Return of the Flash by Kamikaze132

Chapter 17

Naruto flashed straight to his parent's home. He needed something to calm down, something to focus on. His mind was in a haze, with all his rational thoughts and logic buried beneath a storm of emotions he could make no sense out of. This was the first time he was feeling something like this, and his gut instinct was understandably confused. Fortunately, he had Kurama to talk some sense into him.

'Naruto! Calm down! Take it slowly, step by step.' He rumbled in a calm manner, trying to work the panic out of Naruto's system by pushing some of his yang chakra through. He could feel Naruto trying to think this through logically, as he had done with every situation before.

Naruto registered Kurama's shouts and upon hearing the annoyance in his voice, he forcefully shook his head. He took deep breaths, letting each one out slowly. It took him over five minutes to calm down enough so he could listen to Kurama. He slowly sat down in the living room sofa, right in front of his parent's portrait. He put his chin on top of his joint hands and listened.

'Alright, I'm calm now.....Sorry about that. I just didn't know what to do,' he said in a neutral tone, with only a hint of confusion in it.

Kurama scoffed, 'As you should be! I really don't see what's there to panic about. You should be jumping in ecstasy instead, having finally had your first kiss with a girl.'

Naruto frowned a bit, '....Maybe you're right. However, even if I kissed her, she is going to be my enemy on the day of the finals! I don't know what I would do! As a shinobi of the leaf, it is my sworn duty to destroy the enemies of the leaf. However, I know that I won't be able to bring myself to kill Temari. And I can't even imagine the treatment a prisoner of Konoha gets.'

Kurama raised an eyebrow, 'What you need to do, is slow down. It is not up to you to decide what happens to them. That's the job of the Hokage. Your job is to simply stop them from completing their mission, by any means necessary.'

Naruto thought about it, weighing Kurama's words intensely. He was right; he simply had to stop the Sand from achieving their goal. He figured that he might have to take some lives on the day of the finals, but he could choose to spare some.

He got up, his keen mind slowly working out the various possibilities and scenarios as he made his way to the simulation. He already knew that Gaara was the biggest part of the opposition's plan, so he would have to neutralize him by any means. If he could stop Gaara, there is no other trump card that he could think of that Suna can fall back on. He could choose to spare Temari, as she can't do anything on her own. Her other brother was easy to handle as well. Based on his observations, Kankuro was a skilled puppeteer, but he was also a bit of an idiot. Both were a very small part of the entire invasion, the pawns on the chessboard.

He removed his resistance seals and set the simulation to level six. He stepped inside the room and activated the simulation with the seal sequence. As his opponent formed in front of him, he settled into his stance, eyes steely. As soon as the command was given, he dashed forward in a flash step.

'I will figure out what to do!'

XXXXXXX

The fight was tough, easily the toughest that Naruto had ever fought. The bruises and sore muscles were the definite proof of that. He winced as he rolled his shoulder, trying to relax it a bit as he exited the room.

He had given it his utmost effort from the beginning, trying to end it as quickly as possible. However, he wasn't surprised at all when he was parried blow for blow, jab for jab. Neither managed to gain the upper hand on the other for a whole of fifteen minutes. Naruto could not hit his opponent, but he made sure that his opponent couldn't hit him either. It soon became clear that he won't be able to gain the upper hand if he continued like this, so he activated the Blazing hands technique. At first, it looked like he had gained a slight advantage, but he was forced onto the defensive when his opponent copied the Blazing hands and used it against him just as effectively.