Rise of the Byakugan Jinchūriki!
Summary: What if Naruto was born into the Hyūga clan and therefore had both the Byakugan AND the Kyūbi?
Chapter Two: Teamed Up
(A/N: Ok, I made my decision. Of the three people who voted on the poll, two voted for different teams and one for the same team. Therefore, the teams will be as they were in canon; Neji in Team Gai, Naruto in Team Kakashi and Hinata in Team Kurenai. By the way, what did all of you (few) people who've read this think of my OC? I made up a complete back story for him, though I had to twist canon a little bit. You'll probably identify how in this chapter. Enjoy!)
Naruto, Hinata and Neji stood talking in their classroom, each waiting for their jōnin-sensei to come and collect them. They had been disappointed to discover that they would not be on the same teams as they had been hoping. Naruto was on Team 7 with Sakura Haruno and the Rookie of the Year, Sasuke Uchiha. Hinata was on Team 8 with Kiba Inuzuka and Shino Aburame, and Neji was on Team 4 with Tenten Takeshi and Rock Lee. Team 4's third member had dropped out for unknown reasons the year before, putting both Tenten and Rock Lee back in the Academy for another year. Neji, as the eldest of the current Academy class, had been assigned to the team as a result.
Neji's ears had gone pink when he had met Tenten; something that had caused his cousins to tease him mercilessly. Neji had retaliated by shoving Naruto gently. Tenten had simply blushed and looked away when Naruto had mentioned Neji's "crush" on her, before the blue-haired genin had gently taken her hand and kissed the back of it before offering it to Neji to do the same. Neji had simply clipped his cousin on the ear and apologized to Tenten for, in his words, "the fact that my cousin is a bit of an idiot." Tenten had simply nodded graciously and smiled at Neji, whose ears went from pink to red.
Time passed. Each team's sensei came and took them away. Hinata left with a red-eyed woman with long black hair, and Neji left with some weirdo in green spandex and a black bowl cut, who bore an uncanny resemblance to one of Neji's team-mates, Rock Lee. Soon, it was just Naruto and his two team-mates who were left, awaiting their sensei. Sasuke had dozed off in his chair, Sakura meanwhile had leant her head on her hand, her face turned towards Sasuke and her eyes closed. Naruto lounged against the wall next to the door, head tipped back and staring at the ceiling, thinking.
He started as the door slid back, revealing a masked face. The head in the gap instinctively flinched. Naruto raised an eyebrow, "What was that about?"
The person shook his head, "Never mind, I was expecting to be pranked somehow; I've heard a lot about you, Naruto Hyūga."
Naruto snorted, "Maybe when I was younger. Not now though, got to set an example to the younger generations." Then his lip twitched and he dissolved into sniggers, "Ok, do you have any idea how hard that was to say with a straight face?"
The man smiled under his mask as the other two members of the team stood up and walked around their desks to Naruto. "Well anyway," said the man, "Meet me up on the roof in five minutes!" He vanished in a puff of smoke.
Five minutes later, Naruto was sitting on the roof with his team-mates, opposite their assigned jōnin-sensei and a dark figure that none of them recognized except for Naruto, who remembered seeing him the previous day being escorted by two chūnin. The figure was holding a small panther cub and stroking its head gently. Naruto was first to ask the question that was obviously bothering all of them, "Sensei, who is he?"
Their sensei turned to the figure, which lowered its hood. Sea-green eyes glittered out from a face which resembled a panther's more than a human's, though his smile was friendly despite displaying rows of sharper-than-average teeth. "My name is Shizukashi, and this is my ninken Kageneko. I am from the Kagegakure, the Village Hidden in the Shadow. My village was destroyed, so I was permitted to live here and join an existing genin team. I chose this one."
The masked jōnin nodded at Shizukashi to sit down, and he did. "Now," he said to the three Leaf genin, "My name is Kakashi Hatake, and I will be your sensei. What are your dreams, what are your likes and dislikes, what are your hobbies and what are your ambitions?"
Naruto spoke first, "I'm Naruto Hyūga, I like eating ramen at Ichiraku's Ramen Shop, and I dislike people who judge others based on something trifling, like how people judge me because… because…" he tailed off. Everybody was looking at him. Naruto frowned at the floor for a second, then shook his head and resumed talking, "Anyway, my hobbies are hanging out with my sisters and cousin, and my ambition and dreams are the same: to become the Hokage so that the entire village will respect me!"
