Naruto 1. Chapter 1

_**Naruto: The Great **_

**A/N:**

**I'm trying to correct my shit by first redoing the whole format spacing of the story.**

Chapter one: Banishment

Uzumaki Naruto was considered by many as a second rate Shinobi who just had a string of lucky victories despite the odds that he faced no matter what they were. The first being an obstacle of becoming a Shinobi despite not being able to perform one of the three most basic jutsu in the known ninja world, that jutsu being the Bunshin no jutsu (Clone technique), a genjutsu/ninjutsu hybrid that allowed someone to create illusionary copies of themselves.

Naruto's inability to perform this jutsu was attributed to the fact that he had terrible chakra control which stopped him from learning anything related to genjutsu besides the Henge no jutsu (Transformation technique) which allowed a person to create an illusion around themselves that whenever someone was to look at you they would not see you but instead they would see the person you are trying to imitate.

He of course became a Shinobi through the fact that he had been tricked into stealing the Forbidden Scroll that was said to house the village's most powerful jutsu.

It was from this scroll that he was able to learn the Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone technique), a more powerful variant of the Bunshin no Jutsu which allowed him to create solid copies of himself that could help him in battle, thus allowing him to become a Shinobi with a lot of potential that was waiting to be harvested (seeing as how he mastered a B-Rank Kinjutsu (Forbidden technique) in just a few hours). Another was him surviving a battle against the famed Kiri no Kaijin (Demon of the Mist), Momochi Zabuza and his Hyoton (Ice Style) wielding partner, Haku.

It was his first mission away from the village where he not only helped in the defeat of Zabuza and Haku, but he also helped free the tiny island nation known as Nami no Kuni from the tyrannical rule of Gato, a shipping magnate who had a monopoly over the country since his shipping company was one the biggest in the world and they only got their supplies through sea trade.

Another obstacle that came and that he defied was the Chunin Selection Exam or just Chunin Exam for short. Though he didn't become a chunin he did perform really well by making it to the finals and defeating one the tournament favourites Hyuuga Neji, the prodigy of the Hyuuga clan. Though it was not as smooth a victory as he would have wanted it to be it was still the best result he could have hoped for.

The tournament was interrupted by an invasion of the Leaf village when it took place. During the invasion Naruto was forced to fight Subaku no Gaara, who was the invading side's trump card, where he once again he defied the odds by defeating a seemingly unstoppable raging psychopath.

After the tournament, he then took on Rokusho Aoi, a missing-ninja from his home village of Konoha, who had somehow gotten his hands on the Nidaime Hokage, Senju Tobirama's, Raijin no Ken (Thunder-God Sword). He defeated Aoi, who later on disappeared without a trace after falling off a cliff. Naruto knew that Aoi survived, but he wouldn't be a treat since he relied on the Raijin too much, and now that he had destroyed it, Aoi was harmless.

However all of Naruto's victories had garnered the attention of his "best friend"/rival Uchiha Sasuke, who had changed and become colder towards people after meeting his older brother, Uchiha Itachi, the man who murdered their entire clan five years prior. Sasuke was treated like royalty by the village since he was the "last of the Uchiha clan" and the revival of the clan fell on to his shoulders since he was the only Uchiha in Konoha (his clan was one of the founders of the village).

This in turn had the adverse effect of turning Sasuke into an obnoxious brat that desired power to kill his brother at all costs, and seeing Naruto (who was supposed to be beneath him) become more powerful than him drove him to consult power outside the village from the villages greatest traitor since Uchiha Madara, the founder of the Uchiha clan, Orochimaru of the Sannin.

In order to apprehend Sasuke a retrieval team was formed in order to "rescue" Sasuke from Orochimaru's clutches. The team consisted of team leader, and the only chunin rank Shinobi in the team, Nara Shikamaru, along with Akamichi Choji, Hyuuga Neji, Inuzuka Kiba and Uzumaki Naruto himself.

During the mission the group would split up with one person staying behind to fight one of Sasuke's captors. Eventually it went down to Naruto against Sasuke, where the two friends/teammates battled it out to see who would be the eventual winner, where if Naruto won Sasuke would be spared from Orochimaru's clutches, and if Sasuke was the victor he would go to the Hebi-Sannin to get the power he'd need to kill Itachi.

It's safe to say that the people who saw the retrieval team return saw one tired, and bleeding Uzumaki Naruto dragging behind an unconscious Uchiha Sasuke. As soon as someone came to take both of them to the hospital Naruto had passed out, only to wake up a few days later already fully healed thanks to the demon sealed inside him that was the cause for most of the loneliness he suffered as a child, where his own villagers treated him like he was some sort of plague.

Immediately after waking up he was met by his adopted mother figure/boss the Godaime Hokage, Senju Tsunade, along with the three Shinobi elders, though he didn't know who they were since all he saw were three old people, one of which had one eye and a walking stick, an old man in glasses and an even older hag than Tsunade.

After spending a few minutes beating around the bush about why they were there by asking him about his health (well at least Tsunade did), they got down to the reason as to why they were there and that was because they wanted to hear about the mission from him since Shikamaru had given them an overview of what they had encountered whilst on the mission, now he had to fill in the details of what he encountered.

Though Naruto wondered why these three fossils were interested in his mission report since he only reported missions to the Hokage, he gave them one none-the-less, where he told them about his fight with Kimimaro where he drew a bit of the fox's power, and then about the late edition to their mission Rock Lee's intervention that allowed him to catch up to Sasuke, where after trying to talk some sense into him they later on duked it out at the Valley Of The End.

This part of the mission report also got a question out of Naruto as the old bags, as he referred to them, were seemingly more interested on the part where he described how he defeated Sasuke by drawing the power of the fox, where they asked if he was in control the whole time, where he answered truthfully that he wasn't, as he only felt bloodlust, but he was able to reign it in so he wouldn't kill Sasuke.

This, Naruto observed, gained a look of satisfaction from the old bags. After he finished his explanation the "old bags" left. Tsunade spent a few minutes telling Naruto about everyone's injuries that they sustained. Choji nearly died from consuming his family's forbidden pills, Neji had a near fist-sized hole in his shoulder, along with four stab wounds on his back, Kiba had a case of mild chakra exhaustion while his k-9 partner Akamaru had lost some blood, while all Shikamaru suffered was a broken pinkie.

While Tsunade explained this Naruto could see something was not right with Tsunade, something was worrying her. He found out what it was a few days later, where during that time he got visits from most of his friends except Sasuke, for obvious reasons, Sakura, because she was waiting on Sasuke hand and foot, Ino, for the same reason, and Kakashi, his sensei, for an unknown reason but he guessed Kakashi was also with Sasuke seeing as he was his favourite student.

As Naruto left the hospital a chunin messenger came to him and told him he was needed by the Konoha Council, and that's where he was right now, entering the chambers of the Konoha Council that were inside the Hokage Tower. Immediately after entering the council room he took a look around and saw that the room was big, really big.

It was circular in shape and it was plain dark brown in colour. It only had one semi-circular wooden table that was huge, and that this table housed fifteen chairs which had already been filled by the designated councilmen. At the head of the table sat the Hokage herself Senju Tsunade, though Naruto saw that she looked like she didn't want to be there at that particular moment as shown by the look of utter annoyance on her facial features.

To her left sat Hyuuga Hiashi, who Naruto guessed was Hinata's father thanks to their ocular resemblance of white eyes, looking his usually stoic self, next to him sat another being who looked nearly as stoic as Hiashi, Aburame Shibi, who Naruto guessed was his friend Shino's father because of their similar dress sense of big jackets that hid the lower half of their faces along with the dark glasses they both wore.

Next to Shibi was a woman Naruto had met once before when he was younger, he knew that she was Kiba's mother, Inuzuka Tsume, a woman who had feral looks that Naruto found both weird and awesome at the same time. Next to her was Yamanaka Inoichi, Ino's father. Next to him were his two teammates and long-time friends Nara Shikaku and Akamichi Choza, Shikamaru's and Choji's fathers respectively and finally there was a man that Naruto didn't know, but his name was Kurama Shiro, head of the Kurama clan, a clan of genjutsu specialists that was so small that they barely existed anymore. These seven individuals were the clan heads of the different clans that existed inside Konoha's walls.

To Tsunade's left were seven more individuals three of which were the "old bags" that Naruto met in the hospital. They were sitting on the three seats to Tsunade's right, and next to them were four more individuals that were all civilians, the first being Haruno Isamo, head of the civilian education sector, and also his teammate, Sakura's mother.

Next to her was Rojin Shin, head merchant of Konoha's , next to him was Akebino Akira the head of the civilian healthcare department and then there was Toriyama Dan, the head Councilman for the civilians, a position which is chosen democratically every four years by an election held by the people, the head Councilman's job is to voice the needs of the people that don't fall into the category of the first three councilmen's boundaries.

As Naruto looked at the different faces in the room he saw that most of the civilian side of the council shared the same look, it was a look he'd seen long ago, the same look that used to haunt him when he was younger, but they weren't the only ones with that look, Inoichi Yamanaka and Kurama Shiro held a similar to the four civilians, the others had unreadable expressions, except Nara Shikaku, he looked like he wanted to fall off to sleep.

As he moved to the centre of the room he felt a feeling of fore bonding that he was not going to like the reason why he was called forth today to appear in front of Konoha's council. As he continued to have these thoughts of great fore bonding, Hyuuga Hiashi, the council's spokesperson started things off by saying, "Uzumaki Naruto, do you know why you were called forth by the council?"

"No, not really…" Naruto replied.

"Well we have called you here to review you." Hiashi spoke in monotone voice.

"Review me how?" Asked a perplexed Naruto.

Instead of Hiashi being the one to reply it was one on the elders, Shimura Danzo, who answered, "It's simple, we're basically reviewing whether or not you're a threat to this village, or if you're still an asset."

"Well how can I be a threat to the village when all I have done is to ensure its safety? What the heck brought this up?"

Naruto was not liking how this meeting was going, although he already had an idea of what was going to happen, he did not like it one bit, as he knew that the review he was getting was going have the Kyuubi mentioned somewhere somehow, and the next statement mentioned by Hiashi proved him right as Hiashi said,

"Well to put it simple we're reviewing whether or not keeping you in this village is beneficial to us or is it hazardous, especially since your "tenant" is the main cause of all of this. How so you may be wandering? Well it's simple, thirteen years ago this village suffered from its greatest calamity when the Kyuubi no Kitsune attacked Konoha, and it cost the lives of many brave men and women, along with thousands of civilians, but the greatest loss was that of the Yondaime Hokage when he gave his life in order to seal the beast inside of you.

Fast-forward to twelve years later in Nami no Kuni where you, Uzumaki Naruto accessed the power of the fox for the first time, under the influence of grief because you thought your teammate Uchiha Sasuke was killed by the Hyoton user Haku. Though you managed to defeat Haku using the power of the beast you opened the flood gates for a series of events where you used the power of the beast under different emotional situations, like when you reported to having used the power of the beast against Orochimaru in the Forest of Death in the second stage of the Chunin Exams.

It was triggered once again by the anger you felt inside of you. After that you reportedly used the beast's power against Kaguya Kimimaro, also triggered by anger. And finally you used, according to you, once again a large amount of its power that you had no control over. Are you seeing a pattern yet, Uzumaki?" Hiashi asked at the end.

Naruto just looked at the council as he couldn't read the Shinobi side anymore as they were all stoic, even Shikaku. The civilians on the other hand were as plain as day when it came to reading them. They had huge smirks on their faces, the kind you get when your wish was coming true.

He could of course see where things were going, but he chose not to say anything at all and let Hiashi continue, which after a while he did and he said,

"Well to put it in its simplest terms you are an emotional wreck, easy to anger, and something like that is not what should happen to the kyuubi's jinchuriki seeing as the fox, from the information we've gathered from your various mission reports, feeds off all of your negative emotions, now had this problem been spotted a few years ago we would have given you true emotional training, but unfortunately thirteen years of bad emotions is too much at this stage, it's too late now to give you that sort of training."

Danzo, at this point, decided to add his own two cents, "I told Hiruzen a long time ago to give the boy to me, I could have cultivated him into the perfect shinobi Konoha needed, but now it's too late."

The wiser members of the council translated Danzo's statement as "I told Hiruzen a long time ago to give the boy to me, I could have cultivated him into the perfect weapon I would need to take over Konoha", the others however just saw the statement at its face value.

Before Hiashi could speak Tsunade decided to intervene,

"While what you say is true you forget that Naruto is not responsible for the Yondaime's death which you are trying to pinning on him, as how could he have done so when he clearly got the short end of the straw where he lived a life of hatred thanks to you fools…"

Many on the council did not like what their Hokage said about them, and it showed on their faces as they frowned at her statement, but they knew they could not say anything about it so they wisely kept quiet and allowed her to continue, which she did,

"…and in case you forget had it not been for the fox's power boost Naruto would have died against the Hyoton user, and he would never have helped free the people of Nami no Kuni from Gato's tyrannical rule, where we would not have the trade agreement we have with Nami no Kuni."

"But Hokage-sama, how can you be so certain that it wasn't Uchiha Sasuke that saved the people of Nami, there's no way he could have done it." said Haruno Isamo pointing at Naruto.

Naruto got a tick mark at this as he was getting tired of people saying that Sasuke did the things he did. Before he could retort to Isamo's statement Tsunade beat him to the punch when she said,

"How you say? It's simple; he had a bridge named after him, that's right, The Great Naruto Bridge, not The Great Sasuke Bridge."

This got a few snickers from the council as they saw Isamo gaping like a fish looking for a comeback but was not having any luck so she just shut up and stayed where Tsunade put her. Naruto also smiled at this as well since he was glad his "baa-chan" just put the loud mouth in her place.

That small incident quickly passed where Tsunade quickly went on to explain all the things that Naruto had done for the village,

"You people also forget that he used the power of the fox to save his team from Orochimaru's snakes, and he also saved the village from a giant, psychotic Tanuki that was hell bent on destroying everything in its path, Konoha included. Something that not even a jonin like his sensei Hatake Kakashi would have been able to do.

Not only that but he stopped Rokusho Aoi and he gained us a trade agreement with not on the Wasabi Clan, which in turn gave us trade with Cha no Kuni, not only them, but don't forget about Kazehana Koyuki as well as Shibuki of Takigakure no Sato. Koyuki only gave us an alliance because of him saving her, and her country, from her uncle Doto, and Shibuki said that it was thanks to Naruto here that he learned what it means to be a true leader, which gave us an alliance in return."

"That's all well and just Hokage-sama, but do not forget that he nearly killed Uchiha Sasuke, this villages only hope of reviving the Uchiha clan, whose Sharingan is invaluable to the village." Spoke the head councillor Dan.

"You want to bring that traitor into this? Fine. Let's talk about the Uchiha gaki. What I see when I look at him is a spoiled brat with "brother" issues and a traitorous bastard. So I for one would have been glad if Naruto did kill Sasuke but he didn't because that is not who he is, he values his friends too much to do something like that."

This was followed by frowns from most of the council as they didn't like what was just said about their only hope at reviving a powerful clan like the Uchiha. The minority of the council that agreed with Tsunade (Shikaku, Choza, Tsume and Shibi) just nodded their heads in agreement.

"Regardless of our feelings towards one Uchiha Sasuke, we did not convene because of him…we did it because of the genin in front of us. Uzumaki Naruto no matter how many treaties he brings this village will not change the fact that he is a liability…" spoke Koharu, the female elder shinobi, where upon seeing the confused look on Naruto and Tsunade's faces she decided to elaborate,

"…I forgot that you were outside the village when Uchiha Itachi and his partner Hoshigaki Kisame from the infamous missing-nin organisation known as Akatsuki attacked Konoha and turned one of our best jonin into a vegetable for a week, along with defeating three other jonin, and they were just holding back, now imagine what would've happened if they unleashed their full might on us, or better yet, _when _they do this, because an organisation like Akatsuki won't stop until they have their prize, which in case you don't know, is you Naruto…or to be more precise the Kyuubi. If two of their members pose such a threat to the village, imagine if all nine come to attack us, we would be all but wiped out. Frankly I say we just get on to the voting process as it's the only way to put a full stop to this council meeting as I can tell it will take forever so let's just get on with it."

Tsunade could see that Koharu was trying to get the council on her side while she had the last word. Tsunade knew that there was nothing left to say, she had said her piece and there was nothing left to be said, but she would be damned if Koharu had the last word so she just said the first thing that came to mind, "Just remember this, sending Naruto away will have dire consequences, and besides whatever decision you make I'll over rule seeing as he is a shinobi under my jurisdiction."

"That may be so Tsunade, but under article 53 of "the laws of a Hokage" we as the council can overrule that decision if we feel that you as the Hokage is too emotionally attached to a certain shinobi or event, and it's no secret about how you feel about Uzumaki Naruto, so in this case whatever decision we come up with will be the final one…" spoke Danzo clearly showing that he was enjoying putting Tsunade in her place (in his opinion), "…so shall we vote now?" he finished off.

"Yes, let's get this over with." Spoke Hiashi  
At this moment Naruto was beyond tense as this moment was make or break for him.

"Uzumaki Naruto, any last words plead your case?" asked Hiashi.

Naruto thought about it for a while, while doing so he had small flash backs of his life. How this village treated him like dirt. Like he was some sort of plague that everyone avoided at all costs.

He remembered how children were told to avoid him, how he was suffering from loneliness, how his only friendships were with the people at Ichiraku Ramen and the Sandaime Hokage.

He also remembered the night he found out about why he was hated so much by the Konoha populace, he remembered Mizuki's word to him_** "…you are the demon-fox that killed Iruka's parents twelve years ago and tried to destroy the village" **_he also remembered that that was the day he gained another precious person in the form of Iruka after he had saved him.

Then he remembered Zabuza and Haku, the nindo the helped him to create, it was this same nindo that made him the type of person that he was today. The type that was willing to die for the sake of their village, for the sake of their loved ones. It was the thought about dying for the village and his loved ones that made him think back to all those he thought were his loved ones up until now.

Iruka and the Ichiraku family were a given in his book, they were definitely his most precious people. Then there was Tsunade, she might have only been a recent addition but he loved her none-the-less, and then Jiraiya, that bloody pervert drove him nuts but he somehow felt closer to him in the short time they had known each other than from the year long relationship he had with his so-called sensei, Kakashi.

Thinking about Kakashi made him think about team seven and how his life was in the team. Kakashi never taught him anything useful except tree-walking while he taught Sakura things dispelling genjutsu and casting a few, he taught Sasuke how to use his Sharingan along with other fire jutsu along with his signature jutsu, **chidori**, which Naruto experienced first-hand on his chest.

Thinking about the Uchiha made him a little angry about a few things. Earlier on he had just seen first-hand through Sakura's mother how the village favours Sasuke over him, where she basically called everything he did to help free Nami a lie.

He also remembered how some of the shinobi said that it was Sasuke who beat Gaara, not Naruto (though it hurt he did not let it linger on), though he didn't care about that, but what he did care about from that incident was when Sakura went to Sasuke to thank him for saving her from Gaara, he pretended not to hear their conversation but he heard how Sasuke said it was not he who saved her but Naruto himself.

Sakura laughed when she heard that not believing it but after seeing how serious Sasuke was she quickly shut up. Naruto had expected her to do to him, what she did for Sasuke, which was to thank him, but did she show up? Nope she didn't. The not showing up to the hospital thing to at least thank him or see how he was doing was the final straw. If his own team that saw how hard he tried to improve and prove the critics wrong everyday don't acknowledge him, then why would a village of people that practically hate him think or feel otherwise.

He had made his decision, he knew the words he wanted to speak, and by kami was he going to say them. After drawing in some breath he decided to let it rip. He calmly looked up at the council, spending a few minutes on every council members face, this unnerved the council a bit even though they didn't show it, before he spoke while looking directly at Hiashi in a cool voice,

"My final words you say? Well alright, these are my final words. No matter what Baa-chan or I say I can already see that most of you have had your minds made up since I entered this room. No matter what I do for this village I will always be second best to Sasuke, all my accomplishments are given to him. it doesn't matter though anymore because from the way things are going I can see that I am no longer gonna be a Konoha shinobi as I can see it on your faces, as I can tell that only Baa-chan, Kiba's mom, Shino's dad, Choji's dad and Shikamaru's dad were gonna plead my case, the rest of you weren't. This review is nothing but a farce. So can we just skip to the part about what happens now that I'm not a shinobi of Konoha?"

This shocked many from the council, as they all had heard how Naruto was dumb and none observant but to hear him talk the way he did surprised them greatly and it showed on their faces. They all quickly gathered their bearings though, and soon enough it was an all-out scream fest initiated by Isamo,

"We are the council of Konoha, how dare you talk to us like that you de…" before she even finished the word she wanted to say she was immediately met by a glare so intense it made a glare from the Kyuubi seem like child's play. Naruto, overcome by a sudden feeling of hate for the woman in front of him glared daggers at her.

It did not help matters that she was Sakura's mother since for some reason he couldn't explain the pink-haired kunoichi made him sick. He also subconsciously channelled his chakra making him look scary. This had the effect of shutting up protesting councillors before they even could protest.

The shinobi side of the Council quickly regained their bearings, and Danzo decided to answer Naruto's question, "Now that you are no longer a Konoha shinobi, nor its citizen for that matter we will have to place a seal on you, or seals I should be saying. The first seal is a chakra supressing seal that supresses your chakra, so you can forget about becoming a true shinobi. The second is a curse seal that will stop you from uttering anything about Konoha to anyone, if you do, the seal will kill you."

This enraged Tsunade where she said, "I am the Hokage, you can't do this to him, if Naruto leaves then I'm going with him as well…"

"Hokage-sama, you can't do this, the village needs you." Spoke Isamo Haruno with a bit of fear in her voice.

"She's right Baa-chan…" spoke Naruto in a cool voice once again, "…you can't leave this village, it needs you. I shudder to think of what will happen if someone as lazy as Kakashi sensei or if these fossils take over the village. They'll run it into the ground. If you won't do it for yourself, then do it for me, your lover and your otouto (little brother), because despite it all I have a few people who I would much rather not have suffer under the reign of laziness or stupidity brought on by people who have all but forgotten Jiji's (old man) teachings."

This surprised the council once again as they did not expect Naruto to speak like that as he just insulted not only his sensei, Kakashi, one this village's strongest shinobi, but also the elders of the village.

Tsunade herself didn't know what to say as she was at a loss for words, as once again Naruto put himself before others to help them achieve happiness at the cost of his own, and the look of empathy he was giving her didn't help things either, for Tsunade, as Naruto was not truly asking her.

He was telling her to stay, and though she didn't want to do it, she was going to honour his last wish as he was what she considered a precious person. With all but a small nod in Naruto's direction Tsunade agreed. Naruto saw her answer, and though it made him glad that Tsunade would quit just for him, he knew that she was needed in Konoha, and her answer, while sad, also made him happy.

The rest of the council meeting went on for about two more minutes, during which Naruto was told he had two more days to stay in the village where he could say his goodbyes before leaving by noon in two days. As soon as the meeting was over Naruto was taken by the elders, with the Hokage and her ANBU following, to make sure nothing else was done either than place the required seals on Naruto, which surprisingly is all they did, then they let Naruto go to do whatever he wanted, but they reminded him that in two days' time, by noon, he had to be out of the villages premises.

It was night time a day after the council meeting and Naruto was just waiting for the ANBU to change shifts in watching over him and his apartment from the outside. This had been a regular occurrence since the day of the Council meeting. It was Tsunade's way of making sure that Naruto was safe as she didn't trust "her" Council not to try anything underhand or dangerous, for Naruto that is. Naruto, while glad that Tsunade had his back, was also quiet annoyed seeing as he didn't get any privacy when he wanted it. But during the time between the meeting and now he had done all he wanted, and could do while observing the ANBU that were following him secretly.

He learned that while they didn't interfere with the things he did, they paid close attention to whatever he was doing. He also observed that they changed shifts every four hours, with only two watching over him. This had allowed him to formulate a plan that would result in the biggest prank in Konoha history that was for sure. He had promised this to Konohamaru when he last saw him, along with Udon and Moegi.

Speaking of seeing people he also remembered seeing his friends during the day today. Apparently the Council members had told their families, and clans, about Naruto's banishment. How did he know? At ten a.m. all his friends came over to see him, and see how he was doing, and they didn't come alone. Those from the Konoha twelve came with their senseis, those that didn't hate him, which surprisingly was everyone but his teammates and sensei on team seven.

They all told him more or less the same thing about how his banishment was unfair, just because he nearly killed Sasuke doesn't mean he deserved something like this. Naruto then asked if they knew the _true_ reason for his banishment. This drew looks of bewilderment from the group, so he decided to tell them the truth about who or more specifically what he was.

_**Flashback **_

**Naruto stared at the room that was filled by his friends (except Ino), their senseis, along with Iruka, and the Konohamaru Corps. They all looked at him like he had grown a second head since they couldn't understand the question he had just asked them. Seeing the looks of confusion on their faces Naruto decided to elaborate the point he wanted to make, "Do you guys remember the Kyuubi no Yoko, how it was said to have been killed by the Yondaime Hokage?"**

**This statement drew looks of concern from the adults in the room, where Iruka quickly asked, "Naruto, are you sure you want them to know?"**

**Naruto saw that Iruka wasn't the only one who had this look on his face, as did the other senseis, so Naruto replied, "I am Iruka sensei, besides I'm sure that once I'm gone the people of this village will give them their biased version on** **who I really am."**

"**What are you talking about, Naruto?" asked Neji as he, like the other kids wanted to know what was going on.**

"**What I am about to tell you guys is an S-Class village secret that can only be told by me and the Hokage, no one else."**

**This made the group more attentive as they wanted to know exactly what it was that truly made the Council send away probably the strongest Genin in the village. Even Shikamaru looked fully awake. Seeing the looks on their faces, Naruto decided to continue as this was make or break, to see who truly his friend was, and who wasn't. He drew in a quick breath before he said,**

"**Thirteen years ago the Kyuubi no Yoko attacked Konoha, where it took the lives of many, and it nearly destroyed the entire village. We have been told that the Yondaime Hokage gave his life and ended up killing the Kyuubi."  
After saying that he paused to see the looks of understanding that were on all of their faces so far, indicating they were with him, so he continued, "What we have been told is all a lie."**

**This drew a collective gasp from the listeners as they saw where this was going, even the Konohamaru Corps…the Kyuubi was not dead.**

"**That's right…" said Naruto in the cool voice he had developed since the previous day, "…The Kyuubi is alive. The Yondaime Hokage did not, or more like could not kill it. After all, how can you kill Chakra? 'cause that's all the Kyuubi is. It's a giant construct of chakra that thinks for itself…so how can you kill chakra? Simple, you can't. You lock it away in an object that's strong enough to hold it, but unfortunately the only thing strong enough to hold the fox is a human-"**

"**Wait a minute Naruto, you're not saying what I think you're saying?" asked Shikamaru very quickly as he could see where this was going. As could Neji, as he remembered Naruto's second chakra anomaly from their match in the finals of the Chunin Exam, where he remembered seeing Naruto's chakra change into a fox like shape.**

"**Yes I am, Shikamaru…the Yondaime Hokage used me as a vessel to seal away the Kyuubi at the cost of his life. I am its host."  
This shocked all of them as they could not have fathomed what Naruto had told them. The Kyuubi no Kitsune lived inside of him? And he was still alive? This was a lot for them to take in, so it took them about ten minutes before Hinata spoke up, as she had just figured something out, "I-is that why people treated you so badly?"**

**This question shocked all of them for different reasons. For Naruto and the adults this was a question they did not expect to be asked, for the others it was because they didn't know Naruto had it ruff.**

**Naruto quickly regained his bearings, and answered, "Yeah, the adults know so they kept me beyond arm's length, not serving me properly, or doing things like selling me used goods at double the price, refusing me service in stores, giving me looks of contempt, they did it all. I remember this one time a drunkard tried to kill me, unfortunately for him one of Jiji's ANBU watched over me, and as such I was saved from what probably would have been an early grave. Adults told their children to stay away from me, even though they couldn't say why because of the Sandaime Hokage's law that made it an offence punishable by death to ever mention it to anyone that I was the Kyuubi's jinchuriki."**

"**Jinchuriki?" asked a startled Hinata**

"**Oh yeah, um, that's what they call someone who houses a beast like the Kyuubi in them, at least that's what Jiji told me."**

"**So the Sandaime Hokage made it an S-class secret to talk about you being a…uh, jinchuriki, and the only ones that were exempt from this law were him, along you, or in this case, Tsunade-sama?" asked Shikamaru trying to clear things up while also thinking about what he had just heard about Naruto's child hood. **

"**Yeah, pretty much." Naruto shrugged.**

_**Flashback end**___

Thinking back to that moment made him smile because despite it all, and after nearly an hour's worth of playing twenty questions with everyone he was finally able to tell who was a friend, and who was not, and surprisingly they all passed his little test. They told him how sorry they were for their families' biased judgement, especially Neji and Hinata as they remember being told to stay away from Naruto.

