Weight of the Maelstrom.
Chapter 3: The Unique Catch.
Itsuki Uzumaki.
I knew myself enough to admit that I wasn’t in the best headspace possible.
It was… difficult, and honestly, at this point, I had to say that I was acting pretty much on instincts more than thinking. The mental scars were the ones that affected me the most. Every tree I passed was a grim reminder of what I had lost, and I hated it.
I hated it so fucking much.
The tears weren’t there, but the fucking knot inside my throat didn’t disappear. It was what affected me the most; my injuries were mostly healed, the scar across my stomach burned a bit, but only to the level of being uncomfortable.
That knot made each breath feel like my lungs pressed up into my throat as I tried to calm myself.
There wasn’t any big danger left inside the island, that I was sure. Whatever Kirokukami had done to me with Nagisa-Sama’s gift made my own perception increase by an insane amount.
It wasn’t to the level of checking the whole island at once, but considering I was nearing the coast, I could say without a shadow of a doubt that I was the only one here.
The knot in my throat tightened even more at that.
Hearing the whirlpools and waves brought back memories of our academy training. We spent days building simple rafts fit for the ocean. Kiyoshi and I spent most of our time fooling around on the water instead of paying attention.
The advantages of befriending the pampered daughter of the Uzukage.
It was a good thing that it was a class we had every year, so we wouldn’t forget. Because the first three years were pretty much a breeze.
Taking a deep breath to calm my breathing, I closed my eyes and tried to relax for a moment.
Once I opened them, I knew what I had to do.
I grabbed a tanto from the storage seal and scanned the area for the nearest tree.
I couldn’t waste time on misery. I could break down later; for now, I needed to get off this island. At this point, luck would decide if I survived.
After only a few minutes walking, I found a tree worth using. I hated having to thank the tree humper for it. Hashirama had once used his Wood Release to make a natural fortification along the coast.
Obviously, after who knew how many years had passed, some were affected by the sheer negativity in the air, but one couldn’t deny that he deserved his moniker as God of Shinobi.
The vast majority of them still looked pristine.
Cutting decent-sized logs, I dragged them one by one to the sand and went back for more.
Rinse and repeat 10 times.
My body wasn’t exactly happy with the effort. As I said before, fuckers were sturdy thanks to Hashirama’s chakra. The new vitality in my body made it tolerable, but by then, I realized the seal had ruined my muscle memory. It felt as if I was puppeteering myself from the backseat.
At least it served as training.
Little by little, I remembered what the academy taught us throughout the years.
Growing up at the end of the first Shinobi War was tough, but worth it. Uzushio never went easy on us. Survival was drilled into every brat.
And that meant every single redheaded brat on the island.
None of that ‘don’t use chakra until your body develops’, or ‘don’t push your body until it breaks’.
Which was probably one of the reasons the attacking villages lost a lot of the bastards that decided our family shouldn’t exist anymore.
The afternoon passed as I built a raft, binding logs with weed cordage and reinforcing joints with ninja wire.
Was it overkill?
...For anyone who didn’t know the whirlpools, maybe. But I wasn’t leaving it to chance.
And by the time I was finished, the sun was already disappearing into the horizon.
Now, anyone who knew their fair share about fishing would look at my raft and probably jape me behind the head for forgetting one of the most important parts, if not the most important.
But… I didn’t know how to build a fucking sail that worked as they were supposed to do with the items I had on hand.
And my stomach was already burning with hunger.
One disadvantage of so much vitality: Uzumakis ate like animals. Anyone who said otherwise was either an idiot or didn’t know us. The energy had to come from somewhere.
And I had no fuel.
I pushed the raft forward into the water, the logs straining against the sand, and then stopped to look back at the coastline one last time.
The ruins were thankfully absent, too far inland to see from here, but I could feel as if I was standing on top of them.
And I bowed, my forehead pressing against the sand.
The tears didn’t come, but I promised. To every single one of them, of the ones that died during the attack, the ones that survived only to die to give me a chance.
And the ones that weren’t born because the world took that from us.
I promised them that I would survive. If only for them. To return our name to what it once was.
No matter if I had to fill this ocean with blood to make it.
The sand made my skin itchy, but I stayed there for a minute.
And then I pushed my legs into the raft.
Hours later.
There was another reason why I wasn’t panicking about lacking a sail.
Admittedly, I never used this kind of weapon, but fans made for wind users were surprisingly simple from what I knew about them.
They had a bit of chakra metal in their frames, and many users wrote seals to activate them with a small chakra input.
