Chapter 3: The Fuinsmith's Apprentice
"The anvil of justice is planted firm, and fate who makes the sword does the forging in advance."
-Aeschylus
Two Weeks Later
/The Three Wolves Mountains
/The Land of Iron
Naruto
The wind tore and howled through the lait in the mountain like its namesake. The Three Wolves, a triplet set of frankly unimaginably towering stone pillars that extended above the earth like a clawed hand only faintly resembled regular mountains. Naruto imagined the wind howling like a warning call that predators were out there sitting steady: watching.
Waiting.
Icy death waited patiently on the other side of the lait's sturdy structure. The people of Iron called the divots that were naturally carved into the mountains passes that sheltered travelers 'laits.' Naruto stood in one now.
The laits were common all over Iron Country as there was no way that travelers could ever even make it to the foot of the mountains without them. Master Ouran had originally told him, on his first journey out of the mountains on a delivery to another Fuinsmith, that the old Samurai had created the laits using underground heating vents and excavation techniques, carving a system that ran throughout the length of Iron Country. The air was almost a hundred degrees below freezing a short step out of the warmth of the laits. Some said the cold was unnatural, but one was mostly safe if you stayed within the proscribed pathways.
Nobody questioned why it was so cold, despite the fact it was located a very short distance away from both Kaminari and Fire Country, well known for their warm climes.
Inside the safety of a lait, the air was a flat, steady ten degrees with exhaust vents pouring out of the rock from the underground city sprawling untold distances below his feet. The multi-story furnaces that fueled Iron's most important exportable resource-the mining and smelting of chakra-metal ingots and ore gave their military their keenest advantage while also keeping the air in the laits a decent temperature. Well, a temperature that wouldn't immediately kill you... which was just about the same thing.
Naruto knew all of this as he was apprenticed to a big meany of a Fuinsmith who just about beat it into him. That and other useless crap he couldn't remotely find a use for. Sometimes, the stuffing of information into Naruto's poor brain by both his grandfather Mifune and Master Ouran seemed intended for cruelty only rather than usefulness.
The Three Wolves were the largest mountains on the entire continent, stretching up so far that most of the people viewing it from below couldn't even see the tops in the best of conditions: steep drops in temperature and humidity created clouds that terminated less than halfway up the mountains.
The air on the gentle slopes of the lait passages were thin and frigid as Naruto, all of nine years of age, reveled in the bite of the wind that carried with it the biting coppery taste and smoke scent of metal smithy's, his favorite smell aside from that of hand-rolled dumplings that Mother Suzaka made at her market stand.
Come to think of it, he'd never seen any kids-was she even really a mother?
He was on his way back from his errand and planned to make a stop at Mother Suzaka's with the wages Ouran would give him for delivering the package. The plan was to clean her out of her chicken and pork combo ramen and maybe the homemade dumplings if time permitted.
Naruto's mouth watered in anticipation.
First though… he had to deliver this shipment to his Master.
Pulling the hood of his thick ice bear cloak closer to his cheeks produced an awkward motion, as he also had the reins to a medium-sized sled that held an incredibly heavy… well, something on it.
Naruto breathed deep in the cold air and set off, with a little difficulty, down the lait towards the high-vaulted entrance doors framed by white covered rock. Naruto didn't ask questions about the packages he picked up, as he'd found that questions indicated curiosity which just meant that people thought you were bright which then meant you received more work. Naruto wasn't about that. He liked his simple life, thank you.
A lone armored figure manned the door looking for all the world like a demonic oni from the Genji stories brought to life.
As a child, Naruto remembered when he first saw the Samurai in full armor. He'd had nightmares about demons chasing him with huge swords. Cool in the daytime, horrible at night. Mifune had had to stay up very late several nights a week just to comfort him. Yojimbra and Furu still hadn't stopped teasing him and it had been a full year since.
In a world run by the Hidden Village/Daimyo system, absurdly powerful shinobi named Kage ruled supreme backed by their civilian Daimyo, the only check on their power. But there was a reason Iron Country, ruled by their Shogun who Naruto thought of as a Kage, sort of, continued to live their lives content and safe, protected by the armor, their superior skill in swordplay, and the harsh climes.
Each man or woman in an ONI, despite their lack of usage of chakra in direct combat, was a match for any Jonin for speed and strength. Their usage and perfection of swordplay only further widened the gap. Luckily for Iron, no one except the Fuinsmiths could build or maintain the ONI armor systems.
Not a single Fuinsmith had ever betrayed the Shogunate of Iron.
Fuin-smiths created the complicated traditional interfacing Fuin-mark on the skin that linked with the armor system. Each unique to the person. The armor, usually forged in pure chakra metal, were more works of living art and second skin, than tools as families passed down ONI as heirlooms.
But the one for guards outside were usually just mass-produced sets. Most of them were equipped with temperature-controlled cooling or heating Fuin, the chakra-powered glyphs that ran almost every system in the city-state of Iron; from the Tramway, to the Furnaces, to the bathing rooms located on most levels of the city.
The samurai of Iron Country-the only country in the entire world that still pledged religiously to the Oath of the Sage, focused on what they called the 'Zen Arts' and swordplay to the exclusion of all else. Zen Arts were a set of skills and techniques that made up what shinobi would call jutsu, or techniques crafted using chakra. The Land of Iron was the only country in the entire world that could call itself truly neutral and that was all thanks to the secrets of the ancient armorers. Samurai were covered in a highly-sophisticated armor system nicknamed ONI that used chakra and Fuinjutsu in a top-secret mixture to further enhance everything about the man or woman inside.
That… inside his own head was safe to say, but every country in the world still hadn't figured out how the Samurai kept up with the ninja as armor was never allowed to be lost. They would go to extreme lengths to keep that secret.
Samurai, at least ones that kept the Oath, disdained and were truly horrified at the perverting of chakra for battle. The Oath forbid them from offensive usages of chakra, except in the defense of others or self. Naruto found the whole thing slightly ridiculous.
Naruto only knew all of this because he was apprenticed to one of the premier Fuin-smiths in Sekiro's, the city being named for the mountain it was under. Old Ouran, Naruto's master, was known across the world for his handcrafted weapons and armor. To this day, even after almost three years of working with him, Naruto had no idea what Ouran's family name was as the man was such a workaholic they talked of nothing except the craft.
It had been like that most of his life, well, ever since Mifune had found out that he could fluently read Fuin symbologies, unlike anyone; man, woman, or child that they'd ever seen. He could read them as easily as he could kanji… better actually because Naruto sucked butts at letters.
Fuin was different… he just knew them.
The armor, the ONI system, stood for Organic Neural Interface and it was made using Fuin-inscriptions. Fancy words that meant the Fuin embedded in your skin with the traditional metallic, conductive ink created from liquidizing the chakra metal just conducted the chakra you already had into your suit. You basically became a huge battery that amplified everything you already were. Good swordsmen became great. Bad ones stayed bad, just extra strong and fast. The whole process was awesome and Old Ouran was teaching him to do what he did.
Naruto loved his city and his people and regretted that he'd given old man Mifune such a hard time about working with Ouran.
Samurai weren't nearly as revered as shinobi though, which is what Naruto wanted to be more than anything. Mifune always rolled his eyes and muttered about his tendency towards the flashy stuff. But today at least, Naruto was happy enough to be an apprentice Fuinsmith because it got him out of the stuffy confines of the city.
