Disclaimer: I don't own Legend of the Sun Knight or Naruto.

No one was born evil, but one can be nurtured into the worst nightmare known to man.

She... was one of the results of the nurturing, but thanfully stopped before truly becoming a nightmare; they've got Jiraiya to thank for that, bastards. The Jinchuuriki of the strongest of the Nine, secret leaked out to the village before anything could be made official, hated and scorned for protecting them, hunted and spat upon for being the jailer of the demon they feared so much... There was only so much a human would take before they hit the boiling point, and she'd hit that point long, long ago; everyone was just none-the-wiser, oblivious and so foolish and so arrogant as to think she would be docile, would be kind, would willingly protect them for all the agony they caused her.

But she had common sense. If it was to be discovered that the 'tamed demon' had such wishes, that it wanted to kill them... smart child or not, she was still young, her body was not in the condition to go against any adult. The beatings were enough thankyou, she didn't want to add more to the list of hunters and enemies — and so she hid, she sneaked around them, put on the mask they wanted to see and fooled them into thinking they were in command, when they were just being tricked.

She's had years of experience — who would suspect the idiot, dead last, stupid demon to ever have the smarts? Yes, she could be naïve, but not an idiot. — and no one had caught on her act, not even Jiji had caught her.

But then Jiraiya came, with his stupid grin and perverted books and lecherous ways and honest love.

She was uncomfortable. No one — not even Jiji who she knew lied about many, many, many things — had ever been as honest as he'd been. He laughed and he meant it, he joked and it was to genuinely cheer her and not trick her, he forced her along and it was to spend time having fun (even if it was to empty her wallet, jerk; well, she got revenge when they came to Ichiraku), he shared a popsicle with her just because and no outer reason, he didn't lie but there was that confirmation — that truth — that he knew the answers she craved but not yet — I will tell you when you're older. You have my word, brat. —and then he'd be back to that stupid self, peeping on women, writing his awful books that pissed off the women that met him, laughing and taking care of her and utterly confusing her outlook on what she's known to survive by.

Iruka was wary, he still hid things from her and sometimes there was that hesitance of how to treat her, that flash of hesitation and wariness of what was inside her emotion directed at her.

Jiji lied, as she came to find; he lied and lied and lied — that her parents died in the fight against Kyuubi, that they died before she could be the sacrifice, nochoicenochoicenochoice, that he didn't know them; she distrusted him ever since the truth came out, hardened her mask and sealed the window with iron bars and never let him even peek through the door knob.

The Konoha Twelve were too unknowing of everything and taking what they had for granted — she didn't like them, but she didn't dislike them either, it was just in between and a thin barrier between them and her. They didn't know her, they couldn't know her, they don't even try to, and they expect her to open up like the idiot they thought she was? Hand over her friendship (a strange word, even in her mind) on a golden platter? They were just like the villagers too, or had been, anyway. They had leered at her before, scorned her because the adults did, followed the older people like robots, mimicking them and bullying her and hurting her and making her life as miserable as they could... then years later they expect her to forget it? WIthout even apologizing? Without an ounce of regret?

Tsunade-baachan was there for her, yet not. She knew she was just a mirror to her, reflecting her deceased lover and brother. She had never been herself to Tsunade, there was just "you're like Dan." or "So much like my brother..." or just faraway looks that meant she was within her memories. Tsunade-baachan always saw her as a reminder of her deceased loved ones, never herself; just like how the villagers saw her as Kyuubi and never herself.

Jiraiya would eminence too. Sometimes, there'd be this faraway look, this regret and wistfulness flashing through his eyes, the grimness in his face...

She found out about it.

Her Godfather.

He was her fucking Godfather and he didn't come, wasn't there for her.

Right after that she'd screamed at him, mask broken for once in a long time, anger and rage and pain and hurt and confusion and betrayal bare to the Sannin to see, vulnerable and fragile and broken, confused at why he wasn't there, why he didn't visit, didn't face her, didn't — didn't — didn't anything!

...She stormed out on him, leaving him and not even glancing at his unreadable expression.

