"So you're the Dark Avenger, she's the Pink Avenger, and you're the White Avenger, blondie?"
"Naruto Uzumaki," said the blonde boy. "Not an Avenger. If I was, where the heck would I start? I like ramen. I like making things better. I enjoy working with metal, actually. A gal I met at a weaponsmith's shop on Mid-Childa introduced me to that. Very relaxing to do, pounding and heating the metal is a good stress release for me, and with Coeur Blanc I can enhance the metal as I'm working it. Anyway, my goal is to be Hokage and be able to protect those precious to me."
"How did you get taller overnight, dobe?" asked Sasuke.
"Time dilation jutsu gone wrong, or so I'm told," not-exactly-lied Naruto.
"That leaves the Pink Avenger," noted Kakashi.
"I like..." said Sakura, eyes darting to Sasuke. "My dream is..." (blush, fidget) "and I dislike not knowing what's going on!"
"Hmmm," said Kakashi. "Naruto, I've heard about your recent misadventure and your discovery of your hijutsu. I don't believe any of it, but it'll be interesting to see. Tomorrow there will be this little test of all three of you to see if you should even be allowed to be ninja. Don't eat anything tomorrow, because you'll just end up throwing it up."
"Where IS he? He's LATE!" said Sakura, prompted by her stomach growling protest at the beginning of her diet.
"He made us miss breakfast, not bring lunch, and is late," mused Naruto. "So, he wanted us irritable for some reason."
"You think he's planning this?" asked Sakura.
"He's a jonin," said Naruto. "You don't survive to get to jonin without being able to plan ahead."
"Hnn," agreed Sasuke, eyeing Naruto and wondering if he'd had a brain implanted when the extra height had gone into effect. Then again, some of the times in the Academy there had been indication that Naruto wasn't a full time idiot.
"Coeur Blanc!" said Naruto.
[Set Up. Activation.]
Sasuke and Sakura both looked at Naruto's staff of white wood with dark-grey metal bands.
"My 'hijutsu' allows me to heal and enhance people," said Naruto. "When we start the test, how about this? I cast Protection and Haste on Sasuke. That gives you invisible armor and doubles your speed. On Sakura, I cast Divine Favor - that gives you a moderate boost mainly in agility and accuracy of your attacks. I maintain those while you two take this test, then I follow you. If it's some team versus team thing, Sasuke can be attacker, Sakura defense, and I maintain the enhancements. What do you think?"
Sasuke blinked. "You have jutsu that let you double my speed? Speed of what? Movement?"
"Well, your movement speed and speed of your attacks actually," said Naruto. "I can only maintain three spells of that kind at a time right now, otherwise I'd hit all three of us with as many enhancement-types as I could. The problem with running all three is that it'll keep me from moving around a lot. That's why I was suggesting Sakura for defense if it's a team battle. The only problem with Haste is that you're sped up - so you end up tiring quicker because you're doing more. It gets worse if I try to double-Haste you, because it's like you're fighting a strong wind whenever you move."
"You've learned to plan ahead," noted Sasuke.
"Hey, if I didn't plan ahead, all those 'engagement to Sasuke' cards would still be in play," pointed out Naruto. "Did you REALLY want that Dokoro gal to collect them all?"
Sasuke blanched at the mention of the craziest of the crazy girls after him. Knowing his Uncle Genma, he'd see an engagement to that yangire as a training opportunity.
"-and so when I say 'Start' you have to attack me with killing intent," said Kakashi, feeling a moment of doubt when he noticed the three making eye contact with each other and then hand signalled arguments. Someone was deviating from the script, and it took very little effort to know that the deviant would spell his name Na-Ru-To.
"Ready?" asked Sasuke.
"Coeur Blanc!" said Naruto, a staff appearing in his hand a moment later.
[Ready, My Master.]
"Ready," said Sakura, getting into a defensive combat stance.
"Then... let's start," said Kakashi.
The staff's end slammed into the ground. "Coeur Blanc! Haste and Protect on Sasuke!"
Six white wings erupted from the upper end of the staff.
[Enhancement Mode. Haste. Protect. Speed doubled. Protective field engaged.]
"Divine Favor on Sakura," said Naruto bracing himself and his brow furrowed as he concentrated.
[Divine Favor. Strength +10%, Agility +10%, Accuracy +15%, Evasive +20%]
Kakashi managed a yelp as suddenly Sasuke was moving faster than any genin had a right to. Faster even than the bulk of chunin. Heck, there were a lot of jonin that didn't move that quickly. Kakashi realized it was almost a strobe effect going on, and it was only through the extra years of experience that he was dodging ANY of it. Despite that, one particularly good palmstrike managed to solidly connect with his temple.
Sasuke kept from grinning as he landed what felt like a solid hit to the jonin. With speed like this, he had a better chance of taking on Itachi. Maybe having a support team isn't a bad idea.
Kakashi then rotated, tried to counterattack when he noticed Sasuke despite his extra speed had over-extended and was in mid-air, and then switched targets.
Naruto hadn't moved, was still firmly planted on the ground, obviously concentrating on whatever jutsu he'd used on Sasuke. Obvious target.
Sakura stopped in mid-cheer when she realized that a) Sasuke was twisting in mid-air to re-align, b) Kakashi-sensei was no longer fighting Sasuke, and c) Kakashi-sensei had just done a massive attack that caused Naruto to go flying backwards and slam into a tree with enough force that leaves and branches came down a moment later.
"Hmm, I may have overdone that a bit," mumbled Kakashi as he realized that Naruto looked a little... seriously unconscious. As in might not be awake for the rest of the day. Maybe week. There was blood oozing though, so he wasn't dead at least.
Musing about that was interrupted by the much-slower-now Sasuke.
"Lesson one: taijutsu," said Kakashi, feeling much more in the groove of things now. Besides, he had to wrap this up quickly to see how badly Naruto was injured.
"Well, Naruto will likely be unconscious for a few hours yet, and not very combat-ready for awhile after that," summed up Kakashi after the alarm had rung and the test ended. "I'm inclined to fail all of you though."
"Sakura, if we fail because you failed to protect Naruto, I will never speak to you again," promised Sasuke.
"EEEP!" eeped Sakura, feeling as if the shadow of death was upon her. Or at least the shadow of non-date-ability. "Ah, come on, Kakashi-sensei! That wasn't a fair test!"
"Naruto had a protective field up," said Kakashi, eyeing the tree. The indentation was Naruto-shaped but larger than the genin. "However, he was mainly concentrating on keeping Sasuke's speed and protection up and didn't react fast enough to increase his own protection when I switched targets."
"That's because he explained that keeping both of us enhanced with his hijutsu would require most of his concentration, that's why Sakura was supposed to GUARD him," said Sasuke with a glare towards their pink-haired team-member. Honestly, fangirls are SO useless.
"B-b-but," said Sakura.
"So you guys worked out details ahead of time without knowing the details of the test?" asked Kakashi.
"Yes," said Sasuke eventually. "Naruto's plan seemed viable considering his limitations. He'd use his enhancement-jutsu on the one taking the test, then healing-jutsu if they were injured afterwards, then switch to enhancement on the next one taking the test, and so on until we all passed. He also came up with the idea we'd be fighting another team of graduates, and that we'd have the offense-defense-healer set up that we were SUPPOSED to use here."
"I see," said Kakashi, glancing back to the still-unconscious Naruto.
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(Posted Tue, 25 May 2010 16:33)
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