I don't own Naruto. No one else posting on FF.N does either.
Chapter 3
Naruto's head pounded as he struggled to make out even a few more words of the paperwork he held in front of him. "Right," he spoke to himself, "this is definitely about a Kazama Arashi. But, is it Makoto and Haruka's, or someone else's?" He sucked his cheek for a moment, and concentrated on the first Naruto clone, who'd been wandering the aisles as foreman.
"Yeah, boss?" The first clone jumped into view. "What's up?" He scratched his ear lazily, with a half grin that his more independent ones always seemed to take.
"What's going on? How's Kakashi-sensei's paperwork coming? Did any of us find anything else yet?" Both Narutos looked around the room, where just over two dozen clones now were working in a discordant tandem no one else would ever fit into. Naruto had to create a few more when, after actually reading some of the paperwork he was trying to organize, he realized he needed two clones on "Dictionary Duty" just to figure out where to sort it all. After that came another clone who was perched on an oversized "Rules and Regulations, BIRCH branch, Konoha v.2.0.4 (d)" tome that took five Narutos to lift off the floor, where it'd been serving as a table for six boxes of what seemed like tax receipts to every civilian whose name contained an "a". It served as a code breaker. Otherwise, they'd never be able to figure out the difference between form 875-d(b), which showed the annual profit that a shinobi made from working in a civilian business, and form 876-b(d), which showed how much civilians could get reimbursed for collateral damage in major shinobi battles.
The foreman seemed to bite his lip. "Well, we're workin' through the paperwork cluttered at the front desk. Kurenai's handwriting sucks, by the way, and all the other teams get more cash than us. Back here," the clone continued with a jerk of the head towards the clones, "we're still organizing this crap. God knows how - or even if - they ever get any actual work done around here." The foreman scowled in irritation. "Anyway, we're sorting out the papers, but most of them are junk papers like grocery receipts or thirty year old take-out menus, civilian reports compainin' about noisy shinobi fights or broken roof tiles, or completely classified papers from the Hokage's office, but there was only one shelf of 'em and they're censored as hell."
"...wait, 'noisy shinobi fights'? Isn't that a complete oxymoron?" The foreman looked at him expectantly.
"You tell me, boss. How noisy are your fights?" The clone smirked at him, and Naruto resisted the urge to poof him out of existance and create a new one that wasn't as cocky.
"Point taken."
Naruto looked down at the papers he'd been concentrating on making out. It was a standard form that he was currently processing at the front desk, used for every genin team when they did anything below a C-rank mission. It had blanks for the task, the difficulty of it and why (or why not), and room for commentary by the instructor about the job, the client, and observations about his students. This particular form was used for civic duty D-missions, which were usually things like cleaning up all the trash in Konoha's parks or manually stocking fish in the rivers.
While the names of the students were still indicsernable, he could make out a few comments about the job, written in Arashi's hasty script. "Too damn easy for us" and "why the hell are you giving me this crap" were underlined, and "bet you never made Tsunade clean out dumpsters" was scrolled along the side of the paper, creeping across the corner and connected with an arrow. His head ached, but he swore he head that name somewhere before.
As he twisted the paper, trying to tell if those sentences really read "put the brat in the dumpster" and "-ito's hair got caught in the garbage disposal", he saw a small indentation at the top of the paper slightly shadowed in the light. He ran his fingers over it, feeling the bumps and ridges that normally came with a seal. A thought came to his mind, an then an unfamiliar flash of guilt. He turned around on his heel, marching towards the shelves.
"You!" he barked towards a clone with slumped shoulders and a guilty expression. "Yeah, I felt that. Put that book back!"
"But, boss!" the clone pleaded, looking forward with puppy-dog eyes that usually did the trick with Iruka, "This box is full of 'em, and this sign says that they're free!"
Naruto walked over and took the book with one hand, noting how the clone cringed. He really hoped that the clones didn't represent parts of his personality, because this one really got on his nerves. He glanced at the cover - "Royal Proclamations of the Fire Lord." Below that in smaller print was "Collected Rules and Laws of the Fire Kingdom" and near the bottom, in green ink that was supposed to blend in with the cloth cover was "Konohagakure for Dummies." Naruto raised an eyebrow at his clone.
