Summary: The Nameless Clan. The Fake Clan. Many names exist for those who are trained in the ancient arts, and many of the people who do are entirely unrelated, but they share one thing in common, and that one thing, that key component, links them and allows them to access the ancient world now known as the elemental countries. That component is their trainer, their master, ironically the last Ronin in the world… as well as the first. A man with no last name… making him the perfect fit for young Uzumaki Naruto. No one ever wanted to notice him, know him, or even wanted him to live… so Uzumaki Naruto would vanish, and Naruto would take on a new mantle, and a new teacher… he would learn the mysterious ways of his namesake, from the most powerful samurai to walk the planet, to reside in the elemental countries, his world remade in its own deadly spiral…

Naruto's Story

Ch. 1 – The Legend of The Ronin in Red

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"Many millennia ago, there was a great blade-wielding warrior. Today, he is known as a Ronin, a highly ranking figure in the unspoken ranks of the samurai. Today, he is the only Ronin, the only samurai without a master to command him.

"Thousands of years ago, he helped save our world from its perpetual sorrow. He fought alongside the greatest warriors of the time, two of which specifically powerful. They were named Jecht, and Tidus. Jecht was Tidus's father, but his parenting was poor, and Tidus resented him until his death. The Ronin had fought with Jecht against a terrible beast, dying not too long after the battle, except he clung to life and retained his physical form. Ten years later, he fought the same terrible beast after its rebirth, alongside Tidus. However, thanks to Tidus and a woman named Yuna, the beast was defeated for good.

"After the beast was dealt with, the Ronin continued on toward the afterlife, but he was lost in the bridge between the worlds, and was flung back into our world, as he had been. He became enraged at his return to the living world, resenting the dead for their ability to rest, and his resentment grew over a millennia, until he found a young boy who was being attacked by fiends, known today, as demons. He rescued the boy, dispatching the fiends in a single swing of his blade, a giant katana with the man's emblem on both sides of the hilt.

"The boy, as it happened, was an orphan. The Ronin took the boy under his wing, and taught him the ways of our world, many millennia before this day. This bond became known as the nameless clan, as the Ronin himself bore no last name. Throughout millennia, the Ronin taught many samurai to be their greatest, and eventually, forged a summoning contract with an even stronger samurai, having been dead for millennia before the Ronin's own birth.

"This is how the Clan of No-Name Samurai came to be. The ancient world of Spira, long since changed and renamed the elemental nations, a place of magic and ancient power, a world long forgotten. The Ronin was a legendary hero of the land, and ever since, the Ronin's name has been lost to the annals of time. He who is accepted into the Nameless Clan will fight fairly, even if doing so ensure his death. He will be forever bound to Bushido, the Way of the Warrior, the Honorable Code of the Samurai."

'I wish the world worked like that. I really wish it did… I guess that's why they call it a legend…' Uzumaki Naruto had just finished reading the small scroll in the myth section in the library. Several years ago, he'd learned that while the library staff were common attendees of his yearly execution attempt on his birthday, they always left the library unlocked and completely unmanned on the aforementioned day. Every October Tenth since, he's snuck into the library early in the morning, and hid in the dust-ridden, completely unsurveyed myth section of Konoha's library. He found the stories of the many heroes and creatures fascinating, but his favorite had always been in the scroll titled The Legend of The Ronin in Red.

It told not all about the Ronin, and more about the Nameless Clan. Naruto had wished for a long time that maybe he could meet the Ronin, and perhaps join the Nameless Clan. Unfortunately, he'd had no such luck, because when he'd researched the myth further, he'd found that the Ronin either resided in the ruins of the holy city Zanarkand, or that he never stayed anywhere for more than the time it took him to take a nap.

Naruto held out hope that perhaps the Ronin would decide to take a rest at Naruto's apartment, but he decided he had a better chance of finding that Zanarkand place. Anyway, Naruto had researched Zanarkand as well, and all he'd found out is that any record there was of its location was unreliable, as the geography of the planet had changed and villages, such as Konoha, had probably been built overtop of it. But one thing he had learned, was a fair bit of fighting skill. He had learned that in the old times, ninja weren't around, and so, the everyday warriors and mages of old were the dominant combatants in any fight.

