Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. So I read chapter 646 of the manga… and yeah, I can ignore some of this shit right? Like, I can just ignore it and pretend I never found out that the Juubi was a tree? I know it's supposed to be canon, and with Mokuton he can claim that he sort of foreshadowed it what with the Senju getting the physical energy descended from the Sage of Six Paths, but man really? Come on, an unbreakable, vengeful god tree that wants yer chakra? Word?
Chapter 8: Dig Your Own Grave
Okay, no need to panic. So what if Shukaku was regenerating as they stood around the outside of an impenetrable sandstorm? That kind of damage had to take some kind of time to fix. For God's sake they'd blown his entire head and half of his upper body off.
"How long will it take for him to fix himself?" Naruto asked, dreading the answer. Shukaku would probably have a bone to pick with him first and foremost when he put himself back together, "Like an hour? Two hours?"
"Thirty minutes maybe," Pakura said with a pronounced frown, "He can repair himself quickly from what we've seen, but a good chunk of him was gone when he fell. We might have destroyed his brain temporarily as well, if he truly has a physical one, so that might be a factor."
"Uh huh… and when's sunrise?" Tenten asked with a nervous smile as she looked to the dark horizon, "Please say it's soon."
Pakura gave her a wry smile in return, "It's soon."
"Really?"
"No, but you told me to say that it was so I did."
So it was over.
If Tenten of all people was basically out of explosive tags, who else could have more on them? They'd been bombarding Shukaku with as much heavy artillery as they could muster from the very beginning. They'd lost over half of their original force of ninjas, and facing a full power Shukaku with decreased manpower and firepower would end badly.
Naruto dropped to his knees and placed his hands onto the ground, 'No. Not after all of this. Not after what everyone did to get us this far. Kakashi… Gaara's dad… everyone that died fighting all night long.'
To put forth so much effort and to fail, and for that failure to mean the eradication of everyone there… it made him sick. It was his fault if that were to come to pass. This was what being a ninja was really like, to the most extreme degree.
Every decision you made, whether you made it with the best of intentions in mind, could cost lives. Not just your own, but the lives of those that chose to follow you. Whether he'd meant to or not he'd directed the others to follow him when he went to follow Rasa and Gaara.
He just meant that he didn't want to die a coward. He just meant that it was his choice to at least try and fight where the civilians such as Ayame and Teuchi didn't when he'd said those things.
It was then that he looked up and saw that no one was trying to run away. They were all waiting for the sandstorm to come down. Whatever may transpire when it did, they weren't going to even try to run away beforehand.
Well if that was the case, the least he could do was stand up and do the same.
Moving over to the only people there that he knew, Naruto stood with Gaara, Temari, and Kankuro, "Well… it's not like we can quit now right? There's got to be a way to get past this thing somehow."
"You still think we can win?" Temari asked incredulously, "Did you hit your head when you landed?"
"Yeah, but that's not the point," Naruto admitted, "Come on! After all we did, we can't just roll over now and let Shukaku get back up!"
To prove a point as to the futility of the situation, Temari stepped forward and swung her fan at the sandstorm, "Kamataichi no Jutsu (Sickle Weasel Jutsu)!" The resulting powerful wind force from her fan smashed into the unnatural storm and did nothing to disrupt it in the slightest, "See? Feel free to try and get past that. Go ahead. Run into it face first. Maybe that'll work?"
As gorgeous as she was when she was being all sarcastic and snippy, now wasn't the time.
With a growl, Naruto glared at the older girl with the spiky blonde ponytails, "Well I'm not giving up." Before anyone could say anything else, Gaara walked forward toward the sandstorm by himself, "Hey, what are you doing?"
"I will not let this monster win," Gaara declared as he held his head, "The power over sand, the sand that comes to my defense without my direction… this is what our mother meant when she said to us that there was nothing she wouldn't protect us from. The least I can do, is fight the battle that she lost her life fighting."
With that, he held his hands up in the direction of the sandstorm in a position that appeared to be him trying to pry open the air. He visibly shook and strained as he tried to pull his hands apart, sweat dripping down his forehead as he worked.
Temari moved forward to direct Gaara to stop. He'd used too much chakra all night long to waste anymore doing something like this. Kankuro prevented her from doing so however.
"You are a relic from the past…" Gaara said to Shukaku as he tried to rip through his sandstorm covering, "…The only reason you seem to exist is to cause pain and torment to the people of the desert. My mother… she had a heart that was willing to face you to protect others despite heading to her death. She knew it was our purpose to prevent you from massacring others that can't fight back. Her purpose is my purpose… and I have the strength to fight for it!"
Suddenly, Gaara's hands spread far apart and a massive rip appeared in the sandstorm. The amount of effort he had to put forth in order to achieve such a task was enough to force blood to gush from his nose.
Amazement set aside, every ninja present proceeded to pile through without missing a beat. They didn't know how long Gaara could keep it open for, and it was the best chance they had to try and stop the monster inside.
Amongst them were Naruto, Tenten, Temari, and Kankuro.
"How in the world did he do that?" Tenten asked aloud as they all ran into the breach.
Kankuro just chuckled at the question, "Our Gaara is strong. Stronger than even we thought apparently." No kidding. Naruto and Tenten now felt more grateful than ever that they really didn't wind up fighting Gaara when they'd first met.
Upon getting far enough past the sandstorm they came upon an incredible sight however. It wasn't that of Shukaku rebuilding, though he was indeed trying to do so. Every time sand tried to rise to reform parts of his body it found itself pinned down and spaced back apart by Gold Dust.
Impossible. They had seen Rasa fall at the fury of Shukaku hours ago. But as they drew closer they saw that indeed it was him directing the traffic of his own weapon of choice. Temari and Kankuro could have run up to the man and hugged him… you know, if that sort of thing wasn't frowned upon as a show of weakness in their culture.
Also because of the wild upshots of sand that kept going off around him, probably the consciousness of Shukaku trying to get rid of the man that was preventing him from forming his body. However he was being protected from that by of all people Kakashi. Both of them seemed rather battered and torn up from their respective hardships from the battle, but they were alive.
"Oh," Kakashi said upon noticing that he and Rasa were no longer alone, having been joined by the other Sand Nomads, "Hello there! Which of you blew Shukaku's head off? Because that was really helpful to Rasa-san to finish his plan."
Temari moved closer but made sure to keep her distance, "Dad. How did you-? I mean, we saw you get-."
Rasa just stood focusing his attention on Shukaku, "Gold Dust forms a better protective shield than you'd think," He explained, "I did fall in with Shukaku though, and I hid myself inside of his body dispersing as much of the dust as I could through his body to try and weigh him down. Then he blew apart," A smirk crossed his face at that point, "It's much easier to hold him down when he's not whole."
"The situation is contained," Kakashi asserted with a shrug, "More or less at least." At that point he held up the design for the Beast Warding Seal and gestured to the ground around them, "Did you know this sandstorm makes a perfect circle around Shukaku? Convenient."
No way. He drew out the array himself once the sandstorm went up and did the most time-consuming part of the job for him? That sly bastard Kakashi.
It was then that Naruto realized that in the back of his mind he could hear Kurama shouting his head off and cursing Naruto for walking back into the limits of another one of those biju-limiting seals. In return he let out a chuckle that was more out of disorientation than humor, amazement that it all seemed to be over.
So that was a real battle, where real people on your side died right in front of you with nothing that you could do for them?
He had just fought in his first real large-scale battle, and he never wanted to do anything like that ever again. Within two hours when the sun finally surfaced, Naruto and Tenten savored that sight and burned it into their heads forever.
