Chapter 10 - Vicious

Bronze Tiger causing Batwoman's death, civilians choosing to kill others in order to preserve their life, the Joker killing a few hundred people... it was in times like these that Bruce Wayne wondered if everything he was doing as Batman was actually worth it. The people he had been risking his life to protect every day had had no qualms about murdering others in cold blood.

And then there was another question he was asking himself quite often as of late: was his "no killing rule" any good? Wasn't he, in fact, letting innocent people die by not eliminating pure evil beings like the Joker?

Batman sighed and stood on the edge of the roof of one of the many skyscrapers in Gotham. By chance, he had learnt about what the young illegal cage fighter Naruto Uzumaki had become...a drug addict. Someone who looked like he had died inside...because the boy's sister was also killed in the explosion of the yachts...and ultimately because he, Batman, had wanted to keep himself away from killing the psychopath known as the Joker.

But Batman's mental discipline was so formidable that even a metahuman with powers over telepathy couldn't invade his mind. So he willed those thoughts away and said to himself:

'Nobody has the right to take a human life, regardless of how vile it is. And I'm no exception.'

In response to whether it was worth it or not to protect people when they easily killed others in order to survive Batman answered himself:

'I became the Batman so others would not have to go through everything I went through. I took this mask so no other 8-year-old kid had to watch his parents being murdered in front of his eyes.'

But then Batman clenched his fingers into a fist in frustration. Metropolis was quite close to Gotham...yet Batman has never asked for Superman's help in anything he did. If he had called him for help when the Joker just hacked into the television channels, with his planning and Superman's super speed and strength they would have surely managed to stop everything from escalating into the death of a few hundred people.

Bruce Wayne realized that even Batman is not invincible: first, Bronze Tiger had actually bested him in a pure hand-to-hand fight and held him down long enough for another assassin from the League of Shadows to kill Batwoman and then the Joker kept him in the figurative check until the people themselves detonated the bomb, causing a mass-murder. Batman admitted that he needed help...that he couldn't go on all alone, by himself any more.

While Batman was deeply immersed in his thoughts, a sharp claw was suddenly pressed into his Adam's apple and a sweet fragrance pervaded his nose. A seductive voice blew into his ear making him feel goosebumps all over his spine:

"My, my... what would you have done had I been a big bad villain trying to kill you?"

Batman schooled his voice to not betray his emotions.

"Catwoman."

An enchanting peal of laughter escaped from her lips and her chest pressed into his back making him lose his focus for a second. Batman had been trained to become immune against acts of seduction but whenever the leather-clad thief appeared in front of him, it was as though everything was for nought. It took every ounce of his willpower to not let it show how big of an influence she had on him. However, one can't easily fool a woman's sharp intuition, especially not that of someone like Catwoman - she knew how much her charm was affecting him. Catwoman knew what Batman felt every time she was near him. His face may be obscured by the mask but his eyes weren't. And his eyes couldn't lie.

Even so, Catwoman knew to not push things too far. She knew where was the limit. Batman was not the type to easily submit to anyone. Therefore, she retracted her arms from around his neck and sat beside him.

"You're even gloomier than usual. What got you brooding like that?"

"I'm not brooding." Batman said with a glare.

The woman felt the urge to pinch his face and coo: 'How cute!'. But she kept herself in check - Batman would never forgive her for that.

Catwoman continued her mostly one-sided chat with Batman for a while when all of a sudden...

A demonic roar like that of a primordial beast rang in the silence of the night. A red wave of energy exploded, blasting apart the riverbed and evaporating the water. The shockwaves that followed were like a sonic wave, destroying the glass of all the windows of the cars and the buildings for a mile around the centre of the explosion.

Catwoman leapt to her feet in fear when a feeling of malice flooded her being. And she wasn't the only one: in that night every single human and even the animals, they all felt the awakening of a demon and its rage. For a few moments, they all felt like a tiny ant in front of a wrathful deity... even the infamous criminals jailed in Arkham Asylum and Blackgate Penitentiary, for a moment, they all involuntarily trembled.

However, Naruto had no clue whatsoever about the commotion Kyuubi had caused when he flooded his body with his demonic chakra. While the entire Gotham city was having a sleepless night, Naruto was sleeping and snoring like a dead pig in an abandoned building at the outskirts of the c

Even so, while Naruto slept with no care in the world, Kyuubi stood vigilantly. Unlike his extremely harsh words at Naruto previously, he still cared about him. At that moment his senses were extended around the boy and on the bridge from which Naruto had jumped. Kyuubi knew that in his anger he had caused a scene, that he had done exactly what he didn't want to ever do again: expose his existence and reveal to the world that Naruto is "special". On the other hand, unlike nearly a century ago, metahumans were not a novelty anymore. Naruto wouldn't be in nearly as much danger as Mito, his first jinchuuriki in this new world, had been.

