Darkness.

The sun was asleep, as were most people in the village. They would not have been able to see much, anyways. The skies were almost pitch black, with small flashing pieces of silver in the sky twinkling. Few would wake this early.

One was the Hokage, making sure she knew everything that was going on in her village, even during the hours before dawn.

One was her faithful assistant, ready to catch her if she ever fell asleep.

Others, various ANBU and Jounin, beginning training routines at insane times, making full use of the precious silence and darkness .

And one was Mitsuko Nori, jounin-sensei and taskmaster to three genin, one who'd been long used to the darkness of the earliest hours of the day. At 28, he was a good specimen of the regular Jounin. He had chestnut brown hair, long enough that he was often mistaken for a woman by men looking for a date, but short enough to bind quickly in case of a sudden battle. He wore his jounin vest proudly, having acquired it 5 years ago at 24.

Young enough to be comfortable with the three teenagers, while old enough to save their asses, most of the time.

They weren't chuunin yet, but they were damn close. Nori was proud of them, more than he could professionally say. They were the closest thing he had to a family, really. Other than Miko, his cat, of course.

One downside to being on his team was the training time - The same as most Jounin's training time. Most Jounin preferred to train without their students, then pick them up in the morning. Nori, however, made sure they came with him, or he'd drag them out of bed himself. Sometimes they were even grateful...

Most of the time they weren't, but he could handle that. His sensei had done that to him, and his sensei's sensei... Anywas, it was important. That way they got to the missions office as soon as it opened, and got their pick of the best missions.

As he leapt into the training area, though, something was missing.

Namely, his students.

He looked around the forest clearing, immediately suspicious. One or two might not show up, but all three? The hell...?

"Sakujna! Ikari! Ura! Get out here!" he barked, looking around. He heard a shift in the trees, heard an intake of breath. Heard a giggle.

He sighed, smiled, and turned around, looking slightly down. His eyes caught on the green eyes of a familiar person.

His black-haired student grinned.

"You caught us, sensei," she said, grinning wider.

"Yeah, Sakujna. I caught you. Where are the guys?" He asked, pulling his hand through his hair, annoyed.

"Oh!" She looked, as if remembering something. "They were hiding in a cave, just down here... I was supposed to be lookout. I failed, didn't I, sensei? They'll be annoyed," Of course, this didn't seem to bother the young girl in the slightest.

"Yeah, they will... You planned on that, didn't you?" He asked, grinning a little. The two headed west a little bit, until they hit it.

"That it, Saku?" He pointed to a cave in a rocky cliff. They were near the bottom of the mountains, apparently. He looked up at the Hokage's faces.

"Mhm... Come on, sensei... We gotta be quiet though. they're probably sleeping, ne?" Sakujna giggled mischieviously, ducking into the cave. Nori followed, ducking under and stepping in.

It seemed like a little hole in the cliffside, just small enough to stand it. The only thing he could see where she might have gone was a little tunnel... It looked like some kind of animal had dug it in years past. This surprised him not at all - the Fire Country was home to a number of species of bears, etc etc.

"I'm coming, Saku..." He murmered, crawling into the tunnel. He really had to work, getting through here. Squeezing himself to fit, he shuffled along the small tunnel.

Finally, an exit! He crawled out, looking around the small cave. It was empty, cold, and shaped like a perfect circle. He could stand, fitting easily. Where was she? Unless...

"Saku? Ika? Ura? Where are you guys?" He asked the air, looking around frantically. 'Okay, it's best to remain in control in a situation like this...'

"You caught us, sensei..." Sakujna's voice bounced around the cavern. He froze. The whole cave, left to right to left, was empty... That left only one place.

"You caught us, sensei..." He looked up. His eyes widened, his body shaking suddenly.

"You caught us, sensei..." Three figures, swinging from the ceiling. Even through the scars and the discolouration, he recognised them. His students. His hand dug into his kunai pouch.

"You caught us... sensei..." A new voice whispered in his ear. A hand grabbed Nori's wrist, squeezing so hard it felt as if it were being crushed. Then it fell limp, as did the rest of his body. A paralyzing fear took hold of him. What could he do?

