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Chapter 231 Naruto vs Sasuke & Sakura Part 2
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Oscar sat on his branch with a small pile of rocks beside him and watched.
The lizard was confident that Sasuke and Sakura weren't going to win this. The only real question was how far they could push the knight before he decided the lesson was over. Oscar selected a pebble from the pile and began crunching on it like popcorn.
Below him, the spar had become something else entirely.
Naruto flickered back as Sasuke came in with the Sword of the Thunder God. The yellow blade humming at a frequency that made the air around it feel pressurized. Naruto brought the Zweihander up and wind chakra erupted along the blade in a dense swirling cloud.
Wind Style: Vacuum Blade!
The two blades met in a clash.
Lightning and wind tore at each other along the contact point. Both chakras refusing to give in. But Sasuke knew that his lightning would eventually lose so he pushed. Naruto redirected the force and turned the bind into a half-sword grip. While closing his hand over the Zweihander's blade Naruto used the shortened leverage to shove Sasuke's guard wide with a cross strike that moved too fast for the distance it covered.
Sasuke disengaged before the follow-through arrived. He reset before circling.
Sakura came in from the right with the Gargoyle Axe already in motion. The head came down in a wide arc. Due to the tail weapon's flexibility, it curved past the angle a standard axe could never reach, hunting for the gap between Naruto's pauldron and his helm.
Naruto shifted his stance and met her.
He dropped into a half-sword guard, presenting the crossguard as a hooking point, and let her axe come. When the head was blocked, Naruto caught the momentum with his body rather than fighting it, letting the force push him back and bleed the energy out of her swing while simultaneously creating the distance he wanted.
Naruto parried Sasuke's cut with a hanging guard. His blade angled to shed the force downward, slipped left through Sasuke's extended arm, and thrust toward Sakura in the same continuous motion.
One sequence with no pause between the defense and the offense.
Sakura's barrier caught the thrust.
Naruto ducked under Sasuke's recover swing, pushing him away with a short two-handed shove that used the Zweihander's crossguard as the contact point.
He moved through them like water finding its level.
The Zweihander's reach was a problem neither of them could solve cleanly. Every time they closed to a distance that felt manageable the blade was already moving. With long roof cuts coming down from above, wide hip cuts that forced them to respect the perimeter and sudden thrusts that covered distance faster than the blade's size suggested was possible. When they stayed back he walked forward. When they came in he was already somewhere else, the guard shifting seamlessly between roof and ox and the half-sword mordhau work that compressed the threat range for inside fighting.
Sasuke feinted high and cut low. Naruto caught it on a low guard and turned the deflection into a murder stroke, gripping the blade and swinging the pommel toward Sasuke's temple. Sasuke flickered away by a margin that cost him a cut on his thigh.
Sakura took the gap.
"I'm done with this stupid fucking dance."
The pink haired barbarian launched straight up by chakra pouring into her legs, and came down from above with everything she had behind it.
Lightning Style: Electromagnetic Fang!
The uchiha didn't aim at Naruto. He aimed at where Naruto was going to be.
The redhead figured it out from Sasuke's aim and chose to stay.
The railgun shuriken crossed the training ground and hit the ground at that exact point. The detonation came up from below, the shockwave turning the earth into a crater. While Sakura's axe came down on Naruto's head.
Wind Style: Blade of Wind.
The invisible large blade launched upward toward the pink-haired barbarian. The moment it crossed into her sensory barrier she read it. The kunai affixed to the sole of her sandle flared to life with a barrier beneath her feet. She kicked off it, redirected her descent into a lateral rotation, and brought the axe around on a completely different angle.
The axe head connected with Naruto's helm.
The sound of it rang across the entire training ground.
Without the helm Naruto's skull would have opened. With it he took the hit but was thrown back.
Sakura landed and rushed forward, not giving him the space to reposition. The Zweihander shimmered back into inventory and Naruto's hands caught thr gargoyle axe.
Wind chakra layered across his palms and fingers in hundreds of overlapping rotations. The same chainsaw technique that had taken the Chidori. Before Sakura could react, Naruto's punch sent her across the training ground. She absorbed most of with barrier.
Oscar ate another pebble as he looked at sasuke preparing something big.
"You know, I'm really jealous of that armor."
Inner Sakura spat blood onto the ground without breaking eye contact. Barriers were forming around her body as she spoke, layering over each other like a second skin.
