Chapter Text
He squinted, watching the final array form. It sank into the wall with a slight flickering of chakra, distorting the air slightly before fading away.
All that's left is to activate it.
Step back a bit—let me look at the whole chain.
He obliged, moving back until the whole stretch of wall was in his field of vision. He felt the sides of his head warm up as Kurama channeled his chakra through his eyes.
Well done, he said. It should work—or at least not explode. Feed it.
Naruto stepped up to the wall and pulled up his chakra, pouring it into the seal matrix. It drank it up like parched soil.
Good… Now, wrap some nature chakra around your chakra and guide it into the matrix. It should start filling by itself.
It felt almost counterintuitive, using chakra that way. But what Kurama had forgotten about seals was more than the sum total of what Naruto knew, even as the sealmaster in Konoha.
And Kurama never forgot anything.
The whole thing nearly jumped out of his grasp as the matrix greedily grasped for the nature chakra coating his chakra, pulling the two into itself. Naruto gradually released his hold on his own chakra until the supply was stable, the seal pulling a steady amount of nature chakra automatically. All along the wall, the matrix came alight, invisible to the naked eye, but thrumming with power. The hairs on his arms stood until he stepped away from the wall.
Thanks Kurama…
You're welcome.
With this last section of wall, he was done with the fūinjutsu reinforcement of the Hyūga estate perimeter. All that was left was the gate.
Not bad—considering I've been back for less than 48 hours.
The flow of chakra up and into the wall was mesmerising—like an illusion designed to draw you in, but only for chakra sensitives.
Speaking of illusions… Kurama…
I don't know, he said. It depends. You're shit at genjutsu.
Yeah yeah… But could you, you know… drive my body?
You've got some nerve. Why would I want to do something so disgusting?
He snorted.
Hey… It's not like it's going to be pleasant for me either.
Pleasant… I'm not talking about that. Do you realize how… you don't even have the words for it. Stifling, I guess? Do you realize how stifling such a thing would be?
Aren't you just being dramatic though?
Kurama scoffed. Let me explain it like this for you, he began. In the christian incarnation story, God came as man, in flesh. Have you ever wondered why he went that whole convoluted route?
Errr…
Why do I even bother? Kurama grumbled. For the purpose of our discussion, just know that possessing your body, while possible, would be very uncomfortable at least… I mean existential crisis levels of discomfort.
Awww… That's thoughtful of you, but I can handle some existential crisis, replied Naruto.
Of course you can, retorted Kurama. You're flesh-anchored. Even your soul understands that. I, on the other hand, am not. You're asking something as nonsensical as warmth shitting a square, or gravity sniffing purple. It's not a matter of discomfort—it's fundamentally absurd. Your mortal form is more than just 'too small'; it's the complete wrong shape, wrong texture, wrong reality. Do you really want a being of my calibre with an existential crisis?
Oh…
Oh indeed.
Damn… It would have been really useful to have that.
Why can't you? Just practice the old fashioned way.
What?
Clones really have made you lazy. Practice.
The last threads of chakra sank into the stone like a final exhale. Naruto let his senses retract, blinking away the tingle on the edge of his awareness just as Hideo's voice broke through the stillness.
"You done, boss?" asked the man.
"With the wall, yes," replied Naruto. He turned away from his handiwork and took a moment to breathe. "I want to work on the main gate next."
Hideo smiled. "That'd be a lifesaver—literally. That busted gate was a tragedy waiting to happen."
Naruto hummed in reply. Frankly speaking, their situation was still a mess, despite the progress they'd made.
No one could pinpoint when Z Day—as they'd started calling it—began. Takagi's instincts and information were able to gain them a mere day in preparation—preparations that were, at the time, for an unknown threat. Managing those first few days was hell—especially as he could only coordinate via phone. Hideo had shown value for every penny he paid him—both for managing the initial days, and starting the foundation for the rest of their planning.
He glanced at the man from the corner of their eyes as they walked. Hideo's head was down as he looked at a tablet. His hair had grown out a bit, along with a bit of a beard. With boring brown hair, the 5'7" man looked like he could be any random Japanese office worker—normal smile, normal gait, normal eyes. But he was one of his most dependable soldiers.
He'd have to be, to make it as far as he'd come in the company.
It was on Hideo's initiative that the PMC called, or attempted to call, all the contractors and consultants involved in building the estate in one way or the other.
