This is my first story, so plz tell me where I am going wrong!
Also I disclaim this to the Naruto author and the author of the book which I am borrowing the storyline from!
Happy Reading!
The Greatest Swordsman
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Prologue: The Past
Swing, swing…
A small metal weightswung around left to right endlessly in midair. The surprising thing was: there wasn't anything holding it up! But, if you looked closely there was a thin, transparent string connecting the metal to a person's arm. Also, the weight wasn't just any ordinary looking thing: it looked a lot like a square handle of a small dagger with intricate designs on it. The person holding the string was a handsome boy!
However! He was too tall to be called a boy and his face too young to be a man. Maybe around 17 or 18...?
On both his arms, there was a black metal bangle and on his ankles there were two similar looking bracelets, too. And his eyes were concentrated on a pine tree that was several meters away from him.
Suddenly, his shoulders rose, then fell sharply. With his movement, the swinging weight moved directly towards the one pine tree that grew separately from the other groves with unimaginable speed!
On one of the branches of the pine tree, there was one lone pine cone hanging desperately onto it. However, the weight didn't collide with the pine cone and continued on slightly beside it. It wasn't surprising – after all, the tiny pine cone was several meters away from the teen! It would've been more amazing if it had hit! At that moment, the teen's finger twitched and suddenly the weight swerved around and circled around the cone once. It was enough for the string to snap the thin twig that connected the cone with the tree and the small pine cone started to make its way to the ground.
Yet, the teen wasn't finished with it. With the smallest twitch of his thumb, the weight's – which was actually a dagger – sheath was flung off to show the beautifully made, silver blade of the dagger. As soon as the thumb of the teen curved, the dagger drew a semi-circle in the air and headed directly towards the pine cone. The pine cone was pierced through the middle in a flash of metal and landed gently on the ground, with the dagger still penetrating it.
"Whew... I finally did it!" Smirk
A small smile appeared on the teen's face and happily laughter came easily to him as he reveled in his success. However, the happiness didn't last long as a snide voice broke through his joy.
"Heh! You still have a long way to go! I can't believe that doing just one Hishou Raikou no Tantou(Flying Lightening Blade) can make you that happy."
With a small twitch of his fingers, the dagger slid out of the pine cone and made its way back into the teen's hands! The teen turned and scowled at an old man, who was holding a sake bottle in one hand. The man, in return, glowered at the furious teenager, whose face was slowly turning pink.
"You're being unreasonable, Sensei! Can't you congratulate and celebrate your student's first success like a normal person? You're too harsh on me!"
The teenager's cheeks puffed up, his face was clearly full of annoyance.
The older man's eyebrows shot up, his eyes narrowed in displeasure as when he saw his student's face.
"You stupid-! Naruto! You just can't shut that damn mouth, can't you? If you're done with morning practice, you're supposed to go to work immediately! Go! Now! Time is gold! Gold! Didn't I tell you that!"
'Keh... treating me like a slave! Are you really a teacher, old man!'
His face puffed up even more, but he didn't dare speak those words out loud. Naruto glowered at his sensei angrily.
"Okay! Okay! I'm going, sheesh!"
Hishou Naruto spat out the words and ran down the mountain at an amazing speed.
"Heh heh! The little brat... already using the Hishou Raikou no Tantou like that... It should be impossible to do so at his level...! And... it was seven years since that time, wasn't it? My, time flies... heh, heh..."
The old man mumbled while watching the dot that was once his blonde student.
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Chapter 1: The First Impressions and the Start of a New Life!
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Clang! Clang! Clang!
Magnificent red-hot sparks flew everywhere.
As a hammer and the glowing, scorching-hot metal clashed, the beautiful scenery of the sparks flying continued. The shot-lasting beauty of the flying sparks...
The hand that was holding the hammer had a black bracelet wrapped around its wrist. The person was Hishou Naruto! The hammering skill of the teenager was full of experience and it was something natural for him!
We could see that Naruto had worked in this job for many years.
"Kuso! Why the hell is sensei like that! RGH!"
Whenever the scene in the morning replayed in his head, Naruto found himself growing angrier and angrier by the second.
'Who the hell does he think that brings in all the money for the food for him? Damn!' With this thought, the speed of the hammering increased and Naruto was putting out all his anger on the innocent piece of metal.
The job I have right now is crafting swords. To make a sword, one needs a lot of experienced skill to forge the metal into perfection. I've been working as a swords smith for nearly 6 years! This was my job in the village that Sensei and I were living in, and the money coming from this place fed both of us together. Sensei's so old that every single strand of his hair is totally white! And so, earning money is my job and my mission for us to survive. Training as a swordsman was a smaller deal, something to do on my spare time.
