I don't own Naruto. Enjoy.

Prologue:

Sew My Heart Closed

Naruto Uzumaki was euphoric.

She'd been delving into her father's forbidden Fuuinjutsu scrolls again while he was at the Tower, and then she scurried out through the back of the Namikaze estate so no one could see her just like Daddy said to.

The seven year old blonde was a genius in Fuuinjutsu. But... for some reason... that information didn't make Daddy happy.

She had even begun making her own seals, looking for a way to fly.

From what the young blonde could understand, people are not physically designed to fly. Their bones were too heavy. So, young Naruto-chan looked for a different solution for her predicament.

This, was why Naruto was euphoric. Even though she knew it probably wouldn't make Daddy happy, for nothing she tried ever did, the blonde was happy for herself.

She'd done it.

Naruto had figured out a way to defy the effect of gravity on humans with seals.

She took a simple gravity seal normal shinobi used to make cargo easier to carry on long missions, and she combined it with a chakra converting seal.

Chakra converting seals were used by shinobi to store up elemental chakra, so when they activated the seal with normal chakra, it released whatever element previously stored in the seal.

Naruto knew her chakra nature was wind, so by combining the two seals, she lightened her body weight enough to float, and concentrating her wind chakra allowed the blonde the ability to change direction.

This, was also the reason Naruto was floating around in her apartment, trying to steer herself just right so she'd stop bumping into things.

She was having so much fun, when suddenly, she lost control of her chakra, and fell on her face with a loud smack.

"Ouchie..." Naruto whined, lifting her face up, and rubbing her bruised nose.

Little droplets of red fell from her bruised nose and speckled the scuffed hardwood floors.

"Aw dang it!" Naruto huffed.

Now she had to go hunting for a clean towel to mop up the mess.

She pouted.

The old lady at the laundromat never let Naruto in because she said Naruto was a demon, and always chased her off with a broom. So Naruto had to wait for Daddy to remember to send one of the quiet masked men to pick up her laundry to get it clean.

It was a real hassle, and Naruto was thinking about asking Daddy to snag her a bigger apartment with it's own washer and dryer. That would be convenient.

"It would also be convenient if blood cleaned itself up." The blonde sulked.

Imagine the seven year old's surprise when the four droplets on the floor began glittering, and they moved, yes moved, or perhaps, slid, is more like it.

Naruto gaped, the droplets of blood morphing together to form a bigger bead, and stretched-

"Holy Habanero in Heaven!" The blonde exclaimed, blue eyes nearly bulging out of their sockets.

The blood had formed a tiny little man.

It wasn't anything with intricate detail. Just a little blob that was minutely humanoid.

The blood surprised her even more when it walked, yes walked away and towards her kitchenette. It didn't even leave little footprints, even though it was supposed to be a liquid!

It took forever, because the little blood man was so terribly small, and Naruto was probably following it on her hands and knees for a good fifteen minutes, but she was just simply fascinated.

The blonde had bled plenty of times before. What kind of kid didn't scuff their knees, or get paper cuts, or possibly get into fights with Kiba Inuzuka because he was a big bully?

Naruto sure did.

But still... never before had Naruto witnessed something so extraordinary. Not even when she first discovered the beauty that are explosive tags.

The blonde squinted, peering at the little blood man as it finally reached it's destination. The completely behemoth form (compared to him, Naruto only needed a step stool) of a kitchen sink.

Naruto wondered how it would get up there, because there was no way it could climb. It didn't even have fingers. Heck, even if it did, there was nothing to hold on to on the way up.

Naruto really shouldn't have been surprised when the little blood man rippled, and changed form. Now, Naruto's blood was a tiny pair of bat wings. The blonde marveled as they began flapping, and rose higher, and higher, and higher.

Naruto scrambled to get her step stool from between the kitchen counter and her refrigerator. She unfolded the metal contraption, and clunked it down before her sink, climbing it just in time to see the little red bat wings collapse into a blob, and splat into the sink.

Naruto stared at the wet blood splotch in her sink.

She grinned.

"Cool!" The child squealed.

She didn't notice a single strand of blonde in her bangs shift to red.

"Look at her!" Ami jeered. "She looks just like a tomato!"

"Yeah, a rotten one with all that yellow everywhere!" Katsumi cackled.

