Mokuton Child

I doubt anyone actually pays attention to these disclaimers, but just to be sure: I don't own Naruto.

Naruto was moved from the orphanage the next morning.

He hadn't gone back the night before, having slept in the Hokage tower, on a musty spare futon someone had pulled out from somewhere. He hadn't really wanted to stay, but the old man insisted, and it was kinda cool, sleeping in the same place the Hokage worked. Even so, he had expected to be able to go back to the place he had lived all his life the next day - only for the old man to tell him that he was going someplace else.

"A new home Naruto, all to yourself. As an orphan of Konoha, your needs will be covered by a subsidary fund, until you graduate as a shinobi or reach the age of sixteen, whichever of the two comes first. I have spoken to the woman in charge of the building; she is willing to provide meals for you and oversee the basic necessities, although you would be in charge of cleaning, I'm afraid. It's an old building, and there aren't many other tenants - you would have the top floor to yourself. Wouldn't you like that?"

Naruto did like that, as it happened, but he liked what came next even more. The old man had rooted around in his desk for a moment, before coming back up with a piece of paper, a list of names marching over it in neat black lettering. There was a long title heading the paper, but there was only one word in it that interested Naruto, and that word was Academy.

"You're old enough to start there Naruto, and that is only the beginning of your ninja career - if, of course, you are agreeable to it."

"Of course!" Naruto was indignant that the Hokage could ever think otherwise. "Just you wait, old man - I'm gonna be the most awesome ninja ever, even better than you!"

The old geezer chuckled at that, ruffling his hair. "I'm sure you will, Naruto. Now, if that is all, I think it's time you went to your new home."

His new home turned out to be a squat, three-story building with small windows, the white plaster outside stained beige by age, buried in a civilian district. It was all very neat, with square slices of sharp grass, blooms of red and pink in firmly potted flowers at the windows and narrow, cobbled streets that were all long lines and severe right angles. It looked boring, and part of Naruto wanted nothing more to start livening it up, perhaps with that bright orange paint he'd pinched from the arts and crafts cupboard - but no. He couldn't do that. If he started causing trouble, they might kick him back to the orphanage, and the orphanage-

bright red eyes kunai flashing

-wasn't safe. He'd be able to make the place cooler when he was a proper ninja - until then, he'd just have to grit his teeth and hope it got less boring once he'd been living there longer.

An old woman, the papery folds of her eyelids scrunched up against the morning sun, was introduced to him as Oshiro Akahana, the landlord of the building. She didn't look particularly pleased to see him, and she haggled with the ANBU about what her duties were in a horrible croaking voice that sounded as if her lungs could crumble at any given breath. They had arranged that she would cook for him and do his laundry in exchange for a load of money, and she didn't sound happy about it at all, the miserable old grouch. But Naruto didn't care about any of that, because she eventually gave him the keys to his new home, and it was awesome.

OK, the place was old - really old; the old lady had muttered something about not having a tenant in his room since the start of the Yondaime's reign, and Naruto knew that had been ages ago. The actual building had been made long ago, and he could feel that in the ripple of the wood under his feet, the vaulted ceiling with its thin braced support beams, the way he had felt the aged creak of the wood, not in his ears, but all the way down in his bones as they went up...

Yeah.

He couldn't explain how he knew that sort of thing, but just by looking around his new home, Naruto could see it wasn't very big, and he couldn't even work most of the things in the tiny kitchen, or figure out how to clean it like the old lady said he had to or there'd be Consequences. But it was his, this one-bedroom apartment with the squeaky floor and humming air-conditioning, and that made it brilliant. He went to sleep in the narrow bed happily, and had no dreams.

The next morning, one of the masked men turned up to collect him for Academy registration, waiting patiently by the door as he struggled into one of the few sets of clothes that had been brought over from the orphanage. They wouldn't speak to him, only grunting at his questions, but that was fine. Naruto was going to start on his journey to become the best ninja that ever lived, and eventually people like this wouldn't be able to ignore him any more.


The Academy's yard was full of kids by the time they arrived, their parents standing at the sidelines, chuckling as they watched their children play. Naruto wanted to join in with the games, but some of the parents were nudging each other and glaring in his direction. The old man had told him he should just ignore it when they did stuff like this, but Naruto glared back - he wasn't going to let them act like he wasn't here any more.

A large man came out of the doors of the Academy, and began waving his arms as he called out to the mass of kids in the yard. "Children! Please get into an orderly line and come to the door!"

It took a lot of pushing and shoving, which Naruto happily participated in, but eventually everyone was in something that, if not orderly, at least resembled something of a line. The man sighed as he looked over them, but he welcomed them to the Academy anyway, telling them that his name was Funeno Daikoku and that he'd be their teacher. Before long, they were being directed into a classroom, and told to find a place to sit. Lots of the other kids had friends already, so Naruto sat nearer to the back, where there was less risk of being shoved out of the way. Two other boys were sitting there, a Nara with spiky hair and a large boy who was gulping from a large packet of crisps, and a small girl with blank white eyes was sitting to the left. He smiled at them, and got a lackluster nod from the Nara, while the girl squeaked and went bright pink, which he thought was a bit weird.

The guy at the front began telling them that they were now part of the Academy, the beginning of their path to becoming a ninja of Konoha and what a responsibility that was. As he began droning on and on about how only hard work could take them forward now and the need to study well in order to succeed, Naruto let his attention drift. He really wanted to be a ninja and all, and he'd work, but why was it all so boring?

Suddenly, one of the floorboards creaked, and the guy let out a cry of surprise as it splintered under his foot, jolting him from his speech. The class burst into giggles and he smiled painfully wagging his finger. "As you can see, class, the first lesson a ninja must learn is to always be prepared - and to keep their floors properly maintained."

Everyone else seemed to find it funny, but Naruto squirmed in his seat. He had a nasty feeling about what had just caused that wooden floor to change, and he knew deep down that the old man wouldn't be pleased if he found out. He couldn't just concentrate on being a ninja now - he'd also have to keep his attention fixed, or face more wooden things coming alive around him. It was brilliant in a way, knowing he had such an awesome bloodline, but on the other hand...He'd prefer to wait until he could use it properly before being able to show it off as he wanted to.

But then the guy started talking again, and it was so boring, and Naruto let his attention drift once again.


After only a few days in the Academy, Naruto found to his frustration that learning to be a ninja wasn't nearly so fun as he'd thought it would be. Sitting in the classroom, staring at bits of paper for ages was bad enough - there was nothing to do, and he got so bored, trying to make sense of the stupid sentences on the page - especially when he had to stay still for ages, listening to teachers talk and talk for ages. Whenever he tried to liven it up, he got sent out of the room, or had to stay behind once everyone else had gone home, doing nothing but kicking his feet against the desk while a teacher glared at him from the front. Naruto didn't see what being a ninja had to do with learning how to write kanji neatly, or knowing the dates of the Shodai's reign, or looking at stupid chakra diagrams, but for some reason, it was apparently Very Important, which didn't make it any less suckish.

The best parts of going to the Academy was when they were allowed to go outside to learn how to throw shuriken and spar with each other, but even that involved work, like 'calculating trajectory distance' and a whole lot of other long, boring words. It didn't help that, no matter how hard he flung his shuriken, Naruto missed way more often that he hit, something that the other kids made fun of him quite a bit for. Sparring was fun, and he was way better at it, 'cause he could stand getting punched way more than some of the other kids could - but even then, the teachers told him that he was sloppy, and even he could see that the people from ninja clans, like that Sasuke guy, were already way better than he was.

At his new home, he and the old lady who owned the building avoided each other as much as possible, even though Naruto knew the old man had told her to cook and clean for him. She left him meals in the foyer, but they were often cold and damp by the time he got to them, or weren't really that much at all, and she certainly didn't try to clean his place, which had become so messy that the orphanage staff would've thrown about a hundred fits about it. On the plus side, she didn't bother him about going to bed early, or brushing his teeth or anything, which was pretty awesome, and at times he could stay up playing for as long as he wanted. Some days, he woke up so tired that he just snoozed his way through class, only waking up when an irate teacher would throw some chalk at him, or just stared blearily at his work, not even bothering to try filling it in.

Other days, he didn't bother going in at all, and it was on one of those days when he found the flowers.

They'd belonged to one of the tenants who lived below; he'd left suddenly in the last few days, and Naruto could guess why, given how the old lady seemed even more angry with him than usual these last couple days. So quickly had the guy left that a lot of his stuff had been abandoned, and the old lady had been quick to pitch them in the rubbish. She'd piled up the flowers in the landing, waiting for a genin team to come and remove them, and Naruto, skulking about to avoid going into school, had seen them right away. They were so colourful, all of them - reds, greens, golds, blues, bright pink, even orange, the best colour of all. They were all way too nice to just throw away, and so he decided to rescue them.

It took a lot of huffing and heaving, and left a trail of dirt on the landing that the old lady would probably kill him for, but Naruto managed to drag all of the pots inside his apartment. Some of the flowers he recognised - daffodils, trailing ivy, miniature roses, geraniums - from the ones the orphanage used to have, but mostly they were a riotous splash of colour in the dinginess of his apartment, and that made them brilliant enough in his eyes. He settled them all in as best as he could, 'cause he knew plants needed sunlight and water, and on the days he actually went to the academy, he'd always rush home to check on them as soon as possible.

He needn't have worried. It didn't take much for those plants to grow. The shriveled husks swelled into colour within days, shimmering ivy tendrils snaked through the air, and against his window, flowers bloomed, turning the light into a haze of green and shadowing the apartment in darkness.


"This is a bad idea," Yuki hissed, pale eyes darting about nervously as they pressed their way through the bustling streets of Konoha. "A really bad idea. Why won't you listen to me?"

Kiyumi lifted one shoulder, resolutely not looking in her teammate's direction. "No one asked you to come."

Yuki tossed her hair, the ornaments glinting in her dark auburn locks catching the sunlight and casting jeweled tones across her creamy skin. It would have looked far more attractive had it not been for the murderous look on her face, as well as the fact that Kiyumi was fairly sure it had been an attempt to throw her off track. "Very mature, I must say. I hate to break it to you, but no one asked you either. In fact, right now, I am very much asking you not to."

Kiyumi waved a hand, deftly avoiding a protruding fruit stall. Her katana was slung over her back in its plain sheath, the handle jutting over her shoulder, and the weight of it was steadying even through her nerves. "Look, it's not serious, OK? I just want to check that he's doing alright."

"He's got the Hokage looking after him," Yuki persisted, one hand on Kiyumi's sleeve as they wound their way through the crowds. "The Hokage. You may recall him. Elderly, wears a hat, the most powerful ninja in the village? If Naruto has him watching out for him, then he's probably not in any danger - though we could be, if you don't stop being foolish. Remember how Sandaime-sama acted in his office? He looked as though he might rip someone apart when we were done. They've probably already caught whoever was responsible...Well, I mean, if there was anyone else responsible."

Despite her attempts at a calming tone, Yuki looked a little green as she spoke, clearly remembering just what had happened to the one person they could be sure had done something. Kiyumi said nothing, but a cold feeling had slithered through her stomach with every word Yuki spoke. In many ways, her teammate was right. The Hokage had looked furious when they brought Naruto in, and she didn't doubt any more than Yuki that no one would dare to touch the kid if the most powerful ninja in the village was watching over him. That Naruto had also been moved from the orphanage so quickly also spoke to the fact that he was being looked after. Really, she wasn't needed at all by him - and she certainly didn't want to give the Hokage any idea that she might have somehow been involved in what had happened to him.

