1.
Mitarashi Anko knew she probably ate too much and was at least somewhat addicted to dango, but really, who gave a shit? A firm foodie and soul cooker with a taste for sticky dumplings, she worked out too much to really get overweight anyway. And even if she did gain a few pounds, who cared? Getting overweight was much more fun than getting underweight was, and they both caused heart problems and had both been considered beautiful at different points in history.
So whatever.
She was sitting at the polished wood bar of her favorite dango restaurant, snacking, looking out through the curtained doors at the Konoha village view: dirt roads lined with green trees and small white buildings decorated with multicolored round or swirling roofs. A creek trickled somewhere nearby. A fly that had made its way through the cloth door buzzed by her ear, and she swatted it away irritably.
Anko was bored. A Tokubetsu Jounin level ninja who worked for ANBU Black Ops, she hadn't had a good mission in a while and was getting restless. She wanted something interesting. Anko craved action, adventure, and maybe a little bit of spilled blood. (She didn't mean in the bedroom, though she was kinda into that too.)
So what was there to do…? She was a big fan of practicing the feminine arts, her favorite being tea ceremony, but she'd been tranquil for so long she was ready to bust. She'd brewed countless pots of tea, cooked at least ten huge meals, and tried to lose herself in the pages of her latest book.
Nothing was working. Her mind craved something new.
Just then, a little boy ran into the dango restaurant. He was covered in paint, and Anko could hear shouting coming from behind him; his eyes carried the harried gaze of one who was on the run. She recognized him. That was the jinchuuriki kid, Uzumaki Naruto, a skinny little boy with messy wild blond hair and electric blue eyes. The whisker shaped markings on his cheeks and the wild energy in his eyes gave him a permanent mischievous look.
Anko could hear shouting coming from behind him; she watched, surprised but neutral, as he dove and hid underneath the bar behind her.
Several civilians burst in. "Did the little monster come in here?!" one shouted. "He just splattered paint all over my shop!"
Anko wasn't sure, even years later, why she said it. "No." She shrugged. "He hasn't come in here." She could feel the disbelief and relief radiating from the boy behind her. The civilians stormed back out of the shop to go look somewhere else.
The boy crawled slowly out from his hiding place, and stood to stare at her. Up close, she was a formidable kunoichi: a short skirt and a long trench coat whose pockets bulged with weapons, leg armor that made her shinobi sandals look like combat boots, and purple hair tied up behind her head in a hair clip. Her calves were wide and muscular, every inch of her body was armored even if just by fishnet armor, there were obvious weapons all over her person, her curves were also obvious and intentionally seductive, and she carried the aura of one who did not need to worry about her safety. She munched on her food, staring calmly back at him.
Her gaze was interesting. There was no fear or coldness there, but there wasn't much of anything else either. She gazed at him with mild interest and a casual lack of care.
"You're not going to ask why I did what I did?" Naruto wondered suspiciously at last.
Anko shrugged and went back to her food. "It's none of my business," she said, sounding bored.
She hadn't asked. Maybe that was why she was the one he chose to confide in. "That guy," said Naruto, "... he shoved me in the street the other day. He calls me monster brat."
Anko turned to look at him. "So, revenge," she summarized at last. "Or maybe a desire to be noticed?" She raised an eyebrow as Naruto looked away, scowling.
"... Why did you help me?" he asked at last.
"I don't know," said Anko. "It seemed like an interesting thing to do."
"Don't treat it so casually!" Naruto's fists clenched in anger; Anko's eyebrows rose in surprise. Naruto swallowed. "No one's ever helped me escape before," he said, pained.
Anko looked around. People all over the restaurant were giving Naruto cold glares. Naruto looked around, and realized the same thing with helpless anger.
"You had lunch yet, kid?" Anko asked at last. Naruto shook his head. She slid him the rest of her plate of dumplings and his eyes lit up. "Come on," she said seriously, standing. "Walk with me."
"People don't like you," said Anko, walking by the fenced off ninja training fields with Naruto. "I don't give a shit about that. I don't give even a single flying fuck what other people think about me. People don't like me either. My Sensei went rogue and betrayed the village. People don't trust me." She scowled. "But you don't see me running around graffitiing people's businesses. All your pranks really tell people is that you're letting them get to you."
"But - but -!" Naruto paused, staring up at her with big, emotional eyes. "I don't have anything else!"
