Rancorious
Continue? Yes or No.
It's simply peak.
Shoganai - An Ignoramus SI in Naruto
- Thread starter industrious
- Start date
- Fantasy
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- naruto self insert
28. Gonna Fly Now
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Chapter Twenty-Eight - Gonna Fly Now
Waking up in the hospital had long since overstayed its welcome. Between Itachi's attempted - that is to say, failed infiltration and Orochimaru's beatdown, I'd had more than enough time in hospital beds for the year, thank you. Unfortunately, having the greatest medi-nin as a mother and as Hokage meant that I was stuck here for at least another week; while one could use chakra to fully heal most wounds and diseases, it was apparently better for long-term health and easier on the nin practitioner to heal the first 80% before letting the body take care of the rest.
20% was apparently still pretty fucking bad.
Everything hurt, and the cawing of the birds outside my window wasn't helping much, either. Slowly, with all the patience and care of a surgeon, I crawled down the bed, reaching for my chart. My arms felt like the time I'd strapped on one of Lee's weight bandoliers as a joke; my fingers as fat and clumsy as sausages. But I managed to get my hands around the clipboard even so, and collapse once more on the horizontal to read it.
Once my vision managed to focus on the words, anyway.
One of the machines I was hooked up to started beeping.
My prognosis was excellent; no lasting damage, and a full recovery. The benefits of… of your mother being the greatest medi-nin in history. The shock was just what the damage had been.
"Puncture wound to right kidney" was expected, and while the list of secondary effects and complications was long, the notes indicated that all of these issues were standard for that sort of wound. No, what had caused my heartbeat to spike and my breath to stop for a second was the other line.
With the same strike that had nearly bisected my kidney, Kabuto had used some sort of inverted medi-nin technique to inject me with slow-dissolving capsules of poisonous chakra. The capsules had then been caught in my bloodstream and circulated all throughout my body. If my mother hadn't….
There was something utterly terrifying about having competent opponents.
…I was still tired.
Frankly I was tired of being tired. Frustrated with waking up fatigued—
For the fifth day and the uncountable-th time, I fell down into the depths of my hospital bed, and let darkness take me once more.
The next time I woke up, my brother was in the room with me, perched on one of the chairs like an oversized bird and twitching with nervous energy.
He was also covered in bandages. More than me, in fact. Almost as much as the time I'd convinced him to turn into a toilet paper mummy back in the orphanage.
"Big bro!" my little brother had yet to comprehend the nature of an indoor voice. "You're awake! You're awake!"
"I've been awake," I insisted, even though the words came out more of a half-sigh, half-mumble. "Wha' th'fuck 'append 'u?"
…I might still require further recovery time.
They must have changed my IV or something while I was out — my heart should have been racing at the sight of Naruto's injuries, but it wasn't. I felt… distant from everything. Like an observer in my own body. Drugs, presumably; if this was shock, then one of the various monitors or the like would have been beeping, and Tsunade would be barreling through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man to save me.
I was not in the best shape, but Naruto hadn't been on any missions. There was no reason for him to have gotten so injured in the past few days.
"What happened to you?!" Naruto shouted back. "I'm fine — just some cuts and bruises and my arm got dislocated but it's all better now, believe it!"—he waved the offending limb at me as if to prove it— "But you look awful, Nobu!"
There were many things I wanted to say, but my throat felt like the entirety of the Land of Wind. So I tried to communicate my enormous frustration with the genin, as well as the fact that I'd asked him first, solely using my eyes.
I still had it; the blonde flinched away, holding his hands out palms up.
"Alright, alright! Geez, you don't have to be like that…."
The true center of the universe told me everything, and I wished I'd had the energy to swear.
As it turned out, the rogue Sanin, mad scientist, mentor to Kabuto, and all-around evil genius, also understood something of tactics.
The intelligence that'd formed the basis for the mission Tsunade, Gai, and myself (plus, I thought with a shudder, the two other jonin) had been bait; its purpose had been to draw out Konoha's heaviest hitters, and it had succeeded. Four of Otogakure's best had been dispatched while we'd been bug hunting, all for the express purpose of kidnapping Naruto's teammate.
Sasuke had apparently been having dinner with Ino and Sakura when they'd made their move. Seeing the look in my eyes, Naruto had had to backpedal for a moment — both of the young women were fine now, having already checked out of the hospital a few days ago.
Sakura had regained consciousness quickly and sprinted to Naruto's place before completely collapsing. After hastily assembling a team with Shikamaru, Choji, Neji and Lee — and somehow, had roped in Gaara and his siblings as well, the "Sasuke Retrieval Action Team" had sprung immediately into action. There hadn't been time to contact a jonin -- Naurto claimed that Shikamaru had agreed with his assertion at the time.
"A-and?" I croaked, because Naruto was getting far too deep into the details of his fight rather than reveal what'd actually happened. "D-did y—?"
"Yeah," came a somewhat raspy grunt from outside the room.
Uchiha Sasuke was currently in a wheelchair, with one of his legs in a cast and his own scattering of bandages across his body.
"They somehow thought that I'd want to go willingly," he snorted. "Fucking morons."
"They put him in a box!" Naruto proclaimed, and Sasuke twitched. "That's what? The second time, eh, Sasuke? Maybe you should—"
"Come on, Naruto," the dark-haired boy stated. "The chunin looks like he's going to pass out any second."
Naruto pursed his lips as he peered at me, and it looked for a moment like he was going to argue. Instead, the normally hyperactive young teen leapt back to his feet and waved good-bye.
Little punk. I was fine — relatively speaking. I could have listened to the full story if Naruto had just given me the high-level summar—-
Over the next few days, my strength recovered, and all the while I plotted extensive, elaborate tortures on the manufacturer of the hospital bed. In between the ever-less frequent naps and scheming, Naruto would come to visit; each time, he'd be sporting fewer and fewer bandages.
I only had just the single set, and they still weren't coming off. Nor was I allowed to leave my room, apparently. The perils of having the best medi-nin in the world as your mother.
It wasn't just Naruto who visited, of course. Shikamaru, Ino, and Sakura, as well as Gai and Shizune all visited at least once, and between all of them, I was informed of the other consequences of the kidnapping attempt.
The jonin Naruto's team had fought had been powerful, and Lee, Neji, Choji, and Kankuro were all in intensive care, and unable to see visitors. This explained why I hadn't seen my mother while conscious; the woman doubtless had her hands full. Nor did I see Temari during my stay at the hospital — apparently my attempt to creep her out during the Chunin Exams had stuck.
Gaara, on the other hand, came to see me exactly once, and something had clearly happened to him, because he was a lot less serial killer the entire time. The kid had even blinked! Several times, in fact! And chuckled at one of my quips.
Highly disconcerting.
He'd also stated that he found my brother "interesting," which I felt that I ought to be worried about at some point.
But soon enough (but still far too long of a time), I was finally cleared to leave the hospital; Shizune herself had inspected me and found I was in good enough shape to leave.
My mother was still working on the other patients, as well as her duties as Hokage. That, I didn't begrudge her in the slightest.
It was my friends whose lives she held in her hands.
When I finally departed the hospital, I was greeted with another visitor: the man I'd once thought to be the last of the Sanin.
"Hey, kid," Jiraiya chuckled. "How's it feel, fighting in the big leagues?"
"Ugh," I grunted, the man's pointed reminder clashing with the undeniable pleasure of having my feet finally fully under my control. Ten days pretty much stuck in bed, and the mandatory wheelchair ride to the front door too. "I'm not ready yet."
"You survived," the man countered. "And that means you're more ready than most."
There was a certain fatalistic logic to his words, but I'd only survived due to the efforts of my mother and the med-nin team at Konoha. I'd thought myself pretty damn good for my age —- but it was a big world out there. I was a long, long way from the power cap.
"---Which is what I'm here to talk to you about," the Sanin continued. "I'm taking your brother."
There was a finger under the gray-haired man's nose. "What?!" I demanded. "Explain."
"I'm taking your brother as my disciple," he said. "I've gotten new intelligence that the Akatsuki see him as a major target. For the next three years, therefore, he's going to be training with me personally. Far away from Konoha or anywhere else."