It might have been just a sunrise in the grand scheme of things, but it was the most beautiful sunrise that either of them had ever seen because they had to live through the night just to see it. Thankfully it didn't rise in the direction where the bodies were littered. It let them enjoy it for just a few seconds until they had to make do with the aftermath of what they'd survived.
XxX
"What an interesting night," Orochimaru commented to himself as he left the village area, a content smile on his twisted white visage as he carelessly sauntered away from the site of a battle for survival that he had directly instigated via his own actions, "The biju summoning ritual works, at least to attract Shukaku to an area. I'll have to test it later before I attempt to market the idea to one of the wealthier clans. But the things that I've observed…"
For some reason his mind kept going back to the sight of the little boy charging up Shukaku's chest, body covered in blazing red chakra. It was magnificent. It was something that he wanted to know more about. That wasn't regular chakra and he knew it, but that was all he knew.
And that was what ate at him.
That little boy was with Hatake Kakashi. Well that would make it somewhat easier to keep tabs on him than if he was with a no-name ninja. It would make him harder to get close enough to study though, but there were always means to an end, and he had the resources to achieve them.
That power was beyond human, and the prospect of figuring out what it was and how he obtained it was just a delicious thought. Orochimaru believed that he might have just gotten a new pet project to analyze.
He just had to get some things together to begin the process of studying him.
XxX
(Later That Morning)
Headed back east. That was the idea. Kakashi had pitched it, and no one had any arguments against it. Get them the hell out of that desert. There was no reason to be there anymore since the trail on Minato had drawn them a little closer to him, and striking while the iron was hot was for the best.
After the battle, Gaara had chakra exhaustion for his efforts to try and level the playing field of the battle. Rasa had several grievous wounds from his tribulation of enduring Shukaku's pressurized air attack and then surviving inside of his body for hours.
Those two were required to rest for the time being after the dead had been retrieved, thus leaving Kankuro and Temari to bid farewell to the visiting party on its way out of the country.
Naruto, sitting on the top of the cart with Tenten in their normal guard positions took to their task silently and dutifully. Neither of the two were complaining about something as trivial as the heat after the night they'd had before. It just didn't seem anything close to being important any longer.
Kakashi noticed this. Between entering the desert and the beginning of their journey to leave it, they had grown. As horrible as the battle with Shukaku had been for them to have to see, it was probably for the best that they did, 'It's better for them to get a taste of what they've gotten themselves into sooner rather than later.'
Tenten passed part of her time drawing out designs for what she thought could be good weapons to try and create some time in the future once she got the supplies and the mechanical knowhow to do her thing. Last night had proven to her if she hadn't known it before that she had a knack for ninja tools, and that would be her point of exploration for her development.
Naruto's mind was elsewhere at the moment, "That was a biju," He said, stating the obvious before he gulped hard, "We shouldn't have survived that, should we have?"
"No," Kakashi said bluntly, not willing to sugarcoat something so serious, "Shukaku is considered the weakest, even with his desert powers. Not for a lack of brute strength or power mind you, but because out of the nine of them he has the weakest mind. I didn't know what people meant until I saw it for myself."
"Could have fooled me," Tenten said, "Nothing about him seemed weak."
Kakashi just tapped on his own temple for emphasis, "He could have tried to destroy us all far sooner than when he actually tried to wipe you and the Sand Nomads out at once. He relies so much on his brute force and size, and the killing was nothing but a game to him, even when he was losing limbs since he regenerated everything. He neglected to pay attention to the smaller threats in exchange for trying to wipe out as many of you as he could at once. Smaller threats like Rasa surviving, and Naruto here special-delivering a blockbuster explosive down his throat."
At that, Tenten gave Naruto a grin that he returned and nudged his shoulder jestingly.
"By the way," Kakashi gave Naruto an overly pleasant smile behind his facemask that did nothing to hide the severity of his pending order, "Don't ever do anything like that again. If you died before I could get you to Minato-sama I could never face him or Kushina-sama again."
Wow, they were glad to see that he cared about them for the right reasons. Not. Were they really just burdens to him after all, just a means to show his loyalty to Minato for whatever reason he felt it for him? It was kind of a punch to the stomach to think about really.
"That… and I think you two are beginning to grow on me a little more than I thought you would," Kakashi concluded, turning back to the front to steer the cart along the road, "You're both good kids."
Maybe he did really like them a little?
Thinking of his dad, Naruto remembered what Kankuro and Temari had told him about the man before all hell had broken loose. Even after hearing it from their mouths and hearing whispers around the Uzumaki Clan's village about how talented he was, it was still hard to imagine that he was so powerful.
'My dad could have taken on Shukaku all by himself?' Naruto thought as he looked out along the vast desert, 'Could he really be that strong?' Could anyone be that strong? He just couldn't imagine it, 'That's just too much to believe isn't it?'
"Don't be so sure kid," Kurama chimed in, "I don't know your meatbag of a father, but if enough of you worthless humans keep saying that one of you in particular isn't so worthless, it bears believing to some degree."
Either way, if Rasa's tip on Minato's most recent activity was good Naruto would find out sooner rather than later if the man lived up to all of the hype.
XxX
(Some Time Later – Eastern Border of Kaze no Kuni – Border Village)
Villages that lay on the borders of the countries in the Elemental Nations might as well have been targets for outlaws. Not ninjas or samurai, or any sort of warrior belonging to any system. These types were the worst of the worst.
Some of them more so than others, for quite dark reasons.
As a single adult male figure walked through the modest wooden gates of a particular small settlement, he was instantly greeted with the sight of a town that had been thoroughly sacked. The smell of blood, of fires, of destruction still hung in the air. He could even see bloodstains marking the outside walls of homes.
Broken doors, broken windows. It wasn't looking good. Then he began to see that symbols of circles with upside-down triangles within them had been drawn in blood; on the walls, on the ground. Disgusting.
The man stood tall as he made his way about. Good-looking with wild, spiky blond hair and firm blue eyes. He wore blue trousers bandaged at the ankles down into black sandals and kept a closed, short-sleeved solid white haori over the long dark sleeves of his undershirt.
He was a very unassuming type. The kind of person you wouldn't spare a second glance at if you weren't looking for him in particular. There was a confident aloofness in everything he did, but the strength of his being laid beneath the surface.
If you heard his name, you would find it hard to consider for a moment that it was him until you paid attention to his shockingly golden hair. Then if you saw him in action you would never question his identity again.
Namikaze Minato, the Yellow Flash; one of the most dangerous men in the entire world, and widely recognized as the most powerful clanless ninja in existence.
A pensive look was fixed on his face as he took in his surroundings, "…Damn it. I didn't pick up the trail fast enough."
He had been in pursuit of a rather dangerous renegade element for over a week. It was a request that had originated in the northeastern portion of Hi no Kuni and moved wider and wider until the contract was eventually taken by him after it reached the borderlands of Kaze no Kuni.
These people were the absolute worst. Traveling around spreading a message of destruction after killing as many people as they could get their hands on and forcing others to join their ranks or suffer before dying. They were extremely grassroots, and because of their nature they never kept enough members to be a real threat to ninja clans, but because of that and because they never targeted ninja clan interests they were allowed to run amok.
This village was a prime example of why that was a horrible way to operate, and a weakness of the ninja system. When things of this nature were allowed to transpire, no one would do anything about it if it didn't have to do with their interests.
Rounding a corner he began to see corpses littering the streets and he let out a long quiet sigh as he continued to search the area. Instead of hiding or barricading themselves inside of their homes these people tried to run. They didn't make it far as he hadn't seen a single body that made it outside of the gates of the village.
