1,393Arrival
"Uff."
He impacted the ground hard, the stone floor cracking around him.
Standing up Naruto rubbed the small of his back as he looked around at his unfamiliar surroundings. A moment ago he had been fighting together with Kakashi and Guy against Tobi, trying desperately to destroy the statue containing the other tailed beasts and now he was here.
Wherever 'here' was.
It couldn't be an Illusion. B had said that he was basically immune to illusions because Gyuki could simply disrupt his chakra, instantly freeing him from any illusion. He and Kurama had only been working together for a few minutes but he couldn't see any point in not helping him out if that was the case.
'Kurama?'
Silence.
"What, he fell asleep or something?" He muttered to himself.
He was definitely in an alleyway, his surroundings made of stone, and it seemed to be the middle of the day, judging by the sun.
Well, nothing to be done about it. Better find some way to get back.
Bending his knees Naruto tried to jump to the roof of the house next to him. In that moment he realized two things.
One, he was completely exhausted. Everything was sore and even thinking about doing anything was painful. That part he could deal with. You didn't train three years with one of the Sannin without learning to ignore exhaustion.
Two, and much more importantly, he couldn't feel a single drop of chakra in his body.
He almost collapsed to the ground again.
In a moment of desperation he crossed his fingers. Maybe he had just imagined it.
"Shadow Clones!"
Nothing.
Not even a cloud of smoke. Just nothing.
Now he was panicking. Even if he was exhausted, this had never happened to him. Even his own stamina normally ran out well before his chakra did.
Maybe it was a Genjutsu after all?
He went through the motions Jiraiya had pounded into his brain. Focus your chakra. Disrupt its flow in one moment.
"Release!"
This...wasn't good. Not at all.
"What the hell am I gonna do?"
Having spent about twenty minutes in blind panic Naruto finally took stock of the situation he was in.
He still had his clothes and wherever he was it was pretty warm, so he wouldn't freeze.
Sixteen Shuriken, five Kunai, rations for two days, two smoke bombs, one spool of wire, a pouch of caltrops, enough money to last him a week and three soldier pills. That last one was a real godsend.
He popped one into his mouth as soon as he had found them, still on edge about his chakra.
"Shadow Clones!"
Nothing. Again.
Oh, this was worse than he had thought. Much worse. Something was very, very wrong.
Before he could start panicking again he caught himself.
"Calm, Naruto. Just be calm. You can do this."
He sat down and closed his eyes and just focused on his breathing. He had learned to meditate. He could do this. Deep breaths.
In. Out.
In and out. Be still.
Okay. What were his next steps.
Find out where he was. Try to find out what was wrong with him and his chakra when he was a bit calmer. If not find a healer, they had those everywhere didn't they? He was exhausted, so water and some place to sleep.
Good, good.
In and out.
He'd have to be careful. Exhausted as he was and without chakra he was...vulnerable. He could remember feeling like this. He had been a child then. He wasn't one any more and he wasn't completely defenceless.
Get his situation sorted out and then find a way back to the battlefield.
Course decided he stood up.
Both sides of the alley led to streets full of people. Picking a direction at random Naruto headed out.
He emerged into wide street, market stalls on both sides, and people moving in between, some browsing the wares, some haggling prices, and others obviously just coming through.
Bolts of cloth, fruits, some he knew some he had never seen before, pieces of jewelry from headbands to rings, animal pelts, and a hundred other different things.
Had there been Shinobi jumping across the roofs it could have almost been something right at home in Konoha even if the diversity of wares was barely a comparison and there were a lot more people here than there had ever been in his home.
The street was wide enough for two carts to pass each other and still have room for foot traffic and the stalls lining the sides, and still people were crowded together.
He was already getting curious looks from people that passed him by. Obviously because of his clothes. What the people were wearing looked nothing like the things he was used to seeing. Men and women alike were clad in robes in bright colours, yellows, reds, oranges, and greens chief among them.
The clothing resembled what he had seen from some of the clans in Konoha even if it was more colourful.
Some men wore weird hats with a monkey's tail hanging down their backs and others small caps only large enough to cover the top of their heads. Most people were sporting long, dark hair in some kind of braid instead of the varying colours and lengths he was used to.
Almost everyone was obviously a civilian even if some carried weapons. There was at most a dozen people who carried themselves like they knew how to fight.
Most importantly.
He couldn't understand a word these people were saying.
"This sucks."
