- Location
- The Deep Blue Sea
I thought her hands *did* get severed and the water just hampered subsequent use
[Naruto] Lighting Up the Dark
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I welcome suggestions on how to clarify it further. I really don't want to go back and edit a published chapter (and I've already tinkered with that part a bunch), but my beta readers also have objections, and I don't want an entire twist to pass half my audience by.
Maybe expand on what Shikamaru actually said? 'If she grappled him without further support'?
I think the problem is in the "that's how gaara was likely to react". It's hard to detect the point in time to which this refers. I guess because although the does react to the pouring water, the main action he takes afterwards is cutting Sera's hands, which he was already doing before the water (he just changes the tool with which to do it, if I recall). My inmediate understanding of it was that the "reaction" was either going for Hinata or reacting to the ballista shot, at the very beginning of the section.
I guess you could say "gaara was likely to react to the water" or even "that was how Shikamaru said things were likely to go after the water fell on him..." or something in that vein.
I guess you could say "gaara was likely to react to the water" or even "that was how Shikamaru said things were likely to go after the water fell on him..." or something in that vein.
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Chapter XXXVI
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Chapter XXXVI
"What in cold hell?"
Naruto wasn't an idiot. He understood that he hadn't just been teleported into a strange desert. It was perfectly in-theme for Gaara to have an ultimate technique where he transported himself and his enemy into a desert where he was functionally omnipotent, but somebody with such a monofocus on sand manipulation shouldn't also have a teleportation ability powerful enough to cross timezones. That wasn't how these things worked. Besides, he refused to accept that the creepy orb staring at him from the night sky was the real moon.
On the other hand, it probably wasn't genjutsu, because Gaara hadn't had line of sight to Naruto thanks to the umbrella–and besides, mind control would be an even weirder secondary ability for Gaara to have than teleportation. But if this place wasn't real and wasn't fake, that didn't leave many options.
Either way, based on the fact that he was standing in the middle of a desert and not already dead, it seemed like their battle had been put on hold. Maybe this grey sand wasn't the kind Gaara was able to control. Gaara wasn't wearing his gourd either, and Naruto saw no sign of the cloud of sand into which it had disintegrated. Of course, there could still be invisible sand suspended in the air, but Naruto wasn't prepared to use the Dimensional Anchor Technique on Gaara again unless he had to. There was still an outside chance that it had caused this (in which case it was the worst-named technique ever), and using it again could make the whole thing go recursive and send them to another alien landscape even more removed from Leaf and reality.
"You must be another Shard host!" Gaara exclaimed. "I've never met another host before. This is so exciting!"
Shard host? Did that mean what Naruto thought it meant? If so, that… sure explained a few things.
Obviously, Naruto had known there were other demon hosts out there. His research had told him that the last known locations of about half the Demon Beasts were public knowledge (for a certain definition of "public"), and it was safe to assume that the villages that had had demon hosts continued to have them, based on the fact that those villages still existed.
But the more he looked at what he'd done, the more he recognised a faulty thought process. He didn't like thinking about the Demon Fox. It made him feel helpless, vulnerable, in constant peril. So he'd done his due diligence, establishing that the other Demon Beasts were far away and not his problem, and then he'd shuffled their existence under the carpet on some distant cogwheel so he wouldn't have to think about them again unless he had to.
It had been a critical error.
Genin with jōnin threat levels didn't just turn up. The priors, as Shikamaru would have it, were ridiculously low, even after you accounted for the fact that the Chūnin Exam Finals were exactly where you'd expect to see the strongest genin in the world. If Naruto had seriously thought about Gaara's powers, and how the impressive part wasn't the range, or the flexibility, or the sensory functions, but the sheer volume of information he was processing to monitor and control billions of grains of sand at a time, and put that together with the known facts that superhuman levels of data processing and calculation were signature Demon Beast abilities, and that Sand had a Demon Beast, and that for some reason ninja who ought to know better went around sealing those things into children…
…maybe he wouldn't have ended up trapped in a domain only accessible to demon hosts, where everything he saw screamed that Gaara was the one in control.
Naruto didn't know how to feel anymore. Should he be looking for a sense of kinship, now that he was in the presence of one of at most eight people in all the world who could understand what he'd been through and what he still had to face? Should he be upgrading Gaara's threat level even higher, now that he knew he wasn't facing an uber-ninjutsu or a Bloodline Limit but someone who could freely draw on Demon Fox-level power? Should he be panicking at the possibility of meeting another Demon Beast face-to-face, only this time with no Perfect Seal to protect him?
Before Naruto could decide, Gaara stood from his throne.
Naruto tensed. With his chakra split nine ways–him plus the number of people who needed substitutes when he pulled them from the evacuation–he was in bad shape for a hard fight, and he had no idea if any of those clones were currently defending civilians and mustn't be dispelled. Worse, it had taken seven people and Naruto's finest master plan yet to pin Gaara down for a matter of seconds. A one-on-one fight, here and now, might simply be unwinnable.
Gaara gestured towards the throne.
"Would you like a seat? You're a guest, so it only seems right."
What.
"Oh, wait," Gaara said, "I should introduce myself first. Sorry, I don't have much practice hosting. In the social sense, I mean."
He took a step towards Naruto.
"I am Gaara of the Desert, host to Sakkaku, the One-Brained Demon Tanuki. I'm very pleased to meet you."
