Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
Chapter 36: Tetsu no kuni
Although it was nearing springtime, the winter still held strong in the frigid north. Tetsu no Kuni. The home of the samurai. They were summoned to the region to investigate disturbing reports of mass destruction throughout the country, and so far the reports have held true.
The village they walked through would have been the very definition of a ghost town if it weren't for a cluster of survivors. The remnants of the brutal slaughter still strewn around the area.
This was not the work of shinobi, nor was it samurai. For trained professionals it was far too sloppy. The snow carried a light pink heugh, the light snowfall covering up the heavy layer of frozen blood that soaked the layer beneath it. Bodies were strewn around in the most unlikely places: rooftops, gutters, through windows, and crammed into chimneys. Gore and entrails could be found dozens of yards away from the nearest gutted corpse, as if they were ripped out and thrown violently. Dismembered limbs were a common sight as well, many of them were torn to shreds, if not devoured entirely.
Not a single clean cut of a blade could be found anywhere among the wreckage, furthering their certainty that it was not the doing of shinobi or samurai.
"Do you think it could have been Orochimaru's cursed seal bastards?" Itachi asked.
"It's possible." Naruto said thoughtfully. The only thing they had gotten out of the survivors were incoherent stammers of 'monsters' or vague descriptions of the bloody massacre. To say the remaining villagers were in shock would be the ultimate understatement. They were civilians, never having seen a death before in their lives. To witness this would cause permanent mental and emotional trauma. The question was why did they survive?
The two wanted to stay and help, but the first person they moved to examine would only scream and plead for them to leave and simply leave her to die. When they refused the woman produced a broken bone from a dismembered arm and attempted to plunge the makeshift spear through her throat, but Naruto's reflexes were too quick. He snatched her wrist in an iron grip, keeping her from taking her own life. Upon seeing the pleading, terrified look in her glossed over eyes, he pried the bone out of her hands and released her wrist. The moment he let go however, her eyes rolled back and blood gushed out of her mouth.
It was the same with everyone else. Whenever Naruto or Itachi attempted to help the survivors they would quickly take their own life, and for whatever reason not even Itachi's genjutsu could prevent it. It was as if his ocular genjutsu was being blocked somehow.
All in all their their investigation provided very little insight into what had happened, so the two continued on their way to the next village, hoping to catch the perpetrators before they could wreak further havok.
They arrived at the next town in just under two hours, the land of iron was sparsely populated, with few lone homesteads in between each town. The scene was the same as it had been at their last stop, however this time they found no survivors.
The same pattern continued for the following three villages as well.
"Naruto," Itachi called out from the far edge of the town. "Tracks," he said, pointing at a cluster of footprints quickly being buried in the snow.
The two Konoha nuke nin darted in the direction of the trail. The tracks were fresh and Naruto could sense a faint chakra signature radiating from its source. The chakra was haggard and weary, undoubtedly they were injured. As they quickly gained ground, Naruto surmised that there were 6 of them, however only one possessed chakra reservoirs of any significance. Three of them were likely women, by the feel of their chakra, and the last two were children, neither could be any older than four.
Itachi and Naruto stopped abruptly several yards behind the retreating survivors to be met with a katana blade pointed between them.
"Stop! I won't allow you to harm these people!" a boy, maybe a year younger than them, shouted. The boy had long spiky auburn hair done in a ponytail and electric blue eyes.
"We do not wish you harm, samurai-san," Itachi said, taking in his light blue samurai armor and the way he held his sword in a traditional samurai fashion. "We simply want to ask some questions and ,if you'll allow us, help.
The helmless samurai did not waver, "what are shinobi doing here?" he growled.
"Exactly what you're doing," Naruto said. He was certain he could incapacitate the samurai in a matter of nanoseconds if he were to attack, but the blonde had no intention of fighting the boy. "We are here to stop whatever it is that's happening around here."
"Yeah? Prove it." the boy growled definitely.
Naruto sighed and unsealed his sword from his wrist. The young samurai cowered back a few steps before steeling himself once more. Naruto bent down to one knee, holding his blade in the flat of his palms. "I swear on my honor as a swordsman, I will not harm you or the others so long as I am not attacked first." Itachi inwardly shrugged and did the same.
The boy was somewhat placitated, but he still kept his sword grasped firmly in his hands. "Very well. We will answer your questions, but first we need to find shelter. The nights in Tetsu no Kuni are deadly cold."
"That won't be a problem." Naruto rose to his feet, clapping his hands together. A large two story house, complete with a stone fireplace, erupted from the ground 10 yards to his right. "This should suffice for the night," he said, sealing Odenta back into his wrist and walking towards the building. "There are 6 bedrooms. I'll furnish the place and we can speak when we're all settled in."
The survivors all stood gawking at how nonchalantly the blonde stranger erected the building before their very eyes. Itachi smirked, resealing Onimaru and caught up to his friend. "Show off," he muttered.
