Chapter 18: Making Connections

Axel had no idea how well this plan would go, but he was hopeful. Maybe he shouldn't be, but he was nonetheless.

Heading for the door, he again checked that he had his keys, notebook, pencil, and—most importantly—the bundled up sword. After all, he was seeking advice on smithing: it seemed logical to have an example on hand to help steer his questions.

He opened the door.

And the first thing he heard, as soon as he did, was, "Sorry for breaking in before."

Axel blinked at Akaiko, then down at the bundle of flowers she was presenting to him.

The bouquet may have once been artfully arranged, but her nervous fiddling had destroyed most of the careful positioning. Other than some decorative sprigs of green, most of the flowers were of the same type: a stem topped with a dense collection of blue or purple blooms. Akaiko shifted from one foot to the other, and they both stared down at the flowers in her hands.

He was just trying to process what was happening here.

"…The flowers were Inochi's idea," she said, sounding somewhat embarrassed. "Her family runs a flower shop, actually."

"Oh."

Given he had no idea who that was, hadn't been expecting to run into anyone—especially not before he had even made it through his own front door—and had never been gifted flowers before, Axel was just generally not sure what to do in this situation. His bafflement didn't help him much when it came to figuring out how to respond.

Misattributing his silence as an accusation when it was just plain confusion, Akaiko hastily reassured, "Not that I wouldn't have apologized if she hadn't said anything."

"That's fine." Axel waved dismissively, having long since become used to the ninja tendency to make an entrance and ask permission later. "I've noticed trends."

Because while it's true that she had broken in, it is equally true that Minato preferred coming in through the window in the guest room on the second floor. A window that Axel typically kept locked, meaning his friend must be doing some breaking in of his own.

He had just come to accept that, in a world of ninja, any door might as well be an open invitation to come right on in. Even if that door is locked. Or a window. After all, whenever opportunity closes a door, there's no reason to bother searching for an open window if the lock is easily picked.

Maybe he should be worried about how easily he just accepted that way of thinking.

Of course, there was a major difference between these two cases: that being that Minato, unlike her, has a standing invitation to come over whenever he pleases. Not that he hadn't enjoyed her visit—because he had, she was fun to talk with—but just that, well…

Whatever.

Taking the bouquet, Axel waved her into the house and went to the kitchen to get something to hold the flowers. From his pillow under the dining table, Dach gave his human a puzzled look at the speedy return; then he spotted the flowers, the woman lingering by the door, connected the dots, and curled himself back up into a comfy ball.

Akaiko herself didn't come in too far, just hanging around the entryway while he, lacking an actual vase, opted to just fill a mixing bowl with water and plop the bouquet in that.

As the sink was running, he couldn't help but ask, "So… How long were you standing out front of my door?"

She shifted, crossed her arms defensively, but didn't look away. "Not too long."

Which, based on her attitude, he took to mean anywhere from five to twenty-five minutes. Maybe even longer. But this, too, he shrugged off.

"Alright." Since he spent most of his time either in the forge or at the front desk—and flowers don't mix well with fire—he set the bouquet bowl by the register. At Akaiko's curious look, he just explained, "No flower glasses."

"I think you mean 'vase'," she corrected.

As he checked that none of the flowers were at risk of flopping themselves out of the water, he made a mental note of the word and added it to his vocabulary. Despite his improvements with the language, there were still plenty of specific words he simply didn't know yet. A stack of flashcards sitting on his desk helped, but he couldn't add to it without tripping over unfamiliar phrases first.

"Thanks."

Almost hesitantly—which was a little hilarious, given her first entrance was a confident break in—she joined him by the register. She plucked each flower out one by one, trimmed the end of a the stem at an angle with a kunai, and replaced it in the bowl. Now that he thought about it, Axel could remember his mom doing something similar with the bouquets his dad would buy on special occasions: though not with a mixing bowl, of course.

"Inochi gave me a whole rundown on flower care," she said, cutting another stem. "Wouldn't even let me take them before she did. We were genin teammates so she's known me forever, but it's like she doubts my ability to to do anything more than breathing sometimes."

Which, to be honest, reminded him of some of his own friends—they would trust him around near-molten metal to make knives, but would downright refuse to let him use said knives to prepare food or anything. It wasn't as though he was a bad cook, just that they worried for no particular reason.

"She's never told you how to breath?" he asked, teasingly.

"Not recently," Akaiko quipped back with a smile.

They chatted for a while, working their way through the bouquet more and more slowly as they traded jokes and stories: heavily censored on both sides, for completely different reasons.

Somehow the conversation had turned to swimming lessons, and Axel was relating a story from one of his family trips to the beaches of Denmark—naming no names, of course—when he felt a pawing at the hem of his pants. Dach, one paw on his foot, gave him a distinctly chastising look before turning deliberately toward the door.

