Darkest Shade of Black
by violinmana
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"Ha... ha... ha..."
A ninja gasped for breath as he jumped between the roofs of the village of Konohagakure, heading straight for the village wall with a large scroll tied to his back. He quickly looked behind him, and threw a smoke bomb at his next landing spot. The chuunin following the intruder all stopped on various roofs a safe distance away from the towering pillar of smoke in a loose circle. A minute later, the smoke faded away into thin air, and the intruder was gone.
"Where is he!?"
"Up there!" One of the pursuers pointed up, as a pale blue glow grew visible around the body of the infiltrator. "Attack him!" As kunai and shuriken thrown by the chuunin headed up towards the Contractor, the air bent and the kunai twisted in mid-air and headed back to their owners. "Damn it! He's a wind type! Dodge!" After the shinobi of Konoha dodged the deadly hail of steel that they had thrown up in the first place, the intruder was gone.
The leader of the chuunin squad sighed, and then reached in his ear and pushed his earpiece. "Operator? Patch me through to Nara Shikamaru of the ISC. We've got a rogue Contractor in Konoha." He sighed again, and prepared to explain how exactly he had lost the Contractor and the Director's research.
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Right outside of Konoha walls, the intruder pulled down his mask and gasped for breath, feeling tired after using his power for such a long period of time. He grabbed a stick and started scribbling in the dirt, creating a diagram of the genealogy of pigs. After a short while, he stood up, satisfied with his work, and swept his foot across the diagram, erasing it from the dirt.
"Nice diagram there. So that's your Remuneration. Interesting..."
The shinobi, startled, turned to his right, and gasped. "Uzumaki..." The pale blue glow surrounded his body again, but was suddenly cut short with a kunai slammed to the back of his neck.
"Sorry, too slow. You know, you can't take things that don't belong to you." The voice came from behind the intruder, a pale blue glow surrounding his body. The soon-to-be-dead ninja gasped as the illusion in front of him winked and dissapated into thin air. "I'll be taking your body and that scroll now, I'm pretty sure Shikamaru is eager to get his research back." As the glow dimmed and winked out, Uzumaki Naruto sighed and looked up.
Above their heads in the night sky, a star twinkled, and then fell. A shooting star in the darkest black sky.
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No one knew what Orochimaru was up to then. What we do know is that a large... area was created three days before I turned fifteen. We call that area the Orochi Gate, after that traitor Sannin.
The Hokage then, Tsunade, quickly sent Jiraya and me an emergency message to return to the village as soon as possible, in order to make sure that I was safe. Once I got there, I knew it. The village had... changed. People I once knew to be outgoing and lively walked by with cold expressions on their faces. They never even twitched when they saw me. They walked on by, and if I had uttered a greeting, they would return the greeting, expression not changing, and walk on by.
I learned later, that a small amount of the human population all over the world had gained special powers. I wanted to call it a bloodline, but the powers didn't require chakra. Things that were impossible, even to us shinobi, became second-nature to these people. Flying. Telekinesis. Freezing. Controlling the weather. Mind-Reading. All these people shared two things in common: the blank look on their faces, and the fact that after they used their power, they had to do something weird, like write poems. Or eat raw eggs. We called them Contractors, since it seemed like a contract of some sort to us, the normal humans. In exchange for a power, they had to give up their emotions, and do a required action.
However, the most disconcerting thing was the night sky. When I looked up later that night, the stars were arranged completely differently. We later found out, with the founding of the Institution of the Study of Contracts, that each star represented the life of a single contractor. I didn't know that fact that night, when it seemed like there were hundreds of shooting stars. Many in the village, as well as myself, oohed and ahhed at the display, which none of us had ever seen before. It makes me sick to the stomach just thinking of it now. How many people had died, just because they were different? How many people died because they were prejudiced against?
I also later discovered that I am too, a Contractor. One of them. I had to change. Become someone I never wanted to be. It wasn't pretty, becoming who I am today. But hey, complaining just makes it worse, right? After all, black isn't that bad of a color.
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Prologue: End