Appreciation is, as you might imagine, pretty much dead. The last chapter was uploaded on December 24, 2008 - or more than twelve years ago. I was, however, recently reminded of it due to a related story I posted on a creative writing forum as an omake to another person's work.

Appreciation was originally posted on yet another creative writing forum (that is regrettably no longer online, although the community has moved on, and an archive of the original thread is still available if you look), then edited to be posted here. I never did, however, get around to posting all of it... due in large part to the fact that I never reached the point where I intended for this "chapter" to end. One of the people who enjoyed my omake got around to asking me why I didn't post what I had here if I had more... and I didn't really have a good answer. Hence me throwing this up.

I also have a "future scenes" document that I may edit into a "chapter" if I get the chance - it'll hopefully give you some idea of where I was going with this.

Also, apologies for the messed-up formatting. The site ate much of what I originally uploaded.

With that said, please enjoy.


Appreciation,

A Naruto Fanfiction,

By Aleh

Chapter Eight: Of Gentle Sunlight and the Sahara, Part Four


Disclaimer:

I do not own any of the series used or referenced in this story. Said series are the properties of their creators and/or publishers.


As I had an hour or so before the shift change, I decided to take care of some other business. Yuuhi Kurenai's habits weren't exactly secret, nor was the location of her favorite training ground. Perhaps more importantly, said training ground was located reasonably close to the hospital. Travelling there was a matter of minutes.

I didn't expect to find Kurenai pouring a cup of sake as she sat on a nearby bench. She froze as she sensed my approach only to shake her head as she recognized who I was. "Come to gloat?" she asked, sipping her cup.

I blinked, not understanding. "I came here to thank you, actually."

"Thank me?"

"For looking after Hinata-chan," I clarified.

"I... see. Just what is she to you?"

"Many things," I admitted. "But... she's one of the people who I most respect in this world and the closest thing I have to a daughter."

"Is that so?" Kurenai cocked an eyebrow. "You'd go so far as to use..."

"Use?" I shook my head. "She managed to surprise me quite a bit today... I'm afraid that her loyalty to Naruto-kun is her own doing, not mine."

"What do you mean?"

"She's in love with him," I explained. "I knew she liked him, that she admired him, even that she found him attractive... but she really, truly loves him. I think she's only beginning to understand the true depth of her feelings, but I assure you that they're not my doing."

Kurenai momentarily closed her eyes and took a sip of her sake.

"I've had a number of surprises today. Regarding her... sudden change in behavior... she knew about how I'd been forbidden from contacting Naruto-kun. The way she acted in the Academy was apparently an act, intended to prevent people from thinking that I was using her as an intermediary."

"And the way she was... behaving... towards Naruto-kun?"

"I have a... collection of materials... intended for use in bribing Jiraiya. Hinata-chan apparently got into them and decided that she wanted to... try certain things out... with Naruto-kun."

Kurenai promptly downed the rest of her cup and refilled it. "Ah. Just another of those... accidents... that seem to surround you?"

I chuckled. "You could say that, although this one may have been destiny. She would have fallen for him even if I'd never been summoned here..."

"I thought you didn't believe in destiny."

"I hate it and believe that it can be changed," I corrected. "I don't believe that it always has to be."

"So your intention was..."

"For Hinata-chan and Naruto-kun to be happy. If they're happy together..."

"I see," Kurenai replied, downing another cup of the ridiculously alcoholic fluid.

"That's why I was happy to hear that you'd taken Hinata-chan under your wing. I've done the best I could, but she could really use a mother-figure. There are some things that I just couldn't teach her..."

"Like more... appropriate seduction tactics?"

"I didn't teach her seduction tactics at all," I pointed out. "Besides, do you really think that anything more... subtle... would have worked? Sakura-chan and I had to explain things to Naruto-kun anyway - he didn't understand what Hinata-chan's actions meant."

Kurenai promptly poured another cup of her alcoholic beverage and swallowed it. "He's that clueless?"

"He was." I shook my head. "I hope that he's improved somewhat. It's something to work on."

"Ah."

"More to the point," I asked in somewhat feigned concern, "drinking like this isn't like you."

Kurenai was Hinata's teacher and seemed to be doing her best at it. Anything that would hurt her could affect Hinata.

"Yes, well, you saw to that rather nicely," Kurenai remarked as she poured another cup. "It isn't like me to be defeated by a fresh graduate from the academy, either."

"Hinata-chan managed that?" I inquired, rather impressed.

"Yes! What were you thinking, teaching a technique like that to an academy student?"

I blinked. I'd taught Hinata several techniques, after all... "I was thinking that it was a technique that was both useful and suited to her nature."

"You think that that... you do realize that she'll never be able to master killing intent, right?"

Ah. So she was talking about that technique. "So? It's not like killing intent is all that useful on most shinobi... and you've seen how effective her alternative is."

"It is... surprising to hear such a thing from one of Konoha's foremost masters of killing intent."

"There is no use teaching those techniques to one not suited for them. Even had I not taught Hinata-chan what I did, she never would have mastered them."

Kurenai promptly took another shot of sake.

I shook my head at that. "Really, though," I added, pulling out a scroll, "I wanted you to have this."

The genjutsu mistress promptly focused on it. "Oh?"

"It's a rather insignificant thing on its own, but...," I stated, tossing it to her. Catching it was hardly ifficult for her, even in her inebriated state, although she did have to put down her sake bottle to do so.

"This is..."

"It's a technique scroll," I explained. "Consider it a gift and a 'thank you'."

Kurenai put down her cup. "What... sort of technique?"

"It's a fairly simple genjutsu, one of the more fundamental and useful ones of my style."

It wasn't designed to do anything complex, either - it simply caused the target to recall a specific memory via a process called 'cueing'. It had a rather annoying restriction, though, despite its simplicity - the user had to be present for the event that the target was made to recall.

It was a phenominally useful technique anyway.

"Oh?"

"In fact, it's the one that my false memory technique is based on."

The red-eyed kunoichi looked at my scroll with new respect. "I see."

"And I should be excusing myself now," I admitted. "I have some errands to run and I promised Naruto-kun that I'd explain the concepts of 'bunke' and 'souke' to him later."

"He doesn't already know?"

I shook my head. "Who would explain them to him?"

To Kurenai's credit, she seemed quite disturbed by that fact.


I was several rooftops away when I came across a woman in a brown trench-coat, a miniskirt, some fishnet, and very little else. I'd long since gotten used to the rather mild level of strangeness that Mitarashi Anko represented and would have simply ignored her and continued on my way except for one thing which suggested that she just might want to talk to me.

Namely, she was waving a giant flag reading, "Oi, Hakaishin Recca! I want to talk to you!"

Taking the rather blatant hint, I stopped my roofhopping and landed in front of her. "I take it you want to talk to me about something?" I rhetorically asked.

"Yeah," she confirmed. "What did you do to Nai-chan?"

I raised an eyebrow. The only person who I knew she associated with and whose name contained "Nai" was... "You mean Yuuhi Kurenai?"

"Of course!" she confirmed. "It's really not like her to drink like that...," she chided, pointing a finger firmly into my chest as she threw her sign off to the side. "I don't know how, but I know it's your fault."

I shook my head. "I didn't do anything to her. Her students, on the other hand..." I shrugged. "I may have taught Hyuuga Hinata-sama a few techniques that took her by surprise."

Anko shook her head. "Oh, really?"

"Yes, really." I smirked. "And Kurenai-san has yet to see that I taught Hinata-chan Kuchiyose, too..."

"Summoning?! What contract? You didn't give her the kaijuu, did you?"

I chuckled. "Of course not. Hinata-chan is entirely the wrong type for them. No, I gave her the rabbit contract."

Anko started laughing, removing her finger from my chest while taking a step back in her mirth. "Rabbits?! You gave her rabbits?"

"Don't underestimate them," I warned her. "They're vicious little buggers."

Anko paled. "They're that bad?"

"I can't control them. Hinata-chan can."

"... Why would you give something like that... what did she do to...," Anko mumbled, taken aback.

"A single flower in the right place, at the right time, for the right reasons, can change the course of history. Hyuuga Hinata-sama provided such a flower."

"That's not much of an answer," the brown-eyed kunoichi replied.

"It's all that you'll get," I firmly stated.

Anko sighed and seemed to deflate. "You've changed," she observed.

"Of course," I agreed. "Everyone changes. Such is the way of things, is it not?"

The black-haired special jounin shook her head. "That's not what I meant. What happened to the kind man who tried to comfort me after..." She reflexively moved a hand towards her neck, giving me a pretty good idea of what she was talking about. Besides, I hadn't exactly tried to comfort her on a large number of occasions.

I promptly snorted. "You, of all people, should have understood," I chastised her. "Remember my words to you that day. Think about them. I think you already know the answer."

