A/N: So, I found this little thing laying around in the recesses of my computer. Turns out I've got more than two hundred pages of unused Naruto material and concepts… How about that? So I cleaned it up, added and edited for about half an hour, and here I give it to you: Naruko – Bakuden! (Explosion Tales!)
*EDITED*
If you guys like it, I might write another chapter… We'll just have to see, huh?
Chapter 1: Homecoming! A Hero Returns!
"So, you're telling me that the jinchuriki of Kyuubi no Kitsune, the saviour of this village" Izumo asked slowly, his brow furrowed in confusion "is a girl?"
Kotetsu, the other of the two guards who were stationed at the open gates into Konohagakure no sato on that beautiful spring day, made a sound that was half-way between a sigh and a gnash and put his palm to his face in frustration. "Listen, you were hit with some kind of memory-altering Genjutsu" he explained for what felt like the squintillionth time that day "and it altered key details in your memory, okay? You just have to get used to the fact that some things are different from what you remember".
"Like what?" came the question, to which Kotetsu shot him a pointed look. "Obviously the gender of the main character... I mean hero! Hero of Konoha!" he shook his head hard to clear it. "But other than their gender, what would have changed?"
"Okay, let me humour you" Kotetsu sighed again. "How about the rest of team seven? The Haruno girl and that traitor scum Uchiha?"
"Well, Naruto – what Naruko was called – was in love with Haruno chan, who was in love with Sasuke, and Naruto had this fierce rivalry with Uchiha, while Hatake-senpai was pretty apathetic about it all. Wait" his eyes flashed wide "don't tell me-"
"No, that isn't reversed here" he said and lifted a finger to itch under the bandage that was tied around the middle of his face and over the bridge of his nose. "But things're… more complicated. Sasuke and Naruko-chan had this rivalry you speak of, but as far as I can tell Sakura-san considered Naruko-chan an enemy for most of their time together, and Naruko-chan didn't seem to love her. She just ignored the girl, for the most part… I think".
"I see" Izumo nodded, a little sad at that. Naruto's persistent and unreciprocated adoration for the disciple of Tsunade was one of his more endearing qualities in the reality he was used to.
"But the Uchiha" Kotetsu went on and frowned hard, his look going distant as an uneasy feeling came into his stomach. "At their fight at the Valley of the End… only Hokage-sama knows what really happened, but it had to be something bad. Naruko-chan just wasn't the same after that happened. She said she was glad that the Uchiha was gone, for she said she wanted nothing to do with a village that kept, and I quote 'people like that sick bastard' in high regards".
"Did he…?" Izumo wondered, the final words of that question stuck on his tongue. The thought… it was too horrid to give voice to.
"I don't know. Maybe that's best, but I can tell you this: whatever it was that made Naruko-chan so sad, the traitor deserves to die for it!" A sharp clearing of a voice broke their discussion, and the two looked up from their sentry-box at the immediate inside of the gates to see two strangers. "Gossip about someone and their shadow will appear" Kotetsu grumbled while Izumo stared. "Welcome back" he stood up and bowed "Naruko-chan, Jiraya-sama. I see that you've changed your hair".
"Yeah" Uzumaki Naruko shrugged her slender shoulders, her hair once put up in two pigtails high on the sides of her head now cascading freely and wavy down her graceful spine to be tied together with a single silk band halfway down its waist-long length. She had grown taller than she was before, if not much, still short and sort of stocky, but her build seemed to have matured and grown much curvier and slender all at once, her skin still tanned to a brilliant contrast with her bright blue eyes. But the most different about her was her attire. She had shed the jumpsuit she had always worn as a child and traded it in for a pair of orange fatigue trousers with white linen wrappings over both knees and a black sleeveless top cut so that it exposed her entire fishnet-armour-mesh clad midriff. Over it all she had slung a short-sleeved red coat with a black flame pattern along the hemline that reached almost to her sandal-clad feet, and over the back of it was her name, written in fierce and burning kanji. Her hitai-ite was polished to a mirror shine where it was tied around her forehead, and she wore a cocky smirk on her lips. "Whatta'bout it?"
"Couldn't you talk more womanly, for just once?" Jiraiya sighed from beside his student, deep and dark rings beneath his eyes. He seemed tired, the skin hanging looser on his frame than before, and his skin was paler as if he had not gotten enough sleep to sustain him. "Just once? For me?"
"Shut up, ero-sennin" she rolled her eyes at him and looked back to the two guards. "What'cha staring at" she looked to Izumo "perv?"
"Don't be too harsh on him; he thought you were a guy" Kotetsu apologised on behalf of his friend without even the slightest attempt to explain what he meant by it and moved onto the business at hand. "Papers, please".
"Yeah, whatever" she replied with a glare directed at Izumo and pulled out a small scroll from the one of the pouches in the black utility belt that was slung around her narrow waist, handing it to the sentry along with Jiraiya's own identification.
"Inuzuka Jiraiya-sama of the Sannin, Jōnin, with apprentice Uzumaki Naruko, Gennin" Kotetsu looked over their papers before pulling out a stamp and ink and marking both their scroll's already cluttered margins with the seal of Konoha in red ink. "Welcome home" he smiled at them both and bowed they took them without a word and left with merely a wave. He shot a look at his friend, who was still staring mouth agape at what was now empty air, and promptly growled and smacked him on the back of the head. "Idiot!"
"You're thinking about him, aren't you?" Jiraiya asked his student in a low tone as they made their way into town, his tone serious and his look hard. He had spent three years with the girl he had come to think of as a granddaughter, and he had come to know her moods very well. She was silent and outwardly walked carelessly and easily, but he could see the tension in her eyes and knew that her smirk was false.
"Everyone keeps talking about that bastard-attebayo" she let her smile slip into a snarl as a shudder went through her. "Always, always they talk about him, even now!"
"No, they were talking about you and about how they acknowledge you" Jiraiya told her firmly as they went, their voices low as to deter anyone who wished to listen in. "They spoke out of concern for you. And their adoration of the Uchiha brat turned to hatred long ago".
"Sure" she snorted and exhausted that subject firmly, not wishing to speak about it anymore. But he knew she needed to.
"Do you hate him?" he asked her softly, and in her mind those spiteful words spoken three years earlier rang out again, as they often did in her nightmares.
I'll make you bear my children, you impudent whore!
"No" she acknowledged slowly, hesitantly, forcing the memories out of her mind. "I- I don't. I can't hate him, because I understand him, and in a different time, a different world, he could be me". Light and dark, good and evil, love and hate, ying and yang – nothing in the world was without counterpart, and she had always known, deep down, she had been born into that body at that time in that village to be his opposite. "But I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive him".
"For what he said, for what he almost did, I would have hated him" Jiraiya spoke to her in a tone that told her it was okay to weep, it was okay to rage and scream and howl at the sky. She hated it.
"He didn't rape me or anything, and, well, I don't" she shrugged, thinking that the sage didn't know everything. After all, some secrets were hers alone to keep. "You know what? I think I'll go up ahead, see if I can see any of my friends around here somewhere" she said and bounded away without further ado, leaping up onto the rooftops of Konoha before climbing the top of a flagpole in a sprint. Down below Jiraiya shook his head sadly before he turned towards the Hokage tower in the distance and made his way there, hanging his head as he walked. He had many things to tell Tsunade, and very little of the news he brought was good.
