It should come as no surprise that I rethought my secrecy measures.

All the things that had run through my mind as, "Stupid!" when I'd thought I'd been completely discovered? It's because they were stupid. I'd been being complacent, and when you were surrounded by what amounted to professional spies and assassins, that just didn't cut it.

So I made a mental list of things that needed to be fixed, and tried to figure out how to implement it while drawing as close to zero attention as I could. I knew Shikaku and Yoshino's attention would be on me more than usual, after discovering the first secret, which was actually relatively minor. I didn't want to reveal the rest of my secrets by being suspicious while trying to make secrets more secure.

Namely, I needed to do something about the stolen books, and find a way to make sure my jutsu and chakra shaping exercises weren't discovered. The problem was, it was much easier to say that than to actually find a way to implement it. If I was older, it would have been different. But I was just a little over two years old. I had no privacy. I had no autonomy. It would be suspicious if I even tried to get more of either of those things. If I changed my habits drastically, that would also be suspicious.

It was a problem.

So I made a plan. I'd been occasionally practicing my chakra exercises outside, but as Shikaku had shown, that wasn't safe. I'd been like a child with my hands over my eyes, thinking that just because I couldn't see anyone, no one else could see me. But people could see me, without me ever knowing of their presence.

I knew from working with Yoshino on my own chakra sensing that some experienced and strong shinobi developed a kind of sixth sense for chakra use near them, but it was rare, and tended to be more like a danger sense for use in the midst of battle. If either of them could have sensed chakra use, she wouldn't have kept it a secret when she was having so much trouble training me in the same thing.

Honestly, the safest thing would have been not to practice with my chakra at all. But of course that wasn't an option. So I had to practice where I was least likely to be discovered. That was, ironically I thought, in my room, with the door closed, and silently. No anime-esque grunts or shouts of effort. And even then, I would need to be careful. I would practice when Shikaku was at work, and Yoshino somewhere else, either in the kitchen or gone, as far away from my space as possible.

Taking the stolen books somewhere else to hide them wasn't feasible. Both because I had nowhere to take them, and because I would have to sneak away to read them. After some extensive thought, I found what I hoped was a good solution.

The floors of our house were wooden, and though beautiful, they were old and creaked a lot. Yoshino liked to cover them with beautiful rugs, because her feet got cold easily, and she preferred walking around barefoot to the more conventional indoor slippers that seemed to be common in the Japanse-slash-Naruto world. Suffice it to say, I realized the wood was creaking because there was space underneath the planks.

My bookcase was in the far corner of the room, and one of the smaller planks right next to it was particularly creaky. The bookcase just happened to be conveniently resting on a rug that also covered that creaky plank.

I knelt beside it and folded over the rug to reveal the floor beneath, then stepped on the plank to watch it bend slightly. I examined what held it together, and was happy to see that it was little more than some nails. Then I covered it back up with the rug, and set my Nara mind to work.

I had experience hiding things from adults, in my previous life. I'd been a bit of a reader, and especially liked the very genres that were forbidden to me by a strictly religious mother. I'd learned that I got caught when I got sloppy. If I started to relax my system of hiding reading material, and left room for failure, Murphy's law would come in to play, and I would eventually be discovered, confronted, and, of course, punished. Not that that stopped me.

But in this world, the punishment might be a little more serious than being hit and grounded. And instead of working on the same level of intelligence as my opponent, I had to work off the assumption they were better than me.

I had to assume that Yoshino and Shikaku were at least…five times as observant as I was. I mean, shinobi were literally trained to notice small details, since discrepancies would alert you if you were under a genjutsu. Even if I was doing my best, analyzing every action and possibility, I couldn't match them. The only reason I'd gotten away with anything so far was because they severely underestimated me, and perhaps even brushed aside things they'd noticed because of those preconceptions. Now I didn't have that advantage any more. At least not like I had prior to screwing up.

I took an extra long nap in the afternoon, and then waited up that same night till I was sure Yoshino and Shikaku were asleep. Then I reached under my pillow for a short strand of discarded wire I'd found in the neighborhood, and got out of my futon, moving glacially slowly. I could hear the sound of my own heartbeat, I was so quiet, and after every tiny rustle of cloth against cloth, or the slightest creak of my floor, I froze and counted to some random multiple of one hundred before continuing.

I folded up the corner of the rug, and unwound the wire, carefully shimmying it under the head of one of the nails keeping the board down. It was one of the wires used for jutsu, but it was too short to be useful for that purpose, which was no doubt why this piece had been discarded. It was about as thick as the low note string on a guitar, and I had to step on the board near the nail to open up the space to slip it under.

