Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, Darkness or any crossover elements that may be added into this story.

Italics for thoughts

Bold for Jutsu, Sealed and Non Human characters

XChapter StartX

Growing up, Naruto had mistakenly believed that the life of a ninja was eating ramen three times a day, saving princesses, and defeating hordes enemy ninja.

He had become a ninja two months earlier, and he had to say that his perceptions had been shattered. He still tried to eat ramen three times a day, but the other two parts had quickly been proven to be false.

For his first month as a ninja, he had been forced to deal with D-rank missions, which were the bane of his existence. He had done four of them with his team and hated how boring they were. They were just chores, really. What made it worse was that he had actually done six of them by himself. Sasuke had the wealth of the Uchiha clan and Sakura had parents that provided for her.

All Naruto had was a stipend that he received from the Hokage. It had paid for his rent and all of his bills, along with the supplies he needed for the Academy. Unfortunately, the stipend had stopped when he graduated, so he needed to do missions to make sure that he did not end up without a place to stay or food to eat.

And then he had seen a great opportunity in the form of a C-rank mission.

In all honesty, it was not worth doing from a monetary standpoint. He had made just as much ryo during D-rank missions with his team as he did on that C-rank mission. And to make matters worse, the C-rank mission had been as difficult as an A-rank mission but without an increase in pay.

But it was when Naruto felt a surge of raw power and things went hazy that occupied his thoughts, just when Naruto felt that power a dark voice accompanied it that said "SoOn" normally a voice spoken like that would make Naruto want to avoid whatever it belong to but for some reason he couldn't explain he actually wanted to, and that was something that scared and confused him even more.

When Team 7 had left Nami no Kuni Naruto had noticed that two things had changed with him, he no longer had trouble seeing in the dark, in fact from Naruto's perspective there was no difference between Night and day anymore and the second was that every time Naruto either closed his eyes for long periods of time or he went into a shaded area Naruto saw areas that he didn't recognize one was a village that was similar to Konoha but was made completely out of stone, the next was a village was the same as the stone one but was shrouded in mist, the next was high in the mountains with clouds mingling among the buildings, next was a village that was in a dessert and it's buildings were made completely out of sand with high speed winds lowing, and the last was the only place he recognized, it was Konohagakure.

Getting so much information at once caused Naruto to pass out, luckily for him his team had stopped to rest for the night, when Naruto woke up in the morning he used the trip back as a chance to practice that particular ability so that he could control what and how much he saw at any one moment.

It was with those memories and thoughts that he stood atop Hokage Mountain and looked out at the village. He had gone straight there from the Hokage's office upon their return home and their report.

As Naruto looked out over the village of Konohagakure as he continued to practice with his shadow eyes, a name that Naruto had just thought up, to increase his control over it when suddenly everything became picthblack where the sound of a dark hiss could be heard all around him, something that would scare basically anyone, causing fear to rise up in Naruto but it wasn't from the hissing it was from the fact that Naruto was actually comforted by the sound that scared him and it was then that the voice returned "YeS sOoN, So vErY SoOn TiL wE mEeT." Naruto didn't know what it meant and to be honest he didn't care all he wanted was to actually meet whatever the voice belonged to.

Far away in Kumogakure, a dark-skinned man with shaggy white hair was walking down the hallway of the Administration Building in the standard attire of a Kumo shinobi.

The normally lazy look in his eyes had been replaced with a more serious look as he neared the Raikage's office.

Nearing the outside door, he saw Mabui, the Raikage's assistant, sitting at her desk.

"Is the Boss in?" Darui asked with his hands in his pockets.

"Yes Darui, Raikage-sama is in," Mabui answered with a small smile. "He's doing paperwork, so he would appreciate the interruption." The unspoken though I would not lingered at the end of her statement.

Darui could understand her displeasure at the Raikage being interrupted when he was actually doing work for once. It was very difficult to motivate him to actually do paperwork. The fact that Mabui could do so was nothing short of astounding.