He had managed to make a connection to the Mana abilities of old and modern Jutsu, discovering that Chakra and Mana were very nearly the same thing. Chakra is composed of spiritual energy and physical energy, a.k.a. Mana and raw Power. Power refers to the energy that is naturally put behind a punch, which is why amazing chakra control is necessary to effectively augment one's physical strength. In olden times, one would use a magic sphere called a Power Sphere to enhance their Power, whereas its counterpart, Mana Spheres, were used to increase Mana. Naruto was able to find the division in his underdeveloped chakra, and had taken to keeping them separate. He knew this would bring trouble in his future, but he didn't particularly care.

He had found in the more action-oriented legends, great detail of magical spells were accounted. Naruto's favorites, by far, were the White Magic spells Haste and Slow. None too impressive of a name for either, but incredibly useful effects in the life of a ninja. Haste, the ability to increase the flow of time surrounding someone, making the world around them much, much slower, and Slow, the ability to decrease the flow of time surrounding someone, making the world around them many times faster. The negatives, only someone from the old world could possibly teach it. And there was a very slim chance the only one left was any more than a legend.

Naruto decided that it may be safe to exit the library, assuming he left through the back, out the shinobi section. He quietly crawled back and into the shinobi section of the library, and made his way toward the back windows, showing the dark forest outside. He would've continued, if not for the loud banging of the library doors opening up, the typical assassination mob running in to search for him. The odd thing was, that they were all unarmed.

"There it is! It's been trying to learn our techniques to fight back at us!" The librarian, a pink-haired man with a dirty face shouted, the mob roaring angrily in outrage. "Grab him! Take him to the basement, there's a huge pit down there that we can get rid of him with!"

"Are you sure that'll deal with him?" An orange-haired woman with green eyes asked, the man nodding.

"We once threw a small boulder down to check its depth. One week later and there still wasn't a sound, so unless someone's living down there, he's gonna be dead for sure." The man said, the crowd already having grabbed the now-screaming blond. They descended down the basement stairs, nearly ripping the young boy apart as they tugged him down the stairs, many angry shouts involving "the killing of the Demon" ringing forth. It wasn't long until they noticed that the stairs opened up into a very large, dark cavern with a thirty foot thick ceiling that meshed seamlessly with the ground the stairs were built on. Many of the people… fell, off of the narrow stairs into the cavern.

They screamed in rage, before a near-silent slicing sound could be heard echoing, silencing everyone who fell. The pink-haired man's eyes widened frantically when he heard the echo after the tenth silencing. He grabbed the orange-haired woman and started shoving people out of his way, leaving them to fall to their deaths.

The men holding Naruto fell until only one was left, and when the pink-haired man rushed past, the man holding Naruto fell, pulling the young boy with him. As the fell, the hit solid ground after only thirty feet, the man holding Naruto breaking his fall. Naruto scrambled away from the man in shock, running frantically, before he saw a glint he was familiar with and moved out of its path, before jumping into whoever was holding the metal item that made the glint, no sound coming from the person as Naruto shoved them out of his way. Naruto looked back to see a sea of glints, but he took notice that there was only ever one glint at any specific instant, suggesting only one culprit with the constant speed at which the glints appeared. He could hear the metallic swish of a blade, as well as the single footstep that would always appear before another glint showed up. He looked toward the sound, and always found that the sound followed the glint, as if the swordsman were moving faster than the sounds he was making.

Sensing danger and seeing the glint, Naruto dodged, before quickly and frantically moving, his adrenaline forcing his young body to incredible lengths to ensure his survival.

"You are quite skilled… yet you are merely a child. So early in your story, and yet it must come to end. I'm sorry, only those who are noble may ever know of this place, much less discover its secrets." The voice said, coming out as a calm, aged voice. "If you are with that mob of people, aiming to wrongfully kill someone, then you do not deserve to live, no matter how skilled you are."

