Fairy Tail's Shinobi
This is another fixed story by the great Reikson. I hope you guys enjoy and please review.
Normal Speech: "Naruto"
Important or Emphasized Speech: "Naruto"
Thoughts: 'Then I will break that curse. If there's such thing as peace, I will find it. I won't give up!'
Spells canting and Jutsu Names: "Doton Jutsu, Ice Make Shield!"
Demons and Dragons Speech: "Now then... Who do you want to kill...?"
Demons and Dragons Thinking: "The question is what to do with him…"
The Kingdom of Fiore is a neutral country of seventeen million people.
It is a world of magic.
Magic, bought and sought every day, is an integral part of the people's lives.
Moreover, there are those who use magic as their occupation. These people are mages or sorcerers.
The mages belong to various guilds, and perform jobs on commission.
There are a large number of guilds throughout the country of Fiore.
In addition, there lies a certain guild in a certain city.
This guild hosted legends in times long ago, and would continue to host more such legends long into the future…
…and its name is Fairy Tail!
Chapter Two: Naruto's Arrival
August 7th X784
The man frowned. "What's wrong? You guys deaf or something? I said that I'd like some beer and that I want to join your guild. Where's your master, anyway?"
Someone said, "Naruto…" The cloaked man named Naruto turned and found Erza glaring at him. "Ah, Erza-chan, I didn't see you there. Yo!" Then turning back to his drink, he ignored her and everyone else as he continued to drink his beer. She seethed in anger as he continued ignoring her. Finally, she lashed out at him with a punch but he intercepted it with a single finger without even looking at her. He downed the rest of his drink in one gulp and turned to look at her. She somehow managed to get the impression that he wasn't pleased with her, probably because he said, "Can't a guy drink a beer in peace?" before pushing her fist away with his finger.
As she made an effort to calm down, she remarked, "I thought you said that you'd never join a guild because you're not a mage."
"I said that I'm not a mage, but I didn't say that I'd never join a guild," Naruto sassed her, receiving another beer from Mirajane. "Also, I said that I'm not a mage so much as I'm a warrior, a special warrior. But where's your master, anyway? I need to speak to him or her immediately."
Getting up, he dropped five-thousand Jewels onto Mirajane's tray and said, "Keep the change."
Mirajane nodded and thanked him as he turned to Erza. "So, Erza-chan, where's your master?"
The men in the room began talking amongst themselves. This weirdo in the cloak could stop Erza's punch with one finger, and then he talks to her as if they were old friends? Who was he?
Natsu had fire in his eyes. He wanted to challenge this stranger that could stop Erza's meanest punch with one finger, because this new guy had to strong. Opening his mouth, he was about to issue his challenge before a raspy voice fell from the second floor.
"I, Makarov Dreyar, am the master of this here guild." Naruto looked up and saw Fairy Tail's master, Makarov Dreyar. The man was extremely short, and a rather old man. He had dark eyes and had white hair surrounding his balding skull and in a thick moustache, which he hid under a funny jester hat in orange-blue stripes.
"Well, you're a lot smaller than I thought…" Naruto said dryly, making the tiny man spontaneously faceplant himself at the remark. He quickly got back up, coughing into his fist as the guild mages began to giggle among themselves.
"What exactly do you want from me, mister…" he waited for a reply.
"Naruto… Naruto Uzumaki, a humble shinobi at your service," the cloaked man said formally, bowing briefly at the chest. The much-older man returned the gesture with a small nod. Erza twitched as Naruto mentioned the word 'shinobi' as had become her bad habit. Natsu, Happy, and Gray were quiet, having noticed Erza's anger and not wanting to be a part of it.
Suddenly realizing something, Lucy banged her fist down on the open palm of her other hand. "Wait, then he's the one that Erza couldn't defe-hehhee!" she squealed in fright, rudely cut off as Mirajane suddenly slapped a hand on Lucy's mouth, silencing her before she said something stupid in the heat of the moment.
"Sorry, Lucy," the white-haired woman whispered urgently. "…but can you keep what I told you, to yourself? Erza only told us girls in the guild about Naruto beating her all the time, so none of the guys know."
The poor terrified girl nodded, unable to say anything in the face of Erza fuming with rage.
Naruto, seeing Erza vibrating from the sheer force of her anger, asked her, "How's about we make a bet about our latest fight, Erza-chan? But I'll have to wrap up my business with your master before we fight. What do you say?"
