Merry Christmas

Chapter 5

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He looked down at the list and sighed again. Seven people, five men and two women, that was all, the rest of the clan was against him and to be against him, the hokage, is to be destroyed. After the nine tails attack he had been worried about the clan and forced them into a secluded part of the city. He had tried to reason with them but they refused to see it. He had been backed into a corner, and one did not get away with forcing the third hokage to do anything. So now six of those loyal to him had been sent out on missions, and the last stood before him, prepared to do what was needed.

"Go, good luck and I am sorry this had to happen." He told the young man before him.

In a flash Sarutobi was once again alone, he slowly made his way back to his office, and with a sigh he sat down at his desk. The Uchiha clan would be dead by morning and the poison that had plagued his city and their police force would be gone. From those loyal to him he would build a new stronger clan, loyal to their country and more importantly to him, the Hokage. Even with the loss of so many ninja it was a good night, in the end the village would be stronger. And above all the kyuubi would be safe from the effects of the sharingan.

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An eight year old boy looked adoringly up at his older brother, who had just spent one of his precious days off helping him train. And it had been worth it. He was able to do something that no one but his brother had been able to do. He had awoken his sharingan at age eight. Not that he was anywhere near as good as his brother, who had been an official ninja at his age. But this would have to make his parents proud. He would be able to hold his head high as a member of the great Uchiha clan and the son of the clan head.

Sasuke and Itachi walked back to the Uchiha compound happy and on Sasuke's part tired from a long day of training. But as the approached the compound they knew something was wrong. There were no guards at the gate and it was completely quiet. Itachi's ANBU honed instincts kicked in and he activated his sharingan as he pushed his little brother behind him.

"What's going on?" Sasuke asked in confusion, fear bubbling in his stomach.

"Stay close." Itachi responded slowly drawing and kunai out of his leg pouch and walking forward.

As the brothers made their way towards the house they shared with their parents horror mounted. Each house they passed had dead relatives outside them. Bile rose in Sasuke's throat at the sight of his family, the strongest clan in Konoha, dead. As they approached the center of the district where the heads house was located they were greeted by the bodies of their mother and father, the once proud leaders of the Uchiha carelessly thrown down on the road.

A quiet voice made Sasuke jump as a ninja made his presence known. "I've been waiting for you." The male voice said in an even tone. Sasuke looked up from where he was desperately clinging to his brother to see the familiar face of his brothers best friend.

"Shisui why?" Itachi asked in a neutral voice betraying none of the emotion he felt from seeing his family dead.

"It was my job." He replied with eyes that showed a madness Sasuke had never seen before. "The clan was going against the hokage. The way they were was cancer to the village. Don't worry there are a few that remain loyal and together we will make this clan great once more. I will lead the Uchihas to their rightful place. All that remains is you, I am sorry you and your brother have to die my friend but I had no choice. After all you just killed the clan, even your beloved little brother, and I had to stop you before you could do any more damage. After all I am the hero of the village." Shisui threw his head back and laughed. "I will become even more famous than the fourth hokage. Who knows maybe I will become the next hokage. Now die."

Taking advantage of Shisui's monolog Itachi quickly made a shadow clone which grabbed Sasuke and retreated to a safe distance while he prepared himself for battle. As Shisui charged he threw a few shuriken to slow his opponent down before with clash their weapons met. Itachi quickly went over his options as the two jumped apart. He had to finish this quickly and preferable quietly before someone came to investigate. From what his friend had said the slaughter of his clan was supported by the hokage therefore, Itachi reasoned, any company that arrived at this point would be bad news for him and his brother.

Itachi quickly spun around and again crossed blades with Shisui who had just appeared behind him.

"You cannot beat me." He said with a sneer. "I cannot be beaten, look what I did to our precious family. They all fell to my sword. It was easy they were not even a challenge. And you prodigy of this clan are no different. I am invinci-ug." Shisui looked down to see a second kunai buried in his back courtesy of a second shadow clone Itachi had made.

"No body is invincible, and to think so is to invite death." Itachi said a few tears falling down his face showing emotion for the first time since he had entered the compound that night. The death of his family and the act of killing his best friend weighing heavily on his soul as his eyes started to burn.

