Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Small Gods ❯ A Stranger Kind of Acceptance ( Chapter 8 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Author's Note: here is a turning point. Pay attention to the interaction between Naruto and his adversary, it is important.

The sky really was amazing in the desert. If you actually took the time to look at it, it really was…amazing. From Naruto’s prone and exhausted position on the ground, he could see it quite clearly. A sand piper flew by.
“Bastard…” Naruto croaked out hoarsely. The stranger in robes was sitting nonchalantly, cross legged next to a rock.
“There’s just one thing… I wanna know.”
“Oh?” The stranger intoned quizzically.
“How to be civil? I’m afraid I can’t teach you that.”
Naruto grimaced and stuck out a half-hearted tongue. He was flat on his back staring up into endless blue.
“How’d you do it?” He said grouchily.
“No ninja, no human could pull a stunt like the one you pulled on me, repeatedly, without some damned drug. I tested that stuff you left me, the food and the water, every time, nothing in it. So how the hell’d you do it?”
The stranger chortled and shook his cowled head slowly.
“You really aren’t the suspicious type are you?” He said mirthfully. There was an annoying twinkle in those dark eyes.
“What,” Naruto growled. “Does that have to do with anything?” The stranger just shrugged.
“If you had been then you would have double checked to make sure it wasn’t an herbal sedative. Not all sleeping agents are chemical based you know.”
Naruto groaned. So that is what it had been. The man produced a vial from the folds of his robes, held it up in front of Naruto’s nose and shook it. A light colored cache of stems rattled inside.
“This,” he said. “Is Allousin, it’s a plant that grows in the darker carverns. It dissolves quickly when in water and it has no taste. You were lucky, or a complete fool, last night when you forgot to drink anything. Which, I am assuming of course, is what happened.”
Naruto tried to swipe the bottle away.
“Wh-y!” His voice broke out.
“Why’d you-…” He was cut off.
“I’ll give you a clue: until today no one has been able to keep up with me for as long as you did. Why is your answer. I should think that you can figure that out easily enough Mr. Uzumaki.” The stranger said brusquely.
“I’ll give you until…5 o’clock tonight to tell me exactly why. Until then,” he got up and began to walk away at a terrible pace.
“Please try not to die from exhaustion out here,” he called back over his shoulder.
“I’ve put far too much work into you, and I daresay you’ll want another shot at ‘ripping my lungs out through my nose’ before you expire, boy!” The stranger disappeared in a puff of smoke, leaving Naruto to limply claw at the ground in frustration.
“DA-amn y-ou!” His voice cracked out pitifully, angrily.
“Da-mn y-ou to hell!”
A sudden pain stabbed him between the eyes.
Good god no…
After a long night and half a day of running with high emotions the demon had been roused into full gear, and it was angry. He tried, he tried to reign it in, all of it. It would take time. He had that at least.
Two hours later it was no use, his mind was folding under the pressure from the Kyuubi’s chakra. Naruto had been restraining the beast for far too long. It was becoming dangerous. He needed to calm down. Calm down!
Focus, focus. Focus on…Something! Blue sky, endless blue, deep, deep, calm…
Breath in, blue sky.
Breath out, endless plains.
Breath in, wind and sand.
Breath out, lazy day.
He lay there for…he didn’t know how long, but the breathing worked. As he focused on nothing, on everything, Naruto noticed things he hadn’t really considered before. A pack of plains mice skittered nearby, under the ground. The shifting of the sands in the breeze was similar to the rustling of the leaves in Konoha.
Konoha…
He wanted to go home.
Naruto closed his eyes for a moment and then began to move, or crawl rather, towards the plateau. He was fortunate that his stupid chase with the crazy old man hadn’t ended too far away from his fissure. He had time to get there still, time to think about what the stranger had said. Funny how he enough of it when he didn’t want it.
He wanted to go home.

He was just sitting there. The insane old coot was just sitting there rummaging through Naruto’s pack without a care for decency. Naruto stood, swaying, disbelieving at the entrance of the cleft.
“What the hell are you doing!” He managed to shout.
“That’s my stuff!”
The stranger looked up and tilted his head to one side.
“Ah! You’re here now. Do you have the answer to your question?”
Gods his voice was irritating, so damned polite!
“Yes I do! But that’s besides the point that you’re nosing around in my belongings!” Naruto lunged, unsuccessfully, at the man who leaped away with no effort at all, gliding almost.
“You have the answer? Good lets hear it then!”
Naruto would really, joyfully, enthusiastically, have disembowled his unwanted guest at the moment. But seeing as he was again lying face down in the dirt…
“YES! Okay, I know the answer. I don’t want your help. You can keep it.”
The stranger knelt down next to Naruto’s unmoving body.
“Are you sure that’s the answer?” He said cryptically. “I was helping you, hanging you by your toes every day? That doesn’t sound like help.”
Naruto propped himself up off the ground and flipped over into a sitting position.
“Yeah I’m pretty damn sure,” he said. “You told me that no one could keep up with you till now right? Well it figures they couldn’t. They’ve all died from that stupid rope trick of yours! That’s the only reason why maybe hundreds of other guys can’t match your speed and strangle you is because they didn’t last past basic training. I’m stronger, faster than I was before, lifting those stupid knots every freaking day, but I sure as hell don’t have to like it.”
Naruto stared angrily at the now very quiet person in front of him. They had gone completely still.
“Anyways,” Naruto stated, running a slow hand through his hair.
“Like I said. I don’t want your help. Someone who resorts to trickery to get a student is at the bottom of my black list. So just---go away alright? I don’t want any more trouble and I’m tired.”
The man nodded slowly and got up to leave. He paused for a moment, at the wall.
“I saw how strong you were,” he said placidly.
“How much desire you had to be stronger, I thought I could help make that happen. Its been a long time since I had someone refuse the training. Perhaps I went about it the wrong way…”
Naruto grunted from his place on the ground.
“Yeah, you did.”
The stranger looked up at the fading sky.
“You were wrong about one thing,” he said.
“They didn’t get past the basics, but I never let them die, not one...”
Naruto cracked open an eyelid and regarded the stranger.
“Oi, bastard” he said rudely. “What’s your name anyway?”
The man made as if to turn for a second and then stopped,
“I have no name that I can freely give you,” he said. “But for future reference, if we ever meet again, you may call me Mori.”
Naruto mused for a bit.
“Mori huh?” He said, startling the person back to him.
“I don’t understand how to cut a mountain with wind.” Naruto yawned.
“I’d like to know, you got anyone who could tell me?”
Naruto could almost hear the other man smiling.
“I might know of such a fellow, but his methods are harder than all the ones you’ve ever faced before.”
Naruto smirked, almost asleep.
“I think, I can handle that…” He said, and then drifted off into silence.
Mori looked at the softly snoring youth with an unusual fondness.
“Yes I think,” he said serenely. “You most certainly can…” And then he was gone, flying off into the darkness.
There were two stars that shone through the sandy haze that night.
Both distant, and bright.