Chapter 1

This is posted with the knowledge, consent, and, in fact, express permission of the original author (Digitize27), who gave us leave to take up the story when it had been abandoned. Despite the original author planning to return to writing, we confirmed our clearance to proceed with our plans. Thank you.

"We are only puppets, our strings are being pulled by unknown forces." — George Buchner

Among the civilian population of the Elemental Nations, there were many thoughts regarding the Hidden Villages that fell across the map. Most thought of them as simple settlements, containing garrisons of shinobi ready to leave at a word's notice from their leader—their Kage when it concerned the major five. Others thought of them with scorn or jealousy. Few, however, believed them to be simple villages, each with a bustling, vibrant life, echoing with merchants calling out their wares, children running through the streets or parks, and generally filled with activity. Nevertheless, that was exactly what the Hidden Villages were.

Shinobi were an ever-present fact for the citizens of Konohagakure no Sato, so tightly entwined with the nature of the village, but for the most part, they worked in the background. Their main presence in the eyes of the village was in the many D-ranked "missions" that were the bane of every genin's life. The only other place where civilian and shinobi really met was the Academy—squirreled away near the Hokage tower with the ever-present monument to Hokage past and present looming overhead in silent vigil.

Here children were brought at the tender age of six to be first introduced to the life of their home's silent guardians. Slowly, over the years, they would not only learn that lifestyle, but adopt it for themselves, training body and mind to the service of the village. In those first, early years, however, when their bodies were still untrained and their minds still naïve and idle fantasies of rescuing princesses and flamboyant techniques still crowded their thoughts, their studies were more mundane.

This morning, with the summer sun burning hotly overhead, there was one six-year-old not in class. Uzumaki Naruto sat on a rooftop that gave him a prime view of the Academy a street away. At first glance, it might be thought he was simply skipping history class due to boredom. But Naruto was incredibly interested in the history of his village; they often told tales of the shinobi who had come before and their rise to fame and power and of the battles that won them their acclaim.

In fact, Naruto had chosen this spot because despite the small rebellious streak running through him, he wanted to be caught. It would be simple enough for his sensei to notice his absence and, with a single glance out the window, spot him sitting there, staring at his classroom. It had already been half an hour since the start of class and Naruto was still sitting there, slowly swinging his legs back and forth as his posture grew increasingly slumped and despondent. His hands flexed on their own, drumming his nails rhythmically on the tiles of the roof until he finally jumped to his feet, an irritated scowl plastered on his whiskered face.

"Fine then, -ttebayo! If they don't want me, then I don't need them!" The young, spiky-haired blond angrily ran across the roof, jumping the small gap before grabbing a nearby drainpipe and sliding all the way to the ground. Normally, even in a hidden village, any watchers seeing the feat would have been surprised that such a young child was able to execute the maneuver. In this case however, anyone spotting this particular child would have turned away before it would be possible to be surprised; no one wanted to see that child.

Landing in a crouch, Naruto quickly took off in a random direction, swiping at his face to remove the slight dampness that had entered his eyes. He had sworn long ago that he would never cry anymore. It never got him anything anyway.

When the old man who Naruto would later realize was in fact the Hokage first told Naruto that he would be entering the Academy, his childish mind had done the same thing so many others had: conjured up images of death-defying missions, awesome jutsu that would make him powerful, and, most importantly, praise from thankful clients—more than anything, Naruto craved that precious acknowledgement of his worth.

Before he had joined the Academy, Naruto had loved those rare days when he could walk up to a group of kids playing Ninja and they would allow him to join in. The next day though, like clockwork, when he returned they would turn on him and either run away or tell him to leave. He had caught more than a few suspicious or hostile looks from the parents when he approached their children, to the point that he had stopped trying; he preferred to sit by himself and listen to their happy cries so that when he closed his eyes, he could, just for a short while, pretend he was part of that world.

The Academy was supposed to be different; he would be joining other kids seeking to become shinobi. They would be learning together, as classmates. His hopes had been soundly crushed within the first week as children and sensei alike ignored him at best or treated him as if he carried some disease.

