A New Jutsu

It was a sunny day in Konoha, and Naruto Uzumaki was on his way to a meeting with Lady Tsunade, the Fifth Hokage. As he made his way through the halls of the Hokage Tower, he was busy grumbling to himself. "Stupid meeting," he said. "Why does a hero need to fill out mission reports, anyway?"

But just as Naruto was thinking up an excuse to leave and head to Ichiraku for a bowl of ramen, the sound of footsteps began to thunder through the halls. Soon, he saw three figures zooming towards him. It was Konohamaru, Udon, and Moegi, all of them laughing. "Let's go, guys!" Konohamaru shouted. "Finally, another A-rank mission!" Ebisu followed close behind them, giving chase to his three students.

"Hey, Konohamaru," Naruto waved. But it soon became clear that neither Konohamaru or his teammates saw Naruto as they charged forward. At the last second, Naruto jumped out of the way to avoid them, but lost his balance and wound up falling through a nearby doorway. Soon, the sound of the commotion had vanished, and Naruto was left rubbing his head in a dark room.

"Jeez, what the hell, Konohamaru?" he shouted. "Just you wait--next Ichiraku is on you, you brat!" As he got to his feet, though, Naruto forgot all about his friend and turned his attention instead to the room he had ended up in. Scrolls and weapons lined the walls, and chests full of old armour cluttered the floor. It looked like a storage of some sort.

"Hmm...never knew this room was here," he mused. And he looked around for a moment, mildly interested by all the antiques he saw. Soon, though, he realized it was just a bunch of old stuff that had lost its value--until, that is, his eyes fell on a purple scroll on the back wall. He couldn't figure out what it was, but something about it was calling him forward. He had to reach out and grab it.

As he took the scroll in his hands and unrolled it, he didn't see anything all that interesting. It seemed to be some standard variations of the clone jutsu, then the body flicker technique, and so on--just a bunch of things he already knew.

That is, until he reached the part of the scroll that delved into ancient jutsu of the Yamanaka Clan. These were a little more interesting, though he could have sworn he'd heard their names from Ino at some point. "Mind Transfer Jutsu," "Mind Destruction Jutsu," etc. Maybe I should learn 'em myself, Naruto thought with a smile.

Then...

As he reached the end of the scroll, the ink began to change, and black markings gave way to purple. As he unrolled the final bit, he saw one last jutsu titled "Swap Jutsu." "What kind of dumb name is that?" he asked aloud.

But as he read on, he found a note from the shinobi who created the scroll. "I leave this jutsu at the end in hopes that no one will ever find it. I've placed a seal on this scroll to close, but I know one day it will wear off. All I ask is that if anyone ever finds this message, heed my words: Run. Leave now, and forget you ever saw this scroll. Better yet, throw it away or burn it to oblivion so no one may ever see it again. If you use the terrible power of this jutsu for yourself, I promise you it will bring consequences beyond your wildest imagination."

At first, the words frightened Naruto. "Terrible power?" he repeated aloud. But he couldn't deny--there was a part of him that wanted to know exactly what this person was talking about. There was a part of him that was excited. This "Swap Jutsu," as it was called--what could it do?

At the very end of the scroll were three sets of markings that detailed the hand signs for the jutsu and just how to align one's chakra to pull it off. Naruto noticed that the three variations only had minor differences, but each had different titles: "Body," "Personality," and "Reality." The one labeled "Reality" was crossed out with a red "X," as if that would stop him from reading it.

The jutsu seemed simple enough, Naruto thought, though he still wasn't sure what it did. "Body...hmm...maybe it means Body Swap? Personality swap, maybe? And reality? How would that even work...? Aagghh, this is too much thinking!" He decided it wasn't worth it to worry so much about what some old writing said--hell, it probably didn't even work, anyway.

So Naruto rerolled the scroll and placed it back where he found it, though as he stepped out of the dark room and closed the door, trying not to think too hard about what he had just seen. "Oh well," he said. "Can't be any worse than that Kaguya lady..."

Suddenly, he remembered the time, and what he came here for. His heart dropped. Tsunade was going to kill him. "Ah, shit! I'm gonna be late!"

And yet, there was a part of Naruto that really wanted to know just what this "terrible power" entailed...