[Naruto, a person you all know, is a goofy little ball-like. His attitude. Even though he has power, he shows no attitude. He has no eyes to see whether the opposite sex is in love with him or not. He has no courage to beat someone. No courage to satire on someone. He takes the blame on himself. He is a person who saved the people who treated him like a monster. ]
[This is the story that I am writing about Naruto, a fanfic story where you will never see these types of qualities that I have mentioned right now.]
......
The Forest Incident
Mizuki saw Naruto and Iruka in the forest. He thought inwardly, 'today luck is on my side..Once I kill both of them, I will become the owner of multi shadow clone technique scroll.....Hehehe'
Mizuki gets a little troubled look as Iruka is also present.
'First... let's deal with the weak one first.'
3 kunai's left Mizuki's hand and were moving fast towards Naruto's vital parts.
Iruka didn't decide to jump in front of Naruto. His body just did it...like that.
One second he was watching the kunai fly toward Naruto. The next second, he was standing in front of Naruto, shielding with his arms out. He adjusted his body to avoid being attacked in vital spots, making the 3 kunai's hit his shoulder, his waist, and his leg.
Behind him, Naruto couldn't breathe seeing this scene.
Someone's standing in front of me to protect me.
"…Why?" It came out so small that Naruto barely recognized his own voice.
Iruka turned his head, just enough. His face was twisted with pain, but somehow his voice came out steady.
"Because you're my student." A breath. "That's enough reason."
He grabbed Naruto's collar with a shaking hand and hauled him behind a tree, teeth gritted against the pain of just moving.
"Mizuki's still coming." His eyes locked onto Naruto's, hard. "Run. Now."
Naruto couldn't move. His legs wouldn't listen. It was like his whole body had forgotten what running even was.
Iruka pushed Naruto, harder this time to make him move.
"Run!" And then, a low voice he says, "I can take care of myself."
Naruto's legs finally obeyed, and he turned and ran, and once he started he couldn't stop.
Don't look back. Don't look back.
He didn't look back.
Iruka stayed where he was still standing. Facing the trees. Waiting for the shadow of Mizuki, he already knew what was coming for him...DEATH.
Mizuki stepped out from between the trunks, smiling like this was the best day of his life.
"So this is what you chose, Iruka."
He didn't wait for a reply. His hand snapped up and kunai flew, and Iruka — tried to twist away and that twist wasn't fast enough anymore. Two Kunai buried themselves in his legs.
His knee lost strength and hit the dirt before he even understood he was falling.
............
Somewhere in the trees, far enough that he couldn't hear any of it, Naruto stopped running.
His hands wouldn't stop shaking. Every part of him screamed to turn around, to go back, to do something — but his legs kept moving forward until now, because Iruka had told him to, and some stubborn, aching part of him refused to make Iruka's sacrifice mean nothing.
The forbidden scroll lay in front of him. Naruto saw the scroll. 'Maybe I can find something in this to save Iruka and me from this danger'
He tore it open and his eyes raced across the page without really reading any of it — just hunting, desperate, for anything he could use. A jutsu. A trick.
Then he was moving again, scroll clutched to his chest, running back the way he came.
Hang on, Iruka-sensei. Just hang on.
......
After reminiscing with Iruka, Mizuki started moving towards him to finish him.
The sound of footsteps was clearly heard by both Mizuki and Iruka. Both of them thought, 'Naruto'
Naruto arrived at the scene. Mizuki's eyes landed on the scroll first. Then his mouth curled into something cruel.
"…It ended exactly how I wanted it to."
"The scroll is mine."
Naruto standed there without any movement. Then both Iruka and Mizuki heard a big scream from Naruto
"…NOoooooooooooo"
Mizuki and Iruka thought Naruto did not want to hand over the scroll; that's why he screamed like that.
But there is a different reason for that scream; somewhere no one outside could see, something else was already happening.
Inside Naruto's inner sea.....
Deep inside his own mind, a small, fragile version of Naruto stood alone in the dark, barely holding himself together.
"Who are you? What are you doing in my body? Get out — this is my body!"
Xuan Tian was already there. Calm. Cold. Watching him the way you'd watch an insect, like a mosquito before you. Then he laughed — low, mocking, unbothered.
"Pathetic little thing." His eyes didn't even blink. "What could you possibly do, even if you kept this body?"
" I'll use it far better than you ever managed to."
Naruto's soul trembled. But he didn't back down. He threw himself forward anyway, some last stubborn thread of him refusing to just disappear quietly.
Xuan Tian lifted one hand and caught him mid-air without effort. Like swatting a mosquito when you notice it.