...A day later, there was a scroll, a letter, and a sealed object on her table. She didn't touch them, merely sparing them a glance before drifting away.

...A week later, news of the death of Jiraiya no Sannin were tossed around.

...And not a day later, she found out the entire truth written in the letter, the will on the scroll, a gift in the seal.

She cried again.

Sarutobi Hiruzen was no longer Jiji since then, he was on her enemy list, for lying and tricking even Jiraiya, for making him believe she would be taken care of (he even swore it on the grave of his wife!) and healthy when he came back — all for the sake of not dropping the spy network, Hiruzen was willing to sacrifice even the life of a child. The spy network of Jiraiya was too precious, few people even knew he was a spy, and his service was just too valuable for him to drop for a child. It did not matter he was her Godfather or that they were the only family they each had — It was the only way. was Hiruzen's only response to Jiraiya's furious, enraged, downright livid questions after he found out.

(That day, just two weeks shy of the Chuunin Exams, the Hokage was reported to have sparred with the Sannin, and since it was just Jiraiya, no one had bothered to question why the old man was found severely injured. Surely an accident in a friendly spar, right? Incidents like that were pretty common among high-level ninjas.)

...

...

...There was some last words in the letter.

I'm sorry I wasn't there. I know it won't change anything, but...

Know that I will always love you, my goddaughter, Youko.

Something cracked and shattered.

Uzumaki Youko changed.

After the news of Jiraiya no Sannin's death bloomed, there was a drastic change in the personality of the famed sunshine of the Konoha Twelve. It was unnerving, frightening, and it terrified the villagers of Konoha. However, since she was now a ninja, few dared try to 'dicipline' her like in the old days, if not because of her own skill but fear of the Hokage's own severity.

She smiled less, was more serious, more cold, more ruthless, too immersed into her training which had a different meaning, her eyes now a dark color that sent them shivering.

Not that she was weak before, on the contrary she was and still is one of the strongest, but now... it was an entirely different rhythm. This rhythm was ambitious, too different from the cheerful and dedicated training that would go far but not enter forbidden land; the training was now more focused, willing to abandon sleep and study scrolls, practice until she puked blood, go beyond her limits, do anything to learn everything she could to get strongerstrongerstronger.

There were no more anti-shinobi chatters of protecting everything anymore, no more bright smiles, no more laughs full of the naïvety they found so refreshing.

There was only haunted features, unnerving eyes, jaded personality, and simply... fading. She still smiled, but not like before. She still laughed, but it sounded forced most of the time, as if there was no meaning. She still hung out with them, but it was either her ditching or them leaving with excuses while they were too unnerved. She was still carefree, but there was that cynical and scathing remarks on their behaviours, one time of which sent Hinata in tears and made Kiba angry, many of which thickened the line between them. She could be kind, but now it was too rare.

Before, she was the day. Bright and cheerful, shining and smiling, eternally a light.

Now, she was the night. Almost like a melody even; peaceful and haunting, beautiful yet dangerous, potentially soothing as she was deadly, and appearance deceptively harmless and then the next instant screaming dark.

Everyone wanted their Youko back.

But their Youko had never existed to begin with. It was but a mask that she's discarded, a protection that was no longer needed.

This — was the real Youko.

When the Fourth Great Ninja War began, Youko just turned away, expression unreadable before she vanished in a shunshin.

Her name became feared.

She made a blood path. Merciless and unyielding, grim and determined to hack through the undead or the shinobi the Akatsuki threatened into joining their side, blood spattering around her as she made way to her targets; the leaders of the Akatsuki. Death followed her wake, painting the lands in the blood-red of corpses or fluttering white scrapes of resurrected.

Five years after the war began, Youko finally reached the center of Akatsuki and faced off against Madara.

3 days later, Youko finally killed the fallen Uchiha, destroying his eyes, stabbing his skull, cleaving it off and burning everything — for good measure.

1 hour later, the platoon of surviving Shinobi found her, completely still and lungs not producing anymore air, heart having stopped and blood pooling around her pale, ashen, broken body.

20 years after Youko was born, she died killing the main thorn in the Alliance's side.

