Today was the day I was going to do it, I was finally going to get that hat and cloak from him. There was nothing stopping me, he was downstairs and it was just sitting there on the bed. Now I would finally have it. I tip-toed quietly into the room, stepping over the random things on the floor, including those sharp kunai of his. I popped my head over the end of the bed, I was barely taller than the bed. I reached over, but could only grab the edge of the cloak. I pulled on the edge and jumped onto the bed. I placed the hat on my head, it was a little big but all was well. I tied what I could from the cloak on me and it was a giant cape! I had wanted to do this for three days and I had finally accomplished it! I jumped off the bed and sprinted into my room. I hopped up onto the chair and to the desk in the corner. I stood up really straight and basked in my imaginary glory.

"One day I will be Hokage, no, the greatest Hokage who ever was!"

"If you put your mind to it, I'm sure you can do anything", said my father, leaning on the doorway.

"How did you know I was up here…"

"Well, we called you down for dinner half an hour ago, I figured you didn't jump out the window. Now what are you doing with my cloak and hat?"

"I…I was just…oh I don't know. I just wanted to try them on. You look so cool and awesome when you're wearing them, it makes me want to be just like you when I grow up"

"Mariah", he said letting a smile slip over his mouth, walking over and picking me up, "You remind me a lot of me when I was your age, I wanted to be Hokage too, and you know what I did?"

"No, what?"

"I always stuck to my training and tried my hardest", he placed his hand on my head and ruffled my hair a bit, "There is a vital connection between a time for learning and a time for playing. You just need to stick with it and you'll be able to do whatever you want. Now what do you say we go downstairs before your mother gets mad at the both of us"

I nodded in approval as he carried me down the stairs and slyly took his stuff back. I wanted to complain but he set me down in my chair and placed a plate of green stuff in front of me.

"Uh mom…what is this?"

"It's a mandarin chicken salad topped with balsamic vinaigrette"

I thought up how I was going to get out of eating this funny looking stuff.

"But mom I-"

"Mariah just eat your salad, it's good for you"

"Ya but"

"Look, a growing ninja needs vegetables, now eat"

I stuck my fork in and actually ate most of it. She always made me eat the weirdest looking stuff.

That next day, dad decided to once again take me to his office. By now I figured it was my second home, I spent so much time there. Mom was always going on missions or something and dad couldn't just leave me at home all day, they didn't trust me that much. Sometimes they would get someone to watch after me, some random Anbu or jounin that apparently had nothing better to do. I really felt sorry for those people, I must have been such a pain to put up with. Dad had to do all sorts of stuff from paperwork to assigning the random people who walked in missions. He would try to give me things to keep me entertained, but most of the time, I ended up getting away from him and doing my own thing in the hallways and outside. That was the case today, I was wandering around in the treed area around the building. I tried to stay out of everyone's view, they would tell my dad if they saw me. Today I thought I would be able to entertain myself better by taking one of his kunai. I made random marks on the trees and messed around with cutting some grass, but like any small child, started to tire of it easily and simply threw it into a nearby tree. I lay back on the grass and stared up at the tree. One stray leaf made its way down, fluttering ever so slightly in the wind, until finally landing on my nose. I blew on it, which made it rise back into the air.

"Mariah what do you think you're doing?"

"Oh hey dad, I was just enjoying, um, the shade of the tree"

"Nice try Mariah", he stated as he ruffled up my hair.

Why does he always do that!? It bugged the heck out of me and I think he knew that.

"Here, let me show you something cool"

"Don't you have to get back inside?"

"I could take a break for a while"

He picked me up and shimmered us to the roof of the Hokage's building.

"What was so awesome that you were going to show me?"

"Just look around, but be careful around the rail"

"Don't worry dad, I'm not going to fall off or anything"

I walked over to the front of the building, it was kind of awesome to look around at the village from here. You could see anything from there, people walking down the street, buildings bustling with people, trees rustling in the wind.

"Isn't it cool, at least a little up here?", he said as he walked over, leaning on the rail.

