I don't own Naruto.

Descent, Chapter 1.

Over the past few months, Uchiha Sasuke had been growing increasingly angry with his worthless classmates.

It wasn't something he had thought about previous to the massacre of his clan. The confusion he had felt when he saw his brother standing over the lifeless bodies of their parents had been quickly pushed aside for the white hot rage that boiled inside of him.

That feeling had even more quickly been pushed aside for despair to set in, as his first attempt at revenge was effortlessly ignored by his much more powerful sibling.

"Hate me," his brother had said.

"Despise me, and let that hatred fuel your power.

"And then kill me."

That white hot rage had since simmered down into a constant throbbing pain in his head, one that forced him into a repressed anger from the moment he awoke every morning.

He was angry at his brother, and at every one around him. But most of all he was angry at himself.

He felt weak. And knowing just how weak he was in comparison to his brother only made his classmates' weakness that much more pronounced.

Their ignorance of the world around them disgusted Sasuke. Did they not realise how weak they were? How vulnerable they all were?

And they dared to pity him?

Pathetic. The lot of them.

He was broken from his thoughts by the arrival of his teacher, Iruka. An all too cheerful man, Sasuke thought, who always had a good word for even his worst students. He had been curious about the scar that traveled from each cheek across his teacher's nose, but hadn't asked about its cause and was not likely to ask in future.

"Good morning class!" chirped Iruka. After the class droned back a 'good morning, sir' he continued. "We'll have a new student joining us this morning, someone I'm sure you'll all know. When he arrives, I want you all to treat him with the same respect you would want shown to yourselves.

"But for now we'll go over the homework that was set for you over the weekend. And if it's not done" he looked pointedly over at Kiba Inuzuka, a rough kid with a ninja dog (though it was still but a puppy), "then you had better pay special attention and be prepared to stick around during break."

This was met with a groan from Kiba, and one or two more groans from behind where Sasuke sat. How Iruka knew who had or hadn't finished their homework each time was also a curiosity, but he had no plans to learn about that either.

He wanted to groan too, but not for lack of study. The work set for them was far beneath his level, and almost completely trivial for ninja to know. What was the point of knowing about the second Hokage, and his now extinct Mokuton Jutsu?

And so time passed, with Iruka asking members of the class for answers, and answers being read back to him, most right and some wrong. After roughly twenty minutes they were nearing the end of the work sheet, with some kids preparing themselves for the upcoming shuriken practice, when there was a knock at the classroom door.

Sasuke (and everyone else) looked over to see a blond haired, blue eyed child standing in the doorway, looking just as bored as he himself felt.

It occurred to him that this was the new student before Iruka introduced him to the class, though he really didn't require an introduction; everyone knew of the jailor of the Kyuubi, and even if they had not, you would have needed to have been living under a rock not to know who the Fourth Hokage's son was.

Iruka ushered him in, and after a few quick words, he motioned for the boy to introduce himself.

"Hey," he said, sounding no more interested than he looked. "My name's Naruto Namikaze. Please take care of me."

However, it was obvious to Sasuke that this was not somebody who needed looking after. Naruto stood about 10 meters away and he could feel the power radiating off him. And along with that power, he felt something familiar. Something very, very familiar; Hatred.

Some months had come and gone without any hassle. Naruto had fit into the class almost seamlessly; no one got close to him, and he made no visible effort to befriend others.

But that seemed to be modus operandi for the blonde, Sasuke thought. There was no effort in any of the things Naruto took part in, and he wondered if perhaps he'd just end up failing.

Although, nobody ever seemed willing to berate the child for his lack of participation. Probably due to his heritage.

Sasuke's mother, before her murder, had warned him not to get close to the Kyuubi's host. An unstable and dangerous child she had said. He imagined most, if not all the other children were warned similarly.

He had yet to see any unstable, dangerous behaviour himself, but he'd heard stories of the Kyuubi's attack. And he'd seen the large chunk of land the beast's tails had destroyed, surrounded on all sides by dead and decaying flora. He could imagine that anyone containing the monster that had caused that would be prone to combustion themselves.

It pained Sasuke each time he noticed just how much of his days he spent thinking about Naruto. He had realised that maybe he had an obsession with power, and with the way the feeling of power just rolled off of his classmate, it was no wonder Sasuke couldn't get him out of his head.

Maybe he could get some of that power for himself.

And it was just as he was wondering how to approach the Kyyubi's host that Naruto instead approached him.

It was quite early in the morning. Sasuke liked to arrive at the academy earlier than others; punctuality was an important part of being a ninja. Just another facet of shinobi life that his classmates were apparently unaware of.

So he found it very strange when Naruto had entered the classroom just minutes after he had.

The blonde half sat, half leaned on a desk ahead of Sasuke and lazily looked down at him.

"The last loyal Uchiha, huh?"

A slight shift of his eyes was the only indication that Sasuke had even heard him.

"You hear a lot when people think you're not listening, y'know? I've heard that your brother was the one who killed everyone."

His body tensed at the mention of his brother.

"I've also heard your brother was absolutely insa-"

This sentence was ended prematurely as Sasuke leapt from his chair and over his desk, fisting his hands around the blonde's shirt collar and lifting him off the ground.

"What gives you the right to talk about my family?" Sasuke growled in the most threatening voice he could muster. He vaguely noticed through his own anger that it didn't seem

to affect the other boy at all. "What do you know of my brother?"

"Only what I've overheard." was the calm reply.

The black haired boy continued glaring at Naruto for a moment, before feeling the momentary anger drain away. He let go of the shirt and turned back to walk to his seat but froze when he heard from behind him:

"I've killed, before."

