Chapitre 9: Chapter 9 Shadow Clone Jutsu

Within the land of waterfalls, a shinobi was looking through the latest bounties. This shinobi was very tall, wearing a black cloak with red clouds patterned on it. He had light green eyes that seemed to have no pupils, his skin was tan and his sclera were completely red.

This was Kakuzu, a member of Akatsuki and a bounty hunting nin. Right now, he was looking through the latest bounties to quench his greed.

"Hmm?" Kakuzu hummed while looking at a certain page in the bingo book, "Such a young child? And for so much? Interesting…"

On the page was a photo, probably taken after someone used transformation jutsu in order to replicate what the child looked like in order to get a better chance of finding him. The photo depicted a child with long and messy black and white hair, his eyes were grey and his pupils slit like that of a reptile, on the right side of his face was the kanji for dragon seemingly engraved on his face, overall even kakuzu had to admit the kid was pretty cute, not in a weird way of course but in a sense of not wanting to harm him. However, seeing the info and the reward, that sense of not wanting to harm him was aggressively torn to shreds, '8 MILLION RYŌ?' He nearly shouted aloud, but his years of experience was enough for him to keep his emotions under control.

Pushing past the reward, he checked the information.

Wanted poster here -

But the only thing that caught his eye was the

"Reward - 8,250,000 Ryō dead or alive."

Seeing this, his eyes were practically glowing and seemed to have dollar signs emprinted on them.

The only issue was, 'Where the hell is he? Last seen in Konoha but that was 4 days ago, he is just a kid so he probably couldn't have gone far…'

…

A week later, in an unknown forest there was a small figure before a campfire, looking closer you could see a petite face chowing down on a fire roasted deer leg. Ever since he escaped the grasp of Konoha, Riku had found himself capable of breathing fire. Albeit not enough to assist him in combat, but enough to light simple fires. At first he was skeptical about using this black and white flame he had named the monoflame (mono from monochrome) to cook his food but found it was actually more effective than normal flames and it gave the food an interesting taste that was actually very delicious.

But despite all of this, Kokuenryū hadn't spoken in over a week and Riku was beginning to get worried, but he figured the dragon would be okay. After all, he was a being capable of making even a tailed beast run with its tails between its legs.

But what really happened to Kokuenryū ?

Within Riku's soul space, lay a sleeping dragon. His power that was once at 20% was now at all time low at 2%, he figured that if he used his power recklessly he would lose all of his progress in regaining his strength. He figured he would just rest until he regained at least 10% of his power and so he hadn't focused on what Riku had been saying/doing but he knew the child would be okay.

During this time, however, Riku was trying to learn the shadow clone jutsu, but despite all odds, he couldn't manage it for some reason. Maybe it was due to the fact he was learning it from a scroll and not face to face with a teacher? He didn't know but he would continue trying.

Every clone he did manage to summon was always either too small, weird looking or completely dead. He tried to summon Nariko but since the beasts do not use hand seals, and since Nariko didn't already know the jutsu, he was unable to teach Riku.

'I know Naruto struggled with this jutsu because of his large chakra reserves leading to him being unable to control his chakra, but I'm good at controlling my chakra so I don't understand what I'm doing wrong here' Riku pondered while sitting on a tree branch before jumping down and steeling his resolve. 'This is risky, but if that truly is the issue then I just need to go for more.' Riku was going to attempt the multi shadow clone jutsu, or well a self made version.

Instead of pouring the required amount of chakra for the standard two clones, he poured almost tenfold the amount of chakra. Doing this, his head throbbed violently, but he did summon around 40 shadow clones. Only 6 could stay stable without exploding and only 4 were actually working shadow clones.

Riku's head stopped throbbing as he looked up at the 4 perfect reflections of himself in front of him. "Ah, so that was the issue. I should've known" Riku said with a chuckle before grinning, "Now, you four continue to create shadow clones until one of you master it."

Yes, Riku was about to absolutely abuse the training method that Naruto would create 8 years from now that utilises the fact that shadow clones can retain memories and thus be able to master jutsu faster as instead of one person trying, there can be multiple people trying.

…

And just like that, Riku had almost perfectly mastered shadow clone jutsu but after all of this, Kokuenryū had yet to reply to any attempt at contact. With this, Riku was starting to get even more worried as time went on.

After learning the shadow clone jutsu well enough to use it effectively, Riku walked back to his house; a small wooden board he had crafted and placed in a tree covered in a heap of leaves to sleep on.

Laying in his makeshift bed, he tried to contact Kokuenryū one more time.

