Author's Note: I won't do these too often. Still, I have some things I want to say, so this note will be a long one in hopes that it will also be the only one. First of all, holy crap! This is it. My NaNoWriMo novel. I figured it was time to post the first chapter since I managed to write a whopping fifty thousand words of this story last month.

Anyway, on to the important bits. YES, this is a Naruto crossover, but NO, Naruto himself isn't involved. Actually, only a single character from Naruto is directly involved. Regarding canon: I stopped reading Naruto several years ago, either during or shortly after the Five Kage Summit arc. While I know some of what happens next, what with the huge war and revelations regarding Naruto and his family and a whole bunch of other stuff, most of that isn't relevant since Naruto himself isn't directly involved in this story. Still, if anything I say or show contradicts the established canon...just roll with it. It's already very AU on the Naruto side of the crossover and will play with the Negima canon a bit as well.

This chapter has been edited and reposted on April 22nd, 2014 to correct mistakes (some rather glaring) that were made before I realized that editing my NaNoWriMo novel would involve rewriting large portions of it. I haven't changed anything incredibly important, or made any changes at all to the direction of the story itself. Mostly clarification, rewording, and tweaking. The important bits are the same.

Updates and news can be found on my tumblr. There is a link to it at the top of my profile.

Disclaimer: I am not Japanese, therefore I do not own either of these fandoms. I am not profiting in any tangible way from this fic, nor from the characters and plots I've borrowed. This particular fusion of worlds is mine, however cliché the link between the two might be. This disclaimer applies to the entire story and will not be repeated.

Furiously struggling against the thick wooden tendrils that had bound her limbs together, a dark-haired woman looked up into the eyes of her captor. It was easy to see the sadness reflected in their depths. She could almost taste the man's regret.

She wondered what he saw in her eyes. She could feel no regret, after all. No guilt. No sadness.

Perhaps all he could see was her rage.

"I'm sorry," the man murmured. "I'm sorry it's come to this. I'm sorry that Fate has been so cruel to you. I'm sorry that I can't give you another chance. From what my grandfather told me, you deserved better than this."

He placed his hands together in the Ram seal, then they blurred into motion as he began to gather his Chakra. His eyes hardened and filled with fire, though it was restrained behind an icy facade.

"But that does not excuse your actions," he continued, without interrupting the motions of his hands. "Do you think you're the only one who has ever lost someone important to you? Do you think that nobody else would ever seek revenge as you did?" He sighed as his hands finally stopped, clasped together in the Snake seal. And yet, you are completely ignorant of your actions. I am going to give you some time to think on it, to realize what you've done wrong. Perhaps you'll even remember what it was like to live as a human being."

"He made me this way!" she shouted at him with her fangs bared as she struggled against her wooden bindings to no avail. She succeeded only in scraping the skin of her wrists and ankles until they bled. "He took everything from me! So I gave him what he deserved. I did what was needed to seal his Fate. I did what your grandfather, what all the rest of Konoha could not! I became a monster solely to be able to wring his neck myself!"

"That accounts for one murder," the man replied coldly, as the Chakra he had gathered in his hands began to give them a visible glow, "and a justified one at that. I am not speaking of that." His icy glare chilled further as he continued, "What about the tens of thousands of other corpses you left in your wake, then? What of the innocent lives you took on your quest for vengeance? What did they do wrong? Did they earn the Fate you gave them?"

"They were cowards!" the woman snarled. "Cowards and fools! They couldn't even understand the lengths they would have to go to in order to bring that monster down. The whole world was sick, fighting yet another pointless war that nobody would truly win. War was all they ever brought to the world. Death was the only thing that awaited them. I only hastened their inevitable end."

"Weren't you one of them, once upon a time?" the man asked.

"I was...until they turned their backs on him. They let his Will of Fire die and go cold. I was one of them, but when they betrayed his memory, they betrayed all who still believed in him. Those cowards betrayed me."

The man looked at her for a moment, his gaze searching. It was clear that he didn't see whatever he was hoping to find, though, as he quickly frowned and looked away. With a sigh, he reached out towards her with his glowing hands. Bound as she was, she could not move away She could only watch as his palms brightened steadily, until she had to close her eyes against the searing white glare of his Chakra-charged hands.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry I can't bring him back. However, I cannot allow you to remain free. As one of the last remaining Shinobi in this world, I am honor-bound to protect whatever few refugees remain after your rampage. I can only do that by ensuring that you are not free to continue killing as you please. Even finally achieving your revenge did not stop your wanton murder. There is no justification for that."

