"Ten years ago, Oct 10, a massive creature we call the Kyuubi attacked the village. With it's immense power, it laid waste to a very significant portion of our country side. Can anyone in the class tell me how we beat it?" Several hands shot up and started waving around enthusiastically. "Hm how about you Sasuke, do you know the answer?"
Sitting in the corner of the class, with his head down, Sasuke looked up briefly before grunting. "Hai sensei, the Fourth Hokage defeated the Kyuubi using his extreme skill in Fuinjutsu to seal the Kyuubi into his son Naruto."
Nodding his head Iruka procceed further. "And what happened to Naruto after the Kyuubi was sealed into him?"
Sasuke looked down for a moment before twiddling his fingers and glaring at the wall. " My Mom and Dad told me that he was spirited away by the foul chakra of the Kyuubi, somewhere deep in the pits of hell." He shivered a little before looking back at his teacher. " Is it true that if we are bad he will come to take us too?"
Shaking his head Iruka furthered the conversation. " Of course not Sasuke, Naruto has never been seen since. We do believe he is still alive, seeing as the Kyuubi has never made a return appearance, but, for obvious reasons we cannot be certain. Now can anyone tell me the theory of the evolution of the tailed beasts?" Again many hands raised. "Shikamaru it's your turn."
Groaning slightly Shikamaru didn't even raise his head or open his eyes. "Can't I sleep in for a few more hours mom? I won't miss anything in school today..." All eyes were on him, as his teacher quietly made his way up to the row. Then quickly and mercilessly smacked the sleeping boy across his head, which got him to fall out of his chair, with a flounder like gaping expression all over his face. Getting over it in a few moments, replacing his look with one of disgruntlement, the boy sat back in his chair. " What'd you want Iruka-sensei?"
Shaking his head Iruka turned back to the class. "Alright Kiba I guess it's your turn then." Kiba looked at him and nodded.
"Hai sensei, the theory is that, long ago, when man first discovered chakra, it was never initially a part of our bodies. It was in fact an energy radiating from a huge strange rock that fell from the sky, yet somehow barely putting a hole in the planet. We learned quickly to harness the energy and found that it seeped into us very easily, allowing us to use jutsu and alike techniques. However, nobody suspected that some of the animals that survived and continued to live around the crash site would also absorb the chakra. These animals absorbed so much chakra in fact that the mutated heavily, similar to the beliefs on the occurance of kekigenkai. Before too long the animals must have become self aware, and upon such self awareness sought out the source of their conciousness. They went to the strange rock and started to absorb even more of the chakra, causing further mutation in some and some dieing. We believe that the only ones that survived the total immersion into the chakra are the nine tailed beasts."
Blinking owlishly Iruka turned to see Kiba very quickly hiding something beneath his arms and grinning at him. Eye twitching Iruka called him out, " You were reading from your text book trying to act smart again weren't you?" Kiba deflated spectacularly against his desk which was all the answer he needed, and then grumbling to himself added, " At least you will read the damn thing." Looking at the time he nodded to himself. " Alright kiddos its time for lunch be back in class within the hour." All the kids rushed out making him shake his head once more. 'well at least they pay attention without to many distractions.' He went about collecting the class worksheets, noticing that only a few of his students got anything wrong. Well not precisely wrong, but not within the guidelines of thoughts they should be possessing. The names on those sheets were Sasuke, Shikamaru, and Ivane.
All three of them suprisingly enough had the same thoughts on what the bijuu were, which was to say the embodiments of humanity. They all even went as far as giving very similar reasonings which boiled down to this. In recent years there had been many archeological discoveries linking to the past of the tailed beasts. Hundreds of writings and murals were said to contain data on each of these beasts, containing perfect images of the ones last seen walking over a hundred years ago. There was a new theory starting to circulate between experts that the bijuu could possibly be man born creatures. However without a shred of conclusive evidence to support this, the theory was not favored.
Smiling warmly Iruka thought about pulling those three back after class, to see if they were simply going against the mainstream flow, or, preferably, had genuine interest in the theoritical fields of the shinobi life. After all these three kids grades, despite their unattentiveness, were the highest in the entire class. He figured he'd either have a nice, long, and enlightening conversation with his students, or he'd kill a few minutes and then send them on their way.
