Capítulo 115: Naruto : Domination: Chapter 115
Shikamaru was, at almost sixteen years of age, feeling like he was an old geezer that just didn't know how to let go.
Over Konoha, it was raining, and while that would have once meant that he couldn't enjoy could-gazing, it now felt especially appropriate: under the heavy rain and with very little wind to accompany the downpour, the black obelisk holding all the names of the shinobi and kunoichi died in action stood like a defiant, pointing finger accusing the sky.
"So... I've been made Tokubetsu Jonin, for 'great accomplishments in time of need', or some such tripe: I merely pointed out that the tactic that was being used was tantamount ot suicide..." Shikamaru spoke tonelessly to the memorial stone, his dark eyes never leaving the white characters that spelled out a certain name.
"I know we didn't have all that time to train or hang out together since the war began and that our assignments kept us separated more than we'd have wanted."
A part of the Nara's mind realized that it had been deliberate: after all, when Daiki revealed himself alive and kicking, issues had been raised about the trustworthiness of his students, which had been split in order to be easier to observe by the new teammates they were assigned. It was perfectly logic, but that didn't mean that it wasn't infuriating as well.
The purposeful scrap of a sandal over the ground made the recently christened Jonin turn on himself, his shadow twirling around his feet as if ready to strike out, only for it to pool over the wet grass naturally when he recognized the newcomers.
"Hey Shika." Ino stood uncaring for the rain, her blonde hair braided on one side of her head to leave easily visible a scar that ran from behind her ear to her temple. She wore dark pants and a mesh shirt under a purple, long-sleeved jacket that accentuated her curves purposefully without being crass: but the fierce burning of her teal blue eyes revealed just how much she was merely wearing her 'guise of civilty', as Shikamaru had dubbed it.
Her hands were always ready to launch projectiles, her mind always poised to strike with the fury of a tiger: the demure tone she adopted now made Shikamaru distractedly wonder what she was hoping to... Oh.
Not far behind the girl stood the noble-looking Sasuke Uchiha: but where he had been a competent soldier the last time the two met, he was now a mighty warrior, even if not trained to perfection. His chakra hung heavily over his shoulders, like a mantle of barely hidden power: there was a tension in the corner of his eyes, in the set of his shoulders, that...
"We didn't want to intrude, but I wanted to say hello too." Ino spoke again, and while Shikamaru registered her words and shrugged in dismissal of her implied apology, his eyes noticed the fractional relaxing of Sasuke's shoulders.
His mind, like always, ran ahead of him, connecting elements that could appear coincidental in a logical frame of inescapable prcision: "Chouji would have been happy for you two."
Rolling her eyes at his display of intuitive prowess, Ino smiled softly: "He would have tried to bully me into offering dinner to celebrate, in that passive-aggressive way of his."
Despite himself, Shikamaru offered a grin as he passed her by: "I had to go anyway, see you around, Ino, Sasuke. Glad to see you back from your mission."
Sasuke didn't rise to the bait, but his eyes darted around, as if to check for other people listening in, and the Nara had the answer he had been looking for.
An answer that was only another piece in a puzzle that he wasn't even close to putting together. The first classified reports of the raid on Kumo had marked Sasuke as Missing In Action. And now he had been shuffled back into Konoha with no declarations to underline how the Uchiha clan still lived.
His reaction had offered an answer that Shikamaru hadn't truly been looking for, but that nevertheless rang true in his mind. He was not on a mission issued by Konoha under the guise of being MIA.
Shaking his head, Shikamaru walked at a civilian's pace from the memorial stone and the name of Chouji Akimichi that was sculpted into it. He moved from under the rain to under the thick boughs of the small forest surrounding the black obelisk. The reports had been as clear as they were underwhelming: died in an ambush.
An ambush. The words didn't leave him, and they kept rattling in his skull as he moved under the relative protection of the trees. He died in an ambush, while I was in HQ trying to prevent 'Failure'.
The memory of the genjutsu that Daiki-sensei had used to test him and his team rose as always with a clarity that was just the tiniest bit unnatural: and Shikamaru remembered the smells, the sounds, the pain, and the crippling sense of defeat that accompanied them.
Busied with his musings, he moved up to the Hokage's tower without bothering with the changes that were already taking shapes in the village: he knew already of the other face that was slowly being sculpted besides the stern visage of Tsunade Senju: traditionally, the name of the next-Hokage to be was an open secret before the ceremony during which the face on the mountain would be unveiled.
