Bab 96: Chapter 10
Taro's three genin came across one of the teams from Rain thirty minutes after entering the Forest of Death.
They seemed not to notice the Grass team as they began a watch. The team exchanged hand seals as they debated a plan. Number Two was in favor of spilling a little blood. However, it was Number Three, the steam user, who suggested something more subtle…and far less likely to give away their position in the forest.
Number One laid a genjutsu to keep the Rain ninja wandering in circles. That was fun to watch. Number Two mixed up a mild hallucinogenic poison that would take a week or longer to exit their systems. She looked a bit cross that she wouldn't be allowed to cause anyone's arm to rot off or anyone's appendix to burst. Number Three collected the sealed poison vial from Number Two and gave the kunoichi a hard look. He just hoped that she hadn't prepared a distillation of sarin or something equally lethal to spite Numbers One and Three.
After finally deciding the poison was what they had asked for, Number Three timed his throw and sent the vial high into the air, a high arcing curve designed to put the vial over its three targets. When it was just a few feet above all three of the Rain ninja, Number Three sent a small focused blast of steam. The vial cracked and rained down the poison. Within moments, one hit the ground shaking. The other started attacking each other.
They were simple to disarm and incapacitate using nerve clusters after that. The Grass genin threw tree branches over their still breathing victims and counted it as a success.
It was easier than going fishing with a stack of exploding notes.
They'd been given a Heaven scroll before the gates to this exam begun. With this attack, they recovered an Earth scroll forty minutes into the exam. It was good. They looked forward to discussing the operation in the after-action conference with Number Four. The only thing he could scold them for was putting together the plan too slowly and arguing too much about it.
Now the question was: what next.
A few hand signals between Taro's genin settled the question: end the test or continue? They'd remain in the forest a bit longer, deal with a few other competitors, gauge up the people who might actually be tough.
Number One led them deeper into the Forest, knowing that a team from Waterfall had entered not too far from where he and Two and Three had entered.
Unfortunately for that plan, the lone team from Sand was already slaughtering the easy marks from Waterfall…slaughtering, literally. The short red-head had total control of sand and a total lack of sanity.
The genin stayed hidden until well after the Suna genin passed away. With handseals, they compared notes.
Number One: Red boy on a whole other level. Would steam hurt him, Three?
Number Three: Don't want to find out. Girl was wind user. Could push steam back in my face.
Number Two: My jutsu go through wind fine. Number Four has tested extensively.
Number Three: What about painted boy?
Number One: Curious bundle on back. Maybe puppet user who hasn't learned any storage sealing? Number Four lectured on strengths and weaknesses. Likely into deception and hiding.
Number Two: Let's get away from red head now. Don't want to see that Desert Funeral thing again.
The trio encountered three more teams…and trapped their minds and poisoned them without ever being detected. They sealed the unneeded scrolls they recovered into leaves or other forest detritus. It was a standard battle tactic, at least standard as far as their teacher had instructed them: denial and destruction of critical resources.
They were beginning to think about heading for the tower when they felt more of the chakra from the cemetery, the Snake Sannin's chakra. This time it wasn't a little bit…the ninja was throwing around some massive techniques.
He had come into the Forest then, even after Number Four had warned the Konoha officials. Number Four had been right so far…and that the Sannin hadn't come to see them again. What was he here for, during a test of simple genin?
None knew. All three would admit to at least being…nervous. None would own up to feeling sheer terror.
Number Two: Number Four was right. These people are fools. Train up powerful shinobi without regard to whether they're at all sane.
Number One: Don't need a lecture, Two. Need a plan. Stay in Forest overnight or head to Tower?"
Number Three: I don't care to face that freak again. He's throwing around chakra now that would take us down in seconds. We survived yesterday because he was trying to be sneaky.
Number Two: Fine. Tower, here we come.
They encountered only a single additional team in the Forest on their way to the central building. The all-kunoichi team from Tea Country was poisoned without incident; their scroll sealed and hidden.
They arrived safely just after midnight. They unsealed their scrolls and were greeted by a Leaf chuunin moments later. They stopped on the way to their quarters only to grab food.
As they got to their quarters they noticed the name plate on the next suite over: Hidden Sand. It was going to be a long four days trapped with those loonies from Suna.
X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X
Taro thought about going to sleep after he felt his team reach safety in the Tower. But he couldn't get his brain to shut down. Operating a variety of puppets like Naruto did kept his mind continually occupied.
And it was circling around Orochimaru and the oddities with Suna.
Sleep sometimes came…and it sometimes stayed away like an upset, pouting child.
Taro got up and began wandering the village.
He hadn't had a chance to do that in the light of day, not with his trio to keep on the straight and narrow. He walked down streets and remembered what they'd smelled like in the daylight with people moving on them and sun beating down.