He bowed.
Naruto was already off balance and on edge. The last thing he needed right now was deadpan mockery disguised as politeness from the boy trying to kill him and his friends.
"The One-Brained?" he repeated contemptuously. "I thought Kyubey being the Nine-Brained Demon Fox sounded dumb, but somehow that's actually worse."
"Oh, you're the Demon Fox's host?" Gaara asked. "I guess that makes sense, you being from Leaf and all.
"But it's actually very straightforward," he went on. "He is the one closest to humanity out of the main nine, so he's said to have one brain like we have one brain. That's why he can talk to me as easily as he does. I think the brain number is supposed to represent something exponential, so the Demon Fox must be really far from human, in intelligence and in how it thinks, and maybe in how it relates to people. Does that sound right?"
Naruto couldn't let Gaara set the pace. His priority was to gather information, not answer questions.
"Fine, so we're both hosts," he said. "Is that why we've been transported to this… what is this, your mindscape?"
"It's called the Interface," Gaara said. "I think it's half me and half him and half the seal. Yes, I know that doesn't add up, but the metaphysics are complicated and he doesn't like explaining unnecessary things."
Naruto stared at the ruins and the moon watching him from above. He did not like the implications.
"I know," Gaara said, in the sheepish tone of someone agreeing that he'd let his lawn go unmowed too long. "My seal's terrible. I really don't think the people who gave it to me knew what they were doing."
If what Gaara was saying was true, trying to kill him right now was a non-starter–not just for tactical reasons, but because this didn't sound like the kind of place where he could die for real. Besides, even assuming Gaara didn't have direct control of this desert, Naruto's manga was very clear on how powerful a home ground advantage could be in somebody's inner world.
Gaara looked at Naruto thoughtfully. After a few seconds, he gave a frown of concern.
"You seem really tense," he observed. "Is something wrong?"
"Are you kidding me?" Naruto exploded. "You're the guy who nearly killed my girlfriend. Did you think I'd be in the mood for tea and a chat?"
"I kill lots of people," Gaara said almost apologetically. "I do try to keep track of who they were, for politeness's sake, but real life isn't like manga where everyone introduces themselves before they fight. Though it does narrow it down a lot if I only nearly killed her…"
After a second, he snapped his fingers with an expression of satisfaction.
"I know! Are you maybe Miss Hinata's boyfriend? If you are, I'm very happy for you. She seems nice, and she's very strong. I guess I'm going to have to make sure I don't keep my promise to her until the end."
Naruto was starting to get exasperated. He was getting the sense that Gaara wasn't so much throwing him curveballs as playing some completely different ball game invented by four-armed space aliens from a low-gravity planet.
"What are you talking about?"
"People always curse me when I kill their loved ones," Gaara explained matter-of-factly. "You know, 'monster', 'demon', 'I hope you burn in Hell', that sort of thing. I wouldn't want you to think I was a monster or wish for me to burn in Hell. Actually, I was hoping we could be friends, since we're both Shard hosts and all."
Naruto stared at him, aghast. "What is wrong with you?"
Gaara's smile faded. "Well, the same thing that's wrong with everyone else. It's not like I'm special. I need to die too, just last so I can make sure I fulfil my purpose."
This was the point when Naruto belatedly realised that he was dealing with a raving lunatic. But still, enveloped in a fascinated horror that he hadn't felt since that time he talked to Shikamaru after Stage 2.5, he couldn't help asking.
"What purpose?"
Gaara's downcast expression transformed instantly into the delighted grin of a young boy who finally got to share his hobbies with someone.
"Total human extinction! Isn't it exciting?"
…
"Obviously I can't do it manually," Gaara said while Naruto stood lost for words. "There are far too many people, and birth rates mean that in the more populated countries, I'd be running just to keep up. Right now, I'm reading about terraforming, and after that I'm going to look into man-made plagues to see how they compare. It all sounds very difficult, but I'm a quick learner, and he can help me with the calculations, and in any case it doesn't need to be done until after the Shards are finished with humanity."
Naruto finally found his voice. "But… why?"
"Because it's the only way to save everyone from themselves."
That seemed… strangely familiar, actually. Not those exact words, maybe, but that kind of sentiment, used to justify atrocity. Where had Naruto…?
No, wait. He'd got it.
"You're a two-bit manga villain," Naruto said disbelievingly. "After everything I went through to get this far, I can't believe that's the dramatic revelation I get."
Gaara didn't even blink at this diagnosis.
"Being a villain doesn't automatically make you wrong, you know," he said reproachfully. "In fact, villains are always the ones trying to change things, while the heroes are only trying to stop them. If you want to change the world in a manga, you practically have to be a villain. That's why villains always have to be stupid or evil, otherwise they'd outshine the heroes, who aren't trying to make anything better."
That was actually surprisingly on point, as long as you ignored the part where Gaara was killing real people for manga reasons. Somehow, it was always the villains who felt they had no choice but to revolutionise the world. The typical manga hero either had unambitious status quo-aligned objectives like "protect my village" or, at best, fundamentally self-centred ones like "make everyone acknowledge me" or "become Daimyo". It was one of the reasons why Naruto was so fond of manga about antiheroes, who got the best of both worlds: they chose to face the darkness of the world with open eyes but refused to let it corrupt them. When they saw something that needed doing, they did it, without passing the buck to the legitimate authorities (which were invariably useless) or worrying about keeping their hands clean.