He'd spent enough time outside which meant that Old Ouran had him retrieving the supplies from another Smith named Lake. Nine was about the standard age of apprentices that were allowed to fetch things from Sekiro and Musashi, the other two cities in their respective mountains. Besides, Sekiro and Musashi were only about a two-hour walking journey through the laits.
Master Lake worked in Musashi, the western mountain, which was connected as they all were, by the system of warm laits and the Tramway underneath. Naruto preferred using the laits as the outside air was... well it tasted so good after so long spent underground and in and around the furnaces that blasted like dragon fire. Sweat was always pouring off of him and onto his blackened apron as he worked with Ouran in the forge.
Naruto nodded at Shozan, the samurai on duty who appeared, in the suit at least, to be about seven-feet tall and stepped into a darkened hallway that could fit about eight horses and carriages across. The walls were dimly lit with flickering shadows. Shadows cast by the fuinlight were thrown a thousand feet high as Naruto took in the cavern that opened before him like a shy flower as he rounded the corner and proceeded down the massive circular ramps that led down to the bottom level where most of the Smithy district resided.
To Naruto's left, there was a ramp that led, not down to his destination at Ouran's smithy, but up and to the left which would take you to the residential district.
Mifune was out today doing an inspection in the garrison at Sekiro, the northern mountain, and Naruto would see him when he returned home later that night, but for now, he carefully considered the sled as he eyed the ramp. There were handles on the back to gently guide the burden down the ramp, so Naruto pulled down his hood and switched to the back of the sled, gripping the T-bar handle tightly, anticipating the weight.
For this, he mentally flooded his body with chakra; feeling the three-hundred and sixty-five separate places on his body where chakra flowed from, the tenketsu. Like little gates, or mental switches, chakra flowed easily, steadily. Naruto knew only what everyone else knew: that chakra worked and made him far stronger than he should be for his age. Reinforcing his body with chakra was easy now after sparring with Furu every day, like breathing or blinking or something else unconscious and easy. The energy, power, and strength flooded him, each time like new, like slipping into a suit of ONI armor. Chakra itself was a shot of caffeine and a tingling feeling of weightlessness all rolled into one feeling. A feeling he could access whenever he wanted too. Naruto was warned against the pleasure of chakra by Mifune constantly. Blah, blah, blah, intoxicating. Whatever.
How could something so intrinsic to who he was ever be bad?
He gripped the previously heavy burden and gently guided it down the half-mile long ramp with ease, a journey that would've seen him arse over teakettle had he not had access to the strength of chakra.
Despite the general prohibition against chakra usage in Iron for frivolous tasks, and the obvious one about killing and hurting people with the quote-unquote 'holy power', Reinforcements, or simple bodily enhancements such as he was using, were very common. Among the very small percentage of the population that had enough of it in their chakra networks to readily access, spread through their body alongside their veins, to do more than just breathe and live, that is.
He grinned, hurrying.
Chakra was amazing!
Despite his newfound strength, the burden proved heavier than expected, but he managed. What the hell was even in this shipment anyway? Ouran had been especially secretive, though that was fairly common among new finds.
Ouran only worked with the best projects.
Once again he mentally thanked Mifune for kicking him in the ass to speak with Ouran. Naruto had met the keen smith very young after he'd stolen a piece of Fuin 'lying around' and read the entire series of Fuin without any training whatsoever. Ouran had laughed until he was sick once he caught Naruto. Mifune wasn't as pleased to find he had a kleptomaniac as a ward. Ouran believed it was fate. Or something. Naruto hadn't been paying attention.
The press of the crowd and the ridiculous struggle against the handles of the sled made him forget the sheer curiosity of Ouran's shipment as he made his way into the bustle of San's Smithy District.
/San City
/San Mountain
/The Land of Iron
Naruto
"There is an awful lot of people out there, for some reason. Pain in my ass, old man! This better be good."
Ouran was pleased.
He didn't even scold him for his language. Or his grumpy attitude.
Scratch that, Master Ouran was very pleased.
That much was obvious as Naruto watched from his perch atop a nearby workbench cluttered with tools and miscellaneous pieces of stiff paper with drawn symbols that Naruto instinctively understood without much inspection. Ouran had that look in his eye, a combination gleam of a mythical dragon finding a hoard of treasure and the bloodthirstiness of the oni hunkering over a human meal. The whole presentation gave him a slightly manic air, not counting the steel gray hair sticking up in all angles from where his goggles had pushed it up. Batshit crazy he might be, but brilliant nonetheless.
This smithy that Ouran ran was one of the five types present in the massive city-state of Iron. Mifune had explained this to him in painstaking detail as if it were the menu for a gourmet meal. Ignorance, Mifune had said sternly one finger upraised, was a child's excuse and you can't afford to be a child, can you? That always confused Naruto. Every time he reminded the old Shogun that he was a child, Mifune would grow mysteriously deaf. He'd protest that there was no way the old fart was really that deaf, but it was no use. Furu and Yojimbra would always roll their eyes, laughing.
Assholes!
Mifune, being the greatest living samurai and the freakin' Shogun to boot, usually got away with displays like that. Naruto stood baffled when children came up to him, kids own age mind you, and gushed about how cool Mifune was and how they sooo wanted to be him. Naruto, being thoroughly confused by the goofy, wispy-looking stick of a man and his completely bizarre reputation, would just give the crazies a wide berth.
Fan girls and boys followed even the old man. Wild.
Rumor had it, and it was true, that Mifune didn't even use an ONI system. Fighting much like the shinobi, he relied strictly on Reinforcement jutsu to keep up. Rumor had it that his iaijutsu was so fast a shinobi couldn't even get a hand-seal off before losing a hand-or a head! The man was nearing his eightieth year, but was still all corded muscle covered with thin skin. The man was the freakin' leader of Iron Country, the longest living Shogun in recent memory, and he 'suddenly' decided to be deaf? None of what Naruto knew fit the picture of the kindly old grandfather figure who loomed so large in legend and public knowledge.
Naruto didn't buy the deaf act and so inevitably would find some way to harass his adopted grandfather. Perhaps this time he'd really spend his whole stipend buying all the rubber ducks he'd threatened Mifune with and finally fill the bathroom with them as he'd promised.
No, too easy to ignore.
The man washed under glacial waterfalls outside for Shinigami's sake on the regular. Perhaps...Scorpion pepper flakes in his underpants? The man would never fall for that… would he?
Naruto considered this. Mifune was really freakin' old though… and kinda forgetful.
Ouran was frowning at the... whatever it was on the table.
"You didn't drop this... did you, boy?"
Naruto's attention, wandering as it frequently did, snapped back to the enormous mustachioed face of Old Ouran who held up a piece of silvery doohickey-not at all like the dark silver-veined chakra metal they usually worked with.
The piece, oblong in shape and resembling a submersible with arms, was a brighter metallic color. Naruto usually could identify the different alloys and amalgams they typically were handed by the chakrasmiths, but this was something else entirely. Naruto frowned, finger at the side of his face. Then he registered the question and his brain caught up, arms beginning to windmill in denial. Drop one expensive item and your name was marked for eternity around here!
"That was one time-"
"I don't care, boy, I just want to know. It's important."
