What's up everybody, thesaiyanjedi here with my next story, and here, at long last, is the anticipated sequel to "Shinachiku's First Adventure."
I know a lot of my followers have been waiting for this, and I feel like I have had enough time to distance myself from SFA that I can get into this now. What I can say, right up front, is that I do not expect this sequel to go on for as long as SFA ultimately did, which was fifty-one chapters that took me nearly two years straight to complete. Nevertheless, that does not mean that there will not be ambition to this story and big stakes, so just stay alert, because things are going to be quite different this time around.
Also, I am not able to promise how often you will be seeing updates to this story. I will stay active and get the chapters out as early as I can, but as we all know, life intervenes and things come up that get in the way. After all, writing fanfiction is meant to be a hobby, not a job.
One more thing, for those of you who have not read it yet, I encourage you to first take a look at the series I have just finished called "Konoha Tonight." It serves as a sort-of prequel to the events of this story, and will give you hints on a lot of the elements that we will see play out in this narrative.
Oh, wait, I also need to say that there is some graphic violence in this initial chapter, particularly in the description of one character's unfortunate fate near the end. Reader discretion is advised.
So, with all of that said, lets get to reading!
Chapter 1: Prologue
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
The train roared at peak speed down the tracks. Big, long, heavy, powered by steam made by burning coal. The lumbering metal beast clanged and rattled down the steel beams on their wooden supports at a lumbering 125 miles per hour. It was an invention dreamed up by a team of geniuses, pioneers, men of industry and vision that wanted to revitalize trade and transportation for the entire ninja world, and those men saw their opportunity to do so, ironically, with the rise of a terrorist organization.
Ever since the secret society known as Taka was forcefully brought out to the shadows last year, things haven't been the same. New alliances, a Shinobi Union, magical chakra gems, village elders turning into giant glowing monsters of godlike energy... How could one single, fateful day change the entire world so completely?
But alas, the world was truly different. And it was never going to go back. There was a bright side to all of that though, such as this train. Out of the near destruction of the Hidden Leaf Village came a reconstruction effort of truly epic proportions. A railroad system linking all five of the great nations together, elevated trains and subways, and most outrageous of all, a helium powered machine that can propel itself through the air, allowing the common man to fly above the ground like birds do and look down upon the earth like gods.
Of course, none of those things were on the minds of the passengers on board the train. These men, women and children were only concerned with completing their long and fast, but comfortable, journey from Konohagakure to the railroad station in Kirigakure.
"More tea please?" one of the gentlemen on the train said to one of the woman pushing the food cart.
"Certainly sir," the woman said. "What is your flavor?"
"Jasmine please."
The woman poured a fresh cup of tea and handed it to her customer before continuing down the line to take other customer's orders.
"Sir?" the woman called to a man sitting in a cabin all by himself. "Would you like something from the food cart?"
The man said nothing. He was leaned back against the wall of the train, not moving a muscle nor making a sound. He had a hood up so the woman could not get a clear view of his face. All she could use to describe him was his style of dress, which was very strange. His outfit was almost entirely white, consisting of a white sweatshirt, white pants, and a hooded white cloak that hid his face. Even his boots were white with gold trimming. There were also some threads of gold running along the seams of his outfit, and a silver belt that had a buckle in a strange six-sided diamond symbol of cut into six sections of different colors—red, green, blue, yellow, pink, and black—and within that shape was another six-sided diamond colored white, and with that was a very small, four-sided diamond colored gold.
"Sir?" the woman tried to speak to him again. Reasoning that the man had to be asleep, she decided to move along after she heard another passenger call for a bag of potato chips.
But, as soon as the woman was gone, the mysterious man reached into his pocket and pulled out a cellular phone. Dialing a number, he waited until the dial tone was done before he heard the static on the other line, knowing that his allies had to be on the line by now.
He spoke. "This is White, everyone report in."
Another voice came on the line. "This is Black, standing by."
And another. "This is Pink, standing by."
And another. "This is Yellow, standing by."
And another. "This is Blue, standing by."
And another. "This is Green, standing by."
And then the final voice. "This is Red, standing by."
"Read and Green," White spoke into his phone, "are both of you in position?"
"We are Master," Red answered.
"Good," White commended. "Now then, are all sides clear on the extraction plan?" White asked.
"Yes," Each of the six colors said at once.
"Do you really think that this will succeed in getting their attention?" Yellow asked.
"Yellow," Black groaned, "we discussed this. This will ruffle the feathers of the mob, Taka, and the Union alike. It will start the fire of change that the Master has promised for all of us."
