A/N

Hey guys! I started another fanfic!

Also I appear to have died. Again.

Well I'm back now. Jesus supposedly came back after three days. I'm not that good. Took me a while.

The new story's called "A Key in the Graveyard" and it's a Kingdom Hearts story. It's from the perspective of a Keyblade wielder that fought in the Keyblade War. Not as 'family friendly' as the games are. People die. Very little Disney in the plan so far. Also only one chapter in months, so... follow at your own risk?

Take a gander if it so interests you.

I do not plan on stopping this story, as I still have an ass-ton planned for it. My updates for everything will be sporadic, so it might take a while, but I'm not giving it up. It just takes a while for me to write things (Understatement of the century).

I don't own shit.

This shit in particular.

"OK, I guess we'll start on something I know you would love to use: my projectile seal." I began.

Unfortunately, there were no available short-term missions at the desk to get myself out of teaching.

Tenten looked giddy.

I cocked an eyebrow. "Don't get too excited. You won't be able to use it, even if gave you a copy of the design right now."

Her eyebrows scrunched together adorably. "Why's that?"

"Well, really it's two seals in one." I pulled a scroll out of my back pouch. "This is the main storage point." I plopped it on the table and opened it up. "I don't usually keep this one on my person, mainly because I tend to take a lot of damage at the dumbest of times, and if this gets destroyed I lose everything." I pointed at the seal on my glove. "This, is just a variable access point for the main storage, and if I lose it, all I have to do is draw another one and I'm good.

"Now, the main storage point can only do one thing: talk with the access point, but the access point has three main functions. The first is the most important: it's the link between the two scrolls and my head, giving me a complete list of the contents of the seal and giving me free reign to choose what I want to come out. I actually had to consult my clan on that one, as it involves some general mind-fuckery. The second is to spit out its contents at one of two velocities; very fast, or not moving at all. The 'very fast' speed makes it so I don't ever have to throw something again, and the 'not moving' one means I can just grab something out of it. To be honest, I never actually learned how to throw weapons. I faked the fuck out of it in the academy." I smiled at the stricken horror that appeared on her face. "The third function was the hardest: a mono-directional singularity that sucks in all physical objects two feet in front of the seal. The 'singularity' part is how it sucks up objects larger than the seal itself. That is how I eat all incoming projectiles, and also how I got my hands on Momo's big-ass butterknife; he threw it at me.

"Ah-ah, not done." I said, cutting off the obvious question on her lips. I could tell she was annoyed at the 'butterknife' part. "I'll explain how to connect two separate seals later, as well as making them multipurpose. The main issue here is that you'll have to understand exactly how both of these work, because it's not as simple as throwing your chakra into it. There are multiple paths in both designs and channeling chakra into the wrong path, or making a wrong turn in the design will… Well it'll be very bad for your health. Get it?"

Tenten leaned a bit closer over the table, lips pursed slightly, and nodded.

"Good. Now immediately going over this is a trial by fire. It's pretty damn advanced, but it uses a lot of concepts and meshes them all together. I'll go over each individual one to give you a better handle on it all, but we'll move pretty fast. Keep up."

Determination shined in her eyes, and I kept going.

I pointed back at the scroll on the table. "This one is a Blood Seal. In other words, the whole thing has to be written in your blood. The access point; however, is only a partial Blood Seal. The star points are the only thing that need to be written in blood. In essence, that's what links the two seals together."

I looked up to see that she'd gone slightly pale, but didn't lose that determined glint. "Blood allows for a higher bandwidth of chakra through the seal, and restricts who can use it. You could write the access point all in blood, but it makes it a bit harder to control. Having that higher bandwidth isn't always a good thing. Now as for the 'restrictive' bit… Here, try to activate the one on the table."

She looked confused. "I thought you said that would be dangerous?"

"It is. Try it anyway."

She blinked at me and opened her mouth to say something, but closed it and frowned, then looked back down at the seal on the table. "Okay…"

Her hand reached over hesitantly and touched the seal, only for nothing to happen.

Her eyes scrunched together, and she touched the seal again.

Nothing.

"The fact that the whole thing is written in my blood basically means that it will only accept my chakra. Now to write a seal in blood in the first place, you have to imbue your blood with chakra and fuseit with the medium. We'll go over that later. Following so far?"

