Naruto Uchiha: the Last Sage of the Six Paths: Rebooted! Ch. 1
Hello everyone! After many years of being away, I have decided to rewrite this story from the ground-up! I first started writing this when I was in high school and my writing has certainly improved a bit since then, so I'd like to give this story another try! Some of you might be wondering what spurred this decision, so I'll just name my primary reasons to give some meaningful context:
Naruto became far too powerful too fast, despite my insistence that his growth would be slow! With his current skillset, the only two ways for me to make things more challenging for him are: no Kyuubi chakra and/or rapid progression of blindness in the Mangekyou. He's just too powerful! I don't want to produce my own Madara problem before the timeskip, so I'm going to be nerfing Naruto's starting point this time around (not starting with 3 tomoe, (probably) not giving him Mangekyou in Land of Waves arc, forcing him to be more secretive, etc).
The dialogue is sometimes too cheesy and shonen-y for me. There's a good handful of moments where I cringe at my own dialogue! There's also a lot to be desired from character interactions (Kakashi is far too aloof and disengaged from the situations, mostly. If it were post-timeskip, I could see Naruto taking the lead in missions but there should be a noticeable lack of practical battle experience in the Land of Waves arc that Naruto simply doesn't have. He's too much of a one-man-army and a Gary Stu! The characters in general desperately need more depth).
Formatting of the story is rough at times. It desperately needs a line-break in dialogue (rereading it these past few days, I think the dialogue being one sentence after the other without a proper line-break in between makes conversations feel rushed).
Boruto exists now! While I think the story is an absolute travesty more often than not, I remain a Naruto fanboy until I die (apparently), and thus I'd like to work some elements of Boruto into my story. Boruto might come to exist in this story, in some capacity, but I'm not making any promises.
Without further ado, welcome to the official rewrite of my story! I hope you all enjoy! I'll try to return to regular review responses in my Author's Notes as well as a more consistent upload schedule like when I first started.
Uzumaki Naruto, the "demon", ran for his life. While it might have been nigh-impossible to kill him by normal means due to the monster sealed inside him, it would not protect him from the extraordinary stresses of his life in Konoha. Nearly cornered by civilians in his own apartment, Naruto fled the mob, hurrying towards the Uchiha District. Desperate, Naruto frantically searched around for his almost-friend Uchiha Sasuke. The seven year old, raven-haired boy was nowhere to be found. Instead, what Naruto found was a scene of slaughter. Streaks of blood and a trail of bodies paved a path from within the compound to its outer walls. Stunned and horrified by the scene before him, Naruto stood stock-still as he looked over the revolting sight. In the moment, he had forgotten about the raging mob hounding him across the village, and on their arrival, their hateful chase increased tenfold. Armed with the belief that he was a monster, and the belief that this was merely the most recent of his heinous crimes against Konoha, the mob charged him without a moment's notice. Naruto, too frightened by the traumatic image before him and seized by a certain sympathy squeezing his heart like a vice, did not budge. The villagers beat him until his back hit the ground and refused to let up. Laying down blow after blow, the boy's body was covered in blood and bruises, and even after an hour passed, then a second, the villagers only began to let up out of exhaustion. Rudimentary clubs beat the sobbing boy, torches scorched his skin, and kunais were drawn to be plunged into him whenever possible.
Little Uzumaki Naruto, "demon" of the village, showed little more than smiles before that day. That day, he snapped, and the world began to shift irrevocably. Between blows, Naruto made desperate attempts to cry out for his friend.
"Sa-suke! Sa-" a club was viciously swung into his stomach for daring to speak before the crowd, eliciting a splash of blood from the boy's mouth. Naruto coughed, hacking and wheezing out blood as he rolled to his side, trying and failing to protect himself with his arms and legs. Curled up, alone, and being beaten to near-death at the scene of the infamous Uchiha Massacre dredged up something…else. Few would be privy to the knowledge that the Uchiha Massacre included not solely clan members, but a few dozen villagers as well.
Red, burning chakra burst from the boy in a ferocious explosion. His kind blue eyes were suddenly bathed in an even brighter crimson, warping into the prized eyes of the dead around him: the Sharingan. As one tomoe appeared, a second spun into place, and the black pupils stretched upward into animalistic slits. His whiskers darkened, thickened, and his nails extended into sharp claws. A red, bubbling chakra swamped his form, healing and empowering him immensely. "You…all of you…STOP! ENOUGH!" He roared.
