Chapter Nine
Turf War
"Hmm, this is a decent deal here, boy."
Henroin looked over the papers once more, meticulously combing over each paragraph and section for any misrepresentation and word misuse. Too often has a legal document been made with subtle clauses and loopholes that ends up shafting him and his family. Those dirty, no good, backstabbing, cocksucking, lying lawyers.
The Salvatici crime family had been founded by him in the early 1920s with three of his cousins and other immigrant children. In life he had built the crime family with the blood and bodies of rivals and others who have gotten in his way. Deep down, he knew he would not receive the salvation of Heaven for his actions and the way he's treated his family and friends around him.
His eldest, his first son, is the kid he expected to inherit the Salvatici crime family. Henroin put a lot onto him and made sure he learned about the business as quickly as possible. Was he proud of what he did to him? No, not entirely. Would he have done things differently? Only some of them. But in the time that he was alive, he did what he could to prepare him for the future.
His second, his only daughter, had to endure the harshest of him for how much she looks like his late wife. He could not look at her without seeing his wife and it filled him with regret and anger but with no one to blame he turned his aggression on those around him. She would leave as quickly as she could, moving to pursue a nurse's education down south far away from the family in New York. By the time of his death, she had obtained her degree and was enjoying life comfortably with only minimal contact with him.
Then there was his youngest, his second son. He knew the boy was… different from the other kids at an early age, it was hard not to see it. He did not want to accept he had a kid that liked to dress up as much as his daughter, going so far as beating him everytime he acted any way he did not like. He now knows that he had been gay, a fact kept hidden from him but found out after he moved into his sister's and was starring in gay porns.
His family, his three precious children from his lovely wife, had become so estranged from him that he doesn't even speak to them now. They're off doing their own thing, his eldest coming around sometimes, but he was also busy trying to make his crime family survive in the afterlife. The Exterminations and hellborn gangs did not make it easy.
And now he just scored his biggest partner, a well-known bar and grill joint in the Entertainment District.
"Glad that you agree," the blonde Sinner grinned at him with that sickening bright enthusiasm. "Once you sign, ten percent of all profits made starting this week will go to you so long as you get me my deliveries in an accurate and timely manner. Do we have a deal, Henroin Salvatici?"
The Sinner mob boss looked up from his paper to look at Naruto critically and wondered if this boy was one of those types of demons. The ones that can actually strike deals with your soul as the price. It is likely considering the stories he's heard out of the district but he doubted he would care at this very moment. There were clauses and conditions that, if met by either side, would make it justifiable to pull out of the deal without incurring the penalties.
Finally, Henroin extended his hand to shake. "We have a deal, Naruto Uzumaki."
Naruto grinned at the crime boss and shook the man's hand, a glow enveloping their hands as the spiritual contract was sealed between them. This is the first time he has done this with another, a skill he didn't even know he possessed but heard about the major Overlords having. Granted, he should have known there was some kind of magic tied to his agreements as that would explain why Percy is compelled to keep doing his work.
But now he has the kinks of this skill worked out and now he can make these deals whenever he wants.
That means no more outrageously raised fees! A stable supplier for once!
"So that's the deal power I've heard about from Overlords," Henroin looked at his hand for any abnormalities but found none. "When were you gonna tell me you were an Overlord?"
"I'm not," Naruto shrugged his shoulders honestly. "I only recently found out about this skill and that I can make them. Do not worry, I do not wish to abuse you or our deal so long as you give the same respect. Agreed?"
Henroin raised an eyebrow at the weird blonde before scoffing with a smirk on his face. "I like ya, kid. I'm going to enjoy our partnership."
"So will I," Naruto agreed before his eyes narrowed suddenly.
A clone that was overlooking the streets around his restaurant had just ended itself to send him their memories. It turns out that there is now a turf war among two minor Overlords and it is now reaching his area. It is likely going to impact his restaurant if he did not go handle it right now.
"Ah, shit, I'm sorry to end this so suddenly," Naruto bowed to Henroin as he got to his feet and began making his way for the exit. "I will send you the payment and list of goods I need by tomorrow."
