Chapter 2: In Which Canon Goes Slightly Awry
Inoichi slipped into the shadows, observing the lax attitude of the ANBU in the area as he followed Naruto. It had taken a bit of work to explain the difference between stalking and ninja-like behavior, but Sasuke had finally grasped the basics of it. (The advanced version was 'because I'm the one doing it'.) He'd prefer a larger sample-size, but he'd have to make do with this.
FMB
"So, Sasuke, I think I have an answer for you. Maybe you should have Naruto just have a meal with you?"
"That . . . sounds like a terrible idea."
"Really? You seemed concerned about his health . . ."
"I am. But have you seen a room after he goes through it? I like my house standing, Yamanaka-san."
"Sasuke . . ."
"Yes, Yamanaka-san?"
"You have a whole training field."
Sasuke actually colored a little. "Right. Thanks, Yamanaka-san!"
FMB
"Where're you going, Naruto?"
"Leaving?" Naruto cocked his head. "We're done training for the day, right?"
"Yeah. Come over here." Sasuke sat beside Hinata and a picnic basket. "I have extra."
"I'm good."
"Naruto . . ." Sasuke sighed. "Whatever excuse you're thinking, I don't care. Come here and eat. It's not healthy to be on one meal a day. I have plenty of food; eat."
FMB
A ten-year-old Sasuke was relaxing in his chair beside Naruto. They were both waiting for class to begin, although Naruto was, no doubt, mostly thinking about other things. The fangirls were camped around their little swathe of peace at the back of the room, glaring daggers at the corner seat where Hinata usually sat. At the moment, she was running late.
When the door opened, Sasuke's eyes widened and then narrowed; beside him, there was a low growled string of curses from Naruto.
FMB
Sarutobi Hiruzen looked up to see his secretary poking her head into his office. "Uchiha Sasuke is here and insisting he have a meeting with you."
"Isn't it the middle of the school day?"
"Yes, Hokage-sama."
"Send him in."
Sasuke prowled into the office, his face set like thunder. Without any preamble, he uttered a series of words that were on the list of things the Hokage had never expected to hear: "Umino Iruka is permitting the abuse of one of his students."
"You're serious?"
"Yes."
"I see." Sarutobi made a discrete gesture and a shadow detached itself from the wall. Fifteen minutes later, a rather worried-looking Iruka was hustled into the office.
"You wished to see me, Hokage-sama?"
"Indeed. I'm told you're allowing a student to be abused at home?"
"I'm what, Hokage-sama?" Iruka's face screwed up in a mix of offense and confusion.
"Hinata came in with bruises on her face, Umino-san," spat Sasuke. "And you didn't even respond."
"Yes. I met with her before class and she told me it was from a spar at home."
"And you believed her?"
"Well yes. She said she'd managed to hit her sister and so she had a spar with her father and that's where the bruise came from."
"Hn."
FMB
"Hokage-sama." An ANBU member climbed in through the window and deposited a bound and gagged Uchiha Sasuke on the floor.
"What is this?"
"We caught him attempting the assassination of Hyūga Hiashi."
"You what." Sarutobi rubbed his eyes, trying to stay awake enough to deal with whatever insanity had managed to take hold of the world.
"Well, technically we caught him trying to break into the compound, but when we asked him what he was doing he said, and I quote, 'I'm going to kill that child abusing freak, Hiashi!'"
"I see."
FMB
Yamanaka Inoichi was escorted through the window. He was scowling and trying to rub sleep from his eyes. "Hokage-sama," he managed to not actually sound angry at having been awakened at three in the morning. This was eased somewhat by the fact that the Hokage was sitting at his kitchen table with his hat on, but wearing his bedclothes. Inoichi felt better about suffering when someone else was as well. A quick glance took in the glaring face of a boy who was still effectively his patient after several years. "What did Sasuke do?"
"Attempted to kill Hiashi."
Inoichi sighed. "Sasuke . . . what did I tell you about trying to kill Hiashi?"
"But he's abusing Hinata!"
"It was a training incident."
"Sure it was. That's just what she's telling everyone because she's too embarrassed to admit it!"
"You've been reading my psychology books while waiting for our sessions again, haven't you?"
"I get bored!"
"Look, Sasuke. I've spoken to Hinata. I've spoken to Hiashi. I've even spoken to Hanabi. You trust me in matters of social interaction, right?"
"Yeah. I don't like where this is going, though."
"It was a training accident. Hinata managed to hit Hanabi yesterday in training, so her father took over as her sparring partner. From what I gather, he might have been a bit rougher than necessary because Hinata had managed to strike her sister using the Intercepter style."
"Makes sense. It's better than the Jūken, after all."
Inoichi ignored the remark. "So you need to understand that you're not to kill Hiashi."
"I have to wait until I get stronger, got it."
