The spiders nest and the first spark.

He was to be the future clan leader.

The eldest of five children, he grew up as a child of war.

Three of his brothers died before they even reached puberty, and so did several of his cousins.

His mother's health declined as well, and soon, it's just him, his brother and their father.

He promised himself he would become strong enough to protect them.

In just a few years, he becomes the second most powerful man in the land.

His enemies feared him. His allies, even what little family he had left, started to adulate him.

But he knew he was no god.

And that people that were put on a pedestal could fall from blinding heights.

Still, despite his fearsome reputation, he dreamed of peace.

But dreams were not enough.

His father died soon after and he rose to take his mantle.

And too early, way too early, his brother also joined their family in death.

Something in him broke, never to be mended again.

When a tentative peace settled over the land, brokered by the one man he could still find in him to trust…

It was too late.

Fear, anger and hatred at the state of the world led to him trying to destroy the very same peace he had helped bring.

It would not last, anyway.

All he did after that, he did in the name of something intangible.

He was Uchiha Madara, and he would make his ambition a reality.

Naruto's real body was trapped, this time.

He was also unsure if he had lost consciousness… Or if he were dreaming while awake. But there were more pressing matters.

His hands and feet were shackled to the wall, his chakra bound. There was a guard who kept an eye on him.

And they were obviousbly confident in their ability to restrain him.

All in all, it looked pretty bad.

'Good.'

He had gotten in.

As far as Naruto was concerned, this ROOT… This ANBU offshoot had started this fight.

The seals he had willingly put on himself were based on the designs that the clone who had been captured had been able to relay.

Standard chakra-binding seals, Konoha style, sensory-deprivation ones, also in their typical fashion. Easy enough for him to reproduce, as Konoha was the place he had learned from, after all. Steel wire to bind him, too.

Of course, at this point, for him, it was pretty easy to slip in a failsafe into the designs, one triggered by his very own chakra.

Now... Imitating a man he had spent months around…? That might well have been the easiest part.

Pretend you're a man who tries his best not to get too close to people. Add in some internal conflict about the fact that you still wanted to get close to people.

Pretend you don't.

Pretend you're one of the strongest ninja in the village. Except now you may also want to pretend to be a lazy, detached asshole who didn't care about anything, really.

You can? Good.

Now have a Shadow Clone do just that, standing far enough to avoid too close scrutiny.

There you go.

You were in.

Once Naruto felt that it would seem believable that he had fallen asleep, he reached inward.

He unbound some of the limiters, as discreetly as he could. Then he kept his chakra compressed upon itself.

More of the energy started flowing through his body again. Meaning he could use it outside of himself again. It was a smaller amount for sure, but it was refilling at a pace that was close to normal.

Naruto almost let out a sigh of pleasure.

But his chakra flowing outward again meant that he could use his sensing ability again. And he could finally confirm what he had felt.

That was Ino, no doubt about it.

He was not as good as Karin at figuring things out from a signature, so he could not tell much more, other than there was somebody else in the room she was in.

The same questions questions that had gone through his clone's mind, the ones that he had discarded as something to worry about later… came back.

Was she working with this ANBU Root division?

It wasn't unheard of for Yamanaka to join ANBU, far from it. And there were many, many of them in the Torture and Interrogation Force.

Or… was she a prisoner, too? If she had been caught because of him…

Well, there was no way he was going to leave her in here.

He would figure out how to maintain his cover later.

That was the way he did things when he could not afford to ignore his own heart, after all.

And Ino had been his friend.

The least he owed her was checking, no matter if it were more risky.

He focused on his link with Sakura, summoning a Thunder gate under his body, hoping it would not emit too much light.

And he really hoped that nobody would jump in here right now.

Then he summoned a short dagger, also under his body, his focus on avoiding the usual light show that came with the technique.

He cut the wire that bound him, wrapping it around his wrist.

There were three guards in the corridor.

Two too many.

The room was closed off, the only way to see out of it being a small tinted window that was here to help the guards check on him.

Leaving the prison would be easy enough. Focus on a Gate. Jump.

The guards could not be allowed to see it, of course, but he could find a way around that.

But that's not what he was here for.

His mind started working out possible solutions.

If Ino was detained: Get Ino out without killing anyone.

If Ino was compromised: Figure out how to get the scrolls. Get out without killing anyone.

Sounded simple enough.

