An experimental plot, different to any others I've seen in the fandom so far. It is a oneshot, and I do not intend to continue it. It does heavily involve an OC, but taking on the role of mentor.
Please review and let me know what you think - be it you liked it or hated it. I want to improve, but I need you guys to help me do that.
Chihiro had come to Konoha as an evangelist; to show the poor ninjas the truth of Bijism before they died and were out of reach forever. She was a fully ordained Sister in the Order of Kyuubi – the highest of her religion's circles.
The crux of their message was difficult for unbelievers to come to terms with. Humans were insignificant. Oh, perhaps as a race they would leave some miniscule mark, but as individuals they were nothing. No matter how great an age was supposed to be, it would one day be a single paragraph in some history book. The Great Tailed Beasts, the Biju, were a proof of this; they were Gods, creatures of natural, primal cosmic forces, representations of power and emotion that spanned all civilians and species. A human was nothing, and her religion worshipped the Biju for giving them this lesson.
The meaning of this was clear, when one finally accepted that the ego was a human's natural sin. An individuals purpose was to do good for others, to make humanity as a whole flourish – as a race they would leave a mark, not as individuals, and it was the responsibility of all humans to see that it was a large mark, a good mark. Those who served dutifully would die, just as any other, but their spirit and essence would become a part of the aether for their enlightenment. From the aether, they would come to be a speck of power within the Biju themselves.
But, because ninja were heathens, and this was a difficult message, especially for those who threw their lives away so quickly for causes that did not better their fellow man (mostly because they were heathens), Sister Chihiro knew that it was better to first practice, then preach. Ears were most willing to listen to a familiar neighbour than a holier-than-thou stranger.
So Chihiro became one of the few workers at the orphanage. As ninja, there was always going to be a new orphan, but many of them had large extended families and clans – the majority were only with her a few hours – or days at most – as paperwork was sorted. A few remained in her care for years.
Regardless of how long they were with her, Chihiro comforted them all with the knowledge their parents had become a part of the aether, something greater than themselves (though, as heathens, they would never gain the honor of becoming a part of the Biju's chakra force). She made sure they said their prayers before eating, and before tucking them in – each and every one of them, all with the same amount of love and care – she would tell them fables from her Order.
She had been working in the Konoha orphanage three months before the Kyuubi attacked.
Sister Chihiro saw it as the Biju's warning of vengeance against the impudent heathens that would dare to attempt to imprison Gods. Unlike other civilians, she did not run away. She allowed the ninja to escort the other matrons and the children to a safer location, but she herself remained in the orphanage yard – the place where she'd run out and seen the Kyuubi with her own eyes, the place she hadn't moved from. She kneeled there, head bowed and hands clasped as she prayed and worshipped the glorious sight. This was her God, the very one she'd come here to preach about. See, this was his awesome power; this was the measure of eternity compared to a human life.
The city fell into ruins around her, but she and her orphanage were miraculously untouched. There was smoke and destruction, death and screaming, wails of pain and weeping of loss, despair and anguish. Konoha threatened to go the way of Sodom and Gomorrah, consumed by fire from the sky. Through it all was the all-emcompassing power, malevolent, furious, the entire manifestation of all the chaos, all the anger, all the hate in the entire universe.
It was the greatest moment in Chihiro's life. She wrote to the leaders of her Order the very next morning, but it took several days for the letter to be completed – and not merely because there were suddenly dozens more orphans under her care. She told the leaders of Lord Kyuubi's vengeance, of the feel of his power. She wrote hymns of it, and still it was not enough.
And she wrote of how the fourth hokage, heathen to the end, had sealed the Kyuubi away. One generation meant nothing to an immortal God, but the mordacity was disgusting.
He'd sealed it away into a newborn infant. A newborn infant was the container of a God, was in the constant presence of a God, had the God's power flowing through him. Sister Chihiro thought she had been sent to Konoha to evangelize. Instead, she now realized she had been blessedly chosen to witness the birth of a prophet.
Chihiro was thrilled when, after several weeks of careful observation by the third hokage, the little prophet was sent to her orphanage. She had been shocked to discover her coworkers did not feel the same way. Mourning their losses, the inhabitants of Konoha expressed hatred of the Kyuubi. Chihiro pitied them and their blind, hapless outlook. But with wounds so raw, they would not listen to her now – and with their attitudes towards Naruto-sama already so acceptable, they would probably deem her a bad influence and remove the little prophet from her care. Unacceptable!
So she bided her time. Chihiro cared for her very special charge, and for the other orphans around her, while awaiting a reply from her Order. It was one of the bishops that sent Sister Chihiro her eagerly awaiting reply; it was full of praise for the detailed letter she had sent, which could be copied and kept for later generations. It also had instructions, carefully encoded so that no one would intercept them. Konoha was not a suitable environment for a prophet. Bring him home.
Such a task was easier said than done. Though disliked, the hokage was protective of Naruto-sama (as he should be. Clearly the Ninja Professor, while largely ignorant, was still more enlightened than any other ninja in the village), and several ninja were always on duty to protect him from potential attack.