Part of me was dumbfounded. The other understood exactly what was happening.
"You can't just—"
"Who are you to tell me what I can and can't do?!" he boomed out suddenly. "If you value his life, you should understand. The village has already proven to be vulnerable to infiltration twice over; the Akatsuki do not care about collateral damage. Naruto has already agreed to it — at least in part, because of what happened when you were in their way."
His eyes bore down into mine, and I refused to flinch away even as every bone in my body begged me to do so.
He was right.
I knew he was right. The words I'd thrown at Sakura during the Chunin Exams echoed back at me; I wasn't strong enough. I wasn't ready.
And frankly, I wasn't willing to live alone with just Naruto and Jiraiya for company for the next three years. Nor did I have any guarantee that he'd agree if I asked him.
"...how long before you go?" I asked, breaking eye contact.
"Three days," he replied, nodding.
Three days before Naruto left for intensive training. Three days to figure out the proper shape of the future.
Three days to say goodbye.
"Alright," I informed Jiraiya. "Thank you for letting me know."
Neji looked even paler than usual, while Lee was still covered in bandages and seals, but both of my teammates were out of the hospital, even if our bushy-browed friend would have to return after the dinner was over.
Apparently, he'd opened a Gate prematurely during his duel with a pair of twin jonin. He had been warned in no uncertain terms not to use any chakra for the next month; even worse, Gai was furious at him.
This wasn't just a meal with my teammates, of course — Team Seven was also present. I'd invited Team Ten as well, but with Choji still under intensive care, Ino and Shikamaru had both declined. I'd hold a separate feast for them when the big boy had fully recovered in turn. The siblings from Sunagakure had departed once Kankuro was in decent enough shape to travel, so they, too, were out. Rumors abounded that some message had arrived from their village ordering them home, but rumors were often wrong.
This was my brother's farewell dinner.
I'd cooked (nearly) all his favorites — the sole exception being the ramen, which I'd bought. Two full industrial stockpots' worth of broth, plus toppings galore. But even so, there had been plenty for me to slave over: Onigiri, some filled with eel and others with spicy tuna; tempura prawns and assorted vegetables, at one point the only way for Naruto to eat something even remotely healthy; pork shogayaki; chicken katsu; freshly steamed rice; oshinko and other assorted tsukemono pickles; and for dessert, red bean soup.
The table all but groaned under the weight of it all.
The six of us spoke lightly at first, simple pleasantries and compliments regarding the food. Then came reminiscences, wistful recollections of past missions. Without going into any details, the men of Team Gai went into our first meeting with Jiraiya; Naruto howled at how frustrating and perverted the old man could be. In turn, we heard the tale of Team Seven's first mission once again — how a simple C-Rank turned into an A-Rank involving two rogue nin and a criminal monopolist. We laughed and ribbed each other over the lighter parts of the chunin exams: Gaara versus Lee; Naruto's fight against Kiba, which I'd unfortunately missed.
And then, inevitably, the conversation turned towards the future.
Of all people, though, it was Sakura who spoke first.
"Umm… Nobunaga-senpai?" her hands twisted nervously even as the pink-haired girl avoided my eyes. "I… was thinking about asking y-your mother to make me her apprentice. But I wanted to ask you first for permission…."
I blinked.
Why would she ask me about such a matter?
"I-I know she's your mother, so please excuse my presumption! But if you do not want to be a medical-nin, t-then—-"
Oh.
Oh.
That was… considerate of her. If I wanted to train under a Sanin, there was one right there; one who wanted nothing more than to spend more time with me.
Sakura was right, though: I had no interest in medical ninjutsu. My mother's path was not my own.
I'd have to have a word with Tsunade as well, just so she wouldn't refuse under some misguided thought that I'd want to follow in her footsteps.
Naruto would be gone for three years, and when he returned, things would only intensify; it'd be important for Naturo to have good teammates…
…The realization hit me, and I had to stop myself from laughing at it.
How did this entire escapade go in canon? I had no idea, but I could guess.
Earlier in the evening, while we'd been reminiscing about the Chunin Exams, we'd skipped over the Forest of Death. When I'd told Sakura, flat-out, that she wasn't ready, that they weren't strong enough. If I hadn't been in the picture then, what would have happened to them? Would she have gotten the motivation to study and train and practice?
If not for that intervention, Sakura would have probably succumbed to her wounds when the Otogakure jonin had made their move.
That… sounded about right for what had happened. I'd expressed no small amount of frustration with anime in the past about how female main or secondary characters weren't really allowed to excel during the plot; fridging Naruto's teammate right before a timeskip sounded in line with the genre.
I smiled, and shook my head. "Sakura… please feel free to ask her."
I didn't normally think about how my presence impacted the world… but I'd saved the young lady's life without even meaning to. I really was making a difference.
From there, our conversation turned to the other member of Team Seven: Sasuke would be staying in the village, training directly under Kakashi once the man was fully recovered.
"He's the only one left with a Sharingan," Sasuke lied, and we all pretended to believe him.
Team Gai didn't have any definite plans for how we'd be training once Lee recovered; just hard work, missions, and steady improvement. I carefully said nothing about my ongoing work on Four Elements Thesis, or the twin bracelets on my wrists.
When dinner and dessert were finished, the moon had fully risen, and I invited the other five into the back garden, where I brought forth my tonkori.
"Something for you, Naruto," I began, and began to play.
Adventure seeker on an empty street…
The next morning, Uzumaki Naruto departed the village, accompanied by the last Sanin tied to the village and yet not bound to it.
They made quite the pair: one tall and gray with a steady gait, the other short and blonde and bursting with energy.
Together they strode down the main boulevard of the village, a straight line from the Hokage's Tower to the main gate.
There wasn't a crowd parting in their wake; no cries of cheering adulation caught their backs. But as my brother made his way out, his fellow genin and a few chunin just so happened to pass by to give him well-wishes. I even caught shy little Hinata peeking his way, too nervous and concerned with propriety to say farewell.
Neji looked annoyed at that, and I couldn't blame him; all that work we were doing to shape her into the next clan leader, and she couldn't say a casual good-bye.
Lee was back in the hospital, so it was just the two of us waiting at the gate when they got there.
"Bye, little brother," I said, ruffling his hair the way he hated.
"Ack! Nobu! Stahp!" he slapped my hand away, his lip trembling. "W-when I get back, you'll never be able to do that again! Ever! Believe it!"
I grinned. "Promises, promises."
He punched me lightly in the arm. "Believe it!" he insisted.
A wave was all Neji got; a grunt all that was needed between myself and Jiraiya.
And then they were off.
"Three years," I sighed. "We better not fall behind, eh Neji?"
"I doubt we will," my clan-raised friend said. "...I have to find Hinata. More Gentle Fist training for her, I think."
"And I have some work of my own to do," I nodded. Tomorrow, Team Gai would meet up again for group training. But today… today we were on our own.
Or so I thought.
For halfway between the village proper and my home, on the long and lonesome road to Honnoji, I found myself surrounded and encircled by a murder of cawing crows.
Waking up in the hospital had long since overstayed its welcome. Between Itachi's attempted - that is to say, failed infiltration and Orochimaru's beatdown, I'd had more than enough time in hospital beds for the year, thank you. Unfortunately, having the greatest medi-nin as a mother and as Hokage meant that I was stuck here for at least another week; while one could use chakra to fully heal most wounds and diseases, it was apparently better for long-term health and easier on the nin practitioner to heal the first 80% before letting the body take care of the rest.
20% was apparently still pretty fucking bad.
Everything hurt, and the cawing of the birds outside my window wasn't helping much, either. Slowly, with all the patience and care of a surgeon, I crawled down the bed, reaching for my chart. My arms felt like the time I'd strapped on one of Lee's weight bandoliers as a joke; my fingers as fat and clumsy as sausages. But I managed to get my hands around the clipboard even so, and collapse once more on the horizontal to read it.
Once my vision managed to focus on the words, anyway.
One of the machines I was hooked up to started beeping.