But then, in a way, she had been. Senzai had been part of the Uchiha clan, and a shame on one of them was a shame on them all. That was what Kiyumi had always been taught, and to her mind, there was little more shame than could be found in trying to kill a child - and worse than that, a child who had no clan, no family to defend him. The very thought that someone could do that made her blood boil, and the fact that her kin had done that, tried to hurt a kid who couldn't have done anything to him - it made Kiyumi sick, in a cold, lurching way that she couldn't forget, no matter what the Hokage said.

Worse than that, however, had been the reaction of her clan. Uchiha Senzai's remains - and she didn't envy whoever it was that had had to retrieve them from that monstrous tree - had been returned to them, but Kiyumi would not have known that if she hadn't gone on her normal weekly trip to visit her parents' graves in the ancient Uchiha cemetery. Their polished block of a gravestone had been the same as ever, decked out as it was with the wilting flowers from last week's visit, but not two rows away had been another grave, that of Uchiha Sayuri. Her name had been etched on the stone along with that of her spouse, his name marked in red ink to show that he still lived. Now, that red ink was washed away, and the two had been reunited in death, Uchiha Sayuri and Uchiha Senzai. As if the man had been any other Uchiha. As if he had done nothing wrong.

The unnerving thing was how...silent everyone had been on the subject. It was as if Senzai had been dead for years instead of little more than a week. His house had been cleared out by grim-faced Uchiha officers, no one spoke his name, and when Kiyumi tried to ask her aunt about it, she had been brushed off with a brusque "he died on a mission." No one else in the clan knew what she had seen, and her tongue had burned with the urge to scream that no, it hadn't been a mission, it had been a cowardly, evil attempt to murder a child and covering it up like this meant that something seriously sick was going on. She might have thought that it was shame at what he had done, an attempt to pretend that he had never existed...except that it had all been done with the air of any other comrade dying on a mission, and something was definitely up about it.

So.

Uzumaki Naruto.

Kiyumi wasn't going to pretend she knew a great deal about the kid - certainly no more than Yuki - but what she did know was troubling. No family, a troublemaker - though, considering that he was a tiny kid who looked no more than six, Kiyumi didn't have a lot of sympathy for the adults who got caught by his pranks - and on the receiving end of an icy contempt that she hadn't bothered to think about until she came face to face with the results. The terrified look in his eyes when she saw him crouched in that little hollow, the way he'd clung to her when she lifted him up, his obvious fear when he walked into the Hokage's office had all stayed with her even when the Hokage sent her away. Maybe it was nothing now, but she still just want to check that he was OK - and if Yuki didn't like it, she could go play fetch with Kegawa.

Unfortunately, the Hyuuga proved resistant to that idea, and she was still nagging Kiyumi when they turned the corner and saw the house that a gossiping Yamanaka had let slip she'd seen "that horrible boy" emerge from several times. Kiyumi coughed as they neared the brightly painted red door. "You can still leave, you know."

Yuki crossed her arms defiantly. "If you insist on getting yourself into these sort of situations, then I suppose someone has to make sure you can get out of them. I refuse to stay stuck on a team with only Kegawa if, if you get yourself in trouble over this."

Making a face at the mention of their teammate, Kiyumi raised a hand, preparing to knock on the door. However, before her knuckles could make contact, the door swung open, and they were greeted with the sight of one of the most sour-faced old women Kiyumi had ever seen - and that was saying a lot, considering some of the Uchiha clan's matriarchs. Wrapped up in a bright floral kimono, with a huge pair of spectacles perched on the end of her thin nose, she looked as though Kiyumi could snap her in half with one finger, not that you could tell by the glare she was fixing on them.

"Yes? What do you want?"

Kiyumi put on her most charming smile, which didn't appear to soothe the hag much. "We came to see Uzumaki Naruto, ma'am. Is he here?"

The old woman's expression curdled as soon as she mentioned his name, but she gave a stiff little nod, and gestured at them with one brightly-coloured sleeve to come inside. They followed her into a plain, narrow hallway, up a flight of rickety stairs, and then onto a landing, down which marched several small doors. As the old lady headed for one, Kiyumi exchanged a troubled look with her teammate. Even here, in Naruto's own home, there seemed to be no end of disdain for the kid - and she'd let them in awfully quickly. Given what had happened to Naruto, the fact that she was so nonchalant about allowing people into see him was a bit disturbing.

Unless there were other people watching over him. The thought made Kiyumi shiver, and her eyes flickered to the windows. There were no ANBU crouched outside the glass, but then, ANBU was like that. You didn't see them until it was too late.

The old lady gave one short rap upon the nearest door before turning and heading down the staircase without a backwards glance. Kiyumi watched her for a few moments before she heard the click of a latch, and the door swung open.

Uzumaki Naruto blinked up at the two of them, for a moment looking rather like a startled rabbit. Then he smiled suddenly, and his whole face seemed lit up by it. "Hello, Kiyumi-chan, Yuki-chan!"

Well, that was an encouraging reaction, although Kiyumi tried hard not to think what it meant that he was so happy to see a pair of near-strangers. She cleared her throat over Yuki's outraged mutter, mustering her own smile for the kid. "Hey, Naruto. We just dropped by to see how you were doing. Mind if we come in?"

He nodded his head, and pulled open the door, and Kiyumi was at once hit by the strangest mix of smells she had ever encountered. There was a strong, musty stench to the air, accompanied by the reek of stale food and unwashed clothes - but all of that was nearly lost under the damp, rich smell of the air, laden with a dozen sharply sweet scents that enveloped her senses in a dizzying cloud. When she entered the apartment, she saw why.

The place was an absolute tip. Dirty plates were piled high in the sink, marinated in grimy grey water, clothes were strewn haphazardly around the place, the carpet was thick with dust and the floor littered with the practice kunai and shuriken they gave out at the Academy. It was a mess, it was chaos, it was, in short, exactly what Kiyumi might have expected a place to look like that was entirely run by a small child. But what was not expected were the plants.

They bloomed at the windows, in the corner, crowded in boxes lined against the walls, in tin cans on the counters, perched carefully on the window-sills, a veritable jungle of plants that had no business growing here, this cramped, dark apartment with only a kid to look after them. Yet they had flourished, including ones Kiyumi was fairly sure didn't belong inside. Ivy crawled up in the walls in trails of shimmering white and green, miniature roses in every colour trailed thorns from their pots, daffodils shone from several corners and forget-me-nots frothed from a can by the door, whilst other flowers she didn't know flamed in rows along the walls. As Naruto passed them, they would perk up like dogs expecting treats, and to Kiyumi's great disturbance, appeared to try to cling to him, tendrils and petals catching at his hair and trailing down his arms as he went by.

Naruto seemed to be shuffling his feet as they surveyed the place, perhaps aware of how the mess looked. Kiyumi didn't quite know what to say, and so she offered him a tentative smile. "It looks...nice. Did you grow the plants yourself?"

His face split into a shining grin, and she was hit with a barrage of words. No, he hadn't grown the plants by himself, he'd just picked them up because he felt sorry for them, because they were nice plants and only a stupid person would throw them out when they were still alive, and they liked it here, he could tell, and it was cool to have them to come back to, now that he was at the Academy, and he was trying to be a good ninja, the best ever, even if Daikoku-sensei kept shouting at him, and what was Yuki-chan doing?

As it turned out, her Hyuuga sensibilities had been utterly offended by the mess in the room, and she had decided to make a start on cleaning it, one which Kiyumi unenthusiastically dived in to help. Genin missions, if utterly boring, were at least good for some experience in knowing how to clean, and they could at least try and make a dent in the filth surrounding them. Naruto was about as eager to scrub as any child would be, but Kiyumi knew how to get around that.

"Don't you know that good ninja never live in untidy houses? Mess rots your shinobi abilities, it's a proven fact."

That got him helping, and as he started gathering his clothes together (Kiyumi thought she saw a vine drape down to lift a shirt for him, but she blinked and it was still again) she and Yuki began ferreting out just what was going on. It didn't take long to get out of Naruto that, while the old woman downstairs was supposed to be responsible for the general upkeep of the place in addition to feeding him, she frequently preferred to neglect both, and Naruto simply made out as best as he could, relying mainly on the local ramen stand to keep him fed while ignoring the grime piling up around him. Despite all this, he remained cheerful and as obstinate on his goal as ever; becoming the greatest ninja in the village. As they scrubbed the floor with an old bottle of polish that someone had left on a shelf in a cupboard, he happily told her about how he was trying to become as strong as he could, even if it seemed to be a far-off dream given his grudging acknowledgement of poor grades and low ranking in spars.

"I can beat Sakura, or Kensuke or Mashiro, but most of the others can knock me around. Especially Sasuke - he's such a jerk - but I'm going to beat him one day."

Kiyumi laughed, waving a hand when she noticed Naruto's upset. "Naruto, trust me, you don't have to be upset that Sasuke's better than you. He's the son of the Clan Head, and his brother, Itachi - he barely went to the Academy at all. Graduated at seven, and now he's an ANBU, and he's only a couple of years older than me. The whole family's brilliant at the shinobi arts, way better than the rest of us plebians."

"You're related to Sasuke?" Naruto asked, eyes moving over the features that suddenly seemed a bit more familiar - the pale skin, black hair, black eyes and slight build. She shrugged lightly.

"Not very closely - we're really distant cousins. You should see their family bloodline - it traces back to before Konoha's founding, though I think their line only became the head of the clan sometime in the Nidaime's reign. I'm from a lower branch of the clan - I don't really know Sasuke well at all."

"Oh. That's all right, Kiyumi-chan. You're still really nice, even if you're related to the jerkface."

"Distantly related," said Kiyumi cheerfully, although she'd always found Sasuke to be quite sweet in the limited interaction she'd had with him. His father could be a bit of a bastard at times, and Uchiha Itachi was as cool and distant to most of the clan as the moon, but Sasuke was certainly a more polite boy than the one in front of her. Oddly enough, she didn't mind. For all his rough manners, Naruto too was quite sweet once you got to know him - it was a surprise that more people didn't try.

Mollified by her admission, Naruto turned to look at Yuki, who'd settled herself carefully on the cleanest chair in the room, paper spread in front of her as she flicked an ink-brush between her long white fingers, the supple bones of her wrist twisting and rolling as she inscribed something on the paper.

"Hey, Yuki-chan - there's a girl in the class, Hinata, who looks a bit like you, you know with the freaky eyes. Are you related to her?"

Yuki's voice was flinty as she replied, although whether it was due to the question or indirect insult to her prized bloodline, Kiyumi wasn't sure. "That would be Hinata-sama, Naruto. She is of the main family of the Hyuuga, and I am related to her, although I suspect even more distantly than Kiyumi is to Sasuke. We don't know your classmates very well, I am afraid."

Naruto shrugged. "S'alright - I don't know 'em much either. Hey, what're you doing?"

Yuki glanced down at the elegant design in front of her and made a soft noise. "It is a seal, to repel vermin. I expect this place needs it badly."

"A seal? How do they work?"

Yuki shook her head, not that Kiyumi was surprised - as bad as ninjutsu and taijutsu that she was, Yuki guarded the few things that she was good at jealously, and she didn't even let Kiyumi peer at it most of the time. Rather than put her teammate through the bother of defending her work from a small boy, she flicked her wrist at the spare piles of paper sitting primly at Yuki's side. "Fuinjutsu's boring. Why don't you show Naruto some origami instead?"

Yuki quickly concurred with this, and began showing Naruto how to fold the paper, his fingers fumbling with the material as he sought to copy her designs. He was surprisingly good at it, the paper seeming to almost fold itself in his hands, and within moments he had a quite passable crane sitting in his hands.

