"Hm... he's late... later than me..." Kakashi mumbled as he sat on a stool on the Taichi shop. The gray haired ninja had showed up his normal half hour late for the appointed time to see what the young blacksmith had done to his sword, only to find that the boy had yet to arrive. "Should I be worried?"
"Nah, something's probably just holding him up. Kid has a problem that he just can't leave other people's problems alone. He usually ends up late to things." Tendou said with a shrug as he continued to polish an oversized sword.
"That's right! I'm sure there is a good reason that Kuroshi-kun isn't here yet! He isn't a useless tardy-pants like you!" Tenten shouted at Kakashi, being unreasonably angry for some childish reason.
"Hey, I had a reason... I was..." Kakashi started trying to defend himself, but Tenten cut him off.
"Liar! Liar liar pants on fire!" She shouted at the high ranking ninja who simply deflated under the assault. Tendou glanced up from his sword before looking back down.
"Don't worry, he'll be here. Kid's pretty mature for his age. And even though he is a genius of sorts, he has remarkably little pride. He won't try to hide his mistakes. Once he gets here, he will give you an honest apology for wasting your time and give you back the pieces of your..." Tendou started, but his daughter cut him off too.
"Kuroshi won't have failed! He will have done the greatest job ever!" Tenten shouted, stopping her foot on the ground and giving a deep pout.
"Yeah, and maybe the Akimichi clan will all start dieting." Tendou mumbled. He'd only believe it if he saw it. Up until now, Kuroshi had only been doing minor repair jobs and using molds to make kunai and throwing stars, which was already fairly impressive for a four year old. But there was a huge difference between that and actually forging swords, and an even greater gap between there and being a blacksmith good enough to forge chakra weapons of legendary status.
Before Tenten could say anything, the door opened up and the boy himself came in, gasping for breath while clutching a box to his chest. "Sorry... I'm late... The market... cooler broken and..."
Tendou waved him off. "Don't need to hear it. We know you get distracted."
"Kuroshi-kun!" Tenten shouted excitedly as she ran up to him and gave him a strong hug. "I knew you would come!"
"Wh...why wouldn't I?" Shirou said confused as he looked around the room and spotted Kakashi. A wide smile spread across his face. Not the kind of smile that someone who was about to give bad news had. "Kakashi-san, I got your sword for you."
Tenten immediately let go of Shirou so that she would be able to see the sword. Shirou put the box on the ground before opening it up and pulling out the sheathed blade. In his small hands, it actually looked like a full sized sword rather than a long tactical knife. Gasps filled the room as the four year old boy slowly drew the blade out of its sheath.
The flawless metal blade seemed to glow with a strong white light, each and every small movement leaving a trail of energy behind it as Shirou moved it carefully in front of him. Then, pulling out a raw ingot out of the box, Shirou tossed it up into the air before slashing through it with the blade, cleanly cutting the metal bar in two as if it had been nothing but air as a long white streak came from the blade.
The sword Tendou had been polishing slipped from his fingers and fell down onto his steel toed boots, crushing his foot as the piece of protective metal was driven into his toes. But the man didn't react, he simply continued to stare at the pale blade. "No way... It's not possible."
Shirou turned the tantou blade in his hand to hold the hilt out to Kakashi, who took it from him with half shaking hands. The gray haired ninja's eye was bulging out of its socket as he stared at the blade. "Its... I've never..." The blade was as good as new. Better than Kakashi himself had ever seen it.
Even before it had first ended up in the copycat ninja's hands, it had seen fifteen long years of hard use and was nowhere near its peak condition. The blade in his hand surpassed his memories. "I did the best I could. Some of the seals that were hidden inside of the handle still need to be redone. But the steel has should be about the same as when it was first forged." Shirou said with a smile.
"Well... you did a much better job than I was expecting." Kakashi said honestly, testing the weight of the weapon, finding it to be exactly as he remembered it. The pale white stream followed the blade no matter how he twisted it. "How much do I owe you?"
"Owe?" Shirou said tilting his head before his eyes widened as he realized Kakashi was taking about payment. He laughed a little to himself, scratching at the back of his head. "I actually didn't think about pay. I have no idea what this kind of job is worth. I was so wrapped up in the blade itself, everything else kind of slipped my mind." Shirou looked at the blade again. "Just use it well, and become a hero, just like your father."