Naruko, in the meanwhile, regarded the village now below her with a growing smile, thoughts of the past put far out of her mind as she beheld her home for the first time in forever. The great faces carved into the far mountain seemed to smile at her as the sun warmed on her back through her coat, and she threw her arms wide and closed her eyes in a smile as she embraced the summer wind. Her ire from before forgotten she felt joy bubble in her breast. "Everyone!" she announced loudly to the village. "Uzumaki Naruko has returned! Yosh!"
"Naruko-neesan!" came a squeak of a voice from down below, and she looked down at the ground to see a small group of people coming towards her in a run. Grinning like a fool she jumped down in a single leap and landed with feline grace on her feet, looking at the three that ran at her first with cries of "Oyabun!" and "Oneesan!"
"Konohamaru! Moegi! Udon!" she exclaimed as the three children, taller than she remembered them being and now wearing Hitai-ite around their brows, betraying the fact that they were now formally adults and Shinobi, thudded into her and embraced her all at once. "Hey, watch it!" she protested at first as the three hugged her all as one, but she couldn't help but to feel warm inside, and so she laid a hand upon Konohamaru's and Moegi's heads. "Yare yare, you've gotten so big, all of you".
"We've missed you, Naruto-nee!" Konohamaru was almost sobbing with happy tears streaming down his face. "It's been so boring without you!"
"Don't you worry, my little kappa" she pushed them away from her and knelt down until she was at face-height with all of them "I'll make sure you become the best Shinobi in all of your class-attebayo. Neesan is back, and she'll have lots of time to hang about with all of you-attebayo" she grinned at them.
"Oneesan!" Moegi cried and threw her arms around her neck, holding her close. Naruko might have seen Konohamaru as a little brother and apprentice, but Moegi worshiped the very ground she walked on and regarded her as her role model in life. "Okaieri!"
"Tadaima" she ruffled her hair smoothly and looked up as someone chuckled. "S-Sakura-chan?"
"Welcome home, Naruko-chan" Tsuande's apprentice inclined her head as Naruok stood up, and they looked each other over as people and friends that had not seen each other in ages often do. "It's been a while, hasn't it?" To any other observer Haruno Sakura had changed quite a bit since her younger days. She had grown taller, cheeks gaunter and sharper, become slender of body and soft of skin, and her attire had changed to become more practical but also more revealing, and she wore gloves over her hands now to cover the hardened knuckles she had gotten from smashing apart boulders and trees with naught by savage strength and restrained fury.
Still, to Naruko's eyes, she looked just the same as always. "My, you've grown up, haven't you?" Sakura put her hands on her hips. "Become all womanly and stuff… I'm a bit jealous. What about me, Naruko-chan? Do you think I've grown up?"
Naruko looked closely at her and felt the warm comfort of friendship settle in her gut. There was friendship and… nothing else. Inwardly she flinched at that. Where had the… had that passed? But what she had felt for Sakura had been such a big part of who she really was that… damn it all, it was too confusing, it made her head hurt. "Nah, you look the same as ever, Sakura-chan".
Sakura's eyebrow twitched dangerously, her mirth turning to annoyance. "You bitch" she grumbled quietly, and Naruko chuckled nervously at having woken the cherry tree demon of Konoha.
"Na, na, Sakura-chan" Naruko gestured widely and tried to placate her. "No need to get testy! I really like your hair! What shampoo do you use? It's a very… pink! Tell me, is that your natural hair colour-"
"Naruko-nee!" Konohamaru complained as two other familiar shinobi came walking down the street from the other direction and began to listen in on the little crowd. "You're rambling… and you haven't shown me any awesome Justsu yet! Wait" the boy exclaimed "you have studied under that pervert, haven't you?! Your Oiroke no Jutsu must have grown very powerful… but it can never match up to mine!"
Konohamaru's hands flashed into a hand-sign before a puff of sudden smoke rose up around him and obfuscated him. Once it was gone a curvy young woman, naked and long of brown hair and dark eyes, stood preening with a sultry pout, and chaos erupted as mothers shielded their children's eyes, distracted passers-by smacked into walls and lampposts or dropped their jaws to stare, and Sakura began cursing and shouting.
"Perverted brat! Do you know what a silly-" she stopped as she looked to Naruko and saw her pull a slight smile.
"Konohamaru-kun, I don't do that technique anymore" she said gently but firmly as the naked woman poofed out of existence to be replaced by a saddened Konohamaru. "And neither should you". Sakura couldn't help but be amazed at how much Naruko had grown up, how mature she had become, and how pretty she had gotten. "That technique…" And she must have grown really powerful now, and have many other Jutsu at her disposal, and she had probably made a new and even more powerful Jutsu than the Rasengan. "That technique is too weak! Behold – Oiroke no Jutsu 2.0 – Twincesto Powah!"
Wait, Sakura finally thought, what? And in a puff of smoke she saw the new Jutsu.
"Nee-san" Naruko moaned slightly through pursed lips as an identical clone of her suddenly stood behind her, holding her around the waist and busily kissing the base of her neck while her hands groped a chest now clad in a school girl's sailor uniform unbuttoned and half-undone, her tan skin glistening with sweat. "Don't" one Naruko mumbled to the other weakly. "Sisters shouldn't do things like this! It's so wrong-" she gasped when the groping clone distended her tongue and licked her neck, leaving behind a trail of shining saliva, turning her protests into heated whispers. "And yet, so right! Kiss me, nee-"
"Naruko! Shannaro!" Sakura roared and struck with all her might, dispelling the transformation and the clone and sending Naruko slamming into a far-off wall, the pinkette's eyebrows twitching as she clenched her fists and looked around. Konohamaru and Udon stared in awe at the spot Naruko once had occupied, and Moegi looked like she didn't know if she adored Naruko or Sakura more, but it was the new arrivals that drew Sakura's attention the most.
"Shikamaru" Temari growled at the man who had been escorting her until they had stopped to watch something… something you would never see on the streets of Sunagakure; that was for certain. "Were you looking at that little slut?"
"What?" the Nara looked to his, nominally, girlfriend, dazed and unsteady on his feet. "What?! No! Never! You're-" he felt something drip down onto the breast of his shirt and he looked down and felt with his fingers to find his profusely bleeding nose betraying him. "Troublesome" he sighed.
"You arse!" Temari roared and chased after him with drawn fan as he tried to escape her rage and abusive nature, running so fast he kicked up a trail of dust into the air that whoozed away behind him.
"Aow" Naruko stood from the wall into which she had been punched, dusting off her coat with a frown. "Whaddya do that for? That was mean-attebayo!"
"You perverted brat!" came the angry exclamation in turn and made Naruko wince. "There I was thinking that you had grown up, and then suddenly you do something like that. Konohamaru corps" she snapped without looking "scram! I need to drag my retarded teammate in front of the Hokage, so piss off!"
"Hyō, Sakura-sama!" Moegi promptly barked and began to drag her quiet teammate and her loud teammate away by the scruffs of their necks while Sakura took a fierce grip on the blonde's arm and began to pull her towards the Hokage spire.
"You've gotten so unwomanly, Sakura" Naruko complained loudly as she was half-dragged along for the distance to the tower next to the Academy.
"Look who's talking" came the swift and lecturing response. "You're the one that uses masculine pronouns and who's rude all the time. Quite unbefitting of a lady, you know! The way you talk… and the way you dress! Would it kill you to wear a dress or a skirt every now and then?"