The clone shrugged. "Hey, it's free. It doesn't matter what it's about." He flipped the box's lid over so the original could read it. In large block letters, written with dark black ink cracking from the age, the lid read "Please take one." Naruto picked a small post it note off the side of the box, where it'd been wedged halfway between the handle and the lid. The writing was incredibly sloppy, and very familiar. He held the mission report statement up to the post it note. The style - if holding a pen in your mouth and shaking the table could be called a style - was exactly the same.
He held the note high up to the light to make out the faint pencil markings. "According to ...vlc-167 of the Hokage/Daimyo accord ...dated twenty ...penguin monkey cabaret..." He paused. "What the hell?"
A studious clone to the right, who'd been nose deep in the largest scroll he'd ever seen, came over, plucked the note from Naruto's hand, and held his fingers to his nose as if he was adjusting his glasses. Naruto almost had a name for this clone too, but it wasn't a very polite one. "According to section Qu, paragraph vlc-167 of the Hokage/Daimyo accord of the First, all those who are born and raised with the blood," he started, flipping over the note and turning it sideways, "of Fire in their veins will be considered to be bound by the laws of the Fire Lord, so long as such knowledge is granted upon them." The clone handed the note back briskly. "It's an excerpt. From that book, I presume. It means," he said in a haughty tone that Naruto growled at, "that the Hokage agreed that the citizens of Konohagakure are still citizens of the Fire Kingdom." The mild mannered clone and the Original Naruto stood pondering for a moment.
"So," the other clone started, "this means that...uh...something about the Fire Lord bossing us around?" He rubbed the back of his head.
"I doubt he could ever boss us around, but there are benefits we could reap. The Shinobi of the Leaf might be soldiers in the village, and mercenaries for the Fire Lord at his commission and beckon, but still citizens under his rule." He pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose again, as if seeking some external patience. "Only so long as shinobi know about it." He glanced around. "This could be a strong advantage. I would advise us to read this," The snobbish Naruto intoned. He glanced pointedly at the book still in Naruto's hand, and then gave the note back to the meek clone. He walked back to the scroll, opened it up, and continued to scan lines with his fingers, lips tracing out words under his breath.
"What a jerk." The "meek" Naruto looked to the original. "Can I poof him?" He looked up, hopefully. "Please?"
The original shuddered. "Geez. I really don't want to, if it means that I'll get back some of that freakin' attitude. Reminds me of Sasuke in a bad mood."
A Naruto on an errand ran by, and raised an eyebrow as he passed. "In a "bad" mood? Geez, when isn't he pissy?"
All Narutos present snorted. The original looked at the cloth bound book for a second, then shoved it in a pocket of his jacket. "Fine, I'll take it. Can't guarantee I'll understand it, but well, I could always prop up the kitchen table with it."
He stuck the post it note against the mission report again. "Same handwriting. Kazama Arashi knew about these civilian handbooks. He knew about the Hokage/Daimyo accords." He glanced about, finding a Naruto trying to slack off, and made him get a pencil. "Let's see." The kyuubi-vessel murmered, flipping the mission report over and scribbling against the back of where the seal was. He made out the backwards words carefully. "Office of Sanitation". He stopped. "What the hell?! That doesn't help at all! Dammit, this was just a copy for that office's receipts. There's pretty much not anything on him as a shin..." He smacked his forehead. "Damnit. This is a joint shinobi/civilian office. Of course there's gonna be nothing but stupid stuff about Shinobi. Arashi was obviously a ninja - of course there's jack here about him."
With a growl, he handed the paper to the nearest Naruto, who passed it down the line until it was stuck in a folder. By now, most of the paperwork had been sorted into named boxes, the books lined neatly by author on shelves, while the statues and artifacts had been looked at and sorted, by names when there were any, and by type when there weren't. Most of the statues were made of wood, but a few were heavy, like they were made of metal, but were almost warm to the touch. A few more were actually hollow inside. Whoever had examined the figurse before hadn't had much of a shinobi's training, because the secret compartments were almost glaringly obvious. Of course, he did have experience with secreting items away. The orphanage had been good for something other than teaching him to run quick and not get caught.
