Twin Fates will be up in a day or two. Finalizing stuff. Enjoy this in the meantime.

Once upon a time, a blue-eyed boy from the Elemental Countries learned one of life's cruelest lessons... that evil was bigger than his nindo.

So he followed the footsteps of a hero, ended up in a mysterious land, and after much hardship, returned home with the heart of a ninja, and the soul of a gunslinger...

Uzumaki Rising: The Gunslinger Ninja

Prologue: The Art of Ninpo and Gun

"Damn it, what the hell are you standing around looking stupid for? Cast the damn spell already!"

I always thought that my newbie genin days were the worst time of my life.

This turned out to be oodles worse.

At first, I thought that I'd end up joining the strongest monster-hunting team in this world to aid my searching the Lighthalzen Biolabs for a clue in finding a way back to my world... because throughout my travels, I've found nothing but cryptic clues and half-baked hints. If there was a way to manipulate the forces between dimensions for my return home, I was sure the Lighthalzen laboratories would have something.

I mean yeah, it's been a wonderful four years that I've been here, spending free days helping out Old Man Garrison, going between Prontera and Alberta for my day job (got hella buff doing it, too!), training under Lady Selena and my friends in the Gunslinger Guild, and doing my best on both sides in the Marroll conflict (got a nifty set of duds to show for that effort, believe that; and don't ask about my badge. It's enough that the last time I asked to get sent to what used to be the Dimensional Gorge, I ended up in some place called the Abyss, beat up some schmuck named Ragu o Ragla, and all I got was this lousy Sheriff Star).

Now that I've learned everything I can in this world, though... and even someone as brilliant and deranged as the Lord of Death himself threw in his two cents about this damn seal on my stomach... I'm in danger once more.

Danger... because the people interested in hunting me down for what's in the aforementioned seal seem to have tracked me down here.

Letting them run loose here would only mean more loss of life. (Sure, all the snotty and arrogant Champions, Asuras 'Sin and Guillotine Crosses I've run across will be let down a few pegs, but that doesn't justify this at all.)

And so, here I am, stuck with a bunch of idealistic morons who are too busy contemplating whether or not to strike down their "comrades" while I'm doing everything in my power to make sure their hides leave this edifice in one piece.

"Oh dear," a dark-haired man wearing a pair of blood-drenched katars said. "Still stuck on babysitting duty, Uzumaki?" he asked, and the sarcasm rolling off his voice wasn't as noticeable as the fact that he was semitransparent and exuding an aura not unlike mine.

"Oh, shut up, Eremes," I reply as I parry his attempt to slice me open with my pistols, kick him off me while I backpedal and let off several shots to disorient him while I slide out the boomstick from the holster strapped around my back.

Electric blue barrel.

Oridecon-reinforced.

Top of the freaking line.

"Dodge this, pal."

I pull the trigger, and the shotgun coughs out its payload of explosive death. At that close a distance, anybody unfortunate enough to get hit is gonna be hurting.

The buckshot tears through him, and I can see the powers swirling around him repairing the damage.

I look around and seeing the source of those powers, I swear. "Fuck. Party's gotten too large for comfort."

"Does that trouble you, Mr. Uzumaki?"

"Not really," I reply, dodging a purple wave of energy and lining up another shotgun blast. "Sorry we have to go through you guys, Miss Margaretha, but I need to go home."

"We are bound to this place, therefore we are contracted to protect it with our lives if need be."

"Tch. Suit yourself."

Meanwhile, that idiot Royal Guard still HASN'T cast Defender AND Devotion, whining about how his old friend Takius wanted to be like Katheryne Keyron.

(I haven't mentioned the fact that nearly everyone already has a Gryphon mount. This guy hasn't yet.)

Said translucent female wizard was now about to throw a very painful ball of lightning at him.

What an idiot. And this was the best monster-hunting team around?

"Out of the freaking way!"

I barely make it to Roan the dumbass Royal Guard and kick him aside before the ball of lightning sends me flying backwards...

...right into a waiting and grinning Howard Alt-Eisen.

"How's it hanging, friend?"

