House of Paper

A/N: Thank you, all of you, for your reviews for the first two chapters and for the support of this idea of mine. I appreciate the view points and agree that it was a mistake on my part to start this up with a poll on potential pairings, for that I'm sorry. Just so it's clear, no actual pairings will come into effect for quite awhile. I'm a firm believer for there to be friendship before any romance begins. For that matter, there'll be strictly only regular interaction, with the occasional flirtatious moments between Naruto and the female characters (Those will be limited). The main thing I want to focus on this story is building the character that is the Naurto I've created for this story and go more in depth into the ambiguous character that is Konan. Everything else is secondary.

Two reviewers seemed adamantly opposed to me changing both Naruto's parentage and his hair color. Sorry, but thems the ropes. That's how this story is and I make no apologizes for making that decision.

Now, on with the story….

Chapter Three: Revelations

Years had passed since Naruto had entered Konoha's Ninja Academy and it had been interesting, to say the least.

It was soon revealed, during a bushin exercise, of Naruto's special bloodline ability as he created fifteen versions of himself made entirely out of paper. The students looked upon the scene with either envy or with wonder.

Iruka was impressed while Mizuki was indifferent.

Naruto's unique bloodline had been public knowledge with most of the adults of the Shinobis as Jiraya of the Sennin had gave the information to the Shinobi Council after the sealing of the Kyuubi, thus had the struggle for who should claim Naruto at that time.

Naruto's training concerning his bloodline had been speculative, at best. Sayuri and Shikaku tried their best to determine all the visible aspects to the specific ability Naruto possessed when he revealed his ability at the age of four when they began teaching him to mold his chakra. Since the Nara Clan has the ability to control and manipulate shadows, the theory was that the same method could be applied to Naruto's ability over paper, which he could create seemingly out of thin air and manipulate his body into them. For two years, since that revelation, Sayuri and Shikaku had been working with Naruto to try and decipher the mysteries to his bloodline.

Over the years, some more changes had occurred that affected a lot of the Village hidden in the Leaves. The Uchiha Clan, an old and prestigious clan known for their uncanny ability to be fearsome fighters with their doujutsu, the Sharingan; had become wiped out in a single night by the act of one of their own, Uchiha Itachi, and, either as an act of mercy or cruelty, nobody knew; left Uchiha Sasuke, his younger brother, being the only remainder of his clan to exist in Konoha. Itachi, then, left the village; his whereabouts unknown. Several months later, after the massacre, Uchiha Sasuke's behavior seemed to have changed dramatically. He was more withdrawn than before, adopting a cold persona and refusing to interact with any of his peers. This, in turn, caused many of the Kunoichi-wannabes in the class, notoriously Ino and Sakura, to start viewing him as a dark and mysterious character, one, to which they would start to have an immense crush on. Sasuke, however, paid none of it any mind as he seemed to become more and more withdrawn. His focus had shifted to pushing himself to the limits and more. Thus, started his attention to his male classmates' abilities and then focusing on Naruto's.

Naruto felt pity for his classmate. After his fourth birthday it had also been revealed to Naruto, by the Sandaime, that his birth parents had been killed in Ame over a failed uprising against its leader Hanzo. Naruto remembered having conflicted feelings over the revelation of who his parents were and then the pang of sadness that he would never be able to meet them. Sayuri had been an immense help to his getting over that moment, no matter how it still resides inside of him. It was from that experience that Naruto felt that he could relate to Uchiha Sasuke. There had been several moments to where he would try and try again to try and get the stubborn Uchiha to talk to him about it or see if the two of them could hang out and possibly talk. No matter what Naruto did, Sasuke continued to shut him out. That is, until the bushin practice started and when Naruto's bloodline was revealed to the student body.

It was after that, that Sasuke seemed to be paying more and more attention to Naruto. However, he never seemed to want to become friends or to learn more about Naruto outside of the training and the classroom. Instead, he started to have a borderline obsession for sparring only against Naruto and to watch him during training practices.
He wasn't the only one trying to test out his strength against the Hitogawa-Nara-adoptee. Inuzuka Kiba, in a state of territoriality and pack leadership; also started engaging Naruto at sparring sessions.

Naruto was beginning to tire of it all. He had no desire to prove himself as he was only interested passing the classes and getting on a team so he could see outside the village for once. He wanted to do all of the things he had read in books: defeating the bad guys, rescuing the damsels in distress, accomplishing the impossible, and seeing all there was in the world.

Now, with the Genin Exam Test coming, he felt things would get better.

Naruto began his day as usual. He woke up, reluctantly, kissed Sayuri goodbye, met with Shikamaru by the Nara Clan's gates, walked to school and met with Chouji along the way, and entered the class and took his seat next to Shino. The two would discuss things, Naruto usually doing the talking with Shino adding comments rarely; and wait for Iruka and Mizuki-sensei to arrive to start the class.

