Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

When I thought of this story I was hesitant about writing it. To be honest, I wasn't and am not sure what kind of reception this story will get. I hope you all will find it interesting, exciting, and unique. This story is very AU, so please do not expect it to follow the manga or anime storyline.

This story will be accepting OCs. If you are interested, please go to my profile, fill out the forum there, and PM it to me.

Enjoy...

Naruto looked to the sky and watched as the world came to an end. The war had been disastrous. Many had thought it would only last a few months, maybe a year, but the thought of ten years never cross any's mind. At the loss of many good shinobi, Madara had finally been taken down but not before he sentenced the world to death.

The insane Uchiha, after being mortally injured in a fight against Naruto, unleashed the chakra he had gathered from the eight beasts he had captured. He attempted his Eye of the Moon plan and it had terrible results. The chakra had reached the moon but instead of reflecting the madman's sharingan it dislodged the celestial body from its orbit and started to pull it toward the planet.

Naruto watched as the object of distant beauty came crashing toward his world. There was nothing he could do. He knew that and, where his younger self would run around, crying opening, trying to find a way to stop it, he stood silent watch over the end. He had fought hard in the war and had taken more lives than he had ever dared to imagine. Mature, composed, intelligent, dangerous...all these things and more described him but all that didn't matter to him now. The world, his world...was ending.

He was aware of people screaming in terror around him, running from the fall of the white beauty in a derange hope that their short foot steps could get them to safety like so many ants under the foot of a god. He was a little surprised that he wasn't scared for the end. He had fought for so long that all he really felt was tired. Tired and maybe relieved that his task, his war, was finally coming to an end.

'It has been a ride, kit,' a deep voice echoed in Naruto's mind.

Naruto smirked and replied, 'I had thought you would tell me to do something, Kurama, but you sound accepting of what is happening.'

The great fox chuckled softly and replied, 'I have seen the birth and death of stars, I have paid witness to the rise and fall of more civilizations that I care to count, and I have forgotten more than any will ever learn. I have experienced everything that life can provide and now I finally get to explore a new frontier. I am not happy with this, kit, but I am content. What of you? Your world is ending and you do nothing but watch?'

'I feel relieved. I have fought in this war for people who constantly argued for my death as they believed that you would die with me, I have suffered the pain of loss, battle, and betrayal, and through it all I have taken the blows without complaint.' Naruto took a deep breath and let it out slowly. 'When I meet Kami I'll be able to hold my head high.'

'That is more than what others can say,' Kurama muttered.

Naruto didn't turn away when the moon crashed into the planet. He watched the land buck and ripple out. He witnessed the black cloud of burning death spread out from the destruction.

Just before the cloud engulfed him, Naruto whispered, "Its been a good run."

'Yes,' Kurama agreed. 'It has."

-Naruto: Rise of Iwa-

'Wake up, you lazy ningen!'

Naruto's eyes snapped open and he was in a crouched position prepared for an attack. It took a few moments for him to realize that something was very wrong.

'Shouldn't I be dead?' he pondered.

'And the genius award goes to Captain Obvious, Hero of the land of No Shit.'

'Bite me, Kurama,' Naruto snapped. He took a look around and searched the places a shinobi might hide in the many trees around him. 'Where in the abyss am I?'

'No clue but wherever we are it isn't home. Nothing survives something the size of the moon crashing into their planet.'

'So,' Naruto thought as he jumped into a tree and scurried to the top, 'that means that...okay, this is going to sound crazy.'

'Really crazy,' Kurama remarked.

'But, I don't think we're on our planet any more.'

'That is a distinct possibility. There are other options that we can think about but I won't mention them until I'm sure. For now, we need to figure out where we are.'

'Agreed.' Naruto reached the top of the large tree and squinted into the distance. He could make out several valleys and a he couldn't help but feel that the place seemed familiar. He shook his head slightly and focused again this time spotting a dusting of black smoke in the sky. It was far, almost unnoticeable but he had been at war for ten years and had gotten used to spotting such things.

'Campfire, perhaps?' Kurama questioned.

'No, there's too much smoke for it to be that. Something big is burning and I want to find out what.'

The blonde shinobi jumped from his tree to another and made his way to the area the smoke came from.

'Put on your mask,' the chakra fox muttered. 'For the time being we have none to trust so hide your face in case we make a scene.'

Naruto grabbed the mask that hung at his side and looked at it. The mask was a custom ANBU mask designed with no features whatsoever. It was pitch black with no openings around his eyes; the hard plastic had a seal on the inside of it that allowed the wearing to look out of it as if it wasn't there. On the forehead of the mask was red Kanji for 'nine'. Naruto wore it when he entered the battlefield to tell all his enemies that he was there and to act as a symbol for his allies. A person could inspire hope, but that hope died with the person. However, a symbol could inspire hope generations after the person who wore it passed.