Not giving the suddenly frozen kunoichi a chance to respond, I used shunshin to travel to the other side of a nearby water-tower. As I looked back before continuing my journey, I noticed that the normally brash and enthusiastic kunoichi seemed lost in thought, most likely remembering the day she had told me that she didn't need my pity.

I hadn't pitied her, and I'd quickly corrected that belief. I'd actually respected and admired her ability to recover, to bounce back after being utterly, totally betrayed by someone so close to her.

It was also the day that I'd admitted to her that I wasn't sure if I'd be able to do the same thing. Being betrayed by someone close to me had been my worst fear, after all...

My memories of that day and of what had happened to change my worst fear haunted me throughout the rest of my trip back to my apartment.


Clearing out an extra path through the traps in my apartment took a while, but I felt that it was time well-spent. Thyme-chan's help sped things up somewhat, even if I had to double-check her work from time to time and she set off several of the traps in her overly enthusiastic efforts to help. It was fine by me; none of the traps she set off were lethal - or even severely injurious - to either of us.

None of them left behind a residue that would harm Naruto, either, so her help was quite welcome. I wasn't stupid enough to have all of my traps be based on poison.

I wasn't stupid enough to let people know that, either. Most people thought that my apartment was a quagmire of various poisons. It wasn't true - I doubted that I used more than four liters of sarin between all of my traps...

Okay, so the total also included a few liters of cyanide... a liter or so of VX... a deciliter or so of an enhanced version of Bothrops asper venom... a few fluid ounces of brown recluse venom... around a liter of assorted mycotoxins... a room filled with aflatoxins...

Still, that wasn't the point. Most of my traps weren't poisonous.

Also contrary to rumor, I didn't have a stockpile of nukes stored in - or buried under - my apartment, set to go off if anyone broke in. I wasn't going to risk storing potentially lethal radioactives anywhere that Hinata - and now, hopefully, Naruto - visited regularly. That's why they were buried under Danzou's bedroom.

Taking a moment to pull a black mamba's tooth and venom sac out of Thyme-chan's root system, I smiled and lightly stroked her leaves. "Good girl, Thyme-chan. Thanks for the help."

Unable to talk, Thyme-chan just lovingly pressed herself against me for a moment before she flew down the hall, visibly cheered up. For a potted plant, Thyme-chan was certainly emotional... but I wouldn't have her any other way.

I left my apartment in a fairly good mood and headed back to the hospital. Duck-boy was waiting.


When I returned to the hospital I found Sasuke in somewhat better spirits than I'd left him. Admittedly that wasn't saying much, but he wasn't actively crying... which was a good first step.

"Sensei?" he asked, putting down the book I'd given him as I entered his room. "About what you told me..."

"Yes?"

"Are you... sure about what you told me?"

"That depends. What part?"

"About... the mangekyou..."

"Ah. Well... no. Every fact I told you was true, yes, as was the story of Charles Whitman. Was that what happened to Itachi?" I shrugged. "It's what I suspect, but I'm afraid that the only one who knows for sure is Itachi himself."

"Oh..." Sasuke shuddered.

"Does it matter?" I asked.

Sasuke blinked. "What do you mean?" he angrily asked.

"Does it change anything? If that's what happened, Itachi needs to be put down like a rabid dog. If it's not, you still need to kill him... if only to satisfy your own thirst for vengeance. Either way..."

Sasuke blinked again, obviously not having thought of that. "Oh. I see." He decisively shook his head. "If it's the case... I need to know..."

I nodded. "It would be a danger to future generations of the Uchiha, wouldn't it?"

"Yeah."

"Then you need to find out, don't you? I'll warn you that it might be difficult..."

"What... what do you mean?"

"How do you plan to find out? By asking him, perhaps?"

"Hn," Sasuke grunted.

"Well, you'll need to think about that one. I don't have a recording of the mangekyou, so I can't tell you much more than I already have..."

"Yeah," Sasuke agreed. "If... Is there a way to get one?"

I frowned. "It would be tricky," I allowed, "but yes. The thing is... there's not too much room for sneakery there. You'd have to utterly, totally outclass Itachi to get one without his cooperation. Itachi knows about my tags and what they do, so most of the strategies I used wouldn't work..."

"What about disguising the tag as something else?"

I shook my head. "They're like exploding tags in that..."

While you could layer exploding tags or cover them with a genjutsu, you couldn't ink or paint over them. Even covering certain parts of their seals with another paper was problematic - while they could be /stored/ that way, they couldn't be activated that way.

I could get around it by ensuring that there was a certain amount of space between the tags in a stack, but that was too much of a hassle most of the time.

"I see... Itachi would see through a genjutsu..."

I nodded. "He also has seen my seal-tags, so he'd probably recognize what they were." I shrugged. "There's a pretty easy solution, though."

"Oh?"

I solemnly nodded my head. "Simply throwing a tag at him and hoping it sticks is a pretty low-quality attack, but you know what they say..."

"What?"

"In war, quantity has a quality all its own," I intoned, parting one of the world's great truths to my student.

Sasuke stared at me dumbly.

"In other words, he'd be able to evade one prety easily. We just have to throw a few hundred thousand at him and hope that at least one of them takes a good reading."

Sasuke sweatdropped. "Are you sure that'd work?"

"How do you think I got a recording from your father? It's not like I could just /ask/..." I shrugged. "Although /he/ only took a few thousand tags..."

Sasuke was at something of a loss so we just sat in silence for a bit. Getting tired of the silence, I decided to speak up. "Would you like to see something rather neat?" I offered, changing the topic.

"What do you mean?"

I grabbed the backrest of one of the chairs that the hospital had available for guests with my left hand. "I thought I'd show you one of the techniques I plan to teach you."

"Umm... yeah. Sure."

I took a moment to focus my senses on the chakra in the chair. It was a common misconception that chakra was only present in living things, but the simple truth of it was that there were traces of it almost everywhere. While it was true that chakra was only created by living things, anything that made chakra also leaked at least traces of it. A chair had nowhere as near as much of it as even a normal civilian, but it was still there.

It was a good thing that the hospital used wooden chairs, though; I wouldn't have been able to demonstrate on a metal one.

Feeling the chakra in the chair, I twisted the chakra in my hand just so, letting the chair's chakra draw my own chakra through and carrying my hand with it. To all appearances, however, I just closed my hand, the wood of the chair doing nothing to stop my fingers.

Sasuke leaned towards me. "That... wasn't just strength, was it?" he rhetorically asked.

I shook my head. "No," I admitted, opening my hand and running my fingers through another section of the wood. The chair would have to be replaced, but it was no great loss. "It's called 'takatsume no jutsu.'"

"What are its limits?"

I grinned. "In theory, it'd let you do that to anything - chairs, trees, armor... enemies..."

"In theory?" Sasuke parroted.

"Yes," I allowed. "It requires pretty good chakra control and either very good chakra senses or the ability to see chakra. For the most part, the less chakra something has and the more... active, I suppose you could say... the chakra in it is, the harder the technique is to use on them."

"Why haven't I heard of this before? My clan..."

"Collected records on more jutsu than you can easily count? Well, yeah, but I still managed to regularly surprise them anyway. Takatsume is something that I managed to create while doing some theoretical work on the nature of chakra... and it takes far too much concentration for me to use it in combat, so it's not something that I've shown many people."

"Then why are you going to teach it to me?"

I shrugged my shoulders slightly. "The main reason I need to use so much concentration is that I have to focus my chakra senses on the details of the motions of the target's chakra. You should be able to neatly bypass that problem by using the Deus Ex Machingan."

My student frowned at the reminder of his damaged eyes. "I see. There are other restrictions, I assume?"

"Yeah," I agreed. "There's a limit to the size of the body part you can use it with and it can't really be used as a piercing attack. It's pretty useful for slashing attacks with the fingers, but..."

"In the end, it's only one jutsu."

"Yes, of course," I replied before forcing myself to perk up. "That's why I don't plan for it to be the only thing I teach you."

Sasuke nodded.

"Now," I asked, "how do you feel about getting out of this place?"

Sasuke grinned, thoughts of his brother forgotten for the moment. I fully understood - I'd have been going more than a little stir-crazy in his shoes.


Ensuring that Sasuke was properly dismissed from the hospital took very little time. A bit of... creative paperwork... later there was no obvious record of emo-boy's stay, the records instead showing that a villager had been treated for the aftereffects of an... accident... with a razor blade.

After giving Sasuke the doctors' advice - that he could train a bit before calling it a day but that he shouldn't try anything too difficult - I went to look for Naruto. After spending a while searching his usual haunts and being unable to find him, I nearly jumped when I felt a sudden pressure on my shoulder.

