Chapter 3: Distress

Naruto kept her eyes from blinking too much as she watched the person she saved sleep. She still cannot believe the state he was in when she successfully pulled him out of the river.

.

.

.

Naruto gasped for air as she exited the river. She dragged the guy by the collar to the shore and started to examine him.

He was a teenager, between fifteen to eighteen year old. Short wavy spiky hair held back by black Konoha hitai-ate (forehead protector). Empty, bleeding eye sockets. Damaged back, ribs, and skull. Internal bleeding from the way blood seeped out from his mouth.

Naruto clenched her eyes shut, seemingly distraught. She opened them a second later, determined to fix whatever the hell this was.

She took a deep breath and started a sequence of hand seals for the Shousen Jutsu (Mystical Palm Technique).

She can do this. She had perfected her chakra control every night, since two years ago when she concluded that her control was not that good to perform a basic healing technique (it was horrible but she didn't acknowledge that). Since she had begun to observe the people at the hospital, she wanted the ability to almost heal any wounds and illness. No, she wanted to be able to heal all wounds and illnesses.

In order to do that, she needed an almost perfect chakra control.

As she scanned her patient (the very first real human patient, as she usually practiced with her dinner; namely fishes) her mind was searching for the answer to regenerate his eyes back. Not transplantation, no. Regenerating it back.

She knew there was no impossible thing ever in this world. But as she healing him she doubted she can make his eyes... regrow somehow.

Then an idea occurred to her when she glanced at her wet but not drenched backpack (it's waterproof) that was filled with her training scrolls.

Fūinjutsu.

She can do it. She can do it. She heard somewhere that Tsunade no Sannin can regrow her own severed hand, so why can't she?

As she spent the first hour healing his internal bleeding, broken bones and restarted his heart several times, she thought up the formula to regrow such delicate organ from scratch... no, not from scratch. She can use some of the eye tissue and blood that she was certain behind that empty lids.

'I'm an academy student,' Naruto pursed her lips while she tried hard not to cry, 'Why am I doing this? I must be sleeping now instead of doing what the medics do in the hospital. Yet, I'm grateful I have spent the time I can to observe them rather than do the pranks that I know will be useless in this kind of situation... but oh well. Awesome plans reserved for future pranks, I guess.'

Her lips twitched as she remembered the particular incident where she accidentally witnessed a giant seal appeared on her stomach when she had used up half of her chakra.

"Who am I kidding? I'm not normal, right?" Naruto grinned, in an attempt to cheer up herself. Failing the moment her eyes landed on her patient, she sighed. A second later, she abruptly stopped healing him because this guy's heart had stopped beating again.

Naruto pushed his chest again and again with her hands coated in lightning chakra. Finally, after two minutes it started to beat again.

'It must be the shock the body experience,' she concluded. Because there was nothing wrong with the guy aside from the missing eyes and a still crooked nose that she still yet attended because a damaged skull and spine was more important than a crooked nose. On that note, the brain was the most important too.

To prevent him from getting a hypothermia, she carefully took out his shirt and covered him with a blanket she had brought with her. While folding the shirt, Naruto couldn't help but noted the giant red and white Uchiwa symbol on the back of his high-collared t-shirt.

Naruto expected this, really. But this was still a shock to her like it slapped her face. The one clan who she never saw its members because they avoided her to death except for the one that was in her class (and this guy now), because they cannot be near her (she knew why but chose not to indulge in that). The one clan that has its own compound on the far outskirts of the village since the Kyuubi's Attack and almost every night since one year ago exuded so many negative emotions that she was always uncomfortable sleeping at night because she always expected something from them ever since the discovery that she found three months ago.

Well, that explains why this Uchiha guy never approached her even with his interest in her. And also there's a unique chakra in his eyes that the other members don't have. Even though his eyes were gone, the chakra still existed behind the eyelids.

Naruto suddenly got a feel of what kind of person this guy was.

She smiled softly as she came up with a plan.

She was going to protect him.

