The Deadliest Poison
A story about how Naruto
copies the style of jyuuken, to great effect. Only, his version is much more
deadly, thanks to Kyuubi. But no one will tell him, and so when he finally
finds out… Dark. One-shot.
Naruto growled as he stood
up through the pain. His entire body ached after Neji’s last attack. Stupid
jyuuken, sealing off his chakra.
But then Naruto smiled. Just
his chakra. He formed as simple seal to help him concentrate and began
to draw power from the seal.
Neji scoffed, thinking that
Naruto was futilely trying to draw up his own chakra. “I’ve sealed it off,
Naruto. You won’t be able to use chakra for at least a few hours. Give up. It
was not your fate to win this fight.”
Naruto just grinned and
pulled a little harder. Pop, pop, popopopopopopop. Kyuubi’s chakra
forced its way out of the sealed tenketsu, quickly wrapping the blonde in a
thin red mist before it faded out of sight.
Naruto smirked and dropped
into his normal fighting stance, one that he had made on his own so long ago,
when he figured out that the Academy instructors were not helping him at all.
Neji frowned. It should not
have been possible to unseal chakra so quickly. How on earth had Naruto done
so, and what was this strange red chakra?
The Hyuuga prodigy fell
into his jyuuken stance, gathered his chakra, and attacked again. This time,
it would be 128 palms, and then Naruto would be finished.
As Neji rocketed forward,
Naruto had a sudden idea. Why not try a little Jyuuken himself? Of course, he
didn’t have the skill to see tenketsu, so he’d just be guessing… Naruto decided
it didn’t matter. With Kyuubi’s seemingly infinite chakra at his disposal, he
could just make up for his lack of skill with pure power.
Neji almost tripped when he
saw Naruto change into a fairly good imitation of the jyuuken stance. What was
that idiot thinking, mocking the Hyuuga like that?
But as Neji approached, he
realized that Naruto truly intended to fight like that. He saw the strange red
chakra gathering in the blonde’s hands, ready to strike. Man, that was a lot of
chakra.
But Neji had speed and
skill. He deftly dodged Naruto’s first clumsy attempt at jyuuken and tap a
tenketsu on the idiot’s chest. Pop. Almost instantly it unsealed itself
in a flicker of red chakra.
Neji was confused for just
a moment, but that moment was long enough for Naruto to strike. Imitating
Neji’s last attack, Naruto struck Neji in about the same place the white-eyed
boy had hit him. Naruto had no idea if he had gotten a tenketsu, but just to be
safe, he shoved a huge amount of chakra into the attack.
Neji flew back several
dozen feet, and landed in a heap, clutching his chest. If the Hyuuga had been
the kind to curse, the air would have been filled with obscenities. As it was,
he merely curled into the fetal position, and pulled his head back. His mouth
stretched open in a silent scream.
Pain. So much pain. Even
though the attack had missed the tenketsu by a good quarter-inch, which, in
normal jyuuken, was a complete whiff, Naruto had pushed so much chakra into the
attack that it didn’t matter. Much of it had gotten to the tenketsu anyway,
sealing it in some new, incredibly painful manner.
And it only got worse. Instead
of fading away as the shock wore off, the agony intensified, as if the chakra
were burning him from inside. Steeling himself against the pain, Neji stood up
and took his jyuuken stance again, shaking slightly.
The white-eyed boy rushed
forward, now much more careful to avoid getting hit. He hit several tenketsu in
less than a second, easily avoiding Naruto’s slow reactive attacks. But the
tenketsu wouldn’t stay closed. By the time that Neji had gotten to 32 strikes,
every tenketsu he’d hit in the 16-set and before was already open again. The
same with 64, and with 128.
By the time Neji leapt
away, winded after the exertion, and wincing at the continually growing pain,
all of Naruto’s tenketsu were completely open, as if nothing had happened.
Naruto sprang forward to
attack, looking like a slower, blonde version of Neji. The Hyuuga dodged and
dodged, growing slower because of the pain, even as Naruto sped up as he really
got into it. Red chakra flew past the white-eyed boy with every failed attack.
Neji couldn’t dodge one
blow, so he blocked it with a hand. Just a slight tap to divert the blow, but
Neji’s hand was instantly engulfed in screaming agony. Perhaps because it was
so small, compared to the amount of chakra in Naruto’s strike, it grew worse at
an accelerated rate. The pain quickly became unbearable, so Neji blocked off
feeling in that hand with a quick jyuuken strike to his own wrist.
But that couldn’t keep him
from noticing that his hand slowly paled, became gray, and then began to turn
black. The darkness began to seep down his arm, causing pain all along the
forearm. The skin there turned deathly pale, and began to fade to gray.
But Neji had no time to
prevent the pain in his arm. He was too busy dodging the furious flurry of
attack that the blonde now unleashed. As his arm worsened, he realized that he
could no longer move it with precision. The pain in his chest was now a
constant, excruciating torment. His breaths became labored as his chest
tightened involuntarily.
Neji turned to the side,
putting his bad arm behind him, since he could no longer move I adequately
enough to avoid getting hit. Neji coughed, tasting blood, and feeling it leak
from his mouth and nose. What was going on? He could vaguely see the chakra
inside him moving, as if with its own will, but he had no time to ponder it.
Naruto got another hit in,
tapping Neji’s stomach. The Hyuuga doubled over in tortured agony, passing out
before he hit the ground.
The announcer declared
Naruto the winner, and medics removed Neji from the field.
No one wanted to inform
Naruto that Neji died minutes later, and so the blonde continued on, oblivious.