At first, he had tried to persevere, hoping that if he showed he was good enough, like that Sasuke boy, they would see how amazing he was—that he had value. But a lot of the kids seemed to have training before the Academy and there were a lot of things he didn't understand in class—he refused to ask questions, though; that would make him seem stupid.

There's only so much a young child can take though, which was why the blond was running away from the Academy where he was so obviously unwanted, just like the rest of the village. He paused in a lonely street for a few seconds to catch his breath and consider where he should go now. A pang of guilt passed through him when he thought of the Ichiraku. That was his first thought—returning to the place that felt warm and safe. But Teuchi and Ayame had seemed so happy when he told them he was entering the Academy and the idea of telling them that he had given up was too painful.

A burst of determination flooded the young boy. He hadn't given up yet! Just as he resolved to return to the Academy, he walked out of the side street and directly into a large man going past. After a few mumbled curses, the man continued on with barely a passing glance at the village pariah, leaving the young child sitting on the dusty street clutching his head and suppressing tears. He looked up and saw a large building he had only ever noticed when he passed it on the trip from his small apartment to the Academy: the library.

With a bright grin, Naruto jumped to his feet. Shibuki-sensei's words about the library flashed through his mind. He had told the class the library was a place they could go to supplement their learning, but Naruto had never bothered with it before because reading was difficult for him. If it would help him become an awesome shinobi his classmates would respect and admire . . . then he'd try just about anything. That was why, about ten minutes later, he was happily walking out of the building with a stack of books so high it almost cut off his sight of the street in front of him.

He had expected some trouble from the librarian, but the bored-looking man lounging behind the desk (a chūnin, judging from the man's forest-green flak jacket) had barely given him a second glance. It still bothered Naruto how easily the adults ignored him, as if his existence were something so irrelevant as to be overlooked, but if it helped him this time then he wouldn't complain this time. That was why there was an almost-true smile on his face, turning his eyes into fox-like slits as he jogged towards the training grounds reserved for Academy students. There was one that was fairly far away from the Academy that he was fond of because it was also fairly near to the real training grounds so Naruto could catch the sounds of full shinobi sparring.

As he sat down on the soft grass, books spread out around him like petals of a flowering ninja, he couldn't help but feel like this was a turning point for him.

.o0o0o0o0.

"Ah screw this -ttebayo!" Naruto clutched a book on chakra theory in a white-knuckled grip over his head. The only thing stopping him from throwing it across the clearing was the librarian's parting warning about damaging the books. Instead, he set the book down on the pile of other books he had tried to read, only to be stymied by words he didn't understand, diagrams that hurt his head to look at, and sometimes even confusing titles. Later, he would realize that choosing the most advanced books he could find on a subject was a poor choice, but at that moment, he was just frustrated at his own inability.

He jumped to his feet so he could run through some exercises; he figured he could at least work on his fitness, since it was the only thing he seemed to have over the rest of the class. He was unaware that he hadn't been alone in the training ground for a while now. A single eye watched him curiously from a tree.

"Aren't you supposed to be in school, kid?"

Naruto was so shocked by the sudden voice that he spun around and, in doing so, tripped over a haphazardly-stacked pile of books, ending up in a heap on the grass and looking up dazedly at the silver-haired shinobi who was staring at him with amusement. At least, Naruto assumed it was amusement, since the man wore a mask and had his headband tilted over one eye, leaving the remaining eye that was currently closed in a facsimile of a smile. The blond quickly gathered his bearings and scrambled to his feet with an indignant look on his face.

"What's it to you, Cyclops?" To his frustration, what little of the man's amused expression could be seen didn't change the slightest and the man simply chuckled as he looked down at the stacks of books surrounding the boy.

"Well, I was heading to a training ground and spotted you here, seemingly deep in thought. While I admire your work-ethic, kid, maybe your studies would be a bit more effective with an actual sensei."

Naruto glared at the man suspiciously for a moment, thinking about what to say. "This isn't the way to the training ground, Cyclops."