They cleared off all blood off the field, re-checked there was not a speck of DNA that could be collected, gathered her corpse and buried her far away, in a secret place, fearing that the remaining enemy would find even a hair of the feared kunoichi and revive her, maybe even turn her against them. They didn't resurrect her either, too paranoid about the enemy finding a way to kill her since she would have limited strength, and then turn her against the Shinobi.

Even broken and thrown away, her name still striked fear within their hearts.

Despite killing the main antagonist, the war still raged on for years. The remaining Akatsuki were displeased about abandoning the mission they spend decades growing, they'd be damned if it stopped now; and so they relitiated, making it known that the Akatsuki was still dangerous despite their leader perishing. The war took a turn for the worse, and the nations outside the Elemental Nations were even forced to take part of the war, the threat being too large to ignore or leave to the Elemental Nations to deal; but still, they barely managed to match the Akatsuki's continuous assaults.

In the course of the years, a man with delusions of dead people and knowledge of the Resurrection Technique began tinkering. He studied scrolls and sealing jutsus, delved into dark history, prodded for test subjects (corpses mostly, so no one complained or protested even if they found out; most were too tired, busy, exhausted to reprimand him; what's a few corpses to a hundreds, anyway?) to be handed to him, and spend countless sleepless nights tuning the perfect Resurrection Technique he dreamed of.

The Summoning: Impure World Reincarnation is a forbidden technique where, using a living person as a vessel, a deceased person's soul can be called back to the world of the living and bound to it. The vessel will then take on the form that person had in life, thereby reincarnating them to do their summoner's bidding.

The man glanced down at the pristine corpse, studying the aged bones and remaining flesh on the skeleton. He looked away, turning to a book full with notes to re-check everything.

But what was it that called back the soul?

Will? Chakra? Blood? Sealing? Life force? Flesh?

The Impure World Reincarnation forcefully limits the soul in question, requiring living sacrifices, weakens the resurrected shinobi from what they should be.

It's not invincible. There are already several methods to kill the reincarnated.

Yakushi Kabuto claimed that the Summoning: Impute World Reincarnation was the greatest technique in the universe, capable of summoning the deceased without risk.

But, he would show them. That technique was not the greatest, he would create that of which will surpass the Impure World Reincarnation, without requiring the barrier of a living sacrifice, sealing or vital spots.

It were the ambitions of a selfish and greedy man, who foolishly dreamed of dead people and world domination and power, that created the dark arts that came to be known as Necromancy.

He... finally did it.

"Ha... H-Haha... haha... Pfft... HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" He burst into mad laughter, lab coat covered in grime and dirt from the aged skeletons and splattered with blood from the open flesh of moving corpses.

In front of him, chained to the walls and moaning and howling and deformed, were the resurrected... monsters, he had given life to.

Yes, they were dripping blood, but it was expected considering that they were the flesh wounds which finished them in their first life.

That blood was running once again... or on those that even had blood, anyway.

No required living sacrifices! No weak spot so to speak!

Even skeletons...!

His to control, his to command... all that power his to use.

He laughed and laughed and laughed, feeling victorious and greedy and delirious.

The moving eyeball of a resurrected, a man with half his face burned off, locked on him.

Likewise, the other undead's screeched, stared or simply turned to the cackling of the one who dare disturb their rest.

Their rest was interrupted, and they were less than pleased.

But, condemned to servitude to the man they came to hate, they could do nothing but wait for a second death, otherwise obeying and slaving and uselessly struggling against the control of who came to be as the creator of Necromancy.

Naturally, when the man represented his new technique to the higher-ups to receive permission to use it legally, they were not amused.

They put him on trial, ordered him to show them the full process of summoning the dead, the perfect-ness of his technique.

It could not be copied.

Once they saw what it could do, they practically threw corpses to him, ordering him to resurrect them and have them fight for the Alliance. They locked him within the safest, strongest place they had, their paranoid levels shooting to the roofs and their bones chilled to the bone at the thought of the enemy getting a hand of that technique — but they were desperate too, and thus they would use it. To finish the war which has gone on for almost 2 decades.

