Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

A/N:

"human speech"

'human thoughts'

"bijuu/summon speech"

'bijuu/summon thoughts'

...o0o...

Naruto: The Red Spiral

Chapter 2: Meeting and awakening

...o0o...

Naruto slowly opened his eyes. He was in some kind of forest, a very misted forest. Fog heavily limited his vision.

'Where am I?' he looked around. It wasn't something he could expect after awakening, he thought he will be in a damn hospital, not in some unknown place. Despite his lack of knowledge, he knew that such weather and such forests you couldn't find in the Fire Country.

"I haven't expected to meet someone like you here," sounded a deep voice, "but I think it's for the best."

Naruto tried to find the source of it but failed.

"I'm here," he heard from behind.

Naruto turned around and saw an elder man with long brown hair and black eyes emerging from thick mist. He was dressed in white kimono with black matagamas. He looked like some kind of ancient royalty, very uncommon for any place Naruto knew about.

"My name is Indra Ootsutsuki and we have to talk," Sharingan flared in man's eyes.

Naruto gasped.

He didn't expect to meet an Uchiha in this place.

"You are an Uchiha!" he exclaimed, "like Sasuke!"

"Uchiha?" the man asked, "No, I'm not."

"But... but... You have Sharingan! Only Uchiha have Sharingan! Don't lie to me!" cried Naruto. He strongly disliked being lied to.

On Indra's face appeared amused smile, "It is always so funny to see ranting of an ignorant child," Naruto growled at that, Indra just shook his head, "You need to control your emotions, child, or you will die faster than you can imagine," he made a pause, "but considering you are here, you already know it, right?"

Naruto sighed and lowered his head, he knew this man was right, but it was hard to accept it. "You are right," he said sadly, "It's just... I can't believe Sasuke killed me! And Sakura-chan..." he sobbed and tears appeared in corners of his eyes, "I love her, and she...Honestly, I doubt she even cried when I died. Life isn't fair, dattebayo!" he exclaimed.

"First of all, stop weeping, you will never grow up if you will act on your emotions before understanding the situation. You need to mature. And second, the place where we are now is called limbo, the place between the world of the living and the world of the dead, so you still have a chance to come back cause someone is helping you on the outside," explained Indra. He was already irritated by Naruto's behavior, but he still needed this boy.

Naruto calmed down after a couple of minutes and was ready to continue this conversation, "Then how can I come back?" This was the only thing that bothered him now, he didn't want to die, not yet, his goals weren't accomplished.

"You can't," Indra answered, "not by yourself anyway. Your life depends on someone, who pulls you to the world of living right now, and on me, cause only I can push you there. Your comeback will be the result of work from both sides of limbo, from the world of the living and from the world of the dead."

"Then push me! I need to go back... I'm not ready to die..." Naruto pleaded sobbing.

"I will, but not yet. This is unnegotiable," Indra told sternly.

Naruto could only nod. If he had to listen to this old man to come back so be it.

"You named me 'an Uchiha', you were wrong, I'm not Uchiha, I am more than that. I am the first Uchiha, though it was long after I died the clan got that name," Naruto was amazed at this revelation.

"You are so cool, you must be better than Sasuke!" he cried in excitement.

Indra sighed at the child's antics, "Yes, I am better. My blood, or more importantly, my type of chakra thinned over centuries, power of Sharingan had been weakened so people couldn't use it to its full extent without eye transplantation. And to answer your upcoming question about my abilities, I will just tell you that I created ninjutsu."

Naruto gasped, "But... But I thought ninjutsu was created by Rikudo Sennin." His whole world changed now.

"It's not true. My father created ninshu, different teaching with a different purpose. Ninshu used chakra like you couldn't even imagine, ninshu user could connect to another ninshu user through chakra without caring of space-time boundaries," he smiled and added, "like we do now."

"You can connect to dead people?" Naruto was amazed at ninshu powers.

