Chapter One- The Lucid Melody of the Ghost

Chapter One- The Lucid Melody

Towards the afternoon, a young twelve-year-old was sitting on a chair with his arms crossed and wearing a sour look, waiting for punishment for his latest charade. His hair was the brightest blond, and across his cheeks were three whisker-like marks; he also wore an orange jumpsuit that proclaimed to the world ‘look at me!’, and his skin was a deep tan. His most noticeable characteristic was his vibrant, cerulean blue eyes that were stained with mischievousness, and an underlying sorrow that was well hidden.

This was Naruto, also well known as the container of the legendary Kyuubi.

“Ah, man!” Naruto muttered to the air, sitting outside the Hokage’s office with his arms crossed, looking quite miffed. “I’m really going to get it when I see the old man!”

Being the village pariah, it was only natural for someone like himself to want attention, and to get it by any means necessary. To match such a grandiose want, he had vandalized the Hokage monument in a glorious fashion, painting graffiti over it as much as possible.

Naturally, he had been chased afterwards. Even with a couple of chunin tailing him at high speeds, they couldn’t touch the foxy boy. Unfortunately for the blond, Iruka had caught him not even one minute after his initial escape. Most of the time he got away with it because they couldn’t catch him; Iruka was another story. For a second, Naruto wondered if his teacher had the nose of a bloodhound.

He was snapped out of his thoughts as the doors next to his chair opened up, revealing Iruka wearing a satisfied look.

“Hokage-sama wants to talk to you, Naruto,” Iruka told him, his victorious look only adding wood to his student’s fiery temper.

For the teacher, he cared so much for Naruto. The poor boy was the village outcast, and as such, he did the things he wanted so that he could gain recognition from his own home. Loneliness was a terrible curse that no one should have to bear; the scars it left on one’s soul were something that couldn’t be healed easily.

It was something that he was familiar with himself. Because of the Kyuubi attack, Iruka had lost his parents. Ever since then, he had acted like Naruto while growing up, pulling pranks to get everyone’s attention.

But it still didn’t give his student an excuse to get away from his punishment.

“All right, fine,” the twelve-year-old muttered in defeat, still looking upset that he had been caught again.

With slow deliberation, he stood up and began to walk into the Hokage’s office. He was almost tempted to hum a death march, but that would only piss off his teacher even more.

“Ah, welcome, Naruto!” a grandfatherly voice greeted.

Despite the fact that he was trouble, he still couldn’t help but grin as he saw Sarutobi, the Sandaime Hokage, and the head of Konoha. Growing up, the man was something akin to a grandfather that looked out for Naruto as if he was his own grandson.

Sandaime motioned for the boy to take a seat, while Iruka stood overhead. With a sigh, Naruto took a seat from across the desk, laden with countless piles of paperwork that the old man had yet to finish.

“Why did you do that to the Hokage monument, Naruto?” Sandaime still wore his friendly smile, finding some humor in what the little prankster had accomplished.

The boy across from him was quick to answer, “Because someday, I’ll surpass them all! Then the village would have to respect me!”

Sarutobi chuckled, earning a frown from Iruka. “That day may come eventually, but for the moment, you have to clean your mess.”

Naruto groaned in frustration, and allowed his head to fall.

Sandaime knew Naruto well enough to know that he just wanted acknowledgement; and what better way to do it than to become the strongest in the village?

“I knew you were going to say that,” the little prankster moaned.

“I trust Iruka to keep track of you so that you don’t get away this time,” Naruto growled in aggravation; there was no skipping it this time.

At that moment, a jounin came in. He had a senbon in his mouth that reminded Naruto vaguely of a toothpick.

He leaned on the doorway, and raised an eyebrow at the three that were in there. It looked as if Naruto had gotten caught again. But he had to give it to the little guy, he knew how to pull a prank, and then get away with it. At least until Iruka got onto the case.

“Ah, Genma,” Sarutobi said. “What brings you here?”

“Just some business that requires your help,” he answered. He then looked at Iruka, “and maybe his as well.”

The aged man sighed, and nodded towards Iruka. “All right, we’ll be there in a couple seconds.”

Genma nodded as well, and quickly left the room, leaving its three original occupants in silence for a couple seconds.

With a clearing of his throat, Sarutobi returned all attention on him. Naruto’s scowl reappeared as he realized that he wasn’t quite off the hook yet.

His grandfather-like figure slowly stood up, and then put his hands behind his back. Despite being up there in age, Sandaime was still a man that commanded respect, and could still hold his own, maybe even better, in an S-class battle.

“This will take us a couple of seconds,” Sarutobi told Naruto, as Iruka joined him at his side. “Until then, please behave. Okay?”

“Got it,” Naruto muttered as he crossed his arms.

The blond watched his brotherly figure leave, followed closely by Sarutobi. He then sighed in relief to be out of their presence as the doors shut behind them.

