Do you want to be someone who throws huge amounts of damage at your opponents? Do you want to be able to help your friends and associates to do better? Do you want to be a healer who can help your team and agents recover from wounds and ease their pain? Do you want to be an information-gatherer who can sit back and figure out the answers, so that those you send on missions have a better chance of surviving? Do you want to be a stealth specialist who can find problems and quietly remove them?
Naruto scowled. He wanted to be able to do all of that! Still he had a choice. He had to decide! But what?
He remembered dimly a lecture that Iruka Sensei had given him. Well, he had been half listening and busy playing a flicking game with Kiba.
"—our primary role as ninjas were originally as spies and thus we specialized in stealth and silent movement and infiltration. We were never supposed to be frontline fighters or soldiers. But as our abilities became more and more renowned; we began facing increased security measures, better protection, and even trained guardians. We learned to adapt; becoming shadow warriors and as our skills in these arts began to increase, we began to play a more prominent role in military operations particularly with sabotage and assassination which became an essential part of our tradecraft even more than intelligence gathering—"
He remembered how many times had he outrun his pursuers and hid with simple tricks and thought: Does it matter if you could throw kick-ass jutsus if you couldn't even find your opponent? And the best way to protect his friends would be if the enemy never got a chance to launch any attacks in the first place; then they wouldn't be wounded in the first place! And if you could spy on your enemies and find out what they were up to, then you didn't need to figure stuff out! Yes!
"I want to be the stealth specialist guy! I want to be able go anywhere without anybody stopping me! Nobody can see me unless I want them to! I want to be able to hide in plain sight! I want to be a Shadow Warrior! The Ultimate Ninja!" Naruto proclaimed.
The Ultimate Ninja huh? Hmmm. I think I can work with that.
* * *
Toltiir hummed to himself as he finished crafting the Intelligent Device called Hidden Hand. He had borrowed quite a bit of stuff from that Mid-Childan Universe that he felt was suitably ninja-y.
Frankly, he was rather surprised that the kid had chosen this option. He was not exactly the most subtle of individuals. Not to mention that most of the ninjas were into rather loud and flashy techniques and outré clothing to boot. Still … it would be interesting to see what happened when he did this.
He giggled as he rewound the timestream to find a suitable spot to emplace Hidden Hand for Naruto to stumble across it in the new timeline. Ah, that was a good spot.
* * *
107 Years Earlier...
Six year old Hashirama Senju was bored out of his skull as his grandfather hefted the pure black kusarigama carefully.
"—and this is my most prized possession. It was used by a ninja by the name of Tsuzuki of the Masaki Clan. They're all dead now. Most of them weren't that strong, but this weapon was something extraordinary. He killed over a dozen of your cousins and my own father lost his right arm to this weapon. It was more luck on my part that I threw a kunai that wounded him and weakened him enough that the rest of us were finally able to defeat him. Remember that Hashirama! Strength in numbers! The strength of many can overwhelm even the most powerful of opponents. I was given possession of his weapon; as a symbol of our victory was because of my actions."
"Uh huh," Hashirama recited automatically, having heard this story before. Several times. His grandfather managed to reduce an exciting battle against a strong opponent into a dry and boring and overly lengthy story with frequent side comments and rambling tangents about totally unrelated things that happened to pop into his head.
"Kabe!" one of his aunts called out. "Hikite wants to talk to you about the escort mission tomorrow!"
His grandfather grumbled about his idiot son-in-law even as he declared that lessons were over for the day and dismissed Hashirama to play (ie. physical training). As it so happened however, Kabe Senju was in such a rush to leave that he forgot to secure his prized kusarigama.
Hashirama had never used one of them before and quickly appropriated it for himself to "train" with.
It proved to be a lot trickier than it appeared. He had quickly gotten some scrapes and cuts from the sickle when he launched the weighted chain and it came flying back and popped him in the nose, breaking it.
Instinctively, Hashirama let go and the kusarigama went flying off and landed in the nearby river with a soft plop. He got a stern reprimand and several months of punishment for losing his grandfather’s prized kusarigama.
Although Hashirama never admitted it; he was secretly glad when his grandfather finally did pass away because he never missed the chance to harp on Hashirama losing the damn thing…
* * *
10 Years After the Kyuubi Attack…
“YOU FAIL!” the Chunin Sensei snarled at Naruto who slumped dejected. He trudged away, looking enviously at his classmates now newly minted Genin Ninjas, laughing and donning their headbands.
