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Blindsided	By : nescione Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 1138 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1
- 2
- 3
Warnings as always for language (foul, fangirl, and otherwise). Further notes and translations at the end.
Blindsided: Chapter 2

In Which Naruto Shows Off, a reunion of sorts occurs, and Tsunade Practices the Ancient Art of Exposition.
"Oi, oi! Old man!" Naruto grinned down at Jiraiya from his perch in a tree. "You call this a fight? Granny down the street put up more of a challenge!"
"Brat!" Jiraiya grinned back as he slammed his fist into the tree trunk; Naruto was already gone, leaping away faster than the eye could follow. "What are you doing terrorizing little old ladies, anyway?"
He slid out of the way as Naruto came hurtling down with a heel drop that would have split a normal man's skull in two. His student sprang back up as soon as he hit the ground, chakra gathering in the palm of his hand. "I wasn't terrorizing her, she was the one who came after me with the cane!"
Jiraiya didn't really want to admit it, but Naruto had gotten good. Really good, in fact- but the frog sage still had half a head and at least fifty pounds on his student, in addition to nearly forty years of experience. He caught the hand Naruto wasn't using for the Rasengan and flipped the boy onto the ground. Once he had Naruto's face in the dirt, he sat on his student, ruffling the unruly blond hair affectionately with his free hand. "Nice try, brat. You're getting good, but you'll never be good enough to defeat me, the Great Sage Jiraiya!"
"M'not gonna be beat by some stupid, perverted, fat old man!" Naruto's free hand was scratching seals in the dirt with fingers that were rapidly morphing into claws. "Kokonotsu Biyoku Kitsune Kasai!"
The sudden blast of the kyuubi's chakra threw Jiraiya off Naruto's back; he landed on his feet a few yards away, frowning. The blond stood and brought his hands together, forming a quick series of hand seals as fiery chakra flowed around him like water in the shape of six lashing tails. "Get ready, pervert-sennin! Uzumaki Naruto's number two original technique!"
"Number two? You idiot- what do you think you're doing?" Jiraiya tossed a few exploding notes at his student; the way the kyuubi's chakra absorbed them never failed to amaze him. He followed them with a rain of kunai, taking to the trees with a nimbleness that belied his age. "Are you gonna attack me, or what?"
Naruto formed the last seal, and all of the wildly lashing demon chakra disappeared. Jiraiya's eyes widened in shock when he realized that the excess chakra hadn't been absorbed- it had been focused into a long, thin ribbon that wrapped around Naruto's fist. It began spinning, faster and faster, until his hand was surrounded by a whirlwind of energy.
"Ninpou! Tatsumaki!"
The blast actually flung Jiraiya thirty feet into the air, and he wasn't standing anywhere near the epicenter of the attack. He cursed his own carelessness when he hit the ground; that was going to bruise. He staggered to his feet to survey the damage. "Alright. That was pretty good." Like most things Naruto did, it was a little over the top. Effective, but over the top. "New rule, though- no using new techniques on your teacher without telling him what they're going to do, first."
The clearing had tripled in size; Naruto had leveled the forest for a good half-mile on one side. The shockwave that followed the actual attack had ripped the leaves and branches off the trees that weren't felled; it had been that shockwave that had thrown Jiraiya. He'd been lucky to be on the very fringes of the attack- Jiraiya picked up a thick branch and stared at the slender, delicate twig embedded in it. Tornado, indeed.
Naruto was positively beaming, too excited by his teacher's vague approval to care about the destruction he'd caused. "D'you wanna see my other technique? It's a really good one!"
"Is it gonna knock down more of the forest?"
"Nope! It's genjutsu. Sort of. And it's not really mine, but I'm the only one who can do it, and I helped make it, so that still counts, right?" The kid was bouncing back and forth, still grinning. "Well? Well? You wanna see it, right?"
