BXBX NOVEL Chapter 182: Chapter 182
"This is why I don\'t gamble," Chji glumly states.
Crossing his index and middle fingers, Naruto yells, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" With half-a-dozen puffs of smoke, six clones charge after Sasuke\'s sides and Naruto runs straight for him, surprising Kiba, Shikamaru, Chji, Neji and Rock Lee while the Jnin watch on impassively as Naruto uses numbers to overwhelm the genius Uchiha.
\'This idiot went through similar pain,\' Naruto\'s mind yells, jumping in the air as his clones surround and assist him as he descends.
Looking for any blind spot or weak guard, seven Narutos attack with carefully practiced precision with the goal of learning a better timing to Sasuke\'s attacks, but the raven-haired avenger continues to demonstrate why he\'s a genius, swatting away predicted attacks or combining offense and defense to smoothly elude and attack at the same time.
\'We became teammates under one of the strongest shinobi in the village, and instead of letting anyone in, he\'d rather stay this way,\' Naruto\'s mind hotly remarks. Catching Sasuke\'s smirk, Naruto may be hit, he may be parried and brushed to the side, but his insides are rapidly boiling. Naruto\'s angry.
Angry that this fight has to even happen when both of them could be uniting their significant efforts to stop Obito and his boss, Madara.
\'SASUKE!\' Naruto\'s mind yells, and crossing fast fists with his rival, hearing sharp inhales, grunts, tight skidding of sandals against stone, high-speed swishing of clothes, the meaty smack of muscle covered bone and cartilage.
It was like a conversation through their fists identical to when he fought Haku, and Naruto could understand his opponent more simply by crossing unrelenting fists with the Uchiha.
Sasuke\'s leaping windmill kicks allows for evasion, leg sweeps, and counters to the face or body of Naruto\'s clones as the Uchiha\'s precognitive eyes helps him land intercepting strike after strike on clone after clone, and still, Naruto\'s fighting limbs won\'t stop targeting Sasuke.
Mentally seeing a flash of a very young Sasuke sadly sitting alone on a wooden dock of the lake, Naruto knows with the certainty of the dawn that he can\'t stop.
No matter the sharp throbbing pain to his body, Naruto\'s indomitable will only thrives as the impassioned blond mentally yells, \'you were alone like me!\'
The pair continue to trade meat-grinding blow after blow, each trying to attain the better offensive position to land something truly devastating when Naruto swears he hears Sasuke\'s voice say, \'you can\'t stop me. I\'m nothing like you!\'
Absolutely aching to show Sasuke who he really is, Naruto\'s driven heart demands his body move faster, and with each clone dispelled, his multiple perspectives pick up on more of the Uchiha\'s rhythm.
With all his clones dispersed, Naruto can\'t completely dodge Sasuke\'s painful attacks, but he\'s blocking more an irritation Sasuke can\'t stand.
Naruto\'s ears then distinctly pick up the unmistakable sound of cold steel sliding sharply against leather as Sasuke pulls out a kunai, spinning it before slashing down to take Naruto\'s eye.
Opening his fist to open-palm strikes, as Hinata has often shown him, Naruto redirects and continuously parries Sasuke\'s repeated kunai slash until Naruto\'s first available chance to withdraw his kunai.
"That\'s" a surprised Rock Lee starts to say before turning to Neji. The sight of Naruto incorporating Hyga clan taijutsu prompts him to turn a sharp pale eye on a blushing Hinata. No one noticed Kurenai smirking proudly.
The boy\'s kunai clang against each other, sparking loudly until Sasuke\'s Sharingan sights an opening and Naruto takes a foot to the stomach.
With a grunt, Uzumaki flies back from the inhuman kick, giving Sasuke more than ample time to string six seals in rapid succession before yelling, "Katon: Gkaky no Jutsu!" And launches a great fireball directly at his floor-skipping teammate.
Skidding to a chakra-assisted stop, Naruto leaps high and fast, reaching and sticking to the ceiling of the large room as the fireball scorches the stone floor below, however, Sasuke had already launched two more balls of fire, and without answers for them, Naruto springs back down to the ground, exactly where Sasuke\'s eyes foresaw.
Naruto launches a line of shuriken to intercept the raven-haired avenger, landing on the floor just as Sasuke breaks through his guard with the hardest kick he\'s felt yet.
Naruto is launched back farther than the room would allow and hits the wall, radially fracturing the stone around him before landing hard on the floor.
One look at the black flame-like markings across Sasuke\'s skin, and it became clear why Sasuke was suddenly much more powerful.
Naruto\'s insides felt like boiling soup and his vision goes in and out of focus as the sweaty blond slowly rises to his feet, however, ever the tactician, Sasuke won\'t allow him to do any more than that.
He attacks with a combination of speed, power, and perception Naruto has never faced before, giving him no chance to make clones or use Rasengan.
"Uh, aren\'t they going kind of fast," Kiba asks struggling to keep up with the boys from Team 7, and Chji adds, "what\'s that black stuff on Sasuke-kun\'s skin?" Watching the way the inexplicably tattooed Sasuke is savagely beating Naruto bloody, Shikamaru poses critically, "oi, oi, isn\'t this getting a little out of hand?"
With a heel-palm to the face, Naruto feels his vision\'s haze worsen, his nose clog, and he can taste a river of copper travel both out of his mouth and down his throat before Sasuke\'s lightning covered hand thrusts straight through ribs eight, nine, and ten, through part of his stomach, and punctures with a red splash out his back.
Doubling over from the gut, as if horrifically struck through their own bodies, a repulsed Hinata is dead-frozen, paralyzed, and a woefully distressed Kurenai mentally yells what a gutted Ino actually screams, "NARUTO!"
The agonizing pain blinds Naruto\'s entire body from sensing anything other than excruciating stabbing. His outstretched mouth screams piercingly loud, reverberating throughout the room. His body twitches as electrical signal involuntarily spam odd parts of his body.
With his vision nearly blacking out, he hears someone yell his name but he can barely perceive it over the rod of spikes sawing through his bloody torso.
Along with Kiba and the other genin, Sakura eyes a fearful Ino.
The sheer worry on the Yamanaka\'s face was more than her own love for Sasuke, after all, Sakura\'s learned that a girl could care about her crush for a boy more than the boy himself, and what Ino\'s pupil-less blue eyes are telling her, is her former best friend and rival is terrified for the impaled Naruto.
Sakura feels gutted herself, not simply because her blond teammate was just grievously injured by her other teammate, nor because Sasuke has just forcefully ripped away Naruto\'s chances of ever becoming Hokage, but because she\'s actually witnessing the depths Sasuke\'s hatred can lead him toward.
It was easy for Sakura\'s mind to overlap Naruto\'s pain-curdling scream with her parents screaming and the pinkette grips the railing that much harder to stay upright on her drastically weakened knees.