The town of Kuoh, in Japan, is a relatively quiet place. Compared to the cities and tourist locations surrounding it like Akihabara, Tokyo, and Kyoto, all of which have many attractions and bustling streets, the only claim to fame the sedate town has is a relatively well renowned– if somewhat odd– school.
Truly, the school is the only thing about the town that distinguishes it from any other small town in the mind of the average Japanese citizen. Most of the well distinguished schools the world over tend to only be known as places of excellence in a technical field or three, places where prospective students seek scholarships and apply for in the hopes of jump starting a career in specific high-skill, high-demand, high-pay fields where only the most talented can successfully enter, such as Law, Technology and the Sciences, or the Arts. Many of these places have highly prominent sports teams as well, almost as prominent as their primary fields of education, if not moreso.
Kuoh's most prestigious school– simply named Kuoh Academy– is distinct from these other high end institutions in many ways.
Firstly, for most of its existence up until just a couple years ago, it had been an all-girls school, a dying breed even in the traditionally role-oriented culture of Japan. It only became co-ed recently enough that even though it is not its first or even second year as such, the student demographics are still heavily in favor of girls as of the final tally of new and current students to start the year.
Secondly, it may not offer an education more comprehensive and accredited in any specific fields like an Ivy League style school, or have an exceptionally renowned sports team of its own on a national level, however it is widely accepted as the best of Japan's "all-rounder" institutions, fit to prep a student well beyond the average for the majority of future roles and positions in society.
The last reason for Kuoh Academy's claim to fame, and the one that most people consider to be its most stand-out quality, is that it is not just a college. Kuoh Academy is a so-called "escalator" school; simultaneously a primary school, a high school, and a college, all in one. They are separated into divisions, each having their own section of the new main building for the sake of easily and efficiently sorting incoming and outgoing transfers, however any student accepted into the primary, middle, or high school division are already 'students of Kuoh Academy' and do not need to re-apply when entering the next division up.
All this is to say, Kuoh Town is a quiet and relaxed place with not much other than a single school distinguishing it from anywhere else.
You would be forgiven for thinking otherwise if you were the bird resting on the bedroom window sill of a two story corner apartment in the residential area of town.
"Dammit, dammit, DAMMIT! I overslept! SHIIIIT!" Said bird was startled into flight at the sudden commotion and noise.
Moments prior, a boy had been lightly snoring away on his bed with his limbs splayed out every which way and a rumpled fuzzy orange blanket barely covering any of his pajama clad form, nothing but images of mutant textbooks and sentient school stationary haunting his dreams. Draped over his stomach was an open Japanese history textbook, and lying scattered next to his right hand was a small pile of note cards. Across from the foot of his bed, there was a medium sized poster of the periodic table of elements taped on the wall above a worn wooden dresser, and next to them was a much taller poster of a one to one scale diagram showing the front and back of the human muscular system.
On the side of the bed not against the window there was a nightstand, on top of which was a brand new smartphone, two empty cups of instant ramen, and a mechanical alarm clock.
Dreaming of nightmarish scenes any academic slacker would be mentally scarred by, the boy was startled awake by seemingly nothing. Shooting straight up with a gasp and launching the school supplies across the floor, he tumbled out of his bed entangled by the blanket. After a few seconds of struggling to escape the blanket, he achieved his goal and reached up to swipe his phone off of the bedside table and check the time.
After a few more seconds– this time of screaming curses loud enough to give an unlucky pigeon PTSD– he rushed around his room shedding his pajamas and nightcap, and grabbed a change of clothes from his dresser drawers and deodorant from atop it, before practically sprinting out of his room entirely unaware of the grave trauma he'd inflicted on a hapless bystander. He ran through the bathroom door directly across the hallway from his room and went through a massively abridged version of his morning routine, skipping the morning exercise, shower, and teeth-brushing for just swiping a deodorant stick under his arms and swishing around some mouthwash while he threw on his hastily grabbed clothes.
