He was pretty tall.

A few centimeters north of 180 cm, just a couple shorter than Dad is. For foreigners, that's not that impressive, but here in the Shinobi World we tend to be on the shorter side. Shinachiku towered over most other villagers and instantly stood out in any crowd. For a few more reasons than just his height.

For one, he looked a lot more like Dad than Nami or I did. Hanami looked mostly like our paternal grandmother, I took after Mom more than anyone, but Shinachiku's features came from our father and our father's father.

He had blond hair—the spiky yellow kind—Mom's green eyes, and a face of soft features and sharp expressions. He always kept his face bare, his kitsune mask with red stripes either affixed to his shoulder or somewhere else. Pretty conspicuous considering Anbu are supposed to keep their true identities secret.

He didn't exactly dress like everyone else, either. He wore the standard black pants and sleeveless silver Anbu vest—which tended to catch enough eyes as is in today's pacifist world—but over that was a haori that resembled the Hokage's. It was solid black, save the white-colored flames that marked the trim and the vertical characters on the back—boldface white kanji with sharp angular strokes, spelling out the rank 'Anbu Commander'. He didn't wear his haori so much as he did simply drape it over his own shoulders, as one would an overcoat, letting the sleeves dangle emptily at his sides. When a strong sidelong wind came, it would blow a bit to his side and flutter with a tide of black-and-white ripples.

Apparently, the women in the village found this to be cool. Really, really, really cool.

"—Onii-chan, Onii-chan!" Hanami ran up to our older brother while I was frozen in place. She hugged him around the waist and dug her face into his solar plexus, so much so that it looked like she was smothering herself.

Shianchiku looked down at the lively thing encased in red hair that was currently clinging to him. He patted her on the head—which is to say he dug his fingers into her scalp and messed up her hair with a few rough twists of the arm and wrist, fraying it into split ends. Our sister's a pretty durable little creature, so naturally she only finds this enjoyable.

"Now, now, Nami. We talked about this." Shinachiku bent down to eye level and wagged a finger in front of Nami's face. "You're getting too old to call me 'Onii-chan' anymore. From now on, it's 'Onii-sama', alright? Say it with me—'Onii-sama'."

"Onii-sama, Onii-sama!" Nami cheered him on. That's a pretty serious upgrade in honorific.

Shinachiku placed a hand flat on his chest in gratification. "Yes, I am amazing. Praise me more."

What kind of weird stuff is he putting in her head…? Wait, no, I shouldn't care about that right now. I need to get out of here.

I'll just sneak out of here very ninja-like…that's right, I'm a background character, no one pay any attention to me while I slip out of this scene, just a few more steps and I'll—

"—hey, what's that?" Shinachiku says as I'm halfway out of the kitchen.

I return to my impression of a statue when I hear him notice something. I look out of the corner of my eye and see—

Shinachiku, looking dead at…that Hokage headpiece I set down earlier.

"This the Old Man's hat?" He said, picking it up and whimsically inspecting it in front of his eyes, not looking like he's noticed me at all. "Hey Nami, where'd this come from? Thought Mom and the Old Man were still in Ame."

"I stole it from Dad!" Nami says, Dad-smiling without any shame at all. "Dattebana!"

Shinachiku Dad-smiles right back at her and gives a thumbs up. "Ha, Nice! Dattebaze!"

…Aha, idiots…I'm still safe, alright, let's keep going—

"Wanna try Dad's hat on?" Nami asked. "I tried earlier but all the corners flopped down and it kept falling off."

Well, naturally. The Hokage's ceremonial clothes are custom tailored for them alone, and the headpiece is meant to look big even for the head it's meant to go on. Dad's pretty tall, so it doesn't stay neatly on top of Nami or I that well. Shinachiku's the only one out of the three of us that's close enough in Dad's stature and size for it to fit.

"Psh." He does a quick, amused-and-dismissive smile and pushes a short exhale out of the opening in his smirk, like when someone tries to laugh at an unfunny joke and only manages to get a quarter of the way there. "I'll pass."

