Game of Shadows - 33 (Patreon)

Disclaimer: I don’t own Naruto nor The Gamer. I own nothing, really.

Chapter 33

Third Person PoV

“A week,” The man spat out in contempt. “It’s been a week and we still have no idea how that mess happened, Hiruzen.”

“I’m well aware, Danzo,” The Hokage sighed.

The Swordsmen Fiasco, as the Council had started to call it, had been nothing short of a catastrophe. One that ended rather well, all things considered, but a catastrophe nonetheless. A talent like Eiji Satou’s wasn’t something that one came across everyday. And while the rising stars that were Sasuke Uchiha in combat and Naruto Uzumaki in traps and fuinjutsu gave many of the older generation a much needed relief after the Kyubi Attack, Satou was still their best Rookie.

The new batch of the Academy was even better than the older one was at that very moment, many would point out. Yes, Neji Hyuga would have been the pride of the clan if he had been from the main family. Rock Lee seemed to be a Maito Gai in the making. And even Tenten Higurashi was taking the simple and often overlooked Bukijutsu to levels that few did. But they were all the previous batch had to give, in contrast with Teams 7, 8 and 10, not to mention the Eiji’s apprenticeship.

But everyone was also aware of what almost had happened.

Everyone knew of the connection Eiji Satou had with the previously mentioned promising teams. The impact of his death would be lasting, especially so early in all of their careers. Yes, death was part of the job, and everyone knew it. But losing such a prominent figure was bound to scar many if not all of the rookies. It was also the reason many tried to keep Genin as such for as long as possible and slowly ease them onto the truths of their world.

“It should have been a low A rank at best,” The leader of ROOT muttered to himself. And the Hokage couldn’t help but share the sentiment.

A low A rank, that was all the mission should have been. Contact wasn’t even necessary. The mission was Tracking the pair, not confronting them. But regardless of that, the pair shouldn’t have been Jounin, they shouldn’t even have been high Chuunin. Which meant that in case of confrontation, there should have been a decent chance of at least escaping.

Reality had turned out to be very different from what actually happened.

“Our ANBU, my ROOT and even the Mist’s intelligence,” The Hokage’s old ally continued grumbling and pacing around his office, giving voice to both their thoughts. “How could all three of them be fooled in such a  manner?”

“Alas, I do not know,” Hiruzen said, closing his eyes to calm down his worries about such a breach in their sources. “But we have bigger problems.”

“Bigger than someone being able to give us false information?”

“The next generation is always our biggest responsibility,” The Hokage knew he had hit a nerve as he saw Danzo tense up after he finished speaking. “You know what you need to do.”

“I do,” His old comrade admitted, clear annoyance in his tone. “He’s too smart not to consider such a possibility. But...”

“You need to speak with him.”

“I was actually considering alternative routes to-”

“Danzo.”

“It’s not time yet, Hiruzen,” The man denied vehemently before sighing and letting his shoulders fall. “But it’s soon going to be....” He trailed off before the warhawk felt himself growing annoyed once more. “If it hadn’t ended like it did…”

“I know, old friend, I know.”

Both men traded a look.

They would find out how it had happened, if it was the last thing they did.

For the moment though, Danzo let out a grin that the Hokage would almost have called proud.

“E and D-rank jutsu only, Hiruzen,” He said after a moment, and the leader of the village could only return his smile.

“Indeed.”

[}-o-{]

I could only stare, half bemused and half worried, at the papers in front of me on the table. Files upon files, maps and the like included, all of them explaining my mission and what had been known about it beforehand. It matched the intel we had been given, with added information here and there that didn’t seem overly relevant, which would explain why we hadn’t been given it.

I was almost amused by the fact that all this had been dropped in front of me as I waited for some mission or task from Danzo. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought that the man had given me this as some sort of excuse for what had happened. And it made some sense, really. After all, I had considered the possibility of our mission with the Swords being set up to kill me or something. But that had been quickly scratched. Why would Danzo of all people want me dead? I had been doing exactly as he wanted me to for a long time now.

