HOOWAH! I'm back! Finally! I've finished my first year of college, and with a better GPA than I thought I would have. I won't get inot that, because it's nothing to brag about, but I did get three A's in one semester for the first time EVER. Pretty nice.

So, my computer crashed AGAIN (stupid Dells) and when I re-formatted it, I found that I couldn't install either Microsoft Word OR Open Office. So, I had to write the majority of this on WordPad. It worked out well enough, since I've gotten used to it, but it took me a little while. That, and I've been annoyed with my inability to find a job--ok, not so much my inability to do so, but my parents' inability to stop nagging me to get one. To be fair, I DO sleep in 'til 1 p.m. most days, which, when you work like my parents do, must be pretty annoying. I'll find one eventually.

But, now that finals are done, I've finally found the time to finish this chapter. I'm very satisfied with it, and I think that it flows very nicely with the last couple of chapters. I'll begin working on Chapter 5 almost immediately, because I'm on a writing binge and I don't want to disappoint you guys any further. This one's a meager 5,150 words, so I hope that you aren't completely disappointed, but I hope that what's in it will more than make up for it.

For the record, I'm not doing any more disclaimers. What's the point? Does anyone seriously think that anyone looks at their story and say, wow, this person MUST own the rights to this category; why else would they be writing it for FREE on a FREE ACCESS WEBSITE? Slightly arrogant, if you think about it.

And now, without further Adeiu, I bring you:

Chapter 4

"You did what?"

Naruto blushed. He hadn't expected the subject of Daichi's entering the tournament to come to his wife's attention; however, the thought had slipped his mind, and he hadn't expected Sakura to bring it up after dinner. "Now, Isa, I wouldn't have entered him into that tournament if I had thought that he would get hurt!" If he thought that this would have calmed his wife, it had the opposite affect.

She placed her hands on the table where their family and their guests had eaten and where now only his wife, his former teammate, and himself still sat, having cleared away the dishes and leftovers. Her fierce countanence caused Naruto to faulter in his resolve; no matter what happened, no one could do that to him like she could. "This isn't an issue about him getting hurt! I thought that we had agreed that...I don't know--we'd keep our children away from all that! Isn't that what you wanted?" The anger in her eyes gave way to sorrow and pinned Naruto's guilt down more than her words could. Naruto let his eyes fall to the table, and Isaribi sighed and placed her right hand over Naruto's left. Naruto clasped his wife's hand in his.

Sakura sat blushing, embarrassed at having had brought up the topic in the first place. "Well...anyway, back to what we were talking about?"

Isaribi sighed again while Naruto's eyes lifted to stare blankly at the ceiling. She turned her pained gaze towards Sakura and asked, "Why are you here, exactly? I thought that when we left Konoha," Naruto's face tensed, his eyes flashing, but otherwise giving no sign that he was paying attention, "I thought that we'd be done with the whole...the whole ninja thing," she gestured with her free hand wildly in the air, which caused Sakura to fidget a little in her seat. "Why is it that after more than twenty years the esteemed Konoha ninja ranks suddenly need to call Naruto back into service? Mind you, he's not an active ninja. He doesn't have to listen." Isaribi glared lightly at her, and Sakura looked out the window for a moment, collecting her thoughts.

Images flashed through her mind, and she quickly shook them off. When she met the eyes of the two in front of her, nothing betrayed her inner turmoil aside from a slight glistening in her eyes. "After you left, the war escalated slightly. Not so you'd notice, but intelligence reports from that time indicated that Orochimaru began to wage war with a group by the name of Akatsuki--" Naruto's expression became more intense, and his eyes seemed to bore straight through Sakura, "and, from what we can tell, this drew on the majority of his resources for a long while, something like ten to twelve years. We determined that both Akatsuki and Orochimaru lost significant numbers, though we don't know exactly what significant means." Naruto snorted at this, and Sakura glared at him. "Hey! We only knew most of this through Jiraiya's intelligence network! And I'm sure that you among all people would know how reliable that is, mostly for people like Jiraiya!" She crossed her arms over her chest, blushing at the thought of where she had had to go to retrieve some of this...intelligence.

Naruto laughed out loud, the first positive show of emotion from him all night. The tension that had pervaded since dinner had ended, loosening its grip over the room, and Isaribi gave a little half-smile. "We've known for a long time that both Orochimaru and Akatsuki want unstoppable power. It only makes sense that they'd come to blows over it."