I continued without waiting for a response. "The higher bandwidth of a Blood Seal allows for much more functionality, as well as power and control. You're essentially optimizing the seal to fit you, and only you. Pretty useful stuff.

"Now, at its base, this is just a fancy storage seal, but it requires somewhat advanced knowledge of Uzumaki script which immediately makes it God level." I paused. "Well OK, it's not that ridiculous."

"Wait, Uzumaki?" Tenten sat up with curiosity in her eyes. "Like that orange idiot on Kakashi's team?"

I blinked at her, understandably dumbfounded. "You mean to say that you want to be a Fuinjutsu Master, and you don't know who the Uzumaki are?!"

She looked back at me expectantly.

"Oh for the love of- Okay, short version: Yes. Much like the orange idiot. He's one of the last of the Uzumaki Clan; a clan known for their sealing expertise. This clan is said to be one of three that are directly descended from the Sage of the Six Paths. Uzumaki, Senju, and Uchiha. Don't give me that look. Yes, the Uchiha are descended from Indra, the Sage's first born son. Uzumaki and Senju come from Asura, the second son."

She blinked. "How do you know all of that? None of that was covered in the academy, and everyone knows the Sage is a myth."

I shrugged. "My mom's an Uzumaki. Been teaching me this crap along with fuinjutsu since I was two. Plus, it doesn't really matter if they were or not, they're 'said to be' descended from the Sage. Sort of an obvious testament to their power, eh?"

She nodded in begrudging acceptance, then jerked her gaze back in my direction. "Wait, what? Since you were two?!"

"Well… Two and a half, if you want to be precise."

The nature transformation for fire was being an absolute asshole for the last few hours. I mean, I know I should probably have been working on of the other elements, as water was my main, making fire out to be as uncooperative as a pregnant, teenage bull who's dad won't let them go out with their friends on a Friday night. Yes, I know bulls are all male and the family life of cattle doesn't make sense to be anthropomorphized in an analogy such as this, but you get the picture.

...Don't you?

You do.

Anyway, fire was difficult for me, but I figured that if I could master my worst element, earth and lightning would come much easier. I had already gotten close to mastery with water and wind through the past few years, and it was about time that I started to fully take on mastering the other elements if I wanted my end goal to be feasible by the time Madara showed up.

I had already gotten my general chakra control to well beyond mastery, being nearly the only thing I had done with my spare time since the age of four. The next step was mastering the elements, which I was a little under half-way through, and should only take another few months or so. That was mainly thanks to my general chakra control mastery and having already worked through two of them completely. Total mastery would take a bit longer than that, but I could feasibly enter the Expert level by then. Third on the list was nature chakra, which I already had a little experience with while using fuinjutsu. That's not to say that I know how to control it at all, because I most definitely can't if I don't have a brush and ink in my hand.

I had a plan on that front though, which should make strides in the coming months, but wasn't guaranteed. Sage Mode in itself would be a boon that I wouldn't be able to turn down. Finally, step four would be mastering the Yin and Yang releases, then combining them. The physical and mental aspects of chakra are part of the foundation for basic chakra control, so just using them would not be difficult, but using them in any meaningful way by themselves would be a challenge. To find somewhere to start, Tsunade and the Nara clan were two of the more prominent figures for Yin Release; Tsunade's Creation Rebirth technique and medical jutsu in general, and the various shadow possession Nara techniques. As for Yang release, the only group that pops into my head is the Akimichi clan. Their body modification jutsus were pretty crazy. To up my Yin chakra capabilities, I would probably just go ham on becoming an awesome med-nin for a while… I made that sound like it would be a walk in the park… HA! Increasing my Yang chakra would be relatively easy in comparison though, as that focuses more on the physical aspect. I would just have to increase what I was adding to my gravity seal and I'd be set.

Then there was the absolute final step: combining it all together.

This was going to take a while, but thanks to my years of constant training in most of this already, the only thing I had to learn from scratch was how to manipulate nature chakra and enter Sage Mode. That one didn't take Naruto very long at all in the show, but he's a fast learner when someone's actually paying attention to him. It only took him a week; I'll give myself a month. Though I gave myself a bit of a head-start, as I knew part of it was staying still and trying to sense the nature chakra. Becoming completely still while meditating was a skill I had developed over the years in anticipation, and sensing the chakra around me wasn't too difficult as I had worked with it before in fuinjutsu, but using it in any way? Fuck no. I need a teacher, or I'd be a statue in five seconds flat.