"Armor that, with chakra reinforcement, feels like fighting a mountain. Shurikens bounce off it. Taijutsu and Ninjutsu can only do so much those plates." She tilted her head. "But envy is wasted energy. What matters is what you want badly enough to build yourself. So, what do you think of mine?"
Sakura was now covered in head to toe in barriers that formed an armour around her. She flickered forward and threw a punch.
Naruto didn't dodge.
Hyuga Clan's Heavenly Rotation. He had watched Hinata's grandfather use it enough times to understand the underlying principle even if the technique itself was out of reach. The ability to expel chakra outward from the body as a counterforce. The hyuga could spin it to a dome. But naruto was interested in the burst rather than a dome.
The moment Sakura's fist was supposed to land he pushed chakra outward through his face in a concentrated burst.
Suddenly an impact hit his body and rattled his organs.
The shockwave from Sakura's punch had nowhere to go but rolling through his chest cavity. Naruto felt his body jerk backward despite the counter. He flickered back and raised his visor with one hand, coughing blood onto the dirt.
"How do you like them apples?" Inner Sakura said with a cheshire grin. "Here's the thing, Naruto. I can't match your raw power. I can't match Sasuke's lethality. But I have absolute confidence in one thing."
She tapped her temple.
"Your massive forehead... fivehead?" Naruto said.
The vein at the back of her hand was visible from across the clearing.
"My brain, you absolute bastard." Inner Sakura yelled. "And my brain has been very busy creating my own hidden cards."
Sakura flickered forward and Naruto slipped sideways, her fist continuing past him and connecting with the tree behind where he had been standing.
Boom.
A clean hole, edges cauterized by the force of the impact.
"That's not chakra control," Naruto said quietly.
"Of course not." Sakura dodged the tree falling. "Why don't you figure it out?"
Sakura moved in with Leaf Style: CQC answered by Astoran Boxing.
The boy slipped a cross and countered with a body hook that she took on her barrier arm without flinching. She threw a jab that he moved under and came back with an uppercut.
He came forward again.
Sakura's left hand released a compressed burst that he caught on his forearm. She followed with a right that he caught on his palm and pushed off at an angle, stepping through to her outside line and throwing a short elbow that she ducked under with her barrier already deploying on her shoulder to catch the follow-up knee.
Back and forth.
The shockwaves building with each exchange. The air between them charged with the residual force of punches that hit and punches that did not.
They wound up and threw at the same moment.
Sakura's Barrier: Air Freeze
Astoran Art: Poise Breaker.
Two fists met in the middle of the clearing.
The shockwave came from both directions at once. The grass flattened in a perfect circle around their feet. The nearest trees shed their leaves in a single breath. They held the contact point.
"Compressed air," Naruto said, arm locked against hers, neither giving an inch. "You seal a large volume of air into a tight space using your barrier. When the seal breaks on impact the trapped pressure releases all at once. Like shaking a soda can and popping the top."
"When did you learn how to punch like that?" Sakura asked.
"From a tsundere old blacksmith." Naruto replied wonderimg how andre would react to be called a tsundere.
Due to poise breaker, Sakura's punching hand was shredded. The skin across her knuckles had split in multiple places from the final impact. The damage working backward along the fingers from the point of contact. She was frozen in the punch pose anyway.
"You're considerably more skilled then the original Sakura," Naruto said, looking at her directly.
"I am the original Sakura." Her voice went quiet and flat and meant it. "And don't you dare disrespect our hardwork."
A beat.
"You're right. I'm sorry." Naruto closed the distance with a flicker. "I'll should take you more seriously."
His free hand came forward with a spiraling ball of chakra already formed.
Ninja Art: Rasengan!
The impact took her in the stomach and the barrier armor shattered on contact. The spiral shape burning through the layered seals, and the force drove her backward into the tree behind her hard enough to embed her in the bark. A spiral wound on her stomach was bleeding out as her head dropped forward.
With Sakura out for the count, Naruto turned and said. "Sakura has come a long way from the screaming fangirl. Huh Sasuke. You even trusted her to hold me until you finished your ultimate move."
Sasuke was locked in an iai stance. The Sword of the Thunder God held inside a custom sheath made of chakra metal.
Cling.
The moment Sasuke's sword left the sheath, Naruto felt a sensation he had only ever felt in Lordran.
An impending sense of doom.
Death had a hand on his throat.
Whatever jutsu Sasuke was about to throw, if he couldn't defend against it, Naruto would die.
Lightning Style: Electromagnetic Fang!
