Chapter Four: Uzumaki
"Hurry up, will ya?" Ginrei's irritated voice permeated through the thick trees of the forest.
"Just as sec, Ginrei-sama." Naruto replied. He came bursting out of the tree line, hopping from one tree branch to the next.
"What took you so long?" the old man said, with a slightly raised eyebrow.
Naruto did not know what to say at first. A small part of him wanted to lie and blame his tardiness on something else, but he quickly settled for the truth, "…Mito."
"Ah." was all the old man said as his face shone in realisation. He quickly turned around after that, his clothes billowing slightly from the sudden motion, before he said, "Well then, follow me."
Naruto smiled a little as he followed the man he had taken a huge liking to over the past week. He was honestly giddy with anticipation as he quickly caught up with Ginrei and they walked at a relatively calm pace. Nothing was said between the little boy and the old man as they walked next to each other in the forest surrounding the home that they lived in.
The path that they took soon turned downhill. On either side of this downhill slope the trees thinned out and in their place were houses. The houses that they encountered first were almost as regal-looking as the house that belonged to the main family. The further they traversed down the hill, the less extravagant the houses became until they just became bland copy cats of each other.
The houses higher up the hill were for the more important members of the Uzumaki clan, while the ones that were lower were for the run of the mill Uzumaki shinobi.
Naruto saw his parents' house amongst the lower section of the hill. Despite his mother being one of the strongest Uzumaki on the island, at least that's what she always said, she was not of any royal patronage, and as such she was housed alongside all of the less important shinobi.
Naruto found it funny that all of the old members of the clan lived higher up the hill. Didn't walking up the hill cause any back problems?
Looking at the man he walked next to, he got his answer.
The duo soon reached a pair of giant wooden doors that were open. This was known as the Great Gateway. It acted as a separator between the Uzumaki clan and what was on the other side of the gates.
The Whirling City.
The Whiling City acted as the main business hub of the island. People that came from far and wide in order to do business on Uzu no Kuni always wound up in this city. It ensured that no one that wasn't an Uzumaki stepped foot onto their clan's grounds. Naruto and Ginrei calmly walked through the small CBD of Uzu no Kuni, taking in the many house-size stores that made up the CBD.
There were stores that specialised in things such as clothing, food and shinobi supplies. Naruto had been here so many times that he could map out the entire business district with ease. It had been engraved in his mind, which was good because he would one day be stationed as one of its protectors.
As the duo continued their brisk walk, they were greeted by many of the civilian store owners and the shinobi that were on duty, serving as watchdogs. The Uzumaki had a unique relationship with people. Due to being known as the "hippy clan", a lot of civilians wanted to do business with the Uzumaki because they trusted them. They were known to be a just and fair clan, always looking out for one another, never ever backstabbing anyone.
There was a running joke within the shinobi world that the Uzumaki did not even have a single bad bone in them. Of course this would be preposterous in Naruto's own opinion. If that really were the case then the Uzumaki would be dead already. They were shinobi, just like everyone else. Due to their strategic positioning as the only clan on Uzu no Kuni, they were better at hiding their skeletons than other clans on the main land were.
According to his mother, the Uzumaki are the only clan in the world to have an entire city directly under their care. In the main land, especially in Hi no Kuni, the clans that reside there aren't allowed anywhere near their country's capital, unless if they were invited by the Daimyo.
The entire place was guarded by a samurai force that, while individually they were weaker than their shinobi counter-parts, they more than made up for it with their sheer numbers. All of Hi no Kuni's clans would need to come together and work as one if they ever wanted to take control of the capital.
Unfortunately for them, there was just too much bad blood between them all for such a thing to happen.
"Naruto!" Naruto's head snapped towards Ginrei, who had a slightly irritated look on his face as he looked at him.
"Hai?"
"Finally!" Ginrei exasperated, "What the heck were you thinking about that could take so much of your time?"
"Nothing much." Naruto said honestly, before he noticed that they were standing in front of a two story building that had a gigantic swirl on it. The swirl had a scroll running diagonally across it.
"Wait, what are we doing at the library?" Naruto asked as he turned to look at his travelling companion.
"We're here to see a friend of mine." Ginrei said with a small smile on her face.
'Great.', Naruto thought, 'Probably an old man.'
And how right he was. After they had entered the building, they went straight to a man that sat at the front desk of the library. The man wore a red kimono top, dark pants and wooden geta.
"Shimonosuke, old friend." Ginrei said with warmth in his voice.
"Ginrei, you old goat." Shimonosuke said as he got up from his seat and he walked around it in order to stand in front of it.
