Naruto: God of Shinobi

Chapter 46: Removing the Seal

The apartment was dark when he came back. He did not bother with the lights.

Naruto crossed to the small table in the corner, set the scroll down flat, and unrolled it with two fingers. The parchment was thin. Orochimaru's handwriting was cramped and deliberate, each character precise the way a surgeon's cut is precise. There was no warmth in it. Only function.

He read it once. Then again. Then a third time.

He stood up and moved to the center of the room.

The hand signs were slow at first. He built them carefully, feeling where his chakra wanted to rush and making it hold instead, the way you hold a breath before a shot. The counter-seal required restraint more than force. Orochimaru had written that in the margin. Restraint, underlined twice.

The Five Elements Seal resisted. Of course it did. It had been placed by Orochimaru himself, which meant it was not designed to come off easily. Naruto pressed through it anyway, patient, methodical, one layer at a time until he felt the structure crack.

Then it dissolved.

The light that flared from his stomach was brief and very bright and then it was gone. He stood in the dark apartment again. His hands were at his sides. His breathing was even.

He closed his eyes.

The corridor of the mindscape felt different this time. Warmer. The chains that usually hung from the corners of the space had gone slack, and when Naruto walked to the center and looked up at the golden cage, the Fox was already watching him.

Red eyes. Slitted pupils. Nine tails moving slowly in the dark like something that had been waiting a long time and was not surprised the wait had finally ended.

"You are back," Kurama said.

"The seal is gone."

"I can see that."

Silence. Not the hostile kind. Naruto looked at the bars and the Fox looked at him and there was no performance in it from either side.

"Still transactional," Naruto said.

"Yes."

"Good."

He turned and walked back toward the surface. He did not look behind him. He did not need to.

---

Ichiraku was quiet at this hour. The lanterns were warm and low, the smell of broth hanging in the air like something that had been living there for years. Most of the stools were empty. Kin was at the far end of the counter with a bowl she had barely touched, her dark hair loose around her shoulders and her sharp eyes on the curtain at the entrance.

She saw him come in. Something in her face shifted. Not much. Just enough.

"You came," she said.

"I said I would." Naruto sat down one stool away from her. Close enough. Not crowding. He flagged Teuchi down without looking at the menu. "The usual."

Kin raised an eyebrow. "You have a usual."

"I have been eating here since I was seven."

She looked at him a little differently after that. He did not acknowledge it. He picked up her bowl, turned it around to look at the broth, and set it back in front of her.

"So you haven’t eaten yet."

"No… I was waiting."

"For what?"

She looked at him. Said nothing. He understood, which was maybe the point.

They ate. The conversation came in fragments. The exams, the forest, the other genin. Kin talked about her teammates with a particular flatness that told him more than she intended. Naruto asked one question and then let her answer go wherever it went, which she seemed to appreciate more than she wanted to.

"So… uhm… the boy from the Sand," she said. "I think Gaara was his name. You know him?"

"Yeah I suppose you could say that… we have spoken here and there."

"He scares me… like any second he can kill me any moment."

"Yes.. true, very true."

Kin looked at him sideways. “Doesn’t he scare you? I mean you’re strong and all but still…."

"No." He simply answered, nothing else.

"What!? Why not?"

Naruto picked up his chopsticks. "Because I understand what he is." He left it there.

Kin was quiet for a moment. Then she leaned a little closer. Not conspicuously. The kind of lean that pretends it isn't happening. "You really are different," she said. "From the other boys I’ve met."

"I know."

She laughed. It came out surprised, like she had not meant to. "Not humble, are you?"

"No… what would be the point?"

"Most boys would at least pretend."

"I am not most boys."

She looked at him for a long moment. He held it without leaning in, without performing anything. Just looked back. And something in that stillness seemed to unsettle her more than any approach would have.

"Why did you invite me here?" she asked.

"What do you think is the purpose of a date?" He asked.

"What do you mean?"

"To be technical, a date is to see if we are compatible to procreate in the future," He reached across the counter and set two fingers lightly on the back of her hand. Not gripping. Just resting. "Most people will stop there but for me… I am attracted to you and I want to have sex with you. This is a means."

Kin looked down at his hand. She did not move hers away. But she did not turn it over either. Not yet.

"You are going to be trouble," she said quietly.

"That is almost guaranteed."

He could see her deciding something. He waited. He was good at waiting.

She exhaled slowly, and her hand turned under his, just barely, fingers not quite curling around his but no longer flat either. It was the smallest possible thing. It was not small at all.

Naruto smiled. It did not reach his eyes, not completely, but it reached far enough.

Then a chair scraped behind them.

"Kin!"

The voice was flat and hard and it came from somewhere that had decided to be hard a long time ago. Naruto did not turn around immediately. He watched Kin's face instead. Watched the moment close.

She straightened. Lifted her chin. "Zaku." Her voice had no feeling in it whatsoever. "What are you doing here."

"You left early, missing an important team meeting.." Zaku stepped up behind her. Arms crossed. Eyes hard. He looked at Naruto the way boys who need to look down at things always look. "To be with him?"

"I left to eat. Which is allowed."

"With a Leaf ninja? During the exams." Zaku's jaw tightened. "You are embarrassing the team and not to mention Orochimaru will get mad at this!"

