Naruto: God of Shinobi

Chapter 9: Testing the Limits

The trees swallowed him whole. Branches passed beneath his feet in a rhythm that had become automatic, his body moving without conscious instruction, chakra flowing to his soles in measured pulses that kept him just above the wood. He did not need to look where he was going. He needed to look at the clearing, at the man standing in the center of it with a book in one hand and two bells hanging from his belt.

Naruto Uzumaki dropped from the canopy with his kunai already drawn.

He came in fast. Faster than Kakashi expected, or at least faster than the jonin's posture suggested. The blade swept toward the masked man's throat in a horizontal arc that would have opened the carotid artery on anyone slower. Kakashi leaned back. The kunai passed within a centimeter of his mask. His visible eye did not blink.

Naruto followed immediately. A kick to the knee. A punch to the kidney. A second kunai drawn from his pouch and driven toward the soft tissue just below the ribs. Each movement flowed into the next with a fluidity that surprised even him. His body knew what to do. His mind simply watched and approved.

Kakashi blocked everything. Not with effort. With economy. A raised forearm here, a shifted hip there, a small step backward that turned a killing blow into a near miss. He did not put down his book. He held it in his left hand, open to whatever page he had been reading, and defended with his right hand and his feet and the subtle movements of someone who had been fighting for longer than Naruto had been alive.

"You are fast."

The words were casual. Almost bored.

Naruto did not respond. He pressed harder. A feint to the face, then a low sweep. A thrown kunai aimed at the book, then a charge while Kakashi's attention was divided. He used the trees. He used the ground. He used the shadows and the light and every piece of the environment that could be turned into a weapon.

None of it worked.

Kakashi was faster. Stronger. More experienced. He read Naruto's movements before they began, the way you read the first word of a sentence and already knew how it would end. The book never closed. The eye never stopped smiling.

Naruto stepped back. He was breathing hard. His arms were covered in small bruises where Kakashi had blocked his strikes. His knuckles were split in two places. He looked at the jonin with an expression that was not frustration or anger but something closer to satisfaction.

"I wanted to see where I stood."

Kakashi tilted his head. "And where is that?"

"Nowhere near you. Yet."

Naruto brought his hands together. The seal was simple. The chakra expenditure was not.

Shadow clones erupted from him in waves. One became two. Two became four. Four became eight. Eight became fifteen. They filled the clearing in a cascade of smoke and movement, fifteen identical boys in orange jackets with fifteen identical expressions of cold focus. They surrounded Kakashi completely. There was no gap between them. There was no escape route that did not pass through at least three of them.

Kakashi closed his book. He tucked it into his vest pocket. His visible eye was no longer smiling.

"I guess you are not all talk, Naruto."

The fifteen Narutos moved as one. Their hands came together in the same sequence. The same hand signs. The same final seal.

"Fire Style: Fireball Jutsu."

Massive stream of fire erupted. The heat was immense. The light was blinding. The combined blast converged on the center of the clearing where Kakashi had been standing a moment before. The grass turned to ash. The air shimmered and warped. A tree at the edge of the clearing caught fire and began to burn.

Kakashi was no longer there. He had launched himself into the air, propelled by chakra and instinct, his body rising above the flames in a trajectory that would carry him over the circle of clones and out of the kill zone.

He did not see the real Naruto coming down from above.

The boy dropped from the highest branch, his leg extended in a axe kick that carried all his weight and all his momentum and all his killing intent. The heel connected with Kakashi's shoulder. The impact was solid. Real. Naruto felt bone give way beneath his foot.

Then the body beneath him turned into a piece of wood.

The substitution jutsu. Kakashi had used it in the instant before impact, replacing himself with a log from the burning tree. The log fell toward the ground. Naruto landed beside it and looked up at the branch where Kakashi now stood, unharmed, his visible eye still watching.

The smoke cleared. The fire spread. The clones dispersed one by one until only one extra figure remained in the clearing.

Sasuke Uchiha stood where a clone had been. His transformation jutsu dropped. The orange jacket faded. The blond hair darkened. He was himself again, breathing hard, his dark eyes fixed on the jonin above them.

"It almost worked."

Naruto nodded. "He is simply too fast."