"What do you mean? You're an Academy student, right?" said Anko, puzzled.
"Yeah…" Naruto looked down. "But none of my teachers wanna help me train," he muttered. "And I'm stupid, so I don't do very well. I don't have any friends. I have a rival I hate, Uchiha Sasuke, this cold-hearted, arrogant bastard who always does everything perfectly. But that's about it. I guess maybe I have a couple of distant friends at Ichiraku's, the civilian family that runs this ramen place I really like. But I pay them, don't I?"
"Doesn't the Hokage interact with you?" Anko wondered. "He's supposed to be your official guardian."
Naruto glared up at her flatly. "He comes once a month to drop off a check at this big empty apartment he pays for. But I have a dream!" he added, his eyes gleaming. "I want to become Hokage, the greatest ninja in the village, and make everyone recognize my existence!"
"But because no one will help you or interact with you, you're having trouble getting there," Anko realized. "That's why you play all your infamous troublemaking pranks: to get noticed. The problem is, that only hurts other people's potential to admire you."
Naruto looked down. "I'm an orphan. I'm totally alone. Everybody hates me and I don't even know why," he muttered. Anko was torn - there was a law forbidding people to speak of Naruto as a jinchuuriki. That was why he and the people his age didn't know about the demon sealed inside of him. So she couldn't explain, even if she might want to. "Sorry, it must sound like I'm bitching," Naruto continued sullenly, still looking downward and scuffing at the dirt with his shoe.
Perhaps that was what got her. She'd seen Uzumaki Naruto around before - everyone had - and he was a laughing, troublemaking hooligan. But she realized now that was a mask. The laughter and the smiles were a mask to disguise pain. She had a mask herself, the vicious, excitable one. So she understood that right now he was lowering his mask for her, and that meant something. She couldn't screw this up.
Why he'd chosen to confide in her, Anko had no idea. She wasn't exactly the best with tender emotions. But she'd have to give it a try.
"I guess everyone assumed one of two things," she said at last. "That either you're a hopeless moron, or the Hokage is giving you some secret special training. But that can't be true, can it?" she mused.
Naruto blinked in surprise. "Well, Grandpa Hokage sure as hell isn't giving me any special training. But why would you assume I'm not a hopeless moron?"
Anko snorted and smiled. "I admire your crippling honesty," she said dryly. "First, I know because we're having this conversation. But second… thinking about it… because of your pranks. You've pranked people from within ANBU headquarters, desecrated highly guarded sacred monuments. You've done all kinds of things no Academy student should be able to do. That means." Her eyes lit up. "It means you're a strategist," she breathed in realization, suddenly excited.
She knelt down beside him.
"Naruto," she said immediately, "you know how you can think your way into and out of a prank?"
"Uh, yeah," said Naruto, puzzled. "Some of it I just come up with on the fly."
"Well that's exactly what you have to do on the battlefield. Trick people, think your way through it. Think of every mission like a prank! Those brilliant strategists? That's all they do! They see their end objective like a pranking goal, and treat it like one!"
Naruto's face screwed up in thought. "Really?" he said, puzzled. "But that's so easy!"
"Not for some people," said Anko. "And do you know what this means? It means you're not an idiot," she said fervently. "And that means -" she stood. "That something's going wrong with your training. And I'm going to find out what it is."
"Why would you do that for me?" Anko looked down to find Naruto watching her suspiciously. She supposed he had learned over his short life not to really trust anyone who was nice to him.
"Because I'm bored," she said honestly. "Because people don't like me either. And like I said, I don't give a fuck what other people think about me. Look, kid, I'm a Tokubetsu Jounin and I'm offering to help you train as a future Hokage. Are you in or are you out?" She held out a hand. "I like a mystery and I want to get to the bottom of this one."
Naruto looked at her with big eyes for a moment - and then he ran straight at her and hugged her very hard around the middle. Her skirt became moist. She realized he had teared up.
"Oh, great," she sighed. "He's affectionate." Reluctantly, she patted him on the head. "It's going to be okay, kid," she said, feeling a new resolve to make sure it was. "I'm going to get to the bottom of this, okay? You're going to be a good ninja.
"My name's Mitarashi Anko. And for now, Naruto, you can call me Sensei."
First, Anko had Naruto show her some of his physical Academy level moves. They were incredibly sloppy.
"Who told you to throw your kunai that way?" she asked, frowning.
"Mizuki-sensei," said Naruto, looking up at her.