"Only in specific situations like ours or if you have the eye of samsara." Indra answered, "Ninjutsu, as I created it, is a combat application of chakra, usage of what you call jutsu, be it elemental or pure chakra manipulation or genjutsu. Genjutsu is the closest thing to ninshu as it gives a somewhat similar yet completely different connection. The closest thing to ninshu overall is the sensory ability and Mind's eye of the Kagura as a pinnacle of it, ability to sense people, taste their chakra, and even emotions. But even that pales in comparison to my father, who was the true master of ninshu, he even managed to transcend death through chakra. I and my brother, Ashura, did it too, but in a different way. While our father saved his consciousness in chakra and lives now through all human beings but independent from them, we made our chakra reincarnate. Once in a generation, we choose our successor, who gets a glimpse of our power. We choose them according to similarities between me and my descendant and Asura and his descendant in hopes that they will achieve what we couldn't. And here you are, descendant of both of us and current Asura's chosen but not his champion yet. You are at the crossroads now, you can choose your own destiny."

"You say that I'm descendant of Sage of Six Paths? Really?" Naruto was excited. Finally, he wasn't just nobody, he was a descendant of the creator of chakra and both his sons. He wished he wasn't hallucinating now, cause it looked too much like a dream.

"You are. Otherwise, we couldn't meet here," Indra answered with a smile. The child in front of him was so pure, so innocent, he was too good for the shinobi world, but Indra had to do what he had to do.

"Wait, that means that my father or mother was an Uchiha?"

"I connected to you through your father's side. Does it mean he was an Uchiha? No, it doesn't. I doubt he even looked like one, let alone could possess the Sharingan. Blood is thicker than water, they say. Well, chakra is thicker than blood. Your connection to Asura is from your mother's side if you want to know."

"Do... do you know who they were?" Naruto wanted to know this. Dream to know about his parents was even greater than his dream to be acknowledged. Dream to know that he is someone, that his family had its story, that he had a legacy.

"No, I don't," lied Indra. It was not his place to tell, Naruto must know about this from people close to him, know that they had lied about not knowing his parents.

"Can't you just look through chakra?" kid was smart, he had already understood how can ninshu work.

"I don't have time on this. It's harder than you think. The further in space-time is your descendant or ancestor, the longer it takes to connect," it was a half-truth, but Naruto wouldn't know about it, "now we have more important things to do."

"Okay, so what do you want to tell me?" asked Naruto.

"For you to understand what I want from you and what you will need to do," Indra began, "it all started a long time ago, more than two thousand years ago, to be exact. My father and his brother were fighting a beast of unimaginable power. Ame no Hitotsu no Kami, Datara, Deidarabotchi, it had many names, and legends about it still are told in the shinobi world, but I will call it a different name and more demonstrative name - Ten-Tailes," Indra saw as Naruto was going to ask a question, so he shut Uzumaki up, "don't interrupt! My father and his brother were fighting this beast for months, whole landscapes were changing because of their battle. Mountains became valleys, oceans became deserts and forests became oceans. Finally, my father managed to defeat Ten-Tails by sealing its power inside himself and its body became the moon. So he became the first jinchuuriki. Sometime after that, his brother left somewhere, but not before he left his legacy, you know them as clans Kaguya and Hyuuga. They are known for amazing powers in what now you call taijutsu. My father, his name was Hagoromo by the way, left his own legacy - me and my brother. I became the progenitor of Uchiha clan, and my brother became the progenitor of Senju clan."

"I'm a Senju? Like the First, Second, and Fifth?" Naruto couldn't resist exclaiming happily, "I'm so cool, dattebayo!"

