Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ All for One ❯ Failings and Foxes ( Chapter 10 )

All for One

 

Damu Ikeike was a scared gennin. He was one of the only people who had failed the graduation exam. It wasn't his fault that he stayed up late last night! His girlfriend had finally been ready to have sex! It was a once in a lifetime chance! But because of the exhaustion, Ikeike had been low on chakra, and had only produced two of the required three bunshin for the final exam.

 

But then Mizuki-sensei had come to him, and offered him an alternative test. All he had to do was sneak into the Hokage tower, take a giant scroll out from the old man's desk, then meet Mizuki-sensei in a forest clearing. But it looked like the ninja on guard at the tower hadn't been informed about the test! They were all chasing him, throwing kunai and the occasional Katon jutsu.

 

`Shit! Shit! Shit!' Ikeike screamed in his head. He was still cursing when he got to the clearing Mizuki-sensei had told him to meet him at. He looked around frantically. `I've gotta get Mizuki-sensei to tell them about the test!' he thought. But he couldn't find Mizuki. Instead, he saw Naruto practicing some chakra control on the ground.

 

Naruto didn't notice anything. His chakra control was being brought to the limit, as he shot enough chakra out of seventeen of his tenketsu simultaneously, using a precise amount of chakra to hold seventeen pebbles in midair. But he was snapped out of his zen-like state when a large scroll dropped in front of him. A small rain of pebbles followed his lack of focus. Ignoring the rocks, Naruto picked up the scroll, and opened it. `Whoa!' Naruto thought.

 

Ikeike ran away. He'd seen Naruto, and knew he was a trustworthy guy, no matter what his parents said. Naruto would tell Mizuki-sensei what happened when he showed up, and Ikeike would be promoted to gennin. It was foolproof!

 

Naruto was scanning through the forbidden scroll with a look akin to awe on his face. He wasn't stopping to study any of the techniques, but he was getting all of their names. `Kage Bunshin no Jutsu, Shinko Henge no Jutsu, Soshi Renda no Jutsu, Shiki Fuujin no Jutsu!' Naruto thought. Those were just four of the standouts on the scroll, but all of the others were amazing as well. As Naruto continued to pour through the scroll, Mizuki landed on a nearby tree.

 

“Naruto?! What're you doing here? Where's Ikeike?” he asked.

 

Naruto waved a hand at him distractedly. “Be with you in a minute, Mizuki-sensei.”

 

A vein began to pulse on the evil teachers head. `Who does that brat think he is!?' he thought. “Listen here, brat! Give me that scroll now!”

 

Naruto finished scanning through the scroll, and closed it with a snap. “Sorry, Mizuki-sensei. You're not getting this for two reasons. The first is that I'm using it. The second is that when I'm done using it, I'm giving it back to the Hokage where it belongs.” He looked up at Mizuki, who was doing a nice fish imitation. “What? I know what this is, and I know no ones supposed to have it! For crying out loud, it has the word `forbidden' in it's title!”

 

“You little brat!” Mizuki screamed, and pulled the giant shuriken off of his back. With a war cry, he let fly, and a circle of metallic death flew at Naruto. Naruto raised his hand casually, and gave his wrist a flick. A pair of kunai shot out of his sleeve, and intercepted the oversized weapon.

 

Naruto shook his head, and made some clucking noises. “Tsk, Tsk, Mizuki-sensei. Trying to kill a gennin to keep your secret. Embarrassing, but not as embarrassing failing to kill the gennin.” Naruto pulled a knapsack off his back, and dropped the scroll into it while Mizuki was still gaping at the deflected shuriken. Once the scroll was in a safe place, Naruto assumed a fighting stance. “Now I get to fulfill every schoolboy's fantasy: kicking the teacher's ass.”

 

Screaming angrily, Mizuki charged at Naruto. With a jump, and a kick, Mizuki was sent back the way he came. While the enraged teacher was picking himself up off the ground, Naruto thought `I want this to be as humiliating for him as possible.' With that thought, Naruto left the Suimeiashi stance, and entered one known and feared around the world: the jyuken stance. Focusing, Naruto's purple eyes faded away, leaving the veins and pure white of the most famous bloodline in Konoha.

