AN: Okay, a short chapter here, but I'm trying to get them out more frequently. Also, sendings are inspired by the ones from Garth Nix's Old Kingdom Series (wonderful author!) and if anyone has any other ideas I might be able to implement, feel free to suggest them, 'kay? Have fun reading the chapter, and let me know what you think of it please!
Beta'd by: The trolling SnarkLord
Chapter 27 – Bounties and Insanity
Naruto yawned lightly as he stretched. It was early morning, and he'd been awoken by a new package being delivered. On top of that, he'd been up rather late the previous night, so he was not exactly at his best right then. Luckily, it was a Saturday, and the Ninja Academy was only five days a week, like the civilian school was.
"What is it?" He asked Tsuyukami tiredly.
"Something else for the cellar by the looks of things." The masked youkai told him. "Hopefully it won't be as nasty as that cursed baby skull you were sent two months ago."
Naruto grimaced at that, recalling the item in question. After the stuff he'd raided from that Flesh Beast in Lightning Country, word had got around the youkai that Naruto was storing away all of the stuff they neither needed nor wanted, and he'd been sent or given quite a substantial amount of random junk. With all of that, however, were some pretty distasteful and malevolent things that he kept securely shut up in his cellar beneath his cabin.
Picking up the object in question, Naruto could quite easily feel the sheer wrongness that just oozed off it. It wasn't as bad as some of the stuff in his cellar, but it was probably at least painful, if not lethal, if it was used. A quick look identified the object as some sort of goblet, and after reading the note that came with it, it apparently turned anything poured into it mildly poisonous, though whether that was mildly poisonous to a youkai or a human… well, he had no intention of finding out.
Heading out of his cabin and around the side, Naruto sliced his thumb open and swiped his blood across the chains holding the door closed. They rattled for a moment before retreating into the earth and allowing Naruto to open the door to his cellar.
Once inside, he looked around at the numerous shelves and tables that were covered in some of the dangerous and unpleasant objects. There was a whole shelf of books that were covered in human skin, clamped shut and chained to the shelves. One of them, he recalled, was rather insidious in that it stole the memories of those that read it, and once the book was full, left the reader as mindless as a newborn baby.
A series of weapons hung from another wall. The lance that had originally come from the Flesh Beast's lair was there, and it was discovered that any injury caused by it was slow to heal, but the more it was used the more it tried to force its wielder into madness.
A sword next to forced the wielder to kill every time it was drawn before they could let it go. If someone went too long without killing, it forced them to take their own lives. There were other weapons there, with various effects, but Naruto noticed that all of them tended to have some pretty nasty effects, especially those that had positive effects too.
Like that talisman hanging on a hook over there. That granted the wearer immense strength, speed, and durability, but it also slowly transformed the wearer into a ravening beast over the course of a few months, and it could not be removed once worn until the process was complete.
Then there were things like that altar – and how exactly that had ended up in front of his cabin, Naruto had no idea – that used live sacrifices to summon demons. The more sacrifices, the stronger the demon it summoned. However, it granted no control over them at all.
Of course, not everything that Naruto had received had some sort of malicious use. In fact, he'd gotten plenty of useful things sent his way as well. Some of the books, for example, described useful techniques that he could use, or were simply well written fiction.
One of the books included the process for creating 'sendings', which Naruto thought were like stronger, more advanced shikigami. Granted, he hadn't had much success making them so far, as they were far less forgiving than his shiki were, and they did require better materials.
Whereas he could scrawl a shikigami on a random scrap of paper in seconds, a sending was constructed of silver wire, and took at least a month to make just one. He had four melted piles of silver to show for his first four attempts at creating sendings, totalling five months of effort wasted, but he was hopeful that his most recent attempt would be successful.
Anyway, Naruto walked through the store room beneath his cabin and set the newest addition between two other goblets, one which was constantly filled with a viscous, green-brown fluid no matter how often it was emptied, and another that spat its contents in the face of whoever tried to drink from it.
With that done, he headed back out of his cellar, past an alcove that contained a full set of cursed armour, and idly noted that he was probably going to have to expand this place again fairly soon because of how full it was getting. Youkai seemed to have so much random stuff that they were quite happy to dump on him that Naruto often wondered where they kept it all.
"Any plans for today?" Tsuyukami asked once Naruto sealed the cellar behind himself.
"The usual." Naruto replied. "I've got my daily sparring sessions with Takame and, now that she's joining in, Masami. Me and Hinoe will also be doing some work on the sending too, and the kappa will want to play around for a while as well." He paused in thought. "By the way, did you find out anything about that girl from the fire?"
