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Naruto: The Art of Deception 09
🕑 Added 2025-03-06 11:26:12 +0000 UTCChapter 09: The Mask Slips
Naruto narrowed his eyes, tracking enemy ninja as he crashed through the dirt.
He tightened his grip on the kunai and it was a damn good thing he did.
A second later, steel came down hard.
Naruto twisted, kunai snapping up just in time to deflect the sword. The impact jolted through his bones, but he held his ground.
Their eyes met.
Opponent smirked. Then, just as smoothly, he kicked off the ground, retreating back.
“You’re good,” he admitted. “I am Gaiya from the Yami Clan.” he added after a while.
Naruto didn’t answer. His hands snapped into a seal. Chakra surged.
Lightning crackled, sparks igniting at his fingertips, flickering up his arms. The static hummed in the air, sharp and electric.
“Raiton: Kangekiha (Lightning Release: Wave of Inspiration)”
A burst of lightning tore forward streaking toward Gaiya with a deafening crack.
Gaiya’s hands blurred. Four scrolls snapped open around him, paper flaring out in perfect formation.
The ink seals on the parchment glowed deep blue.
“Fūinjutsu: Raikōheki (Sealing Technique: Thunder Armor Wall)”
The lightning slammed into an invisible force mid-air crackling, twisting, then dispersing like it had been swallowed by nothing.
Naruto’s eyes narrowed. A barrier? Against Lightning Release?
He had seen defensive fūinjutsu before, but not something this fast, this precise.
A seal user.
And that meant Naruto had to be careful.
Hmm…
The scrolls were still floating midair, forming a perfect square around Gaiya. That was the first clue.
Quadrant formation. Standard for reactionary barriers. Not a full dome, not a wide-scale defense. This was a selective, directional shield.
Which meant…
It wasn’t active all the time. It only flared up when triggered.
The second clue, the color of the seal glow.
Most standard fūinjutsu barriers had a faint white-blue hue, the natural color of neutralized chakra flow. But this one? It pulsed deeper. Closer to violet.
Lightning affinity? Or just designed to absorb Raiton chakra?
Third clue, the way his jutsu dispersed.
It didn’t just stop. The moment his lightning hit the barrier, it split apart unnaturally, like it had been redirected. Not absorbed, not nullified but rerouted.
Naruto exhaled through his nose. Good. That meant there was a weakness.
If this was a true absorbing seal, it would have simply swallowed the technique whole, rendering it useless. But if it redirected energy instead? That meant the seals had to process the chakra before expelling it creating a split-second delay.
He could work with that. But there was a problem.
It had started during training with Jiraiya. Long missions, deep cover, months spent wearing different faces, different voices, different versions of himself.
At first, it had been a skill. A tool.
Create a persona. Wear it like armor. Use it to get what he needed.
But somewhere along the way, something had blurred.
The masks stopped feeling like masks.
Sometimes, he caught himself slipping. A little too easy. A little too natural.
What was real? What was him? Did it even matter?
A smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth.
For now, he was Arashi. And Arashi liked to play.
Naruto rolled his shoulders, tilting his head from side to side, like he was stretching before a warm-up. Then he burst forward.
Kunai flashed toward Gaiya’s ribs. Too aggressive, too eager. Arashi style..
Gaiya dodged cleanly, sword snapping up to counter. He slashed across but Naruto barely moved, just letting the blade miss by a breath.
“LET’S FIGHT! I LOVE IT!”
His voice cracked through the air, raw with excitement.
He lunged again, laughing now. Just throwing himself into the fight.
Something had changed.
Gaiya knew fights. He knew the rhythm, the flow, the small unspoken exchanges between opponents. The way a battle pulsed like a living thing, moving between offense and defense, each fighter adjusting, adapting, trying to break through the other’s defenses.
This guy had been like that before. Precise and tactical.
But this? Weird as fuck.
He wasn’t fighting to win. If Gaiya had to guess, he would say that he was fighting to enjoy it.
He relaxed his hand on his sword without meaning to. That was the first thing that felt wrong.
The second was the movement.
He let Gaiya’s blade almost touch him before pulling away at the last second, his movement just a hair too slow, too relaxed.
What the hell was he doing?
Gaiya took another step, adjusting his footing. The ground under his boot was… softer than before. Like it had lost some of its firmness.
He looked down. The dirt hadn’t changed. It was an illusion.
A shadow passed at the edge of his vision. Another to his left.
Genjutsu. And when did he cast it..?
He ignored it. It wasn’t real. He knew how to break illusions, chakra pulse, sensory disruption. But something was telling him not to rush it.
Because Genjutsu always had a pattern. A start. A shift. A moment where the user applied it.
When had it started?
His breathing stayed controlled. He wasn’t panicking. But something in the back of his head, something instinctive, was whispering that he should be.
Then that weird guy stopped moving. Just stood there.
Gaiya didn’t take the bait. He watched, muscles coiled, blade steady, waiting for the next move.
Naruto hand moved. Fingers brushed over the skin, tapping lightly, like he was testing something.
A flicker of ink. Gaiya’s pulse kicked up. He knew what that was.
A seal.
He adjusted his grip, weight shifting automatically. Something was about to happen.
A pulse of chakra.A shimmer of black ink. Steel.
The blade shimmered in the low light, its steel polished to perfection. Gaiya’s breath stalled for half a second.
He knew that sword. Every real swordsman did.
Kiba no Kuroyume. The Black Fang’s Nightmare.
One of the Ten Blades of the Old World, forged by the master swordsmith Takeshi no Arata, a craftsman whose name was spoken with reverence in every village, every land where the art of the sword was respected.
Ten blades, each unique, each meant for the hands of legends.
This was one of them.
Kiba no Kuroyume was said to have been wielded by a warlord who cut down entire battlefields alone before vanishing into myth. The blade had disappeared decades ago. Lost, stolen, or buried with its last wielder.
And yet… here it was.
Naruto reached up.
And dragged his mask down.
Gaiya barely had time to process before he saw it.
The grin. Too wide. Too happy.
Something inside him tensed. Fear? Not yet. But something close.
Naruto tilted his head, tapping the katana lightly against his shoulder.
“I also have a sword… hihihi…”
Gaiya swallowed. The shinobi took a step forward. Gaiya’s instincts screamed at him. Move. Now. Attack.
But for some reason his body didn’t listen. The grin never faded.
“Please… play with me…”
Then Naruto lunged.
Gaiya moved on instinct. No more testing.
This was dangerous. Weird. Whoever the fuck Konoha had sent, this guy.. he was a problem.
Their entire operation could be compromised.
Comments
Kaido
Kurama is konshu Naruto is moon knight understood
rotamod
I am trying to create multiple personalities Naruto, but we will explore this further into the story. He will be different in fight and outside of fights, kind main hero with psychological problems :D
Kaido
So sociopath Naruto?
