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The Method by Zabzab
 Anime » Naruto Rated: M, English, Adventure & Humor, Naruto U., Words: 63k+, Favs: 1k+, Follows: 2k+, Published: Dec 8, 2019 Updated: May 19734Chapter 4
AN: To answer Anonimo's review, I didn't know "Luther Strode" before yesterday and you mentioning it. Well, apparently, I wasn't original but heh. I found the comic online and read. It's a pretty good read. It's on the gory (very gory) side though, so viewer's discretion and all that.
Enjoy.
Naruto stood in front of his interlocutor. His brow was furrowed, his eyes were narrowed, his nostrils were flaring and his mouth was contorted in a grimace. The blond, however, was not angry at the one he was speaking. Tapping his foot against the wet floor, arms crossed against his chest, the boy thought long and hard. Eventually, he took a deep, ragged breath and exhaled slowly, forcing his nerves to calm down and appeasing his features.
"Okay."
Looking up, Naruto presented his open hand.
"Nice to meet'cha, my name is Naruto Uzumaki."
Naruto was not an expert at reading people. He knew there was an entire clan in Konoha that specialized in doing just that and more, if rumors about their secret techniques were even half true.
He was still a kid who had had no one to raise him and had been and still was ignored by the population of his own village. People refused to talk to him so he had to make them talk in a different way.
Over the years, he started to notice a number of signs that were telling of how a person felt. Some were obvious: a guy with his shoulders all slouched, dragging his feet, and sighing a lot was depressed and if he held a flower in his hand, then chances were he had just been "dumped".
Whatever that meant.
Some other signs, however, were far, far more subtle or confusing because they could be used for several emotions - frowning for example - or really difficult to see without being up-close - like the motions of the eyes.
Naruto had become decent at guessing what ailed people just by observing them. Sure, his "body dictionary" wasn't complete: there were still signs he could detect that he could not connect to any emotion he knew or emotions he couldn't detect signs for but he could go by pretty well with what he had.
It worked even better with people he knew or at least frequented regularly. The Old Man, for example, was really good at controlling all the signs that gave away his emotions but Naruto had spent days in his office when he was small, doodling, making bubbles, and observing the Hokage so he knew the Old Man pretty well.
That was how he knew the Old Man had been lying when he had told Naruto he did not know why the boy was hated by ninety-nine per cent of the population.
That was how he knew the Old Man was dissimulating something extremely serious from him right now.
Everything had begun as usual. Naruto, having left his boulder a bit before entering the village, had run along the main street, bumped into mister Mask, apologized like a proper, polite person did - because he hadn't been looking and mister Mask was nice so deserved an apology - and continued his run until he had reached the Hokage's office.
Once there, he had ignored the desperate cries of the secretary, who he should gift something to because she was just doing her job but the force of habit was too strong to ignore and barged in the Old Man's workroom like he owned the place. It was rude but the Hokage himself allowed it so Naruto just did it like that.
"Hey Old Man, how is it rockin', 'ttebayo?"
"My, good Naruto, you?"
"All good, all good. Still neck-deep in paperwork?"
"As you can see. I can't wait for you to take the hat from me."
The exchange had followed the routine until here before it had turned into a train wreck.
"Yeah, Old Man, speaking of which, I'm not sure I want to be a ninja anymore."
The first sign had been a single bead of sweat slowly rolling down the Hokage's balding forehead. The fact the Old Man had nearly choked on the smoke of his pipe did not count: everyone was allowed to be surprised by his declaration. The sweat meant the Hokage was uncomfortable with it.
"What brought this on?" The Hokage had asked, setting his pipe down on his desk as calmly as he was capable of appearing to be.
"Well, I don't really know Old Man." Naruto had noticed the curious behaviour of the Hokage and as such, had decided to go at it carefully. "I'm not sure I'm all that interested in it, ya know? I think I'd prefer being a historian."
"I see. Don't you like all the exercising you do, though? Being a shinobi could allow you to make use of the strength you gained. Wasn't it why you started to work out?"