These people weren't warriors or fighters of any kind. They were just regular people living in an out of the way town. Unfortunately this made them defenseless targets for the wandering cultists of the Jashin faith.
Coming to a fountain near the center of town, Minato saw a single ninja surrounded by over twenty bodies of the Jashin cultists. He knew that they were Jashinists due to their filthy cloaks stained with blood as if they were never cleaned off.
The nameless ninja's eyes remained open even in death, and the least Minato could do for now was close them for him. He had been the only one in the village that could defend himself, and he did what he could before being overwhelmed.
This was horrible.
Hearing the sounds of people in numbers, Minato took to the low-lying rooftops of the residences and moved over to the back end of the village where chanting was ringing out. Upon getting close enough, he concealed himself and bore witness to the sight of a post-kill ritual of the Jashinists, being led by a single man at the head of the pack, all of the hundred-plus followers looking to him for guidance.
He wore a pure red robe and had slicked back silver hair with purple eyes. The grin on his face was simply sickening, knowing that more than likely this was the person that was the ringleader of what had transpired here. Once again, Minato had to grit his teeth in stark acceptance that he hadn't been able to prevent this happening.
"Brothers!" The silver-haired priest sort of man shouted after concluding their prayers, or whatever they had been doing at the time, "Last night, did I fucking tell you or what? Under the doctrine of Jashin-sama there's nothing he rewards greater than the outright destruction of ignorant heathen scum like these! At this rate…" He held up his right hand with a strange triple-bladed scythe in his grasp, "…Every one of you loyal to the faith will be rewarded with power like mine."
Chattering sprang up from the robed Jashinists, their robes in all sorts of colors but all holding the same distinction of being splattered with blood, both new and old, "Brother Hidan!" One of them cried out, "When will we be ready?"
"That's up to me!" Hidan stated smugly, "Prove yourselves devout, and one day I'll share with you our religion's most treasured secret. The ritual that will bring you closest to Jashin-sama, so that our god may bestow upon you the ultimate reward for your dedication to slaughter."
All of them pulled small amulets with the symbol of their religion on them as Hidan did the same. His was larger, for emphasis that he was more important than they were.
"This world is about death brothers!" Hidan continued, "It's everywhere! Even with every advancement ninjas make, they're still rank amateurs at killing, so it's up to us to show them what real massacres are. It'll never be enough until we provide a world where Jashin-sama himself will see fit to descend and show everyone the true meaning of slaughter! Towns like this? Heh… it's not enough. One day, real towns, and eventually the ninja clans themselves. Show them all."
"I'm going to have to stop you right there," Minato said, letting his presence be known as he stood up from where he'd been listening, "I've seen and heard some sick things in my time. I've seen a lot of people fight for a lot of reasons, but I've never seen anyone where I could ever say that the world was a better place with them dead. Then I came across you."
Hidan just cackled wildly at the sight of more prey for his gathering, "You. You weren't here last night were you?" He asked rhetorically, "No. We cleaned this town out. Down to every man, woman, and child. So either you're a straggler that was out on a business trip, or you're just not from around here."
Turning around to face Minato, every Jashinist pulled out whatever potentially dangerous instrument they had on their person, ranging from crude kitchen knives to actual weapons such as short blades and clubs. None of them had the slightest bit of hesitation in their eyes, some actually grinning similarly to Hidan when it came to the prospect of killing him.
"Either way, you're just more meat on the table. Tear him apart!"
They all took five steps of their charge in Minato's general direction before he disappeared from the rooftop before their eyes. In a matter of five more seconds, Minato appeared at the backside of the pack holding a strange three-pronged kunai in his hand, the blade covered in blood.
The entirety of Hidan's cult fell to the ground spraying blood from their respective fatal wounds. Minato didn't flinch, turn back, or even blink as he flipped the odd weapon in his hand and caught it by the handle. He simply kept his eyes locked seriously on the ringleader in front of him.
"I didn't even see you move," Hidan said, thumping the back side of his triple-bladed scythe on his shoulder several times. As the blood from his deceased followers ran out onto the ground, Hidan didn't seem to regard their deaths as anything worth fretting over in the slightest, "Those clowns aren't fighters, but that was still impressive. I swear though… I think I know who you are from what you just did."
"Oh really?"
"Yeah," Hidan said, his grin slowly growing, "A man so fast that his every move looks like a flash, that stupidly bright yellow hair, working alone the way you are, yeah. You're Namikaze Minato aren't you?" When Minato didn't deny anything, Hidan laughed maniacally, "Oh fuck, you really are insane aren't you? The man that stole an S-rank ninjutsu from the Senju Clan!"
A deep scowl formed on Minato's face at being accused of any sort of thing from a man like Hidan. He was well aware of the rumor behind his obtaining the jutsu, because it had been spread by the Senju Clan themselves after he began to rise to prominence, but it was not the truth.
Traditionally, clanless ninjas received the bottom-barrel jobs of the shinobi world. Any client willing to pay large amounts of money for work would always shop their missions around to the clans in their area, making sure to balance price with quality. Even though clanless ninjas were always the cheapest, their quality was always the lowest.
If you were a clanless ninja you had to get used to working for the bare minimum to survive or hoping for a commission from the larger clans that needed extra bodies for certain reasons. Those were your two options or you otherwise learned a trade to support yourself.
For Minato, on a particular mission commissioned by the Senju Clan, it had suicide ramifications behind it, but being young and eager he accepted the recruitment for the mission, especially when he found out that instead of just receiving money he would be given a jutsu from the Senju Clan arsenal needed to complete the mission. It was the perfect carrot to bait young and dumb freelance ninjas into doing the dirty work of other clans.
The upfront payment was training for Hiraishin no Jutsu, and he and two others were taught the technique in something of a mini-camp seminar to give them an easy way out of a fortress protected by the Uchiha that they were requested to infiltrate and steal a state secret from.
Upon obtaining what they needed and using the technique to escape to the pre-marked extraction point by the Senju Clan they were ambushed upon arrival so that no witnesses were left from the mission and there were no outside learners of the Hiraishin.
Minato's two temporary teammates were killed in the ensuing trap, but Minato however was more than powerful enough to survive on his own and kill his attackers. While he wasn't given his post-mission payment due to the treachery, he was paid plenty in jutsu knowledge. Even if they only gave him the unfinished version that required three people to work, his genius and overall ability as a ninja hadn't been known at the time.
In a matter of years he managed to reverse-engineer the jutsu from what he already knew about it and made it his own. The Senju Clan hadn't bothered to learn who he was when he'd taken the mission. He was meant to die at the end of it. Thus when he surfaced years later gaining fame from using what was the jutsu of their Senju Tobirama, it was purported that he had stolen it.
That in of itself opened a gigantic can of worms in his life that he felt the ramifications of to that very day. There was more than just the reason of him being an outsider that kept him away from his wife and child in Uzu no Kuni. It was the Uzumaki Clan's close relationship with the Senju Clan. Their clan ties and working relationship that dictated that an enemy of the Senju was an enemy of the Uzumaki, and vice-versa.
But that was another story that he was intent on achieving his dream to fix one day.
Hidan swiftly attacked Minato with surprising ferocity. For someone that knew who he was, he certainly wasn't fighting as if he were wary of his reputation. Minato was more than fast enough however to avoid such a reckless assault and moved past one of Hidan's strikes before he even knew what hit him.
The silver-haired dark priest spit blood as a result of the five stab wounds he'd taken before Minato dodged him. Heart, liver, each lung, and left kidney, all punctured deeply by the awkwardly pointed knife in Minato's hand.
To his surprise however, Hidan simply growled. He didn't even drop to a knee. Turning his head, Minato jumped out of the way of the scythe sent his way in a ranged attack. Now he had two questions. Not only, how did he survive? But also why was he throwing his scythe?