Despite that, Kyuubi still kept his eyes open, his keen senses focused on the river. And true to his predictions, in less than 20 minutes a group of metahumans, the so-called superheroes from the Justice League, appeared at the scene to investigate. And despite his general disdain towards humans, Kyuubi had to admit that a few of them were strong. Really strong. Powerful enough to pose a threat even to him when he was at full power.

Scene break - Timeskip 5 months

"Please, stop! Why are you doing this?" a pregnant woman yelled in panic.

A pair of red-tinted blue eyes looked at her dispassionately.

"Ask your husband why." the owner of those eyes said impressively as he held the woman's husband with a white knife that seemed to have been carved from a bone at his neck.

"Now, one last time: where are the blueprints?"

The middle-aged man gritted his teeth refusing to speak even at being threatened with death.

Naruto understood that. A cold look flashed through his eyes. He knee-kicked him in the stomach and the man collapsed on the floor clutching with both of his hands at his mid-section.

"You seem to not care about your life...then what about the life of your unborn kid? What about your wife?" Naruto spoke coldly as he left the man and headed towards the pregnant woman.

The blade of his bone knife glinted as he raised it above his head in an exaggerated stabbing motion. The woman shrieked terrified and her husband yelled in horror:

"STOP IT! I'M GIVING THEM TO YOU! I SWEAR!"

Naruto put his hand down but the pregnant woman still fainted. The man looked like he wanted to rush to his wife but the steely glare Naruto sent at him stopped him in his tracks.

"The blueprints?" growled Naruto. He was beginning to lose his patience. If the man hesitated any longer, he was really going to kill him.

The middle-aged man felt the hair all over his body stand up at Naruto's voice and understood in his heart that he could not stall for time any longer. His wife had stealthily called the police so only a few more minutes were needed until the police arrived.

"F-Follow me!" the man said in a fake stutter to appear as though he was terrified.

He limped towards his office with the black-clad Naruto trailing behind him. Behind the desk, there was a large portrait of him and his wife on their wedding day. The man took it down and revealed that in the wall there was a vault. He began then to press various buttons to type the code, but apparently, he was getting it wrong every time he introduced the 8-digit code.

Naruto finally lost his patience. He grabbed the man's head and slammed it into the metallic door of the vault. The man yelled in pain but Naruto was not done.

"You think I don't know you called the cops?"

"You stupid fuck!" he yelled and grabbed the man's wrist.

A howl of agony escaped from the man's throat when his hand was pinned to the wall with the bone knife.

"You have 5 seconds. Open the vault or I'll kill both you and your wife."

The man looked at the masked Naruto with a look of pure terror in his eyes. Despite the excruciating pain he felt from his stabbed through right hand, the man typed the code in less than 2 seconds with his left hand and the door of the vault opened.

Naruto took the blueprints from the vault and then, in a puff of smoke, they disappeared. Then, he wrenched the bone knife from the man's hand and delivered a harsh kick to his jaw knocking him out instantly.

The sirens of the police began to blare from outside but there was no hint of worry in Naruto's eyes. A soft breeze blew in the office out of nowhere and his silhouette vanished, only a few leaves remaining behind him. He appeared on the roof of one of the nearby buildings from which he proceeded to run down across its walls as if the gravity didn't work on him anymore. Soon after, he vanished within the darkness of a side alley.

Scene break

"I see you're getting more vicious with each passing day." a demonic voice came from within Naruto and he could sense the poorly masked glee in it.

"Oh look just who decided to finally talk after 5 whole months! What gives? There's still half a year till my birthday." Naruto remarked sarcastically.

Kyuubi growled.

"Don't forget who are you talking to, fleshbag!"

Naruto spit on the ground and said in disdain:

"Get off your high horses. Right now you're the pathetic one. You think I didn't notice you secretly leeching off on my chakra every night while I sleep?"

Although Naruto couldn't see Kyuubi he instinctively knew that the fox flinched.

"Is this how you show your gratitude for saving your life? The Naruto I knew-"

"Is fucking dead!" Naruto interrupted harshly. "That Naruto died! You were right back then, I can't compare with "your" Naruto. That's because I'll never be as retarded as he was."