It was Hideo's initiative that dedicated a company to, on the first day of chaos, bring in as many of those contacts and their families as possible.
The civilians outside the doomsday blocks owed the man their lives.
I haven't told you before, but it is truly impressive what you've built here.
Naruto smiled. Worked out really well, and I got filthy rich doing it. It's simply the ultimate gated community experience.
"Boss," said Hideo, drawing Naruto's attention. "One more thing. The civvies want to meet you."
Naruto frowned a bit. "That's not too unexpected. Why, though? Are they scared?"
"I don't think so," Hideo replied. "That's not the vibe I've gotten from them. They see us like protectors."
The 'civies', as Hideo referred to them, represented the families at the core of the estate's doomsday sector. In a very real sense, they were active clients in the entire project. A cut above the rest of the rabble in the rental tier sectors.
Naruto chuckled. "So, they're just curious about the magician?"
Hideo shrugged, almost as if to say, 'what can you do'. "I can't exactly pass off as extraordinary enough to do all this now, can I," he replied.
Naruto smacked his shoulder playfully. "Only to civilians—and what do they know? One of them in my group was talking about 'who's keeping me accountable?' and 'overconcentration of power'."
Hideo actually laughed at that. "You didn't tell them that you can flatten an area the size of a football field?"
"Obviously not," said Naruto, chuckling. "And it used to be a football field."
It took Hideo a moment to understand.
"No way," he breathed.
"Yes way," Naruto replied, smirking. "I'll give you the lowdown later."
"Damn… OP, please nerf," Hideo grumbled.
Naruto just laughed some more.
Hideo's smile stayed on his face for a moment before it slowly faded, his face twisting into a pensive frown. "That reminds me," he said, voice lowering as his eyes seemed to get engulfed in shadow. "What are we going to do about them?"
Naruto raised an eyebrow in question. "I'm guessing we're not talking about the civilians any longer?"
"Yeah," replied Hideo. "We were able to keep them contained like you asked, but the longer they stay there, the more the chance of someone fucking something up and landing us all in hot shit."
Naruto sighed, his jovial mood sobering up.
"Plus," continued Hideo, "very few of these people have the heart to keep up scum like that locked up in this situation. We don't want a situation where people who aren't our guys a hundred percent wind up catching wind of what's going on."
As always, Hideo was correct.
Naruto sighed again. "I'll handle it," he promised, running his hand through his hair.
Being back with his men lifted a weight he didn't even know he had off him.
Every single one of the old crew had, at one point or the other, worked with him. He was their very own boogeyman. Their thing that went bump in the night. From the blazing hellholes of Borno's deserts, to the favelas in Mexico, whenever there was a need for him to deploy side by side with the men, they were always in a festive mood.
'Shinigami',
At first, they whispered it in quiet relief. Then, the bolder soldiers joked about it out loud. A couple of years later, it was his official callsign.
Soldiers were refreshingly simple people.
Civilians, unfortunately, were not.
He watched the group trickle into the room beyond in ones and twos. Hidden behind a one-way mirror, he listened with half an ear as Hideo whispered information on them.
"That's the last of them," Hideo said softly. "Three minutes before the meeting starts."
Naruto just hummed, the fingers of his left hand drumming a light beat on the arm of his chair, and his stump tucked to his side.
To be fair, they've been extremely well behaved—for civilians…
Even humans can be trained, sneered Kurama. They're no Uzumaki. They're not even the wolves of our world—merely dogs. But dogs have their uses as well.
Will you ever stop looking down on humans?, sighed Naruto in exasperation.
Yes, replied Kurama. When they stop sucking.
The nearly inaudible hum of the computers behind him created an oddly comforting backdrop. If he concentrated, he could hear the murmurs of the group as the members mingled and took the opportunity to catch up.
Even him? asked Naruto, his eyes on a man who sat as the nexus of one of the loosely formed groups in the room beyond. I know you've seen my memories. The man is almost freakishly brilliant.
Kurama kept silent, but Naruto expected nothing less. The man really was that brilliant.
How do we play this? Naruto thought, watching the rest of the room. The predominant emotion in there seems to be positive.
It was easy to observe the groups there, almost certainly representing factions within the estate. They all represented power in some sense. Overall, they represented the thirty-two families in the doomsday sector, and the only ones allowed to shape estate policy. At least before the world went to shit.
