The rainfall

Long before the Uchiha clan was born, Raijin walked the earth.

He was a gentle child, and despite growing during a famine, he never let his circumstances define him.

He was beautiful and strong, the pride of his family. His features were sharp, his hair pure black and his eyes piercing.

But before he had been any of these things, he was clever.

As he grows into his power, the people around him trust him with more and more responsibilities.

He was a storm of lightning and flame on the battlefield, and he trampled over the people who dared attack his tribe.

It wasn't long before he commanded an army of two-hundred men.

But he was still very young.

When their most hated foe offered them a peace treaty, despite everybody else's pleas, he accepted.

"What is the use of learning about the past." He said. "If we can't move on from it?"

He knew of the rumors surrounding the Hell Lake Clan, but if he couldn't rise above this sort of thing as a leader, nobody would.

He went with his father and twenty of his best men, in neutral territory.

It turned out to be a trap, of course.

His father and friends were killed in front of him, and he ended up being the only survivor.

Later, when he finds his way back to their compound, he only finds ruin.

When they send him his mother's head back, he breaks.

Until then, he had never known failure.

Everybody he held dear was dead, and it was his fault.

Later on, when he becomes his era's most terrifying figure, he remembers this moment as the start.

Naruto woke up with a gasp.

"Where am I?" He was sleeping in a tent, it seemed. He heard insects buzzing and saw the light of a campfire through the opening flap. "Oh, right."

They had met up with Kurenai's team after close to five days, including breaks.

He had tried his best to ignore the last dream.

He had pretended that the voice he had heard more than a year ago had been something brought on by exhaustion.

Looking at his shaky hands, he knew that no matter what it was exactly, he couldn't keep his head in the sand.

But where did you go exactly from there? Naruto wasn't sure what they did with mentally disturbed genin — reserve genin — exactly, and wasn't sure he cared to find out.

He went out of his tent, as he couldn't sleep anyways.

There was a woman with jet-black, curly hair sitting on a log near the campfire. Yūhi Kurenai, Team Six's sensei, and Asuma's more or less secret girlfriend.

"Can't sleep, I take it?" She asked.

"No. Had some strange dreams."

"Sorry to hear that. If you'd like, I could put you to sleep." She shrugged.

"You can do that…?"

She smirked. "Genjutsu has a lot of applications. It would be child's play to help someone willing to fall back into sleep."

"Huh. I didn't know that."

"Well… It's the only way some career ninjas manage to sleep. Besides pills, I mean."

He winced and they lapsed into silence.

"You're a close friend of Sakura, aren't you?"

He had never really stopped to consider their closeness, in truth.

She continued. "She talks about you often, just like she talks about Ino, so the rest was easy to figure out."

"Yes. I think we are." He decided, feeling some warmth in his stomach he hadn't expected.

She smiled, and it lit her eyes. She was beautiful, he thought. "Good. Friends are crucial in our line of work… more than anything else."

"How is Sakura-san?"

Kurenai was proud, it was clear as day. "She's growing stronger each day." She mused. "I never met anyone with such fine control over their chakra. And such a willingness to learn too. Truth be told, she's like the perfect student for me!" She laughed.

"I'm glad."

"Not that Sasuke and Toru are bad, far from it." Kurenai amended. "Both of them are very competitive, in a friendly way."

Naruto snorted. He definitely had noticed an intense competitive streak in both of them, the few times he had seen them train.

"And I think that with brothers such as Itachi and Shisui, they probably feel like they have a long shadow to get out of." She thought. "Well, maybe I shouldn't be saying that out loud."

Shisui, he knew of. Some hot-shot Jōnin, who was back in the public eye after what most people assumed to be a years-long stint in the ANBU.

He was less familiar with Itachi, though.

"Itachi?"

"Sasuke's older brother, and the future Uchiha clan leader. He can be a bit more… discreet than Shisui." She laughed.

