Allo

How are you all doin?

I'm here with a new story!

It took me a while to decide on which story to post but I finally settled on this one.

This story has a Naruto that is Nagato, Konan and Yahiko's age mate. It changes up the whole second and third shinobi war stories and it seriously alters the Ame orphans backstory. It will not follow canon, so don't come at me for not sticking to the script. Seeing as this Naruto fought in the second war then he will be older than the Konoha Nine and he will be more experienced. This Naruto is a veteran and (at this point, you shouldn't be surprised) he will be smart. The story starts after the second war but Naruto's background will be explained.

I don't want to spoil the story anymore. So without further ado, I give to you…

Silent Night

I DO NOT OWN NARUTO

CHAPTER 1

"Don't turn away from me."

Two of the three living founding members of the Akatsuki were having an argument.

A man with pale red hair and ominously glowing purple ringed eyes made to storm out of the Amekage's office, away from the person he was arguing with, before he could do something he would regret to his best friend but the other person refused, grabbing Nagato by his shoulder and forcing him to turn around to face him. This man was as imposingly tall as the Amekage and he faced the hateful rinnegan glare with his own glare, his cerulean blue eyes narrowing. He was wearing the robes of the Akatsuki, something Konan thought of after they had defeated Hanzo of the Salamander barely two months ago. He had dull blonde hair that flopped down his head to the nape of his neck and fringed heavily over his right eye, reaching down to his chin. Over his mouth and nose was a black half face mask that had pearly white teeth grinning evilly, a grisly thing to behold for any of his enemies and these bared, painted teeth looked even scarier as the man scowled when Nagato slapped his hand from his shoulder.

The purple haired Angel of Ameagakure, Konan moved between both Kage level ninjas quickly and fought to push them apart as they butted heads over her own head. "Guys," she pleaded, breaking her stoic mask and worryingly, frantically, looked between both of her childhood friends. "Please calm down-"

"I let you desecrate Yahiko's body, Nagato." the masked blonde snarled, jabbing his finger at the rinnegan god's face, very much unafraid and not in the least bit intimidated when Nagato's eyes glowed with ill-intent. "I looked away when you dug him up and used him as one of your rinnegan puppets." he spat, his voice came out clearly in spite of the fear imposing mask covering his lower face. "Now your grand plan to attain world peace is to blow it up? To combine all nine beasts and point it at the planet? Do you know how many levels of crazy that is?"

Nagato barely pushed down the urge to crush his friend with gravity and growled. "Don't talk to me about crazy, Naruto."

Konan was now desperate, holding them apart from ripping each other to shreds. "Naruto, Nagato, we can resolve this."

"No we can't." The masked ninja named Naruto grated. "He comes up with the craziest, riskiest plan and those plans almost end up with all of us dead or dying."

The Amekage was adamant. "The world needs to learn how to behave. If creating a nuclear level threat is the only solution then so be it."

"There he goes again, spitting rubbish. Just like your plan for killing Hanzo, huh? Do you remember that?" he saw Nagato waver and Naruto pointed outside the window at the recuperating village, where it rained heavily and the people were shuffling around, still trying to get a bearing of what had happened a few months ago. "It destroyed half of our home, ruined hundreds of lives and severed two major alliances to the village-"

"You went with the plan; you could have left and yet you didn't." he didn't raise his voice, like Naruto, though it still carried enough venom.

"I told you we could lead Hanzo away from the village and kill him in Suna, where he's weakest, but you said you wanted him at his best. You wanted him where everyone could see you kill him. You wanted the people to know you're the new Kage." Naruto slowly deflated and he exhaled through his nose. "Yahiko died because of you-"

"Don't you dare say that-"

"My student would have lost her life too if I wasn't there." The masked man continued as if he wasn't interrupted. He shook his head sadly and his eyes dimmed at the thought of losing his one and only student. He was put on the spot by Hanzo on who he would rather save, Yahiko or his student, and he chose the girl as his best friend impaled himself with his kunai. That situation could have been avoided entirely if Nagato listened to him for once. Tired shadows gathered under his eyes and he closed them, sighing. "Your pride will be your downfall, Nagato. I…" he hesitated, looking at his glaring friend with sombre eyes and raising his hands in surrender. "I will have no part of your plan. I'm done covering for you."

