Namikaze Legends

Chapter LIV: Tsunade's Bounty

"I'm gonna kick her ass Menma!" Konohamaru declared devoutly as he did pull-ups on the railing of Menma's balcony while the man in question sat in a chair set up there that let him look out over his street, "The chunin exams are the best chance I've ever had! I'll finally prove that I'm the only one that can be your apprentice, you'll see!"

The entire time Konohamaru had been over and visiting on his day off from team exercises, he'd been chattering something about a 'destined showdown' or something with Hanabi, but Menma hadn't really been listening. He'd been acting as if he had been in order to humor the young genin, but his mind was out to lunch and anyone that looked at him for longer than five seconds could tell.

It had been two days since the wild and wooly chase against that mystery ninja that had taken him and some of his friends all over the sizable land holdings of the Uchiha Clan. They hadn't managed to catch a thing and the trail had gone cold. They weren't going to find any help outside of the lot of them.

And who would they have told that might have helped them anyway? They hadn't been attacked first, they had been the ones to initiate any fighting that took place. The guy had been spying on them, and after living in a situation for five years where someone spying on you could mean treason against the shogun Menma take very kindly to any espionage against them.

"-Are you listening?"

No, he hadn't been listening, but in the lucid state of awareness that he had been in the entire time that he had been thinking and fussing with his newly purchased pair of kunai trying to prep for the eventual painstaking branding of his flying raijin seal on them Menma had heard enough key phrases to caveman up a response, "Yeah, yeah. You. Hanabi. Gonna kick her ass. Woot."

Now hopefully he'd be left alone to work. He didn't want to go back to Tenten and tell her that he made her waste her abuse of her ninja tools discount because he screwed up some clandestine sealing combination on them. That girl had gotten scarier since he'd left and returned.

"Good. You were listening." Konohamaru said, stopping his pull-ups to peer over the top of the safety railing at Menma, "So you're going to teach me some killer awesome anti-Hyuuga Clan tricks right?"

He was? When the hell did he say that? He could say quite confidently that he had never said that he would do any such thing at any time... ever. But if he flat out said no he'd have to listen to Konohamaru bitch about how he liked Hanabi better and blah, blah, blah. It just wasn't worth the headache that a one-word answer would give him.

"Look, I can't teach either of you anything." Menma said, trying to let the younger ninja down rationally, "First of all, I can't teach. I suck at it. Second of all, I don't have much I could teach you since we don't fight alike at all. Third of all, the only 'anti-Hyuuga' move I have only works for me because it's basically an overpowered version of something Naruto showed me."

He pumped too much chakra into it. It wasn't supposed to give Menma the clarity that it did, it was just supposed to give him a general idea of where things were. Frankly, if most others tried to do it the way that he did they'd wear themselves out within three bursts.

"So Boss knows that jutsu too?"

"Sure. Yeah, let's go with that." Yep, dump Konohamaru's jutsu begging off onto Naruto, "Wait a minute, why are you talking about beating Hanabi? The start of the chunin exams aren't for another month."

Konohamaru pulled himself up onto the railing in a flip that was actually pretty impressive, "Because it's just destined! We're gonna face off once and for all, epically I might add! It's what rivals do! In front of everyone just like you guys did in your exams!"