He had also told them about Akatsuki and how they were the reason why he was being banished. It was safe to say that when the others heard about the Akatsuki they were worried (about an organisation that had shinobi like the murderer of the Uchiha clan), and then angry about the Council's decision to banish Naruto because they were scared of Akatsuki. It's safe to say that the Council and the villagers had lost a lot of brownie points in the eyes of the Konoha Twelve, soon to be eleven. He also remembered something that made him smile even more than knowing that the people he thought were his friends staying as his friends.

_**Flashback **_

**Naruto had just come back from the Ichiraku ramen stand, having had what was to be his finally bowl of awesome, godly ramen. He was walking up the stairs to his apartment when he saw that someone was waiting for him at his apartment door, and that was no one other than his shy friend, Hinata. From what he could see she looked more nervous than usual, especially when he was standing in front of her. **

"**Hinata…" he said, "…what's up?"**

"**N-N-Naruto-kun…" she proceeded to poke her index fingers together, "…th-there's something I wanted to tell y-y-you."**

**Naruto looked at her for second, wondering what it was. He thought that maybe she wanted to say sorry again for her father's actions, but he quickly shut down that idea seeing she had dine that more times than necessary anyway. So he just asked, "What is about Hinata?"**

**Hinata looked extremely red, and she seemed to be…sweating? Naruto couldn't tell since she was doing the perfect imitation of a tomato. Hinata at this point was feeling so nervous that she just wished that she could have one of her fainting episodes or have the ground swallow her up. But for some reason she didn't feel like fainting even though she wanted it, and the only way the ground could swallow her was if she learned Doton (Earth Style) jutsu. So she decided to get the huge monkey off her back before it was too late, "Naruto-kun…" she said clearly without stuttering, which surprised Naruto since she was prone to do so a lot, "…I-I wanted to tell you something." And the stuttering returned Naruto thought. **

"**What is it, Hinata?"**

**After taking a long, calming breath, she decided to tell him about what she felt, "I wanted t-to tell you something…something that I have been keeping from you."**

"**Something you've been keeping from me?" asked a perplexed Naruto.**

"**Y-yes."**

"**Well what is it?" he asked impatiently.**

"**It's about how I feel about you."  
Naruto being the idiot that he was asked, "How you feel about me? What do you mean?"**

**Hinata at this point wished Naruto was a bit smarter as any other person would have figured out what she meant, but she quickly gathered up all of her courage and said, "I-I like you, Naruto-kun…and before you ask, I mean it in the sense of your liking of Sakura or how she likes Sasuke." Hinata had spoken these words looking Naruto directly in the eyes, an action that surprised her greatly seeing as she could never look anyone in the eye before.**

**Naruto was shocked at what he had just heard. Hinata liked him. Like as in how he liked Sakura, or in this case used to like Sakura.**

**He didn't know what to say, so he just said the first thing that came to mind, "Thank you…Hinata."**

**This surprised Hinata as she had expected him to say that he was flattered ( if he knew the word) and then say he was in love with Sakura, although she saw how when she mentioned him liking Sakura he scowled a bit, so she was confused on what was happening between them right now.**

**As if sensing Hinata's confusion Naruto decided to elaborate his point, "I'm thanking you because you are the first girl my age to say that she liked me in that way…or any way at all…and while I can't say I feel the same about you (this made Hinata lower her head) I can say that if we had the time to get to know each other I'm sure I would return those feelings one day. Maybe we would have been a couple already if you told me a long time ago, so I'm guessing you can imagine how much this means to a guy like me. Someone who has never had someone his age tell him that…so thank you…Hinata-chan."**

**This had greatly surprised Hinata because although she knew Naruto would not say yes immediately, the reply he gave her was a positive one at that.**

**Before she knew what was happening Naruto had opened his apartment and had dragged her inside his apartment and had locked the door and stared at her in the face for a few minutes, while in the dim light of the setting sun that was being cast on his apartment, and then said, "Hinata, you once inspired me to face any challenges that come my way, it was your inspiration that lead me to win against Neji in the Chunin exams, and it's also because of you that I have decided on something else. I will get stronger.**

**So strong in fact that with or without my chakra sealed off I will get so strong that I will start my own village, and then one day you can come join me in this village…that's a promise from one friend to another." Naruto had been thinking about this a lot for the past day and a half. Since he couldn't become Hokage, what could he be? Another Kage? Maybe, he would have to wait and see.**

**Naruto's proclamation made Hinata tear-up, for some reason she just believed that he would be able to do it, because that was who he was. If he said he would do something then by kami himself he would do it, because that was who Naruto was. Hinata felt something stir up inside of her, something beyond ordinary admiration, and something that felt like…servitude?**

**Did she just want to give up everything and follow him? Of course she wanted to do that the moment she heard about his banishment, but that had also brought up another thought, what would happen to the Branch family that she wanted to set free? In the end she decided to stay as it would save her family from their self-inflicted curse. But she found a way to do a bit of both.**

"**I will get stronger, Naruto-kun…for the both of us so that when the day comes when you take me away from the village I will be strong enough to help you rule yours." Hinata spoke with conviction**

"**Arigato, Hinata-chan." Naruto spoke softly. **

_**Flashback End **_

In the end they had stayed together for two hours, during which they discussed plenty of things. One of them being Naruto's parents, something which was what he planned on finding out tonight, no matter what.

It was that thought that brought him to his original point of why he was waiting for the ANBU to change shifts at two a.m. He was going to use the time they changed shifts as a means of escaping Konoha. He was not as stupid as many thought he was, though he was not the sharpest tool in the box, he knew that the whole leaving by noon thing in two days' time was so the civilians could give him what they felt was a proper send off.

So here he was, just waiting for the shift change to happen. He waited with batted breath, where finally, after nearly four hours of fake sleeping under his sheets, the shift change happened, it was only gonna last a few seconds, but that was okay as Naruto only needed one second. As soon as the guard watching him turned to talk to the approaching guard he made the switch.

He had previously created a long lasting clone, which would last until six a.m. approximately, which was about a mile away from his apartment, close to the Hokage tower, and as soon as Naruto made the required hand seals he used the Kawarimi no Jutsu (substitution technique) to change positions with his clone. There was a small puff of smoke but it was gone by the time the ANBU had set his sights on his "sleeping" form nearly a minute later, more time than what Naruto had expected the ANBU to be distracted.

While the clone Naruto thought this, the real one quickly made his way towards the Hokage tower. He quickly snuck passed the ANBU stationed there at the tower, all the while thinking about how Konoha's so-called elites let a thirteen year old kid wearing a neon orange jumpsuit sneak passed them twice.

After making his way passed the guards he quickly made his way to a room Hinata had told him about. Apparently there was a room here inside the tower that used to keep records of Konoha's citizens, but the room was closed off after the Third Great Shinobi War due to it being too full, so a new one was opened on another floor of the Hokage tower, and that's where all the records since then have been kept.

He thought that maybe he should go to that room but Hinata quickly shot down that idea saying that there was a lot of security in that room, unlike the abandoned one that barely housed any. If, according to Hinata's estimations, he wanted to find out about his parents then he would need to check the old archives because she thought that his parents must have been born before the Third Great Shinobi War.

That's why he was now standing inside the archives room. Hinata was right, the security detail in this room was next to nothing as all there was as a security measure was an ANBU operative waiting outside, so after some sneaking up on the extremely board ANBU, Naruto quickly chopped him at the back of his neck rendering him unconscious.

He quickly tied up the ANBU and dragged him into the archives so that no one would see him out cold on a barely used passage way inside the tower. He looked around the seemingly old and dank room making it out. It was, while old, it was surprisingly clean, not thorough clean, but clean none-the-less. The room had filing cabinets that looked old, and that had a small layer of dust on them.

As Naruto looked around the cabinets, all the while wondering how he was supposed to find out who his parents were as these archives contained information on everyone in the village prior to the Third Great Shinobi War, his eyes landed on something that could probably shorten the amount of time it would take for him to look at the filing cabinets, and that was an information box with a how to use manual on its side. Naruto picked up the manual and read it:

_**The Information Box Manual**_

_**How to use…**_

_**The information box is a box with an assortment of seals on it that help finding who you want easier, instead of looking manually through the filing cabinets. The first seal on the box is a summoning seal that allows you to access whoever's file you want after completing one of only two ways of using this box. The summoning seal on this box is tied to every file in this room where whoever's file you want to see shall be summoned to you through the box. The first method of using this box is simple, all you have to do is take a piece of paper and write down the name of the person's file you want to see, and then all you do is slip the paper into the box, where the file will be summoned within a few seconds. The second method involves a blood seal, where you have to offer up a small drop of blood, and whichever file(s) that has a person of similar blood will be summoned to you through the box after a few seconds. We hope the box is to your convenience, enjoy. **_

This was it. The thing that made sorting through information easy as pie, as soon as he put away the manual he felt the ANBU stirring up a little, so he quickly smashed him with a fist through his face after having lifted his mask, knocking him out old once again, this time, hopefully, for longer

After Naruto took care of the ANBU he went back to the box, not before checking his watch, and he saw that it was 02:45 a.m. He had to be out the village by four because at six his clone will cease to exist, a two hour head start isn't much, so he was going to leave another clone behind, one that would Kawarimi with the sleeping clone before it expired.

Naruto, from what he remembered Tsunade telling him about the Chakra Suppression Seal that was on him, remembered that while the seal was already in effect, because of his massive chakra reserves the seal has to first syphon off his chakra, before sealing it up, which meant that he had about enough chakra left in him for two more clones before his chakra was forever shut, and it was decreasing as time went by, whether or not he used chakra the seal still ate it.

He made his way to the box and bit his thumb, and then he dropped some blood inside the box, where it sizzled for a few seconds before finally emerging with a dozen files, some older looking than others. He took the files out of the box and looked them over. The newer files were at the top while the old ones were at the bottom. He opened the first file and what he saw was a picture at the corner of the first page of a woman with red hair, round face, pearl-like eyes and lightly tanned skin. She was beautiful in Naruto's opinion, and when he looked at her details they read:

Name: Uzumaki Kushina  
Age: 28  
Status: Deceased  
Known Family: Namikaze Minato (husband) Uzumaki Mito (grand-aunt) Uzumaki Naruto (son)

Naruto looked at the picture of the woman again, as what he just read shocked him to the core. He looked at the picture for about ten minutes looking to dissect the picture of the woman, this woman who was his mother. And if what he read was any indication, then this Minato Namikaze character was his father. He continued reading everything that was written on his, now revealed, mother's file:

Career: Shinobi  
Rank: Jonin  
Specialty: Fuinjutsu, Kenjutsu  
Known Facts: Is regarded by many as one of the strongest kunoichi in Konoha and was also ranked as a high A-rank, borderline S-Rank Kunoichi. Is also known to be very temper mental, but also very crafty when in battle. Moment of fame came during the Third Great Shinobi War were she fought two of the Kiri Shinobigatana Nananin Shu (Seven Swordsmen of The Mist) and killed one of them, that being Ringo Ameyuri, wielder of the twin lightning blades, the Kiba (Fang).

Naruto read the information, and then stared at it in awe as from what he read his mother was probably as powerful as Tsunade, especially since she fought off two members of the same group that Zabuza used to belong to, and she killed one of its members. As time went by, Naruto read his mother's file, which included mission records, which averaged at 98%, which once again showed just how skilled his mother was, before she passed away. He also read her death report that stated that she died from a stab wound induced by the Kyuubi, as said so by the Sandaime Hokage.

Soon enough though, it was 4:55, and he had only just finished his mother's rather large file. He decided to read every other file concerning his family members later on, when he had reached his first destination. So he quickly took the bag he had with him, stashed the files inside, and then he quickly left the archives and the Hokage tower. At exactly four a.m. when the chunin gate guards were about to swap shifts an explosion about half a mile away from them occurred.

The explosion was phase one of Naruto's Ultimate Prank. Its job was to get the chunin gate guards to move from their post since it would occur close to them, prompting them to investigate, which would give Naruto the time needed to escape through the main gate, where the only security there were the two chunin gate guards.

When Izumo and Kotetsu heard the explosion, their initial thought was to investigate what was the source of the explosion, where they quickly ran to the site of the blast at top speed. When they got there a few minutes later they saw what looked like a cesspool as what they saw made them want to heave their morning snacks.

Directly in front of them was what looked like a large collection of diapers from the hospital, along with homes and trash that looked to have been set to self-destruct on a large scale.

The stench that filled the area was so gross that all the shinobi that came to report the crime scene immediately wished they had not as they wanted nothing more than to turn and leave the scene, but they knew they could not, not yet anyway. But thankfully, or unthankfully, depending on your view of things, they were forced to leave the area when another explosion happened at the southern end of the village, right were the Uchiha compound was.

The Shinobi rushed to the seen, and what they saw was a resemblance of what happened at the other crime scene, as once again the shinobi were greeted by a foul stench that was a combination of poo, trash, and probably set explosive tags (tags with a timer) enhanced the stench greatly. Just as they were wondering what the heck was going on, and who would have the guts to pull of something like this, along with their motes operandi, two more explosions occurred, one near the library, another bigger one in the suburban area of the village where wealthy shinobi and civilians lived.

By now the entire village was running around like headless chickens. Everyone from civilian to shinobi was running amuck not sure what the heck was going on. When they converged on the areas where the explosions occurred, some people actually threw up because of the stench alone.

Everyone was scared as they did not know what was truly going on. Was the village under attack, if so, then who? Who would be brave enough, and stupid enough to attack Konoha, the strongest shinobi village? While all these questions, and more were being thrown around by the shinobi populace a few miles away from their location an orange clad figure covered in a dull brown cloak was headed North with a smile on his face.

He may have been sad over the fact that he was banished from the village he had done so much for already, but for now he was going to revel in the fact that Konoha was turned into a cesspool that would probably take weeks to clean.

As Naruto was heading north towards wherever his first destination would be he knew that he would one day come back to Konoha, but not as one of their shinobi, or as someone seeking acceptance, but as the leader of a village that hopefully will be so strong it could challenge Konoha's might.

As he continued walking down his path a few thoughts struck him. How was he going to become powerful with Akatsuki looking for him? How was he going to build his own village from scratch? How was he going to beat Akatsuki when the time came? He didn't know the answers to any of these questions. He stopped to turn and look at the forests surrounding Konoha he had one final look at the village that had cursed him before he departed.

He had one final thought about everything, "_**Goodbye everyone…goodbye Hinata-chan**_". With that final thought he turned and left Konoha, promising himself that he would one day return for Hinata. While Naruto left Konoha a pair of almost white, pupil-less eyes stared at the rising sun.

Hinata had woken up during the third explosion, but unlike everyone else she knew who did this, it was Naruto. He had told her about his grand final prank, and Hinata had to admit it was pretty good, so here she was staring at the rising sun with thoughts about a blonde haired, orange clad genin that had the most amazing eyes, in her book, and the most beautiful smile.

Naruto had promised to come back for her one day, and if there was anything she knew about Naruto it was the fact that he always kept his promises, or die trying. She would wait for the day he would come for her, and in the meantime she would train to get stronger so that she could help Naruto when the time came for her to leave and join his village.

Whether she would do that as a missing ninja or as a political marriage pawn, she didn't care, as long as she got to be by Naruto's side.

"Hinata-sama."

She heard her name being uttered from behind her. When she turned around she saw that the person who called her was none other than her cousin Neji.

"What is it, Neji-nii-san?" She spoke in her usually quiet voice, but there was no stutter this time, though Neji picked up on this, he kept it to himself and said,

"Hiashi-sama would like to see you."

Hinata just nodded at that as a sign of acknowledging that she received the message, before Neji bowed, turned around and left Hinata's bedroom. Hinata turned to look at the distant horizon one more time before she said,

"Goodbye, Naruto-kun."

And with that she turned and left her bedroom, sliding the door to her bedroom closed leaving it empty, a feeling, she realised, she would feel more so than ever now that Naruto was gone forever. __


	2. Chapter Two: The Grim Reaper

**A/N:**

**Before I begin the next chapter I would like to say something first: I want to express my sincerest apologies to all of those who read the first chapter and had to bear witness to my ignorance in forgetting to space out my work. I want to assure you all that I plan on somehow fixing it (even though it will take forever due to the fact that I upload using my phone so mistakes like paragraph spacing is something that can't be fixed through mobile, though I promise to find a way to fix it). So as penance I brought out chapter two which was supposed to come out next week a few days early as a way of making up for my flop. **

**Your reviews have been greatly appreciated, and I have made sure to take them all into consideration before writing this chapter. **

**I DO NOT…will NOT be doing disclaimers because seriously, the site is called FANFICTION for a reason because everything written here is fiction based on the fan of someone else's show, book or movie…so I won't be writing disclaimers**

**Thank you**

Chapter two: The Grim Reaper

It was a crystal clear day without a single cloud in sight as four people walked into a port town just off the coast of Hi no Kuni. This town was called Otaru Port. It was known by many as the hangout zone of all ronin that were looking for a place to rest without having to stay in a town that was far from the sea. This made it easier for those looking to commute via the ocean as they could stay near the docks for a while before heading off to where ever they wanted to go. What most people didn't know was that there was an underground complex that ran a few miles outside of the port town where a less than savoury bounty office existed. Said bounty office also acted as a mission deployment centre for all of those who were given special missions by said office. There were only two other places similar to this one throughout the continent. The first being in Tsuchi no Kuni, the other being in Mizu no Kuni. The thing that made this place so special is that it differed from your regular bounty collection office because some of the missions issued here were missions that some hidden villages couldn't do so they "tasked" ronin and missing-nin who came by this office with these missions while they offered a substantial mission fee to their unknown assailant(s). It was another hidden truth about the hidden villages. In the times before the hidden villages places like this one were plentiful, where clan-less shinobi would prove themselves by working their way up the ladder by performing missions that people couldn't send to the clans of that era. Now it was hidden villages that now tasked ronin and/or missing-nin with said tasks.

Walking into this town were four people who were dressed in a similar dress code. The first three were wearing black cloaks that had high collars that covered the bottom part of their face which included chin, mouth and their noses, at least partially, just like a certain missing-nin organisation that was threatening the "peace" of this world, while the fourth member wore a high collared black trench coat and had a broadsword that had a black handle stuck to it that was stuck to his back in a black sheath held by the chakra he channelled into his back so he could keep his sword in place. Said person had black hair that formed two bangs along the sides of his face. He had deep onyx eyes and had a look on his face that showed that he was calm person. Underneath the trench coat he had a long sleeved black muscle hugger t-shirt along with a pair of black pants and black combat boots while on his hands were a pair of black fingerless gloves. He also carried a pouch that was located on his lower back under his trench coat.

Next to him were two women who were strikingly beautiful, at least one of them was easily visible so you could say that about her, while the other had a porcelain mask that was similar to an ANBU mask, but also totally different from one seeing as it only covered three quarters of her face where the lower region of her face was visible to the world, as her mouth area was seen by all. Another feature that made this mask different from ANBU masks was that it was coloured orange instead of white. On said mask was a pair of thick black lines that could be seen on either side of her cheek region along with a pair of ear like extensions that extended from the top of her mask. The eye holes in her mask were barely visible as they were small and round, but if you did ever manage to get a peek at her eyes you would see a pair of sky blue eyes. This woman also had long blonde hair that reached her lower back tied into a single ponytail, and underneath her high collared black cloak she had a full orange bodysuit that had black ANBU styled chest armour, along with sewn in black elbow and knee pads along with black gloves that had three tubes in each hand that were sewn into the glove that were attached in the crevices between her knuckles. She also wore specially designed orange combat boots that had steel underneath them and on her back she carried a katana that had a black and orange handle.

The other woman that was part of the group had auburn coloured hair, hazel coloured eyes and a straight faced look. Underneath her cloak she wore a white vest along with a white skirt that had frills on it that was just above her knees. On her arms and legs she had special made skin-tight arm and leg warmers that were white in colour and had a red trim towards the edges. She also wore a pair of white shinobi sandals and she wore a thick white belt that had a sword strapped to it that hung from her left hip.

The final member of the group was a man that had bright blonde hair of the same shade as the women with a catlike mask, though his hair was wild and unkempt giving it a spikey look while he had tied the back of said hair in a small ponytail. He also had piercing blue eyes and a navy blue mask that covered the lower half of his face, a mask similar to that worn by a certain cyclopean Konoha Jonin. Said mask was attached to a similar coloured long-sleeved muscle hugging t-shirt, where he had on a mesh shirt underneath the t-shirt and a plain black flak jacket that was of a similar design to those worn by Konoha shinobi, pocket compartments included, along with black bandages wrapped around his forearms stopping by his black fingerless gloves that had the Uzumaki swirl on them. He also had on a pair of black shinobi pants that were wrapped in black bandages from his calf muscles all the way down to his ankles along with black shinobi sandals. On his back he carried a thin black sheath that had a black handle of a chokuto sticking out of it that travelled down the same path as his vertebrae. He also carried a small pouch on his lower back, though instead of having kunai and shuriken, this pouch only carried empty scrolls. His kunai and shuriken were placed on a pair of seals that were etched onto the inner part of his gloves.  
As the four of them walked through the town some people turned and looked at them while most simply did not give them the time of day simply because they were used to this little group already seeing as they came here a lot over the past year. The small group of ronin made their way towards one of the many bars that were located all over this port town. The Rusty Kunai, as the bar was called, was the bar they usually went to seeing as it was the cleanest of all of the bars in this small town, and that was saying something considering the fact that this was a ronin and missing-nin hangout spot. Once they had entered said bar they quickly went to a spot that was secluded in a darkened area of the bar where they usually sat at. They all took their seats around the six seated table, with the masked male taking a seat that overlooked the entire bar while his compatriots took the other seats with their backs turned to the bar. They did not have to worry about someone sneaking up on them seeing as their seating arrangement covered every angle, so they all had their eyes open and ready for anything, but that did not mean that they could not watch their own backs, it just never hurt to have added security in this world. After the four sat down, they waited a few minutes before a female waitress came over to them carrying four glasses of juice and placed these glasses on the table without saying a word. She threw a smile at the blonde male that she was facing before she turned and left. These four's orders were already crammed into the waitresses head seeing as she seemed to have an infatuation with the mysterious masked man who had been coming with the same three individuals every time he came to this town for the past year. The woman in the cat mask just sighed and shook her head at the waitress's antics. She honestly could not understand what women saw in her brother/leader. Sure he was handsome, but they could not even see his full face, and yet they were practically throwing themselves at him, and he just pretended as if nothing was going on, as if he was oblivious to it all, which somehow added to his "charm".

As the four of them quietly sat and drank their juice a pair of eyes were staring at them from another part of the bar, and they were not alone, as the person next to the man who stared at them was also looking at them to see what his companion was looking at. As the second man saw who his partner was looking at he quickly shook his head and faced his partner and said, "You know, Oboro, I know the look you have in your eyes…you wanna challenge someone to a fight just to prove how strong you are, but trust me when I say that you _do not_ want to challenge those guys…not at all."

"What do you mean, Yasuke? They may look like they're strong, but might I remind you that I have never lost a one on one fight…ever."

The man now recognised as Yasuke just narrowed his eyes at his friend's idiocy and said, "That may be true, but those four are a league or two above you…above us."

"What do ya mean?" asked a confused Oboro.

Yasuke just sighed in exasperation before he said, "Do you remember the rumour we once heard about the Iwa annihilation?"

"Yeah I remember that rumour…apparently Iwa had commissioned for a ronin to undertake a mission where they put a hit out on an A-rank missing-nin from Iwa, who if I remember correctly, was called Kai Toshi who had somehow come into possession of the Raijin no ken after it was reportedly lost after a Konoha genin defeated its previous wielder Rokusho Aoi, who was said to have fell off a cliff, along with the then broken sword. Apparently Aoi had survived and had also run away from Ame, becoming the first missing-nin to go missing from two different villages. After that he ran across Kai, who defeated him, and took the Raijin from him…"

"Yes, yes…" Yasuke interrupted annoyingly, "I know the story so you don't have to explain it."

"I know you do…" said Oboro grumpily, "I just wanted to see if it was the same Iwa massacre that I was talking."

"It is the same one you idiot as there has not been an Iwa Massacre since the Third Great Shinobi War, so I'm obviously talking about _that _Iwa Massacre…the massacre where a ronin shinobi took out Kai as per mission parameters set by Iwa, and when it came to said ronin handing over the Raijin, Iwa had an ambush squad made up of ten Jonin…overkill yes, but they had to make sure that the job would be done properly without fuss as the guy killed Kai Toshi, who before he left Iwa was said to be extremely strong, like Hatake Kakashi strong. But their treachery did not bare the necessary fruits they wanted seeing as all ten Jonin, plus the two chunin that were sent to collect the Raijin from the ronin all died."

Oboro had a thoughtful expression as he heard what Yasuke said to him. He had obviously heard of the story, where this man called Kirito of the black sword killed every shinobi that Iwa had sent after him, gaining him S-rank status in Iwa's bingo book. As he thought about this _Kirito no kuroi ken (Kirito of the Black Sword)_ he remembered said ronin's supposed dress code included a full black ensemble, along with a black trench coat, and when he looked at the group of four again he saw that one of them matched the description made of Kirito, where he quickly paled realising that he was about to start an unnecessary fight where he would be sure to lose. B-rank was never strong enough to beat S-rank…that was the golfing class between them.

"Holy shit, that's _Kirito no kuroi ken_?!" said Kirito in an exasperated, yet hushed whisper, where Yasuke just nodded his head. Oboro contemplated how lucky he was for a few minutes before he realised something else, "Wait a sec, Yasuke…wasn't _Kirito of the black sword_ the one who also killed…"

"The Kyuubi Jinchuriki…yes, yes he was." Replied Yasuke, as he remembered how Konoha had banished their Jinchuriki, where said Jinchuriki only lasted a year out on his own where he was eventually killed by _Kirito no kuroi ken, _and Konoha could not do a damn thing about it as the Kyuubi Jinchuriki was no longer one of them, he was a ronin_._ At the time he (Kirito) was unknown, and no one knew why he did it, but apparently one of the few repercussions that act had was that it stalled whatever plans Akatsuki had, Yasuke may not have been a strong shinobi, but he was a damn good informant, he could find almost anything he wanted to find out, and Akatsuki was kind of an easy topic for him to study, where he learned a great many things about the tailed beasts, like the fact that Killing a tailed beast takes from one to nine years before they reappear in this world depending on which beast it was as the tail count represented the amount of years it would take to for said beast to reform, and the Kyuubi was five years away from reforming, and when it happened, shit was going to hit the roof seeing as every credible, and willing hidden village would try to get the Kyuubi for themselves.

As Yasuke and Oboro continued their chat about the group of four shinobi, said group were conversing with themselves in hushed whispers where the blonde haired woman asked, "Exactly how much money do we have now?"

The blonde male replied, "We're only five million Ryo shy of reaching our objective amount."

"Well this is taking longer than I thought." Spoke the blonde woman

"That maybe so, Tigress, but we need not draw attention to ourselves so that we can fulfil…" spoke the now identified Kirito before being interrupted

"Fulfil what?!" spoke the annoyed blonde female now known as Tigress, "The whole plan, because that won't happen seeing as we'll garner everyone's attention with the second stage."

