Introduction: Nature Versus Nurture

This is a redo of my first story, Nature of the Beast, written to include the sequel, Nature of the Beast – Taming of the Savage Beast. Much of it will seem very familiar to those of you able to read that first completed work, the good and the bad. Quite a bit of it will seem different and it should; as writers grow, so to should their work. I believe I have stayed true to my original intent of the first edition.

That aside, there are some things I need to state up front.

First off, I will staunchly admit that Kishimoto's world is pure genius (I make no claim of ownership to any of it through the entirety of my following work). To have the creative talent to generate Naruto's universe and everything in it belies a talent far greater than mine and, to him, I render all respect due. No, it's not the world I dislike but it's structure and his execution. For that disagreement I make no apologies.

Call me pessimist. Call me naysayer. You have that luxury just as I, in my isolated view from the externally juxtaposed position to this Narutoverse, can reciprocate. Many may say it is a pointless argument in a make-believe construct where a single man can obliterate an entire village with chakra and gravitational repulsion or that another can transform into a mythical demon reaching five stories into the air.

Some rules for those of you who stay with this story so there are no disappointments along the way:

If you are looking for wanton debauchery without purpose debasing women across the Narutoverse globe, you have come to the wrong place - please move along as there is nothing along those lines to see here. All of my debasement has meaning – it serves a purpose (although I've learned a bit since writing this the first time around and working on No More in the interim, so things are much toned down on this second go around).

If you're looking for an epic love story faithfully loyal to canon, you will be bitterly disappointed; please move along and save yourself the agony.

This is NOT a harem piece, no matter how it may seem. Intimacy has its place and will be used as necessary to accent a point, not simply because I fantasize about gorgeous make-believe women.

Okay… every male fantasizes at some point about gorgeous make-believe women but that is not the point here. (Let's be honest… there are naughty bits, but they aren't gratuitously naughty; it has an "M" rating for a reason.)

I do NOT write obscenely overdrawn fight scenes for the sake of verbosity nor for the sheer love of violence. My violence has purpose.

Finally, every progression takes time and ends at the appointed moment and not a moment before. If you're agreeable to my offer of mental distraction and entertainment, I offer you my treatise on nin-manity.

For those of you interested in my point of view, I give you my first fanfiction in what will be its final form.

Enjoy as you will.

- Siva'a-tasi

~I I I~

Chapter 1: The Evil That Men Do

Allied Command Ship, Off-Shore Near the Land of Whirlpools (Many years before our story begins)…

Onoki looked out in disgust across the remaining joint force assaulting this fly speck of a village. True the combined military strength of four major villages and several smaller villages lashed together was impressive, however, this combined might had just taken the "middle ring" after seven days of pitched combat. The blood price for that precious parcel of land had been horrific. If he had known when the Kages sat down to plan this that he would lose a third of his forces before ever claiming the beachhead, he would have turned his back on the whole scheme.

Now he was committed. Now it was too late to turn back.

The emergency Kage Summit had divided the main island, in this cluster of one large and three smaller land masses, into a series of four concentric rings labeled the "outer, middle, inner" and "core." The outer most ring consisted of two hundred yards of shoal water and the first fifty yards of beach head and that ring had cost nearly a full third of all combined forces. It was supposed to be a quick landing, an easy and overwhelming victory against a single clan. Onoki glanced down at yet another bloody Allied corpse floating past the ship's prow just to get hooked by line and tackle manned by the Sea Sprite's crew and shook his head.

So much for easy.

Shoal waters around this island were filled with devastating whirlpools, and very competent Uzu water jutsu users, while the beachhead was a sluggish morass of sand and very, very deadly earth jutsu users capable of using lethal earth and sand techniques. The Tsuchikage hadn't seen fighters this deadly since the Second Great Shinobi war and his Suna allies were hard pressed to take the beachhead from them in order to secure the landing. It had taken four days to get that far with Suna forces rotating out in the constant assault. It had been brutal and the Uzumaki were ruthlessly unforgiving. The many broken invaders floating in the bloody shoal water and lying along the even bloodier shore bore silent testament to that fact.

"Never piss off the Uzumaki." Wasn't that the old saying? Onoki, the Sandaime Tsuchikage of Iwagakure no Sato, grimaced. He now faced an entire clan of embattled Uzumaki and it was a sobering concept.