"Yeah, well, he taught you to do it wrong," she said, staring between Naruto and the target. "That could be part of your problem right there - people might have been teaching you things wrong. Let's try some taijutsu."
They sparred together, and Naruto was almost pathetic. "Have you ever sparred with anyone outside the Academy?" she asked disbelievingly during a lunch break.
Naruto looked at her like she was dumb. "Who exactly am I supposed to have sparred with?" Anko realized it was kind of a dumb question. Who was a jinchuuriki with no special training supposed to have sparred with?
"I'm starting to see your problem with physical skills, Naruto," she said, frowning. "They're twofold. You don't have anyone to practice with and sometimes your instructors have been teaching you things wrong. That would make anyone seem pathetic and weak, even if they really aren't.
"Let's try you with some academics."
Naruto winced. "I'll warn you," he said dreadingly. "I'm not very good."
But Anko read plenty of psychology, being in ANBU, and she had a theory.
First, she had Naruto take a basic test of his already-existing Academy knowledge. As expected, he didn't pass it. Then she gave him a short lecture on a special type of poison, and had him answer some questions about it afterward. Still - no pass.
Then she had him draw pictures and do physical things like tap his feet while listening to a lecture on a different type of poison, making sure to show him pictures herself. She gave him another short set of questions.
He passed with flying colors.
"You passed, Naruto. That's an A," she said, smirking as she finished grading.
Naruto stared at her, his jaw slowly dropping. "... What?" He wasn't even bragging. He was absolutely flabbergasted.
"You are a visual and kinesthetic learner," said Anko. "This means you learn best through physical action, and through visuals like pictures. That's why you haven't been passing your Academy academics. Academy lectures are all auditory - or sound based. That doesn't work as well for someone who learns through actions and pictures.
"It's not that you're stupid. It's that the Academy has been teaching you everything the wrong way.
"There are a few ways around this. Look up pictures on the Internet, study your notes using pictures and visuals. Try doing actions like tapping as you memorize different things. You could even carry a notebook with you and draw pictures to help your academic learning.
"That's the way to pass academics - by playing to your strengths. With math, for example, you could buy an abacus, or visualize different real life examples concerning each math problem. Do you see? There are ways around this. It doesn't mean you're dumb.
"Now let's try you with some strategy. Remember to think of it like a prank."
She gave him a series of Chuunin level strategy questions, and it was incredible. He scribbled down answers, drew diagrams, and he gave answers she'd never seen on the test before - answers that worked.
"It's safe to say you're a brilliant strategist, Naruto," said Anko, and Naruto beamed. "So let's work on revamping your Academy level skills. I will help you with your physical skills, help you learn the right academic techniques to pass tests, and I will give you further training in strategy.
"Sound good?"
Naruto's eyes gleamed. "Yeah," he said. "It sounds great."
And so not only was Naruto's conventional intelligence and confidence in his mind grown, but he got to spar in all his Academy level skills against a Tokubetsu Jounin. Anko found, though, that Naruto had both an incredible work ethic and an unreal natural physical talent, something she made sure to share with him. His Academy instructors were surprised - and not always in a pleasant way - as his grades began shooting up through the roof.
Having someone acknowledge him and something to do each day, his pranking also went down significantly, puzzling though relieving most of Konoha village.
It happened when Anko went to the ANBU archives for another book of strategy to work with Naruto on. She paused in surprise as she saw a section under the clan scrolls labeled, of all things, "Uzumaki."
Her first thought was, no, it couldn't be. The village jinchuuriki couldn't be from a well established, powerful clan and never have been personally taught anything about being a ninja. Right? But she was curious and she had clearance, so she walked over - and saw a large number of scrolls for a clan called Uzumaki.
She thought, Fuck this noise, and sealed all the Uzumaki clan scrolls away inside one of her sealing scrolls. Then she just walked right the fuck back out of the archives with them.
These scrolls belonged to that dorky little kid, and Anko didn't give a shit who got angry with her.
"I'm not sure, Naruto, I didn't know about this either," said Anko honestly at what had become their usual training field, a wide, flat space of grass covered in training posts, with a little brook trickling nearby in the wooded area far to the left. "But it says the Uzumaki are a clan, from a now destroyed water island country called Whirlpool. The Uzumaki, most of them, were killed in the Third Ninja War - they were considered too powerful to remain alive by their enemies. Your mother or father must have come here from Whirlpool as a refugee."
