Chapter 11: Schemes of the Fox and the Snake.
Disclaimer: I do NOT own Naruto. Naruto is the work of Masashi Kishimoto.

"Fuuin: Storage Seal…"

In a forest not too far from the gates of Konoha, a boy with sunset-colored hair was crouched on the ground. Below him was a scroll. A storage scroll, to be exact.

Currently, the storage scroll was sucking up all the blood and meat goo from underneath a tree.

Three minutes later, all the blood was gone, only a little bit remained on the soil, but even that was covered by the fallen trunks or the tall grass around it.

Standing up, Naruto happened to look at a shattered boulder not too far away from his spot. Seeing the shattered boulder, Naruto's eyes dimmed for a bit before he shook his head.

'That boulder lasted for four years, I didn't expect that it would be destroyed in a heartbeat just like that.'

He had grown attached to the stone boulder that had been crushed into pieces. After all, he always came here when he was in need of peace and quiet.

After bowing to the boulder for one minute, Naruto silently left the forest. As he grew closer and closer to the edge of the forest, his face grew colder and colder. If one didn't know better, one would think that a human had an ice block for a head.

Currently, he is deep in thought.

'I'm inside the village, albeit in the outskirts, but I'm still inside the village walls, yet I was attacked by unknown ninjas,' Naruto sighed, 'as expected, the village isn't safe. There's a threat on both front and back. There's that Danzo guy. I think he's the leader of those ninjas called ROOT.'

Naruto had interacted a lot with ROOT before. Most of the time, ROOT would disguise themselves as civilians and provoke him. He retaliated by trashing them and beating them to a bloody pulp, forcing the other ROOT to rescue their companion as the disguised ROOT couldn't just fight back. He was disguised, after all.

The reason he knew that the ROOT disguised themselves was thanks to an emotional radar called the nine-tailed fox. The fox told him that those ROOT ninjas were like logs. Their emotional state was so bad that the fox compared them to rotting logs!

As for how Naruto guessed Danzo's identity, well, it was just that. A guess. He was provoked by ROOT so many times that he couldn't even count the number of times he beat them up, so he guessed that the only person corrupt enough to let enemy ninjas enter the village must be the leader of the despicable organization called ROOT.

'There's also Orochimaru, one of the three legendary ninjas, the Snake Sannin. What a mess. It's like a bunch of cockroaches scurrying about and competing to devour some rotting tree.'

Naruto ran to his apartment while formulating various plans to ensure his safety.

'Preparations to leave this damned village is a must. For that, I need to find loopholes in the village wall's patrol schedule. Unfortunately, both ROOT and the hokage's ANBU guard me twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week.'

Naruto encountered this problem two years ago, but he had yet to formulate a proper way to solve the issue. The most he could do was try to suppress his chakra and sneak near the village walls, but that was too risky.

Suddenly, he remembered the bodies of the chunin he killed earlier. It was the first time he killed. In fact, it was his first time killing something. He could handle meat or fish when cooking, but they were already dead. Furthermore, even if he killed animals, it wouldn't be as impactful as killing a person.

He didn't expect that he would have no trouble after his first kill. In fact, he was exhilarated at the sight of blood. It was like something inside of him got excited whenever he saw blood. Even his kekkei genkai, the Adamantine Chakra Chains reacted and he almost let them out.

If he did, he would've been shocked, but unfortunately, he didn't. As a matter of fact, he had almost forgotten about them. It was because he couldn't control them properly, and his sealing techniques don't require the chakra chains, yet.

'Wow, I didn't expect to awaken such interests,' Naruto chuckled while a certain fox was disturbed, thinking about all the red-haired lunatics he remembered seeing during his long life.

'Speaking of blood, I can't believe those chunins died so easily. Just because they were distracted, they paid the heavy price of death.'

Remembering his fight with the two chunins, Naruto shook his head in disapproval. He wasn't disappointed at the two chunins, he was just disappointed that he didn't have better means of defending against surprise attacks.

'I may have the resources to properly defend against surprise attacks, but that doesn't mean I know how to use my resources to defend against surprise attacks or other trump cards.'

Just like how a baby can't write even if it had a pencil, and how a ninja can't create jutsu even though they had the chakra, he was too naïve and his experiences were too little to maximize his potential.

He was a flower raised in a greenhouse, the outside world was too dangerous for the current him.

Putting aside the treasonous thoughts, Naruto took out a ten inches long scroll with a diameter of 2 inches.

'From now on, I need to carry all my belongings in a scroll. That way, if I need to leave the village, I can do so without hesitation. That aside, I need to create a modified formula for the Storage Seal.'

Satisfied with his plan, Naruto slept. He had to attend the academy early tomorrow. Although he doesn't see the point of having an academy in the first place, Naruto can't not attend classes, even though he was the dead last. He was dead last because he didn't bother to do anything in the academy, his grades were literally blank!

It's not that he disliked the idea of having an academy, it's just he dislike that the academy didn't teach more practical lessons. Theory is important, but what are genin going to do if they don't have any practical skills?

He was baffled when he found that the academy didn't have classes for chakra control training.

Aside from wanting to bolster his strength by gaining experience, Naruto was also interested in other kekkei genkai. Needless to say, having a kekkei genkai is one of the fastest ways to increase your power. Specifically, Naruto was interested in the dojutsu of the Hyuuga clan and the Uchiha clan.

'I want to see if I can combine the two dojutsus.'

At the academy, Naruto has two targets. For the Uchiha clan's sharingan, the only target is Uchiha Sasuke, the last Uchiha aside from his brother, Uchiha Itachi. Naruto befriended Uchiha Sasuke after defeating him in a spar, but he was disappointed to learn that Sasuke had yet to awaken his sharingan.

In the end, he switched his eyes to his second target, Hyuuga Hinata.

Naruto was forced to pick Hinata as his target for the byakugan because the branch family of the Hyuuga clan had the Cage Bird Seal, which means that he can't perform research on their byakugan. On the other hand, the other Hyuuga from the main family were either too strong or heavily guarded.

Only Hinata had no guards.

Naruto sensed something fishy toward this. He felt like Hinata was being discriminated against by her own clan, but he couldn't care less. Hinata liked him, he knew that. He found it interesting how Hinata was full of pride and grace, yet gentle at the same time toward others, but when it came to him, she would be as shy as a child who was caught red-handed secretly eating chocolate.

Sometimes, Naruto would feel guilty about his secret plans to kidnap her, but he comforted himself that guilt had no place in the ninja world. After all, creating sealing techniques requires a vast amount of research. Furthermore, the research he was interested in is kekkei genkai, human experimentation cannot be avoided.

He was resolute to steel his heart and become cold-hearted if it meant being able to create more sealing techniques.

'Sorry Hinata, I hope you don't mind me poking around your eyes. I promise I'll make good use of them,'

Naruto had already created a seal that would allow him to kidnap Hinata or any other living being. He called it "Living Body Imprisonment." In simple terms, it was a modified storage seal. But storage seals can't support life, whereas the Living Body Imprisonment Seal can.

Unfortunately, it was not yet finished. Once Naruto figures out how to keep the person inside the seal alive, the seal would be considered ready to use. Naruto began this project last year, so his progress was relatively slow.

'It would be great if I can speed up my research. I wonder if there is a jutsu that can speed up the brain's thinking speed.'

The last problem that Naruto had to solve before the seal is usable is keeping the target alive when he sends them into the seal, and when he retrieves them from the seal. A storage seal works by sending the items into a separate dimension of the seal. The Living Body Imprisonment is a modified storage seal that sends living beings into a separate pocket dimension, rather than objects.

The problem is that once a living person enters that pocket dimension, they would lose all life. Naruto spent three months creating a pocket dimension using seals big enough for humans. He spent the rest of the year trying to find a way to keep the person alive inside the seal but to no avail.

'It'd be great if father and mother are here. They are both seal masters, I don't believe they don't know how to solve this.'

After talking with the nine tails, Naruto found out who his parents were and what they did to make sure that he survived. According to the nine tails, his father, Minato, sealed the nine tails into him so as to protect the balance of the world.

But as Minato's son, he felt that the story was crooked. As Minato's son, he felt like his father sealed the nine tails into him because he was biased toward him. Minato wanted his son to become powerful and special, so he sealed the nine tails into Naruto. That's how Naruto thought about the entire situation so he never hated his father.

"Sigh…"

[Undisclosed location]

"Those two failed?"

A tall man with long black hair asked as he licked his lips. He had golden, snake-like eyes with a purple marking around his eyes that stretched to the sides of his nose.

"They did, master Orochimaru."

The tall man was Orochimaru of the snake sannin, and the person who answered him had white hair and round glasses. It was Orochimaru's right-hand man, Yakushi Kabuto.

"It doesn't matter. They are just chunin, the result should've been expected. But then again, Naruto's academy results are as clean as a blank paper, I didn't expect him to repel those two chunin fodder. Kabuto, send another two ninjas. This time, send two jonins."

"Yes, master."

After Kabuto left the room, Orochimaru opened a scroll that he was working on. On the far right of the scroll, it read: "Mysteries of the Uzumaki."

He became interested in Uzumaki Naruto when he first lost control of the kyuubi's chakra. Before, he had no idea who the kyuubi's jinchuuriki was, but now he knew.

'It's another Uzumaki,' he thought.

He didn't think anything of it, but when he learned Uzumaki Karin, his subordinate, was able to create seals that he, Orochimaru, couldn't, he was intrigued. After a couple of testing, Orochimaru realized that Karin had no interest in sealing techniques and barely had any talent in the field.

Rather than a sealing master, Karin was more of a scientist, thus Orochimaru stopped eyeing Karin.

Instead, he set his eyes on the other Uzumaki that he knew. Uzumaki Naruto. Only, Naruto was stronger than he expected, so his experiments were momentarily delayed.

"No matter, I will get you sooner or later, Uzumaki Naruto. With the sealing techniques of the Uzumaki, my sealing techniques should rise to another level."

Orochimaru's cursed seal, which made him essentially immortal, relied on sealing techniques. But he encountered a problem. Each time he transferred into another vessel, his soul would weaken. He wanted to eliminate this problem as soon as possible, so he set his eyes on the Uzumaki clan's sealing techniques.

He hoped that by learning about the secrets of the Uzumaki clan's sealing techniques, he could get rid of his weakness. This was because the weaker his soul, the weaker his resistance against genjutsu. This was evident when Uchiha Itachi put him under genjutsu without any issue.

This wasn't the only encounter he had with genjutsu experts. One day, when he was strolling about his village when he encountered a jonin-level spy that used genjutsu. If not for Kabuto, he would've fallen for the spy's genjutsu and unknowingly spilled the beans about his own village.

This made him resolute in finding a solution for his weakness.