He felt the point of something sharp rip through the back of his jacket, felt the bite of steel and the blood flowing out of him. Then, a jerk. He slumped forwards.

"You caught us..."

The figure smiled, looking down at Nori's dead body.

"... sensei."

-
Fade to Black Prologue Alden-san Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, etc. All of the characters not belonging to Masashi Kishimoto etc. probably belong to me.
-----------------

"We've got a passive assignment. Possible C or even B level."

A silver haired Jounin, Hatake Kakashi, jogged down the stone steps of the Shinobi Assignment Office, towards his students.

Sakura was the weakest physically, of the group. She made up for this, however, in her memorization skills and perfect chakra control. Because she didn't have much chakra in the first place, however, that meant she needed to increase it by quite a bit. With her flashing pink hair, mischevious green eyes and close-cut, stylish Chinese-style dress, she could outmatch either of her teammates in large-scale tactical planning and calculations. A bit insecure about her own lack of power, she was still indespensible to her teammates. She also had a crush / was in love with her teammate Sasuke. No-one, not even her closest friends or family, could tell whether her feelings were true or borne of a childhood crush.

Sasuke was the tragic survivor of the murder of his family, the prestigious Uchiha clan. His older brother Itachi performed this act himself half a decade ago, eliminating many of the village's more powerful ninja for an unexplained reason. Sasuke himself was a fairly poweful genin, with a high chakra level and basic chakra control. His strength was in his jutsu, which were above regular genin level (especially his fire jutsu, like a chuunin-level fire skill he learned when he was very young). He mastered their famous teacher Kakashi's only unique techniqure, the Chidori, in a small amount of time. This was made easier by an ability that lay in his especial DNA that allowed him to transform his eyes into the Sharingan, a powerful tool for seeing and copying various nin-, gen- and taijutsu.

Naruto had been born freshly in the middle of a disaster, the attack of the youma Kyuubi. To save his village, the Fourth Hokage gave his life to seal the demon into Naruto's stomach. This had made the unknowing boy go through a hard life, with scorn on the part of the adults and ridicule from his peers, who didn't know his secret but absorbed their parent's hostility. Now he was a powerhouse of chakra, able to use high-level jutsu despite his poor chakra control. He could also, using the Kyuubi's chakra, summon the frog boss, Gamabunta.

Sakura was sitting at the edge of the base of a statue, commemerating Sarutobi Kyushu, one of the villages great heroes and related to the late Sandaime Hokage. Sasuke was sitting a few metres away from her, staring into space as Naruto yelled at him. At the sight of their sensei, and hearing his announcement, however, he smiled slightly.

Sakura looked up, as her sensei walked towards them from the mission's office. "What, sensei? A C-level? But..."

"Yahoo! We have an interesting mission! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!" Naruto yelled excitedly, running in circles around his teammates, until Sasuke reached out and smacked him over the head.

"He said passive, dobe. That means no fighting, no training, no jutsu needed. Right, Kakashi?" Sasuke looked at Kakashi. Sasuke had stopped calling Kakashi 'sensei', preferring the shorter, less formal term. The two were closer than Kakashi ever had been with either of his other students, Kakashi having trained Sasuke privately a few months ago during the Chuunin exam, and again when Naruto went off with his other sensei, a legendary ninja named Jiraiya, to find the person who would become the Godaime Hokage.

"What's the assignment, Kakashi-sensei?" Sakura asked, looking up at her sensei's hidden face. "It must be hard, even if it's not an active mission, right?"

"We're investigating a murder,"Kakashi said simply. "That's all I know. Once we get to the location, they'll brief us."

"I see..." Sakura said, confused. Murder? That was a pretty common crime for a 'C' ranking. "It must be shinobi, either murdered or murderer. That's the kind of mission they assign for 'C' rank when it comes to things like this. When the one guilty could switch the position from passive to active at any time, right?"

"Mhm. That's why they usually want these things hushed up and done quickly, though in most cases it takes at least two weeks to interview all the suspects. Even that's sometimes too soon to close a case."

"Kakashi, why are genin being assigned a murder investigation that's a rank above us? And where are we going?" Sasuke asked irrtably, following close behind Kakashi.

