Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Naruto: The Scroll of Power

Chapter 1: Inheritance

"So ya see," a senile and completely bald man wiped his nose before continuing, "my pathetic excuse for a son was drunk on sake and broke through the wall, and I found this!" Then Saito motioned to the wooden chest on the floor with the the iconic Uzumaki's clan signature whirlpool in each side.

The equally old Third Hokage took the large box and examined it; it was a rather simple wooden box that could be opened without a key. As Hiruzen Sarutobi opened it, he couldn't help but wonder what this chest was doing in some random house's walls.

"You didn't open it, right?" Hiruzen questioned upon seeing that the chest contained various scrolls that Hiruzen couldn't help but feel an odd feeling in his stomach about.

"N-no!" caught off guard, Saito screeched with full force from his throat, which made him sound a lot younger and more feminine. "I'm a businessman! Not some idiot that would want any trouble, sir. I'd go out of my way to avoid all the shinobi stuff, so I brang it here!" The old man knew better than to pry open a chest that could contain secrets that could shorten his already short time in the world.

Hiruzen simply nodded and let the old man go home without further questioning. It took about an hour for the Third to search through the scroll secrets, yet it was most likely time wasted, in his opinion. Most scrolls were rather empty; they were unfinished. The one that caught his eye the most was a scroll that was almost completely empty, since every single one had at least a few things sealed or written in it. The only thing written on the black scroll was 'Knowledge is power.'

"Maybe I should give these to Naruto," Hiruzen thought aloud since a few had some simple basic fighting tips and tricks. He took some of those scrolls that would be problematic and left the few that he saw fit.

XxX

"A year 'til graduation, huh," Naruto said to Shikamaru as the black-haired boy ate the overcooked rice his mother made. Seeing that his words went completely unnoticed by the dark-haired boy, he flicked his finger right to his forehead.

"Eh, what was that for?" the young Nara grumbled as he took the final, awful taste of his lunch. "Not only do I have to stomach my mother's food, but also your ramblings?"

Naruto grimaced at that and responded with a grin, "Y'know, this will be the year when I'll finally put Sasuke in the dirt. I have developed a special jutsu all by myself!" Shikamaru couldn't help but sigh, knowing full well that the technique most likely was created for pranks.

As luck would have it, Sasuke soon passed Naruto, and they locked eye contact. Naruto's piercing light blue eyes gave a gaze that Sasuke could already tell everything; Naruto wanted a fight.

The raven-haired boy stopped right after passing the blond, knowing what's going to happen next. "Rematch!" Naruto announced loudly as he got ready into a fighting stance, at which Sasuke scoffed.

"This again?" he asked. "How many times do I have to beat your ass to leave me alone?"

"Until I win!" Naruto responded with a rather lame response. Neither bowed or anything alike, as it was more of a friendly spar than anything. Or more accurately, a friendly beating to Naruto.

Naruto launched himself forward, and upon nearing Sasuke, he tried hitting his rival head-on first, punching right to his head. However, Sasuke was far too quick and avoided the attack, instead delivering a weak kick to Naruto's leg, making him fall down.

It felt as if Sasuke was holding back, which further infuriated the boy. He aggressively launched himself again, this time with more caution. Strong attack and weak defense was Naruto's motto; unlike most of the pre-genin here, Naruto learned to fight in the streets, where the most important thing was hitting first.

Sasuke easily avoided most of Naruto's attacks, not launching any powerful attacks in return, since he was somewhat curious about what kind of joke/technique Naruto had prepared this time.

Getting sick of this, he deployed his new jutsu, "Oiroke no Jutsu(Sexy Technique)!" and a curvy blonde female appeared out of a puff of white smoke, which lingered in spots that could be considered very inappropriate to show even as a joke.

The few girls surrounding the fight, or more accurately, surrounding Sasuke, were getting their kunai ready to kill Naruto, while Shikamaru was mentally facepalming himself.

Sasuke grimaced, jumped in the air, and delivered a round-house kick to the whisker-marked boy/girl's head, making him/her fall to the ground face first. Sasuke didn't say anything more, and just left without saying a word.

