in check, even a little bit. Be grateful. This is a new contract that's going to run out one day. It's good money and it's for a good reason."
"I know, I know." Kankuro droned, "Feel bad for dad if he had to do this alone though. He would have had to do this shit by himself if he hadn't married mom and had us. All he has to do is the intricate part in the middle, and he's got Gaara to help him with that. Imagine if they had to do that by hand instead of cheating with their jutsu."
"Like we're doing?" Temari asked rhetorically with a wry smile, "I don't think making all of those intricate marks that this seal requires would work so well if they had to do it by hand. Maybe that's why we're always the ones to take this contract? Because people can't make the seal with the same jutsu that dad and Gaara use."
Kankuro looked up into the sky at the position of the sun and sighed before spitting down at the ground, "Thank the Sage this is the last one we have to make. How far are we to finishing this circle?"
"We'll know when we see the other end where we started."
"Not funny."
The brother and sister of the desert continued through the sands of the land that their family wandered for a living until all of a sudden, the black markings of the titanic seal outskirt that they were drawing began to glow.
Knowing what the seal was meant to do, both Temari and Kankuro felt their hearts clinch up in horror before realizing that there wasn't any towering mass of sandy, tailed horror eradicating them from existence yet.
"…Is it broken?" Kankuro asked, wondering why the bane of the desert shinobi's existence wasn't smashing them flatter than sand dollars, "I don't see Shukaku, and that should be one hard thing to miss."
"It can't be broken." Temari said, stooping down to look at the portion of the circular seal they'd already drawn; the portion that detected the target when it wandered inside. It didn't need to be finished to detect, as long as something ventured inside of the portion of it that was already complete, "It's supposed to only go off when a biju wanders inside. That's how the second part of the seal that actually deals with the beast knows when to go off."
"The part that dad and Gaara are working on?"
"Yeah, pretty much."
So that left a pretty significant question for the two of them.
"…Do we go see what it is before it runs into them, or should we finish our part of the seal?"
After a moment of contemplation, they decided to continue on with their job and finish it before heading to town. They didn't need to see what had entered the circumference of the seal. If it was something dangerous, Gaara and their father could handle it or call for them. If it wasn't dangerous…
…Well, Gaara would still probably handle it anyway.
XxX
(With Naruto – Deserts of Kaze no Kuni)
"Grr…" Kurama growled constantly inside of Naruto's head. It was beginning to give him a headache he'd been listening to it for so long, the last fifteen minutes, "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God! Arg, it's like a drill in one ear, and another drill in the other ear, AND THEY'RE MEETING IN THE MIDDLE!"
"What the fuck's wrong with you!?" Naruto eventually bellowed aloud, startling Tenten who was seated on the top of the ramen cart with him, "Nothing's happening! Nothing's happened since we got to the desert!"
"W-What?" Tenten said weakly, not knowing what was up with Naruto. His face had been twisting irritably for quite some time, but she just figured that it had been sitting on top of the cart with the sun beating down on the two of them that was pissing him off, "Naruto, what are you talking about?"
Naruto then realized that he hadn't gotten Tenten hip to the fact that he had a monstrous fox sitting in his body. It hadn't really come up, and Naruto didn't really know how to explain it. Kakashi was a go with the flow kind of guy who would probably run damage control once it came up, but clearly he wasn't keen on jumping straight into opening that potential can of worms either.
So that left him with explaining why he'd just snapped at nothing but open air with the added detriment to his 'clutch' reasoning abilities being Kurama doing what sounded like chewing on the bars of his seal cell inside of his head.
"Inner monologue?" Naruto ventured with a sheepish grin. Thankfully he had a turban to hide some of his face with by pulling it lower on his head.
Tenten just gave him a wary look before turning her attention back to being on lookout, "Ooookay. Whatever." She was beginning to come to terms with that fact that he was weird.
Uncomfortable conversation temporarily averted, Naruto turned his notice back inward, 'Seriously Kurama, what's up?'
"I've got this brain-splitting whistling in my ears and it's getting worse!" Kurama shouted inside of Naruto's head, "What the hell's happening kid? Find! Out!"
Naruto frowned and crawled forward to the front of the cart where Kakashi was driving the oxen in the heat, "Kakashi, Kurama's in a lot of pain right now." And honestly, he was starting to feel funny too. Probably from whatever was hurting Kurama, "I don't know what's up?"
Kakashi's face turned deadly serious as he addressed his youngest charge, lifting his headband to reveal his Sharingan, "…I don't see any genjutsu on you. It doesn't seem like anything I can see is affecting you." A sobering thought filled his mind at that moment, "Is the seal breaking?"
Naruto quickly put a stop to that train of thought, "No." He said firmly, "Mom locked this thing down tight. There's no way she would have told me that everything was okay if it wasn't. She might have tricked me into going with you, but she never lied to me."
He was trying to learn what he could on his own about the seal, but it was way over his head for now. If he was going to begin improving in that department well enough to finish what Kushina had started and find a way to do what he told Kurama he would do, he needed to see a more diverse array of fuuinjutsu other than the few that he himself had managed to learn.
…Now he just needed to see some more seals to kickstart that process.
In the meantime, that wasn't what was important, "Look, Kurama's really hurting in here. There's got to be something going on here that would tell us why."
