Chapter 1

Disclaimer: This is a piece of fiction. I do not own or claim to own the Naruto franchise. Lawyers remember the Streisand effect and sue someone else.

"Wake up!" An annoying voice shattered the serene nothingness of my sleep.

"Guuuh"

"Caius I swear if you don't move I'll drop you in the lake." The voice was irritated now.

"I'm up, I'm up," I respond as I begin to stretch out the aches. I was Caius Nonus and I was still stuck in a barbaric shithole. I was a in my 12th year.

"Just looking out for ya buddy, Arminus would drop the hammer on you if you overslept again." The smirking figure of Furianus stood above me. His curly brown hair framed his narrow sharp face and blue eyes, that combined with a smirk that could piss off a statue.

"You only care because he would punish you too" I respond.

"Caius I'm hurt. Are you suggesting that I am not acting out of concern for my friend and comrade?" Furianus dramatically overacted.

"Sarcastic bastard" I murmured as the fog started to dissipate in my head. I sighed and started to get ready.

"Where are Cato and Muscius?" I asked as I started to change into my day clothes.

"They already ate," Furianus said over his shoulder as he left the tent. I cursed. Whenever I was last to get up, I always ended up with the worst food and since I usually was last, I had developed a tolerance for overcooked and cold food. Leaving the tent, I found out it was a bread day. It's hard to screw up bread, so I have a decent meal for once.

"Well you seem to be happy this morning." Cato said with a smile. Cato is best described as attractive. He exudes friendliness in every manner of the world.

"Not eating garbage will do that to a person." I respond in between bites of my bread.

"Well, you wouldn't have this issue if you just woke up earlier. Muscius eats the best out of all of us, yet he only gets up thirty minutes before you. If you tried you could definitely be first." Cato monologues. Muscius was Cato's identical twin, but despite this they were completely different. Muscius could be called a reverse of Cato. He was a quiet kid to Cato's gregariousness.

"You know I will never manage to do that"

"Not with that attitude," Cato responded in a fake cheery voice. I gave him a death glare.

"Camp revelry is starting," Muscius who had just walked up mentioned in his usual calm voice. I stuffed the rest of the bread into my mouth. I followed Cato and Musicus as they walked to the center of camp.

Revelry is one of those things that serves no real purpose. I mean we do get a speech every day, but it's always the same thing. "Be productive, your existence is costing the empires tax denars so you better be doing something to make yourself worth it to the taxpayer."

Hell, the only reason I'm here costing the empire money is good o'le fashion nepotism. My dad is the client of one of a senator's friends, so my good o'le father pulled the right strings so that I could get included in an apprenticeship to learn about architecture and get my foot in the door for military life. So I both have been trained to be a capable soldier, that means I could march, fight, and kill. I hadn't gotten to do any of these besides marchings. Unfortunately, I ended being placed to the one spot where it wouldn't be a cake walk. Caledonia is a wild land, aka a barbaric shithole, it's in the north of Britannia. The funny reason we are here is that we are part of a pilot program to start conquering areas that were determined too hard to pacify by regular means. So instead the higher ups had the brilliant idea to start by building cities up here as outposts to romanize the barbaric locals. I was part of a specially designed legion that was created for purely engineering matter, but we were also military trained.

I was a part of the twenty first legion, it was specifically created by the emperor trajan. It was half the strength of a regular 6000 man legion, and it had only 5 cohorts. A design cohort, a trade skills cohort, and 2 labour cohorts. I was part of the design cohort. We were then split up into several centuries, and then into tent groups. In our tent group was Me, Arminus, Cato, Muscius, Furianus and 3 other guys. Varus, Tiberius and Scaevolus, all professional soldiers. So that's why I'm here, costing the empire tax money, and suffering while doing it.

The legate walked up onto the lectern and turned towards us. He was a gruff looking guy with a sharp jawline. He had the a look about that he would kill any man who disobeyed him, thankfully for us he was rarely seen so we had never learned if he was capable of that.

"Legionaries at attention!" Yelled the Centurions.

"Legionaries, Britons, and other allies of Rome! We still continue the work that has been bequeathed to us by the imperator. We will continue our work on the great city of Novum Caledonia. Briton allies soon you will see a beginning of the end of the raiders from the north. When we complete this city we will soon have conquered the end of the world. So my friends and comrades are you're willing to help me with this endeavour!?" The legate yelled.

