Chapter 279: Naruto (2)
—
[Present]
Obito Uchiha watched the battle between Sasuke and Itachi come to an end.
For a long time, he stayed silent, standing on a tree branch beside Naruto. Something entirely else was on his mind.
Since Naruto agreed to work with him, Obito has been taking good care of him. He had initially brought the boy to make him a pawn, but interestingly– and surprisingly– he was starting to take a liking to him. It was almost uncanny how similar their backstories were, that on top of Naruto's new personality made him more likeable to Obito.
He felt like looking after a younger brother sometimes. The keyword was 'sometimes'. He hadn't lost sight of his goal. Naruto may be willing to work with him for now, but at one point he may betray him, in that case Obito will have to be ruthless.
But for now, their goals were aligned. The goal of world peace. A state of the world where nobody would be sad and everyone would be happy.
At the same time, the goal of destroying Konoha was also prominent in both their hearts. Especially the death of Neji Hyuga. They both had personal grudges against that man. Obito because Neji forced him to compromise some valuable teammates and materials in order to finish his plan, and Naruto because Neji did something very spiteful to him.
What Neji did to Naruto made Obito mad as well, to some degree, given he could easily imagine himself in Naruto's shoes because of their similar background. Just imagining Rin with Kakashi (Neji's lookalike) made Obito's blood boil, so he could relate with Naruto quite a bit.
"Shouldn't we pick him up?" suddenly Naruto asked, and Obito realised both of them had been staring at the scene where Sasuke had lost consciousness after earning a victory against his own older brother.
"Huh- ah, yes. Ahaha, forgive my wandering mind." Tobi chuckled sheepishly, though it didn't fool Naruto at the least, before he moved towards Sasuke alone with Kamui.
Naruto stayed back since the whole area in front of him was surrounded by the flames of Amaterasu and only Obito was 'immune' to the flame between the two of them.
— -
'So Sasuke won…' Naruto's cold eyes looked at the blazing battlefield. 'If it was like in the past, if the Neji incident didn't happen, would Sasuke have come back to the village?'
That was a fleeting thought. He quickly shook his head and discarded all these useless thoughts.
This battle he just witnessed was quite fancy, Naruto wouldn't lie. At one point, Orochimaru had tried to take over Sasuke's body through the Curse Mark, which Naruto had only found amusing– contrary to his past feelings on this matter. But Itachi Uchiha had managed to defeat Orochimaru, and Naruto could swear it felt like Itachi had deliberately dragged the battle only to fish Orochimaru out and finish him once and for all.
It was a very close fight, with Sasuke having a better version of Amaterasu, but Itachi still could have won if he wanted to. Naruto smelled an interesting story behind it.
He followed the scene where Obito appeared out of thin air beside both Itachi and Sasuke, and picked both bodies up, before vanishing in thin air again. Although the Sharingans Naruto was planted with were no Byakugan, it still gave him eyesight that was far beyond normal human– so he could follow the action quite clearly.
Obito appeared beside Naruto again, the bodies nowhere to be seen all of a sudden. Naruto guessed he had put the bodies away already.
"Let's go. No point in wasting time here." said Obito in the voice of his Tobi persona, making Naruto nod. He accepted Tobi's hand and then vanished in thin air with the intention of reappearing where Kisame and Suigetsu were waiting.
Kisame and Suigetsu, Itachi and Sasuke's teammates respectively, had waited miles away from the actual battlefield for their Uchiha teammates to settle the bad blood between them. Naruto had made a private bet that the two of them would start a fight of their own by the end, and he was somewhat looking forward to the result of that bet.
So, when he reappeared in the waiting place on top of a ruined building's rooftop, finding that both Kisame and Suigetsu were knocked out on the ground, Naruto almost smirked.
'So it was a draw? Impressive for that Suigetsu kid-'
Naruto's mind stopped as his eyes fell on one corner of the rooftop, behind a wall, as two people walked forward, standing in front of him and Tobi with ease that radiated danger.
Well, only one of them radiated that danger– the Neji Hyuga. The other person was just too meek for Naruto to even notice at first. But when he did, Naruto's jaws clenched on their own.
'Hinata… what is she doing with Neji?' he couldn't help but feel angry. 'Yet here I thought she was better than Sakura.'
On his goal to kill all the remaining Konoha people, Hinata was included too– but if she wasn't before, she would have been included in that list from this moment onwards.
After merging with the remnant of Kurama, Naruto had gone through his own memories, one by one, and saw things with a new depth. He understood things that didn't make sense before, or seemed too simple before. One such example was Hinata Hyuga stalking him, always staying away, in the far, and looking at him with those fearful eyes.
He would have hesitated before, perhaps even trying to understand her. But as he saw her with those eyes that were filled with pity, an expression that equally hunted his nightmares similar to the look of disdain he received, Naruto snapped. Her face seemed to overlap with those people, causing his jaws to clench hard.