"…Naruto? Kakashi-sensei?"
Tenten's worried voice got their attention as they both started peeling their eyes around the cart, but were unable to see anything. So what put the worried tone in her voice? Naruto turned back around to see Tenten, only with someone else sitting slightly off to the side of and behind her.
A boy with messy red hair and dull green eyes with black rings around them who seemed to be just Naruto's age was right there with her, sitting impassively as if he were supposed to be there. He wore a black bodysuit with short sleeves, a white cloth diagonally over his left shoulder and a large leather strap over his right, both connected to a large sand gourd over his back.
What the fuck?
His eyes looked between a terrified Tenten and a vastly confused Naruto before speaking, "…What are you doing here?"
"Uh… lookin' for somebody?" Naruto ventured to answer, unsure of why he felt that this guy would turn him into a smear on the desert surface if he wasn't on the defensive, "Who the hell are you?"
"Gaara." The boy said before setting his eyes right on Naruto, "You don't look like a biju. They don't use tricks. They just kill."
"…What?"
Gaara's single blink might as well have been a roll of his eyes, "I've spent my entire life learning how to deal with the biju. I know what I'm doing by now when it comes to them. My father has made sure of that much. You triggered our seal before it was finished. How? Only a biju can trigger it, and the source of the triggering is you."
Slowly the blocks began falling into the correct openings and things started linking up in Naruto's head.
Kurama was in pain for some unseen reason.
This guy thought Naruto was a biju or was involved with a biju.
He created a seal that was apparently supposed to activate when in contact with a biju.
Therefore, this Gaara person was semi-responsible for creating a seal meant to affect biju. This was why Kurama was in pain.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, you're saying Naruto is the source of biju power?" Tenten said in disbelief, "I've never seen one, but everybody knows what a biju is. There's no chance something like that could be in Naruto, could be Naruto himself, nothing like that. Look at him. He's way too little."
"Oi!"
Gaara shook his head, "There is no other explanation as to why the seal went off, and it led me here." He lifted his hand into the air and the cart came to an instant stop for no explainable reason, "Now what are you?"
Kakashi regarded Gaara carefully, but in his amicable smile to the desert shinobi there was a grave warning present, "Would you mind having your sand let go of the oxen's legs and the cart's wheels? We kind of need those if we want this vehicle to move."
"If you won't tell me, I'll just have to kill you to be sure." Immediately after saying that, sand raised itself in front of Gaara to protect him from being punched by Naruto, "…You have no idea how unforgiving the desert can be."
'What the hell?' Naruto wondered. His hand had been stopped cold by a wall of sand of all things.
Tenten started piecing things together from what Kakashi said and what Gaara had just done to block Naruto, "So you're strong enough with that sand to stop a whole ox team, and you caught Naruto's arm." Her only answer was the sight of Gaara lifting his hand, making a motion that he was about to tighten it and crush something, "Aw, no."
"Sabaku Sou-."
A sharp jerk of a cord from Tenten pulled up a panel on the roof of the cart that shot kunai at Gaara's face from point-blank range. Instead of turning him into a preteen pincushion however, more sand protected him from that angle, but it loosened the sand around Naruto's arm enough for action to be taken.
Tenten dove at Naruto and tackled him off of the roof of the cart, freeing his arm from the iron grasp of Gaara's sand before it could destroy the limb or creep further up his body.
Landing roughly in the desert just off of the trail that they'd been travelling on, Naruto sat up painfully with Tenten sprawled across him, "Ugh. Thanks for that. I couldn't get to my other hand to make a seal without getting it stuck too."
"You're my partner." Tenten commented wincing slightly at the fall but smiling nonetheless, "Besides, I owed you anyway… and we're still going to die."
"Huh?"
Both of them found themselves surrounded by sand that rose up from the desert around them, but before it could surround or take hold of them, golden dust of the same variety batted it down and pinned it.
Kakashi breathed a sigh of relief. He was aware of the second presence watching the area after he knew that Gaara was there. Whether the person was an enemy or not he couldn't be sure, but he knew that they were stronger than Gaara.
Which was saying quite a bit, because Gaara was stronger than Naruto and Tenten both. Even by himself. Had Kakashi not been unsure of the other man's intentions, he would have attacked Gaara the moment it became clear that hurting Naruto was his intention.
He couldn't really blame Naruto for trying to attack first. Sand Nomads didn't exactly screw around. If someone said they were going to kill you anywhere in the world, in its current state the threat was never an idle one. For a Sand Nomad to say it, they meant it. They were some of the hardest-nosed people you would ever find anywhere.
"Gaara." A man said, appearing on the road in a Shunshin comprised of gold dust. He bore a stark resemblance to Gaara with auburn hair instead of red, and a stern, weathered face. He had dark rings around his eyes similar to Gaara's, but they only lasted for as long as he manipulated the gold. His clothing consisted of a black jacket and pants with mesh armor underneath, "Stand down."
Gaara looked over in the direction of the older desert-dwelling ninja and then back to Naruto and Tenten before returning his sand to the large gourd on his back, "The source of the biju signature is the blond boy. I was doing what we were paid to do father."
"We were paid to finish the warding seals around the nearby village." Gaara's father said, walking over to his son to admonish him, "We weren't paid to fight Shukaku, even if this boy was somehow connected to him. No one would pay any Sand Nomad that sort of waste of money."