As it flew past him, Minato found that it was attached to Hidan's body underneath the sleeve of his robe by a thick, lengthy cable. Again showing why he was the fastest man in existence, Minato ran up the length of the cable before Hidan could even blink at the feat and kicked him right underneath the chin hard enough to break his neck.
"GUK!" Hidan had been kicked hard enough for his head to dangle backwards off of his spine like an open Pez dispenser. Minato watched in morbid intrigue as Hidan pulled his head back into the correct position with a wet series of pops and cracks, "That Hiraishin no Jutsu (Flying Thunder God Jutsu) is really something."
Once again he faced Minato, still full of life after an attack that should have killed him, "Two things. First, what the hell?"
"It's a gift from Jashin-sama," Hidan declared, "Constantly coming up with new rituals to express my devotion to the only real God this world will know granted me this ability. Nothing you can do can kill me!"
"…Good to know," Minato commented before narrowing his eyes at his enemy, "Second, you're kind of wrong about something."
"What!?"
"I really haven't used Hiraishin once since I've gotten here. That was all me," Before he even finished his sentence, Minato appeared behind Hidan in an instant, in a yellow flash. A subtle movement of his hand moving down to his side as he reappeared. This time, Hidan's entire head popped off of his shoulders in a geyser of blood, "That was Hiraishin though. See the difference?"
At the outset of the fight after stabbing Hidan repeatedly, he'd set the marker that he needed to mark his area of teleportation for the jutsu. Hidan had been such a berserker that he'd never even noticed.
Most people that saw Hiraishin no Jutsu never really lived to spread the word on how it was used anyway, so it wasn't like he would have recognized what it was for if he had been paying attention.
As his body dropped limply to the ground and twitched wildly for a few seconds, Hidan's head just bounced off of the ground and rolled for a spell before coming to a stop.
"Yeah, you see the difference," Minato said, swiping the blood off of his Hiraishin kunai as he stooped down to pick up Hidan's head by the hair. After lifting him up though, he held him at arm's length when Hidan's facial muscles moved and he started snapping his teeth, "Whoa!"
"I'll rip your throat out you son of a bitch! Is that all you've got, decapitation? I'm immortal bitch! Your mother sucks di-!" Minato shut him up by hurling the head against the nearest wall he could see, effectively concussing Hidan and knocking him unconscious. For a holy man he had quite the mouth on him.
At least he had proof of mission success to give to his contractor, and Hidan by his own machinations wouldn't have death as an easy escape from what he'd done. Though he'd have to put a muzzle on him before he turned him in if he wanted to keep from punting him a hundred yards away every five minutes.
With a sigh, Minato kept Hidan's head with him as he began to do what he felt was his duty as the first responder on the scene. As far as he was concerned it was up to him that he put the people of this village to rest. No one else was going to do it if it wasn't him.
XxX
(Later That Evening – Western Kawa no Kuni)
Minato entered a bar in an extremely popular travel town with a weary look in his eye. He'd spent much of his afternoon after destroying the Jashin cult burying the citizens of the unfortunate village he'd located them in. With the other Jashinists he'd simply burned their bodies before warping back to the town of origin where his client lived.
The man gratefully paid and thanked him, even after receiving Hidan's still mumbling severed head. Minato didn't feel much for being thanked however. He'd seen his share of atrocities in his life, but at times it just got to be too much. You didn't get used to certain things, no matter how much time passed.
After changing his filthy clothes at the inn his longtime mentor had booked for him while he was on the job, Minato went to find the man himself. He wasn't very difficult to locate, even without a Hiraishin marker on his person. All he had to do was find the red light district in the bigger cities and locate the place with the most boisterous sounds of laughter coming from within.
"Bwa-ha! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!"
Yep, he was in the right place.
It didn't take him long after entering to find his mentor sitting in the middle of a corner booth with two women on each side of him, hanging off of him as he presumably paid for drinks and told them stories of a grandiose shinobi nature. That Jiraiya, always into civilian women.
Jiraiya was a bright man of middle-age, with long shaggy white hair in a long ponytail down his back, a wart on the side of nose, and red lines trailing down his face beneath his eyes. He wore a sleeveless red haori over a green long-sleeved kimono top and similarly colored pants, as well as a pair of wooden sandals, hand guards, and a horned headband with the kanji for 'oil' on it.
Walking up to the table, Minato set his hands down on it and leaned forward, bringing whatever Jiraiya's story had been to a close, "Thanks for all of the help sensei, really."
Jiraiya raised an eyebrow and easily noticed Minato's sarcasm. The man wasn't good at it, "Okay, aside from setting the beacon point at the inn to give you a quick trip here, would me going have made the fight you had any easier?"
There was no possible way that fight could have been any easier for Minato, "No."
"Then at most, all I would have done would have been to slow you down," Jiraiya reasoned before grinning at his pleasurable company, "This is the man I was telling you about. My pupil. The reflection of my greatness as a ninja. Bask in his greatness and know that it was I, the gallant Jiraiya, that laid the foundation that his castle in the sky was built upon."
The woman, whether it was because of the drinks or Jiraiya's way with words, giggled or swooned at his literary prose, while Minato just stared at him for several long seconds, "…How can you set a foundation for a castle in the sky?"
"Shut up Minato," Jiraiya muttered, hiding his displeasure behind a sip of alcohol, "So the mission?"
"You were right," Minato said with a sigh, pulling up a chair to the front of the table, "Taking you along probably would have slowed me down, but I wasn't exactly timely myself," Jiraiya cringed in understanding without having to say it and spook the ladies. He knew what the Jashinists were supposed to be all about, "It's times like those… I don't know. Between things like that and the way some clans take my ideas, I'm in over my head here I think. What kind of dream-?"
"None of that crap. You got to those Jashinists as fast as you could, and dwelling on it won't change anything. If you couldn't find them fast enough no one could have, Inuzukas included." Jiraiya cut him off effectively before he could get too far on his self-effacing tangent, "I didn't teach you basics of the life back when you were a ratty little kid because I thought it would be fun to corrupt a runt. I did it because I saw something in your eyes. You've always exceeded my expectations Minato, no matter how large the task."
"…I keep waffling back and forth on whether or not I'd ever want my son to meet you," Minato said, a small smile slowly spreading across his face, "There are times when you say things like that and you prove that you're the man I look up to, and then…" Without really saying it, Minato gestured to Jiraiya's drinking and fraternizing loosely with the fairer sex, "…Most of the time you're this guy."
"I work hard, I play hard," Jiraiya said, pulling his lady friends in closer to him for emphasis, "Besides, you never know when it'll all go to hell, we could all die any day, yadda-yadda, you know the drill. Basically the whole basic hedonism justification riot act that you refuse to get into."
"Hey," Minato said, holding his hands up defensively, "I actually have a wife and a kid."
"Yeah, about this mystery woman of yours, I've never even seen her. A ring on a chain around your neck doesn't really mean much to me."
"When everything comes together one day and I can see her again Jiraiya-sensei, you will," Minato said, shaking his head with a smile, "I'll make sure of it."
XxX
(Some Time Later – Elsewhere – In the Skies)
Flying through the air on a large paper bird, the stoic blue-haired beauty controlled the direction of her origami creation while her partner rode farther back and navigated their way to their mutual interest point. Ever since picking him up it had been quite the effective teaming effort.
With the help of a special Senju Clan tracking ninjutsu meant to locate biju, they managed to pick up Naruto's trail after following the path of the rumors that had sent him west in the direction of the desert. From there it was all just a matter of following the jutsu to the nearest trace of a tailed beast.
