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Thinking

Biju, etc. speaking

Biju, etc. thinking

Emphasis

Kakashi was getting used to having a diminutive blonde shadow follow him everywhere, especially since Jiraiya had to leave a week ago to get updates from members within his spy network. As long as everything went right, both at home with Naru-chan and abroad in Jiraiya's surveillance efforts, the Toad Sage would be back in three month's time.

What Kakashi was not getting used to was being called "Daddy," and he didn't know if he could take it anymore.

"Daddy" was the title that belonged to Minato-sensei, and he wasn't worthy of it. What had he even done for the girl? He was supposed to protect her and be her big brother, but after sensei's and Kushina-chan's deaths, he had actually tried to ignore the baby who had been put in a civilian orphanage. It was only when he was literally dragged into the old site after word got out about her being the jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi that he saw her for the second time - and that had been months after her birth. Then he allowed her to be kidnapped. I should've been there! It didn't matter that he was otherwise occupied by a mission outside Fire Country at the time: I should've refused it!

Kakashi continued to stare into his tea, unaware that his ninken laying on the floor with Naruto were getting annoyed with his sullenness. Naruto was also occasionally looking up at him, while painting Bull's nails orange - something the silver-haired teenager was also unaware of due to being so lost in his gloomy thoughts.

Even though he couldn't talk, Bull thought his nails were looking kind of pretty and even flashy against his black paws. The other members of his pack understood he felt that way, so they didn't interfere, although they refused to allow the little blonde to paint their nails.

Kakashi sighed heavily, once again getting the nine others' attention. Then there's the fact that I have no idea of how to be a father… Hell, Minato-sensei was the closest thing that he had to one after his own father's long and deep depression before Sakumo Hatake committed suicide. Naruto deserves so much better than me.

But there was no one else that could be completely relied upon to stay in the village and be her guard! At least for the next year… After that, Kakashi would have to go back to ANBU missions. Surely by then the boy Tsunade-hime was caring for at the hospital will be fully recovered, and she and Shizune could take over for me? If she'll stay... It's not like Kakashi wanted to be rid of Naru-hime, he just knew he couldn't be a father to the little girl.

"Ne, Naru-chan? I need to talk to you, okay?" The little girl nodded and closed the bright nail polish bottle he hadn't noticed until now. Gods, as if I needed more proof that I'm not cut out for this… Naruto's blonde head was tilted cutely to the side as she waited for him to speak.

"Naru-chan, I know you see me as your father…" Geez, this is hard. It was especially challenging as Naruto had nodded and was smiling up at him like he had hung the damn moon. "You see, the thing is, I'm not really your Dad, sweety." Naruto's expression crashed and her eyes watered up. "Oi! It's okay! I'm still your big brother! You can call me Aniki, if you want..." The tears stopped and her expression blanked. "Naru-hime?"

...Being drug out from behind the bars of her cell.
 "Minato'sss demon ssspawn," the bad man hissed. "Get up: I have someone I want you to meet." The toddler shakily stood up and saw an older boy with big glasses. He looked nervous, and Nii-san said the boy was afraid, so he should be okay. The girl nodded her head and bowed to the boy, who returned the greeting she had learned to always give everyone. She was beneath them all, the bad man always said, plus she didn't want them to hurt her back again. "You may call him Aniki: he'll be your big brother!" Suddenly everything went wrong and the boy lunged at her. She heard the deep mean laughter of the bad man. Snakes curled around her feet and one of those black things tore at her skin. She knew she wasn't supposed to make noise, but she couldn't help the scream that ripped through her. The bad man and Aniki punished her for it.

Kakashi watched in confusion as Naruto jumped out of the second-story window and into the surrounding trees. "Shit!" She was moving really fast, and he was only in a morning yukata. Grabbing his clothes and sandals, he quickly put them on and went after her, following behind all his ninken aside from Pakkun, who was by his side. As god-awful as it was for Naruto to have unlocked her chakra at this age, at least she hadn't learned to repress it. She was near the Hyuuga compound.

Naruto stopped in her tracks. What is this?

She could feel three men coming from the East, plus there was something - no, someone else - but something was wrong with that little person! Finally, they came within her sight, and Naruto felt angry. There was a small person struggling inside a sack that the guy in the middle was carrying. That's not nice! Rice goes in sacks, not little people! She jumped down straight onto the big man's head. He tumbled to the ground and was knocked out.

