Author's Notes: I wonder how many readers are scared off…

Probably a lot, to be honest. This is not a sane fic.

This chapter is probably not what you're expecting. At all.

A tad difficult to write, because I wanted him to have a very, very specific voice. If you find yourself nodding resignedly and smiling once in a while, I've done something right, in my opinion.

Disclaimer: I actually don't own Naruto. But even if I did, this fic, without the ffn ToS, would be a violation of my contract with whatever manga company Kishimoto's signed with, I think.

Variants

by Lungs

Swordsmaster 1

It started as a joke amongst us, after I came back.

Kakashi-san was reading one of those trashy Icha Icha novels by the late Toad Sannin. The main character had traveled through time to seduce the woman he loved, but no matter when he found her, he could not convince her to marry him. There was copious amounts of smut about other women, but Icha Icha Time Machine, considered Jiraiya-sama's greatest work amongst other perverts, only allowed the reader to experience the… release of reading about the antics of the main character and the heroine at the end of the book, when he learned that he didn't need the time machine to make her love him.

I thought it was the textbook example of bad fiction, but something about it - not the smut but something else, intrigued Naruto.

It was not fit for a Hyuuga. But this was why I laughed every time. I was the last living Hyuuga.

I was Neji. I was a Caged Bird without a keeper, as everyone, from my smiling cousin Hinata who had stopped stuttering at last to my hated elders who had croaked one by one, was dead.

I didn't care much for my family, though Hinata's death had been a blow. But there was no way I could not leave Konoha after Gai-sensei and my teammates, Lee and Tenten, lost their lives to Hoshigaki Kisame.

I'm sure Naruto understood, when I told him that I could not take being around everyone anymore. My team had, by no means, sustained the greatest loss - after all, I was still alive (while Shino, Kiba, Hinata and Kurenai-san had all lost their lives and Team Eight had all but been erased).

But I had to leave. Naruto, who was shielded from the horror of losing his team - everyone from Kakashi-san to Sakura, both of which had never left Konoha, and Sasuke, who had come back, was accounted for in Team Seven - could not understand, though he could sympathize.

So Naruto signed a waver for unlimited leave, much like the one that had been given to Tsunade-hime before she left all those years ago. If he could find me, and there was a scenario that required my presence to an extent that I could not but head back to the Leaf, I must.

But only if he could find me.

I swore to myself, on the graves of my teammates, that I would kill Hoshigaki Kisame with his own weapon.

With the Sword.

It was Tenten's legacy, a long, well-made katana that shone bright, could not channel chakra, had no seals on it, rusted unless I polished it, was entirely inferior to Samehada.

But I had drive. It was Tenten's sword. And I would stab him through his gills with, while wearing one of Lee's weights on my forearm.

This was written.

This was what Fate is made of, my unerring pursuit of the truth that no Dojutsu could give me.

Sasuke may have lost his family, but I had never had a family. The only people I had, had wormed their way into my heart after countless years of camaraderie. These bonds were stronger than family.

I was terrible with the sword.

I refused to use Konoha's Kenjutsu forms. I told myself that I would build my knowledge of the weapon from scratch.

The Hyuuga had always frowned on the use of weapons in battle - the Jyuuken, which I had mastered to a degree that shocked my elders, was quite a powerful weapon after all.

I closed my eyes for the first time in battle three years after I took up the sword.

It was a chunin level missing-nin. I still received missives from Konoha at that point and Naruto, who understood my need to test my mettle, sent me after opponents who slowly increased in difficulty over time.

It was certainly a bad idea. I discovered this when a kunai tore into my thigh.

I grit my teeth. I was not used to pain - I barely ever got hurt in battles.

If I take one more kunai wound, I will cut down one hundred trees in a forest. And if I cannot cut down one hundred trees in a forest, I will run around the forest two hundred times.