"Didn't need you anyway. You know where the door is. Get lost." He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder and Konan moved in front of Naruto as he made to walk out, gently keeping him from walking by pushing her hands against his chest.

"Naruto, no, we need you." She pleaded and her dark brown eyes softened.

Naruto observed her for a moment before he shot a quick look at Nagato, bent down to her ear and whispered. "He'll need you. Look after him." he straightened up and brushed past her. His cool eyes didn't change as he heard the woman sniff behind him.

He closed the door behind him and mentally began planning in how he was going to pack his things because he didn't want to see Nagato travel deeper and deeper into the abyss of his own creation. The seventeen year old jumped in surprise when he turned back around, face to face with his student; she wore the same Akatsuki garb as her teacher and she didn't look that much younger than him, maybe even just three years younger. She had the same lower face mask as Naruto but hers was simply plain red and she had long, soft white hair that reached her hips and two fang-like bangs that reached her pale hidden cheeks. Her curious red eyes shone even in the dim lighting of the hallway outside of the Amekage's office and the girl looked up at her teacher without much emotion on her face.

"I was coming back from the medical ward because some civilian caught a disease while digging up a house…" she raised a perfectly curved eyebrow and Naruto walked past her. She hurried up to his side, making sure to walk a step behind him with hurried steps. "Did something happen in there?"

"Oh you know, Nagato's gone mad and Konan's going along with him, the usual." He flippantly answered the expressionless white haired teen and the girl treaded lightly after him, her large Akatsuki robe making muted rustling sound with each step. He looked at her from the corner of his eyes, noticing that she was wearing a larger robe than the one she usually did; this one covered her hands and rose up to under her chin, where her lower face was protected by the half mask. She was also wearing stainless silver coloured leggings, so he couldn't see her toes either. He wondered if it had anything to do with her bloodline.

She furrowed her eyebrows softly and tugged his elbow. "What do you mean, Naruto-sensei?"

"Nothing you should worry about, Sueki." He exhaled. He laughed quietly when the girl still tugged on his elbow, calling for his attention.

"Ne, ne, then where are you going?"

"I'm leaving Ame."

It seemed the gravity of his words didn't really disturb her that much, as Naruto, his best friends and she had spent most of their lives in Rain. She simply shrugged, still holding his elbow and walk-skipping after him in the poor light leading towards his room. "Ok, I only need five minutes to pack."

"I think you should stay back."

His students answer was an immediate, "No."

Naruto felt a groan coming up and he came to a stop, something that made his eagerly trailing-though blank faced-apprentice run into his back. She moaned quietly and rubbed her nose over the mask with her free left hand, looking up interestedly to the back of her teachers head. "I'm not going to force you to come."

"I know, that's why I'm coming anyway." She said it so easily and with the most honest smile, a smile that shone through her bright red eyes and brightened up her pale face. It made the masked teacher scoff; he was the one that taught her that Eye Smile technique.

He studied her for a moment, mulling it over in his mind and ultimately reaching the decision that even if he ran away at the dead of night, she would find a way to track him. He couldn't shake her when she was a toddler, he couldn't shake her when he started learning from Orochimaru and he couldn't shake her when he went out on blind dates outside of Ame, in Rain country, for the girl would invite herself to the table and take up all of the Naruto's attention from his date. The girl was fixated on him and he didn't know why. Against what should be expected with a devoted stalker like his student, she was nice company and she was there when he needed someone. His sighed in defeat and her eyes lit up again. "Alright, fine. Get your stuff ready and meet me at the west gate."

"Great." She breezily hugged the tall blonde and ran back the way they came from to her room on the opposite side of the tower.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The Ghost of Ame sat down on his bed with a huff and a misty blackness ebbed from his back. The puff of darkness disconnected from his body and formed two clones, both of which had black eyed with dark red irises instead of sky blue. The clones began gathering his things from his room while the real shinobi stared at the three pictures he had on his walls.

