Within Reach

Within Reach Prologue

This fiction is set in the future, roughly eighteen years ahead of where the anime left off. Sound is defeated, Naruto is Hokage, and most of the old characters are still around and will make appearances. It wouldn't be a Naruto fic without Naruto, now would it? Katsuya is Naruto's son. Who Jun is will be explained shortly. Ask anything else you like in reviews or such! Enjoy. No sex in this
chapter, but there will be. M/M. I'll start working on the first chapter shortly!


"You forgot your homework?" Asked an incredulous Iruka, his eyes along with those of the class room's directed on the blonde haired boy whom tried his best to melt into his seat. "Uh, um, uh... " Katsuya swallowed, tripping over his words much to the delight of his giggling classmates. "Yeah." He finally admitted, looking at the floor. "But I did do it! It's somewhere! I just don't know where!" This brought another round of hushed laughter, as did his teacher's reply. "With your grades, I wonder if it'd matter." "Hey!" Katsuya replied, hitting his hand on the desk in front of him. "I'm a great ninja! Who cares about books or homework or stupid stuff like that?!" During the argument, a young man not that much taller than anyone else of Katsuya's age walked into the room.

He wore a rather tight sleeveless shirt with black, clingy material with pale stands of white woven throughout the fabric, cris crossing every which way. His pants on the other hand were fairly loose but also black, and were bound to his legs at the ankle by an equal pale wrapping of cloth strips. His sandals were the same ashen grey Most noticeable of all, stuck to his back beside a long black pony tail tied back by a dull red braided cloth was what looked like a sword. It wasn't anything spectacular, lacking a hilt or any kind of ornamentation. But the wood itself seemed well polished, both that of the handle and the sheath, which connected seemlessly. The sooty grey length of wood was covered with flecks of black, giving the appearance of an overcast sky. It wasn't large at all, and appeared to be average length. But it still garnered some attention away from the on going fight. He patiently stood at the side of Iruka's desk with a straight posture, watching the teacher bicker with his student.

"You can't be a ninja if you can't figure out how to throw a kunai right! Or how to make smoke bombs and other things if you need to! Or-" "I know how to do all those things just fine! Ask me to! I'll prove it!" Iruka shook his head. "If I asked you to make a smoke bomb now,
you'd either blow up the entire school, or flood it with poison gas. I like teaching. But I have to be *alive* to teach!" Katsuya stood up in an orange flash and stomped his foot, stooping over his desk to hit it with both hands. "Shut up! I'm one of the best ninjas here, and I'll take anyone in this room on to prove it!" This earned a mixture of scowls and laughter from both teacher and student alike, though the stranger remained stoic. Iruka smiled in a devilish manner, then hooked a thumb back towards the stranger. "This boy here, he's just about your age you know." "Yeah so?! You want me to take him on?!" Iruka laughed and shook his head as the stranger looked in the direction of Katsuya for the first time. His eyes almost seemed as though they white, as they were such a light shade of blue, a stark constant to Katsuya's which were a much deeper shade.

"You wouldn't stand a chance against him." Iruka chimed in happily, much to the aggravation of Katsuya. "He's still no ninja, just like the rest of us! He doesn't have a head band." Katsuya replied smugly, crossing his arms across his chest. "You assume too much. It could be hidden. Or he could be the nin of another village here as a guest, or any other manner of things." The stranger broke his look away from Katsuya's eyes, glancing off towards one of the open windows. "My instincts as a ninja tell me I'm right! " Iruka simply shook his head again and walked behind his desk, sitting down with a small stack of homework in front of him. The teacher opened a drawer and removed a shiny new head band without a scratch on it, and placed it on the desk on his left. "Your instincts are wrong." The stranger spoke in a confident, but low voice. "I am Jun Sasaki, a Chuunin. I will be your secondary teacher, as I learn from Iruka-sensei how to become a great teacher myself." All while the spoke, he tied the headband around his neck, tight enough to fit it securely to the front of it without getting in the way. The boy had such a way of speaking that he managed to look as though he wasn't a boy, and that each word he spoke was considered and planned out in advance.

With the class's attention on Jun, Katsuya took the opportunity to sit down before he made a bigger fool of himself. Not only was he a bit older than everyone in class due to an illness earlier in his childhood, but he always seemed to be forgetting things. He always seemed to be messing up, no matter how hard he tried or how much he studied. It just simply wasn't right. He was supposed to be the son of the Hokage, not a screw up! He was supposed to be becoming a man. But some days it just felt like there never was any progress at all. Even though his father said he'd pull through eventually, that he had unwavering faith in him, and that even he was the very same when he was younger... He couldn't help but feel inadequate, compared to his father, to Gaara or Lee, or even to the boy the class just met. The average ninja had tough shoes to fill. The son of a Hokage, double. The son of the legendary Kyuubi, both at times Konoha's greatest asset and sometimes it's greatest headache : Impossible.