Naruto grinned, eyeing his best friend from the corner of his eye, "you call it showing off, I call it a display of power."
An hour later everyone was settled in their quarters, and all but the two children, who were cuddled up in a pile of warm blankets on top of a soft sleeping mat in the first room of the house, had gathered by the fireplace in the den.
Naruto was true to his word and has furnished the home. It wasn't anything fancy, he didn't have such good tastes, but it was comfortable and provided much needed shelter from the cold. He even created a makeshift laundry room and bathroom using a suiton seal to produce water upon activation, and a storage seal to act as a makeshift drain. Itachi even lent a hand by adding a weak heating array to warm the water being used. Neither considered themselves builders by any means, but they made one hell of a campsite. Luckily there was nearly endless space in their storage seals, or at least more space than they could ever fill in one lifetime, so they turned into what some may call hoarders.
The women all warmed up to Naruto and Itachi quickly enough, not in a physical sense, but they felt at ease in their presence. They learned that the two children were the the sons of Kotoru, a fair brunette in her late twenties, and the other two were Kori, Kotoru's sister-in-law, and the other was Suzuha, Kori's mother.
The young samurai had not yet taken his eyes off the two shinobi. The auburn haired samurai was named Kenshin, and was the youngest son of Suzuha.
"So you know who we are, what about you two?" Kotoru asked. She attempted to sound cheerful, as Naruto suspected she normally was, but the deep sorrow weighing her down cut through whatever mirth she could muster.
"I am Namikaze Naruto," Naruto said, keeping his voice even. Adding a cheerful tone would not have been a problem for him to fake, but he considered it rude to act as such, considering what they'd gone through over the past day.
"And I am Uchiha Itachi," Itachi said. 'What makes them so different than the others? Every other survivor commited suicide the moment they saw us.'
"Namikaze and Uchiha?" Kenshin scoffed. "What the hell are Konoha shinobi doing up here in Tetsu no Kuni?"
"Kenshin!" Suzuha scolded her youngest son, "that is no way to talk to people who have done so much to help us!"
"Done so much!? You didn't see the village, Kaa-chan! You didn't see those... those things! They haven't done anything for us! All they've done is prolonged our death! Now instead of dying in the cold we are just going to sit here and wait for those creatures to hunt us down and kill us!"
"You say creatures, Kenshin," Itachi interjected before Suzuha could respond to his outburst. "Did you get a good look at them?"
Kenshin looked at the Uchiha questioningly, "yeah, so?"
"Do you mind describing what they looked like?" Itachi asked patiently.
The young samurai glared at him for a moment before surrendering and giving up the information in question. "Yeah. they were grey. They were a full foot taller than any man I've ever known. They had long skinny limbs with claws on their hands and feet..." he trailed off for a moment, feeling bile rise up to his throat. "Their faces... opened..."
Naruto and Itachi's necks whipped to the side as the two locked eyes. 'Orochimaru!' they said to each other were about to get to their feet and hunt them down that very moment unting Kenshin spoke up once more.
"I watched one open its face and... the last thing he yelled before..." Kenshin choked back the sob in his throat and willed away the tears welling up in his eyes. "He told me to run... save them and run... But then it looked at me after it... with that red eye... I couldn't move... it just walked towards me, like it was hunting me down," his voice turned from sorrowful to terrified. "It was inches from my face. I could see the weird pattern inside the red... then its mouth opened... there were thousands of teeth... I thought I was dead, but then tou-san attacked it from the side and..."
"You ran." Naruto finished for him. Kenshin looked down. It was clear that the boy hated himself for not staying and fighting with the rest of them. "You were very brave, Kenshin." The boy's tearful eyes shot up to meet Naruto's deep blue eyes. "We've been to five other villages so far, and yours is the only one with anyone left alive. You saved your mother, your sister, both your nephews, and your brothers life. Your brother and your father sacrificed themselves so you could save the people they cared about the most. You honor their memory."
The two Akatsuki shinobi rose to their feet. "Where are you going?" Kori asked.
"There are other villages that we might be able to save Kori-san," Itachi said to the auburn haired woman, locking his charcoal gaze with her electric blue eyes. She and Kenshin looked almost identical but for the shape of their faces. Kori had the same heart shaped face of her mother, while Kenshin had the same square jaw Itachi assumed his father had has.
"You can stay here as long as you want," Naruto said. "There is plenty of food and water in the storage scroll in the kitchen, and the fire wont go out for a few weeks at least," his mokuton wood burned incredibly slowly, "I've also set up an array of protective seals, so those monsters won't be able to hurt you. But if you want a new home, go to Kiri. You will be safe there. I'm leaving a wood clone here to escort you there if you choose to go." as he said that a wood clone of Naruto split off the body of the original.
"I want to go with you!" Kenshin shouted as the two neared the door.
Naruto opened the door, but turned around to give the boy a grin. "Your mission's not over yet, Kenshin.
Kenshin rushed over to the door to catch up to them, but as the porthole swung open all he saw was the heavy snowfall glowing white beneath the moon.