"Constantly running after someone who tried to kill him twice, being in love with a flat chested bitch that turned him down every time and abused him daily and then hugging Obito like a brother... the very piece of shit that caused his mother and his father's deaths and brought the Apocalypse upon the Elemental Nations..."

"Indeeeed, how can I compare to him? I'll never be so retarded! Don't like it? Feel free to fuck off."

Naruto said and swore vehemently, leaving Kyuubi without words.

"I know you are not jailed inside me." Naruto said after a period of silence. "There is no seal holding you back. You can always leave my body and go possess some other chap. And it's not like the Uzumaki life force is unique anymore, there are quite a few metahumans nowadays that are even better in this regard."

"You're staying inside my body because you like it. Because it is convenient for you. Because you need me, my chakra." Naruto finished.

Kyuubi, on the other hand, was inwardly growling. This reincarnation of Naruto was too smart for his tastes. This Naruto would be next to impossible to manipulate... But in the end, that wasn't Kyuubi's purpose anymore. His only purpose right now was to become stronger...to get a real body.

For some unknown reason, after he was absorbed into Juubi, Kurama found himself awakening into the body of a baby Mito Uzumaki...in another world. But he was no longer the all-powerful bijuu that could flatten mountains with just a flap of his tails. He was just shell of his former self and his chakra was gathering at a snail's pace. To get back the chakra that he had released in order to save Naruto's life when he was drowning, would take decades if he were to rely only on himself. That's why he had been leeching on Naruto's chakra. Kurama felt ashamed at the condition he was currently in...the former chakra monster was now just a ghost, a parasite that had to rely on a human in order to survive.

"And I'm showing my gratitude to you by letting you live within my body. You've been feeding off on my chakra for 5 months already."

Five months passed since the incident at the bridge and Naruto was no longer the same person. His originally cynical views about life and people became even darker and he no longer had that many moral barriers. He became ruthless and decisive and his eyes were now blazing with one single desire, a desire which was more like an obsession: to murder in the most brutal way possible the killer of his sister: the Joker.

Right now, breaking into Arkham Asylum and killing the Joker with his current power was no longer something impossible. The problem, however, was what came after that: how will he evade Batman? How will he escape from the Justice League?

Naruto was no longer suicidal like before so he had to plan his steps carefully. The first thing he needed, before everything, was to become strong. Strong enough that even when cornered by someone from the Justice League, to be able to at least escape. Therefore, in the months that followed his brush with death, Naruto has trained as though his life depended on it.

One would ask: what could just 5 months worth of training accomplish? A legitimate question...if it weren't for Naruto having awakened all of the memories of his past life. Unlike when he just discovered chakra, this time Naruto had an already paved path before him: he knew HOW to train in order to get powerful.

Even so, Naruto didn't abandon the unconventional method of using chakra that he had created. In his memories, shinobi in Elemental Nations didn't possess a chakra heart and consciously expanding and unlocking the meridians within their bodies was not something that existed even at a conceptual level. Therefore, Naruto combined this current life's training technique and martial arts with the ninjutsu techniques that he remembered from his past life. In no time, Naruto easily learned wall and water walking and the jutsus Henge, Bunshin, Kage Bunshin, Kawarimi and Shunshin were all mastered in less than half a week - these techniques were in Naruto's eyes the most useful things he could possibly learn. Because these were the best in helping him slip away, in making him disappear.

There were many insanely powerful and destructive jutsus that Naruto remembered. However, he refrained from trying to learn any of them because of one simple problem: he didn't know what his chakra affinity was. Sure, there were also some non-elemental techniques like the Rasengan, but Naruto chose not to try starting to learn it yet. The reason? In his past life, Naruto had been a chakra powerhouse. And if that wasn't enough, he had also had the Nine-Tailed Fox sealed within his body. That being said, in his last life Naruto could easily afford to create tens of Rasengans every day. But a normal shinobi couldn't do that – and the current Naruto couldn't make dozens of clones every day; he would have to learn the Rasengan in the old fashioned way...and that would probably take him around a year. A year in each he would have to focus only on learning the technique without training his body or doing anything else. It was a period of time that was not reasonable at all in his eyes.

That being said, Naruto's thoughts shifted to another direction. He was already very proficient with hand to hand combat and weapons thanks to his grandfather's training. Therefore, Naruto thought of one of the most deadly close-ranged fighters that he had ever seen:

Kimimaro Kaguya.

