Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

Chapter 1

Naruto's fingers brushed over the grimy, most likely half a century old paraphernalia. The skin on his back shivered in response. He couldn't help the feeling that choosing the old clan house was one of his more thoughtless ideas. But there was something here that pulled at his heartstrings. When he spotted the thatched and decaying roof across the creek during one of his outdoor adventures the blood in his veins churned and his mouth dried up in anticipation. He didn't know why, but he needed to be there and the only thing left to do was continue walking.

The 11-year-old reflected that it wouldn't be so bad if he found some secret jutsu scrolls but, unfortunately, the scattered, strangely empty parchment only seemed to mock him from the house corridor floor.

The blonde's sandals scraped the wooden floorboards while his bored hands scuffed the door frame as he passed into yet another room from the main corridor, the size of the house continuing to grow on his mental map. The sound of his jacket and pants rustling somehow magnetized to his ears in the veritable silence.

"It definitely didn't look this big from the outside…" muttered Naruto, accompanying an echo that disturbed the stillness.

His goosebumps were exercised for the near 100th time as a biting chill flew into his bones, "It's like these rooms ignore the good weather!" He yelled.

Parchment, pens and pencils, the blank pages and sharp points painting a telling picture despite the dust, sat at corners of the room. Closets and windows, like the rest of the rooms, were nowhere to be seen. And the only pieces of furniture were the matching wooden chair and table, again, just like the rest of the rooms.

Naruto bit down, pressing his teeth together to ward off the expletives, "What a waste of time."

He swung around sweeping the parchment into a mess of air, his legs shaving the distance to the front door. His hurried gait was ignored in the rapid intake of breaths escaping from his mouth and the shadows surreptitiously lurking in the corridor. His mind involuntarily brought doors and floorboards to life, and a suffocating feeling began to seep into his lungs. More breaths came more frequently, and the blood from his veins rushed to his ears. Finally, salvation appeared in the scrambling hands that found the front door handle, wrenching the cold metal back.

Eyesight filled with a wall of green breathed tranquility into Naruto. As if nature agreed with him, sunlight beamed through the tree canopy onto his skin.

"I-I never thought t-trees and grass would be a sight for sore eyes," Naruto panted.

His hands rested on his knees, and wonderful gasps of November air rushed into him as he swept tense eyes around the familiar trees. His bright, yellow hair obscured his vision and drew his attention to how wet the strands were.

"What the hell was that...I've never been that scared before." Sweaty hands rubbed off onto his orange pants as he straightened up and shook his head, splashing sweat onto the grass in front of him.

After gathering himself, Naruto took off in the direction of the creek that he crossed earlier. The world around him blurred into a barrage of green and displaced air whispered near his alert ears. His body moved like a caricature of an orange bullet and the worn sandals he ran in tore up just a little bit more.

"Almost there, it should be rig-" There was no creek. "-ht here." The once calm blood flow exploded, his heart virtually smacking against the hard sternum.

"It's not possible. I know it was here. Maybe it was a bit further..." Naruto reasoned.

The long stretch of grass and lack of creek did not offer any comfort. Muscles in his legs tensed and coiled as he pushed off the ground to move further ahead without waiting to catch his breath. Spotting a thatched and decaying roof elicited much the same reaction as it did the first time. With the exception of the merciless terror howling in the confines of Naruto's mind.

"This is a trick. A p-prank that's it. Dumb villagers probably set up this entire thing because they can't take a prank, it's got to be that," Naruto spluttered.

The eleven-year-old back-flipped, corkscrewing backwards and shooting off the hard ground towards the opposite direction of the clan house.

"You guys think you're so funny! You all want to see me beg for your help, but fuck that! I'm gonna get out here on my own and I'll show all of you what a real prank is, you better believe it," snapped Naruto.

He twisted his head in random directions, pupils darting to and fro for a sign of foul play. The ninja-to-be's feet moved so quickly that grass and dirt were kicked up marking the ground in a mockery of composure.

A thought whispered to him, 'What is this feeling? A prank shouldn't get to me like this!'

He looked everywhere for a sign, something to calm him, something like a pesky villager using those illusion things he remembers hearing about in the academy. And that's when he noticed.

Naruto's ears, his eyes, his everything, they didn't register an important detail. He leaned back onto his heels, stopping suddenly and dragging grass underfoot. The heavy panting halted, and his breathing was put on hold completely. And with that came stillness. The kind of stillness one can only try to imagine. Birds, bugs, wind, random white noise, it was all missing. And, as if laughing at him, a rotting roof refocused into his vision.

Naruto fell to the ground, his legs caving in on him. "A time limit. They can't keep me here forever, a day if anything. They just can't," insisted Naruto.

The rotting material of the vernacular roof demanded his attention again. In response a sudden bout of shivering embraced him. He swallowed heavily.

"I'll just stay here and wait. I give it a day tops and those morons will get bored," reiterated Naruto.

His heart slowed down and his hands stopped shaking, arranging themselves into tightly bound fists.

"I just have to wait," repeated Naruto.

One Day Later

"Let me out! I'll forget this whole thing if you let me out right now. I won't tell the Hokage, it'll all just be a laugh between us, ha-ha," coaxed Naruto.

Only stone-still silence answered him. Clumps of grass tightened in his fingers.

"Come on… I learned my lesson. Happy? No more pranks. In fact I'll do you one better and buy your groceries or something."

Nothing. His face twisted in emotion and the grass was torn from the roots.

"Fine you bastard. Have it your way." Scattered spots of dirt with upturned grass decorated the valley, the furthest distance from there, that Naruto sat on.

Moisture from the soil coated the grass, and for some reason the drops of dew derailed him from another tirade. His eyes didn't stray as the drops inched down the gra-

He abruptly stood up, "I didn't go to the bathroom the whole day!" exclaimed Naruto.

Within a second he faced a nearby tree, his pants down and resting on his ankles, waiting for the inevitable waterfall and closing his eyes in anticipation. Moments later Naruto slowly walked back to his sitting spot.

"Damn it, not even a trickle… Maybe because I didn't drink anything? Speaking of," he patted his stomach. He didn't feel hungry either.

'I should be starving for some ramen at this point.'

Sweat started to gather on Naruto's palms and his arms shook. His eyes shifted up. Clouds high in the sky lazily swirled across a canvas of blue. Sky blue. Wide eyes immediately turned to the side to take in the brilliant ball of light.

"...I never even noticed. The sun hasn't gone down at all. An entire day passed and it's still daylight," marveled Naruto.

