Darkness Falls and the Heavens Weep

Summary: Lelouch is reborn as Uzumaki Naruto. Let's just say, people are gonna die.

(WARNING! Slash, AU, Reincarnation, Sporadic Updates, OOC-Characters, Character Deaths)

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Code Geass.

Chapter 1

The memories came in bits and pieces.

It started slow, barely noticeable.

Naruto spent his time alone in his room in the orphanage, a drab dreary thing colored in monochrome with only a small window letting in light and releasing colors. The bed was made up of a futon on the ground, with only a thin ratty blanket to see him warm during the winter months. The lamp hanging from the ceiling didn't work after his first few months of life, and it was never replaced. There were a few toys scattered on the ground, presents from the old man that came to by see him every few weeks and a Goban in the corner, not something that would usually be given to a small child courtesy of the danger of choking on the stones.

The employees of the orphanage were rarely with him after he became independent enough that their presences weren't necessary. They left him alone in his room to entertain himself and, considering his circumstances, that things went the way they did was perhaps to be expected.

You see, the Kyuubi no Kitsune, a powerful demon made up of pure chakra, albeit malicious, was sealed in the soul of a newly born baby. A baby whose soul had not had much of a chance to solidify its bond with its new body. Naturally, this disrupted things. And perhaps, had that soul not been who they were, it wouldn't have mattered, but as they are, this is what happened.

So things started slowly, with the little things.

Naruto enjoyed playing with the Goban. He liked moving the stones around and creating problems for him to solve and he liked the fact that it was completely under his control. He wasn't sure why this was important, but he knew that he had control over nothing else in this place where he lived and so instead of questioning what his mind was telling him was fun, he made the most of it. He could distract himself for hours with it, creating strategies and even cheating against himself as he ran around the board, not yet strong enough to move it around on his own.

It wasn't so much that Naruto learned how to speak but rather that he remembered how, even if for a while he had a rather odd accent. While listening to the old man talking about his village and the unrest after the Kyuubi's attack, Naruto found himself nodding along as he wondered about the odd old words that people used. He paid attention to the way the old man spoke and did his best to mimic it, even if he could never quite get the old grandfatherly tone down. Although, that may have just been because he wasn't old.

When Naruto was three and the old man—who was apparently the Hokage, whatever that was?—decided he was mature enough, he moved out of the orphanage and into an apartment by himself. A helper came by once a week to drop off food and clean and do the laundry. The Hokage came by once every month and dropped off an envelope filled with the local currency and Naruto always dutifully hid it behind the mirror in the bathroom even if climbing the sink was always a precocious mission. Still, he was determined not to let anyone steal his money and he figured that that was a place most people would overlook.

His helper never stayed long, just enough to do their duty and every couple of months, they changed identity without him knowing why.

The Hokage—the only consistent person that he knew that had never treated him badly—left him things, toys to play with and books to read. But he was a busy man and so he never stayed longer then an hour and certainly not long enough to teach Naruto how to read.

Not that Naruto needed it.

The art of reading was a simple thing and the characters were like half-remembered pictures. Once he had a reason to remember them—to ease his boredom—he found them there in his mind and easy to access. The ones he didn't understand could be learned through context, and only the ones that were particularly difficult resulted in him asking the Hokage for help.

Most of the time, Naruto was content with this. This was what he grew up with, all that he had ever known and he didn't know how to want more. It wasn't like he was unhappy or desperately wanted to leave the apartment to explore the outdoors either. All in all, Naruto was a calm child that accepted what came to him and was prone to going with the flow. He didn't protest when he was told he was leaving the orphanage and he didn't protest when the Hokage informed him that he would be beginning at the Shinobi Academy in a few years time.

With the confirmation that Naruto had nothing against learning the ninja arts—how could he have anything against it when he didn't know what it was?—the Hokage started dropping off more books, these ones on the subjects he would be learning. There were books on chakra theory and applications, guidelines on diets and nutritions, history books detailing the history of Konohagakure no Sato, even if they were the kind where the winners were glorified heroes and the losers the inevitably defeated villains.

He was given maps containing the geography of the world he lived in and Naruto had a brief moment where he thought 'a different world? Interesting' before his mind slipped on to other things. Things that would interest a small child more, even if he were a very mature one. Among the many things he were given, there were also weapons of rather good quality. There were kunai and shuriken and senbon and wires, and with them were scrolls detailing how to properly use them.