The elements would take another few months on top of that, and I had a feeling that I needed to master Sage mode before I could master Yin-Yang Release, so the best I could do was get a better feel for my Yin and Yang until I could explore them from within Sage Mode.

So far, it had taken most of this past month's free time, but with the help of my clones I had finally managed to use the fire nature transformation to slowly burn up a leaf. Once I got the leaf to burn for about a half hour, I started to try the next step. It had been about three days into said step: igniting the air between my palms, or basically creating a small fireball the size of a candle flame from nothing, and I was making some decent progress despite the element of fire being a total asshole.

That is, I was making progress until I heard something whistling in the air flying towards my general direction.

A kunai with a sizzling explosive tag landed in the center of my clones and I. I released my clones and backflipped away from the tag but not before it exploded. The explosion itself wasn't nearly as big as a normal explosive tag, meaning I was safe, but when I saw who was attacking me, I could guess the reason was so that he wouldn't draw too much attention.

"Iwa." I growled. I don't think I'm capable of seeing anything but red at the sight of an Iwa hitai-ate. Not since Shiro died, and every time I go and visit Mai, that anger just consumes me until the regret hits, but here? An Iwa-nin in front of me, having already thrown the first, figurative, punch, and nobody to hold me back?

Oh boy.

"Konoha." He growled back almost as vehemently, though there was a flash of confusion at the sheer radiance of hate emanating from my face.

I picked myself up slowly, eyes never leaving my new target. "So what brings you to our little neck of the woods?" My lips didn't even quiver at the Konoha pun.

"You." He said simply, before getting into a ready stance.

I laughed. "Oh good. I suppose this has something to do with me killing that kid a couple years ago when you guys ambushed my team, right? What was his name? Yaku? Yasu? Yasuo? Yeah! That's it! Yasuo."

Another flicker of confusion, and was that… fear? Oh, I'm putting out killing intent. Gotta be careful about that while in the village. At least I didn't activate the Intent booster seal.

"No?" I asked, not truly caring why. There were plenty of reasons why an enemy nin would attack a 'Konoha prodigy' and I had already dealt with a couple. They were probably just trying to knock me out of the running for the Chunin exams. Let's ask.

"Is this about the Chunin exams then?"

A twitch of the muscles on his face told me that, yes, it indeed was.

"Ah, well. Sorry to disappoint. You can die now." I suppose I should have thought a bit harder about it. I mean killing one of our guests for the Chunin Exams, even provoked as it was, could mean war, but I wasn't thinking about that.

The Iwa-nin had no idea what happened as I turned on my perception seal and body-flickered in front of him. My one real hand was already flying through the half-seals of a fire jutsu before I flickered, and let me tell you; combining a jutsu of your opposite element witha body flicker is fucking hard. Niashi-sensei wanted me to learn this particular jutsu now that I was trying to get the fire element down, and I was almost able to do it without hand seals. It became much easier now that I could do the first exercise of the fire nature transformation.

But the Iwa nin didn't care about any of that. Instead he was more preoccupied with the napalm that had just been spit in his face... At least that's what I hope he was worried about, as he was currently on fire and screaming. It would be pretty weird to be worried about something else when you're on fire.

I smiled when I realized that even his mother wouldn't recognize the corpse after the fire consumed him.

Was this the 'Will of Fire' that the Third kept talking about? I liked it.

I would think back on it much later, but didn't care enough to notice it just then. As soon as the spitfire landed on the man, there was a 'poof' of a simple jutsu ending; masked by the flames as it was.

Once the Academy was out, Iruka often found himself helping the Hokage work through mountains of paperwork, as he was one of the few shinobi in the village that didn't mind sitting still for a while. He also often found himself kicked out to the waiting room while his village leader had important visitors, however when it came to mission reports, he was usually allowed to stay.

Iruka watched as one of the most promising young Genin in years left the Hokage's office, having just given a… disturbing report. Usually reports would be sent along channels from one of the Chunin at the desks a few stories down, but this one regarded a possible security risk and attack on one of their own during the lead up to the Chunin exams.

"What are the chances, Iruka, that this 'Iwa-nin' was one of the Chunin we sent out to test the rookie teams?" The Hokage asked, already seeming to know the answer.

