Disclaimers and all the details you want about this fic at the bottom, just hit Ctrl+End (or scroll manually if you're on a phone, mwa ha ha).

This story is OC-centric. Give it a few chapters as it picks up steam!

A Duty Held By Darkness

Chapter 1: Darkness invades Konoha

'Well, I wasn't expecting that. I'm being spotted, and I'm not even close to the gates yet.'

His dark eyes looked up at the night guards, briefly considering his options. 'I only have a few months now. I don't want to be seen getting in, or it could screw up. Why wasn't I given an entry pass again?'

Yasha had considered that earlier, but nervousness made him rethink his reasoning. 'I tried talking to the Hokage, but that approach failed; even if they didn't ignore me, I certainly didn't help the scenario. This is the final reset, the third time. I can't be known of by the Hokage for at least a few months.'

He stepped forward further, the two chuunin guards glancing up to see… nothing. The darkness had wrapped around him.

Yasha stepped forward again, concealing his footsteps, but with each breath he knew he was being detected. 'Shit.'

He was barely a genin, and his stealth skills needed serious tuning to get past these guards. They were tensing up noticeably, eyes squinting as they gazed down the dark road, their eyes both seeing and hiding the pitch-black figure against the nearly-black sky. If there hadn't been light behind them from the village, their night vision would have found the contrast of black already.

There was nothing for it. He had to kill them. He couldn't wait until tomorrow night for village entry, and it was minutes before the gate closed for the night anyway, then he would be royally screwed.

Just as he was thinking that he heard the tiniest of footsteps in the village in front of him. Only the slightest shuffle.

'Of course… the village barrier.'

The Barrier Unit would have sensed his… unique chakra and sent ANBU just as a precaution. The instruction scroll had warned him of the barrier, but didn't give him hand seals to get around it. Not that it would have mattered much; the gate chuunin were detecting him anyway.

His chakra was unfortunately the kind anyone reacted to on a subconscious level. He reeked of danger. No doubt the Barrier Unit had felt that much too.

Well, he was screwed. He couldn't get out of this one. Even if he made it past the guards, the darkness he had wrapped around himself would deteriorate under the village lighting. Besides that, ANBU were elite. He had no chance of hiding his scent, his footsteps, his footprints, his breathing, heck, even muting his heartbeats…

'Damnit. I have no tools on me. An explosive tag would instantly increase my heat, although as a distraction it might work for a while. But killing the border guards is no longer an option. Two ANBU would be impossible to deal with, and there is probably the usual team size of four.'

His stride had paused long ago, and he was controlling his breathing as best he could, but controlling his heartbeat was beyond him. He couldn't hide himself.

How was he going to get past six far stronger people without raising the alarm?

Yasha froze in place. He had deliberately chosen to wait until ten minutes before the gate was set to close, so it would be at its darkest, but that meant he only had barely any time to sneak in. He couldn't climb over the wall in clear view of the lights, he'd be spotted in seconds.

Time was running out rapidly. He could try tomorrow, but then he'd trigger the barrier going out and that would double the security. He couldn't hide in daylight and there was no reason to think tomorrow night's security would be better. Day security was a bit more lax, but he couldn't just sleep inside the Konoha barrier – there was no cover from patrols anyway. Tomorrow wouldn't work.

Mentally, he tutted. He had no teammates, no weapon, a grand total of two explosive tags, three scrolls he couldn't afford to fall into Konoha's hands, and now about five minutes.

It was then he heard the sweet voice of his saviour.

"Wait up, hold the gate!" An old man ran down the near-empty street towards the gate, his fruit cart rumbling noisily behind him.

"Heading out so late?" a border guard asked with a forced cheerfulness, eyes still locked onto Yasha's presence.

"My grandson…" the old man forked over rather crumpled travel permits. "…nearly set the damn house on fire. It wasn't quick to clean up."

Yasha was grinning at that. It was so against the current tension. The old man clearly had very little observational skills to not pick up on the atmosphere.

"How did he do that, Reriku-san?"

They were used to him, and they still weren't really sure there was danger. That explains the half-forced conversation.

Then, Yasha got an idea. It was dangerous, but it might just work. As slowly as he dared, he lay down, a twisted grin forming on his face. As slowly as he dared, he crawled over to the middle of the road.

The old man didn't need to be crippled. He'd have to be careful with where he put the explosive note.

And that gave Yasha one more opportunity: he had one spare explosive note.

Success.

He shuffled to the side, off the road, gathering as much spare darkness as he could around the middle of the road, drawing the chuunin's attention.