"That isn't that hard, though." Naruto smiled, too. There was nobody in the village who didn't know exactly who Uchiha Shisui was. He had made sure of it.

"True. But between the two of them, you'd be hard pressed to find who's the most talented. Itachi is not even twenty yet, but he's already reached S-rank classification in each of the Four other nations' books."

Both of them were younger than her, too. There was something scary about these young prodigies.

"S-rank?" He whistled. "These are kind of monsters, right?"

"You could say that. We only have about a dozen in Konoha, and that's counting the Hokage. Three of them are from the Uchiha clan, which makes it the strongest clan, in a sense."

"That's a lot."

It probably showed on his face, as she smiled.

"I've heard from… Someone. That you joined the reserve corps?" She asked curiously. It was not common for somebody of his apparent skill.

To Naruto, there was no question who the someone who talked about him was.

"How are you and Asuma doing, anyway?" He turned the question back on her.

She blushed. "Never mind. Let me put you back to sleep, then."

The town of Nadami, close to the border of the Land of Rain, was a pretty bleak one.

There was still some forest, but it was getting sparser and sparser. The weather was, well, rainy.

It was hot and humid, and you always felt like thunder was just waiting to strike.

Nadami itself was rather small, compared to Konoha. The sun had risen already, for the little difference it made. It was still dark, and the sky was still gray.

"Not a bad place, huh?" Toru asked him, wiggling his eyebrows, when he saw his reaction.

Naruto snorted. "Could be worse, I guess."

It was a bit peculiar to see such an expressive face, combined with the Sharingan's glaring red. He was more used to seeing it on stern police officers, or the Fifth himself, who was pretty… stoic.

"Toru… Please turn your Sharingan off. You're wasting your chakra." Kurenai sighed.

"It's good practice, though." He shrugged, the single tomoe in each of his eyes spinning lazily. "That's what my brother says, at least."

"Well, Itachi says that it's also good not to depend on it all the time, too." Sasuke interjected.

"You're obviously jealous you don't have one yet, though."

"That's not true!" Sasuke said hotly. "Besides, I know I'll get it very soon. I hope." He muttered.

"Boys, that's not the time." Sakura sighed. Her teammates were great, but they could really bicker like kids, sometimes.

Naruto stood there amused, with the two other genin, Mikami and Asai.

Izumo and Kotetsu had left to scout ahead for Kurenai.

There had been rumors of military forces getting too close to the Land of Fire's borders, so Kurenai's team, as infiltration and Genjutsu specialists, had been sent to investigate.

Being less combat-focused, she had asked for backup, just to make sure.

She wouldn't say it out loud, but she also had a bad feeling. Something here wasn't right.

Ninjas didn't survive in their line of work without developing a strong gut feeling when things were out of place, but it wasn't enough to just rely on it.

Kurenai had been fishing for information in the village, under two different Transformations.

Unfortunately, the villagers were pretty closed off, and she hadn't gotten anything she didn't know.

This called for heavier methods.

She observed several villagers, until she found one who fit her needs.

She stalked her prey for most of the day, learning his mannerisms and habits.

At the same time night fell, she sneaked in the house of a local fisherman, who lived alone.

A minor genjutsu later, and the man would be sleeping for the next half-day. He'd wake up believing he had gotten too drunk, and would likely never realize.

His name was Yamashita Iwami, and there really was nothing about him that stood out of the ordinary.

He left for work in the mornings, took a nap at around three when he came back, and went out to drink at night. Sometimes alone, sometimes with friends.

If there had been a Yamanaka on the team, she might have been able to glean more information, but this would do.

She locked his house from the inside, and left through the window.

The night was dark. There was nothing much to do in this kind of smaller village on the outskirts of the country, so people drank.

Inside the Blue Ridge, ten men were doing just that.

They drank silently, with this strange pace that was somewhere between resignation and determination.

They made sure to avoid any serious topics, and bad news.

