DISCLAIMER: I own nothing from the Naruto universe but I do have an imagination of my own. I really will take advice and suggestions from my readers while continuing the story.

Thinking

Emphasis

Biju, etc. speaking

Biju, etc. thinking

My eyes and nose didn't just fail me, right? Sakumo wondered. "How are you, my boy?"

His dark gray eyes took in his son's form as he pushed the 5-year-old back to look Kakashi over more closely before pulling him close to him again. He looked alright, he smelled just fine, and Sakumo felt a wave of relief wash over him. "Say something, Kashi-chan," he laughed as he attempted to tickle his boy. "Not that I'm not thrilled to see you, son."

"That's a double negative. That means what you said has no meaning," Kakashi said quietly in his father's ear.

"You're such a brat," Sakumo mused, still holding his son tightly. His kid began to squirm. Naturally. Kakashi wasn't exactly a big hugger - which was why the scene he walked into had surprised him so much. Plus it was just surprising that he'd had a friend here, period.

"Come see!"

Sakumo dropped his pack and stretched before tiredly walking to the back of the house. His body was aching for a shower, long bath, and bed, but his heart only yearned to be with his son. His son who had written to him about what could only be a new summons. Already... It's just crazy for him to have one at his age. Then again, Jiraiya's daughter was summoning toads like it was a piece of cake, from what he'd seen and heard. "Well, would you look at that?"

"Pakkun," barked a tiny puppy. Sakumo let out a bark of laughter, disturbing the whole litter, extra pack, and the she-wolf who was probably exhausted by all of them.

"Oh, Kakashi! I can't believe you named a pug..."

"I didn't name him! He named himself... 'Pug-kun' was just a joke and only seemed to make him mad," the boy grumbled. He watched as his father picked the pug up and examined him. "Pakkun" struggled and tried to bite his father's finger which made Sakumo laugh at him. The puppy whimpered and continued to nip and lean toward Kakashi, looking absolutely livid.

"He seems to want you, son," Sakumo remarked while carefully passing the pup off to his son. Pakkun got a pretty good bite in - for a very little puppy - before lurching into his son's hands, then settling down and looking rather victorious for a little thing with a smushed face. "Pup's got a temper. Much like his summoner, eh?" Sakumo smirked at his son.

"Oi, wait! You - you mean he's for me?!"

"Well he didn't come for me, Kashi-chan," Sakumo ignored his son's scoff at the honorific - the boy had been doing that since he was 3 after all - and bent down to examine the other pups who had shown up, as well as make sure that Akino and her litter were doing as well as Kakashi had reported. He scratched the wolf mother behind the ears and down her neck before asking how she was. The she-wolf yawned at him, making him chuckle again.

"We're fine. The pups are coming along as expected; they're only this tired because of these rascals," she said, pointing her snout in the direction of the summons who had arrived that were crawling all over each other. Her own pups were piled in the corner, sleeping soundly again. Sakumo picked up the very large black pup Kakashi had written him about and whistled lowly in awe of its size. "Yes, I think that's... a bulldog." Her mate walked to her side and sat down by her, sniffing and nipping Sakumo's pants in want of attention. He nodded his head in agreement and Sakumo looked back at Kakashi in fascination as he roughly pet Akiro from his head down his back.

"What?" his brat asked, scratching at his masked chin.

Sakumo groaned. "Just take the mask off, Kakashi! We're at home and alone for Sage's sake!" Just like every other time, Kakashi simply stared at him - looking at him so impassively with his own grey lidded eyes and silver hair - making Sakumo plop down on the floor and then lie back with a groan. The bulldog - if that's what this big near-newborn was - laid down on his Jounin vest and immediately went back to sleep. "And as for 'what,' young man, I'm just... surprised - but proud - that you already have a summons. Or several, it seems..."

"Naruto said they were summons," Kakashi said to himself, wondering how she knew and still scratching his chin.

"'Naruto,' huh? So... that's the pretty little girl I saw when I walked into the house? Jiraiya's daughter, ne?" He paused for his moment before his eyes lit up with a degree of mischief that made Kakashi squirm. "Maa, maa, Kashi-chan! So young and yet here you are with a summons and a girlfriend..."