And… we were the Uzumaki clan. Naturally, the only fan I found in the state had a shit ton of seals to aid the user.
It didn’t work anymore, but it served as intended, pushing the raft from below into the open ocean. To the location where sails or war fans wouldn’t work at all.
Because the whirlpools were already guiding the raft.
I gripped the logs so tightly that my bones ached, squeezed my eyes shut, and began to pray to the Gods.
Because things got bad real fast.
The natural defenses around Uzushio didn’t give a single fuck about my bloodline. A joke for the elders or veteran shinobi who left the village occasionally for some missions.
That the very thing meant to protect us would still kill any Uzumaki dumb enough to test it without the proper preparations.
It used to be funny. But right at that moment, I didn’t feel like laughing.
The first big vortex nearly tore the front-right log off. Only the quality of the ninja wire held it together.
The cordage I had made didn’t fare as well, snapping with a sound of finality that made me clench my teeth. Using the war fan that only worked as a paddle at this point, I pushed against the rotation with the only C-class wind jutsu I knew by heart, and the raft didn’t stop groaning below me.
Now, I regretted cursing the tree humper so much.
I hoped he was more overpowered than everything I heard about him growing up.
The water was pitch black, to the point that not even the moon’s light entered the currents. My eyes weren’t shit at night, but I couldn’t see past a couple of meters in.
And the sound. Gods. The fucking sound.
It was everywhere. Water smashing, then falling onto the raft and bathing me whole. My clothes felt three times as heavy thanks to the dampness, and I could only thank I was using a fucking mask just in case.
It splashed everywhere, and the wind screamed against my ears like a thunderstorm. No… louder.
The wood chipped under pressure, some small cuts appearing on my hands as the overpowered wood ignored my skin.
The next hour was the worst of my life, and I wasn’t saying that lightly.
Because I couldn’t slow down, and I had the expectations of my clan behind my back. The currents inside the defense ring kept pulling me toward the next vortex before I had finished dealing with the last, sometimes sending me back or flinging me much ahead.
My arms burned as I held for dear life against the wood, pressing my cheek into the raft.
The war fan got lost in the fourth vortex, the wind strong enough to overpower my grip.
But I kept going, using my chakra to practically meld myself against the wood.
My reserves kept getting emptier, and every moment that passed made my stomach grumble even harder.
Not that I could hear that, thanks to the fucking wind, but I could feel it.
And then my chakra emptied.
My head fogged. I took hold of more ninja wire, tightened it around my body, and secured myself to the center of the raft before dropping onto the wood with a tired sigh.
To let the whirlpool do the rest while praying for the Gods to care for me.
Two days later.
Good news. The defenses still worked as intended, even though a long time had passed.
It worked both ways; it was hard to leave the island as much as it was to enter it.
That meant that as long as one weathered enough, one would be spat back outside. Away from the whirlpools, if you were lucky.
And I was almost glad to know that the stories were true. That after leaving the vortexes, the ocean was calm.
Almost, because I was in pure agony.
Lying flat on the raft, staring blankly at the sky.
I didn’t have the energy to even move, much less do anything else.
My arms and legs had thin red lines where the ninja wire had embedded itself against my skin, and it fucking burned.
But it wasn’t compared to the damn pain coming from inside my stomach.
My chakra reserves were still filling up at a glacial pace, much, much slower than usual.
All I could do was drift and stare at the bright, burning sky.
My lips were cracked, and my throat was parched. Every lick of mine across them brought the uncomfortable feeling of how split they were.
Honestly, at this point, I should have taken off the cloak. And the vest.
And probably everything else.
The fucking sun was practically scorching me.
But still, I didn’t move.
Instead, I focused inside. On the gift Kirokukami gave me.
Carefully, because I wasn’t sure if I would survive another headache like the previous time. Not as I was.
And I couldn’t help but realize that Kirokukami’s gift was weird. It wasn’t exactly a space inside my head or something like that. Obviously, it wasn’t physical, but at the same time, I couldn’t say it didn’t exist.
Maybe it was inside my soul? I had no fucking idea.
For simplicity’s sake, I would say that it was a vast index buried inside my head.
I slowly pushed through the surface layer. Taking my time so I wouldn't trigger another migraine.
There were no jutsus hidden there. No secret elemental techniques meant to destroy armies, or maybe something useful that would give me some food or water to drink. At least at the level I could access without bleeding my brain from my nostrils.
Inside the first level, there was only the fundamental theory of seals.
It held the amateur mechanics I already knew by heart, but it went so much deeper. It broke down the exact math behind chakra flow and how our language made it work in ways our academy instructors never even mentioned.