As Sensei says, "Since we're human, we have to eat to train, am I right or not?" But I can't help but laugh!
It was already 7 years ago, when I met Sensei – and I was only the young age 10, too. At that time, I was the son of a normal sculptor, who used to make Buddha statues for a living. My mother had already died when I was five, and I still remember her as a woman whose beauty was enough to make princesses and even Goddesses jealous! And to this day, I believed that her beauty was the reason the Gods had taken her from me at an early age.
My father was a kind man and he always tried really hard for me. He taught me how to sculpt at a young age and at the age of 10 I was a pretty good sculptor myself. I was a smart boy for my age and at the age of three, I had memorized and understood a book of confusing, but yet interesting textbook that the older students in those special schools learnt from, at the age of five. At the age of seven, I finished every single subject that they would learn and would have to study for, for seven years. My father and I never moved from the village where mother died and I was born in. But then, the tragedy came.
The village where my father and I were living in had an unexpected, deadly plague that killed most of the villagers. My father was also part of the dead. And I was an orphan. I didn't have any other family to take care of me like the other lucky children did.
I dug my own father's grave and buried him there. I didn't care when the skin of my hands tore and my nails cracked from the furious digging. I didn't care when the blood seeped out and the earth scratched at the bare muscles of my hands. I didn't have any money for a tombstone, so I used the sculpting skills my father had passed down to me and brought out a large, healthy log from the backyard and made a statue of my father on top of his grave.
When I looked down at him, something seemed to be missing.
And I set down to work again, bringing out another similar log and created a statue of my mother. My father would be lonely lying in the ground alone... and mother's grave was right beside his anyways. When my mother's statue was done, I placed it beside my father's. Now it looked complete.
When I stood to leave, I found a long, white-haired man standing behind me. He wore strange clothing of various colors and had a small pack hanging over his shoulder. There were two red markings down his cheeks from his eyes and his dark eyes strayed over the newly-made grave, two statues then at me, especially my hands.
He pointed at the grave. "Did you make that grave?" he asked.
I answered truthfully, but yet reverently, "Hai(yes)." I was a good child who knew how to be courteous!
And then he pointed at the two wooden statues that were standing beside one another. "Did you make these as well?" he asked once more.
"Sayou(yes)," I answered once again. These two statues of my parents were one of the best I had ever made and I was a good sculptor, too.
The white-haired man frowned in a thinking face for a moment, and his hand slowly reached out towards me. "Will you come with me?" he questioned.
And so I asked, "If I follow you, what would I get?"
The man laughed at my polite tone and grinned roguishly. He said, "I will teach you the most powerful swordsmanship the world has ever created."
I frowned and requested in a civil way, "Show me?" He was a kind old man helping an orphan right now, but you can never know... he could be a pervert trying to take a child while showing that I had gone with him willingly. And they were one of the worst perverts ever alive too!
Also, I was a good-looking boy for my age – seeing that many of the villager females had crooned over me since I was eight. They would even leave their promising husbands to see me at least once a day.
The man's grin never disappeared as he raised the arm stretched towards me and towards the side where a long row of trees surrounded the delicate graves of my parents. My eyes widened as a dozen trees were suddenly sliced in half. They fell to the ground in several pieces and my jaw dropped to see that the cuts were clean. Not even my father could cut down a tree like that after all the years he spent sculpting. And this man had done it with just one movement of his arm!
I didn't really believe the words that this swordsmanship was the most powerful of the world, but I knew that he could at least teach me some skills on the subject. As a ten-year-old, I was curious in the Arts and I was an orphan who had no place to go after all. And so, I concluded that nothing bad could happen to me if I followed him.
After calculating the 'cons' and the 'pros' I answered, "Okay," and took the man's outstretched hand. This was the first meeting between the student and teacher and the start of this damned destiny. Knowing that my calculation was totally wrong and that I was a horrible mathematician didn't take long. I'm still regretting the decision I made 7 years ago.
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Sensei took me into the forest beside a village. The village was a pretty big one too. The mountain he brought me into was connected to a long row of mountains and it was tall and full of trees. It was like those stories in the books and storytellers would tell in the small tea shops my father would take me to. The teacher would take their students deep into the forest where there wasn't any human life (in this condition, only one student) and teach him/her special, secret techniques there. Also, in the stories, the students that gone through the special training would come out as the most powerful hero! And for some reason, I knew that this would happen. Sensei was a pretty easy person to read.
Soon, we came across a small wooden cabin with two rooms that were connected to a kitchen. Beside the cabin, there was a large stack of firewood, but strangely there wasn't the usual axe around the area where the wood was to be chopped.