My prognosis was excellent; no lasting damage, and a full recovery. The benefits of… of your mother being the greatest medi-nin in history. The shock was just what the damage had been.
"Puncture wound to right kidney" was expected, and while the list of secondary effects and complications was long, the notes indicated that all of these issues were standard for that sort of wound. No, what had caused my heartbeat to spike and my breath to stop for a second was the other line.
With the same strike that had nearly bisected my kidney, Kabuto had used some sort of inverted medi-nin technique to inject me with slow-dissolving capsules of poisonous chakra. The capsules had then been caught in my bloodstream and circulated all throughout my body. If my mother hadn't….
There was something utterly terrifying about having competent opponents.
…I was still tired.
Frankly I was tired of being tired. Frustrated with waking up fatigued—
For the fifth day and the uncountable-th time, I fell down into the depths of my hospital bed, and let darkness take me once more.
The next time I woke up, my brother was in the room with me, perched on one of the chairs like an oversized bird and twitching with nervous energy.
He was also covered in bandages. More than me, in fact. Almost as much as the time I'd convinced him to turn into a toilet paper mummy back in the orphanage.
"Big bro!" my little brother had yet to comprehend the nature of an indoor voice. "You're awake! You're awake!"
"I've been awake," I insisted, even though the words came out more of a half-sigh, half-mumble. "Wha' th'fuck 'append 'u?"
…I might still require further recovery time.
They must have changed my IV or something while I was out — my heart should have been racing at the sight of Naruto's injuries, but it wasn't. I felt… distant from everything. Like an observer in my own body. Drugs, presumably; if this was shock, then one of the various monitors or the like would have been beeping, and Tsunade would be barreling through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man to save me.
I was not in the best shape, but Naruto hadn't been on any missions. There was no reason for him to have gotten so injured in the past few days.
"What happened to you?!" Naruto shouted back. "I'm fine — just some cuts and bruises and my arm got dislocated but it's all better now, believe it!"—he waved the offending limb at me as if to prove it— "But you look awful, Nobu!"
There were many things I wanted to say, but my throat felt like the entirety of the Land of Wind. So I tried to communicate my enormous frustration with the genin, as well as the fact that I'd asked him first, solely using my eyes.
I still had it; the blonde flinched away, holding his hands out palms up.
"Alright, alright! Geez, you don't have to be like that…."
The true center of the universe told me everything, and I wished I'd had the energy to swear.
As it turned out, the rogue Sanin, mad scientist, mentor to Kabuto, and all-around evil genius, also understood something of tactics.
The intelligence that'd formed the basis for the mission Tsunade, Gai, and myself (plus, I thought with a shudder, the two other jonin) had been bait; its purpose had been to draw out Konoha's heaviest hitters, and it had succeeded. Four of Otogakure's best had been dispatched while we'd been bug hunting, all for the express purpose of kidnapping Naruto's teammate.
Sasuke had apparently been having dinner with Ino and Sakura when they'd made their move. Seeing the look in my eyes, Naruto had had to backpedal for a moment — both of the young women were fine now, having already checked out of the hospital a few days ago.
Sakura had regained consciousness quickly and sprinted to Naruto's place before completely collapsing. After hastily assembling a team with Shikamaru, Choji, Neji and Lee — and somehow, had roped in Gaara and his siblings as well, the "Sasuke Retrieval Action Team" had sprung immediately into action. There hadn't been time to contact a jonin -- Naurto claimed that Shikamaru had agreed with his assertion at the time.
"A-and?" I croaked, because Naruto was getting far too deep into the details of his fight rather than reveal what'd actually happened. "D-did y—?"
"Yeah," came a somewhat raspy grunt from outside the room.
Uchiha Sasuke was currently in a wheelchair, with one of his legs in a cast and his own scattering of bandages across his body.
"They somehow thought that I'd want to go willingly," he snorted. "Fucking morons."
"They put him in a box!" Naruto proclaimed, and Sasuke twitched. "That's what? The second time, eh, Sasuke? Maybe you should—"
"Come on, Naruto," the dark-haired boy stated. "The chunin looks like he's going to pass out any second."
Naruto pursed his lips as he peered at me, and it looked for a moment like he was going to argue. Instead, the normally hyperactive young teen leapt back to his feet and waved good-bye.
Little punk. I was fine — relatively speaking. I could have listened to the full story if Naruto had just given me the high-level summar—-
Over the next few days, my strength recovered, and all the while I plotted extensive, elaborate tortures on the manufacturer of the hospital bed. In between the ever-less frequent naps and scheming, Naruto would come to visit; each time, he'd be sporting fewer and fewer bandages.
I only had just the single set, and they still weren't coming off. Nor was I allowed to leave my room, apparently. The perils of having the best medi-nin in the world as your mother.
It wasn't just Naruto who visited, of course. Shikamaru, Ino, and Sakura, as well as Gai and Shizune all visited at least once, and between all of them, I was informed of the other consequences of the kidnapping attempt.
The jonin Naruto's team had fought had been powerful, and Lee, Neji, Choji, and Kankuro were all in intensive care, and unable to see visitors. This explained why I hadn't seen my mother while conscious; the woman doubtless had her hands full. Nor did I see Temari during my stay at the hospital — apparently my attempt to creep her out during the Chunin Exams had stuck.
Gaara, on the other hand, came to see me exactly once, and something had clearly happened to him, because he was a lot less serial killer the entire time. The kid had even blinked! Several times, in fact! And chuckled at one of my quips.
Highly disconcerting.
He'd also stated that he found my brother "interesting," which I felt that I ought to be worried about at some point.
But soon enough (but still far too long of a time), I was finally cleared to leave the hospital; Shizune herself had inspected me and found I was in good enough shape to leave.
My mother was still working on the other patients, as well as her duties as Hokage. That, I didn't begrudge her in the slightest.
It was my friends whose lives she held in her hands.
When I finally departed the hospital, I was greeted with another visitor: the man I'd once thought to be the last of the Sanin.
"Hey, kid," Jiraiya chuckled. "How's it feel, fighting in the big leagues?"
"Ugh," I grunted, the man's pointed reminder clashing with the undeniable pleasure of having my feet finally fully under my control. Ten days pretty much stuck in bed, and the mandatory wheelchair ride to the front door too. "I'm not ready yet."
"You survived," the man countered. "And that means you're more ready than most."
There was a certain fatalistic logic to his words, but I'd only survived due to the efforts of my mother and the med-nin team at Konoha. I'd thought myself pretty damn good for my age —- but it was a big world out there. I was a long, long way from the power cap.
"---Which is what I'm here to talk to you about," the Sanin continued. "I'm taking your brother."
There was a finger under the gray-haired man's nose. "What?!" I demanded. "Explain."
"I'm taking your brother as my disciple," he said. "I've gotten new intelligence that the Akatsuki see him as a major target. For the next three years, therefore, he's going to be training with me personally. Far away from Konoha or anywhere else."
Part of me was dumbfounded. The other understood exactly what was happening.
"You can't just—"
"Who are you to tell me what I can and can't do?!" he boomed out suddenly. "If you value his life, you should understand. The village has already proven to be vulnerable to infiltration twice over; the Akatsuki do not care about collateral damage. Naruto has already agreed to it — at least in part, because of what happened when you were in their way."
His eyes bore down into mine, and I refused to flinch away even as every bone in my body begged me to do so.
He was right.
I knew he was right. The words I'd thrown at Sakura during the Chunin Exams echoed back at me; I wasn't strong enough. I wasn't ready.
And frankly, I wasn't willing to live alone with just Naruto and Jiraiya for company for the next three years. Nor did I have any guarantee that he'd agree if I asked him.
"...how long before you go?" I asked, breaking eye contact.
"Three days," he replied, nodding.
Three days before Naruto left for intensive training. Three days to figure out the proper shape of the future.
Three days to say goodbye.
"Alright," I informed Jiraiya. "Thank you for letting me know."
Neji looked even paler than usual, while Lee was still covered in bandages and seals, but both of my teammates were out of the hospital, even if our bushy-browed friend would have to return after the dinner was over.