Fuki high fived both of her fellow bullies, and turned to sneer at the red faced Naruto.

The blonde had been experimenting with her cool blood trick over the weekend at home. It was Monday, but she thought it was still Sunday, and she'd forgotten about school playing with her blood. So, Naruto had gone to the Academy without looking into any mirror, in a rush because she was twenty minutes late, and literally brushed her teeth in the shower.

On the way, she noticed the glares from the villagers were a bit off. Like, they still hated her for a reason she couldn't fathom, but they were also curious about what was going on with her.

Naruto had absently wondered if she still had a bit of foam collected at the corners of her mouth from brushing her teeth.

The seven year old simply wiped her mouth with her forearm, and hurried along.

But when she walked into Iruka-sensei's classroom, all chattering had ceased.

Everyone had stared at her like she suddenly had sprouted another head.

And then, they began laughing.

"L-look at that hair!" Kiba had blurted.

"Omg she looks like a sunspot!" Ino guffawed.

The only people who hadn't laughed were Hinata, Sasuke, Shikamaru, Choji, and Shino. They were all too quiet, lazy, emo, or polite to make fun of someone.

Naruto had blushed bright red in embarrassment, which only made the jabs worse, and scurried out of the classroom.

She really shouldn't have been as flabbergasted as she was when she arrived to the bathroom and the whole top half of her hair was a deep red.

'Just like... blood...'

Naruto had dragged herself back to the classroom, ignoring all the teasing from her peers to muse on why her hair was doing magic tricks.

She had come to the conclusion it was her neat blood tricks that made her hair change colors.

The ex blonde actually thought it was kind of cool... and that she looked more like the pretty lady in pictures in Daddy's office.

She thought it made her look more like her mother.

And that was pretty cool.

But, it was after school, and Ami, Fuki, and Katsumi didn't know when to quit.

Naruto wasn't a very patient person by nature, but she had learned to stay calm, as you had to have a level head and unbreakable concentration to successfully use Fuuinjutsu.

But this was too much.

Naruto was a seven year old kid.

Her fuse was incredibly durable, but these dummies had followed her nearly all the way home, (near the red light district, the furthest from the Namikaze estate) just to make fun of her.

Naruto cracked.

She whipped around, clenching her fist in righteous anger, and glared, not realizing her fingernails bit into the flesh of her palms, and drew blood.

"Leave. Me. Alone." Naruto bit out.

Ami, the leader, stepped up, and shoved her lackeys back, crossing her arms and glaring right back at Naruto.

"Or what, Uzumaki?" The purple haired girl spat.

"Yeah!" Katsumi cheered. "What are you gonna do tomato face?"

"Tch." Fuki grunted. "You think you can take all three of us?"

By then, Naruto did notice she was bleeding.

And she smirked.

Red droplets coiled down from in between her fingers, and dribbled onto the ground. The blood slithered silently across the distance between Ami and Naruto.

Naruto knew what she was about to do was kind of sick, and Daddy would be really disappointed when he found out that she got new powers and used them for such a thing. But, at that moment, she felt as if that disappointment was worth it.

If only to see these idiots squirm.

Naruto lifted one of her palms, showing Ami the blood that trickled out of the crescent grooves left from her fingernails.

"Ew." Katsumi stuck her tongue out. "Why the heck are you bleeding?"

"You wanted to know what I'd do, right?" The blonde asked conversationally.

More blood, too much blood, was spilling out of the grooves in the hand still at her side.

"Well, this is what."

Naruto walked even closer to Ami, bleeding hand outstretched.

"Ew, get that away from me! What are you doing?" Ami demanded.

The purple haired girl made to move back, her brown eyes widening. Naruto's smirk grew, and Ami screamed as the blue eyed girl wiped her blood down the side of her face.

Fuki and Katsumi turned green.

"You're sick!"

"Freak!" Fuki blurted.

They tried to run too. They couldn't.

The blonde was warm with morbid glee.

Naruto's blood had stitched the soles of their sandals to the ground. The blonde giggled, watching as her bullies screamed in horror and disgust, flailing around, and yanking at their legs to unstick their feet.

"What the heck did you do you psycho?!" Ami shrieked, Naruto smiling at the blood still smudged on the other girl's cheek.

