Mebuki Haruno sighed, her eyes gazing out the window, fingers gently away from the cutting board. Her daughter had just come running home, absolutely ecstatic that she had passed her ninja exam, and on the same team as Sasuke Uchiha nonetheless. Of course, it came at the price of having Uzumaki Naruto on her team, her daughter spat his name almost venomously.
"Baka Naruto, he didn't even pass the graduation examination!" Sakura had exclaimed, her arms crossed to support her frustration. With that she had ran outside to find Sasuke before dinner time, leaving her mother alone to her thoughts.
"Uzumaki Naruto, huh?" She breathed aloud, an image of a loud, brash, orange clad blonde forming in her head. She had seen him once before, shoved out of a store and pushed into the ground along the main market. He must have been about six. She had bent down to help him up and was met with those fearful eyes, the ones of solitude, holding back a waterfall of tears. She frowned as his body flinched upon contact. It was only for a second, but it was long enough to imprint a long lasting image for her to picture years on.
Why on earth the villagers - including her friends and fellow ninja- went out of their way to undermine him made no sense to her, eliciting a long held sigh. There was another secret she knew that concerned the jinchuuriki, one that most overlooked. He, Naruto, was the son of the Yondaime Hokage. It wasn't hard to figure out, he was the spitting image of him for god sakes, and how many others in Konoha had that hair? Regardless of her ninja status, she was smart enough to connect the dots. Surprisingly, Naruto's heritage was as badly kept as Naruto being the Kyuubi's container.
"Uzumaki Naruto." She tested his name on her tongue, "Uzumaki." As far as she knew, there were only two Uzumaki's in the history of the Hidden Leaf Village; Mito Uzumaki, the Shodai Hokage's wife, and her -she dare call- former friend or at least comrade, Uzumaki Kushina. She was as loud and brash as her son. It was a wonder how few people picked up on his heritage, it was the only reasonable explanation. How else did an orphan have a surname, a near extinguished clan surname at that? If there was one thing Mebuki knew of Kushina after their time at the Academy, was that she was with Minato. The Yondaime Hokage. They were even married for crying out loud. Not that she knew Kushina was even pregnant in the first place, that only raised her suspicions.
"People really don't pay enough attention to him," she muttered, concluding her thoughts on the enigma that was Uzumaki Naruto.
With what seemed like the thousandth time that afternoon, she sighed, before going back to cutting her carrots laid on the cutting board beside her.