This is just a little One-Shot to pass time until I get inspiration for my other stories. Still, enjoy and don't forget to leave a review :D

(By the way, this is set many years after the original plot)

Once upon a time…Who hasn't already heard that sentence? This is how all fairy tales start. This may not be one but I want to use it here, even though, there is no 'happy ever after'.

There never is.

So, now, let me tell you want I want to say.

Once upon a time, there was a village called Konohagakure.

Konohagakure was a village that was protected by brave and proud shinobi and kunoichi that were trained in their home village. There were four other big so called "Shinobi-Villages". Kirigakure, Iwagakure, Sunagakure, Kumogakure and Konohagakure were the strongest ones, though there were also other, smaller ones.

Sadly, the five villages were torn in war and innocent blood was spilled over many years.

Hundreds of ninjas gave their lives in those gruesome and so, oh so meaningless arguments. Their lives were wasted in vain.

And once, everything seemed as if the world was about to collapse. It was something very special and an important event that would affect many generations to come, but still. It was just a single episode in the history of the world.

There would come a time when it would vanish from the people's mind.

It was the episode of the Bijus.

Never, ever had the world been so close at the edge before.

Another fight with many sacrifices, another war. The fourth Shinobi World War, to be precise.

But of course, like all things in this world, it ended.

Once upon a time, just two generations, or three, after the start of the war.

This is when and where our story takes place.

The sun shone down on the rooftops of Konohagakure, a village that had seen many things in the past and had been close to being destroyed more than once.

It was peaceful that day; the village was filled with an atmosphere of harmony.

The sun had long crossed its peak and was slowly setting, as its rays pierced the blue of the sky. It looked as if someone had purred gold onto blue canvas. A beautiful sight indeed.

A boy, maybe fourteen years old, lay in the grass, on top of a hill.

His arms were crossed under his head, functioning as a pillow as day turned into night. His eyes were casted at the sky and he was deep in thought.

Once again, the world had returned to normal, or at least as normal the world could get.

Hunger, despair, death and the few happy ones, the few truly happy ones. Normal.

A sigh escaped the child's lips as a chilly breeze picked up and messed up his hair.

Just then, another child at about the same age approached at rapid speed. A gleeful grin was spread on his face and his eyes were sparkling with excitement and happiness.

"Hey! Hey! Guess what!" he called over to the boy in the grass, while waving his arms through the air.

He got no response and when he lay down next to his friend, he frowned playfully. "Aw, you're no fun."

His companion let out another sigh and propped himself up by his elbows. "You're now Chu-Nin? You wear a Chu-Nin vest." he drawled, not one bit amused or happy. The reaction of the new arriver was quite the opposite; he almost jumped in the air in joy. But his smile slowly faded and his eyes lost their spark.

"Why are you not happy? Shouldn't you be celebrating with me?"

The boy he spoke to snorted. "Why should I? There is nothing to celebrate." Another gust of wind hit his face, blowing his dark hair out of his face. His face was indifferent and his eyes far, far away.

It made his friend angry. He jumped to his feet and screamed in the black-haired boy's face. "No reason to celebrate? I risked my life for this! I risk my life every single day just so that people like you can survive!"

After his little outburst, he lay down again, but the anger wouldn't leave his face. Blond tresses covered his eyes and he brushed them away, irritated.

The still unaffected fellow stayed silent for a while, too caught up in his mind to answer immediately. "No need to get worked up, buddy..."

"No...need? NO NEED?"

"Oh for god's sake, could you shut up now?" snapped the raven, annoyed by his friend.

The blonde was taken aback by that, his words dying down in his throat. Silence settled between them and the raven sighed for the umpteenth time that day.

That irked his friend who rolled on his side to look at his face. "Hey, what's wrong?"

"What wrong is? The world is wrong."

"That's so pessimistic."

"It's realistic."

The dark-haired teen started ripping out some blades of grass in what seemed to be frustration and his companion watched. "What does that have to do with me becoming Chu-Nin?"

"You said that you risked your life. Isn't that a shame? You have to risk your life every single day and what do you gain? The title of a murderer. That's not fair."

"I'm not a murderer!" the blond male protested. His friend only smiled a hallow smile.

"Have you ever heard of a man called Orochimaru?" is the question.

The blonde nods, a frown on his face again. "Who hasn't? HE was a murderer, not me."

But he was cut off, before he could say anything else.

"If I really have to become a ninja, then I would've gone to Orochimaru."

