Swirling Chaos Ch. 13 (Naruto) (Patreon)

A/N: In the end, it's not Naruto's skill that they take issue with...

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Obviously he’s not going to really go all out against Satsuki. Regardless of their difference in biological age and her higher rank, if Naruto pulled out the Big Guns, this version of Satsuki Uchiha wasn’t likely to survive it. And no part of him wanted to kill her, even the part of him that had known another Satsuki as ‘The Last Uchiha’ and ‘The Lone Avenger’.

He would also have to recall Kurama if he really wanted to go all out, which he might be able to do without Satsuki or Hanabi realizing it, but probably couldn’t manage without Mikoto Uchiha noticing something was up. And sure, maybe it was alright that the Uchiha Matriarch knew what he’d done to his seal seeing as Kushina already knew, but this probably wasn’t the best setting for her to find out.

Still… Naruto knew one thing for certain. He can one hundred percent win this duel if he stops holding back. Even if Satsuki is a very capable kunoichi in this timeline, she’s not quite Jonin yet. Based on all of Naruto’s memories of sparring with her, as well as her rank and the fact that she was planning to take the Jonin Test in another month or so, Satsuki was at the level of a Special Jonin, a rank that didn’t seem to exist in this universe due to his mother’s alterations. Put simply, by the standards of this Konoha, she was just a very, very strong Chunin.

And Naruto was so far above that, it wasn’t even funny.

With that said, Mikoto’s words to continue prompt only the briefest of pauses from both Naruto and Satsuki before they each jolt forward. As Satsuki goes for yet another genjutsu, Naruto speeds up even faster, cycling Nature Chakra through his body to increase his speed. There’s a small twinge of pain as he does so, but it passes almost instantly and Naruto doesn’t let it distract him whatsoever. Pain was an old friend at this point.

Naruto’s fist buries itself in Satsuki’s gut as her genjutsu fails to take hold yet again, his senses remaining under his control. To her credit, the Uchiha doesn’t remain folded over his punch for longer than a quarter of a second before rapidly disengaging, her hands pushing herself off of him before Naruto can follow up. Well, more like… Naruto chooses not to follow up.

He’s trying to be nice even now. This is no middle ground. He’s going to beat Satsuki and he’s going to do it convincingly. But he learned his lesson from his first spar with Hanabi. He doesn’t want to give Satsuki’s mother any reason to end this duel in his favor before he’s properly trounced Satsuki. That will just make things worse, though admittedly Naruto imagines there’s no world in which he beats Satsuki and DOESN’T piss her off.

Still, as they clash time and time again, he tries his best to give her little hits here and there. Yes, he could have ended this in a single blow. Hell, he could have destroyed this entire training field if he really wanted to. But the point was never to kill Satsuki. And he’s not necessarily trying to shame her either.

… He’s not going to let her insult against him stand though. To that end, she has to lose. And as they fight, as they dart back and forth across the battlefield and Naruto lands blow after blow on Satsuki while she can’t even hit him half the time, he sees the realization that she IS losing in the Uchiha woman’s eyes.

Her three-tomoe sharingan spin like crazy as Naruto just plain out-speeds her. By all rights, the sharingan was the great equalizer. It should have made it impossible for someone like Naruto to run circles around her. And yet, even as he’s still holding a lot back, that’s precisely what he’s doing.

To her credit, Satsuki isn’t an idiot. She’s a very skilled kunoichi and it shows in how she rapidly adapts her battle plans again and again in the face of his new speed, his new… everything. Realizing quite quickly that genjutsu simply didn’t work on him for some reason, Satsuki has switched to a ninjutsu-taijutsu mix. One moment she’s trying to hit him with a thousand kunai from all directions, the next she’s aiming a kick for his nuts, the next she’s throwing fireballs to cover up her movement and attempting to get the drop on him.

None of it works of course, and while Naruto does feel a flash of irritation over the attempt to strike his groin, he doesn’t necessarily blame her. All’s fair in love and war and for female ninja, ‘love’ and ‘war’ were more closely entwined then one might think. Put bluntly, if a kunoichi was defeated in battle by a shinobi, they were far more likely to suffer certain… excesses before death than another shinobi would have.