Delighted by this, he asked Yuki to show him more, and perhaps flattered by the attention, she demonstrated stars, cats, tea cups, butterflies, frogs, and foxes, each technique watched eagerly and replicated almost moments later. So absorbed was Naruto in learning this that he didn't speak much, and they made only small talk as time slipped by. None of them mentioned the circumstances of their first meeting, even if the occasional wary glances out of the corners of Naruto's eyes whenever there was an unexpected sound told Kiyumi all that she needed to know. Seeing that Naruto was managing his origami quite well on his own, Yuki got up and began drifting around the room, dodging the shifting plants as she planted seals for cleanliness, vermin-warding and other things around the room, but her eyes would always look back at Naruto, and there was a troubled slant in them as they did so.

It was dark by the time they left, and Naruto lingered by the door, his body limned in the soft gold light of the bulb dangling above his head. Looking at him, Kiyumi was struck by how small he was, how alone he was, living in this apartment without anyone to even check that he cleaned it. Without thinking, she blurted out "Would you mind if we came to visit again?"

His eyes widened. "Really? I mean," and he made some attempt to stop bouncing in place, "that'd be great, Kiyumi-chan! You can come by any time!"

"No arguments?" Kiyumi asked Yuki as they walked through the streets of Konoha together, their faces shaded orange by the light of the street-lamps. She had expected Yuki to cut in and tell Naruto that she was not inviting herself back by any means, but the Hyuuga had stayed suspiciously silent throughout the whole conversation.

Yuki shook her heard, pale eyes flickering in the direction that they had come from. "He's...not a bad child, for all they say about him. And it was a disgrace, how he was living. I suppose there's no harm in dropping in to see how he is, at least occasionally."

Kiyumi thought of how he'd watched them go, staying by the door long after they'd reached the bottom steps, and nodded. "Yeah. It's a shame; he's such a nice kid. I wonder why no one wants to hang around him?"


Naruto's fist thudded into the other boy's stomach, and he went sprawling over the dirt. Clicking his tongue against his teeth, Daikoku-sensei made a note on his clipboard. "Match goes to Naruto. Chen, go to the nurse and get that nose seen to."

One hand cradling his gushing nose, the other cradling his stomach, Chen went off, although not before giving Naruto a dirty look. Naruto returned it - Chen had given him plenty of punches and kicks too, and just because Naruto kept going while Chen had lost didn't make him bad. He was about to return to the other kids at the other side of the field, but Daikoku stuck out his arm, blocking him.

"Hold on, Naruto. I wanted to tell you that, while you won the match, your form remains sloppy. You leave yourself open too much, and you use up too much energy when you fight. You have a marked endurance for pain and a large amount of stamina, but that was all that won you the fight. Strength is nothing without skill to back it up."

Naruto bit his lip, not knowing what to say. He knew his fighting needed work - he got kicked around by Uchiha Sasuke and Kiba whenever he got matched up to them, and there were loads of other people in the class that were better than him. But he didn't really know who to ask for help. Daikoku-sensei was nearly always busy with someone else, he didn't have a clan to ask, and while some people like Sakura, the pretty girl who sat several feet ahead of him, were able to learn stuff like that out of books, he'd never been particularly good at working from words. But he needed to do something.

In order to take his mind off it, he headed over to a training ground. There were generally spare kunai or shuriken that got left in the ground or training posts once teams had had their turns at practicing there, and Naruto found this to be a useful way of getting weapons, given that his allowance didn't really stretch to buying stuff like that. Unfortunately, the ground he arrived at seemed to have been picked clean already, so he retired up a tree to think things over.

The tree was young, he could tell that at just a touch of its whorled bark, but it was big, and Naruto quite easily nestled in amongst the leaves. The bark scraped hard against his back as he moved, and he touched it gingerly. He remembered what had happened the last time he was near a tree, and part of him wished that he would never go near one again. But on the other hand...the tree had protected him. The old man said that it was his bloodline that had done it, that the ability to shape trees as he wanted was part of him. But Naruto didn't know exactly how to do that. It was instinct that had brought the tree to his defense last time - but how did he do it now, when there was nothing threatening him other than his need to be a better ninja?

As he thought, he began to idly fold a bit of the paper in his pocket, hands humming through the motions as he pondered. He'd developed quite a liking for origami - it was quite calming at times, just sitting there and folding, and the shapes you could make were really cool. Kiyumi-chan and Yuki-chan had visited a couple of time since then, and one of those times, Yuki had brought a whole sheaf of origami paper for him to play with. It was quite nice paper too; pulped and pressed as it had been, the memories of the process still lingering on its surface, and deeper than that, the feeling of the slender white tree it once had been-

Suddenly, the paper crane under his hands twisted, energy sparking beneath his fingers. Startled, Naruto let go of it, and it hung in the air, wings fluttering like pale moths, and even without touching it, he could feel his chakra flowing through the fibers, the remnants of the tree that it could come from.

The thought made Naruto's eyes widen. Paper had come from trees, and if he could not manipulate trees as he had that one time, then...maybe he could start out a bit smaller. He willed the paper crane back to him; it settled upon his knee, and, with barely a thought, it unfolded itself, becoming still and flat once again.

Quickly, Naruto set to work, his fingers blurring as he created more shapes, paper crackling under his fingers as he made wings, heads, slender bodies that wriggled out of his hands as soon as he was done, shifting and diving as he laughed. Sometimes, they went limp in his hands when he tried to push chakra in, whilst a couple of other fizzled and burned up before his eyes, stinging his fingers and left only crumpled wisps. But he perservered, and when he was done, there was a cloud of them around his head, bobbing and weaving through the air. Their edges though were rather sharp; when he put out a hand to touch one, it sliced the skin and stained the paper bright red.

So occupied was he that he didn't hear the footsteps approaching beneath the tree, or see the flash of colour passing between the leaves until a voice asked curiously "What are you doing up that tree?"

It knocked his concentration, and all the paper pieces came tumbling down, caught in the spindly grasp of the trees. Biting back a rude word, Naruto peered down between the branches. A girl his age was staring up at him, a pad of paper tucked under one arm. She looked a bit weird - her skin was paper-pale, like she'd never been outside, she wore a colorful shirt that looked a bit like a kimono with red mesh armour underneath, and her auburn hair was only partially plaited - but she didn't seem to be unfriendly, so he carefully crawled down from the tree, the paper nestling in his pockets as he did so.

"I was just...practicing, I guess. It's a new bit of training, it's a bit weird. What about you? What're you doing here?"

She shifted her pad of paper uncomfortably; even from where he stood, Naruto could feel the rustle of the pages, the scent of the thick pages and angrily tried to ignore it.

"I'm waiting for my sensei. She said she'd be here by now, but I think she got held up..."

"You have a sensei?" Naruto asked, fascinated. She looked like she oughta belong in the Academy, but now that he thought about it, he hadn't seen her around anywhere with his other classmates. "Are you a ninja?"

She shook her head, biting her lip. "No - no yet. But I want to be! Kurenai-sensei's training me; if I can prove myself to her, I might even join the Academy, and become a shinobi."

Naruto smiled encouragingly. "That's where I go! I'm Naruto, by the way."

"Yakumo. Kurama Yakumo," she said shyly, indicating herself with her spare hand. It trembled a little, and he wondered if she was OK - she looked a bit faint in the dusky evening sunlight, and her breath came a little fast as she stood there. But she only crossed her arms tightly over her chest, smiling softly. "I'm training with Kurenai-sensei; she's helping me with my genjutsu."

"Really? That's awesome! Genjutsu sucks for me, 'cause apparently I haven't got any control - you've got to be really good at it if you've got a sensei helping you."

"Oh - yes, she's-"

With a swirl of leaves, a kunoichi suddenly appeared in front of them, a pretty lady with black hair and red ringed eyes, her red dress swathed in bandages. "Yakumo? I'm sorry I'm late, I had to speak to the Hokage-"

She stopped, seeing him, and Yakumo turned. "Oh, sensei! This is Naruto - he goes to the Academy!"

"Hello, Naruto-kun," the lady said gravely, inclining her head. "Forgive me, but Yakumo and I must go to practice."

"That's fine," Naruto said, giving Yakumo a wave. "I hope you can come there soon!"

"So do I," Yakumo whispered, just before he headed off. He flashed her a last smile before heading home, paper rattling in his pockets.


One time, the old lady tried to barge into his room. He didn't know why - perhaps she was angry that he had Kiyumi and Yuki visit again; Yuki had spoken to her once, and though he could not hear their voices, the old lady had been flushed and mad for the rest of the day. Maybe she had wanted to tell him something, 'cause the old man said that there were some things that she would have to tell him while he lived at her block of apartments. Maybe he was just late for the food she sometimes set out. It didn't really matter why, only that, one day, while he sat in the middle of his small apartment, shaping paper into translucent white kunai, the door slid open and she stood in the gap, mouth already fixing open in a yell.

She never got it out though, because before she could speak, the ivy around the door struck. Naruto didn't command it, hadn't even felt the need like he'd had that time in the forest, but the slender tendrils darted through the air, coiling around her wrists and ankles and snapping her up in the air, tightening until he thought her frail bones would snap.

Naruto had given a shout and leaped to his feet, slamming out a DON'T through the air as best as he could, 'cause he could feel his chakra flaring beneath his skin and he knew somehow that he was causing it - and the ivy went slack, letting the old lady crash into the floor. He'd rushed to help her, but she'd gotten to her feet before she could, her limbs shaking and her rheumy eyes shining with hate.

But there seemed to be fear in there as well, and she never told the Hokage about it. She just backed out of the room, watching as all the plants reared and slithered through the air around Naruto, curling against his cheek in an odd form of embrace. She could've pitched a fit about them too, because he probably wasn't allowed them inside, but she never did. She just stayed away, and never came into the room again - but the food was delivered daily to his door, and it was never cold again.

It was that incident that made Naruto take a closer look at his plants - he'd gotten so used to the way they moved around, the way they seemed to try and cuddle him at every opportunity, that he'd stopped thinking that it was odd that they did that - since that night in the forest, every plant he walked by did that. But now he looked at them closely, these plants he'd lived alongside everyday, and he realised that there was something different about them. They were all far bigger than they had been when he first carried them, all with dazzlingly bright colours that drew the eye immediately, but lots of them had changed in other ways, with sacs and thorns or even clusters of little berries where there had been none before. Some of them shed scents that made him dizzy when he sniffed them too long, some that leaked a sharp-scented white sap that looked as though it would be bad to touch and others that simply seemed to move independently of him. But they all draped themselves over him whenever he came near, the way they surged forward reminding him of how some of the puppies at Kiba's place behaved, and he could sense their affection in the way he soaked up the impressions in wood.

Soon, they began slithering up his arms, winding their way around him and stubbornly refusing to let him go, until one day a rose - one that had started out as small as his palm but was now the size of his whole hand, with red-black petals and glistening scarlet thorns - dug itself into his arm, pulling itself out of its pot as it did so. For a minute, he'd tried to prise it off - those thorns hurt - but it simply coiled itself around his arm, the flowers rising up like a snake's head, seeking to be , he gave up, and more came to join it, including a length of that ivy, that wrapped itself around his other arm and seemed in constant competition with the rose for his attention, while other plants draped themselves across his shoulders or curled around his waist.

After that, none of them came off, though he tried at times to get rid of them. They clung to him even when he had a bath - they even seemed to enjoy it, getting to splash about in the water - or went to bed, apparently no longer needing soil, though he didn't know what it was they were feeding on then. They slithered around under his clothes - and he had to make very sure they didn't go anywhere they shouldn't - and he started finding them surprisingly helpful, even if he did have to buy a massive hooded green jacket to make sure that they weren't seen. They would grasp things for him, even rising up to pick things off shelves, and they would occasionally try to slip past his sleeves and collar to get at the sunlight, and he got very quick at forcing them down before anyone could see.