Sharks were beginning to surface belly-up as a result of their frenzied gorging on human flesh. In their mindless buffet, they'd eaten until their stomachs burst.

Such was the greed of shinobi trying to plunder Uzushiogakure for the greatest secrets of the clan. Too bad their bodies seemed to explode upon death, often taking enemy combatants with them. Men, women, children… it didn't matter as they all burst into an enormous gout of flame upon death. Another explosion just past the beachline punctuated that grim thought with more red-clad body parts sailing through the air. Onoki shook his head again and looked at the remaining tally of shinobi still in fighting condition under his command.

There were far too few in Iwa red for his comfort.

Sighing once again at the cost of this battle, Onoki wondered how many generations it would take for his village to bounce back from today's losses. The obvious answer was many, but it was not a reality he wanted to face at the moment.

Too many if you asked his honest opinion.

Onoki couldn't fault them, the Uzumaki clan. They were fighting for their very existence against nations that had traded willingly and peacefully for goods and services with the island clan only a week ago. It was the height of hypocrisy and treachery. The Uzumaki were due their outrage. However, Onoki still had a job to do and he would see it through. This was the shinobi way after all.

What a colossal waste this was on both sides as a result of following the path of shinobi.

Defenders had long since evacuated villagers from the outer and inner ring sections employing a scorched earth style retreat. They left nothing for the invaders to use against them and fought to their last breath. Every inch gained cost dearly in blood, oft times twenty to thirty invaders for each defender. The only consolation being that fewer and fewer defenders were being encountered further up the shoreline, which initially raised the morale of invading forces… until those same invaders discovered that it cost more lives to defeat those fewer defenders and each concentric ring was more difficult to capture. The answer was simple: defenders were stronger the further in you pushed and it cost you more to push farther inland.

Onoki saw the logic behind this and wept a silent tear in tribute to the noble Uzumaki Clan; the weaker defenders filled the outer rings with the sole purpose of draining chakra from the invaders. As invaders moved further inland, they encountered stronger opposition capable of overlapping their area of influence and increasing their defensive power, which, in turn, required more effort, resources and time to overcome. Onoki could the see the fire in the eyes of the defending Uzumaki clan members and watched in silence as they stoically fought tooth and nail until that light faded, usually after reaching physical or chakra exhaustion making them vulnerable to a killing blow. Even in death they were silent warriors, no begging or pleading. And the damnable berserkers still exploded when they died!

They knew another dawn for the Uzumaki would not come.

They knew they were going to die to the last man, woman, and child.

They knew this was a bitter war of attrition and each defender was doing their utmost to make the invaders pay in rivers of blood.

They also knew they were succeeding.

Standing afloat in the outer ring with little under half the combined invasion force remaining, Onoki's eyes grew wide as sake saucers as they looked beyond his remaining ground troops to the inner ring and core holding the fabled Uzumaki shrine. They needed to hurry. Beyond the three youths standing on the temple grounds powerful chakra was rumbling in the earth below. He could feel the thrumming vibrations through his pointed shoes and feared one final strike of retribution from the vengeful clan. Their fury was legendary, almost as legendary as their skill with fūin.

This told him the invaders were running out of time.

~I I I~

Jiraiya could not take his eyes from the intricate seals being laid over every square inch of the Clan Shrine. All of the remaining seal masters of Clan Uzumaki had gathered and were calmly layering fresh ink in intricate and sequentially-linked patterns around the base of each column, the surrounding colonnades, and the shrine entry itself. Not a single one appeared rushed or panicked despite the ringing thunder and flashes of fire, lightning and other elements wreaking havoc in the inner village just beyond the clan enclosure. A great village was going to die today, ruthlessly stamped out by the combined greed and fear of the elemental nations and he and his teammates could do nothing to prevent it.

That Konoha was complacent in the act nearly made him retch where he stood.

He glanced to his left and right taking in the stoic faces at his sides.

Orochimaru was looking behind the small group, apprehension wrinkling the inner corner of his eyebrows just enough to make his smooth forehead pucker. People were fighting and dying with fanatical furor just beyond the compound gates and they were running out of time. It was clear on his face, his left hand twitching every time a defender died.

