Magma through Leaves

by A238

"At first, I thought this was nothing more than a plan gone awry, some bizarre twist of fate. I couldn't think of a better explanation. After all, how else would one of Iwa's jinchuuriki end up here, in the arms of their greatest enemy?" AU, OC

2. 1: Games

This is a redone version of the first chapter of Magma through Leaves. When I say redone, I mean more of a complete overhaul of this chapter and the story as a whole. The first version sucked, plain and simple. I hope this one doesn't. And away we go.

---

Chapter 1: Games

---

Konohagakure no Sato was built in a land of forests. Hi no Kuni was a green, vibrant nation, teeming with life and flora and fauna of all sorts and species. He found it odd, given the name of the country.

In his experience, fire burnt. He was sure many others would say the same. Fire burnt, and it did not build. It did not create. It did not sustain. It did not give life. No foundation could be found in fire. Yet Konohagakure no Sato prided itself on its Will of Fire, the spirit handed down from the Senju clan to the people to love the village with everything and defend it with the same strength of emotion, the same power of feeling. It was more contradictions that somehow made sense. In Konoha, everything was built on a foundation of fire, but the forest it lived in didn't burn.

Odd, indeed.

Konoha existed in a place of trees and forest, so he had to adapt to it. The shinobi of Konoha knew their terrain. They knew how to navigate it, how to manipulate it, how to use it to their advantage. It was only natural that those who lived among trees understood them best. Chief among those understandings of trees and forests was the ability to hide in them.

Stealth wasn't his forte. He doubted it ever would be, but it was a necessary skill. They all learned it, and they would all use it at one point or another. Not every encounter was direct, not every unfavourable situation was remedied with straightforward action. Some required a more artful approach, a silent, unseen one. This was one of those times. It was perhaps unusual, considering he was only a few hours out of the Academy, but he put that in the back of his mind. He needed to be here. But why?

He wondered what he, a fresh genin clad in grey and black and concealed in the gloom of the trees surrounding the clearing he watched over, was doing here. But then he reminded himself: he needed to be sure of something.

It was the chance of finding an answer to a question he asked himself frequently: am I alone? Some time ago, that question had replaced another one: why am I alone?

The context was different back in those days, a lot lonelier than he was in the present, but it had been answered by a strange series of events he preferred to never discuss. With his question rendered null and void by a decree of the world itself, he began asking something else of himself. Arguably, he had been content to continue asking that newer question, but when a sliver of hope that there was another just like him presented itself, he grabbed at it, regardless of what he was letting go of in pursuit of it. In that, he realised that his contentment wasn't quite what it seemed. In the end, he still felt hollow, alone, but he saw a way to change that. If what he suspected was true, he wasn't alone.

He almost smiled.

He frowned at the unneeded pulling of his facial muscles and shook his head free of thoughts, clutching a hand at his forehead only to be stopped by his hitai-ate. He was still unaccustomed to the presence of the metal band on blue cloth he needed to change to black resting on his brow, and old habits did not fade quickly. But it was unimportant. He had to focus.

There was movement beyond the single person crouched and studying a large scroll in the middle of the clearing, situated outside an old shack. Someone was approaching from the south-east at speed through the temperate branches, faster than the typical genin could hope to manage.

There were two possibilities as to the identity of the approaching individual: Iruka, or Mizuki. The latter was doubtlessly going to show up sooner or later, but the former was likely to arrive given the perpetrator of the offence, not to mention the sort-of history between the boy in orange and the chuunin instructor in the green flak jacket with the red swirl that no one seemed to take note of.

It was Iruka who arrived first. He could see concern on the chuunin's face – genuine concern. It wasn't something he saw directed towards those like him often. But concern was soon replaced by alarm as Iruka pushed Naruto away, allowing himself to be robbed of the opportunity to dodge. Kunai flew around him, natural reactions and instinct took over, but one kunai reached his thigh. Iruka staggered back. Blood trailed down the wooden wall of the old shack.

Mizuki dropped into view, landing in the branches on the other side of the clearing. And he began to speak. Words were exchanged, flying back between the two chuunin like angry shuriken. Mizuki showed his hand before it should've been revealed.

So... I was right.

Brushing a strand of dark hair from the slightly reflective surface of his forehead protector, he readied himself. Though his question had been answered, he had a duty to fulfil: protect his fellow jinchuuriki. And that moment of responsibility was upon him.

Koan recalled the words of his bijuu as he plunged into the clearing, slamming metallic night aside with a clenched fist blazing with chakra.

Brotherhood is not defined by the number, but by the tail.

---

As he sat there on the rickety swing outside and watched the others, an arm supporting his slumped head on the thin rope and the other left to dangle aimlessly by his side, he remembered something: he never wanted to be a ninja.

When he was very young, he had a dream of wandering the world, helping the people he encountered however he could. He wanted to do some good in the lands he travelled. He wanted to drift from place to place, following the wind as it guided him across the length and breadth of the world. He wanted to take life at his own pace, and to walk his own path. He wanted to be free.

As much as wanted that, it wasn't an option.

He never knew why, but his life seemed... predetermined, to an extent. The path he had been set on wasn't the one he chose; someone else had already chosen it for him. But yet again, that wasn't entirely accurate. It was more that he didn't have any other options. There was only one path he could walk: a ninja's path.

It was because of who he was he supposed. An orphan never to be adopted was left with fewer and fewer prospects for a prosperous life as they grew, and he was no exception. Eventually, he was forced to make a choice: stay in the orphanage, or start attending the Academy. The choice was clear, but he didn't like it.

There were benefits to it, at first. He liked having a place to call his own, no matter how modest and rundown his apartment was. He liked being able to have a little quiet and be on his own; he never had real peace in the orphanage, especially when the carers decided they had run out of breakfast or lunch on some days, just when it was his turn to be served. He liked learning something, anything; there was only so much he could learn by watching life go on around him, gazing upon a sea of nameless faces that didn't see or acknowledge him at a distance, and seeing the cold, dispassionate glances towards him when the older people passed him by on the street. The only other benefit of note was the small sum of money he had to his name each month, the part of his stipend that didn't pay for his apartment.

Slowly, he became... less averse to the idea of being a ninja.

But as he got older, he saw more and he understood more. Those benefits weren't quite as great as he had first thought.

His apartment, despite how badly the walls needed a coat of paint and how irritating a leaky ceiling could be during rain, was perfectly liveable. He liked it. But the things he had inside eventually started to break. Furniture got old and worn, appliances stopped working, pipes got clogged and wires got frayed. He couldn't repair much because he didn't know how to. He couldn't buy things right when he needed them because he didn't have that much money. He just had to grit his teeth and bear it. He could do that.

Initially, the solitude wasn't so bad. He had quiet when he wanted it, and he didn't have to deal with people that offered him fake smiles and secretive glances of distaste and disgust in the place he slept. But it got lonely. He didn't have anyone to talk to. He noticed that more and more. Even at the Academy, the kids tended not to go near him much, same as a lot of the adults on the streets. He was alone a lot, too much in reality. There were rare moments when he got to spend some time with the others after classes, at playgrounds and the like, but they always came to a swift end when the parents would come and haul them away, leaving him alone with their hurried looks of revolt and distrust.

As he got older, he saw those looks constantly, from a lot of people. But it was worse when they ignored him like he wasn't even there. He hated it. So he made them look at him. Pranks started to fill up his life, taking up space in his mind and the cupboards in his apartment, odd supplies and orange tracksuits alike. He drew attention with graffiti, with vandalism, with the occasional stolen piece of fruit. Then he threw on a cheeky grin and ran away as fast as he could. They couldn't ignore him then.

He did the same at the Academy. He let his grades, sitting just below average, slide, and became the class clown, the centre of attention to be laughed at. While he learned less at the Academy because he focused intently on drawing attention to himself, that wasn't the only reason. He was never particularly good at the theory and the written stuff, but he noticed that the difficulty on what he got graded on spiked suddenly at times. After a bit of careful observation, he realised his tests were different to his classmates. They were setting him up to fail. Again, he saw those looks of hate and detached disgust, even if they weren't on the faces of the people passing him by.

When he was younger, he would've recoiled, shrinking back into himself to hide. But he was determined to prove them wrong. Despite his own beliefs and dreams, he was going to be a ninja, and he was going to be the best ninja: the Hokage. He was going to become Hokage just to prove them wrong. That was his new dream.

The first step was getting out of the Academy.

So he threw himself into training, trying to do his best to succeed, to conquer whatever challenges life sent hurtling his way. He spent countless hours on the Henge and Kawarimi, cycling through the hand seals over and over again until he could perform them with some semblance of ease. After a while, he achieved his goal.

He tried to strengthen his taijutsu however he could, but it wasn't easy. What he had been taught was awkward, useless and ultimately pointless. In other words, they were just setting him up for another failure. So he abandoned trying to fix it through the basic Academy scrolls – he had never really found much use for those things, anyway – and adopted simple, haphazard brawling. It was chaotic and messy, but through sheer effort, he made it work.

He went to great lengths trying to overcome the biased tests and work set for him by the Academy's chuunin instructors, doing his best to revise and study the content, struggling to make sense of everything on his own. With no real source of knowledge other than his own mind – he wished he could access the library, but the staff kept getting in his way at every turn –, he had to make do with little more than half of what he needed to know.

He put in so much time and so much effort in getting his shit together for the last test. But it was all immaterial now, all useless.

He failed. For the third time in a row, he failed the genin test.