He quickly left the Academy, struggling not to cry and let everyone see him. Ninjas don’t cry! He told himself as he dashed away. And I will be a Ninja! Someday…
* * *
In the normal timeline, Toltiir foresaw Naruto spending a couple of hours sulking on top of the Hokage Monument before going to gorge himself on Ichiraku’s Ramen and heading home. He would retake the Graduation Test twice more before Touji Mizuki would trick him into stealing the Forbidden Scroll.
He couldn’t have that!
And so he made a slight change…
* * *
Usually Naruto went to the Hokage Monument when he wanted to be alone and think about stuff, but today he saw a group of Chunins looking around and working nearby.
He wandered closer and overheard their discussion. “—looks like one of the support beams is rotted through and gave way causing a partial collapse in the tunnels.”
“Awww shit. That’s going to take days to fix. Are you sure we can’t foist this off onto the Genin Teams as a D-Rank?”
“Nope. We’re going to have to some heavy excavating—”
Naruto scowled and decided to try and find some other out of the way place.
* * *
The rushing sound of the river was surprisingly relaxing Naruto found as he sat on the bank and let his feet soak in the chilly water. This was one of the remote training grounds as he reviewed the Graduation Test.
The written part of the examination was horrible although he felt he had gotten enough right to pass. Fortunately he had his Guess-Right-Answer-Jutsu. It never failed! At least with multiple choice questions. He really bombed when it came to fill-in-the-blank sections.
The practicals were somewhat better as his taijutsu, kunai handling, and shuriken throwing gotten a sullen pass by the Chunin examiners, although he guessed it was barely suitable.
But he had totally flunked on his Henge technique. He slapped his cheeks with both hands. Right! He would have to work hard on his Henge!
He grinned as he jumped to his feet and slipped—ACK! He landed in the river and was rapidly pulled downstream by the fast moving current. Naruto struggled to thrash his way to the surface, but he had swallowed water and was hacking and coughing—couldn’t breathe! His hands clawed on the mud on the bottom of the river for some traction—and grabbed onto the links of a chain buried in the mud.
* * *
For the first time in over a hundred years, chakra flooded through Hidden Hand.
Kabe Senju had tried several times to wield the powerful weapon since he had acquired it. But he had never managed to unlock it’s secrets as it was still linked to Tsuzuki Masaki’s chakra. In modern parlance, it was like the engine was fine, but he simply lacked the key to turn it on. It remained inert in his hands and so Kabe was left with a trophy and otherwise useless weapon.
Until now. The chakra raging through it was raw, wild, and unfocused; but there was a lot of it and it overloaded the set defaults for Tsuzuki and Hidden Hand now had a new wielder and master.
Naruto Uzumaki.
It instinctively responded to the desperate survival instinct of its new wielder and it burst free of the riverbed where it had lain forgotten for over a century as Hashirama Senju had converted most of his clan’s lands as the new site for the Hidden Leaf Village.
The chain whipped up, wrapping tightly around Naruto’s wrist and arm even as the sickle spun through the air, embedding itself into a tree trunk and the chain immediately retracted; dragging a sputtering and soaked Naruto out of the river and onto the bank.
* * *
Naruto slowly sat up as the chain loosened around his wrist and the sickle yanked itself out of the trunk of the tree and coiled itself back near it’s new master.
Naruto blinked and stared at the kusarigama in confusion.
[Identify yourself please.]
Naruto whipped his head around. “Huh? Who said that?”
[I did. Identify yourself please.]
Naruto turned suspiciously and looked down at the gleaming black kusarigama and peered at it with a beady eye. No. It couldn’t be...
“Was that you?” he asked, poking it with a finger hesitantly.
[Yes. Identify yourself please.]
Dumbly, Naruto automatically did so as he stared down at the talking weapon. Weapons don’t talk do they? He would have remembered that lesson in the Academy…
[Default User Set. Naruto Uzumaki. Greetings. I am Intelligence Device Hidden Hand.]
“Wow! Cool! So what else can you do besides talk?” Naruto asked.
[I am optimized for stealth fighting, intelligence gathering, and covert insertion utilized by ninjas. My abilities however are greatly augmented by the chakra I am empowered with by my user. My previous wielder possessed only moderate chakra reserves but I detect massive chakra reserves in you. And considering your youth and level of training; you have the potential to increase your power tremendously, dwarfing your current power levels.]
Naruto Uzumaki gazed reverently at the amazing pure black kusarigama’s explanation penetrated. “So you—you can make me into a ninja?”
[Incorrect.]
Naruto’s face fell at that.
[I can make you into the Ultimate Ninja.]
Naruto instantly became starry eyed.
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(Posted Fri, 14 Oct 2011 23:29)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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