"Oh, don't be like that" the blonde pouted dourly, a little insulted, as she tore her arm free and began to strut alongside the pinkette with her hands on the back of her head like she usually did, going along freely to the Hokage tower. "There's nothing wrong with my clothes, ya know? Black works on everyone, and orange is the new black-attebayo. And if you don't like the way I talk well… you can bloody well sod off!"
"It's not that much for me" Sakura said as they arrived at the entry to the tower and were let inside without fuss by guards who could recognize the Hokage's apprentice anywhere. "But… wait, you don't have a boyfriend now, have you?"
"W-what's that got to do with anything?" Naruko stammered back while blush crept into her whiskered cheeks.
"Nothing – just curious, that's all" Sakura replied hastily before a thought that made her embarrassed all to hell occurred to her. "Or maybe you got a… girlfriend?"
"No!" Naruko shook her head "I do not have a girlfriend! Uhm, not that there's any problem with… stuff like that… but I haven't had the time for anything else but training for the last… three fucking years" she explained hesitantly as they made their way up the tower. "B-but why do you ask? Kinda weird talking about this-attebayo. Like, first question you ask after I get back after three damn years away".
"But don't you see?" Sakura pressed. "If you keep acting like this then you'll never get a boyfriend… or a girlfriend, for that matter. Start talking properly, put some makeup and a skirt on to show off those legs, and you'll be beating the boys away with a stick!"
"I don't need a guy to be happy, and I don't base my life around whether or not I have a guy" she retorted swiftly, holding back the "unlike others I could mention" that she had been about to spout back. Saying that would just have hurt Sakura and herself.
"I'm not saying you should, Naruko. But three years… don't you get lonely?" And that, that, was the question that hurt the most.
"Nah, that makes me able to focus on training properly" Naruko shrugged with a smirk that looked natural but certainly wasn't. She held back the true answer: I've always been lonely, so I'm used to it by now. "And if – if, mind you – I do decide to get a boyfriend, or a partner or whatever, I want someone who likes me for who I am, not who I dress like. I'm not going to make myself look like Ino-chan just because I like a guy-attebayo".
"That's always important; to be able to be yourself around your partner and never pretend anything" Sakura nodded as they ascended the last stairs and came into the main hallway of the top-most floor where the Hokage's office and the rookery were located. "But guys are pretty dumb as a rule, you know? You basically got to beat them over with a sign saying 'Take me!' to get them to know that you're interested in them. Dressing up for a date is the first thing you can do".
"I still don't wanna get tarted up, ya know?" she went as they followed the arching hallway towards a corner, beyond which lay the double doors of the Hokage's office. "Not only do I suck at it, but it's just a waste of time".
"Well, not all of us can get perfect tans without even tanning" Sakura muttered.
"Oh, stove it, Haruno" she replied testily as they went towards that corner. "And you think I have it easy? Because of certain lumps of fat" she gestured sharply at a certain area of her body in indication "my back gets so bloody sore you could chuck a sword through my spine and I wouldn't even notice. And training, and fighting? You know how many sports bras I go through in a year? I'd kill to be small like you-"
And that was all she had time to say before her distracted yammering made her miss the fact that she was walking right into something that was just around that far corner, and she bounced off it, her balance breaking until she fell on her rear end hard and probably bruised her tailbone.
"Naruko! Daishobu?" Sakura looked to her friend first, but her worries and most of her coherent thoughts evaporated as she looked to the thing Naruko had bounced off.
"Owie" the blonde tomboy whined as she rubbed the small of her back. "What was that? Did someone retarded piece of cartilage decide to put a fucking wall hidden by a corner? Shit, that-" she looked up, and the first thing she saw were a pair of feet.
It was a fairly pretty pair of feet – not that she had a thing for feet or anything – big and callused and nails bare and cut short, and the black sandals that he wore – obviously it was a man's feet, judging by the size of them – were reinforced for long treks and studded for better gripping. Those feet were attached to a pair of legs - obviously again, otherwise it would have been a little weird and possibly disgusting – garbed in a pair of black shinobi fatigue slacks where kunai holsters had been tied at both heavily muscled thighs, held up by a simple black belt of cloth, over which a long chain had been circled around a firm but narrow waist.
Above it: a leather jacket, in that strange colour cream white, unzipped and wide open to reveal a fishnet mesh undershirt and a ripped, bulky torso beneath. The arms of that jacket ended an inch from wrists that connected to bare, callused and heavy hands, showed glimpses of shining steel vambraces, glinting fiercely even in the gloom of that hallway.
The shine blinded Naruko, and she gazed further upwards to see the slightly curved hilt of a yanmaodao sword with a tasselled brass pommel in the shape of a roaring lion jutting over a broad shoulder. Whoever he was, he was tall, though he seemed young when she looked to his face, and that sharp chin of his was sort of familiar to her, shaven clean as it was. His indigo-black hair had been cut short and jagged, standing straight on his head in an almost military fashion, and his pale face was the host of a slowly spreading blush as his eyes were squinted shut.
"Well" Naruko said, having no idea of who this man was "let me just say" she took him in again, and all in all he was incredibly suited to her tastes. "Hello sailor!" she drawled in an exaggerated manner, causing both of them to blush deeper. "Aren't cha gonna help a girl up?"
"Sorry" the man stammered helplessly "N" whatever he said seemed stuck in his throat "N" he stopped, took a deep breath to keep himself from hyperventilating, and his eyes flashed open to stare at her. "Naruko-chan" his voice, deep and melodious to her ears, was still tiny somehow, as if he was only whispered. And when she saw his pale lavender eyes, void of pupils and almost completely white, she realised who he was.
" Hinata?" she asked breathlessly. She remembered a pale little boy, shorter than even her, possessed of a determination and strength that was hidden deep down but also a deep social anxiety and a perpetual blush and near-crippling shyness. But now, after all these years, there was only one thing she could say to the way he had changed.
"Hot damn, lad!" she whooped excitedly.
After all those years spent imagining her, longing for her, seeing her in front of his eyes every time he went to sleep, yearning for the touch of her skin and the warmth of her smile, meeting her like this wasn't how he had imagined it. She wasn't how he had imagined her.
She was even more glorious than his mind had made the grown up version of her look... and he was making an even bigger arse of himself than he had always feared he would when he saw her again.
"Hot damn, lad!" she broke the tense silence with a grin he could only describe as vixen as she looked up on him from down on the floor, her feet to the ground making her legs bent out in front of her and her hands supporting her weight behind her, arching her back and making her… making her breasts-
Must not faint, must not faint, must not faint, he chanted internally.
"What the bloody hell have they been feeding ya?" she wondered excitedly, her grin outshining even the sun when it came to brilliance. "You're as big as a conservative party prostitution bill at a knocking shop!"
"What are you on about?" Haruno Sakura asked from aside in a sharp whisper, staring at him and his open jacket for some reason, but he had no eyes for her. The amount of fucks he gave for Haruno at that moment could be counted on one hand by making a fist. All he had were eyes for her.
"I have no idea" Naruko professed with a further grin, her whiskered cheeks reddened as her mouth slowly morphed into a shy pout. "Are you-" she reached out her hand towards him, but she didn't even have time to finish her request before he pulled her up.
