The Skies Above the Land of Fire
The world below was nothing more than a smeared canvas of emerald forests and twisting, silver rivers.
High above the cloud layer, bathed in the unfiltered brilliance of the midday sun, Emberis tore through the atmosphere. The Phoenix did not merely fly; he conquered the air, leaving a trail of shimmering, golden heat distortion in his wake. Given the catastrophic velocity they were maintaining, Alaric estimated the flight from Konoha to the Fire Capital would take no more than a few minutes… hardly enough time to finish a cigar, let alone formulate a complete strategy to strong-arm a Daimyo.
Alaric stood effortlessly near the base of the great bird's neck, his boots anchored to the burning feathers by a thin, absolute layer of chakra. He was still dressed in the utilitarian olive-green flak jacket and dark blue polo shirt of a standard Konoha Jonin, a wardrobe choice that felt entirely too restrictive for his tastes, yet appropriately political for his current objective.
With the wind howling furiously against the aerodynamic bubble he had cast around himself, Alaric's mind drifted away from the immediate mission, sinking into the familiar, comforting arithmetic of commerce.
It had been a while since the cold calculations of business had taken the forefront of his thoughts. The recent restocking of the Kenway underground warehouse in Philadelphia had severely dented his System balance. Millions of dollars spent on Hyuga Secret Ointment, Kunoichi Beauty Masks, and instant ramen. It was a flawless investment, undeniably, but relying on the System Shop for his supply chain was fundamentally flawed. It was expensive.
'I need to secure the means of production,' Alaric mused, crossing his arms over his flak jacket. 'I can buy the end product from the System, but it doesn't sell me the recipes or the blueprints. If I manufacture these items locally in the Elemental Nations, the overhead drops to pennies.'
He could export the locally produced goods to the Assassin's Creed world, continue flooding the European and Colonial markets, allowing him to stockpile massive amounts of physical wealth to convert back into System currency. It was a perfect, self-sustaining loop.
The Hyuga Secret Ointment was the primary target. Its miraculous healing properties for superficial wounds and bruised coils made it a premium commodity.
'But acquiring it is the bottleneck,' Alaric thought, his eyes narrowing against the glare of the sun. 'The Hyuga are notoriously, violently secretive. They'd sooner burn their own archives than hand a clan secret to an outsider.'
He mentally flipped through his interactions with the clan, searching for leverage, until a specific memory surfaced. The Chunin Exams. The preliminaries. The conversation on the balcony with the stoic head of the clan.
'Hiashi Hyuga,' Alaric recalled, a slow, predatory grin spreading across his face. 'I promised to sit down with him to discuss a potential "solution" for the deeply fractured state of his family. The Caged Bird Seal.'
It was the perfect currency. If Alaric could dismantle or offer an alternative to the subjugation seal that enslaved the Branch House, Hiashi would owe him a debt that could not be paid with mere Ryo. The recipe for their ointment would be a trivial exchange for the soul of his clan.
'That works perfectly,' Alaric nodded to himself, entirely satisfied.
His thoughts shifted to the other high-selling items. The Uchiha Fire & Spice Hot Sauce was a logistical dead end; the clan was functionally extinct, the culinary secrets of their domestic lives likely reduced to ash by Itachi's blade or Danzo's purges. The Kunoichi Beauty Masks were another mystery; he needed to deploy a few shadow clones to infiltrate the major cosmetic guilds of the Water and Lightning countries to track down the original creator.
And then, there was the crown jewel of his casual imports: Ichiraku Ramen Instant Noodle Cups.
'Teuchi,' Alaric thought warmly, picturing the perpetually smiling chef back in Konoha. 'Right now, his shop is just a humble, hole-in-the-wall eatery. He serves bowls, not cups. He doesn't have the infrastructure for mass production or dehydration.'
Alaric planned to approach the man as a venture capitalist. He would sponsor Ichiraku, build a dedicated, steam-powered factory on the outskirts of the village, and introduce Teuchi to the concept of instant, preservable noodles.
It was a strange temporal paradox, really. The System Shop offered the instant noodle cups despite them not existing in this era. It likely pulled inventory from the Boruto era, completely unbothered by the linear progression of time.
'But then again, linear time broke the moment I stepped foot in this reality,' Alaric philosophized, taking a drag from an unlit cigar. 'This isn't the original story anymore. I'm standing in it. The timeline is just a suggestion now.'
His economic musings were suddenly abruptly cancelled as the thick layer of cumulus clouds broke apart beneath them.
"We're here," Alaric murmured.
Sprawling across the fertile, rolling plains below was the Fire Capital.
It was breathtakingly massive… significantly larger than Konohagakure. Unlike the hidden village, which was designed as a fortified military camp nestled intimately within a dense forest, the Capital was structured like a true, thriving metropolis. It possessed the sprawling, grid-like geometry of a city built for commerce and administration, enclosed by towering stone walls. Grand castles with sweeping, multi-tiered roofs dominated the center, surrounded by expansive districts that housed hundreds of thousands of civilians, merchants, and nobles.
Alaric wasn't overly surprised by the scale, but he was intrigued. It made logical sense; Konoha was merely the military arm of the Fire Country, much like how his own Kingdom of Pennmere possessed specialized military outposts that were heavily funded by the central capital.
"Alright, Emberis," Alaric spoke aloud, the wind carrying his voice to the avian titan. "I'll take it from here. You can drop the afterburners."
Emberis obliged, his massive wings backpedaling to catch the air. The terrifying velocity bled away in seconds, bringing the great bird to a smooth, hovering halt in the mid-air currents above the city.