Genjutsu? Naruto had gotten better at it, but genjutsu was still his weakest skill. Jiraiya frowned. He might have been occasionally lax in his teaching duties, but he always kept a close eye on his student. For Naruto's best technique to be a genjutsu was more than a little alarming. This was something he should have known about. He dropped into a cross-legged sitting position and took out his pipe. "Yeah. Sure. Whatever." He lit the pipe and settled his elbows on his knees. "Go for it."
"Kage bunshin no jutsu!" Three Narutos grinned at Jiraiya. One of them began a long series of hand seals, while the other brought his hands together in a very familiar formation. "Henge!" The transformed clone dropped to the ground with a hollow noise. The third Naruto picked it up and stood behind the first- and probably original- Naruto.
Red chakra surrounded both of them; Naruto's eyes were slit-pupilled and blood red, and the whisker marks on his face had become bold dark stripes. He was going all-out, drawing on enough of the demon's chakra to change his body. Jiraiya sucked on his pipe and watched carefully.
"Kitsunenomen!" The clone disappeared in a puff of smoke and the thing it had been holding- a mask, Jiraiya realized, a pointy-eared, grinning fox mask- fell into place over Naruto's face.
Genjutsu, just a genjutsu, only he said it was "sort of" a genjutsu. Stupid brat, of course he didn't pay enough attention in school to know you're not supposed to mix technique types unless you know what you're doing. Now he's gonna knock down the rest of the forest, and I'm gonna have to pay for it... Jiraiya puffed on his pipe and glared as the forest melted around him. He could tell it was genjutsu; Naruto still sucked at illusion techniques.
"Kai!" He blinked. The forest was still melting. In fact, it had caught on fire, and Naruto was nowhere to be seen. Even his chakra signature was gone; Jiraiya was all alone in the clearing, surrounded by melting, burning trees and little floating squiggles of flame. Fox fire. He sighed. "Interesting effect, brat."
A different set of seals, this time, for a more powerful release technique. "Testu!" The forest slid back into its proper shape and stopped burning, but the floating spirals of fox fire remained, and there was still no sign of his student. Jiraiya knocked the ash out of his pipe and put it away. If Naruto wanted to play this way, fine. Jiraiya kept one eye on the fox-fire as he pulled out a blank scroll and a kunai. He'd forgotten more about genjutsu than Naruto would ever learn; no matter how impressive Naruto's technique was, he still wasn't any match for one of the sannin.
The little flames shivered, and Jiraiya rolled out of the way as a wall of force slammed into the ground where he'd been sitting.
"You're telegraphing your movements too much! Suiton: Tsunami no jutsu!" The wave of water Jiraiya summoned didn't extinguish the floating curls of flame; they looked a little sodden, but otherwise unharmed. Jiraiya wasted no time in slicing a finger open and unrolling the blank scroll. Demon or not, the kyuubi was still a fire spirit, and fire was just another element. It could be contained.
Tsunade was the greatest healer Konoha had ever produced, and Orochimaru could kill people with his brain, but of all the shinobi in Hidden Leaf, no one was more skilled with seals than Jiraiya the Toad Sage.
"Fuukan no koumajutsu!" He scrawled the kanji onto the paper with broad, sweeping strokes of his hand and threw the entire scroll into the center of the fox fire when it was finished. The paper unrolled and wrapped around the flames; Jiraiya could see grasping, shadowy hands in the folds and twists of it, clinging to the grinning licks of fire. When the last bit of it had been wrapped up, the whole thing fell to the mud with a heavy, wet sound; what had once been a scroll was now a ceramic fox mask, crawling with seals.
Jiraiya felt the chakra flare behind him as he was picking up the mask; he leapt out of the way just in time for another wave of force to chew up the ground where he'd been standing. It was unfortunate that he didn't have the luxury of using most of his attacks; Jiraiya preferred to fight on a much larger scale, and they just weren't isolated enough for him to risk that.
Naruto seemed to have forgotten for the time being, but he was willing to be that Naruto didn't remember much at the moment.
