Ciao, miei cari lettori!
How's your day? I hope your doing ok.
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GIGANTIC shout out to Archangel of order, Ishimaru Taiki, Apocalyptica-sama, Tyrese, puzahx2, guest110, Uday Sra, Imheretolive08, uflesh940, LeviDragon, TheBrokenTool, geraldsha, anom665123, shinobinoyami16 and BJJF691. You're all amazing :)
Note: written texts like handwritten notes will now be in italics encased in italicized square brackets [like so] . Here and there inside the story, there will also be signboards, billboards, names of stores and other stuff that will be written in centered italics:
Like so
Hope this isn't too confusing; I'll make sure to properly show which is which later in the story.
This chapter is pretty long.
Enjoy...
CHAPTER 2
He missed them all so much.
Six months ago, COREs five hundred ninjas were having dinner.
Two, an average height kid with rectangular glasses and long black hair, screamed over the din in the mess hall. His voice somehow carried over to the five hundred nine year olds having a rare dinner while still doing their own thing.
"Eleven, elbows off the table!" The girl named Eleven gave him a rude look, slumping further into her rice and curry in defiance of Two's order. "Three-Hundred, Forty-Seven, no gambling at the table! We all know Five's going to eat his bugger!" On that note, he rounded on the boy called Five and yelled as said kid sucked on his pinkie a second too late. Two gagged. "Stop that! It's disgusting!"
Two stood from his seat and pointed across the mess hall four tables down from him.
"Nineteen, put on your pants! No one wants to see your undies!"
Nineteen yelled right back, unintentionally spitting through his braces. "You're not my mom !" Digging deeper into his ham sandwich and making sure to wiggle his boxered behind for all to see. "How's this for no pants?!"
Two was no longer focused on him though, facing the other side and shouting to Four-Hundred-and-Fifteen.
"Hey! Hey! Stop dancing!"
Said girl, a fair haired, bronze skinned child that would no doubt grow up into graceful beauty within the next few years, was doing the robot on the table. She learnt that dance from Kumo and she wanted to show off her skills. Another girl, Ninety-Eight, turned to Two with a shrug. "She can't hear you! Speak up!"
"I said! Stop! Dancing!"
Four-Hundred-and-Fifteen kept dancing and Ninety-Eight wiggled her middle finger in her ear, sending a careless shrug to the tired Two.
"One! Please , drop that book. No reading at the table." One was a girl on the smaller side for her age, and she sighed, bookmarking her page on ROOTs classified edition of The Theories and Deductions of Tailed Beast Chakra , written by a late Eight Tails Jinchuriki named Gee . She closed her book, kept it on her lap and spooned herself a plate of peas and mashed potatoes. Two smiled gratefully, which was replied with a flippant wave by One. "Thank you, One."
"Meh ."
She was only one kid though, and not many of the others followed fheir example.
"Can't we have dinner like normal people?! This doesn't happen every day, you know!"
He was talking about the rarity of this family eating time, and even then they still needed to head back to the Temple for an hour of prayers.
Two looked to his right and exhaled tiredly when he saw Nine-Nine and Ten playing rock-paper-scissors.
Ten cheered when his rock destroyed Nine-Nine's scissors.
"Nine-Nine, Ten," Two called, his mood falling into crippling sadness that no one was recognized how precious this time together was, eating food and resting with their family before their next long stretch of brutal training missions. "Do something, please."
The kid with the Byakugan shook his head, wrapping Ten's rock in a strangling paper and butting heads with his brother when their game turned into a handshake test of strength.
"C'mon Two, relax." Ten grunted, supporting his handshaking wrist with his other hand and pivoting his shoulder forward to gain some leverage, meanwhile Nine-Nine did the same too. "Get that stick out of your butt and have some brocolli. It's good for you...or so I hear…"
Ten was a boy that brazenly wore a Konoha forehead protector that was styled into a full head, like a helmet of sorts. He had large, pupilless dark brown eyes that he often enlarged to intimidate his emotionless ROOT superiors and short, shaggy brown hair that jutted out from the top of the metal headpiece.
Of the five hundred kids that survived CORE training, Ten was one of the few that could glare them down into flinching submission, albeit with petulant muttering and childish cussing.
Nine-Nine got Ten's head in a chokehold and the burlier of the two gagged for air, jabbing his left elbow into the leaner kids ribs.
Two's body sagged into his bench at their table, sad and disappointed that the other siblings weren't listening to him. Ten and Nine-Nine shared a look, with the Byakugan boy lightening his stranglehold of Ten's neck on seeing the lowering confidence of their overly controlling brother.
The boy with Wood release frowned at the Byakugan kid, whose shoulders drooped with a soundless groan.
Nine-Nine made a rude gesture to Ten, which was replied with an even ruder hand sign to the blonde's back when said yellow haired boy patted Two's head and clambered up the table.
Two looked up to his unspeaking brother, eyes wide and oozing gratitude.
He fished a fistful of Flash bang seals , tied securely on exactly ten kunai, and tossed them around to the tables where his other siblings sat. The blades thunked deep into most tables, not near the food but close to many faces.
Most ducked for cover, other closed their eyes and ears when it became apparent they wouldn't be able to dive away quick enough, bracing themselves with a wince.
Those that were already shielding themselves from the blinding light and mildly concussive noise managed to yell in the split second before detonation, purely on instinct.
"Flash bang!"
Bang! B-B-Bang! Bang! Bang! Ba-Bang! Bang-Bang!
Their cries of annoyance were immediately silenced by the silent, narrow eyed stare from Nine-Nine, giving each of his brothers and sisters a daggered look with his pale eyes.
He lifted an index finger to his lips and then harshly jabbed it downwards, and they all fell down on their seats in unison or sat upright from some other distraction.
They listened to him and he couldn't even speak.
Naruto's frown chilled the room and his sharp signs straightened their backs. "Eat your food, catch up and rest before we leave for prayers. Don't waste this time."
He hopped down from the table and sat down with a gruff exhale, motioning to Two.
"Happy?"
"Yes, brother. Thank you."
Naruto blinked.
Outsiders would be amazed by how much these children loved each other.
…And how quick to kill themselves if their Master so ordered.
The blonde boy sighed.
He missed them.
Naruto shook his head; now wasn't the time.
Some minutes after arriving in Star and still wearing the unassumingly casual yet clean secondhand clothes of a tourist-a plain grey t-shirt, dark shorts and equally dark sneakers-, the young ninja went to work.
He spied a shift change for the night at Star's electric company and stalked after one of the twenty ninjas stationed to watch from the company that supplied electricity to the whole Star village.
The woman was bringing out a device to radio the Administrative Tower.
Rising out from behind the Chunin, resembling a shadowed spectre with beaming white eyes, the CORE ninja stood on his toes and tapped the woman's right shoulder, ducked around to her other side when the woman turned to see who touched her. Naruto snagged a kunai from the Star ninja's weapon pouch, touched the Chunin's left shoulder and dipped to the other side once more, though this time he cracked the end of the blade on the back of the woman's head.
He dragged the woman into an alley and stole everything he might need, which was essentially all the ninja tools the lady had on her person aside from the clothes on her back. He wrapped the kunai pouch about his lower back while the shuriken pouch resided on the right side of his hip.
Last thing Naruto did was slice off the Chunin's right hand and slide the ninjas own tanto across his throat, allowing her to bleed out in the bliss of unconsciousness.
The boy watched the blood pulse from the throat wound, wearing a grim look and empty eyes, till he was satisfied the Star Kunoichi was dead.
He scattered rubbish from a trashcan over the dead body and left for the electric grid, sliding his new tanto into a sheath on his back.
Starting now, he had thirty minutes before an alarm would be raised at that ninjas absence. Finding the body was a separate thing entirely; the ninja needed to report to the Administrative Tower via radio that she had switched places with the new team watching the electric grid, so technically she was still on the clock.
Naruto had some wiggle room.
More than enough time to sabotage Star's electricity supply.
The key was limiting how much he used his own chakra. That way, they wouldn't be able to trace him and him hiding his presence wasn't pointless.
Naruto started moving.
