A circle of candles surrounding a bawling child lay in the center of a dungeon-like room. Robed individuals lined each wall leading up to a stone altar. Another cloaked person, this one with a coat of arms on their chest, held their arms out to gesture to gather the congregation's attention.

"Let us begin." The decidedly male figure spoke, as nine people stepped out from the groups on the wall and surrounded the configuration of candles and the child. Each one of them brought their hands up to the center of their chest, with their thumb, middle, and ring fingertips touching, while their index and pinky fingers were pointed upward. They hummed loudly in unison, only slightly drowning out the cries of the child between them. The cloaked man behind the altar began to utter a string of words long lost to the tongues of man. The inherent evil pressure those words brought was reason enough for that language to have been buried, but the cloaked man paid no attention to the pressure as a dark wavy energy covered his hands. Simultaneously, the darkness gathered in the spaces between the hands of the circle of people before extending outward from each of them and convening in the middle of the space between them. The beams of dark energy met directly above the child, temporarily mesmerizing it and quelling its crying.

The mix of humming and the man's dark words increased in volume, until the man finished his chant with a flourish, flinging the darkness covering his hands to a space above the layered circles of candles and acolytes. The dark energy stopped high above the point of contact between the beams, before coalescing into a spiraling sphere of dark energy. The cloaked man grinned viciously as the sphere let out a high, screeching hum before a beam shot from the dark maelstrom to the center of the connection of beams from his followers. The flow of energy from the northernmost acolyte increased in intensity almost instantaneously. The follower supplying the energy had a split second to take note of the increase before a spear of darkness extended from his addition to the dark ritual backwards, piercing deep into his chest. His face drew back in intense pain as if he was trying to scream, but no sound came out. The groups that lined the walls were fortunate they were not close enough to see the sheer agony erupt on the man's face before his entire being seemed to become drawn into the evil going through him. Unfortunately, the others in the circle were close enough to witness every excruciating detail with growing horror, knowing they would too share his fate shortly. His face became gaunt in a matter of seconds, the blood being drained from his body into the black beam of energy. After a minute that seemed like an eternity to those close enough to the suffering man, the flow of the vampiric beam lessened until it receded from him back to the center of the crossing beams. The man's lifeless body dropped to the floor with a gaping hole in his chest, but there was not a speck of blood around the wound, the darkness having drank his corpse dry.

The beam of the follower to the dead man's left increased in flow in a similar, quick fashion before the process repeated to the next unlucky victim. The process repeated again and again, with no sounds heard, but the hum of the dark process and the dropping of the other sacrifices' bodies. The process would have likely gone on without interruption, taking life after life, if not for a sudden entrance to the dimly lit room.

The double doors opposite the altar were thrown open by a young woman with long, red hair. The young woman, mid-twenties by the look of her beautiful face, frantically searched the room with her seafoam green eyes, before locking onto the child in the center of the dark ritual, who had begun to cry again when it saw the people around it collapse. "Izumi!" The woman screamed as she took off at a feverish sprint, her arms outstretched to the child to take it and hide it away from the evil surrounding it. She had only gotten a few steps before the leader of the ritual appeared instantaneously in her way. The woman stopped on a dime as the hooded man growled out, "What do you think you're doing?"

The redheaded woman was startled for only a second before pure fury lit up on her face. "What am I doing?! What the hell are you doing?!" She screamed at the man, "You said she'd be safe! You promised me!" Sweat poured down her face as she inhaled deep, angry breaths and glared at the man in front of her.

The hooded man stared at the enraged redhead. "Yes, I did." He paused. "I still do. How much safer can she be than having the power of the greatest beast of destruction at her disposal?" His head turned and he eyed the crying baby girl, "She will have nothing to fear in this world with that much power." The woman sucked in a gasp through her gritted teeth, before she tried darting around the man, but he grabbed her firmly by the shoulder and held her in place.

