Chapter one: Humble Beginnings
"Issei-kun! Wake up! You don't want to be late for your last day at the Academy do you?" A tall thin woman with kind blue eyes, long brown hair, and a lavender flowered apron on called up the stairs.
"Coming Mom!" A soft scrambling sound and two small thumps came from the young boy's room, then the sounds of drawers being opened and closed, and a young boy with deep violet eyes and his mother's brown hair, though his was far more disheveled, walked calmly down the stairs toward his mother, a katana hilt stuck up from behind his right shoulder, shuriken and kunai holders, one each, were strapped to the outside thigh of his right leg, he wore a pair of loose legged white shorts and a purple gi over a chain mesh shirt.
Issei's mother pulled her son into a hug. "I can't believe my little Ikkun is going to be a ninja!" The twelve year old she was currently squeezing to death struggled vainly to escape his mother's grasp. "Mooom! Stop it, I'm not a ninja yet, I still need to take the exam, remember?" Issei nearly whined the word 'mom' as he was finally released from her grasp.
Setsuya Yuki smiled down at her son with an undaunted and affectionately proud smile. "I know you'll pass, you will be a great shinobi one day Issei-kun." Setsuya Issei just nodded and took his mother's convictions with a grain of salt, she was his mother after all, she was supposed to have faith in him. Yuki and Issei walked into the dining room, where Setsuya Uryu, Issei's father and the current head of the Setsuya Clan knelt in front of the low table sipping a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper, when his wife bustled their son into the room his violet eyes turned to meet those of his heir. "I understand that today is the day of the graduation exam." The head of the household growled out, this was due to the scar that bisected his throat, rather than from anger, the black haired older man had sustained an injury to his vocal chords when he was younger, and an active Jonin, ever since his voice was more often than not a deep gravelly rasp.
The heir to the Setsuya Clan nodded to his father. "Yes Father, it is."
"Then I expect you to pass it and uphold the pride of your clan."
Issei bowed to his father before replying. "Of course Father."
Issei ate a quick breakfast before dashing off, calling his farewells to his parents over his shoulder.
Setsuya Issei enjoyed the freedom of leaping from rooftop to rooftop as he crossed Konohagakure, heading in the direction of the six Hokage stone faces and the Ninja Academy.
Twenty minutes later Issei sat in the classroom alongside his classmates and nervously waited for his name to be called. Their sensei, Aburame Shino, called down name after name in his slow, deep, serious voice that normally calmed Issei quite well, however today the Setsuya heir's muscles got more and more tense with each name called, soon it would be his turn, rather than that of his friends and classmates. "Yamanaka Daisuke." A blonde boy, who Issei remembered was fond of boasting that he was the cousin of the famous war hero Yamanaka Ino, was called down, Issei didn't particularly care for the other boy, he was sort of arrogant and loud, especially since several other students, including Issei himself had relatives who'd been named heros because of the Fourth Great Shinobi War, so the boy's boasting mostly just annoyed everyone, but he still wished the blonde good luck in his head, after all, what could it hurt?
"Aburame Shinji." A boy with a brown afro, sunglasses, and a high collared green jacket, similar to those of his cousin, who had just called him down to take the graduation test, stood from a seat two away from Issei's, and walked out the door to the testing area.
"Takeshi Ayame." A girl with orange hair got up from the seat behind Issei and made her way down.
"Tatsuki Hoshimaru." Another blonde boy, whose hair was shorter, and whose grin was wider than Yamanaka Daisuke's had been leaped out of his seat and ran into the testing area, Issei remembered him from Taijutsu sparring, he'd lost every match he'd been in, Issei sent some more silent good luck wishes his way, these were somewhat more genuine, as he remembered Tatsuki-san was a determined and friendly individual who had worked very hard to get where he was, and Issei truly hoped the boy passed.
When his name was called Issei had to force himself to calm down, which really wasn't like him, he was normally quite laid back, but this was the most important test he'd ever taken, in a way it was the most important one he'd ever take, today, he would prove to the entire village that he had what it took to be a ninja.