Whirling around and unsealing my shotgun, I prepared for an ambush... only to come face to face with a familiar potted plant. I quickly relaxed and, with a simple application of chakra, sealed my shotgun back into my left glove. "Hey, Thyme-chan," I remarked. "You startled me."

Thyme-chan's leaves drooped, making her look somewhat apologetic. How a potted plant could manage that wasn't something I'd figure out easily, but Thyme-chan managed to pull it off anyway.

I chuckled at the display. "You don't need to be sorry," I reassured her. "You didn't do anything wrong. So... what brings you out from the building?"

Thyme-chan perked up somewhat at my reassurances and responded to the question by making a sort of hooking motion with one of her tendrils, forming a somewhat "come here" or "this way" gesture.

"You want me to follow you?" I asked.

Thyme-chan perked up even more, wrapping a tendril around my wrist and gently pulling. I took it to mean "yes."

Despite being able to fly, Thyme-chan wasn't terribly fast. She could easily maintain what would be a credible sprinting pace for a civilian, but the sort of speeds that ninja regularly travelled at were beyond her. On the other hand - or tendril, in Thyme-chan's case - she could literally travel as the crow flies and take a straight-line path, ignoring the need for a convenient branch to bounce off of or a rooftop to land on.

We made decent time, and it didn't take me long to realize that she was taking me towards my apartment. I was, however, rather startled when she made a sudden detour as we approached, stopping on (or, in Thyme-chan's case, above) a rooftop less than a block away from where we lived. Waving a tendril to catch my attention, Thyme-chan promptly pointed it towards a point below us.

Taking a look at where she was pointing, I saw Naruto leaning against an electrical pole and staring at the front door of my building.

"Thanks, Thyme-chan!" I said, jumping down to greet him.

Thyme-chan followed at a more sedate pace, presumably not wanting to crack her pot. Naruto, on the other hand, started as I triangle-jumped off of the pole he was standing under to slow my momentum and backflipped to land in front of him.

"Hey, Naruto-kun," I greeted, waving a hand.

"Ah!" Naruto shouted, pressing his back against the pole.

I winced. "Sorry about that," I apologized. "I didn't mean to startle you."

Naruto relaxed. "Yeah, well... you did." Seeing my face, however, he quickly raised his hands. "It's okay, though, ojisan - I'm not angry or anything..."

Seeing his face, I couldn't help but laugh. "Anyway," I commented after a brief chuckle, "I was just looking for you. Thyme-chan and I cleared out a path through the traps for you to use."

Naruto blinked.

"Your old room's still there. I took the liberty of setting it up as a pretty basic bedroom; if you ever want to stay there, you're more than welcome."

Naruto just gave me an incredulous stare.

"No, really! I want you to!"

Naruto shook his head. "It's not that. I'm just weirded out by the fact that you had a potted plant help you."

I promptly facefaulted.


Ten minutes later, I'd shown Naruto the path that I'd cleared for him and settled him into my study. "So," I asked after I finished making sure that he remembered the route in detail, "was there something you wanted to talk to me about?"

Naruto straightened up. "Yeah. About Hinata-chan..."

"What about her?"

"Why does she... what should I..."

"Why does she want to share her bed with you and what should you do about it?"

Naruto firmly nodded. "Yeah."

I smiled. "You weren't exactly awake for that part of our discussion, were you?" I asked.

Naruto blinked. "You talked about that?"

"Her feelings for you, anyway," I confirmed. "As for the answer, it's actually rather simple. She loves you."

My favorite student's eyes bugged out as he took a step backwards. "W... what?"

"Hinata-chan is in love with you," I calmly restated.

"Y- you mean in love, love? Like..."

"Like she wants you to be happy, wants to spend the rest of her life with you, and wants to bear your children? Well, I don't think she's given that much thought to that last one, but yes."

The blond boy promptly sat down on one of my chairs. I didn't object. "W... why? How?" he asked, his voice tinged with something that I couldn't really identify.

I pulled the chair from my desk and sat down next to him. "Tell me, do you remember the first time you met Hinata-sama?"

"Wasn't that the first day of the Academy?"

I shook my head. "No... you'd met her once before then."

"What do you mean?"

"You probably don't remember, but it was a few weeks after you... stopped living with me. You were sitting in one of the swings in the park, crying. I wanted to go to you, to comfort you, to tell you that everything would be alright, but I knew you'd be killed if I did..."

Naruto looked up sharply at that.

"Either that or I would have been," I confirmed. "I didn't know what to do, I was desperate, trying to decide on my path..." I sighed. "And then a little girl passed by and saw you sitting there."

"Hinata-chan?"

"Yes," I agreed. "Hinata-sama saw you crying, plucked a flower from someone's yard, and gave it to you. It wasn't much, I know, but..."

Naruto seemed somewhat taken aback by that.

"... it made all the difference, you know? Even if I hadn't been summoned here, Hinata-sama would have come to care for you. What she did... it was a reminder that there was still hope, that I still had a chance to help you... and that there were still people in Konoha who were worth protecting." I slowly shook my head, trying to clear out the memories of the day I had decided to become a ninja. "Hinata-sama doesn't remember it, but what she did... it meant the world to me."

I wasn't entirely certain what had become of that flower afterwards, but I'd later picked another of the moon poppies from that field and pressed it. Glancing at where the blossom resided in a picture-frame on my desk, I continued my explanation. "I tried to thank her for that later, you know... I didn't have much time for a while, but it was the start of our relationship."

The fact that my efforts tended to... snowball... accounted for a good number of the complications in it, too. The Kumogakure incident alone...

"I see, but..."

I chuckled. "She knows," I stated.

"What?" Naruto exclaimed, nearly - but not quite - leaping out of his chair.

"She knows enough. It's hard to say exactly how much - she tends to surprise me on that - but she knows what you've been through, about the challenges you've faced and how you've faced them... and, at some point, watching you go through all of that, she fell for you."

"Wh... but..."

"It's best to just accept it, Naruto-kun," I advised my student.

"Yes, but..." Naruto paused a moment as he visibly gathered his thoughts. "I barely know her! How can I just accept somthing like that without..."

I smiled broadly, closing my eyes and raising a finger to form a distinct expression that I'd perfected in my "wandering priest" disguise. "Then just ignoring it is fine," I stated in a rather playful tone that I normally used for declaring that something was a secret before I dropped the act and resumed my normal posture.

"What?!" Naruto practically shouted.

"You were going to get to know her anyway, weren't you?" I rhetorically asked, my voice serious. "Learn about her, get to know her. If you come to return her feelings, that's fine. If you do not..." I paused. "Hinata-sama wants you to be happy, Naruto-kun. If you don't return her feelings and come to fall for someone else, Hinata-sama will support you in that relationship."

It wouldn't be pleasant for her if that happened, but it was better than trying to live a lie. Besides, if Hinata's earlier behavior was any indication, she had... plans... in place for that contingency.

And nothing said that I couldn't... err... subtly encourage my favored outcome.

"But... but..."

"Didn't I just say that Hinata-sama wants you to be happy, Naruto-kun? I'm not saying that it won't hurt her to do so, but if it helps you find happiness..."

"But I don't want her to do that," Naruto morosely stated. "That sort of thing..."

"It's better than living a lie," I observed. "Besides, that's why I'm hoping that the two of you can find happiness together."

Naruto blinked, taken out of his thoughts by that statement. "You... hope that..."

"I care for both of you and want you to be happy. Hinata-chan wants to make you happy. Is it terribly wrong of me to hope that she succeeds?"

"Oh," Naruto answered.

We sat there for a few moments in awkward silence. Naruto slowly grew more and more agitated, despite obviously not knowing what to say. He eventually just gave up and decided to make a blatant attempt to change the topic. "So what's Hinata-chan's family like?"

I frowned, thinking of the stuck-up idiots who were my political allies. "Well, that's an... interesting question," I replied, wondering how to phrase it. "The Hyuuga clan is one of Konoha's oldest, most influential families. They have a powerful fighting style called the Juuken which takes advantage of their kekkei genkai, the Byakugan, and use both to considerable effect. Many believe them to be the strongest clan in Konoha because of that combination."

"Hinata-chan is from a family like that?" Naruto asked.

"Yes," I agreed. "At the same time, however, they're also one of the most traditional and most unstable. There are a number of internal conflicts which are tearing them apart." Taking a moment to consider how to say it, I decided to just do so. "Overall, Hinata-chan loves them dearly, even if she doesn't like her family very much."

"But aren't those the same thing?"

I shook my head in the negative. "Not really," I responded. "The people in her family are precious to her, but her family itself, as an organization... Hinata-sama believes that it needs a very hard kick in the pants."

Naruto's face scrunched up comically. "Do families even wear pants?" he asked. "I mean I know the people in them do, but..."

