"First clause,"
Naruto dodged a boulder that only narrowly missed his shoulder. Backpedalling, he soon found his back pressed up against a tree. Another tree came flying at him at a speed that would've been unseen to the eyes of a civilian. He didn't bother channeling chakra into his fist as he punched the once living thing, splitting it in two before it could kill him. By Kami, his mother was insane.
"No medic nin shall ever stop treatment until the lives of their party members have come to an end." he recited, his face a stoic mask.
A flash of black came to his right before something shiny glimmered in the sunlight. He turned just in time to see a woman with black hair and black eyes flash her arm from beneath long sleeves. The woman seemed to pull something, but the weird contraption on her forearm fired several poisonous senbon. By the Gods above, his sister was insane as well! Naruto drew a kunai and deflected the senbon, only to find that the woman disappeared before he could retaliate. 'Damn it,'
"Second clause,"
Looking up, he saw a flash of yellow and green flying towards him at an impossible speed. Her leg was raised well over her head, prepared to deliver a devastating axe kick. Naruto held both hands over his head, her slamming foot blocked by his forearms. He sank into the ground, a crater forming from the impact of the strike. Had he been anyone else, he would not have survived that attack.
"No medic ninja shall ever stand on the front lines."
Already she blurred out of sight. The dark haired woman was back, throwing a barrage of vicious punches and kicks. Naruto blocked each of the strikes, retaliating when he could. He managed to score a glancing blow to her shoulder, but he held back his monstrous strength. Despite the two woman trying to actually brutalize him, he didn't want to harm either of them.
"Third clause,"
"No medic ninja shall ever die until they are the last one of their platoons." he recited, dodging another tree. 'What is it with Okaa-sama and those damn trees?'
"Forth clause,"
The flash of blonde and green was back and she threw a punch. Naruto leaned back, bending at an unnatural angle before spinning and delivering a sturdy kick. His attack was blocked and a hand wrapped around his ankle. Sooner than he was prepared for, he found himself flying through the air. Curling into a ball, he spun as he plummeted back to the ground. Visible blue chakra coated the blonde's fist as she sent a powerful punch upward. Before it could make contact, Naruto released himself from his compacted state and delivered the same shattering axe kick she'd done not even a few minutes prior. The resulting shockwave was deafening, the crater formed by the strikes colliding becoming far larger than any that the woman created on her own.
"Only those medic ninja that have mastered the Strength of a Hundred Seal and the Ninja Art of Creation Rebirth are allowed to disregard the aforementioned laws." Naruto said as he landed in front of the blonde woman, his thumb pointing to the purple diamond seal on his forehead.
"I'm so proud of you, Sochi." Tsunade smiled, hugging him closely. "Now let get back and pack up. We're going back to Konoha."
Naruto scrunched his face up and made a sound of supreme disgust. "Why, Kaa-chan?"
"Because it's getting around the time for the Academy graduation, and I want you to get into the ranks of the Konoha Shinobi Force. I know that you want to be a Sannin, Sochi, and you are a prodigy indeed." Tsunade kissed the seal on his forehead, placating his eye rolling. "But even Jiraiya, Orochimaru, and myself started somewhere."
Naruto sighed and nodded, walking back towards town with his mother and older sister. Shizune ruffled Naruto's hair playfully, and turned to her master.
"Are you sure, Tsunade-sama?" she asked as Tonton squealed excitedly as Naruto pet her gently.
The elder blonde nodded, her thoughts returning to the promise she made to her sensei when she adopted Naruto all those years ago. Her precious Sochi.
The trio came up to the massive gates of Konohagakure. Naruto's mood was continually darkening the closer they came. No sooner did they walk into the gates, did the two chunin playing cards in front stand at attention, seemingly ready for anything, or at least that was the theory. But when they came face to face with two blondes with identical rhomboid markings. One with lovely eyes like melted chocolate, the other with whirlpools of deep azure. One with a green haori with the kanji for 'gamble' on the back, the other with a black haori with the kanji for 'five' on the back. One with impressively large breasts, the other with three whisker marks on either cheek. The other woman with the pair had dark hair and equally dark, and still gorgeous eyes. In her arms was a small pig with its own haori type of jacket with a pearl necklace.
"T-T-Tsunade-sama?" the two men stuttered out. "What a-are you doing back?"
Tsunade held Naruto close. "My son is here to take the graduation exam. Is sensei busy?"