Oddly enough, this made him feel safer. Now, when he sparred, he could feel them writhing against his skin, and he knew that if he wanted, they would lash out lightning-quick and seize whoever he was fighting, or get him out of a sticky situation if needed to. He never used them - he spent more time actively restraining them - because that would be cheating, and besides, he didn't want anyone else to know about them. But, still. He knew he could use them if he wanted to.


Yuki smiled as she cracked open her latest book, the pages white and crisp as fresh snow, the ink bright black against the paper. Kiyumi was off getting kenjutsu instructions from their sensei - doubtless she would come back via the medic-nins after getting sliced up through her own foolishness - Kegawa, whom she avoided whilst outside of missions, was at his clan's veterinary clinic, getting jabs for Setsuna, and there was no one else to bother her in this peaceful forest glade. It was the perfect spot to sit and read this treatise on fuinjutsu theory, undisturbed by anyone-

"Hey, Yuki-chan, how do you control chakra?"

Barely resisting the urge to let out a thoroughly unHyuuga-like shriek, Yuki let the book fall into her lap, and found herself face to face with Naruto, his china-blue eyes regarding her guilelessly. She stood up quickly, the ability to tower over his tiny form quite satisfying as she sought to retain her composure, though her voice carried the edge of a snap when she spoke. "What are you doing here? And how did I not notice you approaching?"

Naruto folded his arms. "I came through the trees, Yuki-chan. You just weren't listening. And I said. I wanna know how to control chakra."

Yuki glanced up into the dense canopy above her. She was a ninja - alright, only a genin, but still. She should have noticed him coming - unless, she realised with a sour twist of her stomach, it was something to do with that strange control of trees he had displayed. If it could dispatch an adult ninja, she supposed they could camoflague him from a genin's sight as well.

Hmph. The little brat. A bonus point of being a Hyuuga was that this precise thing did not happen. She resolved to practice her Byakugan more.

"Why would you want to control chakra? That's a little advanced for a student of your age. Shouldn't you be running around, playing with wooden kunai? Flinging gobs of paint? Annoying ravenous carnivores?"

Naruto pulled a face. "It's 'cause my jutsu suck. I tried to do a henge like sensei showed us, and it just came out all funny, and he said it's 'cause I have so much chakra, and I need to learn control, but I dunno how to do that."

"He didn't tell you?" Yuki asked, concern gnawing at her in spite of herself. Poor a pupil as he was, Naruto was still a student. If he was struggling, he should have help from his teachers, especially in a matter as delicate as chakra.

Naruto shrugged. "He said there were exercises, and I should go look them up, but I dunno where to start."

"And you decided to come to me?"

Perhaps there was hope for the child after all. She was a Hyuuga after all; in matters of chakra, her bloodline offered her a certain measure of expertise. Despite her lack of skill, even a boy crude as Naruto could no doubt see that her aid would be sensible to engage. She felt a surge of benevolent warmth towards him-

"Well, I looked for Kiyumi, but I couldn't find her anywhere."

"She's training," Yuki snapped, benevolence vanishing faster than a Nara faced with work. Still, Naruto didn't look like he'd be going anywhere, so she let out a sigh. "Very well. Let's see if there's a problem first. Byakugan"

Chakra flowed through her tenkatsu, blazing brightly beneath her eyelids as she opened them to a world of transparent shapes. Before her stood Naruto, a veritable ocean of chakra that welled up under his skin, shining bright as a second sun. And such colours! A pulse of blue, vast and fathomless as the sky above, a dappled forest green that rippled under her gaze like a forest breeze, gentle despite its luminous shade. And there, in the deepest point of the humming sea - red. A bright, coppery red, no bigger than a pinpoint, blazing fiercely against the green, so bright that she had to look away for a moment. When she turned back, it had grown a little easier to bear, the chakra that surged through his pathways, flowing through his body and over-

She blinked. "Naruto, what is that underneath your shirt?"

He stiffened for a second, before closing his eyes and opening his jacket. She had seen them through the material anywhere, her bloodline revealing that which had been hidden to her before, but it was still a shock to see the twisting tendrils, the thorned vine crowned with black roses, the numerous other creeping greenery that unfurled itself before her eyes, buds of every colour revealing their bloom. There was poison in there too, pulsing steadily in the thorns of the rose, in the stems of the other plants, and they practically glowed with Naruto's green chakra, animating them into veritable sentience.

"Naruto," Yuki said with what she thought was admirable calm, "why are you wearing those?"

He launched into an explanation that involved clinging flora, an inability to control his own power and a hesitancy that set Yuki's teeth on edge. Clearly, Naruto had been right to seek guidance - if his chakra was capable of this already, she didn't even want to imagine what else it might get up to doing if not controlled. Yuki had no desire to see more men in trees.


"Using paper doesn't count, you know" Yuki said sternly as she peeled away a sheet of stiff orange card from Naruto's skin. Under her fingers, the skin was hot and humming with barely suppressed chakra, and the carpet around his feet was littered with brittle leaves, thoroughly fried by the sheer amount of energy he was producing. That was the problem, though - he was pouring out so much that he was actively repelling anything he tried to keep on there - anything that didn't come from wood, that was. The leaves were simply too small to cope with the output, but two of the chairs in the room had already sprouted green buds, and she had nearly been knocked out when a heavy stationary pad shot towards his head, the paper fluttering eagerly even after they clamped a paperweight on it.

It was almost frightening, how much chakra he had - easily outstripping her and her teammates put together, and it was only going to grow as he aged. It was no wonder that he was struggling with jutsu - where a glass of water was required, Naruto flooded the room. Yuki had little experience in such things, so she had tried to start him on the exercises she herself had been taught, earlier in her genin education - sticking leaves to his skin, floating them in the air and sticking them to other surfaces. However, not only were those exercises thoroughly inadequate for his vast but clumsy strength, they were also fairly pointless - because anything of the forest seemed determined to cling to Naruto anyway. The only reason more greenery hadn't shot towards him was that the plants he already had were apparently a possessive crowd, whipping through the air like the tentacles of a deranged octopus as they fought to bat away any interlopers.

Biting back a sigh, she decided to turn to another control method. "Watch this, Naruto."

With his eyes upon her, his psychotic vines having withdrawn to let him see, she scooped up some mud from the ground, rolling it between her fingers until she had created a loose ball in her palm. She closed her eyes and concentrated for a moment, focusing her chakra into the ball. Within the tendrils of her awareness, she sensed the loose dirt and the dampness of the water, and with a gentle flare of her chakra, she pushed, the ball shrinking and tightening within moments. She let Naruto see it for a moment below she blew on it, scattering the dry dust to reveal a glossy surface, hard and shiny as polished marble.

Naruto stared at it in fascination. "How did you do that?"

"Simple," Yuki replied, shaking off the slight dizziness that came from using the technique - although a useful control method, it sucked up her small store of chakra quite easily. "I used my chakra to dry out and pressurize the earth until it formed thusly. Civilian children do it for fun, although it takes several days to do so by hand. With this technique, you can do so in seconds - but it takes skillful manipulation of chakra, and so is a useful way of refining your control."

Naruto enthusiastically scooped up some more damp earth, splodging it together between his hands until he had a slightly misshapen ball. He screwed up his face tightly for a moment, and Yuki felt the air crackle with a ferocious energy-

Only for the ball to explode, splattering mud against Naruto's face.

He let out a cry of disappointment, and Yuki smiled smugly. "It's not that easy, you know. I did say you would have to practice."

Enjoying the sound of his cursing - although where a child had learned that sort of language, she had no idea - she settled back against the crook of a tree root, pulling out her fuinjutsu book as she prepared for a long wait.

Time crawled slowly by, and Yuki leisurely turned the pages, keeping one ear out for Naruto as she did so. The writing of the book was fascinating - nothing that Kiyumi would appreciate, but the author had clearly been an artist, drafting seals with flawless precision that would be executed with absolutely astounding results, utilizing as little energy as possible. Lazily, her eyes drifted over the name on the spine...and then focused with an abrupt intensity.

She looked to Naruto, then at the book, then at the trees swaying above Naruto's head, then back at the book again. No matter how hard she looked, the name remained the same - Uzumaki Kasumi.

The book had been published more than twenty years ago, a considerable time in shinobi terms. Yet Uzumaki certainly wasn't a common name, and there was only one other that she knew of. She and Kiyumi had assumed Naruto to be a clanless orphan - albeit one with a jutsu that Yuki now thought might be worth further investigating. The ability to control flora like child's play, and a possible relation to one of the most prominent seal masters of the century...Just where - and whom - did Naruto come from?


Naruto scowled at the ball in his hand, which, after nearly an hour of struggle, had gotten slightly more solid, but not much else. No matter what he tried, the stupid thing either exploded all over him again, or dried up and cracked into dirt on his palm. It was so annoying!

"You must practice," Yuki trilled sweetly from her reading spot, blank white eyes regarding him in amusement. "It'll only come with patience."

"How long did it take you to do?" he asked, doing his best not to squeeze the stupid thing into paste, like it utterly deserved.

"Oh, not long," Yuki replied lightly. "Though I was not blessed with such vast reserves as yours, and so I had considerably less to work through. Still, think about it - as soon as you get some measure of control, you can start doing jutsus such as these."

Her hands flickered through a few quick seals, and she vanished in a swirl of leaves, reappearing up in the branches of the tree. He saw her in between the leaves, her hair red-brown against the green. "You see? Jutsus like the shushin can only be used with good chakra control."

With another flurry of hand-seals she stood in front of him again, bringing with her the sharp scent of pines. He lifted his head eagerly, running those hand-seals through his mind. He could remember them, he was sure.

Yuki noticed his new concentration. "Enough of that. If you want to get better, you must work at this first."

Naruto gritted his teeth. No way he was giving up so easily - he'd stay out here all night if he had to. He focused his chakra in there again, trying to visualize the glass-like ball it was supposed to be as hard as he could. He imagined his chakra as a vice, squeezing it into shape, pressing down on it until it solidified...

In his hand, the dirt grew warm, and he opened his eyes to see that it had grown hard, even if it was slightly misshapen rather than the smooth orb Yuki had produced. He thought of shouting out his progress, but decided against it. There was something he wanted to do first.

Again and again he practiced, trying to make sure that it was as compact as possible. When it seemed to grow glassy under his hand, he slipped it into his pocket, and put his hands together. Yuki-chan would be so shocked when he got that jutsu right first time and teleported on the tree right on top of her head!

Closing his eyes, he ran through the seals, focusing his chakra, and jumped.

For a moment, he seemed to hang suspended in darkness. Then suddenly, the wind was whipping at his hair, there was empty sky all around him, and only a pinpoint of ground beneath his feet...

With a sudden shock, Naruto realised he was standing on the highest spike of the Yondaime's head.

The jutsu had taken him right to the top of the Hokage Mountain!

He almost lost his balance, toppling at a dizzying rush towards the ground hundreds of feet below. But in his panic, the various plants around his body acted, shooting out from his sleeves and trouser legs and seizing hold of whatever they could in nooses of green. The impact jolted Naruto's limbs sharply, and he had to close his eyes for a bit as he swung in midair. Then, summoning his will, he pushed chakra into the plants and they began to drag him up, letting go of one anchor before seizing another, crawling over the top of the mountain like a spider with spiky green limbs. It was only once he was safely on the ground again that he allowed himself to relax into a boneless heap. That had been scary - but also completely awesome at the same time.

