The Legend of Zelda is owned by Nintendo.

Naruto is owned by Masashi Kishimoto.

Evil's Bane

Chapter One: Explosion

The hurried footsteps of one small eight year old as he ran through the darkened back streets of the Konohagakure was the only sound that broke the silence of night. This night would be important for the future of Konoha, and of the young man racing through the backstreets. At least he thought so.

Held tightly in one grimy little hand was a paint brush covered in orange paint. In the other hand was gripped the handle of a metal bucket half full of orange paint. As the boy raced through the darkness of the back streets, his imagination was filled with the images of how scandalized the villagers would be. They would be so utterly and completely shocked by his actions that they'd have to actually look at him with something other than those cold piercing glares that he always got. As he sped down one alley and then the next, it was all he could do to keep himself from chuckling out loud.

He didn't want to get caught.

The target this time was some jerk in a store that had decided that taking his money without letting him buy anything wasn't enough. No, the old hag just had to grab him by the back of his shirt and throw him out the door. She must have been a ninja when she was younger, because she added to his prodigious flight speed with a firm kick in his rear.

The villagers walking around outside at the time started laughing when he flew straight into a heaping pile of rotting garbage. He'd been humiliated and angry at that, but at the same time, thankful that they weren't giving him the cold look they always did. It still hurt though, that everyone laughing was happy he had been hurt and smelled like something that crawled out of the sewer. Hell, he had been down there before, and he knew that he did smell like he'd just crawled out of the sewer.

But tonight, he'd get his revenge. Sweet, sweet revenge. When that old hag came to work in a few hours, he hoped she would have a heart attack when she saw his revenge. Maybe the villagers would start laughing at her when the final part of his attack was implemented. The store wouldn't be the only thing orange, oh no. Besides, the old hag seemed to hate the color, which was a perfectly good ninja color. Who didn't like orange? Well, she'd be finding a healthy appreciation of it soon. Real soon.

The young boy stopped as he came to the end of the alley he'd been running down. This was the most dangerous part. He had to cross the street, which was well lit. He knew that there were patrols of ninja, both chunin and ANBU, that used this street on their way back to the Hokage Tower, which you'd run into if you followed this road all the way across Konoha. If he ran out into the street, with a bucket of orange paint and a paint brush, they'd stop him and drag him to see Old Man Hokage. He'd already been caught enough times to make the ninja population know that an Uzumaki Naruto with a paint brush was not an Uzumaki Naruto on a harmless painting project.

So it was with the utmost care that Naruto peeked out from the shadows. He looked both ways down the street and found that it was completely empty. That didn't mean that there weren't ninja there, because ninja weren't seen unless they wanted to be. Naruto forced his nerves to calm as he waited in the shadows, watching the road. He waited, and waited, and waited some more. Finally, after what felt like forever to the young eight year old, Naruto dared to make the crossing.

Naruto dashed out of the alley like a bat out of hell with a maniacal grin on his face. The store was right in front of him and the front door would be his first victim. He breathed out as he skidded to a stop in front of the door, made a quick and deadly slash at the door with the brush in his hand, and took half a second to admire the ugly orange streak marring the red painted wood.

And then, out of the blue, as if fate had chosen that moment to throw a wrench into the works, a man's body was blown out of the second story window right above Naruto head. Naruto spun around in shock, his eyes wide and his body frozen. Excuses and pleas for mercy had already bubbled to the forefront of his mind but died in his throat.

Where he expected to find an angry ninja, crashing his party, he instead found the mangled corpse of a very dead ninja. This situation made no sense and for half a second, Naruto wasn't sure what he was seeing. He took a step forward, and then the world erupted into fire.

The building Naruto had targeted exploded in a ball of fire large and bright enough to be seen from twenty miles outside of the village walls. The force of the explosion disintegrated the buildings around it, and the set of buildings beyond that. It flattened several more buildings beyond even that and shattered the glass windows of all the buildings all the way up to the Hokage's office. The ball of fire rose into the sky like a vengeful god, roaring as it rose above the carnage it had caused.

So high and so bright was the fireball, that ninja who were on missions just outside the village saw it and, fearing the village was under attack, immediately made for home. Any of the ninja on duty close to the explosion were knocked from their feet, should they have not reacted fast enough to anchor themselves to the ground chakra fast enough. Those that did stay on their feet, immediately bounded toward ground zero once the shockwave had passed.

The fantastically loud boom that chased the explosion shattered any of the windows that hadn't been destroyed by the initial shockwave of energy. It also ruptured the eardrums of anyone too close and essentially woke up every one in the village who'd had the misfortune of going to sleep that night. The village was fortunate that the explosion took place in a district dominated by shops and industrial buildings. Very few people were killed by the explosion.

The average person would have died were they at the epicenter of the explosion or in the surrounding buildings. Their bodies, had they been there, would have been blown into many pieces by the shockwave of the explosion and sent far off into the distance. They'd be deader than dead at that point. Uzumaki Naruto, fortunately, was not your average person.

Rather than being killed, blown apart, or destroyed in anyway, Naruto had been lifted up by the shockwave and thrown with all the vigor that the explosion contained off into the distance. He and several other pieces of debris landed several miles outside the walls of Konoha on the opposite side of the village that the explosion had taken place in.

Even before he'd landed, Naruto had healed completely the patches of skin that had been torn off and the muscle that had been liquidated. His spine had been completely replaced by new bone, nerve, and muscle. When Uzumaki Naruto crashed to the forest floor, he was as whole as he'd been when the explosion had gone off. Whole and covered in a shroud of red chakra.

Naruto, lost in the bestial instinct that was the Nine-tailed Demon Fox, now had claws, sharper senses, fangs, and vertically slit-red eyes. He jerked his head right, and then left. There was no conscious thought. Only instinct. Naruto was in danger. He'd been attacked. He needed to survive. He needed to flee. Flee to survive.

Naruto looked behind him, saw the fire ball still hovering in the sky like an angry omen, and tore off in the opposite direction on all fours. His claws dug into whatever surface he landed on and propelled him forward at such an incredible speed. Were he conscious for the action, the eight year old would have whooped for joy at the exhilaration of sheer speed. As it was, he was consumed with his self preservation instinct and could only feel the gut wrenching desire to live propelling him forward so fast that everything around him was a blur.

He got as far as ten kilometers before a fire ball streaked down from the sky and smashed into the ground. Wreckage, thrown higher and father into the sky from the explosion was just now raining down across the landscape. Naruto skidded to a halt and growled at the small crater.

After sniffing the air, Naruto stopped growling and furtively crept forward. Every few feet, he raised his head to sniff again. When he finally reached the edge of the crater, which couldn't have been more than five feet across, there was an explosion of white energy.

Having already experienced enough explosions in recent memory, Naruto reared back to escape. He was stopped in his tracks by the white energy that continued to be emitted by the object at the center of the crater. Naruto tried to push himself away, but the light got brighter and brighter until everything went white. And then the raging desire to survive subsided, the red cloak of chakra faded, and Uzumaki Naruto passed out in the middle of the deep forest around Konoha.

A lone figure stood atop a mountain. In the far distance, he watched a ball of fire rise up into the sky. The figure grinned.

"It has begun."

A/N: So this was a fun little attempt of mine to bring LoZ elements into the Naruto universe. While this may not seem like there's much LoZ involved here in this chapter, I'll have you know that the inspiration for the object that fell out of the sky and purified Naruto's chakra cloak happened to come from a similar scene portrayed in Twilight Princess. Those of you who've played the game likely know what I mean! *nudge nudge*

Drop a review and let me know what you think.

~I.K.A. Valian