"Dammit! This works against most men!" Naruto scoffed as he got up from the floor and patted away the dust off his orange pants. "Anyway, what do you think about this one, Shikamaru?" He ended his sentence puzzled upon seeing that Shikamaru was nowhere in sight, and multiple girls were getting ready to beat him up. So, it was the average Monday for the young boy.

After a severe, much harder beating than Sasuke gave to Naruto, he attended his classes, which, quite frankly, he slept through. I'm a man of action, not science! Who needs that crap anyway, he thought to himself while walking along the crosswalk in the busy streets of Konoha after finishing his classes.

The trip from the academy to home never took more than 30 minutes, yet Naruto wished it took longer. There was quite literally nothing to do for him at home, nor was anyone waiting for him.

Looking at the ground, mumbling something about "I'll show you," he stumbled on a white cloak's end on the ground and fell to the ground. Looking up, he saw the very familiar Hokage, who was smiling, holding a chest in his hands.

"Jiji?!" Naruto said loudly. "What are you doing here, out in Konoha's streets?" Seeing a Hokage roam freely in the village wasn't a common sight in any of the great villages.

"Being old sometimes makes you appreciate little things," he said as he took off his red and white Hokage hat, looking up at the boy with a pleasant smile. "I gave myself a chance to go and bring you a gift all by myself. It gets quite tiring in the office."

Naruto gave a puzzled look before realizing what he meant, and quickly took the chest from his hands. "Thanks!"

The old man nodded, and puffing out smoke from his pipe, which was almost empty of tobacco. "How was the first day?" he asked.

Naruto grimaced. "As you'd expect the first day to go… I was beaten by Sasuke, once again."

"When will you learn from your mistakes and not blindly attack? Then you might have a chance," Hokage said, and grimaced, noticing that no puffs were now coming out of his pipe.

"Yeah, yeah. See ya later, old man!" Naruto said as he turned and raised his hand in the air to bid farewell.

Naruto couldn't remember the last time he had been given a present and was beyond excited to find out what he got! In short notice, he made his way back to his home.

"Reaaaaally?" Naruto griped as he read through the few scrolls he got. They weren't particularly bad or even boring. In fact, most of them were insightful, mostly covering kunai throwing, and some theories and strategies about war and fighting that Naruto couldn't comprehend/care. In all honesty, he expected something cool; a sword like a katana or the sharpest knife imaginable is what Naruto wished to see. Instead, it seemed it was full of stuff similar to what he read in the academy.

The last scroll that Naruto hadn't picked up yet had a rather intimidating complete black color. As he laid it down and opened it, he only found a short sentence written on it: "Knowledge is power."

"Pfffft," Naruto scoffed, "What kind of lame jackass wrote that down." He then stood up and looked through the window, finding the mountain which housed each Hokage's face.

"What I wouldn't do to be there," he mused aloud. "I'd be right next to the Fourth, Minato Namikaze." After a long minute of staring without a blink at the monument, Naruto sat back down on his wooden chair and noticed that the words "Knowledge is power" were gone from the scroll. Instead, "Minato Namikaze" was written all throughout the long scroll, which Naruto noticed upon unfurling it.

Naruto scratched his head, and for a minute or so had his mind seemingly blank before coming to a conclusion he thought would explain this situation. "I guess when you say someone's name it writes it?" he more asked than answered.

He took the scroll, still fully opened with both of his hands fully stretched to reach the ends, sat down on his bed, and looked at it for a bit longer before raising his shoulders and giving up. "I'll ask the old man about this nonsense." Naruto wasn't too knowledgeable about scrolls, but he was sure he hadn't heard of any that did that.

Turning off the lights was the last thing he did before getting ready in his slightly too-short pajamas and laying down on his bed, which had multiple wood planks broken. Not the best place to live, but for one guy, it was definitely more than spacious enough.

It didn't take long, only a couple of minutes before Naruto went to sleep. He rarely dreamed, and none of his dreams were any memorable. Usually, his dreams were literal dreams about some of the girls from his class or him beating Sasuke up. Not something he ever thought was too important to remember. However, as his eyes closed and his mind wandered off, something felt completely different this night.

XxX

A dark forest surrounded Naruto, or in this case, the body in which Naruto resided. Many ideas were flying through the boy's head, all of which were blissfully unaware of where or who he was.

