AN: to the people still complaining about the Menma name. You can suck on deez. Especially you, OmgRlsm. Given your "reviews", you actually understood nothing about the storyline, not that I'm surprised. Seriously though, Menma is going to use the name "Naruto" again but not anytime soon: let the internal conflict play out, for Pete's sake!

Menma stood in the middle of training field number three, his eyes roaming aimlessly over his surroundings, all his senses sharp. The training field was a flat clearing in the midst of a dense thicket of trees. The atmosphere was heavy with the scent of flowers and the undergrowth. A slight breeze was blowing, one that would soon stop as the day advanced. In the sky, the sun was up and shining brightly and soon, the temperature would become uncomfortable; already, the heat was prickling at Menma's skin. In front of him was Kakashi, a dozen feet away. The man looked relaxed, his shoulders slouched and his overall posture one of nonchalance. To the side, Tsunade was sitting underneath a tree with a jug of sake at her feet and a cup in her left hand. The boy cocked up his right eyebrow.

"Oy, what are we? Your special break?"

"Deal with it, Menma," retorted Tsunade. "I don't get nearly enough entertainment in my life so if I want to see you ducking it out against Kakashi, I'll watch."

Menma grimaced. "That… sounded mildly inappropriate. Somehow," he whispered under his breath before he returned his attention to Kakashi.

"Less muttering, more fighting!' Tsunade demanded from her spot.

"Fine, fine. What are the terms?"

As he waited for his opponent's answer, the boy proceeded to reel in the stretches of his awareness in order to anchor them to the task at hand.

Kakashi gave the teenage boy an eye smile and took a pair of small bells tied to his belt. "Easy. Your goal is to take at least one bell from me in the allotted time."

Menma frowned, focused only remotely on the conversation and almost fully on Kakashi's harmonics. "That… doesn't make much sense, does it? I mean, I'm supposed to show I can escape from ninja. Not attack them."

"If you can punch them hard enough, you don't need to escape."

"That's a startling lack of subtlety for someone pretending to be a ninja."

"Hum?" Kakashi looked puzzled for a second. "Oh, all this sneaky shit? Yeah, no, we... we actually aren't big on that most of the time."

Menma blinked. He needed just a bit more time and he would be set. "Why, though?" He shrugged. "I mean, ambushing your opponent sounds like a solid tactic."

"Yeah, it is but lots of ninja prefer the "endure" reading to the "stealth" interpretation. And S-rank ninja are notoriously ones for shows."

"They like to hear themselves talk?"

"Yeah. Basically."

"Oh." Abruptly, Menma's demeanour shifted. His eyes narrowed, all his senses sharpened to their utmost and his muscles coiled. All five fractions of his mind were now focused on the coming fight. He leashed his chakra, keeping the energy balanced over a delicate edge, ready to be let loose. When he spoke, his voice lacked any inflexion. "Okay. Has the test begun, by the way?"

"It has now. Start."

Menma impassively raised his right hand. A bell was hanging from his fingers.

"You like to hear yourself talk too, Kakashi-san."

Kakashi looked gobsmacked for a solid second before he shook himself.

"How- wait, no."

He reached for his belt and found two bells. His one good eye darted up to where the teen had been standing. Sheer, pure instincts made Kakashi hurriedly duck low, narrowly avoiding Menma's opening. The boy had blitzed his opponent like a bolt of lightning, swinging a mean, tight hook that whistled right above his shock of white hair. He immediately followed up with a knee strike that the jounin reflexively absorbed with a full crossguard. With a roll, Kakashi broke his momentum and stopped in a three points stance, his free arm lifting his hitai-ate from over his left eye. The uncovered orb was red and its pupil was scattered in three tomoe that swirled against the crimson iris.

It proved to be a mistake. For the first time ever since the fateful day he had been gifted his sharingan, Kakashi found that the eye was useless. A matured sharingan normally reads the strands of causality within chakra and predicts the most likely immediate path of any object or person it observes. Kakashi nearly vomited when he looked at Menma with the copy-wheel eye, his sense of up and down shot by the scattered possibilities.

