DISCLAIMER: I own nothing from the Naruto universe but I do have an imagination of my own.

Thinking (or flashbacks, etc.)

Emphasis

Biju, etc. speaking

Biju, etc. thinking

Sakura clenched her teeth as she listened to her new supervisor drone on and on in a monotone voice about her earth affinity: she'd long ago read about nearly everything he'd said about affinities and half of the other things she had learned here. Reading and applying those things were entirely different, though. At least listening to him gives me a chance to rest. As she inspected the dirt and rocks adhering to her fist, she felt like using it to hit this jerk in the head who had a voice that was more boring than Iruka-sensei's.

I miss Iruka-sensei!

Shannaro! We'll get out of here! First, we'll get strong enough to take these guys down, Inner Sakura cheered.

Sakura was extremely grateful to have Inner right now, whether she was called a second personality or not. The only issue was that Sakura had to occasionally reign Inner in because Inner really wanted to take over from her.

And where the hell was her team?! Shouldn't they be rescuing her by now?! It's not as if she inherently enjoyed the idea of needing to be rescued even though she'd been fantasizing about it a lot recently. It didn't matter if her hero was Sasuke-kun, that man that was always so nice to her at the library, or even that Sai-jerk, she just felt desperate to leave this place and The Foundation forever. She had tried to escape once and was punished: no food for two days, plus they'd done something to her tongue that allowed them to shock her, followed by another day with only broth, along with more "training" that was harsh and relentless.

It could've been worse, Inner mourned.

Sakura was sure that the electric-like paralysis she'd experienced was the work of a seal, although there were no mirrors in this damned system of caves for her to examine it.

"Those who break the rules are trash, but those who abandon their friends are worse than trash…" Isn't that what taicho had said?!

Sure, Sakura wasn't exactly friends with most of her team, which was something she deeply regretted now. The person she'd known the longest, and she supposed the best was Sasuke-kun, and that wasn't saying much at all. She was their comrade, though! That had to account for something!

Her supervisor - she would certainly never call him her sensei if she was ever allowed to speak again - drew compacted earth into his fists and took an advanced position of the new taijutsu she was learning. "Begin," he said ominously.

Jiraiya grumbled to himself as he packed up to leave the mountain. He would have never imagined that his allies - his partners - had been holding out on him. Not to mention stealing my scrolls, keeping a completely bizarre prophecy from me, and now seeing Naruto as their primary summoner.

"Stop pouting, Jiraiya-chan! We're always with you, 100%, too!" Lady Shima exclaimed.

"I'm not," Gamabunta croaked.

His son, Gamakichi - a toad I'd never even met! - agreed with his father. "Fine, fine," Jiraiya began. "You really didn't know that it was her, before this mess?"

"I can assure you of that, Jiraiya-chan. We had no memory of Naruto-chan until she summoned herself here." Fukasaku stated but shook his head in exasperation at seeing Jiraiya turn away and give them a sloppy wave as he summoned himself back to presumably Konoha. He looked at his wife and offered her a sad grin. "I hope that Jiraiya-chan is not jealous."

Jiraiya henged as soon as he set foot upon land overlooking the Hokage Mountain.

He needed to check in with that Nara kid, plus see if Tsunade had found out anything since being back in the village - along with having a long chat with her about Naruto… Oh, Naruto.

If his goddaughter had really gone through all that she and the toads had told him about - and he had an inkling that what she'd told him was only a fraction of the mess that was her life in the… future? Past? So hard to consider: meh, screw it. Naruto's tale, one way or the other, made sense, and yet it didn't. Reincarnation? Sure, why not? Millions of people believed in reincarnation, probably all the way back to that story about the Sage's sons reincarnating over the millennia in different people, killing each other over and over again.

Yeesh. Yet another reason why he wouldn't have children!

The Nara kid wasn't an Uchiha, which was what one of the Sage's kids was always described as. The other one sounded like an Uzumaki but was probably a progenitor of the Senju, but who the hell really knows? Jiraiya had little doubt in his mind that the story about the brothers had probably changed a great deal over time: that it probably wasn't anywhere close to the truth. If the story had any truth, to begin with.

Hell, the tale could've originally been a bedtime story made up by some screwed-up parent...

Some might think that Naruto was crazy, but her little "insights" - things she'd already said or implied to him and others that had come true - showed that she was onto something. The toads confirmed what she believed, but had only fought alongside her in certain dire situations. Naruto was certainly right about his first students in Ame, and somewhat correct in her assumptions about the Uchiha massacre. As a sealing master, Jiraiya understood that time travel was certainly possible, although incredibly risky. Hell, his boy, Mini-chan, ended up using a time-space fuuinjutsu every day of his adult life!

Something's missing, though.

