Chapter 7: Gutterknife
"Battle not with monsters lest you become one."
― Friedrich Nietzsche
/Unknown
/The Land of Fire
Naruto
Still crouched from where he'd fallen, Naruto didn't even notice that the crowds had thinned and gone. Instead, he stared transfixed at yet another butchery, more helpless than he'd been the first time, unfolding in front of his eyes.
In front of a crowd of dozens of people who stood still as statues, Seiryu practically sawed two kids in half who barely even stirred from where they stood, frozen in fear like livestock at the slaughter, top and bottom flying apart like a neatly cut sushi roll, that heavy single-edged blade went chop, chop.
Sand absorbed the red liquid seeping from wounds that some time ago Naruto wouldn't have been so familiar with; yet, limbs flew again as Seiryu kicked the second one off the end of his blade, like trash discarded out of a third-story window, different parts of them collapsing to the ground while Naruto stared, mesmerized by the fact he could see his reflection in the pool of scarlet spreading through the dirt.
Flashes of the attack on Iron paralyzed him; the tangy scent of blood, sickly sweet human meat stench, the screams of the kids who had reacted, three of them scrambling in different directions. All of it blended together in a noise that seemed to swell in his head like some orchestral piece reaching a crescendo.
Naruto bit back a scream, but couldn't stop the chaos in his head.
It was another voice, not the screams of the dead and dying, but the same one that had spoken as he had fallen into the Zainon River while fighting Orochimaru; if you could've called what he did fighting.
She was speaking to him.
The ball, orb, the prison, the thing had glowed, hadn't it; then gone dark right as he'd fallen?
A feminine voice echoed with power in his head.
My Seeds butcher each other and call it entertainment.
Naruto imagined full, red lips curving.
How...barbaric. The world hasn't come very far since I fell asleep, has it?
Echoing, the voice rang in his head like a struck bell, reaching inside him, flicking switches, his body and scalp tingling.
They need a strong hand to guide them, to suppress their baser instincts.
Animals need to be trained to be useful, after all.
Suddenly, the voice was bloodthirsty and demanding.
I demand you annihilate him, Seed!
The voice cut through his panic and he realized he was breathing like he'd run a marathon. The screaming in his head was gone. Mifune and Taza had spoken of this moment; the moment he would witness death and things that made average moments in life unimportant. They claimed it was the worst thing imaginable-Naruto, very young, had scoffed and thought only of the glory of vanquishing a foe like in the stories, not of the aftermath, not of what death really meant.
Mifune had been patient; when the battle sickness comes upon you as it does us all, just remember what we've taught you. Breath. In and out. Count while you do it. Naruto had rolled his eyes but followed their instructions just as he was doing now.
One, breath; two, breath; three, breath; four breath.
With each number, he imagined a box in his minds-eye and he followed the lines, each point of the box a number, as the chaos continued around him. When he was calm, he couldn't help but focus on the fact that his internal voice wasn't female and this one, this voice talking about seeds of all things, was a voice he'd heard before. Kurama had spoken to him once or twice, just like this, but he was gone now and he'd been, well, sounded male. The whole thing felt ridiculous; he couldn't afford to go crazy on top of everything else. There were more important things going on than voices in his head, so he refocused.
Why do I have a voice in my head?
But the voice was silent now, gone. He waited to see if it would speak.
Hello?
Most of the kids were down. The voice was a problem for future Naruto.
One kid, larger than the others, with big ears, but considerably smaller in size than the mountainous boy still huddled watching that stupid bug was growling at Seiryu and dodging him by throwing a smaller child at the murderous Gutterknife. Naruto watched the byplay as Seiryu was focused on someone other than him.
"So you throw your compatriots at me in hopes I'll be distracted, do you?"
The kid sneered.
"Hidin' behind a big knife dun't make you strong. I'd crush you wit outa sword!"
The Lightning Dragon laughed and stabbed his massive blade into the sandy ground where it quivered.
Ears, as Naruto started calling the boy who'd spoken, faster than Naruto thought he was capable of moving, threw himself at Seiryu, two large hands outstretched in a grapple. The man just grinned and grabbed both of those wrists, twisting his body and hurling Ears a half-dozen feet to land in a crumpled heap against the outer wall where he just groaned.
"Pft."
Turning, Seiryu spoke in a loud, carrying voice to Shin.
"This is the best crop you've got this year?"
Shin shrugged, smiling.
Seiryu seemed to spot the tiny mountain of a boy in the next moment.
Naruto didn't know why, but he urged the kid in his head to do something, to fight back. If anybody could, it would be the seven-foot-tall behemoth. Naruto named him Tiny in his head and Tiny was actively doing nothing more than staring off into space and muttering, smiling slightly at things Naruto couldn't see. Crazy? Not all there, perhaps? Naruto had met more than one person who had several screws loose.
At least he wasn't fucking around with bugs anymore.
The first fist the size of a dinner plate took Tiny in the face and the startled cry that escaped Tiny's mouth was that of a small child, not the immense giant of a man he looked like. Tiny curled up, a boulder in the middle of the arena, as Seiryu proceeded to beat the kid within an inch of his life. Booted feet made meaty thudding sounds along with the slapping of knuckles against flesh and bone going along with the wet splash of blood. Whimpers poured out of this kid and Naruto watched and wondered why the hell the kid wasn't doing something!
"Hey, knock it off!"
Naruto hadn't realized he'd stood up and shouted until he found Seiryu staring at him. He found that he was breathing like the bellows in a forge. What is wrong with me?
That voice, the one that echoed with Authority, pounded in his head.
Annihilate him, Seed!
He shoved it down; no time for falling apart.
Naruto struggled to reconcile the idea of letting the kids dig their own graves and not rocking the boat, but Mifune's face was staring at him; Taza and Furu and his friends and Master Ouran were judging him from where they lurked in his head, phantoms now, and he couldn't take their staring.
Accusatory.
Besides, that kind of cowardice hadn't ever been him, even when it wasn't cowardice, but just being smart. He told people he didn't have much use for common sense and he proved that now. Mifune's words that he always threw in his face whenever he did anything retaliatory to the other kids he played with thundered through his head.
Your actions speak loudly about who you want to be; so let us talk no more about what a good person is and be one, Naruto. I shouldn't have to have this conversation with you because character is what you do when no one is watching.
That was usually followed by Mifune marching him right back to make amends.
Seiryu was in his face in an instant and the block that Naruto threw up in response to the straight jab at his face surprised him more than it surprised the Lightning Dragon.
Even blocking the man's blow hurt. But Naruto was no stranger to pain.
Not anymore.
Time seemed to skip a beat as they sized each other up; Naruto's violet eyes meeting the almost black of Seiryu's. There was no way he was going to be able to match this juggernaut blow-for-blow, or even win necessarily, but as long as he wasn't beating on that poor defenseless idiot or chopping up any more kids, that was fine with him.