There was one of him as a five year old with his dead parents, clinging onto his father's left leg and angrily pointing, roaring at the cameraman to not take the picture as his mother covered her mouth to hide her laughter and his father rolled his eyes in frustration, shaking his leg for his boy to get off him. A small smile came to his face when he remembered his younger self; he was wilder and more rebellious, insisting on his own way and no other way. That picture was taken a week before they moved from Darkness, or Dark country, to Ame at the peak of Darkness's civil war. His parents had seen the move as better than staying at the war torn country because no other country wanted anything to do with Dark refugees. His father, a tall man that often wore a scarf around his mouth and had black hair with blue eyes, promised that Ame would be better than Darkness, and his mother, his sweet mother, a beauty with equally blue eyes and soft, rose petal smelling blonde hair, agreed to move. Naruto had no friends in Darkness, as people were more concerned with either fighting the government or surviving the random bombings, so the boy only wanted the family to settle down in a place that didn't pose any daily danger to their lives. They stayed in the same town as his childhood friends, Yahiko, Nagato and Konan, on the far outskirts of Ame, far from the conflict in Darkness and also away from the global war waging within Ameagakure. That time he moved he hid most of his face under a scarf, like his father, and so the five friends didn't know how he looked for a number of years.

Another picture was of him, eleven years old and wearing a mud splattered black shirt and black pants with blue sandals, a red scarf around his face and holding a fighting stance across from his opponent, an orange haired boy that that grinned teasingly, wearing a similar style of clothing. The Ghost rubbed his eyes as he laughed at the memory; Yahiko had challenged him to a fight, claiming that Jiraiya's teachings were superior to Orochimaru's. Naruto didn't care much for the fight, so he declined but Yahiko, that lovable idiot, thought blindsiding the student of Orochimaru with a ball of mud was a good idea. Hence the twitch in young Naruto's right eye and the smoky darkness behind him. That picture was four years after they had all lost their parents and two years after two of the Legendary Sannin picked them to be their apprentices; Jiraiya went with Nagato, Yahiko and Konan and Naruto refused because he didn't want the Toad sage's attention to be too divided.

The last picture was of him standing in the heavy rain, with his right arm around her shoulder and playfully tousling his student's wet white hair with his other hand, beaming at the camera, Sueki was giving him a side eyed glare and crossing her arms. Both of them were wearing their half masks and wearing the Akatsuki garb seeing as they were about to enter Ame to fight Hanzo, the then Amekage; Naruto was, and is, seventeen years old.

The story of him finally accepting the white haired girl into their circle of friends made the Kage rank ninja chuckle and stand up, accepting his bag from one of his clones, dispersing it back into Dark release chakra.

Tragedy truly brought out the best and worst in people.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOO

For the longest time Naruto had been content with staying in the background, behind his three best friends, and allowing them to take most of the credit while he watched their backs, protected them from any of their mistakes blowing up in their faces and put his body on the line so that they wouldn't die.

That was how much Naruto treasured them.

Wherever they messed up, Naruto appeared and picked the slack so none of them got hurt. That was one of the reasons he was called the Ghost of Ame; he was an entity that couldn't be comprehended and left a trail of bodies after him when, even if you looked hard enough, you wouldn't see him at all. He wore a mask for the most part of his life and he stayed in the shadows of his more public friends. All they knew was that no enemy who managed to get near Yahiko, Konan or Nagato would get any closer before they inexplicably died.

Especially Nagato.

Before he got his rinnegan, Nagato had the habit of picking fights he couldn't physically or mentally measure up to. That was what Naruto had come to meet when he moved to Ame.

A boy with blonde hair and wearing a long scarf around his neck, mouth and nose raised an eyebrow and crouched down onto his right knee, ignoring the light rain pouring down on him in cold waves. He was staring at a red haired boy yelling at the top of his lungs at three bigger boys, who looked to be about nine or ten, surrounding the boy as they pushed him about.

"Leave me alone!" the red head blindly swung his fist and it slightly clipped one of the bigger boys. The boy that had been hit spat and drove his fist deep into the weak boy's stomach, savouring as Nagato coughed and whimpered, holding his sore belly and falling onto his knees. Naruto hummed and his lips turned down when one of the three boys kicked Nagato's back; he was obviously not a threat again, why hit him while he was down? The three bullies had initially come to the boy for his pocket money and instead of giving them, Nagato had called their mothers…a word Naruto's mother would have murdered him over if he ever said it. Naruto knew bullying; the three boys came with smiles and laughter, genially asking for the boy's money. It was in the playground of the civilian school in the town but the Darkness born boy knew no place was safe from bullies. Naruto closed his eyes and sighed when the other two joined in and began dropping blow after blow on the smaller boys curled up body.

