The sky is a bright blue, the color of stress, of hope and happiness, and the nearness of summer. People are yelling, I think, but I can't be sure. A part of me whispers that I should feel pain, that I do feel pain, but I feel nothing, not a thing, not anymore.

Someone bends over me… it's you. Dark eyes on a pale face. I can finally read them, the concern, the care… the fear.

I'm sorry, I try to say. Please don't look like that. I'm sorry I made you sad. I'm sorry for making my parents sad… and my friends…

Please… don't be sad…

I stirred.

It's cold.

Someone is weeping, soft, harsh sobs. I hear a baby, echoing them with its own wails nearby. It's cold, frightfully cold, as if I had just gotten out of a hot shower into the cooler air of the bathroom.

Fear spikes, deep in my heart. Where am I? How did I get here? I shift and squirm, trying to move, but something had changed – my body would not do as I willed.

Warm arms envelope me. I feel small, swallowed up in them, as I'm lifted like a babe. I open my mouth to scream, and it comes out in a high, screeching wail, in a voice I do not recognize as my own.

What's happening to me?

A curtain of red surrounds me. The sobbing intensifies, and I realize it's a woman. She's whispering something, a mantra, a prayer, in my ear. My cries slowly cease. Beside me I feel another presence, something intrinsically so familiar he feels like déjà vu – yes, he. But try as I might, I could not remember meeting him before.

The arms around me pull me closer. The woman presses a kiss against my forehead, crying, crying. I could feel her warmth, comforting me in her embrace, the curtain of red falling like rain over my bare, sensitive skin.

I tried to reach out but then—

Pressure weighs down on me like iron. A fear so deep, deeper than instinct seeps into my bones. A shriek pulls itself out of my lips, uncontrollable, echoed by the one-who-is-familiar-but-isn't. The grip holding us both tightens. I look up, and see the moon, the full moon and its light on the person holding me up, throwing a halo of gold around his head.

The fear is almost solid, sticky as honey but as cold and viscous as mud. The peace I had just so recently found is gone, torn away in an instant. Red blazes like an inferno, stark against the night sky.

What is going on?

I cried out.

Voices. An alto and a tenor. Rising and falling in a harmony of fear and anger and determination. I wail, and wail, and he-who-was-familiar-but-wasn't wails with me. I reach over, and find him nearby. I grab his hand, desperate for comfort in a world that was fear and voices and unknown, everything unknown.

And then they tear me away from him.

I scream, and scream, unable to stop, unable to restrain the fear pouring off of me in waves. Something hot drips on to my skin. Words and voices.

It sounds like goodbye.

Please! Please…

DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE!

"Min'ko-chan!"

I shot up with a gasp, almost throwing Naruto off our bed. He yelped, falling backwards into the mattress. My eyes flickered in panic—left, right, white sheets and cold metal, sunlight through the windows and scratched wooden walls.

No moon. No fear but my own. No voices I didn't know.

"'Tetetetete… THAT HURT!" Naruto wailed, clutching his head where it had met the wall.

"S-sorry… Naruto." No matter how many years I'd been with him, it was always a wonder to wake up every morning and say that name.

Naruto. My brother. A boy that wasn't supposed to be real, in a world that wasn't supposed to exist.

And me. The one who was never meant to exist here in the first place.

"…y. Oy! Min'ko-chan, you're spacing off again, dattebayo!" said brother grumbled, waving a hand in front of my face. I blinked, then swatted it away.

"I'm thinking of a way to take revenge against you for ruining my beauty sleep." I grinned wickedly at him. "And for the last time, it's Mi. Na. Ko, dattebana!" I immediately clamped my mouth shut and scowled. I've been trying to get rid of that speech tic for ages. Why did I just keep blurting it out?

Naruto barked out a laugh at that, half in fear and half in glee. Then he sobered.

"That nightmare again?" he asked, his voice soft and sad. My expression wilted. That kind of look did not belong on his face. Naruto, dear, bubbly, beautiful Naruto, did not deserve to have expressions like that on his face.

"Yeah." I smiled and ruffled his hair. "Don't worry about it. I'll be fine with a little food in me. What time is it anyway?" I looked around. The tiny window above our little closet-turned-room showed a fairly blue sky, which meant nothing in sunny Konohagakure.

