Faith, Hope, and Love

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, it would have been written very differently if I did.

Prologue

October 10th, Yondaime 3—Hidden Cave Outside of Konoha

"Relax Kushina, it will be over soon" stated the blonde, green eyed, and very large busted woman. This woman was Tsunade Senju, one of the Sannin. She was here to help with the birth of her teammate's pupil's child. As Konoha's premier medic and the child's official godmother, no other person was so trusted with ensuring the birth went smoothly.

"That is fucking easy for you to say, you're not the one giving birth!" yelled a red haired, green eyed, woman lying on the floor. She was Kushina Uzumaki, last of her clan, wife to the Yondaime Hokage, and Jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi no Kitsune. Normally there would be nothing particularly concerning about her child's birth, but this birth was special. Not only would her seal on the Kyuubi weaken while giving birth, but also after much debate it had been decided that the Kyuubi should be transferred to her soon to be born son. Her husband had labored many long nights devising a previously inconceivable seal that would safely transport the Kyuubi into their son without killing Kushina. This would be the first time a Jinchuuriki would survive the extraction of their beast thus giving the new Jinchuuriki a chance to learn directly from their predecessor on how to control the beast within them.

As Kushina lay there screaming in pain from the contractions of birth giving, her husband Minato Namikaze had just finished writing the last symbol for the sealing to take place. Minato was the Yondaime Hokage of Konohagakure and potentially the strongest Hokage since Hashirama Senju, the founder of Konohagakure itself. His hair was a spikey blonde and his eyes as blue as the sky on a clear day. He was famous for his strong demeanor in the face of all challenges, but even the greatest of men become weak in the prospect of their child being born. Unlike many fathers however, Minato knew that this sealing had to proceed without a hitch, so he had enlisted the help of a few interested parties. To a man with long, spikey white hair and dark eyes he gave the command "Jiraiya, the seal is finished, send out the toad and block off the entrance."

Jiraiya was known far and wide as the Toad Hermit as well as being a self-proclaimed "super pervert" leading to many not respecting him. Despite these traits however, Jiraiya was arguably the strongest of the Sannin overall in terms of skill. He was the teacher of Minato and godfather to the soon to be born child. In time he had come to see Minato as his own son and thus had no qualms putting up the strongest of defenses in the name protecting his soon to be born godson. Upon hearing Minato's words, he spoke to the waiting messenger toad "It's ready, go and tell Sarutobi-sensei to be on full alert, the time is close." As the toad hopped away, Jiraiya performed the hand signs for the Summoning: Toad Mouth Bind jutsu. The cave quickly morphed into the intestines of the fire-breathing toad that Jiraiya and Minato had signed a contract with. While the front of the cave's entrance was left open, the back was sealed off with Jiraiya standing guard. Anyone who entered while Jiraiya was using the technique would become permanently trapped and doomed to a slow, agonizing digestion. This is the world of ninja however, and one cannot rely on just one failsafe to protect such a delicate event. This is why Jiraiya and Minato had enlisted the help of yet another individual.

At the entrance to the cave stood an old man wearing the plated armor worn by ninja in the first and second shinobi world wars. In his hand was a gigantic staff that was in reality the weapon form of Enma: The Monkey King. The man holding it was none other than the Kami of Shinobi, former Third Hokage of Konoha, Hiruzen Sarutobi. Hiruzen had been around since the founding of Konoha and had the longest reign of any Hokage to date. He had fought more battles and seen more in his life than most other ninja combined. Even in his old age, Sarutobi was still one of the strongest and most dangerous ninja alive. His former student and successor had requested that he aid in the protection of Minato's child during its birth and the kind-hearted man was only happy to oblige.

The messenger toad reached Hiruzen and told him all was prepared. Hiruzen signaled for the ANBU in the surrounding area to move into formation and activate the Barrier Gate: Five Seals Technique. When the seals went up, a bolder locked itself into place covering the only entrance/exit into the cave. Unless an individual managed to destroy all five seals simultaneously, the barrier was impossible to breach and with Hiruzen himself guarding one of the seals, the chances the barrier would be breached were virtually nil.

"Sarutobi-sama, all is in place, all members are in position" spoke an ANBU wearing a dog mask.

"Good, return to post A-3 and await signal for warning or completion, be on full alert" responded Hiruzen. With the final confirmation in place, Hiruzen began his vigil to protect the birth of the child who would likely become yet another Hokage in the future.

