Do not own Naruto in any way shape or form
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It was almost thirty hours after the battle at the bridge that Naruto woke up and found out that just like Kakashi, he would have to wait at least another day in bed before he would be over the case of chakra exhaustion that had been caused on the bridge.
During the time that he had been out Haku had returned to the base that she and Zabuza had been using and sealed everything except for the two items that Zabuza had wanted sent to the bloodline rebels in mist and brought them back to Tsunami's house. She was waiting patiently for Naruto to awake to find out why Zabuza had asked that she stay with him.
After Naruto had woken up he had been very annoyed because unlike normal when he would release all of his seals for chakra control training, his chakra was coming back much more slowly, because when he had blacked out on the bridge all of the seals on his body had reset and tried to draw on reserves that he just barely had. Normally it took him an insignificant fraction of his total chakra to run the seals, however in his weakened state he almost didn't have that chakra to spare which is what was causing the abnormal strain on his body right now. He wouldn't be able to release the seals until that evening when he should have enough chakra to perform a master unlocking of all of the training seals that were on his body. Naruto knew that his body couldn't truly handle all of the strain that occurred whenever he fully unleashed his chakra which was a secondary reason that he had all of the seals on his body. Another reason that his chakra was returning so slowly in comparison was that his chakra pathways were still repairing themselves after Naruto had nearly emptied them in his attack on the mercenaries.
It wasn't until after he had worked through these thoughts that he noticed the two sealing scrolls that were next to him lying on the bed. One he knew contained Gato's mansion while it took him several hours to remember that the second scroll had come from the clones that had followed him to the bridge after they were done with what he had assigned. The clones had gone through everything that the mercenaries had on them and was still worth anything and sealed it up into a scroll to be sorted through later. Looking at the scroll now he could only sigh regretfully before placing both of the sealing scrolls into his bag and waiting for his chakra to replenish somewhat more.
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Several hours later he could be seen poring over a large scroll with sealing designs on one half while the other half contained a huge number of handwritten notes all of which were in Naruto's handwriting. He was looking at is own designs and how they could be improved before he took the next test for sealing rank when it became available in roughly four weeks in the village hidden in Ink.
The village hidden in Ink wasn't exactly a true shinobi village, however that didn't mean that it didn't have threats and bargaining chips that were worth things to the larger villages. Ink supplied almost ninety percent of the commonly used seals that all five major villages used however it wasn't truly the main thing that the village did to earn it's income because most of the seals that they supplied to other villages were made by the various lower ranking members of their village like the village hidden in the leaves gave out D rank missions. Most of their income came from giving various tests and certifying ninja from all of the hidden villages as capable of various levels of the ninja arts.
The hidden Ink village had been started almost a century before any of the major hidden villages when the lord of the land of birds had seen an opportunity in the sealing arts which he had taken by hiring several of the greatest seal masters at the time and although his original plan changed they did agree with what he was proposing. Later on in history when all of the major hidden villages formed hidden Ink formed treaties with all of them. Essentially if any of the major hidden villages attacked them than all four of the other major hidden villages as well as all of the minor hidden villages would attack that hidden village. The major reason that none of the hidden villages would attack hidden Ink was that not only was such a thing against their village charters than they would lose access to the archives that were kept by hidden Ink. The archives contained a copy of every seal that had been brought to them and they were categorized by rank and each level of sealing certification would allow a higher amount of viewing in their archives. A number of members of each of the hidden villages stayed in hidden Ink throughout most of the year just studying sealing in the hopes of advancing their ranking because of some of the seals were legendary. Currently there were only two grandmaster level seal master and both made their home in the hidden Ink village. There were several master level seal specialists scattered throughout all of the major and minor hidden villages however the difference between master and grandmaster seals was great which was the reason that there were so few grandmasters in the sealing arts. All seals up to master level can be deciphered if the user is given enough time, however grandmaster level seals were almost impossible to decode unless you had an idea on how they worked or if you held the key to them. Other than the two grandmasters in Ink the last time a grandmaster certification was granted was to the fourth Hokage and Kushina Uzumaki on the same day because they had made it a competition between them to see who could get higher in the sealing arts. Since both of their deaths there hadn't been any grandmaster level certifications awarded to anyone new.
