Setting the Record Bent

Summary:

Uzumaki Naruto has a habit of not thinking
things through. But when circumstances force his hand—his detractors may not
enjoy the outcome of Naruto wising-up. Part II of ‘Setting the Record Bent’ oneshot collection.

Pairings:
Naruto/Naruto, hints (non-graphic) of Naruto/Shikamaru
and Naruto/Sakura.

Warnings:
m/m, oral.

Note:
Each oneshot is in its
own universe. These stories are not continuous, rather, they stand alone. Thank
you. Please Enjoy.

*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*

The False Wisdom of Uzumaki Naruto (ONESHOT)

Part II of the Setting the Record Bent Collection

*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*

It all started over a game of shogi.

“You know,” said Shikamaru slowly, his sharp eyes darting back and
forth across the board. “I didn’t think it was possible for any single person
to be this…incompetent when it comes to playing shogi.” He grabbed a piece and
slid it across the board. “Checkmate.”

“Ah…crap. Again?” Naruto asked hopefully as
he fidgeted impatiently.

Shikamaru sighed. “Naruto…as creative and unpredictable as your
attacks may be, you just don’t know enough to make any of your strategies
stick. Playing more games isn’t going to help you.”

“Come on! One more t—”

“No. It’s futile to play another. Our levels are too different.”
Shikamaru said. He let out a lazy breath when Naruto looked down at the board
and clenched his hands over his knees, looking positively frustrated. He was
going to regret asking, he just knew it. “What has you
so hung up on learning how to play shogi in the first place? You’d never want to play with me back at the
academy.”

Naruto muttered something under his breath that Shikamaru couldn’t
quite catch from his position. “What was that?”

“I said – Sakura said I’m too dumb
for her to seriously consider dating me. And granny said she wasn’t making
me Hokage until I started taking supple…uh…supplementary lessons on money stuff
and…politic stuff. Bah! She said a good place to start was to master how to
play shogi. Then she said that when I can beat you regularly at Shogi, I’ll be ready to take her hat.”

Shikamaru immediately figured out Tsunade’s
motivations in assigning Naruto such a ridiculous task. She was essentially
stalling him until he really was mature enough to assume Hokage duties. In
other words, it was:

“Troublesome,” he
muttered. “You’ll never defeat me unless you learn all the rules first. Once
you learn the rules then you can look up accepted and effective strategies used
by masters. Once you have a good handle on those you can look up and study
famous games. Then…and only then…will
you give me a challenge.” That might take years.
Tsunade must have been especially annoyed when she
assigned him such a task. He was almost motivated enough to ask what Naruto had
done to deserve it.

Almost.

“But…can’t I just learn by doing?” Naruto pleaded. “I’m not good
with that sort of stuff.”

A quick prayer to the kami for patience
and Shikamaru attempted to clarify Tsunade’s
not-so-subtle message. “You think the position of Hokage is something they’ll let you learn by doing? You think sending friends off to die is something you can take back or do over?” Two of his favourite phrases during his
first few games of shogi.

Naruto opened his mouth, a protest on the tip of his tongue before
he suddenly got a very thoughtful look, illustrated by his scrunched forehead.
“Oh…so then where can I learn that sort of stuff.”

“Everything you’ll ever need is in the Konoha Archives,” Shikamaru
drawled, having little expectation of Naruto actually visiting. “That’s a good
place to start, anyway.”

“Books huh…” Naruto whispered looking a bit worried before his
expression cleared into a brilliant smile. “No problem! No stupid books are gonna hold me back from kicking your ass Shika! Just wait here, I’ll be back to crush you in no time!”

Naruto was off his cushion in a flash, the wind of his passage
scattering the shogi pieces across the board. Several fell off the side onto
the wooden planks of the porch.

Shikamaru shook his head. “Exactly how long am I supposed to wait? A decade?” He rolled his eyes and began collecting pieces
and putting them away. Not that he would mind sitting in one place for ten
years just staring at the clouds. It certainly would serve Tsunade
right for making him her patsy and foisting Naruto off on him.

