DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN NARUTO
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|PROLOGUE

Sweat streamed down Naruto's face, stinging his squinted eyes. His arms shook from sheer exhaustion as he forced himself through the final hand seal. A flicker of chakra swirled around him...then fizzled out like a deflating balloon.

"Are you kidding me?"

He'd thought for sure he had it that time.

Naruto glared at his empty hands. He had been at it for hours—repeating the stupid seals over and over until the motions burned into his brain. Still, the Shadow Clone Jutsu laughed in his face, staying insanely out of reach.

Naruto ground his teeth so hard his jaws creaked. This wasn't how things were supposed to go—he was supposed to easily master an amazing Jutsu, one so incredibly powerful it would blow away any moron still doubting his skills.

But of course one of the powerful Jutsu in the scroll would be impossible for a screw-up like him to learn. He glared at his empty hands, now clenched into white-knuckled fists. Crescent cuts instantly formed and healed across his palms, but the sting lingered.

As did the simmering frustration that buzzed under his skin since...well, forever really. Ever since realizing he existed solely on the Leaf Village's periphery, a lurking annoyance people simply tolerated and ignored when possible.

Naruto slumped against the base of a tree trunk, chest heaving. His body was exhausted from hours of intense training. Every bone in his body ached and every muscle sore.

Mizuki was definitely telling the truth. Every jutsu in the Scroll of Sealing was totally amazing. But they were also incredibly difficult to master. Naruto had spent the first hour trying to learn something called the Spirit Transformation Technique, but it was way too hard. He didn't understand half the instructions and with only a few hours to learn a jutsu, he had chosen to give up on the Spirit Transformation Technique.

Instead, he focused on what seemed to be the simplest jutsu in the scroll, at least compared to the others. But even the scroll's simplest jutsu looked super complicated compared to the academy Clone Jutsu.

And after hours of tireless practice, going through the motions over and over again, he was finally making progress, but it wasn't enough. He didn't have much time left to learn a jutsu and graduate.

Useless tears Naruto refused to shed stung the corners of his eyes. No matter how hard he trained his all-consuming dream to finally make those jerks respect him, their sneers never faded. The shopkeepers still kept chasing him off, parents never stopped shielding their children from him, and the sideways glances riddled with poorly-masked disdain were always present.

Naruto shook his head. He just had to learn an amazing jutsu then everyone would have to respect him!

"I just need a little more practice," he muttered to himself as he struggled to stand up, but his legs and arms felt like limp ramen noodles.

Before he could start practicing again, a voice stopped him.

"What you need is better chakra control," the voice muttered.

Naruto froze. Did someone find him already? It was too soon!

He whipped his head around, searching the trees and underbrush. But...there was no one around him. The clearing was still empty.

"H-hello? Is someone there?" Naruto called out, but there was no answer. The clearing was still empty.

So where did that voice come from? he wondered.

"Wait, can you hear me?"

Naruto heard the mysterious voice again.

"Say something if you can hear me."

"Y-yeah, I can you here you," Naruto blinked. This wasn't making any sense. Was he imagining things?

"No, you're not," the voice laughed. "I'm really here."

"Where!" Naruto shouted, starting to get frustrated. "If this is some kind of joke I'll kick your ass, believe it!"

"I'm not here physically," the voice explained, sounding slightly amused. "I'm in your head…or more accurately, my spirit is in your body."

"What?" Naruto's face drained of color. A spirit...inhabiting his body? He felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Was a ghost was possessing him? He pinched himself hard, wincing at the pain. Not a dream...this was really happening!

"Whoa, whoa!" the voice interrupted Naruto's panicked thoughts. "I'm not a ghost, calm down. I'm a side-effect, you could say, of that Spirit Transformation Jutsu you were trying—"

"You mean..." Naruto's eyes went even wider, but this time with dawning realization rather than terror. He didn't wait for the voice to finish.

"I did it!" he yelled, jumping up and punching the air. "I pulled off the Spirit Transformation, believe it! Hahahaha!"

Naruto danced around the clearing, cheering at the top of his lungs. "This is so awesome!" he shouted, grinning from ear to ear. "I'm one step closer to being the greatest ninja ever, believe it!"

He had been trying so hard but it seemed impossible. The jutsu was so complicated it made his head hurt. And I still managed to learn a super amazing jutsu like that, Naruto thought puffing out his chest. I'm more amazing than I thought!