"Yes that is true," spoke Kirito in what the group had come to discover was his usual calm manner, "which is why I was going to say that we need not draw attention to ourselves until stage one is complete."

After having that said to her Tigress had the decency to look sheepish as she was felt stupid for interrupting Kirito but she would never apologise to him, and the group knew that as well so they did not bother asking her to apologise as it would be a wasted effort because Tigress was the type of woman to apologise for anything. Before their conversation could continue any further a man wearing ordinary grey pants, and a brown vest, along with a hair net came over to them. This man had a groggy look on his face, and messy brown hair that showed that he barely took care of himself, instead he focused solely on drinking. The man walked up to them, then he sat down on one of two empty seats available, where he then proceeded to burp and slur incoherent words for about a minute, where during that time he just saw everyone around him at the table look at him with expressions that showed that they were not amused by his antics at all. He quickly stopped acting as if he was drunk and had a straight face on him almost immediately.

"I don't know why you continue with that drunken charade of yours when you know that it isn't amusing, not in the least bit." Spoke the blonde male with slightly narrowed eyes.

The "former" drunk quickly recognised that he was in the presence of four strong shinobi who could kill him a thousand ways over, without even trying. He quickly hid the slight fear he felt by lightly chuckling to himself and said, "Sorry, I just use it to get information seeing as no one takes a drunk seriously."

At that the blonde male nodded, and then he said, "Speaking of information, where is the info I wanted?"

The informant looked at them sheepishly before he said, "Well tracking these guys is kinda hard…I mean I would have a better time tracking Akatsuki then these guys…speaking of which, did you know that two people wearing Akatsuki insignia were seen traveling into Kaze no Kuni? Well I don't know much about what they want, but from what I heard from my guys they were making a bee-line for Suna."

"So Akatsuki is making their move against the Kazekage…or specifically the Ichibi no Shukaku." Spoke the rarely spoken auburn haired woman, where the rest of the table just nodded.

Kirito looked at the blonde male and asked, "What do you want to do? We can't let Akatsuki get a tailed beast when we can stop it."

"Agreed…" replied the blonde male, but before he could say anything else their informant quickly butt-in and said, "Whoa guys, before you make your move on Akatsuki I also need to inform you of another development that has occurred."  
This got everybody's heads to turn and face the informant who felt uneasy at having the presence of four powerful shinobi directed towards him where he sighed and said, "Apparently Orochimaru has resurfaced for the first time in five years, if you remember properly he went away into hiding after he failed to destroy Konoha…well he is said to be looking for new recruits, and apparently he has put out a hit on the last Uchiha in Konoha, Uchiha Sasuke, where he said that he is willing to pay about fifty million Ryo for him alive, and only alive. He won't accept a cadaver of Uchiha Sasuke."

Every one sitting on this table, besides the informant processed the information given to them, where after a few minutes the auburn haired woman said, "Well this new bit of information has changed a lot of things…what'll we do?"

"Indeed it has done just that," spoke Kirito with a thoughtful expression etched onto his face, "…but Orochimaru has to realise that Uchiha Sasuke is one of Konoha's strongest shinobi today, and from what I've heard they plan on making him Senju Tsunade's successor."

This caused the blonde haired male to narrow his eyes greatly as if irked by something before he said, "Orochimaru must be getting desperate seeing as Sasuke is not the same weak little boy he used to have some measure of control over all those years ago. Sasuke is strong enough to challenge even a Sanin now…ROOT's training did wonders for him."

"Yes…he may be strong enough to hold his own against a Sanin but he is still no match for any of us." Spoke Kirito with clear confidence, where his entire entourage just nodded their heads in agreement with him.

"Still though, what are we going to do Boss-man?" asked Tigress looking at the blonde male, who in turn stared at nothing for close to a minute before he spoke, "We'll split into two teams…team one will follow the Akatsuki lead, and team two will go collect Uchiha Sasuke."

This got a raised eyebrow from the auburn haired woman who said, "Aren't we supposed to keep a low profile? Going after Akatsuki and the Uchiha would put us at risk…no, it would put us under continental spotlight where we would have both Konoha and Akatsuki after us."

"That's true, Asuna," replied the blonde male, "but don't forget that the plan involved us garnering the world's attention at a later stage…so why not do it now at a controllable pace?"

"I'm sorry, but I don't get it." Spoke the clearly confused informant

"What don't you get?" asked Kirito calmly

"How is having both Akatsuki and Konoha hot on your asses good for you? All I see is a death wish really…I mean, don't get me wrong but I know you guys are strong, frighteningly so, but you can't take on Akatsuki and Konoha, they will crush you." Spoke the informant worriedly.

"Well you clearly don't know enough about us then since you think that Akatsuki and Konoha are going to be the end of us. We can't let Akatsuki capture Gaara, through and through…and we need Orochimaru for something, so we're going to stop Akatsuki because we must, and we'll use the Uchiha to draw Orochimaru out into the open." Spoke the blonde male

The informant just scratched his head at this and just looked at everyone around him and saw, for the first time since he met these four shinobi, emotion being conveyed in their eyes, i.e. determination, so he just decided to drop it at that, and after a few minutes of thinking to himself he asked another question, "Who's going to be with who?"  
At this the blonde male smiled a sly smile reminiscent of a fox, though it couldn't be seen behind the mask that hid half his face from the world

_**Outskirts of Suna: One week later**_

The past five years have been anything but a pleasant notion for one Hatake Kakashi. The past five years had been filled with a lot of regrets and mistakes upon Kakashi's part. As he lead a team which consisted of Haruno Sakura and Uchiha Sasuke, his former students, Kakashi contemplated on how things had changed since the day Naruto had left Konoha for good. For Kakashi, Naruto's banishment only added to the list of failures performed by the "great" Copy Ninja himself who had a lifetime's worth of misery and pain, especially when it came to those he was teamed up with. Naruto's banishment had come as a shocker to him, especially after how Naruto had been proving himself by overcoming obstacle after obstacle in hopes of being recognised by the village. Too bad for him though things don't work like that, apparently all the headway Naruto had made in changing people's opinion about him was short term, because after the chunin exam, and the invasion, his actions performed during the mission to retrieve Sasuke, where he brought a battered Sasuke back to Konoha was the catalyst in resetting everything he had worked for, as Sasuke was seen as royalty in Konoha, and Naruto hurting him quickly made him public enemy number one. Kakashi regretted the fact that he was not there when Naruto needed him most, where he instead chose to focus on Sasuke, believing that the Kyuubi's regenerative factor would help take care of Naruto, but when he finally decided to check up on Naruto he was already two days into his exile. Kakashi remembered Naruto's stink bomb prank, though at the time he was so focused on staying by Sasuke's side that he did not even bother to check the explosions when they exploded, believing that he could leave the safety of Konoha to his comrades, after all Konoha was not built on him as its foundation, where if he did not check any trivial matter it would collapse. Too bad though that it was said reasoning that made sure that he never saw Naruto again, up until today. Life in Konoha just has not been the same without Naruto.

As they continued to move through the outskirts of Suna Kakashi thought on what Naruto would be doing right now if he were here along with the three of them? Would he be chasing after Gaara as well? What would he think of Kakashi right now? What would he think of his teammates? Sakura had grown strong since Naruto had left the village. She felt pretty awful about Naruto's banishment, though the feelings of sadness happened later on. She felt ashamed of what she had done, and when the news of Naruto's banishment came out she was a bit peeved at first, and when she found out the reason why, from her mother, she quickly started acting like a shallow person and had become like the rest of Konoha. She forgot all the times Naruto saved her life, and how he would do anything for her, including bringing back the person she loved. It was not fair for Naruto to be called such derogatory terms by his former teammate, who he would have done everything for, but her mentality changed a few months after Naruto's banishment, where Sakura made the mistake of calling Naruto a monster in front of Hinata when Naruto's friends got together to have lunch at a barbeque restaurant. Unfortunately for Sakura despite the improvements she had made into being an actual kunoichi, Hinata was a Hyuuga for a reason, and according to Kurenai Hinata had made a lot of advancements since Naruto left, and according to those who saw what transpired between her and Sakura, she was as scary as Tsunade was when she was younger. That was from those who knew Tsunade when she was younger. Hinata dealt such a heavy beating to Sakura that Sakura was hospitalised, and when Tsunade got wind of what happened to her apprentice she went to investigate where she called Hinata to the hospital and got both sides of the story from her and Sakura, and when she found out why Hinata had beat Sakura she (Tsunade) actually congratulated Hinata, and when Sakura made a comment about both Hinata and Tsunade being demon lovers, she was sent into ICU by a punch through the wall from Tsunade, where when she woke up a week later she was given the tongue lashing of her life where Tsunade broke her world apart peace by painful piece. Tsunade told her of Naruto's life, about how he lost his parents the day he was born, and how he grew up alone without a friend because of people like her (Sakura's) mother who told their children to stay away from Naruto like he was the plague. She told him the reason as to why Naruto was perceived as dumb was due to the fact that his education at the academy was sabotaged, where teachers intentionally taught him the wrong things hoping that he would fail and never become a shinobi, where it was through a never say die attitude that Naruto proved he could be an even better ninja than probably Sasuke. Sakura at that point wanted to dispute that point by claiming that Sasuke was a better ninja than Naruto, which earned her a slap to the face where Tsunade listed off all of Naruto's achievements, like how he mastered a B-rank Kinjutsu in the form of the Kage Bunshin in just one night and the rasengan in a week, which is an A-rank jutsu that took the Yondaime Hokage three years to create and master, which took Jiraiya a year to master and took her sensei Kakashi a few months to master, or like how he beat Haku, who had previously defeated Sasuke, or how Naruto beat Gaara and rescued her from him, something Sasuke failed to do. Naruto also had a monument named after him, Sasuke does not, and Naruto did all of this with the second grade training he had, while Sasuke who had first rate training decided to become a traitor to the village when he saw that Naruto was stronger than him. It's safe to say that after the talk Sakura changed completely where she trained extensively to improve herself…but Tsunade had stopped training her because of her previous actions, but she was delegated to Shizune since Tsunade thought it would be a waste of talent for someone like Sakura not to learn medical ninjutsu but she had blown her opportunity to learn under Tsunade, but the Hokage was considerate enough to get Shizune to teach her whatever she wanted to know. Sakura also studied genjutsu under Kurenai and she was quiet good at it, and now fast forward five years later and Sakura was Konoha's most skilled medic, with only Tsunade being her better.

The news that came a year after Naruto's banishment left her feeling extremely sad where she actually cried about it since she never got to fulfil her wish of somehow finding Naruto, and possibly bringing him back to Konoha. Her relationship with Sasuke was strained to say the least. Over the years he had become obsessed with revenge even more than before where he now wanted to kill two people, one being Itachi and the other being Naruto since he was the one that stopped him from gaining the power he would need to defeat Itachi. Sadly to say that he was like Sakura was before when news of Naruto's banishment reached him where he said that the loser got what he deserved. It was Shikamaru who reminded him that it was said loser beating him that stopped him from going to Orochimaru. So if he lost to a loser in a fight, what did that make him? Sasuke, after that comment just stowed away promising to find Naruto and kill him, but unfortunately Naruto died a year later where he was reportedly killed by, a then unknown, Kirito no Kuroi Ken. After that Sasuke just proclaimed that he would kill Kirito since he was the one who stole what should have rightfully been his kill. Though Kakashi wanted to stop training Sasuke, even though he was of the same blood as his first best friend, Obito, he had let his darkness consume him too much. He actually tried abandoning Sasuke as his sensei but when the council found out they used their power and influence to make Kakashi stay and teach Sasuke all he could about the Sharingan, but Tsunade said that Kakashi only answered to her whims, not theirs, so they had to take their complaints and shove them up their asses. Unfortunately this allowed Danzo to make his move where he secretly got Sasuke into ROOT. Despite being too old to have his emotions shut off, Danzo's training of Sasuke helped Sasuke to become the powerful shinobi that he was today where Kakashi doubted that he could actually defeat Sasuke in battle anymore because from the things he had seen and heard about Sasuke's missions over the past five years he had become a powerful shinobi, where he was eventually placed in Kumo's and Iwa's Bingo books as a high A-rank, possible S-rank ninja, with an approach with extreme caution warning next to his name.

In terms of weaponry and gear while he remained the same, Sakura and Sasuke had changed drastically. Sakura wore a pink skirt along with a red long sleeved t-shirt along with a beige undershirt along with a Jonin flak jacket on top of it all, and thigh high brown shinobi sandals and black full gloves. In terms of weaponry she had all of her weapons poisoned, from her shuriken and kunai to the tanto she carried across her back that was slung vertically as it went from a white handle on her right hip to the blade tip on her left hip. Studying under Shizune had made her a poisons expert, so add that to her impressive Genjutsu abilities where she was probably on par with Kurenai, you have yourself a very formidable opponent in the form of Sakura. Sasuke's look was different from when he was younger, as he now wore long black pants that had a special black ankle warmer feature that was connected to the bottom of his black sandals. He also wore a grey high collared short sleeved t-shirt that had the Uchiha emblem printed on the back. Over that he wore a Jonin flak jacket and black wrist warmers on his forearms, but Kakashi knew that the wrist warmers hid special seals that contained Sasuke's weapons. On his back was a purple handle tanto that is commonly associated with those trained by ROOT, though not known by many was that Sasuke's tanto was specially made where it had seals that allowed him to actually extend the blade into a wakizashi.

As they moved ahead he heard his team's guide, an elder from Suna who went by the name of Chiyo say something that he did not hear properly so he had to ask her to repeat, "Um, I'm sorry, Chiyo-baa-sama, but could you say that again?" 

Chiyo looked at Kakashi with a bit of an annoyed expression on her face at having to be made to repeat what she said, but she kept her annoyance to herself and said, "I honestly don't understand why Konoha sent help seeing as we could have done things on our own, and the treaty between your village and mine is as weak as a wet noodle, though I am a bit grateful you saved one of our shinobi from Sasori's poison."

Kakashi looked thoughtful for a second be for he said, "Well, to be honest the treaty was made weak by the Kazekage, but weak or not, Suna is Konoha's ally where we will help whenever we can."

Of course that only applied to dangerous situations like this where it was something that threatened village safety. The Godaime Kazekage, Sabaku no Gaara had for the past couple of years weakened their treaty to the point where they only traded goods that were necessary to each village's survival, and only helped in situations such as these, where said Kage had been recently abducted by Akatsuki. The reason as to why Gaara had done this was simple. Naruto was Gaara's first friend, and Konoha's banishment of said blonde Uzumaki enraged Gaara where upon becoming Kazekage a few years ago he practically destroyed their treaty/alliance. The sad part about this was that Gaara was not the only person to do so. Apparently when word got out about Konoha banishing their Jinchuriki several of their allies, those who had become their allies because of Naruto's doing, like Nami no Kuni, Cha no Kuni and Haru no Kuni, formerly known as Yuki no Kuni did what Gaara did. Influential people from those countries were enraged with what Konoha did, so the pulled strings, and ended all ties with Konoha.

Before Kakashi could continue to think about more incidents that involved Naruto in some way or another he heard Sasuke growl, where he quickly rushed ahead of them using impressive speed to and approached something. When Kakashi finally got a good look at that something he realised that it was none other than Sasuke's older brother and sworn nemesis, Uchiha Itachi. Within seconds Sasuke had crossed the distance between him and his brother and pulled out his tanto, where he channelled chakra into it, thus extending its length and surprising Itachi slightly where before he could move out the way he was quickly stabbed through the chest and then pinned to the ground. Kakashi and the others quickly descended upon the scene, where within seconds of having done so they saw a pinned Uchiha Itachi raise his right hand slowly before he used his index and middle finger to point towards the left, where everyone turned and saw another Uchiha Itachi standing on a tree bark. The Uchiha Itachi that was pinned by Sasuke to the ground burst into a flock of crows that slightly startled everyone, Sasuke included. Sasuke quickly stood up from his crouched position and sheathed his blade and glared at Itachi.

Itachi, in terms of appearance had not changed much over the last five years, the only thing indicating that he was older were the now longer, and more pronounce tear troughs on his face. As for everything else it was all still the same as he wore the same Akatsuki robe they saw him in five years ago. Itachi looked at all the shinobi present before him before he said, "Foolish little brother…I had heard you had grown stronger over the years, but you rushing into battle was just careless on your part. If I wanted to kill you I could have done so already."

Sasuke glared at Itachi before he said, "Too bad, because I want to kill you!"  
Immediately after saying that Sasuke jumped straight at Itachi and held up the ram sign and said, "Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu (Fire Style: Grand Fireball Jutsu)" the second the jutsu hit the tree it incinerated it, but before Sasuke could get out of the way of the falling tree debris giant tree roots came out of the ground and entangled him. Sasuke knew that this was his brother's genjutsu so all he did was use his Sharingan as a means of breaking free from the genjutsu, but that one second of immobility seemed to be his undoing as Itachi had performed the Katon: Housenká Tsunábemi (Fire Style: Phoenix Sage Flower Nail Crimson), where he proceeded to take out a handful of shuriken, before lighting up the shuriken by means of a fire jutsu that produced a miniature fireball for each shuriken he held and then he threw the flaming shuriken at Sasuke.

Before Sasuke could move out of the way he heard Kakashi say, "Suiton: Mizurappa no Jutsu (Water Style: Violent Water Wave Jutsu)" and not a second later the shuriken that had a set course for Sasuke ended up being drenched in water. This caused a miniature fog to appear for a few seconds, seconds which Sasuke used to run into the trees as he realised his brother was too good for him to come from a frontal assault. So he decided for a different tactic, but before he knew what was going on a giant fireball came blazing down his way. He managed to jump away in time not to get incinerated but it also made him silently curse as he forgot that Itachi had a Sharingan as well, one that was more powerful than his so his little fog disappearing act did nothing to hide him from Itachi. Fighting Sharinganless people had made him think he was very good at hide and seek during battle, apparently he was not. His feet touched the ground, and he quickly turned around, whilst igniting his hand in a ball of electricity that sounded like chirping birds and dug said hand into someone. He realised that some was his brother, though before he knew what hit him Itachi turned into water revealing that the Itachi he just ran the chidori through was a Mizu Bunshin. Unfortunately for Sasuke though this realisation also brought more problems. The first one being that because of water's 80% electrical conductivity and the fact that Sasuke's Chidori was still active while said water was on his arm, it lit Sasuke up for a second or two, causing some distortion. Said distortion lead to his second problem, Itachi coming from a blind spot, and using Sasuke's distortion to his advantage, Itachi showed his class by throwing five hits, three punches and two kicks, at Sasuke all of which connected in under two seconds which sent Sasuke flying, only for Sasuke to turn into a wooden log before Itachi felt Sasuke's right foot hit the side of his face as Sasuke came from behind him and dealt him a powerful kick that sent Itachi sprawling to the ground. Sasuke merely stood still as he watched Itachi stand up and turn to face him before Itachi said, "Your reaction time is quite good. You certainly have improved, Sasuke."  
At that Sasuke just looked at him indifferently before he said, "Where is the real Itachi?"

Though surprised by Sasuke's question, Itachi never let it show as he stood still and watched Sasuke. There was a stand-off for a few seconds before Itachi said, "I sometimes forget that I am not the only Sharingan user in the world."

Sasuke just stared at him impassively before saying, "Where is the real Uchiha Itachi?"

"Does it matter?" Itachi asked in a reply of sorts.

Sasuke got an annoyed look on his face before saying, "You may move, and fight like Itachi, I can tell that it somehow is not the real you seeing as you only have the chakra of a mid-level chunin, and we both know that you have chakra that could give any Kage a run for their money…so I'll ask again. Where is the real Uchiha Itachi?"

"I do not know why you bother with such questions Sasuke seeing as you won't get an answer."

That statement irked Sasuke who quickly decided to resume their battle by running through a string of hand signs before he cried out, "Katon: Ryuuka no Jutsu (Fire Style: Dragon Flame Jutsu)"  
A dragon made out of fire made its way towards Itachi who simply used the Kawarimi no jutsu to swap places with a log, but what surprised him was Sasuke appeared at the spot he appeared in, already having drawn out his extending tanto/wakizashi and slashing it at Itachi who simply jumped back having used his Sharingan to judge the distance he would need to jump to get away from the blade, but what happened next caught him off guard completely. His Sharingan saw it all in slow motion, from Sasuke running an electric current through his blade that completely enveloped it in Raiton chakra, or more specifically his chidori as the Raiton chakra coursing through Sasuke's tanto/ Wakizashi hybrid blade made the same noise as the chidori. The part that actually made him worry though was when Sasuke's blade increased in terms of reach, while Itachi had already jumped towards a certain distance away, unfortunately though for Itachi he was still in mid-air and as a result he caught the extended blade across his chest were the spot that Sasuke's chidori amplified blade touched, it cut through, and immediately cauterized causing Itachi to falter in his movements for a second, one which nearly cost him the battle as Sasuke brought his chidori enhanced blade, which was now as long as a nodachi down towards Itachi, who regained his footing before releasing shuriken that were hidden in his sleeve. These weren't meant to kill or cut, but actually distract, and the seemed to accomplish their goal as Sasuke was forced to used his chidori tanto to block off Itachi's shuriken giving Itachi enough time to distance himself and fly through the hand seals for a jutsu, one which he called out a second later, "Katon: Haikumo no jutsu (Fire Style: Ash Cloud Jutsu)" where from Itachi's mouth an ash cloud appeared blocking out Sasuke from him, and him from Sasuke. Sasuke immediately went on high alert and jumped out of the ash cloud before it completely enveloped him, good thing to as he recognised the jutsu as he had seen Sarutobi Asuma perform it while he was alive, and just like Asuma the circumference covered by the cloud was the only part that ignited in flames when it was set off, though what Sasuke didn't know was that Itachi had to use a fire jutsu to ignite the flames, unlike Asuma who had to only ignite a spark from a peace of steel stuck to his bottom teeth, this combination took a lot out of him chakra wise, which was why he rarely used it. When the Fire jutsu died it revealed a slightly huffing Uchiha Itachi, whose Akatsuki cloak, and a bit of his under shirt was burnt off from his right chest hemisphere down to his arm revealing something akin to an old battle injury for the world to see. While Sasuke looked unharmed, as his sword continued to ignite thanks to the chidori running through it, he had a raised eyebrow as he saw a cauterised wound on Itachi's shoulder which got him to say, "That wound is too old to have been caused by my Chidori nodachi, so where did you get it as it clearly happened between the last five years?"

Itachi looked at Sasuke while huffing his chest before he said, "An individual who had a lot of potential, where had he not been killed in battle shortly after my fight with him where I was forced to retreat due to the injury you see, he would have surpassed even me by now, and certainly you." Sasuke looked at Itachi with a bit of mirth in him before he asked, "What was this guy's name?"

Itachi looked at Sasuke with an unreadable expression again before he said a name Sasuke had not heard in years, "Uzumaki Naruto."

Something seemed to have sparked inside Sasuke at the mentioning of Naruto's name. After all he was the last person to face Sasuke in actual combat and live, the last person to defeat Sasuke in battle. Itachi saw it, but did not comment on it, opting to remain silent. Sasuke though had no such qualms where he said in an angered voice, "The Dobe had more potential than me? I am an Uchiha. He was nothing compared to me!"

After his rant Sasuke looked at Itachi who was still huffing, though not as much as he was before. His look of anger turned into one of something akin to arrogance. Sasuke looked at Itachi and smirked, "You look like you could do with a break."

Itachi being Itachi just stared at Sasuke's smirking face with a face that held no emotion at all before he said, "What an obvious tactic."

This brought a slightly confused look from Sasuke as he wondered what Itachi meant by that. Seeing the confusion in his younger brother's eyes Itachi elaborated, "Blatantly drawing me out here just so you can let your team finish the mission by distracting me with a fight."

Sasuke stared at Itachi for a second, during which he realised his team had completely vanished from the battle scene, and though this was not a part of the Sasuke had, as his plan involved him facing this Itachi imposter and defeating him, nothing more nothing less, but he let his brother think it was their plan before he smirked and said, "If it was so simple than how did the mighty Uchiha Itachi fall for it?"

Itachi looked at Sasuke for a few seconds before he said, "How did the mighty Uchiha Sasuke, master of the Sharingan fall for a genjutsu?"  
This brought a shocked look from Sasuke as Itachi was not implying what he thought he was implying. He quickly looked at himself with the Sharingan and saw something that made his blood run cold. His saw that his chakra fluctuation was erratic. How? Could this have been caused by the power of the Mangekyou? Sasuke held his hands in the ram seal and said, "Kai!" thus releasing him of his genjutsu, and what he saw almost made him falter in confidence of his chances against Itachi. Sasuke saw that he was back in the clearing where the fight started where everyone looked at him. Itachi was on a tree branch a few metres away from him while Kakashi, Chiyo and Sakura were to his right. His companions had a look of confusion on their faces while he understood what was going on from the start. "I guess it's true what they say about you. You are the best genjutsu user alive. All these years of studying how to dispel even the toughest genjutsu with the Sharingan did nothing in the end as you still managed to overpower me through the Mangekyou."

Sasuke's statement got a lot of wide eyes from his companions, but before they could say anything, Itachi spoke up and said, "That was not the power of the Mangekyou, it was simply me showing you that no matter what you tell yourself little brother, you can never defeat me until you have the same eyes as I do."  
This caused Sasuke to frown, if Itachi in his weakened state could still subject him to genjutsu that powerful, he wondered what would happen should he use the Mangekyou on him. Nothing pleasant would come from that. As he stared at Itachi heatedly he came to a realisation, "That earlier genjutsu…" he said with a look realisation, and of slight anger, "…you weren't simply putting it on me to get me slow down for a sec. You used to determine if you could still place me under genjutsu, and if so for how low, and by testing me with a genjutsu like the Tree Bind you knew that anything better than that would work in your favour."

Itachi just nodded his head while Sasuke, for the first time in years truly understood why this guy, his brother, was said to have been the second coming of the Yondaime Hokage. Before anyone could say anything Itachi just went limp and fell from the tree he stood on and plummeted to the ground below. Everyone was on high alert after that where they all thought of, and tried to break free out of the inexistent genjutsu seeing as not even Sasuke's Sharingan was good enough for Itachi's genjutsu. Speaking of Sasuke, said Uchiha quickly regained his bearings and went over to Itachi's limp body that was lying face down on the ground, which he soon flipped over only for him to see that it was not Itachi, but someone else. A Suna shinobi from the looks of it who had a black hair strand framing his face. Sasuke thought this must be another genjutsu by Itachi, so he used his Sharingan to see whether he was right or not, and it turned out he was not as the person, and the environment were all real. What the heck was this? Sasuke couldn't understand but before he could have any further contemplation a voice said, "Shoten no Jutsu (Shape shifting Jutsu)"  
Sasuke turned and saw that the voice belonged to Kakashi. Kakashi saw the look of confusion etched on Sasuke's face, which prompted him to explain, "Shoten no Jutsu – a jutsu that allows someone to force feed a large portion of their chakra to another person, allowing said person to literally shape shift into the chakra feeder. It's the closest thing there is to a true Henge."

Sasuke was absolutely floored by that explanation. A jutsu that powerful was in his brother's hands…damn it! He just could not find a way to beat Itachi. Before he could continue with his internal monologue he was disturbed by Kakashi who said, "We have a mission to continue…I fear we may already be too late."  
Sasuke just stood up from his crouched position and nodded his head indicating that he understood before he left, though the thought of his brother having placed him under genjutsu that was not even a Mangekyou genjutsu left him feeling worried. He could ponder on that later on when he got back to Konoha, right now he had a mission to complete.