He was laughed at. "What? He was a freak, a murderer, a traitor and a monster! And he's dead!"

"Who knows? Maybe he's still out there? After all, he is immortal." mused the smaller one of them. "No one knows what really happened to him. Not even Hokage Kakashi or the Kyubi vessel, Naruto Uzumaki knew. And the Uchiha...he was killed. So why not?"

"You actually believe there is something as immortality?"

"Remember when the Nara family dug out this guy in their forest recently? Even after all those years, the guy was still alive until they burned his remains. So immortality has flaws and it may not be forever, but I still think it's possible for Orochimaru to be still alive."

The more emotional boy didn't like the way his childhood friend was talking, so he nudged his shoulder and said "Forget it, buddy. I don't want to lose you. And especially not to a creepy, old guy." He laughed a little, but he it was a more forced than really coming from the heart.

"Then why are you a ninja?"

He heard the question, but his brain took awfully long to process the information.

"So that I can protect the ones who are dear to me and so that maybe one day, there will be something like peace in our world. That's why I became a shinobi. Why do yo ask?"

"Why did you become a shinobi if you want to protect people? If you want to bring peace to this goddamn world?"

The blonde grew more and more irritated by those questions. But they started it and they would finish this. They wouldn't have to talk about it again.

"How can you say you bring peace when you kill people? How can you protect others if you have to make others suffer?" continued his still calm looking friend.

"Don't you understand? Those people are evil! They killed innocent people!"

"And what makes you different from them? Huh?"

The cool demeanor of the fourteen-year old was shattered as he shouted those words out to the world.

Hot tears began streaming down his face as his body shook with violent sobs. He blocked his face from the blond male's view with the sleeves of his dark red sweater and his pale hands that seemed to glow in the soft light of the setting sun. The Chu-Nin could only guess how long his companion had kept this inside of him and how much it pained him.

He wanted to comfort him, talk with him, but he couldn't.

He couldn't.

After a while, the crying died down and the boy in the sweater pulled his hands from his face.

"Those, those people want to live too! They have families, friends! They have lives! And you, you take that away from them! I understand that evil people need to be punished, but that doesn't give you the right to kill them! That is self-administrated justice!" New tears formed in the corners of his dark eye, but he held them back.

The words sunk deep into his mind like a poison, yet the shinobi could quite grasp their meaning.

He didn't want to.

"...Then tell me, why would you want to stay with Orochimaru, then?"

A small smile lit up the raven's face, but his eyes were giving his sadness away.

"Because Orochimaru is-or was-not a hypocrite.

People like you are almost just as bad as he is.

His goals are noble, but selfish. He experiments with humans and cages them up.

But he also gave some people reasons to live. Haven't you ever heard of Kimimaro Kaguya? His clan once attacked Kirigakure and died in those fights. Only Kimimaro survived but he had no goal in life, nothing to live for.

And Orochimaru gave him a reason, a purpose in life.

Some people came to him to be experimented with or to be locked up.

When Orochimaru killed, then he killed because he wanted to and he was completely aware of the fact that he was committing a murder."

The blond boy, who had been very happy just hours before, just stared.

He stared at the boy he knew for years and he had been friends with.

He just couldn't believe what he was telling him.

And while he was trying to comprehend this whole thing, the raven went on.

"He didn't need any reasons to explain this. He didn't try to justify this gruesome deed.

But you, you justify your murders with the reason to protect your precious ones. But what makes those different from other people? That they never killed or shit like that? Everyone has the right to live.

I am not saying that Orochimaru was good. No, he was far from that.

But at least he's not a hypocrite.

And if I had to choose between a cruel seeker of truth and knowledge and hypocrites, I'd take the murderer who knows what he does.

You understand?"

The last sentences came out shakily, hesitatingly, as if the male wasn't sure if he should really say them.

He looked over to his friend with big, dark eyes, filled with fear and sadness and examined his face.

The blonde's eyes were dull and the only thing that moved, were his blond tresses which the wind blew out of his face once in a while. His tan skin was a unhealthy white now.

As he slowly recovered, he fell down on his back and the two boys stared up to the sky.

The sun had set.

Stars were covering the dark sky, little lights in the eternal sea of black.

They lay there that way for a while, both hiding an emotional turmoil inside of their minds.

Finally, the new Chu-Nin stood up and lent his companion a hand.

"Come on, let's go home. It's getting cold."