“How could you?” Tenten and the others were waiting for Naruto at the top of the stairs to the balcony, her round face scrounged up in anger and betrayal.

Of course. Naruto cursed himself as the realisation struck him. The way he had approached her after she lost, of course she would conclude that it had merely been a ploy to try and uncover information about his potential opponents, Lee and Neji.

“Look,” he said, too exhausted to think of a coherent defence, “I know it looks bad, but I swear I wasn’t trying to kill Lee or anything like that, I just… I was just, so angry, and I didn’t realize I was hitting him so hard…”

She stared at him, her anger compounded by confusion. “What? I’m not talking about that. I want to know why you said all those hurtful things to poor Lee. Telling him that he’s a failure and that he should give up on his dream… even Neji has never been that cruel to him!”

“…what I said?” It took him a second to register the words, but when he did the pressure behind his eyes redoubled. “I was just trying to taunt him like a ninja is supposed to; who gives a crap what I said? But then I nearly killed him, I threw explosives at him-” The words finally made it real. “-I kicked him in the head, and I, I hit him with a sword! He almost died, so many times…” It was the exam, the whole stupid exam that made all the violence seem so normal, somehow. “You’re not angry about any of that?”

“Of course I’m upset about that, too,” she huffed, as though Naruto was the one who did not understand. “But that’s different. We all signed up for this exam; we knew the risks we were taking right from the start. That’s the same for him as it is for any of us! But talking like that, saying those terrible things to Lee and tearing him apart bit by bit… that was just cruel.”

Naruto stared at her. “But… that’s insane! You can’t just say ‘oh we’ve all gotten used to this kind of evil, that doesn’t count, let’s talk about this other thing’. Either it matters that people get hurt or it doesn’t, and if it does then throwing explosives at them is definitely the thing to be concerned about!”

“Lee is not as weak as you might think,” said Neji. “Training with live explosives is nothing new for him. You’re right that his skillset is not well suited to that of a shinobi, but there’s a time and a place for that kind of conversation. The kind of psychological attack where you crush someone’s resolve in front of all their peers… that is something I would only do to a select handful of enemies.”

“You’re not listening to me,” said Naruto. All the anger that had drained away after seeing Lee on that stretcher rushed back up again, swelling in his throat. “What’s wrong with you people? Don’t you get that life is more important than some dumb feelings? It doesn’t even compare!” He gestured helplessly with his arms, trying to indicate something that could not be defined. “Don’t you get it? The only thing that matters is whether people live and thrive or suffer and die, and everything else is just stuff!”

It was Sakura who answered, speaking up from her spot near the balustrade. “Naruto, I think you’re underestimating just how much people can be hurt by ‘mere words’. Maybe it’s not true for you, but for someone like Rock Lee… it’s possible that what you said to him really did hurt more than any of his physical wounds.”

Naruto groaned in despair. “Not you too, Sakura-chan…”

He turned his hopes to the boy who was slouched against the railing besides her, the one person in the whole room who might understand his perspective, who had to understand given his own experiences –

Sasuke smirked. “You know, Naruto, when I said that you should meet with old friends and future enemies, I didn’t mean you should turn the former into the latter. My bad for being unclear, I suppose.”

Naruto opened his mouth, then shut it again. “You know what? Screw this, and screw you. I don’t have to deal with this crap.” He pushed through the group of indignant faces, past the rows of staring eyes and to the far end of the balcony away from the oppressive crowd. He would have kept walking right out the door and far beyond if not for the fact that the gates were on the other side of the room, and there was no way he was going back past those condemning faces again.

In the arena below, two irrelevant people were fighting an unimportant battle.

-o-

“Oh no, how tragic: In a cruel twist of fate the two brothers in arms, Grunk and Groink, are forced to fight each other in a battle to the death. How cruel is their fortune, that it would pit these lifelong–”

Shikamaru sauntered up to him with visible reluctance. “What are you doing?”