_**Ten minutes earlier – hidden location**_

A few miles outside of Suna, towards the outskirts of Kaze no Kuni there was a giant rock with a sealing tag stuck on it. Said rock was blocking a cave entrance that also served as the base of the most dangerous group of men alive today. Inside the cave, which was dark, there laid a giant statue of a creature with something akin to nine eyes, and said creature had what were reminiscent to being hand-cuffs around its wrists. The hands connected to the wrists were held in an upright position with its fingers spread out. On nine of said fingers were nine different figures, seven of them were astral projections while two were real, those were the two that were in the cave while everyone else had appeared as astral projections. Floating in front of them was the Godaime Kazekage, Sabaku no Gaara. As Gaara continued to float in his unconscious form the nine figures just silently completed their task. Draining a jinchuriki out of biju chakra was no joke, as Akatsuki members could attest to that, but complaining only made it worse as it slowed down the work since your focus was on something else. As they continued to focus on accomplishing their task at hand they never realised that something was about to happen that would shake the very foundations of the Elemental Nations, especially the great five.

Outside of the Akatsuki cave there were two individuals, one stood atop the water that was flowing very slowly while the other was floating a few inches above the water. What these two people had in common was their hair colour, which was blonde, and their purpose, which was to stop Akatsuki from completely extracting the Ichibi no Shukaku. One was male, while the other was female, with the male being the one floating in the air.  
"So what now boss?" asked Tigress in a somewhat board voice.

"I don't get why you like to call me that Tigress, as I am not your boss…I am your brother." Replied the floating male

"Well you are the leader of this operation, are you not?" asked Tigress amusedly

"That I am…though if I remember correctly it was you guys who made me leader."

"True I guess, and you know you were best suited…now break the seal already so we can crash this party."

The masked floating man just smirked at that. His sister was like that, she always craved a good fight, and apparently having a dick measuring contest with a group of some of the most dangerous people in the world was her kind of idea of fun. Still, who was he to deny his little sister a chance to fulfil her fetish? So he floated up to the rock and placed his right palm on it, on the part that had a seal. After what was some time Kanji appeared on the seal that soon spread throughout the rock. A small green shimmer was seen emanating from the rock before it died revealing that the rock was now bare. The masked blonde floated back a few feet before reaching behind his back and withdrawing the chokuto strapped to it that ran down his spine in a straight line. The chokuto had a pure charcoal black handle that if you looked at it closely enough you would see a few seals embedded onto the handle. The blade itself looked to have been made from the strongest of steels just by looking at it. It was extremely shiny as it could act as some sort of secondary mirror, and it had a swirl design reminiscent to the swirl on the back of its wielders gloves. Said wielder swung his blade so fast that it only looked like one slash with his blade was made. If you had a Sharingan it would be something akin to watching a blur as that was the image the Sharingan would have received from watching the swordsman move his arm. The rock he had just slashed ended up with a lot of cuts on it that were deep, but not deep enough to cut the rock into two pieces, before the blonde male raised his sword one more time before he said in a cool voice, "Fuuton: Kaze Kiri no Jutsu (Wind Style: Wind Blade Jutsu)" as he brought his sword down in a slash that released an extremely thin, yet long crescent blade of wind that completely cut the rock into two pieces. This version of the Kaze Kiri was more powerful than the original because of the fact that the original jutsu made you spit out a blade of wind that would have enough power to cut through organic material, i.e. skin or fur or plants, making it a C-Rank Jutsu borderline B-Rank, while this version had so much cutting power that it could cut through nearly anything because of the fact that the wind blade released from the sword is given a natural cutting shape because of how the sword blade is shaped, making this version an A-Rank jutsu. After cutting the giant rock into two pieces, the blonde male lifted his left hand that was not holding anything, while his right hand held his chokuto, before he said, "Fuuton: Kaze Tataki no Jutsu (Wind Style: Wind Strike Jutsu)", where the boulder was blown deep into the cave by a force of pressurised wind that was so great that it left a giant imprint of a hand on the rock piece that was blown into the cave.

No one inside the cave knew what hit them since one moment they were diligently sealing away the Ichibi, the next moment they were disturbed, when they saw a large chunk of the rock that acted as a barricade for them being thrown, or in this case being blasted by a Fuuton jutsu into the middle of the room. This broke their concentration, and forced them to relinquish their hold on the jutsu that they were utilising in order to seal away the Ichibi.

"What the fuck?" said Deidara and a man who had sleeked back hair and a scythe together at the same time, though they weren't the only ones who thought something along those lines. The other Akatsuki members were able to keep their shock and perplexity in check as many wanted to see exactly what/who had just thrown, or blown the rock guarding their cave. As the members of Akatsuki watched the dust settle by the entrance of the cave/base they were finally able to see exactly who it was that blew up their cave. They saw a blonde male and female, both clad in black cloaks similar to their own, though the duo's cloaks were missing the red clouds that were synonymous with their group.

Upon seeing the intruders, Deidara actually laughed and said, "Hahahaha, who the fuck are you? You know what never mind since it's clear you are both insane, un…I mean why else would you come here, un?"

Everyone was intrigued by the two strangers who had just stopped a highly advanced security seal from activating along with blowing up the cave entrance. They watched as the two mystery shinobi walked slowly into the cave before they came to a stop in front of the nine most dangerous men on the planet, seven of them astral projections while two of them were not. They watched as the male part of the duo sheathed the blade that he held in his right hand before he looked at all of them, and then he said, "So this is the rest of Akatsuki."

He said seemingly to no one in an unimpressed tone, and although they could not see his face through the mask he wore along with the high collar that was a part of the cloak, they could tell that the look he had on his face accompanied the tone of his voice, showing that he was greatly unimpressed, before he continued  
"I must say that I expected more from a group that made a village like Konoha quiver so much in their boosts that they had to banish their jinchuriki to save their own hide. Looks like the only impressive people are Uchiha Itachi, Hoshigaki Kisame and him."

When he said the word "him" he said it while pointing to an astral projection that had purple-like (you could barely tell through the projection), ringed eyes that held no emotion what so ever. The rest of the members took it as an offence that someone had the gall to call them unimpressive while he was a nobody.

"You fucking heathen, how dare you call the servant of Jashin-sama unimpressive while you are a non-religious bastard!" screamed an astral projection of someone who had sleeked back hair and was carrying a scythe. Those were the only distinguishable feature about him because of the fact that the astral projection came out looking like something akin to a rainbow so being able to make out any colour was an accomplishment in of itself.

"Shut up Hidan, don't you see he is trying to psych all of us out by making us angry?" said a man whose only distinguishable feature was a mask he had on that seemed to be connected to a head piece that hid his entire face except his eyes.

"Why don't you shut up, Kakuzu, you motherfucking cock sucking zombie? That asshole is lucky that I ain't there personally to tear him a new shit hole!" the now identified Hidan continued to scream.

Laughter was heard from the astral projection of Hoshigaki Kisame as he found the entire scene that transpired funny. This was brought to a halt by the astral projection that had ringed eyes that said in a monotonous voice that would give Uchiha Itachi a run for his money in a monotone voice competition, "Hidan, Kakuzu shut up or I'll make you shut up."

This brought Hidan and Kakuzu's argument to a close along with Kisame's small bout of laughter along with Deidara's ever building anxiety. This also drew a look of astonishment from the male blonde floating figure who quickly guessed that the figure that just spoke must have been the leader of the group as he could practically feel the authority he commanded through his astral projection but he quickly put that thought away he continued to gather Intel on Akatsuki while they continued to bicker amongst themselves, and right now he had gained a considerable amount thanks to the fact that he crashed their "party" and stopped the sealing off of the Ichibi no Shukaku. Thinking about Shukaku made him think about Gaara and how his life was in the balance right now as he could die at any particular moment so he quickly stopped his information gathering stunt and decided to get right down to business.

"Akatsuki…whatever your plans for the world are, I cannot allow them to come to fruition because of their diabolical nature, so I will say this to you now…I'm going to hunt you down and kill all of you."

His statement seemed to have made a lot of people angry by the looks of thing as even the seemingly calm Kakuzu had a look of outright murder in his eyes but before anyone could speak they saw Itachi buckle under some sort of stress related issue before he started panting heavily as the collective use of his chakra while sealing away the Ichibi, and performing the Shoten no Jutsu left him feeling really tired. The Chakra that ran through the Shoten jutsu that Itachi had just offered to "his clone" had just ran out of chakra.

"What's wrong, Itachi-san?" asked Kisame seeing his partner show great fatigue

"The team sent to rescue the Kazekage are on their way here." Spoke Itachi in a tired voice.

This statement brought a look of slight relief from the blonde haired male, not because he was afraid of Akatsuki, but because he was afraid that without enough medical attention within the next hour or so, Gaara would die.

The apparent leader of Akatsuki spoke to his followers in his monotonous voice and said, "We will end this meeting here, but know this…" at this point he turned and looked at the blonde duo, "…you made enemies out of the wrong people. You will feel the wrath of a god being brought upon you. For now though I'll leave to Deidara and Sasori. You two, make sure you kill them."

This statement would have scared many, but these two blondes simply because one of them was a die hard fight fanatic, while the other was a blonde with a lot of power, so he was not afraid at all. The male blonde was inwardly smirking at himself as he had discovered not only all of Akatsuki's members, he knew most of their names now (though the plant-like figure startled him a bit as it was quiet the entire time, which would make hunting them down easier seeing as if he wanted to unite the world, then threats like Akatsuki would first have to be eradicated, and he had an additional five years to do so, after all he was supposed to be dead. Itachi, Kisame, Kakuzu, Hidan, Deidara and Sasori…they were all going to leave this world soon enough. He was the Grim Reaper, and he was here to send them to hell.

The other members of Akatsuki soon started disappearing as their astral projections fizzled out one by one, with the last person being the leader who gave the blonde duo one final look before he disappeared as well. The giant sealing statue followed not long after as it was enveloped in a giant puff of smoke before it disappeared completely.

Without even waiting for any sort of signal to begin their unavoidable fight, Deidara took the initiative to and he quickly opened the lower half of his Akatsuki cloak and dug his hands inside a bag that contained his special exploding clay, where he proceeded to throw said clay into the air after he had formed a miniature bird that was soon covered in smoke before it became a giant white bird made out of clay. Deidara quickly jumped onto the bird and commanded it co sweep down and pick up Gaara, or at least try to, because before he could sweep up Gaara, Tigress had gone through a string of hand seals before she cried out, "Katon: Bakufú Ranbu (Fire Style: Bomb Blast Dance)"

A gigantic swirling flame came out of Tigress' mouth and proceeded to fill up the space between Gaara and Deidara, effectively cutting off Gaara from Deidara. The flame was so hot, and large that Sasori had to jump back a great distance, just to avoid feeling the heat wafting off the Jutsu. When the flames died down it was revealed that the male blonde of the duo had used surprising speed to get to where Gaara was, and he was now effectively cutting off Sasori and Deidara from reaching the Kazekage. Sasori looked at the two very closely, it was safe to say that these guys were probably their (his and Deidara's) equals in strength if that last jutsu was anything to go by, so he could not afford to take these two lightly.

Deidara looked at the duo for a few minutes, not sure what to make of them because if there was anything he was sure of about these two, it was that they were strong. Just how strong, he did not know.

Tigress looked at Deidara and Sasori, sizing them up. Akasuna no Sasori was Suna's greatest puppeteer, so he was long range. Deidara also seemed like a long range specialist if anything was to go by. She looked at them with an excited gleam in her eyes. She could take on Either of them, but her brother was the one who ran the show so she wanted to see who he wanted to fight, and she would just fight the one he doesn't pick.

As if sensing what his sister was thinking about the blonde male, aka the Grim Reaper said, "Tigress, I'll take on Sasori, you take on Mr Mouth over there." He spoke without looking at her as he kept his eyes on Deidara and Sasori.

"What the fuck did you just call me you artless freak, un?" screamed Deidara

Unfortunately for him though, his rant distracted him long enough for Tigress to go through a string of hand seals before she said, "Katon: Góka Meshitsu (Fire Style: Majestic Demolisher)"

A giant flame streak appeared out of her mouth that proceeded to head towards Deidara who quickly gathered his bearings and manoeuvred his bird towards the roof of the cave, but the flame was not necessarily aimed at him, it was instead aimed at Sasori, which said puppeteer realised as soon as the flame passed Deidara and came at him. This woman had supposedly aimed the flame at Deidara making it seem like he was the target, when in fact it was him. Clever strategy he thought as he jumped through the air but before he knew what was going on Tigress had appeared before him using impressive speed, where she proceeded to draw out her Katana and aimed a slash at Sasori who could not manoeuvre himself in time to avoid getting slashed, so he did the next best thing, he brought his scorpion like tail around to try and block, but it was unfortunately cut through with barely an resistance from the tail on the katana that also cut through Sasori, cleaving him in half.

Deidara was about to swoop in and help Sasori as soon as he saw what was happening with his partner, unfortunately though Deidara was cut off by the hardest kick he had ever felt before in his life that sent him flying of his clay bird and sent him towards the entrance of the cave. Deidara actually flew past the cave entrance and went outside where he proceeded to bounce off the surface of the water before he came to a stop on the surface of the water outside the cave. Deidara proceeded to slowly stand up and he looked at the person who just kicked him so hard that he broke not only his nose, but also broke a few facial bones, with nothing but pure, unbridled hatred. This guy was dead! He was so dead if Deidara had anything to say about it. He saw that the blonde male that kicked him had his sword drawn out as he floated all the way towards Deidara very slowly in an upright position. He saw the stranger raise his arm and sheath his sword, an action which made him look at the strangers face and what he saw stupefied him a little.

What the heck was going on? One moment the guy's eyes were blue, the next they were yellow and had black bar-like horizontal slits and orange pigmentation that appeared around his eyes. What the heck was going on? What had brought this new anomaly? These where questions that ran through Deidara's head, but what Deidara did not know was that the new anomaly he was staring at was the use of Senjutsu chakra, and not only that but it was brought on thanks to the stranger's chokuto. In order to channel in Senjutsu chakra one must be still and be one with nature. The Grim Reaper had already mastered the art of Senjutsu, though his mastery went to a whole new level thanks to his blade as he had used his mastery over the art of Fuuinjutsu to carve out special seals on his blade that allowed his blade to gather, and store Senjutsu chakra for him. The premise for gathering Senjutsu chakra requires for one to be still, and due to the fact that his blade will forever be in a still-like position even when he is moving he used it as an antenna of sorts to gather and store Senjutsu chakra, making it quick and easy to gather Senjutsu, even in the middle of a fight, something which was thought to have been impossible before.

Back inside the cave another battle was being waged, Tigress versus Sasori, although neither were moving in to attack the other yet as Tigress was surprised by the fact that the Sasori she had cut in half was but a husk of a puppet the real Sasori hid himself in. Tigress now stood across a young man that had red hair and he wore the traditional Akatsuki cloak, signifying that this was Sasori, though from what she had heard about the man he was supposed to be extremely old, not young and handsome, though the dead look his eyes had lost him a few brownie points on Tigress's _Hotness Scale._

Sasori looked at the woman before him, and although he would not admit it, he had come close to dying from that sword slash unleashed by this woman. She had cleaved through his tail and husk with ease, showing just how strong her blade and skill with the blade were. He had another thought that he wanted to voice out before their true battle commenced, and he asked, "Your partner intentionally lied about who he wanted to fight. He made it seem like he was going to fight me, meanwhile his true target was Deidara, and you knew this. Reverse psychology, right?"

Tigress looked at Sasori as he spoke in a voice that belonged to someone that was young, and she had to say that she was surprised by this as she expected him to continue in his gruff voice, though she chucked it up as to being a voice he used when inside the hunchback puppet. She smiled and nodded at Sasori when he finished speaking and was impressed with how he saw through her and her brother's tactic that they had established between themselves. It was something similar to reverse psychology as they would pick out opponents, only to switch out later on confusing their opponents greatly.

"Clever strategy, Woman. You two are probably an even better team than Deidara and I." Sasori continued

"Thanks…" said Tigress, "…though lets hurry this up as my brother is going to be quick in his battle as the clay user won't measure up to him."

With that being said Sasori quickly unsealed a puppet that he quickly directed towards Tigress.

Outside the cave Deidara was not have the time of his life, this guy just looked at him with eyes he had seen once before from the one guy he hated more than anything in the world. This guy had the same look Itachi had when he first met, fought and defeated Deidara. As the stranger continued to float towards Deidara he looked at him with eyes that held boredom. Deidara got mad even more as the closer the guy got the more pronounced his eyes were.

"Who the fuck are you, un!" Deidara said in pure anger

The stranger had a look on his face that showed something akin to mirth as he smirked under his mask and said, "I'm here to collect your head…you are worth forty million Ryo in Iwa's Bingo Book. I only need five million, so the other thirty five will go somewhere else…"

"I asked who the fuck are you, not what you want!" spoke a beyond mad Deidara

"Oh, I'm sorry…" the stranger lied to Deidara in a mirth-filled voice as he flared a lot of killing intent making Deidara sweat a bit before he spoke in a cold tone that sent a shiver down Deidara's spine, "…I'm the Grim Reaper."

**That's chapter two. Now before you decide to chew my head off or if you want to know what happened to Naruto over the five year period, don't worry as the next chapter will explain it all, as I did not want to was a lot of time and energy writing what many would have considered a filler chapter or two. I promise to alleviate your concerns or confusions in the next chapter as it** **will act as a bridging chapter of sorts where you'll find out what happened to the seals placed on Naruto or how he came across Tigress, Kirito and Asuna along with who trained him.**

**I received a review that said that this has the makings of Naru x Hina and let me just say that it will not be a Naru x Hina…don't get me wrong but I like that pairing, but it has been over used. The reason why I chose Hinata as Naruto's inspiration was because of the fact that Kishimoto did something similar when Naruto was inspired by Hinata to fight Neji, and how Naruto was also inspired by Hinata in Chapter 615 of the manga to fight Tobi after he was demoralised by Neji's death. **

**The Sharingan thing is something I can't forget. If you remember correctly how during Sasuke and Danzo's battle Sasuke managed to place Danzo under genjutsu despite him having ten Sharingan, so what was to stop Itachi, a master of Genjutsu from placing Sasuke under Genjutsu? **

**Thank you, please review**

**I'm out. **


	3. Chapter three: Reunion

**A/N: **

**I have a new Beta reader now people, cjgrider82, so it will take a while for me to post chapters, but the good thing is that they will have proper formatting.**

Chapter three: Reunion

In the outskirts of Kaze no Kuni, outside of a cave, stood figures that faced each other as they prepared to go to war with one another. The first was a male with long blonde hair tied into a single long ponytail with a bang of his hair covering his left eye. This man was also wearing what many had come to know as Akatsuki's uniform, which simply consisted of a black cloak with red clouds on it. His name was Deidara.

The other figure was also a blonde male, though he had shorter hair that was spiky and had it tied in a small ponytail. He had blue eyes and wore a pure black cloak. This man was soon to be known throughout the world as the Grim Reaper, though the world once called him another name before, and that name was Uzumaki Naruto.

Deidara glared angrily at the Grim Reaper for not only breaking a few facial bones with one kick, but also having the gall to look down upon him in a similar manner to Uchiha Itachi, believing him to be nothing but a nuisance. He would show this artless loser who was the better man between the two of them.

With that resolve in mind Deidara made his move. He dug his hands into the pouches he carried on either side of his pelvis, allowing the mouths attached to the hands inside the pouches to begin feasting on the clay inside.

He would usually test out his opponent by building up from C1 and going up to C4, but this guy did not deserve such a novelty from an artist of his calibre, he only deserved to be blown away, resulting in him experiencing true art first hand.

Deidara quickly withdrew his hands from his pouches and proceeded to create a giant clay dragon, his C2 specialty. Deidara quickly ascended onto the dragon as it took off into the sky, all while its tail convulsed, causing it to open its mouth as it prepared to release a miniature dragon missile.

The Grim Reaper just looked on at Deidara's dragon, not moving an inch as he continued to float above the surface of the water, clearly unimpressed by Deidara's jutsu, though that quickly changed when Deidara decided to release the C2 dragon missiles from his giant dragon's mouth, prompting the Reaper to move. As he flew to the left he realised that the dragon missile was hot on his tail, apparently it acted like a heat sensing missile.

That part of Deidara's jutsu was impressive, noted the Grim Reaper. As he continued to dodge Deidara's missiles that just kept on coming towards him as he flew over the water he noticed two things. The first was that Deidara had planted clay bombs in water. This made him realise a part of Deidara's strategy. Try to force him into the water with the dragon missiles, leaving the land mines to finish him off.

The second thing he realised, or rather felt, was the chakra radiating off of Deidara's clay bird, the one he had used to try and swipe Gaara. He felt the bird coming towards him thanks to the Senjutsu chakra coursing through him, this also made him realise that Deidara was planning on using the dragons to distract him from the bird which would come flying over from a forty-five degree angle from behind and try to force him into the water, once again detonating the land/water mines.

Having analysed what Deidara wanted to do to him the Reaper quickly made his move, slowing down in a way that Deidara would think he was getting tired and sloppy, allowing him to send in his bird which came swooping down in a forty-five degree angle from behind him, and it struck. An explosion occurred close to the water surface, causing a ripple effect in the water, and also causing the clay dragons to finally detonate, resulting in a huge explosion that made Deidara smirk.

If this Reaper guy survived his bird, then the explosion from the dragons would finish him off. Deidara watched as the explosion that occurred forced large amounts of water to rise up into the sky, stopping a few feet shy of him and his giant C2 dragon, or so he thought.

The water that was beginning to descend quickly ascended once more, this time though it was in the shape of a serpentine dragon, and what made things worse for Deidara was that the clay bombs he had hidden under the water were now encompassed into the water dragon that rose so fast that Deidara realised he would not be able to out manoeuvre it in time, resulting in him jumping off the C2 dragon and plummeting towards the water.

The resulting explosion from the C2 dragon and the clay encompassed water dragon had so much force behind it that it pushed Deidara so hard that he lost control of the timing of the landing, and as such when a giant water drill met him half way, well, let's just say it was not a pretty sight. Deidara was drilled by the Suiton: Suigadan (Water Style: Water Fang Bullet) through his stomach, causing a lot of blood to flow down into the water.

Deidara could not believe it, he was dying. Literally dying, and he was not going out like how he once promised himself, which was by blowing himself up, but he was just going to die out. His thoughts were cut short when the Suigadan was dismissed and Deidara fell towards the water once more.

Right as he was about to hit the water however, he was ensnared by water that had risen to meet him, and keep him suspended in mid-air. Deidara felt like closing his eyes, but realised that by doing so, he would be embracing death, so he willed himself to keep them open, and what he saw shocked him.

There was the Grim Reaper standing before him, not a single scorch mark, dent or injury to show that he had just been caught in an explosion. He just stood there, or more rather accurately, floated there looking at him with the same eyes as before. Those same yellow uncaring eyes that thought of him like dirt, similar to how Itachi did all those years ago.

"H-how?" was all he could ask

As if reading Deidara's mind he answered Deidara's question with a bit of amusement in his voice

"Kage…Bunshin"

Deidara just looked at him dumbfounded one final time before succumbing to his injuries. Deidara of Akatsuki was no more.

The Grim Reaper watched as Deidara succumbed to his injuries and leaves the world of the living in cold apathy. He let go of the Suiton Jutsu and watched Deidara finally hit the water. He flew towards Deidara's floating corpse, and he took out a sealing scroll from the pouch that he carried on him. He placed the scroll into the water and then he held up the half ram sign.

His scroll, which was once small enough to be put into his pouch, was now the size of Deidara after it was enveloped by smoke. He took the scroll and placed it on Deidara's corpse, held up the half ram sign once again, and watched Deidara's corpse become enveloped by smoke. When the smoke cleared Deidara was gone, having been sealed into the scroll, which readjusted its size and became small once more so that the Grim Reaper could pick it up and place it back in his pouch, which he did.

He turned on his heels and started walking towards the cave entrance, wanting to see how his sister was faring against Suna's greatest puppeteer. As he edged closer to the cave he thought about how his current family came to be. Tigress, Kirito and Asuna, though none of them were his blood relatives, he still considered them as such.

Even though they were there, there was one person that was missing from their family. It was the man who saved his life back when the world had known him as Uzumaki Naruto. He was also the man who taught him things properly, everything from reading and writing, to strategizing, to learning how to punch and kick properly, and a whole list of other things. The Turtle Hermit, Judai Roshi.

