On to chapter two! I figured I would give an oft-maligned, one-and-done character some of the spotlight. Come on, the characterization of villains is practically my trademark after the way Within the Straws I Grasp went. You know I had to do it to 'em.
Review responses:
1. thor94 & Just-Another-Reader-1: I PM'd both of you, but I figured I'd answer publicly as well to clear up any misconceptions that non-reviewers had. Kurama is dead, gone, disappeared into the wasteland of yesteryear. Naruto is himself, just...not the Naruto that canon knew.
2. BeniKaze: I actually went through three 4K+ drafts before I finally got down what I wanted the first chapter to have. I wanted to give things away, wanted to keep them hidden, wanted knowledge about the future juxtaposed against the past...the whole nine yards. Finally made it work to my liking. Glad you enjoyed it!
3. MetalRasenganBijuuLord: We've become ride-or-die now, huh? Fine by me, brother. This hopefully won't get nearly as convoluted towards its end as but I'm glad you're along for the ride.
4. OneLunchMan: One wreck right after another, and you can't look away, can you? Glad to know you're still alive out there, buddy. I swear, I'll get promoted to railroad manager one of these days.
Let's get this trainwreck moving.
"Naruto, you're not going to get anywhere if you don't pay attention in class." Mizuki, a silver-haired Chunin who taught at the academy, said. The blond boy sitting at a desk in front of him looked up, annoyance and mild disrespect evident in the slant of his eyes as he watched his teacher.
"Don't wanna learn outta books. Can't hardly read 'em anyways." Naruto said, speaking with the slow drawl he'd picked up in the slums. "I wanna learn jutsu, an' how to fight. It's been three years since I started classes, an' all I've learned is stuff that just don't matter. Plus, I'm the oldest in my class, an' it's almost no fun sluggin' the tar outta those little kids."
"I swear, if you don't drop that god-awful accent, I'll boot you off the Hokage Monument myself." Mizuki threatened jokingly.
Naruto raised an eyebrow at those words. He would remember that. Some revenge, a good old-fashioned prank or two, would be in order down the road. He'd taken great efforts to conceal his origins and status as a street urchin, though nothing could be done about the small cuts and holes that continued to appear in the clothing he'd stolen. Eventually, he'd be found out, but not yet. He doubted that his physical condition had gone entirely unnoticed, given that the adult shinobi who taught his classes were...
...well, they were adults, and shinobi. Naruto was by no means a genius, owed in part to his lack of an educated upbringing, but he knew there was only so much that he could pull over on them.
"Yeah, fine. Really, though, can you cut me some slack, Teach? You've seen me spar! I'm the best in the class at throwing kunai and shuriken!"
"You sure are!" Mizuki complimented his student. "But you're also still just a kid in the academy. You're in the third-year class, and we don't start teaching jutsu until the fifth-year class, because not everybody develops the control over their chakra necessary to use Ninjutsu at an early age."
There was no way Naruto had the knowledge, or access thereof, to know that was a lie. All the same, though, something had changed in the air; Naruto's face rankled in momentary disgust, his nostrils taking in the scent of wet peanut butter, and he knew Mizuki was lying. On top of that, he was two years older than his class, and that went in accordance to Mizuki's own logic.
"Hey, Teach. Let's make a deal."
A chill ran up Mizuki's spine, the temperature in the room dropping fifteen degrees as Naruto's blood-red eyes tried their hardest to pierce their way into his soul. Every instinct in the Chunin's body was screaming at him to deny the boy, to tell him no, to refuse him...and yet, the words that fell out of his mouth told a different story.
"What do you mean?" He asked.
"If I pass my tests for my midterms and my finals, you have to teach me a jutsu for each one I do well on. You give me an incentive, and I'll make your teaching record look better."
He held out his hand, and Mizuki hesitated before reaching out and shaking it. Amid the sudden chill of the room, Naruto practically seemed like a furnace, his skin nearly burning Mizuki's hand. As he let go, he looked to his skin, and a faint, "IX," was marked on the skin between his middle and ring fingers. Blood dripped down from Naruto's palm, though he showed no concern.
