I landed on the coarse grass, feeling the blades jut out of the matted dirt and brush against my ankle's exposed skin like tiny needles. The night was unusually cold—the air left my lungs feeling brittle and stiff. Konoha was a relatively temperate place to live. It never got too cold or too hot. Traveling outside of it was a mixed bag, as climates tended to vary drastically, but that was neither here nor there.
I drove forward, keeping low as the uneven ground crunched softly beneath my feet. A mess of twigs, animal bones, and rocks was beneath my feet. The ground around me was equally as dirty, which was to be expected. I wasn't exactly in the lap of luxury at the moment. I raised my head a bit and scanned the bandit camp. It sprawled ahead, a mess of makeshift tents and shoddy structures thrown together without care. Smoke from half-dying fires curled into the sky, the sharp scent of burning wood mixing with the stench of sweat and unwashed bodies. Lanterns hung crooked from ropes tied between trees, casting just enough light to highlight the piles of stolen goods scattered haphazardly across the camp.
I eyed the piles to see if there was anything I could take. The sword I was currently using was shoddy at best, so if I could sneak in an upgrade right here and now, I could save myself a bunch of cash down the line.
Plus, is it even stealing if I'm stealing from someone who stole from someone else? I guess if you believe in the transitive property it is, but we'll just keep that on the down low for now.
I shook my head as I got closer to the pile. It was like a shopping spree of weapons. They were on the ground, in bags, some were even leaning carelessly against crates, but as far as I could tell, they were poorly maintained. Still dangerous in the wrong hands, yeah, but not worth taking. My upgrade would have to wait until later. I could maybe use my money from this mission, but my main objective was to leave my shithole apartment, so maybe not.
Bodies swam into my vision as I got deeper into the camp. A few bandits lounged near the fires, their laughter coarse and mean, while others moved like shadows between the tents, oblivious to anything beyond their next drink or scrap of food, or their next bottle of sake. It was a standard setup—chaotic, grimy, and reckless. Just another camp where survival meant taking what you could and leaving the rest to rot.
Anko had called me the ram earlier—not that she had called me that expecting me to fully understand the nuances of the word, but I did. It was old ANBU slang.
The ram was always the first one in, the one who broke through the enemy's defenses and cleared the path for others to follow. It wasn't about power, not entirely—it was about sacrifice. The ram didn't hesitate, didn't question; they charged ahead, knowing full well they might not come back. In not so many words, she was telling me to do the dirty work, to be the battering force that shattered the camp's fragile defenses while the others cleaned up the pieces.
I gripped the hilt of my sword, feeling the familiar weight in my hand, and took a deep breath. I could smell something sour in the air, like soap—fear, maybe. My heartbeat slowed, steadying itself with the rhythm of the task at hand.
Up ahead, the outline of a tent emerged from the darkness. Its canvas walls glowed faintly in the flickering light of a singular lantern hitched at the tent's flap. It hung haphazardly from a frayed rope, casting long, wavering shadows from the trees that danced across the weathered fabric. Each flicker sent the shadows skittering like restless spirits, distorting the shapes inside, making them stretch and shrink in unnatural ways. The tent seemed to pulse with life, the glow of the lanterns giving it a heartbeat that quickened with every step I took closer.
"You can't do shit!" A boisterous laugh echoed from inside the tent. A hulking shadow moved across the tent and shoved a smaller shadow across the space. A resounding thud reverberated from inside the tent, and a round of laughter filled the dead of night. The noise made my skin crawl. "Look at the little fucker! Bandit, my ass! You couldn't kill something if your life depended on it. You're better off holding my pocket and being my bitch!"
More laughter howled from the tent. Someone dropped a bottle of alcohol, and it spilled onto the ground, streams of liquid pouring out of the folds of the tent like dark veins spreading through the dirt. The sharp scent of liquor hit the air, mingling with the musty odor of sweat and smoke, as the laughter inside grew louder, more frenzied.
