Disclaimer: All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites.
Warnings: Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), some moderate Dumbledore bashing (he's more manipulative than evil but mostly just stubborn), and who knows what else.
AN: This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance.
Chapter 3: A Shinobi's Life is Never Glamorous
The first two weeks of training and missions were anything but pleasant for the three Genin members of Team Four as Kushina and their clients worked them to the bone. The only pleasant and relatively stress free event during that time, for Satoshi, had been the birth of his cousin Aburame Shinichi (first born son of his uncle Shikuro) on the twenty-second of June. The rest of the time he was training his body into the ground (and into bed as he barely stayed awake long enough to walk through the door) and performing dozens of horrible chores like pulling weeds, collecting garbage, hauling garbage to the dump, babysitting brats, dog walking, and the dreaded capture of Tora the cat.
Currently, Satoshi pulled yet another weed and wiped the sweat out of his face with his left hand as he tossed the unwanted plant into the small pile behind him. They'd been sitting out beneath the scorching summer sun working on an old man's front yard for most of the morning and his little hands were stinging from all of the scratches he'd gotten from the juniper shrubs that grew in the planters that wrapped around the man's house. It didn't help that the sun was beating down on him and both he and his bugs were utterly miserable.
Not far from him, Izumo was standing hip deep in a large koi pond fishing out maple leaves and clearing out trash from the bottom of the pond; Satoshi envied him if only because he got to be in the water. Kotetsu looked like he envied Izumo too, because the spiky haired Genin kept sending dark, pouting looks towards their last team member as he raked up the few scattered leaves about the yard, gathered up trash, and collected the piles of weeds Satoshi pulled. Izumo looked up and shot both of his teammates an apologetic look, knowing they were suffering from the heat far more than he was.
Kotetsu and Izumo had flipped a coin to determine who got to clean out the pond while Satoshi hadn't even been considered for the job since he was too short and hadn't yet learned how to swim (one of the three items he put on his list of things that he wanted to learn). Sighing, Satoshi sent his water oriented Kikaichu to the pond to help Izumo (and to cool the poor things off because they didn't tolerate the heat as well as his other colonies) and sent a few more burrowing Kikaichu into the dirt beneath the junipers where they were loosening the roots of the weeds so it was easier for him to pull them out.
Glancing to his left, Satoshi took note that he only had another three feet of planter to go before he was finished with his part of the mission and he stubbornly set his chin as he shoved his hands back into the brush and sought out another dandelion plant that had taken root in the cool shade beneath the juniper. Next to come out was a long stretch of carpetweed that had been choking the juniper brush he was working around and it took him a few minutes to clear out the vines that had woven themselves around the trunk of the juniper and through some of the low hanging branches that brushed the ground.
Half an hour later, Satoshi wearily climbed to his feet and carefully brushed the dirt from his dark pants as he sent about fifty of his common Kikaichu to search beneath the brush for any weeds he'd missed.
"All done, Satoshi-kun?"
"Hai, Tetsu-kun; did you need help finishing up the rest of the yard or are you finished too?"
"I'm good; I just need to get the pile of weeds sitting behind you. Go sit in the shade and drink some water; Kushina-sensei will be upset if you end up with heat exhaustion or worse a heat stroke because you didn't drink enough water and sat out in the sun almost the entire time."
"Hai, Tetsu-neechan," Satoshi teasingly replied as he darted out of reach of the taller boy and grinned mischievously as he headed for one of the larger maples that shaded the pond and dropped down in the shade.
"Gaki!" Kotetsu barked back with a laugh.
Satoshi spent the next ten minutes sipping water from his canteen as he watched Kotetsu wade out into the pond to help Izumo finish cleaning out trash before he turned most of his attention to his swarm. Part of his attention was focused on the Kikaichu he'd sent into the water, fascinated by the underwater world beneath the surface while another part of his attention was on the Kikaichu he'd spread throughout the entire yard to monitor their surroundings in case someone tried to sneak up on them.
That didn't mean he stopped observing with his own eyes though, since he didn't want Kushina to catch him zoning out again and assign him extra laps. Izumo and Kotetsu were just climbing out of the pond when a spike of chakra announced the return of their sensei and Satoshi glanced up into the tree he was sitting beneath to wave at Kushina in greeting.
"I take it the three of you have finally finished this mission?"
"Hai, sensei."
"Good, clean up as best you can, inform your client that you are finished, turn in your report to the mission desk, and then meet me at Training Ground Sixteen for your afternoon training."
"Hai, sensei!"
Half an hour later, the three Genin trudged onto their usual training ground to find Kushina waiting for them at the edge of the forest that surrounding the clearing. As they lined up in front of her, Kushina eyed them critically checking for any signs of lingering exhaustion, sunburn, or dehydration. She then smiled at them to let them know they passed her visual medical scan (a first in the two weeks they'd been slaving away beneath her ever watchful eye).
"I'm glad to see that the three of you are learning to watch out for your own health and the health of your teammates. It is important that you look after yourselves because poor health can kill you just as quickly as inattention when out on a mission. Right now, I want the three of you to take half an hour to eat your lunch and then rest for ten minutes before stretching out and warming up. After that we'll spend an hour on chakra control exercises before sparring for an hour."
"Once we finish with that, I've picked up two final missions for you to complete for the day; the first one is to hang up some flyers about town for one of the village shops and the second one is to clear trash out of the river running through Training Ground Twenty-eight. And yes, Satoshi-kun, I will start teaching you how to swim during the second mission while Izumo-kun and Kotetsu-kun collect the trash from the deeper portions of the river."
