Chapter 1

Everything Satsuki was, she owed to Konoha.

On its western side was a moss mottled collection of boulders that adjoined a rill: these were the stone bosom that she would at times recline on, recollecting nascent memories, the fresh water gushing nearby pap to partake in when fatigued.

On its eastern side was the forest. It was a rampart that reached the sun. The burnished boughs, extending every way as far as the eye beheld, were arms that occluded against an assault from the skies. Yet these arms, well versed in the ways of love, offered up wooded embraces, from time to time even divested themselves: dripped from each fingertip a nectarine sap, shook out, during intermittent gusts, as though ridding themselves of rainwater, fruits and flowers. During monsoon, the soil here fanned out on odoriferous wings an earthen scent. Even the matin song of birds then carried a note of veneration.

To the north was the congregation of life: clan compounds and watch towers, the academy and the Kage office, the mountains with their solemn faces that some idiot every once in a blue moon defaced; orchards, arbours and halls; and all else that to her had been bequeathed by those before, and all that she in turn would bequeath to those that followed, even if her service ended in martyrdom, for therein lay glory.

And to the south lay the congregated dead: row on row of memorials and graves, belonging to those that to preserve their heritage had forsaken themselves.

Interred there, and there celebrated, were her clansmen too.

So this place, this village, was not just her home, but her shrine: here couched supine unlimited grace. Her people had besprinkled it with blood and made it holy. For that she celebrated it with a suppliant knee— for that, and for the freedom they upheld. Konoha had been there for her when her clan district wept like a network of rent veins. It had been there when she had shattered, when in one night the brother she loved had unmade her. Theirs was the hand that was extended in love, theirs the mercy, of which she considered herself unworthy. They had grasped at her sinking self, rescued it from its fragility and its self fashioned abyss. She had been remould. Rid of the voices in her that suggested dissolution. Fashioned into an instrument for service, a reed to be piped on, from which was drawn a devotional ditty, unparalleled in harmony and mellifluity. This she did for them unasked. This and more. Her oath to them was all she had; her lips fashioned for them and theirs, as from a lyre, a litany of hosannas. For what had been hers was under the dust, yet they had given her a world and more, given to her all she had and was.

Yes, she thought to herself, serene, nodding while on her way to the Kage office. This and more was her due to the village, this and all they asked for, this and-

Her thoughts were abruptly ruptured by the water balloon that flew into her face.

Let it here be noted that Satsuki Uchiha had earned her Jonin rank. Let it also be noted that she had grinded away for seven years in its pursuit: first for three at the academy, then for two with the ANBU, then as a liaison for a year with the ROOT. That she had undertaken all the while missions demanding discretion, skill, valour and sacrifice. That she had on more than one occasion found herself a hair's breadth away from discovery, or worse, death. That she had surmounted all by being unsurpassed in intellectual and tactical genius. Let it be said that the sitting room in her spartan residence shone with a lustre resembling the star of the morning, for medal on medal was therein housed. Let all this and more be said in her praise: that she could take a blow; had taken a fist to the gut from Maito Gai during the Jonin exams; had once carried back Hatake Kakashi while herself perilliously near death, one arm unfunctional and one side of her face a red ruin; was in fact in some quarters of the torture cell considered a demi goddess for her ability to take pain. That she was feared and adored in equal measure, and vaunted. Above all else, vaunted.

None of this prepared her for the sheer indignity of standing in shock in the midst of a crowded street, mouth open, her face a multicoloured mess, her once pristine jonin vest dripping the seven shades of a rainbow.

A blur of orange blinked in the distance and disappeared from view.

The strangled growl that left her throat was guttural, startling only in its lack of dignity and femininity. People were staring. People were starting to talk. All were looking at her. All movement had ceased.

All thought in her mind ceased too, bar those involving murder.

Then, quicker than the flutter of an eyelash or a micromovement in the flap of wings, she exploded into motion. The blur had been a mile away. It took her a second to bridge the distance. She knocked him out the air, dropped him into a set of trash cans in an alley, lifted him off the ground, ground him against a wall, held him there till he startled to purple, tears like pinpricks dotting the edges of his eyes.

"You absolute-" but reason by then made its return, and with that the first inklings of shame. She let him go. He crumpled and started to wheeze.

Or so she thought.