Naruto wasn't being an antihero by fighting Gaara right now–in fact, he had a horrible suspicion that he might count as a legitimate authority himself–but he was ticking the boxes that mattered. Fighting an enemy because they had to be fought, no matter how strong? Gaara could give Zabuza a run for his money. Boldly defying the rules? Naruto was a genin who'd gone off to fight a jōnin-level enemy without orders in the middle of an evacuation. Doing whatever it took to defeat evil? Those water towers were probably expensive, and definitely not part of the standard ninja arsenal. (All right, that one was a little weak. Maybe he should count it as "unafraid of property damage" instead.)
Everything finally made sense. Sasuke was Naruto's fated rival, but Gaara was his nemesis (or at least the first one he got to fight). Their powers came from the same source, but while Naruto had learned to use his for good thanks to the power of friendship and a whole load of character development, Gaara was his dark reflection. He was drunk on his intelligence and demon host powers, unable to see the value in other people's lives, and warped by his escape into fiction instead of being empowered by it as Naruto was. Best of all, the dark reflection theme fit flawlessly with the way that Naruto had managed to overcome the power gap between them by learning to reach out to others.
"Ever since he explained it to me when I was little," Gaara continued his villainous monologue, "it's been obvious everywhere I look. People are constantly going around hurting each other, even the people they love. Sometimes especially the people they love. And when they're not busy doing that, they're hurting themselves. Really, I don't know how you haven't noticed."
Those few sentences killed Naruto's (anti)heroic excitement stone dead. He had noticed. He had noticed a long time ago. Naruto had been Hidden Leaf's punching bag of choice for as long as he remembered, but he hadn't been so self-obsessed as to think he was the only one, especially after he got to know Sasuke and found out that even being noble and rich and the descendant of heroes wasn't enough to protect you. The world was full of pointless, unnecessary, arbitrary suffering, and contrary to the Demon Brother Onigahara Tariki's convictions, even power was no escape. The tragic story of the Three, even just the fragments Naruto knew, proved that the strong hurt each other and themselves just like everyone else.
It left him with nothing he could immediately fire back, and Gaara didn't wait for him to respond anyway.
"I didn't understand at first. Because why would anyone, much less everyone, live that way?" Gaara asked. "But he has an outside perspective on humanity, so he can see things we can't, and he says humanity has an unconscious drive to destroy itself. No matter how many chakra samples I give him, we haven't found a single exception. It's an evolutionary flaw, like how memories can be lost to brain damage even though they're stored in our chakra as well.
"In other words, it's human nature. Everywhere, all the time. In a way, I'm almost glad I don't have friends, because watching them do it would probably be even worse than watching strangers already is. But I feel much better when I kill people, because even if I hurt them right now, soon that person won't ever be hurt again, and won't ever hurt anybody else again, and that's wonderful. I know that on the level of my purpose it's just drops in the ocean, but for that one person, saving them from a lifetime of suffering is enormously meaningful, isn't it?"
Naruto found himself at a loss. Obviously, any chain of reasoning that ended with "and therefore I must kill everybody" was fatally flawed a priori. But the flaw wasn't as obvious as he'd originally thought when he was mocking Gaara for his clichéd evil plot. The world really was full of suffering. It really did seem to be universal–even Hinata, the kindest person he knew, was constantly hurting herself with her low self-esteem and the secondary beliefs it gave birth to. That alone didn't justify mass murder, but at the same time, now that Gaara turned out to be a realist gone astray rather than an evil moron, "you shouldn't kill people because it's wrong" somehow no longer sounded like a slam dunk argument the way it had at the start. (Technically, Gaara was probably here on a mission for his village, so him trying to kill them was just how things worked, but Naruto felt like that was missing the point.)
"That's why it hurts my feelings a little when people call me a villain," Gaara said. "I want to ask them what they're doing that's so much better at saving people from pain, because all I see is them wringing their hands and saying how all my killing is bad, and then they go away and hurt others and themselves just like everyone else. But of course, if I try to go up to them, they run away, and anyway, I'm not very good at talking to people."
Naruto could see that deficiency in how Gaara was rambling on and on without waiting for a response. It was beginning to sound less like a proper, self-respecting villainous monologue and more like Gaara had been starved of normal human interaction for so long that he was in a hurry to say everything on his mind now that someone was finally listening. (Naruto had felt like that, just a tiny bit, when he finally let himself believe that Hinata was for real. Still, this was no time to start empathising with the guy who'd nearly killed her.)
"I'm not saying I'm perfect," Gaara said. "I go around hurting people too. Sometimes I take a long time to kill people because they're interesting, and that's not really fair to them. But I worry that if I don't make an effort to stay interested in what I do, and just start mindlessly killing like a machine, I'll lose track of why I'm doing it. If that happens, I'll turn into the other kind of manga villain, the ones that never get proper motivations because they're only there so the hero can have a cool fight and show off their new abilities. You couldn't trust somebody like that with the power to save humanity.
"Then again," Gaara said, "he would probably help me if that happened. He's not very good with feelings, so he can't do much when I'm sad or lonely, but he's always there for me when it looks like I might get distracted from my purpose."