"I can't have you disturbing the summoning. It's nearly complete." His grip on her shoulder loosened a bit. "Isn't this what we were working for this whole time? For the power to finally right the wrongs committed against our people? And your child will be the one that leads us into that new promised era."

The woman glowered at the man as her gaze switched between him and the ritual going on behind him. "I never wanted this!" She shook her head as tears formed at the corner of her eyes. "That's not the life I wanted for Izumi! I would never want her to carry that curse!"

The man underneath the veil of hooded darkness sighed in exasperation. "Kushina, you knew we were going to have to make some sacrifices to reach our goals. We all knew that. That's why other loyal followers were willing to give up their lives to bring forth the weapon that will let us prosper. And they're giving up their lives so that your daughter would be able to lead us in battle." The redheaded woman now identified as Kushina gaped momentarily before steeling herself and slapping the hand off her shoulder. She took off past the leader toward her little similarly redheaded baby girl. "Izu-!" was all the sound she got out before a stabbing pain ran through her and she coughed out a huge amount of blood. Kushina collapsed to her hands and knees as she wiped some of the blood off her mouth. "Wh-what?" She looked at her own blood staining her hand before her vision swam and she collapsed face down on the ground. She managed the energy to push herself off the ground and turn her head to the cloaked leader of the cultists behind her. "Wh-what d-did you d-do?"

The leader took slow measured steps toward Kushina with his eyes trained on the dark light show nearing its climax a few yards away. Only two sacrifices remained.

"I've been injecting nether magic into you for a long time now, as a failsafe in case you ever did something foolish to betray me. Small enough that you wouldn't notice it slowly corrupting your mana well, but enough that I could paralyze your body if I really needed to. I see now that was a necessary precaution." He turned his head towards Kushina. "This is bigger than you. This is an event large enough to change the fate of the world. And I won't have anyone interfering. Not even you."

A wave of pain wracked Kushina's body, causing her to cough up another large globule of blood. It felt like there was an inferno blazing through her. It took all of her strength and willpower not to pass out from the pain. She feebly lifted her head to glare at the hooded man with a look of nothing, but pure unadulterated hatred. "Y-you b-bastard." She ground out through the blood in her mouth and the pain running through her body.

A flux of energy coming from the ritual drew their attention back to it. "Ah," The hooded man spoke, "looks like the ritual is complete."

The last of the acolytes fell back a dried husk. The bodies of the sacrifices formed a morbid star around the child and the dark maelstrom above it. When the last of the energy receded into the center, it shot up into the dark sphere floating above it. The sphere released a reverberating pulse, before expanding and flattening into a disk of inky blackness. Wind began to pick up in the room as the disk rotated faster and faster.

Kushina lay on the ground while the atmosphere around her exerted an increasing pressure. But, even with the tempest of energy around her, her focus was on the redheaded baby girl only a few yards away from her. 'Izumi.' She thought as every cell in her body screamed out in pain, from both the dark magic wreaking havoc inside her mana channels and from the fact that she didn't have the strength to take her daughter and run from the dark ritual occurring around her. She mustered up what strength she could and reached out a hand towards her child.

The disk of dark energy picked up in intensity and rotational speed. The light from the candles that hung from the walls had been snuffed out long ago by the vicious winds blowing through the room, but the abyss that sat in the center of the maelstrom was still easily seen, even in the darkness. A blackness that somehow stood out in the dark spiral, because of how placid it seemed to the energy around it, but the potency of that darkness was palpable.

The hooded man watched the ritual unfold with rapt attention. If his face could've been seen under the veil of darkness caused by his hood, the excitement shining in his eyes would've been at complete odds with his stoic face. He lifted his arms to address his congregation. "This is the moment we've been waiting for! The beginning of a new era, our era! Behold, my children, the beast of destruction, the Kyuubi no Kitsune!"

