Disclaimer: Whoever told you that I owned both Naruto and Fullmetal Alchemist was a sick, filthy liar. In this universe. In some alternate reality, I'm sure that it's possible. Maybe. Well, actually, probably not, but that what we authors dream of, right? ^_^

Published: Sunday, May 4, 2014 (MAY THE FORTH BE WITH YOU!)

Notes: Oh, it's been ages. And after I promised a new chapter, too. Um. Whoops. Well, that's life, isn't it? Still. Actually, I had this chapter all written up and... I hated it. Loathed the thing with every fiber of my being. It had a bunch of good ideas, ideas that I will most certainly be using in the future, but it was much too climatic for a middle chapter. You'll probably see the hospital stuff in three (or so) chapters. Oooh, hints. I am so very evil. (Not.) Congrats to all those who guessed why Elric liked blue, you were all correct! As always, leave a review. What did you like? What did you dislike? The best way to improve is to have someone point out mistakes, so if everybody would just take a moment after reading to think about something they didn't like (or heck, just their least favorite part if you can't find something you actively dislike), I would be immeasurably grateful. Until later, everybody!

Chapter Four

Transmutation Integration Situation

Naruto Uzumaki chewed on the end of his pencil as he referenced his mother's Alchemy books, looking back and forth between the diagram given and his own modest attempt at drawing a transmuation circle. He placed his hands over the circle and focused on changing the state of the paper into a folded form, becoming absolutely still for long moments, a bead of sweat falling down his face. Nothing happened.

With a frustrated growl, he reached forward and plucked the circle off the desk, crumpling it into a ball and tossing it behind his back toward the garbage bin. The ball of paper bounced off of the wire bin's full contents, dropping off of the other pieces of paper and down the side of a rapidly growing paper mountain of failed Alchemy equations.

"Why can't I get this right?!" Naruto shouted at himself irritably, rubbing his hands through his hair wildly.

He had little patience for his own shortcomings, hunkering back down into his books and reading late into the night by the light of a flickering lamp. No matter what he did, he couldn't seem to complete the transmutation –- rearranging the mass of the object. He could recognize the make up of an object, and even the balance of kinetic versus potential energy, but he couldn't break it down or reform it. (1)

He was a failure as an Alchemist.

Naruto spread out his arms, crashing his work to the floor violently, and jumped to his feet, sweeping his red coat off of the back of his chair. He stalked out into the night, body slumped broodingly inward. He tucked his hands into his pockets and disappeared into the Hidden Village's shadows.

~ oOo ~

Though Naruto's efforts at Alchemy remained unrewarded with success, his efforts at proving his innocence of any wrongdoing on his exam were blessed with uncommonly good fortune. Or so it seemed at first.

The Hokage had returned the next day, again accompanied by Iruka but also by a strange man with a stone cold face. Naruto had seen him before around the village, but didn't know anything about him. Naruto sat down at his kitchen table and stared unfalteringly up at the Hokage, folding his arms over his chest.

"So what's this all about?" Naruto demanded. "My results were good, but that isn't enough to get the Hokage involved in a test about an Academy student." He wasn't fooled by the friendship he had with the old man. The Hokage meant business, and business was never good when one was Uzumaki Naruto.

The Hokage coughed into his fist for a moment, sheepishly caught in his own passive lie by a mere student of the basic ninja arts. "Well, yes," he said. "If it were merely your overall result –– as good as it was –– I would not have been concerned. I probably wouldn't have even been notified. Though it surprised quite a few of the Examiners, Iruka and myself have always known that you would improve your grades if you merely applied yourself."

"And?" Naruto prodded, foot tapping the floor, the round-about explanation getting on his last nerve. He had been unable to sleep for more than an hour at a time last night, incapable of putting his worry out of his mind. He had repeatedly awoken with the solution to his inability to use transmutation right at the edge of his thoughts, quickly out of his desperate grasp when he gained cognizance and reached for it.

"The Extra Credit section on the Information Exam is always rather advanced," the Hokage explained slowly, resting both elbows on the scratched kitchen table and leaning forward. "A chance for lucky students who know the answers to a question to gain back some of their lost points in the main sections of the exam. The first question was not very difficult, relatively. Some extra, unassigned reading could tell anyone what the other village symbols are. But Seals, Naruto . . ." the Hokage paused in unfocused worry. "Seals are advanced work."

"It was a trick question," Naruto said numbly, eyes wide. He looked away from the Hokage toward Iruka, and then from the instructor's worried gaze to the stranger. The stranger's frown brought him back to the Hokage. He ran a head over his head. "I wasn't supposed to know the answer. None of us were."

The Hokage shook his head gravely. "No, Naruto," he rumbled solemnly. "Academy Students are taught only the most basic theory, simplified for an inexperienced audience. Genin students are taught a bit more, and Chunin more still. But only Jonin are required to be able to explain how the Seals we use in our profession actually work, and they are not required to know how to make them from scratch. The last great Seal Master is Jiraiya of the Sannin, and he only learned to make the easiest Seals when he preparing for the Chunnin Exams –– and he was considered a prodigy."

