Shinigan [Naruto]

[alethiophile]

So I've decided to revive my old story, because it's been lying there for far too long. And, in the process, I noticed how terrible much of it is. So I'll be revising it and reposting it here.

Shinigan

Prologue: Lines

The day was October the tenth, and the time was evening. Uzumaki Naruto ran through the streets of Konohagakure, which were unusually empty; the feast and festival celebrating the Yondaime Hokage's defeat of the Nine-Tailed Fox had just ended, and only a few people were yet filtering out of the great square. Naruto had not attended the feast, because none of the merchants with their booths would give him any food. He had eaten earlier, and now just ran, getting to know the village better and better. The lack of glares and quiet curses was also an advantage; the sort of people who left the feast early were usually in a hurry, and few of them would take time out of their busy schedules just to make life unpleasant for the village pariah. Today had been a good day, reflected Naruto; it was his birthday, and as always the old man had shown up at his apartment to tell him happy birthday and to give him a present. This year, in honor of his entering the Ninja Academy, he had given him a very nice kunai with his name engraved on the handle, below the wrappings, which Naruto had immediately taken to the academy throwing range to practice with. It felt better in the hand than the Academy kunai, even the ones he got when Iruka-sensei handed them out, and while he was still unable to reliably hit anything with it, he hoped to become better quickly. It was definitely a requirement that a Hokage be able to hit things with kunai.

Akiyama Yuma and Tsukuda Hachiro were both battle-blooded chuunin of Konoha. Unfortunately, they had both also had rather too much to drink during the Fourth's festival, and Yuma had lost a brother and Hachiro his father to the Kyuubi. So when the demon brat ran full-tilt into Yuma and fell on his butt, neither were inclined to forgive him.

"Heeey, Yuma-san, look who it is," said Hachiro in a menacing, but slightly slurred voice.

"It's that kid," replied Yuma, his emphasis unpromising.

That kid had just gotten up and was in the process of dusting himself off, when looking up he saw the two shinobi looking at him menacingly. "Oh! Sorry, ninja-san!" he said, looking quickly between the two.

"Sorry, he says," said Yuma. "I wonder if he's really sorry, Hachiro-san?"

"D-" Hachiro seemed to cut himself off. "Brat. I bet he's not."

"Let's see." Yuma leaned close to Naruto. "Are you?"

Naruto jumped backwards, waving his hands in front of him. "I am! I am! Sorry!" He attempted to dodge around Yuma and continue on his way, but the chuunin's extended arm halted him. "I have to go, ninja-san!" he said, a minor note of fear entering his voice.

Yuma pushed a bit of killing intent at the boy, expecting an immediate reaction; seeing none, he increased the level until he was almost sweating, and was finally rewarded with a flinch. "You're going nowhere, brat," he said, in a low voice. "You see, I think there's a good bit of Konoha who wouldn't be too sad to see you dead. And you just ran into me. I think I'm going to call that assault."

Hachiro, who had moved around behind Naruto, spoke from directly behind his ear. "You kill him now, it'll be self-defense, won't it, Yuma-san?"

"I reckon it will, Hachiro-san." Yuma picked Naruto up by the front of his orange jumpsuit. He flailed his limbs about, but to no effect. No one seemed to object to this treatment; if anyone nearby would have stirred themselves to save the demon brat, none of them were ninja powerful enough to take on the two chuunin. He moved into a small alley between the buildings, Hachiro following him.

The beating was quick and brutal. Yuma punched Naruto in the face, hard, while still holding him, then slammed him into the alley wall and hit him again. Naruto was still struggling, but without any real purpose; the Academy training had gone out of his head with the first blow, and even if it hadn't nothing in the Academy taijutsu prepared him for being lifted off the ground one-handed. A flailing kick, without any intent behind it, went towards Yuma's groin; he easily blocked it on one leg, and grinned nastily. "There's another count of assault there. What do you think?"

Hachiro was standing between Naruto and Yuma and the alley entrance, facing them. "So it seems, Yuma-san," he said.

Yuma shifted his grip, gaining a better purchase on the jumpsuit, and hit Naruto knife-handed in the collarbone. It snapped with an audible report, and Naruto screamed. Then Yuma dropped him. His legs folded, and he fell to the ground, shifting the ends of bone against each other and dragging out another scream.

Naruto's shoulder was on fire, and hot pokers were being inserted into it with every breath. His lip had split and his nose was bleeding from the first strikes, and he curled protectively around his shoulder almost on instinct. An indistinct cry of "Die, demon!" came from above as a foot smashed into his arm, both bones breaking, and another wave of pain crashed through his mind. His right leg was next, then his left foot. Then his ribs exploded, pain dwarfing anything he had felt before, and he fell into merciful unconsciousness.

Being unconscious, he did not see the figure, still in formal robes and hat from the Yondaime's festival, appear suddenly at the alley mouth; he did not see the two ninjas who had been beating him turn pale in fright and attempt to run away; he did not see them both caught before they had taken two steps apiece, and knocked out with frightening efficiency.

The Sandaime Hokage, once called the God of Shinobi, could barely rein in his rage enough to only knock the two chuunin out, rather than kill them immediately. He stared at their unconscious bodies for a moment, his hands shaking, then turned to their victim. Naruto had been knocked out a few blows ago, and each blow had broken bones. He bent over him, made as if to lift him up, but stopped after seeing the way his arm twisted, sickeningly, at the motion. Instead, his face weary, he formed a sign and two copies of him appeared by his sides. Without any words, they dashed away over the rooftops, one to bring a medical team with a stretcher, one to bring the ANBU and Ibiki. The original stood still in the alley, watching Naruto and the two chuunin. A glint of metal caught his eye, and he bent over and picked up the kunai he had given Naruto earlier that day. Putting it away, he stood again. At least Naruto would not lose that gift as soon as it was given.

---

Naruto woke up in a bed in the hospital. He had been here several times before; he seemed to have more accidents than most children, but he had never been this badly injured before. There was no pain in — well, anywhere, when from what he remembered of what the ninja had done to him he should have been hurting all over. In fact, he should have been dead, if they continued. He couldn't imagine why they had stopped.

There was no pain, but the lack of pain was more pronounced in some areas than others. His left foot was particularly not-painful, and the feeling, while not painful, was unpleasant. Keeping his left leg carefully still, he tried to sit up, but there was a burst of not-pain in his ribs, and he hastily lay down again.

He looked around the room. His field of view was limited by the fact that he could not sit up, but he could see the upper half of a wooden door on the wall to his right, and the back of a chair in the small area of room not occupied by the bed. The walls were white, the door was unpainted. Everything was completely unremarkable except for that line on the door. It was irregular and thin, not quite as thick as the gaps between the planks of the door, but more noticeable because it broke their pattern. It traced from a point midway between the top corners of the door in a wobbly curve downwards before leaving his field of view, and another branched off it about halfway up and traced its own line to near the upper hinge.

Naruto turned his head to get the door more fully in sight, trying to discern why the door had that particular pattern on it — was it a flaw, had paint spilled on it at some point? Then he noticed that the wall around the door bore some similar lines, though they did not continue the ones on the door. Then it seemed that they continued all over the walls and ceiling, no square meter of drywall without its wending, mysterious line. Naruto could have sworn that the walls had been blank when he first looked at them, but the lines had certainly not just appeared — the feeling was more like a realization that they had been there all along.

He sat up. There was another burst of not-pain in his ribs, but he ignored it; the feeling, while unpleasant, was not actually pain, and he was too consumed in the mystery of the there-but-not-there lines to care about it. They were all over the walls, branching and rejoining seemingly at random, wending in irregular paths over the drywall. The obvious thing to do would be to examine them closely, but he could not get out of the bed, instead deciding to simply stare at them. They were entirely still and inoffensive, now that they had appeared, but they still gave him an odd feeling. After only a few seconds of closer attention, the odd feeling escalated to creepiness, and he looked away, instead at the wooden chair sitting in front of the door.

The chair was not unusual. It was all wood, with no cushion or arms, only four legs, a planklike seat, and the framed back. It also now had a bunch of lines on it, at least one crossing each rod of the back and an irregular grid of several on the seat. What are these?

He looked next at the floor. It persisted in reassuring sameness for a moment before also manifesting lines, and again the feeling was not that the lines had appeared but that he had noticed that they were there already. With a sinking feeling, he examined the window. There were lines crossing the bar in the middle, and fainter lines on the glass itself. He looked at the table to his side, and felt a momentary, distracting flash of joy as he recognized the kunai the old man had given him sitting on it. Of course, it also had lines on it, as well as the table itself and the lamp above. He looked at the sheets, and there were thin lines running up his covered legs. He looked at his arms, and they were criss-crossed by the same lines — which had certainly not been there when last he looked. He would have guessed that the chuunin had chosen to follow up the beating with a game of scar-the-pariah, had they not obviously been the same thing as on the walls, the ceiling and the door.

The not-pain in his ribs had been becoming steadily more insistently not-painful throughout, but he had ignored it due to first his curiosity and second the creepiness of the situation. Now, the vaguely unpleasant not-pain vanished entirely, replaced by a shipment of emphatic and severe pain. Naruto did not quite scream, but he collapsed, which caused the pain to spike momentarily, then fade. The shock took his mind off the lines, but they remained visible, taunting him with their inexplicable presence on everything he saw.

Steps moved down the hallway towards his door, and it opened. A doctor came in, dressed like a hospital worker in gloves and a white apron, but wearing the hitai-ite of a medic- nin. Doctor, apron and hitai-ite were, by now predictably enough, covered in thin, spidery lines.

"Awake, I see," said the doctor. The line crossing his lips moved normally with his words, as if it was simply painted on. The doctor walked the few steps to Naruto's bedside and moved a hand down his body, glowing with green chakra. "And...trying to sit up already. You would think we made the anesthetic seal unpleasant enough to keep you from doing that. You've got a couple of broken ribs, kid. Don't be putting strain on them." Naruto heard the words, but did not nod or speak; the lapse of whatever had held back the pain in his ribs had also given him wonderful new feelings of pain in his foot and other leg, and any movement would aggravate those or his ribs.

The medic-nin did not seem to be offended by Naruto's lack of response. He waved a hand over Naruto's ribs, glowing again with chakra, and the pain mostly disappeared. "So don't do that again. You'll do more damage. Also, you've got a visitor. I'd say 'wait here' but what else are you going to do?" Chuckling softly at his own joke, the doctor left the room again.

Naruto remained still this time, not moving even his head. Now that he was feeling the pain of his injuries, even without the ribs, he wished rather fervently that he hadn't sat up and triggered its return. He could still see the mysterious lines on the ceiling and on the lamp to the side, and even though he knew it was silly, he could have sworn they were mocking him.

He resolved to ignore the lines for the moment, waiting instead for his visitor, whoever that would be. The only person who would be likely to visit him was the old man, so that was most likely. He was distracted from this train of thought when suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the wall on his left simply fall apart, crumbling in large chunks to the ground. He snapped his head over to look at the wall, and the holes in it and large chunks of plaster on the ground vanished, the wall entirely as it was, including the impossible lines.

What was that? He stared at the wall for several more moments, but nothing happened. He was just about to turn his head back when, again at the corner of his eye, he saw the ceiling, this time, break into pieces and fall — seemingly on him. This time the illusion was broken when the falling pieces failed to actually hit him, and as he turned his head again the ceiling was restored, whole as anything. Naruto gaped up at it in surprise. There had been something about that one...what was it?

There! This time, it was the lamp above him to the right, and as it seemed to fall in pieces Naruto could just discern that the pieces were as if someone had cut the lamp all along the lines for which he still had no explanation.

Is this some sort of messed-up genjutsu or something?

His train of thought was interrupted by the door opening. Naruto turned his head to see his visitor, the lamp snapping back into position as he did so. It was the old man. Naruto gave him a wide grin. "Hey, ojiisan!"

The Hokage smiled back. Naruto did not seem to have been affected too badly mentally by the beating. Physically...he was a mess, and it twisted something inside to see him so incapacitated, but those wounds would heal. "Hello, Naruto. How are you feeling?"

Naruto's face twisted in mock complaint. "It hurts! I sat up and it started hurting again! Usually things don't hurt this much!"

The Hokage sat down in the chair. "You haven't ever been hurt this badly before. I think you've only ever had pretty simple breaks before. They crushed your foot completely, and broke three ribs when that man kicked you." His voice was hard, but he left out that similar wounds in another person might very well have ended their ninja career before it began. Naruto's mysterious healing factor, which could not be proven to be related to the demon fox inside him and so which he had not mentioned to any of the many parties who would have demanded information on any sign of the Kyuubi, had done its work; the nasty wounds would take only a few days to fully heal. "Why did you sit up?" This was delivered in a voice less hard, and more long-sufferingly exasperated. "The anesthetic seal should have warned you not to."

"I felt that, but I had to figure out those lines!" said Naruto. Not sitting up again, he pointed with his uninjured arm at the door. "Ojiisan, do you know what those are?"

"What are you pointing at?" asked the Sandaime. He turned in his chair to look at the door. "Lines? You mean the joins between the planks?"

"No, there are lines! Like, just random lines on everything!" said Naruto. "They're all over the door, and the walls, and on that lamp, and even on my arms. And," he paused, looking at the old man, "on you, too. And I've never seen them before! Do you know what they are?"

"I don't see any lines anywhere," said the Hokage. A genjutsu? But why would there be... "Can you describe where they are?"

"They're all over! But there's one," he squinted at the door, "that starts right in the middle of the top of the door and goes down. It's in the middle of the plank. There!" He pointed as carefully as he could.