The innkeeper was telling whoever wanted to listen some half-finished stories, and a few men at the counter pretended to care while they downed their rice alcohol.

Iwashi was one of them tonight, and he was not saying much. "Bad news." He had grumbled, not wanting to elaborate.

They had shrugged, not wanting to push him, and not particularly interested either.

Under the disguise, Kurenai was paying attention.

The first two hours had proven unfruitful, so maybe she would need to be less subtle in her prodding.

She cycled her chakra carefully, making sure to keep her alcohol levels low enough to not be problematic, but high enough that she wouldn't look too sober, either.

Luckily, she didn't have to wait much.

Hideaki spoke, darkly. "I would give anything to get these Iwa bastards out of here."

"Who wouldn't?" Old Atsuchi snorted. He took a long sip.

"From their tone, this is common knowledge here."

It was the first time she heard of Iwa presence in this area.

Nadami, despite being culturally closer to the Land of Rain, was still part of the Land of Fire.

If Iwa was moving troops around here, and they didn't report it to the Daimyo, then it meant they were compromised.

She spoke, thinking about the person she was impersonating's likely answer. "They've been here for too long. There are folks out there that would have gotten us rid of them for some coin." She drank.

One of the men laughed. "Sure, but why would you want to bring these Akatsuki bastards in the mix? Whenever they get involved, shit turns south fast. They wiped a whole village, last time."

"Akatsuki? Who are they talking about?"

They moved on to other topics, and didn't want to tell more tonight.

She left when they did, with more questions than answers.

"Sure, Lighting is cool and all, but using Fire Release is still much cooler, I have to say." Toru insisted.

"Yeah, sure must be nice… All these possibilities, like fireballs and… bigger fireballs?" Naruto mimed reading a cue card.

"It's much more than this, have you never been to the Uchiha festivals?" Sasuke folded his arms over his chest.

"Why would I? My own clan's events are boring enough as is." He quipped back.

"That's only the Sarutobi." Sasuke pouted. "What do you guys even do? It's the same Fire stuff as us, but less fun…"

"Eh, not only. According to Shimura Tetsuo, we also fuck monkeys." Naruto shrugged, but his expression betrayed his amusement.

Toru spat his tea, laughing, and Sasuke made a strangled noise.

"You're lucky Sakura is not here to hear this." Toru said.

"Why? She definitely heard Tetsuo say it before."

Kurenai appeared in a soft jump on the floor.

Her serious face had them standing at attention right away. They gathered the rest of the team, and they waited until the nine of them were assembled.

Kurenai told the rest of the group what she had learned.

"According to the local people, there's a strong Iwa presence in this area."

Izumo and Kotetsu's ears both perked up. They were old enough to remember the last war, too.

Iwa gathering forces anywhere near their country was always bad news.

She continued. "That's why we need to verify the information before doing anything. A detachment as big as they've mentioned can't hide very efficiently. They need a place to eat, sleep. Considering this is the only village around, somebody must be coming here to buy food for the troops."

"So are we looking for caves..?" Sakura asked.

Izumo spoke. "When it comes to Iwa-nin, things are complicated. They are masters of Earth Release, and crafting an underground shelter is like second nature to them."

"They can move around pretty easily too, but the one thing they can't keep around in a seal for long is food. If as many soldiers are in this area as the people said… Then they are not relying on sealed supplies." Kurenai finished.

"What do we do, then?" Naruto asked.

"I was told you were good with the Kage Bunshin. How is your transformation?" Kurenai asked with a sharp smile.

The next day, ten clones transformed into small birds were posted in different spots in and out the city. It was the only Henge he felt truly comfortable with, so maybe the time spent bird-watching had been worth it.

Sure, he could transform into a bird at will, but he had never thought of transforming his clones for spying purposes. This opened a world of possibilities, and he knew he'd get Kurenai a nice gift whenever she and Asuma got married.