Naruto had the sudden desire to let his head fall to the table with a groan. That, however, was an outward sign of weakness, which Naruto couldn't bear. He straightened in his chair and brought his chin upward challengingly. "So?" he asked.

"Where did you learn this, Naruto?" the Hokage asked, his forehead wrinkled in concern. "Who taught you this? Was it a ninja? Was he from this Village?"

"What should it even matter?" Naruto asked stubbornly. "I learned how to make a couple of simple Seals. So what?"

The Hokage's eyes were shadowed by his hat as he tilted his head downward. "Because that work is beyond your skill level, Naruto, or even the skill level of those years older than you. There are very few Seal Masters in the world, and each of them are powerful beyond measure. Whoever taught you this could be a very real danger to the Village," the Hokage cautioned. "I must know who it was."

Naruto was silent for a long while. He leaned back in his chair, slumping over his joined hands. He hissed in a slow breath. "I didn't learn it from a person, Old Man," he explained. He avoided the Hokage's eyes guiltily. "I learned it from books."

"From books?" The Hokage frowned. "Where did you get these books?" He wracked his mind, trying to reason out where Naruto could have possibly gotten his hands on advanced ninja manuals on such a strange, little recorded art. Unless one of the Clans had kept an obsolete scroll on Seals and had given it to Naruto, there were very few places that one could get their hands on Sealing manuals. And fewer still that could not get Naruto executed for treason, Academy student or not.

"You gave them to me."

It was so unexpected that the Hokage didn't quite understand what Naruto had said until he had a long moment to parse it. Even then, he didn't understand. "What?" the Hokage asked. "When?"

Naruto shook his head slowly, refusing to speak more. He could not bear having his mother's things taken from him, the only thing he had left to remember her by. He could not afford to have the coded contents lost to him. He hadn't even managed to successfully Transmute –– he was still missing something. The Hokage leaned back in his chair and tucked his hands inside his sleeves as he crossed his arms, watching silently underneath his hat as Iruka began to cajole Naruto to continue his explanation.

Naruto was many things, but a liar was not one of them. The Hokage had, somehow, given Naruto information that had allowed the boy to become studied in the advanced art of Sealing. Perhaps he had accidentally switched one of the basic training scrolls he had gifted Naruto with one of the forbidden scrolls in the archives in the Hokage Tower? But somehow that explanation did not satisfy the old man.

The Hokage could not let it rest like this. However Naruto had gotten them, whether or not he was telling the truth, there was an instruction set for Sealing that Naruto had managed to gain possession of. Even Naruto, with his inhuman chakra reserves, could manage to kill himself from chakra exhaustion if he attempted Sealing. And that was only if it killed him before it activated, in which case it just might take out half of the village first.

Iruka cut off mid word as the Hokage stood, placing a single hand on the table. "I will give you until the Graduation Exam to tell me where you have gotten this knowledge of Sealing. If you do not tell me then, I will have to refuse your Graduation –– and have you detained as a danger to the village."

With those grave words, the Hokage left through the green apartment door, the stranger peeling off of the wall and following a moment afterward. Iruka looked between the back of his Hokage and his unmoved favorite student, face horrified.

~ oOo ~

Naruto sat on the bench within the park three blocks from his apartment building. It was still early spring, and the sunset came early in the day. It was already dark, and he was utterly alone. His hands were pressed together, and he stared at them with a sense of wrongness that was not totally the fault of the message that the Hokage had come to relay to him. There was something wrong with his hands, but Naruto didn't know what. He sat there for hours, staring blankly down at his clasped fingers, leaning forward with slumped shoulders. His red coat seemed to enfold him like he was a young Academy Year One student again, barely tall enough to see over the instructor's desk.

He looked up, noting with some surprise that the sun that he had recalled being a good bit in the sky had gone completely. The street lamps had turned on. He looked back down at his hands again, unusually disturbed. His hands seemed perfectly fine, now, but then he looked past them at his feet and his toes felt cold. Like ice. He ran a hand down his face and pushed himself off of the bench with an huff of air.

He was thinking too much. He was spooked by the Hokage's warning, and he was overthinking everything. There was absolutely nothing wrong with him!

To prove it to himself, Naruto tucked his hands into his pockets and walked over to the public practice grounds a short distance away from the park, separated by a high, thick hedge to catch stray kunai and shuriken before they killed any civilians strolling through the garden paths. The practice grounds were simple, a small rectangular training field –– perhaps twenty feet wide and fifty feet long –– with a bullseye paper pinned to a thick log in front of a stone wall. There were markers along the ground, dividing the long distance to the target in quarter segments.

Naruto had been so busy with the academic side of his extracurricular studies from his mother's books that he hadn't walked over to the park to practice his accuracy in –– actually, he couldn't even remember the last time he had passed aside a chance to further decode his mother's books to practice the mind numbingly tedious exercises necessary to become truly good at projectile throwing. That was probably why his body suddenly seemed so foreign to him all of a sudden, a lack of exercise. Naruto gave a sigh of relief at the easy explanation and reached into the black weapons pouch on his thigh, falling into the proper stance for throwing.