The lack of any hunger and urge to go to the bathroom, and now a day that hasn't ended.

Another treacherous thought escaped him, 'Time doesn't work here.'

He swallowed heavily.

"Can illusions even do this? Stopping time doesn't seem human," whispered Naruto. He looked down at the palms of his hands. "What's going to happen to me?"

Three Days Later

It's odd how fast the sun had become annoying without the night to offset it. In the beginning its brightness was comforting. But over time, the luster of the sun became too intense despite it being unchanged and Naruto seriously considered running into the creepy clan house.

'But it was that stupid house that got me into this mess in the first place!' He reminded himself.

Exhaling heavily, Naruto continued to lay down under a tree, a spot he had been using for the past few days of sleep. His wait for the so-called illusion to finish ended in a not so spectacular fashion. The second plan, to wait for the Hokage to help, ended similarly.

'Even if this was an illusion, it doesn't matter if I can't get out of it. And it's starting to seem less like an illusion when I haven't eaten or drunk anything for so long too, the same goes for using the bathroom. The Hokage was my last hope but he hasn't shown up yet. If the strongest ninja can't help who can?'

Naruto slowly lifted himself from the ground, groaning and shaking his body to loosen his muscles. A beam of sunlight planted itself in his face and forced him to cover his eyes.

"I give up, the clan house it is," grimaced Naruto.

The walk back was marginally less terrifying than he thought it would be and the old house lost a bit of its creepiness after four days of doing nothing but waiting and sleeping. The front door stood slightly open from when he ran out earlier.

"Come on, nothing to be afraid of," mumbled Naruto. He held in his breath and edged closer to the door, the dark corridor inside making him pause.

'Well here goes.'

A few seconds later Naruto forced his body forward, only releasing his breath after seeing nothing wrong.

The open door illuminated the entire corridor greatly contributing to Naruto's calm demeanor. Like the last time he was in here, parchment, pens and pencils lay scattered across the floor.

His eyes narrowed in thought, 'It's like whoever's trapping me in here wants me to write down stuff.'

Shaking his head free of thoughts he stepped into the nearest room on his right, eerily similar to the rest of the rooms. Light from the corridor clearly showed a lone table and chair.

"Nothing to do but wait for this thing to end. If Iruka-sensei only taught me a ninjutsu this wouldn't be a problem," murmured Naruto, an attempt to distract himself.

He walked forward and sat down on the chair, pushing parchment and utensils off the surface of the table.

'I won't give in to this stupid prank.'

He tilted his head back and his eyelids drooped closed, determined to stay relaxed.

10 Days Later

Numerous, graphic illustrations sketched on pieces of parchment littered the entire wooden floor and table of the room Naruto adopted as his lair. Pictures ranging from a crude drawing of the Hokage Residence to simple models of the self-proclaimed 'Bubble' decorated bent parchment.

The Bubble, a name that Naruto gave for the spherical zone that confined him. These past ten days have been stressing but Naruto did learn something. This cage that kept him trapped in a place with twisted time had no exits. He combed through most of the forests surrounding the clan house, and measured the space he had from the house until things started repeating, in other words he'd be walking from one side of the forested area away from the house when he suddenly realized he was on the opposite side a dozen steps or so into a walk heading to the house. The result? 300 and some steps in all directions from the decrepit house was the limit. Almost enough to make him feel claustrophobic when compared to the vast Leaf village. And then he remembered the air and ground.

It took him two days to think of a way to test the air. Naruto threw rocks at varying angles, the last rock thrown at a vertical angle, near the edge of the circle and waited only to see the last rock instantly appear on the grass beneath him. An unusual thing now that he thought about it. The rocks should have been underground.

Afterwards, however, he ran to the other side of the circle. What he found was what he dreaded, the rocks sat spaced out as if thrown with varying force, similar to the differences in angles he threw them in. Then, he attempted to put just his finger past the edge of the zone. Imagine his surprise when he found himself mumbling incoherently and half-asleep on the opposite side of the circle. The entire scenario was contrived with arbitrary rules, there was no doubt about that.

The ground took him five days. He had taken off his jacket and shirt, and had gone on to dig a pit with his bare hands that went straight down, marking every equivalent 'step' with an 'X' across the hard pit walls. By the 300th mark he was bouncing around with his mouth trying to simultaneously frown and burst into a smile in dreadful anticipation. It was only the tall elm trees that saved him from a pitifully short life after he had shot out from the top of what he now knew to be a spherical prison.

All in all, it was a virtual bubble stretching around the clan house into the ground and sky. And when Naruto fell strangely silent it was not a sign of frustration but rather the uncanny awareness that all of it was too reminiscent of a cruel game.

He spit out the piece of parchment he had been chewing on for the past hour. Hunger and thirst never seemed to affect him in the Bubble, but it made him feel somewhat normal to at least chew something. An uncomfortable feeling of wood against his bare legs brought his attention to the pants spread out in the corner of the room. His pants were filthy with dirt from his early attempt at digging an escape, and with no water in sight he was left in his boxer shorts. Dirt still coated most of his body, however, and his skin was stained with dry mud and soil. His hair also wasn't spared which explained the near green shade it had taken.

Pupils drifted down to the drawings on the table in front of him, the extent to his resistance and a small concession in his participation of this...game. He had started drawing after his seven day testing phase. Naruto discovered it was much harder to keep track of random facts without some record. So he drew.

First was the Bubble and its inherent cruelty, and then his thoughts ventured to his dream, his purpose. To become a Hokage is to have the acknowledgement of the villagers. That's what the Hokage always seemed to be, what he wanted to be.

His hands planted themselves on the wooden surface, and his fingers curled towards him in a tense silence.

"What am I going to do now? The old man Hokage would have figured all this crap out already," he groaned.

Memories of talks with Iruka-sensei and the Hokage came to mind, as they usually did when he was oddly introspective, and with them came the vague, but also comforting idea of the Will of Fire. How the job of the Hokage was to keep it alive.

'Not just alive, but kicking and screaming,' He thought.

Naruto focused on a drawing an arm's reach from him. Rough lines outlining what was supposed to be the home of the Hokage did not diminish the message.

"Heh. How can I keep the Will of Fire alive if I can't even beat this stupid game!" Naruto exclaimed.

Within a blink of an eye he was outside the house. Cupping his hands to his mouth, he screamed to the trees, the grass, the sky, maybe even to himself, but not to whatever orchestrated this whole thing, it wasn't important anymore, "I never run away, I will be the Hokage! I promise that I will, and I never go back on my word!"