His hands joined together, taking one brief look at the two chuunin's tense faces. Good. They were looking down the middle of the road, where Reriku was hastily retreating with his noisy cart. He wasn't out of their line of vision, but he was nowhere near close; the surprise should do the rest.

"Katsu," Yasha breathed as he sent chakra into the seal.

The fruit cart exploded.

The dark-haired boy slunk around the gate as the two chuunin and three ANBU left the village, going to the aid of the man whose cart had suddenly erupted in a fireball.

Hoping the fourth ANBU was observing the cart, probably while radioing it in, Yasha slapped his last explosive note on the side of the nearest building inside the gate, activating the timer, then ran forward in the shadows, darkness still wrapped around him.

His heart thudding in his ears, he ignited the second remote explosive seal and ran, using the brief noise of the explosion to run faster and a bit more noisily.

It was cruel. He hoped the old man had survived the splinters and his fruit hadn't been too much of his finances.

He knew the way to the orphanage and ran towards his target at full pelt, still retaining the cloak despite the fact the village's shade were nowhere near consistent enough, so he was still very visible for a shadow.

There was just a minute or less before ANBU night patrols began, as soon as the gate was timed to shut, so he had no time to waste.

He dived to the wall below the only open orphanage window and calmed his breathing below it. The light coming from inside wasn't significant enough to be a danger to his cloak, but channelling chakra to his ears, he could hear muffled cries of pain.

He scowled angrily as he pinpointed it – the farthest edge of the building, of course. Beating kids wasn't something you want advertised. 'I used to be genin, before I was reset. Now I'm pre-Academy, excluding my bloodline techniques.' As he made his way towards the sound, he flinched with each hit. I'd like nothing more than to hear him scream and his body hitting the floor. And if the only way is brutal surprise, so much the better.'

But the blame falling on either his target or him would work against his objectives. Killing the abuser was out. 'A knockout then.'

Yasha hopped deftly into the window and made his way to the room, flinching with every hard whacking sound and muffled yelps of pain. 'How should I go about this? I brutally murdered the guy last time, but that had ruined it for Naruto… hmm, yes, killing intent. That's the key. No real mess to clear up, since it's just a mental attack. It probably has an area effect, but Naruto will just have to deal with it.'

And Yasha had near-unbeatable KI – without releasing a speck of anger or chakra, people were scared of him instinctively. All he needed was a tad of the darkness he controlled, and it was equivalent to killing intent. And with a lot, it was horrific; literally couldn't be made more terrifying with any use of the imagination.

He finally came to a halt outside the door where the abuse was taking place, his fists clenching. He had only one last shot – no more resets. The pressure would be incredible if he thought about it. But with each jarring whack, he lost more and more ability to think calmly.

'Why me? Why always me?' Naruto cursed at himself.

'What's wrong with me? Just being near makes people hate me.' He did as he was told, but this always happened…

His head spun from nausea but the bat never hit his head hard enough to bring relief. He had only a couple of nights when the beatings had knocked him out cold. The beating had only gone on for a few minutes. He had to bear with it until the adult tired, which would be for a while yet.

'Like a shinobi – be strong. Like the Hokage. Be stronger than it.'

But sometimes, it was so hard. He just didn't want it to hurt anymore.

The blond held back a sob as tears mixed with the blood on his face. His nose had started bleeding a while ago, even though he had his arms in front of his face.

The blows paused. The pause dragged on further.

The orphan held his sobbing down as he waited, risking a look up behind his hands. No, the door hadn't opened, the "carer" hadn't left, he was just panting heavily. No…

The man grabbed something from his pocket, roughly jamming it into the bat. With blurry eyes, Naruto tried to identify it.

A nail. The carer tapped the bat against the ground, driving it in firmly.

"Time for you to get what you really deserve, demon." He smirked.

'Help,' Naruto screamed in his mind.

'Are you sure you want that?' a voice responded, making Naruto's eyes widen in shock.

'YES,' Naruto clenched up hard as the man swung, knowing it would hurt like nothing else. But the blow never hit, wind going past him instead.

Naruto opened his eyes to see – nothing. Pure darkness. 'Wait, was I knocked out? No, I can still move-'

'Don't scream.'The smooth voice said in his head. 'This is not meant for you.'

The lightbulb had shattered above him. That was why it was dark. Naruto could see very little, but it wasn't on and he dimly recalled a shattering noise. 'What is not meant for me?'