Far from being caught off guard, the man only chuckled again, shrugging before scratching his head almost helplessly. "Oh, well, I guess I got lost on the road of life again. Oh, and my name is Hatake-Jōnin, not 'Cyclops'."

Naruto blinked at the response. The more time he spent with this man, the more confused he got. "Yeah, well, whatever. I'm not going back to that place!"

Hatake quirked the single, visible eyebrow and looked off absently in the direction of the academy. "Oh, is that so? How do you expect to become a shinobi then?" The older ninja seemed like he wanted to chuckle again, considering Naruto was looking increasingly like a wet bird, drooping rapidly. "Judging from those books, that is what you're planning."

"I'll do it myself!" Snapped Naruto. "I don't need people who don't want me."

Kakashi tilted his head a little, reminding Naruto of a dog, before giving that pseudo-smile again. "And I see that is going so well for you, yes?" His tone was thinly veiled sarcasm as he gestured with one hand at the books lying on the ground, none of them opened past the tenth page.

For the first time in the conversation, Naruto allowed something other than indignation to show as his face turned a pale red. "I-it's not my fault if the books all use stupid, long words. They should just say what they are trying to say -ttebayo."

Hatake suddenly surprised the boy by plopping down beside him, his head cocking to the other side as he seemed to peer right through Naruto. Infuriatingly, even sitting down, he was still at eye-level with the diminutive six-year-old. He just looked at Naruto until the boy was beginning to get weirded out before the man finally gave a thoughtful hum. "No."

Naruto blinked at the man. He had been silent for so long that when he finally spoke, Naruto had been expecting . . . more. "No?"

The man nodded, seeming to smile again, as if he had come across some great revelation with the simple word. "No, I don't think your problem is the books. Or the Academy. After all, you seemed pretty quick to give up on both."

Suddenly, Naruto's face was red for a wholly different reason as he bristled, much to Hatake's further amusement. "Hey! I didn't give up, dattebayo!"

Much to Naruto's chagrin, Hatake simply waved away his angry words as if he were shooing an irritating puppy. "Sure, sure. But like I was saying: they aren't your problem." When Naruto paused just as he was beginning to grow more indignant, the man went on. "Your problem is that you lack a goal."

Naruto blinked, his anger vanishing as he slowly sank to the ground, his shoulders slumping a little. "A goal?"

Hatake gave him that eye-smile as he watched the boy enter a more contemplative state of mind. "Uh-huh. A goal—a driving force behind what you do. A motivation so you don't just quit as soon as it becomes a little difficult. If you have a goal, then you have a reason to keep going forward. Right now, you have no goal and consequently, you just want things to be easy."

Naruto looked sheepish at that as the jōnin motioned to the books again before looking up at the man questioningly. "So? What should my goal be?"

Hatake only shrugged, still wearing that odd expression of his. "I can't really tell you that, kid. It has to be something you tell yourself, otherwise it's pointless. A goal given by someone else is just another assignment you won't care about."

Naruto frowned at that, internally pondering just what his goal could be. It started to make him think about why he did anything in a village that didn't seem to want him, which just made him depressed, like they always did when he was alone with his thoughts. It was one reason he was so fond of distracting himself, so he wouldn't have to think about things like that.

"But you know . . ." Naruto looked up to see Hatake looking at him, smile gone and a more thoughtful expression on what was visible of his face. " . . . a lot of powerful shinobi, say the Hokage, for example, make their goal to become strong enough to protect what's important to them and . . ."

Naruto was listening with rapt attention now, feeling he was on the verge of something important.

"And, like the Hokage, you need to start at the bottom—in the Academy. The beginning of a thousand-mile journey may not be the most exciting part, but you can't skip to the end, you have to take that first step and walk the path." Hatake chuckled at the boy and ruffled his hair.

Naruto groaned, glaring at the ground before removing himself from under the jōnin's hand. "Fine. I get it -ttebayo. I'll go back."

Hatake rose and gave Naruto a mock salute. "Don't worry too much, kid. Once you have a goal, I just know you'll do well." With that, he suddenly flickered and vanished, leaving Naruto with an awestruck expression on his face.