"You really need to work on that one-track mind, Naruto...but if you want to play ball, then Mizuki-sensei can play ball. You've got a deal."
The warmth returned to the world in what seemed like a millisecond, as Naruto's lips parted to reveal his teeth with laughter. Mizuki didn't know it at the time, but the sight of Naruto's smile in that moment would haunt his dreams until the day that he died.
"Awesome! Thanks, Teach! I'll remember this, and totally won't prank you now! Not on purpose!"
The boy's grateful exclamations, and the way he perked up, almost managed to push Mizuki's concerns to the back of his mind. All the same, he couldn't escape the sinking sensation that he'd made a mistake. Still...a deal was a deal, and with the physical prowess Naruto was showing, he'd make a good ninja. He'd have to mention it the next time his informant was in town. Something about the way he left the room on edge, every time he walked in, reminded him of the few times he'd seen Orochimaru in person.
After the famed White Snake had slaughtered the Uchiha clan's adults single-handedly, leaving only the handful of children as survivors, he'd vanished into the night and been labeled as a nukenin. No explanation had been given for the wanton violence, and there would be no closure for the orphans on whose shoulders the future rested. It had been a kiss of death to the village, especially after having lost the Hyuuga heiress to a Kumo kidnapping after peace talks had masked their intent. Mizuki had taught the lost girl's older cousin, and the event had clearly left its mark on him: Hyuuga Neji's driving force in life was the motivation to slaughter Kumo's ninja for their transgression.
That wasn't particularly uncommon over the last few years, though. While a ceasefire was technically in effect between the two villages, there would be no peace, and conventional processes were out the window. Normally, even if villages were on rocky terms with one another, squadrons passing by would leave the other be. Quietly, without the knowledge of the general populace, the Hokage had put out a kill-on-sight order for any and all Kumo-nin found in the field. Even Iwa, after the end of the Third Great War, had been given more courtesy. Still, it had made Orochimaru happy. Now, if shinobi from Kumogakure went missing, it went unquestioned as Konoha's doing. His laboratories, dotted across the landscape, were partially filled with soldiers from Kaminari no Kuni.
Still, he'd want to hear about this boy.
"Hey, Naruto. You're an orphan, right?" Mizuki asked.
"Yeah. Parents died in the Kyuubi attack, I guess? I was a newborn. Probably. Don't really know, never met them. Whole 'no last name,' and all."
Naruto wasn't much of a scholar, but something about the raw carnage of that night's story had sucked him in. The imagery of a gigantic demon lord striding across a battlefield, laying waste to civilization with nigh impunity, was attractive in a morbid sense. Then, of course, there was the fact that the Yondaime Hokage had actually been strong enough to kill a creature whose title had become synonymous with the phrase, "natural disaster." In the decade since, relative peace had fallen across the world on a geographic scale. Temperatures had been moderate, harvests had been bountiful, and there had been fewer monsoons than in years before. Mankind, on the other hand, had picked up the slack in regard to violence and death.
Covertly, of course.
"You know, there's a service we started offering because of that night. If someone going through the ninja academy is an orphan, we take a blood sample. Since we keep records of the blood samples of every single ninja who's ever served Konoha, we can compare them until we find at least one match. We almost always figure out both of them, but sometimes all we have is the mother. If they had anything for you to inherit, whether it was a house, or money, or techniques, then it would legally be yours."
"You'd do that?" Naruto asked, genuinely surprised. "Why?"
"You're not the only one who lost family that night. Almost everybody lost someone they loved. And we all lost the Yondaime Hokage...I wonder how much differently our lives would be today, if he'd lived? Consider it a gift, from one orphan to another. At least I got to know my parents, though. You've got nothing. Don't they say that knowledge is the greatest gift that can be given?"
