Disclaimer: I don't own anything relating to Naruto or Game of Thrones.

A New Game

Chapter One: Plot Revealed

Royalty, it was the singular most coveted position in any realm. It was something that every man, woman, and child desired at least once in their life but even with millions of dreamers gunning for it, there was only a privileged few who'd have the unenviable task of warming the top seat of man. It was a station that placed one or a pair of people above the rest of their peers with the assumptions that they'd take care of the land. It was a seat that came with as many problems as it did benefits. A good King or Queen lived long enough to see the benefits of benevolence because they were loved. A poor King only reaped the ramifications of the chaos they created. There was no better example of this than the current one, King Aerys II Targaryen, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men.

Under that, in the shadow of royalty was a never-ending game of maneuvering and intrigue. This game found its players in the form of the Lords of the Seven Realms. They'd go about it with different methods but they did it for the sheer chance to inch they and their family name closer to that Iron Throne that was held so dearly. Play nice with those above and exploit the ones beneath, that was the way this world worked. Take for instance the Starks of the North and the Baratheon Stag from Storm's end, once they were staunch defenders of the kingdom and now they were closing in on the Mad King and his tyrannical reign. Not that many outside of the Targaryen name cared if the maniacal Aerys II died.

Of course, any Lord worth his salt had a plethora of soldiers or knights to enforce their visions of ambition. It was the skill of man that aimed bows and swung swords which made them as valuable as the lands they battled over. Sadly, a good soldier didn't always make for a good man. Most times knights were men capable of the greatest evils. They used their Lord's name to shield their actions as they committed sprees of heinous acts which included but were not limited to rape, destruction, and murder. More often than not, this darkness was erased by the false light of bravery and martial strength bestowed upon these men of action.

Then there were the people who suffered the most due to these soldiers, Lords, and Kings, people that made these men and women the relevant figures they were. This group was made of normal people, called common folk. They were and are the life that breathed activity into every realm from Westeros to Essos and beyond, but because they didn't have means they were treated as less than the mud that clung to a shoe's bottom after a fresh rain. They as a group were treated like shit, simple as that. What they didn't know and perhaps what those above them forgot was that it was the people who made the world turn.

Be it a King or common folk, a Lord or a soldier, there was some point in life where someone had their time to bask in the sun. There was at least a singular moment in the continual stream of time where things fell in the perfect way which made them feel like the most important person to ever grace this planet… but the same could not be said for Naruto.

Naruto with no last name and no real home was an anomalous existence that plainly didn't belong in this game of thrones, but here he was. His skills weren't fit to the mold of a shining knight. He was a man bathed in a life of blood, an assassin. Yet, at the same time, he didn't fit into the order of killers that called themselves the Faceless. His failure to comply and shape to them didn't stop the order from attempting to hunt him down for his services, the tenacious bunch.

Not decent enough to stay in the light, but not totally lost to the darkness, Naruto lived in a strange space that existed in between. It was a life that made him feel alone in a world that was brimming with people that came in all different kinds.

His outcast feelings led Naruto to distract himself by taking job after job. Sometimes he found himself working so long that three days would pass and he'd be none the wiser. Okay, so maybe calling them jobs was wrong of him. No one paid Naruto to do what he did. He did as he did because he felt like it was the right thing to do. He was an assassin of morals, something unheard of in a prolific executioner of men.

Naruto's mental processing froze as a refreshing summer wind swept over the narrow passage into Dorne. Thanks to the craggy outcrop he was perched upon, there was nothing around him to break the flow of nature from running over his face. He blinked his azure hues a number of times when he recognized that he'd started to daydream. He shook his head and a look of irritation rolled over his face like lightning, there one moment and gone the next. 'There's no point coming all the way out here if I fumble my chance.'

He knew he needed something to keep his mind from drifting and his thoughts focused so out came a tightly rolled scroll from one of his pockets. He allowed the parchment to roll open over his lap. Naruto's eyes examined the words on the paper, words written in his own hand. 'It looks like Robert Baratheon, Eddard Stark, Jon Arryn, and Holster Tully will meet the forces of the Iron Throne at The Trident. I don't think the Martell's ten thousand will be enough to stop the Baratheon's fury, but we shall see. One thing's for sure, after this battle there will be a winner and there will be a loser.'