He stepped to the halfway mark, twenty five feet or so away, and let his arm fling the kunai forward toward the bullseye. It was with, strangely, relief that he watched the kunai make one revolution too many and strike the target by the hilt, bouncing off to the ground below.

His unexpectedly good exam marks could not effect the simple truth –– Naruto was barely passable as a ninja, and he was unable to use Alchemy. He had always been the dead last of his class, rarely even bothering to try because he already knew that he would fail. It was by nothing but extraordinarily good fortune that he managed to answer the main exam so well, and it was nothing but extraordinarliy bad fortune that he had answered that extra credit question so thoroughly.

Just for the sake of it, he threw another kunai. This one actually landed point forward, but didn't even land within the outer circle of the bullseye. It stuck out a good two or three inches in the log below, a very poor throw even for an Academy student. The next few throws were just as horribly aimed.

Naruto tilted his head to the side consideringly from his place in the middle of the field. He slowly stepped up toward the target and pulled his kunai knives out, replacing them in his pouch. He turned around to return to the throwing line, but paused. What about his taijutsu? he wondered. Had his taijutsu suffered as well? He, of course, did the required practice during Academy hours, but those were just drills. He could do them in his sleep, as could every other student that the Academy had ever pumped out.

The student ninja had always favored a rather undignified brawling style, but had even that become nearly unusable? If his physical abilities had really suffered to that extent, perhaps he would fail his Graduation Exam. Perhaps his obsession with Alchemy had done more damage than he had thought.

He dropped into a weak stance and aimed a punch at the wooden target, unsurprised when it had little effect. Other than causing a small ache in his hand, nothing happened. Naruto frowned and recalled Sasuke Uchiha's wooden taijutsu target, a fist sized chunk of which had fallen to the ground after a particularly well executed series of attacks. He suddenly burned with his old jealousy, his old fire to better himself, to become Hokage. It was a goal that he had never abandoned, but he had allowed it to fall to the side in favor of the more immediate goal of acquainting himself with his roots.

He geared up to attack again, preparing to drop into his usual sloppy form. The effortless taijutsu abilities of the Clan aided ninjas in the Academy seemed completely alien to Naruto, whose body felt like nothing more than a burden, a blunt instrument to point in the direction of his opponent. There was nothing graceful, or effortless, or even effective, about his abilities. He put his weight behind his attacks and hoped that they connected, nothing more. He had never been good at taijutsu. He was worse at genjutsu. Ninjutsu was his only strongpoint, and that was only because he could continue practicing long after his classmates' chakra reserves had been dried up. That determination to become something, to gain respect, to gain recognition, reared its head again with a sudden intensity that shocked Naruto.

It was strangely natural to fall into a different stance, a different perspective. He felt separated from himself, easing into a low crouch and flying forward toward the target, body nothing but a well trained tool. His hand impacted with the log, leaving finger sized dents in the target as he dug his hand into the wood. He kicked a foot out, the log giving him a solid place to pivot his body upwards and run a few steps up the side of the log, defying the limits that Naruto had formerly been chained to. (2)

He found himself utterly free, unbound from even the laws of gravity. The moment seemed to stretch forever, a blindingly wide grin stealing across Naruto's features. He could almost feel something unlocking from within him –– potential, dreams, destiny; he didn't know what it was. He just knew that the world was suddenly a smaller place than before, a more manageable, finite space. A place where Naruto could do anything so long as he had the motivation and the chance. Time seemed to continue on, and Naruto regained his senses.

Nearly horizontal, he planted his feet against the log with his knees nearly under his chin, then flipped his feet further upwards, over his head, and back toward the ground. He landed firmly on both feet with a reverberating thump, certainly not soundless like the ninjas he sometimes saw practicing in the training grounds. Still, he landed without stumbling and was still prepared to give a few more hits without a moment of hesitation. He remained there for a moment, chest heaving. The golden haired boy dropped his fists to his sides, eyes wide.

There was something very wrong with him.

(1) Just for those of us who don't know this off the tops of our heads: there are three steps of Transmutation. 1: Comprehension. 2: Deconstruction. 3: Reconstruction. Naruto can currently do the first one. He understands the academic side of Alchemy and the through processes comes naturally to him. But he can't actually take apart or reform matter. Nothing happens.

(2) No, I know what you're thinking. Naruto did not magically learn tree climbing. His chakra control is still unspeakably poor. What's happening here is that Edward Elric was a master of martial arts and if you look at him, he's everywhere during a fight. It was totally within his capabilities to run a few steps up the side of a solid object and then flip backward and land in a fighting stance. Nothing ninja about it. It's just that Naruto's fighting style is even worse than we see it during the beginning –– which, at that point, was still kinda painful to look at. Another piece of Edward that's bleeding through to Naruto.

Next Chapter: The Nine Tailed Fox Spirit

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