Hello fanfiction readers! Welcome to the beginning of my first attempt at an ACTUAL (yes I know, insane) fanfic.

A few points need to be made.

1. I don't give a fuck about Cannon, it's not rules... just... helpful guidelines.

2. I don't give a fuck about Fannon. I don't care what you think is right/wrong, my story, my version.

3. I enjoy reviews that are helpful. I won't hate you for saying "Hmm cool." but I will love you for giving an in-depth reason for why it sucks. I mean within reason. If you just hate it cause some silly little reason... well go kill yourself. If there's honest, down to earth reason, tell me. I enjoy constructive criticism.

4. If your wondering about pairings... well... I don't really care to be honest. This isn't going to be a Naruto falls in love story. That isn't to say he won't get some, just don't expect romance. No Yaoi, sorry ladies (and that one guy who likes it... I think his name is Gary?). It's not my cup of tea.

5. I have a habit of adding weird/obscure references to my writing. See how many you can catch!

This is just the prologue, and it's not really been edited all that well. Don't expect magic.

Cutting the Deck


The Idiot's Guide to Sealing

A huff of frustration resonates off the hard wood floors. It was followed by the very quiet sound of something landing lightly on the floor. The originator of the huff's eyes narrowed.

Naruto Uzumaki, 9-years-old to date, was not having the best day. Oh sure he got ramen earlier but today was his birthday after all. While other people got lots of presents, had songs sang to them, and maybe even a cake, Naruto Uzumaki had to follow a rule. The rule was easy to follow, very easy in fact.

Don't leave your apartment.

Naruto Uzumaki might be a bit dense, but he wasn't an idiot. He knew that people seemed… less than happy to see him on his birthday. So, he stayed in side. Naruto Uzumaki, just recently, found the reason he didn't spend most of his day here. His house was boring.

He tried telling the old man that. He chuckled and said something along the lines ofi"Go watch TV, you're a kid don't you like that stuff?"/i Well, not exactly that but close enough.

The old man's face turned sour when Naruto simple pointed at his small, but very broken TV. He didn't know how it had gotten broken; he just came home one day and well...

That's when the old Hokage was struck with brilliance that earned him the nickname "The Professor"

"Say Naruto-kun would you like to play a game?"

Throw in a few spins of the clock hands and you will find Naruto sitting on his bed, the picture of frustration. He grimaced as he missed once again. Kunai were easy, throw them and bam! You got yourself… well… a thrown kunai.

This though, this required a certain amount of finesse that Naruto (subconsciously) found himself lacking. He held up the last object of his ire. Some of the designs were cool sure, but this was ridiculous.

This one had a large symbol on it that arced up to a point, kind of looked like an upside down heart if not for the little part at the bottom. Naruto briefly wondered if they ever made a weapon that looked like it. It was pretty cool.

He tossed it in the general direction where it just so happened to be a Hokage's hat sitting in a chair, surrounded by fifty-one paper cards. He couldn't put on the hat or else he would lose the game, which was torture in of itself. He knew the old man was sneaky though. Probably had someone watching him to make sure he didn't cheat.

Naruto's eyes squinted shut as he made a prayer to whatever god there was out there.

Peeking, he saw the card sail off to the side, completely and utterly missing the hat.

Naruto began a string of curses that made the two ANBU on guard blush from their hidden vantage points.

"Fucking old man!" Naruto made is voice solemn, but with a distinct air of mockery. "Naruto-kun, just flip all the cards in the hat and I'll show you a jutsu, BULLSHIT!"

His curses continued until he picked up all the cards. He looks down at the jumbled mess in his hands.

"I should burn you…"

There was no response to his threat, which just served his anger into getting bigger. With a loud roar of frustration he threw the stack to the side. He spared it the briefest of glances, but did a double take.




A step and a quizzical look. Even the ANBU could admit, the chances of that were slim.

He pulled the card out that had become lodged in a tiny crack in his wall.

Rusty gears began to slowly turn. He stared at the back of the card, showing most likely the biggest display of silence he has ever shown in his short life.

A step back, face showing pure determination.

He snapped his wrist, moving his arm in conjunction. It flew towards the wall…

…and bounced harmlessly off.

"AHHH! It's not hard enough!"

He stormed from the room. The card glided and flipped to the ground, landing face up for the world to see.

Ace of Spades.