The Hokage helped him when he asked, correcting his grip when he was mistaken and keeping him from accidentally losing fingers. But with every visit, the man got more and more distant as he got busier and busier and from Naruto could piece together from the limited information he was offered, it had to do with unrest in the village concerning some of their own.

It brought to mind unpleasant images.

Before he could begin at the academy, Naruto got older. He grew taller and his baby fat gradually started to disappear, leaving behind a face that could be described as pretty rather than handsome, despite his young age. He devoured the books he was given, reading them again and again and mapping out timelines in his head and notes on paper where he wrote down anything that could be relevant. The chakra theory alone was fascinating.

He got into the habit of having a bowl of water next to him when he sat on the floor reading, keeping a hand over it and using chakra to pull small drops of water towards himself, just about an inch off of his hand. At the start, just getting the right amount of water was a problem and then to see it essentially floating in the air above his hand made him lose his concentration. At first, the water refused to do what he wanted and it was a pure exercise in frustration but then he thought of something. Water was flowing, something that was always in movement according to its own rules. Rather than pushing and pulling, maybe nudging would work better.

And it did.

Naruto learned how to nudge the water to make it want to hover above his hand, instead of trying to force it and epically failing.

He learned how to move the drops of water around above his hand, never on them, and gradually he increased the amount of drops and created patterns with them. He learned how to divide his concentration until he could do it almost subconsciously with as little thought as possible. He switched which hands he used and taught himself to divide his attention to the point where he managed to read simultaneously.

He learned how to let his chakra seep out of his hands, visible as pale blue light and how to control the output until all that was left were thin threads that could only be half seen. The management of these threads were a delight to Naruto, they represented a new amusing way to use chakra that didn't require he reported his success to the Hokage, a man that he had never really trusted.

He had fun, twisting the threads into braids and creating nets with them. He taught himself to use them to lift up the stones on his Goban and using it to move them around.

Eventually, the time came when Naruto left his apartment to visit the outside world for the first time.

It was a disaster.

The world outside was loud and bright, with birds chirping in trees and people running on rooftops. The people were all smiles and laughs, loudly talking to each other about the latest gossip and inquiring about their health. The children ran on the streets playing games only they could be entertained by with adults milling around on the edges of them to keep them out of harms way. Konoha as a whole was a colorful place with many different people populating it. Somehow, it wasn't what Naruto had expected.

And then they caught sight of Naruto, long blond hair falling around his shoulders and dressed in an old threadbare orange jumpsuit, the only clothes he owned suitable for going outside. The whisker like marks on his cheeks made it impossible to mistake him for someone else.

Their attitude switched in the blink of an eye.

Suddenly, all their smiles were gone and in their places were scowls and furious frowns. The children were pulled reluctantly from the streets to go home, all the while loudly complaining to their parents that didn't pay them any mind. The previously kindhearted people glared and spit foul words, their hatred seeping out of their eyes. Naruto found himself rooted to the spot as his connection to the Kyuubi allowed him to sense all of the hatred and anger and desperate grief directed at him.

His shoulders dropped as he was assaulted from all sides with nothing but scorn and dislike and rage.

It made something in him wake up and take notice, like when one hears a particularly tasteless joke.

Naruto's shoulders dropped a little more before he drew himself up to his full height, his bearing that of a royalty and his blue eyes looking down on everyone around him, as if they were the ants beneath his boots. He didn't spare them a glance as he continued on.

His wandering around Konoha brought him past a stand of delicious smelling food stall. Naruto blushed slightly when his stomach growled in reaction to the smell and made his way to it. He walked between the legs of adults who stepped away from him as if he was carrying a plague when they noticed him until he arrived in the stall. He climbed up and sat himself down on one of the chairs lining the counter and waited patiently for the cook to notice he was there. He wasn't about to announce his presence around people that disliked him with such a fervor.

Eventually, the cook realized he was sitting there and after a few seconds where they looked unsurely at him, they smiled and said, "Welcome! What can I get you?"

Naruto, grateful that this man wasn't seeped in hatred like the rest of the adults seemed to be, smiled genuinely at him and answered. "A big bowl of something delicious. It doesn't matter what it is."

"You got it!" the man smiled at him and made his ramen.

