Elsewhere in the village, lantern light flickered warmly through the windows of the Hokage’s office. Minato Namikaze stood by the wide window overlooking the village rooftops.

  Below, Konohagakure pulsed with evening life. Children chasing one another through the streets as the evening light dims in the sky, shinobi returning from missions, shopkeepers closing their stalls.

  Behind him, Hiruzen Sarutobi exhaled a slow plume of smoke from his pipe. Hiruzen observed. “You’re troubled,”.

  Minato did not turn immediately. “They possess a bijū restraining technique capable of suppressing a tailed beast,” he said quietly. “One that does not require the Hokage’s authority or authorization. Just from the description of it I know that it doesn't just apply to a Tailed Beast.”

  He faced his predecessor. “If they planted those Nails around the perimeter of the village. if they chose to- they could make themselves a threat.”

  Hiruzen’s expression did not harden. Instead, it softened. He said approvingly. “You're thinking like a Hokage,”

  Minato’s jaw tightened slightly. “But you disagree.”

  “I do.” Hiruzen leaned back in his chair, slipping his pipe in-between his lips. He takes a slow pull from the pipe as memories play through his mind's eye. “I fought alongside Elder Jinzo and Elder Yuki during the Second War. I watched that clan bleed itself nearly to extinction.”

  He tapped ash gently into a tray. “The Hanagashi lost sons and daughters on the front lines to protect Fire Country. Not because they were ordered to. Because they chose to.”

  Minato listened carefully, he had fought on the Frontlines in the last war. He could understand fighting for the village but the Hanagashi has held themselves out of the village in a tiny shrine nearly a week from it while they let their workshop and store houses in the village sit empty for seasons. They were more allies than members of the village.

  “They could have withdrawn,” Hiruzen continued. “They could have retreated to their shrine and sealed their gates. Instead, they forged weapons day and night. For us. They sent their strongest to the battlefield. For our shared future.”

  He paused. “They held the line so the next generation could grow.”

  Minato’s eyes flickered to a wall scroll made by his Sensei Jiraiya. He spoke the words the scroll had written the same the Hiruzen was stating that this clan had shown. “The Will of Fire.”

  Hiruzen nodded. "Truly."

  Silence settled between them for a moment. Minato crossed his arms. “If you trust them, why bring up the Nails so openly?”

  Hiruzen’s gaze drifted toward the window. “Because I have seen them used.”

  Minato raised a brow.

  Hiruzen’s voice lowered slightly, memory threading through it. “During the Second War, a jinchūriki died.”

  Minato’s brow furrowed before guessing the next part. “The tailed beast escaped its host?”

  “Yes.” Hiruzen’s expression darkened faintly. “It rampaged through Fire Country. Villages burned. Shinobi squads were torn apart. It was getting too close to the Hanagashi forge shrine.”

  Minato listened without interruption.

  “We called upon them,” Hiruzen continued. “To assist in sealing or defeating it.”

  His eyes narrowed slightly, recalling.

  “The beasts are too powerful for direct confrontation for most Shinobi. Its chakra tore through earth, wood, flesh and steel.” He tapped the excess ash from his pipe into the tray on the desk lightly. “So the elders deployed the Forge Goddess’ Nails.”

  Minato leaned forward slightly while listening to the story.

  “They formed a hexagon,” Hiruzen said, tracing the shape absently on the desk. As he continued his voice lowered into a hush “Six points. Each Nail drove deep into the ground around the beast. They activated the array together.”

  Minato’s expression sharpened at the words and changed tone. “What happened?”

  Hiruzen’s eyes reflected old fire, destruction of forest and village by a beast unleashed. The terror of a tailed beast off its leash. He continued only to pause again. “The beast screamed- Not in rage. In pain, deep and profound.”

  The room felt smaller as the more senior Hokage retold the information to his junior.

  “The Nails suppressed its chakra. Drained its strength into the earth to dissipate far enough where it couldn't control it. Not by cutting it off, but by burdening it. The process for beings made of chakra would be extremely painful, potentially even memorable.”

