Within Three Years
This takes place during the first Naruto time-jump of three years. It's been ¾ of a year since Naruto left with Jiraiya to train. Please refer to the story: 'Training for the Job' for more awesome story plot!
Scroll 1: Enter the Child Trio
The trio of kids saw the village in the distance and moved towards it. They had been walking for quite a while, and were feeling very hungry. To any of the people guarding the village walls, or scouting outside, they would see what looked like three children walking towards the village in a squiggly line. One child, located in the middle, looked like a normal ninja, with the exception of a unicycle on her back.
The child on her left looked like something out of a nightmare. His head sported a spiked helmet with holes for his ears and face. How this head-engulfing gear became welded on was a mystery. Another surprising thing when one might view him was the chains that wrapped thickly around him, disappearing into his pants and shirt sleeves. The young kid had nothing but chains covering his skinny torso.
The kid on her right looked, as most would say; too cute. His eyes were wide, his smile bright and his clothing; colorful. He had a large teddy bear strapped onto his back, a smaller one on his waist, and also grasped a stuffed turtle. It would drag along in the dirt behind him. None of the children wore headbands, so it was impossible to identify where they were from by sight alone.
The three children got close to the village walls and stopped, looking up at it. Upon closer inspection, they looked a little scuffed up and dirty, and the one with chains looked androgynous. They took a few steps back then turned towards each other in a huddle, muttering amongst them selves. The trio, looking to be about eight or nine, separated; looking back and forth between each other still. Then the girl in the middle stepped forward, cupping her hands to her mouth and shouted.
"Hello? Is anybody there?"
"Hm? What's up with you three squirts?" the bandanna-ed brown-haired jounin, Genma, spoke through his long senbon toothpick and looked over to the trio of ratty look kids with mild interest. "You can enter here, like the normal people and stop at that booth there to register for any meetings you might want…or are you lost?"
They blinked and just shrugged, huddling closer together with uncertainty. They walked, shoulder to shoulder, into the village. They quickened their steps and walked past Genma, as though wanting to avoid contact with him. The trio skirted inside and moved looked around, slightly in awe at the size of the village and its appearance. Any passerby could tell, even if only from the looks on their faces, that they weren't from around here. They wondered for a few minutes what to do.
XXX
Elsewhere in the village, Kakashi Hatake looked up from his latest copy of 'Icha-Icha Paradise', getting a feeling that something just wasn't right. He lowered his book to turn his uncovered eye towards the female that was moving in the training field before him. The Lady Hokage had given advice to have him train another genin while his original squad; one consisting of Sakura Haruno and Naruto Uzumaki were gone.
Team 13 had been used and betrayed by their self-serving sensei, Jamaru Akanchi. The surviving genin of team 13 was a red-eyed, raven-black haired kunoichi of age 14. That black-haired kunoichi, known to younger ninjas as Uzaruki-san, finally gave a last series of maneuvers to the old, worn out log that stood upright in the battered down grass.
Yukari Uzaruki was her proper name, third child to the dwindling Uzaruki clan. She may have looked like any other black-haired kunoichi (female ninja), but when one looked into her eyes, they might mistake her for an Uchiha. It was a shame that the Uchiha Clan sucked and wiped themselves out. No, she was better than an Uchiha; with a lot more class and elegance.
She was one of the few remaining carriers of the bloodline limit known as Akashingan; or the Red Bird Wheel. A life-long set of red-colored eyes gave her the power to see the world from an aerial point of view using birds. It didn't matter if the bird was in flight or sitting on her very own head, she still got bird-o-vision, as her best friend bluntly put it.
That friend, namely Naruto Uzumaki, was a thorn of self-improvement to her. Being a friend and rival to a ninja that drove her to go beyond the normal limits and to strive to be exceptionally strong was why she was nearly killing herself with relentless training.
Well, it was a figure of speech; as she was hardly anywhere near death. But since Naruto had left eight months ago to train with the legendary sannin, Jiraiya-sama; Yukari figured she would do her own rigorous training that would help her grow stronger.
Today was particularly harsh, since her week-long, B-class paying mission to the Land of the Tea had ended at midnight the previous night. The Lady Hokage had sent a squad of hand-picked ninja to infiltrate and break-down the so called village of Sneeze. The self-created village of rouge ninja had risen up to pester the land of Tea.
The Lady Hokage would have none of it and promptly decided to send aid to their Tea allies to care of the pesky problem, before it got out of hand. Yukari was one of the two chuunin, or basic level ninja, to tag along for the mission. The other ninja were jounin or higher, and their basic skills were honed sharper than hers. Yukari didn't care, however, as her growing tracking and trapping skills helped pin in the enemy ninja as the Konohagakure squad methodically broke their efforts and arrested the offending ninja.