Naruto blocked the second blow, a shockingly poor attempt at a grapple. Naruto backpedaled using his open hands to redirect the shots away from his midline as Mifune had taught him, not directly confronting the heavy blows, turning them instead, but the next hit broke through, smashing him in the chest. Pain radiated outward from a spiral around the impact on his sternum and he found himself moving, then blinking up at the hundreds of lights hanging from strings across the ceiling of the arena.
Some forgotten instinct, newly rediscovered, told him to roll.
He barely got out of the way of a fist that sent dirt flying into his face as he jerked his head to the side and threw his body into a sideways roll and then into a scramble that saw him on his feet and backing towards a weapon rack against the far wall of the Gutter. Seiryu was crouched with one dirt-covered fist in a small hole in the ground where Naruto's head had been.
No chakra, I'm still exhausted from… everything, this guy has been fighting non-stop and is at the top of his game, and I'm also probably a third his age and less than half his size. That impact crater was more than brute strength.
I thought the Gutter didn't allow chakra-usage?
Naruto swallowed as he assessed his chances.
They were not good.
But Shin said survive…
So perhaps this was just a test of endurance against long odds?
Seiryu was in his face swinging. Naruto blanked his mind and reacted. The first three or four exchanges were fine, wincing with each one that made painful welts on his wrists and arms, ducking under a haymaker that would've taken his head off. But the blows suddenly got faster, Naruto struggled to keep up, but one, then two, then three broke through; the first took him in the shoulder, spinning him, the next took him in the side, breaking a rib, he knew it was the ribs because he suddenly had a hard time breathing without pain, and the last saw him again on his back staring up at the ceiling, swelling over his eye making it hard to see. Those string lights taunted him, twinkling.
Fuck.
Naruto heard the man walking towards him, heavy booted steps.
The blonde felt eyes on him and turned his head from where he lay prone. The boy, Tiny, more mountain than a kid, had bloody snot covering his nose, mouth, and chin and he'd been crying, eyes bloodshot from burst vessels. Maybe it was the dregs of Chava Mifune went on about, scourging him like a flail; but, it was that something in Tiny's gaze that made Naruto want to get up.
Hope.
So he got up.
An age passed as he levered himself up, body one huge knot of agony and watched Seiryu stalk towards him like some jungle cat. Naruto needed an edge. If this was a no-chakra contest with swords, he'd wager that he'd have a better shot at coming out on top, but this guy was definitely cheating and was using Reinforcement techniques for sure. Also, his muscles had muscles.
I need an edge!
He didn't have time to think; a half-formed plan in his mind.
Seiryu was just there.
Naruto ducked, rolled, then lunged as fast as he could while bracing himself on the man's neck, whipping his knee out in a textbook knee bomb and slamming it into a cluster of nerves in the man's thigh. The impact vibrated his whole body as the man's muscles felt like hitting a goddamn tree.
The goal was accomplished.
Seiryu dipped to one knee with a grunt, sliding sideways on an unresponsive leg. Still, he attempted a lazy grapple with one swiping paw, but Naruto had already started disentangling himself in a backward handspring, sprinting away from him at top speed which, given his lack of access to chakra and a definitely-broken rib, was pitifully slow. More of a limping lope than anything.
I need to get to the swords!
A blow took him in the back of the head before he'd gotten three-quarters of the way there, stunning him. He fell, his body a menagerie of various aches and pains, the exhaustion of everything catching up with him. Seiryu pounded on him with chakra-enhanced punches. The sheer agony of breaking bones and tenderized flesh couldn't be anything other than that. Inside, Naruto felt something give way, a new kind of agony flooded his body. Naruto heard a rattle as one hand hit something, a stand, maybe, and heavy items fell in a haphazard heap near him.
Vision wavering, he didn't think the tattooed brute was focused on anything other than killing him. Naruto lashed out, gripping the leather-wrapped hilt of a longsword that had spilled onto the ground with the rest of the rack of weapons, and rolled himself and the blade around just in time to take the man's kick, intended to stomp his face into a pulp, on the flat of the blade which did exactly nothing to stop the sheer force.
The blade rebounded away, smacking him in the chest with the mirror-polished steel, threatening to yank the hilt and his only means of safety right out of his hand. His whole body ached something fierce; a twinge in his leg, a dull ache in his side and face and knuckles, not to mention the dangerous something in his body that had broken from the earlier beating.
I really gotta stop falling flat on my ass.
He didn't give up though.
There is no way I'm letting this guy kill me without a goddamn fight.
He's got nothing on Orochimaru!
Naruto snarled at Seiryu and swiped at him, the razor-edge tip missing the man's neck by inches and flipped onto his feet, that almost sent him spiraling with vertigo, but he worked through it, launching into a set of swings designed to push Seiryu back.
The man was wary. That was good.
Blood dripped from Naruto's mouth and ears and he swiped at the sticky liquid with a hand, the other held the hilt of his weapon steady, sword pointed at Seiryu's face. The man's face, unperturbed by the cold steel pointed at him, was set in a savage snarl.
Naruto couldn't even process how fast the man moved, but suddenly his sword was flying out of a numb hand and a paw the size of a dinner plate was closing around his throat, squeezing. Spots danced and Naruto struggled to breathe. He beat and battered with weak fists, but without his chakra, he might as well be an infant fighting a full-grown Grizzly bear.
Naruto blacked out.
He woke on the ground, again, to the sound of clapping and pleased noises from the box where Shin stood and En leaned on the railing. Seiryu was crouched, leaning over him, so close he could smell the fetid breath. Burning, his face felt hot from the slaps Seiryu had given him, full open-handed blows.
Seiryu stood up and moved away, ignoring the blood and bodies of the people he'd killed and Tiny and Ear whom he'd humiliated. Naruto stared at En Oyashiro, who was looking down at him from the stands with an unreadable glance and a slight smile.
Prick.
Shin had a speculative look like he wasn't entirely sure what to make of what he'd seen. But the lights above were growing dimmer, washing across his vision like blurs. Naruto fell down a dark, dim hole with a rushing sound as he fell really unconscious.
At least I'm not dead…
En turned to Shin who had already started giving orders to the staff that was still standing around on the edge of the arena. Shin's Arenamaster, in charge of training and essentially running the place and its combat athletes, was a stern-faced older man with a tall top-knot and shaved head as well as a still-impressive physique that still managed to be commanding. Yet the skin had started to sag over bulging muscles speaking of a prime well past.
The man's name was just Tanaka and no one, except maybe Shin, knew where he'd come from or what he'd done before training Shin's fighters, but Shin wasn't about to say anything ill about the man who'd earned him his fortunes. Tanaka came up to the railing and looked down at the orderly chaos that had started and watched idly as the blood was covered by a servant throwing dirt on it.
"Was the whole fight like that?"
It took En a second to realize Tanaka was speaking to him.
"Like what?"
"Seiryu becoming frustrated by a little girl."
En had to smirk.
He doubted many people would have noticed, but Tanaka was sharp. The boy had pressed the Gutterknives' newest champion to the point he stopped playing around. By no means a real challenge, but he hadn't been treated like a pushover at the end. That was noteworthy enough, clearly, to stand out in such an esteemed trainer's eyes. Naruto was nine.
