The Need to Become Stronger

[Sophronius]

Chapter 28

"How could you?" Tenten and the others were waiting for Naruto at the top of the stairs to the balcony, her round face scrounged up in anger and betrayal.

Of course. Naruto cursed himself as the realisation struck him. The way he had approached her after she lost, of course she would conclude that it had merely been a ploy to try and uncover information about his potential opponents, Lee and Neji.

"Look," he said, too exhausted to think of a coherent defence, "I know it looks bad, but I swear I wasn't trying to kill Lee or anything like that, I just… I was just, so angry, and I didn't realize I was hitting him so hard…"

She stared at him, her anger compounded by confusion. "What? I'm not talking about that. I want to know why you said all those hurtful things to poor Lee. Telling him that he's a failure and that he should give up on his dream… even Neji has never been that cruel to him!"

"…what I said?" It took him a second to register the words, but when he did the pressure behind his eyes redoubled. "I was just trying to taunt him like a ninja is supposed to; who gives a crap what I said? But then I nearly killed him, I threw explosives at him-" The words finally made it real. "-I kicked him in the head, and I, I hit him with a sword! He almost died, so many times…" It was the exam, the whole stupid exam that made all the violence seem so normal, somehow. "You're not angry about any of that?"

"Of course I'm upset about that, too," she huffed, as though Naruto was the one who did not understand. "But that's different. We all signed up for this exam; we knew the risks we were taking right from the start. That's the same for him as it is for any of us! But talking like that, saying those terrible things to Lee and tearing him apart bit by bit… that was just cruel."

Naruto stared at her. "But… that's insane! You can't just say 'oh we've all gotten used to this kind of evil, that doesn't count, let's talk about this other thing'. Either it matters that people get hurt or it doesn't, and if it does then throwing explosives at them is definitely the thing to be concerned about!"

"Lee is not as weak as you might think," said Neji. "Training with live explosives is nothing new for him. You're right that his skillset is not well suited to that of a shinobi, but there's a time and a place for that kind of conversation. The kind of psychological attack where you crush someone's resolve in front of all their peers… that is something I would only do to a select handful of enemies."

"You're not listening to me," said Naruto. All the anger that had drained away after seeing Lee on that stretcher rushed back up again, swelling in his throat. "What's wrong with you people? Don't you get that life is more important than some dumb feelings? It doesn't even compare!" He gestured helplessly with his arms, trying to indicate something that could not be defined. "Don't you get it? The only thing that matters is whether people live and thrive or suffer and die, and everything else is just stuff!"

It was Sakura who answered, speaking up from her spot near the balustrade. "Naruto, I think you're underestimating just how much people can be hurt by 'mere words'. Maybe it's not true for you, but for someone like Rock Lee… it's possible that what you said to him really did hurt more than any of his physical wounds."

Naruto groaned in despair. "Not you too, Sakura-chan…"

He turned to the boy who was slouched against the railing besides her, the one person in the whole room who might understand his perspective, who had to understand given his own experiences –

Sasuke smirked. "You know, Naruto, when I said that you should meet with old friends and future enemies, I didn't mean you should turn the former into the latter. My bad for being unclear, I suppose."

Naruto opened his mouth, then shut it again. "You know what? Screw this, and screw you. I don't have to deal with this crap." He pushed through the group of indignant faces, past the rows of staring eyes and to the far end of the balcony away from the oppressive crowd. He would have kept walking right out the door and far beyond if not for the fact that the gates were on the other side of the room, and there was no way he was going back past those condemning faces again.

In the arena below, two irrelevant people were fighting an unimportant battle.
​

-o-​

"Oh no, how tragic: In a cruel twist of fate the two brothers in arms, Grunk and Groink, are forced to fight each other in a battle to the death. How cruel is their fortune, that it would pit these lifelong–"

Shikamaru sauntered up to him with visible reluctance. "What are you doing?"

"Commentating." Naruto had propped his head up with both hands, his elbows resting on the balustrade as he watched the match with steadfast apathy. Kabuto's teammates were slowly circling each other, trying to stay just barely out of the other's range as they each probed for an opening. The only thing that made any of it even remotely interesting was the fact that one of them was capable of contorting his body in impossible shapes, which Jiraiya had said to be one of Orochimaru's techniques. He must have learned it from his teacher, who was another of the Snake Sannin's former students, but that just made Kabuto and his team even more incredibly suspicious.

"Uh-huh." Shikamaru glanced behind him as though he was tempted to just walk away again. "Yeah, okay, listen. I'm going to go head upstairs to visit my team in the hospital – I mean, it's a pain, but if I don't do it now Ino will never let me hear the end of it. So if you wanted to come along to see Hinata or something, then, you know… you could do that."

Naruto nodded, and stepped away from the balustrade. "Okay. Let's go."

"Hold on," said Shikamaru. "Shouldn't you let the examiner know where you're going first, in case he calls on you and-" Naruto cast the shadow clone technique, creating an identical copy to wait in his place. "Oh right. You can do that."

The two walked past the staring crowd, through the hall and up the winding staircase in mutual silence. Somehow, climbing the steps of that endless spiral helped Naruto put his jumbling thoughts in order, just a little bit. The exertion only seemed to annoy his partner, however.

"Hey Shikamaru," he said after a while. "You're pretty smart, right?"

"That's what people keep telling me… usually right before they ask me to do something bothersome."

"Yeah, about that," said Naruto. "How do you stand it? I mean… I know they're not stupid, but it's like they're not even trying to get things right." He fumbled with his arms again, trying to reach that ungraspable, indefinable thing. "They divide everything up into little boxes, and then they say 'this box is good and that box is bad' even if the content is exactly the same, and it's so stupid but they don't even realize they're doing it. So if Sasuke killed someone they'd find some way to say it was okay and they'd really believe it, but if he weren't a noble they'd come to the opposite conclusion. And it's all set up in such a way that anyone trying to draw attention to the problem goes into the bad box, which makes it so that they're automatically ignored."

Shikamaru nodded. "The fundamental optimization problem."

"Huh?"

"It's like a math formula," he explained. "You can only ever really optimize for one variable at a time, right? Because if you're maximising one thing you're not maximizing the other. So if you try to set up a system that rewards people for doing the right thing, people will always end up optimizing just to get the rewards, and the most effective way to do that is to change the rules of the system itself. So the only stable outcome, which is to say the outcome you'll always eventually get, is one where the actions you're rewarded for are the ones that keep the system from changing."

Naruto nodded slowly, remembering Uchiha Madara's reasons for challenging his former best friend to a duel, and the argument he had about it with Sasuke afterwards. "So that's why even if the First Hokage had good intentions, the Leaf Village still ended up becoming a lot like the others." He shook his head, thinking back on how horrifying the Hidden Mist's graduation ceremony of forcing students to kill each other had seemed to him at the time. "I think I get it."

He blinked. From out of the corner of his eye it almost seemed as if the shadows around the stairwell were moving – no, they were moving. Shikamaru had activated his technique and was now playing around with it, forming the shadows into fanged demons that scuttled along the walls all around them, constantly changing forms but never losing their jeering grins as they followed the two ninjas up the stairwell. They had to just be Shikamaru's chakra that he had turned black and which he was now manually controlling – there was no way he was actually controlling shadows – but the effect was still unnerving. The image of those creeping black shadows reminded him of something important he had once read, but the memory remained just barely out of reach.

He gave his silent companion an apprehensive look. The slouching Nara clan heir looked just as disinterested as ever, but Naruto was starting to think it was more than just boredom that made him that way. "But then, haven't you ever wondered… didn't you ever think about finding a way to fix all of that? I mean, what's even the point of having brains if you don't do anything with them?"

Shikamaru glanced back at him. "What have you done about any of it?"

"Me? That's not… I mean, I've done a lot of things," he protested, but Shikamaru was already heading up the stairs again, and Naruto had to hurry to catch up. What have I been doing all these years, exactly?

They arrived at the top of the staircase, and a long empty hallway stretched out before them. Wooden doors lined the walls on either side, and scattered sunlight came in through the far side windows.

They found Hinata's chamber on the third try, and they stepped in cautiously, not wanting to wake her with the sound of their footsteps. She slept uneasily, tossing and turning in her bed, though the only remnants of her injuries were the red marks around her eyes which were by now mostly healed.

"I tried to tell her not to join the exams," Naruto whispered. "But I couldn't do it. I was a coward, and I wished her good luck instead. I hated myself for that." He closed his eyes. "But then when she wanted to fight Neji I finally said it, and now I can't help but wonder if my words only hurt her more."

"There's no point in second guessing yourself like that." Shikamaru's voice had a strange, almost warm quality to it. "No matter what decision you make, you'll always wonder what would've happened if you'd done something else instead. Other people already make things bothersome enough without you making things difficult for yourself as well."

It reminded Naruto of something Sasuke had told him, a long time ago: "If only responsible adults were allowed to make decisions, nobody would ever do anything. You can't hold yourself responsible for the choices other people make." But then, Sasuke had only said that because his own words had killed Inari…

"How pointless," a voice said behind them. Naruto and Shikamaru jumped and spun around, fumbling for weapons and forming seals as they confronted the figure. Standing in the doorway was a boy around Naruto's age, with dark red hair and black clothes and a giant gourd tied onto his back with a leather strap. The dark rings around his eyes made it look as if he had not slept in years. "If this person is incapable of defending herself then there is no point in protecting her – you might as well just let her die."

"You!" Naruto pointed a dagger at Gaara, still lacking an effective counter to the sand which floated freely around the Sand ninja's head – in stark defiance of the paralyzing shadow that extended from Shikamaru's feet. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Isn't that obvious?" The boy turned his head to indicate Hinata – Shikamaru's shadow seemed to allow him that much movement. "I was planning to execute her. The punishment for attacking the Kazekage's children is death, and in any case I do not like to leave my work unfinished."

"What?" Naruto gaped. "Are you insane? This is a hospital, you can't just-"

"Shut up." Shikamaru was still holding his hand sign as he crouched next to Naruto, his body visibly shaking. "Don't antagonize him – let me handle this." He turned to the Sand genin. "Listen, your name is Gaara, right? You're the Kazekage's youngest son? Look, I don't know how you guys do things in the Hidden Sand, but over here you can't just kill people whenever you feel like it. Besides, Hinata here is the heir to Konoha's greatest and most noble clan, the Hyūga – believe me, you don't want to deal with the kind of trouble that would come from killing her."

Gaara stared back, nonplussed. "If their heir is so weak then they are better off without her. If anything I would do them a favour by killing her: In fact if they sent her to this exam with her current abilities then I suspect that was already their intention." He turned to face Naruto. "Is there some rule that says you cannot kill people in hospitals? Why? Is it because it is not sporting if they do not have a chance to fight back?"

"What? No! You're never supposed to kill people, but especially not in hospitals!" Naruto stopped as he realized what he was saying. "I mean, we're ninjas so we do have to kill people of course, and yeah it's usually better to do it when they can't fight back, but, I mean, it's just not considered polite to… uh..."

Shikamaru glared at him. "What did I just say?" He turned back to Gaara. "Look. Listen. This whole thing sounds like one big diplomatic misunderstanding, so how about we just go get the jōnin and have them sort out the whole mess while we-"

Sand blasted from Gaara's gourd and struck Shikamaru in the chest, hurling him against the far wall with bone-shattering force. "Be quiet. You're annoying."

"Shikamaru!" Naruto turned to see if he was hurt – leaving his back exposed – and saw at the same time that Hinata was still fast asleep. They must have drugged her, and with Shikamaru unconscious that meant he was alone once more.

The voice continued its barren monotone. "Do you see now? Life is so much more convenient when you have the power to stop irritating people from bothering you. Having watched your fight against the boy in green and witnessing the satisfaction you took in crushing him completely, it seems to me that you must also be able to understand this."

"…why?" His knuckles whitened as he clutched his kunai uselessly. Alerting the others downstairs was as simple as creating a shadow clone and dispelling it, but if he did that then Gaara might kill Hinata and Shikamaru, and then it really would be his fault they died. "How can you believe something like that?"

"I believe it because it is true," said Gaara. "I know it to be true because of the things I observed early on in life. From the moment of my birth my father taught me the secrets skills of the shinobi – he pampered and protected me and for a time I thought that was love. However something transpired that showed me otherwise: Observing a friend of mine to be picked upon I rushed to his aid, but he spat on me and informed me that he did not require my pity. In his wroth my father put him to death in front of everyone and they all cheered for what they called 'justice'. Afterwards the parents of the boy came to my father and thanked him for his great wisdom and for saving them from shame."

Sand coiled around Gaara like a serpent as he spoke, and Naruto stepped back in horror.

"Allow me to ask you something, Uzumaki Naruto: What is this thing called 'justice' which would slay a friend despite my wishes? What is this 'honour' that would leave a parent grateful for the death of their child? And what is 'love'? I asked my father what would have happened if I and the boy had been switched at birth – if he would have killed me without a second thought, and if that meant that in truth my life was worth no more than the boy he had just executed, but he told me not to waste his time with foolish questions." Sand blasted past Naruto's head and he fell to the floor, scrambling backwards as Gaara advanced on him. "That was when I saw the truth: That killing someone is called 'justice' when you have power and 'injustice' when you have none, that 'honour' is the same as 'dishonour' and that there is no love but the love which you bear for yourself." Gaara stepped forward again, but Naruto's back was against the hospital bed and there was no more room to retreat. Sand rushed in to envelop him, grasping for his ears, his eyes, his nose, his mouth.

A blast of wind filled the room, casting sheets around the hospital chamber and scattering sand in every direction. Naruto shielded his face, and when he lowered his arms there was an older girl standing in the doorway. She wore a black kimono with a red obi, and her sandy blond hair was tied up in four pony tails. She held a massive war fan in her hands, and her teal eyes were filled with disappointment.

"Gaara, we talked about this. We are not to kill any foreign ninjas while in Leaf, remember?"

Gaara stared her down, but the sand did not approach her. "Temari. Do not get in my way. I'll kill you."

"And then father will kill you, remember?" She sighed as she walked up to Naruto, slinging her fan onto her back once more. "He's not usually like this, you know. It's the killing that wakes up the animal inside. He can be a sweet boy, really, when you give him the chance."

The sand swirled angrily once more, but a vibration in the air appeared next to Gaara's throat, coming from the outstretched fingers of a man in a turban who was suddenly standing behind him – their teacher.

"Give me a reason, boy," he growled.

Kankuro was there also, standing well back and looking ready to flee at a moment's notice.

"Fine," Gaara said at last. He was holding his head as though he had a headache. "I have… had enough."

Naruto watched as the Sand ninjas filed out the room, holding his heart for fear that it would burst out of his chest if he let go. Temari hesitated in the doorway, looking around and taking in the surrounding damage as though she felt she ought to say something. At last her eyes locked onto Hinata's sleeping body, and she gave a nod towards Naruto.

"Cute girlfriend."

The door shut behind her, and Naruto slowly started breathing again. "I… I can't even tell which of them is more terrifying," he said. "I really can't."

"Definitely the girl," Shikamaru said as he gingerly picked himself up, his own breathing sounding just as ragged. "Women are always the scariest. Just ask my dad."
​

-o-​

After a brief visit to Shikamaru's team, followed by yet more assurances that the matter of the Sand ninjas would be looked into, the two of them descended the stairs in silence once more. Naruto's mind kept repeating what Gaara said to him, over and over. It had all seemed so… familiar, somehow.

What was it Sasuke had said on top of the hill, all that time ago? In this world, if you have no power your life is worth less than nothing, and you can't but expect others to treat you accordingly…

It turned out that Gaara had used his sand to saturate the area with chakra again, preventing the Hyūga clan from making out what was happening in time – which Naruto only now realized must have been the same principle behind the aura of darkness that shrouded the Fourth's enemy while controlling the Kyūbi so many years ago. He was still mulling over the implications when they arrived at the bottom of the stairs and found the others assembled in the centre of the torch-lit hall which had served as arena.

Hayate glanced at them as they entered the room. "Uhm, as I was saying… the final round will take place in one month to give all the foreign attendants time to arrive. I sorted the remaining contenders into pairs, but since we still have nine contestants left, I'll need one of you to fight an additional match-"

"Don't bother," said Kankuro, pointing at the roughly drawn chart the examiner was holding up. "There's no way I'm gonna fight Gaara or Temari. I already passed the first two rounds and crushed a Leaf ninja in the preliminaries – I think father will forgive me if I sit this one out."

His teacher looked decidedly unhappy about this, but he gave a curt nod nonetheless.

"Uhm, very well." Hayate made some quick adjustments to the chart. "In that case, the first round will be: Aburame Shino versus Hyūga Neji, Uchiha Sasuke versus Temari, Gaara of the Desert versus Yoroi, and uhm…" Naruto tried to peer through the crowd to see. "Uzumaki Naruto, versus…"

The sound of slamming doors reverberated throughout the hall.
​

-o-​

"Wait, Sakura!" Naruto ran after her, out of the dark hall and into the humid air outside. "Hold up!"

Sakura twisted around so suddenly that Naruto nearly bumped into her, and then he stumbled again at the expression on her face. "Why? So you and Sasuke can tell me how this all makes perfect sense? What's the point of discussing something when I already know what the conclusion will be?"

"I don't think that at all," Naruto protested. Why would she even think that? "I was gonna say that we don't have to fight each other if we don't want to. We could just, I dunno, throw practice shuriken at each other until one of us gets hit or something, and then whoever loses would forfeit-"

"Forfeit," she said flatly. "You keep saying that to people – telling Hinata to quit, saying Kiba should flee and Lee has to give up, and now me… You're always telling everyone how foolish they are to take part in this exam, but what about you, Naruto? Why don't you forfeit?"

"Me? But…"

"Yes, you!" Sakura's glare was sharp enough to make him flinch. "Even if I forfeit you'll be up against Gaara of the Desert, and then what will you do? Are you really going to tell me you'll get up and leave when that happens? Or will you simply come up with another excuse to keep doing the same thing?"

Naruto opened his mouth, but closed it again when he realized he could not give her any of his real reasoning: The Kyūbi's chakra lets me regenerate so it's not as dangerous for me as you think. I need to figure out who is responsible for attacking the Leaf and killing my dad, and I can't do that as a genin. And me being in this exam is the only thing that saved Hinata-chan's life three times already…

"See," she went on, "this is what I mean: It's as if all the arguments in the world don't make one bit of difference. Everyone just keeps doing the same thing regardless. Honestly, I don't even know why I bother…" She trailed off as she noticed something. "Wait, what's that seal on your palm? Show me."

Gingerly, Naruto drew up his sleeve and showed her his right hand, looking around to make sure nobody could overhear them. "I, uh, got the idea from when we learned elemental ninjutsu from Kakashi-sensei. Dividing techniques into just five elements always seemed really arbitrary to me: I figured the way it really works is you have one jutsu for controlling fire, one for creating shadow clones and one to make poison clouds and so on, and all those different 'techniques' for making bigger or smaller attacks are just modifications of the same basic thing."

She frowned. "That's just standard academy material: You combine physical and mental energy to form chakra, and then use shape and nature manipulation to turn it into a technique. What's your point?"

"My point is that if creating a fireball isn't fundamentally different from making a flaming sword or creating a poison cloud, then it should also be possible to create an entirely new chakra 'nature' if you just have the ability to shape it and the hand signs to manipulate it. We already know that the transformation technique lets you bend light around you, which gives us the controlling part, and when it comes to using chakra to create light–" he indicated the seal on his palm, which was exactly identical to the one inscribed on flash-tags "–we know how to do that too. It's just that nobody else put two and two together, yet."

Because being too sceptical about the world around you isn't very good for your health… for most people.

"So you used a physical seal to generate the right chakra nature, and combined it with the hand seals from a different technique to shape it… ingenious," she whispered. "What did you put on the other hand?"

He hid his left hand behind his back. "What other hand?"

"Naruto!" Her hand shot out and grabbed his wrist, and when she saw the explosive tag seal her expression turned to one of absolute dismay. "Oh no, Naruto, what have you done?"

"It's not that dangerous," Naruto protested. "It's not like I'm planning to use it myself or anything crazy like that, it's just that this way my shadow clones can create explosions without-"

"Not that dangerous? You tattooed an explosive seal onto your body! You could kill yourself at any moment just by thinking about it! Have you gone completely mad? What is wrong with you?"

"My dad thought it was a good idea," Naruto said weakly. He had felt so clever at the time, and when Jiraiya praised him for it he had been so happy he never even thought twice about it…

"Jiraiya of the Sannin?" For a moment she hesitated, but then her fury returned with a vengeance. "Well, then he is just as mad as you are! This whole world is insane, and you're the worst of them all!"

He recoiled, as if he could dodge the words she hurled at him. "Sakura-chan… that's not fair."

"Isn't it? I'm so tired of this, of all of it... I've had enough." She began to turn away, but hesitated. "Naruto, this dream of yours, of the three of us going around the world doing missions, did you really think that was going to last forever?"

He stared at her, fresh dread rising up in the pit of his stomach. "Sakura-chan? What're you saying?"

"This whole exam… I only took part in it because Tsunade of the Sannin does not allow genin to join her medical division. I talked about it with Kakashi-sensei, and, well… I'm going to be a doctor, healing others and doing medical research far away from the front lines. I'm leaving the team, Naruto. I'm just not suited for this kind of life." She half turned her head and gave an apologetic smile – one that hurt more than anything she had said so far. "I'm sorry, Naruto. We'll see each other in the finals, all right?"

Then she walked away, never once looking back.

He half reached out to her, as though he could physically stop her from leaving, but she was already disappearing into the tree line. His hand hovered uselessly in the air, before falling limply to his side.

"Let her go, Naruto." Sasuke strolled up to him from behind, both hands in his pockets and slouching as if the revelation did not affect him in the slightest. "It's better this way. Sakura was never meant to be a fighter."

"You're wrong," said Naruto. "She's smart, and brave, and her chakra control's a lot better than mine…"

Sasuke shrugged, yielding the point. "Perhaps, but it takes more than that. Sakura had a happy childhood with doting parents, unlike us, and so she lacks the determination to hold her hand in the fire for long. Would you wish for her to be a ninja long enough to acquire that kind of resolve, Naruto?"

Naruto recalled the Fourth's letter, and the warning Jiraiya had given him about those who acquired too much responsibility, too fast. He remembered killing those thugs, fighting Haku in the ice and snow, and falling as a dozen shards of ice impaled him. He recalled the solace he had taken in the warmth of the Kyūbi's waning fire, listening to his last words as he revealed his father's dying regrets. "He would have taken it all back, if he only could. In the end, all he wanted was for you to be safe…"

He shook his head. "No. I guess not."

"No," Sasuke agreed. "Of course you don't." The two remaining members of Team Seven stood side by side as they stared after Sakura for a moment longer. Then Sasuke placed a hand on Naruto's shoulder, and gave him a gentle pull. "Come on, let's go back inside. The others are waiting for us."​

 

[8th pirate king]

Is it bad that I want Gaara to crush Naruto?

Good chapter by the way but I find naruto's way of thinking to be more in line with moral thoughts of the real world rather than one of a world where war, superpowers, and killing is normal.

 

[Sophronius]

That's a case of reality being unrealistic I think. There have always been original thinkers who were way ahead of their time, and if you look at how badly Naruto fits in with the rest of society I think it fits. Basically, he sees the world for how it could be rather than accepting how it is, and he pays a social price bevause of it.

Honestly I think it's funny how most people disagree with Naruto even though it's written from his perspective - goes to show how bad he is at justifying his actions even in his own head I guess, or if you're more charitable you could say it's because he refuses to rationalize and always just says what he honestly thinks. Rudeness or honesty, take your pick.

Personally I think he's ~80% right though. People are way too hung up on feelings and way too little about fact, and it's crazy what people are willing to accept just because it's "normal". The part where he's wrong though is that he really does need to stop being so stubborn about always saying what he thinks, regardless of whether it's true of not, if he wants to be effectual at all.

 

[Sophronius]

Chapter 29

"C'mon ladies… turn this way… that's it… oh yeah, do it for Jiraiya!"

"For Kami's sake, dad!" Naruto took a break from dying of embarrassment to try and talk some sense into his godfather, who was currently using chakra-enhanced senses and who knew what other perverted techniques to spy on the girls bathing in the valley river, which lay next to their forest training grounds. "They're almost the same age I am! Can't you at least pretend to be ashamed about it?"

Jiraiya snorted derisively. "Shame is an unnatural perversion invented by tyrants to prevent man from enjoying nature's beauty. Now shush, I think that one's about to take her top off."

Naruto groaned. "Dad, you're one of the Sannin; a former student of the Third and one of the most famous and respected ninjas of all time! At least, you would be if you didn't go around doing stuff like this all the time." He recalled the words of the head of Torture and Interrogation, Morino Ibiki: "Your father is a pervert and a drunk". The man had not even felt the need to hide his contempt. "You could be the next Hokage if you wanted to, dad, I mean if you really tried."