Naruto had been staring in awed disbelief at the scrolls, the Uzumaki swirl emblem upon all of them. His head shot up. "Why didn't anybody tell me?!"
"I don't know, Naruto," said Anko in irritation, and then she began to rant. "I don't know why people are allowed to abuse you in the streets. I don't know why you've always remained isolated. I don't know why you were never given any personal training, or why your Academy teachers were allowed to teach you things wrong, or why nobody ever bothered to figure out why you were failing all your academic tests, or why nobody ever thought to take into consideration your obvious strategic prowess through pranking.
"So I sure as fucking hell don't know why nobody ever bothered to give you the ability scrolls for your own goddamn clan! Or teach you anything about how to use those abilities! At all!"
She finished ranting, breathing hard.
Naruto blinked at her. "Anko-sensei," he said hesitantly, "are you okay?"
"I need a minute," Anko spat, trying to keep a hold on her legendarily short temper. She just stood there for a minute, taking deep breaths. Then she whirled around to face him. "You," she said, as he stared at her in surprise, "are going to be Hokage. You are going to be the best goddamn ninja on the face of fucking planet Earth. Do you hear me?!"
Naruto paused - and then grinned. "Yeah! I hear you, I hear you!" he shouted, jumping around, cheering. Considering what he'd been through, he was a positive ball of sunshine.
"Okay," said Anko, calming, "let's read your clan's introductory scroll, summarizing the Uzumaki abilities." She unfurled it and read aloud in an official sort of voice:
The Uzumaki clan's chief bloodline is that of enormous chakra reserves. The Uzumaki are born with massively large chakra reserves, abnormally sized, giving us incredible chakra strength, stamina, and longevity, and also in olden times making us popular in arranged marriages. Our bloodline meshes well with other bloodlines.
This also, however, means it is important for an Uzumaki early on to practice control over their chakra reserves - otherwise small techniques, along with any technique requiring much chakra control, may be difficult for us. A number of important chakra control exercises have thus been included within these scrolls.
The Uzumaki bloodline gives the Uzumaki two special abilities. First, if we bite ourselves, we can flood our bodies with our own chakra and heal ourselves to an enormous extent. If someone else bites us, we can heal them in the same way. However, even without this technique, our huge chakra reserves allow us to survive and heal from things other ninja cannot.
Second, we can expand the cloud of chakra around us to enormous sizes. This is called the Mind's Eye of Kagura. We can then sense anything within our chakra radius, making us excellent sensory types. The reason why this technique is called "The Mind's Eye of Kagura" is because this ability is rather like that of a doujutsu, or All-Seeing Eye bloodline ability technique. However, it happens from within, so we call it the Mind's Eye, Kagura being an ancient religious dance.
We have one other bloodline ability, and this is that we can combine Wind ninjutsu and Water ninjutsu together into combined wind-water techniques, such as the Grand Whirlpool Technique. Many Wind ninjutsu and Water ninjutsu, as well as combined Wind-Water ninjutsu, have been included among these scrolls.
Our taijutsu style is Mizuken, or Water Fist. Water moves gracefully and agilely, even acrobatically, around whatever impedes it, and that is what Mizuken does. We weave around hits without ever getting touched once, attacking quick in and out at sensitive areas in the body. We are fast and weaving: hence, water.
And finally, we are most famous for our abilities of sealing. There are six main points of sealing: seal chains to entrap beings and people, seal barrier shields and domes, containment-release seals, chakra changing seals, and seal trap tags are the first five. The sixth is more academic: any true Uzumaki must master seal theory, seal tattoos, and touch-placement seals (meaning you can place a seal in a fight just by touching someone).
This is a summary of the Uzumaki clan abilities.
Anko looked up, whistling. "That's one hell of a rap sheet, kid," she said, and indeed Naruto looked excited bordering on rapturous. It was easy to see why. Not only was he going to learn powerful natural inborn abilities, but he now had a family connection, something he had never had before. He was part of a clan, he belonged somewhere, to a people and a place.
Anko smiled.
"There's not much I can teach you with all that going for you," she said. "But I will continue helping you with your Academy-level basics and strategy exercises. And how about this?" She smirked. "I will teach you about poisons."
Anko took Naruto through a whole several-week session on recognizing poisons and the plants that comprised them, and then mixing poisons himself. Since it was all visual and physical, he learned quickly. She also taught him how to lace his weapons with poisons, which he immediately started doing with all the weapons he owned - eager for more strength - and then she gave him poison immunity.
