Chapter Two: Fighting for Worth

Ren had so much time to herself, and was so determined to become a ninja someday and gain some decent respect, that she trained hard with the scroll techniques. Ren was a hard worker, one could say that for her. She also had no knowledge, having no one around her, of what she was supposed to be able to achieve at her age and what she wasn't. She had no sort of litmus test to compare herself to others. She wasn't sure how much she was supposed to master before the Academy.

So she just played it safe and mastered everything. Luckily, these were the kinds of techniques she and her Uzumaki body were a natural in… and so she thrived, sometimes mastering a complex Uzumaki technique in a matter of hours.

One thing she did ask for in the beginning:

She walked into the Hokage's office one day about a week later and said, her eyes considering, "With these scrolls. Grandpa, will you help me train?"

Hiruzen smirked from his desk. "… I thought you'd never ask."

"It says in this scroll," Ren read importantly, out on a grassy, forested and river-strewn training field fenced in across from the Hokage himself, who looked amused in full armor body gear, "that my clan taijutsu style is Water Weaving Fist - Mizuoriken.

"By the way." She put the scroll down and frowned. "Why are you helping me?"

The Third looked surprised. "Well, they say not to look a gift horse in the mouth."

"I think it's a fair question," said Ren in a hard voice.

"Okay… the Uzumaki are related to a clan I owe a very great debt to. Your relatives made me who I am today. We are on the same side, your family and mine. I was also… friends with your parents, and I owe them… a personal debt."

He looked down, away.

"And you still won't tell me about them," Ren realized.

"… Keep reading," was all Hiruzen said.

Ren's eyes narrowed, but she put the scroll up before her nose again, looking at it closely.

"Mizuoriken is based off of the idea that water flows around even the tiniest of spaces, shapes itself to its environment, and still always manages to slip away and survive. The fighter flows, or weaves, quickly and acrobatically around any attacks, never allowing themselves to be touched. To attack, they go in and out with quick nerve attacks to vital areas.

"The main idea is to be 'like water' - and all the kata sequences and moves reflect this." She put down her scroll, frowning.

"So - you will do the moves and katas, and then you will spar with me," said the Hokage, nodding once.

"… Okay," Ren admitted, shrugging, as usual having no idea the full import of who she was fighting with.

Ren practiced moves and katas until she was sweaty, sore, and exhausted. She did every recommended Uzumaki technique in the books to increase speed and acrobatic agility. She memorized huge visuals of where all the major nerve attacks were on the body.

But the real test, of course, was when she sparred with the Hokage himself - even when he was holding back.

He was merciless, fast, and strong, but he would also pause to correct her mistakes and help her in a number of ways. Slowly, as the first weeks passed, she got used to and fell into their groove…

And she began growing stronger. Good at sweating and working hard at taijutsu, callused hands and feet.

"My goal," she told a surprised Hiruzen with sharp eyes, "is to be a master at Mizuoriken by the time I reach the Academy.

"I must become an expert at quick, deadly attacks and never being touched."

For elemental ninjutsu, the Hokage had her channel chakra through paper.

"Ninjutsu are techniques done using chakra energy that look like magic," said Ren simply. "Some ninjutsu are elemental - fire, lightning, earth, water, and wind are the five main elements.

"Now, it says here that the Uzumaki have a natural bloodline for being good at both wind and water ninjutsu, and at putting the two together into our own unique attacks. We can even pull water from the air."

"That makes… weird amounts of sense, for an Uzumaki to be able to create a whirlpool out of thin air," Hiruzen admitted, troubled. "It also matches what I know. The Second Hokage, a cousin of the Uzumaki - he could pull water from the air.

"So… I'm curious… this slip of paper can be bought in weapons stores and was forested from a chakra infested tree. I got the unusually sensitive kind… the kind that can sense both primary and secondary elemental affinities.

"First and second element specialties," he added at Ren's blank stare. "The element you're best at, and your second best element."

"Oh." Ren nodded. "Okay."

Ren took the slip of paper, shot blue chakra energy through it. The paper cut right in half, and then both halves softly dampened.

"Wind first, water second." The Hokage nodded. "Exactly. As I thought. Your father was a wind elemental, so it makes sense."

Ren was listening curiously.

"Which means… this should be good for you," said Hiruzen, smirking. "Wind and water together. Not even the Second could do that. It is a unique bloodline."

And so Ren practiced. She crafted whips made of water and blades made of wind. She blew and cut with wind elemental ninjutsu, drowned and broke the body parts of Hokage clones with poundings, slammings of water.

