Hey everyone,
Quick heads-up: I just started translating a brand new Naruto fanfic, Naruto: The Shinobi Hive, and honestly, I think it's the best Naruto fic I've worked on so far.
It's set during the Second Shinobi World War. The MC is an orphan Genin who can split his soul and take over empty bodies, stealing their memories and jutsu along the way. Expect dark plotting and a lot of canon characters.
I've tagged it in the author's thoughts. If it sounds like your thing, give it a try and add it to your library.
....
"What did you do to Lucy?" Mirajane looked on the verge of tears. "Why is she wearing my clothes?"
Rhodes rubbed his chin. "Hehehe."
Mirajane sobbed. "Please don't hurt her. I'll do anything..."
Rhodes looked her up and down. "Hehehe."
"Waa..."
Jewel started crying before either of them could continue.
"Don't cry, Mommy was only pretending!"
"Don't cry, Daddy was only pretending!"
They moved to comfort her simultaneously, each privately convinced the other was responsible for upsetting the baby.
The guild was still in full swing. The occasion was technically Jewel's one-month celebration, but the guest of honor was quickly forgotten as everyone went their separate ways into their own chaos.
Natsu came downstairs looking entirely unaffected by the evening's earlier conversation. He had, at some point, acquired two bright red demon horns on his head. He jumped onto a table and announced himself to the hall, breathing fire.
"I am the strongest demon!"
A bolt of lightning knocked him off the table. Gray stood over him, dark lines spreading across his skin, electric aura humming.
"Then I'm the Devil Slayer. Sooner or later I become a demon anyway."
"Manliness!" Elfman came under the table from behind, shifted into Beast Soul, and rose to his full height. "I obviously look the most like a demon of any of us."
All three of them started fighting, which immediately drew everyone around them in. The underlying dispute, as far as anyone could tell, was over the title of strongest demon and its physical symbol, namely Natsu's red horns, which kept changing hands throughout the brawl.
Carla watched the horns being passed around and narrowed her eyes. "Those look familiar."
Wendy was adjusting her cloak. She sighed. "They're my hair ornaments."
Carla covered her face.
A massive black fang sword came down through the center of the crowd and sent people scattering in every direction. Erza stood in the resulting space with an expression that left no room for discussion.
"Do not destroy the guild."
The crowd, from the floor, pointed up at her.
"The real demon is right there."
Lucy muttered, "You've actually caused the most damage this time."
The guild stayed loud until late into the night. Rhodes and Mirajane watched from a comfortable distance and laughed.
Rhodes took Mirajane home shortly after. Wendy and Carla came back with them. It was their turn to help settle Mirajane tonight.
Having brought Jewel home from the celebration, Rhodes knew there was every chance she would wake up crying at some point in the night. Fortunately the household had enough people to rotate. Elfman, Lisanna, Wendy, and Carla could each take a shift. Nobody had to carry the whole night alone.
Mirajane went to shower. Rhodes went to Wendy's room first, stayed until Jewel was asleep, and left quietly.
"Tonight I can actually rest."
He stopped in the doorway.
Mirajane was already in the bedroom, wearing a sheer silk nightgown, leaning against the headboard, looking at him with an expression that was doing several things at once.
Rhodes stared at her.
He was not going to rest at all.
A month passed quickly, and every day of it was full. The small one was demanding in the way that small ones are, and the larger one was demanding in an entirely different way. At the rate things were going, Rhodes privately calculated that Jewel might be acquiring a younger sibling at a pace that even his enemies would find inconvenient.
His dear wife.
The quieter stretch was not going to last, though. The Council had released intelligence indicating that the western continent was moving large quantities of supplies, assembling airships, and consolidating forces. War was no longer a possibility to plan for. It was arriving.
The Council had warned the nations of Ishgar well in advance. Most had not taken it seriously. Now those same kings were sending representatives to the Council in a hurry, requesting direct briefings and whatever assistance could be arranged.
Even the King of Bosco had reached out to Rhodes personally, hinting strongly that he hoped the Duke might consider relocating there.
Rhodes declined, offered what reassurance he could, and told the king to focus on his military readiness.
In truth, given Bosco's geography and terrain, the western continent's forces would most likely find a way to go around it and deal with it later. There was no need for excessive alarm, because if it truly came to the point where Bosco needed to be worried, there wouldn't be much to be done about it regardless.
Every nation was scrambling to secure its own position, and the Council's proposal of a unified Ishgar front was essentially unworkable on contact with reality.
Many of the nations on the continent were longstanding enemies of one another. Faced with an external threat of this scale, they still could not bring themselves to trust each other.
Basic operational coordination was beyond most of them, let alone placing their forces under another nation's command. Placing them under Council command was equally impossible, since the Council's headquarters sat within the Kingdom rather than in any neutral territory.
The western continent, by contrast, operated under a single concentrated authority with overwhelming force behind it.
Looking at the situation as it stood, Ishgar was going to be broken apart piece by piece.
Hyberion, Wolfheim, the other Council members, they reached this conclusion within moments of examining it clearly and fell into a collective despondency.
Rhodes's view was simpler. Rather than scrambling to fight enemies on multiple fronts under fragmented command, it would be better to commit fully and hit hard. Fairy Tail had already done the preparation. The training had produced real results across the board. Every restless member had developed new techniques and was looking for somewhere to use them.
Better to send them out than to let them wreck the building every other day.
Nobody agreed with this proposal. Even Wolfheim, who was generally the more aggressive voice in the room, thought Rhodes was pushing too far. Given Ishgar's actual strategic position, going on the offensive was not viable. The preference was to construct a defensive plan and hold.
"Find the right moment. Wait until the enemy has been sufficiently worn down, or until Zeref is taken out of the picture, and then there's room to negotiate."
Rhodes didn't find this convincing. Even Mavis, his own First Master, didn't believe there was any room for negotiation. She had said Zeref had been searching for meaning across more than four hundred years.
Once he had settled on a goal, he would not abandon it, not even if it cost him the entire western continent. To someone operating on his timescale, that was simply the price of a decision.
He had built an empire as something to do with his time. Zeref in his colder state regarded sacrifice as irrelevant.
Rhodes couldn't change the other Council members' minds. He settled for reminding them to prepare contingencies for the worst outcomes. That much they accepted without argument.
He came back to the guild to find Makarov had just returned as well.
The King of Fiore had summoned representatives from the major guilds to a meeting in the capital. Fiore was small in terms of land, but it held sway over roughly a fifth of all mage guilds on the continent. As a perpetually neutral state, it was also the most powerful nation in Ishgar. And given its geography, sitting directly across the water from the western continent, Fiore was without question going to bear the heaviest portion of whatever was coming.
Makarov and Rhodes compared what they knew and agreed to recall all members, suspend long-distance missions, and shift the guild fully onto a war footing.
The very next morning, Ultear arrived with news that hit like a physical blow.
"Guild Master Precht has been captured."