It started out in a set of wet hacking coughs and turned into the first rumblings of laughter. This rose in pitch, till he was staring at her and laughing into her face though still in tears.

And then she realized the tears were from laughter too.

This motherfucker.

"You," she hissed through grit teeth, feeling once more the irrational desire to hurt him. The effect was ruined by some paint going into her mouth. She retched, and rubbed vigorously. "You," she spat out again. "I am due at the Hokage's office in six minutes, and you have ruined my uniform."

"And your face," he wheezed, lapsing into laughter.

"Pay up."

"Wha..?"

"Pay. Up." She stared at him thunderously. "I had this made a week ago. The fabric is the best Konoha has to offer. It is freshly pressed, dry cleaned, and of both sentimental and ornamental value. And now it has paint all over it. Pay up."

"Oi, I ain't got any money," he said, frantic all of a sudden. "You gonna shake down an academy student? That's cruel, even for you shinobi. Don't be an extortionist, sister."

She hauled him up and linked her arm to his, to avoid even the possibility of escape.

"Then you are coming with me to the Hokage," she announced, a note of finality in her voice. And with that, she started marching towards the office, him in tow. A quickly cast henge took care of the paint, at least for the moment.

He sobered a bit as they walked, and said, as though it mattered at all, "lady, I'm sorry".

"Beg as much as you want. It will not get you out of this."

"Yeah." He nodded earnestly. " Yeah, I know. It isn't that. I really 'm sorry, you know. Wasn't personal or something. You were the distraction. Stopped em right in their tracks, that."

"...them?"

"I was being chased." He rubbed his head and looked away.

That rung alarm bells. Chased? A Konoha academy student? In Konoha? Impossible. He was from Konoha, wasn't he? She peered at him.

"Chased." In the flatness of that single syllable she conveyed her lack of faith in the notion. "Why?"

"I, uh…" he fidgeted around a bit, "I might've kinda sorta decorated the Hokage monument."

She looked up instinctively, and there it was. There in the distance. The Hokage monument, multicoloured today, as it was once a year around this precise date and precise time.

"Oh my God," she whispered, deathly pale. "Oh. My. God." Not again. Not this again. She closed her eyes, as though experiencing physical pain. And then to him, "You are Naruto Uzumaki."

And her prisoner puffed out his chest, perking up, preening at his celebrity.

"The one and only," he said with a grin. "At your service."


When Uzumaki Naruto was four, the Hokage had held his hand and led him atop the kage monument, there to sit, from there to view the village. The Hokage had talked about the need for each Shinobi to preserve the sea of humanity that down below drowsily steeped the village walks, peopled the plains; but all Naruto could see were ugly tracts of stone and straw that sprouted from the soil like a smattering of scabs, and were cluttered close to each other, a congregation of dung heaps and ant hills. The people were pinpricks in the background, here and there picketing the earth for a rich lode, or else in weary circumambulations winding their way to weaponries or clan quarters. Their huffs and gesticulations resembled those of the half crazed devotees he had once espied slitting the neck of a bull.

"Someday," the Hokage was saying, "someday, Naruto, this province and its people will be yours to care for. Then you must forgive this old man his many frailties and foibles. If on that day you choose to relieve him of his duties, and keep for yourself this hat, then so be it. I only wish to see you grow. I only wish that you love, and be loved by our people. For that, you must hold this soil sacred. For that, you must vow to protect. Till that day arrives, however, you must take care that you uphold the will of fire, which is our greatest strength."

"The will of fire, jiji?" he'd asked, scrunching up his face.

"Yes." The Hokage smiled. "The will of fire. It is a belief fashioned out of selflessness. It is the cumulative of our desire for peace, the sum total of our love for one another, beating as one heart, combined in one soul. The tree is one great body, and we are all as the leaves that clothe it, embrowned if fallen, thus autumned, but golden when on the bough. We purify the air the world breathes, we are the shade underneath which it reclines. Understand this, and you understand our village. And know that you too must sacrifice, and be willing-"

But the rest was lost in the clouded lanes of infancy; an insect traipsing across a rock had caught his attention. He presumed, however, that it, too, had something to do with love.

Love, he had read somewhere, linked the past with the present and the present with eternity; was the twine that tied the heartstrings of man to man; was the portcullis that if crossed ensured imminent arrival to the treasure trove sequestered within the mortal keep, there brimming, like a gourd of nectar about to overflow, all earth's blisses and joys.

