Prologue

Sasuke Uchiha had insisted that the reason he had collapsed (he refused to say the word 'fainted') during his fight with the ice-nin was due to the fact he had literally been turned into a human pincushion by said ninja's senbon. He neglected to say that, briefly before he had lost consciousness, he had had a front-row seat to a furious blonde's piercing gaze, and although Naruto's anger hadn't been directed at him, but rather at his cowardly attacker (really, he had hidden behind his mirrors because he had clearly been too afraid to fight Sasuke man-to-man), the dark-haired boy hadn't been able to suppress the shiver that had run down his spine.

Naruto's eyes had been a vivid crimson, pupils slit like those of a snake, and an angry, vermillion chakra had started to leak, - yes, leak – out of his small frame. But, while that was mildly terrifying (another fact the Uchiha would never admit aloud), the last thing Sasuke had seen he had quickly dismissed that his clouded mind falling into unconsciousness had no doubt been playing tricks on him. He would never dignify what he had definitely not seen by even considering the fact that it could have been real.

At least, until he remembered that he had had his newly awakened Sharingan active at the time. That – that would be a stinker in contradicting his vehement denial.

The boy was now sitting in the Uchiha Compound's extensive library, scrolls of all kinds spread around him in an unusual mess for the usually (almost painfully) neat genin. He dragged a hand down his face as he recalled the trip back from Wave. Their silver-haired sensei had been eyeing Naruto carefully, which wasn't too far-fetched considering the malevolent chakra his teammate apparently seemed to possess. The unusual part though, and what had only served to add to Sasuke's newfound paranoia that he had not, in fact, inherited a faulty Sharingan (believe him, the alternative was worse), was that the jonin had occasionally spared him a covert, backwards glance before returning to stare intently at Naruto over his little, orange book.

In the privacy of his home, Sasuke let out a very un-Uchiha groan and let his face fall onto the wooden table he was seated at, his shoulders sagging in defeat.

The moment they had all arrived back to the village, the blonde had been spirited away by their sensei with a farewell as short as Naruto, and he and Sakura were dismissed to return to their homes to rest and recuperate. Now, Sasuke knew that it wasn't protocol for a returning jonin-sensei to report with only one other member of their team present, which could only mean one thing…

He sighed. He actually had to consider that what he'd seen in his half-conscious state, had been real. That brought him to where he was sitting now, hunched over clan scrolls, books and heck, even a family tree to find answers to the many questions that were now buzzing around his head like a swarm of an Aburame's chakra-draining insects.

He unrolled yet another scroll, hoping against hope that this one would finally answer the first one on his list. He sighed yet again, something he'd been doing more in the past few hours than he had in his entire life.

Now, if only he could find one conveniently titled: "A Complete History of Blonde Idiots that have Awakened the Sharingan."