He glanced at the paper once again, already getting sick of it but remembering the incredibly sloppy writing. If Makoto and Haruka were right about their instincts, he knew who he'd been searching for from the start. He tapped the shoulder of one Bunshin. "Hey, any word on the Yondaime?"
"Just the censored documents," the bunshin said. "Hey, boss. We're running low on energy. You might wanna..." the clone rolled his hand meaningfully.
"Yeah, yeah," Naruto mumbled under his breath as he bumped past. "Speed it up, I know, I know." His stomach grumbled agian. "Trust me, I know."
He came to a corner of the room, where four Narutos were speedily sorting papers. He grabbed one. Almost every word was covered in a line of black - censored beyond recognition. Even the seals at the top had been disrupted. It looked like someone had taken pins and coated every inch of something as large as a salt shaker with it until it resembled the world's most painful hairbrush , then used it to erase the seals's imprints. The only real words he could make out were "and" and "of" and occasionally "therefore". He poked the nearest sorter. "Are all the papers like this?" The clone nodded.
"Dammit!" Naruto growled. "Isn't there a single helpful thing in here? Anything! The Yondaime! Kazama Arashi! Hell, shouldn't it be easier to find information if they're the same person?" He slammed his fist against the side of the shelf, and cursed when something heavy fell on his exceptionally "durable" head. "Life just keeps gettin' better and better." He rubbed his head, and watched as what looked like a tube rolled under the shelf.
He dropped to the floor, reaching after the offending object until his arm under the shelf all the way to his elbow. His fingertips could just brush the edge of what felt like leather, and he bit his lip, using a new variation on an old shinobi trick to gather chakra to his fingertips. Normally, shinobi used tiny, tiny bits of chakra to keep an extra grip on their weapons or to exploding notes. He'd tried this, but found that when he didn't pay attention, he'd glue his hand to whatever he was holding. That became damn embarrassing with that dirty magazine he'd been trying to plant in Sasuke's backpack. He did find another use for the technique, though, during one of his many pranks on Iruka-sensei. He'd discovered that, when chakra gathered, sometimes miniscule amounts of air was displaced, even if you were using the "glue" version of it. Depending on how you gathered the chakra, the wind would blow in a different way or in different quantities. He knew that this didn't just happen around him - hell, he'd seen Sakura's battle aura blow like a hurricane before - but didn't know why his was the only use really developed into it.
He had to place full concentration on this and cringed as he felt the "info overflow" as some of the more idle clones dissapated. Put gently, his chakra control sucked worse than cold ramen, but he always seemed to get by. He pushed chakra towards his fingertips, feeling the prickling of the hairs on his arm as he pushed more through his wrist. He let some pool there, feeling the slightest movement of miniscule air currents before pulling all his chakra back at once, leaving his hand in place. His chakra had displaced air, and when he'd pulled it back inside, the wind he'd gathered had pulled what he now saw was a scroll case into his waiting hand. He stood up and brushed large kitten's worths of hair off.
He picked at the wax seal on the scroll with his fingers, peeling it off mostly intact. The seal was decorated with the symbol of the leaf, small nicks in the actual swirl showing the authenticity of the symbol. When he'd been much younger, in between ditching school and ditching whichever foster home they had tried to put him in, he'd spend hours upon hours with Sarutobi, either in his office or watching the "creepy mask guys" he now knew to be ANBU watch him watch them watch him. Sarutobi's seal for important documents had been almost exactly like this, but the grooves had been different - there were even different numbers of grooves in the seals for different kinds of messages. He'd never understood it, but some members of the Old Man's staff could tell what a message was about even before opening.
Naruto was good at that, too, but mostly because he knew that, whenever he got an Official message from the Hokage's office, it wasn't ever a good thing.
He glanced closer. There, in the middle of the Leaf's spiral was something definitly not in Sarutobi's - an extra curve that was so faint that it could've been excused as a taint in the wax. He frowned. There was something odd about this seal - something that he could almost place. He moved to scrape the wax on a nearby shelf, already preparing to open the scroll with the other hand when the wax suddenly grew boiling hot, making him inhale sharply, grasp tighter onto the parchment, and lean against the shelves.
