Getting back to Majula had been as simple as sitting by a bonfire in the valley and silently wishing he was back there. The fire had flared up and encompassed him in an orange light, and when the warmth had faded away he had been standing in the familiar surroundings of the village he first woke up in. The open spaces and undimmed sunlight was such a relief from where he had been trapped for what felt like the last month that he ended up just sitting on the edge of the cliff and watching the sea for hours. It was peaceful here.

But it didn't serve as a good distraction from the reality that he'd failed Roland's quest, and he didn't even know how to gather the great souls when the soulcatcher on his stomach just ate them. Or even what to do once he had them. So he sat by the fire with his arms up over his legs, keeping warm as best he could. His looted rags didn't do much to keep the wind off.

"I don't know what to do," he whispered, running a hand through his hair. "I don't know how to save Roland-sensei." He laughed, an abrupt sob of frustration. "I don't even know why I'm here!"

"Uzumaki Naruto," Shanalotte said suddenly, and Naruto looked up from the edge of the bonfire. "If you know nothing else, know this." She turned to look at him, and the boy almost flinched at how she seemed to look through him. "All things end."

Naruto blinked. "What?" he asked weakly, a thrill of apprehension shooting through him. The way she was looking at him…

"All men die," she said, and in her lone eye he felt like he could see eternity stretching into the distance. "All kingdoms fade. Like a dwindling flame, all memory passes away. Until at last there is nothing but ruin, and a pinprick of light where there was once a roaring fire."

"That's not true!" Naruto yelled, standing so suddenly that he kicked ash into the bonfire. He shouted the words with such force the condemnation almost tore his lips with its passing. "Things don't just get worse, they get better too!"

"Yes," she replied. "But to renew a flame requires sacrifice." She finally turned her eye away from him, and he shuddered with relief. "You do not bear the curse. You have not felt yourself slipping away like breath in winter. You cannot lift it because you do not carry it."

Naruto opened his mouth to say that he could, that he would...and said nothing. "So that's it?" he asked sullenly. "I should just give up?"

Shanalotte said nothing, and her answer was somehow worse in its silence.

~Knight of the Sun~

Haruno Sakura was the model of a good student. Her theory tests were exemplary. Her jutsu were precise. She always had an answer ready to hand for a question. It was a testament to her natural talent and intellect that she dominated the class rankings despite being raised outside an established clan and the associated pressures to excel.

But without that pressure, Sakura had failed to do exactly that. While the reports out of the Academy consistently praised her, the lack of additional notes on her betrayed that she lacked the drive and motivation that transformed intellect into tangible accomplishment. She had the potential to be an excellent support-type, perhaps reaching as high as chunin. She would have a long but uneventful career, retire from local or administrative service in her late twenties, and raise a family.

She was the bedrock of Konoha, a quiet but essential part of the village. She would be appreciated, even admired for her intelligence in whatever she chose to pursue. There would be a happy life for her in future, filled more with love than loss.

"Forgive me, Sakura-chan," Sarutobi murmured, and quietly slipped her slim file in with two others. He looked at for several long moments before speaking. "Inform Kakashi I will see him now."

Team 7 was born.

~Knight of the Sun~

Haruno Sakura would never, ever admit she was scared of Uzumaki Naruto. She couldn't even remember if there had been some sign of him changing before he just had, and it was like the laughing, annoying boy that fawned over her had died and been replaced by some...cheap copy. The laughs were gone. The wild swings of his arms and exaggerated reactions, snuffed by a bone-deep stillness. The clumsy enthusiasm had been replaced by a fluid and lethal efficiency that lacked beauty or predictability.

Uzumaki Naruto had changed, and she liked the old one better. He sat on the bench behind the long desks of the Academy classroom with his short arms wrapped around the scabbard of a new weapon, his right hand curled around the very base of the hilt. If any other person in the classroom had been holding it like that, she would have thought they were hugging it. With Naruto, her eyes were almost unwillingly drawn to the way his shoulder had sagged so that if he began lift it up and straighten his arm the blade would begin to slide free…

She wasn't scared of Uzumaki Naruto. No. Never scared. Never ever. But she worried. Worried that something had replaced him, and nobody seemed to notice. So when Iruka called out their names, she didn't scream in triumph when she was put with Sasuke. She curled in on herself a little, and wondered where the boy who bothered her had gone. She wished he would come back.