"Dad!"

"I must say, though, you're both too young to be hugging and kissing, let alone kissing where you're unsupervised."

"Ew! Dad!"

"You need to wait 'til you two are married for such things," Sakumo managed to say before his son attacked him. He knew it was coming. 10 minutes later, Sakumo held his son down as he forfeited, and begged his little boy to let him get cleaned up. Kakashi agreed and excitedly ran off to the kitchen to begin making dinner for the two of them. He supervised his little prodigy for a few minutes and shook his head, his heart full of love but his head full of worry.

As he let the hot water from the shower hit him, Sakumo let out a deep breath that it seemed he'd been holding almost since he watched his son preparing fish that the boy had caught, cleaned, cut into nice pieces of sashimi before surprisingly seasoning and placing them in the oven. Had the training he'd given his son, which started after his wife's death only because he had no idea of what else to do with the boy at the time, ruined Kakashi's childhood?

He had to do something to make sure that the Sandaime didn't send his heir straight out to what was, without a doubt, the war that was on the horizon.

Anko screamed as Naruto appeared beside her in a puff of smoke. "Ah! You! What - what the hell was that? You scared me to death!"

"Sorry, sorry," Naru said sincerely and in embarrassment. She had witnessed what was a special moment between father and son at the Hatake place, and just knew she had to get out of there. She'd never been comfortable with big emotional scenes, plus she guessed that Kakashi's father wouldn't want her there. And of course, Kakashi wouldn't either, so she just left. Yikes: now that I think about it, that was probably kinda rude...

"Yo, Naruto. Was that a sunshin?" Genma asked then spit a toothpick out of his mouth. It nearly stayed stuck into the tree he'd aimed at, and Naruto whistled then clapped for him.

"Yeah, I just kinda did it. It's super easy, ya know. You should get some senbon to see if you can do that!" Naruto remembered Genma from her past/the future. She internally groaned, reminding herself for a second that she really needed to come up with a good name for where/when she came from, even if she was just talking to herself inside her head about it.

Oh! Senbon Genma, she realized with a blush, had turned out totally hot! She shook her head to get that image of hotness out of her too young-again head.

"Tch. I'm better with senbon, but Ma's on my case, saying they're too dangerous."

Anko laughed at his plight. "We're about to be official ninja, for fuck's sake!"

"Yeah, yeah," Genma said and looked around as if to see anyone important could hear him. "We can go to my super-secret training spot and I'll show you what I can really do."

"Okay," both girls chirped.

"Hmm," Genma murmured in thought and gave a nod to Asuma, who had just walked up. "Alright. I'll show you my training spot and amazing skill if you teach me that sunshin."

"You know the sunshin, Naru-chan?" Asuma asked with one eyebrow raised.

"Umm, yeah. It's super easy, ya know. I think - well, for ME it was easier to learn it by going short distances first. It's just the rat sign, determination of where you want to go as you mold your chakra, plus you have to hide what you're doing with things like, leaves or smoke or whatever. No biggie." Asuma nodded his head after considering it, and the group walked to Genma's super-secret spot. Genma checked behind them constantly to make sure that he wasn't being followed.

It was honestly a little silly.

His super training spot turned out to be nearly on the edge of what was considered the Uchiha forest, in a little clearing that had a stream on one side. Genma bent down beneath a tree root and pulled out one of who knows how many little boxes of senbon he had hidden underneath there. "Don't let anyone know, okay?"

"You really are scared of your Mum, ne?!" Anko snickered.

"You have no idea," Genma said, almost under his breath. He put a senbon in his mouth and spit it at a nearby tree, hitting a tree-knot he was aiming for dead-center.

"Cool," Naruto said, really meaning it. Asuma grunted in approval, too, but Anko walked over and pulled it out, her face all scrunched up as she stared at the weapon.

"Why the hell would you SPIT this of all things. Now it's got your cooties and shit all over it: is that the whole plan?" Anko asked. "You're trying to poison the enemies with your spit?"

"If it's got his cooties, then you have them, too, as you're the one holding it now," Naruto snarked as she jumped around. Her hyperactivity got to her sometimes, and she just had to MOVE.