Silence was the only response. But it didn't bother him.

'Isn't this the same as before? Everyone ignored me before, what's the difference now!? I'll break out of this Bubble just like I'll force the villagers to acknowledge me.'

"Now what was that thing Iruka-sensei talked about? Chi, chara, something with a C definitely… and I just had a class on this too," speculated Naruto.

He knew that the Bubble could only be made with the source of a ninja's power, the source of jutsu. Of course there have been stories and old folk tales about demons and gods that did the impossible. But he could only count on what's always been there. Ninja did the impossible all the time. Transformations, moving so fast that they disappeared from the average person's sight, and jumping across entire city blocks as easily as they walked. If that was all possible with ninja, it isn't hard to imagine the same with whatever made this Bubble.

'I can only break a ninja jutsu with another one after all,' Naruto reasoned.

Ninja-to-be are taught from a young age because it is generally more difficult to train an older person. Naruto remembered this practice from what Iruka explained to him in response to his complaints about the Leaf Concentration exercise. It isn't a matter of teaching material or studying. But a person's physical ability to become a ninja gets weaker over the years.

"Now the question is why... Iruka-sensei mentioned holding a Leaf on my forehead would help improve my concentration. A concentrated Ninja is a good one," he recounted.

He closed his eyes in thought, 'That's not all of it though. Anyone at any age can learn to be concentrated.' Naruto snapped his fingers.

Pushing away the mess on the wooden floor in which he sat, he placed a single piece of parchment in front of him. His tongue involuntarily found its way to the side of his mouth near his cheek.

"Iruka-sensei said chakra. Ninja have chakra and use it for nearly everything. That's why we had to learn it at a young age. It's what I use when I make hand seals for the Henge no Jutsu and Kawarimi no Jutsu." stressed Naruto.

'I'll just have to play this game to beat it then.'

Grabbing a pencil and rolling it in between his fingers, Naruto started writing.

Hours Later

"I never thought I'd write so much." Naruto's eyes counted three pieces of parchment filled to the brink with writing and small diagrams.

'Maybe even more than what I wrote in all of school put together.'

He dropped the pencil, noticeably smaller than hours earlier, and stood up to stretch. Pops and cracks reverberated throughout the quiet room. Red hands, still stained with dirt, grabbed the three records and smoothed them out.

"Time to recap," he murmured.

Naruto briskly walked outside into the bright sunlight. Shade greeted him as he walked under a particularly gracious elm tree. The ground's cool surface in contrast with the nice weather- 'the only weather'- nearly lulling him to sleep when he laid down. The Hokage-to-be shook the drowsiness from his system, there was time for that later.

"First, chakra is what ninja have in them to do all the super stuff they do. Everyone has it but it gets weaker over time without training like doing the leaf exercise. Secondly, ninja can use chakra to do so many different things: Sticking things to their body, moving super fast, breathing fire, changing their appearance…" Naruto trailed off. He looked to the edge of the forest, the boundary of the Bubble.

Blinking slowly, he continued, "It's like ninja could do anything and this Bubble is just one more thing a ninja might be able to do. Thirdly, the things they can do are all called jutsu. But there are just so many possibilities that there's different kinds of jutsu. Like an illusion is a different kind of jutsu than a fireball." He nodded.

The pieces of parchment drifted down to the grass, falling from his hands. Sitting up, Naruto angled his head up to lean on the rigid bark of the tree.

"Lastly, hand gestures or hand seals can be used to control chakra to create jutsu. I need to learn how to use chakra better to make a jutsu powerful enough to break this Bubble. Illusion or not it's kept me here for too long." He sighed.

Closing his eyes in thought, he wondered if he should just randomly mix up hand seals and hope for the best when gathering chakra. An image of an explosive mushroom cloud invaded Naruto's mind. His eyes snapped open.

'No. I'll have to work my way up from the basics with the Leaf Concentration method. Besides I don't even know how long it would take me by trying every combination.'

With a quick jump Naruto grabbed a few leaves from a low-hanging branch directly above him.

"Time to get started. The Leaf Concentration exercise shows that chakra can be concentrated to the forehead. Let's see if I can get my hands to have more chakra and hold the leaves up." He reckoned.

Breathe in, breathe out. It was a mantra Naruto had repeated to himself for the past few minutes. When he did this earlier in the academy, it had taken him longer than nearly everyone else to hold one leaf up on the surface of his forehead. Iruka-sensei had urged him to focus more, but all the same he struggled. It was not until he controlled his breathing, putting all of his focus on steadying the air entering and leaving his body, that he felt the signature hum.

The hum did not emit a sound, rather it was like an arc of electricity streaming through his spine into all of his body and gathering mostly in his stomach. He didn't feel pain in the strictest sense, but it was like trying to go to sleep after training and exercise. There was only uneasiness at first, yet the feeling of restlessness grew more and more. He was charged with something, enough to do anything. It would be so easy to just crush anything in his path and..and he needed to-

"Calm down, Naruto," he scolded himself.

Like before, in the classroom, he felt the unnatural desire to work himself to the bone, and he probably would have if it weren't for Iruka-sensei explaining that chakra despite its almost magical effects was, at its core, a power like any other. And like all power, it tended to be dangerous without a leash.

'But Iruka-sensei did seem surprised with how much energy I wanted to burn off,' remembered Naruto. It was enough to have caused Iruka to watch over him for a few hours after class until he was let go. And later, Naruto could have swore that he had heard Iruka mutter something about a beast.

He shook his head to focus again on his breathing, reinvigorating the hum that had almost disappeared with a loss of concentration. However, rather than keep the bulk of the feeling in his gut, he pushed. Calling it a push is as accurate as calling a punch a blast of sound. Still, Naruto didn't know how to describe it, it was like relating the color red to a color blind person. Water dripping down your body during a shower, light shining painfully through eyelashes, seeing mountains and oceans for the first time, he didn't know how to explain it in those terms, but they came to mind when he pushed something, the chakra probably, towards his hands.

Shuddering muscles tinted with a feeling of too much in too little in his arms was the only warning before- Agony. Pure agony exploded from the side of his arms and it was all Naruto could do to not sob. Regardless, tears dripped down his eyes as he collapsed onto his knees, cradling both of his arms to his chest and dropping the leaves from his hands. He slowly fell onto his side, rolling so he was face up on the ground, watching the sky through blurry eyes.