"I did." Tsuyukami nodded. "Yakumo Kurama, aged ten, is the heiress of the Kurama clan, which is famous for having such strong genjutsu that they blur the line between reality and illusion. However, the clan has become somewhat less well known, especially in the last sixty or so years, as their clan members seem to be born with less and less potential.
"Yakumo Kurama, however, either by chance or by experimentation – as some rumours go – was born with incredibly high potential for genjutsu, though this was sort of balanced out with a frail body and some health issues. She was taken as an apprentice of sorts by one Kurenai Yuuhi, a special jounin who focuses on genjutsu.
"Yakumo was deemed unstable though, and unsuitable to the kunoichi lifestyle. Because of this, her chakra was sealed up and she was turned away from the shinobi program. It was shortly after this that the fire occurred, one which almost cost her parents' their lives."
Naruto hummed to himself for a moment, before asking. "Why was she deemed 'unstable'?"
"What little I could get hold of referred to an 'Ido' demon that possesses her and makes her rather aggressive." Tsuyukami explained. "Just how she became possessed is unknown, but it is a generally accepted fact that she has some sort of demonic other personality within her."
"She's not possessed, by either a youkai or a demon." Naruto frowned. "I'd have noticed if she was. No, the feeling I got from her was more like… there was two of her not her and a passenger within her body. Do you think it's possible for a split personality to be that… complete?"
"If we were talking purely reiryoku, then yes." Tsuyukami answered him. "Though rare, there have been cases in the past where an 'imaginary friend' has become real, and that's sometimes how youkai are formed. As far as chakra goes… well, genjutsu is considered the 'mental' arts of the ninjas, maybe it's some sort of self-genjutsu construct or something." Tsuyukami shrugged. "Do you remember what it was you sensed from both parts of her?"
Naruto nodded. "Yeah, there was fear, confusion, sadness, and depression coming from one part. The other was all anger, rage, and betrayal." He considered this for a moment. "Are you thinking that she's somehow split her personality in two? One half taking on all of her aggressive emotions or something?"
"It's possible." Tsuyukami agreed. "However, I can't believe that such a thing is… mentally healthy for a human. Some types of youkai exist like that naturally, but humans are all about balance and diversity. It must be putting quite a bit of strain on her maintaining that, assuming it's true of course."
"Any way we could find out?" Naruto asked.
"Not that I know of." Tsuyukami shook his head. "It's hard to possess a human with a split personality, and the only way to conclusively prove it would be to, well, rip them in two." He seemed a little uncomfortable at that. "If a human's psyche is that split, it's possible to separate them permanently."
Naruto gave him a curious expression, silently asking him to elaborate.
"It was a sort of… sport, centuries ago." He explained. "Youkai would actively search out broken and damaged humans, commonly rape victims, and tear them in two. They would then force the two separate halves to fight one another to the death. It was a barbaric practise, and it's mostly disappeared these days, but… it used to be quite common."
"So it was like those underground dog fighting arenas that happen amongst humans?" Naruto asked.
"Very much so." A voice made the two of them spin around, spotting Riou walking towards them. "Though there's also another, actually legal, human equivalent as well. I believe you would know it as the 'Chunin exams'. I've seen them force children to fight one another as both a show of strength, and for profit too."
"Lord Riou." Tsuyukami greeted the youkai, bowing his head to him. Naruto gave a far more brief nod of greeting, both less concerned about propriety and more intent on what Riou had just said.
"The Chunin exams?" He prodded.
"They turn up in this village every few years, and I've seen half a dozen or so." Riou told him. "The first time, I was drawn to the crowds of humans, and arrived in time to see a child no older than twelve burn his opponent to death with some sort of fire technique."
Naruto winced. Having practised with fire, he knew how much burns hurt. Being burnt alive couldn't be a very pleasant way to go.
"Is Naruto going to be expected to participate in these 'Chunin exams'?" Tsuyukami asked in concern.
"Probably." Riou affirmed. "They are a show of strength after all, and a jinchuuriki is not something to be taken lightly. That arena fighting is the third round though, if I remember correctly, but I have no idea what the other two would be like."
Tsuyukami and Naruto fell silent for a moment, both worried about the future.
"Anyway, have either of you seen Hinoe yet this morning?" Riou asked them. "I found another one of that detestable Orochimaru's labs and Hinoe is supposed to be the one going through all of the things found in them."
"No, but I'll let her know you're looking when I see her later." Naruto replied. He already knew Hinoe was going through Orochimaru's abandoned research notes. That was where she'd learned as much as she had about human fuinjutsu, and a little about high level ninjutsu theory too. The biological mutation research wasn't very useful though, and reading it was rather sickening.
