Chapter 4: The Weight of Names and Nails Beneath the Skin
In which truths are exchanged like daggers, the foolish prove wise, and the slow violence of becoming is laid bare on bloodied stone.
The sun crawled toward its death in the west, bleeding orange and red into the sky like a throat slit slowly. Below, the village stirred with the usual hush of twilight — a lull before the night's secrets awoke.
Naruto stood upon the rusted, dented crown of a forgotten water tower, boots clinking against the iron as if daring it to remember better days. Beside him stood Rias, fire-haired and aristocratic in her silence, the last rays of sun caught in the crimson strands like the bloodstains of an ancient queen.
She looked at him — a boy not so much standing as stalking the horizon.
"What are you going to do now?" she asked, though she already knew the answer. It wasn't in his words — no, Naruto Uzumaki didn't speak his plans. He wore them like armor and wielded them like a blade.
"I am going for my next target," he said without looking back. "And then… we go home."
The water tower groaned beneath their departure, as if mourning the moment. They leapt from its metal shoulders and vanished into the city's arteries, where shadows stretched like claws and the ghosts of the dead danced behind every shuttered window.
Naruto had picked him not because he was weak — no, weakness didn't interest Naruto. He picked Rock Lee because he was pure. And in this rotten world, purity was something you needed to test. Slice it open and see if it bled green like envy or gold like loyalty.
Lee was an orphan too. A kindred ghost — abandoned by fate, devoured by obscurity, and then reborn through effort that bordered on insanity. Naruto had watched him for months now. A boy with bad form and worse odds, punching the air like he could beat destiny into submission.
There was beauty in that. And danger.
"Why him?" Rias asked as they crossed rooftops, tiles cracking beneath their feet like eggshells.
"He's the kind of fire that burns quietly," Naruto muttered. "But give it wind…"
"You think he'll join us?"
"No." Naruto grinned, sharp and deliberate. "I think he'll try to kill me. Then we'll be friends."
She looked at him like one might study a myth, uncertain if he was real or some cruel fable made flesh.
"Is this how you made all your friends?"
Naruto shrugged. "The good ones."
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Rias stood in silence, the wind combing crimson fingers through her hair, her gaze distant as the burning hues of twilight bled across the Hidden Leaf. It was a village of quiet monsters, cloaked in smiles, buried in layers of tradition and lethality. A crucible of power wrapped in the skin of civility.
And beneath it all, the thrum of violence.
The word shinobi had once meant nothing to her. Now it rang with the weight of history and whispered genocide.
These were not men—they were forces.
A single jōnin could move at Mach 300. That was not a number. That was a nightmare with feet. That was lightning in flesh. That was a human missile cradling destruction in chakra-stained fingers. One moment here, the next inside your lungs with a knife where your breath used to live.
They could lift a thousand tonnes without grunting. Destroy a village because they sneezed too hard during a jutsu. They smiled like saints and fought like immortals. More than a hundred such calamities resided within Konoha's walls. They didn't defend their home—they were the home. The shinobi were not born to serve. They were born to conquer.
And yet, they bowed.
To gilded puppets in silk thrones.
Rias asked herself the same question over and over, the way mortals ask why stars don't fall: Why? Why did such monsters serve the Daimyo?
Naruto had explained it with the offhandedness of someone describing a scratched boot.
"It's politics," he said, "and blood—lots of it."
The Daimyo held what the ninja could never possess outright: trust. Power could kill a king. But influence could crown a tyrant.
The rich aristocrats ruled the hearts of merchants, the minds of civilians. They controlled the flow of rice, ink, and gold. In times of peace, their words built empires. In times of war, they bought allies with favors shinobi couldn't even pronounce. Why fight over a province when you could own it with a signature?
Their armies were not chakra-wielding immortals—but numbers were their gospel. Thousands of samurai, trained in formation warfare, armored in steel and obedience. Against a lone genin, they swarmed like ants over sugar. Even a skilled chūnin could be drowned in sheer force of will.
And for every Hidden Leaf, there was a Hidden Mist. A Hidden Cloud. Rivals and enemies and opportunists, eager to leap on a faltering village like wolves to a bleeding deer.
If the Hokage moved against the Daimyo, he wouldn't just fight one kingdom. He'd invite five wars. Maybe six.