The Hokage stood up and examined the door closely. There was no line that he could see. He even used a diagnostic medical jutsu, moving his hand over the door where Naruto had indicated. Nothing was on or inside the wood, except its ordinary grain. "Lines...." He turned around and walked to Naruto's side. "I think that someone might have put a genjutsu on you to see those lines, though I can't imagine why anyone would." It seemed like it wasn't hurting him, after all, and anyone who wished Naruto harm would have done something worse than what seemed like an absurdist prank. "I'm going to try to break it now. Tell me if you see anything." He raised one hand to his face in the half-Tiger seal and pushed a carefully measured amount of chakra, enough to break any illusions on anyone in the room, at least. "Kai!"

Naruto looked around the room. "I still see them. What do you think they are?"

The Hokage sat down again, perturbed. He was confident that the boy wasn't lying; it was unlike Naruto to lie, and the only motive he could have had was, again, some kind of prank. Which, of course, was like Naruto, but his pranks usually involved fewer claims to see networks of lines on everything and more ludicrously oversized graffiti and strategically placed paint traps. And if the boy was, in fact, seeing something no one else could, and it wasn't a genjutsu — and it was an accomplished genjutsu master indeed who could create one that would resist even his first attempt at dispelling it — then it was, by simple common sense, likely to be related to the fox. But jinchuuriki were not unheard of, and while it would hardly be in the interest of any village to release detailed information on their jinchuurikis' abilities, Ibiki and Jiraiya's most excellent intelligence networks would have picked up any hint of a rumor of a dojutsu component to the powers of any jinchuuriki. Was the fox — or Minato's seal — different somehow?

His train of thought was interrupted by Naruto waving his good arm at him. "Hey, ojiisan, what do you think they are? You went all quiet!"

The Sandaime smiled at Naruto. "I was just thinking. I don't know what they are, but if you see anything else that seems related to the lines, let me know."

Naruto replied immediately, with his usual enthusiasm. "Well, I was seeing this stuff right before you came in, where if I looked at the same thing for too long it looks like the stuff in the corner of my eye is falling apart, but then if I look at it it goes back together again, but when it falls apart it looks like it got cut along all the lines. So I thought it might be a genjutsu too, but I guess it's not, right?"

The Hokage frowned. "Things look like they're falling apart...along the lines. That's odd. I've never heard of anything like it. What does it look like?"

Naruto focused on the ceiling above for a moment. Then, suddenly, he flinched to his right and glanced left with a perturbed expression on his face. "It looks like just all of a sudden someone came in here with a saw and cut the wall along all the lines, except really fast, and the pieces are falling to the ground and I can see the other side of the wall. But then when I look at it it goes back to where it was."

"Interesting.... Can you tell me what you saw on the other side? Did you get a good look?"

"Not really, but it's a room kind of like this one and it looked like there was someone in the bed."

The Hokage sat back and wondered. Presently, Naruto looked back at him. "Ojiisan, how long is it going to take for this to heal? I don't want to be stuck here forever."

"You should notice improvement just today, if you pay attention. You can walk a little tomorrow, and be out of here by the end of the week."

"Thanks, ojiisan!" This was with a bright smile. "Oh, and thanks for that kunai, too! That's really cool! I'm going to get so I can hit the target with it every time!"

The Hokage smiled. Naruto's brand of enthusiasm was infectious, and a welcome counterpoint to the icy or furious political squabbles that were so many of the rest of his interactions. "That's good, Naruto. But don't take it to the Academy, okay?"

Naruto frowned. "Why not? It feels so much better than the Academy ones!"

The Hokage leaned forwards, as if imparting a secret. "Ah, but Naruto, if you get really, really good with the Academy kunai, how good do you think you'll be with this better one?" Naruto brightened considerably at that.

The Sandaime stood, stretching a little. "I have to go now, Naruto. Good luck, and don't try to move from the bed unless the doctor tells you."

Naruto waved enthusiastically with his uninjured arm. "Bye, ojiisan!"

Naruto lapsed back into the bed as the door closed. Though he would be stuck here for the rest of the day, it seemed to already be afternoon by the light coming in the window.

The foot of the bed, just visible at the bottom of his field of view, seemed suddenly to crack in pieces and fall. Naruto blinked and scowled, the bedframe reappearing as he did so. "Annoying," he said aloud. He closed his eyes — luckily, the inside of his eyelids seemed to be immune to whatever had put mysterious lines on the rest of the world.

It was perhaps an hour later, which Naruto spent alternately with his eyes closed or watching random pieces of his surroundings fall spontaneously to pieces, when he began to notice a gnawing hunger in his midsection. He looked around, and seeing no method of calling a doctor less conspicuously, started shouting. "Hey! Someone! Do I get any food in this place?"

It was about a minute of this before he heard steps down the hallway again, and the door opened. It was the same medic-nin as before, but his expression was annoyed. "Hey. Quiet it down a little, kid, there are other patients here. You missed lunch because you were still asleep. I'll send someone in with food."

Naruto replied at a more reasonable volume. "Thanks, doctor-san. Is there anything to do around here?"

"Not other than lie around. If you get another visit, you can ask whoever it is to bring you something to read."

Naruto pouted. "All right," he muttered. The medic-nin raised an eyebrow at him, then, after a moment, turned for the door.

"If there isn't anything else...?" he asked, managing to make it clear that there had better not, in fact, be anything else. Naruto gulped.

"No, that's all," he said. "Uh, thank you," he went on hurriedly, remembering his manners. He got a nod over the shoulder, and the doctor left.

As the door closed, Naruto flinched and looked up, only to see the ceiling return quickly to its non-broken state. He shivered. That could get... really annoying, after a while. He lay back on the pillow again, and before he could remember to close his eyes the table to his right broke in pieces and collapsed. He shook his head compulsively and closed his eyes.

A nurse came in with food. He opened his eyes, sitting up and trying to keep from looking at any one thing for long enough that he would see the illusions of destruction. She carried a tray with legs, which she extended and placed across his lap, harder than she needed to. A twinge shot through his ribs, and the nurse gave him a nasty look before stepping back. Naruto looked away, reminded of his apparent status in the village. As he looked out the window to avoid her eye, suddenly, deep gashes appeared across her arms, her chest, her face. She fell, blood pouring from the wounds, her arm already separate from her body....

He gave a yell of horror and jerked his head around to look at her. She, of course, was still entirely intact, and glanced at him contemptuously before stepping out of the room.

Naruto panted, trying to slow his heart. He knew that it had been an illusion, just another manifestation of the same thing that had been bugging him since he woke, but that had been much worse than what had happened before. The lines still weaved tauntingly and inexplicably across everything in his field of view, but he now looked at them with deep distrust. He had seen the line running diagonally down the nurse's arm, but thought little of it, ignoring it as he had begun to ignore the others...and then he had looked in the wrong place, and that line had seemed to rip her arm off. He looked at the lines on his own arms and shuddered.

The tray with the food had not been disturbed by his sudden movement, so he tried to sit up to eat it and was reprimanded by a slash of pain across his ribs. He dropped back, wincing, but the pain was less even now than it had been, and he tried again, pushing through it. He was damned if he was going to call back that nurse and ask her nicely to sit him up with pillows. She'd probably be more inclined to smother him with one.

These dark thoughts accompanied him until he got himself sat up, at which point they were displaced by disgust at the quality of the food. There was a thin, stringy and tough cut of some sort of unidentifiable meat, a glass of watery milk that was pale blue around the edges, and a mound of something that might, at some point, have been a salad green, but had been tortured to the point of losing its form entirely. He looked away in disgust, and the plate split in two, dropping its unidentifiable meat and green onto the tray. Looking quickly back, he muttered under his breath and began to reluctantly eat.

He was reluctant to shout again, but it was nearly another hour after he had finished and no one had come to remove the tray. He had lain down again after finishing, and spent the rest of the time, mostly, with his eyes closed, trying to avoid the constant sensation that his surroundings were constructed from carefully arranged toothpicks and twine, and the slightest movement might break them. After sufficient impatience, he again started shouting. "Hey! Hey! Someone come and get this thing off me!"

The medic-nin came in rather more quickly this time, and glared at Naruto. "What did I say about the shouting?"

"Well, no one was coming to take this! And I can't quite sleep with it here!" He pointed at the tray.

"What? The nurse was supposed to... well, of course she didn't. Of course. Blasted unprofessional...." The medic began swearing under his breath and removed the tray. "Listen, kid, don't shout anymore. I'll be right back with something." He left the room, Naruto already having closed his eyes — he didn't want to see anyone else gutted by illusory lines.

The medic returned several minutes later carrying a two-way radio set. Naruto opened his eyes as the door opened, but carefully looked straight at the medic- nin, hoping that that would keep him from being a subject of Naruto's personal Illusion Of Death. The medic left it on the table next to the Hokage's kunai; Naruto could reach it by reaching over with his good arm. "Don't bother talking, just press this button." He indicated a button on the side of the device. "That'll call me, more quietly. Not the nurses, who apparently cannot do their job. No more shouting, okay?"

"Okay." Naruto made as if to bow, forgetting his position; he flinched at the unwise motion, and hurried on. "Thank you, medic-san." The medic made for the door, Naruto keeping his eye on him. As he walked out, the chair just to his left split into pieces and fell. Naruto jumped; that hadn't been the medic, true, but it certainly hadn't been in the corner of his eye, either. He closed his eyes again, hurriedly.

It was not even yet dark, but Naruto, who had nothing better to do than lie still with his eyes closed anyway, decided to try to sleep. It was hard. Even with his eyes closed, he would occasionally flash back to the nurse, cut up, sliced in pieces, rendered dead and mangled by the malevolent lines. Even the knowledge that it was not real, that it had never happened, that he was being frightened by the memories of an illusion, did not make the images stop repeating. He finally slept, but his nightmares were of a grid of lines covering everything and everyone, and it all falling to pieces, everyone he knew reduced to inert piles of bloody meat, Konoha itself broken in pieces and lying on the ground.

He did not scream when he woke, but it was a near thing. The room was dark, so dark that at first he could not even see the window. After his eyes adjusted, he could see it in a faint glow, probably a light down on the street. He was covered in sweat, though he had not moved from his position. An incautious decision to try resulted in a pointed twinge from his ribs and his foot; his broken arm did not pain him. He fell back into the pillow and closed his eyes again, grateful for the darkness that hid the lines of death.

---

Naruto woke the next morning to bright sunshine. The sun shone in the window and left the room brightly lit, and the environment was cheerful enough, but he still saw the lines on the walls, the ceiling, everything, and they reminded him inescapably of his nightmare. He shuddered violently at the memory, then flinched almost instinctively, expecting pain; but even that relatively drastic motion did not draw any particular feeling from his ribs. He felt his side, where the pain had been, and felt nothing; encouraged, he pushed a little harder, and it twinged, dashing his hopes that he might have been fully cured.

He lay back again, looking up, and saw the chain holding up the lamp above him break in five pieces, the lamp plummeting to the ground to break the illusion. He shook his head violently and tried to sit up. The motion succeeded with no unusual pain, but a lingering sense of fragility about his side and foot warned him not to attempt any gymnastics, even if he could stand. He contented himself, for the moment, with stacking his pillows behind him and leaning back against the head of the bed. Then the door broke in pieces and fell to the ground. He shook his head violently and closed his eyes. The door had been right in the center of his field of view; apparently whatever it was that was affecting him was progressing. The idea was not reassuring.

He sat with his eyes closed, thinking of nothing in particular, until he became aware of a renewed hunger. The thought of more food like the previous day's made him cringe in disgust, but his hunger eventually overcame it. Rather than shouting, he searched out the radio communicator on his bedside table (the lamp broke in pieces and fell, almost on him) and pressed the call button, before noticing that he had unconsciously moved his broken arm. A test wave called forth no pain, and Naruto grinned. This one had healed even faster than the last time he had broken a limb.

The window broke and fell to the ground, its pieces shattering on impact. Naruto closed his eyes again, startled and annoyed. If nothing else, this will drive me insane in another day. The lack of a breeze, a noise or any smell of the outdoors reassured him that the window was, in fact, still intact. He remained there until the door opened and the medic-nin from the day before stepped inside.

"Hello, medic-san!" said Naruto, opening his eyes to look at the doctor. "I wondered if you could tell me — what time is it, and when can I get breakfast?"

"You slept late, Naruto-san," said the ninja. The wooden siding tacked onto the wall in the hallway outside the door split in several pieces and fell, exposing bare plaster behind. Naruto shook his head slightly as the medic-nin continued. "It's almost noon. You'll have to wait for lunch."

Naruto nodded, looking slightly chagrined. "Okay, medic-san. Oh, ojiisan said that I could get out of bed today. Can I?"

The medic looked slightly aghast at Naruto's familiarity, and stepped forward to run a hand over Naruto's ribs. "Hokage-sama is probably right," he said after a moment, emphasizing the title. "You can try it now, but if it hurts you'd better get back in bed."

Naruto threw off the covers only to note that he was wearing nothing but briefs. He contained his momentary startlement and slid his legs off the side of the bed, successfully standing, then asked, "Also, medic-san, is there anything for me to wear?"

The medic-nin nodded (the left wall broke again, exposing another near-identical room) and handed Naruto a hospital gown that had been hanging on the wall. Naruto turned away, not out of modesty so much as a sudden dread that the illusion would catch the medic-nin and he would be subjected to another round of blood and death. He slid into the gown, knotting it as tightly as it would knot, then spoke without turning around. "Thank you, medic-san. Do you know where my other clothes are?"