 

Running quickly at Mizuki, Naruto's hands lanced out. His fingers, infused with a gentle mix of his chakra, lightly touched ten areas in Mizuki's arms. Immediately, his chakra sprung out, and into Mizuki's tenketsu. Now, with all of the chakra pores in his arms closed, there was no possible way for Mizuki to perform any jutsus. He sprang back as Mizuki tried to hit him with another sharp object.

 

“Finding it a little hard to do jutsus, Mizuki-sensei?” Naruto asked, with a sneering tone on the last word. “Well, I'm going to use you as a training dummy for some of the things I haven't gotten to test, ok?” Not waiting for Mizuki's response, not that he would have paid attention anyway, he reached into his back pocket.

 

Instead of producing a weapon, like Mizuki expected, Naruto took out- a small piece of paper with an intricate seal on it. He crumpled it up with one hand, and it faded away. In its place was a long metal spear, as long as Naruto was tall, with a heavy bronze spearhead at the end. “This is my personal weapon. I forged it myself, to prove myself a man in the Shinkotama clan. I haven't really thought of a name for it yet, but I will soon.” He assumed another fighting stance, spear held at the ready. “Now are you going to come, or sit there preening your feathers, chicken?”

 

With another roar, the enraged, treacherous teacher charged at the gennin. With a smirk, Naruto counter charged. But at the last second, he sidestepped and Mizuki ran straight past him. With a quick move, the butt of Naruto's spear pole crashed into the back of Mizuki's knee. Mizuki collapsed, writhing in pain while holding his knee.

 

“Damn, you're pathetic!” Naruto exclaimed. “Well, at least I'll get to test one more thing on you.” Jumping back, Naruto landed a couple yards away from the injured traitor. With a quick maneuver, Naruto pushed two seals that were inscribed in the spear. Immediately, the spearhead and the butt disappeared. “You see, Mizuki-teme, this weapon has four seals in it. The first simply regulates the temperature. No matter what goes on inside or out of this spear, it shall always be the same temperature. One of the others stores and releases the spearhead. The last one stores and releases the end. Once those two disappear, we are left with a perfectly hollow metal pole.”

 

Going into a high-pitched, girlish tone, Naruto asked “What's the point?” Naruto grinned and nodded, clearly mocking his prone foe. In his regular voice, he said, “I'm glad that you asked that, Mizuki-teme. Good to see you're paying attention.” With a sanctimonious nod, he said “Well, the purpose is because of the third seal. It's actually one of a pair of seals- transporter seals to be exact. This is the receptacle seal, meaning that when I push it, whatever is around the other seal is transported to the inside of this here pole, making it like a blowgun. Do you want to know where the other seal is?”

 

Mizuki glared at him, and Naruto released a huge grin. “Good! Always glad to answer questions. The other seal is inside a chain of methane pockets! It was hard to get them in there, I'll tell you! So when I press this seal, a ton of methane gas will come out of the pole. Methane gas is, what's the word…, oh yeah, extremely flammable! Or, inflammable. I was never really able to get the difference between the two. So I'll breathe a simple katon jutsu through one end of the tube, and a huge fireball comes out the other side! Exciting, no?”

 

“Well, I've talked long enough. Time for a demonstration!” Naruto inhaled, preparing a fire jutsu. But he stopped when Mizuki began to stutter out something in a cruel and vindictive tone.

 

“Don't you want to know why everyone hates you?” He breathed out. “Why everyone wants to kill you, and treats you like shit?”

 

Naruto froze. There was a reason? He'd always thought people hated him because of who he was! “Why? Why do people hate me!?”

 

Mizuki grinned evilly. “It's because you are the-”

 

But he never finished his sentence. The reason why became apparent quickly: Naruto's bodyguard had appeared. Jobi, the Aburame bodyguard, stepped forward. “Finish that sentence, and you will not live to see another moment.” The bug user looked over at Naruto. “I apologize for not getting involved sooner, Naruto-sama. But you were enjoying yourself too much to do so.”

 

Ryoto jumped down. “Yeah, Naruto-sama! You were acting just like a Mitarashi there! But remember the first rule of the Mitarashi!”

 

Naruto snapped to attention, and reeled off the designated rule. “If you're causing pain to someone who has wronged you, do not be afraid to enjoy it. But only enjoy it if it is someone that's wronged you!”

 

Ryoto nodded. “Good job. Now, let's get these three people back to the Hokage tower.”

 

Naruto looked around. There was just him, Mizuki, and his bodyguard. “But, Ryoto-chan, there's only two of us here.”

