What is prophesised must be fulfilled. The serpent shall be slain by he who possesses scarlet eyes. But if all with such eyes have been eliminated, how can the prophecy come to past?

Overview: An AU and non-centric fic of the sci-fi genre. The characters are probably at about 15 and 16 years of age. An adventure fic with Orochimaru the evil overlord, Sasuke the deadly bounty, and Naruto the idiotic bounty hunter along with his dysfunctional band of bounty-hunting team mates. Other characters come into play as the story progresses, so be patient, yesh?

Warnings: A little bit or course language, but other than that, not much.

Disclaimer: I disclaim Naruto.

Key:
"talking"
'thinking'
stressing on words

The Prophecy Fulfilled

Chapter 1: There Goes the Bounty

"Get your skinny ass back here, Uchiha!" The 15 year old blonde boy changed the gears of the hovercraft and accelerated. It was tough flying through the land of Ventegrah, especially at such an uncomfortably close proximity to the ground. It was essential to take care not to crash into the sharp conical rocks jutting out from the irregular, stony ridges of the snow-covered terrain. Yes. Snow. Perhaps it would be best to mention the murderous warping blizzard which was gleefully tossing the hovercraft around like a tennis ball.

The blonde pilot peered through the frosty windscreen, watching a dark form bounding around on the kunai-shaped rocks which were hidden to the pilot's wary eyes. He cursed at the cloaked-covered figure, who was hopping away at a very fast speed. Finding it was and had already been one hell of a challenge. Chasing it was a feat not many could even come across. And catching it? Many had said that the pilot was out of his mind if he thought he could even do that. The pilot huffed. He had gotten this far, and like hell he was going togive up. But he sure was discouraged. The cold weather wasn't helping much, and so wasn't the old broken down heating system.

"Impossible." Chouji mumbled from behind the pilot's seat, so caught up in his amazement watching the figure outside that he forgot to eat his crackers. "Naruto… we're on the fourth gear and the bounty's losing us! And he's on foot too. Man, how fast is he?"

Naruto cursed again, "As much as I am tempted to go up to ninth gear, I can't cuz it'd mean hello to nice sharp rock and bye bye to stinking life." He gazed at the messy white panorama outside, "I can't see anything else but his back. I can only tell if there's a rock there if Uchiha has jumped onto or over it." He gripped his throttle tightly, suppressing a tight shiver from the cold. His body suddenly stiffened in realization, turning back slowly and glaring dangerously to face the other boy, "Chouji!" he screamed, "Get your ass back to fixing that stupid heater! Bloody freezing hell, no wonder it's so frickin' cold!" As he breathed out angrily, he could see the misty cloud of water vapor form where his warm breath came into contact with the cold air. If it was already this cold inside, he sure didn't even want to think about how it was outside, lest his brain may freeze.

He turned back to the front and focused on piloting again. The windshield heaters were struggling to keep the frost from icing up the windscreen, doing a rather poor job. The dark figure outside was still hopping tirelessly at an unwavering speed, a mind-boggling pace Naruto was sure no human could possibly master. The blonde quickly shifted to fifth gear before the thick storm and foggy snow-laden clouds consumed the disappearing form of the Uchiha prodigy. The vicious winds outside posed as a wearisome threat, almost pushing his 30 ton craft off its course. He could hear the wall of his ship creak under the force of the fatal storm outside, and from the incredibly low temperatures too.

Of course the thought had entered his mind: The brutal winds, the stinging snow and hail, the slippery, thorn-like rocks, the deep trenches between them that that will no doubt lead to a long fall should one lose his footing or miss a step, and of course there was the bloody temperature of -47 degrees Celsius. Just how the hell did Uchiha do it?

"How on earth…" Naruto couldn't help but breathe out, maneuvering between and over the jagged edges of the uneven ground.

"Does he do it?" Chouji finished for him.

"Yea…" Naruto agreed, and suddenly snapped out of his daze, "Chouji! Get back to the heater dammit!"

