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Naruto sat on the bench outside the nurse's office with his helmet in between his knees, staring at the floor. The hallway was quiet except for the muffled voices coming through the door. Akamaru sat beside him.
"Sorry it went that far."
Akamaru let out a long, low sound, somewhere between a whine and a bark. It was an apology, offered on behalf of someone who had not been willing to offer it himself.
"You don't have to do that," Naruto said. "It wasn't your fault."
Akamaru whined once and looked at the door.
"He had chances," Naruto said. "You know that, right? I gave him chances."
The little dog nodded in agreement.
Naruto reached over and scratched behind his ear. "You know, between the two of you, I think you might be the brains of the operation."
Akamaru sneezed, which Naruto decided to take as agreement.
The door opened and Iruka stepped out, pulling it halfway closed behind him.
"Kiba's jaw has been treated. It was a fresh break, so the medical nin was able to set it cleanly." He looked down at Akamaru. "You can go in and see him. Once the nurse clears you both, head back to class."
Akamaru barked, sharp and grateful, and disappeared through the door.
Iruka turned back to Naruto. "Come on. Let's find somewhere quieter."
The academy rooftop was empty at this hour, the village spread out below them in the late morning light. Iruka sat on the ledge and Naruto stood a few feet away.
"Kiba gave me his side of the story," Iruka said. "Now I want yours."
Naruto talked, and by the end he wasn't looking at Iruka anymore.
The silence that followed was long enough that the boy finally turned to see what was on his teacher's face.
"Naruto, I don't want to come across as dismissive, but breaking a classmate's jaw over a piece of armor. Don't you think that was a bit much?"
"It's not about the armor." Naruto turned away. Of all the people to not get it, he hadn't expected it to be Iruka sensei. "You don't understand."
"You're right. I don't understand. So explain it to me."
When he spoke again, his voice was quieter, but the tears were already there, and he was fighting them with everything he had.
"This is my master's legacy. A knight gives their armor to their squire when they are dying. That's what this is. That's what he gave me. All he had at the end was me, and he gave me everything he carried with him his whole life." Naruto looked into Iruka's eyes. "I didn't break Kiba's jaw because of what he said to me. I broke it because he mocked and laughed at the only thing my master left behind. And I gave him chances, Iruka sensei. I gave him every chance to just stop." His voice broke completely on the last word. "So go ahead. Tell me Kiba was in the right. Tell me he didn't deserve it. Tell me I should've just sat there and let that dog keep barking."
Iruka didn't say any of those things. He just put his arms around Naruto and held on.
"Let it out," he said. "Don't you dare stop it."
And Naruto broke into tears, muffled against Iruka's vest. The older man held him and let it run its course. When the worst of it had passed and Naruto was just shaking quietly, he spoke, keeping his voice low.
"My parents died during the Kyuubi attack. You already know that," Iruka said. "What you don't know is that for the first month afterward I didn't cry once. Not once. I thought that meant I was handling it. I thought I was being strong."
He felt Naruto still slightly against him.
"I wasn't handling anything. I was just postponing it. And when it finally came, it came apart all at once and I was completely alone when it happened because I had spent so long convincing everyone around me that I was fine."
Naruto pulled back. His eyes were red and his face was a mess and he made no attempt to hide any of it.
"Does it get better?"
"It gets different," the older man said honestly. "The loss doesn't shrink. You just slowly build a life that's bigger than it. And one day you realize you've gone a whole morning without it being the first thing you thought about. And then a whole afternoon. And eventually it becomes something you carry instead of something that's carrying you."
He looked at the armor again.
"Oscar sounds like he was someone worth grieving."
Naruto wiped his face with the back of his hand. "I never got to tell him what his actions meant to me."
"He knew," Iruka said.
"You don't know that."
"No," Iruka admitted. "But I know that people who give away everything they own at the end of their life don't do it for strangers. He knew exactly what you meant to him. And I think somewhere underneath all of this, you know that too."
Naruto looked out over the village for a long moment. The wind moved through the trees below them. Somewhere in the distance a hawk circled lazily over the rooftops.
"I just miss him."
"You're going to miss him for a long time. And that's just what love costs."
Naruto said nothing. But he stopped fighting the tears that were still coming, and that, Iruka thought, was a start.
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The classroom felt different when Naruto walked back in.
The way conversations dropped when he walked near them. The way eyes moved toward him and then away. He could read the room well enough to sort them into categories. Respect from some. Caution from others. And from a few, something closer to fear.
A week ago this was all he ever wanted.