Apparently, he'd opened a Gate prematurely during his duel with a pair of twin jonin. He had been warned in no uncertain terms not to use any chakra for the next month; even worse, Gai was furious at him.
This wasn't just a meal with my teammates, of course — Team Seven was also present. I'd invited Team Ten as well, but with Choji still under intensive care, Ino and Shikamaru had both declined. I'd hold a separate feast for them when the big boy had fully recovered in turn. The siblings from Sunagakure had departed once Kankuro was in decent enough shape to travel, so they, too, were out. Rumors abounded that some message had arrived from their village ordering them home, but rumors were often wrong.
This was my brother's farewell dinner.
I'd cooked (nearly) all his favorites — the sole exception being the ramen, which I'd bought. Two full industrial stockpots' worth of broth, plus toppings galore. But even so, there had been plenty for me to slave over: Onigiri, some filled with eel and others with spicy tuna; tempura prawns and assorted vegetables, at one point the only way for Naruto to eat something even remotely healthy; pork shogayaki; chicken katsu; freshly steamed rice; oshinko and other assorted tsukemono pickles; and for dessert, red bean soup.
The table all but groaned under the weight of it all.
The six of us spoke lightly at first, simple pleasantries and compliments regarding the food. Then came reminiscences, wistful recollections of past missions. Without going into any details, the men of Team Gai went into our first meeting with Jiraiya; Naruto howled at how frustrating and perverted the old man could be. In turn, we heard the tale of Team Seven's first mission once again — how a simple C-Rank turned into an A-Rank involving two rogue nin and a criminal monopolist. We laughed and ribbed each other over the lighter parts of the chunin exams: Gaara versus Lee; Naruto's fight against Kiba, which I'd unfortunately missed.
And then, inevitably, the conversation turned towards the future.
Of all people, though, it was Sakura who spoke first.
"Umm… Nobunaga-senpai?" her hands twisted nervously even as the pink-haired girl avoided my eyes. "I… was thinking about asking y-your mother to make me her apprentice. But I wanted to ask you first for permission…."
I blinked.
Why would she ask me about such a matter?
"I-I know she's your mother, so please excuse my presumption! But if you do not want to be a medical-nin, t-then—-"
Oh.
Oh.
That was… considerate of her. If I wanted to train under a Sanin, there was one right there; one who wanted nothing more than to spend more time with me.
Sakura was right, though: I had no interest in medical ninjutsu. My mother's path was not my own.
I'd have to have a word with Tsunade as well, just so she wouldn't refuse under some misguided thought that I'd want to follow in her footsteps.
Naruto would be gone for three years, and when he returned, things would only intensify; it'd be important for Naturo to have good teammates…
…The realization hit me, and I had to stop myself from laughing at it.
How did this entire escapade go in canon? I had no idea, but I could guess.
Earlier in the evening, while we'd been reminiscing about the Chunin Exams, we'd skipped over the Forest of Death. When I'd told Sakura, flat-out, that she wasn't ready, that they weren't strong enough. If I hadn't been in the picture then, what would have happened to them? Would she have gotten the motivation to study and train and practice?
If not for that intervention, Sakura would have probably succumbed to her wounds when the Otogakure jonin had made their move.
That… sounded about right for what had happened. I'd expressed no small amount of frustration with anime in the past about how female main or secondary characters weren't really allowed to excel during the plot; fridging Naruto's teammate right before a timeskip sounded in line with the genre.
I smiled, and shook my head. "Sakura… please feel free to ask her."
I didn't normally think about how my presence impacted the world… but I'd saved the young lady's life without even meaning to. I really was making a difference.
From there, our conversation turned to the other member of Team Seven: Sasuke would be staying in the village, training directly under Kakashi once the man was fully recovered.
"He's the only one left with a Sharingan," Sasuke lied, and we all pretended to believe him.
Team Gai didn't have any definite plans for how we'd be training once Lee recovered; just hard work, missions, and steady improvement. I carefully said nothing about my ongoing work on Four Elements Thesis, or the twin bracelets on my wrists.
When dinner and dessert were finished, the moon had fully risen, and I invited the other five into the back garden, where I brought forth my tonkori.
"Something for you, Naruto," I began, and began to play.
Adventure seeker on an empty street…
The next morning, Uzumaki Naruto departed the village, accompanied by the last Sanin tied to the village and yet not bound to it.
They made quite the pair: one tall and gray with a steady gait, the other short and blonde and bursting with energy.
Together they strode down the main boulevard of the village, a straight line from the Hokage's Tower to the main gate.
There wasn't a crowd parting in their wake; no cries of cheering adulation caught their backs. But as my brother made his way out, his fellow genin and a few chunin just so happened to pass by to give him well-wishes. I even caught shy little Hinata peeking his way, too nervous and concerned with propriety to say farewell.
Neji looked annoyed at that, and I couldn't blame him; all that work we were doing to shape her into the next clan leader, and she couldn't say a casual good-bye.
Lee was back in the hospital, so it was just the two of us waiting at the gate when they got there.
"Bye, little brother," I said, ruffling his hair the way he hated.
"Ack! Nobu! Stahp!" he slapped my hand away, his lip trembling. "W-when I get back, you'll never be able to do that again! Ever! Believe it!"
I grinned. "Promises, promises."
He punched me lightly in the arm. "Believe it!" he insisted.
A wave was all Neji got; a grunt all that was needed between myself and Jiraiya.
And then they were off.
"Three years," I sighed. "We better not fall behind, eh Neji?"
"I doubt we will," my clan-raised friend said. "...I have to find Hinata. More Gentle Fist training for her, I think."
"And I have some work of my own to do," I nodded. Tomorrow, Team Gai would meet up again for group training. But today… today we were on our own.
Or so I thought.
For halfway between the village proper and my home, on the long and lonesome road to Honnoji, I found myself surrounded and encircled by a murder of cawing crows.
Krazyfan1
Worrying for the future.
- Location
- Australia
thanks for the update.
i wonder if this could be replicated, but with Medical chakra instead of Poison Chakra?
V2 cloak repercussions?
Blinktwice13
Underpaid Struggle Bus Attendant
- Location
- Eastern US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Surprise, Itachi's gonna be his genjutsu mentor.
I'm only half joking.
I'm only half joking.
punster lv1
Killjoy - cheerful shitposter - ignorant pedant
Looks like Nobunaga really can't catch a break.
Also this:
Also this:
Is a great quote. I'm going to go and spread it in every quote thread I know.
- Location
- Oregon, USA
The FI thinking they saved Sakura is funny.
29. This Ain't A Scene It's An Arms Race
New
Chapter Twenty-Nine - This Ain't A Scene It's An Arms Race
Flashbang was on my lips and tips of my fingers when I realized the corvids weren't attacking. I was surrounded by the swarm, yes, but the birds had given me more than enough room to extend my arms should I wish it; they did not move any closer, but instead began to fly in alternating rings of clockwise and counterclockwise all around me.
It reminded me of nothing more than an air show - they were showing off.
"Impressive," I growled. "Most impressive."
Itachi's entry in the bingo book had referenced his abilities; his command over crows was known to me.
My teeth peeled back from my lips. "But you are not a Jedi yet."
Flashbang no Jutsu
Flashbang was super effective against dojutsu users. And once my field of vision was clear, I'd be able to see the rogue-nin and counterattack. Whatever he had planned, whatever supposed parley, I wasn't going to fall for it…
The crows cawed out their protests; some of them were grounded completely, stunned by the illusionary explosion of light and sound, while others flapped off and fled in a great cloud, panicked and scared.
"Wahwoaw," an aged voice croaked out. "You are a real sensitive boy, ain'tcha?"
That wasn't Itachi's voice, but that didn't mean a damn thing. Flicking my head around, I found its seeming origin - a great big specimen with a beak like a broken nose and disheveled black feathers.
"Ventriloquism," I stated, dismissing the creature. But the true source had to be around here somewhere.
"And cynical!" The voice snickered. "Untrusting. Dangerous. Prodigiously clever…."
The crow threw up its wings.
"You're perfect."
My eyes narrowed. "Perfect for what?"
Where was Itachi? That was the real question.
