Equestrian Heroes
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Naruto x ?
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Story Start
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Naruto found himself going over the Request Board in hopes of finding a job of interest. After glancing over a bunch of meaningless twenty and thirty bit jobs one finally caught his interest.

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RETRIEVAL REQUEST:

MAGICAL ARTIFACT

REWARD: 3000 BITS

REQUESTER: AMBER WANDS OF CANTERLOT

PLEASE SEE REQUESTER BEFORE UNDERTAKING TASK FOR MORE DETAILS.

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The picture was that of a mare with golden yellow colored fur and a golden blond mane with white streaks. The Unicorn mare also had a lovely shade of rose for her eyes. Her outfit consisted of white and violets and the fabric looked rather expensive.

Well looks like he was going to have to head to Canterlot and get more information about this request. Thankfully she had her address on it.

Having decided on his plans, Naruto decided to let the others know he was going to be out of town for the next few days while he was going to take care of this task. Seeing as both Fluttershy and Rarity were going to find themselves rather busy with their careers, that gave him something to do until they both were able to coordinate a day where they were both free.

First thing the following morning he got on the train and arrived at Canterlot. Per usual, any attempts to mingle among the usual Canterlotian resulted in him being ignored.

He made his way to the address and to his surprise it was a store of sorts. Making his way through the front doors he stepped into a building with various objects on display from armors to all sorts of weapons, urns, and other interesting structures. He gazed at the marbel floor and the bright royal decorations and curtains.

As he continued gazing around he noticed all sorts of moving objects that could only be a result of magic. Finally he arrived at the desk where behind, a stallion sat. "Hello. I'm here to meet Amber Wands."

The stallion adjusted the glasses on his nose and gave a nod towards Naruto.

"Miss Wands is expecting you." He pointed to the white and emerald ornate staircase off to the right. "Head down the hall once you go up and take a right."

"Right, thanks."

He made his way to the staircase and trailed up the stairs before following the rest of the employee's directions. He finally came to an office. Knocking on the door, a voice beckoned him inside to which he obliged.

The room was full of bookshelves, which were in turn full of books and scrolls. Up above was a skyline.

Sure enough, sitting behind the desk was the mare from the posting. She seemed to be reading a scroll, levitating several, briefly skimming between them before writing down something with a murmur.

"Miss Amber Wands? I'm here about your posting."

Amber Wands looked up; with a snap of her fingers the scrolls wrapped up and neatly piled together on the corner of her desk. Her desk was littered with many glittering objects, some encrusted with emeralds or rubies and other objects that seemed to be carved from wood.

"Aah hello, at long last someone answered my post. You're not with the Equestrian Guard are you?" She asked, a tense gaze followed the question.

"No, I'm not. Is that a problem?" He wondered as the mare's gaze soon formed into a more comforting grin.

"Not personally, but they dismiss my request as low priority. Fools. The lot of them. Magical artifacts in the hands of brainless bandits is a travesty. Do they not understand the importance of preserving our history? Bah, this is why I took this obscure route."

Naruto cleared his throat, cutting into the mare's nonsensical rambling. "About why I'm here."

"Aha right, right. I am Amber Wands; it appears you saw my message. Allow me to find a map so I can better explain the details." She said as she got up and began digging through the desk. "No…" She began tossing out scrolls on the desk.

"No…no…uguh confound papers." She murmured before finally pulling out a map. "Aah yes here we are." She placed the map on the desk and spread it out.

"The mission is simple." She pointed to a large red circle on a patch of land between Canterlot and Baltimare. "Some no good bandits attacked the train that was delivering to Canterlot with the last report we received from the train being in that location. I wish for you to go there and retrieve this item." Her horn lit up with a sunflower colored aura as she levitated over a spear. The spear glowed as it showed off the image of a dagger. With the exception of the large red ruby that was situated in the handle it looked rather normal. "I trust you'll be able to get this for me…uum what is your name?"

"Naruto, Naruto Uzumaki, Miss Wands," He introduced himself.

"Please, no need for formalities. It's flattering, but please, call me Amber." Amber corrected. "Any pony willing to help preserve our valuable culture is considered a personal friend of mine."

'Wow, she really loves the Equestrian culture.' He noted. "Is there any other information I should know?"

"I think some of them may have been remnants from Nightmare Moon's forces." She casually suggested making Naruto nearly yelp out in shock. That wasn't just some small tidbit you glaze over, that was something you bring to the forefront.

"What, and you didn't bring this to Princess Celestia's attention?" He demanded, knowing that possible remnants of Nightmare's followers were at the top of the list, the only exceptions were the prisoners who were entitled 'The Condemned' who were not powerful enough to be sealed away in Tartarus, but were too monstrous to house in normal prison facilities.