In truth, he was very tempted to pull another prank, this time on the old fart. But, with some reluctance, he squashed the idea. It would be better to not make his punishment bigger than it was already. The next level up was losing his ramen privileges, and he couldn’t live without his precious comfort food for more than one day.

After a couple of minutes, Naruto finally became restless and began to pace around the room. All the while, he muttered to himself how his punishment was unfair. But at least it was the king all of pranks he had done. Probable even better than his incident with the Hyuga family.

That had been a funny story, and he was thinking about doing it again. One of the members had once again been a prick to him, and it was high time that they remembered who the hell they were dealing with.

This time though, he was going to have to pull something a lot more extravagant than toilet-papering the entire compound, something so embarrassing that the family would be subject to the entire village’s laughter.

He was so deeply entrenched in thinking about his prank against his offenders that he hadn’t been paying attention. His smirk was quickly wiped away as he ran face first into an unbalanced bookcase.

“Who the hell put that there?!” he shouted as he hopped backwards while rubbing his now sore nose.

Naruto stopped his worrying about his nose as he heard a creaking. Slowly turning his attention back onto the bookcase, he found that it was slowly leaning forward.

“Ah, crap,” he fearfully muttered to himself.

With a yelp of surprise, he jumped backwards as it fell on the ground with a large boom. Dust flew up into the air, obviously from the bookcase having not been touched for a long time.

Catching his breath, he suddenly realized that he had just accidentally vandalized the Hokage’s office.

“Oops,” he quietly told himself. Then he began to fret and sweat.

Already he could feel his precious ramen slipping through his fingers. He paled, already hearing Iruka’s yelling, and the Hokage telling him no more ramen for a week.

“I’m in deep shit!” he yelled as he clutched his head, staring at the fallen bookcase with despair.

Naruto…

His head perked up as he heard a ghostly voice. When he tried looking around the room, no one, not even a phantom, was there. But when he turned back to the wall where the bookcase had fallen from, he had found a pair of thin, red doors.

The sun-kissed boy suddenly mischievously grinned as he realized that the bookcase had been hiding something. Maybe it was the old man’s signed editions of those perverted books he read. If that was the case, he had found the ultimate bargaining chip available in the village. No more punishment!

With excitement, he moved over to the doors, and quickly pulled them open. What he had found was not something he had expected.

“Whoa,” he muttered, completely shocked by the sight he was seeing.

Behind the closed doors was a sword on a stand; a sword so beautiful that it looked as if it was carved out of crystal. Swirls of blue veins made from another material ran just under the surface of the blade, and the handle of the sword looked as if it was made from silver. Intricate seals lined the handle and the hilt, twisting in beautiful patterns.

But it also had to be the most unusual sword he had ever seen. Growing up, he had only seen the katana, nodachi, and so on, but not once had he ever seen a double-edged sword before. It was also very large, at least six feet in length and four inches wide, and it looked very hard to use compared to the other weapons he had seen throughout his life.

Even then, he couldn’t help but stare at it in wonder.

It was weird looking at this weapon, almost as if he had seen it before in a dream that he had forgotten for the longest time. It was as if he was connected to this weapon by a set of unknown circumstances. A sense of nostalgia struck him as his eyes ran up and down the blade.

“Naruto!” a voice shouted.

Caught by surprise, he quickly spun around to find Sandaime looking at him. He couldn’t tell how the senior was looking at him; it wasn’t anger, it wasn’t surprise, but it was something more comparable to expectation, as if this was something that was eventually going to happen.

“It was an accident!” Naruto quickly shouted, holding up his hands in defense.

“Yes, yes, I could tell that right off the bat,” Sandaime told him, still holding his hands behind his back as he came up next to the boy.

“Hey, where’s Iruka-sensei?” the whiskered boy asked, scratching the back of his head at the loss of his teacher.

Sarutobi sighed; he was personally glad that the chunin wasn’t here to see Naruto’s find. “He’s still taking care of business. I heard a crash, and then quickly came over to see what had happened.”

“I’m…” Naruto tried to apologize, only for Sarutobi to hold up a hand.

“It’s okay, but what you’ve come across is quite the find. I thought I hid it better than that.”

The blond turned his attention back onto the sword, watching as light reflected off the crystal blade.

“What kind of sword is it? I’ve never seen one like it,” Naruto asked, keeping his eyes on the elegant weapon.

“It’s a rarely used type of sword, called a claymore,” Sarutobi explained, smiling as he continued. “It once belonged to a very famous person.”

That quickly caught Naruto’s attention. “Really? Who!?”

“It once belonged to Yondaime Hokage’s equal in battle.”

“No way! No one could be stronger than him!”

“She wasn’t stronger, just equal to. This is the sword that once belonged to a woman named Kushina.”

