[The Renegade] Chapter 9 - After the Battle (Patreon)

Chapter 9 - After the Battle

As the rest of the Amegakure shinobi and kunoichi apprehended the surviving but unconscious Konoha intruders and Konan sealed them with her paper ninjutsu, Naruto looked blankly at the destruction left behind by their battle.

"I had no choice," he muttered quietly.

After Gai opened the 7th Inner Gate, his Sage Mode senses and his survival instincts screamed at him that he would die if Gai completed his attack. It was a kill-or-be-killed situation.

Done with sealing the invaders’ chakra, Konan glided through the air and landed in front of him. Due to the fact that it was raining heavily, nobody noticed his emotional struggle after killing Gai. By the time she came to him, he had somewhat regained his composure.

"How are you feeling?" she asked, looking searchingly into his eyes. "Do you notice any discomfort or pain?"

"No discomfort. No drain on my chakra either. I think my body accepted these eyes fully. But, more importantly, these aren’t all the ninjas sent by Konoha. Two more have run away towards the sewers. We have to capture them. Can you find them with your sensory technique?"

An expression of surprise appeared on her face at his words.

"They sneaked into Amegakure and attacked me in my sleep," Naruto explained himself. "This battle also injured many of our people and caused so much destruction. Former comrades or not, Konoha and I are past the point of reconciliation."

"I see," Konan said, and her body split into countless tiny paper butterflies that dispersed and quickly covered the entirety of Amegakure.

A few minutes later, the paper butterflies converged again, and Konan materialized next to Naruto.

"I have found them, two teenagers: a girl and an unconscious boy."

Turning to one of the close-by black ops shinobi wearing a rebreather, she said: "Take a team of 10 chunins and guard the end of the main South-Eastern sewer pipe where it spills into the lake."

"Understood!" the jonin said and disappeared with a body flicker movement.

Now looking back to Naruto, she said:

"You’ve done enough for the day. I’ll go capture those two myself."

"I want to see this through to the end. They-"

Putting a hand on his shoulder, she squeezed it softly as she said: "You were in the hospital until not long ago, and it’s the first time you used your Rinnegan eyes. Rest for now. I have a feeling we won’t be getting much rest in the days to come."

"...Okay," he said, caving in eventually.

⁂

Despite being underground and almost one kilometer away, Sakura could still hear the sounds of battle between her comrades and Naruto.

‘Naruto…’

No matter how hard she tried, she could not banish the image of those inhuman-looking eyes from her mind. That pair of Rinnegan eyes made him look like a completely different person. But it wasn’t only his eyes that were different now. The tone of his voice while speaking to them, the lack of warmth, and the rage bubbling underneath that calm exterior - as someone who had been one of his closest friends (if not the closest), Sakura could pick up on all those signs clearly.

‘How could he have changed that much in such a short time? Not even three months have passed since the Hozuki Castle fiasco.’

The Kazekage did warn them in his short letter that Naruto appeared to be a completely different person, but she had not thought he was going to be that different.

She was shaken from her thoughts when the Tortoise Boss suddenly let out a weary sigh.

"Sigh. Yet another one of my contractors died."

It wasn’t sadness. The tortoise’s voice sounded… resigned.

"W-What do you mean?" Sakura asked, momentarily unable to understand the reality of the situation.

"That youngster, Gai, lost his life. Died ahead of his time, just like his father."

Sakura was mute with surprise.

"No way…!" she said eventually. "You must be mistaken! Gai-sensei is one of the strongest jonins in the village! There’s no way he would die in a place like this! I don’t believe it! He-"

Ignoring her rambling, the Tortoise Boss said:

"My summoner is dead. I have no reason to help you anymore. You are on your own now."

Leaving those words behind, the creature disappeared in a plume of smoke, returning to her realm.

Several minutes later, Sakura was still overwhelmed with thoughts of disbelief. It was only when a swarm of paper butterflies appeared in the sewer seemingly out of nowhere and a blue-haired woman wearing the infamous Akatsuki black cloak with red clouds materialised in front of her eyes that she finally came back to her senses.

"Akatsuki!" she said warily, taking a fighting stance in front of the still-unconscious Rock Lee.

"Your comrades have already been defeated. This is the end of the road for you. I suggest you give up and come quietly."

