A/N: HELL-o.

Warning: This chapter contains a lot of blood and is dark – to the point it's really made me rethink the humor tag. It's also unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) ridden with a lot of backstory. Read at your own risk.

PS: Naruto was a bit messed up when he was younger. There is a reason, and I'll get to it soon. However, I apologize if this upsets you. I can change this bit if it's really not liked. It'll throw the story off a bit and I'll need to change up his backstory to account for the alteration. But, like I say, this chapter is really dark. Naruto is not meant to be liked here.

Interlude I

Three years ago

The black building loomed above the surrounding landscape like a monolithic beast. Dark towers spired off from the main structure like bony fingers on a dead hand scratching at the night sky with undead indomitability.

Several kilometers away on a craggy outcropping perched three figures in black ANBU robes waving in the gentle wind passing over the rocky ledge below. To the outside observer they would be indistinguishable amongst the splashy backdrop.

The first figure on the far right was taller than the other two by a few inches. White hair stuck out from beneath his drawn hood at odd angles as if it'd been stuff inside as an afterthought. His hair in combination with his stiff posture gave the impression that he was nothing more than a poorly stuffed scarecrow in black robes. The smooth, white, alabaster mask that covered his face was marred only by two slits for eyes. Two points curved upwards to form dog-ears dipped in brown paint.

The middle figure had his hood back, exposing a mess of black hair, the tips of which barely touched his shoulders. Although he was just as straight-backed as the first ANBU, he wore the posture easily, making the ramrod stance appear natural. He had an air of stiff formality usually on found on seasoned politicians. And it would have been easy to mistake him for one if it weren't for the weasel mask he wore over his face distinguishing him as one of the elite inside Konoha's forces.

The third figure was crouched low to the ground so that his robes pooled around him like a black bloodstain on the rocks below. And, like the second, had his hood back displaying a mane of messy blond hair reaching down to just below his shoulders. The blond labyrinthine mess of tangled knots and snares that looked to not have seen the business end of a brush in months. Like the other two, he had a white mask, artistically splashed with color to give it an owlish impression. That is, if the owl had been drawn by a six year old. The beak was a sloppily painted orange line and the eyeholes had cracks as though the material hadn't set properly.

"So that's Heidiki's base?" Owl asked, his unmistakably youthful voice muffled and made hollow by the mask.

"Yes." Weasel said, his voice similarly distorted as Owl's had been, though still somehow conveying the impression of an old banker.

"Seems boring." Owl said, plaintively. "Why were we called in on this one?"

"The Hokage wants this one done quickly." Dog said. "Heidiki has been selling arms to Iwa under the table for months - even after being told to stop."

Dog had an indefatigable aura of something nobody could quite place about him. It was as though he were trying to be two separate people at the same time. On one hand he spoke with the directness and authority of someone used to being obeyed and obeyed unquestioningly. On the other hand, his body language seemed stilted - as though he were forcing himself to appear relaxed and at ease in spite of years of doing just the opposite.

"Still, I don't know why we were called in." Owl complained. "I was stocking up on ramen! I'd built this amazing shrine to honor the pastry god."

"Act your age and don't question the commander." Weasel said, stoically.

"I'm ten. Complaining and talking about food is acting my age." Owl retorted, standing up to his full and unimpressive height of four foot six.

Owl was the youngest behind Weasel by a few years. He'd joined ANBU because he hadn't had much choice otherwise. It was either this or the funny farm. But that was fine; ANBU suited him. What didn't suit him was the standard issue ANBU robes, which were approximately a half dozen sizes too large meant for a fully-grown adult. To combat looking like he was entering battle wearing a family sized tent, he'd used an odd assortment of belts strapped stragically around his torso so that instead of looking like he was wearing a tent, he gained the appearance of a freshly escape mental patient.

"You're in ANBU. By law your age is: legal. And, therefore, over eighteen." Dog snapped out irritably. "Now cut the complaining and let's get this over with. Do you remember the plan?"

Owl laughed hollowly and said, "It's hardly complicated. Bust in, break some stuff, get out."

"We've talked about referring to human life as 'stuff', owl." Weasel said, his monotone taking on a sharper edge of disapproval as he turned his head to face his junior. "The Hokage asked for me to oversee the rest of your training. Proper mental care is part of the training process."

"Yeah, yeah." Owl said carelessly, cracking his gloved index finger with the thumb on the same hand, the resulting sound echoing off the surrounding rocks like the snap of a whip. "Shall we get started, then? I want to be home by the end of the week." Another crack.

"We will talk about this after." Weasel said with finality.

Moving at an unspoken signal, the three shot off in separate directions and coasted like wraiths down the side of the ledge, flowing around boulders and trees with an easy grace boarder-lining practiced towards the lookout ahead.

