Game of Shadows - 135 (Patreon)

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

Cover Art: Kissuli.

Chapter 135

“You sure you are fine? I can stay for a bit longer, you know?” Eiji asked, giving Sasuke a concerned look. He didn’t want to coddle the boy too much, but on the other hand… He totally did. In his defense though, he thought it was somewhat justified. Sasuke had gone through something hard and was still getting over it.

“Eiji, I’ll be fine,” the Uchiha told him with a slight smile. One that didn’t really help his case, with how strained it looked. “Naruto won’t leave me alone and neither will Sakura or Kakashi-sensei. I appreciate the concern, but I have a team.”

“Right… Right, of course…” Eiji muttered, hearing Tayuya snickering next to him. “Oh, shut up.”

“Come the fuck on, Mama Eiji, we gotta get moving sometime today or not at all, choose one,” his girlfriend told him, making his eye twitch. She wasn’t wrong, however. So, he took a deep breath in and sighed.

“Fine,” he agreed, turning towards his friends, especially Sasuke who was now grinning like he meant it for once. “Take care and send a message if you need anything.”

“I will, take care yourself, yeah?” Sasuke told him.

“Say hi to Hinata for me if you get to Konoha before us, ok?” Naruto asked him, getting a grin from Eiji and a laugh from Tayuya. “And thanks… for everything. You can bet the future Hokage appreciates it.”

“I’m sure you do,” Eiji replied, shaking his head. Then he gave both boys a long look. With a sigh, he turned towards Sakura. “Keep them out of trouble, will you?”

“I’ll do my best,” the pink-haired girl answered, which was as good as Eiji would get. That was fine. He knew they were a handful, after all. “Take care, Eiji, and thanks for the training… Even if I hate Kabuto.”

To that, he chuckled. While they were dealing with Sasuke’s… family problems, as it were, Eiji had pushed Sakura towards Kabuto and told the guy to get as much medical knowledge into her head as he could. He’d done exactly that, from what he gathered, even if it probably had been a miserable experience for the girl. He probably would do it again sometime in the future though. She’d be grateful for it at some point.

Maybe.

“And you… Well… Don’t read too much porn in public, yeah?” Eiji asked Kakashi with a slight grin.

“Hm, did you say something?” the man asked back, looking like he was just now looking up from the book in his hands.

Eiji just shook his head. It wasn’t like he’d interacted much with the man except for indirect meetings like this one. However, the man had a reputation, that was for sure. Anyway, that was enough delay-

“Let’s go Fearless Leader,” Tayuya told him, grabbing his upper arm and dragging him away. “Before you start crying, yeah? Take care, bunch of bastards!”

“Keep an eye on him, Tayuya!” Naruto called after them.

“See you later,” Sasuke told them with a nod, while Sakura and Kakashi waved at them… with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

[}-o-{]

“He wasn’t going to come here, at least not first, I hope you know that,” Temari said, drawing a huff from Eiji. Sure, she wasn’t wrong, but there was no need to say it. Honestly, was she just trying to make him look bad? Good luck with that. People didn’t think badly of Kakashi or Maito Gai despite their rather… colorful personalities. They weren’t going to care much for his eccentricities.

“I don’t know if that wouldn’t have been the better idea,” Onoki said, massaging the bridge of his nose. “Honestly, do you know what you did?” he asked Eiji with an annoyed expression.

“Put the fear of me in the hearts of ninja from every big village?” he asked casually, making the man groan. “It wasn’t my intention. More like a secondary point on the whole plan, you know?” Apparently, that didn’t help the Tsuchikage feel better about the whole thing. “Things going well over here?”

To that, Onoki just deadpanned at him.

“Fine, be like that,” Eiji muttered, rolling his eyes. “You know what? I’ll just go train Kurotsuchi. At least you appreciate that,” he grumbled, making the man snort.

“Now that is very true,” the man acknowledged with a nod. “If I was grateful for that before, I’m doubly so now. You know how much prestige it’s earned her for it to be known that she’s been trained and might continue to be so by The Stormweaver? I’m almost annoyed. It’s gotten to the point where it’s on part with being my granddaughter.”