All his work amounted to nothing, all because of the Bunshin no Jutsu, the one useless clone technique he just couldn't pull off no matter how much chakra he shoved into it. Right when he needed it to work, the clone just appeared like a pathetic, pale ghost of himself, tumbled to the ground and then disappeared in a pitiful cloud of smoke.

He looked away from the crowd of congratulating parents and excited new shinobi, training his eyes on the ground and watching leaves caught up in the gentle wind float into the sky. Unlike him, the leaves were free.

He chuckled to himself at the irony. He was trying to become a shinobi of Konohagakure no Sato, the Village Hidden in the Leaves, yet he was firmly tied down to a path he didn't want to walk. Despite the relaxed, unrestricted namesake and attitude of his village, he didn't feel free in the slightest.

So what now?

He remained on the swing, eyes on the dusty ground, heart desiring freedom, mind working tiredly. He wasn't sure on what was next.

He still had dreams. There were wants and desires he could pursue. But all that pegged on his becoming a shinobi, on graduating and getting on a team and taking the first steps on the road to becoming Hokage. Without that, they just fell into disarray. Without that, his hopes and dreams were worthless.

Maybe... no, he couldn't leave. He couldn't just run away from his problems. Despite everything, Konoha was still his home. He was born in the village, and so he would remain in the village. It wasn't like there was a whole world out there, waiting for him to walk out into nature and explore, sitting quietly in whistling winds as he languished aimlessly in the village that stopped him-

Damn it, just stop! He kept slipping into that weak state of mind, the mentality that accepted defeat and ran away into the distance, never looking back as he fled into the forest, leapt through the trees, scaled mountains and swam oceans, breathing free air all the while.

It sounded glorious to him, a boy trapped in a village of shinobi walking paths he didn't want to take. But it was so cowardly. He wanted that ability to choose his own path and follow the wind where it went, and he wanted it more than he wanted respect and positive attention and friends, but he wanted it the right way.

And that way was the way of the ninja, the only path that had ever been put before him. More than just his route to acceptance and the title of Hokage, it was his ticket to freedom.

He just didn't know how to get it.

"Hey, Naruto."

The boy in question spared a glance upwards to see a white-haired man in typical Konoha shinobi garb – navy blue shirt and pants, sandals, green flak jacket and hitai-ate – standing nearby, hands in his pockets, an understanding smile on his face.

"Hey, Mizuki-sensei."

---

For the better part of a hundred years, Konoha's ANBU forces had been running black ops across the continent in the name of defending the village from the shadows. They undertook the missions no one else could, in the deafening silence that no one else could withstand. They operated under the cover of night, living and breathing darkness, day in and day out. They were chosen, no matter their age, gender, past, heritage or rank, to act as the Hokage's right hand.

They were the ANBU. They were the elite, and they stood ever vigilant in the darkness.

The ANBU way of life was what Uzuki Yugao had known for more than half her life. The twenty-four hour state of readiness, the willingness to do what was needed no matter how dire the circumstances were, and the missions that took her and her squad deep into the underbelly of the shinobi world time and time again were all things she was used to. What she still wasn't used to, even after five years, was the occasional in-village police assignment.

That dreadful night that took away the Uchiha clan from Konoha left the ANBU in an odd position.

For the longest time, their role was to look outward onto the world and safeguard the village from external threats. They were the vanguard, the first and last line of defence against threats to the village and masters of the pre-emptive strike. Torture and assassination were all a part of the dirty business that kept their village safe. And yet that night had seen them almost immediately straddled with day-to-day internal affairs.

The Konoha Military Police Force, run almost exclusively by the Uchiha clan, had collapsed. The chief of police, Uchiha Fugaku, was dead. Manpower had been reduced to a mere ten percent of its original self. The organisation was on its last legs from the events of a single night.

The police force was needed to keep order in the village and handle its basic judicial needs. Without it, a rise in crime was a certainty. Konoha was a friendly place to live in an increasingly unfriendly world, but even it was not above crime and wrongdoing. So it was left to a handful of ANBU squads on rotation to pick up the slack and handle civilian law and order.

The change had been tough at first. They weren't dealing with enemy shinobi, spying on foreign military operations or tracking missing-nin in hostile territory. They were handling public drunkenness, hauling people to lockup on assault charges, sorting out domestic disputes and on the lookout for petty thievery. The shift to such rudimentary police work wasn't a clean one either.

A number of incidents involving excessive use of force against civilians had quickly occurred, but no action was taken against the agents concerned. These were men and women used to dealing with high-level shinobi, extremely dangerous people. They lived in a world with no room for restraint, and their honed senses of immediacy and danger did not fade with the introduction of such mundane, ordinary tasks into their duties so easily. When they were taken away from their typical environment, some behaviours would carry over, no matter how disciplined the ANBU were.

As time went by, their village-bound duties diminished. The Konoha Military Police were brought back up to strength over a number of years and they resumed their traditional function. The ANBU squads assigned to the task of policing dropped away and returned to work as usual. Most things went back to the way they were.

But every now and again, there was something that turned up in the village itself that the police couldn't handle. When something dangerous enough, or information sensitive enough, appeared, the ANBU were called in to take care of it once again.

These assignments were not common. There were few things the police force could not deal with in the village – they were shinobi, after all – but matters of security were not to be taken lightly.

Taking security concerns lightly or not, Yugao still wasn't particularly fond of operations within the village's boundaries, especially ones delegated from the police to her squad.

It was only one or two months out of the year that she and her team were assigned to in-village issues, and it had nearly always been fairly quiet. For a team of highly trained, battle-hardened veterans used to high-stress, high-adrenaline situations, it was something of an additional vacation to their customary time off, just light patrols and the occasional spot of surveillance. She had been expecting a bit of a break from the usual routine.

What she had not been expecting was to be assigned with the shadowing and reporting on an Academy instructor. At first, it wasn't anything out of the ordinary other than the target. The work itself was straightforward observation at a reasonable distance. Any agent with the slightest bit of experience could do it in their sleep. It was the target himself that garnered her particular attention.

Toji Mizuki was not an especially noticeable man. He was a chuunin instructor at the Academy. According to his recent files, he was an average teacher, neither remarkably astute nor unintelligent, nor was he heavily liked or heavily disliked. Delving a little farther back into his past, he was a somewhat noted shinobi. He had made some evident accomplishments on his genin team in his early days, promoted along with his teammate and fellow instructor, Umino Iruka, during their very first Chuunin Exams. After a botched mission and the loss of his other teammate, however, he had quickly faded into the comfortable obscurity of the chuunin rank and assumed a teaching position at the Academy with his old teammate.

It was a common story among those of that rank. After suffering emotional trauma with the loss of friends or teammates, or surviving serious injuries, many shinobi found themselves unable or unwilling to continue with an active career in the field. As such, many assumed administration roles in the Hokage's offices, started private businesses, took up teaching at the Academy or simply retired and remained on call for the reserves in case the drums of war started beating a little too close to home.

Mizuki's tale was not an especially notable one, and by all accounts, it made him the very definition of typical. He was mid-rank, mid-skilled, mid-everything. Even his psychological profile marked him with a very stock-standard shinobi mentality.

To the average person, nothing would seem amiss. Yugao was a member of the ANBU for a reason, however, and there was also a reason Mizuki was under surveillance. She just didn't know what it was.

This kind of reconnaissance was not new territory for her. She had been doing this kind of work for years. But she had been doing it outside the village. Her current assignment was in the domain typically occupied by the shinobi of the police force, the ninja who dealt with the lower levels of village security and maintained law and order. The only reason she and her squad could have been assigned was if something larger was at work. And apparently, that larger something was on a strictly need-to-know basis.

She was ANBU, and she knew the pecking order. Even in the uppermost echelons of Konoha's most elite military organisation, there was still someone above her: the Hokage. The man in the hat did not disclose the reasons why he handed her team the assignment, and she did not ask.

She was used to it, had been dealing with the concept of limited intel and a lack of the big picture since day one. Yet this rubbed her the wrong way. Something was just odd about it all. The information she and her squad was supposed to keep track of – his comings and goings in the village, the people he talked to or socialised with on a regular basis, his usual routine at work and taking note of any changes in it– were all things they did to high-value or high-risk targets out in the field. They didn't do this sort of stuff to chuunin instructors working long, tedious hours in the Academy, doing their best to try and give the next generation of the village's defenders a fighting chance in a world that outright refused to give them one. It all felt wrong.

The worst part was that nothing was coming from it. For the past month, each daily report she submitted told the same story: behaviour normal, routine unchanged, nothing of note to report. It was why she never liked in-village operations. Her time handling policing duties after the Uchiha Massacre had drilled that into her. Nothing ever came of it.

It was just a waste of time.

She had felt that way right until the day of the Genin Exams. They were held every six months, both as voluntary tests Academy students could take to try and get into the genin teams early, and as the final graduation exam of a class. The class Mizuki and his colleague Iruka were teaching – a class full of clan heirs – was taking the exam.

It ended the same way it always did: some passed and some failed. It was nothing notable. But then the member of her squad on watch, Tori, noticed something when the graduated kids started to mingle with their parents or siblings waiting outside for the news: Mizuki started talking to Uzumaki Naruto.

The assignment no longer had anything to do with observing Mizuki's behaviour for anything unusual.

According to Tori's report, Mizuki had tricked the jinchuuriki into making an attempt to steal the Scroll of Sealing from the Hokage's mansion. She informed the Hokage immediately. The man in the hat told her to keep tracking Mizuki and bring him in when the opportunity arose.

