THE IMPERIAL PALACE – THE STORY OF FURST JONAS
The Underground Academy
Himawari finishes the practice routine, having done exactly what Sora told her and looks down at her hands, disappointed in herself for not making a breakthrough. She knows that this will take a long time, and that even with hard work, dedication and focus it takes most people years to break through, but now she has that. She, like everyone else, has been guided an expert teacher, and she has more direction than she has ever had before.
She fails that she gained an enormous amount just from spending a few minutes with one aristocrat, the Hokage have each received personal attention from Sora himself, they must be getting even more out of it. She looks at the most important one amongst them, she watches as her father performs a series of dance-like moves. He glides across the floor between two aristocrats as if performing an ancient ritual as he focuses divine energy on a single point, ever moving about his body. All the while, he receives instructions and advice from those two aristocrats, each of them stronger than him. It forces Himawari to realise just how much importance has been placed on her father.
"What do you suppose they're telling him," she asks.
"I don't know," Kushina answers, pausing in her own training, "There are two of them trying to help him break through, and each of those movements is precise and powerful. I think he's in good hands to say the least."
Suddenly behind them Minato's eyes snap open and the 4th Hokage gasps.
"It just grew," he declares.
The 4th Hokage's wife and granddaughter both turn to him curiously. He often gets worked up over small things, he excels at his job which entails a lot of worrying about other people. But something about Minato is different this time, it's not excitement or anxiety that he is showing them, it's amazement.
"It grew?"
"The stone tablet in my inner world just grew," he reiterates, "It just got larger, clearer and most of the cracks disappeared. I don't exactly know what caused it but when I was learning about the 'wind' I…"
Minato teleports away, using the flying thunder god technique to bring himself to his son's side.
"Naruto, the stone tablet in my inner world, it just grew," Minato excitedly declares.
The stone tablet grew? That is not something that Naruto is familiar with. Ever since he first understood 'life' and the tablet appeared in his inner world it has been completely unchanged. Once Kurama cleaned the dust from that stone tablet and the two of them read the word imprinted on it, that is when the Uzumaki clansmen gained control of the element. That leads Naruto to the obvious conclusion, could his father have just made a breakthrough?
"4th Hokage," one of the aristocrats mutters, "4th leader of the Hidden Leaf Village, Namikaze Minato, father to Uzumaki Naruto, have I remembered all that correctly?"
"Yes."
"You are certain that the tablet became larger, because if it did that's a very good sign."
"Yes, the writing became clearer and it got cleaner too," Minato explains, "Does this mean that I've made the breakthrough? Does this mean that I understand the second level of 'wind'?".
"There is only one way to find out," the aristocrat smiles, "Draw as much power as you can from the stone tablet. Try to concentrate that power into an aura around your body, and we will see what you can do."
Minato closes his eyes and focus. Inside his inner world, one of the three Kurama's to have travelled through time looks on as silver-white energy pours from the stone tablet into Minato's body. Since coming to the future he has come to understand the 4th Hokage better and better, he has come to develop a respect for him and his fellow Hokage. Kurama prays for Minato that he will be able to make this breakthrough, he prays that he will reach a level beyond what was possible in the pocket world.
The energy begins to exit Minato's body through his pores and circle around his torso. The spiralling energy continues to increase in volume, slowly spreading from his torso to his arms and legs before moving up and surrounding his head. Around thirty seconds pass as the energy moves all around and then it stabilises. Minato stands perfectly still, surrounded by an energy cloak of silver-white energy.
It is a divine 'wind' cloak. An ability only colonels possess.
"This is looking good 4th Hokage," the aristocrat concludes.
"Dad, given your speed, I think there is one very easy way to test this new power," Naruto suggests, "Why don't we see if you can keep up with me."
Naruto decides to show off slightly, this is his father after all. He mobilises the 'life' energy within his body, darting around the room at a speed that others cannot follow. The captains and shinobi look on in amazement, the upper ranks look on in amusement, astonished at how Naruto virtually outclasses them all in speed. However, perhaps now there is to be one exception to that rule.
Minato dashes across the room, moving in a perfectly straight line, leaving a silver-white trail in his wake. He arrives in Naruto's path and manages to do what was unthinkable yesterday. He catches his son, tapping him a single time in the chest to indicate their equivalent speed.
Minato begins to think he's got the hang of this new power, of this speed that puts everyone else to shame. He throws a series of strikes towards his son, five to be specific, knowing that they will be easy enough for Naruto to keep up with and not enough to hurt him.
