DISCLAIMER: I own nothing from the Naruto universe but I do have an imagination of my own. I will end up using it, I promise! BTW, I'd love to hear what you think of this so far, as well as any pairings or situations you'd like to see!

Thinking

Emphasis

Biju, etc. speaking

Biju, etc. thinking

Naruto nearly cried at seeing the giant gates of Konoha a good way in front of her.

Finally! She was limping in exhaustion after having spent a full week with the completely insane kunoichi that was the current Senju Tsunade. And the bet - oh, she knew exactly what to do about the bet, but that would mean confronting him.

Seeing a tree that had an absolutely lovely indentation at the bottom that looked to be just her size, she grabbed her canteen and stumbled toward it. Sure enough, it fit her small frame just right, so she curled into it before taking a deep drink of water. "Kami I'm tired!"

"You should be. I should eat that Senju! Allowing her to beat my kit senseless repeatedly only to immediately heal you then do it again, day after day... That bitch needs a lesson!"

"She's gonna do a lot of good for the village when I get her here, Kurama! And the lives she'll save: it will really help!"

"Who knows how long it will take you to manage the Rasengan you pathetically tiny whelp! And that's IF you can get that yellow flashing turd to at least give you a hint of his prized jutsu so you can keep your cover, and IF you can manage to find that horrible flesh bag we just left after you eventually do it! If, If, IF! I swear that harpie takes after Mito even more than I thought!" Naruto couldn't argue with him about Tsunade there, and even if she wanted to, she was just too damn tired. "One difference between her and Mito was that Mito could be counted on when she gave her word. The Senju? I doubt it." He saw Naruto wince, knowing that he was right - at least in this time period. "Why do you even want to save this pathetic village after learning the darker parts of it?!"

"You know there are people I want to save here. And people I must save in the future." Naruto let out a bitter chuckle, "Weren't you the one chiding me to give up on hatred and all that?"

"The things that Senju told us reminded me of why I hated humanity, Naruto. This village is rotten to the core!"

"Tsunade Baa-... Fuck." Remembering what happened when she accidentally called the Senju princess "Baa-chan," Naruto shivered all over in pain again. "She's hurting right now, Kurama. She's only recently lost her closest loved ones..."

"As did you!"

Naruto shut Kurama out for a while, feeling the pain of all that she'd lost in arriving in this time period once again. Why the hell does he have to be so cold?

She could only remind herself of all there was to gain before finally standing to make her way toward the main village gates.

"Naruto..."

"Oh no, you don't! You don't think I know?! I know pain, Kurama, maybe not as much as you do, but YOU KNOW that I know pain! Maybe we all suffer differently when faced with it, 'ttebayo." She tried to clear her head, already knowing quite well that Kurama could still sometimes be a right bastard. Damn millennial-old fox! Before he began speaking again, she made another attempt to assuage him. "She taught me a lot just in the last several days!" Memories of accidentally blowing up dead fish that she was supposed to bring back to life somehow made her chuckle before she winced at what always happened right afterward: "Survival and Evasion Training," Tsunade had called it.

The woman hadn't taken her seriously at all, but granted: Naruto's physical body wasn't even six years old yet. She had gotten a few chakra-enhanced hits on the older blonde which oddly made Tsunade giddy, but the Tsunade of this day and age seemed to love to fight!

"Hold those kunai on each fingertip you brat! Keep them steady with your chakra until I've doubled our winnings! I'll be right back."

"Wind? What a shitty element! That's the worst element to have if you intend to defend yourself or anyone else... Unless you're a killing machine, naturally: that's perfect for wind." Tsunade's expression had turned dark. "Is that what you are? A killing machine for that fucking village that treats us this way, Naruto?" Naruto shook her head, throwing her hair back and forth from just over the ground she had been beaten into.

"Not THAT'S how you do an earth jutsu!" Tsunade laughed merrily as she took another shot of something Naruto had never smelled before. Naruto glared up from the pit she'd been swallowed in, up to her neck. "Now you try it! Let's see if you can even get out of there yourself first..."

"Yes, yes, that's a sealing formula commonly used in surgeries. It stabilizes..." Tsunade shook her head as if she was trying to remove something that was in her mind. "You know what? Ask your idiot father. He's the 'sealing expert,'" she said using air quotes before slamming back another drink. "Here," she thrust a kit of senbon that had some kind of gadget attached that would automatically launch one after another and was meant for a slightly larger wrist than Naruto's. "I was going to give that to my niece, Shizune, but I can get her another one. Put it on and see if you can hit that guy who won the last hand." She watched as Naruto gave it a go; she accidentally hit the man in the tip of his nose. "Oh shit! RUN!"