I blocked the next kunai with my blade. And the next. And the next. As I drew closer, the chunin panicked and tried to raise a wall of mud against me. I backhanded it with Lee's weight, spraying earth everywhere. The sound of the splattering mud gave away the chunin's position. I jumped, as precisely as I could, landing besides the chunin who was winded from throwing his whole collection of kunai.

I sliced the chunin into bloody halves and opened my eyes.

I was covered in the blood of my enemy and Hyuuga was spurting out of my thigh. I was at peace.

I cut down the hundred trees in the nearest forest anyway.

"Neji."

I started. No one had called me by that name in a very long time.

I turned and stared in the direction of the voice, but there was no one.

"Neji."

I bit. "Who's there?"

There was no answer.

I was annoyed.

Neji.

The voice was coming from my sword.

This was absurd. Never had I ever channeled chakra through it. Even if I had, I was not Senju Hashirama, or the Sage himself. I could not grow things. I was not a seal master, an artificer of intelligence taken form.

Make me strong.

My sword was already strong, this was absurd. My sword was powered by my body, by my mind, my drive, my determination.

Make me stronger than Samehada.

There was no voice. It was all in my head. I was crazy.

Oh. I was crazy. That made a ton of sense. Was it like this for Uchiha Sasuke? A voice in his kunai, from his eyes, maybe, telling him to kill his older brother?

Test my mettle.

I glared at nothing in particular.

I need you to understand…

I stared at the sword.

This is only the beginning.

I stuck the sword into the ground and backed away from it slowly.

But I'm not in your sword. I'm in you.

I walked forwards and drew it from the ground in a sharp motion. Tenten's Legacy would not be sullied by the ground due to my instability.

I walked on.

And so it went for the longest time, which I had lost track of long ago.

"Have you ever seen a blade dance?"

It was juvenile, pathetic, even for a grown man to ask questions like that. It was a taunt, it infuriated people. But I was a ninja at heart.

"Hyuuga Neji."

She was some sort of infiltration specialist, perhaps even a seduction specialist. My uncle used to tell stories about how he had resisted them on his various missions.

Her voice was resigned. Perhaps she thought she would sneak up on me?

"You're worth quite a bit in the Bingo Books, missing-nin of Konoha."

Oh how incensed I was. She said Konoha as if it were the lowest of the low. As if it didn't exist, as if anything would have been better than the Leaf.

"Boys," she said dismissively. "So easy to play with your emotions."

"Everyone bleeds." It was one of the first things I learned. There was no one in the world who didn't lose blood, spray sweat and drip tears, from street rat to daimyo.

My sword flashed. Clang.

It cut into the kunai she blocked it with, an angry nick that didn't quite go through it. I saw the strain in her arm.

My sword danced to a rhythm that I did not quite hear myself. My grip switched multiple times. It was an elaborate test, one that would determine if she was worth death by my blade.

The kunoichi performed admirably. I might have misjudged her.

I sliced a fireball in half, much to her consternation. It was a better idea to use Lightning or Earth against me.

Clang.

Clang.

Clang.

Kill her.

Clang.

Clang.

Kill her.

I did not oblige the sword. She had not shown me what I needed to know about her. She had not shown me her great power.

The kunoichi panted and stepped back, losing ground as my katana hemmed her in.

"Fight me. For real. Come at me with the intent to kill."

She glared at me, a trace of panic in her eyes.

"Is there nothing you can do?"

She blocked my swing again.

"No bloodline limit? No highly ranked technique?"

She glared twice as intensely as she did earlier and abruptly, I sheathed the sword.

"You are not worth my time. Your blood does not belong on the sword."

"I'm an assassination specialist," she said quietly. She must have been quite tired. "I don't need anything but a kunai. I've collected hundreds of bounties."

I knocked her out with a slight tap to the back of her neck. She dropped to the ground, snoring.

I cracked open a copy of the most recent Bingo Book that I found, sealed, in her vest.

