Chapter 10: Convergence


"With some people, solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves."

-Eric Hoffer


/City of Ichiman

/The Gold Coast (East)

/Land of Wind

Danzo Shimura

Almost three weeks of hard and cautious traveling had brought him and two dozen of his remaining operatives to the eastern edge of the known world. It was almost beautiful with a clear sky, the strong and clean scent of the salt ocean, the cry of gulls overhead as the bright grass at his feet swayed in the gentlest of breezes.

Almost beautiful.

Danzo hated it.

The bandaged leader of ROOT, though ROOT in nothing but name now, watched the ships docking in the many-fingered jeddies of the city of Ichiman. Like toy boats bobbing in bathwater, Danzo watched them sway from his position high up on the edge of the somewhat-famous azurite cliffs. The blue rock could be seen from miles away, a symbol of safety in the treacherous depths of the Nanzen Ocean.

Danzo struggled to articulate, before suppressing of course, what his bundle of emotions was telling him.

Failure.

Failure, yes, that's what it felt like to be here instead of what it really was; a thousand times he told himself this was just one more in a series of contingency plans he never thought he'd need.

Very few times in his life had he ever cursed-vulgarity was for the mentally deficient.

But fuck Sarutobi and fuck Mikoto!

Theirs had been a… complicated relationship full of ups and downs. But mutual respect, skill, and sometimes opposite views had sharpened them both on each other like whetstones; Konoha had benefited from such a competition.

Until now.

Hiruzen had won, hadn't he?

Danzo's aged, yet still strong fist clenched, nails digging in and drawing blood in crescent shapes. He wanted to scream till his vocal cords strained and broke from the sheer animal fury, screaming until the sheer power of the sound waves toppled Ichiman's thick walls and scrubbed it's 'Black' nickname till it was none only as a wasteland. The world would be far better with Black Ichiman's corrupt and deviant black markets and flesh circuses.

Breathe.

Breathe.

Danzo calmed. No matter how many artists would give their left ear to paint this very vista he stared at, Danzo would never be able to appreciate this the way it deserved. He longed for home. He longed for the dappled shadows of the forested woods of his true home.

Under the canopy of Konohagakure.

But Danzo knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he wouldn't be seeing his home after he stepped foot on the ship he'd booked three months ago, bound for the unknown places out beyond the island country of Pear. Grass crunched under the sandaled feet of a person he both expected, dreaded, and envied. Today was a day for nuance and complicated things: plans and emotions both.

"Lord Danzo. I stand ready."

The once-Hokage of Konoha turned and pinned the heavily-clothed operative, face covered with a black mask that left just his mouth open to the world, with a stare that made lesser men sweat. Torune Aburame, however, was no lesser man. In a world that rewarded expert killers, Torune was an artist and would've been handsomely compensated anywhere he so chose.

Torune was a patriot, however, and loved his country more than he loved his own life. Why else would he volunteer for a mission that would most likely see him isolated, living off the land, and inevitably dying to his own former comrades?

He had the Will of Fire.

Torune would burn out the rot, so the ROOTS of the great tree could be rejuvenated and continue on. The Roots of the Great Tree would return, stronger than ever. At least, that was Danzo's great hope. But he envied the mission Torune was about to embark on insofar that he got to stay in his home while Danzo… while Danzo ran away.

His only consolation in this entire fiasco was that the grand plan was still in motion and Danzo got to rewatch, in his Sharingan-aided mind's-eye, the moment of surprise and horror as he skewered his former best friend, former rival, former royal pain-in-the-ass Hiruzen Sarutobi, over and over again.

Dead. Dead. Dead.

Blessedly dead.

Incompetence at an end, despite Konoha being in the clutches of that cursed Uchiha, Sarutobi's ruinous foreign policy stance could no longer bring Konoha to it's veritable knees. Indeed, when Danzo secured Western alliances and returned he would be lauded as the kind of leader Konoha on a war-footing required. Danzo knew war was inevitable. Onoki was fence-sitting no longer. Pein of Amegakure would wait patiently in wings, played as he was being by The Seifuku-sha and Danzo himself. Then there was Orochimaru and Ay of Kumogakure. That man alone was an ironmonger of grand ambition and with recent intelligence that Ay was building untold amounts of chakra-based weapons, Konohagakure needed allies and an edge against the tide of blood that was coming.

What he did today and in the coming months would be that edge.

But for it to be the true surprise it needed to be, Torune would be instrumental.

So Danzo gave his instructions and Torune Aburame, loyal soldier of former ROOT listened. Orochimaru had reneged on their agreement. Betrayed the trust Danzo had bestowed on him. That would require addressing, among other items of importance. Torune would see to it. Denial of desire was a fascinatingly effective form of revenge.

When Danzo was finished speaking his need, Torune bowed at the waist, high-collared coat crinkled from salt-exposure and left without another word back the way they'd all come. That done Fu, his right hand man, stepped up from where he'd been quietly watching the exchange between his leader and the operative and glanced to where Danzo was looking. Back down the cliff, towards the path they'd take down, a messenger was hurrying towards them.

"That courier is an agent of The Seifuku-sha. His name is Erhlich."

"A curious name."

"Indeed. I suspect it is a Pearish name. I overheard some chatter that our… patron for this endeavour cares about much more than the emancipation of Konohagakure from the yoke of the Elemental Nations."

Danzo turned fully and, with Fu his auburn-ponytail swaying, both observed Erhlich huffing and puffing his way to them.

"What are your conclusions, Fu?"

"The Seifuku-sha is searching for something on the Western Continent. I believe he spoke briefly of a 'key' or 'the key'. I can't be certain either way."

"Those are two wholly different interpretations and meanings. We must have clarity."

"Yes, Lord Danzo."

"I don't know who The Seifuku-sha is and I don't care. Konoha is all. We have concurrent paths for now, but whosoever walks the path of daggers must know the players. We walk a sharp path indeed to not know everything about him as soon as possible."

"I hear and obey, Lord Danzo."

Erhlich, a freckle-faced boy of sixteen summers, lanky in the way of a boy stuck in the transition to manhood, stopped an appropriate distance away in order to catch his breath. Odd. The boy had no real chakra-system to speak of.

When the boy straightened, Danzo pinned him with a stare.

"Well?"

Ehrlich gulped. Danzo frowned. This was the messenger of a man like The Seifuku-sha?

"Uh, preparations to get underway are ready. Captain Ashita is waiting on your lordships, uh, leisure."

What a curious accent the boy had, like a clipped staccato trill on the ends of his consonants. Curious. Danzo gestured and Fu and Erhlich both started away.

The last Shimura turned one last time towards where he knew Konoha lay, a thousand miles away, and smiled sadly.

What I do, I do for you…

Unbidden, the real image of Hiruzen's face, stuck as it was falling, shone out warm and comforted; like he was witness to some truth of peace beyond the grave, a happiness he'd been denied in life granted at that moment. The whole thing swam into view with the Sharingan's perfect recall.

And Danzo really did scream.


/Unknown

/Unknown

/Unknown

Naruto

The fog was gone.

Naruto knew this place, this place of broken blades and skeletons, and that was why he also knew he was… asleep, or dreaming, or well, somewhere else. Maybe it was the eerie silence which boomed in his ears, a quiet desolation, or perhaps it was the way the sky boiled and lightning struck upwards, unnaturally silver.

This was Naruto's soul. Or something suitably profound; that's how Yojimbra would've put it.

That was why it was hard not to freak out when he saw what lay here now, an endlessness uncovered by the disappearance of that soup-like fog. The first time he'd been here, thrown himself really, this shithole had been where a manifestation of the Nine-tailed Demon Fox had been chained. Trapped, like a gigantic malcontented battery in utterly opaque mist. That horrible, mind-destroying form that Naruto had trouble re-imagining without a blankness in his head that scared him.

Savior. Destroyer.

That dual-voice of Kurama's had shaken him with those words escaping from that armored shape-shifting nightmare's face. His face. Singing to him.

Singing to him of his own death and the deaths of everything he loved.