"Somewhere around nine, -ttebayo," he replied, rolling out of the futon. "Everyone's probably eating breakfast already."

I wriggled out of the blankets, raising an eyebrow until he blushed and moved to help me roll it up. I had quickly learned that raising a kid meant constant vigilance (hahaha, quoting Harry Potter while living in a closet), micromanaging every move you and the child made to make sure he didn't pick up any bad habits, from you or anyone else.

Raising a kid at twenty… as a kid

Dear God Almighty, kami or shinigami, whatnot… what did I do in my previous life to deserve this?

"Why do you keep spacing off?" Naruto whined, tugging on my arm. "You always do that, -ttebayo! Come on, I'm hungry!"

"Alright, alright…" I let my smile bloom on my face, this one clearly displaying my love and fondness for him. It had the immediate effect of turning him beet red, from his neck up to his tiny ears. He snorted and looked away.

God, was baby Naruto so cute! Can you believe we're actually related?

Oh man, if I grow up with even a quarter of the looks his – our! – parents had, I would die happy.

Then I remembered exactly what kind of world I was in, and quickly took that back.

"C'mon." I pulled him along, hand in hand like… well, like little kids. It took a little tiptoeing to reach the doorknob before we could exit our tiny closet-room. To keep the other children "safe from the demon brats", the orphanage staff had converted a utility closet into a tiny room filled with shelves and a crib, and later on a futon to share when a bed wouldn't fit.

Our bare feet padded on the wooden floor of the large, traditional Japanese style house. The one good thing about our room was that we didn't have to share a room with at least eighteen other kids. It was enough of a hellhole in the evenings, and I wasn't even in the room when they made noise.

The hall was unnaturally empty as we headed towards the cafeteria. The orphanage wasn't that big, and it felt even smaller with a population of about fifty kids from ages 1 to civilian 15. At least the cafeteria was easy enough to find; all we had to do was follow the cries of hungry children and the smell of a good stew brewing.

"C'mon! C'mon, I'm hungry!" Now it was Naruto pulling me along. I laughed, and sped up, with our little feet thud-thudding all the way up to the door.

Only to jump back as a horde of children roared out of it. Laughing, cheering, they bolted out the door, ready to play in the sun or turn an assigned chore into a competition. It was like a monster had been let loose to wreak havoc on the earth.

…well, considering we're talking about children here…

Scratch that. Considering we're talking about ninja children here, there is no doubt about the "monster(s) let loose to wreak havoc on the earth" part.

Orphanages in Konoha were funded by the government. However, with that funding came an agreement – all the children housed in the orphanage, upon reaching the beautiful, tender age of six and still not being adopted (boohoo), were sent to the Ninja Academy. If they passed, they became ninja.

Few managed to be selected for personal jounin senseis and their own genin teams. Even fewer managed to get a solo apprenticeship with a jounin. (The most legendary example of this rarity being dearest Yondaddy himself. And Kakashi, come to think of it, though I didn't find that out until later.) Those that were completely hopeless were sent back to the orphanage in shame, to finish their schooling in civilian school and become the shopkeepers and other unnoticed but equally important members of society.

…Which meant that, while the village now had a steady supply of cannon fodder and the occasional prodigy, it was also constantly breeding civilians that held a bitterness towards what they could have been, but weren't. The "ninjas are cool" and "to be a ninja is the utmost honor to have in the village" brainwashing didn't help any. Add that to the number of civilians that were creeped out by ninja in general, Konoha wasn't really building up a happy place here, huh?

Maybe, only a small portion of the village was actually made of orphans, and those were usually the children of ninjas killed while doing their jobs, meaning a higher success rate of becoming a ninja, so it probably didn't matter much in the face of ambiguous statistics?

Sometimes I thought thinking up crazy things like this was the only way my mind could cope with having the body of a three-year-old but the mentality of someone at twenty.

Naruto's yelp yanked me right out of my musing and back to the present. "WHAT?!" I winced and tried to clamp my hands over my ears, forgetting I was holding Naruto's hand. I nearly socked myself in the face. "Whaddaya mean the cafeteria's closed?"

At this rate I am never going to marry and have kids. Having to live with the shrieks of a pouting child once is enough for a lifetime, thank you very much.

