The almost four year old Naruto had a decision to make, she had always sort of known that people hated her, not for any reason he could figure out, but they hated her with fervor. The sisters and the matron at the orphanage all hated her, the other kids freely bullied her without intervention, unless she fought back, in which case she was punished, finally, whenever she left the orphanage, people in the streets glared at her and randomly shouted hurtful things.
That is, until the day before, when a drunk had accidentally let it slip. She was the Kyuubi.
Most children at her age would not be mature enough to make a conscious choice, but for Naruto, growing up hated by everyone, had matured her well beyond what most children should be able to achieve. Now, however, she had to choose; on one hand, she could try to run away, but the village kept her alive for a reason, probably so she could be a ninja, or she could stick around, and make herself as non-threatening as possible.
Running away, that just didn't seem like such a good idea to her. Since she was still very much alive, and clearly not meant to know she was the Kyuubi. The only reason the village kept her around was to make her fight for them, but they obviously kept an eye on her, ready to strike her down if she ever stepped out of line. It meant that escape was impossible.
As the little girl considered her future mask, something happened that gave her a different idea.
It was storytelling, and as usual, Naruto wasn't allowed inside, but unlike usual, where she would run away to the far corner of the garden to hide her tears, today she had been so deep in thought that she didn't even notice. "…and so the ninja slayed the wolf, telling the shepherd of its sheep disguise, and hung the still hidden wolf from a tree, so that all could see that the ninja of Konoha was not so easily fooled."
That was it, slowly a vicious smirk spread across her face. She already was a wolf in sheep's clothing, or a fox in human clothing as it were, but then all of Konoha already knew, but she… if she changed her clothes. If she changed her disguise, then they wouldn't and she could be free, and if they found out, when they found out, she would maybe be invaluable enough that they wouldn't kill her. Hopefully.
This would take a lot of work, but she could do it.
The first thing she needed was a name, her gaze fell on the stone faces in the distance, and the smirk on her face grew even further. It was a cruel idea, but she liked it even more for all the things it would entail. She would steal everything from the one that had doomed her to this existence.
Her plan had taken a few weeks to get together, but soon she was ready. Apparently, the village wasn't watching her as closely as she had expected; in fact, they were downright irresponsible. Sneaking away from the orphanage provoked no response whatsoever, as far as she could tell, and after several trips she had started looking for ways out of the village undetected.
Naruto needed a disguise, something to hide two of her most prominent features. Her blonde hair, and her whisker-like markings, hair dye and make-up. Getting said articles was a bit difficult, involving a trap to distract the store clerk, a rubber chicken, and quick hands. She would also need money, enough to live on her own, again, the various stores around the village gladly donated a bit of their income, or at least that is how she chose to see it.
Then, with but a little laugh, Naruto the sheep clothing she had been forced to wear died, and Minato her own sheep's clothing was born.
Aoba sighed in boredom. It didn't do to piss off 'Kage-sama, he knew that, but he just couldn't help himself, it was just such a golden opportunity, and honestly, how often did one catch the God of Shinobi with his pants down, literally. Still, a week of gate duty, it almost wasn't worth it, almost.
Letting his head hit the counter, Aoba noticed a small timid figure peeking around the gate. The child looked towards the gatehouse uncertainly, almost as if some sort of cataclysm would happen. At least it meant that something different happened today, that was better than how the other six days had gone. "Hey kid, come on over here."
As the child approached, Aoba took note of the appearance, the kid looked dirty and disheveled, though the short dark red hair was distinctive, as were the blue eyes, which held the sort of steel that spoke of seeing too much, too soon. He'd recognize those eyes anywhere; he saw a much too similar pair every day in the mirror.
"So, kid, why did you travel here, to Konoha?" It really wasn't a necessary question, the answer already painfully obvious to the experienced ninja, nonetheless, formalities and such dictated he at least do a minimum of questioning. "I, the bad men came, and mom said to run to the secret spot, and then she went after dad, and I waited there for so long, but they never came, and mom said that if anything happened I should head here, since it might be safe."'
