Naruto Namikaze

Prologue

Seconds Late and the Consequences

Forests Outside of Konohagakure no Sato – Night of the Kyūbi Attack

"Fūinjutsu: Shiki Fūin! (Sealing Technique: Reaper Death Seal)" Minato Namikaze shouted as he finished sealing away part of the Nine-Tailed Fox's chakra within himself and he started to feel the first tendrils of cold snaking its way through his body as the reaper began to take his soul in payment.

The normally boyish and handsome features of the fourth hokage were replaced by a gaunt and white appearance, the signs of chakra exhaustion and his impending death. His forehead was covered with a mixture of grime and a thin layer of sweat and his eyes were slowly losing their exuberant and life-filled light. He was knocking on death's door, but he still had one thing left to do before he passed from the land of the living.

"Now that's done, I need to hurry and seal the rest within Naruto." Minato spoke those words with such regret and shame that he nearly stopped himself, but he remembered that the village would need the fox's power if they were going to survive what he thought was coming their way.

For he had a sinking suspicion that the masked man whom he had fought, and had allowed to escape alive, was none other than Madara Uchiha. Who else could have evaded ANBU squads, entered an area on the outskirts of the village that was protected by several high powered seals designed to hide the presence of said area from everyone but a select few, and manage to kidnap a jinchuriki from underneath a Hokage's nose? He didn't even have to take into consideration the fact that the man had time and space ninjutsu that were even more powerful than his own.

"Damn you Madara Uchiha, you have stolen away my son and my wife from me, and you have stolen us away from him, and now you force me to put this damn fox inside my own son so that one day he might have the power I fear he'll need to save our village!" Minato said out loud with a fierce growl that made Naruto wake up and start to cry.

Ashamed that he had scared his son, Minato rubbed his head and bent down and gave Naruto a kiss on the forehead. He looked over to the prone body that was holding his softly crying son. His beloved wife, whom had just finally passed away from the exertion the unsealing of the Kyūbi had placed upon her body. She had a smile on her face as her eyes had settled upon her baby before closing for the last time.

"I am sorry my son, I wish we had had more time. I truly do I love you Naruto Namikaze." Minato said as he stood up and began the myriad hand seals for the sealing jutsu he was about to perform. Minato finished the hand signs and put his hands on the design he had painted onto Naruto's belly before beginning to channel the last remnants of his chakra into the seal to complete the sealing technique.

"Fūinjutsu: Hakke no Fūin Shiki! (Sealing Technique: Eight Trigrams Sealing Style)" Minato shouted out and immediately squinted his eyes in pain from the resulting flash of golden light that emanated from the seal on Naruto's body before it died away to reveal that the Kyūbi had been successfully sealed.

Minato fell to the ground, totally drained of chakra and beginning to succumb to the final effects of the Reaper Death Seal. As he lay their dying, Minato made one final seal upon Naruto and sealed a portion of his own chakra within Naruto so that he could reseal the Nine-Tails, should he ever need to.

Before Minato took his final breath, he laid his head down next to Naruto's and snuggled his nose to Naruto's nose. For a few seconds, a warm light shone in his eyes and a small smile graced his features right before a figure appeared that made his face drain of all of its remaining blood.

He tried to gather the strength needed to stand and protect his son from this new threat, but alas, it was not to be. For the reaper chose that exact moment to finish ripping his soul from his body and the light left his eyes as he watched the tall man slink his way towards him and his son. He died knowing that in the end, he may have been able to save his village, but he had been unable to protect his son.

Naruto began crying loudly the moment his father closed his eyes for the last time. Suddenly, the boy grew silent as soft footsteps reached his ears and a person came into his view. The person stood there looking down at Minato and Kushina lying next to each other and their newborn baby cuddled in between the two of them.

"Well, looks like gathering Minato's DNA would be a waste. He just had to go and offer his soul to the Reaper. Oh well, there is another experiment that I wanted to try and I do believe an Uzumaki should be able to withstand the procedure, especially one whom contains the Kyūbi." The man whom was standing in front of the two fallen ninja and their newborn baby said as he licked his lips with his elongated tongue and his amber eyes glowed with an unnatural light.

Orochimaru bent at the waist and lifted the little baby up and placed him in the crook of his arm. Smiling down at Naruto with his evil smile and a fire smoldering in his eyes, he flicked his tongue out like a snake does to taste the air. He was positive that this boy could withstand the procedure and he was thanking his good fortune to have been in the area when he felt the Kyūbi's chakra going berserk.

"Hmm, if I was in the area, I wonder what the chances of someone else having been in the area as well." Orochimaru mused aloud to himself as he began molding his chakra for the Attack Prevention Technique he was cursed by so many frustrated enemies for.

"Funny you should wonder about that." A deep and mocking voice spoke from the shadows of the surrounding forest.

