A.N: (To my fellow writers) Do you get that feeling, during a particularly difficult scene, that the advice the characters come up with is as much for you as your audience? I have seen places where the inner war bleeds over. It's the truly great works that manage to lend themselves to that without getting caught up in the spiels or the urge to rant.

In my case, it's when I recite technical stuff, use redundant paragraphs, or the battle scene takes a few too many hints out of context. I generally struggle with personifying various characters. Specifically, when it comes to building out group dynamics, and lending out roles to that.

Characters are as much a part of the writer, as they are a component in the story. We are not so immune to the world, and it can surprise us how far we can go to derive inspiration. "The whole of the wave does not see where it lands, yet it will continue to carry through, forming a new path across the horizons each time."

===Chapter 10===

"What are you doing out here old man?"

The graying man turned his head and looked over the blond standing up the hill, "Painting, now could I ask you the same?"

"Oh…" Naruto rubbed the back of his head nervously, "I thought you were someone else."

The man laughed, "Yes well, I get that a lot. Appearances can be deceiving, but far be it from my role to resolve that issue. Now, tell me, what brings you out this far? Forgive me if I overstep, are you lost son?"

Naruto tilted his head, before shaking it, "No. I came out to- erm… exercise."

"Well you're pretty far out of your way for a modest workout. I hope the wilds here suit you."

"It's nice." Naruto furrowed his brow, "What are you painting? I don't see anything like that here."

The man pursed his lips and smiled, "Sometimes the place is in the feeling." Tipping his brush in the ink, "You see those trees, just over that rise?"

Naruto looked up, the trunks extended far over a cliff and obscured some of the buildings ahead.

The man shifted the brush along the edge of a cobbled bridge. Dark brown lines webbed from the edge, and scattered over the ridge.

Naruto tilted his head, "So… this was from when it was colder?"

"I suppose it could be." Tipping his hat, "You see, each little detail can give just that little feeling, that something else is out there, just beyond that reach. It's a wonderful feeling, trying to figure how all this space works together." glancing over his shoulder, at the emptying canteen, "There's always something else to find, but I suppose that's all the seein I can do in one day."

Already the blond was breaking the treeline, "Good luck with your paint, mister!"

Tucking the pouch of inks and canvas into the overstuffed pack, he nodded, "I think you'll do well, young man."

Cutting the loosened soil beneath his feet, Naruto set his gaze through the forest. Shifting his weight to his back leg, he centered himself, before sliding forward. All at once, he swept through a running start, tails extending out behind him, the opaque distortions slicing water vapor from the air and twitching out in anticipation of his goal.

In around a dozen paces, Naruto reached out for the low hanging branches, aiming to lift himself off the ground. For a single moment, he felt it connect, and his determination bore all he had to the moment.

But then he felt the shift, in a moment he felt himself turn midair before the branch splintered, leaving him tumbling into the underbrush.

Nursing his shoulder and neck, Naruto looked up at the tree. There were only a few low branches left. If he kept making that mistake, his practice in this spot would be eliminated before he got an idea to work out the next day.

His enthusiasm sank, and drew his focus to the ground, however there was something in that split second before he failed. As he felt himself being lifted, Naruto recalled the feeling that his legs moved beneath him. It clashed with what he aimed to do, to pull the tree towards himself and position from there.

The narrow tails, in their use he'd felt a clear image in his head. Alien and far from the way he planned to be moving. Evidently, he was better suited to improvising, and despite his shaking nerves, Naruto stood and moved to the track of forest.

He stopped closer than before, eyeing up the tree before him, he felt his nerves getting ahead of him. Over complications, coupled with his jittery limbs did not lend well to his stance. At length of effort, he managed to calm his nerves. Focusing instead on the forests around him and to either side, he let the draw of his pace bring him forward.

The narrow circle of awareness traveled in his chosen direction, and distantly, naruto saw the branches appear to his left, a tree further than the route he'd made out before. He landed in a crouch, at the root of the next tree, and bounded off. He was a touch to far, to have reached the tree, and closing his eyes, he willed everything to carry him through.