Now wearing a burnt-orange t-shirt and dark slacks, he spit the mouthwash into the sink and jumped out of the bathroom, skidding lightly on his socks. He almost began to run down the short hallway to the stairs before realizing he was missing a piece of his uniform. "Crap! I'm so gonna be late!" he wailed as he darted back into his room to grab a collared white button-up shirt from a hanger in his closet.
He immediately resumed his mad dash into the hallway and towards the stairs, flipping the button-up around and slipping his arms through as he ran. In just a couple seconds he reached the top of the staircase, and instead of going down it normally or even skipping steps, he simply continued forward at the same speed and all but jumped straight down to the mid way platform. Landing at an angle and on one foot, he kicked off the floor in the same motion, propelling himself almost one hundred and eighty degrees in the other direction down the second portion of stairs.
He slowed for a moment upon landing, having almost stumbled from the action this time in trying to adjust his momentum to run towards his front door.
"Tch." Having reached the front door and pausing to grab his school bag and blazer from the coat rack while shimmying his feet into his sneakers, the annoyance at the stumble broke through the single-minded rush to not be late, and made his brows furrow slightly.
'Gotta be more careful, it wouldn't be good to go and twist my ankle or something because of falling back into old habits.'
Shaking his head to get back into a good headspace, he opened his front door and stepped outside onto the apartment complex's private sidewalk while swinging his blazer behind him and tying the sleeves around his waist. He then gently kicked his door closed behind him and started forward into a light run in the same motion. One of his neighbors, a stay-at-home mother of two, called out a good morning greeting to him while watering the plants in front of her door. He didn't stop to chat like he normally might, but he did wave back and return the greeting before continuing towards the main road.
His apartment complex was a bit outside of the norm from others, having its own private grounds with pathways, multiple different courtyards, and gardens all creating little community spaces between the multiple interconnected apartment buildings. The apartments themselves went for a more "tall" rather than "wide" approach, each having at least two floors at a reduced-size floor plan, and some having three or even four floors.
Supposedly the owner of the complex had it designed this way to be more attractive of a choice for long term leasing family units and couples. By keeping the rental price competitive with smaller and less aesthetically pleasing apartments, missing out on the short term higher profits from charging higher prices for single floor apartments would be offset by long term profits from having very little tenant turnover and consistently full apartments making payments. Or something like that.
Really, he just thought that the owner was feeling lonely in his middle age as a past-their-prime, balding, single man. It wasn't exactly a hidden secret that the friendly older gentleman who lived here and seemingly knew everyone happened to be the owner. It wasn't exactly posted on a signboard somewhere either, but he did a bit of digging before he moved in here so it wasn't exactly all that hard to get a name from publicly available info and match it to a face.
That, and the fact that the old man was hilariously bad at being subtle about it when they first met.
'Seriously, offering a homeless teen that you just met a place to live for practically free, because you "happen to know the owner" and "just want to be a good samaritan", is all but outright saying you make the decisions and money isn't an issue.' If he hadn't done his research, he would have thought that it was some super shady cult thing or the guy had some twisted ulterior motive.
The old man was genuinely a great guy though, and seemed to just want to be part of a nice community, so he was going to keep quiet about the whole thing with the other residents. Having the people you talk to daily trying to butter up to and change their actions around you constantly would probably get really tiring and disheartening really quickly. It would be the very least he could do to start repaying the man for his generosity.
Reaching the street entrance gate and the iron bar door beside it, he pushed open the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk before doing a quick stretch, twisting at the waist both ways. After feeling a satisfying crack, he leaned forward in the direction of the academy and shot off in a sprint.
'I still have a chance if I go full tilt! I'll be cutting it close, but being late on the first day of classes would be embarrassing as hell after all the work I put into catching up.' he thought with a wide grin beginning to split his face, 'Man, I'm getting fired up!'
By the time he arrived at the front gate to the school, there were no students in sight and only a single security guard making his rounds around the campus, on the pathway towards what he believed to be the assembly hall building. Running past the fountain on his way to the school's entrance, he spared a friendly wave in the guards direction before slowing down on the approach to the door. He dropped his speed from a sustained sprint, to a run, to a jog, to just slow enough that he could swing open the door without slamming into it and immediately drop back into a light jog to reach his shoe locker. After changing out his sneakers for his indoor shoes in record time, he continued his jog through the hallway
Sprinting through the halls like a maniac would surely make a worse first impression on any teachers than being a minute or two late on the first day, right?