"Whatever." The purple-haired girl backed up and threw the senbon like some kind of freaking expert, making everyone gawk at her. "Did you - did you see that?! I... I'm freakin' awesome!" She grabbed another box of Genma's senbon, making him quietly complain although he didn't stop her. She threw the tiny projectiles, one after another, having remarkable accuracy especially considering that she was trying this for the first time. "I can't fuckin' believe this. All this time I've been shit at throwing shuriken and even worse with kunai. Oh Kami: I can use this with real non-Genma-spit poisons and..."

"You've created a monster," Raido said, making nearly everyone jump. Naru had felt him watching them from the treetops, and didn't know until seeing everyone's reactions that Genma was unaware of where the other boy was. Apparently, Raido used this spot to train, too. "Here, let me try." He tried to grab Anko's box of senbon, but she wouldn't let him. Genma reluctantly grabbed more little boxes of his treasures and handed them out to everyone.

Raido was pretty bad. So was Naruto. Asuma was a lot better than either of them but not as good as Anko and Genma, for sure. It made sense that he was pretty good: Asuma was the best in their class in weapons accuracy outside of Kakashi. As the sun began to set, the children worked on their sunshins, more often than not running into each other or the trees, and as the boys headed home, Anko decided to make a real game of it.

Dodging senbon left and right, Naruto was screeching and cursing her best friend, who was laughing gleefully and yelling "DIE!" She wondered if Anko was a sensor or if she simply was having incredible luck at targeting senbon wherever Naruto decided to show up. It didn't matter if she used leaves, smoke, or nothing at all, the senbon were right there, and the blonde wondered if she was going to make it out of the little clearing alive with two functional eyes. Her ass had already been hit three times, and Anko was still going for it. "Stop stop stop! Just wait," Naruto panted, "a minute. Please!" Forced to take off again, she immediately yelled "I FORFEIT," upon landing on the other side of the clearing behind a tree before she pulled a senbon out of her buttcheek. "Are you crazy?!" She probably looked like an idiot for rubbing the spot Anko had hit, but damn! That piercing burned!

Anko's laugh became even creepier before she stopped moving as she looked at the sky and realized what time it was. "Oh shit. I'm barely going to make it. See you tomorrow, Naru-chan!" She took off running.

"Bye!" Naruto had just gotten the word out of her mouth when she saw another senbon headed toward her. "BITCH," she screamed with a laugh as she sunshinned to her apartment - and landed right in front of her father -er, Minato. "EEK!"

"Whoa," he said with his hands up before chuckling. He reached out to pat the girl's head, a gesture he always used successfully with Kakashi-kun, and felt terrible when he saw the little girl flinch. "I - uhh. Gomennasai! We haven't been introduced! Namikaze Minato, at your service," he bowed with a big smile on his face. "Jonin of... well, here obviously! You, I understand, are Uzumaki Naruto-san! It's very nice to finally meet you!"

Naruto stood there, freaking out and mentally unraveling at seeing her father so close up and in the flesh. His real flesh! His irises were still the same color as hers, and his eyes' sclera was now white rather than black. He had no cracks in his flesh, his arms were both still attached as weird as that was to remind herself, and he wasn't glowing with the Kyuubi's chakra at all. He had none of Kurama's chakra, period.

"Are you alright? Kami! Did I scare you... way to go Minato! Trying to check in on her only to give her some kind of ..." he grumbled, mostly to himself.

"I'm... okay!" Naruto said a bit breathlessly. Gosh, he's not even as tall as I remember him being. I wonder if he reaches up to even Jiraiya's shoulders now.

"Good, good. Uhh, as I said, nice to meet you, Naruto-san," Minato said, then scratched the back of his head. This wasn't really going the way he had planned. "I was in the neighborhood," he winced, "or back in the village following a long mission, rather." A mission your father dragged me on even though it wasn't assigned.

"You wanna come in?" Naruto asked softly, as she forced herself not to tremble. "I can make you some tea, but I'm pretty much shit at anything else. Oh! Forget that I said that! 'Shit' I mean - I can still make tea. Shit! Aah, I said it again! Fu-" The squeaking sound that the smaller blonde made afterward didn't sound human to either one of them. Naruto closed her eyes and silently prayed to Kami that the earth would swallow her whole.