A descendant of the Sage of the Six Paths who could manipulate all the bones in his body at will. Not only could he increase his bones' density to the point where they became more resilient than steel, conferring him a formidable power and toughness, he could also create bones in seconds and use them as weapons. Bone weapons that had no problems even when it came to cutting shurikens or swords in half.

Naruto still shivered at the memory of the terminally ill Kaguya single-handedly killing a few hundred of his clones - clones which were even empowered by Kyuubi's chakra. Naruto remembered that in that fight he had never managed to touch Kimimaro even once despite having hundreds of clones ganging up on him and that if it hadn't been for Rock Lee and Gaara, he would have been killed.

After he recalled that memory, a crazy idea appeared in Naruto's mind. What if he used his chakra to manipulate his body into becoming like that of Kimimaro? Having started to train with chakra before remembering the memories of his past life had been in the end a good thing for Naruto because he was not limited to just what shinobi in the Elemental Nations thought of chakra - Naruto was capable of thinking outside the box, of innovating new ways and methods of using the chakra even more efficiently.

However, altering the structure of his bones proved to easier said than done. Even so, after 5 months of arduous training, Naruto gained a small breakthrough: he could reinforce his bones to the point where his tibia could smash concrete pillars and he even managed to create a dagger by using the ulna bone of his right forearm. The problem he was still facing was that he needed around half an hour to create a new ulna bone and that the process was very painful.

Scene break

Within the backyard of the Monkey King Dojo, Naruto was throwing low kicks at a very thick pole made of steel - after unlocking the main meridian in each of his members and connecting them to his chakra heart, wooden logs were of no use for him. They broke as if they were glass under his powerful hits.

Naruto let a low shout and the muscles of his left leg bulged as his chakra heart pumped madly.

*Bang*

A loud sound similar to that of a heavy hammer hitting an anvil was heard and a dent was left in the steel pole!

Naruto inhaled deeply and his normally cold face was lit up by a satisfied smile. The feeling of getting closer to his target was brilliant. Naruto knew for certain that in that moment if he were to meet again the cyborg metahuman that left him in a critical condition half a year ago in the cage, he would destroy him in less than 5 seconds.

Naruto revelled into the feeling of power.

Power!

Had he had power Misaki wouldn't have died. If he had power no-one could stop him from enacting his revenge. If he was powerful enough he would step on everyone that would stand against him and squash them like ants.

Naruto's blue eyes glowed with a burning ambition. He clenched his fists.

'I will become powerful. Powerful enough that even the Justice League will have to cower in front of me!'

'In my past life, I became almost as powerful as a god. But in the end, I was still weaker and I got killed. In this life, I will become even more powerful! Powerful enough to stand evenly against the gods.'

But Naruto's azure-blue eyes were suddenly tinted with hues of crimson red.

'Powerful enough to merely stand against gods?'

He shook his head resolutely.

'No!'

'I'll become powerful enough to slay them!'

But Naruto was suddenly awoken from his fantasizing when he felt someone's presence creeping into the courtyard of the dojo. His chakra heart made the control over his chakra become so exquisite that his perceptive abilities became not any worse than that of a sensor-nin in his past life.

Naruto picked a throwing dagger from a small pouch attached to his waist and channelled his chakra into it. A blue glow coated the blade of the dagger and Naruto stood patiently waiting for the intruder.

*swish*

A sound of a sharp object splitting the air was heard and the chakra-coated dagger was thrown at an explosive speed bordering that of a bullet.

The intruder barely ducked by a hair's breadth and when he looked behind him he saw the small dagger deeply stabbed into the wall of the building.

"Why are you in my yard sneaking like a thief, Mr. Superhero?" Naruto asked sarcastically.

The intruder's eyes narrowed at his tone but it wasn't an easy thing to make Batman lose his cool.

"Nice place you have here. From what I know you lost this place to buy drugs. Where did you get the money to buy it back? And how did you even convince the owner to sell it back to you?" Batman inquired.

Naruto's face became cold. Another dagger made its way into his hand and he channelled the chakra into its blade again.

"Are you the police? Do you even have any proof of me doing anything illegal?"

"Do you think that just because you're the Batman you're allowed to enter another one's house and start asking questions?"

Batman scowled. For a 16-year-old punk, Naruto sure had a mouth. But if that was enough to start angering Batman, the following words incensed him even more:

"How about you fuck off before I break your spine, Mr. Superhero."