Tenten looked between Naruto and Kakashi who had come over to make sure his kids were alright, "Shukaku?"
Kakashi nodded and kept a watchful eye on the Sand Nomads, "Known elsewhere as the 'Incarnation of the Sand'." He began to explain to the younger ninjas, "Shukaku is an omen of death in Kaze no Kuni due to his status as a biju, his bloodthirsty nature, and his control over sand. During full moons it gets particularly bad. He'll attack any living being in sight. Entire settlements have been destroyed in minutes because of his rage."
During this explanation, Gaara took his rebuking from his father in his own way. By staring at him without blinking, "You told me that it would be my purpose to-."
"-And that time will come Gaara. Your value to the deserts is something that can't be measured, even with all of the Gold Dust under my control." The redhead's father told him, "There is no ninja born in Kaze no Kuni with the potential to protect the deserts that you possess, but there is no rush. You're not ready to face Shukaku. Your mother left her will in your sand to protect you, but that doesn't mean you can recklessly throw your life away."
It was hard to tell just how the young nomad felt about the lecture he'd just received, whether he'd listened or not, since all he did was cross his arms over his chest until the man was finished.
There was something pent up inside of that boy. A lot of anger, or pressure on his shoulders. Something.
"I'm going to finish the seal… father." Gaara said before vanishing in a sand Shunshin. His father just watched the place that his son had been standing moments before and then turned to gaze at the foreigners.
Kakashi was the one to take the initiative, mostly because he usually gave less than a damn about how awkward moments could be between people at times. This was one of those awkward moments, "So, control over sand huh?" He said with an amicable eye-smile as he hid his Sharingan once more, "Neat."
Naruto and Tenten just seemed stunned. Neat? That was all he could say? They almost got into a fight with a guy that could literally use the desert as a weapon, and his response to the entire first meeting was 'neat'?
This was a man that simply didn't care about anything outside of his tasks and what he'd already deemed as important to fight for. Protecting the ramen cart per his contract, and getting Naruto to Minato. That was it. Other than that, literally no fucks were given about anything else around him if it wasn't a direct threat to either of those objectives.
"I'd just like to take the time to say that I feel way less safe about listening to everything you say than I first did when I started traveling with you a month ago." Tenten pointed out, wiping at a stinging sand-caused abrasion on her arm.
"Oh, you two are still here?" Kakashi said, pretending that he had forgotten the presence of the children, "Good. That cart isn't going to drive itself. Take it to the next village and wait for me would you?"
Tenten sighed and moved to the front of the cart, Naruto choosing to go in through the back to get a quick burst of cool air and pop in on his favorite ramen waitress for a second before joining his more responsible kunoichi partner out front. He left a waving Kakashi with a flipping of the bird from behind Gaara's father's back, so that he didn't see how much respect Naruto had for Kakashi's unique brand of child rearing.
The older man still noticed though, and admittedly would have laughed… if adult Sand Nomads were into that sort of thing.
Ahh… that boy was going to start a clan war one of these days. Possibly several. At the same time.
"So, nice kid." Kakashi said about Gaara, completely refusing to give Naruto the satisfaction of selling the disrespectful gesture one bit, "Not that I can talk much with my own dysfunctional chibi pair running around."
Gaara's father just nodded stiffly, "Gaara is… special. For generations, Sand Nomads have studied and experimented with methods to control the small particles of substances the way that Shukaku can control sand. It's a powerful weapon."
"Hence the Gold Dust." Kakashi pointed out, noting that it had disappeared from where the man had last used it, 'He can hide it that easily.' This was a dangerous man. If a boy that had control over any sand he saw listened to his orders despite seemingly disagreeing, what was he capable of?
"Correct." The man in question said, "But Gaara. No one has ever been able to control the actual sand itself. Only substitutes that can be controlled by our methods have ever worked. No one studied these things as intensely as my wife did, to try and find a way to-." He cut himself off at that point, realizing that he was dipping into a conversation he didn't want to have with strangers, "You've met Gaara. My name is Rasa."
Kakashi pointed to the two kids up front, preparing to drive the cart away, and then to himself, "Naruto, Tenten, and I am Hatake Kakashi."
"Copy Ninja Kakashi?" Rasa voiced aloud to the aloof masked man.
"S'up."
He ignored the cavalier confirmation that this young man was indeed Kakashi and turned to look at Naruto, "And that was Uzumaki Naruto? The 'jinchuuriki' that was able to kill fifteen Uchiha Clan shinobi with one move?"
Cue the bloating of a ten year-old's self-esteem and delusions of grandeur.
Naruto grinned widely and jumped onto the top of the cart from the front, chest puffed out, "So people have heard of me all the way out here?" Unfortunately for him, Tenten grabbed him by the ear and pulled him back down into the seat to help her drive the cattle, "Ow! Tenten, come on!"
She would have no mercy. By now it was established by both herself and Kakashi that Naruto's ego was a powerful enemy. It could not be granted any quarter and it had to be beaten back furiously when it reared its head or else terrible things would happen.
"I thought it was eight Uchiha Clan members?" Tenten said to him, finally letting go of him once she was certain he'd been sufficiently cowed for the moment, "Where did fifteen come from?"
