This time my Vault of Ink had mercy on me and produced not a person or a dark cloud shrouded creature for my eyes to consume and the rest of my mind to ravage but an idea…no two ideas. It gave me two ideas, two choices I must make to keep my sanity: a man with great power but with great disadvantage, or a man with great intuition but weak self-accomplishment. I chose…both.

Alright, alright i didn't think up this story all by myself; someone dropped a review in one of my stories once upon a time and my blessed curse just had to make something with it. yeah, and the dude that dropped that review, if by some coincidence your reading this…thanks, but…(*waves hand for you to forget*) I'd rather not…yell…this openly.

Please understand guys; my 'talent', if you'd call it that, virtually controls part of my senses, it brings ideas into my mind and continuously clouds my mind till I write it down. It basically drives my mind, leaving me a passenger. I really try to control it but so far I can't; I just go with it till I need to go and ask my psychiatrist for more advice. I also accept advice from all o' y'all so…thanks if you care enough to drop something.

Just some insight to this story. Naruto here is very smart, like really, really smart. He is really manipulative, starts small but it progresses with each chapter. Kyuubi is more tolerable, even helpful. A small note, if you all don't mind; I'll be putting 'Anything but being a Ninja' on a temporary hiatus but the rest of my stories that haven't been finished will be continued when I get out of school…in a few months…

Oh! And I want to put 'The White Hornet' up for adoption; just don't feel it anymore, y'know, with all these stories packed up in my head I can't think up how to continue that story. Anyone that wants to take it should PM me first, ok? Awesome!

I don't want to keep you all waiting with my mindless jabbering so, without further ado, I give to you…

Shadows Smirk

I DO NOT OWN NARUTO

CHAPTER 1

There were a lot of things medical chakra could do, from healing minor scabs to mending entire skeletal systems, going even further to say that it could heal entire limbs back to functionality. It was even widely rumoured that if a medic was to go deeper into his or her profession then he or she would be able to regenerate from fatal wounds. Most believed that was what the crystal on the legendary slug Sannin, Tsunade Senju, symbolized but thankfully there wasn't any reason for the woman to demonstrate what it was for.

True, medical ninjutsu was a great branch of ninjutsu which all ninjas had great respect for, there were some things that it couldn't do. Like raising the dead, or permanently curing hereditary brain tumours, or even healing fatal spine injuries.

Those unfortunate that medical ninjutsu couldn't aid in any way were deeply compensated in other ways if they were ninjas and heavily insured if they were civilians.

Naruto never enjoyed any of these medical privileges.

You see his problem happened at his birth, 12 years ago when the Kyuubi had been freed and not too long before it was to be re-sealed but this time into the Yondaime's only son, just as Kushina and Minato had used their own bodies to prevent the Kyuubi's violent claw from reaching their precious child, the lethal nail had come half way through and scratched Naruto's right thigh, leaking a small portion of its vile chakra into the infants growing chakra system.

Popular poll and basic knowledge for the more adept ninjas stated that, demon chakra, youkai, no matter how small, was terribly poisonous. It was a tainted, fractured version of the human chakra system that had come to be through less known means. The ninjas weren't too well informed on the origin of the tailed beast, namely the Juubi.

Now, Naruto was in a world of pain and he was too young to understand what 'pain' was. It was after this time that Kyuubi had been sealed inside him with the semi irreversible seal matrix instead of the standard Uzumaki sealing method the red haired woman used to keep the chakra monster in her, as well as the jinchuriki before her, Uzumaki Mito. The tainted chakra had taken over the poor child's right leg and just as the Kyuubi could take its chakra back, it was too late.

Naruto's whole right leg was now useless.

It was something the Kyuubi would both regret and be thankful he had done when the blonde would ask him in the future. Regret because he was the reason Naruto would never be a shinobi again and be thankful because the boy found something to make him far better than any shinobi.

The bad leg, outwardly, looked as healthy as its other half, albeit slightly paler, but inwardly it was useless and partly lifeless. Naruto had been confined to a wheel chair since the day he could remember and he had been a sitting duck since the day he could talk; the villagers, not knowing whose son he was, capitalized on the fact he couldn't run by beating him. All the child could do was begging for mercy, but none was given.

On his 4th birthday he was kicked out of the orphanage, having to literally crawl to shelter and last a month before the old (and very naïve) Hokage would rescue him.

The only friend he had was the voice in his head proclaiming himself as the Kyuubi no Kitsune, the most powerful of all the tailed beasts. He had been introduced to the Kyuubi, involuntarily, when he was forced to eat mouldy bread and drink old milk. It was the Kyuubi that kept bolstering him on to not give up; if the Kyuubi hadn't been there then Naruto would have gladly submitted to the world.

They say every one globally recognized has an origin story.