This place was where Sensei was living. And the place where I had to live too...
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I was a bit disappointed to see that the training ground wasn't a large cave full of weapons, rows and rows of bookshelves full of scrolls and books, a table, several lamps, comfortable futons, etc, like any other storyteller had spoken of. But I didn't let that show. I was afraid that sensei would be disappointed in me! Ah...! I was such a kind-hearted, perfect child! Looking around the small, dirty cabin and then the rather grubby forest surrounding, I concluded that sensei wasn't much of an 'almighty, high-status swordsman'. However, with my ocean-wide indulgence, I shared with him, my compassion and empathy of his low-status living standards.
But Sensei betrayed me!
He betrayed my large-scale consideration towards him as well as my exquisite, pure, kind-hearted childhood mind! Sensei ripped up my glowing, pure blueprint of my future into little tiny microscopic pieces that I couldn't put back together!
And from that day on, my suffering (penance) had started!
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The first thing sensei taught me was... cooking rice.
I was warned not to wash the rice more than three times. If I do, then the nutritive value of the rice would drop, yadda, yadda, yadda... and then when measuring the amount of water to put in the rice, the water level had to be the exact level of the start of the wrist when placed on the rice. And another warning was to close the lid of the pot tightly. Also, placing a rock on the lid was a secret method that only he knew (but every single female population of the village I used to live in knew that). The reason of placing a rock on the lid was because the cabin was on the high mountaintop, which was different from the ground, and so if we made the rice the same way then the rice would taste horrible. Making the rice was pretty easy. But that was only the start of the torture.
The next thing sensei taught me was how to make side-dishes.
Sensei was an aging man who needed the various nutrients or else his body would die (or so he says)! He needed to eat meat to get protein and at times – more like all the time – he had to drink sake. I didn't want to eat pine-leaves all my life while training, so I gave in and learnt how to cook.
At first, I started with easy dishes that included frying veggies and/or meat, making something out of tofu, any type of soup, etc. When frying veggies, they had to be dunked in oil and quickly placed the pan. The reason of dunking the innocent veggies into the oil was to keep the veggies' wonderful scent and taste from disappearing quickly. "Cooking is the heart," sensei would bore into my head whenever it was time for breakfast, lunch or dinner.
I was grew suspicious of Sensei's teachings. Or it could just be active service...
But Sensei would always tell me that the Hishou Raikou no Tantou needed quite a bit of, no, a lot of manual adroitness and delicate and sensitive senses of the body. And cooking used a lot of hand skills as well as the usual skills and the senses all together. It was the best way to start the training by training my hand-skills and sharpening my senses, he'd say. Whenever I heard those words, I would snort and look away from his laughing smile.
Hmph! Keh! Snort!
I thought that his words were nothing but an excuse!
However, in that excuse, the name of the swordsmanship technique aroused my curiosity to learn and that was the only thing that helped me going from there.
With little accidents here and there, I learnt the basic ways of cooking edible food.
Cooking rice and making food didn't take that long for me. Right after perfecting the last side dish, I had turned towards sensei for a 'congratulations' or something like that, but all I got was another chore in the pile of others. From that day on, I was in charge of all the cooking. Of course, I tried to talk him into helping me with the cooking chore, but I got beaten up, so I didn't raise that subject again.
And on that same day, I learnt that fists are faster than words in a very, very painful way. Really, I couldn't rise from the ground without wincing till a week later. I also learnt that with fists, we can control our feelings and emotions – and this was a large influence on my character right now.
The very next thing that Sensei taught me after was how to chop wood.
If I was going to make food, I needed firewood, so he took me to the large, never-disappearing pile of wood by the cabin. On the right, there were several firewood that were chopped in half, while on the opposite side: there were fresh new ones that just came from the forest. I looked around with narrowed eyes and saw that the axe was still not there from the day I first came to the cabin.
"Sensei! Where's the axe? If I'm going to chop the wood, I need an axe, don't I?"
I gently requested him to explain to me why there wasn't an axe anywhere.
"You don't need it!"
Was his answer.
"So what am I supposed to chop the wood with? Should I just chop it down with my hand?"
From the stories I heard, sometimes the storyteller would show some of the actions and one of the few I saw was slamming your arm down to an enemy and – if you're lucky – snapping his backbone. But then, Hishou Raikou no Tantou needed hand-skills and delicate senses. I doubt slamming my hand down to a log until it broke in half worked as sharpening my senses...
But Sensei just replied that he would show me how.
In Sensei's words I knew I heard some annoyance.
'Hm...! He's yet to have any control over emotions! He needs more practice!'