Eiji grimaced at the title he’d been given after Amegakure.

“And I’m sure that makes you very damn happy, Red Nose,” Tayuya pointed out, making the man’s eyebrow twitch. “It’s good for her, isn’t it?” she asked then, trying to sound like it was an honest, innocent question. Which obviously didn’t work with anyone that knew anything about her, really.

“Just go away, will you?” Onoki told them with a grimace.

“Hm, I think we’ll be going. Take care, old man,” Eiji decided with a nod before starting to walk away. “See, I told you it wasn’t necessary, Temari,” he told the girl, speaking loudly so as to be heard by the Tsuchikage. “Only thing you did was bother the good village leader.”

“Everyone knows you are doing it on purpose, Eiji,” Temari pointed out with a deadpan.

“I mean, yeah, but am I wrong?” he asked with a wide grin before chuckling at her disturbed expression. “Seriously, I don’t think the man could have cared less if I moved around. So long as I don’t cause trouble of any kind, does it matter? I think we are practically unofficial allies at this point.”

“Still, there’s a procedure, Eiji,” Temari told him, frustrated.

“Yeah, but how many people care about that stuff when you are strong enough to ignore that,” he pointed out with a lazy wave. “How many people ignored that with Gaara?”

Her increasingly disturbed expression was enough of an answer.

“Got you there, Bimbo Number One.”

[}-o-{]

“They are really going at it,” Eiji commented, tilting his head and picking up more popcorn from his bag. “It’s kind of awesome to watch, not gonna lie.”

“I just like when they really fucking smack each other, very satisfying,” Tayuya said with a cackle, doing much the same from his side.

“Of course you enjoy that, you don’t like anyone,” Yugito pointed out with a roll of her eyes, eating from a snack that they’d gotten for this occasion too. Apparently, she didn’t like popcorn, for some reason.

“Ex-fucking-cuse me? I like Fearless Leader just fine, I’ll have you know. It’s the rest of you lot that I couldn’t care less for,” the redhead argued with a frown, picking up a handful off of her bag and throwing it at the jinchuriki’s face.

“Can I join? That looks fun,” Fu said, bouncing excitedly where she sat.

“Your team is troublesome, Eiji,” Shikamaru mumbled, letting out a long suffering sigh. Regardless of that complaint, he did look down and finally made his move on the board. “There.”

“Stop complaining, Shika. They might be annoying, but they shouldn’t affect your game. Stop making excuses,” Eiji said with a chuckle. It was extra funny because he was losing, so the Nara shouldn’t even be complaining. He was fairly sure that the other boy just liked doing it for complaining’s sake.

“He wouldn’t be Pineapple head if he weren’t though,” Tayuya pointed out, which made Eiji take a considering expression.

“Fair enough. You do complain a fucking lot, Shika.”

“God, you used to be nicer, Eiji,” Ino lamented, throwing her hands up in the air. “What’s this banshee done to you?”

“I’ll have you know that he always had that in him, Bimbo Number Three,” Tayuya hissed, narrowing her eyes. “It’s just that you lot were keeping him distracted.”

“First of all, I don’t think that’s a bad thing,” Ino said, narrowing her eyes back at the redhead. “Second of all, we never made Eiji stop doing anything or otherwise have to hide anything. Third of all… Why am I number three?”

“Because you were the third bimbo I met after joining this team,” Tayuya replied with a shrug and a “what can you do” expression. To that, angry Ino made angry Ino noises.

“I think Jirobo is pulling ahead,” Eiji commented, making the two girls turn back toward the aformentioned’s fight with Chouji. Stone armored Jirobo against partially gigantified Chouji was turning out to be a great fight to witness. It was like seeing two mini-Kaiju fighting each other, in a way. Definitely pretty cool. “Wonder if we can get money for a spectacle of this.”

“Probably, but we’d have to throw a pretty face in there to get some more attention. Maybe one of the Bimbos would-”

“No.”

“Definitely not.”

“Oh, fuck you, Tayuya.”

“Aha!” his girlfriend exclaimed, pointing at Ino. “I win!” she declared, getting a horrified look from the blonde. Next to them, Eiji rolled his eyes, picking up more popcorn and deciding to focus on the fight and his shogi match.

