Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Dancing Backward ❯ A Flap of Butterfly Wings ( Chapter 1 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: Sythe 
Anime/Manga: Naruto Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Adventure / Fantasy | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 10.08.2005 | Pages: 3 | Words: 6.1K | Visits: 641 | Status: Work In Progress
Anime/Manga: Naruto Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Adventure / Fantasy | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 10.08.2005 | Pages: 3 | Words: 6.1K | Visits: 641 | Status: Work In Progress
Disclaimer: I own nothing. If you sue, then I’ll sue you back.
Author: Sythe note: First time with a Naruto fanfic. Be merciless, please. This fic is set in the near future after chapter 267 (latest chapter in so you may find something you didn’t know was there.
Pairing: Undecided
Summary: Due to a jutsu accident when fighting with the Akatsuki and Orochimaru, Naruto got sent to an alternate world where there was no Uzumaki Naruto.
Chapter One: A Flap of Butterfly Wings
A butterfly flapping its wing in China can cause a hurricane in America.
It is thought that the flapping of a single butterfly wing today produces a tiny change in the state of the atmosphere. Over a period of time, what the atmosphere actually does diverges from what it would have done, like a rock creating cripples in a pond. So, in a month’s time, a tornado that would have devastated the Indonesian coast doesn’t happen. Or maybe one that doesn’t happen, does.
The Butterfly Theory, Chaos theory
He could remember it somewhere in the distant of his mind. He read about it long ago, not by chance though. He did know that he was not recognized for his academic intelligence, not that he ever cared. Still he knew and tried to understand it. His friends would have laughed and told him to pull of the act had they known. It was true though. It wasn’t very hard, just time-consuming, and he was known for his hard-headness all too well. Why, one would think, a seemingly moron such like him would ever waste the time and effort learning something even highly advanced students would have the quirk for.
Like he said before, it wasn’t very hard as one would think, and it interested him….. like anything concerning fate would have done.
Don’t misunderstand, please, because he can hardly be dubbed a superstitious person. Even in contrast to that, he defied fate, be it his or anyone else having the pleasure of crossing his path. The only thing that would ever interest him in it was that he would like to crash and shatter the wretched thing till it cried and stopped its thievery hands. He had seen what it had done to many people. Neiji for an example, or maybe Gaara, or even Haku. He could give bunches more examples. He had seen far too many people that would have been better off without fate mounting on their heads. Even him.
‘A butterfly flapping its wings in the Mist can cause a hurricane in the Stone’
A very simple sentence, and the first though that popped up in his head just millisecond after was…
‘What’s crazy lunatic guy invented these?’
Expected behavior. Even Tsunade would have sighed in relief. At least he didn’t throw it away, or worse, use it for cooking fire.
He couldn’t remember how he started, or how he even got through reading AND understanding it though. The sentence was short. The explanation was… long. Never the less, it gave him something to think about: ‘what ifs’. Time was long, and human was fleeting. There were hundreds of crossroads. Things that happened, things that would never happened, and things that could have happened. One could only dream of the possibilities.
He wondered though, what today would be if Iruka never was his sensei, what today would be if he never was one Uzumaki Naruto, what today would be if there never was one Kyuubi no Kitsune.
He sighed. Longing thoughts.
He wondered how he had come to this point. His mind reflected it, but he only remembered bits and pieces, flashing images from a distant time of a naïve ‘him’. It had started from the time he turned sixteen, after his two-and-a-half-year training with Jiraiya. Famous history. Everyone knew. New appearance, new power, same naivety. Gaara was kidnapped. He chased. Gaara was killed. He crumbled.
Till this day many times he had asked himself, would he react differently if the person who died was someone else, say, Ino, or Chouji? He didn’t want to know the answer. The feeling was unbearable enough. He didn’t want to risk the chance of ever loosing a friend again.
They never had the time to actually know each other, him and Gaara. Yet the two had a peculiar connection, a severe empathy. They were, after all, both demon hosts, or beasts as village commoners would, once in a while, murmured angrily when they thought they couldn’t hear. Fat chances.
Anyway, the important thing was how everything turned out after that. It was inevitable. A war broke out. A perfect balance of power, the three strongest ones combating for dominance and victor: the Akatsuki, Orochimaru’ Sound Village, and Sand-Leaf coalition.
The day was long, the night was tiring. The next thing he knew after the war declaration, he had buried himself under heavy training, missions after missions, murders and assassinations.
They said, the less you got, the more you treasured. It applied perfectly to him. To the time he turned eleven, the only thing he could call, somewhat reluctantly, his friend would be Iruka sensei. After years, he got even more friends, Sakura, Sasuke, Rock Lee, Ino, Neiji, Hinata, Shikamaru,…., and he treasured each of them, no matter how annoying, irritating, or life-threatening they can get. The loss of Gaara was something new to him. It slapped. And it’s cold. He never wanted to feel it again.
And so, he trained, to at least have some reassurance, to fool himself into believing that he was strong enough to protect those he loved. It lasted for a long time. Five years, to be exact. What did he do in those five years? Of course, he trained. NO, self education was more like it. Because Jiraiya was not enough. Even Jiraiya couldn’t do anything when Orochimaru decided he wanted a world for him self. Jiraiya was no boundary.
He had apologized, had explained, countless time after another one. Then he hid himself in a secluded mountain in the deep forest of Fire country, seeking the guidance of the imprisoned Kyuubi. What did the fox do? The fox was bored, and the fox was sealed, for life. It was not, in any sense of the word, pleasing to know that the Kyuubi would follow him to the steps of his children and further descendants. In other words, Kyuubi no Kitsune was sealed into Uzumaki, not Naruto. The Uzumaki name would forever bear the whisker marks and the seal of imprisonment. The further his blood line went, the further Kyuubi went. Kyuubi no Kitsune would live forever.
Bravo for Kyuubi. Damnation for Uzmaki Naruto.
Let’s clap, people.
Well okay, so it wasn’t as bad as it sounded. At least, if the fox had to stayed with the brat, then the fox would damn well make the brat one hell of a strong brat, damnation or not. You better beware, Konoha bastards, because dead snakes still bit.
He twitched his fingers a bit.
The five years came and went. But time was meaningless to him. He was strong before, now he was unstoppable. He had long forsaken the way of human, turning to the path of demon in stead. Human used the word ‘combat’, demons wanted ‘kill’, Kyuubi preferred ‘slaughter’. The Konoha wanted a beast, he gave them a beast.
Many time he wanted to laugh off the irony. He would never be Hokage now. People chose human to be the leader, not animal. But he sure made it into the Konoha legends. What was it again? He remembered hearing children, house wives, and even fellow shinobis gossiping it (1). Ah, right! The Konoha demon assassin or Moonwalk. Merciless and Efficient. He met no equal. The villagers were more scared of him than angry with him now. People only got angry with someone when they were stronger, capable of inflicting the damage. When they can’t, they scared and accused the other of bullying the weaker. Really, humans and their emotional problems.