They had to be chaffing at the bit.
The old guard were all, save one, clustered around Leon. The last of the old guard—Kenji Sato—was in a cluster of his own. The dark haired man wore a dark grey blazer, and was surrounded by some of the newer renters. The man leaned back, arms folded, his dark eyes gleaming with the satisfied contempt of a man who saw every leader besides himself as a merely temporary obstacle. He leaned in to whisper something to one of his followers, eyes on Leon as he did so.
The new guard, mostly more recent owners, clustered in threes and fours, seated at or near the bar. A few were already nursing drinks. Some others sat by themselves—mostly the elderly, the most prominent of whom was Lady Chiyo.
Yet for the most part, they seemed at least cordial with one another.
Still, the signs were there for careful people to see. A too-tight crinkle of the corners of one person's eye even as they smoothened out their cardigan. The exaggerated laughter of another, a woman on the older side of her forties and struggling to stave off nature as long as she could. An elderly man sat at her shoulder laughing with her. If one could look past his disgusting pink cardigan, they would see the desperate longing of a fool thinking with his smaller head lighting up his eyes. If one could look deeper than her fading beauty, they would see the desperate ambition of a woman looking for the next foothold upwards.
It wasn't the best, but…
I can work with this…
His eyes wandered back to the man he'd mentioned to Kurama—a fairly average man that dominated one of the groups—Leon Reeves.
To literally anyone who was not a huge chakra god, the man truly needed no introduction.
He was one of the richest men in the world. An eccentric technology pioneer with a sort of weird, straight-forward charisma. More importantly, he'd been one of the earliest to sign up as a landowner in the estate, buying into the dream Naruto was selling. His connections were extremely useful in a majority of the technological solutions in the Konoha zone. Even now, from Hideo's reports, besides TACATE's own engineers, the rest of the engineering crew available were almost exclusively his. His wife sat by his side, cold eyes watching everyone in the room. She was a beautiful woman, even in her fifties.
Naruto would not be shy to call the couple his friends.
The former shinobi got to his feet and made his way out of the room. Hideo would remain inside and watch the group from another perspective. It wasn't that he didn't trust them, but... A group as used to power as these people wouldn't be content with merely being herded. Like Lady Tsunade would have said,
Humans are going to human.
He paused outside the door for a moment, centering himself.
Go on, groused Kurama, impatient. They can't be worse than the gasbags back home—these ones actually like you, mostly.
Naruto chuckled to himself, took a deep breath, and opened the doors.
The chill of the air conditioner welcomed him in, soft light spilling into the corridor past his bulk. The room was designed like a sort of lounge, with soft padded chairs and couches tastefully arranged around the room. The dark wood floors blended with the rest of the decor, giving the room a tasteful but cozy feel. To one side, a bar and grill sat, manned by a quartet of Hyūga estate staff. The bar actually dominated the length of that particular wall, and the rich scent of wood formed a sort of earthy undertone, mixed with hints of past barbecues and a hint of the tang of alcohol.
"The man of the hour," hailed Leon, making his way forward to meet him. The rest of the room sort of held back, a few coming to their feet as they allowed Leon forward—not that the man noticed.
The man's voice was the kind that filled a room without trying—warm and gravelly, quick and infectious. It was the voice of a man who had convinced hundreds of people to follow him into impossible dreams.
"It may sound like a faux pas," continued the man, "but it has been extremely gratifying to see how well our preparations panned out." The words tumbled out in a sort of frenzied dance, as though his mouth was struggling to keep up with his brain. His wife was trailing behind him, and she shook her head in a sort of fond amusement.
"It is a faux pas," snorted Naruto in response. "Good to see you Leon," he said. The man was a bit thick around the middle, but he was full of energy. Life on the estate had done him good.
He looked beyond the man to his wife, giving her a small smile as she offered her hand. She was a woman of few words and unstoppable action. He took her hand gently, brushing his lips over her knuckles.
"A pleasure as always, Madam Reeves," Naruto murmured.
"Indeed," the woman replied. Leon took a breath, making to speak. She didn't allow him. "Go on and meet the rest of the room," she said, her eyes on Leon as he suddenly turned bashful. "We can always catch up on our own time."
Naruto chuckled as he suited her words. It was always fun watching the man's wife corral him.
