A Game of Shadows

by KaiserKou

The village Naruto left three years ago is not the one he returns to. Older and more experienced he finds himself swept up in a web of lies, intrigue, heritage and politics. It's a fight he must win to fulfil his dream of becoming Hokage. When you play the Game of Shadows, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.

1. Frozen Memories

Chapter One - Frozen Moments

The endless flow of time dictates that, without a miracle, no one can truly change the world.

---

The Friendkiller Hero

Kakashi hated his clan.

Well, hate was a strong word. He could barely muster up the energy to loath them more than he hated himself, but there was definitely much easier to hate the clan and its leadership. Self-pity and introverted disgust led to nothing, after all. It was a matter of what was easiest, and he was nothing if not lazy.

Most members of the clan were good people. He supposed that at least half of fifty-two people in Konoha who bore the Hatake name were good at heart, statistically speaking. But unfortunately the Goddess of chance must have been cruel when she shaped the fates of men, for it seemed that the leadership of the clan was made up of only the worst ones. As he sat in his grandfather's meeting hall he wondered why that was. And why he was now considered to be a part of his clan leadership, despite how completely lacking in fucks to give he was.

"Nōba-sama has been dead for months" his uncle Kama spoke aloud from opposite him in the two lines of men sitting facing each other on the tatami of the floor of that supposedly humble hall. "A Hokage has been chosen. The time has come for us to choose a new leader. One who can lead the Hatake in the troubled times ahead". Of course, Kama was the type of man to say things like that, sitting in his dark grey kimono at the head of one line of six men. Older men, none of them younger than twenty, all of them at least chūnin – that was the requirement to be able to have a say in the matters of the Hatake clan. And so far there were eleven of them in attendance, in existence. Kakashi hadn't wanted to come, but no matter his feelings he was still a member of the clan. His father would have been amongst them, had he been alive.

Absently he thought he heard distant drums beat on the wind that shook the wooden walls of the Hatake compound. He shook his head slightly to clear away the sound and wished he had brought his reading material with him. Nothing was too important as to not allow someone the read through it.

"I put forth my own name, for the honour of our clan" said Wadachi, old and bald since more than a decade and all but blind, his forehead protector worn proudly attached to the skullcap on his head, as he bowed low towards the floor. The other men, most of them in their finest yukata as they could not afford proper kimonos, reacted stoically as they were expected too. The whole concept of "emotion" was not very popular in the Hatake clan, at least not outwardly. They were supposed to be all stoic and stern all the time. He couldn't be arsed to care.

"With all due respect, Wadachi-san" Kama raised his voice in opposition, and as four of the other men in the room began to nod their heads in a definitely practiced and signalled manner Kakashi closed the hand at his side into a fist. He watched his uncle berated and used all of his rhetoric and non-existent charisma to try and sway the other members of the clan leadership onto his side. Beneath his mask his look of boredom melted away, and he heard the drums on the wind.

He remembered the drums. Drums, beating slowly, solemnly, mournfully, as the cold winds of autumn swept the leaves off the trees. A smell of flowers was in the air. Flowers, and mountains.

The clan lined the ritual path in the Hatake compound, all of them in their best white kimonos for the occasion. Kakashi stood the closest to the platform on which Father knelt, a hand on his shoulder. Only family was allowed to see that moment, the moment when Hatake Sakumo washed himself of his dishonour.

Father too wore a white kimono that day, white with a red obi. He looked so at peace, Kakashi remembered. So serene. And when he spoke, putting down his brush and setting his ink aside, he did so calmly, looking at Kakashi with a smile.

As the wind ruffled the white sheets and paper panes and screens surrounding the audience and the platform Sakumo spoke. Kakashi could not hear his voice yet still he knew his words. A farewell, and an apology.

An apology.

"You don't have to look, Kakashi" said the man beside him, the owner of the warm hand on his shoulder. "You don't have to watch this". Father reached out before him and took up the steel blade of the wakizashi before him, bereft of hilt, and wrapped its upper portion in a small silk cloth. Behind him the kaishakunin rose and raised his sword in preparation. The drums grew louder.

An apology.

"I cast my vote for Kama-sama" said Kakine, sitting beside Kakashi in the line, and at the sound of his voice – and his betrayal – Kakashi's good eye shot to the man just ten years older than him, a second cousin once removed, the stylised geometric rice paddies of the Hatake clan in black on the back of his blue haori. From Kakine, to do this? He had expected the sole sensible one among the lot to choose his allegiances better. He ceased his glaring as all eyes in the room turned then to him, looks expectant. He counted in his mind. Five against five, a tie. He looked back at his uncle and heard the drums in his head, in his heart.

"I cannot in good conscience chose one member of my beloved family over another" he cleared his throat and lied, seeing the rage flit across Kama's scarred face like a vision of a dream. Once, when he had been just a boy, Kama had gone on a routine mission and gotten an enemy's blade across his face. For as long as Kakashi remembered his face had been near cloven diagonally from his right temple to left part of his jaw, chipping a deep valley in the bridge of his nose and curling one side of his mouth into an eternal sneer. Kakashi wondered often how his wife could possibly stand it.

He looked down the lines in the gathering hall, the fusuma all around them drawn shut and the sentries beyond making sure that no one listened in on the deliberations. With his good eye he looked then to the raised platform at the end of the room, raised tatami in three terraces at the top of which was placed an ornate seat of ebony, empty and meant for the leader of the clan.

He cleared his throat again, closing his good eye as if pensive before he opened it. "Forgive me, kinsmen" he said then, noting from the corner of his cone of vision that Kama was all but grinding his teeth together in silent fury "but I cannot choose. I must abstain my vote". Kama's supporters glared, but up one end of the line he saw Wadachi smirking quickly before his face grew impassive. All the emotion passed on by in the span of a few moments before they drew their emotionless expressions back on their faces, like masks to hide their hearts from the world.

Kakashi looked back to his uncle, and under the cover of his own mask he smirked. It was always good to win a fight, but some battles against some opponents made victory all the sweeter.

After the deliberations were over, many weeks in the planning and the forging of alliances for either of the two parties resulting in nothing but frustration and a stalemate, he wasn't accosted for almost ten minutes. Honestly, he had thought that it would happen much sooner. He had abstained his voice again and again, refusing to choose once side over the other. He honestly didn't care if the clan remained leaderless and without representation in the Concert of Clans in the heart of the village, presided over by the newly minted Godaime Hokage, Senju Tsunade. A woman, no less. He smirked as he walked down one of the hallways of the compound, the outer wall to his left and the fusuma of main space of the upper house to his right. He wondered what the ornery old fucks thought of having to obey a woman as the successor of Shodai. Doubtlessly they hated it. It went against their narrow-minded and archaic principles.

But they still thought in the old ways, the ones that hadn't been truly applicable since Konoha and the founding of the hidden villages of the world. The age of the Shῡgenja and the Samurai was over.

This was the age of Shinobi, and it was a brand new world.

He always had thought that Hatakenōjō, the compound of his clan, was a stuff and uncomfortable place. His clan had been a family of farmers a century ago when they first came to Konoha at its founding, and hence they had been given the name Hatake by the Shinobi clans that had filled the village even in those far off distant days. If they had ever had a surname before then it had been forgotten with so much else of their old heritage, but somehow it still showed in their architecture of all things. The Hatakenōjō was a cluster of buildings arranged in terraces on a manmade hill, overlooking the rice paddies that the clan worked to the south of Konoha's outskirts, and the buildings seemed ancient even when compared to the palace-castle of the Hyūga and the foundry-fortress of the Sarutobi.

He sniffed the air and made a face beneath his mask. The roofs of the buildings were thatched with straw, like farmhouses, and everything smelled of rice and mud and horses. The main terrace of the compound had been dominated by the main house for years now, with its verandas and its stairs and its stupid thatched roof, but still the windows let in the scent of horses from the stables on the second terrace. The bottom terrace was walled-in by a tall palisade, and he stopped by one of the windows and opened the shutters despite the windy day to look out over the top of those woodworks and the village beyond. There was Konoha, and the faces in the stone to the northwest, towering above the compounds of the more powerful clans and the main part of the village. All the rest of the village lived there, in simple houses and districts cramped together, boarding houses and shops and businesses all around to satisfy the needs of both Shinobi and civilians, and Sensei's stone eyes saw all of it.

He smiled beneath his mask at that rocky likeness, and he couldn't help himself. Sensei had died before him, as all his true friends and teachers and comrades had – Rin, Obito, forgive me – but Sensei's passing held little bitterness to him. Minato-sensei had died protecting what he loved. The village, and his family. That was what had mattered to the Yondaime Hokage the most. Not his clan, the Namikaze, or the politics of the village and the game of shadows played by the clan. But the village, all of it. And those precious to him within it.