"S-s-sorry, N-Naruko-cha-chan" he managed to fumble out, and mentally the part of his mind that was sound and sane twatted him over the back of the head. But most of his mind didn't care, for he was holding her hand in his… her small, soft, hand with the tan and silky skin made all the more gentler-seeming by the calluses over her knuckles and fingerpads. "Sorry!" he said again and let of her hand before she noticed how much he was sweating. "I didn't mean to trip you, Naruko-chan, I promise!"
"Well, I've already forgiven you, so you can stop apologising" she rubbed the back of her head with her right hand, the one he hadn't gripped in order to pull her up. "I can tell that Sakura-chan's gotten stronger by the sound trashing she gave me earlier" the girl in question protested wordlessly "but I see you've gotten pretty powerful yourself, huh?"
"Th-thank you, N-Naruko-chan" he managed to mumble. "H-how w-was your training? I'm sure you've gotten a lot s-stronger too".
"You still stutter like that, don't ya?" she smiled up at him, noting the considerable difference in height between them. "Despite the whole 'hunky gay pornstar'-thing you got going on?" He blushed even brighter and averted his eyes to stare at the wall to the side, and she couldn't help but release a chuckle. He was just so… cute! "Don't worry, stud-muffin" she reached out and patted his cheek. "I think it's adorable".
What…?
"Are you here to see the old hag too?" she asked him before he had even had time to register her change of topic and her stepping away to stand beside her old friend.
"Y-yes, I'm here to see H-Hokage-sama" he answered, resisting the urge to lick his lips despite them being very, oh so very dry. "A-are you here for your d-d-debriefing and assignment?"
"Yeah, and Sakura-chan wants me to stop teaching 'inappropriate techniques'" she made quotation marks in the air to accompany her mocking tone in speaking those two words "to the kids. She's probably going to ask the old hag to give me a spanking or something".
Spanking… the mental image of Naruko bent over the busty Hokage's lap, bereft of clothes and face twisted into a mask of painfully sharp pleasure as the slug saint used the flat of her hand to punish her by striking her across her perfect posterior, hitting her with loud slaps again and again… it was almost overpowering.
"You alright, Hinata-kun?" He was catapulted back to reality to see Naruko and Sakura look at him oddly while he internally chanted his Karuko motto: must not faint, must not faint, must not faint, et cetera. It was Sakura who had asked him, a blush in her cheeks and her voice low and docile. What was it with girls talking to him like that these days? They had started doing it a little while after he started training with Lee. Had they somehow heard about that time he had almost killed his cousin and couldn't look him in the eye without seeing a monster?
He had to ask Neji about it.
"I-it's fine, Sakura-chan" he replied with a smile at her to show her that he wasn't the brute she no doubt thought he was, but she simply blushed deeper and averted her eyes. He really had to ask Neji about this. "I was s-summoned by Hokage-sama, b-but Jiraiya-sama is al-already inside".
"Tch" Naruko snorted. "Have you lot been sucking up to the old hag while I was away? She'll just get a big head from that, ya know. She's just keeping the seat warm for me-attebayo. Iku ze" she said and stepped past Hinata towards the closed doors into the Hokage's office "Sakura-chan, Stud-muffin-kun. I'll show you how to deal with obaachans!"
And she took a stance, drew back her leg and kicked the double doors opened with a boom. Sakura made a startled sound and Hinata couldn't keep a fearful squek from escaping his lips before mentally slapping himself for appearing weak before Naruko-chan. But their terror only grew when the blonde young kunoichi stormed inside and took an almost theatrical stance.
"What's up, motherfuckers?!" she cried with a victorious grin. "Rukodaime Hokage in da house-attebayo!" And she promptly made the peace-sign with a wink, keeping the charging ANBU from attacking her as they flashed exasperated looks to their leader.
"What the hell, gaki?!" Senju Tsunade, leader of Konoha and fifth Hokage by the grace of the Spirits of Fire, jumped out of her seat staring daggers at the girl. "I just had those doors put in! Red oak from Do no Kuni! This is coming out of your salary, you mark my words young lady!"
"What cha' talking about, Tsunade-obaachan?!" Naruko cried back, outraged at the very notion of someone taking away her ramen funds. "It's my damn office, so I can do what the hell I like with it! And as soon as you get your decrepit old arse off my chair I'll install some revolving doors!"
"Not in my lifetime you will!" they argued as Hinata and Sakura nervously edged into the office, avoiding the rage of their mistress and commander to stand beside the wide-eyed Shizune and the exasperated Jiraiya.
"Haruno, Hyūga!" Jiraiya ignored the verbally sparring women, each currently in the process of telling the other that their clothes befitted only slatterns and women of the even kind. "How's digs?"
"Alright, I guess" Sakura managed to tell him.
"Quite fine, thank you, Jiraiya-sama" Hinata bowed.
"Bah!" Jiraiya flashed the young man a grin and put a hand upon his shoulder. "Stop with that 'sama' nonsense! Think of me like an uncle" he gracefully moved his head out of the way to dodge a thrown sake cup that smashed out the window behind him and hit a stray dove. "Like a drunken old uncle that comes into town every odd year, eating all your pies and shagging all your birds".
"Jiraiya-sama" Sakura asked him, acting now oblivious to the crashing behind her as Tsunade put the blonde girl in a head lock and was busy pummelling the top of her head. "Are you alright? You show signs of fatigue, premature aging and lack of judgement-"
"What do you mean 'lack of judgement'?" he protested.
"You referred to women as 'birds' while being in the same room as Tsunade-sama" Shizune pointed out from aside.
"Indeed" Sakura went on as if she hadn't been interrupted in the first place while Tsunade threatened to banish the owners of Ichiraku Ramen from Konoha while Naruko begged her not to with horrified tears streaming down her cheeks. "All signs of chakra exhaustion. You should go to the hospital, get yourself checked up".
"Aye, whatever you say, mini-Tsunade" the perverted sage grinned at her and looked over to the two bickering women, Naruko crying "You're crushing me!" as Tsunade squeezed the girl into her ample bosoms in the midst of a bear-hug.
"You've been keeping up with the energiser vixen for three years, Jiraiya-sama" Sakura lectured at him. "No one alive can do that and not suffer adverse effects. You should get yourself checked out as soon as we're done-"
"What do you mean my apartment got re-appropriated?!" they suddenly looked up to see Naruko in a genuine rage.
"That's what happens when you forget to pay the rent for three years, gaki" Tsunade took her seat behind her desk again.
"Couldn't you stall the tick man or something?" Naruko whined. "That was my flat, ya know? I've lived there since I was five years old!"
"You don't pay your rent or make any arrangements to that effect and you suffer the consequences" the Hokage spoke firmly, an authoritive air creeping into her voice. She had become a great leader, Jiraiya noted as he looked to her with a warmth in his heart. It was like her grandfather's mantle had fallen over her seeped into her, for she spoke like she had been born onto that role.
"But- but- but where am I going to stay?" Naruko pleaded for an answer, and Tsuande's face adopted an expression of compassionate understanding. "I don't have enough money for a hotel, and I won't stay with ero-sennin-"
"You can stay with me at the mannor, baby girl" Tsunade said to the almost crying blonde, who perked up at the news but suddenly frowned.
"But… you're going to cramp my style, obaachan" she complained, and the Hokage's eyebrows began to twitch dangerously.