She passed out a lot training in those ninjutsu techniques. But the hardest part was yet to come.

She concentrated one day, channeling her chakra, shaking and sweating… and water droplets slowly formed in the air around her in the training field. She brightened, beamed, gasping for air and dripping sweat -

And then she promptly passed out again.

But the breakthrough had happened. She could take water from air.

Finally came the big one. She made the hand seals one day and did her first:

"Whirlpool Technique! Uzumaki no Jutsu!"

A wall of whirling wind and water appeared from the air and slammed into the clones, dissipating all of them in one great burst.

Hiruzen watched from a distance in awe and smiled proudly… then ran forward when tiny Ren collapsed.

She was cheering triumphantly from the ground even as he sprinted across the field to get her.

Her greatest bloodline, though, was why she stuck to big time ninjutsu at first.

"My bloodline," she told the surprised Hokage one day, "my greatest bloodline is abnormally huge chakra coils and abnormally 'potent' chakra."

"Potent means powerful," he explained at her air quotes. "So like the Hyuuga, you really have two bloodlines… how interesting…"

"Yeah. Every clan has at least one gift, and mine has two: wind and water together from the air, huge and powerful chakra coils," Ren explained from a scroll. "This means my chakra control sucks - I can't put lots of chakra into a tiny space naturally - but I can do really powerful, taxing stuff super easily, even if I burn off a lot at first with no control.

"This second bloodline made the Uzumaki popular in arranged marriages in older times, and it also gives us lots of what's called 'endurance.' This is just a fancy way of saying we almost never pass out and we're hard to kill. We never run out of chakra power. This bloodline also gives us unnatural healing ability, in addition to the obvious - enormous power. And if we throw our chakra out wide enough around us… we can sense, kind of like an eye technique or a doujutsu.

"I want to practice three things with you. First, an Uzumaki can do what's called Biting-Healing, in which an injured person bites an Uzumaki and healing Uzumaki chakra floods their body, saving them. Uzumaki Clan members can even do this to ourselves until we run out of chakra energy.

"Second, I have to practice the 'throw chakra out around and sense' technique, called Mind's Eye of Kagura.

"But third, I have to learn high-level chakra control techniques to make up for my Uzumaki high-level chakra coils.

"My Mom Uzumaki Kushina collected these to make herself better at ninjutsu, which she was originally horrible at but turned into an enormous strength through her growing knowledge of Konoha-based chakra control techniques. She can teach me through these scrolls how to channel chakra into the bottoms of my feet - the hardest place to channel chakra - first to walk sideways up a steady surface like a tree, and second to walk horizontally across an unsteady surface like a local pond.

"If I can do that, my chakra control will have improved. And…"

"You want a teacher. Help." Hiruzen nodded seriously. "It's natural. Okay. I'll help you.

"And I will help you practice healing, too."

And so they practiced. Ren practiced healing injured Hokage clones through bites, kneeling down beside them and flooding their bodies with chakra and saving them from dissipation, until she could do it near perfectly until she ran out of chakra.

She threw her chakra out in wide arcs around her and practiced finding where the Hokage was hidden among the underbrush, sensing out chakra signatures and genjutsu illusions. She would put her hands in a hand seal, whisper, "Mind's Eye of Kagura," and suddenly through her chakra she could see in a way her eyes could never match.

But she also practiced tree climbing and water walking.

She passed out a lot here again - running up trees and across water surfaces, falling down or getting wet over and over again.

But slowly… slowly… she began mastering the exercises under Hiruzen's watchful eye, pointers, and barked orders from back behind at a distance.

And her chakra control started improving.

"To be fair, there are a few things I've learned ahead of time through the scrolls that I can't do," Ren admitted to the Hokage. "I'm not naturally good at the feminine kunoichi arts. Formality and grace just go right over my head. I'm also shit at making genjutsu illusions and at more traditional, quiet, slow, and control-based types of healing. My chakra control and detailed intellect still aren't… amazing, you see, even with all that training and reading."

She was sheepish.

"That's natural," said Hiruzen. "Everyone has a weakness. But now we add in the most innate Uzumaki ability of all…"

"Right." Ren nodded one day at the training field, her eyes determined. "Now we get to what made the Uzumaki so famous.

"Their abilities with sealing - most simply, the ability to create a symbol, make it glow with chakra, and have it do something to whatever is touching it."

"There are Seven Points of Sealing," Ren told the Hokage. "That's what the Uzumaki call them. The Seven Points.

"First is the obvious - academic seal study and slow, complex seal puzzle writing and creation.

