Chapter One: An Inescapable Misery

I've had it in mind to write this one for a while, and since I have finished my Invader Zim Civil War fic, I decided that now was the time to share this one with all my readers. It's based off of the movie "The Last Samurai", a wonderful, moving motion picture that I highly recommend watching. You don't have to have seen the movie to understand this story however. It stands on it's own as another tale of honor, compassion and courage in the midst of war. I hope you enjoy it. A few of the characters are OCs, and I have once again made myself the main character, only in the form this time of a Civil War artillery officer. I have tried to keep my character from being too "Mary Sue", and attempted to make Lieutenant Drake as real and multifaceted as possible. I do not own Naruto or any of the original characters or places in the Narutoverse. They are the sole property of Masashi Kishimoto and Viz Media. I ask humbly that you please review. I love hearing from my readers.

Entry One

I will try to relate the events of my life as accurately as possible. The people I speak of, I present them as they were to me, as the strong, compassionate, people who fought with everything they had to protect what little they had. It is said that Konahameru was created when the old gods formed the lands from the elements that made up the universe. Wind, water, and fire. Generations of warfare shaped the borders and the kingdoms. I believe that it was people who created Konaha, brave fearless people who called themselves ninja, people who were willing to die for their way of life.

My part in the story began after the war in which I did my part for nearly five long years. What makes a warrior? I always defined it as a duty, a job with pay for services rendered. When I had stood side by side with my comrades at Corinth and Lookout Mountain , dueling with an enemy who returned shell for shell, canister for canister, I had little time to think about glory or honor, not that there was any to be found, just the repeated orders issuing from my lips dogmatically, telling the men when to load, advance a round, elevate or depress the barrels, fire. Fortunately, every war must have an end, and unfortunately, every war must have a side who is defeated, and I had the displeasure of being on that side. So, the war at an end, my career as a lieutenant of artillery at an end, and after the horrors I had seen and done my part to cause, wishing often my life to be at an end, I found myself unemployed.

Eventually, work came my way in the form of a contract with a small troop of actors, giving demonstrations for a paying crowd of those who were either too young, too old, or for whatever reason unable to fight in the war. My part was to command the two small cannon, for which I was paid enough to live on, a substantial part of my diet being whiskey when the memories of my guns tearing holes in men who left wives and children to mourn became too much for my mind to bear. At night, I would often lie awake, and in my mind, the screams and moans of the dying reverberating in my memory, the destruction of the battlefield, the infernal acts I had been paid to perform against my fellow man haunted me like an angel of the pit.

May of that year brought an unexpected visitor to my room after a performance. Sergeant Hodges, the stocky, bearded, always duty bound sergeant who had served under me in the battery came to deliver a message, and an employment opportunity. It was a message from Phillip Clarke, The Major who had commanded my battery during a few particular battles…the major who ordered us to bombard that small town full of civilians and rake a defeated, retreating foe with double-canister…the officer who after the war, returned to the Union army to keep both his rank and the gentlemanly honor he had loved so much. The man, I wanted nothing to do with. The job I would look into.

And so we all met, at a restaurant in Richmond. Upon entering with Hodges, I found the table where was seated the men who desired my company. I gave a cold nod of greeting to Major Clarke. I was no longer a soldier nor an officer, and I would not salute him even if I were. Seated also at the table, I noticed two men, who were certainly foreigners, and deduced that this must have something to do with the offer.

"Welcome." Clarke said warmly. "Sit, sit. This is Mr. Akuma and Mr…I still can't pronounce it. They are from the land of Konahameru." I stayed standing, hoping they would get to the point.

"Never heard of it." I said, taking a shotglass of bourbon from a waiter's tray and drinking it down.

"Ah, yes…" Clarke replied. "Not many have. They're quite mysterious, and their hidden land has until now remained so." I sat the shotglass onto the table.

"Uh-huh…" I answered.

"Well," Clarke explained. "Konahameru has a new leader, the um…hokage, Danzo." I nodded. Clarke glanced toward Akuma, a large-bodied man wearing a strange headband with a silver plate on the front bearing a leaf-like symbol. "Hogage Danzo has decided to make konahameru a more…civilized nation, and open trade with other countries." I signaled the waiter to bring me more bourbon. He approached with another shot, and I drank it thirstily. "Unfortunately, this progress toward civilization has been hindered by rebels who cling to the old ways, and have made war against the Hokage and his nation." I now understood the purpose of this meeting. The major continued. "Danzo has decided to hire experienced soldiers from our country to train his new, modern army to combat the rebels. He has requested a numerous amount of artillery officers to train the men of Konahameru in the use of cannons, which he says will be the only way to combat the ninja."

"Ninja…" I asked, semi-interested.

"Your word would be…warriors." Mr. Akuma said.

