The rooms were dark as the electricity for the entire village had gone out; in front of his vision was a shroud of inkiness that smothered everything around it and swallowed up all of the light that dared dance within its domain. The darkness was indeed overwhelming; only desperate love across great distances could dare compare.

Chapter 16

A New Player

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. This is a fan made work simply glorifying the great characters and plot of the original. Enjoy.

With the darkness came uncertainty; the populace of the village was in a tumult, as there was still plenty of time until it was time to go to bed and it was said that a great wind from the southeast was coming. With uncertainty came fear; even the hardened and weathered people of the mountainous Nonoko Village in the Land of Water feared the arrival of the great storm from the south. They were each of them warriors as the village produced almost purely warriors and relied heavily on sieges upon their weaker neighbors and trade with their stronger ones. The electricity was provided by a single source: an old reactor that was confiscated from a village further down the river that cut its path through a valley in one of the many mountains. The people of Nonoko were one of the main causes for the state of civil war that the Land of Water found itself enveloped in. It was not surprising; though the village was small, each of their warriors possessed a powerful kekkai genkai that allowed for the village to go unchecked for some time now. But… even the strongest of warriors had weaknesses.

With fear came chaos and the attacks began.

A group of shinobi covered in a black and dark blue pattern to take advantage of the darkness made its way up the mountainside. They travelled swift as panthers, climbing the branches of trees and using them to springboard them along the unforgiving terrain. Their steps were silent and they were cunning enough as to not leave a noticeable trail along their path.

The group landed silently just behind the peak of the mountain and they crouched low so as to not be spotted by the keen eyes of the cunning Nonoko warriors.

"Tight formation. We should be able to sneak down into those trees quickly if we hold a henge as a group."

"A tumbling boulder?"

"That sounds about right… we could also go down as a pack of wolves."

"Whatever, just decide on something."

"Wolves, definitely."

"Affirmative, head out."

The bickering between the youngest of the group was not lost upon the leader of the infiltration group.

"Remember our mission, young ones. You are only six-teen, do not get yourselves killed needlessly."

The two shinobi that had been deciding on the henge nodded toward their leader and formed the two seals each required for a group of six henge.

When they released their chakra, the mountainside became home to a pack of wolves dashing along the edge of the mountain and heading down toward the forest growing on its airy side. Anyone looking up might have noticed the animals, but it wasn't a rare occurrence as the wolves in the area were known as 'mountain bears' because of their large size and affinity for the high, cold terrain.

When the group landed, they split up into a split formation of three teams of two. The two young ones were sent together to sneak into the village while the other groups sabotaged the highly-guarded food and water supply stores.

The village was built like a fortress on the side of the mountain on the lip of a cave. Much of its populace lived on a plateau within a range of mountains further along a road that was carved out after a giant landslide that nearly crushed the entire village where it originally rested before at the base of the mountain. Using powerful earth country jutsu from foreign prisoners, the shinobi of Nonoko made the mountain their home by leveling out what was left of the peak after the massive landslide.

When the two young shinobi made their way to the outskirts of the village, they saw that their counterparts were in their places on either side of the giant cave. There were apparently two routes to two different supply shares, and the third team within the group, theirs, was only there to make an assassination attempt and draw attention off of the supplies.

"Are you ready, Naruto?"

"Yeah, Chojuro."

"C'mon." Their henge gone, the duo climbed up over the walls of the fortress of a village and landed up top with barely enough time to slip into the darkness as a group of sentries posted on the walls passed them by in the darkness underneath the clouded, moonless night.

Any noise they may have made within the village walls was smothered by the loud winds. If that weren't bad enough, it began to rain down upon them as simply as if the knob on a faucet had been turned. Naruto tugged up slightly on his mask as they snuck past the posted guards on a nearly barren street. The way the village was governed, it was very much like a small dictatorship. Everything was being watched at all times and its residents were all given paltry amounts of food, water and clothing and lived in shacks while they 'supreme ambassador' lived in a mansion at the highest point in the village with a moat and another, taller, wall surrounding the estate. They also had set hours where they could be outside of their homes, and all of them worked for the ambassador and 'for the village', but none of them brought home any money or food that they earned. It was all given, and so the village's morale was often thought to be weak.

Fortunately for Naruto's group, they knew the truth and, although they did not understand it, the village's warrior spirit was never broken, even if it meant that all glory ever attained would be in another person's name. Their spirit had become some sort of honor-bound code, like samurai.

Chojuro, raising his hand for Naruto to halt, pressed up against a wall and slowly turned around to look past the corner. He caught the eye of a guard within the courtyard of the first wall and immediately he turned back around and pointed up just as the posted guard dashed toward them. When the guard rushed around the corner to catch the duo, he was surprised to see that there was no one there.