The other kids looked away from the blatant bullying and the blonde instinctively knew that if they intervened then they too would be ganged up on.

He stood up from the small hill he was crouched on and walked to the gang beating, saying over the rain. "Hey, that's enough. You've got what you want."

The boy that began the volley of kicks looked up with a deep scowl, looking over Naruto's face covering and his hand me down clothes. "Who the heck are you supposed to be? This has nothing to do with you." The school was under funded due to the war so the teachers couldn't care less if Naruto reported him, so Naruto removed the option of reporting the bullying to them.

They went back to attacking Nagato. Everyone gaped when Naruto dragged one of the boys back by the back of his shirt. "I said, that's enough."

The boy he pulled back turned around and shoved the masked boy down, shouting. "That's it!" he ambled to Naruto and the boy scurried away from the larger boy, the other two bullies left Nagato's shaking form and followed the supposed leader of the group. Naruto wasn't fast enough so the leader picked him up by the top of his shoulder, lifting him clear off the ground and yelled. "Should've minded your business, scarves."

Naruto, who had formerly been wide eyed and trying to pry the boy's hands off his shoulders, covered his mouth and giggled. "Scarves? Really?"

The boy holding him up prepared to crack his knee into Naruto's gut but the boy had already shot up his right leg, crashing it between the large boys legs and felling him down so he could hold his throbbing groin in agony. Nagato looked at his saviour with large eyes, watching as Naruto landed on his feet and quickly moved backwards when the two other bullies were trying to figure out what Naruto had just done. The mystery boy raised his fists and hopped on his feet, something he had seen his late uncle do when he was telling Naruto a story from his time as a ninja. The blonde paused and beckoned the confused pair to go, returning to his sloppy fighting position once again. The two bullies only surged to Naruto when the groaning boy on the ground yelled at them to.

Naruto bent under a punch to his face and drove an unforgivable uppercut into the attacker's groin, dropping him down onto the ground to painfully cradle his aching nuts. Naruto continued his motion even as his second victim went down and scrambled away from the last bullies kick. He managed to get upright again and the panting bully ran to him with murder in his eyes, ready to avenge his friends. The Darkness born boy reared his right leg back and met his aggressor first, striking his groin with such strength and accuracy, for a five year old boy, that the latest victim leaped back a step with his hands cupped over his attacked groin and tumbled onto his back with a scream.

The playground erupted in celebratory squeals and Naruto smiled at his work; three larger boys rolling around on the ground and wailing.

Nagato later met Nagato after school, flabbergasted beyond belief and hailing Naruto as his hero. He asked if they could be friends and Naruto agreed.

Later that day Nagato introduced him to his other two friends they were attending a shinobi school, Yahiko and Konan. Ame was in serious need for soldiers and Hanzo reduced the recruitment age down to five years old, forcing healthy children to be mandatorily enlisted. Yahiko's father was a high ranking shinobi directly under Hanzo and Konan had an older cousin that was a successful medic, so them being made to attend the Shinobi school was unsurprising. Nagato wasn't qualified to attend the school with his friends because he was too sickly and weak, so his destiny was to become civilian cannon fodder for the army, educated cannon fodder but cannon fodder nonetheless. Naruto didn't mind more people his age to talk to since those in his part of the town were elderly and unable to keep up with him.

It was all going fine for them until a year later another couple from his home village, Darkness, moved into their town.

Now, Darkness was a fairly large place so Naruto couldn't possibly know every person from there and he certainly didn't know those newcomers. They were pale, like all of the populace in Darkness, and they possessed quirks special to people from Darkness, but he didn't know them and Konan and Yahiko rudely thinking that all people from Darkness knew each other couldn't change that fact.

Naruto's parents hit it off with their fellow Darkness comrades but Naruto didn't warm up to the nice couple's peculiar three year old child, Ketsueki Sakenomi.

"Uhhh…" Konan murmured, leaning close to Naruto and whispering. "She's following you…again."