Naruto might not have had a perfect handle on the argument side of things, but he was beginning to see the shape of what was wrong with Gaara, and he really, really didn't like it.
Then again, in a matter of real-world seconds, none of this would be Naruto's problem anymore.
"It doesn't particularly matter why you do what you do," Naruto decided. "You're going to the Academy to kill people I care about, and people I don't really care about but have still decided to protect as the future Hokage, and I can't let that happen. In the real world, we're about to kill you, and then I'll never have to worry about what's going on in your head again."
"I'm not sure you want to do that," Gaara said.
"I promise you, I do. Did you miss the part where you tried to murder my girlfriend?"
"No, no," Gaara waved his hands in front of him in objection. "I mean it's a bad idea. Sorry for being unclear. Do you know what happens when a Shard host dies?"
Naruto didn't. If a demon host dying automatically unleashed their Demon Beast, then it would be insane to keep sending them into battle, especially within one's own borders. On the other hand, if the Demon Beast died with the host, then all it would take to destroy them was a handful of willing sacrifices, yet all nine were (probably) still around.
"No," Naruto said warily. "What happens?"
"Because the seal doesn't disappear straight away," Gaara explained, "the Shard ends up sealed in a dead body, which isn't allowed. Normally, if that happens, it's forced to undo itself, and slowly put itself back together somewhere else."
So even if a Demon Beast died, it just respawned later? That had been Naruto's guess when preparing to kill Gaara. It made the most sense, and in his experience, when dealing with Demon Beasts, the most horrifying answer was usually the right one. (Though if they could just "undo themselves" to escape a seal, why didn't they do it while the host was still alive?)
"Only my seal is terrible," Gaara said. "I mean it. It's an obsolete design that should have been replaced decades ago, and it can't have been meant for use on children to begin with. It relies on my willpower a lot to keep him suppressed, and I don't have very much willpower anyway, but I had none when I was a baby. That's how he was able to rework my Bloodline Limit and everything, and how he's been able to talk to me for so long. So if I die, with my seal already so eroded, and my willpower all being gone because I'm dead, there's a good chance he'll manage to break free at the last second, and he's definitely going to kill more people than I am. Like I told you, I'm not trying to end humanity manually; all I want to do is to keep my promise to that boy, and then kill high-value targets like I'm supposed to until Snake-sensei comes to get me."
Naruto stood frozen.
"I know it might sound like I'm making this up so you won't kill me," Gaara said, "but I promise it's true. It's probably why nobody in Sand has assassinated me yet. They all hate and fear me for being a Shard host, even though they were the ones who made me one in the first place, and I'm sure they could pull it off if they planned well enough, maybe while I was asleep or in the bath. My dad could definitely find a way, and maybe my siblings aren't strong enough–that's Temari and Kankurō, you've met them–but they could at least lure me into a trap like you did. So if I'm still alive, it must be because they know assassinating me would only make things worse."
Naruto couldn't see any way out. If they didn't kill Gaara, then he'd kill them all (except maybe him and Hinata) and then massacre the Academy, and then go killing high-value targets, which presumably meant the jōnin and chūnin leaders on whom Leaf's hopes of repelling the invasion rested.
If they did kill Gaara, then Sakkaku would break free and kill them all, and Naruto wasn't sure what would happen after that, but it could well become a Day of Tragedy.
The last time he found himself trapped on the horns of a deadly dilemma, just earlier this morning, he'd been saved by an unbelievable flash of insight. If he couldn't do something on his own, then maybe he could ask for help, and people might give it–not because their welfare was tied up with his (like Team Seven) or because he was part of a bigger system that needed to be kept in good working order (like the doctors at the hospital), but just because helping others was a thing people sometimes did. It was the kind of thought that he could never have had unless he was truly desperate. (And he'd been right–even Team Earth, Wind, and Fire, whose reported powers had given him the idea, had gone well outside their formal obligations and joined the operation after Kagami read Shikamaru's note.)
Please, Naruto thought silently. Please somebody help me.
But nobody came.
Of course they didn't. Gaara's Interface was as far removed from the normal world and Naruto's friends as it was possible to get, in another dimension of reality. The only other person here was Gaara, and he would never help Naruto.
Naruto glared at Gaara, who was standing next to his throne with an awkward smile, as if not sure what to say. None of this would be happening if the stupid boy hadn't fallen hook, line, and sinker for a blatantly evil monster's omnicidal philosophy that even a child should have been able to see was insane. Naruto imagined it, that damn tanuki whispering nihilism disguised as kindness in a young Gaara's ear and Gaara keenly nodding his head off–
–and suddenly his perspective flipped upside down. He remembered the other half of the insight that had led to Operation Storm the Beach.
Gaara's weakness was that he fought alone.
Naruto wasn't the one who needed help here.
Gaara had grown up hated and feared by everyone because of a monster somebody else had put inside him. Naruto knew what that was like. He knew how it could shape who you grew up to be. When somebody told an ostracised young Gaara that the world was so filled with suffering that people needed saving from it at any cost, and when that somebody was the closest thing he had to a friend, why wouldn't he believe it? If his village treated him as a killing machine to let loose in enemy territory, if he'd never been taught that ninja existed to protect, why wouldn't he believe that murder could be a way of doing good?
