Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
The next day Kakashi did come in and though he didn't say much it was very evident the relief he felt when he saw I was conscious again, he asked me what had happened but between us we had agreed the night before that it was best not to tell anyone what happened in the Hokage's office, the suspicion had been cleared, the past was in the past. Though that wasn't going to stop me from having a few choice words with Minato when I saw him.
Kakashi told me that since the peace deal was signed the village had been celebrating and he mostly came to see me just to avoid the hassle of all the other people partying, not that I believed that. He told me Kushina had also come to see me once or twice but she was extremely busy at the moment with a project she wouldn't tell anyone about but it had something to do with Minato because he was often cooped up with her at the same time.
Guy visited later that same day though he didn't stay long, I couldn't blame him, I wasn't much a huge fan of hospitals myself but Guy just seemed like the antithesis of the atmosphere a hospital exudes.
When evening began to fall I lay down to get some rest and had seemingly only closed my eyes for a moment when I was waking up again, a quick look outside my window though showed it was the middle of the night. I was about to roll over and get back to sleep when I saw the silhouette of the man in the chair next to my bed, he reached out and turned my bedside lamp on. It was the Hokage. I breathed a sigh of relief.
"Oh man, don't do that to me Hokage." I said sighing in relief.
He gave me the mischievous smile of an old man and said in a hushed tone "I am sorry Keiko, I came to visit you but you were already asleep, so I thought I'd take some time to sit here and think. There hasn't been much time for quiet these last few days. Not a bad thing. Not a bad thing at all considering the times we're in. Sometimes though you need a bit of solitude." I nodded, I didn't begrudge him that, this man had the hardest job in the village.
"I wanted to... Ah, before we get onto that I have a small question. Is it Kei or Ko you prefer to go by?" He chuckled softly, "I have heard you go by each even within the same conversation."
I shrugged "Minato was the one that came up with Ko, Kushina decided on Kei when I reached the village. Neither will be convinced to choose the other so I've decided to take a kind of neutral stance for the sake of my own health Hokage."
He laughed a little at that too, "Ah yes it would not do to get on Kushina's bad side, did you know they have started calling her the red hot habenero for her temper?" I shook my head "Strange, that her strongest rages are brought about not by insults to herself but insults to those she considers family, though I guess that is part of the will of fire." I got the impression he wasn't talking entirely to me at that moment, perhaps more musing to himself. After a few moments he seemed to gather himself "In any case I shall call you Keiko, it seems only wise that I too remain a neutral in this small war you've inadvertently created," He smiled "In truth I came here because I felt I owed you an apology" I began to wave it away and opened my mouth to tell him it was not necessary but he stopped me with a hand, "Permit me to at least apologise Keiko, it seems we could have avoided this entire fiasco if I had simply asked you in the first place, you gave us no reason other than being who you are for having suspicions of you."
"You have nothing to apologise for Hokage, you are already forgiven. I think I can understand the weight that must come from being the leader of a village, you can't sacrifice the safety of your people for one newcomer."
The Hokage was silent for a moment before he said "Thank you Keiko. I'm glad of your understanding. Now though," He reached for the lamp again, "I had better be away before Tsunade catches me after visiting hours, I'll have no quiet for the rest of my days otherwise." and somewhere between the disappearing light of the lamp and the darkness closing in the Hokage disappeared from the room.
Tsunade let me go the next afternoon but not before a full medical, a long battery of tests that poked and prodded and pinched and stung in places that I wasn't even aware it was possible to run a test on, I did complain at one point but Tsunade said I would be expected to subject myself to these exams regularly after becoming a ninja so I had better get used to them. She seemed to become more thorough in her tests after that as well so I decided it was safer to just stay quiet.
I headed to Kakashi's house first but found there was no one at home, so I assumed he must still be at the academy. Heading home it felt like it had been much longer than five days since I had opened my door and I realised what I was really missing being stuck in the hospital was something to read.
I opened the door and nearly had a heart attack for the 2nd time in as many days as people jumped up shouting "SURPRISE!". Somehow Jiraiya, Minato, Kushina, Kakashi, Sakumo, Guy, Tuechi and even (somehow) Tsunade had managed to squeeze themselves into my living room. I suspected Tsunade must have raced here from the hospital after my physical.
Luckily it turned out I didn't need to worry about everyone fitting into my house since they had set up tables and chairs with food behind the building, I got the feeling that most of the organisation was done by Kushina judging by the amount of ramen available.