_**Flashback**_

**Uzumaki Naruto had been doing a lot of travelling over the last three months since his banishment from Konoha. He had travelled to Nami no Kuni to see if he could find something to help him in his new quest of creating his own village, and then unifying the shinobi world.**

**During his time in Nami he had stayed with Tazuna and his family, who were more than happy to have him over. Though that happiness soon turned ugly when they found out what had happened to Naruto since leaving Nami, how Sasuke betrayed him and the village, and how the village ended up banishing him for bringing back Sasuke injured along with the threat held by Akatsuki.**

**Tazuna was beyond livid when Naruto had finished explaining why he was there, and how he was no longer a shinobi. It was safe to say that Konoha was going to be in trouble with Nami on his side. **

**He soon left Nami and proceeded towards Cha no Kuni where he met up, and stayed with the Wasabi family. Likewise to how Tazuna had reacted, Boss Jirochou had done the same, promising to bring hell towards Konoha. After all, he was as influential in Cha no Kuni as Tazuna had seemingly turned out in Nami no Kuni. **

**Right now though, Naruto was travelling through Udon no Kuni after having spent some time in Cha no Kuni. The reason why he was here was simple. He wanted some ramen, and what better place than a country that specialised in making noodles. **

**So there he was walking into a small town looking for a noodle restaurant, which he found pretty easily and went inside. He took a seat and waited to be served by a waiter who arrived a few minutes later and took his order of twelve bowls of ramen. As the waiter went to get his order prepared, Naruto's ears picked up a disturbance outside, and him being so inquisitive he went to investigate what it was.**

**When he reached the exterior of the restaurant, he found the town to be under attack from bandits. Not just a small group, but a rather large one, with at least one hundred bandits. He watched as the bandits entered store after store and they trashed whatever store they entered and looted it of whatever valuables it had. **

**He saw a bandit make a beeline for the restaurant he stood in front of, and when the bandit was close enough he saw the bandit brandish a boa-staff and proceed towards him to try and attack him with it. **

**He ducked under a swipe made by the bandit and quickly rose up high into the sky with an uppercut to the bandits chin, knocking him out with just that one punch. Naruto quickly grabbed hold off the fallen bandit's staff and he proceeded to attack any and all bandits in his way. If he came across these guys while he could use his chakra, then they would be a thing of the past already because all it would have taken was one Tajuu Kage Bunshin and they would have been knocked all over the place.**

**Right now though he could not access his chakra, seeing as it was sealed away from him, not giving him the ability to use it even though it was there. So this left him with only one option, and that was to plough through the bandits using his newly acquired, and poorly made boa-staff.**

**He moved from bandit to bandit knocking them out cold with a shot to the head, greatly reducing their numbers as time went on. They may have been grown men, but he was trained, at least partially, in the shinobi arts. **

**The bandits finally noticed that a few of their numbers were down on the ground out cold, and when they saw who did it, they became infuriated. They charged Naruto head on, and with the boa he held in his hands Naruto used what little skill he had in using the weapon to whack as many as he could, though eventually they started getting in their own hits.**

**More hits soon came after that, and then sword slashes soon connected too. Naruto had become sloppy, and they knew it so they charged in together looking to overwhelm him with their numbers from all sides, and right when Naruto was about to close his eyes and let loose a sloppy attack with the boa, he saw a foot appear out of nowhere and slam into one of the bandits faces.**

**This had the adverse effect of pushing him (the bandit), and everyone else that was behind him backwards. There was so much force in the kick that a wind blast produced by the kick picked up all the other bandits in front of Naruto and proceeded to blow them backwards as well.**

**The bandits behind Naruto stopped mid-stride and started backpedaling. Naruto then noticed that the foot that had struck out at the bandits had not returned to the ground, but it did a few seconds later. After that happened, Naruto got a proper look at his saviour. He was a man who had short grey hair, black eyes, a slightly big nose along with a moustache and beard similar to those that great monks had.**

**He wore a black long sleeved Chinese-style shirt, along with blue shinobi pants and a pair of blue shinobi sandals. **

"**You know, a bunch of grown men attacking one boy is really cowardly," spoke the man.**

**The remaining bandits were getting more and more infuriated as time passed. This was supposed to be a quick, get in; trash the town, and then get out. Right now though they were being hammered by a kid and an old man, they had had enough. They gathered whatever semblance of courage they had left, and with a final battle cry they attacked.**

**It's safe to say that the end result did not favour the bandits. The old man just stood still and waited until they were nearly on top of him before he unleashed massive killing intent. Said killing intent was so much that they fainted from it. To Naruto though, who was simply looking on from afar he saw the bandits drop like flies while the old man did nothing, not realising what had happened to the bandits due to him not being able to feel the killing intent radiating off the old man.**

**After every single bandit had passed out the old man simply turned and walked towards Naruto slowly. Naruto looked at the old man's face and realised that he (the old man) had closed his eyes while approaching him. Finally the old man was upon Naruto and he somehow seemed to be looking at him even though his eyes were closed, as if reading him to see what type of person he was.**

**After some time though, the old man finally spoke**

"**You know, attacking those bandits the way you did was pretty foolish."**

**Naruto, though insulted chose to ignore the comment on his actions and said, "What was I supposed to do, let the townsfolk get slaughtered? I don't think so, that's not me."**

"**Oh really?..." asked the old man with some amusement in his voice, "…and what type of person are you then?"**

"**I'm the type of person that never gives up, no matter what. That's my nindo."**

"**Your nindo?" asked the old man in a somewhat surprised manner, "So you're a shinobi?"**

**Naruto once again felt insulted by the old man, this time though he did not let it slide. **

"**What do you mean by 'I'm a shinobi'? Of course I am you old coot!"**

"**Oh really?" the old man said once again, with even more amusement in his voice**

"**If you were a shinobi, than those bandits would not have been able to put even a single scratch on you."**

"**Well, duh, but I can't access my chakra, you idiotic old man, if I could I would have made it out scot free."**

"**Really? Well let me tell you now, a true shinobi, even without the use of his chakra would have still been too much for these bandits."**

"**But…" **

"**No **_**buts.**_** Now get this through your head, boy, if you continue to make excuses like you are right now, then you're only depriving yourself!" **

**Naruto looked down after being told off by this stranger and this man was right. His nindo did not allow for any excuses at all, so why did he just make that excuse for himself. How pitiful of him. **

"**Jiji…" said Naruto as he looked up, "thank you…" **

"**No problem, gaki…" said the old man looking down at Naruto smiling. **

"**Tell me, gaki, what's your name?" **

"**Uzumaki Naruto." **

"**You're an Uzumaki, huh?"**

"**You sound like someone who has heard of my surname before?"**

"**Heard of them? Kid, I've seen them. The Uzumakis were probably the only clan I truly respected more than any other, not even the Senjus had as much respect out of me as your clan did, kid, though I'm surprised that you actually know they were once a clan full of your bloodline. I mean they are nothing more than a fleeting memory now."**

**Naruto looked down at that, realising he didn't have any more true relatives that were alive. He remembered reading all of the files Konoha had that had people who had a relation with him. It was surprising when he found out that he was somehow related to Tsunade, and not only that but the Minato Namikaze character he remembered being mentioned as his mother's husband was actually not only his father, but he was the Yondaime Hokage. **

**He, the son of a Hokage-that seemed like a dream before but now he found out it was reality. He was the son of Konoha's greatest Hokage, the blood relative of the current Hokage thanks to her being part Uzumaki, his great-grand aunt was Tsunade's grandma, and she was married to the Shodaime Hokage. That meant that he was also an indirect relative of the Shodaime Hokage and the Nidaime Hokage thanks to his connection with Tsunade.**

**Damn, he was important; at least he was supposed to be. Now though he could not even be a proper shinobi since there was a huge stopper that could not be released that stopped him from utilising his chakra. No biggie, he would just do the Rock Lee, though he sucked at Taijutsu, and he could not get anyone to just train him. Maybe he could try this Jiji, but then again he might just do what he has been doing all along and just laugh at his face, not good. **

**As these thoughts and more crossed his head he failed to see Roshi looking at him with a keen eye before he said**

"**Hey, gaki…"**

**No response.**

"**Hey Kid!"**

**Nothing once again.**

"**Naruto!"**

**This got Naruto to look up and he saw the old man looking at him as if contemplating something, before he had a look on his face that showed he had made up his mind and he said**

"**My name is Judai Roshi." The man now known as Judai said. "How would you like to be a true shinobi?"**

**Naruto looked on stupefied by the man's request, and he could only respond with these words, "W-wait, what?"**

_**Flashback End**_

Naruto smiled at the thought of that memory as he continued to move towards the cave. Thinking about Roshi made him remember about all the promises he once made. He promised Sakura to bring back Sasuke, promised Hinata to build his own village where she promised to help him lead it, and unify the shinobi world. Thinking about Hinata made him smile a bit. What did she really mean to him? Was she just a friend, or was she more? He did not know the answer.

His thoughts on Hinata were cut short when he entered the cave and saw it littered with hundreds of puppets, almost all were burned beyond recognition. He looked up to see a young man with red hair wearing nothing but purple shinobi pants with his torso exposed.

Naruto had to do a double take at what he saw. This guy looked more akin to a doll than an actual human. His skin looked, well, not like skin. It looked like wood, and in his stomach region was a cable rolled in it. He watched as this seemingly puppet guy, who he guessed was Sasori, extend his arm outwards, pointing it at Tigress and it literally opened up, releasing a black metal tube that spat fire.

Wrong move, Sasori, Tigress was the last person to use fire against. This was proven seconds later when Tigress extended her arm towards the oncoming flame released by Sasori's flame thrower and he watched as the flames simply stopped two feet from Tigresses reach.

This made Sasori have a look of shock etched onto his face. What the heck was she doing, the flames simply stopped when she held out her arm.

"Big mistake, Sasori…never ever use fire against me, as I'll just do this…"

With that being said, a scratch-less Tigress turned her palm and made it face the cave's ceiling, the fire seemingly responded to her motion as it also moved upwards before Tigress made her palm face left, once again the flames seemed to follow whatever notion she made as they went left as well.

Sasori looked on both horrified and impressed. This girl was wielding fire that was not even her creation. Simply artistic. Tigress continued with her little performance for about thirty more seconds, manipulating the flames to follow her every command. Up, down, left and right, the flames went wherever she told them to go all with the flick of her wrist. Soon though she got bored and decided to end things.

Without even weaving a single hand-sign she cried out, "Katon: Góryúka no Jutsu (Fire Style: Great Dragon Fire Technique)"

Out her mouth a dragon made completely out of fire emerged, which proceeded to head towards the flames that were released by Sasori's flame thrower, joining with them to form an even bigger dragon that Tigress started to manipulate like how Gaara does with his sand, making the gigantic dragon flame fly around her a few times before she finally turned it to face its target, Sasori.

Sasori could only watch on as he was awed by what he saw. This girl was probably the best Katon Jutsu user he had ever come across, there was no one that he knew of, or heard of that could do what she has just done. The dragon continued to look at Sasori, with its body of flames seemingly coiled around Tigress, and she did not even look, or feel the least bit uncomfortable in the dragons flaming coils.

"Any last words, Sasori?" asked Tigress

Sasori just stared at her, not sure about how he should respond. He knew he was defeated. He had thrown everything at this girl and she seemingly destroyed all of his puppets, from the Sandaime Kazekage to his one hundred puppet jutsu. Everything. Before he could continue with his thoughts Tigress let the dragon loose on him, it attacked him head on, he thought about used the water he had, but he realised it would not be enough to put out her mega Góryúka, so he did the only thing he could do. He accepted death with open arms as he let Tigress' jutsu hit him.

Naruto watched on as Sasori was burned alive, there was no way he could have escaped, and Sasori knew this as well, so he just let the dragon burn him, and after a few minutes Tigress finally let the flames die out, revealing nothing but charred wood that was once Sasori's body. Akasuna no Sasori was no more.

He turned and watched as his sister in all but blood head towards him, slightly huffing due to the amount of chakra, and the control necessary to pull off what she did. If she were anyone else, they would be down for the count already, but his sister had chakra that would put even Kages to shame. The jutsu she pulled off was impressive to say the least.

Her ability to perform any Katon Jutsu below S-Rank without hand signs was something that many would consider unprecedented, but then again she was trained by the same man that trained him. She was bound to do unprecedented things.

Tigress finally came to a stop in front of Naruto and said, "Sorry Boss man, I couldn't leave enough of him that would allow us to collect the bounty on his head."

Naruto just shook his head and said, "No need to apologise, sis, I got Deidara, so there's no need for Sasori."

"Roger, so what's our next move?"

"We wait for Kirito and Asuna to finish their side mission."

"Wait, what about their main mission to retrieve Sasuke Uchiha."

"They won't be able to perform that part of the mission anymore."

"What? Why?"

"Sasuke is not in Konoha. He is a part of the team that Itachi mentioned earlier sent to retrieve the Kazekage."

"How do you know that?"

"You forget that in Sennin Modo (Sage Mode) I can sense things that are miles away as if they were directly behind me."

Tigress looked sheepish at that and said, "Oh, sorry."

After that was said they decided to go outside of the cave. They moved towards the cave entrance while Naruto raised his right hand, pointing it at Gaara, and almost instantly Gaara was levitated into the air by the wind. Tigress had to smile at that. Her brother's control over Fuuton was greater than even her control over Katon. It was this control that allowed him to be able to levitate almost anything through pure wind. His flight ability was something that was special.

While it would have been impossible to fly on pure Fuuton manipulation due to the fact that it would take concentration and control beyond human capabilities, her brother as able to overcome this hurdle through Fuuinjutsu. According to Naruto, when he had been developing this jutsu he ended up creating a seal that would, in simple terms, boost an elements capabilities in a shinobi.

The results vary per user, but what the seal does is boost elemental control to levels never seen before. It was Naruto's seal that allowed her to bend fire to her will. It was through this seal that he could fly. Naruto once told her that this seal could also be used to increase the "power" of secondary and tertiary elements to be on par with the original element.

Dang, how she wished she had a secondary affinity, one that would allow her to combine it with her Katon and create an elemental Kekkei Genkai. That's right; according to what her brother had said about his seal one could use it to create a faux elemental kekkei genkai.

How that worked was simple. In order for on to be an elemental kekkei genkai wielding shinobi you would need to have at least two chakra natures that were on par with each other. An example of this would be the Yoton Kekkei genkai where you would need a perfect balance of Fire and Earth chakra natures.

So in essence, her brother had done something that was seemingly never thought of before, and that was to create the Mokuton kekkei genkai through the use of the seal. And who had this seal on them? Him…some people get all the luck in the world. Naruto had three chakra natures. Wind was the primary one, Water was the secondary element and Earth was his tertiary element.

He used the seal to first boost his secondary and tertiary elements to the level where his body, and chakra network would consider them to be on par with his primary element. He then combined the Earth and Water natures to create Mokuton, though because of the fact that it was not genetic, it was significantly weaker than Senju Hashirama's.

Though Naruto had two things that helped strengthen his Mokuton and put in on par with Hashirama's. He was currently using the first one…Sennin Modo. It strengthened everything he did, so it would be no wonder when it strengthened his faux kekkei genkai to be on par with the original.

The Second one was the one thing that was supposed to be a curse, but was now a gift really…the Kyuubi, or more precisely, Kurama. Naruto had defeated, and also befriended Kurama a little over a year ago. Tigress did not know how he did it, but he just did. According to Naruto he was also able to finally meet his mother through the bit of her chakra that was in his seal…he didn't stop smiling for an entire month after that day.

According to Naruto, because of the life force present in Kurama's chakra it positively affects the power of his faux Mokuton, greatly increasing its potency.

Before Tigress realised it she was not only outside of the cave with Gaara being levitated by her side, but she had been thinking for nearly twenty minutes. Before she could say anything, her brother said, "Here they come."

And indeed they did, for within seconds of having said that eight figures had dropped in front of them. They were the teams sent to retrieve Gaara. There was Hatake Kakashi, Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura, Suna no Chiyo, Maito Gai, Hyuuga Neji, Rock Lee, and finally Tenten.

The group of eight Shinobi stared down at the two shinobi in front of them. They saw that they wore cloaks similar to Akatsuki, with only the red cloud emblem missing from them. They also saw something that left a few of them awed. They saw the Godaime Kazekage suspended in mid-air by nothing, it was as if he was lying on an invisible bed.

The two groups stared at each other for a few minutes, looking to see what they could deduce from each other. The Konoha group looked from the blonde male to his female counterpart not sure what to make of it. Sasuke had his Sharingan active, looking to try and induce fear through it while Neji had his Byakugan active looking at Gaara to see what was keeping him suspended in mid –air.

As if there was some sort of signal that went off, Grim Reaper still in Sage Mode willed the winds to carry Gaara towards the Konoha group, or more precisely Haruno Sakura. Without even waiting for a question that he knew would arise to arise he simply said in a cool voice

"He's alive, though he won't be for long if you keep staring at me. Now heal him."

With that said, he manipulated the wind the softly place Gaara in front of Sakura, where she begrudgingly had to tear her eyes away from a potential enemy as she began to heal Gaara. The others though kept their full attention on the mysterious duo, not sure what to make of them.

The Grim Reaper had done what he had come here to do, and that was stop Akatsuki, though he failed in that regard seeing as they had already taken more than 90%of Shukaku's chakra.

He turned around and started walking away from the Konoha shinobi as if nothing was going on, with Tigress following him, though they quickly stopped when Sasuke and Kakashi appeared in front of them having utilised the Shunshin no Jutsu. The Reaper just stared at the two shinobi in front of him before he said.

"We are not Akatsuki, nor do we wish to be your enemy, so please move."

"We know you two aren't Akatsuki…" said Kakashi pointing towards their cloaks as if to signify that they bore no Akatsuki emblem, "…though we can't let you go seeing as you have too much information."

The Grim Reaper just shook his head and said, "If you want to know something then all you need do is ask."

Kakashi was slightly surprised by that answer, though he did not show it as he just chose to press on and strike while the iron was hot.

"Okay then, who are you two?"

"The Grim Reaper and my companion is Tigress."

The Grim Reaper and Tigress? Weird names, but he pressed on once more.

"What were you two doing here?"

"We were here to stop Akatsuki from getting the Ichibi, though we failed in that endeavour as they managed to get roughly 95% of Shukaku's power." The Reaper responded in a cool voice once more.

The Grim Reaper's coolness put Kakashi on edge, though he did not let it show as he chose to get more information out of these two.

"What happened to Deidara and Sasori?"

"Dead." Was all that was said by the Grim Reaper.

Before anyone could say anything else, Sasuke decided to ask the question that had been burning him up since they had cornered these two people.

"Where is Uchiha Itachi?"

The Reaper looked at Sasuke with narrowed eyes before he said

"Uchiha Sasuke, I guess what they say about you is true…you do have "brother" issues."

"Fuck you, you don't know anything!" said Sasuke in a raised voice

"Maybe…" said the Reaper, "…but I do know that you're a little bitch when compared to Itachi."

Sasuke smirked at hearing that, though he was seething on the inside as he said

"What would a loser like you know?"

"What I do know is that I've had enough talk-time with you and your group, it's time I took my leave."

With that said they continued to walk forward, only to be stopped by the sound of birds chirping as they saw that Sasuke had ignited the Chidori, while Kakashi had lifted his headband and revealed his Sharingan. This got the Grim Reaper to shake his head and then he said

"Hatake Kakashi, are you sure you want to do that, think carefully on your answer as it may determine whether or not your squad lives to fight another day."

"You hold valuable information, and you are also a potential threat, hence why I say that I am sure about this…and you also threatened my comrades, giving me more incentive to fight you."

The Grim Reaper looked at his former sensei and just shook his head and then he said

"Very well then, you leave me no choice…I was going to let the Uchiha be seeing as I had already commissioned his capture to someone else, though now I think I ought to do it personally."

With that being said Naruto, under his alias of the Grim Reaper moved so fast that both Sasuke and Kakashi only saw a blur through their Sharingan, before Sasuke received a Senjutsu enhanced kick to his stomach, making blood fly out his mouth and making him get blasted across the water where he did the perfect imitation of a skipping stone and just skipped across the water up until he reached an area that had a lot of beams criss-crossing, before he submerged into the water out cold.

Before Kakashi could even react, he was given a punch to the face, though not a blow as heavy as Sasuke's, it still made him fly backwards, though nowhere nearly as far as Sasuke, but it had the same effect of knocking him out cold.

The Konoha group could only watch in shock as arguably their two strongest fighters were dispatched with just one blow each…one blow! That prompted the others to attack. Gai and Lee quickly ascended into the sixth gate as they realised that this was the only way that could keep up with this new foe.

Gai came from the air with a shout of "Dynamic Entry" being heard, while Lee came in with a sweeping kick, Naruto also saw that Neji and Tenten had positioned themselves so that they could strike him when he tried to manoeuvre in between the low sweeping kick and the Dynamic Entry, so he did the only thing he could do at that moment, he flew straight up into the sky so fast that the others barely saw it.

He quickly turned around and inhaled deeply before he said, "Fuuton: Shinkúgyokú (Wind Style: Vacuum Sphere)"

A quick barrage of about twenty extremely compressed wind bullets flew from Naruto's mouth and proceeded to nail team Gai. Though many of them missed, the few that got in managed to do some damage as Neji and Gai took the most, as a vacuum sphere passed into Neji's left shoulder and came out through his back while Gai had one that went through his right thigh.

Naruto then held up the Ram sign and said, "Fuuton: Shinkúha (Wind Style: Vacuum Wave)"

From Naruto's mouth came a crescent shaped wind blade that was sharp enough to cut through anything, even a single drop of water. This Jutsu headed straight for the currently disorganised Konoha shinobi as it look to cut them up. The wind blade was seen by the Konoha shinobi, who proceeded to jump away from it.

Unfortunately for them tough this was what Naruto wanted, no one had more team work in them than Konoha shinobi, so the best thing he could do was separate them, which is what his last two jutsu were for.

Looking to capitalise on his advantage of having separated team Gai, Naruto quickly held up the dragon hand sign and he cried out, "Suiton: Suiryúben no Jutsu (Water Style: Water Style: Water Dragon Whip)"

An orb of water that was really big appeared on the surface of the water where it started to sprout six tentacles. The tentacles started to attack all of the members of Team Gai. They went wherever the team of Konoha shinobi went as they tried to pierce them, but the Konoha shinobi were easily evading the water tentacles so Naruto quickly descended back towards the water, where once he was close he decided to take out his first target, Hyuuga Neji.

Despite Neji seeing the Grim Reaper coming to attack from behind him he was too slow to react as he was picked up by the scruff of his battle robes and he was flung into the air with a Senjutsu enhanced throw.

As Neji was flying at rapid speeds towards the sky Naruto moved to his next target, Tenten.

Tenten had seen how effortlessly this Grim Reaper guy had thrown Neji, so she knew he was dangerous in close quarters, though he was equally dangerous at distance. He managed to fling Neji whilst holding up his Jutsu, which made it hard for them to tag team this extremely tough opponent.

As the Grim Reaper neared her, Tenten quickly withdrew a scroll while dodging two tentacles, after which she then unsealed a Katana. Naruto saw what Tenten did and he smirked, she was making this too easy for him.

Naruto quickly unsheathed his chokuto which he immediately went into action using it to clash against Tenten's, whose blade immediately got cut through due to the fact that Naruto's chokuto "subconsciously" channelled Senjutsu chakra, even during a fight, so the longer Naruto held onto his blade, the longer his Sennin Modo would last.

Tenten immediately tried to distance herself from the Grim Reaper, knowing full well she was no match for him at close quarters, though before she could do anything to retaliate the Grim Reaper held his hand out, palm facing her, before she felt like she was rammed into by a solid steel wall that caused her to get knocked off her feet and twenty feet into the air, and before she knew it she was going back towards the water.

While free falling Tenten suddenly saw a blur appear in front of her as she flew back down towards the water's surface back first. That blur revealed itself to be the Grim Reaper who gazed into Tenten's eyes, where brown met yellow, before she was punched hard in her stomach causing her to smash into the water below her.

As Tenten gathered her bearings and started swimming to the top of the water she suddenly felt a force that attacked her from underneath, that forced her out the water like a dolphin jumping out of the water for some oxygen where she quickly head-butted a less immobile Maito Gai who was too busy trying to dodge the tentacles to notice Tenten shoot out the water aimed directly at him.

The end result was Tenten getting knocked out old while Gai was distorted for a few seconds, one second too long when fighting someone like the Grim Reaper.

Naruto had seen Gai's distortion while fighting off his tentacles. He quickly commanded two tentacles to ensnare Gai, and using speed that was truly impressive he quickly went behind Gai, where he quickly used the hilt of his chokuto to knock him out cold.

Rock Lee had just seen his mentor getting knocked out like it was the easiest thing in the world the way that this Grim Reaper person did it. He wanted to lose the waits he carried and also open the Hachimon but the tentacles didn't allow him the time necessary to do so.

Before he could continue to think about his predicament he was suddenly kicked hard at the back of his head causing him to fly forward head first into an oncoming tentacle, which ensnared him in a viper-like grip before he received a chop to the back of his neck effectively knocking him out cold.

Naruto cancelled his Jutsu allowing him to conserve some chakra. Even though he had more chakra than anyone alive, he still thought it best to not waste any, you never know what could happen.

Speaking of things that no one ever thought could happen, free falling from the sky, after having reached the apex of his throw into the air, which was a few hundred feet, Neji was now free falling pretty fast. He did not know what he should do in this situation since he had never faced an adversary this powerful. This guy was easily Kage level, though he hid his strength well, causing his opponents to question his strength, something that Neji realised he was doing subconsciously.

He would never ever underestimate an opponent again.

His thoughts were cut short when he was looking at the rising figure that was the cause of his current position. The Grim Reaper was flying towards Neji at fast speeds.

Before Neji could do anything the Grim Reaper before him disappeared from sight before he felt an extremely hard punch, harder than any of Lee's or Gai's hit him square in his gut. He coughed up blood, but before he could do anything else he was knocked out cold by the Grim Reaper who simply used his free hand to press a pressure point on Neji's neck, making him black out.

Naruto held Neji by his robes as if he were a rag doll before he descended onto the water before simply dropping Neji into the water.

Sakura and Chiyo watched from the side-lines, while healing Gaara, as this Grim Reaper person decimated the shinobi that fought him. The Grim Reaper then turned his sights towards them. They held their breaths for a few seconds, expecting him to attack before he simply turned and headed towards the place where an unconscious Uchiha Sasuke was.

It felt good to kick Sasuke, honestly speaking that one kick relieved a lot of stress he had built over the years. Naruto quickly reached Sasuke's still and floating body before he went through three hand signs before he said, "Mokuton: Mokusatsu Shibari no Jutsu (Wood Style: Wood Binding Technique)"

His entire arm became wood where three wood pillar bindings shot from Naruto's arm where they quickly ensnared Sasuke before they broke off from Naruto's arm before he walked up to Sasuke and placed his right hand on the back of his neck, where a pew seconds later Sasuke was covered in lines that made him completely immobile.

Naruto then turned his attention towards Sakura and Chiyo who were starting to advance on him before they saw him use the Mokuton bloodline of the Shodaime Hokage, where they quickly faltered in their step. They both couldn't believe what they saw…this guy was also a Mokuton user. He could fly, was super-fast and had the Mokuton bloodline of the Shodaime Hokage?

This guy was way out of their league, still though Sakura could not let him take Sasuke away. As much as she hated the guy, he was still a shinobi of Konoha, despite abandoning it once before he was brought back by the now dead Naruto (at least in her mind he was).

Right as Sakura started to run towards the guy something burst out of the water in front of Sakura before she got a swift round house kick to the side of her face, at her temple effectively knocking her out cold with one kick. Chiyo had stopped mid-stride when that happened. She saw that the figure that had kicked Sakura away was actually a Bunshin of the guy in front of her who called himself Grim Reaper.

The Bunshin then turned into water revealing it to be of the water variant in the Bunshin family, the Mizu Bunshin. After that kick to Sakura the Grim Reaper turned his attention towards Chiyo where he said, "Tell Konoha I'll return their precious Uchiha when I'm done with him."

With that he left Chiyo to fend for seven unconscious shinobi while he simply flew away. Tigress would have left already. She hated flying so she just walked, plain and simple.

_**Konohagakure no Sato – A few hours before the fight with Akatsuki**_

Konohagakure no Sato, the strongest shinobi village in the world…winner of all three Great Shinobi Wars and also home to some of the men history had produced. It was said to that you would be completely insane to break into Konoha. Akatsuki must have been insane if Itachi and Kisame did it five years ago.

Right now though two figures were walking towards Konoha, one was a male shinobi with black hair that had two strands that framed his face, which held nothing but calm that has not been seen since the Yondaime Hokage along with onyx eyes . The male figure also wore a pair of black shinobi pants, a long-sleeve muscle hugger along with a pair of black combat boots, a black trench coat and a pair of fingerless gloves. He also had a black-handled broadsword stuck on his back through nothing but chakra.

The second figure was of a female with auburn hair that went to the small of her back, brown eyes and her face held an unreadable expression on it. She wore white skin tight arm and leg warmers that had a red trim, along with white shinobi sandals, and a white vest and a white skirt that had some red frills on it. On her left hip was a sheathed sword that had a white handle, and over all of it she wore a black high collared cloak reminiscent of a certain Nuke-nin association, though hers lacked the red clouds that were now their emblem.

These two shinobi were Kirito no Kuroi Ken, murderer of twelve Iwa jonin and two chunin, and his travelling companion was Rapier no Asuna…once a shinobi of Kumo, now though she was a part of something that would change the world, for better or for worse, no one really knew.

Kirito looked on ahead at the most powerful hidden village before he planted a small piece of paper on the ground. Seconds later a seal appeared on the piece of paper before it started spreading all around in a five foot radius before it stopped.

Kirito and Asuna simply walked over the seal array and they had effectively entered one of the most impenetrable places in the world with relative ease.

The pleasure that comes from having a seal master of a brother/leader was just too wonderful Kirito thought to himself. The seal was a creation of his brother in all but blood, Naruto. He was too good with Fuuinjutsu. The seal effectively opened a doorway for them through Konoha's barrier. The seal was designed to disable barriers, unfortunately though Konoha's barrier was too big, and their mission required subtlety over everything else, so they could not use the seals full power, so they instead used a low powered one since Konoha's Barrier Corps. would not notice anything if all they did was open a small hole in their barrier. And on they went as they simply walked up the side of Konoha's defensive walls where they soon reached the top and overlooked the village.

Nothing had changed much around Konoha since the last time Kirito was in this village. It was a mission given to him where he had to meet up with one of the few spies they had in Konoha, and they were all positioned in different places, where they did not even know that they were spies working for the same person, except for two of them, and he was going to meet them now.

Kirito and Asuna traversed down Konoha's walls and walked towards a heavily forested area, an area created by Senju Hashirama so he could keep the most dangerous animals lying around Konoha in one contained area. This place also played host to the second stage of the Chunin exams, its name was Training Ground 44, also known as the Forest of Death.

The duo had entered the village through a rear entrance using the natural foliage of the surrounding forests to conceal their movements.

They jumped over the fence that surrounded the Forest of Death and proceeded to go at a jog-like pace, at least that was what it was to them, to others though it would have been chunin level speeds.

They traversed the Forest of Death for about half an hour before finally ending up at a small clearing. They stayed on a tree branch, where after a few minutes they heard a bird chirp and a monkey-like call.

In response Kirito simply channelled Raiton chakra to his hand, but instead of ordinary lightning appearing in his hand; it was replaced by black lightning, which made a few cackle-like sounds for a few seconds before it vanished from Kirito's hand as he terminated the chakra transmission to his hand.

A few seconds passed before Kirito and Asuna jumped from the tree and into the forest clearing, where two silhouettes jumped down from a tree line opposite their own and landed in the clearing in front of them.