Naruto swallowed, sweating despite the forge not being on.
"No, I swear!"
Ouran nodded, graying mustache as thick as Naruto's forearm quivering.
"What the hell is that thing made out of anyway?"
Naruto asked curious, despite himself.
Ouran stood up from the long rectangular workbench. The table was unique with clamps to hold pieces of armor locked in place for etching and pouring of the fuin-lines. Delicate, the glyphs were a language of sorts; part living chakra, part calligraphy, part computer. Naruto didn't know much about what exactly it came from as no one 'spoke' the language, but Fuinjutsu, the art of inscribing and activating the hundreds of thousands of symbols, was a truly lost art.
No one today could really create new ones. Far, far too dangerous. Ouran went on and on with his warnings, citing the lost city of Hrothyuki, in the Land of Snow. Apparently they'd attempted to create a new fuinjutsu and one wrong symbol turned a machine dedicated to creating water from ambient water vapor and instead blew the entire city up in a scorching fireball that could be seen from the peaks of Kaminari.
Fuinjutsu was dangerous; but not to Naruto. He just knew if something was wrong and when it was right.
Most of the hundreds of thousands of established functional Fuinjutsu were said to have been lost in the Warring States period. Most called it a Dark Age, from what little history Taza and Yojimbra managed to cram in his head. They'd lost countless amounts of technology used for all sorts of purposes they could only now dream of. The Oaths of the Sage, that said that chakra was only to be used to bring peace and connect to one another, had been thoroughly shattered into tiny pieces during the Warring States period. Similar to the Empire that had preceded it. Their current Daimyo system, a piece of civilization revived by Hashirama Senju was what was left of that, similar to how the ONI system was the only thing left of the Empire's warriors. Iron Country smiths had found only one of those armor-sets deep in a cavern of Sekiro hundreds of years ago.
That was the day the samurai were born.
According to Ouran, only the Uzumaki clan, of which there were no remaining members, had retained any of the skill with Fuinjutsu that created the technology they used in the past and they were wiped out wholesale on the Day of Sorrow, thirty-plus years ago. Their special skills were such that no one could even get a straight answer about what exactly it was, save that they were so deadly that many of the shinobi Hidden Villages (here Naruto snorted thinking about how hidden they really were) banded together to get rid of them. Konohagakure being their only ally availed them as much as you'd think.
Not at all. Konoha had been too late.
So now the world was left with a handful of imitation copy-artists like Naruto and Old Ouran who were just really good at playing around with what they already had. Experimentation was strictly forbidden; except under strict safety provisions.
Then Naruto got a good look at what Ouran had in front of him and froze.
This was something straight-up covered with new Fuin.
Dangerous Fuin.
Naruto knew instantly, as he always did, what the Fuin were intended for, but Naruto also knew these were not traditional symbols. These were old. There was no way that Ouran could know what they did… so how did Naruto? The question bothered him as it always did and he dismissed it as he always did. Any serious questions about his past, his ability to read Fuin, or why he grew up in Iron and not Konoha, was always met with an impenetrable wall of silence and changing subjects. Ouran had always seemed on the verging of telling him something, maybe something important, but he got a funny look on his face and always changed the subject.
The fairly compact object that Naruto had hitched on his janky sled was built like a sarcophagus. A silvery coffin-looking thing perhaps five and a half feet long etched entirely out of that silvery metal and covered in Fuin. Naruto stared at them, ignoring the fact that Ouran was watching Naruto's reaction, not the symbol-covered thing. Naruto's violet eyes tracked the symbols, reading them like an open book.
At first, they came slow… then they came all at once in triplets.
Throneworld.
Power. Transfer.
Conduit. Resurrection.
Restriction. Deviation.
Death. Life.
Obfuscate. Cessation.
Nadir. Capture.
Frozen. Ascendant.
The symbols went on and on, flashing in his head. Symbolical duologies that made perfect sense; opened the world like a patchwork of threads he could push and pull to go where and when he wanted; do whatever he wanted. Power like he never could have imagined. A frozen world, an expression of a soul that exploded like a star; power surging in swirling fractals and a horned woman at the center staring at him, the real him…
A snarling chorus blending to one sounded deep within him-something he'd never heard before. The woman inside smirked. Naruto got the impression she was absolutely insane and impossibly, knew exactly what he was, the real him.
"Well?"
Naruto blinked, backing out of that weird trance… and what was that place? He refocused, forgetting immediately what just happened, doing as Ouran had asked. Some came up blank as Naruto read them, like he was reading a book, understood the letters and words, but realized there was deeper meaning that was being glossed over. What he did understand, even at nine years of age, was that this was… a prison?
"A prison. Yes. I knew you'd get it eventually."
Ouran gestured with a thick hand. Naruto hadn't realized he'd spoken out loud.
"Lake knew this was beyond his scope and so gave it to me. I knew enough of those symbols at first glance, though not all of them, to know what I was looking at."
He smiled, gold teeth showing. The look was warm, proud.
"I wanted to see if you could puzzle them out with your curious natural intuition."
Those words were loaded, but Naruto didn't know with what.
He clapped a hand on Naruto's shoulder, moved enough over that he could reach.
"Now I know for sure and we can begin moving you into the real Apprentice stage, I should think. This is big Naruto! I was fifteen when I sat for the tests. Wait till I tell Mifune! He'll pay up for sure."
Naruto spluttered, gaping like an idiot. Shimizu, his best friend besides his fellow apprentice Roran, would have laughed herself sick at his expression.
Apprentice?
Him?
This early?
He was nine!
"Wait-you were betting on me?"
Ouran went mysteriously deaf and started tinkering with a device that consisted of a large number of gears, nozzles, and gauges.
Naruto had been studiously avoiding talk of taking the tests for ages as he didn't want the responsibility. Shimizu called him lazy, but he liked to think that he enjoyed the simple life of etching Fuin-glyphs and testing the armor, despite his inability to fit into them properly, more than doing the actual work of fabrication.
The long-haired blonde enjoyed his simple wages, enjoyed the long-hours working the etching tool and listening to the soothing buzz of his Etcher as he worked. Did he even want to give up his life of menial, soothing, relaxing work for real: and a real Apprenticeship to boot? Ouran was the best Fuinsmith around… but that would mean giving up his dream to become a shinobi. Fuin-smithing took almost ten years of study to properly master. At least, to Ouran's standards.
Apprenticeship left little time for chakra and the study of its applications in battle. Not to mention he'd been dreaming of traveling to Fire to study where Mifune told him his parents had grown up. Shimizu, Taza, and Furu had gotten tired of hearing him, he was sure, ranting and raving about how awesome and bad-ass the First and Fourth Hokage had been.
Naruto's thoughts raced around, seeking answers, finding none, grasping for straws. His eyes fell on the silver-inlaid prison. Something told him to run away from it and never come back, to drop it in the deepest part of the Nanzen Ocean. Ouran would never do that. Preservation of Fuin history was a big deal to him.
Thoughts racing, Naruto figured that a prison was meant to hold something. Duh. Nice detective work. This, he knew, was a diversion so he wouldn't have to think about the tough decisions ahead of him, but right now it was a welcome relief. A puzzle to solve!
So, prison/container-question was: what the hell was it holding?
