Disclaimer: See prologue.

o o o

"The first lessons that every ninja learns is how to become a successful weapon. Among ninja, there is no place for mercy, fear, hate, or any of the other myriad emotions that are typically found in normal human beings. Such feelings could lead to hesitation, recklessness, or outright rebellion, and thus must be expunged from a ninja before he can be of use to his or her village."

--excerpt from Chapter 1, A Ninja Society of The World of the Shinobi by Uzumaki Naruto

o o o

"Start!"

Naruto didn't have to look behind him to know that his teammates had vanished. After all, that was what a good ninja was supposed to do. While able to hold their own in straight-up confrontations, a ninja's true strength lay in deception, in the art of striking decisively and then vanishing like smoke. He knew, from his own schooling and from his dreams, that they would be waiting, hidden nearby, for the jounin to to relax his guard to the point that they could capitulate on his mistake and defeat him.

He knew that he should have done the same. He knew that standing here, in the open, was a foolish decision that would most likely cost him dearly. And yet... the gall of this man, to stand there without a care, slouching arrogantly... There was a part of him, a secret, furious part of him that wanted to punish him for his impudence.

"I think you are missing the point of this exercise," Kakashi complained. "Your other two teammates seem to get it, so why don't you just follow their example?" When Naruto continued to stand there, staring at him hatefully, he sighed, silently lamenting the idiocy of today's youth.

Torn with indecision, Naruto found himself unable to move. He found himself rooted to the spot as surely as though he were under a genjutsu, a thought that caused him a second of panic, before being cast aside. Glaring balefully at his instructor, he sifted through his options, trying to find out that appeased both his underdeveloped sense of self-preservation, and his growing bloodlust. To retreat would be the smart thing to do, the most tactically sound of his options, but it would be also admitting that this bastard was better than him, that in a head-on conflict, he was overmatched. And after standing here for so long, it would also be a show of cowardice, one that all of the villagers would hear about and laugh at, shaking their heads at the thought of the 'demon fox' running away from a conflict. If he ran, then there would be no way that anyone would ever respect him. He would be the eternal dead-last, the laughingstock of Konoha.

So he had no choice after all. He had to attack, to fight and win against this opponent just as he had won against Mizuki. This man was nothing more than another obstacle, another person who was convinced that he was just some second-rate idiot who didn't deserve the hitate that he wore.

And yet...

"You won't succeed unless you come at me intending to kill..."

A ninja has no mercy, Naruto reminded himself. A ninja can kill without thought...

--Men were screaming and dying everywhere he looked, the ground slick with their blood. Two hundred strong had come against him, and two hundred strong were now dying at his feet.

What audacity. What foolishness. To think that mere mortals could challenge the most powerful of the Tailed Beasts. It did not matter how many of the little rats came against him, he would destroy them all. That was his duty, his calling, his very purpose, to reign supreme over all other life... and anyone who challenged him would be left as nothing more than a corpse in his wake--

Naruto gritted his teeth against the memory, forcing the thoughts away.

"What's wrong?" Kakashi asked, giving the boy a quizzical look. "Are you just going to stand there staring at me, or are you going to do something?"

A ninja can kill without mercy, Naruto repeated to himself, focusing on that smug face in front of him. If I can't fight this bastard, then what's the point of even being a ninja?

There is no point, he told himself. Being a ninja, becoming the hokage, how else can I show it to them, how else can I prove that I'm not a monster, that I'm important? I have to do this!

He forced the doubt and fear away, burying them both under the bitterness and anger that had been his constant companions over the years, born and nurtured under the villagers' oppressive hatred. Closing his eyes, he felt the all too familiar rage, that burning hatred that never quite went away, feeling the bloodlust singing in his veins as he snapped his eyes back open and stared at the man before him. His vision blurred and twisted, Kakashi becoming Sasuke with his cold sneer, Sakura with her annoyed grimace... a thousand different faces, a thousand different expressions, but all of them screaming one thing: you are worthless.

I'm fighting to prove that I am important, he snarled to that part of him that still doubted, knowing it was the truth, but wishing it was the only reason.

