Disclaimer: This work is entirely fictitious and is based off the hit anime series Naruto. All names and characters of Naruto belong to Masashi Kishimoto…who made all this possible in the first place.

Minato and Itachi are my two favorite Naruto characters. Shame they both died young. I always wondered what it would be like if they ever met…and this was what I came up with. I want to thank Checkerbloom, a fellow writer at , whose story "But Aren't you Meant to be Dead" inspired this story. And so without further ado I give you…

Fallen Angels

Prologue

Orochimaru left the fledgling Uchiha in the forest clearing where he had found him. The Snake Sannin was in a good mood, something that hadn't happened since…in a very long time. He had finally accomplished what he had set out to do. The final preparations for his invasion had been finalized a fortnight ago and all that was left to do was to watch and wait.

Contrary to popular belief, Orochimaru was a very patient man. A trait he adopted long ago back in his genin days. A trait which had played to his advantage on numerous occasions. He believed that it was this trait which made him the greatest of the Legendary Sannin: Unlike his two fellow Sannin he was neither stubborn nor hot-headed. He had the ability to remain level-headed even in the heat of a fierce battle, something which helped him assess his situation and make rational decisions. As an analytic genius, Orochimaru could ascertain an opponent's skill and technique almost immediately after encountering them. And although he had his pride, the Snake Sannin could recognize when he was in way over his head and could formulate an escape plan. Just like when he had foolishly challenged the elder Uchiha, Itachi, during his days in the Akatsuki.

Orochimaru remembered it well. The incident that caused him to leave the Akatsuki. Sasori had been injured while out on one of his own personal missions, and the shark-like Kiri missing-nin that was the Uchiha's partner was on a solo mission in Stone country. Orochimaru had been thrilled when Pein had assigned Itachi as Sasori's temporary replacement. The heavily-pierced shinobi then proceeded to assign them their mission before dismissing them. Orochimaru had turned to the young raven and expressed his pleasure at going on a mission with the Uchiha. The child merely gave him a non-committal grunt before walking off to prepare for the upcoming mission. If he hadn't been in such a good mood then, Orochimaru would have insulted the youth for his insolence. But the snake Sannin let it slide and returned to his laboratory his mind filled only with thoughts of the Uchiha's precious bloodline limit.

They had set out the next day and upon finding their query, dispatched him without any ado. Eager to see the Sharingan in action, Orochimaru allowed the raven to take on their opponent alone. Watching from the shadows, the Snake Summoner had been mesmerized by what he had seen. Regardless of what Sasori thought he wasn't the only artist in the organization. The boy couldn't have been older than 14, yet he was experienced and skillful enough to prove more than a match for his opponent. Although the raven was easily half his opponent's size, he was able to use his size to his advantage; easily countering and avoiding every single one of his opponent's attacks while dealing blows of his own. Orochimaru was captivated by the Uchiha's genius and as he watched the raven finish his opponent off, he realized that he was intoxicated by the prodigy's powerful aura.

His desire for the Sharingan grew ten-fold in that moment. He couldn't wait to have the child's body, to feel all that intoxicating power coursing throw his entire being. For the first time in his life he grew impatient and paid for it dearly. Against his better judgment he scrapped his plans of waiting a little longer before acquiring the Uchiha's body, and pounced. As they walked through the silent forest en route to their rendezvous point, Orochimaru let the Uchiha walk ahead of him. He watched the Uchiha's back for several moments watching for any changes in the raven's body language that would signal any suspicion. When he saw none he made his move and regretted it.

The battle was over in less than five minutes. The Uchiha, the clear victor, watching the Snake Sannin as he fled to the thick surrounding vegetation of the forest. He had never run faster in his entire life. He had retreated to the nearest hideout where he proceeded to reattach his severed arm. His dreams that night had been haunted by nightmares of the Uchiha; a side effect of the prodigy's frightening genjutsu. The next morning he didn't report back to Amegakure like he had been instructed. He focused his energy instead on putting as much distance between himself and the Uchiha. Because despite all the work Orochimaru had put into achieving his current state of pseudo-immortality, he knew all too well that should it ever come down to it, the 14 year old prodigy could easily destroy the Legendary Snake Sannin. And what scared him the most was that the Uchiha knew it as well.

He had lost all hope of ever acquiring the Sharingan until recently when word reached him of the lone survivor of the Uchiha Massacre. In his desperation he risked a confrontation with his former sensei, the Sandaime Hokage, all to just catch a glimpse of the boy. As he watched the Uchiha fledgling by the lake one day, Orochimaru felt his obsession return and triple in intensity as his hope was rekindled. This time he decided to exercise patience and caution with his prey. And so no matter how much it had killed him to watch from the distance, the Snake Sannin had done so. Resisting the temptation that plagued him every time he thought of the young Uchiha. He had kept his distance until an hour ago when he had finally revealed himself to the prodigy's younger brother.

Thinking back to his confrontation with the young Uchiha genin, Orochimaru licked his lips, a sign of pleasure and anticipation. Everything had gone off smoothly; the boy was as skilled, if not more skilled, than his older brother before him. Although he was still yet to unlock it, Orochimaru could see the hidden potential in the lad which only excited him the more. The prospect of soon possessing the Uchiha's body made him restless with anticipation.

Although he knew that his current body would fail in a year's time, Orochimaru no longer dreaded the moment when he would inevitably have to perform the excruciatingly painful procedure of transferring his consciousness into another body. On the contrary he looked forward to it.