This consisted of slowly poisoning him with very weak mixtures for about a week, in increasingly heavier doses, until he was immune to poisons ingested within the body.
Naruto was sick and bedridden, and Anko sat beside him, feeding him and administering the poisons, making sure he didn't die. She had conflicted feelings - this was what her own Sensei had done for her, and her memories of him weren't exactly fond ones.
"Now I know I can trust you," Naruto said weakly from bed at one point, smiling, and Anko raised a curious eyebrow. "What?" he said. "Do you think I would have let just any Konoha citizen poison me?" His face was positively joking, but the words were serious.
And Anko realized just how big a show of trust that was for a jinchuuriki, letting anyone else feed them poisons.
Naruto started his training in the Uzumaki clan abilities.
He mastered tree climbing, water walking, and leaf bending first, passing out countless times over a period of several months just to master chakra control. On that note, his other skills were much easier: biting-healing and Mind's Eye of Kagura chakra sensory expansion were infinitely easier than trying to fit all his chakra into a tiny space, and he began doing Mind's Eye of Kagura regularly.
"It's a good thing you started young," Anko commented, as she helped him train, "the way an Uzumaki was meant to. Otherwise this might be infinitely harder."
He practiced Mizuken taijutsu sparring with Anko, and Wind and Water ninjutsu first separately and then together out in empty training fields. Once he learned to just chakra spam most big ninjutsu, putting as much as he could behind them, he progressed extremely quickly with natural prowess and Uzumaki chakra power and made such alarmingly huge whirlwinds of water that he accidentally destroyed a training field or two.
He also began learning about sealing, progressing slowly from seal theory to seal tattoos and touch-placement sealing. He found a natural affinity for seal theory; it was even pleasant, relaxing. He moved from there into bigger territory, such as seal chains, seal barrier shield domes, containment-release seals, chakra changing seals placed on an opponent's body, and seal trap tags hidden in underbrush. Slowly, his knowledge of sealing got more and more advanced.
In this way, he worked over the years on mastering the six points.
He also studied clan knowledge and ancient rulings. Among other things, he learned that all established clans were allowed a compound and an allotment of money as an adult, and that ancient laws allowing arranged and multiple person marriages were in place. It was all quite complicated.
Interestingly, now that he had big techniques, he did not feel a strong need to show off anymore. His pranks died down, he got better grades in class, he hid carefully knowledge of his budding training and even his seal tattoos from everyone, wearing long sleeved shirts and pants.
He didn't fade into the woodwork, that wasn't his way, but he didn't make as much of an ass of himself anymore as he used to.
This was partly because, as he got bored and had more free time mastering ninja techniques, Anko recommended he find some hobbies and get to know himself a little better. "Self improvement looks a lot snazzier on a future Hokage than pranks do," were her exact words, and she even set herself to helping him.
Some of it, she recommended to him as good hobbies for a Hokage, much of it based on his renewed confidence in himself as an intelligent person. He found to his surprise that he actually liked books, the ability to immerse himself in other ideas and worlds, and he liked music and film for the same reason. Anko gave him dense books, on things like politics and philosophy, and to his surprise he enjoyed them.
"You're not an SP," were her words. "In personality psychology, you're an NF. An ENFP instead of an ESFP. It's easy to make that mistake, because on the surface the two look a lot alike. But you're way too idealistic to be an SP. And ENFPs don't like authority either. ENFPs love all that daydreamy artistic abstract idealistic shit."
Anko-sensei did have a certain eloquence to her.
She lent him some psychology books, in part to show him what she meant and in part to give him more reading material. His mind starved his entire life, he was eating it all up by the wagonloads. The personality psychology, among other things, gave him more empowerment and freedom to be his true ENFP self. He became rather proud of his own personality and intelligence, in a way he hadn't been before.
He found he loved puzzles because they were a lot like sealing and seal theory. They had the same basic visual solving of a puzzle in common. And Anko-sensei introduced him to all her favorite traditional Japanese arts, specifically tea ceremony, flower arrangement, and calligraphy, which she said were more male friendly. On the note of calligraphy, she also introduced him to art and painting, which he came to enjoy, decorating the walls of his apartment with intricate paintings. And on the note of tea, he found he enjoyed waking to watch the sunrise with a nice cup of tea.