I fell into another conclusion.
From the left side of the pile, Sensei brought out a thick, large log and placed it on the stump of the tree. Sensei pulled out a small dagger from his sleeve. It was a normal dagger that could be seen anywhere. The length of the blade was as short as a small child's hand and it could be bought from any black-smith shop! It was a cheap, little dagger.
And then, sensei stooped down towards the log and held the dagger delicately with the tips of his fingers. He moved his wrist only slightly and with a small tap – no the tap was just a sound that I thought I heard. He just moved his wrist slightly above the standing log and made a semi-circle motion as if cutting an invisible smaller log.
The next second, I couldn't believe my eyes.
The standing log had divided itself into two perfect halves! I was so shocked that I couldn't help but let my jaw fall loose against its hinges. This was the first time I had ever seen something like this.
Sensei looked at my shocked face – with my mouth wide open and my eyes round and wide – and smirked. "To do this, you don't even need the pure Hishou Raikou no Tantou! You can do this with pure skill! The secret is the speed and the essential thing is the flexible usage of the wrist," he said, his head and shoulders raised superiorly – I hated him at that moment. "Why don't you give it a try?"
I quickly brought another fresh log from the left side and placed it gently on the stump. I couldn't help but feel excited that I was going to do something that was at least a little in common to the Hishou Raikou no Tantou that Sensei promised to teach me. Taking the small dagger from him, I stooped down and held the dagger just like he did and moved my wrist in a semi-circle manner towards the log.
Tap!
The dagger I swung only gave the log a small tiny scratch and nothing more. I looked down at the small scratch and grew embarrassed when I saw the perfectly halved firewood not far behind. My face grew hotter when Sensei didn't say anything, but stoop down and stare at the tiny scratch as well.
"Move your elbow along with your wrist to draw a larger semi-circle," he ordered.
The second try... failed (of course).
Even with my elbow helping the movement, a slightly larger scratch appeared on the log, but nothing more. My face grew redder. I gave Sensei a small peek and winced inwardly when I saw an eyebrow twitching, as well as a smirk that I knew was laughing at me.
"This time, use your shoulder and swing as hard as you can!" he coughed out.
My third try wasn't any better than my first or second. But, this time I didn't see the log that I was supposed to chop. It didn't disappear in the wind as tiny powder pieces, but at my almighty swing (which wasn't much) of my third try, it had been knocked away a few feet with a very loud 'tap!'.
"You're lacking speed! You don't need strength for this, just skill."
Sensei explained to me why the log had just been knocked away, and he looked as if he wanted me to try again. But! I was only 10! There was no way that I could've done that successfully! And when helping my dad (before he died), I was so weak that even if I swung the heavy axe down, I couldn't even chop the log in half! Just got the axe stuck on the log... but how was I to do this with a tiny, cheap dagger!
Unless this dagger had some special God-like powers...!
But, since Sensei had done the impossible in front of me, I couldn't complain that this was hopeless! However, Sensei was a powerful swordsman, wasn't he?
And so, I concluded powerfully, that I was a mere beginner, so I had failed to do so!
Then, I turned to Sensei and said in the gentlest tone I could manage at the moment, "Sensei! I am yet a 10 year-old, fragile, handsome youth and a beginner! I can't possibly chop the firewood with this small dagger! Isn't there possibly another way to do this until I get the strength and skill to do what you, a powerful swordsman, have done?"
Sensei had another superiority attack and raised his face grandly towards the setting sun. 'GAH! I just wanna scratch that face with this dagger!' but I calmed myself down and continued smiling up at him, with a small endless twitch on my right cheek muscle. He looked thoughtful for a moment and turned to the storeroom of the cabin.
From the storeroom terrible sounds of things crashing loudly and sometimes something breaking continued to ring in my ears.
For some strange reason... I couldn't help but tense up as the sounds slowly ceased.
TBC...
Okay, about (weights) does anyone remember those scale thingies that we used in lower grade schools? Where we used to measure the weight of a certain object using these metal things...? What this object is, is a metal, rectangular, sorta square and circle mixed together 3-D object. And it is a dagger, just with a sheath on itjust then.
Well! This is it for now!
How'd you like it?
I know that I suck at humor... and I was wondering if there would be anyone out there with a lot of humorwho can help me edit my story of grammatical and spelling mistakes (which, I believe there is a lot of).
Plz, write to me through my e-mail and I'll really, really appriciate it if you did so!
Oh, and plz review!
I don't really mind if you criticize my story about where it is missing, but I will mind if you write anything related to the contents of: 'you suck!' or 'I #$$ hate your story!', etc, etc...
Thx!
-Tantou Fighter