Still own nothing.
/~/
He hadn't planned to come back to Numachi De.
What is it they say about the best laid plans? Naruto wondered distantly. He cracked his neck, doing his best to ignore the fire that had engulfed his shoulders once more. And here I had gotten used to the numbness.
The blond tilted his head upwards, bleary, blue eyes regarding his shackled hands suspended above his head from the ceiling. Blood that had long dried from his first four days – by his count – of captivity was quickly being overrun by more of the sticky, red liquid, his wounds having reopened.
The room was small, no more than a large wooden closet really, and reminded Naruto of its counterpart in his team's base of operations. He had performed more interrogations than he liked to think about, but idly felt his respect for the unfortunate souls who had suffered his team's hospitality go up. Resisting torture was no easy business.
He felt his toes brush the splintered floor beneath him and stretched his legs to their limit, face reddening in exertion. He gave up a few moments later, gasping for air. Crafty bastards, he thought with no real venom. Giving enough slack in the chains that suspended him would allow him to take some pressure off his shoulders – his captors had done an admirable job making sure that it was impossible, while still seemingly within reach.
"Abandon hope, all ye who enter here," he croaked.
He thanked his lucky stars that the Iwa-nin weren't all that much better equipped than his lowly squad. The blond had long lamented the lack of interrogation supplies that would make his life easier with their prisoners, but it seemed they weren't the only ones in need of an upgrade. Chakra suppressing shackles were apparently too expensive even for Iwa to readily supply its troops with.
There were, of course, other ways to suppress a shinobi's chakra. Cause enough bodily damage or mental stress and the body's natural balance of physical and spiritual energy would be disrupted, leading to much lower chakra outputs. His captors were nothing if not talented in the 'causing bodily damage' regard, and the lack of sleep their ministrations led to did the rest of the work for them.
He wasn't without his tricks, however. Tilting his head upwards once more, he carefully drew circles above his mouth with his left index finger. Pushing his limited chakra to his hands, Naruto closed his eyes in concentration. Just a bit more…got it!
A tiny stream of water poured forth from where his finger was, directly into his mouth. He lapped the liquid up with all the desperation of a starving dog for a full thirty seconds before cutting the flow off, struggling to catch his breath. He glanced down hurriedly and nearly sighed in relief at no water having fallen to the floor. His captors would undoubtedly take steps to remove his single avenue of sanity if they knew about it – likely by removing his hands.
He thanked his lucky stars for the lack of security cameras as well.
Shaking off the satisfaction of his chakra manipulation, Naruto focused inward. Two cracked ribs, he mused, breathing deeply and containing a wince. Nothing shattered, thankfully. Tons of internal bleeding. He hissed through his teeth as his weight shifted, his right side pinching in agony. "And the stab wound…can't forget that."
He'd dealt with worse; the medic stationed with the Iwa shinobi hadn't even had to be called to make sure he lived this time. That might not be a good thing, though. They could just be getting bored of his intransigence, in which case he'd be dead soon.
Naruto cocked his head to the side as the thought rattled through his skull. The notion didn't bother him quite as much as he'd thought it would. And what the fuck does that say about my mindset?
All thoughts fled his mind instantly as the sound of heavy footsteps outside his door reached his ears. A momentary flare of panic flashed like lightning through his mind, his heartrate spiking in anticipation, before he ruthlessly quashed it with what little of his willpower he had left. They might make him bleed, they might make him scream, but they wouldn't see fear from him.
Not while he had breath in his body.
The thin, wooden door opened on hinges in dire need of oiling, revealing a man that was easily double the blonde's size – in breadth if not in height. He wore the standard muddy reds that were Iwa's signature color, a long-sleeved shirt covering mesh body-armor that was stretched thin over a muscled chest that could only be described as massive. Thick, curly hair that was an orange that was usually only found in wild, Fire Country plants covered the man's head, culminating in a scraggly goatee.
Inexplicably, Naruto was reminded of Haruno Daisuke, his old teammate who hated being called a ginger.
"Hmph. They told me you were young. I wasn't expectin some brat lookin fresh outta the academy, though," Yoton no Roshi drawled.
Naruto did his best to raise an eyebrow. "Terribly sorry to disappoint," he snarked, his water having breathed life back into his voice.
