Welcome, everyone, to Glory, the story of a bumbling idiot who became a ninja and wrote a book about it.
There once was a girl named Misuzu Namikaze. She was a normal girl living a normal life with her clan in the Village Hidden in the Leaves. Things probably would have stayed that way, too, had she not been possessed by the spirit of a young woman from a different universe; but she was, and various shenanigans — serious and not — have ensued. It seems it wasn't all bad, though, because she decided to chronicle her life and call it Glory...
Glory
and its companion Glory Sidestories are written by Eiruiel. One of the many SI-OC stories following the Naruto Reincarnation fic storm, it follows the adventures of the original character Suzu Namikaze, the younger cousin of Minato Namikaze, future Hokage and father to Naruto Uzumaki.
This fanfic has been discontinued and is being rewritten here, with its companion here.
Glory provides examples of:
- An Arm and a Leg: Narrowly averted. Suzu almost loses an arm when she accidentally ends up on the front lines, but Minato gets her medical attention before it's too late.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Minato, of course. Besides becoming the Hokage, there was an instance of this at Tatsumi River: when the previous guy in charge died, everyone looked to Minato as their de facto leader.
- Because I Said So: Minato invokes this when he forbids Suzu from coming with him to talk to Obito.
- Big Brother Instinct: Minato, to every kid in the House.
- Big Damn Heroes: Minato is fond of this. Special mention to his Deus ex Machina appearance in chapter 11.
- Break the Haughty: Kakashi gets a dose of this, though it's mostly offscreen.
- Broken Ace: Minato might qualify. Jiraiya reveals that he actually devotes a hefty amount of effort into appearing completely kind and perfect because he's emotionally dependent on others' good opinions. This is likely linked to his formative years, when he was constantly looked to as a prodigy.
- Calling Your Attacks: Suzu says it's the Narutoverse equivalent of kiai.
- Chekhov's Gun: Suzu receives a Hiraishin kunai in chapter 5. It apparently serves its purpose early on, but several chapters later Minato uses it to rescue his team from the Mist ANBU.
- Child Prodigy: All over the place. Suzu thinks something in the culture of the Narutoverse encourages their frequency.
- Child Soldiers: Suzu spends part of a chapter disturbed about them.
- Continuity Nod: In chapter 13, Chiharu thought Suzu's birthday was the 27th rather than the 20th, in keeping with Suzu mentioning early on that birthdays at the House are almost always celebrated at least a week late.
- Covert Group: The end of chapter 24 reveals that Souhei of all people has one. And that it's made of people from Earth.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Suzu's first fight outside the village, if it could be called that. Her whole squad gets decapitated.
- Deus ex Machina: Minato suddenly appearing out of nowhere and saving Rin with fuuinjutsu magic. Fuuinjutsu in general seems to serve as this.
- Disproportionate Retribution: In chapter 24, when one of the men invading the House breaks Souhei's glasses, Souhei responds by breaking the man's neck. Perhaps somewhat justified in the fact that he was defending his home from attackers, but even Reiko thinks he should have held back a bit.
- Elemental Powers: Suzu has them, as is standard for a Naruto ninja:
- Blow You Away: Her primary affinity.
- Making a Splash: Her secondary.
- Eye Scream: Souhei performs an eye-gouge on one of the men who invades the House.
- Fish out of Water: Touched upon in the sidestory "Lantern Light," where Suzu feels a large cultural gap between herself and her family—both dead and alive—during the Obon festival. Chapter 18 also has her admitting she feels disadvantaged because she wasn’t raised in a shinobi culture and isn’t as inherently skeptical or stoic as a ninja should be.
- Fragile Speedster:
- Suzu states she’s “aiming for an AGI build.” Jiraiya later tells her that she runs like a jounin, so she might be succeeding there.
- After the timeskip, Suzu is speed-specialized enough to shave an entire third off of what is usually a 3-hour run. Minato, of course, halves that time altogether, clocking in at an hour and a half.
- Framing Device: Glory is supposedly a book Suzu wrote after the end of the story. She says she'll be in her twenties by its end.
- Friend to All Children: Suzu notes that Reiko is always delighted to encounter children when Akihiko shows up at their door in chapter 3.
