Part 4

So far it these are the ships I've decided on:
SakuraxIno, AsumaxKurenei and TsunadexJiraiya, nothing else has been decided. I am considering NarukoxSamui, just cause Samui is kind of blank slate to write how I want and because she's rarely written, but nothing's been decided and I'm open to suggestions. Hope you enjoy, thanks for reading.

Naruko woke the next morning utterly exhausted. She'd spent years wondering; 'Did her parents leave her, die, disappear? Did they even love her?' Now she had answers. Answers would never give her parents, or the childhood she never really had, being an orphan in a shinobi village meant she wasn't likely to have one but being a Jinchuuriki meant that one forfeited their right to a childhood entirely. People often said many shinobi grew up too fast, Jinchuuriki grew up a lot faster. The previous night had been incredibly emotionally taxing, not to mention she was tired physically from the day's activities too. Despite never meeting them, just knowing who they were made her miss her parents so much, it was almost unbearable.

-Flashback-

She'd explored the old house even after Jiraiya told her that everything that had been inside had been sealed away by him and the Sandaime for safe keeping. Not even furniture was left, not even tables or chairs were left. She'd left after a few minutes, there wasn't anything to see.

"Naruko?" Tsunade asked as she placed a hand on her shoulder.

Naruko sent her a weak smile. "I'm ok, Baa-chan. I will be at least. I've just not known anything about them 'til now."

Naruko crouched down to look at her parents' gravestones, a frangipani floated down in front of her face. She caught it before it hit the ground and looked at it, then up at the tree. Jiraiya crouched down beside her. "Do you want us to tell you about them?"

Tsunade crouched down on her other side. "Yeah, I was good friends with Kushina, I've got plenty of stories." Naruko looked to their smiling faces. She returned a soft smile and nodded.

"I'd like that."

-Flashback End-

Tsunade had told her she'd be off duty for a week to do whatever she wanted. What they both knew she meant was that Naruko could have a week to read through all of the scrolls from her parents had left and the possessions Jiraiya and the Old Man had sealed away, though Jiraiya had made a point to separate and label all of the scrolls so she wouldn't open a scroll only to be crushed by a couch or something.

For a while she just lay in bed. Turning to her left, she saw that it was nearly 10:30am, which was a massive sleep in for a shinobi. Most shinobi rose with the sun, a habit that Jiraiya had just about beat into her. Eventually she couldn't take needing to pee any longer and got up and went to the toilet. She decided that she'd feel better after cleaning herself up. 'Healthy body, healthy mind' and all that. She figured if she washed off all the grime it'd clear her head somewhat.

After tending to every square inch of her body, which included flushing her chakra coils, helping it to flow better, which was a long process. It helped with control and allowed her to gather her chakra faster. By the time she was done and dressed in bright orange sweatpants and an oversized white jumper she sat on her couch and pulled out a box of her mother's sealed possessions. Pulling one out at random she read the label, which just said, 'Sword'. Disengaging the seal onto her empty coffee table, in a burst of smoke the nodachi her mother had been tending to in one of the pictures of her appeared. It was in a red sheath that would've matched her mother's hair. She carefully picked up the sword and pulled it out of its sheath. The wrappings on the hilt were black and red and the fuchi (collar/wrist guard) was made of some sort of matte black metal that had intricate carvings of a tiger in various poses; relaxing, snarling, mid-attack and nuzzling another tiger. The blade was still very sharp, as if it had been taken to a grindstone yesterday, and was made of chakra conductive metal. She put it back into the sheath and set it aside.

She drew out another and unsealed it. A Konoha headband fell onto the table. She picked it up, it had an engraving on the inside in kanji reading; 'Sword and Mind must be united. Technique by itself is insufficient, and Spirit alone is not enough'. She considered the quote for a while and wondered where it came from. Shrugging, she placed it back onto the table and pulled out another, this time from her father's box.

Unsealing it she was surprised when a piece of clothing appeared and landed on top of her. Pulling it off she was shocked to find it was one her father's infamous coats. She ran her hands over the material, it was surprisingly soft on the inside. It smelled of wood, ink and paper. She smiled lightly to herself. This was the closest to her parents she had ever been, apart from when she'd been at their graves last night.

Draping the cloak over the armrest she pulled out another scroll. Another metallic object landed on the table. She picked it up to find one of the odd kunai Jiraiya had been fiddling with the night before. This was the first time she'd seen one up close. She noticed the seals on the handle, kinda hard not to, and began trying to analyse them. It wasn't in intricate sealing array like she would've expected but some the symbols she couldn't even begin to decipher. The only one she slightly recognised was some type of space-time seal. She then noticed that another object had appeared on the table. It was a book. Opening it she two sets of handwriting, what appeared to be notes on various sealing techniques. Flipping back to the first page she saw that one of the writers, in neat handwriting was simply written 'Namikaze Minato' and in a messy chicken scratches was 'Uzumaki Kushina'. She found it very amusing as their handwriting was like a reflection of their personalities, at least based on what Tsunade and Jiraiya had told her.

She spent the rest of the day pulling out and arranging her parents' various belongings. Once, she would've carefully hidden these items for fear someone that hated her would break into her apartment, but after she'd returned she'd taken special care to place a number of security seals around the building. When she'd moved out of the orphanage, the Sandaime had purchased an old apartment building and gave it to Naruko as a birthday present. While it wasn't in the best of shape, it served her perfectly. Though, once she started living alone there were always at least two ANBU Operatives assigned to watch over the building, even when she was away with Jiraiya. It was often a job given to ANBU who needed a break but refused to take a holiday.