“Troublesome blond-haired shinobi.” All of them. No exceptions.

*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*

Somewhere in the musty corner of Naruto’s mind he knew the Archives
had a lot of books. But knowing there were a lot of books inside the spacious
building and seeing them lining
bookcase after bookcase, wall to wall and floor to ceiling, aisle upon aisle
upon aisle of bound paper in scroll and book form was quite an experience in
and of itself.

“Holy kami of all things ramen,” Naruto
whispered in the throws of shock. He stood among them, dwarfed. “It’ll take years to find anything in here!”

Years? Naruto frowned. That kinda sounded like a
problem he had just had with learning elemental manipulation not too long ago…well…can’t hurt to try!

Much like duct-tape, Naruto had one solution that fit all problems.

“Kage-Bunshin
no Jutsu!”

*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*

It was exactly three weeks later that Shikamaru once again stumbled
upon one of the three most troublesome blonds in Konoha. And of all the things
that Shikamaru imagined finding Naruto doing in his spare time…this one took
strange to a whole new level.

“Are those…knots?”

If his eyes weren’t deceiving him, the mercurial blond was in the
middle of training field eighteen with a long length of thick rope in his hands tying knots.

“Hey Shika, did you know there are hundreds of ways to tie knots?” Naruto
didn’t actually look up when he said this. He was too busy making variations of
the same knot over and over and over; tanned and calloused
hands nothing but a blur as they worked the fibrous length between them.

“I…yes. They taught
knots in the Academy.” He couldn’t take his eyes off those nimble hands. If
Naruto could do handseals half as fast as he could
tie knots he’d still be faster than most chunin he knew.

“Right. Shinobi
knots. But then there are sailor knots, and net-maker knots, and tapestry
knots, and tailor knots. Oh…hey, did you know there are even special knots used
in sexual bondage?”

Shikamaru blinked and dredged his memory. “Shibari?”

“Hey! I figured you’d know that one. You know everything. Wanna see? I’m getting real
good at them.”

“What happened to your shogi research?” Shikamaru asked instead,
completely unwilling to have a conversation about bondage knots with Naruto.
Come to think of it…Shikamaru couldn’t think of anyone he’d want to have that sort of conversation with.

“Shogi. ‘s’, yeah.
See, I’m only on ‘k’, might take a while to get down there. There’s
a lot of books in there.”

“But why knots?” How on earth was that supposed to help him with Sakura…or the
Hokage?

Naruto shrugged, “don’t ask me.”

Shikamaru stared. Who the heck else
was he supposed to ask?

“Seriously,” Naruto continued to mutter, flushing darkly “I don’t
know what they were thinking. Some of them have the weirdest interests.”

One day, Shikamaru decided, he was going to understand just what
went on inside Naruto’s head. And on that day, he also decided, he was retiring
and moving frey frey away to a quiet cottage with a hill out back to stare
at clouds. A place where they’d never heard of blond-haired orange-apparelled ninja
named Naruto.

“Hey, Shika?”

“What?”

“Are you dating Ino?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

Shikamaru really didn’t like the way that ‘oh’ was so dubiously
said. “Girls are troublesome.”

Naruto looked up and rolled his eyes. “You think everything’s troublesome.”

“Girls especially so.”

“Whatever,” he muttered and returned to his knots, which were
becoming more elaborate as time went on. “Sounds like you’re just scared of
them.”

Shikamaru sighed and mentally cursed himself for starting a conversation
with the troublesome blond in the first place. “Girls are troublesome because
they take pleasure in using their physical assets to justify their manipulative
tendencies.”

“I don’t know what that even means,” Naruto scoffed.

“Look, girls and guys have two major aspects going for them. Guys
usually have more physical strength (or they can develop more), and girls
usually end up more physically attractive than boys, get it?”

“Oh…yeah. But
Sakura-chan is strong!”

“She’s an exception,” he said dryly. Just as there
were beautiful men who were the exception on the opposite spectrum. “Girls
don’t have any restraint using their looks to get what they want.”