Iruka's words gently floated into his mind, 'Be very careful when you use chakra. Your future instructors are in charge of helping you with that sort of thing. Don't try to be creative, you'll regret it.'

He couldn't even bring himself to speak about the sudden failure. Gradually, his eyelids drooped downwards and his heart beat fell into a drowsy rhythm. The thrum of pain in his arms faded away as blackness encompassed his vision.

"-ruto."

Clouds hung in the sky beyond the windows. The brilliant gleam of sunlight and a motley of orange and red dressed the skyline.

"-uto."

Multiple buildings were visible through the windows, and the low buzz of chatter and laughter seemed to sweep into the room. Room.

"Naruto!"

A voice thundered into his ears. Naruto swung his eyes to the man. He was old, with wrinkles and veins coiling around his skin. Though if he had to say old, it would be similar to how a tree aged with its dry bark, without a doubt tougher than the newborn tree.

"Naruto, are you paying attention to me?" The Hokage asked.

Naruto peered into the Hokage's eyes, taking notice of the hat that sat on his head, and apologized, "Sorry about that, the village just looked really cool."

The blonde-haired boy smiled then, a smile so wide that it narrowed his eyes, and, as if it were habit, his hand had gone on to scratch the back of his head.

"Naruto…" The Hokage spoke as he looked out through the windows, his hat shadowing most of his face. He was silent for a few seconds before turning back to Naruto, his face still inconspicuous.

"It is good to take notice of the beauty of the village, but you mustn't be distracted," scolded the red-garbed village leader.

Naruto's head fell but he quickly tilted his head up to look into the eyes of the Hokage, eager for the next lesson. The Hokage's calloused and veined hand reached into the folds of his ceremonial robes, pulling out a half bent taper pipe. As he raised it to his mouth, a fire spontaneously lit inside the bowl just in time for the Hokage to take a puff of his pipe.

Closing his eyes and breathing deeply the Hokage spoke again, "Your dream is to be a ninja, correct? A ninja must be a master of his or her own senses, so that weaknesses cannot be exploited. There are those out there who are frightening not because of their techniques or rank, but because of their observational skills. So before your enemies discover you, you must discover and know yourself."

He paused to take another puff from his pipe. Smoke gathered around the pipe and quickly vanished with a gust of unnatural air.

Putting his pipe down, the Hokage continued, "Understand, Naruto? You must know everything about yourself before you can act confidently."

With the pipe in hand the Hokage pushed it towards Naruto, "Here have some." In surprise, Naruto flinched away, falling off his chair onto the ground.

The Hokage looked into his eyes, blowing smoke into Naruto's face, "What's wrong, Naruto?"

A smell of burning paper and ash wafted into Naruto's nose. His eyes stung with tears and when he opened his mouth to complain he swallowed bitter, burning smoke. It burned beyond his body, igniting something even deeper. 'Is my soul burning?' His final thought barely processed when the heat consumed him, trapping him in a void of fiery suffering.

He woke up abruptly with his face red and hot, courtesy of the ever present sun shining down. Slowly rubbing his eyes, he was surprised to find that he didn't feel any differently. More importantly, he didn't feel the torturous pain that he had gone to sleep with. Naruto brought his arms to eye level.

'What happened? I definitely remember pushing chakra into my hands and my arms exploding in pain ...'

He waved both his arms up and down, flexing them intermittently. Other than the skin being hot from the constant sunlight his arms felt fine.

'Weird. I didn't just feel pain. I felt my muscles tearing and my bones shattering. Something like that can't be healed this quickly,' thought Naruto.

Hesitantly, as if afraid of the pain coming back, he lifted himself from the ground. He jumped around and threw a few jabs interchangeably with both arms.

'Not even a twinge of pain, it doesn't make any sense. I can heal fast, but I still feel some pain, and that's with smaller injuries too,' thought Naruto. He sat down, folding his arms to his chest and closing his eyes to focus.

'Again, it's like another random rule in the Bubble. My arms went back to not being hurt when I woke up, as if time never affected them. Like my bladder and hunger, the rest of my body is only affected by time a certain way. But I also need sleep because my mind gets tired. In other words, only certain parts of me are affected by the passing of time. Every time I wake up, though, things reset,' reasoned Naruto.

The ninja in training opened his eyes. His eyes took in the sparsely forested area around him. He stood up abruptly and briskly walked in the direction of the hole he dug a few days ago.

'If I'm right, it'll mean that some things I changed will go back to normal,' his thoughts fell silent as he spotted a grass covered glade surrounded by trees. The ground was undisturbed by human life, regardless of the fact that a 300 foot deep hole was there earlier.

'I know I didn't check it out immediately, but it must have happened when I slept the day I dug the hole.'

Naruto thought about the parchment he wrote on for the past few days. 'The words and drawings didn't disappear or anything. Like me, the rest of the Bubble has certain parts affected by time, and other parts that are reset after I sleep.'

He crossed his arms and leaned back onto a tree behind him. This would help him he realized. If he can stay intact his experimenting won't leave permanent scars and huge recovery times. Now he just had to figure out the problem with concentrating chakra into his hands. When he charged chakra into his forehead, trying his hardest, it felt like only a small stream of chakra was able to move up his spine from the stomach. His hands were the opposite. They soaked a stream of chakra so large that it was almost easy. Meaning that his hands were easier to concentrate chakra into than his forehead, and he nearly shattered his arms by overestimating their resistance.

Grumbling, Naruto spat out, "What a load of... Now I have to make sure that I don't overcharge my chakra somewhere!"

The fingers on his hands involuntarily curled into a fist. Knowledge of any future damage being temporary did little to alleviate his fear of pain in what he was about to do, but at this point there was no choice but to move ahead. Like before, Naruto focused on his breathing, slowly inhaling with his nose and exhaling through his mouth. Thrums of feedback from his entire body answered his call to charge his chakra, and the haptic feelings percolated into a familiar hum of chakra, with most of it concentrated in his stomach near the base of his spine.

A sound of teeth pressed tightly against teeth escaped Naruto as he prepared himself to maneuver chakra to his hands. It was time to only concentrate a fraction of the chakra he used before.

'Let's go!'

With a sudden exertion an electrifying current of energy ran up his arms into waiting hands, the chakra coiling and fluctuating from inside the core of his fingers to the middle of his palms. Almost instantly a horrible feeling Naruto was all too familiar with attacked him and a message of too damn much reverberated in his head. He threw his hands out with open palms and wide-spread fingers as if to ease the pressure somehow and halted the current of chakra. Doing the opposite of focus, whatever that was, the hum of chakra died down and Naruto hoped it wasn't too late.