A man dressed in a black cloak with an orange swirl mask stood on a tree branch looking at the scene before him. The tomoe of his red Sharingan eye were spinning rapidly as he was attempting to figure out why his Kamui wasn't letting him transport through the barrier. When he discovered that it was the very same barrier technique he planned to use in bases for when he finished building Akatsuki, he made four shadow clones to locate the other four seals, a task that was made simple with his Sharingan revealing the connecting points. Normally such barriers weren't a problem, but because this barrier's anchors actually existed in several distant spaces simultaneously, his Kamui couldn't penetrate it; that was the exact reason why he had chosen the technique to be used in the first place. When his clones were in position, he activated Kamui and teleported in front of the Kami of Shinobi, a man he once held in high regard that was now nothing more than an obstacle in his path. "Oh my, it seems that you've blocked my path, would you mind stepping aside, I need to remove that seal," the cloaked man said.

"Until the boy is born, no one gets in or out of this cave" Hiruzen state absolutely as he moved into a battle position, already channeling chakra to strike.

"Really now it doesn't have to be that difficult" whined the cloaked man. He then ran forward activating his Kamui to phase through the old ninja and pull off the tag when he felt his clones suddenly disappear. He immediately jumped out of the former Hokage's range as the memories came flooding back to him of what became of his clones.

The first clone saw a rock with a seal on it, there was nothing guarding it but being cautious it moved quickly to grab the seal. Suddenly it heard a loud scream "YOSH!" And a foot came from seemingly nowhere kicking it into the air, before it could even think it had dispelled from the impact.

The second clone could see the rock that had its target, but on top of it sat a man with his hair tied up in a way that resembled a pineapple. As the clone suddenly realized it couldn't move, the figure muttered something about "troublesome" and the clone felt pressure, then it felt no more.

The third clone looked around but could not see a rock with a seal tag on it anywhere, its Sharingan said the seal was in the middle of the clearing, but there was no rock to be seen. It couldn't be genjutsu or his Sharingan would have detected it. A breeze blew through and the clone saw the grass shift unnaturally. A camouflage blanket eh? I guess old tricks are the best…before the clone could even finish the thought, a sword had jabbed through its chest dispelling it, leaving behind an ANBU in a cat mask.

The last clone saw the seal, and in front of it was an ANBU in a dog mask, as the clone prepared to move forward it heard the sound of chirping from behind. It quickly jumped out of the way dodging the attack that destroyed the branch it had been standing on. That technique, it must by my old teammate Kakashi ever faithfully serving Konoha. Watching the smoke clear to find a straight run to the tag, the clone suddenly heard a shout of "One Thousand Years of Pain!" The clone then disappeared in shock.

The cloaked man was frustrated, but more than frustrated he was embarrassed. To be defeated by THAT technique of all things. The man didn't have long to wallow in self-disgust however as the Kami of Shinobi was upon him in mere seconds creating a large crater in the ground with the end of his staff. Unnerved that he was being countered so easily, the cloaked man charged at Hiruzen once more, utilizing Kamui to make himself invulnerable to attack.

As the man charged, Hiruzen quickly formed hand seals and fired off a Fire Release: Fire Dragon Flame Bullet. His eyes widened in shock as the man simple ran through the technique without a scratch on him. As the man moved in to strike Hiruzen smirked and shouted "Great Clone Explosion!" The masked man barely managed to escape the explosion's damage but the blow made him land directly in front of the seal. What surprised both men was to see the rock lift on its own.

The masked man was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth and rocketed forward trying to use this opportunity. Hiruzen was momentarily in shock, thinking he had slipped in his age…when the masked man suddenly flew out of the cave at an alarming speed, crashing off in the distance.

Slowly walking out of the cave with a bleeding hand was Tsunade. Shortly behind her was Jiraiya whistling. "Now just how hard did you hit him Tsunade?"

"Hard enough to break my hand" she irately replied. Both Jiraiya and Hiruzen flinched at the thought of being punched THAT hard by Tsunade. Neither was worried for her broken hand, she was the best medic in Konoha, if she couldn't fix a broken hand, then Konoha was surely doomed.

Hiruzen then came to his senses and asked Tsunade "so the boy has been born and the Kyuubi transferred?"

Tsunade's features softened at that moment and she smiled saying "yes, his eyes are just like his father's and he's now sleeping, you can see him, but if you wake him, I'll punch you all the way to Iwa."

Hiruzen chuckled at the thought, but didn't doubt her words as he walked into the cave. Seeing Minato embracing Kushina with a bundle in her arms, Hiruzen slowly moved forward and smiled at the sleeping face. "What's his name?"

Kushina looked up with the glowing face of a mother and replied "We named him after one of Jiraiya's books, his name is Naruto, Naruto Namikaze."

