By: roterritter
A/N: Yes, I am still alive! My work destroyed my brain cells (hey, a few survived!) and gave me writer's block, but I'm back. I have gone back and cleaned up the earlier chapters, fixed any obvious spelling mistakes and changed a few facts to make it match Part 2 a bit better. This story is still very AU now, but I plan to use information learned in Part 2 later on.
This chapter is a series of flashbacks, it sets up what I wish I had in the beginning.So I don't confuseprevious readers, I won't be moving things around again. This chapter also centers around Anko, to get her right into the thick of the story. After that, it will pick up with Naruto again. (so please bare with me if you are anxious for more Kakashi/Naruto action).
This is a long chapter, (damn that muse!). The information is mixed with some facts from the anime/manga, but of course the "not really 24" part is made up for this story to make it plausible.
Chapter 05 – Caught in the Snake's Shadow
Eight Days Ago
Crack!
Another perfectly good desk was ruined, but Tsunade was beyond caring at the moment. Despite the display of super strength, the other occupant in her office seemed unfazed, in fact, she was still grinning ear to ear.
It had begun as a simple meeting, a new assignment for Mitarashi Anko to take an Anbu team to investigate a series of disappearances in a village that lay in the border between the Fire and the Rice Field countries. The village had already requested an assassination job with the Hidden Village of the Leaf, which Tsunade handed off to the Anbu, but the entire situation seemed odd and she was making her own investigation.
To lead the investigation she choose Mitarashi Anko, who had completed a large number of B-rank missions already and was familiar with the border area.
Unfortunately, recently whenever they were together they seemed to fight.
It all started when Tsunade had caught Anko altering her own ninja profile. According to the Advisors, Anko had been doing it for years, declaring that she was always twenty-four. They seemed to understand why, but they didn't bother to tell her about it, which irked Tsunade even more, that the Third Hokage had secrets to protect the village and its ninja and even the Fifth Hokage wasn't deemed important enough to know them.
Therefore, she took out her frustration on Anko. Something in the back of her memories told her Anko's age couldn't have been right.. She couldn't have been expected to remember all the children of Konoha, not when her own personal tragedy was happening at the time, but something told her she knew Anko from before. She used that knowledge to joke about Anko's age.
However, Tsunade wasn't innocent herself for looking her age and so that provided plenty of ammunition for Anko to strike back.
"Is your hearing getting worse, grandma?" Anko smirked, she actually enjoyed getting under the Sannin's skin, even if she was the Fifth Hokage.
Tsunade quickly placed propped her foot on the remains of her desk and leaned forward into an intimidating position. She stared right at the other woman, defying her to say it again.
"I called you an," she stopped and over-pronounced each syllable. "OLD-WO-MAN."
Tsunade smirked, carefully hiding the rage she felt inside."There is only one person who I allow to call me that." Tsunade gracefully moved her hand forward, "And you are not him," and flicked Anko on the forehead with her finger.
The Special Jounin went flying and yet somehow avoided crashing into a wall. She had actually managed to keep on her feet, but was clutching her forehead with a grimace.
"Impressive," Tsunade said. "Not only are you as loud as Naruto, but you can take a hit as well as him."
Anko's reaction to that comment was not the she expected.
Her face went blank and pale and her eyes looked off in a faraway gaze. When her hands suddenly went up to clutch the sides of her head instead of her forehead, Tsunade immediately went into action, dropping her anger and resuming her professional demeanor of a medical-nin.
"What's wrong?"
"N-nothing," Anko whimpered.
Tsunade gently pulled away one of Anko's arms, but as soon as her fingers wrapped around the other woman's bare wrist her eyes widened in shock.
The skin felt as smooth and soft as a young woman's skin should feel, but just by extending a little chakra, Tsunade's finely honed medical-nin senses were telling her something was very, very wrong. Worse, it felt unnaturally wrong, something she had never felt before, yet there was a certain taint about it that was familiar, like a snake slithering across her mind.
