Chapter 6: Two Sides of the Same Coin


"If you cannot hold me in your arms, then hold my memory in high regard.

And if I cannot be in your life, then at least let me live in your heart."

― Ranata Suzuki


/Unknown

/Unknown

Naruto

Comfortable nothingness quickly gave way to a pressure in his lungs that got more urgent as Naruto became more aware that he wasn't dead.

...I'm not dead?

"...hypoxic brain injuries often benefit, or really, require therapeutic hypothermia, Chino. This boy is lucky he had such an experience. Take note as I go through the relevant signs: observe..."

Throat on fire, Naruto couldn't keep the water from his stomach and lungs and painful, wracking vomiting saw what seemed like endless amounts of water rocketing from his mouth. His stomach clenched over and over; cramps like knives working him over from the inside.

"...hypatermia?"

Oh god.

Naruto's stomach heaved and more water followed. The world spun and shifted on its axis as his body regained some feeling.

"That's pronounced; hype-o-therm-ia, love. I know you're only five, but still. You must hear it and say it properly!"

It hurt. Hurt a lot. But warmth had returned to his insides, at least slightly. Naruto realized he could feel fire spot-warming his skin.

Where was he?

What happened?

How was he alive? Orochimaru!

"Okay..."

"See, the boy quickly regains consciousness after gentle warmth is reintroduced and the water expelled from his lungs. He's not out of the woods… but he's not dead, is he love?"

"Nope! Lucky boy! Lucky boy!"

"Yes indeed, yes indeed. Now, why don't you go grab him some blankets from the trunk? Maybe some leftover soup from the fire?"

"Okay!"

Naruto found he couldn't care less about anything aside from shivering uncontrollably in his cocoon of blankets. Blinking at the brilliant red sky, and breathing like he'd just run a marathon without stopping, Naruto lay there and tried to give a shit, but found he couldn't. He knew, objectively, that he was alive and that someone had saved him and they definitely had a kid who was pretty young, but beyond that, did anything really matter?

"Hey, kid-"

Naruto decided nothing mattered and slipped back into oblivion.

When Naruto awoke again, night had fallen in total, yet the embers of the fire still glowed with strength and a fitful light that made shadows cast long dancing shapes against the winter woods. Panic gripped him as it all came rushing back, some of it at least. Where the hell was he? Naruto was being held down by something tight, strong. There was a heat emanating from the blankets that were not natural, was not-

"Relax kid. You're safe."

A man-shaped shadow shifted and light from the fire fell upon a relatively young man, maybe Yojimbra's age, mid-thirties, with silverish hair and a silly-looking wispy goatee, dark glasses shading his eyes even though it was nighttime. A poncho of some sort was his main piece of clothing cut with bright slashes of color.

What a weirdo.

"You were in that river for quite a while, kiddo. Very lucky Chino found you when she did as literally five more minutes and you would've died. Kind of a miracle you're alive now, despite that."

The man squatted next to him and rearranged the blankets that had fallen in his struggle. Naruto flinched back, not even understanding why. Something wasn't right and he wasn't sure he was safe; so panic seemed appropriate.

The man put his hands up.

"Take it easy kid, you need to stay warm or the hypothermia won't get any better. Besides, why hurt you now after Chino begged me to save you?"

Something about the way he said that and the grin that used way too many teeth seemed...off. Naruto took in the campsite, noting the horses and wagon and make-shift home they'd set up with tarps crisscrossed to keep the wind out, tied to trees covered in fresh drifts of snow. Clearly, they were still in the Land of Iron. Everything rushed into his brain, the massacre, the dead and dying. Shinobi boogie-men stalking him. They needed to leave, like yesterday.

This man didn't understand what had happened.

Furu. Taza. Mifune. Ouran. Yojimbra.

A litany of names blasted through his skull, scourging him like a flail. Dead. Dead like he would be if the Seifuku-sha caught him, or Orochimaru, or those Mist ANBU.

All of it flashed into and out of his head, Naruto quickly exhausting himself with how overwhelmed he was; he didn't even know if Kurama won that fight against the Seifuku-sha. If Kurama won, would that mean Naruto was safe? If he didn't… well, anybody that can win against the greatest of the walking calamities, the Nine-tailed Fox, wouldn't be stopped by anything in the world and Naruto…

Naruto would be dead.

Maybe not today, maybe not even a year from now, but at some point, he'd be dead. Frankly, Naruto didn't know if he was even still useful to anyone now that he didn't contain a bijuu in his stomach. Spooling out in his mind, thousands of different possibilities, horrible alternate futures where he ended up dead in a ditch somewhere, cascaded through his addled mind.

Naruto wasn't dead.

That was thanks to this man and his daughter.

"T-thank y-you…?"

The man's smile was bright, even in the limited light.

"En, En Oyashiro kid. That little lady," he pointed at a bundle on the ground near the wagon. Only some short, tufted blonde hair poked up above the blankets bunched up around her shoulders.

"...is Chinoike. Chino for short!"

Naruto struggled to sit up against a nearby rock. En helped him up with a guiding hand and a sigh. Naruto knew he was a bad patient, Furu had always said so every time he so much as scraped his knee and started moaning to whoever would listen. Mifune just had that patient look on his face that he got whenever people complained about this or that.

Old man…

He must've had a thousand-yard stare because En looked serious and quiet, settling himself cross-legged in front of the blonde Uzumaki. Waiting.

How much did he tell?

What did he even really know for sure?

