Rocks and Paper

Chapter One

I had so much trouble getting this first chapter up! BAH!

His side ached. Ribs throbbed with every heart beat and burned with every breath. From the pain radiated a numb that filled up the rest of his body. He felt weak and heavy and cold and drained. Shifting slowly he felt stones under him. He wiggled his fingers, testing the rock below and found that there was no dirt, only a damp grit over even larger rocks. He inhaled slowly through his nose, drawing in the smell of granet and lime stone and blood. He expected the blood and the granet, but the lime stone stirred up an unpleasant fragment of memory. The only place he could remember smelling lime stone like this was in the caves around the village.

Caves.

Naruto's eyes snapped open and he gasped. The sudden sharp breath tore at his wounded side like a kunai heated in a fire. He closed his eyes again and swallowed against the pain. Pressing his head in to the damp stones he wondered how long he'd been out, and why his wound wasn't mending. The nine tailed beast locked away with in him should have started healing the wound already.

He opened his eyes again, braced him self for the pain, and lifted his head. He was, he realized, in one of the caves near the village. Rocks and people were thrown about in heaps all along the stony floor. Lights, pail and yellow flickered weakly above them. Floating up and through the hollow air were quiet moans.

Naruto laid his head back down. He scratched at his mind for an explanation as to why he, and so many others, were laying in this cavern. It was a natural cave, enhanced by stone workers and technicians, to be used in the event of an emergency. As to what that emergency was Naruto could not recall. What he could recall was the conditions in which the caves were to be used. There were very few: in the case of city wide over crowding, a natural disaster, or an evacuation due to an attack.

Gathering his strength Naruto struggled in to a sitting position. The cave was in ruins. The entrance, near where he was, had collapsed. The people around him all appeared to be dead. Most of them were nothing more than children. There were very few adults here, and all of them seemed to be laying over the children in a protective manner. Scattered every where were remains of paper bombs.

Clearly, this had been an evacuation. No storm could have done this, and this was no case of over crowding.

An ill feeling swept through Naruto as he gazed silently over the carnage. Memories were starting to gather in his mind, horrible, dark, memories. They had been invaded, and they had failed to repel the invasion. Men, by the hundreds, had pored in to the village. They had on armor that absorbed and repelled chakra. Naruto had thrown Rasanagan after Rasanagan at the men, only to watch as it bounced off like a toy ball. More horrifying still was every repelled attack ended up damaging a building, or more grievous, the people inside.

Naruto dragged him self to his feet and stumbled forward. His chakra was gone, he could feel it. The invaders had brought not only chakra repelling armor, but weapons dipped in some sort of poison that sucked the energy out of a person. With in minutes of the invasion nearly all of the ninja had lost the ability to use any chakra at all.

Kyubi still had all of his chakra. This Naruto could also feel. The fox with in had not been affected by the poison. More sinister still was that the poison had not been designed to affect him. In fact the whole attack was the monster's fault. The invading force had declared, right from the beginning that they wanted Kyubi. If the village handed the beast over then they would leave, never to be seen again. Naruto had felt, for an instant, the horror of his youth relieved. The village had hated him, shunned him, and turned against him. This time however the whole village stood behind him, declaring that he was some one important.

Iruka him self had stood literally behind Naruto, declaring that he would rather die than hand him over.

"Iruka." Naruto sucked in a breath sharply. The instructor had been in this cave as part of the evacuation team. Naruto could recall being with the older ninja in Tsunade's office. Kakashi had been there, Gai as well, along with many other of Naruto's age group. Every one's chakra had been compromised. The children were being gathered and they were to take them to the cave systems.

Naruto remembered protesting, loudly, that he still had Kyubi and that if the invaders wanted the nine tailed fox, they'd get him!

Tsunade had silenced him quickly and reminded him about how he'd promised her he'd be the next Hokage some day. And that if he wanted to be Hokage then he'd better protect the people who would be the next generation of the leaf village. She had spoken calmly, firmly, all while dripping blood from a gaping wound in her arm and shoulder. And then, she lifted that injured arm, pointed to the door, and ordered them all to go.

Naruto looked around the dim cavern, worry and fear mixing with pain and exhaustion. All around him were bodies and rocks.

There were two cave systems, one closer to the village than the other. Kakashi and Gai had declared that they would take the wounded there, because it was where the wounded could reach. Iruka had responded that the children could make it to the farther caves. They'd split up then, Naruto using Kyubi's chakra and cloning him self to carry the majority of the young ones.

There were very few moans in the cave. As he listened he could make out only three voices. Two were female, the other was a young boy. None of them were Iruka. He closed his eyes and tried to smell the older man's sent. It was faint, and he was not skilled at the art of this sort of tracking, but he could tell the man was close. Looking again he spotted two legs of an adult sticking out from under a bolder. His heart sank, but his feet moved forward. The bolder was large, and as Naruto grabbed ahold of it to move, he realized it was slick with blood. The strain to move the large rock was felt most keenly in the still fresh wound on Naruto's side, but he suffered through it till the end. And was rewarded gruesomely for his efforts.

It was Iruka and he was dead.

More should be up sooner or latter.