With a sudden lurch, he opened his eyes to find the world around him turning. Like the thrust of a spear, naruto found himself hurling into the forest, sailing well beyond the tree. He was flying.

Exhilaration and rapidly building panic crashed into him as he met the forest floor. With a quick tumble, he landed in a crouch as one of the larger distortions braced against the next tree. Adrenaline left his system with an immense buzz, and the blonde took a few seconds to clear his head.

Pumping his arms over his head he howled, "Woo- Hoo!" His legs were like jelly. Robbed of the impulse to stand, it took him a moment to improvise, but his exuberance all the more steady for it. He swung his forearms out overhead and repeated the cry, before turning to the low hanging tree.

He needed more space though, and the idea of learning to walk again delayed any impulse to replicate that little feat. It was a vastly different feeling. That of his wreath, and streamlined limbs. He doubted he'd feel the same way if he went through practice using one over the other, but he would learn to make them both work for him.

It had been almost a year now since the most renown traitor the leaf had ever produced had fled. Taking with him a title in infamy second only to human sacrifices themselves. His reputation as one of the legendary sannin only stretched so far and, save for those who had the opportunity to experience his handiwork and live, it covered nothing of the methodical pressure the man himself exerted. The man had undercut dictators and reduced entire armies to unstrung puppets, and he hadn't done so by playing a level field.

The leaf pursuit team had trailed him for a solid two months. The last of the investigative force fell back from active duty not long after, and his trail became cold.

They had recovered nine bodies. Anko's was never tracked down. I had kept an ear out for word that Orochimaru had taken a hostage, but to this day, the girl was reported missing, and none else. It wasn't outside of my capabilities to ensure her safety myself, but by this point, Anko's life was her own.

It hadn't been a divine act on my part either. All of his victims were treated for shock, and while some had recovered, and been taken in by the leaf, I'd already seen a darker side.

Orochimaru's cursed seal obtains its impeccable foothold by rooting itself in the user's chakra. Specifically, the vital aspects of a person, the arcane source, the stone. A person's chakra will come and go, supplied and derived by any number of sources. The stone however is maintained as a control, and forms the foundation for a person's identity. Every person is different, and it defines further than any sole study, what it means to parse life and death.

For all the inner gates, If the stone is lost completely, it matters not how much life force remains. The body and spirit, as they were formed, are undone.

Of the ten victims, I only managed to safely remove the seal from five of them. Or the remaining four I exorcised, three sustained interruptions to their primal source. The last… I may as well have obliterated his stone completely. To this day, the last remained alive, but only just. A hollow shell forming the critical space, and heedless of the checks about it. Until the day someone could directly tap into the nature that formed that source, both rare to accomplish, and precarious to balance out.

It had been so deeply compromised at the time. Had there been time to find a way, it may have been simpler to repurpose the seal for it's entrenchment. Even now, I'm not sure which would happen sooner, that I could pull that off, or that someone else could revitalize his source.

The skills that I possess. Imitator, hijack, corrosion. Perhaps someday I could, but to this day I am far from playing at a master of death. Heck, even to project one's future unto my own is an alien notion to me. It's besides the present anyway. The spring chunin exams will be starting soon, and I have it on pretty authority that this next one is going to be a game changer.

Once upon a time, I would have dreamed for that little girl to stand to learn from one's as fierce as the cloud village. That somehow, she received the chance to learn from ones who would see the very best of her potential, and settle for nothing else. Here's hoping the alternative wasn't too far off the mark.

One chapter of history at a time.

The alien beauty of the season seldom reached the village proper, or rather, brought about with mixed signals throughout. In the days leading up towards the spring, the damage became more and more apparent. Homes forgiven their wear in the mild and rounded climate of the land of fire manifested every quality of their making, unveiling their rationed upkeep in broad lines of strain.

The leaf village was well off for the treaty with cloud, but they hadn't the economy necessary to salvage every deficit that arose. The degree to which they could go to put up a strong face had been wrought at its hinges. People complained all the time, but it was never before so apparent that the battle to secure adequate resources was still being fought.

