Naruto: Tango with Death

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The training to learn Stealth was more mainstream than I thought. It barely involved chakra, and was instead mainly a matter of controlling my physical body to erase all unnecessary movements.

In a sense, it was an enhanced version of what I learned at the academy. Much more enhanced, but still in the same fashion.

It seemed they had been waiting for a worthy human for a long while too as they were prepared for my training. To increase my learning efficiency, they created an obstacle course for me.

While I was panting, recovering from a nasty blow to the ribs I received in the obstacle course, the old owl, whom I learned was called the Owl Sage, and was personally overseeing my training, said, "You are making impressive progress. Your age is a big advantage."

I nodded, it indeed was. Having a small body meant I would move less air with my movements, and my low weight allowed me to move faster, and lower the burden on my surroundings. Such trainings were also ingrained in me since I started training, so I was really making rapid progress.

The hours passed, and I went to sleep not too late, because I was already quite exhausted before coming here, and I wanted to be in good shape for the rescue mission.

When I woke up, I decided to go right away, since the more time passed, the worst it would be.

I was now alone with the Owl Sage, who said with a worried face, "It really sounds like a suicide mission. Fleeing would be safer."

I shook my head and said, "I can't just abandon them. Besides, you yourself said that even top tier humans would struggle to find me now."

The Owl Sage sighed, "I haven't been to the human world for a while, my evaluation may not be the most accurate. It would be terrible if you died, we have waited for hundreds of years for someone like you to come, and you are very suitable for our arts, it would be a pity if you died."

I smiled and said, "I'll be fine." As I said that, I confidently rested my hand on my sword.

Seeing this, the Owl Sage remarked, "That is indeed an impressive technique you developed. It may even take a strong one of your kind if taken by surprise."

I shook my head and said, "I haven't mastered it yet. It's very hard to use, I only managed to pull it off by chance."

And that was true. This technique, the Shunshin Slash, did not just require great reaction time from me, or every Sharingan user would be able to use it, or Jonins for that matter since they had superior reaction times compared to me.

No, it also required an incredible chakra control, and an ability to move chakra quickly. The reason many ninjas stop moving to use their jutsu is because it becomes extremely hard to use a jutsu once you move.

When the body moves, the position of the tenketsu points will slightly shift, making circulating chakra harder. Thankfully, as I was aware of my chakra at all times, I was able to cope with those changes, somewhat.

That's how the Shunshin Slash came to be. The Body Flicker is not pure Taijutsu, unlike what I believed before learning it, but instead it is Ninjutsu. One uses their chakra to give themselves a power boost.

And to attack while moving at such a speed, my body is far from strong enough to support that kind of strain, that's why my slash also has to be imbued with chakra. When successful, it results in a devastating slash, but it is very hard to accomplish as I am basically using two chakras at once, while moving.

Even with all my advantages, it was very hard to pull off, and had only managed to do so by entering the 'zone' when I thought I was on the gates of hell.

The Owl Sage shook his head slightly before taking out something and saying, "This was in your stuff. You should use it."

He handed to me a smoke bomb, which should have been in my pouch when I arrived. I thanked him, before making the half Ram sign. With a last nod to the Owl Sage, I disappeared in a burst of smoke.

The teleportation was instantaneous, and I didn't even bother checking my surroundings as I used the smoke I appeared with to disappear in a Shunshin. However, I did not run as far away as possible, but instead to the first building I saw.

It was night right now, in other words, the best moment for me to hide as I merged with the darkness with the help of my coat.

The moment I started hiding, I heard a large explosion, and looking over where I appeared, the smoke was cleared away as long gashes had appeared on the ground, along with three ninjas. Chunins from Suna.

They looked around for a while, but failed to find me. I was already good at stealth originally, so with the flash training and the feather coat I got, they didn't stand a chance to find me.

Speaking of which, my owl feathers coat actually looked more like it was made of crow feathers, but it didn't really matter. As long as it was useful…

While they searched for me in the area, I moved further away from them, and once I managed to leave the town, I took out my ear piece. This was the only other thing I had managed to keep.

Those were primarily used to communicate between genins, but they also had the ability to locate each other. It took me a couple of minutes to go through every step to find the locations of the others, I discovered they were further west, near the cost. As expected.

It was purposefully made complicated to trace the other ear pieces to make it nearly impossible for enemies to locate the rest of the team by stealing an ear piece.

Anyway, now that I had the precise location of the enemy base, I sneaked back into the town, moving into a house. The people living in it were asleep, they were too far to hear the explosion from when I appeared.

I quickly found paper and ink, so I wrote a coded message, telling about the enemy ambush and the base's location in code, before making my first summon.

It took a tenth of my chakra, but an owl slightly bigger than normal appeared before me.

"You must be the new summon! Hello, I'm Yuki."

I nodded, and handed her the message as I said, "Please bring this to Konoha as fast as possible, Yuki. Do you know where it is?"

Yuki nodded, "I often come into the human world for fun."

I nodded, and watched as the snow white owl flew away quickly, while I started moving under the cover of the night toward the Suna base.

I ran as fast as possible through the Land of Tea, allowing me to reach the Western Coast in only a couple of hours.

However, while I expected to find a secret base, I was shocked to find a large camp. From what I could see, there were only bandits in the camp, meaning there was probably a base underground.

Normally, bandits wouldn't be a problem, but I don't know in what condition my team is, so I may have to carry them out. If I do, then I would rather take care of them now that I have the element of surprise, than later in a front fight. I'm not confident I would be able to defeat 200-300 bandits in a frontal fight, especially if anything goes wrong inside.

So I decided to take care of them now.