Prologue:

Some say that heroes are begotten by destiny, gifted to the world with an inherent strength that reaches into the fabric of reality and shifts the very balance of life and death. Some say that heroes are a creation of fate, crafted by worldly experience and shaped by the shifting of fates, the changing of the seasons. Others, however... Others believe that heroes are neither destined nor fated. Instead, they are ordinary humans, whether gifted or average, strong or weak, that stumble upon the right circumstances at the right time. For the sake of the world, heroes must be happenstance, for if their deeds were scheduled, they would no longer be heroes.

This is not the story of a person who was touched by fate. It is not the story of a remarkable shinobi, begotten and born into a destiny.

This is the story of an accident.

This is the story of an ordinary man with an extraordinary weight upon his shoulders.

This is the story of a hero.

Konohagakure no Sato

"The Village Hidden in the Leaves, Konohagakure, is the seat of military rule in Hi no Kuni, Fire Country."

This statement could be said without any doubts, and even the civilian militaries and mercenaries could say and do absolutely nothing to change this fact. In fact, civilian militia and mercenaries all but disappeared from the plane of existence in Hi no Kuni following the formation of Konohagakure no Sato. What remnants of the local town-watches and mercenary companies still survived lived on the meager pay of farmers and townspeople that were sometimes too poor to hire full-fledged shinobi for their troubles. The massive monopoly on militarism that the shinobi forces ruled was slowly phasing even that mediocre business out of existence. The fact of the matter was that a team of three genin and a jonin was much more affordable to hire once than mercenaries were to hire for a long-term protection job. It was because of this cheap and efficient way of solving problems that Konohagakure thrived both inside and outside of the borders of Hi no Kuni.

Unfortunately for Konohagakure no Sato, the morning of October 10th was not to be as blissful and peaceful as a simple C-ranked mission would allow. The Yondaime Hokage, Namikaze Minato, was rushing to finish paperwork at his desk and looking out over the village to ease his mind and calm his nerves. He could feel that something strange was happening in the village, but he could not possibly tell what it was. Every time he signed a paper, his instinct would flare up and he would feel as if a dark storm-cloud loomed over Konohagakure. There had to be a reason, but since none of his shinobi had reported anything strange and all in the village seemed calm, he was able to push aside his thoughts every time they wandered too far from his paperwork and stamp or sign a few documents. His mind was wandering a bit too much for his liking today, especially since it was his son's fourteenth birthday. The strange feeling that something was wrong permeated his thoughts and stopped his pen from scratching on his scrolls, and after his instinct flared up again, this time much worse than before, he stood and immediately flashed out of the room.

It was in a state of calm stasis that he found his manor house, completely undisturbed and unmolested. The bushes lining his home's outer-wall rustled a bit in the wind and his grass needed a bit of a trim later that day, but the house itself was completely untouched. He thumbed over the doorknob of his front door and heard a satisfying click that told him his chakra seal had unlatched the door. Upon entry, he was greeted by a modest living room with a modest television, a modest couch, and a modest amount of furnishing. Everything was perfectly quiet and lonely, which was what disturbed him. His wife, Kushina, was not on any missions, and thus could have been out of the house with some of her friends. His son, however, was always on the couch with a training scroll this early in the morning, even on holidays. With Naruto, his son, missing in action and a tense sense of danger surrounding the entire village in his shinobi instinct, Minato took action swiftly. He first flashed into his son's room (something which he rarely did after the LAST time he had done so and had paid the price), then to the ramen stand, then to the library, then to each of the village's training grounds. Naruto was nowhere to be found.

Neither was Kushina. He did not find her at the ramen stand, nor at any of the shops that she frequented with some of her friends when they were feeling particularly interested in material goods. Furthermore, none of her friends had even seen her that day. In fact, Mikoto had knocked on the manor house's front door not long after Minato had left to start his daily paperwork and had received no answer. It wasn't strange for his son to disappear with his friends at times, but he always told Minato and Kushina that he was going out for the day in case they needed him for something. No, something most definitely was not right in Konohagakure no Sato, and Minato intended to find out exactly what was amiss with his senses.

He next tried at the Nara clan compound, where none of the younger Nara shinobi had spotted Naruto, nor had any of the chunin and jonin that his prodigy jonin son often conversed with. He next tried the Aburame clan compound, where one of the members offered to send out some kikaichu to look for the naturally massive chakra reserves of the Uzumaki-Namikaze mix. After accepting that offer, he tried with the Akimichi clan, none of whom had any answers for where his family was. After the Akimichi clan, Minato tried the Inuzuka clan, where a young genin offered to take one of the clan dogs out to help search. After referring the Inuzuka to the Aburame clan member who was also searching, Minato flashed to the front of the Yamanaka clan's housing, where no one had seen any sign of his family. In a last ditch effort to find someone who both knew Naruto and knew where he or Kushina were, Minato found himself at the Hyuga compound, where two branch family members were sent out to use their Byakugan to assist in the search.

When a kage got a bad feeling in his gut, it was usually best to act on that feeling.

All of these searches bore absolutely no fruit whatsoever, and so a slightly distressed Minato was forced to dismiss the clan members searching for his family and instead return to searching himself. He was walking along the streets of Konoha, having expended his list of possible places to Hiraishin to find his family, looking for any possible trace of his wife and son. His mind was just beginning to lean toward heading back home when the ground began to shake.

It was not just a tiny tremble. This not-so-tiny tremble was accompanied closely by a bright flash of light and an ear-popping explosion. The Yondaime Hokage, having just heard and felt the results of a major explosion, instantly entered into combat-awareness mode and flashed to the top of the Hokage Monument, where the village had just finished adding the final touches to his monumental Hokage face. Off in the distance, on the other side of the village and a mile or so through the forest, Minato saw the massive ball of blue light that was causing the ground to quake violently. It was quite obviously the result of some incredibly destructive jutsu, he just knew it. The fact that every tree that was uprooted and launched by the ball of light was almost immediately vaporized told him all that he needed to know.

"Naruto..."

At ground zero, the explosion beside Konoha

Uzumaki-Namikaze Naruto, a fourteen year old prodigy jonin that had flourished under the tutelage of the Yondaime Hokage, struggled to stand back up after having devastated the environment around him with an Oodama Rasengan that put his previous renditions to shame. His naturally large reserves, received due to his Uzumaki heritage and Namikaze training regime, were nearly completely drained by the massive jutsu he had just unleashed upon the forest around him. The reason for this outburst of destructive chakra usage was quite simple. One moment he and his mother had been taking a walk through the village, the next moment his mother disappeared within some form of black hole that led to a masked man's eyes, the next moment Naruto was chasing the man through the forests of Hi no Kuni. Upon finally catching up to the man (who had stopped and turned around), Naruto had used every form of battle taught to him by his parents to try and bring the masked man down, but it had done absolutely nothing to stop the man.

In fact, all of Naruto's attacks had completely and entirely phased through the man in question, including jutsu such as the normal Rasengan. Without thinking (something unusual for him), Naruto unleashed his strongest Oodama Rasengan on the masked man, obliterating the forest around him and carving a crater into the ground at least a meter deep for a few hundred meters in diameter. It didn't seem to matter, though, because as soon as Naruto finished standing, he saw the masked man standing in the same spot as before, glaring at him through the hole in the front of his mask.

Naruto, the prodigy of Konoha's newer generation, collapsed backward and started to slip into unconsciousness. The last things that he heard before he slipped away into the blackness were a strange, otherworldly sound and the roar of a beast much, much larger than himself.

...

...

...

"Shiki Fujin!"
...

...

...

"Fuin!"