Hmm… just an idea I had. Since my other computer crashed, my story Rei Tantei has lost a LOT of momentum, but fear not! I downloaded everything straight from my old hard drive and a new chapter might be out (hopefully) reasonably soon. Now, that said, I was just thinking about random stuff I have seen on superhero cartoons while reading "The Art of the Deal" by Case13 and after just watching the movie Ironman, I got to thinking. Reading that fic made me think, since he cannot USE his power in ANY way, perhaps something device or seal could do it for him? The most unpredictable ninja just became the most lethal civilian on earth! Not purely an "Ironman" Naruto, but a Tech Naruto fic. Be expecting a couple of cool things I take from other anime/movies/etc.
PS, I own NOTHING.
"Speech"
'Thoughts'
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Most people would think that Sarutobi Hiruzen would be the type of man to put people to sleep by talking. He was an old man and he had a lot of stories to tell. But to the contrary, his stories were very exciting, passionate tales about great heroes and were not boring in the least. The medic in front of him however, had no such stories and was not very passionate and as such, was very boring.
"… causing complete burnout of the…"
Sarutobi sighed, "Takeda-san, could you please make the final point?"
Glancing up, the man said, "The boy will never be able to use chakra in anyway, ever again."
"I sense…"
"The remnants of the demon's chakra, but once it has been used up, the damage it caused to the coils in saving the boy's life has left them destroyed. He will not be able to even channel chakra to enhance his strength or speed. His life as a shinobi is over. Period."
The old man sighed. "Thank you Takeda-san. You are dismissed." His eyes followed the medic out the door and then wandered to his desk where there was a few reports from the boy's condition, ANBU reports about the incident (though somehow the perpetrators were not caught), and a picture of him and the said boy outside a ramen stand with the largest smile on the boy's face. It had been taken earlier that day. As he looked at it, the frame bent and the glass shattered as he gripped the picture tightly. He waved off the ANBU who swirled into the room at the noise and cleaned up the mess. And as soon as the guards were gone he began to cry.
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Life was pretty boring for Naruto Uzumaki. Since the… incident, he stayed with the Old Man in the Hokage tower. The Old Man said he needed extra protection as the Hokage or something, but he knew that it was just a pity move for him. They took it. The power that kept him from getting hurt, just as soon as he began to learn how to use it, was taken from him. The Old Man told him why they did what they did. About the Kyuubi. About his father. About his role as a jinchuuriki, the "power of human sacrifice" of his village. Well he was tired of being sacrificed. At least most other sacrifices are just killed and are spared pain, but apparently his sacrifice was to live through it. Well not anymore. His face hardened and his fist clenched. If he was going to be a sacrifice, he was damn well going to do it on his terms.
"Hey jiji… can you tell me how to defend myself? I know that ninja stuff won't work, but can I do anything to just survive? I will need to know for when the villagers try again."
Try as he might, Sarutobi could not say no to those eyes… much less those eyes when all of the spark had been taken from them. "Well Naruto, I guess you could learn some styles of hand to hand combat, and some seals that drain ambient chakra for home protection, but there is little more…"
"I'll take it!"
---
The Old Man told him to join a jounin named Gai at a training ground for taijutsu at five in the morning, but Naruto was interested in the book he was given about seals. They could defend his home while he was away, and keep him safe at night! There was even one that diverted attention away from a fixed area, so even if they intended to follow him to his room, they would walk right on by as if he wasn't there! They absorbed chakra that people gave off in everyday life, meaning that he didn't have to worry about having to fill up the "battery" to run them either!
But he knew that it wasn't going to help enough. A ninja career promised pay, and time away from the villagers. It was his ticket out. Now though, news had spread of his condition, and everyone knew that it was practically open season on him. He needed a plan. He needed to make himself untouchable; someone who was needed so badly that no one would hunt him again. What would the village need terribly bad? Or…
What would a shinobi village need badly?
---
Naruto knew by heart the basic things that humans needed for life. Some things were needed far sooner than others, which prioritized them.
Air was first with two maximum minutes of consciousness and four minutes until death without it.
Heat was next. Mere hours in a cool place while wet or on a cold night would result in death. Preserving the heat of the body, through clothing or housing was vital.
Water was next, at three days of survival without the liquid of life.
Food was last on the list. As long as the other needs were met, a typical human could last three weeks to a month without food.