That odd command brought her and her team to a clearing in some of the extended forest that sheltered the village's many training grounds under the cover of night turning into morning. It was a vast expanse of land, and not all of it lay behind the safety of Konoha's high walls and protective barriers. But it was the location that Mizuki had told the jinchuuriki to meet him in to hand over the scroll after he had learnt something from it.

And yet they were not here.

"Tori," Yugao whispered into the short-range radio behind her mask, "are you sure this is the right location?"

"Positive, Neko-taichou," the ANBU newbie in the bird mask responded briskly, bringing up the map of the area to eye-level. "I'm absolutely sure this is... oh, no."

Yugao held back a curse. "What is it?"

"... the map was upside down."

Of all the mistakes an ANBU operative could make in the middle of a high-priority mission, that one was the absolute fucking worst.

Yugao shook her head and snatched the map from his grasp to check it herself. That was the last time she let bird boy handle navigation. "Whatever. We're there five minutes ago. Move."

The ANBU squad leapt into the shadows.

---

This is not going to be easy, Naruto thought with a frown, scratching at his chin as he pored over the jutsu on the scroll he had retrieved from the Hokage's mansion. He had snuck by the guards with the use of every stealthy trick in his bag of sly manoeuvres, made his way into the room where it was supposed to be, found no one inside and made off with the scroll intact and in tow.

It hadn't been particularly easy, but he made it out unseen. The next step was a bit harder.

The jutsu was a clone technique. That set off alarms in his head the moment he read it. The Bunshin no Jutsu was his own personal tormentor, and he couldn't imagine any other techniques like it being simple to learn or use. But then there was the mention of the word solid.

Solid clones. That was a world away from the flimsy illusions he had tried to create for hours and hours on end. These almost seemed... useful. Solid copies that could interact with the environment around him opened up entire realms of opportunity for combat, misdirection, navigation, sabotage, stealth, and a bunch of other things he couldn't think of in a single moment.

This was something he just had to learn.

Naruto shot to his feet, made the depicted hand seal with some chakra behind it and said the words, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" (Shadow Clone Technique)

A puff of smoke later... nothing much happened.

Naruto scratched his head. Nothing? Really? I would've thought I'd gotten something out of that.

He looked back to the scroll. It said something about splitting chakra evenly between clones, so did he have to shove half of his chakra into his hands to actually make something come out of it?

"Eh, nothing to lose, I suppose," Naruto shrugged to himself.

Bringing his hands up into the seal again, Naruto forced a boatload of chakra into his hands, enough to make them glow with vivid blue light, and pushed it outwards, words and all. "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"

He felt a strange rush of motion travel along his skin as chakra shot out, making a larger puff of smoke than before. And something came out of it this time.

It was a pale, pathetic thing, similar to the reedy and sickly looking copy of him that always puffed out in a heap on the ground whenever he attempted the Bunshin no Jutsu. But it was standing. The clothing looked washed out by white and grey, the features and hair were all a little bit off and ailing in colour, but it was standing, looking around, breathing in and out a little too heavily. It was almost... alive.

Then it looked at him, drooping eyes wide and toothless mouth hanging open. It was practically gaping at him, struggling to comprehend something before it disappeared in a dismal puff of chakra-laden smoke.

Naruto frowned. "That was weird."

He tried again with the same method. He felt the charge of energy ripple along his skin and another puff of smoke issued out of nothingness.

The clone had some colour this time. Its hair was blond; its jumpsuit was orange like his, and its eyes were blue. But it was tired, sleepy to the point where it could barely stand. It teetered back and forth on malnourished legs, failing to cover a yawn with a bony hand before it gave him a little wave and puffed itself away and out of reality.

Something was off. Maybe it was the amount of chakra he was pumping into it. Do I need to put more into it or something?

He considered it for a second before tossing that idea out the mental window. Chakra wasn't something he could just toss around like that. Firsthand experience with brute-forcing chakra into a technique had taught him that it didn't do much in the way of good. The first time he tried using the Kawarimi, he knocked himself out for a few minutes when he smacked headfirst into a tree at high speed when he pumped chakra into the jutsu without a second thought. That hadn't been a very good day.

He had asked Iruka-sensei about how to try and fix that with his ninjutsu, and the response he had gotten was something along the lines of jutsu requiring an amount of chakra specific to each. But this was different. This was a high-level technique – a B-ranked one, if the scroll could be trusted. Without a doubt, it needed a lot of chakra to work.

"Worth a shot," Naruto muttered.

He made a Ram seal and focused.

It was what he found comfortable when he needed to concentrate his chakra. It was probably not a good habit to have, especially if he ever wanted to use big or powerful jutsu in the middle of a fight that needed a lot of energy to work properly. It made things predictable. But this wasn't a fight. This was him, learning alone in a forest to try and work his way around the system with the help of a sensei kind enough to give him a chance. Maybe it wouldn't work, but he wouldn't know unless he tried.

Chakra encircled him in lines and waves of brilliant blue. The Ram became the cross for the clone. He breathed in, and then out. "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"

A cloud of smoke exploded out into the clearing, and Naruto felt a little out of breath. But it was worth it, he realised, when the chakra-made smoke drifted out into the trees and faded into the background. He was staring himself right in the face.

"Well, that's weird."

Did... that clone just talk?

It looked around, scratched its chin, stretched its arms, and then sat on the ground to resume looking at him.

"Do you have any ramen on you? I'm starving," the copy moaned.

Naruto just stared.

"No ramen?" it asked. "Oh, well. I don't even think I need to eat anyway."

He couldn't help but ask. "Why's that?"

"I'm just a clone," it shrugged. "Just chakra in a different shape than normal and all that."

He narrowed his eyes a little. "Are you real?"

The clone looked at him incredulously. "What kind of a question is that? Of course I'm real. You're talking to me right now, Boss. I'm talking and breathing, or whatever passes for breathing considering I'm made out of your chakra."

"It's kind of a weird thing talking to myself, though," Naruto said, rubbing the back of his neck.

"I know the feeling," the clone nodded.

The clearing slipped into an uncomfortable silence.

"Um..." Naruto began, "how do I... you know... make you... uh..."

The clone made an 'o' with its mouth after a few seconds of watching him stumble through his sentence. "Oh, you mean how to dispel me?"

"Yeah," Naruto mumbled awkwardly, "that."

The clone shook its head in something akin to disappointment. "I'm made of your chakra. All you have to do is think about pulling the chakra I'm made of back in with the rest of it."

He wrinkled his forehead in concentration. "So... like this?"

His answer was a weird noise and puff of smoke.

"Huh," he mumbled again.

That... was a weird feeling. Maybe he needed more practice. Good thing he still had another hour until Mizuki-sensei was going to meet him. That gave him plenty of time to get familiar with the technique.

He smiled broadly. Even though this wasn't his first choice of lifestyle, at least he actually had a chance at it now.

---

A fierce pounding on his front door woke him far too early, but it was the shouts of a familiar voice to hurry up and answer the door that made him rush to his feet and to the small entrance of his apartment. Flicking on a light, Iruka pulled his door open to see his friend and colleague fully dressed in flak jacket and combat gear.

"What's wrong, Mizuki?" Iruka asked, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

"Naruto's stolen the Scroll of Sealing!" Mizuki almost exploded, information splattering Iruka in the face along with a little bit of spit.

He was definitely awake now. "What happened?"

"How the hell should I know?" Mizuki held his palms up. "I need to go raise the alarm. You should gear up and try and find Naruto."

Iruka flew back inside, grabbing the pouches by his bed and the flak jacket on a hanger in his cupboard in a flurry of motion. This was not good. A jinchuuriki with a wealth of knowledge at his fingertips and a chance to leave the village with it was a recipe for absolute disaster. And if he left, and another village got a hold of him, or the scroll, or both... he didn't even want to think about that.

He dressed, affixed his holster and pouches, slammed the door shut and took off in one direction while Mizuki took off in another.

It was time to put his skill in tracking Naruto to work.

---

Naruto sat back down between the thick roots of a gnarled tree, smiling to himself and breathing a little on the heavy side. He was making progress with his favourite new toy – well, it wasn't really a toy, but the way he could just play around with it at will certainly made it feel like one.

Toys, huh? Naruto thought. A little bit of nostalgia crawled to his mind's surface.

It had been a stinking hot day. Sweat was always uncomfortable, especially when it made the scratchy material of his t-shirt stick to his skin and shift slightly every time he moved. He had found some relief in the bowl of lukewarm rice he had gotten for breakfast, but the rest of the day was filled with rumbling hunger and stifling humidity. Nothing about the day was particularly memorable. The night was a different story.

When the lights had been turned off in the tiny room he slept in on his lonesome, he had sat up on his thin mattress and stared out the small window at the night sky. He couldn't remember how long he spent looking at the moon, feeling oddly pensive, but when darkness flickered behind him, he turned to see something on his pillow: a little stuffed toy.

It was a small brown dog with small eyes and a blue hitai-ate – a ninken. And he loved it on sight. It was the only toy he ever had, and he still had it. It sat by his bed, watching out for him while he slept. He had no idea who gave it to him, but it meant that someone cared, even a little.

It gave him just a bit of hope, enough to keep going. And it kept him going for a long time, long enough to take the road he didn't want to and come out on top. It was just a matter of time before-

"Naruto!"

A shape flashed out of the darkness, and Iruka-sensei stood over him. "What do you think you're doing with that?"

His teacher pointed sharply to the scroll by his side.

"Oh, that," Naruto said, rubbing the back of his neck. "I only managed to squeeze one technique out of it before you found me. But I can graduate now, right? I can show you the jutsu if you want to see it. Damn, it's a nice one! It's freaking-"

"Naruto, stop babbling," Iruka-sensei interrupted. "Who told you to take that scroll?"