The jinchurriki snorted. "You're a talker. No wonder those boys got so pissy with ya. You know who I am, boy?"
The blond cocked his head to the side. "They call you the Monkey."
"That's right. And that means you know what I can do. Now, I've been in this shithole swamp for almost three fuckin years dealing with Konoha and its hired trash," Roshi stated. Naruto immediately affixed a puzzled look on his face at the mention of his home, causing the jonin to roll his eyes. "Don't gimme that 'I'm not Konoha' bullshit. I only seen that color hair once before, and best believe the Yellow Devil was a tree hugger. But who you and your family are ain't why I'm here."
The jinchurriki leaned in close to Naruto's face, looking him dead in the eye. Stale breath tinged with staler alcohol washed over the blond. "Between me and you, I wanna go home, get rip roarin drunk, and drown the next three years in more fuckin women than I can remember. How's that sound, boy? Pretty good, right?"
Naruto shrugged, or did his best to given his state. "I'm only fifteen. Bit young to understand where you're coming from."
Roshi's bushy, ginger eyebrows climbed his forehead. "Sucks for you. Been told I drink and fuck enough for two men, though, so don't worry."
"You're a generous man."
"Aye. Now I think we understand each other. You don't wanna be here, and I sure as shit don't wanna be here." The man sneered. "Why don't ya be a good little tree hugger and answer my questions so we can both be on our way."
"Well…considering 'being on my way' means being dead, I'm gonna have to take a hard pass on that, Monkey-san," Naruto quipped. He flashed what was undoubtedly a charming smile, but it had no effect on the jinchurriki's demeanor. Must be the bloody teeth.
Roshi just sighed, and suddenly the room was twenty degrees hotter. Muted though Naruto's senses were, he couldn't help the start at the feeling of such oppressive, heavy chakra saturating the air.
"Never been one for torture; messy, waste of time." The jinchurriki coughed into his outstretched palm, which opened to reveal a bright orange glob of magma that steamed as it rapidly cooled. Naruto suddenly found his mantra of showing no fear to be far more difficult. "But with that hair and those eyes…"
Roshi bared his teeth, eyes abruptly morphing from brown to glowing red. "I might just enjoy myself."
/~/
What the hell am I getting myself into? Naruto wondered, thoughts almost drowned out by the sound of rushing water. He was sat at the front end of a tiny, uncomfortable wooden boat that was being propelled entirely by Nagato's chakra; the small motor at the back forgotten about as they skipped along the surface of the ocean at speed.
His companion – cousin? – hadn't been wrong when he had called him a man of action. For as long as he could remember he had always been in motion, always working toward a goal of some sort. For years, the ignominy of being a clanless orphan in Konoha had driven him to be a shinobi, to make a name for himself. After failing Hatake Kakashi's bell test, the stigma of the reserve corps had pushed him to excel his way into ANBU. His duty to his Hokage and Konoha saw him into Root, and Root in turn dropped him in Grass Country to fight for Konoha's interest.
The last two-hundred-and-fifteen days had presented a marked difference in the sense that his goal hadn't been anything external at all. Healing his injuries had been paramount. The physical ones at first, and then the far more insidious mental ones – he wasn't stupid enough to believe that he was anything close to mentally fit after the war. Even in the depth of his depression following that day, he had never lost his will to live. His will to fight may have been lost in the flames of revulsion and corpses, but the will to simply continue on had never disappeared.
Even then, subliminally, he had wanted to atone – to make some good of a life that had meant nothing but suffering for others.
Is this my chance? he pondered for what felt like the thousandth time in the past two days. He shook himself, chiding himself at being over dramatic. Don't get ahead of yourself, Uzumaki.
Only time would tell whether this opportunity would be anything more than the delusional ramblings of a man who had too much power at his disposal. And, regardless of Nagato's words back in Tea County, Naruto would have been dead long ago if he trusted every person who promised not to kill him. He trusted his companion to not kill him without provocation, but he couldn't be sure what provocation amounted to. Denying the man's offer of allegiance might send him over the edge – he had no illusions about the relative sanity of a person trying to overthrow the shinobi system.
At least I'm in my element if it comes to that, he thought as he cast his gaze out over the water, darkly amused.