Kakashi, her new sensei, had been most helpful in training her in the basic ways of genjutsu, a subject of which she severely lacking talent in. Thanks to a quick lesson in the art of genjutsu, or illusion art, Yukari was able to see through an escape attempt and stopped those that tried to run off.
Not that the Sneeze Ninja posed that much of a personal threat; the leader of the Sneeze Village had quickly been identified and captured, but Yukari didn't want to be the ninja that failed her part of the mission. She was, after all, aiming to become an elite trapper.
Having interacted with the Hatake ninja during the mission, Yukari had found herself developing a crush on the aloof, lazy-like silver-haired Shinobi. Part of the reason was he was the ideal sensei she never had, another part was his aloofness; it hit deep into her sense of erotic taste. A powerful, carefree ninja like Hatake-sensei was not only physically handsome, but having a kind and lack-a-daisy attitude towards life was enough to heat her blood.
So it was a surprise when she found him sitting on a nearby stump; half reading his normal 'Icha-Icha Paradise' book and half watching her. He looked up from whatever page he had been reading to smile at her.
"Eh? What's wrong, Kakashi-sensei?" Yukari asked; fighting the rising blush that raced to her cheeks.
"Oh, nothing; I was just thinking of something a moment. What are you up to? Don't have anything better to do than watch me read?" He asked, looking over to her with his lazy, uncovered left eye, the book still open in his hands. Not waiting for an answer from the young kunoichi, the copy-cat ninja jumped down next to her and looked around, getting a sense of the surrounding environ - searching.
"Yukari-chan, don't you have gate-sentry duty this afternoon? Or have I gotten so into my reading that a day has already passed?"
Yukari's mouth dropped open as her face turned red at the proximity of the male Nin. It wasn't that much of a secret that the Sharingan ninja and the energetic female Uzaruki heir had something between each-other; and had it ever since after the Sand-Sound War. But, by stating that she was watching HIM, implied many things.
"I…I was training here FIRST, Kakashi-sensei...you where watching ME train, and no, Tsunade-sama made Genma-sensei take sentry duty since he wasn't one of the ones who took down the Sneeze-Village…" She stuttered out. But now that she thought about it, it was getting pretty late in the day and she was meant to take that cramped little scout building near the Konoha entrance two days after the Sneeze-Village Bust. "Well, I guess I have sentry tomorrow, though…"
Kakashi laughed and reached over a hand to ruffle Yukari's raven-black hair.
"You are so easy to mess with Yukari-chan. You make things so much fun. Well, I have something that I must be getting to for now. Why don't you take sentry duty early so we can spend tomorrow together?" His face-mask was still on but you could tell that he was smiling under it, even if it was unable to be seen.
"I guess so; I'll give myself an hour's rest then take the graveyard shift…" Yukari was still beet-red in the face as she began her tone-down stretches to calm her heart down.
Kakashi waved to Yukari as he jumped off into the distance, taking a round-about route and entering Tsunade's office. As he closed the door he started talking to her about 'news on the strange activity.'
XXX
Yukari smiled as Kakashi left and made her way to the Kenkon district of Konoha. The place where her beloved apartment was located, the Kenkon, was like a mini-type neighborhood of farmers and craftsmen that plied their trade in and outside of the Hidden Leaf Village.
Yukari herself had very little money to her own name when she was forced to move out on her own after her clan was decimated during the Sand-Sound Invasion. Her clan; numbering in the fifties, was murdered until only a handful were left. Not only did it hurt like hell, but it was her father that ordered her to move to a different location; preventing the extinction of her clan should some one come back to finish the job. But that was nearly a solid one and two quarter years ago, back before Sarutobi-Hokage passed away.
The Kenkon had taken heavy damage, and the room that was previously her sister's, Raikanami, was demolished – in no thanks to some rampaging psycho, village-sized snake…or so she was told.
It had since been rebuilt, even with her help (she was listed as injured, but she was well-befriended to the nice peoples of the Kenkon District, so she helped as much as she could) and had her living in it again. Yukari was enjoying the evening as passers-by made small talk and such; as was a village is wont to do. However, the entrance was only in her sight once as the red-eyed Kunoichi crossed the village to get to her destination. So she didn't think much of the raga-muffin children that stood in the shadows of a nearby ramen joint (not Ichiraku).