A distinct soreness prickled his forearm and fingers. But Naruto let loose a sigh regardless. The lack of mind numbing pain from earlier was much appreciated.

'This is so much harder than I thought. Focusing on using a small amount of chakra should have helped, but my control is crap. Compared to the control I needed to finish the Leaf Concentration exercise, with the hand focusing... it's like balancing a piece of paper on my finger versus an upright needle. I have to keep trying, this time with leaves,' decided Naruto.

One quick jump and a handful of leaves later, Naruto began the long process of gaining control over his chakra.

Hours Later

"No wonder!" Yelled Naruto. He had just finished concentrating chakra into his hands, but rather than keep the bulk of it in his arms and hands like his past attempts, he continued to move it outwards regardless of the horrible feeling of pressure that crept up. Like air in a punctured rubber ball, chakra, visible blue chakra, escaped his finger tips and palms in streams of ethereal light. Slowly, as if afraid his new victory would disappear any second, Naruto lifted his hands up to his face. The streaming chakra curled around his face, brushing past his skin before dissipating into the air. It gave off heat, but it was akin to a warm embrace, and the ephemeral blue light hypnotically tinting his skin also cast waving shadows moving in motion to the chakra leaving his hands.

"I made a mistake that any ninja would have seen in a few seconds. When I did the Leaf Concentration Exercise earlier, I also pushed a steady stream of chakra to the outside of my forehead," Naruto explained out loud.

In response to the lack of focus, the expelled tendrils of chakra slowed down, and the feeling of pressure started to return. Without hesitating Naruto exerted more of the available chakra out of his ready hands and also started to limit the total chakra flowing through his arms. The task had become much easier than before. With the addition of a visual cue in the form of streams of chakra his control was more concrete and his confidence grew. Similar to playing a game, Naruto's focus began to ebb and flow in response to finding the most efficient proportion of chakra needed. His focus waned when there was too much chakra charging his arms, but it came back immediately following the expulsion of large tendrils of chakra from his hands.

"But when I tried to use chakra to hold the leaves up with my hands, I didn't even move the chakra outwards, only kept it inside. If I never noticed I would have been stuck doing this training for a huge amount of time," grimaced Naruto.

The current of chakra in his arms gently stopped as Naruto reached down, gathering a few leaves from a pile he formed earlier.

'Now I just need to hold these leaves up and then I'll move on to other parts of my body,' decided Naruto.

16 Days Later

It was a contradiction. Trees and glades of green encompassed his entire vision, but the picture felt bland, incomplete even. Sounds, animals, stars, they were all missing and have been for some time now. It was pure nature without a core part of nature. But what did that leave then?

"If I can't find the moment when Nature stops becoming Nature, then maybe there is no such thing as it," mumbled Naruto.

He was laying down in the elevated crook of an elm tree, the tallest one he could see in the Bubble, looking out of a hole in the canopy. The sunlight was, for the most part, hidden at this angle so as to stop it from annoying him. It left him to admire the green expanse of the forest, yet the longer he looked the less admiration he could feel for nature.

'Nature is just a catch all word for people who live in villages and cities. It's all that's clean and nice. Though it says something that humans couldn't wait to leave it for a grocery store and bar a block away.'

Naruto didn't think on amateur philosophy easily, but it was warranted with all the work he had done. It had been only a few days into training the Leaf Concentration Exercise that he was able to keep a decent grasp on the leaves on his entire body. From the soles of his feet to the back of his neck, he was able to decorate himself with leaves. The discovery of external expulsion applied everywhere unsurprisingly, however, it was hardest for the bottom of his feet. Unlike his hands, the resistance of chakra being maneuvered into his legs and into his feet was similar to his forehead. A current of chakra had to be wrestled to even enter his feet, and although this would have made things easy in the same manner as his forehead, whatever difference his feet had caused any expulsion of chakra to be explosively volatile. His feet were both resistant to chakra and volatile to chakra flow. An all around bad situation. Still, he persevered and if he ever needed a camouflage cover of leaves, well, he'd be ready.

Sighing loudly Naruto swung his legs over a coarse branch, bringing his feet up to rest directly on it. He awkwardly oriented himself so that his hands would hold his body up on the branch while his feet planted themselves onto the main trunk, leaving most of his body hovering above nothing except a long way down and grass. The beating of his heart slowed down and on an unseen signal Naruto in what could only be described as an insane act of self-harm let his hands go.

Naruto flinched in reflex but there was nothing to fear. He didn't move from his spot. Inexplicably, the ninja in training stood horizontally, defying gravity on the tree's trunk. Taking his time, Naruto walked around the trunk, revolving around it and slowly approaching the ground.

'It was completely unexpected. After mastering the Leaf Concentration Exercise, I started to test what my limit was in pushing chakra outside of my body. The last thing I expected was for my feet to be stuck to the ground.'

A few feet above the ground Naruto jumped off, flipping forward and landing in a crouch. The crinkling of the grass stole his attention for a moment to see the entire ground littered with scorch marks.

'Somehow the chakra was able to attach itself to the ground and it was like I was a magnet on metal.' Brushing off the dirt and grass lodged in his hair, Naruto ran in the direction of the house. Though it didn't matter what direction he went in because eventually he'd find himself in front of the decrepit clan house.

'It didn't take long for me to test it on the tree and find that with enough work I can run up it ignoring gravity,' Naruto bragged internally. Arriving at the clan house, he walked inside at a much more sedated pace. Though much of the fear passed, he couldn't stop the near instinctual aversion that crept up on him every time he entered the house. It faded the longer he stayed inside but whenever he left his body would have to "adapt" to the feeling again.

Finding the room he adopted earlier as his lair, Naruto's movements fell into a long practiced routine. He walked to the back wall where a row of tally marks were etched with pen into the coarse wood. Picking up a nearby pen he etched a mark near the 6 groups of five tallies, the 31st day. A month... When he explored the house, never in his wildest dreams would he have imagined staying there for a month. A few days in he stayed hopeful that it would end soon. That he'd be out talking with Iruka-sensei about all the things he could do as Hokage, or challenging Kiba and Sasuke to a fight like always. Then right before his eyes a week passed, then two, and when he blustered and said he'd find a way out all by himself he still held onto the hope that maybe it would only last one more day.