"I'm the one they're attacking! They thought this was a bottomless pit, they wanted to kill me!" Naruto shouted, the swordsman catching the boys foot with his blade, blood spewing from the wound. Naruto shouted, before raising his hands up in fear, a small burning and a red aura appearing in his foot, healing the wound. Naruto grit his teeth from it. "Please, don't kill me! They've been trying to kill me every year on my birthday for as long as I remember, please!"

The swordsman said nothing, but apparently, decided on a reprieve, as he left the boy alone, slashing away the stragglers. Afterward, a sigh was heard, and footsteps, like he was walking. A hand fell on his shoulder, Naruto stiffening.

"Come. If your words are true, and you are willing to tell me of everything that's ever happened in your life as you remember it, then I will let you stay here with me… and let you train with me." The man said waiting patiently for Naruto to say something, who was in shock.

"Y-y-yes, of course, sir! Thank you so much, sir!" Naruto said, bowing deeply, the man pausing before chuckling.

"This way." The man said, placing his hand on Naruto's shoulder and guiding him down what Naruto couldn't even try to identify. It was a long time before anything happened, maybe an hour, but eventually, Naruto felt the man stop him, before the man went and a small fire appeared in the air, showing it hovering over the man's right hand, the man wearing a samurai gauntlet over a red sleeves of a samurai's jacket. Naruto couldn't see the man's left arm well, but he saw the man was wearing tight-ish samurai pants inside of average boots reaching the man's mid-calf, pants very dark gray and boots black. Naruto saw a Sake jug hanging off the man's right hip, held there by beads, the man's gray hair spiking itself upward, completely unkempt and ignored. He wore a red jacket with a yellow symbol on the left shoulder, the jacket's back reaching halfway down the man's thigh. The man lit a torch on a nearby wall Naruto hadn't noticed, and Naruto saw a long and thick katana with a sharpened edge and a slightly greenish-black unsharpened side with the same yellow symbol near the hilt, the hilt simply the blade connecting to the handle. "If you turn, you'll find a chair. Take a seat, and begin from as far back as you can remember."

And so, Naruto began his story, and as he went, the man made no obvious responses, not even turning around. When Naruto got to his third birthday, when he'd read the legend, the man stopped him.

"I hadn't thought you would have know of that… much less have it your favorite. The rest you can keep private, I've come to believe you. My name is Auron, and for your information, I happen to be the Red Ronin of which you read." The man said, turning, to show wire-rimmed sunglasses, a scar running vertically down the right side of his face under the sunglasses. He wore a high-collar that was different shades of gray, hiding his lower face from view. He rested his left arm inside of the front of his coat, as if his arm were broken. "I offer you the chance, if you so choose, to be my apprentice for a time. All I ask, is you give up your former name, your former existence. There is no nameless clan, but that rumor was born of truth, and none of those who were trained under me ever retain the original names. You must make a new name for yourself. It need not have any meaning… it must only be a name."

Naruto nodded vigorously, before Auron nodded, and went to the wall, picking up the sword. "The last thing you will say to me, is your new name. Your claiming of your new name, is your declaration as a Ronin. Your ninja graduate from an academy and leave their teachers behind to surpass them, so shall you graduate from your apprenticeship to me, as a Ronin, when I feel I have helped your story as far along as I possibly can. I will teach you all I have to teach, I will condition you to use my type of blade, and you will learn three, only three, magic abilities, one of which I used in that… slaughter. Do not delude yourself, you will not be a hero, you will not be a ruler, you will be a killer, a murderer, and you will be hated by a great many. Do you still wish to walk my path?"

Naruto nodded, and Auron made no response. Instead he turned, and he turned his left hand so his palm and hanging fingers faced up, before snapping. Instantly, white balls of energy, akin to fireflies, with energy trails starting green, before fading to blue appeared, revealing ruins that lead to a giant, ruined city that looked ancient.

"You have decided to learn Bushido, and to walk the path of the Samurai." Auron said, walking to a glowing blue sphere floating in the air emanating healing power. Auron stabbed the sword through the sphere, the sphere becoming a large semi-dome shaped rock in the ground with the sword sticking out. "Welcome to Zanarkand."