Having nothing better to do, I looked through every book.
Until I found something strange.
Medicine.
There was an insane amount of information regarding the human body. It was by far the biggest book I had access to, bigger than the seals one. And I could see it was connected by thin strands of chakra, with more books deeper in the library.
Which… was admittedly weird. Why did I need knowledge about the human body? This was supposed to help me advance as a seal master, or at least that was what I believed.
It couldn’t be an archive of knowledge in general since I couldn’t find a single jutsu inside the library, but… why medicine?
What did I not know?
Having nothing else to do, I mentally pulled that book toward me.
Only to, with morbid curiosity, read about the symptoms currently wreaking havoc inside my body.
Chakra exhaustion combined with severe dehydration and caloric starvation. The mental text was incredibly detailed. Talking about the exact timeline of how human organs shut down when deprived of water and food.
Reading it confirmed the uncomfortable truth. I was in a genuinely bad spot.
My kidneys were probably failing at this point.
The sun kept beating down on me, turning the raft into an oven. I kept reading just to ignore the heat.
"You always were too stubborn to just drown."
The voice made me blink. I turned my head slightly against the wood.
Kiyoshi was sitting on the edge of the raft. Her clothes were perfectly dry. She looked exactly the same as she did before the invasion.
Elder Takara stood right behind her. The old warhawk looked down at me with his usual scowl on his face.
"You can do this, boy," Takara grunted. "We know you can. You are destined for something greater now."
I stared at the two ghosts hovering over the ocean.
The medical text I just read explained this phenomenon perfectly. Visual hallucinations were a direct result of extreme heatstroke. My brain was literally cooking inside my skull due to the direct sun.
I knew they weren't real. But it was nice to see them once more.
“Rest, Tsu-chan,” Kiyoshi smiled gently, “you’ll need the energy.”
I couldn't help the small smile that stretched my cracked lips as I nodded.
My eyelids grew too heavy to keep open, and I let the darkness finally pull me under.
Two days later.
It was pretty uncomfortable to lose and regain consciousness every once in a while. Waking up confused only to see that nothing had changed, then falling asleep once more as your body worked overtime to keep you functioning.
Or as functioning as I currently was.
The pain, surprisingly, didn’t get that much worse.
It was still miserable, obviously, but not to the point that I couldn’t focus on anything else.
In fact, I could say that my mind was surprisingly clear for my situation. At least for the first few minutes after waking up, before I went under once more.
The ghosts came and went, most of the time just looking at me in silence or saying one or two sentences before disappearing. It was… nice. It reminded me of the time we spent inside the seal. Most of the time, it was Kiyoshi and Elder Aoi, but sometimes Nagisa and Elder Takara also made an appearance.
Elder Masaru didn’t. I tried to ignore how uncomfortable that made me feel.
At this point, I didn’t particularly trust my senses because hope was dangerous.
I knew that. I had lived through it until it broke inside that seal.
But occasionally, my chakra sense was sure that someone was approaching me.
Only for no one to appear.
And this one didn’t look any different. A faint feeling on the back of my head, a very subtle chakra signal. No… four of them.
They weren’t approaching me, but I was getting closer to them.
Then the sounds started, once more birthing a bit of hope inside my heart before I squashed it.
It was just… it felt different this time.
It was like a motor, like the sounds of the electrical grids back in Uzushio. Or something like that.
Then, alarmed screams reached my ears.
I didn’t turn to look in that direction, staring blankly at the sky.
I didn’t want to be disappointed once more.
Then a splash of water, and the sound of someone swimming with the speed of a civilian?
My senses sharpened, and I felt the clarity going into overdrive despite wanting to fall asleep once more.
Slipping my hand under my cloak, my fingers wrapped around the cold steel handle of a kunai, and I slowed my breathing.
The chakra signatures were clearer now, and yes, it was those of a civilian. Barely any chakra inside their bodies.
The feelings reached me soon after. Worry, surprise, confusion, to name a few.
“Kid! Kid! What the hell are you doing here?” someone asked gruffly as my raft was invaded by someone else.
I stayed silent, breathing calmly and clenching my hand around the handle.
“Can you hear me?!” his big hands grabbed my neck, and I did my best not to plunge the kunai inside his eye.
His feelings were blindingly bright. Feeling an amount of things for an unknown that honestly, it sickened me after all I went through.
Three more presences drew closer as the motor's sound petered out. Right next to the raft.
I made a weak, pathetic groan. Inwardly wincing at my act, I coughed drily.