“Yeahh…so?”

“But when a guy tries to use his brute strength to get what he
wants, he’s considered a brute, and it’s socially unacceptable.”

Naruto’s expression turned confused. “So…what’s your point?”

“My point is, there exists a
double-standard. I’m not saying I agree with this philosophy but: if girls can
use their physical assets to promote their social status, why shouldn’t guys be
allowed to use theirs to promote their own?

“The answer is more complicated than you think,” Shikamaru replied
to his own question as Naruto was looking a bit cross-eyed. “Physical force on persons is looked down upon; yet we as
Shinobi encourage physical force to
be employed upon peoples.
Fire-Country has gone to war many times to expand its borders and secure
resources to protect our way of life. We’ve delineated the proper use of force
in two different situations.

“So why isn’t it anathema for women to use their physical charm on persons as well? They use it for good
reasons just as often as a weapon. Like I said, women are troublesome. Just look at Sakura.”

Naruto’s frown came immediately. “What about her?”

“She physically abuses you for the smallest infractions. But when
she commits an infraction, if you were to physically punish her – what do you
think would happen?”

“Hey! I don’t hit girls!” Naruto immediately protested.

“Exactly.”

Naruto opened his mouth then closed it. His head tiled sideways
thoughtfully. “Oh…so you’re saying…there are times you want to hit Ino, but
since you can’t, you fall back on calling her troublesome? Why don’t you just
say what you mean, Shika? Sheesh.”

Shikamaru blinked. Okay. I’m
going to walk away and pretend I did not just get successfully psychoanalyzed
by Naruto, of all people.

He stuffed his hands into his pockets and turned. “I’m going to go
now.”

“Oh, yeah. Go. ‘g’ Wanna play? I learned how to
play that yesterday. I had the worst headache after that one dispelled, you
wouldn’t believe.”

“…”

*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*

If Asuma thought it was odd that a very quiet and contemplative and (perhaps most notably) not-orange Uzumaki Naruto was sitting to one side of the shogi
board watching as Shikamaru trounced him, he didn’t mention it around the
ever-present cigarette stuffed into his mouth. Even so, his eyes did tend to
drift over to observe the blond, who was stuck in his eternal thinking pose—an
expression Shikamaru had for the longest time thought was his ‘I’m constipated’
pose, by the scrunched look on his face. Naruto was the only person he knew who
needed to think with his entire body to get anywhere.

He grabbed the rook and moved it into the centre where it threatened
three of Asuma’s pieces.

“Shit.” Asuma’s frown was thunderous; he
pointedly ignored the smug countenance of his opponent across the laden board.

“Hey, Naruto.
Where’s your favourite orange and black outfit?” Shikamaru couldn’t help asking.
Now that he had Asuma cornered he could afford to
split his concentration.

“Huh?” Naruto looked up from the board with quizzical eyes. The
mottled green and dark brown motif made him look not only less conspicuous, but
both he and Asuma had failed to spot his approach
until he crunched some gravel underfoot not three meters from their position.
“Oh, that.” He laughed sheepishly and rubbed the back of his head. “I got rid
of it. Camouflage, ‘c’. You
know there’s an entire bookshelf
dedicated to various scrolls that discuss the best colours to wear in the field
depending on the terrain and vegetation present? I realized that I was
decreasing my chances for successful stealth infiltrations and decided to
correct my oversight.” A month ago Shikamaru wouldn’t even have fathomed Naruto
knowing a word like oversight, much less its meaning.

It was Asuma’s turn to look surprised. “I
didn’t know there were Shinobi Scrolls in the public Archives. I thought all
those were in the Hokage Library.”

The furious nod was only part of Naruto’s response: “Oh yeah. Its way in the back, with all the other
scrolls that have been donated to the archive. Tough to find. And it’s not listed in alphabetical order
back there…everything is kind of mixed up so it’s super hard to find anything useful
in all that dusty crap!”

“Then how did you find
it?” Shikamaru pressed. “You still
spend all your time training, so when exactly have you had time to engage in
all this research you’ve been doing?”