However, it seemed that fate was never a good friend of his. In fact, he wanted to murder fate now. Maybe he can try the new way Kyuu-chan suggested the other day, stylishly killing number fifty four, co-authors: Kyuubi no Kitsune and Uzumaki Naruto.
One lone warrior can only be so strong.
He was defeated, mind you, not the literal sense of the word. The problem was spelled S-A-K-U-R-A. Of course, you, the audiences, already knew what happened. It was the classical hero-save-beauty Disney scene. Sakura-chan got caught, and hero-chan went for the rescue. Very easy, very old-style, very gagging romantic, and unrealistic. The prize for Sakura-chan rescue was paid by hero-chan’s capture. Yes, lovely sarcasm of youth and the thing called fate.
And that was how he ended up here, at the exact same hall he found Gaara corpse five years ago, ready for the extracting of a renowned nine-tail demon.
He sighed. His eyes darted around in his lying position. He had been in situations before, hopeless cases destined for doom since the beginning, and he wasn’t going to give up now. Hokage knew Kyuu-chan would give him the scorch of his life if he did.
He kept his breathing even and his illusion stayed put. He didn’t want to alert the Akatsuki. He just had to be patient, observing for the weakness and striking at the right moment. Haste would only make waste after all.
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Uchiha Itachi fidgeted where he stood, waiting impatiently for the extraction to begin, Kishame right next to him in a similar state. If it was for anyone ever to know, Uchiha Itachi never fidgeted, unless he had something to worry about, really worry. He can feel Kishame fingering the handle of his huge sword beside him as he himself eying the slumbering blonde on the altar.
The infamous Moonwalk.
Itachi surveyed the blonde. If Itachi was asked now, he would say that he never met this man before. Yet he met him. Somewhere around eight years ago, he had met him, Uzumaki Naruto. But now he couldn’t tell if the young man lying on the altar was the loud-mouth brat or not.
The man wasn’t the bulky type. His frame was lithe and agile, perfectly poised for an assassin. He had gotten slightly taller than the last time Itachi saw him, maybe an inch or two. His skin was snow-white, a stark difference compared to the tan shade five years ago, probably because of the working time of his job. His face had lost the last bit of baby fat, making him seemed more feral, more… fox-like. His hair was long, a little spiky on the front, but turned smooth and silky down its length. The whisker marks on his cheeks had become more profound, clearly visible on his skin. He wore all black, even the Konoha hitae on the front of his head was disguised with a bandana the same color with his suit.
This man was different. This was not the Uzumaki Naruto he had known. For all he had known and seen, this man seemed more like the mergence of Uzumaki Naruto and Kyuubi no Kitsune.
Of course he had heard the rumors, spreading wide and thick amongst the shinobis. Moonwalk never failed. A couple of his fellow Akatsuki had tried to test them. None came back.
To say it frankly, Itachi couldn’t understand how and when did Uzumaki change? What was the cause of such changes? And how did he do it? Itachi was no fool. A kid just didn’t turn into a legendary assassin all of a sudden even under the guidance of one Sannin. There had to be something that caused the change.
Even in the rank of Akatsuki, Moonwalk had become many one’s figure. One that many of his fellow Akatsuki wanted a challenge with. After a while, Itachi himself had gotten curious, and he started gathering the information on Uzumaki. It was his style, to know exactly what he was facing. He never liked the recklessness as some of the other Akatsuki. It thrilled the battle, they said. Itachi didn’t need the thrill. Itachi never needed the thrill.
It had taken a long time for the information gathering as the knowledge about Uzumaki was thoroughly protected under many layers of the Konoha shinobi. But in the end, he still got what he wanted though, of course not with out the aid of a very irritating Kishame. He was faking it of course. Itachi knew Kishame wanted the information just as much as Itachi himself. No one in the Akatsuki would ever turn off a chance to fight Moonwalk, ever.
Itachi furrowed his eye brows.
Despite all the trouble they had gotten, the document was vague. It didn’t say much. Birthday, blood type, rank, appearance, ..no.. past appearance weren’t the thing he wanted. But at least it gave him something he could make information out of, the mission record of the blond. It seemed that the change began somewhere about five years ago, after a rescuing mission. The blond had suddenly vanished into thin air. There was no stating if the blond was on a mission or a training session. There wasn’t even the location where the blond was staying. Uzumaki Naruto had disappeared, for no reason at all.
Then, just as sudden as his disappearance, the blond reappeared, guising under the record of an assassination mission three years after. And that was the beginning of a long series of tedious and continuous missions. One after another. The span between them rarely reached two days. It was as if Uzumaki need not the rest normal shinobi must take after every mission.
Itachi noticed something in the record. All of the missions were relatively killing. Most of them were assassinations, but there were also a bunch that could be identified as annihilations of a whole ninja district. That’s right. He wiped out a whole organization of ninja, or more specifically, all the ninja of the Mist village and several other smaller villages, in what was barely a day. So why did every one still refer to him as an assassin? The term terminator would have been a better choice. Of course, it was his style. It was also the cause of the name Moonwalk. The blonde was the silent type. There wouldn’t be any messy death if he could help it. Also, the time of the massacres were usually full moon night, hence the word moon in his name.
It was terrifying.
The record of the blond didn’t say much. It needn’t to. The assigning date and the accomplishing date. There was no time difference between an ‘assassination’ and a ‘massacre’. One day. Those were hardly challenges to him.
Stirred and encouraged by his curiousity, Itachi had once used a sharingan jutsu on a Konoha inspector shinobi who, he was told, inspected the aftermath of a ‘massacre’.
It was short and simple.
Clean deaths. All of them. There was no blood shedding, just dry corpses along the paths of the village. One hundred and two shinobis including seven jounins, twenty two chuunins and the kage of the village. There was no difference to distinguish between a jounin and a gennin as every each of them bore a small orifice at the back of the neck, straight into the nerves. The victim could not have felt death coming.
It was truly terrifying. Itachi had shuddered right then and there, from anticipation or apprehension he could never know.
He glanced at the white elfish face. The blonde looked so peaceful sleeping like that it seemed almost anti-violent.
The sharingan user twisted his fingers together around his genjutsu ring.
Sheer dumb luck was what they had.
Sheer dumb luck was all it took.
It was on an ambushing mission that gave the Akatsuki a surprise present under the name Sakura Haruno. The first choice that was made was to kill her. Swift cut, no leak. The Akatsuki wouldn’t have to worry about property damage or mingling spy in their rank. But after one puppeteer originally from the Red Sand clan voicing his opinion, informing the council that this girl could be of use to them, the plan had changed into using her to lure Moonwalk into their lair.
Itachi had nearly scoffed off the idea once it was announced. There was no way in seventh hell Moonwalk would fall for that. But very much to his surprise, he did.
So it seemed that even the utmost warrior had his weakness. ‘The girl must be very important to him then’-Itachi had thought. And again, very much to his surprise, he felt something akin to jealousy pricking in the pit of his stomach. He had never had anyone that would care for him like that, even going to walking straight into the enemy’s trap.
‘But was he really in the trap? Or was it us?’
