Back again, a week later, it's time for another chapter! Who dem boiz? We dem boiz. Who's gonna win the Super Bowl tomorrow? Hopefully my Eagles up in Philly. Need that ring. Honestly, though, we all know the real winners are the cammercials...usually. Except for party monkey baby. That was horrendous. Enough of my rambling, though.
Review response time!
1. SlyUzumakiVii: Well, if you knew a couple's child was stillborn, the couple dies, and then ten years later suddenly they're not dead, and you've had literally no contact with them...I mean, I feel like that would come as a shock. Just a little bit. Right?
2. MetalRasenganBijuuLord: Well, Naruto's never been associated with law & order. Just depends on how early or late the gate breaks down.
Let's get this trainwreck moving.
"Naruto, do you really think it's wise to allow so many people to run in and out of your home?" Sarutobi Hiruzen asked. "Three, five, ten children at a time, always different ones. It feels impossible to keep track of. Why do you let them come and go as they please?"
The Sandaime Hokage sat in Naruto's kitchen, across from the blond at a wooden table. One such rush of children, not all of them younger than Naruto himself, had just left through the front door of the estate.
"I'm the Banchou. They answer to me, because I run their streets. Or, at least, they answer to me." Naruto said. "When they work in five-man crews, it takes a bit of extra effort, but the division of work allows for jobs to be executed more safely. They were all thrown out of orphanages, or left behind by their families. There's no one around who can provide the life they want, or need...so they do the next best thing, and through guidance, they manage."
"You're the Banchou? The one who's supposed to be responsible for any number of heists over the last three years?" Hiruzen was flabbergasted.
A child was the most sought-after petty criminal in Konoha? Even with three years of ninja training, and an impressive genetic pedigree, that just felt...incorrect. Naruto wasn't someone who told outright lies, though, as far as he knew. It was better just to accept the words at face value.
"Key words there are, 'supposed to be.' I haven't lifted a finger since last year. I kind of miss it."
"And what am I supposed to do with that knowledge, as Hokage?" Hiruzen asked.
"If you're going to do anything," Naruto countered, "then you should provide for those children so that they don't have to steal to survive. They don't have to be ninja, not everybody is cut out for that life, but they could be tradesmen. They could have skills that allow them to survive in the society we live in."
Hiruzen was a little shocked at that proclamation.
"Test them and see if they belong to clans, like I was tested. Honestly, they're so adept at working together and moving unseen, not becoming ninja might be a bigger waste of talent. And beyond all that...what did you come here to talk to me about, today? It's a Saturday."
"I know you enjoy days off from school, Naruto, but that's exactly why I had to come today. Away from eyes that might be prying." Hiruzen said gravely.
Immediately, Naruto's posture shifted at that tone of voice. He sat up straight, his hands bridged with one another on the table before him. Looking the old man dead in the eye, he forced the Hokage to consciously acknowledge his seriousness.
"Go on." He said. Hiruzen made a few hand seals, performing a jutsu Naruto didn't know, before continuing.
"Mizuki is a traitor to the village. He works for my former student, Orochimaru."
"The one who committed the Uchiha Massacre." Naruto said, memories of the day he'd rescued Ayame coming back to the surface of his mind.
"Yes." The Hokage confirmed. "Fittingly enough, he has a summoning contract with snakes. Mizuki was seen talking to one. Ordinarily, this would be grounds for a mental fitness check to continue to serve the village, but the snake talked back."
Naruto stared blankly.
"Animal clans with summoning contracts are effectively the gods of the natural world. They do what they want." Hiruzen tried to convince the boy across the table of his words.
"What's the rest of your story?" Naruto asked.
"You're going to be long-term bait to catch him in the act of betrayal. Even though we know he's a in league with a traitor, because we've seen him talking to a summoned animal that would reasonably only belong to Orochimaru, we have no proof of any information he's actually passed on."
Naruto raised an eyebrow at that.
"You're the Hokage. Do you even need any proof? All you have to do is order it, and it'll happen. What's stopping you?"
"The line between a military dictatorship and a despotic tyranny is whether the person in charge abuses their power." Hiruzen answered the question. "Certainly, if I ordered it, the Anbu would drag him away in the night...but people would ask questions, and rumors would start. It's a matter of ethics. Despite the fact that we're in a constant state of war, we still make our attempts to be humane. There's rules of engagement, and there are laws in society. If you can't follow them, no matter your station, then eventually people will set aside their enmity for long enough to defeat you."
"You're worried a coup would be staged if you imprisoned or murdered a traitor? That's ridiculous." Naruto was incredulous.
"I didn't reach this age by acting reckless. Think about how many elderly ninja you've seen, Naruto. Civilians are relatively likely to live out their lives to their fullest extent, but shinobi murder one another on a near-daily basis. The difference between them, and me, is that I don't make gambles I can't afford to lose."
