Unlikely Survival

AN:

10/08/2018

God help me I didn't realize how damn peppy I sounded back then. Hopefully this makes things better.

Disclaimer:

Fliscent Firetail does not own Naruto, the manga or anime. All rights belong to Kishimoto. I only own the plot/plot twists, and original characters.


Ch. 3

Blood Bonds


The boy was taking to hunting and fishing like a duck to water. He was taking to the food even better. It didn't take a lot for Samira to manage to steal him some better clothing, though she made sure it was as nondescript as possible and already close to what the boy wore before. It wouldn't do for someone to link him to the thievery and punish him for her actions. He was starting to grow though, she could tell in his sudden bouts of frustrated temper when he would get frustrated for seemingly no reason and start to cry though he did so with the greatest reluctance. Growing pains, and the frustration that was spurred by the chemical cocktail that now coursed through him as his body raced to catch up to something it should have been doing for a while now. It hurt, ached as muscle and bone shifted and stretched and he was frustrated with everything from the random aches and pains to his sudden clumsiness as his little body began to change and grow.

It was a bit startling how quickly he took to the nourishment, but maybe that was another difference between Samira's world and this one. She looked down as she trailed a finger over the boy's soft cheek as he slept, nestled in the crook of her arm as she watched the fire. She studied the three symmetrical lines that marred his face on each side. If anything they reminded her of whiskers. She grinned as he nuzzled into her side at the gentle touch. She liked them. They suited her little boy perfectly, reminding her of when she had raised a young fox as a teenager.

Skittish but curious at first before becoming highly curious and highly affectionate. Naruto was highly affectionate and he seemed to crave affection in turn, leaving her to believe that he had never been given so much care and attention before. He was so young too, it made her heart break. Samira's smile faded as she stared into the fire, feeling its light and warmth. She didn't want to die. Before it had been easier when it was only her life on the line but now she was worried about the child's future. Samira looked over to the shadowy figure that sat beside the fire. Even its light couldn't penetrate its darkness and his shape remained humanoid but undefined.

"Shadow?" she called quietly. Where his head should have been turned letting her know she had his attentions tendrils of darkness curling around his head like smoky for hair as always. She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat as she looked down at the child nestled in her arms. Sometimes she wondered if this was what having your own kid felt like. She would never know.

"I don't want to die," she whispered. The smoky mass before her continued to watch her quietly. In all the years she had known him, she had never heard him speak. He reached over with an impossibly long limb and pat her head gently as he always had, sending a wash of comfort through her. She tightened her grip on the child slightly as she took a deep breath reveling in the feeling as a wave of calm swept through her. Soon she was deep asleep. Seeing her unconscious, the shadowy creature rose before disappearing into the darkness around them. He had another person to go check on, though this young woman would always be his main priority.


The child was a very curious one, in case she hadn't reiterated it enough. Content now that she wasn't going to respond to every little thing he did in a negative fashion, he set about asking her a million questions. What was her family like, where was she from, why did she look different, who was Shadow, why was the sky blue, what were they having for dinner tonight? It seemed the kid had never had anyone to talk with before and once he got going, boy was he a chatterbox. He didn't seem to understand moderation, a symptom of being alone. He hadn't learned how to interact socially yet.

Samira didn't mind for the most part. If she was getting fed up with his chatter she would tickle him mercilessly or send him on an errand. He seemed to grasp this pretty quickly as well as the look he would get before she would do these things and would respond accordingly. Sometimes he would quiet down and want to be held, meaning he had just been wanting attention in the first place. Other times he would get a mischievous glint and his eyes and continue. Those were the times he got tickled the most and he seemed to take it all in stride with wide laughter, a far cry from the child she had first met.

While he asked every question he could dream of and got answers in spades, all honest, he had been less willing to impart truths to many of her questions beside his name and that he was an orphan that had been kicked out of the orphanage shortly before finding her. Otherwise, he was tightlipped about the whole thing. If she had had more time, enough to make a difference then she might insist that he tell her these things, but what was the point in spending her limited amount of time stressing out the child and getting uncomfortable truths to unsightly questions. If she had had more time to live, maybe she could have done something to change things for him, but she knew it was already drawing to an end. Samira sighed quietly as she looked at her thin wrist. Whatever was happening seemed to cause her body to start breaking down, leaving her thin and emaciated. Her time would be coming to an end very soon.