It was Sakura who answered, with a hint of doubt. "If the murder investigation needs a really good jounin on them, they sometimes assign them to genin teams with really good sensei's. Especially the three genin are exceptional. I guess, in this case, it fits. Kakashi-sensei is famous, Sasuke-kun has the Sharingan, I was top of my class at these sorts of things, and Naruto knows people proably better than any of us, Kakashi-sensei excluded. I'd say we were a pretty common choice for this kind of thing, Sasuke-kun."

"The dobe knowing more about human nature than I do? Doubt it. Anyways, I thought we were restricted to D missions after we almost got Hakuri-san killed... Unless they really need a sharingan user for this. I mean, me and Kakashi are the only ones in Konoha who have it, and I'm the only one with born Sharigan, so I'm guessing that's it," Sasuke said, looking over at Sakura.

Sakura nodded. "I guess so- There it is! That's the site! Kakashi-sensei... The actual site's in a cave. should we follow, or stay out here and wait for you?"

"I think it'd be better if you came in, Sakura. You'll get the whole brief, and I won't have to bother explaining it, ne?" He smiled with his eyes, and Sakura smiled back.

---

Five minutes later, Sakura was wishing she had stayed outside to be briefed before she'd entered the cave. She was not used to seeing dead, mutilated bodies of people near her teammates'- and sensei's age after just hours of lying there.

Three teenagers were hanging from the ceiling of the cold cavern by their necks, sporting cuts and bruises all over their bodies. A girl and two boys, a genin team. They were a year or two older than Sakura, Naruto and Sasuke were, by the looks of it.

The worst part was the sensei. He was stripped completely, lying facedown on the ground, with slashes all down his back, with a stab wound going completely through him from the front.. The person who'd done this was angry, that's for sure. Their headbands were strung together and thrown haphazardly aside

"Four victims, it seems. Kameno Sakujna, Ukiko Ikari, Uta Urake and Mitsuko Nori, their jounin sensei. The three have been dead for longer the sensei. I'd pin T.O.D at around 2am last night, and the sensei two hours later. The kids were all killed by their throats being slit, but the sensei's cause of death..." The medic-nin in charge kneeled down, rolling Nori onto his stomach. He pointed to a deep wound in the middle of the back. "Right there. The rest - the stabbing, cutting, bruising - was done either after he was dead or while he was bleeding to death. It's suspected the three were bait, maybe he was lured by genjutsu, and he was killed in the split second he froze up."

"Eugh..." Sakura cringed, looking down at the man's body. "Kakashi-sensei, who could do this?"

"They were found by a hiker. He was shook up, but didn't touch anything..." The medic-nin said.

"Wait a second... Kameno Sakujna, that was the girls name? She's the daughter of Kameno Kaoru and his wife Riku, ne? I wouldn't be surprised if this whole thing was based around her, to hurt her parents and hide suspicion..." Kakashi said. "The Kameno clan isn't that popular, in Konoha or outside of it."

"Why, Kakashi-sensei?" Sakura looked at the girl, sympathy on her face. This girl could have been killed... because of her parents?

"The Kameno clan has a tendacy to have great Hunter-nin in the family. Meaning that there are a lot of criminals who died because of them, so there are a lot of enemies in that direction. Grieving famiies, annoyed partners-in-crime who lost their meal ticket because one of their guys was killed in the middle of a job... You name it, " Kakashi said, sighing. "If that's the case, there are a lot of suspects."

"What about their sensei, Kakashi-sensei?"

"Nori? No... Nobody would kill him, as far as I know. 28 years old, a few years older than me... He's single, but there's a girl he's with, who's got to support a baby she had when she was 17. She's a year younger than he is. He's been helping her get through it, but she has no-one to help her now. He hasn't got much of a family background, except for his mother's sister marrying into the Uchiha clan, but that's a pretty obscure motive. He's been a jounin for five years, which really worries me, if he's dead. I worked with him, once or twice, and he knew his jutsu. Why is a genin team investigating this, if the murderer's so obviously either stong, or a genius?"