Naruto walked a few steps towards where the jōnin had been, only to look down when his foot landed on something other than grass. At first glance, he thought it was one of the books he'd gotten from the library, but it was too small.

He picked up the book and found that it was a nondescript black, but the make was remarkable in its own way. It wasn't made of paper, for one thing. It was some sort of parchment that smelled wrong to him. The scent was not unlike almonds. Also, the books from the library had been made with thick thread and something that looked like glue holding the pages together. Instead of that, this was held together with wire and the spine was matte black metal riveted together.

Naruto flipped the book open and was startled to find that the pages were filled with profiles of different ninja, some of them marked as nukenin, others with designations for their village. "Hey Cycl—er, Hatake-san!" the blond called out into the trees. When no answer came, he looked back down at the book, wondering how the man had managed to drop it. He shrugged and threw it onto the pile of books he had to return and frowned as he realized he was going to have to carry them all.

True to his word, Naruto did go back to the Academy later that day, simply walking into the class during the third period and sitting down. The teacher said nothing and continued the class without even noting the appearance of the boy, while the kids whispered amongst themselves about how the "troublemaker" had returned. Instead of his usual, loud self, Naruto was surprisingly withdrawn during the day, thinking about the little book now in his orange hoodie's front pocket.

He had tried to return it at the library when he brought back the other books; with his limited knowledge, he assumed that was what one did with books, but the chūnin had told him that the library didn't take back books that it hadn't leant out in the first place. So now Naruto was holding on to it. He drummed his fingers on the table while the book felt heavier and heavier in his pocket. Looking up, he saw the teacher was writing math equations up on the board, complicated things Naruto couldn't even begin to work out. Without thinking, Naruto reached into his pocket and began tracing the black leather of the frontispiece.

He discretely took it out and opened it, idly flicking through the first couple of pages. At first, it was just curiosity, it was filled with page after page of powerful shinobi and assorted bits of information about them. However, the more he read, the more he was engrossed by the subjects of the book. These were shinobi and kunoichi from all across the Elemental Nations; their headbands had what seemed like every symbol Naruto had ever heard of and some he hadn't. Some were scratched out and had notations of their treason against their village. He was fascinated; they had such vast and varied skill-sets and had become powerful through such different methods . . . it drew him in.

Then it happened: Naruto flipped the page and there, at the top where a shinobi's rank was noted, was the large, bold "S". Naruto paused, looking the page over and blinking, sure he'd read it wrong. He hadn't. This was a shinobi given the highest ranking for danger and skill possible. Akasuna no Sasori. The name wrote itself across the inside of his eyes in fire. He felt something shifting inside him. Something huge.

At first glance, Naruto could see a lot of similarities between himself and the young redheaded teenager staring out of the page with a cold, blank expression. As Naruto read on, he only grew more intrigued. It didn't matter that this man was a nukenin—this youth had already warranted the highest ranking a ninja could be awarded (setting aside "official" ranks like Kage).

One word leapt out at him: Puppeteer. There it was. The concept was what compelled him to read on about the man whose moniker was "Red Sand" because of the rivers of blood he'd spilled. It appealed to him on a level he refused to even admit he still had. Building puppets would be like building his own friends—ones that would never leave because they were extensions of him. Fighting with them would be even better because it meant he would always have a team to back him up. Slowly, a grin split his face for the first time in a long while.

He was disappointed when he reached the end of the profile. He flipped through the book, skimming now to just check the ranks of the other ninja. Mostly the book was filled with B's and A's. There were a few other S-rank shinobi, but none with so varied a set of skills. None struck Naruto as being as fearsome as the boy with his own army. None of them had their own friends.

And just like that he had found it. His goal.

.o0o0o0o0.

Naruto was tempted to just leave the class right away; he felt the burning need to be doing something to further his newfound goal. He briefly realized that this was what Hatake-san had meant when he spoke about goals. No wonder shinobi with great goals became so strong; they had this same thing driving them onwards. It was only the flickering beginnings and he already could tell that this was something that would become the focus of his life and spur him to the greatness he desired—greatness that would mean the world would have to acknowledge his being. But Naruto had promised himself that he would attend the Academy because Hatake-san had convinced him to do so. So he would attend the Academy and learn.