The first one was a female that had long purple-blue hair tied into a ponytail, but she let two bangs fall from it to frame the side of her face. She wore purple shinobi pants along with black shinobi sandals and a black hoodie that had purple trimmings. Underneath that she wore a black top, skintight t-shirt and a mesh shirt underneath that. This woman would be considered beautiful by many, if not all men. She had two defining features on her. One was that she had on a pair of criss-crossed Katanas on her back that had black and lavender hilts respectively. The second defining feature about her was that her eyes had pupils that were barely visible, where many of those not familiar with her clan would think she was blind.

This woman was Hyuuga Hinata.

The second figure was of a male with brown hair and brown eyes that held a lot of mischief behind them. The male figure wore the standard Konoha shinobi uniform that had only two additions to it. The first was a long blue scarf wrapped around said person's neck, the other being a boa-staff that was coloured in black strapped on his back.

This man was Sarutobi Konohamaru.

The four shinobi stared at each other for a few seconds before they broke off into smiles.

"It's nice to see you two again, Konohamaru-san, Hinata-san." Said Kirito

"Same to you, Kirito-san." Spoke Hinata politely

These two were a few spies he had in Konoha. They were perfect in Kirito's opinion. Their position as clan head and clan heir respectively put them in two positions where they could get the inside scoop on pretty much everything that went on in Konoha.

That's right; Hinata was the Hyuuga clan head. How did this happen, it's simple really…okay, maybe it isn't, but the fact is she did what she did and now she was at the top of the Hyuuga hierarchy, and near the top of Konoha's hierarchy as well, since the Hyuuga were Konoha's most powerful clan.

Naruto had once told Kirito about a promise he made to a certain girl, and one she made right back to him. At first Kirito was sceptical about it, but now that it was in motion he could see that it was possible.

Hinata had promised Naruto to help the Hyuuga clan, and when she was done with that she could help him lead his village. Naruto had kept that promise to his heart. He decided upon something a few years ago while training with Kirito.

_**Flashback **_

**Naruto was sitting on a boulder thinking to himself about something that was eating him for days before he felt a familiar presence behind him, where he turned around and found his best friend Kirito there looking at him with his usual calm look.**

"**How can I help you, Kirito?"**

"**It's more like how can I help you, Naruto?" spoke Kirito in a calm manner.**

"**What do you mean?" asked Naruto with a raised eyebrow.**

"**Naruto, you know me better than anyone else here at the school, and you also know that it's vice-versa as well…" **

**Naruto nodded at this, knowing it was all true.**

"…**so you know when I know that there's something that's bothering you, so spill."**

**Naruto contemplated whether or not he should tell Kirito, but in the end he decided to just voice it out. Naruto took a deep breath before he started **

"**As you know, Kirito, there's this girl that made a promise to me and I to her…"**

**Kirito nodded his head at that.**

"…**well I have been thinking, it's been three excruciating months for her since I supposedly died by your hand…she once told me she liked me, at the time I couldn't reciprocate her feelings…I don't think I ever will, but I think we should tell her about me being alive."**

**This got a confused look from Kirito. It had been three months since Naruto's death had spread throughout the shinobi world, and during that time he did not want to reveal himself to anyone, as per plan parameters, but why would he forsake them for a girl that he did not love.**

**Seeing Kirito's look of confusion Naruto explained his reasons**

"**I want to help her become strong. Look at what that turtle hermit has done with me in just one year and three months. He turned me from a barely passable chunin level shinobi and turned me into a high jonin level shinobi…"**

"**With the help of your favourite jutsu, the Kage Bunshin."**

**Naruto ignored that statement from Kirito and continued with his explanation**

"…**and I want to help her as well as Master Roshi's training has helped me out."**

**Kirito's eyes bulged at what Naruto was implying**

"**You're not thinking of breaking Master's law and teaching those outside of our noble school his teachings?" **

"**No, no Kirito, I would never dream of that. I want to help her reach her true potential, but to do that I want to…no have to reveal myself to her."**

**Kirito kept quiet at Naruto's words for a few minutes, not sure what to think. The question that he had asked himself before returned to him once more…why do it for someone you did not love? **

**Before Kirito could say more a brown leather book was thrown at him. Kirito caught it and looked at its bonded form before getting a slightly surprised look on his face.**

_**Naruto's Shinobi Hand Book**_

**That was the book's title, and when he opened it he saw that there was a message inscribed on the very first page of the book that read:**

_**To whoever finds me…**_

_**I want you to know that all that I have in here are things that I, Uzumaki Naruto have learned from different people over the years. All of it is at your disposal**_

_**Enjoy**_

**As Kirito looked through Naruto's book that was actually a journal, which held all of the things Naruto had learned, except for the truly private things that their school considered sacred or not for the eyes of those outside of their master's teachings.**

**Before Kirito could say anything Naruto spoke up and said, "I want to give that to her, as a way of helping her reach her dream."**

**When Kirito looked at Naruto he saw the answer to his silent question on Naruto's face. Naruto was the type of guy that helped his friends, no matter what. It did not matter whether he loved her or not, what mattered was that Naruto called her his friend, and if there was anyone who was a good judge of character, it was Naruto. **

**Kirito showed a small smile before he nodded his head, ready to help out Naruto in any way he could.**

_**Flashback End**_

Kirito looked at Hinata once more, and he saw that the girl he met years ago was no more, where there was once a broken girl that was distraught thanks to Naruto's fake death, where when Naruto revealed his lively state to her she fainted, something she had not done in a long time.

After that scenario where after playing twenty questions with Hinata, Naruto told her of how he wanted to help make her stronger, and afterwards he gave her his book, telling her to use it well.

And use it well she did, where within four years she became not only Konoha's most powerful Kunoichi aside from Tsunade, but she was also the strongest Hyuuga to appear in a hundred years. She had her own page on Kumo's Bingo Book; she was given A-Rank status.

The reason why she became so powerful was because she did not follow the Hyuuga status quo of only utilising Hyuuga clan Jutsu. She actually studied her element and she found out she had a Raiton affinity, something she used to her advantage very well.

Learning all main family Jutsu along with mastering her element and learning elemental ninjutsu allowed her to create a more powerful variation of the Jyuuken that allowed her to lace her Jyuuken strikes with Raiton chakra, creating a truly effective taijutsu style.

She also created a Jutsu that allowed her to send Raiton chakra to her feet, increasing her speed dramatically to the point where not even Konoha's green beast was as fast as she was outside of the Hachimon.

Konohamaru was also someone who gained a lot thanks to Naruto's hand book. It happened in a somewhat weird way.

_**Flashback**_

**Konohamaru was currently walking alone in the streets of Konoha. It had been a year since he graduated and that closet pervert Ebisu had yet to teach him anything useful. **

**All that he knew was thanks to his clan helping him out with a few jutsu he knew, as he was currently thinking to himself he saw someone that he was goods friends with from his "Nii-san's" graduating class, Hyuuga Hinata.**

**As he was about to call her out, he saw her drop something, before she vanished in a puff of smoke as she utilised the Shunshin no jutsu. **

**Konohamaru went over to pick up, and possibly give Hinata whatever it was back to her, but when he got there he saw it was a book. Nothing strange about that, right? But then when he looked at the name of the book he got the shock of his life…what the heck did this mean. As if nature heard his question a small wind blew that made the book open, and then a note fell from it.**

**Konohamaru picked up the note and read: **

_**Konohamaru**_

_**Do not under any circumstances turn this book over to Hokage-sama…I promise you all of your questions will be answered, just be patient. I was told to give this to you to help you realise your dream of being Hokage **_

_**With Regards **_

_**Hinata**_

**What the heck was this book? Still though Konohamaru realised that Hinata dropped it on purpose after somehow sensing him, he wondered what this book could offer him that others could not…still though he would not rat Hinata out and he would just trust her and give it a try.**

_**Flashback**_

It was safe to say that Naruto's plan on giving Konohamaru the book was a success, because thanks to it Konohamaru was fast developing into a powerful shinobi, a year of training through Naruto's Ninja handbook had made Konohamaru into arguably Konoha's most powerful chunin.

Naruto was right in trusting these two they stood by him no matter what.

"So what do you two have for us?" asked Asuna a bit grimly, because that was who she was. She only trusted three people throughout the world. Those three were Kirito, Naruto and Tigress in that order from first to third most trusted person. Naruto knew this, which is why she always worked alongside Kirito.

That and their jutsu complimented each other greatly.

Back to the main point

"We encountered something you might find useful." Said Konohamaru, he honestly did not care about Asuna, she did not like him and it was vice-versa though they respected each other greatly.

"What is it?" asked a slightly curios Kirito

"Well apparently the Godaime Mizukage sent a special request for Hokage-sama to ally herself with her; in other words Kiri wants to become an ally with us, but not only us, apparently the village is under great financial strain, despite having just finished rebuilding after the Kekkei Genkai purges, it left them under heavy financial strain."

"What does Konoha intend to do about it?" asked Kirito once more

"Well the council has yet to officially decide, but the tide is against the agreement simply because Konoha has nothing to gain from backup Kiri financially." Answered Hinata

"Good…" said Kirito calmly once more, "…this will work for us, if everything goes according to plan then we would have one of the Great Five as an ally."

"Ano, may I ask something Kirito-san?" asked Hinata

"What is it, Hinata-san?" said Kirito, giving Hinata free reign to as her question

"I want to know how Naruto-kun plans to untie the Shinobi World."

"Good question and the answer is simple really; by making the world have one common enemy."

That statement seemed to draw looks of confusion from the others except Asuna as she already knew what the full plan was.

"Our master said that in order to unite the world, people need to understand each other…but there has to be an enemy that will force us to unite against it. History has proven that when we are faced with a common enemy, we tend to do what we think is best, and that's coming together to fight as one. The greatest example of this is the hidden village system.

Clans gather together to fight as one against an enemy village…their common enemy."

After having said that Hinata and Konohamaru had looks of understanding etched onto their faces, but that look soon turned into horror for Hinata as she thought of something else.

"Naruto-kun wants to make himself the world's enemy?!" she said in a rather frightened voice.

Kirito looked at her lopsided not getting what she was saying. Hinata saw this and decided to further explain herself.

"Naruto-kun wants the world to have one common enemy, so he's going to make himself the world's enemy so the world can unite to fight him because from what you have told me, there is probably no one alive that can challenge his power."

Kirito and Asuna had a look of understanding on their faces before Kirito quickly answered Hinata's statement by saying:

"No. Naruto does not plan on making himself the world's enemy. He already has one in mind…two to be precise. And as for the thing about no one being able to challenge him you are wrong…there is one man who can."

Konohamaru looked shocked for a moment because if what they said was true, then there was someone truly powerful out there beside his Nii-san. He was pretty sure that from the way that Kirito would talk about Naruto's power, he would be awed by it.

So there was someone else out there that had enough power to squash the Gokage just like Kirito said Naruto could probably do.

As he thought about this and more he heard Hinata voice out a question

"Who are his two targets…and who is the man that can equal Naruto-kun's power?"

"His first target, well you already know them as Akatsuki. His second, well that is a whole other ball game so to speak. All I can tell you is their name because the less you know, the better for you and the plan in case you are compromised."

Hinata nodded in understanding at that before she said, "What is their name?"

"The League of Shadows."

**A/N:**

**I'm having two minds about whether or not I make this a Naru x Hina story since someone said it would help with the story development. So I want you guys to decide, I'll open a poll for you guys to vote.**

**I also have a few ideas for a new story I want to write. Help me out by voting for which one you want to see first.**

**The first story is called Dragon Ball Shinobi and it will be a retelling of the whole Dragonball storyline using the Narutoverse.**

**What if after running away from a group of Konoha shinobi after pulling a prank, Naruto stumbled into a cottage in a forest. He later on learns that it belonged to his hero the Yondaime Hokage…mostly canon, but will involve a stronger, smarter Naruto.**

**The World has eight continents, the eighth continent is hidden by a genjutsu that world does not know of. This continent is the Elemental continent. It's basically Naruto set in the 21****st**** century where on the day the Kyuubi was sealed inside him, he was given to two retired shinobi who lived outside the elemental continent to raise him, and when he's of age, he would come back to Konoha to be a shinobi of the village. Taijutsu, Kenjutsu Naruto, where he will only learn true ninjutsu after becoming a Konoha shinobi.**

**Those are the ideas I have, tell me which one you want to see first. **

**I'm out.**


	4. Chapter Four - The Uchiha Curse

**A/N:**

**Sorry I haven't updated in a while, I had family issues to sort out. It's all good though now. **

**I'm kind of having problems setting up a poll, so we'll scratch the whole voting thing. Instead I'll just pick which story I want to write next.**

**Anyway, here's the next chapter**

**Enjoy**

Chapter Four: The Uchiha Curse

_**Konoha – Three days later**_

Konoha's current Hokage, Senju Tsunade was not having the time of her life right now. Go be Hokage the pervert said. It will be fun the blonde idiot said. Oh how she wanted to castrate those two right now for putting her in this position. Too bad for her she could not simply because they were not there. One was out gathering info for her while the other was dead.

Tsunade hated the last five years of her life by no stretch of the imagination. She had finally reconciled with this village, making a kid brother/son figure in the form of Uzumaki Naruto, only for him to be taken away from her by the village's stupidity, and her cursed necklace.

Still though, the last five years had a few ups as well.

On the morning that Naruto was supposed to officially leave Konoha a series of huge stink bombs were launched all over Konoha, where they left the village smelling like a cesspool for an entire week. After some investigating it was found out that the cause of these explosions was one Uzumaki Naruto. The motive was unknown, though from having talked with Hinata a few months later Tsunade found out it was Naruto's grand final prank on Konoha.

Speaking of the Hyuuga, she was now Hyuuga clan head. No one ever thought that the once shy Hinata could become the shinobi she was today. After Naruto's subsequent, yet slightly unscheduled leave from Konoha, the truth about Naruto being a jinchuriki was spread throughout Konoha. People obviously told their children their own biased opinions of who, or more specifically what, Naruto was.

As expected most of the younger generation saw Naruto as their parents and elders did, as a demon, her former apprentice Sakura was included in that long list of youngsters that saw Naruto in the same light as their elders.

Most of Naruto's friends and piers argued with whoever they could about who Naruto really was, how he and the Kyuubi were two completely different entities, but alas most of it was for naught since most of them let their blind adoration for Sasuke blind them completely to the truth really.

Still though they never gave up, and one incident made people realise that talking ill about Naruto in public, especially in front of Hinata was the biggest mistake that they could ever make. Her former protégé spoke ill of Naruto in front of the former Hyuuga heiress turned clan head and got sent to the hospital. After having gone down to the hospital personally to find out what happened to Sakura, said girl had the balls to call both her and Hinata demon lovers, where she was sent through the wall by Tsunade's super enhanced fist and she spent an entire week in ICU.

After the incident Tsunade dropped Sakura as her apprentice and left her in Shizune's care. What many don't know, except for Shizune and Jiraiya was that Hinata had secretly beseeched her looking to expand her skills by introducing Medical Ninjutsu to her repertoire.

Hinata had excellent chakra control so it was a perfect fit for her. Tsunade wanted to pass down her secret strength technique to Hinata as a way of helping her out to become strong, but she turned it down sighting that she was already going through a rigorous training regime to develop her own style. Tsunade had wonder what the girl had in mind for her secret style, but did not probe her for answers, instead she just played the wait and see approach.

Hinata had become a chunin during the following exams that were held in Suna, along with Neji, Sasuke and Rock Lee.

During that time Sakura had come to apologise to her for her insults towards Naruto and she vowed to one day bring Naruto back to Konoha. Despite her apology Sakura was not let off the hook that easily, where it took a total of nearly two years for her to get into Tsunade's good graces again. During that near two year period all of Naruto's former classmates became chunin (those had not become chunin yet) and Neji became a Jonin.

During a mission to recover some stolen goods that belonged to the Daimyo of Hi no Kuni a shocking discovery was made. According to team Kurenai, the team tasked with finding the stolen cargo, a man called Kirito no Kuroi Ken had somehow fought, and killed Uzumaki Naruto in battle as Naruto's scent was discovered at the site of the battle, along with torn pieces of his favourite orange jump suit containing blood stains, where after an extensive DNA test it was proven that Uzumaki Naruto was dead.

Tsunade had cried herself to sleep for an entire week straight after having heard the news. It had only become worse really for Konoha as nations such as Nami no Kuni, Cha no Kuni and even the now renamed Haru no Kuni sent delegates to Konoha to inform them that whatever trade alliances they held were officially cut off. Konoha suffered a great deal financially where the village was almost forced into a recession. Though Konoha was hit by recession a few months afterwards when Suna elected a new Kazekage in the form of Sabaku no Gaara, who practically tore down their alliance leaving them with only a few minor allies.

Though it took some time Konoha steadily recovered.

Nothing much that centred on Naruto happened for the duration of the period of nearly two years besides most of his former classmates becoming Jonin. Neji, Hinata, Sasuke, Sakura, Rock Lee, and Shino were full Jonin, while Kiba, Choji and Ino became Tokubetsu Jonin, with Shikamaru being the only chunin amongst them. His reasons for staying as a chunin were simple…becoming a Jonin was "troublesome".

Still though things became interesting, in Tsunade's opinion, once again when her former protégé came out of nowhere and challenged her father to a fight for the honour of becoming Hyuuga clan head. In her own honest opinion the only thing Tsunade knew about Hinata was that she was good at Medical Ninjutsu and she knew the Jyuuken, not enough to challenge Hiashi Hyuuga, but still she was sure Hinata had a hidden ace up her sleeve.

The battle was held at the Hyuuga training grounds where Hinata took on Hiashi in what could be descried as the most one sided fight ever. Because of the prestigious nature of the battle, where Konoha could possibly have had a new clan head, the entire council was there along with clan heirs, the entire Hyuuga clan, and some of the more prominent shinobi, which included a list of Jonin like Hatake Kakashi and Uchiha Sasuke.

The reason why many thought the fight was one sided was due to the nature of how Hinata fought.

_**Flashback**_

**Everyone was gathered at the Hyuuga Clan training grounds, which was basically an open field. At one end of the training grounds was one Hyuuga Hiashi dressed in his Jonin attire, having ditched the dress robes for something more battle worthy while. Everyone had been waiting for the past twenty minutes for the challenger to appear, but so far she was running late.**

"**This fight should just be cancelled because if this is any indication of the type of clan leader Hyuuga Hinata could be, then she must not be allowed the honour of becoming the head of Konoha's most powerful clan." Spoke a clearly irritated Shimura Danzou in his usually cold monotonous voice.**

**Before anyone could follow up on Danzou's statement a feminine voice that was soft, yet held a lot of power behind it rang out throughout the training field,**

"**You should keep comments like that to yourself, Danzou-san, as they are terribly wrong. I was simply doing some last minute check-ups on my gear before coming here"**

**Appearing in a Shunshin of leaves seconds after the voice was projected throughout the training field was one Hyuuga Hinata, decked out in a new look. Her hair was now tied into a ponytail with two bangs framing the sides of her face. She now wore purple shinobi pants along with black shinobi sandals along with a black hoodie with purple trimmings. What appeared on her back was what surprised all of those in attendance, and that was the pair of criss-crossed Katanas that had purple and black hilts respectively.**

**Her new look made her look even more attractive than she ever was before.**

**Tsunade looked at Hinata with a look of approval as she inspected Hinata. A kenjutsu using Hyuuga was something that was completely rare, since taijutsu was their main forte. So this was what Hinata had been working on all these years, Kenjutsu. She realised the faults in her clan's studies and just improved in her own way…nice.**

**As more people continued to have their own thought about Hinata and her new look Hiashi was looking at his daughter's appearance with approval really, but he would not show it to her until the fight was over, he wanted to see if his daughter was truly ready for such a responsibility, and this forthcoming fight will be a great indicator.**

**Hiashi and Hinata continued to size each other up, each with their own thought s about the other. For Hiashi it was a chance for his daughter to prove herself to be a worthy successor, and for Hinata it was a stepping stone to achieving her dream of freeing the branch family from the Caged Bird Seal.**

**Tsunade walked up to the centre of the training field and stood there. Hinata and Hiashi walked up towards her from either side of the training field until they were just a few feet away from each other, with Tsunade still in between them. Once they were in front of her, Tsunade proceeded to explain the rules to both of them.**

"**The rules are simple…killing is prohibited, so is maiming, because you are both such integral parts of Konoha's military strength, it would be unwise to lose you to something as foolish as this fight. You are allowed to use any jutsu you possess, and I shall decide who the victor is…if you do not follow these rules then I will personally send you off to prison for treason, am I understood?"**

"**Hai, Hokage-sama." They both said in unison**

**With that settled Tsunade raised her hand and kept it in the air for a few seconds, to give both competitors enough time to get ready, before she brought it down and yelled, "Begin" and jumped away.**

**Despite being told to begin neither of them moved, they just chose to stare at each other intently for a few minutes before Hinata spoke and she said,**

"**In order for the Hyuuga heir or heiress to become the Hyuuga clan head they need to challenge the current clan head to a duel to decide whether or not they are worthy. Despite this being a Hyuuga tradition, upon moving to Konoha the clan forsook this tradition." **

**Hiashi nodded at that since what Hinata said was absolutely true.**

"**The clan head status has just been passed down from one Hyuuga to the next once they became twenty one." Hiashi nodded at that statement again.**

"**The reason as to why I decided to initiate this challenge was to prove something." Hinata continued **

"**What is it that you wished to prove?" asked Hiashi monotonously.**

"**I want to prove to the world, and to myself that I am truly strong and worthy for the position of clan head by defeating the current strongest Hyuuga."**

**Hiashi almost smirked with pride at hearing that, the operative term being almost.**

"**Then come and prove to me that you are truly ready for such a responsibility."**

**With that said they both turned on their Byakugan and burst into action.**

**Hiashi ran straight at Hinata looking to stop her from drawing her Katana by keeping the fight at close range. He struck out with a Jyuuken palm strike to her stomach, only for Hinata to manoeuvre herself out of harm's way by simply moving her hips to her right side. Hiashi launched several more Jyuuken strikes at Hinata at different regions, only for her to dodge every single one of them, before she used lightning fast movements to palm strike Hiashi on both his shoulders before kicking him away with a solid kick to the face.**

**Hiashi flew a few feet backwards before doing a backflip and he landed on his feet.**

**All those who were watching the early proceedings looked on at Hinata with a bit of awe. Hiashi's strikes were fast and precise, and yet none managed to even touch Hinata even a little bit. **

**Tsunade looked on at her secret apprentice in awe. So this was the secret style Hinata was working on all these years, she used her natural flexibility to create a deadly style of combat. **

**Kiba and Shino looked at their teammate with smirks on their faces. Kiba's was visible for the world to see, and Shino's smirk was so small that even with his jacket collar opened up you would not see it. They had known about Hinata creating her own fighting style, Kurenai as well. Hinata had made them all swear not to reveal it to no one at all simply because she wanted it to be her ace.**

**She trained in secret most of the time, though her team helped her a few times so she could find faults in her style and fix them. It was safe to say that Hinata's version of the Jyuuken was vastly superior to the original.**

**Hiashi and Hinata looked at each other once more, both had emotionless expressions etched on their faces as they analysed what they could about each other from the first round.**

**It was pretty obvious to Hiashi that Hinata was not using the Jyuuken since the way she moved when she dodged all his strikes was beyond what Hyuuga's were taught. **

**To Hinata she could tell that her father was not going all out, he was testing her. But then again, neither was she going all out.**

"**I hope you're satisfied with what the first round has brought to your attention father." Spoke Hinata in a cool voice.**

**Hiashi did not speak, nod his head in agreement nor did he shake his head in denial. He just sprang into action by throwing a handful of shuriken at Hinata who quickly retaliated by coating her hands in chakra and palming the shuriken out of her way through the use of the Jyuuken.**

**That little move allowed Hiashi enough time to close the gap in between Hinata and himself, where he used speeds way faster than previously to attack Hinata viciously. Hinata managed to evade Hiashi's strikes by moving from the spot she stood on by backpedalling while bending her body at extreme angles and making sure that she did not take any hits.**

**After a minute or so of constant attacking Hiashi finally started grazing Hinata, after doing so for at least three more times Hinata decided to go on the offence. Right as Hiashi sent two Jyuuken enhanced fingers at one of Hinata's chakra points Hinata raised her hand and blocked the attack using her palm. Hiashi launched a similar attack that also bread similar results.**

**This continued for a couple of minutes where Hiashi would send out finger attacks or palm strikes and all Hinata would simply is block using her hands.**

**After a while Hiashi felt something happening to his arms. At first it felt like someone was electrocuting him in small bits slowly from the inside out, but after a while it started becoming painful, and his attacks started becoming sluggish as his arms started feeling numb due to the electrocuting that somehow occurred internally.**

**Hiashi finally decided to pull back when he realised that this was somehow Hinata's doing. He jumped back a few feet and he could not help but glare at his daughter. He may have loved her but it was obvious that she was somehow toying with him.**

**Hinata matched her father's glare with a blank look of her own, simply not caring what he thought about her strategy, if he had figured it out.**

"**What did you do to my arms?! Hiashi asked/yelled at his daughter.**

"**This…" **

**That was all Hinata said as she proceeded to raise her right hand and show her father what she had been doing to him since she started parrying his attacks instead of dodging them.**

**Everyone that was looking on at the fight, Hinata's teammates included, stared at her in awe as her hand seemed to radiate electricity sporadically. Hiashi and the others looked on slightly dumbfounded, and Hinata saw her father's look of slight dumbfound, and she decided to explain her Jutsu.**

"**This is part of my secret style that I have been working on, using my Jyuuken teachings offered by the Hyuuga clan, and my elemental affinity of Raiton I was able to produce a style of combat that combines both. I simply let you attack me so you would not notice when I coated my hands in Raiton chakra and I used it to not only nullify the effect that all of the Jyuuken attacks you used against me, but I was also sending electrical energy through your body internally. **

**I started it small so that you would not notice, and then I gradually increased the dosage I sent through you until your arms became sluggish. This little manoeuvre also granted me to ability to increase the speed in my hands and make it so that I could keep up with your fast paced attacks with little to no effort really thanks to the speed boost my neurons received through the Raiton chakra I was using."**

**After her explanation all those watching, her team included, looked on with gaping mouths, except the elders and the Hokage as they managed to hide their shocked expressions at Hinata having created something similar to that of the Raikage's Raiton Yoroi. **

**With her explanation out of the way, Hinata moved at impressive speed, even amongst Hyuuga who were known to be generally fast, as she proceeded towards Hiashi. Hiashi saw her coming and retaliated by using the only move he could use at that point in time.**

"**Hakesho Kaiten." Hiashi said loudly as he was surrounded by a dome of pure chakra that had the ability to stop almost any attack, this was the Hyuuga clan's ultimate defence. **

**Luckily for Hinata she had anticipated that her father would do something like that so she channelled chakra to the soles of her feet and simply jumped over Hiashi's Kaiten and landed on the opposing side of it. Hinata then proceeded to slowly turn around as Hiashi's Kaiten slowed down, and after a few seconds it came to a complete stop. **

**Hiashi stopped spinning as he looked at his daughter with a Byakugan enhanced glare. Hinata simply brushed it off as nothing new before she attacked again with similar speeds as before.**

**Hiashi started spinning again, looking to launch the Hakesho Kaiten but right before it sprung up he felt something hit his abdomen hard. Hiashi looked down at his abdomen and saw Hinata's palm on it. She somehow managed to get him in time before he could launch his defence.**

**Blood flew out of Hiashi's mouth as he felt his abdominal region become numb clearly Hinata's doing through her new Jyuuken style. **

"**H-how…"**

**Instead of answering Hinata just decided to carry on with her attack, she proceeded to attack Hiashi with some powerful lightning enhanced Jyuuken taps and palm strikes all over, and due to the attacks numbing effect Hiashi could not do anything as he was systematically handed the beating of a lifetime by his daughter. After a few minutes of relentless onslaught Hinata decided to end things by giving her father a round house kick to the face.**

**Hiashi flew back, spinning in the process, before he landed face down with his face kissing the grass that was on the field. **

**The onlookers just looked at a slightly huffing Hinata with a new found look of respect, and fear for some, as she had just decimated her father in combat, and now she was the new Hyuuga clan head.**

**A few Hyuuga branch members ran on to the field and took Hiashi away on a stretcher since he was out cold. **

**Hinata walked on towards the crowd of onlookers and before long she was upon them. Almost immediately Neji seemed to bow down on both knees at Hinata, and before she could protest all the other Hyuuga's proceeded to do so. With the Hyuuga clan acknowledging her as the new clan leader, the clan heads also nodded their heads towards her, clearly impressed with what she had just done. **

**Hiashi Hyuuga was one of Konoha's strongest shinobi, and her systematic beat down of him proved that she was even stronger than him, thus gaining the other clan heads' respect as they acknowledged her as one of their own.**

_**Flashback End**_

Tsunade smiled as she remembered that day, it was one of the few moments in her life over the last five years that made her smile with pride. Hinata had effectively become the youngest and newest member of the Konoha council.