Whirlpool country was aptly named. The boat didn't travel a hundred meters without having to navigate a new vortex, large or small, and even the still waters had tiny cyclones brewing beneath the surface no larger than water draining from a sink. The largest ones threatened to swallow boats far larger than their tiny craft whole, dragging them to an ignoble death in the blue-green depths.
Blue eyes moved back to his silent companion, meeting steely pools of mercury that had been surveying him. Nagato smiled and cast his eyes across the waters behind Naruto, allowing the not-uncomfortable silence stretch.
The blond wondered how many times his kin had been here, as the boat darted around a whirlpool that formed from nothing with aplomb. The man clearly had practice.
"Take a look, Naruto," Nagato said, interrupting his thoughts. He nodded his head, indicating for the blond to turn around.
Dozens – no – hundreds of rocky islands met his eyes, each one jutting upward from the blue-green waters below for as far as the eye could see. Rich, vibrant green covered each island, and what looked like moss at first revealed itself to actually be tropical trees and plants upon further inspection. Beaches of pure white sand had formed at the base of each island, welcoming in a way that Naruto could only relate to his own ramshackle home in Tea Country.
In the distance, a series of islands that were nearly as tall as the Hokage monument reached toward the sky, the peaks and valleys forming a veritable mountain range to those who sat at sea level.
Naruto felt himself exhale in reverence, a smile forming on his face unbidden. Regardless of the outcome of this venture, he was happy he had come. "This is spectacular," he breathed.
"Quite," Nagato said lowly, voice carrying over the constant sound of rushing water. "At Uzushio's height, these outer islands acted as outposts. A single shinobi could man them, either alerting the inner islands to an impending threat, or dispatching it themselves."
Naruto nodded absently. "The Uzumaki Suiton affinity." It had been one of the only well documented pieces of information he had been able to get his hands on back in Konoha. He could scarcely imagine the havoc he could wreak with this much water at his disposal.
As soon as the thought occurred to him, he dispatched it to the furthest reaches of his mind, images of drowning platoons of shinobi flashing through his mind. Two-hundred and fifteen days, he reminded himself. "Two-hundred and sixteen is better, though," he murmured.
"Something you're familiar with, I take it," Nagato said, having not heard the blonde's mantra. "A single Uzushio jonin could field dozens of enemy shinobi at a time from the outposts. They played to their strengths."
The boat passed through the first set of islands unhindered. Naruto's eyes narrowed as soft, white light emanated once from the depths, and then faded. "Was that…?"
"Even decades after the Fall, the fuuinjutsu is still active," Nagato confirmed. "From what I've gathered, the arrays beneath the water were engraved on the ocean floor. White light means it recognizes our chakra as citizens."
Blue eyes widened at the sophistication of the seals. "They can tell?"
"Each person's chakra is different, but some traits are distinguishable throughout families, as you know. The Uzumaki were the foremost fuuinjutsu experts in the world. The science behind most of their work eludes me still, but it isn't a stretch to imagine the possibility of such complex seals; especially since they apparently already exist."
Naruto blinked, considering. "How much knowledge was lost when they fell?"
Nagato sighed. "Almost all of it, I'd venture. Most of the survivors fled to Konoha. Of them, you're the last. Some few moved elsewhere and some moved before the final clash that wiped them out, like my parents. I haven't managed to find any others, however, and I've been looking for over a decade now. Whatever information is left, is here."
Naruto nodded, melancholy falling across his shoulders like a blanket. "Kiri really did a number on us, huh?" he said.
"Indeed, but if it wasn't them, it would have been someone else, I suspect. Uzushio had only one ally, Konoha, and was a threat to both Kiri and Kumo by virtue of proximity."
"You mentioned Uchiha Madara playing a role." The blond turned questioning eyes back to Nagato.
"There will be much to learn about Madara and the part he still is yet to play in the coming conflict," Nagato said, almost automatically. "But yes. Following his battle with Senju Hashirama, Madara travelled the continent, exerting some level of influence over a variety of events. He was a shadowy figure in Kiri for some time and actually controlled the Yondaime Mizukage directly for a time. I do not know the full extent of his influence over the Sandaime, but he was instrumental in the destruction of Uzushio."
Naruto pondered the information for a few moments, watching the passing islands as they continued inward toward the center of the archipelago. "And you know this, how?"
"He told me himself," Nagato answered, a note of black humor in his voice. Blue eyes whipped to meet the Rin'negan in disbelief. "As I said, there is much for you to learn about Madara's part in my plans."
