Chapter 4: The Last Hope
"Rage — whether in reaction to social injustice, or to our leaders' insanity, or to those who threaten or harm us — is a powerful energy that, with diligent practice, can be transformed into fierce compassion."
― Bonnie Myotai Treace
/The Three Wolves Mountains
/The Land of Iron
Naruto
Naruto's eyes snapped open and met the dark eyes looking down at him through a white-and-red-and-blue mask. Through the haze of sleep, Naruto blearily focused on the red part of the mask.
The red was blood splatter.
A lot of it.
Panic cleared the last vestiges of sleep as the point of a knife descended towards his face. Death raced towards him and Naruto lay frozen, despite the panic freeing him. Everything moved slowly, though. Was this how it ended? Killed in his bed before his life even began? Chakra flooded his body instinctually while anger awakened in his stomach like a beast. It was just enough to form a coherent if not-entirely-effective reaction.
Thousands of pain-in-the-ass hours of Yojimbra and Taza beating training into him took over and the edge of his palm batted against the inner wrist of his assailant just in time to deflect the knife from his face, a certain kill, into the pillow next to his ear. Pain lanced through him, the knife deflected only enough to carve a furrow in his ear and not outright kill him.
The wound burned.
His other fist lashed out in a textbook straight punch. Mifune and Taza, his unarmed instructor, would've been pleased. He'd have been pissed that his student hadn't noticed someone sneaking into his goddamn room in the dead of night though.
The masked man casually grabbed his wrist and twisted outward, wrenching his arm, the other retracting the blade and plunging it down once more. This time Naruto had no choice but to jerk his head as far as he could the other direction. The knife slid deep into the meager muscle of his child's sized shoulder. Naruto felt something tear as he screamed in pain. But training persisted.
His leg lashed out in a grab and wrapped around the arm that was holding the knife. Naruto pinned it and kicked out with his other leg, the hard ball of his foot cracking against the mask as he threw all his chakra into the kick. The man stumbled back, the knife ripping out of Naruto's shoulder and spraying blood from the knife. Not much blood seeped from the wound, but there was a weakness present there in his sword arm that wasn't normal, not good, he knew.
Escape.
That was the only possible answer to the man in front of him.
He was ANBU, definitely, as Mifune made him memorize all the countries' various special operations units 'just in case.' Had he known something that Naruto didn't? It hadn't seemed useful at the time, just Mifune being paranoid. His brain cycled through his lessons settling on what he knew about the mask. Kami, I'm stupid. He was training me this whole time. From something like this though?
Fear shot through him as he realized what country this was from. Blue diamonds in a white mask, eye-slits inked in red.
Mist.
The Seifuku-sha.
The Man in Red, the asshole who Mifune invited into the Land of Iron for the Kage Summit, ran Mist now, according to rumors. What did Seifuku-sha want with the Shogun's adopted grandson, leverage? He'd be more valuable alive than dead though.
Clearly, nobody gave a shit.
Those thoughts fled as he leaped out of bed, rolling across his bedsheets and avoiding a lightning-quick strike that tore furrows in his sheets, feathers spreading through the air and grabbed his lamp, an old-fashioned oil-based lamp, shattering it against his opponent, who blocked with one arm. The oil ignited and Naruto heard cursing as he continued to sprint through the open door of his bedroom, slamming it behind him just in time to hear a grunt as the man ran into it.
It shattered into kindling.
Shit, shit, shit!
No Ouran to bitch at him about his language. Naruto threw all his chakra into his legs and the tenketsu burned as he sprinted.
Death now stalked him through the darkened halls.
There was absolute silence in the house as he sprinted and Naruto's breath sounded like the marching drum of an army in his ears. There was no rhyme or reason that he could find as to why he was being attacked by a single ANBU. Naruto had to admit he was probably dead if not for the surprise of waking just at the right moment and still would be dead if he didn't find some help. Tripping on the edge of a rug, he tumbled head over heels and turned it into a roll that saw him sideways sticking out of a fractured plaster wall.
Fuck!
Naruto picked himself up, frantically looking around and seeing no one, he continued his mad dash to the back door.
Where was Taza?
Where was Furu?
Yojimbra was no doubt with Mifune, but where were the house-keepers and various support staff that Mifune had employed for his entire life? The people he had called family as they raised him alongside the Shogun.
