This is AM welcoming you all to the fledgling story "The Uzumaki Tag Company".
No pairing yet. No yaoi. Feel free to review!
I'm using this story to practice writing...yeah
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, though I wish I had his abs.
Chapter 1: Here Comes the Boom
Night fell over Konohagakure. Trees shuddered as an evening zephyr glided upon them, making the silent woods became alive with the whispering of and the groaning of branches. In the forest near the southernmost gate of Konoha, the breeze gently pushed against the walls of a small cottage,whose rotting foundations and sun bleached steps lay forgotten under the glimmering stars.
From the shadows between two trees a small figure emerged. Piercing blue eyes glowed beneath radiant blond hair as they darted left and right, surveying the clearing intently. Seeing no one, the boy stepped into the open and leisurely strolled across the grass toward the shack, all the while tossing a scroll up and down with one hand.
"Cake," he snorted to himself, nonetheless grinning at his success.
He reached the steps of the cottage and rested himself down.
"Alright," Naruto muttered excitedly. "Let's see why this thing's so important!"
He whipped out the scroll and flicked a latch on its side, letting the parchment unravel in his hands. He eagerly pulled it closer, remembering how Mizuki had hinted that there were many powerful techniques in the Forbidden Scroll. Now was his chance, perhaps his only chance, to learn a jutsu so powerful even Sasuke would be jealous!
Naruto let out a girlish squeal and his eyes darted across the first line of the scroll. Then the second. Then the third.
His grin slowly diminished, and a look of horror gripped his features.
Something was very, very wrong.
The Hokage stirred into consciousness, groaning into the fluffy carpet currently pressing into his face.
"That's it," he muttered to himself as he shifted onto his hands and knees, trying to cast the images of a buxom young blond from his mind. "It's getting put into the Forbidden Scroll."
He stood and surveyed the scene, ignoring the cracking of his spine as it protested his impromptu nap across the office floor.
"What happened?"
His wrinkled eyelids fluttered rapidly as he suddenly remembered. Images of Naruto standing beside the vault flashed across his mind and he nearly threw himself across his desk in panic. The door was closed; the Hokage threw it open with a force uncharacteristic of his age and desperately searched inside of the room. After a few seconds of browsing his brown eyes lost their glint of panic.
"Interesting."
He laid his hand upon the forbidden scroll in thought. Everything appeared to be exactly where it needed to be, and there was nothing unusual in the room besides a small note on the floor. The Hokage stooped over and snatched it up.
"Old man," he read to himself quietly. "You really need better security 'cause I got in here really easy! Just goes to show how awesome I am. I hope you'll take this as a lesson, the first of many you'll be learning from future Hokage Naruto Uzumaki! Oh, how considerate. He included a picture of me drooling on the floor."
The Hokage sighed and looked around one more time. Nothing seemed to be missing, and Naruto, judging by the note, did not intend to steal anything; rather, he just wanted to prank the Hokage by showing that he could break into his vault without getting caught.
Sarutobi's intentions of alerting his Anbu died the moment he finished reading the note. He exited the vault and closed it behind him, watching as a blue shimmer raced over it. No one could ever know of this, he decided. The council would ask too many questions – dangerous questions. He knew that position and power as Hokage would be challenged, for sure, but at that moment Sarutobi was not concerned with that possibility. There was something odd about the robbery that people like Danzo would be sure to notice and take advantage of, and that was Naruto's apparent ease in bypassing a high level bloodline seal that only allowed a Hokage's genes to pass. Sighing, he glanced at the picture of the Yondaime on the wall before turning and walking out of the office. The door closed quietly behind him.
Mizuki frowned.
"What the hell is happening out there?" he muttered to himself, shuffling a deck of cards with sweaty palms.
The answer to his question? Absolutely nothing.
He had waited in his living room, waiting to hear the inevitable emergency siren that denoted the robbing of the Hokage vault, but the signal never came. He found himself increasingly restless, his usual calm temperament disappearing with the seconds passing by. Eventually, he began to mutter to himself.
"The demon might have given up. No, wait. No one might have noticed him. I'd check the rendezvous but..."
He kept his musings quiet, knowing that his roommate and fellow teacher Iruka was fast asleep upstairs after an exhausting day. Mizuki glanced out the window. Silent like a bird of prey, an ANBU operative perched on the chimney of the house across the street. The moon at his back threw his front into steep darkness, but his white bird mask glowed eerily in the darkness.