"I guess so, I mean as far as villages go"

"One day you'll recognize the pure beauty of this, the delicate balance between man and nature. This village is your home, you should always feel welcome and safe here. I know you can't see it now, it's not that evident now, but soon you will find that people do care for you and your well being. Who knows, maybe someday, you'll be the one looking after all this, all of what it stands for"

"I'm so not seeing this"

"Well give it some time, you will"

"Dad, sometimes I think you're just filling my head with nonsense"

"Maybe one day you'll get it", he claimed, as he messed with the top of my head once more.

I can't stand it when he does that, and he does it all the time! Now would probably be a good time to make my escape. I back up a few feet, very slowly, and finally put my hands together in a tiger seal to try to pinpoint somewhere to go. I eventually just thought up some place with leaves and shimmered myself there. Now, after doing such an action, I didn't have much time to get things straight. I was not good at exact location sort of teleportation, I always ended up a little farther away from my destination than I wanted. He follows me almost immediately, so I just shimmered randomly throughout the village. Everything was going great until I ran into someone, who knocked me onto the ground by my momentum.

"Oww…that kind of hurt"

"Mariah, what where you running from?", my mom questioned, giving me a curious and suspicious look

I simply rubbed my neck and gave her that smile I had picked up from my dad. She smiled ever so slightly, then grabbed the collar of my shirt and started towing me back to the house. I guess I didn't know that she was back from her mission so soon.

"Mariah, you really need to stop making your father go searching for you, he is a busy man"

"Ya I know, and that's the problem"

"Just try to see his side"

"Whatever mom"

Once again, my dad got home at nine or ten, it is fairly rare now to actually see him during normal living hours. I had gone to bed by this time, not for long though. I was wondering through endless hallways, seemingly leading to nowhere. The deeper I got into the maze of halls, the colder it seemed to get, the ground and even the air around me. The floor was starting to be covered with a thin layer of snow, gradually getting deeper and deeper. I didn't get why there were hallways leading to nowhere, I could see my footsteps from before in the snow, I was walking in circles. I finally got into a real room, but as far as I could see, there was nothing particularly special about the room. I got farther inside, the only notable feature was some sort of gate at the opposite end. I could hear a rhythmic noise coming from somewhere close by, it sounded almost like a breath…a breath of a very large something. It was really freezing cold, and something didn't feel right being there. I ran my fingers over the walls, they were solid ice. I touched the bars on the gate, it burned my hands instantly. I found out that it wasn't quite a gate, if I didn't know any better, it was a cage of some sort. I looked down at my hands, pale blue burn marks covered them, and it stung just being in the air. I heard something hit the ground, a large crashing noise, coming from behind those bars. I felt a cold breeze from that direction and saw two large blue…eyes. There was something living in there, something…that shouldn't be there, that is not…a normal animal. My heart started pumping faster and faster, I could feel it racing as my breathing started to quicken. It came closer to the bars, its front claws nearly out of the bars. I could see it clearly now, a giant white and blue reptilian beast. It had two huge wings, walked on four legs, long teeth with elongated canines, three tails, each with a pointed spiked tip. It had two, straight, shimmering horns out of its skull, and much smaller ones trailing across the back of its jaw.

"Why hello, it is about time I met you in person"

It…it could talk too…why did it want to meet me.

"Oh, interesting. You do not know about me do you? This is probably the first you have ever seen of me. Let's see what I can do with you"

It reached one claw through the bars. I backed through the snow as it slowly motioned closer to me. It caught my ankle and I fell into the snow. A blue aura started to creep onto my foot and up my ankle. It was a paralyzing cold and was starting to go farther onto my body. I struggled to grab onto the floor to try to stop it from continuing. My hands were slipping in the snow, I was terrified about what would happen if this continued. I couldn't do it anymore, I let out a scream. Suddenly I was jolted back into my room, the beasts chakra was fading as my body was going back to normal. Both of my parents were in the room, my dad with his hand on my shoulder, my mom on the other side of my bed, grasping my hand roughly in hers.

