Lend Them A Hand

Chapter 1: The Deficit

Opening A/N: A puppeteer Naruto story with a bit of a twist. This story definitely draws inspiration from my favorite puppeteer Naruto story, "Naruto's Compensation." I will do my best to differentiate my ideas from the ones created for that story, but if there is anything that I accidentally borrow then I owe full credit to that story. If you have not read it, I highly recommend it. That being said, I hope I can present a somewhat original twist on Naruto as a puppeteer.

With the introductions out of the way, I present to you the first chapter of "Lend Them A Hand."

-Begin-

It was a quiet, warm night in the village of Konohagakure. There was little wind to disturb the still and humid heat that seeped throughout the village. Windows stood propped open, the curtains standing still. The stillness was highlighted by the numerous stars that shone overhead, the full gleaming moon easily visible against the cloudless night. Numerous figures darted unseen throughout the shadows, their animal masks nearly invisible in the cover of night. Their eyes, hidden by the masks, swept over every street and alleyway of the village, scanning for any disturbance within the quiet walls.

Beneath their watchful eyes a single figure crept throughout the shadows, going unseen as he crept from wall to wall. The figure pressed his back against a wall as a silhouette passed overhead. His breaths came slow and shallow. No sound escaped from his lips as he grinned when the silhouette passed by without noticing his presence below. A quick pat down of the jumpsuit he was wearing gave a series of reassuring pressures, the canisters, wires, brushes, and other various items he had stored away still safely in their places.

He crept away from the wall and continued his slow journey throughout the village, his target firmly in mind. His goal this evening was the guarded compound of the Inuzuka clan. He had prepared himself for the guard dogs that the Inuzuka were famed for, armed with stink bombs, his jumpsuit covered in oil and gas soaked rags to cover his scent. The clan had wronged him in his eyes. Nothing so severe as to warrant violent retribution, but he was not one to take any slight lightly.

The event sprung to mind as he came closer and closer to the compound. He had been napping out near one of the training grounds after practicing his kunai and shuriken technique. He may not have been very good, being only six years old and still two years away from being allowed to enter the academy, but he believed it was never too early to start practicing. An Inuzuka had been nearby and their ninhound had decided it needed to relieve itself.

Right on top of his leg.

Uzumaki Naruto was many things, but a latrine was not one of them. The prankster, rightfully incensed by the incident, had decided that some form of retribution was necessary. That dog had almost ruined one of his jumpsuits! It took several hours of soaking and scrubbing to get the rancid stench out of his clothes. So he had decided that if they wanted to make him smell like dog piss, then he would make their entire compound smell like an angry skunk. It was only fair after all.

Coming up to the short walls that designated the clan designated the clan district, Naruto sensed that something seemed off about the night. There was normally a certain amount of noise that permeated the district. Small chatter, the sound of wind, rustling leaves, something. But tonight the district was quiet. Nothing stirred and nothing moved.

A weight seemed to settle in the young Uzumaki's stomach as he strained to hear any form of sound. A voice in the back of his head whispered that he should turn around and try again another night. Something was wrong, the voice said. Something isn't right. Leave and try again. You're prepared, you can come back. Naruto ignored that small voice in his head and pushed forward. He was already here, why should he turn back?

That single moment of impatience would haunt him for the rest of his life, and shape the man that he would become.

As he moved into the clan district, he began to sneak past the massive compound that housed the infamous Uchiha Clan. The clan was one of Naruto's least favorites. Their doujutsu made pranking them especially difficult and they seemed to dislike him more than the other clans. None of them ever acted out against him aside from glares or ignoring him, but the Uchiha clan ran the military police. Some of the villagers occasionally got rough with Naruto, usually on his birthday. None of them ever took it too far, but he had been roughed up several times, and on the rare occasion, beaten. The Uchiha stood by and watched as it happened.

As much as he would've liked revenge on the clan, there was nothing that he could really do about it. So he bided his time, and was simply waiting for the perfect opportunity to take his revenge on the hateful clan. He paused as he passed by one of the walls of the clan, glaring hatefully at then, angered by his own inability to act. He glared so hard that he could almost see the wall bursting into flames from his gaze.