Line Break

Jounin Benal had very few things going for him in life. He was neither too tall nor too short, his hair was always cropped short in just such a way that he might have done better not having any at all, and according to numerous reports from the female persuasion, his eyes were too close together.

But Jounin Benal Tanuke didn't let this get him down. He soldiered on with all the impressive determination a worker ant did, that is with uncaring and unwittering blindness. It was this short sightedness that made sure that there were a lot of things in life he was blissfully unaware of.

For example: Jounin Benal Tanuke did not know that his life was going to end in less than ten minutes.

Needless to say, that if he had know, he certainly would not have continued his rounds with the same cheery optimism he'd exhibited for the last six years that he'd overseen this post. Instead, he would have dropped rank, honor, and troops and made straight for the nearest port to book himself a one-way trip to whatever was leaving right now.

"Evening." Torin grunted, waving a meaty hand in greeting as Benal rounded the corner into the watchman's box. The guard's man was standing by the open window, halberd in hand, staring out the window at the dark landscape beyond.

Torin's body was unique in that it appeared as though he were poured into his clothes by a man who'd forgotten to stop just before reaching the top, biceps larger than baby heads strained against the standard issue red and blue guard's uniform.

"And a good evening to you." Benal said, joining Torin by the window, smiling so cheerfully a cynical man would have thought he knew something you didn't.

The outpost they were in was a small one with only a solitary torch to illuminate the alcove in the wall. Because of the confined space and limited airflow, scents tended to hang around for a while. Benal could detect the starchy scent of potatoes, the sharp tang of teriyaki, and the earthy texture of beans Torin must have had for dinner. He could also detect the acrid smell of…

Benal's smile wavered slightly as he spotted a small bottle that had been hastily shoved inside one of the many cracks spider webbing the outer wall.

Torin spotted where Benal's gaze had drifted and grunted.

"Just a nip. Ain't no harm in a nip, capt'n."

Benal eyed the mammoth severely. Although Benal was only half Torin's height, Benal hadn't achieved the rank of Jounin for nothing.

"Promise it was only a nip?" Benal asked dubiously.

"On me honor, capt'n." Torin swore honestly.

Benal's smile returned in full force. "Then give me a taste, then." He said. "It's been a long night and nothing's happened in months."

"Er was the-"

"The cobbler's son doesn't count." Benal cut in smoothly. "He already knew the layout for the building. Never can outmaneuver a kid in his own territory, I say."

Benal stopped mid ramble when he noticed Torin staring lamely at the hole he'd stashed his alcohol. The small bottle that had previously been there was now conspicuously missing.

"This is disgusting." A muffled child's voice said from behind them.

Benal and Torin spun around to face where the unknown voice had come from. They discovered a diminutive black robed figure with blond hair leaning against the back wall, the missing alcohol bottle in hand. They would almost have mistaken him for one of the noble's sons if it weren't for the sloppily painted, bone white mask glowing in the flickering torchlight. Both Torin and Benal knew what those masks symbolized.

Konoha's ANBU.

Konoha's monsters.

"I don't understand what you people see in this stuff." The miniature ANBU said, holding the bottle up in between his pinched index and thumb fingers.

Benal had to crush the nagging feeling that this was nothing more than a child. ANBU didn't let children into their ranks.

Sliding into a defensive stance, Benal ready himself for a fight. ANBU had come. He didn't know why, but it didn't matter. He had a job to protect the master.

"Torin, I'll go around left, you take his right."

"Who are you talking to?" The ANBU laughed, tossing the bottle to the side so that it smashed against the stone cobbles.

Benal, without turning his torso, glanced to his side and found Torin slumped against the wall, eyes wide. His own halberd had been shoved into his armpit keeping him from full collapsing to the ground. The even deeper red of the guard's blood had obliterated the red insignia of the noble's house that wrapped around the guard's torso.

There was a loud crack and Benal dropped lower to the ground, handing whipping out a kunai from the pouch at his side to block the expected attack. He blinked owlishly when no weapon or jutsu was forthcoming.

It took him a moment to realize that the sound he heard was the ANBU cracking his right hand's middle finger using the thumb on the same hand. Benal's gaze shot back up to the mask.

And pure fear griped his very being in an icy grip that chilled his very bones.

Behind the mask, the ANBU's – no, the demon's – right eye burned a deep, hating crimson. The pupil was elongated and slit like some snake or canine. In that bottomless pit, there was no humanity - none that Benal could recognize. Even in the eye of a sociopathic murderer, there was generally some shred of semblance you could latch onto and relate. In the void that that burned like the hottest fire in the night, there was nothing beyond an unending, indiscriminate fury.