"Kakshi!" A shout behind him broke him out of his deep thoughts, and he turned to see Kakine approach him, the hem of his yukata and the haori of his station drawn tight over his broad shoulder, his white hair in a knot on the top of his head. "What" he growled "in the name of Shodai and all the ancestor spirits, do you think you're doing?!"

"Kakine" he greeted absently, honestly not caring whether or not his old supposed friend had been upset by his actions. "Yo. What's put a burr in your undershirts?"

"Don't play glib with me, Kakashi" Kakine ground his teeth together and prodded Kakashi's shoulder with a callused finger made gnarled and weathered by too much time spent around the Hatakenōjō, in the rice paddies and the armoury and arsenal. "The clan needs leadership. If you can't remember, we've got a feud with the Fūma clan. Who knows what they might do if we can't oppose them on the Concert?"

"I don't know, and I don't care about your petty squabbles" Kakashi muttered back as absently as ever, but when Kakine made to prod him again his hand was slapped away in a motion so quick that Kakashi's own hand seemed like nothing more than a blur. "Don't touch me. I've had enough of this place, and of you". Kakine stopped, silent by Kakashi's side, still fuming but waiting for something. Finally Kakashi sighed. "Kakine, what the- what stupid idea made you think that Kama was leadership material? He's the exact opposite of what you said you-"

"He is the exact opposite of what the clan needs right now – aye, I know" Kakine nodded and crossed his arms before his chest, leaning against the wall beside that window with his shoulder to the opened shutter. "But he's getting old, Kakashi. And he's got no son of his own. He's not as stupid as Nōbu, either. He'll nominate a successor, unlike that randy old todger". He reached up and wiped imaginary gunk out of the corner of his right eye by the tip of his finger before he went on. "And who do you think he'll nominate, hm?"

Kakashi looked back at the only member of the clan that he considered sensible on at least some level, his opinions about the man restored to their previous gentler state, yet still his words made him sigh. He turned around and leant out over the edge of the windowsill, his good eye staring at Sensei's face in the distance. "I'm not interested in leading the clan, Kakine. Ever".

"A nomination means your name is added to the proverbial ballot" Kakine lectured from beside him, his fingers drumming against his heavily tanned arms. "Then you got no choice. Once you step up, or are stepped up, you cannot back down. And they'd choose you. Sharingan no Eiyū. Kama's as stubborn as a donkey with shite on its arse and as comfortable to be around, but by electing him-"

"Well, look at you! Playing the long game" Kakashi chuckled humourlessly as he watched the banners of the clan, the black geometric squares within diamond shape on dull green and yellow, flutter and beat in the wind from the tops of the palisade and roof beams. "Good on you".

"Don't you make light of this, Kakashi-nī". One of those thing callused hands landed on his shoulder, just like Sensei's would have, and Kakashi didn't knock it away or shrug it off. "You're clever. You're wise. You're prudent. If you would stop reading smut all the time and apply yourself properly, you could very well become Hokage-"

"I like reading smut. It's my favourite genre". Not to mention, everything I lead or follow die or turn to shite. But he didn't say that aloud. "You just want to increase the standing of the clan, don't you? You want to be able to say to your kids that the one they're supposed to look up to is a hero. And then you want me to become Hokage, which is all that a thousandfold". He scoffed. "Not a chance".

"Of course I want the clan's standing to increase". Kakine withdrew his hand and craned his neck and head around to look out over that village. "My children get accosted by Shimura and Namikaze classmates because they are 'farmers'. 'Dirt-people'. 'Covered in shit'. As if the Namikaze didn't use to be Yakuza and pirates, and the Shimura flesh traders and brothel keepers. I want my sons to be proud of the name Hatake. I want the family name to live on". He sighed and turned back into the hallway. "That's all that remains once we are dead and buried, after all. Our names and our children".

Kakashi met the petrified eyes of Minato Sensei on that mountain, sterner in death and stone than they had ever been in life and flesh. "Not always" he answered his old friend and raised himself back into the hallway firmly, the shadowy gloom all but blinding after the sunshine and wind. "You'd best take cover" he muttered aside as a clatter of sandals echoed down the house and signalled the arrival of a very, very shouty man. "Kama is going to be less altruistic than you are".

"Kama-san!" Kakine greeted Kakashi's uncle as the man in question stormed around the far corner and caught sight of them, but the older man, void of the clan's customary tendency towards emotionlessness and through it properness, ignored him. He stalked straight for Kakashi.

"You betrayed me boy" Kama growled and grabbed his wrist, but Kakashi tore his hand away from the scarred man and glared at him. "Disrespectful lout!" the older man began to shout, caring not who overheard even in the cramped confines of the compound's main house. "You will obey me! I am your uncle!"

Kakashi heard the drums again.

"You don't have to watch this" Minato's voice whispered into his ear, but Kakashi shrugged off his hand. Sakumo had gone back on his mission. He had shamed the village and the clan, and his son, in the eyes of heaven and the world. He had to atone for his disobedience.

"Yes I do, sensei" Kakashi replied. And not once did he look away as his father sliced open his belly with that blade in his hands. The drums came to a stop, and for a moment all was silent.

With a wordless shout, a battle-cry of a roar, Kama stepped forth from behind the dying Sakumo and cut down in a vicious arch with the katana in his hands. And the wind whisked in Kakashi's hair.

"You're the man who cut off my father's head" he told Kama as the drums went silent once again and that roar echoed still in his ears, and his words seemed to strike Kama like a kunai to the heart. "That doesn't make us family". He glared as the old man stumbled backwards, Sakumo's older brother and protector for all of their childhood years. He had never been as strong as the White Fang, nor as deadly, but once he had been a good man, caring not for politics but for the village and the clan as a whole. And that man had been the one to kill him.

"I-" Kama's chest heaved under his kimono, the silk garment old and meticulously mended time and time again at every seam. It had been a gift from the nobleman he had saved in the process of getting his head nearly cloven in twain by a rouge Shinobi's sword, and he always wore it on occasions when things were precarious. For luck, he claimed. For honour. "I did my duty, Kakashi-kun" he told his nephew, but Kakashi remained impassive and unmoveable. "It was a different time, and failing to meet a contact, running from the enemy in sight of victory-" he breathed in hard, as if to steady himself and regain his outwardly emotionless composure. "He asked me to, Kakashi-kun. I was honoured to be his second".

Kakashi stared at his uncle, remembered all his words of familial duty and filial loyalty, before he turned on his heel and marched off towards the exit of the house, his good mood gone for much of the rest of the day. "It doesn't matter" he told the two of them just when they were on the edge of hearing. Kakine's intentions be damned.

They could all rot for all he cared.

---

Once, in another world and in a time long ago, there appeared a great demon in Hi Province.

Over the centuries, the beast gained a reputation as an age-old natural disaster, appearing suddenly out of nowhere to attack areas that had become breeding grounds for the darkest aspects of human nature. And in lands so plagued by wars as Hi and its neighbouring provinces were such areas were not few, nor were they far between each other. The beast, dwarfing mountains with its size and outmatching typhoons and earthquakes in its destructive capability, took a vulpine shape, fur burnished blood red, and the lucky few that survived in its wake called it Kyῡbi no Yoko.

The Nine-Tailed Fox.

It fell upon the village of Konohagakure in central Hi one night, one hundred and eight years after Konoha's founding. The destruction it wreaked upon that Shinobi hidden village was terrible. All the Shinobi of the village were mustered to fight against it, but to little avail. Neither kunai nor sword nor arrow could pierce its hide, and its jaws were the jaws of death. There was no escape from it, for neither horse nor man nor the divine winds themselves could as much as match its terrible speed. That night screams echoed towards the sky as the people of the village were all but slaughtered and Konoha burnt.

In the end the greatest of their number gave up his life to seal the demon away. His name was Namikaze Minato, Kiiroi Senkō, the Yellow Flash.

The world knew him as the Fourth Hokage.

That was twelve years ago. Since then there had been a new emperor in Heian-kyō, the capital of the land, one whom the provinces of the nation and the Shinobi villages paid next to no heed to at all. The office of the emperor had been largely ceremonial for the last two hundred years, as useless as the now defunct samurai class. The Daimyō of Japan followed newer edicts and dogma, and mostly used Shinobi for their wars instead of their own people and retainers. And so the world went on as it always had, Shinobi fighting and dying in battles against each other from their childhoods and onto their graves.

Some died early, some died late, and in the eyes of the world and the gods they all mattered little. But on one night twelve years after the death of Namikaze Minato a boy in Konoha was tricked into stealing a scroll of sealing and Hiden techniques from the Hokage's office. He had hardly needed to be tricked though, for it was as if Konoha as a whole, the children his age and the adults that had birthed them both, hated him. Some part of him, he would be loath to admit years later, wanted revenge. But more than anything else he wanted to prove himself. He wanted to become Hokage.