Naruto inhaled shakily, covering up his frustration into a worrying twitch of his right eyebrow. He released the air through his hidden mouth and shook his head, placing his hands behind his head and slinking with his female best friend as they went towards Yahiko's house. "Just ignore her. She'll leave…eventually."

She didn't. She stalked the boy for five more blocks.

He spied a red twinkle from the corner of his eye; a girl with white hair messily wrapped her mouth and peeking out from the side of a failing bookstore. She squeaked when she noticed Naruto had seen her and ducked back into the alley; covering her head and trembling with her eyes tightly clenched shut. The bottom of her damp flowery yellow and white dress was speckled with grass, showing that she had followed Naruto as he and Konan leisurely walked through the park, and mud, meaning she passed through the same puddles as the older children. When she thought Naruto had gone she slowly opened her eyes and turned her head, still covering her head with her small hands, to look out of the alley. She jumped back when an unimpressed, incredibly annoyed Naruto stood before her with his sparkling blue eyes dark with irritation and his forehead crinkled deeply.

"I told you to leave me alone. Do you want me to hit you?" He said, waving his fist in front of the cowering girl. She mutely shook her head.

Konan placed her hand on Naruto's forearm and gently pushed it down. "Naruto stop, your scaring her."

He removed his hand from her grasp, glad she couldn't see his cheeks flush at the contact. "Good. She should be scared." He waved his hand and turned away from the red eyed girl, continuing his and Konan's trek to Yahiko's house. "Get lost, weirdo." Sueki fled from Naruto and he thought that had finally done it.

But it hadn't.

Matter of fact the stalking had gotten worse starting the very next day when Naruto's parents hosted Sueki's parents for early lunch and allowed the little girl into Naruto's room while the boy was coming back from school. She rummaged through his things and tried to decipher his elementary level textbooks and his jottings, memorizing his chicken scrawl-like handwriting and taking her time to rub her face into Naruto's pillow, so as to absorb his smell and also leave hers behind.

She learnt the bare basics of how to read and write within the next few weeks from her parents, a feat that shocked them, and she utilized the little she could do every day.

Sueki pursed her lips and pointed her pen at a dirty pink thing wiggling in the mucky grass of the park. "Wuzzat?"

Naruto eyed the tiny girl at his side, running as quickly as her small legs could go after the boy that was run-walking as quickly as possible from her. He looked at the creature she was pointing at and walked on. "Worm."

Her tongue stuck out from the corner of her mouth and she wrote in her gradually soaking notebook. "Wwwwwwuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmm." She looked up at him when she suddenly remembered, asking. "Naruto-sensei, spell 'wuuuuuuurrmmmm'?"

The boy tiredly grumbled. "I'm not your sensei-"

"I'll spell it for you!" Yahiko exclaimed from Naruto's other side, shoving the blonde out of the way and smiling brightly at the white haired girl.

If there was a way for looks to torture and kill then Yahiko would have died a horrible, painful death. Sueki frostily narrowed her eyes at the orange haired six year old and gripped her pen tighter in her hands. Yahiko stepped back, surprised, and cleared his throat when the girl didn't speak, only glaring death at him. In an even more puzzling turn of events, she threw down her book and pen in outrage and, copying something she had seen Naruto do on numerous occasions, she clenched her fists and threw them forward. This time Naruto slipped before his confused friend and held Sueki back by her face, making the irate three year old wildly swing her fists in a fruitless attempt at tagging who she thought was the orange haired boy.

Nagato crowed with laughter. "I think you got her mad, Yahiko~" He joined Konan and waggled his eyebrows teasingly at the tired blonde. "I know one way to calm her down."

Naruto sighed and muttered. "Shut up, idiots."

He was honestly tired of chasing the girl away and he was tired of running away. He was tired of her looking at him like he was some kind of gift from the heavens, always coming to him with questions and for help. He was tired of the assumptions his friends made; that Sueki had a crush on him.

Naruto scoffed.

Ridiculous.

'She's just being a weirdo, like always.' Sueki pushed and fought against his hand, preventing her from futilely wailing on his friend. 'A creepy weirdo freak that won't stop stalking me.' he rubbed the bridge of his nose with his other hands pointer finger and thumb and said. "Stop, ok?"

Realizing it wasn't Yahiko but Naruto that was keeping her back, Sueki suddenly stopped and her expressionless face gave nothing away. "Ok."