Naruto had spent most of his childhood doing increasingly desperate things just to make people look at him like he existed. And now here it was, handed to him, and his mind couldn't hold onto it because Oscar's last words kept moving through it like water finding the low ground.
Live for yourself. Not to prove something to someone else. Not to earn what should have always been yours. The world is yours. Do not spend it looking for permission to exist in it.
"Hey."
Naruto blinked.
Ino was standing in front of him, platinum blonde hair over one shoulder, holding a stack of bills out toward him with her usual confidence. "Thanks for winning me the bet."
"Sure," Naruto said.
She studied him for a moment, her eyes doing something more careful than her tone suggested. "I'm around if you want to talk. We Yamanaka know a thing or two about what goes on inside people's heads. Professionally speaking."
For a moment Naruto almost asked what had prompted that, because as far as he could remember Ino had never gone out of her way to talk to him. But he found he didn't have the energy to be suspicious about kindness today. He gave her a single nod and moved past her toward his seat.
Sakura, who had been talking to the wall that was Sasuke, went completely quiet the moment Naruto sat down. The boy leaned back in his chair, let his head fall against the rest.
"What do you want, Sasuke?"
Naruto could feel the gaze burning into the side of his head.
"You're strong."
It wasn't a compliment exactly. It was more like an observation delivered with a slight forward tilt of the chin.
Naruto thought about how much time he had spent over the years wanting to hear something like that from Sasuke Uchiha specifically. Wanting to stand across from him as an equal. It had been a kind of obsession once. The need to measure himself against the person the village had decided was the top of his generation.
He felt almost nothing about it now.
He had his own path.
"You should see me with a sword," Naruto said with a smirk.
Sasuke's gaze shifted down, studying the broken Astora sword hilt at his belt.
Sakura was looking at Naruto too. The boy had spent two years making it very easy for her to know how he felt about her. And now the thing she had always been able to predict about him was simply gone, and she didn't know what to do with that.
For the first time in a long time, the noise of other people's opinions felt like exactly what it was to Naruto.
Background noise.
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Ino's eyes hadn't moved from the back of Naruto's head since he sat down.
"Your fickle nature is showing."
Shikamaru didn't look up from the desk. He had his chin resting on his folded arms, eyes half closed, with an expression he wore when he was paying more attention than he appeared to be. "What was that, Shika?"
"I didn't say anything."
"You said something."
"I made an observation. There's a difference."
"He's wondering if you now have a troublesome crush on Naruto," Choji said helpfully, reaching into his chip bag.
"I don't have a crush on Naruto."
"Then why have you been staring at him for the last twenty minutes?" Shikamaru stated.
"Because I'm trying to figure him out. That's completely different."
"Mm. Yeah. Completely different."
"It is." Ino turned back toward Naruto's direction. "Yesterday he was tripping over himself trying to get Sakura to notice him. And today he walks in wearing full battle armor, breaks Kiba's jaw, sits down without caring about what everyone thinks." She shook her head slowly. "That's not the same person. Something happened to him."
"People change," Choji said.
"Not overnight they don't."
Shikamaru opened one eye. "What exactly are you trying to figure out?"
"I don't know yet," Ino admitted, which was not a sentence she said very often.
Choji looked over at Naruto thoughtfully, his hand pausing halfway to his mouth. "The armor is real, you know. I don't think anyone's been taking that seriously enough."
"What do you mean?"
"The Akimichi are one of the only clans in Konoha that actually uses armor plating, not just chainmail." He tilted the bag and studied the remaining chips with the same attention he gave most important subjects. "What Naruto's wearing is better than the Akimichi's. The kind of armor gets made for people who go into situations where everything is trying to kill them all the time."
The three of them sat with that for a moment.
"So where did he get it?" Ino asked. "It looks custom made for his size."
"That's the question, isn't it," Shikamaru said quietly.
"He said it was his master's legacy," Ino said. "That's what started the whole thing with Kiba. He said Kiba disrespected his master's name."
"Naruto had a master?" Choji said.
"Apparently."
Shikamaru was quiet for a long moment. "Did you feel it?"
Ino went still. "The killer intent."
"Yeah."
A beat of silence.
"I felt it from up here," Choji said, and his voice had lost the easy warmth it usually carried. "It only lasted a second but it was killer intent that created a hallucinatory effect."
Shikamaru closed his eyes. "That's as far as I'm taking that thought. Way too troublesome."
Ino looked at Naruto again.
"Troublesome," Shikamaru muttered.
"What is?"