It wasn't long before Minato took me aside and I could already tell what he was going to say by his face, the shadows he had hanging under his eyes from when he got back from his mission had gone but a different beast lurked there now; guilt.
"Ko," He started, "I should apologise for some of the things I told you, for the things I kept from you."
I nodded seriously "You should. But you know what? It's too late." Minato looked so crestfallen I couldn't leave him out for too long, "It's too late because I've already forgiven you."
He looked confused but at my grin he realised I wasn't all that angry with him, I gripped his forearm and wrapped my other arm around him "Really though, if you do something like that again I might have to show you how good I've gotten at sealing things away." I said, only half joking, he laughed nervously in return and we made our way back to the party where Jiraiya was gamely trying to beat Kushina in a ramen eating contest overlooked by a swift Tuechi who was filling up bowls before the previous ones were even finished.
When Kushina eventually won - I don't think anyone expected anything different - the bowls were stacked so high some of the one's on the bottom look to have cracked under the weight of those above them. I took the opportunity to lift a very bloated Jiraiya to his feet and guide him to a bench.
"So how do you feel about all this." I said sitting next to him
He didn't need to ask what I was talking about, "You know, I never intended something like this to happen." He sat back, groaning a little at his dilated stomach "But now that it has, I think maybe it might be for the best." He looked at me, "I can't promise to always be around, you know, but I can see you've made plenty of friends so I'm not too worried about you... It's kind of ironic that you were suspected as being a spy, did you know that?"
I shook my head frowning "No, why?"
"Well this isn't common knowledge so don't tell anyone but I spent much of the last war creating my own information network, I'm something like the unofficial spymaster of Konoha."
I did see the comedy in that and couldn't help but smile at the thought.
"I'll be here as much as I can make time to be though." He promised "I don't think Tsunade would let me do otherwise" he said laughing and I grinned back.
A few minutes later we could see Tsunade and Sakumo were both sending looks off in our direction, plainly wanting to talk to either me or Jiraiya but respectful enough to give me some time alone with Jiraiya. We decided to put them out of their misery and made our way back towards the party.
When I got back to the Academy I found out that the official story they had given for my absence was a training related injury, Saku didn't seem too impressed, he was always impressing upon us the importance of safety when training so I wasn't surprised when he kept me back after class to give me a lecture on properly warming up and not pushing beyond our limits. I listened diligently and fortunately it didn't last took long, when I finally left the academy I found Kakashi waiting for me with his father.
"Want to come back to my house? My dad's going to be showing me a new chakra exercise." He said
I thought about it, I already had my chakra control as well controlled as I felt it was going to get, but I knew Sakumo was one of the best ninja in the village, the likelihood that he would have something of value to share was good enough that I decided turning him down wasn't really a choice.
"Sure," I said smiling up at Sakumo.
When we got back to Kakashi's house Sakumo passed us both a kunai each and told us to start running up trees amrking with the kunai how far we had made it up. Kakashi looked a little confused but I had seen Minato do something similar back during the fight at the orphanage so running at a tree towards the edge of Sakumo's garden I placed my first foot on the tree and then started directing chakra to my feet and on my second step it became apparent I had miscalculated somewhere, there was an explosion and pieces of tree and bark went flying in all directions, I myself flew backwards through the air landing in a heap near Sakumo and Kakashi.
Everyone was silent a few moments as the sounds of the tree's trunk splintering and snapping as it fell to one side. Once it had finished falling Sakumo brought his head out of his hands.
"Not quite Ko, but you have the idea… Just use much much less chakra than that next time" he said
I looked in shock at the fractured tree stump I had left and nodded dumbly.
"Perhaps it would be best if I gave a demonstration," he said walking up to another tree, "The trick is to to apply the right amount of chakra." He placed his foot on the tree "Too much," the bark beneath his feet broke and his leg came away from the tree "and you push yourself away, too little," He placed his foot on the tree again and began to lift his other foot but the foot he had on the tree slid down, "and you won't have a good enough grip."
Kakashi and I nodded and, finding different trees, made our own attempts. To my surprise Kakashi made it a quarter of the way up his tree on his first try. For myself, rather than making a running start I put my foot on the tree to begin with and gradually eked out the chakra to my foot, when I felt I had a strong enough grip I lifted my other leg and started trying to channel chakra there. It was difficult but step by step I was making my way up the tree, sliding back a few inches sometimes but moving forward with increasing confidence.
By the time I had made it halfway up my tree Kakashi had reached the same level, though this was his 7th or 8th attempt at running at the tree. By the time I had made it to the top of my tree Kakashi had made it roughly three quarters of the way up, Sakumo called me down.
