[The Renegade] Chapter 22 - Cycle of Hatred (Patreon)

Thanks to their ability to fly, even with Naruto’s antics slowing them down, they were still ahead of schedule, so they could travel leisurely on their way to the Land of Iron.

Now, they weren’t even flying anymore; they were just walking hand-in-hand. Every now and then, Konan would raise her left hand and look at the glittering piece of jewellery on her ring finger.

“You like it?” he asked, smiling when he noticed how often she glanced at her engagement ring.

A silvery band and a deep blue gemstone. The stone was teardrop-shaped and not too big; it was the perfect size for her dainty hand.

“It’s brilliant. I love it!” she beamed at him. “But when and how did you get my finger size right?”

“It was on the day when I returned from Konoha,” he said. "After you fell asleep, exhausted, I secretly measured it."

Her eyes widened in realisation, and a hint of red appeared on her cheeks as she recalled what happened that day. It was the day when they had the raunchiest and most hardcore moments of their intimate lives.

“Just so you know, I decided to propose before I arrived, while I was on my way back from Konoha!” Naruto said, but her embarrassed countenance made him involuntarily flush too. He realised what she must have been thinking of.

He coughed two times in his fist as if to banish the embarrassing moment before saying:

“I commissioned the ring from the jewellery store in Tanzaku Gai. I wanted something that symbolised sincerity, loyalty, and faithfulness. So they told me to get a blue sapphire.”

Her hold on his hands tightened a little at his words.

“It’s perfect,” she said, and she leaned in to kiss him on the cheek. “It even matches my hair.”

He wasn’t content with just that. He pulled her by the hand until she was right up in front of him. He cupped her cheeks in both hands before taking her lips in a tender kiss, a kiss that Konan happily returned and deepened as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

Her Akatsuki robe rode up her thigh, revealing the tight leather pants she was wearing underneath when she raised her leg to wrap it around his waist. Groaning with desire, his hands were quick to move down and grab her ass before lifting her. Konan smiled into the kiss as she bounced up in his arms and wrapped both legs around his waist.

But just as they were starting to get more into it, Konan suddenly made a one-handed ram seal. A Body Flicker jutsu made them abruptly disappear from their spot, and it was not a second too late. The very next moment, a streak of green light flashed through their previous spot, and a powerful wind swept in its wake, raising a cloud of snow in the air.

“What happened?” Naruto asked, not having expected Konan to suddenly sweep him away with a Body Flicker movement.

The two of them had been in the middle of the Shunshin, so Naruto didn’t see the streak of light that flashed past them.

“It’s an ambush,” Konan said.

She was a Sensor-nin. Although she had sensed their attacker the very moment that he entered her sensing range, he was so fast that she could barely react in time. If she had hesitated for even a second, they would have been in deep trouble.

Five Shadow Clones popped next to Naruto and scattered in different directions before he raised his hands and said:

“Shinra Tensei!”

The blinding clouds of snow filling the air were blasted away, instantly clearing the field of any obstacles.

Then he was able to see their attacker. It was a boy in his late teens. His skinny build, tight green jumpsuit, and bowl-cut hairstyle made it impossible for Naruto to not recognise him. It was one of his former comrades, the one he used to call Centipede Brows.

“Rock Lee… what do you think you’re doing?” Naruto asked, narrowing his eyes at him.

‘Has he gone mad?’ he wondered.

If word went out that Konoha tried to ambush him and Konan while they were on their way to the Kage Summit, it would become a huge diplomatic scandal.

“I know for a fact that Tsunade wouldn’t send an assassin after us, and even if she were to send one, it wouldn’t be someone like you.”

Rock Lee watched the two of them silently for a while. The heat emanating from his body as he burned his chakra melted all the snow 20 feet around him, turning the white plains into a muddy swamp. His dark red skin, the pulsating veins on his forehead, and his white eyes made it hard to gauge his facial expression, but one thing was clear: he didn’t come all the way there, in the Land of Grass, just to say hello. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have ambushed them with a deadly attack after opening the 6th Inner Gate.