There was a cold, unflinching steel in Hiruzen's eyes. Naruto stared at the Hokage's face, and he felt a kind of respect that he'd reserved for his peers swell up inside of him. Every scar on the old man's hands and arms, the off-color line that cut from his left ear to the middle of his cheek...they were the trophies of a man who'd pulled himself up from the gutters of the world. He'd watched the failures of those around him, learned from them, and made mistakes of his own.
"And that brings us back around to the beginning." Naruto said. "What does this have to do with me?"
"I want you to be the bait." Hiruzen said, wasting no time.
Naruto appreciated the frank side of the Hokage.
"How?"
"In four years, you're going to intentionally fail your graduation exam. I'll inform the proctor of tests. You're in a class that contains most of the long-standing clans' heirs-to-be, and I imagine Mizuki's plot has something to do with them. He's also stayed close to you, likely for the same reason...especially after finding out who you are. Whatever plan it is that he comes up with afterwards, to get you to graduate from the academy, go along with it. Then, at the end of it all, we'll spring the trap when he's with you."
"That seems awfully contrived." Naruto said. "How do you know he'll try to get me to graduate anyway?"
"He's shown you incredibly special consideration. He's giving you preferential treatment, even more than the clans' children. Don't think I don't know that he's been teaching you Ninjutsu behind everyone's backs." Hiruzen said.
"In his defense, they've all been basic E-ranked techniques. More theory than anything. Like, what way to rotate my chakra, and all that. Lowering my chakra consumption to increase the amount of time that I can practice...but I still can't seem to get doppelgangers down." Naruto frowned at that last admission.
"Realistically, you wouldn't use them much anyway. Of the basic techniques that the academy teaches, the kawarimi and the shunshin are easily the more useful ones. Still, it may simply be a matter of solidity? Clones, at least the basic bunshin, are empty shells of chakra that border on being a Genjutsu. There are elemental variations, and the solid Kage Bunshin, that can actually mete out damage to the opponent. Once, a former student of mine even raised the idea of a clone comprised of nothing but raw chakra, with hardly any form to it...which is essentially a bomb. Still, don't worry too much if you can't completely grasp the basic bunshin. You have four years to keep practicing."
"I will. Thanks for the words of confidence." Naruto replied.
"Any time, Naruto. Now...I think it's about time that these old bones of mine made their way back to my office. Or, maybe, my home? I guess we'll see. Maybe I'll put someone else in charge of finding the Banchou. He's proved pretty elusive so far."
With that, Hiruzen stood, taking two steps before his shunshin took him out of the house. It left Naruto side-eyeing the door, and then staring disinterestedly at the seat that the Hokage had been occupying seconds ago. He'd been interested for a while, but he didn't particularly care if Mizuki had some grand scheme going on in the background. That was the Hokage's business to deal with. Still...if an opportunity presented itself, he resolved, then he would take it. Not because he'd been asked to. It was because there would be a reward, for so little risk, that he couldn't realistically refuse. Hopefully.
Standing up, he left the kitchen to walk across the floor of the house. He moved through the living room, and then down the hallway where his room was separated from Ayame's...not because he held any particular feelings for her; she was his second-in-command, and effectively his protege. Without missing a beat, he stripped out of his clean clothes before moving to a drawer that had his "work" clothes. A shredded black shirt, almost completely faded to orange and brown, paired with jeans that had more rips in them than he could count. In moments, he was dressed, and ready to go.
"Ayame!" He called. "I'm leaving. I'll be back later."
A muffled acknowledgement came from the distance, and as Naruto stared at himself in the mirror, he was a little taken aback by how little things had changed. Certainly, there was no reason for him to do what he was preparing for, but it was what he knew. It was what he was good at. Red eyes, with blood vessels on prominent visible display, reflected in the mirror. Rough hands, well-suited to his future as a shinobi...with deft fingers, necessary for the task at hand.
He'd played the part of a model young boy for just over a year. The itch in the back of his mind had gotten too big to avoid scratching, no disguise adherent enough to avoid breaking his newfound reputation as a good citizen. Plain and simple, he'd been out of the game for too long. It was bad, it was wrong, and it was unnecessary.
Maybe that's what made it fun?
"So you pull your chakra up from your feet, and then you step. That's the shunshin. Like this." Naruto demonstrated the technique, walking out from one side of the room, vanishing before reappearing with his nose nearly touching the opposite wall.
Ayame closed her eyes in focus for a moment, feeling energy rise from the bottom of her body. Without warning, she arrived at Naruto's side, touching shoulders with him. Stepping back in shock from the contact, Naruto squinted a little bit as he looked at Ayame.
"Really? On your first freaking try?" He asked, annoyed at how easily she'd gotten it.
"Maybe I'm just better than you?" Ayame teased playfully.
"Yeah, well, how about the kawarimi, where you switch places with something? You make this hand seal, concentrate your chakra in your joints, and then you move your chakra in a cycle. Like a pulley. Try...that chair?" Naruto pointed at a desk chair that had been pulled away from its table, for this express purpose.
Once again, Ayame closed her eyes, letting her chakra flow into the sockets of her shoulders, knees, ankles, elbows, and her fingers. She made the half-Ram seal, and in a puff of smoke, she'd switched places with the chair.