"Lies! There’s no way Gai-sensei, Yamato-sensei, and Kakashi-sensei would lose to the likes of you!" Sakura shouted, and before Konan could say anything else, the pink-haired girl lunged at her with a scream. "Shannaro!"

Cocking her fist back, Sakura threw the strongest chakra-enhanced punch that she was capable of. Under her devastating power, Konan’s body burst into countless tiny pieces - at least that was what Sakura naively thought at first. She realized a second later that her enemy dispersed into a swarm of paper butterflies and reappeared at her back completely unharmed.

"Out of consideration for Naruto, I wanted to not harm you too badly, but it looks like you don’t plan on coming along quietly."

After saying those words, Konan became silent. Her stoic, pretty face and the rest of her body seemed to split like the pages of an open book, and the sewer was flooded with a swarm of countless paper sheets.

Sakura could only punch and kick the air around her desperately as she was drowned in a sea of deadly paper blades, each one of them carving deep and painful cuts into her flesh.

Feeling the threat of death, black markings spread from the seal on her forehead and covered her entire body as she activated her Strength of a Hundred technique, healing up her numerous injuries in an instant.

Confident in the regeneration ability of her jutsu, Sakura gave up on defending herself completely and lunged at Konan once more. However, unfortunately, she did not have an answer to Konan’s paper kawarimi. Instead of harming Konan, her punch blew a huge hole into the sewer’s ceiling, revealing the downcast sky outside.

Alas, her efforts did not amount to much in the end. Konan’s paper technique was a hard counter to most fighters that specialised in taijutsu and bukijutsu. If Sakura’s efforts had little effect even in an enclosed space like the sewers, when she blew up a hole in the ceiling and opened the sewers to the world outside, she unknowingly cemented her fate.

However, by the time Sakura realised that she had dug her own grave, Konan had already flown up in the air.

‘No! If she flies too high up, I won’t be able to reach her!’

With Konan’s flight advantage, she would become just a target practise for her paper projectiles. Grabbing an enormous chunk of concrete from the broken sewer ceiling, Sakura screamed as she threw it at Konan:

"I won’t let you get away!"

That piece of debris had to have weighed several tonnes. It was an attack that could smash an average shinobi into nothing but a smear of blood upon contact.

However, at that moment, a sound of a blade whooshing through the air was heard, and that huge piece of debris was split cleanly, from the middle. The next thing Sakura knew, her right arm was also looped off from the shoulder. A scream of agony was ripped from her throat, and she collapsed on the ground, holding the stump of her bleeding shoulder with her other hand.

"Submit, or die," Konan said one last time as the large paper chakram returned to her side, whirring menacingly above her head.

But the pink-haired girl didn’t reply. She appeared to have gone into shock, staring in disbelief at her severed limb on the ground.

Gravely injured but mostly because of her lack of mental fortitude, Sakura couldn’t put up any resistance when a vortex of paper sheets engulfed her and wrapped around her like a mummy, binding her from head to toe.

⁂

Hours passed, and the morning came. Although the sun was up now, the clouds covering the sky were so thick and dark that it looked as if it was evening. It was raining heavily again.

Sipping from the mug of hot tea in her hands, Konan was watching over the village through the large windows of her office.

"Lady Konan, Uzumaki Naruto wishes to speak to you," one of her bodyguards informed her.

"Let him in."

A few moments later, as Konan turned to greet him when he came through the door, an expression of surprise flashed on her face.

Battered, wet, and dirty from the fight last night, Naruto ditched his regular clothes and put on another set of clothes given to him by Konan. Compared to his flashy orange tracksuit, which always made him stand out, his current attire was rather plain: dark blue joggers, a black jumper, and a gray Amegakure-style Jonin flak jacket.

"So you’ve made your final choice," Konan said.

"Was there any doubt after I took Nagato’s eyes? Besides, I’ve never had any intentions of going back. I made you a promise, didn’t I?" Naruto said and grinned. "As long as Ame doesn’t turn their back on me like Konoha did, I will be here. Always."

"I think it suits you. I’m happy to have you here, Naruto."

The two of them were not talking about Naruto’s new attire - those clothes were nothing to write home about. They were talking about the new shinobi headband resting on his forehead now. For the first time in his life, he was wearing a shinobi headband that did not belong to Konoha. Instead, the metallic plate showed four vertical lines. It was the symbol of the Hidden Rain.