They nodded and Kotetsu, a man with a cloth like bandage wrapped around the bridge of his nose escorted the group down the long street to the towards the Hokage's Mansion. Naruto, who had been in the village with his mother and sister countless times, already knew where he was going. The kind old man was Hiruzen Sarutobi, the Sandaime Hokage. He was an adoptive grandfather of sorts to the shorter blonde. The only part of the village that Naruto actually liked.
The meeting with the Sandaime was short and ended with the old man giving Naruto a scroll and word of hurry. Naruto hurried along the streets, ignoring the bows and looks of genuine curiosity. Either way, the blonde Senju heir was highly annoyed when he entered the Academy. Various shouts asking who he was, and why he was even in the Academy when a chunin named Iruka made himself known. Naruto gave him the scroll from the Sandaime and his eyes widened to near impossible levels.
"You're T-Tsunade-sama's son?" he managed to get out.
The younger blonde nodded nonchalantly. It was ridiculous how often he dealt with this reaction; the stuttering, the bug-eyes, the subsequent addressing going from just Naruto to 'Senju-sama'. It got old when he was five.
"Yes," he sighed, finally giving a verbal answer. "Just Naruto is fine."
Naruto proceeded to take his seat, completely bored with the fact that he had to do this. 'The things I do for love,' he thought miserably. The test in and of itself was insulting, for lack of a better term. Naruto knew he wasn't being fair; not everyone was the son of a Sannin, least of all the best medic-nin in the world. Being trained extensively by his Sannin mother and jonin level sister, while troublesome at times, had its merits. The written test, which dealt in theory was a breeze. The shurikenjutsu test was easy; though again, he and his sister preferred poisonous senbon to actual kunai and shuriken. That alone required more concentration and dexterity.
The taijutsu portion was fun, at the very least. He was paired with the assistant teacher, a man named Mizuki, that was continually glaring at him. Needless to say, the man was put in his place. Finally, they made it to the last portion of the test, which focused on ninjutsu. The students were required to perform the Substitution, Transformation, and Clone technique. Naruto substituted Iruka, then transformed into a perfect copy of Orochimaru. By the look on the chunin's face, Naruto would swear that the man was going to have a heart attack. After he returned to his original visage, he conjured five Shadow Clones. Iruka was truly impressed. The blonde was a prodigy in the making. He was given a forehead protector. He decided to give it to his mother; he had no intention of wearing it.
Oddly enough, he felt three sets of eyes on him throughout the entirety of the graduation exam. When he looked, he noticed a girl with pink hair and dazzling green eyes, a girl with pale blonde hair, and boy with the Uchiha crest on the back of his shirt.
Ino Yamanaka, heiress to the Yamanaka clan, was a connoisseur of the beautiful. As an aspiring botanist and self proclaimed 'most beautiful kunoichi' in her generation, it was a given that Ino would be attracted to the visible beauty in all things. In fact, her former best friend, Sakura Haruno, had odd pink hair and dazzling emerald eyes that initially drew the blonde to protect her when other bullied her for the size of her forehead. It was only afterwards that Ino found her beautiful on the inside.
It was this draw to the beautiful that led her to the last of the Uchiha, a brooding boy in their year. His cold nature and strong, silent personality were utterly sexy in the eyes of the young Yamanaka. Add his looks and the fact that he was the best rookie from their year.
So when the door to the classroom opened on examination day to admit a boy with the blondest hair Ino had ever seen and eyes bluer than any sapphire, she initially thought her heart was going to stop. He was slightly taller than Sasuke, and from the mesh shirt he wore, they could all tell that he was well muscled, though not overly so. Each cheek held three markings that looked oddly like whiskers. Like his pants, the haori he wore was a deep black with the kanji for 'Five' on the back in crimson. On his forehead was a strange purple diamond-like marking. Was his his clan crest? All clans had their crest emblazoned on their clothing; like the Nara and the Uchiha. Some clans, however, had physical markings as their crests; such as the red fangs on the cheeks of the Inuzuka, or the spirals on the cheeks of the Akimichi. What clan did he come from? It was at that moment that Ino decided that Sakura could have the Uchiha, for she had her eyes set on something much greater.
"You're T-Tsunade-sama's son." Iruka stuttered.
The boy looked as though he were bored and ready to do something else. "Just Naruto is fine."