"There's a trick to destabilizing the skull without causing external blood loss, Naruto. If you focus your chakra to your second and third knuckle joint on the same fingers, you'll destabilize the jaw as you punch downwards, while the immediate follow-up from your wrist can push the septum down into the orifice that's been partially vacated. You must immediately bring the chakra back into your arm - both yours and your opponent's - away from your hand and wrist, because the mouth - and face in general - have so many blood vessels that can otherwise burst. Trackers are out there, Naru-chan, and you must always try to leave the field clean."

Naruto shivered after thinking of that last revelation. "How fucked up was that?!"

"How fucked up is your beloved JiJi for what he's forcing kunoichi like you to do?"

"Uzumaki Naruto," Naruto said tiredly as she acknowledged the gate guard with a nod of her head, coming back to her normal senses outside of her mindscape. It felt weird and sad not to see Izumo and Kotetsu there. She started at seeing a Hyuuga in front of her, however. The man was already examining her chakra but didn't say anything for now.

"You are Jiraiya-sama's daughter," he stated more than asked.

"Hai." Naruto really didn't like the way he was staring at her, even after he deactivated his dojutsu. She knew from dealing with her Hyuugas in the past that they could see her two chakra sources, and see that one of them was red.

"Very well, you may enter."

"Great. Now, what the hell are we going to do about him?" Naruto asked her partner.

"Your chakra is now nearly all purple, Naruto, although gradually intaking Kushina's half of myself does allow wisps of red to be seen by those stuck-up pricks. I have not taken any more of my other half's chakra since Kushina left Fire Country, however."

Naruto was startled when she was sunshinned from the path she was on by that same Hyuuga. She pulled out a kunai and bared her teeth at the guard that had grabbed her, getting into a defensive position.

"Naruto-sama, I mean you no harm. I trust that you are no threat to the village based on what your father has told me. Although I do have questions, I will keep them to myself for now: I am not the only one who owes Jiraiya-sama my life." He bowed from the waist, leaving Naruto thunderstruck. "Sarutobi-sama has asked for you to report to him once back in the village."

Naruto nodded and thanked the Hyuuga. She wondered whether he was part of the branch or main family, and reminded herself that their disgusting seal was another thing she had to deal with and put an end to.

"I can't believe that it's good to be the Pervert's spawn!" Kurama drawled after taking a moment to chuckle in surprise. "Naruto. Keep your cool when dealing with the monkey. His time will come."

"Hai, it will." Naruto soldiered on sadly, hoping that there was some way to get the old man to retire and leave the village in more competent hands that would truly remember and honor why the village was founded in the first place. Hands that don't belong to Danzo.

Orochimaru and Sakumo Hatake both sneezed in unison, not realizing that the last Senju had done so, too. She was in a casino losing part of the money that she'd just recently won in her days of gambling with Jiraiya's rather interesting little brat. The men were outside Ame, although they'd been dragged here by the Toad Sannin without a definite mission.

"I think he's fallen in love with you, Saku-kun," Orochimaru smirked at the White Fang.

"Honestly, I'm starting to think so, too! Damn pervert won't let me out of his sight," the Hatake Clan Head stated while biting into an apple. "Granted, I'm awful pretty..." Sakumo wiggled his eyebrows suggestively before winking at one of his teenage kohais.

"If you want me to agree with you on that, you have another thing coming, Sakumo," Orochimaru sneered from his placement in a tree.

"Jealous," Sakumo replied before dodging a snake sent his way. The wolf accompanying him tried to tear into the summons, and Sakumo didn't even bother watching them.

"Go on in Naruto-sama," Jiji's currently pretty receptionist said kindly - something so different from when the same hag had been ugly and old and tried to keep Naru out of the Sandaime's office early on in her first life.

Naruto gave the woman a slight dip with her head. This bitch: I'll let her keep using that stupid honorific I don't deserve yet! "Thank you, receptionist-san."

"Oh, Naruto-sama! My name's Tenshiki Akuma!"

I know that. You are indeed the devil, just as your name implies... Naruto nodded and gave the woman a big, goofy Jiraiya-worthy smile as she entered the Sandaime's office.

"Naruto-chan! I'm glad to see you're back," the Sandaime said before his voice turned more serious. "The toad you sent said you'd only be gone two days, Naru-chan. It's been a week; we were worried."

