The Beginnings of Change: Hengesai Naruto
Summary: In a world were Mizuki wasn't evil, and he and Iruka had been training Naruto in secret during his time at the academy, Naruto will realize his true potential, and become the true Henge Master! (Note: I am not that good at summaries.) Warnings: Sasuke bashin, Sakura bashing, slight Kakashi bashing, possible Harem for Naruto, good Orochimaru (not pedophile!), possible non-Yondaime father. Possible Soul Caliber Crossover
Pairings: tentative (Subject to change w/o warning)
Anko/Iruka
Mizuki/Wife
Naruto/Harem?
Sasuke/Naruto(onesided)
Lee/Sakura(onesided:If Sakura is redeemed, she will return his feelings)
Shikamaru/Temari
Gaara/Matsuri (Correction thanks to Hopemon)
Chapter One: A Gift is Given
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Naruto sat worriedly between the hospital beds upon which his two sensei were reclining. The iryo-nin medics had already come in and had been working over the two's injuries for almost an hour. Naruto knew that both of his sensei would be fine in his head, but he couldn't let go of the worry he felt at seeing them laying in these white hospital beds wrapped in bandages and hospital pajamas.
Mizuki-sensei was recovering from being poisoned with whatever-it-was that the impostor had used on him. The medics had gotten it out, thankfully, but he'd be in the hospital for a day or two recovering from the havoc it had been wrecking on his body. Iruka-sensei, on the other hand, was mostly better already, with a few mostly healed versions of the wounds he'd received earlier. The worst was from the shuriken to the back, and even that had been mostly healed. The prognosis for both was very positive, which was a relief to their student, who had no idea what he would have done if either of his sensei had been permanently injured because of him.
Not to mention how their friends would react to it. Especially Anko-nee-chan. Her temper was very scary.
Especially when the silver-haired man with the orange book was around. According to Anko-nee-chan, he was a stupid pervert who deserved to be bitten by one of her snakes for reading that stupid crap. She had told him that she'd better not ever catch him reading those books before he was eighteen, or she'd introduce him to one of her snakes at feeding time.
Of course, that had been years ago, but still...
Shudders wracking down his spine at the thought of the horrors that Anko-nee-chan could bring into the mind when pissed off, Naruto returned his attention to the shifting Iruka, who had apparently been told he could leave the hospital now. Mizuki-sensei, however, would be staying overnight for the next three days.
Which meant that he'd be missing Naruto's team assignment and the final graduation ceremony.
While Naruto would much rather Mizuki-sensei be in the hospital getting better, he knew that his teacher wanted to see him join his team.
That was actually the reason why he was still at the hospital instead of training with one of the others. He needed to find out what it was Mizuki-sensei wanted to do about this situation, seeing as his schedule would be in extreme upheaval once he was assigned a team.
While they had more then a year's worth of experience with the current one, they all knew that whichever Jounin he got would not be part of the small circle of family they had created for themselves. The reason they knew that was because the only Jounin member of the group was Ibiki-sensei, Head of Torture and Interrogation, were Anko-nee-chan worked. And there was no way the Hokage was going to give him a team.
Although, Ibiki-sensei often made noises about apprenticing Naruto to himself in order to insure he got a decent amount of instruction once he was out of the Academy...
Which was, for that matter, something that might actually happen depending on how well the Jounin-sensei of his upcoming team trained himself and his teammates.
Naruto snapped out of his meandering train of thought when Mizuki-sensei rasped out his name from not drinking water for over 24 hours. Grabbing the glass of water with the straw, Naruto turned to his sensei, silently urging him to drink the water so that they could speak.
Mizuki, being well acquainted with Naruto's stubbornness when it came to the people he cared for, accepted the water with a token eye-roll of protest. The next few minutes passed in silence as he sipped at the water, hydrating his throat carefully in order to avoid further mother-henning.