"JIJI!" yelled a young voice frantically as a child burst into the Hokage's office, the doors slamming open. The old village leader's eyes went wide with shock and relief. The child that had gone missing for over two month had suddenly appeared in his office and the old man found himself thanking the gods above. His relief was quickly replaced with fear as the child's sobbing met his old ears, his old eyes locked on the blood he spotted on the child's clothing. The older man surged to his feet quickly to check the child over for injury mounting fury nearly making his hands shake. If someone had hurt Naruto, he would kill them himself.

"Naruto? Naruto. Naruto! What's happened?" he demanded as he tried to get the child's attention in his panicked state, sharp eyes taking in the blood that dotted the boy's clothing and the tears on the child's face as he turned the distraught child this way and that looking for injury.

"I don't know what happened! One moment she was fine, an' the next she was shaking on the ground! I told her to go to the doctor, but she said the bad men would find her an' she didn't wan' them to so you've got to make sure no one finds out about her, ok Jiji?" demanded the sobbing child as he grabbed the elder man's hand and all but dragged him along, worry clear on the old man's features.

"Naruto, who are you talking about?" demanded the village elder as they made their way swiftly through the office, the man signaling the secretary to leave them be as they passed, also signaling his Anbu body guards to stay put. If things were as the child described, discretion would be best. He didn't need the council finding out about a possible incident that could be blamed on the boy. The third Hokage knew that some would try and take advantage of events to make a power play if they had the chance.

"Samira-nee. I has been staying with her for a while now. She's really special to me Jiji," the blonde hacked out through his sobs and tears as the old man shot Naruto a sharp look at the boy's words. The idea of the boy being taken someone's home without telling him was rather alarming. They burst out of the Hokage tower and started heading for the tree line to the Hokage's surprise and resignation. So the child had been hiding in the woods this whole time. It didn't make him feel any better about the whole thing.

The boy immediately cut a swift path through the forest, until they reached a clearing where a young woman lay deathly still. The Hokage's eye widened in surprise as he took in the pale looking young woman. He had seen corpses with better color and for a moment feared that she was already dead. His dread dissolved quickly as he frowned, moving forward to kneel beside her prone form as he looked her over carefully, taking in the short red hair that was only a couple inches long and the gently rising chest that indicated that she was still alive.

"She started shaking an' then when it stopped she told me to put something in her mouth so she wouldn't bite off her tongue an' then she bit me! By accident I mean," The child explained through his sniffles and hiccups as he crouched next to the unconscious young woman, grasping her hand in both of his. The Hokage's lips tightened as he crouched to rub the child's back comfortingly, a part of him taking note that Naruto was not shying away from the gentle touch like usual.

"Her hair fell off an' then started growing all red which is weird 'cause her hair is curly an' brown an' stuff. Um, I'm not really sure what else happened but she passed out an' I started crying. I kept feeling more an' more tired Jiji, an' then everything went dark. Then I woke up, she was asleep an' I went an' got you after putting a blanket on her. Is she going to be ok?" demanded the blonde worriedly after speaking nonstop, tearstained eyes red and tired. The older man froze in place at the description of what had happened before his grip on the child tightened.

Quietly he pulled the child into his lap and held him close, rocking him quietly as he thanked the heavens once more. All these symptoms pointed to one explanation, and Naruto was very lucky to be alive. So was the young woman for that matter. This wouldn't be the first time that someone from the forbidden lake had accidentally bitten someone during their metamorphosis, and changed because of the blood of the host.

He could help but sigh, feeling already a weary even though it was just morning. Holding the boy was his only comfort at the moment, one of the day's mysteries having been solved. To think that the day had only just begun.

There was no way all of this could have just been a coincidence, with all the details that Naruto had just described. This sounded just like a patient from the Forbidden Lake and there was one currently missing from the Konoha Hospital, who was also a female with brown curly hair and brown eyes, like the young woman Naruto had described, who they had declared dead over three weeks. The fact that she had survived two months without treatment was rare. Without the proper medical equipment and healers on hand, it was unlikely that she would have been able to receive enough chakra to complete the transformation process that was brought on by her body attempting the metamorphosis. Naruto growing tired from a bite suggested that she had begun draining the boy's life energy during her change. If it had been anyone else they would have died.

Long ago it had been established by Konoha's leading scientists that when people from that other world, beyond the lake's waters, managed to pass through the lake their bodies began to deteriorate swiftly. This happened because the body was incompatible with this world. The interesting thing about this though, was that their bodies, instilled with the drive to survive, began to unconsciously attempt to adapt, and by adapt, their bodies tried to generate chakra.