So the day dragged on and on for him. He wanted to be doing something. When the Academy finally let out, he raced from the classroom. It took him minutes to reach the library. The bored chūnin was still there, leaning back in his chair and reading through some small, orange book.

To Naruto's annoyance, when asked about puppetry, the only response the man gave was a single, raised eyebrow. Then he got a snort and the man walked into the aisles. What he returned with was a beginner's guide for puppetry. For children. As in for amusing children.

"What's this -ttebayo?" The blond's brow was drawn as he scowled at the book. When the chūnin ignored him in favor of the orange book, Naruto chucked the one in his hands at the man.

The man jerked to the side, dodging the ballistic text, but it did get his attention. "What the hell was that for, gaki?" he cried indignantly, throwing his own book down on his desk.

"That isn't the book I asked for!" Naruto pointed at the colorful book behind the chūnin.

"It's a book on puppetry!" replied the man. He scooped up the book and tossed it at Naruto. The book slammed into the blond's chest, knocking the wind out of him.

"The . . . stupid kind -ttebayo!" Naruto managed, when he got air back into his lungs. He wasn't interested in civilian entertainment techniques; he wanted awesome puppets—scary and powerful.

The chūnin looked at him strangely, one brow raised in confusion. "Wait. You mean that ninja 'art' the sand-lice use? Why would you want to know about that junk?"

Naruto pointed at himself triumphantly. "I'm going to be the best puppeteer ever."

It took a moment to get a response. Then the chūnin burst out laughing. He snickered as he picked up the book from the floor and walked back into the shelves. He was still snorting when he returned. "That's a good one, kid. A Konoha shinobi puppeteer?" He wiped a tear from his eye. "Sorry to burst your bubble, but that's a Suna 'art' and they're damned protective of their secrets."

Naruto looked down. "Hey kid," Naruto looked up. The chūnin had a small smile on his face and offered Naruto a small book. "If you really want, that's what we've got on the subject." When Naruto snatched the text from his hands, the chūnin grinned widely. "Go on, get out of here."

"I'll do it!" Naruto proclaimed. "I'll be the best puppeteer ever!"

"Knock yourself out, kid. If you manage, I can laugh at those sand-lice for having a prized 'art' figured out by some gaki." Naruto ignored the last comment and scampered from the library to his home, grinning at the fact that anyone was encouraging him at all.

It made him sad that it made him happy that the chūnin had given him a backhanded compliment like that. But he was the first one other than Hatake-san to show a sign that he even considered Naruto might achieve anything, let alone a dream.

That evening, Naruto sat down at the rickety table in his kitchen and examined the book. It was small, that he'd noticed already, but it was thin, too. Maybe forty pages all told and it didn't have any author. It didn't even have a title. It was just bound in grayish covers and slightly worn with age. It certainly had been neglected for a while, to judge from the dust on it and when he opened it, there was a smell of musty paper.

It was handwritten of course, but there were a dozen different handwritings. Each writer was recording his or her encounters with the Puppet Corps of Suna during the Second Shinobi War. There was precious little there.

What was described were crude and horrifying things. The puppets didn't sound elegant or even intimidating in of themselves. They were little more than logs strung together with some sort of joints and made to move to the puppeteer's will. But they had weapons hidden everywhere and poisons in every crevice and struck like a ninja from a distance that kept their wielder safe from harm.

He stayed up all night reading it over and over again, looking for anything useful. The sun was coming up when he sighed and sat back. There definitely wasn't anything technical about the puppets in the accounts. No one had captured one and brought it back for examination. There was no hint as to what kind of ninja craft was used to make them work. But he had begun to get a glimpse of how they might function Everything seemed to come down to the chakra 'strings' that the Suna shinobi used. Now Naruto had to work out what chakra was.

