Painfully Aware with So Much to Learn

Chapter Twenty-nine: Pain

Shikamaru had a bad feeling the second he woke up. He was already a bit on edge because Naruto had been needed on a mission for the past week, but today was different. He temporarily put aside the feeling and got up, knowing his mother would kill him if he didn't.

He took care to make sure he had all his supplies in his weapon pouch before securing it to his leg, turning back and adjusting the collar of his chunin vest. He quickly left with a quick kiss goodbye to his mother and went to meet with his team at the familiar barbecue restaurant.

He found a rock to kick and he couldn't help but notice that the town was particularly quiet. The second he stepped foot in the establishment he was greeted with frantic waving.

"Shikamaru!~" a chubby boy with spiraled cheeks sang. "Hurry up, Ino made us wait to order!!" The teen whined, earning a glare from the blonde girl half his size. With a muttering of 'troublesome' he made his way over, plopping down in the seat next to Ino.

Barbecue wasn't an uncommon breakfast for any of team 10, seeing with Choji's appetite and Shikamaru's lack of caring, coupled with Ino's distain for breakfast because of the diet she picked up the week before.

The meal was going fine untill suddenly they noticed a commotion outside, there, before their eyes, was a giant chameleon attacking civilians, one with purple ringed eyes.

They dashed out, Choji using his expansion jutsu to hold the thing down. Shikamaru stabbed the lizard through with shadow needles until it poofed back to it's summoning world, sighing when the giant thing was gone.

The relief wasn't long-lasting though, as screaming from all different directions came along with a few small explosions. "Ino, go to Tsunade, figure out what's going on, Choji, find your dad and try to help civilians. I'll try to find who's doing this." The three ran in separate directions toward various threats.

He felt like he was running for hours until he found a bunch of civilians pinned under rubble. He quickly used his shadows to lift the giant rocks, all the people scrambling to escape.

"Get to the Hokage tower!" He yelled over the crashes he heard around him.

In another part of the land of fire, a cheerful blonde was skipping home, his slightly longer ponytail saying lightly to tickle his ears. He was happy to be heading home, this was his first solo mission since his sensei's death and he was happy to have a bit of time with just him and nature. He hummed a little, his ramen song of course.

His song got hushed into silence when he saw animals running away from the direction he was headed. He suddenly got a feeling worse than that one winter night, and he took off.

He ran faster than he could really comprehend with his eyes, and he switched into sage mode so he could feel the obsticals with his chakra. And then he tripped.

His momentum made him tumble right into a sharp rock, but he couldn't focus on that now. He felt a single chakra signature spread into and mixing with other chakra signatures, as if the people were being controlled, and the people were attacking. He quickly got up and began sprinting.

The chakra was spread across six different people, but none of them held it naturally. He felt something red in the chakra, sickeningly alike to a familiar face he could never quite see. He ran faster, feeling every battle going on in the leaf village so clearly it made his head hurt with the beginnings of overstimulation but he pressed on. His heart sank when he felt one of the odd attackers battling Konohamaru, and he choked back a dry sob when he felt his sensei's chakra flicker out.

Suddenly his entire body froze, feet planted firmly in the dirt with chakra but all he could focus on was the thunderous noise that came from a few meters in front of him. He felt a good two thirds of konoha's chakra flicker out, some instantly and some took a few seconds. He felt the back of his eyes burn when he felt the meek civilian chakra of Ayame's flicker out. He felt the distress of Teuchi's chakra after that, but it soon flickered out too. He ran as fast as he could toward where the enemies had gathered.

He dashed in front of his hokage, who could barely stand with her chakra drained and some of her bones broken. He took on a stance, the jacket acting as a cape in the dusty wind as is loosely hung around his waist. "Naruto! You can't do this, you need to run!" He heard Tsunade plead desperately through blood-stained lips as he took his stance.

"Baa-chan." His voice was thick, demanding of her attention. "Your hurt." It was an obvious fact, he turned over his shoulder. "You need to stay alive long enough that I can take that seat of yours. So go for now." He turned back to face the six, relieved at the sound of the people behind him going to safety.

'Don't rush it, my chakra's like a flame, you need to be the wind to keep it in order. Fire will take air until there's nothing left, then the fire will burn out, so you can't keep this form for long. Be careful or we both die.' He hears the tips of his demon ring through his head as he pulls a timer out of one of the seals on his forearm.

He sets the timer to ten minutes before placing it in the dirt behind him. He cracks his knuckles wish a sickening smirk.

"Now I've got plenty of time to make you bleed."

He closed his eyes, focusing. Kurama gave him his chakra, and Naruto quickly grabbed a hold of it with his own. When he had a steady hold, he added the senjutsu chakra to the mix, using nature chakra to hold it together. In what was a second to those outside his mindscape, he had created a power so potent it made the dry land around him rapidly sprout with grass and flowers. His skin began to glow yellowish-orange and sparks flew from the end of his jacket, he opened his eyes. His eyes were no longer the beautiful blue on wouldn't be too concerned drowning in, now they were an orange that glowed brighter than his skin, his puples were no longer cat-like, but thin four pointed stars that made Naruto look like the sun incarnate.

Before anyone could comprehend, he was attacking the one with the longest orange hair, taking it down before any of the bystanders could blink.

He was taking down the carrot tops left and right, until his eyes widened at a sudden ringing of his timer. He deactivated the form, coughing up a little blood at the loss of chakra it took to tame his demon's chakra. His head went a little hazy, but his eyes widened at a suudden sharp stabbing pain in his thigh. There was only one purple-eyed puppet left, and he held another long rod at the ready. He took a knee, wincing as the metal fell slick against his bone. He could feel ringing in his ears at the after affect of the unpracticed form, and he went to pull the rod out, only for another rod to stab his calf, pinning him to the grassy ground around him.

He grunted in pain, and his body began to tremble with the memories of being forcefully pinned back when he was to young to understand. Before he had snapped back to reality, the final puppet had pinned him entirely to the ground, and he could barely breathe.
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Oooooh, cliffhanger. I kinda changed the timeline a bit, I made the whole Killer B arc happen during the timeskip because cannon naruto did nothing in the timeskip except make his 'jinchuriki'ing worse??

Thank you for reading!
                                                    ~Gracie