Satoshi grinned widely as he looked forward to both the swimming lessons and the chance to cool off. The three teammates, who were well on their way to becoming friends, settled down in the shade and worked their way steadily through their lunches; neither dawdling nor rushing since gulping their food could lead to indigestion and affect their performance and taking too long would earn them extra laps (something they all wanted to avoid).
As they ate, Satoshi taught both Izumo and Kotetsu English; a suggestion put forward by Kushina in order to give the trio an edge in hostile situations and keep their enemies guessing about what they were planning. The lessons also helped Satoshi keep a firm grasp of his native language since he rarely spoke it any more now that he had become fluent in Japanese. Izumo and Kotetsu had both been eager to learn a new language as they'd immediately seen the advantages of being able to speak in code (thinking first of all the pranking possibilities such a language would open up).
To help them get started, Satoshi had given them copies of his earliest written assignments that Kushina had given him nearly a year earlier (his first year and a half of lessons strictly verbal) which were more along the lines of a handwritten dictionary than actual writing assignments. Right now they were focusing on building up their vocabulary as Kushina would later work with them on reading, writing, and proper grammar. Unknown to Team Four, Kushina had also been teaching Team Minato how to speak English for the past two years; originally it was to help her better remember the foreign language and now it was so there would be someone who could keep track of the three troublemakers that were her Genin in the event something happened to her later down the road.
The language lessons continued through their warm up and their chakra control practice, forcing all three Genin to split their focus between their chakra exercises and the lesson (which was not an easy task). After a half an hour, Kushina ended the English lesson and taught Satoshi a new exercise while the two ten year olds focused on their leaf exercises. First she had Satoshi lay down on his back with the soles of his shoes pressed against the trunk of a tree. Then she had him channel chakra into his feet until his shoes stuck to the side of the tree. Once he'd managed to stick them to the tree for a few seconds, she set him to practicing holding and maintaining the flow of chakra to his feet in preparation for teaching him Kinobori no Waza.
Normally, an instructor would give their Genin a kunai and have them run up the side of the tree while channeling chakra into their feet and mark the tree as they fell to gauge their progress. However, because a poorly executed fall could seriously injure the soon to be five year old (especially as he got higher up the trunk) Kushina was taking the time to teach Satoshi the long way of learning how to climb a tree. This method of teaching Kinobori no Waza would also act as an extension of his chakra building exercises and help further strengthen his growing chakra network. The tree climbing exercise was actually just a higher version of the leaf exercise that required slightly more chakra to maintain so it would be fairly easy for Satoshi to transition into the exercise as he had gained excellent chakra control over the past two years.
After another half an hour, Kushina set Izumo and Satoshi to sparring while she worked with Kotetsu before she had the two ten year olds switch places so she could work with Izumo after another twenty minutes passed. Having the two older boys work with the younger boy helped reinforce their own training as the best way to master a skill is to teach it to someone else (Satoshi had learned less of the academy forms than his two teammates). It also built up the bonds between the three teammates since it put them all on equal footing instead of placing one above the others; each of them being able to offer something to the other two (Izumo and Kotetsu offering each other a challenge as they were evenly matched).
The team dynamics had actually turned out to be very well balanced despite the two older boys' close friendship and the age difference between them and Satoshi and Kushina was very proud of how quickly they learned to work together as a team.
At the end of their sparring practice, Kushina split their team into two groups so they could hang flyers up around the town; Izumo and Kotetsu in one group while she and Satoshi made up the second group. She gave the two ten year olds an hour and a half to hang fifty posters throughout the southern third of the village while she and Satoshi took care of the northern two-thirds; that would leave them three hours of daylight to complete their final mission. One reason why Kushina and Satoshi would be covering a larger area was because Kushina could Shunshin them around to save time.
The first dozen or so times Kushina Shunshined Satoshi, the nearly five year old and his Kikaichu became disoriented, nauseous, and had trouble refocusing; something that Shibi had told her to expect because it was a common reaction to the transportation jutsu for those hosting the destruction bugs. It was a reaction that Satoshi would need to learn to get over quickly; hence the second reason why Kushina was Shunshining them back and forth across town. By the time they hung their last flyer up on the bulletin board outside of the Hokage Tower, Satoshi and his swarm were barely affected by the transportation jutsu though it would still be a good month or two before he could ignore the effects completely.
Since they arrived a half an hour early at Training Ground Twenty-Eight, Kushina had Satoshi strip down to his boxers while she undressed to reveal that she'd been wearing a one piece bathing suit beneath her Jounin uniform. Kushina then jumped into the water and told Satoshi to jump in with her. Satoshi grinned and jumped so that he landed just close enough to the red haired Jounin that he splashed her. His head slipped below the water and he stared all around for a moment before the need for air had him looking for the surface. Kushina helped him up and they shared a grin before she told him to roll over onto his back so she could teach him how to float; a difficult task due to the distinct lack of body fat he had.
"Chikushou, Toshi-kun, you're scrawnier than I thought you were without your jacket hiding you," Izumo declared as he and Kotetsu finally joined them fifteen minutes later.
Satoshi stuck his tongue out and splashed his teammate in response before he went back to trying to float. After another five minutes, Kushina finally gave up on getting Satoshi to float naturally (due to his lack of body fat) and had him work on using chakra to gain buoyancy (an exercise that would later tie into water walking for the young Genin). Once he could manage that for ten seconds at a time, she had him turn back over and began teaching him how to kick and use his arms to propel himself through the water while she held him up by his waist.