All that hard work, all those hours of struggling, and once he got the Shadow Clone jutsu down he will have managed to learn not one, but two of the incredible jutsu from the Scroll of Sealing!

"I'm actually here because you didn't learn the jutsu," the voice cut off Naruto's celebrations.

Naruto deflated like a popped balloon, his cheering instantly replaced by disappointment.

"The Spirit Transformation Technique is a jutsu that when done right allows your spirit to leave your body," the voice explained. "You messed up and instead of pushing your soul out, you dragged my soul in."

"Oh?" Naruto's shoulders slumped. "How do I send you back?"

"I...don't know," the voice admitted reluctantly. "Because it wasn't a real jutsu that brought me here, I have no idea what would happen to my soul if you tried it again."

Naruto rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "Sorry, I didn't mean to drag you into this. I just wanted to learn an amazing jutsu so I could finally graduate."

"Don't worry about it," the voice responded with a chuckle. "It's not so bad. I can see and hear everything you do, so it's kind of like I'm alive again in a way."

"What?" Naruto gasped, eyes going wide. "You were dead?"

"Yep," the voice replied matter-of-factly.

A chill went down Naruto's spine. He had accidentally summoned the spirit of someone who had passed away?

"Woah..." he muttered, looking around the forest nervously, as if the trees might start talking to him next. "You mean like...a ghost?"

"Again, not a ghost," the voice said with a sigh.

Naruto swallowed hard. This was making his head spin. He was talking to an actual spirit of someone who died?

"Wow..." he said again, unable to formulate any other response for a moment. Finally, his curiosity got the better of him. "What's it like being, you know...dead?"

The voice hesitated before answering. "Boring."

"Boring?" Naruto frowned, trying to imagine what a boring afterlife might look like.

Suddenly, he saw a vision of some sort. He was standing in a field, the biggest field he had ever seen, packed with a million faces. There was no noise or light, just whispering masses of people milling around in the shadows. The black grass had been trampled by billions of dead feet. A warm, moist wind blew like the breath of a swamp. Black trees—grew in clumps here and there.

The cavern ceiling was so high above it might've been a bank of storm clouds, except for the stalactites, which glowed faint gray and looked wickedly pointed. Naruto tried not to imagine they'd fall on him at any moment but dotted around the fields were several that had fallen and impaled themselves in the black grass.

I guess the dead don't have to worry about little hazards like being speared by stalactites the size of skyscrapers, he thought and he couldn't help but look for familiar faces among the spirits, but the dead were hard to look at. Their faces shimmered. They all looked slightly angry or confused. They would come up and speak, but their voices sounded like background chatter, white noise. Once they realized he couldn't understand them, they frowned and moved away.

The dead weren't scary. They were just sad.

Naruto blinked and the vision was gone. He was back in the forest behind the Hokage Monument.

"That worked better than I thought," the voice muttered. "Oh, sorry, I probably should have warned you, but I wasn't sure if it would work or not."

"What was that?" Naruto asked. "Was that the afterlife?"

"Well since you were wondering what it looked like, I thought I might be able to show you," the voice said. "That was just a glimpse of a small part of one of my memories. I'm not sure how much more I can show you…even just that little bit was really hard to hold on to."

"Huh," Naruto was still a little freaked out. "I didn't expect the afterlife to look like that."

"Boring right?" the voice sighed. "Imagine being stuck in that crowd for all of eternity?"

Naruto shuddered at the thought. It really did look horrible. "So you weren't lying. You really don't care that I messed up the jutsu?"

"Not at all," the voice answered immediately.

Naruto smiled. If the spirit didn't want to go back to the afterlife, then that meant they were stuck together.

I won't be alone anymore!

"Nope, I'll be here as long as you want me to," the voice agreed. "And lucky for you, I happen to know a lot about the shinobi world, so I'll be able to help you get stronger."

"Really? Thanks—" Naruto paused, just now realizing that he didn't know the spirit's name. "What should I call you?"

"Oh, umm…" the voice kind of seemed like it was caught off guard. "Well, I suppose you can call me…Menma."

"Menma," Naruto nodded. "Thanks for the help Menma!"

"No problem, but training will have to wait until tomorrow," Menma said. "Iruka is here."

Iruka-sensei? Naruto looked around. I don't see—"

"Naruto!"

Naruto blinked as an out-of-breath and seemingly irate Iruka dropped down from the trees. A grin spread across his face.