To his immense surprise, the wall in front of him suddenly exploded outward in his direction. He was pelted by pieces of stone and gravel from the wall, and could only blink in surprise at the sudden explosion. A figure came speeding from behind the wall, heading in Naruto's direction. The figure paid Naruto no attention, his head turned over his shoulder, watching the wall he had just sped through.

On the other side of the wall, numerous fires burned, igniting the formerly dark and quiet night. The shouts and yells of the members of the Uchiha clan rang through the night, alerting the village to the attack that had just happened.

Naruto gazed into the flames in shock. This was beyond anything he'd seen before. He was a prankster, yes, but he never sought to cause harm. He only wanted to humiliate or embarrass his targets, he never would've imagined seeing their homes go up in flames. His attention was quickly drawn away from the flames as the figure barreled into Naruto, his split attention causing him to miss the child, disguised as he was by the dark, oily rags.

The figure gasped as he stumbled over the small, his concentration entirely lost. He quickly rolled into a stand, trying to find whoever it was that had stopped him. His eyes landed on the child, widening in surprise for just a moment.

"A kid? I was seriously stopped by a kid? Tch. I must be losing my touch." The taller figure scolded himself as he watched the child right himself and turn to look at him.

"Hey! What're you doing! You're not supposed to be here!" The man cringed at the sound of the child's loud and high pitched voice. He didn't have time to deal with a kid. He had just sabotaged one of the most powerful clans in Konohagakure, he needed to escape, and fast.

"I don't have time for this." The man turned and prepared to leap into the trees, his escape all but guaranteed, when something hit him in the back. He felt something soak across his back as a foul odor reached his nose. He sniffed once, and nearly gagged. It was some combination of skunk spray and what he could only assume was rotten eggs and truly rancid milk. It was nothing more than an inconvenience unless the Inuzuka caught on to the scent, which he was guessing wouldn't take long.

He turned and saw the brat with his arm still outstretched from the throw, an angry frown plastered on his face.

"I don't know who you are, but you made me waste one of my stink bombs! You owe me!" The boy shouted at the figure, expecting some form of reaction. The one he got was far from what he expected.

The figure's expression darkened. He was a saboteur, and an extremely good one. His escape was all but guaranteed until he had the misfortune to trip over this annoying child. The stink bomb would normally only be a slight inconvenience, but he had already allowed himself to be delayed. There was only so much time he had before the shinobi of the village responded. Being right next to the compound he had just attacked, he knew that his chances of escaping had dropped to almost nil.

His own arrogance and pride had cost him his chance to escape. Even if he did get away, the trail from that stink bomb was going to be very easy to follow, even for the average person. The man decided that he wasn't getting away. And if he wasn't going to escape, he was going to do as much damage as he could.

He suddenly moved forward, his speed taking the young Uzumaki off guard. A leg slammed into the child's ribs, sending him through the air until he crashed roughly into the wall aroundthe clan compounds. He slumped down with a cry as the pain hit him. The kick had most likely broken several ribs. The man moved quickly to the young boy and hoisted him into the air by his throat.

"You have no idea how much you've just cost me, you stupid little boy. But don't worry, I'm going to make you pay." The man growled his words to the child, a sickening grin coming across his face as he finished. He continued to hold the much smaller boy as he ran off from the compounds, heading across the nearby rooftops. If he couldn't escape he would at least make sure he had time to exact his revenge.

He jumped across several rooftops, the gasping and struggling boy in tow. He glanced behind him to make sure no one had followed him from the compound, but he had forgotten where he was.

He believed that he had made a clean escape from the compound and that the Uchiha clan was going to be much too concerned with handling the fires and damage he had caused to give chase. If he had ran from the compound immediately, he may have had a chance of escape. Unluckily for him, the village's special forces, known as the ANBU, had already responded to the disturbance.

He turned to continue his escape and found himself facing four darkly clad, masked shinobi. Their masks betrayed no emotion as they stared him down.

"Let the boy go and surrender now. If you do as we tell you, then you can avoid any unnecessary pain." The closest masked figure spoke out to the intruder.