Naruto kept her voice down as she grumbled and scratched her head while her eyes stared at the giant seal she managed to make for under two hours. She was missing something. She had already made the calculations for the size of his eye sockets, eyeballs, the genetic make-up, the blood she took from the guy, et cetera and now she was designing the seal to create the eyeballs. She just didn't want to screw this up, so she waited until this guy was awake to ask his opinion about it because, duh, it's his eyes. She didn't want to further screw up his already screwed up... eyes situation.

Naruto forced back a yawn. She was sleepy. She didn't sleep at all because she was too worried to even think of sleeping. She had spent almost half of her chakra healing that guy and a good portion of her energy were focused on running to rescue him. A good medic might be only spent a half of what she had spent to heal, but she was not a good medic. Converting her chakra to healing chakra was hard enough. To maintain her chakra that way for more than an hour was too damn hard.

As she stared at her seal design, she mulled the design over and over again until something clicked inside her head. She remembered something from the books that she had read. Somewhere, she read that yang chakra was life and that yin was the imagination... So, if she gave the seal the yin chakra and made it imagine the guy's eyeballs... and breathe life to it. It might have work.

The problem was she didn't know how to separate the two energy to feed the seal with. She sighed tiredly.

Too much thinking was not her style, she decided as she massaged her throbbing temples. She admitted a few times to herself that she was not a genius when it took more than a week to read a short article about fūinjutsu she wanted to fully comprehend. She just worked hard to cram information upon information that was related to her interest in her head. Naruto personally considered herself to be a hard worker, though that might be up for a debate for Sandaime-jiichan who was impressed with her talent in sensing. On an unrelated note, she can't even produce a perfect bunshin yet.

She just had to wait for the guy to wake up and hopefully the guy knew how to separate his chakra into yang and yin and help her in this.

Oh yeah, that reminded her. She had to conceal the guy's chakra and smell to hide him from the bad guys.

Thankfully, she had kept her pocket dimension seal in her backpack.

Hey, better safe than sorry, right?

Nara Shikamaru was just enjoying his nap when he noticed that a chalk made its way to his head. He dodged it just in time, but the action made him wide-awake.

"Nara Shikamaru! Do your test instead of snoozing off!"

Shikamaru mumbled out a 'yes' and grudgingly stared down at the test.

'Nope. Not going to graduate early, just nope,' he thought when he realized that the test was too advanced for this class. He assumed that this might be his mother somehow requesting it to the teachers to make him a little less lazy. Troublesome.

Sarutobi Asuma bit back a groan when he saw the boy went back to sleep. He didn't know how that Academy Teacher roped him to do this, he was seriously regretting of ever made a bet.

"Nara Shikamaru! Detention after this if you don't do your test!"

Shikamaru froze. No, not that either. He didn't want to face his mother's wrath when she knew that he didn't do the test automatically flunked it and got a detention.

No, just no.

He hurriedly wrote down his answers.

Shisui thought he was in heaven when he heard the voice.

"Oh, you're awake!" exclaimed the voice. "Hey, hey, can you separate your chakra into yang and yin?"

He must be in heaven. Or something. Because he was damn sure that he just killed himself off by jumping off a cliff (the place where Itachi and he trained and played when they were little, he chuckled at the irony of it). Nevertheless, he nodded because he can separate his chakra into yang and yin. He practiced that whenever he could, he was more adept at Yin though.

'Wait, can dead people use chakra?' he wondered and then proceed to nod at the direction of the voice despite his doubt.

"Great! Gimme some!" He heard the strangely familiar voice near him. "Please insert yin chakra into this seal." He felt the hand that was grabbing his hand and guided it to a paper. He complied without protest. "And... yang chakra into this seal!" He did just that with little difficulty because he rarely practiced with his yang chakra.

"Wow, you're awesome, ttebayo!" said the voice, a little exuberantly. "Teach me when you're healthy, will you?"

'What's going on? That voice sounded young and no females I've ever known have a boyish and childish verbal tick such as 'dattebayo',' Shisui thought, pondering.

Soon, he came to a realization and voiced his conclusion. "Uzumaki Naruto...?" he trailed off, unsure.

"Yes? How do you know―oh," the voice― Naruto, coughed. "I'd kinda told you, didn't I?" Naruto said, sheepishly. "By the way, what's your name?"

