Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
'Thoughts'
Out of the Shadows, Chapter 0ne: leaving the village.
The full moon shone bright against the quiet streets of kahona. An owl hooted outside the gates and a wolf howl could be heard in the distance. A lone figure could be seen outside of a dilapidated apartment complex. He was dressed in black robes and a hood covered his face. The stranger made a hand seal and disappeared into a shadow.
The stranger seemed to melt out of a shadow on the inside of a room. A hidden blade slid out of an apparatus on his wrist. The blood-red blade seemed to glisten in the moonlight that shone in through a window in the apartment complex. The assassin seemed to glide around the room until he arrived at a room where feint breathing could be herd. The assassin glided up to his target to look at him.
"W...w...what is this, he is only a child. This could not be a demon that everybody seemed to fear." The surprised assassin breathed to himself. The boy had unruly blond hair and three whisker-like marks on each cheek. 'Oh well, time to die.' Thought the assassin to him as he put the blade to the boy's neck. It was then that he noticed the scars. All over every part of the boys torso and legs.
The assassin was at a moral crossroads. This child had obviously been abused horribly by the villagers. But it was his job to kill him. What to do. He withdrew his blade, his choice made. The boy would come with him, to be trained as an assassin, or as a juggernaut. He gently shook the boy awake. The boy looked startled as he saw the assassin, and tried to escape, but the assassin held him tight.
"Stop your foolish attempts at escape, if I wanted you dead, you would already been dead." Hissed the assassin. The boys eyes widened, but he stopped struggling.
"Good, then. I am going to tell you something. I am an assassin hired by this village to kill you, but seeing you I have decided to offer you a choice. Would you like to stay in this village, where they will most likely try to kill you again, or would you like to come with me, and be trained to fight, so that you can protect yourself from those that would harm you. If you come with me, you will not be treated like these villagers treat you. What do you say?"
The boy's eyes hardened as he said decisively, "yes, I would love to come with you."
"Good then, we leave right now, grab some clothes." As the boy went to put on some clothes, he asked.
"So, what is the name of my would-be assassinator?"
Seeing the clothes the boy was putting on, he quickly grabbed them away from him.
He then answered. "First off, if you are to come with me, you cannot dress like this." He said pointing to a gaudy orange jumpsuit. "We will get you some clothes in a minute; second, my name is Kazeryu."
He then grabbed the child and melted into a shadow. He then reappeared outside of a shop and said, "Wait here." He then did the shadow teleport into the store. Five minuets later, he reappeared beside Naruto and handed him a muscle shirt and some shorts.
"This will have to do for now. We leave now."
Kazeryu then grabbed the child and started running.
The sound of birds chirping woke Naruto up. He looked around and noticed that he was riding on the shoulder of Kazeryu. Then he noticed something else.
"Kaze-san, why don't you have a shadow?" Asked the young blond.
Kazeryu stated, 'because, when one takes the test to decide what path to take, you feed your shadow to the boss Shadow Wolf, and he decides what your path is. Mine was an assassin, so I received a summoning contract with the Shadow Wolves. If it had been different, I would have gotten the summoning contract of my own shadow, and become a literal juggernaut, with explosive charka, whereas I was given shadow charka."
"That is so cool, when can I take the test?!" asked Naruto.
The assassin chuckled. "well, first, you have to learn the clan fighting style, which is called blood fist, then you take the test and if you are destined to be an assassin, you learn lightning fist, but if you are designed to be a fighter, you learn the exploding fist. And here we are." Said Kazeryu.
Naruto looked up and say a village, but not just any village, the village was spread out through a huge abyss, little patches of homes the and here hewn out of the living rock. And all connected by ropes or wooden poles, like a giant jungle gym. Ant in the middle, there was a large spire of rock in the middle of the abyss, and at the top, was a castle. The capitol of Village Hidden in the Abyss.
"Naruto, welcome to Shen'engakure, the village hidden in the abyss, my home." Kazeryu beamed.
Naruto noticed that there were these little overhanging everywhere that gave shade, no matter what the time was. He pointed to one and asked, "Hay, what are those?"
"Those, are how we get everywhere, by using the shadow teleport jutsu, you can teleport to any shadow big enough to encompass you in sight. W have to go see the Kagekage anyway, so I might as will show you how to do it. Make this seal, and say shadow teleport just, then concentrate on yourself being in the shadow you are aiming for, don't let anything distract you, or you might end up falling into the endless abyss. This is your first test, if you can't do this, you don't deserve to be taught here." He then proceeded to push Naruto off of the edge into the abyss.
"Son of a-shadow teleport jutsu!" he yelled, focusing on a point at the base of the greatspire. He then noticed that he was not falling anymore, but standing on solid rock.
"Bwahahhaha, that was hilarious, you should have seen yourself, but I'm proud of you." Laughed Kazeryu
Naruto reared up and shouted indignantly, "you could have killed me, what the heck were you thinking!"
"It wouldn't have killed you; there is a rock ledge about 20 feet under you. But you did real well, the first time I had that done on me, I didn't make it, and landed on the ledge, scared the heck out of me." Kazeryu answered, still laughing quietly to himself. "Anyway, we need to get to the Kagekage, so up we go." He said as they started to climb up the spire that was the kage tower.
After about 30 minuets of climbing, they reached what looked like a glowing, black portal on the rock.
"The actual kage tower is hidden within the shadow realm; this is the portal to it. This is one of our most prized jutsu, the ability to create a portal to the shadow realm. This one was created by the founder of this village, the first Kagekage." Said the robed man, answering the unasked question on naruto's mind.