Naruto frowned. Something was wrong. He thought Iruka-sensei would be in on his arrangement with Mizuki-sensei as well.

"Mizuki-sensei told me to," he said, standing up and slinging the thick scroll over his back by the strap attached to it.

"Mizuki?" Iruka-sensei looked just as shocked as his voice sounded.

Naruto frowned again. Something was definitely-

Iruka pushed him to the ground.

"Hey, what-"

The sound that filled the air was familiar. Training grounds were filled with it during the day. The Academy was sometimes filled with it just the same. He was used to it. He had made it himself. It was the sound of metal stabbing into wood, kunai or shuriken lancing into target dummies or trees as they left the hands of the practicing.

He looked to his right.

Iruka-sensei was pinned to the old wooden shack by kunai, metal puncturing his clothing and his right thigh. With a grunt, the chuunin pulled the kunai free from his leg, a heavy wince never leaving his face. A bloody kunai fell to the grass and the dirt.

"Naruto, give me the scroll."

He looked up. Mizuki-sensei was standing in the branches above, arms by his sides and something large and metal on his back resembling a shuriken.

Naruto's grip on the scroll's strap tightened.

"Don't give it to him, Naruto."

Iruka's voice cut through the night, strong and unshaken.

Mizuki's eyes turned to Iruka, and then he himself winced slightly.

"Sorry about the leg, Iruka," he said... casually? "I guess my aim was a little off. I was just trying to keep you from moving."

"What the hell do you think you're doing, Mizuki?" Iruka practically spat.

"Something they should've done a long time ago," Mizuki answered quickly.

Iruka's eyes widened, but narrowed just as quickly. "No. I'm not going to let you."

Mizuki stared at him. "Come on, Iruka. We can gut this little shit and ditch this dump of a hidden village for some place that'll actually appreciate our talents."

Iruka stared right back, eyes unchanging. "Are you out of your mind, Mizuki? You actually think I'd willingly kill Naruto and desert Konoha? And for what? I'm happy here, and I thought you were as well!"

"We've been chuunin for how long? The better part of ten years? And we've spent six of those teaching kids! We're shinobi, and they want us to teach? It's a fucking waste!"

Some kind of realisation dawned on Iruka's face. "Is that what this is all about? Just our ranks? Our jobs? If that's true, you're even more insane than I thought."

"No. It's about that... thing as well!" Mizuki spat, jabbing a finger towards Naruto. "They should've killed it at the first chance they got. It was why the Yondaime Hokage died, so we could wipe that demon off the face of the planet once and for all!"

Iruka stood up from his lean against the shack's wall, wincing sharply and gripping a hand to his leg. "You're not touching Naruto, Mizuki!"

"What about your parents, Iruka? You think they'd be happy to see you defending the monster that killed them and so many others in a single night from justice?"

Iruka's face hardened further. "My parents would never have wanted an innocent child murdered in the name of whatever the hell you think is justice."

"Innocent?" Mizuki almost laughed. "Stop trying to fool yourself, Iruka. There's not a damn thing innocent about the container of the demon that killed your parents, the Yondaime, hundreds of civilians and shinobi, and my sister, in a single night. It's been thirteen years since then, and the village still isn't fully recovered. And it's all because of that fucking fox!"

"Naruto isn't the fox! He wasn't the one who killed Reiko!"

"Stop denying it and let me kill that thing, Iruka," Mizuki snarled.

"You're the one in denial, Mizuki," Iruka said, suddenly quiet. "If you think that murdering an innocent child is going to bring back your sister and erase everything that happened that night, then you're dead wrong."

Mizuki's face of anger and rage faded, disappearing into something similar to resignation. He looked down.

"Dead, huh?" he muttered almost inaudibly. "Yeah."

He looked back up.

"It's not going to change anything, Iruka," Mizuki said with the same sad and silent tone as Iruka, reaching for the massive shuriken on his back. "It'll just make it easier to live with."

His eyes turned to Naruto, and his mouth contorted into a nasty grin.

Naruto's mind was racing. What the fuck is going on?

His grin turned into a growl. "Goodbye... Kyuubi."

He took hold of the massive shuriken gently, cocking his arm back slowly and deliberately. All Naruto could do was watch, his mind flooded by... whatever had just been said. Images other than imminent death came into view, of giant monsters with flowing tails and strange red chakra, and of an old man in a white hat shouting commands he couldn't hear... and of two people he couldn't distinguish looking down at him with... pained joy.

Then the shuriken overtook it all.

He heard movement from above and below. Grunting. Steel on steel. Effort. Metal through wood.

Naruto blinked. He wasn't dead. He still saw forest. And people. Iruka-sensei was in front of him, paused mid-motion, looking like he was about to lunge forward to try and stop something. Mizuki was in the branches above, arm frozen in the position to release and receive.

And someone... unfamiliar between them.

On a branch lower than Mizuki's and in a different tree across the clearing, next to a path of shredded wood and desecrated leaves, a dark-haired boy with darkish skin in black crouched, one hand on the tree, his murky eyes dark.

He dropped to the grass in a smooth motion. Naruto caught a hint of grey-silver and blue on his forehead – a brand new hitai-ate. He was a genin, just like he wanted to be. And he had a feeling he knew him from somewhere...

"Wait... Koan?"

The name brought to mind another word: classmate.

Iruka's surprised tone made the new entry's eyes quirk in a glance towards him before flickering upwards to Mizuki.

"What do you think you're doing, kid?" Mizuki asked between clenched teeth.

"Stopping you," he said simply, like a fact. The voice that spoke was strong, firm, deep. It belied age.

Dark brown eyes marked with flecks of yellow shifted to Naruto's own. "It's the least I can do for someone like me."

With that, he moved. Naruto almost missed it.

A dark blur sped into the air. Mizuki dodged into the trees. The thick branch he stood on cleaved from the tree in a splash of bark and splinters. The dark blur reformed on the trunk, the genin somehow crouched on the vertical surface.

Koan looked back towards the clearing. "I'll handle this."

He disappeared into the trees.

---

Shit, he's getting away!

Koan redoubled his movement, bounding from branch to branch and zigzagging his way through the wooded space between the ground and the canopy. But Mizuki was still ahead of him.

He was at a disadvantage. He could navigate the trees easily, but Mizuki knew the terrain better. He had seemingly planned out an escape route in case things went south and he needed to high-tail it and run off without the scroll.

He could see Mizuki in the distance ahead of him, leaping up and down through the branches, changing his altitude constantly to avoid any thrown projectiles. Kunai and shuriken were ineffective at a time like this. He could aim and time throws fairly well on the horizontal, but he couldn't efficiently trail an enemy's position vertically while moving himself. Mizuki was a chuunin, and he knew what he was doing.

That doesn't mean I'm going to give up though.

He had a way to force this chase into a confrontation, and after that, he could give that traitorous son of a bitch one hell of a beating. But he had to make him into a viable target first. He needed something big to throw.

With just one quick look to what was all around him, the answer was more than clear.

He landed on the next branch and slipped down beside it to hold himself fast against the tree with a thin layer of chakra. Pumping dark blue energy through his muscles, he wrapped his left arm around the branch and squeezed. An instant of intense pressure, and the bark and wood snapped loose. He grimaced at the jagged shards that cut through his jacket, but he ignored it. Pain could wait. There was work to do.

Mizuki was nearly out of sight, about to take a turn around a tree and guarantee Koan's failure. But that wouldn't happen.

Ready, he nodded to himself.

Heaving the broken tree limb high up on his shoulder, Koan pushed himself into the air with chakra and marshalled his strength before he launched the broken branch, spinning end over end. The massive spiralling projectile smashed through the branches in its path and cleared the way to Mizuki in a rain of breaking wood. The bastard leapt high, spinning his way out of the wooden debris and splinters that took to the space between trees.

Koan almost smirked. Perfect.

The moment was set. Koan took careful aim, making hand seals all the while. One hand at his lips and red-orange light glowing behind his bulging cheeks, Koan gathered a ball of burning chakra in his mouth, compacted and scorching in his throat. He took in air sharply, and released fire bluntly. "Youton: Shakugaryuugan no Jutsu!" (Lava Release: Scorching Stream Rock Technique)

A barrage of fist-sized rocks, blackened and glowing and bursting with spurts of liquid flame, shot out into the forest, punching through bark and branch alike at speed. And it was all aimed for Mizuki. Trapped mid-air and mid-dodge, the bastard only had one option: down.

Mizuki latched onto the still-moving branch and kicked off towards the forest floor as a torrent of flaming rock sped overhead with a sound like rolling thunder, lighting up the night with meteoric streaks of fire and stone. Koan was already moving.

Sweeping around the tree's trunk with a chakra-laden hand on the bark, Koan predicted his enemy's movement just right. Slamming a fist into his chest as Mizuki appeared before him, Koan sent him tearing into the ground below, making a jagged crater with his body and a sudden cloud of dust with the impact.

Koan smirked this time. "Got you, you son of a bitch."

---

Iruka looked firmly to his right. "Naruto, take the scroll, get out of here and get reinforcements."

"No way," Naruto shook his head, tightening his grip on the scroll's strap. "I'm going to help you with this, no matter what."

Iruka pointed in the direction of the village. "No, Naruto. I'll take care of this. Go and get help. That's an order."

Iruka turned and bent his knees to leap into the branches.

"But what about Koan?"

Iruka stopped in his tracks before he answered. "I'll get him out of there and take over. Now go."

