It was the final week before the academy exams, and Naruto still could not study. He had been staring at the same page from the same book for the last three hours, and tried to read the same basic sentence a hundred times, but the words just danced in front of his eyes, eluding any semblance of meaning. It had been a mistake to think that he could study first and then research techniques with Mizuki-sensei after, but he had thought that he was being responsible by getting the unpleasant task out of the way first – as though making his own life more difficult was somehow virtuous. It was starting to look like he would have to call off their meeting to focus on his studies, but the thought that he would then end up doing neither made him even more stubbornly determined to go through with their plans regardless.

It was right when he read the same sentence for the one-hundredth-and-first time, and finally realized that the book he had been trying to read was not his study book at all, but rather “Make-out Paradise XVII: Return of the ninja queen”, that he decided enough was enough. He threw the book against the nearest wall with a satisfying *thump* and stomped down the stairs, nearly tripping over a discarded shirt in the process. It was the environment that was the problem, he decided, as he left the empty apartment behind him. If he could just study with someone else, maybe their studiousness would rub off on him. But when he arrived at his destination, it was Sakura’s mother who answered the door.

“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid that Sakura is entirely engrossed in her studies,” the woman in white told him. “She couldn’t possibly handle any distractions this close to the exams – especially not from boys. You’ll just have to study with someone else. Best of luck though!”

“Yeah… thanks,” said Naruto, as the door closed shut in front of him.

Who else could he try? Kiba? He somehow doubted that the feral ninja was a better study than he was. Sasuke? He would rather die. He had tried to create a shadow clone to help him study, but that only let him accomplish nothing at twice the usual rate, and he did not know any of the other students well enough to impose on them. It was not as if any of them particularly liked him, anyway.

He found himself sauntering in the direction of the training grounds, where newly graduated genin often came to practice their ninja techniques. He had his book with him, and he thought that perhaps if he found a quiet place in the forest he could still get some studying done before it was time to meet with Mizuki-sensei. It was on his way there that he encountered a boy with a black bowl-cut dressed entirely in green, tight-fitting clothes, making what appeared to be a lap around the village on his hands while kicking the air with his legs and shouting at the same time.

“Hut! Hut! Heeya! Please excuse me, green beast coming through!”

Naruto looked at the genin with horrified amazement. “What… what’re you doing?”

“Training!” The older boy flipped around vertically and landed on the balls of his feet, ready for action. “I am a ninja who is unable to use either ninjutsu or genjutsu, but my teacher says that I can still be an excellent shinobi if I just focus all of my effort on practicing my taijutsu. That is why I have vowed to walk around the Village on my hands every day while kicking the air at the same time!”

“But… that’s insane,” said Naruto, who felt that he was considerably understating the matter. “It doesn’t matter how much you practice walking on your hands, that’s not gonna let you beat someone who can shape reality with his thoughts. It’s completely pointless!”

The genin gave him a serious look, his thick eyebrows making him look strangely earnest. “Perhaps. But I see no reason not to try my hardest. And even if it were pointless, I still would not go back on my vow. That is not my ninja way.”

Naruto blinked. “But… why not?”

“Because if I stopped doing something merely because I realized there was no reason to do it, then I could never trust myself to do anything ever again,” he said gravely. Then he excused himself, and went back to doing his laps around the village, kicking and screaming all the way.

Naruto kept watching the boy in green as he slowly disappeared from sight, feeling a strange sense of misplaced jealousy. Either that genin was crazy or Naruto was, and he was having trouble deciding which.

He continued onwards, and found himself a quiet tree stump to sit on and read. Yet no matter how much he tried to focus, his thoughts kept going back to his upcoming meeting with Mizuki. After an hour of futile attempts at making himself study, he decided he might as well head for the abandoned cottage a little early. Right as he got up he remembered that he did not actually have the scroll with him, and he mentally cursed himself as he dashed back to his apartment – and promptly ran right into someone else.

“Ow! Hey, sorry, I gotta – Hinata-chan? What’re you doing here?”

“N-Naruto-kun,” the pale girl squeaked, staring at her feet as though searching for something she had dropped. “I wanted… I wanted to apologize for, for running away and being rude to you earlier, and, and then I heard you were looking to study with someone, so I thought… I thought…”

Naruto blinked. “You heard..? But I only talked with Sakura’s mom, and that was just an hour ago…”

She turned beet red, but said nothing. At last Naruto could afford to wait no longer. “Sorry, Hinata-chan, but I gotta go. I got an appointment.”

