Chapter 1.2

The small mirror in my room captured my likeness. I stared at it disbelievingly.

I hadn't ever seen this body's oldreflection, but I was pretty sure it was miles away from this. In the simplest of ways, I'd aged. I couldn't put an exact figure on it, because, well.

I wasn't sure how to describe it appropriately, but mine was clearly not a human face anymore.

It was a smidge too symmetrical, just a notch too free of imperfections, a touch ageless. My skin emanated a soft, nearly imperceptible light in the shade of the room and my lips seemed to be permanently set into a peaceful smile. I'd grown my hair out once or twice in my past life, but this put that to shame – long sheets of pale yellow, the colour of the first ray of dawn, parted in the middle, flowing past my shoulders till they curled against my back.

If someone drew a more human comparison, I would've guessed I was in my early twenties. I was taller, a touch too lean. Some of the muscle I'd seen earlier seemed more condensed, more drawn into itself. I looked fey-like, which, given I was a Maiar, if a baby version of them in the grander scheme of things, made sense.

It hadn't purely been aesthetic changes. I was more – stronger, faster, more agile. My senses were sharper – my eyes, keen when I'd come to this plane, could pierce the dark like nothing I had known before. My ears had become attuned to hearing the slightest rustling from far away. I knew, on some level, that these could be weaknesses too.

But I was Maiar.

If the Ainur had helped in fashioning Creation itself, what did that say of their position relative to the most fundamental concepts? Did they not stand beyond time and space itself? I knew I was but a fraction of a fraction of as powerful as what I had been, once, but that only meant that I knew the heights I could ascend to. Part of me was determined to go past even them, to soar beyond the loftiest station my Maia self had ever thought of reaching.

I remembered things I knew were not part of my past life's memories, nor this one's. I remembered the Music of the Ainur, that which had given shape to creation as a whole. I remembered Manwë Súlimo, Lord of the Skies, whose kindness had belied the sheer authority he had been garbed in. I remembered Ulmo and his steadfast defence of Man and Elf in the face of his brothers and sisters. I remembered Varda, beautiful beyond compare, radiant even in the darkness that ensued after Ungoliant consumed the Trees of Valinor. I remembered Melkor, he who had one day become Morgoth, I remembered his rage, the Discord he had sung into existence.

I remembered Eru Ilúvatar. Remembered my Father's Song. Remembered His sorrow at the actions of Melkor. Remembered His wrath as He sundered Numenor from existence, as He reshaped Arda itself, bringing from a flat world a rounded sphere. I remembered, and some part of me wept at our separation, wept till the part of me that was Maia withdrew and let the composite of my selves reassert control once more.

It was almost too easy to lose myself in what felt like an eternity of memories. Forcibly, I willed those down, focusing on what was in front of me. I was Suleiman, I was Suleiman, even as a great part of me whispered that I was once someone else. I did not know if I would ever remember what my name had been then, but I knew that I would find it in due time.

Speaking of which, I didn't have time to waste. I didn't know where I was beyond that I was likely somewhere in the Land of Wind. I didn't know when I was. Talk of villages meant that I came after Hashirama and Madara's time, but did I arrive here before the Third Great War? Before the Fourth? During? Was Naruto born yet? I knew those were important questions, but I did not know the answers to them.

I pulled at Ganon's Trident, summoning it into the world once more. Taking a deep breath, I began moulding it into the shape I knew would serve me best. Metal flowed and twisted until it resembled a menacing looking mace, long at the haft to give me reach, thick enough that it would not shatter if too much force was applied to it, its head broad and unadorned. A single opening laid on the very peak of its head, as if it were missing something. I frowned. The weapon seemed… incomplete. It warranted further investigation, but as far as I was concerned, I had more important things to do than to press every lead. The mace's haft came with a leather strap, with which I hung it on my belt.

The next hour was spent asking around Taar-Hadad for directions and ignoring the gawking stares of strangers. I could feel Jun's presence some metres away, and so I made a beeline towards him. Where before I barely came to his chest, my collarbone now rested above the top of his head.

"Jun," I greeted.

"Suleiman?" He asked. I couldn't quite place the look in his eyes – it was an odd mixture of fear, awe, and hope.

Frowning slightly, I tilted my head in affirmation.

"You're a ninja," he ventured carefully.

"Not quite, but close enough," I said. My voice came out smoothly, almost musical in its nature. The Maiar were something, huh. "I'm sorry for the subterfuge, I didn't want to come into the town looking like this."