"Lieutenant Drake here knows more about war than he looks. He is one of the best artillery officers the Confederate army had." I flashed the major an ill look.

"Well thank you for the offer, but I already have employment." I said.

"We will pay you the equivalent of one hundred and fifty American dollars a month for your assistance." Akuma stated. I mused over it a moment.

"Two hundred." I said. "For both me and my sergeant here. And…four hundred more each when we're finished with your war." The two foreigners glowered at me. "You wanted the best artillery officers you could find." I boasted cynically.

"Done." Akuma replied. I walked out of the dining part of the restaurant and leaned against a pillar, sighing at the direction my life had taken. Major Clarke spoke from behind me.

"So, you've decided to participate?" He asked. I turned and looked into the eyes of the man I resented above any other.

"You want me to blow up these ninja, I will. I'm a paid soldier. For 200 dollars, I'll kill them all myself. I'd kill Yankees, civilians, ninja…but you…" I pointed at him. "I would kill you and not ask a penny for it." He nodded unemotionally. "When do we leave?"

Entry Two

Standing on the deck of the odd little steamer, the Taka Orochi, I marveled at the solitude of the sea. I also marveled at the great irony that I would once again be ordering the largest and deadliest of all of man's creations of war to kill more men…an artillery officer…I felt as if it were my fate, my lot in life. Like a horse that could have ran in races or been used to gallop through the woods in hunts, but instead was broken only to pull the plow. This was my fate. I was the horse. War was the plow, and I could never free myself of the bit. Then, we reached our destination, and out of the morning fog broke the jagged outline of a coast.

The port reminded me of all the sketches I had seen of exotic far-off ports, the old world meeting the new. But is there really an "old" or a "new" world? We're all the same animal everywhere after all. I watched carefully as the stewards unloaded my oak trunk, the only effects I brought with me. My baggage was dwarfed by the crates, trunks and barrels brought by the major, as well as the four three inch bore ordnance guns and two mountain howitzers, whose massive barrels were being unloaded by cranes. The three of us departed the vessel that had been our home for so many weeks, and walked along the dock.

The people here, like the place, seemed to be a paradoxical blend of old and new. I saw men and women wearing odd black cloth sandal-boots and oriental-style clothing, but also commoners bustling about in the newest fashions from New York and Paris. So I gathered. I myself have never been one for fashion, even in an age of proper dress, and so clad in tall black cavalry boots, grey wool pants, a wrinkled off-white shirt and fringed buckskin jacket, notwithstanding my carrying my bowie-knife and 1858 Remington .44, and with my black hair past my shoulders, I fit in as well here as I usually did back home. Some things never change…

"Ah yes, hello. You must be the officers brought here to train the army, correct?" A voice asked quickly. I turned to see a man in a wrinkled suit staring at us eagerly."

"Yes." Major Clarke replied. "I am Major Phillip Clarke of the Unites States Army. This is Lieutenant Drake and First Sergeant Hodges. And you are…"

"Oh…yes…" The strange, chipper man said. "My name is Christian, Arthur Christian." He said it like a question, as if we were supposed to know of him. "I will act as a sort of middleman, you see. I have been here for months now, came over shortly after the Lord Hokage first began bringing in foreign advisers and such. In fact, I have been instructed to take you to the Hokage as soon as possible, so…yes, let's show you to your rooms and you may dress for the occasion." My first impression of Mr. Christian is the same one I get of all Christians…he talked too much, thinking words were an acceptable substitute for brilliance. Other than that, he seemed friendly enough.

In my room near the Hokage's palace…whatever they called it, I opened my trunk to dress for meeting this Danzo man. Inside the wooden box were several outfits, uniforms and clothing I had packed for this expedition. I smiled sardonically as I pulled up the blue frock-coat trimmed in red. I laid it back into the trunk, and drew out my gray frock, which I hadn't worn in years. As I looked on it, I remembered in vivid detail Chickamauga. Damned Bragg…the dead and those screaming for death. It had been bloody…costly…too costly. Thank God for Forrest…and for Slocomb and the Washington Artillery or it would've been worse. Damn it all…

Finally dressed in the uniform of a Confederate artillery lieutenant, I checked myself in the mirror, not out of vanity, but to make sure that when I met this Hokage, my appearance wouldn't offend my employer. I tugged the wrinkles out of my grey frock coat, and adjusted the red collar with the two gold bars of a lieutenant. I fastened my officer's belt around the coat, and made sure the saber was where it should be. I finished by brushing back my hair, and putting on my old black wide-brimmed hat with the crossed cannon emblem and red cord of an enlisted man, remembering how many battles this nonregulation, beaten up slouch hat had been through on my head. I sighed and stepped out of my room, ready to meet this Hokage.