The glyph for Power, carved like two people holding hands, usually indicated a certain level of chakra-enforcement in restraint. This was different though; like a feedback loop that strengthened the initial investiture. That was worth exploring, but the Reality glyph? That, depending on the expression required by the other sequences; that meant holding something outside of what we knew as the here and now. Was it a bijuu? Ouran had shown him some great works of Fuin and Bijuu was typically where the true innovation in containment happened, largely to horrible effect. Kumo used the Iron Armor seal to do their containment, Konohagakure's was a mystery, as was the other places. Most of the bijuu seals used a Reality glyph somewhere to different effect.
What could this be, if not a bijuu?
A mythical Apex-knight from the wild and dangerous Western continents?
A demon from the Land of Demons, far to the East?
Awesome Powers with a capital P that would take Naruto to the top of the world's deadliest warriors?
An alien from the moon or the stars above?
Ouran smacked Naruto on the side of the head, jolting him out of his super cool daydreams.
"What the fuck Ouran?"
Smack, heavier this time. "Ow! Goddammit!"
"Don't curse you little shit or I'll box your ears till you hear me in your sleep! Mifune will hang both of us for improper behavior! You're nine and NOT an Apprentice just yet, nor are you a goddamn sailor! Where have you learned all this frickin' language, huh?"
He wouldn't really tell Mifune as that would mean having to admit he'd messed up in his tutelage.
Naruto rubbed his head.
"Fine, fine. But you really think I'm ready? I mean… Roran isn't even testing for a true Apprenticeship and he can forge and inscribe a whole set of armor himself."
Roran was another one of Naruto's good friends. Him, Shimizu, and Roran were the only one of their age group that had actual responsibilities in the city. Most of the other kids were part of the school crews or Agri-farming smiths that worked in the tunnel-gardens.
Ouran was already waving away Naruto's concern.
"We'll start that later today, okay? Roran is a genius with metal-work, no doubt about it, but don't discount yourself. You've a deft hand boy, deft indeed. The important point, and forget the metal-work for a second, is the glyphs themselves; mess those up and boom."
Naruto rolled his eyes. Mouthing the words that Ouran was about to speak.
"Never forget the terrible tragedy of Hrothyuki! BOOM!"
Luckily, Ouran didn't see him, continuing without stopping.
"Forging the metal is the easy part. It's the precision with the glyphs and the passion you pour into your projects," the man waved at the objects hanging on various points in the room, elaborate works of metallic art, "Not to mention the control with which you wield your chakra in the proper Investiture of the Fuin. You know this. You have more god damn chakra than any man, woman, child, in a hundred thousand miles, and despite that, you're still learning to control it, but you can spin and write the ONI matrices better than people twice your age."
Ouran looked at him, gruff face softening. "I swear you're a tiny bijuu with that inexhaustible mouth of yours."
He, sticking a finger up and shouting. "I would stake my reputation on you passing first try. Just as I'll state you'll pass me sooner rather than later if I have my way!"
Naruto just stared at his feet awkwardly.
Ouran seemed to sense it as he let out a large bellowing sigh that for another man would sound ridiculous, but on Ouran it was normal.
Uncertainty wasn't something Naruto was used to, nor such high praise. He was comfortable here doing almost nothing, dammit. Fuinjutsu let him do his thing, alone save for the steady presence of Ouran. No one asked him to fight, to draw a blade he wielded clumsily at best. Iaijutsu was difficult and not really him: iaijutsu required patience that Naruto couldn't summon save for when faced with an arduous glyphing task.
But… this opportunity was big. Equally as terrifying as facing an opponent in the ring and being asked to fight to submission. His opponents never submitted. Something about being the Shogun's grandson made opponents want to humiliate him with their blade work. Blade work was the religion of Iron Country and, while Naruto was better than average with a weapon in his hand, the specific style that samurai used was beyond him for reasons he couldn't tell you even if someone held a blade to his throat.
Iaijutsu was the traditional style of Samurai and he was absolute pants at it; Mifune knew, Taza knew, Furu knew, but they kept pushing him.
But this is the bedrock of the Zen Arts, Naruto. If you want to be a samurai, you have to master this!
He hated it. He didn't even want to be a samurai.
This was big, this Apprenticeship decision. Too big. Mifune had spent the last three weeks attempting to talk to Naruto about his future. The smithy was a place of creation-that was the other half of the Zen Arts that Mifune and Taza droned on about.
Mifune talked of big things like death and honor and oaths kept and what it meant to be a good person; what that had to do with Samurai and battle he had no idea. The Shogun had talked of why Samurai were so different from shinobi. That it was the Oath of the Sage that kept them from employing chakra directly in attack: they kept to the Oath and the Shinobi had not. That chakra could not be used in profane ways like the Shinobi did. To kill. To maim. The blade was pure; patience, skill, and precision turned in concert to defend the Oath.
That frustrated Naruto.
As an orphan, he'd made up stories about his parents after Mifune told him they were ninja from Konohagakure. Wild fantasies about saving princesses and becoming Hokage leaped through his head and made him itch to leave and travel the distance to the place he knew he belonged, the place his parents were from; Konohagakure, the Village Hidden in the Leaves.
Konoha, as it was known by most, was the epicenter of the greatest ninja Village on the continent and the target of a now-brewing war that all the adults spoke of and sounded more than worried.
Most of the other four didn't want to admit it, but the most powerful ninja of the last hundred years all came straight from his home in the Land of Fire. So, it was important to Naruto that he eventually travel there and become a ninja. Mifune told him that this year was the testing year and they'd sit down to really discuss what Naruto wanted when garrison inspections were over.
To travel far away to the Land of Fire and become a shinobi, using chakra in battle in defiance of the Oath of the Sage, or become a samurai here under Mifune's command? Mifune always reminded him that he had trouble fighting here, among friends, what made him so certain he could do it with chakra and to strangers?
To kill innocents like shinobi did?
That pissed him off; the idea that shinobi were just mindless killers was stupid and Naruto knew they were just trying to put him off the idea. Mifune was snooty, that was all, right?
Master Ouran seemed to be suggesting something else, a third option, an alternative path; that of an early and therefore promising start as a Fuinsmith. The idea had a certain… excitement to it. The Fuinsmith's were all extremely well-respected as they were literally the reason that the Land of Iron still stood centuries upon centuries. The power of the suits they forged for their warriors was incalculable. Armor that could shrug off most normal jutsu. Unthinkable to the average civilian in the other countries.
He'd have the chance to become one of the greats under Master Ouran.
Vital. Useful. Respected and not scoffed at for his absolutely atrocious skill with iaijutsu.
But his parents were shinobi. They'd want him to follow in their footsteps, right? To fight for their Hokage?
"Naruto? Lad?"
Snap.
Snap.
Ouran was snapping his thick fingers in front of his nose.
His Master's face was soft in the pale fire of the forge light. It wasn't stoked and therefore gave off a weak kind of heat, though still relatively strong compared to the cavern. But Naruto didn't even notice. The thoughts were all swirling in his head and he didn't want to say the wrong thing, despite knowing that Ouran would accept whatever he said and support him. So too would Mifune. They were great about that, but...
But Naruto still felt paralyzed, like he'd disappoint the only people who mattered to him no matter what he did. Dead and living people. He was only nine and this was big in his head and it made his chest hurt thinking about it.