Uchiha Sasuke wished nothing, and if a thrill of satisfaction loosened from an imperceptible tightness in his chest at the news he would be with Naruto, he gave no sign of it.

Uzumaki Naruto stared ahead, the gentle warmth from the sword he hugged to his chest seeping through his rumpled clothes and spreading against his skin. He wondered what the point was. All things end.

~Knight of the Sun~

Kakashi cast his eye over his genin - ones that the Hokage had told him in no uncertain terms that he was going to pass. They looked like a pretty sorry bunch in person, for all they seemed reasonable on paper. He had a boy who had seen his entire family butchered by someone he trusted (and had an attitude worse than Kakashi's own at that age), worse still because the jonin couldn't fault Sasuke for that attitude in the first place. He had a girl who had great potential but lacked the motivation to exploit it, and the obvious unrequited crush had him wincing at the memory of another girl whose attention he'd disdained, much like Sasuke did Sakura's.

Then he had a boy with sensei's hair, sensei's eyes, and sensei's seriousness, all of which hit far too close to home. That less than half a year ago the attitude had been all Kushina's made the transformation troubling. The story in the small dossier had seemed fantastical, but Kakashi couldn't deny the change in attitude. The worse thing was that Naruto seemed...empty. He'd seen in in child soldiers. He'd seen it in the mirror. He imagined that he would have seen it in the eyes of Uchiha Itachi, too, which made Sasuke's easy acceptance of the other boy all the more strange. Perhaps the orphaned pair couldn't look deeply enough to see what Kakashi saw. Perhaps they did, and didn't care.

Looking at them made his heart ache. But there was nothing he could do about it, so he dropped down from his concealed perch outside the window and entered the building the old-fashioned way. It was time to meet his students. He tried not to see them with different faces.

~Knight of the Sun~

Sakura almost breathed a sigh of relief when the door opened to admit a man in the distinctive green flak jacket of Konoha's high ranking shinobi. They'd been waiting for nearly an hour, and while Naruto had been seemingly content to just stare into space while they sat there, she was sensitive enough to Sasuke-kun's moods to notice he was getting increasingly grumpy as wait dragged on. She was just grateful that their teacher was finally there, but she was too respectful to scold him for being late. Even if he did look strange, with that big...floof of white-silver hair and the forehead protector slanted over one eye.

"...yo," he said eventually, when nobody spoke. "I guess you're my team."

Sasuke grunted, silently analysing their new teacher. Naruto said nothing, just shifting his gaze deliberately to the man. Sakura smiled weakly.

"Hello, sensei," she said tentatively, trying to prompt the other two to say something. "It's nice to meet you." His eye creased, suggesting a smile under that mask of his, and she felt a little relief unfurl from her chest. But the awkward silence continued.

"You're a quiet lot," he observed. "I was going to do introductions, but I guess it doesn't matter if you're not the type to talk. Guess we can just do the test straight away. No point getting to know each other if you're just coming back here for another year, right?"

The relief she'd been feeling turned into dread, and his little eye-crease creased even more at her expression. "B-but we passed the test, sensei," she stammered, the day so far too much on her nerves to let her keep her cool. Being in the room alone with Sasuke was a dream come true, but Naruto was being strange.

"Ah," their sensei said, his amusement and cheerfulness now obvious. "But that's just the first test! The second test is what decides if you become genin - and get this: it has a failure rate of sixty-six percent!"

Sakura felt like ice cold water had just hit her, and stared in numb horror. Sasuke stiffened in his chair, fists white-knuckled, while Naruto seemed mildly interested for the first time in over an hour. It was a change from his sudden apathy, at least. Sakura wet her lips with her tongue.

"Sixty-six percent?" she asked, the question coming out as a little squeak of alarm.

"That's right," he agreed. "So let's just get it over with. Meet me at training ground three in fifteen minutes. If you aren't there...you fail. See you there!" He gave them a jaunty crease of his eye as his wrist flicked and gave them a two-fingered wave. Then he vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving dead silence in his wake.

Sasuke's empty chair clattered to the ground.