'Kami damn it, I told him not to,' Yasha scowled as his ears rang, as he called back the darkness in the room, his night-vision picking out all the details in washed-out colour. Both occupants of the room had passed out when he wrapped as much darkness around him as he could and flashed it outwards, just shy of their bodies. The darkness released Killing Intent, that close, so unexpectedly…

ANBU in ten seconds tops, with ear-shattering screams like that. There was no time for this.

Yasha looked down at Naruto, who was unconscious on the floor, and groaned. 'Sorry, Naruto.'

He knelt down, rapidly unravelling a scroll onto the dusty floor and passing Naruto's bloody hand onto it, the darkness still enveloping the entire room and concealing him.

There wasn't time. Mentally, he imagined cold masked shinobi jumping around on the roofs outside, taking positions, already staring at him. Yasha cursed, kicking the adult in the side. 'I only have a few seconds now. And no alibi if I'm stopped. I have to visit the Academy and drop the message off pronto, then get the hell into bed here and pretend I was one of these orphanage kids all along. I hope no one's watching.'

Yasha opened the door to the hallway he had just entered and ran down the hallway to the end as fast as he dared. He had to put distance between him and the screams. His footsteps were as quiet as he could make them, but on a wooden floor, that was still pretty damn loud.

The brunette made it outside by opening a window on the other end, and immediately ran to the Academy, his breath ripping painfully at his chest, his nervous sweating not helped any by the warm night. Plenty of adults were around, Yasha stuck to the shadows but it was difficult to avoid the street lighting.

Yasha knew the route from the map he had studied, but he was still relieved when he found the large building. He skidded to a halt outside the doors, glancing around for options. He had no key to get in the Academy, but there was the mailbox… that'd do.

The third scroll was quickly deposited in there; his means of getting into Naruto's class, a fake approval from the Hokage. It wouldn't hold up under serious inspection, but should do fine for convincing Iruka.

The sweating brunette ran back, his legs tired out already enough for him to be accidentally stomping without intending to, shocked that he hadn't been spotted by ANBU yet. Not a sign of them.

He had one more scroll to pass on, and that was going to be near-impossible to deliver anonymously. After all, he didn't have a building to post to, and it was meant for Uchiha Shisui.

Best leave that until later. He had a couple of weeks' breather for it before it was relevant. No need to push his luck trying to stay hidden from a teleporter and ANBU night patrols.

Yasha slowed down as he approached the orphanage again, now worried. Not a single ANBU had been detected by him. That could only mean he was completely incapable of detecting them.

There was no way in hell the commotions and movements he had caused weren't getting him noticed, nor that there wasn't enough night patrols to notice him running across the village. How long had they been tracking him?

He forced himself to calm down. 'Resume your cover: you're a pre-genin, sneaking out of the orphanage for whatever childish reason, night exploration or something, and now trying to sneak back in without your carers finding you out. Completely believable if they didn't see you leave the orphanage originally.'

There was no point in dwelling on whether he was already being followed; if they had seen through his disguise as one of the orphanage kids already, then it couldn't hurt to carry on the act. And it they hadn't seen through it, the act was still needed.

The brunette slid back through the open window. The reset had lost him his physical strength and mental abilities, but he kept the chakra levels from the future, and his ability to use his chakra for his bloodline was easily genin level. Slightly higher, perhaps, since this was the second time he'd been sent back in time, so he had accumulated both of them.

Pity he had forgotten all his other techniques and power. Which meant he had high-level bloodline techniques that tired him out in seconds, good chakra control, and no boosted knowledge bar what was written in the instruction scrolls.

By being outside, coming back in, the ANBU hopefully wouldn't connect him to the screams, but do the opposite and assume he was innocent, away from the fray that had happened; just a kid who had snuck out and was trying to hide the fact he was ever out of bed after bedtime.

If Yasha was interrogated, his scrolls and story have so many holes a sieve would be envious, so he was not trying to get discovered. If they knew he had snuck in and were delaying their capturing to observe, the longer he kept them inactive the better; he didn't need much time into weaving the village of Konoha into needing him there.

He hoped his placing of the second scroll in the Academy box had been unobserved or ignored by ANBU. He still had the first, a summon now coded to Naruto's blood, and the third, a short message for Shisui. Both highly dangerous materials that heavily implied a deeper plan than just his pretending to be an orphan kid.

A thought hit him and he froze. 'Hell. Naruto's blood. What if the scent of that tipped off the ANBU? Are there any scent-detector ANBU around? Would enough scent even come out of a rolled-up scroll?'

