Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ End of Days ❯ Appearance ( Chapter 1 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Disclaimer- I do not own Naruto or any element of it, including characters, locations, and techniques used by said characters. My original characters, locations, and techniques are mine however so please do not steal them. Asking me nicely will get you a lot farther if you want to use one for some reason.

((Author's Note: Before I begin I would like to state that this story is posted elsewhere and under a different name than the one being used here. It is however mine and should it be necessary I am capable of proving it.))

Chapter 1;

Appearance

The hot summer sun sat in the sky, beating down on the coastal cliffs at the edge of the Earth Country. From the top of these cliffs the ocean seemed to stretch out forever to the north. A rather steep path was carved into the side of the cliff, leading down to the white sand of the beach that stretched across nearly the entire northern border of the Country. No more than three hundred feet from the shore a large ship was anchored in the water. Its torn white sails showed that it had had a rough journey from wherever it had come from.

At the edge of the cliffs, very near the crude path down, four shinobi were crouched low behind rocks. Three of them wore metal headbands over their foreheads and the final had an identical one tied around the upper portion of his right arm. All of the bands showed what appeared to be a single broken boulder, the symbol associated with the shinobi village of Hidden Stone.

A small rowboat had been lowered from the main ship now and was heading for the beach. As far as the small group of shinobi could tell, only three people were aboard it.

"Alright, remember that the mission is only to learn their intentions. Do not engage unless they make the first move!" The mans voice was full of confidence, but regardless, he gave the order without taking his eyes off of the boat for even a second.

The other three nodded to show him that they understood what to do and all three began their descent towards the beach. It only took them a minute and they found themselves crossing the scalding hot sand at the same time the three from the ship were climbing from their boat.

The first out of the boat was also the tallest. He wore a pair of tan colored pants and no shirt, though two metal belts circled his body. The two belts were not worn as normal people would wear them, but rather they came over his shoulders and crossed the center of his chest in an X shape. He was very muscular, even in comparison to the toughest looking of the four shinobi. A pair of rectangular glasses sat in front of his dark brown eyes, which matched the color of his hair perfectly.

The second was a girl, much shorter than the man and appearing a couple years younger. If they'd had to guess, the shinobi probably would have said she was seventeen. Her clothing was plain, a simple blue shirt and a pair of black pants. At her side though she wore a wore a broad sword, a fact which made the shinobi a little more alert than they'd been before noticing it. She had light brown hair and her green eyes seemed to pierce right through the shinobi, a feeling which for a brief second gave all of them the urge to just turn and run.

However they did not. They stood their ground as the third occupant of the boat, a boy with bright red hair that looked just a bit older than the girl, climbed from the boat onto the beachs hot sand. Like the first man he appeared to be completely unarmed.

The man with the Hidden Stone headband around his arm looked the three new arrivals over carefully. After a moment of silence, he spoke. "State your purpose for being here."

Another moment passed in silence, both sides seeming to stare each other down. Finally the boy with bright red hair raised his hand and extended four of his finger, one pointed towards each of the shinobi.

"Flamma Telum." A small bolt of flame shot from each of his fingers the second he finished speaking.

They were at too close range and had no time to react as a bolt pierced through each of their chests. All of them collapsed to the ground instantly, three dead and one badly injured. The survivor howled and pain and turned away from them in panic, trying to pull himself across the beach to safety. Though part of him knew that it was already over.

They let him crawl a few feet before the red haired boy reached down to one of his fallen comrades and took a kunai from the small pack strapped onto his leg. The boy threw it with no emotion of any kind on his face as it pierced through the back of the shinobis neck and his head collapsed onto the sand. He looked first to the man who stood about a foot taller than him, then to the girl on his other side. "Where there are ants...there is sure to be an anthill. Find it and crush it."

The other two nodded towards him and responded "Yes, sir" simultaneuosly, then they hurried off as their leader climbed back into the small rowboat and started back towards the ship with news of the skirmish.

-

Several hundred miles away, a young blond haired shinobi was enjoying his seventh bowl of ramen. The boy was dressed in an orange and black outfit, an improvement from the old blue and orange one he used to wear in his opinion. He sat on a stool at an unfamiliar ramen shop, a pile of bowls slowly accumulating beside him. It didn't really matter though, he had plenty of money at the moment and even if he didn't he could easily disappear and never return.