That was called potential.
Tanaka definitely saw it.
En had had a good feeling about his upcoming negotiation.
Would you want someone doing this to Chino?
But En ignored that voice as he always did. Nobody would ever do anything like that to Chino. Chinoike was special. Unique. He'd make sure she was safe. Someone had failed Naruto, that much was clear, but it also wasn't up to En to fix every sob story that came his way.
Sure. Keep telling yourself that.
Tanaka was speaking quietly to Shin and En tried to be quiet, to listen in, but the two were experts at conferring so no one heard them. Shin eyed En himself consideringly and gestured to someone to drag the boy to the middle of the field. En suppressed a smile. Shin came over with Tanaka disappearing into the back stairwell he'd come from. No doubt to slaver over his prize.
"I take it you want him?"
"Yes. I'll give you fifty thousand ryo for Naruto; twenty-five hundred for Uruchi. The rest… the big one, I don't care. Kill them for all I care."
Inside, En tried not to let his greed show.
"Sixty thousand for Naruto and I'll give you the other for free."
How was it that Shin didn't seem to sweat at all? Bloody unnatural. En tried not to sweat while Shin eyed Naruto below and then back at En. Eternity passed.
"Done."
Shin gestured and the two men in charge of the new trainees, wide burly men who worked for Tanaka, slapped Naruto to wake him up. All three kids were kneeling on the ground where a Trainer had a hand on their shoulders, keeping them upright. One of the men took out a knife and walked towards the mountain of disappointment. He remembered when he found that child. Such a promising start until the boy opened his stupid mouth and said some nonsensical dumb shit.
Still...
This is the greatest pay-out of my life.
Inwardly he thanked the boy for being such a gold mine.
Perhaps I'll wait and see how he takes the good news!
Naruto groggily opened his eyes to a kaleidoscope of pain. He was kneeling on the bloody sand, that much he could see out of his busted eye. That guy, Shin, was saying something. Looking around he noticed that Ears was still there, kneeling on the ground like him. Seiryu was gone, but there were three men holding on to him and Ears and one had Tiny by the hair while another was approaching him with a knife.
They're gonna kill him.
The thought didn't really register until he heard what Shin was saying.
"...must really congratulate you two on a fine performance! Gutterknives are fighters to the core and you both showed incredible promise that my Trainers will hone and refine until you'll be the finest warriors in Fire!"
You two?
Tiny was…
Naruto didn't even need to look to see the hilt of the sword where he'd dropped it. He didn't even think. So much had been happening that he felt like he was watching himself from above; an out-of-body experience. His near death, the slaughter of his family, being ripped away from everything; all of it made his world spin and tilt on a wild axis and he couldn't figure out which way was up, but what he did know was that Tiny couldn't die, not after he'd saved him the first time and gotten himself beaten for his troubles.
He had a sword and he could move.
So he'd do something.
"I'm not going anywhere with that guy! I'll…"
Naruto pointed at Tiny. The man sent to kill Tiny had stopped advancing, the other had let his hair go and Tiny dropped sniffling to the ground, curling up again.
The Uzumaki felt movement behind him, air displacing in a lunge. Spinning, Naruto flicked his wrist up and out and felt more than saw the tip of his blade enter and exit the man's throat as he let the man fly by him in a textbook redirect of violent energy. The man flopped to the ground, dead, bleeding and jerking like a fish on the deck of a boat, throat neatly slit. Not on Seiryu's level, that was for sure.
That was a bad idea on your part, friend. Naruto swallowed. The kill didn't even bother him and that bothered him. Death was his new normal, apparently.
"I won't put up any more of a fight if you take my friend there with me. He can… he can clean or carry stuff or just… I don't know. I'm sure you need strong people, right? But if you don't, I'll…"
What could he do to Shin?
"...I'll kill myself!"
En, from where he stood next to Shin with hands death-gripping the wooden railing, looked beside himself enraged. Good.
En getting paid depends on my life… Naruto smiled, pleased with himself.
Shin continued to study him quietly, a slight smile curving on his lips.
"Such passion and fire. Impertinent, but the greatest fighters always are, I find."
Pause. Shin glanced at En who was sweating.
"Very well. But I expect nothing less than perfection from you, for what I'm paying. You've also cost me a trainer, a debt you will work off or I'll make sure you understand very clearly my displeasure. If you try to escape you will wish you'd killed yourself here while you had the opportunity."
Naruto shivered. The man was calm-too calm and that made it worse. It was a certainty like the sun-rising in his eyes. No doubt.
"Do we understand each other?"
"Yes."
"Do you find this agreeable?"
Was he really selling himself into… slavery?
Naruto took a moment to think, a moment he didn't need, but in his heart he knew he'd had no choice once he'd seen the naked vulnerability in Tiny's face, the agony he knew had been in Naruto's own heart before anger had put an iron barrier between him and his grief. Naruto knew that he'd make those same choices again and again. Stay and help, escape… escape and leave these others to their fates.
That was not who he was; leaving wasn't an option.
His life might be in shambles, but that didn't mean he couldn't do anything about someone else's life when he had that power.
Remember the chava, the dregs are what we cling to, no matter how small.
No, no thinking needed at all.
"I accept."
Shin smiled widely this time.
"Your...friend will work the laundry and aid my smiths. If he does not or doesn't do a good job, he will be killed and nothing you say or do will change that. You will also find out the depths a man can sink too in life. Yet you will be unable to kill yourself to escape degradation the likes of which would break a shinobi. If this is acceptable, we will continue."
Naruto stole a look at Tiny, who didn't look to be paying any attention at all, then managed a single nod.
En whispered something to Shin and Shin nodded once.
Naruto was let up and he stood, watching as En made his way down to stand in front of him, looking down on him with a nose tilted in the air and a curl to his lips. Those sunglasses of his flashed in the fluorescent lighting. Naruto stared him down as he was led away in a single-file line with the other two.
Naruto almost stumbled into Tiny's wide back as the two of them were shown to their new rooms; if you could call the closets they were put in rooms. Sandstone walls, just like the rest of the place, framed a small space; the floor was dirty stone with beds jutting out of the walls on either side. Somewhat surprising was the fact they were actual mattresses. Shin did say they would get some of the finer things in life, but Naruto hadn't imagined that would start as a lowly trainee. The chamber pots weren't exactly high-end working toilets, however. Indoor plumbing wasn't exactly big on their list of priorities, he imagined. Yikes.
The big kid, Tiny, just stood there looking lost.
Naruto only hesitated for a second.
"My name's Naruto. What's yours?"
"Kazan."
Naruto waited for the family name, or was that his family name and he didn't know his own name? Nothing was forthcoming, so instead he took stock of his wounds, most of them already feeling a little better and that highlighted how uncomfortably aware he was of En's comments regarding his better-than-average healing. Despite that fact, just standing and breathing felt like he was balanced over a bed of knives and every time he relaxed one of them would dig into his lungs.
