GUESS WHO'S BACK? It took a pandemic, ceaseless working 40+ hour shifts, losing and regaining (and losing, and regaining) my inspiration to write, god knows how many hours of staring at this document that was 80% done a year and a half ago without writing anything down, and...you get the picture. Schedules are not my specialty.
What a bizarre life I lead. Do I even know what I'm writing anymore?
Let's get this trainwreck moving.
"So, you're absolutely certain he's alive?" The Sandaime Hokage asked. His elbows were propped up, allowing his bridged hands to rest in front of his mouth.
"As certain as I can be with days-old information. The Otoyon told me themselves...and unlike Danzo, I don't need Fuinjutsu to inspire loyalty."
Orochimaru grinned devilishly at his mentor from across the table they sat at. Here, in the underground, they would go unbothered. Two torches lit the room they sat in, leaving it warm and pleasantly comfortable.
"I resent that." Danzo huffed tiredly, his frail body wrapped by bandages and hardly moving. He'd been wheeled to their meeting place, all but strapped to the chair that had become his own personal prison for the last five years. "Not all of us are as enamored of torture so extreme that it borders on war crimes."
"Yes. Well, regardless...he's alive. Or was. Have any scouts checked the island for remains? The civilians are in my care, but..."
In my care. A very thinly-veiled way of saying that the parents and elders had become experimental fodder, and the children were training to become Orochimaru's foot soldiers.
"Nami no Kuni is gone. Sunk beneath the sea." The Hokage said. "The Anbu I sent to find the Jinchuriki had to use teleportation seals to return safely—the ocean is still tumultuous there, and will be for at least another month."
Orochimaru didn't turn a blind eye to the way that his former sensei had addressed the missing Genin. The Jinchuriki. He'd keep that particular detail to himself, though.
Naruto was far more than a frail vessel to unimaginable might. Each of the members of the Sound Four, even the narcoleptic Ukon, had profusely denied that allegation; instead, they jointly declared, he was a true-born demon in the flesh. The kind of monster not seen on this earth since the war of the gods. A fount of limitless power that was created for battle. The ultimate weapon.
The perfect subject, and a means to an end.
"Well, I suppose that negates the cost of rehousing them." Orochimaru said, smirking at his own sarcasm. "And, speaking of rehousing...I marked the girl you said was his right hand. Ayame? The other two put up a better fight than I was expecting, for fresh Genin."
"That's because one is an Uchiha, and I taught the other myself." Danzo scowled. "Surely you don't believe Sai puts up such a weak front on accident?"
The elder's fists clenched, irritation written across his furrowed brow and narrowed visible eye. He loathed Orochimaru's attitude towards all of their operations, but couldn't refute the man's success.
"Of course not, uncle." Orochimaru replied, still smiling.
"I think what my wayward student meant to say," the Hokage cut in drily, "is that his son has exceeded the expectations placed upon him."
"That too, I suppose." Orochimaru laughed aloud, albeit briefly, and didn't seem to care that neither of his compatriots found the situation as humorous as he did. "So, our plan for the next month..."
"Stands." Hiruzen Sarutobi removed his hands from in front of his mouth, and Orochimaru quietly marveled—not for the first time—at the fact that the man was not only old, but so relatively unscarred as well. Of course, he had scars, nobody existed in their line of work who maintained perfect health and skin...but a quick glance across the table showed the other side of what could happen to a shinobi who was blessed enough, or cursed enough, to live for as long as they had. Danzo had seen better days, and his condition only seemed to worsen.
It seemed a waste to Orochimaru that such a talented soldier would be relegated to suffer through the later stages of life, no matter his personal thoughts on the man.
"Suna will attack Konoha, only to be pincered between our joint forces." The Byahebi ran over their basic plan. "Capture the Kazekage's elder children...but what about the Ichibi Jinchuriki?"
"Itachi will take care of it." Hiruzen said dismissively. "And if not him, then Jiraiya."