The boy seemed like he was vibrating in and out of reality. When he moved, the sharingan immediately generated countless before-images that all had the exact same degree of probability. Only vaguely did the jounin notice that Menma's hair seemed to be burning like white fire and his eyes glowed a perfect snowy light. Kakashi stumbled backwards, desperate to create distance between him and the impossible boy but a lightning-fast straight caught him on his chin and sent him sprawling to the ground, completely limp.

"What the hell did you do, gaki!" Tsunade screamed as she hurried towards her jounin to check upon him.

"What?!" protested the teenager, the tension leaving his body to be replaced by a jittery high. "I thought it was a fight you wanted, so I fought him!"

"You weren't supposed to lay down one of my best soldiers in three strikes!" she admonished, her hands glowing with a green halo as she gently grasped Kakashi's head.

Menma crossed his arms over his chest indignantly; his features, however, were crinkled by worry. "Well, you gotta know what you want!"

"How the hell did you trump his sharingan?"

"I did? I've no idea!"

Tsunade glared at him for a second and relented when she saw his expression. "Okay. I apologize. I'm shit at dealing with what I really don't expect. But seriously, I want to talk about what you trained in."

"You could have asked, you know?"

Five minutes later, Kakashi was sitting straight, leaning against a tree and muttering that he was "too old for this shit". Tsunade declared him to be fine and on his way to complete healing. The Hokage then pointed an imperious finger at Menma before she indicated the ground. The teenage boy contemplated protesting for a second and decided it would not be worth it. He sat, cross-legged, next to Kakashi. The Hokage completed their circle.

"Sorry, Kakashi-san." Menma apologized, visibly mortified.

The jounin waved the young man's concern away and eye smiled. "I'm okay, thanks."

"Alright." cut Tsunade. "What the fuck?"

Menma returned her a deadpan gaze. "What does that even mean?"

"What can you do?"

"Master trained me in aikijutsu. It means "to harmonize the energies", roughly. The discipline also took care of my physical conditioning."

"And this… aikijutsu?" - Menma nodded.- "what does it do exactly?" inquired the Hokage.

Menma hummed thoughtfully for a second. "Hm. The principle is literally in the name. If you harmonize with the energies around you, then even those directed at you that should hurt you won't be able to."

"So… You redirect attacks? That doesn't look like what you did to Kakashi."

"Because I don't redirect attacks, that's simplistic. I harmonize with the energies. I flow through them, around them, within them. It breaks the enemy's rhythm and reveals their weak points. I simply strike at the most vulnerable one."

"You make it sound easy," Tsunade remarked.

Menma shrugged. "I think it is. I mean, yes, it takes some work to put it into practice but it's not a complicated concept. You're an iryo-nin, I believe you should be kind of familiar with it."

Because she was a genius in her own right, the Hokage caught on to what Menma meant. Her eyes widened. "Wait! You mean it's similar to the Healing Palm?"

"From what I understand of it, yes but more advanced."

Tsunade choked. "What do you mean, "more advanced"? The Healing Palm is the second most difficult jutsu I know, gaki! It requires perfect chakra control!"

Menma grinned. "What is it? Jealous? Wanna learn?"

Faster than he could see coming, Tsunade slapped him lightly over the head. "Don't get ahead of yourself. You might have beaten Kakashi but you're not at my level."

The boy offered her a mock scowl, his hand clasped over his head. "What the hell? Don't use your baa-chan strength to hit me!"

Tsunade blinked. "What… what did you say?"

Menma gave her a puzzled look as her mock anger fizzled out like a wet candle. "What I said? About the baa-chan strength?"

The Hokage smiled at the teen warmly. "You used to call me that. Before." She suddenly snarled, her feature twisting in a terrifying grimace that made Menma recoil in fright. But Tsunade had already seized his closest ear. "Don't you ever call me like that, you hear me, young man?"

