Most stories start at the beginning. For those of you who are so into that tradition, I regret to say that formulating this account has taken some great pains. The story contained here does not start at the beginning, due to the fact that... well, it didn't. This story started somewhere before the beginning and after the end. It started with a dimly lit office, where two of the greatest ninja of Konoha sat discussing the future of one of them.

1.

The soon to be fourth Hokage slowly looked up from the prisoner report that he was holding.

"Explain it to me again." He said, feeling somewhere between disbelief, outrage, and curiosity.

"Well, as I said, I thought you should be aware of just what the challenges of taking my role are going to be." replied the old man sitting opposite. The younger of the pair looked down at the report again.

Prisoner alias: Creed

Real name: unknown

"You've been talking about that for a while, but you have yet to tell me just why I am here and who this... (He squinted at the name again, and frowned)... Creed actually is."

Again, Minato looked at the prisoner report, his frown deepening every second. In the top left of the page, there was a picture of a boy. The kid didn't look any more than 15. He had unnaturally blue hair, but where he would have found the dye in the asylum, well, Minato couldn't even begin to imagine. His hair was scraggly, but not quite to the point to which he truly had the full on lunatic look. In the picture, he stood with his head cocked to one side, his expression an amused one, with his hands behind his back. He was fair skinned, and skinny, but not to the point at which it looked unhealthy. But his eyes were the strangest thing about him. For a start, they had no pupils. Next, his irises were gray, perfectly gray, as a storm cloud. And lastly, unlike most people, they reflected nothing of what he was seeing. He could be blind, but it was not mentioned in the report at all if he was.

"Well, I guess that you could call Creed many things," said Sarutobi, "but perhaps the best way to tell you his tale is to show you first."

"Follow me" he said, standing up and exiting the office.

Intrigued, Minato followed.

Konoha police agent Arru Hikyuu had never really wanted to be a police warden. Had he had his choice, he would have been an ice cream man. However, a police warden he was, and so he would do the utmost best that he possibly could at the job which life had dealt him. When he was a boy, he had had a very idealistic view of the police officers. Stoic, honourable men, who risked their lives to bring bad people to justice, When he got older, he realised just what a horrible life such people must lead. Yet he never was prepared for the reality of what warden life in the asylum would bring.

"Creed was never technically diagnosed with any mental disease. In fact, all of the psychiatrists who went to see him reported him as a perfectly minded individual, with a more athletic mind than over 98% of most people. Yet nobody who meets him ever fails to notice that there is something... different about him. He has never technically committed a crime, which is why his arrest and imprisonment in the asylum have been so... secretive."

"Inmate 418."

"Wait don't tell me... hmm, oh, it's that time of the week again. Alright Mrs. new psychiatrist... "(the inmate cocked his head to one side, but did not look at the person outside the cell)" wait... yes, you are a Mrs..." (he continued in a sarcastic manner) "What new exciting game should we play today to discover the deepest reaches of my mind? I hope that you will excuse any sarcastic comments, witty, or otherwise, remarks that I may make, or completely random things that I may say, just to annoy you, but I have done this many many times, and it only causes to give me entertainment now, as you struggle over the insanities of a sane man. Very well Arru, let her in... Let's get this over with."

Arru shook his head, as the woman next to him gasped. He really would never get used to that strange ability of his charge.

"Although there was never any evidence to convict him, and although Creed had probably not done half of the things we convicted him of, I do not believe that there was another alternative to the way that I acted. Creed does have a mental condition... of a sort. You see, he has a mental inability to forget a debt, and an unwillingness to ignore one."

"So the kid has a strong sense of fairness and unfairness, is that a reason to imprison him under such circumstances?"

"You claim that you are totally sane," Inmate 418 raised an eyebrow at Arru, and Arru couldn't help but grin. The last five psychiatrists had come up with the exact same starting line. "But then why are you here, and why did your last six psychiatrists each diagnose you with a completely different disorder, everything from dyslexia, to being a psycho,"

"I'm going to go for split personalities this time," the inmate said to Arru "same wager?"

Arru nodded, barely stifling a laugh. He couldn't help it, no matter how hard he tried not to, he liked his charge.

"What do you mean look at their reports again?" said the psychiatrist.

Arru wasn't even half surprised.