Sasuke didn't turn around, but he was definitely listening.

"It felt quite exhilarating. The rush of energy before the act, and the satisfaction afterwards. I've yet to feel anything quite like it.

"I imagine that you'll feel the same way, when you've killed your brother."

Sasuke turned, just enough so that he could swivel his head to look at Naruto, an unreadable expression on his face. He thought for a brief moment before his next sentence.

"Tell me more."

Thus began a sort of quasi-friendship between the two shinobi in training. It had come up at one point that the Kyuubi's container was guaranteed to graduate. Sasuke never asked why, and it was doubtful that he would get an answer anyway. His "friend" was open, but only when he wanted to be, never otherwise. There was a lack of respect that Sasuke understood intimately, as he held his other classmates in such regard. He also hated it almost as much as he hated his broth- no, "That man". He was no longer anything recognisable as a sibling.

In their spare time Sasuke trained relentlessly; Naruto was content to simply watch, with an occasional remark here and there.

"Ooh, that was a close one."

"Didn't burn your hand there, did ya?"

"You've got a really crappy hairstyle, ya know?"

Honestly, it grated on Sasuke's nerves, but the power he felt from Naruto... it was intoxicating. With him around, Sasuke felt stronger, faster, more focused than ever.

It was on a particularly humid day that the blonde made perhaps the oddest request Sasuke had ever heard.

"Oi, come over here and stab me."

He froze midway through a hand seal and turned questioning eyes over to look into another pair gleaming with mischief.

"You heard me. C'mon."

Sasuke slowly walked over to where Naruto was, hand placed on the flat of a tree stump. In the other hand, a kunai, which he grabbed uncertainly.

"Do it."

Sasuke paused kunai raised in the air. What if-

"Do it!"

Surprised, he brought the kunai down, eyes closed. A whoosh of wind, a hum, and then a wooden clunk rang through the air.

He didn't hear the sound of a kunai tearing through flesh and bone.

He opened his eyes, certain he had missed his target and wondering why Naruto had not mocked him yet, but looking down he noticed he hadn't missed at all. Where one would expect to see a mangled hand and blood, there was instead a haze of crimson red chakra, five fingers protruding from one end, a wrist and the rest of Naruto on the other.

A laughing Naruto, in fact.

"You see, my little duck-haired friend, I'm untouchable. You stick with me and you will be too."

They stared at each other for a few seconds, before Sasuke looked away. He looked back, mouth open as if to say something, and then looked away again, settling for a simple nod.

And then he went back to training. He would do extra, to make up for his momentary weakness earlier, in hesitating. He would not make that mistake twice.

Time passed rather uneventfully for the two shinobi-in-training from that point. Both children were relatively happy to coast through the academy, interacting with the rest of the class only minimally. Sasuke had managed to garner what could only be described as a fan club. A rather substantial group of girls had apparently taken it upon themselves to dub Sasuke as "perfect", due to his dark past, aloof nature, and good looks.

He hated it.

It was at best annoying, and at worst downright infuriating. It elevated the past few years from boring to barely tolerable, and he was so very relieved when team assignments had rolled around and the number of morons he had to endure was reduced to one. He could work around that.

That person being a pink-haired girl named Sakura, who scored strongly academically, but fairly poorly physically. Not poorly enough to oust her from the position of top kunoichi of the year, though. This left the third and last spot on the team to the dead last of the class. And only one person had not even bothered to turn up for testing. He did have the guaranteed pass, after all.

Team Seven, as they were called, was currently the only team left in the classroom, awaiting the arrival of their sensei. Who was quite late, which really wasn't helping Sasuke's mood. Also aggravating him was the steady "chunk" sound of a kunai repeatedly finding itself thrust into a desk, between the splayed fingers of his blonde teammate. Sakura looked on anxiously, probably expecting Naruto to find purchase with one of his fingers at any moment.

Out of the corner of his vision, Sasuke noticed the door slide open, silver hair above a konoha headband peeking around the corner, followed by the rest of what he presumed to be their new teacher.

"My first thoughts..." The man began, pausing to hum thoughtfully.

Sakura's head whipped around in surprise at the voice. There was a short hum, and he saw Naruto pull his hand away and turn towards the door also.

"I don't like any of you. Meet me up on the roof."

There was a puff of smoke, and their teacher had seemingly disappeared. Presumably to the roof. Which left the three young members of Team Seven to take the long route, up three flights of stairs. Exiting the stairwell, they saw the man leaning casually against the fence, an opened orange book held in front of his face. The thought occurred to Sasuke that he was more than likely not actually reading the book, but instead pretending to so that he could observe his students discreetly. It would not pay to underestimate a Jounin.

As they approached, the man closed his book and slipped it into a pocket of his tactical vest, then motioned for the three of them to seat themselves on a ledge beside him. The eye that wasn't hidden under his lop-sided headband hovered over them, pausing on each of them for what Sasuke assumed was dramatic effect.

"I am your new teacher, Kakashi Hatake. Tomorrow morning I will be holding a survival test." He must have anticipated Sakura, as his hand was raised to stop her speaking before a second syllable of protest had a chance to leave her mouth. "None of you are officially recognised as Genin until I give the go ahead. That means that if I think you are not up to standard, I can and will aend you back to the academy."

Bring normal supplies for a day-long mission. I have only one piece of advice: skip breakfast, because you will most definitely be throwing it back up."

- Kakashi doesn't want to know about Naruto, and so doesn't learn anything from the other two. He is stuck with him, though.

- I really prefer to read longer chapters, but struggle in writing them, so updates to the story will likely come in the form of edits until I am finally happy with the length. I just have motivation issues is all. Criticism certainly welcome.