Naruto : The System Files

Chapter no.109 Quest: "Tenketsus Release"

"What is the second most important quality of a Shinobi, recruit?"

Naruto was panting after he had completed dozen upon hundred upon thousand of full-counts. The poison really had done a number on him and he was glad for the reprieve Tiger had offered him. The blond breathed in and out rather loudly behind his mask as he pondered the question.

After a week, he was beginning to vaguely get his instructor. If an obvious question called for an obvious answer then the answer was not correct. Naruto was tempted to answer strength but strength was a word that meant nothing and everything. What was Strength? The physical power to achieve physical prowess? The ability to fling jutsus left, right, down, and up?

After he had had his discussion with Ayame-Neechan just the day before, Naruto had not only found himself a new goal; he had come to realize that this strength he so desired was a mean to an end.

He desired strength to protect Ayame to make sure he would get to taste her godly ramen and eat it for a long time afterward.

Strength was not a quality. By combining qualities and exploiting them rightly did a shinobi acquire strength.

"A strong motivation." The boy offered to his teacher, who inclined his head to the left.

A few seconds passed with the sound of Naruto's slowly settling breath the only thing that could be heard in the training ground.

"Why would you say that?"

Naruto shrugged. "If I'm motivated, I don't let up whatever I wanna do until I do it."

The ANBU fell silent as if considering Naruto's words and only spoke again after a full minute. The blond's breath was steady and calm by then.

"It is an excellent answer," the man said with something piercing behind his monotone, something Naruto had rarely -if ever- heard directed at him. The man was impressed, favorably.

[ +10 Reputation with Tiger]

The blond smiled behind his mask and felt pride mounting within him. He squashed the urge to babble something that would earn him a bone-rattling slap and rubbed the back of his head.

"I won't rank the qualities a shinobi should possess, as they are all equally important," Tiger drawled, his lifeless monotone back. "Give me another quality you think a ninja must show."

Naruto's eyes widened a bit and the gears of his brain started spinning at their full speed. It was a very, very large question and a tricky one at that. What were the qualities of a good ninja? If endurance was one, were they only physical traits? Could the spectrum of answers be wider than that?

The blond searched his mind for ideas when a particular memory came to him. Naruto immediately tried to evoke the Shinobi Code in his mind eye. It was a list of rules a ninja was supposed to abide to and live by. The Code was the sum of the traits a shinobi had to display. The text was the commandment of the ninja. The essence of the nindo. There would be something in there that would help him, he was sure.

Naruto frowned as he realized that, apart from the first rule, "ignore your emotions", something that had never sat well with him, he could not remember anything. Probably because he had not bothered learning it.

At the time, he had deemed the test that began with "ignore your emotions" as something obviously drab and terrible, 'ttebayo!

Was it really though? The blond gave himself a mental scowl. Of course, something telling you to ignore your emotion was terrible! If he ignored his emotion he could not have a motivation, right?

Was it right to ignore the rest of the code and forego potentially useful knowledge? The simple fact he was forced to ask himself that was enough of an answer. The blond grimaced as a disagreeable thought hit him. How many lectures had he ignored, judging them useless with all the arrogant wisdom his mere decade of life had granted him, that could come in handy now that he truly was a ninja? The blond groaned; had he been that stupid, that disrespectful?