On that night, by the wounded proclamation of a teacher he would come to love and a traitor that he would see the death of, that boy learnt that the Fourth Hokage had sealed into him body that dreaded Demon Fox. That was why they had all hated him.

To be completely honest, he was almost relieved that they hated him for no fault of his own.

On that night he was made a Shinobi proper, after having shown skill and strength and courage to match both, and so he joined his classmates and comrades in the petty fights and near-wars that ravaged the land. In his team-mates, Haruno Sakura and Uchiha Sasuke, he found a girl he loved and a brother, a rival, the first friend he had ever had. In his teacher Hatake Kakashi he found wisdom.

And in the people around him he found strength, purpose and hope. But things changed.

Sasuke, obsessed with vengeance, became the target of an old enemy of Konoha, and with an army from the provinces of Kaze and Oto the traitorous snake Orochimaru invaded Konoha in what came to be known as the Crush. More than two thousand Shinobi died that day, but the invasion was fought back. Still, the losses were grave, and the Hokage died. Naruto, with the help of the Hokage's old student and Orochimaru's former team-mate Jiraiya, his new master, brought a new Hokage to Konoha. And people began to forget the fox and praise his name.

But all was not well. Sasuke, obsessed with vengeance, had been struck by a tragedy long ago and delivered himself willingly into the arms of Orochimaru even though the snake wanted to steal his body for his own to achieve ultimate power and immortality. Naruto tried to bring him back to the village, but for all of his efforts he failed. And so the brothers went their separate ways, under different masters.

And the world turned, and the wheel of hatred spun ever on with the cycle of violence.

---

The Forgotten Sannin

All the other Hyῡga elders hid their foreheads from the world. It was an act of humility, of recognising the equality the eight of them now lived in, the eight wisest and most skilled of the clan of either of its three branches working in unison for the betterment of everyone with the name Hyῡga. Not so Hiramaī Hyῡga. She never wore the white headband with the crest of the clan in black over the seal on her brow. She wanted the whole world to see it.

For she was a member of the branch family, and she was just as proud of the cursed seal upon her forehead as she was resolute in her hatred of it. She did her duty because she loved her clan, and in her old age she had come to accept her fate.

Still, in her youth she had railed against destiny. Just like the supposed prodigy, Neji, had. Which was why Hinata-sama was doing a mistake in asking him to train her. He wasn't ready. Not yet.

She, mother to the living branch house members of Suihija, Himawari and Hikari, had been made an elder when Kehijo, a boring old spud older than Konoha itself, had died in the stresses following the Suna attack on the village. Which was about time, in her mind. She had led the Bunke, the branch family of the Hyῡga for nearly thirty years before she handed the duty off to her oldest cousin once removed just a month earlier. Before that she had fought for Konoha and the village in long and bloody wars. She was of the same generation of the Sannin, but compared to those her name was all but unknown and she preferred it that way.

She craved no fame or glory. She had lost too much to battle for that. All she wanted was to teach the children of the clan how to defend themselves and honour the ancestors and the Will of Fire. Failing that she wanted to die in peace surrounded by her grandchildren: Suihija's boy Taiyo, Himawari's three littlest ones and Hikari's daughters. Hanabi and Hinata. She was looking for Hinata then, scanning the hold of her clan with her white eyes in a sweep before she found her. There was next to no privacy amongst the Hyῡga. Even if their walls had not been thin and the clan filled with people their eyes saw all things under heaven – or at least, that was how the old family saying went.

The Hyῡga Compound was a huge thing, as benefitted one of the oldest, richest and most powerful families of Konoha. It lay on the north-eastern fringes of Konoha, surrounded by the houses and businesses of their vassal clans, built upon and around a small hill from which one could see the rock of the Hokage Mountain rise in the west, casting a long shadow over the hidden village at sunset as the sunlight passed over the likenesses of the Hokage. Hiramaī could see the workers scamper over the rock's surface just to the right and north of Yondaime's likeness in the rock, their sweating labouring forms outlined by the setting sun as they carved into the brownish stone the face of the new Hokage: Tsunade of the Sannin, a Senju. Led by a Senju again – it was almost like the days of her childhood.

When Senju Tobirama had been Hokage and Daihī had been leader of the Hyῡga – that was when she had grown up. Of course, the clan had been led by another around the time that she had been born: Hyῡga Hiaima, Byakume no Kijo. Hiaima had been old even when Hashirama Senju invited the clan to join his alliance of the Sarutobi, Senju, Aburame and Uchiha, and had been the one to lead the clan into the new age. On the final day of her death, much more than a hundred years old, she had survived three husbands and seventeen grandchildren. As Hiramaī entered the training grounds, cursing quietly over the ache in her hip, she reflected on that titan of legend, towering over the history of her clan. Perhaps it was about time that the clan was led by a woman once more.

Hiashi, Hiramaī's son by law, had two daughters: Hanabi, a wilful young hellion of a lady, and Hinata, as beautiful as her mother and as kind as the blessed hands of her ancestors. As Hiashi was the head of the Sōke branch of the family he was the head of all of the clan, and an honorary elder to boot. Thus her daughter Hikari had become a member of the main family on her wedding day, and the memory of her daughter's smile as that accursed seal was removed from her brow warmed Hiramaī's heart even now. Her sole remaining son would not have been so happy.

"If not for this thing" Suihija had one said, pointing to his brow with his thumb "my teacher's evil would have destroyed me and my family. This is not an evil thing. The power of our House must be kept safe. Kept in Hyῡga hands. By any means necessary". She had named him Deva, after his grandfather, her father, but just like Hiaima he had changed his name as an adult to reflect the sorrows of his heart.

In Suihija's case it was a change brought about by shame. For years she had tried to convince him that he could not have been held responsible for what Orochimaru had done, for the lives he had ruined. For the lives he had taken and the hopes he had crushed.

And for years she offered prayer to the ancestors in gratitude that Orochimaru had failed to inflict his curse upon her son like he had upon Suihija team-mates, like the traitor Hataro and that poor Mitarashi girl. Her fighting days were long behind her now. As an elder she had a greater duty to her clan than to her village. But if she hadn't been an elder nothing would have stopped her from hunting the snake down and crushing his heart with the Shōtei strike she had developed in her youth. She was confident that she could have bested that accursed creature in Taijutsu, if nothing else.

There was a reason why so many of her classmates and fellow members of her generation had fallen in the wars of old, and why she was one of the few still alive. Aside from the Sannin, of course. She was a good Shinobi, she did not doubt that, but she had been thoroughly overshined by her classmates. Few outside the clan knew her name – and she liked it that way.

Many of the Bunke, the branch house members, in attendance ceased their training and bowed to her as she entered the training grounds, west of the inner gardens and the Sōke branch's citadel at the heart of the compound, a large expanse of cobbled openness between the middle walls and the western wing of the Bunke house. At times the cobbles and the dirt of the eight-sided courtyard were interrupted by poles on which to practice balance or sand pits in which to fight on loose footing, and at the centre of the grounds, on a platform painted into a spiral, practiced Hyῡga Neji his techniques.

She could find few faults in his form as she slowly crossed the training grounds, walking past branch house members – Bunke – who fenced or fought or trained or studied under one of the older masters. He was a prodigy, after all. There was no denying that, and blessed be the ancestors for the fact that he had shed his silly shirt and bandages for an actual kimono robe as befitted him. He had a natural ability, strong Byakῡgan eyes and a head for learning. A talent for the Jῡken. And somehow he had learnt the Hakke Rokujūyon Shō. With one glance at his audience she knew how he had learnt that technique that was supposed to be hidden from him.

Her granddaughter Hinata was there, quietly watching her cousin with an Ekikyō scroll held unread in her hand, her tan Inuzuka jacket with the typical fuzzy hems and hood about her adolescent body. Elder Hanshō might have said that she was growing into a woman already, perverted as that old fart was. And Elder Hirayara would have grown silent and tense at such a suggestion, as even though her own stakes in the line of the clan succession were three in number all of them were sickly, frail and weak. Hinata had seemed weak for years, slight and powerless – something Hiramaī had always known to be false by the colour of her eyes.

There was steel in that girl. Deep down, perhaps, blunted and corroded by needless kindness, but it was there. As Neji went through the steps of the form, the kata, in fluid movements more seeming like dance than fighting but for the strikes that shot out from his centre in flurries of blows, she took to standing beside Hinata, who didn't even notice her at first. The girl was staring at her cousin, enraptured, lavender-tinted white eyes wide in concentration as she took in every single motion, memorising them, making as if to capture them in her mind so that she could repeat them.

That was not the way to teach. Neji had never taught, after all, and when Hiramaī had learned from her daughter that Hinata had asked her cousin for lessons she had grown concerned. Seeing this, now – the boy's form wasn't even correct. Close to perfect, yes, but not quite there yet. Too young, to hasty, too brash, he moved a little too quickly to allow for the proper emphasising of each separate technique and stance. He wasn't performing a kata. He was practicing for a battle.