There was no data stating facts about Moonwalk’s intelligence, or in other word, his sneakiness and snarkiness, but even if there was, Itachi didn’t think he would believe it either. Uzumaki Naruto was known as the ninja best at surprising other people, and if Moonwalk still retained that trait, then… well, the Akatsuki could safely declare that they were totally and completely screwed.
Kishame slowly rubbed the handle of his sword.
Itachi wanted to shout, his eyes never once leaving the youthful figure on the altar.
It was so fucking quiet.
If there was anything the elder Uchiha would ever be proud of besides his sharingan eyes, then that would be his sense of dangers. In all his years before and during being an Akatsuki, he had had his hand full of life and death situations. It wasn’t like he was the victor every time. There were plenty strong enemies in the outside world after all. Horning by years jumping in and out the boiling cauldron, this little skill of his had paid its homage many times by now. A sniff at the danger to come.
It was exactly what that was screaming into his skull every going–by second now.
He fidgeted.
The extraction had yet to begin.
‘Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck’
There was something terribly wrong here. He could almost smell it in the air. It was so damn quiet. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Just what the hell was going on here?
‘Tonight is full moon’
His eyes suddenly bled red as wheels began to rove. The use of constant sharingan was tiring. Yet just in two recent hours, he had used it for more than a dozen times already, checking the signal from the blond, wondering if there was any genjutsu at work.
The result turned out negative every time he tested. The blonde still appeared to be asleep.
It fucking grated his nerve. He just couldn’t believe. There must be some trick here.
‘I hate you. I fucking hate you, Moonwalk. If there’s any fucking tricks of yours lying around here. I swear it, I’m gonna dice it thin.’
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He waited patiently for the coming of the storm, readily poised for any sudden danger.
It was all according to plan.
Naruto sighed. But it was so damn boring. He wondered if he should take a nap or continue waiting. The blurry dome of the illusion he had created earlier when he was first laid on this altar glimmered.
Sometime long ago he remembered, Jiraiya used to nag him about his incompetence in the use of genjustsu, a.k.a human-made illusion. He had wondered then, how he couldn’t do it. He had the charka, and he had mischief of the mind so why couldn’t he do it?
The answer was rather plain as biology was never a strong spot of his. He wasn’t human enough to begin with. Yes, they said that many time about hard-life experience and Naruto still wanted to slap it back into their faces. He was, all in all, too in-between. He was not demon, and he was not human. He was stuck in a nowhere. It had created a ruckus for a while, but that was okay. No harm done. He still learned Genjutsu, one way or the other, just not the, for lack of better word, original human version of the Genjutsu. And now, he had turned a weakness into a unique power no other can duplicate. Just like all the things the villagers had tried to pound into his head when he was young, that he was not, and would never be one of them, he had finally taken it. Okay, so he wasn’t one of them. It wasn’t that bad at all. Who needed their opinions anyway?
But the problem was, he wasn’t entirely demon either. This had set somewhat of a block in his training with Kyuubi. The fox was puzzled. Sure he knew how to teach a fox cub, even given a human boy he could still say pretty confidently that he would succeed cramming something into his head. Naruto was … different.
They had struggled with this ‘little problem’ for a long time. Finally, it had taken a bit of Kyuubi’s creativeness and Naruto’s daringness to solve the problem. If he couldn’t learn either the human way, or the demon way, why not creating another path for him and him alone? The theory was that, introducing it into reality was a bit harder but they had got the basement ready, so it didn’t take much time.
The rest of passageway was smooth and easy. And along the training, they, fox and he, had somehow developed a sort of friendship, albeit a rather strange one that involved death-threatening and black-mailing.
The blond hair boy yawned.
He could still remember the look on Sasuke’s face after his ‘rescuing’ just three years ago.
It was somewhat hard, that one. Still, he had dragged the raging Uchiha back, screaming and kicking all the way. He had asked Sasuke why the raven-haired boy had agreed to join with Orochimaru and after receiving the answer “Because only with him I would get stronger” had proceeded to beating the shit out of the young genius.
Hell, yeah. The image was still intact, pretty clear if the need to ask arose.
The look on Sasuke’s face when he had finally gathered enough strength to utter one single sentence.
“You are stronger than me?”
And the blond’s answer was a nonchalant “Well, duh!”
Amazing, no?
No one ever needed to bother with the problem of Uchiha’s power-seeking dilemma anymore.
A girl at the right side of misty mysterious leader of the Akatsuki murmured something into his ear. He nodded, then sent out silent orders. Naruto watched their lips.
Finally, there’s some warming up. From what he was able to read out of the Akatsuki leader’s lip movements, there were intruders coming through the barriers and it seemed that they were a bit too strong for the guard force. Some thing was out of place here.
He squinted his eyes as the leader nodded again. He clapped and immediately, all the people in the hall stood straight, their hands clasped together, forming identical jutsu seals.
‘Kyuubi! The extraction’s begun’
‘All the better then. I’ve been dying for some fun’-the fox inside his head grinned a ferocious grin. Naruto sat up straight on the altar. It was a little bit earlier than expected but it was okay. He guessed.
The blond’s right hand stretched into an arc above the left one.
Since the beginning they had known that it would be suicidal if they were to barge right into the thieves’ Den without a plan. The members of the Akatsuki were approximately two hundreds, and not one of them was below the Jounin level so brute force was out of the question. There was no doubt that with the aid of Kyuubi, he still had a pretty decent chance against all the Akatsuki but there was also Sakura, and he didn’t want to take the risk with one of his friend at the other end of the rope. If it was him alone, then he would take them on, practice made best, but with a friend, then his friend’s safety would always be the first priority, reputation be damned.
And so they had formed a plan, conceiving with all the mischief and sneakiness they had got.
A simple plan to say the best during his getting caught.
Naruto had always known his reputation went a little bit too far and it was obvious that the name Uzumaki Naruto now had become more cough mouthwatering to the Akatsuki than Sakura Uhano.
He dropped the line. The Akatsuki swallowed the bait, a little bit too enthusiastically for his taste. And now he sat here, ready to run his ass off if anything went wrong when the pink-haired girl sitting in the dungeon under this hall was merely a fusion of a Kage Bunshin no Jutsu and a Sexy no Jutsu.
As soon as the hall was filled with chants of jutsu, the Kyuubi vessel felt a nauseous tug in his stomach. He gently rubbed the circle on his abdomen.
‘Sooo… you wanna stay or you wanna leave?’
The fox purred in his mind. Tonight was full moon.
‘Let’s stay’
The Soul Seal no jutsu was a jutsu heavily based on chakra flow theory. In order to bind two souls together, the caster had to use his own chakra to weave the other two’s charka flows together. The sealing performed on Gaara and Shukaku was an example for this kind of jutsu.
The imprisonment of the Kyuubi no Kitsune was a little bit more complex. Theoretically, the two are the same, yet not. The Soul Seal no Jutsu after its completion would only leave the two souls fighting each other for dominance while the jutsu the forth Hokage had performed on Naruto would completely imprison the fox into his soul. To accomplish this task, a huge amount of chakra was needed, thus the death of the forth Hokage.