Naruto looked at him sideways. “I
don’t. But my clones have lots of free time.”

Both he and Asuma just stared at him.

“You’re using Shadow Clones
to do research in the Archives for you?” Asuma choked
out.

“Uh-huh. Why?”

“How many are we talking here?”

“Mmmm—” Naruto chewed his lip. “Three-hundred?”

The cigarette terminally between the large jonin’s
lips fell out of his mouth. For his part, Shikamaru slapped a hand across his
eyes tiredly.

“Naruto…you’re using the reconnaissance ability of shadow clones
to—” It boggled his mind. Seriously boggled his mind.
“Do you know how dangerous that is?”

From the clueless look on his face…that would be ‘n’, for ‘no’.

“It’s all right when you’re using them for training, because they’re
all basically focused on the same thing. But I bet you have them looking and
reading a variety of different topics.”

“Yeah. So what?”

Shikamaru sighed. “So…that means that instead of having
three-hundred minds merging with yours all vaguely similar in the knowledge
they’re accumulating, you’re getting three-hundred completely original sets of
thoughts and experiences.” Quite literally and physically
mind-boggling. Naruto by all rights should be the equivalent of a mental
pretzel by now – or catatonic.

“I’m not stupid,” Naruto growled belligerently. “I don’t let them
all release at the same time. They coordinate with each other. Plus, they’re not even using chakra. I
don’t get half as tired as I did when I used the clones for elemental chakra
training.”

“It’s not a matter of physical fatigue. It’s a matter of mental
health. Do you have any idea how your personality could warp from strenuous and continuous mental battering? Your brain
isn’t growing, it’s forcibly having knowledge stomped
into it.”

“I’m fine!” Naruto insisted.

“Maybe for now,” Shikamaru said, “but—oh forget it. I’m sure there
are medical scrolls in the library documenting cases of overuse of
Kage-Bunshin. It’s a forbidden technique for a reason, Naruto. If you don’t
believe me, read them yourself. It’s too bothersome to explain it to you.”

Naruto crossed his arms and looked mulish, having no such intention.

“I’m sure Sakura would be more interested talking about old medical
scrolls than she would knots or camouflage, anyway.”
Shikamaru said absently as he turned back to the board.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Naruto perk-up.

“That’s a great idea! Why didn’t I think of
that?!”

*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*

“—and so,” concluded Naruto another month later, “I think that Kabuto must have studied Wan-Fu’s principle of regeneration
and degeneration extensively. His ability to regenerate his own body is
practically the single-most important extension of his teachings.”

“Not to mention his ability to use medical techniques to destroy,
and not to heal” Sakura agreed dryly. “Wan-Fu’s later works were all based on
his human experimentation models. It must be required reading to become a
student of Orochimaru.”

Naruto nodded and took a sip of the small sake cup in front of him; he
swirled it absently around his mouth, relishing the bite and burn before he
swallowed. “I found most of his work of little interest except his dissertations
concerning medical-techniques and their application in combat situations.
Ultimately, I concluded his views were inherently flawed. Wan-Fu never wrapped
his mind around the foundation of all medics—that of ‘do no harm’. The only
reason shinobi and civilians allow themselves to be treated by total strangers
is that those strangers have all taken the same oath to heal and do no harm no
matter the consequence. They don’t trust the person who’s a doctor, they trust
his profession. To break that foundation is to watch the construct crumble.
No-one would be able to trust medic-nins—I can only
imagine what sort of complications that would provoke. Imagine for a moment
what would have happened at the Chunin exams: none of the foreign ninja would
have submitted to our own medical ninja, they would have demanded that Konoha
admit their own medical ninja; complicating not only the entire event, but
compromising the security of the hosting village even further. Kami, if I knew my doctor was cutting open live people for
medical research it’d make me think twice about letting him anywhere near me.”

“Shishou used a similar argument, though
she used a civilian comparison: how people would stop visiting doctors for fear
of being maliciously experimented on.” Sakura admitted with a frown. “But she
still uses medical techniques in combat. I think that’s a bit hypocritical.”