Izumo and Kotetsu watched for a few minutes before they stripped down to their boxers and joined them in the river to start fishing out the trash. The next two and a half hours passed by quickly as the four of them mostly played since there wasn't really that much trash in the water. By the time they were ready to call it a day; Satoshi could float for half a minute, propel himself across a short distance, and tread water for a minute before he got too tired.
The next two weeks passed much the same way; with the team doing hard physical training for two hours first thing in the morning, taking a large mission for the rest of the morning, spending lunch and the hottest hours of the day doing light training beneath the cool shade on Training Ground Sixteen, and then performing two small missions before they spent the afternoon training and relaxing either somewhere along the river (when the river needed cleaning) or at one of the public pools in the village to continue working on Satoshi's swimming lessons. Occasionally, they'd take a day off missions to train with another team (usually one of the Genin teams that were formed the same day as theirs or on a rare occasion with Minato's team) to give them a break from the mind numbing missions.
Kushina would then dismiss them around sunset and assign them a number of laps to run either around the village or around the Aburame Compound (the number and route usually depending upon whether or not they got into any trouble that day and how much physical work they'd done during the course of the day). At the end of their first month of training, the strenuous training and mission schedule began to show results as all three Genin found their stamina steadily increasing. Izumo and Kotetsu benefited the most from the training program though; their bodies more mature and better able to adapt to the physical exercise.
In that time, aside from starting Satoshi's swimming lessons, Kushina also tested the two older boys for chakra affinities (Izumo had a water affinity while Kotetsu had an affinity towards fire). Shortly after she began teaching the two boys jutsu that were based off their affinities, she learned that Izumo (who was an orphan) had a bloodline limit that allowed him to create a sticky-chakra-charged-syrup inside of his body that he could expel from his mouth (which they would eventually name Mizuame Nabara). The syrup was so sticky that anyone stepping on it would immediately become stuck. All of Satoshi's Kikaichu (even those that only consumed his still unnamed wild energy) loved the sweet taste of the syrup and often assisted in the clean up once Izumo began working on producing large puddles of the syrup.
Kotetsu's fire jutsu would also be able to neutralize the syrup once he learned a B Rank fire jutsu (which was still a ways off). Right now he was learning low D and C Ranked jutsu that were fairly easy to control and put out in the event he lost control of the jutsu. Satoshi's swarm didn't care for the flames but the exposure to the intense chakra generated heat would help make them stronger over time as the new generations progressively developed stronger heat resistance. In addition to the new jutsu they were learning, their chakra control exercises were progressing to the next level as Satoshi finally began walking up and down tree trunks while the two ten year olds moved onto the next step in the leaf exercise (holding multiple leaves on different body parts).
Outside of his team training, Satoshi was also learning two of his family's techniques; Mushi Yose no Jutsu and Mushi Bunshin no Jutsu. The first technique was one that the Aburame had developed to collect insects out in the wild without resorting to hunting for the bugs since the jutsu drew the insects like flies to honey and held them as securely as a spider web would. The second jutsu was a variation of the clone technique that allowed Satoshi to make both a hollow and a solid clone out of insects; something he hadn't been able to learn until his swarm had reached the five thousand bug mark (a number that was based upon his current height, weight, and the size of his chakra reserves).
The number of different colonies he hosted had grown through the years since he'd gained his first seven colonies; his current count now at one hundred four colonies with a three/ten ratio between chakra associated bugs and the magic associated bugs with the type distribution as follows: forty tracking colonies (twelve chakra and twenty-eight magical), twenty-eight burrowing (eight chakra and twenty magical), twenty water (four chakra and sixteen magical), and sixteen wingless (all magical). Each colony consisted of approximately fifty-five bugs which actually gave him a total count of over fifty-seven hundred Kikaichu (only thirteen hundred of them actually associated with his chakra network).
At any given time there were no more than fifty-four hundred Kikaichu from his swarm within Satoshi's body as the other three hundred constantly monitored his surroundings or hitched rides on those people he was close to. He never placed bugs on people without permission, since his father had taught him that to do so was an invasion of privacy, unless he was tracking a target for a mission (case in point, he always kept a dozen on Tora to make the troublesome feline easier to hunt down and return to the Daimyou's wife).
Satoshi also frequently carried around anywhere from two to three hundred Kikaichu that were not part of his swarm; those bugs belonging to various members of the Aburame Clan so that they'd know if he was ever in trouble. That was in addition to the hundreds of wild ones that still flocked to him in order to feed on the wild energy inside of him (the steady drain on his magical core unknowingly exercising his core and gradually increasing his magical reserves in much the same way those that fed on his chakra helped to increase his chakra reserves).
Around the end of July, the two older boys were introduced to kenjutsu (one of the things on both of their lists that they had been interested in learning along with ninjutsu). At the same time, Satoshi was given lessons in beginning fuuinjutsu (one of Kushina's specialties) and something Shibi had thought Satoshi would excel at due to his eidetic memory (and therefore one of the things on Satoshi's wish list). By the middle of August, the young Genin had successfully learned to create storage scrolls and low powered exploding tags. He'd quickly and easily memorized the various kanji and symbols used to create various seals and the proper order in which to draw them; the hard part was learning how much chakra to infuse into the seals to make them work properly without having the attempts blowing up in his face.
Because of the dangers inherent in creating and using seals, it was one skill that Satoshi was forbidden from practicing or experimenting with on his own until he had at least two years of solid experience. The five year old shinobi didn't mind though, because he had more than enough other things to occupy himself with and Kushina made it a point to practice fuuinjutsu with him a minimum of three days a week and provided him with plenty of scrolls that he could read to improve his understanding of the different seals (those involving the sealing of bijuu or other such high ranked uses notably absent since he was far too young and inexperienced to learn those types of seals right now).
