Hello again!
Thank you to everyone for the positive response so far; I hope you continue to enjoy the story!
Without further ado…
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Ectoplasm and Chakra
When Danny Phantom and Vlad Plasmius combined to create the catastrophe that would plague Amity Park for ten years, everyone assumed Danny Fenton died. But the truth was far different. Stranded in a strange land, a world-weary Danny meets a tiny blond boy with a nine-tailed fox on his shoulder and trouble on his heels. It is an odd turnabout to be simply ordinary in a village of the extraordinary… TUE timeline; Naruto prequel.
A Danny Phantom & Naruto Crossover Fanfiction
By: Sholay
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PART II - ITACHI
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The first time Danny swum groggily to near consciousness, he could feel the anxious energy of the people bustling around him.
"How is this possible?"
"He is resisting all treatments. I don't know what else to do."
"Treat him without the healing chakra."
"But—"
"There's nothing else to do. If we leave these wounds, he'll bleed out and die."
He heard no more.
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"…"
"…Still unconsi…"
"…wake soon…"
"Yes… how… find us..."
Danny became aware of sound. At first, the words were only garbled noises in his head. Slowly, like a camera-lens struggling to focus, his mind started to make sense of what he was hearing.
"…No sign of his attackers?"
"None, Hokage… Should be awake and coherent soon… well enough to travel in a couple of weeks..."
The voices were blurry, distorted. It felt like there was cotton in his ears—like wearing headphones on a plane—it kept him from being able to identify how many people were talking.
"I'm impressed, indeed. The healers have done an extraordinary job."
"Especially without using chakra. His resistance is unnatural. Perhaps it is a side-effect of his condition…"
Danny's eyes were closed. He felt oddly numb and couldn't quite muster the energy to move his limbs. The fog in his brain prevented him from worrying about this detail. He swallowed then took a deep breath.
The voices above him continued speaking.
"We do not need this… added complication. Especially not now."
"You suggest that we simply turn him out."
"Yes. He is not a child. He is perfectly capable of taking care of himself."
Were these people talking about him?
"He is also a foreigner. He may be in need of help and without money or knowledge of our language he will not survive an encounter with a less friendly village. Just look at those injuries he has. Our Jonins did not do this."
"Yes. Look at his injuries. What caused them? Who? Why? No ordinary civilian would be trekking through the forest with injuries like that. You think it was a coincidence that he happened on Konohagakure? He could be a spy."
"And he may not be. For now, let him rest. I will reserve judgement on him until I have spoken with him personally."
The voices receded and Danny surrendered to his weakness, falling back into unconsciousness.
:o:
Danny's eyes squinted open. They felt puffy and sticky with too much sleep and he grimaced at the sensation. It was dark, but his eyes still ached with disuse. Sniffling, he attempted to bring up a hand to wipe at his face, but felt a cold vice grip his heart when his hand refused to move.
There was something hard and thick encircling his wrist. Arcing his head up, he was able to see the leather restraints locking his arms to the bed. A failed attempt to lift his feet proved that his legs were similarly held down.
Instinct had him reaching frantically within himself—seeking that heart of ice, a familiar race of power—but his body remained stubbornly solid. Solidly restrained.
'It's gone! Gone. Gone, gone, gone. The ghost is gone. I can get better now, right?'
Instead of comfort, all that thought brought him in that moment was chilling fear. A security he'd relied upon for the better part of a year was now ruthlessly stripped from him.
Danny fought the rising panic, but couldn't stop himself from straining and wriggling against his bonds. The claustrophobic sensation that always gripped him in these situations was made worse by the fact that he had no clue where he was. He hated being restrained. Hated it. It made him feel vulnerable and helpless. The last time he'd been similarly retrained against his will his mother had threatened to cut him open with a laser.
Abruptly, Danny stilled.
His mother…
"Is everything okay in—oh! You're awake!" A black-haired girl who looked to be around sixteen, hardly a year or two older than Danny, peered around a doorframe. She was clothed in a simple white uniform with a white cap on her head. She pushed the door fully open—a sliding paper door, Danny did a double take at that one—and stepped fully into the room. "Hello! It's good to see you awake!" The girl chirped, and gave a tiny bow. "How are you feeling?"
For a while, Danny just stared at the girl. It sounded like she was speaking English, but her mouth—
"Oh! You don't understand what I'm saying, do you?" The girl raised a hand to her lips. "Okay, just a moment. I'll go call Madame Shizune."
The girl—Danny assumed she was some sort of nurse—began to turn away and Danny's hand jerked in its restrains. He hissed at the aborted attempt to raise his hand. He settled for stopping her verbally. "No, wait. I understand you." Danny's voice was a bare whisper as it rasped in his throat from disuse. He felt desperately thirsty. His exclamation worked though and the girl let out a gasp of surprise before turning back to him.
Danny swallowed, trying to ease the dryness in his throat before speaking again. "Um… You don't have to call anyone." He really didn't want to deal with an interrogation five minutes after waking up. "It's pretty late, yeah? Might as well wait until tomorrow."
He gave his best attempt at a smile, but it felt strange and weak on his face. Like he'd forgotten which muscles to constrict. Nevertheless, the girl seemed to relax, sending him a little smile back.
"Awesome." He breathed. "Now… um… I don't suppose you could let me out of these?" He looked at his restraints hopefully but was disappointed as the girl gave him a nervous but apologetic shake of the head. Licking his lips he tried again. "I'm just… really thirsty…"
"I'm sorry." She said, clasping her hands. "But we're not supposed to…"
"Alright," He conceded with a sigh. He hadn't really expected her to let him out, but he'd hoped… "Well, could you help me sit up a bit? It's kinda uncomfortable lying flat like this." Being confined to lying on his back with only the ceiling in his immediate vision was extremely paranoia-inducing. If he were going to be restrained he would at least like to see his feet.
The girl agreed and helped him adjust the bed. When Danny could comfortably see both his toes and the room around him, he nodded, thanking her.
"Oh! You wanted water!" The girl remembered and exited the room at a quick clip. A few minutes later she returned holding a full glass. Danny eyed the glass of water and subconsciously sucked on his chapped lips. His hands jolted with the desire to hold the glass even as she brought it closer.
"Hh..." He sucked in a breath through clenched teeth, drawing back his head with discomfort as the nurse raised the glass to his lips.
"I'm sorry…" The nurse said again. "But I can't let you out of the restraints." She hesitated and looked at him, waiting for his approval.
"Don't you have straws?" Danny asked.
The woman looked at his quizzically and didn't reply.
Not fully understanding why his question went unanswered, Danny's thirst nevertheless won out. He took in an uncomfortable breath then nodded stiffly.
Taking that as consent, the nurse raised the glass to his dry lips.
The nurse poured the water down his throat a little too fast, a few drops escaped down the corners of his mouth and Danny's fingers twitched as though to control a glass they weren't holding. It was embarrassing and uncomfortable but he was too parched to care. The water was divine.
Danny drank until the glass was empty. He felt a touch nauseous and somewhat dizzy. Still, he managed a quiet 'Thank you', to which the nurse smiled and offered a tiny inclination of her head.
For a couple of minutes the girl lingered in silence but, as it became clear that neither of them had anything more to say, she gave a quick bow and exited the room, leaving him alone.
Anxious and unwilling to sleep, he took his mind off his immobility by looking around the room. There were multiple standard-issue hospital beds lining both walls of the room. But there were no privacy curtains and the whole setup didn't seem entirely… sterile. He wasn't sure what it was, but there was something off about this place. He wanted to call it a hospital, but it really seemed too… rustic? The walls were wood paneled and there were no lights in the room that he could see. Looking to his side, he noticed the lack of any drip attached to his arm. No one had changed him out of his jeans, although his shirt was missing. Thick bandages encircled his torso.
It was more like a sick bay, or a school infirmary… certainly not a 'hospital'.
Eventually, he leaned his head back and tried to sleep. It was difficult: the moon was bright outside and there was nothing covering the naked window. Nevertheless, his eyes were closing and his breathing was evening out in a light doze when a sudden wash of cold air made him shiver. He exhaled, teeth briefly chattering, and blinked his eyes open.
"Why did it have to be a hospital? Why is it always a hospital? Why is it never a modelling agency?"
"Well, personally I was thinking of it more as a 'sick bay' than a hospital… but I guess that doesn't help much, does it?" Danny answered wryly.
The ghost, who had been standing with his back to Danny, swivelled around and stared at Danny with wide eyes.
"Danny!"
"Hey, Tuck." Danny smiled softly.
"Oh man, dude…" Tucker wafted closer and looked over Danny's body, eyes getting stuck first on the gauze taped to his shoulder and then again on the heavy wrappings around his stomach. "You look terrible."
"So everyone keeps telling me." Danny answered blandly.
"Are those restraints?!" Tucker's voice rose as he saw the leather straps pinning Danny to the bed. "Why are you restrained?! It's not the GiW is it?! They didn't find out—"
"No, it isn't… They didn't. At least, I don't think they did. Not that it would matter anymore anyway." Danny added thoughtfully.