Shinachiku tosses the Hokage-head-thing over his shoulder like it's something for the dirty laundry pile.

—I'm right in front of the hallway leading out back towards the stairs, just one more step, just a little bit more and I'll—

—A three-pronged kunai flies right in front of my nose and plants itself in the wall beside me, stopping me dead in my tracks.

…He's so fast that I didn't even see him throw it. It didn't look like his arms or hands moved at all from my eyes. Like just one moment there wasn't a kunai blocking the way, and then in zero seconds there was.

Hiraishin no Jutsu!

He teleports right in front of me, close enough that I have to bend my neck back to look up at him. He's leaning down over me, smiling with closed eyes and both of his hands behind his back.

"Hey there, little Minato." Shinachiku says, determinately blocking my escape. "Going somewhere without saying hi to your older brother? And here everyone's saying that you've gotten over that little untalkative phase of yours and caught the social bug."

I jump back a few feet, giving myself enough room for us to have a standoff between ninja. We aren't supposed to use ninja tools inside the house, but one of my hands have reflexively creeped towards the holster with my shuriken, like that deadly moment when two mid-level enemy ninja meet each other and have that silent staredown, each trying to predict where the other will dodge before they each take off and start to throw.

…Shinachiku's arms were folded now. He's probably finding this funny.

"Ah, h-hey, Nii-san." Sweat pours furiously from that forehead of mine, evaporating before it can reach my eyebrows. "Yeah, I'm just going upstairs…really tired today…wanna sleep…yeah…"

There's a deep red sun lighting up my face right now. That's the color of all of my bravery burning itself up.

"Really…?" He put a balled-up fist against his hip, his elbow pushing out against that black-with-white-flames haori and revealing a bit of his arm. Like most ninja he was more slim than he was muscular, but he had one of those scary-looking black-ink kanji tattoos, like the ones Kumo ninja like to get. 'Demon-sage', it spelled, between the shoulder and elbow of his left arm. Think you can guess where he got the inspiration from."…Because judging by how you're masking your chakra right now, it seems like you're trying to sneak off without me noticing." Shinachiku goes on, stating the absolute truth. The slightest of smiles is on his face right now, way more subdued then the one he shared with Nami earlier.

You wanna know what makes evil people so scary? It's not the fact that they're good at doing the over-the-top evil laugh. It's that they can do the smallest expression and signal off the full weight of their killing intent behind it.

I'm looking so far away from his eyes right now that my neck is almost twisted into a 180.

"Uh, I'm…ahahahahahahahaha…HaHaHaHa…Haha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha…" My laugh gets progressively more nervous with each sequential 'ha'…ahahaha…

Ha…um, don't worry, me! Any second now I'll use that brain of mine and find some sort of strategy to get out of this! Any second now…

…I'll…

…could, um…

…I-Inner Minato! What are our options here, I need another one of those multiple choice questions in my thought bubble, stat!

A) Try to fight (won't work).
B) Run away (won't work).
C) Negotiate (won't work).
D) Surrender.
E) —all tangled up with each other, almost like they were—

Oh, BULLSHIT!

"Seriously, I'm kinda getting the feeling you don't like me, little brother…" Shinachiku's bright green eyes, from their high perch at a head taller than I was, cast themselves in a lonely downward, like he was pretending to have a heart. Don't fall for it!

"Because you're always trying to fight with me all the time!" I shout defensively, the skin on my shoulders standing up like the hair of a hissing cat. "You're always trying to drag me by the collar off to some training ground so you can throw S-ranked Rasengan variants at me while I try to dodge for my life, or tackling me and trying to wrestle when I come downstairs to get milk out of the fridge, or hiding around the corner and making it a game for me to try to sense you before you kick me in the back of the legs when I pass by, or…!"

I kept listing my grievances before the court. I had a long list of his tyranny dating back into the hazy years in the memory bank.

"Yeah," Nii-san scratched his cheek and looked away a little. "…So?"

Uzumaki Shinachiku was filled up to his eyes with testosterone, so my words pretty much went through one ear, spun around in the part of his brain that thinks that sounds like fun, and then out the other. He's crazy, he's the only one in the world who would find stuff like that fun.