Iruka jumped into the canopy. He could hear Naruto's angry grumble as he made his way towards the sudden source of fire and calamitous boom that rolled out of the trees like thunder.

Thunder was always a bad sign. It preceded storms, rain and lightning. But thunder without a storm suddenly seemed so much worse.

---

Koan ducked, blocked the downwards stab with an arm at Mizuki's wrist and lifted high. Guard open, Mizuki flew back into the trees. Koan lowered his leg, slipping back into his stance, palms facing the ground.

The exchange had been back and forth for all of ten seconds, fast and furious. He, the genin, managed to come out on top. Beginner's luck, perhaps. But, damn, it felt good to win.

"You had enough?" he asked of the forest, almost smirking.

Mizuki walked out of the tangled mess of roots, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and snarling. "You're cocky, you little shit. You're cocky and you're green as the leaves in my ass."

"And I'll beat the leaves right out of it," Koan growled. "Enough banter."

Mizuki smiled deviously. "Right..."

The burst of speed was startling, abrupt. Koan forced himself low and threw his arm into an uppercut. He met air, and then Mizuki met his back. He hit the ground hard, air pounded from his lungs by a knee to the spine. The distinctive sigh of a kunai's thrust whistled towards the dirt.

A single word exploded in his mind: "Move!"

Koan rolled onto his back. Steel nicked his ear, and a blade stabbed into the soil right in front of his eye.

More words boomed like thunder: "Now!"

Koan kicked both feet straight into Mizuki's exposed chest, sandals biting into armour from below with chakra-reinforced strength. Mizuki spat blood as he was tossed back into the crater. Koan rose to one knee, made two hand seals, and spat lava. "Youton: Kagandan!" (Lava Release: Fiery Rock Bullet)

Heat and chakra built in his throat, and rushed out in a single blackened boulder. Thick fire took to the air, and thicker smoke plumed out of the broken ground. The explosion was satisfying, but he doubted that alone was enough to finish off Mizuki. The scorched and smoking log split into smouldering pieces in the bottom of the crater proved his suspicions correct.

"Genin always prefer flashy jutsu, things that make the biggest noise and the biggest fiery boom," Mizuki's voice floated into the air mockingly. "They always seem to forget about the three basic techniques we hammer into them day after day at the Academy."

"Show yourself, you bastard!" Koan shouted into the surrounding forest.

Laughter rolled into the dark air. "And there you go again, forgetting what we taught you. You never wait for the enemy to come to you."

Shuriken lanced down from the canopy of dispersing smoke. Kunai in hand, Koan slammed metal stars into the dirt and roots below with splashes of airborne sparks, barely dodging the ones that passed by his blade. Mizuki's aim was nothing to scoff at, even in forest-strewn night.

The shuriken stopped with the last spark of his kunai, and then it was quiet. No noise, no whistling, no breathing other than his own slow and deliberate exhalations into the smoky air and the realisation that quite a bit of blood was trailing down his neck from the single cut on his ear. Sweat mingling with scarlet liquid felt odd, sticky and slick at the same time. But that didn't matter. Where was Mizuki?

A voice chuckled. "Got you, you son of a bitch."

The irony wasn't lost on him.

He turned, fist raised. He wasn't fast enough. A kunai cut through the mesh on his back like it wasn't even there and stopped his movement with searing jolts of pain. Then Mizuki twisted. A desperate groan leaked out of his mouth. It was all he could do not to scream as the agony ricocheted up and down his side.

Mizuki grabbed him by the neck and pushed the kunai in a little further. Groans turned into whimpers.

"You know, for a genin, you weren't all that easy to beat," Mizuki said into his ear, quiet words turning into a vicious laugh. "You actually made me work for it a little."

Mizuki pulled the knife loose and stabbed a foot into the hollow of his knee. Koan smashed into the ground on all fours, breathing coming in gasps, explosive puffs. It became harder to take in air when Mizuki kicked him in the gut, sending him careening into a tree trunk. It became even harder when he landed on the jagged puncture in his back. Pathetic whimpers turned into a cry of pain.

Pain ravaged his body, unrelenting agony shooting up and down his burning side. Blood was leaking from it, dripping out in waves of red and pooling beneath him. Mizuki began to walk towards him. He held his bloody kunai in plain view, a cruel grin plastered on his face, eyes alight with sadistic glee.

Move, damn it. Come on, move!

He could hear each step, each slight shift in the dirt with his bleeding ear planted against the ground as Mizuki approached.

His arms struggled to lift his bloodied carcass. Come on, you bastard! Move!

The pace quickened. The grip on the dripping kunai was reaffirmed.

His legs wobbled, but moved. Come on! Almost there!

Mizuki was almost on him.

Inu, Ushi, U, Mi... "Youton: Shakugaryuugan no Jutsu!"

Solidifying orbs of lava streamed from his mouth in a torrent of molten desperation, slamming into trees with burning force, chewing through bark and wood and setting leaves aflame. Embers burst into the space. Another discarded log lay directly in front of him.

Another word exploded in his mind, louder than ever before: "RUN!"

Koan hauled himself off the ground, turned and leapt away from the burning flood of devastation raging through the trees behind him and into the branches.

The heat and smoke was almost enough to make his head swim. Thank Kami for my blood.

He wasn't sure where the hell he was going, but he knew he needed to run. He needed to get out of here.

What the fuck made me think I could take on a chuunin and win? I'm not that stupid. I've never been that stupid. That's the kind of choice-

He stilled mid-air, his legs nearly falling out from underneath when he hit the next branch, arms latching on just in time to keep him from falling.

Naruto...

Koan dangled from the branch for a moment.

That was why he did what he did. Mizuki was going to kill Naruto and Iruka unless he intervened, and here he was running away from a battle he needed to fight. And if Mizuki got away, he would come back to try and finish what he started.

My punctured kidney be damned. I'm going to put an end to this asshole.

Fists clenched, Koan pulled himself up on the branch and turned to where he had come from, the glowing spots of fire in the near distance and the embers whirling in the air, spreading the seeds of flame. He still had work to do.

Bracing himself to jump, Koan leapt towards the next-

Shuriken came at him mid-jump, shredding skin along his legs as he redirected himself for the tree trunk, slamming his body against the bark and holding it there with one chakra-reinforced hand. Fishing out a kunai, he dropped to the forest floor. The bark above him splintered into the air as a kunai weighed down with an explosive tag went off. He looked left, right, and then stepped forward out of the recess in the tangled roots.

"I've got you now."

A kunai came for his throat. Sparks flew, but it wasn't his kunai.

I... I didn't sense that.

Iruka struggled; strain was evident in the lines on his face as he pushed into his traitorous colleague, blade for blade. "Get out of here, Koan! You're not strong enough to take on a chuunin!

Before he could say anything, mutter small words in defence of his actions or protest loudly at the insulting notion of fleeing a fight, Mizuki slipped away, five steps out his reach but only one out of Iruka's.

Damn, they're fast.

And in a splash of dead leaves on the forest floor, they were out of sight, but not out of earshot. Words flew between them along with shuriken and kunai.

"Take his advice: move."

"Right," he mumbled to the air.

Ignoring the fading pain in his lower back and left calf, Koan took to the branches.

---

The bandaged gash in his thigh made movement a chore, but his body managed to fight. It was his mind that was the problem. What made it truly difficult for him to fight was who he fought: his best friend.

Iruka blocked a fast jab and deflected the thrust of a kunai with his. Mizuki backpedalled as Iruka stepped in with a fast one-two filled with blades, launching shuriken as he danced away from the approaching threat. Sparks flew into smoke-stained air as Iruka batted them away before returning the favour with a handful of his own shuriken.

Four kunai shot into the air, knocking the metal stars to the blackened ground. Iruka charged in the moment Mizuki threw, kicking high before spinning into an elbow and a stab of his blade. Mizuki ducked, blocked and bit his kunai into his.

They both pulled away, breathing heavy and coughing in the midst of smoke.

Iruka tightened his grip on the kunai's hilt. They had always been quite evenly matched. Back in their days as genin, one pulling ahead had always driven the other on to the same height of skill and prowess in combat, constantly striving to equal and surpass. A friendship founded in rivalry and laughter allowed them that. But now it allowed them something else: a contest.

They both knew the other's movements, their favoured methods of attack and preferred styles of momentary retreat. Not much of that had changed over the years. It wasn't down to outthinking the enemy or bringing down the opponent with cunning use of traps or well-timed attacks. It was a question of who had the better endurance.

Two shuriken sailed overhead. Iruka bent his knees before he kicked up a handful of dust into Mizuki's face as he rushed in from the side at the moment of distraction.

Eyes and mouth closed, Mizuki slid through the disappearing cloud and barrelled sidelong into Iruka. Grounded, Iruka rolled left and right as kunai jabbed into the dirt by his head before he extracted himself with hand seals. Time and space whizzed by in a blur of lines and black leaves as he replaced himself with a kunai jabbed into a tree's trunk. Pulling a blade free of his holster, he wrapped a tag around the hilt and let it fly.

3... 2... 1... and...

The sizzling noise trailing through the disturbed night air ended in a bang. Smoke and dust flew into the sky and another log clattered to the ground.

Iruka turned without a break in his stride, the heel of his sandal grinding on burnt leaves and dying embers. Glowing charcoal scattered underfoot and shot out into the air as hand seals made it come alive.

"Katon: Endan!" (Fire Release: Flame Bullet)

An orb of fire as large as him roared out and slammed into another of the same size, strength for strength, chakra for chakra. A second of contact, and the fireballs exploded. Flame billowed into the trees and set new fires ablaze in the night.