When Naruto cleaned off the kunai he used to dispatch the guard on the poor soul's neck, Chojuro suddenly began rummaging through the man's pockets to try and find something of use to them for the completion of their mission. They pulled his body away to a storage room along the wall and used four kunai and some wire to hang him firmly against the ceiling where there was no light for him to be seen with.

They left the room with the door closed and travelled along an obscured cobble-stone path that lead them up to the main road in the village about a quarter of the size of Konoha and one half the size of Mizu. When they reached the main living areas, they were surprised to see so many people guarding these houses and to see that its streets which would normally be busy in any other city were so dark and uneventful. The power going out didn't help much, and as the duo moved along they could see that not a single candle was lit in any of the houses as they passed.

"It's strange here… you remember what Ao-sensei said about their kekkai genkai and not to fight any of them directly?"

"Yeah… because they have the ability to drain water from their opponent's body using only their touch."

"Right. Dehydration would be the least of your worries… you'll end up like a smoked stick of beef jerky if you don't be careful."

"Yeah, I got it."

When they moved in further into the village, they came upon the second wall and hid away from the main paths and streets to come up with a plan for breaching the fortress at the heart of the village.

It didn't take them long to realize that trying to sneak past the guards posted on the top of the wall was clearly impossible; the bastard must've been constantly attacked and assassination attempts must have been commonplace because it seemed as if the bulk of the guard had congregated at this central point.

It was time for the boys to wait.

After a few minutes, Naruto heard the faint sounds of someone yelling out toward the large walls from a distance. There was some unrest in the guard at the top of the wall, and as the yelling grew louder so did the anxiety apparent in the guards who quickly sent someone to tell their ambassador the news of the events that were unfolding at their supply stores. He looked to Chojuro and nodded at him to let him know that it was time to go.

Naruto turned to look in that direction and saw that black smoke was starting to rise up like a signal. The two young boys prepared themselves as the guard that inhabited the large walls made their way down and opened the front gate, leaving it open and unguarded just long enough for Naruto and Chojuro to slip by undetected. The few guards that were in place had gone together, like fools, to inform their leader of the problems with the supplies.

When the duo came before the mansion, they looked up and skillfully threw their grappling hooks up onto a high ledge just a few floors below the seventh floor. The last thing they wanted to do was tip off a chakra detector in the vicinity by using their chakra to scale the building instead of the classic alternative.

Naruto arrived at the end of the rope first and threw a leg up over the railing where he caught his hook and retrieved it only to spin it up once more and fling it onto the roof where they planned to climb to.

The lack of a light source made it surprisingly simple to scale the building and not once did they have to worry about being spotted, though they were careful enough to climb quietly so as not to attract anyone's attention.

When they picked the lock on the stairway at the roof of the building, they took one last look over the edge of the building to see if the guard had been replenished. Luckily for them, each of the guards had to bring with them a candle to hold up in the darkness to see anything, while the two boys had trained for the past week in pitch black surroundings so that their eyes would grow accustomed to and thrive in the darkness.

There was one candle, one guard had apparently been sent back.

"Better now than never. We trained hard all this week for this one night and the electricity was cut to give us an advantage. It's even hurricane season and the heavy winds should cover our escape after the job is done… I'm ready to go."

"Same here, but don't be so anxious, Chojuro."

The boy grinned, his shark-like teeth hidden behind the shinobi mask.

Their target was supposed to be at the top floor. His name was Nonoko Yon, the founder of the village and a bastard of a man who put himself far beyond his people. When the boys arrived, however, they were surprised to see that the lights on this floor had turned on. They had just finished scaling the building, and neither of them remembered seeing the lights on anywhere else. Naruto looked out a window as they stood in their camouflage drab. None of the lights were on in the rest of the village. He frowned.

"Fuck, he's got a generator… does that mean we should turn back?" Chojuro furrowed his brow as he looked toward the large door which led to their target.

"No… we should do this now. The fighting will never end if he's still in power. We may be able to buy some time for the Mizukage by just destroying their supplies, but these guys are some of Mist's worst enemies and we can't just let them run along freely doing what they will."

Chojuro nodded, rarely surprised nowadays at the commanding and serious tone that Naruto carried with him ever since the incident in Mizu's waters.

"I knew you'd make it sound reasonable to throw my life away… alright, let's do this."

Chojuro followed Naruto up the steps to the doorway and they set several explosive tags around the handles and the hinges. Naruto held a few smoke bombs at the ready while Chojuro activated the tags which were on a ten second timer. He knocked annoyingly loud on the front door and ran away from it while Naruto stood about three meters away, waiting with the bombs at the ready.