"Mariah, are you alright?"

"I…I don't…I don't know"

"Well what happened honey?"

"I was, wandering down these hallways, but I got to a room…on the other side of the room there was, I can't even…it was, the closest thing I can think of is…a dragon or something. I had never…seen something like that, something so…terrifying, so…demonic"

I looked over at my parents, who seemed to be having a mental conversation, she nodded and he acknowledged.

"Mariah, I think it's about time we told you something"

"What do mean, you've been hiding something like this from me?!"

"We were planning on telling you when you were older and could understand where we were coming from on this"

"Oh really, I guess the fact that there's a huge demonic dragon living inside of me was just one of those things you could tell me later"

"Mariah please let us explain"

"No!", I stared down at my hand, it had no markings at all. "That's why, isn't it…why people don't treat me the same…"

"You haven't had these nightmares before have you?"

"No I haven't…"

"Minato, I think it would be best if she stayed with us tonight"

"I agree, nothing will happen then"

I went into their room, hopped in the middle of the bed. I did feel better with them right there next to me. I slept for a while, but all night I would get flashing images of the dragon and what it did. It would wake me every once in a while, but they would coax me back to sleep with ease.

When I finally got into the academy, we had Fridays off. Every Friday I was stuck all alone in the house to do nothing in particular. My mom would always check in on me in the morning, but would never come back until dinner time. Dad was always off at the office and if I wanted to talk to him, I would have to find my own way over there.

"Well I'm going to leave you at the house ok, I expect you to behave"

Hours later, I of course got bored. I desperately needed something to do. I decided to have a little fun this afternoon. I went around the house, collecting a few key object, paint, soap, etc. First stop, Hokage's office. I wandered to the side of the building by the first tree, where people eat lunch on the benches and where they kept a small fountain. I undid the top of the soap, tilting it until all of it was slowly being consumed by the fountain. Bubbles started to erupt from the top of said fountain, so I decided to keep going. I dug a wide hole in front of the entrance to the place, then removed the dirt, and placed a thin mat on it, covering it with a layer of dirt. I got up on the shingles of the roof of the Hokage's place. I saw the circular thing with the fire symbol on it, wondering what I could put on there. I needed to keep going so I just put the first thing that came to my mind, 竜or dragon. Feeling like it was good enough, I kept on to the top of the cliff overlooking the area. There we find viewing binoculars, that are always overtaking someone's eye. I had gotten some charcoal from the fireplace and started to smear it across the edges. I backed away from it and into one of the main streets. I stared up into the sky and waited a few minutes. A crowd started to grow as they were all trying to figure out why they were looking up. I got bored of this and kept walking down the street. I grabbed a few pennies from my pocket and placed them between doors and doorframes all down the street. I also took the liberty of adding a bit of cooking oil to each doorknob. I found a few mailboxes and decided to completely switch all of their contents and fill them with some leaves I had found on the trees. I took one of the for sale signs from a yard, placing it directly in front of the gate. I was about out of ideas by now…so I decided to just go back. When I got home, the last thing I did was got a rubber band, tied it around the pullout hose on the sink, before I walked back upstairs to my room. You can only come up with so many things to do in an afternoon.

"Mariah Namikaze, would you come down here", my mother said from downstairs, rather ominously.

"Well hello mother, how are you this fine afternoon?"

"Would you like to explain to me what you did this afternoon?"

"Oh that would take hours, especially if I explained every little detail"

"I know we aren't here very much, so you have to do a lot of things on your own, but that's no excuse for things like this"

"Maybe if you guys were here more often, I'd have other things to do. Maybe we could actually be a family for once!"

"You know how much I'd like that, but we're busy"

"Ya I know…I'm just sick of having nobody to talk to"

"Just wait, I'm sure something good will happen soon. I know it's hard now, but that's only because they don't get it"

"I know, that's just it, nobody does…Besides you two, I'm alone in this"

"Don't worry so much, c'mon let's make dinner"