"What I mean is… IT'S CLOSED!" We jumped in unison as a tan, wrinkly face shoved itself into our personal space. "You and your sister are late, therefore you miss breakfast!"

"But you said breakfast ended at 9:30!" Naruto whined. "You told me, -ttebayo! That's why I went to wake up Min'ko-chan first!"

"I said 9:00, brat." The orphanage head's nostrils flared wide with her fury. "Everyone knows the cafeteria closes at nine! It even says so, right here!" She slammed her hand against the wall.

BAM! We jumped at the sound. Again.

Sure enough, a small sign was plastered next to the cafeteria. She pointed at it, with a face that screamed contempt at the two of us. At my brother.

I could feel Naruto's hand shaking in mine. Without looking, I knew that his face was beginning to scrunch up and that his blue eyes were beginning to fill. I could hear the faint sniffles beginning to form and smell the faintest tang of saltwater on the air.

My eyes narrowed.

"Miyagawa-san." The woman visibly recoiled, before gathering her wits and pulling herself together. Her stern façade, however, wasn't as convincing this time. "Please forgive my brother for getting the time wrong." I felt Naruto jerk to protest and clamped my hand down on his. "It's not his fault though. We don't know how to read yet, so we couldn't exactly check the sign." Once again, I cursed my limited vocabulary in this world's language. That would have sounded more impressive if I'd used fancy words and formal language.

Please forgive my brother for mistaking the time of the termination of morning meals. However, it is not due to any fault of his, as neither of us is yet able to read, therefore he had no way of checking the time in the event of a misunderstanding or loss of memory.

It sounded ridiculous and maybe even pompous, and could even be made more highfalutin with a little work and editing, but hell, even just thinking it made me feel a whole lot better.

Miyagawa-san seemed to get her wind back at that. "Are you calling me a liar?" What she did after that statement could be compared to that of a threatened rooster: she inhaled, her wide nostrils widening even further, puffing herself up to seemingly twice her size. Her eyes narrowed until they were but dark lines on her reddened face. A mole on her cheek stood out horrendously against the color.

"No, ma'am." I let my eyes open up, the picture of puzzled childlike innocence. My voice was just the right shade of confused and clueless. "I was just saying."

Naruto was practically trembling with impatience and righteous fury. I kept my grip on his hand tight, a small action imploring him to keep quiet just a little bit longer. Miyagawa-san glared at us a little longer, but, unable to find a hole to attack me with, had to relent.

"Fine! Now get out of my sight before I ban you two from lunch too!" she roared.

She would. And she has, too, so Naruto and I wasted no time in turning tail and fleeing the vicinity.

The moment we were out of view and hearing, Naruto stomped his foot and began to yell. "I didn't get it wrong, -ttebayo, I didn't, I didn't! She said 9:30, and when I looked the short stick wasn't even at 9 yet and the long stick was after 10 so I didn't get it wrong, I didn't I didn't I didn-"

"Naruto!" I placed my hands on his whiskered cheeks and forced him to look at me. He wasn't even starting to make sense anymore, not even in convoluted toddler-speech, which meant he was really upset. "Naruto, look at me." He stopped glaring at the side and actually looked, red-faced and his blue eyes swimming in barely held back tears. "I believe you, Naruto."

His frown eased a little. "You do?" he asked, the scrunched-up eyes opening somewhat.

"Yeah, I do." I smiled at him, trying to convince him that I did, and do, that he was my Naruto and I knew he wasn't as stupid as people put him out to be. I didn't have proof yet, other than a few spotty lessons on learning how to tell time, and a few other things, but I knew.

Or I could be biased. But this was what having faith must be like, right?

"But… but why would Miyagawa-san say something like that?" His eyes were starting to swim again. I gently brushed the few tears that escaped with my tiny hands, wondering if I should tell him the truth or struggle to keep his innocence whole a little longer.

"I… don't know, Naruto." I finally, honestly, said. "Sometimes people are mean for no reason I can tell. Maybe Miyagawa-san is hurting inside, so she hurts others. Maybe she's lonely and feels better that others are hurting with her. Or maybe she feels better because she feels stronger when she hurts others."

"But why?" Naruto insisted, his tears bubbling over into streams. "It's not fair, dattebayo! I didn't do anything to her!"