Iruka looked down at the body-scroll on the Hokage's desk, a frown on his lips and looking a little green. He was now glad that he was too busy to test the teams himself, or he might have been the one taking up residence in that body scroll. "Pretty high, sir. The time frame Taichi gave us fits the mission Kotamaru was given."

The Third just sighed sadly, nodded, and slumped back into his chair. "I'm honestly glad the Iwa contingent hasn't arrived yet or I would be fearing a war on our doorstep. When they get here, we need to steer them and Taichi away from each other. I'll dispatch a note telling him to keep clear, saying something like trying to 'minimize repercussions' or something. I can't say I blame the boy under the circumstances, but this cannot happen again. Taichi should not have been tested along with the others; having been active for the last two years gives him much more credibility than the other Genin. I'm not sure where the communication failed, but that needs to be remedied." The Hokage paused for a second, then continued. "To avoid anything like this in the future, the testing of rookie teams will be left to their senseis, and observed by a hidden, unbiased Chunin."

Iruka nodded, jotting all the info down on a notepad.

"Bear." The Hokage said, and an Anbu appeared in the middle of the room kneeling. The Third held out the body scroll and envelope to the Anbu. "Take this to Ibiki to have the body examined and cross-check it with the mission roster. If he's one of ours, inform his next of kin and deliver payment for the assigned mission." Even though he said 'if', he was one hundred percent sure at this point. The Chunin, Kotamaru, was two hours overdue for his report.

The Anbu nodded, took both objects, and flashed out of the room in a swirl of leaves.

Ino was not the most mature twelve-year-old on the planet. She knew that. She was hot-headed and yelled a lot - a fact that her cousin never hesitated to get mad at her for - and she threw herself at the 'most self-absorbed dickbag in the village' constantly. Her cousin's words. She, of course, thought Sasuke was dreamy. Granted, her infatuation with the Uchiha had started to teeter out as soon as she left the Academy. It wasn't for lack of desire, but more that her time and priorities started to shift as she started to take on the life of a career shinobi.

Now that's not to say her focus completely shifted either. Every time she ran into her earliest true friend-and-now-rival, Sakura, that hot-headed side of hers would come out to play. She would get competitive and spout out stuff like, "He's mine, Billboard-brow!" and, "Being on his team is a pretty good handicap!" For Ino, Sasuke was now less of a crush, and more an object to fight over with Sakura.

Again, she knew this. Her clan training taught more psychology than technique. She could analize nearly anyone. Herself included, and it annoyed her that she could see it all logically, but when push came to shove, all that logic fell away.

Every time she saw Sakura, they would fight and call eachother names. Ino knew that fighting over Sasuke wasn't worth it in the slightest, but they were both stubborn. Too stubborn to stop fighting and realize just how petty their rivalry had become. However Ino did realize. She had realized a long time ago, but couldn't bring herself to go up to her once best friend and say, 'I don't care about Sasuke anymore. I just want to be friends again.'

She was too proud, and it was killing her.

She once had a close friend as a kid. It was her cousin, Taichi. He had always seemed so aloof and calm. Like none of the worlds problems mattered. But then, they were tiny children; their problems didn't matter. She grew up listening to his playful banter with Shiro and all the adults. He was always so mature, but would always play with her and never brushed her off. Sure, he would complain, and was lazy like Shikamaru, but it wouldn't ever take much to get him active and going, and once up, he was more fun to be around than most. They would play 'ninja' for hours at a time, and he was the one who would groan when finally called for dinner, always wanting an extra few minutes to play… Though that might have had something to do with the fact that Aunt Tomo always cooked curry for dinner, he would still push to play a bit more with his 'favorite cousin', and she loved him for it.

That easy friendship died when he came home after a mission one day when they were ten. He had been gone for much longer than he said. It was only supposed to take a day or two at most. He had been gone for nearly a week, and when he finally returned, had spent another week in intensive care at the hospital in a medically induced coma.

She was terrified for her cousin, and when she found out, she bolted to the hospital only to find him still in surgery. There was no immediate threat to his life, but there was a lot to fix, apparently. She waited for hours outside of the operating room, and only allowed herself to be dragged home once she saw him alive and breathing.