The jutsu used in the extraction was the exact opposite of these two jutsus. Instead of weaving together the flows of chakra, the caster would untie them. During this untying process, because of the balance set between the two souls being broken, the weaker in the two, most commonly the human soul, would therefore wither away.
However, there was one possible consequence the unweaver must bear if the untying was faulty. The imbalance or even possible loss of his own chakra flow.
‘And that is where we’re going to strike’
Naruto wanted to laugh, to sneer right in the face of the man that was desperately trying to tamper with his chakra flow.
His forefingers began to twine into a curve, forming a jutsu seal.
Normally, no unweaver would dare to let the bearer stay conscious during the extraction because of the chance that the bearer would try to fight back and then would result in the avoided consequence.
He closed his eyes. His eyebrows furrowed in concentration. He was going to do just that. He was going to bleed the bastard white.
‘I’m going to suck you dry, you greedy bastard.’
The game was on. There was no way to stop it.
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Itachi nearly lost himself to the urge to curse out loud. The feeling of un-rightness haunted him obsessively. There was definitely something fishy here. His blood red eyes constantly switched from the sleeping blond man on the altar to the misty leader of the Akatsuki while his hands still kept the seal of jutsu. Something was troubling him.
The elder Uchiha watched as his leader murmured something to another one in the council. His eyes squinted as the hands of the other man trembling slightly, nearly breaking the seal of jutsu.
Did he know the danger of an unfinished extracting jutsu? Of course he knew. The leader of the Akatsuki was no fool. If he were, Itachi would never allow himself to bow to his power.
He turned back to the blond assassin.
Moonwalk still appeared to be unconscious.
Itachi glared at the blond. In just two recent hours, he had constantly used his sharingan to check for any sign of Genjutsu being used. The result assured him yet he couldn’t help but suspect.
The girl at the right side of the leader twitched. She had been doing that for an hour already.
Itachi knew that girl. She wasn’t very strong compared to the other, but she held a necessity to Akatsuki. Within the range of one thousands yards, she can survey all existence of chakra-bearing creatures, be it alive or not. Useful talents, if anyone ever to asked.
Then, were there trespassers advancing to here? He watched the girl. Her fingers jolted.
That… seemed to be an absolution.
The bangs of his hair whirled around as he swiftly turned towards the guarded entrance.
Who would be stupid enough to think they can barge right in to the Akatsuki headquarters and go out alive?-He thought
Could it be the Konoha rescuers? His head shook. He wasn’t sure about that. When he was still in Konoha, the villagers weren’t so friendly towards the blond. And he doubted any of the brat’s friends was strong, confident, or –he paused- foolish enough to try and press their luck.
Then, who could it be? He mused. The fifth Hokage? He had heard that the assassin and she had some kind of close relationship. That woman- he nearly smirked- had the recklessness to do just that.
He shook his head again. Who ever that was, he wasn’t going to care. If they came, then they would better prepare to die. Akatsuki was never known to have mercy. He reassured himself then bolted back in a huge throw as the entrance to the Akatsuki headquarters exploded into fire.
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It was a rather surprising one. That. Life indeed caught him off-guard once in a while.
Naruto watched in amazement as the aflame stone door and some of the weaker Akatsuki members near it crumbled down in a frying heap, revealing two gigantic snakes behind it.
‘This…is not in the plan’-A numb voice muttered in the back of his head, yanking him back to reality. Things were getting shitty here.
‘Fuck’ Naruto staggered as he dodged a fireball came whirling at his head, his hands still making sure that the jutsu seal was not disturbed. He couldn’t afford to lose this fight he was issuing through his chakra flows with the leader of the Akatsuki. His mind screamed with curses.
‘Motherfucker. What is he doing here?’ The other end of the flows tugged painfully.
‘Shitshitshitshit’ And just seconds ago he was winning for sure.
‘Damn you, Orochimaru’ He glowered vengefully at a fully-bandaged Orochimaru standing on the head of the bigger snake.
‘This time is serious. I’m stuck. If he strikes home, I’m a goner for sure.’ The Kyuubi’s vessel’s mind wheeled at lightning speed. He wondered how the snaky man knew he was caught by the Akatsuki. Sure he knew from the beginning that Orochimaru must have something wrong with his head, but never had he imagined the snake lover would actually go crazy as to barge head-first into here. The bastard must have heard the news from one of his spying snakes, and then in a desperate attempt to insure the balance of the three, tried to robe the Kyuubi from Akatsuki’s claws.
But, it seemed that he was not gaining the upper hand here. Naruto watched with much amusement.
‘Precisely’-His demon companion snarled.
Although Orochimaru got the surprise element, he couldn’t tip the table to him. The Akatsukis were quick to recover and they were now retaliating in scale Orochimaru’s snake army.
‘But he’s not going to lose yet. These red-obsessing rats still have a double-edge sword of a jutsu to maintain.’ Naruto nodded in agreement. Just sitting here alone, observing the on-going battle, he had sucked dry the chakra of about a dozen Akatsuki through the flows of their leader already. A second neglecting the jutsu and they were done for.
In the other end of the hall, Orochimaru and his king viper were battling with several Akatsuki.
A piercing hiss penetrated his ears as the snake hissed.
‘What th… Fuck!’ He wheeled back to dodge a fireball from the mouth of the viper.
‘Fuckfuckfuck. He’s looking straight at me. He intended this.’ All the earlier thoughts in Naruto’s mind were wiped out as another series of fireballs descended upon him. The other end of his flows tugged again, and again.
‘Fuck you, you scaly bastard. He’s not going to do that. He’s going to kill me. He doesn’t care if I live or not. Shit. He’s really going to kill me. Whoa’- The fireballs were knitting around him. His legs reacted on instinct as they flipped up to a leap. There was no time to think now. A dampened prick plunged his heart simultaneously with his jutsu seal’s wavering.
His vision blurred. He stared dazedly at the fireball dropping down above his head.
‘Damp. What shitty way to die.’
End Chapter One
A/N: Yes, I know. I’m suck at action sense.
(1): I did research on the history of the real shinobi. It turned out that Naruto world’s shinobis are… not exactly like our world’s shinobi. I think they are more like adored and admired warrior (the Naruto’s shinobis), albeit rather sneaky ones at that. So, there are a chance that there are superstar shinobi as well (In fact there are, remember White-Fang in the original series?)
Hmm… I hope I did not sketch a too far-fetched Naruto’s image in this fic. But if you notice, you’ll see that all the talents I gave Naruto are based on Chinese tales about fox demons (One tail, three tails, seven tails and nine tails). I read that the fox demons are most active in full-moon night when they reverts back to there fox shape (Chinese fox demons can disguise themselves as humans, although they seemed to always forget to hide their tails) and begins their sucking-the-nature’s-energy ceremony, literally.
I also had to do research on Naruto’s chakra theories. On comparison between documents, I think chakra is like the ki theory in ancient Chinese martial arts. Well, at least I hope I’m right. Damn if I don’t.