It brought to light the good samaritan, and those who often saw opportunities to make good of a situation began to become more active. Finding solutions to some of the shortages, coordinating among the community, these people began to pressure change outside of the official channels.

As unruly as that could be, it proved to be instrumental to those in the practice of forming connections. As much manpower as they could hope to provide, the ninja corps couldn't make those resources appear out of thin air. A great number of essential services, which had been a patchwork to begin with, were near comprehensively devastated. Konoha would take any viable hands they could get.

-supplementary notes-

~Oct 19-25. Full hiatus mode.

Sorry about the delay. I'll try and provide advance notice (Akin to this update), when I've shifted to an off season. I'm taking a bit of solace knowing that expressed winding down.

That in mind, hold on to your hats, I've got a fresh dose of inspiration and not a small edge of existentialism. (You have been warned.)

The wind current's brushed through the forest, caressing limbs, tending the flowers and merging voices, from the tiniest creature to the largest constructs of mankind. It wasn't the first time, and it would doubtedly be the last. The times had changed so drastically in a short time, and at length those tiny voices would return to spark the biggest movement of them all. What it would take to give each and every person an edge in this world.

The winds mixed and tousled together, the air-flows converging about a patch of the forest. "You thought I was done with you? With that lackluster performance, you must have been shedding me like the grave." Sparks of lightning drew together in the palm of my hand, "Wake…"

"of the thunder god!"

Blue eyes flashed open, fires and a carnal heat fresh in his mind's eye, they couldn't find purchase in the dark of night. Cold drew about his senses, and as the fires began to shift in a changing wind, a movement drew all that he held dear to his periphery.

Two shadows. A blade of blood. His blood.

Focus snapped back to the blond as a crash sounded to his side. Confusion and dismay warred in his eyes, and he knotted his fingers against them to clear some of the sensation.

Drought with the burning glow, something abnormal drew his eye. In the near perfect darkness, moonlight glinted off the wall. Held by the neighboring rooftops, and mirrored by a small panel of glass. It brought to light, the night wasn't as empty as it appeared.

'Where am I?' The boy shook his head, an all to familiar feeling bracing his head, "Home." 'I just managed to get to sleep.' He hadn't had a nightmare, and he couldn't figure why he would have woken up so… was it the middle of the night yet?

Blood. That blade of creeping red that extended out of the shadows, seemed to split his world in two.

Naruto pulled his blanket close. What was going on with him.

The thunder sprite thrummed deeply. Warbling through the currents, it sang a chipper tune before fading out. A ring of frosty air spreading out from its place.

The burning ash, the restless roots beneath his feet, "Not yet. I've got to get this right eventually." The currents swept about my side again, a bountiful tingle nipped at my torso as the ball of excited wind formed against my palm. At times, the little sprite felt it had a life of its own, eagerly awaiting to be unleashed, "Again. Wisp culminate: Wake of the thunder god!"

-Mindscape-

The blade drew against the sacral, distorting the heavens as it turned.

Naruto's gaze held forlorn to the lamp on the ground. It was in pieces, probably knocked there by one of his special limbs reaching out. He figured it strange, that he'd lost control. He hadn't considered the possibility that nightmares could coax him to draw them out. It was a simple lamp. He would see about fixing it in the morning.

Then he felt it. Again, like a string tied off somewhere in the night. It froze his meandering thoughts where they lay, and drew his focus… like…

The blade of blood. It lay to rest beaming down the silhouette of those two shadows. He could count the rings of moonlight now, and felt the urge to roll up and face it more clearly. Still, it was only a roof. Where was this urgency from, and that blade. How would it be there?

The dark and light swords gleamed in the air behind me. Their edges graze against the flow of energy around me.

The blade of yin, forged of ash from the deepest wellspring in the underworld, binding everything together beneath the weight of the fallen. The blade of yang, it's sibling, and rival to the beginning of all things.

The two edges danced across the wind soaring into my palm. It seemed like all that would ever come was in the balance, and still, it was vexing how simply the difference eluded me. Tailoring my focus into the streams, the world became that much simpler. The position of my hand, the energies at my disposal, the homage to the energies that flanked me. All at once, I could see into the winds that were forming around me, those that lent to the technique.