"…W-O-R-M. Worm. Are you happy?" he grumbled as he released her face. She picked up her book and scribbled the words in, bobbing her head.

"Yes, I am." Sueki, from what Naruto knew, wasn't much on smiling, or showing any emotions for that matter. The most he could get from her, since she now had a red bandanna over her lower face, were the infinitesimally changes in her blood red eyes when she was pleased or displeased with something. Now her eyes glittered and she pushed her book into his face, asking. "Is this it?"

He could hardly read what she had written but he still nodded. "Yeah, sure."

The group went on, Yahiko quickly getting over his hurt feelings when Konan asked him if he had orange juice at his house. Sueki pointed at a brown mound that distinctively looked and smelt different than mud. "Wuzzat?"

"…Dog poo."

Only a year later did catastrophe strike and the dreaded Great Shinobi war reached their peaceful town. A squad of samurai flooded into the town one day, took down the town civilian guards. They hid among them and a day later Iwa, Ame's shaky ally, came around to bring coax the samurais out. The fight had been long drawn out and it was out of control. Nagato's parents were initially killed gruesomely by the samurai because they were stopping the Iron country soldiers from looting their house and Yahiko's father was away at the war front with Hanzo, and seeing as the orange haired boy didn't have any mother he couldn't stay alone. So they ran to Naruto's home and hid with their friend's family.

The next day, when Naruto's parents were ushering them out of the house so they could flee to Fire country, his parents stepped on an active mine set up by Iwa shinobi.

The only thing going through Naruto's mind, as he fought the urge to look at the bloody, scattered remains of his parents, was to calm his friends down and find a good place to hide until everything calmed down.

In his search of refuge, after stowing a passed out Nagato and Yahiko under an ignorable shrub, he found Konan blankly cradling her mother's head. He gently pried the head from her arms and gave her a tight hug, providing human warmth in the only way a recently orphaned six year old child could provide and it allowed his best friend to cry. He supported the listless, catatonic purple haired girl around the town as he cautiously checked for any more fighting or danger in general. The Iwa ninjas and Iron country samurai had taken their conflict further away but the devastation they had left behind ruined any sort of normalcy.

Houses had fallen into themselves and bodies of innocent people littered the ground, parts strewn around carelessly from samurai that could care less of casualties and ninjas that didn't mind ending innocent lives as long as that helped kill a few samurai.

He found Sueki ineffectively pulling at a pale hand from under a pile of rubble and twisted metal that used to be her family's house. She wasn't smiling or crying or showing any emotions whatsoever; it was like she already knew that she was holding a lifeless hand in her own but she still couldn't accept the fact that her parents were gone. Naruto watched her sniff and mutter for her father and mother to come out for a minute before he went to her. He couldn't for the life of him leave her, no matter how annoying she was. He had to hold her in his arms for a few long minutes before she tentatively responded by pressing her face into his chest and embracing him back. She made no sound but her body shook with the tears that refused to come out.

Naruto was just happy she was alive.

The scarf wearing boy carried the then four year old girl on his front and Konan on his back. His whole body still felt the effects of the mine from three hours ago and the combined weight of his two friends had his legs shaking under the effort, though he still powered through, steadily walking back to Nagato and Yahiko. He didn't comment too much when he saw that Nagato's eyes had changed from kind brown to an ominous blazing purple with black concentric circles.

It wasn't funny how war forced children to grown up, not even as he looked back on it years into the future and most definitely not when he was still experiencing it.

For what felt like months, Yahiko, Konan, Nagato and Sueki were lost.

They vacantly stared out at nothing, through the frigid cold nights and through the blisteringly hot days caused by living under crossfire. Their eyes lost the wonder and shine of childhood, the hope for the future and a present determination to reach that hopeful future. They lost all of that.

They lost everything but they only had each other.

They realized this when they finally began to notice the efforts of one of their friends in making sure they had somewhere liveable to lay their heads at night and always had something to eat when they were unbearably hungry.

Naruto was forced to grow up and care for his friends when they were processing how their lives could have gone up in flames so quickly. He snuck into enemy camp and stole food for his friends, endured the beatings they gave him on days he was unlucky and got caught, shuffled around on his own in search of a warm place to spend the night, far away from the eternally dangerous nights.

