AN: Wow, has it really been half a year since I updated anything? Well for those of you who have been anxiously waiting for "Akatsuki no Kage" (formerly "A Reason for Living Redux") to be updated, I have some news. Due to recent events in the manga I've decided that since only two chapters were out that I'd rework some things, especially with the revealing of the Hachibi Jinchuuriki, Kirābī. I hope, despite the mountain of work on my shoulders for my senior year in high school that'll I'll be able to update regularly, at least with one chapter every other week hopefully. Also you may have noticed that the fic is now under Naruto as opposed to Naruto/Anko. Why this is, will become apparent in the prologue, and from what I've planned out there will be no pairings in this fic though there may be hints towards some; though I may move this to the Naruto/Yugito section to improve traffic. Finally, for those of you wanting to see Anko, she may play a role later on in the fic, but I'm making no promises. Well I do hope that you all enjoy the reworked Akatsuki no Kage.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, unfortunately that closet yaoi-fanboy Kishimoto Masashi does. I do however own the characters created to represent the Sanbi, Gobi, Rokubi, and Shichibi Jinchuuriki. The Yonbi Jinchuuriki is an OC created by my fellow author Ayien who based him off of the old man seen in chapter 353 of the manga.
暁の影 – Akatsuki no Kage
By: Frace
'How could I be condemned
For the things that I've done
If my intentions were good?
I guess I'll never know
Some things under this sun
Can never be understood.'
– 'Soul Society' by Kamelot
Prologue: Forced Desertion
Uchiha Itachi stood stoic before the Sandaime Hokage and Konohagakure's three elders - Mitokado Homura, Utatane Koharu, and Danzou. Dressed in the standard uniform of the Konoha ANBU, he wore a form-fitting, black sleeveless shirt, and black pants that clung to his legs like a second skin. Matching gloves extended up to his firm yet thin biceps, even more of his body concealed by the padded vest and armguards colored so similarly to that of a Hyuuga's prized opaque-white eyes.
The Uchiha scion knew why he was there, and in the core of his being, he hated himself for standing before those people. He hated himself for what he would have to do, what he would be ordered to do, and all for the village, because the village, its people, and its fragile existence came before the desires of its shinobi.
Yet he would do it because he was a ninja – one who endured – and the sagely aged Hokage before him knew of no one, not even himself, who fit that definition as firmly as the teen standing before him. The Hokage knew just how much of his heart, his very soul, that Itachi would have to kill, grind to the finest powder, and scatter to the winds to be lost forever, just to perform the task given to him.
Between the soldier and his superiors, the air in the room grew thick like the fogs that gave Kirigakure its name, until the tension snapped, like a fragile twig. Koharu spoke, the Elder's aged and coarse voice showing no sorrow for the boy, who in so many ways was already a man, as she said, "You know your mission, Uchiha. Once the deed is done, you will flee this village a criminal and never return, lest you wish for your execution. Do you understand?"
In that instant, everything inside Itachi told him to lash out and kill the four before him, like the Kyuubi did to countless of his fellow shinobi nearly eight years ago. Yet, he gave the woman a short, curt bow as he resigned himself to his fate, the path that Konoha paved for him with no remorse. Solely because he chose timid pacifism while the rest of his clan chose cruel and violent war.
Itachi straightened himself, and with the briefest of nods to the Hokage, the only person in Konoha he could now trust, the teen vanished in a flurry of leaves. Nothing but wispy semicircles of smoke and pale green leaves drifted to the ground like snow to mark the slaughter-to-be.
He walked up to his parents' doorstep, the normally lively Uchiha compound as silent as a grave, his ANBU tanto and uniform colored in an eerie mixture of reds – from bloody crimson to a darkened, coppery henna. As he entered and stepped into the place he'd called home for the past thirteen years, Itachi looked around, taking in the tranquility of the nostalgic moment. He knew the place would never be the same again, the pristine wood flooring already stained forever by his shinobi sandals caked with drying blood, the blood of his clansmen.