Rolling his scroll back up, he slipped the tube-like structure back into his pocket where it would be secure. Naruto glanced around and saw that he still had some time to kill. He pulled out another scroll, this one being different from the first. This second scroll had details on the ongoing happenings at Storm's End, the ancestral home of the Baratheon family. 'This Tyrell blockade has been going on for a while. The Stags are stubborn but I wonder which will come first? Starvation or salvation?'

The piece inside of Naruto which was tested and tried on the battlefield fancied nothing more than the opportunity to partake in these battles. He didn't care who won any given fight but what he did care about was the legendary figures fighting them. He would have loved the chance to test his mettle against them. He could already imagine a test of might against Robert and his warhammer. He could taste a duel with Eddard and his fine sword, Ice. Maybe a game of combat prowess with the Dragon Prince, Rhaegar.

Naruto sensed the lust for battle moving as quickly through his veins as the blood that was pumped from his singing heart. As much as he wanted to test himself against the realm's greatest figures, he knew that diving head first into the middle of a bloody war was not the way to do it. This sobering reality was what helped Naruto soothe the urge to flex his muscles. 'Besides, there are plenty of opportunities born of war for a man like me.'

He saw his opportunity come in the form of the Lannisters from the Casterly Rock in the Westerlands. Tywin Lannister was a man who wore many titles, too many in Naruto's humble opinion. Naruto chose to focus on only one of those numerous titles. Tywin was former Hand of the King which should mean that he was loyal to Aerys II. His former station is what made the recent Lannister activity so intriguing to the perceptive assassin.

He remembered the day well, it started off as just another day of travel along the King's Road. He was a few days outside of Highgarden at this point when he heard the most peculiar of whispers. The whispers spoke of a Lannister force making their move towards the Dorne. At first, he didn't think much of the claim that came from whispering handmaidens but he grew restless and decided to do some investigating on the matter.

What Naruto discovered was some twenty lions moving with a methodical efficiency towards the narrow pass that'd allow them into Dornish lands. Had it been anyone but the Lannisters and the Martells then Naruto would be willing to call it a diplomatic visit but even the deaf have heard of the tensions between the two families of Westeros. It was this tension that brought Naruto to where he was now, and before the slow marching Lannisters no less.

Naruto was dragged out of his recollections when his keen ears picked up on the drum-like beat of heavy footsteps coming his way from around fifty yards out. He perked up not unlike a hound who caught the scent of something. The laid back look in his blue eyes was swiftly replaced with a chilling determination that was oddly at home on the assassin's whiskered face. Inhaling one profound breath, he stood up and slunk back against the rocky cliff where his body looked to fade into the shadows left behind by the sun in the cloudless sky.

Twenty-five minutes later an ensemble of gold plated knights came marching up to the bottleneck of the gorge, their formation secured in a tightly-knit order of five rows of four knights. The moving box came to a halt at the natural choke and one of the knights in the group took a step out from the rest.

"We have our orders and as honorable knights of the Shield of Lannisport, we shall not fail in our task! Not a single, foul Dorn be it man or woman will be allowed further than this choke point! Do you understand me, men?" Looking out at his fellow knights, the speaker was hit with the blinding sunlight reflecting off their armors. Blinded or not, he didn't need his eyes to catch the brash cries of affirmation from his unit.

"We brave knights will march into these disgusting lands, we will hold this choke, and bring glory to our families by performing the duties of our Lord Hand, Tywin Lannister!" His rallying cry injected enthusiasm into the tired soldiers who began slapping the butts of their blades into their shields which crafted a resounding clash of metal that rained through the pass.

Falling back into formation with the rest of his unit, the man pointed his sword forward and as one the unit began the arduous task of fitting through the compact space of the pass. The summer's burning sun didn't make it an easy trial. As one soldier bumped against the other, their feet worked on uneven ground but there wasn't a single peep of protest from the uncomfortable warriors.