Granted, that in itself could be a point against me, in someone’s book. But to have me killed? No, I didn’t think so. In my head, the only thing that made sense was that someone else had tried to kill me or, also a distinct possibility,  Anko. Who? I didn’t know, but hopefully the higher ups would deal with them before they dealt with their target some other way.

“I don’t really have a problem with this,” I voiced to my invisible watcher. “But don’t get my friends involved next time,” I added. I kept my tone respectful though, no need to antagonize anybody. The thought of what could have happened to the others if they had been in the mission haunted me. After all, it was much less likely that the Grinning Man would have underestimated the three Genin than me.

I received no response, but I didn’t expect one, really. I could only hope that Danzo would listen to my request though. If he didn’t… I didn’t know what I would do but I would have to do something. They knew how to get to me now, I had given them the answer to that very easily. And I would be damned if my friends were used against me.

Despite my reasoning though, there was more than a little bit of bitterness and wariness in me regarding the decisions of my leaders. But I couldn’t quite do anything regarding that even if I wanted to. For now, I could only do so much, despite their rather big interest in me. I was far from good enough to make any demands.

That would change though. Nuibari, sitting in a storage seal in my pocket attested to that. And furthermore, I thought as I pushed the files aside and pulled a now familiar notebook in front of me, my plans for original jutsu would help some more. Maybe I would never create something like the Flying Thunder God technique, but if I could create a bunch of useful lower ranked jutsu, it would be enough.

‘Now, if I could just work out how to do this part,’ I grimaced as I went over the part of my current project that was blocking my progress. It would be slow, and difficult, but I would do it. I needed as much power as I could get.

It also didn’t help that it was one of the few things I could work on while my arm healed, truth be told. ‘Here’s hoping I’ll get an ambidextrous skill or something,’ I mused to myself wryly as I struggled to write with my left hand.

[}-o-{]

“It’s still hard to accept.”

“I mean, we’ve been doing this for years, Shika, one would think you would get used to it,” I joked with a smirk as we reset the board for another game. I, of course, knew what he was talking about, but I was honestly growing tired of these conversations with my friends.

We were both sitting at his house, the rest of the group seemed to all be otherwise occupied at the moment. Ino was at her family’s shop and Chouji was helping his mother with something clan related that I couldn’t quite remember. Teams 7 was training and Team 8 was doing missions, or so we were told.

“I know how you feel,” He admitted with a grimace. “It’s just… you were this unmovable person in our minds. Never to be defeated. Like Jounin, or the Hokage,” I almost preened at being compared to such people, but the weight of his words was still settling on me. It was, after all, the first time one of my friends explained it to me so openly.

“I’m not invisible,” I said simply, with a small smile on my face. He nodded, although his eyes stayed on the board. “I know what you mean though… But the mission, obviously, didn’t go as planned. Something like this shouldn’t happen again.”

“But it could,” He countered, and I had no response to that. He knew it too. “And we understand it, understood it even before, to some extent,” He admitted wryly. “The point is, we- I am worried, Eiji,” My eyes snapped towards him and stared.

“Worried?” I asked, because it sounded like they were worried about more than just what had happened and could have happened.

“The group as a whole is worried about something happening to you, or any of us, really,” He explained slowly as he made his move. I simply turned to the board half-heartedly, my attention staying mainly on the Nara. “But I am worried about you, Eiji. I like you, I really do, but you aren’t… so well.”

I turned to him with raised eyebrows.

“You worry about us too much,” He continued, completely undeterred. “And we worry too, that’s ok, you are our brother in all but blood,” He added just as I went to say something, making me close my mouth with an annoyed expression. “But you still worry too much, Eiji. It’s like there’s nothing else to do with your life but to take care of us, and I may not be a Yamanaka but that’s not a healthy mindset.”

It was my turn to move. But I didn’t move, I kept my eyes fixated on the board, but nothing in particular.