I chuckled. "No, Naruto-kun. It's just an expression. I meant that Hinata-sama believes that her family's traditions desperately need changing."

"Oh," Naruto replied. "But what does that have to do with kicking someone?"

I shook my head at that and did my best to explain the metaphor.

"I see," Naruto remarked as I finished. "But... what sort of traditions do you mean?"

I frowned. "The answer to that ties into what you didn't understand earlier - about what a 'souke' and a 'bunke' are."

Naruto blinked. "So what are they?"

"Well," I explained, "that goes back a bit... do you remember when I told you that there were many types of family and many ways of thinking about the subject?"

"Yeah," Naruto confirmed.

"One of the more traditional ways is to think of a family as an institution, one that its members are a part of. In traditional Japan, these were called houses, or ie. Every house was, of course, a bit different; every family had their own traditions, their own rules and responsibilities... and every member had their own role to play, their own responsibilities within the framework that was their house."

"And souke and bunke?"

"Well, every now and then, a member of a house would start a new ie. The house he came from would traditionally lend him assistance in doing this and help the new house get its feet on the ground, so to speak... and, in exchange, the new house would support its original house and give them a certain amount of allegiance. The original house would be referred to as the new house's /souke/, while the new house would be a /bunke/ of the house it came from."

"So Hinata-chan's family is split up like that?"

"I suppose you could say that," I allowed, "although it'd be more accurate to say that Hinata-chan's family is organized like that. More relevantly, Hinata-sama is the heiress to the main house of the Hyuuga - the original Hyuuga ie, if you will. All of the other Hyuuga ie are bunke of Hinata-sama's house... or bunke of those bunke, bunke of the bunke of the bunke of Hinata-sama's ie and so on. Because of this, the head of Hinata-sama's house, Hinata-chan's father, is effectively in charge of all of the Hyuuga."

Naruto attentively nodded his head.

"Anyway, the ie system, as the Hyuuga practice it, was legally abolished during the aftermath of the Second World War, ten thousand years ago. The Hyuuga clan, however, was so caught up in their traditions that they never stopped."

The formalized ie system had made something of a comeback during the Divine Emperor's rule as a consequence of the trumped-up televangelist's self-serving and often hypocritical encouragement of certain parts of Confucian philosophy. Most people in Konoha thought that the Hyuugas had adopted the system during that period. After talking to both Hinata and Hiashi about the subject, I knew better.

Naruto's eyes widened considerably. "They're that old?"

"The Hyuuga family can actually trace their ancestry a bit further than that, to the middle Sengoku period - still further, if you count the fact that they're technically a branch of the Shimazu."

"The Shimazu?" Naruto asked, obviously taken back - or impressed. It was hard to tell.

"The Shimazu were an even older family, one that was pretty much wiped out in the Great Cataclysm," I explained. "More to the point, though, Hinata-sama is the heiress to the original ie that was formed in those times, an institution that has survived the end of civilization at least twice."

"Wow," Naruto remarked. "That's... really, really old."

"To be fair, I can trace my own ancestry around as far along at least one line," I stated. "The main difference between me and the Hyuuga about that is that I don't care."

That was even true - one of my maternal great-great-grandfathers had married a disowned member of one of the European royal families. Of course, about ten thousand years of my ability to trace my ancestry was due to the discrepancy between my birth-date and the present.

It was pathetically easy to claim a family history stretching into ancient times when you were from them yourself.

"I don't understand."

I blinked. "Well, the Hyuuga clan is rather proud of that fact - justifiably so, to an extent, although both Hinata and I feel that they're too proud of it."

"No," Naruto clarified. "I get that they're stuck up, but what does that have to do with their traditions needing to be changed?"

I shook my head and chuckled. "That's a point. It's more of a reason why they're so hard to change," I admitted. Pausing for a moment to gather my thoughts, I decided to go with the obvious example. Standing up and turning to my bookshelf, I removed a rather thick tome. "This book," I explained, handing it to Naruto, "is my notes on possible ways to change one of the more... problematic... of the Hyuuga clan's traditions, one that even the elders of the clan only reluctantly accept because they have no real choice."

I hated that seal... and I wasn't the only one. I couldn't think of a single person who actually liked it.

I knew enough of the Byakugan's secrets to know that anyone who tried to learn its secrets from a Hyuuga's corpse wouldn't be able to fully recreate it. One of its components was an Overworlder blood gift, after all, and those were based on magic, not chakra... but an intact corpse falling into enemy hands would be no less disasterous to the Hyuuga for that fact.

From what Hiashi had told me, it wouldn't be overly difficult for someone to create a similar, if somewhat lesser, kekkei genkai based on the Byakugan if they had the information such a corpse could provide. The knowledge of the Byakugan's precise abilities and limits would, in a way, be worse. At a bare minimum, the combination would cost many Hyuuga lives. More realistically, it'd also cost the lives of many of their allies.

As such, the Byakugan's secrets had to be protected. It was simple misfortune that the best solution available involved fuuinjutsu.

The principles behind the seal were actually pretty simple - it was nothing more than a seal designed so that it couldn't be removed without killing the person it was on and destroying any trace of the byakugan. Hiashi had hinted that there was a good bit of tamper-proofing in the design, too, but that was another matter entirely.

The problems were three-fold. The first aspect was that the seal being designed so that it couldn't be removed without killing the person it was on wasn't optional. Seals on a living being were... tricky. Unless they were designed that way, they'd quickly erode.

The standard explanation for this was that any seal on a living being had to be at least partially dependent on that being's will. I suspected that this was a gross oversimplification, but it certainly explained a number of related phenomena - not the least of which was the way in which people bearing such permanent seals could bring an entirely new meaning to the phrase "suicidal depression".

The second aspect of the problem was that anyone who could place a seal could also remove it. It was, in fact, a lot easier to undo a seal than to create it... if you knew exactly how the seal was done. In fact, it rarely took more than a single hand-sign to undo a seal... assuming that the person doing so knew the so-called "key".

There was no way in Hell that someone who performed a seal could avoid knowing the key to it... short of going on a bender when they designed and performed it. Were Hiashi to get stone drunk, design a new seal for the Byakugan, and perform it before he got sober every time he needed to place a seal, he might manage to avoid that problem.

To put it another way, anyone who could place the seal that was used to protect the Byakugan could also kill anyone who bore said seal with a gesture... and there wasn't a realistic way to design a seal that avoided that problem. More, it was possible to metaphorically place the key in the lock without turning it... thereby leaving it on the verge of unravelling and causing intense pain to the person it was on.

If the key fell into enemy hands, it'd be an unmitigated disaster for the Hyuuga. It certainly wasn't likely - the key to a seal was intrinsically related to the method for performing it. There was no way to know that without also knowing the secrets it was designed to protect, which meant that anyone knowing the key meant also knowing the secrets of the byakugan.

That didn't change the fact that anyone knowing that secret could effortlessly kill anyone who bore the seal. If the Hyuuga were to survive such an event, someone had to remain without the seal.

And that lead into the third aspect of the problem. Given the need to keep the secrets involved as secret as possible, the logical first choice for that "someone" was the person who actually performed it. Given the fact that it was impossible to learn the seal without knowing the secrets of the byakugan in detail, the logical choice for that was the person entrusted with keeping and guarding those secrets - in other words, the head of the Hyuuga clan. Given the fact that people were hardly immortal and the seal couldn't be removed, this meant that the head's potential successors couldn't be sealed, either.

And thus the traditions surrounding the seal on the Hyuuga bunke came into being. Life really sucked sometimes.

By the time I'd finished explaining that to Naruto, he was staring at me with a rather unreadable expression. Judging by the context, it was likely a form of shocked horror, although I couldn't be entirely certain.

"They... that's..." he whispered, visibly taken aback.

I sighed. "And now you see why I've spent so much time trying to find a better way," I answered, pointing at the book which lay almost forgotten in my student's hands. "But if there is one, I haven't been able to find it."

Naruto's face settled on a determined expression. "Then we'll just have to look harder, won't we?"

I blinked at his inclusion of himself in that. "We..." I stuttered out, taken aback, before I shook my head. "Of course," I stated, smirking. "With both of us looking, it's just a matter of time."

I wished I was as confident as that sounded, but it was true. I hadn't aged a day since I was summoned... and given a thousand years or so, I'd probably be able to develop a spell to accomplish the same thing.

Assuming, of course, that I lived that long. The simple truth, however, was that I didn't want to. Eternal life had started sounding a whole lot less attractive after a giant, nine-tailed fox had decided to screw with my life.

Naruto grinned at me for a moment before looking at the book again, scrunching his face at what was apparently a description of some of my attempts to add a random element to a seal's "key", thus obscuring it from the user of the jutsu. Those had been simple failures... although my efforts did produce a few interesting side products, the most notable of which were the effect displacement seals which I used in a number of my types of... special... kunai.