After learning that Anko really wasn't twenty-four, Tsunade sometimes wondered about her true age. She had not idea how long she had been altering the profile. She could have been only a few years older or several. The same profile also lists Anko as having a high genjutsu ability, not as high as Kurenai's, but perhaps enough to use a genjutsu like her own.
However, what she had thought, was horribly wrong…
"What is this?" she asked softly. For the moment, she forgot Anko's discomfort.
"Y-you d-don't know?" Anko managed to speak through the pain in her head. "The Third and the Fourth knew."
"What? Does this have to do with Orochimaru?"
"It's nothing!" yelled Anko as she managed pulled away. The pain her head was residing. "It doesn't matter anymore."
"And what about your headache?" Tsunade gave her a stern command. "I certainly didn't hit you hard enough to turn your brain into mush."
"That was nothing too," Anko said. "I am perfectly able to take on this mission!"
Tsunade stared at her, but noticed the other woman's unchanging determined eyes.
"Alright, but this isn't over. I let you get away with altering your profile before, but after this," she paused. Tsunade's expression changed from that of a commanding Hokage to that of a medical-nin with a warm bedside manner, "I expect answers when you get back. Understood?"
"Yes," she muttered, but the look on her face told Tsunade that she meant it. She was going to tell someone her secret for the first time in years.
Five Days Ago
A Sannin could never die.
At least that is what they believed, but they were wrong. Their belief was like a child who thought that death had no power over a favorite relative, but once death happened their lives changed along with that shattered belief.
In a village along the border of the Fire and Rice Field countries, where the long shadow of the Hidden Village of Sound managed to reach, the Legendary Sannin named Jiraiya had been killed.
Mitarashi Anko and a team of three Anbu surrounded the broken body of Jiraiya. They had entered the village to investigate the disappearances, not to stumble upon the aftermath of a massive Kage-level fight.
From the damage, they could see it must have been impressive, destroyed buildings, cement crumbled into dust, trees uprooted, and the ground upturned. All of that was what they could see in under the darkness of night. Yet, as impressive as it was they couldn't take their eyes off Jiraiya's body.
A belief was shattered.
"Perverted Hermit!"
Uzumaki Naruto ran up to Jiraiya, pushing two Anbu out of his way. He was almost unrecognizable, partly because he was a few years older and wearing a new outfit that had more black than orange, but mostly because it looked like he was beaten to a pulp.
If anything Anko heard about what the Kyuubi could do for him was true then it was likely he would heal most of it after a night's rest, but it was still made her wince.
An arm hanged limp at his side, apparently dislocated, one eye swollen so bad he couldn't see, and his yellow hair tinted with red blood. He looked bad, but he ignored his pain as he collapsed at Jiraiya's side.
"Why aren't doing anything!" he accused the Anbu.
The large Anbu with a bear mask kneeled down beside, "There isn't anything that can be done. He's gone."
The bear-masked Anbu was also the medical-nin of the group. Apparently, his compassion outweighed any other feelings he might have felt for the Kyuubi kid, but when he tried to touch Naruto, he received a feral snarl that sent him stumbling back.
The change in Naruto's face was only a moment, before he looked back down at Jiraiya. He hunched over and Anko assumed he had started to cry.
She couldn't explain why, but knelt down beside Naruto and placed an arm around him. She refused to move, even as he tried to shrug her off, but some reason he didn't snarl.
Anko looked at his face and realized he wasn't crying at all. Instead, he was repeating a soft mantra that couldn't have heard unless she was this close.
"I won't cry…I won't cry…I won't cry."
An image popped into her head of a crying boy surrounded by angry villagers and she wondered why the memory disturbed her. Although she hadn't really met him before the Chuunin exam, she remembered hearing that he declared he wouldn't ever cry again and had adopted a mask of carefree smiles. She wondered why she had even cared at the time.
She held him tighter and whispered "It is alright", so soft even the Anbu couldn't hear.
When he finally broke down, she changed positions to hold him properly. Anko didn't seem to even care that he was getting tears on her trench coat. She realized that affection or sympathy was as alien to her to give as it was for him to receive it, but at the moment, it felt so right.
Two Days Ago
Uzumaki Naruto hadn't said a word for days. For anyone who was used to the loud-mouthed blond, that was simply scary.
Even the Anbu, who were all secretly taught that one day they might have to fight the Kyuubi kid, were clearly affected by Naruto's mournful silence.
The day after Jiraiya's death they had a small service as they cremated his remains. Jiraiya's body was simply too big to carry all the way back to Konoha in a speedy manner, but returning his ashes to Konoha was actually more than many ninja who died away from home received. Less caring Anbu might have surgically removed anything that could reveal the secrets of Konoha or Jiraiya's techniques and let the rest rot or be food to the ravens.
Anko scrubbed their mission. They would return if needed, but now the priority was to return a Legendary Sannin to Konoha for a proper burial as a hero.
"Can we have some service here!" she yelled into the restaurant that they sat in, almost being loud enough for both of them. It was a small restaurant, not filled with many people, which was thankful because of the noise she was making.
Naruto hadn't looked like he ate in ages and so Anko decided to treat him to a meal. Besides, she had something to give him, something of Jiraiya's that she decided he should have.
A part of her wondered why she was being so kind to the boy. She wasn't widely known for being nice. Even a lot of the male ninja in the village stayed away from her. She reasoned that perhaps, she could understand how he felt, because once upon a time she adored her teacher, who was also a Sannin. That feeling had long ago changed, in fact she tried to kill him herself, but she could still understand it.
She spoke, a little uncomfortable with his silence, "I tried finding a ramen bar, but I couldn't find one, but his place serves my favorite foods so…"
Naruto finally spoke, but it was soft and lifeless. "I complained to Perverted Hermit that they didn't have ramen here. He laughed."
Anko didn't have much to say to that, she wasn't sure what to do in situations like this. Orochimaru had twisted her natural energetic nature into something sadistic, he had never trained to her to be sympathetic to loss.
The waitress finally arrived with a plait of sweet dumplings and two cups of sweet red-bean soup.
"Sweet red-bean soup goes best with dango," she told him with the best smile she could manage under the situation. "I hope you like it,they're both my favorite foods."
Naruto's expression changed as he took a cup of the soup and sipped. His face now had a small smile, which was a small improvement that still made her happy. "I do, sweet red-bean soup is my second favorite!"
"Really? I thought all you ate was ramen."
"Not all the time," he weakly defended.
The meal continued in silence, but the air wasn't as tense or empty as before. Naruto seemed to enjoy the soup more than the dumplings, but she wasn't offended.
By time she had finished eating the last dumpling off its skewer, she had decided to go into why she had brought him here for.
"The Anbu are ready to take Jiraiya-sama back to Konoha," she almost wished she hadn't said anything as Naruto's face fell again. "I went through his things and thought that you should have this…"
Anko pulled out the frog summoning scroll, earlier she managed to carry the giant scroll to the restaurant and placed it behind her seat while she waited for Naruto to arrive.
She presented it to him. "Your name is in it, so I believe it should belong to you know."
Naruto reluctantly picked it up and held it while he looked at it sadly. He undid the knot in the string that held it rolled up and unrolled the first segment, revealing the last three names.
Anko knew very well what was inside. She had unrolled it herself, fearing it was some unfinished copy from Jiraiya's perverted Flirting Paradise series of books. Instead, she saw three names, including one she hadn't heard in a long time, but was still close to her heart.
"Are you sure it's mine?" he asked. He had only seen the inside of the scroll once before and back then he was too young to care why there was a name in between where he signed and Jiraiya's own signature. "There's another name here…" He squinted his eyes and tried to read it. "but it's all scribbles…Ka…Kaseiyo?"
"Kayaku," she corrected him without even looking. "And you don't have to worry about him."
"Uh?" he asked.
"Kayaku passed away a long time ago," she said. Her face looked sad suddenly. It was an old sadness, not like the grief they were feeling for Jiraiya. "So you are the official frog summoner now."
"Anko-san, did you know him?"
She chuckled, "Better than most, but I would say everyone in Konoha knew him."
"Really? He must have been a great ninja then."
"Of course he was!" she said a loudly. "Kayaku is the Fourth Hokage, you dummy. Don't they teach you anything in the Academy anymore?"
"WHAT!" Naruto looked back at the scroll with wide eyes, realizing he was holding the actual signature of one of the Hokage's that he had idolized all his life. However, "His writing is really messy. Are you sure this was the Fourth Hokage?"
Anko laughed. It was a long, healthy laughter. "Kayaku had horrible writing. Jiraiya-sama used to complain about it all the time." She noticed with some happiness that this time the mention of Jiraiya's name didn't bring down Naruto's mood again.
"He was like you, an orphan, with no family to teach him outside of the Academy. So I guess some of his skills were lacking."
"Really?" Naruto looked thoughtful. "Everything I heard about him was that he was a brilliant ninja, even when he was young. Some said I was like him, but usually just because of my hair and my stubbornness."
Naruto scratched is hair and gave her his typical big smile with his eyes nearly closed.
Anko's face suddenly went blank and Naruto stopped smiling when he noticed.
"Anko-san?"
"Oh, I'm alright," she said, but she was holding the side of her head and wincing. "Just an headache."
Anko looked out through the window, onto the dusty streets. Her expression was thoughtful. "What were you and Jiraiya doing in this town?"
"Just passing through at first," Naruto answered. "But we heard about some disappearances and I wanted to help."
"The disappearances in this village are why me and the Anbu team came."
"Really?"
"But now that Jiraiya is dead, I've scrubbed the mission, but the village already paid for a job to take care of the problem, that's what I'm told, but Tsunade wanted some extra investigation in case it the problem was bigger than the village suspected. Is there anything you know?"
"N-not really," Naruto muttered, "Perverted Hermit was supposed to contact one his informants. I'm not sure how good they are, they always seem to hang out in perverted places. But I guess he never made it."
Anko watched Naruto's face fall again and decided that was enough for now.
"It's getting late," she told him. "I'll see you tomorrow?"
He didn't answer.
"We're leaving in the morning. You're coming with us." It was a statement, not a question.
Naruto sighed. He was told before if he left Konoha without Jiraiya that Anbu would be following him.
"Yes, Anko-san," he said reluctantly as he stood up and picked up the scroll. "Before I go I want to train in the nearby quarry one more time. Perverted Hermit will get upset if I don't start training again."
Naruto turned and walked away, leaving Anko only to stare at the back of his spiky yellow hair. She felt as if she had seen that before, in a lost memory. Just like in the memory, something told her, that he wouldn't be coming back.
One Day Ago
"Damn it! Where did that brat go,"
Just because she knew he lied, didn't mean she was going to let him get away with it. If Anko had her way, she would return Naruto to Konoha all tied up.
"Anko-san," said the wolf-masked Anbu. "We can't any wait longer. When we get back to Konoha, we can senda few Anbu teams to retrieve him."
"There's no need for that!" she growled. "His teacher just died, he's not trying to defect anywhere."
"But this is the Kyuubi kid. We can't take that risk!"
"Fine. Go on back to Konoha. I'll stay and find him and be back before the Anbu teams even leave!"
The only female of the three Anbu approached her, she wore a cat-mask. "This isn't like you Anko-san."
"Perhaps then, you don't know me as well as you think."
Anko ignored the whole group for the rest of the morning and eventually the Anbu left, carrying the cremated remains of Jiraiya with them. They hadn't tried to convince her again.