Naruto howled in
frustration as he jumped in with his clones, trying desperately to defeat
Gaara, and so release Sakura-chan. But each time he got close, the sentient
sand would brush him away like a fly.
Growing angrier by the second,
Naruto began to use more and more of Kyuubi’s chakra. But even with his
enhanced speed and strength, he couldn’t get past the sand, which hovered
around Gaara like an overprotective mother.
As he became more focused,
Naruto lashed out with little bursts of Kyuubi’s chakra. With just a few
attack, Naruto became aware of how the sand fell away harmlessly once it was
touched with the demon’s chakra.
Mouth stretched in a feral
grin, Naruto charged in one more time, without clones. When he was within the
sand’s striking distance, he unleashed Kyuubi’s chakra in a thin film around
himself. The sand that had moved to defend fell away as it came into contact
with the red energy.
Now in melee range, Naruto
delivered a single, jyuuken-style punch straight to Gaara’s face. The opposing
jinkuurichi flew backwards, hitting a tree.
Naruto could only watch in
fascinated horror and Gaara’s face twitched and writhed and then fell off,
revealing the true face underneath. Black splotches twisted and writhed around
the red-haired boy’s face, in conflict with some internal source of energy.
Not one to pass up an
opportunity like this, Naruto once again sprang to attack. He grabbed the boy’s
head with both hands and pushed, releasing a continuous flood of red
chakra.
Gaara’ screamed, a
horrifying shriek that was laced with, or echoed by, a long, shrill scream. Black
began to dominate his skin. Blood flowed from his ears, his mouth, and his
nose. Crimson tears ran from his eyes.
Finally, the insomniac boy
fell into unconsciousness, and so Naruto dropped him to the ground, assuming
that some ninja would take him back to the hospital later.
He never found out that he
was wrong, that the ninja who later came across the scene took the body
straight to the morgue.
When Naruto faced Kakazu,
he was still unaware of his deadly power. He was never assigned to clean up
after a mission, and he never had to take an enemy back for interrogation.
No one had the heart to
tell him that the demon’s chakra was a deadly poison, that even the slightest
drop was a certain death sentence, if a slow one.
So when Naruto failed to
defeat Kakazu, no one dared to tell him that he had already won. The moment
that he had attacked with Kyuubi’s chakra, and landed a solid hit, injecting
the chakra into Kakazu’s system, he was victorious. And so no one knew what to
say to Naruto’s when they later found Kakazu’s body lying in the woods,
surrounded by death poems etched onto the surrounding trees. The supposedly
immortal Kakazu could not escape the inevitable doom that had arrived with
Kyuubi’s chakra. With all of his hearts within him, the chakra had spread,
killing them all one by one.
Instead of adding to his
life, they had merely prolong his suffering. But no one told Naruto, who only
heard that Kakazu had been killed by someone else in some other place.
And when Naruto faced
Itachi later, on his way to the Akatsuki base, he never knew why the
missing-nin became so calm during the fight. He never knew that once he had hit
the traitor Uchiha, just once, that he had spelled out his certain death.
Itachi survived for months,
taking special medicines and undergoing various experimental procedures, so
that he was able to survive, just barely, until he faced Sasuke in his last
battle at the old Uchiha hideout.
Naruto never knew, and
Sasuke never found out, that Naruto was the true killer of Itachi.
And no one was surprised when Naruto as moved to ANBU at a rather early age.
Even if Naruto didn’t know why, he was a spectacular asset in combat. As long
as hit the enemy, even once, with just a bit of demonic energy, he won.
And because of the Hokage’s orders, no one was allowed to tell him. Tsunade
couldn’t bear for her beloved surrogate grandson to bear the weight of his own
accidental atrocities.
On her orders, no one told Naruto why several of his fellow ANBU died of
minor injuries on their missions with him. Naruto didn’t know that he had hit
them, and no one was allowed to tell him.
Naruto sighed as he sank into the chair in his office. Being Hokage was
good. Clones took care of all the paperwork, not even needing replacement,
since they lasted until they were hit or dispelled.
Naruto watched them work,
as he slouched in the rather comfortable chair. The worst part of being Hokage
was not even an issue. Despite all of Tsunade’s problems with it, and all of
the old man’s complaints about it, Naruto wondered why neither of them had ever
tried shadow clones.
After the first few weeks,
the clones even had their own personalities, separate from Naruto. They developed
a rather dry sense of humor, and had their own motivations.
Things continued as normal
until one of them managed to annoy Sakura one time to many, and she happily
smacked them into the nearby walls.
Naruto, unaware of this,
suddenly opened his mouth in a silent scream as the memories of the clones
returned to him. Many, many memories of dull paperwork, but that wasn’t the
problem.
The problem was the file
that they had seen, and that they had never told Naruto about, for fear of this
very reaction.
The file that detailed
Naruto’s ability to bring certain death to any enemy.
The file that detailed the
horrific suffering of the victims of Kyuubi’s poison.
The file that listed
the victims of Naruto’s deadly poison.
The most lethal infection
in all the world, a killer without any cure. The most cursed sickness ever
inflicted on another human being. And it was all Naruto’s fault. All his doing.
Even if unwittingly, he had killed and killed killed.
Not many people understood
why Naruto had committed suicide, shoving an exploding kunai into his own
skull. Only a few knew what the writing on the walls of Naruto’s office, penned
in the blonde’s own blood, truly meant.
All around the office, the
walls bore a message written in red. The name of the file. The reason
for his sudden suicide.
“The deadliest poison.”
Wow. That turned out darker
than I really planned it to be. Um… yeah. I know it’s not incredible, but
please let me know what you thought of it.
-demonicnargles