"If you don't want to stay on the damn streets you'd best take a better tone with me, gaki!"
"Okay, okay… jeez" Naruko rolled her eyes at her "kaasan".
"Kaa… san?" Tsunade wondered, stunned, in awe at the sudden change in the form of address the girl used. "Why…?"
"If I'm going to stay with you it's better that I think of you as my mother than my granny, right?" the perky young kunoichi said as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and to anyone but Jiraiya's practiced eyes Tsunade simply smiled slightly and scoffed as if amused. He, on the other hand, could tell that inwardly she melted. "Otherwise it'd be a little weird, ya know?"
"Good" the buxom old woman who looked much young than she actually was nodded as if satisfied. "Most of your possessions are at a storage facility right now. Shizune will see to it that they are moved over to… your new home, heh, after this meeting. But first" her smile faded as she gestured all of the people in attendance, excluding her ANBU bodyguards, to stand before her desk. "Business. How have your training gone, Naruko? Have you gotten stronger?"
The girl smiled confidently. "Yeah, I have. You can bet your hat on it-attebayo".
"Good. But your new skills will need to be evaluated so that we know where we have the best use for them" she went on, as severe as ever before she looked to Hinata. "Hyūga-san…"
"Osu, Hokage-sama!" he bowed curtly in reply, apt like a good little soldier.
"I need your team for a special matter… which I will discuss with you after I've dealt with Naruko and Sakura, ne?" he nodded again, and she dismissed him with a wave.
"Nice to see you again, Hinata-kun!" she waved him off cheerily, grinning at his back as he left the room, and at the door he gave her a shy blush and the slightest of smiles before he closed the doors from the outside. "Okay, spill!" she turned to Sakura. "When the hell did he grow those abs?"
"Huh?" came the oh so articulate question.
"Seriously, did you not see that washboard thing he got going on?" Naruto questioned incredulously, thinking back on the sigh of his mesh-clad torso beneath his unzipped leather jacket. "I mean, there was, like, more than six of them, at least-attebayo. Maybe eight… or ten. And those pecks…" her words faded away into a dreamy haze until Tsunade clapped her hands once to summon her attention.
"Oi! I know you got the attention span of a mayfly, but allow me to interrupt your fantasizing about hunky boys-"
"Shotacon!" Naruko accused with a gasp. "He's like a tenth of your age!"
"You little-" she forced herself to be still and ignore Jiraiya's snicker until she could take him out the back and disembowel him out of sight from prying eyes. "As I was about to say, before you so rudely interrupted me, I will need you to be evaluated to determine your current strengths. Both of you two will" she slid her gaze over to Sakura, who nodded and smirked in eager obedience. "And I have just the person in mind to test your skills".
Hinata sat outside the battered doors to the Hokage's office at a respectable distance as not to overhear anything said therein. The Hokage's private matters were her private matters, after all, and her concerns could often deal with things no one but her were supposed to know about. As he sat, he thought about his nature, and about who he was.
Hyūga Hinata was a pervert.
Not everyone knew that, of course. It was a secret he had guarded closely ever since he had been seven years old and first seen her, and most people thought simply that he was head over heels in love with her when they saw him blush and stammer every time he saw her. But that was only part of the truth.
He loved her, aye so it was. The mere mention of her name, that blessed name seemingly inscribed onto the inside of his heart by the fates themselves in the hour of his birth, brought a crimson blush to his cheeks, and if he stood in her presence he couldn't help but to be intoxicated by her. Her name was the most frequent word in his diary, often ringed in by little hearts and flowers, and he saw her face before his eyes every time he lay down onto his bed and drifted off to sleep.
Yes: he loved Uzumaki Naruko. It was an obsessive, all-consuming love, and it had defined his entire character for the longest time. He had observed her from afar, admired her brash and unrelenting nature and worshiped her great combat prowess in silence. They had both been children then, and as he was merely twelve years old his affection had been fairly chaste and subdued.
But then she had gone away, and though it felt like there was a hole in his life with her missing from it he had tried to move on. He had gone on three dates – three, no less! – all at the behest of his older cousin Neji who was insistent on it. He kept saying that the heir to the Hyūga clan had an obligation to produce further members to it and secure the clan's future, and that monogamy was simply not a word that should be in Hinata's vocabulary. Even his father had encouraged it. After all, his father had several children with many mistresses within the clan beyond his two legitimate children with Hinata's mother, and his mother never seemed to mind. It was a part of the Hyūga lifestyle, and it was best that he got used to it.
One of these girls was Ten-Ten, a teammate of his cousin who had said that Hinata was "cute". Another had been a girl from the clan called Narimi, who took great pride in her Hyūga appearance of long hair and pale, almost completely white, eyes, and the last had been some pale-haired girl from the civilian portion of the village called Miina. She was the one he had thought the most attractive, but even as they spoke over their food at a yakiniku restaurant he had felt uneasy and despicable. In the end he had thanked all the girls curtly and gone home without so much as giving them a dirty look or a peck on the cheek, that one girl still blazing like a fire in his mind.
It was after one of these occurrences that he discovered that he was a pervert. He had been lying in his bed, thinking about her, her smile and her long blonde hair and the lustre of her whiskered cheeks and the sway of her hips as she walked, and suddenly, at the thought of her rear, his manhood had grown to erection, throbbing painfully. So he had pleasured himself to the memory of her, and imagined her doing all manner of perverted things with him – kissing him, holding him, forcing her tongue down her throat as she stroked his length, pressing her breasts up against him while she guided his thickness inside of-
And so he had ejaculated, and afterwards as he cleaned himself with a paper tissue he had felt sick. He was thirteen then, and she had to be… fourteen, and he had not seen her for almost a year. To imaging doing such wanton things with the love of his life… he felt sick as he thought back on the images he had made in his mind even as his manhood stirred again.
For months it went on like that – dates he didn't much want to go to in the evenings after training in the days, and then he would pleasure himself in the comfort of his own room and hate himself for it. The more he did it the more wanton his imaginings became, and the sicker he felt afterwards, and the disgust he felt for himself began to seep into his conscience even during the days and his training hours and in the missions he did with the rest of his team. It distracted him, and his performance seemed to falter to the disgust of his father and his cousin and the worry of his teacher, Kurenai-sensei. She almost decided against sending him to the Sunagakure chunin exams along with the rest of his team.
Almost.
In the end he passed the exams, but only just, only by the grace of his teammates who had kept him safe in a sandstorm and rescued him using the Inuzuka sense of smell and the bugs of the Aburame to move them outside of the range of an enemy's attack. Hinata… had managed to do nothing but reflect his opponent's attacks. In the end they had to be rescued – rescued! – by the proctors of the village they sought to impress. After the exams, on the way back to Konoha, no one said anything about his weakness and his poor showing, involved as they were in their own thoughts and discussions, too busy to pay any heed to the lone lad that trailed after in the rear of the procession. But as he walked with his pale eyes fixed on the ground he could feel their scorn. He could feel their disgust.
He was weak. Always he had been weak, and he had kept the seat as heir to the clan simply by the virtue of being the only son of the current clan head. He had not even been able to best his cousin. Granted, Neji was the famed head of the Hyūga branch family, an acknowledged and renowned genius, but he was of the branch family still. He was a servant and a guard meant to protect the heirs to the clan, and Hinata was a poor heir that couldn't even defend himself. Even his little sister could beat him in practice if she tried hard enough. He was weak… and he would always be weak.
