Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or else Takara and her family who I do own (not Anko) would be in the anime/manga.

Chapter 2~ Friends

"This is Naruto, my new friend," I stated excitedly to Anko who sat staring calmly.

"Well nice to meet you," Anko said handing a stick of dango to Naruto who accepted the peace offering with a little hesitance.

So the three of us sat, ate dango, and told stories. "So why do you want to be a ninja Naruto?" Anko asks chewing on a wooden stick.

"I want to be the Hokage so that people will respect me and look up to me! What about you Takara?" He says looking at me with enthusiasm in his eyes.

"I wanna be head of the T&I Division someday, just like my mama!" I said smiling and getting a dreamy look on my face. Anko stiffens but relaxes quickly. "T&I division? What's that?"Asks Naruto.

"The Torture and Interrogation Division is part of the Intelligence Division. I would gather information from bad guys to keep us safe. Also, my Kekkei Genkai works well with it." I said proudly.

"Torture? Wow, that's scary." Naruto said leaning away a bit.
I giggled. "It's exciting to me!"

After a moment of silence. "I have to use the restroom, I'll be right back," I said standing up and walking to the bathroom.

I was a little embarrassed.

I was still not used to talking to other people outside my family and I think I may have freaked Naruto out a bit.

After I had finished being flustered in the bathroom, I stepped out to be cornered by some kids my age.

"Hi, can I help ya?" I asked tilting my head to the side and smiling. The boys glanced at each other before one stepped toe to toe with me and leaned 'menacingly' over me. "You better stay away from that kid. He's trouble."

'Naruto?' I thought dully before looking over to Naruto and Anko who were both staring at me from our table.
Naruto looked back down at his plate sadly.

I turned my attention back to the boy standing in front of me,"You can't say that! You don't even know him you bully!"

Then I promptly smashed my forehead into his nose. He fell with a scream to his butt, and his nose started to bleed.
"Leave Naruto and me alone or next time it will be a black eye!" I said waving a fist. The boy stood up and with his friends ran away yelling "Crazy violent girl!"

I walked and sat down next to Anko who was laughing and saying something like "Not ready for the academy my ass!" And Naruto stared at me in shock. For a moment I was afraid maybe I was too intense again but then he began to smile.

"Ignore those idiots Naruto. They aren't worth your sadness."

"Yes ma'am," he said excitedly and ate another dango.

Afterwards, Anko and I said goodbye to Naruto and I told him where I lived so that we can train and play together. He smiled and nodded and left for his own place.
When we got home, mom and dad were already there eating their own dinner. When Mom saw me she let out a strangled scream and started pointing at the blood on my purple dress, looking back-and-forth from Anko to my dad.

"Don't worry," says Anko with a smile. "It's the other kid's blood." My dad gave me a silent nod, but mom looked pale as she carefully pulled me into a hug and asked me to explain what happened.

"Well I met this kid, and his name is Naruto. We had fun and were eating dango and talking and then some kids cornered me and said don't play with him so I head-butted one of 'em!" I said as I shook my arms around in an exaggerated way.

I still noticed when my dad visibly tensed up from the name Naruto and the quick warning glance my mom gave him.

"Naruto as in Naruto Uzumaki," my mom asked gently. I nodded hard and said
"Yup! He's really nice and really funny. I don't know why the other kids are mean to him."

My parents stared for a second before nodding as well.

"Anyway, I told him he should come by some time and told him where we live." Once again dad visibly tensed and did not look pleased but mom smiled and said: "I'm glad you found a new friend, I was starting to get a little worried."
"How could you be worried when you never let her out of here?" Anko snorted before walking out the house waving goodbye.

After I had cleaned up, I sat with mama in a chair while she quietly read a book. "Mama, why is dad weird about Naruto," I whispered quietly.

The book was closed and mom looked at me. "Let me tell you a story." She said pulling me into her lap stroking my long, puffy, curly hair. OK, off topic but I love mamas stories so I complied.

"A long time ago when I was nine, me your dad and another boy named Kota were in a genin group. Kota and your dad were longtime rivals and best friends. It was kinda sweet. We went on a lot of adventures, the three of us. Escorting princesses, fighting bad guys, training till we dropped, surviving the war together, supporting each other when we lost friends, we were quite the team. Then one night, about six years ago the demon fox appeared in our village. Kota never got the chance to meet you, or start a family of his own, he was 24 years old."

"What does this have to do with Naruto?" I ask in a sad voice.

"Naruto, while he had nothing to do with the attack, his family was more responsible than anyone." She said quietly.
"But, Naruto is an orphan," I said thinking about our conversation earlier.

"Yes, both of his parents died during the attack as well."

"Oh," I said quietly, suddenly I was having images flash in my head of a blonde man and redhead woman dead and it was just all weird. I just sat there silently mulling it over. Mom had a pained look on her face too, probably from thinking about Kota so I rested my head on her chest.

As the pained look on mama's face got stronger, I got sadder and sadder, I felt bad she lost one of her best friends. I was starting to think she would cry and that made me want to cry too so I asked "How did you and dad meet?" to cheer her up. If there was one thing to know about my mom she loved to tell stories about her and dads life together. And to talk about how much she loves him.

She just laughed a bit before launching into how when she was six she met him in the academy. The first time she actually talked to him was in class-sparing. She swept him off his feet and then held out her hand and instead of taking it to pull himself up, he pulled her down. Pinning her, he says you should never help the enemy. To which she kneed him in the crotch called him a jerk and stormed off. We laughed together and then sat in a happier state.