"They're being taken care of. You should be able to change back into them sometime later today, if you want, but you shouldn't spend too much time out of bed. Is there anything else?" This last was spoken with a slight edge to it; Naruto guessed that the medic did not appreciate the gesture of speaking with his back turned. He turned around, reluctantly, and shook his head. The medic nodded and went out (this time it was the doorframe, tens of little wooden chunks falling to the ground around a ragged hole in the wall). Naruto quickly shut his eyes and sat on the bed.

Feeling more restless now that he could stand, Naruto opened his eyes and looked around. The room was small, and only felt more confining now that he was capable of moving in it. He stood up and moved to the window, looking out. The view was impressive, and the more pleasant for the fact that he could not see any lines on anything. He was unsure whether that was due to distance or if the odd illusions did not extend to things far from him, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. Then the question was answered for him as a tree shivered and fell to the ground, not as if it had been cut but collapsing straight downwards, a cloud forming of its leaves in the air. He shook his head compulsively, looking down, but soon looked out again. Keeping his eyes closed was getting painfully boring, and he was tired of looking at the lines.

Two more trees and a small building later, Naruto decided to stop looking out the window. He moved over to the chair and sat in it, keeping his eyes down. His eyes fell on a large, irregular piece of flooring, unobscured by the bed, defined by the eerie, spidery lines that formed its borders. Almost as soon as he saw it, it was cut along the edges and fell into the room below. Shaking his head again, he closed his eyes and moaned in frustration.

The door opened. Naruto looked up and saw the medic-nin stepping through, holding a tray. This time, the tray split in two, a plate and glass falling to the ground and shattering. He shook his head convulsively, trying to clear out his mind, as the medic walked over to him with the entirely intact meal tray. He set it on the ground in front of Naruto, deploying its legs so that it made a passable table. "Here you are, Naruto-san. Also, Hokage-sama," he made a point of the honorific, "is here to see you again. I'll bring him up in three minutes. Be polite." With this admonition he again disappeared out the door. Naruto, who had looked down as soon as he saw the medic, looked up again, and ate. The food was no better than it had been the night before, but he was hungry enough not to care.

The door opened just as Naruto finished eating. He looked up. The doctor was holding the doorknob, and he could see the old man standing behind him. This was as far as he got before he saw the doctor slump suddenly, blood starting unexpectedly from his clothes, then collapse, his body coming apart as he fell.

Without noticing the motion, Naruto was on his feet. The tray clattered to the floor as he yelled in horror, his eyes fixed on the bloody corpse lying in pieces on the threshold. Then it vanished.

The doctor rushed up to him. "Naruto-san! What's wrong?" Naruto was hyperventilating, his mind still occupied by the image of that same doctor in pieces on the floor. "What's wrong?" The Hokage came up behind, pushing the doctor aside with one arm. He knelt in front of Naruto, his hands on the boy's shoulders.

"Naruto! Breathe! Calm!" He reinforced the words with a slight genjutsu, one that would force his words to break the cycle of panic in Naruto's mind. The boy had closed his eyes immediately after screaming, and they remained closed as he calmed down. He took nearly a minute to slow his breathing to normal before he responded.

"Ojiisan, I told you about the lines, and things breaking along the lines, and it's getting worse, and I just saw the doctor get cut up and there was blood and he fell down...." Naruto's words became more and more frantic as he spoke, until the Hokage again applied the genjutsu. The next words were calmer. "I keep seeing everything break, like the chair and that lamp and the wall and the floor...and even a bunch of trees outside...and then there was the doctor, and the same thing happened with a nurse yesterday...."

The Hokage waited until his words ceased and his breathing was even before replying. "It's all right, Naruto. No one is dead. I know it's hard, seeing something like that, but no one is dead. You don't need to worry about it." He was beginning to reconsider this being a genjutsu someone had laid on the boy to hurt him; it had seemed harmless enough the day before, but this was entirely different.

Naruto opened his eyes, having apparently stopped panicking, but his fists were clenched and his voice was tight. "Ojiisan...this is getting bad. It's not so hard when there aren't people around, but I just can't look at people, I guess, because they might, like...." He trailed off.

"Naruto, it's all right. I'm going to try to find out whether it might be a genjutsu that's more subtle than I've usually seen. Can you stay here quietly until I get back?"

Naruto nodded, his fists still clenched. Then he sat down again, looking up, and suddenly screamed again and closed his eyes.

The Hokage sighed, hating to see the boy in pain, and spoke to the medic-nin. "Listen, I think this might be a genjutsu that someone's put on him. I'm going to go look into that. Try to make him comfortable, but don't stay in here unless you need to — it makes it worse for him." The medic nodded, his expression puzzled but resolute, and the Hokage walked out the door, seeking the one person in the village who was probably more skilled with genjutsu than himself.

---

Naruto sat on the chair, his eyes closed, his head down, his hands shaking in his lap. The images of the dismembered bodies of the nurse from the day before, the medic-nin who had brought him his meals, the Hokage himself, kept running through his head. He heard the medic grab the tray from in front of him and leave the room, but the awareness was second to his near-panic. He didn't know what was happening, and he couldn't leave like this — it would be torture just to walk down the street. He slumped down in the chair, keeping his eyes closed. What's happening? Why is this happening?

The door opened. He looked up, opening his eyes, and suppressed the urge to slam them shut again. The Hokage entered, with someone behind him. (The doorknob split from the door and fell in pieces.) He forced his attention back to the newcomer. It was a woman with long black hair, wearing a Konoha hitai-ite, and as he looked again he noticed that her eyes were distinctly red.

"Kurenai-san, here he is," said the Hokage. He stood to one side, and his face was tired and sad, more so than Naruto had ever seen. (This time it was his hat, showering the Hokage with strips of cloth; Naruto almost laughed.) "I tried a simple dispelling, but it did not react. I cannot think of anything that it could be other than a genjutsu, unless...." Here he gave her a very significant look. She nodded and stepped forwards. Then it happened, just as it had before; the woman suddenly tensed, then slumped, then blood began to show along the lines that had adorned her body. She collapsed in a pile of blood, her limbs separating from her body, her hands and feet mangled, and then the illusion broke. He bit back a scream this time, with great difficulty, but could not hide his tensing up or the sudden look of horror that crossed his face. The woman, Kurenai, stopped, bit her lip, then stepped forward, knelt, and put one hand on his head.

"Try to remain calm, Naruto-san," she said. He slowed his breathing, feeling an odd sensation that he could only describe as pins and needles of the mind. The feeling persisted for some seconds, until Kurenai removed her hand. She frowned, then stood up. "Can you point out where you see one of these lines?"

Naruto pointed to the nearest line, which was on the floor. Kurenai ran a hand over the area, checking it carefully, then raised one hand in a seal and muttered, "Kai!" Nothing seemed to change. (The line that he had just been focusing on to point out its location split, pieces of the floor falling into the room below.) Turning back to Naruto, she put her hand back on his forehead and said again, "Kai!" Again, there was no change.

Kurenai turned to the Hokage, standing. "I'm sorry, Hokage-sama. I can't find any genjutsu here. I don't know what to say...." She looked at Naruto. (Her hitai-ite split in five pieces, two of them falling, the others still held to her headband by the rivets.) "He's obviously seeing something, something that hurts him, but I can't find any external influence. Might it be...?"

The Hokage nodded. "It most likely is. I don't know what to do here...we need Jiraiya, he might be able to tell us if the seal was broken somehow."

This time it was Kurenai again. She collapsed in blood, dying. Then, the illusion broke. Then, the Hokage. The blood was mostly concealed by his long robe of office, but it was painfully obvious that his body was split in pieces. Then the illusion broke.

Naruto shot to his feet, involuntarily, clenching his eyes shut. "NO!" The shout was wild and angry. Opening his eyes again, he looked around, a little wildly, seeing lines, lines, lines. They covered the floor, the walls, the bed, even Kurenai and the Hokage. Looking at the latter two, he flinched away, remembering the sight of their mangled bodies.

His eyes fell on the table at the side of the bed, and he darted over to it, snatching up the kunai the Hokage had given him. "Damned! LINES!" Lifting it over his head, he slammed the point of the knife downwards into the line crossing the tabletop, expecting to embed it in the wood. Instead, it skipped and skittered along the surface, tracing the line almost unintentionally — and the table fell in two pieces.

Naruto waited for the illusion to break, for the table to reform as it already had so many times. It did not. He shook his head wildly, clenching his eyes shut and then opening them. The table was still broken. It had split in half directly along the line he had cut. The pieces still had lines on them. None of the fragments of anything he had seen break still had any lines. Almost curiously, he ran the tip of the knife over another line, this one on the table leg. The leg broke in two. The radio the doctor had given him lay forgotten in the fragments as he did it again, with another leg. It broke in two. The illusion did not break. It was real.

He knelt in the wreckage, almost laughing. It was too much. The nightmares were coming true. "What are they? WHAT ARE THEY?!"

Almost beneath his notice was the Hokage's hand seal, or his spoken word. "Kokuangyo no Jutsu!" What was not beneath his notice was the sudden darkness that engulfed the room — sudden and absolute darkness, with no furniture, no walls, no people, no LINES to torment him. He dropped to his knees in release.

He felt hands on his shoulders, felt a hand gently remove the kunai from his loosened grip. Felt himself lifted up and laid on something soft. He did not care. He shouted, no longer knowing if he spoke in truth or only in his mind. "WHAT ARE THE LINES?!"

A presence filled his mind, oppressive with its power. He saw red all over, even as he still perceived only the blackness of the Hokage's jutsu. A voice spoke, awful in its malice, but somehow tempered — was that amusement?

They are DEATH, whelp.

The churning dread that had taken over Naruto's mind was submerged in a new fear, less panicky, less insane. He did not reply intentionally, but whatever filled his mind took his confusion for an answer.

The LINES are DEATH. You SEE with MY EYES. How do you like it, WHELP? There was a heavy, gloating amusement in the words.

Naruto quailed. He could still perceive the darkness around him, soothing balm after the horror before, but somehow overlaid on it was a fiery red, and he could feel the presence of an enormous power, heavy with malice. He rallied his strength to respond. What are you?

The question brought on a roar of laughter. You do not know? What was the blond idiot doing? Oh, this should be very, very interesting....

The laughter faded slowly, and the presence with it. Only darkness filled his vision now, and Naruto's overtaxed mind let go and slept.

---

He woke again, and again it was daylight. It had been barely afternoon when he had freaked out the day before, so, he deduced, he must have been sleeping a long time. He was suddenly full of energy and restless, in a way that even his extreme boredom the two days previously had not exceeded; he bounded out of the bed, noticing that he was still wearing the hospital gown. He looked around, and saw a flash of orange on the chair. It was his clothes. He changed into them quickly and looked around. The bed was rumpled with his quick exit, and a cheerful patch of sunlight sat on the floor. It took him a moment to realize why everything looked so... happy. There were no lines.

It took a moment for this development to sink in, and when it did he laughed out loud with delight. No lines. No more of everything he saw falling apart. It had not been real. He could forget about it.

The table beside the bed was sitting on the ground, the top split down the middle, two of its legs sheared in half. The surfaces were eerily smooth — not split down the grain, but simply cut, perfectly, as if by a knife sharper than a hair.

Okay, maybe he couldn't forget about it.

Still in the wreckage of the table was the radio communicator that the doctor had given him two days earlier. Naruto picked it up and pressed the call button. Soon enough, there were steps down the hall and the medic-nin walked in.

He looked startled to see Naruto up and dressed, but maintained a professional attitude. "Hello, Naruto-san. What is it?"

"Hey, medic-san. Do you know the time? And when can I get out of this place?"

"It's nine in the morning — congratulations on getting up early for once. And let's see." The medic-nin approached him. Naruto grinned at being able to maintain eye contact without fear of the man falling apart in front of his eyes.

After a fairly comprehensive chakra-scan, the doctor stood up, shaking his head. "Impressive. Truly impressive. Only three days.... Naruto-san, there's no reason why you can't go now. I believe they are holding some of your affairs at the Hokage's office, so you should check there before you go home."

Naruto smiled brightly. "Thanks, medic-san!"

Fifteen minutes later, Naruto was near the Hokage's office door. He ignored the disapproving look of the receptionist to walk straight up to it and listen for a moment. Not hearing any voices, he simply walked in.

The office was as he had seen it before. The old man was sitting at his desk, doing some form of paperwork. He looked up and smiled to see Naruto. "Hello, Naruto. You're here for this, I suppose?" He held up the kunai that had sat at Naruto's bedside the three days before.

"Yeah, thanks!" Naruto took the knife and stowed it in a pocket, making sure to keep the blade away from his skin. "But I had some questions."

"Yes?" said the Hokage, sighing somewhat, as he thought he could guess what the questions were.

"I woke up this morning and it was all gone. The lines, everything," Naruto said. "But yesterday once you had me in that darkness-jutsu-thing," he wiggled his fingers to illustrate, "I saw something kinda weird."

The Hokage tensed. "What was that?"

"It was like, there was this big red aura, and I could see all red even though I still just saw the darkness from the jutsu, right? And then this voice talked to me, when I was going crazy and yelling 'what are the lines?', and it said something like 'the lines are death and you see with my eyes'. And it was just, you know, weird. So do you know anything about that?"

The Hokage sighed further. He had hoped to postpone this revelation until far later, but the demon fox was already, apparently, inside Naruto's mind; it was only fair to tell him what was happening. "You see, Naruto, this is going to take some explanation."

---

Naruto began to fidget again as the Hokage finished explaining. "The demon fox? Really?"

"Yes, Naruto. You have to understand — the Yondaime had no other option. He did not choose to do this on a whim, and he sacrificed his life to do it."

Naruto nodded. "Yeah, I get that... but, is that why everyone seems to hate me? Because the fox is in me? Why?"