On the first two Saturdays of September, Team Four could be found sitting in the stands of the Konoha Shinobi Stadium cheering on Kakashi as the twelve year old Chuunin fought in the Team Melee and One on One Tournaments for the Jounin Exams. The preteen prodigy was the only shinobi participating in the Jounin Exams without the support of his teammates; though that in no way hindered his performance. Watching the two tournament events was an eye opening experience for Satoshi as he was given his first real look at shinobi were truly capable of if they put forth the effort.
Two days after the One on One Tournament, their team took a short lunch break from training to celebrate Kakashi's promotion to Jounin since Kushina was close to Minato (and his team) and Satoshi was friends with all three of the teens (or near teen in Kakashi's case) with Obito having been claimed as an older brother by the five year old. Satoshi still thought Kakashi was rather cold and stuck up and still disliked it when he picked on Obito but that didn't stop him from giving the twelve year old a new canteen (his old one was rather beat up) and a pack of shuriken (a gift to the new Jounin from Satoshi's father, who hadn't been able to join them because he had to work). Kotetsu and Izumo gave the rather standoffish preteen an assortment of brightly colored face masks (in pink, yellow, and lime green as well as a few that were flowered) as a joke with a couple of high quality black and dark blue ones thrown in the mix.
At the end of the short party, Minato ordered Satoshi to take back any and all Kikaichu he had on his team and the five year old frowned as he did so. That was when Satoshi learned that Minato's team would be taking an important mission outside of the village and while they wouldn't give him any details, Satoshi was smart enough to realize that they'd be on the front lines where most of the fighting was taking place. It was the only logical reason for the order to remove his Kikaichu this time when he'd not been given similar orders during previous missions that the older team had taken out of the village.
That knowledge had Satoshi really wanting to leave the Kikaichu with them so he'd know they were safe but he knew Minato would know if any of his bugs made their way back onto any of them. Satoshi watched them leave with a heavy heart as he listened to Kakashi and Obito bickering like usual and he prayed that they would come home safe.
His absent friends were soon pushed out of Satoshi's mind as Kushina piled more training on them; Satoshi especially since he had begun to mope the day after Minato's team had left. Kotetsu and Izumo were now learning tree walking the usual way; with the two of them competing to see who could reach the top of the tree first as they ran up the trunk of a tree and used a kunai to mark their progress. While they were doing that, Satoshi was learning to hang upside down on a branch while performing the leaf concentration exercise at the same time (Kushina spotting him to make certain he didn't get hurt when he inevitably fell each time his concentration broke).
Team Four was just starting their fifth month of training (and had completed over two hundred D Ranked missions; an average of three missions per day and sixty-eight days where they actually took missions), when a battered and exhausted Team Minato finally returned one member short and with one member injured.
Satoshi took Obito's death hard; the boisterous Uchiha had been an older brother to him practically from the day they'd met. The five year old sank into a major depression and barely even bothered to go through the motions of living day to day; he refused to eat for the most part and only put forth a pathetic effort at training when prodded by his father or Kushina. Four days after learning about Obito's death, a memorial service was held for those who had recently fallen (including Obito) on the front lines and Satoshi shut himself off completely. The five year old wasn't the only one grieving either; both Rin and Kakashi had taken Obito's death even harder because they both blamed themselves for their teammate's death.
A week after the memorial service, after the third day that Satoshi refused to even get out of bed and stopped responding to any outside stimuli when awake (despite the fact that he was obviously conscious), Inoichi was brought into delve into the little Genin's mind (something he'd done a handful of times through the years to insure the child was adjusting well to his new life and family). Inoichi withdrew within seconds of attempting to get through to the child; completely unable to break through the wall that the five year old had built around himself in his grief.
The meeting between Shibi, Inoichi, Kushina, Minato, and the Hokage that followed the failed mind delving lasted long into the night. All five adults were worried because Kakashi showed no signs of giving up his wallowing and Satoshi had apparently just given up completely (though he was really only trapped inside of his mind due to a burst of internalized accidental magic; not that the adults were aware of that). After much deliberation, it was determined that Kakashi needed to be shocked out of his self-pity as the twelve year old was their best chance of getting through to Satoshi because he was the closet remaining link they had to Obito (Rin and the various adults had all already tried and failed).
Shocking Kakashi out of his guilt riddled grief fell to Kushina, who stormed into the young Jounin's apartment and gave him a dose of the Akai Chishio no Habanero's temper and soundly whipped his butt up one side of the village and down the other. Kushina then dragged the thoroughly chastised (and liberally bruised) near-teen to the Aburame Compound where she proceeded to show him that other people needed him to be strong even if he couldn't be strong for himself.
Kakashi spent an hour trying to talk Satoshi out of his waking coma before he resorted to summoning Bisuke (Satoshi's favorite ninken out of the five ninken Kakashi could now summon) and ordered the friendly little dog to tickle and lick the five year old until he woke up. It took several hours and an additional two ninken but they finally broke through the wall that had kept Inoichi out and Satoshi pushed the dogs away after glancing at Kakashi once; intent on returning to his mind and his memories of his absent and much missed brother. Kakashi wasn't about to allow him to lock himself back in his mind though as he once more began talking.