Very prescient as it happened.

Kurama had turned out to be less of a nightmare and more of well, the only hope he'd ever had of living. He was his death and his saving grace.

Now that he was gone though… this place looked...

Different.

No seven-story demonic fox, no torii gates pinning it to the rocky red earth, no blackened chains straining to contain his impossibly strong self.

Mountains like small hills in the distance stuck up like massive swords. Naruto thought for a second and realized they were flat on the sides, sticking up like rectangles. Zanbatos, tens of thousands of feet of what was probably rock in the very shape of the largest zanbatos; a curious flatness and edging that strained the eye. The broken pitted red clay earth was flat as far as the eye could see. Impaled in the ground in strangely symmetrical distances were swords of all shapes and sizes, clustered together all broken one way or another; hilts bent and blackened on some, the edges of the blades gouged in others. Unnaturally long weapons stood out every five blades in every direction, making the height of the whole thing variable, like one of those games where you pressed your hand onto a bed of dull needles and an imprint of your hand stood out.

Every so often there would be a mound of bone; femurs, arms, legs, broken skulls. Judging by how many, there had to be easily hundreds of thousands of dead. And what the hell did that even mean? Naruto had originally thought that was representative of how many people in history the Nine-tailed Fox had killed.

But the bijuu didn't reside here anymore.

Naruto found himself in a clear path that led straight to a distant structure. While he walked, he wracked his brain and couldn't remember the last time whether there had been any kind of structure, no, just that gargantuan spiraling Fuinjutsu built onto the ground. Almost like a sacrificial altar that Kurama had lain, pinned like some millennia-old demonic lamb.

If he was remembering correctly, this building was atop that same place.

Naruto was there, quicker than it was possible to be, and his first impression was overwhelmingly of the color white. The white of bone. The white of a skeleton lain in the sun. The white of sunshine when you'd been inside a dark room for far too long. White columns equidistant surrounded an open-air amphitheater, each level dropping one closer to what looked like a circular stage, slightly raised again one level. A woman stood next to a black orb and in front of yet another white stone something. A throne perhaps?

The air felt heavy, the scent of ozone strong, like being in the center of a lightning bolt as the plasma-channels opened, one billionth of a second from the million-degree heat that would sear the very molecules in the air. He found himself moving down the steps.

"Hello, my little Seedling. I'm glad to see you. Come say hello to your mother. It's been a...very long time."

Naruto stopped and stared.

A woman now sat, if you could call a person seemingly carved from some supernaturally-beautiful bone something as ordinary as a woman, in an ornately-carved throne of some unidentifiable stone. Veins of silver accented the etchings of screaming people clawing upwards, sculpted to look as if drowning and grasping for a savior. Despite the fact there was no blood, no plastered organs, no real violence to be had here, it was easily the most disturbing sight he'd seen since… since That Day.

Naruto shivered. This place is dangerous. She is dangerous.

But as soon as he had the thought, it drifted away.

Gooseflesh stood out on his skin as he found himself, dressed as he had when he blew himself up in the valet outfit, standing before her. He couldn't remember stepping down the stairs to stand in front of what she was...working on.

Naruto stood mesmerized, gazing down into an infinite oblivion in the form of a black sphere that drew his eyes like metal to a lodestone. Two large men with arms outstretched to touch fingers in a bizarre hug wouldn't have completely covered the circumference.

This… woman stood now, missing the intervening space between the seat and the orb as she teleported, touching the tops of it manipulating the images that Naruto saw inside it. Something about what she was doing resonated with him and he could really see it; chakra swirled, the feeling of it running through him like a river, and a tiny part of him paid very close attention to what she was doing. Like a bizarre fish-tank with only the top open to see what was inside, it was a window into somewhere other; a realm of molten lava, flow stretching as far as his downward watching angle allowed him to see. Another window flashed with icy winds, a temple with a statue outside it that looked suspiciously like the woman herself. A place of nothingness and a place with all white cuboid shapes floating, hanging still.

Another…another, another.

Naruto felt his eyes drawn up, the lodestone moving the needle, and his violet eyes latched onto the milky white orbs of this stunning bone-woman. But no, his mind wouldn't let him think that anymore, this close to such perfection made it impossible to believe her anything other than an impossibly immaculate alien; delicate cheekbones rose and swept her face back in a graceful heart-shaped curve that the greatest stonemasons in the world would have murdered their families for the chance to craft in a pale imitation. Then there was the horns and ears. Sweeping, furred the ears stuck out like a rabbit, but the horns turned her from prey to predator in an instant. Aggressive, graceful, they suited perfectly.

No, she was no bone-woman.

She was a goddess. His whole being was screaming at him. But Naruto wasn't listening.

No, she's no threat, right? … she's a prisoner, r-right?

Voices warred in his head.

From her white robe, to her white hair that glimmered like a silver vein, to the pale skin that put the greatest geisha to shame; this creature spoke to him in a way that Naruto didn't understand. He felt compelled. Complete.

No! This wasn't right, was it?

There was a connection now between them; one that he was only starting to comprehend. But when he heard her voice, everything clicked, and he suddenly did understand. He understood too well.

NO! This isn't right! IT ISN'T!

Orochimaru's face flashed in his head, the orb too, darkening. That jolt. That voice. The prison. It had gone dark… it had been holding… her.

"Do you like what I'm rebuilding, my sweet? I once owned countless worlds beyond this one. This is but a pale imitation, but once you've helped me regain my place, I can do something much superior."

Her face twisted in what could only be rage, but it made her more human, not less, and no less exceptional for its ugliness on and in her.

Naruto felt the same rage and that made a bridge across the vast differences.

"A long time ago, we used to call your world Garden. Simple, but perfect, no?" When she said Garden, powerful words that his mind shook to even attempt to grasp came out, Naruto settled on interpreting it as Garden.

She smiled at him, a simple curve of arterial blood red lips.

We?

A hundred thoughts were running through his head at the moment, but overwhelmingly he was starting to realize he was in a huge amount of trouble. Whatever artifact he'd struggled to get away from Orochimaru all that time ago had invited trouble with a capital 'T' into the same space that Kurama had occupied. There was a… pull...to her that Kurama hadn't had. His hands clenched and the woman/goddess seemed to notice, frowning and cocking her head.

Problems didn't begin to encompass how absolutely fucked Naruto had been from the moment this woman's orb came into his life. That rage, the same Rage that got him through everything in his life up to this point welled up inside him and it was hard not to start laying about with his fists.

She…

This was his fuckin' soul so that had to be something right?

Naruto felt himself breathing hard.

So Naruto embraced how absolutely furious he was; first the Seifuku-sha, then Orochimaru, his chakra gone, that fuckin' orb, getting blown up by his own explosive tag, waking up here of all places: when would it end?

"Who and what are you?" Naruto thrust a finger at her and almost spat, "Start talkin' lady or I'm grabbing one of those swords and kicking out the squatter!"

Her laugh almost snuffed the anger out wholesale.

"Tch. What's so goddamn funny?"

She hid her laugh behind a hand.

"Why, it's you, my little rabbit. I always did love watching how spirited you...humans are when given an obstacle."

Her body, he couldn't describe it as anything other than phased, through the huge black sphere, and was chest to chest with him. She radiated heat like a furnace, but her hands were cold when she laid a soft, so incredibly soft, palm on his face. He could feel his whiskers acutely.

She put her lips next to his ears and he froze like a rabbit spotting a hawk listening for death.

"It doesn't pay to be rude, rabbit. Does it? Especially not to your Mother."

She paused.

"Let me explain why I've brought you here, shall I?"

She stepped past him, robes and hair swishing faintly. Everything was still; it was impossible, but the ozone feeling intensified.

"My Seeds must be strong and I'm tired of watching you fail."

"Fail?"

"Yes. Fail. You perceive your recent losses against those base animals-animals I might add who cannot even hear Its Voice-a success?"

Naruto was reeling. This was so far beyond him that he was struggling to keep up. She must have taken his silence for agreement because she continued, slowly circling him. A predator hunting.

