"Something Vimes had learned as a young guard drifted up from memory. If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you're going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat.

They'll watch you squirm. They'll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar.

So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word."
—

Terry Pratchett (Men at Arms)

It is also your fault, why don't you try to defend yourself?

I'm not a being whose words hold any weight. Nor do I try to be. I stick with the things I know I can do; the things I know I can change. That's enough for me, to know at least my actions hold merit to what I feel I've done. Even though you humans look at them with spite; see only the wrong.

You've done both; right and wrong, can you blame us, really? You've been known to do terrible things...

Perhaps, we just don't understand each other.

Disclaimer; I do not own any of the characters from Naruto. This is a work of fiction based loosely on every fairytale I've ever read.

Chapter One.

He watches afar, a princess wandering from her party, chasing her golden ball. The gleaming sphere rolls further along into the dark forest as though it possessed a mind of it's own.

She is lovely to look at, a frail human with wide luminescent green eyes, limbs strong and straight.

He is a demon, hunted by all who know of him. Hair long and wild, littered with the forest's leavings. His smooth suntanned skin hidden beneath folds of cloth that hide the shape of his body. His face is hidden as well, a pale wood mask he wears, grown by a wood sprite into a fox's countenance. Old favors spent in frivolous ways.

He reaches one long slender limb down from a tree and snatches up the golden ball right before the princess lays one youthful hand upon it.

"Pretty." A hissing whisper from under the wooden fox, and a grin.

The princess frowns.

"Yes, it belongs to me. Please return it demon, I did not mean to trespass in your forest."

"This round thing? I was, of course referring, to your pale skin, human child. However, You may have this back."

And the golden ball gleams in a patch of light as he tosses the toy safely into her waiting soft hands.

She examines the ball for a moment before looking up into the tree, at the demon resting there in a formless lump of cloth.

"Thank you demon. I shall take my leave now."

And she curtsies prettily then turns and walks along the way she came.

She dreams that night of a frog with golden skin, swimming around in the pond in the courtyard.

When she wakes up the next morning she runs down stone stairs, still in her pale nightgown with lily white lace trimming.

She runs past her startled father, her luminous, vacant mother, and all the nursemaids and governesses who all make the same curious squawking sound when they catch sight of her.

She runs til she is standing, pale and fluttering in the sunlight, staring down into the brick pond decorating the courtyard.

There is no golden frog. There is however, a glimmer in the water, a ball flits about on the surface, startling the princess. She looks down further into the pool, then up and there is the formless lump of dirty cloth and a sly grinning fox mask. A tan slender arm flicks a dark stone that catches the sunlight and glitters abruptly up and down. The slender arm is attached, or originates from the lump of dirty cloth. The princess's shapely lower lip slumps downward. Her eyes follow the dark stone's path, from the air back to the clawed hand, and again it jumps into the air.

A shriek breaks the thrall of the princess.

"DEMON!"

The fox mask is no longer grinning slyly. There are fangs curved against the muzzle and the eyes are slanted in crueler cunning. The clawed hand that would be mistaken for a human's were it not for the bone white razor triangles protruding from each finger slowly curls around the dark stone sitting in it's palm.

The princess gathers a breath to speak out with. She is not sure what she will say, she is not sure if she should run away. A realization breaks into her mind with clarity fierce and terribly cold that she has spoken with a demon and it has followed her home. All breath leaves.

Will it be killed? Will it be her fault? What on earth was that odd glittery stone the demon had been tossing up and down?

R&R. :{D