He sacrificed his sleep so they could rest.

He sacrificed his food so they could eat.

He sacrificed his body so they wouldn't get hurt.

Naruto only found out, after another consecutive night of sleeping without food, that protecting and caring for his vulnerable friends gave him something to do instead of dwelling on his own vulnerability. He questioned the point of his continued existence and his insignificance in the universe as a mere speck compared to juggernauts that shook the world with the smallest actions.

The only thing he could do was ensure his friends lived, even if he was dead inside. It was the role he couldn't play but the role he had to play, as his friends were too physically and mentally broken to do anything but kill themselves. Naruto was just as broken as they were, if not more so, but the awareness of his tiny existence forced him to make many personal sacrifices so that his friends existences shone, never knowing that even in the darkness he was still growing to be a giant star.

Orochimaru wrote this about his lone student in a journal the Sannin forgot in Ame.

Before the battle for Ame, Naruto found it and gave it to Sueki for safekeeping. She seemed to appreciate it, even more so with the words the future nuke nin wrote about her teacher.

Life was crazy and the Ghost of Ame lived for his friends.

The seven year old had to make do with what he had, which was absolutely nothing, and he managed this nothing for two painful years, making sure his friends kept their spirits up in spite of the terrible war going on around them. Sueki was the first to pull out of her daze and she dutifully devoted her life to the person that had cared for her when she couldn't care for herself, learning from Naruto as if he was her only hope and eating everything he told her like it would be her last time hearing his voice. She took learning from Naruto to another level and Naruto was fine with that now.

It was her way of coping.

Who was he to judge?

He didn't know that Sueki actively becoming his student, in her mind, went light years further than simply coping.

Naruto had picked a half mask from a dead Suna shinobi and wore it instead of his scarf because Konan had caught a cold and he had been looking for a substitute for days before he could comfortably give his friend the scarf that hid his identity. This meant he gave Konan his shirt to use for extra warmth until he could get his shirt back and give her his scarf. Sueki adopted a similar half face mask not even a week later.

The Sannin showed up and Jiraiya offered to teach them all but Naruto said no for himself. Yahiko, Nagato and Konan then went on to learn from the newly named Toad Sannin. Orochimaru was at the time feuding with Jiraiya for Tsunade's affections so he chose Naruto to be his student, branching out this offer to Sueki, then six years old, but Naruto staunchly refused, saying that she was too young to learn ninja techniques; the Sannin quietly backed away when he discovered the young mask wearing blonde had two very powerful bloodlines. While Tsunade left for Konoha, Jiraiya and Orochimaru stayed back to train their new students, coming and going to different war fronts until, five years later, they were too busy with the war and hastily graduated their students to the stage of Personal Training. They were still on this stage, a year after the Sannin left, but they had used the skills they had acquired to defeat Hanzo the Salamander.

And that fight was brutal.

It ended with the four surviving friends all crossing out the Ame forehead protectors Nagato provided them as the new Amekage, over the grave of their fallen comrade.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Naruto silently plodded through the rain and the shallow puddles, navigating through the back alleys from the Amekage's tower to the west gate of the highly industrialized village. The Akatsuki robe he still reached his mid-calf, so the rain only soaked into his black sandals, though he wasn't too bothered with them seeing as he had grown up with the feeling of wet shoes. He flicked away the bang hanging over his right eye and looked out of an alley where a swarm of people huddled under a large tarp, distributing and collecting hot food. There was a small stir as a boy about ten years old turned in his direction, catching the attention on of who Naruto could guess was his brother and his sister but no one else. They squinted to look into the pitch blackness of the alley and the low afternoon sun for who they thought they saw. The Ghost shook his head slowly and placed his pointer finger on his mask, telling them not to speak.

They gawked dumbly at who they saw. The legend that had aided in putting down their former tyrannical leader and the only one they knew that could pose a challenge to the newly instated Amekage, the god of Ame. The three kids nodded and went back to eating their porridge. It was remarkable that they could even sense him.

He walked backwards into the dark and his presence gradually left. A tendril of wispy smoke seeped out from the ground a mile from the west gate and formed into the mask wearing blonde, who started walking at a casual pace westward. He was soon joined by Sueki, panting for air as she reached his side.