There was a niggling feeling at the back of his mind that was telling him learning puppeteering might take a while and more than trips to the library.

.o0o0o0o0.

Naruto sat on his favorite stool in Ichiraku Ramen, slurping at noodles and listening to the bustle of the village around the stall. He reflected on the past few months as he ate. It had surprised him, but once he had set a goal for himself, he found it a lot easier to think of his own, instead of his thoughts drifting to the past unbidden and he focused on what was important to him. It was liberating. For example, he was amazed at the ease with which he unlocked his own chakra. He managed it just a few days after first learning about puppeteering from helpful instruction he found in book from the library.

Making his chakra usable on the other hand . . . that was much more difficult. Considering that they hadn't begun to teach anything about it in the Academy, despite many of the clan children having already unlocked theirs . . . he saw no help there. Instead, he was forced to rely on the place that was rapidly becoming a second home for him: the library. And even then, it was taking a long time.

The explanations in the various books were difficult to understand for a six-year-old, and especially for Naruto. He wanted to tell himself that it was because he was more at home doing than reading, but he knew that would be a lie. The fact was simply that he did not understand the words and that meant his progress was slow.

He had gotten to the point where he could expel his chakra from his fingers, which was definitely a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, every advance was met with another roadblock. At the moment, what was holding him back was the creation of strings from his chakra. The problem was that chakra had no real substance. When it came out of his fingers, it was just a wispy, blue, steam-like substance, somewhere between a liquid and a gas. How he was supposed to turn that into something tangible that could actually latch onto a puppet was beyond him at the moment. And since Konoha had never invested time into working out how puppeteering worked (aside from some efforts to counter the Suna Puppet Corps which centered around counters to poisons) the library didn't really have much help to offer.

Maybe his control was simply lacking. While he could somewhat push and pull the wispy chakra he emitted, it wasn't with any precision. Maybe if he just worked harder at chakra control exercises he had read about, he could manage a short thread and then lengthen it over time? He sighed into his ramen, already feeling a familiar headache as he thought of all the leaves he was going to disintegrate once more in the name of perfecting that exercise.

"Why the long face, Naruto-kun?" Ayame was staring at him from the kitchen portion of the stand. Teuchi had stepped out for a while and she was working to prepare the dough that would become noodles. It always calmed him to watch her or Teuchi spinning the dough, stringing it out, spinning it more and more before pulling it again until they could create thin, thread-like . . .

Naruto's eyes widened as he stared down at his hands, wondering how stupid he had to be to have missed something so obvious. Suddenly, to Ayame's surprise, Naruto vaulted the counter and threw his arms around her, beaming up at her.

"You're the best, Ayame-nee-chan!" As quickly as he'd hugged her, he was gone, racing off in the direction of his apartment. The waitress-chef was left standing there, blinking and confused, before she shook herself and chuckled at his antics as she returned to her work.

The moment Naruto got home, he leapt over his couch and grabbed the small wooden doll he had left there the previous night. It was a simple thing he'd stolen from the Academy. They used it in anatomy lessons and he had simply stolen it one day. He'd hoped having something to aim at would help him to create the strings, even though it hadn't, he kept it anyway. Now, though, he placed it in front of him with a grin. He felt through his body for the surging energy deep inside and brought it to the surface, focusing it into his fingertips.

Before, he had simply allowed the wispy blue energy to stream from his fingers in a loose cloud, now he did his best to spin it, trying to coil the insubstantial mist into a thread. His eyes widened as instead of the usual mist, he found an almost conical form exiting each fingertip. He was so surprised that he immediately lost control and the chakra dissipated into the air, but it didn't matter.

"Yes!" He jumped in the air and pumped his fist, dancing around the table. It wasn't a thread, but it was something and Naruto could work with that. He could feel his dream coming together.

.o0o0o0o0.

Naruto had no idea that it would take six months for progress to happen. That was an eternity for someone his age. He practiced every day after the Academy, though. And it still took six months before he could form anything that even vaguely resembled chakra strings. It was slow going because he was inefficient at forming them, even if it rarely burned him out the way the texts said it should. Even so, he would practice too hard and temporarily burn out the tenketsu on his fingertips. Each time he did, it cost him a day or two of practice—instead of the week or more that the texts said it should—but that meant time he couldn't practice anything useful to his goal while his tenketsu healed.