He retrieved two shuriken and swung them ahead, smashing the spotlight over the main entrance of the building while the other cut the wires for the surveillance camera peering down opposite the spotlight.
The ninja at the door looked up and lifted his radio to his lips to call in the strange issue, only a kunai to find itself down his mouth. The force pushed him to the wall and sliding down, crumpling to his behind with the tip of the blade poking out the back of his neck.
Naruto brought the butt of his tanto on the top of the man's head, stopping him from activating a soundless alarm seconds before the injured man could succumb to his wounds. He patted down the corpse's body and took a Pre-drawn Storage seal from one of the man's Chunin vest pockets; these Pre-drawn Storage seals were common for ninjas that didn't know Fuinjutsu and weren't interested in learning, only needing it for the most basic necessities like storing their excess equipment.
Pre-drawn seals, like the three known seals sold all over the continent Storage seals, Barrier seals and Restraint seals, were low level and often crudely made. Depending on the seller, the results weren't very reliable. The highest level for these Pre-drawn seals was level two and the sellers usually keyed the buyers chakra to the seal they just bought, making the Pre-drawn seals simpler to use.
In the case of the Pre-drawn Storage seal, Naruto unfurled the long scroll and found an available seal to use. He then touched the dead body of the Chunin with that unused seal and it was sucked inside instantly.
Touching whatever or whoever was what triggered the seal to work.
Pre-drawn Barrier seals worked the same way by touching whatever or whoever needed the barrier, as long as there was a continuous supply of chakra, seeing as these badly made seals didn't have a Chakra Battery Store applied within them.
Pre-drawn seals were mass produced and in incredible demand, so the work was rushed and sometimes shoddy.
Unless you got a Pre-drawn seals from a good friend, who just so happened to be a decently leveled Fuinjutsu master and wouldn't relocate soon after you were given the seal, the buyer was more or less safe.
In short, don't depend on them too much.
It wasn't Naruto's chakra being used to seal the corpse but the dead body's own chakra, so all the better.
Naruto turned to the door and slapped the bodiless hand in his possession on the sensor by the door, though instead of running inside, where some bored Star ninjas were lounging about in a well-lit waiting room, he blazed up the walls with the Kunoichi's hand, ensuring he used as little chakra as possible.
So little chakra that he didn't gain much traction if not for his added effort.
He glanced into the windows, not using his doujutsu because the momentary burst of activation would alert the sensor ninjas inside, and confirmed the room inside was the bathroom.
Hidden Star was a small village, less than half Konoha's size, so it was understandable that they used three large generators-often referred to as Listers-to supply power across their home instead of a larger, more manageable and more sustainable source of power like hydroelectric dams, solar panels, wind turbines or even nuclear power in one unique and isolated case.
More on that later.
Two generators would be activated while the third was a backup. The building was somewhat large but it did not distribute electricity an outrageous number of pylons.
Naruto managed to pry the window open with the Kunoichi's hand, which wasn't an easy thing to do, and he slid inside.
He landed by the sinks and took a second to orient himself with the flickering lights of the bathroom, storing the hand inside a weapons pouch strapped to his hip.
The boy opened the bathroom door a crack and, nodding to himself that no one was outside, his eyes found something that would make his mission a lot easier.
An air vent.
He bound up the wall and his left hand caught the grate, pulling him up in a miraculous show of upper body strength for one his age, and his right removed a shuriken, using the blade to gently unfasten three of the four screws, hanging there and keeping his breaths low.
One screw tumbled down.
Naruto clenched his teeth, cursing at the idle chatter coming his way.
A second screw eased itself out.
The boy quickened his efforts.
He just barely slipped inside on removing the third screw, setting the air vent grate in place and hissing another soundless curse at the three screws that had fallen to the ground, forgotten in his haste.
Naruto waited to see if he should kill the two conversing ninjas but muffled a relieved sigh when they passed beneath him without raising suspicions.
Hiding their bodies wouldn't be a problem-the bathroom stalls came to mind-, it was that they had to regularly report to their Chunin Leader of their positions and observations no matter where they were.
Navigating the air vents and finding the Control Room took ten minutes of Naruto's precious time.
Knocking out the Chief Engineer and his Deputy took fifteen seconds.
Turning on the third generator, routing the power to the village and thereby increasing power output across Star, and resulting in the generators short circuiting took Naruto thirty seconds.
Naruto watched from the Control Room window, smiling in satisfaction, as the massive power surge drastically increased the brightness of their bulbs and other appliances, before they all went off with a trembling pop, bursting and burning the circuit breakers of each building in the village.
The internal wiring of the generators sizzled and melted with overexertion.
The boy could already hear the village's emergency responders scamper about to help dampen fires and heal injuries.
As the ninjas outside broke open the doors, the CORE ninja was done running smelling salts under the noses of the two civilians in order to wake them up and had long since fled from detection.
Star wasn't a heavily industrial village that had high rise, metallic buildings or many of their adult residents walking about in suits on their way to work, though they consumed plenty of electricity.
Everything in the village, in one way or the other, drank energy.
Yes, even the much coveted, exclusive and secretive Star Research Facility. The palm print scanner and key card panels were deactivated, probably burnt too, and the door into the building was more operable now that it had no power.
The only thing that came to mind that didn't require power were the mechanisms in the tunnels leading into and out of the village that flushed the tunnels with the poisonous gas of infiltrators.
And Fuinjutsu too didn't require electricity.
Naruto bound from roof to roof, closing in on the facility.
Admittedly, it was risky putting his hope in the facility to have some sort of device that could suck out Danzo's tracking chakra from his tongue, rendering the seal useless. Especially now that the power was out.
If worse turned to worst, he could steal some drugs from the hospital.
Cutting off his tongue and staunching the bleeding wouldn't be so troublesome.
It wouldn't hurt to at least confirm that the facility had what he needed, then stealing that device and finding an alternative source of power outside the village would be the next play from that point.
The boy skid to a stop on the roof of Star's Shinobi Division Office and used the distracting confusion below to activate his doujutsu, bending down low and focusing his mind.
'Byakugan!'
Veins webbed from his eyes and reached his ears.
His vision reached yards ahead and he examined the facility building.
It was a foreboding structure, large and cubical in shape. It was pitch black and shiny, as if the entire building was made from tinted black tempered glass, albeit tougher.
There was only one door.
No backdoors, no roof doors, no accessible windows, no useable underground pathways or other exits.
It was a thief's worst nightmare.
There were Sensory seals, Detection seals and Barrier seals humming blue on the corners of the cubical building, primed to activate the moment an unidentified person neared the single, solid iron door.
It was a triple seal combination most human settlements found reliable; the first seal, the Sensory one, spanned further out and formed the invisible shell over the other two, working closely with the Detection seals to discern whether the person coming was recognized as a ninja of the village, while the last was an inner shell was about five yards from the building and rose up the second an issue was transmitted to it by the first two layers of the shell.
This was going to be tricky.
Naruto frowned.
Twenty minutes left.
He brought out the Pre-drawn Storage seal and ran to the facility, curving under the shadows away from the rapt detection of the two ninjas on either side of the door.
The boy unrolled the scroll and the dead body of the Chunin formerly stationed at the front of the electric company burst out, tossed limply through the air.
Naruto surged close behind the airborne body, just slipping in after it through the Sensory seals, Detection seals and Barrier seals and meeting the alarmed ninjas at the door.
The CORE Operative reached over his right shoulder and drew his tanto.
He made an upward slash, cutting off an arm from the elbow and freed a hand from the short sword to flick his a wrist to the other ninja as he opened his mouth to yell out for help, and a silent kunai ripped into his neck from the side, silencing his panicked attempt to call for support. Naruto swiped his tanto under the first Chunin's chin when he finally registered his lost arm, slitting his throat as well and turning again to the second Chunin with another kunai as he made a last ditch effort to activate an alarm, pushing his hands together to form a jutsu whilst his neck ebbed his life blood. The blade caught his wrists, targeting a vital nerve connected to an important chakra pathway to the hands.
Even if he survived, he would never be able to use his hands to perform jutsu again.
They didn't stand a chance.
No one heard them die.
No one saw them fall.
Naruto searched their bodies and returned the kunai he used with newer ones, grunting when he didn't find a map of the facility.