Gaara wasn't Naruto's dark reflection. He was Naruto's light reflection. He'd stood at the same starting line of loneliness and alienation, and instead of doing everything he could to protect himself from the pain, he'd gone straight to saving everyone else from theirs. Instead of putting up walls of suspicion, Gaara had chosen to trust–and it was the utter betrayal of that trust that brought him to where he stood now.
Naruto looked at Gaara again, at the boy who, despite plausibly having a body count that Naruto would never catch up to, was just so incongruously nice. He didn't see a brutal killer like Zabuza. He saw a brainwashed kid whose true crime, behind all the bloodshed, was just the same overwhelming lack of critical thinking that had driven the villagers to cruelty. Naruto hadn't sworn mortal vengeance on them. He'd sworn mortal vengeance on the mastermind who'd taken advantage of their flaws to push them over the edge.
Could Naruto help him? Could Naruto save him from the monster that had warped his mind, and from the way of life that Gaara had lived ever since? It seemed like an impossible task. How was he supposed to undo years of brainwashing in a single conversation, before their psychic bond turned off again and either Gaara killed them all in the sincere belief that he was helping or his Demon Beast killed them all because that was what Demon Beasts did?
Naruto stood there, thinking desperately, but no words came. Naruto didn't have the power to change someone like that. No human being had that power, not with so little time and no idea where to begin. Naruto couldn't even challenge the basic premise that had set Gaara on his path of destruction. What could he do to defeat the insidious, entrenched arguments of a Demon Beast?
What could change the nature of a man?
Suddenly, Naruto had his answer. It was staring him in the face. There was one more way in which Naruto and Gaara were reflections, each an image of exactly what the other wasn't–but also of what he could have been, and what he could still become. There was one means by which Naruto could destroy the cursed symmetry that forced them to be enemies. But it would only work if, deep down, he and Gaara really were alike.
You can break a person with a single question, or open their eyes to a new way of seeing the world. You can change someone forever.
"How hard did you try?"
Gaara blinked. "I'm sorry?"
The path to the future Naruto wanted was narrower than a spider's thread, but it shone so brightly in the light of sudden understanding that he could see exactly where to walk.
He advanced on Gaara step by step until the two stood opposite each other on the dais.
"Gaara of the Desert," Naruto asked, "how hard did you try to fix humanity before you gave up and decided killing was the only way?"
"There'd be no point," Gaara said with a touch of impatience, as if Naruto was asking a question which had been answered earlier during the lesson. "It's human nature. Nobody can fix something like that."
"And how do you know that, exactly?" Naruto pressed. "Do you have a source that isn't a sealed demon and a trickster spirit?"
Gaara stiffened.
"He wouldn't lie to me!" he exclaimed, the closest to anger that Naruto had yet seen him.
"Oh, really," Naruto said flatly. "So that's all right, then. I guess his word's so good that you can wipe out humanity on that alone."
Gaara briefly glanced upwards.
"But where would you even start trying?" he asked. "Everybody does it. All the time. I don't need him to tell me that–I can see it with my own eyes! Even if self-destruction wasn't physically written into what we are, how could anybody ever change something so… so absolute?"
"The size of a problem–"
Naruto broke off. Some deep part of him was ringing an alarm. This wasn't just a truth being told to Gaara. It was a truth being told to Uzumaki Naruto as well, and it was something he mustn't ever let himself forget, even after the moment of clarity wore off. He repeated it, this time with intent.
"The size of a problem has nothing to do with whether it has a solution."
Naruto looked Gaara in the eye.
"Let me ask you again. Knowing that if you were wrong, that if humanity's self-destructiveness was fixable, you would be condemning our entire species to death for nothing, how hard did you try?"
Gaara was silent, his face ashen.
"But… he said…"
"You're the one who decides whether to kill, Gaara. What do you say?"
"I…"
Gaara just looked at him helplessly.
It took time before he spoke again.
"But Naruto," he pleaded, "if there was even the tiniest chance that you were right, the tiniest chance that humanity was fixable, what would that make me? If it turned out that killing all those people wasn't saving them?"
"It would make you an ordinary mass murderer," Naruto said simply. "But reality doesn't work that way. Something is either true or it isn't. Either humanity is fixable or it isn't. Either you're already an ordinary mass murderer or you're not. The only question is: how much do you want to know the truth?"
Naruto watched Gaara balance on the edge between redemption and a fall from which there would be no way back.
He didn't pray, because Uzumaki Naruto had nobody to pray to, but he hoped as hard as he dared.
Naruto waited.
And waited.
And waited.
"What would I have to do?"
A weight the size of a classical temple fell from Naruto's shoulders. In their hearts of hearts, he and Gaara were alike in the way that mattered most.
"Ask hard questions. Find out the answers. Never lie to yourself."
Gaara gave him an uncertain look.
"I don't mean to be rude, but that's really vague."
Naruto sighed. "I don't know yet either, Gaara. But I'm going to find out. That's the goal at the end of my path–or maybe in the middle, because hopefully I'll come up with something even cooler afterwards–and I won't be keeping omnicide as a fallback option."
He took one last step towards Gaara.
"I don't know how many people you've killed, but I'm guessing it's a lot. I can't forgive you for that. Nobody can forgive you for that, because they're all dead. After everything you've done, and everything you nearly did, I don't think I'm quite prepared to call you a friend either. But if you promise that you'll go home and try as hard as you can to find a way to fix human suffering without murder, and I stay here and do the same, then we can at least call each other…"
Naruto hesitated, but somehow it felt right.