But Chihiro was patient. She was a Sister of the Order of the Kyuubi; a human's life was insignificant. Mountains took millennia to be worn down by wind and rain, a few years of caring for Naruto-sama while waiting for their guards to be let down was nothing.
And caring for Naruto-sama wasn't a chore. The small boy dearly loved to the one constant source of affection in his life. He listened to her preaches with wide eyes, though he swore to never share what she spoke of with the hokage when he visited. Naruto looked forward to the day when Chihiro could take him home, away from the anger glares and hate of ignorant villagers. Her attentiveness and her fierce, protective care kept Naruto well fed and cared for in the orphanage, though Chihiro would never understand his love of orange.
The boy found it difficult to be patient and wait as his caretaker did, but it paid off. The ninja became fewer in number, less attentive. They checked up on him a many times a day. At mealtimes and at bed. Once a day, in the evening. Sometimes they forgot to check at all.
Naruto was six, and the hokage beginning to suggest Naruto join the ninja academy, when Chihiro had paperwork, of her intention to leave the village, processed. She missed her home; her family and she felt she had done all she could in the wake of the Kyuubi attack. Her God was calling her to places that needed more. The one thing she did not tell the hokage, when he spoke to her about the request, was that she intended to take Naruto with her. She merely nodded when he said she had been a great blessing in Naruto's life, stated she would miss him, but if he was going to be a ninja like hokage suggested, he wasn't going to need her any longer.
The paperwork was signed. Naruto offered Chihiro a tearful goodbye at the orphanage, and then told the hokage he wanted to be alone, rather than comforted with ramen.
Then he ran to meet her had the gates, a hat covering his distinctive hair and wearing blue clothes instead of his favorite orange ones, which had already been packed in Chihiro's bags. He greeted her at the gates with a hug, just as she was signing her name to state she left the village, and they walked out together. They were barely out of sight before Naruto was begging for her favorite jacket again, and Chihiro could only laugh and hand it to him; delighted to finally bring her Little Prophet home, so sure she'd gotten away with it.
The squad of chuunin, returning from border control, had not been in Chihiro's carefully crafted plans. Her death, for kidnapping the Kyuubi jinchuriki, was inglorious and was barely worth the line it took in their report. The Sister from the Order of Kyuubi would probably had laughed and said 'see?' if she knew this, for didn't it just prove every point of her religion?
In one dimension, Naruto ran. He knew the way to the order's headquarters – Chihiro had told him in bedtime stories – and had escaped in the confusion. It was a hard journey, that took him out of Fire Nation altogether, but Chihiro's memory made him determined. He was welcomed with open arms as a prophet, and led the Nine Orders of the Biju into a new age of enlightenment and converted all the small nations surrounding them to Bijism. He was happy, and believed that her was making a difference to generations to come. He also never saw another ninja, until the day he was assassinated some forty years later, in the enormous crater now known as Kyuubi Lake. After the death of the Great Prophet, as he was forever known, it was believed that he become aether, and became the chakra that composed one of the tails of the Kyuubi. Saint Chihiro, also called the mother of prophets, was said to be the chakra that made up the Kyuubi's left eye.
In another dimension, Naruto froze up at the sight of Chihiro falling to the ground. That was time enough for the chuunin to grab Naruto and return him to the village. His guards returned in full force, but Naruto became withdrawn and quiet. He allowed the hokage to press him into becoming a ninja, if only because he seemed to show no resistance to that or anything else. He struggled at the academy through lack of effort, but revitalized in his last year, when he recalled the teachings Chihiro had instilled into him – all human individuals were meaningless, their purpose was to aid others, for only in number did human life had worth.
He was lured into taking a scroll by Mizuki. He fought ninja in wave, participated in the chuunin exams, hoping to become strong enough that he'd be allowed to leave to visit Chihiro's home. If not as a chuunin, then as a jounin, or as a hokage if that was how powerful he had to be before he could go to learn how to make a difference.
He caught the eye of a sage. He fought another prophet, who he pitied, for it was clear Gaara had been corrupted and tainted, believing his own worth was enough to justify killing hundreds – naturally, as he was the righteous one, he won that bout.
He ended up going on a long trip with that sage, but was only able to spend a few days of that at the Order of the Kyuubi (Jiraiya was very surprised to find such a place even existed). Naruto continued on, persevered, learnt to master the abilities Lord Kyuubi had granted him. He proved that no human life was of the magnitude the egotists among the ninja believed, because each of them he defeated, and their achievements disappeared. After all, one human against one human would always equal zero. It was this nindo that Prophet Naruto used to, gently, bring the concept of Bijism to the ninja nations. Many evangelists from the Nine Orders of the Biju would continue his work – for it was only in number that humans could make a difference.
Each and every enemy that Naruto faced, he defeated. How could he not, when he wore the chakra cloak, the one he was sure was made of Chihiro-mama's aether, hugging him tightly?
Naruto never came to realize the irony; that it was that a single woman had shown him love, that it was the action of one person and one human life, that had made him the greatest paladin Bijism's cause would ever know.