Sasuke had been fascinated by this simple jutsu. Chakra flow that induced an electromagnetic effect on metal, creating magnetic forces. Simple in concept but extraordinarily difficult to execute in practice. Yet through his genius Sasuke hadn't stopped to ask whether he could use it. He had only asked how far he could push it. Not just for shuriken.
What if he could use electromagnetic force to make a simple iai attack the fastest thing he had ever thrown?
The sword sheath became a railgun. Electromagnetic force accelerated the blade forward with a force no muscle in the human body could generate. The metal screamed as it left the channel.
Lightning Style: Thunder God Slash.
A blade moving at the speed of lightning made the world turn white. Thunder cracked across Konoha after the attack. A wave of lightning chased a white blade of plasma across the training ground, everything in its path vaporizing into scorched air.
All of it directed towards Naruto.
And in that moment the redheaded knight stopped holding back.
He breathed in once.
"Radiance of the firstborn, lance of sundering light, pierce through scale, sorcery and flame."
Nine more clones formed beside him, each dropping into the same stance, each raising the same extended arm.
"LIGHTNING SPEAR!"
Sasuke's world of white met Naruto's world of yellow.
The two lightning attacks collided in a beautiful and catastrophic display of destruction that no genin in the history of Konoha should have been capable of producing. The shockwave alone flattened the surrounding trees. The ground cracked in a spiderweb pattern radiating fifty meters in every direction. Windows shattered in buildings three miles away.
When the light died down, all that remained was a scorched and smoking training ground and two figures still standing at the center of it. The redhead held his lightning spear braced against Sasuke's plasma blade.
Boom.
Naruto's lightning spear detonated at close range, the remaining energy sending Sasuke skidding backward across the scorched earth, his plasma blade breaking apart into dissipating fragments of light.
Naruto stood where he had stood.
He wasn't unscathed. The wind cloak and the Elite Knight armor had absorbed the worst of it but the impact had been like standing inside a thunderstrike. His right arm from the elbow down was numb, the gauntlet broken, the metal scorched black along the forearm where the electromagnetic edge of Sasuke's blade had grazed it. Two of the chest plates had buckled inward, the impact spreading across the metal like a hammer blow. Beneath the armor his ribs ached with the deep pain of bones that had taken more than they were built to absorb. His ears was ringing.
"To think you could match my strongest attack in such a short time." Sasuke said it as a compliment. It came out sounding like a wound. He could see what the exchange had cost Naruto.
It was something yet not enough.
"Is this a tie?"
Sasuke heard the words leave his mouth and recognized it for what it was. A plea.
The uncorking of an estus answered him.
In a single moment Sasuke felt like everything he and Sakura did was pointless.
There was no way to beat him. He is a demon. Taijutsu, ninjutsu, kenjutsu, genjutsu... What does he not have an answer to? How do you even beat this monster? Can he be beaten if he can heal back to full health?
The Sharingan had been tracking everything. Every movement, dvery technique, every opening was identified and cross-referenced. It was the most sophisticated threat assessment tool in the Elemental Nations and right now it was telling Sasuke something he didn't want to hear.
There are no openings.
Every gap Sasuke identified closed within seconds. Every advantage evaporated. The armor absorbed what the body could not. The wind cloak redirected what the armor could not stop. The healing erased what got through anyway. Fighting Naruto was like trying to carve a hole in the sea.
He doesn't get tired the way humans get tired.
Sasuke had watched his chakra output across the entire spar. It was barely dented.
He was holding back to protect us.
That was somehow worse than if he had been trying.
What is the ceiling? Sasuke had trained his whole life around the idea that there was always a ceiling and he could reach it if he worked hard enough. Naruto had been in a place that killed things like him over and over. What does that do to a ceiling? Does it still exist? Is there a version of Naruto that can be beaten by someone who has not been through the same thing?
Smack.
Sasuke punched himself hard enough to bleed as he reminded himself not to lose hope. If you cannot even stand up to this, how will you ever defeat Itachi?
Naruto smirked at the sight. Truly Sasuke had the mindset to keep going.
The Uchiha took out kunai and began throwing them but his aim was completely off. It was as if the lightning jutsu had fried his nervous system.
"THAT IS A LIE!" Naruto yelled, turning to find Sakura, not Inner Sakura, barely clinging to consciousness as the girl rasped. "When did you get so perceptive?"
With shaking hands Sakura formed a hand sign.
Barrier Art: String Light Formation!
Naruto twisted his body and lashed his leg toward Sakura.