"Do either of them know?" Orochimaru asked plainly.
"Of course not." Danzo countered. "No matter how loyal they are, they're both too soft to allow input on these decisions."
Orochimaru disagreed, in the back of his mind. Jiraiya may have bought into the philosophy of the Will of Fire, but the Gama Sennin was as ferocious a warrior as anybody he'd ever met. Jiraiya desired peace on a global scale, yes, but at no point did that mean he was unprepared for war.
A fire, tended poorly for too long, would turn around and consume its maker. And yet, was saying something in his own best interest? The Yomi no Shinobi and Shinobi no Kami weren't liable to listen to his suggestions in the first place. To completely assert that they were wrong in their actions wasn't just rude—it would seem like a breach of trust.
The more that Hiruzen had spoken with Danzo, at length, the further he seemed to have veered from the course Orochimaru had proposed a decade ago. There was a difference between the Sandaime Hokage who'd been forced to retake his mantle after the Yondaime's passing, and the one who'd sent a fresh Genin team to be slaughtered by Kirigakure's armed forces. They'd been sacrificial pawns and bait for war.
Even as recently as five years ago, Hiruzen Sarutobi had been far from a war hawk. Something wasn't adding up...but Orochimaru couldn't quite place it. Could Konoha even afford a war, open or otherwise, with Kiri? It was true that they had the lowest population of any major political power, but they were far from weak. In fact, Orochimaru considered them an even greater threat than Suna or Iwa—the kind of thought that didn't cross his mind easily.
The pieces were in place, and he was playing black. Impatience didn't suit his serpentine features, but he had to wait for someone else to make a move.
"Do you understand the concept of Fuinjutsu?" The seated man asked.
"It's ink charged with neutral chakra to perform techniques that the human body is otherwise limited from, like summoning or storage." Naruto said, confident in his description—no matter how much of it was ripped straight from a textbook.
"Wrong." His teacher said, amused at Naruto's shocked face. "The concept of Fuinjutsu is intent. The only thing that differentiates a carved, or written, seal from Ninjutsu is the medium of its use...and sometimes, even that can be suspect. If you know what to write, and how to write it, then there's very little that your imagination can't bring to life with Fuinjutsu. How is your handwriting?"
Rather than say anything, Naruto took a suddenly-proffered pen and paper to show his benefactor instead. It's like this. He wrote.
"Well, thank the Great Darkness. You're nowhere near as bad as I was."
"So, where does that leave us?" Naruto asked.
"It leaves us with teaching you how to turn your intentions into weapons. On a scale from one to ten, how good is your chakra control?"
"About...a seven? Maybe an eight?"
"Good enough. A common misconception with Fuinjutsu is that you have to use chakra-conductive ink when writing the seal, so that you can activate it later with less resistance. That's a fat load of bullshit, and whoever came up with it was trying to sell their own ink supply. The only thing that kind of ink is good for, compared to normal, is if you're making Ninjutsu with it. So what you'll do instead is focus your own chakra through your fingers, into your brush, and into the ink as it spreads across the paper. That way, the seal is linked to your chakra—nobody else can use it."
If not for the small clouds of smoke, Naruto would have thought the enthroned man had really kept thousands of reams of blank paper inside of his crystalline home. If it even counted as a home? For all he knew, it was just as well a prison.
"Once you master using ink, I'll teach you how to use blood, and then...well, you'll see. Knowing you, it's better not to tease you with what comes next."
"Whatever you say...sensei." Naruto replied. "Out of curiosity, though, is there any way you can teach me to draw on my..."
"Your demonic strength?" The man chuckled, both eyebrows rising in amusement. "Well...unlike me, yours has never been sealed away. If you reach deep in your keirakukei, you should be able to feel that the roots of your power are youki, not chakra—but in your current stage of training, without your demonic state active, you'll only be able to use a little bit before it starts to wear on your body."
"What about activating that state?"
