The Future: Naruto Fanfiction

Chapter 34

JASHIN'S POWER

In the Land of Wind

Shinki and his pursuers have hit a big landmark in their race towards the temple. This is the point at which grass turns into desert, at which hope starts to slowly change into despair. Shikadai concludes that they must be well over half way through their journey. They are fast approaching the temple, the location at which the Hidden Leaf's destiny will be decided. ChouChou can't help but question one thing, why?

"What's going on Shikadai?" the Akimichi clanswomen asks as she runs alongside the brains of the team, "Why are we still chasing him?".

Previously, a pair of attacks, each co-ordinated by Shikadai had shattered Shinki's formation of amulets. Initially, ChouChou herself had used her expansion powers to snatch a whole group of them at once. After that, Shikadai forced Shinki to overexert himself, to use all of his iron sand at once before penetrating the defence using raw power, much to Shikadai's detriment. Due to these facts, it should all be over, why are they still running?

Shikadai looks at the surroundings and the sense of achievement begins to fade by the second. For whatever reason, his cousin is running. What does he hope to achieve, without any amulets, what sort of plan could he have formulated? Or is this Shinki's plan at all, could this be the plan of the voice in his head, could this be Jashin's plan.

"Shikadai!" Inojin shouts, bringing The Circle's administrator back to reality.

"I don't know why but he is still running" Shikadai points out with desperation in his voice. If there is another way for him to obtain power, if there is another way he can gain strength, then it would be disastrous should he take out his rage on the Hidden Leaf. If Shinki is running so that he obtains more power, this could be the most important moment in the history of this world.

"What are you talking about?" ChouChou asks, still confused about the nature of this pursuit.

"If he didn't have another way to complete his plan, he would have just taken the amulets back" Shikadai declares as he looks sideways at his teammate. "If he fought us head on there is no way we could win".

This is only natural, the only reason they have been able to do so well so far is that they have caught Shinki off-guard using the tricks that Shikadai has thought up. If the Ino-Shika-Cho was to clash with the Kazekage head-on, there is no way they could win. Despite that, Shinki has not attacked them, he has made no efforts to reclaim the amulets. Shikadai is right, there must be another reason, another way to follow through his plans.

"Couldn't he be running away from us?". ChouChou still hasn't realised what Shikadai has, that there is still something truly dangerous about this situation. "He could think that we are chasing him before imprisoning him".

Shikadai doesn't speak the words aloud but he knows there are flaws in this logic. Not only is Shinki too strong for this but he is not someone who is afraid to face the consequences for his actions. Gaara hadn't believed in being hard on Shinki during his youth, he had wished to show the same love to his son that his mother had shown to him. This left it up to Shinki to discipline himself, to ask others to discipline him. Shinki, the Kazekage, the shinobi, even the gennin, he has always been disciplined.

"We wouldn't have the ability to arrest him". The Nara clansmen shakes his head as he labels this deduction as fact in his own mind. "He still has another plan".