She blushed as he caught her in her heated moment. "O-okay," the Titania sputtered, her emotions warring with each other. "…after you finish your business, I will fight you!"
Naruto nodded gravely before turning to face Makarov as he jumped down from the second floor. His next words, "Do you have a place where could talk?" were grave. The old man instantly knew that he had something important to talk about.
The old man nodded. "My office is upstairs," he said, waving a hand towards the second floor balcony. Naruto nodded, following him, and the both of them disappeared in the inner parts of the guild.
The guild members began whispering amongst each other, speculating about the outcome of Erza's fight with Naruto. Natsu shouted eagerly, "Oh, man! He's crazy strong! I'll fight him after Erza! What do you think, Happy?"
Happy said, "Aye! But if he's that strong, then you'll lose! Natsu, you're doomed!"
"What!" the Fire Dragon Slayer shouted, betrayed, as he glared at Happy. The cat-like creature was looking the other way innocently.
Gray then intervened. "Happy's right; you're so weak that you can't even beat me. What hope do you have of beating someone that Erza wants to fight?"
"What did you say, you pervert?!" Natsu roared, angrily shoving his head into Gray's face.
"What did you call me, you hotheaded idiot?!" Gray snarled back.
As the two begin shoving each other, Erza grabbed the two of them and slammed their heads into the nearest wall, knocking them out. Panting in poorly suppressed anger, the redhead ignored them, lost in thought. 'How does he always defeat me?' she demanded to herself.'Am I not strong enough? Am I too weak?'
Elfman made the mistake of opening his mouth where she could see him, and Erza threw him into Mirajane, sending the two of them careening into Freed and Bickslow. She had no idea what happened, she was still too lost in thought.
'He's never used any magic in our fights other than his sword technique,' she mused analytically. 'If I'm honest, that sword is rather unique to my knowledge; I've never seen that design anywhere by any blacksmith.'
Cana hefted up another barrel of beer for herself, and Erza bisected it absentmindedly, leaving the alcoholic Card Magic user soaked in beer and twitching angrily but otherwise unwilling to infuriate the redheaded swordswoman any further. 'I know that he's powerful, but he's never fought me with any ill-intent. I feel that he's always smiling, even if I've never seen his face. But why does he hide his face? Why do I care so much about that?'
Mirajane noticed her former rival lost in deep thought. She smirked in spite of herself. 'Oh-ho! Somebody has a crush…' she giggled.
"Erza likes Naruto," Happy sang childishly.
Lucy was surprised that someone so much stronger than Erza could make her look like a child. She looked over at the redhead, noticing that she was lost in thought. Sighing, the blonde Celestial Spirit Mage went to sit back down at her seat in front of Mirajane.
When they reached his office, Makarov jumped over his desk to take his seat. Gesturing to the chair in front of him, Naruto sat down as he pulled down his hood to reveal his face.
He looked like any young man in his late teens but had a unique appearance. He also had shoulder-length golden-blond hair, with his bangs seeming like they could hide his eyes behind them if he wanted to. Surprisingly, he had what appeared to be a trio of horizontal lines on each cheek, reminiscent of fox whiskers. His eyes were a sharp and brilliant blue.
But those eyes… Makarov noticed that Naruto's eyes betrayed a long acquaintanceship with soul-wrenching loneliness. This… shinobi, had the air of a hardened warrior about him, hooded in the sadness of a man that had lost everything important to him. The old man finally sighed wearily. For all his faith in humans and magic, his bratty subordinates all had personal trauma in common.
'Eyes like these should not be on anyone so young,' the old man mused to himself.'He reminds me of Erza when she first came here.' Finally, he asked aloud, "What do you need from me, my boy?"
Naruto sighed, leaning back in his chair. "The reason that my powers are so unusual and devastating is partially because I'm from another dimension."
Makarov could feel an eyebrow rise. He was familiar with the concept, because Mystogan had said that he was from Edolas, an alternate and parallel version of Earthland. But he hadn't really thought that places like Edolas, but not Edolas, could also exist. Intrigued in spite of himself, he asked, "What do you mean?"
"My native world is mired in near-constant wars and battles, with very short periods of peace in-between." Naruto's opening statement made Makarov twitch. "I used to belong to a village of mercenaries that were not unlike your own magic guilds, powers and all, but I had to leave in order to insure its safety."
