Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.
Author's Note: This story is written in response to a challenge by EDelta88
Thoughts are underlined
Chapter 1:
In life there were heroes and villains, peasants and kings, lords and servants, warriors and merchants, but what really separated one person from the other? Despite the thinking of several members of the Hyuuga, there was no destiny. A person was not destined for greatness or anything else really. A person's life was molded by their choices and a person's choices were molded by their environment, and the sometimes extraordinary circumstances and events that befall them. Through events beyond our control, heroes can become villains, villains can become heroes, and a nobody can change the world.
A chief example of this was Kaji Koumeiseidai, an ordinary man. A civilian within Konohagakure, he graduated from the University of Kazangan with a degree in Chemistry, which he used to get a job in a pharmaceutical company. His entire life revolved around his wife and his daughter, and when his wife died of cancer, that changed to just his daughter. His daughter Mitsukai was his entire life. His heart and soul. Everything that he was revolved around her. She was his Angel.
Kaji was moderately successful at his job, but not extremely. He was a genius with chemicals; the problem was he had the business sense of a mushroom. From all appearances it appeared he would have an ordinary life. A man who would live and die with a negligible effect on the big scheme of things. But one day an event completely changed his life, and he made a choice. And for that choice, the whole world would burn.
Kaji Koumeiseidai was in a very good mood. And why not? The sun was shining, the birds were singing, he had a successful day at work, and the toy store had that dollhouse that Mitsukai wanted.
Well Kaji thought she wanted it. She never actually asked for it, but she did enjoy playing with one of them when she was at a friend's house and Kaji couldn't stand depriving his Angel of anything.
Kaji at the moment was walking home, dreaming of Mitsukai's future. He had big things planned for her. When the oddest feeling rushed down his spine. It was dread. Then the ground started to shake. It started off light, barely noticeable actually. But it got stronger. Until the whole ground was quaking.
Groundquake?
If only it was.
People started screaming and Kaji slowly turned around and in his fear everything in his hands fell to the ground.
He stared into hell.
The Kyuubi had come.
The fear was crippling. He couldn't move. His body was frozen, ready to die, until a new fear entered his heart. A fear greater and more terrible than anything the Kyuubi could cause. But this fear had purpose, it allowed Kaji to act, and he ran.
And the Kyuubi roared and the world seemed to detonate around him. Billboards shattered. Houses burst into flames, but Kaji didn't care, and continued to run.
She has to be ok, she has to be ok, she has to be ok.
But I'm afraid reality has a way of cutting you down, kicking you than rubbing the salt of truth in the wounds. For what Kaji saw when he got home, sent his heart down to his knees. His house was on fire.
Thought had completely been wiped away from his mind and replaced with a terror and he ran towards his house. Heedless of the inferno he approached.
With a strength that he didn't know he had, a strength that belied his slight body, he reached one of the walls of his house, and tore right through it like it was paper.
"Mitsukai!"
Kaji desperately searched through the house.
"I'm here honey, call out for daddy!"
The smoke made his eyes burn and his lungs spasm, but he didn't care.
"Mitsukai! Where are you?"
And his foot hit something, and Kaji looked down and bile rose in his throat. It was a small still figure covered in grotesque burns. In places the skin gone and the flesh all that remained. But the true horror that he felt was because the figure had his Angel's face.
"NO!"
She has to be alive, she has to alive. She just hurt; she is going to be ok.
Ignoring the fact that Mitsukai wasn't breathing and her body despite the flames around them was much too cold, he scooped her up into his arms and ran for the hospital.
Kaji burst through the hospital doors, the facility packed because of the injuries the fox had caused and was still causing.
He screamed, "Emergency! I need a doctor now!"
A doctor quickly came over but when he saw Mitsukai, a look of despair crossed his face.
"Help her!"
"Um… sir"
"Help her now!"
The doctor ran a diagnostic jutsu on the child. He held no hope for the child but there was a slim chance she was still among the living.
Unfortunately, not so.
"She's gone".
"No she is not, you bastard."
Stepping forward Kaji with one hand lifted the doctor off the ground.
"She is still alive. Now heal her, or I will bring his whole hospital down on your head."
"I'm sorry sir, but there is nothing I can do. She's dead."
"You're lying; she is going to be fine! Now save her now! If she dies, so do you. Now help her!"
"Security!"
"Why? Why won't you help her? You're a doctor!"
A crowd had formed, and was trying to pull Kaji off the scared doctor. But Kaji shook them off and continued to scream and shake the doctor like a rag doll.
"Why, why won't you save her? I'll do anything!"
Finally Security showed up, delayed by other complications in the hospital, and Kaji's unconscious body hit the floor.
The Judge had been quite understanding of the circumstances so had let Kaji off with a warning. Not that Kaji particularly cared. Regardless of where he was, or what he did, life was Hell. These days he spent all his time in the garden of his burned down house. Staring at a memorial he made of his daughter which stood next to a memorial he made 2 years ago when his wife died. He had no friends, and no family. His parents had died during the war, struck down by a stray jutsu, and his only sibling was a cop in Kazangan who was killed by a gang war that erupted in the city's slums. Kaji had nobody.
So here he spent his days, staring at the pictures of his wife and child, lighting and replacing the candles when they burned out, cleaning and taking care of the urns that held his wife and child's ashes, and tending the garden. Both his Angel and his Queen had loved the garden.
And that was how thing were for a very long time. Kaji was an unchanging thing in a changing world. He kept to his routine of keeping himself alive, grieving, maintaining the memorials, and gardening. His hair grew unkempt and wild, his eyes and face grew gaunt and sunken, and his body seemed to be collapsing in on itself. It was as if Kaji body was decaying while he was still alive. He was just skin, bone, and pain. He had long ceased to care at all about himself.
And that leads us to the present, 7 years after that horrible day, where Kaji did something that was out of his ordinary routine.
Kaji sat on the ground in front of the memorials, looking at the pictures of his wife and child, and he pulled an object from his pocket.
A razor blade.
With a steady hand he brought that razor to his wrist and prepared to cut. But then he made a decision that would change the world forever.
He had put the razor down.
Why should my baby girl's murderer live, when my Angel is dead?
Why should a demon walk free, when my wife and daughter don't walk at all?
Why should I die, when a monster still lives?
And Kaji made a decision. He was going to die, he was going to rejoin his family, but he had something he had to do first.
Justice will be done.
As my Angel burned, so shall you.