Naruto: God of Shinobi

Chapter 47: The Namikage

He found them near the edge of the village, in a clearing that sat just inside the treeline where the lamps did not reach. Dosu stood with his arms crossed, bandaged face still and unreadable as a wrapped stone. Kin was beside him with her dark hair loose, her arms at her sides, her sharp eyes finding Naruto the moment he stepped into the clearing. Zaku leaned against a tree with his jaw set and his sleeves rolled up and the particular posture of someone who had already decided how this conversation was going to go.

Naruto stopped in the center. Hands in pockets. Face blank.

"So you really came," Dosu said.

"Of course I did, this is important."

He looked at the three of them and let the silence run for a moment.

"I'm gonna offer you something," he said. "But first you're gonna listen."

Zaku's mouth twitched. He did not speak yet. Dosu said nothing. Kin watched.

"Orochimaru is most likely going to sacrifice you," Naruto said. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just flat and factual. "Remember how he sent you to test Sasuke's curse mark. He knew you'd fail. He knew you'd get broken. He doesn't care about you. You're tools. When you're not useful anymore, he throws you away."

A beat.

"You've got a choice now."

Zaku laughed. It came out short and sharp, the laugh of someone who thinks they have already heard everything worth hearing. "A choice. Right. Let me guess… we work for leaf?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, this place sucks!” Naruto corrected. “I meant you will work for me.”

“A thirteen year old Leaf genin who hasn't even passed the prelims yet?" He pushed off the tree. "Come on. You're nothing, man. You're literally nothing."

"Zaku… are you forgetting who he is?" Dosu's voice was quiet.

"Nah, forget it. This is bullshit! He walks around like he owns the whole village, like everybody's supposed to just stop and bow down, and I'm supposed to what, take him seriously? He's a kid. He's a kid with a big mouth and I'm done standing here pretending he's not."

Naruto moved.

The killing intent came first, a single narrow line of it straight through the air like a wire pulled taut, and Zaku froze mid-word with his mouth still open. Then Naruto was behind him, and the kunai went through his throat clean and fast and without ceremony, the way you close a door you are done with.

Zaku's hands went up. Found his throat. Found nothing they could do about it. He went forward into the dirt and did not get up.

The clearing was very quiet.

Naruto crouched, wiped the kunai on the back of Zaku's jacket, and stood up. He looked at Dosu and Kin. Dosu had not moved. Kin's hand was at her mouth, her eyes wide and very bright.

"He wasn't gonna listen," Naruto said.

He paused. His eyes moved between them.

"Same offer. Work for me, or don't. Those are the options."

Dosu looked at Zaku's body. At the blood spreading dark and slow under it. He looked at Kin. She had lowered her hand. Her face had gone very still.

"What does working for you look like?" Dosu said.

"I'm leaving this village soon. There are people waiting for me already. In the Land of Waves there's a bridge. The Naruto Uzumaki Bridge. Find a kid near there named Inari." He looked at them both. "Tell him the Namikage sent you. He'll know what to do. You wait for me there."

“The Namikage? Are you this… supposed new Kage?” Kin asked.

“Soon…. Very soon, just you wait! I will show them all!!” Naruto said.

Kin's voice came out quieter than she probably intended. "And if we say no."

Naruto looked at her. Her gaze was steady now. Steadier than her hands.

"Orochimaru will kill you when you're no longer useful. I'm not him. But I'm also not asking twice."

Kin looked at him for a long moment. He let her.

"Okay," she said.

Dosu nodded once.

Naruto held Kin's eyes for a moment longer. Something passed between them, not warm exactly, but real. She had made a decision with her whole body and he had watched it happen and now neither of them pretended otherwise.

"Good," he said.

He glanced at Dosu, then back at her. "You'll be alright."

Kin exhaled. "Yeah," she said. "We will."

He turned and walked into the trees. He did not look back. Behind him the clearing was silent except for the sound of the wind moving through the upper branches, and somewhere in that silence two people were deciding what came next.

---

The streets were emptier now. Later than he had realized. The vendors had packed up and most of the lights in the windows above the road had gone dark, and Naruto walked with his hands in his pockets and thought about Karin and the way her mouth had gone small when he said his name.

He heard them before he saw them.

Temari's voice first. Bright and carrying. Then Kankuro telling her to keep it down. Then nothing from Gaara, which was typical.

He came around the corner and they were there in the middle of the street, the three of them, Sand headbands catching what little light was left. Temari saw him and her whole face changed. Not subtle about it either. She smiled the way some people smile when something they were hoping for shows up without them having to ask.

It was a good smile. He had noticed it before.

"Naruto," she said. "Look at that."

Kankuro groaned audibly. "Temari. Please."

"Kankuro. Absolutely not."

She walked toward Naruto and he stopped and let her close the distance, which she did without hesitation. She had a couple inches on most girls her age and she used them like she knew it.

"How are you," she said.

"Better now."

She laughed. Quick and genuine. "That's a line."

"Is it working?"

"Little bit." She tilted her head. "Where are you coming from at this hour?"

"Business."

"Mm." She did not press. He noticed that too. "And now?"

"Now I ran into you."

Behind her, Kankuro had sat down on a low wall with the expression of someone enduring something. Gaara stood apart, arms at his sides, sand curling in slow low arcs around his feet.

Naruto looked past Temari for a moment, caught Gaara's eyes, looked away.

"Come with me," he said. "There's an ice cream place around the corner. Still open."

Temari's eyebrows went up. "You're actually asking me out."

"Yeah."

"In the middle of the street."

"I work with what I've got."