I'd been informed at the Academy that some ninja were "Perception-Type Nin" - individuals with the ability to detect and hone in on chakra signatures. This, I was informed, was a rare and valuable trait, seen only among certain bloodlines. Which was bullshit: anyone could sense when massive amounts of chakra was being used. That meant that everyone was a "Perception Type"; people just needed to be properly trained, even if their actual sensitivity probably followed a Bell distribution. "Perception-Type Nin" were just the equivalent of people with natural 20/10 vision.
And besides. My great-granduncle had been one of those natural Perception-Types. I probably had the talent, even if I hadn't really gotten anywhere with it. But maybe if I tried very hard, right now….
"We," the voice repeated. "Would like to make a contract with you."
"I'm not joining the Akatsuki," I snapped.
Have you ever heard a crow laugh before?
It is, in a word, uncanny. Unmistakably laughter - and just as unmistakably inhuman.
Cracks appeared in my armor of doubt.
"I'd say you were an idiot, but if you were I wouldn't be here," the crow chuckled. "For a summoning contract." It paused. "You idiot."
Summoning ninjutsu was one of the most valuable advantages any ninja could possess. It was one of those jutsu too old to know how old it was; to form a bond with a group of animals. My mother was bonded with the great slug Katsuyu, who possessed potent healing abilities and could allow her to become a one-woman battlefield ER, but it wasn't just the Sanin who held contracts. My own jonin had contracted with the tortoises, and Ningame had supervised us infrequently during our own training. I'd inquired about getting that contract — apparently I was looked upon favorably by the turtle clan, but they thought twenty years was a suitable time to fast-track their agreement.
Jiraiya was known for his command and use of the Toad contract, and if Naruto wasn't going to be a master of it when he got back I'd eat my forehead protector.
Tempting as it was to agree to the crow's proposition, I still had my doubts. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts, as they said.
Well. Nobody said that here.
"Contracting animals require a contract to be summoned, or the would-be summoner to use the Reverse Summon Technique in order to appear." Fully sapient animals didn't just appear in front of other people, after all. Contracts were closely held by many of the major clans as well as a select few by Konoha's jonin for the former; Jiraiya was a famous example of the latter.
"And crows go where we want," was its reply, shrugging its shoulders in an all-too human gesture. "Don't put unnecessary limits on what you think is possible, boy."
…That was fair. If I had a ryo for every time a teacher had told me what I was doing was impossible or impossibly foolish, I'd have been able to put a down payment on Honnoji much earlier.
"And if I did believe you… you're already contracted with Itachi," came my next rebuttal. "Who's tried to kill me and my brother."
"You humans," the crow shook its head mournfully. "So concerned about which marking is on those silly bands you all wear. That's a you problem, with all your various murders trying to murder each other. We crows? We look at you as individuals, see. And we like what we see in you."
Shameless flattery. I was admittedly not immune to it - my back might have stood a little straighter there.
"So where's the contract?" I demanded. "And what's your name, anyway?"
The crow let out a clicking noise that reminded me of nothing more than a cough. "I… uh… don't have one," came the admission. "Not until—"
"Hey, Bent Beak!" another crow called out, diving down from above the treeline. Scratchy as the other crow's voice was, it was also higher. "You convince this human yet?"
"I'm working on it," Bent Beak snapped. "Go away!"
"Bent Beak," I nodded thoughtfully. "I see—"
"Don't you dare!" Bent Beak interrupted me. "That's not very flattering, in crow terms. What if I called you… Too Tall?"
"Not an insult," I explained patiently. "Let me guess. You get a new name after getting a contractee?"
"An acceptable contractee can give me a new name," the ugly crow corrected. "Which you are. I saw him first, Beady-Eyed! This is my enterprise! You don't get a share!"
"Whatever he offers you," Beady-Eyed (whose eyes were, I noticed, reflected the light more than Bent Beak) stated. "I'll make a better deal."
"He hasn't given out any details yet," I noticed, to Bent Beak's squawks of outrage.
"I'm getting there, I'm getting there!" the crow in question stated. "I've been a bit busy trying to prove I'm not some cunning ploy by your alleged enemies—"
"Oh, he is a good fit," Beady-Eyed sighed.
"Still don't trust that you aren't," I informed them both cheerfully.
"Ack! I swear I'm not! I swear by Yatagarasu's third claw!"
From the way Beady-Eyed nearly fell off their perch, that was actually quite serious.
"...Show me the contract."
Stretching out one wing, it tucked the other into the crook of the opposite armpit, like it was reaching into a satchel. Seemingly out of nowhere, a scroll emerged, and taking it up in its mouth, Bent Beak flew off his perch to drop it in my hand.
"Take a look," he stated, after returning to its original tree branch.
It had — because I'd looked at Gai's tortoise contract under his watchful eye — much the same language as a standard summoning contract, involving agreements of mutual aid, access to the relevant seal for optimal summoning, and so forth… save for a single key provision.
"What's this about you getting my eyeballs when I die?"
Beady snickered, even as Bent Beak puffed up. "W-well, you humans are so picky about your eyeballs!" He had the audacity to sound indignant. "Always shooing us away when your corpses are scattered around — they're not using them! This way it's all nice and neat and legal, and nobody has any complaints, see?"
"Bent Beak you greedy little shit," Beady shook their head.
"Honestly," I informed them both. "I like the audacity."
Reaching into my pocket, I crossed out the provision in question with a fountain pen, and with the sharp tip, pricked one of my fingers and signed it with a mixture of crimson and black.
"So," I offered the newly modified contract to the crow who clearly was trying to make the best of a bad lot. "Do we have a deal?"
He squinted at me. "What are you going to name me?"
Not three minutes later, Konran and Beady Eyes flew off.
I had another shuriken in my arsenal, now.
Naruto was gone, but the village continued. With Lee temporarily out of commission, my mother was understandably reluctant to hand out any new missions to Team Gai, but there was still plenty to do. I spent a great deal of time over the next week figuring out how summoning actually worked, at least after Gai and Tsunade both reamed me out for signing such a contract without either of them around.
Getting the right crow (almost always Konran, in my tests) required a level of precision in my chakra control that, if nothing else, would be very useful for what I had planned later.
That wasn't the whole of it, of course. There was seemingly no end to what was on my plate — examining the progres of my special order from Kotabe Ironworks; reading up on additional theory for the Four Elements Thesis; practicing my other jutsu; working on undoing the bad habits that prevented me from using the full extent of my large chakra reserves; and just the general hustle and bustle of living. Grocery runs. Reading for pleasure. Hanging out with Lee and Neji, who always seemed to greet us with an ice cream cone in hand these days.
I guess he'd discovered a sweet tooth or something.
I was waiting before the Hokage's office for my mother to get back — we were going to start lessons on her vanity genjutsu — when I saw her approach, deep in a conversation with Shikamaru.
"But studying to be a medi-nin isn't so easy," my mother was saying. "It requires an entirely different set of skills. And a minute perfection of chakra control; the ability to memorize boundless information; the brains for practical application of that knowledge; patience…. and most important of all…."
"Hey," I greeted them both. "You want to be a medi-nin, Shikamaru?"
A bit of a left turn there -- the other chunin was brilliant but famously lazy. While I could see him seeking out a non-combat position, the list of factors that went into becoming a magical doctor was quite… intensive.
"No, it would be too much of a pain," the teenager shrugged. "I was asking why there wasn't a medi-nin on every team. Would have saved us a lot of stress if we had one when rescuing Sasuke."
"And I agree," our Hokage stated. "I advocated that same position when I was a chunin. But the requirements—"
I held up a hand and frowned. "Why do they need to be full medi-nin?"
Tsunade gave me a look of complete and utter disdain. "Medical ninjutsu is not easy or simple to learn. There are fundamental principles—"
"I'm not disagreeing," I backed up a smidge, before she really got a head of steam going. "But the perfect is the enemy of the good here."
"Eh?" Tsunade tilted her head, even as Shikamaru nodded, a slight smile crossing his eyes.
"They don't need to be able to treat every illness or even injury," I said. "Just the most common ones, and not even fully cure them. Just… enough to get them to a real medi-nin. Just enough to stabilize and maybe leave them in some sort of fighting shape, for emergencies?"