He put the mask on and sealed it to his face with chakra. He looked around in all directions and was satisfied that he could see as if the mask wasn't there. The rest of his attire he chose strictly for battle: black combat boots, black shinobi pants, a crimson leather vest with no sleeves and a seam down the middle in the front where the zipper was, white bandages were wrapped around his mid-biceps and down his arm to his wrists, and black fingerless gloves donned his hands. On his right thigh he had a kunai pouch and sheathed perpendicularly to the small of his back was a ninjato.

'Kurama,' Naruto thought, 'I think it would be wise to change my hair color. Blonde hair was unique in the Elemental Nations and it might hold true here.'

'What color were you thinking?'

He rubbed a hand through his short hair. When he was a kid it spiked like no tomorrow but time had tamed the beast and it how only spiked slighty. 'For now, make it a bit darker. We'll think about what to do with it when we have time to rest.'

The changing of hair color was a simple task for Kurama. He needed his host's permission to do it due to the arrangement they had set up but when he had that agreement all it took was a little bit of his super-dense chakra focused into Naruto's hair. Then all he had to do was tweak the hair color however he pleased. There was a bit more to it then that but the fox never revealed how he did what he did.

Confident that he was ready for whatever he might find, Naruto jumped from the last tree and his eyes widened slightly with what he saw.

It was hard to say that the burned husks of buildings could have been a village at one point in time and that the bodies that littered the ground its people. Fires ate hungrily at a few of the buildings and others smoked with a dead rage. Naruto walked to a person who had been pinned to a wall with a kunai through on of their wrists. They were dead and when the dark-blonde stepped closer the weight of the person combined with the sharp edge of the kunai finally took its toll on the flesh. Without a sound the flesh parted and fell to the ground.

Naruto knelt next to the body, a middle-aged man with brown hair, and rested a hand on the body. It was warm. Fresh. Naruto wasn't the religious type but he still said a quick prayer for the man. Turning his attention to the kunai, Naruto ripped it from the wall and inspected it. It was a typical kunai in size and heft. He turned it in his hand. Every kunai had a tell that identified where it came from but it was never as simple as a maker's mark. He tilted it in the sun light and looked at the grain in metal. The light glinted and showed a diagonal grain going away from the hilt but just at the tip Naruto saw that the grain reversed and that made his heart skip a beat.

The kunai was made in Konoha by the smith that worked at the Flying Dragon Armory. Tenten's Father to be exact, Mashimoto Higashi.

Naruto looked around at the devastation around him. It didn't make sense. Konoha had been destroyed eight years into the war and with the moon being dropped on their heads everything should have been gone.

'Kurama-'

'I have a few theories, kit. Let me gather a bit more information before I say anything.'

Naruto nodded slowly. He dropped the kunai and turned toward the middle of the village and began to walk. He paid witness to the devastation that had visited the town. Bodies littered the ground here and there. Some burned, some with wet blood around mortal wounds, and others that were dismembered. If it was Konoha that attacked this place, that had committed these atrocities, he knew that it wasn't his Konoha.

His feet brought him to the village square and stopped him at the foot of a virtual mountain of bodies. He could see men and women, young and old in the pile. It seemed that none had been spared.

The shifting of stones alerted Naruto to someone behind him and he slowly looked over his shoulder. In the doorway of a decimated structure was a small girl, about as small as he had been when he was twelve and maybe even smaller. She had shoulder length black hair, her eyes were a dull green, and her slightly tanned skin was littered in cuts and bruises. She looked at him with no emotion and Naruto knew that she was in shock.

Turning bodily to her he said, "Hello, child."

It wasn't the most appropriate thing to say when surrounded by the bodies of people she undoubtedly knew and the burned village that she called home but he didn't know what else to say. No words of comfort came to him and if he told this girl that everything would be alright he would be lying to her. Everything she knew was gone as far as he knew and there was nothing he could say or do to give that back to her.

To be expected the girl didn't say or do anything. Naruto took a slow step toward her and then another. He worked his way to her and when he was a few feet away from her he stopped.

'What will you do, kit? If you leave her she will die.'

Naruto extended a hand to the girl and said softly, "I cannot give back to you what you have lost but I can try to give you a life worth living."

'You would take her?' Kurama asked.

'There is nothing else I can do. Besides, she reminds me of me when I was young and that scares me.'

Kurama huffed and muttered, 'And you wonder why I have come to respect you, kit.'

The girl stared at him and not a single muscle moved. At first he wasn't sure if she had heard him and he was about to repeat what he said when several chakra signatures came within his sensing radius. His ability to sense chakra wasn't something to brag about but it was far enough that he had time turn toward them and palm a kunai.

There were three of them and from their dress it was easy to tell that they were ANBU. They landed a short distance from Naruto and observed him while he did the same. the only differences between the three were their masks: Hawk, Weasel, and Tiger. The masks meant little since they were chosen at random and were changed nearly every day.

