I know I haven't update in forever. In my defence, there is something seriously wrong with my computer, so that while it does everything else just fine, it won't support scripts (or something, I don't understand computers) and mostly doesn't work. Which is very sad, because I have trouble reading all the lovely stories posted here. In any case, here's a massive update while I have the means to do it: chapters six through thirteen. The whole story is almost done (23 chapters), but the last ten need to be edited still. Thanks for being patient!

The Real Life

I wanted to find somewhere to hide
And I opened up and let those fears inside
And I wanted to be anyone else
Only to find that there was no one there but me

Three Doors Down

You like making things difficult for yourself, don't you?

I do nothing of the sort. You're the one who makes things difficult for me, Kasumi snapped back.

Well you didn't have to go mentioning that Itachi bastard, did you? I told you he was nothing but trouble.

You're nothing but trouble.

Don't be like that. You'd be dead if not for me and my chakra.

I'd have my own if you hadn't stolen all of it to hide yourself. Besides, it's not as though anything happened with him.

Oh, didn't it? The village elders were planning your wedding.

They never…

They had already picked out your dress. Just think, you could have been married to a mass-murderer.

As opposed to having one living in my head?

That's a low blow.

"Are you alright?" Kakashi asked her. He was being extremely solicitous, helping her get settled into one of the rooms the Academy kept for visiting shinobi.

Kasumi offered him a tentative smile. "It didn't go quite as well as I'd hoped." Well, it had been disastrous. At least Kakashi had been there, to calmly suggest they go their separate ways for the night and meet again in the morning when tempers had cooled.

"Nothing ever does, with Naruto. He's unpredictable."

"The Kyubi is like that, too." She wasn't looking at him, but she knew his nonchalant pose grew considerably more wary as he tried to internalize what she had said.

"You knew…?"

"Not personally, although Ryuu met it a couple of times. The dragon," she added, by way of explanation. "He says Naruto-kun is very much the Kyubi personified in some ways, his temper especially. Although he's not sure if that's because of Kyubi, or if Naruto-kun would just be that way on his own."

There was silence for a time. "Why did you want to meet Naruto?"

You didn't, Ryuu reminded her. You were afraid. You were afraid there was someone else like you. Your problem, girl, is that you care about people too much. Even people you don't know. Why, I'll never know, not if I live to be ten thousand, seeing how they used to treat you…

That's enough!

"I was alone for a long time," she said at last. "I only ever had Ryuu. When I met Gaara-kun… when I learned that there was a third… I had to know for sure. I hate the thought of people being alone."

Well, don't you sound like a crybaby. I've been alone forever.

Then why didn't you kill me and leave when you had the chance?

The problem with you humans is that you think you know everything, when in fact you don't understand anything.

Typical.

"Ah." He looked ready to leave, but turned back for a moment. "Naruto isn't like you and Gaara. He's never killed anyone." She nodded, not looking at him. Death had been a part of her life since she was born - since even before that, in a way. The deaths of humans didn't impact a dragon that would live thousands of years, and Ryuu had been killing humans without a thought for centuries before she had been born. And in the village… Kasumi had no illusions about the Hidden Mist Village. It's nickname, the Bloody Mist, was well earned. She had graduated from the Academy a year before Momochi Zabuza had turned the final exam into a massacre and the practice of death matches between students had had to be discontinued.

That should have been me that died, she thought. Closing her eyes as she lay down to sleep, the scene came back to her. They called even numbers, so that no student would have to risk death more than once. There was an especially promising batch that year, and the teachers wanted more than half the candidates to pass through. So they had inflated the numbers, bringing in a few that they thought could pass the basic tests, but who wouldn't stand a chance in battle. Children with only a slight control of their chakra, or ones like Kasumi with hardly any chakra at all.

Umi-chan. That was the boy she had killed. He wasn't the most promising of the candidates, but most of his family had turned into strong shinobi, and the teachers wanted to give him a chance. They'd put him against Kasumi on the basis that anyone, even a boy with a below average amount of chakra and a mediocre level of control, could beat an eight year old girl without any chakra at all. His family had had such hopes for him, naming him after the ocean, in the hope that one day he would be one of the greatest shinobi of the Water Country, despite his unpromising start.

Except that Kasumi had chakra. She had fountains of it, hidden away by Ryuu so that even she didn't know where to find it. He had given her a little, once in a while, when no one was around, and taught her how to use it.

Even if he had given it to her for practice, she couldn't have done most of the basic jutsus with it. Her chakra, long ago taken over by the dragon, had melded with his, and no longer moved the way human chakra was supposed to. But Ryuu was the Sea Dragon, and in the Water Country there was nothing more powerful than a being with absolute control over water.

The teachers had thought, later, that Kasumi had accidentally used a strike such as those used by the Hyuuga clan of Konoha, and struck an essential point on her opponent's heart with chakra just before the boy could plunge his kunai into her. But Kasumi knew that, in a burst of panic, she had stopped thinking, and Ryuu had taken over. She had watched as her body, out of her control, shoved water from all the cells around in the boy's heart into that organ, stopping it suddenly and violently.

When at last she dropped off to sleep, the dragon within her sighed to itself. I don't know what her problem is. At least she's still alive.