Naruto said that the last thing she remembered was being surrounded by Mokuton, and she also recalled somehow knowing that the Nara kid was dying from a Mokuton attack. Even the Shodaime couldn't use his attacks to transport people back in time, though! No, something was missing from Naruto's story. Hopefully, this Shikamaru kid would have more answers than his goddaughter did.

Team Seven, minus Sakura, had been woken at 0400 to begin warming up and going through drills. Naruto was really impressed at how seriously Kakashi and Tenzo were taking their training as Genin. In her past life, Kakashi's training had... left much to be desired. Yeah, that's a nice way to put it. Before the Chunin exams in her first life, Kakashi had only pushed teamwork, and really only paid attention to Sasuke.

Sasuke, who was staring at her again. Naruto snarled at him, making him quickly turn away. She was still tired from last night - physically because it had been so hard to sleep, and emotionally because of that damned mission she had to complete in the next week. Now on top of it, she was supporting hundreds of clones that were fighting and looked like her and her teammates.

She sighed as Sasuke took off through the trees without saying anything.

Her upcoming horrible mission had the pink code for a seduction, but little further information or coding, aside from that she was supposed to go solo! How the hell was she supposed to plan what to do with this unknown person? It made no sense! Even Kakashi said that solo missions were normally quite detailed and that he'd never seen a mission that had so little to go on as the one she was assigned. She was really glad to hear that he had never been considered "seduction-material," something that she found just so crazy, considering how "mysterious" he was to most people, and truly sexy he was to her. Maybe she didn't understand what a seduction mission even was. The idea that she was sexy was laughable: no matter how much Yoshino had tried, Naruto knew very well in her own mind that she was an unfeminine, training-obsessed dork!

Although the knowledge that Kakashi wasn't a specially-trained seduction artist made her happy on a personal level, considering her career and imminent mission, it really left her in a spot. Kakashi said that he knew that seduction missions often didn't involve sex, and that seemed weird, too. Weird but good! I wonder if I can believe him, though... Maybe he was trying to make her feel better, or wanted her to avoid what a seduction mission really entailed? She looked at Tenzo and wondered if he had any ideas, but how to bring it up? Her mission was a secret!

She cleared her throat as she sat in another one of his wooden cages. Having been deep in thought and on her own he totally caught her, fair and square, when they were supposed to be getting Kakashi's bells again.

As soon as I get that man's clothes off, I'm stealing those bells for good! She inadvertently let out a perverted giggle that got Tenzo's attention.

"Tenzo-sensei," she asked in what she would call her baby voice, "what do Jonin specialize in, and when do we begin specialization training? We start specializing as Chunins, ne?"

"That's not something for you to be concerned with right now." Tenzo darted his eyes around the forest and beach that he could just make out in the distance, making sure that he could quickly capture another one of his students when they came near.

"Mou, Tenzo-sensei! Are you saying that you don't believe in me?"

"What? No, of course not, Uzumaki-chan!" He looked around anxiously, making sure that his senior wasn't around to see him sadden Kakashi-senpai's obviously favorite student.

"Since it's just to the two of us here, can you please tell me about specializations? Pleeeeeeeease?" Naruto pulled herself up on her knees and tilted her head, hoping that she looked like a sad cat that needed attention or something. Or a squirrel. Or whatever Tenzo will respond to!

Tenzo looked over and nearly faltered. Naruto was in a pose that he could only call "seductive." He looked away and cleared his throat, internally cursing Sai and all of his increasingly lewd questions about sex that had him thinking about it so much lately. "What is it that you want to know? There are many specializations open to you. You are a skilled sensor and are already learning fuuinjutsu, along with being a budding ninjutsu specialist. Your use of substitutions and henges, particularly on and with shadow clones is stellar, and your taijutsu is excellent for your rank."

"Mou, Tenzo-sensei! You're so sweet! My heart just skipped a beat!" Naruto said sincerely, holding her hand to her chest.

"Yes. Well, ahem."

"When can I learn something cool like Kenjutsu?"

"I didn't know you were interested in it," Tenzo replied, finally looking at her again.

"Well, I need to find something else to make up for the fact that I have no ability in genjutsu, right? And what about ANBU?" Naruto asked, her eyes sparkling as for just a moment she disregarded thoughts about her next mission. "I like the idea of being in intelligence, too, but I don't want to torture anyone… Although with my 'demonic fox eyes' I can scare just about anyone nearly shitless. Want to see?!"

"No!" Tenzo nearly shouted as he bristled and turned away from her again. He thought he caught a glimpse of Sasuke, but it was only a black bantam that was flapping around on the edge of the forest for some reason.

"Too bad for you!" She laughed. "Alright then. You were an ANBU like taicho, right?" Naruto didn't wait for a response. "What kind of things did you do aside from assassinating and tracking?"