He knew for a fact that Iruka was in the room, and if Naruto started to get upset because he was hurt, Iruka would begin fussing over them both most stiflingly.
Once he'd finished his water, he reached into the draw beside his bed, were all active duty ninja brought into the hospital would be able to find their equipment. While the weapons would be considered dangerous most of the time, the fact of the matter is that ninja don't need weapons to cause a lot of damage, and were more likely to resort to those methods when deprived of their weapons.
Konoha Hospital had learned those lessons well over its many decades of operation.
Drawing himself out of the slightly pain-killer induced train of contemplation, he pulled out the special sealing scroll he'd been carrying that contained Naruto's gift for graduating from himself and Iruka. He handed the scroll over to Naruto silently, with only a reassuring smile when Naruto looked at his face questioningly.
"It's just a graduation gift from myself and Iruka-kun. I want you to open it tonight." Naruto looked at him with confused compliance, and part of him marveled, as it always did, at how trusting Naruto was of him.
He never questioned the instructions they gave him unless it was during training, or class, which were the times when a student is supposed to ask questions anyway.
"I'll come back by to visit soon, Mizuki-sensei," Naruto said, putting aside his curiosity over the scroll that Mizuki-sensei had given him, glancing at the stirring Iruka as he headed for the door in order to go meet with his other teachers before it was the end of the morning.
No matter how much he wanted to confirm for himself that his wounded sensei were safe, he had training sessions to get to, and he couldn't afford to be late.
Anko-nee-chan was far too fond of throwing things for him to risk being late to her training session, no matter what his excuse.
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Staying in the shadows as he got closer to the location where his target would be at this time of day, he snuck closer to object of his efforts. Soon, very soon, he will have succeeded in a task that he'd been working toward for years, one that ninja far older, braver, and wiser than he had failed to accomplish...
"You know that I can see you, don't you Naru-chan?"
And apparently he was not yet any better then them.
Turning around to face the look of amusement on his only female instructor's face, he sheepishly began scratching the back of his head in a nervous habit that Ibiki-sensei had yet to break him of. Possibly because it was something that lots of people knew about him, and they weren't supposed to be in contact with impressionable children.
Something about breaking their minds and changing them into analytical, mind-breaking sadists with unholy appetites for blood.
Anko personally thought it was just an excuse to keep them from spreading their skills so that the Council didn't have to worry about there being any future Snake Masters, or really good psycho-analysts that could make you feel like a worthless disgrace of a human being just by having a single conversation with you.
It was really too bad the Council didn't have the power to officially order them to not train people. Then Naru-chan wouldn't have learned all those interesting things that they'd taught him just to spite the people who wanted to keep the determined little brat down.
Not to mention she'd have been incredibly bored without someone to teach things to who was so very impressionable.
Looking at the little genin-candidate before her, she felt an upsurge of pride that she hid very carefully behind her usual blood thirsty grin.
"So, you ready for your graduation gift from your wonderful and loving Anko-nee-sama, my dear Naru-chan?" the kid smiled at her shyly in response to her much expected teasing, having spent more then a year getting used to her antics when it came to interacting with people.
"Yes, oh great and wise Mistress of Dango." he was getting much better, he managed to deliver that retort with a completely straight face and no hesitation. When she'd first started teaching him the fine art of conversation, as she so sneakily referred to her method of getting under people's skin simply by talking to them, he'd of needed a moment to gather his idea of statement, and collapsed in fits of giggling halfway through its delivery.
She was glad she'd chosen him for this honor she was about to bestow. The sanctimonious little group of control freaks were not going to be pleased that it was being passed on to yet another generation, but she would rather they mind their own business.
Naruto was her chosen protege, her little brother. And she was going to make certain that he had help at his disposal when he needed it now that he was able to go on missions outside the village when he became a genin.
Leading him further into the woods, to a large clearing that had once been used for a very similar purpose between herself and the man she once called sensei, Anko prepared to do something that she'd never thought she'd do.