"Do you want out?"

The dachshund rolled his eyes, sat, and gave him another pointed look: a clear 'no, you' said without words.

Axel blinked, and, adjusting the wrapped sword hung over his shoulder, remembered that he had more plans for today than just hanging out with a friend. "Oh, right. I was going to ask for help."

Seeing his human was once more on track, Dach gave him a satisfied nod and trotted back to his bed.

"Ask who for help? With what? Can I help?" Akaiko leaned in, openly curious. A curiosity that didn't make much sense to the poor misplaced German, given he had no way of knowing that she had basically been assigned to learn his schedule.

Though in this case her interest was less to do with business, and more a consequence of her being a naturally curious person. She had certainly not gone into this apology planning on spying; her only intent had been to chuck the flowers at him and maybe hang out. Snooping is just an obvious consequence of being an intelligence agent with some free time on her hands.

So she followed him out the door and down the street as he explained his plan to try and find a blacksmith who would let him pelt them with questions about sword smithing. He didn't think this plan was anywhere close to exciting, but she waved him off.

"It's my day off, and my only other plans were to waste it away chucking kunai at a log." She sketched a throwing motion through the air, then shrugged. "Spending time with you is a definite improvement, trust me on that."

=X=X=X=

The door shut with a very definitive click, and Axel sighed; that would be the third blacksmith unwilling to hear him out. All he wanted was a little help, but it would seem that he had underestimated how jealously they would hoard their skills. Just one of those differences that he hadn't thought to consider.

In hindsight, it was kind of obvious. After all, ninja are sneaky, secretive, and always keep a few tricks up their sleeves. It just stands to reason that even the civilians would pick up on that mentality.

In the real world—or his old world, he didn't quite know how to refer to it—there was no shortage of helpful resources. Either he would know somebody, or he would know somebody who knew somebody, and Axel could just ask them if he ever got stuck on something. And if there wasn't anyone who could help locally, the internet was always an option: literally a massive community perpetually sharing information and ideas. Even if a lot of those ideas were just cat pictures and memes.

The point is, the ninja world liked its secrets. He couldn't say if it was the ninja that caused the secrecy, or vice versa. Either way, he hadn't quite seen it coming.

Axel turned away, and began walking to his forth attempt.

"No luck?" Akaiko asked, pushing off of the wall she had been leaning against to fall into step beside him.

"No," he sighed.

She kicked a pebble and it bounced off down the street with a clatter, not hitting any of the other pedestrians in the area—and, given her ninja status, maybe that was on purpose. The look on her face was somewhere between unsurprised yet, somehow, still annoyed.

They caught up to her pebble and she kicked it again. "Well, that sucks. Seems the civilians have picked up a thing or two from living with shinobi."

Which echoed just what he had been thinking so closely that it was almost spooky.

It was kind of weird visiting these blacksmiths without Morimoto, since he had always been the one doing the talking. Having Akaiko there was more reassuring than he had expected; it wasn't quite the same as visiting with a mutual friend, but all the smiths could recognize that she was a ninja and therefore a potential customer. Axel had the distinct impression that their refusals would have been much harsher if she hadn't been present.

They turned a corner, and he spotted the bright green door of his next and final target. It was the first place he had visited in the village, having been dragged out of the house by Morimoto and taken along to meet one of the man's oldest business partners. He had chickened out that first time, but there had been no shortage of opportunities later on; Morimoto had been plenty determined to set him up with contacts.

So Axel had come here a few other times, more often than any of the other smithies, though he had never completed any of the transactions himself. Mostly he had stood and watched, trying to follow along as the two more experienced blacksmiths talked shop. The owner—an old man named Pei—had always seemed willing enough to share ideas with Morimoto. Hopefully he'd hear him out, at least.

The sign hanging on the green door said the store was closed, but he could still hear the sounds of people hard at work inside. Axel knocked, and, after a moment, the door swung open to reveal a short old man whose beard had more than just a few white hairs.

"Can't ya read the—" Pei paused, mid-sentence, and his eye narrowed in recognition. "Hey, you're that weird fella who followed Hiroshi around, ain't ya?"

Akaiko scowled a bit at that. "Who are you calling weird, you—"

"Easy there, Spitfire," The old man held up his hands in mock surrender. "Nothin' wrong with being a little weird." Then he eyed Axel, considering. "So. What're you here for?"

"I want advice," he said.

The old man looked surprised, brow furrowed slightly, but it wasn't quite out-right refusal. Axel thought that was probably a promising sign.

With a tone that was squarely between cautious and reluctant, Pei asked, "What sorta advice?"

And that was more promising than all three previous blacksmiths put together!