Tenzo waited for at least a minute to pass, hoping that something would happen so that he could just ignore her questions. Considering that a little general information couldn't hurt, though, he finally answered her or began to. "There's capture and infiltration," Tenzo said, wondering how much to tell his student.

"What about seduction?" Naruto asked, seizing the moment.

"Seduction?! That's not a specialty you want to go into, Naruto-san."

"Have you ever done those missions?"

"No," he said uneasily, remembering a mission that was totally embarrassing. "Not that there's anything wrong with specializing in seduction. If a mission is important to the village, it must be completed, and those missions are just as important as any others. ANBU handles all sorts of higher-level and even lower-level but politically sensitive missions."

"Right. If you're on a seduction mission, do you have to have sex with the target?" Naruto felt her cage cracking and wanted to curse.

"No, and that's enough, Uzumaki-san. I would suggest you speak with a Jonin kunoichi..."

"Are you saying that only women complete missions like that? You're my sensei, sensei!" Naruto said in some degree of outrage. She yelled as the weird man ran away from her. "Get a grip, Tenzo-sensei! I need answers, ya know!" She shrieked at finding Kakashi behind her on the other side of the cage and cursed as he gave her a look of disbelief before sunshinning to abuse/track/"train" her teammates.

Naruto happily sat cross-legged as she dangled one of Kakashi's bells in front of her fuming husband. Her teammates were in similar wooden cages all attached to one another. "Did you think I couldn't use jutsu from in here, taicho?" she teased.

Of all the low-down, dirty tricks, Kakashi thought in both a degree of admiration but more embarrassment than anything. He really needed to have a long talk with his pretty little wife about that Sexy Jutsu and those intimate actions of hers… Her jutsu was quickly becoming more dangerous to high-level shinobi than the Thousand Years of Death.

He'd had Sai on the run but now understood that Naruto had substituted with the Ink-user, as upon crowding Sai and rather easily getting under his tanto, "Sai" had given him a rather sensual wink and smirk before turning into a cloud-covered but otherwise nearly naked version of Naruto. He'd only momentarily thought of using a Chidori or maybe just castrating the kid, before "he" suddenly substituted with a freaking tree that began falling down, which was then substituted by a nearly-naked Naruto again who grabbed a bell in one hand and his junk in the other when he tried to twist away from her. He'd chased her - as she laughed merrily - all the way back to Tenzo, where Naruto again substituted with a bewildered Sai, securing herself back in Tenzo's cage.

Kakashi considered that maybe her skills, when it came to kunoichi subjects, were just natural since she'd stated that she hadn't learned about doing... things like that from a kunoichi sensei. Oh, gods, I hope not. He cleared his throat and looked away from her. "Alright, my kuwaii Genin and kohai," he redirected his gaze at Tenzo who then began pulling the Mokuton into the earth from his catch. "That was better!" Sasuke just laid on the grass, looking exhausted and irritated. Naruto crawled over to him and poked him, and Kakashi almost laughed when Sai copied her on the Uchiha's other side as they both stared down at the emo. He could only see Sai's thoroughly unnatural smile, but it was good to see them coming together as a team.

"Alright, team: lunch then bridge," Tenzo ordered.

Sasuke stared at the stamina-freak that was his kunoichi teammate as she jumped up as if they hadn't just been through a hellish practice to pull out a scroll that housed a large picnic blanket. She jabbered on about nothing as she pulled out one dish after another as she reached deeply inside a scroll - which was weird; some of the dishes, like the miso soup, were piping hot and made him salivate. He leaned back, letting the back of his head rest on the blanket, nearly missing the little box she threw at him. Sasuke glared at her but almost smiled when he realized it was full of cherry tomatoes.

That led to the question: how does she remember that I love tomatoes if she really lost her memory?

And why does she care?

Naruto got out of the shower and carefully dried off before dressing in what she hoped was a more appealing outfit. She fumbled with the blue tank top before putting it on, nervously wondering what exactly Kakashi had in mind for them when they left today.

"Kurama, how can you sleep when all this stuff is going on? You haven't even said anything about the new mission."

Kurama lifted a single eyelid and let out a huff, blowing Naruto's hair back and making her face scrunch up in irritation. Dealing with your anxiety isn't allowing me to sleep. Be quiet and go away.

"You... You total jerk! Here I am freaking out about a seduction mission and how the hell I'm supposed to seduce some dude - if it's a guy at all - and you're just worried about your sleep?!"

Naruto, Kurama sighed, sincerely feeling exhausted from his container's distress about something so simple. I am not concerned about it because I have little doubt about the end result.

"You do?" Naruto asked as she fidgeted. She believed in her partner but just didn't understand his attitude. She thought that he would be on her side and flipping out right alongside her. "Well - what do you think is going to happen, 'ttebayo?"