Though those things were the maximum times for survival, the health of the body would deteriorate without them.
However, these things were typically handled by the civilian side of the village. Food and water was handled by farmers and grocers, the clothing made by tailors, and housing was built by construction companies. Trying anything in that field was stupid since he had no capital to combat the other companies and make a name for himself.
Shinobi, as a military force, had the same human needs, but needed other things due to their dangerous work. All militaries need the same things to survive. Information was the absolute most vital. If you could not see the enemy, didn't know who the enemy was, or how to fight your opponent, you were finished. Next was deploying the right force to the enemy. Moving your ninja quickly and undetected was a must. Attack was the final component. Having attacks that could damage the enemy, skills that could keep them from attacking you, or skills that would protect you from their attacks was the last and, more often than not, the most focused upon part of a shinobi's training. Ninja around him seemed to try to be destructive powerhouses and then get killed in an ambush or in a trap, or they were never caught by surprise and died at the hands of a stronger opponent.
---
While Naruto knew the basics for life, it took him several weeks to observe shinobi enough to understand the vital needs they had for their life. Watching the newbies wouldn't give him any ideas since they needed to improve in everything, and the jounins knew when someone (or at least when it was just him) was watching, so they wouldn't give off any show of weaknesses for him to find an improvement or a weakness from. So he watched chuunin since the ANBU that guarded him whenever he wasn't at the Hokage tower tended to stay out of sight. However if he got caught by whatever chuunin he was stalking and they got ideas about a "defenseless demon" alone in the woods, the ANBU would silently show up somewhere behind the child and stare down the person until they decided that challenging an elite ninja was a bad idea.
At least he watched them when he could. Taijustu was taking up way more time than he had thought. Gai was a… weird person. Old Man Hokage said "eccentric" or some other fancy word, but Naruto was far shorter with his vocabulary, so Gai was simply "weird." However, the man knew more about fighting with his hands than most people know about their significant others. It was odd to Naruto that the man was still a ninja and not an instructor at the academy. While it was apparent to Gai right off the bat that Naruto's education had more than likely been deliberately sabotaged (He figured that there was a 90 percent chance of a deliberate sabotage by false information, and a 10 percent chance that it was sabotaged by a lack of teaching altogether.), Naruto himself figured that his method was rusty from lack of attention.
When Gai called an end to their practice spar (Naruto had not even touched the man. Even as he pushed himself to move faster as the fight went on, the leotard clad man seemed to dance just out of the way each time.) he announced that Naruto should "never quit his youthful ways!" but that he should forget everything he had ever learned about fighting. He threw punches incorrectly, over extended himself on his strikes, threw himself off balance by dodging incorrectly, and knew nothing about anticipating attacks. The only compliment that Gai had was that he was totally unpredictable, which was infinitely better to fighting with a set style that an opponent could memorize and defeat.
And so he learned. Gai practically twisted his legs into the stance he wanted them to always be and told Naruto that since chakra was used in his Iron Fist style of combat, that he would teach ancient martial arts that were lost to ninja, but were still used by samurai who wanted to integrate extra hits into their style. When Gai was asked why he couldn't just join one of the samurai dojos, Gai replied, "All samurai are sworn to their lords who pay for their training. If you joined a dojo, you would be required to serve that lord for the rest of your life or quit and be disgraced as a ronin. It is the ultimate shame for a samurai to leave or be told to leave his lord." Naruto had no more questions about samurai after that.
Working with Kempo was a little weird for the kid. The style was designed around sword play after it had been adapted from weaponless combat. Even samurai lost or had their swords destroyed (rare though the occurrence was since they generally wore three blades: the main katana, shorter wakizashi, and dagger-like tanto) and needed some sort of empty handed combat style. Naruto made a note to himself to get either a wakizashi or a tanto since he was barred from owning ninja equipment like the ninjato or kunai due to his newly minted civilian status. While it was relatively versatile, Gai only taught him how to hit critical points on the body that could disable someone with a hit or two to allow him time to get away from his attacker. (Or, a morbid thought ran through the boy's mind, time for him to stab the man to death and end the attack. He wasn't going to let someone get away with hurting him again.)