"How are you, my friend." Ginrei asked the man as they hugged briefly. Naruto just stood back, not really finding it appropriate to come between these old friends.
"Don't act like you care about my well being." Shimonosuke said this with a smile on his face.
Ginrei feigned being struck by something in his heart as he clutched onto his yukata's chest region, "Ow, that hurts."
"Good." Shimonosuke said as he folded his arms and said, "It shouldn't take you two whole years before you check up on me, you old goat."
Ginrei pouted and mumbled, "You could have gone up to see me, you know."
"And risk hurting my back?" Shimonosuke said, getting Naruto to pat himself on the back for his earlier deduction on the Uzumaki elders having difficulty traversing up the clan's grounds, "No thanks. So who's the gaki?"
Ginrei, quicker than Naruto would expect one to drop a pout, said, "He's blonde and he's an Uzumaki."
Shimonosuke had a long pensive look on his face as he racked his brain for the answer, before his face lit up after a few seconds and he said, "Wait, this is Kushina's gaki?"
"Yep." Ginrei said.
"So you're the famous blonde gaki that has everyone's tongues wagging." Shimonosuke said as he closed in on Naruto, before he placed his wrinkled hand on Naruto's blonde hair.
"Hai." was all Naruto could say as Shimonosuke ruffled his hair.
"Good kid, good kid." Shimonosuke said, "So what's your name?"
"Naruto."
"Ah, Naruto. Good name. So was it your idea to come and see me, eh Naruto?"
"Um…no. I don't even know you, sir." Naruto's answer resulted in something Naruto thought he would never see; an old man sulk.
Ginrei chose this as the appropriate moment to laugh at his old friend, find the entire interaction between his student and his old friend to be quite hilarious.
"Well, that was quite funny." the former clan leader said, "Well, it was my idea actually."
"What do you want?" Shimonosuke said spitefully.
"No need to be so cold, old friend." Ginrei said as he stroked his beard, "I came here to ask for your help with something."
"Isn't that always the case with you, always asking for help." Shimonosuke said, before he turned and faced Naruto and said, "Even as kids he couldn't even wipe his own behind without asking for help"
"Pfft!" Naruto broke into a fit of giggles at that.
"Hey, that's not true!" Ginrei said in outrage, before his face took on the shade of a tomato as he said, "It was just those annoying servants my father had around that wanted to do it."
"Ha ha ha ha ha… " Naruto, at this point, was holding his stomach and laughing his ass off.
Ginrei shifted his focus from the floor to Naruto in a split second, "You shouldn't laugh so much otherwise you'll find yourself mysteriously doing training at three a.m."
Naruto sobered up really quickly.
"Anyway, old friend," Ginrei said as he turned his attention to Shimonosuke, "I have a request."
"What is it?" Shimonosuke said in a grumpy manner.
"Ninjutsu 101." Ginrei replied with a serious expression.
"For the boy?" Shimonosuke said, pointing to Naruto with his head.
"Yep."
"When should I pop by?"
"Whenever you're free."
"Alright; but why don't you do it?"
"Shimo, we both know that my techniques are a bit too advances for a 101 class."
"… You're just lazy, aren't you?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
The two old men just stared each other down for a few seconds, before a smile broke out over Shimonosuke's face, "I'll be there this afternoon for our first lesson."
"Alright." Ginrei said, before he turned to Naruto, who had been silently observing their conversation from the sidelines for a bit, "You, we're leaving now."
Naruto just nimbly nodded his head before he exited the building behind Ginrei all the while thinking about old men that behaved like children.
XXXXX
Uzumaki Main Family Household
Whenever one thought about what it might be like to be the heiress of a clan, they would surely think along the lines of being spoiled rotten while also being spoon fed everything that there was to know about the shinobi world. While that would be true for some, it did not apply to Uzumaki Mito.
She … she was a special case.
"Again." Jin's voice broke through the silence that was within the darkened room.
Mito shut her eyes and did as she had been taught ever since she was a five years old. She calmed her breathing to a point where it seemed as if she was not breathing at all, before she slowly started to extend her sixth sense.
Whenever one thought about what made sensory shinobi special, they just assumed that it was a combination of chakra and good luck that allowed them to pick out things that the normal five senses could not.
The Uzumaki clan had a different ideology altogether when it came to how sensory skills were to be perceived. They did not view them as some special ability that involved the manipulation of chakra through specialised means, rather it was an extension of a person. It was the natural instinct that you had as a person that told you whether you were in a fight or flight situation.
