A/N: I thought it might be a really cool experiment to put Death Note into Naruto. I can assure readers that this is not a simple cut and paste - the story will actually be affected, and Naruto characters (or some of them) do play a focal part.

Unfortunately, I do not own Death Note or Naruto nor intend to use them for my profit - characters belong to Tsugumi Ohba/Takeshi Obata and Masashi Kishimoto, respectively. Regrettably.

Scroll of Death: Chapter 1: Events of Circumstance

The one thing that Light Yagami would never do was to falter.

His understanding yet curt smile was one of his trademarks, making sure that someone like him was remembered throughout the entirety of Hokage Tower. So much so that one day Godaime-sama herself had abruptly entered the dining hall and singled out the 'genius boy with the smile' for doing a special job. It was clear that Tsunade was drunk, but that happened most hours – the hours she was not drunk was instead dominated by her hangovers, and sometimes it was a hazard to be within a square mile of her presence. Nonetheless Light obeyed, and walked out of the door following the irregular clip-clop of Tsunade's sandals.

After a while, they came to a room marked with 'Out of Order, see Supervisor'. "Tsunade-sama… what is this?" he enquired, though he had a pretty good idea of what lay inside.

"It is the room which houses a lot of secret scrolls," Tsunade slurred. Light bit back his remark about his leader's incompetence as she reached inside her pouch.

She thrust her hand out, gripping Light's wrist and suddenly making a shallow cut on the edge of Light's thumb. He let out a hiss of pain, and glared at her as she muttered an incantation, forcibly pressing Light's thumb on the sutra that bound the door to the wall.

"Now, only you and I can gain access to this room – I hope you know how important your new job will be, Yagami."

-*-*-*-*-*-

Light was the best out of his Academy students, although he didn't have a natural talent for a specific ninjutsu, or have an innate idea of hand-to-hand combat, but his intelligence even at that age was unparalleled, and he even showed promise at chakra control, and genjutsu. His fellow Genin were puzzled as to why the prodigy at the top of the class would forgo any serious active duty, but he did not have the heart to tell them that most if not all the students would have sustained some kind of injury in the line of duty, and the unlucky few might not ever come back from some. He was too afraid of this form of demise, but too proud to admit it, and so he proudly took a job as assistant advisor to Shizune, who herself was assistant to the Hokage. A prestigious job indeed.

He was the perfect subordinate, who took his orders without question – but there was bending here and there. As Light shifted another pile of scrolls over to the 'scrutinised' pile, an unusually monochrome box of scrolls caught his eye.

It was almost too low-key for this room of elaborately decorated scrolls of jutsu, and seemed purposefully hidden in the corner, amidst bird-summons and cat-summons. Light was definitely curious, and as he hesitantly slid out a random scroll from this black box, a defined character caught his eye.

"Death…" He inadvertently made contact with the thin rope sealing the scroll, and as his hands burned briefly, he gave a cry of pain.

Someone wants to hide the contents of this scroll from me …Light frowned. He was quite clueless as to the contents, and when he was in a state of cluelessness, frustration soon followed, quite possibly preceding anger.

He soon came across almost a scribbled indentation in the circular rod of the scroll. As he squinted, he finally came to a realisation.

"Ryuu…ku…" Suddenly the scroll came to life.

-*-*-*-*-*-

Tsunade was impatient. Finally, the source of her impatience appeared in a puff of smoke, but her hangover that day was so piercing and so annoying that the quite 'pop' sounds only sought to aggravate her even further.

"Kakashi! You're late."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Godaime-sama. I got lost on the road of life, and …"

"Just shut up and let me order you around," Tsunade growled. Kakashi obediently closed his mouth and lazily looked, anticipating a mission request. She instead looked at him in a vaguely despairing manner.

"There were another 4 deaths this morning," she said, subdued. Kakashi suddenly regained attention.

"Chakra strangulation?!"

"…Yes," Tsunade admitted. "This issue is annoying me, and although this guy's killing criminals and not innocent civilians … I want to know how he's doing it. Why he's doing it."

"Would you want me to find out?" Kakashi inquired, so sure of her answer that he slowly began making his way to the door.

"No, Kakashi. You may be a focal part in this issue, but this is not your area of expertise – we don't need someone to destroy the enemy, or smoke him out. We need someone to find out who he is and how he is doing it,"

Kakashi waved his hand. "Then you want me to find someone," he opened the door and made his way out.

"I need you to find him," she shot out before the door was closed. Kakashi stopped so suddenly that his sandals squeaked on the tiled floor. As she heard the sound, Tsunade briefly kneaded her forehead.

She really didn't want to have to make him do this.

True enough, a visibly shaken Kakashi returned through the door. "Is it really that bad?" he asked, awed.