The size of the maelstrom decreased while the rotation continued to increase, the humming growing louder and louder. When the energy has receded to a point that it became sphere-like, a sudden cracking noise erupted. Slowly, trails of dark energy leaked from the sphere and dropped to the ground, narrowly missing the crying Izumi. The viscous darkness began to spread out in a large circle across the floor. The hooded man began to shake, the only thing in his poise betraying his excitement. The inky blackness spread and looked to encompass a great area of the floor in the room, but just as it was reaching a behemoth size, the darkness stopped and receded back to the center. Once the darkness has receded into a small circle about two feet in diameter that was just out of contact with the young Izumi, a flash of light erupted from the center of the black circle, nearly blinding everyone in the room. The light held for a few seconds before fading and revealing the results of the ritual.

When everyone lining the walls were able to see after the bright flash, they were subject to two completely unexpected sights. First, they saw the stance of their leader drop into one of complete confusion, unnerving a great number of them. For as long as they had followed him, he had always, always kept a calm, reserved front. There had never been a moment where the acolytes believed that he didn't have every instance planned out and accounted for. The drop of his shoulders and the periodic flexing of his hands betrayed his confusion, spreading an uncomfortable uncertainty for the result of their ritual.

Aiding to that uncertainty was the second unexpected sight. In all the previous descriptions of the Kyuubi no Kitsune their leader had given them, they were led to believe that it was a snarling mass of hatred that shook the earth when it walked and spread chaos simply from its mere presence. The acolytes were expecting to see something that was the epitome of power. Not a blonde haired baby.

The hooded man stared at the child that appeared from the dark ritual for a long moment, his unease causing his followers to hold their breath to see how he would react. Something had went wrong, he thought. The Kyuubi was supposed to come through as a barely reformed mass of energy. Then he could use the Nether to seal the energy into the young redheaded child and his plans would finally come to fruition. Instead, a child laid next to what would've been the container of that immense dark energy.

'Th-this is wrong! What could-Kushina!' He thought as he whipped his head to the young woman who was still laying on the ground. He expected to see a triumphant grin from a seemingly successful attempt to destroy his ritual and derail his plans. But when he laid eyes on her, she seemed to be in just as much shock as him. She was one of the few that actually knew what the ritual was supposed to accomplish, so her confusion meant that she couldn't have had something to do with this occurrence. That type of befuddlement couldn't be faked, especially not in the state her body was in.

'If not her…?' The cult leader turned to his followers along the walls, searching their faces for a sign of who might've been the one responsible for this betrayal. But as he searched their faces, not one seemed to have any idea of what was going on. Many of their faces mirrored the shock in his own. 'What could've gone wrong?'

A heavy silence settled in the room, the acolytes waiting for an explanation for what had happened, and the leader waiting for the same explanation from his supposed saboteur. But no one stepped forward to take responsibility. Everyone in the room waited with baited breath for something to explain what had just happened, but there would be no such explanation. As the silence was becoming unbearable for all parties involved, a loud bang sounded off on the metal double doors that had been closed after Kushina brought them open. Some of the acolytes decided their leader probably wouldn't want another interruption and locked the large, metal bolts to make sure there weren't any more intruders to their ritual. Another loud bang was accompanied by a smattering of dust that leaked from the ceiling. The followers closest to the door backed up a few steps after feeling the force that had assaulted the door. Whatever it was, surely it couldn't bust-.

A final slam threw the metal doors into the room in completely different directions, the bolt locks flying to random corners of the room. Each of the metal doors flew into a crowd of followers and killed a few of them outright, while dazing the survivors. A cloud of dust obscured the makeshift entrance to the room. But the occupants of the room wouldn't have to wait long to see who had supplied the force to fling several meters of steel through the air. The sound of the hulking man's metal boots were heard before he was seen, but the sound betrayed the size of the man and the vast amount of armor he had on. The dust finally settled down enough that the cultists could see the new arrival. Those who had heard exploits of the man and knew who he was were stricken with fear immediately upon seeing his red-tinted armor, and those who hadn't heard of the man were fearful enough from his sheer size.

