[Rant: I do not own: Naruto. But I own volume one of 'Nightmare Inspector', which is an utterly amazing story ('Tis one of my favorite mangas). I do own my characters, and...the plot. And no, there are no Yaoi/Yuri pairings in this story or any other story of mine nor will there ever be.
-Now the timepiece has been set and the story begins.
It is:
Five and a half months before the graduation of the rookie nine.
Six years too late to close the gate that shattered the child in the mirror.
Three Minutes until fate reroutes its course.
But like I said, time starts…
…Now…-
-.:Nireiki:.-
-.: Chapter One :: The Soldier made of Tin :.—
-.: Timekeeper{ noun} an instrument or person that measures the passage of time. In addition it records time, time taken, or time remaining :.-
As if it were a natural metronome winter rain dripped down at a slow, methodic tempo onto the bustling streets of Konohagakure filling the air with the gentle sound of raindrop crashing against the cement and wood of buildings. Near silent peacefulness.
However, it was too quiet today thought the vessel of the nine tailed demon fox as he brushed a lock of wet spiky blond hair from his eyes. He could never quite explain why silence held an unmatched dread in his heart.
Perhaps it was because it so reminded him of the villagers soundless and hateful eyes. Perhaps it was because in the quiet of his childhood this was always filled with the hidden eyes of Anbu operatives that Naruto's heightened senses could hear and smell, but his cerulean eyes could never find.
Perhaps it was some other reason entirely.
But whatever the reason a single thought arose to the jinchuuriki, the stillness had to be filled and this he could accomplish so easily…Yes, that is what he would do to retain his sanity…
-xXx-
A thousand flecks of rain splattered the fogged glass as the child rubbed a hole through the condensed vapor on a fourth floor window of the Hokage tower with a gloved hand in an attempt to peek out at the village below. The streets were flooded with multicolored circular splotches that he assumed where umbrellas. He rubbed his obsidian eyes lightly and brushed away few strands of his pale blond hair, trying to center all of his focus into seeing the beautiful shapes that danced in the streets below. No, it wasn't the umbrellas his eyes attended to so vigilantly. It was the twirling fluidness of the gaseous energy that floated haphazardly about each individual as they carried about their goings on in the roadway. It was a spectacular moving painting that his eyes alone could see, the auras of these complete strangers-
"Madara has your mind wandered off again?"
The child heaved an annoyed sigh as he turned from the display towards the lord Hokage. Oh how he hated the civilian council and the ninja elders and the silver haired jounin who had handed him that damn letter. Because of them he was trapped here in this tower to await a dull and monotonous future of paperwork and spell-checking.
"No Sarutobi-dono my thoughts are based in reality as always", replied the blond in a sarcastic yet impassive tone.
The leader of the ninja village tilted the brim of his infamous four-sided hat as he peered at the child's stern gaze. He looked incredibly reserved for someone of only nine years, the stress lines under his vacant eyes were a constant reminder of this fact as was the antique bronze pocket watch that hung from an elongated chain around his neck like a pendulum. The elder ninja then rested a hand just below his lower lip in philosophical habit.
"I was just saying that apparently Naruto has pulled another prank on the Anzai dango shop again and the owners are requesting that I personally see that vandalism before they consider pressing charges. Although seeing as the paperwork today is particularly steep I was considering sending you in my place. Do you have any thoughts on the matter?"
The child's dark eyes veered towards the window once more, "It would be nice to get out of this reformatory for the sane on such an exquisite day", he wistfully replied.
Sarutobi Hiruzen gave a light smile as he returned to the documents on his desk at present. "I'm glad to see you are so cheerful for once Madara, I'll expect you back before four o'clock."
The fair haired child stood up from his perch zipping up on a charcoal colored sweater over standard ninja mesh, retying the ends of his hitai-ite around his neck, and picking up the china red umbrella propped against the door frame as he sauntered out the open office door.
"Farewell 'flue-sama', I'm sure this will be interesting to say the least."
The Hokage gave an acknowledging nod of the head as he listened to the quiet metallic sound of the nine year old's footsteps. How the stringent little boy had come up with such an odd nickname he would never know.
Madara wandered in deaf silence through the streets of Konoha, twirling his oriental styled umbrella as he narrowly avoided puddles and fellow pedestrians. To anyone else the blank look upon his young face would be a sign of annoyance towards the drenching weather; however, this was quite the opposite. The child was actually bubbling with an unusual warmness that he could be out in the rain instead of stuck inside doing miserable paperwork. Here he could observe the transient splendor of the energy signatures of the goers by close up.
