Chapter 11: What's in a Name?
Ninja are curious people. It's in their very nature.
Unfortunately for Axel, who had decided that he would try very hard not to catch the attention of the ninja community, he is a bit of a puzzle. For one thing, he's running a business out of a house in the abandoned district: the place where nobody bothered to set up shop because they wouldn't get any customers. For another, Axel is… blunt isn't quite the right word, but something like that. He tends to say what he means, and doesn't bother with burying things underneath the underneath.
Perhaps, on a very basic level, the ninja simply find it strange that Axel is normal.
For a given definition of 'normal', at least. By his own standards: yes. By the standards of the world he was born in: also yes, though maybe with a little less conviction, given he had gone to university five years younger than most people.
But by the standards of this world?— No.
Because Axel has never been very good at being sneaky or scheming. And he doesn't like to lie.
Which isn't to say that everyone in the ninja world was sneaky or scheming or a liar, but simply that those traits are an accepted part of the culture—for civilians and ninja alike.
Plus, in addition to his poor choice for shop location, he's really not much of a businessman either.
"What?!" yelped the white-haired ninja, looking across the room to Axel with an almost comical expression of shock. "These can't cost that much!"
Axel simply stared back from behind his open notebook, He had been distracting himself—or attempting to, at least—since this guy first walked in: trying to keep his emotions under-wraps as he interacted with the definitely-no-longer-fictional person before him.
Writing always seemed to help him organize his thoughts, which was why he'd gotten the little notebook in the first place. Unfortunately for him, he had been filling it with half-remembered plot points from when this whole… everything had just been an anime.
Which, naturally, made it kind of hard to distract himself from how completely not-anime the person before him was.
Really, he had positively no clue what could have possessed Jiraiya, of all people, to drop in on his shop.
And of course Axel had recognized him—even in the show he had stood out as an interesting character (for lack of a better term). He had nearly had a heart attack when he realized who had just walked in; when Axel had looked up from his notes and seen, well, him… suffice to say that it was lucky he had already been sitting down.
Though he hadn't expected Jiraiya to be quite so tall. Or to behave so much like he was portrayed in the show: a bit counterintuitive, perhaps, but it still surprised him. The guy really could be that flamboyantly dramatic when the mood struck him, which it apparently had.
"Why not?" Axel asked, wondering if he should have pitched a lower price; he wanted Jiraiya to find whatever it was he wanted, buy it, and leave as soon as possible.
The white-haired ninja looked positively scandalized. "What do you mean 'Why not'?!" He picked up one of the shuriken, checking it over carefully. "This is worth at least thrice that amount!"
So it would seem that his half-baked plan to hurry the ninja out of the shop backfired somewhat.
"What makes you say that?"
"Just look at it!" Jiraiya exclaimed, holding the shuriken dramatically up to the light where, if it hadn't had a matte-black finish, it would have shone in the store lighting. "Its keen edge! Its comfortable balanced weight! And its… certain something else!"
"What 'certain something else'?" Axel asked, then could have smacked himself for doing so; he wanted this ninja out of the shop, not sticking around to answer questions.
It didn't matter, though, since the question was brushed aside.
"I simply cannot allow you to continue this mispricing practice!"
He really wanted to curse, but the language barrier—as much as he had improved since his arrival—kept him from being able to articulate exactly how frustrated he was. So, unfortunately, he settled for mentally cussing the ninja out in the privacy of his own mind.
Before Axel had a chance to move on from internal swears to hopefully-more-civil spoken words, there was a noise that sounded very much like a startled dog followed by the door to the shop swinging open with boisterous energy.
Well, this wasn't entirely unexpected. Though the timing was a little unfortunate.
"Brandt Axs-er-san!" The voice was loud, rambunctious, and, by virtue of repeated visits, familiar. Gai leapt into view with his signature beaming smile. "Surely today's attempt—!" Seeing two people where he expected only one, the kid screeched to a halt mid-sentence.
After their first encounter at the village gates, the young ninja had apparently (inexplicably) turned his superhuman determination onto correcting his pronunciation. As for why… well, Axel honestly had no clue. Regardless of reasons, the spandex-wearing ball of exuberance had taken to bursting in every other day to take another shot at getting his name right.
