This is a disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. If I did, wouldn't this be the world-renowned manga and anime, while Kishimoto's work would be the fan fiction?

Just to warn my prospective readers, this is a first-person story, much like the Dresden Files. At the beginning of the chapter, it will say what perspective it is being led around from. Typically it will be Naruto, but don't be surprised too much if it tends to change.

AU Changes: Akatsuki has a very different goal than in the anime. They aren't using the bijuu to fuel their doomsday plot. Instead, they see the value of loyal Jinchukiri as a potent force to wield. They take three Jinchukiri: Naruto, Yugito, and Gaara right after they are born. They train them to create the sub organization of Akatsuki: the Red Rose. This group is designed to give the Akatsuki a good reputation before they reveal the actual members, all of which are international criminals.

"Human Speaking"

"Human Thinking"

"Inhuman Speaking"

"Inhuman Thinking"

Part 1.1

"Your mission is to enter, and dominate, the Konoha chuunin exams that are happening soon." The shadowy figure told me, the voice greatly distorted. If I looked closely, I could see the chakra blue static outline of a person, it's ringed eyes boring into me. But no matter how intense the gaze was, I didn't really feel unnerved. I grinned at these words. After all those years of hard work and training, we were finally ready to emerge from the shadows and do some real work. However, there could be a big problem with the assignment given.

"But what about if they figure out about who I am?" I asked the figure "They might get pretty upset if the realize about me, and what I'm carrying. Not to mention the fact that I would be in the heart of their territory. It would be pretty hard to mount a rescue if they decide to try to repossess me."

"Don't worry." The shadow replied, "Your birth is one of the greatest secrets in the country. They believe that someone killed you, and that you no longer exist. Only the leader of the village knows the true fate of that child that disappeared so many years ago, and he has made no attempt to take you back. Whether he wants you back in the village or not, we don't know, but we aren't too worried."

I nodded. What they said made sense, and the information put most of my worries out of my mind. "But what about Gaara and Yugito? They weren't created to get rid of their 'prisoners'; they were quite possibly the most valuable resources their villages had to offer. Their home villages might try to reclaim their old weapons. And they would probably put a lot of effort into it. Too much for such a small team."

"That will not be a problem." Another figure stated, stepping out from the statues. The man had raven hair and blood red eyes, a look of complete dispassion upon his face. He was adorned with a black cloak that was covered in red clouds. "They have no actual information about what you look like, so they won't recognize you on sight. However, they probably will recognize the moves that their beasts are reputed for, so you need to avoid using youki hijutsu. You will need to rely on the standard jutsu that we instructed you in. To help that, we will be adding a quick release seal to your standard ones. Just focus your normal chakra into it, and the normal flow will return in sixty seconds. It may be slow, but it is the fastest seal we are capable of adding."

All three nodded at this, quickly responding with a "Hai, Itachi-sama." Itachi was almost emotionless, but he knew how to properly prepare for a mission. We had heard about how he became ANBU at 13, years before even the most talented ninja were even considered.

"Who will be posing as our Jounin instructor, Itachi-sama?" Gaara asked from my left.

"Standard shinobi cels all have a Jounin instructor, and should be present for their student's chuunin exams. I assume we have one to better hold together the disguise."

"Yes, we do." Itachi replied. "We needed someone who is knowledgeable about Konoha for this mission, so I was naturally picked. Because my former peers would definitely kill me on sight, I will be acquiring a genjutsu ring from the leader. Kisame will wait outside the village as backup. Also, to avoid suspicion, we will have you use aliases to help put them off the trail. That should prevent anyone from realizing who we are until after we have established ourselves as a potent ninja group."

All three of us nodded again. I could only see my two teammates through the corners of my eyes, so I couldn't really see exactly how they were reacting to the news of our first mission. However, I knew that they were probably grinning eagerly too. All of us knew that this was going to be good.

Part 1.2

Oh, by the way, you're probably wondering who I am. My name is Uzumaki Naruto, ex citizen of Konoha, and the team leader of Akatsuki's next generation: Red Rose. I have been given the name Fumetsu as my squad member alias. My teammates are Gaara and Yugito, squad names Harijan and Fukahi respectively.

I have lived all of my conscious life with the Akatsuki, and don't remember anything beyond that. Since I was able to walk, I was trained to be a strong warrior. When I wasn't training, I was studying about other countries. Yugito joined me so soon; it feels like she was training alongside me forever. Gaara completed our first cel a few years later.

As you can probably guess, the Akatsuki weren't exactly parent material; there were distant guides who led us to power. So, we had to rely on each other for entertainment. We would make sparring games involving stealing bells tied to belt waists; have races, and other competitions of fitness. During the nights, we would attempt to prank the others without caught. I tended to excel in the pranks, coming up with more and more ingenious ways to have fun at my teammate's expense. Our life was much more different than what most other children went through, but we knew nothing else, and we had little reason to complain. They had given us children powers that some adults can't even imagine accomplishing in their lifetimes.

