A/N And I'm back with another chapter! Please read and review if you enjoy it. Every little bit of encouragement helps!
Chapter 5: Lost Heritage
It would be an easy and understandable mistake for a casual observer of events so far to assume the previously mentioned incident at the school involving Uzumaki Naruto was a consequence of recent revelations regarding his containing a certain demon fox. Said observer would only be partially right. The full answer though was a bit more complicated.
'So...you have school today right?"
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'Shouldn't you be getting ready to leave...or something….?'
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'C'mon kid! Ain't you bored of moping yet?'
It was the previous Monday's morning, almost 48 hours since the revelation of Xy's past and the reasons for why Naruto had been hated by nearly all the village for most of his short life, and since said time Naruto had...well he hadn't done much of anything except mope. Not that one could blame him.
On the one hand, he was glad to finally have an explanation for all the bad stuff that had been happening to him, all the whispering, all the evil looks, the all too frequent harm done to his property by some drunken idiot. On the other hand, it didn't make thinking back on or LIVING through any of that crap easier and now he now had to deal with the fact that as far as he knew EVERYONE, barring the kids who seemingly were only doing what their parents told them to, was in on the secret and had been actively LYING to him when he asked about what he had done to deserve what he had been put through.
Everyone from the Old man who ran the village, to the owner of the Ramen stand he had frequented, to...well to be honest there weren't many other people who wanted to talk to him for any length of time besides Xy but still the point remained he had asked people and gotten jack squat in return.
He didn't know WHY they had been lying to him, and frankly at this point he didn't care. All he knew was it was effecting him something mightily. With the exception of getting up to go to the bathroom the boy had just sort of shut down. Even his legendary (to Konoha at least) appetite had all but ceased to exist. All he seemed to have the energy to do was lay in bed and mope…
And Xy had enough of it!
'THAT'S IT!'
'Huh…? Wait Xy! What are you…?!'
Before he knew what the hell was going on Naruto found himself abruptly picked up by an invisible hand, clothes and all, and dropped into his shower which spontaneously seemed to turn itself on upon his being dropped there.
'You. Bathe. Now.'
Said the possessed book whilst it levitated a set of clean clothes onto the nearby towel rack.
'You WILL be out of here in 15 minutes, you WILL eat something, and you WILL go to class. Got it?'
'But…!'
'The only butt you need to be worrying about is your own and how hard i'm going to psychically kick it if you don't hurry up and clean it. So hurry up and get it done!'
Before the boy could respond the book was already on its way out of the bathroom. Figuring he might as well bathe given that his current clothes were already soaking wet the boy set to cleaning himself up. Not wanting to piss the book trapped entity off anymore then he already had, he did his best to finish up quickly and emerged newly dressed to find…
Well...frankly he didn't know what the hell was going on...
'Masali kaptens, mama I karim bilong bipo mi taim hia. Mi singuat long yu! Kam Hia! Nau I taim long moga. Dispela Odai mi, XY! Got long lapun, wantaim mi pawa! Nau givim mi planti kaikai'*
The words were strange without question and they seemed heavy with power, something that seemed to become more and more evident as all the while they were being spoken Xy was glowing brighter, brighter, brighter!
Then before Naruto could ask what in the hell was going on the last word was spoken and something began to appear on the floor near the kitchen table.
It was a set of crates with a strange white star and some sort of writing on each of them in a script he didn't recognize. Another glow and the boxes suddenly popped open and...gold colored round cans started to fly out of them, followed shortly there after by another set of oblong blue cans and some small bags. Another glow and some of the cans suddenly opened of there own accord and dropped the food in a waiting skillet with the rest shoving themselves into any open and available cabinet.
'Oh your out already. Food will be ready in a few minutes'
'I...uh...'
'Don't worry about anyone noticing the light show, by the way. Unlike you Mr. Mopey-pants I've been busy the last couple days warding this place with a low level glamour spell against outside observers. Thankfully magic is different enough from chakra that most folks can't sense when its in play….well not unless they have a really strong dojutsu like the mangekyo, but that's not as common as it used to be...as far as I know.'
