Orange Scroll Saga - Chapter 01
A small, 7-year-old boy with raven hair and onyx eyes had no clue that he was being followed. He had just gotten finished with his self-study in shuriken techniques, and he had been at it too long, as the sun had set before he started his journey home.
Another boy with blonde hair and blue eyes knew perfectly well that the raven-haired boy was being followed. He was the one following him, after all!
'I will watch, and discover all of your techniques, Sasuke! No way I'll keep letting myself play second fiddle to you!' Even so, the blond boy couldn't explain the creeping sense of danger that was starting to weigh in his gut. It wasn't like he was pranking anyone, or anything dangerous was going on, so why did he have such a bad feeling?
The raven-haired boy, Sasuke, broke the tree-line, and began walking the paved paths of the cultivated residential districts of the Village Hidden in the Leaves. The blond boy dropped from his cover in the foliage and trailed Sasuke at a distance to not alert him. He couldn't help but feel a little jealous of Sasuke's situation. He got to live in an upper-class neighborhood with a huge family, after all! He observed the outer walls of the Uchiha compound. Creamy with the Uchiha crest of a fan spaced across it. It was quiet as a block of ramen.
The weight in his gut bottomed out. Looking up to get a feel of the time, he thought he saw a figure crouching on a telephone pole with the red moon to his back, before he blinked. Whatever figure might have been there was gone.
Sasuke rounded the corner into the gate, and he heard a scream that sounded like it could've been Sasuke. The sound of a Sasuke quickening his pace into a run was heard, and the blond boy paused before he turned around the corner. Should he continue? Of course, he would, or he wouldn't be Naruto Uzumaki! Naruto grit his teeth and turned the corner. He staggered at the sent that wafted up to him. It was the most intense rusty pot smell he ever whiffed! Letting his vision catch up, he saw what had Sasuke screaming. There were people laying on the ground with grievous injuries that were spewing blood. Some stopped even doing that. He could see Sasuke's footprints going through.
Deciding that learning Sasuke's secret techniques could wait, he stopped following him, and went to the man who was closest to the gate, and still had some blood coming out of the thin hole in his back. Rolling him over, Naruto saw that he was wearing the Konoha Military Police uniform, and the same hole was also in the front. Naruto took the tool pouch from his waist, and the pouch from the policeman's waist and looked through both contents, before finding what he needed. Putting his fingers to the man's neck, he found he still had a weak pulse. Placing his ear near the man's mouth revealed that he still had some shuddering breath. He took some instant-clot gauze from his own pouch and started shoving it into the man's gut wound. Cringing at the squelching noises and the blood that was getting on his hands, he kept going until the blood stopped coming out. He bandaged the front, then rolled the man over to do the same to the back end of the wound.
Putting him onto his back once more he took a soldier pill from the man's pouch and shoved it into his mouth and made him chew. Shortly after, the man's breathing steadied out, and his pulse quickened. Then his eyes opened.
"What the… where…? You boy… Naruto?" Naruto nodded, and kept his hands on the man's chest to keep him from getting up.
"Please stay down for a little bit, sir. You have a bad wound through your gut. What happened?" The man's eyes regained focus and he moved his hand to check his wound.
"Itachi. He's betrayed the Uchiha clan, and is working on massacring all of us. You shouldn't be here." The words came out with some effort.
"Sir, I'm going to go look for more survivors. When you feel you can make it, please go to the hospital and get some help, okay? I'll need to take your ninja tools, sorry!" Naruto ran off and the man gave himself but a moment before he stood up, cringing at the injury resisting his efforts.
'That boy is certainly no demon.' He disappeared with a puff of smoke as he quickly moved to the hospital.
Naruto had found only four more survivors so far of the dozens of corpses strewn through-out, and gotten them patched up; giving them the same words he gave to the policeman at the gate. He finally came across what looked to be the main house of the compound. Guessing this is where Sasuke lives, he walked in and kept following his gut into the family dojo, where he first saw Sasuke on the ground. Running over, he checked Sasuke to find that he had no injuries, he was just unconscious. Looked ahead, he saw two more bodies. Sasuke's parents?
Running over, he found the father was dead, but the mother was barely hanging on with a large gash running through her back. She was also unconscious, with a hand reached out towards Sasuke on the ground. He sorted through the four packs he confiscated and pulled out a large quantity of gauze that he began packing into her back wound. Whatever hit her had just barely missed her spine. Once he was done patching her up, he gave her a soldier pill and left the supplies. He went to pick up Sasuke, looping an arm around his shoulder and began taking him out of the estate. Sasuke's mom opened her eyes to see Naruto taking Sasuke out of the house and smiled before letting her eyes flutter closed again.
Naruto had just gotten out of the house with Sasuke when he saw the man he suspected to be responsible for all this blood standing in front of him, lazily staring him down with his red eyes. Naruto blinked, and found himself chained up to a cross inside a landscape with black, white, and red coloring. The man was standing before him with that same look in his eye.
"Naruto Uzumaki. You should not be here."
"Are you Itachi!? Sasuke's brother!? How could you do this to your own family!"
Curiously enough to Naruto, the man flinched, ever so slightly. Was this regret he was feeling?
"You know nothing, and will continue to know nothing for some time to come. However, this might be a fortunate turn of events."
"What are you even talking about!?" Naruto immediately stopped shouting when he felt the chains around his neck constrict tightly, leaving him barely able to breath, let alone talk.
"Things are in motion. Large things. You can't be expected to comprehend them right now, but one day in the future, you will need to comprehend everything. Everything of this current time, and everything that is to come, is pre-determined to occur from the events that transpired at the dawn of chakra itself. There is but one thing I will have you remember from our meeting. The one thing you must aspire to learn, and will lead you to learning everything else you will need to know. There is a man known as the Sage of Six Paths who is known as the father of chakra and ninjutsu. Hagoromo Otsutsuki. Remember this name. Learn everything about him, and everything around him. I'm placing my trust in you. Good bye, Naruto."
With that, Naruto blinked once, and turned his head once to see his alarm clock telling him to get up for school. Yawning, he got out of his bed and turned off the alarm. He moved to take his sleeping cap off, only for it to not be on his head.
'Huh? Wait.' Then he remembered the blood from the night before. 'Was that all just a dream?' He walked over to his dresser to get ready for school, and found his tool pouch missing. 'That's right! I was using it to patch up Sasuke's family, and left it with his mom!' He began rushing to his door, but jumped in fright when that selfsame door got roughly beat a few times.
"Naruto Uzumaki! Come out immediately!" Hurrying to comply, he opened the door to see a man with an ANBU uniform waiting for him. "The Hokage needs to see you urgently." He lifted Naruto by him armpits and ran at blinding speeds.