Konan had to admit, as far as having partners forced upon her went, she could have done far worse than Tenzo. As far as their relationship as makeshift partners went, he was mostly quiet, never really trying to chat with her unless it had to do with their job of locating their target, and she rarely caught him ogling her form clad in her form-flattering dress.
If nothing else he was a complete professional.
Sporting short brown hair, Tenzo wore rusted brown plate armor with black pants and a black undershirt. He wore a forehead protector that framed the sides of his face and possessed a metal plate with the Senju Clan crest on his forehead. He was a younger man than her, significantly so at twenty-two years old, which made it particularly annoying when during the times he did speak to her about something non-mission related, it would always come back to the same question.
"Why is it that you're so loyal to Uzumaki Nagato?"
There it was again. He just kept beating that dead horse.
"I don't see how my loyalties to Nagato-sama matter to anyone else," Konan said, not even turning around to face Tenzo. Still, she knew that he sat behind her, holding his arm up with his palm facing outward, the symbol for a special sensing jutsu emblazoned on it as a green crystal necklace dangled from around his wrist and hand, pointing in a direction like the needle of a compass. His concentration was , "My actions on his behalf will ensure that the Senju Clan knows of his resolve on the partnership of your two clans. That's all you should care about."
"I just ask because you're not an Uzumaki Clan member. You're unaffiliated." Tenzo clarified, "It's odd, you understand that don't you? This is a delicate situation, and not really something that a clanless ninja would ever be involved in."
"I could ask you the same," Konan rebutted with a bit of ice in her tone at someone trying to dredge up her personal motivations, "It's common knowledge for those out in the world of who you are, Mokuton no Tenzo. It's closer guarded knowledge that you aren't a born child of the Senju Clan. Your origins to your clanship are rather shady reflection of your clan if they're to be believed, so why are you so loyal?"
"Go ahead and say it," Tenzo declared firmly, "I'm not ashamed of who I am or what I came from."
"So it's true then? You're the end result of the merchant of death Orochimaru's experimentation on replicating the Mokuton bloodline," A distasteful look crossed Konan's face as she kept her back turned to fly the paper bird, "The rumors are that decades ago he was contracted by the Senju Clan to find a way to bring it about after it disappeared from their line. He used children for that. Over sixty."
Tenzo just chuckled in return, "The way you put it, you make it seem as if was such an atrocity."
"Sixty children, and only one survived. It seems like it was to me."
"Sixty children that didn't have a future anyway," Tenzo clarified, "Do you know how easy it is to abduct children? There are countless orphans in every country all over the Elemental Nations. No one cares about them. They're just byproducts of the fallout from the constant fighting. I figured that you of all people would know this better than most."
And she did. Bitterly, Konan had to admit that Tenzo had a point. She was older than him, so she knew it better. When you lost your family to the ravages of war, and you had no one else you were just background dressing to the rest of the world.
Tenzo elaborated further on his point, "Even if I was kidnapped, I was dead anyway. I know that. I didn't lose anything. Surviving it actually gave me something. When I showed signs of the Mokuton, I gained people in my life. Tsunade took me in personally, adopted me personally as family. The rest of the clan never saw me as anything lesser. They actually believed I was more Senju than they were because of my kekkei genkai. It doesn't matter if they were the reason that I suffered for a short time. What I got afterwards, it made up for all of it."
After hearing that, Konan figured that if anyone would understand why she was loyal to Nagato it would be Tenzo. The way he put it, his loyalty was due to finding something in the world that recognized him when he had nothing else. That wasn't too far removed from Konan's reasons.
At a time when there had been nothing else for her to do but struggle for herself to survive, she found someone that believed in her and helped her whenever she needed him. In harsher times for her, Nagato had been her symbol of hope that she strived to reach. Now that she was powerful enough to return the favor she would do so until he recognized just what she was willing to do to walk alongside him, as more than just his friend.
Feeling a bit of camaraderie between them after Tenzo's previous admission, Konan sighed and decided to give him something in return, "You might think it rather foolish, but you could refer to my reason of being loyal to Nagato-sama as unrequited love maybe?"
Tenzo raised an eyebrow curiously but remained silent. Why would anyone fail to return the affections from a woman like Konan? She was gorgeous. Most men on the face of the planet would risk putting themselves through hell if it meant obtaining the unconditional love from someone like her.
"I know that he doesn't feel the same way, no matter how wonderful he's been to me for years and years," Konan said, casting a misty gaze to the lands over the side of the paper bird, "He's always loved someone else. Someone else that already fell for another a long time ago," She laughed bitterly at that. What a vicious cycle it was, "I don't care about anything else. He's the only person I'll ever show my allegiance to."
"No one else?"
"I had someone else once... but he's gone now. And my sensei… he figured that he'd taught us enough and cut us loose," There was a stark melancholy to Konan's tone and in her eyes. Tenzo could see it even from the side view of her face that he had, "Do you see now? People in my life have died and simply left me behind. Nagato-sama is the only one that never has."
And for that man she would do something even as unsavory as taking the life of a child.
Tenzo didn't say anything else, simply indicating from that point forward the direction that they needed to go in per the crystal's instruction to locate said child.
XxX
(With Naruto – Western Kawa no Kuni – Twin Ridge Town)
Twin Ridge Town was perhaps the biggest town that Naruto had ever seen. It was quite the sight. Split into two sections across a spacious, scenic great river gorge, a large dam served as the primary bridge between the two sides.
Normally one would be hard-pressed to find a settlement of this size, even places under the control and protection of ninja clans, but Twin Ridge Town had several factors going for it that built upon one another and made it so.
Situated in Kawa no Kuni (Land of Rivers), it was a major stopping point for those going to and coming from the deserts of Kaze no Kuni due to the dam providing a convenient source of water for those needing to fill up their supply for their journeys. From that, a strong and thriving merchant spirit came to be, as more shops could be found here than anywhere else that Naruto had ever seen. He didn't even know why you would need twelve different places to go to shop for baked goods, but lo and behold, this town had that many.
The number of weapon stores, bookstores, inns and taverns, and other shops simply blew his mind. Apparently there was also something of a thriving red light district, but that was something that was not going to be touched upon… at least until he was significantly older.
With all of these things, it was also an epicenter of happenings. Since they were looking to get a bead on Minato's location, Kakashi deigned that this was the best place they were going to find relevant rumblings of the Yellow Flash's most recent whereabouts so he took off after giving the kids a means to quickly signal him if needed.
Needing to restock her supply of combat goods after quite the struggle in the desert, Tenten had been granted a shift off from watching the ramen cart to garner herself some replacement equipment. It was to be a quick errand and she'd eyed a nice ninja surplus shop en route to their stopping point.
In a nice overlook area where customers could also enjoy the view of the side of the ravine, Naruto sat off to the side keeping an eye on things as had become routine at this point. It was all just part of the job, and when that job meant watching over people he cared about, of which Ayame was included, he found the boring practice to be more tolerable.
He also had a new method of training that Kakashi had turned him onto that kept him busy while he kept watch. The practice of kunai-spinning; a chakra control exercise that required Naruto to first learn how to use his chakra to safely balance the point of a razor-sharp kunai in the palm of his hand before then learning the next step, which was to use his chakra to make it slowly rotate.
It was mundane and it hurt, but he didn't need to keep his eyes on it to focus on it. Kakashi had also assured him that if he wanted to learn a cool jutsu in the future he would practice this exercise.
It also added something to his presence while on guard duty. People were less inclined to make a ruckus or try something on an old man and a teenage girl running a ramen cart when you saw a kid with a look of focus staring right at you, spinning the point of a deadly weapon in his palm.