"Yeah sorry, Master. I was just thinking…well, Mifune said we'd talk later. After the inspections. Do I have to decide now?"
Ouran waved away Naruto's concern.
"Of course not. You know that lad. I'll accept whatever you both decide."
By unspoken agreement, Naruto and Ouran turned to look at the silvery curiosity on his work desk. There was exciting work ahead of them, figuring something this strange, exotic and new out. Naruto smiled a feral smile.
"I'll get the tongs and the censor?"
Ouran laughed.
"That eager, eh?"
Naruto scoffed.
"There is nothing more fun than finding new Fuin, nothing. You sure you aren't getting too old for this Master? You old fart you?"
Ouran growled, but waved him away.
"Just get the tools and we'll get started… provided there is no more outta ya, you hear me lad?"
All Ouran heard was laughter as the two became busy. They had new Fuinjutsu symbols to decode and parse out. Perhaps they'd discover a new function they could add to the armor systems? That would be huge.
Naruto, grateful to have something to focus on and help calm his racing thoughts, sprinted into the back room searching for the censor. The device was a simple measuring tool used to create exacting specifications for duplication of the glyphs, each Fuinsmith had their own censor, calibrated to their specifics. Naruto didn't want to use Ouran's, the device he'd been fiddling with, but wanted his own that he kept in the workspace in the backroom.
A horn sounded loud enough to cut through the chugging, bellowing repetitive sound from the Forge; once, twice.
Iron relied on a country-wide emergency alert system in case of an attack. Sometimes it was used to announce important events in each city, thus most people came to understand which signals meant what. That was the official state visitation signal, that outsiders were arriving. A gathering would be underway in the square.
Mifune wasn't due for another four hours as he was doing inspections on the far garrisons for the other two mountain cities.
Why was he back so quickly?
Naruto sprinted out and saw an equally puzzled gaze matching him from Ouran. Together, the two of them tore off their aprons and goggles and exited the two-story smithy out onto the main thoroughfare of Sekiro Proper. New Fuin was exciting, but very rarely were there ever visitations from other heads of state, the last being a Five Kage Summit during the Third World War, or so he remembered Furu telling him during a boring ass history lecture.
The mountain was enormous, but this particular level of the city was only about five hundred feet from rocky floor to rocky ceiling carved into a giant gently sloped bowl, one enormous ramp circled the bowl and led up to the gatehouse that Naruto initially passed through with his mysterious burden.
San Proper was only a part of San City, tucked haphazardly like discarded toys into the bottom of the bowl. A huge procession trampled down the ramp, horn blower in the middle flanked by huge Samurai in full armor looking like terrible demons from the underworld, abyssal Yomi.
Mifune was at the head, his normally untidy gray beard trimmed for once and looking somehow extra small, dwarfed in his simple segmentata plate by every man and woman around him, his Honor Guard, that towered above him by at least two or three feet.
But it was the tall man next to him, much shorter than the seven-foot armored figures all around, but somehow standing out and above all of them by sheer presence. Naruto didn't know if that was chakra pressure he was feeling or simple gravitas. He didn't know which would be worse.
The man wore a red short robe, tied loosely in the front, with a disturbingly faceless Noh mask, all red like blood, framed by massive tousled waves of obsidian black hair curled in ringlets that tumbled down his back, terminating at his waist. An over-sized gunbai, an army arrangement fan usually used to signal distant forces in a regular non-shinobi army, was strapped by chains to the man's back. Black boots, black belt, and dark gloves covered him and left no hint of skin.
Naruto knew this person by fearful name only: the Seifuku-sha, the Butcher of the Bloody Mist, the Man in Red, The Conqueror as people fearfully whispered. He'd declared a one man war against Mizugakure, Daimyo and Kage, and won.
Now he'd declared that Kumo was next if they didn't stop antagonizing his forces along the Mizu border. Everyone who had half a brain and listened to any part of the news certainly knew of him, given the horrors happening right now in the Land of Mist. Maybe a dozen people turned up half-dead at the gates of Iron asking for asylum each day. Musashi City to the west was almost filled to the brim. That same story was repeated in all the northern countries and some of the southern ones as well. Naruto suspected this was why people were here.
Was this another Five Kage Summit?
Some said there were over four hundred thousand dead and dying, others only fifty thousand or more. Regardless, newscasters were starting to call it the Bloody Mist instead of Mizukagure. The Big Five (or now four as nobody knew what had happened to the Mist government, Kage or Daimyo aside from rumors of their deaths) had recently called for a Shinobi Summit to address the humanitarian crisis starting at the borders of Kaminari and Hi no Kuni. That summit would no doubt happen right here in Iron Country as the only powerful neutral third party.
Iron had been that neutral party in all Shinobi wars and disputes in the last hundred and fifty years. Naruto knew all that… and yet, there was something ominous and foreboding in those deep black eyes staring out of the blood red-robed figure. This felt like inviting the wolf to hang out with the sheep for a social call. Those eyes flashed, just for a second, a deep disturbing yellow, like a lantern on a boat in a dark sea. Naruto shivered.
Next to the red-clad figure, Mifune locked eyes with Naruto, not bothering to hide that he knew exactly where his ward was and in those tired eyes there was a hint of something Naruto couldn't understand; a satisfied recognition, perhaps? Mifune, Shogun of Iron Country, had invited the Butcher of the Bloody Mist and all the Shadows of the shinobi world to San City.
What was he thinking?
Behind the first group came the Raikage, A of Kumogakure with his retinue of gray-clad sword-wielding shinobi, followed by the coterie of deep nut-brown colored shinobi flanking the Tsuchikage of Hidden Rock, Onoki the Fence-sitter.
Nobody called him that to his face.
All of the Big Five, minus Mizu as they were in the midst of being conquered by the man Mifune had invited, had come with the standard retinue of ten shinobi. Naruto pushed through the press of the crowd to get closer to the front to better see the delegations.
There, he spotted the next and last few to arrive. Naruto's heart was beating fast in his chest as he waited for the one he most wanted to see. His home. His people. The Village to which his mother and father had pledged their lives and most likely died to protect.
Naruto had no idea such a big event was happening today.
This might've been the most exciting event of his admittedly very young life.
Why hadn't Mifune told him?
Naruto didn't know how to feel about that. Did Mifune not trust him?
Suna arrived next, the Wind Country Kage surrounded by tan-colored shinobi, some with large battle fans strapped to their backs. Again, standard. Their Kage was anything but standard, however. Pakura of the Scorch Release was a famous war hero and a staunch ally of Konohagakure. The story around her had grown up like weeds since the Wind Civil War. Here she was, in all her heroic glory.
Tall, lithe, the woman had bi-colored hair; black and blonde, with eyes that seemed to glow like the aftermath of an explosion. She was amazingly cool. There was a strange red-haired boy next to her, masked completely unlike the rest. He couldn't have been any older than Naruto. Strange. He had a large gourd on his back the color of the desert. Wow, a boy that young as a guardian of the Kazekage?
Naruto grinned. Shinobi were awesome!
Pakura wasn't what he was most anxious to see though.
Eyes straining, Naruto anxiously scanned the entrance and moved again, pushing past people in a way that would've earned him a scolding from Mifune if he'd seen.
Where were they?
Where was Konoha?
Surely, they wouldn't have skipped something as momentous and world-changing as a Five Kage Summit, not with their ally Suna here in force.