The behemoth that walked through was at least six and a half feet tall and had a huge stature that was aided further by the red-tinted armor that covered his entire body. The armor was large, covering almost any weak spots, but had segmented pieces to support the fullest range of motion that one could get with a suit that bulky. Resting almost lazily on his shoulder was a giant mace with a sword-like handle and guard. The mace was covered in outward facing spikes that promised to puncture as well as crush anything unlucky enough to be met with it. The giant man stepped over the rubble that was left of the door he destroyed and surveyed the room until he met his eyes with the hooded man's own. The armored man smirked underneath his helm and the guard that covered the lower half of his face. "Well, well… and I thought all the parties were going on at the capital. And yet I still didn't get an invitation."

The hooded man turned to regard the newcomer with a stiff posture. He knew all too well what this man was capable of, as he'd been destroying their bases for the last few months. One by one, the knight had decimated their forces and fouled up a number of the hooded man's plans. This base, the site of the most important ritual, was supposed to be completely secret, but somehow the giant man had found their base again. 'I'm going to have to search through the ranks for any informants reporting our plans to him. But, for now…' The hooded man relaxed himself and placed his hands behind his back, subtly gathering Nether magic into his hands. "Jiraiya-san. I should say I didn't expect this, but your reputation precedes you. And as much as I would like to test your strength myself, I'm on somewhat of a tight schedule as it is. I have bigger problems than you to deal with."

The large knight, Jiraiya, bellowed loudly. "Fat chance! You're looking at the great Jiraiya! Bloodstained Battlemaster of the Second Great War! Conqueror of the Abyss! Believe me," Jiraiya said as he struck what he obviously thought was a "heroic" pose, "there are no bigger problems."

The hooded figure laughed. "That's yet to be seen Jiraiya-san. But, as I said, I've got other things to deal with at the moment." His eyes flickered to the blonde child laying a few yards away from him. He channeled the dark energy into one of his hands while he brought the other in front of him and snapped his fingers. The sound rang out and snapped the acolytes around him to attention. "So, I'll leave my disciples to deal with you." The robed figures along the walls were grateful they had a target for their attention after the mass confusion of the ritual. A cacophony of dark incantations sprang from their lips as they brought dark energy to their bodies. Jiraiya's smirk grew as he brought the giant mace in front of him with both hands and the end pointed to the ground. "Oh come on now, let's have the kids play so we adults can talk in private." Jiraiya slammed the end of his mace down twice and from the darkness through the doorway behind him stepped ranks of knights and casters, all outfitted in full battle attire. The knights wore suits of armor like Jiraiya, but ones that were geared more towards pure stopping power than mobility, while the casters wore robes adorned with the colors of the Empire, red and white. The knights filed in while the casters began their own string of incantations. The two leaders of each faction stared at each other as the energy in the room became palpable. The hooded man decided to be the one to break the silence.

"Annihilate them."

A flurry of dark bolts of energy flew from the acolytes towards the knights, as volleys of flame, ice, and lightning flew towards the cultists. As soon as the bolts were about to hit the shields of the knights, barriers of light surrounded them. The barriers dispelled most of the bolts of darkness, but after the few hits some of the attacks escaped through and hit the knights. Those that were prepared enough to bring up their shields were left with heavily damaged shields, but their bodies intact. Those that weren't so quick weren't so lucky. The bolts that scored direct hits on the body armor of the knights took out chunks of both their armor and their bodies. Quite a few fell from that first assault, some of them being drawn behind the front lines and tended to by healers in the back rows, while the others had instantly died upon impact. The acolytes with their light armor and haphazard formations did not fare as well. Many of them died instantly from the offensive launched against them, either from the explosions, the violent shocks, or flash freezing of the load of spells launched at them. Both sides regrouped for a moment, before launching countless spells against each other and charging at one another.

After the first volley of spells had been launched and the battle had started in earnest, the hooded man speedily got to the young blonde child and scooped him up with one arm while the other pointed to the wall opposite the large-scale skirmish happening and flung the dark energy. The energy hit the stone wall and exploded, disintegrating it like it wasn't even there. He took one more look towards the battle before settling the child into his arms and taking off through the exit he had made.