The technique turned the tides to their side. The Akatsuki were stunned, baffled, to see skeletons storming into the field. They were hard to kill. Cleave off the head and the body will still move. Chop off a limb and it won't matter. Blood loss was null to them. They were dead, there was no way for them to die again, too strong, monsters in the truest form, many whispered.

The man selfishly guarded the technique, they didn't put in the threat of torture in fear he would clamp up even further, and thus the only way was to coax it out of him. The fruits of it was the man easing up to the point of being willing to teach them how to call the souls of skeletons. A lower-class version taught to only a selected few, who unknown to the man were actually teaching it to as many people as they could without him finding out.

All things considered, the man received a promotion, was hailed as a god and a hero, many complying to his desires no matter how cruel because he had power.

Greedy, they all were, wanting to learn the secret to resurrecting the dead for their own purposes.

It was that greed that of which ended that war, but also brew birth to the ending of their history and the beginning of a new era.

"Woah, this place sure is dirty."

"What'cha expect? This is a grave."

"But... it's hers, right? Shouldn't it be, dunno, um..."

"Heck no, it would attract more attention. The darker the better, it hides everything."

"...The Golden Death, huh?"

"Shhh!"

"Stop standing there! Help me get out the tomb!"

"Yessir!"

That rainy night, lighting flashed across the sky as several men digged out a grave on orders, dragging out the plain coffin with some difficulty.

The Golden Death was required to stand once again, whether she liked it or not.

For the first time since he showed them the new jutsu, he was going out to the battle field.

He was not afraid. Before it, he'd been a jounin. No weakling should stop him. And with his jutsus, he was invincible!

He's already began the ritual of calling forth the Golden Death, even.

Haha. Stupid higher-ups, giving him gold in its truest form.

With the Golden Death, it will be easier to acquire the corpses of other powerful, deceased shinobi - not to mention she was rumoured to have been powerful 15 years ago.

He was a God, nothing could stop him, but it was obvious that a God should only have the best of the best, right?

Besides, seeing the information data on the Golden Death... if she wasn't too flesh-lacking like most of his undead by the time he gave her life, she could be a decent enough treat.

Youko didn't know how much time passed. Maybe an instant, an hour, a day, a week, a year... Death was anything and nothing, there was no distinguishing time. Everything was black, as if she was asleep, except that she was aware of it and soothed by the darkness, for once able to let her guard down and relax happily. Death was comforting, even if she hadn't wanted to meet it early.

Oh well. Beggars can't be choosers.

Suddenly, there was loud screaming in her ears, light began blinding her eyes so painfully even if they were shut, she began burning and heating and pain and whatwashappening—?

The pain. It was excruciating.

But how? Death was nothing, the dead feel nothing, she knew it personally, it's been this way for a long time!

Howhowhowhow?

The next thing she knew her eyes snapped wide open, agony and pain gone, finding herself once again in the light of the living world, her vision of darkness and death gone, and now staring at a field of living shinobi and bones and injured... or not? Were they really alive?

...Such rotten smell. The field stank of it. What the heck? The war was still—

Her brain screeched to a stop as she finally connected some dots.

...The dead feel nothing, her mind repeated numbly, over and over, unwilling to accept the suspicion nagging at her insides, something already threatening to claw its way out of her.

...

...

Her mind was numb, her eyes stared at what she subconsciously recognized as the 'summoner' who stared at her in... greed, delight, glee, and other horrible things flashing through his eyes.

She comprehended what happened.

And then, there were only a few words flashing through her mind.

How dare he? HOW DARE HE? HOW DARE HE?!

The man grinned widely, expression maniac and insane, unaware of the dropping temperature and the danger he was in. "Fanstastic! Not a skeleton or partly injured, but fully fleshed! Amazing... Simply wonderful!" His voice was bubbling with mad, insane, thoughtless laughter. "You're under my command now. Now, go obl—!"

