As many of you now know, this is the redone version of the original story. Yes, you can go ahead and kill me for this…

You know there was a reason I gave this story its title. But the way the story was going did not give me much room to add the things I needed to. So I decided to scrap the whole thing and rewrite it from scratch. This way I can also add the details I know I've missed.

And I am not changing the OC's character. I don't care if you think she is Mary-sue. There are reasons for her maturity and skills. The more you read the more you will find out.

Anyway I hope you enjoy this version of the story.

Please accept my humble apology.

Read and enjoy!

A series of events

It was a series of events that started this. He knew it for a fact. Though to be more specific, it was a letter that uncovered the possibility of a series of events that started all of this.

Of course, if he actually thought about it from every angle possible then this started with the person who had penned the letter he had received. And if anything were to be deduced from the old and frayed sheet of paper in his hand that looked like it was about to crumble into dust any second now was that this letter was written a long time ago and that the events that he did not yet know of but was sure were happening must have been set into motion that long ago or maybe even longer ago.

'I must be losing my mind!' he grumbled to himself as he ran his hand through his spikey white hair.

He looked down at the letter in his hand. It really was very old and the ink on it had almost faded away. It must have been really good quality paper for it to have lasted this long. Even the time-stalling seals, which this paper did contain, did not preserve paper for this long. Also, it had been stuffed and sealed in an envelope of some material that would not open, and destroyed itself and its contents when forcefully opened. But he had been able to open it because it had a seal inscribed on it that had reacted to his touch.

Of course it had made him suspicious! He did not become such a good intelligence gatherer by being stupid. He obviously knew that whatever was inside was really valuable the moment he received the envelope.

Yet he had been baffled by what had been written on the envelope – number co-ordinates for a specific location that he was instructed to visit and a very simple proverb that left him baffled still.

A fox's treasure is none for hoarding.

What the hell did the message mean? Why was this particular location given to him? Was he supposed to meet someone here or was he supposed to retrieve something from here? Was it a trap meant for him? If so, why go through so much trouble to write it on such old paper? If it really was old then why was it sent to him? And how was it addressed to him? How did the sender know he would be passing through that town at that time? How did the sender know he was staying at that particular in? Who exactly was a sender?

Not to mention that this particular was sent through the general mail system after it had been stored in one of the oldest depositories in all the elemental nations. The general mailing system transported letters between towns and countries with goods. It was much slower than the system shinobi use but sending messages through this system meant that the chances of interception was very low, mainly because of the sheer bulk of the mail transported. Whoever the sender was had enough foresight to use this system effectively. And apparently the letter had been deposited with the instructions to have it sent to his room.

Perhaps it had been meant for someone else. But that scenario was discarded when he found the emblems of both his village and the home of his summons scribbled onto his paper.

In the end he had a lot of questions and absolutely no answers.

'Damnit, I'm thinking in circles!'

So here he was, at the location indicated by the co-ordinates in the letter.

He looked up at the Torii towering over him then at the stone figures of the foxes scattered about the courtyard overrun by weeds. Most of the statues were broken or cracked. His eyes then fell on the main shrine. It was an old Inari shrine, he realized, perhaps decades older than the letter itself.

He took his first step into the courtyard and stopped. A single jolt of pure power passed through him. He just felt it but found it hard to describe it. He turned around and looked down at the thick canopy of trees covering the hill the shrine was perched atop of. He saw it all with a stunning clarity, the plants and the animals, each leaf on every tree and each feather on every bird…

He blinked.

And it was gone.

But it was replaced by a feeling that came from behind him. It was strange, this feeling. It was an alien curiosity that did not belong to him but was invading upon his senses.

He turned back and froze in his tracks. He was pretty sure that there was no twelve-year-old girl sitting on the porch of the main shrine and looking at him curiously. Her eyes were glazed over, as if her mind was ignorant to the world, and she looked drowsy.

He had barely managed to take another step forward when he saw her eyes roll back and her body slump to the side, coming to rest against a wooden pillar.

When she opened her eyes she found herself seeing white. And it was not because of the sudden transition from dark to light. No, she was staring at a white ceiling.

She turned her head to the left, then to the right, her brown eyes taking in the sight around her. And she concluded some interesting facts.

She was in a room, a white room, with white walls, ceiling and floor. She was also lying on a white bed with a white sheet covering her. There was a sad little white table with a white vase atop it which held a single white flower. It was droopy, but she supposed that it was the thought that counted. There was a white chair next to the table. It was empty but from how it had been pulled and placed by her bed someone had been seated there not long ago.

On the right wall, next to the table was a glass window with a white frame. Beyond that was the blue, blue sky littered with white, white clouds.

On the left wall there was a closed white door with a fluffy cream colored mat placed before it. The bathroom, she assumed.

On the wall opposite to her bed was another closed door with a shiny golden knob. The door that led outside, she concluded.

She sat up in bed and found herself in white pajama clothes, though they looked more like her cousin's karate uniform. She looked around again and decided she hated the room. The only true colors in it were from the green stalk of the droopy flower, her own golden-tan skin and her long ebony hair.