"...allies."
He held out his hand.
Gaara stood still as he absorbed Naruto's words.
"And if I try as hard as I can, and it turns out it can't be fixed and I have to go back to Plan A?"
"Then I'll come stop you," Naruto said. "I've seen the goodness in people now. I'm not going to let you kill them while I'm still trying to figure out how it works."
"I suppose that's fair," Gaara said.
He took Naruto's hand, and in that moment, his smile was brilliant enough to light up the eternal night of his inner world.
"So what happens now… ally?"
Nothing had changed in the starless sky above, but Naruto had the inexplicable sense that the moon was now glaring at him. He gave it a victorious smirk while Gaara looked on in puzzlement.
-o-
And that was how the greatest genin victory in the history of Leaf (so far) was won by a desperate yell of "ABORT!"
-o-
The invasion's defeat was declared by the end of the day. From what Naruto could gather between the briefings he was cleared for and the information he could wheedle out of officers too tired to resist, Gaara had been one of the invasion's two secret weapons, together with a guy called Orochimaru (who surely couldn't be the same Orochimaru that the Perverted One had presented as a Demon Beast last resort, but on the other hand, it wasn't exactly a common name). After Gaara went off-script from the start, and then conspicuously floated off on a cloud of sand without accomplishing any actual military objectives, while Orochimaru simply didn't turn up to lead his troops, the invaders' morale had crumbled faster than a sandcastle in a thunderstorm.
Even then, Leaf's losses were considerable, especially in the middle ranks. Naruto had to read the casualty lists several times before he could convince himself that Iruka-sensei's name wasn't on them and Superteam Storm had successfully defied the Demon Fox's prophecy. There was also enough infrastructural damage that, so far, nobody had commented on the water towers.
By all accounts, though, things could have been a lot worse. Apparently, the ninja who'd made the difference was the last person Naruto would have expected: Shimura Danzō, the evil old man who'd tried to frame Kakashi-sensei for treason. Even Naruto had to give credit where it was due: for all of Shimura's horrific flaws, when Old Man Hokage was unable to take charge of the village's defence, he'd stepped into the leader's vacant shoes as smoothly as if he'd been waiting in the wings, and he might as well have had a Sharingan for how effectively he'd predicted the enemy's targets and tactics.
(Old Man Hokage himself was missing in action, last seen at what was now the heart of an enormous crater. It was something Naruto was trying not to think about, at least not yet.)
Over the next few days, Naruto and Superteam Storm were propelled into the spotlight alongside Shimura and the other heroes of the invasion: apparently, Gaara had already fended off enough ambushes to secure his reputation as a jōnin-killing superweapon by the time Operation Storm the Beach began, and they were the team of genin who, without any senior ninja to direct them, sent him into desperate retreat without a scratch on them, and even managed to do it without slowing down their parts of the evacuation. Even without becoming Hokage, Naruto already got to bathe in alternating cheers and grinding of teeth as Leaf at large acknowledged his accomplishments.
Some smaller changes had also rippled out.
Hinata had had a formal meeting with her father, and while discussion of her family dynamics was still off the table, Naruto could make some inferences from how she spent the whole day smiling.
The Uchiha Clan's stock had gone up considerably after Sasuke covered for Naruto by claiming he was the one who saw Gaara's seal on the verge of coming apart with the Sharingan and decided to let him run. Not everyone in the village had believed him (or understood what he was saying in the first place), but those who did could appreciate that Sasuke's powers had potentially saved the village from a Day of Tragedy. (Of Superteam Storm, Hinata had trusted Naruto enough to back their account while she waited for a very overdue explanation, Ino and Tenten had been too far away to get a clear picture, and the foreign pair had presumably recognised that contradicting the "official" narrative would turn new friends into enemies and potentially get them detained for questioning–or, in the worst-case scenario, assassinated to protect Leaf's secrets. Kakashi-sensei, who must have known the Sharingan had no such powers, had claimed he couldn't comment for reasons of village security.)
Tenten had muttered something about Gai-sensei being busy with reconstruction, then thanked Naruto for coming up with Operation Storm the Beach, given him the most awkward hug ever, and invited him to dinner before running off. It looked like Naruto might need to revisit the subject of polyamory earlier than expected.
Though Shikamaru had chosen not to claim his place in the spotlight, Naruto hadn't forgotten his contribution. Shikamaru's help with planning Operation Storm the Beach had been freely-given and invaluable. The strange wall that had arisen between them after Stage 2.5 was still there, but now Naruto found himself hoping that one day they'd find a way across it.
Finally, Hidden Grass's Team Earth, Wind, and Fire had apparently received a formal invitation to the next Chūnin Exam from the temporary administration. While Naruto doubted this would be worth much directly since Leaf was unlikely to host the next exam, especially with no arena, it did make the statement that Leaf's examiners considered them to be Grass's strongest candidates, and that meant Grass would lose face if it didn't send them for another try next year.
There was just one dark cloud on the horizon. Old Man Hokage was gone forever. Leaf was leaderless in a time of crisis, with the village more vulnerable than it had ever been in Naruto's memory, and with a hundred vital decisions to be made–including if they should formally declare war on Sand. Whoever became Fifth Hokage now would not only be like the Third, determining the shape of the village for decades to come; they might also hold its very survival in their hands.
