Demons in the Dark: The Hell Gate

Ch. 1 – The End of Innocence

-0-

"You have to promise me… Naruto, promise me that if I die here, you'll avenge my clan in my place." A boy with spiky black hair lay broken, bloody and punctured all over his body. His blue shirt had gone black in some places, white shorts stained red. Held by his teammate, Naruto, the boy felt his blood flowing out into his clothing. He gave a weak grin to Naruto, before his eyes closed gently and his energy began to fade away. Naruto couldn't believe what he had just heard, much less what he was seeing and feeling.

"N-No, Sasuke… you can't do this, you're the strongest of us! You have to stay alive to regain your family's honor! You can't die! You can't, I mean- y-you just can't die!" Naruto was certain that if anyone were going to die for the team, it would be himself. 'If you're gone… how will I earn your respect? How can I avenge your clan when I know less about your brother than you do?' He let his eyes close as the tears began to fall, ignoring the reflections of their foe in the mirrors surrounding the two. The opponent ninja hidden amongst the reflections shook his head, the white Hunter's mask upon his face betraying no thought.

'He's suffering his first lost comrade… at least Zabuza's orders allow me to grant him a merciful death.' The Hunter leapt from one of the mirrors, moving beyond what Naruto could've seen on average. As he stabbed precisely into the blond boy's neck, an orange aura appeared around the boy. The Hunter should've continued through into the mirrors behind Naruto, but found that the aura was holding him in place. 'What? Chakra can't physically hold someone, what is this?!'

As he received his answer, the voice that echoed through the misty air rang with an almost electric power behind it. "I was raised alone, with no one… I was placed on a team, and my heart called to my entire being 'Fight! Reach higher, climb further! If they will not give it, then take it yourself!' Now though, my heart speaks with a voice; A voice that is now clearly calling to me." Naruto looked up into the eye-holes of the Hunter's mask, his eyes having become a shining orange glow with no discernible pupils, retinas or even corneas. The Hunter found himself locked in that gaze, feeling a crushing loneliness he hadn't known since before his master had taken him in. "Fight! Reach higher into the heavens, climb further into hell! If they will not give their power, then take it for yourself!"

With speed that even the hunter couldn't follow, Naruto grabbed his throat and shoved his head and torso through the mirror he'd leapt from. 'This is impossible, even I'm not this fast!' The Hunter tried to move his fingers to form a handsign, but as though he'd known what the Hunter was thinking, Naruto tore his arm from his shoulder before the Hunter even saw Naruto twitch. An anguished scream erupted from him, Naruto ignoring it completely. He focused all of his rage on the one who'd taken the closest thing he had to a friend, and a second later Naruto's orange aura grew bright, spreading to cover the Hunter's entire form.

"You call this 'Makyou Hyousho'?! I'll show you JUST how cruel real demons are!" Naruto shouted, drawing energy from the Hunter as he was drained of his very essence. As the eyes Naruto stared into went blank, he stepped his right foot against his left heel, rotating to throw the Hunter past Sasuke. With the blazing aura catching fire on the Hunter's body, it impacted against his master; a ninja wielding a long cleaver-style sword. The flames exploded, the burning aura spreading to the man and eliciting a new, just as agonizing shout from the Hunter's master. "Real demons…"

Naruto calmed down as he heard his own voice in this echoing tone, looking at his bloody hands in surprise and confusion. A light blue sphere of shining light was held in his left hand, before it spread into his aura. He looked around, seeing the Bridge clearly. He jumped toward his team-leader roughly twenty-five meters away, surprising himself as he appeared the second after he jumped. If not for his leader's extra-ordinary reaction time, Naruto would've been sliced through his own throat. "N-Naruto? What is all that? I mean…" The man looked toward the other member of their team, satisfied that she was out of ear-shot, "… that isn't the Kyuubi's energy. It's definitely demonic, but where the Kyuubi's power is hateful, this is lamenting. It makes me feel alone, it makes me feel so alone it hurts… it feels like how I always imagined you do."

"I can't explain this… I can see as though there were no mist, I feel like I could run for years without stopping, and I ripped off that Hunter-nin's arm before I even knew what I was doing. Sasuke…"

"I know. But please… reel that energy in. I can't see clearly, but I can see chakra like this… and there's quite the party on the other end of the bridge." The man cut Naruto off, as he felt the pain in his aura intensify, trying to keep the demonic boy in his right mind. 'Could the Kyuubi have corrupted his chakra into… whatever this is? We have to make it back to Konoha… Jiraiya-sama needs to see this.' "For now, we need to protect Sakura and Tazuna-san. Can you focus enough to fight?"

"Believe me… I'll have no problem with that." Naruto answered, walking toward the other end of the bridge. As he passed the still-burning corpses of their foes, Zabuza's sword flew into Naruto's left hand. The light blue sphere returned, shining as bright as the sun. It flew into the sword's hilt, the entire piece shining a blinding white. When the light cleared, the sword had changed slightly. The blade had become an obsidian material, the shape remaining while five kanji etched into either side of the blade shined with a cyan light. 'What? What happened to it?'