"Yes, yes, ow, ow, ow! Release me, baa-Tsunade-chan!"

"Good!"

Kakashi silently chuckled at the antics of the pair.

"I'll call you baa-chan if I want," mumbled the boy as he nursed his ear.

"So, you've learned anything else?"

"Yes."

"What?"

Menma shook his head. "I'm not saying. Shinobi or not, having a few aces up my sleeve is always good."

Tsunade harrumphed, tried to cower the teen with a look and relented when he stood firm in his position.

"Alright. Fine. Good, actually. Naruto would have bragged about it. Though I'd still like you to get better. I've got someone to help you."

"Who?"

"My old teammate," smiled Tsunade. "Jiraiya. A giant pervert and an even bigger moron but a damn good ninja. Don't tell him I said that. He wouldn't take it gracefully."

"What am I gonna do with him?"

"Spar, until you're accustomed to fighting an S-rank threat. You should have trained with him. Before you… before."

"Alright, I've no objection. I've got a question though, about before, while we're at it. Totally unrelated."

"Yeah?"

"I think it's time you told me about the last member of team seven. I mean he is the man who probably killed me after all."

Tsunade and Kakashi shared a heavy glance.

"We're gonna need some sake," declared the Hokage.

The jounin nodded weakly.

A few minutes later, the trio was sitting at a table, on a shadowed terrace up on the rooftop of one of the more extravagant buildings of Central Konoha. From there, the customers had a panoramic view of the city, from the Hokage Mountain to the west overlooking the Red Tower, to Central Cross and the brand new train station, to the three gates up north, down south and eastward. Sunlight was scintillating off the Naka, filtering through the canopy like immaterial sparks. Menma busied three entire streams of awareness with the view, his eyes jumping abnormally fast from one point of focus to the next. He could even see, far outside the city but connected by a railroad, the airport of Shinka. A bloated blimp was currently taking off, looking like a fat little floating caterpillar in the distance.

"Gotta admit. It's a nice view," said Menma, reclining on his seat, a wide wooden chair braided out of bamboo.

The teen had declined the offer for sake and opted for an elaborated alcohol-free cocktail. Meanwhile, his two companions shared a sizable bottle of rice liquor.

"How did you even find this place?" inquired Tsunade.

"Sakura-chan showed it to me!" answered the teen happily. He took a sip of his drink and hummed. "She was right, this virgin-tataibito is a real killer!"

"Virgin… tatas biter? What even is it?"

"Tataibito. Wanna try it, Baa-chan?" offered Menma with a devious smile. "Tututut, we're in public, it wouldn't do for the Hokage to hit a defenceless civilian." He preempted her outbreak of violence when he saw her gearing up for a slap.

"Brat. I'll get you later, you know that."

"Worth it. Anyway. Kakashi-san. You have the floor."

The jounin sighed and took a sip of alcohol. The clear liquid burned but he found no solace in the sensation. Kakashi thought he had mourned the death of his youngest student. He thought he had made peace with what he had been forced to do, with the questionable decisions he had made and with the resulting catastrophe. Now, faced with the opportunity to come clean - sort of - he found himself stuck. He did not know where to begin. He did not know if he even wanted to begin. He was not one for long speeches, that was just not him and yet he knew that whatever this discussion would be, it would at least partially be an outing of grievances. He was not used to such a thing.

"Kakashi-san?"

He blinked and coughed, to give himself countenance.

"Sasuke," he began, his voice croaky. He was not sure where to go from here. After a few seconds of silence, he eventually settled on a possible start.

"Sasuke had issues. When he was eight, his clan was killed by his older brother, who then tortured him into a coma."

"Well... shit."

"Yeah," chuckled Kakashi mirthlessly. "Needless to say, he was unhinged. As anyone would be, honestly. The first… our first failure was not to give him the care he needed. Ridiculous clan political bullshit bogged down the process and Sasuke never received the help he should have received." The jounin shrugged. "Honestly, that one is on the Sandaime Hokage. I get it feels petty to accuse dead men but he should have pushed harder." Kakashi's features darkened. "He should have pushed harder for a lot of things."