Inoichi closed his eyes and then tried again. "No. I'm going to monitor the situation personally. If I think there's ever a sign that Hinata is actually being abused, I'll tell you."
"Right. I'm not to kill him until you tell me to."
Inoichi looked over at the Hokage, who was clearly using his folded hands to conceal a smirk. "Close enough."
FMB
Naruto frowned to himself as the trio sat in the Uchiha hot spring. "Guys, we've got a month until graduation and we still haven't sorted out that little problem of mine. The chakra exercises aren't working."
Hinata patted Naruto on the shoulder. "I'm sure we'll find a way."
"I have been looking through the clan library," Sasuke said after a moment. "Some idiot decided that only those with the Sharingan should be able to use it, so the whole thing is layered with genjutsu and is completely disorganized. But I finally found a couple of bunshin options."
"Yeah?" Naruto's grin turned hungry.
"Yep. All the elemental versions. Well, except wind. Only a couple wind techniques in the whole of the library anyway. And lightning and fire are out, because they just shape the element into a form. But there're water and mud clones."
"You think I can learn those?"
"Maybe. It depends on your affinity."
"Affinity?"
Sasuke and Hinata both sighed. "To figure it out," Sasuke went on, deciding to ignore the evidence that Naruto still didn't pay attention in class, "we'd need chakra paper. And that's illegal to sell to people under chunin rank."
Hinata blinked. "I'll be right back." She rose and grabbed a towel to dry off as she walked out of the spring area.
FMB
She returned half an hour later and slipped back into the water, carefully keeping her left hand above the liquid. "Three chakra paper slips."
"Where did you get that?" Sasuke asked.
"My family keeps some around."
"They didn't mind you borrowing it?"
"Sasuke, you can't borrow chakra paper."
"Did they mind you taking it?"
"No idea; I didn't ask." Hinata shrugged and offered him a piece.
"We already know I'm fire. I'm an Uchiha."
"Well, show us how it's done then," Hinata said mildly.
"Fine." Sasuke took the paper and held it flat on his palm. "If I were wind, it would cut; if I were earth, it'd crumble; if I were water, it would soak through; if I were lightening, it would crinkle up into a ball. Since I'm fire, it will burst into—" as he spoke the paper folded itself up into a tightly wadded ball. "—flame. That shouldn't be possible. Uchiha are fire aligned!"
"Maybe your mother had an affair?" Naruto suggested.
"That cheating whore!"
"Sasuke, was your father a nice man?" Hinata asked.
"Not really, no."
"Then maybe it makes sense that she wouldn't want to have a child with him?"
"But if she had, maybe I'd be as good as Itachi was!"
Naruto raised a finger. "But why would you assume that your mother had any child with your father?"
"That dirty, cheating whore!"
Hinata shook her head, smiling slightly. "Well, I'm probably earth, like my fam—" she trailed off as the paper became soaked.
"Water, then?" said Sasuke. "Your mother was a cheating whore, too?"
Hinata sighed. "Water crops up in our family a now and again."
"My turn! My turn!" Naruto held out his hand and frowned in concentration. Nothing happened. Then, suddenly, the paper burst apart into a fine cloud that blew from his palm into the water.
"So was that wind or earth?" Sasuke murmured.
"No idea." Hinata glanced at Naruto and a faint blush flared on her cheeks. "But it was seriously powerful."
Sasuke sighed. Hinata had made great strides over the years in her shyness. The rest of the world was still treated to the timid girl she would have been, but he and Naruto were privy to a somewhat sardonic and sometimes assertive personality—and then there would be times when her interest in Naruto would make itself known (not that Naruto had ever picked up on it). At least she almost never blushed anymore. Soaks after training had pretty much dealt with that.
"I guess the easiest way to find out would be to use some simple techniques?" he offered.
Naruto beamed. "Learning new jutsu? Cool! Let's go!" He sprang from the pool of water.
Sasuke sighed again.
FMB
"So I've got here a mud-bullet technique and a technique firing air bullets."
"May as well start with the earth one," Naruto said. "If that's the one, I've got a clone technique sorted out." He picked up the scroll and skimmed it a few times. He slowly made the four seals required, murmuring to himself. "Ready!" The two stared as Naruto turned to face the target dummies and his hands flew through the seals. The ground around him liquified and then rose up in a rapid stream of chunks that blasted apart a half-dozen trees.
"Looks like earth is the one, huh?" said Sasuke, once his mouth had started working again. He looked at his friend, who was rubbing the back of his head sheepishly and staring at the damage he'd wrought. Hinata stammered something, but didn't get further than that, apparently having some trouble taking in the devastation. Her eyes flashed as they activated, examining what had happened. "I'll go get the mud-clone scroll . . ." Sasuke trailed off as he watched Naruto trot over to the other scroll on the ground. "What are you doing?"