Tsunade was nervously glancing in the same direction, her hands and jaw clenched as she watched suffering spread through this peaceful village of fūinjutsu masters, the last of a greatly skilled clan that had faithfully allied itself with Konoha for generations. She knew the Uzumaki were related to her Senju clan and that this was her extended family spilling their life's blood into the already sodden earth to buy time for the final ceremony taking place deep within the shrine behind her. In her pained eyes, Konoha's treachery knew no greater shame.

With one last heaving sigh, the self-proclaimed toad sage wrenched his eyes from the commiserating faces of his team and back to the large double doors of the Uzumaki temple, the happy-go-lucky lecher nowhere to be found.

~I I I~

Uzumaki Mito's face, the second Uzumaki to bear that name, was grim.

Deep in the lower levels of their clan shrine, the most sacred of places, her face was set as unyielding as the alabaster stone lining the ritual chamber all around her. She was tiring of Hachiko's pleading and dreading the outcome if this final ploy to save her clan's legacy.

"We will speak of this no more." The sword maiden's pleas died on her lips as she knew all too well what that phrase meant if she pressed the issue further.

Looking to her old friend and mentor, Mito glanced up to the village above their heads to the latest sounds of artificially-made thunder and silently urged them to finish the ceremony. One did not simply rush the most complicated ceremony in the history of Uzumaki fūinjutsu.

"How much more time do you need?" she asked between clenched teeth trying clearly to hide her desperation. It pained her that her family legacy would break after her mother held it together for so long but every story must end eventually.

If only it wasn't during her short time as temporary elder. They hadn't even appointed a permanent replacement after her mother died shortly after the Ceremony of Transition. Shaking loose her morbid thoughts, she snapped her eyes back to the old man puttering through his ceremony.

If he heard her question at all, the wizened scholar never broke his string of hand seals completing the seventieth one and slammed his bloody palm into the seal beneath his feet. The seal began to pulse then glow with a steady stream of red energy that slowly bled to white matching the eight other seals beneath the feet of eight similarly garbed, hooded and kneeling Uzumaki Clan masters. Once all nine seals were a steady stream of white energy, tendrils snaked out forming archaic glyphs interlocking each seal to the central master seal then linking to their adjacent counterpart making a glowing wheel hub and center spoke design. Ienaga Uzumaki lifted his head, eyes softening in a final farewell, as he memorized for the final time the loving face of a very young Mito Uzumaki, the last ruling Uzumaki of the Village Hidden among the Whirling Tides.

Mito smiled briefly then spun on her heel, slim wooden box in hand, and ascended out of the lower shrine before the seals ceased pulsing, wisps of chakra floating to the tiled ceiling.

Once outside, Mito headed straight for the three Konoha Jounin waiting patiently near the entrance. The double doors behind her closed with a hiss, a burning energy lining the door frame as potent seals activated causing the compound and earth surrounding it to shake violently, as she focused on the white-haired ringleader. Jiraiya's eyebrows raised to his hairline as she thrust the ornately inscribed and heavily lacquered box into his arms. It was seamless with no visible locks or keyholes, the clan symbols breathtakingly inlaid with gold centered on the surface where a lid should be.

"Are you sure you won't come with us?" He knew her answer but he would ask one last time just to be sure.

"You know that I cannot, Jiraiya-san. It will not end so long as I draw breath and Sarutobi," she hissed his name almost as a curse, "...remains Hokage. You know that he will not endanger his village for our sakes."

There were heavy doses of anger and resentment in that statement causing all three Jounin to turn confused faces to the very beautiful royal, all arguments of persuasion left to the wayside.

"I am placing great faith in you to make sure Uzumaki Kushina receives this." Her stony gaze brokered no other option. Failure was not optional. 'It's up to you now, cousin.'

With a nod, the three shinobi body flickered away just as Mito drew her own blade and purposely strode to the gates of her clan shrine, her sword maiden trailing in her wake. They had done all they could to preserve the clan.

It was time to end this kabuki drama between villages, 'ttebaya!

~I I I~

Ginkōtaigō Toru knelt in the wet grass for the fifth day in a row with loathing, his eyes taking in the wide-spread destruction from his cliff's concealed vantage point. Today's sky was angry, with dark and roiling clouds masking the sun's warmth while below him man grunted, fought, bled, and died in the misery of war. He clutched his cloak about his shoulders as the wind whipped up around him, a fitting companion to the death and waste happening below.