And he had never known love.

He knew that people thought him to be an idiot. It was said at times that he was absent minded, or lacked application.

But he noticed things.

He had noticed, for example, even at three, the downturn in mouths when he meandered about, had noticed the spite in the eyes of the matron at the orphanage. She never said a word. Not to him. Three meals a day they gave him, but never what he wanted. Never a hug. Never a word of encouragement. Never their love. That they withheld. That, and recognition. That, and respect. That, and everything but the barest of courtesies. Even an accusation would have been preferred to their apathy.

If he closed his eyes, it was like being dropped into the stream of time, from there to be borne back on powerful eddies to that day at the Kage monument. The Hokage was frozen, his mouth still open, flecks of spit like globular fireflies hanging suspended, pierced by motes of the fading sun. And oftentimes, oftentimes in dreams, on many, many nights prior to his discovery of the truth, Naruto would interrupt him halfway through his monologue, and dully ask: You say love em, jiji. You say they love everyone. So why won't they love me?

Of course, he knew now. Had known for five years.

Watching the Jonin who had been marching him to the Kage office freeze due to that little detail was hilarious, though.

These fucking Shinobi, man. So predictable. All the same. Automatons hauled off the same assembly line. Their ludicrous posturing. Their delusions of grandeur. Their crappy, sappy speeches about the village and the world as one great family. Their unerring devotion to an ideal which demanded of them that they all die. And lastly, their fear. Always the stench of fear clinging like cheap perfume to these self sacrificial, hyperventilating, hypochondrial, sanctimonious set of hypocrites. Fear, and loathing. Of him, and the thing sealed in him.

They were fun to fuck with, though.

He puffed out his chest and offered this one a wry grin.

"At your service," he said.

And then something very odd happened.

Instead of paling further, as those unlucky enough to discover themselves in the vicinity of the Kyuubi No Kitsune usually did (that included his pursuers, who at the best of times were reluctant and cowed), this girl (who couldn't be older than him by more than a year, if that) began to purple.

"You," she spat, and there was an underlying venom in her words, "so you are the whelp who desecrates the monument every year. Have you no decency? No regard for your elders? None for what four generations of warriors have accomplished? You dare spit in the faces of those whose labours yield you a place to call your own? They built out of this barren land, which was once only hills and crags and silt and soot and rubble, a palace of pleasure for the likes of you. The air you breathe, the food you eat, the freedom you experience— it is your debt to them. And you. This is how you repay it, you ungrateful, spiteful, history razing, monument defacing little rodent."

Here she lapsed into deep breaths, her cheeks flushed.

A sudden wave of relief and mirth washed over him.

There was something very liberating about her utter disregard for what he was.

Her dislike was for Uzumaki Naruto, the person, and his deeds; it was not for Naruto, jinchuuriki, indentured from birth into a service for nation that he had never asked for— devoid of choice, spited for the crime of existing, expected to be a sacrifice on the frontlines if war ever rolled around.

And for that one moment, and that moment alone, Naruto would admit to himself that though she was flushed and multicoloured, though heaving, and though probably lacking in the stability and sanity department, she was very pretty indeed.

"Yo, did they...did they make you clean it, or something?" he asked.

"Thrice," she said, through clenched teeth. "Every. Fucking. Year."

"Oh." A pause. He closed his eyes, as though contemplating the secrets of existence. Then he opened them and shrugged. "Can't say you didn't deserve it."

He felt his lip curve into a grin as she exploded again. What a beautiful, beautiful day.


A/N: If you wish to ask for updates on my other fics, feel free to do so over PMs. Leave the review section of this fic for comments on this fic.

That aside, wanted to try a sensei Fem Sasuke fic where I also get to somewhat reverse the respective characters' attitudes towards Konoha. Always wondered what would have happened if, say, Itachi had never got to Tsukuyomi Sauce, or if the village had taken great interest in him to ensure his loyalty, due to the sharingan being of paramount importance. Of equal interest to me was the notion of: what if Naruto, instead of just breaking his back to win the approval of those that are indifferent to him or outright fearful of him, comes to dislike them with a near similar ardour (no, not the black suited black booted trench coated harem gathering kinda resentment; just one strong enough to strip him of his nationalistic goal of becoming Kage). And thus this was born. We'll see where it goes.

Feel free to share your thoughts!