Master of Genjutsu

CH-10 Wave missions: Nicknames?

Naruto and his team sat down to dinner the last night before Kakashi would be back to full health. Now that Kakashi was reaching full strength again, Kakashi himself was preparing for Zabuza to appear again soon, which would be most likely within the next few days. He had told his genin as such and they had all nodded, agreeing to be prepared for his accomplice.

In regards to training, Sakura had mastered the tree climbing exercise within the week. She had come home exhausted everyday but she wore a proud smile at the end of the week as she sat next to her teammates.

Sasuke had managed to finally reach the top of the tree about halfway through the day yesterday and had been working on mastering this exercise, he had never thanked Naruto for his help but he rarely called Naruto a dobe nowadays, something Naruto had noted with interest.

Naruto was constantly watching Tazuna on guard duty, but what no one knew was that he used this time to study the Genjutsu he had memorized the seals for and get the appropriate level of chakra for each technique. Despite figuring out the main problem with his Genjutsu, Naruto had needed to train with his techniques, just as with any jutsu, in order to get them down correctly and begin to master them. It had, initially, been a question of how much of his chakra he would have to use to get the Genjutsu to catch. After he had managed that against his clones, he kept using those techniques in order to get used to the way the chakra flowed within him and how the Genjutsu required him to use his chakra. The ultimate goal of this was to make it so he could cast Genjutsu with just a single movement of his body, something that he had been enamored with once he read about it in his Genjutsu book.

He could proudly say that he could do almost all of the Genjutsu he had memorized the handseals for and one of his own self-made Genjutsus. He was rather excited to try it out in a combat situation, and, though he knew that was hazardous, he knew that Kurenai had approved of all of his Genjutsu and said that they would be able to be used in combat once he had tested them himself to make sure they would be cast.

Naruto looked up from his food and noticed that Inari was glaring at him as he and his team sat there with a happy and carefree air surrounding them. Naruto shrugged the little boy's glare off and continued to eat as he listened to Sakura speak to Tsunami about cooking skills while the rest of the table simply sat in silence, enjoying their meals.

"Why?" Inari whispered but Naruto caught it. He turned his gaze onto the little child as he gave him his full attention. He noticed that Inari had some tears accumulating on the edge of his eyes, "Why do you bother to try so hard? No matter how hard you train, you still won't be able to match Gatou's men. No matter how hard you try, the weak will only end up getting trampled by the strong. You're going to get killed." he yelled at the team.

Sasuke scoffed and Sakura looked a bit upset at the boy's outburst. It was Naruto's expression that hardened, his icy blues locking all form of irritation behind their reflective glaciel appearance, "You're wrong kid. Don't lump us together with you." he said coldly to the young wave resident. Tsunami, Tazuna and Kakashi all shivered at his tone, something they couldn't get used to since it came from a child, or in Kakashi's case, his sensei's happy-go-lucky kid.

Inari scoffed, "What the hell do you know about me!" he shouted as his tears started flowing freely, "You're always training and acting like Gatou's men won't even phase you, you act so damn high and mighty just because your a ninja. You're nothing like me! You don't know how hard life can really be." he finished as his tirade came to a close.

Kakashi looked over to Naruto, his eye widening at a look he had thought he would never see again. Kakashi felt his body shiver as he looked into Naruto's eyes. Naruto's eyes were no longer their glaciel appearance as before, they had morphed into a rolling maelstrom of anger and contempt. Kakashi could almost hear the snap of Naruto's handle upon his emotions as he glared at Inari with all of the force of his emotions.