He nodded slowly, glancing up and down, disquiet clear in his eyes. "I can see why. How can I help you?"

"I'm looking for a map. Preferably some directions to," I paused – I wasn't one hundred percent on whether this was Narutoverse, but I thought it was a safe bet – "the Land of Fire, if possible."

Jun's went still ever so slightly. "The Land of Fire's a long way from here," he said almost casually. "I'm not sure if a map would be enough to get you there. Why not visit Suna, go to your destination with a caravan? You might need a guide, after all."

Suna. I wasn't sure if I'd entirely processed the fact that I'd just gotten hard proof that I was a Maiar in Naruto – and wasn't that an odd sentence. There was something ever so slightly off about the way he said that. It wasn't malice, I thought. Momentarily, I cursed the fact that most of my Maia self's memories were of being cloistered away in the Timeless Halls, where Eru dwelt. Had the Maia had more interaction with the race of Men, I would have had a better time reading Jun's emotions.

I raised my eyebrow, locking eyes with him. I let his statement linger in there, content to let his nerves build up.

"Why don't you tell me what's really going on," I said when it became clear Jun wasn't going to offer anything more. It was obvious he was leading up to offering coming with me, but the question was why. Was the journey to Fire truly so dangerous?

Jun shot me a look and motioned for me to follow. When we eventually reached a nearly side road branching off into the town's exit – which, in fairness, was admittedly more discrete than where we'd been standing before – out came a story as sorrowful as it was opportune. Before I'd quite known what I was doing, we'd packed whatever meagre belongings we had and set off to the east.

-o-o-o-

"You didn't really strike me as the vengeful kind," I told Jun as we summited yet another massive sand dune. Compared to yesterday, where I had tripped nearly every ten steps, my feet were steady and sure. The sun, just as oppressive now as it had been yesterday, hardly bothered me now.

"You know my reasons,"

I nodded once, then fell quiet. If there was even a shred of truth in what he had told me, I genuinely could not fault him. Two weeks ago, Jun's younger sister had been taken captive by a roving band of raiders, and any attempts to contact Suna or plead for the Daimyo's Samurai to intervene had fallen on deaf ears. Though the show had merely glossed over the issue despite the serious ramifications it had on the timeline as a whole, from what I'd been able to learn from Jun, Suna's decline after the Third Great War wasn't born in isolation, nor was it limited to the walls of the ninja village.

All villages had emerged weaker from the Third Great War – thousands of shinobi had been killed, entire bloodlines were lost to conflict, and far too many civilians had become mere collateral damage. Law and order had suffered massively as the Wind Daimyo's ability to enforce his laws fell with the ability of the village to take less-paying, but no less important missions that the Wind Daimyo's samurai simply couldn't take on themselves. Even then, would a group of bandits truly have been that difficult to sweep up? "Not all samurai hold to honour," Jun had quietly replied when I'd asked him the question earlier, refusing to speak more on the issue.

And speaking of, it made no sense to me that the Wind Daimyo would outsource missions to Konoha.

One, the Hidden Villages and their respective Daimyo shared a complicated relationship. Whereas it seemed generally true that the Daimyo was the patron to many ventures the Hidden Villages couldn't undertake on their own finances, and that shinobi were fundamentally game changers when it came to their sheer versatility and combat applications, a massive chunk of village funds were still earned by taking on what I was now calling 'private sector' missions. Were there other factors that had depressed Suna's internal economy? If so, what were they?

Two, if fallout with the Daimyo could strip a Village of so much of its economic prosperity, ninja would have long fallen in line with where the money flowed. Both metaknowledge and what I could intuitively sense to be true told me that wasn't the case.

Three, if it wasn't the Daimyo's lack of support for Suna that heralded its fall, then what was?

Four, what did it mean for the Wind Daimyo to come to Konoha, which was not only under the political and financial patronage of a rival Daimyo, but also the source of said Daimyo's strength if war came to his shores. Would the Wind Daimyo be willing to take that risk, to become dependent on a force whose withdrawal of support would result in a massive undercutting of his ability to project force?

Five, would the Fire Daimyo not have been worried about potential conflicting interests arising from Konoha's acceptance of missions from the Wind Daimyo? Was the Fire Daimyo's ease contingent on the knowledge that his money constituted more of the Village's funds? Even if that were the case, would he have tolerated what looked like a poaching attempt?