When Naruto tasted the ramen in the bowl in front of him, he had to admit, it was the most delicious tasting ramen he had ever eaten. And the man had smiled at him and done his best to ignore the whispers of 'traitor' that were being thrown around the stand by the few adults still left. Naruto pretended he didn't hear it, because it was undignified and it wasn't like their opinion of him mattered anyway.

That night, when he was home in his small apartment and alone again, Naruto thought about his new knowledge. For some reason, everyone hated him. When he tried to buy anything, he was overcharged to the point where it was a more of a robbery than purchase. And that was in the few stores that weren't mysteriously closed when he tried to enter them. The children paraphrased their parents and called him monster and demon to his face, in that way that children didn't know it was truly wrong and as they weren't discouraged by their family, they got the idea that it was acceptable and so continued to do it.

The thing was that Naruto could be loyal. He owed the Hokage a great deal and he recognized that and for perhaps that reason alone, he wasn't going to fight his destiny as a shinobi. But he wasn't the type to blindly give it to anyone who asked or was kind to him. If you wanted his loyalty, you had to earn it. And the people of this village—people that he would grow up to kill for so they weren't—spit on his name and blatantly hated him, spreading that hate to their children.

Naruto had no desire to die and fight for people that didn't appreciate it.

— —

Konoha was a military dictatorship that was slowly being more and more influenced by the desires of the civilians.

There was a civilian council that had control of the businesses and entertainment and civilian education. As more children from civilian families were accepted into the shinobi ranks, they spread their different morals and views of right and wrong, condemning anything that didn't agree with their parents teachings. Because they didn't grow up in shinobi clans, the reality of the shinobi life was often a shock and they usually ended up getting stuck as chuunin, because they just couldn't accept that becoming a jounin meant actually doing assassination missions from time to time. They found the practice of loving someone from the same gender to be unnatural and wrong and they spread this belief to the kids they grew up with and befriended.

With every passing year, the Hokage lost more and more of his grip on the village, due to both the machinations of the civilian and clan councils and the scheming of his former teammates.

The reality was that the Sandaime Hokage was tired and old and he had already retired once. His family was reduced to a small number after many different wars and his genin team were all gone to the wind, having left Konoha all but officially. The shinobi world was gearing up for another war, now that they were starting to recover from the last one. Ideally, someone else should have become Hokage and kept the village in their grasp and then maybe the feud with Uchiha wouldn't have spiraled so far out of control that he needed to spy on an entire clan of Konoha.

And it wasn't like all the blame laid on the Uchiha Clan either, the Hokage had waited for too long to address the rumors of their involvement in the Kyuubi's attack and the people had made up their minds. They wouldn't listen now even if he screamed the truth to the heavens, not that he was even sure what the truth was.

This was the times Uzumaki Naruto were born into. A time of unrest in their own home with a civil war an unavoidable result unless something drastic was done.

Naruto was eight when he finally started at the shinobi academy.

Like other aspects of the village since the civilians had gained more power, the academy had been simplified, the classes made gentler and easier to get by on theory alone to pacify the parents of the civilian children that went there. Some classes had been dropped entirely, deemed to difficult to understand and unnecessary for the children to know. This, of course, resulted in the mortality rate on the battlefield to go up significantly, as those without clans to help them were woefully unprepared for their chosen occupation.

But having a shinobi in the clan was a matter of pride and bragging rights, so no-one very much concerned themselves with that.

Naruto's class was filled with a mix of clan kids, civilians and orphans that didn't really have any other choice but to be ninjas. Their teacher was a young man named Umino Iruka that, although he reeked of fear and hatred alike, did his best to be fair to everyone and Naruto had to admit, he kind of admired the way Iruka-sensei could teach him just like any other child despite the dislike he felt for him. It was sort of inspiring, the way he could set aside his hatred in order to do his job.

Unfortunately, their other teachers had no such compunctions.

Naruto was sent out of class whenever an important subject came up, his tests were always returned full of red marks even when he knew for a fact that the answers were correct, his form when it came to taijutsu was always told to be wrong and in the end Naruto just plainly didn't listen to them and instead did his best to imitate the other students.

Humans liked to hate what they feared, which was why whenever he sensed people there was always an undercurrent of fear to their hatred and what they hated they wanted to destroy. For some reason, they couldn't attack him outright, so they had to settle for sabotaging his education and hoping he killed himself off due to ignorance. In short, they wanted to prove they were still better than him. They wanted to feel superior.

This was a wish that Naruto could fulfill.

