The Morning Before

Naruto was sat atop the middle stump again, his nose buried in a book on sleight of hand and other "Magic". True to his word, Naruto had followed Kakashi's instructions and had been steadily working his way through Konoha's Ninja Library from day one of the new training regime. He had finished the History section within the first week, and had been working on all sorts of subjects since. After the History section had been the Academy Student's section. After that had been a section devoted to both Chakra Theory and a small list of Genin and low-Chuunin level techniques on tracking and evasion, and then a section given over entirely to Seal theorem and notes. Naruto had spent a fortnight on the last section trying to gain some sort of insight into his own Seal, but had so far found nothing even remotely linking to an element used in the Yondaime's Seal. After that, he had raced through a section on language, mathematics and science in the hope of getting onto more interesting sections only to find the workings of "science" and non-Ninjutsu based elemental manipulation to his liking. From that, he had left two extra clones working on more advanced sections of the subject while continuing with his revision.

Those two clones had slowly filled his mind along with the work of the others, and some research into traditional explosives like those used in fireworks led to the subject of "Magic" and a whole host of tricks and abilities a non-ninja could use to fool people close up and from a distance. Pranks, that most forbidden of vices while he had been in Wave Country, had suddenly seemed like fun again. Kakashi had fell victim to several, and Sasuke had fallen for even more. Now, Sasuke turned up to the daily meetings of Team Seven with his Sharingan activated for safety. Not that it helped sometimes, of course.

The Chuunin Exam Finals were due to begin later in the day, Naruto knew, and Kakashi had made the three Genin under his command perform only one D-rank mission before letting them go about their business for the day. Naruto had simply sat on the stump and began reading, knowing that all of the clones he had been making had not only been improving his knowledge, but his chakra control as well.

Kakashi had said thirty clones. He didn't say how many groups of thirty there could be.

As of right now, Naruto knew, there were thirty Narutos sat in his apartment reading a large amount of books on Chakra, Seals and Tactics. There were ten in the Ninja Library reading scrolls on techniques. Each time one finished, it dismissed itself. The nine remaining would conjure one more to replace the lost, and the thirty Narutos hidden at Training Ground Forty-One would blink as the information entered their heads and they began practising the technique.

Naruto knew it was cheating, slightly, but all the techniques were fairly useless at the moment. Only the tracking Jutsu seemed useful, and that was only because Team Seven seemed to get the mission to look for that damned cat Tora every week.

Naruto sat upright suddenly as his ears picked up the sound of a twig breaking. A young girl wandered towards him slowly, her head hung in embarrassment. Naruto's mind worked frantically for a moment as he tried to recall the girl's name, and then it clicked.

"Hyuuga Hinata?"

Hinata looked fairly roughed-up still, even though it was obvious she was well enough to be up and about. Her left arm hung in a sling, she had a strange set of small crescent-moon-shaped scars on her right cheek, and her right leg had a still-noticeable limp. Despite this, she was smiling softly and she pressed her index fingertips together nervously.

"O-Ohayo Naruto-kun." She replied. "How are you?"

Naruto smiled back, and closed his book with a snap. "I'm pretty good thanks Hinata. Are you okay? You, umm… look like you've had a bad fight?"

Hinata's cheeks stained pink, and she bit her lip before answering. "The Chuunin Exam had too many applicants at the end of the first parts last month. We had some preliminary matches and I lost to my cousin, Neji."

Naruto's eyes widened visibly. "You were in the Chuunin exams?"

"Hai, Naruto-kun… Kurenai-sensei said she thought my team was ready but… but I let them down."

Naruto hopped down from the stump and patted the top of her head. Hinata went bright red and her eyes widened in surprise.

"N-N-Naruto-kun, what are you doing?"

"I'm sorry Hinata-chan, but I have to say goodbye to you."

"W-Why?"

"Because you're about to break the twig."

Naruto chuckled as the Echoes of both himself and Hinata disappeared abruptly to the noise of a twig snapping. He snapped his book closed and hopped down from the stump he was sat on and turned towards Hinata.

"Ohayo Hinata!" He yelled to the girl as she exited the tree line. She waved shyly, her cheeks a light pink.

"Ohayo, Naruto-kun" she replied, sidling up to a tree and trying as best she could to hide behind it without obscuring herself.

"I heard about your fight with Neji. I'm sorry you lost. I bet you gave a damned good match, though?"

Hinata blushed darker, and her eyes lowered to look at her feet. "No… I don't thi-"

"A real good match. I heard from Ino that you had Neji on the ropes at one point until he said something about a bird." It was a lie. Naruto hadn't spoken to Ino in months, but Sakura had mentioned the blonde girls' participation in the Chuunin Exam. Add in the Echo of Hinata explaining what Neji had said and done to her, and the lie was easily created.