Iruka breathed, and Mizuki, separated from his former teammate by a carpet of leaves and ash, breathed with him.

The technique was one they had learned together. Taught to them both at the same time when it was discovered they each had an equal affinity for fire. And their affinity was still equal.

Iruka blinked dust from his eyes. Mizuki disappeared, and reappeared in front of him. Instinct told him, and the kunai already in his hand saved him. He held Mizuki's blade back with a grunt, a bare sliver of orange, flaming light between the point and his neck.

He could see his friend's eyes clearly now, even in the swirling dust and the darkness of the forested night. And he didn't recognise them anymore.

This wasn't the Mizuki he knew. This wasn't the kid he grew up with, who he attended the Academy and played prank and laughed and failed with. This wasn't the genin teammate he bled alongside in the line of duty, and this wasn't the newly promoted chuunin that cried with him when they lost their teammate because of a mistake he had made. This wasn't the chuunin instructor who walked back into the Academy by his side because he couldn't bear the weight of her death on his shoulders.

He didn't recognise the man in front of him, the man with the kunai in his hand and the furious glint of betrayal in his eyes.

Whoever this was, it wasn't Mizuki. It wasn't his friend. It was just some sick bastard using his face, some twisted son of a bitch who got kicks out of learning a man's life inside and out and then screwing with it in whatever way he wanted.

Whoever it was, he was going to pay for fucking with his best friend. Red filled his vision

Iruka pushed hard. Mizuki slid back a metre and ducked when Iruka flew at him feet first, a high roundhouse for his skull with a yell of something like rage. Mizuki came back and punched for his gut. He caught it with his belly and drove his knee up. Grunts followed on both sides. Kunai slashed for each other's throats. Within a matter of seconds, it was punches flying and blood flowing, blades stabbing and embers whirling around them as the fire built in the trees.

He was going to kill this pretender. He was going to murder this son of a bitch. Or he was going to rip apart until he could barely stand and make him talk. He was going to find out just what the fuck happened to Mizuki.

With blood in his eyes, bruises on his chest and gashes in his thighs, he thrust his kunai down with all his might. Then everything became clear as he lost his balance to Mizuki's kick to the back of his knee. He hit the dirt.

"Sorry, Iruka."

The tone was... not what he expected. It was sad, not vengeful. Rage was gone.

He accepted the inevitable, and closed his eyes to a ceiling of glowing red flames dancing in trees above and a bed of blackened leaves below.

"Iruka-sensei!"

His eyes snapped open to visions of orange turning into puffs of smoke in the hazy darkness.

"Shit, you're annoying, Kyuubi!" Mizuki bellowed. "Hurry up and die!"

"No chance, asshole!" Naruto retorted.

Naruto was forcing Mizuki back with clone after clone, solid copies smashing into him one after the other like a wave of fists and feet. White-grey smoke began to fill the glowing space between trees as Naruto himself charged, the scroll on his back...

Iruka heard Mizuki's feet leave the ground, a sound of shifting leaves barely audible over the sound of clones dispersing into smoke and the crackling of burning wood all around. And then there was a sizzle. A timer buried in the blackened leaves.

"Naruto!"

The explosive tag went off.

A blur of orange smashed headfirst into a tree with a crunch. Blood spattered onto the bark.

Iruka was on his feet and running before he knew what he was doing. His arm came up to hold smoke out of his mouth and nose, and another reached for a kunai from his holster.

Thoughts rolled in his head. No. I'm not going to let him die. This pretender won't kill him. He won't. I promise he won't kill you, Naruto.

He raced through the leaves. Shuriken gained on him. He dove. Two flew overhead and over his shoulder. One jabbed into his jacket. Light armour saved the base of his neck.

Iruka landed on his side with a thud, pulling the metal star loose and leaving it somewhere in the leaves. He rolled to his feet, ran through hand seals and spat fire again. A ball of flames lanced through the trees and punched straight through Mizuki's position before it sent burning tendrils screaming into the canopy, setting more of the forest ablaze. He turned and ran.

"Naruto!" he yelled, grabbing for the orange jacket nested among the roots as soon as it was in sight. "Naruto!"

A boy's hands pulled a head of blond hair matted with blood upright between the roots with alarming speed. "I'm fine, Iruka-sensei."

He couldn't help but grab the kid in a hug, pulling him tight. "Oh, thank Kami you're alright."

Naruto stiffened suddenly, but quickly relaxed. "Thanks, Iruka-sensei."

The moment of sudden peace came to an end with a clapping of hands.

"Oh, while this is certainly touching," Mizuki's mocking voice came wafting out of the trees accompanied by the shift of leaves and dirt, "I'm afraid I'll have to leave you two for now."

He stepped out of the trees, fanning smoke out of his face with one hand, his other on...

"Yep," Mizuki grinned maniacally. "I've got the scroll."

His depraved smile turned sly in the darkness. "See you."

No. This can't be happening.

Mizuki turned, burnt leaves scattering underfoot. Iruka let go of Naruto.

I can't let this happen. I can't.

His knees bent slightly. Mizuki was about to jump.

I won't-

"-let this happen!"

A dark blur slammed into Mizuki mid-air, tackling him into the dirt and pummelling him into the ground with a barrage of fists.

Koan pulled his arm back, rage carved into his face. "Fuck you, bastard!"

Feet suddenly in his chest carried him up and over, delivering him back-first into a tree before two kunai came after him as Mizuki found his footing without a hitch. They clattered to the ground as shuriken knocked them out of the air. Naruto stood, arm and hand outstretched.

Mizuki's eyes darted right to the jinchuuriki. Iruka charged.

Their fight wasn't over.

Iruka came at him high, kicking up as Mizuki stepped back and away. He dodged with a strafing pace and jabbed out with a fist while preparing a hook to follow. Iruka blocked, ducked and brought a kunai up to be matched by another with a spark of force and steel. Mizuki pushed hard, and Iruka didn't see the kick for the ribs coming.

He fell back and rolled with the momentum.

His vision filled with steel, then orange-clad flesh.

Naruto groaned. A hand clutched at his stomach for almost a second, where the kunai was buried up to its hilt. Crimson trickled out of the gaps between the knife and the skin. Then Naruto's hands came up in front of him, in a cross-shaped seal.

Iruka couldn't see his face, but he almost heard the triumphant grin in Naruto's voice.

"Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)

The orange glow of fire above and nearby was forgotten as a cloud of chakra-laden smoke formed and dispersed. Orange of a different sort replaced the flames.

Mizuki stepped back and looked up and around, wide-eyed. Iruka almost did the same.

Copies of Naruto were suddenly everywhere, all at once. Dozens and dozens of them filled the gaps between the trees and filled the branches until they began to falter under the weight of them. Blond kids wearing orange jumpsuits and a cocky grin filled the world of trees around them.

"Got you, you son of a bitch!"

Koan appeared again, smashing a devastating right hook into Mizuki's wide-open jaw with an audible crack and enough force to hurl him into the trees. Koan blurred after him before Iruka could react.

Neither could Mizuki, it seemed.

He heard a grunt, and then ducked as Mizuki suddenly flew back into the clearing, colliding with some of the orange copies of Naruto and sending more white smoke into the dirty air as he thudded to the ground.

Naruto stood up again, smiling. "Get him!"

The clones descended in droves, crashing down like stormy waves on a violent sea of orange. In less than twenty seconds, Mizuki was half-buried in the dirt, bruised and bleeding beneath another cloud of white-grey smoke.

Iruka picked up the scroll and hauled it over his back before he stepped over to Mizuki, his... friend in the ground and groaning.

He shook his head slowly. "A waste."

"I'd say so," Naruto muttered, holding his stomach as he came to stand by him.

Iruka shifted his gaze to his student. "I thought I told you to take the scroll and go get help."

Naruto shook his head. "I couldn't leave you to fend for yourself."

"I would've been fine," Iruka replied sullenly.

"You probably would've been dead," Naruto countered.

"We probably all would've been," Koan interjected, coming to stand beside Naruto.

Naruto glanced to his right. "What are you even doing here?"

"I told you earlier," the taller one said.

"I don't remember what you said."

"Do you need me to remind you?"

"Yes!"

"Okay, then."

"... Well?"

"Well, what?"

"Aren't you going to tell me?"

"Yes. You just didn't specify when."

"Argh!"

Iruka shoved a hand in front of Naruto and held him back from throttling Koan. "That's enough."

Naruto stopped and stood back with nothing more than a tired grunt.

"What're we going to do with the bastard?" Koan asked.

"Take him to the Hokage, I suppose," Iruka suggested slowly. "Or perhaps to the ANBU – oh, they're already here. How convenient."

Six shinobi clad in animals masks and dark grey-blue armour flickered into the clearing and began to fan out, three moving to the edges of the area and three approaching him and the others.

Iruka cast tired eyes over them as the leader, a woman with an exposed length of purple hair falling down her back and a cat mask, moved over to him. Naruto and Koan watched in silence.

"We'll be taking Toji Mizuki in for interrogation," she said briskly, motioning two others to pull Mizuki loose of the dirt and restrain him.

The sound of rushing water caught him by surprise as the other shinobi began to perform minor Suiton jutsu, extinguishing the spots of flame making their way through the forest. He refocused on the purple-haired woman.

"Is there a reason you weren't here earlier?" Iruka asked, his eyes narrowed sharply. "You and your men could've assisted."

She held up a placating hand. "That was an operational error, completely on our part. I apologise for the danger you and the new genin were put in."

Iruka raised a cautious eyebrow. An ANBU agent apologising for anything on duty, let alone a mistake, was a rare thing indeed.

