Three Years Ago
A lot has happend in the decades following the exile of the Snake Ninja.
The war against the Hidden Cloud did not turn out to be the struggle for survival as many thought it would be, an ambitious Cloud ninja overthrew the Raikage, stating his reign was ineffectual and impulsive, and swiftly ended the hostilities against the Hidden Leaf.
Sakumo Hatake failed a critical mission against the Hidden Cloud in the last days of the war by saving the lives of his teammates, an act that was more despised by the Village than Orochimaru's attempt at necromancy, that ended in the ninja's suicide out of shame. His son turned into a cold-hearted machine who required the death of a friend in the following war against the Hidden Rock to become human again, aswell been given a ability that would make him famous as the Copy Cat Ninja.
Minato Namikaze became the Fourth Hokage, and while loved by the entire Village, he gave his own love to a young female foreigner with a fierce attitude. Together they had a son named Naruto, after the main character of Minato's mentor novels who's succes was still nonexistant. It didn't discourage Jiraiya of leaving the Village and travel for his 'research'. News articles on public indecency marked his path on a map. But the Fourth Hokage's rule was tragedically cut short by the attack of the Nine-Tailed Beast which cost massive destruction and the lives of countless ninjas, before Minato utilized a sealing jutsu that locked away the Kyuubi at the cost of his own life, within the body of his son in the faith that he would be strong like his father and be able to deal with it.
The Uchiha prodigy Itachi, someone who many believed to be the new Minato and a potential candidate to replace the Third Hokage who had to resume his duties after the loss of the Fourth, suddenly massacred his entire clan, including every man, woman and child except for his younger brother Sasuke whom he inexplicably left alive before leaving the Village and never be seen again.
In both disasters that left a child alone on the world, the Third Hokage commanded that a qualified guardian is to be assigned to the both of them, knowing from his own expierence what giving a adult to depend on would do to the benefit of such children, and fearing what might happen if they allowed them to dwell in isolation. For the Uchiha heir, no one was deemed more suited than the only other ninja in the Village who had the Sharingan ability, Kakashi Hatake. Some of Jonin, mostly female ones, opposed to the idea that a ninja who spends every waking moment reading a dirty book would give proper care to a child.
It was harder to find a warden for the Umuzaki child, as despite the Fourth's last order was to treat him like a hero for containing the demon, many saw the child as the demon itself who could break out of captivity any moment. The fact that the fear-inspired isolation of the boy caused him to commit numerous citywide pranks, did not encourage them to warm their hearts to him. In the end, the only one who volunteerd was the newly promoted Chunin Iruka. This was a suprise, seeing both his parents were killed in the Kyuubi rampage, and some suspected this being a ruse to kill the boy in his sleep. But while they were more than happy to give him the job on that reason, the Hokage had faith in the young man who barely out grown his own childhood.
Though the pranks weren't as dramatic as before when Iruka took Naruto in, the blonde-haired boy remained a terror to those who hated their beautiful gardens being decorated with toiletpaper every two weeks. This forced Iruka to divide his time between teaching and showing up at the door of nearly every Clan in the Village to apologize for his ward's actions.
When Naruto failed his Genin exams, despite all of Iruka's efforts, a Chunin told him that he could still obtain his headband protector, the true sign of a Ninja, if he could preform a stealth & infiltration mission to, like let's say stealing the Forbidden Jutsu Scroll from the Hokage's office. Not only did Naruto manage stealing the scroll and quickly learning a jutsu that would become a future trademark, he also saved his warden's life when the spy revealed his true colours and tried to kill him, which made him obtain the headprotector that he so eagerly wished for.
A few days later, teams were formed from the new generation of Genins who were to be led by a Jonin teacher. Naruto was put in Team 7, along with Sasuke Uchiha and Sakura Haruno upon whom Naruto held a crush, no matter how many times she would punch him in the head. She held one of her own on the dark and mysterious Uchiha heir, who was too consumed with wrath to notice that the girls in his class were fighting a daily bloody battle for his attention. Their mentor became Kakashi Hatake, who preferred to keep an eye on the child who remained emotionally shut, and to overlook the progression of the Kyuubi Host that some still considered a threat.
One man named Danzo constantly called for Naruto to be handed over to him, so he could turn a worthless ninja into a weapon that would give them an enormous advantage against the other Hidden Villages in a upcoming war. The Hokage told him repeatedly to shut up.
Despite a rocky start where the poor teamwork showed, Team 7 exceeded beyond expectations when a simple C-ranked escort mission turned into a A-ranked battle to defend a fishing village against a Missing-nin known as the Demon of the Bloody Mist and his henchmen the Demon Brothers that climaxed in a epic conflict on top of a bridge-in-construction. Kakashi and Team 7 came out victorious, a feat that the Copy Cat Ninja found so impressive that upon return to the Village he elected his Team to participate in the upcoming Chunin Exams, despite most Genins taking part were much older with more expierence.