Yuki was torn between utter fury at his stupidity when she finally caught up to him, relief that he was alright and utter amazement that he'd managed to do that in the first place. Relief won out, and she extracted several promises from him to never do that again before she sent him home. Naruto didn't mind - he'd only promised to never shushin to the Hokage Mountain again. But when he was a bit better at chakra control...Oh he had plenty of ideas for that jutsu.


Naruto was going to tell Kiyumi all about what he'd been up to when he next saw her, but the look on her face when he ran into her in the middle of Konoha's market stopped him from bombarding her with descriptions of his amazing ride up the Hokage's face. Something had clearly rattled her, and tried as he might, he couldn't quite get out of her what was wrong.

Luckily, Yuki turned up shortly afterwards, a boy with Inuzuka tattoos and a hooked nose following her, a small grey puppy yapping at his heels. The boy was sent off quickly - from the curt looks he gave them, there wasn't much friendship between the three of them - but Yuki stayed, and went off with them to browse through the shops, concern evident upon her face. Naruto disappeared down an aisle of animal-shaped wallets quickly, one eye on the many cute purses and one on the angry-looking shopkeeper, but his ears were fully focused on the conversation between the two older girls - one that quickly yielded results.

"...fished his body out of the river this morning. He'd been dead for a while, from what my uncle says."

"I'm sorry."

"Well, it wasn't as if I knew him that well. I don't think I exchanged more than a few words with him over the years - he was only my third cousin, and he was a lot older. But still...I mean, I couldn't have imagined it happening."

"Do they know what did it? He was one of your clan's best ninja, wasn't he?"

Naruto heard a bitter snort. "You bet. He was one of the prodigies, almost on Itachi's level - my aunt thinks that that means there must have been an accident, because you'd think that if he was fighting for his life, someone would notice, right?"

"Probably," Yuki agreed. "He could have just fallen - or perhaps he was drunk. It wouldn't be the first time even a ninja lost their life to the Nakano. The currents are brutal at this time of year. How are his family...dealing with it?"

"My aunt went to see them last night; she says his father's taken it pretty bad. He lost his wife in the wars, and I think Shisui was all he had. But Itachi...apparently he went absolutely ballistic when the officers came to tell his family. Aiko-san was there; she said he looked like he might kill somebody."

There came a moment of tense silence before Yuki spoke again. "I suppose it must be hard on him, if they were best friends. I can't imagine what that must be like."

Kiyumi's voice took on a wry note. "Yeah...I mean, imagine if I died. How could you possibly cope with that?"

"By calling your stuff, I suppose."

"Oh, thanks!"

"What? I take far better care of my belongings than you do. I can't think of a better way to honour your spirit than ensuring they are finally handled properly. And it is wise to plan ahead, considering your survival instincts. I mean, given how many ridiculous situations you've ended up in, you'll probably be dead by sixteen anyway - best to allocate your belongings properly, while you still have time."

"You put your grubby hands on any of my stuff, and I'll be haunting you for the rest of your life-"

Deciding that the conversation probably wasn't going to go much further, Naruto choose the green frog and ducked out from behind the aisle. He'd been rather worried about how tense Kiyumi was, but it didn't seem like much was wrong at all.


One night, after Kiyumi returned home after training with her team, she found her clan in turmoil. Members of the police force were posted through the streets, clustering around the graveyard and glaring at anyone who so much as looked at them, all the children had been brought inside, and there were whispers flying through the streets as well, mutterings of graves and thieves and Shisui.

"What's going on?" She asked her aunt as she came inside the house, furtively trying to flick grass off her bodysuit as she did so. For once, though, Uchiha Uruchi couldn't care less on the appearance (and abilities) of her perpetually disappointing niece. She had been a chunin, long ago, before she had retired and her own skills slipped into a soft plumpness, and there were traces of it in her eyes, the way she kept watching all the entryways and darting glances to to all the weapons in the room.

"Someone tried to get at Shisui-kun's body in the morgue," she told Kiyumi in a hushed voice while her husband prepared dinner with a grimace on his face. "They were standing over his body with a scalpel when Yakumi-san interrupted them; he'd come in for the report and he sensed a disturbance. They disappeared when he sounded the alarm, but they didn't get his eyes, thank goodness."

"Do they know who it was?" Kiyumi asked quietly, her heart thudding in her chest. A sharingan would be a prize for any village to obtain, especially one of Shisui's calibre, and everyone remembered the attempted abduction of one of the Hyuuga by Kumo. If an enemy had managed to infiltrate Konoha and was now trying to make off with the Uchiha's kekkei genkai...

Everyone in the clan could be in danger.

Her aunt shook her head, looking drained. "They were hooded and masked, and they disguised their chakra well. Yakumi was more concerned with ensuring that Shisui-kun's body hadn't been tampered with, and they've eluded every tracking team sent out so far. Whoever it was, they didn't get the opportunity to touch poor Shisui's body, but Fugaku-sama decided to take no chances. He was burned almost immediately, and they've posted guards all over the cemetery."

"There's only so much we can do, though" her uncle said, bringing the food over to the table. It was her favourite, sashimi, sliced paper-thin, but with her stomach roiling at the thought of someone picking at her family's corpses, she wasn't sure if she could eat a bite.

"True," her aunt agreed. "The police is stretched thin as it is, and ANBU certainly won't offer any help."

Kiyumi frowned. "Why not, Oba-san? It's an attack on Konoha as much as it's an attack on us – they need to find out who got into the village, don't they?"

"Unless they-" her uncle began, but her aunt cut him off quickly. "Enough of that. You know nothing's decided, and until it is, there's no more to be said on the matter. As for you," she turned her eyes on Kiyumi, "you just mind your mouth, and be careful. Our clan faces danger from every corner, and we must stay united if we're to keep ahead, understand?"

Kiyumi nodded silently, but her head was whirling, even as she methodically ate her sashimi with wet crunches. Things were getting even more tangled up among the Uchiha, and part of her wanted to scream at her aunt and uncle, to demand to know what was going on. The rest of her, the cowardly part, kept silent. She was afraid of what the answer would be.


Summer arrived in Konoha with a vengeance, bringing achingly blue skies, golden afternoons that were lazy with heat, and a soft stupor that seemed to have descended on most people in the village. Even Naruto felt drowsy, slumbering through most of his lessons and spending his breaks sprawled out on the cool summer grass with Shikamaru and Choji. He'd never be as close friends with them as they were with each other, but they were great company for just lying around and staring at the clouds - as long as you didn't try to steal Choji's chips. Meanwhile, his class rankings were slowly getting better - although his book learnings remained far behind many, a lot of practicing, especially in his chakra control, had paid off physically, and he was steadily beating his way through the sparring ranks - at this point, he was only a little bit behind Shino.

He'd also been practicing with both his plants and his paper. The former were all apparently capable of moving independently of his own directions, even catching a rubber hurled at his back at one point (although luckily he'd been able to pass it off as just a quick motion of his sleeve) and the rose's thorns seemed to have some sort of retractable ability, given how big they had grown without ripping his jacket. As for the paper...Oh, he'd had fun with that, folding all kinds of shapes, including shuriken, senbon and a katana he'd based on Kiyumi's (only bigger and therefore better). He didn't bring them in, but he practiced with them in the apartment, adding his chakra until they were strong and sharp.

He still couldn't figure how to defeat water with them, though.

So when Daikuko-sensei announced that he would be sparring Sasuke that day, Naruto felt some stirrings of confidence as he approached the Uchiha, who observed his coming with a look of great disinterest. Maybe that wasn't surprising - Sasuke had beaten everyone else he fought with that day - but Naruto still burned with the need to prove himself, to prove that he'd been practicing, to prove that he'd gotten better.

"Begin!"

Naruto moved first, jabbing a fist towards Sasuke's face, twisting on the balls of his feet as he did. But Sasuke was faster, and he blocked it with an arm flung forward, his leg sweeping up in a flawless kick to connect with Naruto's head - or, at least, it would have done if Naruto hadn't flung himself backwards, palms catching on the ground as he twisted himself into the move they'd been shown only last week. Sasuke knew it though, and Naruto's feet meet only empty air before a hand grasped his ankle - he crashed against the ground but rolled through the pain, and slid out of the hold with a deft wriggle, coming to his feet moments before he ducked a punch from Sasuke that went wide-

Only to see the glint of wire in the afternoon sun.

Naruto's eyes went wide as he felt the wire seize against his legs; he began to topple, but Sasuke hadn't moved back fast enough, and Naruto lashed out, something sharp and red darting forwards with his fist-

Sasuke let out a small gasp - perhaps he'd felt a sharp pinch - but he seemed to dismiss it as Naruto crashed at his feet, his annoyance at missing the wires buried underneath his sudden horror at what had happened. The thorns of the rose - those glistening, razor-sharp red spines - had sensed a threat and attacked, one scratching the Uchiha even as his wires wrapped around Naruto's legs. The Uzumaki was barely listening as the match was called in Sasuke's favour, filled as he was with fear at what he might have accidentally done.

"Are you sure you're OK?" Naruto asked anxiously as they headed back inside, but Sasuke only sniffed.

"I'm fine. You didn't hit me that hard, Naruto."

"Yeah, Naruto!" Haruno Sakura cheered from somewhere near the back. "You never had a chance of beating Sasuke-kun!"

Sasuke looked quite annoyed for a moment, but he shrugged and moved off, while Naruto chewed his lip and prayed that he was right.


By the time home-time had rolled by, Sasuke had been sent to the nurse, feeling feverish and dizzy and on the verge of vomiting. Daikoku-sensei thought that he'd just caught a bug, and the nurse didn't sound too concerned, but Naruto felt a squirm of guilt even as he headed out of the Academy doors into the brightly idle afternoon, surrounded by his laughing classmates. Parents and older siblings were clustered by the gates, ready to pick everyone else up, but Naruto was about to head off alone - at least, until he saw a head of tousled black hair by the fence.

Kiyumi looked up when he approached, her black armored bodysuit liberally splattered in the red paint she was gamely attempting to slather on the fence in front of her. The culprit seemed to be the small grey puppy Naruto had seen the other day, who was gleefully rolling around, leaving a smear of red from its curly paint-logged coat with each spin, ignoring the admonishments of its partner, who also had the paint spattered across his pants. Yuki alone stood aloof from the mess, but she was gripping her paintbrush very tightly as she glared at the dog, only looking away when he called out to them.

"What are you guys doing here? I thought you were gonna go off on a mission to Rice-"

"We were," Yuki muttered sourly, crossing her arms over her chest and flicking the wood with paint as she did so. "But there has been a mix-up at the mission office, and they've ground most outgoing missions as a result until tomorrow. The only tasks we can undergo now are D-rank missions, such as repainting the fences of Konoha - and the dogs of it, apparently."

"Leave Setsuna out of this," the boy said, scooping up the puppy in his arms. As he looked at him, Naruto realised that he was actually a couple of years older than Yuki and Kiyumi, and he wondered how they'd ended up on the same team. Seeming to feel his gaze, the boy looked over to him, and his brown eyes narrowed. "Who are you?"

"This is Naruto," Kiyumi said quickly, leaning over the fence to smile at him. "Naruto, this are Inuzuka Kegawa, and Setsuna, our teammates."

The Inuzuka grunted, rubbing a bit of paint off his dog with his sleeve. "Nice to meet you, kid. Hey, Kiyumi, how much more have we got left to do?"

Kiyumi tilted her head, and Naruto glanced around to see that most of the paint was still a uniform rusty red.

"...A lot."