A map would be great about now.
If the triple seal combination surpassed level six, it would need a more difficult manouvre than simply tossing a dead body ahead of him and following closely behind it.
Think of the current seal combinations as a self-regenerating eggshell with three layers to it; the portion walked through "broke" once someone the combination recognized as a non-threat entered and it took one full second to regenerate it. The criteria to bypass Star's own seal combination was for the diversion to bear some sliver of chakra common to the village.
That corpse didn't actually have permission to access the facility, but Naruto didn't need the dead body for that long.
He sealed the bodies into the Pre-drawn Storage seal, adding them to the first corpse, and pushed into the building.
The emergency power of the facility were on and the backup lights that hadn't exploded from the previous power surge were lit up, and much to Naruto's relief they were a red coloured and pulsing.
Taking half a second to know where he was, the boy used his eyes to peer around and saw that he was in an unassuming room with a crank-operated elevator on one side and a stairwell going both up and down on the other.
Understandably, there wasn't much need for a reception area or a waiting room in the facility; the seals, the currently inactive key card panel and palm print scanner were there to vet people coming into the building.
The elevator still worked but Naruto didn't dare use it; there was a chance that ninjas on high alert were going up and down the building inside.
He took the stairs, another chance of being discovered, and his first destination was the floor right above him on the right side of the flight of stairs.
He really needed that map.
What was the point of running around such a large building when he had a thirty minute time limit?
Now an eighteen minute limit, of course.
The floor above housed the office of the Deputy Head Director for the facility and rows and rows of desks, where scared civilians were ordered to take cover under their desks from the previously popping lights while the ninjas assigned to the office attended to the injured.
These civilians weren't researchers or scientists, just simple office workers that ensured the order of the entire facility, from what Naruto could observe as he rushed around desks.
His footfalls were as light as death.
These desks and these cowering men and women didn't have what he needed.
That was going to be inside the lone office on the floor, the Deputy Head Director's Office.
Naruto crouched down by a desk, idly whistling a poke to the neck of the scared lady hiding there without turning to look at her, and softly patting her sleeping head as her eyelids fluttered shut.
He debated his options.
The Office door wasn't guarded but there were people inside, likely the Deputy Head Director and some guards. Staring through the walls and observing their scattered positions about the man's desk as he worked on god-knows-what, Naruto would need a good enough use of long range weapons and close quarters combat to neutralize them. Problem being that slitting their throats gave them a few short seconds of life to surge chakra into a seal to alert the whole building and throwing kunai to heads only lasted as long as the element of surprise.
And naturally, the element of surprise doesn't last very long.
There were six ninjas in the office.
Breaking into the locked room was easy, likely the easiest thing he had done that night, but then accurately sinking ninja blades or stars to their skulls wouldn't be as certain as all the times he did so that night as there was a chance they would dodge with only glancing cuts, not as fatal wounds.
The young ninjas aim was impeccable and his foresight to the evasive movements of targets was above stellar, even without his pale doujutsu, but there were understandable limits in certain situations.
Naruto's Byakugan eyes narrowed.
'Fine then. Noisy it is.'
He blindly reached over him to the desk and snagged a handful of paper, bringing them to him and spreading them out on the carpeted floor. He then bit his pointer finger, drawing blood, and began crafting seals.
No one ever said scrolls and ink were the only things that allowed Fuinjutsu.
As long as the medium-like blood or spit-allowed the stable flow of chakra to the base-like a sheet of paper, a wall or even a brick-then it was fine.
Scrolls, a brush and ink were for finesse, most of the time anyway. They made Fuinjutsu look more appealing to newcomers.
Naruto being at level four of mastery meant he knew a little of Sealing's secrets, enough for him to want to improve his Seal work all the more.
He finished drawing his seals and gently blew on them for the blood to dry, not wanting to break the seal or disrupt the chakra he seeped into it. When they were fairly dry, he got a roll of cello tape from the desk and wrapped the paper to five different kunai.
The Byakugan kid took a moment to close his eyes and centre himself.
Eleven minutes.
He cracked his knuckles and rolled his shoulders, standing up and sending the knives far to the other side of the room, aiming up to the popped lights on the ceiling.
The five flash bangs went off, loud and bright.
Concussing and blinding.
He didn't want to risk bringing the building down around his ears and ruin his chances of finding the device he needed, hence flash bangs. And since the loud popping came from above, where the lights used to be, the ninjas ordered an evacuation at the thought of an electrical malfunction.
The result was screaming and hysteria.
They would only find the the Bear country produced kunai nailed to the ceiling much later.
"Please remain calm and file to the exit in an orderly fashion!" A Chunin took command, flagging for the scared civilians to move to the door. His comrades guided them to the door. "There is nothing to worry about! Please remain calm!"
Naruto gnashed his teeth and waited, hiding there by the desk of the office lady he knocked out, and exhaled coolly from his nose as the door to the lone office on that floor banged open. The Deputy Head Director bustled out with his head lowered and hugging a briefcase to his chest, crowed by his guards.
The ebbing red emergency lights hummed ominously as he fled the facility and, right about as when he was done running smelling salts under the unconscious office lady's nose, he darted into the carelessly open office door.
The woman whose desk he was crouched by groggily obeyed the Star ninja as they helped her out from under her desk, taking her to the crank-operated elevator as a majority of the others stumbled down the stairs.
CORE Operative 099 found the map he was looking for, framed and hanging on a wall.
Or better yet, maps.
There were two of them; one was a map of the floor he was on, as if he was staring down on that wide space of office desks and metal cabinets, and the other showed the other floors as they were arranged on top and below the other. Each floor had its name written in bold words and smaller letters spelt out beneath them, which were the subdivisions of those floors.
It was the best he could get.
He looked for a hint of where he needed to be. His best guess was on a floor below ground level.
Fuinjutsu Research Floor, under which was the Seal Breaker Division.
Naruto didn't hold his breath that that floor was any advanced in Seal work than level six, but that should just be enough to crumple the tracker on his tongue.
He memorized the map.
Next, Naruto ransacked the Deputy Head Director's desk, filing cabinets, drawers and shelves, until he found what he was looking for.
A spare gas mask and an extra hazmat suit.
He secured the mask over his face.
Nine minutes.
Right about now, questions should be raised on where the two ninjas Naruto killed at the door were and why they weren't answering their radios.
On cue, people in gas masks stormed into the office floor and tossed large copper balls left and right.
Naruto was correct in assuming they didn't want to risk the centuries of research stockpiled inside the facility, and so didn't throw pellets of the Star Poison about, which would very well impartially char everything it touched.
Thick white knockout gas oozed from the copper balls.
The boy scooped up one copper ball with a plastic folder on a random desk and slung it across the room, throwing the Pre-drawn Storage seal elsewhere, making the ninjas stampede after both the copper ball of knockout gas and the tangled dead bodies unsealed from the scroll.
"Over here! Over here!" They split up to investigate the disturbances, paving a clear path to the stairwell for the young ninja.
Naruto tore over there and vaulted over the handrail, descending down the winding gap.
Air whistled past his ears as he dropped, counting in his head with each floor he passed.
The roving red lights hit the visors of his gas mask as he caught the handrail two floors from the very bottom to his left, snapping his teeth when he spared some chakra to secure his grip. He heaved himself over the rail and fell into a deft roll on the other side, righting himself nimbly and running deep into the below ground level floor.
That floor was similar in layout to the office floor above but instead of desks, there were worktables with scrolls and ink littered on top.
In this part of his mission, rushing would be detrimental; he knocked down the door of the Seal Breaker Division's Director and riffled through the filing cabinet for what he needed to erase the ROOT Tracking seal on his tongue.
The Director's analysis of seals was the same as Naruto's; take out the controllers chakra and the seal fell apart. The Seal Breaker Division didn't have any other function than discovering convenient ways of dismantling seals of all kinds.
Under Tracking seals, the Director wrote: an Absorption seal that are at least two levels higher than the attached tracker would be able to disable it, though be prepared for unavoidable pain. Place Absorption seal over attached seal until said attached seal loses its integrity, which can be identified by the medium dripping, the base heating up and the kanji being able to be washed off. If unable to find an Absorption seal two levels higher than the attached seal, twenty stacked Absorption seals of the same level would suffice, though with the same amount of pain as earlier warned.