I don't know which is more frightening: his honest-to-goodness childlike grin or that bloodied Light Epsilon he's toting around like a child's squeak-hammer.

Sorta reminds me of that girl in that really odd manga Shino seemed to like - what was her name? Yuno or something?

Well, on a girl it was kinda unnerving, but plastered on the face of a phantasmic man wielding a massive axe, those bland eyes become more than frightening.

Still, my tenant forces me to function even though I should be a shivering wreck on the floor.

"So-so, I guess," I reply, trying to sound nonchalant.

"You don't mind me splurging a little zenny on your return here, now would you?"

"I'd rather you pinch a few pennies, Howard. Times are hard these days."

"You're such a spoilsport, Naruto. Very well... Hammer Fall!"

"This is just wonderful," I mutter as I barely dodge the ethereal hammer, returning my beloved Gatekeeper-DD back to its holster and whipping out the big boy.

"You don't mind me setting off a few fireworks, don'tcha?" I asked, flicking an enchanted zenny coin into the air before locking and loading.

Sadly, all three grenades were blown up harmlessly in midair.

Shit. Cecil's here. ...which means that huntress whose accent I can't place is out of the fight.

Time to get serious.

Need a little help here.

Your friends will be in danger. More of this "protecting precious people" nonsense gone wrong, and your fragile mind will take one dent too many and fall apart completely.

They already know the protocols when they see the red flow out of me. Besides, thanks to those toads you so love, I can feel the leyline closing in. We pull off whatever got us to those Valkyries, plus a little reverse summoning, and we're home.

What else do you need?

You're limited by the seal, but do try to stabilize the main sealing matrix while I fend off these guys, I say to the presence sealed within me, grinning as the last guy in today's dance card enters the floor.

"Good day, Sir Seyren."

"Don't play dumb. You realize that your little time-space experiment helped unleash that horror known as Satan Morroc?"

"Hey, I put in my dues, I paid for my share in that fiasco. I even put two in the head of that mud guy and peeled a swatch of its skin off to reinforce my cape, you know," I said, rolling out Sir Garrison's present for my coming-of-age, when he saw me pull off tricks he last saw Lady Selena do. "Don't tell me what to do when you and your merry bunch of friends are still cooped up here."

Damn, even now, these revolvers are still b-e-a-utiful. I chamber in the shells, time my approach, and just when those three move in, I start my movement.

I dance around their slashes and blows, each time breaking into their guard and firing off point-blank shots into their faces.

Several times.

No, no, don't worry. They get up. They always do.

This just kept them down for as long as what's needed...

...Ouch.

Damn, it was a diversion! And that annoying Pneuma is up! Can't make it to drive them away in time, for Sorin's gonna pop a Resurrect or three, and it's back to square one with me at a disadvantage.

The bolts of Katheryne Keyron's infamous "Lord of Vermilion" descend, and I hurriedly scramble for cover, red chakra beginning to leak out from the seal.

I shoot a glance backwards, and the Baka Brigade have just been assembled, with Roan the dumbass Paladin's wife done doing her healing duties on 'em.

"THERE'S THE PORTAL, NOW GET YOUR ASSES OUT OF HERE!" I roar at them, my voice changing in line with the beastly chakra beginning to augment and modify my person.

"So brave, but ultimately, so foolish," Katheryne said, pointing her wand at me, readying for another cast of Jupiter's Thunder.

"The leyline is already below me. My party has evacuated. Not so foolish, after all," I retort as the chakra cloak begins to take on three tails.

"So you meant to bring us here... was this one of your ploys?" Seyren asked, aghast.

"Sorry, guys. Can't play no more," I tell them as the seal blows a portal open, the familiar gates of Konohagakure on the other side...

...and then I jump through.

I feel the pull of timespace, go all the way to six tails just to hold myself together... and when I see a light at the end of the tunnel, I lunge towards it...

...and I emerge, looking towards the now-famous gates of Konohagakure.

Home at last.

You might know me as Uzumaki Naruto.

Well, I still go by that name. Not that that name matters where I came from.