Mizuki's smile didn't falter, a coy grin that would have spoken volumes to a more experienced ninja in the room. Of course, it was as legitimate procedure, but generally, it was done within the first month of the entry-level class. The results were kept secret until graduation, half of the time. If he sunk his claws in early, though...there was no telling how he could affect the boy's life. Nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, this trail would lead nowhere. And yet, Mizuki couldn't help feeling confident that he was on to something.
"We can even do it today, if you want. I can send a clone ahead with a message." The silver-haired Chunin said.
"Will it take long?" Naruto asked.
Quietly, Mizuki wondered to himself why an orphan would be pressed for time when he had no home to get back to, but he kept that thought to himself.
"It won't take long to draw the blood sample, maybe a couple minutes. They'll take two, one to search the men's records and one to search the women's records. The record-searching can take a few days, but I'll let you know when results come in!"
"Alright, let's do it."
As they walked out of the room together, the last to leave the class on a cool and cloudy day, the stone walls felt a little warmer as Naruto passed by them. Somewhere out there, an answer was waiting for the question he'd asked so many times: who were his parents?
The pair wandered through Konoha's streets, and Naruto realized offhandedly that Mizuki hadn't been joking about being an orphan raised by the streets. He weaved through the crowd, across alleys and intersections, as he moved towards his destination. It was a tactic to throw off pursuit, and a good way to familiarize himself with Konoha's metropolitan streets. In short order, they'd arrived at the doors of a building Naruto didn't recognize, and hadn't seen. Mizuki walked inside, turning after the door opened to reveal a somewhat shocked expression. Then, Naruto heard footsteps behind him, and he turned to see another Mizuki behind him.
"Naruto? When did you get ahead of me? I...how did you catch up to my clone? I thought I'd lost you for a second, and I got worried. If I wasn't able to sense your chakra, I'd have started panicking."
"I thought that was the real you. When did you switch with the clone?" Naruto asked.
"That's not...you know what? Let's just get inside. The faster we do this, the faster we can get the results." Mizuki said.
They walked up to the door, opening it and moving forward.
"Hey, Nikki, I'm here about the parentage bloodwork!" Mizuki called out, waiting for an answer.
Instead of getting a yell back, a tall woman strode out from another room to stare pointedly at him. Her hair was an electric blue, cut off at the middle of her neck with bangs that fell all the way to her eyebrows. Just below those were a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, and she looked as if she was attempting to magnify her disdain for Mizuki through them.
"Man, Teach, what'd you screw up to get her mad at you?" Naruto asked.
"I saved her life on a mission and I'm calling in a favor. People don't like it when you call in favors." Mizuki said confidently.
"That's not what happened." Nikki countered, her voice a deep velvet that Naruto felt like he could get lost in if he allowed himself to. "You ruined my plan, almost got us all killed, and then saved your own ass!"
"The eye of the beholder, dear."
"I'll show you something to behold, you weaselly, no-good, fourth-rate punk! Why, I oughtta-"
"Child! There is a child!" Mizuki said, pointing in Naruto's direction.
"No, no, keep going. I want to see where this leads." Naruto grinned, raising his eyebrows in quick succession.
"It leads to a very shallow grave, for me, if we don't get back on track!" Mizuki said in fear. It was lear that he was joking, but Naruto wasn't sure just how much of it was sarcasm.
"Relax, Mizuki. I won't do anything to you while we're still inside the village walls. Nothing that's not consensual, anyway." She winked at the Chunin. "Since this is part of my job, you can keep that favor...for now. The Hokage was also generous enough to personally fund us with better computers for analysis, after the council turned the department down. The search might be done in as little as fifteen minutes."
Mizuki raised an eye at that.
"Ready to get started?" Nikki pointed the question to the blond boy on Mizuki's right, not knowing his name.
"I'm Naruto. Yeah, I'm ready." Naruto walked forward. "Let's get this show on the road."
"Mizuki, do you mind waiting out here? Safety reasons. I trust you, but...procedure, you know?"
Mizuki nodded, taking a seat at a nearby couch and picking up the first magazine in reach.
Kunoichi Weekly. Nope.