“I-I understand… I’m sorry!” She rushed off through the training area, in the exact opposite direction of where the Hyūga compound was, and Naruto stood there for a moment, flabbergasted. A part of his mind was yelling at him to go after her, and another part of him was yelling that there was no time, until finally the part of him that was not completely useless reminded him that he already had the perfect solution to this particular type of problem.

The easy part was forming the hand seals, but then he had to split his stream of thought into two, which was said to be almost impossible for most ninja but turned out to be merely incredibly difficult for him. He felt the chakra drain from his veins as the technique took hold, and then the world shifted and he was staring at a boy his own height with bright blue eyes, messy coarse blond hair and orange clothing. He had already cast the technique several times before, but the result still filled him with absolute wonder.

“Well, what’re you waiting for?” he growled, after he grew tired of admiring himself. “Go after her!”

The other Naruto hesitated for a moment, a confused expression on his face, before running off in the same direction Hinata had headed. Which leaves the bigger problem to me, as always. He dashed back the way he came.

Stupid, stupid, stupid…

Naruto ran all the way back to his apartment, found the scroll, and only then remembered that it was too large for him to carry. Panicking, he looked around for some easy way of transport, but at last he decided there was no time and he just slung it on his back with a belt. He buckled under its weight as though it were a leaden bell, and it nearly slipped out and fell on several occasions as he ran, but somehow he managed.

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

By the time he arrived at his destination he was aching all over and drenched in sweat. From the position of the sun he realized that despite everything he had still managed to arrive early, but the novelty of calling himself stupid had worn off at this point. I’ll just wait for Mizuki-sensei in the cottage, he thought to himself, and that was when someone grabbed him and pulled him into the bushes.

“Ack! Hey, what?” He suddenly found himself looking up at a man in a green armoured jacket, who would have looked like a perfectly ordinary chūnin except for the horizontal scar across his face. “Iruka-sensei? What’re you doing here? Did Mizuki-sensei ask you to join in on our chakra-research or something?”

“Naruto?” His former teacher looked as surprised as he was. He slowly put his knife aside, which Naruto only now realized had been pointed at his throat. “Is that what Mizuki told you? Listen, I don’t know what lies he’s been putting in your head, but Mizuki is a very dangerous man. The Hokage ordered me to keep an eye on him in case he turns traitor, so I followed him here, but I need you to tell me what he’s up to before I can-”

“Traitor?” Naruto was having trouble focusing, occupied as he was with disentangling himself from the dense undergrowth without cutting himself on any of the branches. “What’re you talking about? Mizuki-sensei isn’t a traitor, he’s my teacher. He stepped in after you left because of me, in case you forgot.”

Iruka grimaced. “I didn’t choose to leave my position, no matter what you may’ve been told. I loved teaching you – every last one of you, no matter how difficult it was sometimes – and maybe I was a little tense before the exams, but I never meant to take it out on any of you.” A regretful look passed over his face, but it vanished when he shook his head. “No, Mizuki pulled some strings to make that happen, I’m sure of it. He’s planning something, but I can’t do anything about it until I figure out what it is.”

Naruto finally managed to return to an upright position, and his wits returned to him along with his sense of direction. “Wait… if the Hokage suspects Mizuki-sensei of something, why would he send you? Where’s the Anbu? What’s really going on here?” Iruka opened his mouth to reply, but when no sound came out, Naruto’s suspicions redoubled. “You’re not here on the Hokage’s orders at all, are you? You’re just jealous that Mizuki-sensei got your teacher’s position and he’s doing a better job than you, so you’ve been trying to catch him doing something wrong!”

“That’s not true!” Iruka anxiously peered through the bushes to look for movement at the cottage door, before lowering his voice to a whisper. “You don’t understand; you don’t know Mizuki like I do. He was my friend growing up, but then as he grew older something changed him. He became colder and more distant: He started mocking the Will of Fire, and then… he was never convicted of it, but a few years ago he was on a mission, and he killed one of his own comrades just so he could run away a little faster. That’s the kind of person he has become.”

“I know,” said Naruto, “He told me.” Then another realization struck him. “Wait. His friend, the one who told everybody what happened, who convinced everyone he was a terrible person – that was you, wasn’t it? You ruined his life!” Just like you ruined mine, by saying that I dishonoured the Fourth Hokage, and by letting Sasuke humiliate me. “And then, and then you followed him into the academy, just to spite him…”

Iruka stared at him, uncomprehending. “He told you? And you’re still choosing his side?”