Ino couldn't stop staring. Even as he took his seat behind Kiba, even as she was taking her test. The boy, Naruto sneered at the sheet of paper as he filled it out and in minutes, he finished. He walked up to the front at the same time as Shikamaru and they handed in their test papers. When Naruto settled back into his seat, he pulled out a reference book on human anatomy and began reading.
During the shurikenjutsu portion of the test, he broke his kunai and split his shuriken as they landed one on top of the other. It was impressive, to say the least. Like Sasuke, he got a perfect score. The taijutsu portion was rather interesting. Naruto was put up against Mizuki-sensei, and she knew that this would be a one sided fight. Much to the surprise of everyone, it was, though not in Mizuki-sensei's favor.
Naruto made the chunin look like a fool before delivering a vicious kick to the man's leg. He knelt before Naruto as the blonde held his hand up. What shocked Ino and quite frankly had everyone else shocked was what came next. Naruto flicked Mizuki-sensei's forehead. The white haired man was set crashing through several trees before heavily splintering another and slumping against the trunk. All jaws were dropped.
The ninjutsu portion was in motion and Ino found herself anxious to find the blonde and introduce herself. Naruto was sitting at the desk he claimed with papers strewn over the top. He was going over something and that held Ino's curiosity. Bracing herself, she walked over.
"Hi," she smiled. "I'm Ino."
Naruto looked up and gave a warm smile. "Nice to meet you, Ino-san."
"Just Ino is fine." she sat beside him. "What are you reading?"
"Notes I've taken on various poisons. Some I've created, some I made an antidote for, and some that I just find interesting."
"You deal with poisons?" her parents owned Yamanaka's Flowers, and while it was a flower shop, shinobi also came in to get various poisons. Perhaps Ino should ask her mother about it when she went later.
He nodded. "Yeah, Kaa-chan says I have a gift when it comes to poison. I wouldn't go that far. It just interests me. A lot."
"Senju, Naruto." Iruka called. In a small plume of white smoke, the papers were gone.
Without another word, Naruto rose and followed Iruka to different classroom. Ino's mind was reeling. He had a lot of papers, all with some kind of diagram or other drawing. He writes a lot.
"Careful, Ino-pig." came the warning voice of Sakura. "Get too friendly with the new kid and I'll steal Sasuke-kun from under your nose."
Ino merely shrugged. "Hey, if I can get close to him, maybe he'll teach me some cool jutsu or how to heal."
The pinkette scoffed. "He's not as cool as Sasuke-kun."
'Somehow I doubt that,' Ino thought, then said with a shrug. "Well, has Sasuke actually ever spoken to you?"
"No," Sakura's shoulders slumped, but she stood up straight with her eyes blazing with determination. "But that won't stop me. One of these days, Sasuke-kun will acknowledge me!"
Ino sweatdropped. 'Again, I seriously doubt it.'
Naruto returned after little bit with his forehead protector in his hand. Reclaiming his original seat to the right of Ino, before he unsealed his notes once more and began pouring over an incomplete neurotoxin recipe. Iruka returned after a few more moments and congratulated the students who passed, telling them to return tomorrow for team placement. Naruto packed up, sealing his notes once again before leaving the school. With a yawn, he made his way through the streets of Konoha before he felt a hand on his shoulder. Had he not been in the village, he might've seriously injured whoever did it.
When he turned, he was face to face with Ino. Her pale blue eyes were attractive. Unfortunately for her, Naruto didn't really have a thing for blondes. He wouldn't mind dating one, it just wasn't his particular go to. 'I'm blonde enough for three people,' he remembered telling his sister before the decision to return permanently to Konohagakure was made.
"Hey, Ino. What's up?" he asked, still walking.
She easily fell into stride beside him. "Not much, really. I was going to go to my parent's flower shop. Do you want to come? We have poisons."
Naruto's ears perked up at that magical phrase. There were few ways to get the son of Tsunade of the Sannin to do something, especially since he inherited his mother's legendary stubbornness. One was the promise of reference materials. Another was something dealing with poisons. Another was the odd mixture of ramen and dango, with a side of sake that he could give to his mother.
"You know poisons too?" he asked excitedly, his eyes dancing.
Ino giggled, but shook her head. "No. Um, I was actually hoping you could teach me."
Naruto's smile faltered ever so slightly, but it got brighter at the prospect of teaching someone the beauty of poison. He was a strange one, the Senju heir.
"I was actually going to the hospital." Naruto turned his gaze forward. "Knowing my mom the way that I do, she's most likely already set up her office. I'm pretty sure Jiji made her the head of the hospital."