The creature staring at Jiraiya, surrounded by fire, was not his student. It wasn't even human. It walked on two legs, but it had six lashing tails and six broad black stripes along its muzzle and far, far too many teeth. Its chakra was a physical presence, strong enough to drive Jiraiya backwards, towards the edge of the clearing.
It was a sight the sennin saw in his nightmares, occasionally, only this one was smaller and had fewer tails. However, it would only be a matter of time before Naruto learned to fully utilize the power at his disposal; his maximum power had gone off the scale. Jiraiya thought of his first student, and felt something a little like despair settle in his chest.
"Naruto! Enough!" He pulled out another blank scroll, hoping it wouldn't be necessary. The fox creature cocked its head to the side, tongue lolling out over sharp, sharp teeth. There was mischief in its glowing red eyes, but not, Jiraiya was relieved to note, hostility.
Then again, he wasn't sure he wanted to deal with the mischief of a six-tailed demon fox anymore than he would its malice. The demon dropped to four legs and whined low in its throat, tails drooping.
"Enough, Naruto." His student had proven his point. The longer he had to look at the reincarnation of that...thing, the more inclined he would be to forget that his student and the fox were separate entities and just seal the whole mess of them- fox, child, distorted chakra, and all- into a tree.
The fox whined again and slunk forward slowly, pausing in front of Jiraiya to nose at the mask in the sennin's hand. Jiraiya looked from the sealed mask to the giant fox, narrowed his eyes, and brought his fist down on the fox's head. It yelped. He felt a little better.
"Stupid brat." A few quick hand seals and the mask was just a mask, albeit a mask that practically glowed with stored chakra. "You can't go around putting that much of yourself into an imperfect jutsu. Do you know how easily I could kill you right now?"
If the fox had eyebrows, it would have been raising them. As it was, the animal's features somehow managed to convey complete and utter disbelief without the aid of eyebrows. Jiraiya thunked it on head one last time for good measure and held out the mask.
Strings of red chakra flowed between the fox and the mask, dissolving both a little around the edges, until there was just Naruto, sitting cross legged in the grass, holding a plain white mask. He stared at it thoughtfully.
"That was weird."
"Idiot. Take off your shirt, I need to check your seal." Jiraiya crossed his arms impatiently. "Can you even tell me what the hell you just did, or was it all instinctual?"
Naruto waved him off. "Hey, hey, old man, calm down. I only took down two seals, it's fine. I told you it was just a genjutsu, right? Kage bunshin starts it off, so I can divert enough chakra into the illusion, and then the rest of it goes into opening the first two seals and the henge."
"You weren't human- I'm not taking any risks. Take off your shirt, or I'll seal you into a scroll."
The boy sighed and did as he was told. "The mask thing shouldn't have happened, though." His voice was muffled by his shirt as he pulled it over his head. "I didn't know you could do that with the seals."
Jiraiya pushed him flat on his back and examined the spiral around his navel. "There are thousands of sealing jutsu made specifically for sealing demon chakra. Those flames practically reeked of it."
Naruto finally had the sense to look a little worried. "They shouldn't have. The illusion was all in the first mask, and that was my chakra, not the fox's."
"It's starting to look like there isn't a difference." The seal was still intact, and the lines were still heavy and dark around Naruto's navel, but a few of the markings looked slightly altered. "You said that jutsu wasn't yours- who taught it to you?"
"Who do you think, pervert-sennin?" Naruto's head was turned to the side, eyes fixed on the torn up ground.
Jiraiya sat back on his heels and studied the spiral seal thoughtfully. "Yondaime did good work when he made this. Very good work. If I find out you've been messing with it, I will kick your ass."
Naruto's head snapped up, eyes blazing. "I wasn't! I didn't do anything I haven't done before!"
"Except try out a jutsu the fox demon taught you. You turned into him, Naruto. A miniature, six-tailed version of him, but still." He jabbed viciously at the new lines on the seal. "Here, here, and here, these markings are all new. If you keep pulling stupid shit like this, the whole thing will rewrite itself. I shouldn't have to tell you what that means."
