Kakashi looked at Haruto from behind his book with slight confusion.
'It seems Danzo has loosened the seal on Haruto…'
'He's much more expressive than the first few days of him being branded with the seal.'
'Or am I imagining things?'
'Or has he just gotten much more comfortable with the seal?'
Kakashi mused silently while pretending to study the Icha Icha Paradise book.
'Should I test him?'
Making up his mind, Kakashi looked at Naruto since he was the key to the plan that had formed inside his head. Soon Kakashi put his book down and asked Naruto a question, "Naruto… what would you do if a Jonin attacked you and your friends?"
Naruto who'd been busy sleeping suddenly snapped out of his dreams and shouted out loud, "I'm studying!!!"
Haruto who'd watched the entire process from the corner of his eye simply shook his head and went back to training poison area control, but he did manage to keep an ear out for Naruto's answer since he had a pretty good idea of what Kakashi wanted to do by asking that question.
'He wants to see if Naruto's letting what he's learnt get to his head and making him overconfident, is he not?'
Seeing Naruto was still dreaming, Kakashi repeated his question, "What would you do if a Jonin attacked you and your friends?"
Naruto, ever the impulsive kid, took a few seconds to blink away his drowsiness before he said with a stifled yawn, "Of course, I'd beat him up. I'd stab a kunai into his sciatic nerve and as he was distracted by the pain, stab another kunai into his solar plexus before dragging him to my level and finishing him off with a nick to the neck over the carotid."
"Ho…" Kakashi stood up from the tree stump he was sitting on while shutting his book with one hand. "Are you sure about that?" Kakashi asked rather ominously. The aura that Kakashi was leaking slightly got to Haruto too since he felt a little chilly.
Taking a step forward, Kakashi looked at Naruto with narrow eyes and before he could respond did something that sent shivers down Haruto's spine.
All of a sudden it felt as if a tidal wave of corpses rose up from behind Kakashi, each corpse rotting in various ways, one having its skin peeling off, another missing its head entirely, and one more spewing out blood like a hose.
There was a horrible rotting stench that filled Haruto's nose and messed up his senses as the looming tidal wave of corpses lubricated by blood and rotting fluid flowed as easily as water over each other and rushed towards him.
As if he owed them his death.
DEATH!
That was what Haruto felt in the moment, his heart racing and his mind fuzzed up.
In that moment Haruto forgot to keep a handle on his occlumency, since all he could think of was his imminent demise.
His eyes widened and blood drained from his face, turning his skin pale much like the corpses approaching him.
In all that chaos, Haruto suddenly heard a voice.
"Give me back my body!!!!"
Then several, all at once, like the chorus of an orchestra.
"How dare you take my life away from me!!!"
"I will never forgive you!!!!"
"Murderer!!!!"
"Killer!!!!"
A chorus of shouts and jeers reached Haruto's ears as they cascaded from the sea of corpses that was beginning to surround him.
Haruto took a step back but only stumbled down, falling on something squishy. His heart dropped as he felt something simultaneously fleshy but slick underneath him. As Haruto turned his head to look underneath him, his eyes widened in absolute horror as he stared at the blood and the face underneath him.
It was his face, smeared with blood and gore.
'HARUTO!!! IT'S NOT REAL!!! THIS IS A GENJUTSU!!!'
A voice snapped at Haruto at that second from deep within his mind, causing him to snap out of his machinations.
His occlumency snapped onto his mind near instantly and his heartbeats gradually started to calm down.
Haruto then closed his eyes, and while he pretended to be calm about the situation, his tightly shut eyes slightly betrayed him to anyone looking closely.
With his hands brought together in the ram seal, Haruto flared up his chakra in his body, causing the chakra circulation to go haywire before everything around him shattered.
The sight, the sound, the smell, the touch and even the taste, all of it shattered like glass against his mind as Haruto looked up at Kakashi who was standing a few feet away from him.
"Was that necessary…" Haruto mumbled slightly disgruntled, still doing his best to appear completely unbothered by what had just happened, but it was a little hard to do while sitting on the ground like a scared cat, so he stood up.
Kakashi looked at Haruto for a few seconds but quickly turned his attention to Naruto, who was similarly on the floor, but he was in a much worse condition that Haruto, there were tear streaks running down his cheeks and he appeared to be, for the lack of a better word, broken.
His mouth was hanging slightly open and his limbs appeared all flaccid. The fire that was always burning behind Naruto's eyes seemed to have been extinguished.
Haruto had already put two and two together to understand why Kakashi had actually conducted the test.
'It wasn't just to test Naruto… he's figured out that I've broken free of the seal somehow… he probably wanted to test if I'd show any expressions too… that's why he went so hard on me…'
So Haruto abandoned caution for a second and placed his hand on Naruto's forehead, he then flooded Naruto's forehead tenketsu with his chakra before spreading his chakra all over Naruto's chakra pathway system to disturb his chakra sufficiently to break him out of Kakashi's control.
His work was really inefficient since he'd never done this before, and also because all of what he was doing was just guessing how he could break the genjutsu based on what he'd seen in the show.
So Haruto wasted nearly all of his chakra in trying to break Naruto out as well.
When the world around Naruto shattered, his dead eyes looked at Haruto, focusing on the thing nearest to him for a second before tears started streaming down once again.
Seeing Naruto start crying silently, Haruto didn't do much, he still had to pretend to be under Danzo's control in front of the ROOT shinobi that were definitely watching them at this moment, so he stood still.
He then looked at Kakashi waiting for the man to speak.
Kakashi locked eyes with Haruto for a second but didn't say anything, before he looked at Naruto and spoke gently, "That was just a D-rank jutsu, Demonic Illusion : Hell viewing technique and you couldn't even break out of that without your teammates help. So whenever you go up against a Jonin, the first thing you must do is run, run for your life, otherwise you'll die and get your teammate killed too."
Naruto couldn't process the words, his eyes were still blank and empty. So Kakashi simply said, "Let's end today's session here. I expect you to be here at ten am tomorrow once again. Make sure you're on time."
***
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