"Can I meet your mom?"
Naruto looked at the girl weirdly. Didn't she just say that she was going to go to her parent's store? He shrugged; his mother was a big deal after all. Ino suddenly felt uncomfortably warm. Before she knew what was happening, she was scooped up by Naruto and the two took to the rooftops of Konoha. Steam was literally rising thickly off of Naruto's skin, he was so hot. Ino never felt the shock of a step being taken. Were his feet even touching the rooftops?
In a matter of minutes, the duo landed in front of the hospital, startling a few citizens as they walked past the steaming boy and wind strewn girl. Ino took a moment to fix her hair and make sure that she was presentable.
"Is it true?" a voice called from behind him.
Naruto turned around as the stream became lighter and lighter. A girl with her hair done in two buns with rather lovely brown eyes was ogling him. Naruto was suddenly uncomfortable; why was this girl violating him with her eyes.
"Are you Tsunade-sama's son?" she asked.
"How'd you figure that out?" he asked tiredly.
"Well the greatest medic-nin would most likely be found in a hospital right?" the girl asked, and much to Ino's irritation, Naruto chuckled. "So then her child would only naturally be drawn to hospitals too, right? It would only make sense."
Naruto sighed after he finished chuckling; far too much was happening, far too fast for his liking. He nodded at the weird girls infallible logic. He was often drawn to hospitals wherever they went. He took pride in his ability to heal and loved to do so. He felt even closer to his mother and sister every time he healed someone or performed a surgery.
"D-Do you think I can meet her?" she asked. "She's my hero!"
'Mine too,' Naruto thought as he resisted the urge to roll his eyes. 'Is this the damn Village Hidden in the Fangirls or the Leaves? I can't tell.'
To be fair to the odd brown eyed girl, she held the air of a serious kunoichi. It was different than the blonde girl or the pink haired girl from the academy, but still familiar because of his family. Something hit Naruto. She never answered how in the hell she knew who he was. Whatever.
"Sure, I guess."
Tsunade was worried. Not that she felt like anything bad was going to happen, but instead her mind stayed with her Naru-chan. He held a deep seated resentment for their home village and it wasn't a secret why. This was the village that sent her lover and little brother to their deaths. This village was the reason she developed hemophobia, a fear that'd become so extreme and crippling to the world class medic that Shizune was forced to heal the more bloody wounds that Naruto received from training. The reason she became a wanderer. So it wasn't any kind of surprise that he held a resentment towards their home village.
His dream was to become a Sannin. To become a world class medic just like her, but she had her start here. Her home. His home. Tsunade sighed as she contemplated the sake in her bottom right desk drawer. She'd sent Shizune out to get some documents from the head nurse, but her mind wandered even still. A knock sounded on her door.
"Come in,"
"Okaa-sama," can the voice she loved the most. "I'm back."
She stood and grabbed the boy in her arms, smothering him in her bust. "How did it go, Sochi?"
When she finally released him and he drank in sweet oxygen, he smiled and handed her his Leaf headband. "I passed. It was too easy. Here, you can keep this. I'm not wearing it."
She gave him a chiding stare and took the forehead protector before she turned her gaze to the two girls staring at her as though she were some mythical hero. The blonde of the two eyed her Strength of a Hundred Seal then eyed Naruto's. Her eyes kept moving back and forth between the two seals. Tsunade was quickly becoming irritated.
"Sochi, who are they?"
Naruto held his hand towards Ino and Tenten in turn. "This is Ino and I met her at the academy. This is, um, Panda-chan and I met her while I was trying to come in and find you."
The girl he so affectionately referred to as 'Panda-chan' leveled a ball-shriveling glare at Naruto. He, having dealt with Tsunade herself, was unfazed and looked to her as though she were missing a few screws. "My name is not Panda-chan."
"Well before you started babbling about meeting my Kaa-chan, you never gave your name." he deadpanned.
Her glare weakened as a blush of embarrassment colored her cheeks. "Oh, uh, sorry. My name is Tenten."
Naruto stopped listening and looked around his mother's new office. Soon he sat on the floor and unsealed his notes again and took up a pen with a contemplative look while the three kunoichi spoke. He briefly wondered who was going to be on his team. The one named Shino looked cool and intelligent. The girl named Hinata, who kept eyeing him with faint blush, would also be an ideal teammate, he supposed.