Inspired by his interest in tea, she also introduced him to soul cooking, which she loved. Soul cooking included ramen, so it was all good with him. She snuck lots of fruits and vegetables into her lessons, and as he cooked for himself more, he formed a more balanced diet.
She introduced him to box gardening, which he began doing, gardening flowers and vegetables in boxes out on his apartment front porch where he took his morning tea. He liked the idea of other living things needing him, and this was that on a grand scale. And she introduced him to the merits of spa treatments and long baths.
"This is too girly!" he protested at first, and then she took him for a spa treatment and massage and he ended up totally relaxed, half drooling in a lounge chair.
"See?" Anko said, grinning, from beside him. "It feels good, right?"
However, some of it was purely him. As he got more into seal tattoos, he also got more into the beauties of body ink. The seal tattoos on his body and the containment-release palms of his hands (to suck up and redirect information and attacks) began to form intricate artistic designs. And to take the place of pranking, he became a nighttime graffiti artist, leaving the Uzumaki swirl symbol next to his art as a calling card. Much of his graffiti was social commentary of sorts, an artistic reaction to the things he read and saw around him. These became more complex as he got older and became a preteen.
He also became obsessed with online ASMR, horror, and urban exploration videos. They reflected the two sides of him: healing and credulous on the one hand, adventure seeking on the other hand.
It happened one night about a year before his Genin Exam graduation. He was putting on a new seal tattoo painstakingly, but something was going wrong. The ink wouldn't go onto his stomach around his navel. He paused and frowned, channeling chakra, checking. Had he already put an invisible seal there?
His eyes widened. That was a seal - but not one he could ever remember placing on his stomach. Frowning, he examined it. It was a containment-release seal, and whatever it contained was huge in chakra power. He had the instinctive feeling he might not want to release it here in his quiet apartment.
But what was that? There was a little mark, a tie on the seal sucking away some of his power every day. He examined it closely, poking it, frowning. Releasing it wouldn't affect whatever was inside this seal; he was certain of it.
Curious, he undid it…
And in an explosion of blue chakra, he looked down and screamed.
Anko got a call late one night from Naruto. His voice sounded shaken, and strange, almost high and unfamiliar. If she hadn't seen the caller, she might not have known it was him. "Anko-sensei?" he said over the phone. "I need you to get over here. Right now."
Anko flashed across rooftops over to Naruto's apartment, threw open the door… and stared. "Naruto, I don't know how to tell you this, but you're under the Transformation of a preteen girl," she said.
This female Naruto - exactly like the regular Naruto except for a curving heart shaped face and budding female body type - swallowed, standing in front of her, mostly naked and covered in bodily seal tattoos. "Anko-sensei," she said in a girl's voice, "I found the seal on my stomach. I might have maybe undid a tiny part of it connected to the main part… And this is what happened. This… isn't a Transformation technique.
"Anko-sensei, I think I might have been a girl all along. Whatever that seal was, it was sucking away some of my chakra to keep up a constant Transformation turning me into a guy.
"Anko-sensei…" Naruto glared. "What the fuck is going on?"
When the Hokage got a message from a Tokubetsu Jounin saying that "it was about the jinchuuriki's seal," it was positively incredible how quickly he flew over to his office. He opened the door - and paused in surprise, seeing Anko and the female Naruto standing there seriously, side by side.
They told him what had happened, everything from Anko finding Naruto right down to this evening, and he sighed, sitting down slowly in his seat.
"Grandpa, what the hell was that seal?" said Naruto, angry and aggressive and afraid. "Anko-sensei won't tell me anything. She says I have to get it from you!"
And so the Hokage sat Naruto down, and she got the whole story. Her mother was a refugee from Whirlpool Country, an Uzumaki, who had married the Fourth Hokage, Namikaze Minato. She was their only child. When the Kyuubi fox demon escaped from her mother during her birth, her parents died sealing it away inside her.
That was why she born on the night of the demon attack. October tenth.
The Hokage hid everything from everyone. As far as the children knew, she was just some random orphan. As far as the adults knew, she was just some random jinchuuriki, or demon container, and that was why they all hated her so much. Anko had physically sat down in shock at the truth.
"The laws don't apply to you," said the Hokage, looking away in shame. "Tell anyone you want."
"Yeah, I think I'll be keeping it to myself, thanks," said Naruto, staring at him. "So… why would my Dad want to pretend I was a boy? Why would either of my parents write that part into the seal, for that matter?"