The fact was that when you were around people you perceived to be stupid, you automatically thought yourself more dangerous than them, giving you an idiotic feeling of confidence because you could, theoretically, kill them before they killed you. So you stopped paying them so much attention and making sure they couldn't surpass you, because in your mind they simply couldn't.

Naruto was well versed in the art of wearing masks and the Mask of Stupid, as he called it, was child's play.

All he had to do was stop trying.

He doodled more on the test papers than he wrote on them, he didn't practice much of taijutsu at all, figuring that it would be better to learn it correctly later from his jounin-sensei when he became a genin then to gather bad habits that could get him killed. He spent more of his attention on chakra control exercises than the ninjutsu they were supposed to practice, because he found that he just had too much chakra to do them correctly without complete control over it. He disguised his traps and stealth training as pranks and practical jokes in order to find out what worked and what didn't in a controlled environment.

Slowly but surely, he improved and his grades didn't really move at all, because they had been bad from the very beginning. The only one that had bothered to grade him fairly was Iruka-sensei, but he didn't cover all the subjects so his grades couldn't save the rest of them.

By the time Naruto was ten, he was known as the dead last of his class.

The massacre of the entirety of the Uchiha Clan save a boy in his class that he didn't pay much focus to didn't really garner much of his attention. It happened in the span of a single night and while Naruto was impressed with the capabilities of the one who offed them, it wasn't something that directly affected his life. Well, much.

The Uchiha had made up the entire police force, they had dealt with all the civilian crimes and many shinobi ones as well. And the thing was, they were good at their jobs. As much as people mistrusted them, with their loss they found out exactly how much they had contributed to the catching of murders and rapists and other unspeakable criminals. With their deaths, the ANBU was redirected to take over their duties, a giant mistake if he ever saw one.

The ANBU were the elite, the best of the best, but they hid behind masks that let nothing show. And sure, they were useful for protecting their identities, but they sucked at inspiring faith in people. The emotionless masks and lack of an actual name meant that not many civilians were brave enough to report crimes to them, because what if they were the ones who committed them?

They also had the annoying tendency to think civilians to be harmless and deny that a civilian could have committed a violent crime.

Quite frankly, all they did was annoy him.

And so time moved on. The Uchiha in his class—the last Uchiha in the village—became a gloomy boy that only ever trained and looked down on everyone around him. The fangirls that always followed him around increased in numbers and Naruto very carefully made sure he was never within breathing distance of the Uchiha, as he had no desire to incur the wrath of a group of rabid females.

Naruto continued to be excluded from class as the years went by, but it wasn't something he mourned, the learning of the Henge meaning that he could walk right into the public library of Konoha, something he had never been able to do before.

He took advantage of this by spending most of his time in the library and reading up on any subject that caught his eye. While the shinobi department of the library was off-limits to him (except the ones geared towards academy students) as you needed special identification that you only got after you officially became a genin to get in and there was always a guard around to make sure no-one snuck in, that didn't mean that there weren't fascinating subjects otherwise. All things that dealt with chakra techniques were books he couldn't touch, but chakra wasn't the be all end all.

There was an impressive collection on poisons and herbs and teas in the library just gathering dust in the corner and with his advanced healing abilities and the fact that poison didn't affect him at all, it seemed like a good way to pass the time. At the very least, learning the antidotes and to identify the different poisons was always a good idea. Who knew, it might his future teammates life at some point.

Not to mention, it was a very good ace to have up your sleeve.

Naruto was of the opinion that always having four or five tricks up your sleeve was just common sense and he didn't see how anyone could argue otherwise.

He'd long since given up on the idea of fighting fair.

Eventually, Naruto turned twelve and it was time to graduate.

Naruto had already tried the graduation test twice for the last two years and he'd failed epically both times, mostly because he just didn't enough control to use the clone technique. He could manage the Kawarimi and Henge, but when it came to the Bunshin, they just looked dead and deflated. He'd tried spamming the room with them the last time, which had made them look less dead but he'd been denied because he'd apparently defied his orders by doing so, as the goal was to make one successful clone.

But Naruto was well aware that for some reason the Hokage was very much invested in him becoming a shinobi and he didn't doubt that if he failed this time as well—you only had three tries after all—the Hokage would find some kind of loophole to be able to advance him. He was considering failing on purpose just to find out what that loophole would be.

It was always a good idea to know loopholes in the law, after all.