Still totally dumbfounded by what he had seen Naruto could only sit down at the table and wait until an absolutely enormous amount of steaming hot food was dropped in front of him to eat along with some kind of off-orange colored fruit drink that magically appeared into his cup.
'Chopped eggs, ham, and potatoes breakfast C-rat, along with that pink wonder of wonders Spam! You know that last one is good if the Tcho-tcho head hunters are willing to let a person escape from them in exchange for a few cans of it. Also some orange powder mix drink but if you don't want to drink it that's fine. Stuff is so sour I heard some of the troops that used to have this issued to them used to use it to clean floors and their weapons in a pinch. Just think of it as training for your insides if you do decide to drink it. I'd give you coffee instead but your kind of young for that'
'...C-rat…?'
'Short for Type C-ration. Not exactly the most appealing stuff in the world but "cargo magic" is limited in the kind of food it lets you summon. On the plus side the stuff in your cabinet should last you about 3 days unless you decide to eat it first. Normally I wouldn't use this sort of magic what with my not having a use for food and all but you haven't eaten in three days, I doubt you want to eat cereal AGAIN, and it would be embarrassing if one of my wielders died of malnutrition so here we are. '
'...Cargo-magic?' Asked the dumbstruck boy weakly still trying to process what had just happened.
'A kind of magic I picked up from a previous wielder.' Said the rather odd sensei as the boy tentatively tried the apparently magic food before him. To anyone else with a choice otherwise the stuff would have seemed too soft and kind of bland, excluding possibly the Spam, but to a boy whose food intake primarily consisted of noodles that could be said at best to have the same nutrition as wet salted cardboard it may as well have been mana from heaven and he quickly began to devour it. Xy chuckled as he watched the boy eat and decided that this was a good segue into the different kinds of magic and some of their history.
'Cargo magic as you can see can be quite useful. It is a unique kind of magic that's one part traditional summoning ritual, one part magic transfiguration (that's when you change one thing into another via magic), and one part benign necromancy courtesy of invoking some benevolent deceased ancestors.'
'Deceased? You mean ghosts!?' They boy thought, a hint of panic entering his thoughts at the concept.
'No, no, no. Ghosts are actually entities that come from a place called the astral realm. Their basically just random masses of energy and a magic rich substance called ectoplasm. Once in a while a creatures will escape from that realm and happen upon an unusually strong mass of emotional and mental energy left behind from when someone died a certain way. Since they need energy to survive they'll try to absorb it but since they don't have sense of self the energy quickly overwhelms them causing them to mutate into a clone of the dead person and/or cause them to act upon those emotions. The magic I'm using now calls directly to the souls of the dearly departed and they tend to be far more helpful and rational then their lesser duplicates. Well unless you go and contact the ones imprisoned in a hell dimension or something...but that's impossible with this particular branch of magic given it uses the energy of what you people would call the "pure land"'
'...okay that's a relief...I guess. Okay so ghosts come from that astral place, the people who power this magic come from the pure place...and you got the magic you got from...where exactly?'
'Initially? From some human islanders who lived on another world. To put it simply they had some belief that their ancestors were supposed to send them gifts of food and things they needed via messengers on magical ships. The shamans of their tribe could summon these vessels in times of need and even a few spirits altered into duplicates of their deceased warriors. However poor choices in who they picked to be shamans lead to the rituals failing causing the tribe to doubt they worked. That all changed when some folks from a nation called the United States of America and its allies showed up on the islands. It seems they were fighting a World War against some other nations, including one called Japan whose people share a common link to to the people of this world (long story I'll tell you some other time). As a matter of fact, one of those Japanese soldiers was the one who summoned me to that world after he botched some sutra of protection he was muttering...even I'm confused how he managed to screw up THAT badly'
'Really?'