Naruto blocks each of the five strikes while smiling. To counter, he throws a powerful punch just past his father's head, letting his hair flicker in the wind.
Minato stops and looks back over his shoulder. 'Amazing, if that had hit me I would seriously be dead! Just how strong is Naruto?'
"You've turned pale old man," Naruto laughs, patting his father on the back, "Don't worry, keeping up with my speed was amazing, you just lack the power to match it right now."
Minato shakes his head. "You're really something else, you know that?"
"I'm going to tell Sora the good news."
Nearby Himawari did her best to keep up with the exchange, but herself yet to make a breakthrough she was unable to do so. Even with the byakugan keeping up with such quick people proves to be impossible.
"That was amazing," she says with a child-like glee, "Grandpa is too fast."
"Yes, he is," Kushina marvels before turning to Hinata. "You really seem to be getting the hang of controlling 'water' too Hinata, perhaps you will be the next one to make a breakthrough!"
Hinata stares at the 'water' in her hands. "I'm not so sure about that."
"Why?"
"I spoke with Sora, he said that my element isn't water. He said my element is 'fire'. What do you think that means?"
While Hinata ponders the meaning of this, her husband approaches the man who explained it all. He waves as he approaches Sora, shouting his name and bowing gratefully as he approaches. With Minato's incredible speed reaching new heights they are even closer than before to reaching the level they need to be at. They are one step closer to defeating the tyrannical emperor.
"My father has just broken through," Naruto says, "It looks like the rest of us may do so at any moment as well."
"That's good news, but you need to keep working hard, your breakthrough will be the hardest and most dramatic of them all," Sora explains, "Breakthroughs in 'life' are hard, even harder than other double-transcendent elements. Perhaps the only breakthrough harder to make is the one Furst had to make all those years ago."
"What is Furst's element?" Naruto asks.
"His element is the more mobile counterpart to your student's. Furst uses 'destruction' energy. It gives him a tremendous power, an unstoppable power to defeat his enemies," Sora explains, "I don't look forward to battling him. When he was on our side it was always very comforting."
Naruto has heard many times now about Furst's betrayal. "How did it happen? How did he come to betray you and what you stood for?"
"Jonas' story is a simple one, but all the same a dark one. I think it's only fair that you should know it," Sora admits, "Gather the others. I am going to tell you the story of Furst Jonas."
Naruto gathers the others around, shinobi, Hokage, captains, colonels, generals, everyone. Even some of the aristocrats stay around to hear the tale from Headmaster Sora. Nobody in the world is more qualified to tell the story of Furst Jonas than he. He is one of a very small group that walked alongside the two emperors as they rose from nothing to the pinnacle of the world. It is a story that defines their reason for being here.
It's a story that starts over a thousand years ago, during Furst's years as a teenager.
Over a Thousand Years Ago in a Small Village
Furst Jonas was a teenager, a young man still growing. He lived the life of a machine, waking up every day and performing the same essential tasks that he designated for himself. He had several tasks dedicated to improving his health, he had several tasks dedicated to improving his mind, but each of these tasks he undertook alone. It was early in his life that he learned to embrace that attitude. While others would resent the way people stared at him, he embraced it, using the solitude to further himself.
Furst was the child of two disgraced members of the village. While neither his mother nor his father had ever broken any laws, they had never integrated into their community, they had never made any friends in this place. Each of them often preached of a different system for the world, a system where the many villages, towns and cities would unite under one leader. Furst never got the chance to meet them. His mother had died during child-birth, his father had gone missing in a faraway place, assumed dead. He was raised by his teachers until the age of eight years old when he was sent out into the world to survive on his own.
Little Jonas was alone, neither his mother nor his father had any surviving family members. He had to fend for himself for a very early age. Many heartlessly concluded that it would be impossible for the young man, but when some people decided to offer him help the future emperor rejected it. Soon the young man learned to stand on his own two feet, he excelled in all areas of life. His life was more successful than adults with three times the experience he had, even despite his lack of a background. Born imperfect but forged in the fire of solitude, Jonas was pushed further towards perfection than anyone imagined possible.
Jonas had one key advantage, one part of him that drove him to perfection in each area of his life, his mind. Even before he left the care of his teachers he was a worthy academic, outperforming those who claimed to be his superiors. He required little time to master complex subjects yet put in the time nonetheless and became something beyond a master academic. He became a dreamer, lamenting the few mysteries of the world he had yet to understand. So he dreamt of the day when he would be able to leave the village, when he would be able to explore the world and learn more.