The Sandaime sighed again. "You have to understand, Naruto, that most of the people who hate you for this are civilians. They don't quite understand the idea behind the seal; they simply know that you hold the demon, and they think that they are getting revenge on the demon by attacking you. And because my law prevents them from telling anyone or inciting hatred directly, they just... you know what they do."

Naruto nodded grimly. "I do." He sat quietly for a moment. "But this whole thing with the lines... that wasn't expected, was it?"

"No. The fox said that you were seeing with its eyes, but we don't know why that would happen. It could be...." The Hokage was silent for a moment, then continued. "The fox makes you heal faster than normal people, Naruto. You healed from some very terrible injuries in only three days, and part of that was taken up by your adverse reaction to the lines." This drew a sheepish grin from Naruto. "We don't know, but it may be... pushing its chakra out, to heal you there. Perhaps pushing enough to heal you from such a nasty beating activated you seeing like it does somehow. We don't know."

Naruto sighed. "I...." He shook his head. "Ojiisan, I... I don't want to be a bother, but this.... Will it come back? Even now that it's gone, that was...." He shuddered. "I didn't like that at all."

The Hokage gave him a sad smile.

"I don't know, Naruto. I can only speculate. I think that if you avoid such injuries, they should not recur very soon. Your healing is quite remarkable, and to provide such results must take an enormous amount of power. That this power should carry along such an effect... is not surprising, I suppose. It is a demon, after all." He sighed. "Naruto. If you see them again, come to me. Should you begin having such symptoms again, I can place you in darkness. You may find this tedious, but it would be better than the alternative."

Naruto nodded, slowly. "It would. It still bothers me, though, that it happens. I mean, what else don't we know about the," he gestured to his stomach, "seal thing?"

The Sandaime thought about this for a moment.

"Naruto, I would like to make you an offer."

The boy shifted. "What's that, ojiisan?"

"I'm going to give you access to the Konoha archives, like a full ninja would have. Not a genin, either. Usually you need to be chuunin level to get this access. And I'm going to ask in return that you learn as much as you can about fuinjutsu. Okay?"

Naruto frowned at him. "That seems a little boring, ojiisan."

The Hokage's smile became wider, and knowing. "Ah, but little you know. Naruto, which branch of the ninja arts is used to create exploding tags?"

Naruto froze for several seconds. They had seen exploding tags demonstrated, of course, and it was an upcoming lesson to learn to trigger them with their own chakra. However, they were most emphatically not allowed to purchase tags for themselves, and the Academy supplies were kept well hidden away. Then he smiled broadly. "Oh, that sounds fun, ojiisan." And was that a bit of a gleeful smirk hidden under his usual grin?

"I'm sure it does, Naruto. And I think that you might find fuinjutsu to be of use in...shall we say, other ways, that some might consider... a little outside the norm. But." The Hokage had straightened, and his smile was gone. "They may not look it, and you will find some who look down on them. But seals are the most dangerous ninja art. Both to your enemies, and to you. You have my leave to study up to a certain level on your own. You are not to go beyond that level, and whatever you make is to be used safely." He looked down at Naruto, very serious. "The reason I ask you to do this, Naruto, is because of your status. The seal which holds the Fox inside you is the Fourth's masterpiece of fuinjutsu. There are many shinobi in the village who know some of that art, and none of them will stint their help with it, if you need. But you will always have the greatest access to it, and perhaps some insight unavailable from the outside. You will not reach that level for a while, but in the long run, you must learn fuinjutsu to defend yourself against what you hold inside. Do you understand?"

Naruto gulped a bit, but stared back at the Hokage with resolution. "I got it, ojiisan." He took a breath, and his grin began to return. "And... thanks."

---

Naruto sighed as he left the Academy. It seemed that he did not get time off the Academy for any longer than he was in the hospital for, and he had stayed up most of the previous night reading the first sealing scroll the old man had given him. He had woken up in a panic and dashed out the door, far too late to make his usual lunch. He was starving, and he didn't have enough money right now to go to Ichiraku-san's place for ramen. He walked tiredly home, looking forwards only slightly to eating the mere instant ramen available there.

Hyuuga Hinata walked along some way behind him. She had been worried when Naruto simply disappeared for three days after the Yondaime's festival, but when he came back he seemed healthy — if tired. He seemed less engaged, though, less attentive even than usual, and he would occasionally, when he thought no one was looking, give a sigh and shake his head as if to dislodge something. However, today he had, for the first time, actually forgotten his lunch, and as was usual she had packed double so that, if he did, she could offer him food. She had missed the opportunity to give it to him at lunch, but....

Mustering all her courage, she moved faster and caught up with Naruto. "Ano ...Naruto-ku..un...." She trailed off, losing her nerve as he turned to her.

"Ah? Hello, Hinata-san," he said, giving her his usual broad grin.

She ducked her head and said nothing.

"Hinata-san?" he asked.

"You...youdidn'teatlunchtoday," she said in a rush. "I..I have some food left over, if you want..." She offered him the portion of her lunch that she had not touched.

Naruto looked at her, his expression puzzled. "Ah...thank you, Hinata-san." He took the second bento. "Why...are you offering this to me?"

Hinata ducked her head even further, and blushed. "Ano...you didn't eat lunch...and you looked hungry. And, uh, you looked a little bit tired today, and...." She trailed off.

Naruto was silent for a moment, then smiled at her, and it seemed different then his usual brash grin — more real, somehow. "Thank you, Hinata-san. I should get your bento back to you. Do you mind just waiting here?"

She shook her head quickly. "No! No...that's fine. Whatever you want, Naruto-kun...."

He smiled again, and sat on the rock to eat.

---

So I'll probably go a chapter a day until I run out of old ones; the revisions go fast enough. Hopefully by that time I'll have some new material to post.

If you're curious, the entire current story is available on FFnet and AO3. But...the early stuff is mostly terrible. I'll be posting the revisions here, then there.

 

[alethiophile]

Shinigan

Chapter 1

Clones

The Sandaime Hokage sat in a large, imposing chair, set at the center of a long, curved table at the front of a high, spacious hall. To his left and right, there sat his Council, the group of shinobi who headed families that claimed, by old right or new strength, a voice in the governance of Konohagakure. While the Hokage wore the robes of his office, stately and imposing, the clan heads were dressed in simple, practical field uniform — if perhaps a little more immaculate than might have been expected on active duty. All were composed, their faces unmoving as they considered those before them, ready to render judgement on the grave matter for which they had been called together on such short notice.

The air of dignity and calm was not replicated in the lower half of the room. While ordinarily, these meetings saw perhaps a score of visitors other than the Council themselves, counting both prominent civilians and petitioners, this time the lower half was packed with almost twice that. Agitated voices echoed around the room, several conversations going at once underneath the voice of the man who had actually been recognized to speak. He was a tall and portly man, his clothes fine, and he stood beside one of the few seats available in the lower half as he delivered his petition. Like many of the other civilians in the room, he bore telltale signs of a recent, hurried and unexpected washing up.

"This kind of outrage cannot be born!" proclaimed the man. It was perhaps the third time he had expressed the same sentiment, in steadily more grand and flowery terms. Tsukuda Kouta was a merchant, the owner of a moderately large bakery placed quite advantageously in the center of Konoha, convenient both to the Academy and to the Hokage's Tower. He had by apt maneuvering become rather more influential in the village than his wealth would have indicated, and at the moment he was bending all of that skill in service of his current petition.

The Hokage sighed, careful not to let the motion show, and raised a hand slightly. Tsukuda stopped dead, right in mid-sentence, and the room quieted.

"I believe we have heard your claim," said the Hokage, mildly. Really, Tsukuda had begun to repeat himself some time ago, but letting him talk himself out might have done something to placate him. Observing the man, Sarutobi thought it had helped, a little. His patience, however, was not infinite.

He glanced over the rest of the crowd pressed together in the lower half. "Would anyone whose complaint is similar please step forward?"

There was a flurry of motion, punctuated by collisions and low apologies, as a bit more than half of the group sorted themselves out and came to the front. The Hokage stared at them, and felt an unexpected urge to laugh. He suppressed it.

The stories were, broadly, quite similar. It seemed that, early this morning, the owners or employees of many village retail institutions (particularly, the Hokage could not help but notice, those convenient to Uzumaki Naruto's route from his apartment to the Academy and back) had entered their places of business to find crude trip-string traps linked, somehow, to storage seals containing large amounts of flour. Tsukuda had found a similar trap, then, after (the Hokage surmised) sputtering in rage for at least half an hour and repeatedly skirting the edges of his Law regarding the jinchuuriki, discovered that half his latest shipment of flour — four barrels in all — was missing. It was now assumed that this was the source of the flour in the traps.

After he felt that he had learned as much from the rest as he ever would, he raised his hand again, and quiet fell. Then he glanced back and forth, addressing the shinobi beside him. "Do the Council have any insights?"

Aburame Shibi spoke first. "It would seem that whatever person is responsible for these devices has placed them rather widely. However, I may report that no traps were found on Aburame clan land."

There were some glances back and forth between the clan heads. Hyuuga Hiashi was next.

"A single trap was laid at the gate to the Hyuuga compound. It was triggered by Hyuuga Makoto-san, who was able to avoid its payload almost entirely. The perpetrator was apparently unable or disinclined to penetrate the compound." He tried for the usual Hyuuga impassiveness, but some annoyance leaked through. The Hokage could not be sure whether this was at the prank, or at the fact that the prank had caused them to be called for an emergency meeting at eight in the morning.

The rest of the Council followed, each denying having found anything. The Hokage waited until the last had spoken, then nodded.

"Very well. On my own account, I have word from the caretakers of the Uchiha compound that a single trap was laid there, again at the gate. I know of no others."

Tsukuda, who had been simmering, motioned for attention again. At the Hokage's acknowledgement, he spoke, his voice almost sharp enough to be imprudent. "That's very useful, but what is going to be done about this? The b— the person who laid these traps needs to be punished!"

The Hokage regarded him levelly. "An admirable sentiment, Tsukuda. Would you have some special insight, perhaps, that might allow us to determine the perpetrator? If you should have such a thing, I urge you not to remain silent."

Tsukuda stared at him for a moment, mouth working as if to speak. But he didn't; he wasn't actually stupid, after all, just outraged. After some time, he glanced down.

"No, Hokage-sama, I have none."

"A pity," said Sarutobi, drily. "What is to be done, then...." He glanced back and forth, meeting the eyes of the Council. "Whatever other mysteries there may be, it seems likely that this act was carried out by a shinobi."

No one felt like either disputing or concurring with the Hokage when he made a statement of such thundering obviousness, so after a moment he continued. "It is, after all, the purpose of our Council to defend the village against the attacks of shinobi. Thus, some action is called for. Tsukuda, you have my guarantee that vigilance will be maintained, and that the full potency of our Council will be devoted to ensuring against a recurrence of this event. Are you satisfied with this?"

There was, of course, only one thing for Tsukuda to say to that. "I am, Hokage-sama." He sat down, still simmering slightly, and the Hokage nodded.

"Very good. There remains the matter of damages. I presume that no one here feels they require the assistance of our Council in cleaning errant spills of flour." His voice was entirely deadpan, and the room became very quiet for some seconds. He smiled thinly.

"I salute your self-reliance. Tsukuda. The damages to you amount to one half your weekly shipment of flour, correct?"

Tsukuda glanced up, startling slightly. He opened his mouth, then hesitated. "Ah... That, and as well, the expense of rush ordering another shipment, Hokage-sama."

Sarutobi nodded. "Prepare an accounting of expenses, and forward it to our Council. You will be repaid in full." Not a bad idea to throw the man a bone, after all, even after the necessity of dealing with him rather unfairly regarding the matter of punishment.

Tsukuda nodded, somewhat shakily. "Thank you, Hokage-sama. I believe my claim is satisfied."

The Hokage mentally applauded the man for playing along. "Good. Unless there is some other claim related to this incident, then, I believe the special session is over."

---

Uzumaki Naruto walked into the Academy, where there was an uproar. He would guess that few of his classmates had been up and about sufficiently early to actually see it, but the sight of perhaps twenty-five bleached-white civilian merchants running frantically back home from their shops to wash off had gotten into the rumor mill with glee. As he walked into the classroom, a wave of, if not silence, less noise swept out away from his point of entry, those students who noticed his entrance and had inferred his responsibility becoming silent on seeing him. He ignored it, walking straight to his seat and sitting down. He noticed with some satisfaction that the stuck-up bastard was not yet present. Probably still cleaning himself off.

Hinata, sitting next to him, blushed slightly at his approach. "Ah... Naruto-kun?"

He turned to her. "Yes, Hinata-chan?"

"You... are you... did you make the flour traps?"

He grinned at her. "Now, Hinata-chan, would I do something like that?"

She looked down, but she was smiling, and there was almost a giggle in her next words. "You should not do such things, Naruto-kun. Makoto-san was very angry."

"Well, I'm very sorry that Hyuuga Makoto-san is angry, and I'm sure the person who laid all those traps did a very bad thing." Naruto smiled at her.

The conversation, so far, had fallen under the cloak of all the other conversations happening at the same time. Now all conversation stopped as Iruka- sensei opened the door and walked into the room. He stopped at his desk and began speaking.

"Class, be silent!" This was mostly a formality, as the class was silent already. "I have instructions to tell the students the following. An incident occurred this morning involving, ah, the gates of the Hyuuga and Uchiha estates, and the doors, front hallways, and bathroom doors of multiple civilian retail establishments throughout the village. The named locations were trapped with rudimentary fuinjutsu flour traps, presumably set up last night. A hunt for the perpetrator is currently ongoing." Several people looked at Naruto, and the majority who did not were clearly exerting heroic willpower to avoid it. "That is all the information available. Thank you. We are now going to begin our lesson," he said with a fulminating glance at Naruto, "with a reexamination of the class' proficiency in the Henge no Jutsu. Please line up at the front of the class."