"It's fine Naruto-san," he tried to placate the girl that apparently had some anxiety and cursing issues. The way she talked all over her own words reminded him a little of Kushina, though. "You shouldn't ask a stranger into your home, though."

He's still so kind. "Well it's Ero-sennin's place," Naru said without thinking, "but you're not a stranger, ya know. Oh! Umm, what I mean is that I know that you're... my father's student," she tried to chirp and wondered if she sounded as fake as she felt that she did.

Minato took a step back but melted at seeing the girl's wide, big blue eyes following that smile. "Well on my honor as a man, a Jonin of Konohagakure, and the future Hokage, I give you my word that I will certainly do you no harm." He wondered why the girl stiffened and paled at his words instead of what he'd anticipated. Normally those words - words that he was very true to - either eased people's tensions, annoyed them (if they were his friends,) or worse, tickled them as they thought him naive, although fewer and fewer were looking at him like that anymore. "Perhaps you would join me for -well, I guess I should explain first. Your father - did you... call him Ero-sennin?" The way she winced and folded in on herself made him keep his laughter at bay. "That's a brilliant nickname, although I'm not sure how he'd feel about it."

"He hates it!" Naruto said with a bit of a sly grin.

"I see." He didn't quite see, really, although little Naruto sure was cute. That didn't make his sensei's new nickname any less hilarious or perfectly coined, though. Plus, he knew that the girl hadn't lived with his sensei for very long. Aaaand he didn't have parents of his own, so perhaps awful nicknames were something he hadn't observed yet in some families? "Well, Jiraiya-sensei asked me to check on you," he lied. "He should return in approximately a week."

"Oh, okay."

Minato thought that she sounded disappointed. Well, there was only one thing to do about that! "Would you like to join me for some ramen?"

"Heck yeah!" the little blonde grabbed his shirtsleeve and pulled - and Minato found that she was really quite strong despite her size. Going down the steps of the apartment building, Naruto suddenly froze and turned to him in a rush.

"No! We have to talk inside. C'mon!" Naruto dragged the future Hokage, her biological father, roughly back up the stairs they'd just come down. She used her key to open the door and pushed Minato onto the couch. "Alright: here's the way it is," she said nervously. Be brave: think of Baa-chan! "I need to borrow your jutsu. Can I please?!"

"I'm sorry?"

"Well, the Rasengan, you see. I went through hell week with Tsunade-baa-hime," Naru corrected herself mid-honorific, hoping that her fath- er, Minato-san wouldn't notice, "and I made her a bet. She thinks I'm super good luck so she joked that she would come back to the village to take me out gamblin' with her again, and while she was training but mostly trying to kill me, she finally agreed to come back to be like a healer and stuff and do all the stuff she always wanted to do with having med nins on every team and all," Naru sucked in a much-needed breath, but couldn't seem to slow herself down. "O'course we don't have enough shinobi for that right now but I got her to admit that the more shinobi or kunoichi we have that have as much medical training as possible would be a way for her to eventually meet her goals but she's making me do an A-ranked jutsu to get her to come back. That's the terms of the bet."

Naruto closed her eyes and shook her head, not seeing the look on Minato's face as he tried to interpret or at least slow down the girl's words in his head. More than anything, he was shocked that the girl had been training or doing ANYTHING with Tsunade-hime of all people, no matter how few days they were together. And she consented to even possibly come back to the village? It would be a boom to their forces and the village in general, but... "Naruto-"

"And I know she's an old drunk hag," Naruto ignored the way Minato looked like his eyes would pop out of his head, along with the way he looked around as if expecting a thunderous Baa-chan attack to come from inside Jiraiya's apartment, "but she's good to her word when she bets! Well, not about money, of course: I mean she's well-known to be trickin' lenders and Yakuza and stuff, but when it comes to other bets, she always keeps her word! Hey, are you alright?" Her father was staring at her with a really puzzled look on his face.

"How do you know all this about Tsunade-hime?" He couldn't imagine that the woman was really as bad as was rumored, and Jiraiya-sensei certainly always told him that the stories about her weren't all true...