Before Furst ever got the chance to leave the village and stand alone, he had to deal with something that most people his age do. He had to deal with bullying. While it may have caused great distress to other people though, it did very little to upset Jonas. He had a mind enshrouded in a resolve of steel and cared little for what people said to him. To this point, he had never met a person like himself, he had never met a person worthy of consideration, he had never met another dreamer.
"There goes little Jonas again," the ringleader would say.
"It's that time of day again," Jonas would reply, throwing his bag to the floor, "Go ahead, do your worst."
The bullies would be violent with Jonas, more so than would have been acceptable with anyone else. The people of the village, increasingly disconnected with the young man, would walk past and blame him for the fights he had managed to put himself in. They considered that if he rejected the world it only made sense for the world to reject him, young men like Jonas get what they deserve. Jonas did not care about their opinion. He was close to the pinnacle of what a human could be, so he took the beating and barely felt any pain as he did so.
The bullies always knew when to stop, they would see the looks on peoples faces as they past. Of course, they got used to them, they learned how to judge people. People wouldn't stop them from having their fun with Jonas, not if they didn't go too far. They could go further with Jonas than with normal people, only on very rare occasion did an elder point out that they were going too far, urging them to stop. Those elders stopped things to protect the bullies souls, to stop them from losing themselves to the black hole that was Furst Jonas.
With his daily beating done with, Jonas would pick up his bag and check the content to see that the bullies had not damaged anything important. They never did, he was too clever and dismissive of its contents. He was always just careless enough into fooling those around him, but no more carless than required. He would go 'home' and use the contents of the bags for his daily experiments, his daily learning regime. He performed horrible experiments, experiments dangerous to himself and anyone around him, but nobody stopped him. He had pushed away anyone who wanted to care about him, and there was nobody around him.
He noticed at one point that one person did start to care about his actions. She never approached him but the young woman would watch his experiments each day, she would watch what he did. He recognised her, a young woman a similar age to him he had met in school once or twice. She was an aspiring academic, someone who wanted to see the world just like him. To him she was merely a pest he couldn't be bothered to deal with, but to her, he was an anomaly. She needed to understand how someone like him could go so far without any help, she considered that the key to pursuing her own goals.
The two of them would have mirrored daily routines, they would both know that the other was there but never exchange a word. A relationship of irritation and admiration, until it all ended one day.
One day, that young woman made a terrible mistake. The bullies stopped Jonas as per usual, forcing him into a spot they had grown fond of, a spot where their beatings were very unlikely to be picked up on by any elders. The bullies began to take out their frustrations on their victim as usual, all until the young woman got in their way. This was the first time she had ever been so close to Jonas, the first direct interaction the two of them had ever had.
Jonas looked up at her with annoyance, he had his day planned out perfectly before she got in the way.
"Stop it!" the young woman berated them, "Why do you keep doing this to him when all he does is mind his own business. Don't you have respect for those of us who pursue our dreams?"
That was the first time that little Jonas had ever heard such a thing said in earnest. He had heard other people mention that they have dreams before, that they had these big goals they wish to pursue, but he had always dismissed them. People talk about their dreams but put no effort into pursuing them. The purity of dreams was diminished by those around him, those who had no intention of pursuing a dream, merely of stating a wish. That's why the young woman had such an impact on him. She may have been intensely irritating, but she was the first dreamer her had ever met.
The bullies did not look upon the young woman so kindly, deciding to treat her the same way they did Jonas. However, the bullies did not realise just how far they had gone with Jonas each time. The young man Furst Jonas had trained himself to incredible physical peak, beyond what any teenager should have been able to achieve, that is how he endured their beatings so well each day. The young woman did not fare so well.
The young woman died that day.
It was a terrible accident.
"Jonas, you didn't see this understand?" the ringleader said, "If you tell any of the elders about this, we'll do the same thing to you."
The word's of the young woman reverberated in Jonas head, possessing him as if his own profound revelations as he got to his feet. This was the first time that Jonas had ever defied them in their years attacking him, it was the moment he snapped.
"… how dare you," Jonas muttered.
That was when Jonas blacked out. In a life of apathy, this was the first time that he truly experience rage, it was the first time experienced respect. His emotions and his empathy awakened in a stunning moment, and seconds later he wished that they had not.