"But then there is also one-touch seal creation and removal - like in a battle, you could slap a chakra suppression seal on someone's body part, for example, just by touching them, or you could remove a seal with a single touch.

"Then one can tattoo seals onto their own body. Chakra strengthening seals onto your own body, for example.

"Tattooing containment-release seals onto your palms is really useful, so that you can suck up and redirect attacks.

"Then there is the Sealing Chains technique. It is a sealing ninjutsu meant to contain anything holding chakra in chains made of the Uzumaki's own chakra coils. Containment is a kind of sealing, so sealing ninjutsu.

"The next ninjutsu is also a containment kind of ninjutsu. Seal barriers - shields and domes made of glowing gold chakra - are also meant to keep something in, but of course they can be used as a defense to keep other things out.

"And finally are seal trap tags. When hidden, these suck unwary trespassers up inside their depths, sealing people away inside the tags.

"And those are the Seven Points."

"… Okay," said Hiruzen, his eyebrows risen, impressed. He raised his hands. "Let's get started, shall we?" he said, sharp-eyed and interested.

Ren had by now turned into his personal project.

Ren did much of the academic studying herself. She bent over scrolls and seals for hours, scribbling and crafting, reading and analyzing, like deciphering a kind of visual puzzle. She got ink stains all over her fingers and became quite obsessed with absent-mindedly working away at seals.

"This is the first academic thing I really feel I'm good in," she told Hiruzen.

"You may learn visually and kinesthetically - by seeing and by doing," Hiruzen admitted. "This is good to know for your academic Academy years, for studying purposes for example. Use your talent for pictures and doing, your natural Uzumaki inclination, as a strength.

"As far as I can tell, you're a wonderful fly by the seat of your pants strategist as well. So make sure to use those spontaneous strategies in battle."

But she also practiced one-touch seal creation on Hokage clones, touching countless times until she had both creation and removal perfect, concentrating with a fierce kind of cuteness. She practiced the Sealing Chains and Seal Barrier glowing gold ninjutsu under the Hokage's watchful eye, passing out countless times, and then once she had them he forced her to use them in battle against his clones.

She practiced making seal trap tag traps, hiding in the underbrush as Hiruzen went out to find her. And she sat at home in her apartment countless evenings and methodically tattooed seals of her own creation all over her body.

With the red hair and the seal tattoos, she was a true Uzumaki at last.

Just for an artistic touch, she put all her body and palm seals in butterfly and hummingbird shapes. She also began using sealing scrolls to hold as many weapons and pieces of equipment as possible just inside her own pouches and holsters.

She had a brand-new label for herself: Seal-mistress.

Ren was eight years old. She stood across their usual training field from four Third Hokage clones.

"This is a complete assessment of your abilities before entry into the Academy," said Hiruzen. "Once this starts, everything will start immediately - physical warfare, psychological warfare, anything. I will be going very easy on you, but as you are fighting me, this will still be extraordinarily difficult."

Ren paused - and smiled brightly. "Well!" She jumped on the balls of her feet, tilting her head this way and that, still ever the pixie. "This should be exciting!" she said with big eyes. "Oh - if I win, do I get ice cream? It's not worth it if I don't get ice cream."

Hiruzen sighed. "Fine. Ice cream it is."

"Hell yes!" Ren shouted. "Ice cream here I come! Alright - let's do this." And she smirked, ducking her head down, her eyes becoming sharp and serious.

"Okay - START!" Hiruzen stepped back, the four clones and Ren facing off.

"One, two, three, four!" Ren shouted, beaming cheerfully, and then she made some fast hand seals. "Wind Cutting Technique!"

A vast blade of air, wide as a horizontal tree trunk, blew outward at the clones to cleave them in half.

Ren began dancing around fearlessly, right there on the battlefield, right as the clones put up an earth wall to block the wind. She bent right over, saw the wall upside down, and sighed. "Okay," she said, unperturbed. "Let's try this!"

She leaped suddenly into the air and made the hand seals. "Whirlpool Technique! Uzumaki no Jutsu!" she screamed.

And a great whirlpool, a solid wall of wind and water, appeared from the air and slammed into the earth wall, destroying it and flooding the training field.

Hiruzen stood back, watching sharply, fearless as the water lapped around even his ankles before slowly fading away.

The clones were running off in different directions - with razor fast speed and agility, Ren landed back on the water, ran across the top of it even as it faded away, and made more hand seals. "Water Whip Technique!"