"Yes-siree, capitano." Chouji mumbled as he ate his last cracker and dropped the wrapper somewhere, making his way to the back of the compartment.

"Damn…" Naruto squinted at the dark fleeing figure which was now a mere shadow in the blinding currents of snow thrashing about outside. The next second, the shadow was gone.

"Crap." Naruto muttered, braking immediately and stopping with a sharp jerk – and thankfully so. The Uchiha had disappeared into the narrow valley of a giant rocky wall which was hidden by a thick blanket of snow. A wall which the hovercraft would have most certainly collided into if Naruto hadn't pulled the brakes.

"Nice save." Sakura said from her station in the same control compartment Naruto was in. Out of habit, she flipped a few switches and from outside, one would notice two large circular metal disks, much a like a satellite dish but with a number of sub-contraptions, sticking out of the sides of the ship. The circumference of the disks were lined with a few ball bearings, with only the corners of a net connected to the ball bearings from the middle. One could tell that the rest of the net was probably folded up neatly within the metal disk, which would open when fired to fling out a net at whatever it was aimed at. Behind each disk were two joystick throttles, with buttons on the top end of each.

The protruding disks made an opening at the sides of the ship. So when in a mighty snow storm with violent winds, it really couldn't be helped if cold air blasted through those openings and into the ship, making everything a whole lot colder.

"Dammit Sakura!" Naruto squeaked from the cold and with shivering hands, quickly but carefully maneuvered the ship into the valley. The crack in the giant wall was narrow, but not enough to prevent the slim hovercraft's intrusion. Once inside, the cold air ceased gushing in, as the craft resided in between the rocky valley walls which shielded them from the storm and winds.

"C-cold…" A sleeping boy with spiky hair tied in a ponytail lifted his head up, shivered, and promptly fell back to sleep. His head hitting the controls he was in charge of caused a bullet to fly out from a powerful laser shotgun stationed at the top of the craft, hitting one side of the valley they were in.

Naruto winced at the small avalanche the laser bullet had caused, wishing he had never put Shikamaru at the combat controls.

"Oops." Sakura smiled apologetically at the sleeping Shikamaru, then back at Naruto.

"S'alright." Naruto grinned back in reply. "Guys, get ready at your stations."

A boy with short hair and canine eyes stepped up to one if the disks and sat down on the chair behind its controls – that is, the two joystick throttles. He yawned and scratched one of the two red marks that ran down the sides of his face.

Another boy sat at the controls of the disk at the other side of the craft, smiling enthusiastically, "Yoish! I will catch this one for sure!" His bowl-shaped haircut bounced along with each syllable, and his thick eyebrows were raised in excitement.

Naruto shivered – not from the cold though. Those eyebrows were just pretty intimidating sometimes. "…Glad to see you're looking forward to this, Lee." He said in fake enthusiasm – which the other boy never seemed to notice.

Rock Lee flashed Naruto a wide grin and then signaled a thumbs up to his canine partner, "Kiba! Good luck! Take honor in being my temporary rival in this exciting mission we are about to partake in. We shall put our whole hearts into striving for the best in this thrilling assignment! But whoever it is that achieves success, may the opposition not frown upon him as we are after all, part of the same team!" He flashed his winning smile again.

Kiba just stared. "Mmkay…?"

"Done!" Chouji called from behind the door that led to the control compartment. But a whirr and a clank later, the boy groaned from the other room, "Aww… not again." He got back to fixing.

"Can't see a thing…" Lee said from his side of the ship, a few snowflakes landing on his controls and his perfectly rounded hair. Looking at the snow-covered landscape before him was like looking at a blank piece of white paper. He couldn't even tell where there were any contours or rocks sticking out. The disk he was to control was also topped with snow, so he grabbed the two throttle handles and pushed them forward, causing the disk further up in front of him to respond by turning down and facing the ground, snow falling off it. Lee pulled the throttles back so the disk faced forward again, "And I definitely can't see him."