The ragamuffin kids stared around and then turned as a single unit to the delicious smell of ramen. In turning, they all saw Yukari passing by. More importantly, they saw her eyes which closely resembled those of an Uchiha; horrible, red eyes that brought to each of them, different memories – memories that were all terrible. The girl was a little frozen with fear, as sounds of insane cackling and destruction ran through her head. Images flashed through her mind, back to the night her village was attacked, and nearly destroyed, by a single person.
The kid wearing chain's lips started to curl back in a snarl as sounds of dripping; memories of total silence came to mind. Days on end where it hung by thread like chains, in pain and crying, as the man stared and did nothing but smile and make things worse. The Cute mini-Nin's thoughts were mixed. The eyes brought to him memories of horrible change, at first gut-wrenchingly painful but soon after, and led him to where he was standing, which was a very good thing.
XXX
Unless Yukari was paying attention to them, she wouldn't have noticed anything until the chained-kid growled and tried to leap at her. The kid didn't get very far before the Cute-kid grabbed the other by the shoulders and swung the body in a circle into the ground. From anybody else's point of view, it might look like they were wrestling. That is, if nobody had been watching the first child leap towards Yukari. Then, things might be a little more sinister than they really were.
Only the nearby Ramen cook paid any attention; as due to the size of incoming-outgoing traffic for Konoha, it was near impossible for a normal person to look at every single person that walked near the simple, yet bold entrance. That's why the second Hokage trained the ninja to sense by chakra; making it easier for the entrance to be monitored.
"Hey, are you kids gonna buy my ramen or not? If not, you better scram and go find your parents before you scare away the good-paying customers…" The pot-bellied man wasn't mean or threatening; he spoke frankly and matter-of-factly, is if the kids would know what he was talking about.
Life around the entrance was busy; as Yukari was already gone by the time the Cute-kid had pulled the Chain-kid back from jumping her down. Genma had already dismissed the trio and was back to watching the entrance. They only thing that made any show of being overly disturbed was a splotchy white and pepper-black cat that had leapt down from the opposing roof and hissed at the wrestling kids before running away, down the path that Yukari had just used.
They calmed down quickly enough, as the two rolled into the side of a nearby building. In their rage they hadn't done anything that involved more than the most basic chakra. The girl then quickly walked over to the two of them and knelt down, grabbing both of their ears and lifting them up.
"Calm down! That wasn't him! It couldn't be! He was too busy when we left; there was no way he could know where we are! Nobody does, so both of you stop it!" she said with a smack to both their cheeks. They didn't like it, but knew she was only being nice. The Cute-kid spoke up, even his voice pumped full of candy and sunshine.
"But maybe she knows something. Her eyes were kinda the same. Should we follow her?" The Chain-kid just shrugged, already falling back into a stony-faced silence. The girl sighed, taking the lead as always. They looked around to get their bearings and turned down the path that Yukari had moved down, trying to catch up to her enough to keep her in sight.
Yukari only took about two minutes to get from Team 7's old training grounds to her place, so it wasn't that big a deal when she got there, and unlocked her purple – yes, she had a thing for purple – door and slid a bowl of water out; more like around the entrance wall, with her black-sandaled foot. She then untied her Leaf Nin band from around her waist and hung it up on a peg next to the door.
"Ugh, I bet I stink, I wonder if Kiba-kun's nose is still sensitive enough to smell me from where-ever he is, ha-ha!" she laughed aloud as that salt and pepper-black cat slid – yes slid - like water through her open window.
"You are such a laze, Meko-chan, talk about ninken. Did you catch any birdies today besides me! Ha, ha!"
The cat had adopted her after Yukari was healed by the Lady Hokage the very day she came into office. Yukari had not the heart to use the effort to force it away, so it stayed. Yukari then crossed her small, couch-filled 'living' room and made her way to the stove. A newer version after snake-smashing rampage; and set some water to make herbal tea.
XXX
The trio of odd-looking kids stopped when they saw her go into the house and huddled together once more. There was a minute of silence as they listened, then they spoke quietly amongst themselves.
"Well…should we see if she's even that strong? If we can beat her it would be pointless to hang around her. What do you guys think?" The Chain-kid shrugged, but the Cute-kid shook his head fervently.
"No, that'd be bad. Besides, this is supposed to be the place we've been looking for right? The person…Naruga-dono something, is supposed to live here. He should be able to help us a little. I'll try and get in." He waited until they nodded, and then turned and walked towards Yukari's apartment.
There was a poof, and then where he had been was nothing more than a little 7-inch tall teddy bear walking. It got a running start, and then leapt onto a windowsill and looked inside, watching Yukari's back.