Kakashi groaned when yet another person came to his room in Tazuna's home asking for advice. It was the morning after a major battle, he was suffering from several injuries as well as Chakra Exhaustion up the wazoo, and he just wanted to sleep. Unfortunately, he had been unable to get any of that sleep he so desperately needed because the nice townsfolk of the village that surrounded Wave's main port kept coming in and bothering him. Things would have been much easier if Momochi Zabuza and that boy Haku had died on the bridge.

He was still thanking his lucky stars that Haku wasn't quite the merciless killer that Zabuza had portrayed him to be. Instead of being worm food like he'd half expected to end up being when he'd fallen unconscious, he was going to be laid up for about a week before going home from yet another crappy mission. Of course, prospect of the week's inactivity really sucked because he hated being inactive.

When Naruto had learned that he was still alive, and had merely been paralyzed by Haku's senbon, he had ordered the mob of townspeople who had shown up a little too late to drive Gato and his forces out to spare the boy and the swordsman who had been laying unconscious in the middle of a damaged section of bridge. Rather than being torn apart by an angry mob as they would have otherwise been, the two were taken prisoner and dragged off to the town doctor to be fixed up before they were dealt with. The two of them received slightly more sympathy from the townspeople than they would have had when Naruto had revealed that Gato had planned on betraying them and killing them once they had completed the mission for which they'd been hired. Not much more than a little though.

Now that they had them, the townspeople wanted to know what to do with the two missing-nin, and had turned to him for advice since he was the highest ranked ninja in the region. Dealing with Haku and Zabuza was a slightly sticky and problematic situation. The townspeople would not be able to keep the two locked up indefinitely as, when they finally recovered from their injuries, they would be able to easily make their escape. They weren't going to be executed either, as Naruto - who was currently the hero of the hour despite his little er...outburst - had pled for clemency and the townsfolk had kindly granted it. They couldn't just let the two go on their way however, and reporting them to the Kirigakure Hunter nin would just result in their executions, so they couldn't really do that either.

He knew that bringing the two of them to Konoha would be a headache and a half for an entirely different set of reasons from the ones that were plaguing the people of Wave, even if they didn't escape or even try to escape while being transported. Momochi Zabuza was infamous for his attempted assassination of the Yondaime Mizukage Yagura, and having him in Konoha would spark a diplomatic incident with Kiri which Konoha really didn't need at all. Relations were still frosty after that incident with Naruto during last year's Winter Chunin Exam, and the reason there hadn't been any sanctions was the fact that Kiri couldn't prove that A) Naruto was a Jinchuriki, and B) that Naruto had been sent to Kiri with malicious intentions on Konoha's part.

So, thanks to the fact that Haku and Zabuza had survived, they were stuck in a Catch 22. They couldn't keep Zabuza and his accomplice, and they couldn't get rid of them either. Well, technically they could get rid of them, but Naruto would kick up one heck of a fuss which would result in another set of problems. Relations between him and Naruto were bad enough, and he didn't need to bring something like that between the two of them on top of everything else.

He really wasn't in the mood for this. He was going to do what he should have done from the beginning and say "Screw it" before kicking this upstairs for the Hokage deal with as soon as he could summon a messenger. Let the Hokage take the fallout. He deserved it, for...for...Whatever, the Hokage deserved it.


Inari watched in mixed revulsion and satisfaction as the townspeople burned Gato's body. The monster that had haunted his nightmares was dead and gone, brought down by a monster that was also a hero. A good person who'd turned out to be more than he'd appeared had done something, and the evil one that had been given strength through the inaction of others who'd turned out to be weaker than everyone had thought him to be had been destroyed.

Thanks to Naruto, both his mother and his grandfather were still alive.

Rather than say that the enemy was too strong, Naruto had faced down an entire army and had fought to save everyone, even though he would almost certainly have been killed. And, like in the stories, the hero had been given great strength defeated the monster, sent the villain's forces fleeing, and saved everyone. Well, almost everyone. Some of the construction workers hadn't survived the battle that had raged around them after Gato's ninja had attacked.