"Would you like that?" The same voice from before taunted. I heard the sound of flesh hitting flesh, and a pained moan floated out from the flap. A few more slaps cracked through the night, intermixed with whoops and jeers. Ragged breathing chunked out of the tent, like the painful braying of a wounded animal, "Look at him. Fucking disgusting. Pussy bitch. Next time I tell you to kill someone, you do it. I don't care if it's a pregnant woman, your mother, or the love of your fucking miserable life. Just do it."
Ah, of course. Standard bandit dynamics. The biggest, dumbest brute climbs to the top of the food chain by cracking skulls and killing indiscriminately. They implement insane rules and try to get everyone to follow them through excessive force. Mob mentality gets everyone to listen.
Most bandits are outcasts—people who wouldn't fit into society with everyone else, even if they weren't bloodthirsty dregs who wanted to eat, kill, and pillage to their heart's content. Having a 'creed' of some sort helps band those freaks together. It makes them feel like they're fighting for a cause greater than themselves, that they're noble in their own, unique way, and not just the human equivalent of a swarm of cockroaches feeding off the world's underbelly.
In a lot of ways, the head bandit is kind of like the glue that holds the fabric of bandithood together. It's their job to peddle the agenda and keep everyone else motivated and happy. They also get first dibs on any prizes, whether that's money, weapons, women….you name it.
And it's also the reason I've never blinked at killing one. They're the worst of the worst. It's one thing to be a bandit, and another to be head bandit. That's the kind of stuff that corrupts your soul.
The spilled alcohol caught the light from the lanterns, glistening like oil as it seeped into the earth, feeding the shadows that danced wildly across the canvas.
How was I going to play this?
I wasn't concerned about winning or losing. I had no doubt in my mind that I'd be able to win—I'd been training with Kakashi for a few weeks now. I'd be surprised if anything out here could be much of a challenge for me, save for that ninja that was puttering around on the other side of the camp. Assuming he—or she, I'm progressive, sue me—was the only unknown ninja in this camp, I wasn't too concerned. Plus, it wasn't my job to be concerned. That was everyone else's. I'd been sent here as a firecracker. I was going to be loud, make lots of noise, and look pretty enough to entice our unknown over.
At which point, hopefully, Anko and friends would come flying out of the tree, ready to back me up.
As for everyone in that tent? Well, they were dead already, they just didn't know it yet.
The question was how I'd go about my work.
Minato prided himself on efficiency. He stopped thinking about the value of a human life right around the time he lost count of how many people he'd killed. Anyone who stood in his way wasn't a human, so much as they were a puppet with strings for him to cut down. It was kind of the opposite of what was normally supposed to happen.
For most ninja, the more they killed, the more those kills haunted them. It was like an ever-filling bucket, constantly bloating with water until there was no more space, and everything spilled over the edges. And when that happened, it was only a matter of time before a ninja eventually quit. The mental strain of killing indiscriminately often manifested in bizarre ways—career shinobi claimed their victims haunted them. Nightmares, sweaty palms, the whole nine yards. Some swore they saw their targets walking down the street: faces pale, eyes hollow, like ghosts clinging to reality.
It was wild. Hardened warriors, trained to feel nothing, waking up in the dead of night, drenched in sweat. They'd say they saw familiar faces standing at the edge of their bed, staring. Sometimes it was just footsteps in the hall, a whisper brushing the nape of their neck. At the darkest hours, the air would turn cold and thick, like the Shinigami itself was lurking, waiting to pull them into a darkness only they could see.
It didn't stop in their bedrooms. On the streets, in crowds, in the reflection of a shop window, they'd glimpse those they had slain—watching, waiting. The worst hauntings? The kids. The ones they'd killed by accident or by orders. They saw those children at playgrounds, little hands gripping swings, hollow laughter scratching like nails on glass. At night, they dreamed of small footsteps following them, just out of sight, always present, always there.
It was poetic in a weird, messed-up way. It wasn't a blade or an enemy in the shadows that broke a ninja. It was themselves. Remorse—this sneaking, slithering thing, patient like a coiled viper. At first, it was easy to ignore. The adrenaline, the mission, the necessity of it all—those pushed accountability down into a pit. But remorse festered. It lingered in the silence, curled up in your mind until, one day, it suffocated you.
