Author's Note: I've never read a story that dealt with a shinobi's first kill, and how that must feel. So I did, to fill the hole in the genre. It isn't my best work, but oh well.
Naruto stared at his hands. He had taken three showers already, and the blood wasn't coming off. No matter what Kakashi or Sasuke or even Sakura said, even if they couldn't see it, he could feel it. His hands were dyed with red.
He had burned the jacket. That had been necessary; it was so blood-encrusted that no amount of washings could rid it of the stains that liberally splattered the front. Iruka had lectured him about throwing away the kunai, though. Such weaponry was easily cleaned, and the blade had been of good quality. But the weapon was still permeated with blood, that no one but Naruto could see.
He hadn't thought it would be so hard. Shinobi were trained practically since they could walk for one thing, and one thing only. But Naruto hadn't really thought about that aspect of ninjutsu. He had always concentrated on the way of the ninja, and not so much on what a shinobi was supposed to do. Naruto didn't think he would have been so ecstatic about getting his hitai-ate headband if he had known that shinobi was just another word for hired assassin.
Contract killers. That was all shinobi were, really. They started out the genin easy, jobs to find missing persons or weed a garden or walk some dogs. Then the bodyguard assignments, after the genin started chomping at the bit for real shinobi missions.
The first kill. Self-defense. They had been told since the academy, nothing was wrong with self-defense, or killing to protect your client, whether they really deserved your protection or not. But so far, Naruto had been lucky. Over a year as a shinobi, and not one death by his hand.
Killing was the way of the shinobi. None of that talk of honor, or achieving lofty goals, or never breaking a promise. The techniques they were taught weren't for games, or for fun, or even to help people. Every jutsu ever created, ever taught, ever learned, was to bring about someone's death.
And sometimes those that died didn't even deserve it. "We take every mission asked of us." That was the pride of Konoha. Naruto hadn't known until recently exactly what that meant. There was no refusal of assassination assignments, no matter the target. Good politicians who were trying to make the world better for the people died under mysterious circumstances, but in a way that couldn't be traced back to their opponents, even as shinobi appeared before those same politicians, and received their pay for a job well completed.
Naruto's first kill had been an enemy shinobi. A chuunin from the Cloud. Naruto, chakra exhausted from tracking a diplomat from the Cloud for days without sleep, had to resort to baser methods. He had slit the chuunin's throat. Hadn't even thought about it. Training had taken over as he watched the enemy form a series of seals that would melt the flesh from Naruto's bones. Instinctual to use the weapons at hand to survive.
Sasuke had looked at him oddly as Naruto dry heaved in the bushes after the mission. Sakura asked what was wrong. He had told her, and found out that she had killed months before, a group of bandits threatening her client. Sasuke had seen too much death to be affected by it. Kakashi was indifferent to the suffering of those he did not know. But Naruto wasn't.
Filthy. The others had been seeped in the blood of their victims, far more than himself. Couldn't they feel it? Sakura said the awkwardness faded with time. It took a few days. Maybe even weeks. But the way of the shinobi was to kill. Even Naruto should know that by now.
Naruto didn't know that. He felt even more different than usual, even more of a freak. Was he strange to be so affected by murder? Self-defense, but it didn't feel like it. He could have stopped the chuunin without killing him. Somehow. Naruto had always questioned people who were afraid of shinobi, wondered what they had to hide, was angered by their distrust and hatred. But Naruto could see now. Any shinobi could be sent to kill you. Profit was the shinobi way, and the shinobi made the rules.
Weeks later, when the pain and strangeness started to fade, Naruto wondered if the murder meant he was finally a real shinobi, one the people would treat with the right amount of respect. And whether that was such a good thing. He didn't think so, anymore.
Shinobi are tools for killing. Naruto had wondered how Haku could stand to live like that, valued not as a person, but as a thing, an instrument. But Naruto now understood. Thinking of yourself as an inanimate object was the only way a shinobi could live day to day and not be overtaken by guilt. Because if you weren't a tool, you were a killer. And no one could live like that.
Least of all Naruto. The kill wasn't so difficult the next time. He was only a weapon. The blood wasn't on his hands, but the hands of the one who wielded him. There was no way of the shinobi. A tool knew nothing so abstract as honor.