"Oh Grandpa, I'm so nervous!"
Helsa looked at Charlie as she bounced on the balls of her feet while looking over the small note cards in her hands. She is wearing a flamingo pink dress shirt with a black bowtie, a scarlet red blazer, and white loose pants. She was beautiful, very if Helsa was honest, but she was shaking like a leaf with how nervous she was.
"Just keep talking about the restaurant and avoid anything else," Helsa shrugged her shoulders but bumped her hip into the girl's lightly. "I know you would handle this a lot better than I would, that's why Naruto trusts you. You got this."
Charlie smiled at the woman's attempt at comforting words and she chuckled softly. "You know, I never told you to your face but ever since meeting Naruto you have been a nicer person to everyone. Usually, you would be snarky and tell me I'm being a coward."
Helsa blushed and looked away from Charlie with a scoff, closing her eyes as she was too embarrassed to see the blonde's face. "Yeah, well, he does that to you. Make you… I guess better is the word."
Charlie giggled and nodded her head as she turned to look at the cards in her hands but she did not read them. She could only think about her blonde boss, her friend, and his peculiarities. "Yeah, I agree. He just makes your worries and aggravations disappear. It's nice."
Helsa glanced at the smiling blonde, seeing her soft features rest in a look of content, and couldn't stop the smile spreading across her own lips. While going through the academy where she met the Princess, she had thought the girl would be a spoiled bitch and had treated her accordingly. She was not proud of herself back then, even at how she became the very thing she accused the blonde of, and for that she was the biggest hypocrite. She can't take that back no matter what but she has changed for the better.
Part of it is because of Naruto, who really just knocked the spoiled rotten girl out of her and showed her how she should be treated and treat others. Respect, kindness, understanding, but also firmness to make sure you stick to your morals and who you are. It was during the time with him that she realized that she really liked the Princess, even their more playful teases in the last two years. She craved the attention from the Princess as much as she did from Naruto, but the latter has given plenty to her.
But would Charlie reciprocate her feelings? Was she bisexual? If she was, would she choose someone like her, who has been nothing but a bitch and bully all throughout most of their time knowing each other? Or would she choose someone else?
She does like Naruto, I'm sure of those glances she makes when she thinks no one is looking. Would she want to share?
Christ on a cross, this was hurting her head and heart with the negative possibilities.
"We will be going live in five!"
Charlie and Helsa heard the shout and began getting ready to appear on camera. It was not much to do, as they were just going to be talking about Get Wasted and Get Out since it was decided that a new restaurant will be being built in the Uptown District. They wanted to advertise the second opening since it was a pretty popular restaurant and with the next Extermination coming in three months meant everyone would be too preoccupied to notice a second opening naturally.
"Good luck, Charlie," Helsa whispered before giving a light push for the girl to make her way to the news panel.
"Three!"
"Two!"
"One!"
"Good evening, I'm Katie Killjoy!" A blonde woman grinned at the camera.
"And I'm Tom Trench," a man in a gas mask greeted next. "Today, we have a special guest."
"The Princess of Hell herself," Katie turned to Charlie as she finally settled into the chair while fidgeting with her cards. "Charlotte Magne!"
Charlie winced at that and gave a nervous smile. "I-It's Charlie-."
"So!" Katie interrupted and glared down at the cards in the Princess's hands but made sure she kept up an enthusiastic and professional tone. "What brings you onto the 666 News, Princess Magne?"
"Uh," Charlie glanced down at her cards and shuffled them quickly before clearing her throat. "I'm sure many people know of the restaurant Get Wasted and Get Out in the Entertainment District. It's a very popular place, after all, with great cheap alcohol and good food! We, uh, we are advertising our expansion with a second restaurant in Uptown!"
A few murmurs could be heard behind the camera from the audience. Many did know of the restaurant, more than half of them being regular customers while the rest had been there once or twice before. As far as they understood, it had been open for two years and even with the growing clients it had yet to show any further openings elsewhere.
"What a surprise!" Tom sounded surprised but Charlie could tell it was slightly exaggerated.