Iron's Shogun was dead, that much Naruto knew. They couldn't have kept Mifune from fighting unless he was unable to do so and Mifune's sheer presence would've turned all of that around if he'd been alive. The old man's strength was unreal. The Seifuku-sha though, that man was on another level.

So what to tell Mr. Oyashiro?

Naruto stared at En. En stared at this child who washed up from a river. Could Naruto trust this man? He'd saved him. Used some type of medical knowledge to keep him alive when, by all rights, he should be dead. Naruto knew that for certain. Naruto had been thoroughly impaled. He remembered the feel of the blade sliding through his ribcage, entering vital soft parts. The feel of the burning poison of some kind that had seemed to paralyze him. The cold grip of death and then gliding into the water so smoothly, light shining in bars through the open water.

Honesty was important, integral to honorable 'comportment,' something that Mifune believed was almost as important as his very life. On the other hand, how likely was it that En was an agent of the Seifuku-sha? Naruto realized he didn't have much of a choice if he needed to impress upon En the importance of leaving immediately. The man wouldn't uproot himself and his daughter without a strong enough reason.

But he couldn't get anything out. His mouth worked, but nothing came out besides a croak.

Everything, the enormousness of the last few hours, days? Rose up inside him like a monster and all his feelings bottlenecked and burst out of him in incoherence. The nine-year-old found himself crying, shivering, with cold snot around his mouth like a child. Stop it! Stop being a baby!

This isn't how shinobi act!

Some harsh voice shouted him down, that he wasn't a shinobi, couldn't be, he was broken, crippled, forever held apart from the beautiful radiance and power of chakra.

But Naruto couldn't help the crying. A dam had burst and nothing would stop it up again.

Everyone he cared about was probably dead. If not from Orochimaru or the Seifuku-sha, then from that Demon Fox's rampage. A rampage Naruto had unleashed. Naruto simply sagged, numb, staring sightlessly at the fire.

Maybe Kurama killed them all...

At that, his mouth quirked stuck between a smile and a snarl. En, unbeknownst to Naruto, gave a speculative if worried frown. But that fierce warmth, anger in an echo of the purity of Kurama's titanic, all-encompassing rage, ran through him, shook off some of the lingering haze of the cold, stopped his crying for the moment at least. The thought that Kurama may have butchered his enemies, torn them to shreds, gave him a disturbingly warm glow.

Perhaps this was pointless? Worrying about potentially dead enemies?

En patted him gingerly on the back.

"There, there, that is an entirely normal reaction to a near-death, child."

Abruptly, Naruto remembered himself and where he was and who he was with. He tried to match his breathing to a rote number system, picturing a box in his head with numbers one through four on each edge like Taza taught him. One, two, three, four. Box breaths. One, two, three, four. Four in, four out, counted sequentially until his head, which had felt stuffed full of wool and almost swollen, cleared a bit and he could focus his eyes properly.

The night was dark and it pressed in against him like a palpable thing, the only light a dim one coming from the half-stoked fire. En's hands fluttered, dropping from his half-hearted patting like he wasn't sure what his hands should be doing now that he wasn't bringing Naruto back to life.

Naruto, clear of mind or as close as he was going to get right now, realized he couldn't be sure of En Oyashiro or what his motives were so the best way forward was to say nothing of what had happened and proceed with a simple, and therefore believable, lie. If the man even asked, that is.

Naruto had trouble swallowing from the skin scraped raw in his throat, but he felt it was important to say something. He was alone in the world, now. An inventory of what he had on him still could wait until later.

"T-thanks."

En was quiet, staring off into the fire.

"For...saving me. Thank you."

The man started. A grin that didn't seem at all real found its way back onto En's face. Musing, Naruto found it a bit odd the man still had his sunglasses on when it was pitch black out. Truth be told, that was low on the list of weird things he'd seen or experienced the last few days. Had he dreamed that conversation with a woman who called him a 'seed?' All he could recall were flashes of white bone and robes of the purest white silk. Had there been blood-red eyes or was he confusing that with the Hokage from earlier? Three eyes?

"Any medical ninja who follows the Code would've done the same. I just happened to be the one here, able to assist."

Naruto perked up. Ninja? An iryounin, he thought they were called?

Naruto knew several samurai who specialized in iryounin techniques. Healing is one of the only 'ninja' things that the samurai didn't frown on. That statement seemed in line with what he knew of them. En took up a long, straight stick fire-darkened from repeated use, to poke and prod the embers into a new life.

"Despite how certain I seemed in front of my dearest Chino here, I was not at all certain you'd pull through. You, my young friend, are both stubborn of mind and strong of body to survive in there as long as you must have been."

En hesitated, glasses flashing reflectively and Naruto caught a glimpse of what must've been pinkish eyes.

Maybe a trick of the light?

He didn't quite know what to say to that, so he opted to say nothing. Naruto warred with himself. It was rude to just… leave. It didn't seem right after the man saved him, but the longer he stayed the more danger both En and Chino would be in if someone was indeed pursuing him; which by no means had an answer.

Orochimaru was definitely still out there, at the very least.

This seemed a circular path of thinking that he couldn't decide on; how much time could he really afford to waste here resting? Could he even get anywhere without En and Chino's help? The boy couldn't make out any identifying landmarks besides the basic fact that En pulled him out of the Zainon River, so they could be anywhere from the mouth of it near the Land of Snow or towards lake Ototo to the south, in the Land of Fire. Though Naruto doubted he'd have survived that long of a distance unconscious and hypothermic. There was still snow on the ground, so they couldn't be too far from Iron. But perhaps he'd lost track of the month and it was snowing elsewhere?