 

The dragon lady winked at him. “I know. But we've always said you're good enough to be two and a half people. The bastard over here is worth maybe a half of a person.” With that flattering comment, she flicked her wrist. Small dragons shot out and encircled Mizuki, effectively tying him up. The thirteen people (and one restrained Mizuki) bounded to the Hokage tower.

 

Ten minutes later, Naruto was standing in said tower, in front of the wizened old man. Hizashi, as the senior member of the bodyguard, was reporting what had happened. “… Then we tied him up, and brought him here.” He finished.

 

The Hokage nodded. “Thank you, Hizashi-san. Could you all please take Mizuki down to the dungeons? I need to have a word with Naruto-kun.” The bodyguard nodded as one, and took the squirming traitor out of the room. That left Naruto and the Sandaime staring at each other in silence.

 

Naruto broke the silence. “Why does everyone hate me? I just thought that they hated me because of something I did, or something, but Mizuki-teme said that there was a reason!”

 

The old man sighed, and leaned back in his chair. “The reason everyone of the civilians, and a good half of the clans, hates you is a village secret.” Naruto looked at him questioningly. “That is, the reason is classified. Are you sure you want to know?”

 

Naruto nodded emphatically.

 

“Ok, Naruto. Let me tell you a story about a brave man who would do anything for his village. That man was the Yondaime Hokage. He was the ruler of this village, until he gave his life to-”

 

“Kill Kyuubi, the demonic nine-tailed fox. I know that already.”

 

“Wrong! It is impossible to kill a demon. So he settled for the next best thing- sealing it away.” The Hokage looked over his tented fingers at the teenager in front of him. “Surely you can guess where this conversation is going.”

 

Naruto stared at the old man, his mouth hanging open and his eyes wide with shock. “Y-you mean that, Kyuubi no Kitsune, strongest of the tailed demons, evil, malevolent force of nature, is sealed inside of me?!” He waited for the Hokage's sad nod. Naruto slumped back into his seat. “Well, that would explain some things.”

 

The Hokage's curiosity was peaked. “Such as?”

 

“I break bones all the time, but they heal almost instantly. I talked with my bugs, and they say they had nothing to do with it. My insects have also started to change into other insects. That could be caused by feeding off of another form of chakra. But I have one question, oji-san.” Sandaime nodded, and waited for Naruto to ask. “Why didn't anyone tell me this before? You, all my tou-sans, my kaa-sans, my nii-sans, my nee-sans, why didn't anyone tell me?!”

 

The Hokage looked at him calmly. “First off, the younger generation knows nothing. I passed a law making it illegal to mention it to anyone of the younger generation. The youngest person who knows is Itachi-san. That's why your siblings never told you. As to why we never told you before, we wanted you to be happy. We wanted you to have a happy childhood, and to live like a child. I believe that they were planning on telling you once you became a man in all of your families.”

 

Naruto nodded. `That makes a kind of sense. They would have told me once I created the jutsu for Kakashi-tou-san.' Naruto looked up at his grandfather-figure. “Oji-san, I have one more question.”

 

“Ask away, Naruto-kun.”

 

“Can I keep the scroll for a little while? I can learn so much from it!”

 

The Hokage grinned. “It is the property of the Uzumaki clan head actually, not mine. So you can keep it once you have attained the level of clan head.”

 

“But, I'm the last Uzumaki. So doesn't that make me clan head by default?”

 

“It would, but you are not at the level of clan head. A clan head must be recognized as an adult by his family. And one other thing. I'll tell you about that later.”

 

Once again, Naruto nodded, shocking the Hokage with the level of maturity in the teen. “I'll ask about that once I've passed my last test!” With that, he tossed the scroll over to the Hokage. “I'll be back for that later!” he shouted, and ran out the door.

 

Sandaime smirked. Then he paged his secretary. “Assemble the thirteen main clan heads in my office, effective immediately.”

 

“Right away sir!”

 

Ten minutes later, the heads of the thirteen clans were assembled in the office of the Hokage. Torahi stepped forward. “To what do we owe this honor, Hokage-sama?”

 

“To Naruto-kun, of course.”

 

Hiashi grinned. “What did he do now?”

 

“Stopped a traitor and protected village secrets.” The Hokage said in a manner of fact tone. At seeing the thirteen gaping mouths, he launched into an account of that night's events. At the end, all of them were grinning. The old man turned to Kakashi. “Kakashi-san, I expect Naruto will want to demonstrate a new jutsu to you later today.”

