Hiruzen Sarutobi sat at his desk enjoying a nice warm cup of honey sweetened chai spice tea. While pouring over some papers from some files that he'd needed to check, when he happened to recall that Naru's birthday was only four months away. And he needed to make sure that he cleared his schedule so that he could throw the girl a proper birthday since he hadn't been able to do so for the past ten years or so.

Scrunching up his nose a little bit as he mouthed the words he was reading from the file, he also made a mental note to take the girl shopping and to raise her allowance a bit since she was quickly approaching the age where she would need it more.

For...female things. And oh, how he was dreading it.

He dreaded Naru's upcoming approach to the age of fertility almost as like he dreaded his next upcoming root canal. Mostly because he feared that she would become a target for sexual assault. And with her grades in the academy, he doubted that she was being taught anything of actual value there to sufficiently defend herself.

He would have to make sure that he assigned some Anbu to her a month or so before her birthday rolled around. Otherwise he may be called to the hospital one day to have to explain to her- His grim thoughts were cut short there when there was a sudden tap at his window, causing him to partially turn in his seat to see who was there.

And then frowned when he saw Shisui perched on the other side of the glass.

Getting up out of his seat, he quickly made his way over to the window and opened it for the teen and allowed him to climb inside of his office before asking, "What's wrong?"

Shisui looked at him for a moment before replying, "Naru is injured. She's currently in the custody of Itachi and his younger brother, both of whom will protect her- however she may need you and a medic present to ask how she became so injured in the first place. Since I seriously doubt that she would have become unconscious and concussed from merely falling off of a building rooftop."

"You think that she was attacked?"

"From what little bit of her I managed to see- yes. She had bruises and other defensive wounds. Perhaps even a few fractures and broken bones."

"I see... I will summon a med-" Sarutobi started to say when he was cut off by the teen.

"There is no need, Hokage-sama. I have already retrieved one, and sworn them to silence. They already know who they will be treating and why. They also know that you will be present and if they try anything- one of us will kill him. We just need to start for the Uchiha compound. When you are ready sir." The teen said as he motioned for the elder to go first and watched as the man quickly took off his hat and then turned and vanished out the window.

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Itachi felt somewhat nervous having the Kyubbi girl, Naru in his home.

Not because he disliked or hated her- to be honest he believed letting himself dislike or hate her for something beyond her control was more than a tad bit unfair to her as a person. No- he was nervous with her being in his home because he was in his seventeen and a very desirable bachelor within the village.

Coming in second only to Sharigan no Kakashi.

And he didn't want anyone knowing that she was there because if they found out- unnecessary rumors would start to fly about the two of them and their relationship. He didn't care much for the attention and probably wouldn't suffer overly much negativity.

Naru on the other hand, would.

The poor girl already had enough crap to deal with as far as how her peers viewed her. She didn't need her innocence tarnished by being labeled a slut and whore on top of it all.

With Sasuke running around his home- he had a little bit of wiggle room as far as the rumors would go. However when the Hokage and medic showed up, there would be no room for doubt that any anonymous person whom just happened to be passing by and noticing the girl in/around his home, would be able to question the reasons why she had been there to begin with.

With the Hokage and medic present those questions would be automatically answered.

There would be no rumors to cause her more trouble. End of story.

Or at least that was what he was hoping would happen, cause if he found out otherwise, he'd have to go against his family and clan and marry the girl just to stop the trouble from becoming critical. And though he wasn't all that sure that he was ready for such a thing to happen... He stopped pacing long enough to let his dark gaze settle on the girl.

Despite her age, and her current state of dishevelment, she was quite a vision with her wild looking long strawberry blond hair, her delicately featured heart shaped face, ivory skin, slender build. Hell even her height was appealing to him as a male.

She simply fit perfectly in his arms.

And from what little bit Sasuke had told him of her since their first day of academy together, despite the fact that the girl never did anything to deserve it- she wasn't exactly treated well by a lot of people. Sasuke was one of the people that actually tended to treat her well, though she didn't seem overly fond of his attentions but put up with them anyways so as not to hurt his feelings.

He told him once that Naru was sort of quiet and guarded too outside of school.

Despite what she was like out and around the village most of the time, when people weren't watching her closely, she tended to simply blend into the background to the point where Sasuke mentioned being jealous of her for being able to do such a thing so easily.

Itachi supposed that he could agree, being able to blend in like that would be rather nice. He himself tended to do the same thing when he was curious, or simply wanted to be left alone from all those who sought his attentions.

He could imagine the girl wishing much along the lines of the same from time to time.