Naruto's thoughts were interrupted by a slow clap, a man walking into average sight as roughly fifty mercenaries followed behind him. "Well, well, well. Looks like he wasn't worth that price he demanded. Too bad he already blew through his down-payment, I won't be getting that back." The man was short, and appeared to be a businessman of some kind. He wore sunglasses with a black suit, and a truly awful hairdo. "Still, the remaining price was far more than all of these guys put together. But feel free to cut one or two down, I'm always welcome to partying spare cash away."

Naruto scoffed, his grip tightening on the sword. As his aura spread along the blade's length, Naruto raised it straight outward to his left, spinning around once with a strong burst of his newfound power. As the men now gazed upon the demonic-looking boy, they like the Hunter found they couldn't look away from his eyes. "You squeeze this country dry, you bully their people, and to top off my only friend died trying to stop men you couldn't give a single shit about." As though handling a kunai knife, Naruto span the sword between his fingers as the aura around the blade intensified. "You don't deserve the honor of falling by the sword. But in your case…" The man laughed uproariously, before an orange blur rushed past him and Naruto ran his stomach through from behind, "… I make an exception. Pray that we never meet again, bastard."

Naruto turned the sword, the businessman's guts spilling from the gaping hole it made as Naruto slashed out from his left straight around to his right. The businessman and the nearest five mercenaries were severed at the stomach, a wave of burning orange energy washing over twenty more of the mercenaries next to him. Naruto's teammates and their client were shocked, but not near as shocked as the remaining twenty-five mercenaries.

"Math time boys and girls, if I killed half of you in one cut how many more do I need to make?" Naruto stood with the sword resting on his shoulder as he stared at the terrified men. He raised the sword above his head, and immediately the remaining mercenaries ran off onto the road on the other side of the bridge. Naruto brought the sword down to his right hip, the aura around the blade intensifying until the light was blinding. "Get out of my sight." Naruto slashed out to his left, releasing a stronger wave of burning energy. It incinerated the men, doing the same to the first fifty meters of the forest.

As he watched the flames burn down a few more trees, his team leader approached from behind. As he did, Naruto heard his female teammate find Sasuke. Her sobs were anguished almost as much as the mutilated opponents', Naruto looking disdainfully down at the sword in his hand. '… why?' The sword itself began to glow bright cyan, before vanishing into similar-colored energy that integrated into Naruto's aura before it began receding into Naruto. His eyes returning to their normal state, Naruto looked up to his team leader with orange-retinas to match his jumpsuit.

"Kakashi-sensei… what was all of that?" Naruto asked, the elder man shifting his headband to hide his red eye. "Was it the fox or… was it me?"

"I'm sorry to tell you this… but that was all you. I don't know whether that power was originally the Kyuubi's, but I know that no one in Konoha will care." Kakashi sighed, trying not to get his hopes up without being honest. "Whether you say anything or not is entirely up to you… but if you can pull that off again you'll need an explanation. As it is I need to give my report without writing one out. And then, there's the matter of Sakura."

"I don't care anymore. I'm the one the secret is supposed to protect, and it never has. Once we return… I'm giving Jiji the go-ahead to repeal the law." Naruto said, turning around to walk away. Kakashi tried to stop him, but found that Naruto was much stronger than ever before. He brushed the elder-man's hand off without even noticing. Their client tried to praise him for the superhuman feat, but Naruto seemed to be in his own world. That is, up until his female teammate discovered something.

"Kakashi-sensei, Sasuke's still breathing!" Her name was Sakura, and though he couldn't explain it, Naruto felt his mood shift completely. He ran to them as quickly as he could, falling to his knees and breaking out into an ecstatic grin when he saw the dark-haired boy's eyes opening.

"Sasuke, you're alive! I thought you were dead, I-" Naruto stopped at that, not feeling like a blow to his rival's ego would help anyone at that moment. Kakashi looked on at the three, forgetting the questions for a moment to join in their happy triumph. They'd gotten their precious teammate back, and he felt that they'd thoroughly accomplished their first-ever B-rank mission.

'We'll worry when we're all back home, for tonight we can rest and celebrate.' Kakashi pulled out a small orange book, donning a contented look as he allowed them their moment.

-0-

"… After the sword vanished, the aura receded into Naruto's chakra stores. But after that, even my Sharingan couldn't keep track of it. The only other appearance of the energy was a slight spike when he saw Sasuke waking back up. It seems linked to strong emotions, not just hatred and loss. But the feeling of it is definitely Naruto, if you felt that horrible loneliness, the pain and lament… that wasn't the Kyuubi."

The old man sitting behind the desk sighed, taking a long drag from a standard wooden tobacco pipe. His hat was in a shade-style with a white drape around the back and a red triangle at the front edge. "So, it is really true… I was hoping my student had been worrying over nothing. You need not concern yourself with it, but rest assured that I know what has happened and what to do. Get a message to Mt. Myouboku for Jiraiya; we need him back to examine the situation." The man said, Kakashi nodding his head with a slight bow.

"Right away, Sarutobi-sama." With that, Kakashi walked out the door and left the Hokage's Mansion. Sarutobi sighed, looking out over his village.

'Naruto-kun… I am so sorry.'