Then Xuan Tian brought Naruto's soul towards his mouth and ate it.
Chew...chew... chew
Naruto's soul is in pain. " No. No, no, no—"
Naruto felt it happen in real time. Felt his own grip on his body slipping, thread by thread, while something else was finally wrapping his whole body in control.
...........
Back in the Forest
"Aaaaahhh!!"
The scream ripped out of him in both worlds at once.
Outside, Naruto's eyes turned to red. His body convulsed like something was trying to claw its way out of his skin from the inside. Chakra burst around him, red and black, and it wasn't just chakra. Kurama's power was tangled in there, yes.
But something else rode alongside it....which is black demonic qi
Mizuki and Iruka felt the immense pressure and bloodlust emiting from Naruto.
Iruka, on his knees and bleeding out, kept his hand on his stomach.
"…This chakra." His voice cracked. "I've felt this before—"
The Nine-Tails. Years ago. That same suffocating weight pressing down on the whole area.
Naruto walked toward Mizuki, his eyes strangely empty. Then, slowly, a smile crept onto his face.
"Heh."
A quiet laugh followed it.
His hands moved, fast and exact, more precise than Naruto had ever managed in his entire life.
"Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu."
Multiple clones flickered into existence in the same breath.
Mizuki's eyes went wide. "No way — he learned that this fast?!"
The clones started throwing Kunai from every direction at once, kunai flashing, and Mizuki tried to track all of them and simply couldn't. Too many. Too fast. His focus cracked wide open.
By the time his concentration left, Naruto had vanished from the spot, he was already standing behind him.
Mizuki noticed naruto, as he tried to attack Naruto, Naruto's the kunai slid forward in one smooth motion, straight for Mizuki throat.
"…Impossible," Mizuki in a low voice. "From a loser—"
"Thud". MIzuki body hit the ground.
Naruto saw Mizuki life less body before him, then Naruto placed his foot on Mizuki's neck and pressed it hard, making the neck bone crush and the body start gushing out faster.
Iruka saw this; he did not believe what he saw.
'Naruto... brutally killing. Well, a monster is still a monster....but the same monster saved me.'
Then Naruto also lost his strength from overuse, and he also collapsed to the ground.
Iruka dragged himself forward on ruined legs, panic breaking through the pain in his voice.
"Naruto!!"
Iruka carried him to hospital himself, half-running through the streets with Naruto's weight limp in his arms, not even feeling his own wounds anymore.
By the time the doctors took him from Iruka's arms, Naruto chakra still hummed faintly under his skin, like something not quite finished happening yet.
Iruka told the nurses everything he understood, which wasn't much.
Then, without stopping to have his own wounds looked at, he went straight to the Hokage. Iruka reported everything to the Hokage. He told him about the forest. About Mizuki. About the scroll. About the chakra red and black chakra emiting from Naruto. Naruto brutally killing Mizuki.
He didn't leave anything out. He didn't understand any of it himself. So he just told it exactly as he'd seen it happen, right in front of his own eyes.
Hokage was left in thought. 'Red and black...is black chakra....the corruption of the Nine-Tails on Naruto or something else.'
..............
Naruto's soul hadn't disappeared completely.
What was left of Naruto's attachments had shrunk down to something impossibly small. Bug-sized. Barely a flicker of light in all that dark.
But it burned fiercer compared to its size. Like a spark that refuses to die out, purely out of spite.
"You stole my body." The voice was tiny, from that bug Naruto. "I don't know who you are. But I'm taking it back. I'll eat you, and I'll throw you out myself."
He surged forward again — one last, hopeless act of defiance against the powerful Xuan Tian.
Xuan Tian watched him come, almost amused by it.
"Are you a pest now? Is that what you've decided to become?"
Naruto hid himself upon hearing that voice.
Xuan Tian's expression went cold.
"You still don't understand where you are." He lifted his hand, slow and unhurried. "You should have hidden well...You pest"
Naruto froze.
A crack. Like glass broke..Naruto's bug soul broke under Xuan Tian's feet.
Xuan Tian stood alone in the silence that followed. When he finally spoke, it came out almost gentle — the way someone might speak standing over a grave they'd dug themselves.
"Naruto Uzumaki is gone."
"This body is completely mine now."
............
Outside, in a hospital bed lit by pale sunlight, Naruto's chest rose and fell, slow and even.
Anyone watching him sleep would have sworn nothing was wrong.
No one in the village knew yet. Just a boy breathing quietly in a hospital bed. But something inside that body had already swapped souls.
A demon that had walked in from somewhere far away, known as Murim. And the village slept on, still smiling in its own ignorance.
(To be continued…)