At that, Naruto had scratched the back of his head. "Yeah, but along the way, I kept at it because it was fun. Becoming a ninja wasn't about doing something fun, it was about becoming Hokage but I realized, I don't really need to do it. I'd prefer doing something I know I enjoy."
The second sign had been the Hokage audibly swallowing his saliva. The Old Man never did that. Naruto had been present once as Hiruzen had had to deal with a tense hostage situation and not once had the older man done something like swallowing loudly.
"Well being a ninja is fun, Naruto. You get to save princesses and kill demons you know?" The Hokage had said that as nonchalantly as he could yet with just enough enthusiasm that it didn't sound fake.
However, Naruto had seen through the lie. Because Naruto had seen what new genin did around in Konoha and it was definitely not saving princesses and killing demons. Demons did not exist anyway. This realization brought Naruto to reflect on the signs he could read in people and what he had picked up thus far in the Old Man and reached the conclusion that the Hokage was hiding something quite serious.
Why was he so insistent for Naruto to become a ninja in the first place? The blond considered the thought as he threw the Old Man a long look, one eyebrow cocked up and his lips pursed in a thin, slightly crooked line of disbelief.
"Well," begun Naruto, "I'm more interested in collecting the stories of those who actually did save princesses."
"But doing it yourself would be cooler right?"
Naruto sighed. "It might but I don't want to go through the "painting fences" phase before I get to the good stuff. The villagers don't like me and I sure don't want to paint their fences."
That'd be humiliating and not even well paid, he could bet on it.
The Hokage abruptly sucked a breath of air. "Do you hate the villagers Naruto?"
The blond frowned. Why should he hate them? Certainly, they were rude and mean to him, constantly pretending he wasn't here and it was hurtful. Although he certainly didn't like the villagers, however, they hadn't done anything for him to hate them
"No? Why're you asking anyway, Old Man? You know it's the villagers who hate me."
The Hokage sighed. It sounded both like a sigh of relief and of immense weariness. "I'm sorry Naruto but you have to become a ninja." The older man eventually said.
Silence fell in the office.
"Huh? Why though, 'ttebayo?" Naruto exclaimed, confused. The Old Man had offered him, long ago, to be a shinobi, telling him it would earn him the acknowledgement he craved at the time. He had never outright commanded Naruto to do something.
When the Old Man averted his eyes for a split second, anger slowly painted itself on Naruto's face.
"Okay, Old Man, what's the deal here? What do you mean I have to become a ninja?"
"Just that, Naruto. You have to do it, you haven't got a choice." The Hokage said with a firm voice and an air of finality.
Naruto looked hard at the one he called "Old Man" with affection. The Hokage was hiding something and the boy didn't like it one bit. "What are you not telling me?"
"Nothing. Now go Naruto, I have work to do." The Hokage shooed the boy with a swift motion of his hand.
"Oh yeah?" Naruto asked, fuming. "Well, as long as you don't tell me what it is, I'm sure as heck not becoming a ninja, Old Man!" The blond exclaimed in a hard tone, his finger pointed accusingly at the Hokage. "You didn't want to tell me why the villagers hate me, I said yes even though I knew you were lying. You didn't want to tell me anything about my parents save that they were ninja, I said okay even though I knew you were lying as well. Well, I'm through, you hear that! You're telling me or I'm not becoming nothing, 'ttebayo!" Naruto finished, crossing his arms in front of his chest and glaring resolutely.
The Hokage stared at the boy - no, the teenager already - in front of him with wide eyes. Once again, Naruto surprised him by acting out of normal, accepted parameters.
The young blond had always been willing to obey his "Old Man" when asked, accepting the fact he wouldn't get any of his questions answered. It might have been cruel but once again, it was the easy way to deal with the problem of Naruto knowing too much and considering certain pros and cons Konoha couldn't afford the boy to consider.
One of them being possibly not becoming a ninja. Hiruzen Sarutobi hesitated. He looked left and right as if searching for support. He wrung his hands in and out. He took a deep breath.