"You've used your power for the first time recently. Your body will naturally acclimate to the youki over time, and your evolution into a demon will be permanent. Until then, you'll need a catalyst, and given the demon who died to give you life..."
"No cryptic bullshit." Naruto demanded, to which the seated man grinned.
"Kurama, firstborn of my children, the Kyuubi no Kitsune. A vessel of raw, untamed rage that was feared as a natural disaster because its power trumped all the rest combined. For you to transform temporarily, amid violence...you must be so consumed by the urge to kill that your human senses fold. You can't force it. Not now, at least."
Naruto held his curiosities for later. Despite his reservations, and the fact that every answer only left him with more questions, he knew better than to talk when action was being demanded of him. Whatever this man said, and however true it might be, he was actively trying to give Naruto a path to power. He would humor his teacher's eccentricities.
It was, after all, the polite thing to do.
Sai didn't quite know how to process the events that had transpired since his team had been attacked. Following their defeat at the Kusa-nin's hands, they'd been attacked by a squad from Otogakure—and a powerful one, at that, for Genin. Unfortunately, they'd had a stroke of bad luck in assuming that Team Seven was weakened for being down a member.
Ayame had woken up from her coma, a dark seal of flames spreading out from the nape of her neck. While Sai had kept himself in check to avoid revealing the extent of his prowess, neither of his teammates held any similar reservations. Ayame's ghost-step left the female Oto-nin facedown on the forest floor, kunai buried deep in her back. Sasuke's Sharingan whirled as he'd cast a Housenka, and flames raged in the Forest of Death as the technique was blown off course.
In their old classmate Kiba's words, they didn't fucking have time for this. It wouldn't do to reveal his better secrets to nearby, prying eyes...but perhaps, just once, a display of skill wouldn't hurt.
"I carry the dead forward." He quietly declared, letting the will of the shadows guide him. Ink dripped from its well on his scroll, chakra seeping into the ground as he watched it etch its way across the battlefield.
While Sasuke and Ayame maneuvered their enemies around, the pale-skinned teen waited patiently as his chakra continued to fan out beneath the grass. Finally, he'd had enough—Sai's hands moved into the sign of the horse, and then the dragon. Without warning, ink leaped out from the ground; The remaining two Oto-nin were lanced through, and riddled with holes as their corpses fell to the grass beneath their feet.
Sasuke and Ayame both turned to look at Sai, who merely shrugged. There were things, after all, that went bump in the night...and he, the sword in the dark, was the one who would bump back.
Only now that the battle was over did some surrounding allies come forward; Team Gai, who had graduated a year before their rookie class, walked out from the forest.
"Nice of you to arrive now." Sasuke said with a grimace as Sai's eyes narrowed. "Don't tell me you're here to take our scrolls."
"Hardly." Neji scowled, arrogantly disinterested in speaking at length with the younger Genin.
"Good." The Uchiha turned his back on Team Gai, with Sai and Ayame following suit. "It'd be in poor taste to cripple your clan's younger generation a second time."
The two had never been on particularly good terms, constantly compared to one another as geniuses of their generation who were overshadowed in their clan—Sasuke by his elder brother, and Neji by his cousin's kidnapping. Adding fuel to the fire, their respective Doujutsu were diametrically opposed, and neither would relent to the idea that their eyes were inferior. After Neji had graduated from the Academy last year, Sasuke had seen him less than a handful of times; that was still too many, in his book. Still rarer, he'd taken the initiative to provoke the Hyuuga. Even if Neji didn't want to show it, Sasuke knew that he'd struck a deep nerve.
"Bold words from a coward who left his sensei and brother-in-arms to die."
Neji's words were brave, but his Byakugan lacked the predictive abilities of Sasuke's Sharingan. Before he realized it, Ayame and Sai seemed to teleport as the former locked three of his limbs from behind and the latter's tipless tanto dug into the soft flesh beneath the floor of his mouth.
"Speak ill of my banchou at your peril." Sai's words were emotionless as his jet-black eyes seemed to drill into Neji's brain. "He sacrificed himself so that we could live. Disgrace his memory again, and I will kill you, regardless of your heritage."