But this left Shikamaru with a problem he didn't fully know how to address: after Daiki's first disappearance from Konoha, back when he used the battle with Orochimaru to vanish from the world, he had left to the Nara genius a small, leather-covered black book.
Such book contained a multitude of state secrets, not last among them the one behind the Uchiha Massacre, along with the main players, as Daiki-sensei had defined them, in the theatre of the Elemental Nations: Danzo Shimura was one such player.
The Nara had developed a familiarity with mind techniques thanks to being teammates with a Yamanaka, and given the quality and quantity of things he wanted nobody to ever discover, he had long since tried to tweak his bloodline into an unholy mixture of self-genjutsu and code-words aimed to trigger his memory in case he ever forgot that he had such safety measures set in place.
His mind relinquished the attention it had over Sasuke's quiet return, and his apparent relationship with Ino, just as he crossed the office of the man who was going to be Rokudaime.
A man that Daiki had deemed trustworthy only when it came to dealing with external threats: a man that in his zealotism, had deliberately orchestrated the extermination of the Uchiha, collaborating with Orochimaru before he ran away in order to promote Konoha's scientific might at the expense of all those that didn't present an immediate bigger gain on the frontline.
Danzo Shimura was all that was dark in the shinobi world: he was a man that exemplified why the Warring Clans Era had been gladly left behind when Hashirama conceived another option.
Shikamaru came to a stop in a relaxed position in front of the Hokage's desk, and observed the highest authority that Konoha had study him in turn.
The old shinobi, and a shiver of caution slithered its way along the Nara's spine at seeing a man that surpassed the sixty years of age in a world where ninja rarely hit 40, had an x-shaped scar on his chin, deep grooves that had once been something as innocuous as crinkles covered his forehead turning it into a perpetual frown, while bandages hid his left eye.
His face, as impassible as it was, revealed less of Shimura's thoughts than the one that was being sculpted into the rock that oversaw Konoha.
"Jonin Shikamaru Nara." he spoke, and his voice was firm without carrying any hint to what the man was feeling, if he felt anything at all.
Then his lone eyes darted to the ceiling, and his only visible hand darted through a sequence of hand-signals: as an answer, the ANBU strategically hidden in the office immediately left, and just as the last one closed the window behind him, the Rokudaime-to be pushed his chakra into a part of the desk to activate a complex bit of Fuinjutsu.
Ink that had been invisible up to that moment flared of a light blue as it ran across the office, sealing it from any attempt at eavesdropping, no matter what technique was going to be used for it.
"In the first years of this village, Tobirama-sama started to develop a hidden force of shinobi whose loyalty could not be doubted: just as the Hokage was meant to be the sun shining upon the village, and our shinobi and kunoichi the trunk that lifted the next generation, those shinobi were to be the roots that kept Konoha standing."
The aged shinobi rose from his seat, his lone eye still impassibly staring at Shikamaru despite the heaviness of the topic: "Just as Hashirama-sama shone for all to see, Tobirama worked from the shadows, defending Konoha in its frailest moments. In the dark, with nobody knowing."
Shikamaru straightened minutely as his chakra started to ping madly inside of his own mind, information that he needed hidden being partially concealed in a way that could not be unveiled by any who wasn't a Nara with his expertise in matters of the mind.
"When the Nidaime was appointed as Hokage, he took two students: Sarutobi Hiruzen, and I." the chakra of Danzo was muted in a way that none could replicate as he spoke, his lone eye briefly running over the portraits of the previous Kage lined up on one wall: "And just as he had a brother to look after and who'd look after him, Hiruzen and I were shaped to assume the roles that Konoha needed of us."
The eyes of the Nara were briefly attracted to the portrait of the Nidaime: with his red eyes and white hair, there was little resemblance to his elder brother, but even in the dead copy of a painting, there was a fierce pride that the artist had been able to capture. A pride that could almost be heard, beneath all the layers of steely self-control, into Shimura's voice.
"Even the gods cast shadows: while Hiruzen shone for the world to see, for Konoha's ninja to emulate, I was entrusted with Root." there was no inflection whatsoever in the man's voice. He was simply stating the facts.
"I the course of the years, I lost sight of the Will of Fire, which in me had been nurtured to burn everything that could be a threat, no matter the potential gain, to our home."
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AN :
Hey everyone! I've started a new fanfic called *Naruto: Monsters.*
If you'd like to check it out, it would mean a lot to me!
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