Unknown to any of the men in the unit of twenty, there was a pair of sapphire blue eyes watching them move clumsily through the mountainous terrain. Like any good predator, Naruto bid his time and waited with patience as his prey wandered further into the tightly compacted space. It was space that grew more and more precious as man, sword, shield, and spear were crammed into an overfilled expanse.

'There goes the third line, now I just need to wait for the fourth line to come through.' Much like the patience his body displayed, the assassin's mind was just as calm as he surveyed the scene playing out in front of him. The amount of space between each line varied by a number of paces but there was plenty of space to operate in for someone like Naruto. He made use of that space when he landed in between the fourth and fifth lines of the Lannister formation.

The fourth row of knights didn't hear Naruto's silent descent but the fifth row saw Naruto or at least half of them did. While landing in the middle of the line Naruto's dexterous hands struck with the swiftness of the wind when he flourished black blades across the throats of the two men who crumbled like a puppet when its strings were cut. The two knights that remained tried to brandish their weapons in response but the assassin was agile on his feet.

When his arms collapsed back into the cloak that was concealing his body the black of Naruto's daggers were totally indistinguishable from his cloak until the moment where they were fired and buried in the eye sockets of the two remaining knights. A sense of shock took hold of their trembling forms but it was only for a moment before they stumbled back against the rock walls on either side of Naruto. It wasn't until they screamed in agony that attention was drawn to what happened to the knights.

The surviving knights in the crowd were jolted to see the gruesome sight of their comrades gushing blood from each of their pierced eyes. It wasn't until their extemporaneous leader came forward that Naruto got the attention he deserved. Where the knights were gilded in shiny metal he was cast in a dark black cloak that hid everything about him apart from the lustrous blue eyes beneath his hood.

"Assassin! You have turned your blades on Lord Tywin Lannister? Does this mean you and your kind have allied with House Martell?" The knight was far from pleased, that much was clear. And why should he be when a fifth of his forces was killed in a matter of seconds by one man?

Shifting his eyes from one person to the next, Naruto ultimately landed on the man bold enough to make demands of him. A pair of black blades appeared in both of Naruto's hands, rearming the man with the same sort of knives that he used to remove four Lannisters. "No one tells my blade where to strike. I decide who I kill and when I kill them. What are a bunch of lions doing treading into the snake pits of Sunspear?"

The Lannister at the lead bristled in rage. The combination of the assassin brushing him off and the fact that he was standing in the blood of his kin pissed the man off that much more. "We do not answer to assassins! The moment you spilled the distinguished blood of a Lannister knight was the moment you were doomed to hear our roar!" His declaration was met by a round of cheering from the men behind him. Four of those men moved forward, stepping up to have their round with Naruto.

From beneath his hood, Naruto took the measure of the four men who had the courage to step up to him. They probably thought they had the advantage but Naruto merely thought them to be foolish. "Then it looks like I will need to turn more of this dirt into mud with the gilded blood of the Westerlands. Come lions, roar at me!"

There was no need for a further invitation, they rushed at him with their roars combined into a singular sound. The men staggered slightly in their approach because of the tight space they were forced to fight in. Their inability to rush him and surround him was something that the cloaked figure could easily exploit to his advantage. Naruto stood motionlessly as the first man finally got close. To Naruto it felt like the man was moving through quicksand, that's how sluggish he was in Naruto's eyes.

The first fighter tailored his plan of attack from steps away. In doing so he allowed Naruto to read his motion and react accordingly. When he opened up to flourish his weapon, the knight was caught across the wrist with the edge of Naruto's dagger. He seethed pain, dropping his shield as his hand seized with pain. Naruto quickly took up the shield. Now that he was loaded up with a Lannister shield on his arm he was able to swing said arm and slap the knight across the face with the golden lion that was proudly placed on the front of the shield.