Over the next week she read though the many jutsu scrolls and notes they'd left. She'd gotten into the habit of reading their fuuinjutsu notes in bed until she couldn't stay awake any longer. There was an entire separate book, the writing was entirely her father's and it detailed his creation of the Hiraishin, which captivated her completely. They weren't actually taught a lot about many of the jutsu they heard about in the Academy, it wasn't something they needed to know about. The last thing they needed was a ten year old Academy student blowing themselves up trying out some fancy jutsu they'd learnt about in class. All they were taught about the Hiraishin was that it enabled the Yondaime to teleport hundreds of time within minutes which he used to great effect in destroying enemy shinobi. He'd created the technique at the height of the Third Great Shinobi War and essentially turned the tide on his own, from a stalemate to a Konoha Victory.

She'd also contemplated replacing her rather basic katana with her mother's nodachi, but she was a ninjutsu specialist, not a kenjutsu specialist like her mother so using such a large sword would likely hamper her ability to cast ninjutsu effectively. After reading through many of her parents' fuuinjutsu notes, she'd found designs and instruction for a storage seal tattoo. While Seal Tattoos weren't unheard of, she already had one to hold the fox after all, it wasn't exactly common either. When you're dealing with symbols that could explode with one wrong brush stroke, most people weren't jumping to have them put permanently etched onto their body. So after practicing on some reinforced kage bunshin, she had one of her clones very carefully tattoo the seal onto her left wrist. Once it was done, with no small amount of discomfort endured, she tested the seal by trying to store a number of different items. Once she was sure the seal was functional she sealed her mother's sword into it, ready to pull out at a moment's notice. She'd have to train with it, as the weight and length difference to her katana would throw her off quite a bit in combat. She was also keen to try out the chakra conductive metal; while most metals could have chakra conducted through them, the nodachi was made with it in mind and as such would require far less concentration, chakra and chakra control.

Deciding she'd spent enough time in her apartment as she hadn't left it in four days and was starting to get a little stir crazy despite all the great scrolls and stuff left to her, she left and began walking around the village, taking in fresh air for the first time in days. It was only about 9am so she wasn't really sure what she was going to do. Then she realised that she was only a block away from Sakura's new apartment. She nodded to herself and turned onto a different road. After a few minutes she came across Sakura's apartment building and went inside. Walking up the stairs to Sakura's floor, she walked down the hall and knocked on the door. She'd only been inside once, it had one bedroom and bathroom off the main part of the apartment and the rest was open, the kitchen, lounge room and small dining table in the same large room. The door opened, a dishevelled Sakura appeared in the doorway in nothing but an overlarge shirt and (presumably) underwear. She seemed to be still half asleep, to Naruko's surprise, as she knew Sakura often got up early to work at the hospital. Naruko raised an eyebrow as Sakura suddenly woke up fully. "Naruko! What are you doing here? Do we have a mission?"

Naruko shook her head. "Nah, I just thought I'd come around and see what you were up to. Bit late for you to be in bed isn't it?"

"Er..." it seemed Sakura was having trouble coming up with a reason for her to be at home this late in the morning.

"Sakura?" a tired, feminine voice called from the bedroom. The girl in question stiffened and Naruko rose an eyebrow and smirked mischievously. "What's taking so long?"

"Yeah, Sakura, what's taking so long?" Naruko asked as she cocked her hips and placed her hands on them.

"Er..." Sakura's face a gone bright red and she began stuttering.

"Sakura?" Naruko looked over Sakura's shoulder to see Ino exit the bedroom in what Naruko knew was Sakura's bathrobe. "oh... hey... Naruko..." Ino realised she was caught, her eyes wide like a deer in the headlights.

"So how long has this been going on, eh?" Naruko asked, leaning into Sakura's increasingly red face.

"Er..."

"You know, that's not really an answer. Ino?" Naruko asked over Sakura's shoulder.

"...bout a year." Ino answered with a blush of her own.

Naruko's eyebrows, somehow, rose further, "Am I the first one to find out?"

Sakura seemed to find her words and shook her head. "I'm pretty sure Kakashi-sensei knows, but he hasn't said anything."

"Same with Shika." Ino said as she walked over and put an arm around Sakura's waist. "I'd be more surprised if he hadn't figured it out."

Naruko nodded. "You're probably right. Well, I guess I'll leave you crazy kids to it." Naruko began walking down the hallway and called over her shoulder. "Whatever you do, don't let Jiraiya find out!"

As Naruko disappeared from sight, Ino turned to her girlfriend, confused. "Why would it matter if Jiraiya-sama found out?"

"He writes Icha-Icha." Sakura answered as she shut the door. "And he researches very thoroughly for each book."

"Research?"

"He likes to... observe."

It took a moment for it to click in Ino's head, but once it did her blush swiftly returned, though it was somewhat out of irritation. "If he tries, I'll castrate him, Sannin or not." Ino stated.

Sakura looked over at her girlfriend with a fond smile as she began pulling stuff out to make breakfast. "Gods, I love you."

Ino responded with a bright smile and she walked over and kissed Sakura. Breakfast was quickly forgotten.