This was usually the starting point of the metamorphosis, for those people. Their bodies would begin to generate Chakra at a tremendous rate because the body had nothing in its DNA to properly augment the process, which would quickly drain the life out of the body as it began overproducing chakra, usually leading to a swift and painful death for the patient. The trick that the workers at the Lake hospital and the Konoha researchers had found, had been something that had been discovered by accident many years ago. It had been when one of the foreigners had begun to go through their transformation earlier than expected.

The person had gone into seizures and had accidentally bitten a hospital worker, only to transform afterwards. They still hadn't lived long afterwards since the transformation had still taken a great toll on the body despite the body having the DNA needed to create the proper amount of chakra, but it had set the researchers at the hospital and hidden base on the right path. After all, the person's appearance had altered greatly, and the staff wanted to know why only to realize what had been taking place in the transformation process itself. It took many years of trial and error, but the staff soon came to the conclusion that the foreigners could survive the transformation IF they had a compatible DNA type chosen for them, and they had a team of specialized medical ninjas feeding the patient chakra through the transformation process, to keep the body from overproducing. However, to the researcher's irritation, they found that even after the metamorphosis was over with, the patient's bodies still overdrew on chakra, which would kill them eventually.

Overproducing and overdrawing chakra was a rare phenomenon with these people, since it was the body breaking itself down into energy faster than the body could handle, leading to a vicious cycle. Their bodies got used to producing more energy because of their overproduction of it and thus the person in question couldn't maintain their health as the breakdown process gradually sped up over time, giving these people a year to live at best. Indeed, it was a pity, but despite the DNA samples used to curb the breakdown rate, there was still the problem that their bodies, for whatever reason, needed more chakra than most to function, even if they were civilians. Their physical bodies could not handle the strain. More chakra seemed to be the key and it had been discovered that these people, if they went through monthly transfusions of chakra, lived longer than those without.

But out of all the people the foreigner had come across, she had come across Naruto, a tailed beast container (also called a Jinjuriki), with huge energy reserves for his age. Tail beasts themselves were a manifestation of pure chakra that would run amok unless sealed in a human, like Naruto, and just for housing the beast, the child was shunned. It was one of the reason's that Jinjuriki meant 'human sacrifice,' seeing as their social life and future were either nonexistent or severely limited. Naruto's future was already limited to one profession and the Hokage's lips tightened knowing that the child would have to become a ninja in the future.

Out of everyone she could have come across, Naruto would have been the only one to have enough chakra to fuel her change, and from the look of it, her having red hair and all, Naruto's Uzumaki blood decided to help her along. It was probably the only reason she was alive despite having the chakra needed to fuel the change.

The Uzumaki bloodline where known for their special chakra and vitality, the oldest most founding member of the Uzumaki family having lived to great age. Uzumaki Mito, who had lived well before the time of Konoha's founding and well into the third Hokage's reign, his reign, was a perfect example of the power of the Uzumaki bloodline. They had never tried giving the foreigners Uzumaki blood before.

There was no telling what would happen now… All Hiruzen could hope for was that Naruto wasn't too attached to this woman. There was a possibility that she would only live a few more years, or that she wasn't a person Hiruzen could allow to live in the village. They had had some low lives come through the lake before, it wouldn't be a first time. Hiruzen would have to have blood tests and chakra readings done on her to gauge how well her body was handling everything that had happened to it so far, and to see the decay rate of her cells.

He would also have to call Inoichi to come and take a look through her mind to see if she was to be trusted.

"She should be fine for now Naruto. We've actually been looking for her for a while now without any luck for the past few weeks." muttered the Hokage distractedly as he turned her head to the side to take in the young woman's features.

"We'll talk about this later, Naruto. For now, we need to take her to the hospital for-"

"No! You can't. The bad ninja will find her," cut in Naruto as he jumped up the Hokage's lap to lay over the unconscious woman as if he could shield her from the idea. Hiruzen frowned as he took in the boy crouched before him. Despite the fact that Naruto was barefooted, his clothing too big, the child was clean, his feet unmarred, the clothing new. He had clearly had a growth spurt very recently, the boy already bigger since the last time he had seen him. All in all, he looked better than he had living at the orphanage where people were being paid to care for children, not like he had been living with a fugitive in the woods for two months. If Hiruzen hadn't seen the small stack of supplies that had been carefully hidden in the camp or the old fire sight, then he wouldn't have believed that they had been living out here. It sent a burn of anger washing through his stomach as he thought of the orphanage.