"Under normal circumstances, nearly anybody would have agreed with you, but two things made what I did justified. Firstly, Creed was a very powerful ninja before his fall, and I was going to make him my successor before the incident. However, the most important thing was that he kept perfect track of the number of debts that he owed each person, and he owed three debts to... he owed three debts to Orochimaru."

"What did you do to them?" she shrieked.

The inmate sighed to Arru, but what the psychiatrist saw him do was completely beyond Arru's best guesses.

"Six different people all diagnose themselves with some of the worst mental health disorders there ever were right after speaking to you!"

There was a pause, all the while, Arru's charge shook his head at Arru while raising his eyes to the stars.

"And will you please move your lips when you are speaking, it's unnerving!"

As ever, his charge's abilities unnerved all who were unfamiliar with it. Hundreds of people could look at inmate 418, and as long as he was sitting down, each could see him do something completely different, and hear him say something completely different. That wasn't the weirdest thing though. The inmate of the cell before him talked with a barely noticeable movement of his lips, and no movement of the tongue, yet he sounded just the same as normal. This pseudo acting, as he called it, was the same for most of what he did. He ate by simply looking at food, slept with his eyes open, could hear a whisper from a soundproofed room, and could feel something without touching it. Just witnessing it though, was enough to make most psychiatrists think that they had gone mad.

"Orochimaru used his first and second debts to prove to me that Creed would do anything for him. With his first debt, he caused Creed to attack his best friend to the brink of consciousness. For his second, Orochimaru told Creed not to resist as he removed part of Creed's intestine and stomach, as well as a section of his voice box. He also removed creed's lens in his left eye, leaving him with just the right, which he then implanted a remote iris contractor into, causing Creed's iris to contract down to the point at which he no longer had a pupil. In order to prevent himself from "becoming an utter freak", as he had put it, Creed took manual control of his left eye, and similarly closed his iris. He then caused his body to rewire, making full use of his strange abilities to restore the functions that he had lost in a different way."

The psychiatrist ran screaming from the asylum, and the inmate picked up her report so far.

"Split personalities, heh, I win."

"You never cease to amaze," muttered Arru emptying his pockets onto the food tray table, which served as the only way that the two could pass objects between each other. "So, what do you want?"

His charge took an elastic band, a cog, a piece of string, and a piece of brown paper from the small pile of objects, as well as a shard of glass, before adding each to a different contraption that he was currently working on. Each had a slight resemblance to something else. There was a crude telescope, an equally crude microscope, a wind up train toy, and a small scale model of Arru. This was one of the few ways that inmate 418 had of keeping himself amused. Once, when all of the inmates were let out for their exercise, one had picked up the train, and broken it. Since then, no inmate had ever entered his cell again, and inmate 418 was moved to a higher security cell. For a second, his charge was as normal, trying to make the best of a bad situation, then, something changed in 418's bearing. Inmate 418 had caught sight of the name the scrap of brown envelope had been addressed to.

"Now we attempted to hold Creed by force, but he escaped five times. It was then, that I made healing his friend the top priority for the hospital that he was in. Therefore, Creed was in my debt. I asked him not to escape again. Since then, he has been in the asylum, in a special cell designed by some of the greatest genjutsu users in the village. For every year that he spends in there, he will lose some of his memories. When he has finally lost all of his memories, and therefore has forgotten about the debt that he owes Orochimaru, then he will be brought out."

"How long has he been in there?"

"Well, he was seventeen when he went in."

"He was only seventeen!"

"And he was born about five years before you, making it so that he has been in there for... about twenty years."

"But he looks only about sixteen!"

"His body ages more slowly than normal, as does his mind while he is in that cell. In fact, while he is there, his body ages backwards. In everything but age, he is fifteen years old."

"Creed."

The name rang a bell to the inmate, it sounded so familiar.

"Tell me Arru, can you give me the letter that was inside here, I will give you back... the rubber band."

"Umm, I guess."

"I want to meet this Creed, this just sounds so outlandish."

"Where do you think we are going?"

"No... No... No... ah, here it is."

"Thank you."

The letter was just a bill.

"A pencil for the cog!" yelled the inmate, in a slightly frenzied voice.

Inmate 418 lightly rubbed the pencil over the paper, and a second message appeared. Arru gasped, and attempted to snatch away the paper, but it was too late. The inmate had already read what the real letter contained.

It read as follows:

"To my dearest friend Creed.