"Why don't you just phase out of them dude?" Tucker wanted to know.
"Tuck… How are you?" Danny asked, gracelessly changing the subject.
"How am I? How are you?"
"But you're the one who's… who's…" Danny choked, still incapable of voicing the word. "How are you so indifferent about it?"
"Dude… why do you think it took me so long to show up? It took me a while to accept that I'm dead." Danny winced at the word, but Tucker was oddly calm. "I've come to terms with it."
"How?!" Danny blurted and grimaced when his only answer from Tucker was a silent shrug. "Tucker... you... you're a ghost."
"Actually... 'bout that, I don't think I am. A ghost, that is… at least not a normal one. I mean, I don't have any of the powers you do, except flight. And I can't touch you." To prove this point Tucker drifted forward and tossed a hand through Danny's head.
Danny flinched backward as Tucker went to slap him and tried to raise his hands in defence. But the bed prevented him from recoiling and his hands were held fast by the restraints. Tucker's hand flew through his head effortlessly, but Danny was still irritated by his helplessness. He hated restraints.
"Anyway, I just really wanted to check in on you." Tucker admitted.
"How did you find me?"
"I dunno." Tucker shrugged unhelpfully. A few moments of silence passed. Danny had settled back and looked quite content to simply bask in his friend's unexpected presence. But Tucker was fidgeting in the unfamiliar silence.
"So…" Tucker began and Danny raised an inquisitive eyebrow.
"You… seem different." Tucker said at length. "Quieter."
Danny sighed. "Comes from living at Vlad's, I guess. That man's house is as empty as one of Casper's band recitals."
"VLAD'S!?" Tucker exclaimed, shocked. "You're living at Vlad's?!"
"Was… I was…" Danny answered quietly. "Everyone else was gone, remember?"
Tucker looked distressed and worried. "But… but it's Vlad's! We hate Vlad! He's manipulative and deceitful and creepy and he wants you to be his evil apprentice-son thing!"
Danny allowed Tucker to finish his tirade. He wanted to clasp his hands together, or to fold his legs underneath him, but the restraints halted both movements in their infancy. Instead he had to settle with fixing a serious look on his friend.
"Tucker, listen… there's something I have to tell you. While I was at Vlad's I… I did something. I—"
"Hello?" The door slid open and Danny's head snapped to the side as the same nurse from earlier stuck her head into the room. "Are you okay in here? I thought I heard your voice."
"I… I… Okay, this isn't what it looks like." 'I'm not sitting in bed chatting with a ghost.'
"It's okay." The nurse gave him a surprisingly understanding smile. "Sometimes I talk to myself too when I need to get all my thoughts in order."
"Yeah, so it's not really a ghost, I…" Her words abruptly caught up to him. "Wait. What?" he looked back to where Tucker had been floating and saw only air.
"Uh…" He stalled.
"All right. If you need anything then I'll be outside. Just yell and I'll hear you." The nurse bade him goodnight and then left.
Danny lay there in the dark, breathing softly and blinking all too human eyes. Each second ticking by seemed to tighten the cinch around his heart painfully. He realized that he was holding his breath, waiting for Tucker to come back. But as seconds turned to minutes, his hope dwindled.
Vindictively, he cursed the nurse and his teeth ground together as his head lowered, fingernails pressing painful semicircles into his palms as he squeezed his eyes shut.
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"Good news!" A lady who'd introduced herself as Shizune told him the next day. Unlike the uncertain nurse from last night, Shizune held herself with confidence and authority as she looked down at Danny. She looked to be in her early to mid-twenties. "You're well enough to leave the hospital!"
So they did call it a hospital, Danny noted. Go figure.
"Really?" He asked, looking down at his still heavily bandaged torso.
"Well, it will take some time before the injuries completely go away. You were very, very hurt."
Studiously, he ignored the curious look Shizune was giving him. Instead, he focused on the raw scars lining his hands. Those must have come from the broken glass in Vlad's lab, he realized. If his hands had healed this much, then he must have been unconscious for quite a few days.
Especially since his aching midsection told him he likely no longer had his preternatural healing abilities.
Abruptly, one man wearing a heavily padded vest and a metal-plated bandanna came over and undid Danny's restraints. The teen rubbed his red wrists, grateful that his body was once again his own to control.
"What now?" He wanted to know. A white t-shirt was tossed at his head and he snatched it out of the air, raising an eyebrow at the woman who'd thrown it.
"First, put that on." Shizune told him. "It's new—your last one didn't make it, I'm afraid. Then you'll need to fill out one of these forms and after that we'll accompany you to see the council."
"The council?" He questioned as he finished tugging on the shirt—quietly marvelling at the relatively minimal protests from his stomach and shoulder— and was handed a pad and pencil.
"Yes, they need to conduct a hearing to decide what to do with you. It isn't often that a little white ghost arrives in the village." Shizune told him and Danny's head snapped up as a frission of shock made his heart tremble.
"A what?" What had she just called him?
"White ghost." She repeated, then seeing Danny's look of alarmed bewilderment, she explained. "It's what we call foreigners with white skin."
"Your term for that is white ghost? Seriously?" He snorted bitterly at the irony. Shizune offered him a grin and he returned it with a wan smile.
"I suppose it is a strange word." She admitted with a shrug.
It occurred to Danny that there was a misplaced singular in Shizune's response but he dismissed the thought as unimportant. "So… a 'hearing'?" He asked her, pulling the conversation back on track.
"I'm sure you'll be fine. You seem like a nice boy, Danny." There was no mockery in her voice as she smiled kindly at him.
"Ah… Th-thanks. Yeah… Heh…" He felt an old embarrassment heat his cheeks as he ducked his head at the compliment. Well, some things would never change, he figured. He would always be a complete idiot in front of pretty women. Shizune didn't look like that old, but she seemed to hold a position of status in the hospital, and she was the first person in a long time who hadn't seemed fake when smiling at him.
Shizune was nice, Danny decided. He dropped his gaze to the form in his hands and then a knot was forming in his stomach for a whole new reason.
"This… I…" He stared at the paper. It was filled with vertical lines of illegible chicken scratch.
"Is something wrong?" Shizune's face turned concerned.
"This… is all in…" His eyes fell on one particular symbol, a simple layering of lines. It looked familiar. Where had he seen this before?
A memory flashed in his mind of a time when Sam had briefly been into Asian cartoons and comics. She had tried her hand at learning the language but abandoned it when she realized the trend was quickly becoming mainstream.
"This is all in Japanese, isn't it?"
"Yes." Shizune said deliberately. "That's what we're speaking, after all."
Danny looked up at her, thunderstruck. He was speaking Japanese?! How?! When?! What he heard when he spoke was only English and that was what he heard from Shizune as well… How could he be speaking a whole different language without realizing it?
"Oh…" Understanding sparked in Shizune's gaze and she looked at him with some pity. "You can't read, can you?"
"I…" He glanced down at the unintelligible writing and shook his head. "No… I can't read it."
Shizune was patient and didn't condescend him as she leaned over took the form from him. As she read out the questions, and as she transcribed the information Danny gave her, he slowly realized what had happened.
Clockwork had given him the ability to speak Japanese with that symbol tattooed on the back of his neck. He had almost forgotten about that part of his bizarre meeting with the ghostly Master of Time. So he could speak the language but he couldn't read it.
Well. That was inconvenient.
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Later that day…
Danny opened the door of his new apartment. Clutched in his hands were a set of keys to the room and a few bills of money—effectively all his current earthly possessions save the clothes on his back.
Someone had vouched for him. The meeting with the village's council had been a near disaster. Poorly described as an 'official objective inquiry' by the old men seated behind a table on a raised platform—literally and figuratively looking down on Danny who was left to fidget uncomfortably on his feet—the meeting had essentially consisted of Danny being read a litany of reasons for why he shouldn't be allowed to stay in the village. One man in particular, with black hair and bandages covering half his face, seemed especially keen on being rid of him. The council had been one suspicious finger twitch away from tossing him out on his ear when the guy in charge—they called him 'Hokage' and Danny supposed he was something like a very well-respected Mayor—came in and politely told them to stuff it.
Apparently, one of the people from the team who'd found him, a person named 'Uchiha Itachi' had vouched for Danny. He wasn't sure what this meant, especially since he had no idea who 'Uchiha Itachi' was. But the council had seemed impressed.
In surprisingly short order, Danny had been released on his own recognisance with stiff orders to stay out of trouble—because so help him if he even sneezed on a poor old lady—and not leave the village until they saw fit to re-evaluate his position. Next thing he knew, he was standing outside the building gazing on the village—Konohagakure, what a mouthful that was—that was apparently his new home.
He didn't know how long he'd been standing there, staring blankly at the air in front of his eyes, when the Hokage came up him.
"You've been through something terrible, haven't you, child?" The old man had said in a surprisingly kind voice.
A sharp retort had rested on the tip of Danny's tongue but when he'd turned he was struck silent by the sincere empathy in the man's eyes.
Without preamble, the Hokage had told him he'd arranged for Danny to receive a small monthly stipend, for just long enough to get him on his feet, and that there was an apartment available which he could rent.
