Title: Three Men and a Tree

Summary: Once upon a time, before any of the ninja villages were founded, when the concept of ninja Clans was just forming and the borders of the nations looked nothing like they do now, three shinobi were hired to kill the same man. InoShikaCho Origins.

Fandom: Naruto (manga/anime)

Characters: A Yamanaka ancestor, a Nara ancestor, and an Akimichi ancestor.

Pairings: OMC/OFC mentioned

WARNING: totally made up in the way distant past so all the characters are OCs. Also in my mind this is before or at the very beginning of the Warring States Period so telling people your clan name hasn't yet become quite so deadly and taboo.

Disclaimer: Neither Naruto nor anything else worth anything belongs to me, I currently live in a small town in rural Zambia, Africa, I don't even have most of what I do own.

AN: None of this is Betaed; I'm the only one who's edited it so sorry for any mistakes. This is actually new, I wrote it just now, believe it!

Three Men and a Tree

There is a reason why the Akimichi, Nara, and Yamanaka clans are considered some of the most powerful clans in Konoha. Making an enemy of one means making an enemy of the other two as well. If one is a friend all three are. Everyone knows that an Akimichi's first loyalty is to the Nara and Yamanaka, as a Nara's to the Yamanaka and Akimichi, and a Yamanaka's to the Akimichi and Nara; even before their loyalty to their Hokage and their village. It's an unspoken agreement within the village councils to never give the three clans cause to turn against them. No one wants a war against a clan of soldiers, a clan of spies, and a clan of assassins, all working together. It has been this way since the three clans joined Konoha; they are not one of the two founding clans but almost as good since the Nara's herds were already in the forests before the Shodai and Madara claimed the land. (No one has ever asked but the Nara have long memories, and they remember that Madara stole this land years ago, without so much as a please or thank you, and burned down part of the forest to create space for Hashirama to build the village. Just because there are no buildings in a forest does not mean it is not inhabited.)

Every tradition starts somewhere, someone has to be the first to do something. So too there was a time in the distant past when the Akimichi family had never heard of the Nara or the Yamanaka, the Nara knew almost nothing of the Yamanaka or the Akimichi, and while the Yamanaka had heard of the other two they had never met either of the other two families. It was a time before there was such a thing as ninja villages. The lands were still divided into small fiefdoms and city states led by innumerable and constantly changing lords, kings, and generals. Clans of shinobi were just starting to form, the earliest of bloodlines were still only a couple generations old. Each family fought for its own interests; against other families offering their services as ninja, against the soldiers and samurai also attempting to occupy the same lands, and against the nine different tailed demons that roamed the lands. Most families with a talent for chakra manipulation developed their skills and offered their services to various leaders and moved on when said leader got too controlling; even back before they were officially shinobi, ninja tended to chafe at being under the control of someone they felt weaker than them (but then, doesn't everyone). Anyone who could provide payment and could find one willing to do it could hire a ninja to spy on or kill their enemies for them.

A woman whose father had traded away her hand to the cruel leader of a nearby fiefdom begged the clan of large warriors known for their mercy to aid her escape by murdering her husband to be. The young head of the Akimichi family, whose father had recently died under mysterious circumstances, agreed to help her, after all he'd fallen in love with the young woman and it might put a damper on their honeymoon if the man she was engaged to hired someone to hunt them down. He headed off to the fortress where his target lived.

A group of what some might call peasants but who might in this case have been considered very poor neighbors pooled their resources to hire one of the ninja that lived nearby to rid them of the man who attacked them regularly for what appeared to be his own amusement. Deciding that they needed the money, the family agreed. It wasn't the type of job they liked to take often, because they'd developed their skills in a different yet vitally important direction, but they'd done their fair share of assassinations before. They sent the son of the head of the family, as he was their best, to complete the job. He headed off to the fortress where his target lived.

A rival lord hired a family of ninja that was recommended to him by his wife's father to kill the man so he could invade and claim his riches as his own. After some debate they decided it was a sound decision to accept the contract. The family drew lots and the son of the current Chief, who was looking like a very good candidate to inherit his father's role as their leader, ended up with the job. He headed off to the fortress where his target lived.

So it came to be that three men were hired by three different parties to kill the same man.

It was very lucky for the future generations of their families that all three men were generally good humored, and that all three young men were young and foolish enough to want to brag to others their age. Had they been older and wiser, or even just a little more guarded, history might have gone very differently.