He walked slowly down the familiar hallway, a mantra endlessly repeating in his head as the weary teen reigned in the emotions that wished to burst from his chest. "It's simply another mission. It's simply another mission." With each repetition of the phrase he felt as if he could continue on with this mission, the betrayal of his clan which threatened the peace of his home village.
Before he realized it, Itachi stood before the door that separated him and his mission's end - the masterfully crafted wood that sealed his parents' bedroom, so much like any door could seal any place. Without hesitation in thought or body, Itachi opened the door and stepped inward.
A kunai darted toward him. The ebony-haired teen had no time to speak or act before the classic razor-edged weapon flew his way, but it didn't faze him. A simple sidestep allowed the steel knife to harmlessly remove a few tresses of Itachi's hair and embed itself in the wall at the end of the hallway behind him.
Itachi's parents stood before him – his father who he resembled so much at a passing glance, and his mother, an innocent in the entire affair, a kunoichi-turned housewife having been forcibly married into the Uchiha. Uchiha Fugaku and Uchiha Mikoto.
"Traitor!" Fugaku barked, his voice laced with venom and stress, and his face a grimace of untold hatred and anger. He continued, his voice straining. "You've ruined everything I've worked for; Konoha could have been mine! You were to be our sword aimed at Konoha's heart; not the other way around."
As Itachi absorbed his father's verbal beating, that impassive look he wore on his face betrayed and masked what his heart and soul felt. The teen, his eyes as crimson as the blood on his clothes – the Mangekyo Sharingan active – felt his heart twitch at every insult his father spewed and fought not to snap back, fought with all his strength not to reveal the true depth of his deception of the clan.
But more than anything his father could say was when his mother, his precious kaa-san and the second most beloved person in his stolid heart – stepped forward, and asked, in barely more than a whisper, "Why, Itachi-kun? Why have you done this? Do you bear some deep hatred for the clan?"
Each accusation felt like a knife piercing through his heart, but Itachi steeled his resolve with the ease that came with having taken far too many lives for a thirteen-year-old. In a voice that held no emotion yet expressed what faint amount of love he could, Itachi said just loud enough for the two to hear, "Gomen nasai, Kaa-san."
Itachi entrapped both his parents within the torturous world of Tsukiyomi. As his parents stood there, still as masterfully crafted statues, the crimson eyed teen sheathed his ANBU-issued tanto with his father's body, tearing through flesh and bone like a knife through hot butter. With a flick of the wrist, the blade emerged from the elder Uchiha's chest, ripping open the left ribcage. Uchiha Fugaku, in a display that no Uchiha would ever dare show, fell to the ground and writhed there, agony written on his contorted face as he screamed, his horrid chest wound bleeding onto the floor.
Itachi drew a short kunai, the moonlight from the window glaring off the blade with a brilliant gleam. The assault on his mother would be far more refined. The tip, coated with poison, dripped a few drops of the bright liquid to form a small pool of insipid purple on the wooden floor. Itachi promptly placed the knife between two of Mikoto's ribs and into the woman's right lung. A brief gasp of pain escaped her pale lips before her legs buckled – like two trees long starved of life, and she fell in a heap. Her long, elegant ebony hair draped her face, hiding the pain that Itachi knew now crawled over her face.
As he turned to leave, a moment of sympathy fluttered in his heart, so faint the young Uchiha almost thought of it as pity. He kneeled and settled his lips near the ear of his slowly dying mother – the poison was a quick-acting one but designed to ensure the victim wouldn't die too quickly – and whispered faintly, his voice filled with nothing but cold emptiness. "Tell Sasuke that I'm sorry and to try his best; to live happily, to love Konoha as much as it so secretly loathes us Uchiha."
Without another word, he vanished, leaving not a trace behind other than the tanto – its cold steel stained anew with crimson once more – and the kunai, which continued to slowly eat away at the innocent mother's life. Barely a moment later the scream of a child, riddled with fear, terror, sorrow, and loss filled the night air of Konoha's Uchiha district.
