Better, right?

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"Legend has it that there was a being that roamed the Earth before the time of man. With no clue where he came from, how he got there, and no idea where to go, he merely traveled. He had zero tolerance to the dangers the world possessed, which resulted in his near death experience. He had fallen into a small stream and the barely cold water gave him hypothermia. The stream gave way to a waterfall, and in the middle of the lake below was a pool of lava surrounded by stone."

Naruto leaned forward from his bedroll. After explaining to Jiraiya what he knew, which wasn't much at all, Jiraiya shared what he knew, resulting in story-time.

"The waterfall launched the lone man out of the water and whizzing through the air. His flight ended when he crashed into the stone that separated the lava and fire, but his hand flopped into the lava, melting it off almost instantly, while setting his cloth robe on fire."

"Jiraiya, this guy sounds like he has worse luck than Granny. If he was around to pass on rumors then how did he make it out of this?"

"I was getting there. Hitting the stone knocked him unconscious, and a storm blew in before he awoke. When he finally came to, lightning was striking all around him, and as he went to stand up and run for cover, he was struck. It's said that being struck by all five of the major chakra affinities at once is what set it off, but none of this can truly be proven." Jiraiya paused to take a drink of water. Story-time took a lot of talking, which is why he always prefered writing to talking. It also allowed him to avoid awkward situation, seeing as how he never had to see the person reading his book.

"Ero-sennin, set what off? You can't just pause at the good parts!" Naruto was flailing around, and Sasuke rolled over in his sleeping bag.

"Be quiet, I'm trying to sleep." Sasuke mumbled from the other side of the fire. In reality he was listening to the story, but he'd be damned if he let either of them know that.

"I was getting to it Gaki, be patient. And they are called cliff-hangers for a reason. Now, anyway, when the man opened his eyes he was surprised he could still move. He was even more surprised that he wasn't dead or even in pain. He looked down at his still usable hand and saw it emanating a blue energy, and the next bolt of lightning shocked him into putting his hands up, when he launched lighting himself. He was surprised, and keeled over in shock. Upon looking at his reflection in the water, he saw his eyes were now dark grey with four odd designs he had never seen before, and odd shapes as well. He looked around at his surroundings, and figured he would experiment on what he could do. And that's where the legend ends."

Naruto just sat there staring at Jiraiya with his new eyes. "You mean to tell me I sat here and listened to your story about a guy who has shitty luck, and then can't provide anything to do with the actual topic of the story itself? What was I supposed to gain out of that?" Naruto was getting more and more upset.

"Oh, right. Thanks for reminding me: there was one more part. During his experimentation he found he could control fire, water, earth, wind, lightning, and lava. All of the things he encountered readily. And whenever a new obstacle struck him down, he managed to get back up and conquer it. It's like he could take everything that hurt him and use it against the world. That's the true end of the story." Jiraiya stood up. "Well, we should probably get ready to head out. Sleeping Beauty, nap time's over. Get up and pack up."

Naruto set a clone to cleaning up his stuff, he didn't feel like doing it himself. He thought about the last part, about using everything you've been hit with against the world. It sounded to him like it was the Sharingan, but better. The drawback of having to get hit with it did kind of suck, but if taking one for the team meant you could send out hundreds for the team afterwards, that would be a pretty good trade off. "Jiraiya, what happened to the guy? Did his power end up destroying him? Did he ever find out how he got there?"

"What part of end of the story don't you understand? If he knew more he would have tagged in on. Now shut up and stop being lazy. Pick up your own shit." Sasuke had his stuff in a nice neat pile, ready to go when the sannin told him to head out. From his position he still couldn't see Naruto's eyes, and he had been asleep when Naruto explained what was going on.

"Whatever teme. I'm working smarter, not harder. Anyway Jiraiya, do you know if I can get my real eyes back? New things are fun and all, but I want to be able to look at things without seeing overlapping bubbles of energy." Naruto was rolling his sleeping bag up, facing away from Sasuke has he glanced over.

"I can't think of anything. Other than maybe focusing chakra to your eyes? Or cutting chakra flow there, that could be it also." Jiraiya had packed up long ago, and was exploring the cave, noticing how all of the doors he saw before were now gone without a trace.

Sasuke started towards Naruto, straight over the fireplace that had since been extinguished but not cleaned. "Why can't you see normally? What's going on?"

Naruto moved on to placing his things in a neat-for-him pile. "Oh, you didn't hear? I woke up with these." Naruto stood up straight, looked at his teammate, and pointed to his eyes. "Apparently they're called the Hakai No Ai, but they don't seem all that destructive to me."

Sasuke gaped at the blond idiot. Not even an Uchiha took activating their Sharingan lightly, and they knew it was coming. Naruto developed a new one, and he is as calm as could be! "I'm not sure if he is just superbly dumb, or if it is his coping mechanism. Either way, the sheer depth of it astounds me." "Naruto, you're acting as if things like this happen every day, they don't."

"Believe me, I'm surprised. But jumping around and blinding myself with fast moving colors isn't what I'm trying to do. Hey! How do you turn off your Sharingan? Maybe they function the same way." Naruto brightened when he thought up his 'brilliant' idea.

Sasuke started walking away, hiding his disbelief. "I think about not wanting them active anymore and they turn off." Naruto thought for a few minutes, going cross-eyed at one point, but his eyes finally receded to normal blue.

"Yes! Thank you Sasuke! I can see everything normally again!" Jiraiya chose this time to walk back over.

"Gaki, calm down and bring me that scroll you said you found." Jiraiya held out his hand expecting Naruto to comply quickly.

Naruto stopped and scratched his head. "I actually don't know which one I put it in. Can it wait until we get back to Konoha?"