  Minato’s mind raced. “They forced it to exhaust itself?”

  “Yes.” Hiruzen nodded slowly. “They did not kill it. They did not seal it. They broke their will to fight.”

  He closed his eyes briefly. “But the cost…”

  Minato waited.

  “I could see it,” Hiruzen said softly, reaching up a hand to slowly stroke his goatee, the grey and white hairs streaking together. “Their hair is greying. Their skin tightening. Years carved from their life force as they sustained the array. Four of the elders who sustained the array turned to dust, one of the youngest elders was rendered to look like a man two decades his senior, hunched and weakened.”

  “They gave away pieces of their lives,” Hiruzen continued. He opened his eyes again. “So that children in Fire Country would live another day. That is who they are.”

  The office fell silent. Minato absorbed the weight of it. If the clan still held that selflessness to be raised in a version of the ‘will of fire’ without actually ever being part of the village. Minato would struggle to find much issue with them joining. The political issues were minor with those opposed to it already opposed to him and his goals regardless of the hanagashi clan joining or them perishing. Finally, he nodded. “I understand.”

  Hiruzen studied his expression. “But?”

  Minato gave a tired half-smile. “It is still dangerous knowledge.”

  Hiruzen chuckled faintly. “All powerful knowledge is. I hold the title of professor for knowing so many Jutsu, it is amongst the reasons I became Hokage.”

  Minato hesitated before asking again. “Then why bring it up now?”

  Hiruzen looked at him carefully. A grin spread across the old man’s face. Like he knew something that Minato hadn't realized he knew. “It is dangerous,” Hiruzen said lightly, “for a jinchūriki to have a child.”

  Minato blinked.

  Hiruzen continued smoothly. “And this old man could not help but notice how extremely close and lovey-dovey you and Kushina have been lately. You know this old man knows the result of such affection.”

  Minato froze before his face reddened slightly. Then slowly lowered his head into his hands. “…You sound like Sensei Jiraiya.”

  Hiruzen laughed heartily. “He learned from the best. Though he has definitely outgrown me without learning my charm of not being so open.”

  Minato sighed deeply. “We have taken precautions. Spoken to a tight group that we trust to be there. We don't know for sure just yet but Kushina is adamant about now being a good time.”

  “Of course you have. I'm adamant that you young folks are having a good time.” Hiruzen jokingly whispered to Minato before becoming more serious.

  “But we have not decided anything.”

  Hiruzen’s grin softened slightly, nearly fatherly. “I only wished to remind you that contingencies exist.”

  Minato looked up again. “You think we might need them? Seals, Chains, even this Nail Jutsu?”

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  “I think,” Hiruzen replied gently, “that life rarely asks permission before becoming complicated.”

  Minato exhaled through his nose.

  Silence lingered, Minato considered the other reports on his desk. Hiruzen slowly refilled the tobacco into his pipe. Then Hiruzen tilted his head slightly. “Arata is Uzumaki. Kurogane's husband. The one missing the arm and eye.”

  Minato raised an eyebrow. “You think Kushina would want to speak with him?”

  Minato shrugged faintly. “That would be up to Kushina. She still grieves for her lost clan… maybe I could arrange a meeting.”

  Hiruzen smiled knowingly.“Of course. Invite Kurogane here and have Kushina meet her. Then, well if they want the pair will speak. Kushina will be a mother soon and Kurogane has given birth recently…”

  “I will- I will invite the Clan head here tonight to sign the documents. Kushina has been coming to the office to make sure I come home in time.” Minato said in thought. Nodding to himself he then wrote out the invitation.

  “Oh here in my old office, how daring you little bastard.” Hiruzen joked before Minato pointed at the door.

  “Out.”

  POV Shift Kurogane

  That same evening, in the Hanagashi compound, lanterns illuminated the central courtyard. A few of the clan's fathers were tending to the walls and fences along with their older children.