"I just hope that we can get this over with quickly," Pink complained. "I did have other plans for tonight, you know."
"Save them for another time," Green said sternly. "We all have a job to do."
"Stand down Green," Red protested. "Remember, the Master has given me second in command."
"Don't remind me..."
"Calm yourselves you two," White ordered them both. "We do not need any more unnecessary complications right now. Keep your sibling rivalry to yourselves."
"...Hai Master," Both Red and Green said in unison.
"Alright, everybody get into position, its time."
At White's command, the conference call shut off. The mysterious man referring to himself as 'White' stood up and grabbed something that he had resting beside him. It was a mask, a ghoulish looking white mask. Putting it on, he stepped out of his private booth and proceeded to walk down the aisle way while the train was still in motion. Some of the other passengers found the hooded man clothed in white a bizarre distraction, but a lot of them thought little of it. After all, shinobi from all across the Union traveled by train as often as civilians did, and they usually preferred to wear hooded cloaks.
...What did make a number of them nervous was when some of them got a sight of the man's white mask.
The woman from earlier was currently in the middle of the aisle, in the stranger's direct path. She was finishing serving another customer when she noticed a familiar presence standing behind her.
"Oh, hello sir did you change your mind about—AH!"
The man in white grabbed the woman by the arm and flung her all the way down the aisle. She collided hard with one of the passenger's chairs, fracturing her arm severely.
"HEY!"
A Leaf ninja traveling on board stood up and immediately charged at the assailant. The ninja's taijutsu was impressive, especially given his severely limited space for fighting. Nevertheless, the masked man barely needed to exert any effort to bring the ninja to his knees.
"Weak." The man in white broke the ninja's hand in the fainted of motions.
"AAHHHH!"
The ninja screamed in agony, but nevertheless tried to fight with his remaining limbs. But every single one of them was broken, and nearly ripped apart by the masked stranger, leaving the Leaf ninja a shriveled mess.
"Does anyone else want to follow this one's example?"
The man in white spoke his question to everyone else in the train car, all of whom were staring in terror at the man's monster strength. None of them could find the courage to say anything.
"Didn't think so." With a whoosh of his cloak, the man in white opened the door to the next car and started walking down another aisle way, further and further to his destination.
"SHADOW POSSESSION JUTSU!"
A black mass suddenly came out and took hold of the masked man, holding him in place. It turned out a distant, minor member of the Nara clan was aboard the train and, under orders from the lead shinobi guarding the train's valued cargo, used his clan's signature jutsu to hold the assailant in place until backup arrived.
"AH!"
The door to the far end of the car opened up and in stormed a small squad of heavily armed, rather thuggish-looking ninja. With a sign from their captain, the Nara clan member moved his arms to force the assailant down to his knees. The Nara ninja did not hold back on how he tightened the binds on the masked man either, a sick, sadistic side of himself coming through.
As the passengers in the train car were all looking on in fascination, the leader of the ninja squad stood before the masked man. As he did so, one of his men snapped a pair of handcuffs to tie the stranger's arms behind his back.
"Get the passengers into one of the other cars," the squad leader ordered his men. While it was a bit difficult to properly motivate the passengers at first, they ultimately did succeed in transferring them into one of the now overly stuffed train cars. The squad leader now stood over the mystery man with a cocky, arrogant smile.
"Well, well, well," he said. "Seems like you've been causing quite a ruckus on this train, haven't you Whitie?"
The stranger said nothing.
Something snapped in the squad leader's already very short temper. He slapped the stranger straight across the face. Of course, all that did was seriously hurt several bones in his hand.
"OW!" The squad leader yelled as he held his hand. He then pulled out a kunai and pointed it directly at the stranger's masked face. "Tell me who you are?! What do you think you're doing here?! Why do you wear that stupid mask?!"
The stranger still said nothing, which only got the squad leader more fumed. "Talk! Now! Or this blade goes through your skull before your body goes under the tracks?!"
"Heh..." The soft, almost inaudible laughter came from the stranger himself.
"You think this is funny, freak?" the squad leader protested.
"I do," the man in white said. "I find it amusing that an inferior specimen like yourself has the redundant thinking to stab a man in the face before throwing him under a train."
"Who are you?"
"I am your superior."
The squad leader cocked his eyebrow in confusion and looked to his teammates before turning back to his captive and snickered.
"Heh. I think you've got things ass-backwards bub. I'm the leader of my own ninja squad and you're just some nut in a white mask and a cloak."
"You misunderstand," the stranger said. "I am not your superior in rank."