~Knight of the Sun~

Kakashi didn't bother timing them: he had no intention of failing them right there and then, no matter how quickly they arrived. The goal was to make them tired when they got to the training field, out of breath and rushed. Less able to make decisions, and more likely to show him exactly what they were made of. He wasn't entirely sure what to make of what he'd seen so far, after all.

He'd just started to read his Icha Icha (best to make a good first impression when they arrived) when he began to hear the tell-tale footfalls of hurried little soldiers. He lowered the green-covered booklet enough to keep the path into the training ground in his peripheral vision, continuing the pretense of reading the contents while the approaching figures came into view. His black-haired Uchiha was first, of course, the boy's nature refusing to let him back down from a challenge.

He was barely out of breath. Given the focus on training, that was hardly surprising. Lagging a short bit behind him was Naruto, but Kakashi frowned at he noticed the boy was hardly running as fast as he could. The pace was more like one Kakashi would choose to conserve energy, albeit at a far slower speed, and he was holding the sheath of the sword he carried at his hip despite a far better grip being to have it strapped to his back and holding the bottom. That would have to be corrected.

Lastly, there was the girl. Her physical abilities were lower than that of the boys - that was to be expected, given that both of them had a drive she lacked, and he mentally noted down some endurance training for the future. If he was going to have to take the team, they would need to keep up with each other. If he took them. Despite that the Hokage said, Kakashi refused to take a team that couldn't work together. With the combination he had been given, they would either spectacularly implode or work amazingly together.

The second the girl came to a halt, breathing heavily, he started talking. "The test is this," he said, holding up a pair of bells. As his sensei had tested him, he would test them. "You have until that timer-" he indicated a quietly ticking clock on a nearby stump with a nod of his head, "reaches noon. If you have a bell, you pass. If you don't, you fail." He slowly tied the two bells to his belt, the thin strings long enough to easily break away if they were disturbed.

"Noon is less than half an hour away!" Sakura protested, still catching her breath. "And there's only two bells!"

"Better try hard then!" Kakashi agreed cheerily. "Oh, and one last thing…" he paused, taking in how even Naruto had tensed. Finally, it seemed like the boy was actually engaged with what was happening. "You better come at me with intent to kill."

Naruto drew his sword.

~Knight of the Sun~

"Bastard!" Naruto whispered angrily, slipping around a tree trunk as he retreated into the forest that surrounded the clearing. His side was oozing blood into his thickly padded top thanks to a kunai which the jonin testing them had thrown right past him. Right through him a bit, too. He'd forgotten the first rule of fighting by attacking then and there. He didn't often get to choose the ground he fought a hollow in, never had with a fellow student, but when he did it was all about luring them to somewhere he could deal with them. What had he done? He'd attacked right there in the middle of the clearing!

The boy yanked up the bottom of his jumpsuit's top and bunched it awkwardly under his chin as he felt the injury, hot flares of pain bursting to life under his fingertips. It wasn't a deep cut like he'd feared, for all it had effortlessly flown through the padding that was meant to protect him, and he shrugged off the stinging easily once he knew that the injury wasn't going to be hurting him any more than it already did.

There was a sudden scream from elsewhere in the forest, and Naruto jerked his head up and to the right. But nothing followed that first sound, and he tensed even further at the suddenly omnious silence. When he'd attacked with his sword, the larger man had simply jumped and feinted around the strikes, faster and quicker than he'd even imagined was possible. He hadn't even put down that annoying book! He'd never seen that kind of speed…

Then it ignored every instinct the boy had and somehow crossed the space between them mid-stroke, gliding on thin air to whip its greatsword across and hit him…

Okay, maybe he had seen it before. But that Pursuer monster that killed him and Roland-sensei had been huge! There was no way it was meant to move that fast. This ninja made it look natural. He shivered as he tightened his grip on Cinder, the longsword seeming to pulse a calming heat into his palm. This wasn't the time to start remembering that. Maybe in the forest he'd stand a chance, where that man wouldn't be able to leap and jump so easily with all the trees in the way.

"Yo." The noise startled him out of his strategising, and Naruto whipped across his sword without even thinking. Kakashi feinted back from the slash then ducked in again, his fist finding Naruto's shoulder and hitting it while his body was wide open from swinging the sword. The force of the blow hit him like a shockwave, his entire body jolting back from the strike and his back hitting the tree behind him. With his arm swinging perilously wide, Naruto defaulted back to a lesson he'd learned time and time again.