“That’s what worries me, Eiji,” He was still talking. “And I know… I think I know, at least. You are like Naruto. You spent too much time on your own. Why, I don’t know. And I don’t care about that. I know you have your secrets,” I felt my throat closing in itself. “And you can have them, but you can’t keep living like this.”

My hands folded together on my lap, nervously fidgeting as I tried to keep my mind calm. Long, deep breaths filling my lungs through the knot in my throat.

“We want you to be happy too, Eiji,” Shikamaru said, his tone turning to a soft voice that I had never heard from him. My eyes locked on his black ones and I let out a drawn out sigh. “That’s all I’m saying.”

“I know,” I choked out. “It’s just… it’s like… I forgot how to be happy by myself,” I managed to say after a moment and he gave me a sad smile in response.

“Then we’ll help you remember, I guess,” He said.

From there, none of us said anything and we simply resumed our game in silence.

A corner of my mind took that moment to chide me about what I had been doing so far. It was a part of my thoughts that I had refused to listen to so far. I had enough, my mind said, I didn’t need anything else to be happy. I had my friends, my family, and that's enough. But now the solitary thought had Shika’s backing, and it returned with a vengeance.

And now I couldn’t push it away anymore.

I sighed before grimacing, Shikamaru was giving me a glare that dared me to forget about this conversation. ‘Of course,’ I thought to myself.

[}-o-{]

It took a week and a few days for my arm to be fully functional again. Jutsu made a lot of things easier, but not that easy. I wasn’t an expert, but I was pretty sure that my arm would have never worked just fine after being shredded by that wire in my original world. So, two weeks or so was ok in my books.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t been able to work on some other things either. I had worked on my original jutsu ideas for a whole lot and Anko had been teaching me as much as she could without things being practical. I had made more progress on Poison Crafting, that was for sure.

Now though, I was too busy to think about that. My right hand came up and blocked a katana with Nuibari’s blade. After that, much faster than I would have liked, I had to tense the legendary sword’s wire with my left hand on my left side, blocking my opponent’s attack once more, this time with the thread reinforced with Chakra Flow.

[Nuibari Mastery has gone up a level.]

Ignoring the screen, I tried to slash with my sword. Emphasis on trying, since I already knew she would block it. It was kind of good that Shikamaru had gotten me used to crushing defeat, because sparing with a kenjutsu master was about as much as one can utterly destroy someone else’s confidence. It made me feel like I was back on the first days of training after waking up in this world, if I was being honest.

It wasn’t a nice feeling when 90% of my days were spent trying to get stronger.

But regardless of that, I continued, blocking, slashing, trying to use the wire, dodging…

[Basic Kenjutsu has gone up a level.]

A smile tugged at my lips. I was leveling like three things at the same time in this spar alone. It was about as much as I could min-max without hindering something’s progress. Nuibari Mastery, Basic Kenjutsu and Chakra Flow would be part of my main skillset, for obvious reasons.

The legendary blade, for as awesome as it was, had set me back on my sword training some, since it was so much longer than the tanto I had been using before. And I also had to get used to the wire that came with it. Yes, I used ninja wire a lot, but having ninja wire wrapped around your fingers and having it attached to the hilt of your blade was a significant difference. Every little change was, actually, which made adding things to my fighting style so much of a pain.

But I would deal with it, I had time and I had motivation.

There was also the fact that the sword more than made up for the problems it brought. While it wasn’t as impressive as, say, eating fucking chakra, the sharpness and durability it gained from Chakra Flow made it so that there was little it couldn’t block, even with the wire. And the point of it could piece just about anything. So yeah, having an indestructible sword (so long as chakra was supplied) and a scarily sharp one at that, was very much something I would put up with to make up for having to train with a completely new weapon.

‘God, how I wish I could use Lightning Flicker,’ I moaned internally as I was given a shallow cut on my cheek. It would heal pretty much instantly with a Healing Palm, but it still sucked.

“You are progressing pretty well,” Cat commented, giving me a much needed moment to gather myself and breathe. “I’m impressed.”