"I must have a Seed strong enough to gather the others. You've already lost one of them and I mean to have them all, in time. The Gate awaits us, after all. I will grant you a boon, a small boon, yes, but it will be the start of more-that is if you but ask."

I have so had enough of this.

Naruto smacked her hand away from his neck and ignored the powerful static shock when his hand made contact with hers.

"Listen lady, you're locked up in my soul and that's where you're going to stay. I don't trust you. I don't like how creepy you are. All I care about is getting Kaz to safety, then… well it's none of your goddamn business."

Naruto started walking away.

"I can't even use my chakra. So if you can help with that, we can talk-we'll call it rent, but I ain't making a bargain with someone stuck away in a sack for a century without some serious convincing."

Naruto whirled around, trying to find the way out. "What the hell is that big-ass orb too?"

How did he wake up from this place again?

"Hmph. Impudent, yet not without merit. Trust is, as they say, a 'two-way street.' Mother is here to help her children. I accept."

Naruto spun. She had a sly smile on her face as she held up a hand.

"On one condition of course."

Scowling, Naruto sat and sprawled on a plinth.

"Like what? Because frankly, I don't even know what you are, let alone your name. So why would I make a deal with some potentially psychotic asshole granny?"

Her laugh tinkled like wind through bells. It cut off and suddenly, as Naruto watched, her eyes spun into black and red whorls, mutating, shifting into purple concentric rings, and then back into milky white. Her face slackened like she'd been wearing a mask of congeniality, of humanity. Black ink, fuinjutsu like none he'd ever seen, spiraled up the bare parts of her arm, snaking up her neck, crossing her chin and cheeks like a helmet. Naruto only caught parts of what it said, but it was so advanced it hurt to look at them. They burned a path through his mind and burrowed in, a worm tunneling to its home.

"You dare ask my name? The name of your goddess?"

Naruto was screaming all of a sudden. His body was on fire, no his body was fire. His mind crunched and underneath it all a single though stubbornly clung to life; like a giant holding the world above him. If he didn't push back, a feeling told him she'd squash everything he was like a bug under a swatter.

Naruto flexed a muscle he didn't know he had; the pain snapped like a rubber band. The pain was gone.

This. is. MY. soul!

His mind was clear. The pressure left.

She hadn't even noticed, turning her back to him. Symbologies spiraled and swirled along her spinal column, the bit Naruto could see above her robe collar.

Enhancement.

"I am Kaguya Otsutsuki."

Silence stretched.

Naruto yawned. He was Master and Commander here and she'd learn to respect that, just like that overgrown fur ball Kurama would have. Naruto amended that mentally. Eventually.

"Yeah, I don't know who hell that is, though, it's nice to meet you I guess."

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, "So about this bargain?"

Kaguya totally ignored the very conceptual idea of the intervening space between them and one moment was five feet away, the next he was choking as she hauled him with main strength up in the air, squeezing his neck. Naruto felt like a kitten held by his mother. Naruto tried to squeeze a grin through his rapidly draining face.

He failed.

"You are an ant. Ants don't quite understand the boot, but I digress. I very much doubt you understand the cosmic scale involved, so let me be quite clear, my child. I was born millions of years ago and came to this flyspeck universe only ten thousand of your years ago, a blip to me, only to watch with rapidly diminishing hope as your uncivilized animal ancestors threw wood and stone spears at each other for the right to rut in a different place and with different people."

Her grip tightened and he saw stars.

"I watched and watched another ten thousand years before your civilization became advanced enough to be properly contacted."

White became purple which became rapidly bluing skin. She seemed to drift.

"The unmitigated gall to not recognize the dominion of the Otsutsuki extended to all of existence? Including Garden?"

That Word again, power incarnate that burned.

Naruto scrabbled desperately at her steel-clamp grip, windows to the outside world darkening.

"Interminable time later, I met someone worthy and I whelped the very first Seed, that precious monkey you call the Sage of Six Paths and his useless, feckless, twin."

She brought him close and all he could see now was those horrifying ringed eyes, like staring into the eyes of death itself. She was hissing her words, spittle flying.

"I am the Mother of All, I am the Goddess that brought Chakra to this world and I will not be disrespected even if my true radiance is shuttered into the cramped menial soul of a stupid child!"

One minute he was choking, close to blacking out and the next he was at terminal velocity, blasting through the white columns, splitting the earth as he carved a furrow a mile long with his body.

His world was agony.

Swords were falling, piled on top of him from where they'd exploded against his skin as he descended like a comet, skipping like a stone. When he came to rest, he had no time to even gasp for the air that was life.

Kaguya was there, leaning over him, smiling like a shark, in an instant.

"Don't fret. Mother's sometimes have to discipline unruly children."

Naruto gasped long and hard trying not to die.

She tapped a long, perfect nail against her full-lips.

"...but, as much as it pains me now, I cannot thus reward you for your spiritedness. Amusing as it is. You will have to find your own way forward."

Her robes bunched as she crouched down in one fluid motion. All of a sudden her demeanor changed; the eyes of an Oni from Yomi looked down at him, like a shark, all razor teeth and deadly grace.

"You want to get back in my good graces, my deviant Seed? Find my Black Will. Perhaps we will speak again later if you've sufficiently pleased me or grovel properly."

Naruto watched, not able to take in air, feeling his organs shutting down, as she raised one of those delicate hands which became claws right in front of his eyes.

They plunged down, ripping him in half, cratering the ground underneath him.

"Goodbye little rabbit."

Naruto felt the shockwave as he died.


Heaving for breath, Naruto rocketed upwards, smacking his head on a painfully hard object above him. Scrambling, flailing, he tangled his legs and arms in something constricting him and fell, impacting his face on something cold and unyielding.

Get away from her!

AWAY!

Startled cursing sounded off somewhere above him.

Gradually, he lay there breathing and realized he was alive. No Kaguya. No all-power Goddess that wanted, no, did rip him apart like tissue paper.

He was blessedly, blessedly alive.

Babbling. Naruto knew he was babbling, but he couldn't help it. Words tumbled, tripping, end over end out of his mouth trying to express the absolute horror that was Kaguya Otsutsuki.

"Naruto."

Lines of imaginary fire outlined the seam where she had sundered him; split him like the cords of wood Naruto had so enjoyed cutting. His hands cramped on those locations, some still covered with the blanket he tripped on, and found himself close to tears.

That made him stop and clamp his lips.

He'd promised himself no more tears. Anger rose, a shield and sword both.

"Naruto, stop!"

Shuddering, he breathed in deeply and let it out. One, two, three, four; in and then out.

Into his vision swam both Kazan and Chiyo looking at him from their respective places; one slumped against a wall, the other crouched over him, one hand aglow with healing jutsu. Naruto latched onto her arm and felt the strong muscles, solid, real through her rough-woven shirt and held it like it was the only thing keeping him alive. She put a hand on his, the other hand tilted his head up and she looked him in the eyes. Dark met light.

Chiyo shook her head and sighed.

"I'd love to speak about what just happened, but we have a bigger issue to confront."

Thoughts scrambled, he was still stuck on the goddess in his stomach and desperately wished Mifune was here, or Yojimbra, or Taza then he was hating himself for the weakness.

Naruto still continued to suck in deep breaths until he was as settled as he could be. Kaz's green eyes glittered like emeralds in the faint light through the slats of the poorly fitted wooden walls of the…

Now that Naruto noticed, they were in some dilapidated shit hole that passed for a one-room home.

This most definitely was not part of the plan. They'd said they would hole up in an inn. Either this was the fucking worst inn he'd ever experienced, which was admittedly a limited amount of times, or they were in some kind of on-the-run trouble they hadn't wanted to admit was a possibility when planning their grand escape.

"What the actual fuck is it now?"

"Language. A little thanks for pulling you out of a ditch swarming with Shin Toruku's men wouldn't be amiss, little shit."

Levering himself against the cold stone hearth he'd fallen on, Naruto pushed himself up and took stock. Chiyo, though he vainly hoped it had been Kaz, had dressed him, not in those valet clothes, but a common laborer's outfit: a sleeveless drab vest with no shirt and loose brown trousers.