The latter sounded more doable with his current level of mastery; drawing twenty seals would end his tracking problem faster than hunkering down to learn his way to level seven, which could take him some years if he took his time to really absorb sealing knowledge.
The Fuinjutsu on Naruto's tongue were level five.
As for the pain, he could endure that.
For extra measure, he checked for Cyanide seals and the Director wrote that the chakra of the person who wrote the seal can be used to break that deathly seal. By overloading the seal with that chakra, it would lose its integrity.
This information wasn't common knowledge.
He heard yelling outside the office door.
Naruto drew multiple Storage seals and sealed as many things from that office inside them; whole shelves loaded with volumes of Fuinjutsu texts, the Director's desk and filing cabinets vanished in a sharp plume of white smoke.
This information was too valuable for him not to take.
He folded the papers into his pockets, storing most inside his weapons pouches and barrelling out of the office when he was done.
The Absorption seal he needed was somewhere inside one of the things he stole. All he needed to do was craft twenty of those seals, stack them, use the stack of seals on the tracker and turn the absorbed chakra against the suicidal seal to overload it.
Easier said than done.
At least breaking down his plans gave him direction and a cleaner route to follow.
Now, he needed to escape the facility without getting captured or killed.
The whole building was on red alert, locked down and brimming with ninjas searching for the brazen intruder that dared enter the facility. The upper levels were more populated than those below ground floor, so getting up and past them would be hard.
Recalling the map he memorized, he snuck past the ninjas and fell down to the very bottom floor.
Pink Meteorite Research Floor.
The CORE ninja suspected an escape tunnel somewhere there, seeing as he didn't see those working on the third to the bottom floor rushing up the stairs to evacuate. There also weren't many elevators for them to pack inside, so that only solidified Naruto's assumption.
Getting there, the Director for that floor was stumbling about the record room with a small handful of assistants, directing them to secure the files containing their rigorous research on radiation, while some Jounin shoving the other workers to a sliding door on the opposite side of the floor.
The layout of the floor was vastly different from the two he saw before; it was two times wider and twice more vaulted than the floors above, with a sharp hexagonal walls instead of a rectangular build. As the stairwell and elevators winding up and down the building have access to floors on both the left and right sides of the facility, the last underground floor was instead one big combination, which made it bigger.
Hidden Star's secret meteorite was in the middle of the hexagonal shaped area, surrounded by lead walls and could be studied from behind thickened glass. Entering required the person wear the village's hazmat suit or else radiation poisoning would occur too quick to be curbed, sucking out human life with each vomited bloody chunk.
It hummed pink and white light through some cracks, embedded in the earth and caked in places with a thick crust.
Aside from the record room and the Director's office, the floor had seven advanced laboratories lettered from S to G based on the secrecy and importance of what was being worked on inside, S being highest and G was the lowest. Although there wasn't a stark difference in the quality of the technology, it was curious why the labs had to be scaled in such a way.
The blonde shrugged.
He couldn't possibly care less.
Now was the time to leave Star and start ripping Danzo's seal off his tongue.
He could very well cut himself a bloody path out of the village from this escape route but doing that didn't sit right with him.
The Byakugan kid wanted to light a fire so hot and so bright it would divert Hidden Star ninjas from his imminent getaway.
Worse than the power surge.
Worse than the actual resulting fires from that surge of electricity.
Naruto looked up as the fire alarms began exhaling smoke, shrouding the young ninja in noxious white mist.
Under his gas mask, his pale eyes glinted with an idea.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Sirens blared overhead, pulsing red with the facility's emergency power.
The girl inside the glass box flinched as the locks of her blast proof containment cell snapped shut, clicking five times in five different places.
Hard stomps ebbed outside the lab in which her glass cell was located, ninjas searching high and low for the person that had broken into the secret research facility.
None of them had a pay grade high enough to even knock down that labs doors.
White smoke filled the lab and her eyes bugged wide, cringing and pulling her legs closer to herself even though she was safe from the noxious gas.
Suddenly, a face slammed into the glass cell, shocking her at who it was.
The Doctor.
Kneeling down with her arms limp at her sides, her eyes were rolled up into her head, unconscious or maybe even dead.
She couldn't see who held the doctor's neck well, all she saw was their gasmask hovering to the right of the doctor, their casual clothes-grey shirt with dark blue pants and what looked like black running shoes-and their dull blonde hair that spiked messily.
This person looked like a mark, one of those sappy, pitiful tourists she read about in her books that got all their things stolen or their pockets effortlessly picked while they gaped and gawked on the streets, snapping pictures and pointing at boring landmarks.
But she knew better.
She saw a warbling darkness ebb from his lean frame. A blackness so deep it resembled an endless void.
Even as her glass case was air tight enough to prevent the knockout gas from seeping in, she could smell the stifling blood on him.
Not only blood from that night.
Blood he had spilt, other than his own, and souls he had claimed.
More and more, her lightning quick eyes took him in, noticing the bandages around his neck and hands, wrapped on each finger and stopping just under his elbows, as well as the few white bandages that rose up from inside his shoes to his ankles.
She bit her bottom lip.
The Doctor's mouth opened with a long groan, speaking with two voices, hers and some other infernal tone she couldn't dare recognize.
"Want to be free?"
In her curious and petrified state, the bald girl nodded.
Mostly covered by the mist, Naruto's left hand curled into a half-ram seal and maintained his custom Hiden jutsu.
Every second that passed, the Doctor's healthy flesh lost its moisture and shrank, framing her brittle bones and driving her internal organs into a confused frenzy.
It was rapid tissue deterioration on a cellular level.
She didn't need to be alive or conscious for Naruto to use this jutsu but the victim having life in their lungs and an actively beating heart lessened the burden of concentration on Naruto's mind.
The Doctor's jaw creaked as she spoke again, this time more with the chilling voice of the person controlling most of her brain, tongue and vocal cords like a puppet master to his puppets. Her bones chattered as her body degraded. "I have a condition."
The bald girl in the glass case swallowed, finding the courage to crawl closer, looking right at the gas mask and it's reflective visors. Her white shirt and shorts rustled a little. "Anything to be free, sir."
"Raise hell." The Doctor was now essentially a talking head held to the body by a thin, weak neck. Her neck bones weren't showing as of yet but the child saw the intricate design of the Doctor's skeleton.
A sense of growing joy festered in the girl's gut at the suffering of one of the people that hurt her.
They all hurt her.
"Please sir, let me out." Her voice was soft and airy, hollow even, but her face was not so controlled.
Naruto felt himself smile at the bald girls manic grin.
Curiosity almost had him wonder what sort of treatment this child underwent to bear so much rage, and to bottle up such a thirst for revenge till now.
She looked to be seven or eight years old.
Anything even remotely close to what Naruto and his siblings went through as training would drive lesser men to irreparable insanity.
The bald girl's expression darkened as her jagged grin cracked higher, softly placing her hands on the glass and staring intently at Naruto's masked face with her neon pink eyes.
He saw the whites of her eyes become bloodshot and the spiny, scaly wings on her back flapped in anticipation.
An angel, if he ever saw one.
She was going to be the fire he was looking for to divert Hidden Star's ninjas, and he didn't even know her name.
"Be free and have fun, my friend."
He released the Doctor's neck and her body clattered to the ground, more or less dead at that point.
There was no power to access the key card panel-and even then the Director for that bottom level didn't have sole authority to open the glass case of who Naruto assumed was Star's best kept secret-, and with the Star ninjas now gaining permission to crowd outside the lab he was currently in so as to smash down the barricaded door, Naruto did the next best thing to break the girl out.
He drew more than many Explosive seals and taped them to the invisible rectangule he assumed was an access point into the air tight glass case.
The glass itself was blast proof but these unseen faults that vaguely outlined a door were not blast proof.
Naruto flagged for the younger kid to take cover and he too dove behind a desk. Thankfully, she used her futon to cover herself and he toppled the desk to face the seals sizzling on the glass surface.
The boy plugged his ears and braced himself.
'Here goes nothing!'