Naruto knew he should've paid more attention to his lessons on geography. But again, he doubted that assertion.

On the whole of it, he couldn't be certain of anything and that was ultimately what decided the matter for him; he wouldn't get far on his own, not weak and without a food source and no weapon, so he'd find out where En was headed and decide from there.

"I don't know how you ended up in a freezing river, nor where your family might be, or what you might be intending now… but you are welcome to travel with Chino and me for as long as you wish.

En laughed.

"I could never leave a child alone in the wilderness without some help, especially after I've gone through the trouble of saving you."

Naruto almost let out a relieved sigh. As much as he wanted to leave, alone, there was no way that was going to happen with no food, no water, and no knife. He was having difficulty formulating how he would ask to travel with En without going into the reason he had plunged a ridiculous height into a treacherous, freezing river without dying.

How could even explain what had happened?

"Thanks, Mr. Oyashiro."

"Don't mention it."

Naruto shifted in his blankets, feeling the chill.

"I feel like all I've been doing since I woke up is thanking you. If you guys need anything," Naruto scratched his head.

Expressing gratitude was hard; Naruto hated when people did him favors. It honestly felt like his whole life was one big favor. Naruto knew Mifune wasn't his real grandfather. He knew, for instance, that the old Hokage had asked Mifune to look after Naruto as a favor. Taza, Furu, Yojimbra, sure, they might've loved him in their own way, that didn't change the fact they'd looked after him because Mifune had told them too. The same thing with Master Ouran.

Apprenticeships didn't come around all that often and Naruto knew he wasn't the greatest student in the world; he struggled to pay attention some times and found listening to be hard for long stretches of time, which is what Fuin-smithing required. He worked hard, but only on things he cared about. Naruto knew exactly what his issues were, but didn't know much about how to fix them.

But En had saved him, not because he was told too, but because it was the right thing to do; that meant Naruto owed him.

"I don't know what I could do to repay you for saving my life, but I'd love to do something!"

With a long look at the little girl sleeping soundly next to them, En sounded thoughtful as he spoke haltingly.

"Chino and I need no thanks really, it's been fascinating studying a boy as damaged as you are. I've been teaching her everything I know about iryou-jutsu. The medical profession really needs all the skilled folk it can get and it's never too early to start learning I've always said. But… if you really are serious?"

En turned his full attention to Naruto; it was like a lighthouse that had been scanning with its lamp had alighted on a boat in distress. Naruto felt like the boat with the heat of the powerful lamp turned on him.

"I am serious-"

He cut off. It took an embarrassingly long time to process what En had said. Naruto scooted back and went cold all over, hair standing up. What?

"How…? What do you mean...damaged?"

"Fascinating. Truly fascinating what has happened to you, you poor, poor thing."

En had risen from his seat, looming over him, light glinting off his sunglasses. Naruto scooted back but realized he was stuck wrapped as he was in his blankets. This conversation had taken a turn that Naruto had a hard time processing. Fear had taken root inside his heart and it made his pulse race. What did this man want with him?

"As I was healing you with my jutsu, I received information on the state of your body and noticed something I previously thought was impossible. That someone-anyone-could've survived the kind of sheer devastation to their chakra network that you have."

Naruto watched in horrified, curious fascination as En spread his hands out like he was trying to make a shadow-puppet, two hands locked together by the thumbs and spread apart like the tendrils of a thousand-arm that dwelled in the sea. He had tried to reach out to his chakra, but it slipped through his fingers; close, but his power might as well have been a thousand miles away. Now, where he had once sensed his tenketsu as a man might have felt the muscles in his ear when wiggling it, there was a terrible sensation similar to the loss of a limb; those phantom pains men talked about when Master Ouran and he fitted fuin-metal replacements for a lost limb. If Naruto understood what En was talking about, nobody was supposed to have survived what he went through.

En knelt in front of Naruto, a dark shape against a darker night.

"If you truly want to repay me…"

A hand reached out.

"You'll let me study you."

The dark shape moved quickly and Naruto moved, sensing the intention before the man moved. It wasn't enough. A hand, strong and chakra-powered, slammed against his mouth and stifled the quick scream while the other was enveloped in a green glow as it pressed against his temple. Struggling, but realizing it wouldn't be enough. Naruto watched En smiling as black shadows edged in on his vision and closed in all around. What the hell? The man saves him, takes care of him, promises he can come with them, then does this?

I escaped the burning ruins of my life, the death of the people I care about, and I die like this?

But no one answered.

Nothingness.


For eight days and nights, he counted.

Naruto was awake and aware and utterly helpless, frozen in some sort of stasis. He couldn't even roll his eyes to look at his surroundings, not that there was anything to see. Pitch black, the place he'd apparently been stuffed into was a storage of some sort. Jars and boxes jostled against him while the wagon rumbled and swayed, occasionally thumping against what he could only surmise was rocky ground. Panic was a constant companion as his mind conjured all kinds of horrible endings for him.

Out of the pan and straight into the fire, Naruto thought bitterly.

It was incredibly difficult not to wallow in self-recrimination, thinking of the dozens of things he could've done differently had he just been less of an idiot and stupidly trusting. Though, he couldn't help but think that he could be forgiven, kind of, since the guy who had just kidnapped him for who knows what perverted schemes had actually also saved his life. There was nothing he could do now but think about all the things he had done wrong. Mifune would probably have said something vaguely wise that sounded like it belonged in a motivational poster. Some form of, 'stop focusing on the problem and hone in on the solution.' But with no chakra, no ability to break whatever it was that was holding him, Naruto could only hopelessly spin his wheels with visions of escape. Panic was a constant companion, clawing at his throat.