Itachi flew across the roofs of Konoha like a bird of the night, not faltering in the slightest as he heard his brother's cries of pain.
"Escape from the east gate, then head west for Ame no Kuni," were the teen's sole thoughts as he retreated from the blood-bathed Uchiha district in the village's southern end. He knew what his mission was now that the slaughter of his clan was complete: Learn what threat this organization Akatsuki posed to his former village.
As the gates came into view, Itachi saw a flash of gold as he passed over a darkened alley, the smell of fresh blood – fresher than the blood that coated his ANBU armor – hung stagnant in the air above it. In an instant, the former scion of the Uchiha backtracked and dove into the alley, nothing more than a swift blur of charcoal black and steel grey.
Landing squarely in the alley, Itachi saw a sight he was all too familiar with since his questionable entrance into the ANBU - Konoha's pariah doused in his own blood. Uzumaki Naruto. The blonde seven-year-old was clothed in what could scarcely be considered rags, a worn T-shirt shrouding his form, its color intangible due to the copious amount of blood soaked into it, and pants in no better of a condition dripping around his legs.
Apart from having his left eye swollen shut, Naruto possessed no other traceable injuries upon Itachi's brief inspection of the blonde's condition. "Your father truly gave you both a blessed gift and a damnable curse, Naruto-kun." Making a brief observation of his surroundings, the slaughterer picked up the outcast child and sped back to a rooftop. Moments later, a speeding shape of gold, charcoal, and steel passed completely unnoticed over Konoha's unguarded eastern gate and into the dark depths of Hi no Kuni's forests.
Drip… Drip… Drip…
Uzumaki Naruto stared up at the countless interwoven pipes some three meters above his head. Suddenly very awake, the child felt his saturated hair and back as he stood on his two scrawny legs, shaking from the cold of the water. Looking down, Naruto's face scrunched up in disgust as he saw the think, murky brown water, not unlike the sewers that ran below his home village. He knew only because he'd been dumped down there once after a beating, like a much undesired sack of trash.
"Yuck," the whisker-faced boy said, shaking himself dry like a wet dog. His blonde locks lost any sense of order the water had temporarily given them, strands pointing out at every conceivable angle.
Now dry, or as dry as one could get standing shin deep in the murk of a sewer, Naruto checked himself over. He remembered being beaten – he always did – and he remembered the silver haired Genin that had attacked him. Mizuki was all that bubbled to the surface of his thoughts, though the ninja's surname eluded him.
Naruto realized there was no blood anywhere; even his faded beige shirt and blue pants were absent of the life-giving fluid, though his clothes were shredded beyond repair. He'd have to steal from someone's trash again.
Taking his mind off of his attire for a moment, Naruto surveyed the surrounding sewer, not that there was much to see. Pale limestone walls ran along both sides, and countless pipes connected overhead. The sewer stretched further than he could see, both in front and behind.
"I'm not in Konoha anymore."
Without thinking, the blonde began to walk forward, still shivering from being drenched just moments ago, towards what he only hoped was a way out of the place.
Drip… Drip… Drip…
Drip… Drip… Drip…
A constant splash invaded his ears, the sound a mixture of his body wading through the dank sewer and the dripping from the pipes. After ten minutes of walking, Naruto felt what little energy his body had draining away.
Nothing looked any different than it had ten minutes ago when he started walking… nothing but the red mist coming from that turn up ahead.
"Wait… red mist?" the blonde wondered. He might have only been seven years old and soon to turn eight, but Naruto knew that mist was never red, especially in a sewer. Despite the shaking in his body, he found renewed vigor, and the cold blonde ran towards the mist, following it down the turn.
As he ran, Naruto noticed the path growing brighter despite the continuing theme of dim lamps perched near the pipe-ceiling. The child entered a large room, its walls lined with flaming torches and radiating a far brighter glow than the lamps. The room was a giant cube, thirty meters separating Naruto from the wall at all sides.
