The Chosen One: Hatake SI (Naruto)

Chapter 25

It was rare for the Hokage to gather a bulk of his force in such a manner, but it was not entirely out of precedent. Still, the Godaime Hokage stood face to face with nearly half of his force standing in front of him as he stood on a podium looking at them all.

Many of them were older than him, but none of them doubted him or his capabilities. After all, the man in front of him had single-handedly forced Kumo into accepting peace at the Northern border.

Some expected to hear a declaration of war, others feared rebukes or demotions for their failure in protecting the village.

“I have gathered you all here to make you aware of my one single demand of all my shinobi,” and everyone stood straight as their Hokage addressed them.

“It is often said that death is a shinobi’s old friend, that donning the hitai-ate is like befriending the God of Death, but I am afraid I refuse to accept such a view,” and many now frowned at those words.

“All of you here are my shinobi. Mine and your lives are much too precious to me. So, from this day onwards I have but a single command for you all,” and now the young kage’s voice grew hard as he gave his final instruction.

“Live. Survive. No matter the mission. No matter the odds, I want you all to cling to life for as long as you can, and know that help is on its way. No matter the place. No matter the odds, if you are injured or surrounded, I need you to push yourself to live for a day,” and he was being serious.

“A day. That is all I demand of you, and I shall handle the rest....”

~Two Years Later~

SASUKE UCHIHA

Sasuke watched as his shuriken simply bounced off of the white-haired shinobi, and by then he had already cycled through a familiar set of seals and shot out a massive torrent of flames towards the white-haired nin.

But just like his weapons from earlier, the fire was put out as the Godaime Hokage simply raised his hands.

“You will have to be better than that, Sasuke-kun,” and he knew that well by now. This had been his routine for the last year now, after he had told him the truth of that night.

Gojo Hatake was not very fond of keeping secrets, so once Sasuke had attained the rank of Tokubetsu jounin, he was summoned to the village by the Hokage and told the truth about the Uchiha Massacre.

Sasuke’s entire world had been shattered by those revelations, and he was filled with rage and pain at the betrayal of the village. His thoughts regarding his own brother were more complicated, and he had spent years hating Itachi for killing their family, yet now he was learning that the whole thing had been orchestrated by the village higher-ups and a masked man acting in the shadows.

“Raiton: Chidori Sharp Spear,” and he aimed his fingers at the Hokage in question, who was perhaps the only person in the village who understood and shared both his pain and his dilemma.

Lightning raced towards him, but a red orb formed in Gojo-san’s hands as he shot it forward.

“Ninpo. Hanten-Aka,” and the red orb shot forward, destroying his jutsu, and Sasuke now knew better, and rather than trying to defend against the attack, he jumped away, throwing two shuriken towards him in the process.

The two shuriken were simply pushed off of the invisible shield that the Hokage had learned to erect around him, while before he would rely on the powers of his eyes and his self-created ninjutsu separately, the man had worked hard to combine these two powers into creating a form of absolute defense that was said to be even more formidable than the Lightning Cloaks of the Raikage.

“Is that all?” the man taunted, and Sasuke’s Sharingan spun, as suddenly his clone vanished.

“IO! Where could you be?” Sasuke found himself surrounded by darkness as Gojo-san continued in a sing-song voice.

“Let me guess,” and Sasuke was just about done with his seals when he felt the man look down.

“You are below me,” but it was too late, as Sasuke felt his reserves drop, but that did not matter to him at all.

“Katon: Raging Fire Dragons,” and suddenly massive dragons made out of fire raged out of the ground and tried to swallow him whole, and Gojo-san jumped up into the air to avoid the immediate impact, but Sasuke was not done with him just yet.

“Gate of Life: Open,” and despite training for two years, the third gate was the maximum limit of how much he could push himself while still being able to use ninjutsu and genjutsu effectively.

He appeared above, the Godaime Hokage, yet the man seemed completely unfazed as he easily blocked his kick and pushed him back as Sasuke tried to force him out.

But he was nearly as well trained in taijutsu as Gai-san, and so he could not beat his defense when suddenly the man was able to cut through his defenses and land a kick on him.