"No reason not to learn this one, too, right?" Naruto was already reading through the scroll and mumbling to himself, hands shifting about. "Right!" His hands moved in a blur again and then there was a deafening bang as a meter-wide cylinder vanished from the trees and the outer wall of the compound behind them. There was cursing from the chūnin who'd been bodily lifted and buried under the rubble of the building he'd struck.
Sasuke's mouth took over while his brain was busy gibbering. "Naruto, inside the house."
Naruto trotted away. Years of friendship with the Uchiha had taught him that the boy was often looking out for him, wanted or not. Thanks to Sasuke, Naruto had been properly fed for the past four years and that was only the start, as far as Naruto was concerned. If Sasuke told him to get inside, there was a good reason.
A moment later, Sasuke had recovered enough to make an expression he knew Hinata would see with her eyes active. He schooled his face into an expression of shocked horror—something that was only slightly faked—as Hinata went over to the pile of debris and began apologizing for Sasuke's accidental attack while practicing a new technique.
FMB
Sasuke opened the door and blinked. "Er . . . Hokage-sama."
"Uchiha Sasuke." The man's voice was kindly. "May I come in? Good." He brushed passed the boy and into the sitting room. "Would you tell Naruto to come out, please?" Before Sasuke could speak, an orange and yellow blur of motion appeared from the shadows and began to bounce. "Ah. Good." The Hokage sat himself down and motioned for the boys to do the same. "Hyūga-san," he said politely to Hinata, who gave him a measured bow. "So. Who wants to tell me what happened this afternoon?"
"Well, Hokage-sama," Sasuke began. "We were considering a problem that Naruto has. You see, he can't manage a bunshin. Not a one . . ."
"And it's quite close to graduation, yes. Though I wonder, Naruto, why didn't you come to me?"
"Huh?"
"You come to me with every problem you have, lad. I grant that number has gone down, thanks to your friendship with these two, but since when have you not thought of me for help?"
Naruto looked mystified. "I don't know."
"Well, we'll return to that later, then." The Hokage turned back to Sasuke. "Continue."
"We figured that since I'd finally found some clone moves in the family library, that maybe he could learn one of the elemental ones to get by instead. To do that, though, we wanted to know what Naruto's chakra nature is. I got out a few scrolls of basic techniques and he used them to test what affinity he has."
"I see. Lad, I'm going to do you a huge favor and tell you a secret: I've been Hokage longer than you've been alive. I've gotten good not only at noticing lies, but spotting when someone has left out huge parts of the story. Since I'm being nice, I'll let you try again."
"Uh . . . well, I mostly left out the part where we tried to figure out Naruto's nature with chakra paper."
"Chakra paper."
"Yes, Hokage-sama."
"The chakra paper that's illegal to sell to genin?"
"Thankfully, we're not gen—"
"The chakra paper that's illegal to sell to those under chūnin, then."
"Since we didn't buy—"
"The chakra paper that is illegal to possess under the rank of chūnin?"
"Yes, Hokage-sama."
"I see. And how did you get this chakra paper?"
Sasuke glanced at Hinata. "Uh . . ."
"Your family gave you chakra paper?" the Hokage asked.
"They provided it without objection, yes, Hokage-sama." Hinata's face was a serene picture of innocence.
"Your father is proud of your progress in political training, is he?"
"We don't discuss it much, Hokage-sama."
"Alright. So then what."
"Sasuke was demonstrating how it worked," Hinata chipped in. "He was telling us what the response it would have based on each element and as he said 'and if it's fire, like me,' it crinkled up."
"Cheating whore," muttered Sasuke.
"And he is now convinced that his mother had an affair as the explanation for his affinity. Naruto and I think that would have been a perfectly rational action and she should be blameless, but Sasuke disagrees. I digress. I was expecting to be earth, but the paper soaked through."
"And Naruto?"
"That's where the trouble started," Hinata admitted.
"My paper just kinda turned into little bits and blew away."
"Right," Sasuke picked up the thread. "And we weren't sure if that meant crumbling for earth or just confetti showing wind. So we decided to do a practical test. I gave him an earth scroll and he fired a bunch of earth bullets at the training dummies. We figured that meant earth . . ."
"And how does this lead to the mess outside your compound?"
"Naruto decided to learn the wind technique anyway. There was a bang and a bunch of my property vanished, along with part of my outer wall."
"And the reason everyone blames you?"
"I had Hinata blame me to the chūnin and got Naruto out of sight. No one will be too put out about me doing this, but they'd have a fit if he did."
"Yep. And while you were busy telling everyone how great you are, I learned the mud clone!"
"We seem to be lasting!" chipped in another Naruto, who had wandered into the room and settled himself on the arm of a couch.
"And we're out of ramen," added a third Naruto, walking in with a steaming bowl.
