Story summary:

This was not supposed to happen. The fox demon should have been sealed, its power sucked down into the labyrinth - a chakra construct nearly a world of its own, powered by the contract with the spirit of Death. Instead, a ring of flames pulsed around the baby, black fires dancing among the red, no, warring with and smothering the red. "It is almost as if," Yondaime, dying, murmured to Sarutobi, "...there is something else already there... something... worse..."

And then as new shadows spread across the battlefield, unnatural, creeping darknesses, the screaming began all over again.

Naruto: BERSERK

by Lousy Poet Automaton

-----disclaimers: Berserk and Naruto are not mine. The lines after the chapter title appear in every episode of Berserk. You don't have to know Berserk to read this fanfic, and I wouldn't even say it's a true crossover or fusion since it really all happens in the Naruto universe. Anyway, if you have read/watched Berserk, I'm not sure if your appreciation will be greater because you can guess at what's hinted at, or less because you can guess what's hinted at.

Chapter 1: Black Student, Pale Genius

"In this world...

man's destiny is controlled...

by some transcendental destiny or law"

"Like a hand of God

that exists."

"At least...

man knows that he has no control

over his own will..."

---

The conversation died away when he walked through the doorway. Oh, he was much larger than a normal boy of his age, it was true – he looked about three to four years older than his age, but it was not his height, or the unusual development of the muscles revealed by his sleeveless black tunic, that silenced the other kids. It was not his steel-studded leather vest or the heavy, baggy pants suggesting that he had come from some colder (and more openly violent) place, or the wild hair that thrust out of his head like black fire, or the cold sneer on his face, or even the bruises and scars on his arms and face.

It was the sword.

Only, it did not look like any sword the other kids had ever seen, not like the slender, slightly curved katana used by some of the weapon-specialized ninja. In the hands of an adult, it would have perhaps looked like one of the straight great swords from the ancient West like those in the museum, but no it did not even look like one of those, not truly. It did not look like a sword.

It looked more like a slab of steel.

It was thicker than any sword they had ever seen, and in length from point to the massive pommel it was very nearly the new boy's height. He did not carry it in a scabbard (which would have made drawing it impossible due to its disproportionate length) – the blocky crosspiece hung from from a clever arrangement of hooks on the leather harness that crisscrossed his back.

Curiously, there were two sets of four finger-sized holes cut through the broad surface of the blade, aligned along the fuller. One set was a few inches back from the point, another set was a third of the way down from the hilt.

He ignored the stares, strode across the room, and, drawing the massive blade casually, easily, he sat in the empty chair closest to the windows. The chair creaked from the strain. He slouched back in his chair, thrust his long legs straight out before him, crossing his heavy boots one on top of the other. He placed the point of the blade against the wooden floor, ignoring the way it scraped the surface, and rested the hilt against his shoulder.

He looked out at the sky, and ignored the whispering that started up.

"Hey, you. New guy."

The boy sighed pointedly, and turned to look at the other who was perched on top of his table.

The irritant was one of the larger kids in the class, though a lot of that was probably from the ridiculously baggy jacket he had on (and he was still both shorter and not nearly so powerfully built as the seated stranger), and the hood drawn over his head. It must have been uncomfortably hot. There were red tattoos on his face, simple marks down his cheeks like fangs. There was a little dog perched on his head, yipping madly at the seated boy.

"How do you get off appearing out of nowhere just in time for the exam? And Akamaru says you smell evil."

"...Whatever." He looked back out at the clouds. The one with the dog was like his dog, small, insignificant. He could feel it in the lack of power in the other.

"Think you're tough? Why I ought to - "

"Kiba! Sit down NOW." The teacher had arrived, a prissy, skinny looking fellow.

Grumbling, Kiba backed off.

"As for you, Uzumaki, right? That ugly thing you've got is damaging the floor. Get a scabbard, or I'll confiscate it."

Naruto's sneer grew. His eyes tightened, and the other students shied away. Some of the better students had learned from their lessons that this was called killing intent. Naruto's was raw, and uncontrolled. Like a beast's. And more than this... it was huge. Looking at him, he suddenly seemed far larger, towering over them all even from his seated position. The chuunin instructor seemed to deflate, seemed tiny in comparison. "Take it from me. If you can, sensei."