BOOM!
It was an explosion Hidden Star would never forget.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Two minutes later
Naruto ran head first out of the escape tunnel, shaking off the cobwebs in his head with a soundless laugh.
Behind him, the research facility fell.
So did Hidden Star.
Certainly not because of his bombs.
The little girl's demented cackling followed him to Star's exiting checkpoints. He turned around to look, both to calm himself and also to pull on his hazmat suit, and his eyebrows slid up his temple.
Out of the now crumbled research facility and flying above the pinkish flames was a small blip in the night, flapping in the sky with skeletal wings that normally shouldn't be able to hold her in the air so steadily.
Naruto pulled up the sleeves of the oversized protective suit and taped up his forearms, ankles as well as his lower abdomen in order to somewhat squeeze out the excess bagginess of the suit, turning his back on the screaming chaos in Hidden Star without much of an errant thought.
There were other things to be done now that he had what he needed.
Hell rained down from the heavens, that night in Hidden Star.
The scathing lights and the agonized wails rend through the air far and wide.
After an hour and a half of sprinting, the boy dipped into Bear country's Capital and clambered up into the hideout he stashed his ROOT kit and the millions of Ryu briefcase; an attic of a residential home, as the family downstairs were none the wiser of his presence and helplessly listening to the family radio crackle with the horrid sounds coming from Star village.
He took off the gas mask and hazmat suit but didn't throw it away, rather rolling the suit up into a spare Pre-drawn Storage scroll, along with the piles and piles of Fuinjutsu knowledge stolen from Star's currently wrecked secret facility and his millions of Ryu briefcase, finding a space inside his ROOT kit and neatly stuffing the scroll inside.
Naruto slung the backpack onto his back, double checked his weapons and tightened the bandages on his hands and feet.
He was long gone by sunrise.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
About the same time
The Temple
The humble family of ninety nine murmured a low, solemn prayer for the lost soul of their wayward brother.
Earnest in their wishes for esteemed Brother Ninety-Nine to regain the endless love and forgiveness of their Master.
Ninety nine of them sat in a stiflingly dark and barren room, aside for the candle they faced, sitting with their backs straight, legs crossed and their hands on there knees, wearing the exclusive eggshell white masks of their assigned numbers, albeit where most numbers were located differed.
The solitary candle cast its red-orange glow about, warming nothing and no one inside the Temple.
The Temple wasn't some massive building of ornate marble or shimmering colour; it was a broken down former mental asylum abandoned deep somewhere in Konoha's vast forests, repurposed to serve as the COREs by breaking down all the walls so the building could be one big room.
Many war crimes had been committed there.
The young soldiers bowed their heads and Two recited a prayer for Nine-Nine aloud.
Danzo stood outside the Temple, his stony face looked down on a kneeling ROOT ninja that had come to report to him.
Hiruzen Sarutobi's first plot to swiftly claim the young escapee fell apart; sending Kakashi Hatake to emotionally manipulate the blonde into returning to Konoha worked as well as Danzo expected.
The Sandaime wasted no time switching from diplomatic and relatively peaceful attempts at nabbing Danzo's boy to forceful and underhanded.
It annoyed Danzo how conniving his former best friend was.
Sending Kushina Uzumaki and Yoshino Nara to track and retrieve the boy was a low blow. An effective team up but a bothersome attack on Danzo's person.
Adding Hiashi Hyuuga, Kushina and Yoshino were his students during their time as Genin and Chunin. They still came to him for training instructions even as they were acquired their Jounin vests.
Hiruzen wanted so dearly to have another Kakashi under his thumb, only that the child the Sandaime wanted was no Kakashi.
No.
Naruto was more.
Beneath Danzo's stoic emptiness, his jaw hardened and his fist clenched.
The Hokage was playing with fire.
Hiruzen only wanted one of Danzo's CORE as his own, reaping where he didn't sow, but the man certainly didn't fully comprehend the tremendous force of nature those children were.
Kakashi was a Ninjutsu prodigy, no one was taking that away from the boy, though there was a reason the Hatake was terrified of Naruto.
Danzo was the only one that kept them in check, both psychologically and physically, and his lack of haste in chasing down the young soldier didn't mean he wasn't sitting on his thumbs.
He needed to be careful.
Hidden Star was ample proof on what a CORE Shinobi could do when they wanted something done; not even the Hokage knew of the chaos ensuing inside the exclusive village, in spite of information travelling fast across their continent, and Danzo already knew who and why the Star village had gone up in flames.
It was one of Danzo's ninjas that just now intentionally leaked information on Star's fall to Shikaku Nara, Hiruzen's ANBU Commander.
Still Hiruzen thought such obvious methods as sending a chakra tank like Kushina and a trapping slash restraint expert like Yoshino would drag the boy to Konoha's waiting arms.
Hiruzen Sarutobi was always too naive to be Hokage.
The girls' teacher was confident in what he had imparted on them though time would only tell if they could hold Naruto down for long enough.
The last Shimura brought out a walkie-talkie from somewhere inside the deep recesses of his cloak and clicked the button on the side thrice.
Five seconds later, his radio crackled.
"Sensei?"
"Kushina." He spoke in a plain tone, hearing her laughing smile from his end. Their team radio wasn't anything serious, just something the Uzumaki came up with to keep their small group connected wherever it is they were.
"Hiya, Sensei. Is this about brunch with Minato? I'm sorry, plans changed; me and Yoshino aren't home, and Minato's gone on some diplomatic mission."
The man's unmoving face hardened and the subtle heat of his words wasn't lost on Kushina. "You mean the yellow bug that wants to marry you? No, this is not about brunch."
The lady groaned, shoulders slumped. "C'mon Sensei, you said you'd at least try to get along with him."
"I made no such promise."
"Yes, you did." She pushed, knowing very well she was getting under her old teacher's skin.
"We can talk about your suitor's spineless attempts at courting you on another day." He ignored her petulent groan, too immature for her age, and continued. "The boy Hiruzen sent you to bring, the one that ran away from the village."
"Yeah, old man Sarutobi didn't tell us his name; we're basically going on a description from Kakashi and some trace chakra the kid left on Kakashi."
Naruto's Body Substitution technique that switched him with a log while Kakashi hugged him didn't bring about a plume of chakra smoke but the suppressed ninja art left some specks of the young blonde's presence behind.
It was almost nothing but for Kushina, it was more than sufficient.
"Do me a favour and bring him to me first."
"You know we can't do that, Sensei."
"I will explain why later. All you need to know is that he is very... important to me." He said that like the words themselves hurt his very soul.
Yoshino snatched Kushina's radio, talking over her friend's annoyance and asking her teacher. "...Who's that kid to you, Sensei?"
The one eyed war hawk snapped, flaring in his impatience. "Do as you're told, girl."
And he clicked his radio off.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
08:01PM
One week and one day later
Somewhere in the Northern region of Snow country
Inside a secluded cave, Naruto made himself a temporary home.
His backpack leaned on the wall with a few of his things arranged outside, like some of the Fuinjutsu scrolls, kunai and shuriken, ration bars and a bunch of carrots he bought a little while ago from a grocery store in a city twelve miles south west of his cave.
He was steadily whittling away at the twenty Absorption seals needed to cancel Danzo's tracker, as drawing them needed time, concentration and a lot of patience.
He was on his seventeenth seal.
Travelling unseen and unheard in a zigzagging line, Naruto was making progress to ROOTs first blindspot, and doing so while drawing these complex seals was wearing on him.
Now though, he was taking a little break to cool down and collect his thoughts.
This cave and the Privacy seals around the interior should provide him at least two more days, three if the incoming snow storm blanketed the entrance and spread thick powder over the horizons.
Naruto coolly chewed on a carrot.
It was ironic really; a Byakugan holder munching on carrots, but Naruto really liked snacking on them.
He formed a heap of dried leaves and twigs, striking a match and tossing it into the pile. When the fire crackled to life after some minutes of softly blowing at it, the boy set up a cooking stand and started warming up his dinner.
The Byakugan kid used a ladle to slowly stir the industrial sized tin of baked beans bubbling merrily over the campfire, all the while chewing on his carrot. The large tin was big enough to comfortably feed a family of four but though Naruto was a big eater, it wasn't all for him.