But there was another reason. One Naruto hadn't said aloud—but Rias saw it in his eyes.
Some shinobi still believed in things.
There were fools who fought for peace. For honor. For children who didn't have to be tools of war. And these—these beautiful, tragic fools—would never let the shinobi rise above the world they claimed to protect.
They were the leash.
They were the reason the Raikage hadn't already installed his own emperor, or the Tsuchikage hadn't melted a castle just to watch it fall. Idealism was rare in this world—but it was sharp. It cut deep. Deep enough to draw blood from ambition.
Rias, a devil born of war and diplomacy, saw the familiar pattern play out. In her own world, devils clawed at humanity's gates, while the Fallen schemed behind every shadow. The white-winged angels, so smug in their sanctimony, stood watch not to protect—but to possess.
The human world was the prize. A beautiful, burning prize.
And then there were the dragons.
immortalless, ageless, and uncaring.
The agents of chaos in a three-way war of ideology, greed, and survival.
She smiled, bitter and amused.
Different battlefield. Same game.
Naruto didn't say much as he walked beside her, heading toward another soul to recruit. Another fighter. Another brother. He moved like a man who didn't need answers because he was the question.
A storm in human form.
But Rias now understood something dangerous.
Naruto didn't bow because he was weak.
He bowed because he was waiting.
Waiting for the moment the leash snapped.
And immortals stopped pretending they were men.
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A sky bruised violet watched over them, the clouds moving like bruises across a battlefield ceiling. Beneath it stood Naruto, the storm wrapped in skin, and beside him, Rias, ever the curious shade—eyes gleaming with unasked questions and a thirst for answers the world feared to know.
They stood at the edge of Training Ground Eleven—a ring of trees and soft grasses pretending peace, though anyone with sense could smell the sweat soaked into the soil. Wooden posts stood like gravestones, chipped and cracked from thousands of blows. A formation of rock at the entrance yawned wide, the village's clever little storage trick hiding tools of discipline and self-mutilation behind a friendly stone face.
There, in the center of the arena, was Rock Lee, mid-motion.
He moved not like a boy but like a soul trying to punch its way out of damnation. Each kick, a sentence of defiance. Each punch, an appeal to the immortals who had cursed him. Weights clinked at his limbs, dragging him down to reality, but never enough to stop the flight of his will.
Naruto watched, arms folded, a smile that wasn't quite mockery twitching at the corner of his mouth. Here was a kindred monster, born of rejection and fire.
Lee had no chakra tricks, no glowing eyes or spectral bloodlines to fall back on. No fox gnawing in his gut, no prestige to lean on. Just flesh. And pain. And resolve honed into something diamond-edged.
Naruto, forged in madness and healed by that same cruelty, had burned himself too many times to count. Bones cracked for the sake of strength. Flesh melted to test limits. He walked through pain like most walked through sunlight, never noticing it anymore. That was how far gone he was. The thing that made people human—their instinct to survive, to avoid suffering—had been boiled out of him.
But Lee?
Lee chose this.
With an average body and a condition that barred him from jutsu or genjutsu, the world had handed him a prison and laughed. And instead of breaking, the boy had sharpened his resolve on its bars.
"Cripple," they called him. Children parroted their parents' contempt. Cruelty bred in cradles.
But Naruto saw past the insult. He saw the monster in the making. Not the demon-tailed kind—but the real kind. The kind that made legends weep for not having met them.
"Obsessed," Rias whispered beside him, eyes following the blur of kicks and punches. "Is it bravery or delusion?"
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The field was dead, save for the rhythm of fists against air and feet thudding like drums against dirt. Dust curled around Rock Lee like incense smoke around a zealot mid-prayer, his body a blur of motion, the kind only born of obsession and silence.
Then came footsteps—not silent ones, not stealthy or restrained. Confident. Purposeful. The kind of steps you took when you wanted to be heard.
Lee halted, sweat dripping down his brow in rivulets that traced his cheek like tears never cried. His body turned mid-punch, neck craning to catch sight of the intruder.
A boy, hair like sunlight scraped across rusted gold. Beside him, a girl with crimson strands so rich they mocked blood. Lee didn't bother with her. Shinobi didn't train their eyes to admire beauty—they honed them to measure threats, to read intent.