"Alright, that's it, trouble-maker. Detention. Now."

Naruto just laughed. "Fine."

He ignored the talking to he received, refused to write an apology, refused anything. And when the other instructor, a long-time administrative chuunin, already an old man, also mentioned taking away the 'eyesore' Naruto carried, an animal snarl was enough to make him pale and back away, spluttering threats about expulsion.

"You won't get the Hokage to sign off on that. I'm only here for the genin exam tomorrow. But if you can, then do it! Or do you want to FIGHT ME?"

He did not get expelled.

---

After school, a number of the boys tried to intimidate him and failed utterly. Just as he was going to totally ignore them and stalk off, shuriken blurred in. Disinterestedly, he batted them away with his left forearm, the studded leather bracer protecting it from the shuriken, which were too light to penetrate much even had they been thrown with more skill.

"You don't want to do that again," he said, almost bored. It was that puppy boy. Worthless.

Two more and Kiba was charging him behind the thrown weapons. Naruto just leaned his head, merely being nicked on the cheek by one of them.

"You're pissing me off." And then he moved.

From utter stillness to sudden motion, Naruto drew steel with preternatural speed into an overhead chop that was inexorable, unstoppable. And there was the sound, almost a moaning whistle, caused by the odd aerodynamics of the holes in the blade. The handful more of shuriken had glanced off the vest, accomplished nothing. Kiba froze as the dark blur descended towards him... He had still been ten feet away! He tried to stop, to backpedal, to get away somehow! Was this death?

It stopped just in front of his eyes. The blast of wind from the thick steel ramming through the air blew the hood back off Kiba's head. If he had tripped and fallen forward in his desperate attempt to halt his forward motion, he might have cracked his head on that thing even if Naruto had stopped the strike.

Naruto chuckled. He could smell the piss of the puppy on its master's clothing.

None of the boys could believe the speed of that draw, or even that a boy their age could hold a sword like that straight out with only one hand, and stop the tremendous momentum in his swing. The others had only just started to get their hands on their weapons.

"It's like this. Those little pins and blades you're taught to throw, they might put me down, if you get lucky and hit a vital spot. This ugly thing in my hand, though... It's not very sharp, but it's three times the thickness of a normal sword. If I hit you with this, well..." He just smiled. "I'd love to properly christen this baby. So come on, then. Come at me, but if you come at me, you better do your best to kill me. Or I, I will kill you." A mad light flickered to life in his eyes, which darkened from blue to something else, something deep, and not altogether sane.

The circle faded back as quickly as it had started to close in. The girls looked at him with a disdain tinged with fear, and from most of the boys, he could smell growing anger that was almost hatred, also rooted in fear. Except for one set of eyes.

"I'll fight you," this one said quietly, simply.

The girls gasped, murmured.

Naruto's sneer faded. Something about this one was familiar, so familiar... so like the Other in his dreams, something in the arrogance of the set of the shoulders, the quiet confidence in the expressionless face, and ah, yes, that face... its delicate, almost girlish symmetry. Yet, despite his pale, milk-white skin, this one was dark, like himself, rather than the deceptive lightness of that most hated dream Other's beginning.

It set the mark on his neck that no one could see to burning, a subtle pain that made him bite down so hard his jaw ached.

"Uchiha. Sasuke. That is my name. You look strong. But slow."

Again, from an attitude of relaxed stillness, Naruto exploded into motion, turning from where Kiba had stumbled backwards onto his ass and turning the blade with the weight of his own body into a blurring, shallow descending cut from left to right.

There was the crack of an impact, and iron shards scattered about them. A number of girls screamed.

"Or maybe not that slow. But not fast enough."

The Uchiha crouched on the flat of his blade! Feet chakra-bonded to the steel, left arm extended out, holding a kunai to Naruto's face.

Naruto laughed. He saw the Uchiha's right hand held out awkwardly to one side, trembling and bloody from the the pieces of the kunai he had used to partially deflect the stroke. Yes, the pretty boy was faster. But not that much faster, not enough to dodge cleanly.