Yasha hoped not. But he didn't know. It made him all sorts of nervous, constantly expecting a figure to blur to his side and attack him.

Carefully, quietly, he opened one of the dormitories, and looked in. Free bed right near the door, but some bunks occupied. An empty dorm would have been too suspicious. Perfect.

Around an hour later, an ANBU with a Boar mask crouching on the roof flicked his headset at his ear, his Byakugan fixed on the target. "He's just gone to sleep."

"Roger that. I'll update the Hokage," the other member of the squad nodded, disappearing with body-flicker bursts.

The Boar ANBU adjusted his position, relaxing on the branch, the Hyuuga scratching his cheek in puzzlement. 'A kid sneaking into Konoha with explosive notes and barely any capacity to hide himself, clothes carrying a shedload of money but no sort of living resources. It's too odd for a normal kid, and too obvious to be an infiltrator. What is this anyway?'

AN: Yo. *cue Kakashi eye-smile*

Hope you enjoyed that starter. Let's get the warnings out the way so I don't have to repeat every chapter:

This fanfiction is too awesome for you to rip off. If you steal it, I'll sue you and your family and your favourite brand of toilet paper. Rawr. :3

The story genres and focus: suspense, adventure, action, mystery, grey morals, suspicion, time travel, dimension hopping, butterfly effect, manipulation, subplots, badasses...

Formatting throughout:
"Speech, emphasised speech"
'Thoughts, emphasised thoughts' (single-quotes and italics, yo)

The story will be written as close to canon as possible. All characters will be (initially at least) canon personalities, and romance will not be biased in any non-canon direction, although extra characters will affect the events, in turn affecting how the relationships develop...

I have no pairing inclinations, canon or not. There may be fluff, but no lemons. I'll go as far as snogging and the bedroom door closing behind them. If you want full-blown intimacy, google it :P

I'm the sort of writer that creates character-driven stories; in layman's terms, I basically make characters, an environment, and then I let the characters 'roam free', so keeping to canon timeline will be interesting for me. You can expect all canon events to be written about, but I may skip writing about some if they're not relevant to the added characters (or Naruto himself).

The main focus of this fic is an OC called Yasha. The second focus is Naruto. However, because Yasha makes waves as he arrives in Konoha, a lot of the starting chapters are him trying to avoid getting jailed.

The way the story is written, if my OCs did nothing, canon timeline would occur - up until Kaguya appears. All the changes from canon are a result of my OCs' actions.

The story will have several non-canon bloodlines - not in canon characters though. No one canon will awaken not-given-in-canon things, but implanted doujutsu can happen. The bloodlines I've added are from very abandoned fanfics, other sci-fi shows, and my own slightly twisted imagination. This isn't meant to be a crossover, though.

Time-travel will be a part of this fanfic, but heavily restricted so to not make people invincible or the time-travelling wielder some sort of genius who knows just how to fix the boo-boos. Fixing may be impossible with all the limited attempts the time-traveller has - a topic noted earlier in this chapter.
The extent of the time-travel the main OC has is just basic facts on important people, the clans, and his own bloodline. Yasha doesn't know them in detail and he has no memories of past resets or people he will meet.

Yasha also does not know about Zetsu/the real Uchiha Madara's contributions, or everything about Akatsuki. Reasons explained in next chapter.

Swearing will be light and dialled back where possible, but it's a realism genre; it'll use words real people would use, so you can expect a few F-bombs to be dropped if someone is stabbed in the lungs. It won't go out of character, though. Naruto especially. Sasuke may be nice or evil from the OC changing the path of events, but he won't be OOC.

Corrections and guidance about canon event timing should be PM'd ideally, but will be read in reviews as well. No one's complained so far, but if you find reason to, please provide source material. Note that this is more anime-based than manga-based.

Have fun, and thanks for reading! Review as you want, I admire the intellect of some people that predict things and seeing the new perspectives people have on scenes. I wouldn't see those things normally.

PS: If you haven't checked out already, see fanfic authors Kenchi618 and Blackwolf501. They write some of the best Naruto fanfics I've ever read (and in Kenchi's case, the best legal disclaimers too). I would also recommend SincereNaruto, but unfortunately he's gone AWOL for half a decade - which is kinda awkward, since he wrote one of the best fanfics for hurt/comfort that I've read.

Next chapter button/link is on the bottom right, just ahead of this text. Give it a shot - two hundred people did before you. If you favourite, make sure to follow - you'll miss updates otherwise.