...
When class was finally over Iruka pulled the three aside. " Alright kids do you know why I asked you to stay after?" Seeing three heads shaking he smiled. " Because all three of you gave an answer that was roughly the same for a very advanced question. Can you guess which one?"
Ivane waved her hand slightly. "The theory of the bijuu right?" Seeing Iruka nod mad the girl think for a moment before looking him back in the eye. " Speaking for myself, I find the idea that the bijuu are our own creation to be extremely fascinating. After the great war that shuddered the earth, and pushed the continents together, almost everything from before then was buried deep into the planet. It's been estimated that 10,000 years have passed since that time, but we cannot be certain because for a long time the survivors of the event, well, they were barbaric. Killing each other and enslaving one another."
Sasuke looking on with interest continued for the girl. " We know that its been 700 years since we gained a semblance of order among the people, finally having large enough villages to once again start industrializing. It was also the time when the moon was blasted through by the rock that gave us chakra. This saw to a huge expansion of villages into large cities. It was fifty years later that the first recorded sightings of the bijuu occured, and then shortly after that the rock had disappeared and another war broke out. This war once again destroyed most of humanity but the survivors, this time, made peace. They came together to for one last large city and for a hundred years lived peacefully very slowly expanding out into other villages."
Shikamaru held his hand up this time, for once looking very interested. " After the hundred years of peace, the bijuu made an appearance once again, striking out to destroy the last great city of man. They put up a valiant effort, but their beloved city fell to the beasts that disappeared shortly after. Their home in ruins the people fell into a depression and spread out across the country to build small villages once again and live quieter lives. Another hundred years pass, and with no large cities, the bijuu wandered the lands only ever appearing around villages during times of dire strife. It was during this time that a strange man came, appearing in villages all over the country, making offers of great power to the people. The day after he appeared in a village, the tailed beasts would all gather there as if looking for something before disappearing again. It is unknown wether people accepted his gifts or not, however I believe that some did, because there are a few reports of the tailed beasts eating certain individuals from a few of the vilages."
Ivane spoke up once more. " I've been thinking the same thing. I mean, when you think about it, anyone could have tons of reasons to accept such power. To protect themselves, to hurt others, to make a name for themselves. It wouldn't feasibly make sense to say that no one took the power. Around that time is also when they discovered fuinjutsu, which we nowadays use to contain the tailed beasts, along with all manner of other functions."
It was at this point that Iruka held his hands up with a grin. " I see that you all have a deeply vested interest in this, what say we go have a bite to eat and I'll tell you all my theories as well. It'll be my treat." The three standing before him smiled and held the door open.
TWO YEARS LATER
"Hokage-sama! Hokage-sama!" A masked shinobi burst into the office of the old Sarutobi.
"Yes what is it?" The elderly man looked up from his papers calmly addressing his young subordinate.
"Sir," he bowed his head, "I have an urgent letter from the archaeological team that furthered the diggings around the new excavation site. They have come across a sealed room sir, the seal is almost exactly the same as the one Yondaime-sama used to seal the Kyuubi within his son." At this point the Hokage practically jumped over his desk urging the man to continue. " They can't figure out how to unlock the seal and are requesting that Jiraya or yourself come to assess the situation."
Hiruzen nodded, " yes when dealing with a seal of that level only a handful of individuals can have a hope of figuring it out." After a few moments of thought he looked at his subordinate once more. " Tell them that Jiraya and myself will come immediately." The ninja nodded and disappeared.
...
After a full days journey both Jiraya and Hiruzen came to the digsite, both displaying anxiousness. They were quickly led through a short cave that was quite wide all the way around. It didn't take long for them to come across a massive structure that was square all the way around. "As you can see, we dug out all the way around the room and have only found this one entrance." He gestured to the man sized portal shape jutting out of the side of building. "There is no visible way to open the door, and without knowing whats inside, we don't wanna risk breaking in through the walls and possibly destroying whatever could be inside. When we uncovered the door we discovered that merely by brushing against any part of the structure the seal will appear." He demonstrated by placing his finger against a part of the wall and the seal appeared immediately, quite bold against the dirty white of the walls around it.