He wasn't even trying to hide himself.
Mizuki took a shaky drink of water from a glass, nearly shattering it with his grip. He knew he couldn't leave his house without a convincing reason; the investigation of his former teammate's death was drawing to a close and the interrogation department was sniffing closer and closer to his doorstep. Mizuki glanced at the clock for the tenth time in five minutes. They could arrive any moment now...
Damn that motherf- Mizuki cursed within his mind, and the glass exploded within his fingertips. He cost me my power, my freedom!
He cast an angry glare out the window at the ANBU, whose blank stare penetrated the depths of the teacher's soul and taunted him. Mizuki thought of Iruka upstairs and grinned to himself.
With this, I can kill three birds with one stone...
Mizuki cast one more look at the ANBU outside and gave him a bone-chilling smile before indiscreetly holding up the ram seal, causing the ANBU to start in surprise.
It was time to leave.
"Release!"
Mizuki shunshined from his house immediately, landing a half of a mile away on the rooftop of the academy. Even from this distance, he felt the heat and force of the blast. Of course, some civilians must have died; there was no normal human who could face the explosive power of twenty medium grade explosive tags and live to tell the tale. Iruka was definitely dead. Mizuki didn't care. Their lives were meaningless in the face of an evil like the Kyuubi. It had been an easy sacrifice. Mizuki turned his head towards the forest, noting that the time to meet Naruto had come and gone hours ago.
"Oh, he'll be there," Mizuki muttered darkly. "If there's anything good about him being a monster, it's that he won't give up until he's swallowed up all of the power he can find."
Another thought came into the teacher's head and he laughed openly, his eyes wide and glinting madly in the moonlight.
"How ironic; my last act before going to Hell will be to kill a demon!"
Naruto moaned to himself as he read the title.
"Fuuinjutsu: Chakra Arrays."
The blond didn't know what to make of it; he had raced into the vault, searched the shelves for a hidden scroll (it was the freaking forbidden scroll. They wouldn't just leave it out in the open, he reasoned) when his fingertips had brushed a small cylinder behind a stack of parchment. He had pulled it out and attempted to read its title in the meager light, but was only able to make out the letter F. In his desperation, he had assumed that it was the Forbidden Scroll. Only now Naruto saw his mistake.
"Does this mean I won't graduate?"
He adopted a pensive pose for a few moments.
"Well, I don't see the problem. It was in the Hokage's vault, so it must have techniques I could pass with, right?"
Naruto brought his eyes closer to the parchment and read.
The Generic Exploding Tag
This array is primarily designed to intake chakra. While the chakra is stored within the seal, it will be compressed to a minuscule size; this compression causes the chakra to react extremely violently when released. The array is shown below:
Naruto glanced at the array in extreme interest. It seemed easy enough. Searching his pockets, he noticed that he had nothing to write on or with, so he grabbed a stick from the grass beside him and walked into the shack. An inch of dust covered every surface, just as Naruto suspected. Holding the scroll with one hand and conducting the stick with the other, he drew the array into the grime, making it as large as possible to get all of the details right. Finally, he finished, admiring his work before continuing to read.
The steps to activating this array are as follows:
Imbue chakra into the paper. Most of the chakra input will be focused into the capacitor of the seal; the rest will devote itself to sealing the chakra in place until the user decides to release it. (Note, first time Sealers are advised to place as little chakra as possible into their first tags. In this way one will know how much one needs to place into the tag in order to produce the desired explosion.)
Place the tag in an area that will cause minimal damage to the user.
Make the ram seal. (The chakra sealing the compressed chakra in place will be attracted to the user. It is advised to show extreme caution when performing other jutsus while an explosive tag is active and nearby.)
Naruto could have laughed out loud. These instructions were so simple, so easy , it was almost as though sealing was made for him. He giggled excitedly to himself placed a hand on the dusty array, concentrating on the smallest amount of chakra he could scrounge up. He focused it into the wood, watching how the seal glowed bright red as it greedily absorbed the ckakra. When he was done, he watched how the seal returned to its normal appearance and almost peed himself in excitement.
"YES! LET'S DO THIS!"
Naruto jumped out to the center of the clearing, closing the door behind him. For a moment, Naruto wondered if this would even work; he had improvised so many things, plus the whole concept of drawing something that would explode at command was laughable, at best. Naruto shrugged and resumed his excited grin. He would try it, first. If nothing worked, he'd do something else.