“Non-lethal, techniques,” Naruto pointed-out. “None of her medical
techniques that she uses in combat are lethal to her opponent. That’s the difference
between Wan-Fu and the modern definition of the combat medic. The two use very
different and distinct definitions of
the word ‘harm’. It’s the classic case of transient and reversible versus
permanent and irreversible.”

“That…makes much more sense than when Tsunade-sama
explained it to me,” Sakura admitted, then shot him a look that oozed suspicion.
“Since when did you start studying
medical ethics?”

“I’m going to be Hokage
someday, Sakura. I need to know all sorts of things. I’ve been studying,” he said
defensively. Did she really need to sound so condescending? Or was the apparent
condescension only a manifestation of his own
insecurities?

Studying psychology is
starting to mess with my head, Naruto mourned
silently.

“You? Study?” Sakura laughed. “It sounds so strange to hear you
say that. About time though. I’m glad you’re finally taking this seriously.
Sometimes I wondered. I mean, you were so immature for so long. This is a nice
change, Naruto. I’m impressed.”

“Thanks…” It felt odd hearing her praise him; like meeting a
stranger and hearing foreign words tumble from their mouth, the gestures were
familiar but the message remained garbled.

Sakura was beaming at him happily. A few days ago he would have died to get one of those smiles directed
at him. Now all he could wonder was why he cared so much for this one person’s
approval; cared enough to act like someone he wasn’t. His thoughts became a bit
mired in confusion as he struggled to make sense of all he was feeling at that
moment. It hadn’t helped that he now somewhat understood Sakura’s motivations
for acting like she did sometimes. All those hours a handful of clones had
spent reading psychological studies geared at understanding the psyches and
common social motivations of females certainly hadn’t helped his plight. Stupid Shika
and his stupid philosophical meanderings. It had just made him
realize how two-faced she was.

No wonder
smart people aren’t happy! Taking the
mystery out of something just meant shining light on the harsh truth. It left him
feeling cold and unhappy. Ignorance really was bliss.

“It’s getting late,” noted Sakura, glancing out the window of the
small restaurant. “Walk me home?”

Naruto mustered a smile and said: “sure!” thinking all the while
that had he been acting like himself, she would never have asked. It hurt a
bit. Thinking always hurt one way or another; immediately or down the road.

The air was crisp outside; the streets, calm and vacant. She held
his hand. And when they arrived at her bachelor apartment, she shyly asked him
up for a cup of coffee.

She really was beautiful: a pink haired, stubborn, prideful,
tomboy—beauty. Everything that made Sakura, Sakura, Naruto
loved—even the hard stuff; her violent temper, and hair-trigger outbursts.
Standing there in front of him for the first time ever, she was willing. And Naruto caved to the sinful temptation
without a second thought.

They never got around to that cup of coffee.

He made love to her in a way that he’d fantasized about. It wasn’t
about his pleasure, it was all about Sakura. He wanted to please her; he wanted
to please her in ways no-one else could. So he made love to her softly,
tenderly—the way all those romance novelists always described true-love
enfolded between coverlets. She panted first, and cried out…and moaned and
moaned and moaned – her shrieks of senseless bliss came next and at the best
part—the best part—when she came she
cried out, loudly, to the man who took her virginity:

“S-SASUKE!”

Because sure as the sun rose in the east and set
in the west, it hadn’t been him who took it.
Sakura touched no other.

Hours later Naruto slipped from her unconscious embrace and tugged
on his clothes, feeling sick with himself and
unsatisfied. He’d held back and held back just for her.
He’d wanted to come when she came. But when those succulent lips had opened and
the piece of flesh at the back of her throat vibrated with the wrong name, he
couldn’t do it.

But he faked a good one. Because this wasn’t about
him. This was all for Sakura. It always had been.

He’d realized as he lay in her loose embrace, vibrating and unsatiated,
just what he’d become for Sakura – not ‘to’, but ‘for’. He’d become what Sakura
had always wanted Sasuke to be: The Knight in Shining Armour. The Handsome Prince. The Loving Scholar.
The Friend. The Faithful.