Tiger, the apparent leader of the three, said, "You were not in the village during the punishment. Who are you?" The voice was female.

Naruto ignored the question and returned with his own, "Punishment? What could a village of civilians do to warrant a death sentence?"

Tiger and the other ANBU took a step back and readied themselves for battle. Naruto knew he could be intimidating but the to get such a reaction from these ANBU demonstrated that they were either undisciplined or hadn't been in a war. He was careful as to not give the ANBU a reason to attack him and after some time the Konoha shinobi relaxed.

"It was discovered that this village was a meeting place for rebel shinobi and that the citizens were actively sheltering them. As an example, the village was destroyed and its citizens executed," Tiger answered. "Now, tell me, who are you?"

"A wondering shinobi who saw the smoke," he replied. "No one of importance."

Tiger studied him and said, "With that vague of answer you could be a rebel for all I know."

"Would a rebel, who had fled this village in the wake of an attack, return for any reason? If any had survived the attack they would hate the rebels for abandoning them to this fate. So, if I was a rebel I would be a fool to return here where only hate would welcome me."

Tiger nodded slowly. "You must be of the Horo Guild, then. You and yours are always so secretive, even when you are under contract with Konoha. I gather you were sent as a representative of your guild for this attack. A little late but it is good to see that your guild is demonstrating their support."

"Taichou," Weasel said from behind Tiger. "Look there, a survivor."

Tiger looked at Weasel and to were the man indicated. It seemed that the girl that Naruto found had moved to his side and was now out in the open.

"It seems that we missed one," Tiger commented. "Hawk, take care of it."

"Hai," Hawk snapped and walked toward Naruto and the girl.

Naruto watched the ANBU come toward him and as he contemplated his options he felt a small hand grab his own. He looked down at his side and saw that the girl had grabbed his hand. She looked up at him with sad-fearful eyes that pleaded with him to do something.

"You asked me who I am," Naruto said as he looked back to the ANBU. Hawk was close to him now and the man had no time to react when Naruto lashed out with his kunai. The blade slide easily into the man's neck and ripped out with an arch of crimson blood. Hawk dropped to the ground, dead, and Naruto continued talking without missing a beat, "I am Kyubi."

Naruto had to give the ANBU credit, they both reacted quickly to the attack. Weasel charged him and Tiger started to rip through hand signs at tremendous speeds. The attack would have been lethal against an under prepared opponent but Naruto was never without a plan. A hand exploded from the ground under Tiger and grabbed her leg. The earth clone he had created pulled Tiger into the ground and buried her up to her neck.

While his clone dealt with Tiger, Naruto engaged Weasel. The man's taijutsu was one that Naruto was familiar with: the Uchiha's Seeker style. That meant that his opponent was most likely an Uchiha but that didn't make any sense since the clan had become extinct with the death of Madara.

Just where the hell was he?

Blocking a jab, Naruto returned with a powerful combo that broke through the man's defenses and allowed several strikes to make contact. The man staggered back and dropped when a kunai found a home in his heart.

ANBU were selected from the ranks of Jonin and Chunin and Naruto guessed that these three were counted among the Chunin. If they had been Jonin, Hawk would have blocked his kunai and the fight would have been far more difficult but with how easily it ended spoke of the inexperience of his opponents.

The masked blonde walked toward the trapped Taichou. People like the ANBU Taichou, who could so easily write off other's lives, disgusted him. As he neared her several other chakra signatures appeared and he launched himself back from the ANBU. Just in time, it seemed, since a blue swirling ball smashed into his clone and a shadow snaked along the ground, just missing his own shadow.

Dust filled the air from the attacks and Naruto took advantage of it by send several clones out to surround his new opponents. One of his clones snatched the small girl next to him and fled into the forest.

The dust settled and Naruto could honestly say he was shocked beyond belief with what he saw. There, standing before him was Shikamaru Nara, Choji Akimichi, Sakura Haruno, and a blonde-haired shinobi pulling Tiger from the ground. Each of them looked serious and were years younger than he remembered them.

"Hinata, are you alright?" The blonde-haired newcomer asked, his voice was filled with concern.

The boy removed Tiger's mask, revealing Hinata Hyuga.

"Hai," she answered, "I'm fine."

The boy sighed in relief before growling loudly and turning toward Naruto.

Naruto looked at the boy in disbelief. The boy looked exactly like him but ten years younger. The only thing that was different was that he didn't have the whisker like scares on his face.

"Troublesome," Shikamaru muttered. "Naruto, ANBU aren't supposed to take off their masks. You and Hinata are both going to get in trouble for this."

'Kurama,' Naruto thought, 'what the hell is going on?'

Le gasp!

I hope you have enjoyed this first taste of what I hope will be an exciting and unique story.

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Until next time...
-Unbiased Abyss