"I am eating ramen," Kin said. "I did not realize that required clearance."

"With the eneme! He is the enemy!"

"He is a person."

"He is Leaf. We are Sound." Zaku stepped forward, trying to insert himself between them. "That makes him the enemy. Simple math."

Kin stood up. Her face was flushed now but her eyes were flat the way eyes get when someone has had this argument before and lost patience with it a long time ago. "I will talk to who I want. Go back, Zaku."

"Not without you."

Naruto set his chopsticks down.

He turned around slowly and stood up and his hands went into his pockets and he looked at Zaku the way you look at a problem you have already solved. Not angry. Not contemptuous. Just finished.

"Kin," he said. "I will see you around."

He moved to leave. Zaku's hand landed on his shoulder.

"I am not done with you."

Naruto stopped. He did not remove the hand. He turned, slowly, and looked at Zaku's face from a distance of about six inches.

The killing intent came narrow. A single line of it, straight through the air, aimed at the center of Zaku's chest like a needle. Not a wave. Not a wall. A surgical thing. Specific. Personal.

Zaku's hand fell. The color left his face. He did not move.

Naruto held it for two seconds, then let it go like he was closing a door. He looked past Zaku at Kin. Her eyes were wide and very bright and her mouth was slightly open and she had not taken a breath since the intent hit the air.

"Find me when you are free," he said.

He walked out.

---

The streets of Konoha at night had a particular quality to them. Quiet without being empty. The lamps threw long yellow shapes across the stone and somewhere in the distance a door closed and then everything was still again.

Naruto walked without hurry. His hands were in his pockets. He was thinking about the seal, and the Fox, and the way Kin's hand had turned under his before Zaku arrived. He was categorizing these things, sorting them, deciding what they were worth and what they were not.

He heard the voices before he saw them.

A group of genin. Four of them. Grass headbands catching the lamplight. They were sitting on a low wall outside a closed shop, arguing about something with the particular energy of people who had just lost something they expected to win. Failed the exam. Leaving tomorrow. He could read it in the posture before he heard the words.

He was already walking past them when he saw the red.

It was tucked under a hood, but the color was unmistakable. That specific shade. Dark red, almost rust, almost blood, almost exactly the same color as the photograph of his mother he had found in the restricted archive six months ago.

He stopped.

He stood there for a moment on the empty street and looked at the back of a hooded girl sitting at the end of the wall, and then he walked toward the group with his hands still in his pockets and his face still blank.

"Hey."

The group looked up. The hooded girl looked up last.

Her eyes were large behind a pair of glasses, the lenses slightly too big for her face. She was pale. Not sickly, just the kind of pale that comes from being somewhere it is always cold. Her hood had shifted when she turned and the red of her hair was visible now at her temples, at the back of her neck.

She was scared. He could see it immediately. The way her shoulders came in, the way her hands gripped the wall.

"What is your name?" Naruto said.

The other genin shifted. One of them started to say something. Naruto did not look at him and the boy decided not to finish.

"Karin," the girl said. Her voice was careful.

"Karin what?"

A pause. Longer than it should have been. Her hands tightened on the wall edge. "Just... Karin. Just that."

Naruto looked at her for a long moment. At the red hair. At the pale skin. At the way her chakra sat in her body, warm and dense and unmistakably familiar the way your own name sounds familiar when someone else says it.

"I am Naruto Uzumaki," he said.

The name landed the way names sometimes do, like something heavy dropped from a height. Karin's eyes went wide. Her mouth opened. Closed. Her grip on the wall went white at the knuckles.

"Uzumaki," she said. Barely above a breath. "You are... you are…?"

"I am the son of Kushina Uzumaki.” He held her gaze. "I am the last of the Uzumaki."

Karin stared at him. Her hands had stopped shaking.

"No," she said. Quiet and certain. "You are not." He waited. "My mother was also an Uzumaki."

He smiled. It was the narrow kind. The satisfied kind. The kind that meant he had already known the answer before he asked the question.

"I know," he said.

Her teammates were looking between them with the confused expressions of people who have wandered into a conversation they were never part of and have not yet decided whether to leave. Karin was not looking at them. She was looking at Naruto.

"How," she started. "How did you..."

"The red hair," he said. "And the chakra." He said it simply, like he was noting the weather. "I have been looking for Uzumaki survivors for months. I did not expect to find another one again so soon, let alone here."

Karin said nothing. Her teammates did not know, he realized. She had not told them what she was. That was information too, filed away without acknowledgment.

"Meet me tomorrow," he said. "The bridge near the training grounds. Sunset." He paused. "Come alone."

Karin looked at him. Something was moving in her expression that she did not quite know how to name. He recognized it. He had seen it in Kasumi's face, months ago on the bridge in the land of waves. The specific weight of being found.

She nodded.

He turned and walked away and did not look back. He did not need to.

Behind him, he heard one of her teammates say something. He did not hear what. He heard her answer even less. He was already gone, around the corner, into the dark, hands in his pockets, thinking.

Tomorrow, then.

Next Time: The Namikage

An offer is made. A name is spoken. And in the silence that follows, the Sound Village begins to understand what they have walked into.

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