"Thank you, I guess," Iruka nodded somewhat, rubbing the back of his neck.

The woman returned the gesture and turned to her squad picking up Mizuki and flickering away once more.

Iruka looked back to his students.

Koan's eyes were suddenly trained on the ground, considering something as his mouth moved left and right in slight quirks. Though he was obviously thinking, the subject of those thoughts was not.

Naruto looked to the trees, then to the dirt and the burnt leaves before trailing up to the smouldering branches and the blackened, leafless canopy. He was... confused, perhaps.

Iruka shook his head. It didn't matter now.

"Come on, you two," he waved. "Let's go."

He began to walk, rubbing a hand at the secured wound in his thigh.

"Where're we going?" Naruto asked.

"To get you guys patched up," Iruka answered. "Then we'll go see the Hokage. I imagine we have a lot of explaining to do."

---

A woman stood in a dull hallway of concrete and steel, a kunai lazily looping around an outstretched finger. And, damn, she was bored.

Bored. Bored. Bored, bored, bored...

The noise of movement made her return her kunai to her holster.

"Ooh, goodie, a new person to play with!"

The purple-haired woman smiled with glee as she watched the ANBU agents haul a bruised and bloodied man with blue-white hair wearing typical Konoha shinobi garb into the third interrogation room along the hallway that held seven. Room Three was usually the one reserved for traitors for some reason. She was glad it wasn't used all that frequently, but she wasn't going to turn down a chance to squeeze information out of a rat-bastard's throat who dare betrayed the village.

It was going to be a little bit messy when she was done with him.

"What're you smiling about now, Anko?"

The woman in question turned, hands playing with the collar of her opened trench coat absentmindedly as she faced the girl in the cat mask.

"Well, hello to you, Yu-"

A hand was on her mouth before she could finish the rest of her sentence. She could feel the strictly professional disapproval oozing out of Yugao.

"You know protocol, Anko. Follow it," she ordered gruffly.

Anko smiled playfully. "You're in a fine mood today, Neko-chan."

Yugao groaned just a little. "You would be as well after dealing with such a shitload of incompetence."

"The new guy fucked up, I take it?" Anko cocked her head to the side in question.

Yugao shook her head. "Fuck up is a grievous understatement. This was the fuck up to fuck up all fuck ups."

This was something she had to know, then. "What'd he do to earn that accolade?"

Yugao sighed. "He read the map upside down."

Anko's eyes went wide. "You're serious? An ANBU agent had a map upside down?"

Yugao nodded.

Anko was on the floor in an instant, rolling around as she clutched her belly and laughed herself near to –self-pissing oblivion.

"Please, don't rub it in," Yugao whined.

When Anko finally settled herself down and wiped the jovial tears from her eyes, she nodded and grinned. "Alright, Neko-chan, I'll leave your name out of it when I retell the story the next time I'm at the bar."

Yugao sighed again. "I suppose that's the best I'll get out of you."

Anko's perpetual smile grew wider.

"Alright," Yugao said. "Down to business."

Anko nodded. "He's a traitor, right? That's why we're using Room Three."

"He's Toji Mizuki, a chuunin instructor at the Academy," Yugao filled in some of the blanks.

Anko frowned. "But what'd he do to get himself in such deep shit?"

She could almost hear Yugao's brow furrowing. "He tried to steal the Scroll of Sealing by getting the jinchuuriki to do it and then killing him and taking it from his corpse."

Anko grit her teeth. "Bastard."

Stealing something so valuable from the village was a despicable act, and more than enough to warrant a death sentence a dozen times over in conjunction with an extended stay in the lovely residences of the Konoha Torture and Interrogation Force. But tricking a lonely child desperate for attention into doing it for him and attempting to murder him right after? That was enough to make her try.

Yugao clamped a hand on her upper arm, steadying her as she began to shake slightly.

"Easy, Anko, easy," she said soothingly. "Just breathe."

Anko complied and felt herself calm just a little.

"That son of a bitch," she muttered quietly.

"I know," Yugao agreed, "but this doesn't feel right to me."

Anko raised both eyebrows. "What do you mean?"

"My team and I were watching this guy for a month," she began. "We did the surveillance, we did the research and we did the proper security checks. But nothing about him was out of the ordinary. He fit the bill of a shinobi forced into semi-retirement by emotional trauma almost perfectly, and that was it."

Anko blinked a few times before the pieces began to fall into place. "But it was a little too perfect."

Yugao nodded. "Yeah, but even more than that, we were watching an Academy teacher. A fucking teacher. There was no warning, nothing at all that told us he was planning anything or conspiring with anyone, and then this happens – with the jinchuuriki, no less."

Yugao was right. There was definitely something wrong here. It was all too sudden, all too rushed and forced and stinking of further conspiracy. Something larger was at work here, much larger than a crazed chuunin instructor and an attention-starved jinchuuriki.

"I'll squeeze the truth out of him," Anko nodded.

She turned to step towards the room, but Yugao's grip returned to her upper arm.

"Just... be careful, Anko," Yugao said quietly.

Anko smiled. "When am I not?"

The woman in trench coat returned the kunai to her finger and began to spin it without a care in the world as she opened the door.

Always, Yugao mentally sighed.

---

"Alright, Umino-san, the wound is clean and properly sutured," the doctor said, leaning back from the bed Iruka had been sat on in the rather bare consulting room just off the entrance to the Konoha Hospital. "Just try not to put too much weight on that leg for the time being. We don't want to reopen the wound, now do we?"

"No, we certainly don't, doctor," Iruka agreed with a feigned smile. "Thank you for your time."

The doctor returned the genuine article as he walked to the door, placing a hand against the frame as he looked back. "Any time, Umino-san, but I hope you understand if I say I would rather not see you here in the future."

Iruka smiled somewhat, chuckling his agreement.

The doctor left, leaving Iruka with a moment to think.

But what the hell am I meant to think?

This didn't make sense. None of it did. His best friend a traitor – it was unthinkable. Mizuki had been there with him through everything, from childhood to the Academy, from that terrible night on the tenth of October thirteen years ago to their genin days, from their first Chuunin Exam to that day he lost Kasumi because of his miscalculations and entering the Academy as an instructor because he couldn't handle active duty anymore. He was his best friend through all of that and more. He knew him better than he knew himself.

Or... he thought he did.

He wasn't so sure anymore.

Iruka stood up and left the room, mindful of the pressure of the bandage wrapped tightly against his leg.

"And he said he didn't mean to," he muttered to no one.

The hallways were a combination of Konoha wood and clinical white, a mesh of sterility and comfortable familiarity. It was architecture typical of the village. Wood was a resource Konoha had no shortage of, and it was used in every facet of its design. Built in forest and built out of forest, the village belonged in it.

And Mizuki betrayed it all.

Iruka stopped walking as he reached the main desk in the quietly appointed lobby, complete with attached waiting room.

"Excuse me," he said, gaining the attention of the pretty-faced girl at the desk. "Do you know which rooms the two boys I checked in earlier are in?"

She consulted a clipboard on the desk, trailing a finger down the list of names. "Ah, yes. They've both been put in room... uh, 204. You'll find it on the second floor, fourth room on the right."

He uttered his thanks and made for the stairwell at a casual pace. The steps on the other side of the lobby were plain, unremarkable. He climbed them slowly, trying to find the words he needed as he walked. There had to be something to say, something he could tell the two boys about what happened, to try and calm what was surely a storm of thoughts and questions raging in their minds. But what was there to say when he had no real understanding of it himself?

The second floor was much like the first, almost identical to the hallways below. A few metres down the worn wooden flooring, he reached for the handle of 204.

Someone fell to the floor with a gasp.

Iruka was in the room in a split-second, kunai in his right and a fistful of shuriken in his left guided by alarmed eyes. He dropped his arms and weapons back to his sides as he took sight of the room.

Koan was standing, arm outstretched into a push with a nurse on the floor, recoiling in shock away from a broken syringe on the ground between him and her.

The chuunin reacted accordingly and helped the startled woman up with a hand before turning to the genin and hardening his voice for use. "What's going on here?"

Koan didn't say a word. He sat back down on the edge of the bed, rubbing his lower back with his free hand, the other spinning a small stone on his palm.

"Are you going to answer me, genin?" Iruka pushed verbally.

Dark eyes shot up towards him. "I don't like needles."

The nurse by his side nodded. "I get that, but I need to take a sample. It's standard protocol during first admittance to have on file."

"He's not going to let you."

Naruto stood in the open doorway, a serious look in his eyes.

The nurse looked suddenly frightened. "But, it's standard-"

"Nurse," Iruka interrupted. "Please come back later."

She nodded fearfully and scurried out without a word.

Naruto walked in slowly before he slammed the door shut behind him. The dusty glass in the door rattled.

Iruka's features firmed. "What the hell is wrong with the two of you?"

Neither of them said a word.

He frowned. "Well?"

Naruto was the first to speak.

"I didn't want this," he said, nearly growling as he stared a hole into the floor. "I didn't want any of this. But it's here now. And I just found out about it. How else am I supposed to react?"

Koan nodded his agreement. "He has a right to be angry."

"And you have a right to shove nurses around for trying to do their jobs?" Iruka countered.

Koan said nothing.

"I thought so," Iruka said, crossing his arms over his flak jacket.

Naruto groaned quietly. "Leave him alone, Iruka-sensei. It's not like this is easy for him either."

Iruka raised a faintly curious eyebrow. "And just why is that?"

The door opened behind him.

"Koan brought something back to the surface, something I should've dealt with quite some time ago."