"You’re the first to wear the new headband of Amegakure. Congratulations!" she said, smiling at him.

Following Hanzo’s death at the hands of Nagato, after Akatsuki took over Amegakure, the new symbol of the village was the four vertical lines slashed through by a horizontal line. It signified their hatred and rejection of Hanzo and the previous regime of Amegakure.

However, now that Naruto had taken on Nagato’s Rinnegan eyes, Konan decided that it was time for Ame to step out of the shadows of the past and look at the future with hope. She renounced the slashed-through headbands and adopted the original symbol. Naruto was given the honour of being the first to wear the new type of headband.

"Thank you," he said sincerely.

He couldn’t help feeling touched inwardly. In spite of everything he had done for Konoha, he had always been treated by his peers like a bum. Everyone from his generation had been promoted to a chunin or even a jonin rank except for him.

Even after saving the village from Pain, they still didn’t promote him. He was still a genin despite having become one of the most powerful shinobi in the village. But now, it was different. He finally had a rank that fit his strength and abilities. Now, he was a Jonin.

Konan smiled at him again. In the back of her mind, she noticed that she had been smiling a lot more often ever since she rescued Naruto from Hozuki Castle.

"What do you want to do with your former comrades?" she unexpectedly asked after she finished congratulating him.

"I… am not sure."

Although they had invaded Amegakure and attacked him when he was at his weakest, while lying in a hospital bed after surgery, Naruto could not bear the thought of killing them in cold blood after they had been defeated.

"What do you think we should do?" he asked her.

"Normally, there are two paths we could take. First, we could squeeze all the intel they have on Konoha through any means necessary, and after they are dead, we could examine their bodies to unearth their secret techniques. In Hatake Kakashi and Hyuuga Neji’s case, we would also extract their doujutsu and use them for Amegakure’s sake. There is also the possibility of keeping the Hyuuga and the Mokuton users alive and locked up in order for them to produce offspring with their kekkei genkai."

Naruto involuntarily started frowning when he heard those words. It sounded terrible.

‘But this is the ninja world… This is the world we live in.’

He knew Konan was not lying or exaggerating because he had been in Orochimaru’s secret bases before and had seen traces of his experiments. He was also aware of Kumogakure’s attempt to kidnap Hyuuga Hinata in the past for the sake of obtaining the Byakugan. But he had not thought about it too deeply before. Single-mindedly pursuing his dream of becoming the Hokage and making Sasuke come back to the village, he ignored everything else.

"The other choice would be to treat them as war prisoners and try to strike a deal with Konohagakure no Sato to trade them in exchange for various goods, techniques, or even money."

Done explaining, Konan looked into Naruto’s eyes while asking:

"What do you want to do with them? I am leaving their fate in your hands. It is your choice."

Despite no longer thinking of them as his "precious people", years of being comrades with them did not get wiped clean after only a few months of being away from Konoha. If possible, Naruto did not wish for them all to die or suffer like that.

"Maybe we could try to trade them in exchange for resources? We could make Konoha trade large amounts of coal and other things that Amegakure needs. Kakashi is a very important figure in the village, he was an ANBU captain in the past. Yamato has the legendary Mokuton bloodline limit, and Sakura is the Hokage’s prized disciple," Naruto said hesitantly.

"If that is your choice, then that’s what we are going to do," she said calmly, taking a sip from her mug of tea.

"Thank you, Konan." 

Even he could understand that if it were the leader of any other hidden village, they would never pass up on the chance to get their hands on three of the most powerful kekkei genkai in the world: the Mokuton, the Sharingan, and the Byakugan. He was not so dense as to not understand what a huge favour Konan was doing him at that moment.

⁂

Nearly four days had passed since the Battle of Amegakure, but Naruto had yet to visit the Konoha prisoners even once. Instead, he had been away from the village, spending those days in an uninhibited place not far from the border with Iwagakure. He had chosen that spot because a rocky terrain was more useful for his training than a swamp.

"Bansho Ten’in!"

As he said those words, a large boulder got yanked out of the ground and flew at him with great speed.

Simultaneously, a Shadow Clone next to him raised his hand and yelled:

"Shinra Tensei!"