Would they?
But no, Naruto moved and stopped on a broken crate next to a tavern that had a nice angle to look up at the descending ramped entrance way and it was there that he saw them.
Naruto wasn't disappointed… just confused.
Three people entered in total.
One woman walked well ahead of the other two white-masked shinobi. They were so strange it made Naruto's heart beat even faster. The first, to the left of the woman in the center, was completely covered in a bizarre spiders-web of pale bandages and had an unsettling white mask, the kind that ANBU wore, but unpainted by animal images. Long, dark hair fell down her back in a waterfall of ringlets, similar to the Butcher of the Bloody Mist. Her mask had a glyph painted on her forehead that Naruto didn't understand.
What is the Foolish Fire?
They were passing too quickly to linger long on its meaning.
The man to the right wore the standard Konoha uniform, he'd seen them in the Bingo books. Green flak-jacket with many-pockets covering a standard dark-blue one-piece jumpsuit of some heavy material. He also had a white mask, but this one had a marking in the center that simply read, 'Blade.' Above his left hip, poked a hand-and-a-half hilt, longer than a standard blade. Then Naruto noticed that above his right shoulder sat five more sets of blade hilts.
Naruto was so confused.
None of them were remotely standard hilts for shinobi blades. Naruto himself had watched Master Ouran forge blades like these. The man wore a samurai's full-length odachi and carried five more above his shoulder in a very unwieldy fashion. The whole get-up must have weighed a ton!
What the hell was the point? You couldn't wield five blades at a time, could you?
Sure enough, as Naruto looked, they rounded part of the spiral and he could see the bottom of the blades in the scabbard was poking out. Five feet, if he had to judge. A warrior's blade. Many, many blades, he amended. The woman in the middle made the two of them an afterthought and the mystery of the bizarre blades disappeared from his mind.
The stories of the newest Shadow of Konohagakure, the Godaime Hokage, did not do her justice.
Naruto had once been exploring Sekiro and run across one of the deep-delve caverns that were simply black holes in the rocky ground. The shadows in them were so deep, so impenetrable, that it felt like the light from his portable lantern did nothing more than show how futile it was trying to push back the vast dark.
She looked like a woman made from those same shadows.
Midnight hair and fathomless black eyes contrasted her pale skin sharply making her seem all the darker for it. The Hokage seemed to float above the ground, though he was sure it was just a trick of the light, and glided forward covered in the traditional white-and-red silk cloak of office. The other Kage's had similar versions that showed off the colors and elemental namesakes of their villages. Hers was no different except that it shrouded her whole body from the neck down. The equally light-colored hat, that of a rice-farmer except made from no doubt expensive materials, displayed the glyph for Fire Shadow proudly.
Naruto thought he saw a brief flash of a red eye peeking out from between the folds of her cloak and then it was gone. He kept looking but saw nothing and no movement from the cloak aside from the gentle swaying as she finally descended the whole ramp.
Three Wolves Square, the largest such plaza in the entirety of Iron Country could house a hundred and fifty thousand people easily, but it felt cramped as the various figures arrayed themselves in a five-pointed star formation. The Kage, and the man they clearly came to talk with, stood waiting for the Hokage to arrive. Arrayed as they were in force, the stares were clearly hostile and Naruto shifted and jumped off the crate, running back to the edge of the crowd to see the Hokage. Scooting through the legs of the majority of the folks were annoying, but there were a few kids in the crowd hustling like Naruto.
Hostile energy filled the almost empty plaza as the edges of the crowd were hundreds of feet back. The Hokage arrived just as Naruto did, and it was Ay of Kumogakure, the Raikage, who broke the tense silence previously broken only by the click of her heels on the cobbled stone.
His voice carried easily.
"I wasn't sure if you could afford to leave Konoha, Lady Hokage. The Village Hidden in Lightning is so glad you could join us. I'm sure things are… hectic...for you right now."
His grin, teeth shining in a darkly-tanned face stood out like white at a funeral.
The Hokage said nothing. What was the Raikage talking about? What was hectic?
"Two shinobi as guards? I fear for your safety on the way home, Lady Hokage. Konoha needs her Hokage in these troubling times."
The Hokage could've given a statue pointers.
None of her two guards so much as shifted. A samurai could've cut the silence with a sword.
Mifune, the shortest one among those gathered, sliced through the awkwardness and the group of shinobi like the prow of a Breaker ship moving through the flows of ice, stepping into the center. He bowed to the Hokage in the traditional way, hands twisted to the right side and bowing in half at the waist.
"Welcome Lady Mikoto, Lord A." He nodded to each in turn. "Banter is for idle times and these are anything but. Come. We have work to be about and people die while we chatter."
Mifune unbowed and seemed at that moment to be truly the Shogun that all Kage respected, despite his age and pacifism. He gestured strongly. A and Lady Mikoto followed, hesitation barely noticeable from either.
Mifune didn't stop, but he did turn and his eyes darted to find Naruto's, not sweeping, but honing in quickly. They seemed to drink in the light and reflect the fire of the torches blazing around them. The words Mifune then spoke echoed throughout the square.
"We've much to discuss."
The old man shifted his head and it seemed to tell him to get the hell home. The gathered Kage ignored the byplay and followed Mifune and his lieutenants into the Administrative building bordering the square, colonnades and worked stone proving opulent enough a housing center for the situation. Naruto slunk back into the press of the crowd, trying not to jostle anyone.
He'd seen what he wanted to see anyway.
But there was a commotion in the back of the crowd, shouting and pushing, that was growing in strength. The commotion pressed near and Naruto, only nine and small for his age, didn't have a chance to react as he was shoved, violently, tossed into the edge of the now-empty square as the commotion burst through the center of the mass of people like some strange, great beast had stampeded and thrown folks aside.
Naruto scrambled up, having landed properly into a tucked roll as he'd been taught, turned to run and went the wrong way, straight into the square. Screaming had started behind him and all around him was chaos as people started running, not knowing which way to go as senseless panic infected the crowd.
What the hell was going on?
The sheer noise almost deafened him and he clapped his hands over his ears and staggered away, but all that meant was that he smacked his head when he was hit from behind by something he couldn't see, couldn't hear, unable to brace his fall.
The impact jarred him, his knee hitting the ground, then another push came, shoving him prone. A figure was standing above him, straddling him. He could feel it. Naruto had expected to be trampled by the enraged crowd surging in his direction, but air and debris pushed around him from above. Naruto curled tight.
A thunderclap of noise halted the crowd. A voice roaring with strength amplified above that of a hammer blow on a steel anvil, or the crack of a glacier breaking away from a cliff face.
"Silence!"
Mifune stood, sword out and horizontal to his body, framed by a semi-circle of the delegates who hadn't moved. Blood dripped from the blade Mifune had used. Naruto peaked his head up and found that one man, a bear of a human being, covered in what looked like bricks of some dark color, sporting wires was kneeling like a puppet with cut strings about to fall, facing the collective Kage with a hand still clutching something in his hands, and missing a head.
One of the delegates wasn't present.
The perfect face of the Hokage stared down at him from under the shadows of her hat. She was smiling. One finger was held against her lips. Naruto shook his head.
But what had happened?
Why had she saved him?