“Commentating.” Naruto had propped his head up with both hands, his elbows resting on the balustrade as he watched the match with steadfast apathy. Kabuto’s teammates were slowly circling each other, trying to stay just barely out of the other’s range as they each probed for an opening. The only thing that made any of it even remotely interesting was the fact that one of them was capable of contorting his body in impossible shapes, which Jiraiya had said to be one of Orochimaru’s techniques. He must have learned it from his teacher, who was another of the Snake Sannin’s former students, but that just made Kabuto and his team even more incredibly suspicious.

“Uh-huh.” Shikamaru glanced behind him as though he was tempted to just walk away again. “Yeah, okay, listen. I’m going to go head upstairs to visit my team in the hospital – I mean, it’s a pain, but if I don’t do it now Ino will never let me hear the end of it. So if you wanted to come along to see Hinata or something, then, you know… you could do that.”

Naruto nodded, and stepped away from the balustrade. “Okay. Let’s go.”

“Hold on,” said Shikamaru. “Shouldn’t you let the examiner know where you’re going first, in case he calls on you and-” Naruto cast the shadow clone technique, creating an identical copy to wait in his place. “Oh right. You can do that.”

The two walked past the staring crowd, through the hall and up the winding staircase in mutual silence. Somehow, climbing the steps of that endless spiral helped Naruto put his jumbling thoughts in order, just a little bit. The exertion only seemed to annoy his partner, however.

“Hey Shikamaru,” he said after a while. “You’re pretty smart, right?”

“That’s what people keep telling me… usually right before they ask me to do something bothersome.”

“Yeah, about that,” said Naruto. “How do you stand it? I mean… I know they’re not stupid, but it’s like they’re not even trying to get things right.” He fumbled with his arms again, trying to reach that ungraspable, indefinable thing. “They divide everything up into little boxes, and then they say ‘this box is good and that box is bad’ even if the content is exactly the same, and it’s so stupid but they don’t even realize they’re doing it. So if Sasuke killed someone they’d find some way to say it was okay and they’d really believe it, but if he weren’t a noble they’d come to the opposite conclusion. And it’s all set up in such a way that anyone trying to draw attention to the problem goes into the bad box, which makes it so that they’re automatically ignored.”

Shikamaru nodded. “The fundamental optimization problem.”

“Huh?”

“It’s like a math formula,” he explained. “You can only ever really optimize for one variable at a time, right? Because if you’re maximising one thing you’re not maximizing the other. So if you try to set up a system that rewards people for doing the right thing, people will always end up optimizing just to get the rewards, and the most effective way to do that is to change the rules of the system itself. So the only stable outcome, which is to say the outcome you’ll always eventually get, is one where the actions you’re rewarded for are the ones that keep the system from changing.”

Naruto nodded slowly, remembering Uchiha Madara’s reasons for challenging his former best friend to a duel, and the argument he had about it with Sasuke afterwards. “So that’s why even if the First Hokage had good intentions, the Leaf Village still ended up becoming a lot like the others.” He shook his head, thinking back on how horrifying the Hidden Mist’s graduation ceremony of forcing students to kill each other had seemed to him at the time. “I think I get it.”

He blinked. From out of the corner of his eye it almost seemed as if the shadows around the stairwell were moving – no, they were moving. Shikamaru had activated his technique and was now playing around with it, forming the shadows into fanged demons that scuttled along the walls all around them, constantly changing forms but never losing their jeering grins as they followed the two ninjas up the stairwell. They had to just be Shikamaru’s chakra that he had turned black and which he was now manually controlling – there was no way he was actually controlling shadows ­­– but the effect was still unnerving. The image of those creeping black shadows reminded him of something important he had once read, but the memory remained just barely out of reach.

He gave his silent companion an apprehensive look. The slouching Nara clan heir looked just as disinterested as ever, but Naruto was starting to think it was more than just boredom that made him that way. “But then, haven’t you ever wondered… didn’t you ever think about finding a way to fix all of that? I mean, what’s even the point of having brains if you don’t do anything with them?”

Shikamaru glanced back at him. “What have you done about any of it?”