Long story short, I got my erstwhile godfather (or so he says) sloshed during our training trip, he lets slip one of the secrets behind the Yondaime Hokage's trademark Hiraishin no Jutsu, and that gets me off my lazy ass and into detailed study of that seal.

And of all my luck, when I decided to do a test run, I ended up in some strange place called Einbech, with a bunch of strange things after me, yearning for my blood.

The failed Hiraishin attempt also did SOMETHING to my chakra coils - after one visit to Cougar Gai (no relation to Might Guy), I found out that it had severely impaired my ability to use jutsu, setting me back ninja-wise.

That was the good news.

The bad news, was that the demon fox sealed inside me was also a stranger to this place. It basically bled its wanderlust over me, leading me to spend the first few weeks on an impromptu Rune-Midgard world tour.

The airship trip was a blast, though - but don't tell it that.

Anyway, with no connection to the earlier cities, I ended up in the Steel City of Einbroch, where I found a suitable living as a gofer for old man Garrison. Shortly after that, they saw that I was literally some sort of ingenue with a gun, signed me up for the guild and classes under both Master Miller (still snicker a bit whenever I think of his name) and Lady Selena.

In between that, there was my day job of stacking crates over at Alberta and shuttling potions from the Merchant's Guild all the way to the former city of Morroc.

First time I saw that, it seemed like I saw Konohagakure again.

You see, right now, my relationship with the entity within me has grown somewhat complicated - I can only use my ninjutsu when its chakra is burning within me. Thanks to a few tips on sealing courtesy of one Dark Snake Lord, I've managed to give the demon fox back even a small fraction of its energy and stopped the energy transfer process.

That may have given me monstrous chakra reserves, but with my coils only going online when I pull on the red chakra, it's not exactly great for covert action.

Now a finely-tuned Dusk - with optional scope, customized stock and enchanted with the powers of one Valkyrie Randgris - is a different matter entirely.

Thanks to my ninja training, I've rediscovered something that was thought to have been lost in Rune-Midgard: sniping.

Boom goes the Dusk, and off goes the Raydric's helmet.

Off goes the Alarm's mask.

Boom to the head of that annoying Anubis.

Of course, the fox has been gleeful ever since I allowed it to see the world through my eyes. The way it is now is that it'll take five hundred years or so to get back its power once it leaves, but out of some weird sort of gratitude, it's not leaving if it meant me dying.

That was just bizarre. Demon logic is really strange.

Even fearsome beings like the Doppelganger sense the demonic presence in me and stalk around warily instead of running into me, intent on cleaving me in twain with their instruments of death.

Come to think of it, these past few years, I've treated the fox as one of the people precious to me, despite all that had happened to me because of it - besides, three years to the day that I arrived here in Rune-Midgard, it told me the story of how it ended up sealed within me.

What it told me about that day it came to Konoha made me wonder... and plan ahead as to what I'd do when I return home.

Sadly, it would seem that Konoha doesn't seem to welcome me - judging by those nameless, faceless, soulless ANBU following me not long since I've made my return.

"...being a ninja is a lot like riding a bicycle."

"What is a bicycle, and what does it have to do with being a ninja, ero-sennin?"

So yeah, that was about the time when Sensei (...after several years, I've had enough run-ins with perfectly normal people whose perversity made my former master look like a saint) and I ended up in Spring Country, and I found out why the saying stuck.

You never really outgrow being a ninja... even if you change specialties somewhere along the line, your mindset still revolves around the three basic disciplines of ninpou: genjutsu, ninjutsu, and taijutsu.

They may have been good at keeping hidden, but being taught by a master at tracking and stealth made it worth jack shit.

The demon fox inside me kind of helped, too. Enhanced senses and all that... Come to think of it, this reminded me of that time in Payon...

"Ugh..." I said. This was supposed to be another run-of-the-mill visit to Payon Cave to find artifacts that would supposedly help me find this world's leyline (to help me return to Konoha, of course).

What I didn't bargain for was for the ancient evil known to the people of Payon as the Dragon Zombie to rouse from its slumber.

Yeah, yeah, I know, you're going to start to blame the fox.