It was just his luck that the last of his bunshins dissapated in that moment, adding info overflow to his list of problems. It was actually fortuitious, because with his mind preoccupied on sorting all the excess knowledge he'd learned about dozens upon dozens of genin teams and their members that he completely missed the acidic pain of the wax seal forming onto his finger.
It cupped around his index finger's tip, rolling over the fingernail and pooling at the fingerprints, hair-thin trains of wax rolling along every swirl and line until hitting a knuckle, than another, and only stopping at the very base, where it met with the rest of his hand. The wax bit suddenly into his flesh, and he was so drawn into his own memories that he missed the few drops of blood mixing with the red wax.
As suddenly as it began, the wax retreated, liquid pulling back until it drew back on the edge of his fingertip at an unnatural angle. It disapeared into smoke, and when Naruto woke up from his sensory saturation, it (and the small hairs on that finger) was gone.
"...what the hell?" He shook his head like a dog shaking dry from water. "Crap. That cocky clone was still mixed in there." He sighed, and his gaze was drawn suddenly towards the scroll, which in his hand was starting to unfurl by itself. Eyebrows arched high, he pulled it open the whole way, his already tested reflexes nearly missing the small object that dropped in the process. He put the scroll, still open, on a shelf, and fingered the object
It was a ring, made of silver or something like it, with a simple band with a single flourish at the front; a signet. Naruto realized with shock that it was the mirror image of the symbol on the seal, right up to the small "m" in the center of it and the hairline second swirl that followed the Leaf's. He wondered briefly how the seal could be made when the design's press had been inside what it'd sealed.
Absently, he slipped it on his finger. The ring was much heavier than it looked, and Naruto grinned at it. "So, this is what it's like. The Old Man wouldn't ever let me touch his. Said some bullcrap about it melting my finger off."
Fox grin still on his face, he glanced at the scroll, and suddenly was quite glad he had laid it down. Otherwise, he would've dropped it in his shock. On the center of the parchment was a map of Konoha. Instead of individual buildings being noted or outlined, regions of the city were shaded. The former industrial district was in red, while the commerical district, circling around the square, was in blue. In between were snatches of yellow, for what he guessed was residental lanes and blocks, and what seemed like white, with small stars on large white blocks around the edges of town. In tiny, illegible script were names - if Naruto hadn't already known that they were the compounds of the huge clans, he'd never have figured it out. He counted them all. The Uchihas dominated the map, with, surprisingly, the Aburames coming second. They had a huge colony to themselves near the forest. The forest itself was colored in green, and had small dotted lines drawn throughout it - paths, he guessed. One led to the Akimichi section, a place which, like it's clan, was too huge to completely fit on anything. The edge of the map had arrows pointing off screen, and small farms which he guessed were peaset run bordered the Akimichi plantation. The Naras had a small hamlet to themselves, one block of white larger than the others, but also deeper into the forest near a striped green area marked "DEER".
There were several names he didn't recognize. The Saotome section was plotted over what Naruto knew were now natural hot and cold springs. There were small gatherings of Uremeshi and Son houses where a plotting of training grounds were now, but Naruto hadn't heard of anyone in the village with those names. Squinting, Naruto could just make out a splotch of grey near the base of the mountain. It had no name, but was circled with pencil several times, and there was a badly drawn arrow from it to the base of the Saotome lands, where it circled around, and another arrow connecting it to a small home on the other side of the mansion. There was the helpful subtitle of "ROCK" on the mountain.
Naruto noticed a distinct lack of a name he did know that wasn't there, and should be. Peering closer, he noticed one block that hadn't even been colored in. Inside it was written, vehemently, "Bastards live here." They were Hyuuga lands.
The discrepencies grew greater in number from there. The Hatakes had a section that Naruto hadn't even heard mentioned once in his lifetime. The Harunos weren't even blips on the radar, but there was a family called "Tsukino" with a circled house or mansion near a path leading off the map. He had noticed Shikamaru and Chouji's clan names on the map, but he didn't see Ino's family's lands anywhere, if they ever had lands.
No where on the map did he see the name "Kazama" or "Uzumaki, but he DID see the work of Kazama Arashi's pen everywhere. Snide comments were just barely visible on the colors - the Hyuuga one made him laugh. Near the Akimichis was the comment "Cow Tipping Traps", which confused him, and "Side Saddle only" on the "DEER" section, which gave him a few wonderful, horrible ideas.