"Dammit." Naruto cursed. "How come you get it easier?"
"Well, aren't these the easy techniques?" Ayame asked. "They're meant for beginners like us."Still, this is...this is nice. It's fun. I do feel a little tired, though."
"The amount of chakra you can make isn't very big when you first start. That makes it easier to control, though." Naruto said, now understanding why she was grasping the basics so easily.
Mizuki had been relatively blatant in letting Naruto know that his chakra reserves were monstrous. Reportedly, everyone on his mother's side of the family was renowned for having powerful chakra, and lots of it. Or, at least, they were when they'd still been alive. The entire Uzumaki clan, except for his mother and the wife of the Shodaime Hokage, had been massacred at the end of the Second Great War. Of course, historical records also said that he'd been pronounced dead at birth, so he took the concept of fulfilled genocide with a grain of salt. Still, it was a little ironic that his high chakra capacity was going to be a major hindrance before it could be helpful.
"Makes sense. How do you get it to increase?" Ayame said, looking a little winded.
"Physical training, and a lot of practice. Supposedly."
"I would prefer not to." Ayame frowned. She didn't mind physical work, but she wasn't looking to become a muscle-bound ogre of a woman.
"Suit yourself." Naruto grinned. "Whatever it takes...I'll get stronger."
"I believe you." Ayame said, looking at the blond boy with a mix of seriousness and apprehension.
While her worldview was admittedly small, especially after the death of her father, Naruto was the most capable person she knew. Certainly, there was the Hokage, but she wasn't privy to the inner workings of the ninja caste. Naruto was the oldest and strongest of the scrape- and cut-covered bottom-feeders that they had lived among, and that made him the leader. He'd fought his way to being the leader, too. Ayame tried not to think about that. Certainly, there weren't many that would miss those few dissenters, and he hadn't meant to...but...
"What are you going to do with all of this? The training, the jutsu? All of them look up to you. Once you become a ninja, what happens to the group?"
"We're not just 'a group.'" Naruto countered. "We're family. This village can take my blood, they can take my time, they can take my life...but they won't take my brothers and sisters away from me. The Hokage won't pull them into the shinobi academy, but he won't go after them because it would mean going after the son of the Yondaime Hokage. He's not willing to commit political suicide on that scale, even if he is planning something."
Naruto wouldn't put it past the Sandaime Hokage to have something on the back burners of his mind. Even so, he'd done a little more than simply pay attention in class. Extracurricular reading had taken up more than a little bit of his free time.
"But...what direction are we headed?"
Naruto was silent for a moment, at that question. Mouth closed in studious thought, he stared at Ayame; the brunette didn't break eye contact, though he couldn't tell whether it was out of respect, fear, or patience.
"An army." Naruto said out loud, and Ayame felt like she was frozen in place.
"You're serious?" She asked.
"What other option do I have? Either we go our separate ways, or I take what I know and teach them, with every spare moment I have. If they steal for me, for us, then they'll fight to protect one another on my orders. And then they'll learn to do it without me needing to tell them."
"Naruto?" Ayame asked her third question in a row. "Isn't having a military force outside of the Hokage's knowledge or jurisdiction illegal? There's a difference between stealing food to survive, and creating a military force with the capability of seceding."
"Rebellion? Don't be ridiculous. It's...insurance. There's a long-term plan I'm working on with the Hokage at the moment, and if something goes wrong, I'll want people watching my back. I'm being cautious, and playing the long game." Naruto said confidently.
He remembered the Hokage's words from the last time they'd spoken. Careful consideration, never taking risks that he couldn't recover from losing. He wasn't stupid enough to think that a comparative handful of soldiers would be able to topple a village. However, if they were to be loyal to him, and not the Hokage...there was some leverage in that. The ability to get things done, without raising his own hands to the task, if he chose.
"As long as you have a plan, I guess it's okay." Ayame relented, not sure if she really believed those words. Naruto had been kind to her over the last three and a half years, he'd kept her clothed and well-fed, but sometimes he ended up being more frightening than reassuring. Had he backpedaled on his thoughts when he believed she didn't approve? Whatever he wanted to call it, whether it was an army or a mercenary company, or something between the two, had one purpose: to fight, kill, and die.
They were people she'd grown up with. The last three years of her life had been spent becoming friends with them, living around them, eating and laughing with them. Could she stand there, and watch them die? Could she go with them, into a fight?
Ayame didn't like killing. She didn't like the idea of it, didn't like the act of it, and she hated the aftermath of death. And yet, as she stood quietly in the silence beyond her words, she admitted to herself that blood was already on her hands. She resigned herself to a future she didn't believe in, just like that, to the hands of the only person she trusted.
Standing on the mantel, a picture of the Yondaime Hokage and his wife smiled out at the room. Naruto's gaze shifted, his eyes locked on the unblinking visage of his mother, and he made his decision.
"Let's get started." Naruto said. "We've got a lot of work to do."