"Pfff, Hokage? A sage like me is above such base needs for influence and power. Enlightenment is all about taking time to enjoy the finer things in life, and there's naught finer than those ripe melons over there." He wiggled his white eyebrows suggestively, but his face fell when he realized Naruto was not biting. "Kami, kid, you're no fun at all. It's just as well I never got married, seeing how you're already such an old woman."

"Dad, we came here to train. You said you were gonna help me become stronger, since Kakashi is off teaching Sasuke a secret technique or whatever." He did not even know where Sakura was or who was teaching her, if anyone. She had not forfeited the exam, so she had to be planning something.

"Yeah, yeah. Gimme a break already." Jiraiya turned around and sat in seiza style, his expression slowly turning serious. "Aright, so you wanna get stronger, huh? Well I've got just the thing for ya – it's called the Rasengan, and it's the ultimate destructive technique created by the Fourth Hokage." He held up his hand, and in his open palm a pattern of blue chakra began to swirl, forming a translucent orb of radiant energy kept together by a constant inwards spiralling motion like a miniature whirlpool.

Naruto stared at the sphere in awe, his eyes seeming to be drawn into the centre of the vortex as though his spirit would be trapped there forever if he looked for too long. "It's amazing," he said, "but… you're saying it's a close range attack technique? What's the point of learning that instead of just using a sword or a knife or something?"

Jiraiya grinned. "Oh, it's a lot more than just an unstoppable melee attack – that's just what you let the other guy think until it's too late. Watch!" He got up and extended his arm away from Naruto. For an instant the blue sphere just hovered there in front of his palm, and then it detonated like no explosion he had ever seen: The blue chakra blasted outwards in a hurricane of force that carved a trench through the earth until it struck one of the surrounding trees, causing it to splinter and crash to the ground with a deafening racket.

"What'dya think?" Jiraiya called out over the cacophony. "Pretty good, no?"

Naruto had stood up without even realizing it, his limbs trembling along with the vibration of the earth. A directional explosion of force that can be set off at will... That really did sound like an unstoppable attack. If he used that in tandem with his clones, not even Gaara would stand a chance against him.

Then he remembered Sakura's furious lecture, and he slowly sat down again. "That's… I mean, it's really impressive, dad, but I think… I think maybe I've got enough ways to blow stuff up already."

Jiraiya looked crestfallen. "But that was your dad's… Bah, never mind. I guess you're just too young for such an incredible technique." He glanced towards the valley river, but the girls had quickly packed up and ran off at the sound of the explosion, making his expression even more mournful. Then he snapped his fingers and his eyes lit up again. "Wait, I've got just the thing for ya. The Summoning Technique!"

"The summoning technique? What, you mean like the scroll Iruka's sensei used to teleport to the tower in the Forest of Death?" Now that sounded like a useful ability to have.

"That's right, kiddo. Only instead of summoning scruffy pen-pushers, you'll be calling upon the awesome force of the Toads of Mount Myōboku! I originally passed the toad contract to your dad, so now-"

"Wait," said Naruto. "A toad contract? So I can only choose one kind of creature to summon? Why's that? And if that's the case, are toads really the most useful type of spirit I could pick? What else is there? Could I summon really powerful spirits like the Nine-tails instead?"

As if in reply, Naruto's stomach cramped up in pain as something burned it like acid. I'll get to you in a minute, you old Fox. You just sit tight.

Jiraiya crossed his arms in a huff. "You gotta sign a contract 'cause there's no point in summoning something that won't agree to fight for you, and the spirits tend to not like each other much. It costs more chakra to summon something the more powerful it is: The only one that's ever summoned the Nine-tails is Uchiha Madara in his final duel with the First Hokage at the Valley of the End, and nobody knows how even he managed to pull that one off, so you can forget about trying anything like that."

"Huh." Naruto rubbed his stomach as the pain slowly faded again. "So what can these toads do?"

Jiraiya shrugged. "Oh, y'know, they come in all shapes and sizes. Some of 'em fight with weapons and armour while others use techniques based on their chakra nature, which in the case of toads means water techniques. Then there's the space-time combination techniques that I like to use, and-"

"Wait," said Naruto. "You're saying that the toad contract would let me summon spirits that can themselves cast techniques that even I can't use? And I'm allowed to do that during the exam?"

"Yup. Though, if you'd rather summon something else you could ask Kakashi for his dog summoning contract. They're great trackers, dogs. Or I could ask the Third for his Monkey-summoning contract. The monkey king can turn into a staff, you know. You never know when you need a good staff. Could be you're out by the river doing your laundry, and you completely forgot your drying pole, and then bam! Instant staff."

"No, no," Naruto said hurriedly. "I'm really feeling the toad affinity here. Plus I gotta carry on, you know, my dad's legacy and stuff. I mean, the Fourth was your student and uh, there's that whole 'Will of Fire' thing where we're supposed to pass that stuff down and all…"

Jiraiya grinned impishly. "Well, if you're sure…" He pulled a scroll from his green short-kimono, and with a puff of air manifested one of his meter-long scrolls from it. "This is the toad contract," he said as he spread it out across the crisp grass. "Just sign your name in blood next to mine, and we're good to go."

"Uhm, okay…" Naruto gingerly pricked his finger with a kunai and scrawled his name down next to Minato's and Jiraiya's, only barely managing to make it legible. There was something decidedly sinister about writing a blood contract with spirits, but Jiraiya thought it was a good idea, and so…

"Your father is a pervert and a drunk," Ibiki's voice came again. "He is just as mad as you are," Sakura had yelled to him. "This whole world is insane, and you're the worst of them all!"

"Good enough," said Jiraiya, rolling up the scroll before Naruto could say or do anything else. "Now, whenever you wanna summon a toad, you gotta get a bit of blood on your hands to let the toads know who's calling on 'em. Then you just need to learn to form the seals and cast the technique. Watch."

After drawing some blood from his thumb, Jiraiya went through the Boar, Dog, Bird, Monkey and Ram seals, moving slowly enough that Naruto could see them easily, and slammed his hands down onto the ground. Suddenly there was a blast of air and Jiraiya was standing on top of a giant toad. It had big yellow eyes, a pattern of blue swirls on its orange skin and a necklace of purple beads around its neck.

"Wow," said Naruto, too flabbergasted to think of anything else to say. "Is it… intelligent?"

"Can't be any dumber than I am," Jiraiya said with a grin. He leaped down and slapped the toad on its side. "Ol' Gama here isn't the most personable of the bunch, but he always does as he's asked. The ones you summon are probably gonna be a bit smaller though, depending on how much chakra you put in."

"Wait," said Naruto, still reeling from the last revelation. "How does that work? I mean… you need more chakra the more powerful they are? What does that even mean? And why are humans so much harder to summon than spirits? Does it depend on how much chakra the target has, or how big they are, or… what?"

Jiraiya shrugged. "Both, I guess."

"You guess. Okay, then… does it cost more if the target is further away? Wait, this mount Myō… Moki… this mount thing, is it like a spirit dimension or is it an actual place? I mean, could you walk there?"

"Sure, if you've got a lot of patience and know where it is. I wouldn't try the food there though, it's dreadful." Jiraiya shared a knowing look with the orange toad, who stared dumbly back at him in response. There was something decidedly creepy about the way its yellow eyes kept following them as they talked. What was it the Kyūbi had said back then? "Small wonder the frogs and snakes are all domesticated, with us as an example of what should happen to them if they ever refuse your will!"

"Okay," Naruto said, as he ran a hand through his messy blond hair. "Okay. Then I'm guessing they get a chakra signal when you try to summon them, right? And the blood contract functions as a seal network set up to let them know it's you. So then does a toad with the right size and chakra get summoned automatically, or do they choose who answers the summoning themselves? But if that's the case, then why…" He was still trying to figure out how the whole thing worked when there was a sudden intake of air and the giant toad vanished. "Wait, what? What just happened? Where did it go?"

"Oh, I guess its contract period just ended," Jiraiya said offhandedly. "I didn't put a whole lot of effort into it just now, so it's already gone back to mount Myōboku."

"It what? You're saying it teleported back? How the heck's that even possible? I mean, it cost chakra and you had to form seals to summon it here, so how can it just automatically go back after a certain time?"

"Oh, that one's easy to explain," Jiraiya said confidently. "It was the technique that brought it here, but then the jutsu ran out, so now it's not here anymore. It's pretty simple when you think about it."

"That's not…" Naruto resisted the urge to groan. "Dad, it doesn't work that way. If you cast the Grand Fireball technique, the trees and houses you burn down don't just come back afterwards. It would completely change the way we understand ninjutsu if that happened!" Not that they understood much of it in the first place. "Even if ninjutsu is magic, it still has to obey the rules of logic and consistency. The Second Hokage clearly established the Laws of Chakra: You can't influence anything unless your chakra is in contact with it, and you gotta spend chakra to change something, so unless the technique… Wait."

He frowned, considering the issue. Chakra has to be in contact with the thing you change… but in the case of the summoning technique, you're not influencing the toad but space itself, making it so that the distance between you and the toad is effectively zero. Could it be that space just… snaps back after a while?

He tapped the sealing scroll thoughtfully. "Dad, you said you need this contract because otherwise the toads wouldn't agree to come, right? But we managed to summon Iruka without even knowing it would happen, so does that mean it's the contract seal itself that determines who you summon? Like, since my blood is in there now along with the toads', does that mean I could be summoned as well?"

"Sure," said Jiraiya, "that's called the reverse summoning technique. Well, truth be told it's really just the same technique but with the destination and origin swapped. Won't do you much good unless you somehow were to find a toad that can cast it for you though, since there's really not much point in you summoning yourself to your own location. Plus the more powerful your target is the more chakra you need, and so to summon yourself you'd need to be stronger than yourself, which is kind of impossible."

Naruto nodded slowly. Jiraiya was clearly still thinking of the technique as being a literal contract between ninjas and spirits, but what he said matched with Naruto's understanding: If the technique really just bent space so as to set the distance between the caster and the target to zero, then it made perfect sense that you'd be able to summon yourself to your target as well – though apparently the cost depended on how much chakra was being moved around, somehow? That was weird.

The theory seemed plausible, but he remembered Kakashi's lesson about always looking underneath the underneath, and so he kept on thinking. What else could make the summoned animal teleport back like that? Maybe the technique itself is designed to do that? But why would it do that, and even if that's the case, how could I tell?

He looked up again. "Dad… this mount whatsit place where the toads come from – you said you've been there, right? Was everything else there really huge as well?"

"Oh yeah. Giant trees the size of mountains, huge toadstools… you'd have to see it to believe it, kiddo."

"So just like the Forest of Death then," Naruto said, realizing. "Did you ever summon toads in another area with huge trees and plants like that? And did the contract last longer then?"

Jiraiya blinked. "Huh, come to think of it… I summoned Gama Bunta in this weird valley in the Land of Grass once – huge place filled with crazy stuff – and he never popped 'till we got into combat with this rogue Grass ninja and he took a few bad hits. Never really thought about it, but that was pretty strange."

That settled it. "Dad, it sounds like these giant animal spirits can only survive in areas with lots of natural chakra like the Forest of Death or this Mount place they're from, and if they go away from there they slowly run out of chakra until they die from it. I'm guessing whoever invented the technique made it so that it automatically calls the spirits back to the place they were summoned from when that's about to happen." And in fact, that implied they were not spirits at all, but just unusually intelligent chakra animals.

Jiraiya shrugged. "That's what I just said, isn't it? The contract calls them here but when their time's up they gotta go back to where they came from. You gotta learn to listen to your elders sometimes, kiddo."

"That's so not what you said! You said…" He stopped when he saw the teasing grin on his godfather's face. "Nevermind..."

"All right," said Jiraiya, still grinning. "Now that that stuff's taken care off, we can get on with the other thing we came here to do." He manifested another scroll, this one even larger than the one before, and spread it out onto the grass. It was the same array of seals that they had used the last time back in their apartment, again with a circle in the middle for Naruto to sit on. "You're still sure about this, kiddo?"

"Yeah," said Naruto, clutching his aching stomach with one hand. "The last time I talked to the Kyūbi I didn't have any safeguards at all, and it turned out fine, so this should be more than enough."

He sat down in the centre of the seal, and Jiraiya lifted his shirt and drove his hand into his stomach.
​

-o-​

Naruto gasped, and then he was back in that dark place where light held no meaning. He stood bent over in the pool of colourless liquid, clenching his stomach which now burned with an excruciating pain.

"At last! Do you have any idea how long I have been attempting to summon you, boy? I was beginning to think you were utterly insensate to your own body's cohabitant calling you."

"I'm starting to sense it now," Naruto groaned. "Would you mind?

"Pwah." The pain vanished and Naruto sagged in relief. "You should be grateful for that burning sensation. After all, it was my beneficent chakra that saved your life when you were so eager to discard it."

"I hadn't forgotten." Naruto stared up at the roaring fire behind the forbidding iron bars and grinned weakly. "So… cohabitant, huh? And here I thought I was just a visitor trespassing on your domain."

"Don't be smart with me, kit!" The raging fire coalesced into a single burning eye that stared down at him, which was by now if not familiar at least less mind-numbingly terrifying than it once was. "The uninterrupted flow of my consciousness is dependent on the continued wellbeing of your physical form, and so in that sense our lives are indeed intertwined. In fact, that is the very reason I called you here. Would you say that you have been taking exceptionally good care of our vessel, child?"

Naruto rubbed the back of his head. "Uh, well I guess I haven't been eating all my greens, but…"

"ENOUGH!" A blast of scorching wind struck Naruto and he was hurled backwards, his flesh burning even as scalding water forced its way down his throat, and he gasped for breath even as he screamed. "Do you think this is a game, boy? Do you believe your life means NOTHING?" Naruto struggled vainly to stand up but a roiling wave rushed in and forced him under again, and yet still he heard the Fox's titanic voice booming from above the waves, echoing through the water. "From the very moment you were born, others have bound the essence of their being to yours: Your father and your mother, who gave up their lives for you – and everyone else who died to protect you. With every selfish risk you take you insult their memories!"

At last Naruto rose to the surface, and as he struggled for breath he saw that the Kyūbi had transformed: Instead of a single crimson eye there was now a snarling visage; a burning mass of teeth and claws with nine smouldering tails twisting around it, like an eldritch horror from a forgotten age. The vision was so bright it burnt itself into Naruto's retinas, and he knew then and there that this image was no mere facade meant to frighten him – this had to simply be the way the Kyūbi was, the only way it could be.

"From now on we shall do things more sensibly around here. Whenever you come up with a clever ploy that is like to destroy you, you will first consult me so that I may have the opportunity to burn you for your stupidity. If coming to me is impractical, you will simply imagine how I would react if I were present, and then you shall grab some flint and tinder and do it for me. Do you understand me, brat?"

"Yes!" Naruto scrambled backwards through the scalding water, searching vainly for a way to escape, but then he remembered that Kakashi was not there – Jiraiya could pull him out but they had no way to communicate and so there was nothing to hold the Kyūbi's fury back this time. "I understand!"

"Good." The Fox's true form faded, transforming into a fire more akin to a crackling hearth. "Now, those burn wounds look exceedingly painful. Would you like me to use my chakra to heal those for you?"

"Yes!" The terror had almost made him forget, but now Naruto's tortured skin screamed out in agony once more. "Please!"

"My will is done." Bubbling crimson chakra leaked out from the seal on Naruto's belly and crawled over his skin, and though it was agony to the touch, any injury it met was burned away into nothingness. At last Naruto stopped squirming as the pain receded, and he stared at his renewed pink skin in total awe.

"You sought to throw away your life once, and then you nearly did so again: I shall not permit you a third attempt. Do you understand, kit? That opponent you faced was no ordinary Sand ninja. Even from within these dark halls, I could sense the foulness of his chakra seeping through. That child is host to the One-tailed Spirit of the Desert Sands, Shukaku, and it is he who gives the boy his power."

"The One-tail?" Naruto had been slowly recovering his senses, only for a wave of dread to assail him once again. "That's… not good." He turned his arms over again just to make sure his injuries were really gone. "But if he only has one tail, that means he's less dangerous than you are, right?"

"No, it does not work that way. I am indeed the last and greatest of the Nine, but in terms of the danger I present, it could be said that in truth I am the least."

Naruto looked up in faint surprise. Was the Nine-tails actually being humble for once?

"I see disbelief in your eyes, and you are right to doubt: It is true that females of every species agree that mere sand cannot hold a candle to the majesty of my flames, yet there is a fundamental difference between having the ability to inspire awe and being itself a creature of terror." The flames flickered and weakened then, and when the Kyūbi spoke again its voice was quiet, almost subdued. "Do you remember what I told you about my siblings, back when we both lay dying amongst the ice and snow? Each time one of us falls, we come back diminished – a mere shadow of our former selves. My younger brother Shukaku was indeed the weakest, and he was hunted time and again by cruel men who sought to profit from his enslavement. Each time he fell his spirit was lessened, until finally…" The Fox sounded almost pained now, if such a thing was even possible. "There is nothing left of him, kit. Just as I am called the Incarnate of Rage by some, so he has become the Whisper of Oblivion."

Naruto swallowed. He remembered the look in Gaara's eyes, and found it all too easy to believe.

"It is said that Shukaku's host can never sleep: His voice stays with him always, babbling lunacy and hatred into his ears, forever looking for an opening to destroy all life. No sane and healthy mind could wish for the destruction of the world it inhabits, kit. Your Enemy is, and has always been, madness."

"I understand." And he really did get what the Kyūbi was saying: I am not your enemy. He only wished he could really be sure that it was true. "So, you're saying I should stay far away from Gaara, right?"

"No." The flames flickered again as the force that empowered them weakened and waned. "Against this opponent, I will not compel you to stand down. When the stakes are high enough to be worthwhile, it is acceptable to risk your life – otherwise, what is even the point of living? All I ask of you is that if you do what must be done, you are quick about it… for my sake. I only called you here to say that much."

Naruto stared into the very heart of the fireplace, unsure of what he was truly looking at. "Kyūbi…"

"That is not my name, Naruto," the Fox said softly. "The name given to me by the Sage of Six paths is Kurama. Please use it from now on, and promise me that you will never forget."

"I will," said Naruto. "I mean, I won't." He turned to leave, and remembered that he did not have a way to contact Jiraiya before the agreed time limit was up. "Ah… would you mind? I'm kinda stuck here."

"You are a fool, kit," Kurama said gently. "I only hope that I will not have to watch you die as a result."

The world plunged into darkness once again.
​

-o-​

"What happened?" Jiraiya asked worriedly. He was crouched in front of Naruto, an intense look in his eyes as he spoke. "You looked like you were in pain for a moment there. What did you talk about?"

"Oh, not much," said Naruto, too tired to even stand up anymore. "That boy from the Sand I told you about, Gaara? Turns out he's host to the one-tailed Sand Spirit, Shukaku, and he could go insane and kill everyone at any moment. I mean, not that everyone didn't know that last part already."

"The Sand was bold enough to bring their Daemon Host into the Leaf?" Jiraiya took this in slowly. "If they're planning an invasion… I gotta tell the Hokage about this, ask him what should be done." He started to get up, but stopped. "I could teach you to control the Fox's power, to counter the Sand Spirit if worst comes to worst and we end up facing the Beast itself. The Five Elements Unsealing technique isn't too hard to learn if you put your mind to it."

"I don't think that's such a good idea, dad." Naruto rubbed his forehead wearily. "And he's not called 'the Fox', his name is Kurama. He and his brothers and sisters all have their own names."

Jiraiya gave him a concerned look. "Kid, you know he isn't your friend, right? When I was just a lad they used to say that he's the living incarnation of hatred itself – a mass of malevolent chakra that was loosed during the wars, come together and given life to punish us for our sins. Even if all that's all just a bunch of hokey people say to scare their kids, he was still Uchiha Madara's greatest living weapon, and if he was controlled against his will I still kinda doubt he was resisting much when he was ordered to destroy the same folks that helped imprison him."

"I guess." Thinking of a giant vengeful fire spirit as his friend did seem like the sort of foolish thing that Naruto had resolved not to do anymore. "But, how is that right? Thinking of someone as an enemy because of something they can do nothing about, treating them like a prisoner and using them as a weapon when they never really did anything wrong… maybe it's the smart thing to do, but is it fair?"

"No," Jiraiya agreed sadly, as he stood up and dusted off his green kimono and red haori. "One day we'll take on all the darkness in the world, kiddo, you and me – but right now this world just isn't fair at all."​

 

[BurningSaiyan]

Every chapter of this story brings me such great joy. Always a treat. That last line was perfect.

 

[Sophronius]

Chapter 30

In front of the great wooden gates separating the Village of Konoha from the outside world, an old man stood waiting. Though his face was lined and marred by liver spots, the years had nonetheless been kind to him, for he looked much the same as he had back during the first Ninja World War. He could not pretend that the wars that followed had failed to leave their mark, yet he counted himself fortunate to enjoy the current period of relative peace in such good health.

Sarutobi Hiruzen, formerly retired Third Hokage and current leader of the Village Hidden in the Leaves, took another drag on his pipe as he waited for his guest to arrive. He knew his retainers found it unseemly for the Hokage to be kept waiting by a foreigner, but it would not be much longer. After all, his guest was not the type that liked to waste time for no good reason.

Even before the dust clouds had appeared on the horizon, reports had arrived of a grand host advancing upon Konoha. Excited chūnin and incredulous jōnin told hushed tales of a spectacular coterie the likes of which Konoha had scarcely seen before: The Kazekage had brought not only his advisers and retainers with him, but also a full assembly of entertainers including skilful acrobats and seductive geisha, followed by a whole entourage of cooks and bakers and more.

One might be forgiven for concluding that this 'Golden Kazekage' was a flamboyant fop given to excessive displays of grandeur, but Sarutobi Hiruzen was not fooled: He would be shocked if any less than half of those retainers turned out to be hidden Anbu and jōnin bodyguards. A more suspicious man might have taken that as an unbridled act of aggression – an obvious attempt to smuggle an invasion force into the heart of Konoha – but Sarutobi Hiruzen knew better. After all, were the Five Kage not threatened by the mysterious mercenary organization known as Akatsuki, which had staged a coup in the Hidden Mist and assassinated the Mizukage mere months ago? It was only natural that the Fourth Kazekage, whose predecessor had also been assassinated, would feel compelled to bring a protective force with him on such a long trip to foreign lands.

Far up in the sky, racing ahead of even this unusually speedy entourage, a carpet made entirely out of gold carried three Sand ninjas through the clouds as though the whole world belonged to them.

The golden platform rushed towards the ground, throwing up a great cloud of dust as it skidded across the earth towards the gates of Konoha. Even as Hiruzen's retainers coughed and spluttered indignantly, the Fourth Kazekage came striding forward, his two companions following closely behind.

"Lord Kazekage." Hiruzen bowed politely.

"Hiruzen." The young ruler acknowledged him with a curt nod. Rasa was barely in his forties, and his hair was still auburn beneath the veil of his headdress, yet his forehead was wrinkled by a perpetual frown. He was joked in hushed whispers to have acquired this consternated expression when he emerged from his mother's womb and first saw the outside world, only to crawl back inside in disappointment.

"Shall we?"

"Of course." Hiruzen gestured ahead, and the two of them set off towards the guesthouse which had been set up for the sole purpose of housing Rasa's massive entourage. The young Kazekage moved with swift strides, and Hiruzen found himself once again grateful for his own good health as he kept up. "It is good to see you again, Rasa. I trust you and your companions found the journey here agreeable?"

"Don't even start," Rasa's closest companion muttered. Hiruzen stopped dead in his tracks: What he had taken at first glance to be a woman in her fifties actually turned out to be a wizened old lady, wearing a brown wig and enough makeup to look twenty years younger. "You know I hate traveling like this, Rasa! It's far too humid in this bloody country, and the flies get everywhere. If you weren't so cheap you'd extend that blasted golden carpet of yours to form a proper transport for a lady!"

Rasa shot her an irritated glance. "Oh yes, that reminds me. Hiruzen, I would like you to meet my two new council members. This young man here is Yūra, my new head of intelligence-"

Yūra bowed so low his veiled turban nearly touched the ground. "I am most honoured to meet you, Hokage-sama."

"-and the woman is Kiara. She is the new joint head of the Medical Division and the Puppet Brigade."

It took all forty years of Hiruzen's diplomatic experience not to raise his eyebrows in incredulity. "Indeed. And, may I ask, whatever happened to the honourable Lady Chiyo?"

"I understand that she is no longer welcome in Konoha due to certain… diplomatic incidents," Rasa said without a hint of irony. "I have asked Kiara here to come in her place. I understand that Lady Chiyo is enjoying her well-deserved retirement in her vacation home in the Land of Wind's central oasis."