That wasn't to say he wasted his time. Once he got over his difficulties with the written word, he found that he could enjoy reading. Not only reading things useful to his objectives, either. Each book was a portal to a different world where he didn't have to remember his past or focus on the disgust or dismissal with which the villagers treated him. Reading became a solace in a gray, empty world and he had taken to doing it in class sometimes, since his teachers clearly didn't care.

In the end, he had finally, finally managed to form the threads, only to realize that he had no idea how he was supposed to attach them to a puppet. Another three months passed before he worked out the trick by accident. He had gotten so frustrated and tired that after almost an hour of practicing yet again, his control began to fray and with it, so did the threads. When he was trying to repair the damage without reforming the threads from scratch, he noticed that they were still touching the doll and a twitch of his finger nearly flung the doll at him. Only falling out of his chair had saved him from being struck in the face by the flying wood.

.o0o0o0o0.

Naruto walked slowly through the streets of the village. He had just left the Academy for the last time that year. His first year of training was now over. Many of the other kids had rushed out ahead of him, eager to talk to their friends or otherwise enjoy the short month they had before their second year began. Naruto was content to simply stroll out. It was amazing how little he rushed now that he had somewhere to be.

He couldn't help but smile as he entered his apartment. It was unrecognizable compared to its state a year earlier. He had cleaned it obsessively once he realized that he could use his threads to move things around. And doubly so once he had begun to use the small doll to do simple chores, turning them into training.

From the door, he reached up, grinning as the thin, blue threads spun themselves from his fingers almost without thought and gripped the puppet sitting in its usual place on his table. A twitch of his thumb and ring finger had it take a confident step forward, turning its head to look at him. With his index and middle fingers, he forced the little figure to raise a hand and wave at him. He returned the gesture with his other hand, even as his fingers moved again, causing the figure to jump from the table and rush over to hug his leg. There was always someone to greet him now.

For a few minutes, he made the doll run around, flipping and dancing as his fingers moved in complex patterns. It washed the dishes from his breakfast and had to jump to put them away. He laughed to himself at how the small figure sprang into the air to to it, doing an elaborate summersault as it did. Naruto had the doll run up the wall until it accidentally dislodged a piece of paper he'd tacked there.

He made the doll pick it up and bring it to him, sobering as he realized that it was the profile of Akasuna no Sasori, torn from the precious Bingo Book. He'd put it on his wall as a reminder of his goal.

He looked from the profile to the doll, whose head had ended up tilted towards him expectantly and frowned. He had no real reason to be happy right now. It took all of his fingers to control a puppet this small and his chakra threads glowed brightly. Compared to the mastery Sasori had over the art, this was pitiful. The man was reputed to control ten puppets at one time—more, if the stories in the Bingo Book were true. Only Sasori's grandmother and the ancient founder of the Puppet Corps, Monzaemon Chikamatsu, had ever accomplished that feat.

Naruto's hand clenched into a fist, causing the puppet to shrink in a facsimile of fear. He had much to do if he wanted to reach his goal. This was just the beginning.

.o0o0o0o0.

(A/N John)

Firstly: I am aware that this is not just a repost of the first chapter. I have the entire original manuscript printed and bound as well as the notes for plans and our additions. I am taking the time to retype the story and put my own touch to the work.

(A/N 2 John)

Secondly: This fic is going to be slow going because I have one major project ongoing and two minor fics I'd like to publish to get out of my hair. I have literally had this in the works since almost the day the original story was discontinued.

(A/N 3 John)

Thirdly: If you are expecting this to a cheerful romp ala Itachi, kindly stop here. This is not a happy-go-lucky story, nor does it feature a kind protagonist.

(A/N 4 John)

Fourthly: Unlike Itachi, I knew how this one was going to end long before I started writing. There's not much that's likely to change.