Unfortunately she was not the only new clan head that came on the scene. Two years ago, at the age of sixteen, Uchiha Sasuke was made into the new head of the Uchiha, having been voted in by those who Tsunade called "Uchiha Ass-kissers".

Sasuke's place on the council was a surprise inclusion, but it gave one particular individual extra power in the council.

Because of the fact that Sasuke was trained by Danzou, he had gained what could be as close to being described as the best political pawn in the form of Sasuke; since Sasuke agreed with all of the heavy decisions Danzou sided for or against.

She sometimes wished that Kakashi had stuck to being Sasuke's sensei so that Danzou would not have the pawn he had that was basically giving Danzou two votes on the council every time they voted on an issue.

Tsunade was brought out of her musings as the door to her office was opened by Shizune who came rushing in with a letter clutched in her hands, with a frantic expression on her face.

"What is it Shizune?" said a now slightly worried Tsunade due to the look Shizune had on her face.

"Tsunade-sama…" Shizune said frantically with a bit of hyperventilation involved, "…we've just received word from the teams sent to rescue Kazekage-sama."

"And?" asked Tsunade rather impatiently.

"Well the overall mission leader, Kakashi just sent a message saying that we needed to convene for an emergency council meeting."

"What?" asked a startled Tsunade seemingly worried now knowing full well that Kakashi would not ask for something of this nature unless if he had a very good reason to do so, seeing as a convening of the full council rarely happened unless it was something that affected the entirety of the village, like the instating of a new clan head or the banishment of a…Tsunade quickly closed that train of thought sparing herself some pain, as she listened in on what Shizune said next.

"According to this note sent by Kakashi's summon, Pakkun, he has vital information that may well be detrimental to village security, hence the need for a convening of the council."

Tsunade thought about it for a moment, what could have Kakashi run into that made him think that Konoha could be in possible danger, still though Kakashi was a good judge of character and of how things were in this world of theirs, so if he said that shit might hit the roof, then there was a good chance that it might happen for real.

"Alright Shizune, get the council ready this…how long did Kakashi say it would take to be here?"

"According to Pakkun, he was about an hour or so away from Konoha."

"Alright…" Tsunade nodded at Shizune, "…get the council to be ready within the next hour, and tell them that if any of them are late, then I will personally escort them to Ibiki."

"Hai, Tsunade-sama." Shizune said with a light shudder as she could not imagine what it would be like for her to go to the sadist's lair courtesy of Tsunade herself.

Putting that thought aside, Shizune marched out of the room to complete her task that she was handed to her by Tsunade.

Tsunade interlaced her fingers and placed them underneath her chin as she thought about what it was that occurred during the mission. Could they have failed, despite having sent out a strong response team to deal with the situation? Only Kakashi and his subordinates knew what it was.

_**Uzu no Kuni**_

Four figures were walking side by side towards the centre of an island that once housed a clan that was nearly as feared as the Uchiha and Senju. This clan was a clan that specialised in Fuuinjutsu, and their members were known to have red hair and an extremely high life force. This clan was once known throughout the world as the Uzumaki clan, the greatest practitioners of Fuuinjutsu the world has ever known.

As these figures traversed through the island they looked around it, at least the blonde male of the group did, his compatriots had their own thoughts raging on in their heads, each unique to the other.

Every few minutes a random shinobi that was roof jumping or simply walking around would wave his way, and he would wave back them. This was a common occurrence for the other three shinobi of the group as all of the shinobi in this island respected their friend/adoptive brother greatly.

The blonde figure's thoughts were on how the island looked right now. If anyone else, either than those that knew the truth about the island came to see it, all they would see would be rubble.

What they would not know though is that the island was being covered by massive genjutsu seals that appeared all over the Island. The world thought that the Uzumaki clan was dead. They were wrong; seeing as there was still one more Uzumaki left in the world that was traversing through the island right now.

The island was as it was right now thanks to Judai Roshi, The Turtle Hermit.

Apparently the man was so old that he was already a fully-fledged adult when the destruction of Uzu happened. After the island's subsequent destruction, Roshi came to the island to see if he could find anything to treasure from the one clan he respected, more than any other clan throughout the world, just as he had told Naruto the day they met.

He found the island in shambles, and along with that he found a survivor. Just one. It was an old man who was part of the main branch of the Uzumaki clan. He and the old man, whose name Naruto had forgotten, placed a giant genjutsu barrier seal around the island that took three days to set up, with the help of five Kage Bunshin each day.

They did this so as to ensure that no one would find the Uzumaki clan's treasures. When the Konoha team had come a few days after the destruction of the island (a few days before Roshi arrived on the island), they ended up taking a few powerful Uzumaki Fuuinjutsu scrolls; one of them contained the deadly Ura Shishou Fuuinjutsu.

The barrier genjutsu was set up so none of this could happen again.

Soon after the old man died, leaving some Uzumaki clan secrets to Roshi to pass on when he met with one of the survivors of the holocaust. That was one of the reasons why he took to mentoring Naruto, so he could pass on his clan's secrets on to him, however little he knew.

Roshi would leave and return to the island on a regular basis just to clean it up so that when there the day came for the Uzumaki clan to rise again, they would have a place to do so. It also served as an impromptu base for his teachings

Naruto did not know what his clan had done to Roshi to make him respect them so greatly, but he was glad they did it, whatever it was.

When Naruto had told Roshi of his dream to build his own village, Roshi took him to the island, and Naruto being an Uzumaki was able to learn things from what was left behind by his kinsmen in hidden areas around the island by the usage of blood seals.

It was during the first time that he was here that he had an epiphany, one which made him realise that the island was more than large enough to be the place where he could run his village.

In order to do so though he first had to be taught a few things beyond shinobi arts; mainly politics.

Roshi also instilled in him his way of recruiting those for his village. Roshi had a system that he worked with that would allow for him to know who was the perfect candidate for his teachings, and who was not, and Naruto seemed to grasp this more than any of Roshi's other students.

On his deathbed Roshi called forth all of his students, this was the day he would decide who would finally succeed him in continuing the teachings of the Turtle Hermit. In the end though Roshi decided that all of his students should choose amongst themselves who they wanted as Roshi's heir.

Naruto…that was their unanimous decision.

Hence why Naruto was the leader of not only this fledgling village, but also the leader of an ancient, yet powerful way of the shinobi that had been forgotten by the world.

That was nearly a year ago.

Quickly regaining his original line of thought Naruto continued to look around the island and its structure that made it unique.

All around them were reconstructed buildings that housed different things. There were two Hospitals on the island, one on each side of the river that ran right in the middle of the island dividing it in two.

All the reconstructed buildings on the island retained the same basic design of the original Uzu no Kuni before its fall. It was marked with similar swirl patterns that once represented the Uzumaki clan, and that was what they were put there for, to honour the first residents of this island.

One building stood out for Naruto though, and that was a building that located a few yards to his left, and that was a place that always made him smile whenever he looked at it, it was the Shinobi Academy.

The building had a modern day design to it, with the Uzumaki spirals etched onto it and a gigantic bronze statue of bird flapping its wings that was on the roof. This was no ordinary bird though, it was the phoenix. A bird that is said to defy death by simply rising up from the ashes to once more walk, or in its case _fly_ among the living.

That was what this island was going through right now, a rebirth. It was rising from the ashes from its fallen state and it was becoming something more powerful, Naruto could just feel it.

The island did not have a lot of inhabitants at the moment, in fact the total tally was at one thousand and two people, all of them shinobi, or shinobi in training, no civilian was on the island at this particular moment in time seeing as the resurrection of the island was Naruto's secret project.

So far though it was still in its infancy, seeing as the type of shinobi that Naruto wanted on the island would be shinobi taught in the ways of the Turtle Hermit School…there would be no exceptions. That was what the island's shinobi academy taught right now, the way of the Turtle Hermit.

The first year was designed to get theory behind the Shinobi Arts through the kids' heads, along with learning basic combat stances and learning how to throw Kunai and shuriken.

In the second year all of the children's time and energy was entirely focused on building them physically, this included Turtle Hermit style physical exercises like running through an obstacle course with a small, yet extremely heavy turtle, on their backs. Learning how to use weapons beyond Kunai and shuriken was also thrown into the mix along with different Taijutsu katas, simply because not everyone could do the same thing, just as Roshi-shishou had taught them.

Year three would start off with a six month refining of the skills you learned during the first two years of your life in the academy, rushing things would not do well for him (Naruto; sanity wise), or the kids. So for those who picked up weapons of choice either than kunai and shuriken during year two were given six months to get down more than just the basics they were taught in year two.

The last three months of year three focused on teaching the kids actual ninjutsu, starting off with the basic three jutsu; Kawarimi, Henge and Bunshin.

Year four focused on the children picking up things from whatever field they wanted to specialise in. If you wanted to be a ninjutsu specialist you were taught two elemental jutsu depending on what your element was.

For Katon users they were taught the Katon: Goukakyuo no Jutsu along with the Katon: Housenká no Jutsu (Fire Style: Phoenix Flower Jutsu).

Doton users were taught the Doton: Shinjuu Zanshu no Jutsu (Earth Style: Double Suicide Decapitation Jutsu) along with the Doton: Doryuu Taiga (Earth Style: Earth Flow River).

Raiton users were taught the Raiton: Raikyuu (Lightning Style: Lightning Ball) along with the Raiton: Rairyuu no Tatsumaki (Lightning Style: Lightning Dragon Tornado).

Suiton jutsu users were taught the Suiton: Mizu Bunshin no Jutsu along with the Suiton: Hahonryuu (Water Style: Tearing Torrent).

And finally Fuuton Jutsu users were taught the Fuuton: Repuushou (Wind Style: Violent Wind Palm) along with the Fuuton: Mugen Sajin Daitoppa (Wind Style: Infinite Sand Cloud Great Breakthrough).

Most of the jutsu they were taught were either D-rank or C-rank, but they were good enough for freshmen shinobi. Plus the training they would do years prior before making it to genin level would ensure that by the time they graduated most students would be around low chunin level on skill alone.

Still though, there were those that had special talents that learnt something different in the final year.

There was a girl by the name of Aiki, an orphan that Naruto had come across two years ago (one of many that he has met, and rescued). She was a survivor of an Otogakure base raid that managed to run away before anyone noticed she was gone. She was fifteen this year, and she was also a survivor of one of Orochimaru's sick experiments. Her ability involved her being able to scream at such a pitch that it could blow your head off. She was trained to control her power since she could not do so before. She had just recently graduated and was now apart of his growing army of shinobi.

Her codename was Canary.

Asuna was another person with unique skills. Thinking about Asuna made him think about how he had met her.

Apparently the Turtle Hermit, Roshi, had a style of teaching that allowed for his students to get a breath of fresh air, so to speak. Roshi would teach for a year straight, no interruptions, and then on one day he would send you away to experience the outside world for a few months in order to gain some experience before coming back to continue being taught by him.

Kirito had been at the school slightly longer than he had, and when the time came for him to leave on his third trip to the outside world he journeyed to Kaminari no Kuni so that he could learn more about the nation that was named after his elemental affinity.

Once in Kaminari no Kuni he journeyed to Kumogakure to see what type of village it was. Once he was in Kumogakure no Sato that is where things changed forever for him.

_**Flashback – Four Years Ago**_

**A figure wearing black shinobi pants, a pure short-sleeved black t-shirt and black shinobi sandals along with a hooded travelling cloak over his clothes walked through the gates of Kumo as he proceeded to explore the village. He also had black hilted sword on him that was visible for all to see thanks to the blade's hilt sticking out of his travelling cloak. He had just checked out with the guards at the front gate as despite seeing that he was a shinobi through the weapon he carried, they deemed him to not be a threat, especially with how he addressed them with respect. The guards were just chunin, and for anyone to talk to chunin with as much respect as this guy did basically made them harmless since most chunin, the gate guards included, were basic cannon fodder shinobi.**

**Neither of the chunin knew how wrong they both were, wrong on two folds to be exact. Kirito was a person who would respect anyone, genin included. So that would mean that that was the first fold the chunin were wrong by. He lived by a code of respect being a two way street, so if you at least talked to him nicely, he would treat you with some semblance of respect. Just some semblance of it, not downright grovelling. **

**His best friend Naruto always said that he was a sissy; in a joking manner of course, but that was just who he was. **

**Kirito had met Naruto the day Roshi-shishou brought the blonde Uzumaki to Uzu no Kuni. Around a time when Roshi only had Kirito and a few others as his students, right now though there was nearly twenty of them, how Roshi could teach so many people, giving them all individual attention when they needed it astounded Kirito (of course his master had enormous chakra reserves, so that enabled him to use the Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu; nowhere near as good as Naruto was with the jutsu, but he could make close to fifty clones at a time before tiring out). They hit it right of the bat thanks to both of their friendly natures. **

**Kirito was what many would call a prodigy of the shinobi arts. This was the second fold the chunin were wrong by since they thought of him as a weak shinobi. He mastered things with such ease that it was almost unbelievable; you could very-well call him the second coming of the Yondaime Hokage if you wanted to, because you would not be too far from the truth. Especially with Kirito having an eerily similar calm expression on his face to that of the Yondaime Hokage.**

**Naruto was very rough around the edges. He had to be retaught everything since all he was taught was either wrong, or incomplete. But thanks to his Kage Bunshin no Jutsu's secret training method he more than made up for it. Kirito may have been an outright prodigy, but he (Naruto) was a workhorse, a workhorse that had a way to cheat his training. He was Kirito's junior by a few years at the turtle hermit school, since this was Kirito's third journey outside of Uzu no Kuni in about a week's time Naruto would set off for his first journey outside of Uzu no Kuni since becoming Roshi's student. **

**Despite having been Roshi's student for a little over five years (at that point in time) this was only the third time he made use of the freedom Roshi gave him and the others.**

**Kirito was the first student Roshi had taken in nearly a decade. Kirito suffered from a mild case of amnesia. He remembered the basics of his life, like his name and how old he was, but he somehow could not remember his parents, or what had brought on the amnesia. All he knew was that Roshi had found him unconscious one day and after healing him back to full health he took Kirito in as his student.**

**Kirito was currently walking through Kumogakure, taking in the sights of the village and the all-round spirit of the people of the village. As he walked around the village he saw that there were a lot of shops that had signs dangling at their door handles that had the Kanji for "closed" written on it. Upon closer inspection of the populace of Kumo Kirito could see that most of them were rushing somewhere, towards one location to be exact; the village Square.**

**Kirito hurried along to see what it was that drew all of these people to the village Square. Along the way he was able to pick up bits and pieces of different conversations that the people held with one another.**

"_**They wanna make it public…"**_** one guy said to his friend.**

"_**They say she failed to do what was ordered of her by her commanding officer…" **_**said a woman to her travelling partner. **

"_**They say she killed two of her squad mates…" **_**said someone else.**

"_**She killed ten innocent people…" **_**said another woman.**

"_**She's pure evil…"**_** said an old lady to, what Kirito assumed, was her grandson. **

**As he picked up these bits and more Kirito continued to make his way to the village square, all the while thinking on who this woman might be that they were talking about, along with what it was that she had done that garnered her public notice of this magnitude. **

**Kirito eventually made it to the village square, and what he saw made him understand a bit of what was going on. **

**This gathering was taking place because someone, this woman most likely (whoever she was), was going to get executed, publicly. **

**Kirito wondered what she had done to ensure such a fate for herself, but he quickly shoved those thought s away as he just chose to survey those in attendance. There was a podium upon which rested a log the size and shape of which was similar to the ones used when people use the Kawarimi no Jutsu. On said log was a very sharp axe that was lodged in the log. From the looks of things Kirito concluded that this woman was going to be beheaded.**

**As he looked past the wooden podium where the execution would take place he looked up towards what he generally understood to be the Raikage tower, and he saw that there was a specially constructed balcony, upon which the Raikage, along with his council sat at to witness the execution. One of the female council members though, Kirito realised, had red puffy eyes that were clearly visible to him thanks to his keen sense of vision that he had acquired through his two years of training under Roshi.**

**The woman must have done something terrible that involved that particular councilman since she was visibly cry silently for now, or it could be that the council(wo)man cared about the woman being executed today, hence why she was crying. Either of Kirito's theories was possible. **

**Kirito and those that were in the village square waited for a few more minutes before the woman was brought out.**

**Kirito was shocked at what he saw. That was no woman, it was a girl, and it was a girl around his age. This was the person that being publicly executed? What did this girl do that was so major that she had to get herself publicly executed, in front of the Raikage no less? **

**Kirito watched as the auburn haired girl was seemingly marshalled onto the podium by two chunin, one on either side of her as she walked up the steps that lead to the top of the podium. The way that the girl walked had a dead feel to it, as if she had given up on life. Kirito could not blame her, she was about to be put to death, so she obviously had the right to walk like a zombie, slowly dragging her feet as she walked up to the centre of the podium. **

**After she stopped at the centre of the podium two people walked up to it, one wearing an expensive looking kimono while the other wore a standard Kumo shinobi uniform. The one wearing a kimono ended up standing to her left while the Kumo shinobi stood to her right, hands behind him. **

**The one wearing a kimono took out what looked like a scroll from his pocket and opened it. He cleared his voice once, indicating that he was about to speak, thus ending the chattering going on amongst the crowd.**

"**Shifon Asuna, chunin of Kumogakure no Sato, you have been brought forth today to Kumogakure's village square after you were trailed, and found guilty of all charges on you. The sentence as issued by Kumogakure's High Court is death by beheading. You are to be made an example of to deter those who wish to try and do what you have done. For the crime of murder of councilman Rorichio's entire family, you have been sentence to death through beheading." The man spoke with clarity and arrogance all over his voice.**

**So that is what the woman did, huh? She was a murderer; she had murdered all of the crying councilman's family.**

**Kirito felt something when he looked at the girl, who had just been found to be Asuna. She seemed to have given up really. But what was it that a murderer would have seemingly given up on? This baffled Kirito greatly. **

**As Kirito continued to muse over the situation the announcer seemed to have called for silence once more as he was about to speak, thus garnering the attention of every individual there for the execution. **

"**Do you, Shifon Asuna, have any last words?"**

**Kirito looked at the girl who seemed as if she was mauling over something in her head. Her final words maybe? Despite the seemingly dead feeling she gave off, to someone who has been training in the shinobi arts as much as Kirito was, and especially with the special trait his eyes had, he could read her body language as clear as day.**

**She was thinking of the perfect words to say…Kami knows he would to. After nearly thirty seconds of waiting, Asuna finally looked up at the Kumo populace that was gathered in their tens of thousands as most of them finally got a clear look of her face since she had her hair covering her face the entire time. **

**And that's when Kirito saw it. Her eyes may have projected a dead look in them, but for Kirito he could see it as clear as the day. Sorrow, but not sorrow for her crimes. Her sorrow seemed to be for something else entirely though, and it was her next statement that made him realise just what it was that made her that way.**

"**I know that this will mean nothing to you all as you already have your own false ideas about who I really am but I want to tell you all that I have been falsely accused of murder I did not commit. **_**Atasui**_** you bastard, you better hope we don't meet up in hell because **_**I will kill you**_**."**

**She said Atasui's name, along with the last part with venom in her voice.**

**Asuna's last words seemed to make Kirito finally understand what was going on. She was being framed for murder she did not commit. And this Atasui person was the cause of some of it. You could fake a lot of things, but you can't fake sorrow so thoroughly that it becomes evident even in your eyes. It was humanly impossible.**

**After her piece was said Asuna was grabbed by the sleeve of her grey t-shirt and dropped on to her knees. Her head was placed on the log after the Kumo shinobi removed the axe that was lodged there. **

**A drum roll was heard ringing throughout the square. A drum roll, really? Who still does that? Cliché much? Apparently it was still the in thing for public executions even on this day. **

**Asuna felt tears well up in her eyes, she did not want to show any emotions, but the way she was dying was so unfair. It just served to prove that the world fucks with the weak and/or the good. She was a shining example of it. **

**As the drum roll became faster and faster all those gathered watched as the Kumo shinobi picked up the axe before he swung it down aiming for Asuna's exposed neck.**

…

…

…

**Clang! That was a sound that resounded through village square. All that were present had their eyes widen in surprise as the watched the axe bounce off of a pitch black broadsword that was held by an individual who wore a similar coloured cloak that had a hood that obscured everyone from seeing who he or she is. This individual had drawn their sword in hopes of using it to protect Asuna from meeting with the gallows via beheading by an axe. **

**The Raikage stared wide eyed at the scene for about a few seconds before he regained his bearings and he shouted, "Stop him". **

**This seemed to have gotten everyone into gear as around half a dozen shinobi descended upon the podium.**

**The shinobi that held the axe was given a swift spinning kick and he was launched off of the podium spinning like a top as he flew towards the crowed. The first two shinobi to descend upon the podium both had standard edition Kumo katana that they both quickly drew before they tried to stab the individual on either side of him.**

**The individual just jumped up into the air just as the two katana were about to stab him. The two shinobi saw what this guy was trying to do; he was trying to get them to stab each other. They quickly stopped as their katana tips touched each other.**

**What happened next caught not only the two shinobi off guard, but also those shinobi that were watching to see if they could find an opening to ponce for; while other shinobi ushered the civilians out of the village square.**

**The cloaked individual descended upon both blades, landing on them as if he were nothing but a butterfly. This shocked the onlookers greatly since they were baffled with how this guy just made himself as light as a feather so that he could stand on the katana that tried to stab him.**

**Before anyone could react though, the individual jump kicked both of these shinobi in their faces before landing back on the wooden podium with his cloak billowing in the wind before it settled down like him.**

**When his cloak stopped billowing it seemed to be the signal he wanted to start moving again. He made a dash so fast that to anyone below jonin level he was a blur before he appeared in front of two shinobi before he kicked them both away with his right foot, before he had to shift his body to the left because two more shinobi came for him at a fast pace, kunai trying to stab him.**

**With one hand still holding on to his sword he used his free hand to back hand one of the shinobi before kicking the other one away with a solid kick to the face. Without even pausing he went directly towards Asuna, who this whole time just remained on the floor, still with a defeated look on her face, though she also had a look of wonder, and a little…hope? She watched as this guy seemingly defeated seven of his opponents with one strike each. Why was he doing this? Who was he? **

**As Asuna pondered all these things and more she saw the man in question suddenly run to her before he scooped her up roughly with one hand around her waist before he jumped off the podium.**

**Those that were watching witnessed on of the longest jumps in shinobi history as they saw the cloaked individual jump up over a couple of buildings before disappearing into the crowd below.**

**Shit! They all realised that he was going to use the crowd to cover his escape, they were too busy being charmed by his finesse that he had them practically hypnotised. **

**As the shinobi moved through the crowd and the roof tops looking for the stranger, they never noticed a figure that stood at the centre of the village square holding up the ram sign, with a look of pure concentration etched on his face. The figure in question held up the sign for a few minutes before he finally dropped it once all the shinobi were out of sight. **

**Kirito smirked at that job well done. He was not the type of person to celebrate after a battle, but what he had just pulled of deserved to be praised. He had cast a genjutsu upon the entire populace that was present; tens of thousands of people all saw the same thing. They saw him stop the axe and then he fought a few Kumo shinobi, taking them out one at a time. This was a powerful genjutsu, one so powerful that anyone below Kage level would be reeling in from the after effect of using the jutsu, that being chakra exhaustion. **

**Kirito did not have that problem though; he had more reserves than the average Kage, Uchiha Itachi eat your heart out, can you do such an awesome genjutsu? **

**After dropping the jutsu Kirito, who was still hooded just like he had been in the genjutsu, walked onto the podium where he tapped the slumping form of Asuna. Asuna looked up and she saw a pair of obsidian eyes stare down at her own brown eyes. She found something in those eyes that made her want to be by this guy's side, to follow him. **

**Whether this was brought on by the fact that he had saved her or if it was due to something else she did not know. **

**Before they could continue, Kirito sensed something and he jumped away with her being pulled along. She was unsurprisingly light due to how poorly conditioned her body looked. When he landed, still on the podium he saw two shinobi that stood next to each other, one had what looked akin to a giant butcher knife and the other had two kunai held in a reverse grip drawn out and ready to strike.**

**Kirito looked at the two Kumo shinobi, seeing that they both wore the standard Kumo shinobi garb, along with that though they had different skin tones and different hair colour. The one wielding the two kunai had slightly tanned skin and blonde hair while the one holding the giant butcher knife had dark skin and shaggy white hair along with a bored look on his face.**

"**Nice genjutsu…" said the blonde haired male, "...your plan could have worked. Unfortunately though your plan did not account on me being in the crowd."**

**Kirito looked at the blonde for a moment before he said. "A genjutsu specialist I see. Truly you are a powerful one as not many could ever detect or avoid my **_**Tajuu Panikku Genjutsu (Mass Panic Genjutsu)**_**."**

"**Thanks for the compliment…" **

**Realising that the blonde wanted his name Kirito said, "No one. That's my name."**

"**More like your alias." replied the shaggy haired shinobi.**

"**I see…either you are a genjutsu specialist yourself, or you were freed from the Genjutsu by him." Kirito said pointing to the blonde shinobi.**

"**I am curious though…"Kirito continued, "…as to why you did not free a lot more shinobi than just him, not even the Raikage as I don't see him here."**

"**I did not break any more shinobi either than Darui here simply because they would be in our way, as to why Raikage-sama has not been freed…well he already has been, but he deemed us strong enough to take you on. After all you are in the presence of Kumo's best Genjutsu user and the Raikage's right hand man. You can't get better than this."**

**Of course there was Killer Bee along with Yugito, but he did not need to know that now did he?**

"**Shi, don't get too overconfident now, especially since we are going up against someone who is clearly strong judging by the genjutsu he used on us, casting an enormously powerful Genjutsu and not looking like he had any trouble with it speaks volumes about his power. His probably a Genjutsu/Kenjutsu specialist, which would mean that we are the two best opponents Raikage-sama could throw at him, since we are both highly skilled in those areas of expertise." Said the now identified Darui in a tired, yet focused voice.**

"**I know Darui; you don't have to tell that to me." Spoke Shi in retaliation to Darui's statement. **

**Kirito was glad that these two, along with the Raikage underestimated him. He was sure that in a fight against the current fastest man in the world he would win if it were a one on one fight, but if the Raikage had these two backing him up, well then that would have been another story altogether. He was glad about his current fighting conditions though. Two on one it may be, but he was sure he could win against these two Jounin. **

**The temperature around the three shinobi dropped a lot as everyone assumed their battle stances. Darui adjusted the grip on his butcher knife. Shi separated his legs a bit more so as to be able to spring better when the fight started. Kirito just withdrew his pitch black broad sword from its holster before he held it firmly in his right hand while he just dangled both arms to the side. This was his fight stance, his first one that is. **

**The two Kumo shinobi looked at their hooded opponent as if trying to decipher what he looked like underneath the hood of his black cloak.**

**Kirito looked at his opponents trying his best to not underestimate them. His master had always said that many people died due to underestimating your opponent's calibre. He did not want to be added onto that list. **

**The now dead silent square played host to three shinobi standing on a wooden podium. One trying to defend a girl he did not know simply because he believed she was innocent by just looking into her eyes, while the other two fought to not only recapture the criminal of a kunoichi that was being protected by this seemingly powerful foe and also to capture (if possible) said foe or to downright kill him if necessary.**