With his first foe dropped, he was free to turn both his attention and his new shield to the knight who just brought a sword down on him. The kiss of the steel hitting on the shield was followed up by a grunt from the knight trying to force Naruto to his knees. Naruto went down with no resistance because from a knee it was much easier for the assassin to bury a dagger to the hilt in the man's thigh. Ravaged by pain, the knight dropped to a knee while shrieks of agony tore out his throat. Naruto quickly silenced the man by burying the same blood-stained kunai in the knight's vulnerable throat.

"Die!" Instinct drove Naruto to jump back and out of the path of the falling pole strike that tried to slice him. His departure was so sudden that he had to abandon his kunai in the man's throat where blood continued to bubble up and leak around the blade's entry point.

Rising from the crouch he dropped into, the assassin noted how his feet sunk into the mud created with the blood of the first lot of lions to be poached. He didn't allow that to stop him from standing proudly in a mess of blood molded around him. The crest of Lannister was still on his right arm via the shield. His shadowy cloak was completely at odds thematically with the flamboyant red and gold of the Lannister family but Naruto couldn't care less. The shield was nothing more than a tool, it's design wouldn't change that.

Next, Naruto saw and heard the growl of a man rushing him with a spear at the ready. The blue-eyed slayer was attentive to parry every spear stab with the center of his newly won shield. Naruto was careful that every time he blocked he did so in a way that left a moderately sized opening on his left shoulder.

This was an opening that Naruto purposefully made to encourage the knight to strike him on that left side of his body.

It took a few moments before the fog of the fight cleared from the knight's eyes but when it did he saw the opening. He shoved forward to strike the spot he thought was a weakness. Naruto, seeing the bait be taken, strode ahead and barreled the shield stiffly into the spear. This time the metal tip of the spear did not bounce away. The spear was shoved back along with the man using it. The Lannister bannerman was forced backward; Naruto snuck his foot behind the man's ankle so when he stumbled back he was also tripped up and sent to the ground.

Jarred around inside of his armor and having his head scrambled about in his helmet, the Lannister knight was left flat on his back. When he was finally ready to fight again Naruto was standing over him with those sharp blue eyes leveling him with a glacial cold vibe.

Lost in full on panic, the warrior in plates tried to clamber for his discarded spear but Naruto was having none of it. He brought a swift end to the man when he buried the slightly pointed base of the shield into the man's throat which was crushed immediately. Life left the man, the knight's hand fell back into the dirt and the spear in his hand rolled out into the dirt as well.

Naruto looked right into the man's wide grassy eyes. He could see the panic that clearly flooded them. Naruto felt the desperation in them but that didn't hinder the assassin from doing what he felt that he was obliged to do. "I'm sorry that it has come to this, truly."

He went to wrench the shield free when he heard the roar of another enraged lion coming at him, the last knight in the second wave. Narrowing his cool blue eyes, in a blur of fast-moving motion, Naruto ripped the shield out of his freshest kill. He bent the shield by standing on one end and pulling on the other end. His frightening show of strength forced the shield to bend and bend, the vibrant color disfiguring until the shield snapped.

Twirling the chunk of broken shield in his hand, Naruto was mindful of the jagged ends as he grabbed hold of his new weapon. He steadied his grip on the chunk before propelling it forward, right at the man racing right at him. Everyone watching saw the shield coming but that didn't make it any easier for the knight to stop the shield chunk from shredding through his gut.

"W-What?" The strangled gasp that carried his question was hollow, haunting. Everybody in the Casterly Rock contingent would remember the sight of their comrade collapsing face first into the dirt for as long as they lived. His body kicked up a cloud of dust when it fell to the spot where he laid unmoving with the point of the shattered shield sticking out of his lower back through the armor on his body.

Naruto stood up uncaring of the number of eyes that were stuck to his wondrous showing of power. He stood unflinchingly over the man who was his sixth kill for an additional moment before he grabbed the spear from the man's corpse. He walked forward past the man with the shield in his gut and to the disoriented knight who was trying adamantly to crawl towards his unit who as a group were rooted in place.

With no one to help him, there was no one who could prevent Naruto from spiking the spear clean through the Lannister's neck. The spinal cord strike was a positive death in the way that it was a quick, clean kill… unlike the man who was bleeding out from the gut gradually.