Had anyone else witnessed the exchange, they would not have been able to detect the slightest hint of displeasure in the kunoichi, but that was because she was a very pleasant person and was a very skilled ninja. Though she did not look it, she was a jonin.

Walking up to the door, Darui knocked, receiving permission to enter nearly instantly.

As Darui entered the office and shut the door, he saw that the Fourth Raikage, A, was sitting behind his desk with his cloak and hat on.

"Did an issue come up during your mission?" A asked immediately, taking note of the change in Darui's eyes.

"Yeah, the mission ended in failure," Darui said with a frown.

"I see," A said with a hint of displeasure, though he did not seem to upset. "Don't worry about it. It's understandable if you could not find him. His village isn't in any condition to pay his bounty at the moment."

"I did find him," Darui said, making A pause. "He was in a fight with Kakashi Hatake of Konohagakure."

"Oh?" A asked. "Does that mean that the Kirigakure no Kijin (Demon of the Mist) was taken care of before you could get to him?"

"Yeah," Darui said as he nodded. "But I got something better than one of the swords of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen."

That had A's full attention.

"After the target died, I decided to do some recon on Hatake's team. He was there with three rookie genin," Darui explained. "One of them wasn't worth paying much attention to. She never sensed me when I was near, even when I wasn't trying to stay hidden. She wasn't from a clan either. But the other two were interesting. The first one's name was Sasuke Uchiha. Apparently he's the kid brother of Itachi Uchiha, and I got a good look at him while he was training. He already unlocked his Sharingan."

"That's a valuable piece of information," A said thoughtfully.

"But it's not as valuable as what I figured out about the third student," Darui interjected. "His name was Naruto Uzumaki."

"A member of the Uzumaki clan?" A asked under his breath, thinking back to the last time his village tried to capture an Uzumaki from the Hidden Leaf Village. "Was he a real Uzumaki with red hair and skill with seals?"

"He didn't have red hair or show any knowledge of seals from what I observed," Darui said as he shook his head. "But that would have just made what I found out even better."

With that, he pulled a picture out from his flak jacket and held it out to A.

"It seems that a failed mission was just what we needed," A said as he looked at the picture of Naruto Uzumaki that had taken of him as he walked through the streets without his knowledge. "It would seem that one of the Copy Ninja's students has a connection to Minato Namikaze, could possibly be his son. He also has the same marks on his face that Ginkaku and Kikaku had, so it appears that he is connected to the Kyubi also."

"We found out that the last jinchuriki of the Kyubi was named Kushina Uzumaki," Darui said, remembering the information that he had heard at the end of the Third Great Shinobi War.

"It could be that this boy is the son of Minato Namikaze but was given the last name of the second Jinchuriki of the Nine-Tails, " A mused as he set the picture down and removed a blank scroll from one of the drawers of his desk.

"What are you doing, Boss?" Darui asked curiously.

"Back before the Hyuga Affair started, we signed a treaty with Konohagakure. One of the conditions that was made was that we could participate in the International Chunin Exams that they set up at the end of the Third Great Shinobi War. All we had to do was ask," A explained as he began to write on the scroll. "So I'm asking now."

That threw Darui for a loop.

"Are we going to capture him or something?" Darui asked.

"No," A said as he shook his head. "That would be a pain in the ass. The last thing we need is for them and their allies to declare war on us. It would weaken us more than it would gain us. We're just going to do a little recon. If we find that the possible son of the Kiiroi Senkō (Yellow Flash) has the potential to cause us trouble, we'll just have him killed by one of the genin we send. If he's killed during the exams, they can't do anything."

No one could say that A was just a brute of a man. He was also very intelligent.

Of course, no one could have predicted how the coming Chunin Exams would change the dynamic of the Elemental Nations.

XChapter EndX

My third story and I'll be using chapters from Crimson Tempest as a template for a few chapters while adding my own additions and touches to this story and don't worry the chapter lengths will get longer