Summary
Our blond wakes up in shackles and sleeps with a broken nose. Tomorrow though, they will do the necessary.
Boruto wakes up to a back-turned woman with shoulder-length pink, no, faded red hair facing a small campfire.
"Awake already, young Uzumaki?"
Something in her voice has the young blond relax a little under the starlight filtering through the partially broken roof. "Yes?"
The woman turns around, to reveal that she is only clothed in a pair of loose olive green pants and heavy red fabric draped over her shoulders. Her stomach shows the creases that come with age.
"It's a little chilly today child," she says with a friendly yet slow and purposeful blink, "Would you like me to help you closer to the fire?"
Our blond doesn't feel particularly cold thanks to the Otsustuki in his blood but decides to play along. He nods.
She rises to her full height, easily towering over our blond, and Log even, and easily bridal carries the bound teenager closer to the fire, before laying him down gently.
For his part, he pushes up against the wall so he's half-sitting. "I don't suppose you'd free me of these restraints if I asked ma'am?"
She shook her head, "I promised Neko I wouldn't."
Well, that was to be expected. She is one of Neko's people after all.
"Child, I serve only Uzushio." Then, after looking into his eyes for a moment, "You've been out for a few hours, would you like something to eat or drink?"
Well, she does sound genuine, but, she won't untie me, and there is some sort of seal work at play, can't channel chakra. That said, Eat? I don't know. Drink? Yes. "Some water would be nice ma'am."
She huffs as she turns to pull out an animal skin flask "Enough with the ma'am business child. My name is Vanasha, call me as such."
"Will do, miss Vanasha."
"Just Vanasha." She bites back, harsh steel in her voice. She then continues softly, "Vanasha is my given name child. I appreciate you considering etiquette but it is unnecessary."
She puts the flask to his lips, and he gently closes his eyes. The slightly warm and refreshing elixir flows into him. She makes a choking sound as her fingers quiver noticeably. The water spills all over him as the woman slumps into him and the flask goes tumbling. His eyes flash open. Oi! What the heck?
"Today's the day you meet your end tarnished scum!" venom drips from every word as a well-built man yanks Vanasha's body off the blond and two others heft him up.
Kuggh. That shit hur- His skull slams into the wall before falling back down again, blood dripping down his nose and lips as the next punch connects with his face
The assailant's vise-grip around his throat raises the blond's head, "Scum like you don't even deserve a fast painless death," comes the guy from one of the sides.
A chokehold immediately after the punches was too much, and the blond's vision blurs. Air! Need Ai- no, listen, if survive, info to track. Gasp. A deep life-giving grab of cold air fills the blond's lungs.
" . . . a pathetic sight." The man spits in his face.
"Oh yeah?" the blond gets out lowly with the little air in his lungs. This piece of shit, to talk with me bound up, I'll show him. "how 'bout you untie me and we'll see whose a pathe-"
Fuck. If my nose was not broken before, it is now. Need to get free. Now.
The man in front of him yanks his head up by his hair.
What? Monologue time? Also, as cool as that seems in the movies, that fucking hurts. He can feel traces of blood blossoming where his hair had been pulled free.
"And do you know just how hard it was to find you?"
And here I thought that monologue stupidity was only in the movies, "Hard enough that you had to go crawling and begging someone else," Boruto spat. The adrenaline was numbing the pain.
The grip on his right arm tightens tremendously. The leader's laugh booms through the stone room. "Yes, we had to beg and grovel at Eida's feet, bribe her with information even, but we know when to kneel, unlike you city brats."
He levels a smile that might have been intimidating if not for the two golden chains spearing all three assailants' throats. The blond is promptly dropped on his face eliciting a scream of agony. My nose, my fucking nose! This day just keeps going from bad to worse. He looks up to see the new attacker, he sees a cat mask.
"Backstab everyone you know?" He instantly regrets his sass.
"Trust me, I'm on your side," her distinct monotone replies. Sorry lady, little hard to believe that after everything. "The church of boro could find your location when even we couldn't, needed to find out how."
She presses something into the blond's hands and she scours the dead church members, "Give that to Log, he has to pay next ti-"
An explosion fires off less than a foot away. The blond can feel the heat on his skin, that should have hurt, in the way is Vanasha singlehandedly hefting an antler horn, the may horn branches probably retarding the explosion spread. Vanasha herself didn't seem particularly bothered.
