Hey everyone!

Welcome to this story. It's my first story in ages and a first Naruto Fanfiction. It is a Naruto based story with Naruto hidding who she is. A female Naruto portayal. Also, it is not a Sasuke and Naruto pairing. I plan on not having major romance elements in the story.

Also, I've rated the story a T even though it mentions abuse. So please refrain from reading if you are too young or if you feel triggered or if you aren't interested.

I just want to say, I'm not a supporter of any such acts. I just prefer to write stories where the characters have a deep understanding of pain and let them bloom through it.

Do read and let me know of your thoughts.

Chapter 1: The start of it all

Konohagakure no Sato

It had been a couple of weeks since the end of the fourth Shinobi war. The five great nations along with most of the minor nations were finally getting into a pace to build back to their previous days of glory. There had been many major changes that had occurred in the last few months, one of them being the Allied Shinobi Force and the peace between the Great Alliance.

Another was that now there were only 2 Jinchurikis left alive and at this exact moment, an unusual-but-natural pink-haired young lady along with a few friends was searching for one of them inside the partially rebuild Konohagakure. She had gone searching for her dear friend after realises between her busy schedule that she hadn't seen the energetic blonde-haired-blue-eyed friend in a while. As she searched for this friend, she dashed into some of her other academy classmates who then decided to join the search.

Now, everyone reading this must be wondering why these so-called-friends didn't just go and check their friend's house. But what was never mentioned was that due to sudden popularity and high demand, their friend had gotten into a habit to hide in secret or henge into someone else to help rebuild the village. So finding this friend had become hard. As this group of friends search, the shade of the sky changed from light blue to golden orange to dark purple.

"Naruto must be helping someone in one of the departments or the Hokage with something. Let's continue the search tomorrow" said a long blond haired purple dress young woman.

"Yeah! You might be right Ino. Let's search tomorrow. But if we don't find the knucklehead by lunch, we can surely go and ask Shishou", replied the pink-haired friend.

The rest just nodded – a reddish-brown haired young man, a ferocious one which purple paint on his cheeks with his ninken, a purple haired lavender eyed kunoichi, and a shinobi who wore a green hoodie and black goggles. They all split up and headed to their homes to get a night's rest.

The next morning, the six shinobi from the previous day were joined by a few others. They searched for their heroic and hyperactive friend but soon it was past noon and no-one had found any clue. So they decided to have lunch and visit the Hokage for some information.

Soon, the group of nine (eight shinobi and a ninken) entered the Hokage Tower, hoping to get some answers to their problems. As they were let in by Shizune, all of them heard her whisper "Finally" before sighing and leaving the premise. The group just shook their heads and entered.

Tsunade, who had been planning for a retirement, was instead stuck with huge stacks of paperwork and no sake stock. She was minutes away from losing her mind from all the events that had occurred since Jiraya's death. She hadn't even gotten time to grieve on one thing, let alone all the mess from the war. The only thing keeping her inside that office was a promise.

That day was like any other, her mind and heart were somewhere else and her body was purely pushing to get the job done as she knew that Shizune had done all the reading and sorting for her. She craved to be away from the place and holding a bottle of sake in her hand. She wanted some kind of distraction to get her back into the world of fantasy and let this world of reality go. But unfortunately, luck was never on her side, not just in gambling. She was brought back into the world of reality when her suddenly knock and a bunch of footsteps sounded in her room late afternoon.

As she looked up, she was hit with the realisation of what was about to happen from their looks. She immediately signalled for her ANBU guard, Boar and just said, "it's time". Boar just gave a slight node and hurried out. Tsunade then turned to her student and most of the Konoha -13 and signalled them to start speaking.

"Shishou," Sakura took the signal and stated speaking, "it's that we haven't seen or heard from Naruto in quite a few days or even weeks. We all searched for the past few days and didn't find her anywhere. So we decided to check with you once and she would surely have informed you".

Tsunade nodded and took a breath. Even though she trusted that this day would come, she didn't think she had the strength to tell them the truth. She called for Shizune and told her to get the others as soon as possible. Then, she finally addressed the group.

"I'll let you all know once the rest of them arrive."

She then looked back at the paperwork and decided to relieve some anxiety by distracting herself and finished as much paperwork as possible 'cause she knew that she wouldn't be able to do it for the rest of the day.

The group awkwardly waited in silence while throwing glances at each other. They were fully confused as to what was going on. They even started to worry about their bubbly-but-not-so-bubbly-friend.

About 10 minutes later, people started arriving. First, came in Shikamaru who was in the building itself, working for the Hokage. Next came Meogi, Udon and Hanabi. Around the 30 minute mark, Neji came in. But Tsunade seemed to be waiting for someone else as well. So everyone just waited; their anxiety increasing. About 45 minutes later, the four Rookie senseis (Asuma, Kurenai, Gai and Yamato) expect Kakashi and including the Proctor from the second and third rounds of their first Chūnin exam, Anko and Genma along with Ibiki and two other ANBU came in. Nearing the hour mark, Iruka entered the room. Anyone in the room at that point could feel the tension as a knife passing slicing butter and knew that nothing could be done to cut it. Finally, about 90 minutes later, Kakashi came in with a tattered looking Sasuke who had been locked up in the hidden ANBU headquarters.

Tsunade finally decided it was time to address the situation and cleared her throat before beginning.

That's a wrap for chapter 1. Do review and like!

I'll come back soon with the next chapter!