The dog yelped, and Kegawa hurriedly picked up his brush. "Let's get this done, then. I gotta go to the clinic to get Setsuna's eyedrops soon."

"OK," Kiyumi said, waving a hand. "Hey, Naruto, we're getting paid for this as soon as we report back - want to go out for ramen in a bit?"

"You bet! Are you coming, Yuki-chan?"

"Actually, no," said Yuki, looking thoughtful. "There was something I wanted to look at in the library this afternoon - I'm afraid I probably won't have time."

"What was it?" Kiyumi asked. "A fuinjutsu or something? I can help you look for it, if you want - if we can find it quickly, then you can still come out with us."

"That would be...acceptable, I think."

"If you're done planning a girls' night out," muttered Kegawa, "then can we please hurry up and finish this?"

Something prickled at the back of Naruto's neck then, an icy, animal awareness that something was not quite right. Frowning, he twisted around, and his eyes met those of the person who was watching them.

It was a guy, about Kegawa's age, with a ponytail of black hair, cool black eyes and an Uchiha fan stitched to his shirt. He looked kinda like Sasuke - but older, and a lot colder. He stood with an Uchiha woman, who seemed to be calling for Sasuke, but unlike her, he didn't seem to be looking for the younger Uchiha. Instead, he was looking straight over at them, and there was something strange in his eyes.

"Kiyumi," Naruto said quietly, "Who's that?"

Kiyumi turned away from Kegawa, but the guy had already turned around by the time Naruto pointed. As her gaze followed the direction of his finger, her face furrowed into a frown. "Him? That's Itachi, Naruto, the Clan Heir. He's Sasuke's older brother - remember, I told you about him?"

"He was watching us."

"What?"

Naruto frantically pointed at Itachi, who, to the blond's great annoyance, had dropped the stare entirely and was now quietly conversing with Daikoku-sensei, probably about where Sasuke was. "He was watching all of us!"

To Naruto's annoyance, Kiyumi didn't look concerned at all. "He wasn't watching us, Naruto - look, he's going in to the Academy. Must be going to pick up Sasuke - did he get ill?"

Naruto gaped up at her, indignity overcoming the squirming of guilt about Sasuke. "He was! He was staring right at us, I saw him!"

"Why would Itachi want to stare at us? He's ANBU and the next Clan Head; I'm sure he's got better things to do."

"But he was looking at us! In a really weird way!"

"Probably wondering why we are all standing around like idiots," Yuki said sternly, rapping Kiyumi with her paintbrush. "We need to get this finished. Come on."

Naruto opened his mouth to argue, but when he looked over again, Itachi and Sasuke were gone. Grudgingly, he trudged off to the training-ground, but he couldn't shake off the small hollow of unease in his chest.


Konoha's shinobi library was buried deep under the earth, a net of concrete tunnels cold as the grave and lit only by the strips of pale light on the low ceilings, the chairs contained in shallow recesses set among the walls. The entrance was blocked by a pack of chunin, who required a genjutsu check and proof of shinobi status before allowing entry, but on a warm, sunny day like this, few had elected to brave the chill for the sake of a few scrolls and the tunnels themselves were almost empty. The walls were a honeycomb of books and scrolls, tags hanging out of the holes in the stone, and it was these that Yuki examined as she walked, paying only the lightest attention to Kiyumi's chatter as she went.

"-haven't explained to me why we're down here yet. I told you, I don't know anything about seals."

"I don't need you to," Yuki replied, tilting her head as she considered a slim volume bound in crinkled leather, peeling letters stamped on its spine. 'History In Development: A Synopsis of Konohagakure's Treaties In The Shodai's Reign'. She plucked it from its cubbyhole in the wall, and onto the pile in Kiyumi's arms it went, balancing on the genealogy book she'd pulled from an upper section in the library. "I intend to research; all I require is another pair of eyes."

"Never thought I'd hear a Hyuuga say that," Kiyumi panted, her breath clouding the frigid air as she struggled to adjust the tower of books wobbling in her arms. "But what do you want to know? And why am I carrying everything?"

Yuki didn't deign to answer, instead sweeping the walls with her gaze, chakra humming through the veins around her eyes as she searched for the last book she wanted. The Byakugan had washed her vision into a sea of grey and white, the transparent monochrome of the books yielding against her sight, a million words pressing against her eyes in this single moment. In spite of everything, a thrill of satisfaction went through her. Paper and ink had long been her weapons, augmented by the Byakugan, her sole inheritance from her clan. These things were what she had wielded for so long, and it seemed only right she use them again, if in a far different battle than what she was used to.

The answers she sought all lay here, of this she was certain. She need only seek to find them.

And...there, on the far shelf, three corridors away. A long series of bingo books, issued from every village, their publication stretching back to the start of the Nidaime's reign, when the collections had first been introduced. After a moment's thought, Yuki selected every book published in the stretch of time between the Second War and the Kyuubi's attack. The resulting stack of books was enough to tax even a kunoichi's strength, so she quickly led Kiyumi over to a nearby table, hidden by a panel of shelving. There were more than a few shinobi in here, moving silently as they browsed the shelves, and she had no desire to have anyone ask what exactly she was looking for.

That, of course, did not deter Kiyumi, who leaned over the table towards her, elbows propped on the books she'd just thrown on the table. "What's this about? I thought you were after new fuinjutsu, not," she twisted her head to peer at one of the titles she was leaning on, "'A Diagram of Konohagakure's Kekkei Genkai Through the Ages'. Why'd you even need that, anyway? I thought you guys had a clan elder or something to keep track of that sort of stuff. I mean, we've got Nobaru-sama, and he's obsessed with mapping out all the bloodlines and making sure they don't weaken. He had a go at my aunt when she married my uncle, 'cause he was a civilian and didn't have any abilities - as if that matters when running the senbai shop - and he made some noise when I was five about arranging a marriage, the prick."

Yuki felt an unpleasant jolt in her stomach, though nothing in her could quantify what emotion it was that prickled at the thought. "Did they agree?"

Kiyumi made a rude noise. "Nah. He was going on about my bloodline, that it was 'purer' than most and they should take steps to preserve it - he had the nerve to talk about a match with his grandkids, can you believe it? - but my uncle wouldn't let him. Probably worked out for the best, anyway. It's not as if that pure blood's helped my sharingan any. I'd probably muck up any kids I had."

"A sharingan does not a good ninja make," Yuki said, and for the briefest moment she wondered why she was saying it, why she was forcing out words that threatened to curl up and die on her tongue with each hesitant syllable. But Kiyumi's gaze had focused on her, and the warmth in her gaze was worth any potential embarrassment, and they needed to be said. "Sensei says you excel at kenjutsu, considering your age, your fire jutsus are getting better and your lack of skill at genjutsu is no less than Kegawa's or my own. As a ninja, you are well-rounded and an asset to your clan, regardless of what they think, and you should stop behaving as though you are crippled by the temporary lack of a bloodline that many get on fine without."

For a moment, Kiyumi gaped at her, and Yuki fought down the rising flush of shyness that had taken over her at the sight. "Besides, the reasons why you would be a terrible parent are as numerous as they are varied, and there is no need to blame your prominent flaws on your bloodline when the fault really rests with your inadequacies as a person."

"A terrible...oi! I'd be a brilliant parent, thank-you very much! I get on fine with Naruto, don't I?"

"Naruto is a criminally neglected orphan to whom pitifully little kindness has been shown. He'd get on fine with a cannibal if they showed him the slightest affection. That he adores you says extremely little about your moral character, save that you are completely unable to say no to him."

"You're just jealous that he likes me better," Kiyumi pointed out, unkindly if not inaccurately. "Speaking of which, I know you'll be down here for ages, but I've got to go soon. I still have to take Naruto out for that ramen I promised him."

Yuki felt a flash of hurt. "You're leaving? But I need you here - for research," she quickly amended. There was no need for Kiyumi to get an unwarranted sense of self-importance after all.

Kiyumi arched an eyebrow, flopping back into her chair with a smug grin. "I know, but I'm just completely unable to say no to him, aren't I? Besides, you still haven't told me what you want down here. I can't really help you if I don't even know what I'm supposed to be looking for."

Yuki took a deep breath, and hoped that she could explain this properly. "It's about Naruto. I want to find out exactly who he is."

Kiyumi stilled, her fine white hands splayed out over the books she had been leaning on. When she spoke, it sounded as if it came through gritted teeth. "What are you talking about?"

Yuki folded her hands into her sleeves, holding her friend's gaze even as she nodded to the genealogy book Kiyumi had spoken of. "I've looked in there already, you know. It contains extremely detailed descriptions of all the kekkei genkai ever documented in Konoha, and do you know what the most prized of those was considered? The Shodai's Mokuton."

Kiyumi didn't speak, but the way her lashes flicked downwards told Yuki all she needed to know. "You suspected as much as I did that that is what Naruto can do. The way he controls plants, the way wood behaves around him, how he can manipulate even the most basic remnants of that element - it all fits the way the Mokuton was described in our history textbooks. The kekkei genkai that ruled the Senju, raised Konoha and subjugated the bijuu that the Yondaime had to give his life to defeat - it's come back to the village, after sixty years and it's Uzumaki Naruto that now wields it."

"Yeah, and what's your point?" Despite the effort Kiyumi was making to keep her voice quiet, the sound still carried and Yuki made frantic motions for her to shush. Lowering her voice slightly, Kiyumi continued, this time with a glare in her eyes. "It's Naruto, he hasn't done anything-"

She stopped then, and Yuki knew exactly what she was thinking of. That day when they'd first met Naruto, when they'd walked deep into the forest, his newfound domain, and discovered a full-grown ninja crushed to death by a terrified child. As the first bloom of Naruto's ability, it was an exhilarating sign of his potential. As the implications for just how he could choose to wield that power, it was terrifying.

Yuki chose her words carefully. "Naruto hasn't harmed anyone, and I don't think he would - but there are so many questions that no one will answer. He has the Mokuton; how did he get it? What are his links to the Senju clan? Who are his parents, what happened to them, and why does the Sandaime show such an interest in him? He had no one else, but there are dozens of orphans without family that haven't merited a kage's attention like that - what made Naruto special, even before the Mokuton revealed itself? Why does everyone seem to hate him, a boy who's done nothing to deserve it? You can't pretend you haven't wondered."

Kiyumi gave a grudging nod, staring down at the vast array of information in front of them. "Well, kinda...but the Sandaime-"

Yuki stifled a small shudder at the remembrance of the cold look in the elderly kage's eyes, that day when they'd found Naruto and everything had changed. "This information is available to any qualified shinobi of Konoha. We break no laws by looking at it. Besides," and here she flourished her trumph card, "I wouldn't have thought you would be afraid of a little digging, considering that Naruto more than anyone deserves to know the answers."

"You can't bait me into this, Yuki," Kiyumi said with a snort, and immediately proceeded to undermine her words by pulling one of the books towards herself. "OK, where do you want me to look?"


Naruto returned to the same training ground where he had first formed his use of paper, and he wasn't entirely surprised when he saw the pale figure of Yakumo standing in front of a training post in the middle. But as he approached, paper cranes and butterflies fluttering around him, he realised that something was wrong. Yakumo's breath was coming out in ragged gasps, her whole body quaking as she threw handfuls of shuriken, none of which came close to hitting the targets. She carried on anyway, almost mindlessly flinging them forwards, seemingly on the verge of tears.

"Yakumo?" Naruto asked hesitatingly. "Are you OK?"

She jerked, dropping the shuriken in a clatter of metal as she spun around, her . For a minute, it looked like she didn't recognise him at all, but then her brown eyes widened minutely. "You're...you're Naruto. The boy who was here before."

