Before I begin I would like to say you are all going to love this chapter.

Adjuster: All I can say is that he will not realize it. Something else will happen, as I already have this planned out and don't want to reveal much. Sorry.

Onto this shit. I own nothing and all that jazz.

The First Arc Begins! A Lying Contractor!

Naruto smiled as he caught the red ball headed towards his face. They, his team, were doing the same exercise they were doing two weeks ago, although it was much more advanced. They were still passing the ball towards each other, but they no longer said each others names and they were a much further distance away from each other, around three buildings worth. They were still blindfolded, however what made that more difficult was the fact that Kakashi kept rotating, or completely changing, the direction of the ball, proving it to be more difficult than before, and he was using a fair bit of strength to do so, allowing them to adapt to focusing chakra in key points of their body better.

'It's time,' Naruto thought, throwing the red ball in the air. He flowed through handseals before smirking.

"Fuuton: Reppūshō (Wind Release: Gale Palm)!"

'A jutsu?' Sakura thought, as she was the only one who heard him aside from Kakashi, as Sasuke was to far away.

Naruto slammed his palm on the ball as it appeared directly in front him, just as his jutsu activated. The jutsu sent out a burst of wind from his palm that sent the ball flying towards Sakura; however Kakashi reacted in time and kicked it toward Sasuke. Sasuke was prepared though, even if he didn't know the ball was coming towards him. As soon as he felt the wind touch his palm he channeled chakra into his arms, catching the ball without moving. However, he had a much harder time than he usually would catching the ball, causing him to raise an eyebrow.

"Kakashi," Sasuke began as he still refused to call Kakashi his sensei, even if the man was. "Why was this ball harder to catch than the other ones you've redirected? And don't say you didn't redirect it, neither Sakura, nor the dobe have the strength to put this much force on the ball."

"Mah, mah Sasuke. You just had to reveal my secrets didn't you? Everyone take off their blindfolds."

The genin did so.

"Well, the reason it was harder to catch was because Naruto here added a jutsu in to power it up, and of course the added force from me redirecting it just proved to make it more of a challenge."

"But why would Naruto add a jutsu to his pass," Sakura asked, walking up to Kakashi.

Kakashi waved his hand, signaling to the two boys to come over. As they did so Kakashi looked at Naruto.

"Do you want to explain?"

Naruto shrugged. "Sure, why not. Basically, Kakashi-sensei asked me to make this training exercise harder as we had already mastered it. So I added a Fuuton jutsu into my pass, although from my memory it wasn't towards the teme, it was towards Sakura-chan."

The two nodded, although Sakura wondered why it was directed at her specifically. While she had been training more, following Kakashi's advice to a point, she still didn't have the power to stop such an attack. Apparently, Naruto either had faith in her or he greatly overestimated her.

"Why you though," Sasuke asked, a hint of spite in his voice.

"Because of my Fuuton capabilities. You see, although I don't know why, I have a talent for Fuuton jutsu, although I still can't use any higher level ones yet, but still, Fuuton jutsu can speed something up or shred it to pieces. The one I used was to speed it up, which proved to be more of a challenge for you to catch, wasn't it teme?"

Sasuke just growled and looked away, clear annoyance on his face. Naruto smirked as if he just won a tournament, holding up the 'Peace' sign. Sakura just sighed at their behavior. She still loved Sasuke, and acted like a fangirl at times, but she had matured over these two weeks, and had come to accept that Naruto and Sasuke were friends and rivals, meaning they would always act like this, no matter how much she wanted to make Naruto shut up at times.

"Exactly," Kakashi said. He then looked up at the sky before saying, "Well, it's time for or daily missions, let's get going." The jonin then took off in a sprint towards the Hokage tower, followed by Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura. This was another part of their training you see. It was endurance training. Sakura, Naruto, and Sasuke had to try and keep up with Kakashi, who was using minimal amounts of chakra, without pumping any chakra into their legs to speed them up. It would allow them to not only move faster when using bursts of chakra, but move faster when they didn't proving to be a win-win situation.

The team reached the Hokage tower in record time, sprinting up the stairs, or in Kakashi's case running on the side of the wall, and breaching his office.