These thoughts occupied my mind for the three days we journeyed to the bandit camp. I knew instinctually that I could move several times as fast as Jun, who himself was no slouch, just as I knew I would not tire overly much from doing so. I was Maiar, but my companion was not. Jun was human, with limitations I no longer had.

It was evening when the bandit camp came into sight. Jun and I took a looping path around it, scouting it as best we could. We kept out of sight under the cover of the night, laying flat to the sand dunes where we could. Bandit camp, perhaps, was a misnomer for what resembled an orderly, almost militaristic, base, surrounded by a ring of stone walls slightly taller than me. There were two openings to the base, each guarded by a pair of bored-looking men.

For a while, I observed them. They didn't wear standard clothing, and only one had any real armour on, but all four had a green patch of some kind emblazoned on their left shoulder. Even with my prodigious eyesight, I could only vaguely see some kind of symbol stitched into the patch.

I asked Jun about it, and received a noncommittal hum in reply.

"Not sure," he whispered, "Probably just them trying to create a fancy insignia for themselves."

Again, I could tell that he was hiding something. I had witnessed Eru bring Truth into the world, just as I had witnessed Melkor warp it with Deceit. Though that didn't mean I was suddenly a lie-detector, I could still tell when someone was hiding something. To my Maiar senses, it was as if Jun had pulled a garb of deceit around himself, letting its ripped edges pool around his feet.

I nodded slowly, turning back to studying the base. We had the advantage of being perched on a relatively tall dune, and though I couldn't see everything, I could see enough to map out the rough layout of the base. I drew it into the sand beside me, describing it as I traced it to Jun. "There's two gates that control entry and exit. One of them is noticeably tougher to get into, see the one on the other side?. There's a couple of the bastards lurking right behind it. There's someone else somewhere over there, but for some reason I can't quite place him."

"Then we take that one,"

I hummed. "I wouldn't be too sure about that. Say, from what little experience you have with them, did all of them strike you as completely and utterly idiotic?"

"No, not really. Violent, yes, simple, maybe, but not stupid."

"The other gate is a substantially softer target. Only two guards, both of them standing outside, and a whole line of tents that have their back to the gate's opening. I could slip in there and no one would be able to see me just by virtue of that fact, so long as I take care of the guards. It doesn't make sense for them to leave one side of their base so open and the other so guarded. Why would you create what, by all accounts seems to be a pretty orderly camp, and leave one entry so poorly guarded, while the other's been all buffed up?"

A small noise of realisation came after Jun gave it a moment of thought. "You think its bait. They're trying to funnel any would-be attackers there, but why?"

"Well," I said slowly, "It could be they have a ninja on standby there."

Jun stilled.

I smiled lightly, shook my head, and withdrew the mace that had once been Ganon's Trident in an instant, placing its cruel, spiked head at Jun's throat. "Any reason you forgot to mention that, friend?" I hissed, applying just the slightest bit of pressure to the haft. Not enough to pierce, or even bruise, but enough for the cool black metal to be felt clearly.

"I didn't think- they had one with them then but I thought he -"

"That he wasn't with them. That he was hired muscle. Don't blabber further. Let me think."

I gave him a moment to recollect himself. For a second, I considered the possibility of Jun taking me there so he could exchange me for his sister. I discarded that idea immediately – this wasn't the reaction of someone looking to lure me into a trap. His was an earnest confession. He truly hadn't thought the ninja would still be there. But this still didn't do anything about the fact that I had just been about to walk into a base that had a fucking ninja in it, whose strength I had no estimation for. I didn't even know how much damage I could take. Hell, the Grimoire refused to respond to my commands. It almost felt locked, as if it couldn't be accessed until something happened first.

My ignorance, and Jun's deceit, could have potentially been a death sentence for me.

"I need you to describe him to me," I commanded, my voice even.

Jun began immediately. He spoke of a man of middling height, no outstanding features or clothing that he had noted, save that he had worn a headband. When I asked him to describe it, I almost cursed. Two almost square like shapes, the smaller attached to the bigger diagonally. Worse, the symbol had been slashed into deeply. There was a missing-nin from Iwagakure standing somewhere in that base. No matter how hard I tried, I could only vaguely sense his position. He was close to the lure, but beyond that, I couldn't say.

At the very least, that spoke to the ninja's ability to somewhat mask his presence, even if he hadn't done a great job of it.

"Okay, that's an Iwa-nin. A missing nin, known for their cruelty and avarice, from perhaps the harshest Hidden Village on the continent," I said, massaging my chin. "He's probably an Earth-user, which explains the stone walls around the base."