Jiraiya stepped out of the shadow of a nearby tree and glared at his former teammate and best friend. Flashing back, Orochimaru was assaulted with a memory of the last time he and Jiraiya had stared each other down like this. As he came back to his senses, he cocked his head to the side and stared at his former rival and teammate with his trademark evil smile.

"Orochimaru, hand the boy over now!" Jiraiya said as he began molding chakra for what he felt was going to be an extremely dangerous fight.

"You know, I was just remembering the last time you and I had a stare down like this, and I'm wondering if things are going to turn out the same way they did last time." Orochimaru said in a lazy drawl as he completely ignored Jiraiya's demand.

The last time they had faced each other down, he had been defecting from Konohagakure, and Jiraiya had thought to try and dissuade him from doing so. It was foolish, for he had beaten the living hell out of him, and had left him to die in a puddle of his own blood. At least, he thought he had at the time, only to find out that the oaf had somehow survived.

"However, I don't have the time it would take to rid myself of you once and for all right now, so I guess we'll just have to save our little tear filled conversation and subsequent beating for another time. If you really want to die, meet me at the Tenchi Bridge in ten days' time." Orochimaru said as his body began to sink into the ground, wondering to himself whether or not he would go to that bridge to kill his former teammate and whomever he brought with him.

"Orochimaru, no!" Jiraiya shouted before lunging forward in a flash, only to reach his teammate's position a few seconds too late.

"DAMN YOU OROCHIMARU!" Jiraiya bellowed to the heavens as his teammate's insane laughter echoed from the surrounding forest.

Forests Outside of Konohagakure no Sato – Nearly Ten Minutes Later

When Hiruzen Sarutobi finally made it to the clearing from which he had last felt the oppressive and malevolent chakra of the Kyūbi, he felt as if someone had just punched him in his gut. After a few seconds of just staring at the scene in front of him, he realized that he was holding his breath and he let it out in a pain filled gasp. Lying directly in front of him were Minato Namikaze and Kushina Uzumaki.

The Yondaime Hokage had succeeded in stopping the Kyūbi's rampage; however, the victory came at a very high cost. Hiruzen just stood there and stared down at their bodies for what felt like hours before he finally felt something nagging at the back of his mind. Something was wrong about the scene in front of him, but for the life of him, he couldn't figure it out.

Analyzing the scene in front of him with sharp and inquisitive eyes, he picked everything apart until he could practically envision the entire ordeal. He could see the Kyūbi lashing around with its mighty tails, and he could picture Kushina utilizing her chakra chains to immobilize the great beast. He saw a multitude of Minato's special kunai lying in various places and he could picture him teleporting to the various places to launch his attacks.

Then he started picking apart the area where the two were lying and it was there that he finally figured out what was nagging at the back of his mind. First, there was an alter lying near their bodies and he could tell from just one glance exactly what kind of alter it was. This particular alter was used as a supplementary agent in the use of various fūinjutsu.

Second, since he knew what the alter was used for, he had a pretty good idea of what Minato had done. Minato must have realized that nothing he did, short of sealing the beast, was going to stop it. So, he had summoned the sealing alter and had sealed the beast into a new jinchūriki. Suddenly, the answer to what was wrong with the scene in front of him became glaringly obvious. There wasn't anyone else in the clearing except for Minato and Kushina. So who is this new jinchūriki and where are they.

Konohagakure no Sato – Hokage Tower – Nearly A Week Later

Hiruzen Sarutobi, the Sandaime Hokage, was standing upon the roof of the Hokage Tower. The sun was setting upon the village and its evening rays bathed the village in a majestic mottling of reds and oranges. It was a beautiful sight to behold that helped the old hokage to relieve some pent up stress. The events of the last week were getting to him and he was cursing the fate that seemed to befall all Hokage except himself. Why was it that he was the one whom lived to a ripe old age?

That was a question he had been asking himself many times over the last week. After he had retired and passed that weird hat off to Minato, he hadn't really given it much thought, but ever since his successor's death and his reinstatement as the Sandaime Hokage, he hadn't been able to think of much else. Sometimes he just wished that his sensei were still around so that he could ask for his advice.

Right now was one of those times. A few days after he had found Minato's and Kushina's bodies, he had been paid a visit by one of his student's messenger toads. Through the messenger toad, Jiraiya informed him of Orochimaru's presence in the village on the night of the Kyūbi attack and of his subsequent kidnapping of one Naruto Namikaze.

Now, the information that Jiraiya had given to him through his messenger toad had undoubtedly answered a few questions that had plagued not only himself but village's council as well. However, it also raised several questions that Hiruzen wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer to. For example, what was Orochimaru doing within the village at the time of the Kyūbi's escape and did he have anything to do with said escape.