"Good morning class, the tests for the Genin Exam will start after your lunch period. Before then, we'll begin with a rough review of what we went over the years." Iruka said and then nodded to Mizuki who began passing out papers. Iruka continued with a barely hidden smirk.

"With a quiz."

A loud groan came from the class and then mutterings as Mizuki walked all over the class handing out papers to the students.

The blue-haired paper user sighed as he accepted his test from Mizuki who had a gleam in his eye as he looked back at Naruto from the corner of his eye.

Naruto had never trusted Mizuki-sensei as he, along with a majority of the village, seemed to act weird around him. While the villagers seemed to be hostile, others patronizing, and most impassive; Mizuki-sensei seemed….well…just plain weird. There were times when he would act like a jerk and never call a halt to a spar that was between Naruto and Sasuke, when Sasuke was obviously having the upper hand, viciously beating Naruto senseless; a malicious grin on his face while watching. Other times he was a nice guy that would welcome Naruto every time he saw him.

Naruto shook his head to get rid of these past feelings and focused on the quiz in front of him. It was a quiz with questions he knew he wouldn't be able to answer. Normally, with the other tests and quizzes, Naruto was mostly able to answer them to satisfaction. He wasn't a genius like Sasuke, nor was he book-smart like Sakura, bust he was able to get by without failing.

Naruto sighed. This was another one of those moments. There had been times in the past where he was given a test or two like this one that had such difficulty he'd never be able to answer it without resulting to his tricks he had up his sleeve.

Reaching into said sleeve, Naruto pulled out an origami paper crane that he had made awhile ago. This crane, though, was a bushin of himself; carefully henged into its paper form. Naruto had started making these awhile back when he learned his relationship with paper. While, with his unique amount of chakra stores, could only make them last no longer than half a day; he found he could create as many as nearly over a thousand without so much as becoming fatigued.

Looking around to make sure no ones attention would be on him, Naruto looked to the open window of the classroom and made the paper crane flap and fly out his hands and silently flew out of the classroom and to the library to get the answers for the difficult quiz given to Naruto.

Minbutes passed and son the bird came back and settled onto Naruto's lap. Naruto waived his hand over the bird which then unfolded itself into a single sheet that held the answers to the quiz.

Naruto smirked as he wrote down all the answers to the test, looking up to see that Mizuki had never once looked in his direction with suspicion.

Much to Naruto's satisfaction, two results happened with the turning in of his quiz. One was that Mizuki was hopping-mad that Naruto had actually answered the Chuunin-level questions to satisfaction and two was that Iruka had taken Mizuki out to reprimand the man for accidentally giving Naruto such a difficult quiz. He returned with a look of pure fury on his face, failing to hide it to any of the students who all stepped back in fear from the large vein protruding from his forehead.

Lunchtime came and Naruto spent it with Shino as the two of them seemed to enjoy each other's company. They spent a lot of time talking, most on Naruto's part, about what they would do in their future teams, what missions they'd want, and who they thought would be good teammates to have. By the time they had finished, the bell had rung announcing the end of the lunch time period.

Walking back inside to the classroom, Naruto was suddenly pulled into an empty classroom and turned to see a serious looking Uchiha.

"Teme, what do you want?" Naruto asked, scowling in irritation of having been brought in, in such a way.

Sasuke made his famous grunt as he looked away. "Hn, just remember, blue-haired dobe, you better not fail." With that, Sasuke turned and left the classroom, leaving Naruto with an incredulous look on his face.

"What the hell was that all about?" He asked no one.

When Naruto returned and took his seat with Shino, Iruka and a still seething Mizuki waited until everyone settled until announcing the commencement of the Genin Exam tests. The students were then subjected to a physical and endurance test outside the building. This was set with an obstacle course, all with perilous and non-perilous objects and traps. The kunai and shuriken throwing was next along with the construction of explosive tags and field knowledge of medical herbs and toxins to be found in the forest. So far, Naruto and his friends had succeeded or satisfactorily passed each of these routines. Next came the part that would either pass or fail each one of them from becoming a Genin.

The bushin, henge, and kawarimi test.

For this, each student was called individually into the sensei's room where the student was to perform all three of these jutsus, should they fail anyone of them, they'd fail the exam no matter how successful they had been in the other areas of the Exam.

Shino was the first to enter and soon came out sporting his hitae-ate with Konoha leaf symbol.

"Way to go, Shino!" Naruto called out, exuberantly.

Shino nodded and went back to his seat next to Naruto as others were soon called and some either sheering with success while others had their heads hung in shame upon leaving the room.

"Hitogawa Naruto!" Iruka announced.

Naruto smirked and looked at Shino.