"Iruka-sensei! I found you!"

"He found us," Menma corrected just as Iruka-sensei did the same.

Iruka's eye twitched. "I found you, fool!" the chunin shouted.

Naruto struggled to stand up, wobbling on his feet and Iruka frowned. "What are you doing out here, Naruto?" he asked. "You look completely exhausted."

Of course, Iruka already knew. Every ninja in the village chunin level and higher had been told. Naruto had been caught fleeing the Hokage Tower with the forbidden Scroll of Sealing. The forbidden scroll contained instructions about how to perform the most dangerous and well-guarded jutsu in the village. This was treason, even for a child like Naruto.

"I am exhausted," Naruto confessed. "I've been training in ninjutsu all night! I even learned t—"

"Don't tell him about me!"

Naruto flinched as Menma suddenly yelled at him. "What—"

"And don't speak out loud when you talk to me," Menma said. "Just think about what you want to say and I'll hear you."

Naruto was confused. Why was Menma suddenly acting so weird? Did he not like Iruka-sensei?

Iruka's expression suddenly turned worried. "You really have been practicing jutsu? What were you thinking, Naruto? Stealing the Scroll of Sealing? Don't you know it's forbidden?"

Naruto decided to ignore Menma for now and focus on Iruka-sensei. He nodded eagerly and got into position to perform the awesome new clone jutsu he'd been practicing. "Here, I'll show you!" he said excitedly. "If I do this, you'll have to let me graduate! That's how it works right? I get the scroll and learn jutsu from it and I can graduate even if I failed the graduation exam!"

He began to make the intricate hand movements, thinking to himself, If I can pull this off, they'll have no choice but to promote me straight to chunin!

But Iruka interrupted with a stern voice, "Hold on, Naruto! Who told you that?"

Naruto looked puzzled. "Huh? Mizuki-sensei was the one who told me about the secret test. He said it would make up for the graduation exam."

"Mizuki told you about the scroll?" Iruka asked, repeating Naruto's answer with concern. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to gather his thoughts.

With tears welling up in his eyes, Naruto turned to Iruka with a look of fear. "I-Iruka-sensei, am I in trouble?"

He had no idea what he would do if he were. Could he fight Iruka, his sensei? The thought made him scoff; despite his bravado, Naruto knew he wasn't strong enough to beat someone as skilled and experienced as Iruka. He knew that Iruka could easily defeat him before he even had a chance to use his new powerful technique.

Plus, what good would fighting Iruka even do? Attacking a leaf shinobi would ruin any chance he had of becoming a ninja, let alone being Hokage!

Iruka let out a heavy sigh. He was at a loss for what to do next. He didn't know what to do in this situation. So he just did what came naturally. He placed a comforting hand on Naruto's hair and spoke honestly, "It's very likely you'll be in trouble. But you were just following your sensei's orders to become a ninja. If you come with me, I promise as a Konoha chunin that I will do everything in my power to support you and help you get through this."

Naruto's body tensed up and he seemed to be weighing his options—whether to run, fight, or give in. Mizuki had already lied to him earlier today; could Iruka-sensei be lying too?

"Don't run, Naruto," Menma said. "You can trust Iruka. You won't get in that much trouble."

Suddenly, without any warning, Iruka lunged forward and pushed Naruto out of the way. Naruto tumbled to the ground as a barrage of shuriken flew towards Iruka. He watched in horror as Iruka was struck by the sharp blades, grunting and stumbling backward.

Iruka clenched his teeth in pain and glared up at a figure perched on top of a nearby tree. "Mizuki," he gritted out between labored breaths, his clothing torn and blood oozing from multiple wounds. "I should have known it was you who was following me."

Mizuki stood on a branch near the top of a tree, with several huge windmill shuriken strapped to his back. "I had a feeling you might lead me to Naruto," he said

"I see," Iruka responded, pulling a shuriken from his arm with a grimace.

Naruto's eyes darted back and forth between Mizuki and Iruka, wondering what was going on. "Wh-what's happening?" he stammered.

Mizuki's usual lighthearted demeanor was gone, replaced by a cold, menacing expression. "Give me the scroll, Naruto."

"Don't listen to him, Naruto!" Iruka's voice rang out, sharp and urgent. "That scroll is filled with dangerous jutsu! Mizuki only wants it for himself!"

Suddenly, everything clicked into place for Naruto. He had been tricked by Mizuki into stealing the scroll from the Hokage!