Hinata nodded sadly, and pressed her index fingers together again. She looked up in shock as Naruto put a hand on her right shoulder and smiled gently. "Don't worry about it, Hinata, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I wish I could have taken part in the Exams, but I knew I wasn't ready for it. You went for it and got an opponent who knew your fighting style and who meant something to you. I assume you like your cousin?"

Hinata nodded quickly.

"So it wasn't any fault of yours. I'd probably have given up if I had to fight you, Sakura or Shikamaru. You and Sakura are way too strong for me, and Shikamaru would probably make me knock myself out or something. You went ahead and fought someone you cared for, and that makes you a really strong person."

Hinata blushed furiously and felt herself swooning. She blinked back the darkness that was encroaching on her vision and forced herself to concentrate on what Naruto was saying.

"- You be watching the Finals later?"

Hinata blinked, uncomprehending until her mind sped up and it finally clicked. "Yes, I will."

"Good. I'm going with my team later, so maybe I'll see you there." Naruto smiled once more, and patted her shoulder once. "I'll see you later, Hinata."

Hinata didn't have time to say anything in reply as Naruto hopped back from her, winked cheekily and disappeared in a miniature tornado of leaves.

Uzumaki Naruto lay upon the roof of his apartment building. He had dismissed his clones early after most of them had finished their 'chores', but having had so many memories flood into his brain at once had given him a migraine. He lay in the warm sun with a hand over his eyes in his now-usual attire of his baggy orange sweatpants and a loose black t-shirt. His kunai holster and equipment pouch were laid beside him, the bandages that accompanied the former still tied around his right thigh.

Naruto didn't quite understand it. Ever since Kakashi had had him reading, his eyes were feeling more and more sore every time he dismissed his clones. He supposed it was the strain of reading almost constantly, but he thought only the knowledge was meant to be passed on when a clone was either destroyed or dispersed, not the fatigue and aches and pains associated. It would explain the soreness he had felt whenever he had a small army of clones assist in manual labour work on the occasional D-rank missions to replant rice paddies, but Kakashi hadn't mentioned anything about it, so he wasn't sure.

And so Naruto lay, concentrating only on the empty blackness that met his eyes and trying hard to ignore the random bursts of colour that spread across his peripheral vision every now and again. He shrank in on himself, and the strange fatigue from his shadow clones coupled with the warmth of the sun led him gently to sleep.

Naruto awoke a few hours later to find the sun slightly past the zenith. He swore and, after grabbing his holster and pouch, ran down the wall of the building and into his apartment. He flip-flopped from the ceiling and landed running, daring a glance at the clock on the wall of his kitchen before cursing again, donning his kit, and leaping out of the kitchen window.

He bounded as fast as he could to the arena, noting the lack of people until he remembered the Exam Finals were a public event. It was just as the arena itself came into view that he noticed the pall of dust rising gently. He stopped, confused, only to launch himself forward even faster when he heard the sounds of screaming.

Naruto made his way through the inner halls of the arena to the public boxes. He charged out into the rows of seats and had to hold back a surge of bile as his still-aching eyes drank in the scene.

Hundreds of people sat dead in their seats. Ninja lay sprawled where they had fallen, and severed limbs decorated the ground of the arena below like so many pieces of grisly confetti. Naruto swallowed hard, and looked for any sign of movement. He focussed quickly on a hand that still twitched, blood coating the backs of the fingers, in the next stand. He leaped over the dividing wall, ran along the handrail and dropped into the box reserved for the leaders and fellow members of Genin taking part in the Exam.

Naruto knelt beside the twitching hand, only to find its owner a good three metres away. When he found her, he lost the battle with his body and lost control of his stomach.

Hyuuga Hinata was lying in three bloody, roughly hewn pieces, and her left leg was a mush of blood, tissue, bone fragments, and blood-soaked grit.

Uzumaki Naruto's eyes flew open in horror a moment before he felt power unlike anything he had ever felt before flood his veins.

His migraine disappeared, his sight became clearer than it had ever been, he began to hear and smell things that he had never noticed before, and he felt his lips become damp. He could taste salt and copper, and he wondered where the power had come from until, a moment later, he remembered the dream.

He was furious at the events he had seen.

He was also completely shocked when a burst of chakra from his own body demolished the roof around him and let him fall through into the highest apartment of the building.