That left…

Well, it left him with waiting time. He was waiting for his moment. Naruto, on the whole, was not a patient kid. It took ten minutes or so to brew Chava and every time he was squirming with irritation, Mifune would completely disregard his inability to sit in a seat for that ten minutes without wiggling. Just constant repetitions of the worst word in the entire common language, 'patience.'

But here he was, forced to be patient.

Patiently waiting for your own potential death was not something Naruto found he wanted to ever get used to, so from now on…

I'll never let someone get the drop on me again, he thought fiercely.

But, without chakra, it was a vain hope. That led him to really think about...it.

His condition.

Naruto knew for certain he still had chakra because people died without at least a bare minimum of the life-energy remaining in their systems. He knew next to nothing besides the basics of the chakra regulatory system. Mifune hadn't considered it imperative to teach him, nor had Taza or Furu. They claimed it would be something covered in differing depths later in his training, depending, as they said, on whether he chose to truly become a samurai and take the Oath, along with whatever else that entailed. There were some secrets, Taza had said, that simply couldn't be shared before the Oath. Naruto also knew that Kurama had everything to do with what had happened. Maybe Kurama had been a part of him for so long that he'd… grown together with him somehow? Ripping apart like that had to... well, now it made a lot more sense.

It was as good a guess as he could make, not knowing much about how it had happened, what fuin had been used, or anything of that nature. Though he still could read the fuin, that didn't do him much good without more specifics.

Come to think of it-

His thoughts were cut off when light struck his now-sensitive eyes. Over En's shoulder, as he loomed over him, Naruto could make out twilight. Chino was probably asleep. The man picked him up like a package, transporting him to the ground. Shoulder-first, he thudded into the -now- dirt with a grunt, but still couldn't move, forced to lie there awkwardly as En rolled him over. The glasses-wearing lunatic simply smiled at Naruto, helpless like a dead fish in a market waiting for the buyer.

The man claimed to want to study him and that was exactly what he did. For hours, Naruto stayed pinned like he was part of a dead bug collection as En probed him with chakra, attempting, he thought, to repair the links between his network and the tenketsu that allowed the expression of chakra in techniques. The only real sound was half-heard mutters about things Naruto couldn't understand. Something about how 'directionless' chakra permeated his body.

"...regenerate the pathways."

"Almost impossible…?"

Suddenly, Naruto could move, but only his arms.

"I'm giving you two minutes to take a piss."

Naruto could only nod.

Legs suddenly working, Naruto slowly walked behind a tree and relieved himself.

Re-tightening his drawstrings, he took off as stealthily as he could, while running like Kurama was chasing him. Naruto made it only as far as a not-to-distant tree-lined slope, maybe fifty feet, before something impacted his head and everything went black.

Fuck.


This process, completely hidden from Chino, continued for a time that Naruto felt sure was longer than a month, but was probably more like two weeks. How far could we travel in two weeks? The length of the continent maybe? He tried to find out where he was, but most attempts gave him a glimpse of forest or plain or desert, very little snow now. Most forests looked much like another and if you've seen one plain, you've usually seen most of them. En never seemed to make any progress either with Naruto's chakra system. The whole thing was a weird feeling where he sometimes hoped the man really did make progress because that would mean he was a step closer to regaining his control and power. That power meant safety. Naruto gave himself even odds against En if he'd had his chakra back. Most of En's ministrations resulted in endless pain where his 'coils' used to be. Whatever that was! Naruto just knew En using chakra on it hurt like a sonuvabitch.

But he was a babe in the woods, else.

Thankfully the man wasn't one of those child-touching freaks Taza sometimes joked about. Naruto frowned at that. That wasn't funny at all now that he was at the mercy of a strange man. Naruto shivered, thoughts turning to literally any other topic. All he could do was think and wasn't that hilarious and terrible?

This really was Yomi.

Most of his time was now spent staring at the fuin that held him, attempting to puzzle out a method of defeating it. Futile, for the most part, he did learn that opposite couplings of fuin-symbols and imbued with chakra would deactivate them. Naruto found this disappointing because he couldn't summon his chakra at all without white-hot fiery pain stabbing throughout his body like knives when he strained too far.

So, no go on that front.

But the longer he stayed patient, the more he realized that the man thought Naruto completely helpless, and that could be of more benefit than he had initially realized. After his first escape attempt, he'd tried every night thereafter with no better results. He hadn't attacked the man but simply tried to escape.

On foot, with no chakra powering his legs, there was no contest.

Maybe, just maybe… if he attacked instead of fleeing, the man would be caught off-guard and Naruto could kill him and escape. Naruto frowned. There had been no squeamishness about his cold-blooded thought to murder the man who'd saved him, who had a cute daughter that seemed every inch an innocent, and well, beyond holding him captive and studying Naruto against his will, had fed him and treated him well. But Naruto was a prisoner and that fact was plain and weighed against his continued well-being and survival. Was he supposed to wait until the man researched everything he wanted about Naruto?

Decided he couldn't heal him and… then what?

Dispose of him?

Naruto wouldn't wait for that, couldn't take that risk. He had to act. It was En or him, Chino be damned.

Three nights after he'd made his decision to stand and fight consequences be damned, En made an early stop. Naruto couldn't see or really hear anything stuffed in the hidden floorboard storage space inside the wagon as he'd been. So, the cessation of the motion of the vehicle was his only clue something was different. That, and a strange buzz above and beyond what he'd normally hear. The wilderness was quiet, usually. This place was not.