Naruto pulled the drawstring a little tighter. Perverted old granny better not be takin' a look at my goods.

"Thanks for getting Kaz out. But fuck you for the other shit."

Naruto scowled at Chiyo. Chiyo just looked at him.

"You left me alone to get shanked by Tanaka's weird fan club. Thanks for that. Took blowing myself up to get out of that. I did jack-all to anyone else."

Chiyo cocked a grey eyebrow.

"You seem fine. Stop whining."

Naruto laughed. It might have had a bitter edge to it.

"Besides, we have bigger problems. Like I've already said."

"Like what?"

"Take a look outside, your chakra is crippled not your legs."

Ignoring her rude mutterings, he made his way to the window. Shutters squeaked on rusty hinges as Naruto pushed them ever so slightly open to peer out at the dark city around them. With dusk falling, it was getting harder to see, but not hard enough to miss where they were. From what Naruto remembered of his initial trip into the city as a trussed pig for En Oysashiro, which admittedly wasn't much given the trussed part, was that Hoseki City was divided into quarters. The Perfume Quarter was where Shizumi Mansion and most of the upper-class residents of Hoseki City made their homes. Crisscrossed by canals, as was most of the city, they were correspondingly more well-kept.

Judging by the far less picturesque scene outside their humble shack; slanted walls with no railings led down into water you definitely didn't want to drink, a conspicuous lack of maintained gardens, and clustered and stacked terraced housing units that fit four or five of these two-room hovels together, they were in the poorest quarter. Vibrant with plant-life though, that was something.

Having been forced to interact with the less well-off members of society, which was practically the only kind of person who would willingly and enthusiastically throw themselves into Shin Toruku and Tanaka the Lion's cruel menagerie of human animals, Naruto recognized the Haven Quarter by the stench of the irony.

However, it was impossible to ignore the sheer amount of Bakkushan, Black Ocean mercenaries, heavily armed and armored unlike last time, roaming the buildings and knocking on doors. They were combing, looking for someone. He eased the shutters a little, turning down an oil lamp near them.

Naruto knew very well who they were looking for.

A shadow detached from a wall near a squadron of Bakkushan and it resolved through weak lanterns the immense form of Seiryu, the currently undefeated Gutterknife Champion, and right-hand man of Tanaka and Shin. His huge odachi was unsheathed and dragging on the ground.

Naruto shivered, ducking as he watched Seiryu's head turn, scanning.

"Fuck."

Chiyo, Kaz, and Naruto all traded looks. Kazan was slightly more confused, but he understood the mood, if not the specifics.

They all knew it was only a matter of time before they were found… or the food ran out.

"There is some good news though."

Kaz and Chiyo both turned to him with eerily identical looks. Naruto knew skepticism when he saw it. But all he could see was his glorious maybe-solution.

"I think I found a fix for some of my chakra problems. That's good, right?"

Kaz let out a sigh, turning back to his art. Chiyo muttered.

"Really feelin' the love and appreciation for my brilliance in this room right now."

Chiyo and Kaz ignored him.

Naruto sighed, trying not to think of Kaguya, and shivered.

Great, one more problem to add to the fat list.


/Commerce Quarter

/Hoseki City

/Land of Fire

Gekko Hayate

A shinobi was never nervous.

Thus, Gekko Hayate was not nervous.

Rubbing his outer breast pocket, Hayate fiddled with the back of the lapel on his new suit. It was perfectly fitted, yes, and cost a small fortune in ryo and happened to be the finest piece of clothing he had ever owned, all things considered, but it just didn't sit right in the collar. Which was impossible. But it was.

Thus fiddling with it was entirely justified and definitely not a sign that one of the newest Jonin-level shinobi in Konohagakure's military was anything resembling anxious. No, it wasn't like his whole career was riding on this promising lead, no definitely not. Promising and also the only lead he had left. No, he definitely did not have anything as pedestrian as a common emotion called, 'nerves.'

Despite the fact Hayate felt far more comfortable with a blade in hand and a blood-covered uniform and Konoha flak jacket than he'd ever be in a suit, regardless of how well-tailored, this wasn't a situation he had any control over and that was what this was about: Hayate despised not having control.

No, Hayate sighed, this wasn't about the suit.

As he watched the sturdy, well-polished bas-relief covered doors to the Head Administrators office of the Department of Child Welfare for any sign of opening, he acknowledged only to himself that this was about the fact he'd been searching for what seemed like weeks to find any lead regarding the young boy named only Naruto; long blonde hair, whisker-marks on his face, no doubt lean, pale, about four feet tall, and last time Hayate had counted, the boy was nine.

All this for one boy…

Hayate endured. Uzuki was waiting for him. His Hokage was counting on him. Naruto might well be counting on him. This had to go well.

Please kami, grant me this small mercy.

Normally, he wasn't a man that believed in any power higher than chakra, but seeing bijuu and The Seifuku-sha made him question what he thought he knew about the world around him and what place he had in it. Maybe there really were gods and goddesses?

The doors opened and other thoughts fled.

Hoseki City's Department of Child Welfare, or DCW, was located in the city center, in the Commerce Center, almost next door to the Daimyo's palace, on the third floor of a forty-story building filled to the brim with various other governmental functions. The man he was here to see must have been a very important cog in the very important system indeed to have what appeared to be, in the room Hayate could see through the double-doors blocked by a thin man smiling brightly, an incredibly sumptuous office.

Curious.

Interesting indeed because none of the other Administrators had such a rarefied office-space, Hayata had checked, despite many other departments being far more integral to the running of the actual city and country, at that. At first glance, it seemed that Gerrild's information may have been about to bear fruit.

"Mr. Satama, I presume? Welcome, welcome!"

Hayate stood slowly, remembering his cover name of Hayate Satama. He brushed his jacket and smiled back after a short bow.

"Wonderful to meet you, Administrator Imado."

The man's secretary, a rather severe woman who had given him the eye like a bird fixed on a worm for the last twenty minutes, was stationed at a desk next to the doorway and seemed none too pleased by the cordial greetings.

Administrator Imado waved her away without looking at her and held the door open, still smiling.

"Come Mr. Satama, I am very eager to hear what you have to say. Get us some of that fine tea, Ritza, will you?"

She was already forgotten as the two walked into what Hayate now knew for certain was a nice office. Recessed into several of the pillars that anchored large clear glass panes looking out over the Perfume Quarter were alcoves with the bust of the Daimyo set into each. Light and open, the room was dominated by a monstrous behemoth of a desk that had almost nothing on it besides a name plate with, 'Yoshio Imado, Head of the Department of Child Welfare,' stamped in dark lettering on a gold plate. A corner of the office held two single-seat chairs that screamed decadence and a loveseat completing a triangle-shaped seating area. Fine crystal flutes on the wall nearest them held no-doubt expensive liquors in a wet bar that seemed… extravagant.

Hayate sat in the proffered seat across from Imado's desk, unsnapped his bottom suit button, and crossed his legs, sitting and watching the administrator settle behind his desk. The man folded his hands, still smiling, and he couldn't help but notice how fine of a coat Yoshio was wearing. Easily the equal to the one Hayate just had made. Blue with delicate pin-striping, it was an exquisite suit as those things go, not that Hayate knew anything regarding a fine cut. What completed the look was a gold-plated chronograph that could not be less than seven hundred thousand ryo, well beyond the means of a simple Department Head. No calluses on the hands, no real muscle to speak of, no, not a plant or a foreign shinobi. Administrator Imado continued talking and smiled all the while.

"So, I understand you are here as the… go-between, if you will, for a rather secretive and wealthy client. They seek a specific adoption, I gather?"

Hayate smiled. Something seemed off, rather oily about this fellow; from the perfectly white teeth, to the thin pencil-like mustache, or perhaps it was the quaff hair-do that looked entirely ridiculous on a man that dealt with such heart-breaking and serious matters as the welfare of the children of this city. One look outside, even just to the alleys abutting this very building, and Hayate knew there was enough work for a lifetime. And enough sorrow.

