Sleeping Shinobi
Chapter One: Through The Portal

Far from the perfect Mary Sue princess she would later become, at the tender age of only six months, Princess Aurora, or Briar Rose as her guardians the Three Good Fairies called her, was quite the little hellion. On top of that, she had a curiosity her guardians hadn't quite managed to cure her of yet, which was why she had crawled out of the cottage again, right under her caretakers' noses. She couldn't walk yet, but that didn't stop her from getting into all sorts of trouble, and a lot more of it than the Three Good Fairies would have liked.

"Rose!" Flora called. "Rose, where are you?"

Briar Rose scowled momentarily.

She hated the name 'Rose' because it made her sound delicate. She wished they would call her Briar, because it was a much cooler name.

"Rose! Where are you? Oh, this is not how a princess should act."

Briar, as she called herself, knew full well that she was the missing Princess Aurora. Why else would the Fairies teach her about things a princess should know, and continually tell her how a princess should act? She wasn't as stupid as her guardians might like her to be.

A swirling blue hole opened up in front of her.

She looked at it curiously, wondering what it was. It was definitely interesting, whatever it was.

She stuck her hand out and touched the hole, expecting to feel something solid, so was surprised to find that her hand passed right through it.

Weird.

It obviously lead somewhere or her hand wouldn't have passed through it, but where?

Well, there was only one way to find out.

Mustering up all the courage she possessed, which was quite a bit considering she was only six months old, she crawled through the portal.

On the other side, the Third Hokage was in his office cursing the paperwork piled up on his desk, wondering how in the world his successor or predecessor depending on how you wanted to look at it managed to do it and still have time to spend with his wife. What did Minato have that he didn't that allowed him to get the demon called paperwork done so quickly? Was it the famous Hiraishin, the Flying Thunder God technique, that allowed him to get it done so fast?

"It's not fair." He moaned.

However, his complaining was interrupted when a swirling blue hole opened up right in front of his desk and out crawled a little girl. As soon as she was fully out of the portal, her appearance changed slightly. Her blond hair turned brighter, about the same color as a boy he considered a grandson Naruto's, and dark red lips became a normal pale pink.

Finally, he thought he saw something appear on her stomach, something that looked eerily like the Reaper Death Seal Minato had used to seal the Kyuubi inside of Naruto.

"Hi!" She said.

"Hello," Hiruzen replied, wondering if this was just a strange dream that he was having because he'd fallen asleep while he was doing paperwork. "Who are you?"

The little girl seemed to debate for a moment. "Briar." She said at last.

"Well then Briar, where do you come from?" He wanted to know.

Briar shrugged and pointed to where the portal had just closed. "There."

"I see. And do you have parents?"

"No."

So, with a sigh Hiruzen called for the Anbu to bring the matron of the orphanage where Naruto lived. She was one of very few who didn't view the boy as a demon because of what he carried.

"You called, Hokage-sama?" She asked.

Hiruzen nodded. "You probably won't believe me, but this little girl just crawled through a portal of some kind. I don't know where she comes from, but she says her name is Briar, and she doesn't have parents. Because she has no knowledge of the Kyuubi attack, I was hoping that maybe she could become friends with Naruto. Log knows he needs them."

All Konoha Shinobi worshipped the Log, most by the time they reached Chunin.

The matron gave him a half smile. "I'll never see what you Shinobi see in the Log." She said. It was an old running joke between them.

Hiruzen chuckled. "It's a Shinobi thing." He replied as he had many times before. "Now, about Briar-chan? What should we do about her? Quite obviously we can't tell people that she just crawled through a portal from Log only knows where."

"Perhaps we could tell them that she had been left on your desk this morning? It is still early enough for that to be true." She suggested.

"Good idea." The Hokage praised.

"Thank you, Hokage-sama."

However, then they were both pulled into what seemed to be the girl's mindscape, a vast savannah. Smack in the middle was a giant cage held by a piece of paper with the Kanji for 'seal' on it, containing a massive ten tailed tiger, despite the fact that the Juubi had been split into the nine Bijuu by the Sage of Six Paths a long time ago.

"So, you're here." The beast in the cage spoke. "As you guessed, I'm the Juubi no Tora. If you're wondering why I'm sealed inside of this girl, it's because I wasn't born like the other Bijuu, but instead created from a curse placed upon this girl on the day of her birth. I don't know how or why. I most likely came into being when she crawled through the portal to escape her guardians. She's quite the trouble maker, I'll have you know." She seemed proud of the fact that her host was a trouble maker and not a goody two shoes.

"Why would someone want to curse her?" The matron wanted to know.

"The logic baffles me, but essentially, there was a massive party held in celebration of her birth right after she was born, and the Three Good Fairies, her former guardians who would turn her into a perfect Mary Sue princess, were invited but not the fourth fairy, Maleficent wasn't invited for reasons I'm not sure of. For that reason, Maleficent placed a curse on her: that before the sun sets on her sixteenth birthday, she will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die. However, Merryweather, the third of the Three Good Fairies, and the only one who hadn't yet given her a gift, altered the curse: Briar will still prick her finger, but instead of dying, will fall into a deep sleep until she's awakened by 'true love's kiss' a concept I find horribly and hopelessly romantic, and not in a good way." She seemed to gag at the very idea. "Anyway, that's how I'm here. Just so you know, I'm not going to hurt Briar-chan."

"I see." Sarutobi said. "Thank you, Juubi-sama."

The Juubi smirked as best a tiger could. "Please, don't call me Juubi. Instead, call me Maleficent. I like that name much better than just Juubi."

Sarutobi chuckled. "You certainly have and interesting sense of humor, Juu— excuse me, Maleficent-sama." He commented, correcting himself.

She smirked again. "Why thank you. I know."

The next day, Briar was placed in the orphanage with Naruto. However, only two and a half years later when Briar and Naruto were three, the previous matron died and the new one who took her place was far less sympathetic towards Naruto and Briar (now because someone overheard the Hokage and the previous matron talking about Maleficent the Juubi and spilled the secret, everyone knew about Briar's tenant which prompted Sarutobi to amend the law which stated that no one was allowed to tell Naruto about his tenant so that no one could tell Briar about hers). The first thing the new matron did was kick them both out, believing them to be the demons they contained rather than just their jailors. Sarutobi was furious when he found out, and promptly fired the new matron. He put Briar and Naruto in a different orphanage, only for the same thing to happen. After the same thing happened several more times, Sarutobi finally just threw his hands up in defeat and got them an apartment despite the fact that both of them were only five years old. The medic nins who examined Briar after she first crawled through the portal estimated that she was about six months old, so the aged Hokage decided to make her birthday in the end of April. Someone somehow found out about that as well, and twice a year, on October tenth and April thirtieth, the villagers tracked them down and beat them up, and the Hokage was usually powerless to stop it because he was always totally backed up with paperwork on those days. He had a suspicion that the villagers did that on purpose.

About a year or so after Naruto and Briar moved into their apartment, it was time for them to start at the Academy, and that was when things really started to get interesting.