Back in my old world, fatalities were relatively simple to avoid if casualties were brought to a proper facility quickly enough -- The Golden Hour, they called it. And I had no doubt that the same held true here.
"The chakra control issues would still…" Tsunade paused, still frowning. "But not if we invented new techniques. Worse than the regular ones, most wasteful, but the point of them would be to be seen later by an actual medi-nin…."
She clapped her hands together, and both Shikamaru and I had to hold our hands toour ears, such was the volume.
"Excellent idea, both of you. I'll need to devise these new techniques. But when I do…" she smiled. "You've both volunteered for the pilot program." The smile turned into a sly smirk. "If I can have someone who mistook the chakra system for the limbic system put these jutsu into practice, then anyone should be able to learn them. Good day, chunin."
My mother… had snooped into my old Academy test scores?
Still slightly numb from her clap and that particular revelation, I was too slow to realize that she'd closed the door on both of us.
"Nice going, Nobunaga," Shikamaru drawled. "You just volunteered us for more work. What a pain in my ass." A slight pause. "Well, I suppose I asked for it."
With a casual, sloppy wave behind him, he set off, leaving me to stare at the now closed door.
"But we were supposed to have our first genjutsu lesson today…"
Three weeks later, Lee was cleared to use chakra, and so Team Gai training could finally resume.
In order to celebrate the experience, I was doing exactly what my over-eager obsessive of a teammate would want most of all - bring my full arsenal to play with: jutsu and weaponry both.
Two Fairbaines-Sykes-style knifes on my belt, and one in my left boot. Expected, obviously — they were a regular part of my bag of tricks.
The catch was that I was finally getting better with Knife Trick no Jutsu. The Old Man — who I was still more than a little upset with — had, despite being a master of all elemental jutsu, invented comparatively few himself. The one he was most famous for was Shuriken Kage Bunshin: a single shuriken transforming into many in mid-flight. I had no idea where to even start with that jutsu, and I wasn't going to ask the man who'd kept my parentage a secret from me for pointers. That being said, I didn't need to know how to do it to pretend otherwise: Knife Trick no Jutsu was simply a genjutsu of Shuriken Kage Bunshin.
Plus, you know, a single real knife. And while Lee had still seen me practicing it, I'd gotten it down to three hand seals at last while he'd been unable to train.
My sealing scroll was filled with miscellaneous useful items, like the field kitchen was in my pouch; not that it was combat relevant, necessarily, but the utility it provided was enormous. Akimichi Choji was himself saving up to get one; he'd complained that his father thought it might be used frivolously if it was simply handed to him.
Five senbon were on my utility belt - precise needle-like weapons that were little more than sharp and pointy. A good distraction, but Lee had taken them out barehanded before.
The real innovation was the two bracelets I wore on each wrist. Jiraiya had helped with their construction - the plain metal concealed small scrolls, enough for maybe a single extra knife each. Or, as was currently the case, a dozen more senbon.
Two of the bracelets had the tips of their senbon in the anesthetic prescriptive that Mrs. Yamanaka had helped me pick out for the chunin exams. Numbness, mild euphoria, and disruption of hand-eye coordination upon entry into the bloodstream. I honestly preferred it to any of the more lethal concoctions that I could apply for in missions; there was little chance that I'd be stabbing myself with one of the needles, but even if it did, I wouldn't have to panic as much as if it had been cyanide or something of that sort.
But the true pride and joy of my arsenal, or at least the latest addition, were the senbon in the other two bracelets. Technically, they weren't even senbon, but the result of my special order with Kotabe Ironworks.
As part of our remuneration from our mission in the Land of Snow, I'd asked Koyuki for a small amount of chakra-conductive metal. I'd gotten enough to make a knife, like the pair Sarutobi Asuma had earned serving the Daimyo, but that had never been my intent for the extremely precious material.
I had discovered that I had no talent for fuinjutsu through my "tutelage" under Shinbe, but Kibaku Fuda were still in ready supply, without a sealing master to make them. The paper bombs could be semi-mass produced using a stamp, although the process made inferior materials to those that were hand-written, and though I'd been kicked out he'd still given me the patterns to make Kibaku Fuda.
Except these efficiency losses came from the materials used. Wood, as the second best chakra conductor, was used to create the stamps for the generic Kibaku Fuda.
I had made my paper bomb stamp instead out of that block of chakra-conductive metal. The improved chakra efficiency would have been enough that a regular sized stamped Kibaku Fuda was nearly as powerful as one of Shinbe's own; but I hadn't gone for regular sized Kibaku Fuda.
My metal-stamped paper bombs were actually slightly weaker than the generic version… but a fraction of the size. And rather than attach them to kunai — which I viewed as a compromise tool, frankly — I folded mine up and attached them to specially modified senbon.
Or rather, to what was essentially a larger than normal pub dart.
The result was a small grenade that flew just as far as the traditional Kibaku Fuda-kunai combination but at less than a third the weight, and I was capable of throwing several of them at once.
I was also finally comfortable using Great Fireball in spars after what had seemed like far too long of a practice. All of this, plus my usual array of genjutsu and taijutsu? I was confident in saying that I'd win more than I lost today.
It wasn't enough, of course. We had three years before Naruto returned. Three years before whatever hell would follow him home. The Akatsuki… but more importantly Orochimaru himself, who doubtless had some sort of plan that was going to end the world somehow.
I had three years to get ready. Three years to prepare. Not only in body and mind, but also in understanding: to learn the lay of the land, the shape of things to come.
I didn't know what would be coming our way, not yet. I didn't have the tools I needed to compete at Orochimaru's level.
But I had a plan.
Strapping on my chunin's vest, I left Honnoji, sprinting towards the practice field we'd reserved.
…Only to find that while I was the last one to arrive, my teammates already had a proper melee a trois going.
Tenten, the girl who had apparently been my female counterpart when we all graduated from the Academy, was with them. And while she was the least impressive of them by far, she was still managing to hold her own, pivoting between Lee and Neji to try to control the balance of the fight.
Neji saw me first, an ice cream stain marring his usually pristine attire, and called a halt.
"Nobunaga!" Two out of the three called out.
Tenten flinched, almost unnoticeably. "Sorry," she mumbled. "I just — today is usually the day when the three of us practice for the Chunin Exams, and so, I mean—"
I held up a hand, and she quieted immediately.
She had been the top female in our class; screwed over by Kakashi one year before he'd taken Team Seven under his wing; gone back to the Academy for remedial training; was saddled with a thoroughly mediocre team of her own; and was now training hard enough to keep pace with my two teammates in defiance of the traditions and conventions of our village.
My team wasn't just my team.
And looking at it that way, she was a pretty natural fit.
"I have one question," I stated. "Are we pairing off in teams of two, are are we just going to free for all it?"
A smile broke like the dawn on the girl who'd thought herself a fourth wheel, and as my teammates shouted (or calmly responded with) the answer, I couldn't help but match it.
We were all improving, one day at a time.
End of Part I. To Be Continued
Flashbang was on my lips and tips of my fingers when I realized the corvids weren't attacking. I was surrounded by the swarm, yes, but the birds had given me more than enough room to extend my arms should I wish it; they did not move any closer, but instead began to fly in alternating rings of clockwise and counterclockwise all around me.
It reminded me of nothing more than an air show - they were showing off.
"Impressive," I growled. "Most impressive."
Itachi's entry in the bingo book had referenced his abilities; his command over crows was known to me.
My teeth peeled back from my lips. "But you are not a Jedi yet."
Flashbang no Jutsu
Flashbang was super effective against dojutsu users. And once my field of vision was clear, I'd be able to see the rogue-nin and counterattack. Whatever he had planned, whatever supposed parley, I wasn't going to fall for it…
The crows cawed out their protests; some of them were grounded completely, stunned by the illusionary explosion of light and sound, while others flapped off and fled in a great cloud, panicked and scared.
"Wahwoaw," an aged voice croaked out. "You are a real sensitive boy, ain'tcha?"