"Don't worry if you don't understand something," I remarked, noting his expression. "Those are my notes from one of the most difficult research projects I've ever attempted. You'll be able to understand everything in there some day, but for now, part of my job is to teach you that ability." I shrugged. "If you'd like, you can keep that - if nothing else, you'll be able to use it to measure your progress in fuuinjutsu."

My blond-haired student's eyes widened. "I can keep this?!"

"Yeah," I agreed. "Nothing in there works, but I included explanations of why they don't work. Maybe it'll help you learn, and as you learn, it'll start to make more and more sense."

The boy nodded enthusiastically, obviously eager to start. "So that'd end the..." Naruto's face scrunched up for a moment before he parroted my earlier words. "'political division within the family' that you talked about?"

I sighed. "I wish," I stated. "It'd be a big help, of course, but..." I paused for a moment. "If the seal was the only problem, things would be a lot simpler."

The problem wasn't so much the seal itself as the pattern that it represented. The Hyuuga clan had a rather large number of traditions intended to protect the Byakugan. Each and every one of them made sense. Each and every one of them helped. In combination, they made acquiring the secrets of the Hyuuga kekkei genkai a practical nightmare for any foreign power.

Unfortunately, almost all of them favored the souke and - subtly or otherwise - screwed over the bunke. The resentment this fostered was not a small thing or something easily rectified. Worse, even if someone managed to find an ideal protection for the secrets of the Byakugan, the Hyuuga clan had a way of clinging to old traditions long after the reason they'd been put into place had been forgotten.

Well, with the entire bloody souke actively looking to change those... it was just a matter of time.

"You know, Naruto-kun, not all of the Hyuuga's traditions are bad..."

I soon segued into an explanation of one of the few Hyuuga traditions that I actively approved of. In a bit of irony, it actually started as a consequence of the thrice-damned seal.

Starting at a young age, each member of the Hyuuga was, for lack of a better term, partnered with a similarly-aged member of another of the Hyuuga ie. They'd play together, spend time together, and generally act as siblings. This partnering" extended far enough that the parents of a child would regularly look after their child's "partner".

The relationship manifesting in the appropriate forms of address for siblings was hardly uncommon.

The tradition's point was really pretty simple: to ensure that every Hyuuga had someone to comfort them in their grief when they suffered a loss.

Given the seal on members of the bunke, this was actually a matter of survival. If someone bearing a permanent seal lost their desire and will to live, their chakra would begin... rejecting... the seal that they bore. Since permanent seals were permanent because removal would kill the person bearing them, this process inevitably resulted in death.

If a Hyuuga suffered a tragedy, their "partner" would take care of them... and wouldn't let them spend so much as a minute alone. If their "partner" died, both families would look after them - and they would be expected to help their "partner's" parents. I strongly suspected that the grieving parents would often put on a bit of a show for their child's "partner", trying to give them a sense of purpose.

Of course, it didn't always work out that way. The pairing of Hinata and Neji was a case in point, even without his father's death.

And then there was Jin-sensei. I didn't know who he'd been paired with, and it didn't really matter that much. What had happened, though, was quite predictable to anyone who'd ever met my old jounin teacher: he'd become convinced that he clan's efforts to get him to make friends were part of an attempt to kill him.

The old bugger was paranoid enough to believe that the Kyuubi's attack on Konoha was caused by Hiashi's father, after all. I still wasn't entirely sure how that was supposed to be part of an attempt on his life, but... that was Jin-sensei for you.

Then again, he'd thought that his being assigned a genin team had been part of an attempt to kill him, too. The paranoia of the only member of a Hyuuga bunke to avoid having a seal placed on his forehead was quite literally legendary.

Naruto and I spoke for nearly an hour, talking about a large number of things. The time passed in a blur, and Naruto eventually left to return to his own, run-down apartment. At least, I felt, he had started to understand Hinata and her motives.

In many ways, that made me happy. The two of them deserved their happiness. In many more, it was a relief.

She'd be able to look after him when I was no longer able to.

I was in a good mood when I went to sleep that night.


I stepped over the charred corpse of yet another bandit as fires burned in the background. It was a bit of theatrical extravagance that I'd perfected after a number of failed attempts... but that was well worth the effort. My cloak, black with a purple inner lining, blew in the wind, billowing dramatically as I seemed to step out of the flames in the eyes of my intended victims. My waist-length, light orange hair, part of my disguise, flew freely with the breeze, only restrained by my simple, black headband.

"Mercy, please..." one of the bandits gasped, raising an arm in a pleading gesture even as his legs remained trapped beneath a wagon that an earlier explosion had sent flying.

I, however, remembered well what had drawn my attention to this particular band of scum. I'd been on my way back from a mission in Wind Country when I'd come across the looted, burned-out remnants of a small farming village.

The corpses were still lying there, less than a day old. Rigor mortis was in full effect, and the smell...

It quickly became obvious that everyone who had lived there had been slaughtered. I used my magatama to clean up as best I could, creating an impromptu funeral pyre... but the smell remained.

It wasn't until I took a closer look at the still-smoking remnants of what had once been the village's largest home that I discovered why. Going by the evidence, the attackers had looted the building, barricaded the building's entrances, and set it on fire... with the village's children still inside.

There were six of them. I wasn't the most skilled at that sort of investigation, and the corpses were damaged by the fire and by the passage of time... but even I could figure out what had happened.

After they'd slaughtered their families and looted their fill, the bandits had gathered the town's children, thrown them inside, barricaded the doors, and started a roast. The children had tried to escape... but hadn't been able to.

I imagined that they'd been amused at the screaming. It certainly hadn't been as amusing from the other end.

One of the bastards responsible wanted mercy? I'd give him just as much as he'd given those children.

I held out my arms in response and began forming a fireball out of magatama between them. The flickering orange glow gave the feminine face of my disguise an eerie tone amidst the carnage that surrounded us as I began to chant, planning to unleash yet another bit of theatric devistation.

"You who are darker than twilight... you who are redder than the flow of blood..."

Much to my surprise, I found mystic energies surrounding me, responding to the call of my chant. Quickly dismissing my magatama, I devoted myself to the task of controlling them, knowing that a loss could be disasterous, especially given the nature of the "fake" spell I'd been attempting.

"Hidden in the flow of time..."

Crimson energy, twinged with darkness, swirlled around me. A ball of the power began forming between my still-cupped hands. Still off-balance, it was all that I could do to keep the power from escaping my control and doing whatever it wanted to. I wasn't quite sure what I'd tapped into, but I knew that letting it do so would be a Bad Idea.

"In thy great name, here I swear unto darkness..."

As I managed to regain my balance, my struggle to retain control of the energy became quite a bit easier. I wasn't sure if it was that I'd finally drawn enough for the spell, that I'd learned how to handle it, or if my words had finally given the power a purpose, but the energy seemed almost accepting as it whipped around me, shielding me from harm and forming a rather spectacular light-show.

"With the power that you and I possess..."

I stood at the virtual calm of a storm, riding herd on the power that I'd summoned with my spell. I could sense it trying to fulfil its desires, to do as it wished... but I had begun to set its purpose and it had decided to follow.

"To grant equal destruction to all those fools who stand in our way!"

With that, the light show around me ended as I thrust my hands forward. The ball of crimson darkness that had formed in my hands turning into a beam of crimson devastation. The bandit that I'd nearly forgotten about as I struggled to control the energy of the spell was hit directly in his face. He didn't survive.

Neither did most of the mountain that they'd set up camp on.

I awoke rather tired, albeit strangely comforted by the dream. As recurring dreams went, I could certainly think of worse... although that one left me with two rather notable questions.

Why the Hell did the power I had tapped into feel like a thousand tongues?

And why did it keep trying to lick me?


The morning's reports were fairly mundane. There were several missing pet reports - mostly cats - a few noise complaints, something about a shortage of fish sausage...

That last one was at least somewhat odd. Konoha didn't use much fish sausage. Someone would have to be buying it in bulk for a shortage to occur.

I paused when I reached a report about someone stalking around Inuzuka Bob's clinic. As the only vet in Konoha who was willing to treat the daimyou's wife's cats, I couldn't afford for anything to happen to him.

If someone was up to something there...

I sighed and made a mental note to "find" an excuse to stop by at some point.


I'd set my alarm to ensure that I'd have plenty of time to prepare. Stopping by a butcher's shop, I quickly picked up the order that I'd made in anticipation of today's lesson. It wasn't cheap, but well worth it in the name of Naruto's education.

Besides, tofu wouldn't have the same sort of dramatic appeal.

Getting set up took a while, but it was well worth it when my students arrived. Smiling, I faced my rather confused students and knew that their confusion could probably be traced to the fact that I had four bats - one titanium, two nerf, and one spiked - arrayed in front of me and a side of beef tied to one of the trees so that it was hanging behind me.

