Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Fairy Tail.


Black Phoenix Arc

12. A New Job

When Naruto arrived for his training session with Erza, he immediately knew something was wrong. It was the only thing that stopped him from telling her about the magic sword that showed up in his apartment the previous night.

All thoughts of it faded away when he saw the look in her eyes. She appeared to be angry, which was a sight of her that he could not recall seeing before.

"What's wrong?" he immediately asked.

"You're late," Erza said with the same angry look.

"No, I'm not," Naruto said with a raised eyebrow. It was still ten minutes before their training session was supposed to begin. After having Kakashi for a sensei, he made sure to be on time. He knew how much tardiness annoyed other people.

Erza frowned, but she nodded after a few moments. "I apologize, Naruto. I'm just not in a good mood. I just found out that Natsu and Lucy left last night after stealing an S-class job from the second floor."

Naruto's eyes widened. He had been lectured about the second floor before. After all, he had thought it would be a cool place to go until Makarov stopped him and explained what the second floor was for. Only S-class mages could go up there, one of which was Erza. He knew that there were only five S-class mages in Fairy Tail, and Natsu was definitely not one.

"They're in trouble," he said as he took in the information. "I'm surprised you haven't gone after them."

"I showed up an hour too late," Erza said with a mixture of emotions. It appeared she was happy to hear him say that but displeased about still being there. "Gray went after them. If he doesn't bring them back by tomorrow morning, I can go after them, but Master refuses to let me go until then."

"Let's get your mind off of that then," Naruto said as he held a hand out.

"Agreed," Erza said as she summoned two swords and handed him one. "You clearly learn better by doing, so I won't be giving you drills like most people go through when learning swordsmanship. I want you to come at me with only the use of your sword. I will stay on the defense and point out any mistakes you made. We'll switch off and on every hour."

No one could say that Erza was not a tough teacher. In fact, Naruto would be more than happy to insist that she was the toughest later that day when she started slapping him with the flat of her blade every time he left himself open.

Despite how tough she was during training, Naruto could not help but admit that he cherished his time with his newest friend.


That night, Naruto was sitting at his kitchen table with two stacks of paper in front of him. The one to the left was quite a bit smaller than the one to the right. He had started entering his mindscape, memorizing a single seal, and copying what the book in his mind said about it on paper. As such, he was able to more readily understand each seal as he learned it, and he had physical copies of the seals that he was learning.

So far, he had managed to learn the Finger Engraving Seal, the seals for the five elements, and the Tailed Beast Suppression Seal, though he was not one hundred percent sure the last one worked since the only tailed beast in his world was inside of him. He did know that he could not consciously draw upon its chakra if he had one attached to him, but he was unsure if it would suppress its chakra if he was already using it.

For some strange reason, Naruto found that he learned fuinjutsu easier to learn than expected.

His mind was not entirely on the seals he had already learned though. Earlier, he had skipped forward in the book to see how many different seals there were in it. Much to his surprise, there were only about twenty-five more seals left before the section on his seal. The part about his seal was somewhere around a hundred pages long. Apparently, it was a very complicated seal. In addition to that, there was apparently background information on the seal.

The only thing that had stopped him from reading about it was a note that his father had left in the book in the front of that section. It had told him not to start reading it until he had at least read everything else in it.

The last five seals in the book were almost as tempting to read as the part about his seal, but that was only because they were labeled as forbidden jutsu at the top of their pages. He had actually read a few paragraphs about the first of the five forbidden seals. He had trouble reading past that though. It was a seal that bound the soul of a living being to a specific item, preventing them from moving on to the afterlife. He immediately knew that the seals that his father deemed forbidden were not forbidden in the same way that the Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu were.

Shaking his head away from such thoughts he removed a blank sheet of paper from the stack to the right and closed his eyes. He was not going to waste any time. There was something pushing him to get stronger, and the next jutsu in the book could only help him.

He could not think of the one that he began to copy down as a seal, despite its relevance to sealing. It allowed the user to generate a seal purely using their chakra. As such, they could touch someone and leave a seal on them within a single moment. Apparently, his father was the creator of the jutsu, and he had never taught anyone else how to use it.

As he continued working, he had no idea what awaited him the next day.