Relax, Kurama said as he began to close his eyes again. Should you get into a situation you cannot handle, the answer is simple. Seeing the idiot looking so glum, he explained exactly what he'd assist her with. We'll kill the target, kit: it's as simple as that.

"Oh," Naruto said, having never thought of that. She wasn't sure that made her feel better, though, as she looked around to ensure she'd left nothing behind in Tsunami's room. Hearing the shower turn on again as Kakashi was apparently cleaning up, she packed up her things and put her scroll into her belt.

"Naruto-san! You look beautiful! The orange looks good on you, but that blue really brings out your eyes," Tsunami said as she watched the younger woman in the short skirt pack up. "You aren't leaving already? The bridge is almost finished and I think you'd like to be there when we name it," she said the last part in a sing-song voice.

"I'm sorry, Tsunami-nee," she said without even thinking. "Oh! I shouldn't have called you that..."

"Don't be silly, Naruto-chan! You and your team have made a change in not only our lives but in the entire population of Wave. You may call me whatever you'd like! I'm honored that you would think of me as a sister," Tsunami said as she put her arm around her son.

"Oh, umm, thank you! The honor is mine, ya know." She then pointed her gaze at Inari. "You know Inari-kun, I really like you and hope that I wasn't too harsh before," Naruto said softly. The boy's eyes widened as he shook his head while his mother chuckled and pulled her child more tightly against her. "I still see a hero in you, Inari-kun. You'll watch out for your mom and grandpa for me, ne?"

Inari nodded his head before staring at the floor, making Naruto wonder if he was still upset that she had scolded him. "Don't go!"

"Maa, Naruto-chan has a mission," came a deep voice from the hallway. Kakashi was already in his Jonin uniform and Naruto wondered if she wasn't dressed appropriately. "We need to leave to get to our destination before nightfall. Don't worry, though, Inari-kun. The rest of the team will stay behind to make sure you and your grandfather are safe."

"We're having a party tomorrow!" Inari beamed, trying to get them to stay a little longer.

"I'm sorry we'll miss it, but I'll come back to see you when I can," Naruto said. She wasn't surprised when the boy dived into her arms: it was the same thing that happened when she left Wave in her first life.

"You ready, Naru-chan?" Kakashi asked, feeling excitement bubbling within him.

"Hai!"

After wishing her team luck, leaving a few clones, and trying to ignore the curious expressions of her teammates, Naruto and Kakashi ran across the long bridge and landed on a small passage of water that Tazuna and his team hadn't finished.

"Do you think I should leave a toad, Kash?"

"Maa, I think Tenzo has it under control," he replied as he looked up and down his wife's beautiful face and figure. "I need you to listen closely to me, Naruto." She nodded her head and looked anxious but eager to please him. He was glad that he had his mask on so that she couldn't see all the things going through his mind as he considered that more. "Shortly after we get back to Hi no Kuni, we'll be taking a little detour. I've got a… Maa, the southernmost Hatake safehouse is a short jaunt from the border. I thought we could spend a little time there before…"

"The mission. Hai," Naruto finished for him, once again feeling sick about that damn assignment. She was surprised when she felt Kakashi's lips against hers. After kissing her, Kakashi continued to stare at her, looking like he expected something. She bit her lip and wondered what it was as Kakashi smiled at her, his mask pulled down around his neck. "Say you consent, Naruto. Say that you're mine."

Naruto nodded her head stupidly, her mind whirling with the possibilities that might finally be right in front of her!

"I said, say that you consent," Kakashi said as he closed in on her. She nodded again and he growled at her. That seemed to get her to focus.

"Of course! I consent," Naruto barely got the words out of her mouth before Kakashi scooped her up and was running North and then West. He didn't put her down until they were at the edge of one of Fire's large forests.

"Say you're mine."

"I'm yours," Naruto said shakily. She felt Kurama finally stir in her mind, but now wanted him to go away.

Kakashi gave her a stiff nod, then glared at the area in front of him before putting her down. "Don't say a word and stay right beside me." He was pleased when Naruto nodded her head, but still on guard. A large black dog met them as they entered the forest.

You've got to be kidding me, Kurama said in a deep dark, very displeased voice.

"The pup's back," the black dog said, a hint of sarcasm coloring his tone. Naruto watched as Kakashi scowled at the dog even as he nodded his head. "Hmph. She's not a Hatake."

"She will be. That's why we're here," Kakashi said in a threatening voice. He squeezed his little wife's hand as he felt her shiver.

"We'll see!" The dog said with a smile that just looked wrong. "Be careful in your footing, she-pup."

Naruto. As soon as the wolf's not looking, make a shadow clone.

A/N: I wonder what's got Kurama so fired up?! Any ideas?

Also, I wanted to mention that I have been reading your comments, and know that some of you think that Kakashi is all over the place. You just might be right, and we'll be exploring that as the story continues.