"Now, I think that it's time to talk a bit more about chakra control and fighting styles," I started. Deciding to address my students' bewilderment, I addressed the items. "Don't worry about these - they're just visual aids."

With that, my students calmed down somewhat, knowing that I wasn't going to make them do some bizarre training exercise.

"Anyway, take Naruto-kun's chakra control when he graduated the academy. He wasn't able to define his chakra constructs very precisely, so a good bit of his chakra was wasted when he used it. More importantly, however, his constructs lacked definition; the leakage would 'cushion' his jutsu somewhat, lowering the damage they could do. In a way, it was like hitting someone with this bat," I explained, hefting the first nerf bat and hitting the side of beef with enough force to send it swinging. "It wouldn't do much damage if you used normal levels of strength, but Naruto had enough chakra that he could put enough force into things to hurt his oppoenents anyway."

Seeing my students nod in understanding, I picked up the steel bat. "On the other extreme, you have someone like Sakura-chan. She wastes almost no chakra when doing jutsu, but has very little chakra. In the end, things even out."

Again demonstrating, I hit the side of beef, this time with considerably less force. Still, the hit left a visible bruise.

"This," I said, lifting the spiked bat, "represents someone like Tsunade of the Sannin, who has literally legendary levels of chakra control. She barely needs to use any raw power at all to inflict tremendous damage, but she can also back it up with a good bit of raw power."

That time, I hit the side of beef with less force than I had used with the nerf bat, but more than I had with the steel, leaving the side not only bruised, but bloody from where the spikes had cut into it.

"And, finally," I continued, lifting the final Nerf bat, "this represents me."

With that, I pointed the bat at the side and twisted the handle, causing the miniature shotgun I had hidden inside the bat to fire and blast a rather large hole into the side.

"I cheat," I finished as bits of bloody meat flew about the area. Not wanting to waste them, I promptly generated a bit of magatama and started an impromptu roast. Beef was always at its best right after receiving a good tenderizing treatment.

I idly wondered if anyone would ever realize that shotgun tenderization was the secret of my famed yakiniku recipe. Repeated hydrostatic shock produced a degree of tenderness that very little else could match.

"So," I asked. "Any questions?"

Sakura was, much to my surprise, the first to speak up. "Umm... sensei... why are you showing this to us? I mean... with what you did before..."

I nodded. "Yes, well, the point wasn't to explain the point about the importance of control or the importance of raising your reserves." I paused. "By jounin standards, my chakra reserves are pitiful and my control is poor. Despite this, I'm also considered the strongest ninja in the world in terms of raw power. This is because, as I just tried to explain, I cheat."

Sakura blinked.

"You see," I continued, "increasing the amount of chakra you put into a jutsu and increasing the fine control you use are just two of the ways in which you can increase a technique's power. While they're important, I tend to rely more on the other ways. Can any of you name a few of them?"

Naruto's face scrunched up in a thoughtful expression, but it was Sasuke who answered first. "Weapons," he flatly stated.

"Well, yes," I admitted. "It usually hurts more if I hit someone with a kunai than if I hit them with my fist. More generally, though, there are any number of ways in which you can amplify a technique's effects or decrease its costs by incorporating something other than chakra. Any other ideas?"

Naruto nearly lept to his feet, apparently having thought of something. "What about seals?"

I grinned, suspecting that he'd been inspired by our talk on the Byakugan. "Yes, well, seals don't really save you energy or make your attack stronger, but they do let you prepare. You're not so much saving energy by doing things that way as paying the cost in advance. In combat, where your total capacity is often a matter of life and death, things like that can be a very effective trump card. That said, it's not just seals - there are a lot of other ways to increase the damage you can do by preparing in advance. Any other ideas?"

This time, it was Sakura who answered. "What about precision?"

"That falls under the third major way. A precise or unexpected attack can bypass enemy defenses, and knowledge of vulnerable points - be it through enhanced perception or through knowledge - can greatly improve an attack's effectiveness." I grinned at that. "Of course, that's only the beginning. Generally speaking, the more you know and understand, the more effective you can make your techniques. For instance, several of my jutsu are designed to recycle the excess energy from the initial attack to fuel or enhance subsequent efforts. This wouldn't be possible if I didn't understand the mechanics of how my jutsu worked and how to exploit those mechanics to their full potential."

Sakura and Sasuke nodded in understanding. Naruto, however, seemed confused.

"Lost you?" I asked him, already knowing the answer. At his hesitant nod, I just lightly slapped myself on the side of my head. "Perhaps a demonstration?"

Naruto perked up at that.

Grinning, I pulled out a scroll and faced the training field proper. Making sure that I'd have enough distance between the area of effect for the technique I was about to use, I slashed my palm with a kunai, ran through several seals, unrolled the scroll, and spread the blood from my slashed hand across its body in a practiced motion. Focusing my chakra through the seals on the scroll via the conductive medium provided by my blood, I quickly called out the name of my technique.

"Kuchiyose: Hanabimichi no Ame!"

Hanabimichi no Ame was one of my greatest accomplishments in jutsu engineering. It was also a jutsu with a long and proud history.

It had started with the Second Tsuchikage. A noted connoisseur of nohgaku, he'd used theatric symbology when naming his signature technique, Hashigakari no Ame. While no living ninja was quite sure how he'd do it, he used space-time ninjutsu to distort space around him, both shortening and lengthening the distances between things around him to his tactical advantage. Even alone, this would have made him a force to be reckoned with in combat, but he had been a formidable ninja even without it.

There had been many attempts to duplicate his technique in the years since his death, but none had been truly successful. Perhaps the closest had been the efforts of Shishiban Rokuba, the perhaps unfortunately named ninja whose stupidity had lead to my first meeting with Minato.

As much as I'd cursed the moron over the years, I had to admit that he'd had extremely poor luck with names. Beyond the many people who regularly spelled his name backwards, there had been the matter of his nickname. While other ninja acquired titles such as "Konoha's Yellow Flash" or "Konoha's White Fang", Rokuba had to deal with being called "Konoha's Acid Trip".

To be fair, this had been his own damn fault. Instead of attempting to duplicate Hashigakari no Ame perfectly, Rokuba had instead used it as inspiration for a fundamentally different jutsu. Creating an ongoing summoning matrix, Rokuba created a technique that would regularly summon small, inanimate objects into an area for as long as he continued to feed chakra into the jutsu. Rokuba would then "ride" the spatial distortions created by these repeated summons and use them to his advantage in combat.

Unfortunately, he did this by relying on his family's summoning contract for a certain class of subsances... and his summoning matrix always wound up summoning tiny droplets of a liquid properly known as lysergic acid diethylamide.

Given the circumstances of his death - and his lack of heirs - there had been a question of what to do with his estate after his death. Minato had ensured that I would inherit all of his notes on summoning techniques, however, and that had included Hanamichi no Ame.

When I'd started my ninja career, I had revisited those notes and quickly reached the conclusion that while Hanamichi no Ame had potential, it was a pretty flawed technique in and of itself. It had taken me a while to adopt it to my use, but the end result had been more than worth the effort.

I had started by substituting my own military equipment contract for That Idiot's recreational pharmeceutical contract. Explosives were much more appropriate for a battlefield than hallucinogens.

Alone, however, that modification wouldn't have produced satisfactory results. The accomplishment of mine that had truly made my own Hanabimichi no Ame come into its own was how I'd managed to alter the summoning matrix to absorb a fraction of the kenetic energy released by the explosions of the TNT that it called forth.

The summoning matrix then used that energy to fuel itself and call forth yet more dynamite. I'd have used C-4, but that tended to explode instantly, and there were timing issues with the matrix - the delay was very much needed to allow the matrix to recover and reform. This produced a perhaps unfortunate ceiling on the rate at which the dynamite could be summoned, but made it a highly viable combat technique as its original function - the production of spacial distortions which could be used to practical effect - was still quite effective. With Hanabimichi no Ame, the battlefield became a complicated mess of summoning distortions in which a single misstep would result in injury or death as a result of the ongoing dynamite rain.

Or I could just use it to rain destruction on my enemies. The jutsu was flexible that way.

As I was explaining this to my students, and taking in their incredulous expressions, thanks to a really cool set of noise-cancelling radio headgear I'd passed out before starting, I sat back and spent a while enjoying the sheer beauty of the technique. I rarely had the opportunity to do that.

"So this technique really incorporates all three principles. The scroll stores chakra in advance and allows me to use a minimum of effort to actually start the technique," I stated, winding down. "That takes preparation. The explosions are based on chemical force, not chakra, so the technique isn't pure ninjutsu. Finally, it takes a great deal of knowledge and understanding to create a technique like this... and even more to use it to its full effectiveness."

