Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Soul Eater ❯ Chapter One: The Death of a Godfather ( Chapter 1 )

Soul Eater

By Stepmaster_Spoony

 

Chapter one: The Death of a Godfather

 

It can't be true. It just………can't. Naruto stood and just stared at the toad in front of him, unable to speak after the toad relayed his message. I can't believe it, I WON'T believe it, He can't be dead, nothing can kill him. The toad had been sent by Jiraiya…to give his final goodbyes. The toad was small and elderly, looking at the boy with a solemn expression on his old, wrinkled face. Looks like he's taking it hard. The toad thought as he looked into the eyes of the boy as they glazed over from shock.

The toad had arrived just under an hour ago. He just barely got out of Rain Country alive, recounting the battle Jiraiya, he and his spouse had with Pain, all six of them. He remembered Jiraiyas crushed throat and the blood seeping from his mouth as he struggled to stay alive long enough to inscribe his final message into the old toads back, telling him to get back to Konoha as fast as he could. He did. He leaped and bound across the land as fast as his old body could take him, which was still pretty damn fast as far as he was concerned. It took him two days to run a normally four day trip, He was exhausted to the brink of death, but he'd be damned if he showed it. He's got a job to do; death can wait `till later.

“Boy.” The old toad softly said, “Are you okay?” Naruto didn't even blink, let alone acknowledge that the toad was even there. There was a distant look to his blue eyes that worried him. “Boy, Naruto, answer me.” The toad said in a concerned way.

The sound of his name woke him from his trance. “H-huh?” Naruto uttered breathlessly as he turned to the sound of the toads voice. The color in his eyes returned, if only slightly. The look of utter despair and denial was still there though, and that made him worry more still.

“How…how did he die?” Naruto asked in a hushed voice, a dark look of passiveness coming across his face, the look of a man who had lost a game he didn't know he was playing with that sly, old devil fate. That face worried the toad more than anything, every time he saw someone with that face, something bad happened to them, always.

He thought for a few moments before answering “He died like a man, he died at peace with himself. That's all you really can ask for in death, peace.”

“…yea, I guess your right about that.” Naruto said in a near whisper. His thoughts were racing inside his head, images of Jiraiya and the memories of there time training in the last three years came to him in quick flashes, there one second, gone the next. Each one memory had a special meaning to him now that his teacher was departed from this earth. “I…I'm gonna miss that old pervert.” Naruto said in a half-cocked attempt to prevent himself from bursting out in tears, thinking that `real men don't cry'.

“Naruto, there is something I should tell you.” Old toad said in a slow deliberate tone of voice, Naruto suddenly felt a sickening lump form inside his gut. “Jiraiya was… he was…” the toad sighed, and then said in a sorrowful overtone “Jiraiya was…your godfather.”

At first Naruto did not seem to hear what was said. He just stared at the toad with blank eyes. Then all at once, the gravity of what the toad said sunk in. Naruto's face cracked and tears started to stream down his face. “W-what did y-you just say?” Naruto sputtered as his face convulsed as he desperately struggled not to completely breakdown. He had definitely heard what was said, but he desperately hoped he had heard wrong. It hurt enough as it was.

At once the toad regretted what he had said. It was much to early for the boy to learn about that. He had not thought it through well enough before he spoke. Damn, I just hope he won't be mentally damaged from learning this so soon. “He is…was your godfather Naruto. I'm sorry for you to have found out this way.” The toad said in a sorrowful tone.

That was the straw that broke the boys back. Naruto fell to his knees, broke down, and cried, cried, cried. And he would never stop crying, even if his face was dry, his soul would still be weeping, lamenting over the lose of the father he never knew he already had.

**********

 

Two weeks had passed since the passing of the legendary sanin Jiraiya. Every man, woman and child of Konoha mourned the loss of the great man. At the gravesite of all the ninjas who died in battle or on a mission, there was a memorial set up in the center. Flowers of all kinds adorned the small shrine dedicated to the dead man. Set down in front of his picture at the top of the shrine, was a row of books. If one would have picked the first one up and looked in the cover, he or she would have seen this message written within, “Thank you for all the laughs, thrills, and `good' things you gave me and countless other readers with your work. May you rest peacefully in the afterlife.

K.”

Elsewhere in the ninja village, more specifically in the office of the Hokage, a conversation was taking place. “How do you think he's holding up?” Tsunade asked the Elder Toad who had brought the sad news two week prior. “Well, I think he's taking it rather well, I thought he might have had a mental breakdown when I told him what Jiraiya really was to him, but he calmed down soon enough, though he still breaks out into tears every now and then, other than that, he is bouncing back quite nicely. Instead of wallowing in his own self pity, his resolve actually strengthened. You just don't see that everyday.” The toad said in a musing tone of voice.

He truly was surprised, he expected the boy to do something horrible to himself, like try to commit suicide, or something else along the lines of that. But he hadn't. Instead he steeled himself and got himself under control, Channeling his grief into something productive, assisting the team of ninjas assigned to cracking Jiraiya's code. It seemed that a breakthrough was due anytime now.

“I just don't know what to due with that boy, as soon as that code is cracked he'll just run off to rain country to find and kill Pain, and then he would be running right into Red Dawns trap. But I can't force him to stay. I just don't know what to do.” Tsunade told the toad.

“I know full well that Naruto plans on going after Pain, that is why I have decided to take Naruto to the land of the toads to teach him the ways of the sage.” Said the toad.

Tsunade's eyes widened. “…..When do you plan on taking him?” she asked in a curious way.

“As soon as the code is cracked.” Said the toad

As if on cue, Tsunade's assistant burst into the room. “The code has been cracked!”

“Well, fate can certainly be a curious thing sometimes.” The old toad said around a smile.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author's Notes: In this chapter I said something about Red Dawn. Red Dawn is actually the English translation of Akatsuki, I just used Red Dawn because it sounds much, much cooler.