Actually it was three, but Naruto didn't care, "I don't know, but I like it a lot." He was in the mix of international rumors now. That was the coolest thing he could ever imagine happening to him, "Now I just need a nickname, like Kakashi's or mom's."
Eight sounded cooler than three. Fifteen sounded even cooler than eight. So fifteen was the new number until proven otherwise or a better sounding number came up. Naruto now loved international rumor mills.
XxX
(With Kushina – Uzumaki Clan Village)
"What?" Kushina said flatly, sitting on a bench in the main courtyard of the clan head's mansion. On this day of her stay as Nagato's 'guest' she was visited by one of her nieces that was actually relatively close to her and Naruto. Sometimes for better or for worse, but still the closest, in ten year-old Karin, "…Sorry sweetie, run that past me again."
One good thing about Karin, was that she heard a lot of things, from her parents, other ninjas in the clan just from passing by, and from other kids that had heard things from their parents or just from passing by. So anything that Kushina couldn't learn by straight-up asking inside of the mansion grounds, she could usually learn by asking Karin. If Karin didn't know how to answer one of Kushina's questions on one day in particular she would figure it out and have it for her by the next time she visited.
So when asked if Karin had heard anything at all, big or little, about Naruto in passing, the girl didn't take long to have something for her favorite kickass auntie.
Karin played with her glasses on her face but repeated the info from before, "Well apparently Naruto popped up around a mainland battle between the Hyuuga and Uchiha Clans. I heard he killed 20 Uchiha Clan members in one move."
Rumors got bloated more farfetched levels over long distances. In addition to that, the haze of large-scale battles particularly gave rise to more implausible stories than without.
And knowing what they did about potential jinchuuriki might, the Uzumaki Clan were subject to believe ones of a certain subject and propagate them for safety's sake.
Kushina was not one to believe the word of mouth. She was smart, and was aware of the fact that until he realized just how being a jinchuuriki worked, Naruto was a normal ten year-old ninja.
Even so however…
"Yes, my baby's the center of his own first bullshit rumor!"
Sometimes you had to enjoy the small things.
XxX
(With Naruto – Kaze no Kuni Desert Village)
Out of the blue while sitting on a low-lying roof that allowed them a good view of a whole marketplace, Naruto felt a crushing measure of pride that put a face-splitting grin on his face in the middle of guard duty with Tenten, "You know that feeling of getting hugged from a thousand miles away?"
"…No?" Tenten didn't know how to respond to such an awkward question.
"Neither do I." Naruto said with a shrug, "But if I did, I think it would feel a lot like I feel right now."
After reaching the village, Kurama's pain subsided and he decided that with his splitting headache it was best to take a nap. He usually slept the day away when he was bored with watching the things that Naruto did, but this time at least he had a real excuse for it.
Sundown was chow time in the middle of this village as the ramen stand opened up shop. Apparently ramen was universal cuisine, which was good for business. All things considered, getting out there was a hell of a trip, but it was looking to be quite lucrative for the clients of the ninja. The line for food simply wasn't dwindling.
It made for a busy Tenten too, who had to keep an extremely close watch on every person that drifted around the cart. She'd noticed a few individuals with ninja-like weapons, but they didn't do anything other than order for their travelling parties which ranged from their families, to the people they were under contract to protect. Sand Nomads.
"You know, the way Minato-sama works reminds me a lot of the Sand Nomads." Tenten said, drumming up some conversation by choosing to talk about the reason that they had come out to the desert to begin with. And it had obviously gotten Naruto's attention, "He travels around, accepts missions off of contact rumors… hey do you think he's from Kaze no Kuni originally? He never said where he was from."
He tried to downplay it of course. After all, he had an awesome kickass mom who was worth at least two parents all on her own. If his dad didn't want to show his face around that was just fine with him. Even so, Tenten wasn't absentminded enough to miss the fact that his posture stiffened in interest, "I wouldn't know. I've never even seen the guy."
"You look so much like him I thought he was with you." Tenten admitted, "That was why I really thought you were a ninja and approached you in the first place. He took missions like the one that you and Kakashi-sensei are on, so I thought he'd come back around and brought his son this time."
"Well sorry to disappoint you." Naruto drawled dryly, "S'just me and Kakashi."
"Yeah I noticed. Come on Naruto, don't be that way." Tenten nudged his shoulder to get him to really think, "I know I don't know what it's like to never have one of my parents around, but I do know what it's like to lose them altogether. Don't put that kind of evil on yourself. When you meet Minato-sama, give him a chance. He's not a bad person."
Everyone kept saying that. Kushina said it, Kakashi said it, Tenten said it. They all swore by the man. Even the Hyuuga Clan seemed to know who he was back when they'd stayed there for a short while and they regarded his strength highly.
But he was literally never around. Naruto had never seen him once outside of a handful of faded pictures, stories from Kushina, and occasional rumors that circulated around the village.
"Just meet him first and give him a fair shake okay?" Tenten requested of him, "For Kaka-, well forget Kakashi." At least for right now after today. Bringing up Kakashi wasn't going to motivate him to do anything, "Do it for yourself, and for your mom. For me too."
Well Kushina always did want Naruto to keep Minato in a positive frame of light, but Tenten? "Why for you?"