CFL Insiders. Better. The Screaming Eagles of Kyouzu, further out in Hi no Kuni, were set to play the Stone Patriots from Tsuchi no Kuni in the Super Bowl in a week and a half. It was the culmination of the Continental Football League's world, and most people were a little turned away from the game because both teams were known for obnoxious fans. This magazine said that the Stone Patriots were supposed to win by a double-digit lead, but Mizuki had some doubt about that.
"Holy shit, that's a big needle." He heard Naruto say from the other room.
This magazine had everything. Stat spreads, information tidbits...this was a rematch of the championship game thirteen years ago, when the Stone Patriots had denied the Screaming Eagles a win. They were out for revenge now, no doubt about it; if it wasn't a bloodbath, then there was no way the game wasn't rigged.
"You know what, if they're gonna malign the Eagles this much, I'll go the opposite direction." He said out loud, to himself. "McCloud and Gram will both pull a pick-six, Cahks will get a strip-sack. Eagles by a landslide, forty-three to nine."
It absolutely wasn't going to happen, not like that, but it was fun to be a wishful thinker. Still, he wanted to believe. Bring the trophy back to a town in Hi no Kuni for the first time in a while. Besides, everybody liked a good underdog story, right? And the Screaming Eagles, apparently, fed off of the disrespect they continued to be given.
"Hey, Teach, we're ready to..." Naruto trailed off, having re-entered the room.
"Men and their sports. The Eagles are his team, I guess? We can watch the search go ourselves." Nikki said. "I put it in the machine back there, so now we're going to wait for it here. I've set it to only search though the names of people killed during the Kyuubi attack."
ANALYZING D.N.A.
H: BLONDE, RED RECESSIVE
E: BLUE
SP: LIGHT
POSSIBLE FATHERS: YAMANAKA, HARUNO, HYUUGA, INUZUKA, NAMIKAZE, AKIMICHI, JIE
POSSIBLE MOTHERS: YAMANAKA, UCHIHA, INUZUKA, ABURAME, AKIMICHI, NARA, UZUMAKI, SARUTOBI
SEARCH MANUALLY? Y/N
_
"No way." Nikki said. "No fucking way."
She looked at Naruto, and then looked out to the Hokage Monument. Back to Naruto. Back to the monument. In brackets, she typed to manually search for the combination of a Namikaze father and an Uzumaki mother. On-screen, images of the Yondaime Hokage and his wife were pulled up. On the bottom of the screen, a small red bar noted the process of the analysis. If it went quickly, then it meant that there was no match.
The bar was barely moving as it went across the screen, and the blue-haired scientist watched in horrified fascination. After five minutes, it hit the fifty percent mark: the sign that there was at least one parental match. Slowly, and then with a quick sort of mechanical certainty, the bar moved to a complete hundred percent. Twin check marks in the boxes below the couple's pictures.
"MIZUKI!" Nikki yelled. "GET THE HOKAGE, NOW!"
Mizuki was shocked into action, the magazine falling from his hands as he bolted faster than either of the room's other occupants could watch. Sooner than Nikki would have thought possible, since she knew just how far the Hokage Tower was from her department's office, Mizuki had returned with the Hokage in tow.
"I, ah...what seems to be the matter, Nikki?" Hiruzen Sarutobi was by no means a tall man, hunched over with his cane in hand, but he was still the Hokage.
"We'd have needed to call for you regardless, because we just got through with a parentage test for Naruto here, but...you're not going to believe this."
"He's...oh, gods." Mizuki said as he and the Hokage looked at the screen. "Are you sure it didn't screw up?"
"These computers are practically brand new. They don't make mistakes. Those names have never popped up on the screen, no matter how much testing we did. Naruto?"
"Yes?"
"You're the son of the Yondaime Hokage."
Naruto drew his head back, eyes widening in shock.
"I'm WHAT?"
A brotherhood was created in that room, of four people who were all bound together by their shock and disbelief at the revelation of Naruto's parentage.