She thought of him as if he was a zoo animal, didn't she? Even after he saved her from bullies that one time in the past, she had always stayed in the distance and got flustered whenever they were close. She was just that scared of him, wasn't she? She was just like everyone else, thinking of him as the demon fox.
'Disgusting female.' Naruto scoffed and kicked the ground to rush forward. Even as Tobi tried to stop him, he evaded his grasp and dashed forward.
However, Naruto didn't attack Hinata first– he rushed at Neji instead.
"Neji, you bastard!!"
A yellow-golden cloak of chakra appeared around Naruto's body, while a (+) icon formed in both his eyes, overlapping with his Sharingan.
Neji vanished from the trajectory of the attack– clearly Teleporting– and then appeared right back on the spot after Naruto passed through.
"Alright Hinata," Neji said to his annoying cousin. "Try to talk to him. I am gonna vanish from here since otherwise, he won't stop attacking me. Don't worry, I will keep the orange mask busy. Besides, I doubt he will try anything unless I do first."
Naruto attacked Neji again, and he just blinked out of existence and reappeared on the same spot once more.
"Good luck."
Then Neji vanished for real, making Naruto groan in annoyance and look around as both his eyes and senses failed to detect the man at all.
Tobi had also fallen back, now standing in a tree in the far, unwilling to meddle in this unless it broke into a fight between Naruto and Neji.
Naruto turned to Hinata in rage. Hinata smiled at him awkwardly. "N-naruto, let's talk this through. This is all a misunderstanding, just hear me out and I can-"
"Shut up, Hinata! Where is that bastard cousin of yours? Call him back! Right now! Otherwise I will have to force him to come out using you!" Naruto didn't listen to her at all and roared at her.
Hinata's smile froze. Naruto failed to receive an answer from her even after five seconds passed, and at that his body shivered in sheer anger.
"Where is your cousin?!" Naruto leashed at Hinata. "You better have an answer for that!" Then, his feet landed on the girl's side. "Tell me, where is Neji Hyuga?!"
The kick created a sound similar to an explosion, coupled with the sound of bones breaking, as Hinata was unable to react to the assault and was thrown down far from the rooftop, landing in the forest below.
"Come out, Neji! Or she dies today!" Naruto yelled in pure anger.
He hadn't missed Hinata's expression of shock and disbelief that she wore before getting thrown away, but he didn't care for that. From his perspective, she was just another girl from Konoha, one who saw him like a zoo animal, and she deserved to experience the same fate.
Naruto kicked the ground and jumped down into the forest, where Hinata had created a crater in the ground, and used his Sharingan to unleash a genjutsu at her in full force.
— - —
Neji observed the 'battle' unfold below in calm silence. In the same way that Midnight and Nagant's personalities (slightly) changed after merging with the Nine-Tails, Naruto had changed as well. Except his change was far greater than theirs– possibly due to his pent-up emotion being greater, or perhaps because he was the true host of Kurama. Whatever the case, Naruto was now a completely different beast.
Did he enjoy seeing a girl get beaten? Possibly. It depended on the context.
Did he enjoy seeing 'his girl' get beaten? If only the one beating them was him, because some of his girls liked to be beaten.
But if another man touched his girls, that was a no-no game which resulted in a game-over for the said man. Unfortunately, Hinata wasn't 'his girl'. Not yet. She was just 'a girl' who in this context deserved the beating for reality to sink into her thick little head.
Naruto wasn't Naruto anymore– and even when he was, he never deserved her.
Naruto was pretty much beating reality into her dumb little head right now. He started his attacks from complicated casual punches, and at point moving to outright torture as he used the rasengan to twist her fingers one after another, all to her agony and cries, intending to "wake her up".
Truthfully, Neji found her drive touching. The amount of obsession she had for him was shocking given she had barely interacted with him in her 19 years of life. Perhaps it was the Will of this World? Or perhaps the will of Hagoromo himself– so that Boruto is born one day to keep this world safe from the Otsutsukis?
Whatever the case, Neji doubted that Will would live on after this. If Naruto didn't want Hinata to call Neji to show himself, he would have killed Hinata already.
Naruto was doing all this beating only for Hinata to call Neji out in the open. Though Naruto didn't know that she wasn't going to do that because Neji had told her before that he would drag her to safety the moment she called his name.
Neji kept his eyes on the scene as the stubborn Hyuga refused to call him, and rather got beaten while trying to shake Naruto 'awake'.
~"Um… Onii-sama."~ Hanabi's shaken voice sounded out from within his planet heaven. ~"I-I think this is enough… can't you stop him already?"~
"I told you to watch this at your own risk." Neji said seriously. "I am doing this for her own good, this is mental illness."
Some may say he shouldn't be the one talking, as so many girls were obsessed with him in ways that Hinata wasn't with Naruto, but those "some" would be wrong. Because unlike Naruto, Neji was obsessed with those girls as well.
~"...My God. What has he become."~ Tsunade's voice exclaimed, clearly shaken by Naruto's cruelty. ~"Neji, stop this please, this is getting harder to watch."~
Neji didn't stop. Because the stubborn girl hadn't called for help yet.
