Naruto: Cautious Ninja

Just as he was about to take off however, he suddenly heard a rustling of bushes ahead of him and stopped in his tracks. When he looked up to see what the noise was, the man got quite the surprise when he saw Naruto Uzumaki himself drop down from the canopy and land on the branch across from his. The blonde, looking grungy from an obvious sprint through the forest, huffed impatiently before fixing his best glare on the white haired man.

"Caught yah," the blonde exclaimed with a victorious smirk.

Mizuki blinked in shock. "N-Naruto? How in the world did you find me?" Or better yet, how in the hell was he still alive? Didn't he send those three dogs after him to tear him to shreds? What the hell was going on?

Naruto chuckled and wiped his nose proudly. "The next time you want someone killed; better to do it yourself than to hire out a bunch of deadbeats to do it for you, Mizuki-sensei." He said the last suffix with a lot of spite in his voice.

"Fuck. They screwed up. How could they screw up? I thought…" Mizuki cursed in his head, grinding his teeth in frustration before allowing a smirk to come back to him. He faced the boy with renewed interest and confidence. "Hmph. So you're not as pathetic as you made yourself out to be after all these years at the academy, Naruto. I'm impressed."

"Thanks."

"You've really come a long way from the little street shit you were when you first set foot in that place."

"And you've really come a long way from the whiney, boring, poor excuse of a substitute teacher you were when I first laid eyes on you when I first set foot in that place. I've gotta admit, this whole trying-to-kill-me-business and stealing Hokage-jiji's scroll has put you in a new light for me, teme."

"Likewise. But I don't have time to play around with the likes of you," Mizuki replied while shouldering the large scroll hanging from him, which the blonde eyed carefully for the briefest of moments. "I've got a relic to cash in. This thing's got a lot of secrets to share with me and I don't intend to waste them."

"That's funny, because I don't hear it talking back to me the same way," Naruto replied harshly, clenching his fists. When he did the canopy above him rustled again and he was soon joined by a small band of macaques and gibbons, which appeared around him on the branches. When the sight of the monkeys surrounding Naruto didn't surprise Mizuki, then the swallows that suddenly darted out from behind the man certainly did. When the little birds perched on the blonde's shoulders, the jinchuriki frowned. "I'd like you to give that back now."

"Not a chance in hell," Mizuki barked with a grin, before drawing a massive Fuma shuriken from behind him and snapping it open. The massive star between his fingers then began to spin like a saw blade. "It's mine! If you want it, then you'll just have to pry it from my cold, dead hands!"

Naruto chuckled darkly. "I was hoping you'd say that." The animals around him dispersed the moment Mizuki threw the massive shuriken at him. Timing its approach, Naruto ducked right under it and sprang straight across at the Chunin, who leapt at him in kind with kunai drawn.

"Since those three kunoichi I sent after you failed," the man roared, taking a swing at the boy and watching him spin around it, before the two passed each other and traded branches, "Then I'll just have to kill you myself!" They turned and glared at one another, a split second before Mizuki leapt with a wide lunge. "Die!"

Naruto waited for the man's blade to come within range. It was the moment it appeared just inches from hitting him the blonde swayed back till he literally fell over the side of the branch, but instead of falling to an untimely death, his legs hooked onto the branch and he swung around it. His body rocked like a weight and went right under the still lunging shinobi, whom he appeared directly underneath a second later and sent a full-swinging uppercut right into his stomach. With a yell of effort, Naruto drove a punch with the force of a piston straight into Mizuki's gut, a loud thud ringing out and causing spit to fly from the man's mouth.

Beginning to fall straight towards the forest floor after receiving the counter, Mizuki choked in disbelief. "What power. How can he hit so hard?" It was when he began spinning towards the ground the Chunin remembered the boy's sparring matches of months past and how he was able to knock-out the genius Sasuke Uchiha with a single punch that one time. It was this memory of that particular incident alone that jogged Mizuki out of his stunned descent. "That's right… taijutsu is one of his strongest points. Shit!"

Flipping to control his fall, Mizuki landed hard on the ground below and spun around; glaring up to see the boy perched up on the same branch high above and looking down at him. From the angle Mizuki stood at and was now glaring at his target from, the boy looked very much like a monkey with his left arm swinging in front of him and his form crouched on the section of tree.

The sound of animal calls filled the air as the Chunin felt himself get pelted by seeds and berries from the family of monkeys up in the canopy. The man held an arm up in annoyance when the projectiles came dangerously close to his face.

"Punk," Mizuki muttered, tossing a barrage of shuriken at the blonde. He watched the boy dodge them and leap to swing around the tree. When he appeared on the other side the Chunin threw a kunai after him, and then another, but the boy kept leaping through into the canopy evasively and disappeared before the white haired thief could take another shot at him. "Damn it!"

For several minutes Naruto was gone from sight with no trace of him to be found. All Mizuki could do was search fruitlessly through the treetops for any signs of him from where he was on the ground, weapons at the ready and an intense look on his face. It pissed the man off that the boy was so good at hiding and that he also had characteristics of a wild animal, which made the Chunin consider setting the entire place on fire to try and smoke him out.

However, when it appeared as though the blonde had fled the scene, a light thump suddenly resounded behind Mizuki that had him spin around and look with a start. Drawing the last Fuma shuriken on his back, he ditched the weapon straight at his target that he now saw dashing straight at him from a distance, the windmill blade cutting a fine path across the grass. It seemed like a sure hit, until Naruto swayed right under it and continued on unhindered towards the Chunin.

"You are like a fucking cat," Mizuki shouted, charging at the boy in kind and throwing a full roundhouse kick at him. Naruto leapt over it and countered with a jumping side kick straight into his opponent's chest, which sent his foe blasting back. Upon skidding to a stop, the winded Chunin glared up to see his little target swing around and lunge in at him again. The man countered with a left jab, only to see Naruto duck under it with his right hand extending towards his side, which immediately had alarm bells ringing in Mizuki's head, "Shit! That jutsu…!"

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