As they stepped through the portal, Naruto gasped at the sight. There was almost no light, the only light coming from the blood-red moon and the occasional flash of lightning. As they continued through to the top of the kage tower, Naruto thought to himself. 'I wonder if Kazeryu will get into trouble because he didn't assassinate me. I hope the Kagekage is kind.' He was brought out of his musings as they reached a set of large, black doors.
"This is it" intoned the larger man.
As they stepped inside, the Kagekage looked at them. As his gaze met Naruto's his eyes hardened.
"What the hell have you done? Why have you brought him here? You have broken our rules, and I should kill you, but you are one of our best assassins, that and I think that there is a very good reason for this. You have five minuets before I kill you both to convince me of otherwise." The man hissed.
The man, thought Naruto, looked older than our Hokage, but Naruto had no doubt that he had the power to backuphis words.
"Excuse me, but what rule has he broken by saving me?" Questioned Naruto.
"He has broken one of our most sacred laws; do not endanger the location to the village."
"How is it endangered?" Asked Naruto.
"Because you know where we are now, you could ran and tell your village, and then-"
I would never run back to that pathetic excuse of a village. You want to know why, ill show you why!" yelled Naruto as he stripped down to his boxers.
The Kagekage almost gasped at the amount of scars on the Childs body. Why would any village have any reason to do this to a child?
"I was beat daily, no way to protect myself, sure I could run, but how long do you think a kid of 5 could evade a group of villagers...and some shinobi." He whispered the last part, but the Kagekage heard it.
"All the while they beat me, I could her them scream the names, demon, abomination, monster, but I never knew why... do you think that you could tell me?" Naruto asked hopefully.
The Kagekage sighed, so the rumors were true, the leaf village did have a junnrukin, or at least used to.He is mine now, and I will not treat him so badly, no, he will make a good assassin.
"All right, you have convinced me, but you still have to take the shad-"again he was interrupted.
"I have already given him the test, he can use the shadow power, and he did it first try." said Kazeryu
"Ok, then, for the next five yours, you will train in our academy." Said the Kagekage with finality.
For the next five years, Naruto trained hard with the other kidsat the academy, and he found that he was very gifted at using the shadow charka and was almost built like an assassin.He rose through the ranks until, at the end of the five years, he was the years top rookie. So, at the end it came tome for the graduating test, which included making his way into the abyss to visit the shadow wolves, to get his contract.
"ok, this is going to be easy, all I got to' do is make my way to the bottom of this endless pit, and then talk to the shadow wolves, who, if they accept me, will eat my shadow. This will be a piece of cake." Said Naruto, trying to psych himself up.
As Naruto maid his way down, jumping from rock to rock, he spotted something. It reminded him of the portal to the kage tower. He made his way to it, and found, to his surprise, it was in fact, a shadow realm portal. He jumped through it, thinking, shadow realm, shadow wolves, must be it.
As he emerges from the other side, he hears a loud, rumbling noise, like a growl. He turned his head and saw a pitch-black wolf, with glowing red eyes.
"Hello, Naruto, I have been watching you for some time now, and I like you, not to mention I owe my friend, Kyuubi, a favor. Oh, I forget, I am the boss shadow wolf. The 8-tailed wolf fenrire. "
What does the 9-tailed fox have anything to do with me?" asked the puzzled blond.
"You don't know, I guess I should tell you thin, you know the reason everybody hates you, it is because the Kyuubi is imprisoned inside of you. The mortal, Arishi, could never hope to kill the immortal Kyuubi, so he imprisoned him inside a young boy, which was you. Sorry I had to be the one to tell you." The wolf said somberly.
Naruto face hade a myriad of images going through it, first shock, then sadness then anger, finally understanding.
"Thank you for telling me, but can we move this along? The boy asked.
"Sure, sure" said the wolf.
"I need to ask you some questions, ok, first one, what is the best way to win a war, through brute strength, or through subterfuge, espionage, and quiet assassinations."
Naruto thought for a second and said" both, and neither, it would be better to not have a war, and instead to work out your problems politically, but if you intend to win a war, both are necessary."
"Good, second one, which one of those from the previous question, could you win a war without." Asked the wolf.
"I am going to have to say, the brute force, you could win a war with just subtlety alone, but killing the snakes head, you kill the rest of the body, but if you don't have spies or assassins, you will fail to get the information you need and could fall to traps and the such."
"I see, well, I have come to a conclusion, you are to be an assassin, prepare yourself, for this will be the most painful thing in your life, or, it could feel good, it's different for everybody. Are you ready?" Naruto nodded. "Good then, we will proceed." The wolf walked over to Naruto and bent his head down.
He then seemed to bite on his shadow and rip it off. Naruto just flinched.
After he finished eating the shadow, he waked over to Naruto and a large scroll popped out of nowhere. Sign this and you will get your assassins weapon, and the contract to the shadow wolves. Naruto sighed. As soon as his signature was done, black robes seemed to appear on him, and what looked like a few senbon lying on the ground appeared in front of him.
He picked one of the black senbon up, but more came with it, it seemed that all the senbon were somehow connected at the point to form a whip like weapon. He whipped it and the senbon on the tail shot off into the distance. A couple of seconds, it seemed to faze back into existence, on the end of the whip. He also felt something like a trigger on his right hand. He clicked it and a two foot, thick senbon slid out of a mechanism on the bottom of his wrist.
"That is really cool. Good by, I will be seeing you later as he exited the portal and made his way back to the academy.
Kazeryu was waiting for Naruto.
Guess what, I get to be your new master. Get ready." He said with a smile.
Naruto smiled beck. "This will be fun."
AN: well, there you go the first chapter of "Out of the Shadows."Chapter posts will be sporadically, thanks to school, but I will try my hardest to post quickly. One more thing, I am in need of a beta-reader, if any of you want to help me fix thatthen leave a review saying so, as my e-mail is not working properly at the moment. Until next time, don't die.