"She sounds like a very sensible woman," the old woman muttered darkly.

"Indeed," Hiruzen said again. "Well, I am most pleased to meet you, my lady." He bowed deeply.

"Oh, stop!" The old woman giggled, a rattling sound capable of inducing nightmares in children, and flashed a crooked smile full of clearly fake teeth. "You old charmer, you!" She elbowed Rasa in the side and spoke loudly into his ear. "Hey, he hasn't remarried yet, has he?"

Rasa's right eye twitched only slightly, and Hiruzen once again reflected that the most important skill for a diplomatic leader was the ability to keep a completely straight face regardless of the circumstances.

They soon arrived at the guesthouse and entered into the luxuriously appointed chamber that had been assigned to the Kazekage. Rasa immediately threw his veiled headgear onto the dinner table in disgust.

"Blasted thing. It protects against the sun well enough, but I feel like a bloody fool wearing it. What incompetent idiot decided that the world's greatest leaders should wear cones on their heads?"

"You're quite right," said Hiruzen, who personally felt it made him look rather strapping. There was probably no sense in pointing out that the First Hokage had decided on the image, and that every other Kage had decided to follow his lead at the time. "Shall we begin? We have much to discuss."

"That we do." They sat down around the fine oak dinner table, each seating themselves in front of the delicacies that had been brought in mere moments before they entered the hotel.

"Sashimi!" The old lady recoiled in disgust. "Everybody knows I despise Sashimi! Yūra, be a dear and go tell these useless people to bring me something decent with sweet beans and baked potatoes."

"Of course, lady Ch- I mean, Kiara!" The young man hastily rushed out the door and shut it behind him.

Rasa sighed wearily. "Would you believe that he is the most competent Head of Intelligence I have had in ages?" He picked up his chopsticks and started to work away at the thin slices of raw meat and fish.

"Good help is hard to come by," Hiruzen agreed. He deftly picked a slice of salmon from his own plate, carefully sampling the exquisite taste before swallowing. "Rasa, I would like to talk with you regarding your son. I have received worrisome reports that he seems a tad… unstable. During the second stage of the exams, it would appear that he lost control of his powers and killed three Rain genin as a result."

"He did, did he?" The Kazekage kept eating, not seeming shocked in the slightest. "It's that damned Beast's doing, whispering its bloody madness into the boy's ears. When I agreed to intern the One-tail within my son, I never imagined what the price would be." He shot an irate glare at Chiyo.

"Don't blame me for this," lady Chiyo protested. "You are the one who authorized it: As Kazekage you have to take responsibility for all that is done in your name. You knew perfectly well why the technique is called The Power of Human Sacrifice. Nothing is ever free in life; I'm sure I taught you that much."

"Enough," said Rasa, his face drawn tighter than ever. "We have more pressing issues to discuss."

"Very well," said Hiruzen. In truth it was not well at all, but he was not about to press the issue when it was so clearly a painful topic. "There is also the matter of this mercenary organization, Akatsuki."

"Mercenary?" Rasa turned his head and spat onto the ground. "Call them what they are: Criminals and traitors. They staged a coup in the Hidden Mist and killed the Mizukage – one of us, Hiruzen! Now, never let it be said that I was a great admirer of Yagura-" In fact, this had never been said by anyone. "-but it still sets a precedent. With Yagura gone, which of us shall be the next to fall? For all that we speak of our Lineage and you of your Will of Fire, those concepts only hold power for as long as people believe in them. If the world starts to see us as mortal…"

The words hang in the air like a dangling sword. Was that what the Akatsuki were really after? Did they intend to upset the entire shinobi order and throw the world into chaos? And if so, why?

The door opened, and Chiyo perked up. "Ah, my potatoes have arrived!"

"Yūra, you're just in time." Rasa beckoned the young man to sit down next to him. Yūra paused only long enough to provide lady Chiyo her dish before obliging. "Show the Third what we have found so far."

"Of course, Kazekage-sama." He laid out what appeared to be a deck of cards onto the table. "We have vastly improved our intelligence network thanks to the assistance of the Leaf, as well as increasing the efficiency of our information storage and transfer system." He started turning the papers over one by one. "These information cards are written in my own chakra, so that only I am able to turn them into-"

"Yūra!" Chiyo yelled, slamming her fist onto the table. "I called for sweet beans and baked potatoes, not baked beans and sweet potatoes. Go back and get the order right this time, you fool!"

The young man nearly stumbled over his chair in his haste to obey, and Rasa sighed wearily. "As Yūra was saying… we are starting to get an impression of Akatsuki's organization. We count their inner circle at nine so far, plus whatever assistance they may be getting from other countries." Left unsaid was that the Hidden Stone was almost certainly supporting the Akatsuki by hiring them as mercenaries, if not worse. "Most members are still to be identified, but we do have these." He pushed two cards forward. "Hoshigaki Kisame, a former member of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist known as the Living Hunger, and one Uchiha Itachi, a madman who slaughtered his entire clan. I believe the latter was a member of your own Anbu, was he not? And then there's… this." One more card was shoved under his nose. "Orochimaru of the Legendary Sannin. That's one of your former students, Hiruzen!"

Hiruzen stared at the picture sketched at the top of the report. It was only a rough drawing, but still… there was that unmistakable glint in his eyes, that glint which had always been there, even as a young boy. Whoever had drawn this must have met Orochimaru in person, or seen another image drawn by someone who had. Someone who was more observant than Hiruzen had been.

"Two of the Akatsuki come directly from you, Hiruzen." Rasa leaned forward, his hands white as they gripped the edge of the table. "You know, my council is half convinced that you are the one who is behind all of this; that you founded the Akatsuki in secret to rid yourself of us, and so become the world's sole power!"

"I am very glad to hear that," Hiruzen said absently. "Has the fact that it is your council that's saying this convinced you of the opposite yet?"

There was a second of silence, but then Rasa's hands slowly unclenched and he sat back, a faint grimace of a smile on his face. "Yes. I suppose it has."

"There is one other member of Akatsuki we identified," Hiruzen said, as he turned the picture of Orochimaru over. "One that you seemingly forgot to mention: A rogue ninja whose symbol is a scorpion, perhaps the greatest puppet master this world has ever seen – a man known as Sasori of the Red Sand."

For the first time that day, lady Chiyo truly came alive. Even through her dark veil and the thick layer of makeup, her skin visibly whitened. "That… that is a vile lie! My little Sasori would never have anything to do with those, those murderous brigands! Where is your proof?"

"Jiraiya of the Sannin has confirmed multiple sightings," Hiruzen said. "Additionally, you have to admit that it fits with his motives. After all, he did assassinate the Third Kazekage twenty years ago-"

"Lies and slander!" She stood up and gripped a chopstick as though it were a deadly weapon, which in her hands of course it was. "So they happened to disappear around the same time, what of it? Where is your proof that my adorable grandson was involved with any of this, you horrible little man?"

The Kazekage raised an eyebrow. "Don't you mean: Lady Chiyo's adorable grandson?"

She swung her chopstick at him. "I am not in the mood, Rasa!"

Hiruzen raised his hands soothingly. "No offence was intended, Lady Chiyo. Such reports can, of course, be in error. All I ask is that the Sand accounts for the possibility that it is true. In the meantime, if you could provide us with a detailed account of his abilities in the same manner as your other reports…"

The door creaked open and Chiyo spun around, her chopstick burying itself deep into the doorpost right in front of Yūra, who promptly dropped the plate of sweet beans and baked potatoes in shock.

"For goodness' sake, boy! Did nobody ever teach you to knock?"
​

-o-​

It was already evening by the time Hinata came to the agreed meeting place, having spent the day helping Shino prepare for the final round of the chūnin exams. She sat down on the nearest bench, fiddling uncomfortably at the sight of the empty training ground and the memories it stirred up, and worrying faintly about the meeting that was to come. She did not have to wait long.

"Hello, Hinata." Sasuke somehow managed to appear as though he were stepping out of the darkness, despite the light of the crescent moon above. "Thank you for agreeing to meet with me."

"Not – not at all, Sasuke-san." She had spent a long time trying to decide what suffix to apply to his name. In terms of social standing, they were close to equal: She was still technically heir to the Hyūga clan, even if she had been all but put aside for her far more capable younger sister, while Sasuke was still the Lord Uchiha despite his clan's demise. If she spoke respectfully to him, would he find that strange? She had never really talked to him, but they had still been in the same academy class. Should she match his own familiar tone, or would he be offended if she did?

He smiled at her. "I suppose you must be wondering what this is all about."

She averted her eyes. "F-forgive me, Sasuke-san, but I think – I think I already know the reason. You want me to tell you all I know about brother Neji… right? In case you end up facing him?" She realized with a flush of shame that she was being rude, but there was no other conceivable reason why Sasuke would want to talk to her. Besides, there was something about him that unnerved her somehow. Then again, she was also unnerved by her family, her teachers and most other adults in the Village, so that wasn't saying much.

Sasuke's smile twisted into a smirk, which somehow looked much more genuine on him. "That's right – you were always the only girl in our class who wasn't so impressed by me, weren't you?" He sat down next to her, leaving the exact amount of distance to indicate a meeting between friends – not that anyone would have mistaken it for anything more than that. "You're right," he said. "I want you to tell me everything about Hyūga Neji, particularly his strength and weaknesses, and to help me train against the Hyūga's Gentle Fist style. In exchange, I will use my Sharingan to cast a genjutsu on you that will eliminate your self-doubt and turn you into a worthy heiress to the Hyūga clan."

A small gasp of shock escaped Hinata's lips. "W-what?"

Sasuke held up an empty palm. "Pain, paralysis… illusions and delusions of madness and grandeur – all these things can be affected through genjutsu, and the Sharingan can cast the strongest genjutsu of them all. It is true that ordinary genjutsu is only temporary, but genuine emotions are no less transient: If I can impart to you the mere suggestion of confidence then your mind will become used to the idea of success as opposed to failure, and what began as an illusion shall become reality in time."

She stared at him, her lips moving silently as she sat there in shock. What he had just said, what he was so casually proposing was everything she had ever wanted, and yet…

"I can't. I'm s-sorry, but I, I can't…"

"Why not?" He tilted his head to one side, curiously. "Do you think you don't deserve it?"

"That – that's not…" How could she possibly explain? Uchiha Sasuke did not seem impatient or frustrated with her the way her tutors usually were, but even so he could not possibly understand. He had grown up as a genius, always excelling at everything he did, while she struggled every day just to avoid having to disappoint her family's already low expectations of her. It had only been when she joined her genin team that she finally found a small measure of peace, of belonging. She had made a vow then, a silent promise to herself that she would never run away from her fears and failures again.

"My t-teacher, Kurenai-sensei," she began. "She said that… that I should hold my head on high, and never look for an easy way out. That I could be anyone I wanted to, if I only tried hard enough…" She trailed off.

"Your teacher is a worthless imbecile," Sasuke said, as though describing the sky as blue. She looked at him, startled. "Or rather, she lacks the imagination to understand problems that are not her own. Strength of will is a quality that varies from person to person the same as any other – telling someone who is lost in despair to try harder is like telling someone without legs to run faster. When you see that someone is drowning, you don't give a rousing speech or ask for permission to save them." She flinched as his dark eyes bored into hers. "It's painfully obvious that your personality is simply not suited to the life of a ninja, but your friends and teachers are unwilling to point this out because it would make them seem cold and cruel, even if it means that you will die on your next mission. None of that will ever change unless a miracle occurs, and I am offering one to you right now."

She turned away. "I… I will think about it, but please… I don't want to talk about this anymore."

"If you want to think about it, you should first know what your choices are." He cupped her chin in his hand and she froze at his touch. When she turned towards him she found crimson eyes boring into hers, and as they grew to consume her vision the world transformed around her.

She was back in the centre of the great hall again, confronted with the first person to acknowledge her since her mother, the boy who had just saved her life in the Forest of Death.

"That's why?" Naruto stared at her in anger and disbelief. "If you're gonna throw your life away just because you're too stubborn to give up, well, there's nothing that could make me lose more respect for you!"

A small gasp of pain escaped from her lips, but she could not speak to tell him he was wrong. I wasn't being stubborn, she thought vainly. I only wanted to show you that I could be strong, too…

As if in reply a cruel, mocking sound came from behind her, and when she turned she found Neji standing there, laughing at her with his arms crossed. "What utter nonsense. It does not matter how much a hare dreams of soaring through the sky, it still cannot grow wings and fly!" The ground opened up beneath her feet and she was falling, desperately flailing her arms but unable to gain any traction on the air. When she opened her eyes again she was standing on the balcony, her arms gripping the railing as she overlooked the fight below, every minute detail picked out in shades of crimson.

"Take a good look around you, Lee. You've proved nothing!" Naruto was looming over his opponent, his techniques having ravaged the battlefield. "You wanted to know if hard work and determination could overcome any obstacle, right? Well as you can see, it can't, and denying it will just get people killed!"

Lee raised his head to face Naruto. "You are wrong… there is nothing more noble than defying one's own destiny! It is only when you believe in the impossible that you are able to make it a reality."

"Enough! Why don't any of you ever fucking listen to reason?" Naruto stepped forward and kicked Lee in the head, and Hinata winced in pain as though she was the one who crumpled backwards in a heap. When she looked again she was running up the stairs, fleeing from Naruto as she always did. She arrived at the top of the balcony, but he was still staring at her with accusing eyes from the bottom of the steps. "What's wrong with you people? Don't you get that life is more important than some dumb feelings?"

She struggled vainly to find words to defend herself, but it was Sakura who answered in her stead. "Naruto," she said, "I think you're underestimating just how much people can be hurt by 'mere words'."

The world turned and suddenly Naruto was standing in the centre of the arena again, scoffing loudly. "Do you hear the fear and pity in her voice? She's afraid of what my words will do to you – that I'll crush your dreams and spirit. Is there anything more damning than your own teammate's pity?"

It's not real, she tried to tell herself, but she knew that Sasuke could never have constructed such perfect images out of nothing. She was forced to watch as he carved apart her hopes and dreams with merciless strokes. She turned around, desperately searching for a way out, but all she found was Neji crossing his arms and smiling viciously. "Allowing a mere commoner to lecture you, how disgraceful."

"And there is Neji, who you said you were gonna defeat. He doesn't acknowledge you as his rival at all!" Naruto appeared at the bottom of the stairs again, his bright blue eyes staring directly into her own, condemning her. "You know what? Screw this, and screw you. I don't have to deal with this crap."

Cracks appeared all along the edges of her vision as the world shattered – the walls, the roof of the arena, everything fell apart. Darkness swelled up all around her as the ground melted and turned inky black, swallowing her – drowning her in blackest despair. Right as the last of her breath escaped from her lips, she gasped and took in cool night air: She was back on the bench, sitting next to Sasuke as though nothing had happened. Slowly his red eyes faded into black once more, and he let go of her chin.

He stood up, pale moonlight falling down in thin rays around him. "Now at least you know what your choices are," he said. Then he stepped into the darkness and vanished once more.

Hinata was left there by herself on the bench, staring at the empty training ground and dimly recalling the memories it stirred up: It had been a training ground much like this one where Naruto had first acknowledged her, holding her hand as he taught her how to throw shuriken.

Sasuke was wrong. If that was how Naruto truly felt, then it was not really a choice at all.
​

-o-​

Hayate finished tying up his boots. He draped his sword belt around his shoulder, checking to make sure that the hilt was within easy reach as always. Back when he was still a chūnin he had made it a habit to touch the hilt of his sword whenever he left the house, but now he had to stop himself from checking it four times each morning, as well as in the evening and afternoon. Just as he was about to finally step through the door and out into the evening air, a soft voice spoke up behind him.​

​

"You should not go out in this weather, Hayate. There is a reason the Third asked you to be proctor for the chūnin exams, and not to patrol the rooftops at night."

He turned around and smiled at the sight that greeted him: There she stood, clad in full Anbu gear and unrecognizable but for a strand of purple hair that peaked out between her mask and hood, all set to go on a mission which she could not even tell him about – and she was worried about him over a little rain!

"Right now there is no exam to be a proctor off," he reminded her. "And, uhm… if it's danger you're concerned about, you should not even be in the same house as me, Yūgao."

"I am an Anbu of Konoha," she declared, stepping closer still. "I married death a long time ago."

He smiled and kissed the top of her white mask. "Get a divorce."

Once outside, he ran up the walls of the nearest building, feeling vaguely guilty for the muddy footprints he left behind. He held out until he reached the very top of the structure before he allowed himself to start coughing. The fit went on for nearly half a minute, and his throat and lungs burned afterwards, but the soft rain pattering on his face and hair served to cool his forehead down.

If anything the moisture in the air was helping his lungs, he decided. Yūgao had been silly to worry.

He leaped from rooftop to rooftop as he continued his patrol, the wind brushing through his hair and banishing the last of his drowsiness as he felt himself come alive once more. There was the smell of fish rising up from a restaurant down in the streets below, the carefree laughter of civilians echoing of the walls all around him as he went. A crescent moon gave watch in the sky above him.

"The moon always changes shape," she had said on their first night together. "A promise made beneath something that fickle is bound to get distorted."

"We just see it that way," he had answered. "The moon is always full, even if a part of it is hidden. The moon is the moon and a promise a promise – that will never change."

He landed on the next rooftop, and took a moment to clear his throat once more. Just as he was about to leave again, he noticed movement in the corner of his eye: A figure in black darting in the direction of the Hokage residence. By itself that would not have been too unusual – this was Konoha after all – but this one had come from the area where the Sand ninjas had been housed, and which had been placed under strong surveillance. That left him with a dilemma: Either he could run to the nearest watch post and report what he had seen, or he could pursue the suspect to find out what was really going on.

But dilemmas were for civilians, and so Hayate cast the shadow clone technique.

The world shimmered around him, and then he was watching himself vanish in the direction of the nearest watch post. With his cloned body he set off in pursuit of his suspect, the outlines of the world growing ever sharper as he focused chakra to his senses. No sooner did he catch the enemy's scent than he cast the transformation technique, wrapping light around him like a cloak until he could scarcely see his own hands. He found his quarry lurking at the base of the Hokage residence, fumbling along the wall as though searching for a hidden entrance until he suddenly sank through the wall and into the ground.

Hayate silently dropped to the ground and ran up to where his quarry had vanished, his exhilaration replaced by dread as he realized he had not been paranoid after all. The enemy had left no trace behind, except… he traced a finger down the stone wall, which felt strangely granular to the touch. He pressed his hand to the surface, and the whole segment collapsed in a cloud of fine dust that invaded his nose and mouth and nearly caused him to go down in another fit of coughing.

With one arm guarding his face he descended down the narrow tunnel, expelling chakra from his feet to stop himself from falling through the dust. Before long a chamber filled with stone pillars opened up before him, but the ground was far too even to be natural and too bare to be intended for human use. He ducked his head to enter, almost having to crouch under the low-hanging stone that had to be the foundation of the Hokage residence, and that was when he saw his target: Something which he had taken to be a shadow was flitting from one support pillar to the next, draped in a black cloak and hood that blended with the darkness as though it were part of it, moving about and doing something to the walls – and then stopped, and turned around. A baleful crimson eye blazed in his direction.

Hayate ducked low and dashed forward, zigzagging between the pillars even as he formed the seals for the shadow clone technique. Two more of his bodies darted left and right as they circled the enemy, each casting the regular clone technique and adding illusory copies to the mix, and then they all drew their swords. The phantom army leaped out from between the pillars and fell upon the enemy in unison, a dance of a dozen blades that was impossible to defend against, and landed on empty space. His enemy was gone, vanished into nothingness.

A shadow clone? Or some kind of teleportation?

He and his shadow clones turned around and scanned their surroundings, swords at the ready for any ambush or trap. Almost nothing could be seen in the oppressive darkness, except… a small light went up on the other side of the room, not unlike a candle being lit. Then another, and another – hundreds, thousands of them, lining the walls and pillars of the stone chamber, lighting up the room like a swarm of glow flies.

Hayate tried to cry out in alarm, but he must have inhaled some of the dust because he went down coughing. One by one his shadow clones vanished, until he was the last one left. His hands were slick with blood.

The explosive tags detonated with the fury of a thousand suns.​

 

[Sophronius]

Looks like there is some confusion here.

Sophronius said: ↑

I have asked Kiara here to come in her place. I understand that Lady Chiyo is enjoying her well-deserved retirement in her vacation home in the Land of Wind's central oasis.​

Click to shrink...

Sophronius said: ↑

He shot an irate glare at Chiyo.​

Click to shrink...

Click to shrink...

You're right, I accidentally confused the beautiful young Kiara with the venerable lady Chiyo. What a terribly foolish mistake!

"Lies and slander!" She stood up and gripped a chopstick as though it were a deadly weapon, which in her hands of course it was. "So they happened to disappear around the same time, what of it? Where is your proof that my adorable grandson was involved with any of this, you horrible little man?"

The Kazekage raised an eyebrow. "Don't you mean: Lady Chiyo's adorable grandson?"

Click to shrink...

In my defence, the honourable lady Kiara also sometimes gets this wrong.

Adhoc vote count started by Sophronius on Jan 10, 2018 at 6:27 PM

This vote count is in an error state, please contact support

Adhoc vote count started by Sophronius on Jan 10, 2018 at 6:28 PM

This vote count is in an error state, please contact support

 

[Sophronius]

Okay, since I appear to have a readerbase of the most shy people on Sufficient Velocity (aside from that one guy who wrote a hasty reply, looked in horror at his deed, and swiftly deleted it before scurrying away), I'll try something new: Asking direct questions in the hopes of getting some feedback

Specifically, I was wondering about:

1) The opening. Was it too wordy? Was it too flowery? Did anyone find themselves skipping through it or glazing over until they got to the dialogue?
2) The characterisation. Good? Bad? Was Chiyo too over the top, or just right?
3) Was Sasuke too much of a prat? I toned down his pratness by like 50%, but is that still too high?
4) What about the fact that these are all scenes from different POV characters? Was that confusing?
5) Could you tell what was going on? This is perhaps the most important thing: Did you go "oooh, so that's what was going on" at the final scene, or were you just confused? And what about the part where Sasuke was frankensteining earlier scenes together to present Hinata with a fake narrative? Did that come across?


If you have answers to any of these questions, please tell me! I cannot improve my writing unless I have some idea of what lands and what does not.

 

[BurningSaiyan]

I loved all of it. The flowery thinking is perfect for the professor. Chiyo is a crazy old bat. Sasuke is a well meaning asshole. I appreciate the different POVs. It was still easy to follow. Dude you've got a great story don't fret.

 

[néocorvinus]

just finished reading the story, It is awesome. One of the most interesting Naruto fanfic I have red. But if you want more feedback, you should go on SB, there are more people there

 

[Sophronius]

Dude you've got a great story don't fret.

Click to shrink...

I have to fret! It's what I do! It's how I improve! Did you think I would have spent 2 years writing a rationalist Naruto story in my head, then writing 100 pages of it, throwing it all out and starting over to produce this story if I didn't fret?

Seriously though, feedback is what helps a writer improve. I actually had an editor at the start who criticized everything I wrote, and it was super helpful. I'd be a much worse writer without him.

just finished reading the story, It is awesome. One of the most interesting Naruto fanfic I have red. But if you want more feedback, you should go on SB, there are more people there

Click to shrink...

Haha, I have been told that about a dozen times. Every time I resolve to do that, I end up causing a month-long delay in my story because I try to improve my earlier chapters before posting it there. So I should probably just give up on that one and save you all the wait

 

[néocorvinus]

Just so you know, usually, fics on SV are not better... But more...complexe than those on SB. Unless they are a Worm fic, because there is all kinds of Worm fic on SB

 

[Sophronius]

More complex, eh? Well, I think this story definitely falls under that category. Heck, 30 chapters in and we've only barely gotten started on the main plot!

Speaking of which:


Chapter 31

A plume of black smoke rose up from the wreckage of the Hokage residence. Naruto stared at it alongside the stunned crowd that had gathered before it, ninjas and civilians alike struck dumb at the sight of the gaping wound that had been torn through the heart of Konoha. Naruto knew of war and had experienced the horrors of conflict between ninjas first-hand, but it was altogether something else to see it brought to their very doorstep – to find it in Konohagakure, in the Land of Fire, where the sun always shines.

Somewhere in the crowd, Naruto saw Ino whisper something into Sasuke's ear, and the last of the Uchiha went pale at the news. Naruto did not need to hear the words to know her meaning: Rumours had been going around the Village of a man with baleful crimson eyes who clad himself in shadows, a man who had butchered his own clan: It was said in hushed whispers that Uchiha Itachi had returned to the Leaf. Naruto did not know where the rumour had come from, much less whether he believed it.