That was a plus, as being such a big social hub of a town and being unaffiliated with any ninja clan or samurai gathering it was also something of an outlaw outpost. Ninjas from all sorts of clans, roving samurai, monks, bounty hunters, and all sorts of other unsavory characters moved through constantly, making it a possible powder keg at any moment.
Deterrence was the best initiative to take in advance. When people saw that he was a ninja kid they found themselves less inclined to stir anything up. The thought of veritable child soldiers was a scary thought to many people not of a particularly combat-related background.
"Stop! Hey Naruto, a thief!"
Hearing Teuchi's call, Naruto noticed someone fleeing with a take-away container of ramen. Someone stealing ramen? On his watch? He didn't think so.
Grabbing the kunai in his grasp he flung it in front of the feet of the departing civilian thief, stopping him in his tracks long enough for another Naruto to appear from somewhere in hiding and snatch the container. He had eyes all over the place. It wasn't just the original sitting around by himself. Bidding the thief a glare that sent him skittering off empty-handed, the clone went right back to the shadows.
In actuality, another clone had gone off to corner the man and question him on why he had stolen. Apparently he had no money or place to stay in town. Damn his soft heart, but he let the guy go with a warning. He'd pay Teuchi for it himself later. One time only, and no one else saw him do it, so it was okay.
That little episode had done enough for those that saw the important part of Naruto being quick to respond to assert that he was a full-on ninja, and that the cart was not to be messed with. No more incidents occurred from that point forward for the next hour or so.
At that point a woman with a light blue paper rose in her hair that had been a patron of the cart moved over to him with her meal and took a seat by him. He had been paying attention to her more than most of the others in line for the last few minutes since she'd arrived because she was thoroughly beautiful. That by itself set off alarms and caused him to regard her warily, because why the hell would she go near him of all people?
"Hello little one," She said, giving him a small smile as she pried open the top to her meal and broke apart her chopsticks to eat. His terse stare didn't seem to make her uncomfortable in the slightest as she gracefully ate, eyes closed and slowly savoring her food.
A small kunai tucked in his hand, Naruto was ready to outright do what was needed just in case, but all this lady was doing was eating and having a seat. What was the right thing to do? Threatening to attack her was out because she wasn't doing anything and he wasn't a bastard, and telling her to leave? There were only so many places to sit at that particular overlook of the ravine, and it wasn't like he owned them all himself.
"I like the marks on your cheeks," The stoic woman said, pausing for a moment to speak to him, "They're cute."
"Uh… thank you?" Naruto didn't know quite how to respond to that other than idly scratching at his whisker-marks, suddenly feeling self-conscious about them, "I don't really think they're so great."
The last few days he'd spent in Uzu no Kuni he'd taken them as something of an indication that he was different, especially with the things he'd heard the other kids who didn't like him to begin with whispering about. Even after leaving he'd never been complimented on them before. Hell, the first sight of them had brought his mother to tears.
"They're special, and what they represent makes you special," The woman insisted, "Even amongst the rest of your clan, you're special Naruto. For better or worse," Upon dropping his name, she saw his eyes slowly widen in shock, "Yes, I know who you are. You've never met me, but I'm a close friend of your clan head and I've known your mother for quite some time as well. My name is Konan."
The casual admission that she knew what he was and who he was ate at his heart. There was a reason he'd been forced to run away from his clan after all. Involuntarily, Naruto gulped nervously, "Y-You were looking for me?"
"Mm-hmm," Konan nodded to him, "I can honestly tell you that she misses you greatly. First your father was forced to leave and then you were taken, ripped right out of her arms. She tries to be brave, but I understand. Even so, you do know why it's dangerous to let a jinchuuriki roam don't you? Especially one attached to the Uzumaki Clan."
Having seen what Shukaku could do and being told that he hadn't even been taking things seriously during that deadly night in Kaze no Kuni, yes, he could imagine what others would think of a human being that held that much power inside of their body.
The people meant to police that sort of thing and widely accepted as the sealing masters of the ninja world, the Uzumaki Clan, possessing a living jinchuuriki reeked of hypocrisy to every other clan in existence. This needed to be contained before Naruto wound up showing a sign of being a jinchuuriki that couldn't be ignored as just a paranoid rumor as he roamed the world.
"It was the masked man that did this."
"The masked man that had no defining features other than his attire? The one that disappeared in and out of your clan's domain without a trace despite its sensors and patrollers? The one that's more ghost than man," She shook her head sadly, "A man with no identity is a weak culprit to pitch. Even if it's true, the biju still has to come out of you regardless, for your clan's peace of mind. They'll be the ones to suffer the repercussions of your existence if you don't."
There was no hiding that he was one, especially from the Senju Clan. As Tenzo had demonstrated at the tail end of tracking him down after they'd gotten close enough for the jutsu to pick him up, even inside of a human, with the right technique you could pick a jinchuuriki out with the appropriate technique.
"I'll get him out myself."
Hearing Naruto mumble to himself, Konan looked down at him and saw him staring at the ground and holding his stomach tightly, "What was that?"
"I'll get him out myself," The boy was dead serious and looked her in the eye to express such, "I didn't do anything wrong, and I'm just supposed to let you take me back and suck all of the life out of my body?" He asked gravely, "Have there ever been any others before me?" There had to have been if his clan had a procedure in place for dealing with him.
"Yes. Throughout history there have been three other attempts that were all caught onto. They all had their biju extracted as well," Knowing what he was going to ask, Konan simply decided to cut to the heart of it, "…None of them ever survived the process. But then again, I don't have to extract it from you."
"You don't?"
"No. There's another way. It's faster and won't hurt as much."
A sharp blade formed from folded sheets of paper around Konan's arm as she simultaneously thrust it forward at Naruto, quickly enough to run him through quietly before he even knew what hit him. The look of terror on his face when he realized that he'd been stabbed. Her eyes didn't show the slightest change of emotion from how she'd been talking to him beforehand.
Those eyes did express quite a bit of surprise when Naruto dispelled in a puff of smoke from his fatal wound. The moment he popped, Teuchi's normally closed eyes opened up and he quickly closed up shop, pulling down the metal screen and locking everything down.
Having not been present for Naruto's quick handling of the thief situation, Konan had not picked up that Naruto had a solid clone jutsu in his arsenal.
By now after using clones for as long as he had, Naruto had figured that even though he was guarding the cart there was always a chance that someone could get the drop on him and attack him. Thus he alternated sitting in closest to the cart personally and using clones to do it while he watched elsewhere from afar like the rest of his clones. It was safer to mix it up, keep people that might have been watching him guessing, and when the clone dispelled he realized what was happening anyway.
It also made counterattacks that much more satisfying when all of his clones received the memory and swarmed on the threat against him at once while the attacker was still befuddled. Naruto's clones didn't miss a beat, launching themselves out of the town woodwork, up to eighteen of them, all targeting Konan before she even stood up.
Converging on her all at once, kunai drawn, they stabbed her at once. As distasteful as he found attacking someone ruthlessly, she started it. He'd never forget the heartless look she gave him as she ran his clone through, thinking it was him. He got it once again when his clones got her and didn't see any blood or even any indication on her face that she had been injured.
In the areas where she'd been stabbed, Konan's body and clothing seemed to lose its coloring and consistency, appearing more like paper than actual flesh and fabric. A faint sizzling sound came from within, causing a particularly savvy clone to go wide-eyed at the thought of the sound. It was too late however for them as the explosive tag buried in the Paper Clone exploded and destroyed them all.
From her place standing atop one of the many closely crowded buildings, Konan passively observed the fireball that her substituted clone created, "He knows a high-level technique like that? Damn you Kushina."