“Of course; he’s a clever lad.” Iruka dodged almost instantly, but the shuriken had been thrown even before the words were spoken and he was struck regardless. Red rivulets ran down the forest green of his jacket where the shuriken pierced him, and he grunted in pain. Mizuki was standing a few meters away, covered in dirt from where he had burst out of the ground with an earth technique. “Naruto, why don’t you get your head down for a bit? This won’t take long.”

Naruto ducked down the bushes even before Mizuki finished speaking, instinct taking over, and then he could only tell what was going on by the sounds of violence. Metal clashed on metal, someone screamed a word, and then there was a sickening crunch followed by a hollow thump. When Naruto got up, Iruka was lying face-first on the forest floor, a large shuriken embedded in what looked to be his spine, only his right hand twitching slightly as he lay in a steadily spreading puddle of his own blood.

“You… you killed him,” said Naruto, who felt like he was going to be sick.

“Yes, that does tend to happen when you play around with shuriken,” Mizuki said idly, as he picked up the stray weapons from the forest floor. He frowned as he cleaned the blood of one of them with a large leaf. “Though, you don’t learn that at the academy anymore, do you? I apologize for that… if I were actually allowed to teach you children something, then I would have given you all a kitten to care for at the start of the year, and made you strangle it for graduation. Perhaps then you would have come to realize that the life of a ninja is not supposed to be fun. But alas.”

“But, but he was your friend!” Naruto’s thoughts were like mud. If he killed Iruka, then that implied… “Does this mean – was what he said true, about the Hokage suspecting you of being a traitor?”

“Who knows?” Mizuki tried to brush some of the dirt out of his white hair, but only ended up smearing it with blood, to his visible annoyance. “For all I know the Hokage says that to almost everyone: That way they’re all watching each other for him, and they all get to feel special. Quite clever if you ask me.” He sighed. “And Iruka was not my friend; that’s just something he chose to believe to make himself feel better about harassing me. But, I suppose even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and this time he happened to get in the way of my taking that scroll from you. Unfortunately for him.”

And there it was: If Mizuki planned to leave the Village then it made sense that he did not want to leave empty-handed… but as a rogue ninja he would most likely get caught almost immediately, unless he planned to join a different Village, in which case it would help his position immensely if he brought them a handsome gift. It amounted to the same thing either way.

Naruto reached around his back and clutched the massive scroll tightly. “And, if I gave this to you… Then, what’d happen to me?

“Oh, well. Obviously it would be in my best interest to eliminate any witnesses.” Mizuki smiled, seeming to find Naruto’s dismay amusing. “Unless, of course, you can think of a reason for me not to?”

It took several long seconds of agonizing silence for Naruto to think of an answer. “My dad’s Jiraiya, of the legendary Sannin… if you kill me, he’ll definitely go after you, but if you don’t, I’ll ask him not to.”

Another smile. “And there you have it. You see, Naruto, you have nothing to fear from smart and reasonable people like me, because we can always come to some sort of agreement. We’re practically allies by default.” A small and pitiful groan came from where Iruka lay, and the two of them looked around in surprise. “…but of course, the same does not apply to him. People like that, who imagine themselves to be virtuous and with good intentions, are capable of convincing themselves of absolutely anything. They will happily throw away their lives just to spite you, and unlike cruel and wicked men, they will never grow bored or tired of hurting others.” He drew a kunai and advanced on Iruka’s prone form.

Naruto crossed the distance and interposed himself between Mizuki and Iruka, his hands already forming the seals for the Shadow Clone technique. “No, I – I’m not gonna let you!” He split his mind into three parts, chakra pounding through his veins and draining away at an alarming rate as two more shadow clones burst into being with an expulsion of air. “I’ll fight you if I have to!”

Mizuki raised an eyebrow, but kept advancing with dagger in hand. Naruto’s newly formed clones circled around him and charged from both sides, but Mizuki merely dodged backwards and took one of them out with a thrown shuriken before stabbing the other with his knife. Naruto nearly collapsed on the spot, the sheer agony of having his liver ruptured proving almost too much to bear, but it was only the phantom pain of a shadow clone’s dying memory.