She got out of bed and nearly fell because her body felt wobbly. Her feet ached as if she had been walking on them for hours. Her back hurt too. Her head felt like there were things crawling about in it. And her mouth tasted awful, as if she had just eaten a raw bitter-guard.

Stumbling into the bathroom, and grimacing at all the white she found there, she washed her mouth in the white basin. She stumbled her way out and got to work with basic warm ups, rotating and stretching various parts of her body.

When her body had warmed up she finally awoke. When she had awoken she came to her senses. And when she had come to her senses the world hit her with the force of a ballistic missile.

She held her nose and fell to her knees at the smell of antiseptic, detergents and medicines, and sickness and death. Her ears throbbed with the murmur and cries that echoed from beyond the walls. And her eyes blurred from all the white she was seeing.

Then suddenly, she heard and smelt more than she knew were actually there, a phantasmal simulation of her senses. She smelt the smoke and a suffocating powder, like fireworks… like gunpowder. She heard the clang of steel against steel, splashes of water, the pounding of flesh hitting flesh, the ominous clicks of firearms and the voices of judgment.

She felt sick. The contents of her empty stomach rose to her throat. Her tongue tasted bitterer than ever before. Tears leaked from her eyes.

The logical part of her mind kept telling her that she was in a hospital, judging from the smell of antiseptic, the clipboard hanging at the foot of the bed and not to mention all the white. But she was not listening to the logical part of her mind. She was beyond reckoning now, beyond rationale.

And in the core of her pandemonium she turned to the only thing she could rely on – her instincts.

She felt she needed to leave immediately. So she ran to the window and yanked it open. She winced as the cool air from outside hit her face. Looking out and down she found that she was on the fifth floor.

She heard footsteps approaching and panicked. The sound rang ominously in her ears. What she felt now was beyond fear, it was pure unbridled terror. She could not think, so she acted.

Scrambling onto the sill she looked down and gulped. It was scary, but it needed to be done if it meant escaping the clutches of the accursed white room. Without a second thought she jumped off…

Boisterous laughter echoed across the district, matched only by enraged shouts.

'Naruto! You've gone too far this time!' the two men shouted as they chased after an orange-clad blond.

'Ha! Catch me if you can losers!' the blond hollered back. He had done it! He had splattered orange paint all over the Academy auditorium. He was awesome!

The ninja chasing him were fast, but Naruto had the home-field advantage – he knew Konoha better than the back of his own hand.

He turned a corner, raced across a back-alley, crossed another street, crawled through a hole in the wooden fence, sprinted across the empty site, climbed up onto the roof of a building, raced across it, jumped down to an alley, pulled the lid off a manhole and dove in. He then navigated the escape tunnels (though he did not know what they were) with expert precision and reappeared at the other end of Konoha. He climbed up the manhole opening in front of an old abandoned apartment complex and put the lid back in place.

He looked all around him to see if there was anyone in sight. When it was confirmed that there were none, he grinned an ear-splitting grin. 'I'm awesome!' he declared loudly to himself.

His victory celebration was cut short by the sound of flapping wings. Normally it would not have bothered him, but now it felt ominous. He suddenly had a strange feeling in his gut. It was not the bad feeling he usually got when he was about to get caught. But it was not a good feeling either. It was somewhere in between.

Something landed softly on his head. Blinking, he ran his hand through his hair and found something soft that did not belong there. He brought it down to his face to see what it was.

It was a black feather.

Something changed in the air around him. He was suddenly aware of the silence surrounding him.

A gentle gust of wind blew through the street he was standing in.

A raucous caw sounded above him.

With a strange feeling tingling in his stomach, he looked up…

She landed on the ledge of the window of the third floor just as she had aimed. She then jumped to the side and caught a pipe running down the side of the building, slid down to the ground while ignoring the burning of the palms of her hand and the soles of her feet. Once her feet touched the ground she dashed off in a direction that felt right.

She had been halfway down a busy street, weaving around the pedestrians and ignoring the looks they gave her, when she had the feeling that she was being followed. She did not dare look behind her. Instead she forced herself to move faster, not lingering in anyone's sight for more than a second.

Finally, she burst out of the busy street, rand the length of an empty side-street and came upon a dirt road that led out of town. She sprinted down the road for about a hundred meters until she reached the forest it passed through, before jumping into the thick foliage and running deeper into the forest. When she found a large tree with a hollowed base between its roots, she crawled into it and allowed herself to rest.

She did not fool herself into thinking it was safe though. That feeling of being watched and followed had not left her yet. She knew she had probably just cornered herself, but she needed to rest she felt so tired and so weak.

She looked down at her dirt-covered hands and found them trembling. In fact her whole body was trembling. Her feet and legs ached. There was a stitch on her side. Her skin was clammy and warm, and her hair stuck to her face, obstructing her vision. Her chest burned and she felt bile rise into her throat. She fought down the nausea and forced herself to take in deep breaths to regain control over her erratic heart and lungs.

