Author's Note: I'm going to try to avoid leaving author's notes in future chapters. Many of the concepts I'm going to use are drawn from logical extensions of the series, but some were inspired by other fanfictions. I'm going to try to focus on adventure and friendship, but I doubt I'll be able to avoid peppering in some philosophy and a little bit of humor. I'm going to avoid romances because that's just not what I want to work on right now. But I will attempt to develop every relationship. I'm also going to try to avoid using the canon arcs as a backdrop because some of them just suck. I'll keep the chunin exams because they allow me to write tons of fight scenes and that's a huge part of adventure. I hope you readers enjoy the story for as long as I write it.

Prelude

In a small urban village, hidden amidst a vast forest, a stadium is packed with people from many different nations. A blond boy, barely a teen, with sun-kissed skin stands across from a dark haired boy in the dirt field at the center of the stadium. The blond boy's eyes are a bright blue and his hair spikes out at all angles as his arms form a protective guard in front of him. The dark haired boy's long, straight hair catches the slight breeze as he speaks.

"You cannot win," the dark-haired boy says, his face a mask of stone.

The blond boy smiles, the hair-thin scars on his cheeks looking more like whiskers as he does. "We won't know that until the end of the match," he says. "Unless you're quitting?" he asks, disappointment dripping at the end.

The boy with the long dark hair moves into a fighting stance. "Your fate is to lose," he says before launching many quick finger and palm strikes at the blond boy.

As the blond boy dodges, a whole clan that shares similar features to the dark-haired boy watches with veins protruding around their eyes. They see the chakra network in the blond boy and wonder at its oddity.

The blond boy dodged the first strike, but kicked the incoming arm on the second strike before bending and flipping away from the barrage the dark-haired boy unleashed.

"Neji-san is going to kill Naruto if he keeps up that pace," a man comments unheard by the fighting boys.

Naruto's arm lashes out from his pouch sending three kunai speeding toward the dark-haired boy. A quick hand sign with a tiny surge of chakra and three become three hundred, forcing Neji to stop and rotate a protective dome of chakra into existence.

A man in the stands watches in surprise, not that his face shows it. Nobody taught Neji the kaiten defensive technique, yet he used it perfectly.

Neji's legs launch him back into Naruto and he begins striking for the tenketsu in Naruto's body. Closing any of them would limit Naruto's options in the fight, while closing all of them would end the fight.

"You are within range of my divination," Neji says as he backs away and then surges forward to strike at Naruto.

Two strikes, four strikes, eight strikes, sixteen strikes, thirty-two strikes, and then sixty-four strikes combined have closed down the majority of tenketsu, the choke points in the chakra circulatory system, within Naruto's body. Even his core is no longer lit with the fire of chakra.

Naruto drops to one knee and coughs up some blood. "Heh. That hurts," he says.

"You've lost. Your tenketsu are closed. You cannot mold chakra. You require medical attention," Neji says, his tone never wavering.

"Are you asking me if I'm giving up? Because the match hasn't been called yet and I'm not done," Naruto says aloud.

'I need a chakra burst big enough to open my tenketsu,' he thinks inwardly, hastily adding, 'please.'

Neji turns to the proctor and says, "The match is over. I have no wish to hurt Naruto. He is beneath me."

Neji's head snaps back to Naruto as his byakugan, the ability of his clan, shows a strange, red chakra surging through Naruto's swelling chakra system. Nobody's chakra pathways should be that large, but Naruto's seem to have swelled to triple their already abnormally wide girth. And then, as quickly as it had appeared, the deep red chakra was gone, replaced by Naruto's normal blue chakra.

"You deserve every ounce of the ass-kicking I'm about to deliver," Naruto says as he stands. His chakra begins compressing in his core, layering over on itself repeatedly until it appears solid to the byakugan. The compressed chakra suddenly surges into Naruto's body, supercharging his muscles and bones with the super-dense chakra.

Anyone in the stands who blinked would have missed the entire exchange. The ground behind Naruto crumpled and the crack of the sound barrier being broken reverberated through the stadium.

Neji had time to bring one arm up in an attempt to block the incoming elbow strike, not that he could see exactly what was happening. His arm moved on instinct alone to protect him. The strike forced his arm back, absorbing some of the blow, but he was still flung over the hundred yards and into the wall in less time than it took to blink. Neji's impact against the wall rippled and crumbled the concrete from the force of it, leaving a Neji-shaped dent several inches deep.

Neji coughed blood and collapsed to the ground, unconscious and badly beaten.

Naruto's elbow is still extended in front of him and his body is where Neji's was only a split second before. "HOLY CRAP, THAT HURT!" he screams as he grabs his elbow and begins hopping around. "OUCH! OUCH! OUCH!"

The proctor, in his green jonin vest, appears next to the downed Neji and checks the boy's vital signs. "We need a medic!" he shouts, gesturing for a stretcher. "This match goes to Naruto Uzumaki!"

Naruto's mouth turns into a face-splitting grin as he clutches his elbow and moves to the contestant viewing area. He'd only used a single technique to win the match decisively. He went for the medics on standby to check out his elbow. The shunshin technique is supposed to be a supplementary technique, not an offensive technique. It's also not generally used with super-dense chakra, but most shinobi don't try compressing chakra as they mold it.

Naruto is not most shinobi. He does not accept defeat. He does not quit. He is driven.