I simply wish to inform you that he is back, and that as my final debt, I wish you to escape from the prison, and to stop him again. That is all.

From your last indebted to."

Creed... the name seemed so familiar...

Creed!

"The thing about him was not so much his power as a ninja, rather, his intelligence, his agility, and... well, have a look at the report."

"Oh, well that is... weird."

"Yes, and nobody is quite sure how he-"

Arru was still unaware of quite what was going on. His charge's door had simply opened, and then Arru had become aware of a strong pressure on his neck, and a general backwards movement, as well as a lot of rushing wind, before a fall of some kind through a closed window, somehow without breaking it. The whole process took less than seven seconds.

Creed grinned, as he fell towards the ground. He had forgotten what it was to actually do something other than sit around. He had to admit though, he remembered being faster than that. Admittedly Arru would probably still have no idea what was going on, or at least would still be processing what had just happened, but seriously, after the door had opened, it had taken him four whole seconds, to grab Arru by the neck, open a nearby window, bail out of it, and close it behind himself with his feet. Unacceptable. If he was going to defeat "him" again, whoever "he" was, Creed would have to do better than that. He was way too rusty. Anyway, back to business, after all, he was sort of breaking out of a maximum security prison. That probably would merit his full attention.

Still with Arru by the neck, Creed broke into a run. He had not been expecting to escape like this, but at least this way he could work some of the stiffness out of his limbs before he actually had to fight or flee. The guards caught up with him in a rather admirable thirty seconds.

"Anybody moves, and this guy dies!" yelled Creed, turning to the ten guards who had followed him. Creed examined each one. Five with head bands, two with ANBU masks. Creed disregarded the other three as no threat, when he saw the crude blunt scythe that the non-ninjas of the guards used. Of the rest, Creed saw one who looked confident enough to be a threat, one who looked a little too confident to know who he was dealing with, the two ANBU were unreadable behind their masks, one who was shaking all over, one who was unremarkable, and one... who was unreadable as the ANBU. The latter of these worried Creed the most. An unknown enemy was often more dangerous than an enemy of any strength. Creed didn't particularly like his odds. Creed never liked his odds unless they were better than 50:1 for, himself, but he really didn't like his odds here. Hmm, the hostage would be the key.

"Now, now, I believe that you are getting over your head little boy. Look around you. We are ten grown men, each armed, and seven of which are ninja. Two of which are ANBU, which if you do not know, are ninja that easily kill other ninja."

Had this speech come from almost any of his opponents, Creed may have been worried, but as it came from the over confident man, Creed remained calm, and summed up the pros and cons of making an example of this person.

"Shouldn't we be running?" asked Minato.

"No, I am quite sure that the guards will be more than capable of catching and holding up Creed while he is encumbered with his hostage."

"But what if-"

"Now Minato, Creed will still be there for us to fight. The only thing that will change is how ready we are for him, and how ready he is for us."

"But surely it would be wiser to have the guards to assist us."

"I believe that the fight will be more favourable to us if you know more about the enemy that we face. Firstly, Creed will not kill anybody, no matter what the circumstances are."

"You have already said-"

"Yes, I know. Secondly, Creed not only can perform jutsu without hand seals, but he can also create jutsu as he likes, and move the physical realm around him with nothing more than his mind. Now you would have been caught out had you not known that."

"Perhaps..."

Creed decided that this fight was not going to be won through brute strength, or at least, if he took that approach, he would be less likely to win. Therefore, giving away a hint at his abilities was more than worth it in order to show these people that he was not to be taken so lightly, and to try to prove the point to them that he was deadly serious.

Creed glanced around. What did he have to work with... let's see... some trees, grass, ground... hmm, overly dry. That might work. Creed felt the way that it all linked together. The trees needed the water that the ground was not giving them. Therefore, it was only a small change to prompt one to search for water in a different way. The overconfident man suddenly found himself wrapped in the roots of a small tree. Two seconds later, the roots pierced into him, and he passed out from dehydration. Creed let out a sigh, as he felt how refreshed the plant now was. The small tree released the now unconscious man, and placed its roots firmly back in the ground. The nine other men looked back at Creed wearily. Creed grinned.

Author's note: I am sorry for the extended use of lines. I attempted to use multiple line breaks, but that didn't really work. Anyway, I am relatively pleased with how this has started out. Reviews would be appreciated.