Naruto continued to stare at him. The seriousness in his young eyes held weight that they usually didn't carry.

"The bad ninja?" Hiruzen asked, his voice deepening slightly with concern. Naruto nodded swiftly, his face grim as he gripped her tighter.

"Uh huh. She said that there were some bad people after her. She was going to leave the village, but… I made her stay," said the boy quietly, looking shame faced as his lower lip began to tremble. Hiruzen's frown deepened. There where ninja after her? Who would- Hiruzen's eyes widened in realization. Danzo… if anyone would go after her, it would be him. Orochimaru wouldn't have been able to locate her that swiftly, even if he had spies strewn all throughout Konoha. Very few had known of her location in the hospital, because of the kidnapping of the other two people from the Lake.

She had been placed in a special ward reserved for the treatment of Anbu Black Ops. There where sensor seals and alert seals placed over every entrance and exit that should have stopped her if she tried to leave the hospital, so someone must have either deactivated the seals with the key sequence or put a seal on her that would allow her to pass. He was the only one that Hiruzen could think of that would have the means, information and motive to do such a thing. Besides, who would think twice about her disappearing after all? Danzo could turn her into an expendable asset with the right blood mixture, cursed seals, and brainwashing.

The people that came from the lake where know to be rather powerful even if they didn't live long, with their affinity for every element, flexible and growing chakra coils, and their resilience to toxins since the world they came from was full of very potent toxins, most of which in the air from the cars they drove or the plants that released toxic waste into the air. The fact that this foreign race didn't originally have chakra made them physically more durable and toned in muscle mass than most shinobi since they couldn't use chakra in their world to help power their motions when they did exercise.

And then there was the fact that most of the people that came through the lake where highly educated, fast learners and very sensitive to different chakras since they didn't have any in their world. Some even had the training to condition and strengthen their muscles for sports, or taijutsu disciplines along with everything else in their already large arsenal of information. There had been musicians, warriors, engineers, fast food workers, bums, doctors… you name it, and it was more likely than not that they had traveled through the lake and into this world. So many skills and specializations, Hiruzen's head swam every time he thought about how elite these people where.

Hiruzen shook his head, berating himself for not realizing sooner the potential threat taking the young woman from the lake would pose. If Root had been able to take her then he should have made the security tighter... The question, however, was how she was able to get away from them… the idea made Hiruzen frown. There was something about this situation that just wasn't adding up right… To get away from kidnappers, what had she done? She must be one of those unusually skilled and intelligent individuals if she had been able to accomplish such a feat and stay undetected so long even in the heart of a ninja village itself.

The thought made the older man feel rather uncomfortable considering the young woman had been staying almost two months with the boy he considered his grandson and ward in all but name. Naruto had said that she was nice, but what if she had been using the boy? It didn't sound like it, but he was still going to have Inoichi use the mind walking techniques on her to determine how she thought and what kind of person she was. From there they would figure out what to do regarding her future, even if it would be a short-lived one. He would have to have one of his shinobi in the blood labs run a confidential series of test on her cells decay rate to see how long they would be expecting her to live. He would probably have to pull Nara Shikaku, his jonin commander and head of the Nara Clan, his chief strategist into the mess as well. The man was a brilliant tactician, who was bound to notice what Hiruzen missed when making his plans. Finally coming to his decision, the man nodded.

"Alright Naruto, we'll make sure to keep this quiet, but we are going to have to take some precautions for her safety," said the aging man as the boy nodded, clearly relieved. His tense shoulder seemed to loosen and he relaxed into her side with a sigh of relief. With the threat of danger gone, the child's fatigue began to catch up with him and he nestled into her side, already blinking tiredly as he rubbed and eye.

"Ok Jiji," he murmured quietly, before dropping off to sleep the old man's lips pursed. Naruto was clearly used to being tucked into her side to sleep. Hiruzen felt his heart clenching at the sight and he found himself dearly praying in his heart that this woman would turn out to be good.

Making up his mind the Hokage turned to leave. He had a lot of work to do, but the first thing that needed to be done was to get Yamanaka Inoichi.

Having her mind read was going to take top priority.


Inoichi frowned slightly as he looked down at the unconscious young woman that was on the couch in the Hokage's living room. The room was dark with dusk, the curtains drawn to hide the presence of those in the old traditional home. The older blond man knelt silently to take in the features of the young woman before him, his gaze lingering on her red hair.

"And you want me to mind read her?" he asked as he shot a questioning look towards his leader. Hiruzen nodded grimly as the Anbu behind him motioned that perimeter was clear before melting into the shadows.