Yet nobody was challenging Shimura Danzō for the Hokage hat.
-o-
A/N: This marks the end of the Chūnin Exam arc. The outline of the last few chapters was plotted out years ago, and only needed me to miraculously find the spoons to write them, but everything from here is new territory. As such, expect the rate of publication to slow down again, though hopefully not to the same extent.
In the meantime, I should mention that 75% of my feedback since I started posting chapters again has been commission artist spam, and that's a little dispiriting. Please remember that feedback and discussion are the engines that power fanfiction writers (and writers in general). I'd love to hear what you think of what you've read so far and what you predict might happen next.
Finally, many thanks to apooooop, Halberdier, HoratioVonBecker, Meneldur, and Paneki for beta reading help.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I really like this twist on canon-Gaara and Therapy no Jutsu. It's really the sort of thing that would only work on someone who is similar enough to Naruto to take ideas seriously; the problem from Shukaku's perspective is that arguments terminating in "therefore, I should kill everyone" is really quite close in concept-space to ones terminating in "therefore, I shouldn't kill everyone," if you are the sort of person who is capable of being persuaded by argument. So this fic is doing a good job of preserving the vibe of the canonical Naruto and Gaara relationship despite few of the details being the same, which I appreciate and find impressive.
- Location
- Hong Kong
Hmm. I'm impressed that Naruto pulled off that sort of win; I can't help but wonder how much that disrupted Danzo's plans, though the obvious answer is "not enough". Sadly, Naruto still has a long way to go, since he literally thought of Danzo's betrayal and still missed it. Dark days ahead for the Hidden Leaf, I expect. Great chapter, thanks!
oakgem217
Connoisseur of Power Fantasy
- Location
- The Moon
the subtle jabs at canon naruto are endlessly amusing. i cant wait to hate whatever changes danzo makes to the leaf. the only other fic i can think of that made danzo the official permanent hokage was Waves Arisen (high bar for rational naruto fics) and even then, he had like one scene before getting assassinated offscreen.
- Pronouns
- She/Her/They/Them
Gotta say, I do not know whether this is a common collocation or "cold hell(s)" creeps up only as a genius reference to that one aside comment about the types of hells, with the cold ones scaring Naruto the most. Also I can't help but think of Haku-compatible subtext.
Now would be an incredibly good time to pull a switcheroo.
That must be an impostor! Reveal yourself, knave!
Learnt no lessons at all from the bell genjutsu in the Forest, he did. His ass kicked by a genjutsu master, he some day is going to get.
I love his priorities. Same, bro. Same.
Worth a shot. Maybe there's ramen on another planet, or maybe you can light up the dark up there. (*ding*! Roll credits!)
Ah, he fell victim to a standard SEP spell.
Hindsight is 20/20 but to be fair, he had sand in his eyes. And countrypeople.
How fitting!
I love you Velorien you magnificent person. :')
錯覚? Hallucination/illusion/delusion?
Typical response to never knowing actual politeness when you grow up dot gif
Maybe not if the seal is shoddy? Thinking positive, people
... Huh.
NARUTO: Freeze, actually.
HIRUZEN (watching from war criminal heaven): I already did mine, now it's your turn, suckers!
Ooh, burn! Or freeze! Or become the world's greatest ramen chef, with the cool tattoos
SHIT
I think THIS is the main part where the sealsmiths didn't know what they were doing
Hey, Naruto, you've kissed two people. He doesn't even have friends. Don't give up on hope just y- oh, THAT body count.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE 💜💜💜
"And that's before you consider the power of answers."
"One eye glaring at me? Pft."
This is hilarious to me. "Commander, neither of them did anything required"
"*sigh* go home..."
☝️😐
🤨👓🤏
But Gai-sensei is way too old-
Ooooooh, cold balls.
- Location
- Poland
Oh, Naruto..
That is so horrifyingly tragic, holy shit.
I really, *really* like your characterization of Gaara here, as well as your take on the ancient art of talk-no-jutsu. The entire scene is very believable (weird as that may sound), and the implications on Gaara's *real* virtue are just.. damn. It would take incredible strength to find out that you commited mass-murder in the genuinely best of intentions, were completely wrong to do so, and then to not immediately end your life on the spot.
- Location
- Hiding
Wasn't predicting that explanation of Gaara's mental state, but it works perfectly with his established actions. Well, he seems to have too much fun a couple of times, but he acknowledges that as an imperfection in his own motives. Well done.
- Location
- New England
A genuinely fantastic Gaara exploration. He really is rational inside his own head, just like Naruto, it just didn't impact with reality with no one but the demon beast to ground him.
As for Danzo..... yeah that's going to be a problem. I'm honestly half expecting him to end up being a Zetsu puppet of some sort all along, deliberately designed to start a war to get the Beasts into chaotic battlefields where they be dealt with in some complex way that makes everything worse. It's definitely not a coincidence that Orochimaru was one of the individuals most capable of containing a Beast and he just so happened to get assassinated alongside with another 1/3 of the people Naruto was told he should go to in case the seal breaks. Oy.
