Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. If anyone reading this actually does, then would you consider cutting me a slice of that off? Come on… I'll be your best friend.

Pre-note: This is really just a personal experiment. Seeing as how I've yet to get a truly negative, shitty comment for my other story as of this point in time I've decided to go ahead with another one of my ideas. This is really just how I believe Naruto would work in an era like today in the urban U.S. It might work, it might not. In truth my last story was me shooting from the hip with ideas, this will be much the same except a lot of this will be original. A LOT. A few concepts will be from the original storyline, but that would be more for continuity, I mean why the hell would I go out of my way to confuse the hell out of the people actually interested in reading this story. I hope you readers enjoy, and I hope this is actually a feasible story.

Chapter 1: Prologue

Ever since the early 1900's, life within the major capital city of Konoha was good for many of its citizens. While it was an average place for the most part; full of businesses and regular jobs, kids went to school and would attempt to graduate in order to actually begin their lives out among the people and other things, balance for the entire country of Hi no Kuni was kept by the mercenary forces stationed in the city of Konoha. While police and other forms of law enforcement were in the city, and the leader of Hi no Kuni himself did possess an entire army at his disposal, mercenaries were the popular form of problem-solving in this world.

Mercenaries were in massive abundance, and they could be anyone; the guy in the seersucker suit or the slamming hot girl in that oh-so-short miniskirt could be the baddest killer you could ever meet. Mercs could range from being kind and only accepting missions without moral discrepancies, to being total and utter creatures of greed or bloodlust, only accepting the dirty jobs full of death and full of riches.

Freelancing was very common as far as jobs for mercenaries went; if someone wanted to use you and knew how to find you then they could try to obtain your contract to work for them. For many mercenaries however, being involved with an organization that could line up jobs and dispatch you with partners, equipment, back-up, and vehicles was usually where they wanted to end up.

Mercenaries, in an effort to separate themselves from everyday soldiers or law-enforcement took to developing supernatural abilities to help keep themselves above the rest; powers commonly known grouped together as 'jutsu.' Jutsu, when broken down into classification were labeled as ninjutsu or genjutsu. Most mercenaries were of advanced speed, strength, and agility to go along with, or supplement these abilities.

While most mercenaries kept day-jobs to keep suspicion for their extracurricular activities off of themselves there were quite a few who became simply too well known. These mercs were spotlighted and usually became major figures, both socially and politically in their culture. In fact many of the politically elected officials in this world were in fact mercenaries that had reasonable measures of strength and fame.

As the lines became blurred between civilian and soldier of fortune, they intermingled to the extent that by the turn of the century there were at least 2 or three mercenaries in each immediate family. As the power increased, the law enforcement were forced to catch up to these advanced warriors by using their own methods. After a famous mercenary was given reign over the police force they were all taught the way of mercenary style combat.

As mercenaries became more and more influential, political intrigue, backstabbing and assassinations and killings became almost commonplace, which leads us to begin our story.

Naruto: Soldiers of Fortune

On the night of October 10th, 1996 a family laid broken. A mother in the hospital was pronounced deceased following a long and arduous labor. Her husband was unknown by the public, hospital staff included.

As the newborn child wailed in his incubator the staff that had delivered the child looked over it with saddened expressions. The doctor involved in delivering the child had taken off out of grief from losing the child's mother and had left her apprentice to watch over the rest of the proceedings. A dark haired teenage girl who's young age did not proclaim her skill at her craft watched the child's incubator from behind a glass window.

She placed her hand on the glass and sighed heavily, "Poor little thing… Nobody knows anything about any relatives of yours… No next of kin… Not even a listed guardian or godparent." She read the child's ID on the front of his incubator she took it into memory, "Naruto Uzumaki… Ok then. I'm sorry little guy, but life for you isn't going to be very pleasant at all… I can already tell."

A nurse came running up to the girl forcing her to look at the new arrival, "Shizune-san, we need your assistance in surgery. There's another one in critical condition."

Shizune sighed, "That's thirteen different people now tonight… What in the world is going on in this city?"

XxX

Hospitals all across the city were being filled with people inflicted with grievous wounds. Many would not survive the night. As the hospital staff and doctors across the city of Konoha did what they could to save the people as they wondered just what was happening there was one place across the city that already knew.

