Chapter Three: Information Ninja
Tape can't fix a broken heart.
The boy sped through the trees. After two lonely weeks of nothing but painful studying and scavenging, he had finally made it through the Basic Sealing Book. Naruto had spent more hours studying in the past two weeks than he had assumed possible.
Not to say, of course, that he had spent all his time studying. He had devoted a good day or so to the tree-climbing exercise that he had read about in 'Genin Lessons' but had only made it about 20 feet up.
He had made a total of fifteen trips back, under the guise of various different people, and purchased with stolen money or simply stolen many lifetimes' worth of paper and ink and lost more blood than was good for his health, though the (demon, demon) fox must have protected him. He'd also had a change of clothes, as the orange had outlived its welcome and the brown paint and mud had worn off.
Though it had been great for stealth training and taking it off and certainly thrown his past pursuers many times, it was better to blend in now. Orange didn't lend itself well to green foliage. (On the other hand, it was perfect for the Hokage Monument and various other buildings in Konoha without being obtrusively sneaky. If there was such thing.)
Naruto finally decided to go ahead and take a look at the seal, confident that he would at least be able to tell what kind of seal it was.
His feet and heart pounded as he made his way across the rooftops, this time under the mask of a boy he'd known rather well. Although it dredged up painful memories, Sasuke was still one of the people he could imitate best. And it was a quickly fading pain, in any case.
With single-minded determination and a haughty, holier-than-thou attitude, Naruto bypassed many other traveling ninja easily. The chakra used for inner muscle and bone strengthening far surpassed that used for the Henge (pro: he didn't even have to strengthen his insides because of the fox), and if any of the ninja passing him noticed it, it was easily dismissed as a genin wasting a little more chakra than what he needed (con: it seemed, according to the 'Genin Lessons' book and many exploded bits of tree, Naruto was always wasting chakra).
Or at least, that's what he assumed since a chuunin (complete with the awesome green vest!) stopped him to tell him that. He barely listened to the woman's instructions, distracted by the knowledge that if she knew it wasn't the Uchiha, she wouldn't have been kind at all. If she knew she'd actually been kind to Uzumaki Naruto, the demon, the bastard, the… (ignored, lonely orphan?)
He couldn't even force a grimace on his face when he heard her say "good luck" and instead turned around abruptly to leave.
The sun was hot on his back, late summer heat melting the rooftops by the time Naruto made it to the Hokage Tower. He'd never realized just how big Konoha was. Or how many of those infernal ninjas ran around on the rooftops, forcing him to duck around to avoid troublesome ones (like Iruka-sensei, whom he passed at least three times, somehow. Shouldn't he have been in class, teaching?).
From the Hokage Tower to the Hokage Monument there were no more rooftops, only a stretch of greenery and several training fields. To the right was the Academy and toward the left was a tall, metal building that Naruto had never visited.
After all, the shinobi sentries in front of it didn't exactly scream open invitation.
The climb to the top of the Monument could be made up two flights of stairs on either side, or straight up the mountain face, though nobody attempted that. Naruto guessed he could take a stab at it with the tree-walking exercise, but the wall was much higher than his 20-foot record. From the top, visitors could lower an observation deck and observe more closely the fine craftsmanship of the stone faces, which looked more like stone counters from up close.
The deck was set so that visitors couldn't reach out and touch the stone. However, when a new face was to be carved into the mountain the observation deck could be brought closer for the sculptors. It was through this mechanism that Naruto had managed to paint the Monument during his final Academy year.
Good times.
There were some cranks and bolts he had to adjust, along with the pulley system and the positioning of the upper supports, but the idea itself was simple and he'd used it not too long ago. He was only glad that they hadn't thought to change it and Naruto-proof it.
Sometimes not playing the same prank twice came in handy.
The metal clanged loudly as he got into it, his weight straining against the ropes. Not for the first time, he wondered if it was safe. Then he decided that he couldn't care less. Likely, if he fell, the fox in him would keep him safe (Pro).
Luckily, the Fourth's face was right there. Naruto positioned himself in the middle of the deck so that it wouldn't swing crazily and pulled at the ropes connected to the pulleys. The rough ropes chafed at his hands, but by then he was so close to the giant right eye that he could feel it.
A seal.
He brought himself within inches of the Fourth's eye, so close that the impurities in the stone stood out. The lines of seals were familiar to him, after spending hours every day staring at them, but it still looked like plain old sandstone.
Then he began to see it. A crack here, a line there – fine changes in color and tint. He couldn't see the entire seal, but he had to admit that if anything, the Yondaime was nothing short of a genius. A splatter here, a bit that looked exactly like bird poop (maybe it was authentic), some fine cracks in the sandstone, and a dusty, slight change in color (a strip of a different kind of stone?) came together to make the most well-disguised seal Naruto had ever seen.
Somehow the Yondaime must have run chakra through those items – maybe there was a layer of the usual ink-and-blood underneath? Blood was a great chakra conduit, and when mixed with ink was good for creating seals that didn't necessarily have to be disguised. One could also create chakra-only seals, though those glowed with the blue hue of chakra and they were far beyond Naruto's level; he couldn't visualize a seal in his mind all in one go, and he had no idea how to shape his chakra into the form of a seal. He didn't know how much time it would take to learn how to run seal-forming chakra through nonconductive elements and string together a seal that way.