"I don't have much time." The ANBU said, stepping forward, his black combat boots darting out from the hem of the thick robes like evil rabbits. "I have a question for you."
Benal gulped. He was a Jounin; but he was an outer-city Jounin. If you were to compare him to a major village's hierarchy, he'd barely rank Chuunin. His opponent was ANBU, black death given form and substance. They were legendary. And this one wasn't even human.

The ANBU drew up in front of him, heedless of Benal's drawn weapon –it might as well have been a toy to him. White mask tilted up so that Benal could make out each exquisite detail of the mask and red pool.

"Do you have any dreams?" The question was spoken softly, almost reverently. Benal never got to answer, because the question was followed by an explosion of pain as his heart was torn from his chest in a volcanic eruption of blood and viscera. He never saw the strike, or the backswing that separated head from shoulders.

Benal was dead before he hit the ground.

Line Break

ANBU agent Owl, also known as Naruto during off hours, was having a good day – a really, really good day. The hallway he was currently making his way across was boring, stale, and the architecture was unoriginal, but he was free and allowed absolute autonomy.

He'd never had this much fun before. Being a door-to-door salesman was nothing compared to this. But then again, without his job as a salesman, he'd never have had this one. It had to be that fate thing he'd heard so much about. He'd never put much stock in it before, but there was always a first for everything.

Naruto sampled the air deeply through his nose and scented the cloying, wonderful aroma of blood. It covered the floor and walls behind him where he'd stumbled upon an unfortunate sentry on his way towards the main estate. He'd spent a minute or two to play. He broke a few of their bones, distended their organs across the carpet, and even made one pluck and swallow his own eye.

Naruto cracked the middle finger on his left hand, savoring the feeling of the bone temporarily dislocating and then snapping back into place, forced back into position by the healing powers his demon provided.

Naruto lifted and inspected his gloved and still bloody hand, his stride down the hall never breaking. The owners of that blood had called him a demon before they died. That assertion was amusing. Him? A demon? In this twisted world, he was transparent. He was honest in what he did. No, what was wrong wasn't him. It was the world.

His hand twisted in a rictus of motion and this time the finger broke. Naruto closed his eyes as his body was wracked with pleasure in the pain.

Pain. It had made him stronger in a time when he'd been powerless. It was then he cast aside memory of his past and embraced the simple conclusion that all the hurt and disadvantage in the world derived from a man's simple lack of ability. He'd embraced who he really was and freed himself.

A sound. Naruto's ears perked up as he heard the desperate and fearful panting in the room he'd just past. Halting, he slowly back peddled, turned, and opened the door.

"What are you doing in here?" Naruto crooned, lips twisting in a cruel behind his mask.

Heidiki Genryusai was huddled in a corner, arms wrapped around legs drawn up to his chest, dark eyes wide with abject terror. His brown hair was mussed and tangled with sweat that dripped down his face, over a long nose, and onto his clinging green pajamas.

Desperately avoiding eye contact, Heidiki tried to flee through the wall he was leaning up against, palms sliding against the floor as he tried to back away. Not that it mattered. Now that Naruto had his scent, escape was impossible.

Naruto raised an eyebrow as he noticed a few scrapes and the beginning of a few bruises on his bare feet. Heidiki had been running recklessly recently. Had he heard the other two coming?

Naruto discarded the idea instantly. The thought of either Kakashi or Itachi being noticed by trash such as this was absurd to the point of contemptibility.

He stepped up to the target and crouched down, resting elbows on knees and letting his hands dangle in between. Ignoring the man's whimpering, Naruto pulled off his mask – an act that he'd been expressly forbidden against – and studied Heidiki's face with curiosity.

Thin, sallow, and pockmarked, there didn't seem to be anything impressive about his features - nothing that marked him as a threat to Konoha. Placed in a crowd and dressed in the right clothing, there would be nothing truly worth mentioning.

"I-I haven't done anything!" Heidiki squeaked in a high, reedy voice.

"I don't care." Naruto said, pulling a kunai from his belt, savoring the smell of Heidiki's intensified fear. The man's cowardice was so thick it was almost palpable.

With a blur of motion, Naruto lopped off two of Heidiki's fingers on his right hand just above the knuckles and reveled in the sounds as the man's feeble mewling exploded into a high-pitched keen. The noble clutched his hand to his chest and as fumbled at the severed stumps with fumbling futility, thick fluid pouring onto his chest and staining his once immaculate shirt.

"Do you have dreams?" Naruto asked, as Heidiki continued to wail hysterically, his panic only serving to make his heart pump blood out faster.