**The minutes rolled by as the shinobi looked to get this fight going. To a low-level shinobi all these guys were doing was just staring at each other. Higher level shinobi would know that these three were trying to ascertain what info they could about the person, or people, they were facing. In a fight it was always good to know your opponents thoroughly. Not doing so would result in your death. Many shinobi have fallen in battle due to such a lapse of information on their opponent, something these three were not keen on repeating by all intents and purposes. **

**After a long while though the staring contest ended. Shi threw both his kunai, one after the other, before he went through a string of hand seals while Kirito deflected both his kunai with his blade.**

"**Raigen: Raikouchuo (Lightning Illusion: Flash Pillar)" Shi cried out. **

**A bright flash of light enveloped the battle arena that blinded Kirito greatly before he felt the ground beneath him shake violently with cracks appearing all over it. Then the ground collapsed like a domino effect, but thankfully Kirito avoided that by simply jumping backwards.**

**While he was in the air though Darui appeared in a blur on his right hand side before he swung his giant butcher knife at Kirito, who simply raised the blade in his right hand and blocked the blade with his own broadsword just as he and Darui landed on the ground, blades still inter-locked. **

**This did not last long though because Shi came out of nowhere and stabbed Kirito from behind, around the neck region with a kunai.**

**Shi smirked at the sight while Darui let out an exasperated sigh.**

"**That was too easy." Shi said in confidence and arrogance, but he was right, it was easy to deal with this guy…**

"**Yes, too easy…" said a voice out of nowhere.**

**The world seemed to distort for Shi as he felt the world spinning around him. Before he knew what was going on though he was back in his original position shortly after he had let loose his Raigen: Raikouchuo, with Darui right there next to him. **

"**Shi look out!" **

**Too late…what Shi saw in front of him made him falter greatly in his arrogance on how easy a victory he had scored when the person he had scored the victory against appeared directly in front of him and gave him what had to be the hardest punch he had ever felt in his life. Shi flew back greatly, flying off the podium and striking the ground hard.**

**How? How was he able to see through the double layered genjutsu so easily and turn it on them? He made them believe they had won. Even for the most skilled Genjutsu users escaping a double layered Genjutsu and then turning it on your opponent would be nearly impossible. Unless of course you had a Doujutsu, and even then you would have to be at Uchiha Itachi's level to do something like that, and that guy was in a league of his own. So how did this guy do it? **

**Back on the podium though as soon as Kirito had punched Shi off of the podium he turned his attention to his right just as Darui's butcher knife was about to cleave him into two pieces, thankfully though he also had a sword, and he was damn good at using it.**

**After parrying Darui's slash Kirito attempted his own diagonal one as well, this was blocked by Darui's giant butcher knife. This continued for several minutes as Darui and Kirito fought using their swords. Slash after slash was blocked, parried or dodged by either shinobi as they both mentally complimented each other's Kenjutsu skills. Though Darui also had a bit of worry coursing through him. From what he could see of his opponent's fight with him he could tell that this guy was toying with him despite the fact that he (Darui) was going all out.**

**Darui was the best Kenjutsu user in Kumo second to Killer Bee. Only Killer Bee and the Kiri no Shinobigatana Shichinin Shu (Seven Swordsmen of the Mist) were more skilled than he was at Kenjutsu, and for this guy to be toying with him in Kenjutsu meant that he had a lot of skill in it…like Seven Swordsmen type of skill, maybe even higher.**

**Kirito decided to end their little spar by feinting a downward slash with his sword, only for it to change course and simply be dropped out of Kirito's grasp surprising Darui long enough for Kirito to punch Darui in the stomach, nearly making him double over due to the force behind the blow before grabbing the back of his head and kneeing him in the face before giving him a round house kick to the face that sent him flying off the podium, but thankfully unlike Shi, Darui was a lot more resilient, thus he was able to perform a back flip before landing on his feet, before falling onto one knee due to the pain in his stomach and his head.**

**Let it be known that this guy hit very hard.**

**Asuna who was in the same position that she was left in at the corner of the podium could only watch in fascination as this cloaked stranger decimate two of Kumo's best shinobi with ease.**

**Asuna was not the only one watching the fight. Yotsuki A watched on as Darui and Shi were put through the ringer by this extremely talented shinobi. He clenched his fists as he bore witness to the man's insanely strong taijutsu style that seemed to have the ability to make even his right hand man keel over like a bitch. Only one person could do that with pure Taijutsu, and she was currently in Konoha so it could not be her. Besides, this guy used a sword, she did not. **

**Kirito stood motionlessly as he waited for Darui and Shi to get back up so they could continue. If Kirito were honest with himself the best possible plan right now would be to run while his opponents were reeling in from the effects of experiencing his Taijutsu first hand. Or he could just as easily kill them. Those two plans had risks though; the first plan risked the Raikage alerting every shinobi about them being under a genjutsu, making it impossible to escape Kumo in one piece. And there was the Raikage himself. A man who was naturally faster than Kirito thanks to his Raiton no Yoroi. A would catch him before he set foot outside the village. **

**The second plan risked him being put in Kumo's bingo books as a wanted shinobi. He was not about to risk that, even though many would say that he was guaranteed a page in the bingo books of Kumo for what he has done already. **

**That only left him with his current option. Fight the Jounin sent to capture or kill him and embarrass them greatly to the point where the Raikage would intervene. Then fight the Raikage and defeat him, then show him mercy by not killing him. This would insult and embarrass a man like Yotsuki A greatly to the point where Kirito would try to scare him into not placing him in the Bingo books. He did not need bounty hunters and all sorts of other shinobi after him right now thank you very much. Though he did know that Kumo would secretly track him down to try and kill him.**

**Still though, he had a fight to focus on. He watched Shi and Darui regain their bearings after about a minute's pause.**

**Shi and Darui stood up slowly, both contemplating how to defeat this opponent that they were facing.**

"**This guy is better than what I expected. He was able to use my own Genjutsu to mask his own Genjutsu. Pretty ingenious really." Shi said in a low voice to Darui.**

"**He makes me look like I'm a beginner at Kenjutsu. He has basically made our strengths seem pretty meek when compared to his…" replied Darui in a whisper while Shi nodded his at what Darui said since this guy made them look weak in comparison.**

"…**Taijutsu is out of the question…" Darui continued, no need to explain that to Shi was the proof was in the pudding, "…so that means that we have to turn to Ninjutsu."**

**Without even waiting for Shi's consent Darui sped through a few hand seals before he called out the name of his jutsu, "Raiton: Jibashi (Lightning Style: Electromagnetic Murder)"**

**A giant wave of electric energy escaped from Darui's hands and proceeded to the podium that the cloaked figure stood upon. Said person quickly moved to where the supposed criminal meant to be executed today was at before grabbing her and jumping off the podium as it was hit by the electrical wave and proceeded to explode into a shower of wood splinters that flew all over the square.**

**Shi looked to capitalise of the opening Darui provided by simply taking out a kunai with an exploding tag and he threw it at the spot that Kirito would land at. While the kunai was in mid-air Shi went through a string of hand seals before he called out his jutsu, "Kunai Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Kunai Shadow Clone Jutsu)".**

**Almost immediately The kunai multiplied into at least a dozen more that proceeded towards the cloaked figures landing spot.**

**As soon as he and Asuna touched the ground the kunai exploded in a series of consecutive blasts that sent a lot of debris flying all over.**

**Shi smirked once more at the sight of having seemingly defeated his opponent. As if he were sensing Shi's arrogance Darui quickly said, "Don't get cocky Shi, I doubt that that would be enough to take down a guy like that."**

**As if nature was also backing up what Darui said a gust of wind blew over the battle field, where it proceeded to blow away all of the dust in the air caused by the consecutive exploding tags, and soon enough the form of the cloaked figure holding his broadsword in his right hand, and Asuna underneath his armpit with his left hand graced Shi and Darui's vision. **

**Shi's smirk dropped once more, this guy was seriously infuriating him. **

**Shi watched as the cloaked figure put a now unconscious Asuna down on the floor before he held up a cross sign using his index and middle fingers on each hand and he said, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu)".**

**Almost immediately a copy of him appeared on the battlefield in a puff of smoke, where the clone picked up the unconscious form of Asuna and proceeded to vacate the area.**

**Shi tried to intercept it though; there was no way he was willing to let the clone escape with their prisoner. **

**Too bad for him though as Kirito saw what the Kumo shinobi wanted to do so he quickly threw his broadsword at Shi, who saw and ducked, and he watched the blade sail over him. Kirito utilised the Shunshin no Jutsu before Darui could stop him, and as soon as Kirito's sword imbedded itself into the ground Kirito appeared on it with him standing on its hilt holding up the ram seal. **

**Almost instantly Electric energy seemed to seep out of the sword as it proceeded to travel on the ground **_**in every direction**_** at super-fast speeds. Shi and Darui jumped onto the nearest rooftop to avoid being electrocuted, all while Darui went through some hand seals before he cried out, "Raiton: Kuropansa (Lightning Style: Black panther" as soon as he had landed on the roof.**

**Kirito saw the black lightning panther that came at him at incredible speeds from Darui, but instead of jumping off his blade he just continued to stand on it with no worry at all. Almost immediately the jutsu hit Kirito, or at least that's what it seemed like at first before the two Kumo shinobi got a closer look at what was going on. **

**What they saw surprised, and shocked them greatly; they could see that Darui's jutsu which had originally been meant to hit Kirito was somehow being absorbed by Kirito's sword.**

"**What the…" blurted Shi in utter exasperation as what he just saw was something he never dreamed could ever happen.**

**When Darui's entire Jutsu was absorbed by the blade Kirito jumped off his sword and proceeded to pick it up and inspect it for a few seconds as it seemed to be radiating black electrical energy all over it. **

"**Black Lightning? I never knew it existed before." Said Kirito in a bit of wonder over his sword**

"**What did you do to my Jutsu?" asked an angered Darui, as that was his second strongest attack and this guy just shrugged it off him like it was nothing; so he would obviously be pissed right now.**

**Kirito looked at Darui for a few seconds as if contemplating whether or not answering him would be detrimental to his strategy, but after thinking it over he saw that it did nothing that would cause his strategy harm so he said, "It's simple…I absorbed it, plain and simple."**

"**Y-you absorbed it?" Darui asked slightly perturbed that his original thought about what happened was right.**

"**Yes…my sword has the ability to absorb any and all elemental jutsu that belong to the five main elements. I would have dodged your jutsu had it not been for the fact that I could hear you call its name out; you called it a Raiton Jutsu, thus I was confident I could absorb it."**

**What? That was insane; this guy's sword can absorb elemental Ninjutsu belonging to the first five elements? Not good, as that meant that more than 90% of their jutsu arsenal was going to work on him. **

**Before they could contemplate any further about what course of action to take Kirito spoke up once more, "That is the boring part…the fun part starts when I use what I gained against my opponents."**

"**What?" was all that Darui and Shi were able to blurt out before they saw Kirito haul his broadsword at them while he went through a string of hand seals and just as his sword imbedded itself into the wall Kirito was able to call out his Jutsu, "Raiton: Kuropansa (Lightning Style: Black Panther)". **

**Almost instantly an electrical panther made of black energy seemed to jump out of Kirito's blade and it proceeded towards Darui and Shi who were on the rooftop of the same building, standing shocked at the fact that this guy was performing Darui's jutsu after only seeing it once, before it electrocuted both of them, only for them to disappear in bursts of electric energy before the real Darui and Shi appeared behind Kirito who saw them out of the corner of his eyes as Darui went through more hand seals before he cried out, "Ranton: Reizã Sãkasu (Storm Style: Laser Circus)." **

**Blue beams of focused energy sprung from Darui's hands that were enclosed in the Dragon seal. They rushed at Kirito's retreating form, who thought he could avoid the Jutsu by turning at a corner that lead into an ally only for the beams of energy to follow him like guided missiles.**

**Fuck…**

**That was the last though Kirito had before the jutsu created an explosion that was visible even from where Darui and Shi were. Darui was huffing after performing the Jutsu while he looked at the damage his strongest attack caused. Smoke was emanating from the ally that the cloaked figure had run to in order to run from the Lasers, only to isolate himself further, making it easier for the Jutsu to strike him down.**

**As the smoke settle started settling down though a giant dragon made of fire emerged from it that travelled at high speeds, and had completely caught Shi and Darui off guard as the Jutsu honed in on them. **

**Before they were struck by the Jutsu though a massive surge of electrical energy blew the Jutsu apart, causing the square to explode once more before it settled down again.**

**When the smoke from the blast cleared it revealed that Darui and Shi had now been joined by another figure, the Yondaime Raikage himself in all of his glory, with his legendary Raiton no Yoroi activated.**

**A looked at his two best Jounin, outside of Yugito and his brother, before he simply lifted his thumb pointing backwards saying, "Shi, Darui, leave this area, this guy is clearly beyond your level…he's just toying with you both."**

"**Boss…" Darui said before he slowly nodded his head after seeing the glare A sent his way. It would do Kumo any good if they lost their best Jounin in this fight, so that was why A was here to clean up after them.**

**Shi and Darui looked at each other before nodding their heads at one another before leaving the area. **

**After Darui and Shi left, A looked at his opponent with a glare that would send most men into curling themselves in their rooms like little babies; Kirito though just shrugged it off like it was nothing.**

**Kirito and A stared each other down before A moved at what would have been a blur to most Jounin before he threw a fist at Kirito, who surprised A by dodging it entirely before he threw his own punch at A, who was further surprised by his opponents punch being able to not only hurt him, but it seemed as if he was not affected by the lightning emanating off his body; though A quickly put that thought away as he swung another superfast punch at Kirito who simply used his forearm to parry it before he sent a knee to A's abdomen.**

**A felt that blow as well, and for him to feel any blow to his body meant that this guy could hit harder than what he had done against Darui and Shi. **

**A sent his right leg at the man, only for him to be countered by Kirito's surprisingly super-fast speed that was able to keep up with him when he was using around 30% of his Raiton no Yoroi's power. Kirito aimed a punched at A's face, who dodged it, before he sent punch at Kirito who dodge it as well. **

**They continued their song-and-dance for a few minutes before A finally had enough of holding back; he jumped back so he could power his Raiton no Yoroi more before disappearing and appearing at Kirito's side, where he proceeded to send a kick at Kirito and he felt it connect, but Kirito did not budge from the kick. Before A could react to anything he was grabbed by an ethereal skeletal hand that appeared out of nowhere and it held him in a vice grip before the hooded figure looked A directly in his eyes and that's when A saw it. **

**The reason as to why this guy was so powerful at Genjutsu. Why he could make Darui's Kenjutsu skills look like they were nothing. The reason why he could replicate Darui's Kuropansa after he had absorbed the Black Lightning through his sword. The reason why he was able to survive Darui's strongest attack with no scratch on him at all. The reason why he could see A's moves as clear as day. And finally the reason why when A kicked him he did not moved an inch.**

**Sharingan. **

**This guy had the Sharingan, or to be more specific, the Mangekyou Sharingan as A could see a Bio-hazard sign with a single black dot in the middle of it as clear as day, that was the last thing A registered before he was caught in Kirito's Genjutsu making him catatonic.**

**Kirito couldn't believe that he was forced to use his trump card in order to counter the Raikage's speed. He had used all means he could think off while fighting the Raikage. He fought the Raikage in Taijutsu by utilising his Raiton affinity through his hands, and when it came to keeping up with him Kirito used his eyes. When he became to fast for him to keep up with he overcame that by releasing his Susano'o.**

**Kirito's Susano'o was reminiscent to his favourite colour…black. Though his was not black, it was actually navy blue. Kirito then felt it, the pull in his eyes that came with using the Susano'o with his incomplete Mangekyou…he had to find another Mangekyou user before it was too late. **

**Kirito felt his eyes hurting greatly as he continued to use them, so he quickly did what his needed to do right now, and that was create another Susano'o skeletal arm that proceeded to dislodge his blade from the wall and hand it to him, just as Darui and Shi came back, this time with back up in the form of Kumo's ANBU. **

**The ANBU saw that Kirito had their Raikage and he had summoned some sort of ghost skeletal abdomen around himself. **

**Kirito looked at his newly assembled opponents who included a worn out Darui and Shi and twelve others. **

"**I will not kill the Raikage…" Kirito said before he made the hand seal for a shadow clone that popped up the next second before it proceeded to block the ANBU by simply spreading its arms wide, "…however I will use him as a means of escape by simply exiting the village, and after sixty minutes after I have left, you can follow me as well. I will leave him wherever I will be after the twenty minute mark is up. My Kage Bunshin is here to make sure that you don't leave before the sixty minutes are up or else I will squeeze the Raikage like a bad grape. Am I understood?"**

**Kirito's tone left no room for argument, and the others knew that he could back his threat up with ease, so they simply nodded and watched as Kirito jumped away in the direction that Darui and Shi noted was the same direction that his Kage Bunshin had left with Asuna after rescuing her. **

**Darui sighed as he and the ANBU watched the unidentified man leave with their Kage and they could do nothing about it at all. He wondered how things would be if Killer Bee and Yugito were in the village right now. **

This would not have happened that was for sure.

_**Flashback End **_

From what Naruto could remember about the story Kirito had made good on his promise to not harm the Raikage, where he left him in the middle off a forest outside of Kumo before retreating to where Asuna and his previously created Bunshin was. He had brought Asuna back to be trailed to see if she could take on Roshi's teachings, and she was deemed worthy by Roshi, though she her near death experience left her with a sour mouth so to speak. Atasui was her sensei, and he had murdered a council member's family and then he pinned it on her…so she had a little more than a few trust issues.

Thankfully though she did trust her entourage enough to turn her back and not worry about having it stabbed by the person that was supposed to be watching it.

Kumo, just as Kirito had planned did not place him in their bingo books for aforementioned reasons, but just as he had also predicted they hunted him down. How did they know this? Konoha was not the only village they had spies in, though it was admittingly harder to get any in Kumo due to their strict militaristic policies.

Before Naruto realised it, he was at their destination. They stood in front of a building that was all white and it was four stories tall with a giant swirl symbol on the front of it.

They entered the building that was laden with wooden floors and white walls. The proceeded to the end of the corridor where they came across a door that had no door handle. Naruto went through a string of hand seals and proceeded to press his hand on the door, which opened barely a second later.

They walked past the door, which closed immediately after the last person to enter, Asuna, entered while the others walked down a flight of stairs. They walked for about thirty minutes before coming to the end of the long downward facing staircase. When they reached the bottom of the stairs they came across what happened to be another door that also had no handle on it.

This time though it was Kirito who went through a string of hand seals before placing his palm on the door where it opened barely a second later as well, just like the first door. This was a clever security system that utilised the use of different people opening different doors. If you opened one door, you could not open the next one, someone had to do it or else you would receive a nasty shock.

They entered the room and saw that this room contained twenty doors of a similar style to the first two doors they came across. There were ten doors on the right side, and another ten on the left.

Tigress stepped up and proceeded to run through a string of hand seals before the room glowed a faint green light before it died down until it only illuminated off one door, the fifth one on the left.

The squad of four entered the room that had the glowing door, which closed after they had all entered.

This was a clever use of Jikukan Ninjutsu that allowed the user to transport one room between twenty random directions, or in this case twenty random rooms. The other nineteen rooms were all booby trapped while only one was the real room. Without the correct seal sequence you would never be able to enter it, and the room entrance changes every time you finish using the current one.

Naruto and the others came across a room that was so huge it was not funny. The room was so big that its entire circumference was greater than that of the building they had entered through.

The room had a lot of things in it really; it was not so much a room as it was a secret gathering place known only to them.

The room was empty right now, though this did not seem to bother the four shinobi in the least.

Asuna stepped up and went through a string of hand seals before placing her hand on the ground, and a second later the once empty room now had a gigantic table that had twenty seats around it, along with a swirl pattern in the middle of the table.

This was another Jikukan Ninjutsu they utilised…Kuchiyose. The room had so many things in it that Naruto created a gigantic Kuchiyose seal so that they could summon, and reverse summon whatever items or things that were in the room that they needed.

The four shinobi took their seats on the large table, with two on each side off the table. Tigress and Naruto on the left, Kirito and Asuna on the right side of the table.

"So…" Naruto said, "How did your mission go?"

"It went off quite alright, although I never managed to capture the Uchiha since he was on a mission according to what your girlfriend said." Kirito replied, saying the last part jokingly.

Of course this had the desired effect on Naruto as he blushed furiously, though no one saw it due to the Kakashi-style black face mask he wore.

"She's not my girlfriend…" Naruto said, still blushing

This just caused his three closest friends to burst out laughing at him. In order to salvage some pride Naruto quickly said, "What about you and Asuna-_chan_?"

This caused Kirito to choke a bit on his own spit and Asuna to glare at Naruto dangerously. If there were two people who were madly in love with each other it was Kirito and Asuna, they were just too chicken to tell each other.

"Imagine that," Naruto continued, "this guy can take on Kumo and not bat an eyelash but…"

Before he could continue the room was filled with Killing Intent coming off of Asuna, which quickly shut Naruto up, not wanting to insight Asuna's wrath.

Looking to change the topic Naruto said, "W-well you don't have to worry about Sasuke seeing as the mission he was on was the one we were on. We crossed paths and I put him down, with one hit."

Kirito nodded at that then he asked, "Well now that we have more than enough money, along with the Uchiha, what's the next step?"

Before anyone could answer though Asuna intervened and she said, "Wait…what about the Mizukage thing, Kirito-kun?"

"Kirito-kun?" Naruto laughed out loud before he felt two killing intents coming from said man along with the woman who called him that, which quickly shut Naruto up.

"Wait, what about the Mizukage?" asked Tigress trying to save her brother's hide.

"Well apparently the Mizukage recently sent a secret envoy to Konoha in hopes of gaining a trade alliance with them. The council haven't made a conclusive decision yet, but according to Hyuuga Hinata most seem against the idea as Konoha would gain nothing from then alliance." Answered Asuna after she had stopped glaring at Naruto for his outburst.

This made everyone think for a few minutes before Naruto spoke up and he said, "Well in regards to the Mizukage we will offer ourselves as potential allies and wont only back her up financially but with man power as well."

"How are we gonna give her man power when we don't have any?"

"Simple…"replied Naruto, "…between the four of us we are each worth few hundred shinobi each, with Kirito and I being more than the Gokage put together when it comes to power and skill alone."

At that all Asuna could do was nod as what Naruto said was absolutely true. To some Naruto's last statement might have sounded like him bragging, but to those in the room who knew that Naruto did not brag knew that he was telling the absolute truth. If they were to be another Great War, and whichever side had them would be the outright winner.

Asuna may have been the weakest of the four, but she had enough power on her to take on at most three Kage level shinobi and win, though it would be close. Tigress could take had, according to their own estimations, the total power of the current Gokage, meaning she had it in her to fight them to a draw at best. Kirito and Naruto were on another level altogether.

Kirito was an Uchiha that had the Mangekyou Sharingan, along with that he also wielded the only sword in the world that could take on Naruto's Senjutsu Chokuto and not shatter. Also the sword allowed him to use all five basic elements. He also had his special ability which would make any army quiver in fear at his power.

Naruto first and foremost had so much chakra it was beyond ridiculous. He also had his Senjutsu Chokuto along with his two biggest trump cards; Senjutsu Chakra and then there was the Kyuubi Chakra mode. If that was not enough to deter you then there was also the fact that Naruto could transform into the Kyuubi…no sane being would want to face the Kyuubi in battle, never ever.

Not forgetting of course what Naruto could do with Fuuinjutsu. The guy could replicate the Shodai Hokage's legendary bloodline through Fuuinjutsu…that alone was super scary. So when Naruto said that they were worth a few hundred shinobi he was playing it down. They were worth thousands of Shinobi…each.

"Alright what about Sasuke and Orochimaru?" asked Asuna

"We'll stick to most of the plan…we'll use Sasuke as bait to lure Orochimaru out of his snake hole. Though we're going to be having a slight change to our plan of attack, and the time we will strike. Not only against Orochimaru, but the overall plan will be changed as well." Said Naruto

"How so?" asked Tigress

"During our run in with the Konoha Shinobi in Kaze no Kuni I was able to use my Senjutsu Chakra to identify something of great importance. When I kicked Sasuke Uchiha I was able to sense something deep within Sasuke through the use of my Senjutsu Chakra." Spoke Naruto once more.

"What was it that you sensed in him?" asked a now curious Kirito.

Naruto looked around the table and he could see that all of his friends wanted to know just as much as Kirito did as well.

"Uchiha Sasuke has the same power that only you…" at this he pointed at Kirito, "…and his brother, Uchiha Itachi, have."

At this everybody around the table had eyes that were wide as they somewhat understood what Naruto meant. There was no need for him to finish off by saying what it was that Sasuke possessed that only Kirito and Uchiha Itachi had…and that was the power that was said to be able to control the Kyuubi, the Mangekyo Sharingan.

And they were willing to bet that no one in Konoha knew about it.

A long silence followed Naruto's statement as his adopted siblings contemplated all that Naruto said and how it would affect their plan of action from here on out.

"I get what you want to do with Sasuke's eyes, but how will they change the entire plan?" asked Tigress in a state of slight confusion.

"Well sis, to put it bluntly I'm going to take Sasuke's Mangekyou and insert it into Kirito, thus curing his eyes just like master told us years ago about how Madara did it. Though I'm sure you already knew that."

Tigress nodded at this, as she had figured as much.

"Well I won't be stopping there…" Naruto continued, "…Kirito's eyes will also have to find a new host and who better than Sasuke."

"What?!" was the outright cry of disbelief that sprung through the shinobi that were listening.

"Why would you wanna give the prick that almost killed you an Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan?" asked Tigress in outrage.

"Simple, because I will convince Sasuke to join us." Replied Naruto

"How, and why?" asked Kirito calmly, thus once again showing how calm he can be.

"Sasuke wants the power to kill Itachi and he believes that Konoha is somehow holding him back. I will give Sasuke the Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan and in return we will get a spy that's inside ROOT. As to how I'll do it, well let's just say that I know how the asshole operates. It won't be too hard for me to do it."

"What if you give him Kirito-kun's eyes and he turns on us?" asked Asuna

Naruto ignored the _Kirito-kun_ and decided to answer Asuna, "Simple once more…I will kill him, because even if Sasuke gains the Eternal Mangekyou and then decides to fight me, he won't be able to defeat me."

At this everyone nodded as they understood that right now no one was more powerful than Naruto…well perhaps there was _him_, but he was a different case altogether.

"So, are we all in agreement?" asked Naruto already knowing the answer.

They all just nodded their heads at him, not saying anything at all as there was no need to. Despite Naruto asking for their input he would have done it regardless as it would result in them gaining a spy inside one of the most notorious organisations in existence. Besides they had to admit that it was a solid plan, not a hundred percent but still solid enough for it to be done.

"Well what's going to happen now?"

At that Naruto said nothing, opting instead to just take a scroll out of his flak jacket and place it on the table. The other's watched as Naruto unfurled the scroll and then he held up the ram sign.

The scroll which was once small became big than the one carried by Jiraiya of the Densetsu no Sannin. The scroll was then enveloped by a huge smoke cloud that cleared itself to reveal the prone form of Uchiha Sasuke wrapped in wooden bindings and he also had a Juinjutsu that was spread across his entire body.

Naruto looked at all of his friends and said, "We are going to start the eye procedure now."

All of them looked at him with looks of agreement. Naruto hoisted the prone form of Sasuke Uchiha on his shoulder and began walking towards the door. Tigress came up from behind him and simply put her palm on the door, no need for secret hand seals. The door opened up and they all slid out the room, Asuna being last before the room was shrouded by darkness once more and then it disappeared from the face of this world going to another dimension, just waiting to be summoned one more.

**That took a while to write, but thankfully I'm finished with this chapter. I hope I did not grease you guys the wrong way about making Kirito an Uchiha.**

**If you want to know how he survived the Uchiha Massacre…well you'll have to stay tuned.**

**I'm out.**


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