Sakura nodded her head in agreement. "Well, from what we can tell of the time, Akatsuki was thrown into chaos shortly after the Sound invaded. We think that it had something to do with something Orochimaru had planned, but beyond that we just don't know. It's possible that Jiraiya knew something more than he wrote down, and many of us believe that the records from his intelligence network are incomplete." Naruto's brow furrowed in consideration, but Sakura didn't say anything. She could tell that he knew more than he was going to say, but she couldn't force it out of him. "Naruto, you traveled with him for years. He was your teacher for about four years. You must know something about the Sound and Akatsuki that no one else does."

Naruto leaned his elbows on the table, bridging his hands in front of his mouth, and sat quietly for a few moments. Sakura and Isaribi watched him intently as he contemplated what he had heard so far, staring hard into the table top. He had long suspected that Orochimaru had wanted to destroy Akatsuki; while traveling with Jiraiya for three years, he had learned much about both groups, and knew that Orochimaru had once been a part of the secretive organization. He had even come to suspect, along with Jiraiya, that Orochimaru had marked Sasuke as someone he had wanted to use to fight Itachi, the strongest Uchiha in centuries. Sasuke, being the only other Uchiha left at the time, would have been the only one with the raw talent to even consider taking on Itachi on even footing.

He also knew what had thrown Akatsuki into chaos; it had been him. When he had killed Gaara of the Sand, he had also destroyed the only thing holding Shukaku to this world. His spirit was no longer on this plane, and Akatsuki's plans to take each of the nine Greater Demons on this world for themselves, ruined. Orochimaru had apparently taken advantage of this and had begun to wage war on the group.

Naruto and Jiraiya had spent long hours talking about all of this. Jiraiya had told Tsunade all about the two groups once they had returned to Konoha. The two had access to much more information than he had, having been cut off from the ninja world for more than twenty years. Why, now, was Sakura here asking about what had happened? There are only two things that would bring her here, without the knowledge of most in Konoha. Either someone outside of the Hokage's office is snooping around, or...

Naruto brought his eyes up to meet Sakura's. She glanced away, the intensity of his gaze stunning her, overwhelmed by the storm of emotions that had blanketed his eyes so suddenly. When she was able to bring her eyes hesitantly back to meet his, he took a deep breath, before asking the question that Sakura had both been anticipating and dreading. "They're dead, aren't they?"

Daichi lay on the roof of his house, just outside his bedroom window, staring at the full moon, thinking about what he had learned about his father earlier that day. He could hear two of the ninja sparring, just off in the very edge of his peripheral vision, and he couldn't help but wonder if his dad had once done the same thing when he was a child. When he was Daichi's age, was he taking classes on learning how to fight? If dad were still in Konoha, would I be in one of these teams, becoming stronger?

Daichi was surprised to find that it annoyed him greatly that he hadn't known this about his own father. He shouldn't have been as shocked as he had been when his mother informed him of what his father used to be before dinner; wasn't this the same man who taught him how to fight? Didn't he seem to almost expect what had happened in the tournament? Daichi scowled, thinking back to what he had seen every time he had won a match. Even in the first fight, he remembered the look on his dad's face when he had gone up against the kid who was easily twice his size, and how he seemed to almost smirk when he saw how Daichi handed him a defeat quicker than you could say mismatch.

Daichi continued to stare up into the night sky, letting his mind wander a bit. Echoes of the spar reached his ears, and he found himself watching their movements, subconsciously studying them and seeing how they were moving. It looked like the kid with the funny eyes was beating Hoji, the boy he had beaten in the tournament to win. His style was a lot more rhythmic, more like a dance, while Hoji fought more efficiently, striking quickly and moving to evade everything he could from Hishinoi.

"Hishinoi's fighting using his family's style, the Gentle Fist. It uses the chakra of the fighter to disrupt the chakra flow of an opponent."

Daichi started, looking at her in surprise as she crouched over his shoulder. He hadn't heard the girl land on the roof behind him. She gave him a grin and said, "Hey, I'm a ninja. I have to be able to sneak up on people."

He blinked a few times, then sat up to get a better view of the spar. He thought about what she had said for a brief moment. "What do you mean, disrupt chakra flow?"