If Shisui could blink, he would do that now. He felt his body lying flat on the ground, his wasn't wearing his shirt, and a blanket covering him. He wasn't dead?

"My name is Uchiha Shisui." He slowly started to sit up while holding his side, the blanket covering him slid down off of his shoulders. He can't see a thing, but he can sense chakra, so he can tell that he was safe here. Even if he didn't know where he was.

"Oh, great! Nice to meet you, Shisui-san!" Naruto chirped, her voice sounded so cheerful that Shisui was left to wonder on where did she get the energy to sound so energetic.

"Where am I?" he managed to croak out his question, despite his ragged breath because he was too quick when he got up. "Why am I not dead?"

Naruto was silent and then quietly uttered, "Well, I saved you." It was muttered under her breath, but Shisui's ears easily picked it up as without eyes, he relied more on his hearing

"Huh?" he voiced his confusion. "Why?" he whispered, his voice subdued.

"I don't want you to die, obviously!" Naruto stated, hotly. "I'm sorry if I was selfish, but I can't let someone die on my watch!"

Shisui hummed uncomfortably as he shifted to the side. "On your watch...? Did you see it?" He leaned against the wall behind him. He didn't want to talk about his supposed 'suicide' but... Naruto here said she saved him. He owed her even though he didn't want to be saved. He even told Itachi not to stop him.

Naruto blinked and elaborated.

"No... erm, I can feel your chakra?" she said, hesitantly, like she was testing the water. "That's why I know that you're in danger... I guess?" She sounded unsure, even to herself.

"Oh." Shisui didn't know what to say to that. He was sore, blind, and exhausted beyond belief. And now his object of affection (inside, he denied that ridiculous part) was in front of him and saved him from his death. What he was supposed to say in a situation like this?

Silence occurred for about a minute before Naruto opened her mouth.

"So, you're Uchiha Shisui, right? That means," Naruto cleared her throat trying to clear out the awkward atmosphere too, "you're Shunshin no Shisui?" Shisui gave a quiet hum, too exhausted to answer properly. Naruto took that as a 'yes' and asked him again to avoid silence, "You're super fast?" Shisui grunted. "Like the Yondaime Hokage?"'

Shisui was contemplating his fifteen years of life and replied, "Actually, I idolized Nidaime and Yondaime for their speed a bit back when I was in the academy. I wanted to be as fast and strong like them."

"So... you want to be Hokage?" Naruto's tone was serious, so unlike the time where she screamed that she will be a Hokage in the middle of the village. Nonetheless, Shisui never interacted with her directly, so he took a note that a girl as young as she was could sound like a miniature adult. Plus, when he saw her the first time, he thought she was close to his age because of her height and the angle he was looking.

"No? Maybe? I don't know." Shisui didn't know why he kept answering her questions. "I've never thought about that." Honestly, since he could remember, the village's safety to him was first, and everything else was second. Did that mean he wanted to be Hokage? He seriously didn't know.

"Well, you can be the Hokage and stop the coup, you know. You stopped Kirigakure from attacking the village, right? Just like the Yondaime with Iwagakure! I'm sure that Hokage-jiichan will consider it, dattebayo."

Shisui's entire body went slack.

"What?" He can't believe his own ears. They were not taken out like his eyes were, right? "What did you say?" His hands trembled. Because, because Naruto knew. The light knowing something so dark, how?

Naruto's expression was grim while she explained how she knew of the Uchiha's coup d'etat.

Naruto knew of the coup that the Uchiha clan planned. How can't she? Whenever she checked Shisui's chakra he was distressed but fine whenever he was under the Uchiha's Naka Shrine. And he was always surrounded by his clan members that always exuded hostility so powerful that she almost thought they would fight each other to death under that shrine.

It was that what made her realize that her ability was not normal. Because people don't notice it as she does (she grimaced inwardly, because it was another evidence of her being not normal other than the giant seal on her stomach).