And so it was that Axel had at least gotten used to one of the people in this village that he recognized from the show—if just barely, and he still mistook him for Rock Lee sometimes.
Two people, in fact, if he counted Minato as well. And he had the nagging feeling that he really should, even though he couldn't quite recall seeing him in the first two seasons. He knew that Minato was in the show, somewhere, just not where.
(He was avoiding his laptop, actually, precisely because he didn't want to know. Even if it would be helpful for filling in his notebook.)
Right now, though, Gai was a welcome distraction.
"Brandt Axel."
"Brandt Axs-erl," Gai repeated. "Ax-er-l."
Personally, Axel thought it was close enough. He had for some days now, and he had told him as much, but Gai remained unconvinced. For a minute or so Gai parroted back pronunciation attempts, getting closer sometimes but never quite perfect.
Jiraiya simply watched with an amused sort of smile.
And when Gai left, it felt like far to soon.
It was quiet, though, and Axel flipped his notebook back open to try and keep it that way: maybe if he looked busy enough, the ninja wouldn't—
"Hey, where're you from anyway?"
His hand tensed, accidentally crinkling a few of the pages in his notebook. He carefully forced himself to relax and smooth out the creases.
This new topic veered rather drastically toward territory Axel wasn't keen on stumbling through: he couldn't lie very well, especially not on the fly, and telling the truth is rather out of the question.
…Or was it?
"München," answered Axel frankly, and it was hard to get the word past the lump in his throat. "It's, uh…" he tried to think of a safe descriptor, "…far."
Spinning the shuriken, Jiraiya considered. "I haven't heard of anywhere called Mun-shen before."
"It's—" in another dimension entirely, "—gone now."
Jiraiya went still, and an uncharacteristically solemn look crossed over his face. "Ah. I'm sorry."
Not knowing how to respond, Axel just nodded and stared down at his notebook. The page it was open to had a list of character names he could remember, most of them probably misspelled. Most of them probably weren't even born yet.
How peculiar, he thought, distantly.
It was with a determined gathering of will that he pulled his attention back to the here and now, and he tried to smile. He could feel that it didn't quite reach his eyes.
"It's alright," Axel lied. "Are you interested in buying anything?"
Tossing the shuriken from one hand to the other, Jiraiya nodded. "Only if you let me pay what it's worth."
=X=X=X=
As soon as the white-haired menace finally—finally!—went on his way, Axel felt about ready to collapse. The adrenaline, though he wasn't sure what about the conversation had been so stressful (other that the whole, well, it was Jiraiya), was draining away and left him feeling almost numb.
The reality—his new reality—was apparently still settling in.
Feeling a little light-headed, still reeling from the unexpectedness of it all, he managed to make his way out the back door. Then on through the forge, where Morimoto looked up from some work with a small frown of worry.
Axel waved off Morimoto's concern.
He just needed some air, that was all.
Sometimes… sometimes it all seemed to hit him at once: who these people actually are, where he really was. Is.
Axel heavily plopped down at the edge of what was probably technically the backyard of a neighboring building, resting his head on his knees.
"Wieder mal," he groaned to himself. "Wieder, wieder, und wieder—! Warum kann ich nicht…"
He thought he'd be over this by now. It's been weeks, after all.
Sighing, Axel pressed a hand over his eyes.
Denial isn't healthy, he knows that. And yet, that's exactly how he's been functioning: simply pretending he wasn't stuck here, in this… this anime-manga-real-life fiasco. Pretending this was all just an event or a vacation or a dream.
After a few minutes trying to just focus on his breathing, Axel felt something bump his foot. He cracked open one eye, lifting his hand slightly to be able to see what it was.
It was the dachshund again.
Axel blinked at him for a moment, and an unbidden smile pulled at his lips. The dog had sat down near enough to touch, but seemed to be determinedly looking in the opposite direction. It was like the dachshund was trying to look like he didn't care: pretending like he had walked over for no reason, and certainly not because he was worried or anything.
"Danke." He cautiously lowered a hand to gently touch the top of the dog's head. On the off chance that he could be understood—this was ninja-magic-world, after all—Axel repeated, "Thanks."