"You're not going to ask how I got hurt? Or how I came here?" Danny couldn't help but ask.
The Hokage favoured him with a knowing look. "I have already decided to give you a chance at a new life, child. Asking you about your past would only detract from that, don't you think?"
Then, as he stammered out a quiet 'thanks', the man pressed a set of keys and a few bills into his hands and ambled away.
So, really, Danny supposed, there were two people who'd vouched for him. Uchiha Itachi and the Hokage.
It bothered him to owe so much to two strangers. He didn't even know what this Uchiha looked like, which meant he couldn't thank him. Or her.
Deciding to lay that problem aside for a more pressing one, Danny cast his eyes around his empty apartment and sighed. The place was completely unfurnished and he didn't know the first thing about furniture shopping. Who allowed a fourteen-year-old to live on their own anyway? Apparently the age of maturity came early in this village.
He wondered mildly if he'd be allowed to drink. Or get his licence.
It was getting late and Danny eyed the wooden panelling of the floor. It didn't look too hard or dirty. He'd seen someone selling blankets outside so if he bought a couple and lay on them he should be fine for the night, right?
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The next morning, Danny was suffering. His back was stiff with enough pain that he couldn't immediately sit up. He twisted, then groaned as his hips and even his knees ached from continuous contact with the wood floor.
Hard lesson learned, he resolved to immediately set out and find a mattress.
Right after he managed to realign his spine.
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It was sheer luck that he found someone willing to sell him a mattress:not even a shopkeeper but some random family who heard him inquiring on the streets and approached him offering to sell a spare they had at a discount.
"A-ah… Thank you… Really. B-but are you sure?" Danny stammered as he awkwardly trailed after the couple as they lead him to their home. Some voice in his head was warning him that he wasn't paying attention to where he was going and that he was putting his safety in these people's hands... that he didn't have ghost powers anymore and what if they turned out to be crazy axe-murderers?! Despite these warnings—which, oddly, took on Jazz's voice in his head—his feet kept following the couple.
"Of course we're sure! Our son just got a new bed and this mattress was just lying around. We were going to keep it for when our daughter grows out of her bed, but that won't be for another couple of years anyway. She's only eight. Almost nine, now, but still..." The woman, Mrs. Haruno, as she'd introduced herself, said cheerfully and her husband hummed in agreement.
"Oh, but, if you need it—" Danny started.
"Hush, child!" Mrs. Haruno chided him. "You need it more than we do and we are more than happy to give it to you. We can buy another one anytime but you need this one tonight. Although… perhaps it is a bit used. You might want a new one. Honey, do you think Iko's still has mattresses? I saw one there a while back and it was pretty reasonably priced… oh, but I'm not sure if they'll be open. He knows you though so he might not mind. We could take Danny there now…"
"Ah… No, no… That's okay." Danny raised his hands, anxious and uncertain of how to deal with these people's overwhelming desire to help him. People in Amity Park were not at all this… generous. These people were actually making him feel bad for protesting. And for thinking they might be serial killers.
"We're here!" Mrs. Haruno said as they stopped in front of a five-storey apartment building with chipping paint and cracked stairs. "Come on up!"
The door was stiff and swung to hit him in the back as he stepped into a dim, unlit hallway. The stairs were cement and cracked and there were dark stains on the walls. The only light in the stairwell came from thin slits cut into the walls above their heads but the Harunos climbed without care. Danny, instinctively turned his head to look for an elevator. Not finding one, and also noticing the distinct lack of electric lighting, his eyebrows rose to his hairline.
It was an odd thing to live in a place where electricity wasn't taken for granted.
Odder still was the bizarre emotion churning at the pit of his stomach. Painful, but also something else... It was similar to the feeling he'd get when he ran across a new ghost, or explored new areas of the Ghost Zone...
'C'mon, Danny!' Sam's voice, sharp and impatient and all too vivid, echoed in his mind. 'Where's your sense of adventure?'
"You coming, Danny?" Mr. Haruno called from one landing up and Danny shook his head hard, as though he could physically scatter his thoughts.
"Coming!" He called as his eyes focused in on the present.
After months of inactivity, even a short flight of stairs caused his legs to burn and his breath to strain his lungs.
That was good. It kept him from feeling other things.
Five flights up, the couple stopped outside a door and produced a heavy metal key that they fitted into the lock.
"Mommy! Daddy!" As soon as the door opened, the couple were tackled by a tiny child with startling pink hair.
"Sakura!" Mr. Haruno bent and hoisted the little girl up, before swinging her around. The girl laughed happily, but grew quiet once she spotted Danny.
"Sakura, this is Danny." Mr. Haruno said as he put Sakura down. "He's a friend Mommy and I made today."
"...Hi." She greeted quietly.
Big green eyes blinked up at him and Danny couldn't help but smile at the child.
Sakura didn't smile, just blinked up at him with an expression that was adorably severe.
Gripped by a sudden urge, Danny dug a hand into his pocket. He still had some change leftover from his ill-advised blanket shopping.
He wanted to make the kid smile.
"Hello, Sakura. You've got very nice hair." He smiled at her and crouched down so they were eye to eye.
Sakura tugged on a strand self-consciously.
"Now, I think the pink is a awesome, but what's this doing in there?" Palming a coin, her reached around behind the girl's ear and pretended to draw the coin out from her hair.
"Look! You have money in your hair!" He put on an expression of amazement as held up the coin.
Sakura looked delighted as he showed her the coin. Danny felt a smile growing on his face in response to hers.
"For the lovely lady." He said, rising from his crouch. Tucking one hand behind his back, he offered her the coin with a flourish and a bow.
Sakura giggled and Danny felt small fingers pluck the coin from his hand.
"I can keep it?" She asked him.
He looked up "Yup!" He found himself grinning at the little girl and then beaming brighter when she giggled and ducked behind her father shyly.
"He has pretty eyes." She murmured to her father in a voice quiet enough that Danny almost wondered how he'd heard it.
"Danny's going to be staying for dinner, aren't you?" Mrs. Haruno said suddenly.
He gaped and stared at them, wondering when dinner had come into the picture. Mrs. Haruno winked.
"Would you like that, Sakura?" Mr. Haruno asked the little girl.
Sakura nodded and it was the most effective trap anyone could've laid—Danny couldn't say no to that tiny pink-haired, green-eyed girl.
Danny hung back, listening to the family chat casually as they got comfortable and began preparing the table for dinner. His offer to help was firmly dismissed by Mrs. Haruno who directed him to a low table and told him to sit. Not expecting the table to be so close to the ground, Danny hesitated for a long moment before noticing the cushions arranged around the table. Awkwardly, he lowered himself onto a cushion and sat with his legs folded beneath the table. Sakura seemed to have quickly warmed up to him as she scampered to the seat next to him and kneeled on the cushion gracefully before grinning up at him happily.
Danny smiled back at the child, but couldn't help fidgeting self-consciously as Mr. and Mrs. Haruno organized dinner in front of him.
Eventually, the food was set. Danny observed and carefully closely copied the elder Harunos as they took their food. He gathered the chopsticks in one hand and did his best to not look completely inept.
"So Danny, how long have you been in the village?" Mr. Haruno asked conversationally.
"Um… 'bout a week or so." Danny guessed, not wanted to go into the details of the time he'd spent unconscious in the hospital. That evasiveness became pointless, however, with Mrs. Haruno's next comment.
"Yes, I heard about you from Shizune." She said. "You were found by a Jon—a patrol team? And you met with the council yesterday."
"The council?" Her husband's eyebrows rose and he looked at Danny. "And how did that go?"
Responding to the mild irony he sensed in the man's tone, the teen offered a dry smile. "I don't think they liked me very much. Especially… there was one man with bandages on his face…"
"Ah Danzo." The man smiled knowingly. "He is quite forceful, that man."
Danzo… Danny had managed to manoeuvre a piece of meat into his mouth and he chewed the food thoughtfully as he tried to remember the last time he'd heard that name. He was distracted by the sudden curling pain in his stomach as his body was shocked by the food. Suddenly ravenously hungry, Danny felt his hand shake and had to clamp down on the urge to simply tilt the bowl and swallow the rest of his meal.
How long had it been since he'd last had a full meal?
'Gotta get in your five courses of meat, Danny!' Tucker's voice scolded him in his head and Danny's hand clenched around his chopsticks. 'Being a carnivore gives you heightened senses and makes you devilishly handsome. Trust me, I know!'
Meanwhile, Mr. and Mrs. Haruno were still talking.
"Danzo is only acting in the best interest of the village." Mrs. Haruno defended quietly.
"That is true. But come, Danny, they must've liked something about you. Otherwise they wouldn't have allowed you to stay." Mr. Haruno looked at Danny as he said this.
Blinking away the stinging in his eyes Danny forced himself to focus on Mr. Haruno's words. "Actually…" Danny spoke hesitantly, wondering if he should be saying this. "It was the Hokage that stood up for me."
"The Hokage?" Mrs. Haruno repeated and both adults looked at him in surprise. "You must be special, then, for the Hokage himself to step in."