It's not like he was almost exhausted and wanted to slow down to catch his breath or anything like that, he definitely only wanted to make a good impression on the faculty and follow school rules about running in the halls, for sure.
That's blatantly not true, by the way.
"Haaah… haah… damn…" he began muttering between pants, "Maybe sprinting at… nearly max speed… for almost ten minutes… was a bad idea…"
Settling his bag into the crook of his elbow, he untied his blazer sleeves from his waist, grabbed it by the lapels, and swung it up to hang off of his shoulders without putting his arms through the sleeves.
He slowed to a walk upon seeing his homeroom's sign at the far end of the current hallway, 1-B. Since he hadn't heard any bells ringing while in the halls, he decided to pull out his phone from his pants pocket and check the time.
"Man, these things are seriously convenient when they work," he breathed out, 8:32 a.m. showing on the lock screen. Seeing as he had a couple minutes before homeroom started and it was just a few dozen meters further, he decided to lean against the hallway wall to catch his breath some more and fiddle around with his phone. He made sure to bend forward slightly at the waist and keep his back straight. From what he had read in a sports training research paper, apparently this position made it easier on the diaphragm when breathing and brought your heart rate down faster than staying upright, while being upright kept your heart rate higher. Essentially, bending over to catch your breath is better for recovery while standing upright is useful for sustaining aerobic exercise.
He had only his phone for two days now, having gotten it for himself as a reward for his hard work at getting accepted in the academy, so he was still learning the ins and outs of how it worked. While messing with it and looking around the various menus, he did something by accident that brought up a list of what he assumed were those app things he had opened before. Seeing the one labeled 'Alarm Clock', he was reminded of this morning's mishap and decided to investigate what went wrong. He hadn't set his normal alarm clock the night before, figuring he could use his phone's alarm instead.
A single glance at the screen was enough to make his eye twitch. He groaned and locked his phone before sliding it into his pocket.
"'When they work' my ass! I'm just an idiot who accidentally set it for PM…" he sighed and rubbed the back of his head.
Seeing as there was only about a minute left before homeroom began and his breathing was back to normal, he decided to begin the walk the rest of the way to the classroom. After turning to take a step he began to hear another few pairs of footsteps from back the way he came. Shifting his head to glance over his shoulder showed him a group of teachers walking down the hall in his direction while chatting lightly, with a couple breaking away from the group every time they passed classroom doors.
'Guess that's my signal to get a move on.'
He faced forward again and began walking towards 1-B. A handful of moments later, he reached the large wooden doors and opened one of them, pushing it inwards. Stepping into the classroom, he ignored the chatter going on as he closed the door behind him and scanned the room for an open seat, spotting one near the back middle of the room. As he began walking towards it, he idly noted with some surprise the sheer ratio of female to male classmates he had. It was one thing to know intellectually that the school was only recently opened up for co-ed attendance, but to see it with his own eyes was just a little bit jarring. The last time he had been in a school setting, boys had outnumbered girls two to one. Yet in this classroom of twenty-something students, there were only five students other than him wearing the male uniform, and one of them was very much a chick with a rack like that!
'Jeeze, what is Japan feeding these girls? Aren't they supposed to be like fifteen or something?!'
Although to be fair, not all the girls had such… mature proportions. Sitting down, the girl in the seat next to him looked to have had most of her puberty taken and divvied up between the other girls. With her short, thin stature and miniscule chest, she almost looked more like she should be in the middle school division. It was only the lack of remaining baby fat on her features and the noticeable muscle tone in her limbs that clued him in to the fact that the puberty bat probably just struck out when it was her turn to pitch. Heh.
'She's still pretty cute though, she's got that going for her at least.'