"Quit poking me, pervert! He's not gonna get out. I know what I'm doing!"
He ignored his student, focusing intently on the seal. He nicked his index finger and traced new lines around Naruto's navel. The lines darkened and turned red around the edges, looking like a particularly ugly burn scar; the new markings melted into Naruto's skin, locked into the seal. Naruto whimpered and squirmed, but Jiraiya's hand on his chest kept him in place. The seal flared brightly for a moment, then faded, leaving behind a faint smell of burning hair and blood.
"Promise me you won't use that jutsu ever again."
The skin around the seal was red and swollen; Naruto poked at it and sighed. "When I'm in that form, I have twelve times as much power as when I manifest the kyuubi's chakra normally, and I'm invisible. Invisible. You'd need to, like, be a Hyuuga to even know I'm in the area, never mind where I am exactly." He sat up and met Jiraiya's eyes with a hard blue stare. "It's cool. And if I need it, I need it."
The pipe was out again; Jiraiya always smoked when he was thinking too hard. "Don't do it unless it's absolutely necessary, brat. And it shouldn't be- that other technique yours should do just fine." He stood and offered his hand to his student. "Nice work on that, by the way."
The blond bounded to his feet and bounced back and forth on his feet, still shirtless. "So we can go home now?" He grinned hopefully up at his teacher.
Jiraiya snorted and threw Naruto's shirt at him. "Yeah. We can go home."
Naruto's whoop of joy sent as many panicked birds flying out of the trees as his overpowered attacks had.
xxxxxxx

"So the trick is to get it moving really, really fast- it's actually a pretty low-powered technique, at least in terms of the chakra that actually goes into the blast, but you use up a lot of energy getting it to go fast enough. If it's not fast enough, you don't get the aftershock. And! And! I can make it an elemental jutsu, too! I mean, it's already kind of a wind one, but I can make it a fire or water one too, real easy." Naruto happily babbled about his new techniques while Jiraiya listened with half an ear; even taking the most direct road, they'd still been traveling for five days, and Naruto had yet to shut up.
It would be nightfall by the time they reached Konoha; as it was, they still had an hour or so to go. Jiraiya wasn't sure he could take much longer before he gagged the boy.
"Hey, hey, pervert! Do you think Sakura will go out with me when we get back?" Naruto had switched topics without skipping a beat.
It was possible that the kid's thought processes made sense to someone, somewhere, but Jiraiya doubted it.
"Nope."
The blond looked crestfallen for half a moment. "Yeah, probably not. No matter how cool I really am, she's still gonna think I'm a loser." Naruto scratched the back of his head and grinned. "Hey, maybe she's going out with thick brows, now. Whadya think?"
Casting his eyes heavenward as if asking for patience, Jiraiya replied, "If she thinks you're a loser, that guy doesn't stand a chance. At least you have something like fashion sense now. You'll find out everything when we get there, anyway. Why don't you give my ears a rest for a while, huh?" He was still waiting for Naruto to realize they were being shadowed by someone in the forest around the path.
"Ch'. But we're going so slowly! We're almost there, y'know? Can't we pick up the pace a little?" The blond bounded ahead and skipped backwards up the road for a few feet. "C'mon, old man, think of the bath houses! All those naked girls just waiting to be spied on-"
Not pausing for a breath, launched a handful of kunai into the branches above the path. "Sorry, waiting to be 'researched,'" he finished to Jiraiya. Then to the treetops, "Show yourself, or the next one goes through your eye!"
A black and white clad figure dropped soundlessly onto the road before them. The hermit raised an eyebrow as the Anbu scout bowed respectfully. "Jiraiya-sama, Uzumaki-san. The path ahead is washed out; the hokage suggests that you take an alternate route." A snarling tiger mask looked up at them.