"That is not the correct way to perform that Kata" she spoke up, and in an instant he flowed up from a deep stance and into a graceful bow. Like a dancer, almost. But just almost, and thus he was yet a great distance from being a master. "Your lotus stance isn't deep enough".

"Hiramaī-sama. I am honoured". He sounded false as he bowed towards her, acknowledging her as his elder and his better, but he was much better at faking humility than before, when he hadn't even made the effort to fake it. Now he at least pretended. As if that made anything better. "I must protest, Elder" he went on even while the others watching him, including little Hinata, bowed towards him and paid their respects. "My stance is practical, more refined. There is no need for the Lotus Stance to be quite so deep. I have determined that-"

"And that is what you believe, boy?" she wondered, supporting herself on her walking stick to alleviate some of the pain in her scarred hip, an old injury that had never quite healed correctly. "That you are better? Was that why you were so arrogant, so short-sighted, so selfish?"

"The forces of fate were arrayed against me, elder Hiramaī-" he began to explain, to which she gave him back nothing but a level look. "I was so angry for a long time. Angry at being trapped by the seal. Angry at being made to serve those whom my father had died for. Bitter at-" she snorted out a scoff, and he fell silent, his pale face reddening visibly.

"Foolish boy" she almost sneered at him, but as she knew that all around them listened to her words she would not dishonour the young supposed prodigy. Perhaps it was better to show him the error of his ways. "I've birthed five children into this world, two of whom I have seen buried before me. My husband was killed by the same traitor who sought to corrupt my son. I have seen more friends than I can count die. My granddaughter was usurped as heiress. Do not speak to me of bitterness and anger, boy. I have both in multitude. Your lotus stance is not deep enough. See it corrected".

"Hai, Hiramaī-sama. Gyoi ni" Neji swallowed his pride and bowed, the blush to his cheeks no longer there by bevexment but instead by shame. "Please, forgive my insolence. I-"

"You were being an arrogant twit with his head stuck up his own rectum, just like your father used to be" she shook her head at him and held up her hand in warning. "But you seem to want to learn humility. You are trying to, at least. Your lotus stance is not deep enough. Do the Eleventh Sparrow Kata five hundred times until you become humble and improve". She turned around and looked to Hinata, eyeing the unopened scroll in her hand before she scoffed again. "Come with me, Hinata-sama" she said to the girl as she walked past her, turning back to her when Hinata remained fixed to the cobbles behind her. "Come along now, girl. I haven't got all day, and neither do you".

"H-ai, Hiramaī-obāsama" Hinata mumbled as she hurried after Hiramaī, white eyes downcast as she stared at the floor of walkways beneath their feet. She had pretty eyes, though Hiramaī had no inkling of where they had come from. Most of the Hyῡga eyes looked white and large, bereft of pupils and irises milky white. Milk eyes, some called it. Some used much unkinder terms: corpse eyes, witch eyes, dead eyes, demon eyes. Some superstitious people claimed that the white eyes had the ability to curse someone with nothing but a look. But to Hinata's there was a hint of lavender, slight as it might have been, and Hiramaī had no inkling of where that trait had come from. Perhaps it was a fluke of genetics.

Or perhaps it was destiny.

"You think I was too harsh on him" she stated to the girl without as much as a look as they headed for the Sōke house at the centre of the compound, walking under slate roofs of the verandas of the western wing of the Bunke barracks. "I led the Bunke branch of our family for thirty years, Hinata-sama. I've seen boys and girls like him before: resentful of their lot in life and the fate they have been given". Somehow she found herself smiling slightly, a motion to which she was unsued. "My father used to have a saying – something he claimed came from Hiaima-dono herself. 'Struggle is an illusion, for fate is like the moon and we are all adrift on the sea. The tide rises, the tide falls, and the wind blows us wherever it wills. There is nothing to struggle against'. Of course, that was utter claptrap".

"A-ano, Hiramaī-obāsama" Hinata stuttered out, and Hiramaī made a mental note of adding vocal exercises to the girl's training regimen. "W-where are we going?" she wondered as they walked through the walkway that close down the centre of the western Bunke wing, a two story building built partially out of stone that served the double purpose as living quarters for the lesser branch of the family and a defensive fortification. The walkways that led to the inner courtyard had portcullises at each end that could be dropped with the release of a single seal, and over their heads were murder holes and arrow slits – relics of a construction dogma established in a previous warlike age.

"To start your training" Hiramaī answered, to which the girl almost stopped and fell haplessly over her feet before regained her balance and her composure. "My daughter – your mother – mentioned to me last night that you seek to grow stronger. That you had said so last night, at the Sōke supper. That all in your generation do, because of some" she couldn't rightly recall. She rarely left the compound in these days, and there was a reason shy few outside of the clan knew of her. "Some classmate of yours. The traitor Uchiha?"

"Sasuke-kun?" Hinata wondered, to which Hiramaī nodded her head. "N-no, Hiramaī-obāsama, Well, maybe a little, but-"

"Don't speak in such familiar terms about a traitor, Hinata-sama". She could not help the sharpness in her voice, the bite of her anger at the notion. "Those who consort with traitors are but one step from being traitors themselves. Damn the Uchiha" she sighed as they exited the long and shadowy walkway at last "and damn their evil eyes. Scheming and devious. We should have executed all of them when Madara betrayed Shodai. Mark my words, girl – if we had done that we would have been spared much trouble in the years that followed".

"B-but" Hinata replied quietly as the inner courtyard opened up before them, a large open square paved with stone before the innermost walls of the compound. Those walls, the tallest they had, three stories high and fifteen shaku thick, went around not only the Sōke house that was the palace of the Hyῡga clan but also the inner gardens beyond it, and the gate in its stone was an eight-sided taijitu that would split in half down the centre when opening. It was guarded by four Bunke warriors, two of whom were her nephews and one who was her first cousin twice removed, metal breastplates and armguards worn beneath their outer robes, and they bowed to the two of them as they walked up the steps towards the gates and then on past the guards. "The U-Uchiha were p-powerful fighters" Hinata went on, just as quiet as before. "Without them we m-might have lost the wars".

"Perhaps, perhaps not" Hiramaī shrugged. "The clan's power lay in its Sharingan, and that is a tool of Genjutsu. It also gives faster reaction time. But the Byakῡgan sees all things under heaven. It cuts through Genjutsu easily. Our clan has always been more powerful than the Uchiha. Remember that". Of course, the Byakῡgan did not match the mythical evolved Sharingan. And some stories said that the Hyῡga Shodai had been born of Uchiha and Kaguya blood, the first of their line. If such was the truth she preferred to think of the Byakῡgan as an evolution of the Sharingan. Not, as she had once heard an Uchiha say, a lesser mutation born of diluted Uchiha blood.

The power of a Dōjutsu wasn't so easily measured. Its strength lay in the strategic advantage it provided and little else. Or so she kept telling herself. She knew, on some level, that she was fooling herself.

The Sōke house, half palace and half castle with layered roofs of black slate around each floor and on the crown of the house, was built almost entirely of Hinoki cypress, its outer walls painted in shimmering white and ebony black. The top two floors of the building were much smaller and more quadrennial than the rest of the rectangular structure, making a sort of tower rise from the centre wing. In the days of the founding of the village the elders would have kept council there, in the tallest top chambers, gazing out over Konoha and seeing all. Now it was little more than a perch and a repository for secret knowledge and techniques, the vault that kept the most powerful tokens of the main house hidden from the world. Hiramaī had never been allowed in there, nor would she ever be. Only the head of the clan was.

Instead she and the girl – though perhaps she was growing into a young woman already – headed for the armoury of the Sōke family. Technically Hiramaī wasn't allowed in there either, but no one ever tried to stop her from entering the long room with wooden walls, reinforced with steel bars as opposed to fusuma like the rest of the second floor, with anything more than token protests. Also, being an elder now afforded her certain liberties she never could have taken otherwise. Like taking the child of the clan head as her student without having to ask anyone for permission to do so.

The Sōke armoury was a far cry from being as expansive as the main clan armoury squeezed down between the middle wall and the outer wall, just up the path from the archery range and beyond the kennels and the stables. It only contained a few dozen weapons and three suits of armour, but it needed nothing more than that. After all, this was where the Sōke family kept their weapons only, and since that branch of the family was meant to rule and protect the family's political interests most of the weapons there were largely ceremonial in function.

The most important of those ceremonial tools was propped up on a stand at the centre of the wall opposite the door, sturdy and wooden and barred, flanked by Hiashi's and Hizashi's armours, matching suits of lamellar plate lacquered in white and black. The masks of the unplumed and unornate helmets were identical stern demonic faces in black steel, but no one had worn either armour for almost ten years. Not since Hizashi's suicide. Hiramaī know that her brother in law had been deeply scarred by his brother's death – even if not even he realised it at times.