"We are ready for a mission Hokage-sama," Kakashi said, smiling at his genin. While they were panting, it wasn't as bad as they were when they had first done this exercise, which was when they were on the floor basically dying, and they had lost track of Kakashi.

"Well Kakashi-san, you really are working young Naruto-kun, Sasuke-kun, and Sakura-chan," Sarutobi said, smiling at their tired faces.

"They still have a lot of work," Kakashi said.

"Tch," Sasuke remarked, getting a laugh out of the Hokage.

"Hey! We're doing better than you could ever do, dattebayo!" Naruto cried indignantly.

The room became oddly quiet after he said that, and Naruto was blushing as everyone was looking at him. He began to inch back towards the door, embarrassed.

"It's a verbal tick alright…" Naruto mumbled, although everyone heard him.

The Hokage smiled, as he had heard if before, as had Kakashi, but Sakura and Sasuke were looking at him as if he had grown a second head.

'The hell was that,' Sasuke thought. 'I call this weirdo my rival?'

'What does that even mean,' thought Sakura with a sweat drop.

"Well, onto more important topics, not including teasing Naruto-kun, we have several missions for you, like getting Lady Daimyo's cat-"

"DON'T FINSIH THAT SENTENCE!" the genin of Team 7 roared, each of them drawing a kunai and throwing it at the desk. While this could be considered an act of betrayal, neither the Anbu in the room, nor the Hokage moved. They understood why the were acting like that too after all. They too had done that mission as genin, and by the end of the day wanted to skin the cat alive, and all the other genin teams wanted too as well, even though Hiruzen did it when another lady was the Daimyo's wife, and had a different cat. He was beginning to think those things were cursed.

"Well then," Hiruzen said, laughing at them.

"We will skin that cat alive," Sakura said.

"Burn it," Sasuke said.

"And let it get torn to shreds!" Naruto finished.

"Well we have-"

"No," Naruto said. "I refuse to take any more of these kid-dy missions. This is just charity work, not fit for something of my status. I want a C-rank mission or higher, or else I'm not moving from this spot."

"Naruto, you can't just-" Kakashi began, but Sasuke cut him off.

"I agree. I want something of higher ranking too."

"As do I," Sakura said, although there was a hint of doubt in her voice.

Sarutobi groaned. It was that time, the time that every genin eventually demanded. The C-rank mission. It was a coming of age ritual basically. Eventually the genin would get bored with D-rank missions and would fight for a C-rank or above, although they only ever got C-rank. Still, Team 7 had done it faster than any other teams this year had.

"Kakashi-san do you think they are ready for a C-rank?"

"As ready as they'll ever get," Kakashi said, shrugging. C-ranks still involved very little threats, usually escorts to nearby villages or taking out a minor bandit problem, nothing your standard genin couldn't handle.

"Well, the only one we have currently is escorting a bridge builder to his home in Nami no Kuni (Land of Waves)."

Kakashi nodded. "We accept."

Naruto smiled and cheered, as Sasuke just smirked. Sakura however had the most expressed reaction, excluding Naruto. She gave a bright smile, although afterwards she showed a hint of doubt in her decision, still not quite confident in her improving abilities.

"Sakura, are you all right," Sasuke asked, looking at the pinkette.

"Y-Yes, Sasuke-kun. But why are you asking," the girl responded, as he rarely ever talked to her.

Sasuke smirked. "You've been improving lately, working and practicing with Naruto and I. You deserve at least some of my respect for that," he said before turning away and looking at the Hokage. Meanwhile, Sakura's heart soared, high above make-believe clouds.

'SHANNARO! Sasuke-kun likes us! We're improving! Thanks a bunch Kakashi-sensei!' The young girl thought, taking what Sasuke said in wrong direction ever so slightly, in assuming that he liked her back that is.

"Send in the bridge builder," Hiruzen said.

The door opened quickly afterwards, to reveal a grey-haired, bespectacled man with a large beard and dark eyes. He wore a sleeveless v-neck shirt with an obi, pants and a pair of sandals. There was a towel around his neck, and he wore a pointed hat on his head. Lastly, he had a bottle of bear in his hands.