[}-o-{]

“How are they still going at it? Him, especially,” Chouji complained as he threw more food into his mouth. “We fought for a while and he still has that much energy?”

“Not really, he keeps going because it’s Fu he’s against,” Eiji pointed out, now watching as Stone Jirobo faced Bug Shell Fu. “He’s sapping her chakra to keep himself going. He should be hitting a limit sometime soon though. He’s not very used to the chakra of a tailed beast.”

“So, he’s training, while in a spar for fun,” Ino muttered, looking at him with a deadpan.

“Yes,” Yugito nodded from off to the side, a sandwich in hand. “He’s a terrible influence on us all.”

“What? Jirobo? But he’s nice,” Eiji argued, drawing even more unimpressed expressions from everyone around. Then he looked down, deciding on a play to make on the board. “What?”

“God, you used to be cool, Eiji,” Ino lamented. “What happened to you?”

“He got a troublesome girlfriend?” Shikamaru asked, earning himself a punch from Tayuya.

“Keep me out of it. He was already like this when I fucking got him,” the redhead told them with narrowed eyes. “If anything, it’s your fault, you little shits.”

“I did my best to stop this from happening, but it didn’t work,” Shikamaru pointed out, making his own move on the shogi board.

“Yeah, and I’m sure you put a lot of effort into that, huh?” Tayuya asked with a sneer. “Dumbass.”

“I mean…”

“Don’t even try it, Shika, we all know you too well,” Ino interrupted with a sigh. “I’ll blame Naruto.”

“I mean, yeah, that works,” Tayuya surprisingly agreed. “That damn kid has entirely too much energy. If Fearless Leader hadn’t spent time training with the limitless fountain of energy from hell, then maybe he’d be somewhat normal.”

“You guys are being very hurtful right now, just saying,” Eiji said, looking at them with an unimpressed expression.

“Pretty sure Naruto complained about Eiji not being fun a bunch of times because he was always training,” Chouji pointed out with his mouth full. “So, maybe he was just born like this.”

“Man, imagine being born a training maniac,” Tayuya commented. “That’s so fucking sad.”

“I mean, you are not wrong,” Ino agreed before she smirked. “Imagine signing up to be a training maniac’s girlfriend though,” she added, getting snorts from both Temari and Yugito.

“Bitch, you Bimbos wish you were me. You can’t convince me otherwise,” Tayuya scoffed before sending the same smirk back at the blonde. “You guys just don’t have my charm. Sucks to suck.”

“You guys think it’s the red hair too, right?” Ino asked.

“Yes.”

“Yup.”

“I’m still here, you know?” Eiji asked.

“Sucks. To. Suck,” Tayuya told the blondes, making him sigh.

[}-o-{]

“One of us can take over, Eiji, it’s just a spar,” Hachi suggested and while he appreciated the offer, it wasn’t necessary. At least, he didn’t think so.

“Your choice,” Kage told him.

Tsuchigumo was being sweetheart again, simply sitting wherever she was and waiting for him to decide. Regardless, she was eager to help out whoever it was that fought. She was great like that… Stopping to smile at her happy bark, he decided that she also deserved all the compliments in the world. It wasn’t because her reactions were exceedingly cute, no sir.

“Everyone ready?” Eiji asked, rolling the shoulder of his prosthetic arm, the armored one for the first time since the day it was all finally over. He looked around at his team plus Kurotsuchi, some of them replied with a nod while others were more vocal about it. “Right, look out for the Princess’s friendly fire. Think of it as extra training for you, guys.”

“I said I’ve gotten bett-” the girl started complaining, only to be interrupted by Eiji dashing towards her. She barely twisted out of the way of his left handed punch, but she wasn’t fast enough to dodge the kick that followed. Before he could follow that up though, one of Kabuto’s flying hands went for a stab in the back.

‘Figures he’d be the one to be ready for a surprise attack.’

“Fuck,” Kurotsuchi cursed as she jumped over the wire that went her way. The rest of the time did much the same as they started getting ready to jump at him. Thus, the spar was on already. “You are an asshole.”