An old man stared out over the dark nights lit up by lights of all kinds from his office and sighed deeply, "It never changes does it Jiraiya?" The old man picked up his pipe and lit it as he turned around and exhaled smoke as he looked at a white-haired man sitting on a desk.

The man, referred to by the old man as Jiraiya, looked down in grief, "I know old man I know… I can't believe Minato is actually gone." He looked up to face the old man, "What the hell could have actually taken Minato down Sarutobi-sensei? That man was the best of all of us… I should know, I trained him myself…"

The old man, Hiruzen Sarutobi, walked over and placed a hand on his shoulder, "I have Anbu agents all over it, but I doubt they will find anything on it I fear. We need you to look into this as well Jiraiya."

Jiraiya hardened his gaze as his eyes remained on the floor, "You don't have to ask me old man… I was going to do it orders be damned or not… I'm going to catch the son-of-a-bitch myself and kill him for Minato." His eyes widened as he uncharacteristically teared up, "Minato… Oh god…"

His attention snapped quickly as he looked at Hiruzen, "What about Kushina? Is she alright? What about the baby is it okay."

Hiruzen put a hand on his pupil's shoulder, "Kushina died in labor Jiraiya, I'm sorry." Jiraiya bit his fist to stanch his groans of grief as Hiruzen continued, "Kushina died, but the baby is alive, it was born right before she passed."

Jiraiya jumped up, "Naruto is alive!? Let me go see him, I have to!"

Hiruzen used surprising strength to keep Jiraiya from running out of the door to rush to the hospital, "Jiraiya no. I'm sorry but you can't see Naruto, not yet anyway."

Jiraiya turned around to face the old man, "What! What not!? I'm all the boy has as far as family and I can't see him? Kushina and Minato are dead, who will take care of him?"

Hiruzen sighed, "This will be hard, but we need to put Naruto in the orphanage to keep suspicion off of him until he grows old enough to take care of himself."

Jiraiya snapped, "You're going to leave him as an orphan! Why would you do that? I can raise him myself! If you told Kakashi or Rin or hell, even Obito I'm damn sure that they could raise him, they would love to!"

Hiruzen tried to calm student down, "I am going to tell them about Naruto, and they will be around, and you can be a part of his life. But you must understand Jiraiya… Minato and Kushina were killed, and we didn't know until it was too late. What do you think would happen if whoever orchestrated this found out that he lived through the attack? We need to find who did this to protect him so that when he comes of age we can tell him all that he needs to know and give him time to grow in strength."

Jiraiya gritted his teeth as he walked over to a pillar and elbowed it as hard as he could, "It was probably Iwa… The bastards, they always hated him after the war."

Hiruzen sighed, "It could have been… But for now I want you to take a few days and come back to me so that I can give you your mission information. Don't go see Naruto do you understand? That is an order."

Jiraiya turned and smirked, "So you're taking up the reigns again and leading the city I see. I thought you would have retired after Minato took over."

Hiruzen shrugged, "It was either me or Danzo… So really there was no choice you see."

Jiraiya shook his head with a smile, "Fine then, I'll gut it out for now… But I want to see him eventually. And trust me Sarutobi-sensei, I will find out who did this."

Hiruzen nodded, "I hope you do too Jiraiya." As Jiraiya left the office and closed the door Hiruzen walked back over to his window and looked out over his town before grabbing his head and looking out over the city once more, 'I think things are going to get very complicated very, very soon.'

I will continue to write Fullmetal Shinobi, my other story because I still have a shit-load of ideas for it and a hell of a lot of people seem to dig it immensely, but I wanted to start this one up as well. I think I've got a decent premise down and hopefully my interpretation will be awesome. Nevertheless I will be keeping up with both because writing these stories are fun as hell for me and I have tons of warped ideas.

I hope you all come along for the ride, because I'm gonna be having a blast with this one. No guns in this story, that would be too easy so don't worry about it. I didn't call them ninja because even in the original show and in the manga they didn't really act much like ninja, only by name when you look at it so I call them what they really are: mercenaries.

No Hokage. No real rankings, in this world having a famous name is half the battle to some. You'll see how I play with that later. This is going to be fun.

Kenchi out.