"Maa, Tsunade gave me no time to update you, JiJi. That woman's completely insane," Naruto said easily as she slouched against the seat in front of him.

"Did you enjoy your time with my cute little student?" Hiruzen asked, genuinely wanting to know.

Naruto's nose scrunched up in disgust at the term, remembering Kakashi-sensei referring to them in the same way. Perverts, the both of them. "Tsunade-hime beat me into submission every single day and night I was gone, old man. She's fucking crazy, but I also learned to blow up fish which was pretty fun." Naruto was exhausted. She hoped the old man got to the point of why she was requested there really soon so she could go to sleep back at Jirayia's place. Seeing him look at her with such interest, she folded into herself. "She gave me lots of ways to kill an enemy without leavin' blood but said I was shit out of luck at bein' a healer. I really suck at it," the five-year-old said.

Hiruzen's lips twisted to the side before Naruto saw his yellow teeth. Tapping his pipe on the desk, he spoke to her as any self-respecting father would. "Naruto-chan, I'm sure that you know the proper, polite language as opposed to swearing: something that you should not do."

"Not really, old man. I say what I say and mean what I say. If someone can't take it, they can suck it," Naruto said, not really understanding the problem - nor what she had just said really implied. She saw the old man close his eyes, and knew that she'd said something wrong. Suddenly, she felt it... HIM.

Hiruzen watched as Jiraiya's cute but rather obnoxious daughter's eyes darted to the hall outside of his office before she seemed to tremble and made her way to nearly hiding in the corner of his rear-most couch. She pulled a pillow in front of her, and he then wondered whether or not he had been correct in his assumptions about her being afraid after all: the girl's teeth were showing like an animal. Hiruzen couldn't help but compare her expression right now to an Inuzuka's when riled up. She seemed to make herself smaller as she continued glaring at the door.

"Hiruzen."

"Danzo," he greeted in response, wondering why his student's little girl was reacting this way. He also wondered if the girl was a sensor as it seemed. "I did not summon you, nor did I..."

"Is that Jiraiya-kun's child? The Uzumaki?" the bandaged man interrupted, as his gaze focused on the girl greedily.

Hiruzen wondered why he still let Danzo go off being so rude and insubordinate after all these years. "She is."

"Has he got Sharingan?" Naruto asked her tenant after the bastard first came into the room.

"I don't detect it, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have some less disgusting diseased eyes that are sealed behind that brace. He's still an asshole, though. Definitely."

"Agreed."

"Why not allow me to take her under my tutelage while your student is out of the village, Hiru-kun?"

"Hiru-kun?" Gross! "Yeah, I'm doin' fine in the Academy and am about to graduate too, so I'm good to go, 'ttebayo," Naruto spoke, trying to not call him a bastard, a murderer, an incompetent fucked up leader of drones, or any other of the myriad of insults her mind came up with.

"I wasn't speaking to you," Danzo sneered.

"Well, I sure as fuck was talkin' to you, 'ttebayo. Leave me alone." Naruto said as she tried to calm herself down. You don't need his attention and you certainly don't need to draw it toward your friends, idiot! "If that will be all, Sandaime-sama?" Naruto asked after standing.

"For now, Naru-chan. For now."

"By your leave, then." Naruto walked out, but ran as far as she could, away from the Hokage Tower, keeping her senses peeled for anything or anyone the old mummy might send her way. "Kurenai-chan!" Everyone else she knew was either too at risk if they were close to her, or otherwise had no one to defend her, like her best friend Anko-chan. Kurenai's parents were an important Jonin couple, and she learned that both had been in ANBU before she was born.

It looked like Kurenai and Anko were just leaving class. "Can - can I maybe stay with you for a night or so, 'ttebayo?" She asked meekly. Honestly, she didn't expect the girl to agree to it, especially after what happened the last time she'd been in class. I acted like such an ass!

"What am I? Chopped liver?!" Anko all but screamed.

"It's just," Naruto pulled at her fingers. "I'm - well, I'm alone and a little worried..."

"My parents won't mind, Naru-chan," Kurenai answered sweetly. "Why don't we make it a sleepover?!"

"You'd better tell us where you've been! Even Dai-sensei's been worrying about you," Anko scolded.

"I'll tell ya! You'll freak out, too, over who I've been with, I bet!"

And with that, Naruto went with her best friends to hopefully hide and gossip with two future kunoichis who she didn't believe were in any better situation than she was, even after they all graduated from the Academy. No, especially after we graduate.

Something in the system or village has to change!