That wasn't Itachi's voice, but that didn't mean a damn thing. Flicking my head around, I found its seeming origin - a great big specimen with a beak like a broken nose and disheveled black feathers.
"Ventriloquism," I stated, dismissing the creature. But the true source had to be around here somewhere.
"And cynical!" The voice snickered. "Untrusting. Dangerous. Prodigiously clever…."
The crow threw up its wings.
"You're perfect."
My eyes narrowed. "Perfect for what?"
Where was Itachi? That was the real question.
I'd been informed at the Academy that some ninja were "Perception-Type Nin" - individuals with the ability to detect and hone in on chakra signatures. This, I was informed, was a rare and valuable trait, seen only among certain bloodlines. Which was bullshit: anyone could sense when massive amounts of chakra was being used. That meant that everyone was a "Perception Type"; people just needed to be properly trained, even if their actual sensitivity probably followed a Bell distribution. "Perception-Type Nin" were just the equivalent of people with natural 20/10 vision.
And besides. My great-granduncle had been one of those natural Perception-Types. I probably had the talent, even if I hadn't really gotten anywhere with it. But maybe if I tried very hard, right now….
"We," the voice repeated. "Would like to make a contract with you."
"I'm not joining the Akatsuki," I snapped.
Have you ever heard a crow laugh before?
It is, in a word, uncanny. Unmistakably laughter - and just as unmistakably inhuman.
Cracks appeared in my armor of doubt.
"I'd say you were an idiot, but if you were I wouldn't be here," the crow chuckled. "For a summoning contract." It paused. "You idiot."
Summoning ninjutsu was one of the most valuable advantages any ninja could possess. It was one of those jutsu too old to know how old it was; to form a bond with a group of animals. My mother was bonded with the great slug Katsuyu, who possessed potent healing abilities and could allow her to become a one-woman battlefield ER, but it wasn't just the Sanin who held contracts. My own jonin had contracted with the tortoises, and Ningame had supervised us infrequently during our own training. I'd inquired about getting that contract — apparently I was looked upon favorably by the turtle clan, but they thought twenty years was a suitable time to fast-track their agreement.
Jiraiya was known for his command and use of the Toad contract, and if Naruto wasn't going to be a master of it when he got back I'd eat my forehead protector.
Tempting as it was to agree to the crow's proposition, I still had my doubts. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts, as they said.
Well. Nobody said that here.
"Contracting animals require a contract to be summoned, or the would-be summoner to use the Reverse Summon Technique in order to appear." Fully sapient animals didn't just appear in front of other people, after all. Contracts were closely held by many of the major clans as well as a select few by Konoha's jonin for the former; Jiraiya was a famous example of the latter.
"And crows go where we want," was its reply, shrugging its shoulders in an all-too human gesture. "Don't put unnecessary limits on what you think is possible, boy."
…That was fair. If I had a ryo for every time a teacher had told me what I was doing was impossible or impossibly foolish, I'd have been able to put a down payment on Honnoji much earlier.
"And if I did believe you… you're already contracted with Itachi," came my next rebuttal. "Who's tried to kill me and my brother."
"You humans," the crow shook its head mournfully. "So concerned about which marking is on those silly bands you all wear. That's a you problem, with all your various murders trying to murder each other. We crows? We look at you as individuals, see. And we like what we see in you."
Shameless flattery. I was admittedly not immune to it - my back might have stood a little straighter there.
"So where's the contract?" I demanded. "And what's your name, anyway?"
The crow let out a clicking noise that reminded me of nothing more than a cough. "I… uh… don't have one," came the admission. "Not until—"
"Hey, Bent Beak!" another crow called out, diving down from above the treeline. Scratchy as the other crow's voice was, it was also higher. "You convince this human yet?"
"I'm working on it," Bent Beak snapped. "Go away!"
"Bent Beak," I nodded thoughtfully. "I see—"
"Don't you dare!" Bent Beak interrupted me. "That's not very flattering, in crow terms. What if I called you… Too Tall?"
"Not an insult," I explained patiently. "Let me guess. You get a new name after getting a contractee?"
"An acceptable contractee can give me a new name," the ugly crow corrected. "Which you are. I saw him first, Beady-Eyed! This is my enterprise! You don't get a share!"
"Whatever he offers you," Beady-Eyed (whose eyes were, I noticed, reflected the light more than Bent Beak) stated. "I'll make a better deal."
"He hasn't given out any details yet," I noticed, to Bent Beak's squawks of outrage.
"I'm getting there, I'm getting there!" the crow in question stated. "I've been a bit busy trying to prove I'm not some cunning ploy by your alleged enemies—"
"Oh, he is a good fit," Beady-Eyed sighed.
"Still don't trust that you aren't," I informed them both cheerfully.
"Ack! I swear I'm not! I swear by Yatagarasu's third claw!"
From the way Beady-Eyed nearly fell off their perch, that was actually quite serious.
"...Show me the contract."
Stretching out one wing, it tucked the other into the crook of the opposite armpit, like it was reaching into a satchel. Seemingly out of nowhere, a scroll emerged, and taking it up in its mouth, Bent Beak flew off his perch to drop it in my hand.
"Take a look," he stated, after returning to its original tree branch.
It had — because I'd looked at Gai's tortoise contract under his watchful eye — much the same language as a standard summoning contract, involving agreements of mutual aid, access to the relevant seal for optimal summoning, and so forth… save for a single key provision.
"What's this about you getting my eyeballs when I die?"
Beady snickered, even as Bent Beak puffed up. "W-well, you humans are so picky about your eyeballs!" He had the audacity to sound indignant. "Always shooing us away when your corpses are scattered around — they're not using them! This way it's all nice and neat and legal, and nobody has any complaints, see?"
"Bent Beak you greedy little shit," Beady shook their head.
"Honestly," I informed them both. "I like the audacity."
Reaching into my pocket, I crossed out the provision in question with a fountain pen, and with the sharp tip, pricked one of my fingers and signed it with a mixture of crimson and black.
"So," I offered the newly modified contract to the crow who clearly was trying to make the best of a bad lot. "Do we have a deal?"
He squinted at me. "What are you going to name me?"
Not three minutes later, Konran and Beady Eyes flew off.
I had another shuriken in my arsenal, now.
Naruto was gone, but the village continued. With Lee temporarily out of commission, my mother was understandably reluctant to hand out any new missions to Team Gai, but there was still plenty to do. I spent a great deal of time over the next week figuring out how summoning actually worked, at least after Gai and Tsunade both reamed me out for signing such a contract without either of them around.
Getting the right crow (almost always Konran, in my tests) required a level of precision in my chakra control that, if nothing else, would be very useful for what I had planned later.
That wasn't the whole of it, of course. There was seemingly no end to what was on my plate — examining the progres of my special order from Kotabe Ironworks; reading up on additional theory for the Four Elements Thesis; practicing my other jutsu; working on undoing the bad habits that prevented me from using the full extent of my large chakra reserves; and just the general hustle and bustle of living. Grocery runs. Reading for pleasure. Hanging out with Lee and Neji, who always seemed to greet us with an ice cream cone in hand these days.
I guess he'd discovered a sweet tooth or something.
I was waiting before the Hokage's office for my mother to get back — we were going to start lessons on her vanity genjutsu — when I saw her approach, deep in a conversation with Shikamaru.
"But studying to be a medi-nin isn't so easy," my mother was saying. "It requires an entirely different set of skills. And a minute perfection of chakra control; the ability to memorize boundless information; the brains for practical application of that knowledge; patience…. and most important of all…."
"Hey," I greeted them both. "You want to be a medi-nin, Shikamaru?"
A bit of a left turn there -- the other chunin was brilliant but famously lazy. While I could see him seeking out a non-combat position, the list of factors that went into becoming a magical doctor was quite… intensive.
"No, it would be too much of a pain," the teenager shrugged. "I was asking why there wasn't a medi-nin on every team. Would have saved us a lot of stress if we had one when rescuing Sasuke."
"And I agree," our Hokage stated. "I advocated that same position when I was a chunin. But the requirements—"
I held up a hand and frowned. "Why do they need to be full medi-nin?"