Cramped in that terrible, confining closeness, Naruto stared up at En as he opened the back of the wagon and pried up the loose boards to reveal Naruto's unwashed pale face. En hauled on his bonds, tied around his wrists, and manhandled him into a seated position on a box of something or other. The fuin was loosened and Naruto slowly started to be able to move; his face, first, then fingers and toes, then arms and legs. Bonds were still tight, however, and that gave him a limited amount of movement to work with. Naruto's mind raced, this was an unexpected and early opportunity to attack-and in the daytime!

Naruto slowed his racing thoughts. Escape was close, but he had to play his cards right. To fight against someone who had access to chakra… that was dangerous. But the man wasn't a fighter, Naruto could tell a little about him just from the way he handled himself. Stronger than he and faster too, but not a close-combat specialist by any means.

Naruto grinned internally, trying not to let it spread to his face.

"We're here boy and you're lucky too, I was getting a little frustrated with your deformity. No progress… what a pity."

But the sight of what was over En's shoulder distracted and derailed his entire plan. The man had been talking, but Naruto barely heard over the beautiful buildings lining the large square, the tree-lined walk on all sides. En Oyashiro had brought them to a mansion set on a sunny, despite the solid covering of snow, tree-lined walk, seemingly made up of at least five stories of building towering above them like some sandstone gargoyle. An inclined ramp, gated with cold iron, lay to the right of his vision, almost at the edge of where he could see. Naruto spotted a canal blocked by railways that led passed the outside of the mansion, snaking around into the distance. Massive towers, some looking like glass, speared the sky in the background.

Where the hell was he?

En yanked on the bonds securely fastening his wrists together, nothing on his legs to trip him which Naruto was secretly grateful for, and pulled him towards the ramp where a man, dressed like some fancy butler, met them behind the bars, looking for all the world like he'd rather be anywhere else other than in En Oyashiro's grinning presence.

"Argyn, I presume? En Oyashiro, world's greatest arms dealer with a special…" En paused, considering, though it was tough to tell as he twisted away from Naruto and had those damn sunglasses on, "...gift to Shin Toruku, Master of the Gutter."

The man named Argyn was unmoved and said nothing, but bowed and Naruto almost fell as En jerked him forward to follow the butler as he opened the gate with a wide thump of and clang of shifting iron, proceeding down the ramp after the retreating soft velvet jacket of Argyn. The blood in his legs hadn't been circulating and there were pins and needles feeling surging all throughout.

Gah!

There was a mold smell that was strong as they went down, along with something heavily metallic that Naruto couldn't quite place. The quiet was eerie as well, with just the soft footsteps of the three of them to echo strangely mutely. Must be the sandstone? Naruto wondered who Shin Toruku was and what the hell The Gutter was and what the hell is an arms dealer? For a mad, heart-pounding terrible second Naruto thought that En Oyashiro meant to sell his arms to this man; for what awful purpose he couldn't discern. What would a man do with someone's arms? Arm transplants?

But no, that'd be ridiculous right? To sell people's arms?

Naruto couldn't keep quiet.

"Hey asshole, you aren't trying to sell my arms are ya? I swear to god I'll beat you with them the second I get outta these ropes!"

Naruto snarled and Argyn looked back at them slightly horrified and scandalized. To be fair, Naruto's voice was loud and it echoed something fierce.

But En just laughed and laughed till he looked like he'd be sick with it.

"No, boy. An arms dealer sells weapons. That's what I do. Sometimes those weapons are people."

At this, Naruto just felt more confused. He sold weapons? Sometimes people were weapons? Did this guy think that he was some kind of weapon? Well, if I still had Kurama that would be uncomfortably close to the truth. Seifuku-sha would like this guy. What assholes.

How could he possibly still think that with how crippled Naruto was? He couldn't even channel chakra through his body. Naruto had to laugh and that had both Argyn and En look at him funny.

What a joke this all was, the crippled kid was a weapon…

"Whatever. You're an idiot if you think I'll be worth anything."

En just smiled at him like he knew something Naruto didn't.

"I've got good instincts kid and they tell me you've got something. I just hope Shin sees it too. I believe he will… and he'll pay me my usual fee for it."

En ruffled Naruto's wild, straggly hair and seemed strangely affectionate. Naruto wanted to throw up.

"You're gonna make me some money kid."

Argyn stopped and looked back at the two of them until they both fell silent.

Whatever was on the other side of the massive wooden double-doors, criss-crossed with thick bands of metal, wasn't something Naruto wanted a part of and this was the last real chance in En's hands to make an escape. This mansion was in a nice area too, so that meant they were in a city of no small size, which also meant authorities and people he could convince to help him. On the off-chance he didn't want to involve authorities, he could also hide pretty well in a city, he figured.

But that meant he needed to escape and needed to do it now.

Summoning every scrape of pissed off fantasy rage-dream he'd been cooking up for the last two weeks, Naruto interlocked his fingers together to form a big ball and swung the collective weight of both of his fists with every ounce of strength straight into En Oyashiro's nutsack.

The man dropped with a squeak.

Naruto started sprinting back up the way he came, heedless of the incline, heedless of the pain already starting to cramp his calves and thighs, heedless of whatever Argyn might do. Feet pounding in frayed and dirty sandals, he tried not to trip as he came to a stop at the shut gate. Fuck! Frantic, he started to look for a mechanism and realized there was a slight indentation on his left and a switch poked out of the slit currently in the top position. Naruto pulled it and the door started to open.

Slowly. So slowly. Naruto felt his blood, his frantic heartbeat, pounding in his veins and ears.

