Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Bunkin no jutsu: The Myth of Procrustes, Naruto Style ❯ Chapter 1

Bankin no jutsu:

The Myth of Procrustes, Naruto Style

Disclaimer: Sadly, Kakashi and the world of Naruto belong to Shonen Jump, Viz, their genius creator Masashi Kishimoto, and anyone else who I don't know about.

A/N: This takes place in an imaginary time before the show began. We're going to say that Kakashi is an anbu here, because, hey…he had to do something in between failing all those students. And for the sake of the story, he's working alone.

~*~*~* Glossary ~*~*~*

bankin no jutsu - Procrustes' technique, translating to "Metal table technique"

-cho: suffix meaning road

Henge no jutsu: a basic ninja technique allowing the user to transform into another person

hunter-nin: jounin assigned the task of finding, killing, and destroying the bodies of missing-nins

jutsu: combat techniques used by shinobi

Konohagakure: Hidden Leaf Village

missing-nin: a ninja who abandons his country

Mizukage: the Kage of Water Country, the Water Shadow

sharingan: here, Kakashi's red eye, which allows him to copy any jutsu he sees; also used as his nickname, Sharingan Kakashi

~*~*~* Konohagakure, two years before the graduation of Uzumaki Naruto ~*~*~*

Three jounin left the Hokage's audience chamber with their assignments, leaving one man in the room, whose face, although not wearing the animal mask that distinguished him as an anbu, was still mostly covered by his forehead protector, which he wore at a slant over his left eye, and the mask that covered his face from the nose down. The man's silvery, spiked long hair was saved from sticking straight up by its decidedly leftward slant. He stood slouching, and looked like he was half asleep, while his left hand kept twitching to the pouch he carried at his waist before moving back to his hip, accompanied by a sigh.

Once the other shinobi had left, the Hokage fixed his gaze on the remaining ninja, who straightened his slouching posture somewhat under the scrutiny. Finally, the old man spoke.

"We've been receiving reports for almost a month of a man preying on travelers of the Piraeus-cho. He's been robbing travelers, but," the old man paused, lit the pipe that he brought out from the folds of his robes, and then continued, "only one traveler has survived. From his reports, this man may be the missing-nin, Procrustes."

The anbu's only visible eye opened a little wider, and what the Hokage could see of his eyebrow disappeared underneath the headband.

The Hokage leaned forward, set his pipe on the table, and lowered his voice. "We can't use the hunter-nins on this. Procrustes is rumored to be a jounin, and the son of Poseidon-sama."

"The Mizukage?" asked the anbu, clearly interested.

"Hai," responded the old man. He picked up his pipe and began smoking again before continuing. "The Water Country will not be pleased if we send hunters after the son of the Mizukage, no matter how many he has killed. We cannot afford to lose this alliance."

The anbu nodded briefly. "I will take care of him, Hokage-sama."

"I have every confidence in you, Kakashi, to handle this efficiently and discretely."

Kakashi, recognizing the statement as a dismissal, bowed and left the room quietly.

~*~*~* Piraeus-cho, two days later ~*~*~*

A man wearing the broad, conical hat and clothes of a farmer walked down the road, his head bowed, deeply engrossed in a book. Hidden in the dense forest cover to the right, watching the traveler, was a man with wild dark hair, whose mouth was pulled up into an unnatural grin by a strangely shaped metal plate apparently embedded on the right side of his face, running from the corner of his mouth, widening across his cheekbone, then coming up to bracket his eye. The watcher's eyes flicked to the well-sized purse hanging from the traveler's belt. His grin widened before he closed his eyes in concentration and disappeared.

Instantly, the traveler stopped, his eyes darting to the middle of the road a few meters ahead, where previously hidden watcher had just appeared. The other man's grin dimmed slightly when he noticed the seemingly distracted traveler's attention focused solely on himself. After a moment's hesitation, he walked forward and called to the traveler.

"Nice day, isn't it, stranger?"