Anyway, this chapter is a pain to write. Too many researches to do. If there is any mistake, even the slightest one that you noticed, please flame. I’ll welcome you with opened arms.
Scythe no see.
Author: Sythe note: First time with a Naruto fanfic. Be merciless, please. This fic is set in the near future after chapter 267 (latest chapter in so you may find something you didn’t know was there.
Pairing: Undecided
Summary: Due to a jutsu accident when fighting with the Akatsuki and Orochimaru, Naruto got sent to an alternate world where there was no Uzumaki Naruto.
Chapter One: A Flap of Butterfly Wings
A butterfly flapping its wing in China can cause a hurricane in America.
It is thought that the flapping of a single butterfly wing today produces a tiny change in the state of the atmosphere. Over a period of time, what the atmosphere actually does diverges from what it would have done, like a rock creating cripples in a pond. So, in a month’s time, a tornado that would have devastated the Indonesian coast doesn’t happen. Or maybe one that doesn’t happen, does.
The Butterfly Theory, Chaos theory
He could remember it somewhere in the distant of his mind. He read about it long ago, not by chance though. He did know that he was not recognized for his academic intelligence, not that he ever cared. Still he knew and tried to understand it. His friends would have laughed and told him to pull of the act had they known. It was true though. It wasn’t very hard, just time-consuming, and he was known for his hard-headness all too well. Why, one would think, a seemingly moron such like him would ever waste the time and effort learning something even highly advanced students would have the quirk for.
Like he said before, it wasn’t very hard as one would think, and it interested him….. like anything concerning fate would have done.
Don’t misunderstand, please, because he can hardly be dubbed a superstitious person. Even in contrast to that, he defied fate, be it his or anyone else having the pleasure of crossing his path. The only thing that would ever interest him in it was that he would like to crash and shatter the wretched thing till it cried and stopped its thievery hands. He had seen what it had done to many people. Neiji for an example, or maybe Gaara, or even Haku. He could give bunches more examples. He had seen far too many people that would have been better off without fate mounting on their heads. Even him.
‘A butterfly flapping its wings in the Mist can cause a hurricane in the Stone’
A very simple sentence, and the first though that popped up in his head just millisecond after was…
‘What’s crazy lunatic guy invented these?’
Expected behavior. Even Tsunade would have sighed in relief. At least he didn’t throw it away, or worse, use it for cooking fire.
He couldn’t remember how he started, or how he even got through reading AND understanding it though. The sentence was short. The explanation was… long. Never the less, it gave him something to think about: ‘what ifs’. Time was long, and human was fleeting. There were hundreds of crossroads. Things that happened, things that would never happened, and things that could have happened. One could only dream of the possibilities.
He wondered though, what today would be if Iruka never was his sensei, what today would be if he never was one Uzumaki Naruto, what today would be if there never was one Kyuubi no Kitsune.
He sighed. Longing thoughts.
He wondered how he had come to this point. His mind reflected it, but he only remembered bits and pieces, flashing images from a distant time of a naïve ‘him’. It had started from the time he turned sixteen, after his two-and-a-half-year training with Jiraiya. Famous history. Everyone knew. New appearance, new power, same naivety. Gaara was kidnapped. He chased. Gaara was killed. He crumbled.
Till this day many times he had asked himself, would he react differently if the person who died was someone else, say, Ino, or Chouji? He didn’t want to know the answer. The feeling was unbearable enough. He didn’t want to risk the chance of ever loosing a friend again.
They never had the time to actually know each other, him and Gaara. Yet the two had a peculiar connection, a severe empathy. They were, after all, both demon hosts, or beasts as village commoners would, once in a while, murmured angrily when they thought they couldn’t hear. Fat chances.
Anyway, the important thing was how everything turned out after that. It was inevitable. A war broke out. A perfect balance of power, the three strongest ones combating for dominance and victor: the Akatsuki, Orochimaru’ Sound Village, and Sand-Leaf coalition.
The day was long, the night was tiring. The next thing he knew after the war declaration, he had buried himself under heavy training, missions after missions, murders and assassinations.
They said, the less you got, the more you treasured. It applied perfectly to him. To the time he turned eleven, the only thing he could call, somewhat reluctantly, his friend would be Iruka sensei. After years, he got even more friends, Sakura, Sasuke, Rock Lee, Ino, Neiji, Hinata, Shikamaru,…., and he treasured each of them, no matter how annoying, irritating, or life-threatening they can get. The loss of Gaara was something new to him. It slapped. And it’s cold. He never wanted to feel it again.
And so, he trained, to at least have some reassurance, to fool himself into believing that he was strong enough to protect those he loved. It lasted for a long time. Five years, to be exact. What did he do in those five years? Of course, he trained. NO, self education was more like it. Because Jiraiya was not enough. Even Jiraiya couldn’t do anything when Orochimaru decided he wanted a world for him self. Jiraiya was no boundary.
He had apologized, had explained, countless time after another one. Then he hid himself in a secluded mountain in the deep forest of Fire country, seeking the guidance of the imprisoned Kyuubi. What did the fox do? The fox was bored, and the fox was sealed, for life. It was not, in any sense of the word, pleasing to know that the Kyuubi would follow him to the steps of his children and further descendants. In other words, Kyuubi no Kitsune was sealed into Uzumaki, not Naruto. The Uzumaki name would forever bear the whisker marks and the seal of imprisonment. The further his blood line went, the further Kyuubi went. Kyuubi no Kitsune would live forever.
Bravo for Kyuubi. Damnation for Uzmaki Naruto.
Let’s clap, people.
Well okay, so it wasn’t as bad as it sounded. At least, if the fox had to stayed with the brat, then the fox would damn well make the brat one hell of a strong brat, damnation or not. You better beware, Konoha bastards, because dead snakes still bit.
He twitched his fingers a bit.
The five years came and went. But time was meaningless to him. He was strong before, now he was unstoppable. He had long forsaken the way of human, turning to the path of demon in stead. Human used the word ‘combat’, demons wanted ‘kill’, Kyuubi preferred ‘slaughter’. The Konoha wanted a beast, he gave them a beast.
Many time he wanted to laugh off the irony. He would never be Hokage now. People chose human to be the leader, not animal. But he sure made it into the Konoha legends. What was it again? He remembered hearing children, house wives, and even fellow shinobis gossiping it (1). Ah, right! The Konoha demon assassin or Moonwalk. Merciless and Efficient. He met no equal. The villagers were more scared of him than angry with him now. People only got angry with someone when they were stronger, capable of inflicting the damage. When they can’t, they scared and accused the other of bullying the weaker. Really, humans and their emotional problems.
However, it seemed that fate was never a good friend of his. In fact, he wanted to murder fate now. Maybe he can try the new way Kyuu-chan suggested the other day, stylishly killing number fifty four, co-authors: Kyuubi no Kitsune and Uzumaki Naruto.
One lone warrior can only be so strong.