As for Danzo..... yeah that's going to be a problem. I'm honestly half expecting him to end up being a Zetsu puppet of some sort all along, deliberately designed to start a war to get the Beasts into chaotic battlefields where they be dealt with in some complex way that makes everything worse. It's definitely not a coincidence that Orochimaru was one of the individuals most capable of containing a Beast and he just so happened to get assassinated alongside with another 1/3 of the people Naruto was told he should go to in case the seal breaks. Oy.
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
@Lysbeth Succubus, you're on top form tonight. I find myself needing to do a reaction post to your reaction post.
Incidentally, I learned this word from Aragami, the undead shadow ninja sim, where it's a sense-impairing power you can use on those accursed guards. It's an OEL game that has a bunch of Japanese wordplay for its own amusement, and I ended up writing a Steam guide to translate it all, in which process I picked up various nifty vocabulary for daily use (another example being "shin'en" or "abyss", which summons shadows to devour enemies, leaving no corpse to hide).
To the best of my knowledge, this is a distinctive Narutoism. It's also mentioned elsewhere that Naruto has trauma from one winter when he was little and lived in a flat where the landlord controlled the heating.
It actually is. Recall that he has a budget of eight clones because the ninth turned up as a Fox clone.
Yup. I was in two minds about whether to follow the Kyubey pattern or stick with canon names for the rest, and ultimately I decided to go with the option that would be more fun to write.
Incidentally, I learned this word from Aragami, the undead shadow ninja sim, where it's a sense-impairing power you can use on those accursed guards. It's an OEL game that has a bunch of Japanese wordplay for its own amusement, and I ended up writing a Steam guide to translate it all, in which process I picked up various nifty vocabulary for daily use (another example being "shin'en" or "abyss", which summons shadows to devour enemies, leaving no corpse to hide).
What be this?
I'm not sure if he's officially kissed a second person. I mean, you'll notice Hinata is neither on fire nor exploded, as one would expect from her kissing Naruto.
- Location
- New England
The ultimate plot by the fox to break Naruto's spirit: death by first base!
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
SEP = "Somebody Else's Problem" from the Hitchhiker's Guide series. An SEP field is used as a far cheaper alternative than actual invisibility: you let yourself be visible, but compel viewers to believe that whatever is going on is somebody else's problem.
- Pronouns
- She/Her/They/Them
Somebody Else's Problem
The short of it is SEP Field is the result of a low-powered electronic device that hides things by exploiting people's natural tendency to not care if they don't have to. It's also the long of it.
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In Gaara's case it would be wander off somewhere else and commit suicide, remember his shitty seal? Whoever is nearby when he kicks it is likely to get tanuki'd.
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- Location
- United States
Remember this old thingy? You made quite the funny joke with it the other day.
Disclaimer(?) - I've never read or seen Naruto, but have read a sufficient handful of fics to get a general idea of it (though keeping the fics separate in my head is sometimes a challenge).
With that said, I really like this story.
I hope your cutlery situation improves, regardless of what happens to this story.
I apologize, this is going to be very partial and bullet-point-y, being pending a re-read-potentially-with-note-taking (due to that whole 'keeping fics separate' thing) and off the cuff and the top of my head.
Might revisit this if 'time for reading' and 'have internet access' coincide in the near future. No promises.
* 'Nine-brained Fox', uhm, doesn't really flow off the tongue. But it's the nomenclature you've got, so eh.
That said, well done. He is impressively scary, for how little we see of him.
* The Global Uzumaki Coalition is amusing, but I can't help but wonder how effective it'd be - it's lots of multitasking, but the entire Coalition's still working off of only one perspective, set of assumptions, etc.
Sending some off to look up information/talk with people, etc. helps.
* On the one hand, yes, Sakura even kinda keeping with Naruto and Sasuke is unquestionably impressive.
On the other, yes, she's definitely not putting the(ir) effort in. Nice to see her called on it.
* I quite liked your Hinata, and her (WIP) evolution.
Glad she didn't die (and wasn't sure whether I was expecting her to). Which doesn't stop me wondering how things would've gone if she had.
* Likewise, lovely Shikamaru reveal(s).
*Hiashi Hyuga just... makes me sad. I don't think I've come across a Hiashi I'd consider (or maybe just think of as) tragic before. Of course, I could have just completely misunderstood him.
Also, I'm still not sure whether the thanks for destroying the shrine was incidentally-genuine or just plausible cover.
* I didn't love the bit of Jiraya describing the Ransengen to Naruto. I don't have the word for it, but my thought process as I was reading it went something like: 'oh, he's doing that bit.' '...' 'Of course he doing that bit' '...' 'of course he's doing that as a bit' '...' 'of course he's doing that as a bit' '...' 'ugh'.
Something like: It just felt like too much of a stretch, making it too forced to be genuine, shoving the meta-ness of in my face. If that helps.
* Interesting (and impressively appropriate (and insightful of Naruto to have grasped it)) take on Gaara.
* Double KO on Hiruzen and Orochimaru with Danzo taking the hat? Oh dear.
I mean, it probably could have ended worse, but...
- Location
- Solar System
The one brained one is closest to human, but also wants to kill them all?
Well that's a bad sign...
I wonder how much worse it gets to the nine brained one, considering the comment about it being exponential.
Well that's a bad sign...
I wonder how much worse it gets to the nine brained one, considering the comment about it being exponential.
I wonder if it's actually 10^0 Brains through 10^8 Brains, or even 108^0-8 brains. Because every exponent of one is just one.
Commission artist spam?