Somehow, Naruto managed to keep up a stream of nonsensical babble and remain aware of his surroundings; he'd gotten quite good at multitasking. Jiraiya felt a swell of pride at his student; the kid had picked up on their stalker soon than he'd expected. Naruto had actually learned something. The feeling of pride was quickly replaced by one of irritation when Naruto regarded the Anbu member, unimpressed. "What's the old hag talking about? Washed out? Looks fine to me." He moved as if to push past the Anbu guard, but Jiraiya grabbed him by the back of his jacket, pulling him up short.
"For once, leave the thinking to those with brains," he growled. "You gonna show us where this 'alternate route' is, or do we just go wandering around the forest on our own?"
The tiger-masked Anbu nodded and took to the tree tops with Jiraiya and Naruto at his heels. It didn't take long for Jiraiya to recognize the path they were taking; it would lead them to an Anbu lookout station in the mountains, just outside the edge of town. Orochimaru had used it to stash bodies before he left. The only reason Jiraiya knew about it (he'd never had the right temperament for the Anbu) was because the snake had tried to go to ground there; they'd fought for the last time not half a mile away.
He kept his eyes sharp as they moved closer and closer to their destination. Moving at breakneck speed, it didn't take them long to cross the distance between the main road and the mountains, and if he looked carefully- yes.
There- running along one of the greater trees, the older ones that Konoha took its emblem from, was line of overgrown scar tissue. His feet had caught in the bark, chakra tearing it away with explosive force. He could track the passage of that fight in the scars on the land; they were old and faint now, but some wounds never healed completely.
Hell, some of his scars from that battle still ached sometimes. His eyes traced a long, broad line in the undergrowth, barely visible but for the way the plants had grown over it. At least he'd given as good as he'd gotten, even if he probably wouldn't have survived if it weren't for the lookout station being nearby. Tsunade had been there, waiting, and she-
Was staring at him with murder in her eyes and a pair of metal plated gloves on her fists. Briefly, Jiraiya wondered what he'd done to piss her off this time before teleporting himself to the safety of the tall treetops.
Naruto, unfortunately, was not so lucky. Jiraiya heard the all too familiar noise of a fist meeting a skull and winced in sympathy. Better the brat than him, however. Naruto was young enough to bounce back from Tsunade's love-taps; his own head didn't need any more dents from her fist.
xxxxxxx
"You still didn't have to hit so hard, Tsunade-baba. Seriously." There was a lump forming on the back of Naruto's head. He knew it would be gone in a few minutes, but it was the principle of the thing. He'd been gone for three years- a less violent welcome would have been nice.
"Do you want to see how much harder I can hit? Stop calling me that." Tsunade crossed her arms over her chest, partly in annoyance and partly in an attempt to keep Jiraiya from trying to look down her shirt. "You're six months late. Six months. Where the hell have you been?"
"You know exactly where we've been; I've been sending my reports. We were sidetracked by the Akatsuki in Rain Country, and I needed to gather more information. " Jiraiya wasn't bothering to hide the fact that he was staring down Tsunade's shirt.
"What you needed to do was come home, you stupid pervert!" Tsunade's fist slammed into the rock wall behind Jiraiya's head, sending chips of stone flying. She pointed to the round table in the center of the room. "Sit."
Jiraiya and Naruto hastily complied, not wanting to chance the wrath in her eyes. She dropped a scroll on the table. "Read."
It was hard to keep from fidgeting while Jiraiya read; Naruto didn't want to be stuck in a cave with the pervert and Tsunade-baba. Sure, it was good to see the old hag, but he was hungry and he wanted to see Sakura-chan and Shikamaru and Iruka-sensei and- everyone really. He wanted to see Konoha, to make sure his village was still there, waiting for him. The way Tsunade was glaring at the scroll in Jiraiya's hands and the way she was tapping her fingers (still in those gloves, he noted with a wince) against her arms forced him to sit still, however.