Come on, come on, come on!

Pain similar to when he'd had Kurama ripped out of him burst in his veins and he tasted blood in his mouth. All over him, inside him, his blood seemed to boil in his veins. Naruto hadn't even realized he'd fallen or that he bit his tongue screaming or that he was screaming at all until the horrible echoing noise cut off and echoed still in the cavernous down ramp.

En was standing over him, glasses gone, blood-red eyes like a swamp toad, one slit pupil of a strange design staring daggers at him and boiling with a ruddy light.

En's voice and smile was colder than the Zainon in winter.

"I could kill you here and now, boil the blood in your veins boy… but I want my money. Let's go."

Shaky, stumbling, En grabbed the back of his shirt and dragged him back down the ramp, Argyn staring without a care in the world.

"If you are quite finished?"

Naruto glared at Argyn through the pain.

Prick.

For ten more minutes after passing through the big, barred door En, Argyn, and Naruto walked down and down, passing twists and turning corridors made from the same sandstone the rest of the building seemed to be produced from. A lot of the rooms seemed to be bedrooms of a sparse nature, or storage rooms with racks of wooden weapons, padded clothes on racks and mannequins, with servants that looked very different than Argyn roaming the corridors. A lot of dangerous looking men, covered in scars and leather and weapons seemed to be out and about and Naruto had to wonder what the hell En had gotten him into and why he wasn't more freaked out by this. His life currently seemed on an endless track of despair and terrible events; Mifune dead, friends probably dead, the closest people in his life dead and all in horrible ways. The best Naruto could say was that he wasn't dead yet.

Another of the barred iron doors squatted in front of them, except this one could fit two wagons through side-by-side. The corridor had widened perceptibly, Naruto noticed, but could only think this was where their ultimate destination would be. His fate would be decided, he thought rather dramatically, by what happened here.

The door opened and a wall of noise hit him.

With some shoving, prodding, and heavy-handedness on the part of En, the three of them entered a box-like area of low-walls from which Naruto, En, and Argyn could see down into the massive open-air arena. Cold chills crawled down his spine. What had he said? That's what I do. Sometimes those weapons are people. The realization hit him and Naruto swore at himself in his head about how stupid he was for not realizing. The man is selling me as a fighter to this Shin Toruku. The wash of noise made even his thoughts difficult to discern and rapidly shifting out of the way of rough-looking patrons clutching drinks and moving about the seating was all Naruto could contend with, let alone contemplate his future and a way out. Mentally, he relegated that task to future Naruto.

Argyn spoke loudly, to be heard over the din of screams and shouts and laughter and raucous yelling, deftly weaving in-and-out of the crowd.

"There is a match now, but Master Toruku will see you and the… boy… after. He bid you sit here and watch. I'll return to fetch you afterwards."

Argyn left them in a rather tight two-person box seating area, roped off and tagged with a sign warning away those who weren't supposed to be there. En settled himself comfortably and dragged Naruto down with a startled yelp into the seat next to him.

"Where's Chino? Does she know her dad is a gigantic prick and scum-bag?"

En seemed to ignore him, staring down the ten foot drop into the wide sandy arena to whatever it was that was going on down there. Judging by the shouts, it was a very one-sided affair. Wary of being subjected to whatever horrifying technique it was that felt like it boiled his blood, Naruto decided to keep his silence-for the moment.

It didn't last long.

"This Shin guy doesn't know I can't use chakra does he?"

En seemed like he was going to stay silent. But Naruto continued, hoping to open him up.

"Look, let's make a deal: I want to get to Konoha and definitely don't want to end up fighting for this guy, lots of money or no. I'm sure the Hokage would pay a bunch of money for-"

"The Hokage?"

En looked sharply over at him over his diamond-shaped glasses.

"Why would she want you?"

Naruto was taken aback. He sensed that maybe caution was a good thing here. He could tell En some things, but leave out others? Enough maybe to make him reconsider this deal with the Gutter-master?

"When you found me…"

Naruto suddenly found it hard to spit his whole ordeal out. Memories flashed and tears stung the edges of his eyes, he blinked hard trying to clear them. Taza. Furu. Mifune… Master Ouran.

"There was an attack on the Three Wolves in the Land of Iron. That's where I grew up. When you found me, Orochimaru had stabbed me and threw me into the Zainon. He wanted some orb thing. I don't know why."

En made a strangled sound.

Blue eyes met red as En took his glasses off.

"Why did Orochimaru, an infamous S-class Nukenin, not just kill you as easily as crushing a bug and take what he wanted?"

Naruto made a noise. Frustration or disgust or exasperation, even he couldn't tell.

"You think I know?"

En was silent for a time. Naruto stared at some brown swirls in the wood grain of the box-seat walls. They reminded him of the jutsu used to restrain Kurama down there in that hellscape of a cavern. He blinked and refocused on En.

The man was quiet for longer than Naruto thought he could be.

"Whatever. This just strengthens my reasons. Perhaps you'll be safer here in The Gutter than out on the streets."

En shrugged and cocked his head.

"You know why I wanted to sell you to Shin regardless of the fact that you're...crippled, as you say?"

Naruto cocked his head and was slow in responding, considering. He hadn't really any idea. Now he was curious.

"I dunno, trying to get one over on the guy?"

En laughed at that.

"No. Nobody gets one over on Shin. That guy is… well, let's just say nobody crosses the Guttermaster and lives. Twice as cunning as the Snake Sage and meaner than a river-lizard in summer heat. No, it's not about 'getting one over.'"

