Heavenly White Light

by ToxicSeraphim

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Chapter One

Reverse Adoption

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An adorable little girl rushed over to a market stall. The shopkeeper smiled and laughed, collecting the handful of scrunched ryō without bothering to count it and exchanging it for a sugary stick of dango. The child thanked him profusely, spinning around and exuding an aura of joyous hyperactivity before accidentally crashing into a passersby. The skewer of sweets was thrown back in the rebound and was promptly trampled underfoot by no less than three unaware or uncaring civilians. However, the girl, rather than bawl like most would have, just laughed sheepishly and ran her fingers through her warm brown tresses. Moments later she skipped away into the crowd once more, the kindly shopkeeper having given her a replacement skewer free of charge.

Unseen by all and sundry I watched the heart-warming scene through a tea house window's reflection. Considering my hidden position in a filthy alleyway across the path, it might as well have been a front-row seat.

Under the deliberate self-delusion of double-checking all outside factors that could affect my plot, I looked six ways, cataloging every last detail I could with all the efficiency my four years of life granted me.

The rising sun splashed waves of fiery crimson and molten gold across the crystalline blues of the mid-morning sky, melting together into a brilliant amethyst. Courier eagles could be seen gliding away from the village or rising in lazy spirals from updraft to updraft. A lone fluffy white cloud completed the picturesque atmosphere.

Kotsuki Gai itself was nowhere near as serene but no less beautiful for it. Civilians and the rare shinobi intermixed with minimal segregation as people from all walks of life made the enjoyable if tedious commute to work. There was a healthy hustle and bustle of a populace that had discovered their place in life and found solace in it. The white noise of a thousand individual conversations was broken only by the excited screeches of children and the cries of stall owners hawking their wares. Underneath it all, the surveying glances of shinobi too impatient to walk and instead chose to flit across the rooftops soothed the more flighty civilians and ended arguments before they could begin.

Knowing that happier civilians were more likely to treat me kindly, I snuck out of my dark alleyway and melted into the crowd with the ease of long practice. I kept my head down and relied on my scruffy hair to ensure my seemingly infamous, triangular ears were kept out of any adult's field of vision. I also angled my body just so that when a civilian's shadow did not enshroud me the sun instead gleamed off my hair, lightening it to a Yamanaka's spun gold rather than my own glaring yellow. It was one of many such tricks I had picked up these last fourteen months since Papa stopped locking the motel doors whenever he leaves on one of his innumerable day trips.

My own ryō were pressed in a crisp stack, one of many tiny factors that hopefully summed together to equal an unprejudiced stall-keeper. A submissive posture, wide, downcast eyes and a penchant for catching the salesman when he's in a good mood are other techniques in my bag of tricks. I need every ounce in my favor I can feasibly get.

I skirted the crowd and neared the busy stall within thirty seconds of the clumsy girl's purchase. Quickly setting the thin wad of cash down on the well-worn if clean counter, I pitched my voice high and meek, asking, "One skewer of hanami dango, please, sir."

"That'll be twenty ryō," the man drawled, affecting a bored tone. He seemed far more intimidating now than he had a minute earlier when he was smiling at the little girl. His cold and calculating jade eyes seemed out of place on a gray, aging man with laugh lines who spoke with such a kindly voice. He then made a show of carefully counting my payment once, twice, thrice, saying, "This is only eighteen, brat. Got any more?"

I very carefully squashed my instinctual indignation at him charging nearly thrice the seven ryō listed on the sign, and quintuple times the four the child not thirty seconds past paid. I was expecting it, after all, which is why I offered eighteen ryō up front and made sure I had two more in a chiseled compartment in my sandal. Had I asked first without handing over any money, he would have demanded at least thirty ryō. All the other stall keepers did.

"Good, good," the civilian merchant said, his eyes disagreeing with his words, claiming that this was not good at all. He then had a clever thought, and smiled: a smug, cruel smile that I decided immediately I did not like. At all. He ducked underneath the counter, rooted around for a long moment, and arose with a skewer in his hands piercing the three, tri-colored dango I had sought to purchase. "Here you go, kid. Eat 'em fast and don't let 'em grow stale, ya' hear?"

My eyes darted to the rack on the far side of the stall's counter. One of the rows of already-made sweets was comprised entirely of hanami dango, but the man had made no move for it. My mind raced through the implications. Acting on instincts I've drilled into myself after long months of social observation, I offered my thanks with a precise amount of warmth and gratitude leaking into my voice, took the dango, and melted into the crowd.