 

Kakashi smiled under his mask. “I don't doubt it. Is that all, Hokage-sama?”

 

“No, I thought you all might like to be aware of Naruto's team assignment. We didn't want him to be under of the senseis from the clans, for fear they'd show favoritism. There weren't many open spots, but Naruto and one other gifted student will be added into an already existing team, making a team of four under one Jounin. Here's the roster.” He held out a piece of paper, and thirteen sets of eyes poured over it.

 

There was a moment of silence, which was broken once again by Kakashi. “You've gotta be shitting me.”

 

Back at the forest clearing, Naruto was thinking about a way to create a jutsu. `I'm good at elemental jutsu, specifically earth and fire. I also like to kick, and have good chakra control. Hmmm… Maybe that'd work.' With an idea, Naruto began pounding out a way to create a jutsu of his very own.

 

Four hours later, the sun was beginning to come up, and Naruto was tired yet ecstatic. “I'VE GOT IT!” he screamed to the world. “YES! I'M AWESOME!” With that, he took off running to the Hatake estate.

 

Kakashi was working on some morning exercises when he heard Naruto's cry. “Wow.” He said to himself. “That was fast.” Soon, a dust cloud on the horizon and numerous yelps of joy announced that Naruto was approaching. Not a moment too soon, Kakashi sidestepped, and Naruto went skidding past him.

 

“Kakashi-tou-san! I've got it! I made a super-kick-ass jutsu!” he shouted, overjoyed with his accomplishment.

 

Kakashi looked at his adopted son fondly. “I heard you before, Naruto-kun. Demonstrate please! Training dummy is over there.”

 

Naruto looked at the training dummy, and began going through some hand seals. Tiger, Horse, Dog, ending in Bird. Then he focused the accumulated chakra into his left leg, then down into his foot. As Kakashi watched, gaping, the dirt around his foot glowed red, and transformed into lava. The lava formed a mold around Naruto's foot.

 

Then, with breathtaking speed, Naruto ran at the dummy. With a lightning-fast kick, the lava-encased foot sliced through the neck of the training dummy like a hot knife through butter. The head flew off, landing ten feet away. As it landed, it glowed red hot, then disintegrated into a pile of ashes.

 

Kakashi was gaping at the powerful justu. It was clearly an assassination jutsu, meant to kill the opponent in one shot, no wounding involved. “What do you call it?” He asked.

 

Naruto grinned. “Kazanashi (Volcano Foot)” he murmured.

Kakashi gaped for another moment, then began applauding. “I'm proud of you, Naruto-kun! It is defiantly a powerful assassination jutsu! I want you to record it in the Hatake archives under A-Class! But first, you might want this.” He held out a package wrapped in black fabric.

 

Eagerly, Naruto grabbed it. Hastily, he removed the fabric, which was in fact, his own mask. “Every wears a mask somewhere. I recommend you put it around your neck for right now.” Kakashi said, and Naruto nodded, and quickly donned the mask. But the mask had been wrapped around something: a bright orange book. Naruto looked at Kakashi questioningly.

 

The copy ninja let out a perverse giggle. “Almost every man reads that. Just, most do it in private.” Shaking his head, Naruto gaped at his perverted foster father. Mimicking his actions, Kakashi shook off his own perverseness, at least temporarily. “The Hokage also wanted me to give you this.” He handed over a brown envelope. Naruto quickly opened it, and read the short note inside.

 

It read: `Naruto-kun, you didn't want to hear the other condition of being a clan head. You must either have been in ANBU, which you won't be able to do for a while, or take the second option. The second option can be taken care of quickly, and with your clan privileges, you should be able to take any discomfort away from you at a later date. The second option is to-”

 

Naruto looked at the last part of the letter uncomprehendingly. Then an anguished shout came out of his mouth. “BUT I'M TOO YOUNG TO BE MARRIED!!!”

 

Naruto slapped himself. `But I could.' He thought. `I could get married multiple times, for crying out loud. I'm a practitioner of polygamy, which means, I think, I can get hitched to multiple girls at the same time, as long as they agree. Now, who do I think I could love?' Naruto thought for another couple of moments.

 

Then, without a word to Kakashi (who was still shocked from his last outburst), Naruto bounded off, in the direction of the Shinkotama compound.