That game had gotten old, way, way back. If this was Konoha, I would have let it slide. But here, where I found a new life, they still come up with this sort of crap?

Especially since it was the one who made sure that I wasn't chomped on by the Nine Tails' running around these parts - and that it had also told me the story behind its attack on Konoha.

Hence why I needed to survive and return: I had to prevent a catastrophe from taking place.

Punching Uchiha Madara's face in was a good enough consolation prize... and this was about the time I found out several things: one, the Kyuubi had both genders and no gender simultaneously. That I found out from the caretaker of the Nine Tails', and my erstwhile ally in putting this monstrosity down.

The other thing was that I somehow understood the Nine Tails and their caretaker now. Part of the seal's many effects, or so they said.

"I'll hold them off, you get the kits to safety," I growl out, the red chakra beginning to flow off me. Seemed like my instinct to protect those precious to me leaked over to the fox, and seeing its distant kin in danger, acted accordingly.

It was a cave once, but I ended up blowing a shortcut to the surface (along with a good chunk of that thing's torso) by following Moonlight Flower's instructions on how to use my billowing chakra as an offensive attack.

Bring the purple Rasengan to play, and then it's game, set and match.

(After what had happened, everyone still goes after the Nine Tails and their caretaker for sport, or so I heard, but I managed to get the people of Payon to not go after their young, and to only subdue the caretaker.)

Anyway, if you want to ask me how relevant this whole thing is to the here and now, is that Moonlight Flower - the Nine Tails' caretaker - is much, much stronger than a group of ANBU.

So seeing the animal masks made me feel relieved, and at the same time on edge.

Here comes the first shot - illusory attack. I chug a purple slim to ward off the effects and pretend to be affected by it, so the first two - Panda and Cat - charge in.

Okay, time out. Something's up. Is ANBU really this lame, or did I get so awesome? They seem to move like molasses - I can even sense what they're intending to do with their attacks.

It's not that. Our adventures in Rune-Midgard have given us a wealth of experience you haven't even begun to sort out.

What do you mean?

Just think of it as culture shock.

If you say so, I tell my tenant.

Out comes the revolvers, and I track down the needles thrown by Panda mask, shooting them down easily while I raise my arm to have my gun block Cat's overhead sword strike.

I sense fire nearby, and break off as the fireball comes careening towards me. Damn. I've dodged the worst of Satan freaking Morroc's attacks, you think you can nail me with that cherry bomb of yours?

Strangely, after I leap away from the fireball, I grab my hat in midair before coming down, allowing them to see my hair and face.

"...Uzumaki Naruto?" Cat asks, recognizing my whisker marks.

"One and the same," I answer, raising the brim of my hat and giving the Konohagakure ANBU my trademark grin.

"So... what's happened since I've been gone?"

The leyline actually manipulated time and space?

It appears so.

If you don't mind me being too curious for my own good, why?

I hear the fox sigh in its cage.

It would appear that if the leyline followed the line of time and space normally, you would be dumped in the literal middle of nowhere.

...nowhere?

Given what little I know about the nature of reality as I am confined within you, the leyline seems to know that the logical location of four years since our departure would not exist in our absence.

That bad?

Our existences would seem to be linchpins that keep this world together, to speak a little more simply. Who knows what horrors would have happened had we not been around? Your kind has the saying about how wanting for a nail cost the kingdom.

So I basically spent four years in Rune-Midgard for free?

Relativistically speaking...

...yes.

Cool.

Leave it to someone like you to see the breaking of many of the cosmic laws that bind this universe and others as... 'cool'.

Believe it.

I shall try to see if we had been followed by anyone or anything from Rune-Midgard. Try not to disturb my attempts to commune with this world's chakra network.

All right. Want me to speed things up with that weird green energy thing?

Not now, but thank you for considering it.

Very well.

I opened my eyes to see a distraught Jiraiya and an irate Tsunade facing me down in the Hokage's office.

"Uzumaki Naruto... explain yourself."

An hour later, I was wrapping things up with them.