Once they got home to Konoha and got notice of their promotion his family wanted to celebrate his promotion, and he had joined in the festivities in a token manner, his focus turned inwards as he was steeped in his own thoughts. He had excused himself early and gone back to his room, his footsteps echoing in the halls of the main house now empty of everyone but him. He was alone. Always alone, and weak.
When he had stripped himself of clothing and laid down onto his bed to rest his thoughts had gone out to that girl, that blonde girl whom he loved and lusted for with all his being, the one he had not seen for a long time. As always when he thought of her and her perfect lips and bright blue eyes he got harder than rock, and so he began to relieve himself in the way teenage boys do.
But it was different in his mind this time. Instead of preening and smiling and embracing him her face, so beautiful, so fair, twisted into a sneer. "You think you are worthy of me?" his dream version of her asked and spat at him. "You'll never be! You're weak! Weak! Pathetic!"
And instead of going on masturbating the young man broke down in tears and cried himself to sleep. In his dreams he chased after her, always at her back, running towards a girl he would never catch up to and who would never love him back.
The next day he wandered aimlessly through the halls of the Hyūga compound, ghosting through life like a phantom. It went on for days, his empty stare burning holes in the hearts of those who cared for him, but when they went to try and bring him out of his depression he saw only his own self-loathing reflected back at him in their worry. He declined all offers Shino and Kiba made of going out or going on missions, he refused his younger sister's insistences of playing or going into town, he ignored his father's pondering queries as to his health and wellbeing.
In the end it was Neji who brought him back to the land of the living.
One morning Hinata was busy brooding when the divider into his chambers slid open so hard that it banged into the far wall, and he looked up to see his cousin standing there, clothed for missions, teeth bare in a snarl as his chest heaven in uncharacteristic fury. "The dojo!" he snapped, Byakugan eyes activated. "Now!"
It wasn't a request, but an order. And Hinata was almost dragged into the dojo to a sparring match between him and the genius, most of the clan and his teammates and sensei sitting as spectators. "Neji-kun, stop it" he said weakly and the young genius took a stance opposite to him on the mat of the dojo. His mother was even there, along with two of his father's mistresses. "I don't feel like-"
"I couldn't give two shits what you feel just now, cousin" Neji practically growled. "This is about the clan. This is about our legacy. Now we will spar" Neji raised his hands into his signature guard "whether you want to or not!"
"Neji, just shut up-" Hinata began, but his cousin was already charging at him, eyes activated, chakra blazing around him. It was all he could to dodge and move out of the range of the Hyūga prodigy's divination. "Stop it!" he cried, but Neji pursued, leaping after him with palm outstretched, aiming for his shoulder. Hinata knew that strike. If he got hit the blow would fall upon his key bone and snap his shoulder in half, potentially crippling him. He had to get away…
Or he had to fight back.
So he blocked and returned the favour at his cousin, forcing his weakened body into fighting after days of not having eaten correctly. In his emancipated state Neji deflected his counter easily. "Is this your best?" he barked and lashed out again and again, faster and faster, forcing Hinata on the extreme defensive. "Is this all you've got?!"
"Neji-kun, stop it!" he pleaded through a voice now quivering with lack of strength and a throat run ragged with heavy breaths, but the genius of the Hyūga was merciless. He struck thrice more, and now once of his blows slipped through Hinata's guard to land upon his lower thigh, sending a lance of pain through his leg before it was numbed of all sensation. "Agh!"
"As I thought" Neji stood tall while Hinata fell to the floor, clutching his leg. "You haven't changed a bit since our last fight during the first chunin exams. You're still as useless in a fight".
"Stop it, Neji-kun" he cried and tried to stand, but a blow onto his back made agony spear through his body and sent him back onto his knees.
"Crying like a little girl" Neji growled "weeping like a frightened civilian. To think that you would be the future of this clan?" he chuckled cruelly as the clan looked on in silence. "You're pathetic!"
"Shut up!" Hinata clenched his eyes shut as his cousin unknowingly echoed the words of the Naruko he so often saw in his dreams. "Just stop it!"
"Weak" Neji snorted finally, and the word seemed to vibrate throughout Hinata's entire being. Weak. Was that all he was? Weak. Unworthy of her, unworthy of the clan. Weak.
But unlike before the word didn't fill him with apathy and shame.
Neji watched with hidden satisfaction as Hinata's pale eyes flashed open with all the power of their bloodline blazing in them, anger burning in his gut. Hiashi had given him the mission to awaken his cousin from his torpor, and he had thought it best to do so forcefully after all gentle methods had failed. His mission seemed to have succeeded as Hinata stood slowly, limping slightly and favouring his injured leg.
"You want to fight back, finally?" Neji wondered, but he barely had time to finish his goading before Hinata changed forever and struck like thunder, the rage and self-loathing finally breaking down the dam that was his restraint. And within him the beast started to roar.
Hinata roared wordlessly and charged, striking the unawares caught genius in the stomach with the same blow Neji had once used on him, sending a shower of blood exploding from the older boy's lips. The clan gasped collectively, Hizumi, Hinata's mother, clasping her hands in front of her mouth in sudden terror.
" Hinata! Cease!" Hiashi ordered, but the heir to the clan was deaf to his father's pleas. Now the situation seemed reversed, as it was Neji who was struggling to remain standing and Hinata who was striking truly and cruelly. A blow to the genius's arm broke it with a sickening snap like the sound of a rotten twig breaking. Another to his leg, half blocked, weakened his further until he fell onto his back, and Hinata launched himself atop his cousin, snarling like a beast, driven beyond words and reason as he struck Neji over the face again and again with closed fists blazing with chakra. In the end he had to be pulled off with great force, and the clan beheld the state of their champion in abject terror.
"Take him to the hospital!" Hiashi snapped at two branch family members. "If the Hokage doesn't treat his injuries soon he'll die!" He turned then onto his only son and oldest child where he was restrained by the iron grips of three guards. "What is the meaning of this? Explain yourself!"
"I'm not weak" Hinata panted, long repressed emotion burning in his eyes. "I won't be weak anymore! I'm going to make myself worthy!"
"No one worthy of being clan leader beats their family within an inch of his life!" Hiashi retorted, and Hinata seemed to snap out of his rage to stare with wide eyes at the large pool of blood that had been smeared over the mats in the middle of the dojo. Neji had been taken away, and only a few clan members remained in the chamber, among them his weeping mother and a pale Hanabi, staring with terrified eyes at her brother. "Such savagery! Barbarism, that's what it is!"
"He had it coming" Hinata said firmly as he tore himself loose from the grips of the guards and stomped of, heading out of the compound, going anywhere and nowhere.
In the end he headed towards a training ground that had a decent sized forest and proceeded to take his frustration and pent up rage on the trees until most of them had been reduced to kindling and his palms and knuckles were cracked and bleeding. Panting he collapsed then, falling to the ground as tears began to roll down his cheeks, and he stared at his fingers in disgust. Had he meant it? Had he meant to harm Neji to such an extent? Had he meant to almost kill him?
So he went to Konoha Hospital and inquired as to the condition of his cousin, and once he found out that Neji was wide awake and not in any serious condition, and so he snuck into his cousin's room under the cover of darkness to sit by his side when he woke.
