Naruto: God of Shinobi

Chapter 40: Naruto vs Kiba II

Naruto stood in the center of the floor. His hands were in his pockets.

Kiba landed across from him, Akamaru already on his feet beside him, the small dog's growl low and continuous. Kiba did not look at Naruto immediately. He looked up at the balcony. At Hinata, sitting against the wall with Kurenai's hand on her shoulder and her eyes still red.

He looked back.

"You," Kiba said. "What the hell is your problem? She never did anything to you. She has always been nice to you. Always believed in you. Even when you were the dead last. Even when you failed every exam and everyone else had written you off, she was still watching you, still rooting for you."

Naruto said nothing.

"Everyone in the academy knew she liked you. She was always watching. Always." His voice was carrying now, loud enough for the whole hall. "And you humiliated her. In front of everyone. In front of her sensei. You made her cry."

Naruto looked at him. His eyes were flat.

"I did not ask her to watch me. I did not ask her to believe in me. I did not ask for any of it."

"That does not give you the right…"

"I told her to stop. She did not stop. I told her sensei. Now I am telling you. Stay out of it."

Kiba's face went red. His fists clenched at his sides. Akamaru barked once, sharp.

"Stay out of it? She is my teammate."

"Then you should have taught her to mind her own damn business."

Kiba stepped forward. His body was tense, every muscle in it pulled tight, his teeth showing in a way that was not quite a smile.

"You are asking for it, dead last."

Naruto tilted his head. His hands were still in his pockets.

"You are already angry. I am angrier. You should surrender now and walk away. You could die."

Kiba laughed. It was not a warm sound. "Die? You? I was top of the class. I trained with my clan my whole life. I have Akamaru. You have nothing. You have never had anything."

Naruto's eyes did not change. But something behind them did, a small shift, something moving in the deep part that his face did not show.

"Start the fight," Naruto said. "I am tired of listening to you."

Hayate raised his hand. "Begin."

Kiba was moving before the word finished.

He came in low, the Four-Legged Technique dropping his center of gravity and pushing his speed up past what a normal genin should have been able to manage. His hands were claws. His teeth were bared. He crossed the distance between them fast.

Naruto stepped left. Kiba's claws passed through the air where his chest had been.

Kiba spun and attacked again from a lower angle. Naruto stepped right.

"You cannot dodge forever."

Naruto did not answer.

Akamaru jumped from Kiba's shoulder and transformed in midair, the smoke clearing to show a second Kiba crouched on the floor, grinning the same grin.

"Beast Human Clone. Two against one now."

They attacked together. One from the left and one from the right, coordinated, timed, the kind of combination that came from years of running the same drills. Their claws reached for Naruto at the same moment from opposite directions.

Naruto stepped back. The claws passed in front of his face, close enough that the air off them moved his hair. They did not touch him.

Kiba threw smoke bombs. The cloud filled the center of the floor, thick and gray, and the two of them moved through it without sound, attacking from angles they could not be seen from, finding the blind spots in the coverage.

Naruto moved through it. He did not need to see them. The pressure of their movement was enough, the way the air shifted ahead of intent, the weight of what was about to happen before it happened. He was somewhere else every time they arrived.

Kiba landed where Naruto had been. Naruto was already behind him.

"Stand still!"

"Why?"

Kiba growled and attacked faster, his claws coming in a blur, overlapping combinations with Akamaru that left no visible gap. Naruto moved through the blur. Always where the claws were not. Akamaru lunged for his legs. Naruto stepped over him without looking down. Kiba punched for his face. Naruto leaned back and the fist passed his nose.

On the balconies, the genin had stopped talking.

Shikamaru's eyes were narrow, his chin resting on one hand, watching.

"He is not even trying," he said.

Ino looked at him. "What?"

"His hands are still in his pockets. He has not taken a single breath harder than usual.

He is just moving. That is all he is doing."

Choji had stopped eating. He was watching the floor below with his bag of chips forgotten in his hand.

Kiba pulled back for a moment, breathing hard, sweat already visible on his face. He had been attacking for minutes without stopping. He had not landed anything.

"What are you?" he said, and there was something under the anger now that had not been there before. "How are you doing this?"

Naruto said nothing.

Lee watched from the balcony with his arms crossed and his face calm.

"He is still wearing the weights," Lee said.

Tenten looked at him. "What?"

"The training weights. He has not removed them. He is fighting with them on."

Neji's pale eyes moved to Naruto's limbs, tracking the lines of his clothes, finding the places where the fabric sat differently than it should.

"He is right," Neji said.

Tenten's mouth opened. "How heavy?"

"Triple his body weight," Lee said. "At minimum."

Guy watched from the far end of the railing without speaking. His arms were crossed and his jaw was set.

Sakura had her hands on the railing. Kakashi appeared beside her, silent, his book closed for once.

"Kakashi-sensei. Where is Sasuke?"

"Infirmary. The curse mark is sealed. He is resting."

"Can I see him?"

"Later. He is being watched."

Sakura looked at the floor below and did not ask who was watching Sasuke. She already knew it would not be a short answer.

Guy leaned on the railing and looked at Kakashi. "How much training have you put that boy through?"

"Not as much as you are thinking. He trained on his own. With Lee. He has been wearing weights since before the Forest."

Asuma lit his cigarette. He took a long drag and let it out slowly.

"Three months ago he could not pass a written exam. Now he is doing this with his hands in his pockets. What happened to him?"

Kakashi was quiet for a moment.

“I don’t know. He has been through a few things.”

Asuma stared at him. "What?"