Hatake Kakashi, like a few people who were old enough to remember the coming of the Kyuubi, suddenly stopped what he was doing and looked to the west. The raw evil of the chakra and killing intent that was being released was phenomenal, and he knew something bad must have happened to Naruto. He didn't bother replacing the cloth mask that should have covered his face, nor did he care that in his haste to uncover his Sharingan he had ripped his hitai-ite fully from his head. He ran from his home and took to the rooftops with a burst of chakra, and nodded a quick acknowledgement of assistance to every single one of the eleven ANBU and Jounin who joined him in the forty seconds it took him to reach Naruto's apartment building.

Naruto snarled loudly, blood from his punctured bottom lip spraying forth with a small spray of spittle. He was foaming at the mouth in anger, the bubbles a strange pink colour because of the sanguine fluid that even now was staining his over enlarged canines. His eyes had turned a dark red the colour of drying blood, and his fingernails had sharpened and grown into claws. He roared in anguish and leapt straight upwards through the hole he had just created in the apartment building, and began racing towards the arena. He dodged, kicked or punched those few who got in his way aside, and spared a glance behind him at the many ninja that followed him. He snarled once more and left them behind in an extra burst of speed.

Kakashi saw his student heading west and stopped dead in his tracks. Before any of the ninja with him could question his actions, he had disappeared in a flurry of leaves.

Uzumaki Naruto roared to himself as he concluded he wasn't fast enough. He was about to put in an extra effort and another burst of chakra to reach the arena faster when a fist smashed him in the face. He felt three of his teeth loosen and break from his gums, and his lip burst. He saw stars, then clouds of green, pink, and idiot-flashes of purple lightning before his vision darkened. His momentum carried his body forward even after his head had been stopped, and in a superb somersault he was thrown up and over to land on his face.

Kakashi winced at the pain in his right hand, but not so much as he did when he heard the wet crack of Naruto's nose breaking as he hit the roof of the building Kakashi had Shunshin'd to in order to head off his student 'at the pass'.

Kakashi dropped to his knees and let out a huge sigh of relief as the horrible red chakra surrounding Naruto's body faded away within an instant. There would be all hell to explain to villagers and the Council, but Naruto had been stopped before he could cause too much damage.

Naruto came around and felt like hell. His face ached horribly, and he had trouble moving his arms. He could raise them a few inches, but then they would stop moving. His vision returned, although he could only see out of his left eye, and he noticed the thick shackles that bound him to the metal guardrails of a hospital bed. He tried to call for a nurse or doctor, but his lips refused to form the proper shapes and his tongue slipped pathetically past missing teeth.

A few moments' later, due to the rather pained groans and random slurred words Naruto could string together, the Third Hokage of Konoha entered the room flanked by four ANBU members in their body-length sackcloth habits and their nearly featureless white and red masks.

Naruto tried to look confused past his injuries, and wished he knew what was happening, or rather what was going to happen, but he couldn't…

He couldn't see what was going to happen.

Naruto began panicking. The four ANBU immediately drew their wakazashi blades from the depths of their robes and took up defensive positions around the Sandaime before he waved a hand at them to step down.

Naruto's frantic efforts at struggling soon wore him out and he lay in bed, panting heavily. The Third Hokage gazed at him seriously, and after a few seconds hung his head and sighed.

"Naruto? Are you aware of what you did today?"

Naruto shook his head, his voice having left him in confusion.

"You drew upon the power of the Kyuubi, Naruto. You drew upon it in vast quantities. You also injured five ANBU members in your… frenzy to reach wherever it was you were going, and because of people being scared because of the killing intent they could feel, we have had to postpone the first semi-final match of the Chuunin Exams. Tell me what you were thinking of, and tell me why you did it. Now."

Naruto swallowed thickly. He forced his mouth to work, and his throat rasped sorely, but he explained.

"I 'ad vision… ev'one dead… blood an' sand…"

The Third's eyes widened.

Author Notes v1.0

Good evening all! I thank each of the nearly 170 people who have added me to their story alerts lists, and the huge amount of you who have reviewed. I apologise greatly for the rather long interval in between updates, however University obviously takes precedence over a fan-fiction due to the rather... labour-intensive work the course involves cough video-editing cough.

I wish to apologise for the relative shortness of this chapter, however I wasn't entirely sure how to continue it without a break in between updates just yet. I will be working around the clock as much as possible to get another update done before a week has passed, but please don't hold your breath just in case!

I would also like to say that anyone who has questions about this fic, my decisions with regards to plot and the such-like, please don't hesitate to ask it via review or PM as I try my damnedest to answer most questions. Obviously, if it is a plot spoiler I may be a bit of a bastard and just hint at a possibility, but there you go.

Hope to hear from you soon!

Ja mata ne!