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"Itachi?" Sasuke questioned when the clone brought him back to his brother. "What are we going to do?" When Sasuke looked at his brother he noticed that there was something wrong with his sharingan, combined with everything else that had happened in the last hour he began to panic. His labored breathing brought his brother out of the stupor he had been in since he had killed his friend.

He quickly wiped his eyes and looked down at his brother. "Calm down, panicking will accomplish nothing." Of course this did nothing to relieve his brother's worries and when Sasuke did not calm down Itachi went down on one knee and held his brother until he was calm enough to talk.

"I have to leave." He told his distressed brother. "After tonight undoubtedly I will be declared a traitor by the hokage and if I do not run they will execute me."

"Take me with you." Sasuke pleaded.

Itachi shook his head. "The life of a missing ninja is a hard one and you will not be able to survive long enough to learn all how to live it."

"I'm not good enough?" Sasuke asked pulling away from his brother. He began to wonder if he was as useless as his father thought.

"NO! I know you will become a great ninja one day but it takes training that we do not have time for. I know you will become strong, strong enough to fix the injustices that caused this." He said gesturing to the carnage of the Uchiha district.

"But what if they kill me when you leave?" Sasuke asked fear in his voice and eyes.

"Don't worry I they won't, I will make sure of that. In ten minutes I want you to run out of here and find a ninja officer, tell them that you were training late and came home to find everyone dead. Can you do that?" Sasuke nodded. "I believe in you, and I will always be there if you need me."

"Be careful who you trust, and remember what happened in my fight with Shisui. Ninjas especially young ones are overly confident and enjoy bragging about their powers during a fight. Take advantage of that, and never decide the outcome of a fight before it starts. No matter how weak the opponent looks."

And with those few words of wisdom and another brief hug Itachi was gone. Sasuke sank to the ground, gathering himself and taking deep breaths. He reviewed everything that had happened that day from the boring history lesson on the hokages at the academe to the training session with his brother and his walk down the body filled road leading to his house. As everything set in and the time for his departure neared the only sound to be heard in the area was a soft muttered mantra of "I will not cry, I will not cry…" from a small boy rocking back and forth next to the bodies of his parents and the man who killed them.

0000

Rage, pure and simple. Sarutobi had never been so mad in his life. Not only had Shisui failed to kill the brothers but Itachi had shown up in his office and threatened him. The nerve of that punk, he wanted to ring his scrawny neck. But he had left before he even had a chance to call for his guards.

He had told the hokage that if anything happened to his little brother there would be grave coincidences. And the worst part was that he was right. Itachi was to good, had been let in on to many secrets that could create great chaos in his village. Along with the information that the idiot Shisui had given him he had the potential to destroy everything he had worked for.

But Itachi was gone now, and if he ever set foot in the village again he would be dead before he could say anything. So what to do with Sasuke. Obviously he was not going to trust him so he would have to discredit the brat before he could spread any rumors. Luckily for him he had lots of practice in that. In the next few days the surviving Uchihas would start to return from their missions and they would do what he said. The best thing would be to shun the young Uchiha, he was the brother of a mass murder what if he decided to follow in his brother's footsteps? Yes that would be the way to do it. Even if he did eventually graduate from the academe he would be friendless and no one would be willing to properly train the boy who could someday become the next traitor to the village.

The hokage quit muttering to himself as he heard frantic knocking on his door the time for planning was over it was time for action.

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Kyuubi's story had opened a whole new realm of possibilities in the area of summoning jutsus. But the most shocking thing for the two eight year olds was the fact that there were eight more chakra creatures out there somewhere probably suffering a lot more than Kyuubi. But all thoughts of the past were pushed aside when the next day news arrived of the horrors that had taken place at the Uchiha compound.

It had come as a complete surprise and that fact scared Naruto more than anything. He had made a mistake. He had gotten comfortable. They had ears in the hokage's office and he had thought he knew what was going on, but clearly the old mad had some tricks up his sleeve, he was definitely more discreet than they originally thought. But the fact remained, they would have to figure out new ways to listen in on the hokage.