She didn't have to wonder where he was for very long, as she bore witness to a loud crackling bolt of lightning being shot directly into the air. Narrowing her eyes she formed a set of paper wings and flew swiftly over to the location where she found Naruto holding a moderately-sized bamboo tube.
Staring up at the woman hovering in front of him with an owlish look on his face, Naruto didn't move a muscle, as if he were facing down some sort of predator that would attack him if he made any sudden motions.
Konan stared him down and realized that the tool he'd just used was intended fired off a signal that could be seen and heard from far away. A double-edged sword of sorts, since while those with him would know something was wrong upon seeing it, she could find him as well.
Then she stopped to think about it.
"You're not the real one are you?"
Naruto pursed his lips and thought about it, tilting his head while thinking about how to correctly answer that question, "…Yes. I am the real one, because that's the answer that'll make you stay here the longest and let the real me actually find a place to hide."
Konan was unamused by his attempt to be cute, instead using her chakra to force sheets of her paper to swarm around her body. In response, Naruto just slammed the bottom end of the bamboo tube onto the ground, shooting another bolt of lightning up into the air with a booming crackle just as Konan tore him to shreds with paper shuriken.
Someone like Kushina would have taught her own son something as annoying as Shadow Clone Jutsu after he'd gained the chakra to freely abuse it.
Such was the trademark of Konan's life; impossibly bad luck.
XxX
With the real Naruto, by then he had gotten as far away as he could by the time he felt his diversion/signal clone die off and proceeded to drop to the street via an alley. Before walking out amongst the general population he utilized Henge to change his form to that of a nondescript, regular, everyday town ragamuffin. Hiding in plain sight as it were.
Silver lining: whoever this Konan lady was, she happened to be after him and him alone.
Man, chakra could make anything dangerous couldn't it? She killed his clones with paper.
'Wait, what the hell am I running for?' Naruto thought to himself from the back of his mind as he continued to blend in with the foot traffic of the town, 'I fought a biju! You're not allowed to run again after you do something like that!'
He quickly shook himself of those thoughts. Being constantly exposed to Kurama's proud mindset that made him constantly talk himself up and reference his greatness was beginning to rub off onto Naruto. By now, after dealing with Kakashi, Pakura, Rasa, and other ninjas he'd met that outclassed him on the battlefield he could tell when he was out of his league.
Fortunately, from how she'd carried herself at the cart she wasn't willing to include innocents in her endeavor to take him out. She could have attacked his main clone from afar with that nasty razor-sharp paper barrage and had a good chance to take it out without getting close to him, but didn't do so. Nor did she try to include the cart in her attack whatsoever.
With the blinders of the townsfolk to mask his movements, Naruto eventually reached the weapons surplus store where Tenten had gone off to. If nothing else it would get him off the street for a bit. If Kakashi couldn't find him he'd look for Tenten next, and that was where the older ninja would find him in this case.
If he saw and/or heard the two signals hopefully.
Upon entering the large shop, he saw his bun-haired partner apparently haggling with the owner for three different crates of supplies, and apparently not faring to well in her attempt to barter with a businessman.
"I don't care kid," The grown store owner said, shaking his head in exasperation, "You can keep pulling out all of the blueprints you want, it's not cash."
"But you can make these and get them mass-produced yourself!" Tenten tried to reason, "Look, the Chain Wind Staff is a great specialty melee weapon, the Injection Shot is a great long-range stealth weapon-," That she hadn't really finished designing yet, "-And the Lightning Barrel is a great support tool. I've got more. There's got to be something I've got worth all of these supplies."
Upon seeing some of the designs, the shopkeep frowned, "Kid, the second thing, it's just a signal. I might as well use a flare. I sell flares already."
"And what about when you run out of flare shells and gunpowder, what then? This just needs some of your chakra to work and someone to set the base charge at the bottom of the barrel. Then it's good until you break it somehow," Putting on her best smile, Tenten tried to keep selling her invention, "They're handmade and the interior is lined with-."
"I don't buy blueprints from kids. Sorry. I can't trust these things, even if you demonstrated one prototype that just so happens to work."
"That's so ageist! I put just as much research into-!" Tenten found her hand grabbed by some strange town boy who was surprisingly strong. Strong enough to drag her outside where she quickly freed herself from his grasp, "What's your problem kid?"
"Tenten," Transformed Naruto said, "Just act cool and come with me."
"Naruto?" After getting a nod from her transformed partner she forgot all about trying to get her foot as a weapons designer in the door somewhere and put her blueprints away as she began to follow him, "Why are you in a Henge? And why aren't you with the cart?"
"Somebody's trying to kill me," Naruto summarized, "And I didn't leave it alone. After I figured I ditched the lady chasing me I made a few more clones to double back and watch over things there just in case."
"Why is anyone after you anyway? You're just a cart's bodyguard," Tenten didn't understand it.
If he left and the person attacking him still targeted him, he had to have something that they wanted. Aside from that, only bandits, other thugs, and low-class ninjas hard up for some kind of money would attack a food stand to begin with, and Naruto could and had easily handled those types almost every day.
For someone to actually make him retreat in a fight, they had to be pretty damn good.
"It's probably better for you that you don't know why he has people after him," A shadow was cast from above the two of them that covered the two young ninjas, "I'd understand why he wouldn't tell anyone he didn't have to, but you can't hide certain things from the world Naruto-san."
Both looked up to see a man in Senju Clan styled plate armor, holding up a green crystal necklace that glowed and pointed at Naruto. By now, the streets up and down the block had begun to clear, as there were enough fights on the streets for people to know that the best course of action was to get indoors or behind something sturdy when the killing intent began to fly.
"I thought a woman was chasing you." Tenten asked as they looked up at the man before them, "What's going on?"
"There was," Naruto replied before hesitating on the second question, "…And, I don't really know how to tell you what's going on." His eyes shot her way for an instant with guilt in them before he looked back up and noticed their assailant forming a hand-seal, "Crap!"
"Doton: Doryuusou (Earth Release: Earth Flow Spears)!"
Naruto tackled Tenten out of the way just as several spears of rock emerged from the ground in an attempt to skewer them both. By then, Tenten realized that the man above them was a real-deal Senju Clan ninja. A member of the most powerful clan in existence. Her body began to shake as if she were about to face Shukaku all over again before realizing that this was just a man. A single man.
The attack had caused him to lose his concentration and drop his Henge, leaving no doubt to the man before them that he was indeed the genuine article, "You gave Konan-san the runaround. Unfortunately she isn't much of a sensor, so she got caught on a goose chase with your clones for a bit before I asked her to cover your only real out while I did this myself. My abilities are better for taking on jinchuuriki than hers."
Naruto's teeth clenched tightly at that word being brought up in front of Tenten who didn't have a definition to put with the strange term, "Power of human sacrifice? What?"
"She really doesn't know?" The man asked rhetorically before dropping down from the rooftop onto the street, "Like I said, I don't blame you for not advertising it. Nothing personal kid, but you should tell her to leave. There's no need for me to take down two kids, but I've got no problems getting as violent as I need to."
Still on the ground from being saved by Naruto, Tenten still had a Lightning Barrel in her hand and winked at Naruto as he started to get off of her. This time when his body concealed most of hers from view, she turned the barrel upside-down on the ground with enough of the opening tilted in the direction of their enemy.
Shoving Naruto out of the trajectory of her move, Tenten hammered down on the back end of the signaling beacon tool and shot a quick stream of lightning out along the ground the Senju man's way.
She could use that thing for more than signaling others? Maybe she was a great inventor after all?
