Naruto: God of Shinobi

Chapter 41: Strongest Genin

Naruto moved.

Not fast. Not slow. Somewhere between, the way a storm moves when it has already decided where it is going and does not need to hurry about getting there.

His fist connected with Kiba's face.

The sound was wet and solid and wrong in a way that made the genin on the balconies flinch without meaning to, some of them turning slightly away and then turning back because they could not stop watching.

Kiba's head snapped sideways. Blood came off his split lip in a short arc. His legs tried to hold him and failed and he went down.

Akamaru charged. The food pill had burned through his fear and he was fast, faster than he should have been, loyal past the point of self-preservation. He left the floor and went for Naruto's throat.

Naruto caught him midair. His hand closed around the dog's body. Akamaru yelped, his legs kicking at nothing, his teeth snapping at empty air.

Naruto looked at him for a moment. His eyes were flat.

"Stay down."

He threw Akamaru across the floor. The dog hit the wall and slid down it and did not immediately get up.

Kiba was already rising, already bleeding, his eyes wild and his face a ruin. He swung before he was fully upright. His fist passed through empty air. Naruto was not there.

Naruto's knee came up into Kiba's stomach. The air left him in a wet gasp and he doubled over and Naruto's elbow came down on his back and Kiba hit the floor face first with a sound that carried.

Naruto grabbed his hair. He pulled Kiba's head up and punched him. And punched him again. And again.

Each one landed. Each one made the same sound. Wet. Repetitive. The audience on the balconies had gone very still.

Naruto stopped. He stood up. His fists were red. Blood dripped from his knuckles to the stone in slow, regular drops.

He was breathing hard, and it was not from exertion. It was from something that had been compressed inside him for a long time and was finally finding the space it needed.

The hall was silent.

Kiba lay on the floor. His face was swollen, his lips split in three places, his nose bent sideways, blood covering his chin and his chest and the stone beneath him. His chest was moving.

Naruto looked down at him.

"Who the hell is dead last now?"

His voice was quiet. It carried through the hall anyway.

Kiba moved.

Slowly. Terribly. His arms shaking, his legs shaking, his whole body a single large injury trying to refuse what it was being asked to do. He pressed his hand to the floor and pushed himself up. He got to his knees. He looked up.

His eyes were swollen nearly shut. Blood ran off his chin in a steady thread. But he looked up.

"Who do you think you are?"

His voice was thick, the words shaped around split lips and a broken nose.

"You failed every exam. Every single one. You were the dead last. You will always be the dead last. You are nothing. You have always been nothing."

Naruto looked at him. His face did not change.

Kiba laughed. The sound was horrible, wet and bubbling, blood coming with it.

"I am Kiba of the Inuzuka clan. I am a beast. You are just a freak."

Something moved in Naruto's eyes. A small shift. A fraction of change.

Kiba tried to stand. His legs gave out. He caught himself on his hands and tried again, and this time he made it, swaying, barely.

Naruto was behind him. No one saw him move. He was simply there, standing behind Kiba with his arms at his sides, his face still blank.

"I have been angry for a long time," Naruto said.

The gentleness in his voice was worse than screaming would have been.

Kiba tried to turn. He was too slow.

Naruto's foot connected with his ribs. The crack was audible, clean and hard, and Kiba flew sideways into the wall and bounced off it and hit the floor. Naruto was on him before he stopped sliding.

He kicked Kiba upward. Kiba's body rose off the floor. Naruto's uppercut caught him and sent him higher. Naruto jumped.

His foot connected with Kiba's chest in midair and Kiba flew across the room and hit the far wall with the sound of the stone taking weight it was not built for. He slid down it leaving a red streak on the stone.

Naruto landed. He walked.

Kiba raised his arm to block. The arm was broken. It hung at the wrong angle and would not do what he asked it to do.

Naruto kicked him in the ribs again. Another crack.

Kiba screamed.

Naruto grabbed his collar, pulled him up, punched him in the face. Once. Twice. Three times. Kiba's head lolled between each one, his eyes losing focus and finding it again and losing it.

Naruto dropped him.

Kiba lay on the floor. His chest rose and fell in the wet, ragged way of someone breathing around broken ribs.

Naruto stepped back. He looked at Hayate.

"Call the match."

Hayate was staring at the floor. At the blood. At the body. He opened his mouth.