"For our customers that don't know," Katie turned to the camera as she spoke. "Get Wasted and Get Out is a bar and grill of moderate popularity in the middle of the Vees territory. However, its owner has been able to fend off the local Overlord, Velvette, and maintained autonomy despite being overwhelmingly surrounded."
"Yes, that's because Naru is super strong!" Charlie discarded her notes as she finally moved onto a topic she liked to talk about!
"Naru?" Trench tilted his head as he asked the question.
"Naruto Uzumaki, he runs the restaurant!" Charlie grinned as she continued to speak. "He has even saved me! He has as much power as any Overlord I've seen, and he's super kind! He cares about his customers and employees!"
"It is a wonder how he got the employment of the Princess, then!" Tom gave a smile under his mask when he complimented the man and Charlie.
"This just in!" Kate shouted as she held her earpiece. "A new turf war has erupted in the Entertainment District between two minor Overlords. On one side is Shioshoku, a young Sinner from the Industrial District border, and on the other is Cherri Bomb, a destructive powerhouse native to the Entertainment District."
Tom was listening to his own earpiece before giving a gasp. "It turns out they are encroaching on the area Get Wasted and Get Out is located! Our analysts say this could be a territory grab as no one controls the four-mile radius around the restaurant!"
"Wait!" Katie leaned forward in her seat and she began to grin wider as she began to partially transform into her demon form in her excitement. "We are getting reports of another approaching their forces!"
Naruto grunted as he landed on the sidewalk in a crouch, lessening the impact on his knees, before looking up when he heard a louder explosion. He had clones combing the area for bystanders and was getting them from harm's way while he handled finding the two women attacking each other. He doubted anyone would actually die from these attacks but it wasn't only Sinners that were around this area.
Hellborn don't respawn in the Pride Ring like Sinners. They died like any other living thing, and that made it doubly dangerous for those that operated in this ring. Sinners don't keep the lives of hellborn very high and because of that too many people could die due to their incessant fighting.
Starting his Circulation Technique, he quickly dashed forward in the direction of the carnage. He wanted to handle this quickly and without much more property damage.
"Dodge this, bitch!"
Naruto recognized that voice from the few times she came to his restaurant. Cherri Bomb, a Sinner with an excessive love for explosives.
One building was set ablaze from one of her explosives.
And an arsonist during her life. Stop burning down my shit!
Naruto created two clones to begin making his containment seal that he will use to immobilize the least difficult of the two. The other, he will have to fight directly and tire them down until he can teach them a lesson. At least, that's the plan, but he knew how few times a plan goes exactly as expected.
The two clones followed behind him when he finally found the two warring Overlords in a small plaza two miles from his restaurant. Cherri is on top of a damaged building while chucking her infamous bombs at the woman on the street. The woman, who he does not know, is standing with a pink and gray turtle mask.
He could feel the familiar energy inside her. Chakra. She had chakra.
"Water Style: Great Water Barrier."
Water flooded from the sewers and quickly protected her from the explosions wrought by the grenades. It did not protect the street or buildings, cracking and shattering the infrastructure around her, but now Naruto was concerned about something entirely different.
For someone who says he has separated ningen from the main populace, this is the fourth person from my world just out here doing their own thing in two years!
Naruto was amused but he had to stop these two before he tried to find out about the woman.
Boom!
Naruto raised his arms to protect himself from the sudden gust of violent wind and fiery explosion that consumed the street in front of him. He even had to use chakra to stay in place or else he would have been launched back from the force of the wind. He wasn't sure if the power in the explosion would have actually caused damage to her but he was still concerned for the unknown ningen.
When it finally finished, he lowered his arms to look at the aftermath and he balked at the devastation. The entire street around the ningen was destroyed at least a few dozen feet down with the sewer pipes bursted apart. The buildings around were all cracked and blown to chunks with one building completely collapsed back into the next street.
"Where the fuck did she get that kinda power?!" Naruto's eyes were wide before turning to his clones. "Go handle her! I'm getting the ningen!"