So he sat.
That wasn't much better.
Now, it was just painful to crane his neck up to look at his behemoth of a roommate and his lungs were killing him.
"Just Kazan, huh?"
The boy nodded vigorously.
"I think that bed," Naruto pointed at the one across from his. It barely looked like it would fit all of Kazan's bulk. "Uh, is yours?"
Kazan immediately sat and turned, laying down. Naruto saw the bruises on his eyes, arms, and chest through the open vest he wore. They were a deep purple already. He looked like he barely felt it. The whole situation just felt awkward. Kazan had his eyes squeezed shut.
What a fuckin' mess.
The door opened and En Oyashiro entered. Being the last person Naruto ever wanted to see, En seemed to sense that and held up his hands likely to forestall an angry tirade.
"I know, I know. But Chino and I gotta eat."
Wordlessly, Naruto snarled.
"Oh save it for someone who gives a shit, ya prick."
Why did En even try to argue this?
What was his goal here? He had to know Naruto wouldn't forgive him for treating him like a lab rat and then selling him? Right?
"Look, whatever you may think, I don't mean you any ill-will."
Naruto just rolled his eyes. He couldn't help the noise that escaped his throat.
En ducked out, looking both ways from their cell, eyes furtive.
"...I know that you can't necessarily use your chakra right now."
The blonde almost lunged at him but knew it wouldn't be good for Kazan, now that his fate was tied with Naruto's.
"But I've done a lot of thinking and this… issue of yours...doesn't mean that you can't manipulate your chakra inside your body. Medical ninja do this in order to convert regular chakra into the healing variety we use, but we practice control almost exclusively in order to accomplish that. Normal shinobi don't do that which is why controlling chakra that isn't pure Yang inside your chakra network is almost impossible really without near-perfect control. Only extremely skilled shinobi and iryounin can do anything without hand-seals."
En squatted to look Naruto in the eye, who was very much paying attention now.
Naruto literally had no idea what En was even talking about; Yang chakra? Despite his less-than-stellar attention span, Naruto would've remembered hearing about a sixth elemental nature; Taza spoke at length about Fire, Wind, Lightning, Earth, and Water, but never Yang.
That was less than important in light of what En was revealing to him. He could still use chakra somehow.
He just had to figure out the trick.
En rubbed his chin with one long finger, before shrugging.
"I've also heard there are… well, rumors and myths about other types of energy. I've put no stock in it myself as I've never seen anything to back that up, but it's worth investigating."
This aid out of the clear blue made the blonde incredibly suspicious.
"Why are you, almost the worst person I can imagine, telling me this?"
En eyed Kazan who was still sniffling and curled up, obviously dismissing him as a concern.
"Let's just say I don't necessarily feel guilty per se. Instead, we'll call this, 'professional advice' since I told Shin I was going to assist my investment in recovering from his wounds."
En stepped forward, Naruto leaned back. The man grinned.
"I've already done my worst to you, boy. Besides, I haven't gotten paid yet so why would I hurt the merchandise?"
Reluctantly, he leaned back and motioned with one hand.
En stepped forward again and a green glow surrounded his hands as he lay them on Naruto's body. Waves of warmth spread through his body, centering on where he felt the most damage. Lungs, ribs, various bruises over half his body made a tapestry of colors that just looked painful. Naruto tried to memorize what the chakra swirling through his body felt like as it moved and despite the fact it wasn't his, he did succeed, somewhat, in focusing on what it was doing. Beyond that, as he felt himself knit together, the bruises reduced in color and shape and size, he was completely lost. En had talked about actually moving the chakra in his body with… his mind? Or something?
Yeah, nothing useful.
Grudgingly, very grudgingly he thanked En. The man simply nodded. Naruto wouldn't miss those stupid glasses or his outrageous poncho outfit.
"Last two pieces of advice, and this is probably the most immediately important, you need an edge. All the other fighters can and do use chakra, subtly mind, with no overt jutsu. Reinforcement techniques are common. You need to be either better, faster, or stronger and right now you have none of those things."
"Gee, thanks."
"Whatever. Lastly... don't ever let them figure out you can't use chakra. If you do, you'll be tortured then killed, Kazan will be outright killed, and then they'll hunt me down and kill me too for selling them a defective product. They'll probably make a wallet out of my skin. Those Yakuza hold quite the grudge."
Naruto was opening his mouth, about to use that as leverage, when the door banged open, Kazan flinching at the noise.
It was one of the trainers; rough breeches, plain shirt, and heavily scarred, he took one beady-eyed sweep of the room and barked at them.
"On your feet!"
Naruto stood. Kazan did not. In fact, he curled tighter into his ball. The man's mouth tightened and Naruto didn't need to see into the future to know what would happen. All of this would be a waste. Naruto felt a tug of responsibility and hated it. Crouching next to Kazan, Naruto whispered so that the man couldn't hear him.
"They were going to kill you, Kazan. I protected you and now I need you to follow my lead, okay? We have to do what they say for now. Just trust me. I won't let anything bad happen to you. I promise. But you gotta do what I tell ya. Yeah, big guy?"
Naruto held out his hand. Kazan opened his eyes; they were a startling green. Mifune had owned a fancy egg-shaped thing made of stone, jade maybe, that looked the same shade as Kazan's eyes. The egg had sat in his gramps study, Naruto had always wanted to play with it, but it was apparently super expensive.
Naruto's hand convulsed.
Kazan spoke, also in a whisper. For him at least. It echoed in the room. He winced.
"Okay 'ruto."
Kazan's hand engulfed Naruto and he almost yanked the blonde off his feet getting up. How much does Kazan actually weigh?
The two of them passed En Oyashiro going out, following the trainer down the hallway towards the noises of people talking over one another.
Naruto felt En's eyes on him as they left.
Time to face his new reality head-on.
Naruto's hands tightened in Kazan's.
The two boys didn't need to push much to get to the front of the small crowd of twenty or so boys in a semi-circle facing the speaker.
Probably a mess hall of some sort?
There were tables and chairs, arranged for groups of four each, scattered around the room and against the far back wall to his right was something of a dispensary, dark now, but clearly where the chow was dolled out. Naruto suspected they wouldn't skimp on the meals. You can't starve your investments, could you?
Naruto elbowed a lanky kid next to him and immediately regretted it, subtly wiping his elbow off on his pants. An acidic smell, sharp and tangy wafted off of him. He smelled like an alleyway. Shadowed, bloodshot eyes peered at him.
"What?"
Naruto pointed.
"Who's that guy?"
Garbage boy's eyes widened, he spoke in a fierce whisper, like Naruto was some poor dumb beast in a circus doing a trick.
"You stupid? That's the Lion!"
Naruto continued looking at him.
Was… that supposed to answer my question?
Cheeks colored, embarrassment or annoyance, Naruto couldn't tell.
"Tanaka the Lion is the greatest fighter on the planet. He could turn an idiot like you and me into something worthwhile if we follow him. He trained Seiryu, Glordring, and Settimana!"
