Naruto woke and stretched. Ever since the mission to Wave Country, he'd felt... wrong. Not really in any way that he could describe, but the feeling had been getting more and more intense every morning. He tossed his head in frustration and then froze halfway through the motion. No. Something was definitely wrong.

Shaking his head to clear it out, he got up and looked around his (dingy) apartment. Slowly he got dressed, feeling spikes of that wrongness popping up as he did (orange?), as he looked around the apartment (no separate bedroom? cracks in the plaster on the walls?), as he made delicious cup ramen (for breakfast?) and happily consumed it like he did every morning (how is this healthy? I'm a growing... boy?).

No. The wrongness wasn't going away today. Huffing to himself a bit, he grabbed his kunai, his sword... no, he didn't use a sword (can feel the kata, the balance of the blade). He didn't own a sword. And if he kept this up, he was going to be late!

Rushing out the door (quietly now, it's morning) he quickly got to the meeting point. Sakura-chan ('chan'? really?) and Sasuke (Sasuke-kun! All grown up now!) were already waiting. He opened his mouth to greet Sakura with his normal enthusiasm, and somehow ended up saying, "Hey, Sasuke!" instead. Both Sakura and Sasuke (kun!) looked at him with blank surprise, and then Sasuke turned his head away with a quiet, "Hn."

Trying not to look as unsettled as he felt, he walked past Sasuke and leaned against the wall to wait for Kakashi-sensei.

oOo;

Sakura looked between the two of them. They'd been acting weird to each other ever since Wave, but this was a totally new level of weird even for Naruto. He actually greeted Sasuke-kun instead of her? Maybe, oh please finally, he had gotten the idea that she didn't and would never like him?

She watched as Naruto stood to wait by Sasuke-kun. Usually she ended up standing in the middle but today that seemed to be Sasuke-kun's job. Over the next hour she watched with an ever-increasing feeling of disquiet as Sasuke-kun slowly edged his way away from Naruto and Naruto kept glancing at him with what almost looked like approval.

She narrowed her eyes as a horrible, utterly impossible thought occurred to her. Naruto had stolen her Sasuke-kun's first kiss... 'No,' she thought, 'that couldn't be true. Never.' And yet...

oOo;

Kakashi Hatake smiled to himself as he spotted his wonderful little team. He loved to see their reactions to his excuses, they were always just the thing to help get his mind off of his old team and onto the business of the day. "Hey, guys! I got lost!" he shouted with a wave.

He watched Sakura glance nervously at Sasuke and Naruto and then say with a subdued voice, "You're late, Kakashi-sensei." He almost stumbled at that. He'd been watching the tension between the three of them grow since the mission to Wave, but this... this wasn't right.

Sakura and Sasuke were standing fairly close together as was pretty standard, with Naruto off to the side a bit watching them. What was not normal was that Sasuke wasn't trying to edge away from Sakura, and Naruto was standing nearer to him than Sakura. Even worse, Naruto didn't immediately hop up ready for action. He wasn't even fidgeting! No, this didn't seem right at all.

He'd been running team 7 through more D-rank missions, expecting one of them to protest out of frustration any time now. He'd been certain that Naruto would be the one to snap first, but now? He actually had to suppress the urge to look blankly at them.

Perhaps a mission would give him more insight into what had changed.

oOo;

Naruto almost couldn't believe himself when he thanked Sasuke-kun for his help during the day's mission. He hadn't really meant to, but Sasuke-kun had done a fine job even though D-rank missions were (pitifully) easy. From the expression on Sasuke-kun's face, he couldn't believe it either, and Sakura actually seemed angry about the whole thing!

He had thanked her (calmly now) as well and then made his escape before he said anything even more strange, and now somehow he found himself in the park. As he'd left, he'd heard Sakura asking if Sasuke-kun would like to work on teamwork (oh come on, they're eleven!) with her. He rolled his eyes at the thought.

As the day turned to evening, he found himself tugging his (orange! really? have I no fashion sense at all?) jacket a little tighter around himself and a deep sense of loneliness hit him. It wasn't the same as what he felt when he watched children and their parents, this seemed somehow both more personal and more specific. Something was missing, something important, and he didn't know what.

As he walked across the pond's footbridge, he glanced down and it was like he'd never seen his reflection before. He knelt down and reached for it, and found himself whispering, "Minato..." The loneliness was almost unbearable, and everything suddenly seemed so horribly wrong. Everything. The apartment, Kakashi-sensei, the looks the civilians and even a few of the ninja he'd passed today and the mutters, and especially the way he looked and felt and his voice and his hair and his face and his horrible bright ugly clothes.