"You don't need that scroll, Naruto!" Mizuki said. "Now hand it over before you get hurt!"

Naruto's eyes widened in fear as Mizuki's usually friendly face twisted into a cruel sneer. "N-no," he managed to say defiantly, even though his entire was shaking.

"Why? Just because Iruka-sensei told you not to?" Mizuki scoffed. "Would you like to know what Iruka really thinks of you? What the entire village thinks of you?"

Iruka suddenly looked horrified. "No, Mizuki! It's forbidden!" he shouted.

Mizuki ignored Iruka's protests and turned toward Naruto. "Do you know who killed Iruka's parents?" he asked.

"It was the Nine-Tailed demon fox, right?" Naruto answered. "The thing that attacked the village seventeen years ago?"

Mizuki let out a mocking laugh. "Well done, Naruto. What a truly brilliant answer, especially coming from someone like you."

"Stop!" Iruka's cry rang out through the air as he tried to stop Mizuki. But the shuriken had done their damage and he fell to his knees.

"Think carefully about my question, Naruto. I asked who killed Iruka's parents, not what."

"Who?" Naruto asked, puzzled. "You're making it sound almost human."

"Because it is, Naruto!" Mizuki spat, his eyes wild and manic. "The Nine-Tailed Fox has changed its form, but it is still alive. Not even the Fourth Hokage could kill the demon. Instead, he sealed it inside a human... and that human is you, Naruto!"

"W-what do you mean?"

Mizuki's face twisted into an ugly snarl. "You are the one who killed Iruka's parents and destroyed our village. They see you as a demon, a monster!"

Naruto's legs felt weak beneath him as he stumbled back, trying to make sense of Mizuki's accusations. "But I...Iruka-sensei's parents..."

"Dead because of you," Mizuki said, his voice dripping with venom. "Their blood is on your hands, Naruto! That's why everyone hates you! Why they despise you! Treat you like dirt!"

"Don't listen to him, Naruto!" Iruka pleaded. "He's not telling the—"

Mizuki sneered at his fellow chunin. "The truth, Iruka?" he scoffed. "The truth is, you hate the Nine-Tailed Fox more than anyone!"

"No, Naruto. That's not—" Iruka started to say.

Mizuki pulled one of the massive shuriken from his back. "Even Iruka hates you, Naruto! You killed his parents! No one can stand the sight of you!"

The chunin threw the shuriken as hard as he could.

"You did your job! Now die in peace!"

Naruto froze as the giant shuriken spun toward him. He didn't scream, or run, or even cry. He just stood there, absolutely stunned. Everything went black as he fell backward. Then a strange thing happened. Suddenly his whole body felt cradled by something soft and warm.

Naruto looked up to find himself in Iruka's arms.

Iruka slowly pulled away. Naruto shuddered when he saw the huge shuriken sticking out of Iruka's back. Iruka's chunin flak jacket had softened the blow somewhat, but he was still seriously injured.

Iruka looked at Naruto and there were tears in his eyes. "You must have felt so lonely, Naruto," Iruka cried. "You must have suffered so much."

Naruto stared at Iruka in utter shock.

Tears rolled down Iruka's cheeks as he remembered what the Hokage had said.

Naruto needs a firm hand. But he also needs love.

That need felt all too familiar to Iruka. He had also longed for someone to love him after his parents died.

As a boy, Iruka had even pulled a few pranks to get noticed, though never as many as Naruto. He just wanted somebody, anybody, to acknowledge he even existed.

Naruto is me, Iruka realized. No wonder I could never get close to him.

But for some reason, Iruka felt different now. He had thrown himself in the shuriken's path without a second thought.

Iruka coughed and cleared his throat. "I'm sorry, Naruto. I should have realized what you were going through," he said gently. Blood dripped from the corners of his mouth.

Naruto stared at Iruka. Then he jumped up and ran into the forest with the scroll.

I know I know...another new fic! But this has been one I've had on my mind for a few weeks, ever since I read Backseat Fighter, a DBZ fic with the same premise. A fan from our world, stuck in the head of Naruto, telling him what to do!

Got a few different ways the story could go roughly outlined, so if you want let me know what you think of different team formations.

Naruto/Kiba/Ino-Kurenai

Naruto/Hinata/Kiba-Kurenai

Naruto/Ino/Choji-Asuma

Naruto/Sasuke/Ino-Kakashi

Thanks for reading!