Now he knew without a doubt that escape could only be brought on with his own two hands. He doesn't know what he'll do with chakra to escape, but he knows all the best plans have steps. You can't skip to the end. And the next step at the moment was to use his new and improved chakra control to perfect the Henge, Kawarimi, and the infamous Bunshin no jutsu.

Naruto let the pen fall to the floor and ambled his way to the corner where a pile of leaves were dumped onto a thick bed of parchment. The pile was used as a bed and even though it was somewhat uncomfortable, it was leagues better than the grass outside.

Leaves flew up in disarray as Naruto dropped suddenly into his bed and before he knew it the vision of leaves swirling chaotically in the air faded into the deep black of sleep.

A dark figure shot upwards into the branches. It jumped from branch to branch, disappearing intermittently in the shadowed forks of the trunks. Without hesitation the agile figure jumped directly off a tree into the air. Shadows wreathed around it entirely as the sun acted like a backdrop to the intense display. But similar to a demon being pulled into the light, the truth finally reveals itself as… Iruka Umino fell lightly into a slightly crouched position. The faintly bent grass beneath his feet a testament to his skill in stealth.

Iruka's face was pronounced into a frown, making the jagged scar across his face even uglier. In addition to that, his closed fists and body language indicated a fight was soon to take place. And as if Iruka himself thought he wasn't menacing enough his head was tilted at such an angle to hide his terrifying, surely they could only be that, eyes. But like ice on a hot day the harsh figure Iruka cut melted away into nonexistence. A smile suddenly appeared sweeping away the shadows and a very familiar habit showed itself when a hand went straight to scratch the back of Iruka's head.

"Haha. Iruka-sensei is definitely not this mean. Kinda went overboard there," confessed... smoke erupted from where Iruka was standing and revealed a much shorter, blonde-haired boy, Naruto Uzumaki.

His chakra control had improved beyond belief. When Naruto began practicing his jutsu he knew it would be easier. But he had so much trouble before this whole mess using a jutsu correctly that doing it seemed like a dream.

A dream it wasn't. During his first try Naruto, as he formed handsigns, felt a distinct amount of chakra in his arms. The chakra circulated through a hand seal from one hand to the other, without his control. It was a feeling that he never associated with hand seals. In the academy anytime he formed hand seals it felt no different than just putting two hands together in weird ways. But as if his eyes were opened to a different world, he could feel exactly what was happening when using a jutsu. The chakra in his arms, the chakra that doesn't come from the core or stomach area, unconsciously began to flow through his hands into a hand seal.

With his left hand flat over his closed right fist, the dog seal made his chakra warp in an oddly specific way. High speed chakra flowed in a curving sensation from the left hand into the right fist, rotating inwards like a cyclone and, finally, escaping into Naruto's right forearm. In contrast, with the boar seal, the second step of the Henge no Jutsu and when both his closed hands are pointed down together and flexed at the second knuckle, had slower chakra move through one hand and bounce in parallel between palms until fizzling out near the fingertips of his other hand.

Somehow the mastery of the Leaf Concentration exercise and walking on vertical surfaces opened Naruto to feeling his chakra much more acutely. More importantly, it allowed Naruto to see what happens when you combine multiple hand seals, or modulations of chakra, together to form a jutsu.

The results were amazing. Just as he finished thinking of Iruka-sensei and using the last hand seal, the ram seal, his chakra burst into an array of jobs. Taking living form, the chakra instantly began to flow throughout his entire body and at certain points exploded. Of course they didn't literally explode, but Naruto felt the chakra charge up greatly and erupting outside the points. This all took less than two seconds and coincided with the familiar smoke emerging everywhere.

Then chakra flow kicked up in multiple places. His core, arms, legs, and the usual. But what was really noticeable was that chakra flowed down from his head into the core and spiraled into the mix, something to definitely remember. The chakra gathered at the same points where it erupted earlier, but instead of doing the same it extended in such a way that it covered his entire body's surface. And then, like a switch was flicked, every inch of the surface of his body had chakra circulate in varying degrees. Immediately his body had changed into Iruka-sensei.

The transformation was perfect on the first try. It had seemed that on top of his breathtaking new ability to feel his chakra in the midst of using a jutsu, he had gained the instinctive ability to limit his chakra from being too inconsistent and messy.

And to make a great situation even better, his feeling of chakra allowed him to modulate it directly instead of leaving it to unconscious instinct. Rather than the Henge no Jutsu's surface body chakra circulating on its own, he could actively take control and by changing the speed or intensity of the chakra flow in certain areas he could seamlessly change the transformation.

Iruka with small legs and a huge chest was as funny as he imagined.

Though it wasn't just the looks he could change. In his past attempts of using Henge no Jutsu, the technique only lasted a few minutes without interruption. But by uniformly increasing the flow of chakra in the last step of the jutsu, the jutsu felt much more stable and could even take impacts and falls.

It was just the breakthrough he needed to get out of this entire mess. Sitting down on the grass, Naruto crossed his legs and continued to think through a future plan.

If he could learn how a combination of hand seals makes a certain jutsu, then he can learn how to make a new one. Right now he knew the seals to three jutsu: Henge no Jutsu, Kawarimi no Jutsu, and Bunshin no Jutsu. Half of the twelve basic hand seals are used in those jutsu which gives him something to work with. He just has to pay attention to how each hand seal changes his chakra and what the end result is…

'I'll grab a few pieces of parchment and describe everything I feel with my chakra after I use each jutsu. Then I'll look at what each hand seal does and what they do put together,' decided Naruto.

He quickly stood up and headed towards the clan house for pieces of parchment and a pen.

"Argh! I don't understand any of this. How does a flow type 3 form outside with the snake seal!? If I follow the pattern with Kawarimi no Jutsu, the snake seal should only push chakra out as it is, but the flow somehow transforms by itself," Naruto lamented.

Dozens of pieces of parchment adorned the floor of his room. Multiple pages had sketches of a generic human body. Dark points were filled in throughout the bodies and all kinds of swirls and cycles were traced around them. A page labeled "Henge no Jutsu" had the jutsu's three hand seals drawn at the top. The flows of chakra Naruto felt when he tried the jutsu multiple times culminated in a detailed diagram of chakra depictions matched directly with the hand seals.

And the same could be said for the rest of the jutsu. Both of them were as detailed as the Henge no Jutsu page. It had seemed his success with the Henge carried over to the Bunshin and Kawarimi. Both of them were perfect on his first try.