We all responded with a resounding yes.

"Now go to your centuries and begin today's work!" The Legate finished.

They mass of men split up into different centuries I included. A century was a unit of 80 men who were lead by a centurion. The centurion who lead our century was a greek man named Timon Theophileos. He was a freedman who had originated from the greek city of Corinth, he had a strange obsession with different cheeses, but besides that he was a normal greek.

After waiting in line for a while I eventually got to Timon.

"Caius, you just need to go ask Arminus what you have to do for today." Timon said quickly, before turning his attention to another. I left timon and returned to my tent where my mentor Arminus awaited.

Arminus is a greek educated architect, he also has served as military engineer for 10 years. In short, he's experienced and disciplined. The only problem is that he expects us to share his level of discipline, we don't.

"Timon should be by soon to give us our tasks for the day." Arminus said.

"Alright guys, we have a long list of tasks to do today. I won't tolerate any laziness from you guys" He stares at both me and Furianus. "Caius you have to go recheck the depth measurements, Cato I need you to continue recording the amount of brick we have, Musicians can you continue to recheck all the calculations done by Furianus and Caius, and Furianus I need you to continue observing me to direct foundation laying." Arminus commanded in his usual efficient voice.

"Arminus, can you let me check Caius's calculations? I think that would be better than making me watch how to land foundations. I wanna reduce Musician's workload and Caius is always sloppy with his works" Furianus sniped. He always did this with my work since I made small mistakes, but he also just wanted to get a leg up on me.

"Hey, my calculations were spot on and Muscius is going to check them anyway after he gets done with yours Furianus," I shot back. Furianus began to move his mouth to respond, but Arminus cut us both off.

"Silence! You will do as you're told, I will tell you what is best. Do you understand?" Arminus bellowed.

"Yes sir!" We both responded promptly.

"Now get to work!" He yelled. Even though he was yelling his face was an image of complete calm, he was strange that way.

Depth measurement was an easy job, but it was boring. In essence what I would do is get on a boat, with a rope and a lead weight, and drop the rope into the lake and count how many knots would be submerged. Giant wooden poles stuck out of the water at the points I would have to measure to mark the points where columns were expected to be placed. It would mean I would have to do a lot of rowing, a lot of counting, and a lot of writing.

I first walked to the tool shed, where all the major tools of construction were able to be rented out. I checked out the measuring rope, it was a heavy and cumbersome thing to carry, but I managed it. I then slowly stumbled my way to the boat-house. I saw the boatmaster right nearby. The boatmaster was a gruff latin man who always had a look of detestment on his face.

"What do you want boy?" he sneered.

"I have orders to measure the depth of the lake with lead weights." I replied in a professional tone.

"Well hurry up and get to work." The boatmaster said before he walked off to deal with a legionnaire who was fumbling with a set of paddles.

I sighed. It was going to be a long day. I grabbed a set of paddles, some bread, and then dropped the lead weights into the boat.

I got in and began to row myself out to the first wooden pole. Each pole would require 8 measurements around it and there were 200 poles. I was going to be out here a long day.

It had been a long day, but after a nice lunch of bread and cheese it seemed to be coming to an end as the sun began to dip below the tips of the mountains. My muscles ached, but I had managed to get almost half of the measurements done. I was in the middle of the lake, it had been a beautiful day. I began to bring myself to start rowing back when I heard a sound that sent a shiver down my spine. Thunder. I spun around in the boat, my back had been to the shoreline. I saw a massive front of clouds in the air and thick soupy fog on the ground and both were moving at full speed towards me.

My blood ran cold.

My thoughts quickly began to roam to an untimely death I grabbed my oars and began to row as fast as I could. It seemed like a wall or an landslide of white clouds were falling towards me, and as they appeared to get larger. That little voice screaming about my certain death became very louder.

I was overtaken when I was halfway to the shore. The wind came in with the force of a ballista shot, the boat almost tipped as the force of the winds smashed into me. The fog was as dense as soup, I could barely see 5 feet in front of my it was so thick. Quickly, my clothes and myself became wet as the driving wind smashed the fog into me at gale force speeds. Swells began to grow to the size where they began to top the boat and began to fill it in. I grabbed for a bucket that had been left in the boat and began to bail water out of the boat.