She searched the village for Naruto, checking the hotel, the restaurants, and even the spot where Jiraiya was killed. Nothing…
Her last resort was checking the seediest areas of the village, filled with bars and brothels. It seemed a very likely place if she were looking for Jiraiya. She hoped after all these years the old man's perversion hadn't rubbed off on him. She felt angry about it, and once again, she questioned herself about why she should care.
She walked into a bar and heads instantly turned. Of course, it was more likely her outfit caused the looks than the fact she was a ninja. She expected wearing only her fishnet body suit and brown miniskirt under her beige trench coat might make her an inviting target, but those who tried would soon regret it. Armed with the skills of a Special Jounin of Konoha and the forbidden techniques she learned from Orochimaru, she could make any ordinary scum hurt in a thousand different ways.
The bar itself smelled of smoke and alcohol. It wasn't the safest places and certainly not a place that she expected Naruto to be, not unless he was trying to track down Jiraiya's informant. That might have been a hopeless action, but she betted Naruto was doing just that.
Anko sat down at the bar, trying to attract the attention of the bartender. A man with sake on his breath sat down next to her and ran his hand down her thigh. She swiftly removed the hand with one of her own and then stabbed it with a kunai held in the other, impaling his hand onto the bar.
The man's screams definitely got the bartender's attention.
"No fighting!" he yelled.
"There wasn't any fighting," she smiled sadistically. She pulled her kunai out of the bar and the drunk's hand and he went scampering away with a whimper. "I'm looking for a teenage boy with spiky blond hair. Have you seen him?"
The bartender looked her over, "Aren't you a little old for him?"
Anko's arms struck out lightening fast, like a snake, and grasped the man by the collar. She waved her already bloody kunai in his face menacingly, the tip only inches from his eyes. "Have you seen him?"
"NO!"
Just as quickly, as she grabbed him, she released him and put her kunai away. She smiled at the man, her eyes partially closed, "Okay, I believe you."
The bartender collapsed, nearly fainting. The rest of the bar patrons were looking at her in fear. At least, her action caused one thing, no one was looking at her that way anymore.
With no other ideas, Anko sat down in a shadowy booth. Deep in thought, she felt the carved wooden piece on her necklace. She ran her fingers through its curves and sharp edges.
"Don't turn around," said a man's voice.
Anko almost instinctively turned her head.
"I said don't. Turn around and you'll never hear from me again."
She smirked, okay, she could play this game while she flexed her fingers, ready to grab a kunai hidden into her coat sleeves at any second. She could tell the voice came from behind her, directly behind her in fact from the other booth. The voice itself sounded like an educated old man.
"Isn't that something odd to say for an attacker?" she joked.
"I'm not an attacker," the voice said with irritation. "My job is to listen and to talk of course. I'm also good at hiding so if you turn around, you'll never see me again."
"Is that so bad?"
"Trust me, you'll want to listen to what I have to say. You're looking for Uzumaki Naruto." It was a statement, not a question.
"So what if I am?"
"You're looking in the wrong place, he's already left the village."
"What?" Anko mentally cursed.
"I imagine he's gone the mansion on the outskirts of this village."
"Mansion? What mansion?" she asked, but her instincts already told her it was what Naruto kept from her. She gritted her teeth, realizing she should have forced him to tell her.
"I've already told Jiraiya-sama where the people were being taken, ask anyone, they know where it is. I just didn't know by who, at the time. I do now. Going to that mansion is a mistake."
"You're Jiraiya's informant?" she guessed.
"Correct, I never got a chance to talk to him before he died. If I had I would have warned him."
"About what?" she asked.
"This entire village is caught in the Snake's shadow. They just don't realize it yet as he's wrapping himself tighter and tighter around them. Pretty soon he's going to swallow them whole and alive."
"What snake?" she asked, but she could feel her stomach drop out, expecting the answer.
"I think you know, Mitarashi Anko."
"Orochimaru? But why?" The presence of her former Sannin teacher was shocking enough she didn't think about how he knew her name.
"I don't know why he's doing it within the Fire country, but I do know what he is doing."
"What is he doing?"
"The same thing he was doing the last time he was in Konoha. You should remember, you helped him."
"I didn't!" she hissed. A kunai had somehow managed to find itself in her hand and she was close to snapping around and using it. "I wasn't under my own control!"
"Because of the cursed seal? Understandable."
"What? How do you know about that?" she asked him. Anko felt more unnerved by this man's calm informative voice by the second.
"I know a lot about the Snake, even more than you. Don't think I'm some ordinary gossiper in this little forsaken village. I've made a career in listening around the Rice Field Country, ever since the Snake moved in."
"How do I believe you?"
"What? Besides letting the young Uzumaki fall into a trap? Alright, I know about you, I read your profile after that Chuunin exam that Orochimaru disrupted. Your ninja profile said your age was twenty-four at the time, born on October Twenty-Four. You graduated the Shinobi Academy at age ten and became Chuunin at twelve."
"What? Any good spy in Konoha could have told you that and why were you looking at my profile?" Anko thought once that information was true, she did graduate at ten and she did pass the Chuunin exams at twelve, but the age...
"My business is to know about Orochimaru and that includes his subordinates, past and present.Only you are a puzzle,your agedoesn't make sense. When did Orochimaru have time to teach you?"
"W-What do you mean?" she asked. She felt odd, no one had questioned the actual timing of those events before. It was a strange feeling knowing someone figured out her twelve year secret.
"Orochimaru left Konoha before Kyuubi attacked, which was twelve years ago, but he became your teacher after you graduated. You were his student for less than two years. Not enough time to learn everything you know from him or even learn the forbidden techniques that are listed in your profile. By the way, how does a twelve year old use the Twin Snakes Mutual Death technique? I've seen it myself, used by another one of Orochimaru's subordinates. It's a murder-suicide attack that requires the victim's hand to complete the seal. With a twelve year old girl's hand, who did Orochimaru expect you to kill?"
She didn't have anything to say to that.
"Maybe if he taught you constantly in those two years it would have been enough, but we all know he was rather busy at the time with the human experiments."
"Enough!"
"Nothing I see in your history fits. My only conclusion is that you are older than you look. At least that makes the information regarding your pregnancy more palatable."
"Pregnancy, I've never been…" She turned around suddenly and looked…
No one was behind her and the booth was empty.
Turn around and you'll never hear from me again.
Author's Notes: There is a reason why Anko keeps having headaches. It relates to something the Third Hokage says in Chapter 2. More about that will be revealed.
While doing research for the story I noticed a few strange things:
Check out chapter 122 or episode 72. There is a picture of Orochimaru with a very young Anko. Is it me or does Orochimaru look a lot younger than the Third Hokage's flashback of him back when Orochimaru was caught experimenting on people?
I got a lot my information about Anko from profiles translated from the Databook and others and any information given in the manga or anime. Her age is listed as 24, but there are a few strange things, both Anko and Naruto like sweet red-bean soup. In one profile I looked at the only other people who liked the same thing are Naruto and Iruka liking ramen. I also worked in my own questions about her into the Informant's dialogue. It seems strange he taught a 12 year old a murder-suicide technique and Anko has also said he taught her everything. Hard to see that in 2 years. It just means in reality we don't know enough about her or there is a continuity problem, either way I believe it makes Anko being Naruto's mother plausible.
About the Fourth's Name: Kayaku comes from a forum board. The writing in the frog summoning scroll that is suppose to be the Fourth's vaguely resembles the characters for kayaku, something put on ramen. Given Naruto's name is also something put on ramen I thought it was a good name. I wanted something more original than Arashi or Kaseiyo (the spanish version). Again, I'm making up the Fourth's background just to make it more interesting. I thought him trying to create a clan Uzumaki is different than the often used idea that they all died out.
Version 1.1
1.0: Original.
1.1: Corrected a mistake, Hidden Village of Sound is in the Rice Field Country, not the Tea Country.