Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

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Ivory Shadows

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Chapter One

Ducking into a dark alley and sliding down an open manhole leading into the sewers, the snow white haired boy quickly sealed the passage way and took off down the dark stone tunnel. This was the norm for one Uzumaki Naruto, the container of the Kyuubi no Kitsune. It was the tenth of October, five years since the Yondaime defeated the great beast; it was also the time of year that Naruto had to be on his guard the most.

Slitted silver eyes flicking back and forth in calculation and caution, Naruto picked his next turn carefully at a five-way intersection in the center of the village's sewer system. Freezing momentarily at the sound of rapid foot steps, Naruto grabbed the kunai that had previously been in his side and tossed it in the water before scrambling up the wall so he could pull himself up into the pipes along the ceiling.

Not even a second later, three chuunin sped down the tunnel, none of them noticing their prey. Waiting for a moment, Naruto silently made his way through the web of stone tunnels via the pipes. Only when he knew he was safe did Naruto finally realize something; the lone kunai that had hit him that night had been poisoned. With what kind, Naruto did not know, but he knew he couldn't go to the hospital nor the Sandaime. The person responisble for the poison probably works in a hospital or has connections in one, so it was definitely out of bounds. The Sandaime would only take him to a hospital, which Naruto was not going to risk.

Hissing in pain as the poison actually started to kick in, Naruto tore off his tattered grey shirt and looked at the wound, finding his unusually pale skin to be even more unnaturally pale with the veins around the injury being dark and blackish. Wave after wave of pain washed over his entire body as time passed. Everything hurt. The pain was so intense he couldn't even scream, a thin layer of crimson chakra coating his body.

Finally being unable to resist the pain, Naruto blacked out among the pipes running through the tunnels along the ceiling. Although he had no knowledge of it at the moment, Naruto's life would be changed forever by morning...

-=xXx=- Ten Years Later -=xXx=-

Snarling at the enemy, 16 year old Naruto- standing at 6'1"- bared his four sharp fang-like canine teeth and flexed his claws. His hair was twisted into a thick braid that went down to the middle of his back while his bangs hung freely in the front, his eyes slitted and metallic silver. His current attire was made up of a pair of black pants tucked into black knee-high steel-toe combat boots, a white sleeveless trench coat with a raised collar over a black longsleeve shirt, black metal gauntlets on his forearms and hands, black shoulder guards on his shoulders, a black face mask that was currently pulled down around his neck, and a Konoha hitai-ate tied around his head. Wrapped around his waist was a black belt with a black cloth hanging down to his ankles in the front, a katana in a white sheath strapped to the belt in the back.

"You'll pay for that..." Naruto snarled while pulling down his collar, spitting out a glob of blood and spit as he stepped between the two rogue Kiri shinobi in front of him and his fallen team mates behind him. Sasuke was unconscious, having been kicked in the head by a Water Clone. Sakura was unconscious as well, dozens of senbon riddling her body. Their sensei, Hatake Kakashi, was out of commision as well, the shorter of the two Kiri missing-nin having turned the jounin into a pin cushion, only more severly than Sakura. Luckily, Naruto had sent Tazuna, their client, away with a team of Shadow Clones to guard the man before the fight had begun. Naruto, who hadn't felt very threatened by them, had been kicked in the face by Zabuza in the very beginning.

"Oh? And what make's you think you can even touch me, genin?" Zabuza taunted as he shouldered his zanbatou, raising an eye brow in mock curiousity as Naruto drew his five foot long katana, which had a solid black blade with a white edge and a white handle, holding it in a reverse grip in his left hand. Naruto cleaned his mouth of blood and closed his eyes before pulling his mask up with his right hand. As he brought his hand back, Naruto threw a single pellet at the pair.

"What the-?" Zabuza started to growl out as he used his sword to deflect the small sphere, which fell to the ground a foot or two in front of him. His statement was finished with a startled curse as the pellet erupted in a flash of piercing white light, blinding both him and Haku. Less than a moment later, Zabuza felt the cold bite of a deadly sharp blade slicing through his right forearm, cleanly severing his sword arm.

"AAARGGH! YOU DAMN LITTLE BAS-!" Zabuza's cry of outrage and pain was quickly silenced as Naruto beheaded the man. In that same motion, Naruto had landed a roundhouse kick to Haku's chest, launching the girl back several meters and landing on her back roughly, sliding a short distance before coming to a stop just at the edge of the lake shore.

