Chakra? I Don't Believe It!
Chapter One
The Council Chambers
Sarutobi Hiruzen sat down regally despite being bone-tired, cradling a tiny infant in his arms. The newborn slept on as he had since Minato completed the seal. At least, that's what Hirzun believed to be the case. He had checked for a seal and couldn't find one. He couldn't even find a trace of the Kyuubi either.
Tense was a tame word for how the council members appeared, and the (unfortunately) reinstated Hokage couldn't blame them. The man stared at the clan heads and other elite shinobi who had survived the battle; the heirs already replaced some seats, and it saddened Hiruzen to think about the sheer magnitude of casualties they had taken. Worse was the exhaustion from fighting, from struggling to survive. Even now, hours after the foul chakra had dissipated, the faces of his fellow councilmen and women showed age and weariness he doubted would leave.
Choza Akimichi, as skinny as a Nara. Inoichi Yamanaka and Nara Shikaku, with suspicious amounts of blood.
Fugaku Uchiha was covered in soot, though he still managed the aloof visage he was known for.
Even Danzo had specks of dirt on his bandages and sweat gleaming on his forehead.
"Er… Hokage-sama," Inoichi asked finally, when no one spoke, "what happened to the Kyuubi?"
Hiruzen looked at each council member and raised a finger before he put it down lamely. "I have absolutely no idea," he said offhandedly.
Inoichi blinked. Homura and Koharu tilted their heads. Fugaku grunted. Even Danzo fought to remain neutral, realizing that his old assassination target had become senile in retirement.
"The infant is our Jinchuuriki, Hiruzen," Danzo pointed out. In his wizened mind, it made perfect sense. Why else would his old comrade and previous target bring the child along? Perhaps he thought Danzo a fool. But Danzo had always been the smart one on his team, no matter what their sensei said.
"I thought so too. But sadly, no."
Danzo blinked stupidly, something he'd never admit to doing. "How do you lose a chakra beast?" he exclaimed in a rare show of emotion.
"I don't know! It was there, and then it wasn't!"
Shikaku, the jonin commander, rubbed his chin. "Minato was always troublesomely determined to shatter all expectations. Ask him to reseal a Bijuu, and he blinked it out of existence."
"The Kyuubi isn't gone. It can't die, you fool," Danzo spat.
Hiruzen slammed his fist onto the table to quiet the discontent.
"The Kyuubi has vanquished. I don't know where, but the creature is gone. We may never know what happened to it, but I believe the secret lies with his child."
An hour or so earlier
Kurama, the most esteemed and extraordinary of the Bijuu, was pissed. He growled and slammed against the cage that was somehow more degrading than the slab and stakes Kushina had subjected him to.
"You disgusting Fleshbags! Meatsuits! Excrement of worms! When I get out of here, I will rip the flesh from your bones. I will eat your children and stomp on your old! There will be nowhere a Konoha flea can hide from ME, Kurama!"
The seal bounced him back from the gate, and he sensed a wave of exhaustion hit. He knew if he didn't get out now, he'd be dragged into the abyss until his new container was in double digits.
It wasn't fair. Kurama never asked to be a walking natural disaster; he had been a peaceful Bijuu.
Sure, there was that civilization across the ocean, Atlantis. They were asking to be dragged into the sea after building on his favorite nap spot. Not to mention, they ate so much seafood it started to make the whole island stink. He considered himself a marine conservationist, taking out such wasteful people.
And Matanabi never let him live down the fall of those Mayan temples… but they shouldn't have been where his foot landed while hunting. Kurama never forgave them. That hemisphere was still considered uninhabitable, and he refused to apologize.
In an exceedingly rare moment of self-reflection, he could be persuaded into considering that he could have overreacted a little.
But then he remembered how long it took to pull the shards of that human temple out from his toe bean and slapped himself with his own tail. It was justified. It was justice meted out. They deserved it.
With that internal monologue out of the way, he pouted and prepared to fall into another slumber.
That's when he heard it. It sounded like something squeaking in the far distance of the dark sewer walls that made up his prison. The sentient mass of chakra squinted its eyes to figure out what was making all that racket.
It started as a white speck down the hallway of his container's mind. To Kurama's horror, it grew closer with each passing second. There's no way. Was that yellow-haired brat who sealed him stuck with him? In his prison?
Oh, just kill him now if he had the monster that stuck him inside the cage with him for the next hundred years. There was room for only Kurama in his cage. He wasn't sharing.
But no. It wasn't a human.