He meandered near to where his apartment building had stood. The fire he'd started had evidently destroyed a portion of the building; it had been razed but nothing else yet stood in its place.
He walked over to that ramen stand he'd loved. It was closed now, but the scent of flavored broth hung tauntingly in the air.
There was that playground that was usually deserted in the evenings. He had first used a swing set there. He decided, what the hell.
For twenty minutes he pretended to be a kid, rather than a teenager trapped inside a puppet. He swung and he laughed and he tried to think good thoughts about the place he'd come back to.
There weren't a lot of good memories…mostly of the Old Man in his office…or in that ramen stand…talking, listening to Naruto. That was before his cold, bureaucratic period, of course.
Eventually he left the park. He was close now, close to a place he didn't want to visit.
He hesitated to walk down a certain street, but eventually his feet took him to where his heart didn't want to go. This was where he'd been crushed between two carts. This was the alley he'd been chased down. This was the store where he'd tried to buy two plums.
A sleepless Naruto wondered what had ever happened to the man. Was he the Kurosawa of Kurosawa Grocers? Did he live upstairs in the apartment above the store? Was his light on up there now?
Taro jumped up and took a peek inside.
He saw that hateful man, much aged, passed out in a chair. The wasteful lights were on inside the apartment. Naruto could see everything so clearly.
The cause of so much pain had both his legs; had his health; was free to come and go and do as he pleased. He hadn't been forced to become an exile; he hadn't been forced to reverse engineer techniques in order to get training to be a ninja; he wasn't living the life of another, watching life on the outside pass him by.
The old man was free, completely free.
Something snapped inside of Naruto's mind. Anger, blinding red rage poured through him. He didn't know he had this kind of thing inside him. Was it the fox coming loose? Or was this from inside his own heart and mind….
His arms ripped the window from the building (the Taro puppet was designed to be ten times stronger than a human body). As the aged man woke from his sleep, he didn't realize the danger he was in.
"What? Why are you in my apartment, foreigner?"
Taro said nothing. His arms began raining blow after blow down onto the man's body. Ligaments cracked and tore. Bones chipped, broke, and ground together. Muscles sustained intolerable amounts of damage. Within thirty seconds, the grocer who refused to sell Naruto plums…who chased him away to meet two crushing carts in a busy street…who never received punishment of any sort…he was dead.
His body looked like a small calf's that had fallen into a pulverizing machine. Blood, and meat, and sinew dripped onto the carpet, spread everywhere.
When he stopped breaking a dead man's bones and tissue, Taro surveyed the bloody mess. Naruto captured the true image of his rage…and promptly vomited inside the confined space of Taro's hollow center.
The stomach acids burned slightly on his mouth, face, chest, and hands. He roused himself from the red rage he couldn't stop seeing in front of him. He needed to get away. He needed to wash up. He needed to pray to Kami for forgiveness.
He needed to check his seal to be sure that the fox wasn't loosening his bonds.
Taro leapt away from the damaged apartment, jumping from roof to roof until he reached a tranquil training ground. He cleaned himself in a stream running through the property. Naruto had to exit Taro and then submerge his Taro puppet in the water to get out all the vomit.
But the running water did nothing to wash away Naruto's current self loathing. He had finally given into his impulse for wrath. And it was horrible.
He climbed back inside of Taro and slept the night in the forest.
Finally, he did fall asleep. Hard asleep. Slept better than he had in years.
X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X
The next day, a stunned and dismayed Hokage would visit the crime scene. He had never before in his tenure as Hokage visited a civilian crime scene, but he had kept the name Kurosawa in the back of his mind.
He had expected something to eventually happen to the man…but he hadn't expected this. No, not at all.
A piece of the man's cracked skull had been flung to the ceiling. It hung there still, held in place by drying gore.
This was the work of a Naruto he didn't know. Or, the Hokage reminded himself, the work of someone who knew of Naruto, or acted on his command. It might not be Naruto's hand that did this, just his voice ordering it.
The style was all wrong, for one thing. Naruto's puppetry was elegant and hard to detect (the Hokage had fallen victim to the same trick twice, a feat few could claim to have gotten past the God of Shinobi); this attack was more like a mauling. The ex-ninja didn't have an unbroken bone larger than a few centimeters.
What had happened to Naruto in the last six years? The Hokage had recognized that the boy was angry. Was this brutality a result of his tenant? He hadn't felt demonic chakra last night….
Why was Naruto back after his self-imposed exile? To do more of this? To kill more Leaf civilians or ninja?
Had he snuck in with all the foreign ninja in town for the tournament? The Hokage felt old, bone weary old.
It was most disturbing. The Hokage prayed that Naruto had not done this thing, but he could do nothing but believe that the small blonde boy was involved.
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone