Hey there everybody. I'm still writing the 2nd chapter right now, I wanted to publish the first chapter at 5k words, but it seemed like the perfect time to end it. Anyways, here goes nothing.

Disclaimer: SNTT: "HEY, DID WE GET OWNERSHIP YET?"

Tobi "NO!"

SNTT: "(SPOILER ALERT) But Tobi, you and Madara are going to take over the Naruto world anyways, can't we just say we own it?"

Tobi: "Haha *Sweatdrops* He's just kidding, we don't own Naruto! Don't arrest Tobi! Tobi is a good boy!"

Chapter 2: Water, water as far as the eye can see, but not a drop to drink.

"We have to test into the ranks immediately with a fight against a jonin?" Naruto asked incredulously.

"I know, but unless you plan on challenging the hokage himself, we are going to have to take the test. It's either that or start the academy with my little brother." Itachi replied. They both shivered at the thought.

"It's been a while since we got to play with a kage-level." Naruto said in a sing-song voice.

"You and I both know that old monkey could beat us. We might have power, but you don't survive two ninja wars with a healthy body on luck alone. He's too crafty, and he knows it. You might have technically lived for centuries through your clones, but a hundred hours of training won't do what a 6 hour frontline war situation can for your abilities and reserves." Itachi replied evenly.

Before Naruto could reply, they reached their destination: Their old sensei's apartment. Neither of them had seen Kakashi since they sealed themselves off from the majority of Konoha.

"Yo." Kakashi appeared behind them, and he wasn't surprised when both boys looked at him as if they had been expecting him.

"Come on Kakashi; let's get this thing over with. I'm going to use the same technique I used when I first appeared in the Hokage's office." Before Kakashi could protest, Naruto grabbed both him and the Uchiha by their shirts, and pulled. Kakashi had the odd sensation of going through a shunshin without using any chakra. Instead of pushing a concentrated blast of chakra to his feet, he felt as if he was being pulled to a destination by his tenketsu points.

When they finally appeared in a dark forest clearing, Kakashi had to sit down, as the feeling of being pulled through someone else's shunshin made him incredibly dizzy. He looked around and saw it was a secluded clearing in the depths of the forest of death

After sitting for a second, he released a burst of chakra and appeared on the other side of the clearing.

"I was under the impression that jutsu was a mokuton, you seemed to appear from the wood in the Hokage's office?" Kakashi asked curiously.

"Ah, that was just a little genjutsu from Itachi to make it look fancy." Naruto said with a chuckle.

"Well, unless you want to say anything else, shall we get to it?" Kakashi asked from behind the Icha-Icha he had seemingly produced from his large puff of silver hair.

"You're fighting me first." Said Naruto with a grin at his former sensei's antics, and without a further word, melted into mud.

'Odd, before they sealed themselves off, Naruto mainly stuck to Kage Bushin. I wonder how much he has learned in the past 5 years.' Kakashi thought as he felt the environment around him for any minute disturbance.

Trusting his sixth sense, Kakashi performed a lightning-fast substitution with a branch on one of the trees, just in time to miss two kunai that had shot out of the ground itself. In less than a split second, Kakashi had realized two things. First, the kunai were made out of wood, obviously grown into that shape and not cut out of the wood, so Naruto must have some mastery of mokuton now. And secondly, those weren't just kunai that had been shot at Kakashi. They were a special fuinjutsu kunai he would recognize anywhere, because his own late sensei had used them. Kakashi jumped off the tree as soon as he realized this, but it was too late.

In a flash of yellow, Naruto appeared in midair, throwing the two seal-inscribed kunai at Kakashi, before disappearing in another flash of yellow, and reappearing at the kunai just as they came within blocking distance of Kakashi.

As he got a closer look at Naruto's clothes, he realized that the cloak Naruto now wore was not in fact black speckled with white, as Kakashi had initially thought, but hundreds of tiny seals, written so small that, from far away, they seemed to be nearly solid black. His dark cargo shinobi shorts were of the same ink-covered variety, and the bandages on his legs seemed to be inscribed with so many seals they had a separate chakra system from Naruto's own. But his thoughts were pulled away from the clothes as Naruto formed a quick ox seal, and gathered a large amount of chakra in the air between them.

'Wait a minute… the way he is molding his chakra… that's not possible!' But as Kakashi shunshin'd away, he saw that his fears were indeed correct. Naruto had just used the Great Fire Dragon jutsu, an S-rank heavy assault jutsu that normally took 19 hand seals and at least six seconds to prepare, with a single ox seal in less than a second. He hadn't even made an audibly noticeable inhalation before the dragon erupted from his lips, much less a yell declaring his jutsu.

Kakashi retreated to the center of the clearing, revealed his sharingan, and cut the flow of chakra to his gravity seals.

"You're already that serious? Sensei, I'm flattered." Naruto said as he landed on the ground. He brandished the two wooden kunai in front of him casually.

Kakashi made no reply, instead opting to slip into a series of rapid-fire hand signs, and gripped his arm before crouching low in his typical Raikiri stance. Naruto could see the gathering of chakra and sense the lightning chakra tingling on his skin, but Kakashi wasn't running like he usually would to gather power for the jutsu. Suddenly, Kakashi turned slightly and Naruto saw something that made his heart drop. Kakashi didn't need to run because the jutsu was gathering far more power by compressing and spinning in his hand. Before Naruto could throw a lightning god kunai, Kakashi disappeared.

"RaikiRengan!" Naruto looked up in time to see streaks or pure white lightning shooting towards him in a tight spiral. His eyes widened, and he was awestruck by the pure power behind the jutsu. As many hours of training and fighting as he had under his belt, nothing could prepare him for the sensation of a jutsu barreling toward him that would no doubt kill him if it got even a second to do so. At the last moment he threw a lightning god kunai to the side in a low and fast flick of the wrist, but it was too late.

Kakashi watched, astonished, as the tightly spiraling ball of lightning hit Naruto dead in the upper torso, ripping through his clothes and skin, and making a bloody mess of his chest. The damage was so extensive, Kakashi could see Naruto's lungs trying to heal and continue breathing, but the surrounding tissue was quickly filling his lungs with blood and bone shrapnel. Not even the Kyuubi could pump his lungs, heal internal bleeding, get bone chips out of his veins, and generate enough new blood to keep him stable.

No, as Kakashi landed next to a pile of gore, he knew that he had killed his former student, one of the foremost prodigies in shinobi history. The only child he had ever sworn to protect, dead at his own hand.

Kakashi's right eye started bleeding, and the sharingan was spinning so wildly it seemed little more than a black blur, circling his pupil. Partly congealed blood coursed down his face as his dojutsu evolved into the Mangekyou Sharingan, one of the rarest and most powerful bloodlines in the world.

A new Naruto appeared across from the weeping kakashi, and the jonin looked at him with profound confusion. That confusion slowly started melting into anger and blind rage.

"Normally I wouldn't show this technique so early in a fight, but I'm not sure I can afford to use anything less." Naruto said darkly, before brandishing a single kunai of the Thunder God kunai in front of himself in the same hand seal that minato used for his space-time barrier to transport the Kyuubi's compressed chakra bomb. Although he had seen it before, Kakashi only now realized that he knew what it was. But it was a Buddhist monk's meditation seal, not a shinobi hand seal. He recognized it as the hand seal zai, the ring of light.

"Flying Thunder God Technique: Embodiment. Glory to divine perfection." Naruto spoke softly and calmly, but the seal on the kunai released a bolt of lightning, and shone a bright, nearly unbearable yellow. As his confusion turned more to rage, Kakashi noted that Naruto's appearance had changed.

The young boy now had long, lightning-yellow hair, the exact same shade the late Yondaime had, whipping around at his waist. He was taller now, around 5'8 by Kakashi's estimation. Two bright yellow seals shone on his shoulders, glowing so brightly they were clearly visible through the boy's long cloak. His eyes were bright red with tiny black pupils, and Kakashi started growling.

As the corpse on the ground slowly started to melt into something resembling bloody jelly, Kakashi screamed and ribs erupted from his back as a foreign entity attached itself to him. Naruto grinned manically and chuckled eerily.

With an explosion of chakra so powerful every tree for 100 meters was flattened, Kakashi's Susanoo exploded into growth, changing from a bare skeletal system into a fully armored, 14 meter tall warrior in seconds. But every Uchiha's Susanoo was different, just as their Mangekyou were unique. Kakashi's Susanoo was covered in traditional samurai armor from head to… well, waist, except for two holes in its traditional Oni mask. But there were no eyes under the mask, only giant pits that seemed to show rain and storms and destruction when gazed into for too long. But before Naruto could become bewitched by its haunting eyes, his attention was drawn to the weapons Susanoo had. In its right hand, it wielded a long, wickedly glowing tooth, and on its left forearm was a shield that seemed to be spiked straight through the chakra creature.

Without a moment's warning, Kakashi focused his bleeding eye on Naruto, and his Susanoo slashed the gigantic white fang at Naruto faster than he would have thought possible for such a large being. But in his Thunder God Embodiment State, it would have to be a lot faster than that to hit him. Naruto reappeared in front of Kakashi and his dojutsu's creation and landed three thundering blows, knocking Kakashi back a little less than 4 meters.

Naruto disappeared from in front of Kakashi, and reappeared back next to Itachi.

"He won't last very long in that state his first time. If you want to get your test in, best do it now." Naruto said with a joking tone, but Itachi saw the truth behind his words. With a burst of chakra to his eyes, then feet, he appeared in front of Kakashi's Susanoo with his own activated.

With blazing eyes, Itachi's Susanoo swung his sword again and again, only to be flawlessly parried or blocked by Kakashi's own. Suddenly Itachi disappeared from in front of Kakashi, and appeared directly above Kakashi and his Susanoo.

"I want to show you what I have learned in the past few years teacher. Please prepare yourself." Itachi said to him with a strange tone in his voice, on that Kakashi easily identified as battle insanity, an all too common trait amongst uchiha.

"Heavenly fire's celebration: jubilant destruction." Itachi screamed at the top of his lungs, a sharp contrast to the soft, slightly scratchy voice Itachi normally used.

A flow of thick, burning gelatinous substance erupted from Itachi's outstretched rat seal, and Kakashi's Sharingan-fueled avatar held up his shield. The substance from Itachi's jutsu clumped on top of the shield, before exploding with such force, the entire forest of death shook.

As the smoke and dust and debris cleared, Itachi could see Kakashi unconscious on the ground, the last of his reserves pumped into the shield to protect against the explosion.

"Looks like the test is over. We should bring Kakashi back to the Hokage's office, I'm sure the monkey was watching, and I'm sure he has seen plenty enough to place us." Itachi said to Naruto.

Without a word, Naruto shunshin'd to where the uchiha and their sensei stood, before pulling all three into a shunshin to the Hokage's office.

When they arrived, Naruto caught a glimpse of Icha-Icha before the old man stowed his precious… literature in his desk.

"Well, looks like you had an interesting reunion. What happened?" The third hokage asked curiously.

"I don't know why you bother asking these things anymore. Itachi, I'll see you at Ichiraku's, ok?" Naruto didn't wait for an answer, but simply disappeared in a dulled flash of yellow.

"What happened to that boy? Before you two sealed yourselves off, he was such a friendly child." Sarutobi said sadly.

"Naruto started to scratch the surface of his potential. But he has also had a taste of the price he will have to pay for the power necessary to protect his precious people." Itachi replied, his tone equally depressed at the state of his friend.

"The price of his power? What do you mean my boy? And how powerful do you believe he truly is?" The hokage asked seriously. Itachi sensed the slight change in his tone from concerned grandfather to strategizing military leader.

"Naruto has the potential to become the most powerful ninja in history. Between how much power he has inherited, and how hard he has trained to protect his comrades and friends, I doubt there is a threat in the world that Naruto couldn't handle. Hell, if it came down to it, I wouldn't discount Naruto in a fight against Madara or Hashirama, once he has had a little more time to develop his abilities. To be honest about his power, I'm not sure exactly how much Naruto could do, if pushed to it. Many of his techniques require a sacrifice of some kind from him or another person for completion of the technique. Things of such power cannot be done halfway, nor can they be undone. I doubt anyone will ever truly find out how powerful he is until they push him to death's door." Itachi said seriously.

"That thought is both comforting and terrifying. Do you ever get jealous of being in the shadow of someone younger than you but more powerful?" The hokage had never spoken so candidly with Itachi, and he decided that the old man deserved an equally honest response.

"No. I haven't ever been jealous of his power, nor will I ever be. The price of power I mentioned earlier? It is naruto's mind." Itachi said sadly.

"What do you mean his mind?" The hokage queried.