Was it truly worth the risk?

I took a glance at Jun's face. Saw the flurry of emotions pass through his eyes. Sensed the budding hope in his soul flicker like a candle before the wind. Something within me curled, cried out against holding myself inactive in the face of abject injustice. Oh damn it, I was going in, wasn't I?

"Fuck it," I said, "We're going in anyway, but if we're going in, here's how."

Jun hung onto every word that I said as I planned our entry into the base.

-o-o-o-

There was a brief moment before I attacked that I knew, on some level, that this was a bad idea. A greater part of me knew it was the right thing to do. Crouching some distance away from the trap-gate, I brought my mace up towards it, breathing slowly, deeply.

And then, I focused.

My mace grew hot in my hand as I channelled power into it. For this plan to have any chance of working, I needed to create as much havoc on this side of the base as possible. Jun would have to hope against hope that the guards on the other side freed themselves from guarding against nothing and joined the eventual battle happening elsewhere. I could feelmore and more of my energy coil in the mace, strengthening it, imbuing it with something dangerous. In an instant, I let it loose.

A bright beam of light and flame, twisting and writhing into itself slammed against the ground near the two guards. Sand and stone was thrown in all directions, the flames that were guided by my will latching onto the unfortunate souls in its reach. There was a great load of shouting as the bandits realised that they were under attack.

Even from a distance, I could see shapes rushing through the base towards the gate, clearly ready to reinforce it. I ignored them, focusing instead on the flames licking their way up the walls. My mace had been a good delivery system for the fledgling Ainur energies I could feel coiling within me, but it wasn't meant to do much more than get my fire from point A to point B. I raised my hand and pulled, willing the flames to gather more densely, grow ever hungrier.

The flames formed a face for an instant, dark and angry and so very interested in what it saw. It existed for a moment, replaced in the next by a serpent of unnatural length, its great maw rushing towards a shocked-still bandit.

Between one second and the next, a mud wall rose from the ground, racing to interpose itself between the rest of the base and the fiery construct, deflecting the serpent's strike before the mud fell to the ground. The presence that had remained ever so clouded so far now flared brightly in my mind's eye, the ninja's manipulation of chakra breaking whatever paltry masking skill he had.

Gotcha!

I sharpened my will and called out to the fire once more. The serpent coiled into itself, losing its shape as it rose into the air and took the form of a rapidly spinning sphere of flame.

"GET DOWN!" I heard someone – the ninja, I thought, for who else could it be – roar over the din of chaos.

I clenched my fist.

The sphere exploded, lashing out at everything and everyone in its blast radius, razing tents and men to naught more than ash and dust even as trails of orange flame burnt gouges into the stone dome surrounding the ninja. I'd made sure to angle it away from where I was pretty sure the hostages were being kept, right in the middle of the base, so I was almost certain it wouldn't harm anyone I didn't want it to. Now, I willed it to focus solely on the dome, drawing away from everything else.

I felt a bit winded from the effort, but still, I had work to do.

In one great leap, I launched myself through the air, calling out to the flames to rejoin my mace. There was little energy in the fire left expend, and I doubted I'd be able to summon up more anytime soon, so this would have to do. I forced the flames to condense at the crown of my mace, coiling and writhing till there was a small, white-hot sphere the size of a marble resting on top of it.

What energy was once loosely arranged had been densely packed into one strike, meant only to break the enemy's defences, to throw him on his back. No longer did I want it to burn, I wanted it to explode. Just before I hit the ground in front of the stone dome that had protected the ninja from my onslaught so far, I roared something strange, an ancient war-cry I did not remember ever learning, releasing all the remaining energy through my mace and into the strike.

Black metal and white fire struck stone, and stone evaporated. There was a lot of sound, a lot of light, and the scent of burning flesh. My eyes adjusted to the darkness that succeeded the explosion, widening as I caught sight of the enemy. Flesh hung loosely off his shoulders, and the arm that had held the stone dome up was incinerated to the elbow, a shock of white bone exposed utterly. My eyes trailed up to his face, taking in the still face, the square jaw.

Something about it seemed… off. I focused. Perhaps if the enemy hadn't been on his last legs, I would never have been able to so quickly dispel what I assumed was the Henge. But here and now? It was almost effortless. Maiar eyes pierced the illusion the next instant, unravelling them.

My eyes widened. This- this was the missing nin?