"Sometimes, the ones responsible for the shit are dead men. So, what then?"

"Sasuke went through the Academy, no problem. He was from a good family, he had received training already. And he was needled, constantly, by his thirst for revenge. It's a good drive, revenge, whatever you say. He passed, with flying colours, no surprise. And he was put on team seven."

Silence fell over the trio. The conversation of the other patrons melded in a vague rumour, a buzzing background noise, along with the clinking of glasses and the sloshing of liquids. A few birds added to the mix by tweeting happily.

"And?"

"And I fucked up. I… Sasuke was identified as a flight risk and it was vital for business that Konohagakure keep the "Last Uchiha". So, following orders, I modelled my teaching of team seven around Sasuke. Around his flaws, around his desires, around the massive can of worms that is his revenge. He thought himself too good for a team, that his teammates would slow him down. But he needed bonds. People to connect to, something beyond his revenge. So, I… I tried to engineer him as the team's ace, the one who would be in charge of the other two's survival. I tried to instil a sense of responsibility, of comradeship."

"I regret the punch I gave you a lot less." Menma frowned. "I mean, really, what the heck? You endangered Naruto and Sakura-chan!"

Kakashi hunched over himself. "I know," he muttered. "I know and it eats me every second of every day."

"To be fair to Kakashi, Sakura was not the most… motivated kunoichi. Kakashi couldn't invent her resolve for her."

The jounin nodded, in confirmation. He could not speak, his heart felt like it was seconds away from exploding. That was not all there was to the story. Kakashi could pretend Naruto lacked maturity but, honestly, Sasuke and Sakura had been much worse in their own way. He could pretend Naruto needed to work on his basics but the boy's martial arts had been decently solid and he had more chakra than the entire jounin population taken together so frankly, who cared about basics? Sakura needed the basics: she was weak as a twig. He could pretend Naruto had been untalented but the boy had learned a completely new jutsu in a few hours and that was talent. As for Sakura had her own little niche, with her natural chakra control.

The entire truth was that he had been selfish. Simply put, he wanted Naruto to experience being a child. The child Kakashi had never been allowed to be. The child Naruto had not been because of the pissant villagers and the weak Sandaime Hokage. Kakashi wanted Naruto to make friends, to establish relationships, to get to play. He wanted to keep his little brother away from the life of a ninja a little bit longer, ignoring the fact that anyone wearing a hitai-ate was irremediably embroiled in the shinobi world. And while Sakura had not been motivated, Naruto very much had been, his naivety aside.

"I'm sorry." He said instead. "I don't know how I can apologize but I'm sorry. I thought… I thought I was doing the right thing."

Menma could tell that Kakashi was not telling him the entire truth; he could hear the jounin's chakra shriek in despair, shame and self-loathing but also howl distrustfully. "So. What happened?"

"At some point, Sasuke was contacted by Orochimaru, who offered him the power to kill Itachi in exchange for his body." The jounin narrated in a monotone. "Literally. Orochimaru knows a jutsu that will allow him to possess Sasuke's body. Then, by terrible luck, Sasuke crossed paths with Itachi and was again mentally attacked. He was already… I think he was already jealous of your- of Naruto's progression. Between this, Orochimaru's offer, his trauma and Itachi's attack… it just finished to twist him. He snapped and went to Orochimaru."

"Konoha was reeling from the Oto-Suna invasion," interjected Tsunade. "I scrambled a team, of which Naruto was a part of. You… he got separated from his teammates and disappeared during this mission. He was declared dead a few days later. According to the mission report, he was last seen going after Sasuke. It's highly likely they fought and Sasuke… got the better of Naruto. Knowing him, you-Naruto wasn't fighting to kill but Sasuke certainly was."

Kakashi nodded.

"Did Sasuke know a powerful piercing attack of some kind?" Menma asked, his voice neutral.

Kakashi paled and nodded. "Yes," he croaked.