The awe and worship in the boys were obvious; those names rang a bell, famous Gutterknives? Naruto hadn't even known places like this, places to watch men fight each other to the death, existed before arriving in the care of En Oyashiro. Iron didn't allow exhibition fights like this as it wasn't honorable. There was some sport or something played on ice with bladed shoes, but Naruto never had much interest. He wondered idly if this was something exclusive to the rest of the world, or just this particular city. People really wanted to watch fights?
Come to think of it, how many of these kids actually wanted to be here? Naruto scanned the room and the vast majority of the kids were glued to the quiet Tanaka, seemingly collectively holding their breath. The man's presence was like water on a candle, dousing the chit-chat, focusing all eyes on his towering frame.
One idea he'd had while En had talked, was of staging a rebellion of sorts. Rallying all the kids, he had an image of himself breaking them all out, slaughtering the guards, and escaping to freedom.
If all the kids wanted to be here, or even a large majority, that was going to be impossible. It might even mean he couldn't share his plan with anyone except Kazan. That would make everything much harder. But, if this guy, this legendary trainer, was such a good teacher, he might be able to take advantage of his skills and learn something that would help him escape.
En did say he needed to find an edge.
Naruto found himself leaning forward on the balls of his toes. Maybe this situation wasn't as bad as being with En, something might be waiting here for him to turn to his advantage.
"Most of you will be dead in a year."
Dead silence.
Kids, some as young as Naruto shifted on their feet, clothes rustling.
"Poor. Rich. Trained. New. I don't give two shits where you came from, who trained you before you got to me or how you arrived in the Gutter. Only a select few will even make it through the first week. I don't put kids out if they can't hack it, I will kill you and feed you to the dogs. You will disappear and your fellows won't wonder where you went because know this-that person is useless and therefore dead to me and the rest of the world. I will not hug you and tell you it is going to be okay if you struggle, because I hate liars and because I hate weakness and that would make me both."
Tanaka's dark eyes met Naruto's violet.
"This life is a gutter; a gutter where life and death lay balanced on the edge of a blade so fine, so sharp, it will cut you to stare at it too long."
Tanaka's eyes darted to a sandy-haired boy who wasn't paying attention, eyes on the food line. A hand as big as a winter ham lashed out, clamping around a throat, and squeezed.
The sharp snap of cartilage cracking and a bone breaking echoed through the room. Tanaka looked like nothing more than a butcher carrying a scrawny dead chicken to the chopping block. Casually, the Lion flung the boy like a rag-doll. It was horrifying, even to Naruto who had seen worse, the way the boy flopped in an awkward tangle against the wall of the mess hall. That was an investment of Shin's that he'd casually killed. A large sum of money just tossed down the drain because he wasn't paying enough attention.
Naruto swallowed, his throat suddenly dry.
"Do you know why we call our champions Knives?"
The question caught them all off-guard.
Naruto looked around, just like everyone else was doing.
Ears spoke up, the boy from earlier who had fought Seiryu and lost horribly.
"We gon' cut our enemies. Cut em' and keep cuttin' till their dead and we won."
Ears had a horrible smile.
Naruto had known a few boys like him, who just liked to watch other people's pain. He'd have to watch out for him.
Tanaka simply eyed him a minute before nodding.
"Crude. But that is one part of it, yes, Uruchi. The other?"
So that was Ears' name. Nobody spoke up or raised their hand.
Naruto found himself putting his up.
Tanaka's eyes focused on him like a lighthouse beam. He nodded.
Naruto was quiet as he spoke, remembering a conversation like this that he'd had with Mifune after a particularly bad kenjutsu session.
"Speed is life. Precision is life. The essence of knife-fighting. Our focus has to be absolute, like the edge of a blade. Always ready to cut and keep cutting. The day we stop focusing, the day we lose track of our targets, is the day we die."
Tanaka smiled and Naruto suddenly wished he hadn't said anything.
"Very good. It seems some of you can think. Good. My job is to train you, yes, but focus isn't something I can teach. Focus comes from within. My job, really, is to weed out the weak and unfocused. The trainers," Tanaka gestured at the men and women against the wall. "Will do their level best to push you well past your limit, to teach you the skills you'll need to kill, yes, but that is secondary to revealing what you're made of. Focus is what will determine whether you have limits. Those who succeed; I guarantee you'll become something magnificent with my help."
That will be me.
Until I leave.
Difficult as it was, Naruto suppressed his unexpected thrill at the thought of impressing this man. Becoming a legend wasn't his goal here. Survival was, escape was; he had people to kill after all.
"Those who fail my process will be forgotten as they deserve..."
The Man in Red.
Orochimaru.
Two shinobi who would crush Tanaka like an ant under a boot heel.
Yet… this might be a place to hone my skills.
He needed an edge, maybe this would show him a way? Naruto couldn't ever forget the way Orochimaru handled him with kid gloves, utterly dismissive, broken like a twig so easily.
"...those who pass will be legends."
After Tanaka left, another hour passed in the mess hall with the Head Trainer, Tanaka's left-hand man, going over their daily schedule; wake up was very, very early, followed by no doubt grueling exercises, most likely followed again by training of some kind for most of the rest of the day, broken up only by lunch and dinner and chores. The place needed to be cleaned, swept, food made, the Trainers laundry done, and a thousand other tasks. Weekends were different due to the season schedule of Gutter fights. Those, they would be allowed to watch, for training purposes, and the older trainees further along in practice would be fighting in the exhibition bouts. Those were less lucrative than the main event matches, but there still were small ryo amounts exchanging hands.
Kazan and Naruto were shuffled back to their beds and while Kazan fell asleep fairly quickly, his snores monstrous in their sheer volume, Naruto stared at the ceiling till the wee hours of the morning thinking. Naruto had been doing a good deal of that since… since the Betrayal. It seemed that he'd just fallen asleep before his door was slammed open and one of the trainers was hauling him out of his blanket roll by his shirt. Naruto hadn't bothered with the actual bedding as that was one more thing to organize.
Kazan sounded like a bleating sheep as a man half his height, but twice his width manhandled him like the child he really was.
"Hey-"
The backhand blow caught him completely unprepared and his head rang like a bell. A sneer crawled across the man's face.
"Your idiot buddy over there is going to the blacksmith for his chores, don't you worry. Maybe you should save the concern for the day you're about to have."
Naruto couldn't muster any more fight as he was tossed around and into a hallway full of kids being herded out into the fighting ring, the whole thing looking like a school of salmon traveling upstream.
Roughly, the now nineteen kids were herded again into a single-file row of movement. The run, a run Naruto could've done without an ounce of sweat with chakra, was two hours long with a thick log held in the crook of their elbows and anyone who fell, dropped the log or failed to keep pace was physically beaten by the more muscular trainers. An ancient stone-faced woman was called over after Tanaka determined the beating was sufficient and she used the same green glowing iryounin techniques to put the kid back into fighting shape. Naruto hadn't stopped once or dropped the log, but the desire was there. Not too long ago, he'd been fished out of a frozen river after having been there who knows how long, stabbed, a freakin' bijuu ripped out of his stomach and beaten multiple times within an inch of his life.