“Channeling your inner Tayuya, huh? They grow up so fast, don’t they?” Eiji asked with a chuckle as he dashed towards the redhead with a grin on his face. Before he could do anything though, Jirobo threw himself in the way, giving the girl enough time to get away. Not only that, but he went for a technique that surprised Eiji a little. He didn’t bring up his armor, nor did he bring up walls or otherwise change the terrain.

Instead, he rose a single pillar from behind Eiji trying to get a hit. He dodged, of course, but that was a split second wasted in which Fu made her way towards him just as he kicked Jirobo away. Yugito soon joined, being dropped by Temari from the air. Eiji also felt Kabuto positioning his puppet hands around for a surprise attack.

“This is fun,” he said, evading their attacks as best he could.

He didn’t much worry about hitting them. Well, too much though. He did throw some of his weaker elemental techniques their way. It wasn’t like he would throw Sacred Flock at them. But now that he’d maxed out Lightning Beast Tracking Fang, well, why not throw it around for a bit, right? Besides, if they got distracted they’d be hit with a wire shaped surprise.

That’s when his eyes widened and he jumped, using his threads to maneuver his body through the team. Less than a second later, the place where they’d cornered him in was hit by a shower of lava. He hadn’t expected that, for sure. It seemed someone had prepared a trick or two for the spar.

“Woah, that was dangerous,” he exclaimed, giving Kurotsuchi an impressed expression and drawing a pleased smile from the girl. “A little too close to Jirobo and Fu, but I guess that was a calculated thing, somewhat. Keep working on it,” he told her as he batted away Yugito’s claws.

“Fuck, help!” Tayuya called, having gotten caught by his wires and he chuckled.

“Eyes wide open, guys,” Eiji called, then he Flickered three times until he was on Kabuto, whose eyes widened.

Before he could do anything else though, the entire area was bathed in quicklime. Wet quicklime too, which was kinda impressive. He’d never seen Kurotsuchi use the stuff in tandem with a water release technique. He was kinda curious about how she got it to work.

“Nice, very nice.”

“I’ve been preparing these tricks for a while,” the girl said, looking very proud of herself. To be honest, she should be. It seemed she’d gotten a lot better and that made him proud. She was the team’s student, after all, and that meant her progress was their achievement.

“Very nice indeed,” Eiji said, before smirking. “But do you have-” he started, before doing another series of Flickers. “Anything to protect yourself.”

“Don’t need to,” Kurotsuchi replied with a smirk of her own. Immediately afterwards, he had to dodge an armored punch from Fu, which was quickly followed by Jirobo putting a wall between Eiji and the Lava Release user.

That’s when Temari decided to stop playing spectator and hit him with a strong gust of wind from above that left cuts all over his clothes. Yugito took that opportunity to pull the Two Tail flames and fan wind combo on him. Or tried to, he was in no rush to get hit with that, for sure. Or any hits, really.

After all, World Ender wouldn’t be used unless he absolutely needed to, ever again. Either that or until he could work the problems it had up. Because he was definitely not going to cut his lifespan shorter than it already was. He had no rush to go into the Void again, that was for sure.

Back to the battle though, at long last one of his team members missed a step, getting their foot grabbed by one of his many wires. Poor Fu was then flung away while Eiji continued dodging and trying to catch the rest of the team. Poor Tayuya, for her part, was struggling to get her own threads off but she was basically already out.

When an opening was offered, Kurotsuchi took it to shoot a blob of lava at him. Yeah, she’d definitely gotten better with her control, if nothing else. Unfortunately, that still wasn’t enough for them to win, but at least they were improving enough to make him work more and more for it.

“This is really fun,” Eiji thought to himself with a grin. Training spars were a lot more entertaining when the world didn’t depend on him getting better, it seemed. So yeah, maybe he wouldn’t push most of them on the twins anymore. ‘Sorry, guys.’

“Don’t worry about it.”

“At least let me have one once in a while.”

‘I think I can manage that.’

[}-o-{]

The next stop was one that was quite important and as such, Eiji would have done just about anything to delay it. However, it was not to be. It had to happen soon, or people would start getting antsy with him. That was a rather dangerous thing when “people” included Kages, or so he was told.  Eiji was at a point in which he could have cared less, but he did have to admit that a part of him wanted to get to it too.