This man, the Mist ANBU that had attacked him, was so far above him in skill there could be only one outcome here unless he found Taza or Furu or even Mifune. ANBU were Chunin-level or kami-forbid, Jonin-level. Equivalent to a small army in strength really. He'd heard stories of a single Jonin decimating an entire battalion of a Daimyo's soldiers. Of course, that was before the Accords forbid Shinobi from battling regular armies in any war.
Now, it was shinobi to shinobi and soldier to soldier.
To infiltrate the Shogun's home was… well, the man was either extremely skilled, powerful, or extremely stupid.
Or he knew something Naruto didn't.
But Naruto was told never to bet on stupidity.
Naruto took two rights and sped past the galley kitchen in the right wing and slid to a stop in the mud-room where his backpack lay haphazardly tossed from earlier. Shrugging on a jacket over his pajamas, he took the sword from its place on the wall rack, a simple wakizashi, and scooped up the backpack.
Reaching a hand up, he snagged his house-key from the little holders on the wall next to the door, the wood scored with a tiny handprint done in blue paint. Naruto remembered doing that as a kid, a project for their house he'd completed in grade-school. His heart clenched.
Where was Mifune?
He should've been back unless… unless something went horribly wrong during his negotiations.
Naruto listened carefully as he unlocked the door. Nothing in the house, but he could hear now, in the distance was the sound of screaming down in the valley.
Naruto sniffed.
Smoke.
Panic gripped his already racing heart. Smoke meant bad things as the ventilator systems designed to prevent a build-up of harmful chemicals and proper air-flow must have been either overwhelmed or were broken.
Or shut off...
Pain from his shoulder wound pulsed, reminding him that there was a man who wanted him very, very dead somewhere behind him.
Naruto grabbed at his shoulder to feel around and in his peripheral vision, he saw a black-on-black shadow behind him moving. Some instincts that he didn't question had him spinning and he tripped on a shoe, falling as he did so, his blade crossing his body in a block that saw him narrowly avoid evisceration from the long knife, a kunai really, that shot at his stomach. The fall turned into an instinctual backroll that saw him back up on his feet and facing the horrible white-masked ANBU with his wakizashi wavering in front of his face.
Naruto spat.
Fear was the last thing on his mind, anger burned brightly like a dying star, despite the burn in his shoulder and the numbness that had started to spread down to his elbow.
The man spoke, a smooth unruffled voice that almost startled him with its humanity. The masked figure looked more monster than human, despite the dark hair sticking up around the mask and the regular skin, not scales as Naruto would've imagined, around his gloves.
"Come quietly and you won't be harmed further. Keep resisting… and I can't guarantee your life. Seifuku-sha simply wants to speak with you."
"Bullshit. You tried to kill me."
The man shrugged.
"You moved. That changes things. Now you know. Cleanliness of your death aside, this works better."
Naruto gaped. Seriously? Knew what exactly?
How much of an idiot did he take him for? Naruto knew he was small for his age, almost ten damnit! The bright blonde hair that hung down past his ears was… well, slightly feminine in cut, but still-the nerve to think he was dumb because he was short. Two bright spots of red entered his cheeks as he grew even angrier. It was ridiculous that he was more mad about this than the whole attempted murder part…
"Stupid prick. You think I'm an idiot?"
The man simply stared at him, still as a statue.
The world stopped as he Naruto noticed a mound of darkness by the door to the mudroom that resolved itself into something that made his mind recoil and misfire; Taza, Furu, Yojimbra, and the house staff were carved up like a selection of fine meats piled like sashimi on display. Their heads cut, sawed off the bodies.
Naruto recognized each one; Taza, blonde hair tied in a messy topknot coated with sticky blood, Furu dark of features seemed shocked, Yojimbra… no, Yojimbra wasn't here. The thought was a positive drop in an ocean of blackness. That didn't mean Yojimbra was alive...
None of them would tell him any stories any longer.
Blood ran down in rivers from where the man callously stacked them like firewood. Arms splayed against legs, uniforms soaked. The smell of piss, shit, and offal making his eyes water and tears sprang to his eyes. Some combination of bubbling horror and his mind-shutting down from the sheer impossibility of what he was seeing had him stumbling back, a scream on his lips.
His face felt numb, but he could feel the tears rolling down his face. A white-hot rage, like the rumblings of a volcano about to go off, started in his stomach.