The other man tilted his head up and squinted his eyes at the sky. "Yeah," he said shortly, before going back to his study of the man in front of him, observing the katana sheathed at his side, the metal plate strapped to his back, and the sickle-like weapon in his right hand, at the end of which was tied a cord that was looped around the forehead protector at the man's neck.

Obviously slightly uncomfortable with the traveler's reaction, the other man looked back toward the trees, then back at the traveler. Then he grinned again. "Well, I think it's a nice day, but you may not for much longer." As soon as he finished speaking, he ran straight for the traveler, almost faster than the untrained human eye could follow.

While the man was speaking, the traveler smiled slightly and closed his eyes. When he opened them, the farmer was gone. In his place stood the anbu, Kakashi. He calmly tucked his book away into the pouch at his side, then looked up to face the man running at him.

As soon as he saw the other man change, the grin almost faded from the other's face as he stopped dead and warily regarded the man he had originally thought was a simple farmer. "Henge no jutsu, eh?" The grin returned full force. "So you're a ninja. You weren't looking for me, were you?"

The other man let out a bored sigh. "I hope so. You aren't the only idiot on the road, you know."

The grinning man blinked.

"Yeah," he continued. "First there was the moron who came after me with a club." Kakashi rolled his eye. "The next one was stupider, though: he challenged me to a wrestling match. Honestly, what kind of idiot just walks up and starts wrestling people?" He paused for a moment, and when he saw that his slightly stunned audience wasn't going to respond, he spoke again. "Then there was the wild boar, but I didn't really think I was looking for him. The next guy…well, I thought maybe he was the one, but that would have just been too simple." Another eye roll. "I give him points for ingenuity though. It takes a…special person…to think of tying people between two saplings and letting them get torn apart when they spring back." The grinning man opened his mouth, but Kakashi ignored him. "And then there was the guy feeding travelers to his turtle familiar." Kakashi looked again at the grinning man. "Now I really thought he was the one, but he was just a rogue chunin."

Kakashi's voice turned deadly serious, "So tell me; who are you?"

The grinning man looked slightly dazed by the other's long tirade, but he flashed a bright smile and replied, "Well, I'm flattened by all the trouble you went through just to find me. I'm sure I won't disappoint. The name's Procrustes. And you are?"

Instead of responding, Kakashi reached up and pushed his forehead protector off his left eye to rest on his forehead, revealing a strange red eye instead of another dark one. Procrustes squinted, and Kakashi could almost see his mind working, trying to figure out where he recognized the other shinobi from.

Suddenly, Procrustes' eyes widened. "Sharingan Kakashi!" he exclaimed. When the other man nodded once in acknowledgement, Procrustes' grin turned a bit sickly. "The man who's copied over a thousand jutsus, but doesn't have a single one of his own."

"Well," Kakashi responded leisurely, "that's not quite right." He paused, and studied his opponent for a moment before continuing. "But it won't matter to you!"

Procrustes recognized the end of the conversation, and his grin returned full-force. "Are we done talking? `Cause I've never been one for having conversations with my prey."

"I was never the prey here," returned Kakashi.

Procrustes laughed, then ran toward Kakashi again. As he ran, he drew a shuriken from his waist-pouch with his free hand and readied the hand-held sickle in his right hand. Kakashi drew a shuriken of his own from the pouch strapped to his right leg. As Procrustes drew nearer, he threw the shuriken at Kakashi, then darted to the right, and prepared to strike with his sickle.

But instead of jumping to his left to dodge the shuriken, Kakashi leapt backward, then seemed to disappear. Procrustes was caught in the momentum of his sickle's downswing, but as quickly as he could, he pulled the weapon out of the ground and whirled around, ready to meet his opponent's next attack.

Instead, he felt the point of a shuriken press against his throat. "That was pathetic," Kakashi muttered in his hear as he pulled the sickle from Procrustes' hand and threw it into the woods.