He kept staring at the black smoke, the sight filling him with an almost familiar sense of dread. The sheer wanton destruction, the indiscriminate damage, to kill just one man… He remembered gawking at the extravagance of Tenten's explosive projectile; how many resources had been expended for this one desperate attempt? In a world of Shinobi for whom individual strength meant everything, what kind of ninja would admit to themselves that they could not kill a foe with their own skill and cunning, and instead resort to such crude brute force? Those were the methods of a barbarian, a civilian, a monster.

It was exactly what Naruto would have done, if he had wanted to assassinate the Hokage.
​

-o-​

"This emergency council meeting is now called to order," the Third Hokage announced.

Morino Ibiki and the rest of the council sat down along the oval table in the Administrative section of the Academy building, their chairs scraping along the wooden floor in unison.

The Hokage sat down at the head of the table, calmly lighting up his pipe as though he had not nearly been assassinated a few hours ago. "Morino Ibiki," he said, puffing out a string of grey smoke. "As acting Head of the Anbu, I would like you to explain the situation."

"Thank you, Hokage-sama." Ibiki folded his hands in a steeple and looked each of the weary-yet-alert council members in the eye, making sure he had their attention. "Shortly before midnight there was an explosion that demolished the Hokage's private residence. Around the same time an unidentified agent was spotted near the Hokage residence by the chūnin exam proctor, Gekko Hayate, who we believe to have died in the explosion." Hayate's shadow clone had clearly believed himself to be the original, which was what truly concerned Ibiki: If the enemy had caught Hayate in a genjutsu right from the start, why permit him to follow at all? That implied darker forces at work.

"Demolished? You should call it what it is: A blatant attack on our Village by a foreign power." This irate remark came from the bandaged old shinobi known as Shimura Danzō, who was seated opposite Ibiki. The man was already starting to look aggravated, which could only be a good thing – strong emotions and logic rarely mixed, in Ibiki's experience, even for someone as cold and ruthless as Danzō. "Hiruzen, this saboteur was coming straight from the compound where you allowed the Sand to gather their forces – despite my every warning! Now this brave young shinobi has paid the price for your naivety."

The Third took a long drag on his pipe. "I am indeed grateful for your council, Danzō: Had you not insisted that I conduct my daily activities with a Shadow Clone while keeping my true body hidden, it most likely would not have ended well for me. However, it is far too soon to conclude that this unfortunate event-"

"Too soon?" The side of the man's face that was not wrapped in bandages contorted. "They brought an entire army with them, Hiruzen. Do you know how many of those retainers are secret Shinobi?" He cast his gaze around the room. "All of them. The acrobats are Anbu, the geisha are kunoichi and even the assistant cooks are genin. And as for that old woman, the new member of the Kazekage's council? I am almost certain that she is none other than elder Chiyo of the Honoured Siblings!"

There were sudden intakes of breath, hushed whispers and murmurs of disbelief all around the table. Even the Hokage looked shocked. "The Sand brought the Doom of Tanzaku Castle right into our Village? I cannot believe they would dare do anything so brazen – No, Danzō, surely you must be mistaken!"

That was Ibiki's cue: "I asked Yamanake Inoichi as well as the noble Hyūga clan to keep an eye on the Sand," he said, gesturing towards his loyal subordinate and the head Hyūga twit respectively. "If anything untoward was happening, I am sure they would have informed us immediately."

They all turned to look at Lord Hyūga Hiashi, who frowned and stared dead ahead, his eerie white eyes allowing him to see all that was happening in the room. He could have been watching girls bathe in Konoha's bathhouses for all Ibiki knew.

"It is true that the Hyūga have been observing the Sand ninjas since their arrival," the man said in the clipped formal tones typical of the Hyūga. "We have noticed no fluctuations in chakra that would accompany the use of a transformation technique. However, I should point out that the Byakugan would not be able to detect more, shall we say… civilian methods of disguise."

"Exactly," said Danzō, sounding as vindicated as a doomsayer faced with a falling sky. "Do you see the truth now, Hiruzen? The Sand is moving against us, plotting our destruction and amassing their army right beneath our very noses. We must launch an offensive strike immediately – if we combine our forces and strike in the dead of night while they lie sleeping, this will all be over before morning."

"I see," said the Third, taking a drag on his pipe. "And tell me, old friend, what are these forces of yours that you refer to? Surely you don't mean the Root division of the Anbu, which you assured me to have been disbanded long ago. Come to think of it, I cannot imagine how you would have any suspicions regarding the elder lady's identity or the Kazekage's entourage without your old spy network – surely you don't expect me to take such a rash course of action based on mere hearsay and guesswork?"

Danzō gritted his teeth in frustration, and Ibiki smiled thinly at the sight, which succeeded in aggravating the old Shinobi even more. In truth he did not disagree with him: Allowing the Sand to amass such strength in the Village could only cause trouble further down the line, and it made them look weak besides. However, admitting that would only strengthen Danzō's position in the council, which he as leader of the loyalist Anbu could not allow.

No, it was not simple spite that motivated Ibiki – rather, he knew from experience that Danzō's ideals were so diametrically opposed to the Hokage's that opposing the man could only ever be good for the Leaf, even if some sacrifices had to be made along the way.

That and riling Danzō up was just too much fun.

"I call for a motion to have the Sand removed from the Leaf," Danzō bit out. "Their forces, even discounting the possible inclusion of Elder Chiyo and the One-tailed Sand Spirit, simply present too great a threat for us to ignore." There were murmurs of assent at this pronouncement, which worried Ibiki. If the Third had any sense at all, he would ignore Danzō's call for a vote and simply-

"Very well," the Third said. "Let us go around the table. What do you think, Koharu?"

"I quite agree with Lord Danzō on this matter," the old woman said primly, siding with the Third's rival as usual. "It was not so long ago that the Sand was our enemy – it is far too soon to trust them with this much power." Her partner Homura nodded firmly along, which was unsurprising since the bland old man had never dared disagree with her on anything in his life.

Ibiki's burned hands twitched at the sight: How the Third could permit his own former teammates to oppose him so blatantly was utterly beyond him. Anyone could make a mistake in trusting the wrong person – Ibiki's own scars were proof enough of that – but to permit the same friends to betray you over and over again was beyond foolish.

"I see," the Third said calmly. "And what is your view, Ibiki?"

Ibiki leaned forward, considering his words carefully. "The Anbu find that there is insufficient evidence to conclude that the Sand is responsible for this attack. Furthermore, challenging the Kazekage with unfounded accusations could cause a rift that would fracture our newly formed alliance and endanger the Leaf. In order to secure our future, I vote against the motion."

He sat back, satisfied that he had made the Third's case successfully. Unfortunately, his dual roles as head of Torture and Interrogation as well as acting commander of the Anbu did not afford him multiple votes. In his place Danzō would no doubt have assigned a crony to each of those positions, thereby increasing his power in the council, but that was the price Ibiki paid for ensuring that those jobs were done right.

Besides him, Inoichi inclined his head in agreement. "In my professional opinion as Head of Intelligence under Morino Ibiki, I second this assessment. The Yamanaka clan votes against the motion."

"Very well," said the Third. "And Chōza, how does the noble Akimichi clan vote?"

Everyone turned to the enormous head of the Akimichi clan, whose eyes went wide with fear as though he had found himself on his own family's dinner plates. "Ahhh, that's to say…" Danzō was giving Chōza a threatening glare, but Ibiki was not overly concerned – not only because he himself was far more terrifying than Danzō could ever hope to be, but also because the Akimichi were lifelong friends with both the Nara and the Yamanaka, the latter of which had just voted against the motion.

Sure enough, the massive man turned to the Nara clan head sitting next to him, sweat pouring from his forehead in litres. "Ah, Shikaku. What uh, what do you think? How I should vote, I mean."

The jōnin commander frowned, stroking his dark goatee in thought. "I think you should make the decision you yourself feel most comfortable with, Chōza."

Ibiki could have punched the man. You imbecile! What's even the point of lugging that sack of blubber around if you're not going to tell him what to do? If Chōza had one redeeming quality it was that he knew his own limitations, which made him infinitely more tolerable than those decrepit elders the Third kept around, but the supposedly brilliant Nara clan head did not even know to use that to his advantage.

The Third nodded approvingly. "Indeed, it is always important for us to follow our own hearts, and to let the ancestral Will of Fire guide our thoughts and actions. So, how shall it be, Chōza?"

"I think… I think…" The man pulled out a giant kerchief and dabbed his forehead. "I think that maybe it's not such a good idea to keep all those Sand ninjas here?" He flinched away from Ibiki's murderous glare.

"Very good," said the Third, and he actually sounded pleased. Had nobody ever explained to the man that politics was an extension of war? There was no denying that the world was better off for the fact that Sarutobi Hiruzen had been chosen as Third Hokage instead of Danzō, but what was even the point of having principles if you refused to defend them? Where was the sense in setting rules that only one side ever obeyed? Each time the Third won a fight it was as though he would bend over backwards to reduce his winnings, while every victory for Danzō was a crushing blow that took the Leaf years to recover from.

Next to vote was Nara Shikaku, whose eyes were closed in thought or from lack of sleep. "As jōnin commander of our regular forces, I agree with Morino Ibiki's assessment of the situation. The Nara clan votes against the motion." This infuriated Ibiki even more: If Shikaku had turned against him, he could at least have understood, but now he and his fat friend might as well not have shown up at all.

All eyes turned to Lord Hyūga Hiashi, who held the last remaining swing vote. Hiashi was considered a moderate voice on the council, but only to the extent that Danzō's views were so extreme that Hiashi's looked mild by comparison. The man's face betrayed not a hint of consternation or pressure as the council waited for his answer, though the veins around his pale eyes grew ever thicker as they pulsed with chakra.

"I agree with lord Danzō that we should not invite danger into our Village needlessly," the man said at length. "However, I also agree that we should avoid insulting our new allies. We could, of course, find some pretext to move the Kazekage's retinue out of the Village…" He slowly tapped his fingers on his armrest, and Ibiki raised three fingers under the table in response. "Although, since we outnumber them so greatly, I suppose they do not pose much of a threat regardless." Ibiki raised one more finger, and that must have been more than Danzō was offering because Hiashi nodded in reply. "Yes, I suppose it's best if we continue to observe the Sand for now. The Hyūga clan votes against the motion."

Success! Ibiki gave Danzō his most self-assured sneer, and that finally did it: The bandaged old man exploded from his seat, the visible side of his face twisting in fury. "This is madness! You people would invite an enemy army into our Village? Have you all lost your minds? Or have you forgotten how the Sand ravaged our lands and tortured our people? What elder Chiyo did to Tanzaku Castle alone would be reason enough to reduce their entire bastard nation to ash, and yet you would dare invite her here?"

"Calm yourself Danzō," the Hokage said soothingly. "Of course we all share your strong feelings, but-"

"Be silent!" Flecks of spittle flew from Danzō's mouth. "We fought three Wars, Hiruzen! Three times our enemies tried to destroy all that we hold dear, and three times our friends and family shed bitter blood on the battlefield to throw them back! Three times we gave up the chance to destroy our foes and signed peace treaties in hopes of a better tomorrow, and yet three times they threw it back in our faces and laughed! The First was a fool to believe in a peaceful resolution, but even he had the sense to kill Uchiha Madara in the end. It was the Second who gave us all that we have, who founded the Anbu and the Academy and finally made us into a nation to be feared, but he made the one mistake in his life when he chose as successor a man who loves his enemies more than he loves his friends!"

The entire room fell silent, and the colour slowly drained from Danzō's face as he realized he had gone too far.

"Lord Danzō, you should apologize immediately," Kotaru said, scandalized. "That was entirely out of line." Homura nodded firmly along. "I'll say," he murmured. "That was most – most irregular!"​

​

Just as Danzō looked about to sit down and apologize, Ibiki stepped in. "Let us not be too harsh on the poor lord," he said. "I'm sure Danzō did not mean to call our great leader a traitor – and if his nightly activities had not left him so exhausted, I am certain he would never have given voice to such treasonous-sounding thoughts." He gave Danzō his best shit-eating grin. "As long as he apologizes to us for his behaviour right here and now, I see no need for the council to punish him for his insolence."

The look on Danzō's face was everything Ibiki had ever hoped for, and so much more. The bandaged old man opened his mouth, choked back whatever he had intended to say, and stormed out of the room while spluttering something incoherent which might or might not have been some sort of apology.

"Most irregular," Homura said again. As everyone else stared on in shock, Ibiki basked in the warm glow.

Truly, victory was sweet.​

 

[ptbptb]

I am indeed grateful for your council, Danzō: Had you not insisted that I conduct my daily activities with a Shadow Clone while keeping my true body hidden, it most likely would not have ended well for me.

Click to shrink...

So, we're all agreed that Root set the explosives, and that Danzo wanted to start a war without putting Konoha on a poor footing (as would be the case if the Hokage was dead), right?

 

[Sophronius]

Chapter 32

That night, Naruto dreamed of fire.

The world was gripped in a raging inferno, ash raining from the sky in black sheets and choking all life from the earth. All around him there were familiar faces, friends and classmates who wandered the world like ghosts, but in their eyes shone the crimson light of the Sharingan. Though he called out to them, they did not answer.

Sakura was there too, but she could not see him, for she had no eyes at all. Shino's mouth opened, and a swarm of insects poured out like a plague, emptying him from the inside out. Kiba and his hound had merged into a feral monster, lashing out at everything around him. Ino whispered to him from inside his own head, her voice a high-pitched wail like steam from a broken pipe. Gaara's sand gathered in a cloud, forming into a single lidless eye that watched them all from above. He blinked and looked again, and then he saw that it was not Gaara's eye but Haku's ice portal, gazing down at him with a thousand frozen eyes.

He fled. It was cold and dark, and the fire burned his skin even as the ice turned his thoughts to mud.

Darkness followed him as he ran through the streets, pursued by an enemy that would not be seen and could not be fought. Whether he was getting away or moving closer he did not know. It was a nightmare and he knew it to be so, and yet still he ran, for what else was there to do?

He woke up to the final day of the Chūnin Exams, and immediately wished he could go back to sleep.
​

-o-​

Somehow, despite seeing the massive building almost every day, Naruto had forgotten just how large Konoha's arena was. Though it was used just a few times per year for training, exams and ceremonies, the circular structure was kept in perfect condition at all times, and could easily house the entire Village.

"You're late," the man guarding the entrance said. He was wearing a standard chūnin vest, but his milky white eyes revealed him to be a member of the Hyūga clan – no doubt to verify the identity of anyone attempting to enter under the transformation technique. "You've already missed the opening ceremony, the Third Hokage's inaugural speech, the Sand's parade, and the concluding lecture on safety procedures."

"Sorry." Naruto had not planned to miss the morning activities, but he had told himself he needed just five more minutes in bed. He had ended up staring at the ceiling with his eyes wide open, repeating the mantra of 'five more minutes' until at last there had been no more minutes left.

The Hyūga shoved a bundle of papers into Naruto's hands. "Here's your ticket, your schedule, a map of the arena and a copy of your waiver form," he said. "Your seat is in quadrant A, column seventeen. Do not talk to anyone you do not recognize during the tournament. Attendants will come by with food and drinks that have been checked for poison at regular intervals – contact them if you need anything else."

"Uh, right," said Naruto. Somehow, his head was still foggy with exhaustion despite the stress. "Got it."

He stumbled through the halls and up the stairs in a daze. Everywhere there were people, endless people, buzzing and pushing past him in their hundreds, all while clamouring in an incomprehensible monotone like a waterfall's relentless cascade. It only got worse when he emerged at the top of the arena: The entire stadium was filled to the brim, endless rows of seats filled with thousands of people and with yet more coming in every second. He stared at the papers in his hands, but the letters and figures blurred and danced in front of his eyes as though they were squirming to escape his notice.

"Hey, dropout."

Naruto turned around in sharp relief, never imaging himself to be so glad to hear that voice. "Sasuke! And - oh, Kakashi-sensei."

"Heya." His masked teacher greeted him with a jaunty wave of his hand, carefree as ever, while Sasuke just stood there and smirked. "How's it going? Are you all set for your match? Glad to hear it."

"No thanks to you," Naruto bit back. If Kakashi wanted to know how he was doing he could have checked up on him at any point during the last month. "Some sensei you are."

"Hey, what was I supposed to do, train you and Sakura to fight each other?" The jōnin sighed and shook his head. "You got one of the Sannin to teach you. Sasuke had to make do with me. Don't complain."

Not wanting to press it any further, Naruto turned to his Uchiha teammate.

"So, how did the training go? I mean, those Sand Ninjas are all crazy, and even if you defeat Temari you still have to face Hyūga Neji after that, and he seems to have it out for you too." He frowned. "What's up with that, anyway?"

Sasuke shrugged with clearly forced lightness. "Oh, you know: It's one of those ridiculous age-old family feuds." He waved his hands dismissively. "Two noble clans, each vying to prove they're the greater and more noble – I think it's moronic, but I suppose if your entire sense of self-worth is tied up in your status as nobility because you have no actual talent of your own, it would seem pretty important."

Naruto followed his eyes to the other end of the arena, where he could just barely make out a figure dressed in white robes – Hyūga Neji seemed to be staring in their direction, though he could not possibly have heard what Sasuke said from such a distance. Naruto frowned in thought at the sight.

"Right," said Kakashi, coughing as he looked for an escape. "Well, I suppose I'd better go check up on Sakura." His hand was already reaching for the perverted book in his pocket as he body-flickered away.

"…useless bastard," Naruto muttered under his breath, which got an amused snort out of Sasuke. He shook his head. "So anyway, if your clan is so far above it all, how come the Hyūga mostly have a grudge against you and not the other noble clans? Something doesn't quite add up there, Lord Uchiha."

Sasuke's lips twisted into a smirk. "I suppose there might have been some old dispute regarding the power of our eyes and the origin thereof. You see, the Hyūga claim that the Sharingan is but a minor mutation of the Byakugan: A rather interesting claim, chronologically speaking, as the Sharingan can be traced back to the first son of the first ninja." A small twinkle of amusement entered his eyes as he glanced at Neji. "To be fair, our version of the Byakugan's history might not be wholly correct either – I suppose it does seem a little self-serving, to say that a lone Uchiha spawned the Hyūga clan in a single night of drunken debauchery – so perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the middle, and it was just the one affair with a scullery maid and not a whole den of women of professionally ill repute."

"Uh-huh," said Naruto, who was starting to feel rather sympathetic to the Uchiha clan's ancient rivals. "So if the Hyūga are all supposedly descended from this one Uchiha, and bloodline abilities are recessive, how would… I mean, how would that even work, exactly?"

"That is an excellent question," Sasuke said brightly, "the answer to which I think would help a great deal in explaining why the members of the Hyūga clan all look so very, very much alike."

At this point Neji descended into a sputtering fit of indignant fury, and it finally dawned on Naruto that of course the Hyūga clan would be able to read lips. Together with their wall-piercing telescopic vision, that gave them the ability to observe and overhear any person in the Village at any time.

He recalled Kakashi's lecture on always holding your hand over your mouth when discussing sensitive matters, and he remembered how quickly the Anbu had managed to find him and Mizuki in the forest, but the pieces only now all clicked together: Naruto was the son of the Fourth Hokage and host to Kurama, of course the Hokage would have ordered the Hyūga clan to always keep an eye on him.

And now he wondered: Had he ever even had a single moment of privacy in his life?

He forced his attention back to the furious Hyūga down in the stands, averting his thoughts before anyone could catch on to the fact that he knew. "What uh, what is he yelling about, do you think?"

"Hold on." Sasuke activated his Sharingan and squinted at the screaming Hyūga. "He seems to be saying something about my face, and… wearing a hat? All that spittle is really obscuring my vision, here."

"Maybe he's saying he tips his hat to you because you have such a nice looking face," Naruto proffered.

"That seems likely." Sasuke smirked again. Then he shook his head and looked away. "Well, I'd better go look for Kakashi before he manages to escape us entirely. I'll see you in the final round, dropout."

"Wait," said Naruto, pausing briefly as Sasuke's meaning sank in. "Uh, about my seating, do you know…"

"Seeing how all examinees have been given front row seats, down would be a good start." Sasuke gave a lazy wave as he sauntered away, before vanishing with the body-flicker technique.

That guy is spending way too much time with Kakashi-sensei, Naruto decided.

He found the other rookies and their teachers in the front row as Sasuke had said, and Naruto breathed a sigh of relief when he saw who was seated next to him. "Hey, Shikamaru!" He realized in surprise that he knew the large bearded man besides him as well. "Oh, and Asuma-sensei! I didn't know you guys would be here too." The jōnin sensei of team ten had been instructing Naruto's shadow clones on wind-style ninjutsu, though Naruto still lacked the fine chakra control needed to master his famous wind-blade technique.

"Hey kid," Asuma greeted him amiably. "Just because my students all failed doesn't mean they don't get to watch the finals. Besides, I've got a bet going on with Shikamaru about the final winner of the tournament," he added with a grin. "Loser has to pay for our next team dinner at the Yakiniku Q."

"Yeah," said Shikamaru, not bothering to look up. "Just watching and figuring out the strategy involved is not so bad actually – in fact it's kind of like playing a game of shogi. If this was all I had to do all day I wouldn't mind too much, though I guess that's what my dad does already, what with him being jōnin commander and all." He closed his eyes and cupped his hands together in an 'O' shape, seemingly deep in thought. "Now simmer down, I still have to figure out who I want to bet on."

"What is he doing?" The question came from a curious looking woman further down the line, with untamed black hair and a daring dress made of elaborate wrappings covered in a pattern of rose thorns. The jōnin sensei of team eight, Naruto guessed. "Is he using some kind of hand seal?"

Asuma laughed. "No Kurenai, it's not a technique. It's just something he does whenever he thinks deeply about something: I once tricked him into taking an intelligence test in the form of a game, and it turned out the speed at which he thought was beyond the level of genius. Unlike anything I've ever seen or heard of, aside from the rest of his family of course – I'm told his dad is just as brilliant."

"Wait," Naruto said slowly, "So he and his entire clan of secret-technique-using ninjas are able to think at a speed that nobody else has ever managed, but only after moving their hands in a specific way that looks exactly like a hand sign… and he's managed to convince you that it's not a ninja technique?"

What were even the odds of something like that being a coincidence? Sakura would know the answer, he thought glumly. But it had to be close to zero.

"Uhm," said Asuma. He looked to Kurenai for help, but she only gave him an artful smile in reply.

"You people are too noisy," Shikamaru said as he exited his stance. "Anyway, no matter how I look at it, I got to pick Gaara as the final winner. A guy like that just… cannot be defeated."

Naruto was about to question this when the examiner called out from below. "Everyone, please prepare yourselves for the first match of today's Chūnin Exam! Aburame Shino versus Hyūga Neji!"

As the audience burst out in deafening applause, Naruto realized he did not even know the name of this new examiner, after seeing the last three come and go – though in truth he found it difficult to care.

He watched as the two contestants faced each other down in the centre of the arena. Rumour had it that Hyūga Neji was not only the strongest genin of his year, but also the most promising member of his clan, as nobody had inherited the Byakugan as strongly as him. On the other hand, nobody ever so much as whispered of Aburame Shino, to the point where you had to actively remember that he was there at all, and Naruto could not help but wonder if that did not make him a better ninja still.

That, and Naruto had seen Shino single-handedly hold off Gaara of the Desert in the Forest of Death.

The silence was broken by Hyūga Neji, who scoffed loudly. "Lady Hinata's noble protector… I suppose you imagine yourself quite fortunate, to have been granted by fate the opportunity to avenge lady Hinata's honour in this fight." Naruto remembered again how eager this boy had seemed to tear Hinata apart during the primaries, and how alien it had seemed to him that anyone would want to do so.

"That seems unnecessary," Shino replied calmly, "seeing how you failed to wound her in the slightest."

Shino's flowing robes and hood left almost none of his skin visible, and when his insects poured forth his form was obscured further still. The parasitic beetles swarmed around him as though they were an extension of his body, which Naruto reflected might well be the case from what he had seen so far.

"Is that so? I suppose there is no merit in seeking to injure someone who can be made to falter by as much as a stern glare. Tell me: How does your family stomach the fact that the noble Aburame clan's heir is subordinate to someone so hopelessly inadequate to her role? I imagine their wounded pride is a bitter pill to swallow – or are you as much a disappointment in their eyes as she?"

"We are all subordinate to the power you call fate," Shino replied. "Why? Because whether it concerns ninjas or insects, each one of us has a role to perform in life, and a queen is no more valuable than the drones in her collective. The only exception is a drone which has lost its function: I find that those are best culled early, and harvested as a rich source of protein."

Neji glowered at him but said nothing, his eyes whitening as he assumed an unfamiliar taijutsu stance.