"You killed them…"
The skin on his stomach burned against his shirt and itched like a thousand fire ants crawled along his flesh.
"Of course. I had my orders."
Like it was that easy… was evil that easy?
"Orders…?"
He'd known these people his whole life.
Furu snuck him sweets sometimes after dinner and Marizu used to read him Tales of a Gutsy Ninja before bed before he became too adult and mature enough to want to read those things. Taza thought he was a brilliant fighter and pushed him for more and more, the only person besides Mifune to believe that even as Naruto himself didn't believe it; Naruto had never liked disappointing Taza. The man was an unbelievable fighter and now he was dead.
Just like that.
Furu was dead.
Marizu was dead, and Taza, and the rest of them.
Dead. Butchered like cattle. Countless more behind him. How had he done it so silently?
"Why?" Naruto whispered.
His breath came hard and fast as something hard and dangerous erupted inside him, shunting aside the horror, blocking it off in palace of death he'd created in his mind; a house of blades and blood.
A desire to kill flooded his mouth with unspewed acid that he choked back down. Tears burned like fire as they slid down his face, but he could feel his face curl into a snarl even as he cried. His shoulder wound didn't even register anymore, nor the pain in his ear, as he found himself three steps forward from where he'd been, wakizashi rock steady in front of him. Blood speckled his bare feet, the blood of his friends, his family, streamed around his feet like he was a rock planted in a river of blood.
Naruto felt his fingernails elongate and harden around the grip of his sword. A black miasma of power flooded his tenketsu, like night and day from his regular chakra. Something came alive, aware. A presence filled him with intention and…
It felt alive, squirming in his chest.
That snarl, that mult-throated wolf-cry surged upward and echoed in his head like a choir of one singing together. The palace of death in his mind was empty, haunted by the memories of dead friends and family. Of loss and hate and now-violence.
"Why?"
The man stared at him curiously, not moving even as a red haze spread around the increasingly lost boy. Why had this butchery happened? The man spoke as if he didn't know what was happening either. But Naruto knew the man's death was coming.
"What are you doin-"
Mifune's sad face flashed through his mind. The Seifuku-sha was behind this and maybe Mifune had known something was coming? This ANBU, this incredibly powerful fighter in front of him had killed them all in cold blood, including Taza. How he would make him pay, Naruto didn't know yet.
But he would pay.
He would pay in rivers of blood.
A surge, like nothing Naruto had ever felt, thundered through his body and veins and mind. Red was everything. A voice whispered in his ear, no his mind.
Kill. Rip. Tear.
Savor.
Break the bones, savor the juice.
KILL HIM.
The palace unfolded and something gripped him.
Before he understood what had happened, his body was moving-one step, then eight feet, crossed in the time it took a simple thought to process had him spearing the ANBU in the midsection, wakizashi melting from the sheer power in his grip, but still intact enough to tear a ragged hole in this butcher.
Some aware part of Naruto's mind registered a massive Fuin-mark crawling from his stomach, the same itch cascading across his body, spiraling and lit up with a red, blood light on his stomach that sailed outward, stretched all across his body. The haze-vulpine, from what little he could see and deadly-melted his flesh, repaired it, then melted it again as it covered him like armor.
Red and black everywhere, at the edges of his sight.
Death stalked his home again and this time it was Naruto.
The man blew apart, his chest separating and opening like a flower, blood and organs scattered like confetti at a birthday. A savage smile, canines protruding, etched on his face. He could feel them poking into the skin of his face. Blood, bone, meat spraying in tiny giblets of string as the bottom half of the Mist ANBU remained standing.
A voice sounded right behind him, close-too close.
The lower half of the ANBU fell with a meaty thud.
"A pity, the man was a fine agent."
A sharp pain; tiny at first, then became all he could think about spread through an impact point on the back of his neck. Naruto found himself on the ground face-down from a blow he hadn't seen. The red haze struggled fitfully around him, repairing his spine.
How was this happening?
WHAT WAS HAPPENING?
The voice, the bloodthirsty one he'd heard only today, sounded again and louder than he'd ever heard it before.
RIP.
TEAR.
KILL.
DEATH TO THE ENEMY.
The...thing had paused.
STRONG.
The last word was faintly concerned.
Naruto struggled to turn over.
Anger blazing up like a bonfire that had oil thrown on it.