He spied a fair, bald head poke out from the cave mouth, hiding there and eying him with wary pink eyes.
He smiled and waved, and she quickly ducked away, flushed with apprehension and shyness.
Naruto remembered covering his tracks very well, so how was she able to find him so easily?
It was also already obvious he couldn't lose her, as a brief stint in a Snow country city's slums made it clear she was adamant to trail after him wherever he went and no matter how fast he ran.
When her legs couldn't keep up, she would still find him eventually.
So, Naruto gave up.
He wasn't much obliged to kill her because the mayhem she raised in Star shaded his escape from detection made him feel somewhat indebted to her for the moment, like with Kisame; as long as she didn't turn on him, she could stalk and stare at him as much as she wanted until she got bored and left.
One week later and she was still there, lingering in her indecision to approach him and probably content to marvel at him from a safe distance.
Maybe he should stop leaving her food.
He chuckled breathily on hearing the loud grumble of the little girl's stomach, serving large spoonfuls of beans into a bowl and setting it on the other side of the campfire with a spoon and a bottle of water.
The boy sat a short distance away, dipping his carrot into his own bowl of baked beans and gnawing on it with a tickled smile.
Expectedly and on cue, the girl crept in with a careful slink, her wings twitching flat on her back and unable to suppress a thick, hungry gulp.
Getting to the bowl, she first caught the water bottle in her mouth and collected the bowl in both hands, running back out of the cave and almost tripping in her red-faced rush if not for a sharp flap of her wings that caught her fall.
She was a curious little girl.
Soft-spoken but proud.
Quiet but eccentric.
Incredibly stubborn.
The CORE Operative could discern that much about her; her insanity and fury were long gone, replaced by confusion and a mysterious optimism.
Naruto could see the hopeful shine of her eyes as she scarfed down on her bowl of baked beans, flicking her gaze up to him and then back to her meal.
The boy shrugged and took a few spoonfuls of beans, before he trudged over to his bag and rummaged inside. He peeked over his shoulder and hid a silent smile when he saw her observing him, stretching her neck to peer around him all the way from the cave's mouth and swallowing her dinner.
He took out a new notepad and a black marker, making his way back to his dinner and leaving them by his side while he picked up his bowl and went on with his food, scooping baked beans into his mouth, enjoying the gentle sounds of leaves and drift wood snapping in the fire.
He finished first, cracking open his water bottle and drinking down mouthfuls of refreshing water.
The boy smacked his lips and beamed at the girl, who was just about done with her bowl, unscrewing the lid of her own bottle of water and chugging down with both of her small hands tipping the plastic bottle nearly all the way vertical. With the water left, she rinsed her bowl and spoon clean.
She shuffled into the cave, her food finished and the empty water bottle, leaving them where she first got them. She Her head lowered in gratitude, murmuring in that light voice.
"Thank you for the food, sir."
She flinched when Naruto nodded back, almost fleeing back to the cave's mouth when the older kid reached for the notepad and pen.
The blonde boy scribbled inside with big, bold letters and turning it around for her to read, hoping she could read.
[Hi]
The bald girls neon pink eyes squinted at the notepad, at those two words, and her eyebrows knitted together. She blinked her eyes up at him and bobbed her head.
"Hey."
Naruto's pale eyes lit up, relieved, and he proceeded to write.
[Still hungry? Feel free to have more]
She shook her head and pat her belly, squatting down on the other side of the fire. "I'm full. Thank you again for the food, sir."
The boy scoffed.
[I'm not a sir. I'm nine]
"And...I'm seven. That means you're my senior."
[Do you call everyone older than you sir?]
She pursed her lips and shook her head, looking down. He turned to the next page and she peered up.
[Call me Naruto. What should I call you?]
"My name's Lio." She bowed, a respectfully deep and sincere gesture that made the normally composed CORE ninja colour at the cheeks, embarrassed. "Nice to meet you. Please take care of me."
[No, no. None of that. Don't do that]
She furrowed her brows, honestly confused. "But...why not?"
[Is it cuz I let you out of that box? I had my reasons. Not cuz I felt sorry for you]
In those few words, he told her the cold, hard truth of why he set her free, expecting at least some sort of angered reaction or at least her storming out of the cave. The little girl didn't seem disuaded. "Still, I'm very grateful for what you did for me, sir."
[Why are you following me?]
"I...don't have anywhere else to go." She sat down, not minding the dirt of the cave on her white shorts. "So I'm staying with you."
[You can go anywhere. You're free]
"I want stay with you." She said it, resolve oozing from her very being.
[I'd prefer you don't follow me]
She began to panic. "But...but I promise I won't be a bother. I-I can carry your things, I can wash your clothes-"
[You'll be targeted. You'll be in danger]
Here, her eyes glowed with certainty and her soft voice became a bit firmer. "I'm pretty strong. You saw what I could do."
[Power and bottomless chakra reserves aren't everything. Don't judge a Shinobi's power on what you saw in Star]
Her shoulders lowered, losing hope.
[I know a couple of people that can put you in the ground]
He frowned, scratching harder and showing his next words.
[I'm one of them]
It would have sounded cocky if his eyes weren't devoid of empathy.
[What are you going to do now?]
"I'm staying with you, sir." She bowed again, touching her brow to the ground when Naruto palmed his face with a groan. "They can hurt me as much as they want if it means they can't hurt you."
[Why?]
"Because, sir."
Naruto screwed his lips to the side in irritation at how close-lipped she was being as to why she was following him. He had secrets too, of course, but for all he knew she didn't have any good reason for trailing behind him.
Lio sat up from her bow, tipping her chin up in defiance.
[You're so stubborn I'm getting a headache]
Her eyes widened, opening her mouth to ask if there was anything she could do but stopped when he pointed his marker at her, wearing a resigned look and writing.
[Follow all you want. When you get bored or you're hurt, you'll run]
He didn't have much faith in her persistence.
Lio had a tough chin though.
He gave her that.
"I'll go and keep watch for the night." She got up and bowed. "Good night, sir."
He let her do what she wanted, watching her walk to the middle cave mouth and plop herself down on the ground. Her large, folded wings twitched as she drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs, resting her chin on her knees.
If she insisted on following, he wasn't going to stop her.
Until she got bored or was scared away when she got hurt, he was going to at least enjoy her company. After all, he had killed his siblings not long ago, watching her eventually run away would be nothing in comparison.
Wherever it was she learnt how to read must have been some of those thick back novels because she spoke too formally for any seven year old he knew.
Nine-Nine unfurled a Fuinjutsu scroll and began studying, wiling away time until he felt the need to go to bed.
Maybe it was because of her full belly or she was more tired than she let on or that his words affected her than she wanted to admit, but thirty minutes later, Lio was sound asleep in that guarded position.
Naruto stood over her.
Unlike in the past when he was near her like this, she didn't jump awake and scamper away. The little girl was well and truly asleep for the night.
Lio's eyes were peacefully closed and, as a cold gust blew past her, she shivered.
She was so defenceless right now it annoyed him.
What if she caught a cold?
What if someone skilled ambushed them?
What if both happened?
Then what?
The blonde boy's lips turned down.
Against his own stoic indifference, Naruto tucked her into his sleeping bag and left the cave that night for the nearest city to get more supplies.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Outside Big Destiny's Supermarket
Tin City
Northern region of Snow country
Naruto half-smiled at a glasses stand, picking a pair of dark, circular shades and trying them on, looking at his reflection with a growing scoff; shades weren't his thing but his pale eyes were fairly recognizable outside of Konoha, and now that he was doing some nightly shopping in plain view, he had to try to lay low somehow.
Of course wearing dark glasses at night wasn't exactly discreet but it was the only other option, with how bright the city lights still were as all clocks neared midnight.
Tin City wasn't the largest or most populous or even the richest of Snow's many wealthy cities, though the boom from discovering precious metals and the rise of continent-demanded blacksmiths made this city immensely important to Snow's prosperity. The markets were dominated by artisans, controlled mainly by corporate offices owned by the Snow Daimyo's Council that managed iron ore mining and production.
It was a noisy place at all hours of the day, yes, but an overall nice place to live as long as you weren't timid.
Naruto lugged a shopping bag in his right hand containing a few Pre-drawn Storage Seals, that also held three blankets, two pillows, two sleeping bags, three tents, winter coats, wool sweaters, raincoats and rain ponchos, leg warmers, socks, bathroom towels, a very expensive toothpaste and a toothbrush, four even more expensive odourless antiseptic soaps, a hair dye set, bandaids, some cartons of instant ramen and other easy-made food, bottles of water, snacks for the road, and last were his receipts.
They weren't cheap.
The cashier gave him an odd look all the while; he likely thought Naruto was the runaway child of a noble.
Again, he wondered why he was making any effort for Lio; when she finally understood why hanging around him was a terrible idea, she would turn tail and run faster than her legs could possibly carry her.
He didn't feel sorry for her.
He honestly didn't have that much empathy in him.
Probably that when she decided on running, which was going to be pretty soon, he could help set her up with liveable stuff until she could cope by herself; food and money and whatnot.
Yes.
That's what he told himself.
He needed an army to flood Danzo's hideouts, of course, but right now he didn't have the capacities, time or patience to watch over anyone, not until he had his problems sorted out.
Naruto sent a quick smile to the sunglasses vendor and paid him for the glasses. Shopping in Big Destiny's went by quickly and now, done with buying black glasses from the little portable souvenirs kiosk just outside the supermarket, he turned to make his way back to the cave before the girl could wake up and cause a commotion as she sought him out in Tin City, though he stopped when a snowflake fell on his nose.
The boy looked up to the night sky and exhaled, seeing his breath in the cold.
"Little late for you to be out, huh kid." Naruto pursed his lips, flinching a little at the sudden appearance of this person and almost not wanting to turn to confirm who had spoken. "And it's way too cold."
The blonde boy brought his eyes down from the sky and turned to the voice, sighing at who he saw.
The person that was racing to become the Fastest Man on the Planet.
He was a man that had radiant yellow hair, sticking out and about a lot like Naruto's waning yellow mop, with jovial sky blue eyes that turned with curiosity as they looked down at him. He wore a long sleeved black shirt and a dark green Jounin vest, black ninja pants and green sandals, bearing no visible weapons.
Like Naruto.
Minato Namikaze quirked an eyebrow at Naruto's turned back, darting a look to the younger blonde's shopping bag. "From the looks of that, you're probably not lost." He smirked, suddenly bemused. "Running away?"
Naruto ran a hand through his yellow hair and turned around, pushing up the glasses that covered his Byakugan and shaking his head negatively.
"Trust me, kid, whatever you're running from can't be as bad as you think." The Yondaime Hokage candidate murmured gently to his fellow blonde, placing a hand on Naruto's shoulder. "Since you've got the money to buy all this stuff, your guardians must love you enough to trust you with it."
The boy slowly looked at the hand on his shoulder, eyebrows raised and confirming no seals were placed on him with the so-called kind gesture.
He didn't show the bare tense of his muscles, geared to backtrack at the drop of a hat.
It wasn't common for seals to be drawn on a surface other than paper or walls using only chakra but there were eight known people that could do that seemingly impossible feat; Hashirama Senju, Madara Uchiha, Mito Uzumaki, Sakumo Hatake, Jiraiya of the Sannin, Orochimaru of the Sannin, Kushina Uzumaki, and last was the man before him, Minato Namikaze.
Four of those seal masters were dead.
These Fuinjutsu masters were so advanced in their craft that they broke past the level ten barrier. Among the seven, most came about this legendary infamy with relentless study and dedication, like Jiraiya and Sakumo, among others. While some of the rest were naturally gifted in otherworldly patience and eyes that could spot the smallest detail.
The patience of Nara men or Aburame clan members couldn't even come close.
Slapping the ground and a Summoning Seal didn't count, as the seal was already drawn on the summoners person.
Now, the yellow haired CORE Operative wasn't a natural sensor that could sense chakra without being warned, or a touch sensor that could sense chakra from touching surfaces.
He was a conscious sensor; he trained long and hard to sense chakra instead of being born with the ability. The degrees of specialty differed, though conscious sensors were common among Danzo's CORE.
The boy's brow twitched at the hand on his shoulder, acknowledging that no seals were placed there and no chakra was expelled.
He glared at the hand when it became clear the older blonde was trying to be comforting.
Minato gave a nervous chuckle and his hand basically leaped off Naruto, holding them up to show he meant no harm. "I get it. Some shady looking guy randomly comes up to a kid at night, telling him not to run away. You might be thinking that I'll suggest you stay over at my place for the night. Or," he tapped his flak jacket. "That this is a fake."
Naruto slipped his shopping bag to the crook of his elbow, signing. "Why are you out so late, old man?"
"I'm twenty." Minato stated, smirking with a laugh.
Naruto smirked right back. "Still old."
"That aside," the man faced the trinket seller. "I'm looking for a souvenir for my fiancee. She made me swear on my last bowl of ramen to get her something good but not too expensive." He groaned, rubbing his face. "I suck at giving gifts, y'know."
"No. I don't know, old man."
"Smart ass little kid."
The two blondes laughed, albeit one more hushed than the other.
Either Minato didn't recognize him or the man didn't care.
Naruto wasn't sure if Minato knew of ROOT but he was inclined to think the Hokage candidate did indeed know of the existence of Danzo's secret army and the shadow campaigns being raged against the world.
Minato scratched his chin, steadily sweeping his gaze over his souvenir options.
Naruto could have used this chance to escape.
...But he didn't.
When asked in the future why he didn't flee the person that would be called Yellow Flash during the Third War when he found the opportunity, knowing that the man could be lulling him into a false sense of security just to capture him, Naruto didn't a strong answer.
CORE had a far wider range of emotions and suggestive subtlety than ROOT, although with much less empathy or sympathy. They knew how to tell lies, right down to the most invisible micro-expressions.
Danzo's emphasis on CORE starting basically from little children was his twisted way of "raising them right."
The end product were child soldiers that were trained and geared to tear down nations brick-by-brick without rousing detection or suspicion, and they did this excellently.
The one hundred surviving nine year olds were well-versed in hand-to-hand combat, jutsu, as well as psychological warfare.
Naruto knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Minato didn't care for him being CORE.
The man wasn't there to capture him.
Minato Namikaze was looking for a good gift for his precious fiancee, and that was the honest truth.
Naruto's shoulders slumped, watching Minato decide between a pair of pink heart-shaped and a mood ring.
"What do you think, kid? Kushina's a real ball of fire but she's really into collectables." He laughed a little, remembering something. "There's this time, when we first started going out, that we were chin deep in Shinobi Collectors Cards. It was fun though."
Naruto came to his side and pointed at a Kazahana bobblehead.
"Ohhhhh…" the level ten Fuinjutsu master bobbed his head with the bobblehead, amazed he didn't think of that.
The boy tapped his chin and pointed at a snow globe, having the tallest building in Tin City inside. "I don't know your fiancee but if she wants a souvenir, a snow globe is as souvenir as they get."
"It's like you've given a lot of gifts."
Naruto flashed back to the times a persona of his buttered up the Wind Daimyo with gifts and offerings so as to influence his treatment of Suna. It was still a mission-in-progress within CORE, now halted seeing as the one taking point in the manipulation had gone rogue.
The boy shrugged.
"Not as many as you think."
"Well," he gave the seller money and collected the snow globe in a little plastic bag. "Kushina will love this." Naruto held in his snort; he seriously doubted she'd love a snow globe, but he let the lovestruck man dream. "I'll get you these…" the man's blue eyes scanned the selection, picking one thing out. "Novelty Tin City glasses, since you like wearing shades so much."
The pair Minato plucked out were bright green, oversized enough to cover half of Naruto's face, had the words TIN CITY written above on the rim and blinked white and orange lights.
Naruto cringed away from it.
"I'm fine...but thanks, old man."
"It'll look good on you~." Minato inched the offensively blinking lights closer to Naruto's face, wanting to slide it on over the dark pair already resting there.
The boy leaned far back back, holding his hands out to stop the man with a gesture. "I said, I'm good."