Ichiko giggled lightly before answering. "Well, every being has chakra. It's a combination of physical and mental energy that circulates throughout the body." She sounded like she as reciting a lecture, so he listened carefully lest he miss something important. "If you exhaust all the chakra in your body, then you die. Being a ninja is learning how to use it most efficiently to fight someone. With enough training, you can mold chakra to create techniques to help fight. Some of these techniques are unique to individual ninja families because of special bloodlines that are passed on from generation to generation, or are just part of a family's tradition. The Gentle Fist is one of these; it's a way of fighting that was developed by the Hyuuga family in order to take advantage of their bloodline ability."

Daichi nodded his head along with her explanation; he missed some, but Daichi thought that he caught that gist of it. "What sort of bloodline does he have? Does it have something to do with those weird eyes?"

"Well, the Hyuuga bloodline is known as the Byakuugan eye, and it allows them to see almost all around them. You can train it so that the very pathways that chakra travels through can be seen, and more easily attacked with pinpoint accuracy. It's one of the most powerful fighting styles in Konoha because of the Hyuuga eye, and many of Konoha's enemies covet those eyes for wanting to figure out how to duplicate their effect. Those eyes are one of Konoha's most closely guarded secrets."

"And here you go telling just any random farm boy my family's secrets, Ichiko."

She jumped in surprise, then blushed. Daichi had turned around so quickly, surprise written all over his face, that he almost fell from the roof. He was saved by Hoji, who had come up behind him when he turned and stood with his hand on Daichi's shoulder, steadying him on the roof. "Tch. He's obviously more than a farm boy. You were watching him during our fight, weren't you?" Hoji's stress of the word indicated what he really meant, and Hishinoi glared at him before nodding stoically. Ichiko matched looks with Hoji, and for an instant he noticed how closely they resembled each other; they might have been brother and sister. Daichi glanced back and forth between the three young ninja, a slightly anxious look on his face.

"Um...w-what do you m-mean?" He stuttered, anxiety at being surrounded by the three overwhelming his inherent curiosity. They all turned to look at him, Ichiko and Hoji with surprise adorning their features--and proving their relation to Daichi, as they resembled each other too closely for it to be a coincidence--and Hishinoi in a calculating way. As much as he wanted to look away, Daichi couldn't help but meet his gaze, almost as though an inner instinct was telling him that if he were the first to look away it would cost him more than his pride.

They stared each other down for several moments before Hishinoi twitched, quickly turning to look to his teammates. A silent communication passed between them, before Hishinoi turned his white, pupilless eyes back to Daichi. "I would very much like to spar with you, right now, if you don't mind."

"They're dead, aren't they?"

The question echoed through Sakura's mind as she fought to maintain control over her feelings. Flashes of the attack that had taken the life of her mentor and confidant, Tsunade, swirled in her mind, adding fuel to the fire of her emotions. She couldn't bring herself to meet Naruto's eyes, looking away and nodding her head, tears threatening to spill from her eyes.

Naruto felt the impact like a ton of bricks. Two of the only people he truly cared about, gone--people he had looked at like family. He kept his face stoic, hiding the pain beneath the surface, the only evidence being the tight grasping of his wife's hand. She grasped back just as tightly, tears trickling down her cheeks to fall on the table.

In all his life, of all the people Naruto had known, very few adults had ever shown him any sort of respect. He had grown up for most of his childhood without knowing a single one who wouldn't at least glare at him as he passed by, save for Old Man Hokage. There were few adults that he could actually look up to--Iruka, Kakashi, Jiraiya, and Tsunade taking up most of that list. He hadn't seen any of them for twenty years now, but it didn't lessen the pain he felt at knowing that some of his precious people were gone.

Isaribi took a deep, staggering breath. She looked away as the tears started to fall; Tsunade had been the one to help her all those years ago. If it hadn't been for her, I would never have gotten my life back. I would never have been…normal again. A sob escaped her throat, and she clung to Naruto, who embraced her as she cried into his shoulder.

He rubbed her back as his thoughts remained on the two people he had seen almost as family. A veil of numbness had descended on his mind; a hollow emptiness echoing through his soul. For all his disagreements with the two Sannin, he had often thought of them almost like parents. It made leaving more difficult for him, but they had seemed to understand his needs in getting away from Konoha, just like a mother and father would. Of everyone aside from Isaribi, no one had understood him like they had. A tear slid down his cheek as he held his sobbing wife.