Years later, Orochimaru left Akatsuki after failing to steal Itachi's body. We were told later that the only reason that he hadn't tried to take one of our bodies was because the bijuu protected us from his techniques. I guess I felt grateful for that information, because it meant that the nine tailed fox sealed in me had done something useful in protecting me.

Our teachers made it safer and easier to use the power of our captive tailed beasts by fixing our seals, which were all crafted sloppily when they were originally put into place. We didn't really blame our sealers. They just weren't exactly on the level of Akatsuki's specialists. Akatsuki really knew what they were doing when they applied the seals. Layers upon layers of easy to remove sealing allowed us to regulate and modulate the use of our strength.

Over all those years, we took no missions. We just were trained in every form of ninja art that Akatsuki was willing to put at our disposal. Yugito, with her combination of fine control mixed with raw power, had great potential in genjutsu and the finer Ninjutsu. Gaara had a lot of talent in Ninjutsu, using Shukaku's ability to control sand to put a devastating defensive and offensive, but he still learned various types of ranged Ninjutsu to bolster his already impressive abilities.

However, I still like to think that I had the fun ability of the team. Since it was virtually impossible to kill me due to unnatural stamina and near limitless youki from the Kyuubi, I was trained in taijutsu. Even though I could take almost any hit, I was trained extensively to avoid them. Why waste power on something you could avoid easily. But, it was very hard for me to train taijutsu in Akatsuki. All of the members were either Ninjutsu or genjutsu masters. So, all the effort put into taijutsu was not nearly rewarding as Ninjutsu was. Even though I didn't have the fine control of Yugito, or the natural ability for it like Gaara, but I had way more chakra then them. I could do the higher end Ninjutsu that we learned without breaking a sweat.

And finally, we were finally permitted to take a mission. And this one was no pushover. While we were strong for our age, we were probably not much beyond chuunin level without our youki hijutsu, so we are in for a real challenge with this. We'll all have a good time, though. Gaara especially. With the sand protecting him from injury, he tends to have a daredevil streak. During training, he would do crazy up close attacks without fear of retaliation. I spent years trying to get fast enough to get past his sand shield, and that wasn't even too reliable. Together, we were a strong team, and we knew that we had the abilities to beat down the competition.

Oh, I guess I better give you a description of what we normally look like. I wear black ninja pants and long sleeved shirt, tapered off at the ends with red bandages for the arms, white ones for the legs. On my hands are sleeveless gloves with metal plate backing, and catch-claw fronts with easy release. On top of the shirt, I wear a light, metal plated blood red vest, with the symbol for 'nine' emblazoned upon it in black. Gaara is dressed in a red shirt, with black pants and matching coat. On the sash, in black, is the character for 'one'. Wrapped around him is a red sash that holds his gourd. Yugito wears a pinkish white and black shirt, black pants, and matching gloves over bandages. Oh, and a red sash is wrapped around her waist with a black character for 'two'. That should give you a good picture in your mind as to what we look like.

Part 1.3

After quickly having the seals applied to our bodies, we moved out of the Akatsuki base for the first time. It was so strange. I had seen out of the hideout before, seeing a canyon river with trees running through it, and I had seen nature before. The training room was designed to emulate various natural terrains. But outside, it was nature, as far as the eye could see.

Itachi and Kisame had taken up physical disguises using genjutsu rings. While Itachi looked so different that no one would recognize him for his real face, Kisame really took the cake when it came to changes. His skin was a normal color, his eyes no longer irregularly small. That wasn't the biggest change, though. Under the henge, his sword was not visible at all. I wouldn't have realized who he was if it wasn't for the fact that I knew who he was supposed to be.

"Those rings are really impressive." I told them as I slipped on my sunglasses to help me accommodate to the natural light. Gaara and Yugito followed suit. The natural light was harsh, but not overly debilitating. I was almost sure that I would be able to take them off the next day.

"Our leader has much talent." Itachi replied as emotionlessly as possible. "Also, there has been a change in plans. To help prevent any way of them figuring out where we are from, we are going to take a boat south to wave, then east into the village hidden in the leaves."

All three of us nodded; we understood perfectly the chain of command established within Akatsuki. We were trained to be efficient and precise, and following orders was the core.

So, we headed off east towards the coast. It was a few days, because there were no trees to jump from this far north. Over the days, the three of us removed our sunglasses, and dawned our Red Rose cloaks that Itachi and Kisame had given us. They were very much like the normal Akatsuki cloaks. However, instead of red cloud symbols covering it, there was one large, red rose emblazoned upon the back of each of them. Finally, we were going to establish our names across the world.