With snow white shoulder length hair and a blank expression on her face, he could see plenty of guys and girls appreciating her doll-like appearance, especially with the almost childish black cat pin decorating her white locks. Whether or not they would admit to being attracted to her might be a different story in a couple years though, depending on if she was just a late bloomer or if she was all done growing. She was in that sort of size range that most straight teen boys would be attracted to, but would raise some eyebrows if they were explicitly open with that attraction in their later teen years.
He shook his head to clear his thoughts. He may be a bit of a pervert, but thinking that deeply about a new classmate's looks when he hadn't even spoken a word to her yet was just weird. He blamed the male role models he had growing up for that.
Luckily he had something new to direct his attention towards when the door opened and the homeroom teacher– a young-ish adult woman with glasses and brown hair done up in a partial ponytail– walked in and addressed the room.
"Good morning class. My name is Arata Misaki, and I will be your homeroom teacher for the next three years, so please feel free to come to me with your troubles if you need any assistance." She was smiling brightly as she spoke. "You can call me either Miss Arata or Arata-sensei. Just 'Sensei' or 'Teacher' is fine as well, whichever is your preference. I am also the supervisor of the English Literature club, so if you are struggling with English class assignments, I'm able to help you there too."
After a couple more announcements, she began to do the roll call. In an unusual but somehow unsurprising turn of events, she called names in alphabetical order according to the English transliterations of their names, so instead of being called on early on, he would end up being one of the last in the class to respond. He did his best to discreetly observe the people in front of and to the sides of himself as their names were called, trying to attach the names to each person in his head. He wasn't amazing at remembering names and faces all that well, but he was pretty good at noticing and recognizing other features like posture, hair, and body shape, so he was fairly confident that it wouldn't take him much more than a day to get a good read on most of his classmates' personalities.
About three quarters of the way through the class roster, a name came up that had him suppressing a sympathetic cringe of embarrassment.
"Toujou Koneko?" Arata-sensei called.
'Uwahhh, someone actually named their kid 'Kitten'...' He sweatdropped and glanced to the side, already making a guess as to who it belonged to. That cat themed hair pin was unique enough that he'd guess it's the only one of its kind in the school.
"Present." Much like her blank facial expression, the short girl answered in a soft monotone while lightly raising her hand.
Weirdly enough, there was a small chorus of quiet sighs of content coming from a suspicious amount of students. Covertly looking around in confusion, he noticed there were a handful of female students gazing at Koneko with bright and dopey smiles on their faces.
"Ah- ahem. Ueda Mitsuri?" Arata-sensei was cupping one of her cheeks in a palm, trying to hide the embarrassed blush growing on her face.
'Even you, Miss Arata?! Is this an anime?! What's with that over the top reaction to a student's looks?'
"Hai haaai…" The girl in the boys uniform answered in a lazy tone, leaning back in her chair with her head tilted back and a bored expression on her face.
'Ah, I guess a tomboy like that wouldn't pay attention to that sort of stuff.'
He grinned at the Mitsuri girl's countenance. She was a woman after his own heart, seeming to be a fellow delinquent. Alas, he had strayed from his roots in The Way of Skipping, trying to become a (somewhat) model student out of respect for the old man who gave him such a great head start on building his new life.
The teacher finished recovering her composure and moved on to the next name on the list, making it his turn to respond.
"Uzumaki Naruto?"
With whisker-like birthmarks on his cheeks and a grin that squinted his eyes, he looked positively vulpine to the class.
Chapter 2
I kept my guard up as I scanned the environment around me, seeing nothing but sand dunes stretching out to the horizon. I was currently alone in the same desert dimension that Sasuke was originally left in, and there was no sign of anyone else here with me. On the one hand, that was a pretty bad sign; Super Granny could be getting up to anything if she wasn't currently fighting me, and as strong as Sasuke was, he doesn't have the same kind of stamina that she and I have. On the other hand, not being able to sense anyone meant I was for sure not just in Suna, which was too close to the others for my comfort. As useful as it had been to have Kakashi-sensei, Sakura-chan, and Obito fighting with us at first, I was glad that Sasuke was able to send them back to the Elemental Nations after Obito died. They were just too low on both chakra and stamina to keep up at this point, and any help they could give me and Sasuke just wouldn't be worth the danger to them now that he and I had acclimated to–
"MOVE!"