This ideology had been passed down to young Mito, who was currently situated in a room filled to the brim with special fūin that made it nearly impossible for one to sense where a person might be, within the confines of the room.
"You're twenty six feet to my left, tou-sama." Mito said.
If one could see through the darkness, they would have been able to see something that resembled a smile on Jin's face.
"Not good enough. I'm actually twenty four feet to your left." the usually stoic man said to his daughter.
"So?" Mito said, with a pout on her face, "I'm off by two feet."
"Exactly." While Jin found it beyond admirable that his daughter was as good as she was for her age at sensing targets, especially within the Black Room, he still wanted to push Mito beyond this level, "A miscalculation by even a single foot is all it takes to ruin mission and result in your death."
Mito's pout dropped from her face, and it took a more neutral look, "I understand, tou-sama."
"Good." Jin said, "We're done for today."
As soon as he said that, the seals within the darkened room glowed green and the natural lighting of the room returned.
Mito was dressed in a form hugging, long sleeved, white shirt and a pair of matching pants. Her father was dressed in the standard kimono he wore everyday whenever he was not on any mission.
The man that lead the Uzumaki clan looked at his slightly sweating daughter with a smile on his face and said, "You are progressing well, Mito."
"Thank you, tou-sama." As much as Mito enjoyed the complement, she sensed a but coming along.
"But," she internally congratulated herself for being on the money, "you aren't at the level that I expect you to be."
" … Thanks?" Mito was never really sure about how to take her father's words. He could make a complaint seem like a compliment and vice versa. It astounded her how someone could do such a thing.
Mito turned on her heels and started heading for the exit. Her training was done for today. Now she could go and play with Naruto.
"Mito."
Jin, as pleased as he was at his daughters progress, had something that he wanted to ask his daughter, and from the look on his face, he was not really sure about how to go about it. It was a mixture between a constipated samurai and a sick patient lying on his death bed.
"What do you think of Naruto?" Jin decided to just rip the plaster off in one go.
"Naruto?" Mito asked her father, with all of her confusion written on her face. Mito may have been seven years old, but even she could tell that her father did not particularly like Naruto, and she had thought of doing something about it during the weekend he was away. She had asked her grandfather about it, telling him that she did not really like the tension between her new-found friend and her father, but the Uzumaki elder quickly shot her down, saying that this was an issue she should stay out of.
"Yes, Naruto. The short boy you seem to play with everyday." Jin said, "Or do you have memory loss?"
Was that a joke? Mito wondered as she stared at her father. He was never really a man of comedy, or anything remotely fun for that matter. He was always serious.
"I know who you're talking about, tou-sama … it's just surprising."
"What is?"
"You asking me about him?"
"He's your friend …or am I mistaken?"
"No-no, nope. He is my friend."
"Okay. Now, answer my question."
"Well …" Mito began, unsure of how to progress, "… he's really smart."
"I know that." Indeed, Naruto was very smart, especially for someone his age.
"Then what do you want me to say?!" Mito was becoming frustrated really fast. Her father seemed to be asking something beyond the level of someone that you've only known for a week.
"Watch your tone." he said sternly, making Mito lower her head. Her father was an adult, and as she had been taught by her grandfather and her mother before she passed away, she ought to respect all adults.
"I'm sorry." Mito said quietly.
Jin looked at Mito's saddened form with a calculated gaze. It would seem he wouldn't be getting what he wanted from her at the moment.
"You're free to go."
No sooner had the words left his mouth, Mito was already out of the room. Jin, now all alone within the confines of the Black Room, let out a small sigh. He did not like how his daughter had left his presence. It was disrespectful, sure, but that wasn't what he did not like about it. He didn't like how she left the room with a body language of someone that was afraid of him.
That is not how a daughter should be with her father. A daughter should love her father unconditionally to the point where fear would be the last thing on her mind. He had already lost one child, and Mito was his last born.
His last hope.
His last shred of humanity.
XXXXX
Uzumaki clan grounds, three days later
Nature was silent. Ginrei was silent. Shimonosuke was silent. Naruto was silent … not really. Moving at his top speed, Naruto's hands blurred into a myriad of hand seals, before he rested on the ram hand seal.
"Shunshin no Jutsu." Naruto's pace quickened exponentially. To a normal civilian it would seem as if he were simply appearing and disappearing from existence with short bursts in between, but to the two men that were watching the young boy train they could see him just fine. To them, he may as well have been walking at a normal, brisk pace.
Naruto shimmered into existence next to the old men, hyperventilating as the sweat on his brow was visible for them to see.