This man didn't look like he had a care in the world.

"Yes, but before I begin, I gather a powerful man like yourself understands the importance of discretion in matters of a… delicate nature?"

Even before he'd finished speaking, that quaff was swaying.

"Oh yes, Mr. Satama. In fact-"

The door opened and the weaselly secretary came bustling in with a steaming tray and several scones which she set down on Mr. Imado's desk.

"Thank you Ritza, that'll be all."

"No dictation-?"

"No, thank you Ritza, I'll handle it myself, that will be all."

The look she threw over her shoulder at Hayate could've been a fire jutsu for all it was burning through his shoulder blades.

What is her problem?

"As I was saying, Mr. Satama, I deal with high-profile adoptions all the time. I'm not saying this is the case in your clients situation, but often we have the honor of a proper bloodline to consider in regards to wealth-based lineage disputes. Thus, these things can get… contentious."

"Right. Well, I feel more comfortable already. In fact, I can tell your word is an iron bond- priceless to a wealthy man like my client. Perhaps I'll skip ahead to the problem at hand?"

If it was possible, the man was smiling even wider.

Didn't his face hurt?

Hayate folded his hands and leaned back.

"Oh yes, I'm more than willing to offer assurances that whatever is spoken about in this room is absolutely confidential. I assure you, sir, that Yoshio Imado is a man of integrity. I must be, for the children, you see?"

The man turned and looked out at the city.

"It is all for the children."

Hayate almost gagged. Hayate continued, trying to keep his face smiling.

"Then I'm obliged to tell you that I represent the wealthiest man in the city. Shin Toruku and his wife, Tatsuana have an… exceptional circumstance."

Imado turned back slowly, his smile faltering for the first time.

Got him.

"You see, they recently adopted a boy from another country. Lady Tatsuana has philanthropic ties to…"

Hayate cut off, clearing his throat.

"Well, that's not important. What is important is that she just fell in love with this child who lost his parents in a tragic accident and brought him back here."

Hayate watched as Mr. Imado's oily smile sputtered and died for good, but Hayate said nothing about it.

"You understand, given how smart of a man you are, Mr. Imado, that my lady and my patron unfortunately… had some small trouble with this child. He has run away you see and this is quite a feral city."

Yoshio pursed his lips to almost a bloodless nothing.

"They wish him to be found and returned to them. Lady Tatsuana is quite inconsolable. The boy will need to have all his information in order as well, do you see Administrator?"

The Jonin-turned-fake-businessman pulled a sealing scroll from his suit pocket and ran some chakra through it to materialize the duffel bag he'd been authorized to stuff full of hundreds of thousand-ryo notes. Enough to buy a palatial country estate. Hayate opened the zipper just enough and watched Yoshio Imado's greedy little eyes bug out to the size of tennis balls. The man was sweating profusely and his office was at a comfortable temperature.

"I trust Mr. Toruku and his lady can count on you to facilitate our arrangement?"

Yoshio coughed into his hand and recovered himself admirably.

"Yes, well…"

"I sense some… hesitation on your part, Administrator Imado. Does this task seem onerous? I assure you, the man I work for is not one to be disappointed, despite how easy-going he seems. Lady Tatsuana far less so, I'm afraid and I told them both that you were the key player to speak with to ensure success."

Hayate stood, re-buttoning his jacket. He de-summoned the duffel bag full of cash into the scroll and replaced it in his pocket.

"I will have assurances from you, Mr. Imado. Whether here now or later on at your place of residence, surrounded by your family. What say you?"

Imado paled at this and swallowed.

"Right, yes of course! Please convey my, uh, sincerest assurances to both Lady Toruku and your master. However, it will take some time to find this...Naruto, you said?"

Hayate simply stared.

"I don't believe I said his name." Inside Hayate was crowing. Success!

Yoshio continued, swallowing.

"Say, a week?"

The Jonin let the silence drag until it was far too much, then-

"Very well. This is acceptable."

He slapped the first half of payment on the table. Perhaps this would keep him from ratting Hayate out immediately to who he suspected was on the other end of this.

"Quite a pleasure. I see my trust was not misplaced after all. Pleased indeed, as I'm sure my employers both will be too. Good day Administrator Imado. "

Hayate bowed and walked slowly towards the door.

It was time.

Reaching inside himself he pushed and pulled and spun his chakra out in fine threads, invisible to Yoshio Imado and crafted a genjutsu, his specialty that would be exceedingly difficult for anyone short of an Uchiha to parse that showed Hayate exiting the room.

Now, the second part.

Tapping into the optic nerve, Gekko Hayate tweaked a chakra matrix that fooled Yoshio Imado into believing there was no one in the room but him.

Patience. That was what this part of the plan now required. That and no one else coming into the room. Otherwise he'd have to extend himself even further. Doable, but difficult. This was much preferred.

Hayate watched as the prick did exactly what he thought he'd do.

The man immediately dialed someone else. He watched as Yoshio connected and frantically attempted to get it all out at once.

But before the conversation could go any further than bare details, the door opened and Hayate cursed softly, still weaving. He readied a third thread, coiled like a snake waiting.

"I'm sorry my Lord Oroc-yes, I'll have to call you back." Pause. "Yes, of course. No, my Lord."

With a click, Hayate's hopes of getting out who this weasel was working for died a premature death.

In walked a truly fat man, immense rolls only barely covered by the widest suit he'd ever seen. Hayate had done his research and knew this man was, 'Big Yu' Yusuke, known as a Yakuza associate. Rumors swirled about his work in some of the darker trades known to mankind. The kind the Head of the Department of Child Welfare should have been directly working against.

Clearly the man wasn't.

How far did this go?

His genjutsu thread struck, spearing directly into his target, Big Yu, before he could realize there was anyone else in the room. Nothing happened, which was exactly what he wanted. The two carried on speaking like there wasn't a third person standing not too far away leaning against the wall.

"Hey boss, update."

Imado snapped. "Close the door first, idiot!"

Big Yu didn't even look phased or surprised, merely closing the door before settling his considerable bulk in the same chair that Hayate had sat in. The man took one cup of the cooling tea that Ritza brought in two fingers the size of Earth country sausages.

"You'd said you wanted an update, yeah? Well, I got it. An update that is, you know, on the kid? Like Lord Orochimaru wanted?"

Hayate's heart fairly leapt out of his chest and exited the room before he could calm it down.

Orochimaru?

S-class threats were classified as such because of their threat to the continued existence of the village. Existential crises, most would say. Orochimaru was one of the few individuals labeled an S-class threat to the village, right up there with a bijuu in damage potential.

Last known position?

Righteous anger suffused Hayate, taking his breath away with the strength of it.

Last known position was Iron Country...in the company of The Seifuku-sha.

That man was still hunting Naruto, which meant he wasn't too far off. Or was this a giant coincidence, two threads meeting accidently?

No, that was ridiculous and absurd.

The two kept speaking, unmindful of the fact Hayate was having a conniption.

"Pause. Before you tell me this new update, I have news myself. News that I'm going to ask you to take care of quickly. Did you see the man leaving when you exited? Tall? Mousey? Utterly forgettable in a suit?"

Big Yu shook his head.

"Nah, I didn't see nobody."

Imado waved a hand. "Regardless, that man came to me with an undoubtedly fake proposition regarding the same boy that Lord Orochimaru had me looking out for and who I found not three hours ago when Master Shin's Gutter blew up!"

Hayate was stunned. So, clearly was Big Yu.

What?

"What?"

Imado stood and started to pace, wiping his forehead with an expensive coat sleeve. He got increasingly louder and more incensed.

"Yes Yu, as we speak there is practically a city-wide manhunt for the nine-year old boy who messily slit Sukumu Gato's son's throat. Lionel, I might remind you, is the sole heir to Sukumu's hundred billion ryo fortune. No, if what this unbelievably violet street urchin's adventure can be believed he then proceeded to kill close to half the guards and mercenaries sent to subdue him!"

Big Yu whistled. "Kid's awesome."