His glowing hands clasped her shoulders.

"Mokuton: Inochi no Ki!"

More tendrils of wood sprouted from the ground beneath her, wrapping tightly around her body and gradually thickening. She pulled hard at the bindings, but the wood wrapped around her limbs refused to give as the rest of her body was slowly encased.

A bone-deep lethargy swept over her, and she struggled to keep her eyes open as she was fully engulfed. Her vision faded into darkness, and her eyes closed of their own accord.

Moments later, the accelerated growth of the wood finally stopped. After eyeing his handiwork with distaste and regret, the man turned and walked away, leaving behind a thick tree with a monster slumbering within.

Bloodlines
Chapter 1: The Fool's Awakening

The barriers surrounding Mahora Academy and the massive tree at its center have existed as long as recorded history, far longer than the crumbled stone buried among its roots, subterranean ruins of what had once been a busy Gateport linking the Magical and Mundane worlds. There are some who believe the World tree itself created those barriers, drawing on the unusually-high amount of mana permeating the area to protect itself throughout its countless years of life. Its dizzying size was a topic of much wonderment and debate, and the natural protections defending it were one possible explanation for its unnaturally long life.

After discovering several naturally-occurring portals around the world, the mages who first managed to break through the World Tree's barriers were not at all surprised to find another connection, the strongest one yet. Directly beneath the World Tree's roots was the largest natural gateway between the two worlds. As mage researchers continuously traveled to the area to study the tree and the various oddities surrounding it, their camps and settlements slowly grew in size and permanence until the town of Mahora was officially inaugurated. The town eventually became a city of scholars, a center for learning and research.

So, when the barriers protecting the tree and thus the city surrounding it began to fade in mid-twentieth century, plenty of the world's foremost magical theorists and researchers were already on-site to devise a solution and keep their home protected and the marvelous World Tree from mundane eyes. They developed a device that could generate magical power from electricity, and used that in conjunction with a number of electrical generators to power the barriers directly. Of course, as they were the greatest experts in Magical Theory and Engineering at the time, they saw all of the potential flaws of this plan, and built in as many failsafes and backup generators as they could to ensure that the power flowing to the barriers would never falter for even a single moment.

For over half a century, that robust setup continued to power the various protections around Mahora, some natural and others added by mages in the subsequent years, without a single interruption.

In April of 2003, when the main generator was shut off for routine maintenance, the backup generators failed to come online to pick up the slack and the barriers went down for the first time since the Tree's original discovery.

Deep within the World Tree, the woman who was the original source of the Tree's power finally began to wake.

The generators beneath Mahora Academy stuttered and groaned as they slowly returned to life. Although they were expertly maintained and had been upgraded many times over the years, they were still beginning to show their age as they sluggishly began supplying electricity to the city once more. A large portion of that power was sent to a special transformer beneath the shcool, which converted the electricity into magical power and distributed it to the barriers that protected all of Mahora.

One by one, the various protections snapped back into their proper places. The magically-sensitive technicians who had been working furiously to finish their maintenance early heaved a collective sigh of relief when they felt the shields settling into place once more.

That sigh was echoed by Konoemon Konoe, Dean of Mahora Academy, as he gazed through his office window. Like the technicians, he could feel the fizzing sensation of the barriers returning to life. When the spell tied directly to the school's resident vampire began to work again, he smiled.

"Looks like Negi won," he murmured. "I'm glad I chose not to interfere."

More barriers continued to return to life. The protections around Mahora Academy were intricate and numerous, designed to keep out all of the potential threats that its resident mages could dream up. From general protections against demons and monsters to very specific, tailored protections against certain criminals and dangerous rogue mages, Mahora's various magical wards made it one of the most well-defended locations in either world.

The smile turned into a frown when he noticed something slightly off. There was an intruder in the World Tree Plaza, someone who had not been there when the maintenance had begun. Clearly the intruder had snuck in during the power outage...but how had the interloper known that the barriers would be down for long enough to sneak in? Maintenance and scheduled outages were handled so carefully that power to the barriers had never been interrupted before...

