Ok… so after months of trying to figure out how to continue Fox of the North Gate, I've come to the conclusion that the way I had originally planned it to go won't work out too well.

There are also some other mistakes I made that I took immediate notice of that people weren't too happy about, first and foremost being Arashime being the Saitama-like demigod ninja I turned him into. I noticed that the second people got angry with him. I was just a bit excited with his abilities and was too impatient to realize the mistake I was making with his character, and I was very subtly trying to backpedal with how op he was, but I've come to the conclusion that the backpedalling won't work out.

There are also a number of other mistakes I've made in direct relation to the main plot, so I've decided to scrap that story for a new one. I'll be including every arc in the series instead of starting just after the Sasuke Retrieval Mission arc like I did with Fox. Most of the arcs will be cannon, but I may add in a few of the filler arcs just to keep things interesting.

Also, both of my OC's from Fox(Arashime and Kaidan) will be in this story, and will be filling in the same roles as they did in Fox, only Ara being Naruto's brother will have a bit of a twist to it that I hope most of you will approve of, if not all of you. It is intended to give him some much needed character development that he lacked in Fox.

All of this said, though, please enjoy this new story that I hope will do the old story justice: Crimson Requiem.

Also, just to let me know how I'm improving, could some people who have already read Fox give me some feedback comparing the two stories? It'd help me to know that I'm moving in the right direction with this story in contrast to the other one. Thank you!

Prologue part 1

Konohagakure

The flames of the village could be seen for miles, courtesy of the savage beast that rampaged through it. This beast was unlike any other in existence. Malevolent, twisted, and powerful without equal. It had a name that struck fear into even the most bloodthirsty of shinobi… the Kyuubi no Kitsune. The mere shockwaves of it's roar ripped every tree in the path of it from their roots. Each step it took had a great enough impact to shake the stones from the foundations of buildings.

It was seemingly an unstoppable force despite the best efforts of Konoha's most skilled shinobi. Even the Sandaime Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi, the Professor of all Jutsu in the village, just barely managed to force it outside the village walls, and even then was struggling to keep it at bay. Just when everything had seemed to be lost, golden chains of chakra wrapped around its body, and for whatever reason, caused it to progressively appear malnourished. It whipped around and lunged it's claws at the ground before it's body swirled into a cloud of pure red chakra and was sucked down into the point it struck at.

The Sandaime and his personal guard of ANBU travelled to the point of it's disappearance, and were stunned to find the Yondaime Hokage, Minato Namikaze and his wife Kushina Uzumaki, both with gaping hole bored through their chests. That wasn't all they found, however. There was also a crying infant boy resting atop a candlelit altar next to them that had a strange mark on his belly. Hiruzen immediately knew that it was the Yondaime's child because of the blonde hair that it had. He walked up to it, and wrapped it up in the blanket that happened to be on the altar upon which it rested.

"Sandaime-sama!" one of the ANBU called out. Hiruzen turned to see him with Kushina propped up in his arms, gasping for air. He rushed over and knelt down beside her.

"San...daime…" she muttered out, albeit barely.

"Kushina…!" he said, surprised that she was even able to speak.

"Please…look after… my sons..." she pleaded, gasping between her words. "T...This one's name… is… Naruto Uzumaki… Minato and I… took it from a novel… by Jiraiya-sensei." she coughed up a large amount of blood as she finished her sentence.

"'Naruto.' I'll remember! I'll take full responsibility!" he said quickly, trying to remain as calm as possible. "Please, don't speak any further. You need to save yo-"

"MOM!" Hiruzen turned around to see a young boy with red hair, just a few shades darker than Kushina's, running towards them with tears running down his cheeks. He stopped just a few feet from them and took in the state of his mother. To say he was shocked would be an understatement. He was absolutely horrified. "Mom…?" he asked nervously.

"Ara…" Kushina muttered out while extending her arm out to him, barely gesturing for him to come closer. He slowly closed the gap between them until she was able to wrap her arm around him. "Arashime… listen… mommy and daddy aren't… we won't be coming home…" her words caused his eyes to widen as she only tightened her hold around her eldest son. "You look at me…"

Arashime looked up at her, trying to keep his eyes focused on her through his tears. "Listen… you have to… take care of… your baby brother." he nodded, wiping the tears from his eyes. "Don't ever… let anything happen to him…" She soon had tears of her own pouring down her cheeks and dripping onto her sons head. She kissed his forehead and held him as close as she could. "I love you so much… both of you…" Those were the last words she managed to say before her arm fell off of him and onto the ground, and her final breath escaped from her mouth.

