Notes:
I'm not sure about this but are Anbu or Jounins higher in terms of rank? In this fic, I made it so that jounins are higher.
Disclaimer:
I do not own Naruto or any of its characters.
Crimson Shadow:
I heard the sounds of metal clashing, people dying and screaming. The battle had begun. However, I was not to be in it. I was a ninja, a shadow. While there are ninjas that choose to be loud, obvious and simply overflowing with power, one must not forget that a ninja can strike with stealth and speed. Before me, I saw a castle, one that was heavily guarded. However, such guards should be nothing to a ninja that struck from the shadows.
My name is Kyu. I am 13 years old, extremely young to be a fully-fledged jounin. However, there is more to me then meets the eye. At first glance, I am a 13-year old teenager with spiky red hair and a striking resemblance to the Fourth Hokage of Konoha. However, when you glance again, you will notice that I emit an unsettling aura and something seems strange about me. If you happen to look a third time, I would probably be gone from your gaze and my knife next to your throat.
I suppose you have heard of Kyubi, the great Nine-tailed Fox Demon. If you know of it, then you will certainly know about how it attacked the Hidden Leaf Village and caused much destruction. Most likely, you would also have heard about how the Fourth Hokage fought it and defeated it. However, what you definitely do not know is that the Kyubi still exists. Its power is not lost and at the moment of its death and defeat, its form was changed, the power compressed into the form of a human. On that day, I was born, as the reincarnate of the Kyubi.
You are probably thinking me as some sort of psychotic teenager with a demon inside of him. You may be imagining me, going on a rampage and killing whoever and whatever I see. Maybe you will fear hearing the news of a demonic teenager suddenly killing thousands in one night. Sorry to disappoint you, but as a human, Kyubi is far less violent. For a human, I probably still seem dangerous and violent but hey…it's not bad for someone who was once a demon.
At my birth, the Fourth Hokage carried me to an orphanage and there, I grew up. My childhood was not exactly perfect as the other kids all sensed something strange about me, even if they did not know what it was. As a result, I was pretty much left alone. Perhaps not out-rightly despised (they did not throw rotten vegetables or taunts as I walked past) but nonetheless, I was treated in "special" way. Nothing changed when I entered into the academy. However, after I passed on the first try and became a genin at 8, people began to take an interest in me. When I became chuunin at the age of 11, people were whispering among themselves. When I entered into an Anbu team at 12, I was a child prodigy. I was selected to become a jounin in the same year and at this, many feared that I had become the next "Uchiha Itachi" who had also excelled at this speed, if not faster.
However, I have not revealed any evil tendencies and I certainly did not kill my entire clan, I had none after all. I simply continued with taking mission after mission and slowly, I became trusted. I also knew that the Fourth Hokage was watching from afar, taking note of my progress. He would be interested…as he was technically the one who created me. Perhaps it would be also proper to call him my Father.
Anyway, back to the mission. I was infiltrating the castle and our target is the Lord of the castle, who has been undertaking violent acts of war in the area. My team, including me, consisted of three jounins and all of us were ex-Anbu. One of them was Ryu, a twenty-something, almost thirty by the looks of him, years old ninja. He wore the customary jounin uniform and he had a sword hung on his back. He had a mask on that concealed his face but he wore his fore-head protector over his forehead, accompanied by a pair of sunglasses that hid his eyes. My other team-mate, Minoko, was a bit younger and female. She had long blond hair that she tied into a bun for missions. She wore her fore-head protector as a hair-tie and she had bright blue eyes.
We leaped from tree to tree and neared the castle walls. Ryu lead the attack and I observed from behind. Ryu was adept at stealthily attacking his enemies and these guards were not alert enough. Ryu sneaked up on two patrolling on the castle wall, side by and side and struck. His blade swept out noiselessly and one was down, falling down our side of the wall, blood flying out from his slitted neck. Before the other noticed his companion was dead, Ryu put a hand over his mouth and jammed his hand into the guard's spine, dislodging one of the vertebrae, leaving the guard's spine useless and the guard was dead.
His movements were silent but the fall of the guard was not. Quickly, he pushed the body over the side and it fell onto the first guard's lifeless body. He flipped over the side and hang there with one hand. A guard came to investigate where the missing guards were.
I whispered to Minoko, "Now it is our turn."