She noticed how Hinata, shy and downcast in the presence of the warlike heritage of her clan, could not help but stare at the swords on that centre stand flanked by the armours. And why wouldn't she? The wakizashi and katana there, shortsword and longsword, there were gifts from Senju Hashirama, given to the clan at the founding of Konoha in return for their allegiance. Their bright blades had been forged in the smithies of the Sarutobi clan out of white steel, and the tsuba, the handguards, had been fashioned to look like Taijitu with eight sides, protruding over handles laced with black and purple silk bands.

The taijitu, the ying and yang coiling around each other and combined, the symbol of eternity, universality and the Tao that could not be named. The crest of the Hyῡga clan. The ultimate manifestation of their beliefs and the legacy that their ancestors had passed down to them since Tsukime Hyῡga and his eldest son, known in the present day as Tokaisen. Strength, Wisdom and Eyes that saw Eternity.

"When you were a young girl the Elders decided that you were too kind to inherit the clan. Too meek. Too weak". Hiramaī spoke softly in the quiet of the inner Hyῡga keep as she ignored the swords on the stands and headed for one of the paper panes along the wall, sliding it back to reveal a collection of heirlooms much older than the village around them and the faces on that far mountain. "The elders at the time and your father, bereaved still by the death of Hizashi-san, saw only what was in front of them. Your father did it out of kindness, twisted as it might have been. Some of the elders were" she paused and glanced over her shoulder at the girl "less altruistic in their desires".

"I-I honour the wisdom of my b-betters" the girl bowed and blushed. Hiramaī sneered.

"Enough! I will not teach you unless you understand that they stole your birthright!" In that alcove behind the paper pane was a few ancient swords and a painting, a woodprint of Tokaisen surrounded by his brothers and sisters, the first Ekikyō scroll being penned by his slender hand in that moment there immortalised. "We turn clay to make a bowl and fill it with whatever we please, but a bowl is most useful when there is nothing in it. It is on the nothingness that the purpose of the bowl depends". The Ekikyō, the sacred text of divination in which the secrets of the main clan's techniques were buried. Without knowing she had shared it with her cousin. Foolish girl.

She pried her eyes from the gaze of Tokaisen and the painting, those lavender-tinted white eyes burning in her mind, and reached into the alcove to take a sword in its scabbard from there. It was a weapon from the Middle Kingdom, as old as the clan, a jian of foreign design, straight and slender and double-edged. Its handguard was the shape of a grinning demon with pearls for its eyes. Just like the first Hyῡga who had forged it and tempered it in the blood of his mother's clan.

"Therefore" she said, taking the sword by the grip before pulling it free of the sheath with a peal of singing steel "just as we take advantage of what is, we should know the usefulness of what is not". The blade, leaf-thin, flexed slightly before it settled, whirling waves and patterns forged into that chakra-infused steel. "Likewise, a leader's strength is not strength unless tempered by wisdom and kindness. Meekness. There things are not weaknesses. Not in the eyes of the ancestors and the pages of the Ekikyō". She let her walking stick drop to the floor and began to move the sword before her in patterns so familiar as Hinata watched, unblinking, the same expression on her face that she had had when watching Neji do his forms in the training grounds.

Hiramaī was far from as graceful as she had been when she had been young and unwounded, when her hip hadn't hurt and had still obeyed her instead of stiffening. Still she moved as a swallow in flight, slowly at first on the morning wind but faster and faster as the sun began to rise, the blade whirling around her in arcs and circles in the dipping of wings and the rising of feathers. She came to the end of the form and thrust the sword out before her, her bad leg stretched out behind her in the air where it was as useless as ever but at least not in the way.

She wasn't even sweaty. Or winded, even. She had always trained with the sword, and this one felt better than most. She readily turned back towards the alcove and shoved the blade back into its scabbard, the lilac tassel hanging from the ring in its pommel soft against the back of her hand. With sword flat across both of her hands she turned towards Hinata and bowed as she straightened out her arms towards her.

"This is Tokaisen's sword. Hiaima-dono's sword. Hyakῡgen – the Source of Hundreds. This sword should be yours, Hinata-sama". Tentatively, with trembling fingers, the girl reached out and laid her fingers around the scabbard, taking it from her. "By all right it should be yours one day. Once you were robbed of your inheritance, of your birthright. Back then I opposed the decision, but I could do nothing. Now I can. I will train you, Hinata-sama" she reached out and urged the young woman's eyes up, meeting that lavender-tinted gaze with her own corpse-white eyes. "I will, but only if you agree to work with me in a certain endeavour of mine".

"W-w-what-" the girl stuttered out meeting her gaze, seeming almost like she was about to cry, until she swallowed hard and nodded, a blush in her gentle cheeks. "What would you ask of me, Hiramaī-obāsama?"

"To take what is yours by right" came the answer as Hinata's grandmother stepped aside and gestured to the painting in the hidden alcove. Hinata gasped, for she saw in the face of Tokaisen, white-haired and ancient, the same lavender-tinted Byakῡgan that she possessed herself. "My daughter named you after Hiaima-dono. She was born under the name Hinata, just like you. The other elders might bicker over who's grandchild shall lead the clan, but in you the souls of the ancestors have converged". Some said that she had grown superstitious and foolish in her old age.

Some said that long years of obscurity and loss had made her bitter and mad. As far as she knew they were only half-right. And to her credit the girl hesitated only a little while.

"Teach me, Hiramaī-obāsama" Hinata nodded, and despite the scars on her face Hiramaī smiled.

---

The Horned Toad

"That's it! Keep going!" Jiraiya shouted idle encouragement to Naruto, sitting in the mighty shadow cast by the branches of a great sugi tree in an otherwise empty clearing in the northern reaches of Fire Country. They were a little more than two weeks of leisurely travel from Konoha, and he idly sat in the coolness of the shade, sketching his next best-selling masterpiece of erotic fiction as he watched his newest student train. He glanced up at Naruto, blonde hair and tanned skin dirty from his tussling, from time to time as the boy worked on his Ninjutsu fundamentals. As long as the boy did not hurt himself Jiraiya was content to let him all but train himself.

Most teachers and other instructors from Konoha would have called him lazy. Even Hiruzen-sensei, on reflection. Perhaps even Minato would have, and Kakashi-kun too. They would have urged him to go out there and continuously shout words at the oblivious boy's head that he did not understand, hammer knowledge into him that he would never need, protect him to prepare him for a life that would never be kind to him. Jiraiya – in his infinite and, if he could say so himself, ever so handsome wisdom – had more of a laissez faire approach to schooling his students. Instruction was to be given in short bits, snippets, and aside from the occasional shouted word of encouragement and the odd boff across the bonce for slacking off they were then left to their own devices, to train and hone their own techniques. Training was supposed to be introspective. The Toads had taught him that when he himself had trained to become a sage. Physical strength and mental strength was nothing if not tempered by wisdom and experience.

And now he even thinking like a Hyῡga. He sneered at himself and shook his head in mock disgust. He was growing old, no doubt. It was easy to be lost in thought these days. He shifted his focus to the notebook in his hands and saw the scribbles there confused and polarised. Unclear. He had two different concepts for his next book in mind. Icha Icha Tactics was easy to write. It was part of the reason why he was so lax in his supervison of his students' training: he had a career outside being a Shinobi that he had to make time for. He could more or less crap out the next instalment in the Icha Icha series in a couple of months and be done with it. It was getting formulaic at this point, that he had to concede, but what was wrong with that? It put coin in his purse. What else mattered?

Still, some stupid part of him wanted to write serious things again. Perhaps not pure fiction, like his first novel, Dokonjō Ninden, which had sold exceedingly poorly. No, something that would not stray too far from his established genre, perhaps. Something well within both his own comfort zone and that of his readers and his fan-base. Not erotic fiction, perhaps. But still erotica. Something a little more introspective-

And he was procrastinating. Again. Sighing at himself he looked up to pay attention to Naruto's training for once. It had been almost a month since they left Konoha, having promised that he would take the boy under his wings and teach him as much as he could while keeping him safe. Safe, from those who wanted him – or rather, wanted the thing that lived inside of him.

He watched Naruto, watched a score of his clones practice the Taijutsu stances, drills and techniques he had instructed them to off to one side of the clearing, while in another a few other clones practiced at perfecting the basics of the Rasengan. The fundamentals were the most important, after all. And since the boy would never be any good at Genjutsu – he lacked the precise chakra control for it, but more importantly he lacked the temperament, for both that and scroll-work - Taijutsu and Ninjutsu would have to serve as his strengths. He certainly had the tenacity for the former, and if he was anything like his paternal grandmother's family he would grow up tall despite his childish shortness. If he was anything like his mother's family he'd grow up strong as well. As for Ninjutsu, it relied on chakra. Control and precision, yes, but the amount of it was the most important part. And chakra in abundance he had, but only in part because of his own abilities. Most of it belonged to that demon, trapped within his belly.