I was only barely able to dodge out of the way thanks to Kurama. That Kaguya chick popped out of another one of her portals from behind me and launched another bunch of her finger bones at me, and I only noticed because the furball can sense negative emotions. If any of them had gotten me, I'd probably be dead. Again.
Man, the past two days have been all sorts of fucked up, I haven't even had time to have a regular conversation with someone that wasn't about the war or fighting. Hell, I literally died and got brought back by pops and Sakura somehow, got crazy strong chakra from Super Gramps to fight that Madara teme, and then he went and got turned into a giant meatball that then turned into a chick! And apparently she's Super Gramps' mom?
And where the hell is Sasuke teme right now?! She dropped his ass in another dimension for like the fourth time, but after Obito brought him back the first time it happened, he'd basically figured out how to do it on his own using way less chakra, so he should be back by now! Ahhh damn it! Fine, I guess I'll just have to hold her off on my own until he gets here to seal her. At the very least, I'd managed early on to destroy that shadow thing that hid in her sleeve and gave her advice.
Also, she's pretty bad at actually fighting. She kept on just sort of… doing things, and then backing off when they didn't work, to try something else, or the same thing but from a different angle. Her hand to hand was… passable, but nothing special to be honest. If it weren't for her insane regeneration and chakra that dwarfs even mine, she would be way easier to deal with than even Madara. As it is, the issue is just finishing her off with the amount of bullshit she can pull off over and over, like when she teleported us into that iceberg right before we could seal her. Despite her ridiculously dangerous abilities and the stakes of this fight, I had way less time to think when fighting Madara.
Speaking of, looks like she's finally had enough of staring at me with that weird sad expression, because she was flying at me with those chakra fists she could make, similar to what me and Kurama do.
Trying to make distance wasn't really a good idea because she was a bit faster than me, so I rushed towards her as well to meet her in the middle. As we got closer, two of the four fists she made rushed ahead, coming at me from the sides while the other two were hovering like snakes over her shoulders to attack me if I got too close to her. Which was kind of dumb because she should instead press the attack and go all in, but I understand that she's not exactly used to battle.
Either way, in the split second between then and now, I had already formed two rounded shields slightly in front of me on either side out of my Truth-Seeker orbs, entirely negating the attacks. As the chakra fists splashed harmlessly over my shield-orbs and I closed the distance, she brought up her hands and extended chakra rods from her palms to engage in some good old close quarters combat. In response, I used a third orb to form a kunai in my left hand and formed a one handed seal to make a couple Kage Bunshin, one behind me and gripping my cloak, and the other behind her. The moment I did so, I formed a second kunai in that hand out of one of the shield-orbs and deflected six "palm" strikes one after the other from her chakra rods down towards the dunes far below, the leftover force blasting the sandy hills apart. We had closed the distance.
She thrust the rod in her right hand at my chest while swiping the other at my face, but I twisted to the side, getting around the thrust and jerked my head back to dodge the tip of the slash by an almost imperceivable short distance. She turned her thrust into a diagonal side swipe, trying to slash from my chest down to my hip, while she pulled her left rod back to set up another stab attempt. I managed to back off just enough that she missed by the width of a hair, but wasn't fast enough to dodge the followup thrust. So instead, I lunged forward.
I had already begun moving the other shield-orb, so when the chakra rod made contact with me, it hit a skin-tight layer of blackness instead of my chest and disintegrated into nothing, having finally broken down from the damage my truth-seeker kunai inflicted while deflecting.
I'd figured out a while ago how to sort of "inject" the things I strike with my orbs, forming sections of them into an ultra thin needle at the exact moment of contact to force the disintegration effect to occur from the inside-out. This allowed me to weaken her weapons enough to give me an advantage without her just instantly making new ones the moment they start disintegrating. Of course, this only worked because she pumped enough chakra into the damn things when making them that they practically glowed to my senses. She probably couldn't see the inside of them well enough with her Byakugan without focusing to tell how badly damaged they kept getting, but she also refused to make them weaker because then they were too easy for me and Sasuke to break if she did.