She was going to have Naruto sign the Serpent Summoning Contract.
"All right, Naru-chan. This here is the Serpent Contract. The Contract that allows me to summon members of the serpent clan by sacrificing my chakra and a little blood to call one of them in order to do something for me."
"Why is it... wait. You want me to sign the contract? You think I'm ready for something like that?" Naruto's disbelief and honest surprise were very gratifying to Anko, who had had to more then once deal with people who seemed to have these strange notion that the world owed them something.
"Yes. After all, you've become not quite so pathetic over the last year, Naru-chan. Who knows, maybe having a summon will give you that extra bit you need to stop being pathetic entirely?" The look he gave her in that moment was one that she couldn't adequately describe, but it made her feel good, for some reason. Like this kid was really going places. Possibly places no other had been before.
She watched with a small amount of pride as he nicked his thumb and wrote his name on the scroll that she'd brought there for that very purpose. She'd summoned the snake in charge of the contract and convinced it to allow her apprentice to sign, as she was a snake summoner and thought that her student should be one as well.
Now that he'd signed the contract, it was a simple manner of showing him the handseals and watching him attempt it for the very first time.
Of course, knowing his luck, he'll either get a baby snakelet, or he'll end up with...
"Very good Naru-chan, you can follow directions." The glare he gave her just made her smirk more, as his responsiveness always amused her.
"Now, these are the seals you need to perform for the Summoning technique, better known as the Kuchiyose no Jutsu!" Demonstrating the requisite handseals at her usual speed, knowing Naruto's eyes would keep up because of the training Ibiki-kun had been drilling into him on attention to detail and memorization, she summoned the serpent who guards the contract and returned it. Naruto gave the pair of them his undivided attention, while the serpent seemed completely unconcerned with this new potential summoner.
Really, it was just waiting to see what the kid could do. The serpent dismissed itself, and Naruto began the handseals, having re-nicked his thumb for the blood sacrifice to accompany the expended chakra. With a shout, he slammed his hand onto the ground.
The smoke that arouse from the summoning was tremendous, and Anko realized that her apprentice had, in fact, done what she thought he might.
Uzumaki Naruto, twelve year old genin hopeful, future Hokage in his own words, had summoned...
"What the hell am I doing here, Anko?"
...Manda.
Wordlessly, knowing that an explanation would wait until the boy had been tested for suitability for the right to summon the great serpent boss, she gestured to Naruto-kun. Saying in body language what she couldn't bear to say aloud. The giant green-eyed serpent looked up at the little gaki standing on his head, before snorting derisively.
"You expect me to believe this child had the power to someone as powerful as I? Very well, if he wants to summon the serpents, he can either pay me the sacrifices I desire, or he can take my challenge." The giant serpent seemed to be waiting for the same answer he had always gotten.
After all, Manda demanded sacrifices in exchange for his summoning; most people were genuinely terrified of what kind of challenge he would hold as being worth many years of sacrifices.
Anko knew what Naruto would choose, and while it worried her, she couldn't be more proud of him.
"I will take your challenge, Manda-sama, in order to prove myself worthy of summoning your kind." His voice didn't waver in the least, which eased Anko's mind about his chances at succeeding in the Serpent's Challenge.
"Are you sure, little brat? If you fail, I may eat you depending on how badly you suck."
Naruto's eyes hardened with resolve, and he told Manda something that Anko knew would be repeated by many one day.
"I never go back on my word, that is my way of the ninja."
Thank kami they'd managed to break him of saying 'believe it!' She didn't know if Manda would have refrained from eating him on principle.
He couldn't stand loud little repetitive brats.
"Is that so?" Manda's tone sent shivers down her spine, it was way too pleased.
"Then we'll begin the challenge now, little human, to see if you are worthy of working with the clan of serpents." He set Naruto down on the ground, and wound his coils around him in a full circle.
He then lowered his head to look into Naruto's eyes.