But truthfully… he was starting to get angry at Naruto.
— - —
"Call him!" Naruto punched Hinata in the face once again, making her eyes shake inside her skull. "Do it!"
"Naruto… why are you…" she spat the words between the attacks. "Do you not remember… that night… when you saved me…?"
Her expression paused as she was thrown into a genjutsu by Naruto's Sharingan. A genjutsu where she drowned to death and her expression turned to horror.
"I don't fucking care!" he yelled, watching her return to her senses.
Naruto was unable to comprehend why she was mentioning that day. It was he who saved her, not the other way around– so it's not as if he was indebted to her. Rather, she was indebted to him and she should just call Neji out if she wanted to repay that debt, shouldn't she?
At his eyes, her already teary eyes trembled as she gave him a pained look. Naruto groaned at that expression. "You are not anyone special to me, you idiotic bitch! You belong to Konoha, so you die! Except for Iruka-sensei, everyone else will die!"
'So that's how it is.' Hinata's eyes shook.
Suddenly, she regretted her decision to want to see him. She would have much rather preferred to live her life and die peacefully one day with the belief that her Naruto– the one she loved– had died that day by the hands of Kiana. But now, she had just heard him say such painful words.
At one point of being assaulted by Naruto, she had started to believe that this actually wasn't Naruto, this was just the Nine-Tailed Fox who had taken Naruto's appearance. But since he spoke of Iruka, it proved that he was still Naruto, not the fox. This meant… Naruto's indifference towards her emotions wasn't a change brought by this new dark chakra he had, it was a fact that Naruto carried with him always.
All this time… she was a nobody. An insignificant girl that never caught his eyes. Someone who was always covered by the shadow of Sakura to his eyes, by the shadow of the same girl who probably did intimate things with her cousin now.
All of a sudden, a new feeling emerged within her. In one corner of her heart, Hinata felt victorious. Happy that Naruto had faced the same fate she did– actually, maybe his fate was worse? After all, he saw his crush getting stolen, and she hadn't.
Naruto held her by the collar while his fist raised in the air and prepared to attack, but then something weird happened.
"...Ahahaha-" Hinata laughed, her lips widening to reveal the missing teeth inside her bloody mouth. Naruto stopped attacking her, frowning in confusion. "I am such a fool. Don't you agree, Naruto-kun?"
Naturo's frown deepened. "That's not even half of what I've been through. Yet look at you breaking down." He looked at her with a disgusted snort.
However, Naruto didn't realise that it wasn't her willpower that was weak, it was his words that were too harsh for her. She could hold on to a hundred more of these punches, even if they killed her, she wouldn't have been broken. But the situation at hand, his words and his indifferent attitude, completely shattered any will she had.
Naruto scoffed. "Look at you break. Yet your cousin isn't here to save you. Don't you regret it, having such a backstabber for a cousin?"
Hinata kept laughing. "At least he is better than some certain people."
Naruto stayed silent for a moment and then punched her again when he realised who she meant by that. In rage, his Sharingan shone briefly as he unleashed a genjutsu onto her– a genjutsu where her skin burned as lava was poured into it. At the same time, he punched her in the gut and watched her gasp for her life.
"How? How is he better than me, huh?!" He pulled her by the hair and yelled at her face. "Answer me!"
Hinata's laughter stopped and she looked at him with dead eyes. "I don't know how to explain." Hinata went silent. "...Maybe he is better in the sense that he isn't a fool."
Naruto growled like a beast and raised his claws to scar her face permanently, but this time– for the first time, Hinata stopped trying to convince him. She didn't want to spend any more time here. She had seen everything she wanted and she hadn't wanted to see.
At one point she had thought now that her 'Naruto-kun' was dead, there was no point in her life– but she didn't have such thoughts anymore. She wanted to leave and… live.
"Please," she muttered before he swung. "Make this stop."
Naruto's claws went down to scar her face, but it stopped mid-air before it hit, caught by a hand that was strong and firm. Hinata looked up and found Neji wearing the mask of indifference, almost similar to Naruto's but… his was a mask. Even she could sense the anger beneath.
"That is enough," Neji said, making Naruto turn to him– just as the boy used his other arm to throw a punch. "I said. ENOUGH."
Neji's eyes glowed briefly and his palm struck Naruto's abdomen before the punch could land, an earsplitting shockwave rushing out of the palm, as Naruto was shot back– not a meter or two far away, but kilometres far from this place as he broke through walls of trees and went flying in the sky.
Neji turned to Hinata, releasing a sigh as gave her an annoyed look. "Probably will sound like a dick, but I just wanna say, I told you so. This is on you."
Hinata didn't reply as he carefully picked her bloody body up. She realised she couldn't feel his touch in most places. The nerves were gone.
"I think you need rest." He spoke, tapping her neck as she watched her world turn blank before she could reply. "Goodnight."
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