Hello people of the internet! I am Shinku Ryuuga, as you can see by the blue words above this, and I am the author of this story. This is my response to MrWriterWriter's "What's in the Scroll" challenge, and my first try at a Naruto fanfic. Hopefully I don't do this too horribly, so, with a request of read and review, my story. I hope you enjoy.

Sighing, the boy walked along the hall, knowing that he needn't worry about any ANBU at the moment. Considering how many times he'd spent in this Tower, the blond boy would've been surprised if he didn't have the shift change times memorized. It took away from the challenge of finding the Hokage's personal library, though… even though he'd spent quite a few nights holed up in there before being given the apartment, but it had been awhile, so the building layout might have changed, right? Well…

"Door's in the same place, is it the same lock… yes, yes it is. Maaaan, Mizuki-sensei said it'd be hard as hell to break in here. Was he pulling my chain or something?" he grumbled, picking the lock expertly. It came with years of practice getting in that allowed him to grumble and not have to focus on the door. After all, the old Hokage couldn't give the only key to the library to a boy, but being given permission to sleep there at certain times had definitely kept him from getting hurt a lot.

Two taps here, five taps there… and one tap over here, of course. "Click" went the lock, as he removed the lock-pick from the keyhole. Opening the door, Uzumaki Naruto walked inside, not closing it behind him because he knew that, just as the ANBU changing of the guard was occurring right now(and rather slowly at that, were they out drinking again?), that Old Man Hokage wouldn't be in the Tower until tomorrow morning, though there was something nagging at the back of his head that Naruto couldn't quite push away…

"Naruto-kun? What are you doing here so late at night? Your home hasn't been ransacked again, has it?"

The familiar voice coming out of nowhere made him almost jump out of the "kill me" orange jumpsuit he wore, along with his sandals and goggles. Or that's what he felt like, at least, considering he only jumped about five inches off the ground. Turning to the old man, Naruto put on a goofy grin, one he knew usually disarmed the man that shouldn't be here. "Nah, but I missed this place, nothing beats the smell of books and scrolls, right?" The forced cheeriness was so commonplace that neither of the two males in the room would be able to say if it were actually fake or not.

Tilting his head inquisitively, Sarutobi Hiruzen didn't quite buy it. After all, Naruto had made his displeasure of the musty aroma quite clear at the age of ten. Raising an eyebrow at the now thirteen year old boy, the old Hokage asked him, "Really? Then why did I hear you say something about breaking in while you were picking the lock?"

That made Naruto pause, though anyone that didn't know him like the Hokage, and two others in the Village Hidden in the Leaves, wouldn't say he missed a beat. The forced smile drooped slightly as well, further alerting Hiruzen to the fact that something was up, though it wasn't just the search for his pipe.

"Oh, that? Well, uh, ya see, I, uh… Oiroke no Jutsu!" One handseal and a poof of smoke later the blond boy became a blonde bombshell, with wisps of smoke barely covering the indecent exposure the Sarutobi was subjected to shortly after the words came out of the boy's mouth.

"…Wow, and here I thought the Old Man was better than that. Oh well, makes my job easier." Naruto said as he scratched his head, then shrugged as he turned from the fallen Hokage, blood dripping from the old man's noise in a stream. Finding the "Forbidden Scroll of Sealing", as Mizuki-sensei said it was called, was rather simple, considering it was the biggest scroll in the library, though there were a few posters that came close to it's size… in the same bin, no less. "Ooookay… this looks more like a bargain bin than a container for some kind of scroll of forbidden jutsu." Naruto was unsure as to why that was, but after taking a quick peak at the rolled up posters, and finding them to have hot women on them, gave them no second glance.

…He would probably come back for them sometime later, though, they'd probably be much better help at perfecting his Sexy Technique than those civilian porn mags had been. Most of the women in those had nice bodies, but some of the faces… Naruto shuddered as he remembered them.

Landing near a small, very shabby shack, Naruto looked around to make sure he hadn't been followed. The clearing he was in the middle of provided ample view of the surrounding forest, after all, so it never hurt to look. After approving of the situation, he sat down and took the giant scroll off his back.

"Man, this thing is heavy! If this is all just ONE sheet of paper, I'm a demon raccoon bent on destroying the village."

"Achoo!"