"Ha ha, well done my boy." Shimonosuke said, "To get this jutsu down in three days is no easy feat."
"Indeed." Ginrei concurred.
"Yes. Why I remember it took ol' Ginger-breath over here nearly two years to get it down." Shimonosuke said, laughing at the look of betrayal on Ginrei's face.
"Oi!" Ginrei said, "Watch what you say in front of my student, you old prune. Do you want him to lose all sense of respect for me?"
"Ha ha ha … what respect?" Shimonosuke said, moving away from Ginrei as he pointed a finger at Naruto.
Ginrei's head quickly whipped into the general direction of his student, and he found him trying very hard to stifle a laugh.
"You better not …" Ginrei warned the blonde Uzumaki, finger raised and pointing at the boy.
"Pfft!" Naruto's cheeks were red at this point, trying to hold in his laughter.
"Good boy." Ginrei said as if he had been talking to a dog. He then turned to face Shimonosuke, with a smug smile on his face, "See, I still got it."
"For now." was all the administrator said.
"Ha- I mean, Uh-hum." Naruto corrected himself after a small bit of laughter escaped, "Ginrei-sama?
"What is it?"
"Um, I was wondering if you could help me out with an issue of mine."
"Oh, don't worry about that." Shimonosuke said, "He'll help you, but only when your training is complete for the day."
"You mean we're not done?" Naruto asked.
"Of course not. It's only…" Shimonosuke looked up at the sky, "Two o'clock on the dot."
Naruto looked up into the sky and silently tried to look at whatever it was that allowed Shimonosuke to be able to tell time just by looking at the sky.
"Hey, I'm down here, short stuff."
Naruto looked at the old man with a mixture of disdain and disappointment. Disdain at being called out on his height, and disappointment and not being able to see what Shimonosuke used to tell the time.
"Okay…" the old ninjutsu teacher said while rubbing his hands together, "Now we're getting to something fun. Elemental ninjutsu."
"Wait!" Ginrei immediately intervened, "Isn't it a bit too early to introduce him to that concept."
"Don't worry, I'm not gonna teach him nature transformation."
"Then what are you doing teaching him elemental ninjutsu at age eight?" Ginrei al but shouted.
"My old man had a stupid, but very effective philosophy…'start them young, and they grow into it." Shimonosuke with pride in his voice.
"Uzumaki Kotetsu was a loon."
"True as that may be, but he was the best at it." Shimonosuke said, not taking the slightest bit of offence at Ginrei's words, before he quickly added, "And I don't mean being a loon. I mean teaching."
"Oh really?"
"Yes."
"How so?"
"Look, if you're gonna argue with me about whether or not my father made a good teacher or not,then we might as well argue about which vegetable is better between an potato and an onion."
Whatever retort Ginrei had quickly died in his throat.
"I hate you." Ginrei said, turning sideways like a child and ignoring the smug look Shimonosuke sported.
"I know you do."
There was a small bout of silence in the clearing that they were training in, "Potato."
And then it was gone.
"Onion." Shimonosuke said.
"Potato."
"Onion!"
"Po-ta-to!" Ginrei said while grinding his teeth and slamming his forehead into Shimonosuke's.
"How? Everyone knows that an onion is the key component to any good meal!"
"Yes, but you can't eat it alone, now can you?"
"And then what? Die of Starch! No thanks!"
"How about I kill you for disrespecting the potato?"
"How when I would have done that to you first?"
"Ahem!" Naruto's voice broke through the bickering old men, "How about we get back to what's really important?"
"Uh …potatoes?" Ginrei answered.
"No! Training!"
That seemed to sober up the two Uzumaki elders as their argument became a thing of the past.
To Naruto, who had been watching the entire exchange without so much as a single interjection on his part until the very end, he couldn't believe that he was looking at two highly respected members of the Uzumaki clan. They behaved like a bunch of spoiled brats.
Respect was definitely going down, fast.
"Anyway, Naruto," that brought him back to reality, "Time to get cracking."
A simple nod was sent Shimonosuke's way.
"Place your hand out." Shimonosuke said, and Naruto complied, "Palm first!"
"What are you doing?" the young boy asked his elder. Shimonosuke had taken Naruto's hand and he had placed it on top of his left palm, while he had taken his right index finger and placed it on Naruto's palm.
"What I'm doing is something my father invented for detecting chakra nature." the elder Uzumaki explained, "I'm going to begin by channelling my chakra into yours, and then you're going to just channel chakra into your hand. Can you do that?"
A nod followed the old man's question.