  The forge fire had been lit for the first time since their return. A few of the smiths were already slowly hammering away at replacement tools for what they lost either in the destruction of their clan's home or in their flight to Konoha. Flames roared upward, reflecting off steel tools and polished armor.

  Incense sticks were freshly lit by Yuki before the massive four armed statue of a woman in a flowing kimono. The fine outer robes pulled down to her waste revealing her inner robes and wrapped chest. In four arms she held tools and weapons. A Hammer, Tongs, A ball with Fuinjutsu seals, and a Katana. In front of her a large stone anvil was her shrine. Today however it was pulled forward and rotated, a short set of stairs down beneath the shrine sat dusty and unused for generations.

  Kurogane stood before the shrine vault doors. The red painted pillars to either side of it were impressive for being buried for so long. The arch of the doorway sat thundering clouds.

  Elder Jinzo walked up beside her. The air was cool and still. Jinzo asked quietly. “You’re certain?”

  She nodded once. “I should know what we have in our vaults.”

  Jinzo formed hand seals slowly. Then pressed his hands to the stone and steel door. The vault seals shifted. The heavy doors opened with a low metallic groan.

  Inside, shelves lined the walls. Scrolls, Sealed crates, Stored gold and silver, Wrapped relics.

  Jinzo approached a specific shelf. He retrieved a long, narrow scroll bound with dark thread. He held it reverently. "The Nails,” he said.

  Kurogane reached out. Hesitating for only a fraction of a second before accepting it. The scroll felt heavier than it looked. She did not open it, Not yet. Instead, she looked at her elder. “Would you use it?”

  Jinzo’s gaze was steady. “If it meant protecting the next generation? Without hesitation”

  Kurogane closed her eyes briefly. Outside, faint laughter drifted across the compound. Arata’s voice. Elder Yuki’s softer tones. Baby Fuyuka’s small, contented sounds.

  The future.

  Their future.

  She tightened her grip on the scroll, before saying something she knows will never be true. “Then I pray we never have to.”

  The shrine vault doors rattled slightly with a resonating hum as Elder Yuki closed them behind herself. Entering with a small pot of tea and two cups. Setting them on the table within the vault she gives the pair a small smile before bowing and leaving. Kurogane returned it before turning back to the scroll in her hands. For a long moment, Kurogane remained standing in the dim interior chamber, the resealed scroll of the Forge Goddess’ Nails resting against her palms. It had taken a few hours to read through the dense manual on the technique she now vaguely understood the process of using and now she understood the cost. “I truly wish we had no use for such a technique.”

  Elder Jinzo studied her carefully. Shaking his head he sits and pours himself a cup of the tea. “You’re thinking too loudly, it is bad luck.”

  She restrained her temptation to roll her eyes at the elder’s superstition, but she didn't deny it. “I have always known we possessed S-rank techniques, some for combat and some for creation of certain tools. This however is beyond anything I have seen or done. This is definitely the more complex and dangerous technique we have. If I hadn’t read this I would not have known the cost of them.”

  Jinzo’s expression softened slightly. “Because it was never meant to burden you. Your older brother was heir and he knew of this technique. The war had robbed us of him and your father refused to choose a new heir till the war was over.”

  She looked up at him. “I am the clan head.”

  “You are also a mother.”

  Silence settled between them. She squinted at the older man, looking for the prejudice or dislike he might have hidden. Finding none of this, she asked directly. “Why would that matter?”

  “The Jutsu taints or takes a woman's ability to have children, and turns her body's ability to feed her child into a poison. It is not dictated in the scroll but handed down verbally from elder to elder.” Jinzo blows softly on the cup of tea.

  “So our clan bans all women from using this technique or just those of a certain age.” She asked, looking at the scroll now rolled up on a small pedestal in a different light now. She and Arata had spoken of having many children once the war was over. If this would take that from her, it didn’t bear thinking of now. She would perform it if it meant protecting Fuyuka or the Clan’s children.

