Senju's Heir

Chapter 1-Pilot

Chapter 1: Pilot

Senju's Heir

It was at the age of nine that Naruto felt his chakra change.

Chakra offered these strange properties that most civilians would likely never experience, ones that calmed and soothed you, stripping your body of most -if not all- physical weight. Sure, such things could be overcome with rigorous training, but some were just born with it, like he.

The problem was the endless desire his chakra had to change into something... more. At first it had started as a minor cold, oscillating between coughs to shivers and uncontrollable wastes of half-digested ramen. It wasn't long before it had started getting worse, forcing him to consider going to the Hokage directly about his illness. Sickness was a rarity for him overall, yet this had nearly crippled him.

Then, after days of enduring, his symptoms just vanished from one day to another.

Not long after, he had started feeling like he could communicate with every living thing around him. Trees, grass; anything holding life and possessing a proper connection to the ground. He didn't know what to make of it at first, but it had increased his pranking success-rate by a whomping thirty percent.

Iruka-sensei had never been more miserable.

After his improved sense of nature and overall control of chakra, Naruto figured it had just been some random tantrum his network was putting up with.

But oh, had he been wrong...

Oddities had surfaced in him, making him feel somewhat nostalgic every time his feet were pressed against the ground. It had gotten to the point that he felt uncomfortable whenever he wasn't near a good patch of soil or a living, breathing tree. At some point, he had even started taking naps under trees much more frequently.

He didn't know why he did it, it just felt natural.

Months after that, he had started feeling like every living thing around him was an extension of himself. He could tug on the leafs of a tree just by concentrating, feel the footsteps of people walking on grass, and make unwanted weeds retreat with so much as a look of contempt. It was a new and exciting quirk almost every day.

One morning, Naruto had woken up to see his eyes, normally violet, even more intense and vivid. He was accustomed to seeing them that normal color, but now they were like freshly cut diamonds; imposing and brisk. He consoled himself with the fact that somehow, thanks to such a change, he felt even more connected with nature.

In class, he took a break from acting out. He wasn't even pestering Sasuke for spars anymore. Instead he slept -or at least acted like he did-, and played with a few bulbs he had "borrowed" from a gardening shop near his shanty apartment. He used most of his time trying to make them sprout and grow, but it had proven to be a much more difficult process than he had originally anticipated.

After a couple weeks of struggling later, he had finally made them sprout with his mind's eye. After they had grown to reasonable dimensions, he had planted them. Overjoyed was an understatement of how he had felt then.

At the time, however, Naruto didn't know that a curse had sprouted at the same time his abilities had. Nor would anybody else until it was far too late.

Now, as he wandered the same park that had served as his grounds to improve his abilities, Naruto ran across the field of green pasture with his eyes closed to test just how deep his sensing went. He ran in between and over sleeping adults, across children that were giggling and playing, and all without bumping against a single one.