As such, teaching kunoichi to go for groin strikes while still IN battle was just par for the course. If you knew you were in danger of fates worse than death simply because of the sex you were born with, then fuck yeah you’d fight dirty too.

So yeah, Naruto doesn’t blame her… it doesn’t work anyways. He doesn’t let the groin strike land, even as he does let some glancing blows to his arms and legs land. Satsuki doesn’t do any damage that isn’t immediately healed up though of course, and Naruto can’t help but grin as he sees this realization flash through her spinning sharingan eyes.

… It’s about time to end this fight, Naruto figures. He’s dragged it out long enough to let Satsuki save SOME face, while at the same time making it abundantly clear just who the better of the two of them here is. The only question is, HOW should he end it?

After a moment, Naruto thinks up a great idea. And no, it’s totally not influenced by his other life… nope, not at all. Okay, maybe a little bit. But it would be poetic to end the fight with a little Rasengan, wouldn’t it? And he does mean little, he’s STILL not trying to kill her, nut shot or no nut shot.

Basically, he figures he’ll give her one last chance to save a little more face by asking Satsuki if she’s alright with ending it with one final move. Then, he figures whatever she winds up doing, he’ll let it hit him while he knocks her out with the Rasengan, hopefully applying a balm to her wounded pride once she wakes up again.

It’s a good plan, Naruto feels. Totally solid, nothing wrong with it. Except… before he can implement it, before he can speak up or even begin forming a Rasengan, Satsuki catches him off-guard. The Uchiha takes him by surprise… by disengaging from the fight entirely and all but dropping her combat stance. As she leaps back, she cuts a hand through the air, a universal sign to stop the fight as she shakes her head back and forth vehemently.

“Naruto! What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!”

Huh? Naruto stops as well, tilting his head to the side in confusion. He could understand if Satsuki was angry that he was so easily beating her. She was smart enough and skilled enough to MAYBE recognize that he was drawing out the fight. But this wasn’t that. Sure, Satsuki sounds plenty incredulous… but she also sounds downright concerned.

He doesn’t understand why. Unless this is a trap of some sort? The corner of his mouth quirks up and Naruto chuckles at Satsuki.

“I’m not going to fall for that, Satsuki. You’ve tried that trick before.”

Scowling furiously now, the older girl crosses her arms over her chest. Which, in a way, conveys just how serious she is at the moment. Unless you were S-Rank you’d have to be an absolute moron to cross your arms over your chest in an actual fight. It was effectively handicapping yourself. As such it was also an effective way of making it clear you were done fighting for real. Naruto finds himself brought up short by the angry concern in Satsuki’s eyes.

“This isn’t a trick, Naruto! What the hell are you doing to yourself?!”

Wait, what? Naruto blinks slowly, now thoroughly confused. Himself? What is she talking about? Before he can figure out what she means…

“I would also like to know that Naruto.”

A voice cuts in from the side and Naruto looks over to see Mikoto Uchiha with her own sharingan active, staring at him intently. She looks just as concerned if not more so than her daughter does. Beside her, Hanabi has her Byakugan active and looks just plain stricken.

… Finally, Naruto understands what their concern is. See, he’s pretty damn strong. Powerful, even. He’s the product of two minds merging into one, and one of those minds has a LOT of experience with bending the fundamental building blocks of the universe, aka Chakra and the like, to his Will.

… However, Naruto’s body is still that of his younger self, despite Kurama’s best efforts to make the merging as painless as possible. The Nine-Tailed Fox had even diverted his journey to make sure that his older self landed in a version of him that was as compatible as possible.

However, compatibility did not mean parity. Put bluntly, Naruto’s body had not yet caught up with Naruto’s mind. Fortunately for him, his capabilities were barely curtailed by this… mostly because of two things. The way Nature Chakra and his Sage Abilities worked, and the natural rapid healing factor granted to him by his Uzumaki Genes and being Kurama’s Host.