"Yeah," Naruto said carefully, coming slowly towards her. "You alright? You look a bit...sick."

Yakumo's face seemed to twist, and for a moment, Naruto thought he saw something hideous shining in her eyes. "I'm not! I'm not sick! I can be a ninja, I'm fine!"

And then her whole face sagged and she burst into tears, crumpling to her knees.

Naruto's indecision vanished; he hurried forward and tried to help her to her feet, bewildered when she stubbornly resisted. "Hey, what's the matter?"

"I'm weak," she said dully, hanging limp in his grasp. "That's the matter." She twisted to look at him and he was startled by the sudden anguish in her eyes. "They say I can't be a ninja at all, that they're just going t-to seal my abilities, and, and-"

"Who says that?" Naruto asked indignantly. He'd wanted to be a ninja so badly for so long, and if anyone had tried to take that away from him, he'd have fought it with all he had.

Yakumo dragged her sleeves over her eyes. "K-Kurenai-sensei. She says she can't teach me, that I just don't have the abilities I need to be a ninja - but I can! I have my genjutsu, I can be a kunoichi, but they won't listen!"

Naruto thought back to the way she'd trembled, the frailty of the form he was holding up, and suddenly had an inkling of what was going on. "So...They're tryna stop you from being a ninja because they think you're too sick for it?"

She nodded weakly. "I can't do ninjutsu or taijutsu at all - but there's someone in the Academy who can't do ninjutsu or genjutsu at all, and he's making his way through. I can do genjutsu, easily - look!"

Her hands flew into seals, and the world blurred around Naruto into a charred wasteland, the trees twisting into blackened caricatures, the ground cracked and smoking, flames licking towards them - and he could feel their heat, a ripple of blistering warmth that filled his eyes with tears, until they flew shut, the white glow of the flames still crackling behind his eyelids-

And then he opened them, and he was back in the training-ground, Yakumo staring at him beseechingly.

"That's...that's some genjutsu," he said at last, still tasting the smoke of flames that never were on his tongue.

Yakumo nodded, clenching her fists. "It's the gift of my clan, and I'm the last to wield its power so fully. If I don't become a ninja, then...the Kurama's clan greatness dies with me. I can't let that happen!"

Naruto frowned. "Can't you speak to the old man? The Hokage told me I could be a ninja, even when other people didn't want me too - can't you-"

She shook her head. "The Hokage already gave me a chance - my father begged him to let me become a shinobi, even when I was too sickly to enter the Academy. Now my parents are dead, and I - I don't have anyone who wants me to be a ninja now."

"Well, then...you're just going to have to prove them wrong!"

Yakumo looked up, her long hair tangled around her face. "What?"

Naruto stared at her determinedly. "I can't believe the old man would let you give up your dream like that unless there was a good reason for it - so you'll just have to fight it. If your genjutsu's that good, then I bet you can become a shinobi anyway - that's the whole point of them, that you don't use your body in the fighting! If this Kurenai-sensei won't train you, you'll just have to work on your own, and prove that you're a good ninja anyway - and then they'll probably just let you into the Academy anyway."

Yet again, for the briefest moment, he thought he saw a shadow on her face, the faintest glimmer of darkness in her honey-coloured eyes. But then her lips curled into a soft smile, and she shakily raised herself to her feet. "You're right - I can't give up. If my parents had faith in me, then," she swallowed, "that's enough. Thank you, Naruto."

"It's nothing," he told her, beaming. His dream of being the strongest ninja in the village was always there, sometimes held onto only by him, sometimes encouraged by others - it was only right if he could help other people hang onto theirs in turn.


From the little scrap of information about the author of her textbook, Yuki managed to track down quite a few pieces of this strange little puzzle and begin fitting them together. As her fuinjutsu book had said, the Uzumaki clan had originated in Uzushiogakure, a village long since destroyed by some unexplained disaster, back in the later days of the Second War. Though the information was sparse in places, it was easy to see that the Uzumaki had been the most prominent clan in the village, with their longevity and skill with fuinjutsu mentioned repeatedly in the different books she read. Not only that, but they had been a large clan, and they had intermarried with many other notable figures - the main branch's last named son had wed the country's daimyo, with a child listed but not named, and though the clan had scattered after the disaster, the books listed previous ties with Ame, Sora, Kiri, Kusa and Konoha, with strong intermarriage with the Senju clan.

Unfortunately, there was no much concrete information on just who had married which person from the other clan. The Shodai had apparently taken an Uzumaki wife, but his descendants were all well-known, with the last living one being none other than the famous Tsunade. There was a faded picture of her younger brother in one of the books - Senju Nawaki, killed in action in the Second Shinobi War, aged twelve - and his features did give Yuki an uncomfortable twinge of familiarity. There were no other descendants of Senju Hashirama listed, but the Mokuton popped up in no other lines of the Senju and Naruto had to come from somewhere. There would be no answers from these history books...but distasteful as the thought was, it would be an elegantly cruel gesture of the gods, to grant the fabled bloodline to an illegitimate cast-off somewhere down the line when the legitimate heirs had tried so desperately to unlock it. One of the older Hyuuga had mentioned the Shodai's son's proclivities for younger women when Yuki asked.

Certainly, there was no resemblance to Naruto in the picture of Senju Hashirama, but then there had been no resemblance between his brother and himself either, so that probably didn't mean much among the Senju. Pondering this thought, Yuki let her gaze slip over to the next page, which featured an illustration of the battle between the Shodai and Uchiha Madara. The artist had probably drawn from the two statues that had been built shortly after the battle - a wise choice; they had been carved by villagers who had known both men and the likeness was said to have been extremely accurate. Yet as she looked at the picture of the Shodai's enemy, she could not help but notice the long, wild hair, the liquid black eyes, the fine-boned features, the general appearance that seemed startlingly familiar-

She darted a glance at her teammate, her face covered by her fall of tousled black hair, then back at the book, then firmly looked away. Some things were better left unasked.

While Yuki had been searching through Senju history, Kiyumi had followed her directive to look for where Naruto's surname had come from. The Uzumaki clan had been splintered by the destruction of their village, and there could be hundreds of their descendants across the continents. But Konoha had long been a close ally of Uzushio, and a number of their famous clans had fled to the village during the war. The daimyo had been killed in the fighting, and most of his family with him, but that one child had survived, and her name-

"Uzumaki Kushina."

Yuki raised her head, eyes watering slightly from the rows of cramped kanji detailing one of the many innovations of the Uzumakis' sealing techniques. "I beg your pardon?"

Kiyumi pushed the book she'd been reading towards her, tapping the open page with one figure. Yuki glanced down, and saw a picture of a beaming kunoichi, her dark red hair billowing around her face as she waved at the camera. The book was dated to seven years ago, and the style of the uniform showed subtle differences to the new standard for Konoha shinobi. But even with that striking mane, the violet eyes and general female build, the facial resemblance to Naruto was astonishing. Yuki glanced at up at Kiyumi, but she didn't need to even ask.

"Born in Uzushiogakure, comes to Konoha in the Second War, qualifies as a Konoha genin, moves up to A-rank - apparently she had pretty great ninjutsu, it says she had enormous chakra capacity - and according to the records, dies during the Kyuubi attack, though it doesn't say how. But given that Naruto was born on that day..."

"It could have been childbirth," Yuki mused, staring down at the smiling face. "Everyone was so busy tending the wounded, it wouldn't be surprising if there was no one around to help her. And the Kyuubi destroyed so many buildings that she could have just been caught in the rubble anyway, if she wasn't out fighting, that is. Many who shouldn't have been on the front lines on that night were called out to battle."

Kiyumi looked sombre. Perhaps she was remembering, as Yuki was, the day they had run for the shelters like everyone else, hearing the screams of the dying and the roars of the Kyuubi shaking the earth above their heads, cowering against the adults as the air crackled with heat and poisonous chakra, the only light coming from the flickering red glow of the Kyuubi's power, though everyone shied away when it began to filter through the shelter cracks. Yuki's mother had died that day, crushed beyond recognition by one of the bijuu's tails, and she could not remember who had brought her out of the shelter, only that the silence following the bijuu's defeat had been almost as terrible as the sounds that came before it.

There were no official records about Naruto's parents, and Yuki had come across nothing concrete about any potential fathers, but Uzumaki Kushina was the most likely candidate for his mother. She wondered if they should tell him. It seemed almost cruel, considering that they could not prove it, and no answer seemed better than a false one. Kiyumi agreed, judging by the way she began flipping back through the pages, letting Uzumaki Kushina's face disappear from view. Thinking hard, Yuki returned to her book, only to be startled by a sudden exclamation from her team-mate.

Startled, she looked up, to find Kiyumi staring down at another picture in the bingo book, one that Yuki couldn't see from her angle. "What is it?"

"Er...Well, nothing, not really. I was just looking, and there's kinda a...Well, I mean-"

Apparently given up on answering, she turned the book around, and Yuki's breath caught in her throat.

The Yondaime smiled from his picture, clad in Hokage robes and hat that did nothing to obscure his golden hair or his bright blue eyes. And perhaps it was because she had spent so long sloughing through books in search of this, but there did seem to be an uncanny resemblance to-

The words were out of her mouth at the same time Kiyumi spoke.

"It's probably nothing-"

"Of course, it couldn't be-"

"It's just because of the hair, really. Lots of guys have that colour hair - hell, just look at the Yamanaka. Naruto doesn't even look that much like him. The face is almost completely different."

"No, you're right. We've been looking so long, we'll probably see him in the Sandaime next."

Looking slightly disturbed at that idea, Kiyumi firmly shut the book, and Yuki set her gaze on the fuinjutsu text in front of her. It was describing a seal design first developed by the clan, which, although difficult to use, became greatly prized in sealing large quantities, even large masses of chakra as in the case of-

Kiyumi swore suddenly, her chair scraping the floor as she stood up hurriedly. "Sorry, I lost track of time. I've got to go, or I'll be late for Naruto."

"Will you be alright?" Yuki asked, fingers tightening on her book. Kiyumi flashed her a grin, eyes darkly luminous in the harsh glare of the lights. "It's a ramen stand, Yuki, and I'll walk him as far back as the Uchiha district. We'll be fine. Though if you're so worried, you can come with me."

Yuki shook her head. "There is something I wish to look at first. I'll see you tomorrow, I suppose."

Kiyumi nodded, and Yuki heard her take off, although she had returned to her book already. There was a word used by the text that she didn't understand, and she wanted to research it further. A strange word too, four syllables that sounded unnatural on her tongue, although she couldn't quite articulate why.

Jinchuuriki.


The paper crane swooped over the counter as it danced, white folds flexing and spreading as it dove, weaving drunkenly between the dishes and the customers' turning heads as Naruto willed it to avoid them. He was just pulling back to give Kiyumi a proud grin when a chuckle from the ramen chef startled him, and the crane dropped abruptly into his ramen bowl with a soft plop.

Blushing, he began fishing it out with his chopsticks and looked up to find Teuchi regarding him with an expression of fond admiration. "I've never seen anyone do something like that before, Naruto. Is that something you learned in the Academy?"

"I wish," Kiyumi said, holding the dripping paper with one hand, her soft black eyes running over its chakra depleted form contemplatively. "Most stuff can be manipulated with chakra if there's a will behind it, but Naruto's the first I've seen that uses paper. See, it's even sharp, like steel – you could cut someone nastily with that. It's a proper weapon – a very good jutsu."