“I’m not here at Hokage-sama’s request,” Rock Lee finally said.

“Then? What are you here for? Why have you attacked us?” Konan asked. Out of consideration for Naruto’s feelings, she didn’t retaliate right away. She knew that they used to be comrades.

“You have the gall to ask why? After what you’ve done?” Rock Lee spoke, his voice quivering with anger.

“So you’re here for revenge,” Naruto said, an unreadable expression on his face.

“Damn right, I am!” Rock Lee screamed.

The green aura of chakra coming out of his body grew in intensity as he put his hands in an X guard and yelled:

“Eight Inner Gates: The Seventh Gate of Shock! Open!”

Noticing that Konan was about to unleash her deadly salamander poison, Naruto put a hand on her wrist, stopping her.

“Please don’t intervene. Don’t kill him. Leave this to me.”

She looked at him for a few seconds before nodding.

“Okay.”

A pair of large angel-like wings sprouted from her back, and she flew at a considerable distance from them, giving Naruto all the space he needed.

Simultaneously, a shade of red appeared at the corners of Naruto’s eyes, and his irises turned into those of a toad in appearance as he entered the Sage Mode. Due to the nature of the Rinnegan and its Outer Path, the Shadow Clones didn’t even need to dispel in order to transfer the natural energy to him. The Rinnegan made it possible for him to bypass the only weakness of the Sage Mode.

“Lee. I don’t want to kill you,” Naruto said in a warning tone.

“Shut up!” Rock Lee screamed at him. “Guy-sensei was everything to me! He wasn’t just my teacher. He was like a father to me. I was just a talentless orphan. When everyone cast me aside and called me useless, he took me in. He taught me his taijutsu and transformed me into the shinobi that I am today! I would be nothing without him. He was my hero. He was my everything. But you took him away from me! You killed him!”

Despite Rock Lee’s rage-filled shouts, Naruto’s face remained stoic.

“I gave him a chance to back away. I gave everyone a chance to retreat when you all attacked me in Amegakure. But he was intent on keeping at it. He was the first to use lethal force. I merely responded in kind. Guy only has himself to blame.”

“SHUT UP!” Rock Lee shouted, and his arms became a blur, filling the air with hundreds of fireballs.

It wasn’t ninjutsu, so Naruto couldn’t use the Preta Path to absorb them. It was taijutsu. The fireballs weren’t made of chakra but by the friction of his punches with the air. And the Rinnegan couldn’t absorb regular fire.

Alas, that wasn’t the only way for him to defend against Rock Lee’s move. The Rinnegan was very versatile.

“Shinra Tensei.”

The hundreds of fireballs were blasted away and extinguished, and Rock Lee himself was sent flying over two kilometres away, rolling and tumbling onto the snowy plains endlessly due to there not being any trees or rocks to stop his momentum.

The green aura of chakra expelled by his body exploded in intensity as he shouted, enraged at how effortlessly Naruto had crushed his prized taijutsu technique.

“Don’t make me kill you, Lee,” Naruto said calmly as he flew over to him with his hands behind his back. “You still have time to walk away.”

But Rock Lee couldn’t even think about giving up. While everyone had ridiculed him for his lack of talent and told him to give up, he had endured. He refused to give up. His stubbornness was second to none, and the rage smouldering in his veins could not be put out by reason.

The ground under Lee’s feet shattered like glass, unable to withstand his monstrous strength as he launched himself at Naruto, full of rage.

“Dynamic Entry!” he yelled as he came at him with a flying kick, intent on taking his head off.

Rock Lee was so fast that his body appeared like a blur; he was barely visible to the naked eye. But the Danger Sense of Naruto’s Sage Mode was more than enough to let him react to his speed.

“Konoha Senpuu!” Rock Lee yelled when Naruto dodged his flying kick and rotated his body, throwing a whirlwind kick.

Every single one of his kicks made the air explode as they broke the sound barrier, and the friction of his body’s movement against the air caused flames to erupt all over.