Minato had seen it before, especially during the war. There were things you could do in the heat of battle that you'd never stomach outside of that bubble. But here's the thing: Minato never had that problem. Ever. He was a psychopath.
He thought about human life the way a mathematician approached an equation—detached, clinical, and focused on the outcome. People brought things into the world: ideas, actions. Their thoughts held value, sure, but only as variables. He reduced lives to components and stripped away emotions until all that was left was a cold, logical sum. It wasn't cruelty. It was efficiency. Death was just another result, a necessary factor in the larger formula.
In his eyes, their greatest contribution was death. Death for him. Death for Konoha.
That's why he despised those who quit because of mental breakdowns. Not that he'd admit it. It wouldn't exactly boost morale if people knew their leader looked down on them for folding under pressure. He wore the mask of empathy well enough—offering words of encouragement, a shoulder to lean on. But deep down, he believed there was no room for fragility in this work. A shinobi was supposed to endure, no matter how shattered their mind or soul became.
The ones who bowed out? The ones who crumbled? He saw them as weak links. And every time someone broke, it only confirmed what he already believed: not everyone was built for this. Those who weren't were better off stepping aside before they dragged everyone else down. They made the rest of them look weak.
I shook myself. I had to focus. Getting distracted out here wasn't a good idea. I had to figure out how I wanted to make my first impression. Hmm...the fastest way to end an equation for Minato was a slit throat. It was clean and effective. Quick.
But, at the same time. A fresh genin couldn't demonstrate that level of proficiency in killing.
My work, as much as I loathed to admit it, had to be sloppy. Random. A bit shaky, too.
I walked through the flap of the tent.
There were about five men in total, all dressed in the unwashed and dirty clothes. They were crowded around a chest of gold and other valuables, clearly celebrating another hit gone right. The man who'd been shoved before—a scrawny little thing, really—looked up at me with a confused look. His cheek was bruising with a splotch of purple that looked painful, and his eyes were puffing up.
"Sorry," I said as a greeting, detaching my sword with practiced ease and plunging it into his throat. Blood splattered out of his neck like the petals of a flower blooming outward, and I clumsily carved a line down his neck, my muscles barely straining. "Damn, this sword really does suck."
The other men immediately began rushing me. I ripped my sword out of the bandit's chest and he made a guh noise as blood pooled out of his body. He began choking, flecks of blood staining his teeth and face like freckles. The bandit leader, a hulking brute of a man with biceps the size of small boulders, stumbled toward me, roaring about something or the other. I could see his mouth move and noise assaulted my ears, but it was like the squawk of a bird, or sign language, or something. The musings of a fractured soul that didn't know its time on Earth was up.
I ducked under the telegraphed punch he threw my way and jabbed my sword into his chest. He gasped out in pain, and I forced my sword left and right, scribbling lines of blood into his chest. He raised a hand and mashed my left wrist in a crushing grip, but I just grinned and kept slashing through his skin like a blacksmith would sharpen a blade on a whetstone. I signed my sloppy signature by detaching my sword and repeatedly jabbing it in and out of the wound until blood seeped out of his chest in crashing waves, like a crashing waterfall.
"That's what a genin would do, right?" I stared at the other three men, who were looking at me like they'd seen a ghost. One of them gagged and threw up all over the ground. I wrinkled my nose. "Gross, man. That's just gross."
Dispatching the rest of the bandits was even easier once they'd seen their leader get packed up and diced like deli meat by a kid who wasn't old enough to go to a whorehouse.
Legally, anyway. Naruto's sneakiness was bound to be good for something, right? Hell, maybe if impressed Anko enough, I wouldn't even need one of those. I could just organically work my way up to seeing her naked.
Go on, little ninja. Time to prove yourself.
Something about Anko's words rattled around my head like a bag of rocks being tossed down a hill. It wasn't that she got in my head—far from it, in fact. Anko was a lot of things. She was hot. A capable ninja. Questionable in terms of fashion. Psychologically, she was a suite of problems, dangling like prayer beads with a string of hatred holding them together like fine silk.
