Naruto groaned when he realized that the first item in the scroll that Mizuki told him he needed to learn a Jutsu from in order to graduate was a Bunshin technique, which meant that he'd never get it down. Not in a million years. Sighing, he turned to the next item in the scroll which seemed to be a complicated flow-chart diagram of some sort that he couldn't make heads or tails of either way. Growling, he unfurled the scroll even further. Yet another jutsu he couldn't make heads or tails of that was accompanied by a number of gruesome illustrations...

He kept unfurling the scroll until he'd reached the next to last item on it. At first he couldn't make heads or tails of what he was looking at. Then, he realized that if he kinda squinted and looked at the picture sideways, he could sorta understand it. The smaller picture next to the list of handseals seemed incomplete somehow, as if something were missing. The complicated scribbles someone had added to the margins didn't help all that much though.

As he was figuring out exactly what the technique appeared to be missing, Iruka turned up looking none too happy to see him there. Not noticing that the scroll had completely unfurled while he was reading, or even spotting what came after the Jutsu he was looking at, Naruto looked up from the scroll he'd been studying as intently as he could in spite of his less than stellar reading skills.

"Aw man, you found me already?" Naruto said, pouting since he wasn't sure he'd actually learned anything from the scroll. "I haven't gotten everything ready yet."

"Ready for what?" Iruka asked.

"If you hand me some paper and some sealing ink, I'll show you." Naruto replied.

"What do you need these for?" Iruka asked as he handed over said items which he'd had on his person because he'd been studying how to make storage seals and had carried the supplies in his vest in order to use in his free time.

He honestly didn't know what possessed him to hand them over considering the seal he'd seen on display and the words surrounding it when he'd found his student. The seal that looked far older than it should've been, and was written in the Shodai Hokage's handwriting. Perhaps it was because he'd wanted to bring Naruto in without a fight, and distracting the boy would be the best way to do so. Naruto had not shown any aptitude for the more academic areas of the ninja arts so, he'd most likely figured that the boy wouldn't get whatever he was planning right first try, and the worst that would happen would be some sealing ink would be wasted while he bound the distracted boy and turned him in. Perhaps it had been out of a morbid sense of curiosity over what would happen if Naruto actually managed to do something with the seal. Either way, Iruka would find himself wondering about the reason he'd done something so stupid as handing Naruto Sealing supplies for years to come.

"Mizuki said that if I can learn one technique in this scroll I can graduate!" Naruto exclaimed as he opened the bottle of the sealing ink that Iruka had handed him. "I figure that if I can find a squirrel or something, I can show you what I learned."

"What did you learn?" Iruka asked, somewhat fearfully looking at the scroll which was still rolled entirely open, displaying a very familiar seal and beginning to regret handing Naruto that Sealing ink.

"Dunno what it's called." Naruto said as he prepared the slip of paper.

While Naruto's reading skills were nearly non-existent and his handwriting was barely legible, one area that he surprisingly wasn't lacking in was drawing. That, and he was quite capable of copying a picture and, in some cases, improving it if he had it in front of him to look at. Had the art been presented to him in the right way, Naruto would've been quite the forger.

"There, now that control seal thingy is perfect." Naruto said as he finished drawing on the slip of paper that Iruka had handed him with little to no idea of what he'd just created, only knowing that it looked right.

Mizuki, who'd seen the scroll be unfurled to the point where the seal that had been used to place the Kyuubi inside its vessel was revealed and had been warily waiting for Naruto to break the seal, decided it was safe enough to come out of hiding at that point since the Kyuubi had quite spectacularly failed to escape as he feared it would. While Iruka was examining the seal that Naruto had made, unable to make heads or tails of it because it was so far beyond his level of understanding it wasn't even funny, Mizuki made his attack.

After Mizuki had revealed to Naruto that he was the vessel for the Kyuubi and there was a chase and a fight and Iruka saved Naruto's life and revealed that he viewed Naruto as a human being, there was a moment where Naruto and Mizuki stood facing off. In one world, Naruto would've pulled out about a thousand Kage Bunshin and pounded Mizuki into the dirt. In this one however...

