Invisibility Release

By the time Naruto returned home, it was already late at night.

He still needed to apologize to Teuchi and Ayame. Because he had stayed at Ichiraku Ramen, the ramen shop had barely received any customers all evening.

He had originally planned to leave after finishing his ramen, but Ayame kept pulling him into conversation and asking him all sorts of questions. It was rare for Naruto to have a chance to chat normally with someone, so he simply sat there, talking while sampling every type of ramen Ichiraku Ramen had to offer.

He had not spent money in over a year, so naturally, his wallet was stuffed.

They really were a very simple father and daughter.

Naruto sighed inwardly. The moment he opened his front door, however, his expression quickly turned strange.

The house was not very clean. After all, he had not returned in over a year, and dust had settled everywhere.

He did not turn on the lights. He merely opened the refrigerator and took a look. It was packed with milk and instant noodles, though all of them had expired. These things had already been close to expiring before he left, but he had been too lazy to throw them out.

Naruto took out two cups of instant noodles, then boiled the tap water that had been sitting in the kettle for a year and a half. After soaking both cups, he placed them on the tatami in the living room and leaned back in the shadows of the sofa. Moonlight illuminated his lower body, but his upper body could not be seen clearly.

He had survived in the wilderness for over a year. A little dust did not bother him at all.

"This is really terrible."

Naruto suddenly muttered in annoyance. In the dim light, the Three-Tomoe Sharingan in his hidden eyes slowly began to turn.

"I was already ignoring you people. Why did you have to be so thoughtless and come right in front of me?"

"Huff—"

For a moment, it seemed like hurried breathing echoed through the room, only to vanish in an instant.

Naruto said nothing more. His expression gradually turned cold as he silently waited for the instant noodles in the bowls to soften into mush.

"Do you like your ramen overcooked? It doesn't taste good when it gets too soggy."

Naruto suddenly spoke, as though talking to himself, or perhaps asking someone a question. Yet there was no response in the room.

"If you still refuse to talk, you might end up starving to death as a ghost."

Naruto suddenly turned his head, his slit pupils locking onto a corner of the room.

The Anbu ninja using Invisibility Release was startled. He had long suspected that he had been exposed, but he had not expected it to be true. His target was just a child not even six years old.

A ninja wearing a cat-faced mask suddenly appeared before him out of thin air and asked in surprise, "Do you know sensory ninjutsu?"

"Is that the legendary Invisibility Release?" Naruto did not answer. Instead, he curiously watched the Anbu ninja who had suddenly emerged from invisibility.

In truth, Naruto did not know any sensory ninjutsu at all. He also did not seem to possess the talent needed to awaken the Uzumaki Clan's Mind's Eye of the Kagura.

But the instant he had opened the door, the malice and killing intent in the room had become impossible to suppress. He could sense all kinds of malice every day. Even while training in the wilderness, he could sense the malice coming from Anbu. But someone who displayed such intense killing intent right from the start was truly something he had rarely encountered.

Naruto peeled back the lid of his instant noodles and found that the ramen had indeed turned mushy. Smiling gently, he said to the Anbu ninja, "Want some? I made it especially for you."

The Anbu ninja's face beneath the mask instantly darkened. His eyes were filled with disgust as he sneered, "Only a beast like you would eat that kind of garbage."

"What a pity." Naruto looked regretful as he stirred the soggy noodles in the paper bowl.

"By the way, you still haven't answered my question."

"What question?"

The Anbu ninja was already preparing to leave. Since he had been exposed, there was no point in staying.

He knew that although Uzumaki Naruto was a child not yet six years old, his strength was already at the level of a Chunin. That talent was as astonishing as Kakashi's had been back then.

But he was still a Special Jonin, and he had some confidence in himself. Since he was staying a little longer anyway, he wanted to teach this arrogant, disgusting sinner a lesson.

"Was that ability you used to turn invisible Invisibility Release?" Naruto asked like a curious little boy asking about something that interested him.

"..."

"What do you want?" The Anbu ninja did not answer, but his silence was an admission. He questioned Naruto in return.

Only a faint amount of moonlight entered through the window, making the room impossible to see clearly. Shadows lay across Naruto's body. Suddenly, he grinned, baring a row of white teeth.

"Nothing much. It just seems pretty fun. Can I borrow it and play with it?"

Seeing Naruto's unnaturally white teeth, the Anbu ninja suddenly felt his heart tighten. In an instant, his limbs turned ice-cold, as if something had locked onto him.

As an experienced Anbu ninja, he knew exactly what that premonition meant. He had felt the same way when he had secretly investigated Orochimaru, one of the Three Sannin, and the other man noticed his gaze.

This monster wanted his bloodline limit!

Without the slightest hesitation, he immediately threw two kunai, one aimed at Naruto's brow and the other at his heart.

