The Clairvoyant

“The unnatural things he was seeing were more of a curse than a useful ability.”

2. Bane

“Sasuke-kun, please date me!” a mixture of fangirls chanted, crowding the poor boy’s desk. Not long after he slipped into the classroom to study, they gathered around him in hopes of wooing the Uchiha. His ability wasn’t the only gift that happened to be cursed—his beautiful looks and smarts were too.

They shrank back as he shot them a glare and resumed rummaging through his notes. Sasuke was the type of guy who possessed enough brainpower to skip studying for tests, but it was a nice distraction, especially around now. ‘Go away’ he wanted to scream, knowing that it would simply fuel the fire in his fan’s hearts. Anything he did would be deemed ‘cool’ and as much as he hated to admit it, he was practically defenseless—in front of harmless girls (unless one of them wanted to kill him for some extra reason).

He felt a bony hand behind him reaching to grab some of his hair and whirled around on instinct. During the times where he still resided in karate classes, he was taught to sense anyone coming up behind him. It wouldn’t be good if a man wielding a weapon assaulted him at his blond spot.

The long, skinny fingers belonging to a deeply violet-eyed girl recoiled into an unstable fist, startled at the boy’s reaction. Her face burst into a flurry of pink and red as she ran to her seat in embarrassment. A couple of her friends followed her and lessened the quantity of the people invading his personal privacy.

“Sasuke-kun, stop reading that book and let’s skip class together,” Karin, a girl whose hair was neat on one side and like a bombshell on the other, shoved her glasses up her nose in an attempt to be seductive.

“No, skip class with me!” a random feminine voice rang out, more following soon after.

“Sasuke-kun doesn’t favor sluts like all of you!” The exclamation was made by a spiky brown-haired girl, Miyaka, wearing a tank top and a scrap of clothing one would call a ‘skirt’, if it weren’t so short and exposed her unshaved legs.

A brilliant red-head by the name of Tayuya narrowed her eyes. Unlike the others, she was wearing baggy clothing suited for gang members. “What, so you’re saying that you’re not a whore, bitch?” she questioned in a threatening tone.

Before the feuding pair could lay a single finger on one another, the group around the Uchiha’s desk was split in half. Never was Sasuke so glad to see a frustrated pink-haired girl shove them out of the way to create a path to her desk, inconveniently placed beside his. The fangirls whispered a couple of inaudible to each other and retreated to their corners and seats in the room.

“Yeah, that’s right! Move outta the way!”

One grouchy Sakura was one nasty monster; the whole school was aware of that. There were rumors where she nearly KO’ed a group of perverted guys who were wolf-whistling behind her back. No one could blame her—every girl in the school, minus whoever liked that, admitted that they would do the same.

“Something’s wrong,” Sasuke inquired to Sakura, placing his notebook in its proper place in its bag. Since she was as smart as him, the conversation would be intelligent. Occasionally, the raven-haired male would hanker for a small talk where he wasn’t treated like a god. Haruno Sakura would be the one to supply that for him.

Without turning her head in his direction to acknowledge him, she grasped her pink strands and yanked on them. Sasuke wasn’t so sure if she knew who she was speaking to.

Sakura growled, “That stupid idiot! On his first day he breaks his leg climbing and jumping from tree to tree trying to be a ninja! Of all things, why a ninja? And while Tsunade-shishou is wrapping his leg in a bandage he shouts, ‘Hi, I’m Uzumaki Naruto! I want to be the best ninja in the world!’ FOR THE LOVE OF HOKAGE, THERE ISN’T A SINGLE NINJA IN KONOHA!”

The psychic smirked at her way of blowing off some steam: by babble. Perhaps she got it from her best friend, Ino, who sat in the front row along with a lazy genius, Shikamaru. Either way, it was useful.

From what she had spelt out for him, Sasuke deduced that this ‘Uzumaki Naruto’ was new. He sounded like a handful, not to mention idiotic and loud. The combination of the two was the type of personalities he hated the most in a person. In fact, he inwardly told himself that he wouldn’t be surprised if the new addition to the class wore orange and looked like a jack o’ lantern on Halloween.

Crreak...