He didn't even know exactly where he was so that made the idea of never coming back quite easy. He knew that he was somewhere just outside the borders of the Fire Country and at least a hundred or two miles from the village he called his home. He hadn't seen it in nearly two years now, though it seemed hard to believe it had really been that long. After Sasukes betrayal he had no desire to stay in that place, he needed a vacation.

Then again spending two years travelling with his sensei, a man named Jiraiya, was one of those things you'd really have to be insane to call a vacation. He'd done practically nothing but train and watch Jiraiya chase women around the entire time, not that he minded the training part, but the woman chasing part had gotten on his nerves a bit lately. He was always ready for anything that could make him stronger...he needed to be stronger than Sasuke so that when he finally found him he'd be able to beat some sense into him this time.

As Naruto finished his final bowl of ramen, he noticed the white haired Jiraiya sit down on the stool beside him at his left. He spoke as Naruto payed the man behind the counter for his meal. "I managed to get some information. Apparently the Hidden Sound shinobi we've been tracking was last seen in a small village about ten miles west of here, so we're moving on."

Narutos face immediatly shifted to that annoyed face he always made whenever he was given a mission that he didn't want to do. "Can't we just spend one night in an inn for once? I'm sick of sleeping in fields and forests."

"There'll be plenty of time for that once we've caught our target. This one might finally be the link to Sasuke and Orochimaru that we've spent the past two years looking for." He assured him.

With a heavy sigh Naruto gave up the arguement, knowing that he didn't have a chance at winning anyway, and the two of them walked westward towards the next town.

-

Back in Hidden Stone, a man in his mid thirties sat behind a desk which was piled high with paperwork. He sighed with relief that his break, no matter how brief it would be, had come with the sound of his office door opening. A Jounin stepped inside with a slight bow to the man at the desk. "Tsuchikage-sama, two unidentified individuals have been spotted approaching the village from the direction that ship was reported in this morning. The team you sent out to investigate does not appear to be with them."

This sudden influx of information left him in silence for a few seconds, before coming to the obvious conclusion. "Go to the gate and tell the guardsthat nobody is to be let in or out for the time being and make sure they know the order came directly from me. If they attempt a forced entry, kill them."

"Yes, sir." The Jounin responded before quickly dissapearing from sight.

The Tsuchikage sighed again as he looked back to the pile of paperwork, then redirected his gaze out the window in the direction the potential intruders were supposedly approaching from. "I can already tell...this is gonna be a long day."

A few minutes passed staring out the window before he finally decided to get back to his work and picked up the pen at the edge of his desk. He finished a couple sheets before the sound of an explosion pulled his attention quickly away from the desk. Looking out the window he could see columns of smoke rising from the direction of the northern gate. He was up from his chair and through the door without a moments hesitation.

-

The pair from the ship stood just inside the village, the gates behind them having been blown inward. Around them the ground was littered with the bodies of at least twenty Hidden Stone shinobi. The girl sheathed her sword while the tall man with glasses just stood there with a bored expression on his face. "This is pathetic. These people seemed like their warriors at first, but then they just started dropping like flies..."

"Indeed. It is pathetic." The girl replied in the most bland tone Humanly possible.

The two of them looked ahead of them as the Tsuchikage himself appeared in the street directly in front of them and approached them without any sign of caution. The man with glasses smirked slightly at the fearless expression on his face. The Tsuchikage stopped his approach about fifteen feet from them and spoke with obvious anger in his voice. "How dare you do this, if you think you're leaving here alive I'm afraid you're badly mistaken!"

"Who the hell does this guy think he is?" The man said with a hint of amusement.

"I am the Tsuchikage, leader of this Hidden Stone village!" His fury was quickly rising, his temper had always been his one downfall in battles.

"Eh? The hell's a Tsuchikage? What the hell. Let's just kill this bastard." The man said to his female partner.

"Yes, let's." She responded in the same toneless voice as before.

The girl raised her right hand quickly above her head and with the words "Aqua Fluctus." a wall of water seemed to materialize out of nowhere behind the two of them.