"If you are both ready…" The examiner slashed his hand downwards. "Begin!"

The swarm of insects flew at Neji like a black cloud, but the Hyūga rolled underneath it and threw himself at his opponent. Twin blades flashed out from Shino's flowing robes in response, curved and serrated like an insect's pincers. The hooded boy slashed at his opponent, each stroke following the other in a flawless web of steel that forced Neji back while having to evade the insects at the same time. Though the Hyūga ducked and weaved, he could find no opening to attack.

Naruto stared at the sight in confusion. "I don't get it. Why doesn't the Hyūga pull out a weapon of his own? He's at a huge reach disadvantage like this."

Shikamaru shook his head. "The Hyūga don't really use weapons. They have their own Gentle Fist style, which uses the Byakugan to detect their opponent's chakra points and closes them off by forcing their own chakra into their body with their fingertips."

"What? That's stu-" Not stupid, Naruto quickly corrected himself. A technique like that might not be well-suited to single combat, but it would be invaluable in capturing enemy ninjas alive, since you never knew what secret techniques they might otherwise use to escape even without being able to move their arms and legs. Couple that with their eyes' information gathering ability and the Hyūga were the perfect clan to assist the Anbu and the Hokage in making unwanted people disappear into the night. He glanced towards Lord Hyūga Hiashi, who was sitting in a seat of honour in the front row, watching the fight with an impassionate gaze. No wonder they're considered a noble clan, with a power like that…

But then, the Aburame were considered a noble clan too – and perhaps for exactly the same reason.

More and more insects found their way to Neji's body, try as he might to avoid them all, and it was starting to look like the Hyūga would be drained dry of chakra before he could so much as touch his opponent. At last the older boy charged his enemy with apparent desperation. Shino readied his blades for a counter, but at the last second Neji drove his foot into the dirt and used his momentum to spin on the spot: Chakra erupted from every one of his chakra points until he was at the centre of a vortex that blew away everything around it, killing all nearby insects and hurling Shino backwards. Shino tried to regain his footing but his swords were out of position and Neji was already in front of him, one hand lunging for Shino's heart with a triumphant sneer on his lips.

Neji's hand speared through his chest, and Shino exploded in a cloud of insects.

Neji instantly dodged to the side as shuriken came hurtling out of the swarm of beetles behind him. The swarm coalesced into a humanoid figure before scattering once more, revealing an unharmed Shino standing in the centre with both his blades outstretched in challenge.

"Is he… is he made of bugs?" Naruto remembered seeing Shino's body disintegrate into insects back in the Forest of Death, and shuddered. He could all too easily imagine the boy having lived there all along, not as a ninja but as a monstrous swarm that one day elected to take on human form…

"Nah," said Shikamaru, "it's a trick: He hid his real body in the swarm when he first attacked Neji, leaving a shadow clone behind – only he used his insects as a base instead of an element like water or earth, so when the clone was destroyed his bugs reappeared. He's pretending to be stronger than he really is."

Right, Naruto thought as he watched the battle below. He's just a really good impression of a monster…

Neji charged forward again, and this time Shino's defence was much more frantic. His blades struggled to hold his enemy far enough at bay, and only a handful of insects settled on Neji at a time so as to prevent him from killing them all the way he had before. Time seemed to slow as Shino's step faltered, and Neji drove himself into his guard and spun, erupting into a nexus of destructive chakra that hurled Shino backwards and sent him crashing into the ground, his swords flying far out of reach.

"You surprise me, Aburame," the Hyūga drawled as he advanced on his fallen opponent. "With all your talk of accepting your lot in life, I would have expected you to give up sooner on a fight you clearly cannot win." He plucked one of the flying beetles out of the air, dangling it between his fingertips before crushing it and flicking it away in distaste. "You refer to these insects as your allies, do you not? Why not forfeit the match and spare as many of them as you can?"

"You misunderstand." Shino struggled to his feet, leaving his blades discarded on the ground. "It is true that we refer to the lives of these insects as equal in value to our own… however, our meaning is far different from how you seem to interpret it."

Neji came to an abrupt halt, and as Naruto focused chakra to his eyes he could see why: Coils of almost invisibly thin wire had descended on the Hyūga, held up by the swarm of flying beetles. Neji cut through the wires with a contemptuous slash of his hand, yet more still were being dropped in loose coils around him, his bounds drawn tighter by the second even as he struggled to sever them all.

"Allow me to show you what I mean." Shino raised his hand and allowed one of the beetles to land on his index finger. "By itself, this drone is adrift, without a hive to give it meaning or purpose – and without purpose, what reason has it to exist? It might as well not have been born at all."

As the wires coiled around Neji he spun in place once more, but the vortex of chakra that swirled around him dragged the coils of wire with it, drawing it tighter around him even as he struggled to break free.

"Yet what if I were to grant this insect a mission, a chance to serve the greater whole?" Shino reached into his robes and produced an explosive tag, which he placed in the beetle's waiting pincers. "Observe how its wings flutter in eagerness; it has been granted joy."

"Oh Kami," breathed Naruto, half rising from his seat. "He's going to kill him. We gotta stop the match."

"Why?" Shikamaru asked confusedly. "Do you know the guy or something?"

The beetle flew at Neji, dipping and straining under the weight of its burden, yet drawing ever closer nonetheless. Neji tore at his bonds with increasing desperation, shouting, screaming as his death approached ever faster until at last he tore one bleeding arm free and thrust his palm towards the insect. There was an eruption of air as an invisible force struck the beetle right as the explosion went off, scattering dead insects and broken wire in every direction. Neji was left standing in the debris, his breathing ragged and his eyes frantic as he searched for his enemy.

"We each must have our purpose," Shino concluded, as he gathered up his weapons and sheathed them within his robes. "If we lose the one given to us, we must discover ourselves anew. However, you are correct on one count: The way you are now, your life is indeed worth less to me than even a single one of my insects." He turned to face the examiner. "I forfeit the match."

As the examiner called out the result, Naruto slowly fell back into his seat and breathed out. "Kami…"

"Yeah," said Shikamaru. "It's a good thing our team already lost to you guys back in the second round. Watching Ino or Chōji face off against someone like that would be way too troublesome."

Naruto chose to ignore that remark – Shikamaru of course knew perfectly well which match was up next. He turned a nervous eye to the stands where the Sand siblings were seated: The Kazekage's daughter had defeated Kabuto with ease, leaving her the oldest of the genin by far – and thus with much more chakra than Sasuke's still undeveloped reserves. What was worse was that Sasuke would have to save his energy for the match against Neji, while Naruto doubted she would bother to do the same. Plus there's that fan of hers… Not only could the weapon be used to attack and defend at the same time, but Naruto suspected it of being covered in enough seals to make it nearly indestructible.

All in all it should be a fairly straightforward match to predict, Naruto reflected.

Except that her opponent was Uchiha Sasuke.
​

-o-​

Sasuke emerged from the gateway under an avalanche of cheers as the crowd roared their savage exultations. A large part of the audience had come here purely to see 'the Uchiha' fight, staking their meagre savings on his life or death. If the Uchiha line ended today, they would be cheering or despairing at the transfer of money, but Sasuke himself would not be remembered. Through his eyes the crowd was reduced to the colours of the Sharingan – a crawling crimson mass crying out for yet more red.

He searched around the arena for his opponent, but soon found out that his opponent was not one to use mere stairs: A shadow crossed the arena grounds as an object drifted down from the air. Standing on top of her war fan, her black kimono and crimson obi flapped and twisted in the wind as she touched upon the ground.

"Uchiha," she announced, "you have something that belongs to the Sand."

It took a second for Sasuke to realize what she was talking about. "You mean the Uchiwa Gunbai?" The ancient war fan which had given the Uchiha their name and sigil had been passed down from generation to generation for as long as could be remembered, yet there were still those in the Sand who claimed it had originally belonged to them. "Sorry. It seems to have gotten misplaced during my clan's downfall." Along with the greater part of our wealth and land, Sasuke thought bitterly. The scavengers in the Konoha Council had barely even waited for his parents' bodies to cool before they began their prowl.

"That's a shame," said Temari. "It would have made for a nice battle trophy."

Sasuke shifted into his Uchiha style combat stance. "I guess we just can't have everything we want."

"If you are both ready…" The examiner raised his hand, and Sasuke's chakra flared into life. "Begin!"

The world blurred around Sasuke as his body-flicker technique almost hurled him towards his opponent, only for Temari's howling tempest to meet him head-on. He body-flickered away and tried again from a different angle, but she swung her fan in swift arcs all around her, casting gales of wind until she was in the eye of a storm; a raging hurricane that made her impossible to approach.

In that case…

He flashed through the seals for the Phoenix Flower technique and spat half a dozen fireballs at her. She evaded the first three and leaped between the fourth and the fifth with all the grace of a cat, but the sixth found her in mid-air with no way to dodge. At the last second her fan swung around and intercepted the fireball, knocking it out of her path, and as she landed she flashed Sasuke a vicious grin.

"My turn."

She swung her fan with all her might, and this time the storm was like nothing he had seen before: Only his Sharingan let him make out the scythes of wind that flew at him, criss-crossed like a net of invisible knives. He body-flickered away as the blades of wind cut deep into the earth where he had stood, blowing up vast clouds of dust behind him as he ran. He retreated all the way to the small outcrop of trees, and did not stop until he had a thick tree trunk between him and his opponent.

"Coward," she called, "get back here! I thought the Uchiha were supposed to be a great warrior clan. What would your dear parents say if they saw you now? Just another little leaf, shaking with fear…"

Her wind cut into the trees, tearing the bark into pieces and scattering leaves in every direction, but his cover remained standing. Looks like that fan gives her incredible power, but as she can't weave signs she lacks the fine control for pinpoint attacks. Sasuke slowly slid down and rested his back against the tree, trying to calm his breathing even as her attacks rammed into the trees until they shuddered from the onslaught. Above him, bloodthirsty onlookers were joining in her cries to urge him back into the fight.

"You know," he called to her without looking around, "I can't take taunts like that seriously coming from someone who won't even dare look me in the eye." Sakura's area-effect genjutsu would actually be more effective here, he reflected morosely. As great as the Sharingan is, it's not really a combat technique.

The savage winds relented, and the whistling in his ears was replaced by the sound of sardonic laughter. "Oh, but that's just not how it works in the Sand! You see, where I'm from people like you are taught to respect their betters: If someone of low status dared to look the Kazekage's daughter in the eye, we'd carve theirs out." There was a brief pause. "Although, you are from a noble family, and you're not too bad looking… How about this? If you come out so I can beat you properly, I'll let you be my consort."

Sasuke smiled wryly, though of course she could not see it. "Sorry, I'm already accounted for."

Inwardly he cursed: His plan had been to take her out quickly, but now she had him pinned, and if he came at her he would be at a disadvantage. One wrong step and it would be his last. He looked at his hands, but they were not shaking – they had not done so since that crucial moment in the Land of Waves, right before he fought Haku amidst the snow and ice. That moment when everything changed…

"Don't be so arrogant," she scoffed. "I'm offering you a great honour here. There are ninjas in the Sand who would kill for a chance like that – to rise above their station and find some meaning in their lives." She slammed the fan into the earth with what Sasuke guessed was vexation. "You know, that's the problem with you Leaf types. You dress up as ninjas and prance around all prettily, but you have no idea what the real world is like. Someone like you wouldn't survive for two minutes out in the desert sands."

Sasuke gritted his teeth: He knew she was just trying to provoke him, but her ignorance still vexed him. "I'm sorry, what was that, princess?" He glanced around his tree and followed Temari's gaze towards the balcony where the Kazekage and the Hokage were seated. "Oh, I get it now. It must have been hard, being raised as the Kazekage's heir, trained from birth and taught to be the ruler of the Sand despite being a girl. Good thing your father had two sons to rectify that mistake, don't you think?" He paused, not yet seeing the reaction he was aiming for. "Although… seeing how one of them appears to be an idiot and the other is stark raving mad, perhaps your inheritance is safe after all, princess."

For several seconds, there was deathly silence.

"See," she said at last, "this is what I mean. That thing you said just now? A smarter person would have said nothing." As Sasuke turned to face her, Temari smeared a streak of blood from her thumb across her open fan, connecting each of its three purple moons with a crimson line. She swung her fan at him, and along with the onrushing storm a spirit animal soared at Sasuke – a weasel armed with a sickle.

"Cut him to pieces, Kamatari!"

Sasuke dodged at the last second, leaping away even as an invisible line cut through the tree he hid behind, causing it to groan and tumble as it crashed into the ground. He flashed a hand seal and lightning darted from his fingertips, but the flying weasel only chittered mockingly as the current bent around its aura of wind to strike the trees behind it. It swung its weapon again and Sasuke was forced to flee, darting from tree to tree as shattered logs and branches fell all around him, cut apart by unstoppable blades of wind. Sasuke dashed out of the crop of trees only to be hurled back in as Temari sent a hurricane crashing into him. Above him, the weasel hefted its deadly sickle-blade once more.

No – I refuse to die to a fucking flying rodent!

Sasuke sprang to his feet, weaving new signs as invisible blades of wind shattered tree bark in every direction. He turned and spewed forth a continuous roiling flame, a torrent of fire that pursued the flying weasel as it flitted between the tree branches, chittering all the while. Sasuke drew his sword and chased after the creature, running up the side of a tree and leaping from branch to branch as he breathed the last of his fire onto the length of his blade. He swung at the spirit animal as he ran, but it flew backwards and stayed out of his reach while its own blades of wind raced past Sasuke so close he could feel their edge upon his skin. At last Sasuke reached the tip of the last remaining tree while the weasel kept flying higher. He leaped after it with all his strength and thrust his burning blade upwards in one last desperate strike, but the creature hovered just barely out of range as it readied its own wind-sickle to eviscerate him in mid-air. Then Sasuke released his technique and the fire burst from the tip of his blade like a burning lance, engulfing the rodent in flame as it shrieked in pain.

Temari's shriek echoed throughout the arena. "Kamatari!"

Sasuke dropped to the ground, landing in a crouch as all around him the burning remains of the forest rained down in a cascade of fire. "I'm sorry," he said coldly, "but when you send your pets out to fight for you, they tend to die. If you had ever set foot in the real world you'd know that, princess."

Temari screamed at the top of her lungs and swung her fan once more, but Sasuke was already on the move: He sheathed his sword and body-flickered to the side and past her hurricane winds, his movements plotted perfectly through the power of the Sharingan. He formed the Tiger seal and breathed out a grand fireball at his opponent, which she raised her fan to block just as he had known she would. Then he formed the seals for Kakashi's Chidori, and with a sound like a thousand chirping birds lightning coiled around his hand. As he drew his sword it ran along the length of his blade like a bolt of thunder, and as he charged at Temari she could do nothing but hide behind her fan and –

Something wet splattered across his face as he halted in shock, the world starting to move again as the chakra slowly faded from his systems. Instead of shattering her fan as planned, his blade ran down the side of Temari's waist: She had drawn back her fan at the last second and shielded it with her own body. Her left hand was on his wrist, preventing the sword from moving any further.

Her body shuddered as the last of the weapon's electricity coursed through her, drawing yet more blood from the wound.

"Why?" he asked, uncomprehending. Why would you do something like that, just for a weapon?

"I inherited that fan, from… from my mother," she whispered back at him. Her face was contorted with pain, but her teal eyes carried a different ache entirely. "She always… wanted me to become, Kazekage. Surely, you can understand… wanting to protect something that precious, at least a little bit?"

He nodded slowly, regarding the girl before him as though for the first time. Yeah… yeah, I guess I do.

She turned away, pulling his sword from her waist with but a small grunt of pain, and handed the bloody weapon back to him. "I don't feel like fighting anymore," she mumbled. "I forfeit the match."

She managed to stumble all the way to the medics that had leaped into the arena, collapsing onto the stretcher of her own accord.
​

When the examiner finally called the match in his favour, Sasuke hardly even noticed.

 

[ptbptb]

Chapter 32

Click to shrink...

I always found Temari pretty much forgettable. Congratulations, you managed to change that.

 

[Sophronius]

Chapter 33

"Hmm, that was quite a skilled fight, wouldn't you say?" The Third Hokage took a long drag on his pipe, the way he always did when he wanted to stall for time or look thoughtful. "I'd say your daughter has great potential as a shinobi, Rasa – indeed, I feel certain she will be promoted to chūnin after this."

Rasa was not really paying attention. His eyes still lingered on the arena below where Temari had been carried off on a stretcher. Her stomach at least would be healed easily enough – Tsunade herself would see to that, he did not doubt. What she had said to the Uchiha, though… Of his three children, she was the only one old enough to remember their mother Karura, though he had half imagined that she too would have forgotten that brief time they spent together in the sun, raising her to one day take up the mantle of Kazekage… until the birth of Gaara had turned those prized memories into poison.

"Well I thought it was no good at all," Chiyo muttered besides him. "The silly girl went and got herself stabbed instead of the enemy. Seems to me a chūnin should know which end of a sword goes where."

"I thought she fought quite valiantly," Yūra said, before flinching away from Chiyo's glare. "I ah, I only meant that considering she was forced to fight the last of the Uchiha, it was not an easy match for her."

They all turned to look at the boy with the Uchiha crest on his back (How did she lose to someone that young?) who was ambling back up the stands as though he did not have a care in the world. Chiyo's expression hardened as the boy joined up with his teacher, and Rasa frowned as he realized why. This whole situation's complicated enough already, without ancient grudges thrown in as well.

Still, he sent a few specks of gold dust across the arena to sink into Hatake Kakashi's clothes and skin, just in case.

"It is time for the next match," the examiner announced. "Please enter, Gaara of the Desert and Yoroi!"

"Ah, now this should be an interesting one," Hiruzen hummed, still tugging on his pipe and puffing out small clouds of smoke. "Are you looking forward to seeing your son in action, Rasa?"

"There's nothing to be seen," he said as Gaara entered the arena. "That boy… cannot be defeated."

The examiner slashed his hand downward, and the Leaf ninja sprang into action. A handful of thrown shuriken was blocked instantly by sand blasting from the gourd on Gaara's back as the boy stood there impassively, and then the sand came rushing at Yoroi like a flood. The Leaf ninja dodged the first wave and the second, but then the sand blasted apart in every direction at once. It spread out over the entire arena until the area below appeared to be covered in a thin mist, and then each individual mote of sand homed back in on their target all at once, leaving it utterly impossible to evade them all.

Rasa idly rubbed the gold ring on his finger as he watched. He and the boy had almost the exact same ability, but Chiyo's experiments to replicate Shukaku's power had come out differently each time. The Third Kazekage had been granted mastery over iron; able to forge any weapon at a moment's notice, and Gaara had the full might of the Desert behind him, but Rasa… Rasa commanded gold. It was too soft to use as a weapon, too heavy to be practical, and above all it was far too precious to waste.

They said that the mind and soul of the shinobi determined the nature of their chakra: That hotheads ended up brandishing fire, while calm and logical people wielded water. It would be the height of irony, he reflected, if the very concerns for his country's economy that drove him to seek such power had laden him with so weak a weapon. A malign spirit's twisted sense of poetic justice, perhaps…

That very spirit was now burying its opponent under a mound of sand; the Leaf shinobi had been covered by more and more of the desert's body even as he struggled to escape. It was starting to look like Gaara would bury him alive, when suddenly the sand loosened and fell lifelessly to the ground. Yoroi burst forth and went on the offensive, casting a technique that sent a raging torrent in Gaara's direction, and although more sand rose up to block the attack it quickly became dark and heavy with water.

"I did say it would be an interesting fight," Hiruzen remarked with satisfaction. "Yoroi can drain the chakra from anything he touches, and his water will slow down your son's sand until he is no longer able to defend himself. He has the perfect skillset to fight Gaara, and he benefits from the Will of Fire: A Ninja of the Leaf will never give up, but seek a path to victory no matter what the odds may be."

As if in response, Gaara raised one arm and bade the wet sand to float up into the air like a looming thundercloud. He condensed the sand into hailstones, and hurled them down faster than gravity's pull allowed, pelting the earth around Yoroi with a heavenly onslaught. The Leaf genin desperately raised a barrier of water to block the attacks, but the hailstones rained right through and one of them crashed into his knee with a crunch of shattered bone. As he shrieked out in agony yet more hailstones pelted him into the ground, striking his arms, legs, chest and head. Then the cloud itself condensed into a jagged spear of sand that zoomed down and homed in on its target like a thunderbolt.

"Stop!" shouted the examiner. "I'm calling the match!"

"As you wish," said Gaara. He lowered his arm even as the sand speared into the Leaf ninja, impaling him in a spray of blood. "I have stopped, and so has the match, but it seems that gravity did not listen."

For a moment, there was deathly silence. Even the audience was still for once.

"See," Chiyo said at length, "I notice that the boy managed to impale the correct person in just one try. Perhaps once these exams are over he could give your daughter some pointers on how it's done?"
​

-o-
​

Naruto watched as the Leaf ninja's remains were carried away, the bile in his stomach seeming to roil and churn in an effort to escape through his mouth. He had seen Gaara kill before – he could still hear the sound of that Rain ninja's wet and bloody coughs – but this time it had been in front of everyone. Gaara had killed that Leaf Ninja right in the middle of the Arena in broad daylight and nobody had done or said anything. Even Naruto had done nothing, just sat there and watched like everybody else.

He was still sitting there, staring at the crimson spot on the earth when his match was finally announced.

"If the participants would move into the arena and get ready…"

As Naruto descended the stairs to the arena, he tried to focus his thoughts on the trial ahead, having barely considered his upcoming match in detail – his mind flinching away from the painful prospect when he tried. Yet no matter what she had prepared this last month, Naruto did not see how Sakura could possibly hope to defeat him: She was a support ninja, skilled in medical techniques and illusions by virtue of her perfect chakra control, but a fighter she was not. Naruto was a front-line brawler, with incredible stamina and healing afforded by the most powerful spirit in existence. He was personally trained by one of the legendary Sannin, and she had what? Some minor water techniques?

Expecting her to face off against someone like Naruto really was incredibly unfair.

At last he saw her, striding into the arena grounds from the open gate on the other side. She was dressed in the white robes of the Konoha medical division, the snake on her chest symbolising healing and rebirth – all to make a good impression on the medics standing by, no doubt. Her eyes were bound with linen bandages, thin enough to see through while still shielding her from Naruto's blinding light. On her back she carried a meter-long scroll, similar to what Naruto had used back in Waves.

Even her hair had been cut short.

"Sakura-chan…"

She walked up to Naruto calmly, no trace of emotion on what could be seen of her face. "Hello, Naruto."

The examiner looked between them expectantly, perhaps waiting for them to engage in some verbal sparring before the match in order to excite the audience and fill some time. Battles between ninjas were as short as they were brutal after all, and many in the audience had come from so very far away to watch them fight… surely it was not so much to ask for Naruto and Sakura to give them a bit of a show?

Perhaps Naruto would have, if there had been anything left to say.

"All right then…" The examiner slashed his hand downwards. "Begin!"

Naruto jolted into action, fumbling to form the seals for the Shadow Clone technique even as Sakura rolled open her scroll and aimed it in Naruto's direction. As the clones rushed at her in unison, a thick jet of water blasted from the seal at incredible speed and slammed into his clones, taking them out instantly even as she angled the scroll to hit the original Naruto as well. The water crashed into him with such force that he lost all sense of direction, tumbling backwards as he washed away with the current. At last he found his footing and he emerged coughing and spluttering, barely managing to cast the shadow clone technique again before the jet of water struck him and he went under once more.

This time his clones lasted long enough to create more copies of their own, and they threw themselves at Sakura with numbers too great to eliminate all at once. Still their memories hammered into Naruto with such frequency that he lost all sense of space and time: One moment he was charging at Sakura only for her to lash him with a watery whip, the next he was rushing her in a group when the water rose up in a wave that crashed into them all at once. He was falling, swimming, sinking drinking and drowning, water forcing its way down his mouth and throat and burning his lungs while his arms flailed around helplessly, he was dying and there was nothing he could do-

An earthen wall rose up to block the stream and he felt strong arms grab him, tugging on his shoulders and pulling him out of the water. In his panic he almost fought back, but then he remembered that nobody was actually trying to kill him. He spluttered and coughed up what must have been litres of water, searing his lungs coming up almost as much as when it went down. When he could finally breathe again he found himself looking up at his own young face, bright blue eyes staring back at him.

Right... of course.

Sakura was still fending off a whole slew of clones, using the water that spewed out of the scroll like a geyser to cast her techniques with maximum efficiency – lashing out with whips of water and launching waves in every direction at a speed he never would have imagined from her. All of her attacks were low lethality but that made them ideal for fighting clones, and the surging water on the ground disrupted Naruto's usual tactics because he had never mastered water walking on account of his poor chakra control and she knew that about him. Above all the sheer volume of water coming from that scroll was incredible – even with an entire month to work with Naruto had no idea how she could have-

Oh. Tenten.