The door opened just before the explosions went off, knocking the door off its hinges and potentially killing anyone standing a meter on either side of the door.

Naruto pulled the corks off of the smoke bombs and shook them up before allowing the chemicals within their clay containers to interact with the molecules of air as they were exposed to them and then immediately rolled the two bombs into the center of the room. Using the smoke, Naruto and Chojuro moved along the walls of either side of the large room around the smoke and allowed its obscuring properties to cause more confusion in the room as the irritating smoke cleared away eventually. There were loud yells and yelps as the smoke bombs went off and as the group of people standing in the center of the room began to shuffle around, searching blindly within the smoke.

Naruto stood behind the chair in the center of the room where a man was sitting with a purple robe on and several rings on his fingers. The young man leaned forward and pressed a kunai up to his neck, but as he was about to slit the man's throat, he saw that the group of bodyguards that had survived the blast were now protecting someone in the center of their mass by shielding him with their bodies.

"You have the wrong man, son." Naruto pressed the kunai even further, drawing blood and making the man in the chair yelp, but there was no reaction from the guards.

He was silent. Their plan to cause confusion had backfired and left the two of them confused. Chojuro had dispatched the two guards that were left standing at the chair at the end of the hall, but it turned out to be a trap.

Even more surprising, was that the person who stepped out of the mass of bodyguards was a young woman.

"Hey, that isn't the target…"

Naruto sighed and was glad that they were at least not captured yet. They had a chance to fight their way out, if they were smart about it.

"We came here to kill the man sitting in this chair…"

Naruto looked down at the man as he suddenly stared up at him, wide-eyed. In one swift motion, Naruto acted as if he slit his throat, drawing a little bit of blood for dramatic effect, and spun around the chair so that he standing in front of the man to shield from view the fact that he had just stuck a roll of explosive tags in the man's mouth. He stared back at Naruto with wide eyes, a look of disbelief in his eyes as he shook like a leaf.

"What a waste… you killed a man with a family, just so you know."

"Every man is potentially someone's father, son, brother… woman someone's mother, daughter, sister… If I worry about the bystanders who are affected by a person's death every time I kill, I couldn't possibly be a ninja. We are only tools, you see. It is the leaders of our villages who decide when it is right or wrong to take a life."

The two of them stared each other down for a moment while Chojuro's spine straightened up just a little bit. Jeez. Anymore tension and there'd be an aura coming off of those two. Who the heck is she?

The young, red-headed woman nodded. "You have a way with words… well, c'mon. If you give up we won't kill you. Let me see your face." She ordered with a hard grin. "If you're cute… maybe I can find some use for you… you can be another of my servants."

"Are you Nonoko Yon?" Naruto asked, ignoring her demand.

"I suppose it wouldn't hurt to let a dead man and-or servant know who I really am. No, Nonoko Yon is no longer among the living."

The duo furrowed their brows behind their masks. That was startling news. Why were they sent here then? Was the info received on the leader of the Nonoko Village faulty?

"I did kill that stupid fuck… so I guess that would make me the heir to the Village and the clan. That would mean you could take up your problems with me."

Chojuro asked, breaking in between."So… who are you?"

She smiled. "You might know me as one of the sound four. My name is Tayuya… don't you fucking forget it."

Chojuro was blushing behind his mask, "I know I won't!"

Naruto sighed. "Nice to meet you Tayuya… I suppose it couldn't hurt showing a dead woman and-or servant who I really am." He pulled on his mask and allowed it to fold at his neck, showing his face as he pulled back the bandana that covered his bright blond hair, though his headband with the symbol for Mizu was still wrapped securely around his head.

Tayuya gawked, "Wow, you're not half bad! Cute whiskers!"

Chojuro blinked, looking at Naruto meanwhile thinking, Lucky bastard!

Naruto then grabbed the man who sat on the chair and smacked him hard on the face. He had passed out earlier from shock. He woke up with a start and stood up quickly when Naruto grabbed him by his shoulder to drag him toward the ball of body guards at the pretty red head standing in front of them.

"Oh? He's alive?" Tayuya said, pouting her lips as she brought her index finger up to touch them.

When the man landed on his knees before her, she smirked and walked past him toward Naruto, sauntering over saucily like she knew drove men crazy; a talent developed over the years of being a woman in charge. "Are you soft or just kind-hearted under that cool exterior?"