"What the… Holy shit! Look at that brat: she looks like the Flash!" The other man was yelling about waking up the third guy, but the first man told him to leave him behind. "We've got an even better prize for Raikage-sama!"

Naruto didn't know what a dick was, but Nii-san told her where it was and what to do, so the moment the bad man - he had to be a bad man - pushed a dark blue-haired little person back into the sack, she went for it. The man screamed in pain and was pushing her away and hitting her, but she wouldn't let go! He's bad! Plus his hits were getting lighter and he was stumbling. He didn't hit nearly as hard as the snakes, anyway.

Kakashi and Hizashi Hyuuga came upon the scene at the same time. The Hyuuga heiress was climbing out of the kidnapper's large sack as it seemed that Kakashi's ninken had taken down two men, and the ninken were trying to talk his blonde charge into letting go, as she was still biting one of the men's groins. "Naru-chan!"

The tiny blonde glanced over to her OTHER "Aniki" in shock, immediately letting go of the fierce grip her rather sharp little teeth had on the man's pants and something else inside them. This Aniki - the man that wasn't her Daddy after all - even looked kind of the same, she realized as tears erupted in her eyes: the hair color especially. Naruto turned to jump up into the trees and run but was grabbed by the other man with the long hair.

Hizashi turned the little blonde around and stared in shock at her, before getting himself together to reassure his clan's heiress - his precious little niece - that she would be alright now. Kakashi had already sent Pakkun to alert the Hokage and bring him back. This was an international incident and could mean another war. "Is this who I think it is?"

Naruto was hanging in Hizashi's arms, looking like she was in shock. Great, another person knows, Kakashi thought grimly. He took a deep breath. "Hai, but we're keeping her return as silent as possible. It was...him, after all," he said cryptically. Hizashi's eyes widened and he gave a slight nod. "Here, give me Naruto-hime and…"

"NO!" Naruto screamed. She nearly got away from Hizashi with her kicking and attempts to scratch the Hyuuga. Kakashi reached out to grab her and the blonde began screeching something terrible and he clearly heard her scream that "Anikis are snakes" as she cried, shocking him terribly. Every time Orochimaru or a snake came up, he'd seen the girl either go still or come completely apart. His thoughts ended rather violently when little Naruto turned herself upside down in his arms and was clearly aiming to bite his family jewels off.

Hizashi knocked the thrashing child out just in time. "Wow!" Bending down and activating his dojutsu, he checked on and gently patted his crying niece's head.

The Hokage arrived, bringing not only his regular guard and additional ANBU but also Tsunade. "Kami-sama, are they alive? And why is that man bleeding from his crotch?" The blood was easy to see, thanks especially to the light-colored clothing the men wore. "Wh - what is she doing here anyway, Kakashi-kun?" Hiruzen asked, pointing to Naruto.

Tsunade had taken the little unconscious girl from his arms to check her over. As soon as she saw blood on the girl's mouth and teeth, she had to be Jukened to be stopped from punching the Kumo kidnappers into what would no doubt be mush, had she managed to land a hit. Kakashi was especially glad that the monster known as Tsunade-hime was unable to use chakra normally as he felt her nearly-overwhelming Killing Intent as he described how Naruto got away from him in the first place.

"Anikis are snakes, huh?" Inoichi said absentmindedly as he looked at Minato's daughter. She's so small and has already been through so much. And to think that she took down a Kumo Jonin or two. The last part made him sadly chuckle, thinking of how the girl's mother would've done the same. Kushina-chan may have racked me a time or two, but at least teeth were never involved!

He'd been brought into HQ to Mind Walk the Kumo ambassadors and the now-known fools who had gone out on their own to kidnap a Main Branch Hyuuga to supposedly please their leader. They would've either taken her eyes or waited until the girl was older and made breeding stock out of her! What the hell's wrong with people? Shinobi or not, little Hinata-chan was a baby, just like his three-year-old daughter and the even smaller girl laying in a hospital bed in front of him.

The Raikage was furious, and the ambassadors were completely embarrassed by their comrade's scheme. It seems he really did learn after kidnapping Kushina… Minato never really forgave the bastards for taking his girl, Inoichi thought, and Kumo suffered for it. And that led to another problem at hand.

He had to erase all memories of the encounter to ensure that when two of those idiots were returned to Kumo, they did not remember anything about a "Little Female Living Yellow Flash." One of the Jonin actually thought for a moment that Minato had actually survived, just before little Naru-hime landed on his head, breaking some of his vertebrae. Moron. That blonde hair, though - it had terrified the Jonin as he saw it falling down on him.