Naruto glanced in the direction of the stands where he imagined her sitting. Of course the budding seals mistress would have helped Sakura prepare against Naruto, since she still had a score to settle with him for beating her teammate Lee. He really had not properly prepared for this fight at all.

"Uhm," he heard his own voice say. "Shouldn't we, uh, change tactics or something?"

Naruto sighed. His clones were identical to him, yet somehow they still looked to him for leadership. He drew blood from his thumb with a knife, formed the seals for his new technique and slammed his hands on the surface of the shallow water. Two monstrous creatures appeared in front of him: Gama, the giant orange toad that Jiraiya had introduced him to earlier, and a smaller yellow toad with an especially moronic expression on its broad flat face. The former greeted him with a mournful croak.

"Use your water technique to attack her from a distance," he ordered the yellow toad. "Me and Gama will circle around and attack her up close." He jumped on top of the orange toad and glued himself to its back with chakra, and then it set off with great bounding leaps. I'm sorry Sakura-chan, but I can replicate your chakra nature with a single technique – no matter how hard you try, you still can't beat me.

As Sakura fended off the last of his clones, she switched and ran through the seals for her genjutsu technique. Naruto immediately called for Gama to pick up the pace, its bounding leaps nearly causing him to lose grip and fall into the rising waters below. Her genjutsu targets an area instead of a single person like Sasuke's: All I gotta do is move fast enough and she won't be able to catch me in it.

Right then a jet of water struck Naruto from behind and he tumbled head over heels down and into the water, though this time he managed to scramble to his feet right after. Gama croaked painfully as the jet of water slammed into his rear, and Naruto realized with a curse that it was coming from his own toad that he had just summoned – Sakura's genjutsu had never been intended for Naruto in the first place.

"Stop, you idiot! The target is the girl, not the toad!" Hesitating only a second, Naruto cancelled the technique and sent the yellow toad back to where it came from, but it was already too late: Sakura had run up to the still recovering Gama, her hand glowing green with chakra as she brushed upon its flank. At once boils and sores erupted all over its skin, green blood running down its body in rivulets as it croaked and moaned in anguish before collapsing on the spot and disappearing with an intake of air.

"Gama!" Naruto twisted to face Sakura, who was still standing there with that unreadable expression on her face. "What on earth did you do that for? He was just a dumb toad, you didn't need to-"

"Calm down," she said, speaking at last. "I didn't kill him: I only used my Mystical Palm technique to inflict epidermal injury. Funnily enough, it turns out the trick to being a medic is learning how not to kill your patient." It was hard to tell with the bandages covering her eyes, but her lips seemed to quirk in a humourless smile. "Besides, didn't you hear Sasuke earlier? When you send animals out to fight on your behalf, they tend to die – that's something you're only supposed to do with other people, you see."

He stared at her, unsure what to make of that. "What's the matter with you? Why're you doing this?"

"Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this?" She tore the bandages from her face, and at last he could see the simmering fury in her eyes. "Why are you even here, Naruto? I'm taking part in this blasted exam because I need to become a chūnin so I can join the medical division, and Sasuke is – well he has to become stronger for his own reasons, but what on earth are you doing here?"

"I…" Naruto started to give her one of the many reasons he had come up with in advance, but when he opened his mouth a different sound came out. "I have to beat him. I need to show him and everyone here that he's wrong: That being insane or unreasonable doesn't make you stronger, it just causes you to forget about protecting the things that are most important to you."

"Who, Gaara?" Her green eyes searched him vainly, looking to make some sense of his words. "What is it to you? You don't know him, he's not even from the same Village as you – he's not your problem!"

"Nothing around here is ever anyone's problem," Naruto protested, remembering how everyone had just ignored the fact that Gaara killed those Rain ninjas in the forest. He saw again how the audience just stood by and watched as the Sand ninja killed Yoroi, revelling in the bloodshed. "If I don't stop him, he's just gonna keep on fighting other people, and they'll die too!"

He remembered how pained Kurama had sounded while talking about his lost little brother. "His voice stays with him always, babbling lunacy and hatred into his ears, forever looking for an opening to destroy all life. Your Enemy is, and has always been, madness." And finally, he remembered the Fourth's letter, and the words Jiraiya had repeated to him for as long as he could remember: "Even I can tell that the darkness is spreading, but I believe the day will come when people truly understand each other. One day we'll change it, you and I…"

"Someone," he said, swallowing, "someone's gotta start taking responsibility for things that are not their problem. And maybe, maybe if they all see me do it… maybe other people will learn to do it too."

"And if, if even we can come to talk like this… maybe it's not so hopeless… after all…"

She was still staring at him, her expression only growing more fixed as her facial muscles hardened. At last she pulled her bandages back over her eyes, obscuring her face once more. "Fine," she said. "I already knew that trying to reason with you was never going to work. I'll just have to do this the hard way."

"Wait," said Naruto. "Hold-" She opened her scroll and the jet of water blasted him yet again, sending him sprawling away from her once more. He hastily cast the shadow clone technique even as he tumbled and fell, seeking to distract her from his real body.

He raised his head above the stream and gasped for breath. "I just want to-!"

She flicked through more seals and the water rose up all around her, a veritable tidal wave that crashed into Naruto's clones and threw him under, tossing him around like a ragdoll before finally dumping him onto the other end of the arena.

Fine then, Naruto thought, a simmering fury rising up in him like boiling water. The hard way it is.

He channelled his chakra into his own element of Wind, needing no seals or fine control to send all the water hurling away from him with crude brute force. For a second he stood in the centre of the maelstrom, droplets of water raining down all around him, and then he charged at Sakura. She aimed the scroll at him again, but he ducked underneath the stream and blocked what he could not dodge with his aura of wind. She formed seals and sent another raging torrent rushing at him, but this time he leaped over it effortlessly, the water barely touching his feet as his chakra responded to his will like never before. At last she discarded her scroll and created illusory clones all around her, an academy-level technique that she knew Naruto had never learned to see through properly, and charged right back at him.
​

-Tiny water droplets, falling and passing through the first four images but not the fifth-​

His fist impacted her face and she careened backwards, her body twisting and flailing as she struck the water, and for one horrible moment he thought he had hit her too hard but then she half rose to face him again.

She brushed her bruised cheek with the back of her hand, examining the blood with vague distaste. "Is that all? Were you planning to defeat Gaara like that, by throwing just one punch?"

For a second he was at a loss for anything to say, but then his anger gave answer. "What's it to you? Who do you think you are, telling me what I can or can't do with my life? You just told me not to interfere with other people's problems!" His fists balled involuntarily, frustration giving rise to a rage coming from a place he did not know. "You and Sasuke are always talking down to me, deciding what I should do and treating me like a child, but you'd never accept the same from me, not in a million years!"

"It's not the same," she whispered. "You are my problem." She took hold of her bandages and pulled them loose, strands of linen cascading from her clasped hand. "They say that if you save someone, they are forever after your responsibility, so that if they kill someone then that makes you a murderer as well. I suppose it's meant to make you consider the consequences of your actions, but the stories never say what to do if you fail to save someone. If someone dies on your watch, doesn't that make you even more responsible? I'm starting to think that perhaps it should be the other way around…" She stared up at him, her green eyes begging him to understand. "What if… what if you remain innocent as long as you try your hardest, but if you do nothing even once then you're guilty of whatever happens after?"

Naruto stared at her, his anger for once leaving him without a retort. "Sakura-chan…"

"Forget it," she mumbled. "You're right: I'm always lecturing others and talking down to them, but I have no answers to offer, not really." She rose, letting the bandages slip from her fingers to swim freely in the ebbing waters at her feet. "Just… please promise me you won't die to him, Naruto."

As she walked away, he found his voice only belatedly. "…I'll try not to."

The examiner looked between them and nodded, apparently satisfied. "Winner: Uzumaki Naruto."
​

-o-​

And then it was time for the first semi-final match.

"Oh, this is so exciting," said Tenten. "I can't wait to see what the last of the Uchiha is capable off!"

"Shhh, don't remind her," Ino whispered, a tad too loudly to prevent Sakura from overhearing. Ino shot a worried glance in her direction. "It's probably best if you don't bother her right now…"

Sakura sat there quietly and watched until the examiner announced the next match, and she was still watching quietly when the contenders entered the arena. Sasuke looked imperial, standing tall though his shoulders ever so slightly slumped: A sign of exhaustion from his last match that would have been imperceptible to anyone who did not know him as well as Sakura.

(Although… did she? Sasuke had told Temari that he was 'already accounted for', but what did that mean, exactly? Even after all this time, she still could not tell what he was really thinking at all...)

The pale-skinned Hyūga facing him was the opposite: He bore none of the fatigue, but his right arm was still raw from where the wires had cut into his skin, and there was a wild look in his eyes like that of a cornered animal, eerily reminiscent of the desperate men Sakura had fought in the Land of Waves.

A particularly naïve person might have concluded that this made him a less dangerous foe.

The two warriors met in the centre of the battlefield, staring off as the examiner raised his hand. "Please prepare yourselves," he said. He watched the two of them like a hawk. "If you are both ready…"

Neji lowered his headband, obscuring his white eyes from sight. Of course: He can still see everything this way, but Sasuke can't use his genjutsu. The Byakugan really is the perfect counter to the Sharingan…

"This seems familiar," Sasuke remarked with a smirk, though his spirit did not really seem into it.

The examiner slashed his hand downwards. "Begin!"

"What are you implying?" Neji asked with gritted teeth as he shifted into his clan's taijutsu stance. There was a strange marking on his forehead, Sakura noticed, like a hooked cross that was etched into his skin…

"I believe your teammate Lee employed the same trick against my comrade," Sasuke said idly. "He is also a master of taijutsu like you, and yet you seemed to look down on him – saying he lacked talent."

"What of it?" Neji's stance remained perfectly still as they squared off. The examiner looked between them in bemusement but said nothing, content to watch. "His delusions are not your concern, Uchiha."

"I'm merely curious," Sasuke said as he assumed his own stance. "What exactly makes you so different from him? Is it the fact that you can shape chakra? But your clan refuses to learn even basic elemental techniques, insisting on only using chakra in its purest form so as to better show off your eyes' ability. Tell me: What is the difference between someone without potential, and one who refuses to fulfil it?"

Neji charged at Sasuke, who instantly leaped backwards and threw a handful of shuriken at his opponent – which Neji instantly deflected and plucked out of the air. No, it was not going to be that easy to force him to waste chakra, Sakura thought grimly.

"I asked how you're any different!" Sasuke formed seals and sent lightning darting from his fingertips even as he dodged the shuriken that were thrown back at him, but Neji raised his hands and the lightning bent around an invisible wall of force to harmlessly strike the earth behind him. "If you were the one to fight Naruto and he had dug into the ground the way he did against Lee, what could you have done about it?"

"I would have used the Byakugan to recognize what he was doing and stopped him," Neji snapped back. "Or else I would have located him below ground and used explosive tags to flush him out." He charged again, and this time Sasuke spat out countless tiny fireballs which Neji extinguished with a brush of his hands, only for more shuriken to be revealed within. Wires coiled around Neji even as he dodged the shuriken, but this time he was prepared for it: Even without spinning, chakra erupted from every part of his body and blew the shuriken away – broken wires and all. "I am different because I am better!"

Sasuke breathed the last of the fire onto his sword and rushed at him, driving Neji back and forcing him to avoid not only the flaming blade but also the burning lance Sasuke had revealed he could unleash from the tip. "You say that," Sasuke chided, "but explosive tags are hardly –" He gasped as an invisible force from Neji's palm hurled him backwards, causing Sakura's heart to jump.

Sasuke stood up painfully, his sword extinguished. "All right," he grunted, "your versatility is decent, but…"

"Stop talking!" Neji scattered smoke bombs around Sasuke, covering the area in fumes that his bound eyes could surely see through but which the Sharingan could not. Then he threw his own shuriken through the smoke which Sasuke moved to dodge despite his lack of vision, only for a blast of force from Neji's palms to hurl the shuriken straight into Sasuke's path, tearing into his arms and legs. "Be silent!"

"Sage's Sacred Tools…" Tenten's hands went to her mouth. "Neji's destroying him."

No, thought Sakura. You're only looking at the facts, but you should look at his eyes. The truth is always in his eyes…

Neji came charging forward once again, and this time Sasuke body-flickered away – only for Neji to body-flicker after him and send him crashing to the ground with another burst of invisible force.

And yet, somehow, Sasuke still thought he was winning. No, more than that, it was like he was not looking at Neji at all...

"You're the one who talks too much," Sasuke said with a grimace as he pulled a shuriken out of his leg. "Trying to break Hinata just because she's the heir to the Hyūga clan and you're a branch member – as if it were somehow her fault. Don't you think she would prefer it too if your positions were switched?"

"Shut up!" Neji lunged at him with one hand, and Sasuke raised his right arm to block in reflex, but the limb shuddered upon contact and fell lifelessly to Sasuke's side. For one second Sasuke's eyes widened in panic, but then he turned his body and blocked Neji's next attack with his right shoulder instead, which slumped as well. "You don't know anything!" Neji struck out again, but Sasuke kept interposing the same already numbed body-parts, reducing the effect of the Gentle-Fist strikes. "You Uchiha always think you're so clever, with your smooth tongues and your hypnotic eyes, manipulating everyone while pretending to be above it all. Everyone acts like the Uchiha were this great and noble clan because they were so afraid of them, but meanwhile everyone hated their guts!" He sneered viciously at Sasuke's change in expression. "That's right: Your entire family was a nest of vipers and everyone in the Village knew the fact, yet it's amazing how much more likable they became in death!"

On the surface, Sasuke's face was slack. His right arm was numb, his body torn and bloody, but his eyes… his eyes were like she had only seen them once before; right before Sasuke had fought Haku back in the ice and snow, right after he had seen Naruto fall. His left hand was shaking ever so slightly.

"Oh Kami," Sakura said with dawning horror, "he's going to kill him."

"No kidding," said Ino, aghast. "Sasuke-kun should give up already, before it's too late!"

Sakura ignored her, rushing from her seat to – to do what? She hesitated, her hands on the railing of the arena. She could jump in and call for the match to be stopped of course, except… if she did that, Sasuke might never forgive her. She looked around furtively, searching desperately for some way out, and saw –

…five solemn figures dressed in white, the central a regal figure placed in a seat of honour. Hyūga Hiashi.

She rushed towards them without thinking, not even pausing as one of them rose to stop her before Hiashi shushed him down. "Lord Hiashi, you have to stop the match," she cried, fumbling for words. "I think… I think Sasuke might kill Neji, if he keeps insulting his family like that!" Her outburst was met by snorts of disbelief from each of the Hyūga except for Hinata and Lord Hiashi himself, the latter of whom only looked at her curiously, as though trying to determine what would make her say such a thing.

"F-father," Hinata said hesitantly. "If… if Sakura-san says it, then… I think, perhaps, it might be true."

Neji meanwhile had given up on using his Gentle Fist style, aiming instead to pound Sasuke into the ground with raw unfocused punches, his attacks clumsy and ineffective with rage. "Do you think nobody noticed when your family was being slaughtered? We all heard the screams, and they were like a lullaby to us! As far as the Hyūga clan is concerned, your brother was the only noble Uchiha that ever lived!"

Hiashi watched this disaster with a measured gaze. "If my nephew wishes to provoke the Lord Uchiha into killing him, then that is his decision," he said at last. "I shall not take that right away from him."

Sakura stared at him, aghast. "But he is your brother's son. How could you just watch that happen?"

"Do you see that mark on his forehead?" asked Hiashi. "It is a cursed seal, and it is what binds the branch house of the family to serve the main house." One of the Hyūga half-rose to protest this admission, but a single glance from Hiashi shut him down. "A hand sign which is known only to the main branch of our family may activate the seal and kill or torment the bearer at one's leisure, and should they fall into enemy hands it can seal their eyes as well – all to protect our clan's bloodline." He let out a small, pained sigh. "There exists… a certain kind of person who would sooner choose death than live even a single day in servitude, and I fear my brother was of that type. Following a certain incident, he elected to die rather than to be punished at my hands, and I could not bear to deny him that last remaining freedom." He watched Neji, who looked like he was finally starting to tire of beating on Sasuke. "Perhaps it runs in the family? Who knows but that I would have done the same, were I in their position…"

Seeing an opening, Sasuke's left hand grasped his right and forced it into position to form a seal. Darkness sprang into existence around the two, a globe of pure blackness five meters across that obscured all vision – even that of the Byakugan, Sakura realized with a start, if it was made of chakra.

"But that is Uchiha Madara's technique!" One of the Hyūga rose up in shock, even as a choked scream escaped from the darkness – a high and piercing note of agony that cut straight to Sakura's spine.

"Senju Tobirama's, actually." They all turned to stare at Lord Hiashi, whose milky-white eyes seemed to be misting over as his Byakugan poured over Sasuke's technique. "Everyone knows it was Madara who commanded the darkness at the Valley of the End, but it was the Second Hokage who first invented the Bringer of Darkness technique. Genjutsu he called it, even though it could be seen by everyone in sight." A wry smile appeared on his lips. "And of course, they all insist it was the noble First Hokage who came up with the Will of Fire, despite the obvious fact that it was the Uchiha who possessed fire-nature chakra. Ah, but I fear mere history and fact carry little weight relative to what people feel ought to have occurred."

Sakura turned her gaze back to the arena, uncertain of what she should think or feel or what she should do if anything could even be done at all. Before her eyes the darkness faded – disappearing as though it had been an illusion after all – revealing Sasuke looming over Neji's prone form, standing tall despite his injuries. In his eyes shone the crimson light of the Sharingan, and Sakura saw that Neji's headband had been raised once more, revealing a pair of pale white eyes that stared out at nothing.

"Perhaps you're right," Sasuke said softly, his voice strained as though he had to force out every word. "You are the servant of a great clan, while I am Lord of nothing and Master of nowhere, so perhaps neither of us is better than the other and we both talk too much. Yet if you insult my family again, I will not forgive you so easily, because I do love them even if they were never perfect." His red eyes bored into Neji's. "In order to protect something that precious… surely you can understand, just a little bit?"

As the examiner called the match, Sasuke slowly limped in the direction of the medics that were rushing into the arena, but Hyūga Neji kept lying there and stared at the clouds for a little while longer.
​

 

[demonitter]

Well, considering that the Byakugan is essentially the power of the Tagalong, that while weak can somehow see the protagonists high speed battle and what now, and the Sharingan is a step by step guide to defeat your opponent...

 

[Sophronius]

Yeah, the Sharingan is ridiculously OP in canon, but in NTBS this is much less so. The Sharingan doesn't get ridiculously OP abilities like irresistible genjutsu (plus you still need eye contact to make it work, so as Sasuke points out it's more of a psychological tool than a combat ability), while the Byakugan is fantastic for spying and capturing enemies alive, as Naruto points out. Seriously, you can watch and listen in on everyone in the Leaf Village if you have it - that's super OP for a rationalist setting. Then again, properly used genjutsu is also super OP, so the Sharingan probably still comes out ahead. But in the Sasuke vs Neji fight it's actually the byakugan that has the advantage, since Sasuke can't use his genjutsu but Neji still gets full benefits from his own eye techniques.

 

[Sophronius]

Chapter 34

Neji lay on his back, staring blankly upwards just as he had at the end of his match, still looking at nothing even though the drifting white clouds had been replaced by a white ceiling somewhere along the way. That's right, he thought distantly. Hospitals are white too, aren't they? Just like back home…

There was the sound of a door opening, and a familiar voice compelled the medics to rush out the room and close the door behind them.

"What do you want?" he asked, not bothering to see who entered.

"I came to see how you were doing," said the solemn voice of Hyūga Hiashi. "And also, to tell you something I realize I should have told you a long time ago: The truth of what happened to your father."

This time Neji did crane his head to see. Lord Hiashi was wearing his formal white robes and brown haori, and the expression on his face was both serious and concerned, though that was not unusual.

He rose up slightly. "What are you talking about? You did tell me: My father chose to take his own life rather than to be punished after he failed to prevent Lady Hinata from being abducted by a Cloud ninja." Perhaps he gave his reply too brusquely, but it was absurd to think that Neji could ever have forgotten.

"That is indeed what I told you," Lord Hiashi agreed, seating himself on the bed opposite Neji and neatly folding his robes to prevent creases. "However, that is not what truly transpired. The truth is that the person who tried to abduct Hinata was none other than your father, my brother Hyūga Hizashi himself."

Neji sat up straight, not trusting himself to speak. Somehow, it was not as much of a shock as it should have been. Perhaps a part of him had suspected, all along?

"I could not believe it at first," Hiashi admitted, "but when he explained it to me I finally understood. He had carried the burden of that mark on your forehead his whole life, but he always performed his role without complaint. Yet when it became time for you to be marked as well… somehow that was too much for him to bear. Perhaps he thought that you might have been made the heir, if my daughter was out of the picture, as even then the differences in talent had been plain to see. Or perhaps the idea of you being placed beneath her was simply too much of an insult for him to bear."

"Why tell me this now?" Neji clutched at the hospital sheets, his knuckles white. "After all this time…"

"I wanted to save my nephew the shame of being the son of a traitor," Hiashi said softly. "That is truly the reason why I invented that story, but today I realized I should have told you much sooner. Perhaps I hesitated because I myself wanted to maintain the illusion. He was my brother, after all."

Perhaps it was only the exhaustion, but Neji found it very difficult to hate the Lord Hyūga in that moment. Moreover, for his father to target Hinata purely because she made for an easier target, that was just… cowardly.

He stared hard at the floor's stone tiles, and spoke with a trembling voice. "Then… since it was my father's dying wish, will you remove the Mark of the Servant now?" He touched the lines on his forehead, and flinched, though of course he no longer felt any pain.

Hiashi's voice grew stern. "The separation of our houses is a tradition that goes back to the inception of the Hyūga clan – I cannot make an exception to that merely because my selfish brother wished it so. We each must accept the role we are given in life. Young as you are, I expect you to understand that much."

"I see," Neji said emptily. "Then, if that is everything, please let me rest. I am still very tired."

As soon as he heard the door close, Neji got up and walked to the window, staring up at the sky once more. Right in the midst of those drifting white clouds, he thought he saw a single bird fly freely.

Uchiha Sasuke… it seems that you were right about everything. Just like your clan, my family is also a pit of vipers, though you are their heir while I am but a servant. Perhaps we are not so different, after all?

He would have to go and apologize to Lady Hinata, as soon as he could.
​

-o-​

The examiner had called for a long break after the last match, presumably to give Naruto more time to fret and worry himself to death. There was just so much going on: So many competing strands of thought that all clamoured for his attention, each more pressing and disconcerting than the one before.

He was going to fight Gaara of the Desert: The person who had killed or tried to kill someone almost every single time he had appeared. Naruto had no idea how he was even supposed to fight someone like that, but he had sworn to defeat him right in front of everyone and to forfeit now was unthinkable. Well, it was not really unthinkable because he was thinking it right at that moment, but…

…but also Sasuke had used Madara's technique. He had called upon the darkness as though it was nothing, and Naruto had only just started to untangle the implications of that when he realized it was the exact same technique he could also use. He should have realized it much earlier, but of course the transformation technique which worked by bending light could also be used to create pure darkness, which would naturally take the form of a sphere if the range was expanded to the limits of one's chakra control. That meant that Madara's secret power that everyone feared so much was just a simple application of an academy-level technique, which nobody else had thought to use because they all thought of power as being able to cast the biggest fireball. Naruto only now understood what the Fourth had truly meant when he wrote in his letter that it was the Enemy's wisdom that he feared the most.

…but more importantly he was about to fight the host to the One-Tailed Beast, which if Kurama could be believed had been driven insane through countless deaths and rebirths and was now actively trying to compel his host to let it out so it could destroy the world. He could not even begin to imagine how that might tie into the Enemy's plans, except that for all he knew the Enemy could be right here in the audience waiting for the right opportunity to release the beast from Gaara's stomach and control it, just as they had done with Kurama fourteen years ago. And if that was the case, should Naruto forfeit his match to foil those plans, or would defeating Gaara be more likely to achieve that?

"Attention everyone!" the examiner called out. "The match begins in five minutes. I would like to ask all of you to please take your seats and for the contestants to start heading towards the arena."

Naruto found himself standing up on trembling legs and moving towards the stairs without any conscious decision on his part. It was as though he were caught in a torrent that pushed him inexorably in one direction, almost like when Sakura had unleashed her water scroll on him.

"Hey, wait! Hold on a second."