"It seems you have an intrinsic understanding of where your chakra is at all times Ko, I don't think I've seen someone able to channel chakra so deliberately and easily. If you didn't have so much chakra you would have made a great medic." I nodded at his praise and at that moment Kakashi shouted down from the top of his tree his arms raised in a rare fit of public celebration.
"What do you have next?" I asked Sakumo, the chakra training exercise had been useful not just for the increased chakra control but for allowing us to now climb up solid surfaces without handholds, I was beginning to think that anything strange in this world could just be explained away by chakra, it was like magic. I realised when I had started I had never tried pushing chakra out from other parts of my body other than my hands, I put away that piece of information for later because I suddenly came to the conclusion that there must be many places around the body that chakra can exude from.
He rubbed the back of his head laughing "Honestly I never thought you'd get this far so quickly I didn't really have anything else prepared. Other than dinner that is."
He added the last and Kakashi was down out if his tree in moments. Sakumo's food was just too good.
When I headed home after dinner Kakashi came with me, I was wondering why but it didn't take long to find out.
"So why were you in the hospital?" Kakashi asked.
"Didn't you hear? Terrible training accident, you know how much of an idiot I am, I let myself loose on a training dummy and...No?" He didn't look like he was buying it.
"You don't end up in a coma for 5 days with Tsunade of all people looking after you from a 'training accident'." He deadpanned
I thought about it for a moment, technically I think Jiraiya being my father was still sort of a secret, or at least I hadn't gotten confirmation either way from either Jiraiya or the Hokage and the events that took place in the Hokage's office were definitely a closed book. "I'm.. not sure if I can. Orders of the Hokage I promise." I replied.
He looked at me skeptically, "Sure… Does it have anything to do with how you're suddenly friends with Jiraiya? I saw you two talking a lot at the party yesterday."
"My lips are sealed." I said, and Kakashi let it drop knowing he wasn't going to get anything else out of me.
When I got back to my house I used the evening to study fuinjutsu, so absorbed was I that I didn't notice my window was open until I felt the breeze from outside, looking up I saw Jiraiya leaning on the window ledge.
"How's it going kid?" He asked
I grinned seeing him, Jiraiya was so easy going that you sometimes forgot he was a trained killer and not just that but one of the elite in the village. "Not too bad, just brushing up on my fuinjutsu - Kushina would kill me if I started slacking, coma or not." I joked
"Fuinjutsu eh?" He climbed in looking at the scroll I was reading, eventually giving a whistle "This is some really advanced stuff. You sure you understand all of this?" He said grinning
I knew he was joking but I nodded anyway "This is just revision, I know most of this stuff already" Jiraiya seemed to size me up for a minute before saying, "How'd you like to drop the books for the evening and I take you outside and teach you a jutsu or two?"
I didn't need to be asked twice.
The first jutsu he taught me didn't have a name but it caused my hair to length and harden into a kind of jagged shield, Jiraiya's could expand and grow to shield a few people but as it stood my hair was only big enough to cloak myself. It took a while to get right but by the time we had finished I was experimenting with other possibilities like stretching it over my hands to act as a kind of spiky glove.
The second jutsu he taught me I hadn't been able to perform despite his best efforts to show me where I was going wrong, it was called Swamp of The Underworld, it certainly looked amazing when Jiraiya used it, it changed an entire field into a boggy swamp, definitely a game changer in a larger battle. He did tell me that at first I'd be lucky to get something even close to a quarter of the size of what he created, I had to give up trying towards the end of the session because the technique was so chakra intensive, even though I never succeeded in executing it the chakra still got expended. He clapped my shoulder on the way back to my house.
"No need to worry kid, Earth jutsu might just not be for you."
I nodded tiredly in response, I wanted to ask what he meant by 'not for me' but my feet were barely making progress on the dirt road back to where I lived.
"I'm glad I caught you today, I have to back out on a mission from tomorrow so I might not see you again for a while."
Something about that made me upset but in kind of a detached way, I was struggling to think through what he was saying and then the ground was coming up to meet me.
I think Jiraiya must have caught me because the next thing I knew I was being held on his back my head laying on his enormous mane of hair.I think I could hear him laughing about something in the distance.
I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew I was being laid onto a soft futon, I tried to open my eyes but they wouldn't open beyond me just being able to make out a silhouette between the slits of my eyelids.
"Sweet dreams kid."
I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore and I slept.