“The Shadow Clone technique is meant for running interference and reconnaissance,” Mizuki said amusedly. “It’s not a combat technique, as you just found out. If you’re unable to hit your opponent, making more of yourself is a waste of chakra. Still, to think you could learn an A-rank technique like that after only a few weeks… There you have the difference between those with access to forbidden knowledge and those without. If I had that scroll at your age, I might have been the Hokage by now!”

Uhm,” said Naruto. “I don’t think so. I mean, the Shadow Clone technique is hard to learn because it costs a ton of chakra, and you gotta have a mind that’s really, uh, flexible. It just happens that I’ve got those things already, but for someone like you it’d be much harder.”

Mizuki gave him a long stare, seemingly trying to decide whether to believe him or not, but then shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. There must be over a hundred techniques in that scroll: I could become a seals master, a genjutsu expert or a ninjutsu specialist. I won’t be a second-rate ninja regardless.” He motioned with his dagger. “Now give me the scroll and get out of my way, or I really will kill you. After all these years of being forced to teach teenagers, I’m fresh out of tolerance for youthful exuberance.”

Naruto took the giant scroll from his back, moving with deliberate slowness, and stopped mid-motion. “Wait… how do I know you’ll really let me go? You might be trying to trick me.”

Mizuki raised a bemused eyebrow. “You’ll just have to rely on my sterling reputation.”

He shook his head, defiantly. “No, you gotta make it a promise, or else I won’t give it to you.”

“You want me to-” The man’s mouth opened and closed again. “Fine, I promise not to gut you like a fish. Now give me the bloody scroll!” He advanced on Naruto, his knife outstretched menacingly, then paused and turned around. “Wait, what was that?”

Naruto focused chakra to his ears, but there was nothing except the sound of crickets chirping in the evening air. “I don’t hear anything.”

“No, of course you don’t.” Mizuki swivelled around, searching the treeline. “Who’s there? What do you want?” His head snapped around again to face the other direction. “No, no, no! I was so careful! How did they find out?” He turned to face Naruto, his face contorted with rage. “What did you do?”

“When Shadow clones disappear, their chakra’s sent to the other bodies along with their memories,” Naruto explained. “Like you said, it’s not really a combat technique.” And the Byakugan gives perfect telescopic vision. Even if you’d moved away from here, Hinata-chan still would’ve sent the Anbu after you.

Mizuki glanced around the forest clearing, clutching his knife like a shield. “No… there’s too many of them, too fast. They shouldn’t be here! I only killed Iruka – they have no reason to care!” He twisted around to stare at Naruto again. “But of course… with that hair, and those eyes, and that name! I should’ve realized. Of course they would be keeping a close eye on you.”

“What? What do you mean?” But instead of replying, Mizuki pulled Naruto in front of him and held a knife to his throat.

“Stay back!” he called out. “I have your precious legacy. Now we’re going to talk this out like reasonable people, or the boy dies!”

“Uhm, I don’t think that’s gonna work.” Naruto swallowed thickly, all too aware of the cold steel pressed against his throat. “Because… I used the Shadow Clone technique earlier, to study with Hinata-chan, and I think – I think I might be the clone?” Mizuki looked down at him, disbelieving. In reply Naruto formed the necessary seals, split his mind, and created another shadow clone. The newly created clone pinched him in the arm, and he vanished, and then he was free of Mizuki’s grasp and remembered both pinching his clone and being pinched just a moment ago.

The two looked at each other, wordlessly.

The silence was interrupted by a crunching sound coming from the treeline, and Mizuki turned to face in that direction, eyes wide with fear. It was the sound of a large animal that crushed all leaves and shrubbery before it, the kind of animal that was prey to no other, and wanted you to know it was coming.

“No.” Mizuki’s face turned deathly pale. “Not him. Not him!” He formed the seals for his earth technique, and the ground softened up beneath him, and began to swallow him up. For a moment Naruto thought he would get away, but then all around him the roots and vines began to twist and bend, and seized him by his legs, pulling him out even as his fingers dragged along the dirt. “No!”

Naruto could see them now: All along the treeline, crouching on the ground and standing on top of the highest branches as well, there were shadows. Black cloaked, and hooded, with no faces but for the masks they wore, which were white as death. They stayed there, watching silently, but never moved.

The crunching sound was coming closer, now.