Aside from his little brother singing more than enough of the girl's praises, Itachi had found himself rather curious about her a time or two and had actively sought her out on more than one occasion. Though he had been sure to erase those encounters from her mind before he left her.

From what his brother tended to tell him, she was actually quite pleasant and politely mannered when sitting one on one with someone equally politely mannered. She was intelligent too. Very much so.

The first time that he had sought her out because of his curiosity, she had mentioned several key holes in the village's defenses that needed to be strengthened. There were places where a village wide attack would wipe everyone and everything out, there were places where an invading outside force could slip by them and slaughter them all in their sleep.

She kept extremely well documented maps of each area. And had even showed them to him.

He'd taken the map away from her and placed in within the Hokage's hands, of course. But it wasn't a hundred percent because he didn't trust her, it was more like he didn't trust others not to break into her home, find the map and betray the village.

She must have been aware of that on some level since she let him take it without any fussing or fighting. He highly doubted that she wasn't without one or more new maps by now though. Come to think of it, he needed to drop by her place again and take those too. Just to be on the safe side.

It was right about then that Sasuke stuck his head into the living room from the kitchen at the exact moment that Itachi seemed to detect activity just outside his home.

"Nii-san, do you think we can ask lord Hokage and Naru if they would like to eat dinner with us?"

Itachi almost visibly cringed at the mere idea. Not that it bothered him any- it didn't. For a while now he had been dying to have Sasuke and someone else over so that he could show off his fantastic cooking skills. And as much as he might like to do so- he didn't think Hokage-sama, nor Naru would appreciate being ambushed into having dinner with himself and his brother.

He was about to tell his little brother no, when he suddenly noticed that he wasn't where he had been a few seconds ago and turned his head this way and that to try and locate the squirt when he heard his voice, speaking in the general vicinity of the front door and quietly bristled as he heard the Hokage's masculine laughter of amusement as he told his brother that both he and Naru would be delighted to have today's dinner with them.

Which caused Itachi in turn to almost groan as he covered his face with his hands as the elder stepped through the door followed by a medic and his older cousin.

"Hello Itachi, how is Naru doing?" The Hokage asked politely as he walked over to the young Uchiha.

"Still unconscious on the couch, sir. I've treated what I could of her wounds with Sasuke acting as my little helper." Itachi said as he caught his little brother by the scruff of the neck as he tried to get by them to head back into the kitchen. The boy made a funny face as a squeak escaped him while he felt his brother's fingers roughly combing through his hair.

The boy could already tell that his brother was going to skin him alive for inviting the Hokage and Naru to stay for dinner, but he had his reasons for doing so.

He knew for a fact that Naru rarely had any decent food at home that didn't have mold or was rotten. And could even more rarely afford to eat out in the village. Unless she went fishing or hunting and foraging then she rarely had anything at all that she could eat. At least if she were here at his brother's home, she could get a decent meal- perhaps even enough leftovers to last a little while until he could wrangle her into eating dinner with him and his brother again.

The moment that the Hokage went to check on Naru along with the medic, Itachi practically lifted the boy by the back of his shirt so that he was dangling up off of the floor and walked them both into the kitchen and sat Sasuke on his kitchen table before wheeling on the boy and snapping, "What the hell are you trying to do to me?! Why would you go inviting the lord third and your classmate to dinner without any prior warning?"

"I have my reasons nii-san." Sasuke said with a little pout.

"Tell me those reasons now or I'm sending you home and grounding you from my house for at least a week."

"What! You can't do that!"

"I can and I will." Itachi warned causing the boy to actually blanch at the mere thought of being exiled form his brother's home for a week or two.

Sasuke frantically launched into his reasons about wanting to invite Naru to eat dinner with them. And by the time he finished explaining why he decided to include the Hokage in the invite, Itachi sighed, getting the rather dark picture that his little brother had just painted for him.

Moving away from his sniffling little brother, he went to a large jar that he kept on the top of his fridge stuffed full of paper money and coins and fished out a decent amount and then went back to his sniffling brother and laid a hand on his head as he leaned down a little bit and said, "Okay, they can have dinner here. You can even drop by starting tomorrow morning to pick up a couple of extra bento's lunches, and whatever leftovers we have from tonight will be boxed and sent home with her. Now- I need you to run to the grocery and get us some chicken, enough fish to feed at least six people, and some veggies. Cherry tomato's, onions, eggplant, radishes, lettuce and a few other things. Think you can handle that?"

Sasuke took the money that his brother handed to him and nodded his head as he wiped his eyes and with an overly determined look, jumped down and ran out of the door- damn near mowing down the Hokage in the process if the startled yelp from the man was any indication at all.