From the coast, we met one of Kisame's wave contacts. He was a pirate ship owner, working for the Businessman Gato. His job was normally to patrol the coast of the land of the waves, and sink any ship trying to enter it. You could tell he was a pretty rough person just by looking at him. Apparently, he had recently lost an eye in his line of work, as he wore a bandage wrapped around his head, covering the left side of his face. Within an hour of meeting up with the contact, we were speeding south along the coast in the oversized catamaran.

Now, even with a motorized boat, it took a few more days to get all the way to wave. Also, Gaara was particularly seasick. Even with jutsu to fortify him, he was still very queasy. He spent as much time as possible sleeping, and when he was awake, Yugito and I mocked him for his seasickness. He probably would have tried to beat us up for that, but he was too ill at ease to do anything serious. Itachi stayed out of it; he was above such mocking. Kisame just sat back and smirked at our childish antics.

As we traveled down the coast, it got even mistier and mistier. Something to do with the fact that the further south you travel, the hotter it gets was what the pirate mentioned to us. The annoying part was that with low visibility. The boat could crash at any minute, and we wouldn't know until it was too late. That wasn't too bad though. We were almost there, and probably walk on the water the rest of the way there if we had to.

But finally, we made it to shore. The mist that we had traveled through crept up the rocky beach, which constituted the coastline of wave. If I looked closely, I could see the outline of trees up beyond the beach. When we landed on the shore, some of Gatou's men were waiting for us. Apparently the crime boss was desperate to isolate the small country, by the amount of pirates waiting for us to dock. However, it was quickly cleared up. After our driver talked to some of his colleagues, who looked every bit as rough and thuggish as he, we moved out.

Part 1.4

"So, what's our rout out of here?" I asked Kisame, who was leading us through the area. He was ex Hidden Mist after all. Even though he probably hadn't been here for years, he probably knew this place like the back of the hand.

"Well," Kisame replied, his voice still similar to the original. "I talked to Homura before we left, and he said that the easiest way to Konoha would be to take the bridge that the local dissidents are building. It's not completed, though it would be a simple matter to jump off and walk the rest of the way. The quickest way is through this forest, southwest until we come to it."

"That plan will do, Kisame." Itachi replied, "It is imperative that we avoid the locals. They wouldn't recognize us, but I don't want to be involved with these 'dissidents'. It would be a massive waste of effort to involve ourselves in some local dispute that doesn't involve us."

All of us nodded, even Kisame. Itachi was someone you didn't disrespect. He could mentally torture you into a coma in a matter of seconds with the mangekyou sharingan. If you were near him, you followed his commands.

This time, however, trees were abundant, which allowed us to rapidly jump from tree to tree, making travel time take a fraction of what it should. It took Gaara, Yugito, and I a while to get used to jumping from trees because we weren't used to it too much. However, it barely took any time to get the hang of it. With our preferred mode of travel, combined with the small size of the island, we quickly made it to the bridge.

However, the sight that met us there was not what we expected at all. A silver haired Konoha Jounin, a black haired boy, and a pink haired girl stood over a corpse that appeared to be wearing a leaf headband. Opposing them was a strange man wearing only pants and a large sword, accompanied by a slight female wearing a hidden mist tracker mask.

"Damn it." Itachi exclaimed. "I didn't want to have to get involved with this struggle. It is irrelevant to the mission."

"Well, let's face the music." Kisame replied "I'm going to go get chummy with the locals." Grinning maniacally, he pulled the genjutsu ring off his finger. The normal, human skin melted off and pooled on the ground, revealing the eerie blue shark skin that characterized this ex mist swordsman. The residue from the skin began to mold and shift shape, eventually changing into the form of his sword. Kisame bent down and picked it up, resting it on his shoulder.

"Take Naruto, Gaara, and Yugito with you." Itachi told his partner. "I want this fight over as quickly as possible, and my moves are too recognizable to fight here with. And now, Kisame, you're going to have to take my original role as the group's Jounin sensei, because they are going to see who you really are."

"Very well, Itachi." Kisame turned towards us, and motioned. "I'll back up the Jounin. You take care of the brats. Try not to show off too much of your powers. It would best if you left most of your techniques hidden for the chuunin exam." All three of us nodded, and we exited out of our cover, trying to get this fight over as quickly as possible.

A.N.: I apologize for the short chapter. This introduction was supposed to be a quick one, just setting the tone for what is to come. If you haven't noticed, Gaara is not an insomniac in this book, because they made the seal safer to channel the youki, as well as mentally shielding the Jinchukiri. Don't know what I will do for pairings, if any. Please review, because that's what makes me post more chapters. They tell me how much the interest in the story is, so I know if it's worth it to continue. I expect about five before I make a new chapter. I do have the second chapter, but I'm just waiting for reviews to post it.