"You give me brats to protect me? The girl looks like she's the broody ones fangirl, the broody one looks like he has a mental problem, and the blonde one looks like he couldn't harm a fly. They better be good enough," the man said.

However, when three kunai impaled his bottle of beer, courtesy of Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke he gulped.

"We are not in the mood for your shit," they whispered silently.

The man shivered, although he wasn't the only one. Hiruzen also shivered, although for a different reason. Those three talking at the same time and saying the same thing over and over again was creepy. Kakashi however seemed fine, as he was used to it.

"Well, Mr. Tazuna, I'd be careful what you say. These three are very capable, and very irritable," Kakashi said as he walked out of the room.

"Meet me at the sough gate at 12 o'clock tomorrow."

And with that Kakashi left the room, however his voice carried up the stairs. "Sakura, Sasuke, Naruto, training time, again."

The three genin cheered, although Sasuke's and Sakura's was less enthusiastic then Naruto's, though for different reasons respectively.

XxX

Naruto groaned as Team 7 and the old man, Tazuna was his name if he recalled correctly, waited on Kakashi. Normally Naruto wouldn't have even arrived early enough to be bothered by Kakashi's tardiness, however as this was his first C-rank mission he wanted to get it underway already, even if it was just protecting some smug bridge builder.

"Why did you come here early Naruto?" Sasuke asked looking at him. "You knew Kakashi would be late. All of us but the old man did. I came to get in some last minute peace and quiet as those…demons…know where I live," Sasuke said.

Naruto nodded. While he didn't understand Sasuke's pain personally, having fangirls chase after you endlessly wasn't fun, at least from what he observed. When he was younger he would have killed for that, but after seeing the craziness their supposed love for the Uchiha had caused them to do, he was happy he didn't have fangirls.

"I am just excited for the mission, that's all, honestly," Naruto said. "Why did you come early Sakura-chan?"

Sakura rubbed the back of her sheepishly. "I'm the same as you."

"Hey, brats, where is that sensei of yours? Isn't he supposed to be a jonin or something? Doesn't that mean he should be on time? I'm an important contact you know," Tazuna grumbled.

Naruto just looked at him tiredly. "Too many questions, and I don't give enough fucks to answer them. Still, he is running unusually late."

Sakura just shook her head and apologized to the man. While he may be annoying he was still a paying customer, and they shouldn't ruin that. He could have hired a different village after all.

"Sorry I'm late," Kakashi said, appearing behind Naruto, and causing him to jump in the air with surprise.

"BASTARD!" Naruto roared throwing a punch at him, however Kakashi easily caught it.

"Yeah, yeah, I've heard it before Naruto. Are we all ready to go?"

"Tch, you shouldn't be asking that, you were late after all," Sasuke said, just shaking his head as he walked out the gate, followed by Tazuna and Sakura, Naruto not far behind. Kakashi stood there confused.

"What I say?"

XxX

"I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!" Naruto roared, after he slapped his fuinjutsu book closed. He had been studying the subject for literal hours, and while he may love the subject, he was going to snap if he read one more complicated intermediate level seal. Of course it didn't help that Naruto disliked reading to begin with.

"This silence is deafening, I'm sick of reading, Kakashi-sensei is to busy reading his smut to pay attention to us, AND I SWEAR TO FUCKING KAMI IF I READ ANOTHER FUCKING SEAL SOMEONE IS GONNA GET A KUNAI SHOVED SO FAR UP THEIR ASS-"

"We get it Naruto," Kakashi said, looking back at his student with a dramatic sigh written all over his face. Was his student always this hyperactive?

"Then do something about it," Naruto said, kicking a rock. It landed in a small puddle, although no ripples appeared.

'Strange,' Naruto thought, but ignored it, continuing on his walk.

'That's not normal. Ripples should have spread through the puddle, especially considering the power behind Naruto's kicks. Plus, it hasn't rained in weeks, so why would there be two random puddles on the ground? Unless…what idiots.'

As soon as the group passed the two puddles the puddles rose from the ground, solidifying into humans. They had used a genjutsu to seal their form, hiding from the group.

The shorter one of the duo had shoulder-length, wild dark-brown hair and dark eyes. He wore a gas mask that covered the lower of half of his face and a large, clawed gauntlet on his right arm, which had a chain coming out of it that attached to the others gauntlet. He wore a camouflage suit with bandages around his waist, dark-colored, knee length sandals and a ragged black cloak.