His accompanying sniff was filled to the brim with disdain.

They disgusted him in every sense. Pitifully short-lived, man had made a thorough mess of every endeavor, mucking up the very land with their blind morass of stumbling greed. How had the Thirteen allowed this manifestation to grow like the cancer it was?

His ears perked nervously – had he said that aloud or merely thought it? Girding himself tighter in the howling morning wind, he mentally reprimanded his lapse in discipline.

To ease his mind, he idly fussed with the same fleck of mud beleaguering his cloak. 'This will never come out. Ruined!'

His mercurial mind flickered back to his last thought. 'Where was I, hmmmm? Oh, yes!'

That way led to pain at the hands of the Justicars and his silver eyes flicked nervously to the nearest brush. Being one of the few clan males did not grant him immunity. His mouth twitched into a familiar sneer even before the first few drops fell from the sky. 'Perfect,' he groused silently and tugged his hood down to further shield his face.

He had no idea why the Matron was interested in these blustering infants, this walking blight upon the land, but she ordered, thus he obeyed. For three turns of the cycle he obeyed. He would die obeying with none to mourn him.

That was not their way.

He knew one goal and only one. He needed to find her. Wherever she lay, whatever den or village or mudhole had hidden the Great Youko, he needs must find her.

His body shifted as he noted the significant rise in power below, the thrumming vibration that shook the mountains and the bones deep in his chest before all went still. It was an ominous end and somewhat anti-climactic, yet it pulled at him, his body leaning forward of its own accord. It was then that he noticed them.

Three streaks fled northward toward his direction, one pausing to slam a hand down to the earth before summoning the largest frog… no, toad judging by the warty skin, he'd ever seen. He reflexively sniffed again. The thing must have stood forty spans high, the blue vest and blade at his side at odds with the pipe clamped in its warty lips. Unfortunately, he had little time to stand their slack-jawed as the beast gave one powerful flex of its hind quarters and cleared the distance between the island and shore of the mainland, another hop sending it high into the air and cleanly over the very cliff Toru observed from.

For the briefest of moments, his eyes locked with those of the three humans atop the creature's head before they were gone, the toad thumping his way with each earth-shattering leap deeper into the heart of Fire Country. Toru was no fool. He knew exactly what lay deeper into the Land of Flames, but his mind wandered to what might lay in that ornate box tucked firmly under the rather thick arm of the male with spiky white hair. The delicious delay only lasted a few moments more before his eyes were unavoidably drawn back to the tiny island under siege.

Cretins. Neanderthals all of them.

It's tragic end was a foregone conclusion. He knew the outcome even as he turned back to it and settled back into a comfortable crouch. He would need to see its finale before returning to his clan's matron and dare not leave a moment beforehand. He could not help but be distracted though as his mind kept wandering back to the deliciously curious secrets hidden away in that secret treasure box.

Even before the battle ended he knew where his next journey would take him. Inside he shuddered contemplating a life among these beasts. Who would ever want to live a human's life? He simply could not fathom it.

Perhaps he should delay for the necessary diligence in investigating that other island group further east, just in case the remnants held more of the Uzumaki below. He sighed in anticipation of more agonizing moments attempting to keep the smelly creatures at arm's length as he hunted and pecked through the humanity of yet another mud hole village.

A servant's work was never done.

With another look of disgust, his fingers picked at the persistent blotch upon his cloak. If only he had fresh lemons he could…

~I I I~

When all was said and done, Onoki stormed from the island three days later empty-handed and, once his remaining troops had been recovered, began the long trek home without delay. Cries of the victorious force rang half-hearted in his ears and left a bitter taste in his mouth.

Their shinobi might have ultimately shattered the Uzumaki phalanx but at the cost of much blood, sweat and tears, their victory hollow and turning to ashes in their mouths with their morale equally broken. Weeks of non-stop effort and they hadn't even been able to breach the final dome protecting the shrine, a shrine rumored to hold the greatest treasures of the clan. It was all for nothing and he wanted to be fully done with the place. He left convinced the price was too high to pay for this win.

Let the others fight over the scraps.

~I I I~

A/N: With No More winding down, it's time to honor another promise I made and finish this partially completed tale (the first half of the story was finished but I never completed NotB: Taming of the Savage Beast). I will combine and complete the story in this one telling.

As always, reviews feed the muse! Ja ne!