Naruto had the journeyman license from all of the times that he had been tested by the members of hidden Ink when they stopped by to deliver the quarterly supplies of seals to the village hidden in the leaves. He was just about ready to take the adept test, however that test had to be taken in hidden Ink itself because Journeyman was the highest that was allowed to be tested for outside of the hidden ink village. Restricted and forbidden licenses up to certain level were able to be tested at the same time as the advancement tests. Restricted licenses were for any seal that had to be applied to any living thing because of the chance that bad results would turn up. Forbidden seals were those like the cage bird seal that could kill the person that they are used on and the only reason that Naruto even had that license was that he was bored when he took it and that you needed a certain level in it to advance in rank even if you never used it.
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Two days after he woke up Naruto was sitting at the table having breakfast with team seven and Tazuna's family while thinking back on how bored he had been over the last two days as his body shook off the lingering after effects of his stunt on the bridge. Other than working on his sealing skills Naruto had been reviewing his designs to see if he could improve the sealing arrays on the weapons he had forged. He had also started to work slowly on lower tier chakra control exercises that required little chakra to perform. He had also idly thought up several new designs that he wanted to try making when he got home.
Idly he also had looked up the next technique on his list that he was going to learn. Oddly enough he had finished with the reaper techniques for now. The reaper techniques that he knew were part of a series of techniques that spanned across all of the elements however each element carried a name that was included in its name. All of the wind techniques in the style carried the name reaper while every other element type carried another name such as the earth style hunter techniques. Naruto had decided to learn all of the techniques in the style when he had learned that he carried some of the Shinigami's energy in his body because the whole style was named the Shinigami style. There were two hundred sixty-five techniques within the reaper style and they spanned through all of the elements including the sub elements. Naruto knew twenty-three of the techniques in that he could perform them, however only seven of those techniques were ready to be used in battle because of the requirements that were written in the scroll next to each technique.
Thinking about how his techniques worked was also what led his mind back to what he had done on the bridge and how many lives he had taken. Naruto barely made it to the forest outside of Tazuna's house before he threw up. Some people killed with no feelings, others enjoyed killing, still others locked the feelings that occurred when they killed deep within their mind until they released them and Naruto fell into that last category because of the way he suppressed his emotions over killing the mercenaries until he was ready to release them. When thinking about his techniques he had unintentionally brought all of those emotions and memories to the front of his mind so that he had to deal with them as he started to shake uncontrollably.
Swallowing back the bile that had been forming in the back of his throat, Naruto shook those thoughts away. He sternly told himself that now wasn't the time to lose himself to his emotions. Pulling out his sealing scrolls he unsealed more sealing supplies to work through his sealing designs that he was working on currently.
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It wasn't until the next morning that Naruto was disturbed away from working on his sealing designs as well as working his body back up to full power after the massive use of chakra on the bridge.
"Naruto," Kakashi began as he walked into the room while scratching the back of his head nervously. "Um, I know that I probably should have spoken to you about this before however with the both of us recovering from the battle it slipped my mind. What were those techniques that you used on the bridge?"
"They were part of a series of techniques that are very difficult to learn." Naruto said as he turned away from a sealing array that he had been building from an idea that he had gotten from Tenten. "I don't know all of them yet but I do know most of the techniques that are wind based because of it being my primary element."
Seeing Naruto shudder a little when talking about the techniques helped Kakashi decide his next question, "You took a great many lives on the bridge, how do you feel?"
"Horrible." Naruto responded with a grimace as well as a shudder. "I can still see all of their faces and see the life flowing from them at my hands and techniques."
Kakashi sighed as this looked like one of those conversations that he had been hoping to avoid for some time with his own students. "Naruto, what you have to realize is that a huge number of the techniques in this world are lethal in some manner. It just seems that no matter what happens one shinobi or another is just going to come up with even more deadly techniques. How you're responding to taking all of those lives is reassuring to me though because I have seen many shinobi who after their first kill started getting a thrill out of killing. With the way that you are reacting I can see that if possible you wouldn't take those lives so I know that you aren't becoming like the monster that you have sealed into you. Killing should never truly get easier but with time the faces that images that haunt your dreams should fade but they will never truly be forgotten."
Some of the dark feelings in Naruto had disappeared from Naruto during the short conversation and helped start a two hour long conversation with Kakashi that helped dispel some more of the anger and horror that Naruto still felt toward himself.