One moment, nothing and the next, the world seemed far darker than it ever had been. The voices were all blurry, but one thing was clear to see — a man with a gray mask with many black moon-like shapes throughout it. The man in front had a black cloak and just slightly less dark hair.

Naruto couldn't see who he was, but he could feel that it was... familiar. The voices were mumbly, yet he could feel them coming from his own mouth, both voluntarily and involuntarily at the same time. He was in complete control of the movements, yet it felt like everything was happening automatically.

Voices were starting to get a bit clearer, yet it felt as if he himself was only speaking every now and then. It seemed the man he was in was confident, yet reserved in his own thoughts, which, sadly, Naruto couldn't quite understand.

Madara.

Kyūbi.

And a few other words Naruto could hear before he heard the final words. "Now, that I've freed Kyūbi," was what Naruto could piece together and gather the man in front saying. It still felt quite dizzy for the young boy, but even then, it appeared that the man could be the one responsible for the attack that killed many in the village a decade ago.

Soon after, Naruto, or the vessel whose memories Naruto now inhabited, attacked the man that claimed to be Madara. Noticing the red eye symblons on the man's eyes, it was clear as day that he was an Uchiha.

Both the vessel and the masked man launched forward at a speed Naruto had never seen before. Naruto thrust a peculiar-looking kunai with three sharp blades into the man, yet it phased through him. The masked man's chains almost caught him, but with his insanely quick speed, he shifted up into the air, avoiding them and falling ten meters behind the masked man.

Naruto couldn't hear the words as they took a one-second break, yet he could feel the many mixing emotions of slight stress and concern in the body he was in.

They both once again launched forward towards each other, but this time, the vessel threw the kunai with the seal which went through his head. Then, as the vessel was forming some sort of blue spinning ball, Madara was about to grab the him, but the body Naruto was in teleported to the kunai, gaining the high ground. A dramatic, final attack was made which hit the masked man, and he fell to the ground making the whole area explode in dust and pebbles.

There were some other things afterward, yet they all faded out and were forgotten the moment it all ended. Finally, Naruto's dream finished.

XxX

Cold sweat ran down Naruto's forehead, some even dripping onto his bedsheets. A loud gulp emanated from the pit of Naruto's stomach as he noticed the black scroll on the floor no longer had the words 'Minato Namikaze' written on it.

Could it be... but maybe it's just a dream, Naruto thought. He wiped the sweat with his pajamas and looked through the window. It was unusually early for Naruto to wake up at this hour, but he certainly knew he wouldn't be able to sleep anymore after this.

He picked up the scroll with his hand and stared at it. He looked at it for so long but all the ideas he had seemed to vanish into thin air as he held eye contact with the black seal markings on it.

Could it be... that this man was responsible or related to the Kyūbi's attack? The idea lingered in Naruto's mind before he scoffed.

"Maybe it's just a bad dream," he muttered softly, splashed some water on his face, and looked at the mirror, noticing the stressed look visible in his reddened eyes and his lips twitching. The dream felt as if he was living it, and certainly not dreaming. Even the ball he held in his hand still felt as if he could do it. No, he knew he could somehow do it, and he unconsciously felt that he already had done it.

"Maybe I need a bit to clear my mind," he said to himself and put on his iconic orange outfit. "Maybe Sasuke just gave me a concussion."

Locking the door, Naruto went for a stroll along Konoha's outskirts. The sun was just barely above the horizon, and the only people who seemed to be awake were a few shinobi and shopkeepers getting ready to sell their wares.

Running, running, and running. For three hours, Naruto ran, and he couldn't help but look at his hand, imagining forming the blue ball he did previously in his dream. "Screw it, I'm trying this out," he said to himself aloud as he stopped running in an area where nobody was.

Closing his eyes, he imagined what it felt like back then. Then, he started doing the exact same thing. It was easy to guess that the jutsu in his dream required a lot of good chakra control, and even if his was terrible, he felt as if he could just simply do it anyway; the amount of chakra wasn't an issue for Naruto. As he pushed his left hand forward with his palm to his right hand, the blue spinning ball appeared.

Then, he suddenly stopped, as his own concentration evaporated, replaced by surprise and shock and the blue ball disappeared.