He had been able to see and feel these auras as far back as he could remember, all the way back to the days when he used to live in a farming village with his parents and little brother on the border between the land of grass and the land of fire when he was still a toddler. He could still visualize the opaque glow that enveloped his mother's feminine form. It was a light pink like blended strawberries and milk and highlighted her mid-length saffron hair that she always kept tied in loose plaits. Her rosy smile-
No, came the empty echo from within his head. They're gone. Nothing will ever change that.
Subconsciously, he began to rap the ends of his gloved fingers against the wood of his umbrella listening for the familiar clanking of muffled metal against timber. This was his ever constant reminder of his mistake that day. The day he had lost everything and any future that was not knotted in war and tragedy.
The blond quickly shoved these thoughts to the back of his mind where he could suppress their demonic heads as he closed his umbrella and grasped the brass handle of the Anzai dango shop. As he stepped inside into the cozy store all ideas of this simple task going smoothly were shattered as he was immediately bombarded by an angry employee.
"Excuse me, but this store is not for little children so run along home kid," she voiced snottily. She wore a creamy white apron with the store's logo embroidered in bright vermilion stitching along the edges over her mesh top and short violet skirt. Her hair was tucked into a messy bun with to embellished chopsticks to hold it in place although several locks of her parse hair threatened to dangle in her eyes. She crossed her arms agitatedly awaiting an answer.
"I'm here on behalf of the Hokage. You asked for a personal examination of the defacement of your property," replied Madara evenly, his voice tinged with specks of aggravation. "However if you would rather simply kick me out of your store for doing my job, that is fine as well."
The employee shot him a death glare, "This way then."
Madara glanced about the shop as he was lead to the backroom where anything needed for making the store's delectable desserts was housed. The sparse crowd of customers sat at about rounded tables quietly murmuring conversations to one another as they ate their meals in near silence. If you hadn't seen the sugary treats you might have guessed it was a library, but this was disproved the moment you stepped into storeroom.
To put it neatly, it was absolute chaos. Smashed fruit and various other flavorings covered the walls in a Technicolor of abstract art and sticky dough was spread at random through out the room. A particularly large clump of the stuff had even been rolled into a thin chain link and strung near the ceiling in festival style. But the most obvious and blaring of the vandalism was the giant chibi Naruto scrawled on the back wall in what the child hoped was blackberry jelly.
"That little demon must have come snuck in during lunch and done all of this", snarled the angry employee with a tang of bitterness, "I bet he-"
However, her thought was never finished as her gaze caught the actions of the reserved child. The young blond briefly tossed her the look a teacher might give a student who had just said that the sky was neon orange with purple polka-dots before his atrous orbs reconnected to the thin ninja standard metal wire in his palm. Disturbances of the flour covered floor indicated it had messily been left behind by the prankster. But she didn't remember seeing that earlier, or did she?
The child's voice was clipped and serious as he examined the evidence and carefully stepped around the small room breathing in every detail. "Assumptions made on flimsy evidence and uncertain circumstances are as good as no assumptions at all. It is very unlikely that that Uzumaki-san would make collaborated this prank together and left this string behind to frame himself. It is more likely that this set up by someone else in a miserable attempt to recreate one of his high jinks and get him reprimanded for such."
The employee's eyes remained narrow, but nonetheless her head nodded slightly as she considered all of the ramen-addict's previous pranks she had seen close-up. They all had a machine like efficiency, no wasted energy or effort on the prankster's part and all of the (not so) hilarious results on the prank-ed.
Her voice came as a quiet grumble reluctant to admit her hasty conclusion, "I…suppose that might be what happened…"
The child's dark eyes caught her own for a half second as he spoke. In that fraction of a second she could have sworn she saw the somber look an artist might have upon seeing that their prized masterpiece had been burned.
"I'll be taking my leave then."
The young woman gave a slight nod and stared after the child who re-gripped the wooden handle of his umbrella firmly and turned to leave.
"Wait!" she found herself saying as his left hand extended towards the door knob to the pouring rain outside, "Would you like to buy something before you go?"
He paused for a moment.
"Do you have any tea?"
"Green, White, Black and Oolong", came the employee's hesitant reply.
He was at the front desk in a matter of seconds.
"Some White tea please."
Steam wafted from his clay cup and blew into Madara's eyes as he weaved through the crowded streets Konohagakure juggling a half-drained tea cup and his oriental umbrella between both hands desperately trying not to drop either of the two.