"Another idea down the toilet," muttered Naruto. He scrunched up the paper he was working on and threw it to the side.

When he had finally written down all his jutsu observations, he sat down to rack his brain and find a pattern of logic that matched all the information. But it was useless. Every pattern he tried was contradicted faster than he could come up with them. If he tried a pattern that explained how chakra formed the Henge it would fail in the face of Bunshin or Kawarimi. If he tried to explain even basic things about the movement of chakra, it would be contradicted a few seconds later in the same jutsu!

'I don't know who in Leaf makes jutsu, but they must be geniuses to understand anything at all,' pondered Naruto.

Wiping his hands in disgust from the work he had been doing for the past few hours, Naruto pushed away the surrounding parchment and gave into the allure of the forest outside. It was a liberating feeling to say the least. Despite the fact that the Bubble had a forest without nature's sounds or even something as simple as running water, the trees surrounding the house still gave off a feeling of freedom and clarity.

"Tch…"

So much for his thoughts on if nature existed. As long as people continued to be cooped up in dark, confining rooms the appeal of towering trees and mysterious winding paths into the unknown will never go away.

A near-silent patter of running sounded out throughout the forest. Blonde hair could be seen bounding in and out of foliage at impressive speeds, accelerating by the second. But for all the effort put into hurtling through the hollow Bubble forest, the ninja-to-be's mind seemed to predominantly elsewhere.

'Okay. I hit a dead end. You can't expect anyone to be successful every time they try something new,' concluded Naruto. He bent forward with his arms extended behind him in the traditional ninja run. The run was commonly used to reduce noise from air resistance and to put the arms in a position where they can efficiently reach for weapons. It slowed him down some but it always made him look like the ninja occasionally dashing atop Leaf's rooftops. Alarms sprung to life and by instinct he ducked and weaved past a few stray branches in his way.

His inexperience showed as he moved into the less explored part of the Bubble. Elm trees were evidently much more diverse in this location. Rather than reaching the hundred foot heights near the edge of the Bubble, they seemed to have grown downwards and sideways into precarious roots and low hanging branches. Tangled branches wove in and out of one another, creating a haunting effect in the solitude of the forest. Ignoring his bout of nervousness Naruto flung himself into top gear to continue his thoughts on what his next step should be.

'If I can't understand what makes a jutsu a jutsu then I haven't found the right information. I know there's a way to make jutsu with chakra, how else would ninja have them now? So I know it's possible. But what am I missing? Chakra moving in certain ways and bam! A jutsu should appear- still, that doesn't make sense according to what I feel happening with each jutsu I've tested. There's no pattern to completely work off of!' Naruto internally groaned.

Suddenly, he swept his entire body to the right, spinning parallel to the ground. His perception slowed to a pinpoint as he watched the rush of air push off tiny blades of grass in the foreground of his own blurred shadow. He watched as, continuing his spin, his vision was overtaken by the underside of an unyielding, thick branch and felt as his back brushed off a similarly hard surface of elm.

Time seemed to return to its trajectory as his spin abruptly finished and in response he instinctively collapsed his body to protect himself. The impact was to be expected, but as he sporadically flew across the grass, bouncing every second in a rather unfunny caricature of a ball, his thoughts pondered exactly how fast he had been going. His speculation was put on hold, however, with the appearance of a monstrous tree trunk a few feet away. His eyes darted a fraction downwards to the ground, deliberately noting the blurred stretch of green amidst the disarray of loose roots and limbs.

'I'm going too fast! No time for a Kawarimi.'

In a last-ditch effort Naruto did the only thing he could think of to avoid a concussive collision, he focused his chakra. Unlike the sluggish attempts of using chakra half a month ago, the telltale hum of chakra instantly reverberated from the base of his spine craving to escape.

His body dragged by momentum closed the distance to impact to mere inches, legs and arms twirled and scraped roughly across the rooted ground.

Chakra surged throughout his physique. But it wasn't enough to do what he's always done. Sticking things to his body was useless here.

Air rushed past his ears and the looming bark was practically on him.

'A second, no, not even that…' His eyes widened. Chakra haphazardly fluctuated through his body, streaming and gathering into an ubiquitous pressure he learned weeks ago how to control.

Bone met bark as Naruto's head smashed into the unforgivingly dense tree. Hands unconsciously curled themselves into fists as his body wrapped around the tree's surface, the impact culminating in an earth-shattering crack in the desolate air. And finally, as if paying respects to Naruto's strength of will, the tree let out a creak.

25 and a half tons of tree. Heavy and daunting enough to bring a group effort of ten horse-drawn carriages to a crushing collapse. Yet, as Naruto slid off the tree to land on his back, all that could he focus on was the large crack slowly growing from where he had made contact with the wood. A shuddering sound of wood splintering echoed through the air. Pieces of wood rained down from the change in stress.

"Impossible," whispered Naruto. And just like that 25 and a half tons of pure tree split in half and fell backwards, the impact shaking the entire Bubble and deafening Naruto's ears for minutes.

Trembling, Naruto put a hand on his head, feeling for the place where a dent in his head should be. His other hand went to the rest of his body, frantically trying to make sense of the situation. There was no chance for his body to have split a tree that large. Not even if it split his head open to do it. And pain…

Sitting on the ground with the noise of his elevated breathing, the only thing keeping him company, Naruto felt little to no pain. His mouth dropped open and his eyebrows scrunched together.

"What is going on here!?" He roared. Deep exhalations of air were forced through his ground teeth.

"First I get stuck in this place for a damn month and now I can run through huge trees like I'm some kind of elephant?" Growled Naruto.

And when the adrenaline coursing through his veins finally died down, he felt the pressure of chakra bursting within his body. Quickly taking control of things Naruto expelled his chakra in visible blue streams. His hands and feet shook with energy as the plasmatic waves of light swept out to disperse into the air.

Naruto could only watch as the fantastical aura of chakra gathered around him. It was the most amazing thing he had ever seen in his entire life.

'This power…' realized Naruto.

Soon the aura disappeared into an invisible haze of energy. Clear waves of pressure and heat clashed, permeating the air. Naruto covered his eyes and turned his head away from the backlash, the pinpricks of heat stung the skin of his arms and bypassed his torn shirt to inflame his chest and stomach. Then, as fast it came it was gone altogether.

A peaceful silence was left in the wake of the chaos that had persisted just earlier. All around him crushed foliage and bit and pieces of singed wood scattered the ground. It was hard to believe he did all this.