"You expect me to believe that if I just surrender you won't harm me?" The man asked them with a sneer, his eyes darting left and right, searching for some kind of escape route.

"I did not say that. I only said you would avoid the unnecessary pain." The same emotionless voice came from behind the mask once again.

The man growled as he saw no obvious way out of the situation. There was little he could do. He couldn't go forward and he couldn't get away fast enough carrying the boy with hi-

His eyes suddenly widened as a thought came to him. A dark, terrible thought. He knew how he could escape.

"You want the boy? All right then..." The ANBU tensed as the saboteur grinned, and pulled back the arm holding Naruto's neck. "You can have him!" He slung the boy towards the ANBU, his free arm dipping into a pouch on his hip and slapping against Naruto's chest as he flew towards the ANBU. As soon as his hands left the boy, he flipped backwards, falling off the edge of the rooftop they had been atop.

Naruto's arm instinctively reached for his chest where the man had hit him. His hand closed around something and began to pull it off of his chest. His head swam from being choked, and his body ached from the broken ribs and the lack of oxygen. He had a ringing in his ears, nit he vaguely heard a voice call out, "Scatter!"

For a moment his mind pondered what they were scattering from before his world was consumed by flames.

The ANBU jumped back as they recognized the exploding tag the man had placed on the boy. They saw him leap from the building, and two of them broke off to give pursuit. The chase was short lived as they found the man in the street below, his foot twisted at a strange ankle. Despite his skill he had made a fundamental mistake when landing, and it had broken his ankle. He was quickly taken into custody by the ANBU, and was being taken to a cell to await interrogation.

The other two ANBU had stayed behind to check on the boy. They expected to find nothing. A high powered explosive tag attached to a child's chest was enough to end any life. They almost gasped in surprise when they found the boy. Their training stifled the natural response, but their shock was evident.

The boy lay on the ground, his right side covered in various degrees of burns. Starting at the breast level were the most severe burns, tapering off as they spread further from the side. His hair was partially burnt off, his face red and blistered in places, skin blackened and dead in others. But the ANBU were most surprised by the gentle rise and fall of the boy's chest. They knelt down to grab the boy and remove him from the slowly growing pool of blood beneath him. Despite the severity of his injuries from the explosion, the heat had cauterized the majority of his wounds.

The ANBU that bent down to pick him up couldn't stifle their next response. "Oh Kami..." They whispered as they gathered the small burnt child into their arms. The other ANBU turned, not expecting to hear their partner speak. Their eyes widened behind their mask as they saw the small boy in the arms of the other ANBU.

The boy's right arm now ended in a blackened, bloody stump, inches from his shoulder.

Naruto had succeeded in pulling the explosive tag from his chest. While it had likely saved his life, the tag detonated next to his arm, severing the limb just below the shoulder.

Hiruzen Sarutobi allowed a large sigh to escape his lips as he gazed at the prone form in the hospital bed. He had lived through the Shinobi Wars and seen many terrible things, and had committed many of them himself. Everything he had done had been in the name of his village, in the name of protecting the many people who relied upon him. Of the many terrible things he had seen, only a few of them compared to the sight that lay before him now.

Hiruzen had seen six year olds torn apart by battle before. Some of them had been shinobi under his own command after all. He had seen others that fought against them torn apart by their own forces, but they had all been shinobi. They had been trained in the art of combat and while they may not have fully understood what they had committed themselves to, but they had agreed to. He had seen civilian children die in the crossfire, their lives ended far before their time. They had made no agreement to fight, but still they their lives had become a battleground. And while they had not agreed to the fighting, it had been war.

Those children had not chosen war, but they had been drawn in. And no man walks away from war unscathed, no matter how distant he may be from it.

But the sight that lay in front of the aged Hokage was neither that of a trained shinobi nor a casualty of war. It was a six year old civilian child who had been drawn into the feud between the Uchiha and whoever had sent the assailant that had injured Naruto. The boy had been on a mission to prank the Inuzuka. He had carried stink bombs and trip wires and glues and pastes. He wasn't on a mission to harm, only to humiliate. And fate had placed him in an actual battle.