One tail. Two-tails. Three tails, then four bubbled out of his back, Naruto felt each tail like a bucket of cold water to the face, a fresh ocean of power flooded him and wavered above his body. His sweat in the cold air, that was the containment of the city failing, letting in the frigid sub-zero temperatures, was steaming off his body.
Five.
Six tails.
Naruto rose to a crouch and met the eyes of the man he knew was behind this all. The Seifuku-sha, the Conqueror of Hidden Mist, covered in blood. Whose blood, Naruto couldn't tell. Naruto had eyes only for the Man in Red. Curiously, he had a bleeding gash across his chest and leg that seemed to be affecting the way he walked.
Naruto could see pink muscle through the slash.
One minute the man was facing him from where he'd hit Naruto in the back, the next he was towering over him with two yellow eyes that could've been twins to the Hokage's, though a different mark, like a six-pointed shuriken, spinning.
A pulse hit his body where the man's hand gently touched the lit-up Fuin on his stomach, his shirt had evaporated off his body, and all of a sudden he was a puppet with cut strings, falling to the ground, on his knees.
The yellow eyes, he hadn't had them before in the courtyard?
The smile the man gave him was horrible; like some Oni from the fairy-tales. Black flesh surged across the man's pale skin like time-lapsed shadows over the course of a day.
"Fuck… you…"
"Oh, language. How old are you? Eight or so? And Naruto is it? Tsk. Tsk. I thought that old bastard would've taught you better. Even in my day, Samurai were always a disappointment. Completely overrated in my opinion."
Anger surged, transforming. Naruto's mind threatened to shut down and it felt like he was looking down at himself.
Mifune…
"What have you done with my grandpa?"
Naruto barely recognized his own voice.
It was guttural, older, psychopathic.
"Pity again, the old man was really something, but alas you have something that belongs to me. Killing you was the nicest way, but this is me improvising now. I'm just taking it back. Nothing personal."
The man beckoned to someone behind him. A pale man, tall, almost as tall as the Man in Red, glided forward like a snake in high grass. Long, black hair fell to his shoulders and he had yellow eyes too only these weren't like lamps in the night, no, they were sickly like bile or venom. The snake-man had a longsword in one hand, beautifully crafted. It flashed, tilting into the harsh overhead lighting of the massive cavern they all stood inside.
Behind them was a whole cadre of men and women dressed like his family's butcher had been. Mist shinobi.
"Take him."
The blade flashed again, this time at Naruto's face. Blade scraped blade, sparks flying with bits of Naruto's wakizashi flying off like wood chips. The snake-man thrust his free hand, a claw-like thing, each finger covered in tiny blue flame, straight into Naruto's stomach.
"Gogyo Fuin!"
Everything went dark. The palace of death, metaphorical swords littering the ground of his mindscape, was shuttered up and went dark.
I'm so sorry grandpa….
I failed.
Rain fell outside as Naruto watched through the windows of their small kitchen in the same house he'd just left.
But he wasn't confused at all.
This seemed totally, weirdly normal, or so his brain made him think.
The house is inside a mountain… how is there rain?
Mifune, very much alive and well, was sitting across from him, dressed in his usual tattered maroon robe, at the little table in a nook they shared breakfast at for as long as Naruto could remember. Mifune had his strange box of sand and two strange metallic cups nestled in tiny sand dunes sitting on the table between them.
Chava, Mifune's favorite drink to start his morning with, had grown on Naruto and now he couldn't have a good day without it. Naruto had zero ideas how to make it, but he watched, as he always did, as his grandfather carefully made the drink using the usual process.
Their cups were heated in the sand, he'd, unfortunately, found out as a young child, was so hot it was more akin to a forge than anything else. Mifune didn't so much as look at Naruto while he focused on pouring the ultra-filtered Chava grounds into the cups, followed by a generous dosage of the spice he paid a lot of money to import from the Land of Tea, then a generous helping of a sweet white powder, and then the water he had Furu fetch from the snowbanks outside Sekiro. A process that involved a lot of bitching on the part of Furu.
After that, it took about ten minutes for the rest of the process; a gradual stirring and gentle gliding movement of the cups through the sand, the grains boiled up along the sides of the ibrik, the fancy name for the cup that had taken Naruto an absurd amount of time to pronounce in his young mouth.
Swirled.
Swirled.