There were even traces of it in his appearance. The whisker-marks on his cheeks were the most apparent part of it, but at times he thought that he could see more than that. His teeth were sharper, more canine in appearance perhaps, and he seemed always famished when they ate, as if his stomach was an abyss that was hard to fill. Always hungry, because the Hakke no Fūin let the demon's energy seep into his body, affecting more than just his chakra coils. It strengthened his regeneration of blood and hurt tissue, it made some of his senses more acute. Also it sapped his strength and drove him to hunger, just like how the Bijῡ fox hungered for destruction. He thought he could see a hint of the beastly grace and the primal ferocity in Naruto when he attacked his clones.

Or maybe he was just seeing things that were not there. Blessed Spirits of Fire, he hoped he was seeing things that were not there. Maybe, maybe he was only getting suspicious in his old age.

Then maybe again, perhaps he wasn't.

It was an odd thing to Jiraiya, being old. He wondered where all the time had gone, the life that had seemed so infinite in his youth now mostly behind him. Memory was everywhere, in every reflection cast in the still waters of the pond beside him, voices long gone whispering on the breeze that stroked his cheeks. He need only to close his eyes to drift away to a world of moments and memory.

A world of memories frozen in time.

He lived for a long time through decades of war and strife. He fought monsters and villains and heroes all alike, killing men and unmaking nations for the sake of his village and the teachings by which he had been raised. Throughout his years he met prophets, fools, seers, geniuses, avatars of lost power come anew and tyrants bent on remaking the world.

Not once did he ever meet Shodai Hokage, the God of Shinobi.

"Keep your boy on a tight leash, Inuzuka" Uchiha Harada had warned Father that glorious summer day that he could scarcely remember, a day long ago filled with sunshine and happiness and the scent of flowers. He remembered the sneer of the Uchiha guard – they were in few places in those days, those days after Madara betrayed them, those days he could only faintly remember – as they walked with the rest of the clan envoy into the Senju compound south of Konoha proper. He remembered those golden oak doors of the main building, guarded by Senju men in red armour who swung it open on silent hinges while the Uchiha security contingent checked each envoy on their own. He remembered not thinking much of it then. He was four years old, after all. A child so young hardly thought anything was dangerous in the presence of their parents.

He remembered the Senju compound vaguely, his childhood memories given strength and form only by his later visits to the place. The central chamber of the entry forecastle was huge, for it seemed all a castle to him compared to the palisade, near permanently placed hide and skin tents placed around the courtyard, squat stone buildings and deep burrows of his own clan compound. In the middle of it, jutting past the floorboards of dark wood, shot a Konora oak, as old as the founding of their village yet seemingly much older than even that, its leaves forever blooming. Past it, ignoring the tall stories above them and the rooms therein teeming with Senju clansmen, so numerous in those days, was the grand meeting hall, all made of both wood and trees and surfaces of oak sometimes polished to a mirror shine, the leaves over their heads already wilting after the death of the one who had built it.

He remembered being sat down by one of the lesser tables, by the Hyῡga side of the deliberations along with the Aburame twins, who were no fun at all, and a couple of pale Hyῡga and Saito his age. All of them were told to keep quiet. As heirs they were to attend with their clan leaders, but as children they were not to speak. For Jiraiya that was hard at first, but he remembered it getting much easier when he decided to start sulking.

He remembered seeing a blonde young girl for the first time, sad and angry, still all dressed in black after the death of her grandfather like the whole rest of her clan but for the warriors. He remembered her uncle much more faintly, his armour blue and grey, the hat and robe of his station elsewhere still. He remembered Nidaime's eyes, though. Piercing, dark, and full of sorrow and repressed anger. Hate was there. The adults did not see it, but he did.

He remembered the hate flaring to life as Sarutobi Sokka, son of Senju Tōka and Sarutobi Azarumo, begged for clemency and mercy for the Uchiha. They had not sinned, he remembered the stern man saying. Only their leader was a traitor, not the rest. Many had refused to follow, and those that had followed had done no less than he would have, if asked to do so by his own father. Old Ashina, in the last days of his life even then, had too counselled leniency. And Ashina they heeded, for his daughter Mitō was the old Hokage's widow, stoically sitting beside her brother-by-law. She ushered in silence with but a glance when the conversations of the adult got heated and the weapons were drawn.

The conversations were important, yet Jiraiya was still bored. Even though he could almost touch the tension in the room even then he was bored by all the adult talk. He remembered that he wanted to explore the rest of the Senju lofty compound – had they any warrens like his clan's? – and find out why the blonde grandchild of the old Hokage was so angry.

He remembered one man best of all, though. One man placed close to their side of the chambers as the uninteresting deliberations began, his hair as spiky as his father's though brown instead of grey and unmarred by tattoos, unlike Nidaime's face, unlike his own. He smiled easily despite the death of his uncle, and said that something as furtive as a death in the family was no reason to stop pursuing the greatest creatures the Gods had ever placed on the mortal world. He inquired what that creature was, whispering to the man in quiet conversation while in the centre of the chamber Hyῡga Daihī, the young leader of the white-eyed clan, demanded the execution of every last Uchiha in the village.

"Women, gaki" Senju Itama had answered with a lecherous grin. "Women".

Many years later he would work with Senju Itama – the second to bear that name in two generations, named by his father Tobirama after his and Hashirama-sama's dead brother whom he so much resembled – but before that he was enrolled into the academy.

He remembered being betrothed first, though. It was an archaic practice, one the Inuzuka had never kept, but Father had wanted it, and oddly enough the Hyῡga Daihī had accepted in defiance of the Hyῡga policy of blood purity. Later he would realise that it was because the families needed allies in those days, when the village seemed a fragile thing breaking at the seams. He had gone along with it, but only because it made Father happy. It made Mother angry, though, and much the rest of the clan felt the same way. "A Wolf is not shackled" she had told him the day she had left for the Kingdom of Earth, two dozen clan members going with her with all their Ninken, knives and axes and clubs and battle-sickles in their hands. He had cried, for he had been four years old and hadn't understood.

He remembered that he would rather never have ever seen his mother again after that. He remembered that six years later he cried when she returned as well, when she killed Father and New Mother and took Father's place as chief. She would die eight years later, and only the crones, Kobe – her new husband, bearded and quiet, weak-willed – and he himself had been the ones from her clan to attend her funeral. Orochimaru and Tsunade had come along too. Tsunade had even held his hand after he had spread her ashes to the wind, soothing him as the tears ran once again down his face.

He hadn't ever cried for eight years before that, and he hadn't shed a single honest tear since but for one time. He had promised himself that he would never weep, for years were unmanly. A sign of weakness. Mother had said that.

In the academy they had taken to him quickly. He made many friends, even with that weird lonely kid from the Katō clan with the ominous name. Orochimaru – wasn't that the name of some ancient snake monster from the myths of the Sarutobi? And the teachers, he remembered, told him that he had a talent for Ninjutsu and advanced techniques. Particularly scroll-work and seals.

He didn't know if he had a gift. He would have liked to think so, though, because it made him feel fuzzy in the chest with pride. He did think the seals were fun, though, like puzzles but much harder and thus more of a challenge, pictures half-filled in, ink directed towards a purpose along with chakra. He remembered that the teachers had taken him aside one days and explained that while his clumsiness made his physical skills suffer his sealing skills were the best the school had ever seen in a student his age.

Which wasn't as much praise as it would have been in later days. The institution of learning had only been a little older than him at that point. Still his skills got him an internship away from the clan, those cramped halls and draft through the walls seeming more like the confinements of a prison to him with each passing year, ever since he had seen the splendour of the Senju compound for himself. He relished the chance to go back there, and so nine years old he began working for Konoha's new head of research and science – Itama Senju. Itama confessed to him that he hadn't known nearly as much about science as his predecessor, an Uchiha who had been one of those few that had been punished with execution for joining in Madara's betrayal.

Itama-sensei, he remembered, would much rather have spent his time drinking and whoring – "You think girls are icky, gaki? Wait until you're older. Oh yes, when you're older! He he he" – than shut in at the Senju compound's lab. Later they would move to the newly built facility by the interrogation force's headquarters, but by then he was twelve and Itama was much better accustomed to his job. He had gotten much better at it too by then, though that didn't stop him from hiring one female understudy after the other when Jiraiya was made a genin and had to prioritize his missions and training over his friend and teacher.

Those beautiful young women never seemed to stay around for long, though. Some left for maternity leave and sought other paths through life, often in places far away, while others just left, levelling charges of sexual harassment as they went. Thankfully most of them were civilians, clanless Kunoichi or from the lower clans, like the Saito and the Shiranui and the Raidō and the Namikaze. Namikaze Kaigῡ, in particular, had been memorable. With her long blonde hair and her slender figure, her arms covered in tattoos that were something half-way between Shinobi diagrams and yakuza markings visible in the short-sleeved white haori she always wore, she had inspired him to write his first piece of erotic fiction. He never showed it, of course. It was rubbish.