Rolling the giant scroll open, Naruto saw that the first two jutsu available were variations of his worst technique. "Shadow Clone and Shuriken-slash-Kunai Shadow Clone… What else is in here?"

Naruto rolled the scroll open further, finding that passed the first two jutsu, there were seals and more jutsu interspersed along the length of it. As well as minuscule stitches in the paper, telling Naruto that it wasn't all just one sheet.

"Let's see, there's this Dead Demon Consuming Seal, probably a goo-give my soul to the Shinigami? Pass. 'Dragon egg'… hmmm, I think I'll come back to that. Soul Eater, does that mean me or my opponent? Come back to that… hello, what's this? 'Black Dragon Technique', chakra intensive, burns just about anything in it's path, slowly destroys my arm with each use? Pass. 'Fire Dragon Flame Bomb', made by Old Man Hokage, chakra intensive, more powerful than the average Fire jutsu, hmm…" Naruto took out one of the small scrolls he packed into his jacket's inner pockets in case he came across a jutsu he liked but probably didn't have time to learn, along with a pen. After writing down the handseals for the Karyu Endan and labeling the line for it, Naruto went back to reading through the Forbidden Scroll.

"Dagger with alien technology on it, pass. I don't need a dagger, a sw-oohhh, red spear supposedly made of solid fire… Maybe. Hmm, sword made out of lightning gives me the same vibe as the spear, so I'll get back to that later.

"And next is… The Flying Thunder God Technique? The one the Fourth Hokage used? …Yup, very same one. Oh, dammit, it's not written down all the way, and I can't make these kunai by myself, let alone put the right seals on them… dammit. Well, what's next… summoning contracts? I like the sound of… dog, cats, birds, lizards, and, are they kidding me with this? F**king SPIRITS? I do believe we have a winner!" With that, Naruto brought his hand up, and after channeling some chakra into it, brought it down on-

"Naruto! What the hell do you think you're doing?"

-a poof was heard.

Naruto fell over as he heard the second familiar voice of the night, and it sounded rather angry. Sadly for him, his hand had changed directions upon hearing Iruka-sensei's yell, and instead of the spot where the kanji for "Spirit" was, his hand landed on the spot with "Soul Eater" written on it. The ensuing puff of smoke was actually something that worked in his favor.

The sound of weapons slicing the air was faint in Iruka's ears, but his instincts said jump, his body asked where to, so Iruka jumped to his right, evading the kunai that embedded themselves on the wall of the shack. No one heard the squeak that came from inside it.

Iruka turned to see that a certain white haired Chunin had landed on the branch that Iruka himself had jumped down from. "Mizuki, what is the meaning of this? Have you gone mad?" the tanned, scarred Chunin asked of his comrade.

Laughter was his answer. "Oh no, Iruka, I'm still quite sane, though the meaning of what's going on tonight will not be of any use to you, considering that you, and that stupid brat, are both going to DIE!" With that, Mizuki threw a bracer of shuriken at Iruka. Luckily for him, he managed to evade them. Unluckily for Naruto, Iruka had been right in front of him, though the puff of smoke was still lingering over his torso.

Upon hearing the clanging of metal hitting metal, Iruka wondered how Naruto deflected the shuriken while on his front, turning his head towards the boy, but after the smoke was swept away by a hand, found it wasn't Naruto that had deflected them, but a girl that looked rather pale in the moonlight. Iruka didn't pay attention to much else because the next thing he, and Mizuki, noticed about the girl was that she had a sword for an arm. A black, bat winged blade that started at her elbow.

Glaring at the white haired man, the girl growled at him, "Do you dare try to harm MY wielder, idiot? Do you not know what I am?" Both Chunin in the area could say they were freaked out by the way the girl's voice seemed to overlap with another, but they couldn't tell if the second voice was male or female.

Though if there was one thing Mizuki detested more than having to deal with anything related to the Ninja Academy, it's having to deal with anything related to that damnable fox brat! "Your wielder? If you want that piece of trash to own you, your standards must be rather low. He IS a demon, you know that, right?"

Iruka quickly turned to give Mizuki the darkest glare he could muster, though it would rank much lower on the "killing looks" scale than what the girl with a sword for an arm was still giving Mizuki. "He's not a demon, Mizuki! And if you tried getting to know him, you'd kno-"

Maniac laughter interrupted him. "Oh, oh dear gods, do you actually know what you're saying, Iruka? You're actually trying to stand up for the killer demon fox that killed just about half of Konoha's shinobi forces, YOUR parents among them?" Mizuki's continuing laughter made him ignorant of the dark look Iruka was giving the, now traitorous, Chunin. "Ahhh, it's been awhile since I could laugh like that. Well! Say goodbye, Iru-kaaaah!"