'Bandits then.' Though a thought niggled in the back of his mind, the red hair, Aoba couldn't quite place it, but it somehow rang with a memory. "So, what then?" He was now crouching in front of the sobbing child, trying to coax the rest of the answer out of her. "…they wouldn't wake up, I tried, but mom and dad, they wouldn't wake up, and they said if that happened I should head here, that I'd be safe, and I could be safe if I became a ninja."
"So, kid. What's your name, and how old are you?" The child was clearly too young to be an infiltrator, but the story, something seemed off about it to Aoba, and it bugged him that he couldn't place it. Still, orders where orders, Konoha was seriously hurting for ninja, and all potentials had to be tested, to refill their ranks as quickly as possible. "…Minato, and I'm fi– almost seven!"
Aoba snorted, he could tell the kid wanted to enter the academy directly, which was fine, well he'd fudge the records, and the kid was five, he'd entered at the same age so he wasn't too worried. Then it hit him, that redheaded woman that was friends with the fourth, an Uzumaki, 'the kid is an Uzumaki. Maybe, but it fits, the secretive parents, vary of Konoha but considers their ninja safe-ish.'
"Alright kid, entering Konoha to join the academy is possible, if you sign on, you will have to fulfill your contract once you graduate, as a ninja, that is how we pay for the free education, but it comes with a small stipend for orphans." Aoba hoped he had glossed over the contract requirement enough that the kid wouldn't even question it, an Uzumaki even a distant one, would be invaluable.
Once Aoba had the paperwork back, he made a quick note that the kid was a potential clan child, and the academy should expedite chakra training.
To Minato it all seemed too easy; the guard became a lot more enthusiastic once he heard her name, and he practically shoved the forms down her throat to speed up her entry process. However, it didn't seem like she had been caught. At first, she had been leery when he had told her to wait for his shift to end, but nothing much happened, and another guard showed up around lunch, while the she had been put through some exercises to gauge her fitness level.
In the end, nothing came of it. The guard had introduced himself as Yamashiro Aoba, and then taken her to the administrative office, located in the Hokage tower, right next to the academy. After filing her paperwork, Aoba herded her into the academy, and introduced her to the headmaster, who gave her a quick onceover, read the papers, and nodded.
Just like that, Minato, age six and three-quarters, was a student at the upcoming fall class.
Minato had barely started her education, when her teacher had pulled her aside, at first she had thought they had somehow seen through her disguise, but it turned out to something else entirely. Apparently, in choosing her disguise, while she had gone for the red hair to look like the fox, she had inadvertently made herself look like a member of a lost clan.
If Minato really was a clan child, then unlocking her chakra and starting training early was necessary, so after the first week, a teacher pulled her aside for extracurricular lessons on using her chakra. Once the teacher was done explaining it, she was a bit concerned, the chakra of the fox should be easily recognizable, but maybe, the sealing her like this meant her chakra would appear more human, she could only hope.
Just a few hours later, and the teacher looked at her with an almost awed expression. Minato had, apparently, quite large reserves for her age, not to the point of worsts case scenarios, but enough that it was good they had done this now rather than in the second year. Besides her larger than normal reserves for an almost seven year old, her chakra was, at least to the teacher, perfectly human, and quite pleasant.
Of course, in a corner of her mind, Minato shuddered, she was almost four, and if she had followed the normal schedule, she wouldn't have unlocked her chakra, assuming the village would even let her try, for another three years. Considering the fact the teacher was showing her an advanced exercise to walk on water, and had told her to report the following day for more control exercises and an in-depth discussion of this, she wondered if any later would have made it impossible to learn proper control.
It took her only a few days to get the water walking down, though Minato still used far more chakra than necessary, but with her rapid progress impressed her teacher, even more so, the fact that she was learning in reverse order. Her next exercise was surface clinging, or commonly known as tree walking, and by the end of the first month at the academy, she had gained enough control over her chakra to try the ordinary leaf floating exercise.
