AN: Many thanks to all who read this and a special thanks to my two reviewers
lindon2: thanks for telling me you like it!
Baka of the Funk: thanks for the corrections! By the way, yes it is Orochimaru and Anko in the second to last paragraph, it's the Kyuubi in the last one if anyone was confused about that. No, it's not a Yamato/Mikoto pairing, but she will be paired with someone.
Sorry this is out so late. My computer was blocking this site so I was writing and doing Naruto quizzes on facebook at the same time! (According to the quizzes my chakra affinity would be raiton, my signature jutsu would be Doton: Yomi Numa (that is my actual favorite jutsu) and my rank would not be a normal rank: I'd be a nukenin!) My computer is not blocking it out anymore so I won't do the sloppy job of posting really quickly and then forgetting a section at the end again. Sorry! Enjoy!
Chapter 2
Walking Through Memories
Four years later
Two boys chased each other through the streets of Konoha. They "quietly" ran through the residential sections moving fast enough so it would be to much of a bother to catch them. In the market square, they ducked under tables, dashed through stalls, and wove through people.
Everywhere they went they got the same reactions. People's reactions to the first boy were ones of love and acceptance. When he knocked into people or crashed into stands people would laugh and tell him it was no problem. Their reactions to the boy chasing him were the complete opposite. The reactions he got were those of annoyance at best and those of hatred at worst. If he happened to crash into people or stalls, they would yell at him and sometimes beat him.
"Got you." The second boy caught up to the first boy and tackled him to the ground. The two boys laughed as they rolled around in the dirt, each trying to get in a random kick or punch.
The first boy had bright blond spiky hair that stuck out everywhere. Cheerful sky blue eyes complemented his heavily tanned face. He wore a burnt orange t-shirt with the kanji for Namikaze on the back and black shorts with orange stripes down the sides. He had either not worn shoes or had lost them in the chase. This was Namikaze Naruto, the son of Namikaze Minato and beloved of the village.
The second boy was very different than Naruto. He had soft bluish-black hair that hung about his face and shoulders and intelligent black eyes that contrasted greatly with his pale skin. He was dressed the same as Naruto except his t-shirt was dark blue instead of orange and his shorts had no stripes. He also wore a pair of black shinobi sandals. This was Namikaze Sasuke, the disowned son of Uchiha Fugaku and village pariah of Konoha. He was hated hated as much as Naruto was loved, and just as Naruto could do no wrong, he could do nothing right.
The two boys continued wrestling until Naruto managed to pin Sasuke to the ground. "I win!"
"No you don't," said Sasuke after thinking for a bit. He had a sly smile on his face. "You said the person who got to the Hokage Tower first would win. We're all the way in the market."
"Darn. Got out of it again." Naruto dropped Sasuke and ran off in the opposite direction. "See you at the tower!"
"Hey! At least give me a fair start!" Sasuke chased after Naruto. He found himself going toward the older section of Konoha. Sasuke liked this area. Many of the older clan's compounds were located here, so there were more shinobi than civilians. Evan though he didn't know why they disliked him, Sasuke saw that both shinobi and civilians hated him, but the shinobi hated him less, or at least they never physically took it out on him. Any area that had more shinobi than civilians Sasuke liked.
He turned a corner and swore when he saw what area Naruto had led him to. He knew more of the layout of Konoha than Naruto did, because he had actually bothered to memorize a map of Konoha's streets. Naruto was currently faster than him, but because Naruto had learned his way around Konoha through trial and error, he did not know where he was going half the time. This meant that Naruto had not led him to this area on purpose. Sasuke wished Naruto had, a pranking war would have been started.
The area Naruto had unknowingly led Sasuke to was one of the worst places for Sasuke to be. He was currently a the border of the Uchiha district. His mother had warned him repeatedly to stay away from all the Uchihas and the fact that the few civilians in the clan beat him more than anyone else did only reinforced her warning.
He turned down a back alley that skirted the entire district. It had buildings on one side and the wall that went around the Uchiha district on the other. He planned to follow the alley until it got to one of the streets that connected to the main square where the Hokage Tower was.
After he had been running down the alley for a ways, he turned a corner and bumped into someone. Not looking to see who it was, Sasuke ran on passed him. The man gave a sharp whistle and three men jumped over the Uchiha wall in front of Sasuke. Sasuke swerved to avoid them, but they caught him and threw him to the ground. Two of them picked him up and held his arms while the man who had whistled came and pulled Sasuke's chin up so he could look Sasuke in the eye. Sasuke's blood ran cold when he saw that the person he was looking at had the sharingan. He quickly looked at the other three men and saw that all of them had the sharingan. The man holding Sasuke's chin pulled out a kunai. By now, Sasuke was frozen with fear; he knew the Uchiha hated him more than anyone else, but they had never gone this far and he was now at their mercy.