I leaped down from the tree and ran across the grass to the castle wall. I scaled it easily and I felt Minoko right behind me. I leapt onto the battlements and faced the shocked guard who had come to investigate the whereabouts of the missing guards. Before he shouted to sound the alarm, my blade passed through his stomach and I swang my right leg in a circle and kicked him from his right, sending him tumbling down into the darkness, outside the castle. The body heap piled to three. I remembered that Minoko often favoured aggression over stealth and I turned my head to her position. Minoko had climbed up the nearby tower and I looked over and saw two bodies fly out of one of the windows, one headless and the other in half. The assault had begun.
There was a battle going on near the gates. There, the lord of the castle was fending off rebels. This attack was the perfect opportunity for my assault. We leapt down into the shadows and made our way to the keep. As one ninja, we scaled the walls, passing all the way to the top. Once on the roof, I bent over the side and hang upside down to look into the windows. The room was empty. I slipped in and the others followed my lead. I crept towards the door, opened it to a slit and peered through. The hallway was well lit and there was a guard at the end. At the moment, he was pacing from my side of the hallway to the opposite. As he came up to the door, and turned around, I unsheathed my sword halfway. I held it in front of me, leapt froward and swung the exposed blade over the guard's head, down pass his face and onto his neck. I pulled and blood spurted out. I pulled and his body came with me, into the room.
Ryu rushed forward and Minoko right behind him, checking the other rooms of the hallway. I hid the body and heard the sounds of Minoko and Ryu eliminating other guards. They came out of the rooms, their blades and hands dripping blood. I walked forward, reached a flight of stairs and went down. Suddenly I saw the shadows of two guards coming up. With no time to run back up and hide, I used an invisible spell. Minoko and Ryu run back up and hid in the rooms. I waited until the guards were right in front of me. Instead of reaching for my sword, I unsheathed my two knives and slit them both. They fell to the ground, lifeless. My invisible spell wore off and my body appeared in a wisp of smoke. I was still have not fully mastered it…it usually lasted one full minute, not thirty seconds.
I came to a door and beyond it was a well lit room, with the sounds of laughter and food being consumed. I guessed there were five of six guards in there with some innocent people in there as well. My team-mates were older and however talented I was, they had one thing I could not obtain without more time: experience. I motioned for them to rush in and kill the guards and knock out but not kill the innocents. I stepped back and they drew their blades. I opened the door and they rushed in. I heard weapons being drawn and some shouts that were cut short. I heard things being thrown about and smashing on the floor. Then everything stopped.
While this was going on, I managed to kill three guards that came to investigate. They came running from where we just came, noticing fresh blood marks on the floor and that guards were missing. I leapt up and clung to the roof. The first two went past under me and I let fall myself and hit the third guard, planting my feet on his shoulders and bending over and slitting his throat with a shuriken and then threw the shuriken at the second guard, hitting him in the back of his neck. I leapt from my first victim and came at the remaining guard, before he fully turned around. My two knives went into his heart and his neck. He fell a bloody mess and slumped onto the floor. I really do need more training; it took me five seconds to accomplish the kills. It should have taken me three.
I went into the room and Minoko nursed a slight cut in his arm while Ryu held his hand onto his leg, where a lucky guard had stabbed him. I looked at them and they returned hazes that told me they would be fine and that we should continue. I moved to the other door, opened a fraction and looked. I smiled, we had reached our target. I finished it myself. Instead of my knives or my sword, I used my katars. Later, Minoko and Ryu described the next moment as a whirlwind of blades. I kicked the door open and leapt inside. I stabbed a guard in the neck and slit another's throat before I landed onto the table, right in front of the target. He looked up and my arms moved fast, stabbing and slicing again and again. Later, I looked back and saw myself doing an unnecessary over kill. The target fell with a mutilated body.
"Let's go," Ryu ordered, as I cleaned my katar blades on the dead person's shirt.
I opened a window and leapt out, falling into the night. I landed on the veranda, hearing Minoko and Ryu right behind me. I leapt down from level to level, until I reach the bottom. We ran through the shadows and came to the stable. As an end to a successful mission, Minoko sent the horses on a rampage. With this diversion, we scaled the walls, leapt over the side and passed into the shadows of the forest. The soldiers will have a lot more problems in the morning, more than just the aftermath of a rebellion.