Gently turned with the expertise of long years, the cups churned out a smell that was heaven; a chocolatey bitterness. Mifune smiled at his grandson, finally, a quick lift of his lips, the rain a counterpoint to the steam and boiling of the water in the background and it all seemed so normal.
This was the only quiet time Naruto longed for. Normally, he hated being still-his tutors reminded him of that. Furu. Taza. His heart ached as his mind flashed to those two, dead and dismembered.
How could this peaceful scene be when scenes like that existed in the world?
"Naruto. Your Chava. Drink before it cools."
Naruto sipped. A sweetness burst on his tongue like the first juicy bite of the finest of apples, chocolate mixed with a bitterness that was uniquely chava. They'd had chats like this every weekend when Naruto was off of school and didn't have practice with Taza, Yojimbra, or Furu. That was almost never, so he cherished these things. Matters of state never came up during these times.
Mifune had promised.
"You knew, didn't you grandpa?"
The man just looked sad and said nothing. The long-famed strategist and master of Go couldn't have not known what he was inviting into his home. Right? But what fuckin' purpose could there have been in getting all of your people killed?
To what end?
"Naruto, you need to wake up."
The blonde boy knew in his heart that his grandpa was likely dead. Nobody would've been able to do the things the Man in Red did with his grandpa still alive. The man would've had to go through Mifune.
Naruto suspected he had, but hope was there still.
"Wake up? I'm dead aren't I?"
"We're all dead Naruto. Life is what you do. You must act, just like we've all tried to teach you. What you do in life is what defines you."
Naruto shook his head angrily, the whiskers on his face quivering.
"What's the point?"
Mifune's soft brown eyes hardened in unwelcome surprise. He only did that when he was disappointed in something Naruto said.
"Hope, child. It is always left at the bottom when all else is gone. Like the choicest Chava grounds at the bottom of your cup. Bitter yes, but you must taste it to get the fullest expression. Lose that and you might as well never have existed."
"Well…"
"This isn't real. You know that. You know I'm not here. You're in pain and your mind has shut down on you, keeping you safe. But this isn't real."
Before he knew it, Naruto had smacked Mifune's cup across the room, the delicious brown liquid arcing through the air. Droplets glittered in the fitful light streaming through the rain outside.
"What is the point? I'm not strong enough, even with that strange… red stuff. The voice. The power. It's not enough. I'm not a shinobi-not even a samurai, not a warrior. I haven't even able to beat Roran let alone Taza, or that ANBU."
Mifune simply kept staring and Naruto felt his heart constrict.
"What was that anyway? That power?"
His thoughts felt like they were being pulled apart like cotton candy floss. Scattering. The voice, what the hell was that? The Fuin, hidden on his body the whole time… what was that? So many threads were converging leaving him feeling like an idiot for not noticing, or perhaps he didn't want to? Locked in his complacency about Fuin-crafting and his easy life of fantasy about sword-fighting as a shinobi when he couldn't even master Iaijutsu and if he was being truly honest, his difficulty was because it was hard and he wasn't very good. Fuinjutsu was nice because he had no peer, even Ouran, though he didn't admit it, couldn't decipher glyphs as fast as Naruto could. He'd taken the easiest route in his life, ignoring the signs, ignoring the trouble, the worried looks from Mifune, the veiled comments, the training that he'd shirked as soon as he could, the pranks he'd played to get out of learning history, or tactics, or politics.
All of it was preparation and he'd treated it like a game.
The thoughts rushed through him and panic rose like a phoenix from the ashes of the dream.
What an idiot he'd been.
His life cracked and fell apart in his mind and it felt like he'd woken up from a long sleep, groggy and confused. A pawn in a large web whose consequences he'd been shielded from his whole life, but anger was there too-this man he'd loved hadn't told him why any of what they'd done was necessary. He'd simply pointed and said, 'go.' The large web he'd found himself caught in had arrived in the form of a man who knew something about him, something he'd carried. Something dangerous and powerful.
Mifune stared at him; hard.
Anger started like the smallest embers in a forge. But the truth fanned it ablaze. The Hokage knew something. Mifune knew something. The Man in Red… he knew something.
Taza and Furu were dead and probably his friends Shimizu and Roran, who treated him like any other kid and not the sad orphan ward of the Shogun like everyone else, dead; dead because of secrets. Everyone knew things that he didn't… and those things killed the people he loved.