As the couple stepped away from him, most of the rest of the room flooded towards him. He worked the crowd, shaking hands, kissing knuckles, and engaging in a bit of small talk. He personally knew some of the older Hyūga families like the Reeves, but the newer ones only knew of him by reputation.
Lady Chiyo Mori—Lady Mori, as she was known—was one of the few who remained seated, and he saved her for last. The woman was the mother of one of his men whose name was on the honor plaque. Widowed only last year, the elderly woman had grief wrapped around her as a sort of stately garment.
Naruto wound his way to her chair, getting to his knees beside her. He took her hand gently, smiling in response to the soft smile on her face.
"Hello ma'am," he greeted quietly. She was the eldest person from her household, which now consisted of her late son's widow and children, and her two youngest daughters.
Her eyes softened a little as her smile widened. "Naruto," she said, the familiar hint of huskiness wrapping his name in warm friendship. "Took you long enough to get here."
"Sorry for the delay, ma'am," he replied. "It could not be helped."
Somewhere at the back of his mind, he noted the people whose gaze sharpened at the time and affection he spent on the old woman.
After all, unlike the rest of them, she was not moneyed. She was 'just' the owner of some restaurants who somehow found her way into this elite group for reasons they were unaware of.
A mere middle-class woman.
Near the back… That man in the dark blazer—again.
The simpering fool by the old man in that atrocious cardigan too, added Kurama. She reeks of ambition.
He nodded internally. Is that all?
No, replied Kurama. But those are the most egregious. If you can't handle the rest without even knowing, then the snake really did waste its teaching on you.
Fair enough…
Madame Mori waved his apology off, drawing his attention back to her.
"None of that now," she said, a warm chuckle in her voice. "If you couldn't help it, then you couldn't."
Her eyes sharpened as they took in the rest of the room behind him. "You should move on though," she said. "It won't do to spend so much time on an old woman like me." Suiting her words, she removed her hands from his and patted his shoulder as he stood.
"Be careful," she muttered. "You know how these people are."
He simply nodded. He did indeed.
Once on his feet, he took note of the lounge staff at work. Even with their numbers gutted, they moved with well-drilled precision, rolling out refreshments, and blending into the room like shadows.
He made his way to the dais located more or less in the front of the room. It was a little elevated stage, perfect for keeping the attention of all the occupants of the room.
"Hello everyone," he began, his voice ringing out.
"Hello," the room muttered back in chorus.
This feeling, he thought. Having so many look up to you because of your power… What a rush!
"I'd say it was nice to be here, but that would be too much like our good friend Leon," he continued, getting muted chuckles around the room, the loudest from Leon himself. "I'm sorry this has been delayed so much—I was not on the estate grounds until a couple of days ago."
For a moment as he watched the crowd chuckle, the old, familiar resentment threatened to bubble up in his chest. Once again, he stood alone, looked up to for survival by people who would not hesitate to pull him down for some perceived gain. In times like this, he missed the simplicity of the shinobi life—his team and him against the world.
He fought that feeling down.
He was always going to be made for more than that.
It might not be the blood-pounding rush of bloody battle, but it was a battle—one that Orochimaru trained him well to enjoy.
It was the burden of competence, as all the Sannin would say.
Besides, said Kurama, his voice as soft as it ever got. You aren't alone. You will never be alone again.
He smiled internally, waiting for the mutters to settle down.
"That being said," he continued, "this little briefing is to update you all on the measures we have taken and will be taking to help us navigate this catastrophe."
He strode out to the nearest edge of the dais, a mere step from his former location.
"You all became a part of this community for times like this," he said. "If the debacle of the failures of the past taught us anything, it is that the government can't be trusted to find their nose with a mirror and lightbulb."
He smiled, lifting his left hand as he gestured to the crowd. He carefully kept his stump still, taking care not to tar the image he was trying to project.
"You all realised the truth—our survival cannot be outsourced to an impersonal government."
He clenched his remaining fist.
"You put that trust in yourselves, and in me."
He smiled then, a daring thing that promised wild adventure.
"Let me show you why that trust was not misplaced."
Saeko crouched, her arms apart as she circled her opponent.
Around her, the raucous cheers of the barracks rang, forming a wall of sound that was almost a physical thing. Chants rose and fell like waves, jeers and cheers blending into applause and taunts—a living organism of raw enthusiasm. Sweat trailed down the side of her face and disappeared into the neck of her shirt, matting her hair to the sides of her neck.
