Naruto: God of Shinobi

Chapter 51: Another Uzumaki Girl

The bridge was old enough that the planks had gone grey, every joint soft with years of damp mornings and river mist. It crossed a slow-moving stream that fed into the Naka River, and the water below it was dark and very still, holding the sunset sky in long orange-gold bands that shifted as the light changed, bleeding at the edges where the current turned.

Naruto arrived first.

He stood at the center of the bridge with his hands in his pockets and looked at the path that led from the village. His headband was tied. His clothes were clean. He had slept, eaten, let his reserves rebuild themselves in the way they always did, fast and aggressive, like his body resented being empty. He was ready.

She came from the direction of the training grounds. Her hood was up and her hands were buried in her jacket pockets and she walked with the particular slowness of someone who had not yet committed to arriving. The red hair was visible at her temples where the hood did not quite cover it. Her glasses caught the low light and held it.

She stopped at the edge of the bridge.

Naruto waited. He did not call to her. He did not wave. He just let her stand there with the decision.

She stepped onto the bridge.

Her footsteps were careful, measured, each plank tested before it took her weight. She stopped three meters from him and looked at him the way people looked at things they were not yet sure were real.

"You came," Naruto said.

"You told me to."

"I did."

She looked at him. At the whisker marks and the blond hair and the eyes that did not perform anything, that were just clear in the way still water was clear, showing you the bottom without pretending the depth wasn't there.

"You're really Uzumaki?" she asked.

"Yes."

She let that sit for a moment. "My mother was Uzumaki," she said. "She never talked about the clan. She said it was dangerous to talk about it. That people would come if they knew."

"She was right."

Karin's hands stayed in her pockets. Her shoulders were tight.

"How did you know?" she asked. "That I was Uzumaki."

"The red hair," Naruto said. "And the chakra. I have felt it before. It has a particular weight to it. A kind of density that other people don't have."

"Felt it before?"

"A girl named Kasumi. She's in the Land of Waves. She's waiting for me."

Karin went quiet. Her jaw worked, the way jaws worked when someone was sorting through the next question and could not decide which one to say first.

"So what do you want from me?" she asked.

Naruto looked at her. His face did not shift.

"I am going to rebuild the Uzumaki clan," he said. "Find every survivor I can. Bring them together. Build a place where none of us have to hide."

Karin stared at him. For a long beat she did not move. Then: "That's impossible."

"Probably."

"The clan was destroyed. The village was destroyed. Everyone who survived went in a hundred different directions. You're thirteen."

"Doesn’t really matter, I have made up my mind a long time ago."

"That is not the part I was questioning."

"I know." He looked at her. "I also know I cannot find everyone. But I can find enough. I can start."

"Start with what? You're a genin. You don't have money, you don't have land, you don't have…"

"I have Kasumi. I have a boy named Haku. I have a boy named Inari in the Land of Waves who is training. I have others coming." He paused. "And I have a name and a plan and the patience to do this one person at a time."

Karin shook her head. Not dismissal. Something closer to disbelief that had not quite decided whether to become belief.

"I noticed the way you looked at me on the street," Naruto said. "Before I introduced myself. You already knew what I was."

She went very still. "What?"

"You felt my chakra. You recognized it. You knew before I told you."

She looked away. Her arms came out of her pockets and crossed against her chest.

"I can sense chakra," she said. Reluctant, the way people talked about things they had been told to keep quiet. "I don't know how. It's just always been there. I can feel people from far away. I can tell when they're lying. When they're dangerous."

"That's an Uzumaki ability," Naruto said. "The clan was known for it. Huge reserves. Long lives. Sensing. They were hunted for it, which is why most of what I know about them I had to find in enemy archives."

She looked at him. "Enemy archives."

"I broke into them."

She blinked. Opened her mouth. Closed it.

"Why?" she asked.

The question was not why the archives, he could see that. It was the same question sitting under everything else she had said, the real one, the one she had been building toward since she stepped onto the bridge.

"Because I grew up alone," he said. "In a village that hated me. I didn't know who I was or where I came from or why people looked at me the way they did. I had to find out myself. Break in, read reports from places that wanted my clan dead, piece it together without anyone who could just tell me." He looked at the water. "I don't want that for anyone else. I don't want other Uzumaki growing up not knowing what they are or why the world treats them like a threat."