"Thank you." Riou said. "In that case, I have some rambunctious underlings to deal with. Tell her I'll be where I usually am, she'll know where to find me." With that, he bid the two farewell before leaving the clearing and disappearing amongst the trees.
Tsuyukami and Naruto watched him go for a few moments, before heading for the field to pick some fresh fruit and veg. A single shikigami talisman was activated as well and told to check his traps and snares for any fresh meat too. Tsuyukami was amused by the wide variety of food that was available in Naruto's field, as well as the quantity of it.
"That's out of season." He indicated a fruit bush. "And that one isn't native to Fire Country." He indicated a small group of fruit trees, several of which were foreign varieties.
Naruto just gave him a flat look. "With me working together with the kodama spirits around here, is it really that surprising that I can grow things that wouldn't normally flourish here and at this time of year? Besides, they enjoy the variety just as much as I enjoy their produce."
"I was actually thinking of any humans that might visit here." Tsuyukami corrected Naruto. "Akiko might know the truth, and this area might be warded against humans, but there will probably be times humans will end up here. Disabling the seal that allows regular people to see youkai might keep us secret, but if the Hokage or someone else came here, they might notice things aren't as they appear and that could raise some unwanted questions."
Naruto paused to consider that. The seal that allowed humans to see youkai was mostly for Akiko's benefit, and it did automatically deactivate if an human not keyed in was brought into the clearing, but that did nothing to hide the other odd things that weren't youkai. That included the stuff in his cellar, if anyone ever managed to force their way in there.
"There's not much I can do about that." Naruto eventually replied. "I mean, it's not like anyone other than Akiko really comes here. The only other humans that have been here are the Hokage and that Anbu woman he sent along with me, and it's not like humans can just stumble into here, or even find it if they were searching. The barrier keeps all humans but Akiko out, you know that."
"I'm not saying it's a major concern or anything." Tsuyukami said. "It's just something to keep in mind if there ever is an occasion where you bring more humans here, specifically humans that don't know about your unique situation, okay?"
"Okay." Naruto nodded his head.
"Now, let's head inside and see if Minako is up and about yet. If not, let's see what we can put together for breakfast, ne?" Tsuyukami suggested, heading towards Naruto's cabin.
Smiling, the blonde followed him.
xxxxx
Several hours later, Kurama finally returned to Naruto's cabin. He still had the bounties wrapped in his tails, but dumped them in a pile next to Naruto, who was trying to work through making a sending. Currently, he was making an arm out of silver wire, weaving it together to make a framework, a kind of 3d model that was the equivalent of a shikigami's paper talisman.
"Those stink." Naruto commented.
Kurama raised an eyebrow. "They're corpses, and Fire Country is rather warm, of course they stink."
Naruto sighed. "True. So, how much are they worth?"
"Not a great deal." Kurama grumbled. "B rank and higher bounties aren't exactly very common, you know. Most of these are C rank, though I think one or two of them are a low B. I remember them from that bingo book you got from the bounty office."
Naruto hummed in response for a moment, carefully building up the silver wire arm.
"I'll take them to the bounty office later. You okay to give me a ride there? I can go by hirenkyaku if you don't, but it'd be nice to just chat with you for a while. You've spent a lot of time out of Konoha lately, hunting down one bounty or another." Naruto asked.
"I enjoy it, it's fun." Kurama shrugged. "Do you have any time off from that Academy of yours? We could go hunting together, I heard a rumour about some sort of pirate trouble on the coast to the west."
"I've got a week off next month, if I remember right." Naruto mused, idly wondering why a ninja school even had the same regular holidays as a civilian school did. "If you're here then, I'll ride with you."
"I'll try and remember to be back in time for it." Kurama agreed. "Now, what's this you're working on? It looks like the framework for a mannequin or something."
"Oh yeah, you haven't seen my previous attempts at making a sending, have you?" Naruto chuckled. "Well, it's called a 'sending' and it's basically a much improved shikigami. It takes at least a month to complete one, and if you make even one mistake you've got to start again from scratch, but they should be able to completely wipe the floor with a few platoons of regular shikigami."
"So like a decent chunin against a group of genin then?" Kurama clarified.
"Pretty much, though these might have the potential to be even stronger in comparison." Naruto confirmed. "It's not like I know what I'm doing too well yet. After all, my first shikigami were barely good enough to fight a regular civilian, they've come a long way since then."
"Yes, now they can be taken out by the average genin." Kurama scoffed. Inwardly, however, he knew that Naruto could produce enough shiki to drown an army of genin in sheer numbers. He also knew that Naruto knew this, and was aware that Kurama was also smart enough to realise this, and so didn't do anything more than roll his eyes at the fox.