Shizukashi considered the boy for a moment before musing, "I wonder if he knows about his tenant. He seems to… I wonder if I should tell him I'm in a similar position…" He was shaken out of his thoughts by the pink haired girl beginning to speak.
"I'm Sakura Haruno," she began, "What I like is…" she glanced at Sasuke and blushed.
Shizukashi sighed and rolled his eyes slightly, "Great, a fan-girl. This is going to be one interesting team. What is so enthralling about this Sasuke anyway?"
"Anyway, my hobby is…" she glanced at Sasuke and blushed again; Naruto rolled his eyes this time, "And my dream for the future is…" This time she covered her mouth with her hands and giggled.
"And what do you hate?" asked Kakashi.
Sakura scowled, "Anybody who tries to get between me and my…" she trailed off, giggling.
"And you…?" said Kakashi, turning to Sasuke with a sigh.
"I am Sasuke Uchiha. I hate a lot of things, and I don't really like anything." Sakura looked crushed at this. Shizukashi sighed; that girl would have to get over her crush if she was going to become an effective shinobi. "What I have," continued Sasuke, "is not a dream, because I will make it a reality. I'm going to restore my clan, and destroy a certain someone."
Naruto snorted. Shizukashi glanced at the Uchiha, thinking that maybe they had a bit in common. Except that where Shizukashi was concerned, the person who had destroyed his village was someone he couldn't exactly seek vengeance on. If anything, Shizukashi had more in common with the Hyūga than the Uchiha, mainly because they both had similar hairy problems.
"Ok then," said Kakashi, "I'll see you all tomorrow morning for a survival exercise. Five a.m. at the designated training area. Oh and one last thing: you may not want to eat any breakfast. You'll just end up throwing up."
Shizukashi caught Naruto's eye for a second and raised an eyebrow, before Kakashi vanished in a puff of smoke.
Naruto decided to make conversation, "So what are you three going to do?"
Sasuke shrugged, "Go home."
Sakura glanced at Sasuke and blushed slightly before turning and saying, "I think I'll go home too."
Naruto nodded before turning to Shizukashi, who shrugged, "I need to find a place to live while I'm here."
Naruto smiled, "Well, why don't we ask my father if you can stay in the Hyūga compound?" Naruto didn't know why, but he had a feeling around his navel that he could trust this person.
Shizukashi's ears, or at least the parts of bare skin Naruto could just see inside them, went pink, "Are you sure they won't mind?"
Naruto smiled, "No, they probably won't. If we tell them you don't have a place to stay then they'll probably give you a free room. My parents are nice like that."
Shizukashi smiled, and in the back of his mind he heard a soft feminine voice purr, "For the jinchūriki of the Kyūbi no Kitsune he's actually quite well-mannered. I would have expected him to be a little more brash and crass myself…"
Shizukashi shook his head slightly, "Quiet, you. You know I still haven't forgiven you for that."
The voice came back, wheedling and annoyed, "For goodness' sake, boy! The massacre was months ago now, let it rest!"
"No!" Shizukashi shouted into the recesses of his mind, "No! It's going to be a little harder than you think, just letting it go and forgetting that you took over my body and massacred my entire village while I was asleep!"
"Aw, come on! You pretty much gave me the opening! Falling asleep like that just begged me to take over!"
"That doesn't matter! Was it necessary to kill everyone in the village then leave me to wake up the next morning to find that everybody I cared about in the world was DEAD?"
"Shizukashi-san? Shizukashi-san?" said Naruto to the black-furred boy, who seemed lost in thought.
Shizukashi shook himself slightly and looked up at Naruto. Naruto couldn't put his finger on it, but he somehow knew why Shizukashi was acting oddly.
The Kyūbi no Kitsune sealed in Naruto's gut however, knew exactly why Shizukashi was acting so oddly, he could smell the Seven-Tailed Panther sealed in the boy's gut. The seal holding the Seven-Tails was different, however; Shizukashi seemed to be able to call on a number of tails at once from the Panther to boost his power reserves. "I wish my vessel was able to do that…" mused the Kyūbi as he curled up and lay down again, "It gets so boring in here."
Shizukashi scowled slightly as he followed Naruto down off the roof of the Academy, Kageneko gambolling along at his heels. He would have to find some way to punish the Panther for what it had done, but not right now. Right now, he had better things to be doing.