This went on for 30 minutes, but my arms already tired from a day's long work began to fail me. It was when my arms sagged uselessly after a last bucket of water that things went from strange to stranger. From what I could assume was the lakeshore a wall of fire burned off the fog. We were surrounded by a wall of fire that rose up high into the sky and surrounded me, the island, and even the lake in its entirety.

"Fuck" was the only commentary I could provide. It was in this moment that I thought this day couldn't have gotten any worse. It was at this moment that the then wall of fire began to advance inwardly. It had gotten worse, now I was going to burn to death. I surprised myself by not crying, calling for my mother, or even panicking. I merely flipped off the soon to be instrument of my death.

I was again surprised for not the 5th time today, when the wall of fire hit me, it didn't burn me. It still hurt, but instead of being incinerated by the wall of fire. I was surrounded by fire and lifted up from my boat.

I didn't have to many thoughts running through my mind, it The fire around me changed into some kind of white energy. I was sure I was hallucinating. Pain emanated from my back, it was like being branded. I wish I had been able to pass out, but whatever was happening to me was way too interesting. I soon found myself back on my rowboat, but wedged on the shore. My body was weak, but I was still alert. I watched as the fire and wide from the wall sets fires around the camp. Men ran around in panic. Animals were even more destructive. I saw all this from my slumped over position on the bow of the rowboat. It was at this point that I passed out.

"Caius wake up"

"Guuh"

"Are you okay?"

"What?" I raspily croaked out. I found my entire body to be hurting in ways I thought It couldn't hurt. My throat felt as dry as the desert. My eyes fluttered open as I managed to see Arminus staring at me with a look of both fear and worry. "Is something wrong?" I asked.

Arminius's face muscles tightened up and then relaxed. He must have composed himself, so he wouldn't overreact and cause me to panic. I was too tired to panic. Looking around I got a pretty good idea of the devastation that had occurred during my unconsciousness. Smoldering remains of wood and fabric littered the ground. Pack animals wandered freely. Many of the buildings that had been under construction had been burned to the ground. The smell of smoke was ever present. The camp must have been thrashed while I was asleep.

"Get up." He ordered. My limbs felt like lead.

"I can't" I managed to murmur. Arminus probably didn't feel like arguing since he hefted me like a sack of potatoes and carried me. As we moved through the camp it became even more evident how much the camp was trashed.

"What have you been eating Caius, your heavier than you look," Arminus sniped as he carried me.

"Mostly, burnt stuff" I mumbled.

"Remind me to make sure you stop eating that" He groaned. I just mumbled some protest. I fell in and out of consciousness during the walk back. I don't know how much time had passed before I had been laid in my sleeping roll. It was at this point my body wouldn't move at all, but my mind was still semi-awake.

"This kid is heavier than he looks." I heard Arminus say after putting me down.

"Or maybe you are just weak, I mean you are an architect and not a soldier first." Tiberius offered.

"Shut up, I'm going to get a doctor. He has a weird burn or tattoo on the back of his neck." I heard Arminus say. It was a while before I heard his voice return

"Doctor, what happened to him" I heard Arminus say.

"I just want to confirm what you told me. So you're telling me that this boy was stuck outside the camp during the firestorm and this is the condition he is in" I heard a different voice say.

"Yeah, he was slumped over a rowboat. If you don't believe me I can show you where it happened." Arminus replied.

"I'm not doubting you, it's just that his wounds seem to indicate that no burns were inflicted upon him except in the ring pattern on his back, and from what we all saw that isn't very likely. I don't believe in any gods, so allow me to suspend my disbelief in that it was simply divine intervention. The rowboat must have protected him. He will be fine, now I have more patients to attend to you. " I heard the voice of the doctor say. That was followed by footsteps. It was after this that I eventually fell asleep.

Now usually when one is asleep they expect to be unconscious, however that did not happen. Infact I found myself to be a white room.

"What the hell?: I said as I began to look around.

"Oh! You've finally made it." An unfamiliar voice from behind me said. I spun around. What greeted me was a sight that I could not have imagined. It was a face that was recognisable to almost any roman boy.

"Are you?" I began to ask.

"Yes, I am indeed Cincinnatus."

This is a rewrite of the first chapter.