After a few minutes, Isaribi excused herself and left the room. She and her husband shared a look, and Naruto nodded after her, silently telling her that he had more to discuss. Naruto watched her leave, then turned back to face Sakura. "Tell me what happened."

Sakura sighed, wiping a few tears from her own eyes before looking up to meet Naruto's blank stare. Her voice came out flat, though her stormy eyes gave away her inner pain. "A little over a year ago, the Sound attacked again. It wasn't nearly as bad as last time, since we weren't caught completely off guard again, and we didn't lose many people before they retreated.

"However, Orochimaru infiltrated the city with a few of his strongest supporters. We don't know how they got in, but we know what they were after. Orochimaru ordered the guards to attack the strongest of Konoha's shinobi ranks--Kakashi, Maito Gai, Morino Ibiki, and Mitarashi Anko. Thankfully, no civilians were hurt, but there was a lot of property damage, Ibiki was killed, and Anko has been in a coma ever since." A smirk flittered across Sakura's face, "Iruka visits her almost every day, in the hospital. I think they were dating."

Naruto snorted, raising an eyebrow at the unlikely combination. "Wow. Really? That's not just something you and Ino came up with to spread around, is it?" He gave her a sidelong look with one of his fox grins, causing her to blush and hurl a shoe at his face. It connected with a loud THWAP! And Naruto clutched his nose as Sakura glared at him.

"Ow…alright, alright! Go on, already," Naruto said, rubbing his nose and glaring at the other shoe Sakura had prepared to throw at him.

With a "Hmmph!" Sakura put her shoe down. She looked down at the table, focusing on the finish as she contemplated how to say it. "Orochimaru targeted Tsunade and Jiraiya. Shizune was there, but she was taken down pretty quickly. She survived, and it's thanks to her that we know anything of what happened there. She said that…well, before they fought…Orochimaru, he pulled his…his f-face off. You know how he did that, that one time during the exam, right? When we faced him?" Naruto nodded an affirmative. "Shizune was behind him, so she didn't see the face. But…" Sakura clutched her hands together, looking around the room, tryiing to find something else to focus her eyes on. Her face showed the strain Sakura was going through. "...but, she saw his hair, Naruto. And she saw Tsunade and Jiraiya. They were shocked. And Jiraiya was angry. And Orochimaru said something like, 'Jiraiya, don't you have any greetings for your former student?' and then they started to fight, and she blacked out."

Sakura was crying, now. The memories of what she had felt when she had thought Naruto was dead, or worse, possessed by Orochimaru came flooding back; if it hadn't been for Ino and Shikamaru, she might've had a mental breakdown. All those people, they were practically celebrating, while the Hokage was dead. If it hadn't been for all her friends, and especially Ino and Shikamaru, she didn't know what might've happened.

Sakura felt an arm being draped over her shoulders, and look up to see Naruto's sympathetic face. She threw herself into his chest, crying as hard as his wife had been, as Naruto waited for her to settle down. Once the crying subsided, Naruto handed Sakura a handkerchief. After calming down a little, Sakura continued. "Ever since Tsunade was killed, the council has been running the village. Shizune's done her best managing the ninja corps, but attacks in Fire Country have been picking up, and we think that Orochimaru's ready to make some major moves." She breathed in deeply, lifting her eyes hesitantly from the table. "Tsunade left some documents that only a few of us have seen, mostly those that Shizune knew Tsunade would trust. They pertain to a mission, should she have been killed without naming a successor. I," she hesitated, "I was told where she knew you to have settled down, and I was supposed to find you. Naruto," Sakura paused, looking back down at the table top, "Tsunade named you to be her successor. She chose you to be the Sixth Hokage."

Naruto was shocked. Him, the hokage? He rembered how he had defended the job of Hokage to her. He had told her of how much devotion one had to have to the village, how respected one had to be to remain in the highest post in Konoha, arguably the most powerful of fire country. When he was a small child, he had dreamed of all that. He had wanted the respect, the recognition allotted to the Hokage, he desired it, he needed it--that was, before he had grown tired of the way he was treated. Could he really go back? Could he really take the position he had wanted as a boy?