Naruto shrugged awkwardly, still bound.

"I give."

"You say you were stabbed by Orochimaru, yes?"

"Yes."

"And I healed you after pulling you out of the Zainon right?"

"...yes."

"You didn't have a sword wound on you when I found you."

Naruto stared.

"What?"

En nodded, satisfied. "I wasn't aware you were stabbed by a sword when I found you. I found that out just now. But when I probed you and took samples with my chakra scalpels, the very next day, sometimes within hours, you were completely healed. Remarkable."

En had seemed to relax as he spoke, using his hands as if excited by what he'd found. For all the guy was a gigantic scummy asshole, he wasn't a bad guy per se. Maybe he was just a big nerd for science. Who knows. Naruto mentally shook his head. Not a bad guy? What was he thinking? Asshole with a capital A.

Well fuck him for kidnapping me anyway. That does make him a bad guy, just… not the worst he'd experienced in the last twenty-four hours.

And didn't that say everything about his life currently?

"The most amazing thing is that that damage to your tenketsu and chakra pathways eventually will be healed-though I suspect it'll be a decade in coming given how extensive it is and the very nature of it is what is slowing down your healing of it. But it honestly would've killed absolutely one hundred percent of people. Except… apparently you."

En looked him up and down.

"My specialty is bloodline limits and I'm convinced that you have one focused on healing. There are limits to yours, obviously, but it's enough that I think Shin will make a strong fighter out of you. Longevity in battle is important and here far more so. Most Gutterknives don't last more than a year of bouts. The ones who do last… well, they become legends on the underground fighting circuit."

Naruto snorted feeling lost and not knowing what else to do.

"Who says I want to be a famous circuit fighter making other people money?"

"I did. And you will. Be making me money that is… when Shin buys you."

The match in front of them was wrapping up it seemed. Naruto looked down and noticed the only man standing had one side of his head shaved, steel grey and criss-crossed with scars. The man looked small from where Naruto sat. The other man was lying face down in a pool of rapidly expanding blood and missing a head. The shaved-head man had a wide-bladed odachi that looked more like an oar than a katana draped casually one-handed on his shoulder like it weighed nothing.

Scar guy was built like Master Ouran but looked to be much, much taller. Like a statue carved from mountain stone.

I pity the guy that fought him.

Two workers in rough laborers jerkins had come out and were dragging the dead guy by his ankles across the sand towards a wide opening in the lower arena wall. The man was rotating facing the dwindling and, from the sounds of it, half were disappointed and half were celebrating wildly. His arms were outstretched and a shit-eating grin spread across his face. Naruto could see it and his white teeth from where he sat. He revised his opinion. The guy wasn't small, it was just the distance playing with his perception.

"Master Oyashiro. It is a pleasure to have you in our establishment once again. It has been far too long."

What could only have been the infamous Shin Toruku stepped into view with Argyn at his side, same detached, slightly imperious face on full display. Argyn' face said that yes, it hadn't been long enough since the last time they'd seen En Oyashiro.

En calmly faced Shin and bowed low.

"I see that Seiryu has worked out well."

Shin glanced down at his fighter who, Naruto now saw, had strode over to a wash and water station that had been set up for him and was sluicing the blood off his face, hands, and chest. Naruto, even from this far away, saw his tattoo, an ungodly huge ink replica of some maned lizard-snake that wrapped his arms and chest. While he watched, muscles seemed to ripple under his skin as he moved and stretched, the tattoo moving with them.

Naruto swallowed. That guy was a monster.

"Most now refer call him the Lightning Dragon; fast, powerful, and skilled with a blade. A name is good advertising, which is why I tattoo them with signature animals. But you are not here about your previous offering, are you?"

En smiled.

"No, I'm here for more business."

En gestured to the bound blonde with one casual hand, as if he wasn't a person, but a good to be traded. Naruto tried to summon the feelings he'd felt earlier; anger, the hatred against En for taking advantage of him at his lowest, Naruto's gratitude at being saved by someone he'd thought was a good person. Anger at how much of an idiot he was for thinking so well of a stranger.

Instead, Naruto just felt a feeling of loss that he couldn't put his finger on, like a piece of him had drifted away while he wasn't paying attention. He knew he needed to start thinking, start planning, to get himself out of the obvious hot water he was currently residing in, but he couldn't summon the energy. What did it matter?

Argyn was a statue, but Shin Toruku, clad in beautifully-intricate robes of dark geometric designs that seemed to purposefully make him stand out in a crowd, walked up to Naruto and stood looming over him. Eyes like obsidian dissected and weighed him, seemed to see through him as if through a farseeing lens. Those eyes belonged to insects: cold and inhuman and unfeeling. But the smile was all warmth that didn't reach those eyes.

Shin snapped his fingers.

A line of kids were led out, bedraggled and slumped like the dead, bound and linked by ropes to a few of the huge men Naruto had seen in passing in the corridor. One particular specimen of what had to be a kid, though that was hard to believe seeing his size, reminded Naruto of a mountain, roughly a head and shoulders taller than the Lightning Dragon.

What did they feed that kid?

Naruto himself often been mistaken for a girl with his longish blonde hair and delicate features. He preferred to call them rugged, but Furu and Taza would just laugh at him and Mifune would tell him some bullshit about looks not being everything. Naruto would just be grumpy. Getting called, 'pretty' was not at all a compliment when one wanted to be a badass ninja.

Judging by the considering look that that man was giving the large newcomer, and the lionfish smile that followed, the bigger the kid, the better the competition and that didn't seem like a good thing for the kid given that he didn't even seem to be paying attention.