"What are we going to do with you, Hime-chan?" Inoichi asked the sleeping girl. A three-year-old falling down from THAT height in the trees? She could've really hurt or killed herself, with or without chakra. Must be the Uzumaki genes - and maybe the Kyuubi? Kushina had always healed quickly… Hmm...

"What are you doing here, brat?" Tsunade asked Inoichi harshly - as always. She moved to once again disinfect Naruto's entire mouth with hydrogen peroxide, followed by an alcohol swab.

"Do you have to keep doing that? And seriously, Tsunade-hime, is that the only reason she's being kept sedated?" Inoichi asked. Those swabs must taste terrible!

"Tch! It's better this than having that bastard's blood in her mouth! And from his penis, no less!" Tsunade ranted as Inoichi winced. The blonde pig-tailed woman's expression turned sly. "That asshole will never be able to use it again: not even to urinate. I sure as hell won't heal him - and it'll be too late - if he's one of the ones chosen to live that gets to go back to Kumo."

Inoichi shivered. Dear Gods… He understood Minato's need to put strong people in charge of Naru-chan's well-being, but they were all so damn frightening, harsh, and weird! With guardians like Tsunade, Jiraiya, and Kakashi… Naru-chan: what will you turn out to be? Shaking off his thoughts, he finally explained why he was here at the hospital. "I can't walk a jinchuuriki's mind," he sighed and grimaced. "I came to talk to her - see if I could help her out."

"Therapy?" Tsunade asked as she pulled out a blanket for the girl.

"Hai, therapy. Gods, she's so little and hardly speaks as it is..."

"You know what caused her to run, don't you?" Tsunade asked, a bit of bitterness in her tone.

Inoichi shook his head: he hadn't heard anything about why in the world the blonde heiress was at the scene of a thankfully botched-kidnapping. Tsunade tugged Inoichi's arm and the man nearly fell on the floor. Annoyed, he followed her into the hallway anyway, past the girl's ANBU guards and into the lounge which Tsunade secured with seals. He sat down and waited for what could be quite an interesting conversation if the Senju woman was acting like this.

"That dimwitted Hatake-brat needs therapy even more than she does," Tsunade began, noting that Inoichi didn't seem surprised by that in the least. "That moron is so hung up with Daddy and loss issues, I don't know if he can actually take care of the brat! And he promised - so he's muddling along as well as he can, but today… Today," she let out something between a cough and a chuckle. "This morning he decided that he just couldn't be what she was calling him: 'Daddy.'" Tsunade shook her head and saw Inoichi's eyebrows rise. "I think he just said it out of nowhere, the emotionally-constipated mutt! And now this brother thing…"

"Yes, I heard she compared a brother to a snake," Inoichi stated as Tsunade closed her eyes. No doubt she's thinking about her traitor of a teammate: the absolute bastard.

Tsunade sunk down on the couch. "I don't know. I - well, I do, but Naru-chan has mentioned having a brother before." At Inoichi's curious look, she continued. "She has a little 'invisible' friend that she talks to that she calls Nii-san. She'll even - although it's rare with how little she talks - but she does occasionally let us know what he's said or is thinking."

"That's nothing to worry about. I'm sure it's a coping mechanism," he expected Tsunade to agree but she still looked troubled. "We don't know what happened to her in his hideout… How often she was moved, what - well, what all he did to her. But judging from the reports, and what little I've been able to get out of your boy who was rescued, the kids were kept almost entirely isolated. An imaginary friend is a good mental tactic, and probably helped her stay sane - and maybe even remain alive in there."

Tsunade nodded her head and wiped a tear from her eye. Fucking Orochimaru: what you did to those kids! I will tear you to pieces if it's the last thing I do! "Maybe it's a big brother thing specifically… I don't know. I DO know that when she woke up for a moment and saw Kakashi-kun, the brat completely lost her shit and had to be held down. She was definitely going for the window. That's why we moved her: no window, no escape." The Slug Princess rose and removed the seals, thus ending their conversation.

"I'll go see Hatake: see if he knows anything more." Tsunade nodded and headed back the way they came, after letting him know that she'd hospitalized him, too. He was apparently healing from an especially hard and swift kick to the ass.

Walking toward the room, Inoichi could FEEL Kakashi's doom and gloom. This time, though - whether Hatake liked it or not - he was getting therapy! And he's going to eventually like it, the little shit!