"Keep calm, child," Indra said with hints of anger, "As I said, I became the progenitor of Uchiha clan, and Asura became the progenitor of Senju clan. We were different, very different, like the sun and the moon, but we both were children of our father. One of us had to become his successor, that's where our roads parted. I was a natural genius, cause I inherited our father's mental power, and less sociable, while my brother was way less talented, but still was someone to be reckoned with, cause he inherited our father's physical power, and unlike me, he was a people person. Our father dreamed of world peace, and his choice of successor was based on how we would try to achieve it. That's where our personalities came into play, my turned into a vision of peace through power, my brother's turned into vision through unity. We were both young and stupid, we didn't understand, that eternal peace cannot be achieved and temporary one could be achieved only through the fusion of our ideas, it took us death and observing our descendants to understand this simple truth, but it doesn't matter anymore. Our father chose Asura instead of me, I became angry with his decision and eventually left only to return later to kill my brother. I failed and our paths finally parted. I was so angry at my father's choice, that I made my chakra reincarnate so my descendant could finally win my brother's descendant, Asura did the same to counter me, and the story began. My Will of Power turned into Uchiha's Curse of Hatred, my brother's Will of Unity turned into Senju's Will of Fire, our clans were eternal enemies, fighting for centuries, until they finally became allies through Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara as Konoha's shinobi and were finally reduced to couple clan members that are thrown around the world."

"So all Uchiha-Senju battles were because you two couldn't decide who is better?" Naruto asked astonished. He just couldn't believe that so much bloodshed was because of THIS. It was so stupid in his opinion.

"More like I couldn't accept my defeat to my brother, my pride was too big then," Indra honestly answered. Sure, it wasn't something to be proud of, but it was still his past, a part of his life.

"Why you couldn't connect to one of your successors?" ex-jinchuuriki asked a logical question.

"To speak as we do now, he had to get in limbo, neither my, nor Asura's champions couldn't do it yet."

"That's sad," Naruto didn't know what to say, but his talkative nature made him say at least something.

"But my pride wasn't that big just because of how I was, no. During my childhood I met a creature, it called itself Black Zetsu. This creature made me unlock my Sharingan and later told me how to achieve Mangekyo. It was praising me, increasing my pride, was helping me with some ninjutsu, and finally, it told me to challenge Asura for our father's successor title. Later, after my death, I many times watched as it approached my champions, told them to challenge Asura's champions, but they all ultimately failed. Like I had lost to Asura, every my champion couldn't match my brother's champion. That had happened until my champion became Uchiha Madara. He was the craftiest of all my chosens, he didn't want to kill Hashirama, no, he wanted a part of his power. Only then I finally found out what Black Zetsu is trying to achieve. I have no idea, how he knew that, but if you combine my and my brother's chakra, you can get the Rinnegan, ultimate dojutsu. All these years Kuro Zetsu strived to resurrect Ten-Tails for an unknown purpose. To be honest, I don't care what it wants, but it will mean only one thing - death to humanity. Madara died, but his will still lives and with the rinnegan they are too dangerous to be left alive."

"You want me to stop this Zetsu?" Naruto asked.

"Yes, I do," Indra answered, "but you are weak now, nobody is willing to teach you and you don't have enough time to achieve the required level through skills only. You need power, you need to be smart, ruthless, cunning, and manipulative. In other words, you need to be the opposite of what you are now."

Naruto was shocked at this revelation. All these years he tried to prove himself, tried to make people like him for who he was, and now this Indra tells him, he must change to the opposite.

"No, I won't!" Naruto answered stubbornly, "I won't give up on my way!"

'Stupid child,' Indra thought shaking his head, 'he is too naive. For now, at least.'

How can he not understand, that world was worth more than his pride, Indra had realized it the hard way.

"Do what you wish, Naruto," Ootsutsuki said, "as I told you before, you are now on the crossroads, you can choose your path. You can be my champion with my ways or my brother's champion with his... or your current ways. Either way, you will face what you will have to face, but only through me, you can become really powerful. Do you think, just being my or Asura's champion makes you powerful? No. No, it doesn't. It just expands your limits. Madara and Hashirama became Gods of Shinobi through the fire of endless battles and through harsh training. Yes, they were at advantage, but still, they had to earn their strength. And so will have you to face your enemies, but nobody wants to train you now. Without Kyuubi you are not important for them, you are not worth their time. You don't have something powerful as Hashirama's Mokuton, just your Fuuton, you don't have Kongo Fusa. To be as powerful as you should be, you need tools cause you can go by yourself only that far."