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The next morning consisted of going through all of the things that he had sealed since the start of the mission interspersed with some insane cackling as several clones worked on altering exploding tags in any way that their minds could come up with. Even while Naruto and the majority of his clones worked their way through the items that were sealed they couldn't help but watch some of the oddities that were spawned with all of the random alterations that were done to both the exploding tag seals as well as the storage scroll seals. Some of the alterations just fizzled out while others took more or less chakra than their starting edition while others bordered on the bizarre like the thirty foot tall dango stick that grew out of the ground when he had activated the one seal. That one was a lucky find as Naruto had forgotten to bring lunch with him that day and while he would have loved a bowl of ramen in this case dango was a more than acceptable substitute so after having a clone try it and finding out that it was delicious he ate his way through it.
Normally it was dangerous to experiment with seals the way that Naruto was but one day out of every two weeks Naruto would just let his clones run wild with seals just to see what he could create with them. Generally when he did this he had a fifty foot barrier around the area that he was using for these experiments and had as a precaution set it so that there was a partial storage seal set up across his experimentation ground. The storage seal would suck up everything within its range into it until nothing is left because there is no way to unseal the items that had been thrown into it. Quite a number of his pranks had come from ideas spawned from this type of experimentation and it was mostly due to the seals that he had created this way that he had been able to advance as far as he had in the sealing arts. After he had lost all of his supplies due to having to use his failsafe partial storage seal, Naruto had wised up and only used what materials that were copied when he made his clones so that he would be getting rid of only chakra constructs anyway.
Still working his way through Gato's mansion Naruto was startled to discover a ledger that had the exact counts of Gato's fortune and where he obtained all of it right down to the last ryo. It also appeared that Gato despised banks because in many hidden locations around the house Gato had hidden his vast fortune as well as a rather specialized sealing scroll. There were of coarse many other documents and belongings, however the amount of money and the sealing scroll were the things that caught most of his interest. The money caught his interest because how often are you going to see almost a billion ryo in various denominations all in one place at one time. The sealing scroll on the other hand was a blood storage scroll and was connected to what it contained in such as way that even non ninja could use it. It wasn't locked to one bloodline or type so it could be opened by anyone just by wiping a small amount of blood across the primer seal to ether seal or unseal its contents. Considering that he had yet to find Gato's yacht and that he had heard rumors several years back while being tested for his next licenses in the sealing arts about a seal that had been commissioned by a civilian who couldn't use chakra that fit the description of what he was seeing Naruto decided that it just might be a good idea to open the scroll over water because of what he thought it was. Carefully organizing everything as he left he took the ledger with him so that he could figure out how to allocate the funds because from the way that the ledger looked, Gato had poured a much larger amount of funds into getting Wave under his control than he had managed to squeeze out of the villagers of Wave. From the plans in the back he also found out why Gato had decided to take over Wave which were deeply disturbing in their own right.
Gato had been conspiring with two of the upper members of the shipping guild to take over this island upon which Gato would marry their widowed sister and proclaim himself daimio of Wave. The plan went on to vaguely list further plans to start a shinobi village in Wave and what few plans there were in that regard made all of the evil things that Danzo Shimura the War Hawk of the leaf village look almost saintly in comparison. They had planned to rule the world a little bit at a time until they had a large enough fighting force to crush all of those who stood against them. The plans also mentioned that aboard the yacht there were a great number of shinobi artifacts that Gato had been gathering for some time through shady deals as well as killing off missing ninja and taking their belongings and bounties. Also according to the plans the other members of the plot were stirring up unrest between the 4 hidden villages by doing various acts which couldn't be traced back to them.
One of the letters in the documents that Naruto had liberated from Gato's mansion held further proof that Gato's partners were responsible for most of the major border disputes that had been leaving the leaf village so shorthanded recently. Throughout all of the documents it was just one bad revelation after another that Naruto would have loved to have dumped off on someone else, however that would have to wait until he got back to the leaf village.
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Several laborious hours later Naruto had finished going through the documents and had divided up all of Gato's fortune fairly so that everyone of the villagers of Wave got back all of the money that they had been cheated out of as well as interest on it. The documents had also told where Gato had been keeping the captives on the island and what he had planned on using them for. They would be alright for several more days because considering the nature of the captives, Gato had arranged for them to be completely cut off from his men so that nothing unfortunate could occur because of any indiscretions that the men might commit. He and his personal body guards would visit them every week with several bags of rations for the women that he held captive for his future plans. Luckily Gato had had the forethought to have them keep two months of supplies with them in the cavern at any given time because had known that something might happen to where he would no longer make his deliveries. Of course Gato had had a very malicious reason for what he had done but he had still made sure that his captives weren't too badly off all things considered.