"Didn't you say…" she closed her eyes and wheezed, tightly holding the back of his cloak in her small hands and blindly walking with him. "Meet you…at the gate?"

"I did." Naruto answered candidly.

The girl, also still wearing the soon to be S rank rogue organizations black with red clouds robe, didn't look to have any luggage or scrolls on her person. Like her mentor, she sealed her storage scroll into a storage seal painted onto her right upper arm but unlike her teacher she had to run a mile in five seconds to reach his position. She got her breath and curtly walked at her master's side, moving a step behind out of a sort of respect for him. "Was it a test?"

"Yup."

She blanched. "Did I pass?"

He didn't look at her as he answered. "No."

Sueki's less than pleased mood came into her eyes as she lowered the burning red orbs to the ground, disappointed in herself. From years of knowing her friend and her mentor she knew when he was in a bad mood and she knew the consequences of prodding him during his bad moods. She sighed and remained silent, keeping her obvious question to herself.

They were still within Rain country territory and as such the rain still fell on them, though not as heavily as they were closer to Ameagakure, the centre of the developed country. The country itself was small and Ame made up ninety percent of it while small settlements surrounded the massive Rain village; Nagato planned to merge it all together as well as imbue the natural rain with his chakra once Ame had gotten back to its feet. This was to increase security so that if invaders came from any direction, he would know from the beginning. The three surviving founders of the Akatsuki had so many plans for Ame to prosper and become a global power house worthy of challenging all the other major villages at once.

Now that Nagato wanted to do something that would inevitably result in another Great Shinobi war and possibly end with the world destroyed, the Ghost finally found the line he couldn't bring himself to cross to protect his rinnegan bearing friend.

Yahiko wouldn't have wanted it if he was alive, Naruto knew that much, and Konan didn't want it but the Angel of Ame followed Nagato because Nagato wouldn't let her go because of his and Naruto's promise to Yahiko. It was why Naruto didn't ask Konan to come with him; Nagato had her in a cage and her frail, unadjusted mind told her that she should stay in his cage. Yahiko's death affected them all, even little Sueki, but it hit Konan worse.

The whole thing was just too frustrating.

He released a breath he didn't know he was holding and Sueki felt his pent up frustration leave his body, she liked her small lips and asked a voice very close to monotone. "So…where are we going?" his answer was enough to shatter her stoic expression and make her eyebrows shoot up into her hairline.

"…Kiri."

Next time on Silent Night

He announced to them that he was going to end the war and bring their country back to normalcy.

They were to focus their attention on expelling Fire country and any other leaching foreign country from their country, which were Earth, Lightning and Waterfall, while the other countries that had not participated or contributed whatsoever in the violence, like River country, Sunagakure, which was their western neighbour, Kiriagakure and Uzushiogakure, were to be left alone.

They would establish a formal alliance with those four places after the war.

The forced removal of the undesirables from their country was set down in history as The Purge.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

In Orochimaru's words, Naruto was a living anomaly.

He had two naturally cooperative affinities, one of which was strong enough to be considered a bloodline, and these two affinities combined to form an extremely rare bloodline.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

"Gimme me a minute," crack! The whole bar was in chaos and if there weren't bodies littered on the floor then the other patrons were either fleeing from the general vicinity of the insane ninja or were cowering under their tables. Naruto's blue eyes were dark and the intimidating beastly grin on his half mask finally scared the downed man into the sweet bliss of unconsciousness.

"Your drunk-"

Naruto growled lowly and swiped his hand back, pushing the white haired girl away from him and readying another blow. "I'm not drunk," crack! "I can't get drunk."

She could see it in his vacant blue eyes, between each swallow of sake and rum; the emptiness and the purposelessness that wallowed in his dead orbs like silt at the bottom of a pond pool, muddying those formerly crystal clear and cheerful cerulean eyes. The void of life that had taken the place of direction and the daily settling depression and personal disgust at what used to be his life and what his life was now.

Naruto was lost.

Authors note

Probably not in that particular order.

Is anyone interested in reading more of this story?

Drop a review, would you so kindly, on your thoughts and opinions. Please, stay safe, wherever you are in the world and I will see you when I see you :)

Foy.