It nagged at him. It was weird in a way. He didn't know exactly why it bothered him. Could be when he thought he had actually made the card cut into the wall he felt like he was hot shit. Truthfully, when he tried to seriously come up with a good reason for it the only one he could think of was "It would be awesome."

Oh sure it was a good reason, but enough for this constant part of him to be pondering it? He still pranked, he still stuffed himself with ramen and most of all he still pissed of Iruka-sensei. He just had that always at the back of his head pounding a steady beat and proclaiming "Pay attention to me!"

He was doing the latter at the moment, though it wasn't really his fault those masked-facey-what-ever-their-name-is guys are so boring to hear about. He wanted to say they were called… Baboons? No that didn't sound right. Giving the equivalent of a mental shrug he let his eyes droop once again. It was at this point he was catching every other phrase.

Something about swords (shiny), something about chakra hardened metal (whatever that is) and then something having to do with seals (Isn't that an animal in some really cold place?)… wait…


"Idiot sit down!" a feminine voice carried over the crowd eliciting a small laugh. Not that Naruto heard any of that he was too focused on what Iruka just said.

"What did you just say Iruka-sensei?"

"ANBU class swords?" Iruka couldn't do much than respond. Naruto didn't usually wake up unless he screamed or said something about a spilled ramen. To Iruka, this might as well have been the second coming of the Yondaime.

"After that…"



"Chakra hardened metal?"

"YEA YEA! How do you do that?"

Iruka sighed. It was good that he was asking questions, but what could posses him to want to know about how ANBU-Class Swords are made? Then again maybe he didn't want to know. Naruto and a sword… those two shouldn't ever be left alone together. Iruka's took a calming breath…

"MAYBE IF YOU STAYED AWAKE YOU WOULD ACTUALLY HEAR WHAT WAS SAID!" If Iruka was more observant at that moment he would notice that his voice just pushed several front row students on the back two legs of their chairs.

Our blond-haired hooligan cringed back a second before sending Iruka his most withering glare… which was a complete failure in all regards.

"… As I was saying," Iruka's composure was rebuilding. "ANBU class swords are not actually chakra blades in a sense. They are chakra enriched when being molded and for several hours after words that harden them to th-"

"YEA but how do they do that!?"

Iruka's eye developed a twitch. Maybe an inquisitive Naruto wasn't that great.

"I-was-getting-to-that-" Iruka had only released Killer Intent a few times and even though he was radiating with enough at the moment to make most Chuunin gulp and back away, Naruto just stared at him in rapt attention, eyes shining with… hope?

He could only sigh again. "A complex seal array is used to funnel a steady amount of chakra over the course of several hours to the point where the blade is hardened enough to cut through most other met.."

Naruto suddenly found a new line of thoughts nagging at him and it went sorta like..

"Seals seals seals, hard, seals, seals harden. Need seals…


Yea, sorta like that. Sorta.

'I'm getting too old for this shit.'

A hand rubbed a forehead above a furrowed brow, as if trying to force the annoyance before him away through sheer will.

"I should burn you…"

There was no response to his threat, which just served to make his annoyance bigger.

A sigh. 'What I wouldn't give for even some distraction right now from paperwork."

Speaking of the devil.



"AS IF!"

Sarutobi closed his eyes and said a small thanks to whatever deity heard his unspoken prayer. A moment later an orange blur shot through the doors, followed by a distraught secretary yelling, "YOU HAVE TO HAVE AN APPOINTMENT!"

"OLD MAN! I need your help!" As the secretary grappled with the young blonde boy the 3rd Hokage of the Village Hidden in the Leaves smirked.

The black-haired women nearly had the boy in a head hold before he decided to intervene, "Yomiko-chan, it's quite alright."

The women scowled from behind the boy's hand which was doing its best to keep the 'crazy lady' from throttling him. She stood abruptly, pushed her thick-rim black glasses up with a huff, and stormed out of the office. Sarutobi briefly wondered why the girl never got ninja training as several Chuunin parted like the Red Seas to let her get back to her desk.

"Naruto-kun, what brings you here?" Naruto rounded on him, having just given a rude gesture and a stuck out tongue to the women.

He blinked for a few seconds, trying to recollect what did bring him here. His face lit up and Sarutobi thought he could see the light bulb hovering over his head.

"Seals old man! I need seals, lots of seals!"

Sarutobi's eyes narrowed for a second. What had brought this about?

"If I may, what do you need seals for?"

"To make stuff hard!"

Sarutobi decided not to comment on that.