"Ah… I dunno…" The teen ducked his head, regretting having said anything.
"So you think you'll stay in Konoha?" Mr. Haruno asked.
"Maybe." Danny answered, tilting his head. Konoha… was that what they called the village for short? "For now, yes."
"How are you going to be living on your own?" Mr. Haruno inquired. "Are you planning on getting a job?"
Danny blinked, swallowing the food in his mouth thickly and then stalled by taking a drink of water. Oddly, the thought of getting a job made a lump rise in his throat. Something in his chest gave a panicky flutter. A job? He'd never had a job before… could he even hold a job—he couldn't even sit through a whole day of school.
…But then again, that had been back when he'd… when he'd been… Well… He didn't have that particular issue anymore…
But could he get a job? He wasn't even really good at anything. Except ghost-hunting…
…Then again… that had been then. He didn't have that part of him anymore.
"U-um… yeah… yeah. I-I guess…" He stammered.
"You're not sure?" Mr. Haruno sounded surprised.
What about school? Danny wondered. He didn't even have a high school degree… He had nothing. Shouldn't he be in a foster home or something? Or was this simply how this village worked? Was he supposed to get a job and forget about school?
Danny shook his head. "I don't… don't really know what I'm going to do." He avoided the couple's eyes in favour of studying his food.
Just then, Sakura's head rose. "I'm going to be a ninja!" She piped up happily.
Danny let out a short polite sound of amusement, feeling the pressure on him immediately lifting at the typically outlandish comment from the child. But when the others at the table remained quiet, his small smile faded as he looked up.
"Sakura, dear, now's not the time to be bringing that up." Mrs. Haruno chided her daughter and Danny's curiosity was mildly peaked at the hint of steel he saw in the woman's eyes. But she blinked and looked at Danny and it was gone. "Oh! You're not used to the chopsticks are you? I'm sure we have something else…"
Danny tried to protest, but Mrs. Haruno had already left the table to bustle in the kitchen.
Next to him, Sakura giggled and showed him the chopsticks in her hand. "You hold them like this!"
Danny was feeling too self-conscious to humour the child but luckily enough Mrs. Haruno came back with a shallow spoon and a knife.
"I'm sorry, we don't have many foreign utensils but this—"
"This is fine. It's good. G-great. Thank you." Danny stammered and felt heat rise in his face as he took the utensils. He wished for a fork but was grateful for this much – a knife and a spoon would allow him to finish the meal at the very least.
Focusing in on his food, Danny let the conversation resume around him. Silently, he took note of how quickly the topic of jobs had been dropped.
After changing in utensils, dinner was actually quite satisfying Danny. It was a welcome feeling to eat something filling and warm.
However, playing the polite guest was slowly becoming an exercise in tediousness.
It seemed that Mrs. Haruno had one eye constantly trained on him. Every hesitation brought questions of whether the food was okay, whether he wanted more, something different, something to drink…
It made Danny simultaneously irritated and homesick. What Mrs. Haruno was doing, most people would consider to be mothering. But Danny's mother had never been the most attentive woman—not like this. He felt pained as a part of him yearned for his mother's behaviour while another part felt awkward for not knowing how to react to what Mrs. Haruno was giving.
Overall, it was wholly unpleasant and Danny was itching for everything to be over so he could leave. The desire for the quiet seclusion of his apartment was strong. The feeling was simultaneously sour because he knew that going back to his apartment meant he'd be alone again—with nothing to stave off the memories and guilt.
"Where do you live?" Mr. Haruno said once everyone had finished their food and the plates had finally been cleared away. "I'll help you carry the mattress back."
Danny, knowing only his address but having no clue how to get to his apartment on his own, had no choice but to accept the man's offer. He didn't know which direction to head in, let alone how he'd walk the distance carrying a mattress. The helplessness chafed.
As he was getting ready to leave: putting on the shoes he'd left near the door—yet another new custom to get used to—he was stopped by Sakura who came up to him holding a white flower.
"For you." She said quietly.
Danny felt something, a dull ache, in his chest and forced a smile that was a little sad. "Thank you." He took the flower.
"I really am going to be a ninja." Sakura confided, looking straight up at him. "No one believes I'll be able to do it, but I will!"
Danny, if nothing else, admired the girl's conviction and the way her eyes seemed to dare him to doubt her. People had doubted him too…
Maybe they'd been right about him. But that didn't mean he'd do the same thing to this little girl.
"It's good to have a goal." He told her. "And remember that it's your goal, not anyone else's. So you shouldn't let anyone stop you from working toward it." The happy smile she gave him went straight to his heart. She drew close and shyly held out her arms for a hug.
"Come back again." Were her parting words as he gently let her go.
When the folding futon mattress was resting on the floor of Danny's apartment, Mr. Haruno looked around the bare place critically. Danny also surveyed the room, feeling like the emptiness was rising up and around him as a gaping, insurmountable monster.
"Here, I brought some sheets and a pillow as well." Mr. Haruno suddenly spoke and Danny turned in surprise to see the man holding bedding in his arms. The teen had no idea where the man had pulled it from – certainly he hadn't seen Mr. Haruno carrying a pillow on the way over.
"Oh, uh… but I don't think I can pay for…"
"Don't worry. They're extras." Mr. Haruno held out the bedding but Danny shook his head, already feeling too indebted to accept more generosity.
"N-no… I…"
"Take it." Mr. Haruno insisted and stepped forward to press the bedding into Danny's hands. "And remember to fold the mattress up in the morning, or it'll catch mold." Danny blinked and, perhaps in response to his hesitant expression, Mr. Haruno's eyes softened. "We truly don't mind you taking this. But if you are so stubborn you can return them once you buy your own–Sakura will be happy to see you again. She rarely takes to someone so quickly."
"Ah…" Danny looked down, unsure what to say.
Eventually though, the words did come.
"Thank you."
:o:
It took a few weeks for Danny to gather his wits enough to remember the second person who had vouched for him. He didn't go inquiring after him or her, always feeling too weary or too uncertain. It did bother him vaguely though—the thought that there was a stranger out there to whom he owed a debt and that he had no idea who that person was.
Uchiha Itachi actually came to him first. Or rather, his name did.
Standing near the merchant stalls on the dirt streets two older women were gossiping.
"Did you hear?"
"About that one—?"
"Yes, the Uchiha boy."
"Itachi."
"Yes, Fugaku has been in such a tiff over that boy."
"The chief of police? He wants his sons to go join the police, doesn't he?"
"Of course! They all have to. You know… the Uchiha. But Itachi is a strange one… always has been."
"He's ANBU now, isn't he? Youngest yet."
"Yes, but who knows if he's a prodigy or just a freak of nature."
"Excuse me." Danny chose that moment to interrupt. That word, 'freak', never failed to make his jaw clench and he felt the need to intervene, if only to fulfil some perceived sense of kinship.
'We freaks should stick together. Drives the normal people crazy. Then they become the freaks and guess who's normal?' Sam had said that to him once. Recalling that made his heart ache.
The two women quietened and stared at him with distrustful eyes as he neared.
"I heard you talking about Uchiha Itachi … Do you know where I can find him?" Danny asked. Over the past few weeks he'd spent in Konoha, Danny had figured out that people tended to state the surname first. That meant that Itachi was the first name of the person he was looking for. And Itachi was apparently male.
"You know, boy, isn't not polite to eaves—" One woman started.
Her friend scoffed and leaned toward her friend to murmur in a low voice. "Don't bother. He's white."
Danny took offence to that but didn't care enough to let it show. After all, back home his parents had called Danny Phantom worse things.
'Not undeservedly…'
"You know the Uchiha compound? You must. It practically is Southeastern Konoha." The second woman continued, looking down at Danny disdainfully. "The area with the houses that are walled off. Yes? You know it? Good. Go to the biggest, most central house. That's where the main family lives." Then the women turned away, clearing dismissing him.
Danny didn't ask any more questions. He didn't need to. He knew where to go as he turned and began navigating his way through the narrow streets. He'd walked that way just yesterday for laundry day.
Ah, yes. Laundry day.
Yet another unpleasant surprise among so many. Since he owned only a couple of outfits, he ran out of clean clothes quickly and his first laundry day had been a shock. Some impatient bystander had pointed him rather brusquely toward a clump of trees and Danny had discovered the laundry pool.
The laundry pool! Where people actually sat down and scrubbed and pounded their shirts against stones in an attempt to beat the stains senseless.
Danny had returned from that experience with buffed knuckles, an ache in his back and a newfound appreciation for washing machines.
At this point he was just grateful that they had at least a basic amount of electricity in this strangely backward village. He didn't think he'd be able to handle lighting candles and oil lanterns after 8pm.
'No plugs!' Tucker's voice wailed in his head. Danny could picture his friend hugging his PDA. 'How'm I supposed to charge Rosalina?'
Danny straightened his clothes—a simple blank white t-shirt and his usual jeans. The hospital had long disposed of his favourite t-shirt, but his jeans had survived… Which was fortunate, as Danny didn't at all favour the ankle-length pants all the men of Konoha seemed to sport.