She breathed through her nose, controlled, as she tried to find a way past her opponent. Her arms ached faintly, and a bruise in her side pulled at her sharply as she moved, but she put it out of her mind.
The person on the other end mirrored her, matching her effortlessly. The woman's dark hair was cropped close to her head, the hint of a tattoo peeking out from the neck of her shirt. She might have been any generic fighter, but she had a gorgeous smile—a smile that was doing nothing to hide the mild enjoyment in the woman's eyes.
Saeko could feel her face stretched into a matching grin.
The woman lunged at her, a sudden explosion of movement that brought the two fighters almost face to face. Time seemed to slow as Saeko lost herself in the rhythm of their bodies, the sounds around her fading away as the moment stretched—impossibly long. Suddenly, the woman's elbow was slipping through, cracking against Saeko's side in an explosion of force. Saeko stumbled, and the woman was there, leading her into another body blow, leaving her face untouched.
As if she was mocking me…
The woman's playful superiority tugged at something inside Saeko—something raw she hadn't even realized was there. Suddenly, all she saw was red.
She twisted in a sharp motion, shifting all her weight to one leg even as she fell. Then she lashed out, aiming for the other woman's smug smile.
She missed.
The woman flowed past the kick, unruffled, taking the time to smack the inside of Saeko's thighs in a disgusting display of dominance even as Saeko tried to turn her fall into a vector for a counter. She landed with her palms beneath her, pushing off them in an attempt to flip herself over.
Suddenly, she was crashing nose first into the mat in blinding pain, a vice grip around her ankle. She rapidly blinked away tears, and saw the woman's foot a couple of inches from her face. It took her a moment to locate where the pain was coming from—her scalp. Her eyes traced the foot down to where it stood, trapping her hair between it and the mat.
The roar of the crowd rushed back in, drowning her. The foot disappeared, and the woman crouched beside her, her smile less mocking now—warmer.
"You did fantastic, girl," she remarked. "Has the boss been teaching you?"
For the first time, Saeko felt something uncomfortable—shame, in a place where she only knew honor. Her face felt like it was on fire, a rival to the pain burning her scalp. Before she could reply and embarrass herself though, someone else answered for her.
"Even I can't take glory for that."
She turned, despite the pain, to see Naruto slipping effortlessly through the crowd and stepping just inside the ring, an easy smile on his face.
Her face burned, but in a different kind of embarrassment.
Naruto's demeanor stayed warm. "You really did well," he remarked, dropping on his haunches beside her. "Lara here has been killing since before you were born. Keeping up with her this long…" he trailed off in a smile.
His hand stroked her hair as she relaxed into the mat, her heart stuttering, and the aches from the rest of her body catching up to her. With his hand in her hair, even the burn in her muscles felt pleasant, the soreness sharpening the warmth of his touch.
His smile was infectious, and she felt her face mirror his. Now that she had the time to calm down, she was being unreasonable.
She managed a scoff. "I guess I believed my own hype, eh?"
The woman—Lara—chuckled. "A little bit, yeah." She ran her fingers through the stubble on her head. "Sorry for being so rough, but you definitely needed it. You came at me like you were going to bulldoze your way through. Straightforward, aggressive, full of fire—like you'd already decided you could win."
Saeko looked back on the last few minutes as the woman spoke, a chill worming its way down her back.
Lara was right.
She met Saeko's eyes, a thin sheen of perspiration on her face. "You ignored the gap," she continued, her voice hardening. "Experience. Reach. Weight. You didn't even try to assess me—not really. You just charged in, as if your aggression would be enough."
Her tongue darted out to wet her lips. "It isn't—not in our leagues. Not if you want to move to the next level."
She smiled as she shrugged, probably to blunt the edge of the critique. "So I cut you down a notch. You're good, but not that good."
"At least not yet," Saeko replied softly.
Lara grinned, voice approving. "Now that's more like it."
Saeko rolled onto her back, the movement moving her hair from Naruto's ministrations. The noise had thinned to murmurs, and boots scuffed the mat as spectators trickled away, losing interest now that the show was over. Lara stood over her, hand stretched out.
She grasped it and was hauled up to her feet. Naruto patted her head as she smiled up at him.
In a way, this was the best outcome for her. Naruto and her father were unapproachable heights for her—one more than the other. But with someone else, she had gotten a glimpse of an intermediate step.
A step she could reach.