Unfortunately that was also a problem for later. In the past week Naruto had been consistently listening in on the hokage's office. At the moment he was in class pretending to sleep with a listening seal up to his ear. The hokage was speaking to the remaining members of the Uchiha clan minus Sasuke, who was a couple rows in front of him. The old man was planning a Naruto, as he had termed it. This involved discrediting someone based upon gossip and the sins of those who said person was related to.

In this case the hokage was convincing the remaining Uchiha clan to shun the poor child because his brother had killed the rest of their family. Even if the hokage had been spreading his story around the village for the past week these people were frighteningly easy to convince.

The whole thing told Naruto two things: first those six people were loyal to the hokage. With all the rumors that had been going around the village in the past few months it was clear that the hokage was not supported by the Uchiha clan. So for all of those who survived the massacre to be loyal to the hokage hinted that the hokage had a hand in the whole affair.

The second thing was that Sasuke knew something. Sarutobi always had a reason to do what he did, no matter how sick or twisted they were. And the old man was desperately trying to isolate the youngest Uchiha. So he knew something and for some reason just making him disappear was out of the question. So what did Sasuke know, and why was he being kept alive?

Naruto sighed as the conversation he was listening to broke up. He opened his eyes and looked around the classroom. There had been no overt changes since the massacre but if he looked close he could tell that everyone was on edge. For one thing he was not receiving as many hateful looks as he normally did, at the moment most of them were focused on the Uchiha, who seemed to be lost in thought.

But that was not the only difference everyone was on high alert. Where normally there was one teacher and an aid in each class Naruto counted two aids and if his senses served him right at least one other hiding in the room. He also knew that once they got out of class for the day there would be many more adults waiting than normal. It seemed like all the clans were on high alert and wanted to keep a close eye on their children.

The big problem with this was that Hinata was part of a clan and as such they had not been able to talk since the incident. And they needed to talk, not only about what the Kyuubi had told them or the events of the last week but also about Sasuke. He had potential and if what he had thought was going to take place actually happened he would be in need of allies, perhaps he was the third member they had been looking for.

Damn he really needed to talk to Hinata, maybe they could slip away at lunch today. Naruto closed his eyes again as Kakashi announced himself before entering the hokage office. This should be interesting after all the recently retired ANBU had been Itachi's captain. But first he had to listen to them discuss the newest Icha Icha book. This was going to be a long day.

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Sasuke was having a bad day after a bad month since the massacre. He had finally been allowed to go off on his own instead of being watched constantly. But after hours of training he was tired and had not seemed to improve any.

He was also afraid to use his sharingan because even if they were not overtly watching him he was not sure if they were watching from the shadows. So here he was tried from training that seemed useless and afraid he was being watched. On top of that he was trying to sneak around the village because everyone was giving him dirty looks refusing to speak to him and on occasion throwing things at him.

Sasuke sighed wondering if this nightmare that was his life would ever end. The only thing that was keeping him going were thoughts of his brother, he had to keep going for him. He turned into an alley which would take him around the market area town and stopped because two people wearing black clothes with scarves wrapped around their faces and hair were standing in front of him.

"We have a proposition for you." The one on the left said in a slightly familiar female voice. When he looked at them closely the appeared to be about his age.

"What do you want?" He asked warily.

"We know what is going on, how everyone is scared of you and we know who caused it. Unfortunately you are not the first person to be treated this way." The girl said with a quick glance at her partner.

"We propose a partnership," the newly identified male said, "we have a common goal, to survive the life of a ninja and escape from the grasp of a manipulating old man."

"We have been watching you and believe you would be a good addition to our team. So are you willing to join us?" The girl finished.

Sasuke thought about this for a few minutes was he willing to blindly through his lot in with these strangely familiar people? Well he could always get away from them if he didn't agree with what they were doing after all he was an Uchiha and had an active sharingan that no one knew about. Making a decision he took a step forward.

"OK I'm in."

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So today is my birthday so what am I doing? I am watching my sick cousins and writing a new chapter. Really a fun day I know. But here is my birthday/Christmas present to all of you enjoy.

~Erkovas