"Umm, sensei?" Sakura asked, sheepishly scratching at her earmuff.

"Yes?"

"When does this jutsu end?"

"End?" I blinked. "Wouldn't that kind of defeat the point?"

Sakura and Sasuke seemed rather nonplussed by that. Naruto, however, just nodded.

"But wouldn't something like this get you into a lot of trouble?" Sakura inquired after a moment.

"Nah," I admitted, sealing up the picnic basket I'd been munching onigiri from as I admired the explosions. "Tenzou'll just fix the place up; it should be back to normal by tomorrow."

Sakura gave me a very strange look. "But how can he do that with this jutsu still..."

I shrugged. "Oh, I can cancel the technique - it just won't end on its own."

Sasuke frowned. "If you can cancel the technique, what's keeping someone else from doing it?"

I audibly snorted at that. "Other than the fact that cancelling it requires intimate knowledge of the way the technique works?" I redundantly and rhetorically asked. "Well... there's also the fact that I'm the only one in the world who can do this."

As I said the last word of that, I quickly pulled one of my contract kunai out of my pocket. Quickly slashing the nearly-healed palm of my hand, I spread blood over all of the necessary places in a well-practiced motion. Timing and aim both needed to be perfect for the next step, but that wasn't a problem for any jounin; the issue in this case was knowing where to target and when.

I'd practiced that for quite a while before getting it consistantly right. As such, I instantly spotted my moment of opportunity and let my kunai fly into the rain of sparking and exploding red cyllinders.

The next step had to be perfectly timed as well, but that, again, wasn't an issue for me. Quickly running through a familiar sequence of seals and focusing my chakra, I suddenly slammed my hand on the groune. "Kuchiyose: Jikuukouidou Shoukan no Jutsu!"

Depending on your perspective, the results were either truly spectacular or nothing to write home about. Despite its fancy name, Jikuukouidou Shoukan no Jutsu really was just a displaced summoning technique, and summoning something as trivial as a cow didn't exactly drain a lot of my chakra.

On the other hand, its effect on the invisible web of chakra and spatial distortions which was maintaining the explosive rain was far more impressive. The action of summoning an object of precisely the right mass at just the right place at just the right time would momentarily destabilise the pattern of the jutsu matrix.

Of course, the explosions from the summoned TNT would still feed into the technique, and the destabilization was only momentary. Given the delay between summoning and explosion, this meant that the only way to truly cancel the technique was to detonate the remaining explosives in that single moment of opportunity.

That was why my solution to the problem was particularly elegant... not to mention aesthetically pleasing. A momentary expression of bovine shock graced the face of the nitrate-rich cow as it found itself a few feet above the ground in an area rocked with explosions. The impact of it hitting the ground would have been enough to end its life in a rather impressive display of pyrotechnics, but that was not to occur.

In other words, a nearby explosion detonated the cow before the fall could. The exploding cow, in turn, set off the remaining TNT in a rather attractive, if insufficiently deadly, chain reaction.

With that accomplished, it was fairly simple to dispel the remnants of the jutsu matrix, taking only a series of twenty hand-seals and a precise flow of chakra. Without that, it would have continued to absorb kinetic energy and eventually used that energy to reconstitute itself.

Put another way, it would be reasonably difficult for anyone else to dispel the technique.

"So," I reluctantly stated after collecting the headsets I'd passed out to my team, "I suppose we should take a mission."

Naruto promptly jumped up, cheering. Sakura and Sasuke were far more subdued.

"You do realize that it's going to be a D-rank, right?"

That quickly deflated my student's enthusiasm.

"How about I share some of my team's hard-won tips for completing them?" I suggested. "Hopefully we can get our missions done a whole lot less painfully than my team did..."

"That seems like a good idea, Sensei," Sakura answered, my other students clearly indicating their agreement.

"Well," I said, gesturing them to follow me as I thought back to my own team's last D-rank, "we can talk as we walk." I paused for a moment to frame my thoughts and ensure that they were following before I continued. "First off, I suppose I should warn you not to lose your temper when ordered to weed a garden. If you do lose your temper despite your best efforts, trying to torch the weeds with a katon jutsu is a particularly bad idea."

Sakura and Sasuke visibly sweatdropped.

"Now, if one of your teammates does that, I also strongly recommend that you not try to put the fire out with a fuuton jutsu. That tends to just make things worse."

I paused to make sure the point had sunk in.

"And if you do make that mistake, stealing one of your teammate's sealing scrolls in a misguided attempt to retrieve something to put the fire out with is probably a bad idea, too. You'll inevitably steal the wrong one."

Even Naruto was sweatdropping at that one.

"It's also important to keep in mind that while both fire extinguishers and napalm throwers typically consist of a storage canister, a hose, and a dispensing apparatus, they really serve different purposes. Try to make sure you have the right one before you carpet the area with the contents of the device you're using."

I thought back to that fateful mission. While somewhat nostalgic, it certainly hadn't been very much fun at the time.

"In the event that your teammates have started a napalm-fueled fire in the heart of one of Konoha's major commercial districts, stay aware of the present location of your teacher's stash of explosive tags at all times."

That one, at least, was fairly straightforward.

"If you do lose track of your teacher's stash of explosive tags," I remarked, idly catching a thrown tomato and returning it to the grocer whose business had started the mess, "and they wind up being consumed by a napalm-fueled fire in the heart of one of Konoha's major commercial districts, be very careful to ensure that your teammates haven't messed with your sealing scrolls before you try to use one to put out the fire. It's especially important to ensure that they haven't left the one containing powdered trinitrotoluene where the one containing water should be."

I winced at the memory of what had happened after that.

"Also, try to keep in mind that the Hokage isn't usually sympathetic to attempts to convince him that a mission failure wasn't your fault."

And so I continued to lead a group of three somewhat shell-shocked genin away from a scene of aesthetic devistation and towards the Hokage tower, where our destiny awaited... in more than one sense.

If I'd known what our first mission would turn out to be, I'd have been considerably more cheerful.


"Oh, yes," I observed several minutes later. "I can't believe I forgot - in the event that you need to resurrect a cat that one of your teammates has killed, keep in mind that cybernetics are much less likely than chaos magic to create an undead monstrosity that will attempt to take over the Daimyou's palace with an army of vampiric rabbits."

Vampikitty had given up on that plan when the rabbits had turned out to like carrot juice far more than following his orders. I'd bribed them with a cup of the stuff each and sicced them on a particularly annoying bandit group. Last I'd heard, they'd taken over the bandit's encampment and were using it as a cemetary for undead lettuce. I still couldn't figure that one out.

Unfortunately, the squirrel and chipmunk minions Vampikitty had replaced them with had a really unfortunate tendency to go for the nuts in combat. Kunoichi had a far easier time dealing with them than their male counterparts... but it was still one of the most annoying recurring D-ranks Konoha had.

Much to my surprise, it was Sasuke who managed to sum up the feelings of my rather overwhelmed students. "What. The. Fuck?"

I grinned in pride at the unexpected vulgarity from my most repressed student. Pushing open the door to the Hokage's office, I stepped in. My students quickly followed.

"Hakaishin Recca reporting for duty," I announced, giving a crisp, military-style salute.

"Recca-san," Sarutobi stated in a weary tone, idly rubbing his forehead, "what on Earth did you do to your students?"

I blinked and took a look at them. Seeing the thoroughly shell-shocked expressions they wore, their pale skin, their trembling forms... I could only sigh and turn back to the Hokage. "I was just telling them how to avoid some of the pitfalls my team encountered on D-ranks."

The Third Hokage scowled, rubbing his forehead even more intensely. "Please tell me you didn't tell them about the Pikathulhu Incident."

I shrugged. "Nah. Didn't tell them about the incident with the dinosaur pheromones and the Barney contract, either. I stayed to the normal stuff - mostly how to avoid trouble with gardening, the cats, and large explosions in the middle of Konoha's shopping districts."

Sarutobi let out a sigh of relief before speaking up. "Perhaps I should start you off with a nice, easy mission... preferably one without the potential for too much destruction... yes, yes... that'll be good."

By the end of that, Sarutobi was seriously creeping me out. The sick cackling he'd introduced in those last few pauses didn't seem too healthy.

"Anyway," Sarutobi stated after a few moments of disturbing shaking, "Aoba! Bring her in."

I blinked as Aoba promptly walked through the door. A small girl followed him, taking my breath away.

Simply put, she was the cutest thing I'd ever seen.

Strawberry blonde hair framed a cherubic face. Soulful blue eyes were twisted into an impressive variant of the expression commonly known as the "sad puppy look" as their owner snuggled her head into a life-size plushy rocket launcher. I wasn't quite sure why she was still wearing pajamas at this time of day - not to mention in the Hokage's tower - but they had obviously been artfully designed and fitted to maximize the effect... right down to the green-and-brown military camo pattern which adorned them.

