Strength From Within (A Naruto Neglect Book)

15

Naruto looked up in awe as he arrived at training ground 44. All the training grounds were big, of course, but because of the sheer size of the trees and plants that loomed above it seemed to be much bigger than it actually was. He'd heard of its reputation of course, but he had yet to visit this training ground. He could already tell that the dense forest would make it difficult to locate Anko, and all the animals in the forest made it harder too. As soon as he sent a bit of chakra into his eyes to activate his heat sensing he could locate clearly where the animals were, but there were many big ones as well. He couldn't easily distinguish Anko from the animals that way, there were simply too many.

He turned off his heat sensing and took a deep breath, trying to calm himself and think through his options. He knew that Anko wouldn't be hiding somewhere, she would be moving to her to her allies quickly, where she would have the upper hand. The amount of the leaves would obscure anyone on the ground, meaning height wouldn't give him the upper hand for that, but it would allow him to use his chakra sensing more effectively.

He would need to use shadow clones for that, however, because his range for chakra sensing wasn't big enough to envelop the whole of the grounds. Additionally, if Anko was somehow moving beneath the ground, it would also be out of his range to sense from the top of the trees. The amount of clones he would need to use would be too many, and he wouldn't be able to quickly disperse them among the training ground. By the time he did that, it was likely Anko would have already reached her destination, unless he found a way to discreetly move his clones long distances.

That resulted in him having to think of a different solution, and this was why he had been trained in strategy by Kurama. If he was Anko, running away from an enemy who didn't know his exact location in a place he was familiar with, where would he go? Where would he hide, perhaps? No, it was unlikely that Anko would hide, knowing that he could make large amounts of shadow clones and that he was able to see through traps. So the only likely option is that she would be running, but why here of all places? Why the 'Forest of death', other than that she knew her way around?

"Damn it," he mumbled under his breath, shaking his head. Either way he would have to take a risk as to where Anko could have gone, but he needed to preserve chakra in case he did run into her. Unless... well, ninja were meant to look underneath the underneath after all. He'd come to the conclusion that she wanted him to waste chakra, or at least time. Sending him running through the forest of death on the look out of her would take him a long time and waste chakra as he searched for her, meaning she could get an advantage as she ran through on a path that she knew well.

With this in mind, the only option for him would probably be to run around the training ground. It would take long time to do so, but it was less dangerous than running through unknown territory full of large wild animals where he couldn't tell where he was and would frequently have to stop to fight or evade things. He groaned, having difficulty thinking of what to do. There were so many different possibilities that he wasn't sure what would be the best option.

Still, he didn't want to waste any more time standing around, that was just allowing Anko more time to run. He released the seals he had on, the ones that acted as weight but worked for the whole body, allowing him to move faster than before. He then made three shadow clones, one to go with him and two to run around the other side of the training grounds.

Naruto and his clones ran as quickly as they could, and as they reached the other side of the training ground it was just in time to see Anko running off. He was just lucky that he often ran long distances, otherwise the over twenty kilometre run would have exhausted him to the point where he wouldn't be able to fight. He sprinted, moving faster than before, while his clones went around the sides in an attempt to surround Anko. He used a wind jutsu, not strong enough to injure her but one to knock her off balance and stumble, allowing him to move closer. His clones jumped onto her, trying to restrain her movements.