She brought her hand down and the water came over their heads and straight at the Tsuchikage. He quickly jumped out of the way and landed on the roof of a nearby building. Glancing down at where he had been he saw that the force with which the water had hit had been enough to put several large cracks in the street. Looking up a bit from that point he saw that the girl was staring at the cracks in the street, paying no attention to him. The man..."Shit! Where'd he go?" He thought to himself as he noticed the man was gone.

A slight noise behind him was all the warning he had and he quickly turned just in time to block the mans fist with his forearm. The force from the impact was much more than he'd expected and he was knocked backwards, landing back in the street. "Dammit. Looks like I can't take these two lightly."

He pulled five shuriken from a pouch at his side and threw them towards the girl, who effortlessly deflected them with her broad sword. He followed the attack with a single kunai before she had time to counter. She raised her blade to deflect it as well, but just before reaching her it started smoking, then exploded in her face.

The Tsuchikage shifted to the right as the dark haired mans fist slammed into the ground where he'd been standing, leaving an indent where it struck. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted the girl coming at him again. Her shirt was singed but other than that she appeared to have completely evaded the explosive note he'd wrapped around the handle of the kunai.

He quickly performed several handseals and a wall of earth shot up behind him, blocking the swing of the girls blade at the last second. Unfortunately his jutsu had left him open for a split second and the man took the opportunity to hit him squarely in the chest. The blow knocked him back into his own wall as the man came forward to finish him off.

In an instant, three members of the Hidden Stones special forces were standing between him and the man, protecting him from the attack. The man pulled his attack and flipped up over the Tsuchikages earth wall, landing beside his partner who was standing with her sword sheathed, waiting for him to finish things on his own. He looked at her in frustration. "Come on. We're retreating for now, this bastards a lot stronger than the others."

She obliged and the two of them took off through the gates. The three special forces shinobi started to pursue them as the Tsuchikage lowered his wall, but he quickly stood up and raised his arm to show them not to. "Let them go for now...send news of what just happened here to all of our allies. Even I had trouble holding those two off...and chances are good that there are more than just those two."

Without any sign of acknowledgement, the three of them headed off quickly to obey their orders.

-

Several hours later Tsunade, otherwise known as the Fifth Hokage, had her face planted on her desk. She was snoring lightly and a small puddle of drool was beginning to accumulate on some of her papers. Her eyes slowly opened and she blinked sleepily as she heard the sound of something outside tapping on her window. She turned her head to see a falcon standing on the windowsill, a letter tied to its left leg.

She stood up stretching and yawning, wondering silently how long she'd been out. She opened the window and took the envelope from the bird, which screeched and flew away immediatly. The first thing she noticed was the Hidden Stone symbol on the front of the envelope. "That's interesting...we havn't heard from them in the entire time I've been Hokage..."

Slightly more interested now, she opened the envelope and began to read. The farther down it she read, the grimmer the expression on her face grew. When she finally finished, she looked up towards the door and yelled "Raido!".

A moment later a young man with dark spiky hair and a bad scar on his left cheek stepped into the room. "Yes, Hokage-sama?"

"There may be a problem...I'd like to see Hatake Kakashi and Maito Gai ASAP." She said as she sat back down at her desk, placing the letter in a drawer.

Raido nodded an affirmative and then disappeared, shutting the door behind him. Tsunada took a kleenex from the corner of her desk and wiped up the drool, then took the letter out of her drawer and started looking it over again.

It was only fifteen minutes before Gai appeared in the room, but Tsunade refused to go over anything until Kakashi arrived. So the two of them sat there as an hour went by, Gai telling Tsunade all the stories he could think of, most of them involving Lee in some way or another. She was considering commenting on his unhealthy obsession with the boy when the door opened and Kakashi stepped in, smiling beneath his face mask. "Sorry, I got los-"

"Shut up and look at this." She said holding the letter out to Kakashi for the two of them to read, her patience had run out about half an hour earlier.

Gai got behind Kakashi, looking over his shoulder to see the letter as he read. As soon as the two of them had both finished, he handed the letter back to Tsunade. "And so you're sending us to see what's going on." Kakashi stated as she took it.

"Pretty much, yes. But only Gai will be going directly to Hidden Stone, along with his old team if he can round them all up." She said giving him a look to let him know she didn't need to hear any celebrations.

"And what will you have me doing?" Kakashi asked with his usual serious face.

"Take Sakura, track down Naruto, then meet up with Gais team at the border of the Earth Country."