It took two days for some kind of normalcy to set in. Finding water had been easy enough, there were a lot of wells and fountains all over this city. Finding shelter had taken a bit longer.
Most of his money was less than useless. When he had tried to buy food the merchant had taken one look at his bills before laughing in his face. His coins at least he had been able to use. They hadn't lasted long but he had been able to buy at least some food with them, so he still had his rations.
Without money, well usable money, he couldn't pay for a room or bed. Instead he been forced to look for other places to sleep.
Turns out he had started in a rather wealthy part of this city. Once he had travelled further he had found an older decrepit building without any inhabitants. The roof wasn't whole any more but until now it hadn't rained and the weather was quite similar to the summers he was used to.
With a base of operations he could now start actually planning specifics.
His first visit to a healer had been pointless. The man hadn't understood a word Naruto had said, only looking at him more and more confused before sending him away.
He had to learn the local language. Without even a rudimentary understanding, he couldn't find out much of anything about his situation and while he could steal the necessities for survival that could come to bite him in the ass quickly.
He needed to find a way back so that he could help his friends. That had been the whole point of training and then setting out to help on the battlefield. But now he was stuck here.
There was one bright spot in all of this though.
His chakra wasn't gone.
Not completely any ways. Though with the quantities he now had access to it might as well be.
Not enough for a Shadow Clone, not enough for a Rasengan, far from enough for Sage Mode or using Kurama's chakra. He barely had enough chakra for one Replacement or normal Clone.
And wasn't that a biting bit of irony. He had tried for months to get that stupid technique down when he was still in the academy and now he could finally accomplish it, when it was way too late and of no use at all.
He hadn't been able to dispel any illusion but Kakashi had told him once about his run in with Sasuke's older brother Itachi. Apparently, that one couldn't be dispelled through the normal methods either and inside time didn't work the same. Three days had passed inside without a single second passing in the outside world.
If that was the case and he had been trapped in something like that, he hoped that even taking days wouldn't mean that he would be too late. He just had to find a way to break the illusion.
For now he'd play along with whatever was going on here. Either he really was trapped in that kind of illusion or somebody had transported him away from the battlefield. He just had to figure out which was the case.
Entering his mindscape had yielded some positive results at least. Kurama was still there, though nothing he had done had been able to wake the lazy old fox up. To him Kurama had felt as weak as he felt himself. If he hadn't been looking at the giant furball he would have sworn that he wasn't there at all.
The omni-present aura of malice and power was gone. Which probably explained his other findings.
When he had stumbled upon a fountain the first time, he had simply rushed over, intent on drinking some water. After quenching his thirst he had gotten a look at his reflection.
His whiskers were gone.
He had scrubbed at his skin, looked for another reflection and tried once more to dispel an illusion. No change. That had been when he had noticed his hair. It wasn't as spiky any more.
His blonde hair now fell normally around his head. It was still unruly and wild, still nowhere close to the straight hair of his mother, but it had still changed.
This was getting worse with every new thing he learned.
One last jump and he was back on the roofs.
Naruto carefully crept across before peeking over the edge on the other side.
He hadn't been seen.
Confident in his successful evasion he continued on and ten minutes later he was back in his hideout. He had 'loaned' a couple of books for his own use.
At first he had only spied on the lessons of children, trying and mostly failing to learn particularly quickly.
With the books he would be able to use the remaining time he had every day to get further. That in addition to his continued unnoticed participation in lessons and the tidbits he could work out by walking through the market every day should allow him some grasp of the language soon. With nothing else but getting enough food to survive occupying his mind, he hoped that he could get a good grasp of the language in a month.
A month. Way too long but he couldn't do much about it. Even if every day he spent here weighed on him heavily. He just had to hope that he could still make a difference then.
And his chakra was still a no-show. At least it hadn't disappeared entirely. But it was still only where it had been a week ago. Not enough for much of anything.
Maybe he could figure out a way to store some chakra outside of his own body? If he could get even one Shadow Clone created, that would cut down a lot on that time.
For now he relaxed into his attempt at a comfortable seat, made up of straw, two ragged cloaks, and an old pillow. He had restrained himself from stealing anything besides food up to this point. Ideally, he'd find work as soon as he was capable enough to ask the necessary questions and not be cheated out of his pay.
Opening the first book he began.
'I'm pretty sure this word means 'old'.'
How he hated reading. But it had to be done.
"That should do it," Naruto muttered, breaking the quiet of his hideout. The sun was already setting and the sounds from outside were growing more and more quiet every minute as people stopped spending so much time outside.