"I'm so sorry, Neji-niisan" Hinata had said as he sat in a chair by the sick bed and stared at all the bandages that covered the older boy. "I don't know what came over me".
"It's quite alright, Hinata-sama" Neji smiled weakly and took his hand. "I goaded you to try and bring you out of your depression… I must admit it worked a little too well".
"Heh" Hinata said in what was half a chuckle, half a sob.
"Why are you sad, Hinata-sama?" Neji wondered softly, frowning despite the bandages that were tied around his head and the medicine that kept him happy and awake to avoid sleeping due to his multiple concussions. "You've been growing distant over the last year. Is something the matter?"
"I-" he shook his head hard at himself. "It's nothing".
"There is something. Ever since the chunin exam… and before even that, you've been sad almost all the time, almost never smiling" Neji went on sombrely. "Tell me" he urged when the younger boy stayed silent and tight-lipped. "You can tell me everything, Hinata-sama".
"Do you" Hinata began and licked his lips "do you remember Uzumaki Naruko-chan?" he asked, and Neji gave him an incredulous look.
"Remember the only person who has ever beaten me until today?" Neji arched an eyebrow, his tone as serious as always. "Of course I do, Hinata-sama. What about her?"
"I" Hinata found himself stammering as he only did in the company of his one true love, his tongue feeling three times bigger than it actually was. "I – I th-think I'm in l-l-love with her!" he finally blurted out, and Neji's look in return was flat.
"No shit" he spoke just as flatly. "Have you been promoted to commander of the obvious squad? Should I start calling you Obvious-taicho?"
"You knew?" Hinata asked, wide of eye and a blush burning in his cheeks.
"Everyone knows except for Naruko-san" Neji said simply. "That girl is thicker than sake paste sometimes. And I can't for the life of me understand what you see in her. But" Neji added in a slow acknowledgement "the heart wants what it wants. Why has your love for her made you sad?"
"Because I'm not worthy of her" Hinata whispered, the words pouring from his lips as the dam holding his emotions back had been broken. "I'm weak, like you said. And she's so strong. She even beat you without having to surprise you or resort to dirty tricks. She's beautiful, you know? And I'm just a plain guy that doesn't have half of her skill or talent or ability. I will never be worthy of her".
"Bollocks" Neji stated firmly in hard reply. "She's the one that won't be worthy of you. You're strong, Hinata" he pressed his cousin's hand "and you're the kindest and gentlest person in this village. And believe when I say that your potential with the Jūken and the Byakugan is the greatest I have ever seen. Even greater than mine" he said, and that utterance made Hinata look up to his cousin's eyes in stunned amazement. "All you need to catch up to her and prove yourself worthy is the will to do it".
"But I don't-" he grew sombre, but Neji wasn't done.
"Discipline and strength of will and character: these things can be learnt. One you have that the rest will follow" Neji was confident in that, and Hinata's mind swam at the thought.
"But if I haven't gotten any stronger yet, doing the things I've always done, how do I grow stronger?" he asked.
"Only you know the answer to that. If one road to enlightenment is closed to you, know that there are many others that are open". Neji smiled weakly again, tending to his cousin's tender feelings. "Try a new method, a new path to walk, or a new teacher. You're my little brother, Hinata, and I know that with enough hard work you can do anything. 'I'll never give up-'"
"'And never go back on my word. Such is my Shinobi vow!'" they echoed the words spoken by Naruko so long ago now, and Hinata found his tears drying and a smile returning to his face in the first time in forever. "You really think I can become strong?"
"I know that you can grow strong enough to surpass us all, Hinata-kun" Neji replied.
And in the days to come he was determined to prove his cousin right. Neji would take a couple of months so any work he could do to improve his Jūken techniques would have to wait until the genius was better once more. Until then he would have to practice other things… but what?
He thought of what Naruko would find impressive, his adoration for her still one of his determining character traits, and decided against Genjutsu, and she would no doubt find a specialisation in such a discipline to be foppish and weak. And Hinata lacked aptitude for more advanced Ninjutsu, as he had a fairly limited chakra reservoir compared to many others in his age group and had to train it up first before he settled on studying the sorcerous shinobi art. As such there were only a few options left to him, and Fuinjutsu didn't sound very appealing to him. That left him only Taijutsu and other options for close quarters combat.
And he just so happened to know whom was the foremost expert on hand-to-hand fighting in all of Konoha.
"Yosh!" Lee decreed, jumping up on the table in the dining hall of the Hyūga family, startling several servants and clan members and scarring away the pigeons nesting on the roof tiles far above them. "It shall be my honour to teach you everything I know, Hinata-san! The fire of youth shall spread to engulf all the world!"
"I just want to know if you have any exercises for strength-" Hinata began to protest with a tired look, but flinched and jumped away as reached down and pulled something out of his leg warmers. He saw them then, the weights that Lee always wore, and then the idea dawned on him. "Weights?"
"Wear them whenever you exercise and your youthful fire shall blaze grand under the weights and transform your simple carbon muscles into diamond!" he decreed in a manner most operatic. "And I shall teach you the basics of the Gōken style to grind and polish that diamond into a brilliant shine!"
"Sure" Hinata smiled at the young man who was clearly insane and took the weights from him, groaning in surprise as his arms slammed into the floor under their mass. "Isn't this a little much, Lee-san?" he suggested in a strangled tone.
"Nonsense! The greatest adversity leads to the greatest of triumphs! The greatest of villains demands the greatest of heroes!" he lectured firmly and jumped off the table, pulling the legs of Hinata's trousers up to fasten the weights around his ankles. "I shall bring you others soon, for your arms and legs both, but for now we shall go to your dojo, and I shall teach you the Gōken way!"
Hinata was already beginning to regret that particular undertaking. He especially began to regret it when Lee took him out on a hike in the mountains… walking only on the palms of his hands.
And he knew then for a fact that both Lee and his sensai Gai were insane. But after three months of the gruelling training he didn't doubt that it had results, and when he and Neji spared once his cousin had recuperated their fight ended in a draw, as Neji's technique was matched to Hinata's new strength, speed and versatility. Neji then decided it was time for them to advance the Jūken arts into territories yet unseen, and so they studied and sparred for many long hours every evening Hinata didn't have any missions. In the mornings Neji had other matters to attend to, often with his team or as Taijutsu instructor at the Academy, and so Hinata turned to another discipline she had neglected for too long.
"I don't know" Sharingan Kakashi, the foremost expert on ninjutsu in Konoha after the passing of Sarutobi Hiruzen, muttered in a manner most bored while he scratched his head. "You already have the Byakugan, don't cha? Why would you need Ninjutsu too?"
"If I cannot touch my opponent, I need a way to fight them anyway" Hinata said firmly and bowed low. "Please teach me, Hatake-sensei!"
"But the more advanced techniques of the Jūken are capable of ranged attacks" he protested, but as he saw the determination in the look Hinata gave him he surrendered. "Alright, I can coach you in basic Ninjutsu theory and practice. If nothing else it might give you some diversified skills. What is your nature release affinity?"
"Katon – fire" Hinata stated simply, and bushy brows furrowed over a single eye.
"Sure… Katon. I thought it would be something rare in this country, what with the Hyūga blood and all. Maybe Suiton – yeah, you seem like a Suiton guy to me – or Fuuton maybe. But almost every Shinobi in this nation has the fire release affinity".