'Can you hear me, Kokuenryū?' Riku thought, his fingers crossed…

But there was no reply, Riku sighed as he fell asleep. But thanks to Kokuenryū not being there to keep track of the surroundings, Riku had completely forgotten about being found as he was too used to Kokuenryū being able to just sense anyone around him. So Riku had so way of knowing there was a large bandit camp only 200 metres from his current location.

…

Riku woke up the next morning, but as he was about to jump down and attempt to learn the body flicker jutsu, he heard footsteps.

Looking down beneath him, Riku saw 6 middle aged men holding multiple women and children. "Hmm..?? Why didn't Kokuenryū inform me-" right then, Riku realised he had been careless once again. Kokuenryū wasn't able to inform him as he Riku had figured he was resting.

Realising that the situation was probably nothing good, Riku used the horse, then tiger hand seal and then only swiped with a finger to not injure any of the supposed victims. As one singular slash projection flew forward, slicing 3 bandits that were walking in a single file line in half from their chests.

Riku then ran behind some bushes while using the clone seal which lead to two shadow clones appearing either side of him. Dashing out from the bushes, one clone threw a clean chakra enhanced hook to the abdomen of one man, causing him to spit out saliva as he collapsed. The other clone used a claw projection to instantly kill another, to which Riku then used the one finger slash projection he had named the slash projection jutsu to sever the head of the last man.

The two shadow clones then disappeared in a cloud of smoke. Untying the children first, then the women Riku asked "What happened? Who were those people?" Asked a certain girl as most of the people were all knocked out, but the one young girl that looked oddly familiar replied "hmm? I think they were just bandits eh whatever, thank you anyways." Said the girl, she looked around his age but maybe one or two years older. She had mint green hair held up with an orange hairpin that matched her orange eyes that complimented her sun kissed skin, she was petite for her age, being around the same height as Riku despite being older.

"Wow you really butchered them huh!" The girl looked at the corpses, then at Riku with a hearty laugh. Riku looked at the girl dumbfoundedly, trying to recall where he knew her from. And if he knew her then why the hell was she able to be kidnapped? If she was a major character then why'd she let herself get kidnapped? Oh well, Riku would leave that for later. "What's your name? Little girl?" The tan girl asked.

Riku's face flushing red as he looked away while saying "I'm not a girl."

The girl looked at Riku with a expecting expression, but Riku only replied with "Are there any more bandits or was it just those six?" His face still slightly red as he asked, trying to change the subject.

"Hmm, there was only those six from what I remember…" the girl looked at Riku with her hands behind her back, looking straight into his eyes as she leaned forwards.

'Is she giving me puppy eyes? What the hell is going on' Riku thought to himself. But right then

*A tailed beast.*

He heard one sentance, the first he'd heard in a long time.

Kokuenryū had finally regained 10% of his power and was now ready to return to the world. But, right as he looked through Riku's eyes, his own eyes widened before telling Riku straight away that the girl infront of him, was a Jinchuriki.

'Kokuenryū? You're okay? Where have you been?' Riku thought, so much was going on right now but he had to calm down.

"What is your name?" Riku asked with a now friendly tone. "Oh? My name is Fū. But it's rude to ignore my question, you know?" Fū answered Riku's question, "My name is Riku Kuroshiro." Riku said with a smile as he held his hand out in a gesture of friendship. He wound definitely not give up on the opportunity to befriend a Jinchuriki.

However, within the soul space of the two…

"Hi!" The large armoured rhinoceros beetle with a helmet like skull covering its face said with what looked like a large smile to the equally as large creature before it.

*Ehem, hello.* Kokuenryū replied, realising that Riku wanted to befriend this creature he naturally got rid of his ego in order to not make trouble in the future.

…

An hour went by and most of the people had woken up, during this time Riku had learnt that Kokuenryū was incapacitated for over a week due to using his power without it being fully returned, so that was all cleared up. And Riku had also found out from the women that many people from their village had been going missing recently. Getting the jist of what was going on, Riku asked Kokuenryū to search for any signs of life nearby in hopes to find the bandit camp that was no doubt nearby.

*I see… there is a large gathering of people approximately 193 metres to the west.*

'How many?' Riku asked

*Roughly 100.*

Hearing this, Riku sighed. He could probably deal with it using shadow clones but it was going to be tough.

"I'm going to go hunting for food for a bit, Fū can you wait here and protect everyone while I'm gone?" Riku said as he stood up.

"Hm? Sure." Fū said pretty much instantly.

Riku was honestly worried for her, she was way too friendly and someone could easily take advantage of that.

Riku began to run to the west, but he had told himself that he wouldn't summon any of the Kumarai as he couldn't rely on them forever.