Naruto's origin story was that…

He opened a book.

Well…it wasn't exactly a book, more of a single page in a beat up paper back.

He had just celebrated his fifth birthday by himself; the Hokage had recently been too busy to visit him, the silver haired, dog mask wearing ANBU agent had stopped coming as well, and even the cat that had a curious red ribbon on her ear had stopped visiting. The only person that stayed; he didn't have any option, was the Kyuubi. As I was saying, after celebrating another lonely birthday, the child was about to go to bed until a thin book was thrown at him through the window by an obviously drunk villager who just happened to throw the first thing he saw, disregarding all the 'healthy' sized stones around in favour of an old, abused paperback book.

He tentatively picked it up, not having the energy to yell at the man, and opened it. It was like kami had sent him an apology for how messed up his life was.

The book contained only a picture and a page long paragraph. He was at least grateful the Sandaime had taught him how to read and write before he stopped coming; apparently the picture wasn't a picture at all, it was a seal. He took his time marvelling over how neat and intricate it looked, tracing his fingers over the drawing, his eyes then trailed to the writing. It was in a neat cursive and from what he read the picture (he didn't know it was a seal until then) was a basic fuinjutsu for storage.

His voice murmured slowly as his fingers traced where he was reading. After reading he blinked slowly and read over it again, something in his mind clicked, "Kyu? What do you think?"

The living natural disaster was also reading the writing, he looked at the Shinigami's seal, knowing that he would never be able to break out, and shrugged, "from what I remember, fuinjutsu is a very underappreciated branch of jutsu. The possibilities are endless. I'm certain that with enough dedication…"

"…I'll be able to walk," Naruto finished, he looked back at the seal and relaxed his hands when he saw they were gripping the delicate book harshly, "I-I don't know Kyu, this looks hard," he again trailed his fingers on the seal; Kyuubi allowed the boy to speak, "this fuin-something doesn't seem like much. But you did say it was 'underappreciated' and that the 'possibilities are endless'" the boy hummed cutely and scratched his chin, "you know what? I'll see what I can do, if it's too hard I'll stop," the Kyuubi rolled his eyes and settled in for the night while Naruto struggled up to the window sill directly next to his bed and waved his arms frantically, a mantis mask wearing ANBU operative dropped down from the roof and crouched on his desk, the unknown question asked, "please, ANBU-san, can you get me more stuff on this, please," the man snorted and was about to jump away but Naruto wasn't having any of that; he latched onto his leg with both arms and held on, "please," he tried doing what he saw most orphans do to collect more food: pout and widen his eyes. Naruto underestimated the power his kicked puppy look had on people.

The man sighed and silently flicked Naruto's arms away, he then back flipped out the window and came back a minute later with an arm sized scroll, "beginners level, kid, when you finish let me know," Naruto was only half hearing what the man had droned out; he had snatched the scroll and was pouring through it furiously. Mantis sighed and dropped the empty scroll, brush and ink on the bed, he briefly studied the boy and when he was sure Naruto wouldn't notice he dropped another empty scroll, as a spare, and left.

Naruto wasn't aware, not in the least; he was salivating over the beginners scroll for fuinjutsu users. His childish mind a whirlwind of ideas and possibilities from what the unknown author of the scroll wrote seal masters could do with seals. It said fuinjutsu could seal away entire buildings and even create a solid protective barrier when needed. He filled in the blanks of what the person didn't want to write like it could seal away bijou and if possible alter reality slightly, not too much but to the users favour.

If fuinjutsu could do this then there was still hope for him to be a ninja. If he could invent a seal fast enough before the academy started then he could be a ninja. Realistically speaking, it was impossible; one of the signature jutsu the Yondaime used, as outlined by the scroll, took him years to make and even longer to fully master, so he unconsciously prepared himself for disappointment. There was one thing he wasn't aware of; it was to never count out an Uzumaki, especially when it concerns fuinjutsu.

Sleep left him that night…and the subsequent nights…and the subsequent months of studying the enthralling scroll. The boy was so awfully dedicated to mastering the beginners scroll that he had set aside an hour, from 3 am to 4 am, to get some shut eye. It was just for necessity; he was abiding by what the scroll had set down.

It was after three months that he had finally made a successful storage scroll.

Naruto couldn't recall the happiest he had ever been after seeing the stick being sealed into the scroll and unsealed. He didn't need to even ask the mantis mask wearing ANBU to give him another scroll; he found another level scroll, bigger and heavier than the last one, on his bed. Little did he know it was the Sandaime that was giving him the fuinjutsu scrolls through his ANBU ninja. The scrolls were coming straight from the joint Namikaze-Uzumaki sealing scrolls the Yondaime and his wife had set aside for their child if they were ever met their demise. It was the Third's way of keeping the child's mind off his seemingly permanent predicament, and if there was ever a need, for Naruto to have a way to defend himself.