From then my Academy days seemed to fly by, I didn't see Jiraiya again and a great part of me missed spending time with him, the amount we were being asked to learn in class though had really shifted up and some nights I found I was having to bring work home rather than using the evenings to work on fuinjutsu.
My medical at the hospital came back a few weeks later and indicated I had an abundance of Yin chakra. Tsunade's words were "A freakishly large amount". It seemed to explain my large chakra reserves as the more I trained my body the more Yang chakra I had to combine and use techniques, Tsunade suspected it also had something to do with my accelerated growth, by the time I was three quarters of the way through my academy year I had already grown to 5 foot. It also explained why I felt as if I still had more chakra to use after using up my available chakra, there was a vast pool of yin chakra that was untapped and unusable. Tsunade lamented that I wasn't very good at genjutsu, with that amount of Yin chakra she had told me my genjutsu would have been some of the strongest in the village.
My mornings now were when I trained physically, I got up at 5 every morning and trained until I had to leave for the academy at 8:45, Kakashi was a great help as he was always coming by to remind me before I got too involved in my training and I left myself late. Saku didn't hold with students that weren't punctual. Kakashi himself didn't ask anything more about the incident that landed me in hospital which I was thankful for, I could tell it had bugged him at the time as well, sometimes I felt like I didn't deserve a friend like Kakashi.
I wanted to learn more about some subjects like elemental jutsu but with the pressure leading up to exams there wasn't much chance at all of that.
It was just a few days before the end of year graduation exam when Jiraiya came back to the village.
"The academy is getting really tiresome lately" Kakashi observed, "I don't see why we need to know some of these things, I mean practicing how to draw profiles? What use is that"
I looked over to Kakashi, We were on our way back from the academy, "You know completing a mission isn't the end of a mission right? If you see a suspicious individual on a mission how are you going to put it into your report if you can't at least pass on a likeness of how he looked"
Kakashi huffed, knowing I was right but not happy about it.
Suddenly I found myself going up in the world until I was dropped onto a set of shoulders, "How's it going kid?"
"Jiraiya!" I exclaimed
"The one and only." He said grinning, "How's the academy going."
"Same as always," I replied smugly, "I get tests every now and again and I ace them."
Jiraiya barked a laugh, "That's my boy."
I jumped hearing that and looked at Kakashi who hadn't reacted, after a few moments he noticed me and glanced up at me "What? Have you seen how you two look next to each other, it only took me a few weeks to put it together."
I chuckled at my worry and Jiraiya nodded "Yeah, Sakumo told me a while ago that it was kind of hard to miss, It's regarded as something of an open secret at this point Ko."
"So how about how he ended up in the hospital 6 months ago?" Kakashi asked.
Jiraiya looked down at him, "Still very much a closed secret I'm afraid"
Kakashi huffed through his mask.
"How about I take you two kids to a training ground and teach you a thing or two?" Jiraiya asked.
"I'm not going to say no." Kakashi deadpanned as I threw up my arms in celebration very nearly losing my balance on Jiraiya's shoulders.
AN: Phew I really struggled with dialogue to begin with but I think I'm getting used to it, the same with fight scenes sometimes I think I'm giving too much detail... oh well hopefully they're OK anyway. I hope there aren't too many spelling/grammer errors I do try and read back through but I always see one or two once I've submitted. This upload schedule of one chapter a day has lasted a while and I'm not sure how long I can keep it up so don't get too used to it. Hope you enjoy. See you in the next chapter. It might, at least partially, be from Jiraiya's point of View.
Bonus Round: Review responses! (part 2)
I've really gotten a lot of reviews recently and I want to thank those that left positive reviews, I wanted to just address a few that I had seen.
So the first thing is I've had a few people remark that Keiko is a female name and they're right it is usually given to females but it isn't exclusively female, for example there was a Japanese emperor named Keiko.
The next thing is some people seemed confused as to the timeline of Naruto, the chapters so far have taken place at the closing of the second shinobi world war, the 3rd comes in about 5 years if I remember correctly.
After that I've had some suggestions on what to do with the story, I've already got the broad strokes up to and past the 3rd shinobi war already marked out in my head though it feels weird to have it take so long to have something in my head to be translated into text, I'm not going to retcon anything I've done so far and it's unlikely I'll do anything with suggestions I'm given. A lot of people seem to be thinking of the konoha 11 and how they're coming into the story. I wouldn't worry so much we're still nearly 10 years away from them even being born and when we eventually reach that point things might look very different though honestly I've only got vague ideas of what the story will look like at that point.