And this boy—this Uzumaki Naruto—was radiating intent like a furnace radiates heat. Not hostility. Something worse. Conviction.
"I am Uzumaki Naruto," he said, as if the world should already know.
"I want you as a friend."
It was not a request. It was a declaration.
Lee blinked. He'd expected many things. A challenge. A jibe. Perhaps mockery. But not that.
"Okay… Do you want to practice with me?" His voice remained friendly, the default setting for a boy who had nothing but fists and sincerity to offer the world.
Naruto's gaze sharpened.
"Lee, I don't mean that kind of friend. I meant a real friend. The kind where trust is not spoken but lived. The kind who sees your soul beneath the bruises."
Lee tilted his head. Confused. Interested. Hesitant.
"What does that mean?"
"Real friends know each other. Deep down. Do your friends really know you? Do you know them?"
The words struck like a kunai sliding past bone to nestle in marrow. Lee's lips parted. Then closed. His eyes fell to the dirt—sweat-drenched earth that had taken more truth from him than any classroom ever had.
"No," he whispered. "I don't think I do."
Naruto stepped closer, the air between them thickening.
"But friendship isn't your only goal, is it?"
"No," Lee admitted.
"I want a team," Naruto said. "A clan made not of blood, but of battle and trust. I want you because I see potential. I see fire behind your fists."
Lee frowned. "You speak like a teacher. Who gave you that right? What makes you think you're fit to judge others?"
Naruto smiled then. Not mockingly. Not kindly. A smile forged of hardship. A smile that said I have bled more than you, and I wear my scars like armor.
"Good question," Naruto said. "And I'll let you decide how you want the answer."
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Lee looked at the boy and saw nothing. That was the trick of it.
A confident smile. A relaxed stance. Orange, immortals-damned orange jacket fluttering in the breeze like a challenge issued by a madman. But that was all surface. And Lee had learned—slowly, painfully—that the surface often lied.
Still, his mind clung to the facts like a drowning man to driftwood. Naruto Uzumaki. Twelve. Top of the normal class. No bloodline. No history. No fearsome clan name clinging to his shoulders like a crown of iron. Just a ghost of a smile and eyes that burned like they'd seen hell and found it unimpressive.
He couldn't be serious. He shouldn't be serious.
But then came the words.
"I advise you to stop thinking about what you know about me, since the things you know will only lead you astray."
They slipped into the air like a dagger into flesh—silent, clean, deep. Lee stiffened. The boy had read him. Not just guessed. Known. And that was enough to twist his footing just slightly, to bend the confidence of a born martial artist into something cautious, something aware.
"Stop the weight seal and fight me seriously. I will keep it fair by not using any jutsu."
A lesser boy would have scoffed. Laughed, maybe. But Rock Lee didn't laugh at honesty. He lived by it. Bled by it.
He met the boy's gaze. "Thanks for the warning," he said, and touched hand to seal.
Chakra hummed like a storm in a bottle. The seals peeled off like scabs from old wounds—one on each leg, one across his chest. And the weight... immortals, the weight lifted. Five hundred kilograms fell from him like a coffin lid cast aside.
There was freedom in it. And shame.
Lee didn't forget the history—how Fuinjutsu was the legacy of a slaughtered clan, the Uzumaki, their brilliance so profound that the world chose to butcher them instead of stand beside them. Art turned to threat. Legacy turned to funeral pyre.
Now, this boy bore that legacy, knowingly or not. And Lee… he wore it like borrowed bones, seals gifted by academy coffers, temporary enhancements painted over fleeting youth.
But Naruto? Naruto had worn them to their limit.
His muscles, his bones—reshaped, broken, regrown like saplings forced through stone. He had taken pain and made it a tutor. Let his body die a thousand small deaths beneath that weight, until strength became his second skin.
The gap between them had vanished.
"Good," Naruto said with a grin that bit like frost. "I'm hoping for a good performance."
Then he leapt back—ten meters, silent as breath, light as ash.
Rias, who had watched all with regal quiet, spread her wings of ethereal flame and drifted to perch upon a boulder. A queen watching warriors dance their violence beneath the sun.
The space between them was sacred now. A stage for something more than a spar. A place where boys stopped pretending and started carving their truths into the world, one strike at a time.