It doesn't matter, he thought angrily. I have to do this.

Whipping out a kunai, he charged.

o o o o

Sasuke had watched the confrontation with cold, analytical eyes, sneering to himself as he saw the blond's obvious indecision. Not only was his teammate a moron, but he also seemed to be a coward as well. From where he was hidden, he could see the boy practically shaking in his fear. That idiot is nothing but a liability, he thought, thankful that, even if it was an otherwise tremendous waste of time, at least Kakashi's little test had shown him that much.

Not that Haruno is much better, he thought bitterly, cursing whatever fate had decided to place him on the same team as the class dead-last and the pink-haired fangirl. No matter which one was sent back, he would still be left with a teammate that was nothing more than a hindrance.

His sneer twisted into a scowl at the thought. After years of wasting his time in the academy, he had finally received the opportunity that he had longed for, and this was how it turned out. Given a joke of an instructor, teamed up with the worst possible teammates, he might as well have stayed at the academy.

It had been pathetically easy to become the top of his class. At first, he had eagerly focused on every lesson, sifting through the lectures and practices to try and find something that had eluded him, some great secret that would give him the power that he sought. However, it quickly became apparent that there was no such miracle lesson, or, if there was, then the academy didn't have it. While he yearned for the strength he knew he would need to kill Itachi, he somehow knew that he would not find it amongst the second-rate students that were his classmates. And now, the final insult: being placed on the same team as the dead-last of his class.

The Uchiha prodigy had nothing but contempt for his teammate, having watched the boy clown around throughout their shared schooling years. The kid was undisciplined, unmotivated, and a complete idiot, three things that would have never been tolerated among his clan.

The thought of his long-dead family brought a fresh lance of pain through Sasuke's heart, an agonizing reminder of those events that had occurred so long ago. He relished the feeling, holding tightly to the pain as it purified his soul. Whenever he felt lost, whenever he felt helpless, he had but to think of his father and mother lying on that bloody floor, and he found direction again.

While he would never thank his brother for what he had done to him all those years ago, he recognized that he was stronger now that he had ever been before. The grief and the rage that he felt over those events gave him a focus, a purpose that was his and his alone. It drove him to become even more powerful, a fact that he would be sure to show Itachi the next time he saw him.

Snapping out of his daydream, he focused back on the fight, watching the jounin and waiting for the right moment to strike.

o o o o

Naruto felt his mouth twist into a vicious snarl as he slashed wildly at the laconic jounin, his every muscle burning with the need to rip that look of boredom off of his instructor's face. The man's apathetic attitude infuriated the blond, and he longed to see that look twist into fear, hesitation, anything that showed that that Kakashi was taking the fight seriously.

Yet there was a part of him that was enjoying the fight, one-sided though it was. There was a certain euphoria that the genin had come to realize could only be found on the battlefield, where life and death could lurked behind every decision, and even the slightest mistake could cost him everything. Only during times like this, when he held nothing back, could he he truly feel alive.

It was not a new concept to the boy. He had felt the same rush before, during the fight with Mizuki. Then it had been like lost himself, casting aside his doubts and fears and longings to become something different, something... powerful. The feeling had been intoxicating, a current of fury and excitement that had pulled him forward, to enter a world of ecstasy in which he knew only the glory of combat. It had only been when he stood before Mizuki's broken body that he had come back to himself, and had recognized what he had done.

Unfortunately for Naruto, the opponent he now faced was not the treacherous instructor, a fact that was reinforced when the man easily side-stepped Naruto's latest assault, knocking the genin off balance with a lazy slap to the boy's back.

Naruto spat out a curse as he felt himself stumbling, arms swinging wildly as he fought to catch his balance. Tripping over an exposed root, the boy fell, his arms automatically shooting out to brace his body. He grit his teeth as pain shot out from where his right fist had struck the ground, the entire hand stinging from where he had refused to drop his kunai.

From near his ear, a voice laughed at him. "A ninja isn't supposed to be caught from behind, idiot."

