The Path Of a Hunternin

Taking the blame

It was sunny afternoon in Konoha and Uzumaki Naruto was training to perfect his new jutsu. After his training in order to master fuuton chakra, he was now trying to perfect the rasengan by incorporating fuuton chakra in it. Meanwhile, Kakashi was reading his precious and inseparable Icha Icha Tactics while watching the blonde in front of him, doing what his sensei, the fourth hokage failed to accomplish when he created the rasengan. The Forth Hokage, namely Namikaze Minato was the sole creator of the spiraling ball. However, few people knew that the rasengan was an incomplete jutsu. In order to perfect it, the ninja needed to add elemental chakra to it. Just like Kakashi's chidori which managed to fuse both chakra manipulation and lightning chakra, the rasengan, which was known to be the highest form of chakra manipulation, was created to the sole purpose of merging both chakra manipulation and elemental chakra.

Since Naruto had a fuuton affinity, he was trying to fuse his element with the rasengan with the aid of his clones, but failing miserably. Another factor that made possible for Naruto to improve on such technique was Yamato. Since the ex-Anbu has mokuton abilities, he had the ability of keeping the kyuubi's chakra from interfering with Naruto's chakra, making his control improve.

After several tries, Naruto slightly managed to add fuuton chakra at the rasengan, adding little sharp blades around the energy ball. "Kakashi-sensei, I can only go about this much yet." – Said Naruto to which Kakashi stopped reading his book and came to look at the rasengan, which now looked like a little shuriken was added to it. "Looks different, let's test it. I'll do the normal rasengan and we'll see what this new version does" – Said Kakashi, before making a normal rasengan and charge towards Naruto who in turn charged with his one. After the encounter, smoke came out of both Naruto and Kakashi's hands, however while Naruto stood still, Kakashi was holding his stomach from the deep cut caused by Naruto's technique. When Kakashi looked at Naruto's back, suddenly the figure of the Forth Hokage with his white robe appeared, making Kakashi's eyes go wide from the implication of such comparison. 'Naruto, only you can surpass the forth hokage. Keep like this and you'll be the one who finish sensei's work' – Thought Kakashi as he got up and went to congratulate Naruto on adding fuuton chakra to the rasengan, even though he knew that the technique was far from mastered, being still room for improvement.

"Congratulations, Naruto. You made it. Although you still need to improve" – Said Kakashi smiling to Naruto who in turn scratched the back of his head and laughed back at Kakashi. "Thanks, Kakashi-sensei. Just a little more and I can finally reach Sasuke's level" – Said Naruto shooting his arms high, making Kakashi smile in recognition. However, Kakashi wasn't aware of the fact that the blonde's behavior was just a mask to hide his true self. When Naruto was a little boy, he was always mistreated by Konoha's population, just because of what was kept inside his body. However, one time when Naruto was eight, he was being chased by a couple of chunnins. He was terrified at the time, since he didn't know the reason as to why he was chased all the time. Since he couldn't outrun shinobi, the chunnins managed to catch him and started kicking him, while screaming obscenities linked with the word demon. Suddenly for some reason, Naruto smiled at the chunnin, even though he was drenched in blood, Naruto genuily smiled at them, making them stop kicking him and walk away.

Because of that, Naruto chose to be this loud and obnoxious attitude of his in hopes that people started acknowledging him as a human being, other than a demon. Even now after being able to protect himself in case someone decided to attack him, Naruto still chose to behave like an idiot, hiding his true nature. Back to his training, Kakashi was talking about further developing his technique when Izumo arrived at the scene together with Yamato. Upon seeing the pair, Kakashi was suspicious that something bad happened, but he couldn't put himself to figure out. However, he was sure that something really bad happened, from the looks of sadness displayed by both Izumo and Yamato. Suddenly, Yamato broke the sudden silence and delivered the bomb.