“Me? That’s not… I mean, I’ve done a lot of things,” he protested, but Shikamaru was already heading up the stairs again, and Naruto had to hurry to catch up. What have I been doing all these years, exactly?

They arrived at the top of the staircase, and a long empty hallway stretched out before them. Wooden doors lined the walls on either side, while scattered sunlight came in through the far side windows.

They found Hinata’s chamber on the third try, and they stepped in cautiously, not wanting to wake her with the sound of their footsteps. She slept uneasily, tossing and turning in her bed, though the only remnants of her injuries were the red marks around her eyes which were by now mostly healed.

“I tried to tell her not to join the exams,” Naruto whispered. “But I couldn’t do it. I was a coward, and I wished her good luck instead. I hated myself for that.” He closed his eyes. “But then when she wanted to fight Neji I finally said it, and now I can’t help but wonder if my words only hurt her more.”

“There’s no point in second guessing yourself like that.” Shikamaru’s voice had a strange, almost warm quality to it. “No matter what decision you make, you’ll always wonder what would’ve happened if you’d done something else instead. Other people already make things bothersome enough without you making things difficult for yourself as well.”

It reminded Naruto of something Sasuke had told him, a long time ago: “If only responsible adults were allowed to make decisions, nobody would ever do anything. You can’t hold yourself responsible for the choices other people make.” But then, Sasuke had only said that because his own words had killed Inari…

“How pointless,” a voice said behind them. Naruto and Shikamaru jumped and spun around, fumbling for weapons and forming seals as they confronted the figure. Standing in the doorway was a boy around Naruto’s age, with dark red hair and black clothes and a giant gourd tied onto his back with a leather strap. The dark rings around his eyes made it look as if he had not slept in years. “If this person is incapable of defending herself then there is no point in protecting her – you might as well just let her die.”

“You!” Naruto pointed a dagger at Gaara, still lacking an effective counter to the sand which floated freely around the Sand ninja’s head – in stark defiance of the paralyzing shadow that extended from Shikamaru’s feet. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Isn’t that obvious?” The boy turned his head to indicate Hinata – Shikamaru’s shadow seemed to allow him that much movement. “I was planning to execute her. The punishment for attacking the Kazekage’s children is death, and in any case I do not like to leave my work unfinished.”

“What?” Naruto gaped. “Are you insane? This is a hospital, you can’t just-”

“Shut up.” Shikamaru was still holding his hand sign as he crouched next to Naruto, his body visibly shaking. “Don’t antagonize him – let me handle this.” He turned to the Sand genin. “Listen, your name is Gaara, right? You’re the Kazekage’s youngest son? Look, I don’t know how you guys do things in the Hidden Sand, but over here you can’t just kill people whenever you feel like it. Besides, Hinata here is the heir to Konoha’s greatest and most noble clan, the Hyūga – believe me, you don’t want to deal with the kind of trouble that would come from killing her.”

Gaara stared back, nonplussed. “If their heir is so weak then they are better off without her. If anything I would do them a favour by killing her: In fact if they sent her to this exam with her current abilities then I suspect that was already their intention.” He turned to face Naruto. “Is there some rule that says you cannot kill people in hospitals? Why? Is it because it is not sporting if they do not have a chance to fight back?”

“What? No! You’re never supposed to kill people, but especially not in hospitals!” Naruto stopped as he realized what he was saying. “I mean, we’re ninjas so we do have to kill people of course, and yeah it’s usually better to do it when they can’t fight back, but, I mean, it’s just not considered polite to… uh…”

Shikamaru glared at him. “What did I just say?” He turned back to Gaara. “Look. Listen. This whole thing sounds like one big diplomatic misunderstanding, so how about we just go get the jōnin and have them sort out the whole mess while we-”

Sand blasted from Gaara’s gourd and struck Shikamaru in the chest, hurling him against the far wall with bone-shattering force. “Be quiet. You’re annoying.”

“Shikamaru!” Naruto turned to see if he was hurt – leaving his back exposed – and saw at the same time that Hinata was still fast asleep. They must have drugged her, and with Shikamaru unconscious that meant he was alone once more.