Things that formed seals had a magnetic attraction to each other; a made seal tended to stay that way, even if it was created from loose leaves on the ground. Without the attraction, there was the chance that this clever disguise would actually have been to the seal's detriment and the contents would be forever lost.
Then again, Naruto hadn't seen many real-life seals. Only book ones, which were real enough but not ninja, y'know? Maybe all real ninja seals were like this.
He looked at the seal more closely.
There, the [Space], largest, a small [Activate], a [Shield] and a [Time-Stop]. Together, it created a 'shielded pocket of space outside of time' with an activation area that acted like a door. It was the simplest kind, one that, once activated, would force anything inside the seal out. If there was nothing inside the seal, what was on the [Activate] Furu would go in. There wasn't even a [Entry] Furu to insert something into the seal if it already held something else.
Containment seal.
It was the first he'd ever learned, and the knowledge that he could have done this on the first day bothered him.
But it was so easy. How could this have remained a secret all those years? All those tourists and ninjas and people and none of them could recognize a seal?
(Naruto blatantly ignored the fact that two weeks ago he didn't even know what a seal was.)
Then Iruka-sensei's force-fed history lessons kicked in. The Yondaime carving was made three months after he took up the Hokage mantle and took several months to complete. This must have been sealed close to the day of the Kyuubi attack. After the Kyuubi attack, the village was too devastated to go around messing with the Monument.
Even twelve years afterward, Konoha had never fully recovered from the attack. It was not too unbelievable for a well-done disguise created by the Yondaime himself to have stayed a secret for 13 chaotic years.
With that thought, Naruto had managed to convince himself that the seal and everything about it was not a trap. With an unsteady hand, he touched the 'release' or 'activate' portion of the seal. He could see now all the fine lines and Furu in the seal, the excellent craftsmanship, and the natural feeling of it all, but everything went away as he closed his eyes.
At that moment, he didn't have the energy, his usual confidence, to say 'Activate!' loudly. He just channeled a bit of chakra to his hands and sighed.
Here's hoping for the best.
"Uzumaki Naruto." It was soft, like a breeze. Familiar, somehow.
Naruto stopped at the edge of the forest. In his hands were scrolls, round, cylindrical, the feeling of paper and knowledge and the thought that the greatest-shinobi-who-ever-lived had written them and they were his and he was running faster than he'd ever run in his life.
But he stopped.
And he looked around.
There was not a rustle, not a word, not a person in sight.
But there, in front of him, was a scroll. A paper, and something on top of it.
His first instinct was to jump back. After learning extensively of the very, very many different types of Explosive seals (this way for bigger explosion, this way for more fire, this way for more noise, this way if you just really want to kill somebody…) he had become rather wary of all paper.
But curiosity and good eyesight got the better of him. He landed on one foot and sprang forth, pushing with his ankle, and was at the paper in a matter of seconds. He inhaled sharply and smelled ninja: scentless soap and kunai grease and old blood.
Somebody, then, had left this for him. Somebody who knew his name. Somebody with a voice he recognized.
Somebody who, for some reason, wanted him to have a shiny new Konoha forehead protector, a stainless steel Konoha dog tag (for identifying dead bodies and discrete affiliation identification) and a scroll with a lavender sticky note on it.
"Naruto: We ninjas are like a disease on the face of the earth. When the people of the mountain met the people of the sea, diseases from both countries wiped out half of their populations. But the disease was only trying to survive. Go, likewise, and survive. Jiji."
He paused and stifled a sound between a cry of outrage and a laugh. "Is he telling me to kill people? What is he saying?" He peeled off the sticky-note and stuck it on the inside of his new forehead protector. Iruka-sensei's he had left in his apartment, along with much of his old life.
Then he read the scroll.
"I, Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Sandaime Hokage of Konoha, hereby authorize Uzumaki Naruto, of Konoha, information-ninja, to go forth into the nations and learn everything he can. He is to report back to Konoha within five years and is to be received by the acting Hokage of that time. Until then, he is to make annual reports to a representative of Konoha at places of their discretion."
"Information ninja?" Naruto looked up at the sky. Then he turned to the Hokage tower. "What even is that?" Then he laughed.
"I think you can see me, old man," he said to the tower, "because I'm starting to feel like you're omnipotent." He paused, unsure of what to say, unsure if anybody at all would hear his words. "Thank you."
But it felt too soft, and serious, so he raised his voice: "I'm still going to be Hokage someday, believe it!"
And maybe he didn't really believe in it anymore - maybe he was fed up and hurt and angry, but in that moment he loved the Hokage and he loved Konoha with all his heart. And maybe he was still an idiot, and maybe all those years of shouting things at the top of his lungs had affected him, but in that moment, he believed it.
He imagined, then, in five years, returning triumphant. Konoha would take him back - Konoha would want him back - Konoha would welcome him home. He would stand at the Yondaime's head, powerful and independent, and he wouldn't take shit from any random villager. He'd stand there, at the top of the world, and look down.
Author's Notes: 10.30.2012: Edits, a bit of clarification on the Hokage thing.
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