"YouhavetheKyuubisealedinsideyouanditsthereasonthevillagersdontlikeyou!"
"What?"
Naruto looked up and down at the massive cage of iron that lay in front of him, the bars rising too high for him to see their end and plunging too deep to see their origin. The space behind the adamantine columns seemed large and spacious but the being contained by the cage was… well… large and spacious too.
"What are you doing here, child!" A powerful voice roared, the air it displaced ruffling Naruto's hair backwards.
Naruto sighed. "I'm visiting my tenant!" He answered at the top of his lungs, not angrily but just to make sure the one he was visiting could hear him.
"I'm not deaf, stupid human!"
A heavy silence was reigning without contest in the Hokage's office. Naruto stared at the Old Man as if the Sarutobi had grown another head.
"Could you repeat that, but, like, slowly?" The blond asked, trying to buy time as his brain deciphered what had just been revealed to him. "'ttebayo?" He added as an afterthought, unsure.
The Hokage took a deep breath and sighed before he straightened in his chair only to sag with another, deeper sigh. "The villagers… the reason they… dislike you-"
"The reason they hate me and ostracize me, let's call a cat a cat, shall we, Old Man," said Naruto frostily, not in the mood for wordplay. He was doing his damn best not to panic right now and the Hokage wasn't going to try and sell him the situation as better than it was.
Nope, he wasn't.
"Right," acknowledged the older man, sagging even further in his seat, sliding out of it like Naruto had done in the Academy when he was really bored and wanted to be somewhere else. "On the night you were born, as you know…"
"The Kyuubi attacked yes, the giant fox ran amok in Konoha and killed people, so?"
"Well, you see, the Yondaime couldn't kill it so he…"
Naruto tapped his feet on the floor impatiently and waited, his gaze affixed on the Hokage.
"He sealed it inside you," breathed out the older man, now nearly sprawled on the ground more than seating on his chair yet looking relaxed, as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
Naruto looked down at his own body with attention. Carefully, he pinched one of his cheeks firmly until it hurt and blinked two times. Then he blinked a third time because never two without three. Slowly, his head swivelled around on his neck as he observed the office with a frown. He poked himself again, in the ribs this time but nothing changed. The blond looked himself up and down again, from his toes wiggling in his blue shinobi sandals to the tip of his nose.
Then he looked back at the Hokage with a frown and a pout. "Okay Old Man, I'm all for jokes and I deserved this one, probably, but com'on, be serious for a second here."
"What?" The Hokage whispered.
"I'm all tiny, Old Man, I know it, no need to mock me about it. There is no way the Kyuubi," saying that Naruto spread his arms as much as he could, "could fit anywhere in me," he punctuated the statement by closing the palms of his hands together, leaving them separated by a hair's breadth.
The Hokage sighed. Gone was the regal old man from before. "No, Naruto, you don't understand. The Kyuubi was sealed inside you. Lift up your shirt and channel a bit of chakra, you'll see it."
Naruto stared hard at the Hokage for thirty seconds before he sighed himself. There was no sign he could detect that the Old Man was pulling a fast one on him so he did as he was told.
"Ah, penis!" He said flatly, startling the Hokage slightly with his curse word, as some kind of spiral contained within eight prongs appeared in black ink on his stomach.
Naruto only barely knew anything about fuinjutsu but that seal was not for storing kunai, that was for sure.
"Look, I know you… or is it my fault? Oh, whatever!" Naruto exclaimed, flailing his arms. "I know it's not comfortable here but you can't be like that every time I come and visit!" The blond boy said in a voice of protest.
"I. Do not. Want you. To visit!" The being behind the bars roared. "I want out of here, that's it!"
"Well I can't, mister Fox, 'cause I don't wanna die!" Naruto screamed in turn, rolling his eyes and throwing his arms in the air. "We already discussed that! So unless you have a bright idea-"
"You won't keep me here, miserable human!"