She wasn't, however, a capable trash talker. Mainly because all her trash talk consisted of somehow referencing the fact that I was significantly younger than her, which didn't hold much water in a vacuum, because I had a former Hokage mucking about in my head.
But it was just something about those words specifically. They felt muted and flat, like kanji written on a dusty old scroll somewhere. They were rehearsed and choreographed. I could almost imagine someone hiding across the branch with a cue card, pointing at her and mouthing: it's your line!
And that's when it hit me.
I'd heard those exact words before. My hand shook. Not from Anko, but from her sensei. Orochimaru.
As I continued walking back to the tree line, the world shifted around me, swirling like fire caught in a tempest. The trees blurred into streaks of dark green, the shadows twisting and coiling like serpents around the flickering light of the campfires. A laughing noise hissed around me like wind through dry leaves, sharp and mocking. It echoed off the trees, twisting in the dark, making it impossible to tell where it came from. The sound crawled under my skin, cold and relentless, like I'd been dropped in a basket of snakes going for my throat.
It was as if time had slowed, each second stretching out, letting me feel the weight of the sword's hilt in my hand, the rough texture pressing into my palm. The flames from the bandit camp danced in the periphery of my vision, licking at the edges of the darkness like hungry tongues.
The murmurs and laughter from the bandits grew distant, as if I were sinking deeper into a dream, or a nightmare. Layers of memories wrapped around me like a thick cloak. Just like before, the world flashed around me, blinking in and out between memories. My head throbbed painfully. I remembered standing beside him, half-hidden in the shadows as we watched him train his students.
"My dear Hokage," Orochimaru's tantalizing voice whispered, settling around my shoulders. "Welcome. This is where our research will be fully tested. They have been trained to show no mercy. To...No! No! You strike fast, strike hard, do you hear me? Do you hear me?"
"I'm sorry," A hidden voice cried out.
"You have no idea," Orochimaru's voice floated above my head once more, simmering with anger. "You've embarrassed me in front of our Hokage. No matter. I'll give you one more chance. Kill, or be killed. Go on, little ninja. Time to prove yourself."
Anger coiled in my veins. I'm not entirely sure what I was mad at, but I turned back to the tent and flipped through hand signs, feeling the familiar thrum of power roar through my veins with each movement.
Snake. Ram. Monkey. Boar. Horse. Tiger.
A burning fireball exploded out of my mouth and slammed into the tent, exploding it in a wall of fire that stretched far into the night sky.
Fuck.
I thought I'd gotten past most of the memories—I hissed in pain and grabbed my head. Strong emotions tended to unearth the deeper ones, though, the ones I'd forgotten about. They clawed their way back up when I least expected it, like shadows lurking beneath the surface. This time, it was worse. The fire I'd just unleashed had burned through more than the bandit camp—it had reignited something inside me, something old and raw, tangled in the past.
The pain pulsed, sharp and unrelenting, as images flashed in front of my eyes. Orochimaru's cold smile hovered like a dark cloud, his yellow eyes gleaming with cruel amusement. Vials of blue liquid swirled in my memory, their contents shimmering ominously under sterile lights. Sealing matrices sprawled endlessly through my vision, intricate and suffocating, like webs of black ink crawling over my skin, each symbol burning its way into my mind.
The world tilted. My knees buckled, but I caught myself before I hit the ground. More memories surged, uninvited—glimpses of shadowed rooms, the metallic scent of blood, and the hollow echo of a laugh that wasn't my own. I blinked hard, trying to focus on the present, but the past clung to me like a curse. The pain spread, branching out like cracks in glass, and I could feel my composure unraveling, piece by piece, and being replaced by righteous anger.
But why? What was it about Orochimaru that was making me so mad?
Bandits came running over to me, staring between me and the fire. I was still young enough that they spent just a minute too long wondering what I was doing here, and that was more than enough for Ōkei to unleash his barrage of needles, sinking them like flies.