With her down a rod and the other starting to fall apart as well, I was well within her guard before she could choose her next action. Swiping up at her face with my left kunai, I gave her plenty of time to raise her arm to take the hit on that side in order to prevent her from immediately forming a new rod. Simultaneously, I threw my other kunai at her face slightly to the left as well, forcing her to hastily dodge to my right with blood flowing from her raised right wrist. Heh, even immortals instinctively protect their head. Of course, her chakra is strong enough in a weird way that even my Truth-Seeking knife isn't able to deal permanent damage, so at most her arm should be disabled for now. Normal opponents would have had their whole arms destroyed by just a scratch from this thing.
She immediately realized her mistake, as the thrown kunai returned to orb form and obliterated the hovering fist on that side, leaving her with one more chakra fist and one uninjured arm while I was still in close range, and my clone was still behind her, having waited patiently for this moment.
He caught the orb in his palm while flying at her back and I mentally shaped it into a staff so he could swing at her while staying out of her range. While he aimed for her other chakra fist, I began to swing at her undamaged arm with my remaining orb-kunai. The goal was to disable her current attack avenues to make her back off once again, buying time for Sasuke to get back. If I hit her hard and fast, leave her no time to plan her next move while dismantling her current attempt–!
The clone that was gripping my cloak suddenly yanked me back and down, practically throwing me towards the sand. I figured out why when both of my clones dispelled in the same moment, giving me the memories of their destruction, as well as the fact that my thrown truth seeking orb returned to me. From the perspective of the clone behind her, everything was fine up until the point he destroyed her second chakra fist, upon which he was immediately speared through by a tendril of sharpened hair. At the same time however, the clone behind me did exactly what I created him for, but surprisingly pulled triple duty on that front. While I had focused on disabling her uninjured arm, I wasn't able to track absolutely everything else she did.
I had expected her to pull something like Gaara's old reactive spiky sand shell if I pushed her too hard, but with her hair. What I didn't expect was for her to do that, while firing her finger bones at me from her previously-injured now-healed hand, on top of launching ANOTHER chakra fist from within the sleeve of her good arm.
The entire clash– from the moment she began her charge at me, to the moment my clone bodily threw me– took place in the span of a single second.
I narrowed my eyes up at her hair cocoon. A strange, almost-but-not-quite unsettling feeling settled into my gut.
"Kurama…"
"Yeah." The fox in my soul grunted, "She's improving greatly at using her abilities, mid fight, just like we have been." So it wasn't just me and Sasuke then… "It went unnoticed by us, right under our noses because she's so inexperienced. But with that inexperience as well as the sheer power difference, comes a certain advantage of hers that we overlooked…" he trailed off slightly and growled before continuing in an aggressive tone, "She can't even tell just how outskilled she is, still seeing her victory as just a matter of time, so she doesn't even bother applying the things she figured out until we force her to! She's treating it like she's dealing with children, still just throwing her abilities at us at random until we force her to try a little bit harder, so we can't even gauge just how much better she's gotten with normal clashes. The moment we actually catch her out, she'll respond immediately with something we haven't seen."
The worst thing is, he was right, and from a certain perspective, she was too. At the beginning of the battle, the most she would do is launch a couple projectiles at us– her bone rods and hair needles– and move around using her portals or by swapping dimensions. Dangerous for sure, but more annoying rather than something actually hard to deal with. The most dangerous thing about her was the immense lethality of the attacks and how hard it was to pin her down while making sure not to get even a scratch. Other than that, she was pretty predictable. As the battle went on she showed more abilities such as the chakra rods, using different forms of those bone attacks like rapid-firing her finger bones, her dimensions having more and more exotic effects, but all throughout, it was still just an escalation of the "scale" of abilities she was using. The closest she got to using genuinely creative strategy on the offensive was the use of projectiles in the insane gravity dimension. She never upped the amount of effort she put into the fight, just upped the ridiculousness of her singular attacks, like when she destroyed one of her dimensions with a massive Truth-Seeking Ball.