Kakashi went into a solemn silence as the mention of his father, slowly taking the sheath and putting away the sword, keeping it upon just an inch so that its white light could stream out of the crack for a moment longer before closing it shut. "Becoming a hero is a tall order. But I suppose I could give it a try." The gray haired ninja said disinterestedly.
Shirou grinned until Tenten grabbed onto his sleeve and gave it a sharp pull. "Kuroshi-kun!" She shouted, looking him dead in the eyes with a killer pout that confused the boy. "I want one."
"Huh?" Shirou said, not comprehending what it was that the girl wanted.
"I want you to make me a sword. One just as good as that one."
"I don't believe it. I don't believe it." The shop owner said again and again as his daughter begged the young child for a sword. "It can't be. I just can't."
"I know what you mean... but shouldn't you get that foot looked at?" Kakashi said with a raised eyebrow, glancing down at the man's crushed toes as the boot turned a darker brown from the blood seeping into the leather.
"Wha?.. FUCKING HELL!"
Shirou eventually managed to get away from Tenten. Though he had pointed out that she was not supposed to practice with real swords until she was older and that she wouldn't need one until she was a full fledged ninja, she had still forced him to promise to make her one as a graduation present for when she graduated from the Academy.
He hoped she would simply forget about that... what were the odds of her remembering? She was only four and that was eight years away.
Looking inward, he found the chakra blade on his hill of swords, now reforged and whole, the way it was meant to be. Kakashi had no idea. That blade he held was far greater than it had ever been in life.
Shirou had used his magecraft to restore the sword. He used a paradox called the Ship of Theseus Paradox in order to maintain the identity and memory of the steel as he reshaped it. The story was based around the ship of an ancient hero, that was stored and maintained. Over time, all of the wood that made it up rotted and had to be replaced. The paradox asks if, after the last plank of wood has been replaced, is it truly the same ship? And if not, then at what point does it cease to be the same ship?
Though the theory, the ideal form of the blade was maintained. In the same way that iron is folded again and again to increase purity, Shirou slowly blended the idea of the sword that existed within his Unlimited Blade Works with the physical weapon, it until the ideal form and the physical form matched. And then, at that moment, the blade transcended and became a Noble Phantasm. Shirou was actually torn from giving it back to Kakashi. Part of him wanted to keep the original blade for himself.
It had been a slow process, much slower than tracing, but it was still much faster than actually forging the sword from scratch. The original blade took over three years to complete. And even if he had, it wouldn't have been the same sword, and therefore wouldn't have become a Noble Phantasm.
Shirou was grateful to Kakashi for providing him that chance. He had never been allowed to hold onto shards of a weapon that should have been a legend. He had always believed that he would use the Ship of Theseus Paradox in order to obtain a Noble Phantasm, one that did not suffer from the inherent flaws of his Tracing. But shards of ancient legendary weapons are far too rare, and any magus who got their hands on one would guard it with their lives.
In Shirou's mind, the chance to test his theory was all the payment he would ever need. The magus back in his old world would have made him pay a king's bounty in order to simply observe the fragments for a day. Kakashi had no clue what he was holding onto, believing them to just be a keepsake from his father.
The method wasn't very practical. He would need shards of legendary weapons in order to reforge them into true Noble Phantasms, but it was interesting and could one day be highly useful if he found himself fighting against powerful opponents, like the Kages. Taking their swords and transforming them into pseudo-divine weaponry.
Shirou stopped in his thoughts about possible applications of this new method when something caught his eye.
Three people stepped out of the Village central building's library branch. Two adults and a child around his age, all three of them looked to be of the Hyūga Clan, dark brown to raven hair, plaid clothes with long sleeves, the adults having their headbands around their foreheads, and the signature white, featureless eyes of the bloodline. One of the two adults, a tall man with long brown hair, was carrying a stack of around a dozen scrolls towards a coach.
None of this was all that strange. The thing that caught his eye was the young girl, or more specifically, her hair. The black hair was pulled up into twin ponytails one either side of the girl's head, the hair was so long that it still came down to her shoulders. It was the hairstyle that Rin had worn back in their teenage years.
He remembered being a bit surprised when she dropped the hair style when they were both starting into their twenties, letting her hair fall down her back. The conversation about it was a bit of a blur though. She said something about the old hair style having its charms, but that it was becoming too childish for her. Shirou couldn't exactly remember how the rest of the talk went, but it ended up with him being kicked so hard between the legs that he walked funny for the rest of the week. The memory of the attack on his sword caused him to wince.