Axel grabbed the bundled up cloth from his back, unwrapping one end to reveal the hilt of a tanto; he had made this one purely for practice—the result of said practice, which Morimoto had deemed decent, now hanging in his shop.

"I'm… more familiar with a different type," he said, thinking of the metalwork he had done for his university friends. Their club had been part of a whole organization focused on recreating skills from medieval Europe, so it only made sense that he'd have more experience making western weapons.

Some techniques translated. Others… didn't.

Pei frowned, hands held behind his back as he considered what he could see of the sword. He hummed contemplatively, leaning in for a closer look. "I can tell."

Choosing to take that statement as plain fact, free of any snide-ness the old blacksmith may or may not have actually intended, Axel pressed, "Can you help? We can trade."

"Trade, huh." He rocked back on is heels slightly, a thoughtful expression on his face. "Goods or information?"

That was unexpected. In fact, he had begun to think he might not even get this far and had subsequently forgot whatever it was he had been planning to say next. However, to be honest, that wasn't what caught Axel most off-guard. That would be the fact that: "You'd actually want something I made?"

Eyeing the blond for a minute, bemused, Pei asked, "Yaknow, for a while I thought it was Hiroshi makin' those new knives."

Not quite picking up what the old man was trying to put down, Axel shifted in place. "What?"

"Thought he'd come up with some new trick in the process." He seemed to be partially talking to himself now, musing out loud. "I actually asked him about it, straight out, but—"

The odd emphasis stood out, but the reasons for it—why being direct would be worthy of note—were not quite clicking in Axel's mind at the moment. Before he really thought his way through what he was saying, he was already mid-sentence.

"Of course you asked, isn't that just common… sense…" Then Axel drifted off, question dangling, and immediately wished he could smack himself. Common sense here was very uncommon—or, at the very least, defined differently.

The old blacksmith stared at him for a minute, expression unreadable, then burst into laughter.

"Ain't it just?" he asked, tone still jovial. "There I was, thinkin' he was just playing sneak when he pointed over 'atcha for his answer." He shook his head, and his tone switched back to something more serious. "But it was you, wasn't it. You're the one what made those kunai."

This wasn't so much a question as a statement of fact, with the curious trimming on his tone that suggested it was something he had only just realized.

Axel nodded, wondering if that would be a problem; it was surreal, and maybe a little worrisome, to realize that more people than just his friends had noticed the curiousness of his metalwork. Especially since there wasn't some trick to it, it was just the plain fact that he didn't have chakra. He couldn't very well spread that particular tidbit around.

"Alright then, one smith to another… I'll level with you," Pei said, arms crossed. "This sword would probably shatter in its first conflict. There's some promise, 'specially in the fittings, but the rest is gonna need real work."

That tone sounded almost as if— "So… you'll help?"

The old man clapped a hand to Axel's shoulder, which was a little awkward given the not-insignificant height difference between them. "Hiroshi really liked ya, Blondie. What kinda friend would I be if I didn't help?"

"Didn't stop the rest of them," Akaiko grumbled.

Which, again, was very in-line with what Axel was thinking.

Pei just laughed. "Well, ya get to my age and you don't have time ta second guess yourself. Now get in here," he waved them inside, heading toward his forge, "Let's see if we can't cram some more stuff in that head o' yours."

Author's Note:

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Business, as they say, is all about knowing the right people.

The flowers are purple and blue hyacinths, which basically means "sorry, please forgive me" in the language of flowers. They also look really cool looking, since it's basically a cylinder of solid flower. I searched google for a reference pic of a hyacinth flower bouquet, and it looks pretty cool.
(Though you really need the "flower" in "hyacinth flower bouquet" or you get photos of some lady. Weird.)

On a non-fanfic related tangent, school is well under way—I even have a midterm on Monday. Here's hoping that goes well, and I hope your school (or work) experience is going well too.

Here a quick question: what sorts of things from reality do you think Axel should bring into play in this world of anime ninja logic? I have some ideas—not limited to science and math—but what do you think?

Updates on the 15th of every month.
Thanks for all of the reviews! And thanks again for all the follows and favorites.

Jutten: I like the idea that Axel doesn't need to be a crazy-good fighter to make a difference. All he needs to do is be himself, and the ripples spread out from there.

Heart: I'm glad that you liked Rin and the rest, sometimes from my perspective it's hard to tell if I'm really getting the personalities right.

Blackbird0: I'm definitely planning on more fuinjutsu advancements, perhaps bringing in the idea of mathematical formulas or such as a new tighter way to represent a jutsu. Kind of like how a string of variables can represent a shape in 3D (or even higher dimensional) space. And Gai will definitely come back later, he always does. Usually with a suitably Dramatic Entrance!

See ya on the flipside, everyone!