If only because he quite enjoyed the Land of Rain, honestly.

Thus, he found himself crossing that border once more. The rain almost seemed to welcome him, in a way. It was the expected thing to see, but he was still happy that he’d arrived on a day where the nigh eternal storm hadn’t stopped. There was no wind to disturb the peaceful fall of the drops, and that alone was enough for Eiji to walk through the rocky landscape with a smile on his face.

He could have Flickered his way through the country, and be done with it all faster, but he didn’t feel like it. He’d much rather take the scenic route, as it were. There was no rush and he enjoyed the weather, so why even bother? That was his reasoning and no one in the squad voiced any complaints with that approach. He rather suspected some of them could have done without that, but none of them said a thing so he took it as them deciding to bear with it.

“Not that I mind the infinite shower, but do you have a plan here, Fearless Leader?” Fu asked, walking next to him. It didn’t seem to be a sarcastic comment, judging by the way the girl skipped around, almost dancing under the falling drops. It was quite heartwarming to see her like that. She was already so much different from the girl they’d found in Taki, desperate for even the smallest semblance of freedom.

“Enjoy our stay here,” Eiji answered with a grin. “That’s about as much as I have planned. I have a feeling there’s little need for anything else apart from that.”

“Works for me,” the jinchuriki of the Seven Tails replied with much the same expression and a nod.

“Surely there’s more to it than that, right?” Yugito asked, revealing herself as one of the people that didn’t quite like the rain. He could have laughed at that. Eiji wondered if that was a coincidence or if it was a side effect of the Two Tails in her. It was a cat, but surely that wasn’t it, right?

He refrained from voicing that, otherwise poor Yugito would never hear the end of it from Tayuya.

“Nope, that’s all,” he told her with a chuckle. “It’ll work out, I assure you. I’ve thought this over for a while and honestly, any other approach would be more effort than it’s worth. With that in mind, I’d rather not bother.”

The woman huffed, but remained silent after that.

That was as much as was discussed about their current “mission” while they traversed the Land of Rain. They walked under the rain, slept under covers made by Jirobo and trained under those rather specific circumstances. Other than that, Eiji himself simply took the sights that surrounded them, now much more relaxed than the last time he was there. It’d been beautiful before, but the sense of peacefulness they offered was much more pronounced than before.

It was one of those days, when they were more than halfway through the place, that something happened.

Eiji was sitting by himself on top of a rather tall rock that stood tall around a rather flat surface. His squad was some distance away, behind some rock formations and under a roof made by their resident Earth Release user. Tayuya had left some time ago, finally growing tired of the rain even though she enjoyed it about as much as he did. She had much less tolerance to her clothes being wet though.

That was fine, being alone in the rain had a beauty of its own, really. Besides, at times like those was when he could enjoy the company of the twins and Tsuchigumo, besides meditation, that is. He and the Chakra Beast rather enjoyed what little time they managed to scrape while he was on the outside world. It was different from being inside the Mindscape. It felt more… real.

“Eiji,” Hachi called in his mind but he gave her the equivalent of a mental nod. He knew already, he was simply waiting, really. The twins were much less calm than he was, but they conceded that it was an irrational thing. They could feel just what he could at that moment and they knew everything was fine.

Maybe he wasn’t the only one that had grown a little too paranoid with time. They were certainly having a harder time adapting to the more peaceful times they were suddenly thrown in though. Which was fine. They’d done the part of helping him stay calm before. It was now his turn to return the favor.

“I had a feeling you would come,” Eiji said then, looking up and closing his eyes as the rain washed over him. “You took your time though.”

“We were… keeping an eye on things,” one of the people behind him said, drawing a nod from him.

“And, how did you like what you saw?”

“You do good work, Weaver,” another said and Eiji grinned. “Now, what is it that you want from us?”

“I just came for a chat, Pain.”

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How’s it going?

I find it very amusing that I managed to put a cliffhanger in what’s supposed to be an epilogue chapter. Man, this is fun.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the chapter.

Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ

Random Question: Red, blue or green? I personally like red more.

See you.