'In fact that was the most energy I've ever used. How the hell did I do it if earlier I barely held off the pressure from a tiny amount of chakra?' Pondered Naruto.

Shaking himself free from debris and dust, Naruto carefully raised himself from the mess on the ground. He took off his shirt hoping to salvage some of its cloth for later. Despite the Bubble's helpful resetting with regards to arms and holes in the ground, it didn't lend itself to actual clothes and he needed a solution before he really became nature boy.

A single thought persisted in his mind, however, and before he could forget it he took off towards his room.

Scraping and scratching echoed Naruto's room as he filled out a new page with his recent observations. Ink traced out a tree very similar to the one he had just cleaved in two, but the focus was on human figures with obnoxiously spiky hair. Naruto had drawn in two of these figures. One was further back from the tree and had spirals representing chakra inside its body. The second figure was drawn at the base of the tree with much smaller spirals arranged in a tight packs of large numbers.

It was a clear observation that Naruto had intended to portray. When a small amount of chakra was regularly present in his body, there was a lack of pressure. But when he incorporates a large amount of surging chakra, a pressure begins to fill his body. Or to put it more simply, fewer spirals equates to less chakra and pressure, and more spirals equates to more chakra and pressure. An idea Naruto can quite easily imagine and understand.

Earlier when he first started his chakra experiments, pressure had become synonymous with an unhealthy amount of chakra. When he overcame his troubles and learned to adjust his chakra to a finer proportion he had thought his days of feeling like a bomb about to explode were over. But his run-in with a hulking mass of tree had surprisingly set him on a path to become more acquainted with it.

The scratching of pen on parchment echoed throughout the room as Naruto continued to detail his observations and ideas; with him not figuring out how to make jutsu, this might be the perfect distraction. After a few minutes he put the parchment down and stretched, satisfying sounds coming from his arms and back. Sighing loudly he looked down at the chicken scratch of what he'd generously call his handwriting.

"Somehow my body can hold a larger amount of chakra," Naruto read aloud.

"This is because I can circulate a much larger amount of chakra in my body before feeling like a walking bomb. I don't know for sure why that's happening, but if I had to guess then," Naruto could see the next part underlined multiple times, "more chakra can exist in one place because I can better control it," recited the 11-year-old. An arrow was drawn from the underlined text to the tightly-packed group of spirals in the figure at the base of the tree in his drawing.

Naruto shuffled backwards to put his back to the wall and rest his head. It was a tiny bit uncomfortable, but the slight pain was enough to distract him from the complicated thoughts he had been forced to go through trapped in this place.

"So I can become super strong if I have a lot of chakra in my body," said the tired ninja-to-be.

He brought his left hand to eye level. Fingers closed over his palm into a loose fist and Naruto bit his tongue. Better control or not, the pressure always put him on edge. And now he was about to experiment with it. Tightening his fist the half-naked experimenter began to ease the hum of chakra into existence.

The ethereal feeling was so much more fine-grained than the first time he used chakra, enough to nearly make out some kind of chain of chakra instead of the blob or vague haziness associated with it. He would have spent more time outside the Bubble on controlling his chakra if he knew it was this helpful.

Focusing, Naruto put forth the chain of chakra from his arm into his fist. Akin to someone dragging an ice cube across his forearm, a fading feeling of power traversed into his fist. Not feeling the pressure yet, he continued to devote a seemingly never-ending chain of energy. Quicker than he thought it would have taken his fist began to feel too tight for comfort, but he could feel an intense supply in his left hand. Ceasing his focus of chakra, the pressure unexpectedly left him as the chakra in his palm and fingers circulated back into the rest of his body.

The feeling was like a rush of caffeine injected into his spine. He bent down to stop a sudden bout of shivering from the rapid change of energy throughout his entire body.

"Note to self, make slow changes when working with crazy amounts of chakra," groaned Naruto. He shook his head to clear it from the jitters and... were those floating colors? Shaking his head even harder, his vision finally cleared from the energy-induced effects.

His back met the wooden surface of the wall again as Naruto refocused on the task of making his hand capable of breaking through mammoth-sized trees. Reenergizing his left hand, his fading nervousness let the chain of chakra traverse much faster into a coil of circulating chakra ending in his palm and somewhat in his fingers. As he felt the pressure start to build, he let some chakra back into his forearm but only enough for the chain of chakra going to his fist to roughly balance out with the chakra leaving his fist.

His fist was vibrating from the power, or at least he thought it was. It might have been the excitement he was feeling. In a sudden move, Naruto spun onto his feet and faced the wall behind him. And in a trademark bout of recklessness he shot his left fist forward, holding the pressure of chakra steady and not holding any strength back.

His knuckles dug into the wood, snapping it immediately and buckling it inwards like a house of cards. Splinters of wood erratically popped out of the wall into the air, but sharp cracks from his shoulder and elbow stopped him from doing anymore. Falling to his knees instantly, he held up his left arm and ground his teeth to stop himself from cursing in pain. His left fist was lodged into a 5-inch deep hole in the wall with splinters of wood digging into the skin. The rest of his arm dangled uselessly, only avoiding an unnatural angle by the support of his right arm.

"Not again damn it!" Yelled Naruto. His arm was on fire from the pain and it was obvious that his shoulder was dislocated.

Peering over to his left elbow he saw a nauseating sight. A slight piece of bone pierced his skin and was of course the second source of the mind-numbing pain he could feel. Blood drizzled out of the hole in his arm and it painted the parchment on the floor with splattered red. His eyes were closed suddenly and the weight of pain drifted his head into the comfort of his right shoulder. The 11-year-old's heavy breathing escaped into mere whines as his shoulder muffled his mouth. Biting down on his flesh he braced himself until the pain left him.

'Please stop,' plead Naruto.

Taking control of his senses, he stretched his fingers lodged in the wood and, with the chakra still amplifying his strength, quite easily broke the wood digging into his hand. He spread his fingers enough for his other arm to painlessly pull his fist out. Gently Naruto carried his broken arm as he sat in a seated position with his back to the wall. As the pain faded away to a numb throbbing he sighed heavily.

"Another failure. Great…"

Author's Note:

This is my first published fanfiction so it may not be the best writing/formatting. Hopefully it'll improve in the future. The idea behind the story came to me when I began to wonder if a Naruto with little outside interference could become strong. The length of the story shouldn't be too long, but that really depends on how well it comes together in the next few chapters. Thanks for taking the time to read.