By chance the three men happened upon a large tree ideally placed at the top of a hill overlooking the fortress from a reasonable distance. The first man did not attempt to climb the tree, his size would make it difficult not to shake the branches as he settled, so he used it as cover from which to observe the security of the fortress. The second man had climbed the tree and hidden in its branches to do some very similar observation and was a little put out to find his hiding place was so quickly found. The third man was far too laid back to care that there were two other men converging on the same tree he'd chosen as an ideal lookout point and he slipped over to lean against the trunk in the large circle of shade it provided.

They quickly established that they were all there after the same target. Somewhat warily the men gathered, just out of arms reach, in a vague semi-circle at the base of the tree. As they watched the fortress each man made sure to keep a careful eye on the other two. Then of course all of the men came to the conclusion that dead was dead and it didn't really need to be a competition since they would each get paid by their own respective clients.

"Well," the only man wearing armor finally broke the silence. "I'm from the Akimichi family."

"Nara," the man wearing very dark brown deer hide clothes and leaning against the tree told them.

"Ah, I've heard of you. I'm from the Yamanaka family," the final man, a tall rather lanky youth, finally admitted.

"You've heard of him?" The head of the Akimichi asked with only a little surprise. His clan preferred more straightforward methods whenever possible so they tended to be a little behind in gathering information on all the various families of shinobi that were developing all over the place lately.

"I've heard of both of you," the Yamanaka heir admitted.

"Ah, so your family specializes in the information trade?" the Nara guessed.

"Yes. We're the best," he bragged.

"I take it you were planning on infiltrating the stronghold then," the Akimichi waved his hand slightly in the direction of the walls around their shared target.

"Well how were you planning on doing it?" the Yamanaka retorted just a bit defensively.

"I think first, we all agree that for the duration of this contract we are allies and will work towards the same goal without sabotaging or attempting to injure one another." Before their fragile truce could deteriorate the Nara stepped in to solidify it. "On our honor, and the knowledge that if one betrays this trust the other two will turn on him." As none of them particularly wanted to fight the others if it could be avoided the three men agreed to these terms. Immediately their stances became a bit more open, still ready and watchful, but there was less of a potentially hostile edge to their stances.

Grinning widely, with a hint of self-depreciation, the broad Akimichi gestured to his chest plate. "I was planning on making a frontal assault and just smashing my way in. My family's special techniques would help me out, we're really great front line fighters but assassination isn't really one of our skills."

Nodding in agreement the Yamanaka gave a mischievous smirk. "My family specializes in information gathering so I've already got some idea of what your families are known for. Your family branched off of a pretty famous line of samurai and the Naras are herbalists who live in the woods with their deer, known for trading medicinal supplies and assistance for any goods they need. So I'd guess that he was planning on using poison of some kind. I was going to use my family's techniques for mind control on one of the guard captains, it's better for infiltration but I can do an assassination in a pinch." It can be noted that though he made a valiant attempt to seem cocky and sure of himself it was obvious from the way he shifted his weight that he wasn't as comfortable with assassination as he claimed to be, because indeed his family techniques were almost solely designed for information gathering.

Both of the other men shifted a little away from him at the knowledge that he could control someone, although the Nara shifted a lot less so than the Akimichi. "So you're a soldier and you're a spy. Seems like we've got all the important shinobi skills right here." The Nara drawled as he slouched just a tad bit further down the tree. "My family takes select contracts from clients who are willing to pay the right price."

"Oh," now it was the Yamanaka's turn to shift away from his companion a little, "Your family specialty is assassinations isn't it."

"Yep, so, soldier, spy, and assassin. All the major shinobi skills right here." If the way both his companions were looking at him, just a tad more wary than before, bothered him the Nara didn't let it show. While assassination was a necessary evil of the life of a shinobi there weren't many who focused their talents on that specific skill; contradictory though it may seem most families wanted to be known for some other ninja skill even if they also were good at assassination. This is perhaps because everyone feels more comfortable facing a death they can combat. A silent death that slips up on the unaware, a surprise death you can't fight off with your own skills, is something of a bogeyman, even to a shinobi. Not to mention what killing an unarmed non-combatant in cold blood tended to do to one's mental stability. "Sometimes we need things that can't be grown or harvested in our forests. We always discuss it before deciding whether we should take a contract, and we're careful not to send out the same person twice in a row. Whenever we can we try to trade in medicines instead, but yes my family specializes in assassinations. We're not great with direct confrontation."