The vein on Imado's head that appeared sometime in the last hour pulsed.

"No Yusuke. He is not awesome. He's a major pain in my ass and may get both of us killed if he keeps this up. What part of this don't you get?"

Big Yu seemed unimpressed, continuing to sip his tea.

"Supposedly, my source says the boy had help from a medical ninja hired by Master Shin to tend his Gutterknives. I'm not sure I believe that as there is bad information floating around. All I know," here, he turned and bit his lip, shaking his head, "all I know Yu is that we can't have a third party here fucking things up. Loose ends stink up ships."

Big Yu cocked his head.

"Not sure that's the phrase exactly, boss."

He shook his head, finished his tea in a gulp, and stood before Imado exploded.

"I get it though boss. I'll kill 'em for ya."

Yoshio whirled and the vein continued to pulse.

"I don't just want you to kill him, Yu. I want you to find out who he works for because Lord Orochimaru was in the middle of negotiating a price for the boy with Master Shin and then this shit happened. Who is this third party sniffing around for a boy named after a goddamn ramen ingredient? For that matter, why is this boy so important? I have fifteen more like him waiting to be sold! I don't get it!"

Big Yu made soothing motions with his dinner-plate-sized hands.

"Alright boss, alright. It'll be alright. I'll snap this chucklefucks neck and then I'll go through his shit. We'll figure it out. We're still gettin' paid, yeah?"

Imado nodded absently.

"Yeah, then that's that. I'll see ya boss. In the meantime, drink some of that tea, yeah? It's delicious. That snack Ritza makes a mean tea."

At that Imado made a face and waved again, a weak flapping gesture, but then stopped, whirling on Big Yu.

"Make sure Yu, above all else, that we find this boy before the Lord Guardians get involved. Not all of them are on the Lord's payroll, or Master Shin's. You understand? Disaster. I don't want another Shinata Incident."

This time, Big Yu waved and left.

Hayate was reeling. This was huge. Too big for him to handle.

He needed to contact the Rokudaime.

Naruto was dead in the next few hours if they didn't do something.


/Haven Quarter

/Hoseki City

/Land of Fire

Naruto

The doorframe, windows, and empty refrigerator rattled with the force of the slammed door. To her credit, Chiyo looked slightly chagrined as she came in like a whirlwind, genjutsu melting from a plain-looking middle-aged woman to an incredibly wrinkled crone. Well, the last one was actually her.

Naruto didn't have the courage to mutter any of his thoughts out loud, despite how grumpy and annoyed she'd seemed ever since he'd seen Seiryu was hunting for them. She didn't apologize for scaring the ever-loving shit out of Naruto and Kazan both, though. He'd sworn that the Bakkushan mercenaries were about to roll over them like their namesakes.

Naruto opened his mouth to ask her if she was raised by feral wolves, couldn't she knock? But an image of an irate goddess killing him because he quote unquote, 'disrespected her' stilled his tongue. Chiyo wasn't on the same level as Kaguya, being that she was seemingly always grumpy, but it paid to be cautious. He felt that decision was very mature.

Naruto moved his piece three spaces and yelped in glee when he realized he earned three more coins, greedily collecting them from the pile in the middle of the dirt-caked board. Kazan had 'found' this game, Torbol, in an alleyway all scuffed up and missing some pieces. Afterwards, he felt terrible because the city-rats only had one copy and Kazan had wanted to venture back out unsupervised and without a genjutsu to put it back. It was all Naruto could do to stave off that disaster. The fact he left and came back without anybody realizing it was mind-blowing and also terrifying. Like he said, maturity was rising inside him.

"Boy, I need to speak with you about why you're sitting on your ass and playing games with Kazan while you should be fixing the chakra issue."

Her significant glance towards his notebook was not lost on him.

"I'm not wasting time, I'm bonding."

He more felt the eye roll than saw it.

"Be that as it may, this is your life at stake-and ours as well. I cannot be seen openly fighting in the middle of the Daimyo's crown-city. I'm a… somewhat well-known shinobi from a country that is not Fire."

Naruto twisted from where he was sitting cross-legged on the ground opposite Kaz, who was frowning down at the board. There was no way he'd recognize the highly-advanced maneuver Naruto was about to pull off.

"Why the secrecy Chiyo? Why don't you just… I don't know, be honest with me? I told you mine, it's about time you told me yours."

Chiyo let out a relaxed sigh as she sat on the edge of her cot on the far wall.

"I'll make you a deal, boy. Are you interested?"

Naruto's eyes bulged as he looked down at the board and realized he'd lost to Kazan. How the hell…?

He cleared his throat and turned, looking Chiyo in the eyes.

"I'm interested."

"How about you tell me about this Kaguya Otsutsuki and then I'll tell you everything you could ever want to know about little old me. Hm? Fair?"

Naruto broke his gaze with her and turned back to Kaz, who was rolling up the board with great care. Naruto helped him put the 'coins' in the pouch. Quietly, he muttered something.

"What was that?"

"I said, 'nevermind'."

"That's what I thought. Now, let's discuss this 'fix' you claimed you had."

He cleared his throat, trying to buy time to figure out what to say. It was true that he had, or thought he had figured it out, but there was a small piece missing; not to mention he didn't have the supplies or a person with enough etching acumen to use the etching tool on him. He couldn't do it on himself, not unless he had some stretchy, rubbery arms like a superhero from the stories. That'd be cool. But yeah, no, he didn't have that.

"Unless you have access to a blacksmith, chakra metal ingots to liquify, and a sufficiently advanced fuinsmith then we're out of luck. So, just kidding?"

Chiyo gave him the flattest look he could ever remember being given in his short life.

"First off: Kazan brought a bunch of random junk from his work in the smithy at Shins. Second, there is a blacksmith in the Commerce District, one gate over from where we sit. As for the other things…"

She trailed off, one finger tapping her chin, absently looking at Kazan.

"As for the other things, give me sufficient time and I'll think of something. Ever wonder how you eat a Plains Buffalo?"

Even Kaz's face was screwed into a funky look at the incredibly bizarre non sequitur.

"I'm surrounded by idiots and I can't decide who's worse. At least Kazan has an excuse." She sighed. "You eat a Plains Buffalo one bite at a time. We can't do the other things unless we accomplish each of these smaller tasks. Let's focus on figuring out what we do have."

Kaz lumbered over to his enormous backpack and brought it to Naruto, dropping it with a clanking rattle that sounded like he brought half a smithy with him. Naruto upended it on the floor and it proved more difficult than expected.

This weighs a ton!

But the reason for that soon proved apparent; ingots, darkened ores, and various other raw minerals tumbled out.

"Kaz, you big beautiful weirdo."

Naruto sifted through the junk with his fingers and realized some of them were draw-string pouches of various sizes, one of which contained, of all things, various cleaning supplies; powders, rags, and small tubs of oil. Underwear, a towel, various pens and inks capped and placed gently in a small wooden box. Random shit was stuffed in a dozen different pockets.

How the hell did he get all this stuff?

In another pouch, larger this time, lay the very thing he had been looking for.

Kaz grinned, lighting up his whole body. Naruto couldn't help but laugh.

The Etcher.

But his breath caught when he saw what was at the bottom of the pile: two palm-sized silver-veined ingots of…

Chakra metal. Originally, these were used for the forging of a full-blooded Gutterknife's actual knife. Each one received their knife during the blooding ceremony. Chakra metal was expensive, so they only had a few pieces lying around and Kazan had nicked enough to buy a small mansion in the country. Kami.

Like a furnace radiated heat, Chiyo fairly hummed with smug satisfaction.

"Yeah granny, well this doesn't exactly solve all our problems, does it? I need to spend some time creating a stable fuin-ink out of these babies."

She was clearly undaunted. "I have faith in you, boy."

"What about all that shit you gave me for this idea, calling me an idiot?"

"Very true. It is definitely stupid, even terminally idiotic, to attempt to create an entirely new fuinjutsu based on something you probably saw in a very vivid nightmare. Yes, stupid."

She leaned in and he could smell her old-person scent: garlic and that weird soap she used.