Upon the path ahead, they came together once more. I drew my arm back, but this time, I felt the need to launch the technique was unnecessary. It bore as much desire to move forward as I the ability to hold it. The vortex of wind and lightning swept forward, and passing amidst the forest the currents of air swept and spun about the dancing spark. The sphere of energy distorting the forest colors, devoid of its own, until the currents folded and pulled at the seam. Blue currents swept outward from the heart of lightning. Sweeping in lazy arcs before bracing against the seam. They laced the perimeter and propagated like a marble into a vat of pure subfreezing water. The sphere became solid, and the tendrils of energy warped akin to a forming vortex. It jostled, and then shot outward unto the currents of air, a flourish of ghastly blue energy.

Little feet pounded across the balcony, in moments, peppering down the stairs. Something was out there, and he wanted to find out what. His long lean tails extended out behind him, three in total. Through the entire trip, even removed from the latest burst, he could tell instinctively where the source was. Even through the numerous buildings he was passing to get there, it stood out like a perpetual sunspot, yet it didn't move for all the loops he could throw at it.

Like sleep fading from his mind, he could feel more extensively that the thing, whatever it was, was preparing to form again.

Green vines burst from the ground beneath my feet, swaying like branches in the wind, they leapt into the fray. The deft movements do little to disturb the lazy movements of the airflow.

By this point, I had done everything I could think of to provoke the response I was looking for. It worked to an extent, now I was just letting all the other munchkins have a go at it.

The vines dipped into the source like an inkbrush, swizzling in place before backlashing in a crack of thunder.

The movement couldn't have been much larger than a few centimeters, but I could feel the tug in the air from here. What was more, the energy drawn into the air tripled in response. I wondered whether I should be mindful about pulling so much out of the ecosystem. It was more energy now than I would typically bring out during a mission. Still, I could feel the resonance in the forest itself. It was abundant, yes, but it didn't see a single complication in the forest's energy. If anything, I felt like the conductor of an orchestra. A dozen of so oddly tuned melodies being swept together for the next page.

It was definitely too much to get accustomed too, but I was running out of sheet music either way. It came to a final bidding note when I felt another energy type ahead of me. It differed greatly from the forest, and yet, it seemed the entire chorus was settled with this one presence.

I felt… envy? No, content. A strangeness in the quaint silence, but so carried away as i was, the whisper of the forest at rest promised yet another song without concern for my invention. I wasn't expecting the kid to come seeking me out, but given the forces I've been toying with, I guess some specter of another would check my dues.

Still, "It's a bit late. Is a kid your age discovering the midnight stroll, or was I caught in the act?"

Naruto slowed his stride as he wandered through the brush, glancing up to discern my features, "Who are you?"

"What have you done?"

'Minato.' I shifted my hand to my scalp. I could sense the yondaime's presence interspersed with his own. It would take quite a bit to draw him out like this. I suppose the kid's sensory capabilities fall on the higher end of the range I was anticipating, "A traveler. How much I tell you depends on how you came to find me."

"I saw blood! You came, and the shadows…" Naruto grasped his head, "But you're not- You're not one of them. What's going on? Why are you here, giving me nightmares?"

"You had a nightmare. So you remember me. Is this from the nightmare, or somewhere else?"

Naruto shook his head and wrung his fingers through his hair, "I don't- It's not! You weren't there until the winds changed, but now, what you're doing, its weird! I feel like you were pulling me around, I was sleeping, but then-"

"Naruto/Minato."

The boy looked up in consternation. He felt his name, as much as heard it, but he never shared it once.

"I am done reliving that night. I won't go back and change what I have done again, I promise you that much. What I want to know is what you want of me. The path that you choose, you cannot continue to walk it alone, and I cannot forge the future for you. Not by myself." I looked up, grey blue meeting cobalt, "My name is Joseph, and I've been watching you for some time." I sat down on the forest floor, amidst the brambles, "Now, what is it you want to know?"