"It's my fault that Obito-kun is dead," Kakashi rasped which made Satoshi snap his attention to the older boy. "It should have been me who died but Obito risked his life to save me. I was stupid. I always thought that I was the better ninja and in the end, Obito proved that he was better than me because he truly knew what was important. I wish I could go back and change what happened but I can't. Obito wouldn't want you to waste away grieving over him though…"
Kakashi's confession turned lecture was cut off abruptly as Satoshi punched him in the nose; his green eyes blazing with fury as he glared at Kakashi (his sunglasses had been left on the table beside his bed). He was currently too weak to break Kakashi's nose but he still managed to hit the older boy hard enough to make his nose bleed.
"You hated Obito-niisan! You have no right to tell me what he would or wouldn't want!" Satoshi hissed in English as he lashed out a second time and clipped Kakashi on the chin.
"You're right, I don't," Kakashi replied in the same language causing Satoshi to pause in confusion because he'd never heard the older boy ever speak English before. "I didn't realize how much Obito's friendship meant to me until it was too late. If it will make you feel better to hit me; I will not stop you."
That was all the invitation Satoshi needed as he gave a short cry and lunged at Kakashi swinging; most of his blows raining down on Kakashi's chest and stomach. The two weeks of near starving himself left Satoshi weak though and after no more than five minutes of furious blows, Satoshi stopped swinging and simply broke down and cried for the first time in over two years. Kakashi wrapped the younger boy in his arms at that point and simply held him as Satoshi finally allowed himself to properly grieve for his missing brother; the older boy shedding more than a few silent tears as well. In the living room, Shibi and Shoichi both smiled in relief as their Kikaichu reported what was happening in Satoshi's bedroom before they nodded to Minato, Kushina, and Inoichi who had been waiting anxiously to see if their plan had worked.
Team Minato was officially disbanded the next day; Minato to finish his training under the Sandaime in preparation of taking over as the Yondaime Hokage, Rin to the Konoha Hospital where she was furthering her medical training under Taji, and Kakashi temporarily assigned to assist Team Four while Satoshi recovered from his long depression. Kakashi spent nearly all of his free time with the five year old, telling him stories of Obito from their various missions (those that weren't classified) and training sessions. Once Satoshi rejoined his team for training, Kakashi continued to hang out with the Genin team as he helped train them and learned how to cope with the Sharingan Eye that Obito had given to him before he died.
The changes in both Satoshi and Kakashi were patently obvious to anyone that knew them; with Kakashi being far more open and accepting in addition to taking on Obito's tendency to be late all the time while Satoshi began hiding his emotions more often and with greater efficiency. Aside from his parents and grandfather; Kushina, Kotetsu, Izumo, and Kakashi were the only ones that could make Satoshi laugh out loud or get him to play around like a normal kid and that was only when no one else was around. Even the friends he'd made during his year at the academy couldn't draw him out like they had before but that was mostly because he rarely ever saw them any more.
Once Satoshi had recovered what strength he lost during his depression, he threw himself into his training with single-minded purpose; pushing himself harder then before. Kushina and Shibi monitored him closely during this time but let him push his body to its limits since they knew it was yet another part of the grieving process. By the end of October, Satoshi slowed down without being told as he finally began to come to terms with Obito's death and he soon fell back into a routine that was only slightly more difficult than the routine he'd followed prior to the thirteen year old's death. Around the same time, the war between Iwa and Konoha finally came to an end as the Sandaime Tsuchikage and the Sandaime Hokage signed a treaty agreement after the Tsuchikage was forced to surrender.
On November first, Namikaze Minato was sworn into office as the Yondaime Hokage while Orochimaru watched bitterly from the side (the man furious that Sarutobi had not chosen him as his successor). That coupled with a hundred other minor slights (including the refusal to allow him to train the young Aburame prodigy) saw Orochimaru begin to plot the downfall of Konoha (his previous desire had been to rule the village) though his plans and secret experiments (which he'd been running for years now) would not come to light until early December. Satoshi feared for his friend, Anko, when he learned that she had gone with Orochimaru when he left; though her two teammates had been left behind.
In the wake of Orochimaru's deflection and subsequent escape a month after Minato's inauguration, the AnBu discovered the human experimentations that Orochimaru had been conducting. There was only one survivor found; a young ten year old orphan that had vanished shortly after he'd passed the Chuunin exam some four years earlier whose name was Tenzou. The shaken child was discovered to have undergone some kind of genetic experiment that granted him the ability to use the Shodai Hokage's Mokuton bloodline limit. Satoshi was only peripherally aware of this though as his attention was still focused on his absent friend.
Over the course of the next year and a half, Satoshi would flourish as a shinobi along with his two teammates. His skills in fuuinjutsu and genjutsu (once he was introduced to the art of illusion) grew in leaps and bounds as did his chakra control and his ability to command and control his Kikaichu. His taijutsu and ninjutsu skills remained about average due to his small stature and still growing chakra coils but his excellent chakra control, speed, and accuracy helped make up for what he lacked in stamina and power.
The other new skill he was introduced to during this time was kenjutsu in order to extend his reach since while he'd grown, he was still rather short and petite for his age (due to his biological family's genetics and not because of outside influence or an imbalanced diet). Because his clan didn't have a kenjutsu style (since few of his clansmen bothered with swords or skills outside of the academy basics and their swarms), Kushina opted to teach him how to wield a set of wakizashi blades in the Uzumaki style due to his speed and flexibility. She would give him a set of weighted wooden practice blades for training and a stern warning not to even touch a real blade until she said he could.
Early on during those eighteen months, Minato and Kushina finally tied the knot in a small, private ceremony (the two Jounin had danced about their feelings for each other for over six years). The two reasons that the pair did not announce the happy occasion to the entire village were due to Minato's numerous enemies and Kushina's mostly hidden status as the Jinchuuriki of the nine-tailed fox.