  Taking a small sip of tea Jinzo looks at the scroll then says. “It is of a certain age to be truthful but that is more from wisdom. It does have an effect on men but once you’ve reached the age of an Elder, men often have an external issue anyway.”

  Jinzo gives Kurogane a small shrug smirking at her as she thinks about that before realizing he was partially joking. As the elder takes another sip, Kurogane strikes. With a calm cold face she puts a hand on Jinzo’s shoulder. “It is okay Elder, I hear that happens to many men.”

  Choking at the Girl he helped raise responding to his joke in kind the older man lets out a laugh before coughing and choking on the tea. Standing he would say. “There is more if you wish to review them.”

  Jinzo turned away and walked deeper into the vault. Kurogane follows after him. He stopped before a lower cabinet built directly into the stone foundation beneath the shrine. A cabinet that Kurogane recognized from her father’s bedroom. “The Nails are not the only inheritance you must carry.”

  Removing a small rack of simpler Jutsu scrolls which he sets to the side. Jinzo then presses his pinky and thumb into the corners of the bottom board of the cabinet. The faint click of metal pins lifting with the elder’s magnetic chakra. Then hidden seals unlocked after the soft metallic clicks. A compartment opened.

  Inside lay several scrolls bound in black thread, each marked with an Anvil struck by a lighting bolt seal pressed into red wax. Kurogane’s gaze sharpened, remembering some of the scrolls from her father gifting them to her and her brothers. “These are the higher level techniques?”

  Jinzo nodded. “Passed only to the clan head or their designated successor or to any clan member with the skill and experience to wield them. You were meant to receive them after we confirmed safe settlement after being well.”

  The elder trails off not wanting to say ‘after your brothers and father died.’ He retrieved the topmost scroll and handed it to her. She took it carefully. The exterior of the scroll held an ink painting of two smiths hammering out metal the sparks and slag forming a coiling dragon of chain and wire, plate and scale, serrated tooth and dagger length claws. From its mouth it spewed a forge’s flame, senbon, kunai and shurikin.

  Her pulse slowed instinctively at the images on it. She recognizes a technique only her father and grand-father had been known to possess.

  Jinzo said quietly knowing the name of the technique without having to read the label. “Tetsuryū Yakusai.”

  She exhaled slowly. “Iron Dragon’s Calamity.”

  Jinzo’s voice was grave with warning. “It is not a technique for battlefields crowded with allies. It is not for minor threats. It is not for pride. It requires your full control on nearly half the chakra you currently possess. Your father had to hold it in reserve in case of a strong opponent.”

  Kurogane brushed her thumb lightly over the wax sealing the scroll shut. “I understand.”

  He studied her, He stepped back frowning with concern. “You may think you do. The technique consumes enormous chakra. It requires absolute control over metal within a wide radius. It transforms the battlefield into your domain for so long as you maintain control.”

  She nodded once then looked at the Elder with a raised brow. “And if control slips?”

  “The dragon does not discriminate between enemies, allies, or the user.”

  She did not flinch, Jinzo grunted quietly.

  “You should study it beneath the shrine. Not in the courtyard. I frankly don’t trust Hiruzen or the Elders of the village. Seen too much during the two wars I fought alongside them. Too many Coincidences."

  She inclined her head again. “Of course.”

  He turned to leave, but paused. “And Kurogane. You are not your mother. Forgive me if my words were rude, I know you want to protect the clan.”

  She held his gaze. “I know.”

  “You do not need to prove it by burning at both ends.”

  She did not answer that.

  Jinzo left the vault. Kurogane remained alone.

  The shrine chamber beneath the compound was cool and quiet. Incense drifted faintly from above, seeping down through carved ventilation shafts. The central stone floor was etched with circular seal arrays meant for training depth of their clans chakra control. She sat in the center of it out of habit rather than need for the circle. Slowly, she broke the wax seal, and delicately the scroll unfurled.