"But I can smell him…" Kiba said incisively, slowly shifting his own throttles and causing his disk to turn side to side.

The others looked at him in interest, "Smell?" Naruto squinted characteristically.

"It's faint. But I can definitely pick him out." Kiba answered, sensitive nose sniffing the cold air.

Naruto suddenly asked with a hint of embarrassment but with utmost curiosity, "What… does he smell like?"

Kiba inhaled deeply, "Like…" The boy pondered for a while, as if searching through his mind for an accurate enough description, or perhaps a past memory, "Like rain… rain in Moonhaven."

Naruto scrunched up his face in confusion, "Eh? Rain has a smell?"

Kiba turned and looked at him, "Have you been to Moonhaven before?"

Naruto shook his head, interest never leaving his eyes.

Lee interrupted, "Moonhaven…. That's where the Uchiha clan dwelled, right?"

Kiba nodded, "I've been there before. Just once. It was beautiful and I never wanted to leave." He closed his eyes, seeming to delve back into his recollections, before opening them and facing Naruto again, "Everyone had said that it was theoretically impossible to have vegetation of any kind growing on that land. It was a barren, lifeless place. But the Uchiha clan ain't called geniuses for nothing. The reknowned ninja clan made that desert bloom and prosper, with the most beautiful forests containing Kaleida and Sundown trees, proving other political leaders and top-notch scientists wrong. They called it Moonhaven. Itlooked even better than it smelt. My dad managed to save up enough for a short trip there. I remember that night. The forest had such a cool smell to it. It was raining too. Made everything smell fresher, yet darker and more… mysterious." Kiba suddenly paused.

"…Is… that what he smells like?" Sakura couldn't help but ask.

"Yea. Sorta." Kiba looked outside, taking a whiff of the cold frosty air.

"Hey, what do I smell like?" Chouji piped up, genuinely curious.

"You don't wanna know." Kiba replied bluntly, causing the other boy to huff indignantly. Kiba turned to face the white snow-covered crags outside again, "But then later that night, the smell changed. It was sudden, and it was overpoweringly strong." He paused, staring at the snow falling, "It was the suffocating stench of blood."

Sakura's eyes widened.

"The air was thick with it. It was scary. Hundreds of foreign ninjas dressed in shiny metallic armor flooded the forests, killing every member of the Uchiha clan that happened to be there. They headed for the village, but they left me and my family alone.Weand some other foreigners had to hide in cavesfor two daysuntil the massacre ended.Then weremained in there for a another few more days, in fear of coming out and encountering the Curean warriors.The Uchiha were strong, but unprepared. After the whole thing, we went back to the village a few days later, and not one Uchiha was left on the land. Not even the dead bodies, which was pretty weird. All that remained in Moonhaven were foreign visitors such as ourselves, and dried up blood." Kiba trailed off.

The group launched into silence, when Naruto abruptly broke it.

"Eh? Lee?" The blonde looked around, realizing the other boy wasn't there anymore. He ran out to the opening of the disk Lee had previously been controlling. "Lee! He called out, wondering if the boy fell out or something.

"Kiba!" Sakura screamed.

Naruto spun around to see Kiba's empty seat at that disk controls on the other side.

"W-what's going on?" He spluttered, panic evident in his voice. He ran back to the front, wiping the frosted window pane to peer outside. "I-if he's here, we can here hear him, r-right? I mean, w-we should be able to tell he's here… right, Sakura-chan? Sakura?" He turned around and came nose to nose with another boy, slightly taller than him, with a black cape hanging a long way from his shoulders, a connected hood covering his forehead and above. All Naruto could see was a face as pale as the moon, with bangs as black as the night sky falling over his eyes, which were redder than blood. "I think she'd say 'no'." The boy whispered.

Naruto took a peek behind the boy's shoulder, seeing an unconscious Sakura lying on the ground near her seat. So he did what any other normal healthy teenager in such a situation would do.

He screamed.

And boy did he scream.