But Naruto weaved through his attacks as if he could see the future.

“Leaf Rising Wind!” shouted Rock Lee as he kicked upwards, aiming for Naruto's chin, but the blond tilted his head to the side, making him miss.

This time around, however, Naruto didn’t just dodge but also grabbed his overextended leg with his left hand. Rock Lee’s instincts screamed at him to get away, but he couldn’t budge his leg an inch from his vice-like grip. The brute strength of his Sage Mode was immeasurable.

In a panic, Rock Lee raised his other leg in an attempt to throw a switch kick, but Naruto was faster than him and acted before he had the time to make a move:

“Frog Strike!”

His hand was engulfed in senjutsu as she smashed his palm into Rock Lee’s gut, blasting him away like a canon ball.

But Rock Lee immediately flipped back to his feet and even managed to make two steps, seemingly about to throw himself at Naruto once again, before the delayed effect of the Frog Strike kicked in and he collapsed on his hands and knees.

A mouthful of blood burst from his mouth, painting the snowy ground red.

Fighting through the immense pain coming from his damaged internal organs and despite the large amount of blood pouring from his mouth, Rock Lee was still on his knees when he put his trembling hands together in a handseal that resembled a Tiger Seal and shouted:

“Hirudora!”

Daytime Tiger was the most powerful attack he could launch while he was in his 7th Gate. It was on a completely different scale from any attacks that he had thrown until then.

As the pressurised air took the form of an enormous white tiger, Naruto furrowed his brows for the first time since the start of the fight.

He tapped into the bijuu chakra stored inside his body, making a cloak of red energy engulf his body before he raised his hand towards the several hundred-metre-wide tiger jaws coming at him.

“Shinra Tensei!”

Rock Lee watched in sheer disbelief as the most powerful attack he was capable of was blasted away and dispersed into nothingness.

One of Naruto’s Shadow Clones suddenly appeared above him and axe-kicked him in the spine, making him scream in pain. Then, the clone grabbed Rock Lee by one of his legs and brutalised the ground by repeatedly slamming him down.

Lastly, the clone grabbed him in a full nelson.

“Gakido.”

Beaten to an inch of his life and with his chakra drained out of his body entirely, the next thing Rock Lee saw was Naruto landing in front of him, turning his arm into a huge chakra cannon, and pointing it at his face.

“This is your final warning, Lee. Submit or die,” Naruto said, his cold, inhuman Rinnegan eyes striking deep terror into his heart.

Rock Lee closed his eyes, and tears started rolling down his cheeks.

“You’re strong. You defeated me without even trying. You’re so strong! Why couldn’t you do the same to Guy Sensei?”

Naruto understood the pain that Rock Lee was going through at that moment. Less than a year ago, he had been in that exact situation as well, losing badly against Pain, who had killed his sensei, Jiraiya.

“I wasn’t that powerful half a year ago,” Naruto explained, but he didn’t move his chakra cannon away from Rock Lee’s head. “Your comrades attacked me while I was in the hospital; that was the first time I had used the Rinnegan. Guy was too powerful for me to beat him without killing him.”

However, it was as if his words fell on deaf ears. As lost in his rage and bitterness as he was, Rock Lee didn’t register what he said.

“We used to be comrades! I thought of you as a friend! Why did you kill Guy-sensei?” he shouted, blood, tears, and mucus staining his face.

“Don’t make me do this, Lee! Stand down!” Naruto shouted in a strong voice and a massive amount of chakra started gathering in the wide barrel of his Asura Path chakra cannon.

However, unexpectedly, even though he shouldn't have had any chakra left other than the amount needed to stay alive, the boy let out an enraged roar, and a burst of chakra dispelled the Shadow Clone who was immobilising him and blasted the real Naruto away before he could react.

“Eight Inner Gates: The Gate of Death!”

Most of his chakra was already gone due to Naruto’s Preta Path absorbing it. But Rock Lee no longer cared what happened to him.