"Hey, that stuff sounds like fun!" Nami said, apparently still here.

"Shut up! You're not helping!" I spin around towards Nami and swat away her words with a shaking fist.

"So, I don't get it." Shinachiku said. "Are you saying I'm a good older brother, a bad one, or…?"

I spin back around and look up at Nii-san.

…He's a bit of a surreal sight, honestly. I didn't really notice when we were younger, but now that he's a year shy of twenty, I can kind of see what all the Prewars from our village like to say. He looks like a face from Hokage Rock come alive, with all the entrapping of youth, life, and happiness with it.

Some people say he's a reincarnation of the Fourth Hokage because he looks like him and has a similar fighting style. This is a lie, of course. Our grandfather was already long gone by the time any of us were born, but from what I understand, the Fourth Hokage was a kind man with a gentle smile and an absolute control over his own actions. Nii-san has exactly zero of those things. And he tends to rub some people the wrong way—

As popular as Shinachiku is with girls, there's a certain type that distinctly avoids him. The kinds from noble families that wore stuffy jyuunihitoe in the summer and adorned white-painted faces come the New Year. 'Undomesticable' some of them say behind his back. 'Unmarriageable', said in the huddles of those who treat such a thing as a social contract and a means of political alliance, rather than of emotion. The Fire Daimyo's Family and the more traditional elements of the Hyuuga Clan in particular seems to act like they're allergic, save one of them anyway.

—I gather my courage, and face up my older brother; like I'm Mom whenever she steps into her role of chief disciplinarian and plants a finger in front of his chest, despite the fact that Shinachiku towers over her by now. I say—

"I'm saying you should quit being such a dick all time and stop venting out all of your aggression by antagonizing everyone around you."

In these peaceful times, it's more typical of hyperactive young people to output their pent-up energy into the opposite sex than it is to pick fights. But like Dad, Shinachiku is a child at heart, so such an idea never even occurred to him.

"But I'm a tragic character!" My older brother protested, putting a knuckle to the corner of his eye and pretending to wipe away a tear. "I have a backstory with at least three tinted panels showing that I was bullied as a kid and that I just wanted to show everyone they were wrong…"

…What the hell? Is he trying to say he's some sort of sob story manga villain…?

"Nii-san, everyone in the Academy loved you because you were the Hokage's Son." I correct him. "Also, you were stronger than all of your teachers and only graduated when you were ten because the postwar rules don't allow anyone to graduate younger than that. No one ever bullied you, or anything."

"Oh, right." He perked up, instantly dropping the obvious lie.

Tsunako-san was Shinachiku's classmate and graduated at the same age he did, so I know some of this from her. She was also his genin-teammate on Team Naruto for a short while before he powerhoused his way through Chuunin, Jounin, ANBU, and ANBU Captain all in about the course of two years, dragging her along with him.

It's freaky how strong geniuses can be. He'd probably be Hokage by now, if Dad weren't literally the strongest person to ever live. How did he get this way…? Not entirely sure. It's hard for me to remember back this far, but I remember Shinachiku being really polite before he entered the Academy, shy even. And then somewhere along the way on the path of a Ninja, he got infected with the wildness of manhood, along with an unrelenting drive to get stronger.

"—If you understand, then let me go upstairs and lock myself in my room in peace! Dattebaro!"

"Sure." Shinachiku stepped to the side, getting out of the way. "Just go upstairs if you're so much of a coward…" He says 'coward' with a bit of a rising tone at the end, his eyes glancing off into their upper-right corners, inviting me to come prove him wrong…

…I decide not to take the bait, and walk straight past him. Damn straight I'm a coward. I'm not falling for this one.

I get all the way up to edge of his armspan before he reaches out at my scalp and digs his fingers into the crown of my skull, stopping me in my tracks.

"Hey!" He shouts, madder than I am. "What the fuck, Minato?! You were totally supposed to go 'I'm not a coward!' there, and then go into a big monologue about pride or something while orchestral music slowly bled into background, until it finally hits crescendo and you jump at me and we have this huge epic fight!"