Clearly, Naruto thought, intrigued in spite of himself. As far removed from the Fall as he was, there was only a distant sort of anger directed at the man who had worked to obliterate his clan. He had never known his family, never had the chance to love them as anything other than an orphan yearning for a connection to something greater than himself.
He turned back to face the oncoming islands, just in time to see a grand archway the same color as Nagato's hair. They had reached the mountainous islands. "Why'd he do it?" he asked, craning his neck to see the top of the traditional gate.
The boat passed through the grand gate and entered into a massive bay that was pockmarked by dozens of islands. Faded crimson bridges that were wide enough for supply trains to use crisscrossed from island to island, undoubtedly thoroughfares from decades past. Buildings built of wood and stone still stood tall, looking utterly untouched despite the great calamity that had obliterated the people who lived here. More fuuinjutsu, Naruto realized. Only way these could still be standing after all these years.
Hundreds of boats filled the bay, many simply adrift and being carried by the various currents. More than a few were pressed up against the face of the mountainous rocks that shielded the village proper from the outside world. Most looked simple, nothing more than wood held together by nails and, likely, fuuinjutsu. He glanced down at the boat he rode in, comparing it to the others, and realized that Nagato had likely appropriated the craft from in here given the similar design.
Lost in his wonderment and musings, he almost missed his companion speak. "The same reason Madara has always done things: power. He was searching for the Kyuubi."
/~/
A prisoner's first duty was to escape.
Too bad I'm slated for execution, he thought, mind surprisingly clear through the haze of fire that he felt through every nerve ending.
Roshi was, thankfully, done with him. The Iwa filed medic had patched up the various holes the jinchuuriki had melted into him enough so that he wasn't in immediate danger of dying. But that was all he'd done.
Haku will fix you up, the blond consoled himself. He's a good medic. But you gotta get to him first.
And therein laid the problem. His team was leagues away. He was in an Iwa controlled village.
Two options, Naruto mused. Freeze the chains, break them, walk out. As far as plans went, it wasn't half bad. His chakra had been mostly beaten out of him, but Grass Country was so humid that he had enough moisture in the air to work with for a few, low level chakra manipulations. And water was always easy for him to work with, no matter how little chakra he had.
Unfortunately, as far as plans went, it wasn't half good either – he didn't have the wherewithal to fight, kill, or evade however many Iwa-nin were still in Numachi De.
Which means they have to let me out.
The door to his closet-sized accommodations squeaked open, heralding the entrance of his most frequent tormentor – a square-faced Iwa tokubetsu jonin whose name Naruto had never learned. The man chuckled lowly. "He really did a number on you, didn't he. Surprised you're still breathin," he said, slowly stepping around Naruto's chained form. "Gotta hand it to ya, kid, really thought you'd squeal when we brought him in. I'm actually kinda impressed."
The blond coughed blood, fire engulfing his lungs. "Do you feel better now?" he croaked. "Knowing that you're not just incompetent?"
A calloused hand closed around his neck in a vice, and Naruto felt victory surge through him as he circulated his chakra. "Defiant to the bloody last, ain't ya," the Iwa-nin growled. His grip tightened even further, and Naruto sputtered, gasping for air. Vision going white, the blond felt a momentary panic at his plan failing before the grip relaxed and he gulped precious oxygen.
"Not gonna break out your toys?" Naruto gasped after a few moments, when it became clear that the Iwa-nin was just watching him, rather than moving to interrogate him.
"Tch. It's your lucky day, actually. You're finally gonna get outta here. Monkey's out on patrol, but before he left he told me I could finally kill you," he said, satisfaction practically oozing from his words. "I was thinkin I'd have one last go at ya for old times' sake, but there's a difference between punks who need a little motivation to talk, and the freaks like you who'd just enjoy it."
Head down, Naruto grinned through bloody teeth, the thrill of satisfaction filling him at the knowledge that he'd finally, finally beaten his tormentor. He was a twisted man who the blond knew derived far too much pleasure from the screams he caused. To deny the man's enjoyment was as much a victory as anything. "Bummer. Think you can do me a favor and make it quick?" he snarked.