Looking up into the sky, Naruto estimated that he only had about an hour of sunlight left in the day and decided that it might be a better idea if he made his way to release the captives the following morning because of distance involved between the village and the cave. Naruto might have been able to run the distance in moments however the captives would take at least several hours to travel back to the village. With those thoughts in his head he sealed all of the things that he had been unsealing earlier and dispelled all of the still experimenting clones.
Entering the house, Naruto was given a semi small meal and went off to bead early so as to get a head start the next morning when he planned on releasing the captives that Gato had held hostage.
Before sleep overtook him his thoughts turned to the bridge and he smiled when he remembered that it was almost completely done. Sure it would take another week before they would be done however considering where it was located the extra time and funds that went into its construction weren't wasted because it would handle the wear and tear of the elements .
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Making his way toward the cave the next morning Naruto thought about what training he could do to get over the last aftereffects of the battle on the bridge. He had suffered this type of injury before back when he had first started training and taken care not to be put in that position again. If nothing else he knew that his body would be back to full power just before the bridge was finished at it's current rate. The bridge might have been able to be finished faster, however its current speed had slowed down some because of the fact that Gato had perished and with him, his control over the ports and how much the villagers were allowed to bring in. About a quarter of the workforce that Tazuna had been using had gathered up some marketable goods from across the island and taken them to market to help restock some of the islands food supply so that they could live more comfortably after the bridge was finished.
Reaching the cave entrance he searched for the hidden alcove that had been mentioned in the documents that he had liberated from Gato had mentioned contained the key to the cell that contained the captives that Gato had kept.
Finding the key he made his way into the cave and holding up a palm full of fire made his way, through the cave toward where the hostages were kept. Getting to the door he could see the light from beyond the doorway even as he inserted the key into the keyhole. Turning the key and opening the door, he was greeted to a very strange sight as he looked around the improvised cell that Gato had held a fair number of hostages in.
The cavern had about a ten foot ceiling and was roughly shaped like an octagon. It was roughly fifty feet across at its widest diameter and had four large pillars that were set up around the center of the cavern that were obviously not naturally occurring because Naruto could see the stonework that had been used to make them. The pillars had most likely been placed there to make sure that there wasn't a cave in. Along one wall there were two places that intersected small freshwater streams which had been put to several uses. One had been used for washing and getting water for cooking from while the other had been curtained off as a makeshift restroom. As he stepped into the room, the eyes of all of the hostages turned on him. Over fifty pairs of eyes on him were making him somewhat nervous as he hadn't quite thought this whole situation out before he had come here to release them.
"Who are you," one of the women asked harshly as most of them went for makeshift weapons while eyeing him warily.
"Naruto Uzumaki, genin of the leaf," Naruto said nervously as he tried to figure out how to explain what had happened to these women who had been held captive by Gato for almost half a year. "How much of what's been going on do you all know about?"
Still eyeing him suspiciously one of the women answered, "Gato, completely cut us off from all information from outside these walls and the only thing he would ever talk about was what types of food to bring in his next delivery. The only information that we have been getting is from whenever they bring a new person in. the last time we got someone new was about five months ago according to our delivery schedule."
"Ah, I see." Naruto said with a sigh as he would have to explain the whole situation to them. "Within the last four months, Tazuna has been building a bridge to the mainland in the hopes that it will bring up wave's economy. About a third of the way through construction Gato found out about the bridge and started threatening Tazuna. When the bridge reached half way Gato sent some mercenaries after Tazuna. Tazuna luckily escaped and made his way to the leaf village and hired the best team that he could afford. There have been several battles since Tazuna has made his way back to Wave that ended in Gato's death as well as the deaths of all of his bodyguards and enforcers. When going through the documents from Gato's manor I ran across some information that told where you all were as well as how to get in."
Listening to the hastily abbreviated tale most of the women let out sighs of relief and lowered their weapons before one who had spoken before asked, "What happens now?"
"That really all depends on you all as I'm just here to let you out of this cell." Naruto said as a slight amount of relief flooded his system when the weapons lowered. He would have been able to beat them all however he most likely would have had to kill them to get them to stop and that was something that he didn't wish to contemplate if he could avoid it.
"You know, its kind of ironic that you came to let us free now when we could have been free at any time in the last three weeks with our escape tunnel." another one of the women said as she pulled up one of the beads to revel a crude trap door. Under the trap door was a tunnel that stretched in the direction of the village.
"If you had a way out, why didn't you escape already?" Naruto asked as he once again felt confusion.