The eyes though... They had changed. Hmm, three marks spinning around red irises... High level doujutsu, though Naruto could not quite recall the specifics of the Uchiha-type eyes. Still, it would not matter, regardless of the other's bloodline - Naruto had years of combat experience outside the village in this life, learning to control the cursed mark on his neck and what that meant in regard to demons.

"You talk too much!" Chakra flares burst into life around Naruto, arcs of black light.

Like an animal, Naruto snapped forward, closing his jaws around the kunai's blade. The muscles in his neck and shoulders stood out under the skin in stark relief. Though the blade was angled and not flat enough for a good grip, the sheer power in his muscles, combined with an overwhelming burst of chakra to his mouth and teeth, held the kunai immobile despite Sasuke's attempts to thrust it forward or draw it back for a better strike.

Without releasing the kunai from his mouth, Naruto roared through his teeth. He swung the massive blade with both hands in a rising cut as he drove forward with his legs, catapulting the smaller boy off and thirty feet back.

Sasuke landed easily on his feet, hands in position before him, ready to take the fight to the next level. He wondered if his flames would be effective against this wild man. The heavy gear wasn't just for show – it was armor, heavier than most ninja wore, and he could sense chakra flowing through it. But just as quickly as the dark chakra had risen around his opponent, it was fading, and he realized that the strange sound coming from Naruto was laughter escaping around the kunai that he still gripped tightly in his mouth. He spat it out and it whistled towards Sasuke backwards, like a bullet.

Easily caught, though Sasuke eyed the light coat of spit on the blade with something less than the easy detachment he had been showing. There were tooth marks in the iron. Not that kunai were well-tempered steel, since they were disposable throwing weapons and not worth tempering to a high grade the way proper daggers or swords were, but it wasn't everyday that the Uchiha had one kunai suffer a spectacular stress failure in the face of spectacular force and another damaged by teeth. He did not show it, but one hand throbbed from the vibrations that had shivered the other lost kunai to pieces, never mind the slivers that cut into his palm.

"You're tough, girlie Uchiha! Tougher than the rest. That's good!" Naruto sheathed the blade. "You should bandage your hand, girlie. Your groupies would hate it if you got those pretty fingers scarred."

Sasuke arched one eyebrow, let the power fade from his eyes.

"Interesting. When you pass tomorrow's exam, you can be my subordinate."

Naruto was torn between the desire to laugh and to scowl. Yes, so much like that other, and yet different too. Would he never escape those ghosts, even in this world?

"You're no hawk, Uchiha. You aren't sharp enough yet, I can feel it. But I see you have seen blood, and in that, you are more of a man than these children."

Sasuke shook his head. "You'll pass tomorrow. And you'll be on my team."

---

The instructor had wanted to fail him, of course. He did not know bunshin or henge, the two techniques that were tested for. Why would he? He only learned what was useful to him, and out there, such paltry tricks were useless against his prey.

"I haven't learned to do them. Instead, you'll pass me when I show you that they cannot be used against me."

And he did just that, though it was only after he had the dull point of his sword pushing slowly, inexorably into the chuunin's throat that they allowed him to pass.

And so another day went by, and, as the Uchiha had predicted, they were teammates, along with a pretty, but useless girl, all paper-smarts and no practical skill.

They met their jounin instructor, a lazy-looking, slender man only a little taller than Naruto, and not as broad in the shoulders. But, despite his tardiness, this one, Naruto could respect.

So he chuckled at the jounin's words to them, revealing nothing but his name. This Kakashi's appearance, the subtle, bone-deep weariness that only one who had seen death on countless battlefields could identify, was more than enough to tell Naruto everything he needed to know. He could feel it in the other, the taint of deaths on the gray-haired one's hands, the loss and sorrow, and yes, guilt, hidden beneath a shallow smile hidden beneath a mask.

Naruto parroted the jounin's nondisclosure right back at him, shrugged when the response was a flicker of irritation in the single exposed eye.