Sasuke was sent flying back, but he was not done yet as he raised his finger.

“Ninpo: Aoi,” and a small blue orb formed on his hands, and the fire dragons he had sent towards him began to circle his body, before the man aimed the orb towards him and let it go, and Sasuke found himself being attacked by his own ninjutsu.

Sasuke had no time to use a ninjutsu, so he closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, the world shifted as a purple skeletal structure erupted around him.

“Susanoo,” and this was the power of the Mangekyo Sharingan.

The dragons crashed into the skeletal construct, and yet they could not pierce through it. Just as he landed on the ground, he jumped towards Gojo-san once more as he drew his blade and laced it with Raiton Chakra.

Goho-san simply avoided his attacks, and his attacks kept getting deflected away from him by an untraceable shield. In his frustration, he roared, and the Susanoo came out once more and struck down hard, creating a massive dust cloud.

One would think the battle was over, but he knew better, and suddenly Sasuke felt a blur appear behind him.

“I think I told you not to use this power in a spar,” and suddenly he was kicked hard and sent flying into the forest until his back hit a tree, and now Gojo-san was mad as he came at him hard.

Sasuke was still reeling from the pain, so he used the storage seal on his wrist and took out a massive shuriken and swung it towards the white-haired nin flying towards him, but once more the massive shuriken was parried away, but just that fist was inches from his face, Sasuke pulled on the wire attached to the shuriken and pulled it back.

And just as he had hoped, the fist stopped inches from his face, and the blades of the shuriken were impeded by the invisible shield around him.

“You were able to guess that. Interesting,” he heard the Hokage-san mutter, and Sasuke began his counterattack as he raised his fingers into the ground.

“Raiton: Lightning Cage,” and Lightning descended on him, but he saw the Hokage-sama smirk.

“Well, you did well, but you failed to consider that I could simply do this,” and suddenly Sasuke felt his chakra gust forward as the man uttered a single word.

“Aka...”

BOOOOM!

And Sasuke found himself tumbling through the forest, as the ground itself was torn apart. His body crashed through trees and rocks, and he found himself coughing blood until the pressure suddenly vanished when he hit a giant rock a few hundred meters away and fell to the ground as pain seared through his entire being.

“That should be the end of it,” Gojo Hatake declared, even as he tried to push himself back up.

“Sasuke-kun,” a worried voice came out from the side, as a familiar bundle of red rushed towards him in worry.

She helped him sit down, as Sasuke glared daggers at the man who stood at the pinnacle of the shinobi world.

“You are injured,” Karin added worriedly as she examined his body, and the two of them had become fast friends over their shared histories. Karin was one of the last members of her clan, while Sasuke was the same.

As an ANBU, Sasule was in need of a medic to care for him, and his frequent visits to the Hospital had led to him building a rapport with the red-haired girl who was apprenticing under Lady Tsunade.

“Let me help,” she said as she pulled back her sleeve, and Sasuke shook his head.

“There is a need for that,” he insisted, and the girl’s face contorted with worry.

“I will be fine,” he promised her as he let his shoulders loosen up.

“Would you please be more careful in your spars, Hokage-sama,” a weary-looking jounin added quietly as he looked at all of the destruction around him.

“Come on, Yamato. It is not really that bad,” and Sasuke found himself scoffing as he looked at the ruin in front of him. The man had blown away a mile of thick forest with a single attack, and he was calling it small.

“He really is on an entirely different level,” he uttered to himself as Katin lowered her sleeve.

“Let me heal you then,” and she began using iryo-ninjutsu on him. It was less effective than her kekkei genkai, but Sasuke hated to see the girl in pain, and he had promised himself to never use that power after learning about what Kusagakure had done to her mother.

“You have gotten better,” Gojo Hatake added as he walked up to the two of them.

“But I can’t beat you,” and the Hokage-sama chuckled at those words.

“Beat me?”

“Well, I would say that you are now an elite S- ranked nin. Heck, you might now be nearly as strong as Kakashi,” but Sasuke was not the only one who had improved over the years, for Kakashi had made tremendous leaps by now.

“How far am I?” he asked, and after learning the truth, Sasuke had sought to confront Itachi and the masked man about their role in their clan’s demise, but he had been rejected.