"I sooooo got this in the bag!" Naruto then leapt to his feat and hopped down the row of desks, some of their occupants shouting at him as he was doing so, until he reached the bottom and proceeded into the sensei's room where he closed the door behind him and stepped forward to be in front of Iruka and Mizuki who were seated at a table with numerous amounts of hitae-ates awaiting for someone to wear them.

"Alright, Naruto, let's begin with bushin, shall we?" Iruka asked, nodding.

Naruto nodded in return and started channeling chakra to the outside of his body toward the paper listing the students names in front of Mizuki, changing it's form to where, in a puff of smoke; became another Naruto standing on the senseis' desk.

Iruka nodded his approval while Mizuki just sneered.

"Henge!" Mizuki barked. Iruka looked at his associate with a barely hidden look of disapproval for his outburst.

Naruto, unfazed by Mizuki, nodded and made a unique handsign and soon his entire body fell apart bit by bit turning into unfolding paper that soon swirled in a tornado-like motion and then all the pieces went out into different locations around the room attaching themselves to the walls of the room, each one changing themselves into either printed documents or posters.

'Incredible', Iruka thought as he looked around the room, 'If he could hide his chakra signature better, he would be a master of stealth and assassination.' Mizuki, next to him, seemed to be growling louder and louder in irritation. Iruka paid it no mind.

"Alright, Naruto, the last thing you need to do is kawarimi with an object in this room and you'll have passed the Gening Exam."

Naruto, then, appeared out of nowhere from the ceiling as he came dropping down. Elsewhere in the room there was a crashing sound as a light bulb was shattered against the ground near a wall where Naruto had been.

Naruto grinned as he scratched the back of his head, sheepishly. "Well, that was less stealthy than I had planned."

Iruka chuckled at the modesty of his student. That was less than stealthy but the act of replacing yourself with something securely screwed into an object, in a matter of seconds; was astounding to say the least.

"No matter," Iruka said, "You've still managed to complete the Exam. Congratulations Hitogawa Naruto, you are now officially a Genin of Konohagakure." Iruka then handed Naruto a hitae-ate off of the table.

Naruto, smiling, took the metal plate with cloth attached and bowed to both of the men in front of him.

"Thank you both, Senseis."

Iruka smiled and nodded.

There was a loud smashing sound as both turned to look as Mizuki's fist was now imbedded into the wall, his whole body shaking and a look of unbridled fury etched on his face as he was looking at Naruto.

"You….should not have passed…you-"

"Mizuki!" Iruka warned, his whole body tensing.

"Demon!" Roared Mizuki as he then leapt at Naruto, a kunai in his hand.

Suddenly, a large wall of paper appeared and came in-between Naruto and the raged Mizuki.

"Damn you!" Mizuki shouted as he tried, in futility, to rip through the wall of paper between Naruto and himself, which was like trying to claw through a stone surface.

Iruka appeared behind Mizuki and grabbed him into a full-nelson position, Mizuki shouting and struggling in response.

"Mizuki! Control yourself!" Iruka shouted.

"No! How can you even think of protecting that thing! Didn't the Kyuubi killed your family, Umino?! We should exact our revenge on this thing posing as a human for the village once and for all!!!"

In a rush of memories, Iruka thought back to when he had similar sentiments the same as Mizuki towards Hitogawa Naruto. Then the memoires of all the moments he had with the blue-haired student both in the class and outside of it. All of them were with Iruka smiling and Naruto smiling in return.

Iruka bent his head down, still struggling with Mizuki as he took a shaky breath before pulling his head up slowly.

"He's not the Kyuubi, Mizuki." He said in a quiet tone.

"Nonsense!" Mizuki shouted, now thrashing his body against Iruka's hold. "When the Kyuubi was sealed into the brat, he became the brat! He's still the Kyuubi!"

Suddenly, in a flash, three members of Konoha's ANBU were in the room, their faces hidden by clay masks resembling animals, their bodies dressed in black armor and cloaks.

"Mizuki Touji, you've been found guilty of breaking the Third's Law. You will come with us now." One, who had the mask of a Neko, said in an authoritative tone.

Mizuki was then struck in the back of the head, rendering him unconscious and was disappeared along with the rest of the ANBU in a swirl of leaves.

Iruka looked away as he took the moment to regain his breath, holding Mizuki had taken a lot out of him. He turned and noticed, in astonishment, that the paper barrier Naruto had placed between himself and Mizuki was beginning to breakdown. Once it fell completely, Iruka looked on in alarm as he had completely forgotten something in that incident.

Naruto had remained in the room.

The Third's Law has now been compromised.

To be continued…………

A/N: Well, I know I've made some people either disappointed or intrigued by this story. Hopefully the latter will continue.

Please Review.

Q-n-P