"Look, I know you're angry but-"
"I'm not your prisoner, pathetic-"
"I did not put you here!"
The voice of Naruto echoed like a primordial roar, shaking the foundation of the space the boy and his interlocutor were in. Chakra pulsed in a single, infinitely thin wave. The blond was glaring at his tenant, a snarl tensing and almost cramping his feature by its intensity. The Kyuubi recoiled behind the bars of his cage.
"Listen, mister Fox. I get it, you don't wanna be here. I don't want you here either. If it wouldn't kill me, I'd set you free and-"
"What?"
Naruto frowned and fumed. "It's super rude to interrupt peo-"
"What did you say about… setting me free?" The Kyuubi asked, uncaring of the fact he had interrupted Naruto again.
"Well, what I said. You've served for what now? Twelve years behind bars in this damp as heck cave without seeing the sun. No criminal is treated like that. Or at least, no criminal should. You attacked Konoha and it wasn't cool but you deserve to see the sun once in a while."
Only silence answered Naruto before the Kyuubi spoke again.
Naruto breathed in. And breathed out. He breathed in. And breathed out.
"Alright," said the boy, once again looking at the Hokage who had straightened himself and was seating, all proper, on his chair. For some reason, the sight got a vein in Naruto's forehead pulsing.
The Old Man simply looked at him in response. "Alright" wasn't really a question so the blond did not fault him.
"So?" The boy tried before he realized it would be in vain as well. Well, try learning you have a giant god-like beast in your stomach and see if you aren't at a loss, 'ttebayo.
"What does that gotta do with me being a ninja?" The boy eventually managed to formulate a proper question after two other false starts.
"People like you are called jinchuuriki, Naruto. The other four great ninja villages have jinchuuriki too."
Naruto cocked his eyebrow and puckered his lips out, throwing an interrogative glance at the Hokage rather than trying to choose complicated words for a spoken question. Speaking was hard for him right now.
"Jinchuuriki are all ninja because, in case of war, they are both very powerful soldiers and primary targets."
Naruto groaned. "Because of… what we contain?"
"Yes. The Bijuus give their host incredible powers and great physical strength. If they can channel the beast's chakra, that is."
"So," said Naruto, analyzing what he had just been explained and running it through his own filters. "You want me to exploit the fox stuck inside me like it's a battery and go to town on Konoha's villains." The boy summarized crudely. "Also, I don't have a choice."
The Hokage swallowed audibly but nodded resolutely.
"If I still refuse?"
"We'd be forced to transfer the beast to someone else. That means you'd die."
"Huh. So you'd basically force my terrible life on someone else. Wow. And kill me to boot." Naruto's gaze hardened. "You suck, Old Man," declared the boy with a frown marring his face. "Like, you swallow too." He added after a second.
This one was from Method and while the blond didn't understand the subtlety of the insult, he was quite certain the Hokage deserved this one.
The older man simply sighed. "You could be this village's protector, Naruto. You could-"
"If I can't choose I'm not a protector, I'm a slave." The boy interrupted in a dry tone. He didn't mind becoming a ninja but being actually forced to be one was grating him the wrong way.
The Hokage sighed again but stayed straight, refusing to sag in his chair again. The old and young men stared at each other, one angrily and the other resolutely.
Naruto shifted his gaze first, lost in thoughts. He didn't want to fight the Old Man, he was pretty certain he couldn't win right now. Plus, there were at least four ANBU in the room with them, given the number of breaths he could hear. It was time to try another path. Method insisted that a good fighter is the one who throws is punch the correct way but that the fighter who wins is the one who strategizes.
So the blond bashfully looked down, put his hand behind his back and twisted his right ankle slightly before he looked up with wide azure eyes brimming with tears. "You'd do that to me, grandpa?" He asked in the most high pitched, trembling voice he was capable of. He was somehow looking six years younger than he really was and there was a violin playing sad music somewhere.