He tried it again, working just as it did before. He looked at the spinning ball for a few seconds before thinking, Maybe I should try out this bad boy, with a grin. He ran and placed it into a tree. If he didn't know better, with his usual posture and hand placement, he would've gone flying with the blue ball spinning him around a hundred times, but now, even that felt as if he knew how to do it exactly.

In the wide tree, a massive spiraled hole appeared, with the tree ending up falling to the ground a second later. I can't believe it, he thought. What in the world is happening? I can just imagine Sasuke's face when I show him this! Hmmm, maybe I should practice it a bit more, he kept thinking to himself as his grin widened so much it reached heights unseen for a human seemingly reaching his ears.

"Screw the academy," he said loudly. "Who needs that crap when I can do that already?" Soon after, he ran to academy and hatched a plan, if you could call it that, to skip the academy today.

Slamming the door with full loudness, Naruto quickly entered the classroom, noticing that none of the students, besides Hinata and Sakura were present. The pink-haired girl was now glaring at Naruto for making such a loud entrance.

"Why is it always you, Naruto?" Sakura said.

"Because I'm awesome like that!" Naruto enthusiastically replied, even more than ever. He was practically jumping mid-air with excitement.

"Aren't you happy today?" Iruka commented, to which Naruto goofily nodded his head many times over.

"Oh nothin' important happened," Naruto not so subtly said. "Y'know, I had slept very badly because... ehh, the food I ate made me feel dizzy," he then pointed to his eyes, which, in all fairness, were very red with veins popping out like a pressure cooker about to burst. "I can't read more than one second before it feels like my eyes are burning!"

Iruka looked concerned, and at one second, Naruto felt like he was glaring, but that wasn't the case. Despite the happy face on Naruto, there was definitely a problem with his eyes. "Fine, Naruto. You can go, but if tomorrow your eyes aren't any better, I'll force you to see a doctor. Like it or not." Naruto nodded, once again, multiple times over while holding his thumbs up in the air.

"Gotta celebrate!" he said to himself upon exiting the academy grounds. All the excitement he was feeling was fogging his mind; he stopped caring about what had caused him to learn such a technique and what it entailed.

"How should I celebrate? Hmmm, a good shinobi like me could use a weapon or something," he said to himself as he walked the now buzzing streets of Konoha. It was still early in the morning, with most people now heading to their jobs.

Naruto shook his frog-themed wallet and heard a good amount of banging. As he kept on banging just for the sake of it, he stumbled his way into a shop that could only be described as beyond dated. Anyone under 6 feet had to bend their backs to fit inside since they'd hit their heads. The wood it was made from was also dark gray, with some planks on the floor missing, and a few glass panes seemed to be broken in places.

"What'cha searching for?" a man with two long, rat-like teeth said in a voice that screamed not to trust him. Naruto scratched his head, not being too sure what he wanted himself.

"I'm celebrating, so I'd like somethin' cool," he answered as he walked down the narrow hallway, examining the various tools on the few tables. Most looked alright, in his opinion, yet the coolest-looking one caught his eye the most. It was a katana with black encasing the whole blade, making it look almost unreal in how truly black it was; the sword was like a dark hole sucking in all Naruto's attention.

"This one, how much?" Naruto pointed and asked the man, who gave him the price tag.

"Hmmmm, that's pretty cheap for such a sword," Naruto said as he picked it up and swung it a couple of times to test. It was clear as day to the owner that the blond had little clue about what makes a sword great.

"I'll take it—" Naruto's words were cut off by a girl with brown hair pinned in two buns who smacked the table with her fist. She wore the standard Konoha headband and had a light pink sleeveless blouse with dark green pants.

"What kind of scam are you running, old man?" she accused the man, glaring angrily at him for a few seconds before letting out a loud hmph.

Naruto raised an eyebrow at that. "What d'ya mean?" he asked as he placed the black katana back on the table.

The girl shook her finger and gave her reasons, "I'm not letting anyone new who's interested in tools be scammed like that!" she almost shouted, expressing genuine offense at the man's actions.

The girl then came closer and took the sword herself. "Just look at this crap! There are swords with black blades, yet this one..." she said and literally facepalmed. "It's paint. And not very good paint at that. Clearly, it's made for idiots who don't know any better."