I think someone's watched a few too many of those manga-adapted action cartoons that are starting to get popular.

"I don't care." I said. "I hate confrontation, alright? Besides, you know I can't really do anything like that with my condition. Just let me go already."

Like I said before, Shinachiku and I are polar opposites. And all of the ways we're different really just boil down to one key difference—

Shinachiku loves to fight. He likes actions over words, excitement over rationality, and he loves pushing people to see if he can get their true self to come out.

Me? I hate fighting. I hate the taste of iron in my mouth, I hate putting myself in do-or-die situations where people might get a peek into this crazy party that's going on in my head. Maybe it's because I'm so bad at fighting that I hate it. Maybe it's because it's my job to patch up the hot-blooded types after the fact.

What's so cool about watching your friends get hurt? What's so fun about beating up on someone weaker than you just to prove how much of a badass you are? What's so great about doing it over and over until your village hates that village because they've beat up on everyone you know, and that village hates your village because you've beat up on everyone they know? Maybe if I were a little cooler, a little stupider, a little less girly and more heroic—maybe I'd get it. But, honestly, I'm just a boring healer. I don't get it at all.

"—And what's up with this weird stuff in your hair, man?" Shinachiku, ignoring what I said, took his pointer finger and thumb off my head for a second, rubbing together some of the chalk on his hands. His chakra-enhanced grip strength's like the claw of an industrial crane. I can't escape even with only three of his fingers holding onto me.

"The white powdery stuff? That's just chalk, Nami hit me with the 'eraser over the sliding door' trick." I answer.

"It was amazing! I give myself nine out of ten stars!" Nami shouted, overhearing us. I don't think her self-reviews ever went anywhere under eight out of ten, so that's actually an average score.

Nii-san looked at Nami. Then he looked back at my head. It looked like he was thinking up something.

And then after a second,

the Evil Smile Returned.

The slight, subdued one. Unlike Nami, Shinachiku isn't an idiot, he's a true elite-level shinobi. His only flaw in that regard was that he was too honest, he was choreographing exactly what he was thinking on his face.

"Really…?" He starts talking after his moment of deliberation. He's definitely thought up something evil. "I'm not really talking about the chalk though, there's this other stuff in here too—"

"Huh?" I'm confused. What's he talking about…?

"—it's just that there's all this weird stuff in your hair…what's this, blond?" Shinachiku asks with faux-curiosity, like he already knows the answer to the question he's asking. "That's weird, Minato, I don't remember your hair looking blond when we were kids…"

"Ah—!" An involuntary noise gets forced out of me when I realize what he's getting at.

"…Think I got a new technique that can help you out with this…you know how Wind Release: Rasenshuriken does microscopic damage to people? I think I can use a Water Release version to unbind all that stuff that's stuck to your hair follicles and making you look blond."

"But…your chakra affinity is Fire! You can't even use Water Release!" I protest.

"Of course I can, I can use all five!" Shinachiku extended out his free arm and spun some chakra together, beginning an S-class Elemental Rasengan—direct application of which to my head carrying a very short symptom list, namely, the unambiguous medical side effect known as 'immediate death'.

"I'll get that stuff out of your hair, for sure!" Shinachiku beams.

"I'll die, for sure!" I shout. "I'll die-ttebayo!"

That evil grin on Shinachiku's face magnifies. "Oh, I'm definitely doing it now that you've made that joke."

"I couldn't resist, okay! Mercy, mercy! I really can't survive a point-blank Rasengan to the top of my head!"

"Oh, don't worry." That evilness in Shinachiku's face suddenly turns into fake sincerity. "I made a weaker C-ranked version of the Rasengan just for you. All it'll do is get rid of that weird stuff in your hair."

"T-there's no way you invented a variant of the Rasengan just for the sole purpose of bullying me!"

There's no way he could actually have done that…right?

—Shinachiku held out his free hand. A micro-Rasengan with trace amounts of water release spun up and glowed above his palm. He did. He did just invent a new Rasengan just for the sole purpose of bullying me.