"Good work, kid," Anko said, dropping to the ground next to me and placing a comforting hand on my shoulder. She could tell I was rattled, even if she thought I was for the wrong reasons. Now that I knew what I was looking for, I could see it in her eyes—the same calculating look her sensei had. I wasn't just an unknown to her anymore. I was a curiosity. "Now, then—"
"Well, hello there," A smooth, cultured voice called from beyond the flames. I tensed, every nerve on edge as the shadows at the edge of the camp parted, and a figure stepped into the flickering light. It was our mystery ninja. He moved with a quiet, almost unsettling grace as if he belonged here amidst the chaos. As the firelight danced across his form, I could make out a tall, thin young man with pale golden eyes that gleamed in the dark, their narrowness giving him an air of quiet calculation. His brown hair hung to his shoulders, a side parting letting long bangs cover the left side of his face, giving him a mysterious, almost disarming look.
He wore a long, light blue kimono that billowed slightly with each step, adorned with an emblem of three bubbles on the back. The kimono hung loose, casually exposing part of his chest, and a bright orange sash tied it all together in a way that felt both elegant and dangerous. Grey pants peeked out from beneath, and in one hand, he carried a bamboo jug, while in the other, a long, slender pipe rested between his fingers. The smell of soap mingled with the smoke in the air, an odd contrast to the stench of sweat and burning wood that filled the camp.
For a moment, the world around me seemed to pause, the crackling fire and frantic shouts fading into the background. There was something about him—an unsettling calm that felt out of place in this wreckage. He didn't belong here, not like the rest of us, and yet, here he was, standing amid the chaos like he'd been waiting for it this whole time.
He raised the pipe to his lips, took a slow, deliberate breath, and exhaled, a stream of bubbles drifting lazily into the night air. "I see you've made quite the mess," he said, his voice calm, almost amused. "Quite rude, no?"
"Identify yourself," Anko said, her voice firm. Her fingers tightened on my shoulder, twinges of pain dotting my skin and she forcefully shoved me back.
She knew who it was.
"No, no," The man laughed. "You won't be needing my name. I do, however, possess yours. Anko Mitarashi. A friend speaks highly of you."
Anko smirked, stuffing her hands in her pocket. "Know me, do you? Not many bandits can claim that. Though, if you're a fellow ninja, why are you in a bandit camp?"
"Simply put, I was waiting for you."
Anko didn't sound the least bit surprised as she said, "Me?"
"You," The man smiled placidly. His golden eyes glowed briefly. "It was always going to be you, wasn't it? After so many reports came channeling back to your dear Hokage, who else would they send?"
Anko asked the question that was burning a hole in my mind, "Why?"
"Only you would be able to stop what's coming next," The man said contritely. "And I've been paid a lot of money to make sure that eventuality does not come to pass."
As the man exhaled from his pipe, delicate bubbles began to form, shimmering in the firelight. At first, they seemed harmless—small, translucent orbs drifting lazily around him, reflecting the flicker of flames in their iridescent surfaces. But then, more appeared, swelling in size and number, surrounding him in a slow, mesmerizing dance.
The bubbles swirled like a gentle current, each one catching the light in a rainbow of colors that flickered with every movement. They floated effortlessly, defying gravity, growing larger and denser, forming a luminous barrier around him. They moved in perfect harmony, as if responding to his very breath, clustering together yet never colliding, their surfaces thin yet unbreakable.
The air around him felt charged, humming with a strange energy. These weren't ordinary bubbles—they carried a weight, a silent promise of danger. Despite their delicate appearance, there was something menacing in the way they hovered, ready to burst with untold power at his command.
"I generally make it a point to not harm children," The man watched me calmly from behind his veil of floating spheres, his golden eyes glinting through the translucent wall as the bubbles pulsed, waiting for his signal. Each bubble shimmered like a loaded weapon, fragile yet deadly, poised to strike. "But, every rule has its exception. The question is simple now: which one of you will die first?"
AN: And just like that, canon is irrevocably fucked. As you can tell by Utakata being alive and well, randomly in a bandit camp, I'm taking liberties with the timeline.
That's all I'll say for now. Looks like our little Naruto/Minato hybrid is getting his first taste of real action, too.
I wonder what'll happen.
Be sure to join the Discord in the meantime. Just take the spaces out of this: Linktr . ee /maroooon
Thanks! And see you soon!
- Maroon