"Yes. Now would be best. Naruto is currently asleep and we can talk without worries of being overheard. I've already placed silencing seals on the living room," rumbled the older man around his pipe as the blond-haired Yamanaka's lips pursed slightly, in thought.

"How far back do you want me to go into her mind?" he asked as Hiruzen frowned thoughtfully at the man's question.

"Everything," he said as the long-haired blond man's eyes widened.

"That's quite a bit. This will take some time, Hokage-sama," he said as the old man nodded grimly.

"Take all the time you need," he said as he Left the room. The blonde haired man watched him go before sighing. Inoichi hated mind reading, invading privacy to such an extent, but it had to be done. With that he placed his hand on her damp brow, his pale blue eyes sliding shut. What Inoichi didn't expect was how swiftly he was pulled into her mind.

Mind walk

Her and Naruto, he thought. Inoichi nearly winced under the barrage of information that assailed him when he tried to summon memories of them together. They were gardening in the forest to grow vegetables. Then they were hunting for rabbits using snares and traps. They had followed a deer onto the Nara land only to get chased off by a clan member.

The garden was growing good and the traps worked well though. They gathered edible plants, and mushroom. She taught him how to garden, hunt, snare. She taught him how to climb, to sneak, to move quietly, to cook using an open fire and a cooking pot. How to season food, and find fresh water. He learned quickly, starved for attention as well as her approval and soon the boy was self sufficient. It had been her plan from the beginning, knowing that she would be dying soon. She worried about him, what would happen to him after she was gone.

The boy was lonely, he needed her, just like she needed him. She hated herself for being so weak, for needing the emotional support, for letting herself care so quickly, but how could she not? He was such an inquisitive child. He was kind and loud and brash and honest, but under that cheer and curiosity, extremely vulnerable. How could she not love him and want to help him? He reminded her of the little brother she never had and the older brother that had died before his time. Ingrained protectiveness over him reared its ugly head over the memories and Inoichi found himself swiftly blocked away from her warm happy memories of the two of them. People use the information they know about you against you, protect him, don't let him see, protect Naruto, whispered a voice through the memories that now zipped past. He grabbed onto another random one desperately. He didn't want to be ejected from her mind so soon.

Her looking over scrolls that the two of them had snuck out of the library. They were in the forest as Naruto peered curiously at their contents and her rapidly absorbing the knowledge of the scrolls before explaining it to the child. He could see the way she shifted through the information and how she reached her conclusions based on the information available as she learned. Memories began to whip past swiftly and he grabbed another. A bright summer day, a child version of herself running towards the water on a small island in the middle of a lake. A shadowy figure appeared stopping her and he was forcibly ejected from the memory, this time focusing hard. More memories. He reached out again.

The two of them on a training field gathering Kunai and Shuriken that had been left behind and abandoned. Her in a Dojo training students. Her as a child learning to fight. Her as an adult running in fear, someone chasing her the slap of large feet on wet concrete filling her ears as her heart pounded wildly, her breathing harsh. Just around the corner and-

BANG!

PAIN! Pain, pain painpainpainbloodmyarm, oh God. No hesitation. No remorse. You kill them before they kill you. That was that. The knife was out and in her hand less than a millisecond later before she skidded to a stop, her body falling into a crouch catching her assailant by surprise as he sprinted at her. He tried to raise the gun again but this time she moved too quickly, stepping into his guard. The knife flashed with deadly speed and there was a spray of blood on the grimy alley wall as she severed his carotid artery. His eyes went wide as a hand pressed against the side of his neck. Seconds later, his form slumped to the ground in unconsciousness leaving her standing there blankly as she tried to process this. He would be dead before the medics could help him but she made no move to stop the bleeding. Huh. Interesting. She didn't feel panic anymore. In fact, she couldn't really feel anything. Just calm. Must be the shock talking. Calmly she raised the phone to call her stepfather before calling the police.

He continued going through memories. Friends, school, training, work, family.

Inoichi tried to get into memories of her childhood but found himself swiftly brought to a large field. There were trees to the left and right leaving a long tree line before him, the gloom managing to look bright and dark at the same time as the wind went sweeping harshly over the grass causing tree limbs to creak under the strain, clouds promising rain and maybe a bit of lightning overhead. To the left of the field was a large stone that protruded from the earth, steady and unmoving in the face of the wind. Inoichi frowned as he started towards the stone, seeing something on its cracked surface. When he drew close enough he found it to be carved with the symbol of a spiral.

