IdleMuse's Snippet

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The Village Hidden in the Leaves, Arata's Forge [A month after Third Shinobi War ended]

–Arata Kato–

Akio had always been somewhat of an oddity of a child. Not something that he would say or even think in front of his wife, who would skin him alive if she knew he thought something like that but it was the truth.

He began crawling at 6 months, babbling at 8, walking at a year old and then outright speaking, even if it was somewhat choppy, at 1 year 2 months and then to constructing fluent sentences at 2 years.

No matter where he went, that was abnormal behaviour, and abnormal in a shinobi Village was not a good thing. He might not be a shinobi himself, not anymore but he knew what fate awaited teh so called abnormal, the so called "prodigies" of the village. Stars forced to burn too bright at the start of their lives, only to end up with burnt out husks of what were once promising candidates.

Or, he thought darkly, dead bodies of children.

He didn't want to impose that fate on anyone, let alone his own blood but the thing was, they lived in a shinobi village. Just because he left the Genin Corps and learned a few things from a refugee of the Land of SNow, didn't mean that he was out of the web of shinobis and whatever went on in their lives.

See, very early on, in fact in the first year itself, he knew that if he waited in the GEnin Corps, all that awaited him was a lifetime of injury, risk to life and more likely since he didn't have any fancy jutsu, bloodline or clan backing him, death.

Yup, he knew that all that awaited them was death and thus, when there were rumours that another Shinobi War was about to erupt, he had immediately started frantically searching for ways to survive, and find he did.

A refugee he had helped out on a whim because his father always used to take him to the shelter, asked him one day about the reason he came to the shelter and used his meagre earnings to help them with food and even blankets since the shelter always ran in a budget deficit, and he had answered the first thing that came to his mind, something that his father always used to say.

"With Great Power comes Great Responsibility," He had said, all posing as a superhero, and then had deflated and clarified later on, much to the laughter of the surrounding people, "I have so little power so I can only take on this little responsibility. That is why I do this," 

He had answered and moved on, not knowing that the same refugee would approach him a week later and offer to teach him the art of making weapons.

Weapons of greater quality than anyone in Konoha could make.

And, in the same week, he had not found anything of note that would help someone like him, with meagre and even mediocre chakra control, that might help him survive the upcoming war. The Second Shinobi War had taken his father, the one true support he had in this world and he didn't intend on becoming another nameless casualty in the Third one, another unmarked grave in the mass graves that had become the norm in Konoha.

It always creeped him out how they had to cut Shodaime Hokage-sama's trees around the existing cemetery to make space for more and more graves, as a result of the vast casualties of the war.

It felt like they were not just cutting Hashirama Senju's trees but his dreams, his ideology as well. He knew for a fact that more than half of the casualties in the Third Shinobi War had been teenagers or children and if war erupted anytime soon, they might just have to send in the civilians because the village was pretty much depleted at that point.

Then, he exhaled, and then smiled wearily. At Least this war was over and with how damaged the other villages were, chances of another Shinobi War beginning so soon was all but nil, all thanks to the S class monsters that roamed the walls of Konoha. The Strongest of them being the Sandaime Hokage who was hailed as the God of Shinobi.

Sure, he was old but he had won Konoha two Shinobi Wars. To be frank, he hoped that Sandaime-sama would just retire now and let someone else take over. It was not as if they had any shortage in viable candidates.

Princess of the Senju Clan, the Sannin in the entirety actually, even if Orochimaru-sama gave him the creeps, Wicked Eye Fugaku and then finally, the Yellow Flash, the sole reason why Iwa had to surrender to Konoha.

Ah, that man was way too handsome to be a cold blooded killer, he thought to himself.

"What are you making that face for, Old man?" A squeaky voice interrupted his dreams of continued peace for decades. His face smoothed out as he looked down, to see a chibi, looking at him with a look of concentration which just looked cute on him, holding a small knife in his hand, hilt held in his direction.