'Sealing arts are rather obscure,' the wizened old man began to go into deep thought. Weighing the pros and cons of showing Naruto a few sealing methods. He was no expert by far, the Nidaime probably put it best.

"The art that is sealing is not some fancy jutsu that can be practiced to perfection. It's not like Taijutsu that you can beat into someone. If there was a ninja art related to it, it would be Genjutsu. Both require an imagination and even then it's not a right fit. Oh sure, you could learn how to draw hundreds, thousands, MILLIONS of seals. You wouldn't be a master though, not even close. A true master of sealing though doesn't memorize seals. He knows them, like an old friend that he constantly question. Your good monkey, but your too linear."


Said 'Old Man' was brought out of his little flashback. The boy was standing on the balls of his feet waving his hands wildly.

'I guess it couldn't hurt to distract him,' a grin spread across a wrinkled face. ' Not to mention it couldn't hurt if he understood the seal that is bound on him.'

The only problem was how. He was just an academy student after all, who would teach him? Couldn't just give a tutor who's good with seals without raising eyebrows. Then again… who said he needed a teacher exactly? He just needed to know the basics for now and Sarutobi just so happened to have the perfect little thing for that.

His chair rolled back as he stood and began searching on a small bookcase that all four Hokages had added to. One would think that it would be a variable fountain of ninja knowledge…

… In truth it held a lot of poetry, plays (The 4th had at one time dreamed of starting his own Kabuki theater), cook books (The Shodaime brought the Akimichi into the village by baking them a 3 story tall cake), the occasional book on jutsus, but last (and most certainly not least, not by a long shot) smut.

There was only one book that interested the 3rd now though.

"Ah HA!" He pulled a rather old book. It looked as plain as they came and was pretty rough. It looked as though someone had at one point tried to stab it with a kunai and failed, every third page was at one point dog-eared, and the front was covered in a giant doodle displaying a man in a black cape fighting someone that looked remotely like a mime with green hair. It also looked like several pages were torn out and added.

Above said doodle there were five words. Under fore-mentioned doodle were two more words.

When given the book, a one Naruto Uzumaki took his hand at pronouncing the words that had surrounded the battling pair.

"An Idiot's Guide to Sealing?" Naruto briefly wondered if he should be offended but dismissed it just as fast. As much as he hated reading, if this could help him it would be awesome.

"By R…r…Ro…Rodf?" He pronounced the foreign word and looked up at the old man for confirmation that he said it right. A nod and a smirk.

"Naruto-kun you need to understand something about that book." The boy nearly stood at attention and saluted.

"That book has been in the possession of several people over the years, most notably the Nidaime." Naruto's eyes put saucers to shame. "The Nidaime was the most proficient Seal Master that Konoha has ever produced and this is the book he started out learning it from." Naruto was holding the book with reverie that fangirls could only hope to attain.

At some point Naruto realized seals weren't just some animal that lived where it was really cold.

"…and your just…" He gulped down the nervousness that had rose up in his throat. " Giving this to me?"

"More like a loan Naruto-kun," This was like a treat for the old Hokage. A cautious Uzumaki? Unheard of.

"As you can see it's rather old, and several owners over the years have added in…" He could have said insane ideas, theories, and tips. Many of which went over his head. There was even another language in some parts that nobody could read. "…Help."

"I'm going to trust you with this Naruto." He dropped the –kun to relate the seriousness of that statement. This of course went right over Naruto's head who was looking at the book like it was a free bowl of ramen.

He let out a sigh. It forgot for a second how forward he needed to be.

"Naruto." He drew the boy's attention. "Make sure to start from the beginning and keep the book safe." His best bet for understanding what he was reading was starting from the beginning after all.

A rather furious session of nodding and a "Thanks jiji! I will!" later and Naruto was stepping out of the Hokage's office. He cracked the book and began to read the first page which consisted of only two words but had several more doodles.

The first two words of "An Idiot's Guide to Sealing" were bolded, large and underlined several times.

"Don't panic? Why would I panic?"

Author's Notes

Yes I know your gonna say "The Nidaime wasn't a seal master! The 4th was!" Well so fucking what? I don't care, my story. I like the Nidaime and Shodaime, they don't get enough depth. You don't really think the Nidaime was just good with some Suiton did you?

Yes, there are gonna be a few Hitchhicker allusions in this. I just got done with the 3rd, so I can't help myself.

Chapter 1 should be out... who knows...