"Until the sun has set, you must remain silent. You cannot scream, and you cannot pass out. No matter what it is you see." The seriousness of the situation was obviously impressed upon her apprentice, because she didn't hear him respond, but Manda looked somewhat pleased, as if he had answered.
"Now we'll begin."
And with those sibilant words, the Serpent's Challenge began. Anko leaned back against a tree and kept her eyes on the giant boss summon in front of her.
There was no way she was going anywhere while Naruto was undergoing multiple illusions of his own torture and death brought on by the Serpent's gaze.
It had been going on for hours, and each vision was more horrifically detailed then the last. He'd started feeling the phantom pains hours ago, becoming more and more susceptible to the terrible illusion that is induced by meeting a hunting serpent's gaze.
Their prey is paralyzed with terror as the hypnotic gaze of the graceful reptile reveals the manifold ways in which they can die.
Humans, as a more sentient being with higher brain function, was particularly susceptible to the power of the serpent's gaze. Their own imaginations' work against them, aiding in the creation of the horrifying illusions of the ways they can die.
It was for this reason that not many chose to undergo the Serpent Contract's challenge to get the rights to summon without additional price then chakra and blood.
Most people just can't handle seeing what subjectively feels like days, or even years, of their own death, carried out in various gruesome and decidedly graphic manners.
At first it had started out small, the giant serpent around him had simply crushed him within his coils, a painful but quick death.
Then he'd been bitten by poisonous serpents, and their venom had wracked his body with never ending fires of torment as it attacked his nervous system.
He'd been swallowed whole and slowly suffocated and crushed by the powerful throat of a large serpent, broken strangulation via serpent's coils, held in place as corrosive venom was dripped upon him by a serpent's fangs.
And still he did not scream.
In moments like this he could only be grateful to Iruka-sensei, who made up for his lack of high-powered ninjutsu, and lower physical strength, by mastering any and everything there was to learn about genjutsu.
And while the visions being induced by the serpent's gaze were terrifying in their own right, Iruka-sensei had made very sure that he was able to sense when he was in an illusion. And how to avoid giving in to the illusions even if you could not break out of them.
Those lessons were doing him in very good stead right now, as the illusions induced by staring into Manda's eyes were some of the most traumatizing things he'd ever seen.
And people wondered were Orochimaru had learned the trick of making people see their own death when they met his eyes.
However, even he, with all his willpower and determination, with his nindo of never going back on his words, was beginning to falter.
Naruto was close to his breaking point, and he knew it. One of things all of his sensei's had insisted on was being honest with himself, so that he did not over or under-estimate himself when he went on missions and got into the inevitable eventual battles with enemy ninja.
He wouldn't be able to keep silent much longer, the accumulated mental pain was getting to be too much. If this didn't end soon he was going to scream...
And as soon as he thought that, the images were gone.
Naruto blinked for a moment, not quite processing what had happened. It came back to him, however, when Manda began speaking.
"Very impressive brat. You made it all the way to sunset without screaming." He sounded grudgingly impressed, as though he hadn't thought it possible for a mere child to withstand multiple hours of watching and feeling their own death.
"Since you managed to fulfill the required objective, you've now earned the right to summon myself and my clan. However..." his voice got very ominous as he made a dramatic pause.
"If you do summon me, you better make sure its worth my time." And with that, the serpent boss pulsed his chakra into Naruto, causing a faint burning sensation in his eyes and on his left forearm.
And without further ado, the massive purple and black serpent dispersed into smoke, leaving sensei and student in stunned silence within the clearing.
Anko walked up to him as he looked ahead, slowly coming back to himself after the hugely disorienting sensation of having the serpent's chakra in his body, for however short a time it had been. He finished coming back to his senses enough to look himself over and see what the Boss Summon might have done.
Knowing that it was damned near impossible to look at your own eyes without some kind of bizarre Kekkai Genkai, he looked down at the arm Manda had sent his chakra into.