The creaky door opened and a late Kakashi shuffled in, sticking the doorstop in the space between the door and the tiled floor. Today, he was a mere ten minutes late—a new record. The familiar orange book was not in his hand, though his silver hair was still in utter disarray and his mask intact as always. The whole class braced itself; something was coming and the possibility of it being the Apocalypse was pretty high. Kakashi never walked anywhere without his copy of ‘Icha Icha Paradise’.

“Hello, class!” he greeted cheerfully, though there was the same lazy tone meshed into it. “Today we’re going to make a new friend!”

He sweat dropped when the whole class remained silent, contemplating what kind of person he or she would be. The girls squealed that the student would be a cool one like Sasuke, while the guys hoped for someone wimpy.

On the contrary, Sasuke wished that it wasn’t who he thought it was.

“Well, let’s welcome him,” Kakashi droned on, reverting back to his sluggish tone of voice. “Come in.”

Cricket, cricket...

Crickets were chirping in the background as there was no response. Kakashi sighed; he should’ve listened to Tsunade when she caught him in the hallway and told him that the boy was a handful. His single eye, the other obscured by a headband bearing the symbol of Konoha (he wore it to hold back his hair), crinkled at the nurse’s preposterous story of the ninja-influenced teen.

Just as the class was about to break out in roars of ‘liar’, ‘scam’, and ‘I want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich’, feet hitting the tree near the open window positioned next to Sasuke could be heard. Sakura groaned and hid her face under the cover of her hands.

Sasuke barely had the time to register whatever was happening because a flash of orange, white, and metallic silver shot through the window and tackled the Clairvoyant to the ground, successfully knocking his desk over. It landed with a ‘thud’ one millimeter from Sakura.

“UZUMAKI NARUTO! HOW THE HELL DID YOU CLIMB A TREE WITH CRUTCHES, YOU IDIOT!?” she berated the crippled Naruto. “AND IS IT NECESSARY TO JUMP ON SOMEONE WHO’S INNOCENT?! Sasuke doesn’t swing that way, you know!”

‘Thanks for implying that I’m not gay,’ the Uchiha thought sarcastically, rising up on his haunches to wipe the collected dust off his hands and clothing. Then he set his desk in its proper, upright position and sat there like nothing had happened. It took all his mental strength to resist the urge to bang his head on the desktop.

Speak of the devil; Sasuke’s life couldn’t get any worse.

“Um... that is the new pupil, Uzumaki Naruto, as Sakura brilliantly put it,” Kakashi said while dodging a glare from Tsunade’s apprentice, “Well, come to the front of the class and introduce yourself, Naruto.”

“OKAY!” the blond enthusiastically answered and retrieved his crutches from the floor in the same lying position. Though it took a little while for him to steady himself, he finally made it to the front of the classroom by hopping like a bunny. Half of the students didn’t see why he had to introduce himself; he already made a first impression on everyone which was a simple, ‘Naruto is a total retard, possibly gay.’

“Hello, my name is Uzumaki Naruto! I love ramen and want to be a first-class ninja when I get older! If I can’t be a ninja, then I want to be a taste tester for Ichiraku Ramen, the best ramen stand in all Konoha!”

Kakashi nodded and directed the interesting addition to the empty seat in front of a flustered Sasuke. From his pocket, he pulled out three schedules and handed them to Sakura, Sasuke, and Naruto. “Sakura and Sasuke; the principal, Sarutobi-san, wanted you to help Naruto out. So he came to the decision of changing your schedule so it matches Naruto’s exactly. Good luck.”

This time, Sasuke banged his forehead against the flat, hard exterior of his desk. He had visions that occurred any time of the day and now, he had to deal with a first-class Dobe.

But there was this kind of energy radiating from Naruto he couldn’t really put his finger on...

“Ah, man! I hate Math!” The voice of a disappointed Naruto rang throughout the hustling crowd of pupils and the occasional teacher. His bag full of textbooks was slung over his shoulder like that of a mailman’s. Students would make sure that they were at least a few inches away from the crippled wonder, for he keeled over a couple of times already from the unbalanced weight.

“Dobe, you hate everything that helps you with your mental power,” Sasuke commented. “No wonder why you’re such an usuratonkachi.” ‘Dobe’ was the primary nickname for Naruto, who dubbed him ‘Teme’ because he riled him up with grunts and insults. It was the so-called first step to their friendship.