"Takara! If you don't master this move in your next five tries I'll make you run till you drop with an extra set of weights!" Dad said harshly as he dodged my pitiful excuse of a leaf gale(leg sweep). I huffed, pulling up my black training shirt to look at my tummy where I smacked on the ground, yup red and bruised.

"Can't we take a break? I'm tired daddy!" I whined loudly.
"For whining now it's in 2 moves or I'll double the weights."

Fearing for my life, I quickly got into a turning position before I attack dad with the leaf gale. This time managing to hit his leg with mine, but the shin not the back of the knee. Meaning it felt like I hit a steel bar. I fell on my butt and clutched my leg holding in the sound of pain with dad in the background clapping his hands saying:

"Well, at least you hit me but hurry up and try again. You'll never improve if you just sit there sulking all day and your accuracy is atrocious so you better clean up your act now. Upon your feet Takara!" I sighed and stood back up and got into position.

'Last one' I thought numbly, imagining me coughing up my lungs later from running around Konoha all day. I took one last deep breath and charged forward. This time faking him out to swing behind him and knock his knee out behind him a little bit.

"Haha, I knew you could do it! Now, how about a little aikido practice." He said pulling out one of the katanas strapped to his back making me groan.

I was gonna go find Naruto to play but dad was never gonna let me leave. My dad is a big guy, standing in about 7 ft tall and being a big-boned thick guy he is intimidating. He carries around two katanas which he insisted I must learn to use and fight with. His family is known for its two katana attacks and physical attributes. He typically dresses in a complete black attire with the exception of a green headband tied around his right shoulder bearing the Konoha symbol. He has another band on his left arm showing our clan symbol. Which is a jagged horizontal line with a circle above it on its left and a triangle sitting on its right.

He hands me the white katana and holds the black in his hand. "You're holding the katana of Yang, and I'm holding Yin, you have to respect the weapon and use it with a firm hand and concentration." He said giving me the same speech as always. He stood tall before swiftly swinging his katana towards my legs.

I clumsily stopped it and went forward aiming for the stomach. He easy blocked it and in a twist of his sword disarmed me.

"Takara if you continue to have loose hands and bad posture you will never reach two katanas, now try again! This time I will attack you!"
I ran, to grabbed my katana just in time to block his attack coming down on my head. Mama had always yelled at dad for being too aggressive, but dad retorted the same way every time.

Someday when I am a ninja, no one will go easy on me.

I brought my katana up to block another blow when I heard, "Takara! I found you!"
I stopped in my defense to turn around to see Naruto before dad hit me on the head with the hilt of the katana. He sighed and with a look over to Naruto took Yang back and waved his hand at me.

"Hi Naruto!" I exclaimed grabbing his arm.

"Woah that guys huge!" Naruto yelled pointing to dad.
"Yup daddy is kinda big." Naruto gave me an extreme look of shock before I dragged him off, which made sense. I inherited my mom's petite size, for now at least.

We ran through the village causing mayhem and playing ninja for a while before happening on two other kids. Two boys, one with thick brown hair pulled into a spiky ponytail and the other with light brown hair and spirals on his cheeks.

"Hi, I'm Takara and this is Naruto, it's nice to meet you!" I said enthusiastically but with a weird bit of shyness making my voice crack. I was still getting used to meeting new people and it was harder to be my full level of enthusiasm when my actions weren't drawn by Conscience.

"Hey, I'm Shikamaru and this is Choji." The brown spiky hair boy said tiredly.

"Do you guys wanna play with us?" I asked showing the paper shurikens we had been using.

The two glanced at each other, Choji wanting to play but Shikamaru grumbles about being too tired but in the end, we all played together. Naruto looked super happy and I was happy too. For the first time, I had real friends, not just my small family. Shikamaru was lazy and grumbly and funny too, and Choji was really sweet and caring, even if he wasn't the best at the game.

We played for an hour before I was running down the street trying to hide from Shikamaru and Choji.

BAM!

I slam face first into a boy.

"Owe, sorry I wasn't pay'n attention," I said looking up to realize it was the guy from yesterday. Seeing it was me he grabbed me by the mesh collar of my black training uniform raising me off the ground and shook me a bit.

"Ha found ya! Now I'm going to make you sorry for yesterday!" The boy spat.
"Do your worst." I spat back and prepared myself for a smack to the face. He reared an arm back to punch me when BAM he's tackled by... an Eskimo kid and dog?

"You shouldn't pick on little girls!" The Eskimo said jumping to his feet, grabbing my arms, and pulling me up with him. At this point, the boys on the bullies side and my friends had arrived.

"Thanks for the assist but I got this!" I said turning to the mean boys before pulling back my own fist and punching the main boy in the face. His friends hissed in pain and he cried out and turned to run away with his friends.

"I told you next time would be a black eye!" I screamed at him.

I then turned around to face my friends.

For a second I felt the fear that maybe I was too intense again and they wouldn't like me anymore but... they were looking at me amazed.

"Sorry about that, those guys have been a pain recently. And hey, thanks a lot for helping me! I really was not finding a way to get out of that one!" I said giving a toothy smile to the Eskimo kid and his dog.

The boy got a little red. "It's no problem, and they shouldn't have attacked you anyway." He scratched his head before remembering something. "Oh, I'm Kiba and this is Akamaru." He pointed to his puppy.

"It's nice to meet you Kiba! I'm Takara!"

And so I played the rest of the day with my new friends.

Authors note:

Thanks for reading, I hope you liked it. Feedback is loved, but I won't fault you for not doing it. You guys reading it is enough. If you have any questions or concerns please contact me.

Thanks and have a nice day!

~ToL