Both Sasuke and Jiraiya dead-panned at Naruto. "You have one bag, I'm sure it is an easy find. Besides, I thought you wanted answers?" Jiraiya started rubbing his temples in frustration.

"I got a lot of scrolls from the rooms, and they were all sealed again and again. I don't know what one ended up with the weird scroll in it."

Jiraiya did his best to calm himself before speaking again. "Gaki Gaki Gaki. Whatever, we'll go through them when we get home. Let's go, I've had enough of dark caves, and I want to get out of here." There was a click, and the floor under Jiraiya shot upwards, and he was close enough to his stuff that it went out with him.

Sasuke said the same thing after grabbing his things, resulting in him going up along with Jiraiya.

Naruto stared at them for a moment, before finally realizing how great this room had been. All of their needs had been met without a question, and now it is just freely letting them go. "It doesn't make sense, but I wish I could take you with me. It would be awesome having a room like this in my life. But I guess that wouldn't make sense. Would you please be so kind as to take me to my friends?"

Naruto saw the room glow brighter than anything he had seen to this point. He closed his eyes and held his head in pain, while feeling himself being lifted in the air. He assumed the room was taking him out, but he had no idea why it grew so brightly taking him out but not the others. When he finally felt the movement stop he realized his skin was warm from sunlight. He opened his eyes and found himself on an island a quick sprint across water from the coast. There was a single building on the island, and he was still standing on the floor of the cave-room, which had remained black. Slowly he saw that the color was receding from the edges, almost as if it were folding, and the end result was the most complex seal pattern he had ever seen the size of his palm on the ground by his feet. Another protrusion from the ground brought it to arm level, and the seal floated off the pedestal and attached to the back of Naruto's hand, fading away almost completely, but remaining visible if you looked closely.

"Gaki, are you alright? What was that?" Jiraiya ran over to Naruto and pulled him off of the metallic ground.

"It's a seal array. It's what allowed the room to do the things we needed. I can actually see things like that written in this seal, it's fascinating. There is so much I don't understand, but considering you just started me on reading seals this is wonderful." Naruto was amazed as he stared at the back of his hand.

"We need to get back. We have so much to report, and this little excursion is going to cost us a lot of traveling time." Jiraiya had so many thoughts running through his mind, so one very important thought eluded his attention.

"Dobe, Jiraiya. What are we going to do with the ninka we tied up back there. With how weak he was I don't think he will actually be able to get out himself." Sasuke looked off into the village, seeing nothing but broken building and a destroyed home. It reminded him of the Uchiha compound in a way, but he knew these people made it out alive, unlike his clan. He looked away and took a moment to calm himself. Getting worked up over something like this was no way to beat Orochimaru's curse mark, and he'd be damned if he let Orochimaru have his body. Glancing at the building on the island he saw light emitting from inside. "This is probably where he was holding up. It looks refurbished."

Naruto finally looked up from his hand. "We should go get that guy before we leave. I'll go grab him." Naruto sprinted towards the village and returned moments later with their captive who was only now regaining consciousness

"You better let me go now, or I'll break free and kill you all!" The ninja was squirming, clearly trying to threaten them, to absolutely no avail.

"Anyone of us individually could kill you ourselves, there is no way you could possibly beat all three of us together." Sasuke was about to put a genjutsu on the loser just to shut him up.

"Fine. What do you guys want from me? I moved to this village to get away from people trying threatening me. And could you please put me down? This is highly uncomfortable." Naruto shrugged and put the guy down next to his dwelling.

"I'll let you go, but on a few conditions." Naruto started talking. He had some ideas how to make this work.

"Yeah, sure. But what could you possibly want from me?" The ninja just sat there. He wasn't getting out without being released.

"First, tell us your name."

"Saikon. I lost my family name in a duel with Father. Another part of the reason I'm out here." Saikon looked down in sadness.

Jiraiya and Sasuke stood back, waiting for Naruto to get to the point. "I'm sorry about that Saikon, it must be tough having your father not respect you." Naruto cut one of the three seals on their captive. This one held his arms and legs bound together. "The second thing I ask is that you inform us if you find anything of interest in this place."

"I've been here for three years and I haven't found anything, but yeah, sure. I don't care." Naruto leaned in to cut off the one holding Saikon's feet together.

"Finally, be more welcoming to guest of Whirlpool. I'm sure the old inhabitants wouldn't want to see the sole soul here being rude and attack happy."

"Yeah, alright. I can do that I guess. But I'm still going to defend myself if nece-" Saikon looked at Naruto's face for the first time. "Those eyes! I saw a picture of them somewhere in the village! I looked at it and it shrunk into the wall, and I haven't been able to find it since, but it looked almost exactly like those! They had more stuff in them though" Naruto cut the last seal, freeing Saikon's hands.

"Thank you. Remember to let us know if you find anything. Oh, and can you draw?" Naruto got a slight giddy smile on his face.

"No, sorry."

And Naruto's smile melted away. "Oh well. Ok, have a nice life! Stay in touch! Pervy Sage, Teme, lets go." Naruto hopped on to the water and started sprinting towards Konoha.

"Gaki! You don't even know if you're going the right way!" Naruto stopped and turned around.

"I think I do Jiraiya. When I look that way I see an outline of Konoha. It's really weird, and faint, but I see it." Naruto took off once more, leaving a larger gap between him and his companions. They bid farewell to their now previous hostage and leapt after Naruto.

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Cool. Two updates in less than seven days! New record for me! Probably sucky as well, but I try my best. The next chapter should hopefully be more interesting. Don't worry, some of the loose ends I noticed will be getting tied up. If you notice anything you'd like an explanation to just leave a review or pm me and I'll get back to you ASAP. Until next time, Ja Ne!

The King- has left- the building.