The cool thing Naruto had learned over the weekend from experimenting, was that she could do almost anything with her blood. She could make it eat through things like acid, she could harden it like crystal, she could make it dance... it was... awesome.

"Have fun trying to figure out what I did ladies." Naruto snickered, turning around and walking off.

"Where are you going?!" Fuki roared.

"Get back here! Let us go!" Katsumi screamed, sounding close to tears.

"I'll get you for this Uzumaki!" Ami screeched. "You better watch your back you sick freak!"

"Just try it." Naruto muttered darkly. "Try it and I'll do more than just scare you..."

The rest of her hair turned red.

Two weeks later, Ami never did make good on her threat.

She, and her lackeys were too terrified.

Naruto's hair was now a thick silky mass of blood red waves down her back, her long bangs curtaining the right side of her face. A pair of black goggles with burnt orange lenses sat atop her head.

She had taken to wearing a face mask, hiding everything below her eyes. It was thick black cloth, five safety pins positioned like elongated teeth across it's width. Under the safety pins was a silver zipper, that looked like a big gruesome smile.

Naruto's Daddy knew all about her blood tricks. And he told her it was a bloodlimit. One Kushina's Mother had inherited. It always skipped a generation, so, Naruto had awakened it.

Many bloodlimits/ bloodlines had weaknesses. The Sharingan had blindness and hatred, and the Byakugan had a secret blind spot.

Naruto's?

Increases in disturbing thoughts and macabre actions.

The new redhead giggled to herself, drifting passed Sakura and Ino and up to her seat beside Hinata. She had mastered flying, and to treat herself, the redhead had carved the necessary seals to defy gravity into her arms, and the bottom of her feet.

She had a blood clone of herself (yes she could make those) carve the necessary ones into her back. Because Naruto had always healed at a questionably accelerated rate, she had the blood clone tattoo pitch black ink into the scars before they could heal.

The redhead knew a guy in the red light district who did illegal tattoos, and he wasn't judgmental. So, for the right price, she bought supplies off of him. Money was never a problem. Her father was the Fourth Hokage for Kami's sake.

The problem was finding people actually willing to sell her things. Naruto learned almost no one in the red light district asked questions. And that suited her just fine. When the redhead's scars had healed over to baby smooth skin in one day, the black seals remained. They were drawn under the first two layers of the child's skin.

They weren't going anywhere.

After a month of playing around with seals and her bloodlimit, the redhead was on her way home from the Academy.

Drifting lazily through the air in a shadowed alley, the seven year old suddenly deactivated the wind chakra flow into the seals on her skin. Naruto's black sandals touched the ground. She didn't move.

"Who are you?" The redhead asked. "And what do you want?"

"My my," Came a hollow chuckle.

Naruto scowled.

An old man wrapped in bandages stepped out of the shadows, just for a moment to stare at Naruto with a single slit eye.

"You are a very talented young girl." The old man rasped.

"You've been watching me?" Naruto demanded, unzipping her mask quickly. Just in case.

"Yes." The old man admitted.

Appalled, the redhead bit her tongue, making to spit acid blood into the creepy old man's face.

Lucky for her, Naruto had become somewhat impervious to pain.

"Cease. Do not be offended, child." The old man lifted his only good arm, and held his hand in the universal sign for "stop".

Naruto swallowed her blood, her tongue gradually scabbing over.

"What do you want?" The redhead asked again.

The old man smiled. Something about that friendly look was entirely wrong.

"You are no fool my child. And I can see that. So, I'll just cut right down to it."

Naruto crossed her arms impatiently.

"How would you like to work for me?" The old man asked. "I will teach you to be a truly formidable shinobi. One perhaps your father will take note of, hmmm?"

By Kami Naruto knew she was being manipulated. She knew it. But... then again... if the old cripple knew who her father was, he had to be a high ranking nin. He had to be powerful. And he could make Naruto powerful too...

'And... and maybe getting stronger, can sew my heart closed... Even if it doesn't make Daddy love me... maybe being strong... will make it easier to know Daddy can't stand to look at me...'

Naruto looked up, and walked closer with a determination she only had when a seal formula was kicking her butt.

She grasped that gnarled, calloused hand.

The cripple smiled hideously.

"Welcome to ROOT. You may call me Danzo-sama."

End Prologue.