'Incompetence knows no limits or dimensional borders it seems. Regardless he ended up getting killed before I could create a bond with him and one of the natives investigating that battle's aftermath found me. That is how I got to witness this rather odd cargo magic first hand and how it was being altered by the presence of those unexpected visitors to the island. See it had been some time since the old rituals had worked properly and so the natives didn't know what to expect. So when a bunch of advanced giant ships made out of metal happened to appear right after when a brand new shaman attempted one of the rituals, it was only natural for some of the natives to mistake the Americans onboard them for the messengers their ancestors had promised to send them. The fact the soldiers even shared some of their excess supplies with them only cemented that fact in their minds. Later when the American soldiers left those islands the islanders tried to perform the magic again to bring the Americans and their magic cargo back to no effect. Seeing this, some of the natives figured they were just doing the rituals wrong and figured the best place to start from in order to fix things was to alter their beliefs and rituals to mimic some of what they saw the soldiers doing around their bases. Since belief and faith is power when it comes to magic, their altered beliefs ended up changing what could be created and summoned by their ancestors. The end result? When these new beliefs were combined with a shaman who actually had some magic power to him they ended up summoning magic cans of spam and objects just like the American troops used to get!
'Wow'
'Quite. Now not being human I normally couldn't use this magic, but the tribe that found me coincidentally had deceased ancestors who had worshipped me, which allows me to get them to work for me. Gotta love little loop holes like that'
'So...now you can summon magic food?'
'And bombs, and vehicles, and a horde of spirit soldiers armed with the weapons and equipment of that war. Hell give me some coconuts and a few months time to perform the necessary rituals and I could use this sort of magic to summon up a bomb on par with the devastation a tai...I mean only a really few powerful shinobi could pull off'
Xy said quickly correcting himself before his words inadvertently sent the temporarily mollified boy back into another depressive funk at the mention of the creatures whose existence had ruined his life by their actions.
'Since my energy is flowing through your body the ancestors of that tribe should see you as my champion and so should respond to your commands. Still, while the food summoning ritual is relatively quick its one of the exceptions not the rule. The more powerful rituals need a lot more energy and time to pull off. There IS a way to get around those costs with addition of casters and people to contribute their energy to the rituals, but seeing as currently only the two of us can pull off this sort of magic on your world I doubt we'll be using them any time soon. We can start training you in this and other stuff later once your feeling better, right now though I think its time to for you to get going.'
Quickly taking advantage of the boy's still awestruck status to nudge him along the possessed book, after levitating the boy's empty dishes into the sink, once more reluctantly took up a place in the boy's backpack. It wasn't his favorite place to be given his still fresh memories of being buried in the old temple but it needed to be done to avoid raising anyone's suspicion.
The two of them left the apartment without another word. It was a pleasant day and for a moment it seemed that the boy would be able to put the shock of the revelations from the past couple of days behind him…
Then the still unfortunate reality of the situation decided to rear its ugly head.
The crowds of people shooting dirty looks, the whispers, the kids suddenly changing course to avoid having to interact with him. It was almost enough to make him turn back...
'If you turn back, they win. They don't want you to have a chance, why else would they take away what you could draw strength from? Or in this case, make even the attempt to gain power and knowledge from school unpleasant? Don't let them take what little opportunity you currently have away from you with their bigoted actions.'
It was only those telepathically sent words of encouragement that allowed the boy to steel himself and keep marching forward. Still by the time he got to the classroom what little energy these words gave him was all but spent. He barely even found it in himself to pay attention to what was going on for the rest of the week, and the few times somebody made the mistake of getting in his way he barely stoped to acknowledge them...or if he did it was via shooting them a look filled with hatred so intense that time itself seemed to stop in its tracks rather than continuing to advance and risk the boy's ire.
Xy rather than press him about these events or his not paying attention in class decided to just leave the matter alone as he could sense the boy was still emotionally unstable. Instead he decided to just talk to the boy about other random things in an attempt to mollify him. Unfortunately it was that very attempt to mollify the boy that finally lit the fuse on that powder keg of resentment and anguish that had been slowly stockpiled in his heart. It began with a simple enough question one day at recess as Naruto headed toward the lone swing near the school, his book bag slung over his shoulder.
'Naruto?'
'Yes Xy?'
'Something has been bugging me for a while now. Why do you live in that rathole apartment of yours?'
'... incase you've forgotten Xy I'm an orphan...'