The girl, Sakura, had blathered, pointlessly. He needed to know nothing more of her – at this stage in her life, she was a child in a game, not a killer in a community of which the primary income was from hiring out killers, soldiers and spies. In fact, he was impressed at the Uchiha's restraint at her clinging, useless ways. He did not just tolerate her, he cultivated her. Like a pet bird.

The Uchiha's words, however, made his heart stop. Had he really been able to dismiss him so casually two days before?

"Uchiha, Sasuke. I train. I study. Arts, literature, history, combat. Of dreams, I have two. The selfish, personal one is to kill a man. The other... I wish to unite all the ninja villages under my control, to be a Kage among Kage, and end the continuous warfare of the past hundred years."

Sakura exclaimed, starry-eyed, "Wow, Sasuke-kun, that's such a noble ideal! I'll be the one to - "

But she may as well not have been there. She trailed off when she realized that both Kakashi and Sasuke were paying more attention to Naruto's soft-spoken whisper.

"Uchiha. Your ambition... Hah! I understand vengeance, and that's fine. But you as the unifier? Can your wings carry your dream, or will you fall and bring us all down with you?" Naruto closed his eyes and trembled. The memories flooded through him, the years that were not his own, the lifetimes of a scarred, broken warrior, betrayed and living only for vengeance. And yet astonishingly, the idea still tugged at him. Was that the part of him that should have been a child in this life, or the innocent that had never been allowed to be a child in the other? He grit his teeth. "What if I kill you before you get that far, Uchiha?"

The killing intent around him weighed Sakura down so heavily it was difficult for her to breathe.

Sasuke smiled pleasantly. He blinked twice, and the sharingan came alight in his timeless gaze. It made it easier to replay the other day's combat in his head. And it made it easier to analyze the subtle facial muscle responses, the changes in breathing, minute alterations in composure. It was not as accurate as the byakugan in terms of reading people, as that revealed a host of responses even beneath the skin and superficial muscles, but it was still more than normal eyes could see.

"You swing your sword as though each strike is your last, as though you scream out your life, and your death, each time. These eyes of mine see it, and I know you have no purpose. Your life is empty. You will be my right hand when I get there, I know it. In fact, I'll give you Konoha – you can be the Hokage, with a whole village of precious ones to protect as your purpose. At my bidding."

The words ripped him deep. It was happening again. Was it him? Could it possibly be him? He had been so sure it was just a coincidence, but if it was not, what did it all mean? Was he still trapped by another life's destiny?

"Maybe I will, Sasuke. Or maybe I'll be the one to bring it all crashing down around you."

Kakashi murmured, "Hey, hey, what's all this heavy talk?"

Didn't they just meet two days ago? What the hell was wrong with these two? He had read Sandaime's briefings on them and even with them right in front of him it was difficult to believe that all the data he'd received on them could be true. While he'd normally be ticked at having a girl with Sakura's attitude, at this point, he was god damned relieved to have at least one normal newbie genin. And... when did the Uchiha brat activate his Sharingan? What had triggered its activation? That wasn't in the report, and neither was the extreme killing intent that Uzumaki could project.

This was too weird. He needed to confer with Sandaime again. He wasn't sure he could handle this. What was the Hokage thinking, putting them on one team? It was almost easier to believe that they were chuunin infiltrators from another village that had undergone major body-alterations to impersonate them. He wished he could just have them placed under heavy genjutsu-augmented psycho-interrogation with Ibiki... Would he actually have to take them into the field like this?

At least they probably did not yet have the skill to interpret the true level of his unease.

"And anyway, you two... Hah, I mean, talking about being Hokage and, what, some kind of Grand Kage? You're not even genin yet. At least, not if you don't pass my exam. The failure rate over the years is sixty-six percent, and no one has ever passed my test. You may very well be back at the academy after tomorrow."

That quieted them down, but the disturbingly knowing sparkle in Sasuke's eyes and the half-longing, half-homicidal look in Naruto's was creeping him out in a bad way. He zipped through the rest of it, only telling them where and when to meet him for the survival exam. He even forgot to tell them to skip breakfast in his hurry to get to the Hokage's tower.

There was something deeply wrong.

---end chapter 1