“What did you say, Sasuke-teme?”

“Uh... hey, we’re here,” Sakura pointed out. Truth to be told, the Medic was a type of buffer between the two, and so the current conversation was immediately dropped. She gave both of them a smile and headed inside the class, Sasuke shoving a paranoid Naruto along.

Sakura chose the seat beside Ino and Tenten, her friends who also happened to have Math in the same block. In an instant, they were chatting about the latest gossip and the Calculus test that they were going to take.

Naruto called the desk in the corner of the back of the room, pushing his acquaintance in front of him. Sasuke’s suspicions were raised when the teen in the orange jumpsuit insisted that he sit behind him. “I’m just going to check something,” he had said.

He wanted to contemplate on this longer, but Kurenai-sensei waltzed into the room with a stack of test papers. “All right, class, today we’re having a Calculus Test. Make sure only to have a pencil and eraser in front of you. If you cheat, I will know, so don’t dare of thinking about it. The talking stops when I hand out the first test.”

Groans from the people who forgot to study slowly dissipated into the air. They knew that cheating wasn’t an available option; Kurenai always managed to find them. Sometimes she would keep quiet about it until she passed them back, some discovering big fat goose eggs on their paper.

“Hey, Teme, can I borrow a pencil? Mine just broke,” Naruto whispered. Wordlessly, Sasuke chucked a black mechanical pencil at the Dobe’s head. The Blond plucked it off the floor and gave him half a grin and half a glare.

Gracefully, Kurenai sauntered towards the first row of students, handing them the tests. She continued the pattern, finally stopping at Naruto and acknowledging him as an unprecedented learner. To the wannabe ninja’s dismay, she gave him a copy of the test anyways just to see what he had learned at his old school.

And he left every question blank.

For Sasuke, the test was a breeze on a cheerful, visionless night. The same went for Sakura, except for the fact that she felt as if it were an afternoon without any patients to tend to. Despite the enormity of questions that were fired at them, they instantaneously finished it ten minutes prior to the end of class and handed it to a surprised Kurenai.

At that point, Sasuke grabbed the Aeneid, a book he borrowed at the school’s library from within the deep darkness of his bag. It was fairly old, which was indicated with the tearing cover and yellowed pages or the former kids who got their hands on it never bothered to care for it.

He started to read the part where Pallas was slaughtered by Turnus when he heard Naruto sniffing the air like a curious puppy. The Ramen Addict reminded him a bit of Inuzuka Kiba who was in another class. His dog was the one who walked him to school and there were instances where he acted like one, smelling things out of the ordinary such as cooking pizza over a mile away.

Either way, it was annoying yet he had to stick it out. Talking wasn’t allowed nor was he willing to confront Naruto since it wasn’t his business at all. So he concentrated on Sakura sleeping soundly on top of her desk, pencil still in her steel grip.

As quickly as it came, Naruto stopped sniffing and skipped over to Kurenai, stumbling a little over her desk. Observing his test, she shook her head and shot him a disappointed look. He countered it with a scratch to his unruly head and a grin.

On his way back, he sniffed the air momentarily before regained his slightly hopping stride. Sasuke swore that he saw a flash of recognition shine in those blue eyes. If there was something the Uchiha was confident about, then it would be his sight. It caught any movement made by anyone—well, anyone he’s seen so far.

He shook the eerie feeling off along with drifting thoughts of his earlier vision, the two supernatural things invading his mind like a plague, and continued on to Turnus taking Pallas’ belt as a prize.

RRRRING!

The bell woke up and screamed that it was time for the transition to the cafeteria for lunch. As a couple of upset students handed their Calculus Tests in, Sasuke and Sakura waited for Naruto to shove the strap of his bag up his arm to his shoulder.

“Hey, Sakura-chan, could you go before us? I need to talk to Teme about the test and stuff,” Naruto asked politely.

Sakura was happy to oblige. She nodded to Sasuke and ran out the door to catch Ino while Naruto rapped his remaining guide’s knees, beckoning him to follow him. Growling in annoyance, he grudgingly scampered after the Dobe.

He was supposed to be the one leading him, not the other way around.