As he walked toward the Southeastern corner of Konoha, the smell and sounds of cooking hawker food wafted to his nose. It occurred to him that, though he was hungry, the smell didn't entice him even a bit. He was craving fried chicken and coke, which wasn't good. Iced drinks were an expensive rarity here and these people's version of 'fried chicken' also happened to be soggy with sweet-n'-spicy sauce.
The street ended at a high wall. He bit down on his lip, resolutely pushing away both his hunger and his craving. He traced the wall, searching for a break that eventually came in the form of a large ornate gateway: framed by pillars and an arch with an enormous set of wooden doors that were currently held wide open.
Beyond the doors was the most affluent neighbourhood Danny had yet to see in Konoha. Posh, well-maintained houses lined a street that curved away to either side. It didn't take long for him to locate the central house: in perfect alignment with the entrance, it intimidated anyone standing at the gateway. The opulent bungalow sat deep into the compound, circumferenced by a sprawling, leafy garden that sparkled here and there from the reflections of still ponds.
And Danny wondered—they called this the 'Uchiha' compound. Did only one family live in this whole neighbourhood?
As he entered between the pillars and walked the long pathway forward, he saw people standing near their houses: women sweeping leaf-strewn porches, children halting in their play to stare, men smoking. He felt their eyes tracking him openly even as he too watched them out of the corner of his eye. They were all dark-haired and dark eyed—not very unusual. But still, there was something odd about this place that stroked the sixth-sense he'd picked up while ghost hunting. Like sharp nails ghosting over skin, it made the hair on the back his neck rise. He began to wonder if coming to this place had been a mistake.
He was already approaching the main house though, and, unexpectedly, his pride refused to let him be cowed by the many eyes watching. So he straightened his spine and called upon a courage once only associated with his ghost-half as he stepped up onto the porch.
As he approached the door it slid open before he could even raise a hand to knock.
"Good morning." A man in a simple black servant's uniform answered the door. "Please state your business."
"Um… I'm here to see… I-…Uchiha Itachi." Danny stammered, remembering at the last moment to say the family name first.
"Do you have an appointment?"
"No…"
The servant, with a single, slanting look, seemed to convey the severe depth of Danny's impropriety and the teen nearly flushed. What was the problem? Had he made a mistake? Were people not allowed to make house calls in this village?
"You may enter." The servant stepped aside to permit Danny entry. He stepped across the threshold and stood uneasily on polished, dustless wood. 'You may enter' felt a far cry from 'You're welcome to enter'.
"I will call Mr. Uchiha." The servant said—and Danny had a strong, foreboding impression that the 'Mr.' referred to Fugaku Uchiha, Itachi's father, and not Itachi.
Was that what it was? Was it impolite to inquire after the son and not the father?
"Will you have tea while you wait?"
"Oh…" Danny was taken aback by the request and stared at the man for a moment. "Uh… uhm, no. No, thanks."
Another look. Another mistake. Then, with a highly dismissive air, the servant left the room.
Danny let out a breath of stifled pressure, wondering to himself why such a big deal was made out of the littlest things. Making appointments… Asking for the patriarch of the family… Accepting tea when offered… What was the point of all this? Why the complex, stubborn attachment to meaningless gestures of formality?
"Is it true?"
Danny nearly jumped out of his skin at the sudden voice behind him. His breath caught and he swivelled around. An tall youth was standing at the other end of the room, leaning against an ornate cabinet.
But it wasn't his eyes that Danny was focusing on. The youth's voice was sparking memories in his head.
'I'm sorry I couldn't look after him better… Tell him… Tell him… I trust him.'
'What are you babbling about?'
'Weasel!'
"You were there that night… Weasel." Danny said and the teen stiffened, frown deepening. "You're Itachi." He surmised with some amazement.
Now it made sense!
"I am. What are you doing in my house?"
"I… wanted to meet you. I wanted—" Danny cut off abruptly as Itachi strode forward and aggressively leaned in to his personal space.
A small part of him wanted to stumble backward, but a larger part—the part that had faced down innumerable ghostly enemies and Pariah Dark and won—refused to be intimidated so easily.
Reminding himself that he wasn't part ghost anymore, dammit!, he compromised by standing his ground and frowning up at the teen towering over him.
Up close, Itachi looked younger than Danny had expected. In fact, Danny wagered they were about the same age—the main difference being that Itachi was tall and Danny was cursed with shortness.
"Is it true?" Itachi hissed.
"Is what true?"
"What you said about the ghost—is it true?"
So that's what was bothering him so much. Danny finally allowed himself to lean back, satisfied that, despite his bluster, Itachi did not have the upper hand here. He smirked. "His name isn't the only thing Shisui told me." He said pointedly.
Itachi's expression darkened. Danny sensed danger and mentally rebuked himself back down to calmness. He wasn't here to cause conflict.
"I can tell you—"
"Not here, you halfwit." Itachi interrupted harshly, sending a look down the hall behind Danny. "There is a monument in Northeast Konoha. An obelisk standing alone in a field. Meet me there in one half hour. I am sure you won't be tied up here."
"Your father is going to kick me out, isn't he?" He guessed and Itachi just looked at him blandly.
"I should've taken the tea." Danny grumbled.
There was something like amusement in Itachi's dark eyes. "I don't think that would've helped you much. Father disapproves of foreigners in general. Uncultured or not."
"If that was supposed to make me feel better—" The sound of a door opening behind him had Danny turning. The servant re-entered the room and behind him came a tall, dark-haired man with very foreboding eyes.
"Master," The servant bowed. "I present Fenton Danny."
Danny swallowed as the man's eyes pierced through him, he didn't even have time to wonder how the servant knew his name—he definitely didn't remember introducing himself—before the man spoke.
"What business do you have with the Uchiha, Mister Fenton?" The Uchiha patriarch's voice was deep and seemed to carry the weight and presence of many people. It was unsettling, and Danny was momentarily flustered, feeling his cheeks redden as he tried to remember and put into words what exactly he was doing in the man's house.
"I-I'm here to see… to speak with Ita—Uchiha Itachi. Your son." Danny clarified at the end and then felt stupid for doing so—of course Fugaku would know whom Danny was talking about. He turned to look back at where Itachi had been standing but was surprised to see no sign of the youth.
Feeling oddly abandoned, Danny looked back at Fugaku. Was this how other people felt when he turned invisible? Danny wondered. He didn't have much time to ponder this thought as Fugaku continued speaking.
"Then I am afraid you have wasted a trip. My son is training and will not be back for many hours. He is busy and does not have the time to employ in idle engagements." Fugaku considered Danny for a moment then continued. "If that is all, I have matters which require my pressing attention. Good day, Mister Fenton." Without even the slightest bow, Fugaku turned and left the room, taking Danny's remaining breath with him.
"You may exit this way." The servant was already holding open the door, and Danny could have sworn he'd heard a smirk in the man's tone.
Before Danny left, he felt the presence of someone else in the room and turned his gaze back. Beyond the foyer, at the far end of a long hallway, big dark eyes framed by a head of messy black hair peered at him shyly around a threshold. Danny smiled at what must have been a young boy of only eight or nine years. Upon realizing he'd been spotted, the eyes widened then abruptly vanished around the corner.
Danny left the house then, pondering the brief but intense visit.
Training? Really? Training at what? Unless Itachi was training to master his skills at sneaking around his house, Fugaku clearly had no idea what his son was up to. That, or he was blatantly lying to Danny… Which was probably very likely, come to think of it.
He spared a moment to remember the child with the big eyes, thinking to himself that it couldn't be easy growing up with such a daunting father.
Then again, Jack Fenton had been daunting too, just in different ways.
As memories of his Father flooded his mind, Danny felt a smirk pulling at the corner of his lips. As quickly as the humour came, it left, and Danny felt the darkness cloud in on his mind.
Shaking his head roughly, Danny forced himself to think of other things as he walked out of the Uchiha compound. He was going to meet Itachi in half an hour. Itachi was probably going to want to know everything Shisui had told Danny. But the memory was a little foggy. It had been a while and Danny had been pretty out of it at the time…
Danny frowned then as he suddenly remembered where else he'd heard Danzo's name.
:o:
Following Itachi's directions, Danny found the obelisk without trouble—it was a pretty large monument in a pretty open field—and leaned closer to read the inscription.
'We shall not forget – Those upon whose strength we draw and upon whose shoulders we may stand tall.' Following that was a list of names.
A memorial stone. Danny felt a stinging lump rise in his throat as he realized for the first time that he would never be able to visit the graves of his family or friends again. His eyes skimmed down the list, then stopped at a surname he found familiar.
"Uchiha Obito."
"There was a war."
Danny inhaled sharply and spun around at the sudden voice behind him. Itachi was standing there, a few feet away, slouching and eying the stone lazily.
Somewhere behind Danny a crow cawed persistently in the far away trees.
"What?" Danny asked.
"Those people. They died in a war."
"Oh…" Danny didn't really know what to say to that. He let a respectful moment of silence pass, then quirked an eyebrow at the other boy. "You know, you don't have to keep sneaking up on me like that."