Very soon Sasuke…very soon. In a year's time you will be mine. Can you feel it Itachi? Can you feel me getting closer and closer to realizing my ambition?

A persistent pain in his right hand roused the Sandaime's former student from his musings. Orochimaru stopped in his tracks and turned to examine the offending appendage. His eyes widened slightly at the sight that greeted him. The skin of the arm was a bright red instead of pale like the rest of his body. The fingers were swollen and bleeding at the tips and the palm was somehow a lot worse than the rest of his hand. Unlike the rest of that arm, the skin there was a very dark red and seemed to be in the process of shedding.

As he stared at the hand in confusion, Orochimaru wondered how come he hadn't noticed the pain before then. Something seemed to be crawling underneath the skin of his palm and was slowly spreading to the rest of his hand. Orochimaru reached into his weapons pouch and retrieved a kunai from its depths. With surgical precision, long ingrained from his numerous dissections of the human anatomy, the pale-faced Sannin cut his arm open and watched as congealed dark-red blood oozed out. He felt a jerk of pain in his wrist and turned his attention there as well. He saw something squirming beneath the flesh there and cut the flesh open to reveal the cause of the pain.

Orochimaru nearly fainted when he saw a sphere of raw chakra stuck between the bones of his forearm. He applied some chakra to his left hand and held it over his opened flesh, watching as the blue sphere of chakra squirmed away from it. Something about the chakra sphere, particularly the color it adopted, seemed awfully familiar. Unlike normal chakra that had a light-blue hue, this chakra sphere was a perfect shade of sky-blue. The color reminded him of something that eluded him. Where did he know that color from and why did he have the feeling that it had nothing to do with the entity above his head.

He turned to watch several puffy white clouds drift over an expanse of never-ending blue. And that's when it finally hit him. The Uchiha's genin teammate, the blonde brat in the orange jumpsuit with more guts than brains, the Kyuubi container that had attacked him head on; his eyes were the exact same color as the squirming chakra sphere in his arm.

But how? The Five-Pronged Seal only suppresses malignant chakra. It doesn't trap chakra within the caster's body. It's an airtight sealing jutsu of my own creation, nothing could have slipped through…so how did….?

But something about this chakra was really off. Apart from the color of the sphere another thing about the strange matter bothered the Sannin; normal chakra never took on a specific shape unless something was seriously wrong. The phenomenon of chakra taking a definite shape was only seen when jinchurikis adopted the chakra cloak of their bijuu. And even then it was uneven and irregular; definitely not a perfectly formed sphere like the one he was seeing. The sphere reminded him of a particularly bothersome jutsu he had given up mastering a while back.

He could remember the first time he had ever seen the jutsu in action. The young, blonde ANBU wearing a porcelain eagle mask had plunged the newly formed chakra ball into an opponent's heart. Orochimaru remembered shouting at the youth to give it up because the opponent was wearing a thick, heavily reinforced armor. But the blonde had persisted and pushed on surprising the skeptical Snake Sannin when the small ball of rapidly spinning chakra threads tore through the thick armor like it was made of silk. He continued watching in amazement as the chakra ball pierced the skin beneath the armor; exposing the flesh within. The chakra-threaded ball continued spinning furiously, devouring all that was in its path. It tore through flesh, muscle, tissue and bone in milliseconds leaving behind a violent, circular scar on the surrounding tissue. When the jutsu skewered the heart beyond the ribcage, Orochimaru was mesmerized by the sight before him: the tall, bloody shinobi, whose lean frame held raw power hidden beneath perfectly sculpted sinewy muscles, whose hands were still buried inside his opponent's chest where a heart had been beating mere seconds ago.

Covered in the dead man's blood, the ANBU had withdrawn his hand from the skewered chest and turned to face the Snake Sannin. Orochimaru remembered expecting the boy to attack him at any moment; after all if he was in the boy's shoes he would have done the exact same thing. Why would he want to associate with someone as weak as he felt standing next to the masked warrior covered only in the blood of those he had slain? He would have ended such a weakling's misery like he had suggested doing to those three pathetic, starving orphans on the streets of Amegakure. He would have convinced himself that it was for their own good as opposed to him just doing so as a show of strength.

The masked ANBU approached him slowly, quite contradictory to his nickname, and reached out to help the Sannin up from the floor. As Orochimaru accepted the hand and felt himself being lifted to his feet, he shuddered in delight at his close proximity to the power the youth exuded from every pore in his body.

"Is that…where did you learn that jutsu?" He had inquired much later as they turned to leave the clearing they had been in, after eliminating all traces of their ever being there. The youth had laughed, not mockingly but in a way that informed the Sannin that he was very pleased with himself.

"Nowhere, I invented…I call it the Rasengan."

Orochimaru's eyes widened when he remembered what color the man's eyes had been. It all made sense now; the chakra ball that wasn't really what it seemed, its strange coloring and shape, the way it was reacting to his chakra. It all pointed towards one person.

Minato Namikaze…the Yondaime Hokage.

Turning back towards the squirming matter embedded in the depths of his right wrist, Orochimaru reached back into his weapon pouch and replaced the bloody kunai in his hand before retrieving an empty, medium sized vial.

"Well, well, well, Namikaze we meet again."

Don't push the next button until you've reviewed.