“He’s alive!” the man in my raft turned his head toward his friends. “Help me here, let’s move him.”
He had a bandana and an X-shaped scar on his chin.
He probably weighed double what I did, but the difference between a ninja and a civilian made that a moot point.
His strong arms cradled my neck before he lifted me up in a princess carry, passing my body into the arms of another.
Again, bigger than me. Almost as big as the first one.
… I needed to think. And fast.
Hopefully, my brain still remembered the infiltration classes.
Collapsing against the wet floorboard of their ship, my lips trembled from lack of use and a bit of pain. Not entirely an act, because I was feeling like shit, but I enhanced the tremors to look more pathetic than an Uzumaki should act.
“Easy, kid, you’ll be fine,” the man said, dropping to his knees next to me.
Then, he unhooked a wooden canteen from his belt and brought it to my cracked lips.
“Drink slowly, just a little bit at a time.”
I had read about this in my mental book. It wasn’t recommended to drink or eat much after a long period of not doing so.
Easier said than done.
I took big gulps, only to cough like I wanted to spit my lungs outside of my body.
The man took the canteen away with a disapproving frown, but his eyes looked even softer.
It sickened me.
He brought it once more to my lips, but he didn’t tilt it too much this time.
And the fresh water felt like absolute heaven.
The pity in their bodies radiated even harder.
“Where did you come from, kid?” the man with the bandana asked gently, “We’re miles away from the coast. And…”
He hesitated, looking at the raft that was getting farther away.
“Did you come from the cursed ruins?”
I calculated my story in a fraction of a second. Enough to be believable, but tragic, nonetheless. Something that would ensure that these men would take me to the mainland until I decided on my next move.
I looked up at him, letting my eyes widen as the tears spilled outside. I had to reach into the genuine well of trauma I held inside my chest, the fresh wound of losing my family.
“There was a storm,” I choked out, the tears spilling freely, “A storm hit us while we were traveling to the water country. Five days ago, I think, but I can’t be sure. I was on a merchant ship, but the winds took us to those whirlpools, and they tore the ship apart.”
I sobbed, curling my knees painfully against my chest.
“I’m the only survivor,” I cried out.
Their feelings turned overpowering in a second. Especially the man with the scar.
Years ago, I would have felt bad about lying this way to someone who looked like a genuinely good person.
Now? I could only wonder why it was so easy to the point of being disgusting.
“I woke up on the beach," I continued, letting my voice shake. "On that awful island. There were ruins everywhere. I hid in a collapsed basement for a day.”
I let out a broken breath, “I heard about what happened there. I just tied some wood together and pushed it off. I didn’t want to stay there more than necessary."
I buried my face in my hands, weeping silently into my palms. Inside, I was dying of shame.
"Gods," one of the older fishermen muttered, removing his hat and pressing it to his chest. "Shipwrecked and washed up on Uzushio. The boy is lucky he didn't lose his mind. Everyone knows that the vengeful ghosts still roam through the ruins. That place is cursed; I tell you. Cursed!"
Again, I barely managed to avoid plunging the kunai into his chest for that.
I understood how civilians could be in a world with so much war. But I hated hearing it when it came to my home.
The man in the bandana placed his hand on my shoulder.
"You don't have to be afraid anymore," the man said, his voice firm. "The ocean spared you for a reason. You're safe now."
I slowly lowered my hands, looking up at him with wide eyes. "Where... where are we going?"
"We are heading back home. To the Land of Waves," the man smiled, extending his hand to help me sit up properly against the wooden bulkhead. "My name is Kaiza. What's your name, kid?"
I looked at Kaiza. I saw a man who believed in doing the right thing, a man who probably stood up for the weak and fought against impossible odds.
The kind of man who would help anyone in need, no matter their allegiance. Before, I would have been glad to meet someone like that.
But I just felt frustrated.
"Itsuki," I whispered, keeping my voice small.
"Well, Itsuki, you rest up," Kaiza said, patting my shoulder again before standing up to return to his nets. "We will be at the docks in a few hours. We will find you a warm meal and a place to sleep. You don't have to worry about surviving on your own anymore."
I watched him walk away with panicked eyes.
I leaned my head back against the wooden hull, closing my eyes and letting the gentle rocking of the trawler soothe my aching muscles.
I felt the heavy silver chain resting against my chest, the cold metal a stark contrast to the burning sun.
I am here, Kiyoshi, I thought into the quiet dark of my own mind. I made it.
Will I ever feel disgust at using someone who reminded me of my clansmen?
I didn’t know the answer to that.