"How so?" the old man asked, curious. All this talk about near-constant warfare gave him a good foundation for his suspicions, but the answer awaiting him only confirmed them.
The blond-haired young man sighed. "My world is 'kill or be killed' and I have my fair share of blood on my hands. We don't have magic like you, but rather jutsu and other ninja techniques. We fight by using an energy produced from within our bodies, what we call chakra. From I've heard of this Eternano stuff that you mages use, it seems similar to a type of nature energy that allows me to enhance my jutsu by several orders of magnitude…"
Makarov felt his eyebrow twitch again. Only two months ago, a wandering mage had stumbled across the remains of a freshly-destroyed Dark Guild. After he alerted the Rune Knights, their preliminary investigation revealed that the guild's master had been obsessed with enhancing magical capacity. A follow-up investigation from the Ten Wizard Saints saw the discovery of research data that hinted at a secondary Eternano reserve in the human body, which drastically enhanced a mage's magical power. The guild master had ordered nine of his best mages to undergo the process, and then joined them as the tenth.
But the process of activating this reserve was excruciating. Further investigation revealed that the guild master alone survived this agonizing process, drastically enhancing his magical powers. But he then slaughtered his subordinates in a berserker rage before falling catatonic, dying of dehydration only a day before the wandering mage had found him. Once the Mage Council learned of this development, they immediately ordered the research data confiscated, and that any attempt to recreate this procedure was to be stamped out.
He snapped out of his thoughts as Naruto said, "…however, I can still use my chakra, so I can use jutsu and even enhance them with nature energy. Ironically, this means that I cannot use magic directly. But I can use magical objects, though; probably because I was summoned here magically."
"Summoned?" Makarov asked intently. Mystogan had briefly talked to him about Edolas' powerful Anima magic spell, just enough to worry him. If this shinobi came to Earthland in the same way… "What do you mean by, summoned?"
"I came here about… three years ago, now," Naruto shrugged. "When I found myself here in Earthland, I was in the middle of a circular sealing technique array with a great deal of elaborately-intricate subscript in its architecture."
Popping his neck, he slouched in his chair. "The mage that made this array, what I later learned was called a magic circle, said that he was trying to invent a space-time teleportation spell. Instead, it opened an interdimensional rip through the space-time continuum. I crashed into that tear when I was using my own space-time jutsu back in my dimension."
Makarov grimaced. His childhood experiments with his own magic had beaten a particular lesson into his head; never let spells mix if you can help it. Naruto nodded, having guessed what the old geezer was thinking about.
"Then, before I can ask the mage about the specifics of his spell, a bunch of guys from what he called a 'Dark Guild' attacked us," the blond shinobi sighed bitterly. "During that fight, my body didn't work. Probably because I'd just gotten here and the summoning took quite a toll on my body, but… I could only fight physically, without using chakra at all."
Breathing in deeply, he exhaled noisily. "I beat them all, but I was too late. One of those dark mages had already killed the mage that brought me here, and I didn't even know his name. So I took his body to a nearby town and asked the locals to bury him there. After that, I tried to look for a way home but couldn't find anything for a year. I even went to Era and asked a few questions. They said that there's some ancient time spell on record, but they didn't have anything on space-time magic or even interdimensional magic."
Makarov grimaced at the despair in the young man's voice. "So… you're telling me that you're from an entirely different dimension, then. You're also a superpowered warrior that can use our magic as well. That's a little hard to swallow, but…" he trailed off as he looked up at his forlorn guest. For a man who'd lost everything, the shinobi could hold his faculties together like no one else he'd met in his life.
"I believe you, Naruto," Makarov said. "I'll help you in any way I can, but even I don't know anything about such magic. What I'll do is tell everyone that you're from a faraway land and that your magic is unique. I'm glad that you want to join our family here in Fairy Tail, but I ask only one thing from you."
The blond man turned a questioning gaze up at him. "Please refrain from killing your opponents, because that will make you a dark mage here." As his eyes hardened, Makarov winced somewhat. Naruto had grown up in a realm of combat and had fought a war, where he'd killed his enemy and gotten used to doing just that, and asking him to stop killing was practically an unreasonable demand to any soldier worth his mettle. But when the blond only nodded in agreement, the old man exhaled noisily, having held his breath.