This was, without a doubt, the single most detailed map of Konoha that he'd ever seen, even with the errors. While everyone in the village had a sense of where specific places were after a time, usually navigating by landmarks like the mountain, the forest, the river, Ichiraku's Ramen Stand, he'd never seen a map like this before. When they went to Wave Country those few weeks ago, Kakashi's map of the countries had been the first he'd seen. Everyone knew that Fire was the largest kingdom (even though it really wasn't), but it was somewhat different seeing it laid out like that, just like how it was different seeing the "Uchiha" compound and knowing that there was only one left in that whole huge compound, and man, he was a major prick.
He had to unfold the map completely to make out the date scratched in the far corner - 10/1, and a familiar year.
Six days before the Kyuubi.
Nine days before he was born.
He felt, quite suddenly, like he couldn't breathe because it'd be even more sacriligeous. There was a reason this map was so different from what he knew, and he - or what he'd been and what he still had within him - was it. It felt almost like looking at the map was looking at all the snarling faces from his past, cursing him for being a demon, or at least carrying it.
He'd heard the stories, about the Kyuubi causing Earthquakes and Tsunamis with its footfalls and tails. He'd felt the Kyuubi's monsterous aura and the endless amount of Chakra that was only just dipping into the surface of it's power. Hell, he'd been face to face with the bastard in the inside of his mind - that filthy sewer that he hoped was a reflection of the Kyuubi, and not his own thoughts. But, hearing the stories and comprehending the amount of destruction were two completely different things.
He could understand now. He understood the glares of the villagers, the hateful whispers and the snide comments behind his back. He'd destroyed entire histories - techniques and bloodline limits and families down to the last child. He just ...never knew all of what had been. Before, it was as if the teachers had singled him out because he'd been an orphan, and he had hated them for it, and acted up because of it, and then relished every drop of attention he gained from it. The idea that people would watch him had stunned him stupid at the time. When Mizuki had betrayed the village like the bastard he was and finally spilled the beans about the whole Kyuubi-thing, Naruto had gained a bit more insight on the whole fox-hatred thing. This, however, was something shocking and entirely different, and the clamp around his chest loosened all at once as he realized it.
He forgave them.
He thought back, his earliest memories of bright colors and of frowning nurses. When he was a kid, he thought he saw ghosts haunting the windows of the orphange - ghosts with animal faces he now knew to be the ANBU symbols. He had tried not to memorize that particular lesson in the academy, but it was quite easy to kill a child, especially a new born. Starvation would be too obvious, but within a year, a child could pull itself over it's crib bars and fall to the floor "accidentally". Suffocation was also a possibility - a toy too close, or a blanket too snug, or even laying the child down the wrong way. A nurse could've handed him to an irresponsible child who wouldn't have known (or cared) enough to hold up his head - his neck might've broken. Who knew how early the Kyuubi had been healing him - he might not have lived through heatstroke or frostbite. He might've died if they'd put poison in with his formula or if they'd never given him vaccinations and just thrown him in with the other children.
But, he didn't die. He survived another day, another week, and then another year. Every hour was a landmark, now that he thougth about it, because these people were grieving, and angry, and confused, and trying desperately to live in a village decimated by something they couldn't understand or hope to defeat, until their favorite hero died, seemingly to give the Fox a new body.
Naruto believed truly and with all his heart that one day, he'd become Hokage, and one day, every villager would respect him for all that'd he accomplished, and not see him as the "Damned Demon Fox", the murderer of their loved ones, their clans, their village, and their hero. But, looking back on it, he completely understood why his life was like it was.
As a baby, he wasn't anything but "the Fox". Wounds still fresh in their minds and on their bodies and apparent in the crumbling facades of their buildings, the people of the village needed something - anything - to hate. Their hero was dead, but the murderer was alive, and it was so easy to hate someone who couldn't fight back - couldn't protest.
If Sarutobi had not made the law about the Demon fox, he would've probably died shortly after he learned to speak. What cruel person would've cooed sickening things into his ears, until he repeated it around the wrong traumatized shinobi? He was certain, looking back on it, that he had said evil things, sickening phrases he couldn't and didn't understand. These things made it easier for the people to hate an innocent, a child whose only desperate desire was touch, was love.