'Yes, yes, I know little smart-ass. You mentioned that as well as the orphanage being full up before, but that still doesn't answer my question. Why that particular building?'
'Well where else would I live Xy? Most folks….most folks just refuse to even live near me let alone rent to me.
'Okay...so why don't you just move to your clan's old compound?'
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'...w-what?'
'Your clan's old compound. I mean. I don't know if they ever actually built it, but if they did it has got to be better than that wreck you live in now. Did something happen there to give you bad memories of the place or...?'
'Xy...what are you talking about? I don't have a clan!'
Naruto couldn't see Xy's face at the moment of his response but if he could he had a distinct impression that it would have had a look of dumbfounded shock.
'Uh yeah you do, the Uzumaki clan. You know, the guy's you got your last name from.'
'That's….that can't be. I-I was told that they just gave me a random name at the orphanage since they didn't know who my parents were.'
'Now that's impossible. Nobody with any brains would name a random orphan after a famous clan unless they wanted to piss somebody off something royal. That's a big no-no going back to the time before the village was founded. Besides your life force is just as unusually potent as theirs was judging from what I'm seeing via our bond'
'...famous clan?'
'Wait...you...honestly don't know any of this? About the Uzumaki clan or their village of Uzugakure?
Now it was Naruto's turn to gain a look of dumbfounded confusion. He heard the words understood each ones individual meaning...but what they added up to, what they meant for him….No! It. Just. Couldn't. Be!
When Naruto didn't respond to Xy's repeated mental prompting Xy immediately realized the truth of the matter.
'Sweet merciful crap what sort of nonsense is this village trying to pull...look kid, I don't know what you were told before but I'm telling you, you have or at least had a clan.'
'But-but...no! That can't be! Even if it was true...no it doesn't make any sense why nobody would have told me about them...unless maybe people forgot about them...'
'Forgot about the Uzumaki? Yeah I don't think so. My memories of them are admittedly a bit hazy, what with their arrival being around the time Hashirama accidentally damaged the temple, but I do distinctly recall a clan named the Uzumaki being here. Hell Hashirama's wife came from them as I remember. I also remember that after the wedding there was talk about possibly setting up some of her closest relatives in a compound in the village. Meanwhile the more distant relatives of her's after trading some of their knowledge of sealing jutsu for manpower were planning on going back to the Land of Whirlpools where they came from and founding their own village there. In honor of this arrangement and to ensure the two villages would always remain close the Konoha even went so far as to include the proposed symbol of the spiral in their emblem. '
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'Naruto…?'
Silence. Nothing but silence greeted the imprisoned being's tentative question. The boy's mind had for lack of a better term all but shut down at the bombardment of new revelations these past couple of days. It was too much! His entire sense of the world had gone and gotten flipped on its head and he had no way how to reorient. There was no reason for Xy to lie about what he was saying, no obvious benefit to it...but to think this whole time…
How much had this village hidden from him? First the fox and now this, what else were they hiding? Question after question spinning faster and faster in his head. The strain of it all was too intense, the world seemed to spin and he all but collapsed into the swing, his eyes staring numbly ahead, oblivious to all around him...which is probably why he didn't notice the group of kids heading his way till they were practically on top of him. They were around the same age as Naruto, two with black hair and the one in front, evidently the leader of the group, had brown hair.
"Oy Uzumaki-baka! What the hell do you think your doing hogging the swings like that!?"
The leader shouted while pointing at the seated blond boy. Vaguely Naruto felt the sensation of knowing him from somewhere, but despite his efforts he couldn't place him, at least until the other two boys in the group of three spoke.
"Yeah come on, what do you think you own the swings or something!? Didn't you learn last week not to get in the way of our fun?"
"Say, that reminds me how did you get away from Oni-chan and his friends last week?"
Ah! There it was. These kids were the ones who had picked on the Hyuuga girl. The younger brothers of those idiots who had chased him into the woods. Normally he would have said something cutting back, maybe insult their siblings ninja skills... but in the dazed state he was in he just wasn't feeling up to it. Not getting a response and perhaps taking his silence as his trying to play it cool or as some sort of insult the three idiots decided to continue on their little insult spree.