"One could say, a feat of stupidity made infinitely more moronic by the fact you are attempting to put the product of your mad brain on your spinal column. Yes, we've reached rarefied air in your attempts to fatally out-stupid the rest of humanity."

Damn, granny is harsh.

She started quietly clapping.

Naruto threw up his hands. "If you think it's such a bad idea, why the hell did you even tell me to solve this one problem at a time?"

Naruto had the faint sensation that she now thought him even dumber.

"...because every great idea starts out looking stupid to others, boy. That's innovation. You do the impossible, yes? You ignore what people think they know and you prove them wrong."

She folded her arms and snorted. "Well, I'm waiting."

Sneaking through the various patrols of Bakkushan, panicking to avoid Seiryu, and then ducking away from some menacing-looking people in weird embroidered sashes took the better part of two hours. Only, when Naruto did find a blacksmith, it took another four tedious hours to prove his competence by creating a barrel stave as quickly and effectively as he could. Then, and only then, did the Master of the forge, an intense fellow by the name of Tandrick, let him perform the complicated and highly-secretive process that Iron Fuinsmiths had been perfecting for a thousand years; ultimately ending up with eight ounces of silvery, metallic liquid that would form the basis of the etching ink. Hiding that involved using some of the money Chiyo had 'liberated' from Shin to bribe Tandrick not to come into that side of the forge.

Then it took him another couple of hours to sneak back across, well, enemy lines, so to speak, because a patrol stopped to beat the ever-loving shit out of a man who refused to let the four-man squad in to check the apartment.

Luckily, or maybe not so luckily for them, a dozen men with what looked like table-legs and various heavy implements took the moral quandary right out of his hands and proceeded to return the favor four-fold on the surprised squad of Gato's Black Ocean mercenaries.

Somehow, a fire started and the small incident turned into a big incident. Big like, the entire Haven Quarter turned out in droves hunting for more Bakkushan. Naruto would swear up and down this wasn't his fault.

Naruto heard, rather than saw, the righteous band of citizens find Seiryu and his guards.

He hurried to the shack as fast as he could. They clearly didn't have much time.

Naruto took one look at Chiyo's face as he came upon the barely-there front-door and said, "Don't even start. The goddamn day I've had."

He pushed past her with the ink vial clutched in one hand and fairly gulped down water from the huge plastic bottle Kaz had clutched in his hands.

Chiyo shut the door and turned. "Success?"

Naruto grinned around the mouth of the bottle, giving a thumbs up. Screaming and wailing and the clash of arms was barely audible over the fire crackling in the hearth.

"Now I just need to fix the last issue with the symbology equivalency and loop, don't know how She handled that, but it's on the tip of my brain. Is that a phrase people say?"

"No, it's not. And I trust you realize I cannot help you with that part, boy? I have no small skill in the art of Fuinjutsu, but the task you're undertaking..."

She shook her head and sat back in her usual spot, across from Kazan who was working on...something. He couldn't quite tell from his spot aimlessly pacing like a caged tiger in the center of the room. Bowls with caked rice and chicken were stacked on a desk Naruto had been using to write in his recently-appropriated notebooks.

"...it's almost beyond me. And I've messed about with bijuu seals."

"I guess that means we're both stupid, huh granny?"

She looked like she swallowed a lemon. Naruto grinned.

The notebook was open and a picture showed facing up; clouds like some volcanic smoky quartz glimmered with inner light, a boiling thunderstorm producing jagged forking blasts of lightning that connected sky and ground.

Naruto had never beheld a more amazing natural sight like that in his short life lived mostly underground, well, except for that time he'd lived through one in the wild. Almost caked his pants during that experience.

Lightning was power; lightning was majesty in motion.

The second those plasma channels opened, charged ions transmitted power from sky to ground in a billionth of a second. Naruto remembered Yojimbra talking about the various elements and their strengths and weaknesses. Yojimbra had laughed when Naruto began to obsess over how cool it would be to throw lightning around like some god of the sky.

Naruto stood up, his chair flying backward.

Lightning.

Hunching over the notebook filled with his work, Naruto reworked the feedback elements and introduced some fundamental symbological matrices that changed the overall nature of what he was trying to accomplish. There was something happening in his brain, but he had the kami-given feeling that he'd succeeded. These symbols, together just so, made… sense.

It would work.

And Naruto stared as he finally understood what his Uzumaki heritage had given him.

Unlimited access to success in the pursuit of fuinjutsu if he merely put the work in and never gave up-this ability, the means to check for correctness, to ascertain success or failure of a given created fuinjutsu?

That was what had killed his entire people.

Everything, and he meant everything, in their world now ran off of already-established fuinjutsu matrices; people didn't understand, not really, what fuinjutsu was other than its purported functions. It was a thing that did something-that was it.

But the Uzumaki had understood-down to the last atom.

Fuinjutsu products were a license to print money and the greed of those seeking a license to print money had killed the only possible avenue to innovation.

Rumors had abounded, and even Master Ouran had heard them, that the Uzumaki leashed bijuu, chained an actual God, and found a secret to boosting their own powers with fuin-marks. The Uzumaki hadn't sought war or the death of others, except what Konhagakure had asked of them for general defense, no, they'd used fuinjutsu, in their wisdom, to improve the lives of everyone. No patents. No money changed hands. Just free sharing of ideas to make the world better.

Fuin was everywhere: we used it to power auto cars, the vaunted autobus, to power flying machines, to pave roads between countries, to clean water and redistribute it, and even to supply city-power grids with ambient chakra. He had even used a fuin-matrix to heat ramen in three minutes or less.

Rage flooded him and his fists clenched. He blinked at the sudden pain and found his fist bleeding, stuck half-way into the wooden boards facing his desk. Kazan and Chiyo gaped at him.

A part of him was ashamed that he didn't know more about his heritage, about either his mother or father, despite the little he did know of the Uzumaki lineage. And because of what he did know of the Uzumaki, Naruto felt they wouldn't remotely approve of Fuinjutsu used like this, the samurai definitely would find this anathema to everything they taught; a 'violation of the Oath of the Sage.' But another part of him, a darker part, felt that the world deserved to learn what the fuinjutsu of the Uzumaki could do unleashed, turned to destruction. The peace-loving artists they'd scorned and wiped out.

Surely doing a bad thing for a good reason… that made it right, right?

Would Mifune have understood? Naruto scowled.

No, no he wouldn't have understood.

He was, after all, the man who let The Seifuku-sha in to slaughter his people and kill every person Naruto had ever loved. No, Mifune wouldn't understand and maybe that was a good thing. He wouldn't end up like that man, a coward afraid to use the tools in front of him to get the job done.

"Naruto?"

He turned. Chiyo had a strange look on her face.

"Are you… okay? Your hand is bleeding. Give it to me."

"I'll be fine. We have work to do."

Naruto cut off Chiyo's response as he turned to Kazan.

"Kaz."

Naruto moved to his best friend and turned him so they were face-to-face.

It was hard looking in those vulnerable green eyes. Naruto gave him the notebook, with the drawing outlined and looking like intricate beads on a string, if the beads were concentric rings of fuin symbols connected by more and more matrices down a length that would lead from where his neck met his shoulder blades all the way down to the dimples near his buttocks.

"Kaz, I need you to copy what I've written here onto my skin," Naruto picked up the Etcher, a needle-gun specially designed, filled, and ready with the liquid metal.

"You are the only person I can trust with this."

Those green eyes looked horrified. The needle would not be kind if he was to penetrate the upper layers of skin far enough. Kaz knew this. He'd done some light metal-etching work using a regular heated knife. Naruto continued to try to tell himself this was the same thing.

Naruto gripped Kazan's hands, which were shaking, and pinned them. They strained against each other. He knew Kaz didn't want to ever disappoint him; his friend was nothing if not straight-forward about his loyalty and you couldn't put any kind of price on that.

Naruto had found that out first hand.

Images of Yojimbra throwing his broken self at Orochimaru to let Ouran and him escape flashed through his head and it was everything he could do not to howl with sheer loathing. This was what he had to do! No one else could! No one else would!