Jiraya was immediately enthralled in the inter workings of the seal and gave a whistle. "I can see why you'd think this is just like my students seal, however there's a few notable differences. Namely, that the complexity of this seal is significantly beyond anything I've ever seen, the fact that there's a name written into it, and the number one.. Kurama..." At this point Jiraya scrutinized it some more before busting out a pen and some paper and scrawling out individual parts of the seal.
Hiruzen was also giving the seal his eagle eye, quickly noting that he had seen similar designs in some of the more sophisticated storage seals. Like the ones used to keep food fresh for longer. Once Jiraya was done the old man looked over at him. "Jiraya-kun..." Jiraya looked up into the grave expression of his sensei. "I have a hunch.. and I don't want to be right." Jiraya had similar thoughts going through his mind.
"Considering that this is only a few hundred feet away from where they found the data regarding the tailed beasts, and the size of the room, this could very well be a birthplace for one of the bijuu." Jiraya scrunched his face up and glared seriously at the building in front of him. "And if it is i'd wager a guess that it's probably for the first bijuu created.. the most powerful one." Hiruzen nodded his head.
"We need to get this seal busted Jiraya, I'll stay and help you with the decryptions." Jiraya nodded absently already deep into the mysteries of the seal, making Hiruzen smile. He turned back to the man he had placed in charge of the archaeological site. "Make sure that we keep this as underwraps as possible, until we get it open and have ample time to secure everything we find. I don't want this leaking to the public just yet."
"We figured as much sir, everyone here is so excited, nobody has left the digsite since we found it and we've been spreading our search grid much further than we originally scheduled. With such an amazing find we decided to take initiative and gain extra ground." The man smiled and bowed. " I will go see to your accomodations." With that he quietly turned tail and walked off with a pleasant air about him.
The old man smiled as well. "I'm glad I picked such an amiable man to be the lead of this expedition. Jiraya remind me to give that man a bonus when we get back to the village." Jiraya just grinned at him.
...
A week after their arival Hiruzen and Jiraya finally broke the code of the ancient seal and opened the door. They were only partially suprise to see the door slide into the structure and then the whole wall seemingly slid into itself at the sides and the top. Inside was a giant mess of destroyed machinery, some masses of shattered glass everywhere, and strangely enough a glow far off in the corner. They quickly organized all the gathered archaeologists and began removing equipment. Dozens upon dozens of files talking about the creation of a nine tailed beast were found, along with a few devices that look extremely similar to their video recording devices. However in the back of the room where the glow was coming from they found the biggest mystery of all. The glow was coming from a small glass window inside a rather large pod that had a cold mist coming off of it. Unfortunately they couldn't see through the glass, but when one of the men placed his hand on it there was a loud beeping noise that drew the attention of literally everyone there.
The glow from the window got brighter and the pod popped open. The room became filled with the chilly mist almost immediately, causing everyone to wave their hands in front of their faces for a few moments, attempting to dispel the fog from their view. The men closest to the pod stepped forward to it, once they could see again, and carefully opened the pod to see what was inside, all of them gasping loudly and shouting. "Hokage-sama, Jiraya-sama you have to see this." Both the men stepped out from behind him having beent here already. Both of them thought they would lose their eyebrows into their hairlines forever when they saw what was inside.
"I just can't believe it... I was right." Hiruzen said quietly. Laying right there before them all was a blonde haired boy, who was extremely pale but otherwise looked healthy. Suddenly, a screen flickered to life on the inside face of the door, it read simply download complete. Scrutinizing the pod some more he lifted his hand and a shinobi appeared beside him. " Get a medical team here right now, and send for Tsunade to come to Konoha. We are leaving with the boy and the pod immediately, the rest of this I want to be sent to the bunkers under the mountain." The shinobi nodded and disappeared again.
Jiraya was still staring in minor disbelief. " Sensei.. this is just to strange, how is he even alive in here? It's been twelve years for Kami's sake!"
"I don't know Jiraya. I just don't know."
AN
Hello my fellow fans, and thank you for viewing my 'pilot' for a fic I hope I can continue to have inspiration for. Hopefully you enjoyed it and feel like letting me know, or even if you didn't let me know that too! Everything helps after all this is just as much of an adventure for me as it is for you.