"Well like I said earlier, the guards were anything but accommodating to my attempts at seeing the Princess. They had the nerve to dismiss me as some high strung mare playing with magical trinkets!" She shrieked as her magic caused multiple items in the room to be enveloped in magic. "The nerve!" She then huffed as everything fell back into place with noisy clatter. "So you Mr. Uzumaki are my only hope in getting that artifact. Three-Thousand bits is pretty generous."

"Yeah, not like I'm risking my life against dangerous criminals. You kind of left that part out in your posting." He sarcastically remarked as Amber made a wave gesture with her right hand.

"Details…details." She replied.

Naruto stood up and gave a nod. "Fine, I'll get your item. Don't you worry."

Amber Wands smiled, pleased at the declaration. "May Celestia's sun continue to shine on you." She stated as she watched the stallion leave. 'I did as you wish Princess, but is this stallion really capable of handling dangerous criminals on the level of the condemned?' The mare couldn't help but wonder.

Naruto made his way to the castle, hoping to catch Celestia at a time she wasn't busy, but of course Day Court was in session. The last few times he had been lucky to catch her when she wasn't busy, but that didn't seem to be the case today.

For a moment he was pondering where or not he should wait until after Day Court was over?

"Naruto?" A surprised voice called out to him.

Turning around, the blond was surprised to see it was known other than Twinkleshine dressed in an outfit befitting a lawyer. "Twinkleshine? Well this is a surprise? What are you doing here?"

"I'm on call. I'm one of the new paralegals her majesty has hired to help deal with the rush of new cases that's been occurring. Many of the recaptured criminals are being retried for crimes they have committed along with many influential families hiring their own lawyers with testimony of many of them being brainwashed or coerced into it by Nightmare Moon."

"Or so many of them claim I bet." He remarked, recalling about such similar arguments that were made by the criminals in the past. It wasn't their fault, it was the evil chakra in their brains from their blood lines. God damn Sasuke. He had to get drunk and lament that damn Uchiha brain chakra thing.

"Nevertheless, it is good to see you? Are you here on business?" She asked.

"I am, but it looks like I might not get my chance." He said, pointing behind him to the ever growing line of ponies wishing to attend the day court.

"I wanted some information for a request I'm going to partake in. The client has hired me to track down an item stolen by bandits during a shipment to Canterlot and she mentioned there are rumors one of The Condemned are among them and I was hoping to get files on these Condemned to see what they look like."

Twinkleshine let out a startled gasp. "You must be kidding? You can't be thinking of going against one of those monsters!"

Despite the horrified expression on the mare's face, he wouldn't be deterred. "Like I said, it's only rumors and I need the information so I know who or what they look like. You can't avoid a criminal if you don't know what they look like." Or in his case, take them out.

Running into Twinkleshine surely couldn't have been a coincidence. Now she was going to reveal she either worked on one of their cases or she was hired by one of their family's in the past and had access to their files, the blond promptly figured and began counting down.

"Files like those are confidential. You would need to be a high ranking member in the Equestrian Crime Information Center to have access to files like those. It could be possible to find a version of their files in the county they committed their crimes and where they were charged, but it's not straight across the line in each jurisdiction. Some have all the non-expunged criminal offenses and others are limited to actual convictions, while in others it also includes arrests, charges dismissed, charges pending, and even charges of which the individual has been acquitted. In other words, you would be shifting through weeks of paperwork, bureaucracy, and other issues."

"So, that's it? You don't know anypony who maybe owes you a favor or something like that?" That wasn't how things were supposed to go. What happen to his crazy luck where things always worked out?

"No, I'm afraid I don't have access to such things. They don't leave important documents like that lying around for anyone to get their hands on after all. I'd be rather concerned if those in charge were that incompetent."

"I guess I'll just have to be careful then. After all I'm just going on item retrieval. How long do you think you'll be working on these cases of yours?"

"Til my mane is all gray." The mare dryly lamented.

"Well either way, it was good seeing you again. If we see each other again let's get lunch or something sometime." He waved her off, deciding he was just taking his chances. It wasn't like he couldn't defend himself.

"It was good seeing you as well Naruto. Good lord on your task." Twinkleshine bid him farewell, readjusting the large stack of files in her arm as she continued on her way.

Either way, he had a map and he had a location, so it was only a matter of getting some supplies, and with two hundred bits, the best he would be able to do was food and enough water for two days.

That meant he was going to have to travel on foot none stop at full speed if he wanted to get to the location marked on the map in three hours' time.