A giant white magic eraser crawled out of the darkness like some type of unholy sponge abomination. It purified and cleaned everything that touched it with every swish and step. The grime-ridden walls flashed to a white-tiled horror. It sparkled.
Kurama would never admit it, but he shrieked like an Uzumaki banshee when the edge of the abomination magicked a tail out of existence. He tried to flee, but the cage started to close around him.
It was a fight to the death; Kurama stood no chance. His glorious tails, he groomed obsessively with the oil and blood of virgins, were gone in a flash. His body that he chiseled through harsh physical activity followed soon after. His last thoughts that shot through his mind were, That damn Minato…
Meanwhile, Naruto smiled in his sleep and let out a diaper explosion, feeling like he had just gotten rid of some gas.
One of Konoha's Orphanages, Four Years Later
Strange occurrences had been shared around the young not-Jinchuuriki since birth. By the time Naruto was a year old, anyone close to him would report feeling "odd," like their control had slipped. By his second birthday, even Hiruzen couldn't discount the feeling of power loss on his weekly visits.
Naruto may not have been the Jinchuuriki, but these occurrences assured no one wanted to be near him. And like all small children ignored, his frustration led to unholy levels of screaming and attention-seeking.
ANBU Raven was a new recruit to black ops and had been expecting glorious battles and cool assassination moves. Maybe some espionage missions in rival villages to root our dark secrets for blackmail purposes or national security. Like the pamphlets claimed.
Instead, Raven was in a tiny orphanage room, plugging his ears behind a genjutsu while a four-year-old cried. He felt lied to. Tricked to the highest degree.
Despite not being a Jinchuuriki, Hiruzen had assigned his elite to guard the boy until his genin days as an assurance no one would attempt to take out the last of Minato's line.
At this point, Raven is tempted to pay for an S-class assassination mission against the kid. The kid just kept crying.
"God, I am never having a kid. Screw continuing bloodlines."
A block hit him in the mask, and murder entered his thoughts.
"Killing him is treason. Treason is bad. Treason means no rent money," he thought to himself. The other ANBU faced similar dilemmas.
Even the ROOT agents, who were there for the day when the Bijuu awoke and proved their master right (Danzo refused to be wrong), were ready to break orders.
And then Naruto, a toddler that rolled around on the carpet and sobbed his heart out in frustration, sneezed.
And that sneeze changed the world, as Raven would tell his grandkids.
Suddenly, all their chakra left them. It was like it was erased, just gone. Raven and his squad, who had been using genjutsu and wall climbing since their academy days, felt all control leave them, and they collapsed on the ground.
Raven blinked, thinking he had just gotten fired for letting a D-rank genjutsu slip, but his comrades- and ROOT- were staring back at him in similar positions.
Then the kid noticed them and screamed louder than ever.
When he heard about the incident, the Hokage would call the ability radius negation.
Konoha Academy
Naruto expected a lot when he joined the academy at the request of old man Hokage. He had been told stories of shinobi wielding legendary powers to fight the world's evils while ensuring the Will of Fire stayed alive and well. What small child didn't hear about the ability to conjure fireballs and shoot lightning and didn't get excited?
However, when anyone tried to show him some amazing techniques, they couldn't. Due to this, Naruto started to doubt that chakra was even real. That didn't mean he didn't want to give it a chance, though. So he found himself in school learning about the village and the world beyond the walls.
Things went relatively smoothly for the spiky blond. He studied history, learned math and science, and why his village was the best, and every other village sucked. Especially Iwa. His favorite was learning taijutsu. The thrill of hand-to-hand combat really got his blood pumping.
Then it happened. Naruto's teachers would finally teach him and his peers how to use this mystical energy called chakra. Unfortunately, Naruto's radius of negation had grown big enough to encompass a quarter of the village. The teachers could not demonstrate the techniques, much less feel their chakra. They couldn't even teach the children how to unlock theirs.
Naruto became disillusioned with the chakra idea and decided it was a fairytale. That thought would have untold consequences. With Naruto's full acceptance that chakra wasn't real, his ability made it so. His radius grew to encompass the entirety of Konoha, and the village would never know chakra again.
This is the story of Naruto, who didn't believe in chakra.
AN: Hi there, folks! It's C&M, and together we make MACE! We're a fanfiction couple who both enjoy writing. We enjoyed sharing fun little writing ideas with one another, and then something amazing came to us. So, we were sitting around having a fun time when this idea popped into both of our heads. We discussed it and broke into laughter, and we couldn't wait to share it with you all! This is the beginning of our "I Don't Believe It!" series. Please look forward to more and let us know how you like it. Also, please leave your thoughts, comments, and suggestions; we may take them and use them.