"What then?"
"...Everything."
There was something about the stranger's tone, something that cut right to the squad leader's core. Something that pierced his very soul. For a man who was so full of bravado just a second ago, it took all of the will he had to recklessly rip that damned mask off of the stranger's face.
"GASP!"
It was a face that the ninja and the passengers alike had never seen before, and yet a face that they all knew so well...or rather two. It was a young man, say in his early-to-late twenties. The young man was in physically superior condition, with a handsome and comforting bone structure. His hair was black with blonde tips and bangs hanging over one of his eyes, which were blue with mesmerizing onyx pupils. On each of his cheeks were three distinctive markings similar to the whiskers on a fox.
"You...You're..."
The stranger smiled at the squad leader's incredulous reaction. "No, I am neither the one you call Hokage or the one you call Uchiha. And yet I am also both of them. Which means, of course, that I am their better."
"W-Who are you...?"
"My name is Sugure Mashita. And you may consider me the harbinger of the new age." The man narrowed his eyes. "A far better messenger than those deranged zealots you are smuggling $68 billion ryo in the cargo car for that is."
The squad leader was shocked. "Y-You don't know what you're talking about!"
Sugure rolled his eyes, "Of course I don't. 'Hail Taka' indeed."
The ninja drew his blade again and pointed it directly at his throat. "Shut up! I ain't no Taka spy! I ain't never took a dirty ryo on my life!"
"Not today, maybe."
The squad leader, now sweating buckets off of his forehead, had finally had enough of this. One way or another, this freak was going to die now.
"Well congratulations freak! You managed to cause a small ruckus and then got yourself caught. Hope you're proud of yourself."
"I will be," Sugure said, before his smiled again. "After my plan is finished."
A cold shiver went through the spines of every ninja in the train cart save for their prisoner. The squad leader, again, dared to ask. "W-What plan?"
"Wrecking this train..."
BOOM!
The train came to a sudden halt, throwing most of the passengers and crew down to the ground and even causing a few injuries. The jolt was enough to even force the Nara clan member to loose his control of his Shadow Possession Jutsu.
"...With no survivors!"
Sugure was free. The first move the mystery man made was to kick the squad leader super hard, so hard that he literally flew through a solid metal door into the next train car filled with screaming passengers. That kick was delivered with the same ease as a basic taijutsu move, no concentration of chakra to amplify the stranger's own strength whatsoever. Whatever the man in white's monster strength was, it was all him...
After that Sugure started fighting all of the remaining members of the ninja squad.
"SHADOW CLONE JUTSU!"
Sugure created four additional copies of himself, all of whom took on three ninja a piece. They murdered all of those men...by punching through their bodies and crushing their heart's in their hands!
Another wave of ninja came into the same car, not even waiting for orders to begin their attack.
"SHARINGAN!"
The fabled dojutsu of the Uchiha clan was activated by the original Sugure and all four of his copies. Once the men made eye contact with the tomoe swirling in the man's blue eyes, they all became trapped in a genjutsu and found themselves unable to move...
...Which left them wide open for attack when the side of the train car literally got pulled open, sending sheets of metal flying out onto the plains as two men dressed in similar garb and robes to Sugure, one in red and the other in green, leaped in through the open hole in the train.
"LIGHTNING BLADE!"
Both of the masked assassins used their alike jutsu to electrocute the entire ninja squad to death in a horrifically gruesome manner. Now the two of them were all alone with their leader.
"Master," the man in red bowed.
"Master," the man in green did the same.
"Geki, Burai, well done so far you two."
The two men each took off their red and green masks, revealing that the two of them were, in fact, identical twin brothers. Both of them were only slightly younger in age than Sugure was, and they both had silver hair with black eyes, and narrow jaw lines that complimented a pair of handsome young faces, except that the one in green, Burai, had a vertical scar running down his right eye.
"Where are the others?" Sugure questioned.
The brother in red, Geki, answered for the two of them. "Dan is outside holding the train in position just as you ordered master. Goushi, Boi and Mei are all onboard the train purging this world of the rest of these lesser beings."
"Well done."
"This would have gone much quicker if I had been co-leading this mission," Burai cursed.
"But you are not," Sugure stated. "Your brother is my number one and you are my number two, and for good reason...Or have you forgotten that fact already?"
Burai turned his head to the left to face his scar away from his leader. "No master."
"Good. Now lets get what we came for and get out of here."
As the three men went through the train, car by car, they used their superhuman strength and colorful mixes of jutsu to slaughter any and all that were unfortunate enough to bare witness to their presence, or were foolish enough to try and challenge them.