…

Standing up in a tree, Riku looked down at all of the bandits. At first he was slightly worried and was a bit scared but then…

Riku watched as bandits dragged the bodies of women out and threw them into a fire, blood dried on their thighs and watched as even more women were dragged to the rooms they came out of.

Seeing this, Riku's eyes went bloodshot and his irises began to glow white. If there was one thing he hated most in the world, it was rape.

Kokuenryū was taken aback, seeing his power being used by someone other than him.

Riku's hair began to float upwards as he breathed steam from his nose. His teeth began to grow sharp as he lunged down while holding the clone seal.

10 shadow clones appeared on the walls of the camp as Riku held the sword of a bandit he had killed an hour ago, "Arden Swordsmanship : 8th page, Lunar Whirlwind" he said under his breath, but as he pulled the sword back to begin the assault, he felt an immense heat.

Swinging his sword down, dashing forward in a flurry of sword strikes. Slicing and dicing every bandit around him before landing 10 metres from where he was, crouching before another flurry of strikes began flowing around him for a split second, slicing the bandits surrounding him into pieces of flesh. However, when Riku turned around, instead of dead bodies littering the ground, Riku saw his monoflame flowing in a vortex form where he came, swallowing every bandit within his flame.

"Oh? How convenient??" Riku looked down at his blade, now soaked in a black and white flame. He didn't know how long this would last so he turned and looked at the 20 odd bandits rushing towards him. He swapped swords with one of his shadow clones and let that shadow clone go to town with the bandits.

Riku turned and rushed inside the largest tent, hoping to at least save one person.

Behind him, the clone muttered "Arden Swordsmanship : page 12 Dance of the Hunters Moon." Vanishing from his position, he found himself 30 meters away, turning and looking at the burnt pieces of flesh he chuckled, then continued onwards to slaughter the remaining bandits with the other clones.

…

Riku entered the large tent, his chakra at 50% but he could make that work. He had to stop himself from throwing up as he looked at the many women on the floor covered in blood and other fluids. He looked up at the man sitting on a chair, he had an eyepatch and looked to be in his late 40's. On the table was a large great sword almost 5 feet in length.

"Oh? Such a pretty girl has brought herself to me this time?" The man licked his lips.

Riku didn't even bother reacting as his sword began to glow with his monochrome flame. "You… disgustin-" but before Riku could finish, he had to dodge back instinctively.

The man in front of him was nothing to take lightly, his killing intent was so strong it could be cut with a knife.

Riku crouched down and readied his sword, but first he created the horse and tiger seal ready.

The man, who was clearly the leader stood up, but right as he did…

6 flaming slash projections sent via Riku's blade flew straight for his throat.

"Oho! Interesting technique." But as the man was about to deflect them, to his horro, his sword suddenly became lighter, an indication that it was losing its strength. Which lead him to then dodge to the left multiple times in order to not get hit by the flaming projections.

"What the hell…" the bandit leader looked at his now chipped sword, and then at Riku who he was really looking forward to killing now.

He lunged at the child before him, Riku's eyes widening at the speed of the large man. But it was too late, the large greatsword was a hairs breath away from Riku as.. *POOF*

Riku disappeared, a chair in place of rikus previous position. *SLAM* the large sword collided with the chair, slicing straight through and even smashing into the ground.

The bandit quickly took the sword out of the ground and looked around, trying to gain sight of the child once again.

But Riku was nowhere to be seen.

Until.

"Down here." Riku spoke, the bandit leader followed his words as he looked down, Riku's empty white eyes staring up at him, empty yet with a passion burning evident within.

"Arden Swordsmanship : 2nd page, Rising Moon" Riku spoke before slicing upwards, slicing the bandit leader into two, Split between his legs, ending the man's disgusting life.

…

"Please help us…" Riku heard a voice from his right, he looked over and saw at least 20 women of all ages in a cage wearing nothing but rags, his gaze instantly softened, but as he looked around he couldn't hold back anymore and threw up. The dead eyes of the women that were subjected to the torture of this cruel reality staring at him, almost asking why he couldn't save them.

Steeling his resolve, Riku cut off the lock for the cage and helped the women out of the cage.

He, followed by the women exited the tent and were greeted by 8 of Riku's clones and a maelstrom of monochrome flames. He handed the women to his 8 clones to escort the women out and back to Fū and the other women and children.

The attack was way easier than Riku had expected, this was thanks to the unknown flame that coated his sword. He suspected it was caused by his rage at seeing the cruel fate of the innocent people at the hands of these bandits. He figured he would try and experiment with it when he was back home. But for now, Riku had some more exploring and potentially some stealing to do.