After a long and dangerous first two exams that unlocked Sasuke's Sharingan, inspired Sakura to no longer being the weak chain in her team and become stronger, and made Naruto to be in mortal fear of the insane Jonin Anko who enacted a campaign of terror against him and his teacher, the third and final exams would be commencing tomorrow to see who would obtain the Chunin rank.
Only Naruto and Sasuke were to continue after the preliminary matches, but Sakura was content to have reconciled with a old friend. Both rivals had trained hard for tomorrow, Sasuke with his guardian Kakashi and Naruto with the pressured Toad Hermit, who Naruto insisted on calling the Perverted Hermit after catching him doing 'research' at the Hot Springs.
Tonight all was peaceful in the Village. All but the Sand Ninja who's heart was obessed with death and causing the deaths of others to quell his pain. But mostly everyone else went to sleep peacefully.
Outside the Village however, four men in dark cloaks and straw hats overlooked the slumbering Village, with a quite of lot of evil intentions in their gaze. They were waiting for their local agent to arrive, and one of the men especially hated waiting despite his love for eternal art.
"Where is the mongrel. We did not have him sprung out of captivity so he could take his time." A low and gruff voice came from the one who appeared to be a hunchbacked giant who's chin was close to the ground.
"Have patience. Or I will kill you." A deeper voice came from the masked one, who's eyes were black orbs with green pupils.
"Oh just stop for Jashin's sake you fuckin bastards. You're getting me all riled up, and I really want save my energy for tomorrow. There's no fun in killing old carcasses like yourselves." The third had taken of his concealing straw hat that revealed a young man with long slicked-back grey hair who was holding a massively oversized triple-bladed red scythe over his shoulder.
The fourth man prevented a potential fight that would certainly alert every Hidden Village in a hundred miles, by pointing out the agent had arrived, with the items they've requested in return for his freedom.
Mizuki has been a spy for their organisation a long time, ever since he learned the true meaning of power. Which was that you could never have enough. And in a Village where your own interests needed to be sacrificed for the interest of the greater good, a man to had to realign his affiliation to something more profitable. But now he was afraid of his masters. With reason.
Men like those whom he stood before now, were used to men like Mizuki doing things for them without question. And despite having brought them what they desired from a heavily crowded and guarded facility at risk of someone seeing through his disguise, he was terrified his escape was more trouble than they were acceptable of, especially as he had failed in the plot to make the Kyuubi Host an easyier target by making the Village turn against him. Mizuki also never met one of them in person before, his contact having always been the Uchiha defector who despite his menacing gaze, Mizuki knew him to be professional enough not to start killing people out of annoyance. Not these four monsters, both in appearance and mind.
One of the more human-like members smiled, which if it was an attempt to put Mizuki at ease, end up doing a horrible job at it.
"You did a good job, hmm. I trust everything we required you have brought us. And if you didn't, we will hunt you down and feed you to our resident shark. Understand, hmm?"
He patted Mizuki on the shoulder, that made the Leaf traitor tremble even more as the touch felt like a spider crawling up his spine.
"Now go along and run for your life. Tomorrow, Konoha won't be a safe place to be, hmm."
Mizuki nodded, and after a nervous glance on the others, he leapt up into the nearest tree and began to make his way to the next country as humanely possible. They stared after him in unison before the social turned to his comrades and grinned.
"Okay, gentlemen you know the drill. Place your bets and see who knows my art the best, hmmm."
"10. You're a triggerhappy motherfucker, Deidara."
"30. You always go for 30, being as predictable as your art."
"A full minute or beyond. You're sadistic enough for it."
After 15 seconds Hidan lost his bet, who cursed profanity as always. After 45 it was Sasori, who grunted in disaproval. In the end it was Kakuzu who won when finally after two minutes, they saw a short flash in the far distance, and the soft echo of an fading explosion.
"Pay up." 500 ryou bills were changed among owners, and Kakuzu reveled in his own art. That of making money.
"I'm suprised Itachi and Kisame ain't here. It's his fuckin Village afterall, would make things easyier than rely on worthless cunts like Two Minutes for information."
"They are to keep the Toad Hermit occupied. We have enough trouble with those present without him aiding them. None of you forget we are here for the Tailed Beasts and their hosts. Kill as many others as you like, but they are to remain intact for extraction."
None of them went to sleep as each had a ton of work to do, and despite each also having the ego the size of mountains, they understood they would be making an error in being careless and underestimate the Hidden Leaf.