Log dashes at Vanasha with the intent to kill, she intercepts his punch in a crook of her antler and twists his arm, locking it behind his back, pushing him to the ground, and immobilizing him with a foot on his bent knee crook. She puts her free hand on his shoulder and lets her chains entwine him locking him down and preventing his use of chakra.
"I shall have no one hunt or hurt an Uzumaki in my presence child." She waits for the young man to quit struggling just the thousands of other others before him had, "So, will you behave? Or should I keep you chained?"
Log's face is furrowed.
"Log . . . I think we can trust her." Well, the last time I ordered him around we got bushwacked into this, but, I couldn't have predicted that. It's still better than both of us hogtied.
Vanasha lets Log loose and he flies through hand signs only to be nocked into the floor by the second one, a leg against his neck "Log . . . child . . . I mean no harm. Please, hear me out first."
Neko is gone, and Vanasha is undead? Play along till I get answers.
Vanasha turns to blond and Log hacks for a bit. She pulls out the once explosive tag carrying kunai still embedded in her antler and uses it to cut the teen lose.
Wow, she can handle herself. Never seen Log shut down so easily, and to make it seem effortless to the point Log seems dumb . . . Damn. Boruto rubs his wrists. "So what did you want to say Vanasha?"
"Look at the note that Neko left you."
Boruto pulls out the scroll that had been pushed into his hand earlier and opens it up. A tiny slip falls out from within the roll.
He reads it out, "Log, The church of Boro managed to find out Boruto's location before I could, this was a matter of concern because it was not me, not the Gokage's network, not the black but the church that found the boy first. I needed to find out their source. I apologize for the inconvenience, I shall provide any information I find regarding the matter to you, for the boy."
Boruto passes the slip to Log, "Why do I get the feeling that 'I' doesn't refer to Neko."
"Because it doesn't," is his eloquent reply. No explanation provided.
"Well, children, let's get that broken nose dealt with first, your ribs should be fixed." Vanasha irreverently beacons to follow.
Boruto follows, Log unwilling to let the teenager out of his sight joins the procession to a nearby slow-flowing tributary.
"Sit child." Vanasha is already standing in knee-deep waters.
As soon as the blond complies, she puts one hand around his neck, bracing his head, and pinches the soft part just above the nostril. "Breathe through your mouth child."
"Yep, and, I have a name ya know?" the nasal sound doesn't suit the blond.
Log just observes.
Vanasha pulls her bracing hand and shapes a stream of water to flow across the blond's nose.
"Damn, that cold. Are you cooling the water?"
"What do you think child?"
"That you are? It is colder than the stream," Boruto replies withdrawing his fingertips from the stream.
"So it's obviously cooled then." Vanasha seems amused, just not in smirk-inducing self-satisfied amusement.
They simply stay that way for about ten minutes, silent and mostly unmoving.
"The bleeding should have stopped, the swelling is manageable. I'm going to splint your nose child, it'll impair your breathing a bit."
Each breath was a task that needed effort, and that's leaving aside the discomfort of having a piece of bone shoved up your nose and god knows what fitted on the outside. Impairment my ass.
The woman stands, "Yours is the mantle of guardian, but first, you must know what it entails."
Boruto stands up and piques an eyebrow. Vanasha walks into the heart of the ruins and Boruto follows. Log sighs and follows anyway, he seems to be fated to follow and look after his starry-eyed charge for the rest of their Uzushio-trip.
Vanasha leads them through the ruins, chilly breeze blowing strongly, forced through the broken chambers and pathways, frosting over flesh and freezing bone. The borderline naked old woman seems unbothered. The forced winds die down as the trio reaches the outskirts, and the cold of the night becomes more manageable.
Then they start climbing up the surprisingly bare northern mountains, right then left, right then left, gradually drifting eastward. The only sound to be heard was that of the blond's laborious breaths. The trail dips into a semicircular crater, filled with water, flowing in through a river and flowing out via water-fall. Log was simply too burnt-out, numbed from the procession and the blond was consumed with exertion because of his impaired breathing. So, they mindlessly walk behind Vansha, over the lake past the house in the middle to a stoneface rising almost vertically upward, just to the right of when the river fed the lake.
"And this is a part of our story . . ."
The woman's proclamation captures the boys' attention.