The voice continued its barren monotone. “Do you see now? Life is so much more convenient when you have the power to stop irritating people from bothering you. Having watched your fight against the boy in green and witnessing the satisfaction you took in crushing him completely, it seems to me that you must also be able to understand this.”

“…why?” His knuckles whitened as he clutched his kunai uselessly. Alerting the others downstairs was as simple as creating a shadow clone and dispelling it, but if he did that then Gaara might kill Hinata and Shikamaru, and then it really would be his fault they died. “How can you believe something like that?”

“I believe it because it is true,” said Gaara. “I know it to be true because of the things I observed early on in life. From the moment of my birth my father taught me the secrets skills of the shinobi – he pampered and protected me and for a time I thought that was love. However something transpired that showed me otherwise: Observing a friend of mine to be picked upon I rushed to his aid, but he spat on me and informed me that he did not require my pity. In his wroth my father put him to death in front of everyone and they all cheered for what they called ‘justice’. Afterwards the parents of the boy came to my father and thanked him for his great wisdom and for saving them from shame.”

Sand coiled around Gaara like a serpent as he spoke, and Naruto stepped back in horror.

“Allow me to ask you something, Uzumaki Naruto: What is this thing called ‘justice’ which would slay a friend despite my wishes? What is this ‘honour’ that would leave a parent grateful for the death of their child? And what is ‘love’? I asked my father what would have happened if I and the boy had been switched at birth – if he would have killed me without a second thought, and if that meant that in truth my life was worth no more than the boy he had just executed, but he told me not to waste his time with foolish questions.” Sand blasted past Naruto’s head and he fell to the floor, scrambling backwards as Gaara advanced on him. “That was when I saw the truth: That killing someone is called ‘justice’ when you have power and ‘injustice’ when you have none, that ‘honour’ is the same as ‘dishonour’ and that there is no love but the love which you bear for yourself.” Gaara stepped forward again, but Naruto’s back was against the hospital bed and there was no more room to retreat. Sand rushed in to envelop him, grasping for his ears, his eyes, his nose, his mouth.

A blast of wind filled the room, casting sheets around the hospital chamber and scattering sand in every direction. Naruto shielded his face, and when he lowered his arms there was an older girl standing in the doorway. She wore a black kimono with a red obi, and her sandy blond hair was tied up in four pony tails. She held a massive war fan in her hands, and her teal eyes were filled with disappointment.

“Gaara, we talked about this. We are not to kill any foreign ninjas while in Leaf, remember?”

Gaara stared her down, but the sand did not approach her. “Temari. Do not get in my way. I’ll kill you.”

“And then father will kill you, remember?” She sighed as she walked up to Naruto, slinging her fan onto her back once more. “He’s not usually like this, you know. It’s the killing that wakes up the animal inside. He can be a sweet boy, really, when you give him the chance.”

The sand swirled angrily once more, but a vibration in the air appeared next to Gaara’s throat, coming from the outstretched fingers of a man in a turban who was suddenly standing behind him – their teacher.

“Give me a reason, boy,” he growled.

Kankuro was there also, standing well back and looking ready to flee at a moment’s notice.

“Fine,” Gaara said at last. He was holding his head as though he had a headache. “I have… had enough.”

Naruto watched as the Sand ninjas filed out the room, holding his heart for fear that it would burst out of his chest if he let go. Temari hesitated in the doorway, looking around and taking in the surrounding damage as though she felt she ought to say something. At last her eyes locked onto Hinata’s sleeping body, and she gave a nod towards Naruto.

“Cute girlfriend.”

The door shut behind her, and Naruto slowly started breathing again. “I… I can’t even tell which of them is more terrifying,” he said. “I really can’t.”

“Definitely the girl,” Shikamaru said as he gingerly picked himself up, his own breathing sounding just as ragged. “Women are always the scariest. Just ask my dad.”

-o-

After a brief visit to Shikamaru’s team, followed by yet more assurances that the matter of the Sand ninjas would be looked into, the two of them descended the stairs in silence once more. Naruto’s mind kept repeating what Gaara said to him, over and over. It had all seemed so… familiar, somehow.