The change in Kushina's familial status didn't change the fact that she was a slave driver when it came to her team's training – not that her Genin had ever expected it to. Her reasoning was that they needed to prepare for their first C Rank mission that would take them out of the village for the first time and eventually the Chuunin Exams which they'd be allowed to enter the following year if they reached their goals for the year.
Roughly three months after Kushina and Minato were married, Anko was found and returned to Konoha bearing Orochimaru's Cursed Seal and Team Four (under Satoshi's influence) were amongst the few in the village (shinobi or civilian) that didn't shun the kunoichi for her former association with the Snake Sannin. Anko tried to push them away but Satoshi stubbornly refused to be chased off and his teammates willingly stood by him.
Kotetsu and Izumo made certain that Satoshi didn't get hurt (emotionally or physically) as well as tried to impress upon the confrontational kunoichi that they didn't care about her association with Orochimaru. It would take months before she finally gave up on chasing the stubborn trio off but she did eventually accept that they were going to be a relatively permanent fixture in her life. Her reluctant acceptance pleased Satoshi to no end and eased his fear that he would loose another friend (Obito's death still affecting him and always would on some level).
It was about that time that it became obvious that their team was forming into a highly versatile team due their combined skills. They were a fairly strong offensive team with Kotetsu and Izumo a hard hitting close range duo whose attacks were devastating when they worked in tandem with each other while Satoshi provided long range support with his Kikaichu and genjutsu. They were also good at infiltration and reconnaissance due to Satoshi's Kikaichu and Kotetsu and Izumo's ability to sneak in and out of most any building (a skill they'd developed during their pranking years at the Academy).
Furthermore, tracking and capturing bandits and low level thugs was fairly easy for Team Four since Satoshi could use his Kikaichu to track their quarry through any terrain and in most any type of weather while Izumo's bloodline limit allowed them to capture their target with minimal risk when paired with one of Satoshi's genjutsu. Once Satoshi turned six, that versatility would often see their team providing support to older teams during high ranked C and low ranked B missions outside of the village. Satoshi came to love those out of village missions; visiting new places and learning all kinds of new things appealing to his inquisitive nature (once he'd stopped suppressing that part of him in his grief over Obito's death).
It was not long after Satoshi's sixth birthday that Satoshi learned his adoptive mother was pregnant. Satoshi loved the idea of being a big brother but secretly worried that his parents only wanted to replace him because he wasn't good enough (a left over insecurity from when he was younger). Kotetsu and Izumo were rather quick to pick up on Satoshi's fears and they didn't hesitate to corner him to find out what was bothering him. That was the day that Satoshi finally told his teammates that he was adopted after his father had found him in the forest and that he hadn't been born in the Elemental Countries; the only two secrets he'd kept from them.
Shibi and Mayumi were also quick to pick up on Satoshi's insecurities and they both did their best to reassure the troubled six and a half year old that they still loved him just as much as they did before and that they were not trying to replace him. Shibi also didn't hesitate to tell Satoshi that he believed he would be a good big brother to the little tick once he was born. The moment that Satoshi learned the baby had been given his or her own nickname instead of being called by Satoshi's nickname (which was still little bug), most of his worries were set to rest as he now had solid proof he wasn't being replaced.
It also helped that the way his parents and grandfather treated him when he was home between missions hadn't really changed beyond the fact that his mother was less inclined to participate in strenuous physical activities. They also sought to include him in the preparations that were being made for the baby; such as helping to turn the second bedroom into a nursery, picking out furniture for the nursery, and baby proofing the house. It was also about that time that Satoshi was given a watered down version of the 'Talk' in order to help him understand where babies came from.
The small family of three would welcome Satoshi's little brother, Shino, into the world on the twenty-third of January in nineteen-eighty-seven. Satoshi was immediately fascinated by his baby brother; he'd never seen such a small baby up close bar the handful of memories he had of his birth parents holding him up in front of a mirror and those didn't really count. The last of his insecurities revolving around his new brother would be smothered the first time he held the little tick and they would be replaced with feelings of protectiveness that would only grow fiercer as both boys grew older.
Less than a week after Satoshi's brother was born, Team Four would venture forth to Kumogakure to participate in the Chuunin Exams for the first time. And while Satoshi had been taking missions outside of Konoha for the past six and a half months this would be his first time stepping outside of Fire Country (not counting the two and a half years he lived outside of the Hidden Countries prior to being found and adopted by Shibi) and for the first time since Obito's death you could actually see the six year old's excitement as he practically skipped all the way to Kumo.
There were an additional seven teams traveling to Kumo with them. Out of the twenty-four Genin heading to Kumo, the six Genin from Teams Four and One (Orochimaru's former team now under a new sensei) were, by far, the youngest in the group; the rest of the Genin all in their late teens. Those teams were mostly made up of Genin who'd not managed to stand out on the battlefield during the course of the war where shinobi were sometimes promoted in the field when they displayed exemplary behavior or judgment. Many of those older Genin were amused and annoyed in turns by Satoshi's blatant enthusiasm as he chattered endlessly about his new little brother to anyone that would listen.
Kumo was a sight to see for the six and a half year old and his Kikaichu (now numbering just over eleven thousand) went on a whirlwind tour for him so that he could see everything (though they did not invade anyone's privacy and they avoided those places where they'd cause trouble if they were discovered – such as Kumo's library).