We were lucky Kakashi was able to use Obito's eyes to interfere with her, preventing her from destroying all of them while transporting us to the ice world. We almost had her there too. The destruction of her little helper early on made her rely a lot more on her Byakugan, so even though we got so close to sealing her a second time, she was still aware enough to dodge Sakura's punch and continue erasing the dimension. Point being, she just kept spamming her attacks, because each individual ability she's used has been insanely strong.
And it was working for her. So far, at least. Even when she got more used to using her abilities together in a combo, she didn't do it much because she was already beating us as is. She was simply that much more powerful. She even started using way more powerful chakra rods from her palm like Nagato's in place of her bones, so that her weapons could hold up in clashes against me and Sasuke after we kept breaking them. Which then forced me to use my orbs for that on top of guarding against her chakra attacks.
But now she's beginning to multitask.
I felt a bead of sweat drip down my neck from the heat of this dimension's sun, and definitely not the stress of fighting her. I'd fight anyone who claimed otherwise, Uzumaki Naruto is no coward!
Placing my hands on my hips, I put the most cocky grin I could manage on my face. "Heh, I guess she decided we were too much for her current level and decided to kick it up another notch," I said in my most obnoxious tone, trying to keep our spirits up, "At the rate we're going, Sasuke won't even make it back before we figure out a way to beat her, y'know!"
The furball sighed at my bullshit before chuckling and throwing in his own two ryo to the mix.
"Is that so? In that case, I better kick it up a notch too. Tasking a dumbass like you to use your brain is a fools ask, so I'll just beat her myself instead!"
"Hey, what are ya trying to say!? You're the dumbass here, dumbass!"
"Idiot."
I couldn't help it, I burst out laughing for real, most of the stress of the situation falling away. I shook out my limbs and flexed my chakra alongside Kurama, us both gathering absurd amounts of nature energy and together cycling it all through our system a couple of times in an instant, immediately feeling rejuvenated both physically and mentally. Unlike in the past where I had to fight for every scrap of control over his power, it had become all but natural for our power to mix smoothly, making us feel so much closer than anyone would ever believe in just a few days' time. Just as I could understand him now, he could understand me too. We had truly become partners.
"I'm going to try something…"
I felt him take the reins and channel our chakra towards a spot behind me, changing its nature in a way that somehow felt both familiar and utterly foreign to my senses, keeping it contained in a shell about the size of a normal Rasengan. After a moment of it constantly shifting in nature, it went through a sudden change, almost 'snapping' into familiarity and joining its 'siblings' hovering behind me. It wasn't a shifting nature transformation, it was all nature transformations– the basic five plus Yin and Yang– just changing ratios to find a balance like when I gather natural energy.
"Oh, that's pretty neat. Since when could you do that?" I was now back up to four Truth-Seeking Orbs.
"Technically only just now. I've had the idea since we got our own that they were formed by some process involving senjutsu and the old man's chakra, I just haven't had a chance to try until now." His normally gruff voice abruptly got so smug that I imagined his dumb fox face with the type grin I'd seen Sakura have when she gets one over on Ino. "Considering all the practice I've put into keeping us in the fight, converting nature energy into chakra as fast as you waste it, it's only natural that I managed it first-try! Kehahaha!"
I could feel a sweat drop form on the back of my neck that had nothing to do with my earlier worries. Who knew the fox had such a prideful streak?
Oh wait, he's been like this since the beginning. Just a lot more… growly.
"Stay sharp brat, she's getting ready to make a move." Kurama suddenly warned, much more serious than he was a moment prior.
"Mm." I hummed with a nod in acknowledgment, forming an eight-ringed shakujou staff in my right hand and a normal rod half the length of the staff in my left, held in a reverse grip while the staff leaned against my shoulder.
Kurama unexpectedly barked out a laugh.
"You keep taking that stance and it'll become your signature pose! They might even make it into a figurine for merchants to sell to kids after this is all over."