"Z-Za...Z-Zabuza...sama..." Haku weakly muttered as she pushed herself to her feet, eyes wide with fear behind her mask as she looked at Zabzua's headless body. She hadn't heard a sound when the white haired teen had attacked after the flash bomb went off. Having been trained by Zabuza-sama in the Silent Homocide style, Haku's hearing was incredibly fine tuned to the point she could evade her former mentor while in a thick blinding mist. For this genin to move without them even hearing him...

Haku looked up to see that the teen hadn't moved from his original spot where he had thrown the flash bomb pellet. Her eyes widened as she noticed a few drops of blood sliding down the blade and then drip from the tip of the sword onto the ground, his eyes still closed. She slowly started to shake slightly with fear. The boy had killed her sensei and-

FLASH

Haku cried out as a flash bomb went off right in front of her face, having been thrown from the side by a clone most likely. Flinching back and loosing her balance, Haku fell into the cold shallow waters of the lake, hitting her head on a rock and falling unconscious face first in the water. The last thing she remembered before blacking out entirely was a hand grabbing the back of her shirt and lifting her up...

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Gently setting the girl down on the futon, Naruto stared at the young woman known as Haku, her hands bound with chakra suppressing cuffs and her feet bound with rope. Her head was bandaged lightly from when she hit her head earlier that day. He had used Shadow Clones to carry his injured team mates to Tazuna's home, those same clones using the extensive knowledge they had in medicine to tend to their injuries. As for Haku, she was going to be kept in a separate room secured with seals of Naruto's own design to keep the others out in case they tried anything stupid.

"Enemy or not, you're still defenseless and under my custody." Naruto spoke quietly so as not to wake up his prisoner. To be honest, Naruto found her to be quiet beautiful. She had to be only a year or two older than him. He had taken precautions to make sure she couldn't escape or in case she had a hidden weapon on her somewhere; in other words, Naruto had to strip search her. Unlike the arrogant bigots and lecherous bastards of Konoha, Naruto was respectful and kept his hands to himself when they weren't needed. When he was finished, he redressed her and bound her before completely sealing her inside the room.

"I'll hold onto this for now." Naruto muttered as he hooked Haku's mask- white with a red swirl design on it- onto his belt. He had been meaning to get him a similar one, but they were issued exclusively to hunter-nins back in Konoha. Maybe Haku had a spare? Dismissing those thoughts, Naruto left the room and sealed it shut with a number of blood seals and coded chakra seals. Once he was done, Naruto left the building and created a small army of clones to guard Tazuna and his family along with his out-of-commission team before disappearing into the forest.

When he had been poisoned ten years ago, Naruto's chakra circulatory system had nearly been destroyed. Most of the 'veins' were fractured or weakened, causing nearly half of his chakra to leak into his muscles, bones, and organs. This dropped the amount of chakra he could access at one time from borderline low-Kage down to about mid-chuunin, but in return, Naruto's chakra control shot up to near insane levels and allowed him to become a shinobi.

His natural physical speed and strength shot up high enough to put most jounin to shame. Poisons, toxins, venoms, diseases, and other things were useless against him as well. His bones had become so dense, Naruto doubted they could be broken, but they were lighter than they should be, which only bolstered his speed all the more.

His ninjutsu arsenal was rather small, but his genjutsu and fuinjutsu arsenal was massive. Using specially designed seals, Naruto was able to store large amounts of chakra- which allowed him to summon Shadow Clones at will- that he could use in conjunction with ninjutsu techniques to perform them or to turn them into powerful make-shift bombs when placed on paper.

"Hm?" Naruto paused in his brisk walk, sniffing the air as a familiar scent reached his nose. It was Haku's scent. "That's odd. It's faint, but layered...She's gone this way several times before..."

Glancing around, Naruto gained his bearings and pulled out a detailed map he had made the first day they were in Wave Country through Shadow Clones. After marking the map with a red pen where Team 7 had encountered Zabuza and Haku, Naruto thought back to when he mapped out Wave, marking places where his clones had spotted Gatou's thugs in black, blue where they spotted either Zabuza or Haku. After a few minutes, Naruto found a pattern and then marked where he was currently with a green pen.

