Naruto; I'm sick of being a girl, make Sasuke the girl!
LC; I'm afraid that would be impossible.
Sasuke; Why's that? Not that I'm complaining.
Naruto; YEAH! Why not?
LC; Cause female bad guys are never taken seriously and he's a good bad guy!
Sasuke; See? Even if she doesn't like me she likes me.
LC; Don't push your luck pretty boy.
Sasuke; *Gulp.*
Naruto; Let's just get this over with.
Disclaimer; I don't own anything but this story and I kinda borrowed some stuff from some people, you'll know when I show you.
Chapter 1; Old news, new hope, and common knowledge.
Three months. That was how long she'd been traveling from village to village. That is how long she had been banished for failing to bring Sasuke, her brother in all ways that mattered, back home.
Huh, she still thought of that place as home? What was she? A five year old who needs a place with a warm meal and bed to survive?
Shaking her head fiercly, she kept moving down the lonely road until the Sun had long since set.
How long had she been walking now? When had she last stopped and slept? It was obvious, three weeks. Ever since she found that Hunter-nins had been sent after her.
If she kept moving, she would be able to stay ahead of them. After all, they had to stop and rest sometime right? She could keep going as long as she needed to, because she needed to.
All she wore was the ripped and tattered jacket and ninja pants she was never seen without.
Come to think of it, she needed new clothes, otherwise she'd be tracked down.
She also had a sort of cloth sack swung over her shoulder like a potato sack. In it were several pouches with weapons inside and what little money she had left after three months.
All in all, she appeared to be a poor beggar. Then again, it was better that way. That way, no one would recognize her and she could get away and find somewhere else.
Her normally bright, exubrant, blonde hair was so filthy it was almost brown! Her eyes were dull and lifeless, her spirit broken.
Oh how she wanted to die! If only she could finally be at peace! She no longer cared if she went to heaven or hell, so long as it was an end!
Her reason for existence had been taken from her, what more did she have? A soul? A body? A pulse? What did it matter when none of it was necessary for someone else's survival? How the mighty have fallen indeed.
Glancing upward, she saw she had wandered to a rather desolate range of mountains. Turning around, she found that some time ago she must have wandered off the path ad wound up here as a consequence.
"You lost kid?" She jumped and drew a kunai from up her sleeve before turning to face an old man walking with a cane with a content smile on his face.
"Or maybe someone's lost you!" He continued thoughtfully, setting himself heavily onto a mangled old stump and beckoning her.
"I'm Pappy, what's your name, little lady?" He greeted her kindly.
Clearing her throat, for fear of only being able to cough when she opened it to speak. "N-Naru U-U-Uzumaki, sir."
The old man, Pappy, gestured for her to sit down on a nearby rock. "So Naru, what brings you to the gateway of Heaven and Hell?" He asked jokingly.
"What do you mean gateway?" Naru asked suspiciously.
"Well, most say these mountains are cursed." He explained. "Depending on what is in your heart, the mountains either swallow you and spit you up in Hell, or throw you up into Heaven."
Naru shuddered at the thought of being eaten and then spat out or thrown up. Personally, she didn't know which one disgusted her more at the moment.
"Course, that's all just silly superstition!" The man continued, not noticing her look of repulsion. "I myself have lived twenty years in these mountains and not once has it opened it's maw!"
"You live here all alone?" She asked curiously. "Are you a hermit?"
"You could say that." He nodded wisely. "Though mostly cause I've outlived my entire clan, the people who once populated the place beyond these mountains."
"How can you outlive an entire clan?" Naru asked, slightly confused. "Were they killed or eaten by the mountains or something?"
Pappy chuckled as he saw some spirit appear in the girl's big blue eyes. Looking with every ounce of his fading eye sight, he saw her hair was actually sun blonde underneath all that dirt.
"Child, they were killed in a horrid genocide." He said slowly, sadly. "Because my clan had a special bloodline trait that allowed us to do magical things."
Naru listened intently as the old man recounted what had happened fifty years ago, when he was but a babe. Outsiders had attacked his clan while at a large clan meeting out of the mountains and killed them all, all, but one.