"Well..." the Uchiha with the kunai looked at the weapon and then at the men holding Sasuke captive. "I suppose we should finish what Fugaku started." The man laughed as he brought the kunai towards Sasuke's bare throat. Sasuke squirmed, but he was held too tightly and the men just laughed at him.
One of the men holding him said, "We should take him inside the compound. We don't want him to call for ANBU. And besides, what is clan business stays clan business; the Hokage cannot interfere by law."
"Excellent idea," the one with the kunai said. "Knock him out. We don't need him knowing how to leave the compound." The other man quickly pressed the correct pressure points on Sasuke's neck and Sasuke blacked out.
Mikoto finished cleaning up the lunch table and collapsed on the sofa with a glass of iced tea. It was hard to believe that four years ago she had moved into this house with Sasuke. The events after the sealing were certainly very interesting, Mikoto reflected.
After Minato had been found dead on the battlefield, the council had held an emergency meeting and declared Sarutobi Hiruzen as Hokage again. To his credit, he said nothing about how the Yondaime had actually stopped the Kyuubi although it later became apparent he had known exactly how the Yondaime had stopped it. All he said at that meeting was that the Yondaime had stopped it at the cost of his own life. The meeting was adjourned and Sarutobi said he had some paperwork to do as the newly reappointed Hokage.
Everything was going fine until Fugaku somehow got word that his wife had gone into labor the night before. It was then that the situation spiraled out of control. Somehow, Fugaku had seen the Fuuin Jutsu: Shiki Juuin before and recognized its seal on his son. He immediately called another emergency meeting after he had disowned his second born son and divorced his wife. At the meeting, he publicly announced what his son was and what he had done to both him and his wife. He then demanded if Sarutobi had known how the Yondaime had sealed the Kyuubi. Sarutobi admitted that he had known, but he had kept silent about it in the hope that Sasuke could have a normal childhood. The rest of the council wondered who would be taking care of Sasuke and some, particularly Danzo, had wanted him turned into a living weapon. That was when Sarutobi stepped in and showed the council Minato's last decree. It declared that Sasuke was to be raised by Mikoto without interference from anyone else. That ended the discussion. Sarutobi then revealed that he had also just signed into effect a bunch on new laws pertaining to Sasuke. The effects of those laws was that no one could tell anyone born after the Kyuubi event that Sasuke was the Kyuubi's jinchuuriki or that he and his mother had been disowned from the Uchiha clan and that no one could kill him. Unfortunately for the council, all the new laws had been signed by the Hokage so they could not repeal them.
In the coming weeks, a lot of things happened. First, Tsunade showed up. She said that she had heard about the Kyuubi attack where she was (she never said where she had been, much to Jiraiya's annoyance) and had come to help with the wounded so Konoha wouldn't lose any more shinobi. Everybody was glad she came back. Then, Orochimaru didn't turn up. It was perfectly normal for him not to be seen for days at a time, so nobody noticed until a full month after the Kyuubi attack that he was truly missing. Not very many people minded that he was gone.
During this time, Mikoto and Sasuke moved into the Namikaze compound. The compound was a lot smaller than most of the clan compounds and in an entirely different section of the city. This was because they had come to Konoha after the first shinobi war had been fought, much later than most of the clans had come.
When the Namikaze first came to Konoha, the clans tried not to judge them, but it was hard given the Namikaze's history and the fact that most people didn't think that the Namikazes were even a clan. Back before the time of the elemental nations, the Namikaze were know as being the smartest group of mercenaries money could buy. The Uchiha and Senju were the strongest clans in military might by far, but if an organization needed a group of powerful shinobi that thought outside the box and could do the impossible, they would hire the Namikaze. At that time, the Namikaze were more of group of shinobi than a clan. They were known for accepting people whoever they were, and did not care who married who. It was said that someone from every other clan had married into theirs.