Deep down Naruto knew, it was the truth, but he still didn't want to believe it. No, he wanted to prove Indra wrong despite his gut telling him otherwise.

"Anyway, I won't let you go with empty hands. I will give you the power of sharingan," Indra touched Naruto's temple.

"W-what? But you said, my father didn't have one, how can I?"

"To have your own sharingan you must have chakra pathways connecting your brain to your eyes and special chakra produced in your brain. I gave you this chakra now and pathways... Well, this is luck of you having bijuu inside yourself. To manifest its power, to see through the eyes of host bijuus create chakra pathways for their demonic chakra. Have you seen how your eyes turned fox-like?" Naruto nodded, "that's what I'm talking about."

"So I have temporary sharingan?"

"You do. You will have it for some time, but eventually, it will fade away along with my chakra," Indra explained.

"Unless I accept your proposal," he earned an approving nod and a smile from Uchiha progenitor.

'He is already smarter than he was before,' Indra thought, 'let's see, how long will it take for you to understand what you need to do.'

"When you will accept my power, you won't become just another champion of mine. I've made a bet on you, my chakra won't fade away, it will be produced by you and increase its amount. You will be my true successor. And besides that, I also want you to defeat my brother's current champion."

"And that?" Naruto was surprised.

"Well, I can be selfish sometimes," he smiled, "but now I will teach you something important for you. I will teach you the basics of ninshu. To look through chakra to see parts of lives of your predecessors, to use ninshu-based sensory powers. I hope you learn fast."

For the first time since his meeting with Jiraiya, Naruto was truly happy that someone wanted to teach him something without any ulterior motive. He could accept or he could reject Indra's offer, but he still was taught something, something nobody except him would know. But unlike Naruto, Indra knew, that that choice was an illusion.

...o0o...

One month later in the real world

Limbo was an interesting place. Time went differently there, way faster than in the real world, one and a half months in limbo equaled about eight hours in the real world.

"You still have your relatives, people you can call family out there, you are not as lonely as you think," Indra had told him before his departure, "and if you want to find a solitude, a place to think or to hide, go to the island of former Whirlpool country, you will find it there."

If Naruto could look underneath the underneath, he could find that his surname 'Uzumaki' wasn't just a name for an orphan, but a name of a proud and powerful clan. Unfortunately, Naruto wasn't that smart yet.

The whole month his body was changing from being jinchuuriki to being normal shinobi, it was stressed from a near-death experience. Only now Naruto managed to wake up. He opened his eyes and noticed, that his vision was better than ever before. First, he saw flowers, few bags of chips, and a History book on the bedside table. 'Looks like Ino, Choji and Shikamaru were here... Everything is fine, but the book will wait for another day,' he thought. Then he found a healing ointment hidden under chips, he saw it before so he knew it was from Hinata. There was also some food under the table, he had no idea who brought it. Then he looked in the window of his hospital room and noticed that his eyes were glowing red. 'So it wasn't a dream,' he was happy, that all that time in limbo wasn't just hallucination of a dying man. He cut off chakra flow to his eyes and smiled. 'Things must get better now,' he thought.

A nurse opened his room and saw that he was awake. Naruto heard as she called some passing shinobi and told him to go and alert Tsunade. He was happy that old hag cared.

...o0o...

"Brat," Godaime called, "how are you?"

"Better than ever," Naruto replied sarcastically. It was very unlike him, but Tsunade put it down to stress.

"Glad, you can joke," she said, "now, what the hell were you thinking? You took part in an unauthorized battle and nearly died! How can you be so irresponsible? For your own life!"