"I take it back!" I plead. "Kill me instead! Anything other than this, alright?! It takes me two weeks just to get my roots ready and then another two weeks of bleaching just to get it to look somewhat normal!"

My natural hair color is especially resilient, so much so that it takes a whole month to change into something else. Even then, anything minor such as using the wrong shampoo can make some of the real parts shine through. It's a real pain.

You might think it's weird that a guy puts so much effort into making his hair look a different color. It's not weird at all. If you knew what I was covering up, you'd understand.

"—Alright, fine—" Shinachiku let go of my head with a slight, subdued smile…

Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!

…And then a clone of his appeared in front of me, effectively flanking me on both sides and blocking all escape.

"—if you can get past my clone in ten seconds, I'll let you die." His shadow clone poked me in the forehead with his pinkie. "Ten…nine…eight…"

His arm gradually lowered down in pace with the countdown…gotta think of something!

I try running past him. My legs move wildly, but the rest of me doesn't. Shinachiku's chakra-enhanced physical strength is about half as strong as Mom's is, which means his physical strength is roughly on par with the Fifth Hokage's in her prime. Forcing my way past him this way is impossible.

"Six…five…"

Look up. Look down. If I had more time, I could cut a hole in the ceiling and escape to the floor above…I'll need a different plan.

"Three…two…"

I bite into the finger of the clone holding me back. Some green chakra comes out of my teeth and tries to heal him when I do. I don't know what I expected.

"…One…"

Dammit; no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no…

"…Zero."

—A miniature rasengan hit me on the top of the head.

A burst of spiraling chakra and water. It feels like my hair is being washed in the middle of a whirlpool. Doesn't really hurt, but I wouldn't recommend it.

"—See, all done. That wasn't so bad, was it?" Shinachiku says, his jutsu over. It's his victory.

I look up at one of my bangs, and I see…

…The flutter of cherry blossoms through the air in their springtime bloom…

"Ah, nuh, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" I scream in defeat, having suffered the worst humiliation.

"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Shinachiku laughs maniacally as his clone disperses with a cloud of smoke. Turns out he's good at the over-the-top evil laugh too.

I collapse limply on the ground without the clone to prop me up, all the fight in my body having left with my pride.

Ah…why my hair…everyone knows I'm sensitive about this. Why'd he have to go and be such a dick about it…ah…

"Oh, I've been violated…" Some meaningless words leave my mouth as my face squishes against the floor and I deathly stare a thousand yards away. "My innocence has been stolen against my will…my most shameful side has been shown to the whole world, I'm ruined for marriage, and now I can never be a groom…"

"Eh, seriously? All I did was give you a high-powered noogie. Don't be so dramatic." Shinachiku looked a little nervous at the sudden dark turn in my dialogue. He was probably expecting me to laugh with him and go 'ah, you got me!' or something like that.

"That looks fun!" Nami jumped up and shouted. "I wanna violate you too, Mina-nii!" With a parted-teeth smile and exactly zero understanding of what she just said, Nami jumps on my back and squeezes me with an attack-hug.

"Gah, ah, ah…" I heave myself against the floor, something deep inside me starting to leak out.

"Huh…?" Shinachiku's grin vanishes pretty quickly once he starts hearing the pathetic noises coming out of me.

"Ah, ah, ahhhh…" I whine like an injured puppy. Why did he have to…he knows there's a reason why I…ah…hck…

Shinachiku's eyes get really wide when he's realized he's pushed me too far. "Ah, ah, d-don't cry! That and dying are the worst! Don't do either!"

In a complete 180, he frantically tries to stop the emotional reaction that he set in motion, his face probably looking pretty panic-stricken.

"GA…" The feeling of tears gathered in the corner of my eyes tickles a hidden fury out of the shackles of self-restraint. "GAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

"Eh—!" Shinachiku and Hanami both bolt off and away from me.

"I can handle being the weakest ninja in my family!" I shout. "I can handle being the weakest ninja in my group of friends! I can handle having a mom with super-strength and an overpowered dad that encourages everyone my age to be a bunch of idiots! But KAMISAMA, WHY—"

I point at my head, now exposed with its natural hair color—the hair I was so embarrassed about as a wild little kid, and shout at the heavens:

"WHY IS MY HAIR PIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK?!"