What was it Sasuke had said on top of the hill, all that time ago? In this world, if you have no power your life is worth less than nothing, and you can’t but expect others to treat you accordingly…

It turned out that Gaara had used his sand to saturate the area with chakra again, preventing the Hyūga clan from making out what was happening in time – which Naruto only now realized must have been the same principle behind the aura of darkness that shrouded the Fourth’s enemy while controlling the Kyūbi so many years ago. He was still mulling over the implications when they arrived at the bottom of the stairs and found the others assembled in the centre of the torch-lit hall which had served as arena.

Hayate glanced at them as they entered the room. “Uhm, as I was saying… the final round will take place in one month to give all the foreign attendants time to arrive. I sorted the remaining contenders into pairs, but since we still have nine contestants left, I’ll need one of you to fight an additional match-”

“Don’t bother,” said Kankuro, pointing at the roughly drawn chart the examiner was holding up. “There’s no way I’m gonna fight Gaara or Temari. I already passed the first two rounds and crushed a Leaf ninja in the preliminaries – I think father will forgive me if I sit this one out.”

His teacher looked decidedly unhappy about this, but he gave a curt nod nonetheless.

“Uhm, very well.” Hayate made some quick adjustments to the chart. “In that case, the first round will be: Aburame Shino versus Hyūga Neji, Uchiha Sasuke versus Temari, Gaara of the Desert versus Yoroi, and uhm…” Naruto tried to peer through the crowd to see. “Uzumaki Naruto, versus…”

The sound of slamming doors reverberated throughout the hall.

-o-

“Wait, Sakura!” Naruto ran after her, out of the dark hall and into the humid air outside. “Hold up!”

Sakura twisted around so suddenly that Naruto nearly bumped into her, and then he stumbled again at the expression on her face. “Why? So you and Sasuke can tell me how this all makes perfect sense? What’s the point of discussing something when I already know what the conclusion will be?”

“I don’t think that at all,” Naruto protested. Why would she even think that? “I was gonna say that we don’t have to fight each other if we don’t want to. We could just, I dunno, throw practice shuriken at each other until one of us gets hit or something, and then whoever loses would forfeit-“

“Forfeit,” she said flatly. “You keep saying that to people – telling Hinata to quit, saying Kiba should flee and Lee has to give up, and now me… You’re always telling everyone how foolish they are to take part in this exam, but what about you, Naruto? Why don’t you forfeit?”

“Me? But…”

“Yes, you!” Sakura’s glare was sharp enough to make him flinch. “Even if I forfeit you’ll be up against Gaara of the Desert, and then what will you do? Are you really going to tell me you’ll get up and leave when that happens? Or will you simply come up with another excuse to keep doing the same thing?”

Naruto opened his mouth, but closed it again when he realized he could not give her any of his real reasoning: The Kyūbi’s chakra lets me regenerate so it’s not as dangerous for me as you think. I need to figure out who is responsible for attacking the Leaf and killing my dad, and I can’t do that as a genin. And me being in this exam is the only thing that saved Hinata-chan’s life three times already…

“See,” she went on, “this is what I mean: It’s as if all the arguments in the world don’t make one bit of difference. Everyone just keeps doing the same thing regardless. Honestly, I don’t even know why I bother…” She trailed off as she noticed something. “Wait, what’s that seal on your palm? Show me.”

Gingerly, Naruto drew up his sleeve and showed her his right hand, looking around to make sure nobody could overhear them. “I, uh, got the idea from when we learned elemental ninjutsu from Kakashi-sensei. Dividing techniques into just five elements always seemed really arbitrary to me: I figured the way it really works is you have one jutsu for controlling fire, one for creating shadow clones and one to make poison clouds and so on, and all those different ‘techniques’ for making bigger or smaller attacks are just modifications of the same basic thing.”

She frowned. “That’s just standard academy material: You combine physical and mental energy to form chakra, and then use shape and nature manipulation to turn it into a technique. What’s your point?”