The two clones nodded their heads and quickly scaled the building next to Cherri Bomb. Naruto, however, rapidly took in a deep breath while channeling chakra into his lungs. They expanded more than their natural limit and he finally blew out a strong wind.
He wasn't sure how experienced this one person was, he couldn't discern who they were but he knew they were an adult by how shapely they are. He just hoped they weren't too dangerous to face, especially since his whole objective is to keep the destruction at a FUCKING MINIMUM!
Why is she using a building to make a rock wall?!
Sure enough, she channeled the Earth Style: Rock Wall Technique using a nearby building's wall as the material. Without that wall, the building collapsed into the next one and created a large dust cloud to cascade on them. It blocked a lot of his vision, preventing him from seeing his target, and he had to cover his face to avoid getting dust in his eyes.
Then he tasted the emotion. Copper. The metallic taste of anxiety that made him think he bit his tongue.
He quickly bent backwards at a ninety degree angle, avoiding the fist of the minor Overlord, and he noticed something peculiar. The style she used was developed in Konoha for combat in the Third Shinobi War as the standard technique of the Genin in that time. It had a lot of drawbacks that made it perilous against true taijutsu specialists, and it was from those experiences that they would create the Academy Standard Taijutsu down the road.
So that narrows her age and village.
He used his hand to hold himself from falling on the ground while he used his foot to hook behind his opponent's leg. He pushed off of his hand and spun around, using his hooked foot to drag her leg out from under her. It worked easily as his style, while not entirely perfected as he had to modify it to fit his acrobatic brawler methods, was still better than hers.
As he got to a proper stance a few feet away from her, she quickly caught herself and flipped backwards to land on her feet in her own style's stance. They stared at each other as they finally had a moment to look at each other closely.
"Whew," Naruto breathed with a small smirk on his face. "It sure is weird facing the predecessor taijutsu style of my home after all these years. Can I ask your name?"
"Shioshoku," she answered stiffly and the black aura around her told him that was not her true name.
But why did that name sound familiar?
"Tidal erosion?" Naruto questioned with a narrowed gaze. "Wait, I heard of that-!"
He had to block her punch quickly or else he would have been knocked out with how she aimed for his jaw. Precise and deadly, only gained through real experiences of battles that they have survived. And the Third Shinobi War is considered the worst of the three wars because of how they utilized the youngest shinobi ever at the age of ten.
"Truly wonderful of a Third War shinobi," Naruto marveled, more to see what he could say that would gain a reaction. "You must have been a real genius."
She gave a quick jab to his face that he swat to the side, but he backed up when she went to deliver an uppercut through his guard.
Now THAT is not part of the predecessor style.
She had obviously modified the style as well like he had to, so that means that he was not facing the true predecessor. That made it hard to expect attacks and techniques.
But that means she was not alive to see the refined successor, meaning she died sometime during the war.
"I heard the Third Shinobi War was brutal," Naruto jumped over the woman's leg sweep and planted a rough kick to her chest. "So many teams of ten year olds were sent to their deaths, and the ones that actually survived had to retire because of the trauma they had to deal with."
The woman said nothing but he had noticed the stiffening of her stance as she more aggressively attacked him, giving him no room to retreat or retaliate.
"Konoha faced three fronts as well, going toe to toe against Kumogakure, Iwagakure, and Kirigakure." The last one made the woman quicken her strike, actually landing this one square in his chest and sending him skidding backwards. "The biggest event that I remember learning in the academy was Kiri's secret operation codenamed Shioshoku, also known as Tidal Erosion."
He had to more fluidly dodge the woman's more ferocious attacks as he talked. He could no longer take the time to strike back or he would risk extending himself in a way that she can capitalize on.
"Shioshoku was described as the one way to weaken Konoha that would turn the tide of the war," Naruto continued, wincing as his arms were beginning to hurt with how many times he had to block. "They captured a Konoha genin and made sure to inconspicuously broadcast where they were keeping her. Then, once she was caught, they would let her escape to her home village. But there was a problem with that; she was a ticking time bomb."
