Adult-FanFiction.org : Naruto

The Blessed Realm	By : susanna Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male > Naruto/Sasuke Views: 1746 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: Disclaimer: Naruto, his friends and the world he lives in don't belong to me but to Masashi Kishimoto. I write this story only for my pleasure and I don't make any money with it.

Chapter List
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Chapter One Hundred and One: Woman and Horse
Naruto told Juugo's fostermothers about the police's offer to join them too, even without taking the entrance exam, just based on his fighting skills and his skill of dealing with people. The two women were rather sceptical.
“You don't have to do the same thing as Sasuke,” they said. “He wants to follow his family's tradition, and he wants to learn how the police functions if it has to follow rules, but this is his aim, not yours. You have to find an aim of your own.”
“You know my aim,” Naruto replied. “I intend to become Hokage of Konoha.”
“But you have to do something meaningful while you're here. Maybe you can go to school and get a degree that allows you to apply for university. Then you can study law or economics.”
Naruto was not looking forward ot it. “You don't need to be a scholar to be Hokage. You need to be a strong fighter, ready to defend the village and sacrifice your life for your people.”
The women looked completely unimpressed. (Sasuke too: the idea of Naruto sacrificing his life for Konoha was not attractive to him.)
“You have to be Hokage in times of peace too,” the women said. “You have to make your village prosper. We've heard that Konoha is in severe economic troubles these days – you'll have to get it back on track once you've driven Danzou out of office, and for this you need to know about national economy.”
Naruto was silenced.
“And also you have to do something. You can't sit at home all day and wait for the political situation in Konoha to change.”
Naruto knew that they were correct, but he didn't want to admit it. They teamed up with the guy from Earth Country and his husband, collecting information about various ordinary and professional schools in Music Town, suggesting a couple of careers to him that in their opinion suited him, even threatening to force him to go to school (they were entitled to this as Naruto had been required to name guardians too when he had applied for official status as a refugee), and then Naruto gave in and accepted the police's offer. Like this he would at least stay with Sasuke. (The grown-ups agreed to this when they heard that training at the police would give him a degree that counted as a qualification for university.)
So Naruto joined classes a week later than Sasuke, meaning that he had to catch up from the beginning. He invested a lot of work, mostly because he saw that Sasuke invested a lot of work too: He wanted to catch up with him. He was not as enthusiastic about all the stuff he had to learn about rules and laws as Sasuke was, but he enjoyed learning about the different theories why people became criminals: because of poverty or neglective and abusive families, or because people just were selfish by nature and needed to be restrained by rules and the threat of punishment. He enjoyed the general education that was part of the training programme, however, foreign languages and science, much to his own surprise, and with time he understood that he had never been less intelligent than other kids but that from the beginning he had been impeded by his loneliness and everyone's hatred which had made it difficult for him to focus on his books. Learning side by side with Sasuke and and helping each other made it enjoyable.
(Sasuke had initiated this. He did not have any interest in setting up a rivalry against Naruto but was mainly interested in getting better than all the girls around them, who had attended regular schools and so had a head start compared to them.)
He also enjoyed sitting with an extra teacher and learning for the entrance test which he was required to take retrospectively. No one should be able to complain that a person who did not meet the requirements was allowed to join the police.
It was unfair all the same, the young people from the riverside explained to him. No one else received help from the police itself in learning for the test.
“They want to co-opt you too,” they said. “They want to make use of your ninja skills. They are proud of having two real ninja in their ranks, and they think they can use you as weapons.”
Training to be policemen also led to the boys' first contact with what the locals called Martial Arts. It was part of the training programme, but they were exempted of having to participate in the beginners' lessons for their classmates. Instead they were asked to join the police's Martial Arts masters in their own training: it was not possible to cancel Martial Arts training completely, as it was part of the offical requirements of the training programme. So this was Music Town's way of dealing with rules, Sasuke thought: not break them, but get an official exception, or, even better, find an official way to change the rule in a way that made sense.
So the boys taught taijutsu to the Martial Arts masters of the police, and in their turn they learnt Martial Arts from them. The most astonishing thing they learnt was that the local Martial Arts teachers held the view that a true master did not need to fight, and that they believed that this was true for great ninja too: they were so good at fighting that they no longer actually needed to do it. They were very disappointed that Sasuke and Naruto had never heard of the concept. (After some time they remembered that they had indeed heard of it: the mothers of their own taijutsu kids had spoken about it too.)
During their classmates' Martial Arts lessons Naruto now learnt the stuff he needed for the entrance test, and Sasuke was taught horse-riding as he had requested during his interview with the police. People again made stupid jokes about horse-riding and being gay, and Sasuke did his best to ignore them. (Some time later a man from some association of gay policemen approached him, alerted by some of the girls of the class, and asked Sasuke whether he needed help. When Sasuke declined, saying that he could deal with this by himself and that he needed no one to protect him, the man frowned and explained to him that he must not deal with these jokes by beating up people but that he had to tell people off with a calm voice, or to reply with a joke of his own. Until he had learnt this, he should accept help. Sasuke had swallowed: if he wanted to live in Music Town he could not remain neutral to the town's conflicts, even if he still considered them trivial compared to those of his own life, and he'd have to learn to deal with these conflicts in ways that were considered appropriate by people in Music Town.)