In fine relief is an exquisite carving of a slumped-over woman, vomiting. Her back has chains sprouting out and forming a dome around her. Next to her is another woman. Within the dome, a spray of water overhead and gulls flying through the spray. "Uzuki, the first matriarch, from back when we were shared peoples and not a clan. Over time her followers went from Uzuki's to Uzumaki's. She was the one to invent the adamantine sealing chains and the Shiki Fujin in pursuit of creating that which could seal anything. She succeeded, but it cost her life. Here she is, sealing time itself, freezing the spray and birds mid-flight. The strain was too much and left her vomiting blood. Her death was short and agonizing."
"That's a fun story."
Vanasha turns to face the blond before speaking, "True child, but she was true to herself. She had her cause and was willing to die for it. She always looked beyond just existing in comfort, beyond just living till tomorrow."
Log, curiosity piqued, decides to cut in, "You sound like you knew her."
"I did child, I did. I loved her and she used me, I loved her and she took care of me, I loved her and she satisfied me. She had no boobs to speak of. She was manipulative. She was a short-tempered firecracker, but, she loved, lived, and lead with fierce passion, always bringing out the best in those who followed her."
And that would make you inhumanly old.
Vanasha turns gazing at the next part of the engraving. This seems to be of a funeral procession, it ends in an image of a cabinet containing a single scroll with the woman beside Uzuki from earlier shutting it, as seen from inside the cabinet. That is a rather modern style of imagery, picked straight from the movies. "Knowing her does make me older than should be possible. She cut a deal with the Shinigami, mad woman, so that I may live forever until I pass down my shamanic duties." Vanasha sighs. "Her daughter instituted the 'bloody library' after her death, a repository of all the knowledge paid for in blood, it would later be expanded to include learning that can easily be used to spill much blood . . . Knowledge that dangerous requires a guardian."
"What about the rest of it?" The rest of the engraving is fuzzy and incomplete.
Vanasha chuckles softly, "An old lady like me needs something to pass time with, I can only read and go to the moves so frequently." Her momentary smile quickly dims. "During the fall of Uzushio, it is said that the former guardian of the library hid our accumulated knowledge a hundred fathoms deep, but tonight, Uzushio tells me that you have found it. She believes that you have earned the right to be guardian."
"Uzushio tells you?"
"The city lives child, someday you may commune with her the way I do." Vanasha has a grandmotherly look. "The question for today is whether you accept or not."
Boruto simply turns around and walks away silently.
Vanasha looks at Log, "Let us go to the house child, I'll cook us some dinner."
Half an hour later there is a knock on the door and Vanasha calls for the blond to enter. Man its warm in here, should have come earlier. Vanasha beckons for the blond to join her an Log around the hearth for some rabbit. Boruto graciously accepts.
A few bites later, "So, uhhh, Vanasha?"
"Yes, child."
"What does this entail, the whole guardian business? What happens if I don't accept? And why not just make someone like Neko guardian? I assume the guardian has to be Uzumaki, and she is."
"As to Neko, I do not know where the library is child, Uzushio does, but she has her secrets just like anyone else. Neko didn't find the library, you did. If you don't take up the mantle of guardian, nothing happens, things just continue the way they are." Log walks into the room and lays down bedding for himself and Boruto as Vanasha continues, "What does it entail? Keeping the library safe and deciding who gets access to it and who doesn't."
"So I'll essentially be tied down to Uzushio."
Boruto holds out his bowl and Vanasha serves him some more rabbit.
"Not necessarily child, you can carry the library with you. If you choose to take up the mantle, I should be able to draw up the storage seals you require."
"And can you teach me sealing?"
"No. I can give you the materials you need to learn yourself though."
"All right, I'm in."
"Eat well and rest soundly tonight child, tomorrow we do the necessary."
Boruto's choice is the right one because, apparently somewhere along the way, Uzumaki synapses were speeded up to keep up with the intricacies of seal work. To think that a whole bunch of babies were used as guinea pigs . . . You think twice as fast, and process twice as much information in the same period of time, but, as a flipside tend to have a lot of unnecessary wandering thoughts when not focussed. That would explain so much of the Uzushio fiasco.
Now I know the cause, I can work on harnessing it. Man, so darn much happened, those scrolls are so interesting and I can't really understand shit. He steps out into the sunny clearing for his daily hour-long fuinjutsu practice. And then Neko also dropped off Ji-san's kunai, that thing is a fucking maze and masterpiece.
Boruto freezes for a second, Ahhh! Focus on one thing at a time goddamnit Boruto!
End of Part 1.
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Long time since I picked up a work of original fiction. C by Anupama Raju is like nothing else I've ever read. 6 chapters in so far and I'm loving it.