Several students gave Naruto mild glares at this, which he ignored. Everyone filed up to the front and lined up. It was at this point that Uchiha Sasuke walked in the door. His appearance was not rumpled in the least, for which Naruto had to give him credit, but he gave Naruto a nasty look as he took his place at the end of the line.

Quiet repetitions of "Henge!" filled the classroom as they filed up one by one to complete the jutsu. Naruto serenely ignored both glares and curious looks, merely waiting until it became his turn. He stepped forwards, the form he wanted held in his mind — "Henge!"

The smoke cleared. Iruka, his face suddenly twitching, was looking at a transformation that was, indeed, a perfect copy of him — except that he was wearing white pajamas embroidered with bright pink rabbits.

Naruto-as-Iruka grinned. "So, sensei, do I pass?"

Iruka twitched several more times before replying. Naruto wasn't sure whether he was holding back amusement or annoyance, but if he had read Iruka correctly before, it would be amusement. Iruka's deadpan reply seemed to confirm it. "I'll mark your henge as 'proficient' and your ability to respect a teacher as 'needs work'," he said. "Get back to your seat already." Naruto released the transformation and walked back.

---

Naruto walked into the Hokage's office, his movements painful. Maybe that trap on the Uchiha compound hadn't been such a good idea after all — the bastard had beaten him bloody in taijutsu practice that day. He might almost believe that he had touched a nerve.

Ah, well. He would have to console himself with the thought that he could easily have replaced the flour in the trap with a few kunai or an explosive tag. There was more to being a ninja than the ability to punch people efficiently.

The old man was sitting behind his desk, writing something. He looked up as Naruto walked in. "Hello, Naruto. Thank you for coming."

Naruto grinned. "Hi, ojiisan!"

The Hokage gave Naruto a rather crooked smile, and gestured him to sit. "We need to talk about all those flour traps."

Naruto burst out in mock indignation. "Hey! How do you know it was me who set those?"

The Hokage merely raised an eyebrow, and Naruto gave a sheepish grin. "Okay, yeah, I did it. But still!"

"Your defense is registered, and completely ignored. Now, back to the traps. Have you been reading further than I gave you permission to? Trap seals are beyond your level. You shouldn't be able to do anything with a seal without activating it yourself."

Naruto smirked broadly at the memory. "Oh, yeah! No, I haven't been reading ahead. What I did was I used this old and kinda broken storage seal, and I wrote it on two different pieces of paper, and then when someone hit the tripwire it yanked them apart, so the seal just got really broken, and that old broken storage seal makes all its stuff like explode out if it's broken without chakra activating. So yeah."

The Hokage gave a sigh. "Avoiding one danger merely to court another? Did you not read of the dangers of disrupting a powered seal, in particular a dimensional seal, without properly releasing it? I seem to recall it was rather prominent. At the beginning of the section, in fact. In red ink. I have this distinct memory of writing it there, you see."

"Hey, I knew it wouldn't do anything bad!" said Naruto. "I used that broken old seal in the first place because the dimensional storage is stupid and stops working when you look at it wrong! And I tested it out like five times, and I made all the traps the same. And I was right. Nothing bad happened, did it?" He crossed his arms, staring defiantly at the Hokage.

The old man looked back at Naruto for a moment, his eyes hard, and Naruto felt a shiver trying to pass through him. Then he nodded.

"I'll let that go, then. As you say, it was successful. Leaving aside your methods, we come to the subject of your aims."

Naruto frowned. "My aims?"

"You attacked civilians, Naruto. There are laws about that. Shinobi of Konoha do not victimize citizens of Konoha. We rule them, and protect them. And yes—" he raised his hand, cutting off Naruto's indignant justification. "I know the circumstances. I know they treat you shabbily. The fact remains."

Naruto ducked his head, a bit shamefaced. "All right, ojiisan. But why this? It's not like I haven't played pranks before."

The Hokage nodded. "Leeway can be granted, Naruto, for an Academy student — not even a shinobi yet, legally. And be very sure, if I thought you were attacking out of ill wishes — or attacking people who hadn't mistreated you first — I would not have granted you any such leeway. But ninja arts are different. A tripwire or a paint bomb is a prank. A seal trap is an attack by a shinobi. Even if it's only filled with flour. You understand?"

"Yes, ojiisan," said Naruto. He was looking very serious now.

The Hokage examined his face for a moment, and was seemingly satisfied. "Good. I have given Tsukuda-san my personal guarantee that I will see this does not happen again. Will you uphold my word on this?"

Naruto nodded quickly. "Of course."

The old man smiled, his face becoming a bit softer. "As I expected. Then only one thing remains."

"What's that, ojiisan?" said Naruto, a bit wary.

"I have also promised Tsukuda-san compensation from the village for the flour you stole. I will speak no more of attacks on civilians. However, in punishment for theft, I am levying on you a fine in the amount of his compensation. This will be paid in the form of half your living stipend and mission payments until the debt is satisfied. Understood?"

Naruto groaned. "Ojiisaaan...."

The Hokage's face was severe, though there was the hint of a twinkle in his eye. "If you're going to break laws, Naruto, you can't complain about serving the consequences. Dismissed."

"Okay, okay," Naruto grumped, getting to his feet.

The Hokage waved him out. "Goodbye, Naruto."

---

Naruto sat in the Academy classroom next to Hinata, sweating. It was the day of the final exam, and Iruka had chosen the Bunshin no Jutsu for the technique to test on. Just my luck... the thing I've never practiced at all! Hinata was called first. She went off after quietly wishing him good luck. None of the people who were called came back, so he couldn't ask her how she had done. Drat, drat, drat... He fidgeted until he was called.

Iruka-sensei and Mizuki-sensei were in the room alone, Iruka standing behind a table full of new hitai-ite, Mizuki beside him. Naruto walked up to the spot in front of the table.

Iruka smiled. "All right, Naruto, show me a Bunshin no Jutsu. You should be able to create at least three clones."

Naruto gulped and concentrated. He formed the appropriate seals, then, concentrating chakra, he yelled "Bunshin no Jutsu!" He felt a chakra drain and, panicking lest he not give it enough, pushed more chakra at the technique. There was a sudden release, but it felt warped, somehow. Naruto waited for the smoke to clear, only to see a single clone, looking like a slightly bleached zombie, lying beside him. He groaned.

Iruka had raised an eyebrow. "Really? Your henge was better than that...Unfortunately, Naruto, this does not satisfy the requirements. You fail."

Naruto groaned more loudly and walked out of the room.

---

Naruto sat on the swing outside, dejected. He had failed. His life was just going along perfectly well, and then this happened. Why did he have to fail?

Hinata had come up to him earlier, correctly interpreting his saddened demeanor. She had offered him good wishes, hopes to see him again. It was kind of her. She had seemed almost as dejected by his failure as he was. She, of course, had passed — whether or not her actual fighting style would ever use anything so pedestrian as the Academy jutsu, it would be the ultimate shame for any Hyuuga to fail the Academy test.

Naruto was sitting there, trying and failing to think coherently about what he would do next, when Mizuki-sensei approached him.

"You shouldn't blame Iruka-sensei, you know," he said. "He's trying to ensure that you become stronger."

"I don't," said Naruto, his voice muffled by his arms. "I know he couldn't have done anything different... it's just, I don't know what to do now."

"Ah, that's hard," said Mizuki. "Having to stay back a year, not with your friends anymore... it would be a great pity."

Naruto groaned — this seemed to be a common vocalization of his lately. "I know. I just can't figure it out. I just wish... I wish I hadn't failed."

Mizuki waited, just the right amount of time. "Well, you know...."

---

Naruto sat in a forest clearing, a huge, elaborate scroll sitting in front of him. The Kage Bunshin no Jutsu had been difficult to learn — difficult, indeed — but he had done it. In only an hour, too. He sat back, nearly exhausted and panting, but with a wide grin on his face. He could graduate, now. He wouldn't need to skip a year, wouldn't need to fall behind; he could surprise Hinata-chan and make her smile.

Fast approaching footsteps through the trees alerted him. Iruka-sensei jumped down from within them, landing on both feet in the clearing just ahead. Naruto grinned broadly at him... but there was something wrong. Iruka's face was tense, and he looked at Naruto almost coldly. "Naruto! What are you doing with that scroll?"

"Iruka-sensei, that's the secondary graduation test, isn't it? I learned a jutsu! Now I get to graduate, right?"

Iruka looked at him as if he had grown another head. "Where in the world did you get that idea?"

"Mizuki-sensei told me! He said that if I got this scroll and learned a jutsu out of it, I could graduate along with the other kids! That... wasn't...." Naruto stopped talking in reaction to Iruka's suddenly horrified face.

"Naruto! Get out of here! Mizuki tricked you, he's using you to steal the scroll! Run!"

Naruto, suddenly horrified, looked around in fear, but it was too late. A volley of kunai flew out of the trees, straight towards him. He was moving, but he couldn't move fast enough — the knives were going to hit him —

Suddenly Iruka was there. He checked Naruto bodily out of the way, sending him crashing to the ground, and took the blow himself. He was slammed back against the wall of the building behind, a kunai through his leg and another in his arm, breathing hard.

Mizuki landed on a tree branch at the edge of the clearing. He was wearing two oversized shuriken on his back, and his face was twistedly triumphant.

"Iruka! I didn't plan for you to find him. But," he grinned nastily, "you're weak. I can kill you right after I kill him." He pointed at Iruka, then Naruto with a kunai.

Iruka looked up, chest heaving, still standing. His voice was strained, and interrupted by ragged coughs. "You call me weak, but what does it say about you, if you're using Academy students to do your stealing for you?"

Mizuki scowled, a horrible expression. "Oh, I can recognize the thing's talents. Right before I do the village a favor by killing it. I can do Konoha one last thing, before I leave. For old times' sake. Don't you agree, Iruka?"

Naruto, still sprawled on the ground, suddenly stared at Mizuki with an intent focus. Mizuki noticed, and made a twisted grin. "Oh, the thing hears. Are you curious, brat? Curious why I call you that? Curious why the whole village hates you?" He bared his teeth. "Curious why Iruka hates you?"

Naruto whispered. "No...."

Mizuki did not hear. "I'll tell you. Do you know what happened on your birthday, brat? Twelve years ago, the Nine-Tailed Fox attacked this village. The Yondaime Hokage gave his life to defeat it — but he couldn't kill it, brat. He could only seal it. He sealed it into a child. You. You are the nine-tailed fox! You killed everyone twelve years ago! You killed Iruka's parents! They all hate you. Everyone hates you. Demon!"

Naruto stood up, slowly. "No...."

Resolve shot through his mind. Mizuki had lied to him, had told him that he was the fox. No doubt Mizuki had not known that he already knew about the seal, so he was guilty of deliberately violating the Sandaime's law. Most of all, Mizuki had hurt Iruka.

Naruto was going to kill him.

He began to laugh. "Hah! You thought that would surprise me?"

Mizuki scowled and jumped down from the tree. "I don't care. Surprised or not, you can just die already, demon!" In a single motion, he whipped the heavy shuriken off his back and hurled it at Naruto.

Almost in slow motion, Naruto watched it come toward him. It was well-aimed, a spinning blur that arced across the clearing, curving toward him with an ear-catching whoosh of motion. As it moved, Mizuki himself charged toward him, drawing kunai in both hands.

Naruto dived away from the shuriken, rolling to the side as the disk sliced the air somewhere around his left ear. Mizuki had nearly reached him, and Naruto scrambled to get his legs under him as he hurriedly reached for a kunai of his own. He was tensing to deflect the strike when Iruka appeared. He set himself in the ground like a steel wall, parrying the kunai aside and knocking Mizuki back with a blow to the throat.

Mizuki snarled, his face animal as he glanced from Naruto to Iruka and back. He had retreated to get out of the other chuunin's reach, but after just a moment he set himself, preparing to attack again.

It didn't matter. The hesitation had given Naruto his chance. He reached into his pocket again, this time pulling out a slip of paper engraved with elegant black lines, and wrapped it around the handle of his kunai.

"I'll show you a demon, you bastard!" he shouted, his voice slightly muffled by the handle of the knife. Then he held out two fingers of each hand, crossing them in front of him.

"TAJUU KAGE BUNSHIN NO JUTSU!"

There was a burst of smoke that eclipsed the whole clearing. When it cleared, the clearing, the trees around, the roof of the building, were all covered in copies of Naruto. The only clear space was a small circle around Mizuki, who looked around frantically, suddenly absolutely horrified. Each clone was glaring at him with death in their eyes...and each clone still had a kunai with an explosive tag wrapped around the handle clenched in its teeth.

The twenty or so clones closest to Mizuki activated their tags and threw them at Mizuki. He managed to jump out of the way in time, and a cloud of red-glowing tags converged where he had been, then exploded hugely. Mizuki, still in the air, was a sitting target for the next twenty clones doing the same thing. This time, most of the kunai hit. Mizuki was wreathed in red for a moment before the tags exploded. A mangled body was catapulted out of the blast, Mizuki barely recognizable, his clothes burned through.

Mizuki was almost certainly dead by this point, but that didn't stop the remainder of the clones. Each one threw their kunai straight at Mizuki's body. They hit as he topped his arc, a hundred little red-glowing motes congregating on him.

Then they exploded.

By some quirk of position, this explosion sent Mizuki down instead of up. His body, now completely unrecognizable, shot straight down from the sky and collided with the ground. The explosion, high above the forest, blew leaves off the trees. Then there was silence.