Meanwhile, in the midst of the fighting, Jiraiya screamed as he swung his massive club and felled multiple acolytes attempting to use magic against him. After a bit more of completely overwhelming those around him with his earth-shattering swings, the acolytes began to completely avoid engaging him as anyone that did risked facing the wrath of the Bloodstained Battlemaster. Jiraiya looked around and saw that the battle was quickly going in their favor, as the acolytes were not anywhere near organized as the force that Jiraiya had brought with him. He took this brief respite to look for the hooded cult leader. A loud explosion sounded off, loud enough to drown out the sounds of battle for a moment, which Jiraiya took as a good indicator of where his quarry was. He looked in the direction the loud blast came from. 'They should be able to wrap this up without a problem.' Jiraiya thought, looking at his soldiers quickly taking the battle. He tensed and was about to chase after where he believed the cult leader to have gone, when he felt an intense grip on his ankle. His body automatically went into attack mode and he pulled back his mace to slam it into…a redheaded civilian woman?

"Please," she coughed out alongside a globule of blood, "help her."

Kushina turned her body slightly and showed Jiraiya that she was holding a small child against her chest. The redheaded baby was bawling from all the chaos around her. Jiraiya froze for a moment thinking that it could've just been a trap to get him to distract him, but no one was even giving the two any attention, lest they catch the eye of the giant man and risk incurring his wrath. He quickly made the decision after he took in the state the woman was in.

Jiraiya swiftly picked up the woman and her child in a bridal carry hold and looked around him. He spotted the telltale trail of smoke from one of his officers and sped through the battle, ducking through attacks while keeping a secure hold on the pair in his arms. He finally found the man he was looking for engaged in battle with one of the malicious cultists. Quick as lightning, Jiraiya dispatched the cultist with a single mule kick and bounded off him to land on his feet in front of his soldier, while the cultist went flying into a pair of his compatriots and dispatched them to unconsciousness with the force of his flight. The soldier was slightly jarred after being brought out of combat so suddenly, but snapped back to attention after seeing that it was his commanding officer that was standing in front of him with a serious look on her face.

"Sir!" Asuma, otherwise known as the Whirling Furnace in the ranks of the Royal Army, saluted Jiraiya with a cigarette hanging limply from the side of his mouth. Asuma was a large man by normal standards, but he was dwarfed by the still larger Jiraiya. Asuma had a face chiseled by many battles and dark hair that led down in a goatee that framed his face. His gray armor had been stained by blood from his previous encounters, but Asuma himself had only a few scratches to his person, indicative of his prowess in battle. "Are you alright?" He paused and looked to the pair in Jiraiya's arms. "Who is this, sir?"

"I don't know, but-," He started, only to get interrupted by the redheaded woman. "Kushina Uzu-," was all she managed to get out before coughing out a fresh splotch of blood, which only heightened Jiraiya's sense of urgency even more.

"Asuma! I need you to take her to the hospital! I'll clear a path!" Jiraiya carefully handed the stunning, but clearly injured redhead and her child over to Asuma. The bearded man looked from the pair in his arms to the giant in front of him. "B-but sir, what about-?"

"Things will be fine here. I trust the guys to be able to take care of these novices." Jiraiya grabbed his mace with both hands before channeling a large amount of his natural element inside it. He brought the mace high above his head before smashing it on the ground just to the left of Asuma. As the mace pulverized the floor into pieces, Jiraiya called out the name of his technique and released the energy he had built up into the ground. "Terra Path: Maw of the Underworld!" The ground leading straight out from the mace shifted violently before giant earthen spikes rose out at 45º angles towards the hole in the wall the masked man had created moments earlier. "Heads up!" Jiraiya yelled as the attack forcibly split open a path through the carnage of the room. The members of Jiraiya's assault force were familiar with the attack and the damage it could do. As soon as they had heard him call out the name of the spell, most of them had jumped away to safety, with others sticking to their battles until they actually heard his cry of warning. These stragglers got away in the nick of time, but the acolytes that had been battling the soldiers, some of whom were too puzzled by the disappearance of their opponents to react in a quick enough manner, were run through by series of spikes.