Never. Drop. His. Sword. Rather than kicking back like Kakashi expected, given how close they were to each other, he instead spun along the tree trunk and brought the sword in closer to his core andinstinctively brought it up into a guarding position towards his enemy. Or he would of, if Kakashi's foot hadn't found his side mid spin, hitting right in the still-bleeding gash that the kunai had given him barely more than a minute earlier.

The cry of pain wrenched itself from Naruto's throat, his vision going gray around the edges as his maneuver became a limp-limbed stagger away from the tree and his attacker, the hand that had been moving to grip the hilt of Cinder in a firm two-handed hold instead instinctively flying his side to cover the wound. The boy managed to half-tumble up into a kneeling position facing Kakashi, who hadn't pursued to finish the job.

"Shinobi lesson number one," the man said pleasantly, not even looking threatened. "Taijutsu."

For the first time since he'd began to shift between Drangleic and Konoha, Naruto felt a thrill of fear while he stood beneath the still-living trees of his home. It rose up in chest as the jonin regarded him with one gray eye, lifting a single kunai in a reverse-handed grip, and the moment Kakashi took a step towards him Naruto's hand flew to the kunai pouch on his leg and sent one of the heavy knives flying across the intervening space between them.

There was a loud clang as the jonin simply deflected it with his own weapon, the blackened steel blade easily deflecting the thrown weapon. But Naruto didn't see it. The moment the kunai left his hand, he turned and sprung up from his kneeling position, fleeing towards the edge of the clearing. He couldn't fight in the open. He couldn't fight in the forest. He had to get out into the open while their 'sensei' was still after him, to beat him with the only weapon he had left...

Naruto panted desperately as he emerged from the treeline mere seconds later, turning around and lifting an arm to smite the trees and deny the jonin an easy pursuit. There was no sign, but that didn't mean anything with how the man had appeared silently beside him earlier. He willed the seed of lightning to appear in his clenched hand and lengthen into the great spear he knew it could. Nothing happened. No lightning tingled and crackled.

Naruto froze in confusion, and that was all the opening his opponent need. Hands reached up from the ground and grabbed Naruto's ankles, the earth swallowing him in one sudden lurch. The blond-haired boy opened his mouth in silent confusion at the grass suddenly appeared near eye-level. What just happened? Why had his technique failed?

Roland chuckled, the sound raspy and unfamiliar. "...what do you know about faith?"

"Faith?" Naruto blinked. "Like...believing in something?"

Naruto clenched his teeth and struggled to make room, but even his sword was trapped below ground, hilt trapped in his fist and long blade awkwardly jutting upwards mere inches from his chest. It had been forced upwards by his descent down into the small hollow of earth which now confined him, and it was held so tightly he couldn't even use it to break any of the earth free.

The knight breathed. "Yes. Gods. Ideals."

"I believe in the Sun," Roland said tiredly, when Naruto said nothing. "That there is hope. Before that? Fidelity. Brotherhood." He paused, a rattling sigh. "Chivalry."

"Damn it!" he yelled in frustration, forcing his shoulders this was and that, twisting his hips and trying to kick with his knees to get any sort of leverage. Why. Wasn't. Anything. Working!

"Chivalry?"

"Defend the weak," the knight murmured, sounding as though he wanted to go to sleep. "Protect the innocent. Be fair and just. Strive against evil." He sighed. "That is what is means to be a knight. As a knight should be. To be an heir of the sun."

With a strangled cry of despair, he stopped struggling and went limp. Naruto tilted his head down and closed his eyes, his nose close enough to the earth to smell the soil. His throat felt swollen, the sword hilt still held in his hand radiating a dull warmth. It only made the earth around him feel colder.

"What is the sun?"

"The sun is hope," Roland murmured quietly, and Naruto found himself scuffing the dirt as he shifted forward slightly to get closer to both the knight and the bonfire they were sitting beside. "The night is dangerous. The sky is dark and moon is cold. But the sun rises. It has to." There was a low, rattling sigh from within the depths of Roland's great helmet, and Naruto shivered a little. It sounded like the wind through the trees. Like the helm was empty.