A boy that couldn't have been older than thirteen stared up at me defiantly, the overwhelming pain of having one's arm flash-evaporated evident in every minute shudder and tremble. I held the mace loosely, hesitant to strike now that I knew he was a child.

"Don't," he rasped. "Don't give me that look. I don't need your pity. I'm-" The boy, for he was a boy, weakly spat out a loose wad of blood and phlegm and saliva, "I am Stone."

Behind him, the bandits that had thus far been content to hide behind the only one of their number who could use chakra regrouped. They may have been unwilling to meet me in combat when I had a serpent of fire eating their comrades alive, but I doubted I looked nearly as imposing as they expected.

I shoved the boy out of a stampeding charge that would've seen him thrown into the air like a ragdoll, dodging the overhanded strike of a truly massive man. The massive blade he wielded looked less like a sword and more like an oversized butcher's blade, but-

I twirled out of the way of an arrow strike, pointing my mace at the offending bandit and let a weaker, smaller beam of flame rush towards her. A fireball impacted her in the next second, searing away at her flesh even as it threw her into the air. I jumped into the air till my knee was at height with the truly huge bandit's face, slamming my mace as hard as I could into his face before rolling out of the way. The bulky metal head struck bone and flesh with a sickening thunk, nearly tearing the head off his shoulders.

I stared numbly at the blood and gore staining the metal. This was- I had clearly underestimated how strong even a fledgling Maiar was, especially in comparison to a man who couldn't even mould chakra to protect himself.

Standing behind the ninja – the child, I corrected myself – I placed one hand firmly on his shoulders to restrain him. With the other, I let my mace dissipate, raising my newly freed hand into the air, using what was perhaps the last bit of energy I had left in me to summon a whip of liquid fire. Its flames did not burn me, could not harm me, but that wasn't the case for those who still stood before me.

Only a dozen stragglers were left in the base. Some had died in the initial attack, others had left, some had just been dispatched by me. I stared at them once, fingers curling around the whip, and lashed out with a mighty swing.

The whip tore through the air, sizzling against the chilly air of the desert night till it drew a deep gouge across the ground. I struck again, and again, drawing gouge after gouge until sand and stone alike bubbled and oozed brown sludge.

"Who among you will stand against me?" I asked lowly, voice rumbling through the air. The vibrations of my voice sent sand whistling away, as if a dozen zephyrs had sent them hurtling through the air all of a sudden. "Who among you wishes to court death?"

Predictably, they dropped their weapons, doing their level best not to look me directly in my eyes.

In the distance, I saw Jun, surrounded by at-least two dozen angry men and women – and a handful of children, I distantly noted – coming towards me. Most of them carried some kind of restraining material. I nodded at him in thanks, my eyes trailing towards the girl who had pressed herself into his side. That could only be his sister, I supposed.

"Pick their weapons up, then restrain them all," I ordered the more physically able hostages, trusting Jun to have enough of a head on him to execute the last phase of the plan. I turned towards the boy, frowning at the amount of blood he'd lost from his arm.

In the brief lull I'd had to consider his situation, I was forced to concede that whether he was a child or not, he had fully committed himself to living, working with, and aiding common criminal scum in not only the regular looting of others as a means to live, but the kidnapping of dozens of men, women, and children. He may have been a child, but he wasn't innocent, not by far.

The boy glared up at me. Some part of me was almost impressed with both the way he hid his pain and the steadfastness with which he'd held onto consciousness. My past self would have been reduced to a crying wreck ages ago.

I looked at him in the eyes for a moment, searching for something. Something within me that I didn't quite understand reached out to his mind, prodding, poking, assessing. I wasn't sure what it was that I was looking for, nor why or how, only that I found no trace of it there. Only that its absence meant there was little of innocence to be saved.

The whip of fire wrapped around my hand, transforming into a glove even as its light began to die as the excess exertion overwhelmed whatever control I had over the element.

"What's your name?" I asked softly. The boy hesitated for a moment, before something in his eyes gave ground at least.

"Dai," he responded at last, coughing up blood the moment later.

"Dai," I repeated, bringing my flame-covered hand near his chest till my fingers rested above scalded skin, above his heart. "Go forth secure in the knowledge that Námo is just, fair. Go forth, Dai."

Flame punctured flesh and bone, incinerating the beating organ in an instant. Something heavy settled in my heart, but I had not the strength to question what it was, nor why the killing of a child – no matter how vile his actions – seemed so easy. I would introspect later, when all hostages had been fed and clothed.

Now, how would I deal with the bandits?