The clones all dispersed, one by one. The original Naruto stood there, silent, staring at Mizuki's body. There wasn't much of it left, and he was struck by a sort of abstract horror.

His voice, when it came, was almost, but not quite emotionless. "Guess I went a little too hard, huh."

Iruka, standing unsteadily several feet away, gaped at him.

Then Naruto noticed something. There, on the ground around Mizuki, was a loose grid of spidery lines. He looked around, beginning to panic. The lines. They were coming back — it was happening again!

Naruto crumpled, screaming, and clenched his eyes shut.

---

The Hokage sat in a side room off his office, one with a bed in it. He couldn't imagine why there was a superfluous bedroom here, but it was useful. Naruto lay on the bed, his eyes closed. Iruka sat beside him on a different chair.

Mizuki's body had been collected. The Hokage had seen it, before it was disposed of. Naruto had become far stronger. He hoped the experience hadn't been too painful for the boy.

Iruka had just finished his report of what had happened. He had had to knock Naruto out to carry him back here; any attempt to move him while conscious had resulted in his struggling wildly to escape. The Hokage had brought him in here; he was the only one who knew how to deal with Naruto's Kyuubi-induced madness.

The Hokage turned to Naruto, still unconscious, and sighed. Time to try and help the boy. He reached out to his forehead, medical chakra flickering on his hand, and woke him up.

Naruto's eyes opened. They flicked wildly around the room, and Naruto tensed up. Before he could move or scream, the Hokage had finished the seals. "Kokuangyo no jutsu!" Naruto relaxed in the sudden darkness.

The Hokage spoke. "Naruto. Can you hear me?"

It took a moment for him to reply. "I hear you, ojiisan. What's happening?"

"I've placed you under a genjutsu to prevent you seeing things. You've been acting like you did that time two years ago. Iruka just got back from the forest with you. What's happening?"

"Ojiisan...they came back. I had just killed Mizuki and then the lines came back." A note of strain entered Naruto's voice talking about them, even without seeing. The Hokage made his voice as gentle as possible.

"It's all right, Naruto. You can't see them now. Try to remain calm."

He paused for several breaths before continuing. "I've heard what happened from Iruka. You don't need to talk about it. I'd like to ask you about the lines. All right?"

Naruto nodded, still lying on the bed, his eyes open, if unseeing. "All right. I just... I had just... killed him, and his body fell down, and then I was looking at it... and I saw the lines again, and... remembered...." He shuddered. "And I guess kinda went crazy... and then the next thing I remember is waking up here."

The Hokage nodded, before remembering that Naruto couldn't see him. "All right, Naruto. Iruka is here. I'm going to explain to him what's going on, and then I'll want to ask you something. All right?"

"Okay, ojiisan."

The Hokage turned to Iruka. "This is related to something that happened to Naruto two years ago. You remember when he was absent?"

Iruka nodded.

"He was absent because he was ambushed by a couple of former chuunin in an alley and beaten. Really badly. And during his recovery, he started seeing some sort of manifestation, a grid of lines on everything, and later on he started to see things and... people fall apart along the lines. It took some toll on his mind. The effect went away after he was recovered; we suspect it's related to the fox."

Iruka nodded again, his face sober. "So...those are the lines he's talking about?"

"They are. We know it isn't any kind of genjutsu, I had Kurenai in to check on him. We don't really know anything about the effect, but it happened when he was healing up from the worst he was ever injured in his life and when he had just used up a whole lot of chakra, both times when you'd expect the fox's chakra to be active in him. And... there's something else."

He turned to Naruto and spoke. "Naruto, something happened two years ago. You had just gone crazy, and you were able to cut up a side table with a kunai. Do you remember?"

Naruto nodded. "Yeah...I do. That kind of convinced me it wasn't a dream, when I woke up the day afterwards and saw it still cut up. What about it?"

"Naruto, I'm going to take the genjutsu off you now. If you start seeing anything break I can put it back on you, but I want to check something. Okay?"

Naruto hesitated before nodding. "Okay. Go ahead."

The Hokage broke the technique, and Naruto's eyes moved again with purpose. He sat up. "What did you want to check?"

"Can you still see lines?"

Naruto looked around. "Yeah... it's a little fainter. Like I can't see them on something until I really look. But yeah." He took a deep breath.

"Do you remember what you did when you broke the table two years ago?"

"Yeah. I was trying to stab the line. I don't know what I thought it would have done. But the kunai just kind of traced along it, and the table broke. Same thing happened with the legs."

The Hokage handed Naruto a kunai which he took from his own holster. Then he cast about for something to test it on. "Iruka, would you mind standing? I'd like to use that chair."

"Not at all, Hokage-sama." Iruka stood, and the Hokage reached over to his chair and handed it to Naruto.

"I want you to do the same thing that you did two years ago with the desk. Just trace the lines on the chair. See what happens."

Naruto took the chair and set it on its legs in front of him. Peering at it closely, he frowned and placed his kunai on the edge of the seat, then traced it along the top to the other side. The Hokage could clearly see that he wasn't pressing hard enough even to scratch the paint. Then, without warning, as Naruto reached the other side of the seat and removed the knife, the chair split in two pieces along the line Naruto had traced. His eyes widened as the pieces fell over, no longer stable with only two legs apiece.

He picked up the front half of the chair and tried again, this time tracing along the seat between the two legs. The piece broke again, and the half that Naruto wasn't holding fell to the ground. Looking fascinatedly down at the fragment, Naruto cut diagonally along the leg, and it, too, broke, showing a wide stripe of unpainted wood. Then he cut it again. Then again.

The Hokage caught Naruto's hand before he could bisect the chair leg any further. "I think that's enough."

Naruto jerked suddenly, then relaxed, dropping the kunai. "Sorry, ojiisan. Can you put the darkness back now? It's...a little bit weird."

The Hokage nodded and repeated the genjutsu. "Well...this is very interesting. Naruto, I think that the lines should go away soon, as your chakra builds up again and pushes out the fox's. We can just wait the rest of the night. You should sleep, if you can."

Naruto nodded and lay back on the bed. "All right, ojiisan."

The Hokage looked at Iruka, and they exchanged a nod.

---

It was some five hours later that Naruto woke up. He opened his eyes to find that the old man had canceled the darkness genjutsu sometime during the night. Early morning light shone through the window, and Naruto jumped out of bed, suddenly energized.

The room was empty when he woke, but as he got up he heard movement outside the door, and a moment later Iruka-sensei walked in. He grinned brightly as he saw Naruto. "Hey, Naruto. Sit there and close your eyes." He indicated a spot on the floor.

Naruto sat, and closed his eyes as ordered. There was a sound as Iruka knelt on the floor in front of him, and he felt something pulling on his forehead, then a tension around his head. Iruka fiddled with something at the back of his head for a moment, then pulled away. "You can open your eyes now."

Naruto opened his eyes. Iruka, still grinning, sat before him. "I, Umino Iruka, as the teacher of Uzumaki Naruto and in consultation with the Sandaime Hokage, do now declare that Uzumaki Naruto has successfully graduated the Ninja Academy."

Naruto groped blindly at his forehead for a moment and felt a familiarly engraved plate of metal. He grinned hugely, barely refraining from whooping with delight, as he jumped on Iruka and hugged him.

---

Missed yesterday, due to working on an unrelated project. Hopefully won't have that problem again. The revisions will get somewhat easier as chapters go on, due to the original story becoming slightly less dire.

 

[alethiophile]

Shinigan

Chapter 2

Bells

Naruto threw open the door and walked elatedly into the room. It was one of the Academy classrooms, but not one that Naruto had ever frequented. Two-person desks filled the room, which was perhaps two-thirds full. He was one of the later to arrive, though the time announced had not yet arrived.

Hinata was sitting at a desk next to someone else, whose name he did not know. He stopped beside her desk and grinned at her. "Hey, Hinata-chan!"

Hinata looked quickly up at him, as if startled. She must have been really distracted — normally even without her eyes she noticed far more of what was going on around her than he did. Her eyes flicked first to his face, then to the hitai-ite around his forehead. "N-Naruto-kun! You graduated?" She smiled brightly, making him feel suddenly almost as absurdly happy again as when he had gotten the hitai-ite from Iruka-sensei.

"Yeah! Some, uh, some stuff happened," and here his smile faltered for a moment, "last night, which I can't really explain, but it worked out with me getting a merit promotion. So yeah!" He grinned broadly again, casting around for a seat. The one next to Hinata-chan was already taken, so he sat down in the nearest empty one — which, he noticed only as he sat down, put him next to the bastard. Great. Sasuke turned and looked at him levelly as he sat, but there was no particular malice in the gaze, and in only a moment he turned back to staring at nothing in particular. Naruto hmphed quietly at being ignored, and settled firmly into ignoring the Uchiha in turn.

There was a clatter from the door at the rear of the room, and the sounds of loud female argument. Naruto did not turn around. He recognized the voices of Sakura and whatever-her-name-was who always fought with her, both of whom he disliked, Sakura in particular for hitting him when he tried to ask her out once a year ago, and the other just on principle for her ardent and painfully obviously unrequited pursuit of "her Sasuke-kun". He ignored them, too, until Sakura stormed up beside him and demanded that he move, so that she could sit beside, oh joy, "her Sasuke-kun".

"What?" said Naruto, looking up, rather confused. "No. I'm sitting here. Find somewhere else." He turned back to looking forward, expecting the matter to be finished, and so was startled and annoyed when Sakura grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him out of the chair, dropping him behind it.

Sakura was about to sit down in the chair she had just yanked him out of, when the other girl, the blonde, moved up and disputed her right to it. Sakura brushed her off, claiming first-come, first-served. At this, one of the other girls who already had a seat, who had begun to pay attention when Sakura had knocked him out of the chair, stood up and claimed seniority over Sakura. This set off a wave of other fangirls vacating their seats and disputing who had entered the room first. Many of them had, indeed, come in before Naruto, which made him wonder why they hadn't just sat beside their precious Uchiha when the seat was empty.

The dispute was approaching the point where it might very well have erupted into physical combat when Naruto stood up. He was still behind the desk, standing between the mob of fangirls and the Uchiha, whose level stare at nothing had become distinctly annoyed and long-suffering.

"OI!" said Naruto, very loudly. This preempted several volleys in the War of the Fangirls, and they all became silent and stared at him. Naruto illustrated his words with large, pointed gestures as he spoke. "I," said he, pointing at himself, "am going to sit here." He indicated the chair that was the object of contention. "The reason for this is that I actually sat here. So, all of you, kindly, buzz off." He sat down and pointedly stared ahead.

The fangirls were, for a moment, shocked silent. Then Sakura growled in anger and again grabbed at Naruto's wrist to deprive him of the seat. She was just about to yank him off the chair again when he broke her grip, causing her to reel backwards for a moment before regaining her balance.

Things might have gone badly for Naruto at that point, being at the focus of the ire of the fangirlish mob, if Iruka had not at that moment walked in the door. He saw almost a third of the class congregated around a single desk, and loudly cleared his throat.

"EXCUSE ME!" he shouted, his head seeming to grow by a factor of three or so. (Naruto had never figured out if that was some sort of genjutsu or merely a psychological effect of being screamed at by Iruka.) The group of girls turned towards him.

"Will this group of new ninja, now legally adults and considered capable of acting maturely in most situations, please sit down?" said Iruka.

The fangirls dispersed, some grumbling quietly. Sakura made a pointed sniff and moved off to take one of the closest seats to Sasuke, which had actually been occupied by another of the fangirls; that girl disputed the seat for only a moment before finding a different one.

Iruka smiled without a trace of his earlier menace. "Thank you!" He then launched into an explanation of the system of teams, most of which seemed designed to, having stoked the egos of the new genin with their shiny new hitai-ite, cut them back down to size for their participation in the world of real ninja. Naruto tuned most of it out; one could not read any of the village history that he had read in the Konoha archives without both the relatively lowly status of genin and the structure of their teams becoming obvious.

The lecture ended with Iruka's preparation to list off the teams themselves. Naruto perked up and began to pay attention. No one he knew was on any of the first six teams called. Then —

"Team seven. Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura, Uchiha Sasuke." Naruto groaned quietly to himself. The bastard and the annoying fangirl. Well, at least Sasuke was an effective ninja. With Sakura on the team, hopefully no one would expect them to fight anything for a while.

He had kind of hoped to be on a team with Hinata-chan, but he supposed that they could still get together and spar or something. Hinata-chan was hard; even though she wasn't nearly as strong as he was, when she turned on her eyes he just couldn't hit her unless he got a lucky shot. He couldn't think of a better way to get faster.

And speaking of which — "Team eight. Hyuuga Hinata, Inuzuka Kiba, Aburame Shino." Naruto knew the Kiba kid for that dog which he always carried around on his head, and the Shino kid for, basically, being very tall, and a little bit weird. He hoped they were good teammates for Hinata.

---

Naruto sighed. The last team to be chosen had left with their sensei almost fifteen minutes ago, leaving him, the bastard and the fangirl alone in the room. Naruto had become bored and started pacing five minutes ago, and Sakura had, much to the Uchiha's quietly expressed annoyance, taken the opportunity to steal the seat next to him.

Sasuke sat in the same position that he had held, without change, for most of the class. He paid equally little attention to Sakura sitting beside him shooting him not-very-subtle glances, and Naruto pacing and muttering in the front of the room.

After a good hour of this, Naruto was quite thoroughly annoyed, as well as bored. Weren't the jounin-sensei supposed to be good role models? Why was he being so late?