The image of Wave Country was covered in a large black spider web-like image that stretched over all of Wave Country while Naruto was currently standing not far from about where he predicted Haku's and Zabuza's hideout to be. Stashing the map and pens in his trench coat, Naruto headed in the direction of where the hideout might be. It didn't take him long to find it; he simply had to follow Haku's scent.

Cautiously approaching the suspended 'tree-house', Naruto checked for traps before entering the building. Again, he carefully checked for traps with every step he took until he had cleared the entire building. Naruto then went about 'cleaning house', storing everything he found usefull inside of sealing scrolls. Having taken Zabuza's zanbatou as his own, Naruto grabbed the spare harness Zabuza had along with all of the man's equipment; kunai, shuriken, wire, exploding tags, and various other items.

He even found Zabuza's old ANBU armor and a blank mask identical to Haku's without any village symbol or design on it. Deciding to paint the mask later when he had time, Naruto hooked the blank mask to the opposite side of his belt than Haku's mask before continuing on. After nearly an hour of careful searching, Naruto left the building after marking it's exact location on his map. He might need it later on in case the Council tried to pull something again and get him banished or executed.

Hearing a twig snap nearby, Naruto froze before leaping into the branches of a nearby tree just as two swordsmen and a short man walk into the area. Recognizing the short man as Gatou from Tazuna's description of the man, Naruto tensed his wrist, causing a narrow two-inch wide and twelve-inch long ivory blade to snap out on the top of his forearm from the front of his gauntlet.

Waiting until they were directly under him, Naruto dropped a flash bomb pellet in front of Gatou and his guards, closing his eyes just as he set it off. He then jumped down and landed between them all before the light even started to fade, spinning on his heel and slitting their throats in an instant before jumping back up into the branches to avoid getting blood on his clothes just as the light faded away. It had all happened in the blink of an eye.

Dropping back down, Naruto went through their pockets for money or things he might be able to use. He smirked slightly, knowing his insane speed was getting better every time he moved. Having forced the Sandaime's hand into revealing his heritage back when he was six, Naruto knew his father was the Yellow Flash of Konoha. He had been given his inheritance that same day, which included everything his father had on the Hiraishin and the training the man had gone through to master it. This included special seals meant to increase ones physical speed to near lightning fast levels to prepare them for the instantaneous teleportation of the Hiraishin technique.

Naruto had been using those very same seals since he could recreate them perfectly, which had been roughly six months after he received his inheritance. When it came to speed, Naruto was virtually untouchable, but he didn't let it go to his head. His father had one philosophy that Naruto had taken up as his own. No matter how strong you are, there is always someone stronger. No matter how fast you are, there is always someone faster. No matter how smart you are, there is always someone smarter.

Naruto had stuck to that philosophy since he read it in his father's journal. Since then, Naruto had been training relentlessly. The purpose of the flash bomb whenever he used his personal assassination technique, Denryuu or Electric Current, was a sort of homeage to his father's Hiraishin. Plus it helped disorient his enemy long enough to either terminate or immobilize them as quickly and effeciently as possible. It was called Denryuu since Naruto normally used Raiton chakra to increase his reaction time so as not to run into any trees or walls while moving. Plus, Raiton chakra let him turn, but he could only go in straight lines, no curves. It worked best in forests since he could use the trees and their branches to ricochet off of for the best effect.

"Tch...Nothing." Naruto grumbled before disappearing instantly, heading straight for Gatou's mansion. Apart from a tall stone wall surrounding the building and guards spaced out widely across the area, there wasn't much of a challenge in terms of security. "Too easy..."

Just as he said, it really was too easy. The trees in the walled in area were close enough together that Naruto could reach the building unnoticed. Also, from what he could tell, most of the guards were outside. That saved him a load of trouble since he wanted to raid the mansion for everything he could carry, lure all of the guards into the building, then blow the whole place down with a few of his bombs. For now, he would wait until night fall before he struck.

Stepping back into the shadows, Naruto blurred out of sight, heading back to Tazuna's house...

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Groaning quietly, Haku slowly woke up and found herself in a room she did not recognize. She groaned again as she squeezed her eyes shut, her head pounding. Haku discovered she was restrained when she tried to raise a hand to her head, both bound with cuffs. She also couldn't feel her chakra very well. It was still there, she knew that much, but she couldn't draw on any of it.

"Ah, you're awake. You've been unconscious for nearly four days."

Haku slowly turned to look at the door before her eyes went wide with panic, that same white haired person that killed Zabuza-sama was standing there as he closed the door and locked it with some kind of seal she didn't recognize. Noticing her fear, he removed his katana and set it down beside the door before kneeling beside her.