“No!” Mizuki had found his knife and was cutting at the branches with wide, unfocused sweeps. When they regrew anew, he turned the knife to his own throat, but then stopped. The knife stayed there, a mere hair’s breadth from his skin, and would go no further. His whole body trembled as the roots grew around him, seizing him, pushing him to his knees and drawing his arms behind his back. Even his mouth no longer seemed to be his own, now.

There was a final crunching sound, and then the newcomer stepped out of the treeline and came into view. The first word that came to Naruto’s mind was bear. Huge, and with a black overcoat that made him even larger, he wore a grey uniform and a black cap on a bold head. Scars ran criss-cross along his face, as if he had fought a monster with claws – and presumably won, because he was smiling. It was the sort of smile that was used to remind the other party of the existence of teeth. He was flanked on either side by a man and a woman, with black cloaks and white masks both, and they had to be the ones casting the techniques, for the newcomer had both hands in his coat, and was slouching.

“Mizuki, Mizuki, Mizuki…” The bear drew closer and placed one gloved hand on Mizuki’s head, nearly closing around it, and gave it a light squeeze. “Why’d you have to go after the children? You know that makes papa Ibiki upset…”

Thin trails of blood trickled down Mizuki’s eyes, and he screamed soundlessly.

-o-

“You okay there, kiddo?”

Naruto blinked. He was sitting on a chair in the kitchen of their apartment, a cup of hot tea in his hands. He was wearing a large black cloak that a masked woman with purple hair had given him, because he had ‘looked cold’, but the exact details of it eluded him. Jiraiya was sitting opposite him, an unusually serious look on his face.

“…what?”

“I asked how you’re feeling,” Jiraiya said in a concerned voice. “You were just letting us know what happened, when all of a sudden you froze up, like you’ve seen a daemon or something.”

Naruto frowned. He was feeling… calm. Strangely calm, considering. Just a second ago, there had been… bad things happening, to someone – and then… he glanced around, trying to make out his surroundings through the haze. “How did I get here? What’s going on?”

Jiraiya turned to look at the person standing beside Naruto – a middle-aged man in a red coat with blond hair tied back in a ponytail – and shot him an accusing glare.

The man shook his head. “It’s the shadow clones he’s been using. They keep dissipating and interfering with my technique. You only have yourself to blame for letting your child teach himself forbidden techniques unsupervised; if I had let Ino do something like that, my wife would be murdering me right about now. Count yourself lucky you only have to answer to the Hokage.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Jiraiya waved him off. “I’m sure you can find yer way out, Inoichi.” There was the sound of equipment being gathered, followed by retreating footsteps and a door being closed shut.

“What happened? I was just… I was in the forest, and there was a man… then, nothing.”

“You probably bit yer tongue, and popped,” Jiraiya suggested. “Happened to me once: I was just about to beat the stuffing out of Orochimaru, when I tripped and found myself back in my original body again. I later heard that the snaky bastard laughed for a full minute before he tugged his tail and ran.”

Some of Naruto’s sanity started to come back to him, and with it his memories as well. He – the original Naruto – had been escorted back to the apartment the moment he and Hinata had sounded the alarm, only to find Jiraiya already there, along with the strange blond man. “Who… who was that?”

“What, Inoichi? He’s the head of the Yamanaka Clan. He leads Konoha’s intelligence division under Ibiki, who is head of the Torture and Interrogation division of the Anbu. That lot always panics when a traitor’s found, and starts asking pointed questions – the kind you can’t choose not to answer.” He nodded at Naruto’s cup. “Drink yer tea. You’ll feel better.”

Naruto took a sip. The tea was hot and strong, and it must have had some kind of herb in it, because just the smell of it was making him feel sleepy. “So, what’s gonna happen now?”

Jiraiya sighed. “There’s bound t’ be an investigation, and more questions… and I’ll hafta hand over that scroll of course. But you don’t need to worry about any of that stuff: I’ll tell the proctors you’re too shaken up to take the exams, and arrange something with the Third under the table, so you can take it easy for a while.”

Naruto nodded mutely, too tired to raise any objections. Something was wrong, terribly wrong, but it was getting harder and harder for him to remember what it was. “Mizuki,” he heard himself say, even as he started nodding off. “What… what happened…to him…”

“He’s with Ibiki now.” Naruto started to fall from his chair, but large, strong hands took hold of him, and began to carry him upstairs. “Probably best not to think about it,” was the last he heard Jiraiya say.