Thank you for the reviews!

LeUndeadRabidChipmunk : Oh you wish don't you? But sorry to disappoint you, but they stay on. :P

Here's the next part to Aoi's past. Hope it's not too badly written. I wrote this out in a hurry.

Enjoy! =D

Nii-san - What Aoi called her elder brother.


Blue

When Kakashi came in his office with that expression on his face, even though Minato had a ridiculous amount of paperwork to fill, he couldn't turn his student away.

'Kakashi?' he greeted with a smile. 'What can I do for you?'

'Do you have some time, Minato sensei?' Kakashi asked. 'I wanted to ask you something.'

Minato moved away his paperwork, sensing that this conversation could take a while. 'What is it then?'

'It's about Aoi,' Kakashi said.

'What about her?'

'I was wondering if you could tell me about what happened to her family,' Kakashi said. 'She told me something and now I just can't seem to keep my curiosity in any longer.'

'What did she say?'

Kakashi hesitated for a while. 'That she killed her mother.'

Minato sighed.

'Well is it true?' Kakashi urged.

'You are aware of her kekkei genkai of course?' Minato asked.

'Yeah,' Kakashi said. 'Immunity to fire.'

Minato nodded. 'Her family's power is much like the sharingan in the sense that it is awakened at a certain point in your life frequently at the age of nine, ten or eleven. And the change seen in an individual when this power is awakened is that some part of their hair turns blue.'

Kakashi did a double take at that.

'Wait a minute, sensei! Aoi's hair had blue in them the first time I met her. And that was when she was four. She activated it at that young an age. Does that mean she's some sort of a prodigy after all?'

Minato shook his head. 'I wouldn't say anything about prodigy. Some people think she is some think the complete opposite. Aoi hardly talks about it herself but once she told Kushina that it was more like a curse.'

'What?!'

'She didn't activate it when she was young,' Minato said. 'On the contrary she was born with it already activated.' Minato paused a little giving time for Kakashi to swallow that information.

'You know how it works?' Minato asked. 'Her bloodline limit?'

Kakashi nodded. 'She explained to me once,' he said. 'She has the ability to change her chakra into blue flames and project it out of her body. The flame forms a protective layer around her and stops any external fire from affecting her.'

Minato nodded. 'Correct,' he said. 'Then you should also know that the flame around her has the ability to burn anything it touches like any normal fire.'

Kakashi nodded. 'I burned my hand once when I touched her when she was in that mode.'

If it wasn't such a serious conversation Minato was sure he would have laughed at that.

'It takes some amount of control to keep around the body and prevent it from spreading,' Minato said. 'Since Aoi was born with it, she had whatsoever no control over her power.'

Minato no longer needed to spell out to Kakashi what happened next. He could guess the rest and the utter horror of it shook him for a moment.

'Her mother, not being one who possessed the similar bloodline, burned to death right after she was born,' Minato finished it anyway. 'Her father tried to kill her after that, thinking she was some sort of a demon. Her brother saved her, took care of her and taught her how to control her powers afterwards. Unfortunately, he died soon after that on a mission for the ANBU. Her father dumped her at the day care claiming to never wanting to see her face again. Kushina took care of the rest.' Minato sighed again. 'You should hear sometimes what Kushina has to say about Aoi's father.'

'This was something she kept to herself all this time?' Kakashi asked, after he regained the ability to speak.

Minato smiled ruefully. 'Well, everyone has something in their past that they wish to forget and ironically Aoi doesn't even remember what happened.'

'But she was four,' Kakashi protested. 'And she was….cheerful.'

This time Minato's smile was genuine.

'Wonders Kushina can do, eh?'


Even after he got pushed into the lake of cold water as a way of thanking Aoi for not showing him any pity when everyone around him did, Kakashi climbed out of the water and followed her, dripping wet.

'Cheap trick,' he said.

'And yet,' Aoi said. 'It worked.'

'So,' Kakashi said. 'How do you deal with it?'

'With what?' Aoi asked back.

'Your father, everything,' Kakashi said.

'The old man isn't hard to deal with,' Aoi said with a nonchalant shrug. 'I hardly saw him since after I was born. It was Nii-san who was always with me. He wasn't a very imaginative person so he just named me Aoi after seeing the blue hair. And he taught me control. After he died, Kushina sensei was the one who brought me up. The old man still sees me as a murderer and will have nothing to do with me, not that I blame him.' She sighed. 'I gave up hoping that he would change long time ago.'

'I'm not going to say it's not your fault,' Kakashi said. 'I'm pretty sure you know that already. But knowing that doesn't really do anything to lessen the guilt does it?'

Aoi looked at Kakashi and gave him a half smile knowing that he was right. Then she said, 'It's back in the lake for you again if you don't stop with the mature talk!'

'Yeah! Time to go!' Kakashi said and disappeared from there in the fastest speed he would muster.


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