He himself rushed straight for the door. In almost an instant, he reached it, slammed through it, and rolled across the ground several times from the force of the impact.

"Huff—huff—huff—"

"Looks like the Jinchuriki is nothing but—"

Before the Anbu ninja could even relax, his mocking words caught in his throat. He suddenly saw the Jinchuriki sitting on the sofa with his back to the moonlight, kunai lodged in his forehead and heart, grinning at him.

Something was strange. That spot had been in shadow just moments ago. How could he suddenly be backlit?

"This is genjutsu!" The Anbu ninja immediately understood what had happened. He swiftly formed a hand seal to dispel the illusion, but only felt the Chakra in his body become disordered for a moment. Then nothing happened.

"What a letdown. I thought we could play a little longer."

The Anbu ninja could not see Naruto's expression, but he could hear the disappointment in his voice.

"Uzumaki Naruto! Are you trying to betray the village?"

"Don't forget that the village raised an orphan like you. Are you going to repay kindness with ingratitude?"

The Anbu ninja suddenly spoke with bluster masking his fear. He had already drawn the short blade from his back and remained completely alert.

Why was the Jinchuriki's genjutsu so powerful?

Looking at the Anbu ninja, whose entire body was tensed, Naruto suddenly wanted to ask a question.

"Before today, I don't think I've ever done anything to wrong the village, have I?"

"What?"

"As an Anbu ninja, you should know that I'm a Jinchuriki. You even know that I'm the Fourth Hokage's child. So why do you hate me so intensely?" Naruto was somewhat confused. If the other man had not been crouching in the corner of his room with killing intent from the very beginning, he truly would not have wanted to bother with him.

The Anbu ninja pressed his lips together, his right hand gripping the short blade tightly. In a hoarse voice, he said, "My parents died on Nine Tails Night!"

Naruto frowned in confusion. "So what does that have to do with me? I'm just a Jinchuriki."

The Anbu ninja's voice turned venomous. "If you had never been born, the Nine Tails Rampage would never have happened! Your parents were never Konoha's heroes. They were Konoha's true sinners!"

The Anbu ninja's expression twisted into something incomparably vicious.

"Someone like you should never have been born into this world!"

"?"

"How arrogant, when you're so weak."

Naruto was stunned, and even his expression became one of bewilderment. He had truly never considered it from that angle. If Kushina Uzumaki had not become pregnant, then this would indeed never have happened. But that kind of thinking was truly selfish.

"Die!"

Naruto was still thinking through the logic when a short blade gleaming coldly in the moonlight stabbed straight toward his heart. The Anbu ninja had seized the opportunity.

Every day, he had wanted to kill this enemy who had cost him his parents. But as a Konoha ninja, he could only bury his hatred. Now, at last, he could avenge his parents.

Even if Lord Third punished him afterward, he would have no regrets. He only hoped Hayate would not be implicated because of him.

"Pfft—"

The sound of a blade piercing flesh rang out. The Anbu ninja's lips curled into a triumphant smile beneath his mask, and he could not help sneering inwardly.

Hmph. So what if the Nine Tails Jinchuriki is talented? True ninja grow through battle after battle. A genius who has never experienced war will easily lose his life.

"You, gurg—"

The Anbu ninja wanted to sneer at him, but thick liquid suddenly kept pouring from his mouth, making him unable to speak. The intense pain in his chest turned the disdain beneath his mask completely into terror.

He suddenly realized that Naruto's face, with kunai sticking out of it, looked as terrifying as a demon.

"Gurg..."

The Anbu ninja let out a pained cry. His vision suddenly blurred. When it became clear again, he found himself sitting on the sofa with a short sword piercing his chest.

He struggled to look toward the owner of the blade. It was an animal mask. The Anbu ninja seemed to see the disdain beneath that mask, and only then did he suddenly understand.

It was me? I killed myself?

Naruto sat quietly on the sofa opposite him. Since returning home, he had been sitting there all along, calmly and happily watching the show of the Anbu ninja driving the short sword into his own heart.

Looking at the corpse on the sofa, still twitching slightly, Naruto felt no discomfort. Perhaps it was because he had spent too long dealing with wild game in the wilderness. After all, it was difficult for people to feel sympathy for food.

Naruto walked over and removed the man's mask. Beneath it was a young, resolute face, likely only in his twenties. It was not Hayate Gekko.

"Truly ugly."

He looked at the mask in his hand. After hesitating for a moment, he tucked it into his clothes. The slit pupil in his right eye trembled slightly, and a vortex appeared in Naruto's hand. The Anbu ninja and every drop of blood splattered across the sofa were completely swallowed by the vortex.

Naruto felt as though his Chakra had increased slightly, and a strange energy suddenly appeared inside his body. Following the natural guidance of his body, he formed a hand seal.

His body gradually vanished from where he stood.