He was defeated, mind you, not the literal sense of the word. The problem was spelled S-A-K-U-R-A. Of course, you, the audiences, already knew what happened. It was the classical hero-save-beauty Disney scene. Sakura-chan got caught, and hero-chan went for the rescue. Very easy, very old-style, very gagging romantic, and unrealistic. The prize for Sakura-chan rescue was paid by hero-chan’s capture. Yes, lovely sarcasm of youth and the thing called fate.
And that was how he ended up here, at the exact same hall he found Gaara corpse five years ago, ready for the extracting of a renowned nine-tail demon.
He sighed. His eyes darted around in his lying position. He had been in situations before, hopeless cases destined for doom since the beginning, and he wasn’t going to give up now. Hokage knew Kyuu-chan would give him the scorch of his life if he did.
He kept his breathing even and his illusion stayed put. He didn’t want to alert the Akatsuki. He just had to be patient, observing for the weakness and striking at the right moment. Haste would only make waste after all.
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Uchiha Itachi fidgeted where he stood, waiting impatiently for the extraction to begin, Kishame right next to him in a similar state. If it was for anyone ever to know, Uchiha Itachi never fidgeted, unless he had something to worry about, really worry. He can feel Kishame fingering the handle of his huge sword beside him as he himself eying the slumbering blonde on the altar.
The infamous Moonwalk.
Itachi surveyed the blonde. If Itachi was asked now, he would say that he never met this man before. Yet he met him. Somewhere around eight years ago, he had met him, Uzumaki Naruto. But now he couldn’t tell if the young man lying on the altar was the loud-mouth brat or not.
The man wasn’t the bulky type. His frame was lithe and agile, perfectly poised for an assassin. He had gotten slightly taller than the last time Itachi saw him, maybe an inch or two. His skin was snow-white, a stark difference compared to the tan shade five years ago, probably because of the working time of his job. His face had lost the last bit of baby fat, making him seemed more feral, more… fox-like. His hair was long, a little spiky on the front, but turned smooth and silky down its length. The whisker marks on his cheeks had become more profound, clearly visible on his skin. He wore all black, even the Konoha hitae on the front of his head was disguised with a bandana the same color with his suit.
This man was different. This was not the Uzumaki Naruto he had known. For all he had known and seen, this man seemed more like the mergence of Uzumaki Naruto and Kyuubi no Kitsune.
Of course he had heard the rumors, spreading wide and thick amongst the shinobis. Moonwalk never failed. A couple of his fellow Akatsuki had tried to test them. None came back.
To say it frankly, Itachi couldn’t understand how and when did Uzumaki change? What was the cause of such changes? And how did he do it? Itachi was no fool. A kid just didn’t turn into a legendary assassin all of a sudden even under the guidance of one Sannin. There had to be something that caused the change.
Even in the rank of Akatsuki, Moonwalk had become many one’s figure. One that many of his fellow Akatsuki wanted a challenge with. After a while, Itachi himself had gotten curious, and he started gathering the information on Uzumaki. It was his style, to know exactly what he was facing. He never liked the recklessness as some of the other Akatsuki. It thrilled the battle, they said. Itachi didn’t need the thrill. Itachi never needed the thrill.
It had taken a long time for the information gathering as the knowledge about Uzumaki was thoroughly protected under many layers of the Konoha shinobi. But in the end, he still got what he wanted though, of course not with out the aid of a very irritating Kishame. He was faking it of course. Itachi knew Kishame wanted the information just as much as Itachi himself. No one in the Akatsuki would ever turn off a chance to fight Moonwalk, ever.
Itachi furrowed his eye brows.
Despite all the trouble they had gotten, the document was vague. It didn’t say much. Birthday, blood type, rank, appearance, ..no.. past appearance weren’t the thing he wanted. But at least it gave him something he could make information out of, the mission record of the blond. It seemed that the change began somewhere about five years ago, after a rescuing mission. The blond had suddenly vanished into thin air. There was no stating if the blond was on a mission or a training session. There wasn’t even the location where the blond was staying. Uzumaki Naruto had disappeared, for no reason at all.
Then, just as sudden as his disappearance, the blond reappeared, guising under the record of an assassination mission three years after. And that was the beginning of a long series of tedious and continuous missions. One after another. The span between them rarely reached two days. It was as if Uzumaki need not the rest normal shinobi must take after every mission.
Itachi noticed something in the record. All of the missions were relatively killing. Most of them were assassinations, but there were also a bunch that could be identified as annihilations of a whole ninja district. That’s right. He wiped out a whole organization of ninja, or more specifically, all the ninja of the Mist village and several other smaller villages, in what was barely a day. So why did every one still refer to him as an assassin? The term terminator would have been a better choice. Of course, it was his style. It was also the cause of the name Moonwalk. The blonde was the silent type. There wouldn’t be any messy death if he could help it. Also, the time of the massacres were usually full moon night, hence the word moon in his name.
It was terrifying.
The record of the blond didn’t say much. It needn’t to. The assigning date and the accomplishing date. There was no time difference between an ‘assassination’ and a ‘massacre’. One day. Those were hardly challenges to him.
Stirred and encouraged by his curiousity, Itachi had once used a sharingan jutsu on a Konoha inspector shinobi who, he was told, inspected the aftermath of a ‘massacre’.
It was short and simple.
Clean deaths. All of them. There was no blood shedding, just dry corpses along the paths of the village. One hundred and two shinobis including seven jounins, twenty two chuunins and the kage of the village. There was no difference to distinguish between a jounin and a gennin as every each of them bore a small orifice at the back of the neck, straight into the nerves. The victim could not have felt death coming.
It was truly terrifying. Itachi had shuddered right then and there, from anticipation or apprehension he could never know.
He glanced at the white elfish face. The blonde looked so peaceful sleeping like that it seemed almost anti-violent.
The sharingan user twisted his fingers together around his genjutsu ring.
Sheer dumb luck was what they had.
Sheer dumb luck was all it took.
It was on an ambushing mission that gave the Akatsuki a surprise present under the name Sakura Haruno. The first choice that was made was to kill her. Swift cut, no leak. The Akatsuki wouldn’t have to worry about property damage or mingling spy in their rank. But after one puppeteer originally from the Red Sand clan voicing his opinion, informing the council that this girl could be of use to them, the plan had changed into using her to lure Moonwalk into their lair.
Itachi had nearly scoffed off the idea once it was announced. There was no way in seventh hell Moonwalk would fall for that. But very much to his surprise, he did.
So it seemed that even the utmost warrior had his weakness. ‘The girl must be very important to him then’-Itachi had thought. And again, very much to his surprise, he felt something akin to jealousy pricking in the pit of his stomach. He had never had anyone that would care for him like that, even going to walking straight into the enemy’s trap.
‘But was he really in the trap? Or was it us?’
There was no data stating facts about Moonwalk’s intelligence, or in other word, his sneakiness and snarkiness, but even if there was, Itachi didn’t think he would believe it either. Uzumaki Naruto was known as the ninja best at surprising other people, and if Moonwalk still retained that trait, then… well, the Akatsuki could safely declare that they were totally and completely screwed.