"Because you're my friend." The weapon-toting young girl said, elbowing Naruto in the arm, "And I don't want to see my friend hate his dad before he ever even gets to know him."
"I don't hate him. I can't hate someone I've never met." That didn't mean Minato didn't piss him off though, "I'm still gonna punch him in the throat when I see him though. I'm gonna move in all teary-eyed, arms open like I'm going for a hug and WHAP!" Naruto emphasized by throwing out a jab, "Right in the throat, one good time, 'ttebayo!"
It was clear that he'd pondered how he would handle the scenario of his first meeting with Minato quite extensively.
Tenten was officially convinced that Naruto was totally unbalanced. Hopefully that made for a good ninja, because on the surface it didn't instill much confidence and she trained with him every day as it was, so he wasn't going to utterly blow her away with some amazing secret that she had yet to be informed about.
That could never happen.
So it was back to lookout duty, until something in particular caught the eye of one of the young shinobi in the midst of their guard work. It got a hold of Naruto's attention and would not let it go, no matter how impractical.
More like someone actually.
Tenten noticed the person as well, or people. They kind of stuck out. A boy and a girl. One clad in all black with odd facepaint, and a noticeably older girl with a very large fan on her back, seemingly observing the bustling town square with some interest as they talked with each other and laughed.
"More Sand Nomads Naruto, and they're pretty young to be by themselves." Tenten said informatively, "They don't look like trouble either, but keep them in sight with the others we found." No response, "…Naruto?" Turning to her side where she'd seen him before, the bun-haired girl did not find her partner sitting next to her any longer, "Where did you go?"
Naruto's eyes never really left the girl with the fan after they had landed upon her. His legs moved themselves in her direction, but as he drew closer he'd realized his folly. In the entire time it had taken for him to walk on over to the girl, he'd failed to formulate a logical and coherent thought for what he was going to say when he got over there.
So there he stood, having walked up to some girl he didn't know who by now had noticed him standing near her vicinity just looking at her.
Because first impressions were everything and all.
"Uh." Came the eloquent first words of ten year-old Uzumaki Naruto, "Hey. My name's Naruto."
Temari had no clue where this brat had come from. He was at least a few years younger than her, and he had just randomly introduced himself to her in quite the awkward manner, "Good for you." She said before sternly putting her hands on her hips, "What do you want?"
"To say hi?"
"Hi there." Temari said with a faux-kind smile before her face turned stern again, "Now go away. I'm not into babysitting. I just finished a mission. I want to relax, and my idea of relaxing isn't humoring some foreign ninja kid."
Man, Sand Nomads were a tough bunch. None of the ones he'd met had been particularly nice today, even a pretty girl like that one. That babysitting remark hit him right in the heart.
But right then, he remembered a lesson driven home deep by his mother that had formed a core trait of his personality. If you had something you needed to get out, you'd better say it and you'd better say it loud and clear. Being quiet and meek never got anything productive done for anyone, and if you were an Uzumaki you'd better learn how to speak up.
"Alright look." Naruto eventually said, a slight growl in his voice from biting back the feeling of how stupid he must have looked actually saying it. After all, it wasn't like she had been taking him seriously beforehand anyway, "I think you might be the prettiest girl I've ever met, I think your fan is awesome, and I want to know your name. So would you stop actin' all stingy and cough it up already?"
Temari just stared down at him, gaping like a fish in the aftermath of perhaps the bluntest statement she'd ever heard any human being give her in her life. And it had come from a kid that was probably no older than her youngest brother. She didn't know what to say off the top of her head in response.
Standing right there with her, Kankuro had been annoyed by Naruto's presence from the start. He hated runts to begin with, and this one had come up to them trying to strike up a lame conversation. Even so, after that, he didn't quite know how to react either.
Eventually though, Kankuro recovered enough to say something first, touching on Naruto's foreign looks, "Where are you from brat?"
"Uzu no Kuni." Naruto informed, confidence slowly building after having thrown her off-balance, "Waaaay east, off of the mainland. Island in the sun."
"Well what are you doing out here in Kaze no Kuni?"
"Looking for someone." Naruto replied earnestly before catching himself and remembering what he'd learned from listening and watching others back home. With that in mind he addressed Temari once more, "But I found you instead."
Girls liked to be seen like they were the center of the universe didn't they? That was what Kushina said when he'd asked why guys in the village seemed to spend months doing nothing all day but wooing women. And sometimes it worked.
Oh wow. People actually said that. Out loud. In public, "What?" Was the flat response came from Temari.
"The heat of our love will burn this world to ashes."
Kankuro couldn't help but sputter, temporarily forgetting how much he wanted to punt the kid out of speaking distance of the two of them. That was the ballsiest thing he'd ever heard anyone say, "D-Do you even know what that means?"
"No." Naruto admitted with a shrug that exhibited just how little he knew of the things he was saying, "I actually got that from one of my mom's weird books. Some guy named Jiraiya wrote it." The guy had to be some kind of genius if he wrote a book his mom was reading.
"Right." Temari said, putting a way too sweet to be safe smile back on her face, "Okay, so here's what's going to happen. I'm going to give you ten seconds to run as far away from me as you can or to convince me not to do what I'm going to do next." With a metallic thud she took the fan from her back and set it down on the hard ground for emphasis, "Then I'm gonna open this, and we're going to see how much you like flying. TEN! NINE!"