When the elemental nations were established, the Namikaze continued to be a mercenary group until the first shinobi war. During the war, they split up and were hired by every side. Many people hoped they had finally split apart for good until the war ended and the leader of the Namikaze asked the Sandaime if they could settle in Konoha. He explained that the Namikaze were tired of wandering and wanted to settle down. In order to decide which village they would settle in, they had fought for each village and voted for their favorite. The Sandaime excepted them with open arms and gave them land to build a compound. The ninja didn't like this at first; many of their friends and relatives had been killed by the Namikaze in the war. The thing they didn't like the most was that the Namikaze didn't care about clan purity. They still accepted anybody into their clan regardless of background and the clan was filled with Kirinin who escaped their village's kekkei genkai wars. Behind their backs, the Namikaze were called the village's pariahs. By the time of the sealing of the Kyuubi, it was a respected clan among leaf shinobi. All that was lost when they took in Mikoto and Sasuke.
Mikoto laughed to herself when she remembered how people's opinions of her changed. Most people hated her. The Yamanaka dubbed her the demon bitch and Sasuke the demon brat. Because the Yamanaka were Konoha's rumor mill, the entire village called them that. Other than the Uchiha, they were the only ninja clan that hated her. Most of the ninja just ignored both her and Sasuke when they could and acknowledged them only when they had to. All the clans fell into this category in one form or another except the Nara clan. They and the ANBU understood what she had done, and why she had done it. Those few people made living in Konoha bearable. The Nara invited her and Sasuke over for dinner at least once a week to catch up on news and play shogi. When she went back to the ANBU, they accepted her. Kakashi even went up to her and gave her a complement on what she did when he told her that she had the same un-Uchihaness that the rest of her side of the family did. The Naras and the ANBU were the only people who acknowledged her and Sasuke consistently.
In the months following the Kyuubi attack, Konoha was gradually rebuilt and life returned to normal. The entire village celebrated when Naruto, the Yondaime's heir was born. After that, Tsunade and her new apprentice, Shizune, left the village. Tusanade publicly said she left to research different methods of healing, but to Kushina and Mikoto she said she left because she could not stand the hypocritical way the villagers treated Naruto and Sasuke. After she left, Jiraiya did the same thing to attend to his spy network. Before that, he made sure that Sasuke's seal was holding correctly. Many men tried to interest Mikoto into marring them, but she rejected them all because most of them just wanted to have heirs that had the sharingan. The few men she did like never asked her to marry them because they knew she was too concerned with Sasuke's safety for marriage just yet. In order to bring in an income for both of them, Kushina and Mikoto both re-joined ANBU as guards of the Hokage. Speaking of which, the boys should be there by now to meet Kushina. I should go catch up to them. Who will get there first this time? Mikoto left her house and climbed the wall to go to the Hokage Tower.
When Sasuke woke up he saw that he was in a part of Konoha he had never been in before. He was lying on the ground with his hands tied behind his back in an old training ground by the side of a road. He could tell it was old because it was filled with trees that were older than the Kyuubi attack. He looked around and saw the four men sitting a ways away from him.
As soon as they saw that he was awake, they came over to him. The four of them each pulled out a kunai. The man who had held his chin in the ally came up to him and lifted Sasuke's shirt up to expose his stomach. He held his kunai up to Sasuke's navel. "Don't worry. We will finish you off demon. But who said we would do it painlessly?" He brought down the kunai on Sasuke's stomach.
"What are you doing?" an emotionless voice was all that stopped Sasuke's stomach from getting ripped open.
Fear rippled through the men around Sasuke. "I- Itachi, what are you doing here?" one of the men asked.
"I was coming back from receiving my chunin vest." Sasuke had never heard anyone sound so emotionally dead. "I suggest you leave." Itachi went on. "If the Hokage finds out what you are doing, he will disband the clan. Leave." The last word was filled with authority that dared not be tested.
One by one the men slowly sheathed their kunais and left the training ground. When they were gone, Sasuke felt a pair of hands slip under his back and untie his hands. When he was free, he sat up and got his first look at whoever Itachi was.
What he saw astounded him. He had been expecting an adult shinobi. What he instead saw was a young boy who looked about ten years old. He had pale skin and black hair that was very similar to Sasuke's, but his hair went down past his shoulders. If his black eyes were not void of emotions, he and Sasuke could have been brothers.
"If you're only a kid, why did they leave when you told them to?" Sasuke looked at Itachi with confused eyes.
"They left because I am Uchiha Itachi, the son of the head of the Uchiha clan, Uchiha Fugaku."
As soon as he heard who Itachi was, Sasuke got up and tried to run away. He went no more than five feet before Itachi caught him and turned him around to face him.
"Why do you fear me if I saved you from being killed?" Itachi had backed Sasuke into a tree. There was no way for Sasuke to avoid his question.
"Kaa—" Sasuke gulped. "Kaa-san told me to stay away from the Uchiha because they don't like me for some reason." And because they might try to hurt me. But Sasuke didn't want to tell Itachi why he thought his mom had warned him to stay away.