Batman breathed in deeply. He calmed himself down. For all he knew, the boy could intentionally be talking like that to make him slip up and do a mistake.

"Don't think I don't know what you been doing during the past months, Mr. Mercenary." Batman said, using the same manner of speech Naruto did. "Last month, the blueprints of a secret project disappeared from Star Labs when one of their employees was fired. And since it was a secret, bordering illegal project, Star Labs couldn't legally pursue the thief. Therefore, they had to use a different method."

"Coincidentally, last night, the police found that employee and his wife unconscious. The man had signs of physical abuse and a deep knife wound on his hand. Furthermore, the vault in his office was robbed."

Contrary to Batman's expectations, Naruto's face remained unperturbed.

"So? What does that have to do with me? Do I look like I care?"

Batman was more than a little frustrated at the situation. For someone like him it was obvious that Naruto was the new mercenary that had become infamous in Gotham during the last few months, but for all intents and purposes, he truly had no real proof that it was him. Nobody knew that mercenary's face or even how his hair looked like. Every time he was on a job, Naruto wore the traditional ninja attire he had seen in movies, not the fashionable uniforms that shinobi wore in his past life. Naruto thought that a ninja's trademark was stealth. Therefore, when he was on a job, he always dressed in black clothes and a black balaclava covered his head, only exposing his eyes. Because of this, Batman didn't have anything to prove his suspicions – a strand of hair, some fingerprints, nothing!

"Why have you actually come to me?" Naruto asked.

"Work with me." Batman said directly, deciding that a straightforward approach would work better with someone like Naruto.

"Not interested." Naruto said bluntly, without thinking about it even a second.

Batman stood silent for a while.

"I'll pay you."

Naruto frowned.

"I'm not interested in becoming a superhero." Naruto rejected, saying the last word in a mocking tone.

Batman's eyes narrowed in his trademark glare.

"Those superheroes you seem to despise so much are risking their lives every day for ordinary people to be safe."

"So that's what you keep telling yourself, huh? Where were all the superheroes when my grandpa was shot in the head? Don't tell me it was just a thug with a gun that did it. It took a professional assassin to get the job done. Nothing less than that could possibly kill my old man." Naruto shot back.

"And where were all the superheroes when hundreds of people were blown to smithereens by the Joker? Where was the mighty Justice League when my innocent sister died?"

He wasn't shouting. There seemed to be no hint of anger on his face. But the red that tainted the blue of his eye spoke volumes of how great was the rage he felt, how great was his desire for vengeance. And for some reason, that calmness gave Batman a feeling of danger – a man that lets himself driven by his emotions is not that dangerous because his actions are very easy to predict. But the teenager in front of him was a far cry from how he had been half a year ago. He was cold and calculating. Batman could not read him.

Naruto continued:

"You're just a bunch of rich guys with a hero complex and with too much free time on your hands...Not to mention, is this all a game for you?"

"What was that?" Batman asked dangerously and began to step forward.

Naruto continued unperturbed:

"Take the Joker for example. How many times has he broken out of prison already? Three times, four times? Is this all a game to you? Catching the bad guys, them escaping, killing a few hundred innocents and then you catching them again?"

"Is the life of a crazy animal like the Joker more important than that of a few hundred innocents?"

"Answer me!" Naruto demanded, unconsciously letting out the killing intent that he had cultivated through the countless of battles he had fought during both his past and current life.

"No." Batman said eventually.

"Then why haven't you killed him yet?"

Batman didn't answer.

"You like being a hero, huh? But the problem is that for there to be a hero, a villain is needed, right? ...for you, the so-called Justice League to continue playing your game, you need a number of antagonists. Right? That's the only reason I can think of why you don't cut the evil from its roots."

"You, the Batman, need the Joker. He completes you."

When Naruto spoke the last words, Batman had finally had enough. He lunged at Naruto and grabbed him by the neck, trying to throw him to the ground in a judo-like grappling move. But the result made Naruto smirk coldly.

'How is he so heavy?!' Batman barely had the time to ask himself before Naruto grabbed him by the neck only using one hand and slammed him into the ground, hard. It was just like how Nagato's Deva Path chokeslammed Naruto in his past life.