The dachshund looked up at him, or, more to the point, at his hand. Huffing a quiet bark, the dog stood, seemed to consider something, turned twice, and then lay down with his head resting on Axel's foot.
The companionship, so simple and peaceful, cast a delicate calm over him. He let himself relax back into the wall slightly, just enjoying the chance to think. And indeed, he found he could think further than his own breathing again. This was, understandably, a huge relief.
Honestly, the past month or so was throwing Axel into more panic attacks than he had ever thought he'd encounter.
But counting up minor (or less minor, sometimes) panic attacks was not the best way to spend his time right now. What he needed to do was figure out a plan going forward: something that could help prevent future anxiety-inducing encounters.
So, staring up at the sky, Axel thought.
People had been talking about him.
Never mind that he had no clue why, the fact was that it happened. It had to have happened, otherwise there was no reason he could think of for somebody like Jiraiya to pop in to look around.
Probably.
Which meant that his solution could be keeping people from talking about him or the shop. Somehow. He wasn't sure how to make it more difficult to talk about the shop, given it's not as though the shop actually had a name—
Now there's an idea.
"Vielleicht…" he murmured to himself, considering the option. Then he nodded.
It could work. Maybe.
Hopefully.
From where he had been snoozing, head pillowed on Axel's foot, the dachshund yawned and glanced up to see what the slight motion had been about.
The dachshund eyed him for a moment, and Axel managed a small smile.
Another second of consideration, before, with an oddly satisfied nod, the dog stretched and stood up; it was time to head off, apparently, now that the human didn't need comforting.
Watching the small dog leave, Axel noticed that there was another larger dog waiting at the other side of the yard. This dog—a girl—was brown, significantly larger than the dachshund, and very very fluffy. She also looked kind of smug for some reason, and the dachshund, once he noticed her, seemed almost peeved. Or maybe embarrassed.
It's not as if Axel really knew how to decipher dog body language—beyond wagging, anyway.
He couldn't be sure, but it looked almost like the dogs where bickering. Chuckling slightly, Axel waved at the pair of them. The dachshund stuck up his nose and turned away, but his tail gave a few telling wags. The girl dog, seeing this, barked what sounded like a very pleased bark.
He unfolded his legs, letting them stretch out as he could finally relax, and leaned back into the wall. It was nice, just having that quiet companionship as he gathered himself back up. Standing, he dusted the dirt off his pants and pulled open the door to the forge, ready to head back inside.
And when he looked back across the yard one last time, the two dogs were gone.
"Are… are you alright, Axel?"
He felt the hand on his shoulder, and managed to give Morimoto an almost genuine smile.
"Yes," he answered. Then, "Well, mostly. I have an idea."
=X=X=X=
Axel was finally making a sign for his shop, and—in an ironic contrast to what signs are usually built for—he hoped it would help prevent people from talking about him. It had taken a while to choose the perfect name. It had to be virtually unpronounceable for this plan to work.
After all, they can't talk about his shop if they can't even say its name. Right?
He would, of course, look back on that optimism with something akin to embarrassment; but for now it really seemed to be the ideal plan.
Forging the letters he needed hadn't been all that hard, although some of the finer details were a bit tricky to keep strong. The issue of what to mount them on was neatly resolved by Minato, on accident. The ninja had once again blown up some of the nearby forest in his seal testing, resulting in a perfect (if slightly charred) log for his use. Personally, Axel thought the metal lettering—a Germanic font, just to look extra cool and, more to the point, confusing—looked fantastic on what was basically a misplaced tree trunk.
There was a thump of something landing upstairs.
Axel glanced up at the ceiling then toward the staircase, largely unconcerned. It was a noise he was becoming quite familiar with, after all. No matter how much it annoyed him, he was fairly sure that this was going to be one of those things he'd just need to get used to. He suspected that the noise was actually a sort of polite courtesy: ninja could move silently, after all.
Minato, having entered from a window on the second floor, jumped down the stairs and rounded the corner with a cheerful hello.
"Guess who finally probably figured out where the seal kept going wrong!" the ninja said, happily brandishing a small scroll that probably had the aforementioned seal drawn on it. "And this time I'm pretty sure I've got it right!"