The moment her heart rate slowed down pain shot through her limbs. She hissed in response and bit down on her lower lip. Lactic acid was a bitch…

All her thoughts were cut short when she saw a pair of legs appear before the hole. They were clad in green cotton and the feet were placed in wooden slippers. Geta, her mind supplied.

Then the figure crouched and she got a good look at the man. He was large and well-built, aged somewhere around the fifties and had an air of casual confidence, deep wisdom, childlike faith and passive lethality about him – a combination that made her wary of him. White hair sprouted off his head in large spikes that flew in all directions, the longer hair was tied back in a thick ponytail. Red tear tracks rand down his cheeks. He wore a band across his forehead with a metal plate in the middle. A symbol she recognized as Kanji was emblazoned on it.

'Hey brat!' he exclaimed jovially.

She did not respond. She kept her eyes trained on him, while her peripheral vision and all her other senses helped her mind calculate an escape route.

'Managed to get a long way before I caught up with you', he continued.

Her eyes narrowed at his words. Of course he was the one that had followed her around. Was he also the one that had placed her in that damnable room?

'You're pretty skilled', he said again.

Skilled? What did he mean by that?

Wait… there was a weak spot in the wood, a section where the roots were thinner. It would take just a little blunt force to break them. She would need to act fast.

'Who are you?' she asked him.

He frowned at her. 'I could be asking you the same thing.'

'What do you want from me?' she asked softly.

If anything the man's frown only deepened. 'Nothing really', he replied smoothly, 'I was sent a letter that told me to go to a shrine where I found you.'

She inched away from him. He did not say or even show anything in response.

'What shrine?' she bit out.

The man remained silent for a few moments as he thought of how to phrase his words. 'A ruined Inari shrine in the middle of nowhere.'

She looked at him incredulously for a minute before narrowing her eyes. 'Liar!' she hissed.

The man sighed. 'Look here kid. I have no idea what is going on here. But that letter was given to me probably because someone wanted me to pick you up, though for what, I don't know.'

'Why would you be asked to pick me up? I don't even know you!'

'You tell me!'

She decided she had heard enough. Without warning or preamble she kicked up the dirt so it fell in the man's face, more specifically his eyes. And as he reactively cursed and fell back from being caught off-guard, she kicked the thin wood and made a hole for herself. She scrambled out in a second and was on her feet running.

She did not get too far, just about ten meters before something caught her scruff and lifted her off her feet. She was spun around mid-air and soon was face-to-dirt-covered-face with the man she had been speaking with not more than ten seconds ago. He was frowning. Not good.

'Stop running!' ordered the man.

'Why should I?' she snapped back, 'You're all involved in a human trafficking racket that kidnaps young girls and sells them off as slaves.'

'What?' he asked in disbelief, 'What makes you say that? I wouldn't…!' His sentence was cut short as the girl kicked his shin. He hissed in pain, only to feel another kick to his shin that made him let go. Of course the girl too the chance to run away again.

And again she did not get very far. When she had tried to jump over a log, a hand wrapped around her left ankle and yanked her up so that she was hanging upside down.

'Calm down!' the man ordered.

She tilted her head toward her chest to look up and saw the man frowning at her.

'I'm sure this is all just a big misunderstanding. Let's talk about it civilly and …' Again his sentence was cut short when her free foot swung forward and made contact with his nose with a satisfying crunch.

In his haste to clutch his bloody nose he let go of the girl's ankle causing her to fall headfirst onto the hard ground below.

Wiping the blood from his nose with his sleeve, he looked down at the unconscious girl and was decent enough to say one sheepish yet undoubtedly appropriate word.

'Oops!'

Crows.

There were so many of them. They were all perched on the iron railings of the apartment. And they were all staring down at him.

It was creepy…

Silence ruled the world as their beady eyes scrutinized him and pierced his soul so intensely that he froze on the spot. Their black feathers shimmered in the sunlight.

It was eerie.

It was beautiful.

It was…

Splat!

The blond looked down blankly at the white spot on his shoulder. He stared at it dumbly for a second before it finally registered in his head.

'GAH! You stupid birds!'

He flailed around, trying to find something to wipe the white… stuff off his orange jacket. He stopped though when he felt a weight settle on his head. It made him tilt his head and roll his eyes up to see what it was.

'Caw!'

'Gah! Get off my head! Get off! Get off! Get off! Get off! Get…!'

'Naruto!'

The blond froze in his tracks, left leg raised high and hands grabbing at his head, making him look like a manic clown. He slowly straightened, with the bird still perched on his head, and turned to face the person that had called his name. 'Iruka-sensei…' he chuckled nervously.

'Don't 'Iruka-sensei' me!' the man with a scar across his nose scolded, 'You've gone too far. You will sit in class, listen in class, clean the class after the period and then clean up the auditorium.'

'But…'

'No buts!'

The blond saw the other crows watching him as he was pulled away by his ear, while the one perched on his head did not even bother to move. They all seemed to be smirking down at him.

'Caw!'

Damn birds!

Well, this is the crazy first chapter. A much more realistic take, if you ask me. As random as it seems this is a prologue of sorts.

I'm sorry for the delay, but updates will be faster now.

Please review!