Hiruzen hoped against hope that his former student had merely been in the area at the time and that it had been pure coincidence that this being in the area had coincided with the beast's escape. However, that brought forth another question. If Orochimaru had nothing to do with the Kyūbi's unsealing, then who did. After all, they all knew that child birth alone wouldn't have made Kushina's seal weaken enough that the beast could break out on its own and Minato had been there to strengthen the seal anyways.

Grumbling under his breath about how useless it was to even think about such things since there were no answers that were going to be forthcoming anytime soon, he turned to leave the roof of the tower and reenter his office. After all, the near annihilation of a hidden village tended to create a plethora of that thrice damned paperwork that all kage had to put up with.

Orochimaru's Hidden Base – Somewhere in the Forests of the Land of Fire – A Few Days Later

Deep underground, nearly thirty feet to be exact, snaked a large maze of tunnels that formed the veins of a vast base. Each one of these tunnels led to certain rooms that either contained material with information recorded from scientific experiments or they contained the many instruments needed for those scientific experiments. This underground base was a secret laboratory.

In one of the many rooms inside this base, a tall and pale skinned man stood in front of a stone table that had a collection of syringes and vials placed in an orderly fashion over its surface. Dressed in a black cloak with red clouds, this tall man had greasy black hair that fell straight and smooth down to the middle of his back. Slightly glowing gold irises surrounded by some kind of purple marking raked over all of the objects on the table before stopping on one particular vial.

Picking up the vial that contained the DNA code to a deceased man, Orochimaru turned around and walked over to his most recent test subject, whom was laid out on a small operating table. Wires snaked their way to and from various places upon the boy's body before connecting to various machines that were designed to record everything from this procedure.

He was testing his equipment and his supplies upon subjects that were easily discarded, and as such, easily replaced. After all, he didn't want to begin the procedure upon the young Namikaze boy and have a mechanical failure ruin everything. He had way too much riding on this experiment.

This experiment was years in the making, and Orochimaru was close to giving up on the chance of it ever working. One could only suffer so many failed attempts before they gave up on something. This would be his last chance to succeed on this experiment, and if he failed here, he would turn his attention to other more promising experiments. Oh, how he hoped that he didn't fail this time.

"Assemble." Spoke the static voice of the one man he truly didn't want to be anywhere near at the moment.

Back stiffening and eyes widening in slight surprise, Orochimaru laid the vial down by the unconscious boy's side. He knew who it was that had called out in that static voice and commanded an assembly. First off, there was only one ninja that had a jutsu that allowed him to communicate with someone no matter the distance between the two. Also, there was only one ninja that would have the courage to order him around. It was Pain, the leader of the S-Ranked Criminal Shinobi Group known as Akatsuki.

Akatsuki had started out as a rebel group in Amegakure no Sato, and after a well laid trap by Hanzo the Salamander and Danzo, had devolved into a group of S-Ranked Missing-nin that hired themselves out as mercenaries. They would take any job, from an assassination of a Daimyo, to the kidnapping of a princess. It just so happened that they also wanted to collect all of the tailed beasts.

Now, he was faced with a decision that could easily change the rest of his life, either for the better or for the worse. He could either utilize the strange projection jutsu that allowed all of the Akatsuki members to 'assemble' and hope that none of the members caught a whiff of his betrayal. After all, he knew that Naruto was the jinchūriki for the Kyūbi and he had no intentions of giving the boy up. The second option would be for him to ignore the order to 'assemble' and begin preparations for disappearing off of Akatsuki's radar.

It was a very easy decision and it only took him about ten seconds to make it. Flashing his hands through the necessary seals and molding the needed chakra, Orochimaru decided to stick it out for as long as he could with the group and to ditch them when it became either too hard to hide his duplicity, or they lost their usefulness. After all, he was only using them for their funding anyways and as arrogant as he was, he still had doubts about his ability to hide from them.

In an underground complex, deep within the village of Amegakure no Sato, resided a room where a group of S-Ranked Missing-nin held their little monthly chit-chat get-togethers. Now, the topics discussed at these little chit-chat get-togethers consist of some things that you wouldn't think S-Ranked criminals would discuss. For example, one of the major topics is about who made it on the cover of Shinobi Weekly, a shinobi magazine run by the criminal organization Gato, Inc. Let's face it; S-Ranked criminals don't only talk about nefarious criminal things.

Now, that doesn't mean that they don't talk about nefarious criminal things. For example, their leader had decided to bring up the subject of Konohagakure no Sato's recent little furry problem during their meeting today. The leader's name is Nagato, however he hides his identity behind a group of ninja known as the Six Paths of Pain.