The Iwa-nin just snorted as he stuck his head out of the door, calling to two of his comrades. "Hiro, Haruka, come help me with this fucker." He turned around and faced Naruto, face set as two other Iwa shinobi shuffled in. The blond smiled graciously at them and they turned away, eyes downcast.
"Unlock him. We're gonna take him outside," his torturer ordered.
One shinobi strode over to unchain him unquestioningly, but the other hesitated. "Sir, he's to be killed, correct? Can't we just do it here?"
Naruto caught a flash of irritation cross his tormentor's face before his chains came undone, and he crashed bonelessly to the floor. So undignified, he thought with some small humor. He began to modulate his breathing, chakra beginning to circulate slowly.
"I don't remember you being able to question my orders, Hiro," the blond heard the ranking shinobi growl. "'Sides, a quick death is too good for trash like this. Pick 'im up and let's go."
Naruto closed his eyes, breathing deeply and doing his best to focus his chakra as he was grabbed under the arms by each of the Iwa-nin and was dragged out of his cell. His eyes remained closed even as daylight greeted him for the first time in what he thought was about five days. Fresh air followed a moment later, and he couldn't help the audible sigh of relief that escaped him as he tasted air that wasn't stale.
Blue eyes finally opened as he felt his feet impact familiar wooden steps – they were the same steps he had used in all of his infiltrations of Numachi De. "Heh," he breathed, wondering absently at the power of suggestion as he was unceremoniously dropped to the wet earth beside the marsh. He let his face fall flat into the murky water, weakly spitting out a mouthful of mud.
"Sir…are we…?" he heard Hiro hesitatingly ask above him.
"Don't have the stomach to drown a man?" his torturer mocked. "Leave, then. Just needed help gettin 'im here."
Naruto heard Hiro shuffle his feet but there was no sound of feet retreating back up the steps. Too bad.
His hair was grabbed and he gritted his teeth as he met the eyes of his tormentor once more. "Quick death is too good for you, tree hugger," he said, and shoved Naruto's face into the shallow water.
The suddenness of the action took the blond by surprise for a moment and he roughly exhaled a stream of bubbled beneath the surface as his arms flailed uselessly at his sides. Closing his eyes once more, he reached out with his chakra, touching his favorite element for the first time in nearly a week – it bent to his will as easily as ever.
The grip on his hair slackened after a few moments, and he gasped as his head broke the surface. He pushed his arms underneath him and, with effort, managed to leverage himself into a sitting position.
When he turned around a moment later, he met the almost comically wide eyes of his torturer. A bubble of murky water encased his head that he was futilely clawing at, a stream of air bubbles emanating from his mouth and rising above his head to the open air. He fell to his knees as his body slowly began to rebel at the lack of oxygen, his hands fumbling with less and less dexterity with each passing second.
Naruto blinked, feeling nothing at all – not even vindication – and cast his eyes to the slumped forms of Hiro and Haruka. Each laid sprawled on the wet banks of the marsh, eyes wide and uncomprehending, their throats neatly sliced open; bright red arterial blood still flowed freely from the wounds and soaked the ground anew.
He returned his gaze to his tormentor to see his panicked eyes had widened even further. The man's chest heaved as he coughed violently, the noise muted by the bubble, and he finally lost the battle with his body as he sucked in water in deep breaths. His hands stopped scraping at the water and he reached out towards Naruto as his eyes began to glaze over, unseeing. The Iwa-nin teetered on his knees for a moment before keeling over and lying still, eyes still firmly locked on Naruto's own.
The blond stared at the man who had been the bane of his existence for the past five days, waiting a thirty seconds that felt like an eternity. Finally satisfied that the man would move no more, he dispelled his water manipulation with a thought and a tiny application of chakra.
Paying the corpses no heed and saying no words, Naruto turned around and crawled forward into the marsh. Lying on his back, blue eyes greeted the sky for the first time in a week, he let himself smile. He felt his chakra extend out into the water surrounding him, gently propelling him on a self-made current, obscured from sight by the reeds.
Time to go home.
/~/
"Did he find it?"
"Oh yes," Nagato said darkly. "The Uzumaki fuuinjutsu had kept the Kyuubi contained for nigh a century. He broke it, and slaughtered as much of the clan as he could get his hands on to protect the secret."
"Avoiding scrutiny from the rest of the Five," Naruto murmured.