The boy lay unmoving in the bed, kept sedated by the doctors who had been working to save the boy's life. While many of the wounds had been cauterized, it was not allowing them to heal properly. In order for them to respond properly to the medical chakra techniques the doctors had to remove the burned and damaged flesh in order to allow a smoother, more natural healing. The explosion had damaged several of his internal organs and could have ended his life had the doctors not seen to him as quickly as they had.

Despite the boy surviving the ordeal, one glaring injury stood out to the eyes of the Hokage as he watched the boy rest.

The distinctive lack of his right arm.

The explosion had not just taken the arm off, but rather shredded the limb and burned most of it away when the tag had gone off. The ANBU had only been able to recover large shards of charred bone from the area, the still smoldering pieces of flesh not being worth anything to the now comatose child. The shards of bone did little to help him in his current condition, but they may hold more clues to where the assailant hailed from based on the damage to the bone.

That brought another troubling thought to the old leader's mind. The assailant. He had managed to infiltrate the village and attack one of their most prominent clans without being detected. He had been taken into custody surprisingly quickly for what seemed to be a highly skilled saboteur. He had been given to the trusting care of Ibiki and the T&I department, so the Hokage had no doubts that they would know where he had come from soon enough.

But knowing where the assailant would come from did nothing to assuage the Hokage's fears of how Naruto would handle his sudden disability. For as long as he was able to speak and understand what it meant to be Hokage, that had been his dream. To take the hat from his Jiji and rule over the village. That dream seemed to have gone up in flames with his missing limb.

It was true that many ninja overcame sudden disabilities and were able to continue in active service, but they had years of experience under their belts at the time of their injury. They could compensate for their weakness by playing to their strengths. But ninja did not continue in service after the loss of a limb. Naruto could no longer form handseals. Jutsu were beyond his reach. His taijutsu would be severely limited. Even many of the styles that relied heavily on leg work still utilized the arms for balance and the occasional block.

Naruto's ninja career had been ended before it ever truly had a chance to start. The old Sarutobi had no idea how he was going to tell the young boy that all of his dreams had been stolen from him.

Rising from the seat that he had been occupying in the hospital room, the Hokage's gaze turned from sorrow and regret to that of fire and steel. He viewed this boy as a surrogate grandson, and he would be damned if he allowed this infiltrator to keep any secrets after ruining the dreams of an innocent child.

"Rooster." The Hokage's voice did not raise above the volume of a casual conversation, but the timbre of his voice would have frozen even the strongest of his enemies. A figure appeared in front of him, kneeling, the stylized mask adorning his face resembling that of a rooster.

"What is your command, Hokage-sama?" The veteran shinobi gazed down at the ANBU kneeling in front of him, his presence less that of the kindly grandfather he appeared to be to so many shinobi of the village, and more that of the battlefield terror that had earned him the name the "Kami no Shinobi."

"Tell Ibiki to cease interrogation of the prisoner known as Firecracker. I intend to pay him a visit myself."

With a quick nod the masked shinobi disappeared from the hospital room. The Hokage tilted his hat forward over his eyes.

It seemed that he would be going to war at least once more in his life.

-End-

A/N: A fairly rough first chapter, but it sets up the things that I want to do with this story. I realize that it doesn't give a lot of information. All it really does is reveal that Naruto will be missing his right arm. The question of who the saboteur is will come eventually be answered. Whether it's in the next chapter or later remains to be seen.

Naruto's puppeteer capabilities will also be answered later on. I'm attempting to differentiate this story from the one that inspired it, so his abilities will not be cultivated in the first couple chapters. I can't guarantee how long it will take to reach that point in this story, but I'm attempting to take it slow.

Constructive criticism of the story is accepted, but that's it. If you have negative things to say about my story, word it fairly and constructively. Flames will not even be read all the way through.

With regards to Betas, I currently do not have a Beta, and this is merely a rough draft of the chapter, so it could potentially change in the future. If you are interested in being a Beta for this story, feel free to PM me and we can discuss how to communicate and what is expected on both sides.

Thanks for reading, I hope enjoyed the first chapter of "Lend Them A Hand," please leave a review and stay tuned for the second chapter.