The Waking Dream.

And still, it wasn’t his name she called in the middle of an orgasm.
It wasn’t enough. He just wasn’t Sasuke.
And that reality hit him like the wrecking-ball that was Tsunade’s
fist. He wasn’t Sasuke.

Naruto began then to hate himself—his true self. Or maybe it was his
true self hating what he’d become. Because this wasn’t what
he wanted. This sort of love…wasn’t even love. It was lust, affection –
and it had a steep price-tag. Deep down, she probably knew it too. Or maybe she
didn’t. Sakura was good at convincing herself to ignore unpleasant realities.
Maybe that’s what made her so strong; what made her hold on to him, even when he was gone.

The confusion from dinner settled then. And he smiled into the dark
room, bittersweet feelings becoming clear. It hurt, knowing this was one
contest with the bastard he would never win; even as he vowed it would ever
remain the only.

He finished dressing and left, unsatisfied bulge still prominently
displayed in the front of his pants.

*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*

He’d never realized how dark and lonely and cramped his apartment was until he sat on his bed wishing he had
someone to talk to—anyone really, just someone to listen. Naruto had lived in
it since he’d been admitted into the Academy, and had never had a reason to
move seeing as it had the most
convenient location – equidistant between the Hokage-Tower and Ichiraku Ramen
and his favourite training ground.

But now that he was sitting on his bed in the dark, he recognized
the dump for what it was; shelter from the rain and a place to store his dirty
laundry. And boy did he have a lot of dirty laundry.

He was still uncomfortably erect from the evening of sex that came
to no conclusion. His balls felt like lead and ached, feeling too full by half.

What motivated him to make a single shadow-clone, Naruto wasn’t even
entirely certain. Maybe it was a step up from thinking too much. He’d read that
somewhere; internalizing was bad. This was as close to ‘keeping it in the
family’ as he was ever going to get.

The clone just stood there in front of him patiently—blue eyes
looking at him intently, face half-hidden in shadows cast by the monochrome
moonlight. Naruto wondered briefly if his own face had the same small sad
smile.

“What do you see when you look at me?” Naruto wondered.

“Guy who just got blue-balled by a bitch who was thinking about
another guy while you gave her the fucking of her life,” answered the clone
irreverently.

Naruto winced. That was blunt. “Thanks. Now I truly feel as pathetic
as I must look.”

“I’m just calling it how I see it boss. Just like I’m gonna have to agree with Shika
and say…troublesome.”

Naruto snorted in agreement. His eyes travelled down the clone’s body
until they fell upon the mirrored bulge in front of him. “So…the detail of
shadow-clones is pretty amazing, huh?”

The clone shrugged. “What do you see when you look at me, boss?”

He gave the clone a sour look before flopping back onto his bed.
“Me, I guess.” He hesitated. “And…I guess I can’t help but thinking if you were
me you’d probably do a better job of being me than I can. Fuck…I dunno. I just wanna go to sleep.”
He moved his arm to cover his eyes with the crook of his elbow.

“You’re so horny you’re vibrating,” the clone pointed out.

“Unless you’re offering to fix it, shut up.”

“Hey, I’m you. And I know
you’ve thought about it before,” the clone accused. “You can put up a front
with everyone else. But I’m you. You
can’t hide nothing for me.”

“…it’s not my fault you guys went through the ‘h’ section
thoroughly,” Naruto muttered to himself…quite literally.

“I like the pictures in the homo-spoof of ero-sennin’s: Make-out
Tactics, personally.”

Naruto flushed under his arm. Of course…if he were honest with
himself he found them erotic too. But would he really have found them erotic if one of his clones hadn’t decided they were erotic first? Naruto honestly
didn’t know. “I’m not sure what’s more disturbing; that the clone read it in
the bathroom while jacking-off, or that he finished
and dissipated while I was in the middle of the public baths and gave me the
mother of all erections.”