"Kiri's participation and the total destruction of the clan were convenient smokescreens. Konoha immediately declared war per their treaty, and any hint of Madara's motivation or involvement was lost in the ensuing bloodbath."
The blond was silent, pondering the machinations of a man he, like most others, had believed long dead. Uchiha Madara was a history lesson, the history lesson in Konoha; one of the village's legendary founders and its third most infamous missing-nin – if only because the whole village thought he was deader than the Shodai.
What was it like, he wondered, to be so assured of your own righteousness that all collateral damage could be rationalized in pursuit of a goal? For all of his sins, the lives he had taken, he had done so in defense of an ideal. Such was the way of shinobi: any and all could be forgiven so long as it was for the good of the village. To be a shinobi was to be a servant to that which was greater than oneself.
Nuke-nin were, naturally, vilified to the highest degree. It wasn't the depravity of their actions that condemned them; it was their selfishness.
His time in the jungle had opened his mind to be able to look past the idea that all missing-nin were selfish traitors who deserved only death. He thought of Zabuza as he surveyed the ruins wrought by one man's ambition. Would the Kiri ninja have slaughtered this many to liberate his home the way he dreamed?
Yes, Naruto decided, drifting behind Nagato as they made their way toward one of the larger structures. Zabuza wouldn't have hesitated if it meant he accomplished his goal – that much had always been clear to Naruto. The man's reputation and moniker were both well-earned.
But then, it wasn't thoughts and motivations that made monsters of them. Their actions did.
They entered a large building with ornate, circular doors that had been blown off their hinges long before. A small room greeted them. There was nothing else in the room besides a pile of splinters that had long been overrun by moss, hinting at a desk having been the centerpiece in the space some decades ago. The back wall was singed and burned in a variety of places, and was marked with intricately woven kanji in the shape of a spiral.
More fuuinjutsu? Naruto wondered. Seems to be a theme around these parts, he mused darkly.
Nagato didn't wait for the blond to voice any of his questions, as he strode confidently to the damaged wall, bit his thumb, and placed his palm against it. Naruto's eyes widened as his suspicions were confirmed, bright white light blinding him for a moment before unseen cogs drew the wall apart from itself perfectly in the middle.
The true size of the building, which Naruto hadn't been able to ascertain from outside, was made apparent. Shelves the same red color of the great arch they had passed through extended from the floor to the ceiling, some hundred feet over their heads, and extended for what Naruto guessed was nearly two hundred yards back.
"This was the library," Nagato stated, casting an amused glance over his shoulder at Naruto's stupefied form.
"Was," the blond repeated, getting ahold of himself as they stepped into the massive room. Upon a second glance, the majority of the shelves were barren where there had no doubt once been scrolls upon scrolls. Unbidden, he felt a pang of loss for the collective knowledge of an entire culture of people, never to be found again.
"My guess is that whatever was left of the clan after Madara's rampage burned the majority of the scrolls and tomes," Nagato said, voice low. "To keep the knowledge from falling into Kiri's hands."
"Could they have so easily gotten in?" Naruto wondered aloud, thinking about what had undoubtedly been a blood seal that Nagato had opened to get in.
"Not on their own. You're no stranger to the ruthlessness of shinobi, though."
Naruto withheld a grimace. Hold a knife to a loved one or child and peoples' resolve often crumbled – he had used the tactic often enough to be sure of its effectiveness.
"I took whatever was left back to Ame when I first found this place. Save for one room," the red-haired man said, turning down a random aisle. Naruto followed dutifully, head swiveling back and forth trying to fully take in the expanse of the library; he could scarcely imagine what it must have looked like in its prime.
He turned back in time to watch Nagato activate another seal, this one on the floor in a seemingly random spot. A flash of familiar white light heralded a quarter of the floor rising slightly before sliding smoothly away to reveal a spiral staircase that descended into a brightly lit, circular room. The shelves were made of the same wood that characterized the rest of the library, but they were filled to the brim with scrolls. A small desk accompanied by a chair sat in the center of the room.
"What is this place?" Naruto asked in a whisper, running a tentative hand along the scrolls as he slowly descended.
"These are the birth records," Nagato returned, equally quiet. Blue eyes snapped to steel, widening ever-so-slightly at the implication. Nagato nodded. "The most recent scrolls are on that shelf." He pointed at a random set of scrolls behind Naruto before, "I will be outside when you've finished," he said before retreating back up the spiral staircase.