Before he knew it he was running back to the apartment trying to hold back sobs, and then he was in bed clutching his pillow and crying. And then, afterwards, he felt so drained he just fell asleep.

oOo;

Kurama nodded to itself in satisfaction. It was done finally. The seal had been weakened just enough, and Kurama was after all a crafty nine-tailed kitsune. And soon it would have Kushina back for good. The anticipation was almost unbearable.

oOo;

Kushina woke up feeling totally disoriented. She'd just given birth to her darling baby Naruto, and then Minato had flashed away with him, and that man in the mask had... and the rest was gone. She stretched cautiously. No pain, but her body felt very very odd, and then suddenly her life flashed before her eyes. Her new life. Her life as her son. Her horrible life as her abused, mistreated, maleducated son. The one that was supposed to be the village hero!

Eyes narrowing, she took stock of her situation. She didn't know how it had happened, or why, but she was certain that it would be better if nobody else ever found out about her. This was going to be difficult, but she wasn't a kunoichi and a jinchuuriki for nothing! And then something important entered her awareness. Something that she absolutely did not want to think about or deal with. She needed to use the restroom.

oOo;

The toilet had been bad enough, but the shower was torture. She felt like she was a creepy old lady and the feeling just would not go away! She shivered. Getting used to this wasn't going to be easy.

And the orange. 'Why orange? Why?! Day-glow kill-me-now orange? That totally clashes with red! Oh, wait, no. My hair is blonde now, not red,' she thought to herself. As the shivering got worse she henged herself into herself and breathed a sigh of relief. 'I can't do this often, but maybe just a little right now to help me center myself.'

Her expression in the mirror looked brittle. Slowly the shivering went away and she relaxed. 'What happened,' she wondered, 'what happened to me? What happened to Minato? Why did Naruto, why did I grow up without us?' And then she remembered. He had died fighting the nine-tails, and somehow everyone had forgotten that she'd been pregnant with his child!

And Naruto's godfather. 'Where is Jiraiya? Why wasn't he here to raise and protect Naruto... me? This is confusing, I just need to accept that somehow I am Naruto now, as well as being Kushina,' she thought with a half grin, half grimace. 'Uzumaki Naruto Kushina at your service. The only shinobi to ever have gone through childbirth. Oh. Oh, no. Puberty is going to be bad.'

She shook herself. 'No, think about that later. First I need to fix this horrible situation. And...' Her thoughts trailed off with a frown as something else occurred to her. Mizuki. 'I'm the nine-tails jinchuuriki again. Still. But how? Without chaining it myself? What happened to... me?' And that brought up another point. 'My chakra, it's surging. My control is shot. Do I even have my special chakra anymore? And my training... what were they thinking? I'm going to have to totally retrain my muscle memory. And find a good sword. And buy better clothing. And burn the orange in the hottest fire I can find, datteba...ne!'

She giggled to herself a little. 'I guess that I passed that on even though I hoped not to. But I should probably use dattebayo when I'm not henged, it just sounds less feminine.' She blinked. 'Henge,' she thought, 'I'm henged right now but I don't feel any strain at all.' She shook her hair. 'I suppose if I do henge, I should do it as my younger self, not as an adult. Too many people might wonder why I haven't aged otherwise, but as a younger girl I can pass myself off as a daughter or something... if they even remember me at all, dattebane.'

She released the henge, and nothing happened. Frowning, she henged back into Naruto, shivering a bit as she did so, then tried to release the henge again. Nothing. She then tried henging into a nondescript civilian and releasing it, and immediately snapped back into Naruto. 'This is... odd. Henge doesn't work like this!' she thought distractedly. She henged into her body from right after Academy graduation, and again there was no henge to release. '...I don't know why, but I'm just going to be grateful that I won't have to spend all my time as a boy.' She henged one last time into her adult form, and this time when she released it she snapped back into her youthful body.

Frowning, she tried again three times more with the same result. Adult wouldn't stick, but either her-as-a-beginning-kunoichi or her-as-Naruto worked perfectly. When she looked into the mirror, her face had the same 'whisker marks' that it did as Naruto. 'I have no idea what's happening here.' Oiroke no jutsu? No, that snapped back too, and when she did it from female form she got what she would consider quite the hunk out of it. 'Definitely no Minato, but still pleasing on the eyes, red hair and all.'

Looking distastefully at the evil orange, she slowly and unwillingly got dressed. 'I think that later today is going to be Fun With Henge time. The shopkeepers may not like Naruto, but they're civilians. And I want to maim most of the Academy teachers for not teaching him... me critical thinking.' With a slight grimace of distaste, she switched back to Naruto and then he looked over what he could only loosely term breakfast. 'Tonight my diet changes. Much less ramen, and more fruits and vegetables and meat. And curry. Spicy curry.'

oOo;

Kakashi Hatake was troubled. Something drastic had changed with Naruto, and he had no clue at all what it could have been. He had watched Naruto carefully all during the mission yesterday, and he actually seemed to approve of Sasuke now. There didn't seem to be any kind of attraction there, just a very odd, out-of-the-blue respect. Even stranger he seemed to have totally forgotten his attraction to Sakura overnight.

'I can't say that this is bad as far as teamwork is concerned,' he mused. 'Still it's worrying that something happened that I'm not aware of, something that could cause a change of this magnitude overnight. When I talked to Iruka last night he hadn't heard anything either. I'm not really sure that this is good for teamwork either... if Naruto doesn't see Sasuke as a rival anymore, then motivating him will be much more difficult. I really don't want to have to ride herd on Naruto-the-Prankster every day.'