Arashime stood there, tears still running from his eyes, but unable to speak. His mother had just died holding him in her arms, so it should be no surprise that his shock was unfathomable. He couldn't begin what to make of it. So many emotions went scrambling through his head that it was too much to handle. He began to feel light headed, and before long he was falling backwards. His back never hit the ground though, as a masked silver-haired shinobi suddenly appeared behind and caught him.

"Hiruzen-sama." the man said, picking the boy up into his arms.

"Kakashi-san… take Arashime to the Hokage's mansion and watch over him until further notice." he stated in the most strict voice Kakashi had ever heard in his life.

"Understood." he said as he leapt off, leaving Hiruzen with Naruto in his arms, looking over Minato and Kushina's body.

'Minato… Kushina… I will do whatever it takes to keep them safe… I swear this to you…'

Days later. Yondaime Hokage's Memorial.

The same red haired boy stood before the gigantic gravestone with tears trailing down his face. The memorial had a multitude of names of those who had fallen in the wake of the Kyuubi's attack. Among the thousands of names inscribed on the memorial, however, only two dug at his heart as he read them.

Minato Namikaze and Kushina Uzumaki. His parents.

Those whom he cherished most in his life had been lost. He had been left with no family at all, save for his newborn brother whom his parents had saved from the Kyuubi just prior to their deaths. He still remembered the words his mother told him just before she passed on.

'Don't ever let anything happen to him.'

Those words were almost like a curse cast upon him. On top of losing his parents, they had entrusted him with the biggest responsibility he had ever been given in his life. It was something he thought was almost too much to bear.

Almost…

He suddenly felt a hand lower itself to his shoulder, and he turned around to see a shinobi whom he was well acquainted with: Kakashi Hatake.

"Kakashi…" Arashime said just loud enough for him to hear.

"Come to pay your respects to them again?" he asked, to which the boy nodded.

"Why did they have to die?" he asked, somewhat surprising the jonin,

Kakashi frowned under his mask and closed his visible eye. "I don't think it was that they had to die…" he began, causing the boy to look at him confused as he rubbed the tears away from his eyes. "It was more of a matter that they chose to die for the greater good of the village." He knelt down and put his hands on Arashime's shoulders. "They sacrificed themselves in the hopes of preventing further losses. And I'd say their hopes were realized in the end. They managed to seal the Kyuubi, which in turn saved the rest of the villagers, including you, and even managed to save your younger brother Naruto…" he trailed off at the mention of his former sensei's son's name.

Arashime raised an eyebrow to him. "Something wrong, Kakashi?"

"I was sent to bring you to Hiruzen-sama… it's regarding your brother." he said in a much more serious tone than before. The boy's look had gone from sorrow to nervousness from the mere mention of his brother's name.

Hokage's Office

Hiruzen sat behind his desk with a grim expression as he eyed the raven-haired woman across from him. The look adorning her face wasn't much different from his.

"Are you sure about this Hiruzen-sama? I can give Arashime-kun a home to live under until he's old enough to go out on his own, but why separate him from his younger brother in this way?" she asked in a very worried tone.

He closed his eyes and let out a deep sigh. "I'm not the least bit pleased about this either, Mikoto-san, but this is the best way to keep the both of them safe from Minato-san's foreign enemies in the future."

"I'm still not sure about this… especially given the amount of hostility our clan has been getting since the attack. Are you sure the village is going to just keep quiet about the Yondaime's son living with the head family of the Uchiha?"

"Given the circumstances, they won't even know that it's Arashime-kun living with you at all. No one in the village except a select few are even aware of his status as it stands."

As he finished that sentence, the door to his office opened and the child in question stepped in along with Kakashi. The moment the boy laid his eyes on the Uchiha matriarch, his face lit up with happiness that he hadn't felt in the past few days.

"Auntie Mikoto!" he yelled as he ran toward her.

Mikoto gave him a smile as she turned around and knelt down to catch the young Uzumaki in a hug. "Arashime-kun! It's so good to see you!" She slowly eased him out of her arms. "How are you feeling?"

His smile faltered a little. "Better than a few days ago…"

She frowned and very briefly pulled him into another hug. "I'm sorry, Ara…" she said as she released him again and turned her attention to Hiruzen with Arashime following suit.

"I take it Kakashi-san told you why you're here?" he questioned, to which the boy nodded.

"Naruto…" he said uneasily, which everyone took notice of.

"...We'll get to that in a moment. For now, I need to discuss where you'll be living until you're able to go out on your own." The boy raised his eyebrows ever so slightly in curiosity. "I've decided that you'll be staying with Mikoto-san and her family for the time being."

Arashime's face lit up with joy. It was very clear that he had no qualms about that decision whatsoever. But while he was more than happy to abide by that, there was one thing that still tugged at his mind. "But what about Naruto?"