The hairstyle was something rather iconic of Rin, and he hadn't seen anyone else use it since he had been reborn. The age seemed about right, and she carried herself in a rather proud fashion. Shirou's suspicions had been aroused. However, none of this was concrete evidence.
He checked the air for her prana, but didn't find it.
That wasn't surprising. Unlike chakra channels which always seemed to be putting out at least a little energy, magic circuits didn't waste. No self respecting magus would let their Od leak out as they went about their daily business, so unless Rin used a spell, any spell, while he was within around three miles of him, Shirou wouldn't be able to lock onto her. It was the reason they could go to the same school for years without even realizing that the other was a magus.
With the option of reading her prana out the window, Shirou checked the girl's chakra. He was immediately made even more sure than before when he got a lock on the scent.
It was 'average'.
Usually, when he was sensing chakras, he was getting a feel for what type of chakra they had affinity with. Different chakra's holding different scents based on their affinity. So for something to have an 'average' smell meant that it held not just one or two, but all five affinities.
It was not something he had seen in any ninja before. And with how similar chakra affinities were to the elemental affinities in magic, it became another reason to believe that this girl was indeed Rin.
Among all the magus Shirou had ever met, only one had ever had all five elemental affinities, and that was Rin. Such people were often called 'Average Ones', and were always sought after by other magus.
The three individuals climbed into the coach and were horses were pressed forward, taking them up the road and towards the Hyūga complex. The Clan's complex was a large section of land within the borders of the Village. It was far enough away from the main village, that even if Rin had used her magecraft there, he wouldn't have been able to detect it. It had been so long without him detecting her magecraft, that he had assumed she had been born in a different village. He felt like an idiot for not looking more.
The reborn swordsman started running in the direction the coach was going in, following the scent of chakra. It was about time for their four year separation to come to an end.
Man, Rin was going to be pissed that he took so long.
Danzou was quickly giving out orders to his ANBU units to try to stop the spread of rumors, though he worried that it would be a lost cause. It had taken less than an hour for news of the return of the White Fang's Sword to its former glory.
The old ninja didn't waste time questioning how this had happened or where the child had come by the knowledge of how to do it. The only question was what he needed to do.
A blacksmith that was able to create swords on that level was invaluable to the village. He could easily remember when the Kiri village was at its height. The seven swordsmen of the mist, most of them were hardly special as far as ninja went, but their blades pressed them into a whole nother level. In the hands of a skilled master, a sword like those could raise an individual who only had as much chakra as your average Chunin and let them hold their own against even a high ranking Jounin.
If one took the seven legendary swords Kirigakure possessed out of the equation, they would drop from being perhaps the most powerful village to being a joke.
If word got out to the other nations that a genius blacksmith had been born, one who could forge swords of legends at the age of four years old, then assassins would flock to him in order to try to kill the boy before he could reach his full potential and produce his masterpiece, a weapon that would no doubt cement their village's position as the greatest village for years to come.
It had came as a pleasant surprise to Danzou to find that the Hokage had already taken steps to insure the boy's safety and give the child the chance to practice his art. Sarutobi Hiruzen had not only declared himself to be the boy's guardian, letting him continue to live at his forge, but had also convince the child to turn his home into a hotel for off duty ninja. There was not a single day where at least one high ranking ninja wasn't watching over the boy, and since it wasn't counted as a mission, there was not the usual attention drawn by such a heavy guard detail.
Perhaps the Third Hokage was a better leader than Danzou gave him credit for, if he had already noticed the boy's importance to the village.
However, the boy's talents were being wasted. Before reforging the White Light Chakra Sword, he had been only using his skills to mass produce kunai and throwing stars, only doing the odd repair on more advanced weapons from time to time.
Perhaps this was all part of a cover while he performed his more advanced training in secret. But he was still a wasted resource if the village didn't use him properly.
While the boy might not have been ninja material like Uchiha Itachi, the influence his swords might bring could last over generations. Making him arguably more valuable than even the Uchiha genius.
Danzou was already devising a way to make commissions from the boy in order to encourage the advancement of his skills. The old man would have to make this his top project.
Since the chapter introducing Rin will have to explain quite a bit of what she has been up too and her view of the world, I'm holding off on that until the next chapter for length reasons. So I decided to add something from Danzou at the end here instead of starting it up.
You might disagree with my choice, but I don't feel like making a precedence of having 10K long chapters. Best if people don't expect much out of me.
Sooner or later, Shirou is going to have to start hunting Mist Swordsmen in order to get their weapons.