She smiled again. The good one. Her arms crossed but loosely, the way arms cross when someone is trying not to seem too easy and not quite managing it. "Ice cream," she repeated.

"Best in the village. I know the guy."

"You know everybody."

"Not everybody. But enough."

She was about to say something. Then Gaara stepped forward.

"No," he said.

Just that. One word. The sand at his feet stopped moving, or rather it moved differently, tighter, the way water looks before it boils.

Naruto looked at him. "I wasn't talking to you."

"You're talking to my sister."

"Trying to. You keep interrupting."

Temari turned. "Gaara. Stop." Her voice was careful. The kind of careful that has been practiced. "I can figure out my own night."

Gaara did not look at her. He kept his eyes on Naruto. "You're not going with him."

Naruto stepped around Temari. He stopped two meters from Gaara and tilted his head.

"Gaara of the Sand," he said. "You've got a gorgeous sister who can clearly handle herself and you're over here brooding like somebody owes you something. Find your own girl. Stop hovering over her."

He turned back to Temari and reached for her hand.

The sand moved faster than he had expected. A flat sheet of it swiped across the space between them and knocked his hand aside at the wrist, not hard enough to hurt, but definitive. A statement.

Naruto went still.

He turned back to Gaara slowly.

"You think you're the most dangerous thing in this street," he said.

Gaara's eyes were flat and pale and completely without warmth. "Shut up." A pause. "Or I'll kill you."

He meant it. That was the thing about Gaara. He always meant it. The words didn't rise like a threat. They fell like a fact, heavy and without drama, and Naruto felt the chill run clean up his spine.

And then he was somewhere else.

---

The golden cage was in front of him. The Fox was watching.

"The hell," Naruto said. "What is this?"

The Nine Tails tilted its enormous head. Its tails swept slow arcs through the dark behind it. "You felt it."

"Something did that. That wasn't him."

"No," Kurama said. "It was not. There is another inside the boy. The One Tails. Shukaku of the Sand."

Naruto was quiet for a moment. "So he’s like me. He's a jinchuriki."

"Yes. Though his situation is... different from yours. The seal is unstable. Shukaku bleeds through in ways your seal never allowed me to."

"So the sand isn't him."

"The sand is always listening to something older than him. He believes he controls it. He does not, not entirely. And he has never slept. Sleep lets Shukaku in. So he stays awake, and the line between them gets thinner every year."

Naruto processed that. He looked at the bars of the cage, at the red eyes behind them.

"Interesting," he said.

The Fox said nothing else. Naruto turned and went back.

---

The street snapped back. Gaara was in front of him, exactly where he had been, the sand still moving.

Naruto took a breath. Took a step back.

He looked at Gaara, really looked, and what he saw under the pale eyes and the dried blood tattoo and the sand curling like something alive and hungry was just a kid. A kid who had not slept in years and did not know where he ended and the monster began.

"I get it," Naruto said.

Gaara's expression did not change.

"Possessed by something you didn't ask for. Everybody hating you. Hating yourself back. Thinking the killing is the only thing that makes you real." He paused. "I get it, man. I genuinely get it."

"Don't," Gaara said.

"They put one in me too." Naruto looked at the passersby on the edges of the street. Some of them had stopped. Watching. The way they always watched him. Fear dressed up as contempt. "Same village. Different monster. And look how they look at me."

Gaara looked. Temari looked. Kankuro looked.

The watching faces. The distance people kept without thinking about it.

"So here's the thing," Naruto said. "Why am I not a wreck about it? I've got the Nine Tails in me. It should be worse. Objectively worse." He smiled. It was thin and real. "Because I decided they don't get to have that. They hate me, fine. They're gonna hate me either way. I'm not gonna spend my one life making myself miserable to match what they want me to be."

He shrugged. "Fuck them and their kids and their whole opinions."

Kankuro made a small noise behind them. Temari was very still.

Gaara said nothing. But he was listening. Naruto could see it in the faint shift in his shoulders, in the sand settling just slightly lower around his feet.

Naruto started walking. Past Gaara. Past the three of them. Then he stopped.

"Also," he said, without turning. "I know why you're here. That you’re with him. Not just for the exams." He let that sit. "Make sure your elders aren't being played. Whatever's coming from inside this village, make sure it's actually worth it for Sand. Because Konoha is strong. Stronger than people give it credit for. His help won't be enough."

He turned then. Looked at Temari. She was watching him with her arms crossed and her expression caught somewhere between unsettled and something else he did not name.

"I'll see you around for that ice cream," he said.

She searched his face. "You're serious."

"Yeah."

She uncrossed her arms. Looked down. Looked back up. "Okay," she said. Quiet. Not performing anything. Just okay.

He reached for her hand again. Slow this time. Obvious. Giving her the chance to decide.

She looked at his hand. Looked at his face. Then she let him take it, her fingers coming around his without hurry, and she did not say anything about it, just held it for a moment the way you hold something you're not sure yet whether to keep.

He squeezed once. Let go.

Then he looked at Kankuro. "Take him somewhere nice. Girls, food, something. He's gonna be a buzzkill his whole life if somebody doesn't intervene."

Kankuro blinked. "I'm sorry, is this the part where you give me life advice?"

"Yeah."

"You're thirteen."

"Thirteen and correct."

He walked.

Behind him the three of them stood in the street and nobody said anything for a moment, and then Kankuro said, very quietly, "what just happened," and Temari did not answer, and Gaara stood with the sand low and still around his feet and looked at the space where Naruto had been.

Next Time: The Old Pervert -- A name surfaces from the village's past. Jiraiya of the Sannin is in Konoha. And he is doing research for his books.