Naruto's attention snapped back to the man looming over him. Shin slowly walked forward until En let go of the rope and Naruto's back hit the low wall behind which lay a ten foot drop to the sandy floor of the Gutter.

Shin seemed to be talking to En, not Naruto. But the man's eyes never left his.

"You know how this works, En. We must see what they can do-though I know your ability to spot talent is impeccable, I reserve the right to observe. A tool that breaks the first time you use it isn't worth paying for, wouldn't you agree?"

En grinned at Naruto over Shin's shoulder.

What the hell are they-?

"I agree."

Shin shoved Naruto over the railing.


He had about a half-second to digest the swooping sensation in his stomach, and the pain of a palm strike, before he reacted to his impending impact, kicking his feet off the edge of the arena and turning his body over to land in an awkward crouch, face down, hands still tied at the front. He couldn't balance properly tied and fell over into the dirt after he landed, scrambling back up and trying to ignore the heat in his face.

The kids were looking at him, most with dead eyes, some openly sneering. The big one, the mountain, was following a flying bug with his eyes smiling. Something seemed...off about him now that Naruto was close enough to see his face.

Naruto gave them both; Shin and En, the one-finger salute. En clapped a palm to his face. Shin never shifted.

"Fuck you, En! I'm not playing your stupid games. And I don't give a shit who the hell this pervert is either, playing with a bunch of tied up kids!"

Shin lost his enigmatic smile. En looked near fit to bursting.

"Shut the hell up kid! You'll get yourself killed!"

Shin quirked an eyebrow at En with Argyn behind them looking apoplectic, a vein pulsed in his forehead. Naruto couldn't help but smile. Mifune said his ability to piss people off was a legendary ability in and of itself.

"Undo the bonds."

One of the rough men nodded and barked a command at another one who unsheathed a belt knife and started to cut the kids free. Those kids didn't seem to understand what to do with themselves; some just stood there, others tried to make a break for the entrance. The belt knife ended up in the kids back and Naruto tried not to flinch. The big kid simply followed the bug from earlier and Naruto struggled not to goggle at him.

Is this kid for real?

Shin stepped up and cleared his throat.

"My name is Guttermaster Shin Toruku. This place," he gestured at the huge stands and empty seats. "...is the Gutter. A place of glory. Of triumph. Of defeat. Of skill and bravery and wealth. Wealth garnered from legendary fighters and fantastic battles."

Naruto was eyeing the kids. Some seemed to rouse themselves at Shin's words. But most still stared at the dirt, beaten down in mind and body. He shivered. That was him a couple of hours ago. Was it still him, was he still beaten?

"The Gutter is also a place of death, blood… and eternal life."

One hand pointed at the tattooed warrior flanking them, he now had his huge single-edged, slightly curved blade resting openly on one shoulder.

"Seiryu was crowned by the people. He is a King here. Out there," Shin invested the words with heavy scorn, like anyone who thought life outside worth living was an idiot of epic proportions, "he meant nothing to anyone, a common laborer who didn't pay his debts and got sent to prison. Here?"

Seiryu screamed now, startling everyone but the Guttermaster and En. The scream more resembled some wild beast than a man. Terrifying. Tendons stood out on his forearms, muscles bulged in his arms and neck, veins pulsed. The man grinned at the frightened sheep shying back from him at his scream.

"Here, the people revel in his presence and he is given every comfort; women, gold, fine clothes and silks, a feather down bed, and all the food he could ever want. In exchange? He kills. He kills like a beautiful poet who speaks prose to a lover. He is a painter that only uses one shade: red!"

Shin shouted that last word; deep pride in his fighter coloring it.

"Seiryu earned his keep, earned his kingship, earned the people's respect with every fight, every masterful battle against the odds."

Shin was quiet. Every eye, even the men working for him, were not turned on the prisoner-turned-gladiator-hopefuls, but instead were staring up at Shin in adoration. Damn. Guy is nuts. Who'd want to fight for a living like this?

Caged like some animal and only brought out for people's entertainment?

A small voice, one that spoke only the uncomfortable truth, spoke up.

Isn't this what you wanted? Some version of it as a Shinobi?

Naruto protested internally, not listening to Shin's monologue. Shinobi life is different. They fight for a good cause. To make the world better. Not for honor though. Honor was a samurai ideal…

But you aren't a samurai, are you?

Shut up.

He tuned back in just in time to hear the final part of Shin's speech.

"...today you have an opportunity, no matter how you've come to me and to the Gutter, to take the first steps towards greatness, to train under my auspices, to become the next Seiryu, or Glordring, or Nakamura Giantsbane, or Settimana the Deathwhisper and have glory eternal! Everything you've ever wanted will be yours… when, if, you pass the training to become one of my legendary Gutterknives."

Everyone was silent, hanging on his words.

The men began to back away towards the entrance, leaning against the walls. Money exchanged hands. The kids started eyeing each other speculatively. One started crying. The big kid, I gotta stop calling him 'big kid' just wandered like he had no idea that shit was about to go down.

Naruto simply sat crouched like a frog on a lilypad.

They don't really expect us to… what? Try out like this is some recreational kiddie-league game? He went cold. Shin nodded to Seiryu. I don't think they want us to try out…

They want us to kill each other.

Seiryu smiled and cracked his neck, side-to-side. The blade made a thunk as it hit the ground, carving a deep divot.

Shin smiled too. It was not a nice smile.

"All you have to do… is survive!"

Seiryu became a blur as he sprinted towards the nearest victims.

They want us to survive him!