"Naruto. Iron is brittle and breaks under pressure. A sword built using flexible material slices deeper. Do not be Iron. Bend. But do not break. Stand firm. Let honor be your guide. Wake up and run."
Naruto had to laugh at that.
Honor? Bend? Run?
Naruto snarled, feeling his whiskers on his face more than he ever had before and the canines poking into his chin.
"You bent, old man. You bent and stayed neutral to accommodate those people and they snuck into our houses and murdered us!"
Mifune was the reason he was where he was… had he just told him anything about his past, anything at all; he might've taken the training seriously, wouldn't have shirked so many important lessons.
Why had he waited? Why?
There was a secret here, something nobody was telling him.
Something more than just being an Uzumaki.
Kami as his witness, he'd get answers. He might just be a kid… but he knew how to use his sword. The Man in Red proved that power was only as good as how you used it.
Naruto stood up from his chair and walked to the kitchen door, watching the rain splatter on the windows and saw the darkness waiting for him beyond.
Mifune stood as well, his mustache quivering, tears in his eyes.
He wasn't real. None of this was. That was confusing.
Two massive red eyes and what looked like nine-waving tails waited for him out in the rain-soaked darkness, peering at him through the window.
He opened the door and stepped out. The beast smiled at him, smiled at the hateful rage he felt in his heart, no doubt. Naruto swore, then and there, that the Seifuku-sha would die by his hand and no other. The Beast seemed to approve with a fang-filled mouth; fangs the size of door frames. He willed himself to wake...
...and he awoke to darkness.
Voices.
His senses came back to him; air flowing around his body, pain in his shoulder, his abdomen pressed into something hard, a strange sense of vertigo and nausea bubbling up in his throat. Water trickled nearby in a staccato bwoop, bwoop, bwoop.
Naruto took stock of his surroundings, waking up, and found that he was in motion, his body thrown over the shoulder of someone as they moved deeper into what had to be a tunnel. The number of times Naruto had delved with friends into the tunnels were countless; it was the dampness of the air that gave it away.
Further down from the main thoroughfare was the agri-smiths main hub of activity; those scientist-farmers that used Fuin-systems to power massive greenhouses and lakes that held fresh-water salmon farms amongst other things. The whole system had been amazing to watch when he would tag along with Mifune on inspections.
Afterward, he and his friends had snuck onto the work platforms that crisscrossed the stone-walled lakes, set with artificial lights glaring above them, and tossed larger and larger stones in to watch them make ever-larger splashes. That same harsh lighting was stabbing into his closed eyes and the gentle hum of large generators could be felt-and heard-through the walls.
They were taking him deep underground.
Why?
Voices smooth and low carried to him; the acoustics, he'd found, were strange in certain places.
"My Lord Seifuku-sha, I… know that you are…married to this plan; however, releasing the beast will make it almost impossible to Seal again so soon-"
The voices cut off.
"He's awake."
A hand grabbed his hair in a rough grip.
Naruto struggled to open his eyes quickly enough to see something, anything.
A heavy weight impacted his head, pain blossoming before unconsciousness took him and it was much longer to wake up the next time. He was, instead of bobbing on someone's shoulder, lying sideways on the rough, cold stone.
Naruto slit his eyes, trying not to reflect the light on his corneas, desperately trying to regulate his breathing so as not to alert anyone that he was awake. How the man had found he was awake so quickly, Naruto didn't know, but he'd seen stranger things. Best to be cautious.
Dark figures ringed the room all dressed like the man who had attacked Naruto in his house; they were masked ANBU bearing those Mist colors.
Naruto lay sideways in the center of a massive fuin-diagram.
Release.
Containment.
Power.
Entomb.
Those symbologies repeated in endless loops, strengthening and warding itself from dangerous feedback. Though still hazy with pain, Naruto could tell just from a single glance that they were attempting to unseal something powerful and reseal it again in a different vessel. Or something like that. What the hell could they possibly want with him?
But those eyes, waiting for him in the darkness of dream exposed the lie in his head. He did know what they wanted, the secret that Mifune had been keeping, the reason he came from Konoha to Iron. It all made perfect sense when he thought back. Hindsight, yes. But Naruto still felt beyond stupid. He'd had all the puzzle pieces and spent no time fitting them together because it was too hard and too painful and unearthed just as many questions as it answered.
They wanted a bijuu.
Not just any bijuu, the greatest of them all: the Nine-tailed Fox.