But he never stopped.
Not just his life was on the line now; no, the success of his revenge was too.
Rage, a warmth in his belly like a blazing hearth, not chakra, gave his legs the stamina needed to continue and his arms the strength to hold that piece of wood that seemed to get heavier every minute his legs worked.
After the run, which was apparently a warm-up, they were separated into different groups; one of which composed of trainees who seemed to already know some taijutsu, or combat in general, the others were brand new. There were only two newbies; Naruto imagined they wouldn't last long.
Naruto found himself as the physically smallest of the kids in the trained group, yet he was almost at the top in terms of conditioning. The next smallest was almost half a foot taller and wider by a few inches, but couldn't keep the same fast pace as the blonde Uzumaki. He tried not to let the height-difference bother him, but he'd been short and lithe for most of his life; annoyance flashed through him, but he reminded himself that Yojimbra was also short and it bothered him not at all.
Well, when he was alive.
Tanaka's demonstration of what happened when you lost focus had Naruto snapping to attention. That was the last thing he needed.
Instructions to line up in two rows facing one another, spread fairly far apart, had the kids scrambling quickly and with little order; Naruto failed to find a partner, despite making it to a line and ended up alone.
That was bad.
At least he'd gotten there quickly.
The beefy guard, the one who had been none too gentle with his reprimand earlier this morning, quickly filled in the slot at a nod from Tanaka who stood to one side, huge muscled arms folded across his broad chest.
The guy, the Trainer, had to be six foot one at least as Naruto only reached his mid-stomach. How the hell was he supposed to realistically fight this guy? Size mattered when chakra was taken out of the equation; he'd learned that very early.
Eyes immediately jumped to Tanaka when he spoke.
"This is a submission fight. I need to see where each and every person's technical ability lies and the best way to do that is to let you fight to the limits of your ability. I will be extremely displeased if any of you should be seriously injured. I will make that displeasure extremely clear and will only remind you of this once. This reminder will make the other one look like a leisurely Sunday stroll in the park. You will now say, 'Yes Master Tanaka' so I know you hear me."
A chorus, almost as one, echoed through the empty stands.
"Control is extremely important; a knife cuts where Master Toruku wants and he has made that desire very clear to me. Therefore, a knife that cannot cut where and when I want will be discarded."
Naruto locked eyes with the guard. Somehow he didn't think the guard was under the same restrictions as the trainees.
Naruto needed to step quickly.
"Begin."
The next few weeks were a blur of running, a grueling weighted exercise that had him throwing up yet continuing anyway, extensive dusting of dust-covered rooms, late-night sweeping, weekly stretches of organizing the food pantry, non-stop weapons-work, chakra-less taijutsu, and murderous beatings by that muscular guard who had it out for him.
Naruto found out his name was Torin.
Despite the grueling drills, murderous sparring, frequent beatings, and endless chores, the trainers gave the kids a huge amount of free time.
That was a nice bonus. Regardless, Naruto's nights were consumed with spending time with Kazan; who apparently was a savant with artwork, which was quite a surprise. The boy couldn't string a coherent full-sentence, but could accurately, from memory, and with photo-realistic quality draw your face and everything around you at the time. No one but Naruto ever appreciated any of the things Kazan drew; a bird on their windowsill, overlooking a canal of some kind, or any of the action shots of Naruto getting his ass beat by Torin. Yomi even knew where Kazan got the pencils and paper from. Naruto tried to keep Kazan away from the other kids as Uruchi, that was Ears, seemed to have it out for Kazan.
Naruto already had to make his displeasure clear once.
Ears steered clear after that, even though Tanaka made Naruto howl for it.
The Lion had spoken loudly, between meaty blows that Naruto couldn't avoid, despite him trying.
"I don't care about petty differences settled out of the ring, but I do care when my fighter can't hold a weapon for training."
After that, Ears and Naruto simply stared at each other and then attempted to ignore one another.
It was difficult.
Kazan was also extremely fond of sweets and hand games and sleeping, not necessarily in that order. More than once, Naruto found himself throwing rock in Jankin knowing Kazan always threw scissors. Kazan never got frustrated at losing this way, he'd just look amazed and say, "'Ruto good!" Idiot.
After a while, Naruto started throwing paper just to see Kazan smile, being the only person who did smile in this place.
After a month, all of the trainees were given the run of the place. Not that there were very many trainees left from that batch. New ones were always coming in. The blonde was always paired with Torin, however, despite evening numbers. He didn't know what to make of that. But Tanaka would just nod and Torin would take his place. Recently, he'd started beating Torin with longswords and every time that happened, submitting Torin was immensely satisfying; Tanaka would just stare at Torin and Torin would redouble his efforts.
Naruto had to swallow his smile, lest Tanaka extend their training sessions.
Nobody, not even Torin, could touch him now while he had a blade in his hands.
Taijutsu was...a decidedly different story.
That was where Torin took his pound of flesh. But Naruto was getting faster; never fast enough or strong enough to win, but definitely faster.
He still hadn't found the edge that En spoke of; so, at night, when Kazan was busy drawing in his art corner, a small corner of the room that he'd started accumulating supplies that had no function Naruto could see, he'd attempt to move the inert chakra he knew was lurking in his body. Sometimes he felt like it moved, sluggish molasses more like, but other times it would just sit there, inert. Other times, a flow would form when he wasn't thinking, that was the only way he could think about it, a circulation of warmth throughout his body, but as soon as he realized that aimless, purposeless chakra really was moving, it would go haywire and squeeze out of his light grip.
The whole exercise was like wrestling fat, adrenaline-fueled pigs covered in grease, layered in spikes.
Training made the days fly and Naruto and Kazan both would look forward to breakfast, lunch, and dinner given how sparse food was otherwise. Kazan enjoyed his cleaning chores in the smithy, from what he could tell, and Naruto improbably, despite the brutal pace of sparring and drills and lifting those heavy-ass objects to build strength, not to mention the endless fighting with Torin, began to enjoy himself. None of the other kids, nor Torin, were remotely able to touch him when it came to weapons work and even more recently, their version of taijutsu with the focus on striking; knees, elbows, knuckles, whatever you could throw.
Two months in and only five kids out of the original twenty were left.
One from the new group and four from the trained group. The other kids had just disappeared one morning and weren't talked about, but each time it happened, everyone shared a look. The training was ramped up after every disappearance, but the determination and ferocity of the trainees went up as well. Naruto had learned his lesson hard when Ears started up again, talking shit about Kazan, and the Rage, a source of energy all its own that Naruto tapped into when he felt like quitting, now simmered beneath the surface at all times, easily provoked. The Rage had reared up and he'd found himself strangling Ears with his bare hands after he'd said something about Naruto fucking Kazan. Ears weighed twice what he did, but it didn't matter, not to Naruto.