"Don't be afraid. I won't hurt you." Naruto tried to reassure her, but Haku only inched away from him, frightened still. Naruto sighed at this, knowing it was going to be tough trying to calm her down. "I assure you I won't do anything to you. You may be my prisoner now, but I will not allow you to be harmed by anyone. Not even my team."

She seemed to calm down a little, but not by much. Pulling his mask down around his neck, Naruto took Haku's mask and set it in front of her, smiling softly at her. He felt awkward. His skills lied in battle and stealth, not socializing. Apart from team training and missions, Naruto rarely spoke to his team mates; he was naturally reclusive now due to his mistreatement by the people of Konoha.

"I figured you might want it back and I thought you might be hungry." Naruto calmly continued as he set a small container of dango beside the mask. Haku took her mask as she sat up, but gave him a skeptical look as she glanced at the dango. "Don't worry. It's not poisoned. It's not my style."

"S-Style?" Haku stuttered out, slowly and cautiously taking the dango.

"Yeah. If I'm going to kill someone, I would rather do it with a blade. Makes it quick and painless if done right." Naruto answered the question calmly, but he went quiet at the end. "It also helps me sleep at night knowing they passed on as painlessly as possible at my own hands than brutally at the hands of another."

Haku didn't say anything. She simply stared down at the dango in her hands, which were resting in her lap. She jumped slightly in surprise, startled when Naruto reached over and ran his thumb over a seal on her cuffs, unlocking them and causing them to fall from her slender wrists. When Haku looked up at her captor, she was surprised to him smiling still.

"It's hard to eat while wearing cuffs." Was all he said before silently pulling out a second small container of dango, eating the dumplings slowly as he placed the blank mask in his lap, pondering on what kind of design to paint on it. Haku, while hesitantly taking a bite out of a dumpling, watched as Naruto slowly traced an armored finger around the mask, almost as if he was painting something on it with slow precision. She nearly jumped out of her skin when Naruto spoke again, his eyes still locked on the mask.

"My name is Namikaze Naruto, just in case you were wondering. Your name is Haku, right? I heard Zabuza say it when he told you to take care of my team mates." Naruto asked and then stated.

"Y-Yeah..." Came her quiet reply. Naruto noticed the sadness in her voice. He sighed heavily as he looked back at Haku.

"Look...I'm sorry for killing Zabuza-san, Haku-san, but he would have killed me, my entire team, and our client. I couldn't let him do that." Naruto explained sincerely, but Haku seemed to get more upset at that.

"T-Then why didn't you k-kill me too?" Haku asked harshly, her voice shaky with emotion. "I-I'm just as much responsible for it as Zabuza-sama was!"

"Because you attacked with the intent to immobilize or knock out. Not to kill." Naruto calmly replied, not in the least bit phased by Haku's outburst. She went silent at that, slowly finishing her small meal. Having finished as well, Naruto took the empty container from Haku and stood up, the blank mask hooked to his belt again. "I'll be back later this evening to bring your dinner up and to redress your bandages afterwards."

Haku silently nodded in response as Naruto unlocked the door and opened it slightly. He paused for a moment. "You should also know that your employer is dead. I killed him as well." With that said, Naruto stepped out and slid the door shut, locking it once again. Haku sighed as she slumped back against the wall, head down and her hair veiling her face.

For the first time in nearly six or seven years, Haku began to cry. Only a few tear drops fell and she didn't make any noise, but she was still crying. After a few minutes, Haku regained control of her emotions before noticing the cuffs lying on the floor beside her. Silently, Haku picked them up and set them in her lap before untying her feet and setting the rope off to the side. With a sigh, Haku put the cuffs back on.

She didn't want to be one nor did she like being a prisoner, but Haku knew that she had no chance of escape at that moment. It was best to wait it out. Besides, where would she go if she did manage to escape? Zabuza-sama was dead and Naruto had obviously found the hideout she and Zabuza-sama had been using since that was the only place she kept her spare mask. She couldn't return to any of their past hideouts since they always destroyed them before they moved on and she didn't have any money. Zabuza-sama didn't have much either, which was why they had to take the job issued by Gatou to kill the bridge builder.

Sighing again, Haku lied down on the futon to try and catch an hour or two of rest. Her head was still pounding...

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