Naruto could easily guess that he'd been some sacrificial lamb that Konoha had sealed the beast into instead of defeating it like they'd claimed in the history newscast. Then, no doubt the Hokage had shuttled him to Iron and sequestered him away. He was probably some no-importance orphan brat, disposable.
A small voice whispered that that couldn't be true; Mifune loved us.
But did he?
He trained us, yes. Like a weapon of sorts, though Naruto wasn't very good. Kept us in the dark about everything. Anger boiled, pacing like a caged animal. Nowhere to go. Mifune was likely dead and he was raging at someone who cared about him, just not enough to tell him the truth. His rage sputtered and died when he thought about his situation.
What use was rage when death was so near?
But that savage voice, not the multi-throated demon, but the one in him that forced him to seek out Tzyki when he bullied his friend, the voice that made him stand up when Taza knocked him down over and over again, the one that smacked the cup out of dream-Mifune's hands when he spoke bullshit, the voice that refused to give that time he was stuck out in the cold and crawled for forty minutes back to safety in the lait, that voice screamed a roar of outrage in an endless loop in his head, it wouldn't let him stop here.
He would have died without that voice, the one that pushed and pushed, never relenting, unbroken by every bad experience-and he'd had many-but never backed down. It made him believe he wouldn't die here either.
Just think, Naruto.
Yeah, not your strong suit. But hope is the bitterest dregs and you must swallow it, on that much, Mifune had been right.
The red power in his body swirled around his tenketsu, mirroring his feelings of anger. Pacing. Waiting. But the circle of warding created by the Red Man's symbologies prevented any chakra from escaping-or a certain amount? It was hard to say. Could he overload it during each stage? His fuinjutsu had to be specifically tailored in order to accomplish exactly what was asked of it. That was what made fuinjutsu impossible to use as a battlefield weapon; preparation and its exacting nature; those were anathema to active battle where variables are ever-shifting.
But Seifuku-sha and his minions, they'd prepared ahead, and his curious glance revealed nothing of use. There had to be something, though. Consider this from all sides as Taza had always wanted you to-the way Mifune did. Desperation chased that thought and refused to go down that logical path. If the fuin-crafter got this one hundred percent right, there would be no way to break it from the inside. All he needed was just one slip-up.
Naruto, however, was an Uzumaki.
He could see fuin like no one else. If there was a mistake, he would find it, take it, exploit it… and then...nothing really. That was as far as his brain would let him go, for now.
But it was enough.
He had a plan.
Keeping his eyes as closed as he could while still being able to see, he tried to scope out the brightly lit room as best he could, lying on his side as he was. Those same ANBU figures were still ringing the room, but there was a low table with various implements, scrivening tools for fuinjutsu, and a young man with large dark eyes and dirty brown hair sitting in a seat next to the table, as still as a statue. Those dark orbs were freaky large. The boy had to have been twice Naruto's age, or more. He really couldn't tell as he was dressed the same as the ANBU around the room, but with greens and browns instead of the blue of the Mist uniform.
The hum of the generators still echoed through the walls, that was a good sign. Perhaps they hadn't killed Mifune after all and he was still out there organizing a resistance?
The smoke from earlier was bad, but maybe they were fixing it?
This wasn't a completely lost situation after all?
He needed to find a way out, preferably alive.
Naruto sat up, assessment of the lines of symbologies and their purposes. They couldn't break the fuin-lines now, not that it was visibly flooded with light. Naruto couldn't leave either until he was done with whatever his ridiculous plan ended up being. But he was safe, showing that he was awake. They couldn't get him and he couldn't get out until they were done or something else happened.
That gave him the opportunity to examine their work.
The snake-man, though, was right in front of him, feet at the edge of the fuin-lines.
"Ah, the boy awakens. Brave and stupid of him to be so bold with his attitude."
Naruto ignored him and his eyes swept the intricate symbologies, like a nineteen-pointed star inside a nineteen-pointed star, the inner sanctum of the star inside a star was worked with countless fuin. Bizarrely complicated. Naruto's brows furrowed. Most of this was excessive and unnecessary and actually perfectly sculpted except…
There was something nagging him about the lines. Something very specific. The lines were inscribed onto a raised metallic platform. Perhaps they created it for this specific purpose and brought it with them? Or they… Naruto trailed off. Not important. At least, not more important than focusing on getting out.