Forty-five seconds later I arrived once more in the dark and relative safety of the hidden alleyway across from the local tea house. The extra time allowed me to ensure the safety of my hard-won prize while mulling over the consequences of the stall keeper's unusual actions. Granted, I had a fairly accurate idea of what he had truly done, but self-denial is a vice I can't help but indulge in from time to time. Sometimes it's the only way I can get up in the morning and face the uniform dismissal and prejudice of an entire world.

Staring deeply at my skewer with a look of deep contemplation in my cerulean eyes, I couldn't shake the feeling of foreboding rising up my spine. A frighteningly large part of my heart was screaming at me to drop the hanami dango on the filthy ground, grind it into the earth, and write off my lost twenty ryō as a bad job. I buried the instinct under a deluge of fiery determination – or, as Papa would call it, stubborn bullheadedness.

"Uzumaki Naruto is no coward," I told myself, and swallowed the crimson dango whole.

I immediately choked and tried in vain to retch the tainted sweet right back out. The slimy taste of dirt, mud and sweat refused to leave my tongue. I fought back tears of hurt and disgust. Sight, sound, touch and scent abandoned me to the wretched contamination and all I could think about was betrayal.

Like in all things, my undying willpower was forced to the forefront of my mind and higher thought returned to me. I rose to my feet, having been unaware I had crouched and leaned into the building side for support, and breathed deeply through my nose.

I glanced sideways at the skewer of hanami dango still clenched tightly in my hands like one would an adulterous lover. Bowing to my earlier instinct and internally swearing never to ignore it again, I threw the corrupted sweets to the blackened earth and ground the heel of my sandal into it with a dark smirk twisting my usually sunny face.

And then I laughed. I fed the hysterical shrieks of mirth all my rage, all my hurt and desire and hatred, and my manifestation of Papa's 'Will of Fire' devoured it all. It was... soothing. Long minutes passed.

I was left drained, empty of all feeling. Only exhaustion was left.

My feet followed a whim and traced a path away from the alley with a fallen skewer of dango and into the market district. I did not object. I was buried underneath a mountain of thoughts.

I had known. I could not argue this fact. From the moment the stall keeper smiled that cold smile and ducked underneath the counter I had known. Then why did I deny the truth? Out of hope?

Papa, Tsu-baachan and Shizu-neechan were the only people who didn't look at me with those cold eyes. Papa disappeared from twelve to twelve every day and was always too busy scribbling in his notebooks even when he was around to spend time with me. Tsu-baachan and Shizu-neechan were on the other side of the Land of Fire and I only get to see them every four, maybe five months anyways. It wasn't exactly enough to provide a stable social life.

I knew the stall keeper of the dango stand wouldn't join my three-person list of precious people from the moment I caught a glimpse of his jade irises. By all rights I should have expected the man would serve me the trampled stick of sweets his earlier customer had so clumsily dropped. That he went through the trouble of shaping the dango back into orbs and applying a sheen of glaze over it isn't a stretch, all things considered. If Faunus didn't technically have 'equal rights' in the Land of Fire than I suspect he would've done much worse.

He held the moral high ground, in his eyes, at least. Common knowledge states that the first Faunus was born only three weeks after the Grimm first ravaged the Elemental Nations and drove mankind scurrying behind high walls and Shinobi into the Hidden Villages. That the two have a connection is beyond doubt. And while rational thought would point to the fact that no Faunus has ever spontaneously developed a Grimm's heartlessness and blood-thirst as a point for civility and common Human decency, the masses have never been accused of being rational. 'Correlation, not causation,' as Papa liked to say. An imagined connection to the Grimm is enough to send even the everyman into a witch-hunt.

From a rational standpoint I know my life could be so much worse. Countless Faunus didn't have a powerful, rich, loyal and, perhaps most importantly, Human backer like I did; for all his faults, Papa would always see right by me. I could've been left to starve in the sewers like so many others of my kind or, worse, suffered whatever fate always made Papa's face pinch downwards whenever the Hidden Leaf is mentioned in a quarter-mile radius.

No, the devil lies in the details. Crowds will jostle me that much harder, adults will steer their children away from my general direction, and everyone has such cold eyes. I'll have to pay thrice the price for everything, be it a toy, a sweet, or an apple, and the merchandise is always mysteriously damaged. I can't play a game of ninja with the local kids without being laughed away or worse, having the entire park clear by a herd of disapproving parents. A thousand and one tiny slights compounding until I have to find some out-of-the-way corner to just... laugh it off.

"How could you spit out dango, gaki? 'Tis the food of the gods."

"No, ramen is," I replied on instinct before blinking and looking up.

The voice belonged to a teenage kunoichi with blue-tinted black hair and pupil-less brown eyes that were glazed over with liquor. She was lying on her side on the roof of the tea shop, the worm's view and mesh body suit providing a fantastic view that I was entirely too young to appreciate. A tan overcoat was wrapped over her side like a blanket.