The feral blonde had put Ears on the ground and in seconds, the boy was purple in the face and a blood vessel in both eyes had popped, spilling red veins across the whites.
Naruto had been careful to leave Ears fully-functional. Nobody talked about Kazan. That kid was innocent incarnate and nothing would touch that.
Nothing.
Naruto dropped him after Ears passed out. The boy walked quietly around Naruto after that, but he kept sharp eyes open. He was, after all, the next best fighter after Naruto himself. Tanaka hadn't said anything this time. Tanaka just looked like a speculative statue as he always did. Ears didn't want to say anything, let alone that someone less than half his size pushed his shit in.
What followed was training, training and more training. Exercising until half-dead. Chores. Hanging with Kazan. Trying not to lose to anyone in hand-to-hand or weapons.
Rinse.
Repeat.
En had warned him, early on, but Naruto hadn't put any real effort into finding out a solution and it kicked him in the ass.
Chakra changed everything.
Tanaka's salt-and-pepper hair was tied in a tall topknot and it bobbed as he nodded. Every trainee, sweating and breathing hard, were kneeling on the sand of the Gutter in a semicircle.
"Today's lesson will change how things work moving forward."
Tanaka knelt, folding his hands in his lap, incongruously looking all the world like a monk in a monastery. At peace.
What a joke. Tanaka gestured around him.
"The Gutter is our temple. Violence, our religion. But like everything, there are rules to when, where, and how we apply violence. Chakra-use is frowned upon, but not forbidden. Not everyone can access this power or has sufficient amounts to be truly useful; yet it is the patrons who are the lifeblood of the Gutter and they do not come to watch shinobi fight with jutsu."
Here, his eyes were razors, honing in on them and driving his point home.
"They do not want to be reminded of the god-like status ninja have above us all, that way lies envy and envy leads to hate. Hateful people do not spend money to watch you fight. They want to see people like them fighting and winning. You must be the People's Champion. Therefore, in the Gutter, no jutsu or technique that is visible is allowed. Speed is something people understand. A fireball out of your mouth is not. Are we clear?"
Agreement in unison rang in a chorus from the trainees, Naruto among them.
Naruto understood. People needed to relate to their champions. Your average civilian had more myths and legends about shinobi than truth. But two guys fighting hand-to-hand? That made sense. You couldn't relate to someone who fired electricity out of their hand or covered themselves in fire. Fast was fast though and it was believable. There was one other reason for this that Naruto thought Tanaka didn't want to speak of for want of looking weak.
Shinobi frowned heavily on training ninja outside the Hidden Village system. This was tolerated precisely because most of these kids here had weak or almost non-existent amounts of chakra. To change that, and invite true chakra-based combat, was to spit on the Hidden Villages.
No one did that and lived.
Tanaka cleared his throat.
"Therefore, Reinforcement is the only technique you will be allowed to practice and I expect you to perfect its use in combat with the same diligence you have thus far demonstrated. Is that understood?"
Another chorus of agreements.
The dynamics of the trainees were about to shift; Naruto fought the urge to curse and squeeze his eyes shut. Yes, Naruto was faster than all of them, even Torin half the time, but that would count for shit now that all of them were encouraged to use chakra. Even a little chakra was a massive force-multiplier as Furu had stated once in a half-forgotten lecture. Chakra was a miracle power and it would work its magic on even the lowliest of trainees. Naruto was about to be on the bottom of the totem pole and the bottom meant imminent death. Today or next week, it was certain he'd be getting the ax.
En was right. He needed an edge.
The first fight against Torin using chakra resulted in Naruto not being able to see out of one eye and received a broken arm and sprained leg. But Tanaka did let him see the iryounin this time and there had been a moment of panic when she swept through him with the green glow of what Naruto assumed was a diagnostic technique and thought she'd out his secret to Tanaka and Master Shin.
En had been able to tell what was wrong almost immediately.
But she said nothing, just stared at him, briefly surprised then that look was wiped away so quickly Naruto thought he might have imagined it. Phew!
The next morning, Naruto had stolen a white sheet from the laundry and fashioned a sling so that Tanaka didn't notice how fast his arm had healed. But there was no hiding the bruises and sprain were gone, as well as the other. That would just encourage him to be more thorough or more frequent.
A downside was that Naruto was forced to swing a sword with his non-dominant hand and that led to even more humiliating losses to Torin.
Chakra had changed things.
Abject failure was what led Naruto to where he was now, wandering the corridors of what he was allowed to explore of the basement-level of Shizumi Mansion, the real name for Shin Toruku's veritable palace over which The Gutter resided.
During Gutter matches, the trainees were encouraged to show up and watch, but a few of the older ones liked to skip it and spend some quality time doing absolutely nothing.
That was currently what Naruto was doing as well.
He'd spent most of the night flat on his back from the strain of constantly losing. Torin and the other trainees absolutely tore him apart. Technique-wise, he was way ahead of everyone, but chakra wrenched the gulf in speed apart. Nine out of ten fights had gone his way before this, now he was lucky if he stepped quick and read his opponent like a book, he might scrape two wins out of ten. Zero against Torin and Ears. Surprise, surprise Ears, Naruto deliberately went out of his way not to use his real name, was now the best of the trainees and had a ton of chakra to throw around. Naruto felt he had started to pick up on who had chakra and who didn't.
Tanaka was displeased with this apparently unexpected turn of events and it was obvious. Naruto did his level best to ignore the frowns directed his way when he lost.
Hence why he was wandering near the forges now, lost in thought.
Naruto very rarely had time to visit Kazan in the smithy, but apparently he'd unconsciously went in this direction. He knew he was close because the air temperature skyrocketed. Naruto pushed open the double-doors and went into an empty smithy. The Forge was relatively cold now, mere coals in the furnace, and the anvil was cleared of any projects. The room was dark with just the dull glow of banked goals and some lanterns worked into the walls. Naruto doubted the man was a farrier, as the advent of the autobus and Autocar made horses almost obsolete for everyone but the very poor. Judging by the few weapons and armor on stands and hooks, the man didn't have very much work in that part, but there was a jumble of other items that Naruto couldn't identify, made out of steel and iron, set into a giant cubby. Against the far wall was an incredibly cluttered workbench.
Master Ouran would've had a heart attack.
As always, his heart clenched at the thought of his former master, but he shook it off.
Kazan, the person he came to see, was sweeping iron filings and discarded pieces of chafe metal into a dustpan.
"Hey, Kaz."
The big kid looked up at him from where he was hunched over working on sweeping some small speck up into the pan.
"Hi 'ruto."
Talkative guy.
Naruto wondered why he'd even come to speak to Kaz. They'd progressed as friends to the point where they could be quiet together for hours, but Kaz wasn't someone he could really bounce ideas off of, only talk at. Kaz would just nod or shake his head depending on whether he actually understood what the hell Naruto was talking about.
The Uzumaki walked to the workbench, swept his arm across it to clear a spot to sit, and hopped up on it, swinging his legs. He stared at nothing, just vaguely watching Kaz clean. The guy loved to clean, that was for sure.