Wind Style: Blade of Wind.
A blade of wind launched from his foot and hit Sakura in the head, knocking her out and dissolving the barrier before it could fully form. Meanwhile Sasuke channeled everything he had left into one hand and rushed at Naruto. He was going to take advantage of the few seconds of distraction Sakura had bought him.
Chidori.
The Uchiha's lightning blade was met with a sphere of spinning chakra.
Rasengan.
The instant they met, the collision point cracked like shattering glass. Shockwaves exploded outward hard enough to tear apart the ground beneath their feet and send debris scattering across the entire training ground. Unfortunately Sasuke's Chidori was built on forcing everything out of his body at once while Naruto could spam Rasengan all day. Yet the boy seemed to deliberately weaken his Rasengan just enough. Rather than sending Sasuke flying he grabbed him by the shirt and body slammed him into the ground with a bone rattling impact.
"That was a pretty good fight," Naruto said, pulling off his helm as he looked down at Sasuke who was somehow still conscious.
"Naruto. You want to hear something before I pass out."
"Our score is two to zero and I am awesome," Naruto said.
"I once heard my father say that high level ninja could read the thoughts and intentions of others through an exchange of blows," Sasuke said.
"Is that so?"
"I sensed a hole in your heart. A pit of anxiety and fear."
Naruto rubbed the back of his head. "...Yeah."
"Did we manage to fill it?"
"I'll tell you after you wake up, teme." Naruto said it with a toothy grin as Sasuke passed out.
With his telekinesis Naruto pulled Sakura toward him and began pouring Estus over both of them. He didn't look back as he said, "So what did you think, Kakashi sensei?"
Kakashi was standing behind him feeding Oscar some sugar cubes. "I think I am the only sane person on Team Seven which is deeply concerning."
Naruto snorted as he finished healing the duo. "They are fine by the way."
"Hn." Kakashi glanced between the three genin and the devastated training ground. "So why did you do it?"
"Hmm?"
"Why fight Sasuke and Sakura? This wasn't a simple spar. You wanted to do something."
"..."
"If your wondering how I figured it out. You just have to look underneath the underneath."
"...I fought them because I am afraid."
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Author Note: With that evil cliffhanger-kun strikes again.
1. Isn't this a short chapter?
Yes but you'll be surprised how hard this chapter was to write for me. I had to go back and forth on multiple drafts just to finish it. The next portion of the chapter had a different vibe and I wanted to give the Naruto vs Sakura and Sasuke fight a moment to breathe.
2. Who is the MVP of the fight?
Oscar because he lazed around while watching idiots fight. Jokes aside that's up to you to decide.
3. How many JJK references are in this chapter?
Sigh, come on guys I don't always do JJK references in my chapters.
Anyways there are 2 massive JJK inspired techniques in this chapter.
A. Sakura's Barrier Art: Air Freeze.
This was a technique inspired by Naoya's Air Freeze. Naoya as a vengeful cursed spirit could use Projection Sorcery to freeze the air in a frame, break it and send a shockwave out.
Sakura meanwhile is doing a pressure vessel burst. When you compress a large volume of air into a small sealed space the pressure inside builds significantly. The moment that seal breaks the stored pressure releases instantaneously in an explosive decompression event. The energy released is proportional to the pressure differential between inside and outside.
B. Sasuke's Railgun Sword or Thunder God Slash.
This is partially inspired by JJK's Batto Sword Drawing.
Batto Sword Drawing is an iaijutsu sword drawing technique optimal for striking enemies situated directly in front of the user. It covers the blade with cursed energy to greatly improve the drawing speed of the blade.
Sasuke does that but with a railgun, allowing him to reach the speed of lightning on the draw.
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That's It… For Now.
I want to thank you all for taking the time to read, comment, and follow along with this story. Your feedback means more than you know, and it helps push me to make each chapter bigger, sharper, and more true to the worlds of Naruto and Dark Souls.
Until next time,
Praise the Sun.
\-Adam-/
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[ Personal Note: First off, thanks a ton to all of you for sticking with this story. Seriously, you guys are awesome. Now, if you're interested in supporting me on P@treon, let me just say that over there, I post these massive 15k-word chapters. But heads up, if you're jumping to P@treon, you'll need to start from Chapter 99, since that's where this chapter lines up with the content there.
To everyone here just reading along, please don't forget to leave a comment! Honestly, your comments make my day, and they let me know you're as invested in this story as I am. So yeah, thanks again, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day!