Somehow, he had survived to tell the tale. He would not have known had not one of the men discover he yet lived and taken him away out of pity.
"I survived, when the strongest and proudest of my clan did not." He said sorrowfully. "All I know is, that while we may be gone, our secret thrives still."
That night, for the first time in three months, Naru ate with another civil human being. When all the food was gone, her stomache gave yet another fiercome growl.
"When was the last time you ate?" Pappy asked her.
"Three weeks." She said quietly. "I couldn't afford any food, and I was too weak to hunt or forage for myself. I was badly injured when I got in a fight with a ninja. It took all I had to keep moving. If I stopped, they'd find me."
"A refugee too eh?" He said understandingly. "Both of us outcasts from society, both of us hunted."
Late that night, he showed the now happier girl all the different movements of the stars. He was old now, and he knew he did not have long left.
He needed a successor, an heir, someone to retell the stories he had painstakingly sought for about his clan. What was more, was he needed someone who would understand him, someone who would need him, as much as he needed them.
And he found that, in Naru Uzumaki.
After six long months of lessons that Naru hardly found to be lessons and much training, (How could anyone learn that fast? Six months and she knew all his clan's jutsu and styles!) Naru was now ready to be showed where the clan had lived before their death. Slowly, they made their way through the mountain range, until they found a cave hidden almost entirely from the best of eyes.
They traveled inside for what seemed like hours, until finally coming to an exit into startling light. When her eyes grew accustomed to the bright light, she saw it was the Sun's rays glinting off the ocean that caused it.
"Wow!" She exclaimed, running down to the water's edge and prancing around in the waves.
Pappy looked at his little protege's growth over the last sixth months. The first time she had taken off that torn jacket, he'd almost fainted when he realized he could clearly see each and every bone.
Now, she had grown out a bit more and didn't look like a walking skeleton. She'd gotten rid of the jacket and had replaced it with a twilight blue no-sleeve shirt. She also had some strange wide-rimmed sleeves that only began at the elbow and covered her hands most of the time.
For pants she now wore cute black shorts stopping at the knees. Below that she wore blue chakra wieghts and regulary shinobi sandals.
Her hair was clean and shone in the light, her bangs cutely framing her face and her pig tails dancing in the breeze.
He sat down by the water's edge and waited until Naru came back from her swim. "I've seen the ocean before but I've never been able to take a real swim in it without being in danger! It's so much fun!" She laughed, straining her long hair.
Pappy hauled himself up and gestured for Naru to follow him. Along the way, Naru picked up several seashells and things she'd never seen before.
Finally, they came to a land path that went over the water, acting as a natural bridge.
"Step lively now!" Pappy warned her playfully, seeing how she was walking slower and taking in the view.
It wasn't long before the path started taking on a slope, soon Naru was walking up to her knees in cool water. "Um, Pappy?" She called to her sensei. "At this rate we'll be under the water."
"Yes, you see Naru," Pappy began, pausing them on their trek. "My clan had the ability to completely control water with our will power. To forever be safe from presecuters, we used this ability to build an underwater utopia. It took many years, but now, under these waves lies an entire city."
Naru was amazed something like that could be under this seemingly bottomless ocean. "But, I don't have that ability!" She cried, not knowing if she could still go.
"I know, but I can make a dome around us so we can both get there." Pappy informed her patiently.
An hour later, Pappy had them both within the indestructable dome of the village hidden in the depths. Uzu no sato, the village hidden in the depths. (Just shut up about the name, I couldn't think of anything else.)
Looking around, she was amazed to find it was twice the size of Konoha! Just outside the dome, hundreds of shiny fish swam by, basking in the city's glow.
The village itself was beautiful. Everywhere one looked, there were gentle curls that represented the waves rolling above along with so many different designs that she knew she'd never be able to find where they had come from.
All in all, it was an undersea utopia.
Pappy watched as Naru turned her gaze from side to side, trying to take in everything she saw. He remembered doing much the same thing when he was finally able to make it down here.
"Naru, it's time I taught you about my clan." He said slowly, setting himself down onto a nearby bench.