Throughout the rest of the train, three other hijackers in multicolored robes, clothes and masks—a man dressed in black, a woman dressed in pink, and a teenager dressed in yellow—went through the train massacring everyone they came across. Men, women, children, it did not matter. None of these people were worthy of survival. Orders were orders. No witnesses.
"Mei! Boi!" The man in black called out to his two teammates. "You two keep at this. I'm going for the conductor."
"Hai Goushi!" The woman in pink and the boy in yellow said as one.
While the two of them continued their killing spree, the one called Goushi did as he promised, making his way to the front of the train, punching in the door and staring down the conductor.
"Please don't hurt anyone else! Take me instead! I'll give you Anyt—AAGGHH!
Goushi grabbed the conductor by his throat and held him up in the air, He then removed his own mask, revealing a face of very fair skin with dark brown hair tied in a ponytail. His eyes were pupiless, with a slight tint of lavender in them. They were the eyes of the Byakugan, and they would be the last eyes this poor man would see before he died.
"Your proposal is acceptable."
CRUSH!
The conductor's body fell to the floor with a thud, lifeless. Goushi then coldly walked over to the controls and pulled all the levers he needed to in order to stop the train. It wasn't going anywhere anymore.
After his job was done, Goushi stepped out of the front of the train and bore witness to his teammates handiwork. Dozens of passengers, crew and shinobi alike were all dead, blood splattered everywhere. It was a massacre, one carried out with cold, ruthless precision.
"Good work you two," Goushi said, "Now lets get back to the brothers and the master."
The other two of them nodded and as they walked with their teammate, they both removed their own masks.
The woman in pink had fair skin and pale white eyes, again with a tint of lavender, the Byakugan. Her hair was long and pale blonde, with a single pink streak. Her overall demeanor was very stylish and cute, with a healthy and fit woman's physic. If there was any possible flaw to be found in her appearance, it would have to be the presence of her large, prominent forehead.
As for the boy in yellow, he had short, tufty blue hair with pupiless dark eyes. As the youngest member of his team, he was naturally the shortest in height. But perhaps his most curious feature were his pointed, jagged teeth, almost like a shark's.
Making their way through the horror show that was once the train, the three of them managed to overlook that there was still one remaining survivor, a little girl, now orphaned, too traumatized to make a sound or do anything else but curl up in her hiding place.
Finally making it to the cargo hold, the three of them caught up with their two teammates and their master. They were in the final car on the train, the cargo car, and they found that there was still one last shinobi on board with them...the squad leader that had questioned Sugure earlier.
"You think you freaks are gonna get away with this!" He yelled. "You have any idea who you're stealing from?! You freaks are dead, you hear me?! DEAD!"
"We know exactly who we're stealing from fool," Burai stated.
"That large crate behind you contains 68 billion ryo, all of which is being laundered to the remaining leaders of Taka," Goushi outlined.
"Including a certain Sand Village elder who's about to go on trail, if I'm not mistaken," Geki remarked.
Sugure himself stepped forward. "Step aside now, and let us take what we need."
The squad leader pulled out a tantō sword and held it towards his enemies. "I'd rather die than surrender to you!"
"So be it..."
Something changed in Sugure then. No, not changed, transformed. His cerulean eyes, still filled with the tomoe of the Sharingan, also took on a vertical pupil running down the center of each of them. The color of the eyes themselves changed from blue to red, and a strange, yet terrifyingly familiar, red aura started bubbling around Sugure's form. The whisker marks on his face became more pronounced, and his teeth became more fanglike. Even his fingernails grew longer from the transformation.
The terrified ninja dropped his weapon, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. Only one person in the world was supposed to have this kind of power, and that man was sitting at his desk lording over Konoha right now.
The ninja was unable to scream because the transformed man in white had him trapped in his still active Sharingan. He grabbed the ninja by both sides of the head, grinding his fingernails into his skin for a solid grip.
"You have served your masters well ninja. Consider yourself...relieved of duty."
Knowing that this was the end, the ninja could only do one thing before his end came. He smiled and quietly uttered two words. "Hail Taka..."
With a disgusting sound, the man called Sugure ripped apart his captive's skull with his bare hands! Blood splattered everywhere, and the man's brain sloppily bounced as it landed on the floor of train car. With a thud, the now dead Taka spy's corpse was dropped to the floor.
Sugure spoke to his fellow murderers and he pointed to the crate. "Bring it."