I wrapped the wire almost all the way around the head of the nail, then wrapped the ends around both my fists, and pulled. It didn't do much more than put a painful line across my palms. So I tiptoed back across the room to my laundry basket, grabbed the dirtiest clothes I could find, and tiptoed back, still careful to stop and wait for a random amount of time with every involuntary sound I created.

I wrapped a layer of cloth around both fists, then squatted and gathered up the wire again, this time wrapping it several times around my protected hands. Instead of just pulling with my arms this time, I thrust with my legs, basically doing the rising half of a squat, but with the nail providing the resistance instead of weights.

It worked, though I felt like I was about to rip my arms out of their sockets, and the wire scored lines into my palm. The nail budged, and then shot out, and it was only through luck that it landed on the sound-cushioning folded over rug instead of the floor. I froze, then let out a silent sigh of relief, and went back across the room for more dirty laundry, which I laid out around myself in case I wasn't so lucky next time. The sound of the nail hitting the floor might wake Shikaku or Yoshino.

I could have used the edge of a knife, instead of the wire, maybe, but that presented multiple problems, in that I would first have to steal a knife from the kitchen without Yoshino noticing, and I might accidentally damage the knife while prying up nails with it. Plus, unlike the backs of hammers, which were angled specifically to pull out nails, a knife would be hard to get leverage with, when working on a flat surface, and without my whole body working at it as one, I didn't have the strength needed to overcome that.

Then, I repeated the nail removing process three more times. By that time, my hands were aching, and my leg, back, and arm muscles had decided to mutiny. I placed all four nails together, and knelt down to try and pry the board up. It didn't want to come loose, at first, and I couldn't get a good grip on it.

I was just about to become frustrated when I realized I could do magic, and should stop whining. I channeled chakra to my hand, laid my palm flat to the surface of the board, and pulled up. The wood rose with my modified wall-walking technique, and I wrapped my other arm around the board, pulling it away from the floor and setting it gently on top of the rug, careful not to make any noise at this critical time.

Underneath the planks, there was a few inches of space. Not enough to crawl in or anything, even for someone as small as me. But enough room for books to fit. I stood up and took my books from their hiding spot, then laid them carefully out, away from the opening I'd created. I would have to put my arm in and reach for them by feel when I needed to get one out, but this way, even if someone took out the board and looked into the floorspace, the books still wouldn't be immediately noticeable.

Then I replaced the board, slipped the nails back into place, knowing that they were loosened enough I could remove them whenever I wanted, and rolled the rug back over the floor. I put my dirty clothes back in the basket, and slipped under the cover of my futon.

That was the second problem, solved.

The third was not to arouse suspicion with my behavior, and would no doubt be the hardest.

Shikaku started spending a lot more time with me after partially exposing my secret activities. When he got home from work, he would check in on Shikamaru and I first, and then hang around with us for an hour or so, asking questions and…playing with us. Shika loved it, and started waiting often by the door for Shikaku to come home, when the usual time came around.

Once Shikaku was confident I'd learned the rules of shogi, he played short, easy games with me, more for the teaching aspect than either of us trying to win, as he'd give me advice on my next move, and explain why, almost every time.

Shikamaru would sit beside us and watch our back and forth interaction, dark eyes silently taking in the strategy. I knew he'd be better than me at games of strategy like shogi, once he grew up and put in the practice hours. I was smart enough to make up for it, but I didn't really have a talent for the game.

What I really enjoyed was the shuriken practice Shikaku started us on. He came home one day with two small boxes for each of us, and casually handed them over. When I opened the first up, I saw closely stacked shuriken, colored bright orange. The other box had strangely shaped kunai, in the same glaring orange. When I took them out to inspect, I saw that the edges were blunted, but still sharp enough that if thrown with enough speed, they might embed themselves in the side of a tree instead of bending or bouncing off.

Shika had bright blue, and when he saw the "kid-safe," but still real weapons, he leaned forward and wrapped his arms around Shikaku's leg, then mumbled a muffled, "thank you," into it. Then the boy pulled away and returned to unconvincing nonchalance, mimicking his dad's slightly slouched posture and struggling not to giggle aloud as he gazed down at the weapons in his hand with adoration.

I thanked Shikaku more sedately, but clutched the boxes of training weapons securely to my chest. When we ate at the table that evening, Shikamaru tore through his food, glancing eagerly at the weapons which he'd placed in a spot of honor right in front of his plate.