"You see my dear, our bloodline trait, isn't a bloodline trait."
3...2...1. "NANI?" She cried.
"Our manipulation of the water is a skill aquirred through a lot of training and will power, nothing more." He explained calmly. "It is in fact, a jutsu we created many years ago, that others saw as a gekkai genkai."
He began teaching her how to control water to the extent she could actually, 'bend it', so to speak. After another six months of training, she finally mastered it to the extent that she could create the movable dome to go to the surface.
On one of these trips, she found out that people were traversing the mountains. She found the remains of a campfire, still warm. The only sign was the bare circle of wrong colored grass, something only a ninja would notice.
"Ninja." She growled, checking her surroundings quickly.
Without waiting to see who had come to call, she ran back to the earth path and hid it under a genjutsu she had learned, covering it with enough water to disguise any abnormalities, before vanishing under the surface.
Upon reaching the main tower where she and Pappy lived, she bust into his room where he had been laying ill all day. "Pappy we got tresspassers in the mountains!" She gasped as she saw that he was on the floor, unconcious.
"Pappy!" She cried, immediatly hoisting the old man onto his bed. "Pappy?" She called again.
His eyes fluttered open and his lips curled into a ghost of a smile when he recognized her.
"Naru, back so soon?" He coughed, not losing his smile.
"Pappy I told you to stay in bed!" She scolded him, pulling the covers up.
"Naru, I'm an old man." He sighed heavily. "I'm afraid I'm not long for this world."
"Pappy." Naru said sadly, tears coming to her eyes.
He died late that night, and she buried him in the graveyard. She had changed much from the ramen loving girl everyone in Konoha knew.
Her hair reached her waist and was no longer unruly, but perfectly straight. Her top was the same, as was the disconnected sleeves, but her shorts had been replaced with the skirt of a black kimono. The waist sash was bright blue and tied simply.
Her shinobi sandals had been replaced with normal japanese sandals worn by young men and women. (Jaraiya's kind of shoes)
Her whisker marks had become finer, less like the scars many had mistaken them for. Her eyes were bright and happy, reflecting her emotions as clearly as the ocean on a clear day.
"Thank you Pappy-jiji." She prayed for his kind soul. "For giving me a reason to live. Now I know what I wish to do, I'll travel and someday, build this village into it's former glory." She paused for a second before smiling. "That's the promise of a life time."
The next day she packed a bag and went to the surface, ready to begin her journey to lands never before seen by the ninja of Elemental countries.
Unbenownst to Naru, she was being watched by a pair of calculating brown eyes. To be more specific, it was one brown eye, the other, was hidden unerneathe bandages.
The X shaped scar curved as he grinned a soulless smile at finally having found his quarry. 'Naru Uzumaki, jinchuriki of the Kyubi no Kitsune, you will be my greatest weapon yet!'
He thought malevantly.
Upon reaching the shore, she turned back to the exposed land bridge. Lifting her hands, she felt the pull of the water, and carefully raised the tide until the bridge was hidden under a near foot of water.
"May you rest easy, sensei." She whispered solemnly, bowing in respect of the dead before jogging off and into the cave to begin her journey.
Danzo had seen enough and he released himself, showing him to be nothing more than a shadow clone. The real Danzo smirked, seemingly for no reason, as the memories recorded themselves into his mind.
'Good, it seems she's gotten stronger in the last year.' He thought happily, taking a sip of his tea.
Three days afterward, Naru was walking down a frequented path through the forest when she caught sight of a large cage further down the road, hanging from a tree.
When she reached it, she found inside a young man around her age, highly weakened.
His eyes fluttered when he heard her approach and for a moment he showed hope in his eyes.
"Why are you in this?" She asked calmly, gesturing to the cage.
"Let's just say I ticked off a tyrant and he decided to make an example out of me." He sighed tiredly, as though he were used to it.
His eyes took on a melancholy look as he looked to the right of the cage, just out of his reach, there lay a beautiful sword.
"They'll be back any minute now." He said tiredly, before turning to her. "I beg of you, take with you my sword! I can not allow someone like that man wield Shupaname!"