—My hair was as pink as sakura trees in full bloom.

What did I do in my last life to deserve this, huh? Was I Uchiha Madara?! Did I try to take over the world with the sleepy-dreamy-thingy no jutsu? Did I do something that pissed you off somehow, huh? DID I PISS YOU OFF, GOD?!

"Just calm down, little bro, deep breaths, think about happy memories…" Shinachiku nervously tried to make amends while my vision was cloaked in the sight of my own chakra.

"THAT'S IT!" Inner Minato shouted at me, released from his binds. "LET'S PICK UP THE WHOLE GODDAMN HOUSE! LET'S FLIP THIS MOTHERFUCKER THE FUCK OVER! WE'LL KILL EVERYONE INSIDE AND CRUSH THEIR CORPSES INTO THOUSANDS OF LITTLE GROUND-UP BLOODY SPECKS SO THAT NOT EVEN EDO TENSEI CAN BRING THEM BACK! GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

"[Hey, Minato! It's really dangerous if you suddenly spike up your chakra that high, after all, you're—!]" Shinachiku says something, but I can't hear him.

I focus all of my chakra into a single point, nearly pitch-perfect chakra control. I go through all of the steps Mom taught me years ago when trying to increase my physical strength with chakra control, and replicate each of them just like I should. Find a focal point that's comfortable—for me, right between the knuckles of the middle and ring finger—and release everything on impact with timing as close to zero as possible. Even though it's been years since I last tried to use this, my body remembers the way how perfectly.

—My punch flies towards the nearest wall, with so much directed chakra behind it that it'll bring everything around me crashing down—

—before anyone can stop me, with every bit of strength I have—

—illuminated by the faint glow of green, my chakra incarnated—

—Everything slows down around me at the last few centimeters before I hit the wall, as if in slow-motion. I know exactly what's going to happen. But I don't stop myself. I hit exactly where I mean to, with no pauses or stops—

THUD

My fist harmlessly hits the wall with all of my power, softly bouncing off, stopped by nothing more than the unremarkable strength of the framing behind it. Something breaks, but it's nothing that's outside of me.

That green chakra of mine seeps from my hand and spreads around the undamaged point of impact where my knuckles are, like it's trying to heal the inanimate wall…

…Well, there's no 'like' about it. That's exactly what it's trying to do.

—Even after all the noise we just made, there's suddenly nothing but a uniform silence—from Shinachiku, Nami, and myself. There's a reason why.

…The air's stale. They don't know what to say. My overtalkative, hyperactive family…they know exactly what just happened. What my impotent little bit of rage signifies. And they're worried about me, but they don't what to say.

Lub-Dub. Lub-Dub. Lub-Lub-Lub…Dub.

—My heart beats painfully against my chest in its irregular rhythm, going up to steps three and four in the ten-step journey towards a heart attack—and then settles back down peacefully at step one. My heart's not the best. A small little side effect of a greater cause.

…In case you haven't figured it out by now…

…This is that 'defect' I've been talking about.

The only ninja abilities I can use are harmless types of Medical Ninjutsu, basic ninja tools like kunai that do not use chakra flow, and fundamental movement techniques like focusing chakra to my legs to jump really high or move faster—or controlling my chakra to walk on trees or water. Everything else is impossible thanks to the diagnosis that was handed down to me seven years ago.

I don't like to talk about it. The more I do, the more I feel like I'm giving myself an excuse to not try in life and to not care. There are plenty of people out there who have it worse than I do. It'd be disrespectful to them and everyone who cares about me to get all depressed about it.

—My outstretched arm falls limply back to my side, my curled-up fingers loosening flat. My hand hurts.

I felt my mind wander somewhere else, towards something like a dream about sometime long ago.

Towards a dream where I was standing in the middle of an ocean, watching everyone's backs as they disappeared faraway—

Towards the dream of that day when my once-blue chakra had turned green—