The strong scent of urine wafted towards Sasuke’s nose and Naruto had to cover his own with a paper towel, hating the solution he made to evade rabid fangirls. At least in the boy’s restroom, the girls couldn’t find them. Unfortunately, the smell of 100 liters of sweat, dirty gym socks, and deodorant hit the two. Naruto especially was afraid that he would faint; he could smell a bit better than the average human yet not as well as Kiba.

Sasuke scrunched his nose up and snapped, “Make it quick, Dobe.”

Naruto lifted the towel from his nose and replaced it with the pencil, inhaling deeply. The other entity across from him felt a cold shiver run down his spine; he made a mental note to give it away later, if he ever got it back. As long as it didn’t touch him, he was fine.

“Yup, I know this scent anywhere!” Naruto shouted in pure delight.

Sasuke got into a standard Karate stance in case the strange idiot happened to do something inappropriate. He definitely didn’t swing that way.

“Sasuke-teme, you’re a Clairvoyant, aren’t you?” Naruto stated, wondering why the hell the teme was crouched into that particular position. A couple of reasons shifted through his mind searching for an explanation.

“Hn. Give me your reason,” Sasuke demanded as he relaxed his tense shoulders.

Naruto dramatically got onto one knee and bowed in mock respect. “I’m Uzumaki Naruto, the vessel of the Kyuubi demon, at your service.”

“You’re a demon,” the psychic confirmed slowly. He was finding it hard to swallow. Naruto was practically the epitome of idiocy, but he was a container for a demon? The words didn’t make sense at all. Heck, he wasn’t sure why demons had humans as prisons anyway, let alone Dobes.

“Phew, your reaction’s better compared the last teenage psychic girl I asked before. She hit me with a stick.”

“...” Sasuke had no comment. So there were other psychics than him in the world. He’d never thought of that. And apparently, there were ones that were smart enough to hit the demon vessel with something degrading.

“Yup, she immediately thought that I was bad, since demons have the reputation of being very bad, and hit me square on the head. The poor girl went into the road and got ran over a car. It was too bad; she was cute too.”

“...So you are saying that you are not bad.”

“Bingo! You see, the demon world is split into good and bad ones. I, of course, am a good one. And we good demons, especially Kyuubi here,” Naruto patted his stomach, “help psychics—for a price. Mine happens to be a fair one, too. All I ask is that you pay for ramen and you’ve got yourself a companion! We stick with our psychic friends for life, as long as they abide by the rule, and we can perform tasks depending on our psychic abilities!”

Sasuke raised a questioning eyebrow. “Depending on psychic abilites? So you can’t help every psychic out there?”

“Nope, we can’t. Each demon, whether they are good or bad, has a different power for aiding! Bad demons don’t ever help anyone unless their heart is pure evil. But us good demons, we use different powers. In total, there are nine good demons named for the number of tails they have. There are also nine bad demons.” For one so dim, Naruto seemed like he really knew what he was talking about. He could be smart when he wanted to.

He noted the expressionless Sasuke absorbing the info like plants and water.

“Hey, Teme, you must be wondering why I’m a vessel. Kyuubi used to be a bad demon, rampaging around in the forest and killing innocents, but he was sealed into me—someone with a good heart,” Naruto paused to hit his chest proudly. “So Kyuubi became good. The same goes for his eight relatives. And the nine psychic people who sealed them into us died while doing it, which explains why we only help Clairvoyants ‘cause we only react to their power.”

In the topic of supernatural subjects, Naruto was more informed than Sasuke was. He should’ve known that they were more people out of the ordinary living their lives like him and Itachi; he would look into more with research on the Internet and Library—he needed return the Aeneid today. It was the due date.

“Teme, what’s your power?” The Demon Holder was curious to see what kind of power Sasuke had just as he was thirsting for knowledge about Naruto’s kind.

Suddenly, the familiar pain shot through his head. It felt as if an arrow was shot through his head at an incredible rate. An agonized grunt escaped from his tightly pursed lips. ‘Another vision...’ his mind alerted.

“Oi, Sasuke! What’s happening?!”

The Uchiha had no time to reply; he was already deep in the vision world.

There was a park filled with all kinds of kids playing tag and attempting the monkey bars. The sky was laden with fluffy clouds floating lazily in a blue sea of the atmosphere.