After a moment's wait for an answer, Naruto grew impatient and, reaching out, took hold of two more of Heidiki's fingers and twisted them. With a snap, the man's scream intensified further, eyes widening so much that it appeared they were going to pop out of his head at any moment.

"Do you have dreams?" Naruto repeated, wiping the blood that'd smeared on him when he'd broken the noble's fingers across the noble's leg.

Frowning when he didn't get a response, Naruto was about to begin the process all over again on one of Heidiki's feet when he was distracted by the sound of doors banging open.

Head snapping around, Naruto watched with startled amazement as the closet doors burst open and a girl no older than four came lunging out, tears streaming down her round face.

"No!" Heidiki choked out, scrambling over of slick and wounded hands and legs to the girl, wrapping her up in his arms and burying his nose in her brown hair.

Naruto let him go, watching with some bemusement as the girl gripped her father's shirt, even as her own unicorn nightgown was stained by his blood.

"Don't hurt daddy!" She bawled, eyes screwing up tight.

Heidiki looked up at him. The fear that had once been reflected in his eyes had evaporated, replaced by a searing loathing.

Naruto stood, amazed. Where had the pain gone? The man had been a twitching wreck before. Now, his back was arched around his spawn protectively, his body ridged and coiled like a spring. He was prepared to fight tooth and nail.

"Stay back!" Heidiki yelled, his voice filled with venom.

Naruto growled, low inhuman, guttural sound, as his right eye began to throb.

This was all wrong. What broke Heidiki? Where had the pain gone? He had been so close to becoming strong before. It was all ruined now - by the thing he was clutching in his arms.

"Owl!" A stern, voice laiden with anger barked from the doorway.

Naruto's eyes snapped to the side to see Itachi looming in the doorway. His shoulders were raised and his cloak seemed to expand to encompass more than just the doorway. Inside the mask's eyeholes Itachi's sharingan spun with frenzied intensity displaying more emotion than Naruto had ever seen from the older ninja yet. Granted, this was their first official mission together.

"What?" Naruto asked nonchalantly, shrugging in an attempt to appear unfazed by the Uchiha's menacing appearance. On the inside, however, he was feeling a slightly apprehensive.

Had he accidently overlooking the girl upset the Uchiha to the point where Itachi might attack him? If the girl was what enraged his elder, then the problem was easily rectifiable.

Naruto acted smoothly. Coating the kunai with chakra and flipping it into throwing grip, he launched the weapon at the girl's head, intending to drive it through her skull and into the man's chest.

His attack never reached its target. In a clang and a flash of sparks, Naruto's kunai and the one Itachi had thrown to deflect his buried into the wall and floor like angry bees.

"Stand down." Kakashi's voice came from behind Itachi.
The ANBU captain stepped around the incensed Uchiha and moved over the where Heidiki still knelt. The noble's eyes had lost a lot of their previous focused and were now glazed from the blood loss setting in, but he was still conscious enough to draw his daughter closer to him as the white-haired ANBU approached.

Kakashi stopped before the target, stared at him for a moment, meeting both the daughter's eyes and her father's, nodded curtly at them both, and then in a single smooth motion and a spray of blood and howling electricity, slit Heidiki's throat. The man didn't so much as twitch as blood streamed from the incision like a released waterfall, sliding down his neck to vanish into his shirt and daughter's brown hair.

The girl, for her part, didn't move. She simply stared at Kakashi blankly.

Naruto knew enough of genjutsu to recognize one placed on the girl. Kakashi must have put them both under one, as a mercy to relieve the pain. Why had Kakashi made them weaker?

"The mission was to kill the noble," Kakashi said in a low voice, "there was no need for," he swiped his hand broadly to indicate the whole base, "this!" he spat.

Kakashi spun to face Itachi, white mask reflecting the light streaming in through the window.

"Did the Hokage mention any of Owl's," he searched a moment for the right word, then, failing that, blurted, "insanity."

"I don't understand." Naruto said, blinking uncomprehendingly. He had thought ANBU would suit him. It would allow him to explore his ability to kill.

Itachi's shoulders, if possible, became even stiffer, any impressions of apathy vanished, melted away by the heat of his anger. His shadow seemed to stretch and merge with the others in the room, combining and becoming larger.

"This is not the place to argue. We will talk about this on the way back to Konoha." The way Itachi had pronounced 'will' left no doubt in Naruto's mind that if the Uchiha did not receive the responses he wanted during that discussion, Naruto would have to either find a new body to live in, or a new village. Perhaps both. He only needed to figure out how to inhabit a new body.

End of Interlude I

A/N: I'll be completely honest with you guys. In the original version of this story, the girl died – and Naruto force-fed her to the father. I decided against that version. The humor tag would have to have been removed then.