"What do you want, Akio? Don't you have homework to do?" He asked as he took the knife from Akio's hands and had to suppress a flinch as the edge drew blood from his finger.

Akio shook his head, "Nope. I completed the homework in school itself. How is the sharpness, and the weight distribution? I had to increase the thickness of the blade to balance it all. Chakra Metal is really hard to work with," 

His grip faltered as he held on to the knife as if it was the most precious thing in the world and it probably was, because he looked at the knife's blade and sure enough, it shone briefly when he poured his chakra into it.

Looking around, he pinged his chakra in a very basic stealth detection technique to see if anyone was nearby and then immediately hid the knife in the locker and pulled Akio in the basement, which was laden with security seals, courtesy of the village.

"What did you do, Akio? I gave you regular scrap ore to practice with." He all but shouted at Akio because it was no small matter.

Chakra Metal was strictly regulated, especially in Konoha since it made very potent weapons and monsters at S class levels were really hard to kill with just jutsu and sometimes needed chakra Metal weapons to kill without sacrificing droves of shinobi to just stall them.

Now, as he said earlier, Akio was a peculiar child and while his wife refused to acknowledge it, he knew for a fact that being able to handle tools of that calibre while just being 10 years old was an anomaly. Thankfully, not a chakra anomaly because his son had one of the rarest chakra diseases in the world.

Chakra Restrictive Syndrome, a disease that seals off the major tenketsu points in a body, effectively disabling them from becoming a shinobi. Sure, he had above average chakra pool but using it was out of the question and due to less use as a child, the chakra network atrophied, rendering them incapable of using more complex jutsus as an adult.

While his wife had been heartbroken, he had quietly sighed in relief because he did not want his son to be thrown into the meat grinder that was the Genin Corps and while his son was a Second generation Shinobi child, his parents were both Genins, who were barely stronger than the average Genin.

"Yeah, you did that but I saw a ball of metal in the scrap as well. Well, it was not a ball but a rock. I broke it down using the tools you gave me and found some silvery liquid inside. It was fascinating so I used some of it to make that knife earlier. It turned out very glowy for a moment before it all dulled down. I thought you could tell me with your chakra," Akio said and he pinched the bridge of his nose at that.

This child was going to the death of him.

"Akio, what you just said sounds too good to be true. Take me to the scrap pile," He ordered Akio, who was taking lessons in the civilian academy, to become an accountant for some reason. He was incapable of molding chakra and thus, barred from attending the Shinobi Academy where Children graduated at 16 to become full fledged killers, but he was allowed in the Civilian Trades school, where he could get training to fill in a number of roles that the Shinobi Killers could not do.

Akio chose to be an accountant and was acing everything so he had no argument against the boy learning the family business.

"There, I broke it right here, and silvery metal came pouring out. I collected that, and then made more and more holes, until the entire thing broke apart, revealing that small vat of silvery liquid. I stored most of it away and used some for my project. It was nice," Akio said and then pointed at a large pile of rocks and then revealed that the large pile of rocks had once been a single rock larger than his entire shop floor.

He once again sighed in resignation, pinched his forehead, and looked at the oblivious face of his son, the star of his life.

"Alright, I'll get that whole thing," he pointed at the vat of silvery metal, "sorted out but Akio, remember this, no more exotic metal use. Come to me before performing any variations in the process. Now, why don't we get started on the standard kunai set? You should be able to make all the shinobi tools by the time you graduate,"

Akio scoffed and then looked up at him, god he was so short for his age, "Please, Old man. I will surpass you in 2 years at best, and then you will sit at home, with nothing to do,"

Having said his part, Akio turned around and went to their shop/house building that he was still paying his loan for.

As he said before, Akio was a peculiar child.

A/N - 

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I run weekly polls on P*treon to decide which snippet series will get updated (2-3 ch/wk) and ofcourse, I write what my muse brings me as well.

Do note that the 5 extra snippets will be in order of when they were written & uploaded, not necessarily 5 chapters of any given story.