Hiruzen could only smile as he looked down on Naruto's soft newborn features, if you didn't already know it, you could never guess the boy housed the strongest of all Bijuu. "That is a wonderful name, may I hold him?" Kushina handed the bundle over to Hiruzen and he whispered softly to the boy with a tuft of blonde hair "welcome Naruto Namikaze, to Konohagakure, may the Will of Fire burn brightly in you from this day on."

The masked man woke up in a cave that he had come to know very well; the only problem was that he didn't recall using Kamui to transport himself. As he stood up he heard a voice answer his very thoughts "I had Zetsu bring you here once you landed from that attack, so you failed to capture the Kyuubi it seems, Obito."

The masked man now known as Obito was immediately on his knees in respect to the one that had brought him back from the dead. "I tried my hardest great father, but they were far better prepared than I had anticipated and caught me by surprise. The child was born far more quickly than I had imagined. In addition two of the Sannin as well as the Third, Fourth and several ANBU were guarding him, it simply couldn't be done."

Looking up, Obito saw the face of what was once Madara Uchiha, the strongest ninja to ever come from the Uchiha clan, his ancestor. Madara had brought Obito back from death to serve his purposes and in exchange had made Obito more powerful than nearly any shinobi.

Madara looked down upon Obito with the Rinnegan eyes he had developed shortly before his "death" with disdain. "Well, I suppose it couldn't be helped" Madara confirmed, "only having one Sharingan eye must have surely hampered you, we need to fix that now if our plans are to move forward." With that, Madara tore out one of his own eyes only for a new one to grow in its place. "Here, take this to replace your lost eye."

Obito was shocked at Madara's generosity, but had learned to not question the man's choices. He took off his mask and inserted the eye; once the pain faded and his vision adjusted he was amazed at the clarity and power the Rinnegan gave him. If he were to do everything over with this eye, he would surely be victorious.

Madara then told him "now go back to Kiri and monitor your puppet, I will summon you when I decide what to do next."

Obito quickly obeyed transporting himself back to the world of the living in his cave near Kirigakure where he had the Mizukage under his Genjutsu. As he prepared to exit the cave however he felt his body grow stiff, he then heard Madara's voice in his head say to him "do you really think I take failure so lightly? I can't afford to deal with children who can't follow orders."

He then lost control of his body and could only watch as he used the Outer Path: Samsara of Heavenly Life technique. His body began to shift and transform and he felt himself slipping away from his body.

"No…" he began to feel cold.

"This can't be" everything went dark to the eyes that were no longer his.

"No…Kakashi…Rin…" and Obito Uchiha was no more; in his place now stood the revived and very much alive Madara Uchiha, who was now ready to move forward with his plans, without any more setbacks.

"Now we will see just how much this world has changed, first, to Kiri" and he was gone.

Author's Note

Hello everyone,

KajiyaSatoshi here, this is my first time writing a fanfiction, but after reading nearly every 100k+ story on this site for Naruto I figured I'd like to give it a shot myself. I welcome all forms of review both critique and complement, but please, if you aren't going to say something that is productive to either my motivation or the improvement of the story, please refrain from commenting.

This is my first time writing a story so I'm a little new in certain fields but I felt like giving this a shot, if all goes well and my motivation stays high, I hope for this to be a very long, well written story. It is important to note three things when reading my story:

1. This is a fanfiction, while I will take several ideas, abilities, characters, and locations from the canon storyline, my world will differ in certain aspects, obviously some have already occurred. This is the nature of fanfiction, if you wanted a copy of the canon storyline, go read the manga or one of the many stories that do so.

2. Chakra, it's use and method of being used won't necessarily work the same way as in canon. The same goes for some characters and matchups. These will act as I think would fit their character for the situation they are in, this story will highly shift the Naruto world from the bottom up and characters will have to adjust. Characters are only OOC if you relate them to the original canon character. Again this is fanfiction and I will write the characters the way I think makes sense.

3. Finally a word on plotline and pairings. I have a plan for the plotline, BUT it might change with time if it seems to work better. For pairings I have NONE planned, but that doesn't mean they won't happen, this is meant to be an adventure story, not a romance one. Telling me you'd like to see Naru/x will not have any affect on who Naruto, or anyone else MIGHT be paired with, if it becomes useful to the plot at all.

All of that being said I hope that you will all enjoy this story. Anytime you have questions feel free to PM me and if relevant enough I will post responses at the end of chapters to clarify points. I may not answer some questions if it will give away plot points however.

Thanks! ^^