"Doesn't that always happen?" Naruto asked tentatively, sounding unsure.

"Not always," the knight whispered. "Sometimes."

The sandals that Kakashi wore came to a stop just in front of Naruto's face. "Is that all it takes?" came an amused voice. "Giving up?"

"When the sun rises you feel it. It's more than a symbol, more than a shining ember of the Lord of Sunlight. It's a promise that there is always hope. But you have to believe in it."

"Why?" Naruto whispered.

"I guess fancy tricks aren't everything," Kakashi mused, and a thin scream echoed from the treeline before dying abruptly. "Looks like Sakura-chan beat the genjutsu."

Roland looked up, and Naruto fancied that for a brief moment he could see a reflection of eyes inside that dark helmet. "Why?" the knight repeated, sounding almost confused. "If you don't, what's the point?" Then he lapsed into silence, and the bonfire quietly continued to crackle on dry bone.

Naruto swallowed thickly, eyes and nose burning. "What's the point?" he asked. Then he laughed. Kakashi leapt back as the earth exploded upwards in an explosion of light, dirt heaved upwards like a titan had swept it up with one mighty arm. Naruto's hands, one mostly still around the hilt of Cinder, sank deep into the now loose soil as he pulled his body up and out of the small hole he had occupied. The dirt slipped and cascaded down the slope he was half-climbing and half-dragging up onto the grass, filling up the space his legs had emptied as he pulled free.

"I'm not giving up," the boy growled, blood pulsing beneath his skin like fire, like it was a flame which could sweep him up and burn him to ash. "I'm not giving in. Not to you, not to anybody!" He hauled himself upright as Kakashi regarded him from a dozen meters away, this time speculatively. "I'm going to find a way!" Naruto declared, eyes bright and clear, a stark contrast to the clods of dirt falling from his clothes and hair. "I'm going to find a way to end this curse, and I'm never going to give up!"

He lifted his sword and charged.

~Knight of the Sun~

Kakashi was perturbed. The long blade that Naruto carried was a little too long for the boy to use properly, but he was making a good effort, and the jonin found himself analysing the fighting style. It was like nothing he had ever seen before, but Naruto lacked either his father's speed or Kakashi's, and he was able to avoid the arcing strikes with reasonable ease. Nonetheless, the...foreignness of it was a little unnerving to see. He made a short jump back to avoid a swipe and watched as the tip of the sword effortlessly sliced through the wood of a tree, cutting a deep gouge through the bark and side of the trunk. That was a dangerous weapon. Fortunately it was easy to avoid with his speed. But it was disappointing that his remaining student hadn't tried anything yet.

"Katon-" And there was Sasuke. The fire erupted from the foliage near Kakashi's right side, and he made a quick retreat up above the fireball to the safety of a higher branch, only for a crackle of thunder to herald the thick bough he had been standing on a moment prior shattering into splinters. He had a talented bunch, that was for sure. That just left Sakura.

Descending from the leap that had brought him clear of the strange lightning jutsu, Kakashi touched down almost silently on the fallen leaves and winding roots that made up the forest floor. Both Sasuke and Naruto seemed more intent on trying to beat him than make for the bells...he twisted easily out of the way as a kunai whistled through the space where the cords tying said bells to his belt had been a moment before. The final member of the team had appeared, clenching another kunai in a white-knuckled hand that very nearly matched the pallor of her face. It was impressive she still had the stomach to try and fight him after the Hell Viewing genjutsu - it was hardly the weakest in his arsenal.

"Enough," he said, stopping and raising a hand. It took a moment for the command to filter through, and he had to hop back again as Naruto's sword tried to impale him to a tree trunk. Sasuke stopped from where the Uchiha had been trying to close to taijutsu range, and Kakashi grabbed Naruto's wrist as the boy rammed the sword hilt-deep into the tree Kakashi had been standing in front of.

"Enough," he repeated, and the blonde-haired boy finally stilled. All three of the genin were breathing heavily, and he glanced at Sasuke and Sakura. "Enough," he said, a third time. "You've shown me what you've got." For a brief moment at the end, he had felt the way that they could work together. It was a shadow of a thing, but if he was going to have to take the team anyway, it was enough.

"You pass."