Two whips made of water appeared in her hands and she lashed out, lassoing two clones, one each by an ankle with each whip. She pulled them toward her, threw them up in the air, and stuck out her hands as they passed by her. "Wind Blade Technique!"

Two tiny blades of wind appeared in her hands and gutted the two clones to the stomach. They dissipated.

"Hey, two more to go! Not bad!" said Ren with terrifying cheerfulness and quirky energy, then she grinned teasingly at the remaining two clones who had paused in shock. "Aww. What's wrong, boys? A little surprised that a little girl's beating you?

"It's okay. I'll make this fast. We all know I love a challenge, so try to work with me, okay?!"

She made the hand seals.

"Water Wall Technique!"

A wall of water slammed straight into the surprised clones, breaking several of their bones and throwing them into the nearest tree -

But only logs remained when the water cleared. They had replaced themselves and were gone from the clearing. Two Hokage clones were still out there somewhere nearby.

"Hm. They've gotten smarter and stopped underestimating me," said Ren in a thoughtful voice, frowning slightly. "I wonder where they could be…" she said airily, smiling dreamily around the clearing.

Nobody was fooled. Ren was sharp.

Suddenly, voices echoed out to her, whispering voices.

"You'll never be good enough, you know."

Ren paused, her eyes wide and vulnerable for a split second.

"You should know your place at the bottom. What could you ever really do, against us, with so many limitations placed on you? You know no one even likes you. You pretend so hard not to care, but we all know the truth.

"You're alone, Ren… you're nobody… chasing a foolish dream of respect from fellow villagers…

"You're worthless… limited… you can't do anything…"

Ren's hands slowly moved up - and made a hand seal. "… Mind's Eye of Kagura," she whispered, her head lowered and her bangs obscuring her eyes.

Her chakra threw out in a wide, visible arc around her. She looked up, ramrod straight, face blank and empty eyes wide - sensing.

"Genjutsu," she said decisively, and then, "Release!" She shot out a spurt of energy and the genjutsu disappeared.

Ren whirled around, Mind's Eye working one last time, and caught a taijutsu attack from a Hiruzen clone right as it was about to knock her out. But instead of blocking - with supernatural speed and acrobatic fluidity, she flowed around the attack, determined and alarmed and sharp-eyed.

From there, she and the two remaining clones began a furious taijutsu fight, her flowing dodging Mizuoriken against their more traditional Konoha taijutsu. She was good, but they were better, and she was quickly injured and bleeding from several places, including her upper lip.

Finally, she retreated, wiping her mouth and glaring.

"We've gotten to you," one clone observed calmly, "with that genjutsu."

Ren looked down. "… No. You haven't." And then she looked up, glaring, her eyes made of iron. "I'm good enough for myself!" she declared fiercely. "I refuse to know my place! I'm chasing that foolish dream, I'm going to become somebody! I don't care if I'm alone, I still have my self-respect!

"AND I'M NOT WORTHLESS!

"I don't care what kinds of limitations are placed on me anymore, and I don't care who approves and who doesn't! I'm going to push past those boundaries and see just how much I can do! Nobody's going to free me, so I'm going to free myself! I'm going to be myself, I'm not going to be who people want me to be, and if somebody doesn't like that they can go fuck themselves!

"You just spouted a gigantic load of poisonous bullshit, and I'M TIRED OF LISTENING TO YOU!"

Hiruzen smiled proudly from a distance as Ren bit herself. She paused, tilting her head, eyes wide and eerie -

And then everything neatly healed itself, jerking back into place. The bones righted themselves and healed, her cuts healed over, and then she straightened, grinning, perfectly fine.

She spat out the last blood. "Ugh! Coppery! Gross!"

Then she looked up… and beamed. "Okay! Let's try this!" And she sped forward for more taijutsu.

"You didn't win last time," said one clone skeptically as both began sparring with her again.

But then suddenly Ren jumped back.

"Changed your mind?" The clone raised an eyebrow.

Ren gave a wide, slow, evil, shit-eating grin, her eyes narrowed. The clones looked down…

She had slapped two chakra suppression seals, each on one arm of a clone, during the brief taijutsu fight. They would have to do anything one-handed. One of their arms had just been taken out and now fell limp and useless to one side.

And only a seal-mistress herself could have undone that on the fly, they realized with wide, alarmed eyes as one.

Suddenly, Ren ran up the nearest tree and threw herself down at the clones from on high at high speeds.

One handed, they managed a single fire attack as one. "Seal Barrier Technique!" She shielded with a glowing gold shield; the fire dissipated as she cut determinedly right through it, her eyes gleaming. Then, still falling, she shouted, "Sealing Chains Technique!"