The Hokage faltered as if mortally wounded, and looked right and left, his left hand gripping his chest as the right pushed on his chair for him to stay seated upright. "I'm sorry Naruto," whispered the aged leader. "It's my duty to do so." He said, pain making his voice tight.
"Tch, that really sucks, Old Man!" Naruto exclaimed, his earlier appearance gone and forgotten in the blink of an eye.
The Hokage sputtered furiously before pointing at the blond boy in outrage. "It's Gai, isn't it?! Gai has been teaching you his "Sunset Genjutsu"!"
"What? No! What even is that!" Naruto screamed in return. "Don't try to avoid the conversation we're having Old Man. You're choosing my career for me as we speak, 'ttebayo!"
"Argh! This comedy has gone for long enough. Look, I'm sorry Naruto! I really, really am! You can't leave your life as you want it and I can't make the decision I would like to take! Life is unfair but that is that!"
Naruto recoiled slightly at the older man's sudden outburst, as it was very unusual for the Hokage to lose his calm like this. The boy waited for a second to be certain the man was done and sighed. "Can I sit down?"
"Yes."
Man and boy eyed each other like cat and dog on each side of a fence.
"Look Naruto, I'm sorry-"
"Nah, it's okay," answered Naruto in a dulled voice. The boy sighed. "I'm an orphan, I can't know who my parents were, the village hates me for something I didn't do, I'm the prison of a giant monster, and now I can't even choose what I'll do of my life. It's okay."
The Hokage winced. He couldn't say anything to that because it was true. "You know," he tried anyway, "the ninja know of your condition and they should be less… biased against you, Naruto."
The blond snorted and it told the Hokage all he needed to know.
Even the ninja population was biased against Naruto. He really was the stupid leader of a stupid people.
"Can I at least learn whatever ninja art I'd like to learn?"
The Hokage eyed the boy. Naruto deserved a sweetener.
"What do you have in mind?"
"Well, I've been studying medicine."
The Hokage hummed. "What about ninjustu? You… used to like the idea of it."
Naruto sighed before a smile slowly blossomed on his face. "Ha! Ninjutsu! I can't become a ninja, Old Man, I can't perform any of the three Academy jutsus! I'll fail the graduation exam and-"
"And you'll be sponsored into a team, Naruto," informed the Hokage, cutting the boy's sudden enthusiasm short. "Look. Being a ninja isn't so bad. You'll be in a team of people your age who don't know about your burden and your sensei will not hold any ill-will against you, I can promise you that. Those comrades will become like your family Naruto."
The boy perked up at the mention of a family before his moral fell just as swiftly. "They'll be people from my class and they don't like me either."
"You'll change their mind Naruto, I know you will. I know you're very strong, you know a lot about medicine, you are an actual genius when it comes to mathematics somehow and you read more history books than any boy your age. You'll surprise them and in the real world, they will quickly forget the way you were in the Academy."
Naruto stayed silent and the Hokage didn't add anything. For a full minute, that eventually stretched into another one, not a sound was heard in the office.
"Okay," said Naruto slowly, as if he was testing and tasting the word. "Okay," he repeated more firmly, "but I want an all-you-can-eat evening at Ichiraku on your tab."
The Hokage gave the boy a smile. "That I can manage. You'll also get a special authorization to read on iryojutsu in the ninja library. Also," added the older man as he took a slip of paper and scribbled something on it. "I want you to learn that jutsu." He said, presenting a folded piece of paper to Naruto.
"What is it?" The blond asked, doubtful there was any point in him even trying.
"It's very, very chakra intensive so you should be able to use it."
"Huh? What does that got to do with me?"
"You have a lot of chakra Naruto. Way, way too much and way too potent for any of the Academy jutsu. You working out didn't help your case. You know about yin and yang chakra and balancing, correct?"
The blond nodded.
"I believe you have a lot of yang chakra and it unbalances your chakra as a whole. This jutsu is nearly purely yang based."
"Oh. Okay then. What's its name?"
"Shadow Clone Jutsu."
AN: So... yeah. Leave a review?
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