The other wore roughly the same thing; however one thing they wore brought out something unique to them, at least it was the first time the genin and Tazuna had ever seen such a thing.

They both wore Kirigakure headbands with slashes through them.

However, just because they had never seen one before didn't mean they didn't know what it meant.

'Rogue ninja,' the genin thought, taking up a position around Tazuna, Sakura and Naruto on his sides with Sasuke in front.

The ninja ran towards them, although Kakashi hadn't noticed it until it was to late, and he was wrapped in chains almost instantly.

"Target one, eliminated," the two men whispered creepily.

They yanked on their chains, ripping Kakashi to shreds. Sakura looked horrified, and her face paled, but Sasuke and Naruto had different reactions. Sasuke tensed, as if he was preparing for the fight of his life and was going to enjoy it, and Naruto had a look of pure fury on his face, as if he was a demon that was going to slaughter all who stood in his way to avenge his sensei.

"Kill them boy, prove them to be weaker than you are. You are a host, YOU ARE MY VESSEL!" Naruto heard a voice scream in his head. Naruto thought still had enough semblance of control to ask an important question.

'Who are you?'

"KILL THEM CHILD!"

Naruto was soon overcome by the voice and disappeared in a flash. He reappeared next to the taller one of the men; however he didn't look the same. His whisker marks were thicker and longer, his nails had become claws, his canine's were protruding from his mouth slightly, however there was something more ominous about his transformation.

His crimson orbs and the large amount of killing intent he was releasing. It had paralyzed Tazuna, Sakura, and even Sasuke. They couldn't move as they were experiencing the most pure form of fear. The fear a prey had when running from a predator.

Naruto lashed out with his clawed hand, claws ripping through flesh, and blood splattering over the ground. The man's throat had five slash marks on them, and blood was pooling on the ground and in Naruto's hands. The man tried to scream in pain but found he couldn't, not that it would have mattered as Naruto thrust his hand through his chest soon afterwards. Naruto pulled his hand out quickly, turning to face the other man, who was shaking in his boots, but it wasn't from fear.

"GOZU!" the man cried, charging Naruto, clear intent to kill him in his eyes.

However, Naruto didn't even hear the man shout Gozu's name, he was too preoccupied with the rush of instincts that overtook him. As he saw the man's gauntlet come up to carve out his throat he dodged it easily, as if the hand was moving in slow motion. Naruto then spun around, before slamming his foot into the man's head, snapping his neck, and sending him headfirst into a tree that was now painted red.

Naruto kept looking around, a sadistic look in his eye before he spotted his team and Tazuna. He smiled before he raised his hand and tensed, preparing to launch at them, however his world soon faded into nothingness and he fell to the ground, unconscious. Instantly the killing intent vanished.

Kakashi was behind Naruto, a sad look on his face, along with a worried one. That had been the Kyuubi in charge then, he knew it. Naruto wouldn't do such horrendous acts; he wasn't the type of person to do so. Kakashi looked at Naruto with worry. The seal must have weakened for it to have happened, or Naruto became aware of the Kyuubi and was starting to accept it. Neither were good things.

Kakashi picked Naruto up and put him on his back, sealing the two dead men in a scroll before looking at Tazuna, Sasuke, and Sakura.

"Are you okay?"

Sakura however didn't answer. Instead she ran to a bush and retched all over the ground, and Sasuke looked like he wanted to do the same, but managed to contain it. Tazuna looked pale and backed away from Naruto, fear entranced in his eyes. Kakashi sighed; the man and his genin had a right to be scared. They shouldn't have been forced to see that, but Kakashi had to assess how much control the Kyuubi had over Naruto when he was in the berserker state.

"Sasuke, go help Sakura. Tazuna, we need to have a chat."

The man nodded as Sasuke ran towards Sakura. However, once the boy saw her pale face he too had to retch at the events he had just witnessed.

"Tazuna why were those ninja after you?"

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about," Tazuna lied, although it was rather blatant that he was bad at it.