Naruto smirked when she stood in front of him, eyeing him with her pretty eyes and long lashes. Her eyes widened though when she heard the violent explosion come from behind her. She turned around in time to see the ball of fire that swallowed up and fried her bodyguards and servants to a crisp, killing the man with the roll in his mouth for sure and injuring a few of the others. With her back turned she heard the amused words roll off of the blue-eyed assassin's tongue. "I certainly am not soft."

She turned back around only to see Naruto's kunai-in-hand swipe down over her head, successfully knocking her unconscious.

Chojuro said nothing, he only looked at the mess of the bodies on the floor and pitied the dead and said a silent prayer for the living.

"We have what we came for." Naruto said, grabbing the young redhead by the collar and pulling her over onto her stomach so that he could tie her arms behind her back and her ankles together. He picked the girl up onto his shoulder and walked past the mess of bodies on the floor.

Chojuro nodded and they smashed the window just outside the door to the hall using a grappling hook; that same hook Naruto threw up over his head outside the window and arched it so that it hooked the roof again. He then leapt off of the building with Tayuya over his shoulder and used his feet and well placed chakra on the rope to help him slide down the rope swiftly.

Naruto landed in the courtyard with the screaming Tayuya; she had come-to halfway down the building and the speed that he was flying down the side of it made it seem as if he had some sort of death wish.

"Are you fucking insane! Holy shit, why the hell did you have to go so damn fast! God damn it!" Her cursing didn't stop for a few seconds until a flickering light bulb caught her eye. She looked around and saw her bodyguards looking on in confusion as the lights came back on.

"One of you mother fuckers: help me!" She screamed; normally composed, the red head had broken down to crying for assistance and cursing, the latter being something that she hadn't resorted to for years.

Naruto sat Tayuya down on her knees and deflected a straight punch by leaning back, kicking his assailant's elbow and then reversing his momentum by bending at the knee and leaning his body forward hard enough to kick the man in the chest with his same leg.

Naruto turned around and caught an axe kick only a second away from hitting squarely on the top of his head and easily snapping the vertebrae in his neck. He held the bare leg with his gloved hands and his attacker simply smirked at him behind red face paint; a customary guerilla warfare tactic of the Nonoko's strongest warriors that is used to strike fear in their opponents and instill recognition, and with it a sense of foreboding, within their enemies' ranks.

Naruto was surprised when his opponent leaned into his axe kick and gripped at the back of Naruto's head just as he reached back to cover himself properly lest the Nonoko warrior get a grip on his scalp and sap every last bit of moisture in his brain. To the attacker's surprise, his leg was still blocked by the pinch of Naruto's elbows brought together as he covered the back and sides of his head with his arms.

Unable to reach past Naruto's strong hands, he let go only after kneeing the blond in his rib cage with his free leg and then spun himself backwards by pushing on his raised leg. When he landed, he took a few steps back and brandished a tanto; a straight edge blade that was shorter than a katana or ninja-to, but longer than a standard kunai or dagger.

Chojuro landed behind Naruto in the large courtyard, his kunai at hand. When he surveyed the area, he saw that through the main gate a swarm of furious-looking Nonoko warriors and their red faced leaders came charging back in to possibly break every single bone in their bodies before throwing them off of the giant balcony and doing it again.

"Naruto, I think it's about time that we head out now..."

Naruto's annoyance with Chojuro's lack of tact only doubled when the redface in front of him smirked with widening eyes. "I see. So you are Namikaze Naruto... how interesting that you seem to have such a obvious tattoo on your face, considering your popularity with the shinobi world; is that something that you had done recently or were your parents fools and had it done when you were a child?"

Naruto grinned and looked at him with focused, narrowed eyes as he held out his own kunai to parry away a swipe with the tanto the man carried. "Look who's talking! I heard you guys had a bloodline limit, but I didn't know that it made your face turn red like a tomato. I think that mine is a little easier to cover up than yours is, don't you think?"

"Hah. We paint our faces to show our courage, rank and love for the clan. I suppose it would be hard for you to relate; I hear you have no family."

Naruto swiped back with his knife and kicked at the man's shin with his heel only for it to be dodged and his first strike to be parried just within a breath of cutting the man's throat out. They followed through with their own attacks at the same time and ended up caught in the middle in bout of power as Chojuro shook his head and began to unravel the sword on his back just as the mob of Nonoko swarmed the staircases that lead up to the main courtyard.

"Only a brother," Naruto said, to the redface's surprise as they continued to fight for the upper hand.

Chojuro spun his broadsword above his head and smirked at the group climbing up the tall stairs before he slammed downwards with the sword and followed through by leaning his body into the blade. Chakra erupted around them and the warriors stopped for a second until nothing happened.

Chojuro waited, but still, nothing had happened.