Thankfully, the older blonde gave up with a heaving sigh. "At least let me treat you to some ramen; it's getting cold." The man frowned at Naruto's simple and plain long sleeve brown shirt, black shorts and black sneakers, purposely overlooking the bandages on the boy's neck, hands and feet. "I swear on my life and my secret ramen stash back home, I won't step out of line. My word is as good as my ramen."
"You sure love ramen, old man. Isn't that bad for your heart or something?" Naruto wasn't one to judge; he had about seven boxes of ramen sealed in the Pre-drawn seal, albeit for emergencies and when Lio decided to leave.
Minato gave a hearty chuckle and Naruto's smile lifted a little. The foolish laugh and odd attitude wasn't what the boy had heard about the man, and he assumed this goofy behavior was to put the boy at ease. "Ramen only makes me stronger, little boy."
"I had dinner some time ago, so I'm not hungry." The man grunted, disappointed. "How about you owe me one next time we meet?"
The seal master shrugged. "Sounds ok." He then finally admitted. "It would have been great if we talked a little; you remind me a lot of this old guy-" Minato felt a bead of sweat drop from the side of his head at the sharp eyebrow the wordless boy raised. "Not Danzo. Some other old guy."
Confirmation.
Minato definitely knew who he was and was aware of Naruto's wanted status.
The boy brows lowered, half-smiling. "Don't say I remind you of yourself. That's cliche."
"No, not that." The man waved carelessly.
Naruto almost didn't want to show it, but he stepped away from the older blonde and tilted his head to the side, allowing himself a crestfallen frown as he sealed. "Is this the part where you try to catch me and I try to run?"
Minato gave the boy a lopsided smile, understanding Naruto's weariness.
Konoha's youngest seal prodigy went the extra mile to show his good intentions; he unsealed one tri-prong kunai pouch out of many and tossed it to the ground between them, untying his forehead protector and throwing it to the boy.
Naruto caught the hitaite with a terse frown.
The gesture wasn't lost on him.
Although Minato on his own was a ninja reputed for his near supernatural speed, he hadn't yet mastered the Flying Thundergod seal, mostly expending his natural swiftness on the battlefield. Improving and utilizing the Nidaime Hokage's Hirashin tags was a constant work-in-progress.
At twenty, Minato had skills, and that was the worst possible understatement.
Naruto didn't hope to match the man in actual combat, not now at least; the best he could do was match Minato's raw speed with his eyes though seeing the man didn't mean he could move quick enough to sustain any reasonable offense.
As for the Leaf headband Minato entrusted him, the very symbol of his loyalty, it showed that Minato wasn't speaking to him as a Konoha Shinobi.
It was the closest thing a ninja could get to being honourable, of which they weren't.
"I just want us to talk."
Moment stared at the man, devoid of expression and studying for any glimmering cracks that could show the Hokage candidate's true colours.
He wrinkled his nose and tucked Minato's hitaite into a front pocket.
"Sure. I can't say I'm not curious."
" Ehem!" Naruto and Minato jerked at the interrupting cough. They looked in unison and identical frowns turned their lips down. "Is this the wrong time?"
"Orochi, I didn't know you were in Snow." Minato said, his temple creased. "What's up?"
The Snake Sage shrugged and leaned to the side, smiling widely with his eyes closed. "Just the two guys I was looking for." Naruto glanced down at the long sword sheathed on the man's hip, and the Sannin chuckled as he motioned to Minato. "My fellow Hokage candidate," then to the young boy. "And Konoha's lost son. My two favorite people right now, at this moment."
Minato flicked a look to Naruto, and then darted his blue eyes to the Sannin. "My mission isn't to retrieve him-"
"Oh, don't worry about that." The golden eyed man's right hand settled on the end of his sword, unsettling the two other ninjas. "I'm here to kill the competition, as the kids say."
And assure his ascension into the Hokage's seat by hogtying CORE Operative 099 and presenting him to the Sandaime Hokage, but that went without saying.
It would create an international incident between Konoha and Snow country, the fight the would soon ensue in Tin City. That, though, could be dampened relatively quickly with some runaround diplomacy and CORE intervention.
Somehow, Minato understood this.
Naruto's comprehension of the situation was founded deeper on inside knowledge of CORE and ROOT; Danzo didn't want Minato to be Hokage, putting his support behind the next best option, Orochimaru. The blonde seal master was truly a great ninja at such a young age and he was quick to rise in the world as an infamous Shinobi, but he wasn't Hokage material in the war hawks eyes.
Or worthy of Kushina's affections. As the redhead's longest guardian and someone she trusted, Danzo's opinion of Minato plummeted.
Kushina's fiance narrowed his growing ire at Orochimaru.
"Don't do this, Orochi." Minato said lowly, shaking his head for the Snake Sage to back off. "If you draw that sword, there's no going back."
"Are you scared?" Orochimaru cooed to them gently, as if assuring a child to not fear the monsters under the bed, doing so while gripping the handle of the Kusanagi long sword. "Don't be scared."
"...This isn't your fight, kid." The older blonde whispered from the corner of his lips, focusing on the larger than life grin on the Sannin's face.
"Kinda feels like I'm part of this." The boy stated, tilting his head to the side and signing sharply, allowing Minato's side eye catch the hand motions. He sent the man a quick smirk and ribbed the seal master. "Go rest your old bones, old man. I don't want you breaking your hip."
A vein throbbed on Minato's temple.
Naruto was getting some sort of sick pleasure from the man's irritation, snickering at the glare Minato shot him.
Suddenly a slight smirk joined the twitch on Minato's eyebrow. "Tell that to me after you change your diapers, kid."
In unison, both blondes then shifted into their fighting stances; Minato's was lower and emphasized bombarding speed alongside quick strikes and toughness behind those blows, while Naruto's was outwardly relaxed, hinting his dexterity, flexibility and reacting to attacks with vicious attacks and counterattacks.
The next Hokage and the future crime boss found themselves grinning.
One of Orochimaru's greatest mistake was facing both at the same time.
Authors note
Character Ages/Age Range
Itachi, Yugao, Kakashi, Naruto, Lio (and others) - 3-9
Clan head's - 17-21
Minato and Kushina - 20
The Legendary Sannin - mid 30s
Hiruzen Sarutobi, Danzo Shimura and Konoha Elders - late 40s
Next time on: Whisper Group
There was a war coming.
Iwa was getting restless.
Konoha didn't want to look powerless.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
"Sir?"
He bobbed his head, telling her he was listening as she stared at him wrapping bandages around his fingers and hand. It was clearer, on seeing his hands and feet before he left and ensured the bandages were neat, why he wound his paws so meticulously, but her curiosity equalled her master's and just couldn't be contained.
"What happened to your voice?"
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Naruto wasn't dumb enough to think he could out-muscle or outlast her in a battle of attrition, especially since there was an injured trap expert staying away from his blows.
Bringing Kushina Uzumaki and Yoshino Nara down needed careful planning.
"Oi brat, give it a rest already." Kushina panted lightly, a bit winded but overall now analysing and adapting to the boys combat style. "This is crazy! Let's stop this and head back home; Lord Third and Danzo-sensei are worried about you."
Said brat pushed his left fist forward and lowered his centre of gravity, reversing the grip of that tanto in his other hand at his side.
His blazing white eyes narrowed.
"That's...not Gentle fist…" Yoshino mumured, more and more alarmed at the feats she'd witnessed from their target. Her mind worked to recall where she had seen this broken stance, gritting her teeth as the boy directed a good, long look at her, hunkered down and protected by her Uzumaki partner.
Her eyes bugged out-
And done!
Not in that order.
We've got two really big fights coming up in the next chapter AND a key confrontation. My advice, like I said in the first chapter, is to not reference canon. Minato and Orochimaru's skills and abilities are more or less the same in canon; it's Naruto that's the dark horse.
My fingers are tingling XD
Then we've got some backstory on Naruto, Kakashi and Lio (pronounced Leo). It's not for the faint of heart. I'll put warnings, it's fine.
So...any thoughts on this chapter?
Drop a review, would you so kindly. Please and please stay safe, wherever you are in the world, and I will see you when I see you.
Foy.