Naruto was a curious child by nature. One day, approximately three months ago, when she had enough not knowing what's going on that she went there in plain midday (because the meeting was always at night, and of course she suppressed her chakra completely) and placed a seal that can enable her to eavesdrop on their conversations. The meeting room was under the seventh tatami mat, and she placed the seal at the back of the tatami and made it invincible because she didn't want their Sharingan to find it. If they find it, it will be bad, Naruto's instinct told her. It wasn't a prank that was designed to catch someone's attention.

What she found that night were something that speaks a lot of the village and the Uchiha clan. She was pale the entire time she heard their screams of taking over the village, what was originally theirs and all that. She found in all of that, only two chakra signatures were not excited, angry or eager. One was the person that was seemingly curious about her but never approached her for unknown reasons, namely Uchiha Shisui, and the other one was unknown. Possibly Shisui's friend or something, as they liked to spar and training together a lot (she swore to herself that she wasn't a stalker and never going to be one).

Naruto was conflicted. She managed to know one of the village's propaganda, and she was overwhelmed by it, so much that she skipped the academy that day. By all means, she was seven, and even though she wanted to think of the Uchiha clan as evil (excluding Shisui and his friend) with their plan to take over the village, which can cause a civil war, she knew the village was in the wrong too (she was feared and hated by the villagers, after all, of course, she can think of the scenario where the village discriminate the Uchiha like what they do to her or something like that).

So she told Hokage-Jiichan when she was too stressed over it.

Apparently, the Sandaime already knew about the coup when she informed him while he visited her apartment. Jiichan said not to worry and not to tell anyone, but she still worried because their hostility was still there as plain as day for her to feel it. It was that day when Jiichan said that her ability was similar (but not quite the same) to one of his teachers that she asked him if his teacher was related to her.

"Yes, her name was Uzumaki Mito. She was Hashirama-sama's wife."

She was so surprised by Jiichan's reply she didn't ask anything else.

As she told all of this to Shisui, she noticed that his chakra radiated his many emotions, but the primary one was fear. Why did he feel fear? Oddly, while wanting to know the answer to that, Naruto didn't want to ask him, so she asked a different question than the one she had in mind.

"Shisui-san? Are you okay?" Naruto wanted to slap herself as soon as she asked this. Of course, he was not okay, judging by his chakra going crazy flips and all that.

Shisui nodded stiffly, still not acknowledging that she knew about the dark side of the village. The one information that he didn't want to spread to anyone other than Sandaime-sama and his... advisors (he mentally removed Danzou from the list of his 'trusted people'), was known to this girl. If he can erase her memory of knowing now, he would do it in a heartbeat, unethical or not. He was that irrational, he could acknowledge that about himself.

Naruto huffed when she found him still in denial and scooted over to his side. She placed her hand to his stomach and scanned him with medical chakra; to ease his physical and mental energy; in case there was something wrong with him. Finding nothing was wrong, aside from his missing eyes, she asked him with all the seriousness a seven-year-old can possess.

"Will you accept my help, Shisui-san?"

Author Note: Phew! To be continued again! This chapter is a pain, I tell you! Because there was one guest demanded 'update faster' and I was so troubled because, look, I updated once a day. How is that not fast? I'm writing this not for you guys, okay? I just want more Shisui x FemNaruto fanfictions, that's it. Why was this guy demanding faster update and not giving his own opinion for this story? Is my story that shitty or something? Tell me if I did something wrong, and I will consider to fix it. Just... ugh. Okay, I'm irrational but something about 'update faster' review makes me want to not update at all. Hmph.

By the way, that doesn't mean you guys can't demand a faster update. Just... not do that by giving me the typical 'update faster' review, please. That will make my not updating at all. All I want is a decent review, why can't you guys do it? *sigh* Sorry, I feel like you guys don't appreciate the time that I make to update this once a day. So, yeah, I'd say I have the right to rant this to you guys.

If I didn't update once a day, either I was sick or I was dead. Choose :)

See you!

-Tonegawa Rie

Edit: I was sick when I made this fic. So I was joking when I said that 'if I didn't update once a day, I was sick or I was dead' because all I could do those days were writing and reading fanfics. I'm sorry for being so dark :( And obviously, I won't be able to update once a day anymore because now I can move around~. Tee-hee.