"So, how were you going to do it?" Akimichi were, even so long ago, naturally friendly people and this one was unwilling to let a little thing like murder hinder a budding friendship, at least not when he himself had been planning the same thing just a few minutes ago.

"I planned to slip in with the shadows tonight and use one of my family's techniques to bind and smother the target. I'm supposed to bring the head to my client as proof the contract was completed." Both men found their eyes drawn to the bone knife strapped to his belt. It was at this point that history turned to its proper path. All three young men were a little uncomfortable, each of them had shared a little more than he really should have, and it was at this moment that a bond of friendship formed between them.

"You know," the Yamanaka started slowly as he thought aloud, turning to each of his companions as he addressed them. "I think you're right. We've got all the major Shinobi skills between us. I can go in and scout out information, you can use my information to make killing our target easier and you can protect us when we're doing that, or cause a distraction if needed by storming the front gates. With us watching each other's backs we'd all be more likely to succeed than we were on our own."

"You're not just talking about this one job, are you?" Nothing but the way he slumped a couple more inches down showed how thankful he was for their unspoken support, even so early in a friendship the opinions of these young men his age who were not in his family mattered to him.

"Yeah!" Smiling excitedly the Yamanaka bounced a little on the balls of his feet. "I mean of course this job, but we all live nearish, right, and having a team with a good variety of skills would mean we could take a wider variety of jobs."

"It could give us an edge. Having an alliance like that," as the head of his family the Akimichi could think of plenty of ways his family could benefit from this alliance, not just on the job. "If our families allied we could set up consistent trades for the things your family needs in exchange for the medicines they make. You wouldn't have to take any, uh, contracts you don't want to. My family forges our own armor and weapons."

"My mother's family grows a lot of rare plants so we could trade you some of those if you need them in your medicines." The Yamanaka heir was a few years younger than the other two and had a lot more enthusiasm for wild ideas, he tended to drag his cousins along with his schemes when he was home and was more than willing to plunge straight into this whole alliance thing.

"We don't really like outsiders in the forest. And we move with the deer so we don't always live in the same place like you do." There was an undertone of distance to the Nara's statement, us versus you, that hadn't been there before. "I'm not sure we could agree to that kind of permanence."

"So we could still live on the edge of your forest, mom's been talking about moving away from the city lately, and if we lived on the edge of the forest we could help protect it from other people. We could be like a fence between you and the rest of the world." His enthusiasm was contagious and the other two found themselves picturing it in their own minds.

Still the Nara winced, "I'm not sure you should describe it as a fence if we ever put the idea before my family. We like to be free, like the clouds: able to drift wherever the wind blows us. Fences and walls are not good things to us."

"Never mind, we can figure out specifics later. For now lets treat this job like a test run." Grinning the Akimichi set down his pack and pulled out the dried fruits his mother had made for him to eat if it wasn't safe to light a fire and offered some to the other two. They both took a slice but waited for him to bite into his first. This exchange prompted the Nara to pull some venison jerky out of his own pack and share it around and the three of them settled in to plan their first joint effort. "Let's see how well we can work together."

AN: I've done so much world building in this universe it isn't even funny. This is part of my head canon for the history of the InoShikaCho trio that has slowly developed over the years. It has little to do with the characters, just their ancestors. I may do another chapter with how the alliance gets up off the ground, or how they grow closer than just allies when one of the Yamanaka kids gets injured and is saved by Nara medicine, or when the Akimichi put themselves between the Nara forest and an army that wanted to cut some of it down, or how the Yamanaka develop into therapists for the other two clans due to their mind techniques, and how the Akimichi draw both of the other families out of their more isolated existence and into the strong bond they now have. They struggle to figure out how to accept what jobs since each clan is used to doing a different type of job and they eventually form a second alliance with the Sarutobi ancestors and let them act as an intermediary between them and the clients, the Nara are especially pleased with this arrangement because they don't like outsiders who want to hire them tramping through their forest, which is the eventual basis for the four man squad formation Konoha uses. (And no, the Nara have never forgiven Madara for burning a part of the forest down and stealing their freedom. (Remember kids we have to live inside walls because of him.) Each generation is warned to watch out for Uchiha with fire techniques.) I see it as totally canon compliant because it's so far in the past.