The next morning, Naruto frowned as he saw that Erza was not behind the guild like she had been the past two days. It seemed that she had gone to bring Natsu and Lucy back to the guild after all.

Sighing, he entered the guild and noticed that Makarov was looking at him as if he was amazed.

"Speak of the devil, and he shall appear. Isn't that the old saying?" Macao asked with a chuckle.

"What's going on?" Naruto asked in confusion.

"I was just going to send for you," Makarov said with a grin. "You saved us some trouble. An important job has come up, and I want you to lead a team to deal with it."

Naruto could not hide his shock, or his excitement, at the Master of Fairy Tail's words. He had never really been in charge of a job before.

"What's the job?" he asked with a grin as he walked up to Makarov.

"Councilman Siegrain has offered this job specifically to you," Makarov said, surprising everyone who was listening. "Because of your success during the Lullaby Incident and your actions when Erza was put under trial, he wants you to lead a team of your choosing. Your task is to defeat and capture the Black Phoenix, a fairly small Dark Guild."

Everything about the job sounded fun to Naruto. He longed to push himself to his limits to see how much he had grown thanks to his father's fuinjutsu. "What's the pay?"

"One million jewels," Makarov said, making his eyes widen. "Black Phoenix was as large as Eisenwald at one time, but most of them agreed to disband when they were named a Dark Guild two years ago. The Council learned that their forces stand at twenty-six mages. Their location is halfway between Oshibana Town and Mount Hakobe. You may choose your team."

His old personality tried to slip out at that point, but he knew that declaring he could do it by himself would not have been a smart idea. He was getting the feeling that the job was some sort of test. "What kind of guy is their leader? I've never heard of anyone with a name like that."

"I have no idea who he is," Makarov said, surprising Naruto. "I'm sure it's an alias. The strongest members of Black Phoenix disbanded and joined other guilds, so it isn't considered to be a very strong Dark Guild. There are rumors that their leader isn't even a member of Black Phoenix from its days as a legal guild. I'm inclined to believe that it was an unallied mage who took over the guild when they lost most of their strength. He's said to be a powerful opponent, nonetheless. He is said to possess some sort of explosive magic."

"Did the guild specialize in fire magic?" Naruto asked after a few moments later.

"Was the name that obvious?" Makarov asked with a chuckle as he nodded.

"Okay, I'll pick my team," Naruto said as he looked around. His eyes first landed on Cana. He knew how strong she was. They worked well together too. "Hey Cana, do you want in on this?"

"Sure," she said as she turned around in her barstool.

"We need three more people," Naruto said as he looked around. With five mages, he would feel better about the job. He was more cautious than he had been in his world, so he wanted to have more than enough people just in case Dawg Anders was a challenge to fight.

"How about Shadow Gear?" Cana asked, catching the attention of Levy's team. "They have good teamwork and are pretty strong."

"What do you guys think?" Naruto asked as he looked over at Levy, Droy, and Jet. They all looked to each other before nodding their heads.

"We'll help," Levy said.

"That's settled then," Naruto said as he turned to face Makarov once again. "We'll go and take care of that right now."

"Good luck," Makarov said.

"Thanks," Naruto replied. He looked over at his new allies and said, "Meet me at the train station in half an hour."

"I'll go with you now," Cana said as she rose to her feet and walked up to him.

Naruto gave her a curious look, but he simply nodded and walked out of the guild with her.

About ten minutes passed before they were nearing the train station. It was at that time that Cana decided to say something.

"Naruto, I was wondering if you'd like to go out after the job is over," Cana said with a somewhat nervous smile.

That stopped Naruto in his tracks. He looked her over for a moment before asking, "It's not that I don't like you or something, but why would you want to…."

"I just want to go out on a date. I'm not asking for anything serious right now," Cana said with a light smile. "Have you seen some of the other guys in Fairy Tail? I wouldn't be caught dead going on a date with Elfman, Natsu, or Gray. Some of the others our age are nearly as bad."

"I don't know," Naruto said as he looked away. "I doubt you'd enjoy going out with me though. I've never actually been on a date."

"Then we need to change that," Cana said with a look that told him she was not going to take no for an answer.

