Hiruzen Sarutobi, the formerly retired Third Hokage of the ninja Village Hidden in the Leaves, sighed as he looked out at the devastated village through the broken window at the top of the Hokage tower. Not even an hour ago, the village had come under attack from a force of nature. The Kyuubi no Yoko, a massive nine-tailed fox spirit and most powerful of the nine tailed-beasts, had appeared, literally out of nowhere, and had begun to destroy all in sight. Had it not been for the self-sacrifice of Minato Namikaze, Hiruzen's successor to the seat of Hokage, and his wife Kushina Uzumaki, the nine-tailed fox would have destroyed the village, and quite possibly have gone on to ravage other parts of the Land of Fire that the Hidden Leaf Village resided in. As it was, Minato and Kushina had driven the Kyuubi out of the Hidden Leaf before giving their lives to seal the Kyuubi away into their newborn son.
Hiruzen stood at the window, hands clasped behind his back as his mind whirled. This attack should not have been possible. For years, the Kyuubi had been held prisoner within the soul of Kushina Uzumaki, beginning at a young age when she received the Kyuubi from its previous warden, her great-aunt Mito Uzumaki, wife of the First Hokage, on her death bed. The Kyuubi had been trapped within both women's souls by fuuinjustu, the esoteric art of seals. A nearly arcane skillset, fuuinjutsu was more of an art than a science, a master of which could do or contain almost anything he or she set their mind to. The seals holding the Kyuubi to Kushina had been a masterpiece of Uzumaki sealing, the Uzumaki clan being the undisputed masters of the art of Fuuinjutsu.
As every seals master worth his salt knew, the seal of a female tailed beast container, or jinchuriki, would destabilize during childbirth, granting the bijuu within a chance at escape. Kushina had been due to go into labor soon. To prevent the kyuubi's escape, Minato, a seals master with skills on par with those of the Uzumaki of old, had been at his wife's side to stabilize the seal. It should not have broken. As such, Hiruzen came to one inescapable conclusion: someone had attacked the Kyuubi jinchuriki and had deliberately released the Kyuubi and unleashed it upon The Hidden Leaf. The question was, how had the assailant gotten past the elite guards and Minato himself? Who had killed the nursemaid and his dearest Biwako before—A sudden bloodcurdling scream from the neighboring room broke Hiruzen from his dark musings.
Minutes earlier, as the aging Sarutobi stood deep in thought, newborn Naruto Uzumaki lay in a crib, whimpering in his sleep as a dark shadow loomed over him. The shadow, a chuunin by the name of Takeshi Keisotsu, stared down at the fitfully slumbering babe. Jaws clenched as tight as the fist around his kunai knife, Takeshi brought the knife up to strike at the dozing demon in disguise. He took in a shuddering breath as he steeled himself with the memory of his family.
"Never shall you menace another family again, demon." The knife came down. A loud, almost deafening clunk sounded in the silent room.
For a long moment, Takeshi could only stare at the knife on the ground. Time seemed to stand still as he took in the sight of his hand clutching the knife, and the strange lack of blood. Just as suddenly as time had stopped, time resumed, Takeshi falling to his knees with a gasp of shock as a geyser of blood spewed from the stump that used to be his forearm. Weakly clasping his bleeding arm, Takeshi looked on in breathless horror as the darkness in the room coalesced into two shadowy humanoid figures in front of him. As one clasped a razor-sharp clawed hand around his throat and lifted him above its head, Takeshi gave loose a bloodcurdling scream.
Hiruzen Sarutobi burst through the door, bo staff in hand, in time to see a featureless humanoid the color of the midnight sky hoisting one profusely bleeding Takeshi Keisotsu bodily by the neck as another humanoid the dark red of freshly spilled arterial blood held the newly born Naruto Uzumaki, the only notable feature on both humanoids the pair of jagged antennae that reached for the floor. Hiruzen could only watch in horror as Takeshi was casually beheaded as the creature almost lazily closed its hand into a fist. Roaring with rage as the headless corpse collapsed limply, Hiruzen leapt at the ninja's executioner. However, the creature stopped Hiruzen's attack with one hand almost effortlessly.
Hiruzen grit his teeth as he struggled to free his bo staff from the creature's grip. He sneered at the creature as he met its solid sky-blue eyes. "You'll regret even coming here before I am through with…" Hiruzen trailed off as he stared into those deep blue eyes that danced and glittered with a joviality that was hauntingly familiar to him. "…Minato?" The claw gripping his bo staff loosened and fell to the creature's side.