Then the sensation passed. The intruder was gone.

The odd feeling returned a moment later, but it was weaker than before. It was almost as if the anti-intruder spell was having trouble determining whether the person it had detected was even an intruder at all.

"Well, this bears investigation," the elderly Dean sighed as he stood up and left his office.

Using a small amount of magic to augment his atrophied muscles, he began a brisk walk towards the World Tree, moving with the speed and strength of a man half his age.

He arrived at his destination to see a very curious sight. An unconscious and deathly-pale girl was lying at the foot of the tree.

Darkness surrounded her, wrapped around her like a smothering blanket. But this darkness seemed different from the darkness that was all she had known for so many years...

"Who is she?"

"I'm not entirely sure. Even the wards aren't sure what to make of her. For an instant, they identify her as an intruder, but a moment later she is suddenly a resident of Mahora. Her appearance here is a curious occurrence."

The voices she heard seemed so far away, and yet so very loud in ears that had heard nothing but the slow creaking growth of a tree for so many centuries.

"And you found her beneath the World Tree?"

"She was lying on the exposed roots around the tree, covered in dirt. If I didn't know better, I'd say she dug her way out from beneath the soil."

She tried to think back, to recall a memory that kept slipping from her grasp. She remembered...crawling out from her prison of wooden tendrils...digging through the soil until she emerged in the light of a moon that she had not seen for so long...

And then...nothing. Her last memory was of the crescent moon hanging low in the sky.

"Dug her way—"

"I am not certain. Given the amount of time the barriers were down, I suppose she could have snuck in, then somehow fell unconscious on her way across the campus...but something about that strikes me as wrong. Why would she stop under the World Tree, of all places? And how could she have made it so far without being seen?"

As much as she tried to ignore the two voices that rang in her ears and pounded on her skull with mallets made of sound, she found herself unable to shut them out. They were speaking about her; she knew that for sure. With a quiet sigh, she sluggishly began to open her eyes so she could begin to figure out where she was and why her head was throbbing so much.

The two people in the room with her didn't notice at first, as they continued to discuss her, so she had a moment to surreptitiously look around.

She was lying on one of several beds lining the walls of what looked like an infirmary. Her nose provided no evidence to the contrary, as she detected the faint smell of blood and the not-so-faint scent of disinfectant that always seemed to permeate hospitals. The room was nearly empty, the beds other than hers unoccupied. Two people, presumably the sources of the two voices she had heard, stood half-way across the room. They were still deep in discussion, so was able to observe them without interruption.

One was a young woman, probably in her late twenties, with long blonde hair and an impossibly voluptuous figure that reminded her of...someone. The memory slipped from her grasp.

The other was a very old, rather short man. His head was oddly shaped, his ears elongated. He had a long moustache, a longer beard, and his eyebrows put even the infamous duo—whose names she couldn't recall at the moment—to shame.

Her eyes widened as her sluggish mind finally shook off the rust. She was free. She had been imprisoned for such a long time...and now she was free! She sat up with a gasp, but winced as pain shot up and down her spine. Her abdominal muscles gave out on her and she collapsed back onto the bed. Her stiff body complained vehemently. She mentally shouted back, ordering it to shut up.

Her movements had caught the attention of the old man, who turned and raised his gigantic eyebrows when he saw that she was conscious.

"Ah, good, you've awoken," he said, drawing the blonde woman's attention to her as well. "Good. Now, I hope you don't mind, but I have a few questions to ask you."

Questions. The fog began to lift from her mind. Questions were bad. She didn't want to answer any questions. Her strength was almost completely gone, her Chakra drained to its dregs. Even a powerless child could defeat her now, and the gaze the old man was leveling at her was steely enough for her to guess that he was far from powerless. If the hospitality she currently enjoyed turned into hostility—and she knew it would, once they discovered the truth about her—

Her thoughts were silenced by the painful jangling of her nerves as she attempted and failed to get off the bed. It was only then that she realized her arms and legs were bound to the rails on either side of the bed. The bindings had left enough slack for her to sit up as she had attempted to a moment ago, but they would not allow her to leave the bed. She summoned every last ounce of her flagging strength and experimentally flexed her arm with enough force to tear through what appeared to be a leather cuff attached to a thin and fragile chain, only to be thwarted as both cuff and chain held fast. With a scowl and a sigh, she finally looked up at the old man and gave him a slight nod. She had no choice but to answer his questions.