Caught between the attractive and repulsive forces of those two techniques, the boulder exploded, unable to handle the pressure.

‘It’s great that I can bypass the 5-second cooldown of the Deva Path if I use Shadow Clones, but this shared vision is so troublesome. It’ll take me some time to get used to it.’

Nevertheless, the temporary loss of the ability to create large numbers of Shadow Clones was hardly a minus when he looked at the absurdly powerful techniques of the Rinnegan.

Momentarily making a ram seal with his hands to better concentrate on his task, another two pairs of arms grew out from his shoulders, and two other heads popped out from his neck too, giving him the appearance of a mythical Asura.

"I still can’t get used to this, man; you look creepy as hell," his shadow clone said, shuddering.

In response to that, one of Naruto’s extra arms transformed into a cannon, and a chakra blast obliterated the clone. He was so used to his clones getting killed in fights that the memories of the clone he had just destroyed didn’t perturb him in the least.

‘It might look creepy, but having three heads gives me 360-degree vision, and the extra pair of arms could give me a big edge in taijutsu, especially if I combined it with my senjutsu and if the enemy doesn’t expect it.’

Following that train of thought, Naruto started performing the katas he had learned from the toads by using all six of his arms simultaneously.

From a spectator’s perspective, it looked strange, even silly, how he fumbled and how his arms sometimes collided against each other during movements. It was hard for the human brain to control so many extra limbs perfectly without training. But he was not discouraged. It all boiled down to the amount of work he was willing to put in, and he had never shied away from training.

⁂

Back in Amegakure, one of Naruto’s shadow clones was sitting on a sofa in the living room of his apartment and reading a scroll. Given that it was evening, past the curfew, he was straining his eyes to understand the tiny scribbles under the pale light coming from a small gas lamp.

‘I should call it a day. It’s late, and I need to preserve my chakra too,’ the clone thought.

Rolling back the scroll, he put it on the coffee table and lied down on the sofa on his side with an arm under his head. He was about to fall asleep when he heard someone knocking on the door.

"Naruto? Are you still awake?" Konan’s warm, quiet voice came from behind the door.

"Yes, one moment," the clone said as he got up and went to open the door. "Hey, what brings you here at this late hour?" he asked as he invited her in and led her to the living room.

"I wanted to talk to you. Is it a bad time?"

"No, I’ve been reading until not long ago," he said, gesturing towards the pile of scrolls on the coffee table.

"Ah, Nagato’s fuinjutsu scrolls," she said in understanding. "Have you found what you’ve been looking for?"

"It’s too complicated for me. I don’t understand much of what’s written in them."

"I told you as much, didn’t I?" she said, and he was treated to the beautiful sound of her soft laughter. "It takes a long time and a lot of studying to become adept at fuinjutsu, and if you don’t know the basics, it’ll be useless to attempt the more advanced sealing techniques, especially the ones created by the Uzumaki clan."

"Ugh, I hate studying," he moaned. "But I made Kyuubi a promise, I can’t give up just because it’s hard."

"Then you should start with the basics and slowly work your way up. I’m not a seal master like Nagato, but I could guide you up until an intermediate level."

"...You just want me to draw storage sealing scrolls and exploding tags for yourself, don’t you?" Naruto said, looking at her suspiciously.

He felt something inside him flutter when he heard her laughter again.

"Well, you need to start from somewhere, don’t you?" she said with a small grin and rested her chin on her palm as she looked at him.

He found it physically impossible to tear his eyes away from her. Whether it was because of his gradually evolving feelings for her or because of the increased vision offered by his recently acquired Rinnegan, he was not sure, but he was becoming increasingly aware and conscious of her beauty as a woman. Those bright orange eyes of hers in particular were mesmerising.

"I’m sure Boss will be happy to help you if you ask him. I know I would do it, and we’re pretty much the same," he said with a grin too, rubbing the back of his head.

"When is he coming back?" she asked.

"I don’t know yet. But he will give me a sign when he wants me to summon him here."

While Naruto didn’t know what his clones were thinking and feeling until after they were dispelled, due to his Rinnegan eyes, he shared their sight nowadays. All he had to do was put it into writing, and his clone would be able to understand what he wanted regardless of the distance.

"Oh, he said he wants me to summon him now!" the clone suddenly said and stood up.