Soldiering on, he added, "You should also keep your life story to yourself until the guild members and I can trust you. But this is still your call, so you can tell anyone about it if you want. Also, I'd like to see how you fight, if you don't mind. By the way, is your magic…? I mean, your jutsu… are they destructive?"
Naruto smiled thinly. "My jutsu are only as destructive as I need them to be. That said, my fight with Erza-chan is coming up soon. You could be the judge, see for yourself."
'Erza-chan?' the old man thought to himself wryly. 'She lets him call her that already? This boy's amazing!'
Naruto's voice snaps him out of his stupor. "Are you coming or what, gramps?"
"Okay, okay, hold your horses. Youngsters these days… so annoying," Makarov grumbled.
Meanwhile, everyone had gathered in a clearing behind Guild headquarters. They were waiting for the stranger, Naruto, to get his butt kicked by Erza. Only their female members knew the truth; that Erza was in for quite a fight. They wanted to see if she was really going to have her armor cut into pieces and be left her in just her underwear, even though she said that he did that to her every time they met and wasn't known for lying.
Speaking of Erza, she was waiting in front of the crowd with her arms crossed. Standing next to Mirajane, Lucy leaned in and asked, "Who do you think will win now, Mira-chan?"
"I don't know, Lucy," the Demon of Fairy Tail shrugged, giggling. "…but since she's going to fight that man, this fight's going to be a great one,"
Gray, now shirtless, then added, "Whoever he is, he can't beat Erza. She's the strongest woman in Fairy Tail."
"Really?!" Lucy sputtered. "She's that strong?! But isn't he the one who-" she suddenly cut herself off, trying not to talk about her guildmate's repeated defeats and humiliation.
Behind Lucy and Mirajane, resident bookkeeper Cana Alberona shouted, "Who are you going to bet on, the new stranger or our own Erza Scarlet?" Fairy Tail promptly erupted in a storm of bets, most people betting on their Titania destroying the newcomer. The ones who bet that the stranger would win were female guild members who'd heard about Erza's many grudge matches, and had a healthy proclivity for gambling when odds were in their favor.
Makarov and the hooded man, Naruto, walked into the middle of the clearing, stopping in front of Erza. She stared at them steadily before popping her knuckles and picking up her favorite broadsword. Then master Makarov said out loud, "This is not just a fight. We have a young man, from a faraway land, who wants to join our guild today. But I want to test his strength beforehand, so I'm using the Erza Scarlet/Naruto Uzumaki fight in order to assess his power."
"One moment, please, master," Naruto asked. A sweep of his arm, and he'd removed his hooded cloak to reveal his face and body to the guild members. He was a tall young man, about six-foot-two, in his late teens or early twenties, with unkempt spikes of blond hair and deep-blue eyes. He had three whiskers-like birthmarks on both his cheeks, which gave him a surprisingly-feral appearance.
He wore a sleeveless black muscle shirt, a pair of black pants, a pair of metal vambraces, a pair of fingerless gauntlets, a pair of black boots, and a black cloth across his forehead that he wore like a bandanna. He was also wearing two weapon pouches on his back-waist.
To a one, every female member of Fairy Tail promptly and spontaneously squealed with hormonal fangirlish glee. Every girl and woman in the guild was drooling over him, hearts in their eyes. The men were shocked; they thought he'd be a normal looking guy.
Lucy had hearts in her eyes as steam blew out of her nose. "He's so handsome!" she squealed. "He looks so sexy and cool!"
Happy shouted in amazement, "Is he a human cat?!"
"Human cat?" Natsu parroted, confused. When he looked at Naruto and saw his whiskers, he realized. "Ohh, I see! He does look like a cat! But he looks strong! I'm so fired up! I want to challenge him right now!"
Even Mirajane and Erza couldn't help but blush. Both of them were thinking, 'Look at those arms! His body looks like it's been carved out of stone!'
Makarov frowned, assessing the situation. 'I didn't know that he'd have that much effect on the guild's women. Even Erza and Mirajane are blushing! This kid's going to break a lot of hearts.' Shaking his head, he looked at both fighters and said, "Are you two ready?"
Erza snapped out of her musing and nodded, as did Naruto. Both entered their respective battle stances as Makarov shouted, "All right… begin!"
To be continued…