The Hokage stood behind him, his customary robes of red and white, quadrangle hat and all.

Iruka immediately inclined his head in a short bow. "Hokage-sama."

"Please excuse my intrusion on your impending lecture, Iruka-kun," the Hokage said in a respectful tone, "but I do have something to speak with you all about. It is merely more convenient if you are gathered in the same location to do so."

Naruto crossed his arms and sighed, resigned. "What is it, jiji?"

The older man closed his eyes for a brief moment, breathing once before he reopened them, dark eyes gazing tiredly upon the room.

"I am sorry, Naruto-kun," the Hokage said quietly. "I am sure you are deeply troubled by this and are searching for something to blame. Before you settle on yourself, here I am."

As Iruka watched on, Naruto gulped down air. "What... what are you talking about, jiji?"

The Hokage closed his eyes. "The law I made after I announced your identity to the village only exists because of my mistake in revealing you to them. I trusted them to honour the Yondaime's last wish: you were to be viewed as the hero you are. That trust of mine was misplaced, and my faith in the Will of Fire was shaken to its core. I am sorry."

Silence reigned. Naruto said nothing.

For a long, endless space of time, he stared, his eyes hopelessly wide, and his mouth contorting into shapes as Iruka watched him attempt to make sense of what he had just heard. But, slowly, the confused motions settled into quivering, and his eyes became something else: tearful. Naruto walked over to the Hokage, and threw his arms around him. He pulled the man in the white and red robes close.

Quiet sobs rolled out of the boy, and the Hokage held Naruto tight.

"It's alright, my boy. It's alright," he repeated in the tone befitting a kind grandfather comforting his dear grandson.

A minute of tears and silent consolation passed without a word spoken in the room. Iruka merely stood firm, controlling his face as emotion threatened to claw free from his iron grip on his heart.

This was all too familiar, all too close to home. He could still see a boy with a scar across his face, tears running down his cheeks in silence as he stared at the sky drenched in smoke and dust, rubble and ruin rising to a final peak somewhere in the starless heavens. He could still see that boy turning to see his best friend placing a hand on his shoulder and giving him a tearful smile that stretched across the sadness of a dirtied, bloodied face still dripping crimson.

Mizuki...

He saw that moment after the storm at dusk once more.

The jinchuuriki and the Hokage parted. Naruto wiped at his eyes with a ripped orange sleeve, sniffing once or twice as the tears receded and the emotions drained away.

Naruto spoke in a small voice. "It's alright, jiji. I'm still angry, and I will be for a while. But I'll be alright. We'll be alright."

The Hokage offered him a grateful smile. "That is more than I can ask for."

Naruto nodded and sat himself on the other white-sheeted bed in the room, a pensive look passing over his face.

"Koan," the Hokage said, turning to face the genin on the other side of the room.

Dark eyes, the ones that had turned on him abruptly, were not so dark now. Koan's eyes shifted from darkness to a resemblance of... sorrow, or perhaps regret.

"I did not tell you who Naruto was," the Hokage said aloud. "I was still trying to protect him, even though I failed. And I was trying to protect you."

The dark-haired genin gazed at him with measured intensity, a pair of judgmental pits staring past Iruka and towards the older man with his hands clasped behind his back and his head lowered in deference and remorse.

"It was from... this, then," Koan whispered, almost inaudible. "This... game."

Game?

The word struck a chord in Iruka's mind, a pluck of some buried mental string that resonated within. Something about the word and its echo in his head was... off, distorted. It felt wrong.

The Hokage nodded, his face held in grave stillness. "It runs deep and long. I was trying to keep you safe from it."

Koan, much like Naruto, said nothing at first. His sight became distant, and his eyes glazed over. His fingers twitched slightly, and his foot tapped once, then twice against the floor. His body became rigid, stiff, but then he relaxed and his eyes returned to the world.

"I... understand," Koan said, seemingly unsure of his own words.

"If you or your..." the Hokage began, pausing for a moment before rephrasing. "If you have further questions, see me when you have time."

The Hokage's gaze finally turned to him. "Iruka-kun, I would like to you to visit the interrogation headquarters."

It came as a request, and perhaps it was, but he was the Hokage. His word was law, and his requests could not be denied, but did he mean...

"Mitarashi Anko requested your assistance in dealing with your old teammate," the Hokage continued. "You know him best, and she believes your presence may make him more amenable to disclose information."

Iruka's blood ran cold, and he didn't know why.

He internally shook his head, but nodded externally. Whatever his state of mind, he had a responsibility to carry out his Hokage's orders. If that meant assisting in the interrogation and possible torture of his friend, he could not let his emotions get the better of him. Duty came far before feeling in matters of the village's continued safety.

"I will go now, Hokage-sama," he said, bowing slightly.

Walking for the door, Iruka couldn't help the growing cold spreading in his veins.

---

Naruto shifted where he sat on the bed. He didn't find mattress particularly comfortable. He preferred his bedding on the softer side rather than the hard and supportive firmness of the hospital stuff. It was just too stiff, too inflexible and sterile for his liking. But that was a hospital in a nutshell: clean, sterilised and so very white.

The walls would eventually give him a headache if he kept staring at them. Which he was. Because he was fixating on everything but the present.

The Hokage stood sentinel in the room's centre, his hands behind his back as they normally were. But the old man's robes were slightly damp, and noticeable and the very white lighting of the hospital room. His tears were still in the room.

He promised himself that he was done crying years ago, yet here he was, spilling his weeping guts all over the floor and the Hokage's robes. He felt something like embarrassment, but he wasn't used to the feeling, so maybe it was something else. But it was still quite painful, in one way or another.

What made it that little bit more painful for him was the presence of Koan across the room, sitting on the other bed.

He glanced over at him, the genin with the dark hair and the dark clothing and the serious air about him.

He knew virtually nothing about him. What he knew consisted of the facts that Koan was physically strong, disliked needles, and was similar to him in some way because 'he was like him', or whatever the hell that meant. He barely understood what he was at this point, so perhaps it was all irrelevant anyway.

The point was that a complete stranger had seen him cry, and that was what made it that little bit more unbearable.

Naruto sighed.

"Well, perhaps I should be going," the Hokage began, turning for the door. "Take care, boys. You both have team assignment at the Academy tomorrow, so get plenty of rest."

"Okay," Naruto nodded. "Good... wait."

Team assignment. Team assignment? Oh, team assignment. That thing where the genin get put on teams, which I have tomorrow... oh.

"I'm... I'm... I'm..."

He couldn't find the words.

The Hokage pulled a blue-clothed hitai-ate from the folds of his robes and tossed into Naruto's hands. "You've... earned it, Naruto-kun."

The metal plate landed in his palms gently. He ran a finger across the reflective surface absently, right before he removed his old goggles and secured it around his forehead, tying the cloth tight.

The Hokage opened the door.

"You are a shinobi now, Naruto-kun. You are one step closer to your goal," he said, smiling proudly.

The Hokage looked to Koan. "I'll check you two out at the front desk when I leave. Perhaps you should use this time to explain."

He closed the door behind him.

"Explain?" Naruto echoed, looking towards Koan for an answer. "Explain what?"

"I'll tell you once we're somewhere quiet," he said. "Follow me."

Koan walked out with his hands in the pockets of his jacket and not another word out of his mouth. Naruto followed along a few paces behind.

Maybe it was his natural curiosity getting the better of him, or the lack of time given to process all the new information floating in a jumbled mess throughout the vacuous space that was his mind, but he followed him without questioning it. Or maybe that it was he had no reason to suspect anything from him.

Suspicion was a typical state of mind for him to remain in. Mizuki had proven that. But the Hokage seemed to trust Koan, talking to him in an oddly familiar way... and similar to the way the old man talked to him. So he followed.

Just where Koan was taking him, he didn't know. At this point though, he didn't really care. He was a shinobi now.

As they left the hospital and began to roam the darkened streets, Naruto lifted his head a little higher.

He didn't want it this way, but a chance to be free was close by. Maybe it was freedom from people, or the walls of the village one day, or the shadows that seemed to hang around him, or maybe... it was freedom from the Kyuubi.

But it didn't matter. It was freedom, and it was in reach. He was going to take it with both hands.

---

The Hokage settled himself into the chair of his office once more. His time spent at the hospital coupled with the smaller administrational tasks that he needed to attend to on the way back had delayed his return to his office to resume more of those administrational tasks. But at least he would have a moment now to smoke his pipe in relative-

The door to his office burst open. Iruka clutched at the doorframe, his chest heaving as he struggled to catch his breath.

"Hokage-sama..." he muttered breathlessly. "Mizuki is... Mizuki is..."

He was at the man's side in an instant.

"Take a moment, Iruka-kun," he urged.

Iruka nodded and gulped down air, rasping gasps in and out through his mouth.

When he had finally regained some semblance of breath, Iruka concluded.

"Hokage-sama... Mizuki is dead."

No time to smoke his pipe, then.

---

So, this is it.

Hopefully it's turned out alright. If it hasn't, please let me now in any way you want to. I'm pretty desperate for feedback on this because I really, really want to improve this story and hopefully take it up to the levels of the giants of Naruto fanfic like Kenchi618, that new guy I love, Eilyfe, a personal favourite of mine, Kingakashi, and the author who does the great Naruto crossovers, The Engulfing Silence. I'm nowhere near them yet, but that's the goal.

And I can't do it alone.

If you have advice, give it. If you think my writing's shit, tell me why. If you just like this and want to tell me that you do, then tell me.

This is a great community, and I'd really like your support with this.

Thanks, guys.

With a hope in my heart and a dream in my head,

A238