In less than ten minutes a butcher had killed eight knights with nothing but a set of knives, a shield, and a spear. It was a showing that sent ripples through the shaken soldiers who had the displeasure of seeing it first hand.

"He's a monster, a blue-eyed monster! He's like one of those damned White Walkers that the Crows on the wall ramble about when they're drunk!"

"Fuck that, he's worst! This thing is a demon straight from the Stranger himself!"

That closing comparison sent a wave of ungodly panic through all of these men who believed in the religion of The Seven. With the image of Death itself connected to the shadowy cloaked person, none of the men had the urge to fight anymore. They dropped their weapons, turned tail, and tried to run for a sanctuary that didn't exist deeper in the Dorne.

Lynceil Lannister tore off his helmet and threw it to the ground with disgust. His golden helmet bounced away from him not once but twice while the man who bounced it watched as the soldiers meant to have his back fled in a frenzy of fear. "Get back here you cowards! Do you hear me? I said get your asses back here and fi-"

His command for action was brought to a dead pause when a pair of blasts shook the entirety of the mountain pass. The eruptions of explosive power were high enough along the walls that none of the retreating Lannisters were caught up in them. What the explosions did do was jostle an avalanche of rocks that fell from the sky like a bastardized version of hail. Screams of fear tore through the area and all Lynceil was able to do was observe. One at a time his men were snuffed out, their brilliant golden armors crushed like a flame would be in a similar condition.

When the final scream was finally silenced beneath the crushing weight of the rocky slide, Lynceil fell to his knees in disbelief. That anger which serviced him earlier was gone, replaced with unshed tears that left his green eyes glimmering. "What has happened to us? Are the Gods choosing to punish us?"

Lynceil was a man that was faithful to two things. He's loyal to his Lord Tywin and loyal to his belief in The Seven. So when he watched a rain of rocks on one side and an emissary of Death on the other, Lynceil could only assume this was the work of something greater than them, something that was punishing them for some sin left unanswered.

"Maybe it was something you did… or perhaps it's because of the plans that your Lord has hatched in his devious mind?" Naruto knew what caused the rock slide because it was his doing that machinated the seemingly natural event. He was still more than willing to take advantage of a religious man's fears and what greater fear was there than death?

The once brave knight felt his eyes widen. It was an action that caused the welled up moisture in his eyes to fall unimpeded over his cheeks. Like he feared what was waiting behind him, cause he did, the shaking blonde in the armor slowly turned his head to look at the cloaked figure who had successfully opposed them.

"Please… please spare me! You have already taken so much from me, please allow me to keep this life of mine!" To grovel for any reason was heinous for a Lannister but Lynceil cared not for his pride. He valued his life more than the entirety of his ego.

Naruto gave the man in a shambling suit of armor a smirk that was buried underneath the shadowy veil created by his cloak. "A good way to earn that mercy would be telling me what Lannister men are doing marching into the Dorne? I know you don't see eye to eye but shouldn't your Lord be more neutral? This seems too obvious for him."

Turning himself so he was both on his knees and facing Naruto, the knight looked up at the assassin with no small amount of fear. "I don't know anything! I swear on the men you just killed that I know not our reason for being here!" Lynceil followed the morbid path of mud and blood that trailed all the way from the bodies to where Naruto stood now.

Not buying the shit being sold to him for a second, the man under the hood drew a kunai. The small, black blade came into view right in front of Lynceil's eyes which made him recoil in fear. "Lying to me just won't do, I overheard you so proudly telling your men that you knew why you were here. Now I'm going to need you to tell me the details of that."

If anything the singsong sound of the killer's voice only made the rate at which Lynceil's face paled faster. He understood painfully so that he had been caught in a lie. In a furious storm of I's and Buts, the disheartened lion tried his best to come up with something that would preserve his shivering skin. At first, Naruto thought it was amusing but the novelty of a man about to soil himself wore off quickly.

Needing to silence the man, Naruto settled his cold blade against Lynceil's jaw. Playing on his fear, a silence was created between them which made Naruto smile. "Sounds like the cat has caught a lion's tongue. I will only ask this one more time. Why are Lannister men in the Dorne?"