Most of what was taught in the first year was basic reading and writing, along with mathematics. Added to this was plenty of physical exercise, an area where she exceled, even if she had to keep up with kids two years older. Still, there were no ninja skills in the curriculum, and while the physical part pushed them, the only thing to suggest this was a ninja academy was the fact that all the teachers wore the chuunin uniform.
When Minato had brought it up with Daikoku-sensei, he had laughed so hard that his entire body shook, while clan children often knew the answer, she was the first civilian child to ever notic, at least in his ten years of teaching. The explanation made some sense, in the end chakra was rather powerful, and not all children had what it took to be a ninja, so they were weeded out early, and either left from the grueling training and lack of 'ninja', or were transferred to the civilian school.
Still, the first year was important enough, and Minato spent most of it clinging to a wall and reading, this was the one area, where she was sorely behind her peers, and she could learn while training her control, an added bonus. Then, the first year was over, and she had the summer to herself.
Minato spent her first summer vacation working, it wasn't that she didn't have money, the stipend for orphans would cover her, and what she had liberated from stores before she transformed was untouched, but still, she would need gear when she graduated. Besides, the hard work as a groundskeeper doubled as physical training.
In the afternoon, she would make rounds past the training fields, to see if she could spot a ninja training, and possibly learn something, or at least practice suppressing her chakra around other ninja. It was during one of these trips that she encountered something interesting, the man wore an outfit like those police officers, and was slowly making hand seals, something she had only brief knowledge of, but knew were for jutsu.
The man had repeated the hand seals several times, and slow enough that Minato could remember them, though she only knew the name of the last one, Ram, Daikoku-sensei had shown it to her, to use for gathering chakra. However, as the man did the five seals, he ended up slamming his hand into the ground, and suddenly there was a small hawk under his hand. A smirk spread across her face, this was certainly a powerful technique, and she made a point to write down everything she had seen, with illustrations, for later.
By the beginning of the second year, Minato quickly skimmed through the textbooks, chakra theory, one of the new classes added to the curriculum, obviously had mentions of hand seals, and she used the illustration in the textbook to identify which ones the man in the training field had used to make a hawk appear. It was for later, but it didn't hurt too have the extra knowledge.
The second year of the academy also saw the start of actual ninja training, they were taught kata's for the Konoha Five Leaf Taijutsu Style, or academy style, as it was apparently called. The style itself focused on parrying and dodging, with only a few attacks, mainly low kicks. Again, Minato had taken her wondering to Daikoku-sensei, and again, he had been impressed that she had noticed the oddity.
In hindsight, Minato admitted, it made perfect sense, when the children graduate they will still be twelve at most, and as such, will most likely face opponents much taller than themselves for several years. Besides the taijutsu, there was also kunai and shuriken training. However, I was the extracurricular chakra control training that held most of her interest. In order to maximize her control, Daikoku-sensei had started teaching her Chakra Sensing, something that required an almost absolute awareness of her chakra.
By the third year, the students had electives to choose from, there weren't that many, but this was part of picking specialties, future medic-nin would take the advanced anatomy and biochemistry classes, while those wishing to join cryptography would have advanced mathematics. Minato was a bit torn on what to choose, she considered her options, and eventually went with classes that offered a wide usage. Kenjutsu, infiltration, and tracking.
Infiltration was an obvious choice, really, it would help, and she might learn of a way to keep her hair dark red, and her whisker marks concealed, without resorting to hair dye and make-up. Tracking was just interesting, and those missions would mostly take place outside the village, besides, she'd probably pick up some tips on how to cover her tracks in case she needed to flee.
Joining the kenjutsu class turned out to be quite a bit more difficult than she had anticipated; it was a rather popular class, and as such, it was filled with nearly every student in the year. Choosing this class had been obvious, when considering the future line of work, she'd very much prefer to have a sharp piece of steel between herself and whoever was trying to kill her.