"Hey!" Naruto shot up, but deep down, he acknowledged that he knew next to nothing about swords. "So... any advice on a good one?" he said rather awkwardly after a few seconds.

"Why'd you trust me? Maybe I'm working for this guy, and I'd just scam you even harder?" Ten Ten said with a playful smirk.

Naruto, quite frankly, didn't have a good answer to that. "It's my lucky day, I guess. Everything is going my way today, so I'll trust you just this time!" he responded with his own smirk.

The girl hummed as she looked around, spotting a few options. "You don't seem like that kind of fighter, if I had to be honest. You seem more like a knucklehead brute to me," she grinned, seeing Naruto's nose wrinkle in annoyance.

"How about these bad boys instead?" she asked as she picked up yellow gold brass knuckles. "They don't fall and hold to your hand even when you're doing a jutsu since you put gloves on first which holds the brass knuckles together," she added, before frantically raising a finger and continuing, "Oh, they are very easy to carry, great in close combat, and—" before she could continue, Naruto nodded and nodded as he pulled out his cash from the frog wallet.

"Looks good to me!" he said with a smile and put on the gloves with the brass knuckles. Right before stepping out of the building, Naruto uttered, "Oh, thanks, by the way for help…" but he couldn't finish since he didn't know the girl's name yet.

"Ten Ten," she said with an eye roll.

"And my name is Naruto—"

"Yeah, yeah. Uzumaki Naruto. Who hasn't heard about you in this village," she stopped him from finishing and waved, going back to looking for equipment for her own mission that she came here in the first place.

This is the best day ever. Tomorrow I'll smack Sasuke to the ground, he thought with a wide grin as he entered his apartment. The room somehow looked even messier than yesterday, with all the scrolls wide open and scattered on the floor.

The black scroll was still the only one lying on his bed, even though he thought he threw it on the ground. The excitement seemingly vanished in a matter of a few seconds as a weird, indescribable tension settled in the room. An idea, one that had been somewhere deep in his head ever since he woke up, was now spinning around his mind.

"M-Minato Namikaze," he said barely audibly. To his surprise, his thought process was right. The black scroll, at a speed that no eyes could possibly see through, had the name of the Fourth Hokage written on it once again.

A blank stare lingered, and just like yesterday evening, a loud gulp escaped the boy. He picked up the black scroll, rolled it into one piece, and placed it vertically on the table. It was of normal size, about 20 inches in length, yet its presence seemed to grow bigger and bigger to Naruto with each second.

He quickly took off his clothes and slowly laid down on his bed again, this time wondering whether he wished to sleep or not.

Maybe I should stay awake and see what'll happen, he thought to himself. However, he didn't feel that every second passing lying on the bed was making him more and more awake until he fell asleep.

XxX

Once again, he found himself back in the same body he had previously occupied. While here, he couldn't quite grasp his own thoughts, but it was quite obvious to him that It felt the same as it did before.

The vessel he was in held a young baby wrapped in an orange blanket, appearing just freshly born. The baby had light blond hair and... whisker marks on his face. What the actual hell? was a thought that managed to form in Naruto's mind.

As in the previous "dream", Naruto had trouble hearing and properly understanding what the people were saying. In front of him lay a red-headed woman with very similar to his own light blue eyes, ensnared in dark gray chains with a golden aura surrounding it. The woman near him looked like she was at the end of her end when she coughed blood out.

Sadness enveloped the vessel. Naruto could feel the emotions as his own, despite not knowing any of these people. He could feel a tear rolling from his own eyes and a sense of determination welling up within his chest.

Naruto did manage to catch a few words, though none of them seemed of great importance. It was all very disjointed, but a few words did stick in his memory, something about Jiraiya, whose name Naruto had come across in history books, and the two discussing something about a son and such.

However, the next words Naruto heard loud and clear. "Shiki Fūjin(Reaper Death Seal)!" he found himself saying aloud, and a new, dark aura emanated from deep within his soul into the air, taking on a monstrous form. Before, he had heard some words, but the moment the jutsu was spoken, Naruto ceased to hear anything. The only sensation he was left with was his soul being torn away. It felt surreal. He was still alive, but his soul was no longer whole within his body.