It was when the budding seal master was 11 years old did the Sandaime get the shock of his life.

The boy had been making progress in his seal work so fast that on his 11 birthday he was a level eight seal master. Besides the regular studies on the regular supply of training scrolls, Naruto had been ensuring that he kept his primary goal in mind. He spent half a day of scouring his scroll and then spent the rest of the day cracking seals to their base strokes and separating them so he knew the combinations to make. He tested them on the dead rats in his hovel like apartment, hoping and praying for their legs to even twitch minutely. His breakthrough finally came when the dead rat scampered erratically around his apartment, as if it was being electrocuted. The creature was still as dead as a door stop; it was only his lower half that was moving but it was the result he had been searching for.

As the rat was running around limply his fingers tapped the table periodically when it slowed down, it froze for half a second and continued moving about madly.

He called it a Forced Movement seal. Its inspiration, surprisingly, was gotten from a barrier seal. The barrier seal was powered by the users own chakra, if the person ever stopped the flow then the barrier would momentarily lose its integrity and crumble but if the flow was continuous until the barrier was no longer needed then it could with stand the full brunt of numerous lightning jutsu. The force movement seal functioned almost the same way; one part of the seal would be placed on his useless leg and the other would be in the palm of his hand. Though it was still unfinished, the seal in the leg was to send some chakra to the main tenketsu in his legs and the muscles to stimulate movement, the one in his hand was inspired by the walkie talkies he saw the villagers children played with, the seal in his palm is where he would channel the chakra and it would immediately go to the leg seal.

The only thing that remained was to add in a chakra store in case he ever forgot to channel chakra and to make sure it wouldn't inflict too much strain on himself. He shakily controlled the epileptic rat to him and scanned over the dead body for any wounds or strained muscles.

Success.

No problems whatsoever. He covered his mouth hastily and giggled, 'no better time like the present,'

'Don't overdo it, kit,'

'No worries Kyu, I've got this,' he over loaded the seal on the paper, a severe down side of the wonder seal, and both leg and palm seals dissolved into small drops of ink. He placed his left hand on the ground and began the long process of drawing the seals, after drawing the seals flawlessly on his palm and his right leg, 'here goes nothing…' he channelled a trickle of chakra to 'warm' the seal up and steadily increased the flow, his eyes widened when he felt his dead leg twitch again and again, he scrambled to his hands and knees and pushed himself up.

He fell down.

He grunted in frustration and pushed off the ground again, stumbling around and smashing back first into the wall. He tried to get his legs back under control but the limbs rebelled and began kicked around. It greatly surprised him that it was both of his legs that went against him, the left leg kicked a hole through his wall and his right axe kicked the only table he had. He reduced the chakra flow into the seal and when he felt his legs crumble under him he jump started it again, the rebellion reduced to only a barely perceived muscle twitch this time.

The moment he began walking he felt like a new born baby, bumbling and crashing into furniture but since he didn't exactly have anywhere to go for a while he used the week to get used to walking. Then he went to the Hokage's office…

"Naruto?"

"In the flesh!" the last time Hiruzen Sarutobi had seen Naruto he was a short five year old boy with dazzling blonde hair and healthily bronze skin. Now…now he looked very unhealthy, with the way his dull blonde hair flopped weakly on his head, he noticed the jaggedness on the edges and assumed Naruto had been cutting his own hair and how his skin now looked too pale and veiny. His skin was pallid and malnourished; his clothes looked like they hadn't been washed in… a really long time. From the large holes on the boys torso and legs he saw the purple bruises and the obvious stab wounds turned scars, the horrifying stab wounds were so large that you would have to be blind to not notice them and how awfully numerous they were. He knew if he was to check Naruto's whole body he would find more.

In summary, he looked the direct contrast of how one in his lineage was meant to be treated. The Hokage held his face and restrained the tears that wanted to fall down, 'how could it have gotten this bad?' though he was the one to send the training scrolls to Naruto through one of his ninjas he hadn't personally checked up on him, even through his scrying ball. He has failed in protecting Naruto and he knew it. He lifted his head, and though Naruto hid it well he saw the major distrust in his eyes and the way his fingers kept tapping his supposed to be dead thigh.

"Hello? Are you still there Sandaime-sama?" there was another reason he had failed; Naruto used to call him grandfather, honourable grandfather, but it grandfather all the same. He put his best game face on and allowed his mouth to fall open when he finally noticed Naruto was standing, the pale blonde took his surprise in stride, "pretty neat huh?"

