DISCLAIMER: I don't own Naruto. It owns me. Seriously, I ran out of money and happened to run into Kishimoto-sama and he offered to give me the manga whenever it came out if I agreed to sell my soul….well, there you have it. Now, to the destruction one-shot!

'Retribution'

Fires burned all around them. The scent of blood and sweat hung heavy in the air. Cries of agony echoed through the air. The famed eleven, the heroes of Konoha , the epitome of the shinobi of the Leaf faced down their single opponent. An opponent that had easily crushed them all. Who could ever have thought that one person could have so much power? They could barely fathom the depth of his might …and then wonder quickly turned to terror. Looking at one another they knew the end was near. Tired, beaten, bloody and wounded none of them stood without damage. The weariness visible on all, they quickly realized that if they at least wanted to save the others, what few were left at any rate, they would have to give it every thing they had and more.

It was hard though. If it had been any other opponent, any other threat, any other thing in the world they could've brought themselves together and made the last stand. Sadly, for them, this wasn't so. Looking at the form before them, seemingly death incarnate, they couldn't help but realize that in many respects they deserved what had befallen them. Each tried and failed to raise their eyes and stare down the specter of death. His burning gaze penetrating into the very depths of their souls and they simply knew. They had been weighed. They had been measured. They had been judged.

And they had been found guilty.

With an ear-splitting roar the destroyer of Konoha brought his demonic charka to full-measure and leapt into the air, nine tails of burning charka waving wildly about behind him. As their executioner flew towards them the elven made no move to run. No last effort to survive. No attempt to stave off the inevitable. Afterall, they had known for years that they would be punished. There was no way that the world would allow them to continue unhindered for their sins. Each one of them had betrayed him before. All he had sought was friendship, trust, love, and encouragement. All of the things that they so easily shared with one another and had always had or at least experienced he had been denied. He gave everything he had to give when it came to each and every single one of them and yet not a one had helped him when he needed it most.

The true hero of Konoha, Uzumaki Naruto, he who brought back Tsunade, was the student of Jiriaya, who defeated Gaara, faced off against Kabuto, ultimately crushed the Atkatsuki, and who had single handedly deafeated Orochimaru and Sound came at them. Yes, none of them made an effort to move. Afterall, he was Uzumaki Naruto, the abandoned son of the Yondaime, the object of torture in Konoha, the child without a childhood, the boy that was betrayed by who he acknowledged as his brother, the one who was forgotten and written off as trash by the one he loved, whose accomplishments were always accredited to another, and he who was abandoned to his fate at the hands of a mob of shinobi and villagers alike once his greatest secret had finally been discovered by his "friends" , his "family", the ones he thought he could trust.

When it had come down to it, when the people of Konoha had their last chance to stop and finally acknowledge the one who could've become the greatest hokage of all, they had failed. They had turned their backs as the kunai flew and jutsus discharged into the air surging towards him. They each had their own particular reason but in the end they had all not chosen him, and the hero of konoha finally accepted that he had no one. As the jutsus rained down on his single form and the never ending blows ceased to stop he knew his once chance of survival lay in the forbidden power he had been granted with from birth. The power, that with his sheer determination and inner drive he had always sought to avoid and suppress, the dark power which he protected the ones he loved from. As his heart shattered and all thoughts drifted to self-preservation, all hinderances to Kyubi, the most powerful demon the world had ever seen, the butcher of the innocent, and the nightmare of Konoha, had fallen. With the eruption of red charka and the rain of blood from the immediate forms of those around Naruto, both the mob and the eleven quickly realized their folly. They had always assumed the seal prevented the demon from escaping and using Naruto. They had never known it was his CHOICE. Taking the time form their utter shock and horror, Naruto had raced off out of the village and into the forest where he would not be seen until he came to take his revenge.

Thinking back, each of them came to the same conclusion. The answer was no. How could they move to fight on knowing what they had done? How they had done this to him, MADE him into this? They had known so since Tsunade had erupted into a rage upon returning to the village and learning of their treachery had quickly resigned from her position as Hokage and left cursing Konoha and its people to its detruction. Jiraiya and the chunin Iruka had left with her not saying anything, but everyone knew they would never see either's face again. Strangely, an old man and his daughter left the same day as well muttering much the same.

No, how could they move when they had taken a paradigm of virtue, love, trust, and unbending acceptance and had perverted it into a snarling, vengeful, visage of destruction and mayhem? The answer was simple indeed. They couldn't. And with that in mind, they accepted death….

…Five days later a caravan traveled in through the gates of what had once been Konoha. Upon seeing the evidence of the massacre they quickly turned around and fled all along emptying their stomachs as fleeting images of the carnage surfaced in their minds. If they had stayed they would have seen a few sights that seemed oddly untouched. Onewas a single swing set standing in the yard of what might have been a school of some sort. Another being a ramen stand oddly untouched in anyway despite the fact that it was in a district of the city where every other building bad been utterly crushed to the ground. Finally, they would have seen the mountain side demolished except for the face of the fifth hokage, Tsuande, seemingly preserved with tender care. Two places before it however; it had seemed as if the very mountain had been carved in two. Indeed, if the terrified caravan had stayed and had taken the time to explore the village they would've found one blonde haired boy with wide blue, sparkling eyes snoring softly in a chair on top of the rubble of what had once been the the Kage's tower. They would found once sleeping boy finally at peace and content for the first time in his life. Now, if they had awoken him…well, that's a different story.