They were given three days to register and rest after arriving in the city and the Jounin that had made the journey with them ensured all of the Konoha teams registered first thing before they retired to their hotel rooms to rest and prepare for the first exam; which would be a written exam. During those days of rest, Kushina (who'd visited Kumo previously) took Team Four on a short tour of the markets to allow them time to shop for souvenirs since they wouldn't have another chance once the exams started. Their team also sized up some of their competition as they moved through the streets, though that was difficult when it came to Kumo Genin; the other Hidden Villages that sent teams to the exams being rather easy to pick out thanks to their hitai-ate and uniforms.
On the day of the first portion of the test, Satoshi, Kotetsu, and Izumo took care to dress with care and pack all of their ninja tools since they'd been warned that the second test usually took place immediately after the first test for those that passed the written portion. Like Obito had before him when Satoshi had first earned his hitai-ate, Kakashi had taken Satoshi aside and warned him about what he could expect to face during the exam before asking him to be careful and telling the six and a half year old that failing the exam didn't matter so long as he came home alive and in one piece.
Satoshi had passed that information on to his teammates shortly afterwards as he'd long since stopped keeping secrets from his two teammates (not counting clan secrets like the family jutsu and the wild energy inside of him that wasn't chakra). Once they were ready, Kushina escorted them to the entrance of Kumo's Shinobi Academy and wished them luck before she left to join the other Jounin.
The first trial they needed to pass was actually making it to the classroom where their test would take place as a number of Kumo Chuunin had taken up post just inside of the academy doors in order to discourage teams from actually taking the test. Team Four made it passed the obstruction by a bit of misdirection with Satoshi creeping by on his hands and knees under a low level genjutsu while Kotetsu and Izumo provided a loud distraction. Once he was clear, Satoshi then returned the favor for his teammates by hitting the group if Chuunin in the back of the head with water balloons filled to the bursting with shaving cream (just two of the many prank supplies that Izumo and Kotetsu brought with them in the reusable storage scrolls that Satoshi had made for them).
Unsurprisingly, a number of other teams took advantage of Team Four's mayhem in order to sneak through; including the other seven teams from Konoha. The Jounin who'd been watching the security cameras that monitored the blockade were mildly amused by the underhanded tactic because it wasn't malicious and effectively neutralized the Chuunin long enough for several teams to get through without completely disabling the checkpoint for those teams that arrived after them.
As the Konoha teams stepped inside of the classroom, the Chuunin proctors that would be monitoring the exam handed them each a slip of paper with a number on it that corresponded to a number on the desk they were to sit at, effectively splitting up teams. Satoshi felt his first stab of nervousness over being separated from his teammates and the other Konoha Genin but he quickly buried it as he took his seat between a Sunagakure Genin and a Kirigakure Genin. Twenty-five minutes later, the bell signaling the start of the test rang and the Kumo Jounin administering the written test arrived to explain the rules while the Chuunin proctors passed out the test sheets (face down) and pencils.
The rules of the test were simple; each question was worth one point and each time they were caught cheating, five points would be subtracted from their score. If a person was caught cheating five times, then that person's entire team would be disqualified and kicked out of the exam. Five minutes after that, they were told to start the test and that they would have exactly forty-five minutes to complete all twenty-five questions.
Satoshi had no trouble completing all of the questions in less than thirty minutes thanks to his eidetic memory, the advanced lessons his father and grandfather had given him to keep him from growing bored, and his Kikaichu. His Kikaichu were then used to help his teammates answer all of the questions when he had the miniscule wingless colonies congregate on their test papers and spell out the answers to those questions they were struggling with in English so no one would know what the bugs were doing.
During that time, about one fifth of the teams that had come to take the tests were disqualified and kicked out because they were caught cheating more than five times. That still left well over one hundred and fifty Genin to take the second half of the written exam and move on to the second exam if they passed. When the final portion of the written test came, Satoshi was shocked to his core and would have been in a blind panic if not for Kakashi warning him that it would be a trick question whose meaning he would have to figure out in a set time limit.
Kumo's trick question wasn't actually a trick question but more of a trick order; they'd been told that to pass the written portion of the exam and move onto the next test each team would have to kill their weakest member. If they refused to follow through with the order, they would be asked to leave the room while if they failed to kill the weakest member after agreeing to the order, then they would fail the test and never be allowed to take the Chuunin Exams again. Kotetsu and Izumo were the first ones up out of their seats refusing to follow through with such an order without even an ounce of hesitation; the two of them calmly gathered the stunned Satoshi and carried him out of the room.
They were the first team to actually pass the task since it had been a test of their ability to accept their teammates even if they had weaknesses instead of cutting their losses just to gain a promotion. Only three quarters of the teams that had made it through the written portion of the first exam passed that trick question while the other quarter failed because they were willing to murder a teammate for selfish reasons. Satoshi thanked his teammates for dragging him out of there before he said something stupid and insulted all Kumo shinobi and embarrassed Konoha.
The two older boys just laughed and told him that they'd been worried Satoshi would be tempted to take them both out which made those foreign shinobi eavesdropping on their conversation frown since they had pegged Satoshi as the weakest member of Team Four because of his age and size. Satoshi just laughed in response to the teasing which only served to further confuse those that had been eavesdropping on their conversation.
The thirty-nine teams moving onto the next portion of the Chuunin Exam were then led out of the Academy building by the Jounin Proctor of the next task to the entrance of a cave that the Kumo shinobi fondly called the Circle of Death. The Circle of Death was actually a man-made series of tunnels that had been carved through the cliffs; linking together a series of natural caves within the mountains that Kumo's Administration Building (which also housed the Raikage's Office) had been built upon. Inside of those caverns lurked all kinds of deadly denizens but the biggest danger was the caverns themselves since there were frequent cave-ins, an endless maze of hidden crevices, and hundreds of man-made traps spread through out the seventy mile tunnel ring.