With a snort of annoyance, Naruto came to a decision. He hunted up a sheet of paper in the desk at the front of the room, then grabbed the canister of mostly- spent chalk from the floor below the blackboard at the front and sat down at a desk. He removed a brush and ink — the basic sealing kit — from his pockets and began to sketch the same obsolete storage seal that he had used in the flour traps. When the seal was done, he dumped the canister of chalk onto it and sealed it inside with an application of chakra. Then he set the seal at the top of the doorframe, standing on a chair to do so, and attached it to both the frame and the door so that the door would tear it apart if it opened.

The others had been watching this work, being the most interesting thing happening in the classroom. Sakura was taken aback by the sealing and did not comment, though she evidently wished to. Sasuke turned to look at the sealed paper stuck through the top of the doorframe.

"A jounin isn't going to fall for that trick, fuin-dobe."

Naruto grinned brightly. "Well, you never know."

Sakura decided at this point to step in. "Idiot! You're laying a trap for our sensei! You're going to get in trouble!"

Naruto crossed his arms, stubbornly. "He's late, it's annoying. Even if he doesn't fall for it I want to see the look on his face."

Sakura was about to continue the debate when they heard a footstep outside the door. All three genin quieted and turned to look. A hand in a blue, fingerless glove pushed the door open. The seal tore in two, and there was a minor explosion. Chalk dust filtered down from above, and there was a momentary rain of used-up chalk ends.

A white-haired man walked into the room through the now-dispersing cloud of chalk dust. Oddly enough, he didn't seem to get any of it on him; it would have been hard to tell if there was chalk in his hair, but one would assume that it would show up on his blue face mask.

All three genin stared at him for a moment before he spoke. "Well, I have to say that as a first impression, this leaves something to be desired."

There was silence for a moment, and the jounin spoke again. "Meet on the roof of this building in five minutes." Then, without ceremony, he disappeared in a puff of smoke.

---

The three genin sat on benches atop the Academy building, while the white- haired, masked man leaned against the railing around the edge. The jounin's face was unreadable, but he spoke in a mildly bored tone.

"So, why don't we introduce ourselves? Tell us your names, your hobbies, what you like and don't like, your goals. How about you, Pink Hair?"

Sakura bristled at the name. "Shouldn't you introduce yourself first, sensei?"

The jounin nodded. "Okay. My name is Hatake Kakashi. I like some things, but there are things I dislike. I...have some hobbies. My goals...." He was quiet for a moment, then continued. "Okay, Pink Hair, your turn."

Sakura glared at him, but spoke anyway. "My name is Haruno Sakura. I like...." she blushed slightly and looked at Sasuke. "I don't like loud-mouthed brats who can't keep quiet." This with a glare at Naruto. "My hobbies...." she blushed again and looked at Sasuke. "Goals...I suppose I want a family some day." This with another glance at Sasuke.

Kakashi nodded. "Okay, your turn, Rudimentary Seal Traps."

Naruto grinned at the reference. "My name is Uzumaki Naruto! I like ramen, Iruka-sensei, Hokage-ojiisan, and the bit of the Archive with the seals in it! I don't like...." here his enthusiasm flagged for a moment, "well, a lot of people are idiots. My hobbies are eating ramen and figuring out fun ways of using seals! My goal is to become Hokage!"

Kakashi raised one eyebrow, which was the only expression, Naruto thought, that anyone could actually read on his face, and nodded. "Okay, Staring At Nothing. Go."

Sasuke shifted, a flicker of annoyance crossing his face. "My name is Uchiha Sasuke. I like...well, not many things. I dislike weakness," this with a glance at Sakura, who squeaked slightly, "and tricks." This with a glance at Naruto, who glared at him. "My hobby is training. My goal...my ambition is to revive my clan, and kill a certain person." At this, Naruto's glare turned to a mixture of interest and alarm; he stared at Sasuke for a moment, as if he would say something, but was cut off by Kakashi.

"Okay, well, at least you three aren't boring. So. We begin tomorrow, meeting at 5 A.M. at training ground 13. It's...a training mission of sorts. Don't be late. And," he finished, standing up and turning around, "don't eat breakfast. You'll just throw it up."

---

Naruto showed up at the bridge leading to training ground #13 at five precisely the next morning. This was quite a bit earlier than he was used to getting up; he had had to sleep early to make sure he wasn't tired for it. Sakura was already there, standing on the bridge, and after only a few minutes Sasuke-teme showed up as well. Then, of course, Kakashi didn't... show... up. They had waited for almost an hour before Naruto lost patience.

"Don't be late? Don't be late, he says? What's he doing telling us not to be late?" Naruto growled, pacing back and forth on the bridge. "We weren't late! He's late! Why's he late?!"

Sakura was also annoyed, though she managed to refrain from fidgeting. "If he doesn't show up then I won't get the chance to prove how strong I am to Sasuke- kun...." she muttered, almost to herself. Sasuke's comment about weakness the day before had nettled her.

Naruto lost what remained of his patience after another hour. The sun had risen some time ago; Sakura sat still with a growing look of annoyance on her face, while Sasuke-teme just stood, apparently not noticing the passage of time. Naruto got out his sealing brush and ink and started drawing on the wood of the bridge. "Rudimentary Seal Traps...I'll show him Rudimentary Seal Traps..." he muttered angrily as he worked. Behind him, and unnoticed, Sasuke turned to look at him, staring rather intently at the matrix of seals that he was constructing.

Naruto finished the seal, which looked like another storage seal, then pulled a flash bomb from another pocket. A tiny seal, just a single symbol, went on the flash bomb, and Naruto pushed it into the storage seal with a flash of chakra. Then he took up a position further down the bridge, across from Sasuke, and drew another seal on the rail near his hand.

He looked up for a moment. "Sasuke, Sakura, when I set this off you might want to close your eyes. I'm going to do it as soon as I see Kakashi-sensei stepping onto the bridge."

Sasuke looked at him with more interest than Naruto had ever seen him show. "What does it do?"

Naruto grinned. "It's a self-triggering storage seal. The basis for a lot of trap seals — you can launch something out of it like an explosive tag or a flash bomb and it'll set it off for you. But Hokage-ojiisan won't let me do trap seals yet," this with a near pout, "so I have to set it off myself."

Sasuke looked at him more intently for a moment, then shook his head. "You think that'll work any better than it did yesterday?"

Naruto rolled his eyes and stood, fidgeting, next to the trigger seal on the rail.

He managed to stand, ready to trigger the trap, for two more hours, probably a record for Naruto standing still. Eventually, however, he also became bored and sat. It was half an hour more after that when Kakashi, oblivious to Naruto's careful work in preparing a trap for him, appeared on the wrong side of the bridge, with a bright "Good morning!"

"You're late!" yelled Sakura and Naruto, almost in unison. The three genin moved off the bridge to stand in front of Kakashi. Kakashi made precisely no apology for his tardiness, but held up a pair of bells on a string.

"All right! So, the first thing I should tell you is that this is, actually, the final test to become genin. If you fail this, you go back to the Academy. Okay?" This was met with disbelief from Sakura.

"So what was the point of that final exam?" she grumbled.

"Ah, that selects the students who are capable of becoming genin. This selects the student who will become genin. So here's the test. You are going to try and attack me. What you are trying to do is take these bells," he shook the two bells back and forth, and they jingled cheerily, "from here." He tied the string to his belt. "If you have a bell before noon, measured when the sun gets to there," he indicated an arbitrary point in the sky, "then you get lunch. Anyone who doesn't have a bell doesn't get any food. Oh, and they have to go back to the Academy." Kakashi's expression was unreadable, of course, but his voice was gleeful. "Any questions?"

Sakura spoke first. "But sensei, there are only two bells, and three of us."

"How observant of you, Sakura! I guess one of you has a problem, then."

There was a momentary, heavy silence before Sasuke spoke. "Sensei, are we to fight all out?"

Kakashi nodded. "Believe me, you'll need to. Don't hold back on my account."

Naruto raised a hand. "Ah, sensei...last time I fought all out...uh...I didn't really like what happened," he said, his voice uncomfortable.

Kakashi raised an eyebrow. It might even have been both eyebrows, but the one was hidden under his hitai-ite. "Ah. Touji Mizuki, wasn't it?" Naruto nodded. "You don't need to worry about that. Fight as hard as you like. I won't be caught so easily." Naruto nodded in vague relief.

Sakura and Sasuke both had been looking at Naruto oddly during this exchange. Before they could ask any questions, Kakashi cut them off. "Any more questions? No? Good. The exercise begins in three — two — one — and now." He jumped away from them, landing in the middle of the clearing off the bridge.

Naruto stood and shook himself. "All right!" he said, and charged at Kakashi.

As he charged, he formed a familiar cross hand seal. "Kage bunshin no jutsu!" he yelled, and ten clones appeared next to him, charging as well.

Kakashi found himself under assault by all eleven bodies. It was no contest. He moved more quickly than Naruto had ever seen, blocking every blow aimed at him and dispersing the clones right and left. None of them even came close to the bells on his belt. When Naruto himself attacked, going for the bells rather than any hits on Kakashi, he found himself flying backwards from a particularly hard blow to the forehead. He landed and skidded along the ground, panting.

Then stood. "All right, let's turn it up a notch! Tajuu kage bunshin no jutsu!" This time, some thirty clones formed. Half of them charged, while half held back. The half that charged went straight after the bell just like the previous wave, and met a similar lack of success. The half that held back were loading kunai with explosive tags. As Kakashi cut through the first wave of clones with casual ease, the second wave all threw exploding kunai straight at him. Kakashi, not surprised, jumped straight up, letting the exploding kunai land where he was and destroy the remaining assault clones. None of the clones had any kunai ready to attack Kakashi while he was a sitting target in midair, and Naruto cursed himself for not making more.

Kakashi landed unmolested and began taking out clones. Predictably enough, none of them could touch him; he plowed straight through the group of them before he came to Naruto himself. This time, Naruto drew a kunai himself and stabbed at Kakashi with it. He blocked the stroke aside with the armor plate on one glove, then turned the overextended arm into a brutal over-the-shoulder throw that left Naruto upside-down against a tree.

"Good! You've gotten lesson one: fight to kill. You can take the bells off my corpse," said Kakashi loudly. "Or you could, if you could actually kill me." Naruto, disoriented from the sudden flip and near concussion, fell over sideways, groaning.

Sasuke and Sakura had disappeared from the bridge long since. It was at this point that Sasuke came out from cover and attacked Kakashi, hoping that his taijutsu — well superior to the dead-last's, anyway — could succeed where Naruto's clones had failed. Unfortunately, that hope was dashed. Kakashi was too fast. Sasuke managed to avoid any knockout blows like the ones dealt Naruto, but he couldn't get close to the bells. After two minutes of straight assault, he had gotten one good shot at them, and had missed.

Giving taijutsu up as a bad job, Sasuke jumped back and made a series of seals. "Katon: Goukakyuu no jutsu!" he muttered, inhaling, and shot a huge fireball out of his mouth at Kakashi. Naruto, having recovered from his disorientation while Sasuke was fighting, sat up and watched, mouth open. "Wow..." he muttered. "I have so got to learn that."

The fireball cleared away, leaving a circled of charred, scorched earth. Kakashi was nowhere to be seen. Sasuke looked around, scowling but somewhat panicky. He swiveled around quickly, staring to both sides, above, and then turning again to cover his back. "Where is he?" he muttered.

He stood still for too long. A hand came up out of the ground where he stood, grabbing his ankle. Sasuke panicked for a moment, trying to break the grip, but failed. Then, somehow, it managed to — drag him down into the ground? What?

Sasuke's head stuck out of the middle of a bare patch of earth as Kakashi rose from the ground as if it were liquid. He crouched in front of Sasuke's apparently disembodied head. "In case you missed it," said Kakashi, dry as dust, "I was below you."

Naruto, completely recovered by this time, started laughing uproariously. "Impressive, Sasuke!" he yelled, getting to his feet.

Sasuke, luckily for his remaining dignity, was facing sufficiently near Naruto that he could focus on him. "Like you did any better, idiot!" he shouted, annoyed. Kakashi stood and faced Naruto as he approached.

"Sorry," said Naruto, getting over his laughter. "It was impressive. It's just also really funny."

Sasuke scowled at him.

Naruto stood straighter, and grinned. "Now I'll show you how it's done. Tajuu kage bunshin no jutsu!" With a much greater puff of smoke, clones of Naruto surrounded Kakashi and Sasuke's head to three ranks deep. Each clone began preparing an explosive tag on a kunai.

Kakashi, knowing what was about to happen, jumped over the group of Narutos to land outside the ring, leaving Sasuke out of the line of fire. Unfortunately, this left him close to several clones, who immediately threw glowing kunai at him. He jumped again, as quickly as he could, and dodged the first volley. Then the second rank of clones threw at him. A hundred kunai converged on him, each glowing with the light of an explosive tag, just as the first volley exploded below him. Kakashi quickly made a single seal. When the smoke of the second explosion cleared, a badly charred chunk of log fell to the ground.

Clones fanned out, looking for Kakashi. Several approached the bridge over which one arrived at the training ground from the rest of Konoha. Naruto still stood in the ring, approximately where he had been.

Kakashi appeared over the bridge, dropping down out of a tree. Two bells still dangled from his belt where they had been. He walked slowly towards the bridge, as if daring the clones near its other end to attack. A clone shouted, and soon most of the original big mob of them was gathering around the end of the bridge.

The original Naruto pushed through the mob to the head of it. "Hey! Kakashi-sensei! Had enough yet?"

Kakashi laughed dryly. "Are you going to stand there talking, or are you going to take a bell?"

Naruto was on the bridge by now. He glanced around, looking for anything he could use to his advantage, then saw it.

He had to stall some more. "Hey, why aren't you attacking? You're only outnumbered fifty to one."