I blinked a second time and took a closer look. My enhanced senses could discern the sickly sweet taste of spilled saké even from this distance, and I could see the glaze of the rice wine on her lips and dribbling down her chin. The empty and capsized bottles turned my supposition into a certainty. The empty box of dango beside her made a corner of my mind idly wonder if she was a hungry drunk before I shook it off and turned my attention back to the kunoichi.

"Pfft. Ramen? Please." Now that I was more aware, I could hear the definite slur to her words and wondered if the empty bottles beside her were all there was or if the lip of the rooftop hid even more from my view. I decided I didn't want to know. "'Ango is swee', and succulen', and delisch, and swee', and..." she sniffed. "I's always there fo' you; and i's swee', too. 'Ango doesn' discrimina'e... Nevah leaves you tah become a Missin'-Nin... Nevah loo's at you wit' such col' eyes... Nevah experimen's on you... 'Tis the food of the gods..."

All my emotional control vanished in the face of this drunk girl slurring her problems down at me from a rooftop, and I gaped at her in bafflement. Yes, I wanted to say, dango doesn't do that, because dango doesn't have hands. Or a brain, for that matter. It's dango. But I could see the appeal. I treated ramen the same way- if it weren't cheap enough for even me to afford, if Papa hadn't taken me for it on my third birthday, if my mysterious and un-named parents hadn't apparently been addicted, well, I wouldn't give a single fuck about the heavenly noodles. Harsh, but true. Then I noticed the admittedly pretty drunk girl was still rambling.

"... And swee'... How 'are you spi' out 'ango, ga'hi? I'ma kill you for tha'."

"It's not like I wanted to," I tell the drunk kunoichi whose name I still do not know, pitching my voice to carry from the busy market floor to the tea house rooftop. "He contaminated it, see, and it was more mud and dirt than mochiko. It was blasphemy. I didn't want to insult the dango gods by eating tainted dango."

I did not believe in the dango gods, but I wasn't about to tell her that; she was a kunoichi after all, and could probably kill me a hundred different ways with the dango skewers lying beside her, liquor and laws of physics be damned. I also felt an odd sort of sympathy for and kinship with the girl. No one else- not Tsu-baachan, not Shizu-neechan, not even Papa- had ever sounded at all understanding when I mentioned the cold eyes. This girl understood.

Plus, she was pretty, if not as pretty as Shizu-neechan. Maybe she could become my new onee-chan?

"How 'are he?" The kunoichi seethed, her glassy eyes darkening in wrath. "'Ell Aun'ie An'o where he is! I'll-" she hiccuped, the sickening scent of saké freshening. "I'll 'ill him!"

Yes. Definitely like Shizu-neechan. Sweet one minute, first degree murder the next. Maybe all girls are like that? Shaking my head, I cleared my thoughts and called up to the raven-haired kunoichi one last time. "I won't stop you. Wait a moment, I'll be right up!"

Her rant had brought her half-over the rooftop's edge. Kunoichi or not, I didn't want her to fall and break her spine.

In between the tea shop and a shinobi armory was a small alley, barely large enough for a four year old to stand sideways. I slid in without any hesitance. Pressing a hand to each wall and digging my sandals into the rough woodwork I was able to shimmy up without too much trouble. I had gotten a lot of practice doing similar stunts in the first week since my third birthday, back when we were spending a month in the Capital for reasons Papa wouldn't discuss, before an amused Guardian with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth told me the rooftops were reserved for shinobi and repairmen alone. I never scaled the buildings again.

Now, though, I have an excuse. Should Cigarette-san or another shinobi find me, I can always point fingers at the alcoholic kunoichi. It's not like they'll believe her should she object.

"He's the gray-haired stall-keeper over there," I told the drunk teenager when I at last arrived on a rooftop. I waved my hand in the dango salesman's general direction, feeling precisely no remorse for selling out the civilian to a murderous and drunk assassin. It's not like I had any parental figures to teach me morals. Papa certainly never bothered. "Oh. I'm Uzumaki Naruto, by the way."

"Than's, ga'hi," the woman grinned sadistically, before blinking and asking, "Uzuma'hi? The fo' Jinshūri'hi? Though' ya wen' missin'."

Wondering what 'Jinshūri'hi' meant or if it was just a slurred bastardization of some other word, I made a questioning noise.

"Righ'. Yeah. 'Tis a secre'. Forge' I 'aid anythin'. 'Ma rather 'tached to my 'ead."

