Title: the odds and the end.

Summery: When Naruto confuses the regular summoning jutsu with the one to summon death, the consequences will be far reaching and unforgettable. Even with therapy.

AN: usually when I write a story, there are some scenes in my head and the rest of the work is devoted to getting to those scenes. In this case, I just started typing to see where things went. I put particular emphasis on trying to use vocabulary matching each character's character. Comments are appreciated.

When Naruto got the scroll deep into the woods, where he was sure he wouldn't be distracted the first thing he did was open it. There was some sort of zapping noise when he did which made everything go tingly, then a poof of purple dust that made his eyes water something fierce. Nothing bad happened though, so he started reading.

The first jutsu was some type of clone which sucked. It had to be a special though, or it wouldn't be on this super-important-secret-Hokage-only scroll. Unless this was actually a scroll of the usual crappy academy stuff, just kept in the Hokage's office for the test. Boy, was that a sucky thought.

Naruto unrolled the whole scroll, which promptly rolled up again. He unrolled it again, it rolled back up again. Dammit, reading sucked. With a sigh of frustration, he started gathering up rocks and sticks and using them to hold the stupid thing down. There was quite a lot of it, and it was pretty obvious it wasn't academy stuff. They probably hadn't taught this much in his whole time there. You could have twenty Narutos sleeping on the thing end to end without crowding, and it wasn't like the writing was super large either.

It was a good thing he hadn't taken it back to his apartment, he'd have had to nail it to the ceiling and walls and even if he made a full loop there probably wasn't even room. It didn't take him long to realise that the jutsu got tougher as you went along the scroll. Naruto couldn't have said if they got better, 'cause the whole reading thing kind of sucked. But the start ones had the hand seals listed, and the middle ones had no hand seals, and then the ones at the far end had those picture-and-kanji things that he'd seen on the really neat explosive tags that the old man had shown him once.

So naturally, Naruto started at the last one.

His reading skills weren't that great (he could admit that here, to himself, in private) but he could read bits of it. Like 'Extremely dangerous' and 'Lethal' and 'Only the most powerful of shinobi' (that was his favourite). He skipped over the bits he didn't understand, and skipped back to read the name of his soon to be most-awesome jutsu.

The summoning Jutsu.

Oddly enough for something so super-awesome-secret, Iruka-sensei had mentioned it. It had caught Naruto's attention, because it was a way of having someone who would help you fight whenever you wanted. Naruto wasn't stupid enough to think there was anyone in his class who liked him. For some reason everyone in this whole damn village (except the old man) hated his guts. For some reason, no one from outside the village did. But then, it wasn't people from outside the village he'd be on a team with. He seriously doubted there was anyone in the whole academy who'd stick their neck out for him, the best he could realistically hope for was indifference. So having an animal who'd fight with him and maybe even be his friend was just a slice of awesome. And if it was on the scroll, it had to be a super-awesome animal. Maybe a dragon? Boy, would one of those show Sasuke-bastard who was best. He wouldn't be so proud of his stupid firebreath if Naruto had a summon who could roast him like a duck.

Naruto spent several moments contemplating this happy event oblivious to several facts. One fact was that the last seal on the scroll was in fact the master version of the Death God's contract with the Fourth Hokage, the complete version to support the abbreviated one on his body. Tampering with it would be a Very Bad Idea.

Another more important fact was that in all his daydreaming about having a summons, he'd missed one of the points of Iruka's class on Shinobi contracts – that without signing the contract, there could be no summons.

The consequences of this would be far-reaching and quite memorable for a number of individuals.

AN: Based on Naruto's character as we see him in the series, and given that the scroll of seals started with what Naruto saw as a basic jutsu and got more complicated, what on earth makes people think he would start at the easy end?