The day of graduation dawned quietly. The sun was shining, birds were chirping and Naruto was—as he'd made a habit of being, because the teachers were always less likely to pay attention to him when they had a legitimate excuse to mess with his education—late again. He arrived running through the door more than half-an-hour later than he was supposed to and he could see the vicious satisfaction on Mizuki's face. Considering the fact that Mizuki had never taught him a single thing, Naruto wasn't about to call him sensei.

The other students in his class were all different degrees of nervous. The clan heirs (and there were quiet a lot of them) were all calm and composed as they knew they would graduate. The civilians were rereading all heir books and repeating things they had learned recently to make sure they remembered it for the written test that made up about sixty percent of the final test for graduation. This way, even if the civilians sucked on the physical applications, they could graduate with decent results based entirely on theoretical knowledge.

Again, this was another way thing that would result in former civilians dying faster.

The orphans, the ones that were desperate and had nowhere else to go, that had trained until their bodies broke down because they wouldn't get chosen unless they were the absolute best, were all trying to keep calm, because at this point there was nothing more that could be done. If they didn't manage to graduate, they had two more chances (the ones that weren't already repeating that is) and two more years to get better, but they all knew that they probably wouldn't get any further than chuunin even if they did. Orphans had nothing to fall back on if the shinobi thing didn't work out, as they had no means of getting any other education—the shinobi academy was free but all others schools cost money to enroll in, money the orphans simply didn't have—so they were all varying degrees of desperate.

During his years at the academy, Naruto had barely had any contact with the clan children. Occasionally he and Kiba had teamed up on pranks, sometimes even Shikamaru tagged along, but that was the extent of it. He sat nest to Aburame Shino in class, as the other boy was quiet and never said anything stupid, which was more than could be said for almost everyone else.

But aside from that, Naruto had barely spoken a word to any clan children. He had had even less contact with the civilians as they were always influenced by their parents and peer pressure to hate him and ridicule him. He was, on the other had, on amicable terms with most of the orphans as they had the lack of parents or family in common and due to both the various wars and the Kyuubi's attack there were many orphans, the employees of the orphanages couldn't turn everyone against him. Not to mention, orphans in Konoha were so numerous that the vast majority of them were independent—there just weren't enough room in the orphanages—and they weren't about to be manipulated by adults that couldn't care less about them. It was a matter of principle.

When his name was called by Iruka-sensei, after finishing all other tests including the written ones (which he already knew he failed) and the physical ones, he left the classroom behind and entered another one next door.

In it Mizuki was waiting with a smug smile.

Naruto narrowed his eyes in suspicion but didn't remark on it. There was no point as MIzuki was both Iruka's assistant and friend.

"Alright, Naruto-kun the final test is to perform the Bunshin successfully." Iruka-sensei said as he stood next to table that held a bunch of forehead protectors.

As soon as he finished talking, Naruto was already sure he would fail and he let out a sigh. Well, this just meant that he could see what the Hokage's reaction would be to him not succeeding. He was, admittedly, curious about it.

He took a deep breath, made sure that he had a good grip on his chakra and made the hand seals.

The clone that appeared was colorless, flopping to the ground almost instantly and just looked very much not alive. It was a decent image of Naruto at least, but he doubted that mattered much.

When he looked up, it was to see Iruka-sensei actually look disappointed, as f he had been expecting something else and Naruto was stunned to realize that he actually felt bad about disappointing the only person in the world that had ever tried to teach him. It was the shock of this realization—that Iruka-sensei actually mattered to him somehow—that meant he wasn't paying much attention to how Mizuki tried to argue for him. Oh, he knew very well it was a trap of some kind, Mizuki had hated him since day one, but he was confident in his ability to beat Mizuki if it came to that.

No, what had his attention was the way that Iruka-sensei looked, like somehow he'd been proven wrong.

It kind of… hurt.

At the end of it all, Naruto left the classroom without a hitai-ate and with a strange sense of guilt in his stomach.

He didn't like it.

— —

"I'll let you in on a big secret."

"If you can get the Forbidden Scroll from the Hokage Tower and learn one of the techniques that is written there, you can graduate anyway."

"It's a secret test, so remember not to tell anyone."

"So, what do you say, Naruto-kun, do you want to become a real shinobi?"