There, on his arm, was a stylized serpent tattoo in stark black, twining around his arm like some kind of tribal symbol.
"That looks like the one that's on Orochimaru's arm..." then she glanced up at his eyes and gasped.
"What's wrong, Anko-sensei?" When she didn't answer him, he began to grow concerned. However, Anko didn't remain impassive for long, and dragged him over to a very still pond. When they reached it, she pointed at the water and waited for him to look. Unwilling to disobey her when she was acting like this, he obediently looked down into the water. Unbidden, a similar gasp rose in his own throat.
There, in the water, was reflected his face. More specifically, his eyes. His purple lined eyes that had slit pupils.
It looked like he had tattooed purple eye liner on his eyelid, not covering the whole thing, or even extending passed it on either side, but it was definitely noticable.
It was almost as if he had painted a strip of indigo on each of his eyes.
It had the noticeable effect of making the bright cerulean of his eyes stand out more, and somehow added a regal quality to his features, though how that could be, he didn't know.
"What does this mean, Anko-sensei?" He looked away from his reflection to search his sister's eyes for the answer to this new mystery. She looked somewhat uncertain herself.
"I think it's a sign of Manda's acceptance of you as a summoner. That man's is similar, but in a different shade of purple, and its far longer." She sighed, looking frustrated.
"I think we'll just have to wait and see."
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Since it was already so late, Naruto decided to head over to Ichiraku's for dinner, hoping the ramen would aid him in contemplating this latest development in his life.
He knew that it was something different, because he had taken a shower at his home to get rid of the stench of the sweat that had accumulated during the hours long test to become an official Summoner, and neither the summoning tattoo on his arm nor his new "eye liner" would wash off. They were very literally permanent.
Fortunately, he hadn't gone to get his picture taken for his ninja registration yet, or he'd have to go through it again now that his appearance had gained two very distinct additions.
On the plus side, he could not wear orange any longer, as it clashed too much with them, meaning he could claim that someone had made him change his cloths. Most people in his class would readily accept that excuse without further comment, seeing as how most of them either don't care, or would have made him change it anyway.
Now he was wearing dark blue pants and tank top over a long sleeve fishnet shirt with black bandages wrapped around his forearms and ankles to keep his pants from catching on anything. He had his weapon pouch on the right side of his back and his shuriken pouch tied around his left thigh. His hitai-ate was on his forehead, proudly declaring his allegiance to the leaf village.
Inside his pouch was the scroll that Mizuki-sensei had given him earlier that day, which he had finally gotten around to opening after he finished cleaning himself up in his run down home.
It turned out to be a storage scroll that would hold ten things, and one of the slots had already been filled. Sealed away inside his new storage scroll, had been a very well-crafted and beautiful kusari-gama. A real kusari-gama, not one meant for someone in training to learn how to wield the dangerous weapon, but one meant for battle.
In their own ways, his two sensei had been telling him that they were proud of him, and thought that he was ready to handle the realities of being a ninja.
He smiled slightly at the thought as he slurped down more of his ramen, having placed his order on auto-pilot, since he did it so often.
He couldn't wait to practice with his new weapon, but it was already getting too late for any decent training to be done.
Perhaps tomorrow after his picture session, and his training session with his other three sensei. They'd want to see what had happened after his surprise from Anko-nee-chan, who had warned them that she was going to give Naruto something big for finally managing to graduate.
He smiled, looking up at the ceiling as he ordered another bowl.
He could hardly wait for tomorrow.
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Well, this is chapter two, and I managed to introduce some things that will become fairly important later, as well as mess with what Naruto looks like!
Go me!
Oh, and for clarification on what Naruto's eye markings look like, look at either Sango's or Sesshoumaru's from InuYasha, only in Indigo.
I apologize for the delay in updating, but school was getting in the way of my writing time.
Next Chapter: Ibiki, Konohamaru, and meeting Team 7!