Naruto looked up from his inspections and the snake-man was still eyeing him with something close to amusement. The way a snake watches a mouse.
"Struggling makes this all the sweeter, dearest."
"Shut up."
"Oh, dear. We've got ourselves a fighter with that comment. Already at shut-up straight out of the gate? My, my."
Naruto glowered. What a real asshole this guy is. Kinda weird too.
"Where's your boss, huh Snake-ladyman? The big guy. I wanna talk to him."
There was a snort somewhere in the room, but if it affected the snake ladyman at all, Naruto couldn't tell.
"Fuu, fuu. The boy has a bite after all. Tell me," the thing crouched, his face inches from the line of fuin. "Did that bite help your grandfather when I cracked his bones and sucked the marrow from him? While I watched the life drain from his eyes? Did it help your precious Taza and Furu when I chopped them like little pieces of meat for a delightful meal?"
No way grandpa died to this freak! Taza, Furu… no.
Fuck this guy!
Snakeladyman made a pouting expression like he was sad.
"No? I expected not."
Naruto slammed his fist into the barrier and ignored the flash of agony and bone-deep pain that came with it. Naruto hadn't even realized he was snarling.
Red power poured off of him in waves. The man's cackling laughter was high-pitched and hypnotic in its insanity.
"Lord Orochimaru, it is time. The Conqueror arrives. Our forces are meeting unexpected resistance, so we must be swift."
An indistinguishable ANBU appeared in a swirl of mist next to the man they called Orochimaru, dressed more like one of those women from the red-light districts than a shinobi. From behind them both, at the mouth of a tunnel entrance Naruto hadn't noticed in his distraction, came the bulky presence of the man responsible for the complete disaster his life had become. The man was utterly silent, even the chains on his body were quiet, the rattling of them absent of sound like watching from behind a sound-proof barrier.
Seifuku-sha's voice seemed a duology of voices, one high-pitched and insane, the other deep and commanding; it made his head hurt listening to it.
"Tenzo. Prepare yourself."
The boy that was more puppet than human, stood up suddenly and came to stand next to the snake-man named Orochimaru. There was a feeling of finality here, like the next actions would be Naruto's last and as much as he had a thousand angry questions to throw at the Seifuku-sha, survival took priority. That voice in his head urged him back to his task.
He tuned them out and threw himself into his task, analyzing the fuin.
Symbologies flashed in his head as he absorbed the ritual field and came to find a picture of what its intentions were inside his head. Naruto broke it down. He knew, for instance, that the beginning was an unsealing, then a containment, then resealing. Then entrapment, or entombment. A much more permanent word symbol for what they intended.
Naruto thought faster than he ever had. Chakra had begun flowing into the circle, hardening it, a blue glow manifested throwing dark shadows across the figures ringing the room. This was a nightmare beyond anything he could imagine.
A growl, not anything that came from him, echoed in his head.
LET ME TEAR THEM.
SUCK THE LIFE FROM THEIR BODIES.
Even listening to the voice seemed to put him on the edge of insanity from the sheer power behind it; barely veiled.
Wait…
But no, that was suicide. Wasn't it?
If the ritual had specific purposes tied to the overall structure, it had to flow according to its design. That meant that if he did things in a way contrary to how it was structured, he would effectively weaken the barrier. He had one shot at overloading the first part, the breaking of his sealing glyph located on his chest. There was a patience to this ritual that was implied and written all over the nineteen-pointed star. Methodical. Breaking that pattern would, hopefully, overload the expected ramp-up method of the seal by…
Naruto's mind shied away from the implication.
He'd need to break his own seal and hope he survived what came after. The power needed to be swift and immense to overload each part of the containment and entombment symbols.
So, certain death at the end and…
Unleash the greatest of the bijuu and hope to Kami he survived the aftermath.
Hope was the bitterest of dregs in his heart, as his grandfather had said.
But how would he unseal himself before the ritual could do it?
Naruto knew he didn't have long to think, he felt the first tendrils of foreign chakra latch on to his tenketsu, sliding through his body like puppet-strings seeking all three-hundred and sixty chakra points.
I need to go deep.
Deeper than he'd ever ventured in Taza's meditations. Mifune had warned him about that. That there was an edge. Naruto suspected the Beast lie beyond the edge.
So delve deep he would.
Naruto closed his eyes and dove.