Yoshino smiled brightly at Shikaku, approval fairly radiating off her. Had she put him up to this? I was pretty sure Shikaku hadn't been the type to train Shikamaru in much more than shogi, along with some sporadic life advice, in the canon "Naruto."

But either way, I was grateful, as after eating, Shikaku took Shika and me out to the back, and with his own, non-blunted, kunai, carved a human outline into the bark of a large tree on the outskirts of the Nara forest. He then marked off the "kill" spots, and the "distraction" spots we would be aiming for. I would have been surprised, but I quickly realized that I wasn't on Earth anymore. Of course we'd be practicing killing or peripherally injuring a human shape, and not just try to get a bulls-eye on a ringed target. We were training to be shinobi, not champion marksmen.

Shikaku showed us the form for shuriken throwing first, as that's what we'd been doing before, but he demonstrated a few variations, each best for different things. Then, he had us practice throwing, correcting our forms. It didn't take me long to see how much it helped to have a teacher for things like this, as both my aim and throwing force almost instantly improved. The shuriken may have been mostly blunted, but they still sunk a centimeter or so into the tree trunk when I threw them, and the balance and weight was incomparable to paper shuriken. I was grateful for the bright coloring of our weapons when we had to find them to pick them up, because they stood out, unnaturally bright against pretty much everything. I realized that my set were Naruto's favorite color.

As Shika and I gathered up all the shuriken that had hit and missed our targets, my thoughts wandered a bit, to Naruto, who would be in the orphanage at this point in time. Was he alright? I almost snorted at my sentimentality. Of course he wasn't all right. The adults around him were no doubt psychologically scarring him for life at that very moment. And there was nothing that I could do.

We moved on to kunai after the shuriken were all gathered and safely slotted away back in their boxes. I pulled one of mine out and examined it curiously. It was bright orange, and blunted, of course, but even beyond that it didn't look like I'd expected it to. It was more like a throwing knife than the angular instrument with a long handle and a loop on the end that I'd come to expect from Kishimoto's rendition. It was flat, the handle didn't have a loop on the end, and the tip was asymmetrically angled. I frowned, and looked over to Shika, whose were the same as mine, and then to Shikaku, who was holding a kunai that looked like ours.

He noticed my expression, apparently. "Just like shuriken come in many different designs, so do kunai. The standard kunai you've probably seen a lot of before were adapted many, many years ago from farming instruments."

I nodded, because I vaguely remembered hearing something like that before.

"A lot of shinobi still use the standard kunai today. I used one to make the target here," he pointed to the tree, "but in reality, they're often not the best tool for the job. For a shinobi whose style of combat isn't reliant on projectiles, they work alright. They're light enough not to slow you down too much, and sturdy enough to block a blow from another weapon, if needed. They can even be thrown. But they're unwieldy. And," he paused, reaching down to poke Shikamaru's forearm, "they take a bit more strength than either of you two have."

Shikamaru scowled, then raised his arm and flexed, comparing his bicep with my own.

I held back a snicker and pretended I hadn't noticed.

"This kunai design is called north wind. They are better for throwing, though they're not designed to block a heavy blow from another weapon. That doesn't matter, because, once again, you're not strong enough to block a blow anyway." He flicked a look toward Shika again.

My eyebrow twitched, wanting to rise and give Shikaku a knowing look. But I held back, because that seemed a little too adult, and I was trying to watch myself after being discovered last time.

"If your opponent is unarmed, or you're ambushing them, these could also be used as hand-held stabbing knives, though you'll need careful aim to make sure you hit a vital point. Even the non-blunted version of this knife isn't very sharp on the edge, so they can't be used to slash. Now, you're going to learn to throw these without the end-over-end spin, so that you'll still be able to stick the knife from anywhere, no matter the exact distance from the target."

He showed us a couple different way to throw the knives, and then had us practice for the next half hour or so.

I fell in love with the length and weight of the north wind kunai, and the way they sank in to the bark of the tree with a satisfying thunk. Real weapons were so much nicer than their paper imitations.

As Shika and I walked with Shikaku back to the house, I said to Shikaku, "Thanks for teaching us."

He nodded, a faint smile softening his perpetually frowning face.

My fingers almost itched for the feel of cold metal between them. I wondered how I might hide a couple shuriken or kunai on my person as a nasty surprise for any enemies who thought I was helpless. I bared my teeth slightly, restraining an eager smile, and then wiped it from my face when I caught Shikaku looking at me.

6/15/16: The North Wind throwing knife actually exists, and it's pretty cool. Google it, if you're interested