The moment he asked that, Hiruzen closed his eyes and let out a deep sigh and the overall mood in the room seemed to darken. "Naruto-kun will remain in my care for some time."

"It doesn't sound like you're telling me the bad part about that." the boy stated firmly.

Kakashi looked at Arashime in amusement from the corner of the room and smirked under his masked. 'Perceptive like you… huh, sensei?'

Hiruzen opened his eyes back up and stared directly into Arashime's, almost as if he was trying to use his vision to pierce straight through to his core. "Arashime-kun, before I tell you the decision that myself and the other clans have come to an uneasy agreement on, how familiar are you with your father's history in the last war?"

The boy eyed the Hokage with confusion. He thought it was rather strange for him to ask that. "He was a hero to Konoha. Known all over the world as the Kiiroi Senko because of his speed."

"That's only the surface of it." he said, bringing Arashime to a mental halt. "His alias: Kiiroi Senko was known far and wide not just because of his speed, but also because of his lethality in battle. As his reputation grew, so did the number of his enemies across the nations. His death was something that became wanted across the world. And if they couldn't kill him, they would simply try and do the next best thing." Hiruzen let that thought hang in the air for Arashime to figure out, but the boy was growing minorly impatient.

"And that would be?" he asked.

"They would go after those closest to him in order to get their revenge." he said, and the from the look on the boys face he knew he had come to an understanding of his and Naruto's situation. "The decision that we came to was to separate you and your brother until a much later time." he said to which Arashime gave an outraged look.

"What?!" he exclaimed in a slightly raised tone.

Hiruzen raised his hand to silence the boy briefly. "This doesn't mean you won't be able to see him. By all means, you have every right to, and we won't keep you from doing so. However, you must be sure to never let him know of the relation between you two as he gets older."

"Why can't he know?!" he yelled, becoming increasingly more angry with this decision.

"The world needs to believe that all of Minato-san's family died. If anyone finds out that either of you two survived, it could spell the end of the both of you." he explained as calm and clearly as he could.

"And how are you going to make it look like I'm already dead? I have plenty of friends who'd recognize me in an instant if they saw me! On top of that, when Naruto gets older, don't you think he'll be able to piece together who his family is?" he said in an increasingly agitated tone.

"I do. That's why we must make you into a different person in a way." Hiruzen explained, causing Arashime to raise an eyebrow in minor curiosity, despite how much he hated the idea already.

"What do you mean?" the boy asked.

"We will use a Henge no Jutsu to alter your appearance slightly. As for making sure no one knows of your lineage, we'll be changing your name as well. You can pick the name if you'd like." Hiruzen told him.

Arashime clenched his fists tightly. "And what about Naruto finding out about our parents?"

"We will give him your mother's last name, but we will tell him nothing more about his family beyond that. He must not know until he is much older." he said.

"How much older?" Arashime asked very quickly.

Hiruzen sighed. "When he is thirteen, he will be permitted knowledge of your mother on the current Hokage's behest. When he is sixteen, he may be granted knowledge of you and your father under the same conditions. However, should you want to prepare before revealing your identity to him at that time, you may choose to hold off until you're ready."

Arashime let his crimson hair drape down into his eyes, effectively covering them. His face looked more like a grimace as he gritted his teeth, with several of his veins becoming visible as a sign of his anger at this decision.

"Arashime-kun?" Mikoto reached out with the intention to gently grab his shoulder to try and comfort him only to have her hand zapped by a tiny volt of neon purple lightning, causing her to flinch back with a slight hiss at the pain.

The boy raised his head to Hiruzen, his eyes now fully visible, which caused Hiruzen's to widen as he got a good look at them. A matching purple ring to the lightning surrounded his sky blue iris, and everyone in the room felt a very fierce, dark-natured chakra emit from him, sending horrible chills down each of their spines.

"Dynamis…" he said just loud enough for Hiruzen to here.

The elderly Hokage raised an eyebrow at him. "Beg pardon?"

"My new name." he suggested. "Dynamis Ketsueki."

Prologue Part 1 End

Author's Notes

Ok, I'd like to think that'll do for now. I know this is kind of short, even for my liking, but this chapter as well as the next are a setup for the main story itself so no unneeded plot holes will develop as they did in Fox. Once the main story is set in motion, the chapters should be much longer, but hopefully they won't confuse anyone.

Anywho, I sincerely hope all of you enjoyed the start of this new fanfiction, as I look forward to continuing it, and I'll take even more satisfaction from working on it if even one person likes it.

Please review, favorite, and follow if you're interested in seeing more of this story, and I thank you for your time and I'll see you next time!