He brought his hand into the ram seal and concentrated.
"Naruto!"
His concentration broke as Mizuki entered the clearing, looking grave.
"Mizuki-sensei! I learned a jutsu! Want to see it?"
Mizuki didn't speak. He only unlatched a windmill shuriken from his back.
"Sensei?"
The man grinned and flicked the giant star at the dumbstruck blond, who tripped backwards over a root and landed heavily on his butt. A rush of air and a distant thunk told him that the star had gone over his head and lodged itself into a tree. Naruto looked frightened as Mizuki took a step forward and spoke.
"Uzumaki Naruto, your judgement has come."
"W-what?"
Mizuki made to grab the other star and Naruto bolted, throwing himself behind the nearest tree.
"And the fox hides...how poetic that the great demon should cower in fear as his day came, just as many of his victims cowered...yes...this is fitting," Mizuki whispered. "You should know, Naruto. The day the Kyuubi was sealed into you was a day of rejoicing."
Naruto froze from behind the tree.
What?
"Would you like to know why?"
Naruto didn't answer.
"Despite the pain we all suffered from just looking at you...we knew that you were weak, extinguishable. We knew that once you peeked out from under the robes of the Hokage, you were ours to kill. You were no longer a god. You were a weak, stupid little child. And that, Naruto, is something to rejoice."
Mizuki suddenly appeared around the tree. Naruto yelled in terror and tried to escape, tearing at the firm grip on his collar. Mizuki grunted and, with one arm, tossed Naruto across the clearing into the wall of the cottage. Blood sprayed from the blond's lips as his back slammed into the stone, his head whipping back with unrivaled force as it made a crater in the wall.
Mizuki's laughs greeted his efforts to stand.
"Demons will never give up, will they?"
Naruto ignored him and stood, his balance unstable and shaky. Suddenly the man disappeared and a foot slammed into Naruto's chin, sending the boy high in the air. The hard roof of the shack greeted the blond's face as he slammed into it. Crimson swam in front of his eyes and his surroundings became blurry as Naruto laid on the rooftop, his mind swimming. A small vibration tickled his cheek as Mizuki landed nimbly onto the roof beside him.
"W-Why?"
Mizuki paused at Naruto's small plea.
"Why?" repeated Mizuki quietly.
There was a silence. Naruto could only see Mizuki's feet as he lay against the rooftop, so he could not see the look on the man's face.
Suddenly Naruto gasped as he felt a vice-like grip clench his throat. As he was lifted into the air, the boy saw the look in Mizuki's eyes and froze.
"WHY?"
The man reached into his holder and pulled out a kunai with his free hand while choking Naruto with the other. The look on his face was no longer anger - it was fear. Mizuki's eyes were those of a dead man walking, a man that knew his final act was drawing near. As the kunai drew closer, Mizuki screamed one last sentence.
"YOU...YOU..." he screamed, mad with fear, "YOU MURDERED MY FAMILY!"
Naruto saw the knife approaching almost in slow motion. Instinctively, he closed his eyes, focusing on his chakra.
His hand curled into the ram seal.
The rooftop of the shack creaked one last time beneath the feet of Mizuki.
The world disappeared and a dimension of blinding light and searing heat exploded around them. Naruto felt the grip on his throat get wrenched away as Mizuki's skin turned the color of coal and his eyes exploded in two sick, bubbling pops. Clothes were turned to ash instantly, and hair turned black before disappearing in smoking clouds. Naruto felt his clothes disintegrate, but his eyes were locked in horror on Mizuki as the man's skin was blown away in bunches and bone was seared with heat until it glowed and cracked. Naruto could not feel pain; if anything, the flames felt cool, almost cold to touch as they streamed across his naked body.
The blinding light stopped after what seemed to be ages and a choking, heavy smoke replaced it. The smell of singed flesh hung heavily in the air. Naruto lay on his back, eyes wide and breath coming in short huffs. The ringing in his ears was disorienting and sickening as he turned onto his side, pushing aside pieces of burnt stone and wood. Though his vision was blurry, he could make out a prone figure across the clearing, black and smoking. The final image was too much to handle and he threw up down his front and onto the grass before passing out.
A small scroll lay some distance away, relatively unharmed and glowing a gentle blue.
Review please?