Konan, a longtime friend of Nagato's, stood a little to the right of Yahiko Pain, one of the six paths and the figurehead leader of the Akatsuki, and stared with concern in the direction of the room where the real leader of Akatsuki was. She had an inkling of what was on Nagato's mind, but that was all she had. After all, she had heard the rumors of the Kyūbi's attack, but hadn't been able to confirm anything in the short amount of time since it supposedly happened.

However, she had to turn her gaze away from where her longtime friend was and focus upon the meeting at hand, since the pedestal began to fill up with familiar astral projections. Konan looked around the pedestal and ticked each name off of a mental list as her eyes rested for a few seconds on each of the members.

A grand total of six astral figures had appeared in designated spots upon the pedestal. These six included Sasori of the Red Sand, Kakuzu, Hidan, Zetsu, Kisame Hoshigake, and Orochimaru of the Legendary Sannin. Yahiko Pain flicked his eyes in their direction and took in the sight of all of them gathered before proceeding with the meeting.

"Zetsu, report." Yahiko Pain commanded as he again turned his eyes in the direction of Konohagakure no Sato.

What followed was obviously a firsthand report on the catastrophic powers of the Kyūbi and the state of shambles that it had left Konohagakure no Sato in. Not for the first time Konan found herself wondering just how Zetsu found himself in the right places at the right times for all of his firsthand reports. However, she wasn't allowed much time to muse upon his almost precognitive abilities because of what the weird shinobi reported next.

"The Yondaime Hokage battled the Kyūbi and sealed it inside a new jinchūriki, however, not only were we unable to ascertain the identity of the jinchūriki, but it would appear that the jinchūriki has gone missing as well." Black Zetsu said as White Zetsu looked fearfully in the direction of Yahiko Pain.

"I see. Where exactly were you when the beast was resealed." Yahiko Pain said as he turned his eyes, smoldering with restrained fury, onto the plantlike shinobi's spectral image.

Choosing his words carefully so as not to reveal the presence of his real master to those present that don't know of Obito, Black Zetsu went about reporting that they had been engaged in a battle with eleven unknown shinobi. At his statement, Kisame and Yahiko Pain's eyes widened imperceptibly.

Of all of the Akatsuki members present, only himself, Nagato, and Kisame were aware of Obito's existence and his role and as such they had set up a simple code to let each other know whenever Obito was involved in something and that they couldn't be truthful in their report for his sake. That code was the reference to exactly eleven unknown shinobi. After all, since shinobi were normally grouped into fours, there was a very small chance that someone would ever have to face exactly eleven shinobi.

Accepting his statement for the moment, Yahiko Pain's eyes lost some of their fire and he turned the meeting to the other topics that they normally discussed. After all, nothing came close to making a person forget about missing little furry problems like who made this week's front page of Shinobi Weekly. Well, ramen did, but that doesn't count since ramen was a food blessed by gods and since he thought himself a god he obviously loved the stuff.

Orochimaru's Hidden Base – Somewhere in the Forests of the Land of Fire – Nearly an Hour Later

Goodness, how in the world could they talk about such trivial things for a full hour? It was impossible for Orochimaru to grasp how such a group of unbelievably strong shinobi could be so damned strange. After talking about the newest person on the cover of Shinobi Weekly, they had gone on to argue with each other about what was the best food known to all shinobi kind. On and on they had discussed similar things and by the end of it Orochimaru found himself nursing a very bad headache.

However, he couldn't completely blame his fellow Akatsuki members' strangeness for the headache, since he knew that it was partly caused by his impatience to begin young Naruto's procedure. Not only does DNA alteration have the greatest results in babies, greatest being objective since in all of his experiences each of his test subjects had died, but he also had to worry about finishing it as fast as he could since Akatsuki was going to be on the search for the blond boy.

He could just feel the major headache that this was going to be giving him for the years to come, but he knew that it would be worth it in the end. He would finally have his greatest desire, a body so strong that he could wear it forever and such amounts of chakra that he would be able to fling jutsu around like candy. His eyes practically sparkled at the mere thought of his future body.

"Must get this damned equipment tested and back to proper functionality, oh I just can't wait to wear that body." Orochimaru mumbled to himself as he slapped his hands together and rubbed them gleefully before he set himself back to what he had been doing before being interrupted by Akatsuki's summons.

Okay, so to all of you whom are my faithful readers that stuck with me through the last month, I am sending you a very heartfelt thank you. Now, not everything that I had written before will change, and in some of the stories, you won't actually notice any storyline changes until a little further in the chapters. I am so glad that you stuck with me and decided to keep reading my stories. I will apologize in advance for how long it takes me to put out chapters, but writing is not my day job, yet. Also, I am going to write a chapter for each of my stories and post all of them at the same time. I have five stories going and that means that I'll be splitting my writing time between them all. However, you have stuck with me this long, and if my stories are good enough, hopefully you'll stick with me through this as well. Also, I want to send a big thank you to PoeticFire for being an awesome beta for my story.