But there was something off about the room; roughly three-quarters of the cube lay on the opposite side of a great set of iron bars stemming from the pipes far above Naruto's head. A simple piece of paper, yellowing from age, flapped ominously from the center bar not far from where he stood. Looking closely at the paper, Naruto read fuin in faded black kanji.
Naruto stepped forward, fully aware that whatever waited on the other side of the bars had created the red mist that hung about his waist, leaving his thighs feeling strangely warm. Naruto raised a small hand to touch the metal beam, but before his hand could touch the bar an enormous set of claws slammed against the cage, rattling the entire room with its force. Naruto jumped back, narrowly dodging a gigantic dislodged nail that had slipped between the bars
The blue-eyed child shook in fear as he stared at the claws. He had never felt more afraid in his life, even when being beaten to the edge of death. After a long moment passed, the claws withdrew into the shadows of the cage, swiftly followed by the red mist compacting itself behind the bars.
Before Naruto realized what was happening, the mist became a great fox of incomparable size. The beast had fur resembling a living fire, brilliant yellows mixing with raging oranges and burning reds. Its eyes gleamed like the deepest pool of fresh blood, a thin black slit wading its way through the crimson waters. Then there were the nine tails, each a thin whip of fire extending from the fox's body.
"So we finally meet," the fox ground out, its lips curving back as it revealed its fangs in a sinister, foxy grin.
"Wh- what are you?" Naruto stammered, the blonde falling back on his rear and submerging himself halfway in the murky water.
The beast chuckled, the water rippling with every vibration of its vocal cords, as it opened its jaws slightly, allowing its tongue to slither sloppily over its lips. "You ask what I am? Why don't you think for yourself, and use your eyes and your brain!" the beast roared deafeningly, its saliva flying out of its mouth to fall to the water where it bubbled and hissed, boiling the liquid.
Naruto stared at the flaming fox before him, shaking like the leaves of a tree caught in a tornado. As he looked over the beast again it hit him. "Nine tails… but the Yondaime… ." The blonde gazed into the fox's eyes, his quivering coming slowly to a stop. "You're the Kyuubi," he said forming the words as a statement rather than a question.
"Correct. Your foolish leader was incapable of slaying me (as if any mortal could) so he did what he considered the next best thing." The Kyuubi's voice was filled with agitation and long pent-up hatred for the dead hero of Konoha.
"But why pick me?" Naruto asked. Unlike the other children, he never had a parental figure to teach him and guide him.
"How should I know?" the fox snapped at the child, more saliva flying, falling, and boiling as its frustration rose. "I was looking for a simple meal that night, not once thinking of coming near this accursed place. But your precious ANBU seemed to have thought otherwise of my intentions."
"So you were attacked first and only fought back," he said, the blonde's childish curiosity now getting the better of him.
The Kyuubi unleashed a low-pitched, guttural growl, "Would you expect me not to, to ignore such blatant disrespect by creatures so far beneath?" Its anger reached a breaking point. "Leave me, Kid. I no longer wish to be troubled by your asinine questions!"
"But wait." There was so much more he wanted to ask, so much more he wanted to know. Who were my parents? Did you kill them? Unfortunately it looked like he would have to wait.
"Leave!" the Kyuubi roared, shooting saliva and phlegm into the air, where it mixed with the red mist, and fell steaming into the water there. The mist swallowed the blonde as he was forced from his own mind.
Naruto awoke, no longer surrounded by metal and limestone but by the brown bark of trees and the lush green of their leaves. As he stirred, he noticed he was sitting against a tree, perched on one of its wide branches.
Standing at the end of the branch was a teenager, ebony hair done back in a low ponytail, his back to Naruto. He sported the attire of an ANBU.
"Good morning, Naruto-kun. I hope you slept well despite what transpired last night." The voice was low, only audible to Naruto because of his sensitive hearing. It conveyed no emotion.