- Good Parents: Reiko and Souhei. Though the former of the two is a strict disciplinarian, Suzu’s explanation of her policy on corporal punishment reeks of this. As for Souhei, not only is he always keeping a careful eye on each of the House children (ie monitoring Suzu’s training from afar while juggling four infants), when Reiko breaks her leg, he runs the entire House on his own. While caring for his injured wife. While secretly consulting with Suzu’s doctor. While planning a surprise birthday party. The House children may not be their biological children, but that's obviously not stopping them.
- Geometric Magic: Suzu’s Strings of Fate jutsu makes use of touch-applied fuuinjutsu to operate, courtesy of Minato.
- Happily Adopted: To a degree. Technically the House orphans are wards of the clan as a whole, not specifically Reiko and Souhei, but they may as well be.
- Highly-Visible Ninja: Well, obviously. Suzu is notorious for a ridiculous eye-high zipper-vest among her friends and family. Though it seems that, as of her reassignment to Team 7, she’s ditched it for a plain black-shirt-and-chuunin-vest ensemble.
- Lampshade Hanging: Hayato's eccentricity scale, which counts tragic pasts as a factor in ninja skill level. Kudos to Suzu for hanging a lampshade on his lampshade, too.
- Mundane Utility: When Reiko uses Suzu's wire practice to chop vegetables.
- Murder Is the Best Solution: When Suzu manages to get the drop on a Mist ANBU, she cuts his leg off and then breaks his neck while he's on the ground to make sure he won’t play possum and kill her when she’s not paying attention to him anymore. Perhaps somewhat justified because it’s an ANBU, the most dangerous level of ninja, but damn.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Suzu after Team Minato returns from Kannabi Bridge. Also after she kills the Iwa nin in chapter 10.
- No Fourth Wall: Played with. Suzu begins Glory by addressing the reader, and though for the most part the rest of the story reads normally, she will often stop and make some sort of wry comment for the audience, usually involving some kind of Aesop.
- Parental Abandonment: Suzu. Minato counts too, along with everyone else at the House.
- Put on a Bus:
- Akihiko. He's been gone since chapter 8.
- Rin suffered from this until The Bus Came Back after the timeskip.
- Precision F-Strike: When the Iwa ninja crushes Suzu's arm.
- Rebellious Spirit: Or, as Suzu puts it, her defiant American spirit.
- Running Gag: Supply delivery missions going wrong and making fun of the super ninja zipper vest. Also, thinking aloud.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Rin lives.
- Stepford Smiler: Minato is revealed to be one. He seems to be happy and nice no matter what nonsense Suzu gets herself into, but as it turns out, he's actually quite irritated and angry with her. Jiraiya implies he became this because due to the psychological stress of being hailed as a genius since childhood.
- Supernatural Sensitivity: Several characters. According to Souhei, chakra sensors aren’t unusual in the Namikaze clan. Besides Minato, who is noted early on to be a gifted sensor, it has been said that Reiko is one, along with Suzu's deceased father. Suzu herself has slowly been picking up the ability.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial:Suzu: I did not immediately begin inching behind Minato's leg. Hiding? Me? I'm not trying to hide.
- Title Drop:
- When Suzu is talking about child soldiers:
They required children to go out and sully themselves, forcing them into the military and making them become soldiers, hiding reality with pretty tales of honor and glory.- Another in chapter 13:
No amount of glory could heal a broken heart. - Tranquil Fury: Minato, after the Rock ninja attack his baby sister.
- True Companions: Subverted. Though they try to stick it out, Team 11 eventually falls apart without Yoshiya to hold it together.
- We Hardly Knew Ye:
- Yoshiya was not nearly as well-characterized as Akihiko before he got killed offscreen.
- Kazuto was around for all of two chapters—three, if you count his tiny bit of dialogue at the end of chapter 18—before he was killed off, too.
- Wise Beyond Their Years:
- Suzu, by virtue of being an adult in a child's body. Minato picks up on it almost immediately in the second chapter, but nothing has come of it yet.
- As of chapter 14, he finally knows of Suzu's origins. Chapter 16 shows that he really doesn't give a damn about how old she is—he's the Hokage, and she has to listen to him.