It took all of my willpower not to run up to her and comfort her right there. If she was the client for this mission and it had anything to do with why she seemed so sad... my team would succeed. I'd make sure of it.

"This girl managed to get separated from her family and got lost. Your mission is to help her find her mother. That's all." Sarutobi continued rubbing his forehead. "Also, Aoba, would you be so kind as to bring me the clear bottle from the emergency sake stores?"

I frowned momentarily - that couldn't be good for the old man's liver - before turning to my client. "Don't worry," I reassured her. "We'll help you find your mother."

She sniffed and turned to me, her adorable eyes sparkling in a manner that reminded me of a raging bonfire. "Weally?" she asked, her childish voice every bit as cute as the rest of her.

"Really," I promised, holding a hand over my heart. "I swear it on the honor of Hakaishin-ke."

The girl's reaction was truly spectacular. Her face totally shifted, the sad look vanishing as she literally glomped me. Her plushy rocket launcher floating just behind her back, she looked up into my eyes... before she promptly buried her face into my shoulder and started crying.

It probably would have been a lot less impressive if the posture hadn't left her feet several feet above the floor. Her plushie floated slightly behind her, bobbing slightly as I quickly moved to ensure that my adorable client didn't fall.

"I was so wowied," she sobbed into my shoulder.

"There, there," I reassured her. "Everything will be alright." Careful to maintain my one-handed grip on the girl who was still sobbing into my shoulder, I nodded towards Sarutobi and jerked my head towards the door in an unmistakable gesture. Taking the hint, my students moved to leave. As I moved to follow them, I idly noticed Aoba returning and handing Sarutobi a bottle, the contents of which the old man quickly downed in a single gulp.

I winced. For the time being, though, I had a client to deal with... and a mission to complete.


A few minutes later, the four of us stood in a conveniently open room within the tower. The girl had calmed down considerably, working out her emotional turmoil in a single fit as children were oft prone to do.

The mercurial proclivities of little girls aside, she did have a genuine problem, and we were being paid to solve it. With that thought in mind, I briefly considered which of my students I should use this as a training opportunity for.

Naruto, of course, was my first thought. While I certainly wanted him to play a role in the mission, however, he still needed a degree of emotional maturity before he'd be ready for lessons on how to question a friendly informant. Besides, his style in such matters depended far more on enthusiasm, instinct, and sincerity than on manipulation. His skills in things like this would probably develop on their own... but any outright educational efforts on my part - in this area, at least - would probably be counterproductive.

Dismissing Sasuke from consideration was an instantaneous decision. There was no way in Hell I'd be subjecting a cute girl like our client to any more of emo-boy's angst than I absolutely had to.

That left Sakura. As such, I turned to her and gestured for her to come closer. "Why don't you handle this?"

For a moment it looked like Sakura might speak up and ask me something. Our client, however, beat her to the punch.

"What're you doing, Mister?" she asked in an adorably cute tone.

"Asking Sakura-chan to ask you a few questions," I replied, kneeling down to meet her at as close to eye-level as I could manage.

"Why?"

"Well, she's my student. Because of that, it's my job to teach her a lot of things, and how to gather information is one of them. I just thought that this would be a good opportunity for her, and I'll be here in case she does anything wrong, okay?"

"But what does that have to do with asking me questions?"

"Well, when you want to know something, what do you usually do?"

I briefly looked up to where Sasuke was scoffing, Naruto was fidgeting anxiously, and Sakura was watching with a surprised, but otherwise unreadable, expression. It was brief, however, mostly because the little girl in question promptly replied.

"I ask daddy!"

"And if your father isn't there?"

"I ask Mommy!"

"And if your mommy isn't there?"

"I ask Mom!"

Sasuke scoffed. "He asked about if your mommy wasn't there, idimmpf-"

Sasuke's remark was promptly cut off by Sakura's hand covering his mouth. Noting the glares that all three members of his team were directing at him, Sasuke didn't press his luck.

Our client's reaction, however, was far more amusing. Quickly turning to face my emo student, she leaned forward in an incredibly adorable angry posture. "You're a meanie," she stated, only slightly raising her voice. "I don't like you. Biiii-da!"

The last bit was accompanied by the characteristic tonal shift and eyelid-pulling that went along with the cultural expression of contempt. I had to struggle not to laugh.

"So," I asked, briefly chuckling despite myself, "do you have a way to ask your mother something if she's not there?"

The little girl turned around and faced me. In a childishly serious posture, made all the more adorable by her clothing, she calmly answered. "No, I just ask another Mommy."

I blinked. "You have more than one mother?"

"Yep!"

My eyebrows rose despite themselves. My hitai-ate kept it from becoming too obvious, but it was a highly unusual situation. "Umm... just how many do you have?"

"I have this many!" she replied, holding out her left hand... with all five digits extended.

Well, that certainly took away any doubts I might have had about her father's sex-life. It did throw an interesting wrinkle into our mission, though...

"But... what kind of..." Sakura sputtered out, visibly taken aback by the declaration as her hand slipped from its perch over my emo-wannabe student's mouth. Sasuke promptly took advantage of that to escape.

I just shrugged. "So she has an unconventional family," I chided my student. "It's not really our business unless it effects our mission... and, to be fair, it does."

"What do you mean, Mister?" our client chimed in.

"Well, I promised to help you find your mother, didn't I? Does it particularly matter which one?"

Our client blinked cutely, visibly confused.

"Were you separated from your family, or was your family separated from you? Are you looking for one of your mothers in particular, or are you just looking for your family?"

The little girl looked even more adorable, but no less puzzled at that.

Naruto promptly stepped into the mess. "When did you last see your Mommy?" he asked, standing to my side and offering what support he could.

"Umm...," she began, endearingly thinking it over before answering in a sudden exclamation. "Wast night!"

"Last night?" I asked. "What happened?"

"Well," she answered, "Mom put me to bed as usuwal. I was about to go to sweep when I saw this wittle bwack piggy wandering thwough my room. Piggies weally, weally don't bewong in my room, so I gwabbed Wocky-P and twied to blow it up."

I smiled. It was pretty rare for a girl her age to have her head screwed on straight. My students, on the other hand, all bore sweatdrops.

"But the piggy dodged!" our client exclaimed. "And den it wan off! I couldn't wet it get away, so I chased after it!"

That was a pretty reasonable approach... but, at her age, it probably would have been a bit more sensible to call for help, too.

... wait a sec. Her plushy rocket launcher was fully functional?

Well, as magic items went, I'd seen stranger, but it was a very impressive feat of magecraft... not to mention almost unbearably cute. That last bit beared repeating.

"The piggy wan and wan... I lost twack of the piggy in the mist in Mommy's woom. I was going to find Mommy and ask for help finding the piggy so I could blow it up pwoperly, but I twipped and fell thwough the big door that Mommy's always stawing at."

Okay. As adorable as that was, there was something seriously odd about her story. Why was there fog in her mother's room, not to mention that the "big door" that her mother was "always staring at" was more than a bit suspicious...

"And then I found myself in this weird street with a wot of stwange people and couldn't find anything and looked and looked and couldn't find my Mommy no matter how hard I tried and I looked and looked and looked and then this strange man in a mask came and I was so scared!"

By the end of that, our client had nearly burst into tears. When I reflexively moved to comfort her, and once again soon found her latching onto me like a cross between a barnacle and something from Momoko's store... and the "nearly" soon vanished.

"There, there," I reassured her, putting aside my suspicions for the moment. I had a frightened child to comfort.

The ephemeral moods of youth quickly changed once again, however, and she stopped reliving the memory. I honestly regretted making her relive that, but I hadn't known that it would be such an unhelpful line of inquiry. We'd need to take another approach...

... and figure out what the fuck was going on.

It was with that thought that I released my team's client. "Alright," I stated, knowing that my answers wouldn't come from our client - or at least not directly from her. Fortunately, my confusion didn't really change anything. "I think I got a bit of what happened." I then paused, realizing that I didn't know something that was pretty important. "By the way, what are you called?"

As awkward as the phrasing sounded in my native language of English, I had actually used a relatively polite way of asking her name. As children - in any culture - often do, however, she answered the wrong question.

"You can call me Ama-chan!"

It was cute - unbelievably so - but not terribly helpful. Then again, I didn't need her full first name so much as... "What about your mommies? Or your family name?"

Ama-chan immediately stiffened, suspicion crossing her face for the first time during our conversation. "Why?" she asked, obviously trying - and failing - to look nonchelant.

This, of course, only added to the mystery around the unspeakably adorable child. Sasuke, however, decided to handle the matter in precisely the wrong way.

"So we can find them," he flatly stated.