An innocent girl, not even half the size of the towering slide—more than seven feet—in front her, was standing all alone. Her head was very big in comparison to her stick-like body. Her eyes were wide and her nose was flat. She wasn’t the picture of beauty at all and the sad expression on her face showed that she knew it.

Other kids scrambled around in a sandbox below, building all kinds castles and mountains. She looked so sad, watching them.

“Can I play with you guys?” she called out.

They didn’t even bother to spare her a glance as they animatedly answered, “No, you’re too ugly.”

She had enough. Climbing onto the slide, she shoved herself off the edge, landing in the hard cement beside the kids. They all screamed and ran to their parents as a bloody pool formed around her head.

Without even feeling what it was like to grow up, she had committed suicide; all because she couldn’t stand herself.

Upon waking up, Sasuke knew that he couldn’t do a single thing about it, whether it was in the past, present, or the future. Itachi wasn’t there at his side all the time and if anyone dared to leave the campus except during dismissal, they would be handed a detention and possibly a suspension. This was why he loathed his ability so much—the pain of others was too much to take.

A hand placed on his shoulder jolted him from his stupor. “Sasuke-teme, what the hell happened?”

Realizing that it was futile to avoid it, he murmured, “I had a vision.”

“A vision,” Naruto echoed. “What kind?”

In his career as a psychic aid, he had never encountered someone who could see visions. The idea was used so commonly in unrealistic movies that it was considered cliché by many. But he was confident that he could help this one. Maybe it was fate, because his power matched up with Sasuke’s. ‘We can be the best of the best!’ he thought as the puzzle put itself together.

“I see the deaths or anything of that sort that occurs with mainly innocents as the victim. It happens anywhere.”

“I can help you, Teme! Really, I’m not joking!”

The faint dripping of a leaking pipe overhead sounded like a pencil dropping onto the ground as the bathroom fell silent. Holding back the will to puke from the mixture of stenches, Naruto grinned, extending his hand. Sasuke glanced hesitantly at the demon vessel’s hand and his eyes. He was undeniably telling the truth and wasn’t pulling his leg.

Slapping Naruto’s hand away, Sasuke said, “Deal. But I’m not going to shake your hand, Dobe. Teens don’t shake hands like that anymore unless they’re idiots.”

The Blond gawked at the insult and wailed, “SHUT UP, TEME!”

“Hn. Your power is?”

Forgetting whatever was rudely said to him, Naruto’s eyes gleamed. “Kyuubi and I can suppress or amplify your power and energy! Though it takes some energy, we’re able to send more visions to you or shrink the flow of visions in your battered, scarred head,” he explained, completely oblivious to the twitching Uchiha. “And you can sleep soundly at night! Believe it or not, the bags under your eyes really show right now! It makes you look like a hag, not that I’m saying hags are bad or anything. Hehe, luckily for you, I have tons of energy so leave it to me!”

Sasuke raised his fist and brought it down to the babbling Naruto’s head. His loud voice was equivalent to a hundred visions bombarding him a once. Besides, they had missed half of lunch with a ridiculous talk and pulling an Uchiha from his food would land one in a bad predicament.

He then grabbed the scruff of his partner’s collar, dragging him out to the cafeteria’s fresher air.

“Hey, remember the payment! Buy me some ramen, Sasuke-teme!”

“They don’t serve ramen today. Its tomato soup or chicken noodle soup.”

“DAMMIT!”

A/N: Wow, thanks for all the support you guys :D I think that this is the best story I've written so far XD Anyway, I'm not jumping into SasuSaku as many like to do. I'm going to take the relationship slow and add some friendship between Sasuke and Naruto as well. And as for Sasuke's vision, I AM NOT telling you that suicide is the answer to your problems. Really. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Remember that.

Thanks to: spottedgecko (anon.), waveblader213, experiment15, Myaa-kun, MiMiSora4EVR23, MissDramalicious, LiNkInPaRkNaRuTo, Green Froggy of Death (anon.), NorthernLights25, CrimsonBlood101, Kurai hi, and harunosakua for reviewing :)

Comments of all kinds are greatly appreciated. It is nice to hear some feedback from people who read my story.