And in that quiet—charged, heavy, holy—Rock Lee bowed.
Naruto did not.
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The sky above Konohagakure hung like a cracked mirror, blue and empty, mocking with its serenity. Below, atop the broken edge of a forgotten courtyard where weeds sprouted through fractured tiles and yesterday's glory rotted unseen, two boys met.
No, not boys. Weapons in skin.
One wore fire behind his smile and shadows where a heart should be. The other—Rock Lee—stood with his fists clenched in the memory of a promise: that hard work could surpass genius.
Naruto didn't believe that. Not really. He believed in dominance. In pain. In the lesson hidden behind agony. But he wanted to test the theory, and Lee? Lee was the experiment.
They didn't speak much. Words were for those who hadn't bled yet.
Lee struck first. A blur of green—a comet wrapped in cloth. He moved like wind desperate to prove itself, legs churning, a phantom in motion. A punch came from Naruto's right—clean, controlled, academic. Naruto bent backward with boneless grace, palms meeting chest and shoving.
Lee rolled with it, landing with a grace that spoke of broken bones mended in sweat, of nights sleeping under stars with tears swallowed down. The older boy didn't falter. He came again.
A sliding tackle.
Interesting. Naruto's eyes gleamed, feet dancing. This was not a move taught in any academy manual. This was street war. Dirt-under-fingernails technique. Naruto dodged, but Lee was not done.
The boy twisted mid-slide, heel grinding against stone, turning his momentum into a spinning hook that came for Naruto's ribs like a whisper with teeth.
Naruto blocked. The impact screamed up his arm, a jolt that echoed in bone. He skidded back—trails gouged into the earth beneath him. It hurt. Not enough to matter, but enough to be remembered.
He laughed.
Lee's breath came ragged. "You're—"
"Fast?" Naruto finished, still grinning like a child handed a knife and told to play.
Then he moved.
Lee never saw it—only heard the words, a prophecy sealed in a whisper.
"This is going to hurt."
A flicker. A blur. A crack. Lee was airborne. The hand on his leg might as well have been iron wrapped in intent.
The world turned upside down.
Then impact—his spine kissed the earth with a thunderclap. Dust screamed upward like spirits fleeing a corpse. But Naruto wasn't done.
Second slam.
Lee's vision popped. Lights. Sounds underwater. A third impact and he no longer remembered how many limbs he had.
Naruto finally released him.
Lee lay still. The sky looked back down at him, cold and unimpressed. Pain sang lullabies in every bone. His body had become an archive of torment, and every joint a library of regret.
Naruto crouched, tilting his head like a fox curious about the broken toy.
"Good endurance," he said, voice without mockery. Just fact. "Guess all that bone-breaking training is paying off."
Lee didn't answer. He couldn't. He was busy counting how many teeth he still had. His heart thudded against his ribs like a prisoner desperate to escape.
How can he be this strong?
This is too much for someone so young... even the elites…
The realization sank in with the weight of a tombstone.
Naruto hadn't used chakra. Not even a whisper of enhancement.
And still, he'd shattered him.
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Training Ground Eleven. The air was thick with the scent of sweat, scorched grass, and the soft promise of ambition strangled in the cradle.
Lee, that fool, that limping lion with iron in his bones and rust for hope, stood like a statue fractured at the joints. His breath came in ragged gasps, ribs heaving under the strain of the day's ritualistic self-destruction. Weights hung from his limbs like penance—his whole body a church of pain built to house his undying will.
Across from him stood Naruto Uzumaki, barefoot prince of nothing, bastard child of the storm, grinning with the arrogance of someone who had already walked through hell and found it boring.
"How?" Lee spat between broken breaths, his body a cracked vase holding the last dregs of defiance.
Naruto tilted his head, as if amused by the question—as if it were a riddle beneath him. "Do you want to know?"
The silence between them stretched, a thread pulled taut between the shattered and the mad.
"Yes," Lee gasped. His voice held no pride. Pride was for those who had a choice.
"Then join my group," Naruto said, voice low and electric. "Train with me. Fight beside me. My goal is freedom—real freedom. The kind that lets you walk across borders without bowing your head. The kind that lets you look immortals in the eye and not blink. I want power not to dominate, but to move. And I want a team who can do the same."