I opened my mouth… then closed it. It's true. It wasn't fair. And what's worse is that I knew she wasn't doing it to any of the other children either.

Was it jealousy of the children who received two separate visits from the Sandaime? Two visits too many for a normal child? Or was it…

My hand strayed towards my temple, barely brushing the black line I knew stretched from around my eyes to there. Days of tracing it in front of the mirror let me memorize the smooth tattoo, from where it started at the corners of my eyes, over and under my lashes, to the tiny ends that reached for my hair, like a fierce eyeliner design for a Hollywood party.

Demonspawn, they'd called us. Called me.

"Minako?" he asked softly.

I shook my head clear and tried to smile. "Life isn't very fair at times. Especially people." I paused, but easily forestalled another "why?" when I saw it coming. "It's hard to explain," I said, stating the words I used when either my limited vocabulary could not keep up with what I was trying to teach Naruto (my brother!), or it really was hard to explain. This situation right now was both.

Naruto looked ready to push it, but relented with a sigh.

"C'mon." I wiped the last few tears off his cheeks with my hands once more, before wiping them off on my fourth-hand (possibly more) duster. Then I took his hand and tugged him back into motion. "Let's get you cleaned up."

My smile brightened as he gave a wobbly one back.

We walked to the bathing area. I had tried to drill the importance of bathing into Naruto, but it was hard to do when we only had a pair of clothes each. For now I was going to settle for washing his face.

"Come on, Kaoru, you can't not take a bath. Move along…" A gentle voice reached my keen hearing long before we saw the owner. Turning a corner, we found a brown-haired woman kneeling in front of a pouting child.

"I dun wanna!"

Minoru-san was Miyagawa-san's older sister. A soft, sweet woman, it was a wonder those two were even related. If there was ever a more impossible set of siblings, they would be it. While Miyagawa-san grumped and roared and glared, Minoru-san was always ready with a smile and a lap for all your misery. This was one of the reasons why most children called her by her first name, while Miyagawa-san by her last.

"I know! How about you take a bath now and—" A stifled gasp. I stiffened, coming to a sudden stop that sent Naruto bouncing off my back and nearly toppling both of us over. Hazel eyes were wide with terror, her skin as pale as an egg.

"Minoru-san?" Kaoru, a new kid, glanced between me and the frozen woman. "Minoru-san, what's wrong?" He reached up and tugged on her sleeve.

"N-n-nothing. Say, Kaoru, why don't we go for a snack first and then come back later?" Minoru-san snatched up the little boy in her arms. Shooting one last terrified glimpse at me, she fled, socked feet thump-thumping on the wooden floor.

"…Min'ko?" Naruto gave my sleeve his own, gentle tug. I didn't have to look to see his round, puzzled blue eyes.

"Come on, Naruto." My voice sounded distant to my ears. "Let's get your face washed."

"Min'ko… why'd Minoru-san look so scared?" he asked, following obediently. "She looked scardier than when I showed her that bug I caught before."

"More scared," I corrected him, dragging him to a sink and grabbing a stool to stand on. "Now scrub your face like I taught you."

"More scarblrbulbrrr," he repeated, the words disappearing under running water. "But," he added, pulling out from under the tap, "You didn't answer my question, -ttebayo!"

"I can't explain right now, Naruto," I said, fighting back my impatience that I knew wasn't truly directed at him.

"But why noooot?" he whined, stepping down from the stool.

"I just can't, okay!" I snapped.

He recoiled, making me wince and hold my face in my hands.

I took a deep shuddering breath. "I'm sorry, I… I don't know, okay, Naruto? I just can't."

How could I, when I was not supposed to know about the Kyuubi in the first place?


A/N: I'm going to be completely honest here in that I'm just writing this out as I go. There are events I can imagine and want to happen, but I have no idea how to link them together into an overarching plot. This is one of the reasons why updates are pretty slow too. I can imagine how Minako would react to certain events, like the Chuunin Exams for example, and there are characters I want her to meet but struggle to make it realistic, but that's pretty much more or less the limit of my capabilities for this fic. Seeing as how there is almost no planning in the first few chapters, and too much planning for future chapters has essentially ground my writing to a halt, I hope you will all forgive the dip in quality as I try to get my game together.