The journey was quiet and the pace was rather quick. The heat of the sun beaded down on him as he continued the journey.

He found himself coming to a pause when he glimpsed something on the ground. It was a body. He came to a stop and began making his way to it. A moan came from the body, but it was inaudible to him.

Naruto made his way over to the body, pulling out the knife he brought with him. He didn't have enough bits to squander them on kunai that could be so easily destroyed. Naruto bent over to inspect the body, but something was off.

It was warm.

Naruto moved up to watch the surrounding trees, looking for signs of movement that would indicate trouble.

Suddenly a bolt of magic shot out from the trees. In the blink of the eye he moved and twisted out of the way of the ambush. Several more bolts fired and immediately he was on the move.

Naruto trained his vision on where the blasts came from and shot forward into the trees.

Amateurs. Sloppy.

One foot connected into the jaw of one of the bandits. He landed, spun, grabbed the wrist of one and yanked him forward so he could bury his knee in the bandit's gut.

He twisted around to avoid a machete slash from one of them. A quick twist of the wrist disarmed the bandit, allowing Naruto to catch the blade with his other hand. Spinning counter clockwise he pulled the bandit in front as another one of them fired a blast, burning a hole through his companion. Leaping up he drove both of his feet into the now dying bandit and sent the soon to be corpse into two more of them.

Lilac, violet, crimson, blueberry, gray, and peach. All matters of coats and all matters of mane it didn't matters. Unicorns or Earth ponies, the various features of these nameless bandits did not matter. They were criminals, they were scum, and they were the lowest of the low.

They were fast, but he was faster.

They were strong, but he was stronger.

They thought they were unstoppable…they didn't even know the meaning of the word.

Upon making quick work of the first wave that attacked him, the rest had smartened up and taken off. Instead of picking them all off, Naruto trailed after one of them, with any hope they would lead him to the stash of goods they had confiscated.

Upon seeing a base in the distance, Naruto quickly dashed up and rendered the pony he was following unconscious with a jab to the back of the head. Upon heading inside the makeshift base, he had found all matters of treasures and other items. Most of the haul was bits and personal effects that were stolen off unlucky travelers with a good bit of items being the supplies and exports/imports that were looted from the train.

He had even managed to find Amber Wands item. A nice cool easy three thousand bits, but that was far from enough. He wondered how long that would last him so he began going over his financials in his head.

For each of his mares, he would need a fifty bit budget minimum for the dates. Now if he were to factor in Rarity, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Applejack of at least once a week, that would be two-hundred bits. That would be covering the meals, set-up for the dates, and even the gifts.

His monthly water bill was three-hundred bits a month. While this era thankfully had plumbing, the magical means that were used to transport, heat or cool, and dispose of water was rather costly and took him quite a while to get used to.

There was his food bill that was also around a good fifty bits a week thanks to his appetite.

Not to mention he was still paying off the materials and workers for the construction of his dojo that was rather costly. In hind sight, him contracting the services so soon after incidents kept befalling Ponyville was a bit sort sided since the materials and both the labor had grown more expensive as of late.

'Shit ,speaking of water, I'll have to pay to get the plumbing install.' He had completely forgotten to factor that into the equation. He had factored in an office and a training room, and a cafeteria, but he wondered if he had left anything out? He had always figured he would worry about the design later, but now that he was really factoring in his finances he needed to plan more carefully. 'I had a surplus of twenty-thousand bits. Did I really manage to spend it all in a matter of months?'

He began thinking about his options. His best bet would be to go gemstone finding with Rarity, but in order to find any gems of any real value, that would require them to spend the entire day traveling great distances. He wouldn't do that to the mare, especially since he already dragged her away once from her focus in order to design something for Dash. He couldn't be that selfish, not to mention the scoring of the gems and gathering of the bits took a great deal of time.

He also couldn't ask the Apples, they were also trying to maintain their own finances. One of their biggest money makers were after all their Zap Apple Jam or their Apple Cider and it wasn't time for either of those.

He decided to stop worrying about it for right now. First he would deliver Amber her item and then he would start planning out how he would earn bits as well as construction of his dojo.

This chapter is a number of firsts. Amber Wands the first of the fan submitted OCs.

This chapter is also the first to call to attention Naruto's been rather wasteful and free of his money, time to put a bit more thought into that.

This chapter is also the first of the escapes arc/subplot that has only been mentioned in passing , but will finally gain some prominence in the ensuing chapters.

Also a reminder that despite their friendship Celestia is still the ruler of Equesnia and even now more than ever insanely busy dealing with many things meaning Naruto has to start finding new means to get the important information he needs.

With that I hope you guys are going to enjoy all the fun parts that's going to be occurring soon.