Kurenai stood nearby with her arms crossed, her red eyes on Naruto.

"That does not explain the killing intent. Or the way he spoke to me. Or any of it."

"He has been through a lot," Kakashi said.

"We have all been through a lot."

"Not like him."

Kurenai said nothing.

Guy's eyes did not leave the floor. "He is faster than Lee was at his age. Without those weights he would be faster than Lee now."

Kakashi nodded.

"Let us hope he does not go too far," Kakashi said.

Guy looked at him. "What do you mean?"

"He has a tendency to snap. When he gets angry enough, he stops holding back."

Kurenai's eyes sharpened. "You think Kiba's life is in danger?"

"I think we should be ready to intervene."

Asuma took the cigarette out of his mouth. "Is that a joke?"

Kakashi did not answer. He looked at the other jonin and they looked at each other and at the fight below, at Naruto's blank face and his hands in his pockets and the way he moved like all of this had already been settled.

Asuma put his cigarette out on the railing.

"Everyone get ready to jump in," he said.

Kiba stepped back. He was breathing hard now, audibly, his chest working. Sweat ran down the sides of his face. His arms were shaking slightly at the elbow, the small shaking of muscles that had been asked for too much too fast.

"You are fast," Kiba said. "But speed means nothing if you cannot hit back."

Naruto said nothing.

Kiba reached into his pouch and pulled out two red pills. He held one out to Akamaru and swallowed his own without water.

"You asked for this."

Akamaru caught his and swallowed it. The effect was not slow. Kiba's chakra surged outward in a wave that was visible as heat shimmer at the edges of his body, his eyes going red, his muscles thickening at the shoulder and arm. Akamaru's white fur darkened to a deep crimson, the dog's growl dropping an octave.

"Food pills," Lee said from the balcony. "Doubles the users speed and power."

Kiba's grin came back. It was wider now, and there was something in it that had not been there at the start of the fight.

"Now," he said. "Let us see you dodge this."

They came at him together. One from above and one from the floor, their coordination tighter than before, sharper, the food pills burning through them and making everything faster and harder and less forgiving.

Naruto moved. His hand almost came out of his pocket.

A claw caught his arm. Blood came.

He twisted away. Another claw raked his leg.

He rolled and Akamaru was already on him, and Kiba was above him, and there was not enough space in the angle to clear both of them clean.

Kiba's foot connected with his chest. The impact lifted him off the floor and threw him backward and he hit the stone and slid, leaving a streak of blood behind him.

Kiba crossed the distance before Naruto stopped moving. His claws came down. Naruto rolled and they hit the stone where his head had been, cracking it. Akamaru bit into his ankle. Naruto kicked him off. Kiba punched him in the face and Naruto's head snapped back and he went down.

He lay on the floor. His arm was bleeding. His leg was bleeding. His lip was split and the blood from it was dripping onto the stone in a slow and steady way.

Kurenai watched from the balcony. "Looks like you were wrong, Kakashi. He is not invincible."

Kakashi did not answer. His visible eye was narrow and fixed on the floor.

Sakura's hands were white on the railing.

"This is bad," she said.

Ino looked at her. "What do you mean?"

"This is really bad. Naruto has been angry. For days, since the Forest, since whatever Orochimaru did to him. He has been holding it in." She turned to Kakashi. "If Kiba pushes him too far..."

She did not finish it.

Kakashi looked at the jonin. "Everyone get ready."

Asuma's hand moved to his weapon. Guy's stance shifted. Kurenai's eyes narrowed.

"He has killed before," Kakashi said. "In the Land of Waves. He did not hesitate. He will not hesitate now."

The jonin were quiet for a moment.

On the floor below, Naruto moved.

He pushed himself up. Slowly. His arms were shaking. His legs were shaking. The blood from his face dripped onto the stone in the silence.

He stood.

He reached into his jacket and pulled out the weights. One from each arm. One from each leg. The chest vest last. He held them for a moment and then let them fall.

The impact when they hit the stone was not a sound so much as a feeling, a concussive thud that moved up through the floor and into the feet of everyone standing on it. The stone beneath them cracked in a starburst pattern, fine white lines spreading outward from the point of impact.

Kiba stared at them. "What," he started, "are those," he finished, and his voice had lost some of the certainty it had carried since the beginning.

Naruto straightened. His hands went back into his pockets.

The chakra came off him like pressure, not a wave and not a surge but a weight, settling onto the air of the hall and pressing down on it, on everything inside it. It was his chakra, his own Uzumaki reserves, the deep reserves that had been building since before he understood what chakra was, amplified by months of training and compressed for months under weight that was no longer there.

It was not the Fox. His eyes were not red. They were blue, cold and flat, the eyes of someone who had passed through anger and come out the other side into something that did not have a simple name.

The killing intent came with the chakra. It did not aim itself at anyone in particular. It did not need to. It simply existed, filling the hall the way cold fills a room, touching everyone in it whether they were the intended recipient or not.

Kiba took a step back. His body had stopped listening to him. Akamaru pressed against the floor, whimpering, the crimson fading from his fur.

On the balconies, no one spoke. The genin had gone still, some of them bracing against the railing, some of them not entirely sure their legs were going to hold. The jonin had their hands on their weapons but none of them had moved yet.

Kurenai stared at the floor. At the chakra that was pressing against her skin from twenty meters away. At the boy standing in the center of it with his hands in his pockets like none of this was difficult.

"Who the hell is this kid," she said.

---

Next Time: The Strongest Genin -Naruto Uzumaki

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