Being forced to dodge by sticking himself to a wall, the Senju man grunted at being faced with such a strange weapon. He'd never seen that before. He was then faced with a Naruto who had allowed Tenten's shove to propel him closer to his position. Blocking the punch of the boy who had launched himself through the air at him, he dispelled the clone to get a face full of smoke. Dropping down from his place on the wall, his timing was good to avoid several shuriken thrown by Tenten once the clone had been dispelled.
Well that was alright too. If both were going to fight him he might as well make sure that they weren't going to go anywhere.
"Mokuton: Jukai Heki (Wood Release: World of Trees Wall)!"
Countless wooden branches grew from nothing, spanning the width of the street as they wove together and formed a high, effective barricade directly behind Naruto and Tenten's position. They even formed on the rooftops, continuing the straight line and cutting off anything on either side from the other.
The tight-knit setup of those branches and how quickly they came up gave Naruto pause. Those were trees. Trees that had come up from the ground where weeds couldn't even grow from. Trees that had grown from the rooftops of buildings.
"No… Mokuton."
'Kurama?'
"…This… is not good."
"My name is Tenzo," The man said, giving a ghost of an apologetic smile to Tenten, but especially Naruto, "For what it's worth, I'm sorry about this Uzumaki Naruto."
Omake: New Friends 1 (Kaze no Kuni)
"Hey, have you ever thought about using puppets?"
On the long walk back from the desert battlefield to the village, Tenten's head perked up at the rather innocuous question from Kankuro. Even Naruto and Temari looked his way in interest, as after gathering the deceased and trudging over the early morning sands they needed something to take their minds off of it all.
After being presented with the scenario, Tenten had to actually give it thought, "You think I could?"
"I really don't see why you couldn't," Kankuro replied, showing her the odd puppet on his back that he'd used during the battle, "This is my 'Crow' puppet," Naruto snickered at a crow reference after traveling for so long with a 'scarecrow', but it went over everyone else's head, "You can't have him or look at his designs. You can make your own after you get good enough."
Looking a bit put out after learning that she wouldn't get a new toy to tinker around with, Tenten frowned but nodded. She wouldn't hand off plans of her own designs for nothing either, "So when did you make that thing?"
"Oh, I didn't make him. He was passed down to me," Kankuro caught himself a glare from Tenten for that, as he didn't even make it himself and was being stingy about coughing up a quick look at the designs, "I do upgrades all the time though. Yeah, a lot of technical work goes into maintaining these guys. A lot of work. You can do it after you learn how to use Chakra Strings."
Honestly, Tenten could see the merits of learning how to use Chakra Strings even if she never even used a single puppet, and she already made weapons for fun, so making puppets was probably a more "Hmm… I don't know,"
Because she really didn't care about puppets. At all. They were a creepy kind of intimidating from the looks of Crow. If she was going to intimidate someone she preferred the look of fear because of cold, hard, steel. That was the ticket.
"Are you actually gonna teach her the Chakra String thing, or are you gonna tease her by just talking about 'em too?" Naruto asked, hands up behind his neck with a thoughtful squint on his face, "Hey, wouldn't learning how to make puppets take a bunch of years to even be good enough to suck at?"
"Shut up runt!" That was why Kankuro hated kids. At this rate Naruto would wind up punching holes in his attempt to pass on the greatness of puppet-related combat.
"What'd I say?" Naruto asked, raising an eyebrow without opening his eyes. He was calling things as he saw them, "I'm just saying, because the only reason most of my clan are really good at seals is because we're stuck learning about 'em right around the time we start learning kanji. Puppets seem like one of those things you've got to put in a ton of time and focus on."
Naruto wasn't a complete rube. He was astute in quite a few situations actually. As someone that wasn't too shabby at seals but still had a lot left to be desired in that department before he would ever dream about screwing around with biju-related things, Naruto was somewhat aware of when a particular facet of the shinobi arts would take more work than people necessarily had the time to put in for those not necessarily looking to master it.
If you had to make your own puppet or get one passed down to you just to get your own you probably had to know all about the mechanisms and everything that went into just making them move. Not to mention everything else. The way Kankuro had been talking, it was like it was something he could teach her while they were still around and then within a few weeks of practice on her own she could use them like him. That clearly wasn't the case.
Besides, Tenten's penchant for weaponry was more related to the things that she had to hold in her hands to use. The feeling of ninja tools on her skin, the weight of a blade, staff, or whatever in her hands gave her a sense of security and comfort. She probably wouldn't like puppets anyway since holding them wouldn't let her use them.
With a smirk, Temari began punching holes into Kankuro's attempted conversion of Tenten further, "You've got that one more on the nose than you think. Kankuro had to spend so much time with just Crow to learn what he needed just to fight with it that he started talking to it like a person."
"Temari!" The affronted puppeteer shouted at his grinning elder sister.
"You do," The fan-wielding girl pointed out, getting a kick out of embarrassing him, "You even do play-by-play of what you're doing when you're working with it, and you act like you're doing surgery on a patient when you give it upgrades. Crow's just one of them. I'd hate to see what you're like by the time you're good enough with the other two you have to use them in fights."
"I don't want to use puppets anymore," Tenten deadpanned instantly, "Not my thing." The fact that there was a chance that they would affect her mental state in such a manner just drove that point home further.
"I… I understand," Once she gave him the big 'no', Kankuro knew there was no way he was going to be able push it on her after that. Puppets kind of had that effect on those that didn't want to use them.
"I still want to learn those Chakra Strings though if you don't mind," Tenten clarified, "The idea of that seems really cool to me. I could probably do a lot of stuff with that."
"Okay," Kankuro said, dejected at not converting a ninja to the side of the puppet-user, "…Those are pretty basic to teach. It's control-heavy but basic. You look like you have good control, so just make sure you practice." Tenten nodded in return.
With that, Temari eyed Naruto suspiciously, "I'm not going to teach you how to use fans."
Opening a single eye at her, Naruto gave her a bit of an objectionable look, "I don't need a fan to use my jutsu," He reasoned with a sniff, "Besides… fans are kind of girly."
"You sure you don't want to take that back?" Temari offered, no venom in her tone. It was more like warning actually, and not one that meant she was the one that was about to do something.
Why though? She was a girl, and Naruto would say that despite how heavy that damn thing probably was, when she swung it she looked extremely feminine. Thus the fan was a girly weapon. He was ten, it was that simple, thus he was going to say it.
"No, I meant what I said," Naruto said before realizing that several other fan users walking back nearby were now eyeing him angrily. They were all men, "…Meant it in the most macho way possible. Seriously, I love you guys. Fans saved my ass. Did I thank all of you for that before? I could have sworn I did-."
"-Yeah, stop talking now," Temari told him, knocking him slightly on the head to shut him up. She sighed to herself as they continued onward, "…Definitely not as cool as Minato-sama."
Yeah, this is the first of a double-posting. I thought I could get what I wanted down in one chapter, but I have a habit (good or bad depending on personal reader preference) of writing a lot in chapters, and I can't stop until I get the point I'm trying to convey across, so this is the result. I do too much and have to split it in two, and then I don't feel content until I finish the second one.
I think I have a mild case of OCD, because to give an example I need my change to be in perfectly symmetrical stacks and I am willing to physically attack people (brother) that purposely disrupt them.
I don't know why that pisses me off more than most anything else. I participate in a sport that sees me get punched, kicked, and my limbs contorted in harmful positions just for the love of the game. Not only that, but I constantly write stories that I post on the internet where I can and have been casually slandered at will in reviews by people I'll never meet.
…When you think about that, having the sanctity of my change disturbed is kind of a lame sore point to have.
Kenchi out.