Procrustes growled and kicked back, catching Kakashi in the kneecap. When the other ninja winced, Procrustes quickly elbowed him in the stomach and twisted out of his grip, springing back a few feet.

"You want a challenge, huh, Sharingan?" Procrustes' grin turned malicious. "I'll give you a challenge, but you won't live to walk away from it!"

Procrustes unstrapped the metal plate from his back. He let it fall flat to the ground behind him, then he took a step backwards to stand on it.

Kakashi had obviously been expecting this maneuver, and had already taken a small, thin square of metal from his pouch. He dropped it to the ground and stood on it, mirroring his opponent's stance.

When Procrustes saw this, his eyes opened wide and his grin slipped a little. But when he spoke, his voice held no uncertainty. "You may be able to copy my jutsu, but by the time you do, you'll already be trapped in it!"

Kakashi ignored him, and began performing a series of hand seals. Procrustes' mouth opened wide in horror as he recognized the order. "No! No way!" he cried. "That's impossible! I haven't done anything yet! Are you reading my mind?"

Quickly, Procrustes started to form the seals, but before he was even halfway done, he heard Kakashi shout, "Bankin no jutsu!" The piece of metal Kakashi had been standing on suddenly liquefied and oozed down the road at him. When it reached the metal plate he was standing on, Procrustes tried to jump away, but he fell flat onto his back. As he looked down, he saw that the liquid metal had hardened around his ankle in the form of a shackle, and as he lay there, he could feel it flatten out beneath him and trap his arms, neck, and other leg. Just as he was about to cry out again, a strip of metal covered his mouth, preventing him from speaking.

Kakashi walked over to his prone enemy as the metal formed the legs of a table and rose up to the height of his waist. Reaching down, he drew Procrustes' katana. "Like I said before, you're careless. I saw you perform this justsu twice yesterday, and you didn't even sense my presence." Kakashi paused, and slowly ran his eyes over the trapped shinobi from head to foot. "Well, now, it looks like you're too short. It would be a shame to waste that extra space on the table, don't you think?"

Kakashi preformed three more seals, and the shackles holding Procrustes' arms and legs began to slowly and steadily shift farther apart. Kakashi watched impassively as his opponent was stretched by the table, his screams only partially muffled by the metal band across his mouth.

As the table finished stretching, only a short time later, Procrustes was still screaming in pain. Kakashi looked at the other man for a moment in disgust. "You attacked women and unarmed men, supposedly to rob them, but I saw you." Kakashi's eyes narrowed. "You enjoyed it. You laughed while you tortured them. You have no honor. You're lower than trash!"

Kakashi raised the katana and brought it down just below the band restraining Procrustes' neck. The other shinobi's eyes opened wide for a moment, and a muffled whimper escaped from behind the metal gag.

Thrusting the katana point-first into the dirt, Kakashi released the justsu. The metal table suddenly shrunk back into the think metal sheet, which he picked up and tucked back into the pouch strapped to his leg. Procrustes' body fell to the ground with a thump, and the still-grinning head rolled to a rest at Kakashi's feet. With a sigh, he reached down again and picked up the former shinobi's forehead protector, then grabbed the head by the hair and set them a few feet away on the ground.

As he gathered the fallen weapons of Procrustes, Kakashi muttered, "I hate cleanup…"

**This story is actually a retelling of the myth of Procrustes for my ENG 308 Mythology class. In the myth, Procrustes is a robber on the road from Athens who was said to be the son of Poseidon (the god of the sea), who laid his victims on an iron bed and either stretched them or cut them off along the legs if they were too short or too long for the table, respectively. Theseus (here, Kakashi) beheaded Procrustes on his own table, as well as clearing the road of other dangers to travelers: Corynetes, who beat travelers to death with a bronze club; Sceiron, who threw travelers off a cliff to a huge sea turtle; Sinis, who killed travelers by tying them to a pair of bent saplings that would release and tear them apart; a wild boar; and a robber who wrestled all travelers to death.