"I see. Then chances are, it was him."

"Why do you say that?" Tsunade asked.

Without a word, Menma rolled his shirt up until his entire torso was revealed. Right above his heart, a humongous scar betrayed the point of impact of a jutsu. It was an almost perfect, extremely fine ring of skin surrounding a bluish-black mark. From it, scars of the same colour streaked his flesh. The boy allowed his audience to stare at the ravaged flesh for two seconds before he let his shirt drop.

"Well, damn," said Tsunade.

"That was a chidori." Kakashi explained but his voice was completely dead and his lone visible eye was staring off in the distance. "It's mainly nature recombination and a bit of spacial recombination, basically a lightning knife. I taught it to Sasuke." He choked and his body shook. "I-I thought he needed it to fight Gaara. I-I never… I never believed…"

"That's alright, Kakashi-san." Menma shook his head, his chakra still reeling from the jounin's perfectly silent yet soul-shattering internal cry of pained horror and abject remorse. "You didn't make Sasuke use the jutsu on Naruto. His circumstances are what they are and in the end, he chose his revenge over everything else, even the life of his teammate. You aren't responsible for it. And… if Naruto was not ready to kill Sasuke, that was on him. What could you have done? Subduing someone who is ready to kill requires an obscene amount of strength, one you couldn't have trained Naruto for."

The teenage boy breathed in deeply, allowing his chakra to settle. He had not expected that the bonds Naruto had created before his death would entangle him as strongly nor as quickly as they did. He heard the yearning within Kakashi's emotions, the desire to do better, to right his wrongs and the choking fear that he was fundamentally inept at doing so, too flawed to even try. He heard it all and knew that he could not ignore it.

Menma was not even really angry against the jounin; again, the lack of memory prevented him from feeling incensed. Did it make sense to be angry on behalf of the Naruto-who-had-been? Menma did not think so and so was not resentful. He was, however, displeased - disgusted even - by the behaviour of the people around him, how they seemingly disregarded the child he had been, counting on his misconstrued notion of forgiveness to keep abusing him.

"Whatever you think you have missed with Naruto… it's too late," said Menma, ignoring the recess of his psyche telling him it was not his right to say something like that. Kakashi flinched. "But I'm here. I'm not Naruto. I can't forgive you for him. From what you told me, he probably wouldn't mind. Or at least, pretend he didn't, which is another can of worms. But…" Menma shrugged. "What I mean is, I'm open to… I don't know. Hanging out? With you too, Baachan." He smiled. "It must be boring, being cooped up in your office all day."

"It's Tsunade-sama to you, brat," answered the woman without heat and a smile playing on her lips.

"Sure thing, Baachan." Menma waved. "I just want to be clear though. I'm not Naruto. Whatever drove him, I doubt it's driving me. Be forward with me, as I'll be with you and we'll be friends. If you aren't, don't count on my forgiveness as you did for him. What you did to him, repeatedly, was not correct."

Sipping the rest of his drink, the boy rose to his feet. "Well, I kinda had other questions but I think it's enough for today. Did you send the invites, Baachan?"

"Yeah."

"Cool. Thanks. I might visit them so that we aren't all holed at your place. Well, I'll see you both later."

Menma departed, leaving the Hokage and the jounin at their table.

"He is right, isn't he?" mused Tsunade.

"What?"

"About Naruto. What we did. What this village did. I thought I was better but I never got to tell him so many things. About his mother. About the Uzumaki. I don't even know why. He was a rootless orphan and I didn't give him the means to establish some." She shook her head. "We were horrible. I guess jinchuuriki has a more literal meaning than we thought."

"What do you mean?"

"Konoha sacrificed Naruto more than once. He was the jail of the Kyuubi. Then he was the scapegoat. Then, the idiot everyone enjoyed bullying. Then the one we relegated on the sidelines, no matter how noble our intentions. The kid was shaped entirely too much by those sacrifices." She smiled. "In a way, I'm glad Menma seems to have enough self-worth to not let that happen again. He'll be out of here before we can hurt him again."