Kishame slowly rubbed the handle of his sword.
Itachi wanted to shout, his eyes never once leaving the youthful figure on the altar.
It was so fucking quiet.
If there was anything the elder Uchiha would ever be proud of besides his sharingan eyes, then that would be his sense of dangers. In all his years before and during being an Akatsuki, he had had his hand full of life and death situations. It wasn’t like he was the victor every time. There were plenty strong enemies in the outside world after all. Horning by years jumping in and out the boiling cauldron, this little skill of his had paid its homage many times by now. A sniff at the danger to come.
It was exactly what that was screaming into his skull every going–by second now.
He fidgeted.
The extraction had yet to begin.
‘Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck’
There was something terribly wrong here. He could almost smell it in the air. It was so damn quiet. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Just what the hell was going on here?
‘Tonight is full moon’
His eyes suddenly bled red as wheels began to rove. The use of constant sharingan was tiring. Yet just in two recent hours, he had used it for more than a dozen times already, checking the signal from the blond, wondering if there was any genjutsu at work.
The result turned out negative every time he tested. The blonde still appeared to be asleep.
It fucking grated his nerve. He just couldn’t believe. There must be some trick here.
‘I hate you. I fucking hate you, Moonwalk. If there’s any fucking tricks of yours lying around here. I swear it, I’m gonna dice it thin.’
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He waited patiently for the coming of the storm, readily poised for any sudden danger.
It was all according to plan.
Naruto sighed. But it was so damn boring. He wondered if he should take a nap or continue waiting. The blurry dome of the illusion he had created earlier when he was first laid on this altar glimmered.
Sometime long ago he remembered, Jiraiya used to nag him about his incompetence in the use of genjustsu, a.k.a human-made illusion. He had wondered then, how he couldn’t do it. He had the charka, and he had mischief of the mind so why couldn’t he do it?
The answer was rather plain as biology was never a strong spot of his. He wasn’t human enough to begin with. Yes, they said that many time about hard-life experience and Naruto still wanted to slap it back into their faces. He was, all in all, too in-between. He was not demon, and he was not human. He was stuck in a nowhere. It had created a ruckus for a while, but that was okay. No harm done. He still learned Genjutsu, one way or the other, just not the, for lack of better word, original human version of the Genjutsu. And now, he had turned a weakness into a unique power no other can duplicate. Just like all the things the villagers had tried to pound into his head when he was young, that he was not, and would never be one of them, he had finally taken it. Okay, so he wasn’t one of them. It wasn’t that bad at all. Who needed their opinions anyway?
But the problem was, he wasn’t entirely demon either. This had set somewhat of a block in his training with Kyuubi. The fox was puzzled. Sure he knew how to teach a fox cub, even given a human boy he could still say pretty confidently that he would succeed cramming something into his head. Naruto was … different.
They had struggled with this ‘little problem’ for a long time. Finally, it had taken a bit of Kyuubi’s creativeness and Naruto’s daringness to solve the problem. If he couldn’t learn either the human way, or the demon way, why not creating another path for him and him alone? The theory was that, introducing it into reality was a bit harder but they had got the basement ready, so it didn’t take much time.
The rest of passageway was smooth and easy. And along the training, they, fox and he, had somehow developed a sort of friendship, albeit a rather strange one that involved death-threatening and black-mailing.
The blond hair boy yawned.
He could still remember the look on Sasuke’s face after his ‘rescuing’ just three years ago.
It was somewhat hard, that one. Still, he had dragged the raging Uchiha back, screaming and kicking all the way. He had asked Sasuke why the raven-haired boy had agreed to join with Orochimaru and after receiving the answer “Because only with him I would get stronger” had proceeded to beating the shit out of the young genius.
Hell, yeah. The image was still intact, pretty clear if the need to ask arose.
The look on Sasuke’s face when he had finally gathered enough strength to utter one single sentence.
“You are stronger than me?”
And the blond’s answer was a nonchalant “Well, duh!”
Amazing, no?
No one ever needed to bother with the problem of Uchiha’s power-seeking dilemma anymore.
A girl at the right side of misty mysterious leader of the Akatsuki murmured something into his ear. He nodded, then sent out silent orders. Naruto watched their lips.
Finally, there’s some warming up. From what he was able to read out of the Akatsuki leader’s lip movements, there were intruders coming through the barriers and it seemed that they were a bit too strong for the guard force. Some thing was out of place here.
He squinted his eyes as the leader nodded again. He clapped and immediately, all the people in the hall stood straight, their hands clasped together, forming identical jutsu seals.
‘Kyuubi! The extraction’s begun’
‘All the better then. I’ve been dying for some fun’-the fox inside his head grinned a ferocious grin. Naruto sat up straight on the altar. It was a little bit earlier than expected but it was okay. He guessed.
The blond’s right hand stretched into an arc above the left one.
Since the beginning they had known that it would be suicidal if they were to barge right into the thieves’ Den without a plan. The members of the Akatsuki were approximately two hundreds, and not one of them was below the Jounin level so brute force was out of the question. There was no doubt that with the aid of Kyuubi, he still had a pretty decent chance against all the Akatsuki but there was also Sakura, and he didn’t want to take the risk with one of his friend at the other end of the rope. If it was him alone, then he would take them on, practice made best, but with a friend, then his friend’s safety would always be the first priority, reputation be damned.
And so they had formed a plan, conceiving with all the mischief and sneakiness they had got.
A simple plan to say the best during his getting caught.
Naruto had always known his reputation went a little bit too far and it was obvious that the name Uzumaki Naruto now had become more cough mouthwatering to the Akatsuki than Sakura Uhano.
He dropped the line. The Akatsuki swallowed the bait, a little bit too enthusiastically for his taste. And now he sat here, ready to run his ass off if anything went wrong when the pink-haired girl sitting in the dungeon under this hall was merely a fusion of a Kage Bunshin no Jutsu and a Sexy no Jutsu.
As soon as the hall was filled with chants of jutsu, the Kyuubi vessel felt a nauseous tug in his stomach. He gently rubbed the circle on his abdomen.
‘Sooo… you wanna stay or you wanna leave?’
The fox purred in his mind. Tonight was full moon.
‘Let’s stay’
The Soul Seal no jutsu was a jutsu heavily based on chakra flow theory. In order to bind two souls together, the caster had to use his own chakra to weave the other two’s charka flows together. The sealing performed on Gaara and Shukaku was an example for this kind of jutsu.
The imprisonment of the Kyuubi no Kitsune was a little bit more complex. Theoretically, the two are the same, yet not. The Soul Seal no Jutsu after its completion would only leave the two souls fighting each other for dominance while the jutsu the forth Hokage had performed on Naruto would completely imprison the fox into his soul. To accomplish this task, a huge amount of chakra was needed, thus the death of the forth Hokage.
The jutsu used in the extraction was the exact opposite of these two jutsus. Instead of weaving together the flows of chakra, the caster would untie them. During this untying process, because of the balance set between the two souls being broken, the weaker in the two, most commonly the human soul, would therefore wither away.