Withdrawing his blade, blood began to spring from twin cuts where its edges had caught Neji's skin. Ayame released his arms and leg, and it took the Hyuuga a moment to regain his balance. Beside him, Lee and Tenten had wide eyes with slightly opened mouths. They hadn't so much as felt their fellow Genin move.
"See you later." Sasuke grinned, his Sharingan spinning as he mockingly waved goodbye.
Amid three corpses, Team Gai was left to process the last five minutes of their lives in detail; among the details, it didn't escape their notice that none of Team Seven's members had bothered to look at the scroll of the Otogakure team.
"You're getting the hang of it." The enthroned man said, his mild praise enough to garner a smile on Naruto's face. "Are you aware of how much time has passed?"
"A month? I kind of lost track. You can't see outside of this dome." Naruto admitted.
"Three months. If my memory is correct—and it usually is—some important events are getting ready to happen in Konoha. I'd say we probably have...another week. After that, you'll have to go back."
"How will I find my way back, though?" Naruto asked, red eyes questioning his mentor's statement.
"You won't. Not while I'm still alive. Your arrival...well, it meant my time was up." The wizened man laughed, clearly amused, though Naruto failed to see the humor in accepting death. "Now, back at it. I've taught you everything you need to know about Fuinjutsu, so now we can move on to Ninjutsu."
Though Naruto's eyes twitched at the notion of learning sealing arts for three months, and combat techniques for a week, he did his best not to complain. After all, with the Sharingan, he could memorize and master any technique he saw. On top of that, this teacher of his had driven him to the absolute limits of his chakra consumption—something that was rapidly acclimating Naruto to the demonic youki that slumbered deep within him. Faced with circumstances that would do nothing but better him, he was content to absorb all of the information that this ten thousand-year-old Kage Bunshin could teach him.
Idly, however, the blond's thoughts turned to those he'd left behind; not only Sai and Sasuke, but Ayame, the rest of his crew in Konoha, the Sandaime Hokage and others. Even the Otoyon, bound to him by their oaths, were out there somewhere. As his Sharingan spun lazily, Naruto watched his teacher with rapt attention. The ancient clone obliged his student's patience, quietly thinking of events more than ten thousand years ago, and how the world had taught him when he refused to learn. How far would the younger man go in this world? Would he, too, reach a point where continuing to live out his days in the Elemental Nations was too great a burden to bear?
The ripple-eyed clone was somewhat special among the living creatures of the world; though he was undoubtedly a creation of the Kage Bunshin technique, he was still a demon, and could recall the memories of his creator at will. Even among the ranks of his brethren, he'd been somewhat special—but given his primogenitor's tendency to produce clones like so many little fun-sized candies, to the point that even his weapons had been Kage Bunshin with a complex henge applied, that had gone unnoticed until well into his tenure in this City of the Dead. Reaching down, his thumb ran across a whirlpool groove cut into the metal of a hitai-ate.
"Keep in mind, you are not the first of the new demons. You're the ghost of the old ones." He said to the Naruto of this world, tossing the black-cloth headband of Uzushiogakure to the teenager. "This belonged to your grandmother. Your mother's mother, specifically. Wear it with pride."
"The ghost of the old...well, alright then." Naruto murmured, looking at the hitai-ate he'd caught in his left hand. "Then to the world, I shouldn't be Naruto anymore."
"Oh?" No further prompting came from the seated clone.
"To the people who know me, and who care about me, that can still be my name. But for the rest of the world...I will be Yuurei. And, after I finish my transformation?"
"The Kyuubi no Yuurei...I suppose, given what happened to Kurama, that has a nice ring to it. Alright then, Yuurei. I have a decent grasp of the techniques that you know, thanks to that left eye of yours, but...maybe we can start with one of my personal favorites: the Raigen'ya."
The days would pass as Naruto, now Yuurei, continued to study.