Was that as confusing to read as it was to type?
Anyway, back to Naruto slowly twisting strands of silver wire together to make what, to any modern day school kid, looked like the basis of a paper mâché model. He was quite focused on his task. Not to the exclusion of all else, that would make him jump if someone spoke and he hadn't realised they were there, leading to him probably wrecking the sending and having to start all over again.
He'd already failed four times, and silver wire wasn't that easy to buy in bulk, he wasn't going to fail a fifth time if he had anything to say about it!
Kurama tidied away the corpses he'd brought for Naruto to cash in the bounty – while transformed as someone else of course – and settled down to watch Naruto work on his creations. They weren't his style, Kurama much preferred dealing damage more directly, but he could still appreciate how much time and effort Naruto invested in his own skills and training.
There wasn't enough raw destruction for his tastes, but to each their own.
xxxxx
Taro looked up as the door opened., admitting what was undoubtedly a ninja. After all, only ninja – both village and missing – ever really entered a bounty office. As it turned out, it was someone that Taro was becoming increasingly familiar with.
Wearing a tan coloured cloak with a hood over his head, the man's features were cast into shadow. However, he could still see the slight tan on the man's skin, the locks of dark blue hair that peeked out from under the hood, and those slitted amber eyes were unmistakeable.
"Shinji." Taro greeted the man using the only name he knew the man by.
Shinji simply bowed his head in greeting, never speaking. Taro had never heard a single word pass the man's lips, and as eerie as it was at times, especially how he seemed to appear out of nowhere and disappear just as easily, he was also one of the easiest bounty hunters that he dealt with.
Shinji placed a leather bag on the counter, and Taro pulled out an up to date bingo book. He pulled human heads out of the bag, quickly and efficiently matching them up to the various bounties in the book. He marked down the values of them as he went, and the reference number attached to each one.
He couldn't help but pay attention to the expressions on the faces of the heads. Like most he'd received off this particular bounty hunter, they looked shocked, surprised, and horrified. However, the cuts at the neck were some of the cleanest he'd ever seen, implying an incredibly sharp blade.
Taro had worked the bounty office for decades, through two ninja wars even, and he could tell that something strange was going on with this particular bounty hunter. Call it a gut feeling, intuition, or whatever you want, but Taro had a feeling that Shinji – and he doubted that was the man's true name anyway – was not your average bounty hunter.
Aside from the fact that he was never seen around the Elemental Nations – and this avoided gaining a bounty of his own – he seemed to strike randomly around the continent. On top of that, he didn't really seem that concerned about the bounties themselves, and he also didn't come across as one of those blood-thirsty psychopaths that revelled bloodshed.
"I heard a rumour recently." Taro told Shinji. "There's been some raids up near the north-western border of Fire Country. They haven't been attacking any of the richer towns and villages, so the reward isn't particularly high, but that also means news hasn't spread that far just yet."
Shinji paused for a moment, before pulling a small leather money pouch from within his cloak and placing it on the counter. He nodded his head, collected his reward money, waved goodbye, and left the building.
Taro opened the money pouch, finding a reasonable, but not extravagant number of coins within.
That was another reason he liked dealing with this particular bounty hunter, he tipped rather well. As long as he had some decent information, he could always count on getting a little something for his troubles, and it wasn't difficult for a man in his position to come across interesting titbits of information.
Heck, he remembered being tipped more than this that time he'd told Shinji about some rumours of old, abandoned temples out in Swamp and Fang country. He'd also gotten a sizeable tip for giving the man some information on some strange relics that he'd heard about.
His coin was good, and getting the information wasn't hard. What was there not to like about that?
xxxxx
Several flashes of blue light later and 'Shinji' had vanished into a nearby forest.
Cancelling the transformation revealed Naruto hefting the coin bag he'd just collected. He mentally added the amount of money he'd just gained from Kurama's bounty kills to what he had at home and wondered if he should take a short trip to the capital.
You could get almost anything in the capital for the right price. The black market was also useful for getting your hands on some restricted substances. He'd gotten some rather rare seeds from Wind Country there, and it'd been quite expensive, but he now had some poisons and herbs growing in his field that were most definitely not native to Fire Country.
It was, however, far harder to get hold of anything to do with ninja and their techniques. While the various villages might covertly encourage and make use of the black market, they also tried to control it as much as they could, with limited success.
Naruto had managed to acquire a book on chakra strings and puppets, a very basic one, that had given him a few ideas on how to use Masami's chains in interesting ways, and another book on poison ninjutsu, like the poison cloud jutsu that he could quite easily emulate, but those were the only ones he'd been able to get for himself.