"Naruto is capable of many impressive feats of nin, tai, gen, and fuinjutsu, as well as many other forbidden techniques, but no ninja, regardless of age or wisdom, should know the things Naruto knows. In order to do many of his techniques, he loses a piece of his sanity. While Naruto can create a seal complex enough to change the landscape completely, he will one day look at a seal used to heat stoves, or a random plant, and decide it is the most beautiful and simple thing he has ever seen, and he will devote his life to it. At some small, unknowable trigger, Naruto's consciousness will lose interest in all other things on this planet, and his mind will cease to want anything else, leaving little more than a rambling husk that his loved ones will mourn. No, while I may never achieve his level of power, I'm content to stay safe in my knowledge in techniques, so that when Naruto does break, someone will be there to take care of him until he comes back to our world or dies." It wasn't the frank way with which Itachi delivered his synopsis of Naruto that shocked the hokage, but the resigned tone that the boy used. Nothing was more heartbreaking than to watch your friend slowly killing himself, knowing that if you stop him, hundreds of people might suffer or die for lack of a protector.

"But regardless, I must know. What is the most powerful technique you have seen him use?" Although he hated to pry, if he was going to have Naruto as part of his shinobi force he needed to know his capabilities.

"I understand. I'll tell you, but you must never tell anyone else, nor can you let Naruto think that you know of this technique." Itachi said.

FURASHUBAKU

"Don't worry Itachi, I'll blast this asshole to pieces in no time, and we can be on our way." Naruto spoke with confidence about their newest bounty excursion. They made 5-6 bounty collections in a week, sometimes more. With all the supplies they burned through in their training, they needed all the money they could get.

But Itachi had a bad feeling about this particular day. The forest they were walking through was nearly silent. Birds, animals, fish, all reticent. Normally this only happened when storms were near, but Itachi knew for a fact that storms were near nonexistent in western fire country forests this time of year.

"The guy from the collection office said that we could probably find the asshole and the girl over this hill somewhere." The asshole, as Naruto insisted on calling him, was none other than Marahosu Kanse. A seemingly random low life scum missin-nin chunin that managed to bribe a genin kunoichi into helping him steal 40 million ryo (A/N ryo in this story will be 1:1 against U.S. dollars for simplicity) from a civilian businessman.

Naruto smiled as the house came into view. It was an old, abandoned supply store for travelers. Just as they came within hearing distance of the house, they heard a girl crying in the house.

Naruto burst into movement, barely slowing to slap his hand on the wall to melt it with a seal. When Itachi got into the house, the man they were after was naked on one side of the room, and the genin was blocked by Naruto. Itachi couldn't see what happened, but there was blood, a lot of it on the floor.

"Itachi, take the girl and run." Naruto said the words calmly, but Itachi immediately ran to the kunoichi's side without so much as glancing at her, and started to shunshin away from the supply store as fast as he could.

Though the girl was hysterical at her rape and abuse (Itachi hadn't even looked at her to judge her condition, he was too focused on running as far away as possible.), she managed to make an intelligible string of words, almost resembling a sentence.

"You… have to go… back.. man's not…. He seems." That was all Itachi could understand, but he understood what she was trying to say.

"Yes, well, neither is the boy." Itachi replied, when he was lifted off the branch he was about to push off of, and thrown forward. He barely managed to brace himself and the kunoichi before hitting the ground, but thankfully neither he nor the genin had broken anything.

Itachi turned around to see a cloud of debris and dust rising into the air where the building was a minute ago. Even 4 kilometers away, Itachi had still felt the effects of whatever technique Naruto had used.

"Is the girl okay?" Naruto reappeared next to Itachi, completely unscathed.

"Eh? That was a clone? What technique could a clone possibly pull of like that?" Itachi wasn't surprised by much, but now he was legitimately confused.

"That? That was just one of those exploding clones you like so much." Naruto said, also confused as to why Itachi had asked.

FURASHUBAKU END

"That technique requires nothing but pure chakra, overloaded into a clone, doesn't it?" Sarutobi asked. Itachi just nodded, knowing that the hokage would understand the implications of that.

"Well, I had best be going; Naruto is expecting me after all. Goodnight Hokage-sama." Itachi said before disappearing in a swirl of fire, leaving the third to contemplate his student's slowly deteriorating mental health.

CHAPTER END

Hey guys, thanks for reading. R&R. To clear a few things up, insanity is something Naruto, and every other ninja to a lesser extent, will have to deal with. There will be no medical ninjutsu, fuinjutsu, or forbidden technique that cures this. Itachi wasn't lying when he said that one day, Naruto's mind will stop functioning. As morbid a thought as it is, no power comes for free, and because of his jinchuuriki status, his uzumaki heritage, and his fuinjutsu mastery, he could never have an ailment of the body, so the gods see fit to disease his mind.