"I was not sneaking." Itachi said plainly and took a few steps closer.
"…Okay…" Danny drawled slowly, disbelievingly. He was pretty good at sensing people approaching him. He knew that. And he hadn't felt Itachi coming at all. No one was that naturally silent—but why would Itachi bother lying about something as random as that? "So, you want to know what Shisui said, right?"
"First," Itachi was looking at Danny with sharp eyes. "Tell me if you see him here right now."
Danny shook his head.
"Fine. Tell me then. What did he say?"
Danny repeated, as best as he could recall, what Shisui had told him. At the mention of Danzo's name, a nearly imperceptible frown crossed Itachi's face for a moment before it was erased. At the end of Danny's short recitation, he quietened and a long silence fell.
"I see." Itachi said at length. "And that is all?"
"Yes."
At some point, Itachi had drawn a small blade from one of his pouches. It was an odd, stunted thing: triangular and dark. Danny found his attention drawn to it as Itachi used the point to pick at the dirt under his nails.
"Fine. I admit that a large part of me thinks you're lying." Itachi said, voice quiet and even.
"I'm not!" Danny insisted.
"But why?" Itachi continued as though Danny hadn't spoken. "And for what purpose? And the fact that you know that name… You said you see ghosts, boy. How?"
Danny shrugged. "I dunno. I just do. For me it's more of a question why you people don't see them." And that was true enough – he did wonder why no one else had seen the ghost.
Itachi was again quiet for a spell, the only sound in the field coming from the incessant cries of the crow in the trees.
"Fine." Itachi repeated. He stopped playing with the knife. "I don't think I need to tell you that this information should stay between the two of us."
"What information? That I see ghosts or that I saw Shisui and what he told me?" Danny asked cheekily.
"Whether you want to make the entire village question your sanity by claiming you see ghosts is irrelevant to me. But you will tell no one about Shisui. You will tell no one that you even know that name. Do you understand, boy?"
Itachi's eyes had taken on a sudden steely quality and his tone had turned threatening. Danny's mind was sharply reminding him that he was not a half-ghost. He was not a half-ghost anymore and therefore his bravado was empty hot air because he had nearly failed PE and was absolutely useless in a fistfight.
The very atmosphere seemed to blacken around Itachi and Danny's eyes widened.
"Understand this," Itachi continued in that low, deadly serious voice. "The war might be over but if you cross me you will discover first hand how well Konoha continues to train its soldiers." And with quick, deft movements, Itachi flicked up the blade in his hand and threw.
Danny did not flinch, did not even close his eyes as the blade passed a mere hairsbreadth from his temple.
There came a loud squawk and then the crow was silent.
He couldn't help it—his head was twisting even before he realized he was taking his eyes off Itachi—he stared at the far away line of trees but no matter how hard he squinted he couldn't spot the dead crow. He didn't even think he could toss a stone far enough to hit the closest tree.
Swivelling back around he saw that Itachi had turned and was calmly walking away, hands deep in his pockets. Apparently the youth had taken Danny's shock and silence as an agreement to keep silent.
"Hey!" He called out, "Itachi!"
The Uchiha stopped and Danny briefly wondered if he should be ducking to avoid any more thrown projectiles. But no, Itachi just turned and raised an eyebrow.
"I know this is kinda awkward, what with you just threatening my life and all—" He grinned. He couldn't help it. Being sarcastic in the face of danger made him giddy. "But I never got to tell you the proper reason why I came to your house." He took a breath and continued. "I wanted to say thanks. You know, for vouching for me? If you hadn't, they wouldn't have let me stay in Konoha. So yeah… Thanks." He ended off feeling a little silly, but still smiling.
Itachi was looking at him with something very closely resembling an actual expression. Bafflement would probably be close, Danny thought with entertainment. Danny's adrenaline was up, his interest was up, and for the first time in a long time he felt excitement.
"Careful," Danny quipped. "Your mask is cracking."
Instantly, Itachi's face returned to its normal neutrality, though his eyes were no longer steely.
"You're thanking me for vouching for you?" Itachi confirmed. "Let's see if that gratitude sticks. Konoha has a lot of secrets, kid. Be careful you don't become one of them."
This time, when Itachi walked away, Danny didn't stop him.
"A threat and advice, all in the same meeting? Wow, dude, you sure know how to make lasting friendships." Danny mumbled and shook his head before shoving his hands into his pockets turning to head back into town.
He was still craving that unattainable can of Coca-Cola. He wondered mildly whether, if he screamed loudly enough, Clockwork might oblige him.
:o:
It was base necessity and not motivation that eventually drove him into a daily routine. Had he a choice, he would have easily regressed to the lethargic hermitage he'd lived in at Vlad's. But base desire for comfort and food outweighed the distress of his heart and mind.
'I got rid of the monster, Mom, Dad. I cut it out of me. Shouldn't that make me… better?'
It started innocently enough. Danny hung around the hospital because his bandages needed changing. Then, when he'd healed well enough for them to be removed completely, he hung around because it was the one familiar place that he knew and understood in this new, bizarre village that was so drastically different from his own home.
Living on his own, Danny realized, was difficult. There was paperwork and bills and fees and all sorts of things that he had no idea how to deal with. The apartment the Hokage had given him was still unfurnished—Danny slept on a mattress on the floor and there was a meagre stack of clothes in his closet. There used to be more, but some blond kid had purposefully collided with him while he'd been walking home with an armful of laundry. The kid had made off with a few shirts and even a pair of pants without Danny ever seeing his face.
Even grocery shopping had to be relearned. Danny was proud to say that even before arriving in Konoha he could wield a skillet well enough to feed himself. But he couldn't cook if he didn't have any food to cook.
Back home his mother had sometimes taken him grocery shopping. But back home there was a grocery store. Here, everything was sold in open-air markets. Stalls and stalls lined both sides of the aptly named 'Market Street'. Some displayed roasted birds hanging from their necks, cloudy eyes open and staring; others had water tanks; still others boasted heaps of dried vegetables and fruits, half of which he could not even name, let alone assess for ripeness.
Much of what he saw were things he'd never seen offered before—one stall was selling skewered scorpions and crickets for Godssake! Who ate that?! And no matter how many people tried to tell him it was the most delicious thing they'd ever tasted, he was not going to try one of those smelly durian fruits.
Needless to say, he had been surviving on take-out for the past month.
Tired of the way his head spun as it tried to sort out all this new information—culture shock was real: he'd never make fun of people whining on reality shows about non-western toilets ever again—he had sought out something familiar. He didn't want to stay holed up in his apartment because it meant being left alone with his own destructive thoughts.
So he found himself at the hospital.
Sick people were universal. Everybody got sick and though the illnesses and treatments differed, there was a similarity. People could speak differently, they could think differently, but everyone cried out when struck and everyone bled when cut.
At first he'd only dropped by to thank the nurses and doctors who'd looked after him. Shizune, in particular, was always nice to talk to. She was quiet, didn't say much, and that suited him just fine. When she did speak though, it was always with a frank sincerity that he enjoyed. He had found out quickly that she was frequently out of the village on this-or-that business—people were oddly vague when he inquired about her comings and goings—but whenever she was there he made an effort to drop in and say hi. She always smiled when she saw him coming.
Eventually, he'd made enough visits and hung around the hospital enough that they'd handed him an apron and put him to use.
Mostly, he'd kept busy cleaning floors and making beds. But then, a couple of weeks later, Danny found himself facing his first emergency.
They were short-staffed and there were too many people to help. Eventually Danny had approached the nurses, intent on helping however he could.
"Let me do something. Please! I can help!" He pleaded with a harried nurse who was examining a moaning patient.
"Fine. Fine." The nurse relented. "Hold his shoulder. Put pressure on the wound. There." The nurse instructed Danny, who he placed his palms flat on a wound that was steadily oozing blood.
There were a worryingly large number of hurt people in Konoha. A staggering proliferation of people came in with cuts and stab wounds that bled furiously. Danny wasn't allowed to stay in the room with the more seriously injured patients, but still, the severity of what was considered a minor wound was shocking.
Honestly, the pale, shuddering man beneath his hands looked like he was about enter shock and everyone was too busy to tend to him!
Realizing there was no one in the room with him, Danny made a split-second decision. Taking his hands off the wound, and muttering a quick apology when the man groaned, Danny reached up and unzipped the man's heavily padded vest.
A lot of people in Konoha wore the same padded vest. It looked sort of like a camouflage uniform and was one of the reasons why he thought the village might have some sort of militia. He remembered Itachi's warning about the soldiers of Konoha. Maybe they weren't at war, but there definitely seemed to be some sort of fighting ongoing.
He pulled the vest open and then, using a scalpel he grabbed off the table, he cut and peeled the man's sweat-dampened, bloody shirt from the wound.
Danny eyed the wound with a critical eye. It wasn't that bad, now that he looked at it. He wasn't put off by the blood. He'd seen worse on himself, after all. It was a long, clean slash—something else he had often seen on himself, particularly after fights with Skulker. It wasn't serious, but it was considerably long and the skin was split wide enough for the wound to gape. Without stitches, or preternatural healing, it would scar uncomfortably.
