Blindsight

Prologue

by Methinks

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The concept for this story was first conceived around the time the Hidan/Kazuku arc first began and is written as such, so you can pretty much throw away anything that happened afterwards – it never happened and it never will.

Personally? I feel that's a very good thing.

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When Tsunade had asked Naruto three days ago what he was planning on doing over his vacation, he'd just smiled and kept quiet. There was no way he going to tell her he had all but spent the last month dreaming about sake, ramen, hot springs, and women. He got in enough trouble as it was without the terrifyingly strong blonde realizing just how much her perverted teammate had corrupted him.

But of all the things he had considered telling her, taking care of an ornery, foul-mouthed, crippled redhead was not on the list. In fact, that particular scenario actually rated near the top of his 'things not to do on vacation' list - right up there with backpacking through Iwa or playing pattycake with the Kyuubi.

Not that he had any clue what he was getting into when he'd first left the village. Right then, he'd felt on top of the world. For the first time in almost a year, he'd be able to do whatever the hell he wanted without the threat of paperwork looming over the horizon. He could vaguely remember Sarutobi-jiji saying something about paperwork being a Hokage's greatest enemy but he'd never really been able to appreciate the truth of that statement until Tsunade had forced the Village Council to accept him as her eventual successor. Not only granting him his greatest wish but at the same time throwing him right into the jaws of his most insidious enemy yet.

The paperwork also made him develop a much better appreciation for the phrase 'the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence'. He almost wished Jiji had told him about the paperwork thing before he'd promised to become Hokage.

Ever since then he'd been stuck behind a desk all day, every day – for 'training purposes' of course – and he hadn't even been made Hokage yet! In fact, he was strongly beginning to suspect that the old drunk was passing off all her paperwork onto him instead of just the minor things she claimed to. Come to think of it, that was probably why she'd appointed him so early in the first place. As far as he was aware, she wasn't planning on retiring for a few more years yet.

Though he supposed he should just be grateful she'd at least given him a small office instead of a cubicle. Considering how bitchy she'd been for the past few months, he wouldn't have put it past her. For some reason she'd believed it was his fault her face on the monument had suddenly become old and wrinkled after she'd burned the new orange jumpsuit he'd commissioned. She'd been taking that one out on him for months, even though he fixed it hours later.

But it wasn't just the paperwork that irritated him. It was that she wouldn't even let him play with all the other cool perks of the job! Like the hat. She guarded that hat like it was a bottle of the finest sake ever made. Despite all his best efforts – including some truly ingenious schemes, if he did say so himself – he'd yet to get his hands on it. And not only that, but the mansion, the big desk, the law making – the stingy drunk kept all of it to herself. She wouldn't even let him play with the library of exciting kinjutsu scrolls the previous Hokages had acquired. And to top it all off, the wretched little tease kept dropping hints about all the cool stuff hidden in there. It was almost enough to drive a guy insane.

Well, he'd finally had enough and told Tsunade in no uncertain terms he was taking a vacation whether she liked it or not. Unsurprisingly, the old hag hadn't appreciated being ordered around in her own office and had expressed this disapproval quite explicitly. Her office had quickly erupted into what the Hokage's ANBU bodyguards had termed a B-class spat. The kind that left the office broken to bits and found the two bruised and bloody blondes off drinking at a nearby bar.

Eventually, over several bottles of sake and a pool table – during which, clever use of the twins as distraction won Tsunade the game quite conclusively – the two of them had reached a suitable compromise. Tsunade would send him on a month long C-class mission to a small village in the north-west of Konoha in order to "investigate" a strange occurrence that had been happening in the area for the last couple of years. In return, Naruto agreed to help her smuggle in extra sake for the next three months to replace the bottles Shizune kept confiscating.

Both blondes had toasted the deal immensely satisfied; Naruto would finally be able to see the sun again and Tsunade would once more be able to pass out on her paperwork.

When the woman had finally collapsed snoring on the bar table – Naruto's Kyuubi-accelerated metabolism enabling him to drink even the incurably alcoholic Hokage under the table – he'd left almost immediately. He'd prepared for his trip earlier in the day, packing all the necessary vacation supplies and sealing them away in one of his many scrolls, just so he could make his quick escape the moment he finally got her to acquiesce. At the last minute, however, he changed his mind and did the gentlemanly thing and took the snoring Hokage home first.

The photograph he frog-mailed to his perverted sensei minutes later more than made the trip worth it. He just hoped it wouldn't take too long for the red Jiraiya stripes to wear off her face. It would really suck to get back from his vacation only to get beaten to death.

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When he'd finally reached the little village that had requested the mission two days later, he'd found it to be pretty much what he'd expected. There were a little over 100 people living there with only a single inn where travelers could stay. Not that they got many. The innkeeper had been ecstatic at Naruto's arrival – apparently he was the first traveler to even pass through the town in several weeks – and had broken down when Naruto told him he wasn't planning on staying, he was just looking for information.

The blonde felt so awkward he went ahead and paid for a room for a week and left a clone there to keep up appearances. Never let it be said that Uzumaki Naruto failed to please.

As soon as he'd calmed the man down, Naruto followed his directions over to the town's tiny pub where'd be meeting his informant. The informant turned out to be a villager who had owned a small hunting cabin about two days away from the village. Apparently he went there for a week every year. But when it had come time for his annual hunting trip four years ago, he'd set off only to discover the cabin had completely disappeared. Even stranger, he'd spent hours looking for the cabin only to eventually realize he had been walking in a never-ending circle, one which continued until he'd finally given up the search.