"Shit, uh, you! Hey, it's time to go!" He pointed at Naruto, remembering his earlier blunder as he tried to think of a way to get Naruto's attention. He placed his sword on his back again and ran as fast as he could to retrieve Tayuya.

"You won't be going anywhere anytime soon, will you? We only got started!" With a loud yell, Naruto's opponent spun around and slashed wildly at the blond from an angle he wasn't expecting. Naruto turned his head and caught the blade using the steel headband of hidden mist, earning him a clean slice over its metal surface through the hidden mist symbol and just along his eyebrow where the tip of the blade barely missed his eye.

When Naruto recovered, he wiped away the blood and threw his kunai haphazardly at his attacker who deftly swayed past it. It sailed lazily into the crowd behind the redface just as the mass swarmed over the top of the staircases and onto the courtyard, stampeding through to squash the would-be assassins.

Without his weapon, Naruto seemed easy prey as the man stepped forward the little distance that he needed to disembowel Naruto's gut. Just before closing the distance he yelled with passion, "The world should know that it was Nonoko Bankei that struck down the Yellow Flash's only son!"

But when he saw Naruto's hands closed together in a tiger seal, it was too late.

The explosion caught the both of them, obliterating the crowd and throwing both Bankei and Naruto down the courtyard towards the front of the estate. Right before Naruto's limp body hit the jagged steps leading up to the estate, Chojuro reached out a hand and caught the blond by the scruff of his shirt and dragged him in behind a fence along with the gagged Tayuya who was screaming coarsely, muffled by the gag.

Naruto's sense reclaimed, the duo carried off with their spoils past the deadly explosion of the powerful tag that was used mostly during wartime because of its lack of subtlety. To put it in layman's terms, it was Samurai-grade, not Shinobi-grade.

They passed the sprawled out corpse of Bankei as he lay with his face caught in between two of the steps and his arms and legs splayed out in a horrid fashion. Naruto cupped his head, still dizzy from the blast as they left for the walls of the fortress-like estate and scaled their steps to rappel down the side of the gargantuan walls that surrounded the Nonoko's mansion.

When they met up with the smirking leader of their group, who was traveling slowly down the road using a donkey and a cart filled with stolen supplies, they turned to watch the fireworks as the giant building burned to the ground after a massive explosion blew out each and every floor, completely leveling it.

"Even though I didn't ask you to find a wife during the mission: well done, to the both of you." He promptly smacked Tayuya's butt as she lie there in paralyzing fear, a pitiful moan escaping her gagged lips. "She's not a bad catch, is she? Who is she again?"

"She is their current leader."

"Oh!" He scoffed, "Well, I'll be! Well played! Though, seriously, you could use a little padding on that escape route of yours." He smiled at Naruto and Chojuro, who were understandably silent as they watched the building that they didn't set to blow up explode. His smile flattened out and he furrowed his brows in confusion. "What's wrong? Did something happen?"

"We weren't the ones that blew up that building."

Chojuro nodded when their leader looked over at him for confirmation.

"Then, who did?"

Naruto closed his eyes and lied back on the cart as they rode beside the supplies and the tied up girl who glared at him with angry, pretty eyes.

He pulled out his kunai and pointed it at her face, making her flinch and showing her that he had his eye on her and that in no way would he underestimate her. He stared into her eyes quietly for the rest of the trip, but what he was really looking for he didn't find in the girl; it was in the reflection in her eyes that he found himself and a shadow resting its hand on his shoulder.

A pair of yellow serpentine eyes were staring back at him between the batting of this girl's lashes.

"Tayuya, kunoichi of hidden sound… due to your heinous crimes against the Land of Water under the banner of the Nonoko tribe, and those committed by your master against all of humanity; I sentence you to death by noon tomorrow. You will die alone, in a cage, suffocated and drowned by hanging in a pool of water; the water being like your very presence which suffocates our own. I hope that your life of servitude to the Sannin was worth this ultimate reward. Dismissed."

With that, Tayuya of sound was taken away with handcuffs that were designed to keep her wrists apart together with a shackle collar on her throat.

Sorry for the long wait. I am working hard and playing harder; spending a lot of time working with kids and dating this sexy librarian that managed to catch my nose in her book. Heh heh. Take it as you like it.

I'll be posting a little more, and the length of this chapter was a little "I'm sorry" gift to you all, but to shed some light on this new chapter, yes, there has been a time skip. His age was revealed there. So you can assume that most everyone else is two years younger from the rookie 9.

As far as the characters and interactions that have occurred in my last and/or previous chapters that some of you felt to be questionable, if I put something in this story it's likely for a good reason. Believe it or not; in the end, you'll have to read to find out.

I hope you enjoyed yourselves. Until next time.