Naruto stared at the headless man. Blood leaked from a graphic cross-section of the inside of his neck, white bone clearly visible as the man pitched forward, spurting arterial blood. Naruto wiped his forehead, sweat mingling with blood as he stared at his fingers. Red like the eyes of the Hokage. Red like the gibbets of blood stringy and hanging off the dead man's neck. Red like the eye of the creature that stared out from beneath the Hokage's legs, hiding with tiny arms clutching her armored leg.
But the creature...
The creature was hideous. Naruto's eyes slid away, distracted by the sudden influx of movement and screaming.
Behind it, Naruto's eyes focused on Mifune whose eyes widened as the headless man released his grip on something in his hand. Mifune was right at the center! Naruto caught sight of Yojimbra, Mifune's protege and bodyguard both, a man like an uncle to Naruto, dark eyes frantic, tackling his Shogun.
"Dead man switch! DOWN!"
Everything...exploded? A swirling, guttural sound echoed through the screaming.
The mountain shook, but it sounded like it was from outside, above them?
Sound was muted, deafening. Then stopped. He'd dropped to the ground again and was face-to-face with the strange cyclops creature that was only a few inches high, crouched by the Hokage's boot. Naruto continued to stare at the...thing.
A part of him, the part trained by Mifune, identified shock in himself, but another part didn't care that something had exploded and then ceased before any wind could reach him. A high-yield explosive, but no consequences.
The thing.
Hideous.
And tiny.
And bone-white.
The thing spoke to him from a mouth that stretched across its face, dominating the body slightly less than what sat in the center. It was a shin-high creature of what looked like the stuff bee cocoons were made of; a kind of birch-white wood, but it wasn't wood… because it had an enormous eye. The thing seemed concerned, crouching down to tap him on the tip of his nose. Naruto went cross-eyed trying to look at the tiny three-fingered gray hand booping him.
Wood couldn't talk, didn't have eyes, or blink. Could it? Naruto's thoughts were scattered like dandelion fluff on the wind. Focus!
The eye was like nothing else he'd ever seen. An enormous singular eye stood out prominently on a face, if you could call it that, that was warped and twisted. Like from a bad sculptor working off a misshapen human figure. Blood-red and black, the pupil contained a throwing-star shaped black symbol, if the throwing-star was three tear-dropped shapes connected by rotating lines. The whites of the eye were thoroughly bloodshot.
Naruto was sure his mouth was hanging open, staring at it. While he stared, the… things tail twitched, tiny legs swishing as it moved towards him. Where had it come from? He couldn't process this. Had he been hit harder than he thought?
Was he dead? Delirious from blood loss?
The explosion! What had Yojimbra called it? A Dead Man's switch?
Naruto scrambled up and tried not to hit the Hokage who still stood near him and then the creature was gone, swirling away into a shattered fractal swath, like mixing paint with the colors of the scene behind the nothingness in the air.
Gone.
Naruto looked up and the same thing was happening to the man's body. There was no body. Wait. Where had it gone? The same gray swirl, a warping of the air and image behind the… hole, swallowed itself and was gone.
The body was gone with it.
Had she done something?
Her eyes were red and black and shaped strangely, like an upside down cross that spun lazily and then it stopped, the eye changed. They were black.
Normal.
She was still smiling at him. Naruto wouldn't have called it a nice smile, more… well, she looked like an ice-bear that found an injured seal.
Naruto was suddenly afraid that he was the seal.
"Are you unharmed, Naruto Uzumaki?"
The Hokage knew his name; the one Mifune tried to hide by giving him an orphans name in Iron Country. Naruto no Tetsu, officially, a family name that tied him to the country like all the other orphans.
But she knew the real one...
It was the name he'd lost. The one he'd promised never to tell anyone.
/San City
/San Mountain
/The Land of Iron
Naruto
Chaos still reigned with men, women, children; those who'd come out to see the once-in-a-lifetime gathering of leaders from all the Hidden Villages, running in terror. The body of the man who had been screaming and running at the delegation was nowhere to be seen.
No explosion, but a lot of blood.
Slowly, people relaxed as they found that seemingly nothing had happened. That gray swirl in the air, that mixing of paint using the colors of the things around it, had sucked the man into nothing.
There was no trace that anything untoward had ever happened, minus a gallon of blood spilled on the ground in a huge swath.
Naruto was still stuck on that creature with one eye and the Hokage with her eyes of blood. That and the fact that she knew him, the real him, the one he'd promised never to tell anybody. That was one of the very first things Naruto could remember Mifune speaking to him about. The Secret.
The Big Secret.
People wouldn't just kill him, they take him away and do… well, Mifune never quite said, but Naruto's imagination at five was wild and got more vivid each year thereafter. Those people wanted him for his ability to not just read Fuin, but understand it on a level not even Ouran could grasp and… well, it didn't seem so fabulous to Naruto, but Mifune told him the Uzumaki were whole-sale slaughtered for their ability to read, understand, and craft new Fuinjutsu without a single accident that prevented others from experimentation. An Uzumaki just... knew if something would work or not. Legends told they could bind gods to their symbologies. Even Hashirama Senju, founder of Konohagakure, could only restrain bijuu, not seal them. He'd needed an Uzumaki to do that, the impossible.
Even the rumor of that idea had gotten his whole clan wiped out in a day. Mifune had told him stories of the Day of Sorrow.
So, for the Hokage to know his full name…
His parents had been shinobi of the Leaf village, one an Uzushiogakure refugee, according to Mifune, but that didn't mean that it was okay that the Hokage knew. Panic rose inside his chest, a crushing feel like a fist squeezing his throat, heart racing, palms sweaty. Naruto tried to breath nice and even, but it didn't work. Dizziness swept over him. Not even Ouran knew the truth—if he had, well... nothing bad would've happened, but Mifune had made him swear not to tell a soul! And Naruto never went back on a promise.
It took him a minute or two to get himself under control with a breathing trick learnt from Taza. His palms were sweaty as well, so he wiped them on his trousers and stood, staggering back away from her.
"How…?"
"That is quite enough, Lady Hokage."
Mifune was there.
Shorter than the Hokage, but somehow taking up all the available space in the market square, he presented a comforting bulwark against everything that was happening. This day was strange, horrible, and had gotten stranger still. The apprenticeship decision, the glyph-covered prison, the Seifuku-sha staring at him like he knew him, the Hokage knowing his name?
Had he mentioned the looming specter of the Journeyman trials and him, still so young?
It was all too much.
"Gramps-"
"It's alright Naruto. I'm sure today has been long, please head back to Master Ouran's and I'll have Yojimbra collect you for dinner. I'm afraid I'll be a little late tonight."
"I…"
Mifune turned slightly, Naruto not missing how he kept the Hokage in his field of vision. Mifune's face was smooth, weather-worn and dimpled. He always gave the impression he was thinking of a great joke and it was reflected in the lines on his face. The Shogun's face always made Naruto feel like everything was going to be okay. Like Mifune was an immortal guardian made of stone that occasionally smiled, but only for him.
None of that confidence was there when he searched for it, but the smile… that was the same. Naruto steadied and listened as Mifune spoke quietly.
"There is a lot going on today, Naruto. Some things… well, I prepared you as best I could and there is still more I need to say. Things that I left too long, perhaps. But for now, I need you to go and say nothing to anyone."