"Probably the fact that all the Jounin are busy doing active missions, so they need to get a genin team for access to a jounin" Sakura added, looking around the cave. "I'm still curious, though, why they chose a genin team that was restricted to D missions for a 'C' level that could escalate into a 'B' level..."

"Mhm," Kakashi nodded, looking over a fact sheet that had come with the mission brief. "Also, Ukiko Ikari was a bloodline user. I'd almost forgot about the Ukiko, because they'd quieted down so much..."

"What? Kakashi-sensei, I thought Konoha only had two - The Uchiha and the Hyuuga. I didn't know about the Ukiko clan..."

"That's because this clan acts like any other normal clan, instead of keeping a whole village to itself, basically. There was an Ukiko village - You know that area of Konoha called the Triangle of Peace? That's the section between the Hyuuga, Uchiha and Ukiko village gates. Only, about 16 years ago, the clan was attacked by Mist Country assasins, and a lot were killed. Now, however, they are living peacefully as a smaller clan, keeping their ambitions low and only sending off one in five of their children to become shinobi," Kakashi said.

"I see..." Sakura mulled this thought over. "So, this attack could have happened by people who wanted Ikari to be dead, so the clan's bloodline would end. That means other Ukiko children are in danger, I guess... What's the matter, Sasuke-kun?"

"So two of the three clans have been whittled down to nothing. Mist Country assasinates this family, and Itachi murders mine... This doesn't seem like a coincedence, not when two major bloodline clans are murdered within two decades of eachother. That means, this Ikari is probably a good lead, too..."

"And Uta Urake?"

"Urake's father is, according to this, a rice merchant who moved here from Kuroko a decade ago. He's been building up high gambling debts within the last eight years - after his wife died. Ura's pay, along with some of his father's profits, keeps them satisfied, but the debt just grows higher and higher. This could be their sign to hurry up and pay... We've got too many suspects to hurry this one along, because all of the people involved have a good number of suspects, except for Nori."

"Sensei..." Sakura said, in a confused voice, looking at the exit to the cave.

"Hm?" Kakashi asked, looking over his former comrade's body, wondering if his facade of noncaring was numbing his ability to care about a former comrade. His inner blankness disturbed him greatly...

"Where's Naruto?"

------

As it turned out, Naruto was sitting outside the cave, staring blankly into the water. That was where Sakura found him. "Naruto?"

"Sakura-chan... I don't think I can do this..."

Sakura almost fell over in surprise. Of all the things she'd expected, Naruto breaking down hadn't been anticipated. She'd expected him to charge into it, demanding jutsice for all who'd died, and end up bungling something in his charge ahead.

"What do you mean, Naruto? Do you mean..."

"Sakura-chan... Those people ae dead. I know that they need to have justice, but... It's just so..." Naruto looked up at the morning sky, as if waiting for an answer.

"Sick? Twisted? Yeah, murder's like that. Naruto... As a ninja, you'll have to deal with death. As Hokage, you'd be swarmed with it. One in twenty ninja don't make it to chuunin. Seven in ten chuunin die in battle. One in ten chuunin makes it to jounin. The rest either don't want to, or die in the process. A ninja's life... is one of the most dangerous things you can be. I never really thought about it, either... But, if I make it to chuunin, that's as far as I'll make it. I'm probably a good candidate for chuunin, if I could fight. but you see, now I don't even know if I'll live long enough to get that far... I'm not like you and Sasuke-kun. I don't have any strong jutsu, or flashy moves, just enough to keep me alive."

"Sakura-chan won't die! I'll keep anyone from killing you! I- I'd let myself die before letting any of you three die! You guys...You're my most precious people, along with Iruka-sensei and Konohamaru. I don't want to become Hokage if it means letting you guys die. Especially you, Sakura-chan. I'll protect you with my life!" Naruto almost yelled.

Sakura just smiled a little, and said, "Naruto, Kakashi-sensei will be waiting for us... You think you'll be able to help after all? I mean, there are four of them, with enough suspects to fill up the academy, so we need some definate help-"

Naruto nodded, interrupting her. "I'll help, Sakura-chan. The guy who did this won't know what hit him!"

--End Prologue--