The teen turned, and for a second Naruto thought he stared at an adult, the deep lines below the teen's eyes greatly betraying his age. Then the blonde recognized him. "You're Itachi-san, Sasuke-teme's aniki."
"Correct," Itachi said flatly. He reached behind him and returned his hitai-ate to his forehead, but something felt off about it. A jagged scar ran through the leaf symbol that adorned the headband. "Are you sore anywhere, Naruto-kun?"
The blonde shook his head, standing up while trying not to fall from the high branch. "Where are we, Itachi-san? And what did you do to your -" The Uchiha cut him off.
"We are currently about halfway between Konoha and the Ame no Kuni border. Thirty kilometers west of here I am to meet someone. My hitai-ate is as it is because of the crime I committed last night." Despite his stoic expression, Naruto sensed a deep feeling of sorrow and regret in Itachi's eyes.
"Is something wrong, Itachi-san?" The blonde wanted to know details; he hated being left in the dark.
Itachi reached into his pocket to reveal a scroll and without hesitation, unrolled and unsealed its contents. Clothing. "Put this on. It would probably be best for you not to be in bloodstained rags when we meet my contact." The obsidian-eyed ninja lightly tossed the pile of clothes at the blonde with the grace befitting that of a ninja. Naruto wasn't as graceful with his catch, teetering on the branch and nearly falling the twenty meters down to solid earth.
Itachi turned his back to Naruto, the blonde changing faster than one would think possible for a boy his age. In less than a minute, he chirped out a, "Ready!" Itachi turned to face him. The boy was now clad in an outfit he was so used to seeing his otouto, Sasuke, wearing.
"Then let us get moving; we are to meet my contact in about two hours." In a blur of charcoal, gold, and grey the two disappeared, heading west as swiftly as the Uchiha could go.
Naruto remained quiet has he clung to Itachi's back, much like a small monkey, as they soared from tree branch to tree branch with the sun against their backs. After a half-hour of semi-comfortable silence, Naruto popped a question. "Itachi-san, do you know why the Yondaime sealed the Kyuubi inside me?"
The Uchiha assassin almost lost his balance as he stopped abruptly on a branch. He turned his head slightly to look over his shoulder, a slight glimmer of worry in his visible eye. Naruto had a similar expression written on his face, mixed with a small hint of childish curiosity. "When did you learn of this, Naruto, and from whom?" Itachi questioned, a small trace of anger lingering in his voice.
"Last night… I met the Kyuubi," the blonde replied meekly. He quickly tried to hide his face in the high collar of his pitch black shirt.
"So he's made contact with it… ." The thought floated in Itachi's mind for a brief second.
"I see. Naruto-kun, do you know your relationship to the Yondaime?" Itachi questioned, some warmth woven into the question, as if he were speaking to Sasuke.
Naruto prepared to answer when Itachi interrupted, "Other than the fact that he sealed Kyuubi into you?" The blonde's mouth shut as tight as a safe. "As I thought… ," Itachi said as he started moving forward again.
"Naruto-kun, you are the son of the Yondaime Hokage, Namikaze Minato, and his wife, Uzumaki Kushina, a former Jounin of the old Uzu no Kuni," Itachi deadpanned. He made it sound as if this fact was common knowledge.
Naruto sat dumbstruck. His idol, the Yondaime Hokage, the Kiiroi no Senkou no Konoha… was his father. As they continued to travel towards their destination, Naruto spent much of the time letting all he had learned in the past few hours sink in. While he never did ask, one question floated constant in his mind.
"What happened to kaa-san?"
AN2: And that concludes the redone prologue, the redone chapter one should be out within two weeks. See you at the next chapter.
– Jinchuuriki Character Section –
Name: Namikaze Uzumaki Naruto
Age: 7
Date of Birth: October 10, 1990
Height: 111.5 cm (3 ft 9 in)
Rank: Academy Student
Biju: Kyuubi no Youkou