The thing that mattered most now though was that Wave was free, thanks to Naruto.


Even though he should be back at Tazuna's resting, Naruto sat at Haku's bedside and studied the other boy's face as he slept. Doctor Yoshida had taken the boy's mask off when he had been brought in for treatment, and he'd immediately noticed that the boy had very feminine features. He'd also had the niggling feeling that he'd seen him before somewhere as he looked at the boy's exceedingly feminine face which would likely plague him into adulthood. Because that feeling had bothered him like an itch he couldn't scratch, he racked his brain trying to figure out where it could have been that he'd seen the boy before. Finally, it came to him. The boy looked just like a very nice girl he'd once met...

He was seated on a worn stool in front of the counter of a slightly-run down ramen stand in a foreign village. The nice girl who had led him here was seated next to him. They had introduced themselves to each-other as they waited for the old man to finish making their ramen. Her name was Haku, which was rather strange, since that was a boy's name.

"Tell me," the girl asked slightly nervously. "Do you have someone precious to you? Someone that you would do anything to protect?"

She, he rather, had been so nice to him back then, had been one of the very few good things that had happened to him in Kiri. He'd almost forgotten her, him, in all the general unpleasantness that had occurred later, and now, he'd almost killed him. He had completely lost control of himself, and had almost killed someone who had shown him nothing but kindness and mercy.

He had almost killed a friend of his as well yesterday. Inari would have died if he hadn't regained control of himself at the last second. Morishita-san had warned him that something like this would happen if he let his rage control him after the first time this had happened, when he was in Kiri. She had told him to reign in his temper and find a safe outlet for it. He apparently hadn't. He had lost control again, and had let even more of the Fox out, the fox that his mother and the Yondaime had trusted him to keep sealed away. He had failed them.

As he wallowed in his guilt as he waited for Haku to wake, the Zabuza guy groaned from the other bed in Dr. Yoshida's small clinic. He had just returned to consciousness and was undoubtedly in a massive amount of pain. It had been touch and go with him last night, and his survival had not been certain. He had pulled through however and, if his wounds didn't get infected or something, he should survive. They had nearly lost Haku due to his injuries and the Chakra Exhaustion last night as well, and he was still in danger until he woke up.

The two of them wouldn't have been in nearly as bad a condition as they were currently in if he hadn't completely lost it. It was one thing to kill your enemies in battle, it was something else entirely when you lose it, almost kill your enemies, and become a danger to everyone around you including your allies like he had done.

If he didn't find a way to stay in control of himself during these kinds of situations, one of the dead was going to end up being a friend or a teammate someday.


Sakura stood outside the town's small, run-down medical building uncertain about whether she should go inside or not. Naruto was inside, and she wasn't certain if she was ready to face him yet. What she had seen yesterday had really shaken her. Naruto had snapped. Naruto had more than snapped, Naruto had turned into a monster.

What had happened to the nice, cheerful but annoying boy that she had remembered from the Academy? Had he always been like this? Is this why everyone avoided him and told their children not to play with him?

She had heard of Kekkei Genkai before, but none of the ones in Konoha that she'd heard about matched what she had seen. His mother had been a foreigner though. His mother had come from here in fact. The doctor who ran the clinic was old, probably old enough to remember Naruto's family. Maybe she would know whether or not Naruto had a Whirlpool Kekkei Genkai.

With her mind finally made up, she finally entered the building. The doctor was sitting in a chair resting, having spent the night tending to her two patients who had been in critical condition when they arrived. The two patients were occupying beds at either end of the room and Naruto was sitting next to the boy's bed, watching the boy with a serious expression on his face.

"Yoshida-san?" she said, trying to get the doctor's attention. "I was wondering if I could ask you a question."

She was slightly uncertain about asking with Naruto present, but it was probably better than going behind his back. If Naruto objected to the question, he could ask the doctor not to answer it but, she really wanted to know the answer however.