He would, later in life, count for certain that Itama-sensei had twenty-three children in the world. He kept count of them all, better than Itama-sensei's own clan ever did. He had been used to organising the old man's secrets and papers, after all. And the it was better that he looked after them than most of anyone else, who mostly shunned them.

Twenty-two were murdered by Orochimaru. He had seen the corpses with his own eyes.

He remembered the days before Orochimaru had become so deplorable. He was odd, always quiet, afraid to the extent of quivering in his boots the first time they went on an actually dangerous mission. But he should have seen that the fear was overtaking him, that he was pursuing power not for the good of the village but for the reason of overpowering that fear. In the end the fear must have vanished, leaving behind next to nothing. Killing his former brother would be nothing but a mercy in the days of Naruto, but in those times he was a comrade, a friend. His brother in all but blood. That made the betrayal hurt all the worse, made the shame bite deeper. He should have seen it. He should have known.

Tsunade was never family. Perhaps because he teased her, leered at her, pursued her relentlessly when they were together but forgot about her as soon as she was out of reach. He wondered at times, now in his introspective days, if she had ever been able to feel something for him like he did for her. If she had been a strong woman creeped out by his slovenly nature, or if she had been the one that he had meant to be with, the one that had gotten away. Perhaps it was both. Perhaps it was neither. Perhaps Dan had been her one true beloved, and he had held her when she wept after his death. He had been the loudest to proclaim his support for her ideas when she brought them before Hiruzen-sensei and the council of the elders after that. His presence had made the Inuzuka vote to carry the motion.

Which seemed odd to him at the time, and seemed odd to him still. Inuzuka Soda, who had replaced Mother, had been a very distant relative to him, and wasn't even that to him by the time of Dan's death. He had rejected the clan the day of his mother's funeral, when the crones had told him that they nominated him as one of the heirs to the clan. He had wanted nothing from the clan. Nothing at all from them, from anything the name would give him. He had started his sage training by then, and in comparison to the wisdom of the Toads the squabbles and tradition of the clan seemed so petty. Orochimaru had already been shunned by his clan for disobeying the orders of the elder – according to Orochimaru – and he so publicly stripped himself of his own name in defiance of the Inuzuka.

Jiraiya was as much of a name as he ever needed. Even now that was true. His life was filled with empty conquests and regret, but that choice he never doubted. He had done it for the wrong reasons, true, but he never regretted doing it. It had been the right choice, just like how Hiruzen-sensei had stepped down from his duties as a Sarutobi when he was ascended.

He remembered the inauguration ceremony, how stiff and uneasy sensei had been when he had hugged him after bowing towards him and shaking his hands after all the pomp and ceremony was done away with. He remembered how sensei had become the bedrock of the village for many years, years beyond counting almost, the longest serving Hokage in the short history of their village. He remembered the Old Man as old even when he was young, always wise beyond his years yet set in his ways, how everyone came to depend on him for leadership and guidance just like how Team Hiruzen once had. That hadn't stopped sensei from being nervous on that first day. Jiraiya suspected that his fear for his people never truly went away.

He remembered too the day Hiruzen summoned him, Tsunade, Orochimaru and several other Jῡnin to his side at the Academy, the headquarters of the Hokage now long since moved there from the Senju compound. It had been decision rooted in politics by Tobirama-sama, showing that he expected a non-Senju to succeed him, showing that theirs was not a monarchy. Politics played little role to them then, though, with the war raging – he forgot which one, there were so many – and Hiruzen-sensei told them outright to pay no heed to clan-affiliation as they watched that year's graduating class from above behind sheets of glass mirrored on the other side. Just chose the team of three that you think would suit your proficiencies the best. Jiraiya-kun, would you perhaps-

"That one". He remembered having no hesitation in his heart at all as he pointed to one squad of three boys amongst the lot of them, fading into the background but for the blondeness of the shortest of the trio. "That one. A Ninjutsu affined squad? I'll be their teacher". Kohinata Kentaro, Akimichi Chōmῡ and Namikaze Minato. The last one was Kaigῡ's son, but he had known that even before his name and dossier came up.

He remembered putting them through the trial of bells, just like he had been. He remembered sharing in their first kills, just like Hiruzen-sensei had done with him. He remembered laughing with them, berating them when they were foolish, sharing with them their experiences as they grew up from boys into men.

He remembered holding their cold bodies in his arms, years apart but all of them still dead, falling one by one until only he was left.

Fallen in war, on missions, defending the people and the spirit of their home. By Chōmῡ's death he had been angry, by Kentaro's he had raged and sworn to end his murderer.

By Minato's he had been proven wrong.

When he held Minato's broken corpse close to his breast that night thirteen years ago, three days after Minato had been slain by the demon – that was the last time he had ever cried. If he was the one who would usher in the Chosen One, the one to teach the Child of Prophecy, then why did they all keep dying? It had been thus with all his students before Naruto. Were his methods flawed? No, the world was. The wars were the true sickness. That was the conclusion he had drawn.

This world wanted murderers and warriors, not peacekeepers.

He remembered how lost he felt after Minato's death, how he had wondered away from the village that he had hurried to so quickly to defend. He focused on what he knew in his heart to be a lesser pursuit, a career that he was still proud of, somehow. His pride in his writing was all that he had left. Hiruzen never changed, his clan was not his own, Orochimaru had betrayed them all and Tsunade-

She too had betrayed them, after a fashion, though he didn't begrudge her for it. He could never hold anything against her for long. All those years since he had first seen her, sullen and pouting at the feet of her great-uncle, and still she owned his heart.

He would have laughed at it all, hadn't it been so dammed pathetic of him. If she asked him anything, truly asked him, he would do it for her. Even if she would never feel the same way he could not help himself. Even now. Even now, when he was old and the only thoughts burning in his brain were his own. Even now, when sensei was dead, when Kaigῡ was dead, when Itama and Sokka and Ashina and Mitō and Daihī and all of the rest of them were dead. Most Shinobi lived short lives.

That was what he hoped that Naruto would change for the better. One day, perhaps, there would be no more wars.

And no more children dead before their time.

"Oi!" a shrill voice intruded on his senses, and he looked up to see the shadow of a young man there, blonde and fearless and grumpy, sweat oozing out of his every naturally tanned pore in the summer sun and sticking the bangs and strands of his blonde hair to his forehead. Those foreign features, the darker skin and the blonde hair and those piercing blue eyes – sometimes, from certain angles, it was like looking at Minato's ghost. "Ero-sennin!" But then the lout had to go and open his fucking mouth. "I'm done! I've been practicing that basic crap for hours-dattebayo!"

"Damn brat!" he grumbled as he stood from his comfortable seat under the tree. Every single thing out of that boy's mouth was either an accusation, a profanity, a cocky assurance, a whine or one of those damned verbal ticks. Like all the worst parts of his mother and of his father combined. He was disturbingly like them – even though he had never met either of them except for in unintelligent infancy.

"Oi, Ero-sennin" Naruto pouted pensively, looking up at him as he stretched, his muscles not obeying him quite like they had used to. "Why do you look so sad all of the sudden?" Jiraiya turned his head and looked down on the boy, the words on the tip of his tongue. Because I was thinking about your father, boy. Because I know that if I had taught him better maybe it would be him you'd be kicking awake, not me.

"Because it occurred to me that an uninspired buffoon like you can never match my literary and romantic brilliance!" he swept out his arm before him in a dramatic gesture and laughed, and the young man from Konoha began to visibly fume like a tea-kettle too long on the boil. "Oh, stop that, will you?" he muttered and put his hand on the boy's head, ruffling about his hair. "Come now! You are done with your Taijutsu and Rasengan drills!" Naruto nodded eagerly. "Yosh! Then we shall move on to-" he stopped and shut his mouth.

"To what, Ero-sennin?!" Naruto was all but jumping with eagerness on the spot, eyes wide and bright like those of a kit exiting the foxhole for the first time. "What?! What are you going to teach me next?!" Of course, he had no heart to tell the kid that he had no idea. He had been talking out of his arse, and now he was furiously raking his mind for something that he could possibly teach the boy-

"Chakra nature transformation!" he decreed the first thing that came into his head before he internally winced and kicked himself. Now there was a stupid sodding idea. The boy was much too young and undisciplined to possibly learn something like that. Better to master the basics first. "No, how to counter Genjutsu!" he said instead, knowing that such would be a much better field for the boy to learn.

"Screw Genjusu-ttebayo!" Naruto shouted, resenting the very word as soon as it left Jiraiya's mouth, and crossed his arms before his bare chest as he took a proud and firm stance. "Seishitsu Henka! Nature transformation!" And so, to Jiraiya's great trepidation, it was decided.

