Rise of the Science-Nin

Chapter 4.5: Little shop of Horrors

Miamoto-sensei's quote of the day: "When the shit hits the fan, run."

The early morning sun shown from beyond the horizon, and the smell of dew was in the air. It was just after dawn. Naruto whistled a jaunty little tune as he unlocked the door to his new shop, and several dozen of his clones followed behind him, each one carrying several enormous sealing scrolls containing the inventory he planned to stock his new store with. He had spent the last two day renovating the medium sized building (with the help of his shadow clones, of course) and today it would finally be ready to open. All he had to do now was stock the shelves with his wares and put an 'open' sign in the window.

As he walked into the showroom, he flipped on the light switch. Bright fluorescent lights filled the room, supplementing the natural light from the large show window. His new building was in the heart of the market district, and has cost his almost all of the money he had brought with him to Konoha to purchase and furnish. It was about two-thousand square feet, including the stockroom and office in the back, and a small one-room apartment on the second floor. The apartment was separate from the main building, and only accessible from a set of stairs outside. He had no use for the apartment since the Hokage had given him a house, but he thought he might rent it out if he found a reliable tenant. The showroom itself was around 900 square feet, more than enough to show the products he intended to sell. Most of his clones headed for the storeroom to begin unsealing the large store of items that wouldn't fit in the main store, and a smaller number began unsealing everything meant for the public's eye. Rows of kunai, shuriken, senbon needles, and droves of other weapons were placed on shelves and hung from the walls. All of the weapons he was selling were special; every one of them had numerous fuuinjutsu arrays etched into them, making them stronger, sharper, and much more durable. As long as they were infused with a very small amount of chakra every few months, they would be practically indestructible. That was just the basic package which went on everything. Many of the weapons had custom seals on them, allowing them to do anything from burst into flames with an infusion of chakra to exploding on a timer. He had been looking at other weapons shops in Konoha, and none of them were offering anything like the weapons he was selling. As soon as the word got out about the shop, he expected to be flooded with customers.

The weapons were just icing on the cake; day to day stuff that would sell quickly and net him a little extra cash. His real business was going to be selling chakra armors. His clones were already busy unsealing wooden mannequins carved from Snow Country hardwood, and hanging sets of display armor on them. They were real chakra armors of several different types, specialized for different aspects of ninja combat. There were pure defensive armors, flexible "jutsu" armor, designed to maximize the power of ninjutsu, and many other types. There was also a large tome which Naruto had written that would act as the catalog for his business. It listed every option he was willing to integrate into the armors he sold, and the prices for doing so. Many of his best tricks he kept for himself, but any armor he crafted would be formidable.

It only took his clones around thirty minutes to unload everything and finish setting up the shop, as Naruto sat behind the counter sipping the strong brown tea he had grown accustomed to in Snow Country. As the final touch, he himself walked outside and hung a carved wooden sign from a pole jutting out above his door, proclaiming his shop to be "Kousetsu no Kame", or "The Snow Turtle". There was a picture of a solid white turtle on the sign, clad in chakra armor and holding a sword and a shield in either hand. Below the title and picture were the words "Fine Armor and Weapons". Naruto had made the sign himself, and was proud of both the picture and the name; art was a minor hobby of his and he didn't get the chance to practice it that often. With a smile on his face, he flipped the sign on the door from "closed" to "open", and walked inside.

It took almost thirty minutes before he got his first customer. It was the Sandaime of course; No one else yet knew about his shop. When he first arrived in Konoha the Third Hokage wanted to let the council know about his skills as a chakra engineer, but his father had put his foot down, and insisted that Naruto be allowed to make his own way and open his own business at his leisure. Sarutobi had dutifully followed his old friend's wishes, and had agreed to keep the existence of Naruto's plans quiet until he opened his shop. Naturally, though, he wasn't going to miss the opportunity to be the boy's first customer.

"Good day, Hokage-sama," said Naruto, smiling at the aged shinobi, "What can I help you with today?" Sarutobi smiled back, his eyes taking in the various displays.

"Good morning, my boy. A fine shop you have here, everything looks top notch." Sarutobi was examining a kunai as he said this. Naruto smiled, and nodded. He didn't need to be told how good his work was; he was a master of his craft after all. "I would like to commission a set of chakra armor for myself. Could you tell me a little about them, so I know what variety to choose?" He pointed to the mannequins displaying the different types. "These all look so dissimilar to each other."

Naruto pulled out his catalog, and sat it on the counter facing away from him. He pulled out a second stool so the aged Hokage could sit down. "Well, the first step is to identify what type of ninja you are so that we can tailor a set of armor to your needs. First, what area of ninja techniques do you specialize in, if any?"