Lowering the knife he had been using, he tracked the flow of blood from his arm. Drop by drop the jar at his feet was filled with the red fluid. It took about twenty minutes until he judged the jar filled sufficiently and bound his arm.
Normally he wouldn't have bothered. Wounds like that used to heal in seconds. Now they didn't.
Shaking his head at the thought he moved onto what mattered. He couldn't do anything about it right now.
Arrayed in front of him were a dozen jars, all filled with his blood. And he could sense the chakra contained inside.
Acquiring all those jars had been difficult but after he had the idea that couldn't stop him. It had taken almost two weeks of bleeding himself daily to acquire the amount of blood he now had access to.
Best get started.
Moving over to a corner of his hideout, he started emptying the jars into a big bucket, the wood floor cool under his bare feet. That one he had bought by doing some work on a construction site. Even without his chakra he was stronger and quicker than any normal civilian which only served to endear him to the foreman despite his broken YiTish.
At least that had worked out somewhat according to his plans. His speech was coming along quite well, even if he couldn't do much more than the necessities.
But that progress had also yielded more information about his situation. Apparently, he was in a country called Yi Ti, somewhere in Essos, wherever that was. When he had asked after the Elemental Nations people had only looked at him like he was crazy, though maybe that had just been his pronunciation.
The maps he had seen didn't contain anything that looked even vaguely familiar.
But with every day he got better and better, which meant he could read more and faster. He had even come to enjoy it somewhat even if it was still necessity that was the main motivator.
If his current endeavour worked out, he should be able to move on to better sources of information the next week. Even if the Elemental Nations weren't on any maps he had seen yet, that didn't mean there wasn't any mention of them anywhere.
Emptying the last jar, he put it to the side.
In the past he would have thought it a weird sight, gallons of his blood accumulated in a bucket. Now he ignored it.
Naruto took deep breaths while placing one foot in the bucket. The blood was cool but felt no different around his foot than water would.
"Okay, let's do this." He crossed his fingers and focused his chakra, specifically in his submerged foot. If everything went according to plan he could use the chakra in his blood to replenish his own reserves as he used them.
"Shadow Clones!"
A small puff of smoke filled the empty space in front of him. That was a good sign at least.
The smoke slowly cleared as he lowered his hands back to his sides. As soon as the first bits of orange became visible Naruto had to suppress the urge to whoop in excitement.
He stepped out of the bucket, quickly cleaning his foot with a rag, and got closer. The clone looked stable and functional, though seeing his changed features on his clones face really drove home the changes.
"Take that! Man, I knew I could figure this out, who says only Shikamaru can come up with a good plan." Naruto spent a minute celebrating his achievement.
One clone would propel his progress forward to a huge degree, and it also opened him up to find out more about this city and his next steps.
"Okay, let's get to the books. The faster I figure this language out, the faster I can find a way to get back!"
For the first time in his life he actually felt some enthusiasm about the reading he had to do.
The next day, Naruto walked the streets with a spring in his step. He had set out to look for work that would pay better than lugging rocks and stones from one place to the next. He hadn't been very successful yet.
With the amount of trade he had observed in this city there had to be caravans or shipments of goods. And caravans meant trade routes and trade routes meant bandits and therefore hired protection.
That kind of work suited him just fine, it was standard Shinobi work after all. With his clone working through the night he could afford some time away to earn money and most likely information. No one talked as much as merchants during boring travel time.
That was probably true of sailors too, but his experience in that regard wasn't as plentiful. Ships probably travelled further as well and for now remaining relatively close was important.
So he'd look for a caravan transporting goods over land. From the maps he had seen the city he was in, Asabhad, was one of the first entry points into Yi Ti which meant lots of trade coming in and going out, both by ship and by cart.
Naruto ignored most of the people around him and focused instead on the buildings. He was looking for some kind of trade district or trader's hall. He already looked near the port but it the shipments that were handled there were strictly for travel on shipboard.
When he had tried his luck at what passed for a merchant guild here he had been turned away at the door.
He had walked to the outskirts of the city before finding a well travelled road and promptly followed the first larger caravan. They'd know where to go.
The group of wagons slowly snaked its way through the streets before arriving at an enormous building, split into two distinct parts, surrounded by hundreds of not thousands of people. The first wagon was stopped at one of the giant archways that gave entrance to the larger part of the building.