I flipped through the genin section, which was basically a list of names and photographs amounting to a missing-persons list rather than actual threats. I slowed down as I flipped through the chunin, C rank, then sped up again. She was clearly beyond a fresh chunin in ability.

Now the pages were starting to get more detailed - up to three nin a page, with multiple pictures, some drawings and ability descriptions. These were the Special Jonin and more powerful Chunin, dominating B rank. It seems as though Kumo had a lot of deserters nowadays, with the death of the Hachibi's container convincing them that their village could provide them with no more safety.

I couldn't find me.

So, A rank, then.

Hyuuga Neji, nin of former Konoha. My hands clenched over the book. Former Konoha?

It was time to go home. I left the B-ranked assassin, from Sunakagure of all places, with a pair of ration bars tucked into her shirt.

I had avoided the border to Fire Country and Wave Country for so many years. It only felt right now, to walk along that calm water broken by little pulls of the bright moon. My father had told me that the moon was responsible for the motions of the sea. I cherished every word I remembered.

Konoha was in a sad state.

There was a single watchtower. There were no walls.

But there were three S-rank nin.

I thought of the floating words in seedy bars, talking about how a hawk had flown home to roost, at last.

Hatake Kakashi, the copy-nin.

Uchiha Sasuke, the last, finally loyal, son of the Fire.

And Uzumaki Naruto, a star so bright that even in my youth, his ascent burned my all-seeing eyes.

And that wasn't all. We had grown in a time of war, a time of unmatched companionship. I wondered briefly if I would have been S-rank too, if my team had lived, if I hadn't devoted myself to the blade.

The Taijutsu strike came so quickly, and from such a strange angle, that had I not pushed myself to the limit in order to sense incoming attacks, my head would have been knocked clean off.

Still, the hit had jarred my arm, despite the heavy block from Lee's weight. Perhaps the only thing that saved my arm from a clean break was the fact that they had the propensity to absorb some chakra. It was, after all, a gift made to even the playing field for my late teammate from Gai-sensei, to defeat some lightning attacks, to crush walls of earth, to block the ever-gentle, never-forgiving fist of his teammate.

To stop me from hurting him too much.

I managed to dodge the next hits with some difficulty, and I caught a strand of pink hair streaming from within the hood.

"Haruno-san."

She paused, then continued her attack anew.

"It is I, Neji."

With an amazing feat of control, her fist stopped a mere millimeter from my weights and she dropped into a crouching stance meant to block everything but the easy-to-read high attacks from Taijutsu specialists.

"Prove it."

"Byakugan."

I had not used it in a while, and I could see traces of a black substance in her lungs and running through her bloodstream. Her chakra which would have normally fought it, and generally ran within the blood in small amounts, had been neatly partitioned to allow the filth to pollute her brain.

"Are you… affected… by some medicinal substance?" I asked incredulously.

To my surprise, she giggled softly. "Maybe," she drawled.

"You… were on patrol… of some sort." I could not comprehend the magnitude of the irresponsibility before my eyes.

Abruptly, the chakra snapped into the black substance and filtered it out. She glared and her movements became a lot less choppy.

"It doesn't quite impair my speed, nor does it stop me from punching Hyuuga missing-nin so hard that their chests explode."

My glare was intensified by the Byakugan. "Just take me to Naruto."

"As you can see, he's sleeping."

I glanced at the 'village' again and, indeed, Uzumaki Naruto was on a bed, his chest rising and falling rhythmically.

Without another word, I let her grab me by the shoulder and activate a body-flicker which brought us to the top of the watchtower.

It stank of opium and sake. In a second, she was perched on a makeshift seat, created from a wooden crate and her pipe was in her hand.

I sighed and deactivated my Byakugan.

I didn't know what I had come back to, but it certainly wasn't something good.

"The Akatsuki is gutted. Madara is dead. Why is Konoha still here?"

A glazed look had entered Sakura's eyes. She giggled again.

"Neji-kun. Our greatest fear is not that we are weak… but that we are… immeasurably powerful."