"You. You're not trying to figure out what happened to him. You already know something happened to him. What you're actually trying to figure out is whether the person he is now is worth knowing." Shikamaru groaned. "Which is a very different thing from not having a crush on him."
"Trying to taunt me into dropping this by bringing up some nonexistent crush isn't going to work," Ino said.
"Ino. Think about this honestly for a second. None of us have ever had anything to do with him. Choji and I at least crossed paths with him a few times over the years. You?"
The Nara paused to give his friend a hard look.
"You never gave him the time of day. So what changed in the last two hours that has you this invested, woman?"
Ino said nothing.
"Go back to thinking about Sasuke," Shikamaru said, settling his chin back onto his arms. "I'll watch the clouds. Choji will eat his chips. And Naruto Uzumaki will remain someone else's mystery because I have made a personal decision that he is too troublesome to think about before lunch."
"He has a point."
"Eat your chips, Choji," Ino said.
"I am eating my chips," Choji said.
Shikamaru said nothing, which meant he felt he had made his point sufficiently and was now done with the conversation. He put his head back down on his arms.
Ino turned forward and looked at the back of Naruto's head one more time. Yesterday she had known exactly what Naruto Uzumaki was. Loud, obvious, and harmless.
She had been wrong about that.
She could admit it, at least to herself.
The question was what she had been wrong about exactly. And she found that she genuinely wanted to find out more.
What was the mystery behind Naruto Uzumaki?
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Kiba sat in the corner of the classroom with an icepack pressed against his jaw, glaring at the back of Naruto's head with focused resentment.
"Don't tell me you're thinking about going again."
Kiba startled and turned to find Shino sitting beside him. A single beetle making its way slowly across his knuckle with the unhurried patience that seemed to characterize everything about the Aburame clan.
"I wasn't thinking about going again," Kiba muttered.
"You had the expression of someone thinking about going again."
"I was just looking at him."
"With the expression of someone thinking about going again."
Akamaru shook his head once. Kiba shot him a look.
"Naruto only won because of the shadow clone jutsu," Kiba said. "That's it. That's the whole fight. Without that jutsu he's nothing."
"So your position is that another shinobi who defeated you did so by effectively using a jutsu."
"It shouldn't even be something a genin can use."
"And yet he used it. And you lost." Shino tilted his head slightly. "I'm not sure that framing helps your argument."
Kiba pressed the icepack harder against his jaw. "What do you want, Shino? I'm not in the mood."
"My kikaichu are behaving unusually."
"What does that mean?"
"It means they are reacting to something. They've been since Naruto walked into the room." Shino raised his finger slightly, watching the beetle on his knuckle. "Chakra is what they react to. But what they are sensing from Naruto is something different."
"Different how?"
Shino considered the word carefully. "Something that makes them want to move toward it and away from it at the same time." He paused. "I have never encountered that particular combination before."
"You're telling me your bugs have feelings about Naruto."
"I'm telling you my bugs are sensing something in Naruto that I cannot currently explain. Which, given what I know about my bugs, I find more concerning than anything that happened in your one sided fight today."
Akamaru whined softly.
"Your ninken felt it too."
Akamaru looked at the floor and said nothing, which was answer enough. Kiba glanced between his dog and the Aburame, then back at the back of Naruto's head. Something shifted in his expression that was not quite his usual bluster.
"Whatever," he muttered. "He still got lucky."
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Theories spread through the classroom fast and increasingly detached from anything resembling evidence.
"He's been sandbagging. The whole dead last thing was an act."
Hinata ignored the conspiracy theories rippling through the classroom.
A Hyuga's eyes will show them the truth about the world.
She had heard that phrase her entire life, usually from her father. The Byakugan saw what was actually there and reported back without sentiment. If something had changed about Naruto Uzumaki, her eyes would show her what. She activated it quietly, the veins rising beside her eyes without fanfare, and turned her gaze toward him.
Then she went still.
His body was different.
She had observed Naruto before, enough times that she had an accurate baseline of what his body looked like. The muscle density was fundamentally altered. The fibers were thicker and more uniformly developed than anything she had seen produced by physical training alone.
His bones were denser too.
That kind of density took years of sustained conditioning to build.
Naruto had not had years.
Something had done this to him in a very short window and she had no framework for how.
Her eyes moved and found the seal on his back.
She knew about the seal on his stomach. But this one was different. More like a tattoo than a seal, but there was a flow of energy inside its geometric structure. Then her eyes found a flame on his palm.