“I’ll take it as the high praise it is,” I replied as I rested my hands on my knees before straightening my back. Truth be told, the combo of Anko Mitarashi’s Apprentice and Prodigy titles was very broken. Ever since I had gotten the secondary title, I had been using both while training, and since the former still seemed to apply when I trained with someone else under Anko’s ‘guidance’ my progress went fast.

[Basic Kenjutsu – Lvl 15

Increases the skill of the user when fighting with a sword according to skill level.]

[Chakra Flow: Lightning – Lvl 10

Technique with which the user can channel elemental chakra into weapons to grant them special enhancements.

Increases the cutting power of the weapons affected by 50%.

Weapons have a 50% chance of causing numbness on contact.

Consumption – 5 Chakra Points per second.]

[Nuibari Mastery – Lvl 3

Increases the skill of the user when fighting with Nuibari according to level.

Increases damage done with Nuibari by 15%.

Increases accuracy when throwing Nuibari by 15%.

Increases Chakra Flow effectiveness and efficiency by 15% when used on Nuibari.

Increases Physical Stats when using Nuibari by 3%.]

‘Very fast,’ I thought to myself, feeling pretty proud of myself. Yes, Nuibari Mastery was still pretty low leveled and going a bit slow in comparison to the others, but since it appeared to take the Basic/Intermediate/Advanced set and combine them in one, I guessed it made some sense to have it go slower. I wasn’t complaining.

“Yes, I know, my apprentice is awesome,” Anko said, appearing next to us with an expression so smug you would think she was the one we were talking about. I raised an eyebrow at the woman and, if my guess was right, the ANBU did too, under her mask of course.

“Sometimes I wonder why I’m your friend,” Cat said.

“Took the words right out of my mouth,” I nodded.

“Everyone is mean,” Anko pouted.

[}-o-{]

“No coat today?” My teacher asked curiously another day as we met for more training.

“I decided to go without it,” I answered, shrugging lightly. “It gets shredded or burned more often than not. So, what’s the point of even having it? In the end, it doesn’t make up for the usefulness of the extra pockets, really.”

That was true, but my fight with the Grinning Man had also pointed out something for me. If I needed to use the inventory, chances were that I would have to forsake my intention of keeping it a secret. It was fortunate that it had stayed so after I used it on him, but the lesson was still there.

The other change to my usual outfit was the bandages on my forearms. I had changed them to white when I started using actual, real bandages for my right one. Now though, I kept using white aesthetically too. It took away some of the edginess that my previous clothes had, especially now that I didn’t wear the coat either. And I must admit that I liked my new attire just as much as the other one.

“Your call. I had told you it wouldn’t make much of a difference,” Anko commented with a shrug of her own. “So long as you have something to carry your tools on and don’t wear anything too bright or unnatural, it’ll be ok. Those white bandages shouldn’t give you too much trouble, but be careful while trying to hide. Might want to take them off while in stealth mode or wear your dark red ones.”

“Noted,” I nodded.

“Well, what are you waiting for,” She smirked. “I’m sure you have this on the bag already, so, there’s no point really in wasting time. I know you don’t need me to actually teach you anymore than you’ve read.”

Nodding once more, my brows furrowed before I closed my eyes. I took a deep breath in as I focused and recalled everything that I knew about the jutsu I was about to use. Everything I had read and everything that was similar to those I already knew.

A quick succession of hand seals followed as my eyes locked on a tree some distance away from the both of us. It was much longer than I was used to, although it wasn’t the first jutsu that I learned that had as many. The Body Flicker though, wasn’t considered as a battle technique in my brain though. That spot was reserved for the Lightning version of it.

I finished the ten seals and pushed all stray thoughts from my mind. Lightning came alive on my hands as I drew them away from each other, and I had a split second to witness and rejoice in the sheer awesomeness of the fact that I was literally handling lightning on the palm of my hands. Then, I pushed forward.