Iruka blinked as he saw the girl with a sword for a forearm interrupt Mizuki with a well placed stab. To make sure the man didn't do anything further, the girl slashed her arm upwards, splitting Mizuki's head, and the upper part of his torso, in two. Iruka wasn't sure if he was under a genjutsu or not, though, when he saw what happened next. Because, instead of slumping over, Mizuki's corpse turned into a ball of light that was almost covered in dark splotches, with very few patches of light shining through. Grabbing the ball from the air in which it hung, the girl brought it to her mouth and ate it whole, grimacing as she did so and looking like she wanted to hold her nose while eating the ball.

"Ugh, what a horrid tasting soul. I haven't had something this bad since the Heartless, they at least came in packs big enough to mix flavors." she said, turning to Naruto and ignoring Iruka's gaping maw and wide-eyed stare. Walking to the blond boy, the girl's arm shifted under Iruka's gaze, becoming flesh and blood instead of a black blade. The girl kneeled before Naruto, and Iruka almost dashed to knock the girl away from him when her hand reached out. Instead of strangling him, as he'd thought, she shook Naruto's shoulders, and spoke with a surprising gentleness as she did so. "Wake up, wielder, you must return to your housing. It would not do to catch cold out here."

A muffled voice came from Naruto's head's region, mumbling a few words that Iruka couldn't make out. The girl rose a thin eyebrow, and said, as if she had heard him perfectly, "The idiot is dead, you know. I think he was a traitor as well. After all, comrades don't go around throwing shuriken at each other with intent to kill."

Turning his head to face her knees, Naruto frowned. "I know that, but he sai-crap! I still need to learn a jutsu from the scroll!" Naruto got back onto his knees, and began looking for a jutsu to learn frantically, before what the girl said clicked in his head. "Wait, traitor? That means... he tricked me... Dammit! I'm better than that!" Naruto punched the ground to his left.

"Naruto? What do you mean Mizuki tricked you?" Iruka's presence was re-acknowledged by Naruto snapping his head to face the scarred Chunin with a shocked face. "While trying to kill a fellow Konoha shinobi is grounds for treason, if Mizuki is the one that set this whole thing up, I'll be able to make it so you go scot free, Naruto. Just tell me what he did, and I'll tell the Hokage." Iruka's serious face assured Naruto that the man wasn't going to go back on his word.

"That won't be necessary, Iruka-kun. I saw everything." The aged voice surprised two out of three people in the clearing. As the old Hokage landed from the clearing, coming down on the opposite side than Iruka and Mizuki had, he scanned the new face for any signs of trouble. Finding none, Sarutobi nodded and cleared his throat, still disliking the damage old age and who knows how many jutsu had done to it. "While I don't know why Mizuki had Naruto steal the Scroll, it was probably for some reason we don't want to know. Right now, though, I'd like you," he pointed at the girl, "to tell me your name."

Cocking her head to side, as if considering the demand, the girl said, "Well, normally I'm only in my weapon state, so I only went by Soul Eater at any given time. My last wielder, however, had a form that I felt would be better as a female body, so I'll take his name." Naruto took the time to look at her up and down. She had spiky silver hair that fell to just below her neck in back, and just above her small nose in front, partially obscuring her emerald green eyes. Under the moonlight, she'd looked like a ghost, but out of it, Naruto could tell she was supposed to be tan, though he wondered why she looked more like a recluse with her skin color. An open white vest and black tanktop were on her torso, though Naruto noticed that her tanktop was higher than it probably would have been normally, considering her breasts were big enough for a handful, at least, exposing her stomach to everyone's gaze. Moving his eyes downwards, Naruto found she was wearing light blue jeans, with two rather large pockets at the top. Aside from that, the pants were unremarkable. The girl's feet were covered by a pair of white and silver running shoes. Bringing his eyes back up to her face, Naruto waited with the others as the girl tried to remember her previous wielder's name. Though the males present wondered how a guy's name would work for a girl.

Snapping her fingers after a couple more minutes of thinking, she said, "Call me Riku." That answered their internal question handily.