She wrapped them up in glowing chains made of her own chakra - landed and held them steady from a distance. Her chakra strengthening seals glowed on her body as she slowly moved in closer and closer by the chains, as if by a rope -

The clones just managed enough chakra from inside the chains. They broke free by hardening their bodies into rock - the sealing chains slipped immediately back inside Ren, forming chakra coils again. She snapped to attention, rolled her shoulders back, and straightened.

She was by now beaten up, sweating, and gasping for breath.

But the clones weren't perfect themselves - especially only having a portion of Hiruzen's full power.

Then the final assault - they threw kunai and shuriken at Ren one-handed - and she held out her palms and sucked the weapons up inside the seals on their insides.

Then she threw her arms out, twisted her hands, and threw the attacks back outward. The kunai and shuriken flung themselves right at their owners.

"Easy," said a clone scathingly. They stepped sideways to avoid the attack -

And stepped right into the seal trap tags Ren had secretly placed near them with the bottoms of her feet - as she'd gotten closer to them during their struggle in the chaining process.

The fight was over as the clones' eyes widened in alarm and they disappeared.

"See you later, motherfuckers," said Ren in an angry, iron voice, grinning and breathing hard - suddenly alone on the battlefield.

"… You do realize they were simply acting and they're me, right?" Hiruzen said, amused, from off to the side.

"Yeah, well, they sure as hell felt like enemies - it was a really good act," said Ren bluntly, and she sat down right there on her butt on the training field. She flopped over and yelled dramatically, "Why do all my plans leave me exhausted?!"

"Well, if you're yelling like that, you must be fine," said Hiruzen in amusement, walking over beside Ren on the training field. "Ren." Ren looked up, wide-eyed in surprise. "… Good job," said Hiruzen warmly, looking down at her. "On the psychological and strategic as well as the fighting level."

Ren slowly smiled, more quietly and warmly. "Thanks," she said, grinning and breathing hard. "I'm exhausted. Nice to know all that hard work paid off."

"Most Academy students wouldn't have been able to do a single one of those things without passing out or being knocked unconscious," said Hiruzen bluntly. "You and your chakra have really come far."

"Yeah, then I'm better than usual?" said Ren curiously. "I wouldn't know - my only litmus test is you."

"You are far better. I purposefully didn't tell you that because I didn't want to stifle your ambition," said Hiruzen simply.

"Cool," Ren grinned. "So… ice cream?" She perked up.

Hiruzen sighed and smiled. "Yes," he said, "ice cream."

Ren somehow immediately leaped up and started jumping around, dancing and cheering in triumph. Hiruzen shook his head, fondly amused.

As they walked, Hiruzen said, "The Academy student graduation required age has been changed to twelve since the last Great War. This was done by the heroic Fourth Hokage from the famous fox demon story, before he died.

"So you have to attend the Academy. Even though truthfully you are far beyond it. For psychological reasons. The Fourth found that… healthier."

"Eh. I like meeting and talking to people anyway." Tough face on, Ren shrugged philosophically. "Gotta start changing people's minds by being an awesome ninja somewhere, right?"

Hiruzen smiled warmly.

"Since you are now a powerful Uzumaki founder of Konoha, the only one of your kind, I should tell you your clan rights," he continued. "You are entitled as an adult to a certain amount of wealth every month, a compound, and as an Uzumaki main family member, a maximum of two spouses. Any main family clan member is allotted the same, even in this age where arranged marriages no longer happen quite as often."

"Clan stuff, huh…?" Ren trailed off thoughtfully.

That night, Ren reached into the good old chest of scrolls at the study desk where she still did at-home academic tutoring - something she had been steadily improving in, by the way, though she would never be a brainiac.

This scroll read: "Uzumaki Clan History." It was in what she now recognized as her mother Kushina's handwriting.

Ren sat down at her desk, opened up the clan history and information scroll, and started reading. One of the first words that stuck out to her was a word she had studied as a seal-mistress: "Jinchuuriki."

Human sealed demon container.

The first thing Ren thought of… was the mysterious Five-Point Seal tattoo that sometimes appeared on her stomach when she channeled chakra, in accidental emotion or on purpose - right over her hara, or chakra center. A seal she did not remember making herself.

And her fox demon and birthday connections.

Eyes narrowed in intense thought… Ren began reading.

Author's Note: I've added tags. Look up top. The end pairing will be SasuNaruGaa, or Sasuke/Naruto and Naruto/Gaara. But there will also be teenage dating in the meantime.