Jiraiya had released the attack for more than a few seconds before he took off. "C'mon!" Asuma quickly followed his commander. Both of them were using the flat portions of the spikes as platforms as they sped through the path Jiraiya created.

They burst through the makeshift exit and landed in the darkness of an alley with streets to either side of them. The light of the moon was the only form of illumination they had. Jiraiya turned to regard the injured redhead. "Take her directly to the hospital. Have her sedated and treated. We'll figure out the details of what to do with her later."

Asuma nodded, the shock he first exhibited replaced by a veteran coolness. "What about you, sir?"

Jiraiya built up energy before releasing it through the bottoms of his feet and turning towards a seemingly random direction. He scowled before saying, "I've got something I've got to take care of." He tensed before shooting off, the force of his departure leaving imprints in the roof of the stone building they were on top of.

Asuma watched him leave, before moving his eyes to the redheaded woman and child in his arms. He sighed and turned the opposite direction that Jiraiya had went. Asuma gripped the woman more securely, not worrying about the child as the woman had a tight hold around her. 'Better take it smooth.' Asuma thought as he left at a brisk, but steady pace. In the woman's condition, a rough ride might just kill her.

X- Meanwhile -X

The masked man stopped on a rooftop as he caught his breath, now that he was a good distance away from the fighting.

"There. Even he shouldn't be able to track me now." He said as his breathing leveled out. He took the moment's respite to look down at the child in his arms. He still had no idea what had happened with the ritual to bring a child rather than a giant beast of destruction. He had gotten every step right, of that he was certain, which made the outcome that much more peculiar. Nine lives had to be sacrificed to complete the ritual to summon the Kyuubi no Kitsune, mana forcefully extracted out of every cell in their bodies. He had seen the process before, and had not felt any excess mana leaking out, so he was sure that all the parameters of the summoning spell had been correct, but the mystery of why the blonde-haired child had appeared remained.

The man stiffened suddenly as he lifted his face to the sky. He was silent for a moment before asking to the air around him, "Are you sure?" The man recoiled as if struck and whispered out in a fearful voice, "Of course not." He looked down once more at the child, who was awake and squirming around in his arms. "As you wish." The man adjusted the child into the crook of his left arm while holding his right hand in front of his face. An intense black fire lit up around his index and middle finger as he recited a dark spell. He brought his hand towards the child, who had started crying. After a moment's hesitance, the masked man placed the flame onto the child's forehead. Contrary to what should've happened when fire came in contact with skin, the child was not burned. As soon as the flame touched the baby's head, his cries quieted abruptly. The flame sunk into the child's forehead without much resistance. As the flame disappeared, a peculiar black symbol shone on the child's forehead. It glowed an eerie black light before seemingly disappearing. The symbol faded away and the child went from being silent to unconscious simultaneously.

The masked man smiled. 'This should certainly be interesting.' He looked at the mysterious blonde baby for a few seconds before glancing to his right suddenly. 'I suppose I underestimated him.' He thought as he removed his cloak and wrapped it around the child as a makeshift blanket. He bent over and placed the baby on the rooftop he stood on just as Jiraiya's hulking presence made itself known a few meters away.

Neither warrior moved. Jiraiya was waiting for the cult leader to act while subtly building up his energy. 'If I can just…' Just as Jiraiya was about to make his move, the other man rose his hand to his brow in a two-finger salute before his body seemed to disintegrate in the wind from his feet up. The mask he wore blocked his face from view, but Jiraiya could just sense that he was smirking. When his upper body was just about to completely fade away, he left Jiraiya with some parting words that would change the lives of everyone on the rooftop forever.

"Watch over my little monster, will you?"