Mentally screaming at himself for his stupidity, Naruto started to spin around, his kunai slashing in a wide sweep, but it was already too late. He felt something slam into his backside, a blinding pain beyond anything he had ever experienced before. His eyes snapped shut as his brain tried to process his agony, and as a result he didn't even realize that his feet had left the ground until he was already several feet in the air.

His entire backside in agony, as the magnitude of his defeat and the ease at with it had been accomplished washed over him, Naruto could only scream in rage as he sailed towards the horizon.

o o o o

Sakura groaned inwardly as she watched her sensei dispatch Naruto.

She had recognized that the outcome had been determined from the very beginning, though she couldn't understand why Naruto had even thought that he could defeat a jounin in a head-on confrontation. Then again, she had long ago stopped trying to understand the reasoning behind most of the blond prankster's actions.

That Naruto is such an idiot, she thought scornfully. Not like Sasuke-kun.

The thought of the raven-haired Uchiha prodigy warmed her heart, and, despite her best efforts, she found herself blushing at the thought of him.

While she recognized that she was hardly the only person to have a crush on the boy, she knew that she had an insight into Sasuke that no one else had. She wasn't like the others, who only saw a pretty face and a cute butt. Unlike his little fan club, she could see beneath his looks to the type of person he really was.

She had been a child when the Uchiha Tragedy had occurred. She had already liked Sasuke, even then, and had worried over what might have happened to him. Yet, two weeks later, he had shown up for class, as though nothing had happened. Sure, he was quieter, and he might have been a little more withdrawn, but the fact that he continued to go on despite what had happened, that was what had ultimately won her over.

Blinking, the girl realized that while she had been reminiscing, Kakashi-sensei had left. Casting a quick look around her, she noticed that there was no sign of Naruto or Sasuke either. Cursing her inattentiveness, she scanned the area, looking for anything that would indicate what direction the others had gone.

Seeing none, she bit her lower lip, before finally deciding on a random direction.

As she ran, careful to keep a close eye on her surroundings this time, her mind slipped to think of her other teammate, the loud obnoxious blond that had trailed her like an overly affectionate puppy for years.

She had never been entirely comfortable with his feelings towards her, eying them with a suspicion borne of years of being a target for pranks and taunts from the more popular and, though it galled her to admit it, more attractive classmates. Yet, despite her best efforts to persuade him against it, he had persisted, and, unwillingly, she found herself coming to view the boy as another permanent fixture in her life, like Ino's antagonistic rivalry or Sasuke's distant perfection. It was strange, but, on a certain level, Naruto's immature attempts at romance did make her feel better about an existence that she had begun to tire of.

Yet, she had never seriously considered returning the boy's affections. Naruto was too... Naruto. He was wild, inconsiderate, chaotic, all those things that she hated in life. He had none of the consistency and dedication that she so admired in Sasuke, a fact made obvious in his dismal grades and attendance at the academy, instead bounding from prank to prank as quickly as his short attention span demanded. She knew that his crush on her was just another fixation, another way of passing the time until something else caught his interest.

Besides, in a contest between Sasuke and Naruto, the blond prankster didn't even measure. He lacked the dark-haired boy's dedication, his intellect, his--

His cute butt! Inner-Sakura piped in.

--and as little as such things mattered to her, he lacked Sasuke's devastatingly good looks.

Sakura stopped suddenly, her breath hitching as she spotted a flash of silver amongst the green leaves. There, standing not thirty feet in front of her, was her jounin-instructor, his back turned to her as he perused that filthy book of his.

But where is Sasuke? she wondered, knowing that the Uchiha would not have abandoned such a tempting target.

A sudden rustling near her caught her attention, and she held her breath, her body going rigid with tension. Trying to keep her motions inconspicuous, she slowly relaxed her right arm, her hand twitching slightly as it eased to her thigh, where she had attached a shuriken holster.

"Sakura... help me..."