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(two days later)
"Two days and 18 villages later and we're nowhere closer than we were when we started!" Shouted an exasperated Naruto as the blood stained snow crunched beneath his feet in yet another decimated village.
"This one looks fresher," said Itachi, scanning the area with his sharingan.
"So we're gaining on them," Naruto scoffed. "That's not fucking good enough! How long do you think it takes them to do this to a village? I'd say a half hour, at the least! And that depends on the amount of resistance they meet!" They've been finding more and more samurai corpses within each village the deeper into tetsu no kuni they wandered into. "We're reacting. We need to start acting! Screw following a trail of bodies! We have to anticipate where they're going to be and cut them off before they have a chance!"
"We have no idea where they're going though," Itachi said looking at a map that they'd marked the attack sites on. "There is no pattern," he said, searching the map with his sharingan. "The only thing I can say for certain is that they're getting closer to the capital."
"Then that's where we go." Naruto said.
"We're just going to leave the smaller villages to fend for themselves the?" Itachi said, narrowing his eyes in disbelief.
"At this rate there will be no country left!" Naruto exclaimed. "We have to save someone! If we keep chasing them like this they'll kill everyone without us getting a crack at them at all! We can go to the capital and warn them, then we can work our way out and try to head them off."
"Once we lose the trail there is no way we're going to be able to predict where they'll strike," Itachi argued.
"Then we'll evacuate the villages they haven't hit yet. We'll send them to Kiri."
"And if they don't go?" Itachi said.
"We'll make them."
"Fine, you get this one, but next time we go with my plan," Itachi relented. He knew he was gambling with lives, but Naruto had a point. They were being reactive. They needed to act proactively for once.
"Deal!" Said a relieved Naruto.
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(the next day)
They arrived in the capital city of Tetsu no Kuni just after sunrise. They raced to the city at breakneck speeds, traveling through the night. Unfortunately the travel weary pair were not met with a warm welcome. The second the entered the city gates they were surrounded by twenty armored samurai, all holding their swords ready to attack.
"Awesome! They sent out a welcoming party!" Naruto exclaimed sarcastically.
Itachi rolled his eyes. "Take us to Mifune-sama." Itachi demanded.
"And what would two shinobi want with me?" Asked a grey haired man with a fu manchu mustache and a goatee. The samurai split to allow their general access to the two shinobi.
"Your country is under attack. You have to evacuate the city, and the remaining villages at once," Itachi said seriously.
Mifune studied the Uchiha for a long moment. "And what would be so powerful that an army of elite samurai can not handle them. We have thrown back superior shinobi forces in the past. I'm confident we can do it again." It wasn't a boast. Every shinobi invasion into Tetsu no Kuni in history had been quickly dispatched by the Samurai forces.
"That would be true, Mifune-sama." Itachi said respectfully. "But these are not shinobi. They are corrupted creatures of the like the world has never seen before."
Mifune looked at the Uchiha skeptically. Itachi reached over to his wrist, much to the displeasure of the surrounding samurai. Itachi held up his hands to signify he meant no harm. "We have proof. I just have to unseal it," Itachi said, waiting for permission to continue. Mifune nodded and Itachi produced a scroll from his wrist.
"Sealing a storage scroll within a storage seal seems redundant, Uchiha," Mifune stated.
Itachi ignored the fact that Mifune knew who he was. It wasn't important at the moment. He knelt down and unfurled the scroll. Channeling chakra into the seal painted to the center of the scroll there was a large puff of white smoke which quickly dissipated, revealing the corpse of the open faced creature they killed just over a year ago.
"We killed it last year," Naruto explained to Mifune who was hiding his surprise well enough. "It's one of Orochimaru's creations. And he's improved on it since then."
"Our intelligence says they possess an advanced sharingan now," Itachi growled. "Don't ask me how. I intend to find out myself."
"What is it?" Mifune asked?
"We have no idea." Naruto stated flatly. "All we know is that it's insanely fast, strong, and vicious. It travels in packs, and if I know Orochimaru, the packs are not small. We know that they're likely heading this way. We've passed 24 villages on the way here. All completely in ruin thanks to these things. Civilians and samurai alike have been slaughtered by these things, and we haven't come across a single one of these thing's bodies."
"How did you two manage to kill one?" Mifune asked, edging closer to the dead creature, venturing to prod at a limp face flap with the sheath of his katana.
"Like Naruto said, this is an older version," Itachi explained.
"And we're pretty damn strong," Naruto added.
"Very well. You have my attention. Follow me," Mifune spun on his heel and walked towards the center of the city, the army of samurai parting in his wake.
XXX END CHAPTER 36 XXX
Okay, one more actionless chapter. Sorry :/ next chapter there will be action for sure! I promise to make the wait well worth it!
Also, shout out to 'Light "Kira" Yagami', he's my day one homie, been reading from the start. Thanks for the support man! I appreciate you!
Please review.