"I shall spread my wings elsewhere for the time being," Emberis's tectonic voice resonated directly in Alaric's mind. The Phoenix turned its golden, molten eyes toward the distant, north-western horizon. "I feel a most curious concentration of natural energy roughly seven hundred kilometers from here. It reeks of ancient amphibians. Perhaps a light hunt is in order."
Alaric blinked, instantly recognizing the geographical direction. Mount Myōboku.
"You absolutely cannot eat the toads, Emberis," Alaric said flatly, rubbing his temples. "They are vital allies. If you roast the Great Toad Sage, Jiraiya will actually cry, and I do not want to deal with a weeping Sannin."
A deep, rumbling sound vibrated through the bird's massive chest. It sounded like an earthquake trapped in a cavern.
It took Alaric a full second to realize what it was.
Emberis was laughing.
"I jest, contractor," the Phoenix rumbled, a spark of pure, fiery amusement in his tone. "Their meat would likely be too stringy and bitter with age anyway."
Alaric stood entirely dumbfounded. His jaw literally dropped a fraction of an inch. In the years he had known the ancient summon, Emberis had only ever communicated in threats of immolation, demands for respect, or stoic, begrudging compliance. The dry humor was unprecedented.
"Did you... did you just make a joke?" Alaric asked, staring at the back of the bird's head.
Emberis merely snorted, a plume of white-hot smoke erupting from his beak.
Shaking his head in utter amusement, Alaric stepped off the bird's back. He didn't fall; he simply commanded the gravity around him to yield, floating effortlessly a meter away from the blazing feathers.
"Well, you are always free to do whatever you want while you're in this realm," Alaric said, adjusting the collar of his flak jacket. "Just do me a favor and refrain from leveling any mountain ranges or burning down entire countries, alright?"
Emberis shifted his wings, radiating a wave of dismissive heat.
"I am eons past the age of childish tantrums, human," Emberis grunted, sounding genuinely offended by the implication. "I merely wish to fly where the air is not choked with ash. Though..." The Phoenix tilted his head upward, his golden gaze piercing through the blue sky to look at the faint, daytime silhouette of the moon.
"There is a peculiar, hollow resonance emanating from that pale rock. It is a cage holding something deeply unnatural. I am half-tempted to shatter it just to see what spills out."
Alaric raised a brow, following the bird's gaze toward the moon.
He opened his mouth to tell Emberis to go right ahead… that cracking the moon open would be a spectacular show. But then, the capitalist gears in his brain violently shifted gears.
'Wait,' Alaric's eyes widened slightly.
The moon held the Gedo Mazo. The husk of the Ten-Tails.
If he used his Ascendant Fuinjutsu to breach the lunar seal, he could theoretically extract the Juubi's shell. He could then transport the colossal, primordial artifact back to the Assassin's Creed world and feed it directly into the System's Sell menu. The payout for the physical husk of a god would be astronomical… likely enough to buy the Sage level of Fuinjutsu ten times over.
Emberis, sensing the sudden, manic spike in his contractor's mental activity, turned his head to peer at the floating blonde.
"Your mind is spiraling into tedious, greedy calculations again," Emberis sighed, the fiery equivalent of an eye-roll evident in his tone. "You bore me, Alaric. I shall leave you to your petty politics."
"Wait, I—"
Before Alaric could explain his brilliant heist, Emberis banked sharply. With a single, mighty flap of his wings that sent a wave of hot air washing over Alaric, the Phoenix launched himself higher into the atmosphere, flying away at a leisurely, majestic pace.
Alaric watched his summon shrink into a spark of light against the sky, shaking his head in profound amusement.
"Temperamental overgrown pigeon," Alaric murmured affectionately.
He turned his attention back to the moon, the grand idea of stealing the Gedo Mazo returning to the forefront of his mind. It was the ultimate heist.
But as he began plotting the necessary spatial coordinates, a cold, sobering memory forcefully inserted itself into his thoughts.
He remembered the Black Apple of Eden.
Years ago, when Caroline had fused with the corrupted Isu artifact, she had become a vessel of terrifying, mind-bending power. When Alaric had touched the Apple to forcefully extract it, the artifact had completely bypassed his physical invulnerability and his immense chakra. It had attacked his mind directly, rendering him utterly strengthless, paralyzing his cognitive functions, and terrifyingly, it had completely severed his connection to the System interface.
The Gedo Mazo was the husk of the Juubi… the physical remains of Kaguya Ōtsutsuki, a being who was far stronger than his current self.
'If I unleash the shell of the Ten-Tails in my home dimension,' Alaric reasoned, his initial excitement cooling into absolute caution. 'And it possesses even a fraction of the esoteric, mind-warping properties of the Apple... it could short-circuit my System access again.'
He stared at his hand, imagining the sensation of absolute powerlessness.
'Yes, it's currently just an empty shell. No chakra, no consciousness, just wood and ancient flesh. But artifacts of that magnitude have a tendency to carry lingering, passive wills. If it causes a glitch in the AC world, or goes on a mindless rampage, it could destroy Philadelphia before Kassandra even has time to put her boots on.'
The risk simply vastly outweighed the immediate financial reward. He had plenty of ways to make money that didn't involve importing apocalyptic alien husks into his living room.
"Yeah, let's shelve that idea for a rainy day," Alaric decided, violently shaking the thought from his head.
He refocused, looking straight down at the sprawling, magnificent expanse of the Fire Capital below. The political heart of the nation beat steadily beneath him, unaware of the predator hovering in its skies.
He crossed his arms, his blue eyes locking onto the grandest castle in the center of the city… the residence of the Daimyo.
"Well," Alaric murmured, a cold, calculating smirk touching his lips as gravity slowly began to pull him downward. "I'll just have to take care of a little budgeting problem first."
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