“You’re lucky he ran out of chakra, or else he probably would have
convinced another clone to try something out in the bathroom with him,” the
clone said, amused.

“If you’re me, why in kami’s name aren’t
you embarrassed talking about this? And why would a clone of me, look in the homosexual section of
the library in the first place?”

Naruto peeked out from under his arm expecting an answer, only to
observe the clone stripping. “W-what are you doing?”

“We’re clones, duh. Our
existence is transient, brief. We live, we return to our maker. Our time of
independence is limited—and by association our restraint is even less limited.
I know that I can disappear at your whim, or when my chakra runs out. I don’t
have to deal with the fallout of my actions. You do.” The clone was down to his
underwear now, the head of his erection poking out of his boxers. “It’s like
having a doctor tell you you only have an hour to
live. Death is inevitable, so why worry? So we, or I, make the most of what I
have.”

“I never thought of it that way,” Naruto said, wondering if he’d
offended his clone. It didn’t look
offended. It just looked horny. And those blue eyes were absolutely piercing when they wanted to be.

“Enough of this depressing topic. Are you gonna get undressed, or are you
going to dispel me?” The clone had crossed its arms and was looking at him with
an expectant expression.

Naruto sat up and forced himself to look at…himself. It wasn’t at
all like looking in a mirror. The mirror was a reflection of himself…but
a clone was less a reflection and more of an extension. Once created, they had
their own thoughts, their own desires—they were their own persons. And it
smelled like a human. It smelled like him—like sex and sweat and salt. Naruto
was accustomed to the smell to such an extent that he barely took note of it, save
taking comfort in the familiar.

“Come here,” Naruto ordered hoarsely. The clone complied, stepping
up so close their knees brushed. It rested its hands upon his shoulders and
smiled down at him reassuringly.

The clone had hair the colour of freshly-cut straw. He’d never
really paid much attention to it before. It was such a vivid sort of blond that
was like no-one else’s. And his eyes were the sort of electric blue that was a
shade that he’d never get tired of looking at. It was energetic and alive, and just being on the receiving
end of its gaze gave him giddy shivers.
His skin was golden-brown from working and training outside in the sun—though
he possessed a few uneven tan lines from the various outfits he wore while out
of doors.

Naruto raised a hand and ran it down between cut pectorals, and the
ripple of muscle protecting his core. “…do you figure it’s a bit narcissistic
if I think you’re beautiful?” Naruto mused aloud to his clone.

“Maybe,” he clone said, an affectionate smile never far from his
lips. “Freud would probably get a kick out of this situation.” The clone
reached under his armpits and urged him up onto his feet. “Get up – that’s it.
Let’s get you naked.”

Naruto submitted to being undressed.

There was nothing shy or gentle about the way the clone pulled down
his boxers, got on his knees, and took Naruto’s prized erection in hand. Naruto
hissed as calloused and rough fingers gripped him roughly; tugged his foreskin
back; inhaled as much of the swollen flesh as he could.

“Kami…oh kami
that hurts.” He was sore and sensitive down there from his earlier romp with
Sakura. The clone’s mouth was warm and wet, and although it was obviously an inexperienced
mouth, he made up for it with a sincere energy, grabbing what hot flesh he
couldn’t swallow with his free hand and pumping frantically. Naruto grabbed two
handfuls of the clones messy hair and held on for dear
life.

Obviously suffering the same arousal as Naruto, the clone had
slipped a hand into his boxers and extracted his own raging erection, which he
beat with his other hand while sucking with an intense focus. When the clone
moaned around the member stuffed into his mouth and looked up at his creator
with lust-hazed eyes, Naruto saw white. He cried out as he erupted into the
clone’s mouth.

With absolutely no sign of modesty, the clone sucked him dry after
the orgasm; even pulled off and licked him clean before he got up.

The clone pushed him over to the bed and helped him under the
covers, climbing in after him after cleaning the floor with a cloth where its
own orgasm had been deposited.

Even the illusion of being held in a bed with only one occupant was
better than being alone, was his last bitter thought. He burrowed deeper into
his clone’s arms and slept.