Kakashi rolled his one visible eye. "You can only taunt someone without sounding ridiculous if you have even the slightest chance of beating them." With that, he charged.

Naruto moved forwards and to the side, several of his clones moving up to fill the gap. Just as Kakashi reached the bridge, Naruto slapped the rail in a burst of chakra and shouted "GO!"

The seal trap Naruto had laid that morning, forgotten when Kakashi had apparently bypassed it, set off. The specialized storage seal spat a single flash bomb up to eye level, where it detonated. Kakashi's one eye widened, barely, as he saw it; then it went off.

A wave of clones rushed forwards to attack. They crossed the bridge in seconds, then milled around on the other side. Kakashi was nowhere to be seen.

A clone at the rear of the group yelled a warning. Only a few of the clones managed to turn in time to see Kakashi finishing a group of seals, then slamming one hand into the ground. The earth leaped up in a wave to his command, and that wave swept towards the bridge and the mob of clones. As it hit them, they either dissipated immediately or were thrown into the air to dissipate on landing. The wave stopped as it hit the river. Only the few clones on the bridge itself survived.

Kakashi hit them just as hard as he had before. None of the clones survived, or even got near him. Naruto himself was the target of another long throw, back away from the bridge towards Sasuke. He landed, skidded, fell. Kakashi walked up to him.

"Wow! You almost made me work there. Okay, enough of you. Let's see if Sakura can get a bell. Maybe she's worth making genin."

He disappeared in a sudden cloud of smoke.

Naruto stood up, slowly. His body hurt all over. Being repeatedly slammed around by a jounin could, apparently, be considered harmful. He glanced around, checking to see if Kakashi was still around and planning to throw him through pieces of the landscape again, but saw nothing — until he froze, almost panicking, at the sight of countless thin lines on everything in sight.

Crap. Crap crap crap. It's happening again it's happening again — damn it!

He hyperventilated for a moment, then made a valiant effort to calm down. This is not the time to panic — my promotion is riding on this! He looked around, forcing himself to keep calm at the sight of more of the lines. Hokage-ojiisan said that they were related to the fox's chakra, and I just made like three hundred clones and got beat up by Kakashi-sensei. That must be it. Just ignore them, that's the ticket....

He looked around again, this time forcing himself to ignore the lines and concentrate on what he saw. Still no Kakashi. Sasuke's head stuck out of the ground, facing away from him — it must have driven the boy mad to hear what had been going on behind him without being able to see it.

Naruto brooded about the test for a moment. This is annoying. They can't possibly actually make being able to beat a jounin a condition of becoming genin, that'd just be dumb. He couldn't beat Kakashi at all; hell, Kakashi hadn't even pulled out any high-level techniques until Naruto got the drop on him with a flash bomb in the presence of an army of his clones. Sasuke couldn't beat Kakashi either, and while Sasuke couldn't pull Naruto's one-man-army trick, he certainly had more techniques — Naruto wouldn't be surprised if Sasuke could beat him even with all his clones, if he had anything else like that fireball.

I can't beat him. Sasuke can't beat him. There's no way in Hell Sakura could beat him. What's his game? It couldn't just be an impossible test; there was no way they'd let jounin-sensei pull that on their prospective teams.

Suddenly an idea came to Naruto, without any real logic behind it. He decided to run with it. Jogging around Sasuke's head, Naruto made the cross hand sign. Four clones materialized behind him.

"Hey, bastard."

"Hey, idiot. I assume from Kakashi's monologue that you didn't get it that time either?"

"Yeah. I've come to a bit of a realization."

"What's that?"

"It's impossible."

"What?"

"Look at it. I couldn't beat him. You couldn't beat him. I surprised him with that seal trap I set this morning, and all I got out of it was some really-huge- class earth jutsu and getting thrown across the field again."

"Hn. Why?"

"I don't know. But I figure I'll get you out of there, just on general principles of frustrating Kakashi-sensei's intent." Naruto and his clones dispersed around Sasuke, digging with kunai. The process was annoying and the tools not ideal; several of the clones' kunai dispelled on hitting a rock or something, making it go more slowly. Relatively soon, however, they got Sasuke's arms free, and he then cooperated in freeing his legs.

Naruto dispelled the rest of his clones with a bit of relief as their chakra poured back into his system. Usually he didn't get tired, but this was a little taxing even for him.

Sasuke scrambled out of the newly made hole in the ground, brushing dirt off his clothes. Naruto looked at him and laughed weakly, earning a mild glare.

"It's not that funny, dobe."

Naruto finished laughing and shook his head. "It's not that. But I bet Kakashi- sensei was planning on pulling you out of there with an earth jutsu later on. And it probably would have left you just as clean as he was after he finished, um, hiding underground."

Sasuke grumbled. "Stupid over-clever teachers...." He looked up. "Did you have a plan other than going back to what we were doing?"

"Not really... but I've kinda been in the archives all the time since two years ago, and they tell you all about these teams, right? Like it looks like the team you were on as a genin is really important later on, they kind of stay together until some of them die, or whatever. And they always talk about teams of three. There's no teams of two anywhere, unless someone on the team died or went rogue."

"Yeah, okay. So he's probably not going to fail only a few of us and keep the others."

"Yeah. I bet that whatever this test is, we either pass it or don't as a team. So I guess there's no harm in working together on it, if we're not fighting each other."

"Why would that do any better than what we've been doing? He's a jounin."

"Well, what if you were to henge into me? Then I could make another bunch of clones, and while he's taking them all out you do that fireball thing again. He wouldn't expect it, might not dodge in time, especially if some clones hold onto him."

Sasuke looked at him with mild surprise. "That's a good idea, actually." He looked around. "The question is, where is he? He said something about Sakura, where's she?"

Naruto shrugged. "I don't know. Easy enough to find." He focused his chakra, more difficult than usual, and formed a cross hand sign. "Tajuu kage bunshin no jutsu!" A mob of clones appeared around him and immediately scattered.

Naruto staggered suddenly and sat down hurriedly. "All right, that might have been a little much." He shook his head muzzily. He had used quite a bit of chakra there, especially given that he hadn't gotten any of the last mob's chakra back, because Kakashi had destroyed them all. He waited a moment for his head to clear, then stood up, breathing rather more heavily than usual.

"Now I guess we should just wait until one of them comes back."

Sasuke nodded. "Hey, what is that technique? It's not a regular clone, obviously."

"It's called shadow clones. Physical clones, that dispel after they get hit hard. It takes a buttload of chakra, though."

Sasuke looked at him rather bemusedly and said nothing. Naruto, still tired, felt no particular urge to continue the conversation. He looked around, seeing nothing out of the ordinary, but noticed that with the latest large expenditure of chakra the lines had grown more distinct. There were none on the ground (which was almost a pity, as it would have made it quite a bit easier to dig Sasuke out), but they covered the trees, the rocks, they were all over the bridge.... Naruto closed his eyes momentarily and took a mental step back. Ignore them. Don't freak out.

Then, suddenly, he shook his head and cursed. "Damn it, Kakashi-sensei is an asshole."

Sasuke looked up. "Not that I disagree, but what brought this on?"

"He saw one of my clones and just dispelled it. Kind of painfully. He's this way," said Naruto, moving off at a jog in one direction. Sasuke followed.

"Did you see Sakura?"

"He's got her in some kind of genjutsu. At least I assume that's what it is, since she's just sitting there looking horrified while Kakashi stands in front of her."

Sasuke grunted as they continued on. A moment later, they crossed the boundary into the forest proper, and Naruto jumped up into the trees. Sasuke followed. After perhaps a minute, they stopped.

"We're almost there," said Naruto. "You'd best transform into me now, so we don't lose surprise."

Sasuke nodded and made a quick gesture, transforming into a perfect copy of Naruto. Naruto was inclined to laugh at first; Sasuke-as-Naruto looked at him and gave a very Sasuke-like supercilious look. "Keep going, dead-last."

Naruto suppressed his laughs as they moved again. It was only another few hundred feet to the edge of the clearing in which Sakura sat, caught in her genjutsu, while Kakashi stood in front of her maintaining it. Naruto landed in the clearing, Sasuke behind him.

"Hey! Sensei! I don't like being ignored! Tajuu kage bunshin no jutsu!" Another mob of clones appeared, half in the clearing, half in the branches of the trees. Naruto himself fell into a squat, winded.

The mob of clones, including Sasuke, charged forwards. Kakashi rolled his single visible eye and flashed at them. He began dispelling them, again, left and right, no clone able to get a shot on the bells at his waist. But unbeknownst to him, one clone in the mob was making hand signs.

It happened suddenly. A flash of fire came from within the group of clones, and a huge, roaring ball of it came out to engulf Kakashi and the six clones he was currently engaging. All the clones immediately dispelled, but Sasuke had seen Kakashi right in their midst as the fireball destroyed them. He kept it up until he ran out of breath, and looked at the target.

This one had made an actual crater. None of the clones nearby had survived. Kakashi was nowhere in sight; instead, a blackened log fell to the ground.

Sasuke cursed. "Again? Seriously?" The henge had dispelled when he put as much chakra as he could into the fire jutsu, leaving him again looking like himself. He looked around frantically, unable to find Kakashi.

The genjutsu on Sakura had broken when Kakashi was distracted by the next iteration attack of the clones. She looked around, confused, only to focus suddenly on Sasuke's fireball. Then, seeing his henge dispel, she smiled happily, only for the emotion to turn again to alarm.

"There! Behind you!" The voice was female — Sakura? Sasuke spun around, dodging to one side, barely avoiding a driving punch from Kakashi. Then it was himself versus Kakashi again, Sasuke barely holding out, now on the defensive. Then, suddenly, a clone of Naruto jumped out from behind Kakashi and grabbed him in an armlock, his legs locked around Kakashi's waist. Kakashi faltered, and Sasuke lunged forwards triumphantly, grabbing for the now exposed bells, when he suddenly felt a really odd twisting motion, as if he was being yanked up into the air, but without going upwards. Then, suddenly, the feeling resolved, and he was standing in the armlock of a Naruto clone, the clone hanging off his back. Unprepared for the sudden weight, Sasuke fell backwards, landing on the clone.

"Ow!"

Sasuke had expected it to simply dispel, but it hadn't. Its grip had slackened with the fall; Sasuke rolled off and looked at it. "Naruto?"

Naruto lay there, rubbing at his nose. Okay, not a clone. "Yeah? That hurt!"

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Sorry, idiot. Kakashi-sensei did a kawarimi, again, and switched me into the hold."

Naruto got up, still rubbing his nose. He addressed the white-haired jounin, who was standing right in front of them where Sasuke had been. "You are really annoying, you know that?"

"I work at it." Kakashi looked up at the sky, his voice and affect in no way indicating that he had just been exchanging blows. "And time is up. Sorry, no bells for you. Meet me back at the starting position, all three of you." He disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Sasuke stood. "...Damn it." He looked over at Sakura, who stood under the tree where she had been caught in Kakashi's genjutsu. "Are you all right?"

Sakura blushed and nodded hesitantly.

Naruto grumbled. "Stupid annoying sensei...let's get going. We probably failed that."

Sasuke nodded and followed Naruto out of the clearing, with Sakura hurrying to catch up.

---

Kakashi sat on the ground, reading some sort of orange-covered book. He looked up as the three arrived, and stowed the book somewhere behind his back. Naruto wondered vaguely what it was, but that was the least of his worries as the three of them stood in a line in front of the jounin.

Kakashi raised his one visible eyebrow; what could be seen of his expression was sardonic. "How'd you like the test?"

Naruto glared at him. "You're annoying, sensei."

Kakashi rose to his feet. "All right, then. Naruto, you have a lot of chakra, but you should work on some more creative uses for it than 'try to beat people up with fifty clones'. Sasuke, I was startled that you could do the fireball jutsu, but if I can dodge it easily it's not a good time to do it. You did better the second time." He turned to look at Sakura, whose eyes were downcast. "Sakura, you did a good job of hiding at first, but you lost concentration on the task at hand. That's why I was able to catch you so easily in that genjutsu. Overall, you're decent fighters. There is definite room for improvement."

Naruto looked at him. "What's your point, sensei? We're just going back to the Academy, right?"

Kakashi laughed sheepishly, one hand behind his head. "Oh, yeah, maybe should have said that first. Team Seven passes, you're all genin now."

Naruto's jaw dropped, and he looked at Kakashi murderously. "What? Then what was all that crap with the bells for?"

Kakashi's visible eye wrinkled in what might have been a smile under the mask. "The test was whether, even in a situation that seemed to require you to compete against each other, you could still work together. Naruto, Sasuke, you did well with that — you managed to surprise me with that fireball, Sasuke. Sakura, you warned your teammate about a threat to him, even though it might have led to him getting a bell instead of you." His face and affect became deadly serious. "Sometimes the rules, or the mission, seem to conflict with your teammates. Your comrades. This is the question: what do you do when you are forced to fight your comrades, or abandon them? And this is the answer: those who abandon the mission, or break the rules, are considered to be worthless. Trash. But those who abandon or betray their comrades are worse than trash. That is the lesson of this test."

Naruto looked pensive for a moment, then nodded. Then, as the words sank in, a broad grin grew on his face. "Hey, we graduated! Yes!"

Sasuke acknowledged the news with only a subtle grin, but it was a visible show of emotion that was not annoyance, which might as well have been a record. Sakura, of course, was looking at Sasuke, but she seemed happy as well.

Kakashi made the eye-gesture that might have indicated a grin under his mask. "Team Seven will begin missions tomorrow. See you then."

As Naruto walked proudly back to the village, he almost managed to ignore the fact that there were still black lines on everything he saw.

---

Was too lazy to post this yesterday. May post a second this evening, or may not.