Naruto shifted nervously, but sat down all the same. His restlessness was readily apparent, and he seemed suspicious of the space around us. Not much I could do to make the nest of branches any easier to take in. Not in this position, "You said-" He paused and squatted forward, "That really happened. Can you tell me who they were?"

I nodded my head sagely, but it wasn't an easy topic to breach, "I think you know in your heart who they were. You've done well by everything they asked of you thus far, and I'm grateful for the chance to meet you."

"That's not what I wanted to know!"

"They were, and forever shall be your parents, Naruto. I can only guess at what you recall right now, but I doubt it did them or yourself justice." I leaned my head back, "You remember the blood of the shadows, so I wager you've kept to their last moments."

Naruto's breath caught. They were dead. They were so very dead, right in front of him. He'd been there, right with them, and they left him. There. The last memory he would ever have?

Tears were running down the blond's face. I pickled up a stone and checked its facets, gauging his reactions from within my own world, "They're not as gone as you might think. Actually from that stubborn look in your eye, I think you know there's more to those memories than you'll uncover tonight."

Naruto gave a half scoff, half sniffle. Sputtering out his retort, "Sh-hut up. You don't know what I'm thinking."

I just raised a brow and let that one slide. He'd been through hell, and he'd already done more to help me than he'll ever know, but if I know anything about this kid, he stakes big on his dues.

Minutes passed, and the snuff of his breath the only declaration of his mourning. Finally, with a shaking voice, but a fierceness to it, he asked, "Were they there for me? Why did they die like that?"

"Those two had so much riding on that day. You were hardly hours old, and they fought tooth and nail for every moment they could spare for you. They were protecting everything you have ever known, and they couldn't have been stronger, to stand there holding the strongest creature to ever walk this earth at bay."

"Oh yeah? What's stronger than." It died, hardly even a question, on his lips. In the span of his whole life, there was one thing it could have been. The calm that claimed his features was unnatural, "You can go back?"

"No. Those two were intertwined with your destiny from the very beginning, and the dying breath they gave you, it was the paragon of who they were. What's more, I've committed to this world now."

Naruto's gaze soured, "You're weird mister."

"Tch, ha! If that's all it took for you to take me seriously, what am I playing at out here?" I gazed wistfully along the canopy.

Naruto raised a brow, "What are you doing? I felt something pulling me, but I don't feel that now."

I tilted my head further, sending him a sideways glance before sighing, "Your father, he knows his spirit well. I may not become something of his caliber, but in regard to what we do and seek to accomplish, I consider him a rival." I leaned back and shrugged, "Apart from the tug, can you tell how it affected you?"

Naruto frowned and glanced to the side, "No. It's hazy now," He perked up, "But when I followed it here, I could tell exactly where it was." His brow furrowed in thought, "Should I be talking to you though? You're a stranger. Most big people don't like me, and you don't sound like people around here."

I gave a short belly laugh, "Kid, if someone like me ever invites you out to the forest alone, you probably shouldn't trust them as far as you can spit. You've got a strong sense of character, but keep in mind that people can have double motives." I gave him my best conspiratorial gaze, "You may need to pick your poison before they pull one over on you."

Naruto bristled, and I laughed at the reaction.

"I won't hurt you, I'll give you that much. But as I said, I've reached the limit of what I feel I should share with you tonight." I rose to my feet and stretched my legs.

Naruto tried for a pout, but the wear had been creeping up on him and it was undermined by an alligator yawn. His impatience didn't survive to the other end.

"Can you make it home? I doubt it's my place to carry you, but I'm not about to let you pass out on the forest floor."

Naruto shook his head, "I'll be fine. Don't go away though. I want to find you again tomorrow." He rose to his feet and carefully wove back through his trail in the bushes. It became clear that as wasted as the three year old was, he was determined and wary enough to make the trip.

"Tomorrow it is then. However long that will be."

===Chapter notes===

Geez, seven pages? I got really carried away last night. Barely even stopped to sleep when my hand-eye coordination crashed. Anyway, I hope the new vibe sits well with people. We're working on 30k words now, but i can tell that the style reboots are going to be a regular thing.