In a sudden twist, hand-like appendages shot out of the stomach and seized the Nine-Tails demon. It was only now that the vessel, who Naruto felt as if he were, saw the demon in all its glory. The ferocity of the beast made Naruto shiver to his core, even though the fox seemed completely bound by the same chains that had come from the red-headed woman.

Out of nowhere, Naruto created some sort of seal, and a stone-like platform appeared, clearly meant for the baby to rest upon. As he did this, the fox found an opening and attempted to pierce the vessel before he could complete the seal. However, the red-headed woman jumped in, using her own body with the Naruto/vessel's assistance to stop the ferocious animal's massive claw from reaching the baby.

Naruto had never experienced such pain before. His soul being taken away made him want to vomit, and to some extent, it felt as a natural end to his own life was placed. However, after the mental torment of not having a soul, having his own body pierced through the chest was something equally agonizing. The pain within his mental and physical chest made him want to collapse and die, as he lost all semblance of power or vitality. Yet, the body he inhabited insisted on moving forward.

The last thing he felt or heard, aside from the ringing pain in his ears, was the woman in front talking and sobbing... somehow, her cries almost made Naruto feel worse than the stab through his chest, which caused his guts to splatter on the ground.

XxX

The same cold sweat as yesterday was pouring down onto the same still somewhat damp bedsheets. Naruto touched his stomach and found his insides intact, sighing comically loudly to ease the stress. He stumbled just a bit in his bed and fell from his sitting position to lie down again, still dizzy from the whole experience, slowly breathing and trying to comprehend what had happened.

Why does the baby's face… Who was the woman… Why did I, in that dream, seal that monster, Naruto's mind was filled with questions and puzzles he had to piece together. The redheaded woman felt familiar, not only because of the lingering familiarity of the memories but also because he felt as if they were related in some way.

Uncharacteristically, Naruto decided to pick up some history books and look through notable people. Page after page, Naruto didn't find anything important, besides Madara Uchiha, who had extremely long and spiky hair that reached the ground, which wasn't how Madara looked in the previous dream. Also, the legend was far taller than in the dream, so Naruto was confident that wasn't him.

The pain he felt was easing, yet when he flipped the final page, he found something that would be the hundredth shocking thing in the past two days. The same redhead from the dream was standing beside Minato Namikaze, the Fourth Hokage, who had defeated the evil demon.

Putting his hands on his head and slightly pulling his hair, Naruto began to piece it all together. The Fourth sealed, but didn't kill the demon in the dream. His wife died alongside him, protecting a newborn baby with blond hair and whisker marks features that Naruto had never seen on anyone's faces besides his own.

"The masked man was probably the one that released the Nine-Tails," Naruto muttered softly. He then suddenly pulled up his shirt and stared at the marks on his stomach, pulling it down and releasing a loud gulp in the process.

He glanced back at the black scroll, feeling a dark presence enveloping him. Quickly making his way to it, Naruto opened it, seeing the name of the Fourth Hokage vanished yet again. I should try sleeping again without saying his name, Naruto mused. While it all felt real, and it seemed to make more sense than what was said to have happened—nobody really knew how the Fourth managed to kill a tailed beast, which was beyond confusing for most as it didn't specify the details.

Still, the fact that everything was coming together only made Naruto more worried. "So if I'm that kid they were trying to protect… I should also have the Kyūbi in me," he thought as he took off his shirt and touched the black markings yet again.

He then laughed a bit at that. No, no. That's ridiculous! I can't be THAT! As he dismissed that idea for a bit, he considered a different hypothesis. "I'm definitely skipping school tonight," he thought aloud as he kicked the black scroll under the table and laid down to test whether not saying the Fourth's name would still lead to a similar dream.

Aaaaand the chapter is done. A bit of a long one, for what felt not that much. I'm going to explain how that black scroll works a bit more in the future if it wasn't all too clear. Also, the whole Kyūbi is sealed in Naruto in this fanfic since I never liked him only having half-one (or, a third one if you count the fillers).

Give all the reviews you can. Helps me to get up and write some more. Don't have anything more to say, so... Dendras out.