Lee blinked sweat from his eyes. "You're talking like a lunatic. You're within walking distance of the Hokage Tower."
Naruto's smile sharpened into something that could cut steel. "I fear no one. Let the old man hear—what's the buzzing of an ant to a dying empire?"
Lee's lips twitched. "You're not wrong," he muttered. Perhaps the madness in Naruto's voice was only a louder version of the voice in his own head. Perhaps it had always been there, whispering between bruises and nights spent vomiting blood behind the academy.
He glanced at the ground, a battlefield stained by thousands of solo battles. If this failed—if he failed—he'd simply return to it. Return to the rocks, the silence, the ache.
"I'll join," he said.
"Excellent," Naruto said, clapping a hand on his shoulder like a general christening his first soldier. "You're the first to swear loyalty. That makes you Senior Brother."
Lee blinked. "What?"
"I'm just starting to gather the team. You're the first. The cornerstone."
Lee stared at the mad blond boy. "Just… please tell me you'll show me how to get stronger."
Naruto leaned in, and there was something terrifying behind his eyes. Not cruelty. Not pity. Understanding.
"I'll show you how to walk through fire and not burn," Naruto said. "I'll show you how to shatter mountains with your bare hands. You will bleed—but you will become someone the world can't ignore."
And Lee, the so-called cripple, the discarded, the footnote—he believed him.
Somewhere beyond the forest, the wind shifted. Birds stopped singing. And the world—a world ruled by bloodlines, fate, and silent chains—felt the weight of two boys dreaming recklessly under the sun.
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Naruto Uzumaki was not the kind of boy you invited to dinner unless you liked your silverware missing and your guests indoctrinated. He spoke like a prince born in exile, confident, certain of some distant throne the world had forgotten but he remembered. Pain didn't deter him—it amused him. And now, with blood still drying on his knuckles and a newly broken companion in tow, he laughed. Because this, to him, was the beginning of something beautiful.
Lee wheezed from the cracked bench near the training post. His ribs echoed his breath like cracked bells—each inhale a sermon, each exhale a confession. Naruto's fingers wrapped around his forearm like iron roots sprouting from his madness.
"Of course, we'll gather others," Naruto said, eyes already gleaming with too many futures. "But training never stops. Practice dulls pain. Sharpens spirit. And stops us from becoming old, fat, or dead."
Then, casually—like someone picking up a stray stick—he lifted Lee to his feet.
"Please… be gentle."
"What was that?" Naruto tilted his head. "Harder?"
Lee wisely swallowed any protest. There was no reasoning with fire once it had decided to burn you. And Naruto, whatever else he was, burned bright.
"I warned you," Naruto said, slinging the older boy across his shoulders and breaking into a sprint. "My methods are mad, but look at me—I'm still alive."
And that, perhaps, was the most terrifying part.
Rias Gremory stood atop the nearby rooftop, still and silent, a modern oracle dressed in school uniform and shadow. The wind pulled at her crimson hair, but her eyes never left the screen in her hands.
The camera Naruto had entrusted her with hummed quietly, recording every kick, every gasp, every broken guard. She rewound the footage again. Slow motion. Pause. Reverse.
The boy fought like a storm trying to pretend it was human.
She didn't understand him. Not yet. But she was beginning to feel him. The way a deer feels the approach of wolves long before they see them. There was something in him—coiled, waiting, patient as plague.
And she… she had the first draft of his gospel in her hands.
The clinic by the training ground had seen better days—and better patients. But the woman at the front desk barely blinked when Naruto barged in with a battered Lee slung over his shoulder like yesterday's regret.
"Emergency," Naruto grinned.
"Sprained ego?" she asked dryly.
"Cracked pride. Fractured worldview. Maybe a bruised rib."
She motioned to the left. "Bed three."
By the time Lee emerged again, posture straightened and breath mostly unlabored, he felt… different. Pain hadn't left him—it never really does—but it had morphed. Now it was purpose. A bruise with direction. A limp toward something that might resemble destiny if you squinted hard enough.
He looked at Naruto, who was already squatting beside the window, fingers twitching with the hunger of unfinished plans.
"At least tell me," Lee muttered, "that you're going to show me how to get stronger."
Naruto grinned, the kind of grin that made devils pause and reconsider damnation.
"Not stronger. Free."