Jiraiya finished reading and set the scroll in the center of the table. "How bad is it?"
Her fingers stopped tapping and clenched her shirtsleeves instead. "Bad. Orochimaru's shinobi aren't skilled, but there are a lot of them, and he's allied with Cloud and Mist. Even with Sand's help, we're back to where we were twenty years ago. I've lost nearly a third of the Anbu, and we're giving field promotions to genin just for staying alive. He has us on the defensive and we're still falling back." She slumped into a chair and pinched the bridge of her nose. "We're losing. He's toying with us, and we're losing."
Naruto froze as he reached for the scroll, Tsunade's words sinking in. Losing? No. No fucking way is my village going to lose to that snake bastard. Not my village. He had already lost Sasuke; he wasn't going to stand for losing anything else. Red began to bleed into his eyes.
"Control yourself, Naruto. She's not finished." Jiraiya was more serious than Naruto had seen him in a very long time.
Slowly, his claws reverted back to ordinary fingernails, but the fist he slammed into the table still hit with enough force to leave a dent in the wood. "Give me a team and I'll go rip the fucker's throat out with my teeth, 'baa-san."
Tsunade blinked at him, and smiled. Even with her illusion, he could see wrinkles around her eyes. "Stop calling me that. Three years, and you still haven't learned any respect- I hope you learned at least a little about fighting."
"Of course I have! I can kick the pervert's ass any day of the week! I-"
"He's good. Not that good, but he can hold his own." Jiraiya tapped the scroll with a blunt fingernail. "He's also still my student. I don't care how desperate the situation is- if you're even thinking about giving in to Orochimaru's demands, I'll kill you myself."
The hokage narrowed her eyes at Jiraiya. "What kind of person do you think I am?"
The white haired man leaned forward, mouth drawn into a thin line. "One who would have betrayed her village for a dead dream."
She slapped him. Naruto's eyes widened in shock and sympathy; there were whole levels to this conversation that he was not privy to, and he was confused. He'd seen Jiraiya and Tsunade bicker before, but this was different. He didn't like the open hostility in Tsunade's eyes, or the quiet resignation in Jiraiya's. "Hey, wait a minute, what's going on?"
"Orochimaru lost Sasuke." Tsunade hadn't taken her eyes off Jiraiya, but Naruto couldn't care less if the two sannin were fighting. Relief hit him like a physical blow, rocking him back in his chair. Tsunade continued. "He wants you in exchange for a ceasefire."
"He-what?" Naruto wasn't used to being struck speechless, but this was too surreal. "He wants me?" The words Sasuke's free, Sasuke's free ran in circles through his head, obscuring any other rational thought.
"He wants to use you as bait. The only thing Sasuke cares about is Itachi, and right now the quickest way to get Itachi's attention is with the Kyuubi." Jiraiya's voice was very cold. "I mean it, Tsunade. You're not doing this."
"Of course I'm not!" Tsunade and Jiraiya were too busy glaring at each other to notice the way Naruto went still and silent at the mention of the fox demon. "Why do you think I brought you here instead of letting you walk through the front gate?" She stood and began pacing. "I don't have many choices, but that was never one of them. Naruto, give me your hitai-ate."
"What? What the fuck-" He pushed away from the table, fingers leaving deep gouges in the wood as he moved to his feet. The strangeness of the situation had him thinking in monosyllabic circles. Mine! He could see red in the corners of his eyes.
"Sit down." He obeyed instantly, without thinking. "I'm not giving you to Orochimaru. I'm giving you a mission."
The world slowed to a saner pace. Once again, his fingers reverted to dull, human digits with a tingle. Naruto flexed them and frowned at the Hokage. "What kind of mission?"
"Undercover. A-rank, at least. The official word will be that you are a B class missing nin; since you haven't killed anyone, I can't rank you any higher than that. Be thankful, brat." Her warning tone made him shut his mouth before he could protest. "You are going to stay as far away from the Akatsuki and Sound as possible. Konoha will be fine; Orochimaru will give us a few months grace period. He's more interested in Sasuke than us, anyway."