*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*`*

“You’re what?” Shikamaru
said, stunned at the words that had just come from
Naruto’s mouth across the shogi board.

“I said I’ve decided to give-up on being Hokage.” He picked up
another piece and deposited it on Shikamaru’s side of the board. “Your turn. Check.”

Shikamaru looked down and cursed himself mentally. He had already
had trouble focusing ever since Naruto had dropped his first bomb; he had given up pursuing his pink-haired first love. He
protected his king and tried to refocus his thoughts.

“Naruto. You’ve always wanted to be Hokage.”

“I know, but I’ve been thinking,” he took Shikamaru’s knight and
threatened his defensive centre. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking recently.
I’m only eighteen. I’ve got plenty of
years ahead of me, you know? Why am I rushing towards a position that’s going
to put me behind a desk all day? I’ve got things to do and people to beat-up.
Besides,” he said and crashed through Shikamaru’s hasty attempt to plug the
hole in his formation. “I’m wasted on paperwork.”

When he’d begun to sweat, Shikamaru wasn’t quite sure. “Shit…”
Naruto had him cornered now. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his
forehead, then sunk into his thinking position.

“I want to start a family,” Naruto went on. “I want a ton of little
tykes running around by the time it’s my turn to wear that stupid hat. But even
that’s not a priority, I just want to live, get stronger, and have fun with
life. I’ve been running so fast I’ve forgotten to appreciate life. So that’s
what I’m going to do. I’m going to live. I’m going to be happy. The pressures
of Hokage can wait. It’s not going anywhere.” Naruto’s brilliant blue eyes
zeroed in as Shika made his move. He snatched his
queen and moved it deep into Shika’s formation.

“Checkmate.”

Naruto had to say it three times before Shikamaru came out of his
shock and drew-out a sigh.

“I don’t believe it.”

“Believe it!” Naruto chirped, his white teeth glinting in the
late-afternoon sunlight.

“It shouldn’t be possible in such a short time…” Shikamaru muttered,
eyes glaring a hole into the resulting formation of pieces.

“Right. No way I could beat you in a fair fight.” Naruto agreed easily.

Shikamaru looked up. “What?”

“You’re impossible to beat in a fair fight,” Naruto admitted. “But I
noticed you have a tendency to direct your focus linearly. By splitting your
attention between my own problems and several disturbing and surprising
revelations, your attention splits equally. It brings down your level from
godlike to just a master. Add in my constant chatter and you have a recipe for
defeating you at Shogi.”

Shikamaru was torn. He wanted to be impressed at the blond’s insight
into his own mental quirks; just as he wanted to be extremely irritated for
figuring them out. Asuma never had.

“So…when do you want to come over?”

Shikamaru blinked. “What?”

“Remember? When I challenged you? I said, ‘if I win you have to help
me practice tying knots back at my house.’” Naruto looked innocently up at
Shikamaru. “You’re not reneging on our deal are you?”

Shikamaru hadn’t exactly been paying too much attention to the
blond’s challenge at the time. Why bother considering conditions when defeat
wasn’t a possibility? It was only now, in hindsight, he realized he had grossly
underestimated the wily shinobi. “No…”

Naruto jumped to his feet and pulled Shikamaru after him. “Great! I
knew I could count on you. Don’t worry Shika, you’ll like this kind of tying up. You know? ‘Cause I’m the one
who’ll do all the work. All you have to do is sit there…” Naruto chewed his
lip. “Or hang there.” He shrugged. “Either way. This stuff is right up your alley.”

Forcibly being dragged towards Naruto’s apartment, Shikamaru
couldn’t help but mentally repeat his indisputable conclusion from earlier:
Blond Shinobi were troublesome. All of them.

No exceptions.

*`*`*`*

[END]

*`*`*`*

A/N:

Heh. I’m not sure if I
should feel sorry for Shika…or get jealous. For those
of you who reviewed Part I, thank you very
much. It’s nice to know someone enjoyed that perverted garbage…other than me!

Thanks for reading and see you next time!