---
Sealing, Naruto decided, was extremely boring while sitting in the training ground at the Hokage's house. It was extremely useful for someone in his position, but some of the stuff wasn't practical for him. An exploding tag was cool, but since he couldn't put the chakra into the tag to detonate it, it was useless to him. Doodling a chakra siphon seal around the activation seal he held the tag in his hand for a minute before crumpling it up and throwing it over his shoulder. He went back to practicing his seal translation. Every action guided by the seal had to be written in a way that the chakra could run through the seal in the correct manner. He 'could' write the kanji for fire on paper and run chakra through it but nothing would happen. However, if he translated fire correctly onto the paper, and added chakra, it would make a flame out of the chakra. It would be hugely inefficient and not very powerful, but it would still be flame and would still hiss… wait hiss?
Naruto turned around behind him just in time to see the sealing tag as the source of the hissing before it blew up. Thankfully he was knocked unconscious by the blast wave because the second degree burns from the explosion and the broken bones from the impact on the ground would have hurt. Seriously.
---
When Naruto awoke in the hospital, he couldn't make much out due to it all being a white blur. As he began to regain consciousness, he could feel pain on the entire front of his body and face, and along his back. Cocking his head very slightly to the side, he could hear people talking next to the bed.
"I told you Hokage-sama; the boy's coils could NOT channel chakra, even the demon's, which is why he is not healing at his previous rapid rate. We will heal him and then he will be free to go. He actually needs to stay in the hospital this time rather than being fine and escaping."
"Alright. Make sure he gets treated and not attacked."
"Jiji…"
"Naruto are you ok?"
"I feel like shit…"
"Naruto just rest, I will get you a book to read or something, but make sure you rest so you can get back out of here ok?"
"Can I have the book I was reading when I got put in here?"
The Hokage sighed and looked down at that comment. "I am not allowing you to study that topic anymore."
"WHAT?!? I will…"
"NOT contradict me! You nearly died doing a very dangerous practice, an art that has killed masters of their craft, much less unsupervised children!!! You will not be allowed to have that book and you will not pursue the craft again. You may use what you have learned, it is not like I can stop you, but you will not experiment with new ideas you may or may not get. PERIOD. Do not challenge me on this."
Naruto could do nothing except stare at the man in shock. He quickly got over the shock, opened his mouth to retaliate before closing it, and glared at the Third Hokage before turning and staring out the window.
---
"Carefully. I need to do these things carefully. Screw the old man, I will do what I need to survive. I need to find somewhere to do this without getting caught. Also, I need to be able to do this safely. If I get into the hospital, the Old Man will find out why. Damn, why does this have to be so complicated? If I get hurt or get caught, then it is all over. I can use armor and metal plates for shielding around the areas where I am experimenting, but I can't get that stuff with me being who I am. And I can't be seen because I will get in HUGE amounts of trouble. The Hokage was risking enough by letting me, a mere civilian, look at books like those seal manuals. If I could use chakra, I could sneak the stuff I needed, but that was the problem in the first place. I can't use henge, and no one would believe a non-chakra disguise in this town. I can't even use a seal cover beca…
Naruto blinked.
The tag went off.
The tag, the explosive tag, had blown up.
Chakra was needed to activate the tag. Sure a tag could absorb the energy from a sapper seal, but chakra needed to be put into the activation seal to start the fuse. So the sapper seal he put around the activation seal worked?
Naruto smiled. Maybe this wouldn't be so hard after all. The Old Man said that he couldn't do sealing beyond what he already knew? That's fine. He couldn't be a shinobi? That's fine too. Kids pretend to be stuff that they aren't all the time. But in a ninja village, you have to watch everyone just to make sure that the people you think are real, really are, because pretending to be someone you are not is part of shinobi life.
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Author Note:
Kempo is not my strong martial art suit, so give me a break. I am a student of Iaido, but I have little experience in the strikes that can be incorporated into Kendo. Kendo is sword fighting as a large scale art (like samurai wars- hundreds of guys swinging swords, trying to kill each other) and Iaido is quick, precise killing with the sword, mostly by using battojutsu (the drawing of the sword from the saya [scabbard].). One time drawing the sword and within seconds the other guy is bleeding to death in the street, not hacking away at each other.
If you have questions/comments just send them, but remember, I don't bow to the masses. You can suggest something, but I may not use it. If it is a problem, I will try to fix it, or I will leave a note about why it needs to be that way. Remember, this is a dictatorship for everyone but me, including the laws of nature. You are the taters and I'm the dick. That's just the way I roll.
Note, I said the laws of nature. The laws of copyrights still apply. I own nothing at all. NOTHING.