Now, Naruto might not have been a genjutsu expert but endless circles sounded right up that alley. However, considering the man had been attempting to out drink Tsunade on one of her binges, Naruto couldn't help but wonder if those 'circles' wasn't simply the alcohol talking.

Thus it had been a skeptical Naruto who finally made his way north from the town, following the hazy directions the drunk had given him. At least he'd thought he was, the man's slurring had made him near impossible to understand so the blonde could have easily been traveling in a completely different direction. And this was assuming the lush even had the mental capacity to give directions in the first place.

He'd finally stopped several hours later as the sun sank down beyond the forested horizon, having absolutely no idea of where he was in relation to said cabin. But in the spirit of his new vacation, he hadn't really cared. He had plenty of time to waste and didn't want to work himself too hard just yet. He'd have plenty chance to do that later if he felt like it. Right then, his first day out, was simply not the time.

So it had been an extremely well-rested Naruto who'd woken up on the third day of his vacation, having slept in for the first time in what seemed like years. The first thing he'd done was unseal a cup of instant ramen from one of his many storage scrolls and three minutes later had seen him happily beginning the new day with what was assuredly the food of the gods. In his opinion, a day couldn't possibly begin any better.

Actually, he could think of a number of ways the day could get better but all of them featured sleep and ramen quite heavily anyways so he figured he was at least off to a pretty good start.

Not being one to spoil good ramen with an excessive amount of work, he'd decided to get his searching finished while he was still eating. With hardly a thought, he'd created several dozen kage bunshin and sent them out to canvass the area with orders to disperse themselves in half an hour or the moment they found anything of interest, whichever came first. If there was one thing that his experiences as a ninja had taught him, it was that kage bunshin made mixing business and pleasure quite possible.

Having his ramen and eating it too, so to speak.

He'd just started on his fourth cup when the first clone dispersed itself several miles west of his current position. It had stumbled on a low-level, area effect genjutsu while approaching a large lake a couple miles to the south east. He'd had no doubts that this was the 'disappearing cabin' he'd been hired to investigate, but he'd only been halfway through his ramen and the genjutsu had been there for over four years now. There was absolutely no reason for him to rush. So he'd decided to go ahead and wait for his remaining clones to finish exploring before going off to investigate.

After all, he could quite literally hear that fifth cup of ramen begging him to eat it.

It had been a thoroughly satisfied Naruto that packed up camp twenty minutes later as the rest of his clones dispersed themselves. He finished up quickly but took one last look around the empty campsite to satisfy himself that he'd done the job properly. He'd grinned, not a single trace remained that he had ever been there - a habit Jiraiya had forcibly ingrained in him. The wretched pervert had come up with some truly horrifying punishments for whenever he forgot to do so when they were traveling.

To this day he still couldn't look at a kiwi without becoming nauseous.

He'd set a leisurely pace towards the genjutsu field. He'd figured it was most likely nothing more than a remnant of the war between Konoha and Oto all those years ago. Perhaps a fixed illusion meant to disguise an ambush that had simply never dissipated. Nothing he couldn't handle.

Despite his lackadaisical pace, he'd soon found himself approaching the large lake the clone had marked as the boundary of the genjutsu. Sure enough he'd felt a slight disturbance in his chakra as soon as he'd gotten near, a tingle indicating he'd stepped into the field.

S-ranked ninja that he was, the one field Naruto had never been able to grasp was genjutsu. In fact, he had such a complete inability with the illusions that he rather suspected Kyuubi of actively sabotaging his growth in that area. After all, kitsune were known for their trickery and illusions and he didn't doubt the wretched little furball would have spitefully denied him the ability simply out of some twisted sense of possessiveness.

But what he lacked in constructing genjutsu however, he more than made up for in destroying them. When a shinobi uses a genjutsu, they're creating a delicate framework of their own chakra over the target using the target's chakra coils as an anchor. In other words, human chakra anchored to a human chakra system.

But if there was one thing human chakra had been never meant to mix with it was demon chakra. So while Kyuubi might have prevented him from using the techniques, he couldn't prevent Naruto from flooding his coils with the bijuu's unnatural chakra, thus upsetting the anchors and completely destroying the illusion.

Shikamaru once described it as taking a sledgehammer to a intricate stained-glass window. Naruto rather appreciated the analogy.

By this point using the Kyuubi's chakra was almost as easy as his own, so all it took was a thought and the red chakra spiked through his system and shattered the illusion. Just in time for him to catch a glimpse of several twisted looking creatures moments before his vision was obscured by the massive club swinging directly at his face.

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Author's Notes:

Honestly, I couldn't think of any cruel or unusual punishments involving kiwis. It is, however, my steadfast opinion that fruit should not be hairy. Thus... kiwis.

I also want to make it clear where the inspiration for this story came from. I got the idea from re-watching old episodes of Rurouni Kenshin. One of the antagonists in the story is a blind spear user named Uonuma Usui. After he lost his eyes, he developed super human hearing he termed the Shingan or 'Eye of Heart'. His hearing is strong enough to allow him to even hear the creak of muscles as they tense and thus predict what his opponent is going to do.

It is Usui that sparked this story and not, as someone suggested, Daredevil. To be quite frank, I hated the movie. A two hour waste of my time. I could go on a rant about why exactly it sucked but I'll spare you. I just wanted to set the record straight and make sure everyone knew this story was birthed from 'pure anime awesomeness' and not 'irritating Hollywood shit'.

Enjoy.

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Published: 10.09.09

Updated: 11.06.09