Making a mental note to sneak into the library and search for the term later, if the shinobi would execute her for mentioning it it had to be important, I wondered if this 'Jinshūri'hi' thing was why Papa always told me to give out a fake name – a failure he was not going to find out about. Regardless, I promptly pushed the matter to the back of my head and returned to the conversation at hand. Mainly by taking a closer look at the empty box of dango and realizing it was not so empty after all. Glancing at 'Auntie Anko' sideways and seeing her passed out with her face buried into the woodwork, I snuck a hand into the crate only for it to be slapped away seemingly on reflex.

Right. Ninja, I thought, as if that explained everything, which it did.

"Don' ta'e my 'ango, ga'hi," Anko threatened. "Geh' your own."

"I can't, remember?" I patiently explained to the much older and theoretically more mature career killer. "The stall keepers don't like me. They contaminated my dango."

"Jus' 'enge, tha's wha' I do," the kunoichi advised, waving the lazy hand that held the last skewer of dango – hanami, I noticed to my despair – and devouring all three mochiko balls in a single swallow. I wondered in a rare moment of clarity if this is how I look to Tsu-baachan and Shizu-neechan on my first bowl of ramen. I decided I did not particularly care.

"I don't know what a 'henge' is," I respond when it becomes clear the ravenette wasn't going to continue. "I'm four."

"I'll sho' yah," Anko declared, pushing herself to a tenuous cross-legged position, muttering something about 'being a better sensei than snake-face.' I very carefully did not say anything when she showed me something called the 'Ram Seal' and corrected my mimicking. I didn't want her to stop, think, and realize she was teaching a glorified toddler Ninjutsu, after all. I didn't even know what the Henge did, yet. "Now, thin' really, really 'ard abou' havin' blue hair," the kunoichi told me with a faux serious tone, which sounded ridiculous with her slur. "An' voila."

I was grateful I had already 'found' my chakra ages ago- or, rather, contrary to what Papa says, had always known where it was for as long as I can remember- or I would have never been able to manage this. As it was, I clumsily flushed a wave of my chakra into my interlocked hands, fighting down a shudder at the feeling like ink trickling through my veins. It was uncomfortable, but not unpleasant.

Then a lock of cyan blue hair fell over my eyes and I stumbled back in shock. Anko just laughed, rooting around in the empty dango box in hopes of manifesting another skewer. In my excitement I abandoned all thoughts of health and safety and catapulted towards the edge of the tea house rooftop. I leaned over, using the window as a makeshift mirror. I couldn't help but grin at the sight.

The hair was a uniform sky blue that didn't react to the glow of the sun in the slightest. It looked utterly ridiculous, especially with the random blond strands. Furthermore, it was so obviously ninja magic that not even a five-year-old civilian could be fooled. But I was nothing if not determined.

I turned around and smiled at Anko's spontaneously sleeping form, having conked out halfway on top of the box of dango.

"Thank you, Aneue."

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Twelve hours later, a four-year-old girl with blue-tinted raven hair, pupil-less brown eyes, a tan and violet jumpsuit and no whisker marks whatsoever skipped away from a dango stall with a skewer in her hand. It had taken almost the entire day to change just her hair, eye, and clothing color to a realistic hue, and more subtle changes were still out of her grasp, but she had managed it in the end.

She swallowed all three mochiko sweets in a single bite.

They tasted of satisfaction.

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No, the alleyway dango scene wasn't that dramatic. He's four, being served tainted sweets is, like, Armageddon. This is first person limited, if he thinks that stick of dango insulted his mother, by God I'll make the words thrum with hatred and rage.

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Disclaimer: Even should I claim ownership of the Narutoverse or RWBYverse, none of you would believe me. So. Yeah, I totally own these kickass characters/worlds/monsters/what-have-you. Kneel, motherfuckers.

Updating Schedule: Unclear. Might be in six days, might be in six months. I'm preparing for university, then I will actually be *in* university, and from what I've heard - alongside that job I should totally be getting instead of writing fanfiction on the internet - my free time will be mysteriously vanishing. That being said, I have several other partially-written stories in a folder on my laptop, and I might be uploading the intro's to some of them in the next couple of weeks. We'll see.

Notes: Hmm. Not much left to say, and long 'Notes are boring as all hell. Anyways. This story was inspired by the obscene number of Naruto-travels-to-Vale-and-becomes-a-badass-Hunter stories, which made me stop, think and declare, "yeah, not touching that prompt with a ten-foot pole." Instead, this is an Elemental Nations AU where the advent of the Hidden Village Era was brought on not by Hashirama Senju, but by the Grimm, which 'mysteriously' appeared and began killing shinobi left and right. When the whole Kyuubi thing goes down, Naruto becomes a fox faunus, the Hidden Leaf flips out, and Jiraiya makes off with his godson and makes a break for Wind Country. Cheers.