When his first riding lesson was about to begin he had already forgotten about these jokes. He was early, and when he arrived at the stables the horses all put out their heads and looked at him. He had never seen a horse from such a short distance, and they looked indeed a bit scary. He was tempted to use his Sharingan on them, but people had already explained to him that he was not allowed to use genjutsu or invade people's minds in order to control them. (Using his Sharingan to learn a new technique, or to see through people's movements in a fight, however, was okay, even if Naruto thought otherwise.) Sasuke was not sure whether it was okay to use his Sharingan on horses, but he didn't want to take a risk.
The riding-teacher was completely relaxed about the horses. “They want to get to know you,” she said. “They hope for some food. But they've already been fed this morning.”
She headed for one of the boxes, opened it and led out the horse that was inside. Secretly Sasuke used his Sharingan on her, but she wasn't forging chakra, nor using any trick: She just patted the horse's neck and led it by the bridle, and the horse followed her to the riding-hall. Sasuke followed her too.
She had to put on the saddle before the lesson could begin, but before this she fed the horse some apples and cookies she had brought with her. She talked to it while she did so: “Look, here's an apple, now be patient, I first have to cut it up.”
The horse kept trying to reach for the apple, and the woman had difficulties to cut it. When she had managed she fed one half after the other to the horse.
“You want to feed him too?” she asked Sasuke.
He didn't answer. The whole scene confused him. He had asked to learn horse-riding because he wanted to know how the local women controlled beasts that were as strong and big as horses, without using chakra or any other tricks. He had not expected them to talk to them as if they were one-year-old children.
The woman misinterpreted his confusion. “Are you scared?” she asked. “You don't have to.”
“I'm not scared,” Sasuke replied automatically, straightening. He still did not show any incliniation to accept a piece of apple and feed it to the horse.
“But you like horses, don't you? Otherwise you wouldn't want to learn to ride.”
Sasuke did not feel any particular affection for horses, but he had lived long enough in Music Town to know that he should not admit this. “I guess I'm really just abit scared,” he said.
“That's okay,” the woman answered, softening. “I was too when I was still a little girl and never had sat on a horse. But there's nothing to be afraid of, and this one is particularly friendly. He's an experienced school-horse, and has taught horse-riding to quite a few beginners. You'll learn it too.”
Sasuke felt even more confused. The woman gave him a quarter of an apple and showed him how to offer it to the horse. The horse's lips were soft and wet, and his eyes warm and brown and full of curiosity. He was really friendly, Sasuke decided and patted him on his neck as he had watched the woman do it.
He tousled the horse's mane, which was thick and black, and as the horse kept begging he fed him the rest of the apple one quarter after the other. He began to enjoy it, and he smiled at the horse.
“Here, that's the last one,” he said when he fed the last bit of apple. “It's all gone now: no apple any more!”
The horse begged for some more, and when he realized that Sasuke didn't have any more apples he turned to the woman.
“No more apples,” she said. “First do some work.” She turned to Sasuke: “Now you have got to know each other, so you can start to learn to ride.”
When the lesson was over Sasuke had learnt to make the horse go and stop and to turn left or right. The woman told him that he learnt quickly, and she told him that he should talk to the horse and tell him that he had done well. She also cut up another apple and gave it to Sasuke so that he might feed it to the horse. He felt more confident now.
“You did really great,” he said, caressing the hair between the horse's ears. “You're a fine horse.”
Within a few days horse-riding became Sasuke's favourite subject. He made quick progress and soon got his own horse both to ride and to look after. “He's a bit nervous and a bit shy, just like you,” his riding-teacher told him.
Sasuke discovered that with this horse he actually had to avoid all signs of nervousness or insecurity but appear all calm and confident: then the horse would be calm too and trust him. He grew attached to the horse, even though it was more difficult than the school-horse and did not always obey him.
“You have to show him who's the master,” a male riding-teacher told him who had come to stand in for the regular teacher when she did not have time. “You have to know what you want and to give clear signs. It's just like dancing. If you're confident and know what you want the lady will follow you into any figure and when the dance is over you'll be her hero and she'll tell you that you made her fly. Only when you're insecure she'll begin to try to lead herself and start discussions.”
Naruto would never tell him that he was his hero, or that he made him fly, Sasuke thought. He wondered whether he should tell the man that he was gay, but he decided against it. All in all he preferred his regular teacher, who spoke of gaining the horse's trust and not of showing him who was the real master. She also advised him to give clear signs, however, and to compliment him when he followed these signs. She told him that he was fully responsible for everything and that if something went wrong it was always his mistake, not the horse's. “You're human, and he's an animal,” she said.
Sasuke thought that when they were dancing Naruto also held him responsible for everything that went wrong, even though he was definitely human himself.
He did not talk to Naruto about his experiences with horse-riding, but he told the people from the riverside about his achievements. They were shocked.
“You're joining the mounted forces of the police! But they're the worst of all.”
“Why? They do their patrols on horseback, that's all.”
“They are used to keep down protests and demonstrations.”
“They're used at football matches to keep the drunken fans in check!” Sasuke was no longer ready to accept all his friends' accusations against the police.
“It's all the same: horses against large crowds of people.”
“You have a better overview from a horse's back.”
“You're more intimidating on a horse. They're used to scare people.”
“Horses aren't aggressive,” Sasuke replied. “They eat grass, not people. They run when they're scared. People don't have to be afraid of them.”
“Ordinary horses aren't aggressive,” a young woman corrected him. “But the police horses are. They will tread on people and trample them to death.”
For some seconds Sasuke was silenced. “My horse won't do that,” he then said. “I won't make it tread on people.”
His friends gave in, admitting that he might become a policeman different from the others, and his horse a police horse different from the others. (Sasuke did not catch the irony.) It turned out that three of the young women had been active riders too at the age of fourteen, and they agreed that one day Sasuke would introduce them to his horse (and convince them that it was not aggressive at all.)

A/N: Thanks again for your reviews and your plusses! You can find my answers at http://www2.adult-fanfiction.org/forum/index.php/topic/14965-blessed-realm/ .It is now possible to access the thread without registration at the forums.
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The Blessed Realm