Itachi's eyes narrowed at this and his dreaded sharingan activated. "That is a good reason to stay away from the Uchiha, but you do not need to fear me." With that he caused Sasuke's black eyes to meet his sharingan and Sasuke quickly fell into a deep sleep.
Itachi quickly picked up Sasuke and shunshined to his room. Once he got there he laid his brother on his bed and silently cried, something he had not done since his brother had been born. Ever since his mother had left the clan, Fugaku had trained him to be the perfect shinobi, an emotionless killing machine. He had succeeded in doing so not because he had broken Itachi, but because Itachi had seen the wisdom in being able to be emotionless when he had to and had willingly gone along with it. Instead of loosing his emotions, Itachi had learned to hide them in such a way that it appeared to every body that he had lost them. Only a select few, such as the Hokage, knew that he still had them. Even with all my training I still can't control myself when it comes to my brother. When Itachi had seen what was going on in the training field, it had taken all his control to not kill the four shinobi that were threatening his brother.
After he had stopped crying, Itachi went over to look at his brother. Sasuke looked so innocent while he was sleeping that Itachi had a hard time believing that anyone would want to harm him let alone kill him. From what he saw in the village however, he knew Sasuke had had a difficult time growing up. How has he stayed the cheerful little kid he is? How I wish I could see how he grew up. Wait a minute, why don't I use that method?
That method was something Itachi had developed as a way to read a person's mind even if you weren't a Yamanaka. It worked because people's memory's were stored in literal vaults: large rooms lined with numbered doors that led to different memories. You started at the door marked as the first memory because it was the only one that was unlocked, experienced it and then found yourself back in the central vault. Now the door marked as the next memory was unlocked and you could experience that one. In between doors, you could stop and take a brake to think about what you had learned, but you could not go through a memory twice and you could not skip a memory; the doors only opened in sequence. The only problem was that instead of being able to look for the information you wanted, you had to watch the person's entire life from the moment they were born to the moment you found whatever information you were after. I can't use it in most situations, but for what I want right now, it's perfect.
Itachi bit is thumb and spread his blood in a straight line across his brother's forehead. After that he put his hand on the blood and whispered "Hijutsu: Omoi Sansaku no Jutsu." He blinked his eyes and found himself inside Sasuke's memory vault.
Mikoto entered the Hokage Tower and leaned against a wall to wait for the boys. A few minutes later Naruto ran in.
"Hah! I won." He announced to everyone in the entrance. Everybody looked at him with shock and ryo changed several hands.
He went over to Mikoto. "Hey Aunty, I'm finally catching up to Sasuke!"
Mikoto ruffled his hair. "Naruto, you can only say that when you've beaten him more times than he's beaten you. Now go and find Yamato, he's hiding from you somewhere."
"What do you mean? 'Go find him?' He's right next to you! Now where's my mom?"
"Right behind you!" Kushina tickled her son's shoulders and he jumped three feet in the air.
"Don't scare me like that Kaa-san!"
"Hey! I'm in ANBU, if I wasn't scary I wouldn't be able to do my job." She smiled at her son while he scowled at her.
"Can we leave now?"
Kushina laughed. "No, since you got here first, you have to wait until Sasuke gets here before you can leave, but I'll let you hang out in here instead of outside."
"Okay!" Naruto ran off to hopefully find some foolish genin to play poker with.
Ten minuets later they were still waiting.
"Something's wrong." Mikoto put bluntly. "Every now and then Naruto does come in before Sasuke, but Sasuke has never been this late."
"Yeah... Naruto come here!"
Naruto came running at his mother's call. "Are we going yet?"
"No, Sasuke's not back yet. When you guys were racing here, where did you go?" Kushina made it sound like an innocent question.
"Well, first we went to the area where all the shinobi and civilians live, then we went to the market, then we went to the place where all the clans except us live and then we went here."
"Where did you last see Sasuke?"
Naruto screwed up his face in concentration. "On some street near all the compounds. I don't really remember which one. Why?"
"We don't know where Sasuke is." Mikoto said. "If you could—"
"But Sasuke never gets gets lost; he always knows where he is."
"We don't think Sasuke's lost. We think that something happened to him and we need to find out where he last was so that we can help him. Do you think you could show us where you last saw him.?"
"Yeah." Naruto scratched the back of his head. "But I'd have to start from home. I can't find the place from here."
"Okay then," said Kushina. "We're starting from our compound."
"...we went by this compound and then around here and when I turned this way at this intersection I saw him catching up to me and that was the last time I saw him."