Kiba's fingers twitched.

His hand pressed against the stone. He pushed. His arm was broken and he pushed anyway, and his body shook with the effort, and he got himself to one knee.

The hall was silent in the specific way of people watching something they cannot quite believe.

Kiba looked up. His eyes were almost completely swollen shut. Blood ran freely from four separate places on his face.

"You think I will lose to you."

He found his feet. His legs shook under him badly enough that the shaking was visible from the balconies. His body was barely holding together. He roared anyway, and the sound that came out was not entirely human, the sound of something that has been pushed past every reasonable limit and has decided, past all logic, to keep going.

Naruto watched him.

"Fine," Naruto said. "Have it your way."

He turned his back on Kiba.

Kiba's eyes went wide. He lunged. His momentum carried him forward, both feet leaving the floor, claws out, everything he had left in the motion.

Naruto was not there.

Kiba stumbled through empty air and caught himself on his hands and knees, his arms shaking under the impact, his vision graying at the edges.

Naruto was behind him.

"I have had enough of this."

His hand closed around the back of Kiba's neck. He lifted him. Kiba's feet left the ground, his broken arm hanging at its wrong angle, his legs kicking weakly.

Naruto threw him across the room.

Kiba hit the far wall. The stone cracked behind him. He slid down it and lay still.

The hall was silent.

Blood dripped from Naruto's knuckles to the floor. His breathing was hard and even. Not effort. Release.

Naruto closed his eyes.

The chakra came off him slowly, then all at once, his own reserves, the Uzumaki reserves that had been building and training and compressing for months under weight that was no longer there. It filled the hall like pressure fills a sealed room. The torches along the walls flickered. The stone floor vibrated faintly under the feet of everyone standing on it.

His hands came together. The seals were slow and deliberate. Tiger. Ram. Monkey. Bird. He held the last one.

"Wind Style..."

Sakura's hands went white on the railing.

"Kakashi-sensei. That jutsu. He cannot use that here."

Kakashi's visible eye was fixed on the floor. "He is not thinking. He is releasing."

The air around Naruto began to turn. Not wind yet. The memory of wind, the air organizing itself around a decision that had not quite been made.

"Great Cyclone..."

Kakashi moved.

He was on the floor before anyone finished processing that he had left the balcony. His hand closed around Naruto's wrists.

"Naruto. Stop."

Naruto did not look at him. His eyes were on Kiba's still form against the far wall.

"Naruto."

Guy landed on his other side, hand closing around his other arm. Asuma landed behind him, hand on his shoulder. Kurenai landed in front of him, her red eyes level with his blue ones.

"It is over," she said. "You have won."

Naruto looked at her. His eyes were not quite focusing on her face. They were looking at something behind it.

"Kiba is down. He cannot fight. You have won."

The chakra flickered. The turning in the air slowed and stopped.

"You have won," Kakashi said. Low. Calm.

Naruto looked at the hand on his wrist. At the other hands. He looked at Kakashi's face.

His hands came apart. The seals broke. The chakra receded.

He stepped back.

Across the floor, Kiba's chest rose and fell. Unconscious. Alive.

The medics came fast, kneeling beside him, checking pulse and breathing, their hands moving with the practiced efficiency of people who had done this many times. Akamaru limped after the stretcher, whimpering, his red fur fading back to white.

"He is alive," one of the medics said. "Barely."

Naruto watched them carry Kiba off the floor. Then he turned and walked to the stairs without looking at anyone, climbed them, walked to the far end of the balcony, put his back against the wall and closed his eyes.

The hall was quiet for a moment.

"That was not a fight," Shikamaru said. "That was a beating."

Ino's face was pale. "He almost killed him. He almost actually killed him."

"He didn't," Shikamaru said.

"Only because four jonin held him back."

Choji had not eaten anything since before the weights came off. His chips were in his hand and he was not looking at them.

"I did not know he had that in him," he said.

"None of us did," Shikamaru said.

Lee stood with his arms crossed and his face serious, his eyes on Naruto's still form at the far end of the balcony.

"He was holding back," Lee said.

Tenten looked at him. "He broke Kiba's ribs. He broke his arm. He almost just unleashed a damn massive ninjutsu that had that pink haired girl crying."

