I own neither Naruto nor Watchmen.
It's been a while since I posted. No more chapters have been written past 40.
This is the part where we truly start to worldbuild.
Enjoy.
When Walter and his mother get to Konoha, they move into a small apartment in Flicker District; one of the poorer districts in Konoha. All seven districts within the city are named for fire; Blaze, Flicker, Hearth, Ember, Ash, Sizzle, and Flare.
It's practically on top of the fish market, which is the reason why the rent is so low. There are two cramped bedrooms, a bathroom, and a single living room slash kitchenette. It's run-down, but the building is sturdy enough. The windows are dirty, one is cracked, all of them are jammed shut, and the carpet peels up against the mustard-yellow wall.
There is no heating or air-conditioning. It smells musty and humid and definitely has a hint of fish, but it's far better than the old tenement apartment's accumulated reek of certain bodily fluids. There isn't much hot water, but the old tenement back in the capital sometimes didn't have water at all, let alone heated water. The apartment heats up fast in the sweltering sub-tropical climate, faster than they're used to. The capital is further north and further inland than where Konoha is located, and thus has a temperate climate, and milder summers.
The heat puts his mother into a bad mood, so Walter wisely stays out of her way. He wanders the village, taking in the sights, habitually prying change out of gutters and pocketing it. He drinks in this place that wants him, thinks he's worth enough to move him all the way from the capital.
It's beautiful here. The buildings are whitewashed, with patched red tile roofs, pipes clinging to the architecture like steel vines.
The people are friendly; they smile at the eight-year old as he passes. Walter finds enough change to buy lunch, and the man who runs the tempura bar pats him on the head and calls him 'kiddo'.
Birds fly overhead, messenger pigeons, nin-hawks and sturdy blackbirds with long tails, and the strangest cry – it starts out low and rises high, a sort of tuu-weeek!
And the trees. Massive trees on the horizon, dark and lush like a primeval forest, in which monstrous beasts must surely lurk, creatures of wonder and horror.
There are trees within the city limits too, sometimes even a feature of the architecture – houses built around or on the trees. There are viridian parks with lush grass and bright playground equipment, where children pretend to be fearsome ninja.
The air here is different from the capital, fresh and invigorating, with a flavor of smoke from the controlled brush fires Leaf-nin use to burn open the seed pods of the behemoth trees, thus prolonging the collective life of the rainforest.
The streets are paved with brick, with deep gutters. They're clean, although that might be from the local daily downpour. It pours down - buckets of it - for half an hour, almost exactly at two in the afternoon every day. The streets turn into creeks, the drains gurgle, drinking rainwater greedily. Afterwards, the hot, sucking summer sun dries the puddles within hours. The locals take their lunch when it rains, wisely evading the downpour.
To the south looms the Hokage Mountain, with the proud heads of the village leaders carved into it, vigilant and still. Walter wants to be like them, noble and dignified, wants faces to turn to him with the same reverence. They are not handsome men. They didn't need to be.
He finds the civilian library nearest his apartment, and fills out the paperwork for a card with the help of a librarian. He checks out books about ninja, and civilian fighting styles, then goes back for a dictionary after paging through the books a little.
He fills his head with words like duty, honor, cunning, gile, and deception.
School is coming up, fall will begin in a month, and so will the Konoha Ninja Academy. Walter will never be as ready as the other children – he is civilian, and foreign. He knows very little about what being a ninja actually entails. But he can learn, he can try.
Ninja have to be smart, so he reads whatever he can find and understand.
Ninja have to be strong, so he trains his body. Runs in the mornings and afternoons, pushups and sit-ups, punching the air and turning his whole arm as he strikes like the karate book told him to, twisting into it with his whole body.
Preparation is his watchword.
And all this preparation takes him away from the apartment and his mother, which can only be good.
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