"What are you doing?" Mizuki asked as he watched the Uzumaki boy cycle through several handsigns as he said "You know, I was going to bring my pet frog back first but..."

The last thing the arrogant Mizuki, who'd wanted to show Naruto the true meaning of despair when whatever jutsu the boy was attempting inevitably failed to defeat him, heard was "Edo Tensei!"

Normally, considering the requirements for the jutsu in question, this would've had about as much effect as yelling "Fairy Sparkle Princess Attack!" but, it had worked on that day thanks to the fact that Naruto hadn't been thinking of bringing anyone in particular back, had the devil's own luck, and a habit of fishing things he found to be potentially useful out of the trash or any other sort of junkpile he came across.

The junkpile that Naruto had fished through on the way home from his failed Academy Graduation Exam had been created by a woman who had been clearing out her deceased grandmother's home. The woman, who had no idea of the value of the things her grandmother had allowed to collect dust, had unwittingly tossed out several priceless treasures that would have had village historians and collectors alike salivating over the possibility of even looking at them in the process of clearing out the house in order to prepare it for sale. When Naruto had seen the lock of hair that was of a certain shade of raven-wing black which shone with blue highlights under certain lighting sticking out of the middle of the trashpile, he had taken it with the intention of cutting it so he had several sections of the correct length and dividing it even further in order to sell it to Sasuke's fangirls.

Having a living sacrifice for the Edo Tensei and a genetic sample that happened to have fallen out of his pocket in the rough vicinity of Mizuki at the right time and the Devil's own luck on his side, Naruto managed to successfully complete the Jutsu despite the fact that by all rights it should not have worked. An instant after calling out the name of the Jutsu, a coffin emerged from the ground where an arrogant Mizuki had been standing just an instant before. As a somewhat confused Naruto wondered what the hell the coffin was for, the lid to the upright coffin opened and slammed to the ground.

"Aw crap, he's old!" Naruto said while the elderly man who'd previously been in the coffin took a single step outside the coffin which fell to the ground behind him.

Grumbling about how his new jutsu completely sucked and how it had probably been Mizuki who'd ruined it, Naruto tied the corrected seal that he'd created to a kunai that he'd picked up and moved over to the old man who'd appeared in Mizuki's place. Following instructions he'd only half understood, Naruto sunk the kunai with his modified seal into the body of the elderly man who was leaning on a kama as if it were a cane. The old man sluggishly blinked as he looked down at Naruto. Then, the man looked like he was thinking about something, and blinked again.

"What the HELL did you do to me boy?" the old man rasped.

"Um, I used the Edo Tensei thing and you popped out of the box." Naruto said, somewhat disappointed in the sucky result of the jutsu he'd picked and wondering who the hell the old man was.

"Are you sure this is the Edo Tensei? I should have been able to break the contract seal if it were." the old man rasped, leaning more heavily on the Kama and looking as if he wanted to kill the child in front of him as he asked.

"Um, Contract seal? You mean that control thing right? I fixed it." Naruto replied, looking somewhat proud of himself for having completed one of the Jutsu from the scroll even if Mizuki had kinda ruined it.

"After you release me, you'd better pray that I never find you again." the old man snarled.

"Huh? Release? How do you do that?" Naruto asked.

The old man growled at this, his eyes turning a blazing Sharingan red. Whatever the old man had planned on doing, it didn't work since he was forcibly frozen in place when he'd gotten within six inches of Naruto. Naruto wasn't paying attention to any of this however, since he was more focused on the injured Iruka who was staring at the old man with wide eyes.

"Hey Iruka-sensei?" Naruto asked, catching the rather shaken Chunin's attention.

"Yes?" the rather ashen man asked.

"Even though I can't send him back, do I still pass?" Naruto asked.

Edited 8-21-15.