Before she had activated her dojutsu, she had been willing to believe this was a bad day. Everyone had bad days. Even people you had watched from a careful distance for years and built careful pictures of were allowed to have days that did not fit the picture.
But this was not a bad day.
Something significant had happened to Naruto Uzumaki. Something that had changed the structure of his body and left marks on him that she could not read and a flame in his hand that she could not explain. And whatever it was, it had happened recently enough that Naruto did not have this a few days prior.
She wanted to know.
More than that, she wanted to know that he was alright.
She had spent years watching him from a careful distance and not once had she done anything with what she saw except hold it quietly and hope he was okay.
Not today.
I can do this, she thought. I need to do this.
She pushed her chair back in a show of bravery for the shy girl.
The classroom door opened. Iruka walked in with a stack of papers under his arm. "Alright everyone, settle down."
Hinata sat down.
She wanted to cry. After finally finding the courage to talk to the boy she admired, the world had closed the door in her face.
Maybe next time.
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"You're shinobi now."
A few of the genin jumped in their seats.
Good. At least they were paying attention.
"The headband you earned is nothing more than a first step. Yesterday you had nothing. Today you have a rank and a standing in this village among people who once stood in the same place you did."
Iruka paused, letting that settle across the room.
"Whether you were first or last yesterday has no bearing on who you are today. You are genin. Nothing but genin. Yesterday you were the oldest and the strongest in this academy. Today you are the youngest and the weakest in Konoha."
He watched the faces in front of him absorb it. They needed to hear this more than they needed to feel good about themselves right now.
"Be proud that you passed. You earned that. But remember that you are stepping out of a school and into a world that does not grade on a curve and does not care how you ranked among twelve year olds. Do not doubt the skills you built here. But do not become arrogant with them either."
He looked across the room one final time.
"Because today, you are nothing but genin." He picked up the team assignment sheet. "The teams assigned to jonin instructors are as follows."
He worked through the list steadily, a mix of civilian and clan shinobi distributed across each team by a selection process that had more thought behind it than most of the students would ever know.
"Team Ten under Asuma Sarutobi: Ino Yamanaka, Choji Akimichi, and Shikamaru Nara."
The Yamanaka, Nara, and Akimichi had been pairing their children together for years. The combination of their clan abilities was something Hashirama Senju himself had reportedly called without equal. It was tradition in the truest sense, and Iruka had never once expected it to change. What he had expected was for Ino to make some noise about not being placed with Sasuke.
Nothing came.
The girl was sitting with her chin resting in her hand, looking at Naruto for some reason.
Iruka moved on.
"Team Eight under Kurenai Yuhi: Kiba Inuzuka, Shino Aburame, and Hinata Hyuga."
On paper it read as a tracker team, which was fine. What puzzled him was that Kurenai was a famous genjutsu specialist. Why she wanted three sensor and tracking types was her business, and Iruka trusted she had a reason.
He took a short breath before the next one.
"Team Seven under Kakashi Hatake: Sasuke Uchiha, Sakura Haruno."
Sakura threw both hands in the air like she had just won something. Iruka did not begrudge her the feeling. Young people were allowed their infatuations. He just quietly hoped that somewhere down the road Sakura Haruno would find something to be that passionate about that could actually be built into a career.
"And Naruto Uzumaki."
Sakura's cheer stopped abruptly.
Meanwhile Naruto was mentally weighing whether he had enough time to travel back to Lordran and accomplish something meaningful before his jonin instructor showed up.
Sasuke muttered under his breath, "At least I got one worthwhile teammate."
Iruka looked at Team Seven and felt something in his chest that was equal parts amusement and genuine concern.
Kakashi had failed every genin team he had ever been handed, without exception. And now the Hokage had seen fit to give him a brooding avenger, the most unpredictable ninja, and Sakura.
He prayed for all four of them.
Kakashi perhaps most of all.
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Author's Note: Q and A Time
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Q: What did Shino's bugs sense, and what was the flame Hinata saw with her Byakugan?
Both were detecting the same thing: the pyromancy flame living inside Naruto's palm. When it is not being actively used it sits dormant inside him, but its presence is still there and readable if you know how to look.
The Byakugan can see it and the Kikaichu can sense it. The bugs are drawn to it and repelled by it at the same time because it is something completely alien to anything in their world.
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That's It… For Now.
I want to thank you all for taking the time to read, comment, and follow along with this story. Your feedback means more than you know, and it helps push me to make each chapter bigger, sharper, and more true to the worlds of Naruto and Dark Souls.
Until next time,
Praise the Sun.
\-Adam-/