For a few moments, Naruto was frozen, staring blankly at the pile of scrolls facing him. And then he burst into motion like a man possessed, thoughts a frenzied mess. The first scroll was swiftly tossed aside, the dates not matching what little information the blond knew about his mother – she had been twenty-three when she died, meaning she had been born roughly forty years previous.
Steady fingers belying a frantic mind closed around the appropriately dated scroll, and he let himself fall backwards into the room's single chair. The scroll opened easily, the babies born in January at the top. Blue eyes devoured the names greedily, idly noting that more than half of the names were Uzumaki even as they were discarded.
January passed in a blur, then February, March, April, May. The first creepings of anxiety were threading their way into his brain as he passed through June – what if she wasn't recorded – when he stopped dead.
July tenth. Uzumaki Kushina. Born to Uzumaki Ayako and Uzumaki Hideaki.
Fingertips gently brushed the faded ink and a tiny smile split his lips. "Hello, mother," Naruto breathed.
He didn't know how long he sat there, simply staring at the line that proclaimed his single link to the once great clan. The thoughts whirring through his head were much the same as they always had been. What was she like? Who was she, beyond the name? It was, as it always had been, an exercise in futility. He had known it when he was a child and he knew it now. And yet the simple words and numbers on the page were mesmerizing in a way he had never even imagined.
Eventually, however, Naruto reminded himself that he wasn't alone here. He carefully rerolled the scroll, a final glimpse of his mother's name searing the image into his mind, and replaced it on the shelf.
The spiral staircase seemed so much shorter on the way back up, and he was face to face with Nagato once more. The redhead was sat cross-legged on the floor of the library, eyes closed in what appeared to be meditation. Now-familiar ringed-eyes snapped open after a moment, a patient smile crossing the older man's face as he beheld the blond.
"I believe I spent nearly two hours just staring at my parents' names when I finally found them."
Naruto blinked, taken aback at the non sequitur. "How long was I in there for?" he asked hoarsely.
"Not nearly that long," Nagato assured. "I expected you to be there for longer, actually."
The blond shrugged, somewhat uncomfortable. "The only memory I have is some lingering emotion and a red haze from that night. And I might even only be imagining that…" he trailed off. "Thank you, though, for giving me the opportunity," he added somewhat hastily.
"You deserve the chance to see, just as I did, Naruto," Nagato returned, waving away the thanks.
A heavy silence fell over the two clansmen, ringed eyes regarding the blond with an intensity that almost made Naruto flinch. "Where do we go from here?" Naruto asked quietly.
"That remains up to you. I asked you to come here to see our heritage and why Madara needs to be stopped," the redhead said. "I told you before that I need another ally, someone not only strong enough to fight the coming battles with me, but someone who has seen why our world needs change and is driven to make it happen."
"And if I want to return to Tea Country?"
A small smile split Nagato's lips. "I told you before: you have nothing to fear from me by turning me down."
Naruto held his silence for a moment. Nagato's position was clear; what wasn't clear were the consequences of turning him down. He had said before that Naruto was free to make his own choice without fear of any reprisals, but could he trust that? Men like Nagato didn't rise to the heights he had by leaving loose ends unattended. I think you're a very good liar, cousin, he acknowledged. If the man was as strong as he claimed, he might very well be able to kill him without Naruto even noticing – it was doubtful, but the possibility couldn't be ignored.
But then, I don't really want to refuse, do I?
"What guarantees do you need from me?" he asked, and was answered with a smile he hadn't believed the quietly intense man was capable of.
"For now, simply that you won't attempt to run on our way to Amegakure," Nagato said, wry humor once again present in his bearing. "I have methods of keeping sensitive information secret that we will go over once we arrive."
Naruto shrugged noncommittally, somewhat taken aback by the seemingly lackadaisical attitude toward security. When you're the strongest man in the world, I suppose you can come across as blasé.
"Thank you for your faith in me, Naruto. I truly believe that together we will change this world, and I know that you'll believe it too." He extended his hand from his sitting position, and Naruto grasped his forearm to pull him to his feet.
"Welcome to Akatsuki, Uzumaki Naruto."
/~/
And the second arc is officially underway. Drop a review if you feel so inclined.