Getting up from the sofa, the clone went to the open side of the room and, after a short sequence of hand seals, he placed his hand on the floor.

"Kuchiyose no Jutsu."

As the original Naruto stepped out of the plume of smoke, the clones smirked at him and said:

"You're so lucky, boss!"

After the clone was dispelled, Konan involuntarily started smiling at the sight of Naruto’s face getting red - no doubt due to the thoughts and memories he received from his shadow clone.

"The summoning technique of the Rinnegan is so convenient. As long as I carry these black receivers, my clones can summon me anywhere," he said, trying to push away the not-exactly family-friendly thoughts he had received from the clone.

Looking at Konan, he suddenly got an idea.

"Would you like to carry one of these as well? I think it would be great to be able to summon you away in times of need."

"I already carry one of those. It’s right here," she said, touching her lower lip with her finger.

"You mean that piercing is made from this stuff?" he asked, looking at the small labret piercing under her bottom lip.

But then, outside of his control, his eyes darted away from her small piercing to her lips. Their pink colour, their delicious fullness, and their moist, slightly glossy appearance that-

"Yes, you can summon me anytime."

So absorbed was he in admiring her lips that when she spoke, he was almost startled. But if Konan noticed his eyes lingering on her lips longer than was appropriate, she did not mention it; she merely smiled.

"How did your training go? Have you become more familiar with your Rinnegan’s abilities?"

"I still have a long way to go. I can control Deva Path’s attractive and repulsive forces well, but Chibaku Tensei is too difficult at the moment. It explodes after a few seconds. I’m also struggling with the Asura Path; it’s so hard to control six pairs of arms at once... ...And I haven’t had a chance to train the Human Path, the Naraka Path, or the Outer Path. As for the Animal Path, nothing comes up when I’m using the summoning technique. Preta Path is the only one I can use perfectly."

He scratched his hair with both hands in impatience. 

"I suggest you focus on the Deva Path and the Human Path for now."

"Why?"

"In preparation for the next time Uchiha Madara comes back. I’ve been thinking of ways to defeat his ability, Kamui, but my options are limited after such a short time and due to Amegakure’s current financial situation. It took me several years to gather all those paper bombs, and Madara still won because of his Sharingan," she said in a dejected voice.

Her strategy, all her preparation, and the fortune she had poured into the plan... ...all for Madara to cast Izanagi and rewrite his fate.

"Not all was for nought, however," she said. "Although I lost the battle, I gathered another piece of information from it, something that will be vital in our preparation for our next battle. But first, I will share with you what I already know about his abilities."

"As far as I know, Madara has four main abilities: becoming intangible, teleporting himself, teleporting other people or objects, and rewriting his destiny at the price of losing a Sharingan eye."

"I'm not completely sure but I suspect his intangible state is automatic, so surprise attacks might not work on him."

"How are you supposed to hit him? How did I manage to kick him in the face?" he asked. 

"His ability is very strong but, even so, it's not perfect. Every jutsu has a weakness. In Kamui's case, it has a maximum duration of only 5 minutes, and he cannot attack you while he is intangible or teleport away. He needs to materialise first before doing that. Therefore, the only strategy I could think of was to bait him into materialising himself and counter-attacking him at that exact moment. What I discovered in our last fight, though, was that even though he is intangible, his body still follows the laws of the world."

Naruto tilted his head in confusion at her last sentence.

"What do you mean by that? Sorry, I was never good with that type of stuff."

Konan hummed in thought for a few moments before saying:

"When I split the lake underneath his feet and detonated all those paper bombs, Madara turned himself intangible to escape from the explosions. But I noticed that even though he became invulnerable, the force of gravity still pulled him down. That means that the attractive and repulsive forces of your Rinnegan should affect him even in his intangible state. So even if his space-time technique makes him invulnerable, his body is still affected by the laws of physics like gravity."

"I think I understand," Naruto said, deep in thought. "But even if the Deva Path abilities work on him, how will they hurt him if he's intangible?"

"That’s where I come in. I will prepare another death zone for him. Not just one but several of them for the case where he tries to cast Izanagi again. Your job will be to make him walk into my traps, and I’ll deal the finishing blow."

"Will you be able to get that many paper bombs in again in a short while?"

"I won’t be using explosive tags this time around. I have a different plan now," she said confidently.