Naruto stumbled around in a crude mockery of a Ninja's sharp reflexes, and found himself staring at a small round face with her hair bound in buns like a pair of big round ears. "Tenten? Why are you here? I thought you were still mad at me."

"Of course I'm still mad at you!" she huffed. "I won't forgive you so easily for insulting poor Lee like that. But, I also realize that if he had fought against the guys who's waiting for you down below, Lee wouldn't just have gotten hurt – he would be dead. So, you'd better make sure you don't lose to him!"

Naruto blinked. "But… I thought you…"

"She's right, you know." Shikamaru was still lazing in his seat, not bothering to look up. "This is not the sort of guy you can afford to take lightly. He hasn't faced any real challenge yet, so I'm willing to bet that he still has some tricks up his sleeve. He'll use them the moment it starts to look like he's losing, so don't let your guard down." As Shikamaru's team moved past the row of seats to join him, the corner of his lips twisted into a sardonic smile. "And hey, I'm just glad it's you facing him instead of one of us."

Ino gave Naruto an encouraging smile, while Chōji extended a meaty hand. "It's a bag of soldier pills," the boy prompted. "They're our clan's special recipe. I'm not really supposed to share them with outsiders, but my dad also gave them to Kakashi-sensei to improve his stamina, so it should be okay."

Naruto took the bag wordlessly, unsure of what to say.

Hinata and Neji arrived closely behind the others (Did they seem more friendly with each other now? When had that happened?). It took Hinata a second to find her voice, but when she did she spoke she almost sounded confident. "Naruto-kun… all my life I used to think that I was a failure as a ninja. You were the first to prove me wrong. I – I truly believe you have a power that your enemy cannot hope to match." Her face flushed as she realized that he was staring at her.

Hyūga Neji nodded in agreement. "I have seen you fight against my teammate, Lee. You will not lose."

Naruto stared at them, the world failing to make sense to him once more. "I don't… I don't understand. None of you said anything like this to me before, so why now?" What did I do? What changed?

"It seems logical to me." Naruto jumped as insects began to crawl over his skin, but then he turned and saw that it was just Shino being creepy as always. "Why is that? Because we all witnessed Gaara killing a Leaf ninja right in front of us. I told you once that friendship means standing together for the sake of the collective, so it only makes sense that we would wish to unite against such a dangerous enemy."

"Finally the man says something I can get behind!" Kiba slapped Shino on the shoulder with a feral grin, while Lee joined up with them as well. Naruto had no idea that the two of them had been out of the hospital, never mind that they were watching the matches here with him. "That bastard's been going around acting like he owns the place, and he needs teaching a lesson. Anyone who goes after one of us has to deal with all of us!"

Shino's insects were filling his coils with chakra, Naruto realized, but there must have been some special quality to it because it was generating the strangest feeling – like there was an even greater power flowing through his veins.

At last Sakura strode up to him, a serious expression on her face. She held out a large scroll which she thrust at his chest. "Naruto, you're an absolute idiot for refusing to forfeit this match, but if you absolutely must fight Gaara then I don't want to see you lose because I didn't do enough to help." She nodded towards the scroll, which Naruto gingerly accepted. "It's the water scroll Tenten helped me fill," she explained. "I already used up most of it against you, but it should still help to slow down his Sand."

"Sakura-chan," he said, "I don't…"

She was upon him on the instant, nearly crushing the scroll between them as she gave him a lung-crushing hug. "Please don't die, Naruto," she whispered. "I wouldn't be able to forgive myself a second time."

It was too much, just too much. Like a question in an academy exam for which he had not studied, he had not the faintest idea of how to deal with this. Tears were forming in his eyes, and it was all he could do not to let them fall, because crying right before a battle was a terrible idea and in any case it would just make him look like even more of an idiot.

He searched for the one person who was missing, and found him leaning casually against the railing, looking like he had just escaped from a hospital bed – which in fact he probably had. Sasuke's wounds appeared to have been closed at least, even if his clothes were tattered, so the bandages seemed largely symbolic.

"What are you looking at, dropout?" The last of the Uchiha smirked at him. "I'm not about to hug you if that's what you're waiting for. If anything I should be rooting for Gaara – I have to face whoever wins here after all, and out of everyone in this exam you are the person I'd want to fight the least."

Naruto stared at him, speechless. Somehow, those lightly barbed words seemed to matter more than everything else combined, purely because of who it was that spoke them. Chakra seemed to explode out of his veins as the insects filled him up till bursting, and when the swarm departed they took all of his fears and worries with them. He flexed his fingers experimentally, and found his fists brimming with unreleased strength, while his mind reviewed the upcoming match with perfect clarity. The inexorable force pushing him onwards had vanished; there was no longer any reason to fight Gaara at all.

He smiled inwardly. The others would call him an idiot and complain about wasted effort when he let them know that he was forfeiting the match, but none of that seemed to matter anymore. But right as he was about to admit defeat, an even better solution seemed to slide in place. The very act of facing up to doing what he feared the most had finally allowed him to realize that he did not have to.

"Hold on!" he called out, as he ran off in the other direction. "Stall for me! I gotta go bathroom!"

The others all cried out in protest, and the examiner swore that Naruto would be disqualified on the spot if he did not show up immediately, but Naruto paid them no heed. For once, he could see the path ahead with perfect clarity, and their patience was rewarded by the sight of an orange ninja leaping into the arena, with the light of the sun behind his back as he hurled towards the ground like a meteor.

"Gaara! I don't care who you are or how strong you are – this fight you lose!"
​

-o-​

The redheaded boy stared back at him, unfazed, and Naruto grinned weakly in return.

"I'm gonna show you that you're wrong about everything," he said. "All that crap about there being no justice and honour and it being easier to just kill anyone you like... It's just like I said to Lee: I'll show everyone who's watching that there's advantages to being sane, even if I gotta beat the stuffing out of you to do it!"

"That is a foolish thing to say," said Gaara. "Do dead men in Konoha all say such foolish things?"

"All right then," said the examiner, chewing on a senbon as he examined the two contestants. "If you're finally both ready, I declare that this semi-final round of the Chūnin Exams shall now… begin!"

Sand shot out of Gaara's gourd even as Naruto cast the shadow clone technique and split into a dozen bodies, which ran off in every direction. Naruto immediately lost track of where and who he was as the Sand took out more than half of them, but none of that mattered. All he had to do was last until-

Yet more clones popped into existence as they all cast the technique again, and his chakra plunged at an alarming rate, but now they had him surrounded. He unfurled his water scroll and blasted Gaara's sand defences at full force. In response a lance of wet sand smashed into him, but all that it achieved was that the world shifted until he was on the other side of the arena, still blasting water at the enemy. Cloned scrolls access the same storage space, he thought triumphantly, but there was no time to cheer as half the clones charged forward on a silent command while the rest hurled shuriken at their enemy. The sand instinctively rose up to block the shuriken, and a sweep of Gaara's arm resulted in the sand taking out several more clones that rushed at him with swords drawn, but several more had managed to leap over his attacks or had body-flickered behind him. Then the world burst into blinding light as they activated his Lightbringer technique, and for just one instant Naruto could see the outline of Gaara shielding himself as the clones fell upon him before they activated the explosive seals on their palms and the whole scene became consumed by a ball of fire.

The ground shook beneath Naruto's feet as the shockwave thundered through his body, and he only barely remained standing. There were only a few clones left in the arena now, and he realized in shock that the chakra of the others had not returned to him and neither had their memories.

"Blood," he heard a voice distantly say, and as he looked up he saw that Gaara was standing, staring at his hands as wet sand crumbled and fell from his skin – the boy had worn the sand on his body like armour, using the transformation technique to make it look like skin. "You… you injured me?"

Naruto stared at his opponent, who was indeed bleeding slightly, drops of red running down his hands and face and dripping onto the arena grounds. There was a look in the boy's eyes like someone haunted – no, angry, or perhaps… excited?

Gaara's lips twisted into a sick grin. "Uzumaki Naruto… I was right about you. The way you fight is the same as mine – caring only to destroy your enemy with nothing held back."

"Don't give me that crap," said Naruto, far less eager to continue the argument now that he had used up most of his chakra and the rush from before had worn off. "I wasn't trying to kill you, I was just…" What had he been doing? His chest tightened at the thought: That explosion certainly could have killed his enemy – would have killed his opponent but for the armour he wore. Somehow the fight had gotten away from him, just like it had against Lee. "I was just… I was only…"

Gaara's grin widened further, eyes manic. "There is no need to hide it any longer, Uzumaki Naruto. You do not need to be concerned with the opinions of others for as long as you are stronger than them. As a ninja the instinct to kill has been instilled within you since birth – it is only natural for you to desire the destruction of your enemies." The wet sand gathered under the mad boy's feet, and before Naruto could do anything Gaara was floating up into the air on a carpet of sand.

"You are not allowed to leave the arena," the examiner reminded them from his hideout at the very edge of the arena. "You may only fly as high as the arena walls, or else you will be disqualified!"

But that was still higher than most of Naruto's attacks could reach, and as long as Gaara stayed close to the centre there was no advantage in running up the walls, either. "Look," he tried, "I'm sorry I almost killed you, all right? I can forfeit the match if you want, but you still killed a whole bunch of people and I can't just stand by and let you keep doing that. If you'd just listen for a moment and hear me out…"

Gaara's sand gathered in the air like a looming thundercloud, and it rained down on him just as it had done against Yoroi. Naruto cursed and formed seals to raise a barrier of earth all around him, the walls closing at the top to form a dome even as the globs of slush pelted the fortification. He cast the shadow clone technique again, and suddenly he was on the outside, running wildly to avoid being hit.

The sand above him coalesced into a single projectile, condensing with such force that all the water was squeezed out of it, and hurled down into the fortification he had just left behind. Naruto winced as the shelter exploded in a cloud of dirt, but there was no time to look back: He cast the shadow clone technique once more, this time focusing his chakra on cloning just a single kunai. The seal on his palm flared into life as he used the explosive chakra to fuel his technique, and then he hurled the explosive dagger at the floating platform with all his might. The Shadow Clone technique shattered on impact and the weapon detonated along with half a dozen others that the clones had thrown at the same time.

When the dust cleared there was an orb of sand hovering in the air, Gaara having pulled his projectiles back in order to make his defences even more impenetrable than before. Only one option left…

Naruto cursed inwardly as he unsealed a drop of his own blood from yet another seal on his thumb, not wanting to dispel his own cloned body. He formed the signs for the summoning technique and slammed his hands down on the ground. There was a blast of air that revealed a yellow toad staring dumbly ahead – the same one he had summoned before. Gaara was not the type to use genjutsu, Naruto hoped. "Yellow toad," he said. "Uh, Gamatatsu. Shoot water at that guy. Go!"

The toad croaked once, and then a blast of pressurized water spewed from its mouth and into Gaara's sphere of sand, which shook from the impact even as the sand grew wet and heavy once more. Immediately the orb began flying at rapid speed around the arena, and Naruto stared in wonder for a moment at the fact that Gaara was doing all of this blindly, but then one of his clones dispelled itself and he realized that Gaara had an eye of sand floating in a corner of the arena. He lifted his left palm to shoot a concentrated beam of light at it, but one of the other clones had beaten him to it and the eye hurriedly flew off, zipping around the battlefield even as blinding rays were shot at it from every angle.

Gaara's orb juddered in mid-flight, and Naruto was about to chase after it when suddenly motes of sand closed in on him from every direction. He hurriedly unleashed a blast of wind to hurl them away. All over the arena his clones were doing the same, and Naruto realized that Gaara had been trying to take all of them out at the same time. He was only pretending to need all his sand for defence! But that means-

A torrent of sand hurled from the sky to strike the ground behind him, and Naruto twisted around to see the yellow toad disappear beneath a mound of sand. "Gamatatsu!" He ran blindly towards it, only to stop as the mound collapsed to reveal nothing beneath. One of his shadow clones had managed to cancel the technique just in time and sent the animal back to its home, he realized with faint relief.

"Why are you pretending to care about that creature?" Gaara was watching him curiously from above, his head peeking out from behind a hole in the floating orb. "From the first instance of its summoning its uselessness to you has been made readily apparent. That is why you chose to field it against me after all: In selecting it you judged the value of its life, and found it wanting."

Naruto opened his mouth to deny it, but found that he could not. Mad he might be, but Gaara was not wrong: When Temari's spirit animal died there had been true anguish in her scream, as if she had lost a dear friend, whereas Naruto had treated the toad as little more than a weapon to be used – merely another technique in his arsenal. Somehow, the guilt that arose only served to fuel his nascent anger.

Kurama's words resounded in his head once more: "Small wonder the frogs and snakes are all domesticated, with us as an example of what should happen to them if they ever refuse your will…"

"It's not like that," he said, balling his fists in frustration. "I know I don't always think before I act, but at least I'm trying to be a good person. That's no excuse for you to just go around killing whoever you like!"

"Is that what you choose to believe about yourself?" The orb of sand drifted downwards until Gaara's eyes were almost level with Naruto's. "Look around you, Uzumaki Naruto: You are in an arena fighting a battle to the death against another who is doing the same. You are a killer seeking to kill killers for the entertainment of those who only wish they could be killers, all so that you can be promoted to a killer of a higher rank. You are here because you have been trained since birth to kill others and it is the one thing you are skilled at, and you know of no other way to win the respect of the killers you call friends."

Naruto stared at him, choking back the bile that welled up in his throat, only for it to churn in his stomach like sickness. It was as if everything that had been bothering him about the exams came back to him with twice the force: The fact that the Head of Torture and interrogation, Morino Ibiki, planned and oversaw the written test, followed by the mad Anko and the apathetic Hayate Gekko. The way everything had been designed as if to maximise the violence, with almost no regard for their wellbeing… the way Kiba had been beaten and carried off right in front of the Third Hokage as if it were the most normal thing in the world. All carried out by the Anbu and their spies in the Hyūga clan, who were watching him always – as though he was no less a tool of the Village than the toad had been to him.

He averted his eyes, turning to the audience, but their expressions seemed warped and monstrous now. Some were cheering for their conflict, while others were booing and shouting for them to continue the match. A lone old man stood and shook his cane at them, the bloodlust palpable in his beady little eyes.

He forced his gaze back to Gaara, but by now his visage had changed as well. It was no longer just the bored monotone that disturbed him; even more than the history of casual murder, it was the pale light in his eyes which made Naruto shrink back in fear. "Do you see now, Uzumaki Naruto? Do you see the true nature of the world?" The orb touched upon the earth, and as Gaara formed hand seals a sick and twisted grin split across his face. "Then I have only one more question for you: What are the odds that I would destroy thirty-seven of your shadow clones so far, and not hit your true body even once?"

With those words Gaara closed his eyes and touched the edge of his orb, as though sensing all the earth around him, and when he opened them the light in his eyes redoubled. "You really are most interesting, Uzumaki Naruto: Of all the opponents I have ever faced, you are the first to ever fight back!"

A spear of sand burst from the ground to impale Naruto, and then that Shadow clone too was no more.
​

-o-
​

The real Naruto stumbled and almost tripped over his feet as the memories of his clones struck him over and over, but he forced himself to focus on his own task. The streets were nearly deserted, almost the whole Village having left to watch the exams. He dashed through the narrow alleyways of Konoha without pause, relying on his transformation-technique to shroud him in the guise of a civilian, which he now knew would prevent even the Byakugan from making out his true form since it could not pierce chakra.

The optimal strategy had become obvious the moment he accepted that the exams were not worth dying over: He had realized then that getting disqualified was not strictly a worse outcome than forfeiting, and so the option of cheating purely dominated that of risking his life – or so he had thought.

Hope rose in his chest at the familiar sight of his apartment complex appearing before him, and he sped towards the stairs with such speed that he slammed into the wall before he could turn. Ignoring the pain in his shoulder he ran up five steps at a time, fumbling for his keys and slamming the door behind him upon entry. He crashed onto the floor, struggling vainly to get his breathing under control.

Behind him, sand was already forcing its way under the crack and through the keyhole.

Naruto stared in horror at the sight, his pained gasps burning in his chest. It was just like fighting Haku in the house amongst the fire and the ice, except this time his enemy was trying to kill him.

The sand coalesced in front of him, forming a naked eye that twisted and turned before settling on him, followed by a gaping mouth of sand that formed beneath it. "Uzu… Uzu-maki, Na-ru-to…"

A hand of sand grasped at him, and Naruto shrieked as he sent a panicked blast of wind to hurl it away, only for the sand to gather once more, forming a full head and body this time. Naruto spun and rushed through the hallway and into the dirty half-kitchen, pain flaring in his back as something slammed into him from behind. He ran straight towards the large oaken door of Jiraiya's room, not stopping at the sound of dishes crashing to the floor. He entered and slammed the door shut behind him.

If the seals in Jiraiya's bedroom were not capable of keeping Gaara out, nothing would.

Without looking behind him, Naruto grabbed the giant scroll leaning against the desk next to the bed, the quickest glance confirming that it was the right one. He spread it out on the floor – ignoring the scratching and scraping sounds that were coming from the door – and searched for the empty spot next to his name and Jiraiya's. Then he cast the summoning technique again, and this time a tadpole the size of his fist appeared on the scroll, spitting out a small and grimy vial before disappearing once more. With no time to look for a quill, Naruto dipped his finger in the sandy red liquid, and began writing.
​

-o-​

Naruto swallowed another of Chōji's soldier pills, hoping fervently that the side effects would be spread out over his many bodies as well, and continued the fight. All around the arena Shadow clones were disappearing, their memories crashing into him with such frequency that he barely even noticed anymore. Gaara had pulled out a giant scroll of his own, and from it had burst forth a fountain of sand like Sakura's water scroll – so much of it that it threatened to drown the arena.

Gaara of the Desert… so that's what they meant…

More than just the sheer volume of sand, the use of it had changed entirely: Gaara had unsealed weapons and tools, countless hands of sand hurling projectiles at his clones and operating crossbows, slings and other strange devices. Motes of sand were carrying explosive seals around the battlefield, destroying countless shadow clones no matter where they ran or how they tried to fight, and it was all Naruto could do to keep all of the clones from being destroyed at once.

And all the while, Gaara was sitting up there in his floating castle of sand, watching, seeming to enjoy it.

"Gaara," Naruto pleaded once more. "Gaara, this is pointless. You know you can't kill me like this, and I can – I can just…" Give up, his brain finished. Do it. He turned to face the examiner. "I… I'll just forfeit."

"Is that it, then?" asked the examiner. "You have to say the words in order. Say: I forfeit the match."

"No, stop." They both turned to look upwards, for it was Gaara who had spoken. "Don't… don't forfeit."

"Why shouldn't I?" At last, some semblance of control returned to Naruto. "You're trying to kill me."

Gaara's mouth work silently in search of a reason, his eyes frantic (they were yellow now). "I… I will…" He turned to face the audience. "I will murder your friends if you quit." He nodded to himself, relieved. "Yes, that's it: If you quit, I will kill all your friends slowly. So you see, you have to fight."

"You'll kill my friends," Naruto repeated, hollowly. He followed Gaara's gaze towards the stands, to where Sakura watched him mutely, Tenten with her hands over her mouth, Kiba cheering him on while Sasuke tried vainly to look casual, not quite able to hide the worry in his eyes. "You mean those friends, right over there?" He spotted Hinata and Neji, Shikamaru and the others, watching, all rooting for him to win. "I'm just asking, in case the Anbu in the audience didn't quite get which of my friends you just threatened to kill right in front of everybody."

"Do you imagine they care?" Gaara's grin returned again – his lips were almost quivering now. "At any point during this exam your Hokage could have stopped the fighting and saved the lives of those who perished, but he did not because your existence means nothing to him." Naruto turned to glance up at the balcony where the Third was seated next to the Kazekage, watching impassively. "To harm the Kazekage's son is to harm the Kazekage and that makes my life valuable to him, but the Hokage only desires peace: Thus he has measured the value of your life against his interests, and found it wanting."

Naruto stared at Gaara first in horror, followed by rage, and then a volatile mix of either that eclipsed both. Sand was gathering around Gaara, forming an ever thicker second skin, and at last Naruto realized what was happening. Once again, the voice of Kurama resounded in his head. "There is nothing left of him, kit. Just as I am called the Incarnate of Rage by some, so he has become the Whisper of Oblivion."

"Don't do it," he whispered, despairingly. "I can't tell you how, but I know what you're doing. Gaara... If you release that thing there's no telling what's gonna happen; you have no idea what you'd unleash!"

"…it is said that Shukaku's host can never sleep: His voice stays with him always, babbling lunacy and hatred into his ears, forever looking for an opening to destroy all life…"

"There is only power," Gaara said in a faraway voice. "Killing is justice, honour is dishonour and there is no love but the love which you bear for yourself. It all becomes so much clearer when you understand that – It makes the world hurt so much less." The sand was forming into a tail now, swishing to and fro behind him as blue markings appeared on the sand which increasingly resembled living skin. "Yes," he whispered, "yes, you are right, of course… I shall kill them for you. Yes, yes, it is time..."

"Fine then," Naruto spat, turning away. From the corner of his eye he could spot distant movement in the stands, like Shinobi making ready to act, but he no longer cared enough to see. Fury burned in his veins, his ire scorching the very air around him until only his enemy remained within his field of vision. "I keep making the same mistake, over and over and over again... I keep trying to reason with people who cannot be reasoned with, and it never, ever, ever works!" As another shadow clone stepped next to him he drew his sword and focussed chakra into it, his control over what little remained greater than ever before, until he could almost imagine seeing it shimmer with purest Wind. "Have it your way."

Gaara laughed from on top of his ramparts, mockingly, hauntingly, his voice a drunken giggle. "How are you planning to hit me with that, Uzumaki Naruto?" His eyes had turned into yellow diamonds.

"Like this." The clone next to him slammed his hands on the ground, his fingers red from the bloody sand he had gathered from where Gaara had been injured, and then Gaara was standing there right in front of him, his bright yellow eyes staring dumbly ahead. Behind him, the sand castle fell from the sky.

"All I ask is that if you do what must be done, you are quick about it… for my sake."

Naruto struck out once, his chakra blade slicing through Gaara's sand armour like paper, and the boy watched stupidly as his innards spilled out onto the arena grounds. His eyes widened in horror as he finally realized what was happening to him, and he opened his mouth to scream but Naruto was faster: The point of his sword went straight through the roof of Gaara's mouth and out the back of his skull.

He pulled the sword back out, and Gaara's body collapsed. The sand castle crashed into the earth.

"Well?" he cried out, turning to face the Hokage's balcony with bloody sword in hand, his fury bursting forth from every pore. "Isn't this what you wanted? Children killing each other for your amusement?"

There was a brief moment of silence, and then the audience burst into devastating applause.​

 

[Red Navy]

Holy crap. I was really expecting naruto to die here. You did a great job of setting up the tension and that fight scene was really well written.

 

[Elamshin]

Naruto fanfiction with original characterization, quality writing and mature no pulling punches storyline. Like someone already said earlier, don't fret. Continue writing, you're good at it and you know what practice makes you. Quality gets you watchers and watchers give you comments. Eventually.

 

[Sophronius]

Heheh, thanks! To both of you. No worries though, I'm getting a ton of comments over on r/rational, so I have nothing to complain about. I think quite a few of my readers here also use the reddit, so sometimes they post here and sometimes on there, depending on where other people are replying.

Plus I get my fanfiction.net reviews, so it's all good

 

[Sophronius]

Chapter 35

"Well?" he cried out, turning to face the Hokage's balcony with bloody sword in hand, his fury bursting forth from every pore. "Isn't this what you wanted? Children killing each other for your amusement?"

For the briefest moment, everything was silent. The Kazekage turned his back and stormed off, the Hokage and his entourage quietly rushing after him. Then one boy started clapping. A few others followed, scattered applause growing around the spot before cascading across the stands like a wave, until finally the whole audience burst into devastating applause. That was when they started chanting.

"Uzumaki! Uzumaki! Uzumaki!"

Naruto wanted to yell and curse at them, to grab and shake them and scream that all this was their fault for craving such violence in the first place, but his voice was drowned out by the thunder. The whole arena shook with the stamping of their feet as more and more spectators rose in exultation, and Naruto's legs shook with them – not just from the tremors of the earth but from the adrenaline and the drugs that coursed through his system, and above all the burning rage that scorched his veins like fire.

Then one of them leaped from his seat into the arena grounds, and all that rage came into focus.

"You!" Naruto strode towards his bandaged opponent, who calmly walked up to greet him as though it was the most normal thing in the world. He had almost forgotten about having to face Sasuke in the finals, but if his teammate was about to insist on fighting with lethal force Naruto might actually have to murder him as well. "Why the hell did you start clapping? I was gonna-"

"Because annoying you is a national sport?" Sasuke smirked at him, but his smile disappeared as soon as he reached Naruto and whispered into his ear. "Calm down. I know you're angry, but this is not the time and place for it. You just killed the Kazekage's son: Every shinobi in the audience has their nerves on edge right now, so unless your plan is to start a war and get yourself killed in spectacular fashion, just shut up and wave."