However, there was one possible consequence the unweaver must bear if the untying was faulty. The imbalance or even possible loss of his own chakra flow.
‘And that is where we’re going to strike’
Naruto wanted to laugh, to sneer right in the face of the man that was desperately trying to tamper with his chakra flow.
His forefingers began to twine into a curve, forming a jutsu seal.
Normally, no unweaver would dare to let the bearer stay conscious during the extraction because of the chance that the bearer would try to fight back and then would result in the avoided consequence.
He closed his eyes. His eyebrows furrowed in concentration. He was going to do just that. He was going to bleed the bastard white.
‘I’m going to suck you dry, you greedy bastard.’
The game was on. There was no way to stop it.
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Itachi nearly lost himself to the urge to curse out loud. The feeling of un-rightness haunted him obsessively. There was definitely something fishy here. His blood red eyes constantly switched from the sleeping blond man on the altar to the misty leader of the Akatsuki while his hands still kept the seal of jutsu. Something was troubling him.
The elder Uchiha watched as his leader murmured something to another one in the council. His eyes squinted as the hands of the other man trembling slightly, nearly breaking the seal of jutsu.
Did he know the danger of an unfinished extracting jutsu? Of course he knew. The leader of the Akatsuki was no fool. If he were, Itachi would never allow himself to bow to his power.
He turned back to the blond assassin.
Moonwalk still appeared to be unconscious.
Itachi glared at the blond. In just two recent hours, he had constantly used his sharingan to check for any sign of Genjutsu being used. The result assured him yet he couldn’t help but suspect.
The girl at the right side of the leader twitched. She had been doing that for an hour already.
Itachi knew that girl. She wasn’t very strong compared to the other, but she held a necessity to Akatsuki. Within the range of one thousands yards, she can survey all existence of chakra-bearing creatures, be it alive or not. Useful talents, if anyone ever to asked.
Then, were there trespassers advancing to here? He watched the girl. Her fingers jolted.
That… seemed to be an absolution.
The bangs of his hair whirled around as he swiftly turned towards the guarded entrance.
Who would be stupid enough to think they can barge right in to the Akatsuki headquarters and go out alive?-He thought
Could it be the Konoha rescuers? His head shook. He wasn’t sure about that. When he was still in Konoha, the villagers weren’t so friendly towards the blond. And he doubted any of the brat’s friends was strong, confident, or –he paused- foolish enough to try and press their luck.
Then, who could it be? He mused. The fifth Hokage? He had heard that the assassin and she had some kind of close relationship. That woman- he nearly smirked- had the recklessness to do just that.
He shook his head again. Who ever that was, he wasn’t going to care. If they came, then they would better prepare to die. Akatsuki was never known to have mercy. He reassured himself then bolted back in a huge throw as the entrance to the Akatsuki headquarters exploded into fire.
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It was a rather surprising one. That. Life indeed caught him off-guard once in a while.
Naruto watched in amazement as the aflame stone door and some of the weaker Akatsuki members near it crumbled down in a frying heap, revealing two gigantic snakes behind it.
‘This…is not in the plan’-A numb voice muttered in the back of his head, yanking him back to reality. Things were getting shitty here.
‘Fuck’ Naruto staggered as he dodged a fireball came whirling at his head, his hands still making sure that the jutsu seal was not disturbed. He couldn’t afford to lose this fight he was issuing through his chakra flows with the leader of the Akatsuki. His mind screamed with curses.
‘Motherfucker. What is he doing here?’ The other end of the flows tugged painfully.
‘Shitshitshitshit’ And just seconds ago he was winning for sure.
‘Damn you, Orochimaru’ He glowered vengefully at a fully-bandaged Orochimaru standing on the head of the bigger snake.
‘This time is serious. I’m stuck. If he strikes home, I’m a goner for sure.’ The Kyuubi’s vessel’s mind wheeled at lightning speed. He wondered how the snaky man knew he was caught by the Akatsuki. Sure he knew from the beginning that Orochimaru must have something wrong with his head, but never had he imagined the snake lover would actually go crazy as to barge head-first into here. The bastard must have heard the news from one of his spying snakes, and then in a desperate attempt to insure the balance of the three, tried to robe the Kyuubi from Akatsuki’s claws.
But, it seemed that he was not gaining the upper hand here. Naruto watched with much amusement.
‘Precisely’-His demon companion snarled.
Although Orochimaru got the surprise element, he couldn’t tip the table to him. The Akatsukis were quick to recover and they were now retaliating in scale Orochimaru’s snake army.
‘But he’s not going to lose yet. These red-obsessing rats still have a double-edge sword of a jutsu to maintain.’ Naruto nodded in agreement. Just sitting here alone, observing the on-going battle, he had sucked dry the chakra of about a dozen Akatsuki through the flows of their leader already. A second neglecting the jutsu and they were done for.
In the other end of the hall, Orochimaru and his king viper were battling with several Akatsuki.
A piercing hiss penetrated his ears as the snake hissed.
‘What th… Fuck!’ He wheeled back to dodge a fireball from the mouth of the viper.
‘Fuckfuckfuck. He’s looking straight at me. He intended this.’ All the earlier thoughts in Naruto’s mind were wiped out as another series of fireballs descended upon him. The other end of his flows tugged again, and again.
‘Fuck you, you scaly bastard. He’s not going to do that. He’s going to kill me. He doesn’t care if I live or not. Shit. He’s really going to kill me. Whoa’- The fireballs were knitting around him. His legs reacted on instinct as they flipped up to a leap. There was no time to think now. A dampened prick plunged his heart simultaneously with his jutsu seal’s wavering.
His vision blurred. He stared dazedly at the fireball dropping down above his head.
‘Damp. What shitty way to die.’
End Chapter One
A/N: Yes, I know. I’m suck at action sense.
(1): I did research on the history of the real shinobi. It turned out that Naruto world’s shinobis are… not exactly like our world’s shinobi. I think they are more like adored and admired warrior (the Naruto’s shinobis), albeit rather sneaky ones at that. So, there are a chance that there are superstar shinobi as well (In fact there are, remember White-Fang in the original series?)
Hmm… I hope I did not sketch a too far-fetched Naruto’s image in this fic. But if you notice, you’ll see that all the talents I gave Naruto are based on Chinese tales about fox demons (One tail, three tails, seven tails and nine tails). I read that the fox demons are most active in full-moon night when they reverts back to there fox shape (Chinese fox demons can disguise themselves as humans, although they seemed to always forget to hide their tails) and begins their sucking-the-nature’s-energy ceremony, literally.
I also had to do research on Naruto’s chakra theories. On comparison between documents, I think chakra is like the ki theory in ancient Chinese martial arts. Well, at least I hope I’m right. Damn if I don’t.
Anyway, this chapter is a pain to write. Too many researches to do. If there is any mistake, even the slightest one that you noticed, please flame. I’ll welcome you with opened arms.
Scythe no see.