Later, as they took their places on the middle of that open clearing in the woods, the lesson began.

"The road we set upon this day, as you learn these basics from me, shall result in you mastering and gaining your very own ultimate Ninjutsu technique". A flash of golden excitement seemingly went through the blonde's eyes. "One that surpasses even the Rasengan. Chakra nature" he held up one finger "and shape manipulation" he held up another "are essential to this process".

"S-shape and nature manipulation?" Naruto asked slowly, a drop of sweat running down the side of his apprehensive face, and Jiraiya fought the urge to put his palm to his face in frustration. What were they even teaching in the Academy these days? Then again, maybe they had taught him that and he just hadn't been listening or been awake.

"You've already mastered chakra shape manipulation" and he explained how the Rasengan was the epitome of all shape manipulation, the greatest expression of chakra shaping bar any yet discovered by Shinobi. "You rotate your raw chakra wildly at extreme speeds, and compress the energy, and then – there you are! When the energy is dispersed it does so explosively, lashing out uncontrollably. That is the essense of what makes the Rasengan such a devastating offensive weapon".

"So, I've passed shape manipulation, then?!" Naruto exclaimed, grinning and beaming with pride, eager still. Jiraiya grinned back at him, and Naruto shouted "All right! Yosh!" and leapt into the air, ready to perform a little victory dance of his own making. The boy was certainly eager, if nothing else.

"Well, that is the first step" Jiraiya hated to be the proverbial rain on the boy's parade, but he had only so much tolerance for Naruto in a given day before he had to go out whoring for a change of pace, if nothing else. "Now, most techniques are made of both shape manipulation and nature manipulation. Kakashi-kun's Chidori is a good example. He does an almost Rasengan-like motion of chakra in his hand before he changes it to an electrical current according to his chakra nature affinity. That, incidentally, increases its destructive potential by quite a bit".

"So if I use that nature-thingy on the Rasengan, I'll have a new technique in no time!" Well, perhaps. Jiraiya thought that he might have a stupid sort of release instead, like Dōton. Earth Release Rasengan? It might be impossible to make the Rasengan conform to the Dōton due to the earth element's resistance to be moved. In that case- he honestly had not an inkling of what to do then.

And so he sighed and explained to the overeager boy that not even the creator of the Rasengan, the Yondaime Hokage himself, had been able to perfect the Rasengan in its intended state. The technique was, in essence, incomplete, and upon hearing that everyone else were unable to perform that Jutsu to its fullest Naruto looked a little downcast. "And actually, you don't even know which element you have an affinity for".

"Element-what?" he asked with a, in all due frankness, quite retarded expression, and Jiraiya barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

He sighed deeply. "I'd figured I had to explain this". He held up his right hand with the fingers spread "There are only five basic types of chakra elemental natures. They are fire, wind, water, lightning and earth. The five great shinobi nations are named for these elements, and they form the foundation of all ninjutsu".

"Oh… cool…" The boy was obviously in a sense of wonder, but Jiraiya wondered if he really understood anything of what he was saying. Well, if he just kept on talking maybe something would stick to Naruto's non-adhesive intellect.

"Most people's chakra naturally leans toward a certain element. For example; the Uchiha were geared towards fire, thus they were exceptionally skilled in fire element techniques – Katon no Jutsu". Naruto's eyes narrowed at the mention of that name, and inwardly Jiraiya balked. Are you driving him even now, Sasuke? It seems we all have our inner demons. "For wind, it's Fūton. For lightning, it's Raiton. Chidori, for example, is a Raiton technique"

"So Sasuke's got fire and lightning natures, then?" Jiraiya honestly didn't know. His interaction with the Uchiha boy had been all but non-existent and brief. But, through the wonder that was fiction, he had become a master of lying convincingly. According to no one but himself, granted, but still a master.

"Sure! And you currently have zero. You don't even know which elemental nature you're most suited to". From a pouch tied to the back of his utility belt he retrieved wad of blank paper notes, no larger than four inches along each quadrennial side, and extracted a single one, holding it high beside his head so that the lad could see it clearly.

"What are those?" Naruto scratched his head. Jiraiya kept those papers on his person because, if handled just right, with the right seals and careful application of chakra, one could use them as a lens to capture a moment in time as if by a perfectly replicating painting. He used them mostly for what Hiruzen-sensei would have called "less than beneficent purposes".

"We'll find out which affinity you have through these slices of paper". When Naruto asked how, the gallant and ever so handsome Toad Sage concentrated and moved the energy of his power from his gut into the tips of his fingers holding the paper between them. The paper instantly burst into flame as was gone in the span of a few moments, and Naruto gasped in amazement. "If you're lightning-natured, the paper will wrinkle. For wind it will split in twain, burn if you're a fire affinity; water: get soggy; earth: crumble". He extended the wad of notes towards Naruto. "It's a unique paper that reacts to even the slightest amount of chakra, made from special trees fed and nurtured with chakra. If you run your nature chakra through this paper, we'll find out which nature affinity you have".

Naruto determinately took a single paper from the wad and held it before his eyes. "All right" he muttered before he massed his power and focused with a huff.

As the boy focused all his power into the sheath of paper the wind picked up around them, rustling in the grass of the training field, bringing with it a hint of a winter chill despite the spring sun high in the sky above. Jiraiya could feel his student strain, like he had when he was learning the Rasengan, attacking the new lesson the only way he knew how: head on despite his ineptitude, battering away at his own inability to learn with sheer force of will and determination.

Suddenly Naruto felt something change, and he looked down on the paper as it momentarily stiffened. And then, slowly, it began to grow wet… and cold. Very cold.

As the entire surface of the note began to drip he thought it was over, but then it grew even colder, the droplets falling from it chilling his fingers to numbness, and it began to stiffen again, the water growing hard into ice, and flowers of frost blossomed all over it before –

A dull crack split the paper in half lengthways, one half of it slipping out of his hand to fall to the grass below and shatter like glass, the other breaking into small pieces under the grasp of his fumbling hand.

"Sensei…" Naruto looked up, holding the icy shards of the frozen and shattered note in the palm of his hand. "Is it supposed to do that?"

He remembered going down into the chasm into which he had thrown Naruto after Gamabunta had jumped out of it with the blonde boy wonder on his back, his arms shivering in the cold air down there.

He remembered the first time after Naruto had performed the Rasengan, how there had been spots of frost in the grass around the knoll where he had first struck Orochimaru's apprentice and aide in the stomach.

He remembered walking about the Valley of the End after his fight against the Uchiha boy as Kakashi-kun took him back to Konoha, running the pad of his finger down one of the slick patches on the rock that was the likeness of Shodai's leg. Slick, cold, a surface as clear as ice.

Most of all he remembered speaking to Morino-kun and Kakashi-kun, learning that when Naruto had first performed the Kage Bunshin Jutsu the wind had become cold and fridgid, utterly merciless. He remembered being told of how Naruto had fought and defeated a wielder of a fierce Kekkei Genkai known as the Hyōton, the Ice Release, and how the world had seemed to grow cold all over.

There were quite a few things Jiraiya could have said and done when he discovered his student's Kekkei Genkai. He could have been amazed and extolled Naruto, jump up and down around him, dancing in eager pride over having fostered such a genius. He could have been swamped by fear and told Naruto to keep his abilities hidden for fear of threats both foreign and domestic clamouring for his power in a desperate chakra arms race to obtain such potential. He could have punched the kid in the face and said that he was an idiot for not having realised this skill sooner, as it could have saved a lot of lives and done a lot of good in the world. He could have even cried, told him everything about his father and said onto the boy that his parents would have been proud of him.

There were quite a few things Jiraiya could have said when he discovered his student's Kekkei Genkai. But he said only two words, which to him seemed the most apt for the situation.

"Well, shit".

---

A/N:

This story is basically a smash-together of a lot of ideas I've had about Naruto fics for almost a year now. Story-wise it will deal with a lot of the same motions of themes as my previous fic,

the White Fox Chronicles

but be considerably less OOC and psychotic. I was in a bad place when writing that, so this story shall hopefully be better. However, setting-wise and a lot more of the minutiae comes from a story I never published called Katana no Kitsune – Fox of the Sword.

Basically, the setting is a sort of pseudo-medieval Japan-esque fantasy world (turning back the clock of the Naruto setting about six hundred years). OCs inspired by Japanese history and other projects of Japanese fantasy and historical fiction will make appearances. More importantly, the setting is more Game of Thrones-like, if that makes any sense?

As in clans being of supreme importance, swords are special, there are dragons and monsters and other unsavoury things lurking in the shadows. In the next chapter's A/N I'll go into greater detail.

Anyway, I hope that you have enjoyed this chapter. The best is yet to come.

Ta.