The chain of events hadn't taken long at all and roughly around the time Naruto had said something about home, Tenten had found him in the courtyard, "Naruto, what are you doing over here?"
"About to get a scenic trip of the desert through the air." Kankuro said as Temari counted down another number, "She's only counting so that everybody here knows she warned him in advance in case she kills him. And so they can get out of the way."
"What? Why?"
"SEVEN!"
Naruto wasn't particularly afraid of the potential death threat the way that Tenten seemed to be though, instead wondering exactly how this was going to go down, "So you're going to open that, hit me, and you'll hit me hard enough to knock me into the desert?" She didn't look strong enough to manage that with a melee attack, but then again she was carrying that big-ass fan to begin with so she was definitely strong enough to swing it, "How?"
"Wait and see. SIX!"
Tenten yanked the shoulder of Naruto's shirt to get his undivided attention, "What did you say to make this girl mad enough to give you a countdown?" And more importantly, should they have been taking that time to leave?
"I called her cute! That's all!" Naruto assured his friend frantically, not wanting the wrath of two girls on his head instead of one, "I just came over here to say that! I didn't do anything else! …And that angry look on her face is actually really pretty." As if she were appropriately beautiful when her claws were bared… even if they were bared at him.
"Five-four-three-two-one, time's up!" Temari hurriedly counted after Naruto's last offhanded comment. With that done, her fan opened up with enough force to blow the dust away from her immediate surroundings, revealing three purple moons on its interior, "Let me show you how much I appreciate your candor."
"…Can-what?"
"I'M GOING TO BLOW YOU AWAY FOR HITTING ON ME JUNIOR!" Was basically the gist of what she was trying to say. Who wanted to hear that from a ten year-old kid? She was thirteen damn it. That wasn't flattering.
"Man, Temari's got a temper." Kankuro remarked to himself from the sidelines. He thought he was going to be the one to grab that brat by his collar and hurl him out of there, "She's a special kind of pissed off today. Walking around in three gigantic circles in the desert all day to finish a seal will do that though."
"Whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa." Naruto somehow stopped the proceedings by simply stepping forward and waving his arms, "Hold on. You guys made the seals surrounding this village? I thought a guy named Gaara and his dad made those seals?"
For the moment at least, Temari lowered her fan from the poised-to-swing position she'd had it in before, "We all did. Gaara's our brother." How did this kid know there were seals? They were too big for anyone that wasn't really good at them to know what they were, "Why do you know Gaara?" Temari asked, closing her fan back up.
"Because he almost tried to kill us." Tenten groused, a combination of relieved at not being attacked and somewhat disappointed because a part of her wanted to see what Temari would have done to Naruto, 'Probably something with wind from how that fan opened.'
"Yeah." Naruto said, squinting his eyes in agreement with his partner, "Your little brother's kind of a dick." And just like that Naruto found himself swept off of his feet and yelling as he crashed into a sand dune between two buildings.
With one moon of her fan open for the quick maneuver, Temari had a therapeutic smile on her face after sending Naruto flying. Tenten just stood there and cursed Naruto for the complete lack of tact and judgment present. Someone was going to have to kick that into him, and since Kakashi couldn't seem to care less as long as he knew how to fight it would undoubtedly be up to her.
"You aren't going to fight back for that?" Kankuro asked the slightly older brat in Tenten, "Temari just blew your little brother away."
Tenten sighed and started ticking off things on her fingers, "One, he's not my brother. Two, even though I wanted to say what he said too, I knew better than to say it to your face. And three, I've seen him get hit way harder than that today and get right back up, so all you really did at worst was piss him off."
"Okay, even if Temari did piss him off-." Kankuro got around to saying, "-Who cares? He's just a fucking ki-."
BOOM!
People scattered away from the explosion of sand that came from where Naruto had landed, proving Tenten's point by her reckoning, "See?"
The front of the sand dune had been blown off, with Naruto standing inside of it, holding his hands together in front of his body from the use of his first wind jutsu. He gave his entire body a few good shakes before jogging back over to the others, "Okay, that didn't even hurt and the only reason I'm not gonna kick your ass for that is because-."
"-Because you can't?" Temari finished for Naruto with a smirk. He used wind too. That was interesting. She'd totally turn it against him if he wanted to fight.
Temari really hoped he wanted to fight.
"-Because I'm supposed to be saving my energy to guard the cart forty yards away, because I want to know more about the seal you guys were putting up, and because you're beautiful so you get one of those."
Everybody got one as a matter of fact. Kakashi got one, Tenten got one, those three jerks that attacked the cart when he met Tenten got one, the Uchiha kid from the Hyuuga escape bridge got one. Everybody did.
By now Tenten was starting to get a little miffed though, "You never call me cute or anything like that, but you can say it to her?"
Not that she would have actually felt any differently from Temari if Naruto had indeed pestered her for something like that. He was younger than her and was more trouble than could be considered beneficial to have his attention in that fashion. But not hearing it from him and hearing it directed at another girl, that had blown him into a sand dune as a matter of fact, was indescribably annoying for some reason.
