Disclaimer: Naruto, I own thee not, nor do I receive even a pittance for mine work here.

WARNING! This story contains some violent imagery.

Kurotsuchi scowled as she walked along, glaring a hole into the back of her grandfather's head as he led her down a lesser traveled street towards a bar that looked at least 20 years past condemned. The inside was very bare for a bar, with only a few patrons, most of whom were probably as old as Onoki himself.

"Ah, Tsuchikage," The grizzled old barkeep greeted, "Here for a drink."

"Hmph," Onoki grunted, jumping onto a stool, "Like hell I'd trust any of the swill you serve here."

"Then maybe your lovely granddaughter?"

Kurotsuchi shot a glare at the man before returning to her attempt to burn a hole in her grandfather's skull. She demanded an explanation, and he drags her to this dive?

"Whoa, she looks pissed Onoki," A man at the end of the bar laughs, joined by many others.

Onoki, taking a flask out of his vest, Closed his eyes and drank, before speaking, "She's mad at me for denying her team entry to the Chunin Exams," another swig, and he added, "Konoha's got an Uzumaki entering."

At that name, the entire bar fell silent, some started shaking, and the man at the end of the bar grasped at his chest, the bartender had to rush over and fish some pills out of the man's pocket, shoving a couple down his throat before he started to calm down.

"And what the hell does that mean?" Kurotsuchi ground out the same question she'd asked her grandfather.

"It means your grandfather is trying to keep you alive," The Bartender said, picking up the glass he'd dropped in his rush.

"What? Just because some punk from a near dead clan is going to be there?"

"Shut your trap, girl!" The man at the end of the bar growled, still clutching at his chest with one hand and steadying himself with the other.

"Kurotsuchi," Onoki said flatly, staring at the flask in his hands, "The Uzumaki is more than some near extinct clan." Taking a drink to steel himself, he continued, "Back in the first great war, they were a force to truly be reckoned with, even a single one of them could turn the tide of a battle we would otherwise be sure to win. When the second war broke, it was known how dangerous they could be, so a temporary truce was reached between Us, Kumo and Kiri. At most, Uzu, the island village of the Uzumaki, had maybe a thousand ninja, and maybe fifteen hundred people if you include civilians in the entire island, and we came with a combined force that outnumbered them at least 100 to 1, led by My teacher, the second Tsuchikage himself, as well as the third Raikage, and the second Mizukage. I was there with my teacher."

There was a shudder in Onoki's breath as he continued, "The mist ninja managed to help us slip through the whirlpools that protected the place. Once we hit the beach, we marched from all sides of the island. We had them boxed in…"

"And they knew it," A man in the corner of the bar cut in, staring at his glass with his one remaining eye, "The farms and fields were abandoned, the ports were empty, they'd all fallen back to the central village. The village didn't have defensive walls, probably never really needed them, but when we got there, they were all standing around it, ninja and civilian. We sent a messenger with a warning, they threw him back with his head torn off and shoved up his own ass. We charged, and like a wave of blood, they charged." The man stopped, his hand now shaking wildly.

"The battle lasted three days," Onoki continued, "Three days of non-stop battle, and in three days, they'd taken our numbers down to less than two hundred at most." Swiveling his chair, he looked at his granddaughter, "Some had apparently held back, hidden, and took out our ships. Hundreds of ships and their crews were destroyed and killed…By six people. So we were trapped there, with Them."

Kurotsuchi shivered, she couldn't remember ever seeing her powerful, strong grandpa look so…empty, hollow and weak, he even looked fearful.

"I saw a woman," The man at the end of the bar began, "She couldn't have been younger than ninety, probably a hundred, they lived damn long you know. She was holding a sword in her left hand, because she'd lost her right arm, and pretty much everything, shoulder to hip, sternum out by the time I first saw her, looked like it was blasted off by a ration, but I still saw that old woman cut down no less than fifty trained ninja before some poor bastard finally cut off her head, but," He clutched his chest again, "That old lady's body kept going, that headless corpse cut down five more men, before she fell, and drove her sword into the heart of the guy who beheaded her. One of my buddies set her body on fire, just in case. I…I don't know if I was seeing things, but that blackened, headless corpse, it looked like it still tried to get up again."

"My brother and I, we were in that hell together," Another old ninja began, rubbing the stump where his left arm had once been, "We saw a kid, maybe three years old, crawling through the blood and muk, missing both his legs, and looked like he'd been coughing up blood. My brother went to put the kid out of his misery. The kid jumped. With just his arms, the kid jumped ten feet and tore my brother's throat out with his teeth. He came at me before my brother even hit the ground, I was lucky to get my arm up in time. The little monster still tore my arm out at the shoulder, but it bought me enough to get out a kunai and plant it in his head. When everything was over, and we gathered the bodies we found thousands more who'd been killed like my brother, with little bite marks where their throats were."

The Bartender poured himself a drink, "I saw a kid, she was maybe ten. She was missing a leg, and she'd replaced it by shoving the handle of a sword into the bloody stump, it was off a Kumo nin, I know because she'd used his headband to tie it off. She kept jumping around like some sort of dancer, cutting guys apart until a stray kunai slit her throat. I saw her look at the guy who threw it, and those eyes," he shot down his drink in one gulp, "I've never seen such hated in a kid's eye, but there was more, it was like the eyes of a predator near the end. In her death troughs, she leapt, spun, cut off his head, and landed, dead, driving her stump-sword through the top of another guy's head." He shakily poured another drink, "I saw a boy, later, cut a man who killed his dad in half, from groin to crown."

Onoki finished off his flask, "I was with Mu and the other two kages, and there was a woman. I'd guess someone slit her gut open, and she…she may have been pregnant before all that. She must have had more shuriken and kunai in her back than I've ever carried with me, and she even had one still sticking out of her eye when she came at us. Before we could react, she'd slashed at the Raikage and beheaded Mu. The raikage was too badly wounded to fight anymore and she'd moved onto the mizukage, his genjutsu were useless and she cut through his summon's armor like water. Once she cut him down, she came at me," Onoki shuddered, "I blasted her with a Jinton, disintegrated everything down from her right shoulder to her left hip, but…she kept moving, even with just her head, an arm and half a torso, she jumped at me and," Onoki lifted his shirt, revealing a jagged scar, running across his body from his right shoulder to his opposite hip, "If I hadn't stumbled back, I'd have died. Four of the most powerful ninja ever, killed or critically injured in less than two minutes by one heavily wounded, dying pregnant Uzumaki, I'd rather face Madara Uchiha again, at his peak, and call his mother a whore than face that woman again."

"Once that bloody battle was over, there were maybe two hundred survivors alive, at most, of our army, and more than half of them died within a few days from injuries or…Or from suicide." He put his shirt back down, "From that bloody field that rage and bloodlust lingered. Even now, near forty years, I still sometimes feel it, like one of them is looming over me, waiting to strike, waiting to take their revenge. We got our asses out of there as fast as we could, but it followed. Even some of those who got off the island on the ships we could fix went missing, all that was left was some blood spots and, once, a trail that looked like…like something had dragged him off the ship."

"Every village has sent teams there, looking for remnants of the clans, scrolls, tools, something, we've sent four, Konoha's sent at least one, I've heard Kumo has sent as many as twenty full teams, and not one has ever been heard from again."

"Kurotsuchi, it's not because I didn't believe in you that I didn't send you, but after what I've seen, I wouldn't send less than a hundred jonin against even a single Uzumaki, and even then I wouldn't expect them to return alive."

The young kunoichi shifted uncomfortably with the cold stone in her stomach at what sort of monster was waiting in Konoha…

A.N. Just a little something I wanted to write.