"What is it?" Doctor Yoshida asked tiredly, sitting up straighter in the chair she had been slumped in.

"Well, I was wondering if you knew if the Uzumaki had a Kekkei Genkai. What Naruto did yesterday didn't match any of the Konoha Kekkei Genkai I've heard about." she replied, almost timidly.

"The Uzumaki were famous for their red hair, their sealing skills, and living to a very ripe old age, but I don't think that those were Kekkei Genkai. Why?" Doctor Yoshida replied after a minute of thought.

"Well yesterday, Naruto grew claws and fangs, and there was this strange red Chakra surrounding him, and I thought it might be a Kekkei Genkai." she answered.

"Jinchuriki." Momochi Zabuza moaned from his bed.

Doctor Yoshida gasped at this, looking shocked and sickened.

"What's Jinchuriki?" she asked.

"About the most horrible thing anyone could do to a child." Doctor Yoshida replied. "To make a Jinchuriki, you seal one of the biju into a living child, usually an infant, since the beast's Chakra would normally kill an adult. The Jinchuriki are used as weapons by their village."

"I'm not a weapon." Naruto growled from where he sat by Haku, apparently having listened to the entire conversation despite the rapt attention he seemed to be paying the unconscious boy. "My mom and the Yondaime sealed the Fox inside me to keep Konoha safe. They wanted me to protect everyone from it."

A pain filled "Holy shit!" came from Zabuza's direction.


Sasuke froze with his back against the wall. He had been standing by the open window of the clinic providing extra security in case one of the injured ninja decided to take one of the more popular hospital exits in an attempt to escape. What he'd just heard...

That Boy had the Kyuubi sealed inside him. The Kyuubi that had vanished after Uchiha Madara had used it in his battle against the Shodai Hokage at the Valley of the End, and had reappeared twelve years ago only to be disposed of by the Yondaime who had given his life to do so, disposed of on the day That Boy had been born.

He remembered asking his father how the Kyuubi had died after he'd heard the rather sketchy story that had been told to his entire year during a special assembly that had taken place on the Yondaime's birthday during his first year at the Academy. He'd asked his father because he'd thought he would know how the Kyuubi had been killed because the Academy Instructor who'd told the story had refused to tell them how the Yondaime had killed the Kyuubi. In fact, the man yelled at That Boy for asking when he had told the combined classes the tale of the Yondaime's sacrifice for the village. When he'd asked, is father had looked like he'd been about to say something about it, but he suddenly changed his mind and told him not to ask ever again, that the Yondaime had defeated the Kyuubi, and that was all he needed to know about the subject.

Had his father known about Naruto? Had that Academy Instructor known? And, if they had known, who else knew, and why hadn't they shared their knowledge?


Zabuza had heard the rumors of the Kyuubi Jinchuriki that had been cropping up lately, but hadn't put much stock in them, as there had not even been a whisper about a Kyuubi Jinchuriki in the generations since the Jinchuriki first started being made. The rumors had started after some sort of incident that took place during the Chunin Exams over a year ago. Supposedly, according to the rumors he'd heard, the Kyuubi Jinchuriki was a small blond boy. A blond boy, like the one that had nearly taken him out on the bridge.

The existence of the Jinchuriki had not been confirmed, until now that is. He had nearly been killed by, and was currently lying helpless in the same room as the Kyuubi Jinchuriki who was sitting by the bedside of Haku who was also helpless.

He should have followed that damn fortuneteller's advice and not accepted any business contracts on that day. But no, he had to go and accept Gato's offer, and look where it had gotten him. He'd been betrayed by his employer before he could betray the man, was down two followers, was badly injured, and was the prisoner of a bunch of Konoha shinobi, one of which was Sharingan Kakashi, and another of which was the Kyuubi Jinchuriki who he hadn't believed in. To make matters worse, he had done all that work and nearly gotten himself killed twice in order to get funds for another coup attempt, and he hadn't seen a single ryo for his effort.

Today really sucked. In fact, the entire week had blew chunks.

Edited 11-26-12