That's when she stepped out from behind the stone.

Inoichi started in shock and took a step back from the young woman who was standing before him with her arms crossed, eyes dark and dangerous, face unreadable. Without another thought he broke the jutsu.

Mind walk ends

With that, Inoichi pulled himself from her memories before finding himself back in his body. Blinking blearily he looked around the quiet living room before sighing. He was going to have to do this in bursts then. She wasn't simple minded like a lot of the ninja he had had to read and she had managed to sense him. He was going to have to use stronger techniques to get the information that they were wanting.

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"Well? How did it go? What did you find?" asked the Hokage as Inoichi eased himself further back into his seat to get comfortable. It had been a long afternoon and it was now night, the Hokage's traditional manor lit with warm light and the smell of food filling the air. The child was asleep in the back room, much to Inoichi's discomfort. While he might have nothing against the child, he did have a problem with the Demon that was sealed inside of him. It had only been eight years since that fateful night and despite the time that had passed some wounds didn't become any less raw with time. The Demon's attack on the village had been utterly devastating, the death count unimaginable. It had been a miracle that other villages hadn't decided to take advantage of their weakened state, one that had been paid in blood since the other villages had suffered greater losses in life from the most recent Ninja War than them. Without the forces needed to attack, the other villages had been forced to watch with gritted teeth as the Hidden Leaf Village slowly began to recover, unable to avenge their previous loss.

"Inoichi?" called the Hokage pulling him from his thoughts. The other man looked up, eyes widening before he smiled sheepishly.

"Sorry sir. I don't even know where to start," he admitted easily as the older men frowned.

"Very well. Let's start at the beginning," said the older man. Inoichi sighed as he tugged on a strand of his long dark blonde hair before his teal gaze met the Hokage's, his face grim.

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Hiruzen puffed away on his pipe deep in thought as he mulled over everything that Inoichi had told him of the young woman. The fact that she could speak their language was an astonishing factor. It had never happened before, and a part of him wondered in their language had ended up on the other side of the lake like the foreigner's language had ended up on this side. She was unusually intelligent and well learned, according to Inoichi's report, already knowledgeable in taijutsu, and basic weaponry, another odd factor. He sighed as he kneaded his forehead tiredly, a headache coming on.

Inoichi had suggested that she was going to want to become a ninja, with or without their help, if she was going to live long enough. He had said that she had already determined that Ninja were the strongest in this world, that this was a sink or swim world, harsh in a way hers was not, bloodshed on the daily a common occurrence while in her world it was considered a crime to be punished. This was mainly from listening to the villagers speaking without their awareness enough to discern these things, but discern she had. What had thrown the Hokage for a loop was when Inoichi supported the idea of her becoming a shinobi, if she survived her physical limitations.

"Inoichi, do you know what you ask?" questioned the older man quietly, "We would have to come up with a soundproof cover for her for her to become a part of this village, and even then, it would be difficult for this to work. She is from an entirely different world. She would have to learn years and years' worth of skills in a brief amount of time."

"She already knows a lot about our culture, and she even knows enough taijutsu for that to be pulled off as her specialization if it came to that."

Hiruzen sighed tiredly. Inoichi was getting ahead of himself. There really wasn't going to be a point of them even speculating over her future, because no one from the lake had ever survived longer than a year or two, however, it seemed Inoichi wasn't as familiar with the people from the forbidden lake. Deciding that there would be no point in arguing with the blonde man Hiruzen waved a hand dismissively, deciding to humor the other man.

"As for her cover?" Hiruzen questioned as he puffed away on his pipe.

"Nara Shikaku. You know how brilliant he is with coming up with plans and creating strategies. I suspect that you were thinking about calling him into this long before I even began the mind walk, if she proved useful, isn't that true, Sir?" said the blonde with a sly grin as the older man huffed in annoyance before starting to puff on his pipe irritably. Inoichi's chuckle filled the den as the Hokage shot him an annoyed look. The fact that she probably wasn't going to live and the fact that Inoichi assumed that he was correct was aggravating. Hiruzen liked the sound of her and it was a frustration to him that they would have no power over keeping her alive. To even suggest a cover story was like rubbing salt in a wound for him. Naruto was clearly bonded with her and her him.

"We will see." Said the older man as Inoichi sent him an apologetic grin to which the Hokage merely shook his head in frustration. His jonin's inability to see the big picture could be so irritating sometimes.


NOTE: the story 'Unlikely Survival,' is set a few years before Naruto graduates from the academy.