“My point is that if creating a fireball isn’t fundamentally different from making a flaming sword or creating a poison cloud, then it should also be possible to create an entirely new chakra ‘nature’ if you just have the ability to shape it and the hand signs to manipulate it. We already know that the transformation technique lets you bend light around you, which gives us the controlling part, and when it comes to using chakra to create light–” he indicated the seal on his palm, which was exactly identical to the one inscribed on flash-tags “–we know how to do that too. It’s just that nobody else put two and two together, yet.”

Because being too sceptical about the world around you isn’t very good for your health… for most people.



“So you used a physical seal to generate the right chakra nature, and combined it with the hand seals from a different technique to shape it… ingenious,” she whispered. “What did you put on the other hand?”

He hid his left hand behind his back. “What other hand?”

“Naruto!” Her hand shot out and grabbed his wrist, and when she saw the explosive tag seal her expression turned to one of absolute dismay. “Oh no, Naruto, what have you done?”

“It’s not that dangerous,” Naruto protested. “It’s not like I’m planning to use it myself or anything crazy like that, it’s just that this way my shadow clones can create explosions without-”

“Not that dangerous? You tattooed an explosive seal onto your body! You could kill yourself at any moment just by thinking about it! Have you gone completely mad? What is wrong with you?”

“My dad thought it was a good idea,” Naruto said weakly. He had felt so clever at the time, and when Jiraiya praised him for it he had been so happy he never even thought twice about it…

“Jiraiya of the Sannin?” For a moment she hesitated, but then her fury returned with a vengeance. “Well, then he is just as mad as you are! This whole world is insane, and you’re the worst of them all!”

He recoiled, as if he could dodge the words she hurled at him. “Sakura-chan… that’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it? I’m so tired of this, of all of it… I’ve had enough.” She began to turn away, but hesitated. “Naruto, this dream of yours, of the three of us going around the world doing missions, did you really think that was going to last forever?”

He stared at her, fresh dread rising up in the pit of his stomach. “Sakura-chan? What’re you saying?”

“This whole exam… I only took part in it because Tsunade of the Sannin does not allow genin to join her medical division. I talked about it with Kakashi-sensei, and, well… I’m going to be a doctor, healing others and doing medical research far away from the front lines. I’m leaving the team, Naruto. I’m just not suited for this kind of life.” She half turned her head and gave an apologetic smile – one that hurt more than anything she had said so far. “I’m sorry, Naruto. We’ll see each other in the finals, all right?”

Then she walked away, never once looking back.

He half reached out to her, as though he could physically stop her from leaving, but she was already disappearing into the tree line. His hand hovered uselessly in the air, before falling limply to his side.

“Let her go, Naruto.” Sasuke strolled up to him from behind, both hands in his pockets and slouching as if the revelation did not affect him in the slightest. “It’s better this way. Sakura was never meant to be a fighter.”

“You’re wrong,” said Naruto. “She’s smart, and brave, and her chakra control’s a lot better than mine…”

Sasuke shrugged, yielding the point. “Perhaps, but it takes more than that. Sakura had a happy childhood with doting parents, unlike us, and so she lacks the determination to hold her hand in the fire for long. Would you wish for her to be a ninja long enough to acquire that kind of resolve, Naruto?”

Naruto recalled the Fourth’s letter, and the warning Jiraiya had given him about those who acquired too much responsibility, too fast. He remembered killing those thugs, fighting Haku in the ice and snow, and falling as a dozen shards of ice impaled him. He recalled the solace he had taken in the warmth of the Kyūbi’s waning fire, listening to his last words as he revealed his father’s dying regrets. “He would have taken it all back, if he only could. In the end, all he wanted was for you to be safe…”

He shook his head. “No. I guess not.”

“No,” Sasuke agreed. “Of course you don’t.” The two remaining members of Team Seven stood side by side as they stared after Sakura for a moment longer. Then Sasuke placed a hand on Naruto’s shoulder, and gave him a gentle pull. “Come on, let’s go back inside. The others are waiting for us.”