The first thing the examiners asked him to do was the leaf chakra control exercise, he could hold seven leaves on his fingertips for a full minute, three more than necessary to pass. Next he was asked to perform the basic katas of the Academy Taijutsu style, it was at this point that the tension in him slid away permanently, he slid through the forms and motions like he was made of water, as a close range specialist he'd familiarized himself with the Academy style to an exhaustive degree whenever he wasn't practicing his Kenjutsu or Ninjutsu and the familiar motions and poses served to center his mind on the task at hand and firm his resolve, he was going to pass this test. After his demonstration of his Taijutsu knowledge the examiners gave him a short written test that he completed with no problem. Then came the final hurdle of the test: Ninjutsu, first he was asked to perform the three basic Academy Jutsu, then he would have to perform the most powerful Jutsu in his repertoire. For the Transformation Jutsu Issei turned himself into a near-perfect copy of Shino-sensei, near perfect because he got the nose slightly crooked. One of the examiners, Nara Shikamaru, threw a kunai at him for his demonstration of the Replacement Jutsu, Nara-sensei gave a lazy nod of approval when his kunai struck one of the empty chairs in the classroom they'd used as the examination room which had suddenly swapped places with Issei, who then walked back down to perform the final of the three Academy Jutsu.
Standing in front of the pair of examiners Issei formed three handsigns and suddenly three exact replicas of Setsuya Issei appeared next to the original.
Nara-sensei made a note on his clipboard before turning his piercing grey eyes back onto Issei. The Jonin spoke with a lazy drawl. "Alright, it's troublesome, but we've got to see the most powerful Jutsu you can successfully execute, if you need a target we can bring in one of the wooden dummies from the training room, if you require a living target we'll bring in one of our Chunin volunteers from outside, do you need any of those things for your Jutsu?"
Issei shuffled uncomfortably under the examiner's gaze. "A wooden dummy would be great."
A man in a chunin flak jacket brought in one of the vaguely humanoid dummies and set it up eight feet away.
"Whenever you're ready." Shikamaru droned. Issei nodded, the he focused his attention on the training dummy, made five quick handsigns, Horse, Dog, Horse, Tiger, Ox. Then he drew the katana from it's sheath, set his stance, and reached his arm over his shoulder, so that the back of his sword almost touched his back, sparks of electricity ran down the length of the blade and shot out behind his heels. "Setsuya Sword Style: Lightning Release: Beast Moon Dance!" The clan heir intoned before he vanished from the examiners' sights for a brief second, if they hadn't been far more experienced than Issei they would never had been able to tell exactly what Issei did, as it was the surprised duo watched as the young Setsuya rushed the dummy, electricity coated the katana's blade and exploded from the bottoms of his feet, which they surmised was the cause of his rapid acceleration, Issei's first cut took the left arm off of the dummy as his momentum took him past the damaged piece of training equipment, as soon as he passed it he leaped backward, delivering a deep cut to the dummy's side, the instant his feet touched the ground Issei darted to his left, leaving a third cut in the dummy's abdomen, spun once and took the dummy's intact arm off at the elbow joint, which again took him past the mangled dummy, with a backslash Issei removed the dummy's head one moment before the Jutsu ended and he dropped to one knee. Issei's head spun from the massive chakra drain that Jutsu demanded. It took almost five minutes, but Issei came back to full awareness and stumbled to his feet and turned to the examiners, both of whom had smiles on their faces. It was the second examiner who spoke up.
"After that impressive display there's really only one thing left to say: Congratulations, Setsuya Issei, you are now a Genin of Konohagakure."
(Author's Note: My first attempt at a Naruto fanfic, hope you like it! On a relevant note, as I've never seen Naruto: The Last, I'm ignoring it as far as canon goes for this story, it takes place while Kakashi is still the Hokage, it will follow a team entirely of my own creation, the Konoha eleven are all jonin, constructive criticism is welcome, flamers will be ignored for the attention seeking morons they are, I'm trying to make sure I didn't make my characters over powered, but I'm not sure I have an appropriate power scale to judge them by, advice would be appreciated, other than that, read, review and most of all enjoy!)