"He'll know we were here. You can't honestly believe the forest isn't full of his spies." The tilt of Jiraiya's head was rebellious.
"What would you have me do?" The table creaked in protest as Tsunade brought her palms down on it. "It's a risk we had to take; if anyone asks, you came back and Naruto escaped before we could put him in lockdown."
"He'll know you're lying. He's not stupid, Tsunade, and he knows you."
Her mouth was drawn into a hard, thin line. "I don't have time to argue with you. We're losing. Every day we continue to fight is another dozen lives lost. I am protecting this village as I see fit; if you want to question my judgment, do it later."
She unrolled a map onto the table. "Naruto, you're going to Sand; if you follow this path through the forest, you should avoid being seen. When you get there, you will be living as a civilian- do not attract attention by doing stupid things. Sand is our ally, but their hospitality will only extend so far, so please don't antagonize Gaara. The two of you will have a better chance of resisting the Akatsuki together than you would apart."
"What about Sasuke?" He didn't like the thought of leaving; he'd only just gotten back, and no matter what kind of mission Tsunade called it, it still felt like exile.
Jiraiya snorted and Tsunade frowned. "Sasuke is no longer Konoha's concern. He's made it clear where his loyalties lie."
"What's that supposed to mean? If Orochimaru is looking for him, shouldn't we do something about that?"
"I don't have the time or the resources to be worrying about a traitor, and neither do you." She stood over him and held out her hand. "So don't you dare go looking for Sasuke. Now give me your hitai-ate; you're going to Sand."
Naruto refused to meet her eyes as he untied the headband. "You better take good care of it, old hag."
"I am sorry about this." The wrinkles around her eyes were even more pronounced as she took his hitai-ate. "I'll hold onto it for you, until Konoha is rebuilt and ready to welcome you back with open arms."
The smile he gave her in response was similar to the grins he used to give Iruka when he failed a test. "Come on, Tsunade-baba, you don't have to hold onto it forever." He felt naked without the familiar strip of cloth keeping his hair out of his eyes.
"Idiot!" She reached for him suddenly, pressing a kiss to his forehead and holding him close. "Stupid brat." She let go of him as quickly as she'd grabbed him and rubbed irritably at her eyes. "There's a pack with enough supplies to last you for about a week by the door. They'll be waiting for you in Suna."
He gave her a real smile and ran a hand through his now unbound spikes of hair. "I'll be okay. And you! Pervert!" He pointed at Jiraiya, who was feigning boredom. "If you run into Orochimaru before I do, kick his ass extra hard for me!"
His teacher snorted and gave a lazy salute. "Sure. Now get out of here."
Naruto took the pack by the doorway and waved goodbye one last time. He nodded to the silent Anbu guard outside the cave and forced himself not to look back as he set out into the fading twilight.
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kokonotsu biyoku kitsune kasai- nine tail fox fire (what, you expected originality? Pshaw!)
tatsumaki- tornado
kitsunenomen- mask of the fox
suiton- water technique
tetsu- iron
fuukan no koumajutsu- seal of demon invocation
tsunami- ...really big wave
Ngaa. Naruto is amazingly difficult to write sometimes. I'm not sure how well the images in the "fight" at the beginning actually work; comments/suggestions/gripes on characterization and text flow would be lovely. (Hey, it almost looks like I have a plot, doesn't it?)
A thousand thanks for all the amazing reviews; any response at all from readers is wonderful, but some of you went above and beyond what most reviewers do, and I appreciate that so much. Hopefully I'll continue to live up to expectations. Also: I am lazy like a very lazy thing and work very slowly unless poked repeatedly with pointy things. So a month or more between updates will probably be standard; possibly it will be less now that I am on break, but I am very lazy and easily distracted.
So, you know, make with the reviewing and keep me on track, yo. *grin*
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Blindsided