Hey. This idea has been in my head for a while, so I decided to write it down. Its my first attempt at a Naruto fic, so I'm not sure how it will go... Anyway, I suppose I should get the legal stuff out of the way... I don't own Naruto, never have, never will.

Here it is... Hope it's alright...

Prologue

On that night, when the world shook, the wind screamed and the rivers ran red with blood, lives were abruptly shoved onto different paths from the ones they were originally on.

I was thrown onto a path that I didn't expect to have to take for ten more years, and even then I was expecting something different.

After all, I had just entered the ANBU ranks under the command of my mother, a squadron leader. My father was one of the top Hunter-nins in Konoha. I was following tradition, as most of my clan enters either the ranks of ANBU or become Hunter-nins. I was 16 and looking forward to the rest of my life.

But all that changed.

That night, that night I was forbidden to help in the protection of the village. My superior, my mother, forbade me from entering the battle, just as other clans forbade their heirs from entering. The survival of the clan was just as, if not more important than that of the survival of the village.

So, I stayed safe, as any clan heir should, I obeyed orders, as any good shinobi must, and waited. Waited for the news that the fight was over, that we were safe.

However, that was not to be. I abruptly felt when the control of the clan shifted hands and I was thrown onto my new path. The surge of knowledge and power that came from being the Head of the clan struck me dumb for a moment, before I realised what it meant. I was now leader of the Shinikaze Clan, otherwise known as the Assassins Clan. I now controlled all decisions in my clan, and had the power, both political and physical, to enforce my decisions. However, the Clan Heads never made too much of a fuss about the physical power. After all, we weren't the Hyuuga, with their Branch House Seal. We were respected by our Clan members, by our family, for our skills and abilities, and we didn't need to segment the Clan to ensure its protection. After all, we didn't have a Kekkei Genkai, just clan jutsus which suited our purposes.

All of this didn't matter though, because it meant quite simply that my parents had died. Only their deaths could cause the abrupt transfer of power between Clan Heads and the heir. Normal succession was done through a ritual, one in which the current Heads of the Clan passed on their knowledge and power to the heir under the watchful eyes of the clan.

I don't know how long I stood where I was, unable to comprehend the fact that my parents were dead. When I did begin to notice the outside world once more, I could hear cheers and shouts of joy, exclaiming that the beast was killed, was defeated by our beloved Yondaime.

Then there came the screams of denial, of anguish and pain. The monster, the demon was defeated, but our Yondaime had been killed too.

Then there came the signal. The signal that meant that the village was meant to meet at the bottom of the Hokage tower. Only the Hokage could use this signal, so I was confused until I realised that the Third must have taken control once more.

My body moved automatically to the meeting point, ignoring the destruction of a section of the city I had to pass. Once I was at the foot of the tower, I barely took in the Sandaime's words til one part of his speech caught my, and the rest of the grief-stricken village's, attention. The Yondaime hadn't killed the demon. It wasn't possible for a human, even one of the Yondaime's calibre, to kill a demon. Instead, the Yondaime had sealed the demon within the body of a newborn infant.

Screams of rage filled the air as people began to demand that the babe be killed, that it was the demon. I watched with a disinterested air until I felt it. A killing aura unlike any I had felt descended upon the mass of raging villagers and shinobi, freezing the villagers instantly and causing the shinobi to unconsciously reach for their kunai. Seeking out the source of this deadly rage, my eyes fell upon the form of the Sandaime, the infant containing the demon nestled in his arms. With a start I realised that this massive killing intent originated from the Third.

In that moment I understood why he was picked to be the Sandaime. I understood why other nations feared the shinobi known as the "Professor". I understood how the Sandaime could have trained shinobi who were so powerful that they had their own individual rank, the Sannin. Finally, I understood that the kindly old man that we saw walking the streets of Konoha was merely a mask, a cloak the hid the true power of the Sandaime.

The Sandaime, upon realising that he had the attention of the crowd once more issued a surprising order. No one was to speak of the true events that occurred this night. Anyone caught speaking of such events were to be treated as if they had committed treason. And the punishment for treason, and now this new law, was death.

For four years I was a good shinobi. Like a good shinobi, I followed orders. Like a good shinobi, I arrested those who broke the law, handing them over to the scar-ridden Ibiki for interrogation. But I didn't want to be a good shinobi. I wanted that creature's death, like all those who were arrested. I wanted it so bad that when I found out that I was put on watch duty of the creature, I had to restrain myself from reaching for my kunai at the mere thought. Upon receiving these orders, I immediately raced to the Hokage's tower, to see the Sandaime, to demand a new assignment.

The Sandaime looked at me, disappointment in those kind eyes of his, and I felt ashamed. He told me to be a true shinobi and look beneath that which we saw. When I took my position observing the demon, I saw something the shocked and horrified me. I saw a lonely boy, not a malicious demon. I saw an innocent child who was protecting the village from destruction. I saw what the Fourth and the Third had wanted us to see, a hero. But we had stubbornly and ignorantly clung to our beliefs and hatred, unwilling to let the past go.

I watched the boy for a month, my orders preventing me from actively engaging with the child unless his life was in danger, and I struggled to follow my orders as I saw the boy tormented each day by villagers, unable to comprehend why he was being treated the way he was. I thought that what happened on a day to day basis was enough to destroy someone's spirit, but the child kept fighting, kept trying to make friends, kept trying to get someone to smile back to his shy, innocent smile. But no one did. What I saw I thought was enough to make battle-hardened shinobi sick, what I saw, I thought was the worst.
I was wrong.

- ANBU squad leader, Head of the Shinikaze Clan, Shinikaze Kohaku