The shock of hearing it put like that was like a splash of cold water to the face, which helped to quench Naruto's inner fire, though he still could not bring himself to wave at them. Behind him, Gaara's body was being carried off, an ancient-looking lady from the Sand fretting over him before sending a murderous glare in Naruto's direction and flickering away once more. As the rage in Naruto's body slowly ebbed away, more and more of the void was filled by a sinking anxiety that sickened him like poison.

What did I just do? What was I thinking? He had had every good reason to do what he did, but still…

"Don't worry," said Sasuke, seeing his expression. "You won't have to fight me, if that's what you're thinking. I'm forfeiting the match."

Naruto stared at him, dumbstruck. "What? Why?"

The boy shrugged. "Why wouldn't I? I only ever cared about gaining combat experience in the first place, and I can spar with you whenever I want. I'll probably be promoted to chūnin anyway, and it's not as if the proctors are actually interested in another match right now." He smirked again. "Besides, you're in no state to fight me, and it wouldn't be any fun to beat you up while you're weak."

Naruto watched numbly as Sasuke went over to the examiner, who nodded and raised his hands to gain the attention of the audience. "Everyone please listen! As Uchiha Sasuke just forfeited his match, I provisionally declare Uzumaki Naruto to be the winner of the chūnin exams, until we can deliberate-"

The rest of his words were cut off however, as the crowd exploded in an uproar that shook the arena with enough force to make the previous tempest look like a mild breeze. All across the arena people were rushing for the exit, knocking over seats and clambering over each other in their haste to demand refunds for their tickets or the money they had bet on Sasuke, or perhaps both at the same time.

Sasuke smirked at the sight, his grey eyes twinkling with amusement. "Look at them. Mere moments ago they were deriving their afternoon's excitement from watching our mortal struggles, but now our positions have reversed completely. Just like ants on an anthill, scrambling madly after getting poked by a mere stick..."

Perhaps it was only the exhaustion, or his previous resentment at the crowd that had left his well dry of empathy, but for once Naruto thought he could understand Sasuke's perspective. Somewhere in that crowd people were getting trampled, but from down in the arena it really did look like a peculiar sight.

"Come on," said Sasuke, placing a hand on his shoulder and tugging gently. "Let's get you home."
​

-o-​

"Are you sure you'll be okay?"

Kakashi-sensei had appeared from out of nowhere to whisk Naruto out of the arena, helping him to disappear as only a jōnin could. The expression of his one eye seemed unusually serious – for once, he was not pretending to be unconcerned about the fate of his student. "That was your first kill, wasn't it?"

"Yeah," said Naruto, not quite sure which question he was giving answer to. It was a lie, either way: He had killed all those people back in the Land of Waves after all, whose deaths had felt the same for all that they were not ninjas, but Kakashi surely knew that already. "I'll make it from here. Thanks anyway."

"All right," said Kakashi. "We'll talk more, later." He gave a final nod before vanishing once more.

You could've been a little harder to convince, Naruto thought glumly, perhaps unfairly. He began to make his way towards his apartment: It was only another minute to get there, anyway.

Thirty seconds later there was a slight expulsion of air behind him, and Naruto froze. Turning around, he found a pair of shadows hidden beneath one of the many walkways that connected the upper levels of Konoha, blending in with the walls as though they were part of the structure. Their black cloaks and white masks left almost nothing to be identified, but Naruto thought he could make out the slightest strand of purple hair peeking out behind one of the cat masks, and there was something vaguely familiar about the second man – as though Naruto had met him once already, in some time long past.

"The Hokage wishes to have an audience with you," the man said.

Naruto sighed. He could almost see his apartment door from where he stood. "How nice of him to ask."
​

-o-​

Naruto tried vainly to control the beating of his heart as he marched through the long halls of the administrative building. Crackling torches passed him by on either side, their flickering light casting shadows across the floor and obscuring the movement of the shades that were surely following behind. Only the faintest shifts in the air current served to convince him that he was not, in fact, alone.

After everything I've gone through, I should be able to handle this as well. Yet even as Naruto thought that, a part of him knew perfectly well that the Anbu presented a different level of threat entirely. Zabuza had been part of the Anbu, Kakashi had been one of their captains and so was Sasuke's murderous brother if the stories about him were even remotely true. He remembered Kakashi's speech about teamwork, about everything that made the Anbu so unbeatable, and he believed every word of it.

Kiba came back in the end; I will come back too, he told himself. Or someone who looks like me, anyway…

"Enter here," a voice said behind him. When Naruto turned around, there was only an empty hallway.

He sighed and, trying vainly to calm the beating of his heart, pushed open the massive wooden gates that had appeared before him. A wall of voices rose up to meet him – angry, loud and discordant.

"Lord and ladies of the council, please," the Hokage implored. The Third Hokage was sitting right there at the head of the oval table, calmly smoking his pipe amidst the turmoil. "Remember yourselves. What happened is in the past; what we must do now is find a way to forge ahead towards a brighter future."

"It's the future you wish us to be concerned about, is it?" The council member who spoke was an elderly man whose head was half wrapped in bandages, with only one narrowed eye and a crop of sharp black hair poking out. "I will tell you what would lead us to a brighter future: Heeding my advice! I warned you about this, Hiruzen. I told you this would happen, and what did you do? Nothing – you did nothing!"

"You did warn us," Morino Ibiki growled. The scarred Anbu commander and head of Torture and Interrogation loomed over the table in his massive black overcoat, casting a shadow over them all. "Of course, you also warned us about a great many other things – speaking of which, has the sky fallen down on us yet? No? We'll keep waiting then, and be sure to call on you for advice when it does."

"Be reasonable, Ibiki," said the man next to him. His pointed face, goatee and ponytail all made him recognizable as Shikamaru's father, and therefore the jōnin commander of Konoha's regular forces. "You have to admit that he was correct on this count – the Sand really did sneak in their daemon host beneath our very noses. We have to consider the strategic implications of that, especially if Lord Danzō is right to infer that the boy's transformation into a Tailed state was meant as a prelude to invasion."

It was all Naruto could do to stop himself from reeling at the mention of the name. He still remembered the ominous warning in his father's letter: "You must not, under any circumstances, trust the man called Shimura Danzō." The Fourth Hokage had considered him one of the primary suspects for the attack on Konoha. Jiraiya had told him afterwards, about the nightly activities of the disbanded Anbu forces that still operated under Danzō's command – answering and accountable to no one but himself. When Jiraiya said that Danzō considered Ibiki's methods to be too soft, it had sent shivers down Naruto's spine.

"Damn it Shikaku, you're supposed to be on our side!" Morino Ibiki slammed a gloved fist on the table, shaking the entire structure, and looked about to use those same gloved hands to strangle Shikamaru's father when the doors closed behind Naruto and they all finally took note of his entry.

"Ah, there he is right now," the Third Hokage remarked, as though he had only just noticed him. "The provisional winner of the chūnin exams. You caused quite a stir, my boy, winning the way you did."

"Don't you dare lay blame on him for that," Danzō spat. "This brave young shinobi saved the entire Village, by foiling the enemy plot that you refused to do anything about. He is a shining example to his entire generation – never mind chūnin; he should be promoted to special jōnin on the spot!"

"I'm afraid the rules are quite clear on that count," the old lady next to him said primly. She squinted at Naruto, examining him. "If a contestant kills his opponent for whatever reason, he must be disqualified. While I think we can all agree that the boy's actions were nothing short of heroic, we cannot be seen to make exception to the very rules and regulations that form the foundation of our society – a shinobi must be able to follow orders, after all."

The bland-looking old man by her side nodded firmly along, humming in agreement.

"I'll be the judge of that," Morino Ibiki snarled. The scarred monster of a man was baring his teeth, as though he were deliberating which of the people in the room he would gobble up first. Naruto shrank back as his murderous eyes bored into him. "No killing, I said. There will be no fighting without permission of the examiner or else you'll have to deal with me, I said. And what did you do? What did you do?" His black gloves creaked as he clenched his fists. "Damn it boy, you promised me you wouldn't cause any problems!"

Technically, Naruto did not remember promising anything of the sort, but the point seemed moot. "Gaara was trying to kill me," he protested instead. "He was gonna unleash a daemon, just like mister Shikaku the jōnin commander said. There wasn't any time to think about it – it just happened."

"About that." An austere looking man with a blond ponytail leaned forward and gazed at him with piercing green eyes. There was something eerily familiar about those eyes, and just looking at them made Naruto feel as though his souls was being laid bare before him. "As head of intelligence under Morino Ibiki, I'm very curious to hear how you knew about that."

Naruto looked uncertainly at the Third Hokage, who nodded in response.

"We're all friends and family here," the Hokage said amicably. "You may tell Inoichi-san your secret."

That still did not tell Naruto which of his secrets they already knew, frustratingly enough, but it was easy enough to guess. "It's because of the… the thing, in my stomach," he answered bashfully. "I could tell he was like me when we fought – I could feel it, I guess, like some kinda connection between us. And then when I saw his eyes change like that, I knew I had to stop him right away, or else it'd be too late."

"So that's how you did it." They all turned to look at the person seated at the far end of the table: A pale man dressed in white robes and brown haori who could only be the lord Hyūga himself. "You knew from your own experience that when a host loses his struggle with the daemon within, he becomes vulnerable to targeted techniques such as genjutsu and sealing, the same as any other spirit. That is how you summoned him to your position and slew him despite the sheer difference in power. Ingenious."

Naruto blinked. He would not have expected the lord Hyūga to be the kind of person who also investigated the inner workings of techniques. His threat estimate for Hinata's father instantly doubled.

"A shinobi must be able to act on his own initiative," Shikamaru's father remarked. "That goes double for a member of Team Seven, and it seems fair to say that Uzumaki-san has exhibited this trait. I believe an argument can be made for his promotion after all of this. More importantly, we need to discuss-"

His words were interrupted by a banging of the gates as a truly massive mountain of a man barrelled into the room, breathing heavily. "Ahh… I'm sorry, I was, held up by, the old lady and then – the new meeting room. I was confused. I thought, with the Hokage building…" he trailed off.

"Ah, Chōza, I'm glad you could make it," The Third Hokage said congenially. "Please, take a seat."

The massive man, who could only be Chōji's father, stared at the one remaining seat and visibly paled. It was the one next to Shimura Danzō, who was staring at Chōza with not a flicker of emotion on his face.

"You can sit next to me, Chōza," the austere man offered, as he moved to sit next to Danzō. The giant man shuffled to the freed-up seat with tangible relief, and squeezed in between the blond man and Shikaku – who endured the sweaty elbow that was pressed against his face with only a slight grimace.

Naruto stared dazedly at the sight, his gaze traveling down the line of faces as he regarded each of the council members in turn. Morino Ibiki first of all, for the man enjoyed torture as a profession, but equally the bandaged elder called Shimura Danzō, who his father had mistrusted so much. That there was an enmity between them was clear, but could it be that his father had also become tangled up in it?

One of the people in this room is the Enemy, he thought, shakily. It has to be. Why else would anyone go to so much trouble to kill the Fourth, if they didn't expect to gain a position of power in return?

He looked at the massive Chōza, who seemed so out of place, and did not buy it for a second. He had seen first-hand how the Akimichi clan used their weight in battle – their mastery over their bodies was second to none – and even now the pills Chōji had given him were all that kept him upright. No, Naruto would not be fooled into thinking that you had to look like a ninja to act like one, not for one moment.

His eyes travelled further down the line, to the austere man with the red coat and the blond ponytail, and suddenly Naruto realized where he had seen that face before: It was the same person who had been there the night after Mizuki got captured, the one who had been trying to control his mind. Ino's father: The head of the Yamanaka clan and the Leaf's purifier of unsavoury thoughts. As head of intelligence the man was responsible for most of Ibiki's dirty work – much to the torturer's chagrin – yet could you ever be truly certain that a mind-reader was working for you and not the other way around?

And then there were the others: The jōnin commander, Shikamaru's father, who was suspect purely because of his supposed brilliance and his role as Leaf's strategist. If anyone could have engineered such a convoluted scheme to kill the Fourth, it was him. He turned to the elderly lady with the squinted eyes, whose traditional bun and hairpin made it quite clear where she stood politically, and the docile man next to her (Her brother, or her husband?). With two votes already, how much power did she truly have? And then of course there was the Lord Hyūga, whose milky white eyes saw all and knew all, and watched Naruto always. If he controlled the flow of so much vital information, then surely he could also control the actions of everybody in this room.

Naruto jumped slightly as the Third Hokage rose from his seat and advanced in his direction. "Come, let us take this conversation elsewhere," he said, beckoning. "I would like to talk to you in private."

Naruto blinked as he realized that the Third was still sitting in his seat at the head of the table, arguing with the rest of the council and calming their emotions as he had before. "Right," he said, still shaking. Of course the Leaf's 'Professor' can use shadow clones too – he knows every single technique!

The Third Hokage guided him out of the room, the doors closing behind them once more, and advanced into the darkness of the corridor. "I imagine you were quite eager to get out of that room," the Third said, chuckling. "I know I was. Those council members will talk your ears right off, if you let them."

"Right," Naruto said again, still in a daze. He followed after the Third, who led them to a much smaller office, where the ancient shinobi sat down behind a simple wooden desk. Decorating the wall next to the window, pictures of past Hokage stared down at them; all four of them including the Third himself.

Naruto gazed at the sight of his father's face, which looked so very much like his own. The rare image stirred up strange feelings within him. He had thought that Morino Ibiki was the one person who had gained more from his father's death than anyone else, but he realized now that it was not true. There was one other who had gained more: If the rumours were true, the Third Hokage had been forced to step down after the Third Great War because of the massive casualties they had sustained for only the most meagre peace terms in return. It was a young hero of that war, one who had contributed more to their victory than anyone else, who had been appointed to take up his mantle.

And then that young hero had died not three years later, and the Third had been forced to step up once more, solemnly continuing his rule for just as long as it took to find another suitable successor.

"Ah, I see you have spotted Minato's picture," the Third Hokage said wistfully. He took off his conical headdress and placed it beside him on the wooden desk. Though well-preserved but for a few liver spots, the expression on his face him look older than ever. "It is hard to believe that it has been fourteen years already, since he passed. I must apologize for failing to visit you since the early days of your youth – I kept meaning to, yet every time I cleared some time in my agenda, it seemed my assistants found something more pressing for me to do. I still remember, though, the sight of you in your mother's belly, as well as the warm glow on your father's face when he first beheld you."

Naruto hesitated, trying to make sense of the strange sight before him. While he had not believed Chōza's bumbling for a moment, the Hokage seemed to be shifting in and out of focus before his eyes: On the surface was the kindly grandfather and wise old ruler, but then there was the tiniest flicker of something else underneath – and Naruto had no idea which if any of those aspects he ought to believe.

"Speaking of more pressing matters," he said, ever so carefully, "shouldn't you be doing something about the whole situation with the Sand? I mean, I know it's kinda my fault and all, but the Kazekage looked really angry, so I thought..." he trailed off, helplessly.

"Oh, but I am," the Hokage said, chuckling lightly once more. "As we speak I am convening with the Kazekage and his advisors, just as I am meeting with the Council in the room next door, while at the same time resolving a sizable amount of paperwork which my assistants all assure me is of absolutely critical importance." His wrinkled eyes crinkled a little further. "I dare say that if I resolved every crucial problem in the world today, the morrow would look exactly the same, with new crises arriving with the dawn just in time to fill the void." The old man leaned forward, whispering as though conveying a secret. "Between you and me, I find that politics is mainly a matter of endurance: They come to you with questions and demanding answers, yet what they truly wish is to be heard and understood. And so you allow them to rage and vent and cry and curse, and in the end nothing has changed and yet their problems seem so much smaller, and your solutions so much more tolerable than they were before."

Naruto found himself staring again, an unbridgeable gap between him and the understanding he sought.

"Enough of such unpleasant matters," the Third said, gesturing with his pipe which had by now been snuffed. "Take a seat. Would you like some Hijiki?" He conjured forth a bowl of brown sea vegetables. "I always keep some close to hand for when Danzō is in one of his foul moods – that and some sardine balls works to resolve most of our political differences, I find." He lit up his pipe with a flick of his fingers, and a moment later he was breathing out short puffs of smoke. "Tell me, my boy: How have you been doing? Has Jiraiya been taking good care of you? You've not picked up any of his bad habits, I hope?"

"Yeah," Naruto said distractedly, still trying to digest the image of his father's adversary and the Hokage enjoying sea food together. "No actually," he corrected himself, remembering just a little of his buried anger. "He's not. I'm not. I mean, he's totally irresponsible and doesn't take raising me seriously at all." He gritted his teeth in memory. "He left me alone and didn't keep any of his promises, and then he allowed me to learn dangerous forbidden techniques without caring about the consequences just because he felt guilty about the whole thing." He paused, realizing that he might have been even angrier if he had not been allowed to learn those techniques in the first place, which would be unreasonable.

"I'm very sorry to hear that," the Third said, frowning and leaning closer, listening intently. "Go on."

Anger flared within Naruto at the condescension – he was hardly going to fall for the Hokage's tricks right after they had been explained to him. "No, stop." He took a deep breath, fumbling for the many things he had wanted to say but which now seemed beyond his grasp. "Things are not all right, and it's not about my feelings either," he said carefully. "This whole exam – you've got children fighting and killing each other, and for what? Because measuring our power is so important to the Village? But then you have us doing pointless missions like painting fences. It's totally inconsistent!"

He remembered complaining about it along with Sasuke only a year ago, though it felt far longer. The Uchiha heir's gripes about his family's stolen possessions seemed so much more reasonable now.

"Such is the nature of politics, I'm afraid." The Hokage took a long drag on his pipe, looking thoughtful. "We each have our will and we each get our say. If I had everything my way, certainly, the academy would finish at a later age and our youths would have more time to develop. But if lord Danzō were Hokage, the Village would look different also, and so we find a golden road in the middle to traverse."

"But the end result makes no sense!" Naruto forcibly calmed himself down again. "Okay, look. I get why you'd want to let someone be heard even if you disagree with them, but if what this Danzō wants is so much worse than what we have right now, then it sounds like he's just an evil person. Why listen to him instead of literally anybody else in the Village? Because his ruthlessness allowed him to amass power and so he gets to be a representative? That sounds like a completely arbitrary way to try and be fair."

"And now you start to sound like Ibiki," the Third laughed, before turning serious again. "Believe me, in my forty years as Hokage I have heard this argument once or twice before. Everyone always seems to think that the Hokage is all-powerful, that we can call any reality we wish into being. I suppose our overly embellished historical accounts are to blame for that." He frowned at Naruto, pushing aside the bowl of vegetables. "Do you imagine Lord Danzō is alone in his views? That all we need do is silence him, and our problems will be past?"

"No, but I bet it would help." How had Gaara put it, exactly? Killing is called justice when you have power and injustice when you have none. "We're ninjas – we're supposed to solve our problems through murder, so how come it's only ever the ones following orders who seem to die?" All of those innocent people who had died in the Land of Waves, and for what? Because the Eternal Mizukage had thought his ninjas ought to be without empathy – and it seemed the Mist was only doing better now that he was gone. A picture was starting to emerge in Naruto's mind, of a war fought not between nations but between those who meant to keep things the way they were and those who intended to fight back.

"I see," said the Third. "And if Ibiki seizes power then, after finding himself uncontested, should I silence him also? Where would it end, exactly?" The Hokage sighed, and turned in his chair, watching out the window to where the first stars could be seen twinkling in the evening sky. "All over the world, darkness is spreading; a continuous rolling tide of hatred that never seizes in its attempts to swallow us whole. For all the power we possess, how are we to fight an enemy that lives within each of us? That is the reason the First Hokage founded this Village in the first place: The whole concept behind the Will of Fire is to find a way for individuals of all stripes to do good together, so that not all of us need be angels."

For a while it was silent, as they both watched the stars together. Perhaps there was some special kind of wisdom to be found there, but if so Naruto could not see it. They just looked like stars to him.

"Maybe you're right," Naruto said at last, not trusting his shaking voice to speak unless he controlled its every word. "Or maybe, when you think about simple things for long enough, they start to look really complex and hard to solve, and you allow yourself to imagine that you're the only one wise enough to fix them. And maybe, if you've been in power for a very long time, you start worrying mostly about distant abstract things that just so happen to justify the current situation, and you tell yourself that the everyday problems of common people are really not so bad after all." He took a deep breath, and forced himself to look the most powerful man in the world in the eye. "You just had an exam where children fight and kill each other. That's wrong. The exam was organized by a man who tortures people and whose band of masked killers makes people disappear into the night. That's wrong. You took most of Sasuke's money just because you could, and you allowed Danzō to have his own personal army of assassins just to appease your political rival. That's wrong too."

He turned aside, for blood was pounding in his ears, and it reminded him of Kurama's voice – speaking for the first time of the hypocrisy of men who kept him enslaved for all those years, none of them imagining it their responsibility to free him, yet feeling at liberty to use his power all the same.

"Bad things are not gonna stop being bad just because you invent reasons for them," Naruto concluded. He remembered trying to convince Haku not to fight them in the Land of Waves, and how hopeless it had felt; the inevitability of everyone dying for no reason, and the sheer pointlessness of it all. "My teacher told me over and over again about the dangers of being clever, about how arguments are just an excuse for smart people to be dumb, and now I feel like I finally understand what he meant by that."

The Hokage was still sitting there, not having moved a muscle, appearing to have listened as intently as he had at the start. "I really should have visited you earlier," he mused. "You grew up – not the same as your father, but with Minato's intelligence and your mother's strong personality, perhaps..."

"I dunno about that," Naruto said with more than a touch of bitterness. "I never met either of them, so I suppose you would know better than me, Hokage-sama. But if my dad really was as great as they say, then I hope he wouldn't have accepted any of this either. I suppose they did kill him for that in the end, so maybe you're right and it's better to play it safe – but then the Enemy never felt the need to kill you."

The room fell deathly silent, and Naruto instantly regretted his words as he realized he had just insulted the most powerful man in the world in his own office, but it was too late to take it back. "I'm sorry," he said, "but I just fought and killed someone and I'm very tired right now, Lord Hokage. Please give me some time to rest, and we can talk more some other time – uh, I mean, if you still want to."

"Yes… yes, of course," the Third Hokage said, sounding as though he had not quite heard what Naruto said but was agreeing to it anyway. The fire in his pipe had gone out again, and he looked at it with a morose expression on his face. "You may leave, if you wish."

Naruto hastily got up, feeling as though he should apologize again but deciding against it, and headed for the door. Right as he was about to turn the knob, he heard the Third's voice again.

"Just one more question before you dispel your cloned body, Uzumaki Naruto. Tell me: Why did you really decide to murder the Fourth Kazekage's son?"

Naruto froze, his muscles halting mid-movement as his mind searched for an answer that was not there. As always, he fell back on honesty instead. "He threatened to kill my friends, Hokage-sama."

"I see," said the Hokage, sounding tired and yet vaguely satisfied. "That is the best reason there is. You will become a strong shinobi, I think."

Naruto dispelled himself, and when he opened his eyes again he was sitting at the kitchen table, trying to explain to Jiraiya what had happened that day and feeling twice as exhausted as he had before.​

 

[Tackyseven]

reading the prolog at the moment, and I love it so far! I just want to point out that Hiruzen is about 55-56 years old at the time which is only 1-2 years older then the sannin at the time of Jiraya's death. Hiruzen is old enough he's starting to feel his age sure but not enough to have the "I am old" croak voice that old people get IMO at least.

Please shout me down if I am wrong it just seems a little early to me

edit:wow bashing Sasuke in chapter 1 a little much aren't you?! He's like a weird mix of canon neji before the fight against naruto and Sasuke during the influence of the curse seal. I don't know who you're trying to make him seem like but if it was a crazy psycho with a short fuse in the shape of an prepubescent boy then you succeeded. He has nothing to do with his canon persona at that age except (I assume) his looks
edit2: I jumped the gun here and assumed Sasuke was gonna cripple naruto with that kunai...in my defence Sasuke is so massivly OoC I don't know what to expect...

What you just saw was no duel. This boy attacked me, the last member of the noblest clan of the greatest country, while my back was turned."

Click to shrink...

I mean, this is literally Neji if he had Sasukes backstory it's hillarious! Sasuke would never say this in a million yeaers

edit3 ok I'm done after this but in what rational universe does a prepubescent kid say to another prepubescent kid and I quote:

"He's only a kid," Sakura protested feebly. "I'm sure he's learned his lesson."

Click to shrink...

because he's threatening to maim another kid after a spar? I don't even...