Naruto nodded reluctantly, turning to go as Mifune stood, but Mifune didn't let go of his arm. The last Uzumaki looked up, confused.
Mifune's hand tightened. The Hokage and him were in something of a staring contest. Naruto could feel the tension in his grandfathers arm. Mifune was his grandfather, no matter what anyone said.
"Naruto, iron is strong yes, inflexible?"
"Yes…"
"Is that a good thing?"
Naruto frowned, thrown for a second. Why was he asking that? Every good blacksmith knew that iron was a brittle metal and needed alloying to make useful, despite its relative strength compared to wood.
"No, the properties of iron makes it inflexible and prone to shattering, a flexible metal alloy is always stronger than pure stock, why?"
Naruto frowned, but Mifune smiled.
"Yes, I've always said that hardness doesn't indicate strength. Flexibility and willingness to bend to outside forces are best. I'm glad you agree. Perhaps the samurai could have benefited from some alloying of our own..."
"What the hell kind of a question is that old man!? Stop being weird and cryptic, for once!"
Mifune laughed loudly at that and Naruto thought he was imagining his earlier worries.
Things would be okay.
They just had to get through this Five Kage summit.
Mifune ruffled his head and pushed him slightly in the direction of Ouran's smithy. The look on his face… it reminded Naruto of the nightmares he'd wake screaming from when he was younger. Dreams of fire, blood, a demon he couldn't see, of terrifying power, devouring him whole. Mifune would sit with him and rub his back in quiet circles, this same look he had now in his eyes.
Sadness and some knowledge he hadn't felt like sharing just yet.
Naruto's stomach clenched involuntarily, but he made himself walk away. He tried not to look back as he was walking away, but Naruto couldn't help looking back at his grandfather, a grandfather in truth no matter what others said. Mifune was speaking quietly to the Hokage. Her eyes slid sideways and met Naruto's violet ones and she smiled, eyes flashing red in the distance.
Naruto shivered, turning back, and kept walking.
This was the life he wanted, the life of a shinobi.
...right?
Did that mean he'd decided?
Naruto kept walking.
His head was a bundle of different feelings. But as fear faded, excitement tore through him and he couldn't stop the hope blossoming inside him as he realized he liked the feeling he'd gotten in the crowd; fear yes, but adrenaline too. The same feeling when he focused on a new project: uncertainty, a competitiveness, a knife-edge emotional blend of the two.
Energy buzzed under his skin, not the powerful rush of chakra, but an eagerness, the same dangerous feeling that made him volunteer for adventures outside fetching deliveries from the various Fuinsmith's in Musashi and Sekiro City. That feeling times a thousand tonight. Fuin-crafting was great and fun and very, very easy at his level, but this… this feeling.
This was something else.
Death had been so close as he watched the man running towards that group of shinobi and it made him feel alive, his heartbeat pound in his ears and behind his eyes, made him hate the idea of staying one more day inside these mountain walls separated from the world that his parents had made their own.
His home, his real home, waiting out there in the world. His Hokage had saved him and smiled at him. And maybe it wasn't so bad she knew who he was? That made him special, right? Singled out by the Hokage to save? Mifune had promised that if he truly had made up his mind, that he'd send him out on the next caravan out to Konohagakure.
Naruto grinned, clenching his fists and broke into a sprint.
Yes, being an Uzumaki was a death sentence… and that was scary but…
Shimizu and Roran, the only friends he'd had or wanted, always scolded him that he needed more excitement in his life, that he couldn't waste his days playing pranks on Yojimbra, Taza, or Furu, or even scribbling in Ouran's dungeon with just his Fuin for company. He doubted this is what they meant, but that conversation about his future with Mifune… that needed to happen.
That was exactly what he planned to do.
First thing tomorrow!
Ouran was waiting for him when he arrived back at the smithy.
The wide man seemed displeased or maybe worried. It was hard to tell exactly what he was thinking through his thick beard. The whole day was shaping up to be strange and exhausting. Naruto's head was spinning: Mifune's strangely dark mood and musing, Ouran pushing Naruto into Journeyman trials, not to mention the Hokage of all people, here!
That didn't even account for the attack that… well, failed.
"Are you okay Naruto? What happened? I lost you in the crowd."
Ouran put a hand out to block Naruto as he scrambled past. His shift was nearly over, so Naruto started to gather up his tools and his scroll that contained all his notes and ideas for new Fuin. Ouran couldn't make heads or tails of it, so it was mostly safe, but he liked to keep it on him anyway. Naruto eyed Ouran, responding but not stopping his rummaging. Tools clanged metal on metal as he shuffled through various piles of things searching.
"Attack. That red asshole-"
"Language."
"-asshole is here from Mist. The one that butchered all those people?"
A big sigh, gusty. Ouran hated bad language, something about it 'contributed to making Smith's like him seem uneducated and dumb.' Naruto was a big believer in calling it like he saw it and Ouran was a big hypocrite since Naruto learned all his language from his Master. Well, him and Shimizu. She could swear like her hair was on fire.
Right. The Seifuku-sha murdered people and strung them up like grotesque puppets, or so the rumors went. Why Mifune was entertaining the man without opening him up with his blade made no sense to Naruto. The old guy had always preached about honor above all things. It was what set the Samurai apart from their honor-less cousins, the shinobi. Naruto had always rolled his eyes. He didn't see much point in a fair fight if the guy you were fighting was stronger than you. Mifune had always had a 'headache' by this point in the conversation.
Yeah, sure, don't stab the guy in the back...but don't give him his sword back when he drops it either. Hands were thrown up and Mifune would usually walk away.
The last item he'd been looking for was next to the silvery coffin-thing they'd discovered, the Fuin still glittering at him like fairy-lights. The mystery of that was almost as exciting to him as the thought of really becoming a shinobi, but he could only make an exciting life out of one of them. Reluctantly, he tore his eyes away from it and scooped up his knife from where it sat, holstering it in the leather sheath on his thigh.
Ouran leaned against the wall. Naruto could almost see the cloud of worry over his head. Inviting genocidal maniacs into their homes would do that, Naruto supposed.
"Look, grandpa has this handled. He's the Shogun. That's like, better than a Hokage."
Ouran didn't look reassured, but he did give him a slight smile.
"You're a good lad Naruto. Head on home now. Straight home, ya hear? None o' this detourin'. I don't want the Shogun knocking on my Smithy again because you're 'missin''. We'll do our investigatin' tomorrow bright and early."
Naruto rolled his eyes.
He'd detoured once to the Water Gardens with Shimizu and Roran and they sent out the hounds after an hour. Now, they didn't need to know they were pranking that idiot Tzyko who'd cracked Roran in the jaw last week for something no doubt stupid. Naruto couldn't stand bullies and when they'd found out that Tzyko was going to be skinny-dipping with his buddies… well. The rest was inevitable. Was it his fault that the ass had been caught naked in public?
Literally?
"Yeah, yeah."
Naruto pushed the door open, but paused as he slung the bag onto his shoulder where it clanked. This might be the last time he'd be in this forge, with Ouran, for a very long time. If ever. That is, if his conversation with Mifune about his future and Testing Day went as he hoped.
Change was good, right?
Naruto waved to Ouran, the man raising one in response, and he headed out into the night headed for his home and especially his bed.
Tomorrow couldn't come fast enough.