Danny blinked then stuck his head outside the door and eyed a rolling table overflowing with medical equipment.
The tricky part would be stitching the wound up. He knew well how to clean and bandage a wound. But he didn't know much about anaesthesia—or stitching people up, for that matter. He was pretty good at mending clothing though and it couldn't be too much different from that, could it?
It would probably hurt though…
Just then, the man looked down at his own wound, paled and gave one full-body shudder before falling still. Danny raised an eyebrow, then checked the man's pulse and eyes.
Unconscious. All right. That worked too.
Danny had finished stitching the wound and was washing his hands in a nearby basin when he heard a commotion from near the entrance of the hospital. No one had come to check on the man yet but, as far as Danny could tell, he would be fine. Weak from blood loss, but still fine. So the teen slipped out of the room and went to see what was going on near the reception.
He walked face first into what looked like the aftermath of a warzone.
Men, women and even children were crying and huddling over terrible injuries. The waiting seats were all filled so people slumped against walls and those who could not stand sat and shivered. Danny saw a couple of people who were prone and unmoving.
The hospital staff dashed back and forth, putting people on beds, easing the injured, trying to manage the crowd, but there were simply too many injured people.
Danny didn't hesitate before diving in. He helped where he could—lifting people into stretchers and helping them up and down the halls, cleaning wounds— he even found himself talking with a few of the patients, trying to keep them calm.
It wasn't long before the front of his apron was streaked with blood.
"It'll be fine. You'll be fine." He mumbled to one man, who was grimacing and looked like he was about to be sick. Danny frowned, he'd already stripped the man to the waist but aside from a dark bruise on the chest he couldn't see anything that could be causing the man distress.
"Can you tell me your name?" Danny asked.
The man looked at him and Danny could see the question registering and a response forming. But as the man opened his mouth to answer, his chest and stomach contracted and his face contorted as a wet cough was torn from his mouth.
As the man kept hacking, Danny hurried to lift the man's upper body, trying to prevent him from choking on his own blood. Danny's eyes widened as foamy pink blood formed at the corners of the man's mouth.
He'd seen blood like that before. Once, during a particularly vicious fight with Vlad, the man had nailed him with a merciless uppercut in the gut that had lifted Danny right into the air. But the hit had been a little high. Danny had felt something crack in his chest and extreme pain had followed.
Rushing to the door, Danny poked his head passed the sliding frame and looked around. Spotting a woman he recognized as one of the healers, he jogged over and flagged her down.
"Hey!" He called.
The woman gave him a harried look. "Is there a problem?"
"Yes, can you look at the man in this room?"
He led the woman over to the room, but she barely looked at the man before sending Danny a frown. "He has not been marked as urgent. I realize you must be one of our newer volunteers, but you must understand that it is not appropriate to waste the time of the staff during an emergency." She lectured.
"This is an emergency!" Danny insisted. "He has a punctured lung!"
The woman gave him a double take before casting her eyes back on the patient. There was a pregnant pause while the woman simply stared at the patient and Danny fidgeted, wondering what was happening. Abruptly, her entire countenance changed.
"Go find Shizune!" She ordered Danny.
"Was I right? Is it—?"
"Go!"
Danny nodded and did as ordered. When he came back, Shizune in tow, someone had shifted the man to an operating table and brought in a set of instruments. Shizune slipped a facemask around her ears.
"Thank you for bringing me." Shizune said, putting a hand on his shoulder.
He knew what was going to happen and gave her a pleading look. "Can't I—?"
"No." Her eyes were kind, but her hand was firm as she guided him out of the room. "You know the deal. You can't stay and watch. Go help the others."
He knew he looked contrite.
"You did good, Danny. Now leave the rest to us. I'll keep you informed on the patient." And with that, she closed the door on him.
Many hours later, he was sitting alone in the empty waiting lobby of the hospital. Finally, the commotion had died down. Most of the injured had left or were in the rooms being treated.
Danny was exhausted, both mentally and physically. Never before had he seen so many injured people. It was unnerving, especially since Konoha seemed like such a small, remote place. What were all these people doing that they got hurt so badly? And not just men, but women and children too.
Another thing that baffled Danny was the bizarre hospital procedures. Multiple times he'd tried to stay in a room as the doctors treated the more grievously injured patients. Every time he was ushered out the moment someone recognized him.
Why were they being so secretive? Unless they had something to hide, it didn't make any sense.
But then…Danny did feel that they were hiding something. There was something very odd about the way the hospital healed people. Sometimes… sometimes it seemed quick. Too quick. There was a woman who'd come in bleeding from a gash behind her knee. Danny was certain he'd seen her leave not half an hour later, walking out as though she'd never been hurt. She hadn't even limped, and Danny didn't care how high her pain threshold was, a wound like that would definitely have made her limp. He knew.
If he didn't know better he'd have said they were using some supernatural means to heal patients. But that was just ridiculous… wasn't it?
After hours on hours of caring for the injured, the number of patients slowly diminished to a trickle. Stripping off bloody gloves and a bloody apron, Danny collapsed with relief into one of the waiting chairs in the reception area.
Danny had wedged himself into a relatively comfortable position, sitting sideways in one of the seats with his side against the plastic back and legs pulled up with his knees to his chest. He found himself quite unwilling to move and let his head list to the side, eyelids closing on their own.
Someone was shaking his shoulder and Danny recoiled away from the touch, hands instinctively raising defensively, as he looked up with wide eyes.
Shizune blinked back at him, gazing at him in mild concern. Behind her stood none other than the Hokage himself.
Danny inhaled in surprise and straightened. He made to stand.
"Sit, young one. You don't need to stand on my behalf. Besides, I hear you've had a trying day." The Hokage gave a low chuckle at his confusion.
"Iruka is going to be fine, Danny." Shizune let him know.
"Who?"
"The man you helped. The one with the punctured lung."
"Oh," Danny relaxed. "That's good."
"Shizune tells me you've been an invaluable help today, working tirelessly with the hospital staff." The Hokage intoned.
"I…" His hand gravitated up to card through his hair and he looked away nervously. "I just did what I could."
"I also heard that you were able to spot and correct one of the errors of the staff—"
"It wasn't that. They were really busy and I just happened to recognize one of the symptoms." Danny interrupted thoughtlessly.
Both the Hokage and Shizune gave him interested looks and Danny, averting his eyes, didn't elaborate.
"Nevertheless, it was thanks in large part to you that Iruka is safe and well. Without you, his injuries may have been much more severe. You were also responsible for stitching up a patient earlier on?"
"How did you know about that?" Danny asked quizzically and only received an enigmatic smile in response. Had his stiches been that bad that they'd noticed?
"In light of these things, Shizune has come to me with an interesting request and, after speaking with you I can't help but grant it. Shizune?"
The woman grinned and turned to Danny, clasping her hands before her.
"Danny, how would you like a job at the hospital?"
:o:
He came in for his first day of work dressed crisply in a new shirt and pants. He stood fidgeting nervously in the doorway and wondered, yet again, why all the men in this village considered ankle-length pants to be the height of vogue.
"Yes, can I help you?" The woman at the desk looked at him politely. She was new—not one of the staff members he'd previously met.
He shuffled, toeing his uncovered ankles for the hundredth time as though it would lengthen his pants. "I… uh… I-I'm here about the… the job? Shizune said—"
"Oh! You must be Danny!" The attendant suddenly smiled. "Of course! I should have recognized you!"
His eyebrows rose questioningly.
"Shizune said to be on the look-out for a foreigner with pretty blue eyes. But dressed like that, I thought you might be one of the new genin trainees."
The compliment had Danny ducking his head, one hand rubbing at the back of his neck, but his gaze came back up at that odd word. "Genin? What's that?" It wasn't often he came across a word he didn't understand.
"Oh!" The woman put a hand to her mouth, looking oddly chagrined. The friendly smile fell away. "I-I didn't realize… Ah… Let me… Let me call Shizune for you…" She'd hardly finished speaking and she was up out of her seat and striding out of the room.
Danny stared after her, a bemused frown creasing his brow.
:o:
Danny's first week of work passed in a parade of stupid mistakes and embarrassing slip-ups. Everyone assured him that it was normal and that he'd fall into the routine in time, but it didn't prevent him from feeling like an idiot and a failure.
Added to that was his near constant state of mental exhaustion. After months of isolation at Vlad's, being forced back into social interaction was… stressful, to say the least.
He hadn't exactly been the most social person in High School. He had Jazz and Sam and Tucker—and Valerie, on occasion—and that was all he'd really needed. Keeping track of all the people at the hospital and making an effort to be polite and friendly and happy was absolutely, teeth-grindingly, exhausting.
Still, he hadn't always been this reclusive. It was a bit disturbing to realize how much he'd changed in less than half a year.
Unlocking the door to his apartment, Danny tossed his bag toward the mattress that he kept forgetting to fold up in the mornings. He really needed to go shopping for some furniture: maybe even a wooden bedframe—Mr. Haruno's threat of mold wafting into his mind like a bad premonition.