Seeing Naruto keeping his attention on him for once in his life was a sight that had made Sarutobi chuckle. He knew that the young boy idolized Yondaime more than anyone, both as a person to surpass, and as a person to look up to as a hero.

For a second, the aged man wondered if that view would change if he knew about the Kyuubi.

“What else?” Naruto yearned for more knowledge of Yondaime’s only equal. He had to know about her. It was also his first time of hearing of a woman that was that strong.

With an aged sigh, albeit, while still wearing a gentle smile, Sandaime continued. “She was once the Yondaime Mizukage, leader of the Village Hidden in the Mist, a shinobi village like our own. At one time, she was the leader of a group known as the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist, who were all known to be some of the greatest weapon masters on the planet.”

Naruto’s eyes widened in awe as he heard the tale, and continued to stay silent, even as Sarutobi paused to let what he had said sink in.

He went on with his tale. “Kushina was different. She rose above the rest, just like Yondaime did. There were few that could fight her, and even fewer that could last in battle against her.”

Sandaime pointed his finger at the sword, making Naruto turn his attention to it as well. “That weapon was hers. It is called Suigin (Quicksilver, more lit. Mercury, or Water Silver), and it is said that whoever uses is able to change the course of the world.”

“What happened to her?” Naruto asked, having a gut feeling that Kushina’s story was as sad as Yondaime’s.

His suspicions were only confirmed as his grandfather-figure sadly sighed. “Much like Yondaime, she passed away. How she did, though, is often left to imagination, but I do know that she did die around the same time as he did.”

“Oh.”

Slowly, his face contorted into sadness as he heard of how another figure that was just as strong as the Fourth Hokage had passed away for reasons beyond their control.

This woman, Kushina… the more he thought of her, the more he began to idolize her like he did with Yondaime. She had been awesome, able to almost take on anything, and only have to wipe the dirt off her shoulders afterwards. It was awesome, and he wanted to be as strong as her, and Yondaime Hokage.

“Well, we better get to cleaning up this mess,” Sarutobi softly spoke.

He moved over to the twin doors, and quickly closed the hidden cabinet that held Suigin. After that, he moved over to the fallen bookcase, and, despite his frail-looking body, picked it up with just one hand. After returning the shelf to its place, he turned towards Naruto.

“You wouldn’t mind picking up the books?” he nicely asked. “It wouldn’t be good for my back to bend over and pick them up.”

“Oh, yeah,” Naruto said, shaking his self out of his thoughts of becoming stronger than a certain Mizukage, and Hokage.

Without arguing, the young boy quickly began to pick the mess he had made by accident, his mind still running the story he had heard over and over in his head.

As Sandaime sat down at his desk, watching the little prankster as he cleaned up, he let his own mind drift, remembering the faces of two particular people that had died much too early. And before him was someone that was the only remnant of who they had been, sharing a bit of who they had been.

He then turned back to where Suigin was hidden. A part of him wondered if Naruto would be able to wield such a fickle weapon.

Suigin is a very unique weapon. Users of the weapon don’t find it; it finds them.

Kill Joy no Jutsu (A.K.A. Author’s Note): This is the newest story from Lithius, and I do hope you enjoy it. This is the popular contest winner that won by a landslide on my polls; it got more than fifty percent of the vote out of the two hundred that voted.

If you’re wondering how I came up with this idea for a story like this, I had been thinking one day ‘I wonder what would have happened if Kushina had been a kage of some kind’. It sounded good, so I thought ‘what the hell? I’ll do it!’

Whew, I’m not dead. If you are wondering what’s wrong with my other stories and why I haven’t updated them yet, then please understand that I have hit the worse rut I’ve had in a long time, and it will be a while before I get out of it. Good news is that, the next time I update everything it will be all at once. I’m hoping to get them done before school starts, but don’t bet the farm on it.

Yes, I know that this chapter is a little short compared to what I’m normally known for, but this is the opening chapter, and I had to start small to set everything up, which is something that I usually like to do.

Some of you are wondering ‘why a claymore?’ If you’ve read Memories of the Nevermore, you would know that a zanpakuto called Amemitsukai has a shikai form that is a claymore as well. Honestly, the claymore is my favorite type of sword, and it sort of ties in my writings, as the main character in my original story also uses a claymore. To capitalize this, I own a couple that are currently hanging on my wall.

Haku will be a girl in this fic, and unlike my others, she won’t die. As a matter of fact, she’ll be playing a pivotal role in this story.

Much like Shattered Eyes, Pairings are not confirmed!! They’re only twelve in the story, and depending on how well this story does, I might make it a two part series like my other two. I like doing this because it leaves it open for everyone, though this time I might be leaning towards a particular pairing, but what it is… I’ll keep it to myself.

Original jutsu and Bloodline Limits will be posted down here.

Now that the technicalities have been taken care of, sit back, hang on tight, and enjoy the ride.