Naruto leaned back on the branch he was sitting on and kept a tight grip of the large scroll in his hands. Down on the ground, almost directly below, a Kage Bunshin was pretending to be him. He'd made sure to overload so it could make clones as well, a trick he'd learned while he played around with the technique. While it wouldn't last long while it was overloaded on charka, it would be able to get rid of some of that chakra by making clones as well and lasting longer. More importantly, it would help sell the trick that the clone was the real him while the other clones hidden in the forest copied the scroll.

All of the clones were in the forest to make sure that even if they gathered a sensor, they would all claim he was here. He didn't yet know how to hide his chakra, after all.

Once whatever trap there was had been sprung, he'd need to be quick about switching with the clone to make sure no-one figured out exactly how long he'd had the scroll.

It had been easy to steal.

All Naruto had to do was walk into the Hokage Tower like he belonged, while henge'd to look like an unremarkable (but not too unremarkable, that would be seen through) person of low—but high enough—ninja standing. He'd made sure he didn't have any identifying markers and to limp while he walked to have an excuse available if someone wondered why they hadn't seen him on the field. He'd looked to have been a little above average height and his eyes had been a dark blue color while his hair had been sandy brown.

Then all he had to do was to slowly make his way to where the Forbidden Scroll was hidden while looking like he knew exactly where he was going, which he admittedly did.

In the end, he'd stolen it in broad daylight and left a copy in its place. After all, when you cloned yourself, everything you wore were also copied, including a certain scroll tied to your back.

This was the copy his Kage Bunshin had later stolen right in front of the Hokage's sight to get their attention on whatever Mizuki had planned, if—for some unforeseen reason—Naruto messed up and couldn't get out of the trap himself. Having a back-up plan or five was just common sense.

When he could hear evidence of someone else getting closer, he henge'd himself and the scroll into two squirrels and sat back to enjoy the show.

Mizuki bludgeoned into the clearing his clone was in with all the grace of a boar.

The taunts were unwelcome but not a surprise. What was, however, was when Iruka-sensei emerged as well and started to fight his fellow leaf ninja.

Then came a sentence that explained everything.

"You're the Kyuubi no Kitsune!"

"You killed Iruka's parents!"

"It's all your fault!"

"Just die, demon!"

Both Naruto and his clone were stunned by surprise and the many things it explained. The stares, the hatred, the fear.

It explained it all.

The next sequence of events would be ingrained in his memory for the rest of his life.

Iruka-sensei risked his life to protect Naruto's. He risked his life to protect Naruto's clone. He took a giant shuriken to his back and still manage to smile and tell him he was his precious student.

The rage he felt almost drowned him.

Naruto watched as his clone erupted in anger, summing as many clones as its chakra would allow, until there was nothing left for the clone itself and it poofed out of existence. Naruto didn't waste any time, he jumped down from the tree and once on the ground, together with the scroll in his hands, he let the henge go. He stared, satisfied, as Mizuki was crushed by dozens of clones, the burning rage only calming when Mizuki's heartbeat finally stopped.

Naruto waited for a few more minutes, listening closely, before he finally calmed down enough to go an check on Iruka-sensei. He could still hear his heartbeat so he knew was alive, but coma or something else was still a very real possibility.

Iruka-sensei opened his eyes when he sensed that Naruto was near and Naruto was, once again, stunned when he saw the tired but undoubtedly warm smile on his face. Naruto felt himself smile in return, his first real smile in years, before he knew what he was doing.

"Come here Naruto, I've got a surprise for you. Close your eyes."

Naruto closed his eyes just enough, he didn't trust anyone not to stab him in the back, a feeling that had only grown over the years, but thankfully Iruka did't seem to notice. He stared at Iruka as he took off his forehead protector and felt his breath catch when he felt him put it on him.

Oh, it wasn't because he was finally a shinobi. That was utterly inconsequential.

But, it did feel kind of good to know that there was someone who didn't think him entirely useless.

When he opened his eyes to gaze at Iruka-sensei again, the smile that lit up his face was unconditionally real.

Behind him, the sound of ninjas arriving spooked the forest and Naruto was bombarded with the memories of the clones in the forest as they all popped, one after one, after they had careful hidden the copies where none but him would find them. A medic came forward to take Iruka-sensei away and Naruto watched him until he was out of his sight as the Hokage put a hand on his shoulder and smiled proudly down at him.

Well, this ninja thing could be interesting, I suppose.

Such a shame Suzaku isn't here.