Karin said nothing.

"That's why I'm building something," Naruto said. "Not just a place. A family. People who know where they come from and don't have to pretend they don't."

The light had changed while they talked, the orange going deeper, the gold bleeding out at the edges. The stream below them was going dark. Somewhere behind them the village was lighting its lamps.

Karin's arms were still crossed. But her shoulders were not as tight as they had been.

"Where is this place?" she asked.

"The Land of Waves. I'm going to build a village there. Small at first."

"Who's already there?"

"Kasumi. Haku. Inari." He paused. "Kasumi is Uzumaki. She's been training. Haku has a bloodline ability. He's loyal and fast and has better control than anyone his age I've seen. Inari is young but he stopped being afraid, which is the hardest thing."

She looked at him. "And you think they'll follow you."

"I know they will."

"Why?"

"Because I gave them a choice," he said. "A real one. Not a command. Not a threat. I told them what I was building and I asked if they wanted to be part of it. Nobody had ever done that for them before."

Karin was quiet for a long moment. The water moved below them, slow and dark.

"You're asking me to come with you," she said.

"Yes."

"To a village that doesn't exist yet. In a country that isn't your home."

"Yes."

She studied him. "What if I say no?"

He looked at her steadily. "Then I respect that. But you should know that not deciding is also a decision, and the window for some choices doesn't stay open indefinitely."

He reached into his jacket. Drew out a small scroll, tight-wound and sealed, and held it out between them.

She looked at it. "What is that?"

"The bridge in the Land of Waves. The people waiting there. If you change your mind, find the bridge. Find a boy named Inari. Tell him the Namikage sent you."

"The Namikage." She said it slowly, tasting the shape of it. "Wave Shadow. That's what you're calling yourself."

"It is what I will become."

She looked at him for a long moment. At the scroll. Back at him.

"You're not kidding," she said.

"No."

She reached out and took the scroll. Held it in both hands, feeling the weight of it, this small thing that was somehow heavier than it looked.

"I'll think about it," she said.

"Good."

She tucked it into her jacket. Looked at him one last time.

"I have to go. My team leaves tomorrow and they don't know what I am. I'd like to keep it that way."

"Understood."

She turned. Walked toward the village. Her footsteps were less careful now, less measured. Like something had settled.

"Karin."

She stopped. Did not turn around.

"You're not alone anymore."

She stood still for a breath. Two. Then she nodded, once, a small precise movement, and kept walking. The village swallowed her.

Naruto stood on the bridge until she was gone. The stream below him was almost invisible now, just the sound of it moving in the dark.

He turned and walked back toward the village.

The lamps were lit. The shop fronts were closed. The streets had that particular evening texture of a place settling into itself, the noise of the day gone soft and the dark not quite complete. He walked through it without hurrying.

He thought about Karin. The way she had held the scroll. The way she had not looked back.

He thought about Kasumi at the bridge in the Land of Waves, training in the mornings, watching the water. Waiting.

He thought about Haku. About the ice mirrors and the speed and the loyalty that had nowhere to go until he gave it somewhere.

He thought about Inari. The boy who had stopped being afraid. That was the hardest thing, and the boy had done it.

He thought about Gaara. About sand that moved like something alive. About the thing caged inside him that was older and angrier than the one caged inside Naruto, because nobody had ever sat with Gaara the way the Fox sat with Naruto now, in that strange neutrality they had arrived at.

He thought about Neji. About the Finals. About a cage of a different kind.

He thought about Sakura standing in the dying light of the hospital room with her hand pressed to her mouth, not crying, because she had already decided.

He thought about the invasion. About the thing coming. He did not know the shape of it yet, not exactly, but he could feel the pressure of it the way you felt weather before it arrived, a change in the air that your body registered before your mind had the words for it.

He passed the Hokage monument.

He looked up. The four faces were dark against the evening sky, cut from the same stone as the mountain, patient in the way that only carved things were patient. His father's face was up there, the Fourth's, that angular jaw and those familiar eyes looking out over a village that had never told his son what he was.

Naruto looked at him for a moment.

Then he looked away and kept walking.

"One by one," he said, quiet, to no one.

He turned a corner and the monument was behind him and the dark was ahead, and he walked into it without slowing.

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Next Time: The Legacy of the Fourth Hokage - A new jutsu