For a whole week, some three-hundred and fifty students drilled in the exercise yard, each trying to improve, so they could impress the teacher, and trying to sabotage those around them to lessen competition. In this Minato actually excelled, as she did with most physical things, something Daikoku-sensei had noticed with her kata's, she easily learned when presented with physical training.
As it were, so did the kenjutsu teacher. Still, her tracking teacher and her infiltration teacher weren't happy that she'd missed her first lessons.
The fourth year followed in the same vein as the third, with the exception that Minato swapped infiltration for field medicine, and added fuinjutsu. Kenjutsu was a two-year course, and her tracking teacher had informed her that if she stayed on, and did well, she would be taught a few tricks at the end of the year. Besides, the tracking course really just was about repetition, an extra year would only help improve her skill, and she was liked the subject and apparently had a very good senses.
As the end of the fourth year drew close, Minato was faced with a rather disconcerting decision. The fifth and sixth years were mainly meant for reinforcing what had already been taught, and most student would apply to their desired divisions for an apprenticeship, only having a single day in the academy. Alternatively, she could stay on and graduate with the 'elite' track.
As Minato dithered over the decision, she suddenly found it was made for her. Daikoku-sensei, her otherwise staunch ally, had told her to report to the headmasters office. "Minato-san, I wish there was an easy way for me to say this, but, there isn't, your presence in class is disruptive," she looked at her teacher, with something close to hurt, but before she could give voice to her painful thoughts, he continued. "Minato-san, I had hoped that your presence would inspire the other students to excel, however, you improved so fast, and so quickly, that instead of inspiration, they saw despair."
"Oh," that was not exactly what she had expected, honestly, she hadn't interacted much with her peers, most of them weren't that interesting, the girls seemed to think this was some sort of prep course for future housewives, and the boys were, immature. "That really isn't all, you have glowing recommendations in your file from the teachers in the elective courses, and honestly, you won't be able to advance your skills much further until you make chuunin."
"Funeno-sensei," so far the headmaster had kept quiet, but he looked sternly at her teacher as continued; "I am not one for sending such young children into the wild, and I have already been forced to graduate young Uchiwa-san just recently, while his case might be different, he has a clan to support him, unlike young Minato-san."
"Yes, I understand, but truthfully, sir; unlike Uchiha-san, Minato-san displays both a maturity and thoughtfulness, the academy honestly have nothing left to teach him, what he needs is experience." The headmaster nodded, with a look of quiet contemplation. "Hmm, if you are certain Funeno-sensei, now young Minato, how do you feel about this early graduation?"
"Er… I am not sure, it is unexpected, I had hoped to have more time to physically grow, and to hone my skills, but as Daikoku-sensei pointed out, for taijutsu, I can't spar with my classmates, as they pose no challenge." Minato took a moment to collect her thought, this was either going to doom her, or send thrust her career into the clouds.
"Recent events, has given a certain… discredit, to the early graduation, and considering the options, graduating early wouldn't necessarily be in my best interest. A jounin-sensei, could as such, not deliberately, but subconsciously, try to limit my education, or worse create a rift in the team by limiting my duties." Both her teacher and the headmaster nodded gravely, Minato had brought up a rather valid point, something they should consider. "Then, do you wish to stay at the academy?"
"Perhaps, headmaster, a very, very, quiet graduation, and sending me straight to the genin corps? I can take missions to pay rent, train, and mature, out of sight, and when the time comes, apply for a genin team." A large smirk spread on Daikoku's face, and mirrored by the headmaster. "That is an excellent idea, and as a genin, there is no true limit on whom you receive instruction from, or what you may be taught."
And that was that, by the end of the fourth year, Minato graduated, very quietly, with only a few witnesses. Her paperwork was handled discreetly, and her transfer into the genin corps went unnoticed, just one amongst many. She had acquired all the skills taught, her file had glowing recommendations from her teachers, and even one from the headmaster, who had been quite impressed with her thinking and reasoning.
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