Thrice curse his caffeine addiction to hell,
And the idiot who could never seem to file the building codes into the right file cabinet, and a very very long list of people the child found particularly troublesome.
But at least he had momentarily escaped the monotony of the Hokage tower for a few hours and avoided filling out any more paper work on the notorious troublemaker that was Uzumaki Naruto. The abnormal messiness of this particular prank seemed highly unusual for the container of the nine tailed fox, but it had presented the perfect opportunity for a half-truth and no doubt the preteen would be grateful for not being forced to scrub the Hokage building again or worse…be given the delightful task of wrangling that miserable cat, Tora, whom the village pariah had already caught (and been nearly clawed to death in the process) thirty-four time exactly. He had checked Uzumaki's file earlier this very morning and read so himself.
The nine year old's eyes drifted hawkishly along the skyline hunting for the tell-tale sign of a fading aura trail. If Uzumaki had planted this rather messy prank there would definitely be some sort of evidence and his personal energy signature was the most credible of all. Like invisible finger prints everyone, even identical twins, had different auras each gaseous energy field a reflection of its individual and as such contained easily identifiable markers. Wisps of leaking chakra. Unique pallor or hue. Even how long an aging aura trail remained were all remarkably useful to one with this atypical and anomalous ability of his. This eternal fact had already been proved beyond the shadow of a doubt to Madara hundreds of times on locate-and-retrieval missions.
There!
Hovering akin to thinning smog over the roof top of the Yamanaka flower shop trailed Naruto's cesious aura tainted with tiny embers of vermillion. Madara's cold black eyes pursued the cloud over the skyline of Konoha's rooftops until he found its source right above his head.
-xXx-
CRASH!
'What happened? And why does my head hurt?'
As the world spun about the jinchuuriki like he was on a gigantic merry-go-round the young Uzumaki shook his head a few times trying regaining his balance before plummeting to the concrete once more.
No wait; there was something in the way…or more specifically someone. The blond blinked several times as everything came back into focus. He had been climbing out on the awning of the ninja supply store reaching just a little too far over to snag a polished steel kunai from its open case that teetered dangerously on the stores canopy. All had been going well until a soft clanking of metal had startled him causing him to lose his stability and plunge down one and a half stories…onto whoever this was.
Naruto shakily sat up analyzing the person who had broken his fall as he did so. He was about a head and a half shorter than Naruto, only about nine or ten at the most, and had spiky hair of a dull blond color that turned pale gray where the light hit it. Beneath his closed eyes where stress lines and a slight discoloration of the pale skin he guessed was from several sleepless nights. However his time to scrutinize his target was immediately cut short.
"Uzumaki-san, get off of me before you squish me to death any further."
The startled blond involuntarily twitched as he quickly hopped off the pedestrian and stumbled backwards into the cemented alleyway wall. How did this person know his name? He'd certainly never met the kid before!
"Listen, I'm really sorry I sort of…umm…fell on you," the jinchuuriki spluttered as he extended his right hand to shake, "And well…I'm Naruto Uzumaki and I'm going to be Hokage someday!"
His target slowly sat up and carefully braced himself against the alleyway wall as well vigilantly re-examined his surroundings. The village pariah alerted his senses as he watched the child take a numerous deep breaths. The target, as Naruto had begun to think of him as, had an impassive expression on his young face that perfectly synchronized with his emotionless and semi-formal way of speaking. But the thing that struck him the most was this kid's eyes.
They were a pupil-less blank obsidian that had an eerily haunting quality like voids into a parallel dimension; so dissonantly alike his own sharp blue eyes that it frightened him. Cold and sad, spilling over with solitude and a something else he couldn't think of a word for…
Suddenly the child's dark orbs locked with his own snaring him in a lethally invisible trap.
"Prove it."
'What is he talking about, dattebayo?'wondered Naruto momentarily.
"Huh?"
The pale haired child took a slow deep breath before restating his question to the elder blond. His tone was an even calm that startlingly enough lacked the villagers' absolute loathing at for the demon vessel.
"What makes you any more worthy of becoming Hokage than any of the other ninja in this village?"