I felt confusion for a moment before realizing he was talking about when I took the same stance earlier against Madara, and felt my cheeks start to twitch in irritation. As I opened my mouth to retort though, I cut myself off when I noticed movement over by Kaguya.
The hair cocoon opened up slowly, showing her undamaged robes and perfectly smooth skin inch by inch. Like, genuinely slowly even to a normal person, let alone people like us who could move as ridiculously fast as we can. Despite my bragging, I didn't make a move to attack the opening she was giving me. With her head and upper body revealed, I could see her wiping her eyes with her sleeve. Apparently she'd been crying again, probably something to do with me being a descendent of hers or whatever.
As much as a part of me would like to take advantage of the opening, and as much as I was criticizing her fighting inexperience earlier, the truth is that it's actually best for me to let her take her time to 'reset' here. Her win condition is simply beating us. It doesn't matter how long it takes her, how much damage she takes, how many clashes she 'loses', none of that matters. She can heal back to normal in a moment. We can't kill her. The moment she becomes experienced enough at fighting us to beat even one of us, she wins. In comparison, our win condition is my right hand and Sasuke's left hand making contact with her at the same time. That may sound simpler, but Sasuke isn't here right now, so the actual best move is to not actually move; to stall for time.
Every moment I'm not pushing her to develop her skills is a moment well spent.
Her hair finally retreated to its normal length of 'still entirely too long to be practical', and she had finished wiping her eyes, although she seemed to still be crying.
I shuddered a little bit. It was super creepy sensing her genuine sadness despite all the ridiculous ways she'd tried killing us, it reminded me a lot of that Raiga freak years ago who buried people alive and then cried about it. The fact that Kaguya's sadness came from her sense of motherhood made it easier for me to understand and sympathize with… but it still freaks me the hell out, and she's still trying to destroy the world. Even if it came from good intentions and the desire to get rid of all the messed up things in the world, she'd still be throwing out the good alongside it all.
I don't exactly want her dead or imprisoned for all eternity, and I definitely don't hate her, but I have to stop her. That's simply how it is. I'm not strong enough to get her to listen, so convincing her to stop isn't possible.
I stood on the air, muscles loose but ready, when I felt the world shift and a thread of Sasuke's chakra appear at my side. In the next instant he was standing to my left, slightly facing me but already locking eyes with Kaguya.
"Sasuke." I greeted with a nod.
"Naruto." He returned without even a twitch.
"Took ya long enough, teme. You get lost?"
Without so much as acknowledging my words and his eyes never leaving Kaguya's, he began to speak in the same deliberate and intense way that he had been for years. Other than the times he lost his cool and yelled of course. "I need you to get her in position for me. The same strategy as back then in the second stage of the exams, and against Zabuza." He was talking about when my clones transformed into our team in the forest, and when we tricked Zabuza with the Shuriken Transformation.
What the hell is transforming going to do when she has the Byakugan? Unless he's talking more in a general sense, like using misdirection, or swapping pla…ces…?
'!'
He apparently decided that Kaguya wouldn't attack if he took his eyes off of her for a moment (which I agreed with, she looked lost in her own thoughts as she watched us), because he took a moment to look directly at me and saw by my expression that I caught on to what he was saying. He continued.
"I'm going to go back to Sakura and Kakashi to have her provide him with some of my chakra, while I give him the technique I figured out to travel through time-spaces. Kaguya sent me to the realm that was furthest away from either of you, and it took me a while to lock on to both you and him, about the same amount of time. Which means that these two worlds were about the same distance from me and are currently the closest to each other. While I've made progress, I'm still not good enough to do both techniques at once, so he'll be the key I use. " He looked back towards Kaguya. "She'll notice his intrusion, but will be on the lookout for my chakra and ignore him as long as he doesn't interfere. Fight her like you were just now, go at her from multiple angles in a way that she'll find natural. When you two finally make your moves, she won't suspect it until it's too late. I'll be watching for that moment."
With that, he disappeared from the world with the same subtle instantaneous shift, leaving me and Kurama alone once more with Super Granny.
What a bastard.
"Agreed."