His skin darkened and cracked. A cry erupted from his throat, and red vapour seeped out from the cracks in his skin, mixing with the chakra that was being expelled from his heart.

“The justice I delivered to the Leaf Village is no different from what you are trying to do to me. The pain of losing something dear to you is the same. And both of us know that pain very well. You have your justice… And I have mine.”

“We are both ordinary men, driven to seek vengeance under the banner of justice. However, if there is justice in vengeance, then justice will only breed more vengeance and trigger a cycle of hatred.”

Uzumaki Nagato’s words came to the forefront of Naruto’s mind as he watched Rock Lee burn his blood and lifespan away, blinded by revenge.

‘What is the answer to peace?’ he asked himself.

He no longer believed in Jiraiya’s idealistic dreams because his own experiences—the way Konoha betrayed him—proved the fact that they were mere fantasies.

“We know what the past has been, and we can predict what the future will be. That is history as we know it. So we cannot help but believe that human beings are incapable of understanding each other. The world of the ninja is ruled by hatred.”

“How would you confront this hatred in order to create peace?”

When Pain asked that question, Naruto did not know what to say.

‘I don’t know.’

He didn’t have an answer in the present either. 

‘It’s human nature to be selfish. To envy. To desire. To lie. To kill. As long as people exist, peace will never be possible.’

Therefore, he stopped thinking about it. 

When he was a kid, after his battle against Sasuke at the Valley of the End, Jiraiya told him:

“To be a ninja, you need more than strength and Jutsu. You must acquire the judgement to make the right decisions. If you want to live as a ninja, you must become smarter. This world… There’s no place for a fool. That’s the reality.”

In a few words, Jiraiya told him to stop dreaming and grow up. And grew up he did. Being thrown into the Blood Prison made sure of that. It destroyed the last bit of optimism that he had had.

‘I’m not smart. I don’t know what the solution to world peace would be. I won’t chase something as vague and unrealistic as that. I’ll just do what I’ve always done. I’ll protect the people I love and beat into the ground the ones who threaten my life or theirs.’

Naruto’s eyes became steely, and a look of determination appeared on his face.

At that moment, Rock Lee was done powering up the Eighth Inner Gate. Since Naruto had already drained most of his chakra earlier, the boy knew that he didn’t have much time left before his life ran out.

‘I’ll bet it all on one final attack.’

Even if he wanted to stop now, it was too late to turn back. The red cloak of chakra and blood surrounding him exploded in intensity as he crouched on the ground, and a crimson dragon head was conjured around his body.

This was his final stand.

“Night Guy!”

However, a split second before he could throw himself at Naruto, four voices were heard from four different directions around Rock Lee. They were four out of the five clones that he had created at the beginning of the fight.

Naruto’s Deva Path was on cooldown after blasting apart Rock Lee’s earlier 7th Gate Hirudora attack, but that wasn’t the case for his Shadow Clones too.

The four clones raised their right hands at the same time before shouting:

“Bansho Ten’in!”

Pulled from four different directions by the power of the Rinnegan, Rock Lee erupted in a scream of agony. He felt as if he was going to get ripped into pieces by the four contrasting forces. And that would have definitely been the case if it were not for the enormous crimson dragon that covered his body after he activated Night Guy. Thanks to it, he wasn’t killed instantly, but he was locked in space, unable to move.

As Rock Lee appeared to be petrified in midair, immobilised, Naruto aimed his chakra cannon at him. The air around the mouth of the barrel appeared to get distorted from the massive accumulation of chakra.

“Hakai!”

A massive beam of chakra burst from the Asura cannon.

It didn’t just kill Rock Lee; his entire body was erased from existence.

And that wasn’t all. The beam of chakra continued annihilating everything in its path, evaporating all the snow and leaving a wide and deep gash in the earth below. It went on until it smashed into a very distant mountain at the Land of Grass’ border with the Land of Earth, obliterating it and raising a humongous mushroom cloud to tens of miles in the air.