And Youko snapped. Fury and anger and rage and hatred and scorn flowed through her veins, enough to shatter away the slithering chains around her mind into dust, destroying the poor attempt of control on a strong soul such as herself. She growled, baring her teeth, eyes darkening into a black color, killing intent seeping into the air as her shoulder-length gold hair whipped through the air before she succumbed to her desires of ripping them to shreds - that want of killkillkillkill that's been writhing inside her since she was a child, most of it not influenced by the Kyuubi but by the hatred dealt by the villagers.

Vaguely, she remembered an excruciating pain, skin tearing apart, two probings on her back, a warm trickle of liquid sliding down her cheeks, her whole body burning and still wanting to kill... before it all stopped, and then she'd felt powerful, invincible, the stiffness gone, every limit on her body vanish and leaving her with the power she had as a human... except many times more powerful, frightening.

Flexing her fingers -claws- for a moment and testing her body with the curiosity of a child, she then smiled darkly - at both the human that dared dragged her off the comforting, soothing embrace of Death, and the opposite factor compromising of white Zetsu, shinobi and undead, before she descended upon them.

It was their nature that gave birth to an art that not only called souls to do their bidding, but also had the potential to create uncontrollable monsters.

No one had stood a chance. She made a river of blood, painted the ground crimson, mauled them utterly, destroyed them as if they were naught but twigs, dragged out the destruction for as long as she could, barely flinching when other corpses suddenly rose up and roared in unison with her inhuman scream of blubbering emotions, decimating everything and everyone in her path.

She had no ally, not anymore, and even then, her mind was too corrupted by hatred and anger to care.

She went berserk, slaughtering even those that tried to escape or anyone who tried to aid. Sympathy and humanity had left her that instant (not that she'd need the latter, she told herself bitterly). By the time any reinforcement came, coming from the east, north and west, and bearing witness to the massacre that were before their eyes... almost all of them were slaughtered. What once was thousands of human, undead and White Zetsus' alike, dwindled into a short number of few dozens.

What they saw chilled them to the very bones.

An Angel of Death, wings tipped with claws and colored the blackest of black, clawed hands dripping blackened blood with tiny scrapes of meat or white skin between them; her skin was the color of ashen white, like how a corpse should rightfully be; with darkened scar-like whiskers on her cheeks, black markings coiled around her neck and drifted within the cloak of black adorning her deceptively tiny figure; her golden hair, still as bright as when she was alive, was splattered with blood; marks of death bearing proof in her eyes, her mouth was twisted in a silent snarl of displeasure and anger.

Of course, they knew who she was. The Legend, the monster, the hero that slayed off one of the greater threats, and died soon after. She was one of the strongest weapons the ninja history has ever created... supposedly broken and thrown away, and ordered to come back from the dead to serve them once again — or so had been the intention when they decided to resurrect her. Now that same weapon was posing her blade into one of her own, or what was one of her own. She couldn't be called one of them again, she was not human anymore, she was an undead, a soul resurrected using the technique which was improved off the undead resurrection technique Yakushi Kabuto supposedly completed.

Luckily, by then her anger and rage had dimmed enough, but not completely, to give her some state of mind.

No one had been able to move, the atmosphere too heavy and themselves frightened of the demoness before them, and when she turned to look at them with those eyes, their hearts felt like stopping.

"Get in my way, and I'll kill you."

No one stopped her when she turned away, vanishing completely in a flash of gold.

They looked at the mangled corpses, insides scattered across the gruesome landscape, blood painting the ground in crimson, with death lurking in every inch of the dirt.

Truly befitting of the one called the Golden Death.

That day had been the last showdown, the battle that would decide everything for the Fourth Shinobi War, and it was ended in a ridiculously easy, mind-scarring, blood-freezing way by a girl who had never truly lived.

Fueled by the hatred, resentment, hurt, pain and anger she's bottled inside her ever since her birth, it all burst forth after her revival in one crushing blow; and thus she added another level to the evolution of undead Necromancy.

And so the first Death Lord was ever born.

When everyone came around naming the undead, only two classes were named into a section of their own. There was either low-level or mid level, and then it escalated into a Death Knight, and finally the strongest evolution of an undead: A Death Lord.