"...So basically, that's how I got four years' experience under my belt - I've lost a significant amount of abilities as a ninja, but I've gained a whole other skill set in exchange. Several creatures were also given to train and assist me, because of their respect for the fox's power: I learned how to harness more of the fox's power efficiently with Incarnation Samurai, advanced seals from the Dark Snake Lord and the Lord of Death, chakra to matter conversion from Kiel Hyre, among others..."

"...All that aside, how did Konoha fare while I was away?"

"Naruto, it's only been a week since you tried to use the Hiraishin," Tsunade said.

Well, fuck me sideways.

By the time my fourth year in Rune-Midgard passed, I was already resigned to the fact that everybody would pass me by.

Looks like I still am Konoha's most surprising ninja.

...and I'll be all set to add "and Gunslinger" to that, too.

Everyone won't get to know what hit 'em.

I smiled at the Hokage's statement, and got ready to take on the tail end of my apprenticeship with Jiraiya in a Konoha training ground.

"...so you'll agree to finish here within limits of Konohagakure?"

"I see no problem in that, ma'am," I reply. "There might be a few things I'll miss, but that can come after we send the Akatsuki packing, right?"

"That's right."

"What are we waiting for then, sensei? Let's go and make the most of the week."

It was actually rather hilarious - I was dragging the Toad Sage onto the training field, promising him a chance for him to do his research if I got a chance to have my old skill set analyzed.

Yeah, there's no place like home.

prologue: end

notes:

Sheriff Star
Equipment Type: Accessory
Weight: 0
Level Required: 95
Job: Gunslinger
Slot: 1

STR, AGI, INT, VIT, DEX, LUK + 10
CRIT + 10
Lucky Dodge + 5
Critical Attack damage increased by 10%
Max HP increased by 30%
Max SP increased by 20%
Increases HP and SP recovery rate by 50%
Skill "Coin Flip" always succeeds
25% chance to not use a Coin when using single Coin-based skills
Halves coins consumed when using multiple Coin-based skills
25% less SP consumption when using skills
25% increased damage when doing long-range physical attacks
Halves ammunition consumed when using "Trigger Happy Shot", "Full Buster", "Desperado" and "Spread Attack"
Reduced duration of status abnormality by 66%
Double effect of Potions
50% increased duration for "Gatling Fever" and "Last Stand"
Reduces cast time of "Tracking" by 50%
10% chance for long-range physical attacks to ignore target's defense
5% chance that "Lex Aeterna" will be cast when using "Bull's Eye", "Tracking" and "Triple Action"
Reduces damage from all types of monsters by 350% when user wears "Elite Shooter's Suit"; "Sheriff's Manteau" and "Battle Boots"

Wild Cloak
Equipment Type: Garment
Weight: 80
Defense: 85
Level Required: 90
Job: Gunslinger
Slot: 1

HP +500
Flee +10
+5% Resistance to all attacks
Additional 10% resistance to long-range physical attacks
Name is treated as "Sheriff's Manteau"

Naruto has the following weapons in his arsenal:
+8 Gatekeeper-DD
+10 Dusk of Elimination
+10 Double Aqua Garrison
+8 Diligent Inferno
+8 Soldier Gatling Gun

Optional weapons:
+8 Lever Action Rifle of Chinook Double
+8 Double Bloody Wasteland's Outlaw

His equipment is the following:
+4 Romantic Gent
+9 Prime Elite Shooter's Suit
+9 Deluxe Wild Cloak
+9 Superior Battle Boots
Sheriff's Star
Sheriff's Badge

And Kiel Hyre's "chakra to matter conversion ability" is simply Dante from DMC's ability to create bullets from his demonic energy. Our boy won't do running out of ammo at a crucial moment, won't he?

This story will probably go for nine more chapters (another hint to the other other series that inspired this story).

Oh yeah, if I could, I'd have David Nowlin and Greg Weber do the music and lyrics for this story's theme song.

And to answer your questions, no, I never planned for Naruto to get any second or third-job class skills. He's broken enough already. Also, the reason Naruto has a lot of +10's and +9's is because just like in canon, Naruto is unbelievably lucky.