The villagers struggled to breathe with the immense killing intent this six year old boy, this monster, was unleashing. The few nin among them, a couple of chunin and genin who had accompanied the villagers, stood shakily until the boy finally lashed out. He moved faster than most could see, ripping through them like paper. Blood splashed into the air, splattering villagers, the ground, and Naruto himself alike. A dozen bodies, then another, dropped to the ground unceremoniously. He tore through over 30 villagers with ease, with only a couple of chunin capable of withstanding his assault. The chunin and a handful of surviving villagers, lucky enough to avoid the initial attack, screamed in horror and fled from the rampaging jinchuriki. As their forms fled the compound and out of sight, the chakra that had flooded his system dissipated everywhere, except from his newly-awakened eyes. Naruto stood over the corpses, staring over them, and the full weight of what happened began to bear down on him. He turned to run to the Hokage, to beg for forgiveness and tell him what he'd done to them, and to himself, but his path was barred by the sudden appearance of Uchiha Itachi.
Two pairs of red eyes locked before Itachi's spun into the Mangekyou, whispering a single word before he shunshin-ed back to the Hokage's office to inform him that his mission was complete, with only one complication: a red-eyed, blonde-haired boy. As Itachi's genjutsu, the Tsukuyomi, took hold of him, Naruto collapsed to his knees.
"Even Itachi wouldn't speak to me…I…I'm a monster, aren't I? I'm everything they said I was…everything I tried to prove I wasn't…"
Naruto began to drown under the choking sobs that seized him, and the events of the last hour were forcibly replayed to him by the genjutsu, over and over, tormenting him with the consequences of his retaliation.
"I'm a demon…I killed them…all of them…" he thought. He broke down as the sights, sounds, and smells of the night repeated until they forced him unconscious. Within the hour, the Hokage and his Anbu arrived to "assess the damage" and cleanup after Itachi.
-Fourteen hours later-
Slowly, two blue eyes opened, blurred by the light above. They stared into the ceiling as they adjusted themselves before their owner sat up slowly. Lying in a hospital bed and sitting up with a wordless wince, Naruto's eyes scanned the room with a sullen expression. They met the gaze of the Sandaime Hokage, first.
"Naruto…how do you feel?" the Hokage asked.
Silence. Naruto's blue eyes remained locked with the Sandaime's dark eyes for a moment, wordlessly shifting into the Sharingan, before his eyes dropped back down to the bed. Silently, a few tears dripped from his cheeks and chin.
"Oh, Naruto…what do I do?" the Hokage wondered. "I suppose I must blame Itachi; it would be better that way for both of them…"
-Flashback-
"Hokage-sama, it is done…" Itachi spoke as he kneeled before the "God of Shinobi", Sarutobi Hiruzen. The late Sandaime was forced back into the position after the death of Namikaze Minato. Hiruzen nodded to Itachi. "Rise, Uchiha Itachi. I am afraid it's time for you to leave the village." Itachi nodded and stood, turning to leave, and pausing mid-motion. "Before I go, Hokage-sama…I ask that you blame everything on me. Not just for my clan members' deaths, but all of them. Do not let Naruto be blamed for it. Tell them I placed Naruto under my Tsukiyomi. Most of all, make sure the councilors don't get their hands on the last two Uchiha left in the village. Goodbye, Hokage-sama…". The now-S-ranked missing-nin burst into a flock of crows before Hiruzen could question him, or respond.
-End Flashback-
"This must be what Itachi meant…I'll have to keep a better eye on Naruto, now…" he thought, still overcoming the initial surprise at Naruto's Sharingan. Itachi's path was set in stone after this night, but Naruto's remained open-ended. Hiruzen knew he would have to be much more involved in the boy's life from now on.
"Naruto, just rest…tell them I have given you permission to leave whenever you see fit."
"Then I'm leaving", Naruto replied. There was something between numb grief and exhaustion in his voice.
"Are you sure, Naruto?"
"Hai…Hokage-sama…"
The boy's words cracked the old veteran's heart. The stress, hate, and pain of it all had finally crushed Naruto's spirit. Naruto slid off the bed quietly, clothing stained with blood and tattered beyond measure, before stepping past the Hokage and making his way out of the hospital. Whether he knew or cared for the Anbu tailing him didn't make a difference; he walked home, silently, and opened the graffitied door reading "MONSTER". For the next three days, Naruto would remain cloistered in his apartment, locking himself away in a cage of comfort, away from the outside world.