Seeing that look, he tried to think of an honest reason that he did not want to go on a date with her. She was his closest friend in Earth Land, she was a rather powerful mage, she was incredibly beautiful, and she actually wanted to go on a date with him. He knew that if Jiraiya was there at that moment, he would smack him upside the head.

"On second thought, I'd be happy to," Naruto said with a smile. "But you get to pay."

"That's not what a gentleman would do," Cana said as she crossed her arms.

"Erza told me she beat Natsu when the match started back up," Naruto said with a grin. "I bet on her, but you never paid me back."

"Damn, you remembered," Cana muttered under her breath, making Naruto laugh. "You seem much more happy than you were when you first joined."

"I am," Naruto agreed.


Naruto and Cana sat right in front of the train tracks on a bench while they waited on their partners to arrive. They had already bought the train tickets for the entire team, so waiting was all that was left to do.

Levy was the first one to show up. Looking at her again, Naruto had to admit that she was unlike most of the girls in Fairy Tail. She was not quite up there in looks department in comparison to some of the girls that he spent a lot of time around. That was not to say that she was not attractive though. Whereas Mirajane, Erza, Lucy, and Cana were, for the lack of a better term, hot, Levy was simply a cute girl.

There was one thing that stood out about her though. She was a genius. She knew a variety of ancient languages and was the only person Naruto had allowed to study his paper bombs.

"How's it going?" Naruto asked, immediately catching both girls' attention. They knew what he was talking about.

"It's hopeless," Levy said with a frown. "Even with the instructions on how you create paper bombs, I can't figure it out. They just won't explode."

"Here," Naruto said as he handed her a dull gray book the instant that it appeared from his right wrist band. "I should've given it to you right away."

"What's this?" she asked in confusion as she looked at the cover. It was called A Guide to the Sealing Arts.

"It's a book on seals and seal theory," Naruto said as he felt a headache come on. Even though he was more skilled with fuinjutsu than any of his classmates had been, it was still confusing to think about seal theory. "Since you can't figure it out, that might help you. It explains how it works and why the seals have to be made in a certain way."

"Thank you!" Levy said in the most excited voice that he had heard in a long time as she bent down and gave him a hug. She broke away from the hug and put on her special glasses that let her read fast and began to read the book.

"Why is she so excited?" Naruto asked Cana, fully aware that his blue haired teammate was not paying attention to him.

"Her magic is kind of like your sealing arts. They're pretty different, but they are kind of related regardless," Cana said as she shook her head at the blue haired girl's antics.

"Well, they're just on time," Naruto said as he rose to his feet. Jet and Droy were not too far behind the bench. "Let's hop on a train and head to Oshibana Town. We can go and kick the Black Phoenix's ass from there."

Cana just rolled her eyes at the blond's behavior.


Author's Note: I have to say something before anyone gets the wrong idea. This is not a Naruto/Cana fic, nor is it a harem of any sort. I won't go into the reason I generally won't read, let alone write, harems, but the important thing is that's not my style.

So why did I have them decide to go on a date? Their personal feelings aside, I feel that it would be better for Naruto and Erza if he had some experience at dating before they got together.

Now, I want to talk for a moment.

People keep bringing up nature manipulation and Sage Mode. Let me clarify things. Naruto will never master nature manipulation. He did create a weak wind jutsu, which he only broke Erigor's Storm Mail with because he overloaded it, using his sword, but that won't be an attack he uses very often at all. Furthermore, he will never learn Sage Mode.

As smart as Naruto is in this fic, I can't imagine him figuring out how to generate wind chakra on his own, even if he did come close during his fight with Erigor. Regardless, figuring it out would be a bit pointless since it would take so long to manage it. As it is, he'll have abilities that far exceed that of nature manipulation.

Oh, and I want to address the Shadow Clone training method now. I've put off addressing it for too long. Naruto will not be using it. He will figure out the information sharing aspect of it, but he won't even consider the possibility that it could be used for training. Given my plans, it wouldn't work out well if he tried to train with them like that anyway.

However, I can say that Naruto will practice his swordsmanship against shadow clones, but that's not the same, seeing as how physical training doesn't carry over through clones.

Anyways, thanks for reading.