"You're my best friend and my teammate, you can't be cute." Naruto reasoned in what he felt was a logical manner, "You were cute, but now we work together so you can't be cute anymore or it would screw up the dynamic."
That just served to antagonize her further, "What dynamic? We train and spar with each other, beat up bandits that try to rob Teuchi-san, and do a piss-poor job of guarding a cart together. And I say piss-poor because we're right here and we aren't even watching it right now."
"We kind of are actually. It's being handled by top men."
"What top me-?"
"Top. Men."
In other words, clones stashed all over the place. When he made them, Tenten did not know because while paying attention to her surroundings to guard the cart she blocked out anything Naruto was doing that didn't revolve around him speaking to her or pointing out potential persons of interest.
Apparently Naruto was getting better at subtle clone creation. Good for him.
Kankuro could see Temari's ire rising, and while he despised brats, he wasn't keen on being around her after she blew up. Even if she killed the loud yellow-headed one, he'd be the one to really suffer for it later when she remained angry afterwards, "Kid, if I tell you about the seal will you shut the fuck up and go away?"
"We can't go away because we're on a mission that needs us to stay right in this general area, but I can make him shut up." Tenten said, preventing Naruto from saying whatever he was about to that more than likely would have made things worse.
That was good enough for Kankuro, at least for now. And it wasn't like the seal was some big weapon that could be used against them or any other human. It was something that had been spread by one man to the Sand Nomads, fairly recently in an effort to cut down on the fatalities incurred by Shukaku's rampages.
It wasn't a practical seal, it was extremely complex, and it was so situational it could never work under any other circumstances than the one they used it in. There was absolutely no danger in showing it to him.
And if it shut him up, all the better.
Kankuro couldn't form the intricate portion of the seal, so he had to show Naruto a scroll with a diagram of the technique, "Yaju-gata u~Oudo no Fuuin (Beast Warding Seal)." Its design consisted of a thick double-lined circle surrounding the kanji symbols for 'restrain' and dozens of smaller, intricate seal arrays surrounding it, "Here. Look."
And look Naruto did. Extremely closely.
Squinting and reading slowly, Naruto mumbled out words like 'suppress', 'overwhelm', 'trigger', 'biju', and other words. It took a while, but the others all realized that Naruto was translating, "…You can read that?" Tenten asked curiously, noticing the way his eyes danced across the parchment, "It looks like a lot of squiggles to me."
Sometimes with how dumb he acted in regards to most things, most recently evident by his dealing with Temari, it was easy for Tenten to forget that Naruto was fairly talented with sealing knowledge, at least when it came to interpreting them. Most ninjas on the mainland wouldn't know the first thing of how they worked, even if they used the seals themselves.
She wondered if he could teach her? Or maybe even make his own someday?
"Kinda." Naruto said, still staring as if he were trying to make out something else. Compared to this, Neji's juuinjutsu was downright simple to decode, "It's hard to explain. I mean, I can understand some of it, the ones that are by themselves." Benefits of an Uzumaki Clan education, "But most of the marks intersect with other stuff. I can't read those. Someone invented those arrays."
Which meant that someone knew what the hell they were doing when they made this. Reading seals was almost like a language, and just like any language you could create new words using the already established rules of the lexicon or complete nonsensical gibberish.
You knew when you had gibberish because the seal wouldn't work or it completely blew up in your face.
"Nobody can read seals." Temari insisted, clearly ignorant of just what went into the culture of a ninja on the other side of the continent, "Even if you could, how? You aren't even the one that created it to give to the Sand Nomads. You're just a kid."
"I didn't say I could read the whole thing." Naruto said, struggling and failing to read the true meat of the fuuinjutsu in front of him, "I can read a good bit of it, but I'm probably missing the parts that are really important." Like the part that soloed out biju to be affected, "…You said someone else made this and gave this to you guys?"
"Yeah, a few months ago he gave this to every Sand Nomad that he came across. We're supposed to set them up on all sides around a settlement to make sure we cover it." Kankuro explained, "He told us what it was for, how to use it, and he just left. He didn't ask for money, food, water, or anything. I didn't expect a ninja that strong to just give away a jutsu like this for nothing."
Knowledge on the biju aside from how devastating they could be when provoked (or not provoked in Shukaku's case) was slim to come by, especially in Kaze no Kuni. Someone that had developed a sort of means to deal with them was almost entirely unheard of. Until recently, Sand Nomads that came across Shukaku during one of its full moon rampages on a random area had to flee on the spot. At least now those that did not have the means to slow it down otherwise had a chance.
The death toll had been dropping lately all over the country during these monthly attacks for years. Ever since this preventative seal began spreading in popular use.
A small blush and a smile came to Temari's face upon remembering the man in question, "Minato-sama was so strong, even dad acknowledged he was stronger. But he was such a nice person. Most strong ninjas are stone-faced pricks. Not blue-eyed, genius gentlemen."
"Temari, he's like at least 20 years older than you."
"Shut up Kankuro, it's not like that!"
Meanwhile Naruto and Tenten just shared a look between the two of them before deciding to see just how deep this rabbit hole went, "Okay, when you say a few months ago we're talking less than six, right?"
XxX
(Out in the Desert)
This was going to be an interesting full moon sequence. Shukaku was always at its most destructive during these times. It always came out somewhere in the desert to slake its insane bloodlust, and it had a track record of violence unmatched by any biju in the world.