I don't want that anymore, a voice popped up in his head. Now, I just want peace, here with my family. I want to see my children grow up, I want to live here with nothing more to worry about than if there would be a drought this summer, or if the first frost would damage the crops. He remembered Konoha, the place of his childhood. He remembered the looks, the barbs, the accusations from the villagers. He remembered people looking at him with distrust, with loathing, with fear and hatred. He remembered all of it. What would happen if he were to go back? Would it all start again? Would they let him protect them, or would they try to chase him out? What would they do to his family?

But if he didn't go back, then how long would it be before Konoha fell? How long until Orochimaru's people found this village? What would they do to the people living here? Whatever they would do, it was most likely a thousand times worse than what could happen in Konoha. Still, he didn't want his children to go through what he had. Naruto sighed; there was no easy decision.

Hisninoi and Daichi panted from opposite sides of the yard, lying down after their draining spar. The two had used up quite a bit of energy in their mock-fight, with neither being able to make any huge hits on the other. Hoji and Ichiko lightly applauded from their vantage point on the roof of the barn. Daichi gave them a grin from where he was, before propping himself up on his elbows. He blew out a breath and rolled onto his knees as Hishinoi began getting up, wobbling a bit due to exhaustion and walking over to sit on a bench next to the barn. Daichi joined him, and Hishinoi's teammates dropped from the roof to stand across from the two.

"That was amazing! I haven't seen anyone able to make you work that hard, Hishinoi!" Ichiko exclaimed, as Hoji rolled his eyes and shook his head. Ichiko glared at Hoji, before smacking him upside the head. Hoji yelped, and the two began bickering, completely ignoring the other two.

Hishinoi grunted, looking annoyed at her exclamation. "If it were a real fight, then all those hits I made on his body would have been fatal."

The comment silenced them, and caused Daichi to blush. He narrowed his eyes at the pupilless boy. "If it had been a real fight, I would have focused. Like I did against him," he nodded at Hoji, "during our fight. You don't know that you would have won," he finished.

Hishinoi narrowed his eyes, ready to refute the boy's claims, when he remembered the red chakra from the tournment and the way the boy had fought using it. It had ironed out his technique, forged him into a different fighter than the one sparring with nothing more than raw talent and basic taijutsu knowhow. Instead, he turned his pale eyes on the younger boy and asked, "How is it that you learned to fight like that?"

Daichi shrugged his shoulders and said, "My dad taught me. He showed me some of the moves and I practiced them whenever I had free time. He told me, one time, that someone had taught him those same techniques and that aside from him and his old teacher, no one else knew any of the technique."

"That would explain why I've never seen those moves before," Hishinoi mumbled, though loud enough to hear, "If your father came from Konoha like Sakura said, then most likely there would have been someone else to have used that style of fighting."

The four sat quietly for a few moments before Hoji spoke up, "Hey, didn't Sakura say that she and Naruto used to be teammates?"

"Hmm...yeah, I think so." Ichiko scratched her head, trying to remember what it was the her pink-haired teacher had spoken about on their way here. "I think she said that it was her, him and one other guy, but he was killed in the first Sound attack, and that after that they never really spoke again."

Naruto got up and turned to Sakura, who was watching him from the table with red-rimmed eyes. "When Sasuke died, were only kids. We may have been ninja, with all that responsibility that went along with it, but in the end, we were still only children."

Sakura blinked, sniffling back tears. She remembered how much she had cried over Sasuke, how long it took for her to get back on her feet after he had died. She even remembered how she had blamed herself for it, as if she could have beaten Gaara back then. "You beat him," She exclaimed.

Naruto gave her a confused look that made him look twelve years old again, making Sakura chuckle a little. "You beat Gaara, when you were only a kid. You were really strong," she elaborated, "You were strong enough to take on and beat one of the greater demons of this world."

Naruto's face darkened at the memory, his mind replaying parts of the fight from memory. He opened his mouth to reply, but held back; what was he supposed to say? Yeah, he was powerful enough, but there was more to being a ninja than simply power. "There's more to being a ninja than just being powerful enough to take down a strong foe. You ought to know this. Neither of us took Sasuke's death well," Naruto sighed, "and I probably took it as bad as you did. But while we were strong enough to be ninja, we weren't mentally prepared for everything that it meant. How many comrades do you think adult shinobi lose? It happens, and they accept it. Children shouldn't have to, and for the most part they don't. They aren't usually placed in situations where they can lose their teammates, their friends." Naruto shook his head, "We were, though. I doubt if many could have faced what we did and come out much the better for it."