"I know, I did a stupid thing, no need to remind me," he replied harshly. Tsunade flinched.

"Sorry for my outburst, but I worry for you, damn it, I really do. Ten hours. Ten fucking hours I was saving your life. So don't you dare talk back to me!"

"What's with my team?" he asked, he wanted to know, were they punished, did they visit him.

"They are under suspension, but the village needed Kakashi to continue Sasuke's training. They all had to pay for your hospital stay and extra compensation, I also gave them all Tora missions I could, without payment," Naruto chuckled at that and asked, "Did they visit me?"

"Kakashi did, often. Sakura was doing whatever she could but not ninja training and Sasuke was as broody as always, they visited you once or twice, but that was when Kakashi brought them," she didn't want to lie to him or soften the truth, "Jiraiya visited you couple times and left for his spy duty, Teams 8, 9 and 10 visited you. Lee survived his surgery and was so loud during his visit about youth, I had to kick him away. Literally."

"I got the best team, right?" there was no disappointment in that phrase, only acceptance.

"You got the short end of the stick, right," Tsunade said, "I give you one week and you return to duty."

"Hai, baa-chan," she just smiled at this, she was happy to see that Naruto wasn't broken too much.

...o0o...

The vacation week was shit. Plain and simple. Team 9 and 10 were on ф joint B-rank mission, so Naruto had no one to hang out with. Kiba was an asshole who tried to insult the blond any time he had a chance, Hinata was weird and Shino was Shino. Naruto had no desire to go to his teammates, not because they were the reason he had nearly died, but because they obviously didn't care about him at all. He would like to visit Kakashi-sensei, but he had no idea, where to find the lazy jonin except for the Uchiha compound, where he would meet Sasuke, what Naruto wanted to avoid as long as he could.

So he spent his time at Ichiraku eating ramen and at training grounds getting back into shape. Without Kyuubi's healing abilities life became harder. Stamina now was lower and the recovery period became longer. But he now understood how amazing sharingan was and why Sasuke was so proud to have it. In one week he had fixed many problems with his taijutsu, managed to steal a couple of ninjutsu such as Sasuke's favorite Katon: Gokakyu no jutsu, which to Naruto's own surprise turned out as easy to learn as a jutsu from Fuuton, which was Naruto's affinity according to Indra. Fuuton: Daitoppa was the second and last ninjutsu that Naruto managed to get to his repertoire. One week with sharingan! Naruto had never felt so envious, he could only imagine what power would have that bastard Sasuke after a month with Kakashi-sensei. Naruto also knew that the highest level of ordinary sharingan was three tomoe. He himself had two right now, Sasuke at the moment of their battle also had two, so now Sasuke could have all three and be even better than before. How strong was the desire to accept Indra's offer and show everyone, that he was even more special than that bastard, but he wanted to go by himself, to prove that he was worth something.

And finally came the day of his return to duty.

...o0o...

Naruto came early to Hokage's tower and waited for his 'teammates'. First came Sakura. Just by looking at her Naruto could say, she was scared to start a conversation, She averted her eyes and was nervously fidgeting. He was quickly bored by her behavior and decided to talk first.

"Hello, Sakura," she flinched at the lack of -chan in her name, not that she was surprised by it.

"H-hello Naruto," she greeted back.

"So, how was our team this month," Naruto wasn't beating around the bush, he hit where it hurts the most. It was obvious that he meant 'how was our team without me' but asked it more politely.

"Ehm... Not very good, Sasuke was only training with Kakashi sensei... I spent time with Ino when she had nothing to do. We managed to repair our friendship to an extent..." she trailed.

'Not a word about me... Just as I thought,' Naruto expected it but was still sad. To think he was so happy to be on one team with 'Sakura-chan' in the beginning.

"Well, fine," he replied and the next ten minutes were spent in silence.