Hiruzen leapt back as Takeshi's body suddenly dissolved into motes of light to be replaced by a pink floating cartoonish heart. Entranced, Hiruzen reached out with one hand towards the softly glowing heart, only to wrench his hand back as the heart was pierced by a black chain that seemed to absorb the light in the room. As heart evaporated into smoke and motes of shadow, Hiruzen stared at the crimson creature holding—no—gently cradling Naruto as it gazed at him with soft violet eyes. There was only one person, dead or alive, that Hiruzen knew of with those chains. Indeed, with that coloring and the noticeably more feminine build, there was only one person it could be. "…Kushina?"
As Hiruzen stared, the motes of darkness from the destroyed heart gathered, coming together until they formed a pitch-black, yellow-eyed creature the size of a child. Hiruzen took note how the shadow was almost identical in appearance to what he assumed were Minato and Kushina. 'Shadow, a good name for what they have become, I think.'
Hiruzen looked into Minato's eyes. "How…is this possible?" As he stared into the creature's solid blue eyes, Hiruzen began to see images flash through his mind.
The Shinigami watched as the mortals gave up their souls to him in exchange for locking away the raging Kyuubi. As the sealing came to a close, the death god reached into the blonde mortal's body and pulled out a soul. In another time and place, the death god would have been too concerned with tracking down certain…reticent…souls to notice anything amiss. However, this was not to be.
Seeing that he only had half a soul in his grasp, the Shinigami took a closer look at the three bodies curled up together. Dismissing the two empty corpses, the death god inspected the fresh seal written on the newborn's stomach, idly noting the three whisker-like birthmarks on either cheek. Reading the intricate calligraphy of the seal, a trivial matter for a god such as himself, the Shinigami found what he was looking for. Smiling cruelly, the death god plunged his ethereal hand into the seal, and pulled out two broken souls.
Kushina and Minato stared in horror at the death god clutching them in its grasp. Their last ditch plan to provide some form of protection to their only child had failed before it could even begin. Before the souls of the two parents could recover their wits, they were stilled as the Shinigami began to chuckle, a dry raspy thing that invoked the imagery of shifting bones in a mouldy crypt. The Shinigami brought the two souls close to his face.
"You amuse me, mortals." The god's voice was akin to the dry winds of a cracked wasteland, his breath a rancid fog of decaying flesh. "Many a mortal soul has summoned me…and made a deal with me…only to try and…renege on their part of the deal…as soon as they got what they wanted, wanting…more. But you…you did so for your child…something even I can respect." Kushina and Minato looked at each other in confusion. "For entertaining me…I shall grant you your wish…"
The Shinigami thrust the two souls into the shadow of the blonde infant below him. Withdrawing his empty hand from the shadow, the Shinigami vanished from the plane of the living, his parting words lingering in the dead air around the ceremonial alter.
"Be careful what you wish for…"
The next thing Minato and Kushina knew, there was a man standing over a crib, a knife ready to strike down. Reacting instinctively, the two erupted from their baby's shadow to defend him.
Hiruzen staggered as the visions ceased running through his mind. He turned to Minato and Kushina. "Is…that…I…I don't know what to say. Are, are you alright with this?" Minato and Kushina nodded, eliciting a sigh from the aged leader. He gestured vaguely at the jerkily twitching Shadow at their feet and where the corpse had disappeared. "Is…this…going to be a regular occurrence?"
Minato and Kushina looked at the small creature at their feet then looked at each other before shrugging helplessly, they had no idea that would happen, but it had seemed…right. Hiruzen sighed, rubbing his wrinkled forehead as he turned to leave the room. "Just…try to keep the bloodshed and paperwork to a minimum. I need to find out why there was an armed man in here, how he got past security, and who the hell told him about the seal!"
Carefully placing Naruto back into the crib, Minato and Kushina stood over their child, embracing happily as the sleeping infant used the newly created Shadow as a teddy bear.
I apologize to those of you awaiting the next installment of Aura Shinobi, but I hit a horrible case of writer's block, followed by Real Life kicking me in the proverbial Oompa-Loompas. Then I got this plot bunny: What if the Shinigami wasn't fooled by Minato only giving him half his soul? And then it went from there. Anyways, I hope you enjoy.
Guardsman Sparky