"Good." was all he said, before he sent a small stream of chakra into Naruto's palm. Naruto replied by doing as he had been instructed by Shimonosuke and he channelled his chakra into the man's index finger.
As soon as there was contact between both of their chakra natures, Naruto felt a weird sensation coursing through his hand. While it was not an unpleasant one, it was a sensation that was not really welcomed by his body. He tried to quantify it by comparing it with something else, but he honestly could not. It was just so strange.
The duo had stayed silent for a few moments, with only the small gust of wind blowing through the clearing and the quiet hum of their chakra making any sort of sound. Shimonosuke eventually spoke after a minute had passed, "Ah, water."
"You sound disappointed, sensei." Naruto said.
"Not disappointed, just tired." Shimonosuke said.
"I guess you would be if you lived on an island nation filled with water users…I'm sure you'd like some variety." Naruto said, clearly catching what his ninjutsu sensei was alluding to.
"You're a smart one, eh?" Shimonosuke said as he let of of Naruto's hand, stopping the exercise.
"I thought we had already established that, Shimo." Ginrei decided to join in on their conversation.
"True, but even I am surprised by just how smart he is. He speaks with the mental clarity of a very experienced individual." Shimonosuke spoke while walking away from Naruto.
"Careful, Shimo, we don't want to inflate his ego."
"What ego? He's too small to have one." Shimonosuke laughed a bit.
"Age does not mean anything. I ought to know, I raised a very egotistical son."
"Your son was not egotistical. He was just spoilt rotten by a very bad parent."
Ginrei's facial features took on a slightly dark turn, "Are you calling me a bad parent?"
"No." Shimonosuke said calmly, not the least affected by his friend's dark aura.
"Good. We both know I am a very good parent."
"Yes, but your wife was not."
'Oh, shit.' Naruto thought. He may have been young, but even he knew that Uzumaki Kasumi was someone that Ginrei loved more than even his own children. He knew that you never ever insulted the woman's memory, even if you were not in front of Ginrei. You were basically asking to die. Yet here was Shimonosuke, not giving a rat's ass, and doing so anyway. Maybe he had gone senile with old age.
During the few seconds it had taken Naruto to remember everything related to the former clan head's wife, an eerie silence had descended upon the clearing. It was a silence that spoke of many things that could happen as soon as it ended. Be it good or bad. In this case anyone that was there could surmise that something bad was about to happen.
"Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!" and then they would be proven wrong by the sound of laughter that erupted from the two Uzumaki elders.
"Ha ha ha ha…oh, that is a good one, Shimo." Ginrei spoke in between fits of laughter while clutching his sides.
"I'm so- Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha – sorry, but Kasumi was te- te- terribbbble with kids!" Shimonosuke was also finding it very hard to speak in between his fits of laughter.
"She was so bad – oh, ha ha ha, so bad that she dropped Jin when he was just a month old."
"Maybe that – that's why – ha ha ha ha ha – he is such an egghead!"
"Ha ha ha ha ha ha!" the old men laughed so hard after that that they ended up on the floor, just laughing their butt's off.
Naruto, who had been looking at the old men from the sidelines, decided to just let them be. Uzumaki geezers were just too weird for him. They behaved more like kids than actual adults.
"Um, I guess I'll just leave you two to it then." Naruto said, referencing to their bout of laughter that they did not seem to be calming down from soon. He slowly made his way out of the clearing, disappearing into the trees that surround the massive clearing, on his way home.
The laughter immediately died down as soon as Naruto was out of their sight. The old men looked at each other with very serious expressions that were not something that one would have associated with either of them a few moments ago.
"So," Ginrei began as he got up from the ground and dusted himself off, "what did you want to talk about?"
Shimonosuke mimicked his friend, standing up and dusting himself off as well. One of the perks of having a best friend of more than five year was that you tended to develop your own secret system of codes. With the two of them, however, it was a full blown language with how long they have known each other.
"The boy's chakra." the aged administrator said, thinking about how he had secretly sent a small signal to Ginrei while scanning Naruto's chakra for his chakra nature.
Ginrei nodded at his friend to continue.
"There's a strangeness to it." Shimonosuke said, trying to find the proper words to say what he wanted. The technique his father created was something that was meant to decipher a person's chakra nature. One of it's requirements was that you needed to have a certain level of mastery in the five basic chakra natures, and Shimonosuke had that.
"My friend, stop beating around the bush." Ginrei said.
"He's…"
To be Continued
I wonder what the heck was discovered with Naruto. Is it good? Is it bad? Can't wait.
Anyway, like, leave a review, you know the drill.