Goushi and Boi both lifted the heavy wooden crate all by themselves. Meanwhile, Geki and Burai both went to the far end of the train and ripped the back metal wall apart with their own bare hands, much like they had done before.
When their escape route was opened, the light shined in and they could see their final teammate was still outside doing his job. He was disguised just as they all were, except his color of choice was blue. He was holding the train in place with a giant pair of hands made entirely out of sand.
"About time you guys finished up. It was getting boring out here."
Goushi rolled his eyes. "The joke's on you Dan. I killed the conductor and shut the whole train down already. You don't need to hold it in place anymore."
The man in blue sweat dropped in embarrassment. "I-I knew that."
The man called Dan's sand hands let go of the train and dissipated back into a small gourd he kept at his side. He then took off his own mask, revealing the face of a tall, dark skinned young man with short, spiky auburn hair. His eyes were pale blue-green with tanuki-like black eye rings surrounding them. He also had a small, thin auburn mustache growing underneath his nose.
"Here, catch."
Goushi and Boi tossed the create of money towards Dan, who instantly reformed his giant sand hands to catch their prize. With that, the rest of the group stepped out of the train and joined their teammate's side.
"What now master?" the youngest of the group asked of their leader.
"Destroy this worthless hunk of steel. We have the money now to pay for what we need. Our work here is done."
Under Sugure's command, Dan's sand hands crushed the remains of the train and tore it into pieces. The little girl inside, the sole survivor, knew that she needed to get out now or she was surely going to die with her family. And so, she found one of the earlier openings that those monsters in the colorful robes tore open in the train and jumped out of it, bruising herself as she fell out and onto the ground, tumbling away. She took shelter under a giant piece of metal, out of sight of those monsters.
In the distance, she could see the seven of them walking away, with a single box being carried with them by a pair of giant hands made of sand.
The girl did not know how long she stayed hidden there, out of sight, unable to make any noise or speak a single syllable. All she could hear were rapidly approaching swooshing sounds and the noise of feet rapidly running across the plains as shapes that resembled Leaf ninja were in the far distance, running in her direction...
Well, there you go, the first chapter of "Shinachiku's Next Adventure" is in the can!
I'm sure some of you might be surprised that this first chapter feels shorter than some of my other work, and that neither Naruto, Sakura, Sasuke, or even our title character himself, Shinachiku, are anywhere to be found in this first chapter. But the reason for that is very simple. This chapter exists for a singular purpose: to introduce and establish the threat of our new villain.
My main inspirations for this chapter were the opening prologue scenes of both "The Dark Knight" and "The Dark Knight Rises", although I think the latter film ended up taking the dominant influence by the end. I wanted a scene separated from our main heroes where we got to see our villain and his team carrying out a plan to get something they wanted, for reasons we do not yet know. Also, to make it clear from whom they are stealing from that these characters are not members of the Taka organization that I introduced in SFA. The setting of the scene on a train was inspired by how Bane was introduced on a moving plane in Nolan's final Batman film, even with some similar dialogue. The idea of our main villain and his team all wearing masks and colorful uniforms, however, as well as the twist of who they are daring to steal money from, owes more to the Joker and his gang robbing the bank at the start of "The Dark Knight", minus the infamous angle where all of Joker's men are duped into killing each other for a bigger cut of the loot.
As for our villain himself, his name is Sugure Mashita. I actually introduced him back in the very last scene of the final chapter of SFA. His origins have ties to Orochimaru, and he might have been created with a more specific purpose that he is not necessarily following now. His name is a splitting up of suguremachista, which is the Japanese word for "superior."
You may have noticed from the way I described his appearance that he sounds awfully familiar. I'm not going to spill it all out here, but consider Sugure's physical features, and the abilities he is displaying here, and you can probably figure out what he is and what is going on. I will admit this much however, one of my main influences for creating this character came from Star Trek, namely our favorite 90s superhuman dictator, Khan Noonian Singh. Yes, "KHAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNN!"
As for the rest of Sugure's team, you probably noticed the widely broad color palate of the uniforms they were all wearing. This is a tribute to a childhood passion of mine...Power Rangers! The colors they wear are red, black, blue, yellow, pink, and green, with Sugure himself in white. The names of each member of Sugure's team are directly taken from Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger, the sixteenth installment of Super Sentai, and the one that the first season of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers was based on. Obviously, I chose then Japanese names instead of the American names to make it fit in with the Naruto universe better.
I think that's all I've got for right now. I hope you all enjoyed this first chapter, and I hope I've got you all hooked for the next one.
Until next time, see ya!