Naruto stared in perplexity for a moment as he absorbed the question. The reactions of the villagers had also been in one of three categories. There were those out rightly despised him or sought indirect sabotage through seemingly innocent guises of wanting to bring their child home because 'dinner would be ready soon and grandfather hates to wait', even though grandfather had died the year before. Others simply ignored him pretending the troublemaker wasn't anything more than a figment of their imagination. And finally there was a select few who encouraged him to shoot for his dream and prove everyone wrong; this was Ayame, her father, and the lord Hokage. But this boy seemed to fall into his own category. He wasn't angry and didn't try to ignore the young Uzumaki. However, he didn't happily praise him in the fashion of his three peers. What was the word for this?
"I-I-I'm gonna learn loads of powerful jutsu once I graduate!" Naruto retorted attempting to regain his shaken confidence.
The child raised an eyebrow and picked up his bright red umbrella that he had dropped when Naruto had crash-landed on him and using the end brushed shards of his shattered teacup to the edge of the alley so pedestrians wouldn't tread upon them.
"And how do you expect to graduate by skipping school? I sincerely doubt any sensei would take a delinquent under their wing who doesn't care about their education."
Naruto half-stuttered, half-shouted a reply, "I-I'm not a de- whatever you said! And I will be Hokage so there!"
The young boy unhurriedly stood up keeping himself slightly braced against the wall as he did so.
"Being vainglorious of skills you lack will get you killed in battle Uzumaki-san. Perhaps that is-"
But his thoughts were cut-off as he bent over slightly and his right hand rising to his mouth while he began violently coughing into his cupped palm. Each of his rasps sounding worse than the last as if he were an invalid gasping for his last breaths.
It felt like Naruto's world froze over as he watched the kid only a few years younger than himself continue soughing. He recognized the faint smell that leaked into the air as the coughs persisted.
Blood.
There was no mistaking that metallic iron smell it always gave off.
"Hey, are you okay? Did I squish you too hard? Should I go get a doctor?" came the academy student's insecure rapid-fire questions.
The pale blond tried to shake his head and protest between coughs.
"I'm quite –Cough- alright. I don't need a -Cough- medic."
He gave one final wheeze before lightly wiping something off of his lips and pocketing the hand he had coughed into within a compartment of his sweater. His posture returned to normal and he turned once again cutting off the blond who had once again begun to mutter condoling reassurances.
"-it's okay! I know this one nurse who's half way decent who lives a few blocks from here and-"
"Uzumaki-san, I am not a porcelain doll nor do I wish to be treated as such. I would however appreciate it if you stopped babbling."
"-But but-" spluttered Naruto confusedly. His cerulean eyes flooding over with the desire to help this stranger whom he had never known in his life yet wanted so dearly to give the aid he had never been given in his own childhood.
"Babbling, to babble, verb, to utter sounds that have no meaning or importance. If I am troubling you so, I'll leave you to your...sky diving."
The younger blond then opened his umbrella and turned as if to leave.
"Whatever potential you may have will be wasted if you just stand there chattering Uzumaki-san. I suggest you get to class before you use up your prospective abilities on pulling pranks that only make you the target of the villagers wrath."
The stranger then strolled calmly from the side street like the highly unordinary event had never taken place at all leaving Naruto Uzumaki alone to his thoughts.
Who does he think he is? He's sick, but he's definitely a lot stronger than me. Probably already in the graduating class or something-"
And then one thought rose above the others.
Why did he feel so bad about what that little kid had said? He didn't know him at all and yet it felt like the child's unimpressed and critical statements had penetrated to his soul deeper than any of the Hokage's warm praise. Naruto's eyes narrowed.
I'll prove him wrong. I will be Hokage! I just have to find a teacher...
-xXx-
The smallest of smirks tugged at Akakonoha no Madara's lips as he walked in a steadied pace among the crowds of merchants and customers in the roadways. How stupid of the academy teachers and his peers not to notice the blond jinchuuriki's potential as a loyal shinobi. Everyone needed something to believe in to keep themselves sane and this child had nothing and no one at all to save him from his loneliness. Perhaps...perhaps Madara could be that person, Naruto's aly, after all Madara needed a subordinate in what was to come. Yes, in time perhaps the elder blond could awaken the enormous potential within himself and join the comrade's cause...but now Madara was getting ahead of himself. First he had give Naruto a little test. An exam to determine the Uzumaki heir's future...
{YAY Chapter one done at nine pages! *happy author dance* Please review and tell me whether or not I should
A. Continue damn it!
B. Scrap it. Burn it. Throw it down a well
or
C. other; not really sure if there is an other though...
Just review please! X3
-Also! I'm looking for a beta reader! [my spelling skills suck.]}