"I had not realized he had done so, but I can guess," said the Hokage seriously. "Naruto… young female jinchuuriki often experience sexual harassment. Your life has been difficult enough as it was. Can you imagine how much more difficult it would have been, for a girl who could not defend herself? Think of the sheer condescension you would have faced."
Naruto nodded solemnly. "I… I think I'm going to pretend to stay a guy," she decided. "For that reason, for… for now." This was visibly difficult for her to say. "When I'm established as a powerful ninja… maybe then things will be different."
"I can help with that," said Anko suddenly, fiercely, sitting forward. This wasn't just about Naruto or being Hokage anymore. This was about her duty to her village.
"Alright." The Hokage nodded. "I won't even tell your superiors. All documents will be highly classified." He sighed and sat back. "This is going to take a lot of paperwork."
And Anko was as good as her word. She did indeed help Naruto hide her gender from the world.
They chose baggy fashion for her male ninja outfit: brightly orange colored loose sweaters and loose modern pants, fishnet armor underneath it all, and underneath that? Breast bindings. That part took some getting used to.
They kept her hair short, framing her face in a longish, messy pixie cut. Of course, no makeup or perfume.
At the end, she just looked like a particularly pretty small, slim, blond, blue-eyed, Spring complexioned guy. The whisker cheek markings were still there, as was the curving face; it was obviously still Naruto.
Her voice was different, so Anko took her through different voice acting exercises to sound like a man. "The nice thing is, your voice hadn't dropped yet, so we don't have to do too much work to get you to sound the way you did before," Anko commented.
"Gee, yeah, that's great. I'm so glad my voice didn't drop," said Naruto dryly, and then they both snickered. In all honesty, though, it was a blessing - people were expected to change a lot physically at Naruto's current age, so nobody seemed to think much of the changes. Unbeknownst to Naruto, Hinata just thought they made him hotter.
But on the note of puberty, Naruto went through it. Yeah, girl puberty. With zero preparation beforehand.
Naruto went through a small self-identity crisis. She'd never exactly been a feminine guy, and now she learned she'd never been a guy at all. Anko talked her through a lot of fear and disgust at being a woman, a lot of late night phone calls, helping her slowly come to terms with and even (at Anko's behest) be proud of being a woman. Eventually, over that year, Naruto came to accept her femininity and even politically became fiercely defensive of women.
Anko also guided her through what sex would mean, what female reproductive health look like, she helped her with periods and especially with periods as a kunoichi. That included hiding the evidence of them. They came up with plans for every scenario they could think of, all the ways they could consider for Naruto to hide her sex.
Anko also lent her porn and erotic fiction, "to help you come to terms with feeling attracted to guys." This was indeed a problem. All of a sudden Naruto was attracted to men instead of women. It was a huge change, a major psychological shift. Now, not only did she hate Sasuke, but she started to see why women fawned all over him - which was infuriating, because he was still a gigantic dick. As for her crush on Sakura? It faded away as she started to see less of Sakura's beauty, and more of Sakura and Ino's shrill obnoxiousness.
She'd thought that had always just been a girl thing. Then she looked at herself and thought, … Apparently not.
So some nights, Anko and Naruto just had sleepovers and stayed up late talking about guys. Naruto needed that, Anko knew - needed to admit how she felt about guys to someone, and be accepted. Anko was more than her mentor now - she was the only person who knew the truth, who Naruto could really be herself around, her first friend. Anko even confided in turn to Naruto, talking sometimes with sorrow and anger about Orochimaru. They were each other's best friend, two lonely but fierce people who had each found a kindred spirit.
And Anko-sensei was the one who had made Naruto into a smart, strong, and fulfilled ninja. Anko hadn't turned Naruto into a clone of herself - she'd turned her into her best version of Naruto.
"Thanks for finding me, Anko-sensei," she said meaningfully, one night shortly before her graduation.
Anko just smirked. "Don't get sappy on me now, kid," she said. Naruto knew that meant you're welcome.
Author's Notes: I call this an unusual fem Naruto story because it starts out traditionally, with a male Naruto being upped in power, then shifts over to the newly realized Naruto becoming female. Fem Naruto is not the point, but rather the result. It's because she knows herself better that she has the realization.
I also don't see a fem Naruto hiding her gender very often, which I thought might provide an interesting dynamic.