The two remained in contemplative silence for a few minutes, remembering Sasuke and the days of Team 7. Naruto turned to leave the house through the kitchen door, but paused, turning his head to his old teammate, "If you guys want, you can stay the night and head out tomorrow. We have some extra futons, and the couch is always open."

Sakura gave a small smile and said, "Oh, you don't have to. We can leave tonight and make it back before morning."

One of Naruto's trademark fox grins adorned his face as he replied, "Hey, it's no problem at all. It's not often we get guests around here, and I'll be damned if I let you guys out into the woods this time of night." With that, he left through the door and went outside. He had a lot of thinking to do.

Isaribi walked out onto the porch, stopping right next to the seat her husband was sitting in, staring aimlessly into the night sky. She looked at his face, tracing her eyes over his high cheekbones and masculine jawline, his 5 o'clock shadow and narrow nose, his strong forehead and deep, sky blue eyes. She stared into them for a few minutes before she noticed that they were staring back; she smiled, and he smiled back, reaching up and dragging her onto his lap. She giggled, giving him a kiss as he wrapped his arms around her and returned it passionately.

When their kiss ended, she continued to gaze deeply into his eyes, the eyes that hadn't changed a day since she had first met him; they still held that overwhelming fervor, the complete and utter devotion to what was important to him that first made her fall in love with him. She smiled, and said, "How did your talk go?"

Naruto gave a small smile of his own, before leaning forward and kissing his wife on the nose. "It was good."

Isaribi crinkled her nose at his explanation, drawing back a little, the smile still playing in her eyes. "Good? What do you mean, good?"

He grinned, though not at his usual intensity. "I mean, well, we talked. And it was good, you know? She was like family to me, Isa."

She smiled, giving him a hug. "That's good."

"Isn't that what I said?" He smirked.

Isaribi playfully swatted his arm as she moved around to lean her back against his chest. Naruto put his arms around her stomach and she laid her head back against his shoulder. They sat in silence together, gazing at the thousands of stars winking throughout the night sky in peace.

Naruto sighed, and looked down to find his wife staring intently into his eyes. "There was more, wasn't there?"

He nodded, though didn't immediately respond. Naruto pursed his lips, then frowned, then let out a growl. Isaribi raised an eyebrow, and Naruto huffed. "That damn fox was right! I'll never be free of being a ninja."

Isaribi smiled, then grinned, then laughed, causing Naruto to turn his frown to her. She chuckled lightly before wrapping her arms around his shoulders and sighing.

She lay with her head against his shoulder, his arms around her for several moments. Naruto had begun drifting off before she nudged him. "Hmm?" He mumbled.

"I'd like to go. To Konoha. I want to...pay my respects. To Tsunade, and Jiraiya."

Naruto tightened his arms around Isaribi, nodding his head. She continued, "I want to show them our children. I want them to see how our lives have turned out, and I want to thank them, for everything. For you, for me, for us."

Naruto blinked away tears, nodding his head fervently in agreement. "I'd like that. And...Daichi, he could go to the ninja academy. He'd like that, you know, and he'd be really good--you should have seen him! I barely taught him the basics, but he took it and ran with it! I think that he could be a great ninja. Better even than me!" He grinned, and Isaribi chuckled lightly and turned her head forward. She snuggled into Naruto, and the two sat for hours until the darkness drew back and the stars faded to the light of the rising sun.

Questions? Comments? Reviews? All of the above? For the record, I love my beta, who just constantly gives me praise and inflates my ego. Thanks, babe, not much else I can say, cuz if I didn't have someone for that, I'd probably be all depressed and EMO-y and write all angst-y and depressing stuff that no one really wants to read.

Seriously, though. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope to get another couple of chapters done by the end of June. The one thing I hate about writing fanfiction is how long it takes to write sometimes. It helps that I know where I want the next 2 chapters to go, and beyond that I have a vague idea, so all of you, keep reading, cuz I'll keep writing!

Adios,

DarkSov