"I spent days with her, ya know. It's not like she exactly hides who she is," Naruto said dismissively and felt a rush of pride in herself for holding back the "dattebayo" that nearly escaped her lips.

"An A-ranked jutsu?" Minato finally asked before sitting back more comfortably on his sensei's old couch. "You know, Naruto-san, the Rasengan isn't only an A-ranked jutsu because of the damage it inflicts. It was also incredibly difficult to develop."

"Yeah, of course! I mean - I bet it was, ya know. But since you already know how to do it, it's not like I'd have to come up with the whole thing from scratch. You wouldn't make me do that, would you Minato-san?" Naruto used her big pout and the flawless puppy-eyes-no-jutsu that she'd perfected as a kid in her first life. It rarely failed her: she couldn't think of a time that it did, in fact, although she was always careful about using its power. It was the closest thing to a genjutsu that she'd ever had in her arsenal.

"I don't know, Naruto-san. It could be dangerous."

"Oh of course it will be," she chirped happily in reply. "But I'm super-tough: you have no idea! I'm an Uzumaki and I know I've got enough chakra, plus we NEED Baa- I mean Tsunade-hime to come back!"

"For the medical program," he nodded as he followed what he thought he caught of the little blonde's logic.

"And not just that! To change things for the better, ya know! Plus she's well-known to have countered Lady Chiyo's poisons in the last war, so we need her to do the same for this one. Well, if there is one," she maneuvered, "and she already helped me strengthen my taijutsu, although I'm thinking of using nintaijutsu in the future, really, but imagine combining them both!" Naruto pushed her fist into her other hand, smacking her palm soundly as her excitement grew at the thought of it. "I know she could teach others her technique, too, if she's not being a selfish old b-itty, not that she's old it's just fun calling her that I guess." Naru wrinkled her nose and scratched the back of her head, just thinking about the not-old-anymore lady.

Minato chuckled at the fired-up girl, seeing what he was sure would be an excellent and serious kunoichi in the future - the too-soon future, as far as he was concerned, though. "I wouldn't call her that to her face, or anywhere close to where she might be, Naruto-san."

"Yeah, I know! When I called her Granny she threw me through a tree," Naruto grinned. "It was great! Oh, and drop the -san, I don't like honorifics: they make me feel old." Minato snorted at that: it was an old saying among those who preferred less formal ways, but he'd never heard a 5-year-old say such a thing. "So how 'bout that jutsu?!"

Minato smiled, but couldn't give her the Rasengan. Jutsus were normally passed either from parent-to-child or from master-to-student. He had promised Sakumo-senpai to apprentice Kakashi shortly after he became a Jonin but wondered who would do the same for the prodigal little girl in front of him. "How about ramen first?" He received an enthusiastic reply and was once again pulled out the door, but stopped little Naruto before she dragged him down the stairs. "Would you like to get to Ichirakus faster?"

Naruto nodded eagerly and nearly fainted when her father picked her up and put her on his hip. If only it could've been this way with him as my dad...

"Let's flash," he said with a wink - one that Naruto dearly remembered from when she'd first met him - or rather his chakra imprint - inside of her seal. In less than a heartbeat, they were at Ichirakus. "You're not sick? Most people feel ill when I bring them along for the ride."

"No way! It's a RUSH!" Naruto had used the Hiraishin during the Fourth Shinobi War and had LOVED the feeling. Plus it was damn useful! "Hey, maybe you can teach me that one instead!"

Midway through their fifth bowls of ramen, Minato was completely unprepared when his cute little companion's eyes welled up with tears after he gently and logically explained a list of reasons that he could not teach her either of his original jutsus. She'd placed money down on the counter despite his insistence of paying for her meal and couldn't get her last choked-out words and teary blue eyes - so much like his - out of his mind.

"If Tsunade-hime doesn't come, more people will be hurt and die, 'ttebayo! And she's the only chance girls like me have in not being forced into some kinda sexual servitude to the village! No one else will listen and make sure we're strong enough to fight on the front lines for a long, long time!"

What a horrible thought. He walked back to her and Jiraiya's little apartment deep in thought until making sure that the girl's enormous chakra had calmed somewhat. He found that he couldn't leave his spot until she finally turned out the light.