"Ninjutsu and bojutsu are my greatest strengths, though I'm a master in every major ninja field. In my old age I tend to favor ninjutsu, as I'm not as quick or limber as I used to be."

Naruto nodded. "You're a summoner, right? The Ape contract, if I recall correctly?" Sarutobi grinned, nodding. It was no secret that he was the holder of that particular contract. "In that case," said the blond storekeeper, "You'll need an option with either a blood reservoir in the hand of the suit, or a needle embedded into one of the gauntlets to draw it out of your finger one demand…" The two discussed the various options the suit would have for nearly thirty minutes, and then Sarutobi followed a shadow clone to the back room to be scanned by the chakra analyzer, and get his physical dimensions recorded so a set of armor could be fitted to him exactly. With all of the options and upgrades Sarutobi had selected, his armor would be among the most powerful that Naruto would ever make. It would also be among the most costly.

The leader of the Leaf left a deposit for twenty-five percent of the final cost of the armor, and just like that, Naruto had recouped the entire cost of the money he had set setting up his shop, plus a lot extra. The final fee the Hokage would pay him would pay for his operating costs for his new business for years to come.

Two hours later, Naruto was swamped. He had to create an additional three dozen shadow clones to speak with all of the clients in his shop, almost all of whom were ANBU, a special division of Konoha shinobi dedicated to serving the Hokage directly. Several of them had mentioned that Sarutobi had referred them to his shop, so this insane rush was all the old man's fault. Clones ran back and forth rapidly, taking orders and measurements, and there was a line several feet long of people waiting to go through the chakra analyzer. Naruto was thankful that this was one of the few days off he received from the academy; There was no way he was going to be able to make it to class at this point if it was a school day. As they took orders, his clones dispersed, and Naruto wrote the details down from behind the counter. A clone in the back room stored the information from the chakra analyzer for later retrieval. He had found out from several of the ANBU that because of their positions as village security, the Konoha treasury was paying half the cost for each of their chakra armors. Realizing that the longer they waited, the longer it would take to get an armor crafted, almost half of Konoha's special ops had come to his shop on the opening day to place their orders. From the deposits alone, Naruto was rich several times over.

All-in-all, it had taken over six hours to get all of the orders taken for the ANBU who had visited his shop. There had been a total of forty-six sets of armor commissioned, and many of those were deluxe models. His clones had a lot of work ahead of them. Naruto had ducked out for lunch at around noon, leaving another dozen shadow clones in his place. He had realized about halfway through the morning that there was no way he would be able to run the shop with a single shadow clone as he had been originally planning. He would have to create fifty or more each day if the volume of business remained the same. He also planned to use one of his new ideas in order to insure there were no problems at the shop. Groups of shadow clones were easy to destroy using low-level area of effect attacks, and he would be damned if some punk tried to rob him while he was at school, or later on a mission. He planned to let one of his shadow clones use chakra armor, giving it an enormous boost in its resiliency. It would take at least a jounin to take down one of his clones wearing chakra armor, Naruto thought. Smiling, he set his clones to cleaning up his business and restocking the shelves in preparation for tomorrow. It had been one hell of a grand opening.

Author's Note:

Here's a chapter-let for all of you. I am in the process of writing chapter 5, however I needed to take a break so I made the grand opening of Naruto's store its own chapter. He's decided to do all of his advertising through word of mouth, as he knows that people love "discovering" a shop or restaurant, as it makes them feel like they are keeping some amusing secret. I hope to have the next full chapter done sometime soon, and I hope this will tide you over for a bit. I want to ask a serious question as well… Originally I wasn't going to concentrate on pairings, but as one of my readers pointed out, what really is tying Naruto to Konoha? A partial answer is that he's serving the village he was born in, where his parents were from, and where his father ruled. A big part of why he's in Konoha is to try and figure out who his birth parents really were, to try to get to know them as much as an orphan can know his deceased mother and father. I think, though, that he needs another reason to stay after all of that is said and done. I've already given him a friend in Rock Lee… Should I give him a major love interest? And if I do so, who should it be? There are really only a few females in canon that I think my flavor of Naruto would work with; Tenten, because she is his teammate, Karin, because she is brilliant and a fellow researcher, Fem!Haku, for reasons better left un-discussed for now, and Kin, because she is cute and such a mystery. So, yeah, share your ideas with me on this matter, and if you think a pairing would help the story suggest one of the afore mentioned characters. Thanks, and please review.