With a sick feeling of dread spreading throughout her body, she turned.

o o o o

His lungs burning with exertion, Naruto still forced himself forward, praying that he wasn't too late. He had been eying the lunches Kakashi had prepared for them, contemplating whether or not to eat one when he had heard Sakura scream. His concern over his teammate and longtime crush quickly overcoming the growling in his stomach, he had immediately began running towards the source of the scream, afraid of what might have occurred.

That bastard's gone too far, he raged, hating the jounin even more. His mind churning with scenarios of what might had happened to his pink-haired teammate, each worse than the last, he pushed all of his energy into his legs, finally seeing a clearing ahead. With a final desperate burst of speed, he leapt forward.

And stepped into a scene out of a nightmare.

The first thing that he noticed, oddly enough, was the way Sakura's hair fluttered in the wind. It flowed around the young genin like a personal banner, caressing every angle and curve like the hands of a lover.

Except, it wasn't her body. At least, not the body that he remembered.

She lay slumped against a tree, her head down as though she had decided to take a nap. So overwhelming was his relief at finding her, at first he thought that this was the case, and he laughed, overwhelmed with gratitude that she had not been hurt.

"Hey, Sakura," he started, his irritation gaining voice. "What's the big idea--" His voice trailed off as little things that had gone unnoticed in his excitement suddenly screamed out at him.

The girl lay like a broken doll, her head hanging low as though it were barely attached to her body. Kunai had punctured both shoulders, attaching her to the tree like a moth in a display. Her face was ruined, a deep gash slicing from her left eyebrow down to her neck, gore seeping through the open wound.

Sakura weakly lifted her head to look up at him, staring as if noticing him for the first time. Her mouth moved in what he assumed were words, but all she could manage were wet gurgles..Her eyes, though... They communicated far more. They were pleading, full of terror and agony and begging him to do something to make it all stop.

Naruto choked back a scream as it tried to escape his throat. The blood was pounding in his head, a vicious throbbing as his body reacted to the bloody scene before him. He tore his gaze away from his dying teammate, only to find himself confronted with another horrifying vision.

Laying towards the edge of the clearing, his body curled as though he had been kicked aside, was Sasuke. The proud Uchiha seemed to be in incredible pain, low gasps escaping his body every few seconds. His left arm was extended outwards, the fingers splayed outwards from a ruined hand, while His right hand clutched at his stomach, gripping the cloth of his shirt as though he was trying to keep his organs from seeping out of the jagged gash in his stomach. Worst of all was his face. His mouth was open in a agonized scream while his eyes were locked on Naruto with wild, unthinking fear.

And the blood...

The crimson liquid was splattered across the clearing like a young child's painting. It coursed down the tree Sakura was impaled against to gather in gory puddles at her feet. It trailed behind Sasuke's body to smear across rocks and leaves, a testament to the boy's dying efforts to flee.

"Naruto," Sakura gasped, her breath gurgling thickly from a ruined throat. "Please... help me..."

Naruto slumped to the ground, his legs suddenly lacking the strength to support him. He clawed at his eyes, sobbing now as he tried to make the images stop. Dear gods, he pleaded, please... no more! Let this all be a dream. Please, just make it stop!

Even as his body and mind reacted with disgust, he could feel something within him crow with dark satisfaction at his teammates' fate. He could feel that part of him exulting in the scene before him, taking grim satisfaction in the fact that the ones who had despised him were laid low, made to suffer for their unthinking cruelty.

Isn't this what you wanted? A cold, cruel voice asked, curling like oil inside of his head, soaking into his brain until he could no longer hear the cries of his dying teammates. They acknowledge you now. They recognize how weak they are compared to you. Rejoice in their recognition, and revel in the fact that in dying, they have shown how much weaker they are than you.

It was too much. It was all too much. He couldn't take any more. His eyes rolling up in their sockets, Naruto collapsed into a dead faint.

o o o

Author's Notes: Forgot to include this, but thanks to Naitachal666 for looking over this chapter for me. I appreciate it. Also, apologies to everyone who was waiting for this, as I had the first draft done for a while, but it was just sitting on my hard drive while I went through some personal problems. Sorry about the wait.

Also added in this version is the quote at the beginning.