He was going to attract it to this place in the hopes of quite the dog and pony show. Only with more blood, devastated property, and loss of life than the conventional dog and pony show, so it would be much more entertaining.
"Hm. This is going to be an interesting scientific observation." A tall man with white skin, serpentine yellow eyes, long black hair, and a dark violet kimono over black pants and a mesh shirt with bandages as his sash, "Hopefully watching Shukaku yields something that I can use in my newest set of experiments. After all, kukukuku… the shinobi world demands progress."
And as the world demanded progress in regards to its ninja arts, he was there to improve upon them by any means necessary.
He fancied himself, and was touted by others as the most brilliant scientist in the Elemental Nations; inventing new ways to utilize chakra with technology, and discovering the secrets of multiple clans after studying their methods of fighting.
That wasn't where his passion lied though. His obsession was with the collective ninjutsu of the world itself. He reveled in reverse-engineering techniques and learning them himself, as well as creating and modifying his own. He had such a knack for it that he had amassed a fortune with which to conduct his experiments, all by the way of selling the results of his studies, selling techniques and other combat-related knowledge to those willing to pay handsomely.
In a time of constant war and backstabbing, there were ALWAYS those willing to pay handsomely for what a man like him could give them. Senju, Uchiha, Yotsuki, Aburame, all over the continent, if they could contact him they would enlist his science to strengthen their clans against their enemies.
The ultimate death merchant of the Elemental Nations.
Coming upon the deep black marks in the ground that commemorated the signs of a sealing array, the man stuck out an unnaturally long tongue, focusing his chakra in a heated form on the end of it that he dragged over the surface of the sand, breaking the array just slightly. Normally impossible, but with a jutsu such as the Shikoku Fuuin (Finger Carving Seal), created to manually write and disrupt arrays, it was simple.
He enjoyed the chaos of the world. It allowed him the ability to take in the downtrodden and easily malleable, to experiment with them and test his results while using them as his own standing army. It allowed him the freedom to do as he liked. To discover, to unveil the secrets generations past thought to be lost to time and legend.
His name was Orochimaru, and in his unflappable opinion it was his destiny to discover the true meaning behind everything. No matter what it took, no matter how long it took, and if it made him boatloads of money in the process so be it.
Watching things burn before he needed to study them in the aftermath was just a little hobby of his on the side.
"I can't wait to see the destructive power of Shukaku firsthand. It will prove to be… inspiring."
Jutsu List
Yaju-gata u~Oudo no Fuuin (Beast Warding Seal). A-rank fuuinjutsu, barrier ninjutsu. Close-range, supplementary, defensive. Created with the intent of deterring the biju away from certain areas, this jutsu creates a field within its area that reacts to the unnatural chakra of the mightiest tangible forces in the Elemental Nations. Though it works in differing ways with differing biju, the effect is generally the same. Intense pain and discomfort is inflicted upon those that enter the area, becoming more harmful the closer to the center that the biju travels. Being affected by this jutsu at its strongest point can cause paralysis in the overwhelming creatures, allowing action to be taken against them, even if it is just extra time to flee.
Major Clan Information
Sand Nomads
Leader: No Leader
Population: 2/5
Military Strength: 1/5
Economy: 2/5
Notable Traits: Propensity for wind or earthen-based techniques. Very frugal, pragmatic people. Ruthless in combat. Sun-weathered hair colors are common (bright colored hair is extremely rare), as are worn turbans and other light headwear of some sort to protect from the wind and sun. Constantly mobile lifestyle, no permanent residences. Incredible sense of direction and above-average survival skills are common amongst their people. No organized hierarchy. No actual clan ties. No joint affiliation with one another.
Area of Operations: Kaze no Kuni.
Alright, we're in the friggin' desert now, and Gaara still controls sand. Kishimoto mind-freaked me back with Gaara's big conversation with his dad (all the Shukaku vs. Karura for sand control crap), so I'm not even going to try and justify why I won't give him the ability.
It's important to the next chapter though, so just understand for now that Gaara in this story = future messiah of the desert because of what he has the potential to be one day due to the sand control. He hates Shukaku for personal reasons that a lot of people can probably guess before I even write it into the next chapter, and for his aforementioned messiah of the desert reasons. He's not as crazy as canon Gaara was, but due to expectations put on his shoulders for his abilities, the way he lives, and the general temperament of his family in general he's a hard kid.
Now for those of you wondering, no I'm not going to draw out the meeting with Minato for 20 chapters or something absurd like that. Screw that. It's not going to take too much longer to happen. I've got points to get to in this story.
Chasing Minato's shadow forever doesn't make for an interesting tale, and besides, waiting that long to do something like that isn't anything to do when you're writing. Maybe in a TV show, but not when you're writing something like this. I just want to get some things set first and get the tone of the alternate universe I'm using set up so that it's easy to understand and follow along to.
…Also, I dig character interaction, and I want this Naruto to have experienced some real-deal shit in the cold, cold clan-based world first, because he's still 10. So there's also that. It's not like there's a shortage of characters I can actually use to do it with either.
Alright? Cool. Anyway, I hope I dulled your senses for a few minutes, and I'll catch you next time.
Kenchi out.