Not looking at him, Naruto started to talk. He felt like he owed Kaz an explanation. He'd promised him he'd keep him safe. So far, he'd done that, despite how much it had cost. There was a gulf between him and every other kid here. Normally, Naruto had no problems making friends… but he actively avoided getting close here.
Winning up to this point hadn't really taken a lot of effort, but now, he fought with all he had and he was losing; losing even to the worst among them, a skinny kid named Rizhi, who could barely hold a sword not three weeks ago.
Slowly, but surely, Tanaka would have enough with his prized investment's abject failure and he'd be… disposed of.
Kaz would most likely be killed… though maybe he was a good enough worker they'd let him stay?
Naruto shook his head. Best not to count on Master Toruku's generosity.
"Kaz, I'm trying to fight as best I can… but I'm…"
Naruto swallowed.
"I'm… handicapped, Kaz. I can't use my chakra. I'm useless. I can fight, but…"
His knuckles turned white, veins stood out on his hand and curled up his forearms. Naruto had noticed he was a bit taller in the last few weeks, some muscles were starting to show, and he didn't look as… girlish as he had. But he was still only nine. Or maybe ten now? He had no idea what month it was now.
None of it, none of the progress, mattered if he couldn't solve the main problem. How do you get faster when you have a hard limit?
"You gotta keep working hard. I hope they'll let you stay when they kill me. I-"
Kaz loomed over him suddenly, Naruto flinched at how quickly Kaz moved. Damn! When did Kaz get so quick?
Anger poured off him like a forge fire.
"No!"
"What?"
"No kill, 'ruto!"
Naruto watched Kaz's hand tighten on the broom handle and it snapped as easily as Tanaka snapped that scrawny kid's neck.
"Well, there's not much I can do-"
Kaz cut his hand through the air like a knife.
"No!"
"But-"
"No!"
"Kaz-"
"Can you shut the fuck up?"
"NO! 'Ruto live!"
Sour, Naruto rolled his eyes.
"I mean the vote of confidence is nice. I wish I could just 'no' over and over and have something be true. That'd be a shinobi power worth having."
Kaz was fishing around in his over-large pockets for something. He pulled out a neatly folded piece of paper and peeled it apart like it was worth millions of ryo.
The eight by eleven piece of paper was covered entirely with a picture, done in vibrant color. Last night, they'd both watched a lightning storm through their tiny cell window. Purple and blue and white and yellow slashes of ferocious, thunderous lightning had rent the sky in crossways zig-zags of color and furious motion. Naruto had stared at it, stared at the infinite power of nature, in awed silence.
During his childhood, and he was painfully aware he was technically still in it, there were precious few times he'd ever seen the night sky like this given that Iron was predominantly underground. Master Ouran had had him do a similar delivery run to Master Lake and he tried to beat a thunderstorm before it broke, but he'd ended up spending a night watching a blazing fireworks show of power, mesmerized by how bright the world was despite being late at night.
Kaz had drawn Naruto watching the lightning show, from a viewpoint behind him and Naruto's face was slightly tilted. But Kaz had drawn him like some noble hero in a storybook; a strong jawline, honed by food and exercise, and a perfectly symmetrical profile, framed by long, shaggy blonde hair with whisker marks on his cheeks, faded but still noticeable all giving his face a wild cast.
The Uzumaki colored faintly, uncomfortable with the obvious hero worship and the fact floating in his mind that Kazan reproduced what he saw perfectly, so if he looked like this, it was unabashedly him.
There was something about the picture that tore at him, sparked something in his mind, but he couldn't put his finger on it.
Naruto cleared his throat.
"Thanks Kaz. This is great, I love it. But what does it have to do with not dying?"
"'Ruto hero. No-kill. No-scared. Think! Win!"
Naruto had turned this problem over and over in his mind, trying to match his abilities with solutions. Swords were all well and good if he had one he'd give fifty-fifty odds against an unarmed chakra-user of low-skill, but that wouldn't aid him in training. Might as well tie the person's arms behind their back as well.
Phaw.
Next, his Uzumaki heritage granted him an absurd advantage using Fuinjutsu, but he'd never practiced making new Fuin. Not only that, but Fuin required preparation and he couldn't imagine they'd pause and let him scrawl some symbologies on their bodies to bind them or stop them, let alone lending him their chakra to activate it.
So what good was that?
Naruto picked up a random doodad on the table beside him and started fiddling with it as he thought.
En had claimed there were potentially other sources of energy that one could tap into, but there was no possible way to research that or just 'suddenly' discover something like that. Naruto snorted. That only happened in storybooks. Nobody just gained a power-up like that overnight without working for it. Hard work and preparation trumped luck every time, as Mifune liked to say.
Fuinjutsu. Fuinjutsu… every time he thought about it, there was almost nothing useful about it. Everything had to be written down, the medium had to be non-temporary, and the only real thing he'd made before was armor symbols that actively drew from a source. Nothing like that was going to be useful to someone who couldn't draw his chakra from his coils. That was the crux of the issue.
He had to have chakra to use fuinjutsu.
Was there some way around that? And if there was, what would he even do with it? The only thing they'd allow is speed-based techniques and Naruto had never come across anything that increased the speed of the user. Sure, the ONI armor system that the Samurai used increased speed, but it didn't actually do anything by itself. Most people didn't get that. But all it did was increase the strength of the input chakra. So, basically, it was a helping hand but didn't do anything on its own. None of that would help him here given that he couldn't access his chakra!
"Ow!"
Naruto sucked his index finger, a point of blood was welling up where he'd pricked himself on the doodad he'd been playing with.
"What the hell..?"
The doodad, or gizmo, or thingy, all very technical terms, looked very much like the needle-gun that Fuinsmiths used to carve symbologies for the ONI matrices into the steel of the armored suits. Instead, there was ink in a tub attached to the back of the needle. Naruto's index finger had a black dot embedded in it.
"Fuck that hurt."
Naruto dropped the needle gun on the table and shook his hand out.
Maybe I shouldn't be messing around with things I don't know how to use properly.
Kazan looked faintly disapproving at his curses. "Oh piss off, Kaz."
Despite the fact he wasn't any closer to solving his issue, the picture had cheered him up and Kazan was a better friend than he deserved. It was obvious the boy trusted him to get them both out of this situation, so he couldn't close the book on them just yet.
That much was obvious.
So he needed to buckle down and just… what, train harder?
Naruto sighed. So, from now on, he'd train twice as hard and make up for the lack of speed with even more skill. He smiled at Kazan and took the picture from the dinner-plate-sized hands gently.
"Thanks, buddy. Let's grab dinner, yeah?"
"Otay 'Ruto!"
Trying to keep smiling, Naruto vowed he wouldn't let his buddy down no matter what. Naruto held the door open for Kaz as the boy finished putting things away like they were made of glass.
No matter what, he'd keep Kaz safe.
And perhaps, just perhaps, there was a way to even the playing field that didn't require chakra...