"He was in your old ANBU squad, and you're the only one who knows where he is, annoyingly," Tsunade said irritably. "So get him to come as soon as he can if not faster, and see what he can make of this,"

There was an awful pause as Kakashi digested the information. "Yes, ma'am."

-*-*-*-*-*-

"Oh my goodness, you got promoted?!" a screech of a young kunoichi hurtled through the corridor as she overheard the conversation between her elder brother and her mother.

"Calm down, Sayu, it's nothing to make a ruckus about," Light said exasperatedly, in reality aching to get the privacy gained by going behind his screen door.

"I think I can make a ruckus about the fact that you're now the Chief Advisor to the Advisor to the Hokage? Can't I?" Sayu now seemed confused. "Unless I'm not meant to say?"

"Of course you can say," Light laughed. "Just concerned with my dignity. Now I do have to go to my room, there's some work that Shizune-san assigned me to do." Sayu grinned.

"Okay, then!" she trilled. Light as casually as he could climbed the stairs to his bedroom.

After the sound of the screen door sliding along the wooden door frames came to a halt, Light finally rushed to grab the scroll that slid out the scroll pockets on his Chuunin vest.

The names were growing in number.

"Oh geez, Light … you've put more names in that scroll than I ever remember Shidou putting on his…"

"Who's Shidou, Ryuk?"

"No one that matters." Ryuk was a warped being clothed in black robes; eyes lolling precariously in emaciated sockets and unruly black hair spiking in all directions. He licked his dry darkly-coloured lips.

"Do you have to seal me in that scroll every time you go outside?" he whined.

"Of course, Ryuk. You're just a summon, after all," Light coolly explained. "Although you may be able to hide yourself from the human eye, a lot of people in this village sense chakra, and you exude it from yourself in the most obvious way, if I may point it out."

"Well, you could just be looking extra hard," Ryuk said sourly. "Do you have any apples round here?"

"Some in my pouch." Ryuk emitted a gleeful sound as he zoomed over to Light's utilities pouch, where, true to Light's word, two shining apples gleamed with goodness.

"Youran Tanaka. Satoshi Nakamura. Naoko Kojikata," Light drummed out, carefully brushing the names into the scroll. The chakra signature needed along with the name to kill the named seeped along his brush, sinking into the ink.

Two murderers and a hostage-taker from the Land of Mist. Light smiled.

Ryuk had literally shot out of the scroll after Light had read out his name. Although he had been thrown backward by the force of his chakra, Ryuk came to a juddering stop just before he reached the wall, and then slowly stretched into inhuman contortions, all sorts of joints realigning themselves with sweat-inducing clicking. After this ritual, he slowly turned to Light, who was moaning in fear.

"Finally. Someone finally releases me out of that hellhole. God, at last!" Ryuk made a peculiar sound which Light reasoned was the equivalent of a whoop in whatever land he had come from. "So … how many names have you written?"

"…Names?"

"Oh dear, dear, dear. You haven't done anything, have you?" Ryuk practically tutted. "Well, I'll be coming back to you soon," he flitted to the door.

"Wait!" Light sputtered. Ryuk turned around in curiosity. "Why are you going to come back?"

Ryuk's head cocked to one side, and he made a hoarse giggle. "Well, that scroll you're holding was mine; I was sealed in it 'til just now. And now it's yours,"

Light's eyes widened. Ryuk's eyes rolled. "God, I'm bored," he groaned out before promptly passing through the wall.

-*-*-*-*-*-

The silver-haired ninja landed softly on top of the tell-tale rocks that signified the entrance to the underground hideout. As he straightened, he vaguely wondered how on earth he could get down there without getting killed by the old man.

As if he was listening, said old man pummelled into him, and Kakashi only just remembered to carry out a classic ANBU swivelling move, quickly throwing him a comfortable distance away.

However, it seemed that this man quickly recognised Kakashi's features and immediately stopped his attacks with a grace that was unmatched. Kakashi awkwardly cleared his throat – he never really was on top form when he was around this unnerving bodyguard.

"I hear that the Hokage is going to get a cat next week," he said as casually as he could in the circumstances. The grey hair on the old man's temples glinted as he glared at the intruder spouting coded nonsense.

"Leave him, Watari."

A fairly deep toned manly voice resounded from behind Kakashi, making him sigh with regret about how his former squad member had most likely improved his infiltration skills.

"It has been a long time, Sempai," he said, part-warily and part in a tone that Kakashi couldn't quite interpret. Pleased?

The former ANBU member was crouching on a large boulder, eyes wide with childlike curiosity and thumb resolutely in mouth.

"Likewise, Ryuzaki," Kakashi returned cordially to his most difficult former squadron member.

A/N: PLEASE REVIEW. Orange likes comments :3