The bag fell short of the bed and hit the floor with a loud, heavy thunk that had him wincing. The thing was filled with hardback books on anatomy and medicine. They were all in English, which was something of a miracle in and of itself. At first, Shizune had tried to find books with lots of pictures but it was an exercise in futility because without understanding the explanations, the pictures simply made no sense.
On his second day, he'd remarked offhandedly how much easier it would be if the books were in English and Shizune had instantly lit up. Two days later she had dropped an armful of medical texts on him, all in English.
When he'd asked her where she'd found the books she had simply smiled and apologized—it was a secret.
He guessed it had something to do with whatever she was up to during those many days she was absent from the hospital. He didn't press her, instead thanking her graciously for the books before he planted himself at a desk and willingly cracked open the first textbook he'd ever touched for non-school purposes.
That was something else that had changed, he supposed: his willingness to study. It was different than school. He had studied for school so he wouldn't fail and so his parents wouldn't get upset at him. Now he studied so he wouldn't look like a fool and get fired from the only job he'd ever held.
In one day he had somehow managed to fill multiple pages with messy, handwritten notes that now jutted, wrinkled and dog-eared, between the pages of his books. 'Jazz's notes had never looked like that.' Half his mind scolded, while the second half reminded him that Jazz had had exercise books and highlighters and binders and tabs and sticky notes and all sorts of other random doodads and thingamajigs that she'd conned their mother into buying during the annual back-to-school sales.
At the very least, he had found a shoulder bag that was doing a bang-up job of holding all his stuff. It was a leather satchel—something Sam would've chewed him out for buying, though it'd honestly been the only thing he could find at the time—with thick, hard straps that either bit into his shoulder or blistered his hands. He'd complained, once, about the stiff bag to someone at work and she'd laughed before gathering up his hands and commenting on how soft they were.
Danny had snatched his hands back, grumbled something indignant and never mentioned the bag again. So ghost hunting hadn't given him the toughest, coarsest palms. So what? With they way they did laundry here it wouldn't take long for his hands to turn to leather anyway.
Standing alone in his empty little studio, Danny felt the familiar dark lethargy slowly sinking its claws into him and he viciously shook the feeling off.
Turning briskly on his heel, he headed right back out his door. The reading could wait. He needed to find dinner anyhow.
Heading down the hall toward the staircase, the sound of a commotion caught his attention. Turning a corner, he came upon a strange sight. A middle-aged woman, reedy and dour was wearing a pinched, strained expression as she stood in the hallway with one hand on her waist and the other firmly cinching the ear of a young child. The child was blond and looked to be around seven years old and there was an animal of some sort of his shoulder.
He recognized the woman. Ms. Okada was his landlady and wasn't all that bad as long as you paid your rent on time, abided by all her rules, never rose your voice above a whisper, weren't the subject of any gossip, and avoided talking to her whenever she was in a bad mood—which, Danny knew, was almost all the time—and, basically, weren't remarkable or unusual in any way.
Danny, by virtue of being one of, if not the only, foreigner living in Konoha was by rote one of the woman's least favourite people in the building.
He was working on it though. Unlike high-school, where being disliked only got him chased around school and tossed into lockers, and unlike Danny Phantom, who could disappear and hide from ghost hunters and fangirls alike, if the landlady here didn't like him she could evict him and put him on the streets. So Danny put on his best smile whenever he saw her and did his best to be charming, to largely mixed results.
As far as he knew, Ms. Okada didn't have any children, which raised the question of who exactly this blond kid was.
Although… the overlarge T-shirt the kid was wearing looked familiar…
"If I've told you once I've told you a thousand times, Naruto! If you're late on the rent, I'll toss you out on your rear."
"But I had it!" The child was protesting, squirming and wincing from the landlady's hold on his ear. "But it was—"
"I don't want to hear any excuses Naruto! It's always one thing or the other with you! And Mr. Hitzen was complaining about frogs in his bed. Do I even need to ask?"
The guilty grin on Naruto's face spoke for itself. The landlady's eyes lit with fire.
"That's it! I've had it with you! I'm going to—!" And Danny had heard enough.
"Ah, excuse me!" He walked briskly over to the pair and the landlady eyed him disapprovingly for the interruption.
"Mr. Fenton." Ms. Okada said snippily. Her chin tilted up and her eyes gained the vague, aloof look that Danny saw on many different faces in Konoha. In his head, he had begun referring to that expression as the 'oh-it's-that-foreigner-again' look. "As you can see, I'm in the middle of something and I would appreciate it if you did not interrupt."
"Oh, of course." He gave her his best winning smile and was rewarded when she relaxed, if only minutely. "It's just, Naruto here loaned me a bit of money earlier on in the week and I came to pay him back."
"He loaned you money?" The landlady's grip had shifted from Naruto's ear to his shoulder. She looked at the child dubiously. Naruto, for his part, was staring openly at Danny.
"Yep." He nodded with an innocent expression, putting to work every skill he'd gained from lying to his parents for a year about his ghost powers. "I was in a bit of a jam and Naruto was kind enough to help me out."
"Naruto… kind?" The woman raised both eyebrows and Danny was actually a little insulted on the boy's behalf. Honestly, she was acting like the kid was incapable of doing any good.
"So I came over to repay the loan but in light of the situation I figure it might be easier just to pay you." Danny continued his narrative. "So how much does he owe you for rent?"
Ms. Okada hardly hesitated before naming her figure. Money was money after all, no matter from whom it came. And Danny nearly swallowed his tongue at the number. Paying off this kid's debt would take nearly all of his first week's salary.
Danny's eye twitched, but didn't let his smile waver as he reached into his pocket and pulled out the roll of bills Shizune had handed him just that afternoon. The smile stayed on his face as he simply handed the landlady the entire roll. He watched her count it and huff to herself as she realized the money would cover what Naruto owed.
When she reached the end of the small fistful of money, she reluctantly shaved off a single bill to hand back to him.
"Keep it." Danny offered. "As an advance on his next month, since you'll be letting him stay…?" Danny wondered where the kid's parents were. Surely the seven-year-old wasn't living on his own?
The woman didn't look pleased and she sent Naruto a swarthy look.
"C'mon. He promises he won't put frogs in Mr. Hitzen's bed anymore, right?" Danny coaxed and then looked at Naruto pointedly.
The boy, whose mouth was hanging open in disbelief, nevertheless managed to quickly catch on and nod vigorously. "Uh huh, I'll never put frogs in his bed again. Promise!"
Danny could clearly see the kid drawing up loopholes in his brain. But the landlady seemed to buy the insincere promise.
"Fine." Ms. Okada huffed. "But if I hear one more complaint about you…" She wagged her finger under Naruto's nose before turning to Danny. "I will be holding you responsible for him, Mr. Fenton, since you seem so intent on advocating for him. And here, it is not my policy to take advances." She looked appalled at herself as she handed Danny the small change. The landlady then turned and walked down the hall with at a sharp clip. Only once she was firmly out of sight did Danny let his false grin drop.
"Whew." He sighed. "Thought she'd never leave. You okay there, kid?" He asked, sending Naruto a crooked smile.
Naruto was staring at him with wonder. "That was SO awesome! Who are you?"
The boy turned to face him fully and Danny blinked in surprised as he got his first clear look at the animal on Naruto's shoulder. It was a baby fox, a tiny thing, curled up with its snout near Naruto's neck. What Danny thought was only one tail was actually many tails fanning down Naruto's shoulder and back.
"Ummmm… Hello?" Naruto was waving a hand over his head and Danny blinked.
"Oh…oh yeah. Me? I'm Danny." He introduced himself.
"And I'm Naruto!" The kid shoved a thumb at himself. "And you are so cool for paying off my debt!"
Danny smiled, pulling his eyes away from the sleeping fox for now. "It's no problem. I have a talent when it comes to stubborn landladies and I make it my mission to help out little six-year-olds in danger of getting their ears yanked off whenever I can."
"Hey! I'm eight!" Naruto cried in offence.
"Really?" Danny was honestly surprised. The kid looked too scrawny to be eight. "By the way, where are your parents?"
He was taken aback when Naruto's entire face screwed up in displeasure. The boy huffed and crossed his arms, turning away. Realizing he'd somehow struck a nerve, Danny backpedalled.
"Hey, it's okay. Look," He held up the single bill the landlady had returned to him—also the only money he had left, period. "Wanna go get some food?"
It was like a switch had been flipped and Naruto lit up brighter than a Christmas tree.
"FOOD? YES! Now you are OFFICIALLY the coolest! Let's go get dinner, dattebayo!" Naruto cried joyously and in the time it took Danny to blink the kid had already raced down the hall and proceeded to thump down the stairs in a way that was guaranteed to offend the landlady.
Wondering why Clockwork's charm hadn't translated Naruto's last word, Danny shook his head before chasing after Naruto. There was an odd feeling in his chest as he descended the staircase—like a new page had been turned in his life.
Naruto was going to bring him havoc. He just knew it.
:o:
END PART II
To be continued in PART III – KAKASHI
:o: