Another week, another chapter, another bad opening phrase!

I usually start the story here, but today you'll hear me rant for a while and then the story will start…

I'm tired as hell. That's the first way to describe the last week, I can't sleep well, and my work out routine is killing me even when I'm not going to the gym,,, I sleep six hours a night and then catch up in class, which leads me to get stressed out about failing and I sleep even less.

On the bright side, I'm now officially closer to 17 than to 16, to bad it also means I'll get the first letter from the army soon, which is depressing.

I'm pretty sure I had more stuff to write about, but I forgot it all, so lets get on with the story.

Chapter 4: Secrets

"So, what do you say, Karen? Karen?" she heard Hob's voice, "say about what?" she asked, she was too focused with what was going inside her head to pay any notice to her group mates.

 "I asked you if you'll join us afterwards with a little surprise to Ealla, an humiliating surprise which will involve a bucket of paint, and a few powders that have a really strong smell" Hob said in pride, he considered himself to be a prankster, and when he was younger, he played tricks on Doro all the time, as he grew older, the pranks were much more calculated and rare, partly because his parent's reaction, and partly because it was hard to find new pranks to do.

"oh, sure, sounds like fun" Karen said in tired voice, even if they were after a long tiring practice, her tone left no place to wonder, she was clearly not interested in the prank. One by one, team 13 genin's went to their homes, only Karen went to library, "good, take any history scroll which tells what happened the past 15 years, especially about the part where the leaf joined the sound, and pick up a scroll concerning chackra control while you're here, you need lessons in that immediately" the voice mentioned.

 "just remember what you said, you'll have to tell me about my family" she said, hardly keeping her eyes open and hardly pulling out the scrolls, "no problem, start going through the scrolls, just change the page every 20 seconds, it'll be enough for me" he stated.

Karen followed his orders, and after ten minutes they were on there way out and back home, she was carrying a scroll about chackra control, the scroll was written by the top ninja's of the cloud village, and it was regarded as one of the best informational scrolls about that subject, due to the fact the authors described different states of chackra, including abnormalities such as high chackra leaking or suppressed chackra release.

"So, was your trip to the library useful?" Karen asked, "I still have too much questions, but I think I'll need a first hand source to find answers, but going for it now will be bad for m… us" the voice responded "it's time for me to fill my part of the deal, we still have enough time for one question" he suggested.

Too many questions were going through her head, she wanted to know everything, but she was getting near her house, and she knew the moment she'll sit on her bed, the fatigue will take over her and send her to dreamland, she had many questions, but she decided to start with the most obvious and less important one "who are you?" she asked, already at her bedroom.

 "I'm called by many names, nine tails and fox demons, I am the Kyubi" the answer came to her mind, Karen couldn't believe what she 'heard' that moment, but the sleep took over her, sending the shocked girl into the land of dreams and nightmares.

"it can't be, stupid basterd" she cried, "huhh? Now this is great, you also have control over our dreams… your father was much easier to deal with" the kyubi stated in frustration, Naruto already knew about him before they met, and while Naruto was quick to take use of his chackra and power, the kyubi suspected that Karen was a different matter.

"Why are you here? Are you invading my dreams as well?" Karen said, she, or a least her image in the dream, was growing repeatedly,  "well, it kinda goes the other way around, I'll try to keep this explanation simple, so listen well, you just started your missions and the whole thing takes time to get used to" he said, she just 'nodded' at him to tell her the story.

"so this is how it goes, about 43 years ago, the nine tailed demon fox, who is myself, has attacked the leaf village, the leader of the shinobies, the forth hokage, sealed the demon into a newborn baby, named Uzumaki Naruto, who in days, would become your father.

 To make long story short, the boy grew up and discovered me, faced a few challenges, lost his teammate to an enemy, and by teammate I'm talking about Uchiha Sasuke, and by enemy I mean the first sound kage, got kidnapped by his own mother, spent 3 years at captivity, then he got out, a year later he fought and killed one of the demons, ran away from the village, then he re-met your mother, after a few months they got married in less than legit ways.

 then the sound attacked for the second time, but was deflected, and your father killed the second sound kage, and my memory blanks out a few months later, for reasons you aren't in the age to know about, and in a situation kids never want to think of".