Unlike Sakura, who was nervous, Sasuke acted as nothing had happened. At least Sakura was afraid of how Naruto would react, what would he say to hurt her or would he say nothing to hurt her even more. Sasuke just 'hn'-ed and silently stood in a few meters from his team.

"Say, teme, did you learn something new?" Naruto asked.

"None of your business," Sasuke answered.

If he would be honest with himself, he was ashamed of his interaction with Naruto, but he didn't want to bond with him, they were already close enough. He didn't show it, but later, when Tsunade told him what had happened with Naruto, how close to death he was, only then he really was worried about the fate of his teammate. But he didn't need them, this worry had already shown him how close they became, while he had only one goal. To kill Itachi. He got the third tomoe later that day and understood what Itachi had meant. The price of Mangekyo. Sasuke wasn't ready to pay it so he decided to stop all his interactions with his teammates, fear to lose someone again was too strong.

"What an asshole," Naruto said aloud.

Sakura wanted to hit Naruto for insulting Sasuke, but after what she had done she was ashamed of her previous behavior and decided against it. Sasuke just shrugged.

Not even two hours later appeared Kakashi-sensei. He didn't show it, but he was terribly disappointed in his team's interaction, he watched them all this time and he felt like something was broken. They didn't act like friends, they didn't even act like acquaintances, they didn't act like teammates, they were just three people who got together in one place, like strangers that stood together in the line for food. 'Previous C-rank mission united them... Maybe a new one will make them open up to each other again?'

"Hello, my precious students," he said with an eye smile.

"Hello, Kakashi-sensei," said Naruto and Sakura while Sasuke 'hn'-ed as usual. And three genins followed their sensei to Hokage's office.

A/N

And cut.

I'm still searching for beta.

I want to thank all people, who supported me. By this time I got 48 favs and 51 follows what is more than I'd expected from a new story with only one chapter. 12 reviews, most of which were also positive.

To Chaosweaver6139: I know, I get a feeling that I'm rushing sometimes, but I don't know what to do with it. Sometimes you feel, that you need to write more, the story itself just asks to add something, but you have no idea what exactly. I will try to improve so such moments wouldn't exist.

Back to the story.

I've changed some things in canon origins and added some things from myself. Do you like what I did?

I tried to make all this 'hey, he is a demi-god reincarnation' less like a Deus ex Machina like it was in canon. The whole 1st season we are told that hard work surpasses talent, and in 2nd we get that being a god surpasses it all. I tried to make it less awkward, more like a choice with a chance than anything else.

Naruto will have some ninshu-based sensory abilities, you will see them in the next chapter. Also, he will be able to see through some moments of the previous Indra's champions' past. According to plot development, Naruto will have to leave Konoha, and I asked myself "who will teach him?" Just walking around isn't always enough, I didn't want to resurrect someone or create a new character, who will suddenly find his worthy successor/student/etc in Naruto. Indra is more than enough. So here come the abilities of ninshu. Everybody in the Naruto series says what an amazing thing chakra is, how great was Sage of Six Paths, but nobody really explored it. So, I decided that ninshu will be my tool to give Naruto some of the needed knowledge. It won't be OP, so no 'I've watched whole Madara's life and now I will kick asses like he did', no, it will be harder, way harder and it will be more like a way to learn new jutsu somewhere behind the scene than the plot-moving device. You will see how this will work anyway, it won't be OP ability, it will even be hardly useful.

I hope, I haven't ruined the story with it.

About Minato being a little bit of Uchiha. This is simply for the plot's sake. My opinion is that Minato is an unregistered Senju. I know, that all 'Naruto is Fourth's son' is a retcon, but I still base my opinion on it. How else, except being Senju, his genes could be more powerful, than Kushina's, who is full-blooded Uzumaki? I think this is the only option. But his being Uchiha explains Minato's ability to react using his Hiraishin no jutsu. (This was used in some fics)

R&R

Till next time