He dashed backwards and quickly bit his finger and drew a line of blood along his arm. Black seals quickly drew along his arms before he slammed his hand on the ground. The seals ran from his arms to the ground and fluidly formed a circle around him with a swirl in the middle where he stood. The Protection Bubble is a modified version of the barrier sealing technique used by Tayuya and her former team when they isolated the battle between Orochimaru and Hiruzen.
Unlike that large-scale barrier seal, which was originally drawn out to protect hospitals and other important locations during time of unrest, this one was for personal use and was very quick and easy to apply for situations where you are overwhelmed. He had developed it to eventually place around his restaurant in times of turf wars like this, or to wait out an attack from a major Overlord that wishes to have his area, but also found it able to protect individuals from A-rank techniques and below. Considering most magic of this world scaled from B to S, it covered from most spells beyond the greatest which were used by higher ranked hellborn and Sinners.
The woman punched his barrier repeatedly, but he could see the red and gray that surrounded her. She knew personally about this operation. But only two people were involved in this.
One, the rescuer, is his old sensei. Kakashi had been sent by his sensei, the then-Jonin Minato Namikaze, to save the kidnapped Genin that would be used as a bomb. The second is Minato's second student, and the kidnapped Genin, Rin Nohara.
"The kidnapped Genin was you," Naruto finally said and the woman stopped attacking. "Rin Nohara, the former student of Minato Namikaze, gave her life at the hands of her teammate, Kakashi Hatake, to prevent the destruction of Konohagakure. She was forever memorialized to the village as a hero of the Third Shinobi War. You gave your life for your home."
The woman breathed rapidly but she did not move or say anything as he spoke. The red and gray were not pulsing with blue and orange. She clearly did not expect him to know who she was and it only delayed her anger enough for him to get a proper look at her aura and posture.
"My name… is Naruto Uzumaki, and I was a Genin of Konohagakure," Naruto told Rin with honesty as he bowed his head in greeting. "I gave my life for my village, as well. I do not wish to fight you, but please calm down and stop damaging my block. You'll ruin my business and home."
Rin still said nothing but she staggered back exhaustedly before taking off her mask. Her face is beautiful, still having the purple stripes that she had during her official service in the Third Shinobi War, and her chestnut brown hair is held in a small ponytail behind her head with two strands framing her face. Her eyes are red from holding back tears but she did not look angry anymore, only defeated.
Naruto had ended his barrier and stood to his feet when something landed next to him. He turned to see a seal paper applied to Cherri's chest and she was unmoving even as her eye glared at him. Looks like the clones are finished.
"Why can't I move?!"
Naruto pointed at her chest. "That seal is applying pressure to nearly all seventy-two non-fatal dim mak that paralyzes your mobility without rendering you unconscious. Until it is removed and you recover, you will not be able to move or attack anymore of my stuff."
Naruto had his clones grab the Sinner and bring her to his restaurant so he can have her recover and settle down from this… exciting event. He turned back to Rin and saw her looking at him critically. "What?"
"You're Kushina-sama's son?"
Now that had Naruto confused, mostly because he had never learned who his parents were in life and when he died it only became more irrelevant to his survival. "I do not know my parents. They died when I was born."
That had Rin confused as she could have sworn the only Uzumaki in Konoha was Kushina, and she was romantically involved with her sensei up until her death. Did that mean he was the son of her sensei and idol? He does look a bit like Minato…
Naruto, however, was looking at the damage around him and was tallying up everything that will be needed to fix the area. It was going to be time consuming for his clones to do so, but with some Earth Style techniques he could possibly fix all of it within a month or two. That doesn't leave a lot of time afterwards to prepare for this years extermination but he will have to deal with that when he gets to it.
"I'm so sorry, Naruto. Forgive me."
Naruto whipped around when he heard that voice, looking around for whoever spoke, but he found no one around. It was only him and Rin at the moment.
"Did you hear that?"
Rin tilted her head at his question and listened for whatever he may have heard. "I don't hear anything?"
Naruto could taste the vanilla from her and his heart began to beat rapidly against his chest. It couldn't be him… could it?