Naruto (the one presumed to be the original) sighed. "That supply was supposed to last a month! Sasuke doesn't let me buy more than that!" He smashed his fist down on the clone's head. It burst apart.
"Naruto, could you not do that inside? It'll take forever to get the mud out now."
"I'll go make tea," Hinata rose and left the room.
"Things seem to be under control," the Hokage said.
"Yeah, pretty much. Though I need to plant a bunch of trees and hire some earth-user to rebuild my wall. I'll file the missions in the morning."
"Well, between you and Naruto, there are enough ANBU observing you that I think you'll be alright for the evening."
"Probably, Hokage-sama."
"Naruto, the next time you have a problem like this, just come to me?"
"Alright," said a dozen blonds.
FMB
"GUYS!"
Sasuke glared at his best friend once he'd managed to catch all the falling cookware he'd dropped while reaching for kunai when his friend had burst into the room shouting. "What the hell, Naruto?"
"You know how Mizuki wanted me to stay late after we graduated?"
"Yeah. It worked out, because I got a chance to finish cooking our celebratory feast. Hinata is . . . borrowing . . . some of her family's best tea."
"Never mind that! Mizuki said that I did so well, learning the alternate clone and everything, that I'm being given an extra test that can be used for credit towards making chūnin!"
Sasuke blinked while he ran that through his head. "A special test for credit towards chūnin?"
"Yep!"
"What is this test?"
"It's an infiltration exercise. Break into the Hokage Tower after dark, acquire the scroll planted for the mission, exfiltrate, and meet at the extraction point."
"Break into the Hokage Tower?"
"Uh-huh."
"This doesn't sound good."
"It's great! We'll get promoted early for sure!"
"What do you mean 'we'?"
"You and Hinata are coming with me!"
"I'm still suspicious."
"Come on, Sasuke, what's the worst that could happen?"
FMB
Sasuke felt himself grow faint when the giant kunai slammed into Umino Iruka's back with a dull thud. The world streamed into focus, bright and clear suddenly as Hinata gasped and Naruto began to curse at the white-haired man up in the trees.
"Don't you wonder why everyone hates you, brat?" he was saying, laughing as Iruka tried to rise. "Haven't you ever asked what you did? You destroyed the village!"
"I what?"
"You're the demon fox, brat! That's the secret!"
"I . . ." Naruto's face was falling.
"Bullshit!" Sasuke barely recognized his own voice. It seemed to be coming from a great ways away. "He's Uzumaki Naruto!" Beside him, Hinata put her hand on Naruto's shoulder, her eyes flaring into life as she stared up at the man with an expression of hatred turning her normally kind face into a mask of dark fury. "And you're not getting away with this!"
"What are a couple of brats like you going to do, fox-lover? I'll kill you kids before I do in the demon!" Mizuki's contempt lasted about as long as it took for the forest to vanish in a sea of orange and yellow.
"Kill you." Sasuke spat a fireball at the tree and then dove into the clone horde, dodging between them with greater ease than he expected, tracking Mizuki's path through the trees and following it with a fireball whenever the man seemed to be getting too comfortable.
Mizuki dropped to the forest floor, hoping to disappear into the underbrush as the waves of clones charged at him, Uchiha Sasuke weaving through the crowd and coming at him with murder on his face. The brats had been beating the hell out of him for twenty minutes and even though he was killing clones by the score, there was a limit to his endurance and the two kids didn't seem to be slowing down. Two? Mizuki pitched forwards as Hinata lowered her hand.
The boys stared at her. She shrugged. "You were taking too long." A pause. "Congratulations, Sasuke."
"What for?" Hinata tapped the bulging veins on her face. "Oh? Oh! Cool!"
"We should do something about Iruka-sensei." Naruto was crouched beside the man, looking jittery but not panicking yet. "I can't remember, do we take the weapon out or leave it in?" He looked up at Hinata and Sasuke when they came over to stand next to him. "We can't let him die. He saved us!"
"I think," said the lion-masked ANBU behind him, "that you have bigger concerns." A second ANBU sporting a stylized bear on her mask seized the scroll out of Naruto's hands, while a third with the stripes of a hunting cat knelt and started healing the injured chūnin. "The Hokage wishes to speak with you."
Sasuke summed up the situation perfectly: "shit."
(A/N John)
Surprise! We're publishing again already! I have a good chunk of For My Brother already written, it's mostly a feel-good story (excepting the moments of serious darkness) and so I like writing it in the winter when everything is a bit grim.
(A/N 2 John)
On the other hand, Borderlands 2 has been taking its toll on us. We've been enjoying laying waste to hordes of monsters and freaks with a variety of snooty objects and slushy things.
(A/N 3 John)
I do believe that next chapter will have some of the great moments as far as I am concerned. I truly enjoy the way I've written Kakashi for this fic.