It had been twelve years since he'd been born, since he'd been hated nearly day in and day out by practically all around him. Habit, for shinobi or for civilian, was a very hard thing to break. Perhaps it was even harder for Naruto to prove himself to the shinobi than the villagers. Naruto, for one, was ruled by instinct, and shinobi had to at least have some when it came to danger. The fox, Naruto knew even through secondhand exposure and the memory of terror half-heartedly hidden on Kakashi's face when he's asked about the seal's strength after the battle was over on the bridge, was a creature of pure and malevolent darkness. "Evil" was too loose a term because it implied there was a single good strong enough to balance the crawling, devouring fear and horror the fox's mere presence induced.. It was said that only shinobi at the battle saw the final end of the Yondaime and of the start of Naruto's story. But, there were precious hours before the Sandaime's law was carved out of desperation, hours in which loose tongues spread rumors and lies, and soon a myth spun of hatred and anger and fear took a reality far darker and more dangerous than any orphaned newborn could ever be.
Konohagakure was the most beautiful place in the world. There was no other city, no other place in the world that he'd rather protect with his life. These were the people of his village. These were the people who'd glared and spat at him, humiliated him and tried to kill him (though, the ANBU were so efficient that he rarely thought about the death threats and the assassination attempts until he'd gotten out of the academy and most of the ANBU had left - as far as he knew.), and who had made him feel as if his very existence was only to be hated.
If it hadn't have been for his "precious people" - Iruka, Sarutobi, and now him teammates and Kakashi-sensei - he would've become what the villagers had fear he would be. He would've been a monster of their own design.
But, Konoha was a village full of monsters in human skin, and humans within the skin of monsters. Naruto forgave because he understood. Sasuke hadn't actually died on the bridge, hadn't actually said his last words to Naruto after mutual exchanges of hatred - but it felt like it. It stabbed in him more than senbon ever could dream - not just the death of Sasuke, the bastard he'd only begun to know, his first "best friend", but the guilt. Sometimes, it was all Naruto could do not to hear all the mistakes he'd made come back at him. Sometimes, it really was better to be a fool than to be regretful later on. Now, his nin-do was a path without regrets, facing forward into what could only be a brighter future, even if he had to pave it brick by brick, and break down Konoha person by person until it, as a whole saw what only a few had realized.
Everyone was a monster. Rage, hatred, sadness drive men and women to the brink of sanity and then past it, forcing them to regret their lives, their actions, and their words. Grief drives people mad. Naruto's inner demon was corporeal - that was the only difference between "him" and "them".
"What now?" He found himself muttering. His hand shook slightly, still hovering above the scroll, the weighty ring of the Yondaime on his finger, awkward and loose on his child's fingers. He refused to cry again, refused to look back on tonight and think about how he could've spent his time better. He would build on his childhood, the past mistakes he'd made and the clumsy failures he'd make a thousand times over in a single day, and from it, he would grow, and his way of the ninja would grow as well.
Silently, Naruto folded up the scroll and placed it back in the sealed container. He sat the case on the shelf with the rest of the Yondaime's confidential documents. Then, he stopped, and placed it with Kazama Arashi's mission reports instead. He never noticed that the slight bit of red wax still on the leather seemed to stretch back into place as if it'd never been touched.
Haruka and Makoto were waiting outside. The BIRCH office was clean, and he was full of the knowledge of a hundred clones and a hundred stories (and millions of small by-laws that no sane person needed to know.). In that moment, Naruto felt as if his life had changed for the better, as if a weight a thousand times heavier than any boulder could dream of being had rolled off his shoulders and was thundering behind him, growing fainter with every step he took forward.
Naruto Uzumaki felt as if he had changed. This was true. He felt as if the world had changed. This was also true. He also felt that, from that day forward, nothing in his life would ever be the same.
He really had no idea.
This chapter was insanely hard to get out. Don't worry; I already have the next chapter planned. A question for all of you, though. Are there any blindingly obvious continuity errors I'm not seeing yet? Remember; this is your chance to criticize someone to your heart's content! Thanks for all the reviews, too, and page hits and the general feel of recognition. Man, I can see why some people get addicted to this.