However, to those that know about the first Death 'Lord', they called her by a different name, in both fear and respect of her power in both life and death. Being the only recorded Death Lord who's ever been a female, along with being the first Death Lord, she was titled "The Death Lady" instead.

The Death Lady; no one knows where she is or if she's still alive, and even if she only made an appearance once as an undead, it was enough to create history.

There is low-class undead, mid-class undead, a Death Knight, and finally a Death Lord. They each had several of their own.

The Death Lady was an exception, and only she would bear the title of The Death Lady.

And so the years passed, her appearance became forgotten, her name was lost in time, her existence as a human and undead slowly disappeared; now, the only thing you would find about her, would be in the pages of an ancient book, stories of Shinobi's descendants, or tales of the Dark Age Of Before.

You won't find her name, her race, her appearance, or any data just by scrolling through some pages.

Now, centuries later, she's commonly known as The Death Lady or The Golden Death in ancient myths, stories, or documents that still make the human population doubt whether her existence was real or not.

Despite the results of it, many began clamouring on learning the art of Necromancy, loving the feel of power and ignoring the consequences until it was too late. The Necromancers, after perfecting the act of summoning the dead, began creating even more techniques that involved the arts of corpses, dark attributes and death.

Those that disapproved of the Necromancy voiced it out, attempting to rebuke them but only succeeding in causing a war once again, this time between the factors that wanted the Necromancy and those that did not.

To fight against the terror of Necromancy, everyone abandoned the ninja arts (so far, they were useless against undead) and created the arts to counter attack them: The Holy Spells.

Following this example, many abandoned the arts of shinobi even more, instead opting to evolve their own method of techniques since the undead began to grow into a huge threat. Many learned the Holy Spells, many followed the path of Necromancy, many created other ways to fight off against the new arts, while very few stuck to the Shinobi Arts.

With the new arts, people began believing in religions, in the Death God and the God of Light, and many other deities. Before, very few dared pray to deities, however now it was a common occurence to hear someone praising a God for a good hunt.

Slowly, the era of the Shinobi was forgotten, made into legends of old and stories used to scare children.

But, there were still others that believed in it, and passed down the truth down to their descendants, warning them of the true terror of what could be.

Along with it, the descendants of the last Shinobi who were told of The End, were truly paranoid when met with rumours of a Death Knight, especially when they experienced first hand the power of a Death Lord, although not the same one as whom their ancestors warned them of.

After hearing the last battle of the famous Fourth Great Ninja War, they did not want to meet the Death Lady that was once the Golden Death — ever.

Meanwhile, everyone was oblivious to the golden-haired girl within their midst, blue eyes showing an age older than what her appearance hinted, body language controlled and movement precise, a faint smile on her lips as she watched over the playing, laughing children with unusual fondness, giving a small chuckle herself when they tried to make her play with them.

If a trained human bothered to inspect her close up, they would notice the small, painfully suppressed traces of darkness around her, so alike to that of... an undead.

The first Death Lord, The Death Lady, was still walking in the Living World, taking the appearance of her human self with the help of an artifact and entering the midst of humans who were none the wiser.

Literally a wolf in a sheep's clothing, eh?

I got hooked with reading 1/2 Prince, and then through it, got to read the Legend of the Sun Knight, although the manga are still running about. I love them very much. Praise the skilled writer who created them. They are very funny, the right atmosphere, with a huge amount of imagination - only thing I'm disappointed is the lack of interest in it. Suggest you read 1/2 Prince and Legend of the SUn KNight. The two plots MAY be boring in the beginning (to me it wasn't though), but gets really better as it goes further down the road! (my opinion though)

This is an AU, considering that I extended the time of the war and changed FemNaruto AKA Youko.

I doubt the Elemental Nations are the only land filled to the brim with ninja, surely there are other places on the planet with ninja villages blooming, even if they're not known to the Elemental Nations? Just like in Harry Potter, where England is not likely the only place populated with magic, and how there's a branch of magic on each place of the planet (i.e. Japan, France, Australia, China, ect).

For now though, it's just a one shot.