"Why take just the blade when the life is much more precious?" She asked, cocking her head to one side.
"You don't understand!" He pleaded with her. "Even if that were true, this cage can not be opened without the key! Besides," He said softly. "I am but a weapon with no master, if I must die, I want my master's blade to be far away from here."
He lowered his head in shame, and thus missed Naru's reproachful glare as she sensed many men on horseback galloping towards them.
She turned her back to the cage and faced the road. "Your name?" She asked him. "What is your name?"
"Haradai, Haradai Shitzuki." He answered confusedly, realizing they were about to have company, and wondering why this young woman did not flee.
"They will kill you if they find you here!" He warned the young woman. "Please, leave with Shupaname! Flee!"
The horsemen came to a halt at the sight of the woman standing before their prisoner.
"What is this?" Demanded their leader, sneering down at the young woman. "A lover? Or perhaps a sister?" He was now taunting the man in the cage, Haradai.
"I assure he and I are not connected in the least." Naru said politely, adding a small bow, as was respectful.
"You should stay here then!" His eyes gleamed with lust as he anticipated what he would do with her later. "After we execute the traitor we can escort you back home!"
The girl giggled, and he immediatly grew nervous for some strange reason he could not understand.
With a blur of gold, the woman vanished, only to reappear on the other side of the clearing. As soon as she stopped moving, all of his men fell from their unharmed horses.
He could just make out a blade in the woman's hands before she turned to him.
"You remind me of a man I once knew." She told him softly. "A man I once hated." A man that went by Zabuza. "You have the ability to be good and just, yet your greed has gotten in your way."
She said not another word before slitting his throat.
Haradai could only watch as this woman moved at speeds rivalling his own and wasted the entire group without putting a single hair out of place.
He watched her take the key from their leader the tyrant and walk over to his cage, swinging it around her little finger.
"So, which one of us was going to die?" She asked jokingly, putting the key in the lock and opening the door for them.
"Who are you?" He asked weakly, his days without any food or water catching up to him.
"Naru Uzumaki." She answered, lifting his surprisingly light form out of the cage and grabbing his sword.
He hefted him over the back of a black mustang before swinging her legs over a white female one.
"Thank you." He said to her, before closing his eyes.
They rode until finding a clearing far off into the forest. Naru unrolled her bedroll and put Haradai onto it before pouring some water down his throat.
After that was done, she made dinner, a rabbit stew so he would be able to eat it without being too sick.
The horses were cobbled not far away, whickering to eachother no doubt, while she slaved over the fire.
Chuckling at her small inside joke, she waited for him to wake up.
"So that old man taught you how to get to the legendary Uzu no Sato?" He asked, just making sure he'd heard right.
"That's right." She acknowledged.
"And you can really control water?" He asked skeptically, his brow raised slightly in challenge.
She giggled and opened the water bottle from earlier. "Just watch me!" She said, bringing her hand from the top and drawing the water out bit by bit until she had an orb of it in the palm of her hand.
"It takes a lot of chakra and will power, both of which I have in abundance." She told him.
He kept watch while she slept, and marveled on how anyone could hate someone as beautiful as her. To him, she was a glorious angel who had saved him from certain death.
He knew she was but a mere fourteen, and he sixteen, but he instantly knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he loved her.
In the morning, he spoke to her.
"Naru, you saved my life." He said her name like it was some rare and exotic flower. "To you I am grateful, and to you, I owe my life." Her expression seemed confused, her face almost a pout. "Until the day I can repay my debt, I swear to be your blade."
This was the highest honor someone of his clan could give. A life debt was no laughing matter, he had basically layed his life in this woman's hands.
STORY BREAK TIME!
LC; YUP! Now for the credits! Sarakiel gave me some good ideas!
Naruto; Hope she doesn't sue you for taking stuff like this.
LC; I asked for permission first so it's alright!
Sasuke; Keep telling yourself that kid.
LC; What can you say? Your the reason poor Naru-chan was banished!
Sasuke; You made me do that!
Naruto; Nu-uh! Kishimoto did!
LC; Death to KISHIMOTO!