After he woke up though, she visited him everyday, and everyday her heart broke a little bit more. Sure, he still acted the same as he normally did, but she could see it in his eyes. Something had broken in him, and her fun-loving cousin might as well have been dead, replaced by a burning sentinel that would watch over everyone he loved until the day his body passed and was laid to rest beside his soul that he buried when he was ten years old.

Perhaps he could be brought back in time, with the right person saying the right things, but she couldn't help him. She didn't know how, and that thought hurt more than she could imagine.

So when about a month ago, she saw Naruto, Sasuke, and their sensei leaving the hospital with bleak expressions, after coming back from a mission that took nearly twice the allotted time, she panicked.

"Where's Sakura?" She had asked. Nearly screamed.

Naruto looked stricken for a second. "Uh… Hi Ino-."

"Sakura! Is she okay?"

"Yes! Um no, I mean - Agh!" Naruto fumbled with his words and Ino grabbed him by the collar, desperate for a straight answer.

Hands pried her own off of Naruto's jacket gently, "Mah, Mah." The white-haired Jounin began. "She'll be okay in the end. If you want to see her, she's in room 207."

She bolted away from the trio, flying through the hospital hallways and getting yelled at along the way, until she found the mentioned room and burst through the door."

"...I-Ino?" Sakura hesitantly said, staring in confusion at the panting blond.

Ino just took a few seconds to scan her friend. Friend, because that's what she was. If the injury was any testament to the dangers of their chosen career path, a petty rivalry was not worth spending any spare thought. She wanted her friend back.

"Are you okay?" Ino asked, scanning the pinkette from top to bottom. "I saw your team leaving the building without you and-" Her voice died when her eyes fell on empty space typically reserved for a leg.

Sakura's own eyes fell down to the missing limb. "Yeah." She said quietly. Slowly. "I guess you win now, huh? Go ahead and gloat. Sasuke's not going to want anything to do wit-" She was cut off by a slap to the face.

"You're alive." Ino said around the lump in her throat and the brimming tears in her eyes. "You're alive and that's all that matters. Fuck Sasuke. I don't care, I'm done fighting over him with you. Just please- just… just…" Ino couldn't take it. She wrapped her arms around a completely stunned Sakura and cried.

And there she stayed for nearly ten minutes, Sakura still confused, though now rubbing Ino's back in small, slow circles, just let her cry.

Finally, Ino took a deep breath and sat up next to Sakura in the hospital bed, though didn't fully unwrap her arms from the embrace. "I'm sorry. You're the one with the-" She swallowed. "You're the one in the hospital, and here I am, crying like a baby in your lap."

"...I'm not sure you can call it a 'lap' anymore. There's not much of it left." The attempt at humor only made Ino tear up more, though. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry! Don't cry! I was trying to be funny!" She quickly got out, eyes wide and waving her hands in a placating manner.

That though, made Ino chuckle. It was a part of her friend that she hadn't seen in years.

"I'm so glad you're okay." She said, and squeezed Sakura into another awkward bed-hug.

After that whole debacle, the two girls clicked for the first time since their early Academy days. Sakura was in the hospital for nearly three weeks, which confused Ino. She couldn't really figure out why they were keeping her, but Sakura didn't seem to care much. She just spent her free time gossiping with Ino, reading a book that she said she received from Ino's cousin, or playing with a little marionette that came from the same person. That's how the conversation about the Wave mission came up. Ino was interested to know that Taichi had been with them on the mission, and that he had beat the shinobi that took Sakura's leg. She didn't ask for details, but Sakura told her how he had helped her after the fight, and talked her through the concept of a puppet limb.

Ino was ecstatic that Sakura was taking this in stride, that she would be up and about in the coming months as if nothing ever happened.

But something did happen, and she was just glad she had her friend back.

A/N

Welp, no promises when the next one's coming out. I just had time and incling today to sit down and finish a chapter. Not giving up on it by any means. Just gonna take a while.

I hope my writing has gotten better. I've been practicing a bit with a couple other story ideas, and I think I'm getting a little better hold on this whole thing. I want to go back and edit all my early chapters to fit my progress, but that's ridiculously time-consuming. Well, I'll get to it eventually. Probably.

Please let me know if there's something I can do to improve; which is also known as Constructive Criticism.
Please do not shove insults up my ass.
Please review! Even if it's just a word or two, I'd like to know what you all think.