When Jonas woke up, he found himself in a prison cell.
"Why have I been brought here?" he asked the man guarding him, "Isn't this a prison cell?"
"Don't you understand little Jonas?" the guard asked, "You have been put in here because you are a killer. You crossed the line."
"A killer, when?"
"Six missing children," the guard explained, "All the same age as you. We found their remains, and in the middle we found you with a crazy look in your eye. You killed them Jonas."
Jonas reflected on what the guard had told him. He concluded that it made sense, that the young woman had likely made some sort of connection to him because of her dream. He decided that he must have felt empathy and that it must have induced a rage within him. Rationally, if he were ever to have fought back against his bullies he could easily have killed them. While he found the series of events unlikely, he decided that they were more likely than any of the alternatives. He had no choice but to accept that he was a killer.
"There were five young men, they used to attack me every day," Jonas explained, "The young woman tried to stop them, they killed her. I don't recall killing them, putting me in here is illogical."
"You're a killer Jonas," the guard shrugged, "There's no avoiding it, you are the reason the six of them are dead."
Jonas knew that there was no way that he could convince the guard, or anyone else, or his innocence. His incarceration was easily political gain for the elders of the village. It was popular to remove him from the community, to cut him off. The dangerous experiments would stop, so would the embarrassment and the spreading resentment. The elder responsible for imprisoning him enjoyed the praise for it and never saw Jonas again.
Jonas remained in the same prison cell for too long. He enjoyed no dignity and no luxury. The only interaction with the outside world were the books that the library would send for him after he managed to trick one of the guards. He didn't get the books as often as he used to and would read them all too quickly. With nothing else to do for entertainment, Jonas would pass the time by memorising the books. He would not only memorise the content, but would memorise them word-for-word, developing a memory beyond anyone that the village had ever seen.
Jonas continued his prison studies for years, enhancing his genius and curiosity. It was not until twenty years later that he was finally released, judged to have served his time based upon the inconclusive evidence used to arrest him in the first place.
Jonas emerged from jail looking the same age as the day he went in. He had not aged because he had understood an element that day.
At this point, while he was unappreciated, Furst Jonas had likely become the greatest thinker in all of homeworld. He had been a genius for years, but now there was something more, he was a tormented genius with even more determination than before. Nobody had more resolve than Jonas, and nobody has ever had more since.
Jonas had concluded long ago that he had likely understood an element that day, though he had not yet seen a stone tablet in his inner world. He thought that he must have been an exception to the rule and he was right. He confirmed his suspicion during his time in the prison cell, he would occasionally lose control of his body and watch as crimson divine energy rose from within him, destroying whatever it touched before settling down. But he did not use this divine energy to escape, he diligently served his time, not daring to explore the potential of the power he had unlocked.
It was not until he was released that Jonas began to study his element. He immersed himself in countless books, making full use of all the resource he lost while was in prison. He read endlessly about the intricacies of divine energy, about the warriors of the past and even some other types of energy that had been spoken of in legend. He began from this to consider ways of creating different types of energy. What he truly came to understand though was how to characterise and quantify his power.
He determined that his power was not one that was recorded in the village's library, that it may even have been the first of it's kind. Eventually he understood, and the stone tablet in his inner world made everything become clear. He was a user of 'destruction' divine energy.
When Jonas managed to master his element, he was no longer little Jonas. He quickly became the mightiest warrior in the history of the village. The little kid who was once a have-not protected the villagers from countless assaults and tribulations. He once disregarded them as pointless, but a small part of him hoped that they too could learn to dream as he and that young woman had. He preached to the people who once hated him, he begged them to make the effort to pursue their dreams, to push them beyond just wishing. He became a hero.
For the first time since meeting that young woman, Jonas felt respected.
The other warriors in the village looked up to Jonas. He became their commander, many referred to him as Lord Furst, he was their leader. While serving as the leader of the village, Jonas even made a friend. For the first time in his life, Jonas woke up in the morning and had someone he was genuinely looking forward to meeting, life was perfect. He had redeemed himself his sins of the past, he had gone from the village's most hated son to it's most loved and had become a pillar of the community.
He went on to find out that respect is a fickle thing though, and that life could easily fracture it. That very respect was what caused him to turn once again though. Nothing is invulnerable, no matter how we may want it to be.
In the coming years, it was this fragile respect that would cause Jonas to turn once again.