Now It Begins

-4 years later-

The man who covers his left eye with bandages stepped in front the orphanage. With a polite knock he knocked the old oak doors of the orphanage. A few seconds later the nun opened up the door and saw her master standing in front of the door. She immediately kneeled as she welcomed her.

"Welcome, Danzo-sama!" she exclaimed.

"At ease." The man said. "Consider your mission completed and took a few days break."

He walked past the nun as he traversed the corridor that led to the backyard of the orphanage. There he saw various aged children was playing with each other. The exception was the pale skinned boy that had hair as dark as night itself. The boy was sitting on the boulder that the kids used for various games. He stood behind the large rock as he tested the boy for how long would it take for him to notice him.

Barely a few seconds had passed when the boy turned around and looked the man dead in the eye with his black pupilless eyes.

"Not bad for an untrained orphan." The man thought.

He took a breath and molded chakra in his abdomen, infusing with his breath. He exhaled an invisible chakra infused breath around him and the boy, using this as a medium he cast a mild genjutsu on the boy. The genjutsu would incline the boy to trust the man and subconsciously follow him.

"Come with me." Said the man. "Your destiny is not anywhere besides me; you shall become a powerful shinobi that would change the course of the entire world. You and I are the cogs in the machine that will shake the entire word."

"Who are you?" asked the boy in a coarse voice. It could be seen that the boy was not the talkative type as he was not used to talking.

"I am your new master." The man said. While infusing more chakra to his genjutsu he asked the boy "And who are you?"

"I-I don't k-know." Said the boy in a shaky voice. The genjutsu made him confused. He instinctively knew that he only trusts this man and no one else. "Who am I?" asked the boy himself. In the past years he couldn't bond with the kids at his age as he couldn't understand their feelings. They were always happy and smiling, the boy couldn't wrap around his head why they were always laughing. While everybody around him had a name to identify himself with, he had none. The boy was already having problems with social interactions due to having no name and adding his inability understand the feelings of others drove him to be cast out from the children that he was supposed to 'bond' and made him more introverted than he already was. He truly was clueless about himself and what was he supposed to do in this foreign world.

"Who am I?" repeated the boy out loud.

"You are my subordinate." the man said.

"I am the master's subordinate." said the boy in a mesmerized state. The genjutsu was indeed effective.

"Follow me boy" he said as he walked the road that leads to the root with a smirk in his face.

The boy followed him closely with a newfound goal of his life.

When they arrived the doors of the root, the man opened the doors and let the boy in. What the boy saw next minute was the stairs that seemed as if they had no end. They started slowly climbed down the stairs without saying a single world to each other. When they finally reached the end of the stairs the boy was shocked once again to see a suspended bridge that converges with another suspended bridge and makes a cross pattern leading to four different doors. The boy looked around and saw that they were in a cylindrical complex that led down, he boy came closer to the side of the bridge and looked down to understand the building's structure. He saw that there were multiple overlapping bridges as they were on right now that lead to different doors on different floors. "There must be dozens of different floors." He thought. They directly crossed the cross shaped bridge and opened up the door that was directly in front of them. There the boy saw a figure wearing a black long cloak and a panda mask along with another boy that was near his age. This boy was wearing a simple blue shirt with an even simpler black pants. His short black hair and big eyes complemented his rounded facial features. The big almond eyes of the slightly chubby boy made him looked like an adorable child.

The man wearing bandages on his right eye looked to the boy he brought with him.

"Your name will be Kasai from now on. And the other boy over there will be your roommate, your comrade and your brother in the years that you spend in here training." He spoke. "You will be given courses on basic literature, ninjutsu, kenjutsu, genjutsu as well as introductory fuinjutsu."

While speaking for the two boys, "Your Kumo-sensei here, will oversee and report your progress to me. If I do not find your results satisfactory, there will be additional punishment. From the moment that you will receive your seals you will have no longer affiliations from the outside world, you will be only aligned to me and my Root." He spoke as the figure in the panda mask handed over a fuinjutsu set.

"Open your mouths and roll your tongues out." The man demanded from the to boys who stood next to each other.

The boys did as they told as the man started working on the seal on their tongues. When he finished his seals, he started speaking again.

"This seal will stop you from speaking about the Root." He explained. Then he nodded to the figure in the panda mask to indicate the starting of the boys' training.

The figure in the mask told the boys to follow him and left for the stairs them leads to the deepest part of the root compound. There the boys saw a corridor full of doors. They followed their newly appointed sensei to the door that labeled as 'Edification room six'. He opened the metal door to reveal a hundred square room with an elliptical chabudai in the middle of the room. There were three shojis leading to different rooms in the three sides of this room.

"In this room I will teach the aforementioned lessons. Beyond the doors that are located in the right and left of this room is your sleeping quarters. The door that is right in front of you is where we will be practicing taijutsu as well as kenjutsu." Their teacher explained.

"You have your time until 2 o'clock, get acquainted with your companion as well as your surroundings. You can use this room but taijutsu room as well as going outside is off limits." He told them while pointing at a clock that was mounted above the door that leads to the taijutsu room.

"Understood?" He asked the boys.

"Yes sir!" replied the boy while Kasai just nodded. Satisfied with their reply their answer, the man wearing the panda mask left the room.

The boy turned to Kasai with a smile on his face and said "So you got named Kasai. I got named Junpei" with an enthusiastic tone.

"I hope we can get along and become good friends." Said Junpei said with a beaming smile.

Kasai was dumbfounded as to why the boy if front of him was smiling. He tilted his head to the side as he tried to understand why the boy was happy. Like the other small creatures in the orphanage that he came from, Kasai seemed to unable understand him too.

"Why do you hope that?" Kasai questioned Junpei.

Junpei was surprised at Kasai's question. He looked at the face of the boy standing if front of him to understand his intentions but the intent behind the dark pupilless eyes was still a mystery for him.

"You and I are going to train and live together as long as we stay here, so I thought getting along with each other would make our lives more comfortable." Junpei responded.

"Hmm." Kasai responded indifferently as he walked to the left side sleeping quarters. He slid open the shoji and stepped inside the small room. As Junpei saw that Kasai picked the left room, he shrugged and went for the right one.