The earlier infusion of playfulness that colored what Naruto had to say was long gone. He even dug his kunai into the man's skin which opened up a shallow cut just above his jowls. "Failure to provide me with a satisfactory answer will end with a death most painful, Ser."

A promise of pain was one thing but a decree of death was something entirely different. Lynceil had seen first hand how masterful the man in front of him was in the art of massacre. Seeing was believing, he had no doubt that the screams of his butchered friends and the haunting hues of this man would frequent his nightmares for many a moon. "O-Okay, I'll tell you what you want to know!"

Happy that he got compliance, Naruto removed the blade from Lynceil's skin. His was an act that calmed the man at least a little bit considering Lynceil wasn't breathing as heavily as he was a few moments ago. He had nearly forgotten about his position when Naruto cleared his throat. Panicked green eyes snapped to the glowing blue that lurked under the cloak, "Speak"

"We were told to watch the borders of the Dorne to make sure that none of Lord Doran's men leave the kingdom! That's all I know!" He promised to his tormentor, voice quivering and his body quaking with fear.

"Why?"

Any inclination he might have had to lie was removed by a single movement of that damned black blade in Naruto's hand. "I don't know for sure… b-but I heard some of my superiors whispering about something."

If there was one way to gather interest it was to talk in whispers. It was whispers after all that were used when people had something important on their tongues. "What were they talking about? Keep in mind, if you choose to be short with me then I will make you regret it."

Did he betray his kin or did he die? That was the question that Lynceil Lannister needed to answer, and answer he did. "They were talking about moving eight to ten thousand men to King's Landing! I don't know any more than that, I swear!"

Naruto gathered that this man knew nothing more than that. Knowing what was happening didn't mean Naruto understood what Tywin was doing with such a considerable force. 'That's too many men to bolster the Kingsguard. But if he really wanted to help he'd send them past the Landing to The Trident…'

It didn't make sense, unless-

'Tywin you are a crafty bastard.' Any further explanation of his thoughts was prevented when the anxious sound of the last knight's voice broke his streamline of thoughts.

"C-Can I go now?" He didn't think it was possible until it happened. When Naruto went silent it became painfully clear to Lynceil that he preferred when the death dealer was talking. During the time where he was silent, it made Lynceil feel like he was planning some kind of horrendously painful death.

Turning from the obviously terrified man on his knees, the assassin showed there wasn't a single spot of him sullied by a drop of the blood he spilled. Jerking his head in the direction the knights first came from, he delivered an order. "Go"

Lynceil didn't need to hear anymore. He looked at Naruto's back one final time before forcing himself onto his feet. The entire body of golden plates moved as fast as the body beneath it could run. His legs barely took him ten steps when a barrage of three kunai embedded themselves along the man's spine. Dead before he hit the ground, Lynceil never saw the assassin's blades coming.

With blood on every side of him and bodies both sliced and crushed to go along with the blood, Naruto looked very much like the assassin he was trained to be. Going around the battlefield he plucked his kunai out of the bodies he left behind, wiping them of any excess blood before storing them somewhere within his cloak.

"So Tywin Lannister has decided that it is the rebellion that will win this war and is moving to secure Robert's victory. No doubt he intends to earn himself favor with the man likely to become the next King, a smart move." The more he thought about it the more the picture sharpened in Naruto's mind.

Turning on his heels, Naruto commenced the slow walk towards King's Landing, each step taking him away from the mess he'd created. At least none of his blood was spilled on the dirt! "I really don't care that they plan on getting rid of the Mad King but I have my doubts that the noble lions of Lannister will behave themselves. I can almost smell their pillage coming."

For all the gold they had and the pride they boasted, it was remarkably similar how a man from Casterly Rock was to the horse riders that frequented the grassy plains of Essos. Peel them down to their basic nature and the men of Westeros were just as liable to ravage the land with plundering and fire as the Dothraki were.

"Looks like I'm paying King's Landing a visit."

END