Prologue

You might think a restroom is a pretty uneventful place (unless you're a woman or a high-schooler), but one grunt found out the hard way how dangerous it can be. See, he just happened to be in the wrong stall when the grate above him opened and a pair of hands dropped through the hole, attached to a pair of arms. If he had looked up and squinted, he might have seen a mess of blond spiky hair and two blue eyes that seemed to shine like steel in the sun. As it was, though, he never had the chance because the hands were silent as they grabbed his head and quickly gave a sharp twist to the right, causing the grunt to slump immediately as his neck was broken. I guess he didn't learn, though, because to learn one has to be alive, and this man was clearly dead before his arms dropped to his side.

Equally soundlessly, the arms withdrew back into the hole in the ceiling. In place of those arms, a pair of legs, followed by the rest of a body dropped into the same stall. The man turned and positioned the dead body to appear as if he were busy with his bowels rather than busy pushing up daisies, then snuck out of the bathroom. One hand held a silenced Walther PP7, perfect for sneaking missions such as his, and the other wore a watch on it. Now, this watch looked like an ordinary Timex, the kind that would be high-end with its various abilities such as a stopwatch and waterproofing, but when you're a secret agent you need to be able to carry as much as you can in as little as would slow you down. This one was modified to carry a tether line and hook for fast ascents and a detonator for mines. These mines were small, hardly effective except as anti-personnel, but when placed in a room full of explosive canisters that were sensitive to heat and explosions they could do much damage. They also had a timer in case they could not be set off by the trigger, and it worked in reverse as well; if the enemy could turn off the timer on each mine (which would be troublesome except with an EMP device), then the remote could set them all off at the same time. For the sake of this particular mission, that was all that was needed, as the two agents assigned to it were among the most experienced and talented in the 'field-work' of the espionage business. Being part of the British Secret Service alone commanded much respect, and having a 'Double-O' rank meant that one was the crème of the crop. Sending two would signify that severity of a mission, and was rare once the Cold War ended because of the relative stability of the world as a result.

In order to achieve this rank, one had to be a master of silence, and although the blond-haired one was not well-known among his friends as being silent, he knew well how to sneak around an enemy base. Being British yet growing up as an orphan in Japan, Naruto Uzumaki stood out like a sore thumb yet at the same time blended into the background perfectly; no one knew how or why, not even his boss, but when he was recruited he managed to leave many graffiti marks on the cars of the other agents who had been tracking him without being caught. It was only after several hours that they managed to catch him, and only after they had 'given up' chasing him and waited for him to stop for his lunch, which consisted of a bowl of ramen and nothing else. Once training began, it was obvious that the Secret Service had its biggest mission yet: to mature this juvenile master-of-disguise into a professional secret agent. This was done by pitting him against a boy who would become his rival and self-proclaimed best friend: Sasuke Uchiha. This boy, of pure Japanese descent, was far more mature in his bearing and respectful of his superiors, and though his raw talent did not end up measuring up to Naruto's, both would end up competing with each other. Naruto learned how to mature, and it was assumed that Sasuke would learn how to loosen up around even his comrades. Even so, these two were the pride of the British Secret Service by the time they earned their '00' status and, as a result, were among the busiest of all the agents. To Naruto's dismay, he got to see far less of Sasuke, but by then he knew that he would be better off alone, because having allies often becomes a troublesome variable, as his inventor-friend Q would say (Naruto would call him Shikamaru all the time because the older man would often remind him of an old friend of his), and since they often seemed to die, even during his less dangerous assignments he would not get too close to any of the other agents or anyone he met during his missions. Sasuke was always the role-model of a perfect agent, so Naruto would often look up to him, despite the fact that they were in almost all respects equals.

Which brings us back to the facility where the two 00 agents had snuck in. In the back of his mind, Naruto hoped that Sasuke would finally acknowledge him once they completed the mission, but he knew all too well that a slip in the mind meant instant death, much like his favorite travel food needed only water and a microwave or an open flame to make, so when on a mission he switched into mission mode. Every inch of the facility had previously been mapped out by a mole and memorized by the two agents, so he knew how to get to the storage facility that housed chemicals that were allegedly being sold to Arab nations to make the weapons that Hussein used during the Gulf War. Sasuke was in charge of retrieving information regarding their sales, and was to leave a flash drive in the room and set half of the explosives that they carried. When he arrived, he smirked as he saw the item sitting on one of the containers, so even as he grabbed it he began setting his charges on the canisters. The voice in the back of his head began screaming that things were going too easy, and it was rewarded with a staccato of gunfire just beyond the canister that he'd been standing behind.

A hard voice rang out as the noise ended, saying "Come out!"

Peeking around the corner, he saw a group of about twenty or thirty soldiers, with their leader standing in the middle of them. Next to the leader was a man kneeling on the floor, sporting a mop of black spiky hair, and Naruto knew immediately what had happened: Sasuke had botched his escape and been captured. Thinking quickly, he reset the timer on his last mine, then shouted back. "Let him go!"

In true form, Sasuke muttered the word 'idiot' under his breath and shouted "Forget about me; blow them all to hell!" back to him.

Naruto winced almost before the single gunshot rang out, knowing that Sasuke had just given his life for the sake of the mission, and when he took another peek he saw the body lying limp on the ground and the leader's pistol now pointing in his direction. "You're going to regret that!"

"Not in this lifetime, perhaps. Now, come out," the voice replied, his gun trained carefully at the canister that Naruto was hiding behind. He smirked as the blond came out with his hands in the air. "Drop the gun." This also was complied with as the KF7 Soviet, which Naruto had 'borrowed' from the dead guard in the bathroom, slid along the smooth tile floor.

Meanwhile, Naruto already had his escape route planned in his mind. As he came around the container he noticed a cart of small containers that could be easily pushed, as well as an open door on that same main floor which would allow him to quickly get to the airstrip. Smirking at the general whose eyes freaked him out too much to stare at for too long, he quickly dodged behind the cart. He heard a click and involuntarily winced before the general's voice rang out, saying "Hold your fire! We could all be blown up!" He used their hesitation to slowly make his way out of the room. Once out, he quickly looked down at his watch and noted the time as he dashed down the hallway, pausing to kill two guards and taking a rifle from one of them. At this point the alarm had been raised, so getting out was helped only by the fact that he was already close to the airstrip. He slipped through a bag ramp just as a cadre of guards rounded the corner in front of him and quickly dashed out to the departing airplane. Bullets would whiz past his ear as he ran, but the KF7 was not known for accuracy since it was a full-automatic rifle and the distance increased even more. Not bothering to look back, he focused all of his energy on boarding the airplane, which was already started up and turning to escape. He dove at the plane, grabbed one of its wheel struts, and quickly pulled himself up to the door since any time he spent in contact with the ground increased his chance of losing his grip and falling off. Behind him the explosions began to occur, and only after he closed the door did the deafening sound become blocked. He deftly knocked the Russian pilot out and threw him out the door, then took the controls; it was just in time, too, because the ground had just disappeared out from underneath the plane, and it took all of Naruto's strength to pull the plane out of its nosedive.

Once he got the plane leveled, Naruto chanced a glance back at the facility, which was now little more than a pillar of black smoke jutting out of the mountain range. "Rest in peace, my friend..." he muttered as he flew off; casualties or not, he had a ride back to HQ to catch.