"He was holding back," Lee said again, the same way he had said it the first time. "I have sparred with him. He may have removed the weights but he was still holding back. I know what he looks like at full speed. That was not it."

Tenten stared at him for a moment.

"Then what is his full strength?" she said.

Lee did not answer.

Neji watched from across the balcony, his pale eyes steady.

"He is dangerous," Neji said. "But he is controlled. The killing intent was deliberate. He used it to freeze Kiba before he ever threw a punch. Every broken bone, every moment he could have ended it and did not. He chose each of those."

Tenten looked at him. "That is supposed to be reassuring?"

"It is supposed to be accurate."

Temari stood with her arms crossed and her eyes on Naruto.

"He is stronger than I thought," she said.

Kankuro looked at her. "Evidently my little sister, your new crush is strong."

"Because he keeps making it true."

She watched him leaning against the wall, eyes closed, blood still drying on his knuckles, breathing like someone coming back from somewhere far away.

"He walked off the floor and closed his eyes like it was nothing," Temari said.

"It wasn't nothing," Kankuro said. "That's the point."

Dosu stood at the far end of the balcony. Kin was beside him.

"That was amazing…," Dosu said. "I have never felt so much chakra gathered like that… remember the clearing…"

"I remember," Kin said.

"We should have been more scared Kin, be careful on your little date."

Kin did not answer. She was watching the blood on his hands.

Kurenai stood with her arms crossed. Her red eyes had not left Naruto since he walked off the floor.

"He almost killed him," she said.

"He didn't," Kakashi said.

"He was about to Kakashi… the amount of chakra he gathered."

Kakashi did not argue.

Asuma lit a cigarette. His hands were steady.

"I have never seen a genin produce that much chakra. Not even close."

"The weights. The training." Guy's voice was quiet. "He has been preparing for something."

"For what?" Kurenai asked.

Guy looked at her. "I don't know. But whatever it is, he is ready."

The Third Hokage stood at the edge of the balcony. His old eyes were on Naruto's still form.

"What has gotten into him?" The Hokage asked. "He is also controlled. He could have killed that boy a dozen times. He chose not to. That means something."

Anko stood beside him.

"It means he is not a monster," she said. "Yet."

The Hokage looked at her.

"People like him," Anko said. "They go one way or the other. There's not much in between. Heroes or something else entirely." She paused. "What happened to him?"

The Hokage did not answer.

Kakashi walked back to the railing. "The village feared him, the people in it hated him, and he had no one. Not until recently."

"That does not excuse what he did to Kiba," Kurenai said.

"No," Kakashi said. "It explains it."

"So this is Naruto Uzumaki," Asuma said, to no one in particular. "Lord fourth’s son. The strongest genin in this examination."

Guy nodded. "I have never seen anything like it."

Tenten turned to Neji. "I thought you were joking. When you said he might be stronger than you."

Neji's pale eyes were on Naruto. "I was not joking."

Tenten looked back.

"I can see that," she said.

Gaara stood apart from his siblings. His sand moved in slow circles around his feet, and it was moving faster than it usually did, restless, responsive to something internal.

His eyes were on Naruto.

"The strongest genin," he said. Quiet. To himself.

He did not agree.

His blood was warm. Warmer than it usually ran. He had felt the chakra surge from across the hall. He had felt the killing intent press against his skin. He had watched Naruto beat Kiba to the edge of death and stop, and the stopping had interested him more than anything else.

"The strongest," Gaara said again. "We will see."

Temari looked at him. Her face was pale. "Gaara."

He did not look at her. He was watching Naruto.

Hayate coughed. His voice echoed off the stone walls.

"The next match. Hinata Hyuga vs. Neji Hyuga."

Hinata's face went white. Her hands started shaking at her sides, small tremors she could not stop.

Kurenai put her hand on her shoulder. "You do not have to do this."

Hinata looked at her. Her eyes were still red from before. But she was not crying.

"Yes I do," she said.

She walked toward the stairs.

Neji uncrossed his arms and walked toward the stairs from the other end of the balcony. They passed each other on the steps. Neither looked at the other.

Naruto opened his eyes.

He watched Hinata descend. He watched Neji descend. He watched them reach the floor and turn and face each other across the space where Kiba's blood was still drying on the stone.

His face did not change.

Hayate raised his hand.

"Begin."

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Next Time: The Caged Bird - Neji vs. Hinata

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