Which might not mean very much, actually, seeing as the very piece of wood he was nailing letters into had come from an earlier version of the seal that Minato had claimed to be confident in: a version that, in addition to being explosive, had caught a good portion of the training ground on fire.
So his skeptical expression was somewhat justified. "Have you?"
"It wasn't timing at all!" Minato continued, which could kind of be considered an answer. "The new spiral improved it tremendously, yes, but the true problem was the outer seal six-point array. Six! Of course that wouldn't work well, it's off sequence—"
Axel had only the absolute barest of understanding for what he was ranting about. "Minato. What?"
The ninja paused, remembering that he was talking to a friend who, while occasionally helpful, didn't actually know about the written ninja magics. "Right! Right, so how to explain…"
Not bothering to stand from where he was kneeling on the floor, Axel just smacked down his mallet once more to securely nail in one of the metal letters. There was only nail left to hammer down now, and then the sign would be complete. Kind of, anyway. He'd still need to actually put it out front, but that would be easy enough.
Especially if he could get some help from Minato.
"Anyway… what are you working on, Axel?" The blond ninja in question walked over, apparently choosing to drop whatever he had stopped by for in favor of his own curiosity. After a moment, he seemed to recognize the log. "Oh! Is this your shop sign?"
Axel nodded. "I've come up with a name," he explained, looking both proud and somewhat like he was making a joke only he understood. Even when he had asked for the wood, he hadn't yet figured out what the sign should actually say.
With a grin, Minato lightly chided, "Well, it's about time. The store's been open for weeks!"
Holding the last nail in place—the bottom of a lowercase 'r'—Axel gave it a few taps with the mallet to get it started. Then, with a few more stronger hits, the final nail was in. He sat back to look over his handiwork, and Minato peered at it in fascinated confusion.
Which, fair enough: the store name wasn't written in any language the ninja could know of. As such, the sign for the shop was completely illegible, in a manner of speaking. It was a series of nine symbols that probably looked like nonsense geometric patterns to anyone from this world.
But to Axel, the sign was a word—or, to be technical, a name: "Excalibur."
"What?" Minato asked, wondering if he had heard that correctly. "Is that… the name?"
"Excalibur," repeated Axel, smiling. The name had been specially chosen to be hard to say, with the hope that it would be bothersome enough that people simply wouldn't talk about it. "It is a legen, er, legernd… Is a special sword from stories."
Even as Minato tried to puzzle out how the odd image could be read as such an odd word, he still thought to correct his friend's mistake. "Did you mean 'legendary'?"
"Probably."
Still staring at the positively unreadable symbols, Minato had to ask, "How is this… what you said?"
Axel, for a moment, had no idea how to respond; after all, he'd never been asked to properly explain the alphabet before. When he couldn't figure it out, he decided to just roll with his most default response: Axel shrugged.
But of course the ninja wouldn't—or maybe couldn't—let that stand. Axel knew Minato well enough by now and, perhaps even more importantly, had been included in enough discussions about that written ninja magic stuff to guess that Minato was always interested in new symbols or concepts that could be incorporated into his explosive designs. These peculiar scribbles were probably, to him, utterly fascinating.
"Axel," Minato urged, "Please?"
"Ach, warum musst du so sein?" he grumbled under his breath, not caring how unintelligible the words would be to Minato. The ninja, that friendly weirdo, always seemed to be a mix of delighted and confused when Axel slipped into German.
"So… does that mean you'll tell me?"
"Maybe," Axel allowed. "But I'll only explain this once."
Minato looked unconcerned.
Author's Note:
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
Axel is doing his best to adjust, but he's also trying to avoid being sucked into ninja nonsense. I have bad news for you, Axel… that's not gonna work out. Ninja can be such gossips.
Idea Partner: Rikkamaru
Updates come of the 15th of each month.
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Translations:
"Wieder mal." = "Yet again."
"Wieder, wieder, und wieder—! Warum kann ich nicht…" = "Again, again, and again—! Why can't I…"
"Danke." = "Thanks."
"Vielleicht…" = "Perhaps…"
"Ach, warum musst du so sein?" = "Oh, why do you have to be like that?"
See ya on the flipside, everyone!