Sasuke stepped up beside him. The two boys stood in the smoking clearing with the fire crackling behind them and the jonin watching from above. They did not look at each other. They did not need to.

"What we need is a third teammate," Sasuke said. "To go up against a jonin like him, two is not enough."

Naruto's jaw tightened. He did not want to say it. He did not want to admit it. But Sasuke was right. They had thrown everything they had at Kakashi and the man had not even broken a sweat. He had defended himself with one hand while holding a book. He had substituted out of a killing blow at the last possible moment. He was playing with them. And they needed help.

"Fine." Naruto's voice was flat. "Where is that flat chested bitch anyway?"

They started looking.

Sakura crouched in the bushes at the edge of the clearing with her hands pressed over her mouth and her heart pounding in her chest. She had seen everything. The taijutsu exchange. The shadow clones. The fireball. The aerial attack that had almost worked. She had watched Naruto move like a completely different person from the boy who had slept through class and failed every practical exam.

He was fast. He was skilled. He was dangerous.

And Sasuke. Sasuke had transformed into Naruto, had integrated himself into the clone formation, had waited for the perfect moment to strike. He had trusted Naruto's plan enough to make himself vulnerable. He had worked with the dead last as if they had been partners for years.

They looked like proper ninja. They looked like the kind of shinobi who would survive the test, who would pass, who would go on to do things she could only dream of.

How was she supposed to compete with that?

The tears came before she could stop them. Hot and silent, running down her cheeks and dripping onto her hands. She thought about the breakfast she had refused. The diet. The hunger in her stomach that was now so loud she could barely think. She thought about Naruto's words. *If you screw this over for me, I will make you pay.* She thought about Sasuke's cold disappointment. *Dieting. For what? For who?*

They were right. She had not been taking this seriously. She had been treating the academy like a social club, like a backdrop for her crush, like something that would eventually hand her a career because she showed up and did the bare minimum. And now she was hiding in the bushes while her teammates fought a jonin and her stomach growled and her eyes leaked salt water onto her knees.

"Finally found you."

She looked up.

Naruto stood above her with his hands in his pockets and his headband askew. His face was streaked with soot. His knuckles were bleeding. His eyes were the same flat blue they had been all morning, but there was something else in them now. Something that might have been exhaustion or might have been respect or might have been neither.

"Yo. Listen up, Sakura."

He crouched down to her level. His voice was quieter than she had ever heard it.

"We cannot do this by ourselves. I guess we do need your help after all."

Sakura stared at him. The tears had stopped. Her mouth was open.

"So here is what I am proposing. If you really want to be a kunoichi." He paused. His expression did not change. "It is a bit unorthodox. But this was the original purpose of using kunoichi back in the day. And for a guy like Kakashi, it will work."

She looked up at him. He was so serious. There was no mockery in his face. No hint of the old Naruto who would have made a joke or a loud declaration or a stupid face. He was looking at her the way he looked at a problem that needed solving. The way he looked at everything now.

How could a person change so much so quickly?

She had watched him sleep through class. She had watched him fail tests. She had watched him paint the Hokage monument and get chased by chuunin and shout his name at the top of his lungs like the volume of his voice could make up for the absence of anything worth hearing. That boy was gone. In his place was someone she did not recognize. Someone who cooked breakfast for his teammates and threw down with a jonin and looked at her like she might actually be useful.

She slapped her cheeks with both hands. The sting brought her back. The tears were gone. The hunger was still there but she pushed it down, pushed it away, locked it in a box and set the box on fire.

"I am ready, Naruto."

Her voice was steadier than she expected.

"What do you want me to do?"

Naruto looked at her for a long moment. Something moved behind his eyes. An assessment. A calculation. The final piece of a plan falling into place.

Then he smiled. It was not the old grin. It was something narrower. Something that knew exactly what it was doing.

"Follow me. And try not to be useless."

He turned and walked back toward the clearing. Sakura stood up, brushed the leaves from her knees, and followed.

Behind her, the fire crackled and spread.

Above her, in the branches, Kakashi watched them gather and wondered what the boy with the blue eyes was planning.

The test was not over. It had barely begun.

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Next Time: Teamwork at Last - Debut of the Harem Jutsu

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