Sakura had layered a somewhat complex genjutsu on his clones, to make them less noticeable.

"People won't want to pay attention to them." She had said.

She really was making strides, just like Kurenai had said.

In the parts of the village he couldn't cover, every member of the team was gathering information the way they could.

So mostly asking innocent questions under Transformation techniques.

Toru was observing the people with his Sharingan, hidden away under dark glasses.

So they waited.

After two days, at sunset, they got what they were looking for.

"What the hell?"

Naruto hadn't realized one of his clones had been dispelled until he noticed he wasn't supposed to remember seeing two Iwa Jōnin laying dead two kilometers from their position.

"They're gone." He said.

"Who's gone?" Kurenai asked.

"There were Iwa-nin here, but they're dead. Two of them are, at least."

She almost jumped. This was bad news.

"What happened?"

"I have no idea. They're about two kilometers, down this direction." He pointed.

"Let's gather the others and go. Quickly. Something strange is happening here."

It was a gamble, she figured.

But she knew Iwa would not risk a war by killing nine Konoha ninjas. The last war had been worse for them than it had been for Konoha, after all, and they were still recovering their strength.

They reached the clearing in a few minutes.

Izumo and Kotetsu set up a defensive barrier around the area that would warn them of any arrival.

The Iwa ninjas were very much dead. And from their temperature, had been killed early in the day, even.

"A wind jutsu did this." She said out loud. "This is pretty rare in this part of the country."

She checked their equipment.

Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary here.

Their jackets were torn up anyway, so she dug in, and fished out a bloody Iwa bingo book.

"Well, that's not a bingo book." She amended, with a dark expression. "This is a black book."

Izumo stiffened and Kotetsu shot him a knowing look.

"What does it mean?" Sakura asked, not liking their expressions.

Sasuke spoke, quietly. "This means bad news. Iwa is not amassing forces here, at all."

Kurenai added. "One of the dead guys is Azuma Kotsubaki, an A-rank Jōnin. His partner, I don't know, but I assume him to have been around the same level."

Sakura was shivering a bit. "And that means there are more of them, aren't there…?"

Toru nodded, his face somber, and his Sharingan active. "There are many footsteps around here. I'd estimate there were from six to eight people in this area. Most of them went in one direction, and one of them split off."

"Two are dead, what about the rest?"

"They're hunting someone." Kurenai finished. "But they seem to have fled from the fight."

If there was something that could send the Iwa Hunting-Corps running…

Kurenai gave up on the mission right away. Their objective had been completed anyway.

Troops had been amassed near Nadami. The surprising part was that it turned out to be a smaller squad.

Ten Jōnin, and especially when they specialized in hunting, were more than enough to eliminate any opponent who wasn't a Kage.

She shuddered.

Their one and only priority was surviving now.

Team Six and the temporary Chūnin squad were running on lack of sleep, but in some circumstances, this didn't matter.

These were some of them. She had split soldier pills and urged them to leave now. At full speed.

She had weaved several distracting illusions during their escape, and asked Naruto to leave a few clones behind to set up some basic traps.

Kotetsu and Izumo kept up a small detection field around them, while running.

None of them had been triggered, so there was a good sign.

This meant that in a few hours, they likely would be out of the hole.

She had never missed the village — and Asuma's casual manner — more than now.

When she got home, they would stop hiding.

She would-

Something brushed against her arm, and there was the sound of thunder striking the ground, right in the middle of them.

They had made one mistake.

Or rather, they had miscalculated.

The kind of barriers and traps they had would have worked, too…

If they hadn't been dealing with somebody who could simply notice and avoid all of the traps, and then appear in their midst faster than they could react.

When Kurenai opened her eyes, just a few seconds later…

Izumo was a charred corpse, and there was nothing left of Kotetsu.

A man with long red hair, was standing in front of her genin, an amused expression on his face.

His chakra was heavy and powerful, and she knew she had no chance of getting out of here alive.