"H-h-how…"

"There was this really nice ninja that gave me this scroll on fuinjutsu; it was so interesting I just had to learn it,"

'The level of mastery he has to have to create a seal to do this is amazing!' he cleared his throat, "well done Naruto-kun," he watched, confused, as Naruto's shoulders sagged in disappointment, "is there a problem,"

"Ji-I mean-Sandaime-sama…I came to sign up for the academy, I may be a bit too old but-but with hard work and dedication I can-"

"I'm sorry Naruto-kun but you can't be admitted," the old man cut him off before Naruto could fall into a nervous rant,

"Why not!"

The Hokage waved for a cat mask wearing ninja to stand down after the boy's outburst, "technically…you still can't walk,"

"But I can! Look at me!" he stomped around the room and stumbled after two steps, he cursed foully and stood up so he could walk around again, "I can walk fine!"

"I can see the strain it has on you-"

"It's only a little, I'll get used to it!"

"The answer is still no. You're very unhealthy and your very weak," he visibly saw the respect the boy had for him, the little left, fall out of Naruto's eyes as a small stream of tears,

"And whose fault is that?"

Sarutobi sighed, "Naruto-"

"answer me, who's to blame," he used a dirty sleeve to blow out his nose, "I spend the greater part of 7 years to find out how I can walk…so I can finally be a ninja…and you-you won't even give me a chance to prove myself,"

"I was just being honest. I can't have any of my ninjas weak, what if that seal got washed off by a water jutsu user?" Naruto kept quiet, "exactly,"

"I-I can make it more durable, I just need a bit more time,"

"The answer is still no. I can register you for civilian school?"

"No! I want to be a ninja!"

"Naruto…I'll say this once and only once but you can't ever be a ninja,"

You can't ever be a ninja

Ever

His last words echoed around the room, into the listening ears of the hidden ANBU and the blonde boy. He took the proclamation very well. The tears stopped flowing and his anguished face smoothed over, he didn't even bow before he left the office. Seeing the boy go and acknowledging he had just broken a child's dream the Hokage went back to work, his heart berating him for his harsh words but his mind drowning the voice out by saying it was to disillusion the boy.

"I told you he wouldn't agree,"

'Yeah well, good for you,'

"That wasn't what I meant, kit," he hadn't seen the boy this defeated in a long time, his eyes were glassy and his weak blonde hair seemed even weaker and duller than normal. Naruto was looking at the ceiling with his face a perfect mask of expressionlessness. His shirt was off and his hands were tracing the latest scar he had, near his belly button, he deeply wondered why he hadn't set up barrier seals and alarm seals around his apartment. Maybe it was because of the childish hope that the people in the village would finally see he wasn't bad.

He chuckled dryly at the thought, 'they'd never accept me,'

"Kit?"

'You were right, heck you're always right; they would never accept me,' Naruto rubbed his face and sat up. His eyes moved to the scraps of paper scattered all over his apartment, on the pieces of paper were unfinished and imperfect seals, the seals that were good enough were neatly stacked beside his broken table. He pumped some chakra into the seal and stumbled to the neat pile of paper, 'what should I do, Kyu?'

"I don't know why you keep asking me for instruction kit, I'm not exactly the best at giving advice," this wasn't true; it was the Kyuubi that had pushed him into studying fuinjutsu and it was also the great beast that picked him up whenever he fell down, Kyuubi was always there.

Always

The boy knelt down beside the pile and blankly looked over the pieces of paper, 'I don't know what to do with myself anymore, the only reason I invented this seal was to be a ninja and you saw how that turned out,'

"Then prove them wrong, make something out of nothing,"

'What do you mean?'

"To be honest kit, I can't stand this place. Konoha. You can't feel it yet but so do you," Naruto didn't even raise any complaint, "you have potential, I can see it, but this place is limiting you,"

'What should I do?' he already knew what the beast was about to suggest, he just wanted him to say it out loud,

"I propose we make our own paradise," Naruto laughed breathily,

'That's crazy talk,'

"I'm being serious here. If this place won't see you for you then either go somewhere else or make your own place. I don't want to see wasted potential,"

'Assuming I agree with you…how do you suppose I leave, I barely know how to walk,' the great beast chuckled darkly after hearing what the boy had said,

"Baby steps. Remember what I said all those years ago: In fuinjutsu, the possibilities are endless," the jinchuriki blinked slowly and comprehension finally dawned on him, as well as ideas for more seals. He couldn't stop himself; he picked up a random sheet of paper and began scrawling over it, crafting and drawing a seal that would soon propel him into the global recognition in the near future. He made a wrong stroke and discarded the paper and began anew on another empty scroll.

When he had finally finished he crawled to a pile of dirty clothes and slipped the scroll under it, he shuffled a bit away and drew a clean 'X' on the seal n his belly.

Naruto steadied his breathing and channelled chakra into the 'X' seal…

Authors note

What'cha think? Good? Bad? Meh?

I'll update this when I can; I'm still in school.

Review!

B.j.