"Thinking hard there?" Tsurara asked, draping herself across his shoulders.
"Just wondering if I might head to the Capital before going home." Naruto answered her.
"Hmm, some more cloth and thread, perhaps?" Tsurara suggested. "You can never have too many clothes, and you are becoming decently skilled with needle and thread."
"I was actually considering more esoteric materials, but you're right." Naruto agreed. "I do kinda enjoy making clothes, it's relaxing."
"And I enjoy wearing some of your results." Tsurara smiled. "That kimono you made me might need some more adjustments though." She shot him a sly look. "I'd be happy to model it for you and show you exactly where needs your attention."
Naruto snorted. "You just want me to stare at you while you dance."
She chuckled warmly. "Not just stare, Naruto." She told him. "I'm sure you could get your hands all over me as well."
Naruto just rolled his eyes and huffed a laugh. He did glance away from her, and if one were to look closely, they would see the slightest of heat in his cheeks. Eight years old or not, Naruto knew what Tsurara was constantly suggesting with her flirting, and aside from that, he did find her fond affection quite endearing by itself.
Tsurara, as it so happened, did notice Naruto's ever so slight blush and her eyes gleamed brightly. She didn't comment on it though, she wasn't going to push any further right then. Tsurara wasn't stupid, and she knew if she pushed too hard and too fast, she'd do more harm than good in her slow seduction of the boy.
Tsurara then focused hard for a moment, the temperature plummeting temporarily as a result, before an eight year old version of herself appeared in the middle of the frozen circle of grass. Daintily stepping forward she wrapped her arms around Naruto's own limb.
For a moment, she missed her modest bust, but breasts would look ridiculous on an eight year old. Still, she surprised Naruto, and grinned at him with a mouth containing pristine, shining teeth.
"Maybe we could wander around like this?" She suggested mischievously.
"Are you visible to humans like that?" He asked.
"Of course." She told him. "I might be weaker than I would be purely as a spirit, especially in such a warm place as Fire Country, but I am a yuki-onna, and we as a species aren't weak by any means."
She didn't tell him that it would be more difficult for her if she hadn't been growing stronger from the ambient reiryoku he radiated almost constantly. Not a great deal more difficult, but give it a few decades and she would be significantly stronger than most other yuki-onna her age.
"Let's go then." Naruto smiled, taking a moment to transform his hair colour to black, his eyes to green, and make his whisker marks – which had been getting more pronounced recently – disappear.
With that done, the two disappeared in a flash of blue light, leaving a frosty clearing behind them.
xxxxx
Back in Konoha, with no Naruto to follow around at present, Benio wandered the streets of the human settlement. She was becoming more familiar with the place thanks to going to school with Naruto five days a week, but just like Naruto, the forest would always be her home.
Of course, she did find some things intriguing about humans. Naruto had once bought her a box of puzzle games as a gift and she'd spent weeks figuring them all out. She'd enjoyed it as well, much to her own surprise, and she still played around with them to find new solutions.
That 'Rubik's cube' was her favourite though.
She paused as she saw a young girl, a little older than Naruto, wandering around outside the hospital. She recognised her immediately as that girl that Naruto pulled out of that big burning house the other day. If she remembered right, her name was Yakumo Kurama, and Tsuyukami had explained a few theories he and Naruto had discussed earlier that morning at breakfast.
'She doesn't look like much' Benio thought to herself, seeing nothing but a frail little girl with average brown hair and eyes. She wasn't even reacting to Benio's presence, showing none of the awareness of youkai that Naruto had going for him. Still, if she did have such a split personality, she might prove to be at least mildly amusing.
How to test it though…
Ah! Benio grinned evilly, stepping up to Yakumo and whispered in her ear. It didn't really matter what she said though, simply making sure she sounded vaguely threatening.
When the girl jumped a mile in the air and span around, she began whispering comforting words in her other ear.
Switching sides and tones several times, Benio quite enjoyed the panic showing in the girl's eyes. Say what you will, but youkai were products of belief and the subconscious, and so it was very common for them to be, at the very least, pranksters, and there was nothing inherently malicious about it, it was simply their nature.
"No!" Yakumo cried. "I'm not going crazy. I'm not! Kurenai is wrong, I'm stable, I'm not insane… I'm not."
That last bit was said so plaintively that Benio felt a little bad about what she'd just done, but it proved one thing at least. This girl, if nothing else, denied insanity, and as almost anyone can tell you, humans deny what they can't face. It wasn't conclusive, not by a long way, but it did support their theories a little.
Now, if only she could work out a way to draw out her possible 'other side'...