The paler boy frowned when the much tanner one just kept going. And didn't stop. What kind of boy screamed anyway? A short yell was much preferred. Even a very loud shriek just passed as acceptable. But this guy packed one hell of a long-winded high-pitched screech.

It finally ended, and the paler one thought it was due to the other running out of oxygen, but his senses told him otherwise when he turned his head back to look at whoever it was that just entered the compartment.

Chouji stood there at the door, his packet of crackers on the floor, as he stared at the dark-cloaked Uchiha looking back at him with those cold, crimson eyes.

So he fainted.

"Dammit… what kind of crew did I get?" Naruto muttered and returned to where he had stopped off – by screaming some more.

"What the hell…?" The lazy drone of boy at the combat controls was heard.

"Shika!" Naruto yipped happily, "Shikamaru! You're awake! Oh boy, I'm so glad. I was wondering when my manly calls was gonna get to you! Get your gun out, dammit! I know you were put in the combat category for a reason, so prove yourself… Shika?"

The other boy was already back to sleep.

Naruto sighed, "Really, just what kind of crew did I get?"

The dark-haired boy was staring at the sleeping Shikamaru in hidden fascination, and Naruto took this opportunity to reach down the back of his pants and grab his kunai out.

But not before a pale hand blurred his view of his own hand and his own kunai was shoved at his throat.

Naruto took a deep breath, about to scream again, but the Uchiha quickly said, "Scream, and this very clean blade will be clean no more."

Naruto swallowed the scream back down.

"A short quiz, if you don't mind." The boy's voice was darker than his hair, and probably more mysterious than his scent, not that Naruto even knew what mysterious smell thing Kiba was going on about. The blonde was so bloody scared now he couldn't even breathe. The other boy continued, "Number one. How much is the bounty this time?"

"Eh…" Naruto stammered, "700 million bucks."

The pale one smirked, "Wrong. I believe an extra zero behind would make it much more worth it."

Naruto glared and lost his previous fear, regaining his customary aggression, "Hey! It was a jump from 16 million to 700. You weren't so great before, and you ain't so great now either!"

"Then why are you after me?"

Naruto glared when he realized he was stuck , so he went off the topic, "HA! You think you're so hard to get? Puh-lease. Look who I have in my ship now. The most wanted guy on earth."

"Says the one with a kunai at his throat."

"Ah…" Naruto murmured and settled for a pout.

"Number two. Who placed the bounty?"

"Probably some other rich bitch who you killed a family member of." Naruto replied casually.

"Wrong answer." The other pressed the kunai deeper into Naruto's neck, "Why don't you attempt that again and try thinking hard this time."

Naruto's breath hitched as he felt the sharp edge of the dagger push against his throat, "Ah… Lemme think, you bastard."

The pale boy would have smirked at the blonde's antiques, but didn't.

"Eh… some dude going around and conquering the world. White skin, black hair, one hell of an ugly face…"

"Orochimaru…" Sasuke whispered darkly.

"Oh, you know him. First time he appeared on the bounty-placer channel."

The Uchiha looked to the back of the compartment.

"Number three." He said, "Is that spare shuttle over there yours?"

"I'm the captain." Naruto spat, "Of course it's mine!"

The Uchiha prodigy smirked, "Wrong again."

-

"GIVE ME BACK MY SHIP YOU BASTARD!" Naruto yelled at the spare shuttle flying off into the distance, as he struggled to free himself of the ropes around him.

His missing crew members were just climbing up into the ship after having woken up on the snow-coated ground outside, and Sakura and Chouji were stirring.

He turned back and glared at the mess of controls, a kunai having been dragged across the control board, leaving a mighty gash. Loose wires spilt out, and electric sparks flashed ever so often.

"Mm… That'll need fixing." Shikamaru said sleepily before his head hit his controls again, a laser shot rang out, and the valley caved in – covering the craft in mounds of snow.

"Curses!" Naruto howled.

A/N: Sorry if only so few characters have been introduced. Some more will pop in later, and may take as much as half-way through the story, I think…

-sylver