Naruto had not managed to perfectly recreate Kimimaro's kekkei genkai. Instead, he created an original ability which was, truth being told, inferior to that. While Kimimaro's bones didn't have a very different weight compared to that of an average human, Naruto couldn't increase the density of his bones and keep their original weight at the same time. Therefore, while Naruto's bones became just as resilient as steel, their weight increased exponentially. Right now Naruto weighted almost 400 pounds. Although Naruto sacrificed speed and agility for the sake of strength and sturdiness, he didn't get discouraged. His thoughts were clear: if his muscles became strong enough, even despite his enormous weight, he could move just as fast as before.

Batman groaned in pain when he was slammed into the ground but he was not out of the fight yet. Although he was on the ground, Batman was not disadvantaged in the least: he kicked with his heels the back of Naruto's knees and when the boy fell to the ground, Batman jumped up to his feet and grappled the kneeling Naruto from behind. He grabbed Naruto's neck in a triangle lock trying to defeat him by submission.

Despite the precarious position he was currently in, Naruto was not done. The chakra heart in his dantian pumped into the meridian of his right arm and Naruto punched back at Batman's head explosively.

A sound of cracking was head and Bataman's bat mask was shattered into pieces while he was flung backwards as if he were hit by a speeding truck.

Naruto rose up to his feet. But when he turned towards Batman, to his surprise, the dark knight also stood up from the ground. Blood was flowing like a river from Batman's forehead but he didn't back down. The forehead was the toughest part of the human skull yet Naruto's punch cracked it in one hit! Batman understood then what terrifying strength Naruto's seemingly skinny body held.

Although his opponent was bleeding profusely, seeing him standing up made Naruto mutter darkly:

"You don't want to do that."

Those were the words Batman said to Naruto half a year ago when the boy took out a pocket knife against him. Now, Naruto was throwing those words back at him.

Batman didn't reply.

"Have it your way. After beating you half to death I'll also get to see what is your real identity."

Although Batman's face was no longer covered by the mask, it was now obscured by the large amount of blood that flowed from his forehead.

Naruto didn't say any other words. He threw a punch at Batman and then jumped with a roundhouse kick. During these 5 months of training, Naruto has trained his muscles to regain his agility until he moved at the speed of an average human. That, however, was far from being enough against a martial artist of Batman's calibre. He dodged the punch and side-stepped Naruto's roundhouse kick relatively easily.

But Naruto had more than a decade of martial arts training and a past life worth of memories...he was no slouch either. Although he lacked in the speed department, he began to punch at angles that forced Batman to block the punch, not letting him fully dodge it. When he did that though, Naruto was momentarily stunned at Batman's response:

'Countering toughness with softness?!'

It was a principle met in Kung Fu, but something like that was more like a myth, not something that anyone could actually use in a real fight! Yet, in front of his eyes, Batman was doing just that!

Batman was aware that with his terrifying strength, Naruto would destroy him with the next landed hit. Even if he were to directly block Naruto's punch, Batman's forearms would most likely be snapped. Therefore, Batman stance changed. When Naruto punched, he leaned softly to the side, letting his entire body sway from the blocked punch till the point where he was almost thrown off his feet, but still somehow standing. It was a pitiful sight for the eyes but the effects were unquestionable: this way he was dispersing almost half of the force of the blows!

In the split second when Naruto was shocked by the profoundness of his martial arts, Batman stuck lightning fast! Like a venomous snake, his right hand plunged towards Naruto and he stabbed into the pressure point of his biceps with three fingers. Naruto felt his muscles going numb and his arm fell down as if paralyzed.

Not even a second passed before Batman struck again, his steel-like fingers stabbing towards Naruto's other arm. But when he hit Naruto the second time, his body burst into a puff of smoke...blinding Batman for half a second.

All of a sudden, a sharp burst of pain in his back overwhelmed all of Batman's senses. When Naruto's shadow clone burst into smoke, the real Naruto shunshined behind Batman and backstabbed him with a bone knife. The dagger Naruto created from his own ulna bone was so terrifyingly sharp that it pierced through Batman's protective suit as though it was made of cotton not reinforced Kevlar!

If it was the old Naruto from his past life, that Naruto would have right away spammed a dozen shadow clones to deal with Batman. But that was not how a true shinobi acted. The current Naruto calculated each one of his steps, keeping his aces hidden in the sleeve. And when the opportune time came, his actions were swift and deadly.

Batman went still. If he as much as moved a centimetre, the blade of Naruto's bone dagger would cut through his spinal cord...something which would result in his complete paralysis, for life. As Batman thought of these things, Naruto's cold voice rang from behind mockingly:

"I said I would break your spine... Sorry to get your hopes up. It seems that, in the end, I'll have to cut it in half instead."