With that unhappy thought in mind he stared at the memorial stone, hoping for inspiration.

oOo;

When Naruto arrived he found that for once he was the first one there. Shrugging, he gathered a few leaves and placed one on his forehead. 'Leaf Concentration is boring, but I need better chakra control, datteba..yo.'

His chakra felt ominously quiescent, like some huge tide waiting to flood everything. It felt nothing like it did in her...his previous life. 'I'm not sure if I want to try my chakra chains. If I don't have them anymore, if my chakra is too different, then what will I do? How will I handle being a jinchuuriki?' Shaking his head a little and missing the feel of her hair, he closed his eyes and concentrated on the leaf.

When he heard a "Hn," he opened his eyes and nodded respectfully to Sasuke-kun. Really it was the least he could do for his former friend Mikoto. Poor Sasuke had had a rough time of it since his family had been massacred, and adding to his stress was something that Naruto just didn't have the heart to do anymore. 'It helps that I'm not exactly attracted to Sakura-san anymore. I don't know what I'll do when puberty strikes, or who or what I'll end up being attracted to now. I'm not sure that anyone in the entire world has ever had the problem I'm facing now.' Sasuke looked mildly surprised, but when Naruto closed his eyes again to continue with the Leaf Concentration he didn't make any more noise.

He only opened them again when he heard Sakura muttering under her breath, and found Sasuke sitting nearby also doing Leaf Concentration. When he opened his eyes Sakura said, "Oh, Naruto. Your little 'friends' told me yesterday that you promised to 'play ninja' with them, but they couldn't find you anywhere. Why are you playing ninja?"

As Naruto opened his mouth to answer, Sasuke said, "When does he not play ninja?"

Feeling vaguely offended but mostly amused at Sasuke, Naruto answered, "Because they're going to be ninja too, and because nobody in Konoha should feel like they're insignificant. It doesn't hurt me, and it helps them. Do I need another reason, Sakura-san?" She looked taken aback at both the logic and the more formal mode of address, and Sasuke looked surprised that he hadn't gotten an insult in return.

Settling back and returning to the Leaf Concentration, Naruto put them out of his mind.

oOo;

Sakura and Sasuke looked at Naruto and then at each other, and then Sasuke too returned to Leaf Concentration. She was feeling offended, she found, by the more formal address Naruto had used. She'd been 'Sakura-chan' for so long that it felt unnatural to have Naruto call her anything else, and the uneasy feeling she'd had yesterday returned full force.

'Did I offend him somehow? If so, how? He hasn't been offended all the way through Academy, not enough to call me Sakura-san. ...not that I want him to call me Sakura-chan anymore, of course! (That's for Sasuke to call me, shannaro!)' she thought, ending with a firm nod to herself. But still, that uneasy feeling just wouldn't leave...

oOo;

Kakashi Hatake caught sight of his team, and immediately stopped to study them. Sakura was pacing back and forth, obviously waiting for him to show up, but both Naruto and Sasuke seemed to be practicing Leaf Concentration! No, something was clearly wrong with Naruto, he was sitting still and concentrating with his eyes closed. Naruto, the boy that could stay neither still nor quiet, was doing both. He wasn't sure why Sasuke was doing the same, but at least it wasn't horribly out of character for him. 'And I nominated them for the Chuunin Exams yesterday! This could be very bad. Perhaps Iruka was correct?'

Waiting until Sakura's pacing left her with her back to him, he quickly moved closer to them, and then just before she turned around he loudly said, "Morning, people!" Sakura gave out a little shriek and spun around with her hand on her chest, and Sasuke jumped slightly. Interestingly, Naruto did not jump, he merely opened his eyes and said, "Good morning, Kakashi-sensei." Adding that observation to the rest to mull over later, he said, "This is sudden, but... I've nominated you guys for the Chuunin Selection Exam."

As he held out the application forms, Naruto asked, "Sensei, are you sure that we're ready for the exams?" At that he almost dropped the forms, and Sakura snatched them out of his hand with a "What did you say!?"

"Well, Naruto, this is just a nomination," Kakashi answered. "Whether to take the exam is up to each of you. Those who wish to take it should sign those papers and turn them in at room 301 by 4pm tomorrow."

Naruto took his with a thoughtful (thoughtful?!) nod, and Kakashi walked off with a simple, "That is all."

No, something was wrong. Horribly wrong. This had to be reported to the Hokage immediately.

oOo;

Sasuke looked at his application, and remarked, "There will probably be strong opponents in the exams. By facing them, I can get stronger." His eyes had an almost feral gleam in them.

Sakura looked down at her exam and thought, 'Sasuke-kun doesn't even think that I'm as good as Naruto. Do I really want to do this? Can I even keep up with them both?' She didn't have an answer.

Naruto just nodded to Sasuke and walked off slowly studying the application.