Gojo Hatake had declared that the masked man was his, but he had promised to let him deal with Itachi as long as Sasuke was able to extract the truth about the death of a girl named Hana Uchiha.

He remembered Hana, and she was Shisui-san’s sister. She remembered her being ill, and he had only recently learned that Gojo-san had been in love with her.

“Given your condition, I would say that if you and he were to fight, you would lose some seven out of ten battles,” and that was better than before, when he had deemed him worthy of winning barely one battle.

“You still have a long way to go, kid,” and with that, he turned away as he saw Yamato-san finish his seals.

“Mokuton: Deep Forest Emergence,” and suddenly the torn u ground began to shift, as the helmet-wearing nin slapped his hands on the ground. In the blink of an eye, the ground tore apart as a new forest emerged and replaced the part that had been torn up, Gojo Hatake.

The man’s face fell as his reserves dropped while the Hokage-sama simply walked up to him and slapped his back.

“That’s my man. See, it’s all good once more,” and Yamato-san clearly did not appreciate the humor.

Just then, a masked ANBU came and handed the Hokage-sama a small note. The man read it.

“Well, it seems like it is time for me to go,” and Sasuke could not help but question.

“When will I be ready?” he roared back at him.

“Tell me?” and the man with bandages around his eyes turned back towards him.

“I am afraid only you have the answer to that question, Sasuke-kun...” Yet for some reason, he was not looking at him as he said that but at Karin, making him wonder what message lay hidden inside those words.

.

.

.

Minutes later, Gojo Hatake walked to the roof of the Hokage building, where Shikaku Nara and Tsunade Senju lay waiting for him already. A massive sealing formula was placed on the floor as Tsunade-sama gave him a perturbed look.

“Do you really have to do this?” she questioned, and he nodded.

“I do. I made a promise, and I intend to keep it,” and in the last two years, Konoha had almost rebuilt its strength and numbers but not through churning out graduates. No, but by preserving the force they already had.

Konoha had been the village with the least casualties amongst the five great nations, and the total number of shinobi that they had lost barely crossed the double digits while the numbers for other great villages were in the thousands.

“You know well enough the sheer toll this takes on you. Every time you do this, you are pushing yourself to the limit and causing damage to your brain,” and she seemed much concerned about his condition, as she shouted angrily.

“You are killing yourself, you fool!” she rebuked him, but Gojo shrugged.

“Aren’t we all,” and with that, he walked to the center of the sealing array and plopped down. He drew in a deep breath as he removed his bandages, and suddenly his chakra gushed forth as pain began to cut through his entire being.

He saw it all. He saw birds chirping up in the mountains of Kumo, and he saw Ohnoki sipping his tea. He saw Mei fighting a battle against the rebellion forces in Kiri. But he focused on his men, and it took him five minutes to look through them all, and he finally let go and sealed off his powers once more.

“HAA!” he gasped, and he could see the blood dripping down from his nose as he opened his eyes. By now, he could control his powers without the seals on the bandages, but the seal eased the burden of keeping the tap closed.

“Damn idiot,” Lady Tsunade cursed him as she stepped forward and placed her hand on his head.

“I never should have agreed to come back,” she complained even though he felt the pain lessen, as her iryo-nnjutsu began healing up all of the damage that he had sustained.

“Our teams along the Kiri border are being overwhelmed. You will need to reposition them and send out reinforcements from the Shu Jing Base to the North. There is no trouble along the border with Suna, though Kusa is building up a force again. I don’t know the purpose, but they might be thinking about revenge once more,” and Shikaku Nara rolled his eyes in frustration.

“Again,” and Gojo shrugged.

“The border with Kumo is peaceful, but I did spot a bit of trouble in Otogakure,” and they both perked up at that, for everyone knew of the power behind Oto. Otogakure was the only village apart from Ame that he could not quite see with his powers, yet today he had been to see through those barriers and that could mean only one thing.

“I notched one of the Akatsuki’s chakra signatures heading in that direction,” and now both Shikaku and Lady Tsunade looked at one another.

“So, this means,” and Gojo nodded.

“Orochimaru is about to make his move....”

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