Basically, what Satsuki, Mikoto, and even Hanabi had all picked up on was the fact that Naruto was literally ripping his body to shreds and then rapidly rebuilding it back up in order to move as fast as he needed to in order to overcome a ninja of Satsuki’s caliber. It wasn’t something Naruto was overly concerned about, of course. Sure, he was destroying parts of himself in order to move at the speeds he was moving. But he was also rebuilding those parts of himself back in real time, both his natural traits and trained abilities allowing him to heal himself as fast as the damage was done.

As Naruto had already noted, pain was an old friend at this point. Still, he’d clearly worried the three women standing in front of him. Letting out a sheepish laugh, Naruto rubs a hand through the back of his hair.

“Oh, that? That’s just a new technique I’ve been working on. I was going through my father’s old journals and-!”

“Bullshit! New Technique my ass! You were literally tearing your cells apart just to be faster than me. Where the hell did you learn that sort of speed without having the physical conditioning to go along with it, Naruto?!”

Satsuki’s growling accusation leaves Naruto floundering for a moment. Given a bit more time though, he probably could have figured out a way to assuage her and her mother’s worries. Unfortunately, before he can figure out what to say, Hanabi steps in, her tone quiet and frayed as the young Hyuga trembles with fear.

“It… it wasn’t just his body he was tearing apart. He went further than that. He was breaking down his chakra pathways one moment and r-rebuilding them the next as well.”

Well… shit. It hadn’t come up before in his bouts with Hanabi because he hadn’t NEEDED a certain level of strength or speed to overcome the Hyuga Heiress, but she was right. And unfortunately she’d seen it all with those eyes of hers. The rivalry between the Sharingan and the Byakugan was somewhat legendary, but there were nevertheless known advantages and disadvantages between the two dojutsu.

Specifically, when it came to being able to see through things and see Chakra, the Byakugan reigned supreme. Yes, Satsuki and Mikoto’s Sharingan had allowed them to pick up on the million ways in which Naruto had been damaging and then rapidly healing his body in order to out-speed Satsuki. But only Hanabi with her Byakugan could see deeper than that, to the damage that he’d been doing to his still-juvenile Chakra Pathways throughout the whole fight in order to make sure that Satsuki couldn’t get a proper genjutsu over him.

His first instinct is to gaslight Hanabi into thinking she got it wrong. He even opens his mouth to do exactly that… only to stop dead in his tracks at the look she’s giving him. They’ve just started up a relationship and while Naruto doesn’t quite know where that’s going just yet, he still doesn’t want to ruin it. More than that, both Satsuki and Mikoto are also looking at him with even more concern now, something that even further brings him up short.

… Naruto blames his older half. His younger half is used to being coddled and babied and was willing to do anything to get away from that sort of shit. But his older half hadn’t had anyone save for Kurama to be concerned for him in… quite some time. It was a an old-new sensation for the merged Naruto, to suddenly have so much worry leveled his way.

Before he can really get over that and figure out a way out of this mess, Mikoto claps her hands together.

“It’s clear that you don’t have an acceptable explanation for this, Naruto. You’ll need to be checked over by a medic-nin immediately.”

Wait, what?! No way! That’s… probably a bad idea right? Naruto blanches, which Mikoto notes and immediately pounces on.

“Of course, any med-nin that checked you over would need to be… read in on certain Village Secrets. Fortunately for you, I am a fully trained medical-nin.”

She WAS?! Naruto had never known that about Mikoto. Neither version of him had. And yet, she speaks with utmost confidence as her eyes flicker to her daughter and Hanabi.

“… If you are willing, then my daughter and my new apprentice shall assist me in your check-up, Naruto. This will of course mean they learn a certain Village Secret though. Or you have me look you over alone. Otherwise… I’ll have to insist you allow us to escort you to the Hospital, right now.”

Jeez, she wasn’t pulling her punches, was she? Twitching, Naruto looks between the three women. Satsuki is looking at Hanabi in surprise, while Hanabi is torn between puffing up in pride at Mikoto’s address of her and still looking downright horrified and concerned over what Naruto was doing to himself.

Meanwhile, Mikoto is just staring him down. She’s not Auntie Mikoto right now. She’s every bit the Uchiha Matriarch, and Naruto can tell that he has no real choice in the matter. He has to pick one of the options she’s given him if he hopes to placate her.