Her captive state didn't stop her from responding to his amused glance with an icy glare, though.

"First of all," the man finally began, "I would like to know why you are here and how you came to be here."

"Where is 'here', anyway?" she tried to ask, but after such a long period of disuse, her bone-dry through seized up and she began to cough.

A cup of water was thrust under her nose. As it tipped towards her, she struggled to stop coughing while swallowing the delightfully fresh liquid pouring into her mouth. Water was not her favorite drink, and it would normally not satiate her at all, but she was so dehydrated that it tasted more like a heavenly ambrosia than just simple water. After draining the cup completely, she sighed in relief and repeated the question she had attempted to ask while the woman placed the cup back on a table near her bed.

The old man raised his bushy eyebrows again. "You are in the High School Infirmary of Mahora Academy," he informed her. "I found you beneath the World Tree."

Academy? World Tree?

She could feel the ghostly sensation of wooden tendrils wrapping around her, forming a coccoon in which she slumbered...

"What country is this?" she asked quietly, trying to shake the odd feeling. The names he had given were meaningless to her.

His eyebrows shot up with such force that she was half-convinced they would leap right off his forehead. She tried not to laugh at the comical sight and just barely succeeded.

"Japan," he answered. This time, he immediately noticed her confusion and continued, "Where are you from?"

She tried to let her mind drift back into the past, to remember where she had been before waking up amongst the roots of a tree whose sheer scale defied description. Her mind was still foggy and inexplicably fixed on eyebrows that she could not recall much more than the name of her former home.

"The Land of Fire," she answered quietly. Blank stares. "One of the Elemental Countries."

The two strangers shared a look. When the old man turned back, she saw a glint of confusion in his eyes before he hid the expression behind a carefully blank facade.

"Now that we've established where you are," he told her, though she certainly felt she could argue that point since she had no idea where this Japan place was supposed to be, "we really need to know your purpose here, and how you came here."

"I don't know," she immediately answered. She opened her mouth to speak again, but then her attention drifted. Her gaze lit on the large bay window behind the two strangers and she barely held in a gasp of shock when she saw the massive cityscape beyond it, sprawling over both banks of a shimmering sapphire river. It was far larger than any city she had ever seen before. She opened her mouth to speak, but something else caught her attention; right in the center of the city sat a tree larger than any she had ever seen.

She felt a pull from its direction. It was only when her leather shackles caught her limbs that she realized she had been unconsciously leaning towards the window.

No, towards the tree itself, she suddenly understood. Is that what he called the 'World Tree'?

And then her mind finally untangled itself and everything snapped back into place as she remembered.

"I've been here for so long," she mumbled as the suppressed memories rushed into her conscious mind. The deluge of recollections overwhelmed her while her gaze remained fixed on the tree that was calling out to her.

"Excuse me?" the blonde woman asked, speaking up for the first time since the conversation had begun.

"Someone...sealed me away," she clarified hesitantly. She didn't want to give these people too much information about herself, not when she was still in no condition to slip away. Perhaps it would be useful to stay a while, to learn her way around the new world in which she found herself. It was obviously different from what she remembered.

"He sealed me away," she repeated, "using wood. I think he sealed me inside a tree. I think it was that tree."

She pointed with one of her shackled hands, pulling the chain taut and taking the chance to surreptitiously test its strength again. It held firm, not flexing in the slightest despite her best efforts. It was far too strong and far too delicate-looking to be made with any normal material.

"Interesting," the old man murmured as she stroked his excessively long beard. He fell silent for a moment, ignoring the incredulous look from his companion. It was only then that he decided to ask the question that she had been expecting since the moment of her awakening:

"Who are you?"

She had no reason to lie. Judging by the cityscape visible through the window as well as the size of the tree that had served as her prison, many years—perhaps even centuries—had passed during her incarceration. After all of that time, perhaps her name had been forgotten.

There was only one way to find out for sure.

"My name is Hinata," she answered honestly.