This would be only his first step.

Naruto's grip tightened.

"Kaz… please."

Naruto whispered, but Kaz was already crying silently. The sounds of battle outside formed an odd counterpoint. Chiyo simply watched.

In the end, Naruto had known it had to be Kazan and it seemed he knew it too.

In a weird trance, Naruto took his vest off and set it aside as Kaz cleared the desk. He climbed atop it and lay face down, just fitting with only a bit of his feet hanging off.

Chiyo cleared her throat, but Naruto interrupted her as he stared down from his place on the table.

"Save it granny."

She scowled. "Don't call me that, boy."

Her voice softened. "I was going to say you're going to need this."

She proffered a stick. Before Naruto realized what was happening, shiny threads of...something… snapped out of her like a thousand spiderwebs, latching on to his limbs and he was pinned. Naruto could almost smell the chakra. Every muscle in his body was frozen stiff, though she left his mouth open.

"What the hell granny?"

"Stop being a baby. You don't want your jerking around and whining to blow us and half the city up do you? If he slips?"

Naruto stilled and Kaz made a sound in the back of his throat; frightened or annoyed he couldn't tell.

"Tch. Fine."

Chiyo fit the stick between his teeth. The wood tasted of ashes.

He tilted his head at Kaz and tried to smile. Chiyo smiled at him, but it was fragile.

"Tgh-oo it."

At first Naruto didn't feel anything, then his neck started getting warm, then he felt it: the needle pierced his skin. That wasn't so bad. He'd had to show Kaz how you used the Etcher, first placing the needle, next you penetrated with the lip and injected the liquid.

So this was the penetration, next was the-

What felt like molten metal crawled inside him and-

Naruto screamed.

The stick snapped.

The chakra threads tightened, freezing his mouth.

Everything went white in his head.


/Haven Quarter

/Hoseki City

/Land of Fire

Tanaka the Lion

There were many strange things afoot this night.

Not the least of them was that the rain felt more like continuous walls moving horizontally, then true rain, driving so hard that it left lines on his vision as he stared at the ominous black clouds rolling through Hoseki City. Very few people would want to be out in this deluge and those who were surely had a need. No one would willingly choose to venture into a monsoon like this; Tanaka eyed the men surrounding him and Master Toruku, hand-picked and well-trained as any standing army.

No, not willingly are we out here.

But their very reputation was at stake. No one came into the Gutter and knifed one of their own, though privately he believed that sick child had gotten what he deserved, but Gato, the patron of his patron, believed otherwise. His son was still alive, barely, but who knew what the fates had decreed for such an evil child? Perhaps he would die this night.

The omens were quite right for such ill-things.

Master Toruku commanded, Tanaka obeyed, no matter how much he regretted losing the sheer atmospheric heights of potential that that little boy had harbored within. Tanaka fancied himself a sculptor of potential and nowhere had he ever seen a more beautiful or pure marble like what Naruto represented. It was ever so that the flaw made the whole piece stronger.

Yes, crippled he may have been, it just meant that he needed more encouragement to strain to reach the heights he and Shin had both seen during that first encounter. Seiryu had been put on the back-foot. Temporarily, yes, but that opponent was a nine-year-old boy with what seemed a curiously strong foundation. Thus, that potential was squandered as here he was, along with the best the Gutter had to offer hunting The Lions dream down and slaying it like knights beset the dragons of yore.

Part of him wished they wouldn't find him.

But Tanaka knew it was a matter of time.

Stranger still was that the Guardians hadn't interfered yet; though he knew they would. Whatever force caused them such hesitancy wouldn't prevent the end. There was much about this he didn't understand. Not the least was how their own iryounin was so moved to aid the boy and his idiot friend in their escape. What fell power did Naruto have that convinced loyal servants to jump ship in such a suicidal endeavor?

A messenger came to a huffing stop nearby, one of their apprentice Gutterknives; Uruchi, was his name?

"Master Shin, Master Tanaka, we think we got 'em."

The boy showed almost no excitement about that fact. Noted.

Master Shin, from where he sat under a makeshift open-faced tent, only shifted slightly in response. Tanaka knew he was to take point. Master Shin was that rarest of creatures in that he hired people more capable than him to do a job and when he did so, he trusted them implicitly, never attempting to steal the credit due, always deferring. One of the many reasons he'd agreed to work with this genius man so many years ago now. Hopefully, their partnership would last far into both their eventual retirements.

The Lion never disappointed, after all.

Uruchi, yes that was his name, spoke quickly at Tanaka's prompting.

"Master, we missed them in the first sweep."

The boy pointed up from the wide courtyard they'd erected the tent, towards an elevated position squeezed in among the terraced housing complexes that characterized the Haven Quarter.

"They are holed up in a small caretaker's shack on Chesu Way, by the cathedral."

Leather armor creaking from its age despite his careful diligence with the oil, Tanaka loosened his shortswords in their sheaths. Time and Regret were his two oldest companions, short-bladed weapons that had served him through almost two world wars and countless individual duels. If everything went right today, he wouldn't need to even draw them.

Best to be safe.

"Move our men into position. Seiryu has orders from the Guttermaster. Grand Oyabun Gato must have visible proof of death. We bring the head, but Seiryu is to engage. Torin will wait back with you and the others. Are those orders understood? Repeat them back word-for-word."

Uruchi, to his credit, barely stumbled.

"Very well. The most important thing is for us to bring him in dead or alive. Impress this upon Seiryu. It must be us. Go now."

Shin and Tanaka both watched him go, watched the conference, watched Seiryu fairly vibrating with suppressed anticipation.

His Masters voice was quiet, but it cut through the rain like no other; strong, iron, but faintly worried. That was new.

"Tanaka, old friend, I trust you without reservation. I trust I need not remind you that we are on let's say thin ice with Grand Oyabun Gato?"

Tanaka nodded. "You are worried, Guttermaster?"

"Phaw. Dispense with that nonsense when it is just us two." Shin turned, pinning him with the stare that had made men soil themselves, made fearsome fighters cower. But he was worried now and that brought a sharing of burdens that made them equal for a time.

"Gato has brought a...man, a shinobi, from Mist." He paused. "I daresay… He frightens me, Tanaka. We must have the boy dead or in their custody before this man finds him. I want this business put behind us as quickly as possible."

It was all Tanaka could do not to goggle at the man he'd known for close to thirty years. In all of those he'd never professed to being frightened. Not aloud. Shin continued speaking.

"Pray this man, this Raiga Kurosaki, isn't turned on us for failure. Which is exactly what will happen if Sukumu's son dies on the operating table and we fail to catch this… child. Hook or by crook, blame must not fall on the Gutter."

Tanaka simply nodded.

Both turned to watch the rain, falling in buckets, turning the world into a smoky hot soup.

Everything turned around capturing Naruto. Everything.

"Gentleman, excuse me, do you have a permit to create a temporary dwelling?"

Tanaka and Shin turned as one to see two men; one bald, wearing the robes of a Shinobi Monk, a Questioner, and the other a rather non-descript brown-haired fellow in a suit. No one would've taken a second glance at the fellow on the right, but Tanaka wasn't just anyone.

Tanaka smiled as he beheld the sash emblazoned with the symbol of the Daimyo's personal guard, a phoenix and sword against a tree in full bloom on a red and white checkered background.

The symbol of the Lord Guardians. No one they expected or wanted to meet, but needs must.

The man in the suit stepped forward, "My name is Gekko Hayate, an associate of Sukumu Gato, and I believe you pursue my charge?"

The man nodded to the calm Lord Guardian next to him.

"Lord Guardian Chiriku is here to assume custody, post-haste."

Shin turned and merely looked at Tanaka. It went without saying they couldn't allow this… but they also couldn't contest both the Daimyo's right hand and Gatos. There was a third option and it fell right in their lap, preventing undue blame.

Tanaka pointed up at where the sounds of crashing blades and screaming had started up.

"I believe he can be found up there with a...small number of my men. Shall I accompany you?"