"How'd he get away? Hah, that's easy he probably went and hid behind some old lady's skirt or something!"
"Yah right like anyone in this village gives a crap enough about this loser to protect him!"
"Poor little nobody orphan boy got nobody to care for him. Hahah!"
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'this...is not going to end well…' thought the ancient observer of these events
And he was right.
"Hahha-urk!"
The group of boys laughing fit was abruptly cut off as they saw the seated blond's hand reach out to wrap around their leader's windpipe and squeeze.
"Hey! What do…?" one of the other two began...only to stop cold as he felt it.
Something foul...something heavy...something that made every hair on his body stand up, something that seemed to reach deep into the very depths of his soul to dredge up some primal ancestral feeling of terror. The feeling that our ape ancestors must have felt when in their scurrying for food they encountered some dread beast of air, land or water that sought to feast on them!
And that feeling was positively rolling off the otherwise innocuous looking blond boy! Then they saw it...wisps of something red tinged with black and a deep purplish color seemed to just seep out of the boy whilst his eyes…
Oh dear Kami his eyes!
Eyes are not supposed to be...that color that boy's eye were! A blue so dark they seemed darker than even the black pupil within them, a pupil that was slitted like a snake!
"You want to know how I got away from your little shit elder siblings? DO YOU?!"
Blind horror held an irresistible grip on their tongues, holding them fast to the roof of their mouths so all they could choke out was faint and idiotic sounding gurgle as the unnaturally reverberating voice of Naruto echoed in their ears.
"I got away because I am not some useless orphan! I. AM. UZUMAKI NARUTO! AND THAT IS ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW! You and the rest of these people in this village...all you do is lie and mock me! NOT ANYMORE!"
'NARUTO STOP! You'll kill him!' A voice, Xy's voice, echoed in the raging boy's mind abruptly dunking cold water on the searing inferno that his emotions had become. It was enough to make the flames of hate sputter and to make him loosen his grip on the boy's throat, but not enough to quench the flames altogether or erase the look of absolute hatred that he shot the gasping boy as he lay writhing on the floor.
*Cough**Cough*"You psycho!" *Cough "I'm gonna tell sensei this and then…!"
"Your dead."
"What…?"
"You...your little friends here...and your family...and anyone else you care about...all dead, if you talk about today, get in my way, or if you even so much as think of LOOKING in my direction from now on! GOT IT?!"
At those last words the group of boys felt SOMETHING smash against the inside of their heads like a wrecking ball. An image of something, some nameless horror something with tendrils and MOUTHS full of teeth like swords and wings fit to block every light in a sky for all eternity. A thing even a madmen in his most intense psychotic episode couldn't dream up...
One of the boys pissed his pants in sheer terror; the other two could only blankly nod.
"Good...NOW PISS OFF!"
And they did. Fleeing like the devil himself was on their heels they ran screaming from the blond boy, who once more returned to looking like any other child as the menacing aura around him faded away to nothing.
'Feeling better?'
*Huff* 'Somewhat...what the hell was that?'
'Best guess? You got so pissed you accidentally tapped into a fragment of my energy and the fox's. Not unexpected given the bond between us. Now then, if you don't mind I think it might be best that we call it a day and take our leave of this place. At least until you cool off a bit...'
'Show me.'
'I'm sorry? Show you? Show you...what?'
'You said you know where my clan's compound was right?'
'I know where they WERE building it yes.'
'Then show me it...might as well get something useful out of this day if we're not going to waste time here'
Xy considered the proposal, thought over what issues might be involved, then figured what the hell?
'Your going to want to head north from here.'
And so they did.
A/N: By the way that spell isn't some gibberish I made up. It's actually written in a probably butchered pidgin language from Papua New Guinea a place where some of the same sort of people from the real world cargo cults used to live. Translation of the spell: Spirits of captains, born before my time here. I call out to you! Come here! Now is the time for the ritual of sharing. So commands I, Xy! God from a time long ago, by my power! Now give me lots of food!