He concluded his story ((AN:\\ for the exact details, you should re-read Shadow of life, which this story is squealing. Like DUH!)), "so where comes the part the part you kill everybody in the leaf and forced them to move here?" she inquired, his story seemed to be so incomplete it was scary, "well, when you were 'formed' I was cloned into you, so I have no memories of what happened then, but I'm pretty sure the stories are far from the truth, I never was able to control your father, so I doubt the sincerity of them" he said with a clear voice, "my parents…" she started to ask, "would they be proud of me?", only the silence was there to answer her.

*****////////*********

"I don't understand why we have to do these stupid missions; can't we at least do something useful?"  Hob asked in frustration, the only thing which was worse than walking the dogs was to deliver cargo, and the difference was that Hob was used to walk his dog anyway. "Shut it, just keep that trio away from everyone else, if Shu-al wasn't there to stop them they would have eaten the small kid" Doro said. he looked at Karen's fox, he was twice the size of any other dog he ever saw, he looked like a tiger but he was still perfectly calm as long as Karen was besides him, "can't blame him… the amazing white eyes, the flowing hair.."

He started to drown in his thoughts until a small rock met his head, "concentrate!" Shally's voice pierced his ears, "the faster we end the small tasks we can move to the real training" she silenced them all.

They finished the D-ranked mission by noon, they were ready to get the next list of assignments when Ealla said "it's about time we finished them! Now we can do some fun training!" she wondered how accurate in their abilities the kids were.

"so, what's the fun part you were talking about?" Karen asked, not letting an hint of emotion show on her face, she knew it made people freak out and do their best to avoid her, and that was the way she liked it.

"for today, Chackra control, it's what makes the difference between an academy student and a genin" she threw 4 kunais near their feet, "Take them, it's now Chackra control 1O1, the good old tree climbing,

when you can walk up the tree to the top, it means you might keep being a genin" she pointed at four trees, and walked towards another one, "this is your challenge" she did the first step on the tree, and steadily kept walking up, it was a necessity to any shinobi, no matter what operation was in progress.

Ealla watched the four genins make preparations to start climbing, as she expected, Shally started by inspecting the tree she had walked on, with the amount of chackra Ealla released it was easy to distinguish the parts she walked on, Shally finally run to her tree, she managed to do three steps before she fell down.

Doro was the next to try, with his super sonic waves family jutso, Ealla expected that he would have more chackra control than others, as those jutso required moving chackra through the air, he easily climbed five meters up but then he found out that the sound waves weren't fit to stay at the same place for long and he would have to release the chackra from his feet.

Hob just did the regular 'try over and over' thing, each mark by his kunai was an inch higher than the last one.

What Karen did was the surprise to Ealla, the girl sat there with an opened scroll and just read it.

"Are you sure this is my case?" Karen asked in her mind, "yes, you're a rare case but an 'over output' regular, you have to find a way to keep your chackra inside and not let it outburst all the time" the Kyubi answered, she was a complete opposite from her father, in their personality, their goals and everything else imaginable.

Where he was loud and annoying, she was silent and cold, When he wanted everyone to look at him, she wanted to be far away from the crowds, he was hell-bent on trying everything for himself, she learned from others, the only connection between them was the loneliness they never stopped feeling, "that's the bound between the three of us" he thought to himself.

 "Activate your Byakougan, and then try focus chackra to your foot, with you bloodline you could understand it in no time" he ordered her, "I don't see your point, I'm focusing the chackra but I can't feel any difference" she followed his directions, "Damn, your Byakougan is even weaker than I thought, you can't even see the chackra flows, you'll have to do it the normal way, try to release as much chackra as you can and then look at yourself, maybe you'll see it" He said.

{

"so, you say that I should hold her back?" Ealla asked in anger, it was the most stupid order she ever heard, even if the subject was anyone else she would have been furious, but to stop Karen from getting to her max power? It was unimaginable for her.

"it's not as simple as you think, if we allow her to become too strong the whole leaf crumbling will happen to us!' she didn't believe it, her own husband has sided with the Kage and the Uchiha, and knew that Sasuke and Konhamaru were good friends of Karen's father.

"What's wrong with you? She isn't her father, I don't know what went on with him, but it doesn't mean she would do the same" Ealla tried to argue, the Kage has ordered her to hold back the most promising team of the sound just because something that happened years ago.

"It's you who doesn't understand, I wish it wasn't true, but we all believed that Naruto is different, but in the end, he only finished the job that the Kyubi started, and we all know that she doesn't even have to try hard to let loose of that power" Sakura entered the conversation. All the ex-leafs were there, even Kiba agreed that group 13 should be held back until Karen was old enough to be assigned into a remote part of the world, he agreed even though he knew that it meant his son will also be hurt from it.

"I see" Ealla answered, "I see that you're all cowards and have no right to call yourself shinobies!" she continued in her mind, vowing to make Karen into the greatest ninja the sound has ever seen.

}

"I can't see anything" Karen complained, "damn it, I guess you have to do it the normal way, just try focusing to your leg like when you transformed in order to jump, but this time, release it like it is, don't bother to combine all the types in the right order, all you need is pure chackra" the Kyubi answered, he was amazed to see how useless her hyuga bloodline was, without the proper seals and guidance, it just gave her white eyes which alerted everyone she was a ninja.

He decided that the only way for her to survive will be to go to the leaf hidden village, but it meant that both of them will have to confront the past.

---------End of chapter 4 – secrets--------

I had my ranting time before, so I'll just do the shout outs (!):

Per: Thanks, I sometimes read stories and in the end I think "why did I read that piece of crap?" (I already labeled the story pg-13, I can use crap and shit if I want to. J ) it's great to hear this story isn't one of those. About the story sounding like the real one, I have mixed feelings about that subject, I sometimes read 2nd generation stories in the Inu-yasha section and it seems like the author just changed the name of the characters, but sometimes it seems like the wrote a new story and just said 'X is the son of Z + Y', so it's hard to catch the 'real feeling' of an anime without being too expected.

Synaptix: yay, I only needed one try to spell your nick right!

this story won't turn into one of those 'Kyubi teaches Naruto everything and makes him an ass kicker guy' stories, it's not that they are bad, but they can easily turn into "I'm cool" kind of story, so Kyubi will teach Karen some new stuff, but don't over expect anything on the new jutsu department. Metamorphism jutsu as a main jutsu? Never thought about that, I've used it only once or twice until now… I might start using that on the new chapters I'm writing, once I get my head set on the plot continuation… It's not that hard to read all the non-yaoi stories here,,, they are about only 20% from the total... And half of them aren't really worth it. I know Shally sounds a bit shallow right now, that's because she has two chapters focusing on her past very soon, so I don't want to spill it out now. If it makes you feel any better, I'm planning to post both of those chapters at the same day, cuz I'm not really sure about their writing quality.

Hattuteline: Yay! I'm catching up to the nicks; I needed only one try for this one as well!

I can't really say much about the descriptions, I know my stories seriously lack them, I guess I'm not too sure about how everybody looks as well, but their relationships with each other should be much clearer… The sound village? That's another subject I've never thought about, I guess it looks a lot like the leaf, since Orochimaru created it, and he probably used the leaf as the model… anyway, it's another thing I'll try putting in sometime.

Eikou:

Sorry for under appreciating you, girl, you had it worse than me, I only had to wake up at Saturday morning for about half a year… but seven whole years? And after school classes? I can't even begin to imagine… The fast pace is a problem with every story I write, it'll slow down as the story progresses, don't worry about that. There are a lot of details in order to confuse you, so when I drop the big plot bombs, you could go back and say "hey! There were hints that it was going to happen!" and stuff like that… the fic you've written, which section is it? you don't use a logged on nick, so I can't go to your profile and search it. As I said last week, I found out how Tea Kwon Do is spelled only last week, I've started working on this story about three months ago, and I'm too lazy to go through the story and replace every  Tack with a different name, even if I only need to press Ctrl F to do it.

That's it for the shout outs (!), now for the character nin-card…

Name: Hob Inuzaka

Relation to original story: son of Kiba and Shizune (tsunda's apprentice, kiba just looks like the type to fall for older woman, doesn't he?).

Age: 12

Apperance: like Kiba, just with a less crude face and a more 'shining' black hair.

Hobby: pranks, being cool, dogs.

Likes: Karen.

Rival: Dosu

Dog: nameless, you can call him fang if you want, but I've never mentioned any name for him, just cuase I felt it'd be too much of a burden to remember such a side character name.

Specialty: powerful sense of smell, dog, I might have him learn a few healing jutsus, but I'm not sure.

Issues: not much, continues the line of being the average guy with the dog.

Well, that was one piece of non-important information, if you have a specific character you want to see next week, tell me about it!