Now… How the hell did he make this work?

There was a tiny, tiny hole for air in the upper right corner of his cell, one that he had almost missed.

If the guards were paying attention, and he knew they were… He would have to take care of the three of them at the same time.

One way of doing that would be to suffocate them using Wind Style. The rooms were too big, though, and it would take him way too much time and energy to pull off.

And… He would likely suffocate himself and Ino at the same time.

Lightning would be a safer bet, then. He'd have to find a way to deliver it to them.

Naruto took a look at his right wrist, where the steel wire was currently wrapped.

It was chakra-conductive wire.

Maybe… Just maybe this could work.

Sakura had finally gotten to set a gateway close to Mist, after days on a boat.

The Land of Water had been… uneventful. A gray, drab place, for the most part, still reeling from a bloody regime. Some islands were said to be richer, but she didn't even get to see any of that.

She came back to Umi, tired, boatsick — she still fared better than Naruto or Karin would have… and did she mention tired..?

Karin was there, trying to channel elemental chakra through a chain that extended from her left hand. All the while, she was reading through Umi's latest sales reports.

She greeted her with the usual Karin grin. And a big hug, of course.

"You're finally back, then?"

"Yeah. This trip was a pain in the ass… and even more. I think I'm going to have a bath and then pass out."

"Right. There's some food left, if you're hungry. I worked something out for water temperature, it should be easy to adjust.."

"You're a life-saver, Karin." Sakura laughed, squeezing her shoulder as she passed her.

"I'm trying to figure a few things we can sell that won't come to bite us in the ass." Karin shrugged. "I think we could work something out to adjust weather conditions in specific areas, actually."

"Uh huh." Sakura nodded. "Can't help you much with that." She shrugged.

Karin just smiled, going back to her book.

Naruto tried something.

Once he had run through a few ideas and was almost certain one of them would work, he released another limiter seal.

Now, he had to be careful. If he expended too much chakra, any guard who was even remotely chakra-sensitive might be able to feel it.

Alright. He probably got the hang of it.

Any time now.

Yep.

He closed his eyes, focusing on his link with Karin.

Holding the wire in his right hand, he pictured golden bands in his mind.

Naruto summoned them inside the wire, in a shapeless, in-between state. Physical, but not really.

The material shifted, stretched, pushed.

In his mind, he saw its shifting state as its normal.

There were no bands. There was no wire.

Both were molded into something in between, shifting and shifting as long as his chakra coursed through the structure.

A thin, thin… Thin line of chakra-conductive metal twisted like a serpent.

Its length was way more than enough to do what he needed it for.

He guided it through the air vent, slowly. Then he made it snake around the corridor, silently.

The guards were unmoving, mostly. He used chakra sensing to estimate their positions, guiding the steel-wire into a wide loop around them.

They twisted a bit more, lifting off the ground.

Just a little bit more…

There. Now was the moment.

He stopped holding his still-limited chakra back. As he had expected, one of the guards' chakra expressed something that Naruto guessed to be 'surprise'. Maybe 'fear'?

He squeezed in his mind, and the wire tightened around them, brittle, easy to break.

He let Lightning fly across its length, as strong as he could make it in his limited state.

He heard three thuds.

And then he felt fatigue cloud his mind.

He lifted the remaining limiters. The other teams of guards would likely notice in less than a half-hour. The fatigue abated.

He summoned a blade, enhanced it with Lightning until it started visibly falling apart, and cut a hole into the wall.

Naruto stole the unconscious ROOT's clothing, mask included, and put the outfit on.

He hid the three ANBU, putting the limiters on them instead of himself, before binding them. Properly.

By extending his chakra senses, he figured that Ino was the one being detained.

Under his disguise, he walked to the end of the corridor and knocked on the heavy door in a specific pattern, for the guard to open the door.

The only problem was that he didn't know it this was the correct pattern, as he could only use what he had heard on the other floor.

Apparently… That was the wrong one.

The guard inside stiffened.

'Ah shit.'

He raised the alarm. Naruto sighed. He could not afford any more time.

'Wind. Lightning.'

He used wind to shape a Vacuum Blade around his hand, leaving enough room for lightning to enhance its cutting power even more. His hand bled, wounds opening all over it.

The door barely slowed him down.

And then he saw Ino.

Later on, he would remember this as a pivotal moment, one that he would call the first spark, setting everything else in motion.