Tsunade gave me a look of complete and utter disdain. "Medical ninjutsu is not easy or simple to learn. There are fundamental principles—"
"I'm not disagreeing," I backed up a smidge, before she really got a head of steam going. "But the perfect is the enemy of the good here."
"Eh?" Tsunade tilted her head, even as Shikamaru nodded, a slight smile crossing his eyes.
"They don't need to be able to treat every illness or even injury," I said. "Just the most common ones, and not even fully cure them. Just… enough to get them to a real medi-nin. Just enough to stabilize and maybe leave them in some sort of fighting shape, for emergencies?"
Back in my old world, fatalities were relatively simple to avoid if casualties were brought to a proper facility quickly enough -- The Golden Hour, they called it. And I had no doubt that the same held true here.
"The chakra control issues would still…" Tsunade paused, still frowning. "But not if we invented new techniques. Worse than the regular ones, most wasteful, but the point of them would be to be seen later by an actual medi-nin…."
She clapped her hands together, and both Shikamaru and I had to hold our hands toour ears, such was the volume.
"Excellent idea, both of you. I'll need to devise these new techniques. But when I do…" she smiled. "You've both volunteered for the pilot program." The smile turned into a sly smirk. "If I can have someone who mistook the chakra system for the limbic system put these jutsu into practice, then anyone should be able to learn them. Good day, chunin."
My mother… had snooped into my old Academy test scores?
Still slightly numb from her clap and that particular revelation, I was too slow to realize that she'd closed the door on both of us.
"Nice going, Nobunaga," Shikamaru drawled. "You just volunteered us for more work. What a pain in my ass." A slight pause. "Well, I suppose I asked for it."
With a casual, sloppy wave behind him, he set off, leaving me to stare at the now closed door.
"But we were supposed to have our first genjutsu lesson today…"
Three weeks later, Lee was cleared to use chakra, and so Team Gai training could finally resume.
In order to celebrate the experience, I was doing exactly what my over-eager obsessive of a teammate would want most of all - bring my full arsenal to play with: jutsu and weaponry both.
Two Fairbaines-Sykes-style knifes on my belt, and one in my left boot. Expected, obviously — they were a regular part of my bag of tricks.
The catch was that I was finally getting better with Knife Trick no Jutsu. The Old Man — who I was still more than a little upset with — had, despite being a master of all elemental jutsu, invented comparatively few himself. The one he was most famous for was Shuriken Kage Bunshin: a single shuriken transforming into many in mid-flight. I had no idea where to even start with that jutsu, and I wasn't going to ask the man who'd kept my parentage a secret from me for pointers. That being said, I didn't need to know how to do it to pretend otherwise: Knife Trick no Jutsu was simply a genjutsu of Shuriken Kage Bunshin.
Plus, you know, a single real knife. And while Lee had still seen me practicing it, I'd gotten it down to three hand seals at last while he'd been unable to train.
My sealing scroll was filled with miscellaneous useful items, like the field kitchen was in my pouch; not that it was combat relevant, necessarily, but the utility it provided was enormous. Akimichi Choji was himself saving up to get one; he'd complained that his father thought it might be used frivolously if it was simply handed to him.
Five senbon were on my utility belt - precise needle-like weapons that were little more than sharp and pointy. A good distraction, but Lee had taken them out barehanded before.
The real innovation was the two bracelets I wore on each wrist. Jiraiya had helped with their construction - the plain metal concealed small scrolls, enough for maybe a single extra knife each. Or, as was currently the case, a dozen more senbon.
Two of the bracelets had the tips of their senbon in the anesthetic prescriptive that Mrs. Yamanaka had helped me pick out for the chunin exams. Numbness, mild euphoria, and disruption of hand-eye coordination upon entry into the bloodstream. I honestly preferred it to any of the more lethal concoctions that I could apply for in missions; there was little chance that I'd be stabbing myself with one of the needles, but even if it did, I wouldn't have to panic as much as if it had been cyanide or something of that sort.
But the true pride and joy of my arsenal, or at least the latest addition, were the senbon in the other two bracelets. Technically, they weren't even senbon, but the result of my special order with Kotabe Ironworks.
As part of our remuneration from our mission in the Land of Snow, I'd asked Koyuki for a small amount of chakra-conductive metal. I'd gotten enough to make a knife, like the pair Sarutobi Asuma had earned serving the Daimyo, but that had never been my intent for the extremely precious material.
I had discovered that I had no talent for fuinjutsu through my "tutelage" under Shinbe, but Kibaku Fuda were still in ready supply, without a sealing master to make them. The paper bombs could be semi-mass produced using a stamp, although the process made inferior materials to those that were hand-written, and though I'd been kicked out he'd still given me the patterns to make Kibaku Fuda.
Except these efficiency losses came from the materials used. Wood, as the second best chakra conductor, was used to create the stamps for the generic Kibaku Fuda.
I had made my paper bomb stamp instead out of that block of chakra-conductive metal. The improved chakra efficiency would have been enough that a regular sized stamped Kibaku Fuda was nearly as powerful as one of Shinbe's own; but I hadn't gone for regular sized Kibaku Fuda.
My metal-stamped paper bombs were actually slightly weaker than the generic version… but a fraction of the size. And rather than attach them to kunai — which I viewed as a compromise tool, frankly — I folded mine up and attached them to specially modified senbon.
Or rather, to what was essentially a larger than normal pub dart.
The result was a small grenade that flew just as far as the traditional Kibaku Fuda-kunai combination but at less than a third the weight, and I was capable of throwing several of them at once.
I was also finally comfortable using Great Fireball in spars after what had seemed like far too long of a practice. All of this, plus my usual array of genjutsu and taijutsu? I was confident in saying that I'd win more than I lost today.
It wasn't enough, of course. We had three years before Naruto returned. Three years before whatever hell would follow him home. The Akatsuki… but more importantly Orochimaru himself, who doubtless had some sort of plan that was going to end the world somehow.
I had three years to get ready. Three years to prepare. Not only in body and mind, but also in understanding: to learn the lay of the land, the shape of things to come.
I didn't know what would be coming our way, not yet. I didn't have the tools I needed to compete at Orochimaru's level.
But I had a plan.
Strapping on my chunin's vest, I left Honnoji, sprinting towards the practice field we'd reserved.
…Only to find that while I was the last one to arrive, my teammates already had a proper melee a trois going.
Tenten, the girl who had apparently been my female counterpart when we all graduated from the Academy, was with them. And while she was the least impressive of them by far, she was still managing to hold her own, pivoting between Lee and Neji to try to control the balance of the fight.
Neji saw me first, an ice cream stain marring his usually pristine attire, and called a halt.
"Nobunaga!" Two out of the three called out.
Tenten flinched, almost unnoticeably. "Sorry," she mumbled. "I just — today is usually the day when the three of us practice for the Chunin Exams, and so, I mean—"
I held up a hand, and she quieted immediately.
She had been the top female in our class; screwed over by Kakashi one year before he'd taken Team Seven under his wing; gone back to the Academy for remedial training; was saddled with a thoroughly mediocre team of her own; and was now training hard enough to keep pace with my two teammates in defiance of the traditions and conventions of our village.
My team wasn't just my team.
And looking at it that way, she was a pretty natural fit.
"I have one question," I stated. "Are we pairing off in teams of two, are are we just going to free for all it?"
A smile broke like the dawn on the girl who'd thought herself a fourth wheel, and as my teammates shouted (or calmly responded with) the answer, I couldn't help but match it.
We were all improving, one day at a time.
End of Part I. To Be Continued
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There are faster and less painful methods of suicide.
- Location
- Who knows?
Tbqh I'm not sure Itachi would really care?
Krazyfan1
Worrying for the future.
- Location
- Australia
Consider: he sends back a crow with a reply insult.
Itachi is nothing if not a consummate professional. While he personally wouldn't give a shit he needs to maintain his cover as the kind of murderous nutcase who slaughters his entire clan just to see if he can. Someone like that does not tolerate people who think they can insult him directly without consequences.
I mean don't get me wrong, it's a hilarious idea, but our boy isn't nearly S-Class enough to survive pulling it off.