  The first diagrams depicted a wide-scale magnetic lattice forming above a battlefield, the round circles of ink holding the Kanji for Iron. The user at the center of it like the whole fight required the user to have the fight orbit them.

  Thinking for a while she thinks of the techniques that this would require. Metal Release to strengthen and control the either released weapons or the discarded weapons. Then Magnetic release to gather them together. That would require too much set up unless.

  Standing Kurogane goes through the scrolls and retrieves a familiar B rank Jutsu. Iron Constellation Formation. While it seemed a mix of Fuinjutsu and Jutsu it was mostly a Jutsu that required a tool. Opening the scroll she refreshed her memory of the Iron Constellation Formation, recommended uses where for the seals to be chiseled into walls or armor. It would cause any metal to be drawn towards or away from the point where the seals had been inscribed. She had previously however, as a younger Shinbi chiseled them into marbles. It allowed a mobile defense. If she combined the two using one after the other.

  Nodding Kurogane returned to the larger scroll to continue reading through it. Better to finish reading the thing before thinking up ways to alter it, combine it with other Jutsu or how to deploy it.

  The next images showed weapons lifting from the ground Armor twisting. Debris rising like leaves caught in a storm. Metal grinding against metal heating and shaping at a point within a few meters of the user. A serpentine construct of steel and iron. The construct’s construction mid combat wasn’t the calamity however it was what followed.

  The next image depicted the dragon lunging towards the illustrated foes, a spiraling vortex of hot sharpened iron and condensed chakra that could tear through entire squads of enemies. Then the construct of chain, wire, plate and blade was finally brought low. Its final act was to detonate, the chakra of those it swallowed fueling its final death throws.

  There was a hand seal to have the construct simply break apart but Kurogane would prefer using supposedly half of her Chakra on something with a bang if needed than a pop.

  Her breathing steadied as she slowly settled backwards slightly, Kurogane wouldn’t admit it but if she had been born in Konoha. There wouldn’t be a Jutsu scroll unread in the village. This was her favorite part of her life as a Shinobi.

  She began reading the chakra flow instructions carefully as she returned to the scroll. Iron Dragon Calamity did not simply manipulate metal. It commanded it, like the forge goddess. It didn’t just bend, it knelt to its command.

  The technique requires the user to saturate the environment with their chakra, marking every metallic object within range as an extension of themselves to create the body of the dragon. Once marked, the user could pull, fuse, reshape, and accelerate the metal into a cohesive storm. The final stage was the Dragon Manifestation. A rotating mass of fused steel orbiting the user like a living guardian before surging outward in a devastating arc.

  She closed her eyes, allowing her senses to focus briefly on the pool of chakra at her core. Metal ornaments in her hair lifted slightly. Small iron nails embedded within the shrine walls trembled faintly squeaking. Her chakra pulsed outward in a controlled wave.

  The shrine vault’s chamber responded. A handful of loose metal tools resting near the walls lifted slowly into the air. They hovered. Her control tightened. The tools began orbiting her gently.

  Sweat beaded faintly at her temples. The technique’s framework pressed against her reserves like a weight. Their clan’s techniques required their unique bloodline but the cost of delving into the sensory or non-jutsu portions of it became difficult without consistent training.

  She lowered the tools carefully back into their places. The Clan’s Kekke Genkai taking a toll on her. Part of her sense wanted to detach from her like ore from a rock and become one with metal. She exhaled.

  Then opened her eyes. “…Not yet,”

  She would master it but not by rushing.

  Above her, in the courtyard, Arata laughed loudly at something Elder Yuki said. Baby Fuyuka’s small coo followed. The shrine floor beneath Kurogane felt solid and cold, anchoring.

  She rolled the scroll carefully and set it beside her so that it wasn’t in danger. The Third war had robbed her of her time to study and train the clan’s techniques. For her child and for the clan’s children to have the time she didn’t she would have to work hard and master all of them.

  Then with the faint rattling of metal, she began again.