Their objectives; to run the gamut in seven days, collect one of fifteen stone spheres scattered throughout the Circle of Death, and escape the caverns with all three of their teammates alive and conscious. The fact that there were only fifteen sphere's available meant that more than half of the teams that entered the cavern would fail right from the start. It also meant that there would be fierce competition to hold onto one of the spheres if you managed to find one.
Satoshi wasn't worried about the natural obstacles (both living and non-living) inside of the caves since he was confident that his Kikaichu could guide them safely through the tunnels. What he was worried about was their competition due to the fact that there were no rules in place to prevent the teams from killing each other in their quest to locate or steal a sphere. Several other teams were also worried about their chances as four teams dropped out of the exam at that point while the other thirty-five teams (including Team Four) signed the required waivers and lined up in groups of nine (or three teams) at one of the twelve entrances to the Circle of Death to wait for the signal to start.
Five days later, just before sunset, Kotetsu and Izumo carried Satoshi and one of the stone spheres out of the Circle of Death. They were the first team to navigate the cavern and carry out a sphere (three teams had cleared the cave before them but had failed to gain a sphere for one reason or another). Their pass came at a high cost though as Satoshi had been seriously injured when their team had the misfortune to run into the Jinchuuriki of the Nibi. He'd been raked across the chest from left shoulder to right hip by Ni'i Yugito's chakra enshrouded claws when the desperate teen had transformed into her one-tailed state and attacked their team towards the end of their fourth day in the caves less than an hour after they'd managed to find and retrieve one of the sought after spheres.
Satoshi had, at the time, run back and jumped in front of Izumo who'd tripped over a rock while they were trying to flee from the stronger Genin. Pain, anger, and fear had triggered his first bout of external accidental magic in almost five years; the magic flinging the enraged Jinchuuriki across a distance of over twenty meters and slamming her into a wall. The older teen had hit the wall with enough force that it had knocked the young host unconscious and out of her one-tailed state as well as triggered a minor cave-in that separated the three of them from the Jinchuuriki.
Satoshi's Kikaichu (those that hadn't died the moment they were exposed to the bijuu's chakra) had used their bodies to stop his wounds from bleeding too heavily and Satoshi used his chakra to put on a henge to hide the wound to avoid letting any other teams they ran into know that he'd been seriously injured and therefore reveal that their team was an easy target. Kotetsu and Izumo then spent all night and most of the next day taking turns carrying their injured teammate (their sphere safely hidden in a storage scroll).
Satoshi fought to remain conscious as he was carried despite the pain and his magical exhaustion so that he could use his swarm to guide them quickly and safely around any obstacles in their rush to escape the caverns. Their team barely passed the task and that was only because they had a sphere, made it out within the seven day time limit, and all three of them had been conscious when they stepped out of the cave. Satoshi would pass out the instant he received confirmation that their team had passed the task.
He would then spend the next thirty-six hours at the mercy of a medical team to have the five gashes cleaned, stitched, and bandaged; the bijuu's tainted chakra that clung to the wounds preventing them from being fully healed through the use of medical jutsu. Kushina was beyond pissed when she learned that they had encountered a Jinchuuriki that recklessly entered the one-tail state and would have made a big deal out of it if not for Satoshi quietly reminding her (in English) that doing so would only draw more attention to him and raise questions as to how he had survived the attack and how their team had escaped.
When that still didn't change Kushina's mind about raising a stink, Satoshi wrote down that he'd stopped the partially transformed Jinchuuriki cold with a bloodline limit (which is what his family believed his magic to be) that his family didn't want anyone finding out about. That information made Kushina pause and reconsider, as none of the Aburame had even hinted that Satoshi had a Kekkei Genkai. The fact that said bloodline limit stopped a rampaging Jinchuuriki long enough for the three Genin to escape was knowledge that they couldn't risk revealing to the world at large.
The scroll he'd written that information down on (in English of course) was promptly destroyed to prevent anyone from finding and deciphering it and Satoshi's teammates were promptly sworn to secrecy about what they'd seen Satoshi do while in the Circle of Death.
Translations: Japanese to English
Akai Chishio no Habanero – Red Hot-Blooded Habanero
Gaki – brat
Hai – yes
Iwagakure (Iwa) – Hidden Rock Village
Jinchuuriki – demon container; demon host (also called the power of a living sacrifice or something similar, I think)
Kenjutsu – sword technique
Kinobori no Waza – Act of Tree Climbing
Kirigakure (Kiri) – Hidden Mist Village
Konohagakure (Konoha) – Hidden Leaf Village
Kumogakure (Kumo) – Hidden Cloud Village
Kyuubi – one of the Bijuu; nine tailed fox
Mizuame Nabara – Starch Syrup Capture Field
Mokuton – Wood Release (combination of Earth and Water)
Mushi Bunshin no Jutsu – Insect Clone Technique
Mushi Yose no Jutsu – Insect Gathering Technique
Nibi – one of the Bijuu; two-tailed cat
Oneechan/neechan – a childish or cute way of addressing an older sister
Oniisan/niisan - older brother
Sandaime Hokage – Third Fire Shadow
Sandaime Tsuchikage – Third Earth Shadow
Shodai Hokage – First Fire Shadow
Sunagakure (Suna) – Hidden Sand Village
Wakizashi – type of Japanese sword usually between 30 and 60 centimeters long.
Notes:
Izumo's supposed Kekkei Genkai – yes, I am fully aware that the Mizuame Nabara is not listed as a Kekkei Genkai in canon but I'm taking creative license to call it one in this story.