"So, you really didn't reinstate him?"

"No. He has no memory of ever swearing an oath to Konoha. He doesn't feel beholden to it. And I refuse to coerce him into doing it. If anything, I won't sacrifice him again."

Kakashi nodded. "I see."

Menma was wandering aimlessly in the streets of Konohagakure, his features plagued by doubts. His mind was scattered yet each stretch was beholden by similar thoughts, furiously arguing against one another.

He genuinely did not know what to make of the people who had been a part of Naruto's life. The chakra of Tsunade, Kakashi and Sakura sang of love. For Naruto. For him too, somehow. He had learned to recognize the peculiar chords of this raw yet complex emotion during his travels. They radiated it, in each of their harmonics and his chakra had picked it up easily. What he could not begin to rationalize was their behaviour.

Sakura, he could understand. She had been a kid: she had obeyed what the adults had told her to do and even today her insecurities still clanged louder than pans being used as drums. Bullying Naruto had probably been a matter of self-preservation, of belonging to the pack. But Kakashi? The man had dunked - for lack of a better word - on him repeatedly. Even if it had been ordered by the Sandaime Hokage, even if he felt he owed something to Sasuke, the linchpin behind Kakashi's actions lay with his sense of loss. The crux of the matter was to understand if the man had been blinded or allowed it to guide him. Even Tsunade, though far less than the other two, held some regrets, a shame she had not voiced yet. It was perplexing for the young man, frustratingly so. They recognized that their behaviour had hurt Naruto and yet they had carried on with it. Menma did not understand, it did not make sense. His master's lessons were of no help. His limited experiences could shed no light on the matter.

They were not animated by bad intentions, at least none that Menma could feel. They all had scars that still hurt them. Menma did not think that it excused their behaviour, intellectually. All the goodwill in the world meant nothing if not accordingly followed by proper actions.

From his perspective, however, he had nothing to forgive and it did not feel right for him to hold them accountable. Then again, his past self had been trampled upon precisely because he was foolishly forgiving. He was left with an unlikely puzzle to solve: whether or not he should accept in his life people who had nearly constantly hurt a version of himself he could not recall. It was far from a straightforward, easy decision but, obviously, it was further complicated because chakra remembered things that the mind could not. His chakra had recognized Tsunade, Kakashi and Sakura. Their life force was entwined with his tightly, strongly and ignoring such a bond was impossible. Breaking it would cost him as much as it would them.

It was not up to him to decide such a thing, anyway. He had no right to refuse those people. They were Naruto's friends and family while he was no one. He already had the disagreeable impression of exploiting them in order to make someone of himself, he could not burn bridges he had not built.

A chance, mused the boy, forcefully silencing the worm eating his mind; a chance was what he was going to give them. It was something he had to give. He shook his head; no! it was something he would give himself. He owed it to these people. Wrong, it simply seemed to him like the ideal middle ground. He had to preserve Naruto's relationships. He was not Naruto: they would build their relationship anew, a bond between them and him, Menma.

He fought the pernicious whisper that kept telling him they would only ever see Naruto. Naruto was better. Naruto would have forgiven these people without hesitation. Naruto would not have held their mistakes over them or at least not made said mistakes conditional to a relationship. He craved the bonds Naruto had established but he would never live up to Naruto. Menma snarled at the thought. He wanted something real, honest and sane. Naruto was wrong to let everything done to him slide. It led even the best-intentioned people to disregard him. Menma would not be the same. He would not allow people to hurt him under the pretence of friendship. They would turn out to be good people or they wouldn't.

Naruto had died. He was now Menma. The names should have mattered little: they held everything he would not be anymore and all that he could become. They represented radically different things. Yet, he could not entirely fill the pit in the depths of his stomach nor appease the whispers in the back of his mind. The young man smiled wryly. It was difficult to live twice.

AN: summer in the northern hemisphere means holidays, holidays mean vacations and vacations mean I'll slow down the publishing a bit.

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