"NO GAMES TAZUNA! You nearly cost my team their lives, and caused them to witness something they shouldn't have had to-" Tazuna interrupted him.

"That demon boy killing those two-" Kakashi interrupted the man right back.

"Call him that again and I will slit your throat, call this mission a failure, and say you ran off into the forest with a case of madness," Kakashi warned.

Tazuna stepped back, shame in his eyes.

"I pretended to die to see if this occurrence would be ninja attacking ninja, or ninja attacking bridge builder. I found it to be the latter, now, why were those ninja after you?"

"Gato," Tazuna whispered.

"Gato, as in the head of the Gato Company, one of the richest men in the world?"

"The very same. You see, while he may be a great businessman, he is also an illegal drug dealer, and recently came to Nami no Kuni (Land of Waves). He quickly took over the ports and has our small island in a stranglehold in terms of economy. All of our money goes to his absurdly high taxes, and we can't trade as he refused to let any ships leave, and few enter, and the ones that do work for him."

"That does not excuse you paying for a C-rank mission. This should have easily been a B-rank."

"I would have liked to pay the money for that, however the entire town came together with the money, just barely scrapping by a C-rank, it was the best we could afford."

"I see," Kakashi said. He looked at Sasuke and Sakura who were looking at him for leadership, as well as Naruto, only they were looking at him with fear and hate. Apparently they had taken on the villagers feelings towards him now. Naruto would have to work that out, with some help from him of course.

'It seems all the teamwork I put into teaching them was wasted. Good luck, Naruto.'

"Why don't we all set up camp for now," Kakashi suggested.

XxX

Naruto groaned as he awoke, only to be faced with an unfamiliar setting. He was in a sewer, with water flooding the ground, reaching up to his ankles. There were pipes along the ceiling, some blue, and some red leaking the aura he had felt not even moments ago.

Naruto then felt it. Whatever that aura belonged to was somewhere nearby, very close in fact. Naruto wandered the sewers, still trying to figure out where he was and where that aura came from, only to reach a large room with a metal cage and a piece of paper that had the kanji for 'Seal' on it.

"What the hell?"

A set of crimson eyes appeared and bore down on him, along with large, canine teeth.

"Welcome vessel, TO MY CAGE!"

The creature's massive roar sent water flying into the air and Naruto had to guard his head and channel chakra into his feet to stand, and then again he was still sent skidding backwards.

"Who are you," Naruto asked the massive creature, just as a form came into view.

It was a giant kitsune with red-orange fur and red eyes. It possessed the upper-body structure of a human, complete with opposable thumbs on its clawed hands. It seemed to be shrunk down, although Naruto assumed that if it wasn't and stood at full height it was the same height as the Hokage Monument, which was saying a lot. Naruto dared say a full grown was smaller than one of its eyes. And even then, Naruto felt it's size was still being limited.

"I AM THE KYUUBI NO KITSUNE!"

BET YOU GUYS WEREN'T EXPECTING THAT! Hey guys it's Kuma Akuma, and I'm sorry I just had to rub it in your face. Now onto the explanations before I get the questions. No the seal is not weakening, in fact Minato's seal is as strong as ever, however because Naruto never had Iruka there to tell him he wasn't the Kyuubi it has more influence over him, especially as Danzo would never do something to help him without gaining something from it. Because of this influence the Kyuubi was able to breach the seals defenses momentarily, of course with the help of Naruto's rampant running emotions. In the manga and anime it has been said that the Kyuubi could be classified as a construct of anger and hate, and the Kyuubi used Naruto's hate towards the demon brothers to allow it to have control, at least for a moment. This actually wasn't even the way I had planned on introducing Kurama, but it seemed like to good of an idea to pass up. If Iruka wasn't there in the anime it actually could have had a possibility of happening, at least in my opinion. And yes, Sasuke and Sakura now have a rightly-so fear of him, even if it isn't his fault. Who wouldn't be scared of your friend killing people with a look of glee on their face, before turning on you? I sure as hell would be. Now this will not last, but Naruto will have to work to gain their trust and friendship back, and it won't be easy. This may also affect the name of the bridge Tazuna is building, if he complete's it that is. Well keep reading, follow, favorite, and review. See you guys later, and avoid the Earl.