Part of Naruto swelled under the praise as she favoured him with a sharp grin, but the rest was worried that they thought that would be all he could do. The stumbling paper construct that he'd been so proud of in the loneliness of his apartment seemed much clumsier, much less impressive under the eyes of others. "I'm gonna make it better though, you'll see. When I can make it work better, it'll be able to fight, like Akamaru does for Kiba."

"Wouldn't think that could do much damage," Teuchi said doubtfully, looking at the crumpled, soggy paper. Naruto had to admit, it didn't look like it could pose much trouble to a fly in that state, never mind people like Kiba and Sasuke.

Kiyumi shrugged. "Maybe not on its own, but chakra enhances a lot of things. You could sharpen the paper like a razor, or strengthen it or enlarge it. You could do a whole lot of damage with something like that, especially if no one's expecting – you'd better not be getting any ideas, Naruto," she said suddenly, catching onto the glint in his eye. "You're a bit too young to be playing around with stuff like that."

Naruto nodded quickly, surreptitiously crossing his fingers behind his back as soon as Kiyumi looked away.

"I'll still make it awesome, though. I bet when I'm bigger, I'll be able to do it to lots more stuff, and soon I'll be the best ninja in the village!"

The genin and chef alike laughed at that, and Kiyumi ruffled his thick golden hair. "I'd tell you not to get cocky – but on the other hand, Naruto, if I could've done just half of what you can at your age, I'd have considered myself well on the way to being a completely awesome ninja. Hey, keep it up like this, and soon you're going to be beating me."

"I already caught Yuki-chan with a trap," Naruto boasted, snapping his chopsticks apart as Teuchi brought over two more steaming bowls. "She thought I'd rigged the tiles, so she didn't check the ceiling, and the paint went all over her head!"

"A ninja must always be aware of their surroundings," Kiyumi parroted solemnly, but she gave Naruto a furtive high-five under the table. He decided not to mention that Yuki had promised him an enormous bowl of ramen to get Kiyumi when she next walked into his apartment – this time with what Naruto felt would be an ingenious use of wires and heavy yellow dye.

The warm chatter, delicious ramen and peaceful surroundings all faded together into a lull that lasted for ages in Naruto's mind, the sky outside darkening from the lavender of early evening into a dark, solid blue. Yet after what seemed to be far too short a time, Naruto's chopsticks scraped his bowl with an unsatisfying hollow plunk. Kiyumi, who'd been staring in rather horrified fascination as he devoured his second and third helpings, pulled up her wallet and began to count out ryo while glancing at the dark around them, a wry grin on her face.

"I really need to get a watch or something. Ah, well – come on, Naruto. Let's go home."

Konoha seemed eerily quiet as they headed towards the Uchiha district; barely anyone was on the streets, and even the roofs, the domain of perpetually active shinobi seemed utterly deserted. The silence pricked at Naruto's senses, and under his jacket, the shivering plants pressed close to his skin. He shuddered, and gripped Kiyumi's hand tighter, her fingers curling through his own as if one of them was clinging on for dear life, though he couldn't be sure which one.

Perhaps Kiyumi found the silence as unsettling as he did, because she cleared her throat suddenly as they crossed the needle-thin bridge over the Nakano river. "So, Naruto – how are you finding things?"

"Finding things?" he repeated, baffled. "Whaddya mean?"

Kiyumi shrugged, tilting her eyes towards him. In the moonlight, her face was stripped of all colour, black and white like Yuki's ink and paper. "You know, life. Living on your own. Learning to be a shinobi. Is it...what you expected?"

Naruto considered this for a moment, his steps bouncing as he fought to keep up with her longer strides. "I dunno, really. I thought there wouldn't be so much work, and that it wouldn't be so boring. But – I kinda think that makes it better, in a way."

Kiyumi's eyes were fathomless in the dark. "What do you mean?"

"Well...If it was easy, then I'd just get it already, wouldn't I? And it wouldn't mean anything. But I'm gonna work for anyway, and become the strongest ninja ever, and, and everyone's gonna have to see that, and they'll never be able to..."

He stopped abruptly, his breath caught in his throat. Kiyumi turned her face away, and she seemed to be struggling with what she wanted to say for a moment. "To do what that man wanted to do. In the forest."

For once, no words would come to Naruto, so he just shrugged. Kiyumi tipped her head back, staring at the swelling white moon as if it had all the answers she'd ever wanted. When she spoke, it was little above a whisper. "He was Senzai, you know. I don't know if they ever told you his name, but it was Uchiha Senzai."

Naruto looked up at her, unsure. "He was part of your family?"

Kiyumi snorted, and the spell was broken. "Not any more he's not. Naruto, what he did – it was horrible, and no one deserves that, especially not you. I don't know why he did it; I don't think I want to know, but I'm glad you were able to stop it, even if I'm sorry you had to go through it in the first place. A man who would do that...he wasn't worthy of being anyone's family."

Naruto frowned. "Was that why you and Yuki came to see me? 'Cause you felt guilty about it?"

"A little bit. And because you were hurt. No one would tell us anything, but we brought you back in the first place. I wanted to make sure you were safe."

"And afterwards?"

She looked down at him again, and this time he saw the glint of a smile. "Because we like you, Naruto."

He laughed. "Even Yuki?"

"Of course even Yuki, though I reckon she'd crawl over broken glass before she admitted it."

Naruto opened his mouth to reply, but all that came out was a massive yawn. Kiyumi raised an eyebrow in concern. "Are you going to be able to get back to your apartment by yourself? I could walk you there, if you want."

Naruto shook his head firmly, even if part of him would have liked the company for the longer route. "I don't need anyone to walk me back to my place – I'm gonna be a shinobi, remember? But I'll walk you back to your place if you want, Kiyumi-chan."

"Well, I guess I can't resist such a gallant offer. But instead of walking-"

She leaned down and hoisted him up, settling him on her back. He scrambled for balance, looping his arms around her neck and his legs around the narrow contours of her waist as she continued.

"-I think it's safer if we go like this, don't you?"

If Naruto had wanted to argue, his next massive yawn would have cut him off anyway. Instead, he pressed his face into her shard-sharp shoulder-blade, her long black hair tickling his face as they moved. After they'd settled into a loping stride, he stretched up his head and murmured in her ear.

"Did you mean it when you said that Yuki liked me?"

Though he couldn't see her face, there was a note in Kiyumi's voice as if she were smiling. "Are you fishing for compliments now? I said that she liked you already, didn't I?"

Naruto didn't know how to put it into words what it might mean if one person liked him when they said they didn't, because as nice as Kiyumi was, she didn't understand what it was to always see the cold faces and harsh words, to wonder just what he'd done to earn their dislike. He tried, but all he could say was, "She called me annoying."

"Yuki's called me annoying ever since I ate her crayon when we were three, and we're still friends. She finds everyone a bother, most of the time, so you're not so special. But hey, I think that's your job, isn't it? Little brothers are always a pain that way."

Naruto froze. "Little brother?"

There might have been the smallest stumble in Kiyumi's step, but it was gone by the time Naruto looked for it. When she spoke, there was no hesitancy at all. "Well, sure. I mean, I don't have any siblings at all, and neither does Yuki, but...I think that's what they're meant to be. Annoying, in the way, but," and she turned her head towards him, "you can't do without them at the end of the day."

Naruto thought of this, and his fingers tightened their hold. "If I was your little brother though...You'd be my sister, wouldn't you?"

Kiyumi tilted her head. "I guess."

"Kiyumi-neechan. Yuki-neechan." He sounded the words in the air, letting them fit around his tongue, before nodding authoritatively. "Yeah, I like it."

"I'd pay to see Yuki's face when you call her that," Kiyumi muttered, shifting him so that he was more comfortable. "But I like it too. Kiyumi-neechan it is then – but I'm not really used to being a sister, just so you know."

"We're awesome," he assured her, letting the cockiness he rarely truely felt fill his voice. "We'll figure it out as we go."

"That's alright, then. Just let me-"

She stopped, suddenly, jostling him against the hard bone of her shoulder. Naruto blinked, trying to peer through the veil of her thick hair. "What is it?"

"There aren't any guards," Kiyumi said softly, staring ahead. Naruto slid off her back and peered around her; in front of them, the Uchiha district yawned into darkness, the gates wide and opened and empty. "There should be guards, I...Where is everyone?"

She moved slowly at first, her feet silent as they paced through the gates, but then she was breaking into a run and Naruto scrambled after her, the plants squirming out of his coat to twist through the air like snakes. He didn't like this at all, and there was a coppery stink to the air, salty-sweet against his teeth, and Kiyumi had just skidded to a halt, and he crashed into the back of her legs, trying to peer around to see what she was gazing at with such horror in her eyes-

The white moonlight shone down on it all, painting it in stark black and white. The shine of steel buried in flesh. Torn viscera, unfurled red like rotting flowers. Puddles of thick, dark liquid pooling around the slack faces, the wide, staring eyes.

"Oba-san?" Kiyumi whispered. "Oji-san?"

Behind her, Naruto stumbled backward, stomach heaving in nausea, but that just made it worse, because he could see beyond her now, the corpses littering the streets, left out like old sacks of meat of bone, and it was worse, a thousand times worse than the forest, and the plants were uncoiling, thorns and poisons and scents twisting around him as he tugged on Kiyumi's hand, trying to get her to move-

There was the faintest flare of chakra, slight as leaves rustling in the forest breeze, and they both turned around. Uchiha Itachi stood behind them, his sharingan bright red against his bone-pale face, his sword wet and shining.

"Kiyumi-san," he greeted, and Kiyumi gave a start, as if she'd never heard her own name before, tearing her gaze away from the corpses to stare at him as one hand curled around Naruto's shoulders, the nails digging right in. "You weren't with the rest of your family. It made things...messier."

"You did this?" Kiyumi whispered, and her eyes darted between the bodies and him for the briefest moment before settling on Itachi's face, wide with incredulity. "You...why?"

But Itachi didn't answer her; his eyes instead found Naruto's, and his face seemed to tighten. "He is not of this clan. He shouldn't be here, Kiyumi-san. It was foolish of you to bring him here, tonight of all nights."

"What're you talking about?" Naruto demanded, at the same time Kiyumi, her face twisted in revulsion, said "What's happened to your eyes?"

But Itachi said nothing more, he moved, and Kiyumi was faster than Naruto had ever seen her; her katana arched out of its sheath in a blaze of steel, but it was barely good enough, sparks flying as the blades crashed against each other and broke apart, jabbing and slashing at the two exposed faces. Naruto scrambled up, tried to shout a warning, but a misjudged block as Kiyumi was sent stumbling back, barely able to parry the next blow. For the briefest second, her eyes flickered to his, and the fear in them froze him in place.

"Naruto – Naruto, run-"

Fury suddenly seized him, for what sort of any ninja would leave their friend, their sister to die?

"I'm not leaving you!" he shouted, and the plants surged, clawing from his skin and out into the open, a nightmare of writhing red and green, hungrily outstretched for the Uchiha's face-

But as he turned his head, he saw Kiyumi's eyes open wide, felt the ripple of genjutsu, heard the clatter of a falling sword, an anguished shriek, and Naruto's world was plunged into red.

Well, I said I'd update soon, and I ended up doing it a year late, with a cliffhanger to boot. At least the chapter was long?

In all seriousness, thanks to all those who reviewed and sent PMs and who were far more patient with me than I deserved. I wouldn't have got the chapter out without you, never mind sorting out the rest of the story. It was a long difficult chapter to get out, and it featured some things I wasn't expected, such as more prominent inclusions from the anime arcs (what can I say - they get it right occasionally). With any luck, the new chapter will be rolling out at a reasonable time (and I mean it this time). Please review to say what you liked or what you didn't, and as I will be offline for these next few days - Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year to all!