That night, Shizukashi lay on his back on the patio outside the small house he had been given on the Hyūga compound with his arms behind his head, staring up at the sky. It was a custom back in his home village to sleep under the stars except in bad weather. Shizukashi had told Naruto he liked to sleep outside when he had first moved in, so Naruto had told the guards to watch the ground when walking past the hut in case they trod on him. Shizukashi had had a brief conversation with two of the guards on their rounds, and they had got along fairly well. Naruto had mentioned his sisters and cousin to Shizukashi on the walk back to the Hyūga compound and offered to introduce them to each other, which Shizukashi had happily accepted.
Shizukashi rolled onto his back, listening to Kageneko's soft snuffling by his side. The panther cub was fast asleep and by the sound of it, dreaming of chasing mice. Shizukashi took a long time to get to sleep; too busy thinking about what he was going to do in the future, before he finally slipped into a sleep plagued by dreams of watching his village destroyed, unable to move to protect it.
Shizukashi woke up at four thirty the next morning when Naruto nudged him with his foot. Shizukashi, a little twitchy after his nightmares, grabbed his kusarigama and wrapped Naruto in the chain before he realized who it was.
"Um, do you usually do that when somebody wakes you, Shizukashi-san?" queried Naruto as Shizukashi untied him amid multiple apologies.
"No, Naruto-san," said Shizukashi, as he finished winding the chain around his arm and slipped the kusarigama into its holster at his wrist, before picking up his sheathed kodachi and slinging it over his shoulder onto his back, "Usually I completely freak out and try to impale them with my kodachi." He sniggered at Naruto's expression, "I'm joking. No, usually I just grab their arm. I've just been having nightmares so I'm a little jerky in the morning."
Naruto nodded, picking up his tool pouch and attaching it to his belt. Shizukashi slipped his tantō into its sheath and stood up, while Kageneko scratched behind his ear and stood beside Shizukashi's foot.
Naruto eyed the shadow-nin for a second, "Why do you carry so many weapons?"
Shizukashi fixed him with a piercing stare, "Back in my village, you grow up learning how to use a lot more than just kunai and shuriken. Also I was on the road for quite a while; you need decent weaponry to defend yourself on the mountain roads leading down from the Kagegakure. Particularly in times such as these…"
Naruto glanced once at Shizukashi before nodding and walking off towards the gates of the Hyūga compound.
The pair walked in silence to the training grounds, where they met Sasuke and Sakura. Sakura was, as usual, giggling and blushing while occasionally glancing at Sasuke, who was ignoring her.
Kakashi appeared a few minutes later in a puff of smoke, reading his little orange book. Shizukashi scowled at him, "Do you seriously have to read that? It's disgusting smut."
Kakashi gave a small giggle, prompting the young Kage-nin to sigh and roll his eyes. After a few seconds passed, he snapped, "Kakashi! What are we doing here so early in the morning?"
Kakashi raised his single eye from the book, "Whoa, touchy. What's gotten into you today?"
"Broken night. Nightmares about watching my village being destroyed before my eyes and being helpless to stop it tend to put me in a foul mood."
The three genin of Team 7 stared at him in some shock as Kakashi considered him. Finally, Kakashi put away his book and turned to the three genin, "Ok you three, today we will be doing a training exercise to see if you are good enough for me to train you."
"I thought we'd already been passed as genin, though!" protested Sakura.
"No," said Kakashi, "That was just so that we could see who was genin material. This is the actual test to see whether each of you is worthy of your hitai-ate. Of the twenty-seven genin candidates who got out of the Academy, eighteen will be going back. That makes for a sixty-six percent chance of failure."
Naruto snorted, "No problem."
Kakashi smirked, at least they thought he was smirking behind his mask, "Oh I think you might find it a little more challenging than you think. Your task," he held up two small bells, "is to get these off me. For the sake of fairness, Shizukashi will participate in the exercise."
Shizukashi smirked, drawing his kodachi. He flipped it round in his hand a few times before finally adopting a backhand grip on it, so that the blade extended towards his elbow. He flicked his left arm and caught the kusarigama as it shot out of his sleeve. Settling into a crouching position with Kageneko at his side, he smirked at Kakashi. The other three genin swiftly drew out kunai and held them at the ready.
"Ready?" said Kakashi. At their nods, he said, "Start…" and vanished in a puff of smoke.
(A/N: Hey all, Leonineus here! I've got a bit of news for you: I'm going to post a new Naruto fic on here called Both Sides of the Kunai. It will be NarutoxHarem, but his main girl will be Yugito. I hope you guys enjoyed this new chapter and I hope you enjoy the new story when I post it. See you later, LEONINEUS OUT!)