A clerk exchanged a few words with the driver of the wagon before motioning for the wagons to enter. As they passed the clerk, two associates of his quickly counted the volume of goods before reporting their findings back to the man.
The sight of wagons being loaded for transport raised his confidence that this was the right place.
Drawing near the sheer scale of trade in this city struck him. The diversity of things on sale had already clued him in but seeing this building, which was more than two times bigger than the whole Academy complex had been before its destruction, really drove that point him.
"Man, this is seriously awesome."
You could probably spend hours just walking through this one building and still have thing left to see.
"You! Yes, you! Stop-" he didn't quite catch the rest of the sentence as the speaker started obviously cursing at him. He didn't understand most of the phrases, but there was definitely some comment about his mother in there.
Naruto turned his head towards the irritated tone.
The man was sitting on a wagon, wildly flailing his arms and continuing to yell at him. Naruto barely understood even half the words and phrases but the meaning was clear enough. Stepping out of the way looked around for a good place to start in his search of work.
He could probably just wait near one of the entrances and look for any opportunities that presented themselves. With the amount of activity this place saw there had to be a ton of them.
Ten minutes of nothing later he ran into a problem he hadn't thought of yet.
"You alone? What will you do? Deathdance?" He wasn't sure what that last part was supposed to mean, it was probably some saying he didn't understand.
The merchant gave him an incredulous look before continuing on his way.
Okay, he could have expected that one. Tazuna had been disgruntled enough when four people were tasked with protecting him, especially because three of those had been children. Dismissing a single guy was probably reasonable.
But finding some other people to work with couldn't be that difficult. There had to be some kind of headquarters for that. Or maybe that always done individually by the merchants?
If he was better at sensing chakra over distances he could have looked for any other Shinobi around. They would probably know, but unless he just ran into one that wasn't likely. Or maybe there were no Shinobi in this city?
Tanzakugai had been like that. Without a mission Shinobi weren't common in that city either. That would explain why he hadn't seen anybody using the rooftops to travel yet.
Maybe a bar or inn? He had spent enough time in those kinds of places while travelling with Jiraiya to know that they you could meet all kinds of people there.
He'd stay here a bit longer but that would be his next option.
Six different attempts with similar results later and Naruto was on the lookout for the next tavern, his earlier positive energy slightly dampened.
The nature of the establishment he ended up at was easy enough to discern even without being able to read the name. The second word was 'bandit' but he wasn't sure about the first one. Didn't really matter anyway.
Naruto opened the door to a room filled with conversation, laughter, and alcohol.
He wove through the crowds of rowdy drunks towards the bar. He wasn't a particular fan of alcohol after Jiraiya had made him try Sake once or twice but not ordering anything would look weird.
Before he could reach his target, he was hailed by someone at a table to his left.
"Hey sun-head, over here!"
Naruto spotted three men sitting together with drinks on the desk, though none of them looked drunk yet. He couldn't remember seeing them before now. Sun-head was an obvious enough identifier, seeing as he was pretty much the only one in the room that didn't sport dark hair. The waving was another clue.
He made his way over, careful not to bump into any of people walking through the room. He had no interest in a confrontation right now.
All three of them gave him considering but friendly looks as he arrived. They were all older than him. One was about twenty, the other two probably four and eight years older. More importantly, they all had weapons on them, though that was true of most customers here, and looked capable.
"Sit, sit." The one that had waved him over, motioned to an empty spot at the table.
"Thanks." That made them look at each other in amusement.
"Not from here, are you? Well, does-," that next part he wasn't sure about, but the guy shrugged his shoulders so he could guess at the meaning easily enough.
"We hear you are looking for work." That phrase caught his attention immediately. He had focused his learning in that direction early on, so he was more confident in understanding related sentences.
"Yes, didn't have many luck." Once more they looked amused and he quickly caught his mistake.
"Err, didn't have much luck, I mean."
"We're looking for a number four." - 'Maybe that just means fourth.'
"You have interest?" This time the middle one asked the question. His voice was surprisingly deep though it sort of fit.
Naruto nodded his head vigorously, a grin worming its way onto his face.
"Yes, yes!"
"Start is one day after tomorrow," the oldest one stated.
Naruto clasped the hand extended towards him in agreement. They hashed out the details over the next twenty minutes.
That day, for the first time since he had arrived in this place, he went to sleep with his mouth stuck in a grin. He wasn't home yet, but this was a good step forward.
Tomorrow he'd look for another healer and with work acquired he'd have some money soon.
Progress, even if it was slow.