The attack wasn’t quite a lightning bolt as much as it was a strange coalition of smaller charges of electricity shooting in roughly the same direction. I was a strange sight, but it was also much more epic than a simple bolt would have been, or at least that was my opinion. Certainly better than its counterpart, since Electromagnetic Strike would have at most splintered the wood all over. This one though, broke the trunk so much that the tree almost fell over, not to mention that it could hit a wider zone, so it was harder to dodge.

[New Skill Acquired: Lightning Release: Electromagnetic Murder]

‘Nice.’

“Nice,” Anko said, unknowingly echoing my mind. “Kind of expected of you, at this point, but still very impressive.”

“Way to make a compliment lose its value, teach,” I grumbled, although there was no heat to it. I knew everyone expected me to do well, to do even better than well. The pressure was… not entirely welcome, but I had learned to live with it. And sometimes, it even managed to feel nice, encouraging.

“Next one, kiddo,” She voiced, pointing at an untouched tree. Finding one of those was always a challenge in itself, I had noticed. Understandable, considering that these were training grounds, so it made sense for the trees to take a lot of hits.

I repeated the process, same as before really. Although this time, I ended with the fingers of my right hand forming a circle in front of my mouth. As I took a breath in, I felt the hot air inside my lungs burn fiercely, reaching a temperature that should have made me combust from the inside.

Instead, the feeling was kept under control and promptly pushed up and out of my mouth. The fireball flying and ultimately hitting the new tree. The poor plant ignited into a fire that was quickly put out with a quick Water Jutsu from Anko. Almost the whole thing had gone up in flames though, and I was quite happy with those results.

[New Skill Acquired: Fire Release: Fireball]

“Even better,” My sensei nodded, a smirk tugging at the corner of her lips. “This is all we’ll be working on from now on. Well, this and what you already know. There’s little chance of you getting these pairs to a point where you can use them without seals before the Exams, but it should kickstart you for the final round, which you should be given some more time to train.”

“Nothing for the first rounds?” I asked curiously, my eyes focusing on the remaining water of her technique.

“Not right now. And don’t even think about it, kiddo,” This time she sent a full on smirk my way. “Adding another element to your list will only hinder you. You learned fire to counter your weakness. Water would boost your strength, but dealing with so many elements isn’t going to do you any favors. Keep to what you’ve got for now.”

“When would you say I’m ready for a third?” I questioned this time, not really upset about her denying me some other techniques. I had kind of seen that coming.

“I would wait until you are a Jounin… or Tokubetsu Jounin, whatever comes first,” She shrugged. “Shouldn’t take you too long.”

It sounded reasonable, but it still bothered me a bit. After all, my circumstances weren’t exactly normal. I sighed. I would have to deal with it, I guessed. ‘And,’ I thought to myself. ‘The issue of time is still a thing. I really don’t have enough time to level so many things. I much prefer to work on fire.’

During one of the breaks an hour or so later, I looked at my new skills.

[Lightning Release: Electromagnetic Murder – 2

C-rank technique with which the user creates a wave of electricity from their hands.

Hand Seals – 9

Consumption – 38 Chakra Points.]

‘Weird that it got a Consumption reduction right at the very beginning at level 1,’ I thought to myself. ‘But I’m not complaining, this is much more expensive right now than my other jutsu.’

[Fire Release: Fireball – Lvl 2

D-rank technique with which the user launches a fireball at a target.

Hand Seals – 5

Consumption – 19 Chakra Points.]

‘Kinda reminds me of Electromagnetic Strike’s stats,’ I noted with a small smile.

‘Here’s hoping I’ll be ready for the exams.’

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How’s it going?

I was going to go on for a bit more. But the chapter would’ve gotten too long, so I’ve got to cut it here. Next chapter we are definitely getting to the exams. I might even just do a quick montage of training and start (maybe even finish) the first stage of the Chuunin Exams. But we all know how my plans usually go, right?

Anyway, as you can see, and probably guess, we’re not quite done with the Swords Mission plotline quite yet.

Random Question: Do you have a favorite jutsu? Mine is the Summoning one. I’ve always been a lazy bastard, and I would surely summon things to deal with my problems instead of doing so myself if I could.

See you.