"Are you going to teach me or are you going to complain, Kakashi-sensei?" Hinata wondered.
"You haven't been talking to Sakura or Naruko lately, have you?" he grumbled in response and stood up, pocketing his eroge book and dusting off his slacks. "I usually do both, ya know".
He had thought that the copy-shinobi's training regimen couldn't possibly be worse than Lee's, but it actually was, if only for the fact that Kakashi had a much different attitude to teaching than the one Gai had instilled in his disciple. Kakashi had a relaxed attitude to life and teaching and preferred to shout instructions and encouragement from the side-lines while Hinata worked his ass off in the exercises. Kakashi also said he had a prototype regimen in mind for someone else, whom he did not say, that involved Hinata summoning as many shadow clones as he could in order to speed up his learning process by absorbing the knowledge clones gained when he dispelled them… or somesuch. He wasn't focused on that as much as he was determined to learn all the secret arts that he had ignored before.
And Kakashi watched, outwardly impassive, as the boy pushed himself harder than he had seen anyone ever push themselves before. Naruko could have matched him, perhaps, or Sasuke, but Hinata lacked the massive chakra reservoirs of those two and the natural aptitude the both of them possessed for Ninjutsu. He was proud of the boy's efforts… until the time the lad almost killed himself.
Hinata barely remembered it happening. One minute he had been standing with his hands pressed to a tree stump, focusing on making it catch fire and be reduced to embers with nothing but his chakra and nature manipulation, and then suddenly his head had exploded, or at least felt like it had, and he awoke in a hospital chamber days later, an iv attached to his arm and a silent Neji sitting worried beside him. Chakra exhaustion, they said – and if he kept at it like that then he would essentially poison his blood with irradiation and be find himself in a state of eventual living death and chakra coil degeneration. He was under orders to rest and recuperate, to regain his strength for a few months before he went back to training.
Naturally he was on his feet after two weeks and tried to continue only to pass out from exhaustion after five minutes, after which his father took him aside and strictly forbade him to ever practice anything but Jūken techniques ever again. "You are a Hyūga, my son. You need nothing but your hands and your eyes".
Yes, he was a Hyūga. As he sat meditating in his room in the compound that night, the room that had become his prison in so many ways, he looked inwards and asked: why? Why was he a Hyūga? Wherefore was he Hyūga? He knew that if he kept training as he did the chances of him running himself into the ground was insanely high, and the clan techniques were safer, more suited to his own chakra and constitution.
But if he didn't push himself as hard as Naruko, how could he ever be worthy of her?
Why would she ever look at him if he was anything less than equal to her?
She was protecting everyone, even when they scorned and ignored her and spat curses at her back, and she was putting herself in so much danger in doing so. So maybe it was that she needed – someone to look after her, to take care of her, be there for her.
And how could he do that if he was weaker than her?
The path to the power he craved was fraught with danger, but he could not walk it as Hyūga Hinata. Like the Yondaime, whom he had been named for, he could only stand his strongest if he walked that path without family and worldly distractions. And so he made the decision.
He opened his eyes from his meditative state and stood, his hands in fists at his hips and his pale eyes set in determination. If he did this, there would be no going back. He would do like that traitor, Sasuke, though his treachery would be less. He wouldn't leave his village. Only his family.
And so he gathered his things and all the funds he had saved up over the years and threw them into a bag, shedding his white and lavender hooded jacket and leaving it behind before he threw a black jacket over his shoulders and looked at himself in his full body mirror. His appearance was Hyūga no longer in body, for the training he had kept under Lee had made him bulky and strong where many of the clan were lithe and willowy, and his clothes no longer bore the clan colours, but his hair, his face, his eyes were all Hyūga.
His thoughts went to one of the jounin sensei he knew that had made the same choice that he did now, and his lips bent into a slight smile. And with a kunai in one hand he grasped the long dark indigo hair that fell halfway down his back and sheared it off, leaving only jagged spikes of black upon his head standing straight up in a style reminiscent of Sarutobi Asuma's. With the hair gone his face seemed leaner, sharper, and hungrier.
And only the Hyūga eyes remained of his bloodline heritage.
That night he left the clan compound behind him with the intent to never return.
Of course, he went back there often. His father didn't disown him or revoke his Hyūga status or force him to join the branch family. He could still play with his little sister, who was quickly growing up, and talk with all his relatives and ask his father for advice and spar with his cousin, and if his teammates came around for missions or what-not he could easily indulge them under the name Hyūga Hinata. As far as the world was concerned he was the same lad as always – simply living elsewhere but the compound in which he had grown up. He got a small studio apartment in the centre of Konoha and resolved to live on his own.
If he wanted to be worthy of his beloved he had to know a little of what she had gone through.
The first few weeks, months, living on his own were hard, harder than he had ever thought possible. Without the sounds of the house and his family and clan moving around him, greeting and helping him with the task of the day-to-day he felt blind and lost all alone in the woods with no way home. Cooking for himself, washing for himself, taking care of his own expenses and living on his own will and actions alone was a heavy thing, but as the months wore on it became strangely empowering. He lived on his own, and he didn't need them to keep him upright. He could stand on his own now.
He was weak no longer.
He celebrated his fifteenth birthday in that apartment, surrounded by friends and immediate family. Ten-Ten got slightly inappropriate and tried to mack on him, saying something about her adoring him and always thinking he was cute and that she loved him, but he pushed her away firmly but kindly. There was but one for him, and he longed for the sight of that blonde angel. No one else would simply do anymore. The others seemed to understand, and got him the things he would have wanted for birthday presents: Kiba got him a white leather jacket very similar to his own, and Shikamaru and Asuma gave him a curved sword of a heavy foreign design unlike the Katanas of the Shinobi nations, a chakra blade that suited the Jūken fighting style he had created. Sakura and the others got him tools, kunai, clothes, medicines and provisions for future missions, and lastly, from his father, he got a single long length of chain with a weight attached to each end.
"Let these links be as your determination" his father had spoken with pride in his eyes. "Unbreakable. And promise me that you will never give up".
"I'll never give up, father" Hinata had spoken fiercely in response. "I'll never go back on my word! Such is my Shinobi way!"
Naruko, watch me! I've grown strong for you!
He was pulled back to reality by a cry from inside the Hokage's office, the voice of the Senju princess herself shrill and harsh. "Whaddya mean 'Kekkei Genkai'?!"
"I'll show you!" came Naruko's eager shout back, and even without his Byakugan eyes active Hinata could tell that some tremendous power was gathering. "Bakuton" she roared "Shakkahō!"
And then the world exploded.
Chaptawa… endo!
A/N: You know, I think my intention in writing this was seeing how, if Naruto and Hinata's genders were swapped and switched around, their conditions would change giving social standards, gender-roles and other such stuff. This is my take on it, which is probably poor, but whatever, right?
And I added the part about Naruko flirting with Hinata so that he wouldn't come across as a complete fucking stalker, alright? And in regards to Hinata's backstory, I was thinking: what would I do if I had Hinata's life? What would Hinata, if she was a boy, urged to be strong as boys are even more so than women, do if pushed too far? Learn an important lesson and work even harder, it turns out. Huh. How about that?
Anyway, that's the chapter there. Read and Review, and DFTBA!
EDITNOTE: Changed the name from Hinato to Hinata, the latter being unisex which no one had elected to tell me before I posted this thing. Well, the more you know, right?