"Gato used to check on us pretty regularly when he was alive and would do a head count to make sure that we were all there." the first woman who had spoken replied to Naruto's question. "Before he had us in isolation there were some instances where one of his minions would get greedy and would steal up to several women who had been held captive and use and abuse them until he was satisfied. It was for that reason that we were isolated from his mercenaries."
"I really don't need to hear any more about this." Naruto said as he looked around the room again while this time focusing on just what he would need to help them carry back to the village. "If you would pack what you would like to take with you, I'll help you transport it back to the village."
Almost an hour later Naruto was staring at a huge stack of belongings that he would need to help them transport. It seemed that every one of them had secreted away numerous items during there stay and now they wanted them to come back to the village with them. Pulling out one of his highest capacity sealing scrolls, Naruto looked from the pile of things to the scroll several times as he tried to guess whether or not all of it would fit in one scroll or if he would need another. Deciding to be cautious he sealed about half the pile in one scroll before pulling out another to carry the rest.
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Getting Gato's hostages back to the village wasn't a very pleasant experience for Naruto because of all the complaining that they did. Some of them had been captive for over a year and while they knew the general layout of the island from that time, the island's layout had changed significantly since then and several times the hostages had insisted on taking shortcuts that weren't there anymore after Gato had started restricting people to the side of the island closest to the village to have a better grip on them. He had had some of his less distinguishable mercenaries follow villagers for several weeks and determine al of the places that he would have to destroy to keep them isolated to the one section of the island.
Since he had gotten back several hours ago Naruto had been helping the former hostages reacquaint themselves with the village as well as recover their things and help them move back into their homes. He thought that it might be a good idea to wind down some before he made his way back to Tazuna's house because right then Naruto was extremely stressed from all of the complaints that he had been given over the course of helping the former hostages over the day.
Starting at the beach closest to Tazuna's house he started to run around the island in a circle keeping a steady pace as he followed the wildly curving beaches. From maps he had seen Naruto knew that the beach that ran around the land of waves was roughly ten miles long and that because of the shape of the island, it's land mass was significantly smaller than other islands that had the same amount of beach.
The run had been a good idea because it allowed him to get in some training as well as keep an eye out for any retaliation from the shipping guild for Gato's death. From the documents that Naruto had from Gato's mansion, Naruto knew that the shipping guild could go ether way depending on how the higher ranking members felt about Gato's death. From what little Naruto had heard and seen of how Gato acted there was a good chance that the shipping guild would just write his death off because he died because of his own actions. On the other hand if what those plans that he had found were true there was also a good chance that the guild would send in an army for cutting some of their plans short.
It wasn't until he was just a little over half way around the island that he saw the ships that were anchored on one of the few safe places to land on the island with larger ships. As he watched he that the ships had already discharged several hundred mercenaries that looked to be much better fighters than any that Gato had hired. As Naruto watched the ships were still discharging more mercenaries as well as a huge amount of supplies to the camp that was being formed on the shore. Almost absently Naruto put his hands into the cross shaped seal for the shadow clone technique and stood there for a moment. Looking down at his hands Naruto poured enough chakra into the technique to summon up several dozen shadow clones and ordered them to scope out the camp without being caught.
Half an hour later Naruto had most of the details of the camp laid out on a scroll in front of him as he looked it over and jotted down more information as more shadow clones dispersed. Sealing up the scroll, Naruto left his hiding place and began finishing his run so that he could get back to Tazuna's house quickly because at that point it was quicker to finish his lap around the island than to backtrack to Tazuna's house. He needed to get the information to Kakashi so that they could plan what to do because the mercenaries that were being unloaded off of the ships were almost ten times better than the ones that Gato had had with him and that was before the ones that had some shinobi or samurai training were counted amongst their number.
(Authors note) had a family member die recently and it threw the schedule I was trying to do way off so as of right now I'm going to try for a chapter every two weeks with a hopeful return to a chapter every week in April. Also just to point this out before I'm asked the reason that Naruto is recovering for a fair portion of this chapter isn't because he hurt his body but rather that he had locked up portions of his chakra to give him better control however this also had the side effect of making it so that his body wasn't used to the full power of his chakra which is the main reason for his long recovery. His body itself was almost completely healed by the time that he woke up rather it was his chakra pathways that had been damaged during the battle because of the rapid expenditure of chakra that was much more potent than normal. If that makes sense anyway. Just my thoughts on the matter of why this chapter turned out the way it did.
Valor.