"Thanks Naruto, you've been very helpful." Inwardly, Mikoto was seething. How could you lead Sasuke here. Even you can't be that much of a blockhead. The last place Naruto had said he had seen Sasuke was at the intersection where the Uchiha District joined the village. Mikoto had no doubt that some Uchiha was the reason her son had not shown up. If Fugaku was behind it, boy is he going to pay. She looked at Kushina and they both nodded in agreement.
"Why don't we all go over to the Nara's." Kushina stated randomly. "We haven't been over to their house yet this week and we need to catch up on work."
"Nice idea." Yamato caught on to what Kushina and Mikoto were doing.
"I thought we were looking for Sasuke?" Naruto looked back and forth between the adults.
"Oh we are. We just want to eliminate all possible locations where Sasuke could be first. Now come on." Yamato put Naruto on his shoulders and the three shinobi jumped across the rooftops to the Nara compound.
When they got to the Nara compound Naruto raced outside to see if there was any possible chance of budging Shikamaru from his spot on the lawn. The adults asked if Shikaku was available to talk to. Fortunately, he decided it was worth the trouble to talk to them when they mentioned that Sasuke had gone missing an hour ago and that the last place he had been seen was near the Uchiha district. When they asked him if he would go with them to see Fugaku he said yes and his wife said that Naruto could spend the night. He even helped them figure out a way to get Mikoto through the Uchiha's guards and to Fugaku undetected by the sharingan. By the time they left for the Uchiha district, Itachi was going into his brother's memory vault.
Itachi had never seen a memory vault like Sasuke's. As he made his way through his brother's memory vault he wondered what memories his brother could have stored in such a forbidding place. It was a dark, narrow, twisting cave with red light shining down from cracks in the ceiling and, there was no doors. Instead, each memory was contained in a cavern or corridor that led directly from one to the other; there was no break between them. But Itachi only found that out after he had gone through them.
Itachi found himself in a dead end. After taking in his surroundings, he went forward into the first cavern. Instantly he was hit with the memory. Apparently, Sasuke's first memory was of him, Naruto, Mikoto, Kushina and Yamato having dinner together in the Namikaze compound. It was a happy scene, full of laughter and warmheartedness that Itachi knew Sasuke got almost nowhere else.
From there, the memories came at an overwhelming pace, almost as if Itachi was living through them himself. Instead of just focusing on Sasuke, he found himself focusing on the people around him and how they were affecting Sasuke as well.
Itachi could not have asked anything more of his mother or Kushina. Mikoto was everything to Sasuke. She was not just his mother, but his teacher, protector, comforter and friend. She never spoiled him, constantly sacrificed for him and was glad to do both. Kushina also held a place in Sasuke's heart. He saw her as his aunt and enjoyed going over to her house to play with her son and get spoiled.
Much to Itachi's dismay, Yamato did not consider himself Sasuke's older brother. He considered himself a friend, but nothing more. This wouldn't have been so bad if he didn't live with Kushina and consider Naruto his younger brother. From his actions, Itachi deduced that he saw the Namikaze family as the people he was indebted to and should therefore respect and he saw Mikoto and Sasuke as people the Namikazes had taken pity on and regarded them as his equals.
Itachi was glad for Sasuke's sake that he had Naruto, but was worried about Naruto. If it wasn't for Naruto, Sasuke would have had a very lonely life. Because of Naruto, he always a friend his own age to play with, conspire and prank people with, and then get into trouble with. Naruto let Sasuke have a childhood and not to have to look to adults for his only company. But Itachi saw something in Naruto that could potentially grow into a problem. Naruto was loved by the villagers as the son of the Yondaime Hokage and not as Namikaze Naruto. Since he was often considered the 'Uchiha Prodigy' and not Uchiha Itachi, Itachi knew that if Naruto took that love the wrong way he would do anything to prove he was Namikaze Naruto and not the Yondaime's son. Hopefully, Naruto would understand when he got older.
Sarutobi, Itachi decided, could not be blamed for the way Sasuke was treated. He had tried his best to ensure that Sasuke would have a normal childhood and it wasn't his fault that Sasuke would never have that.
He was extremely grateful for the Nara clan and the ANBU. He wasn't at all surprised that they didn't consider Sasuke the Kyuubi in human form at all; the Nara were not known for being the smartest clan for no reason after all and all the ANBU knew the difference between a sealing scroll and the kunai sealed inside it. He was surprised that the Nara went into all the trouble of inviting Mikoto and Sasuke over for dinner once a week. In fact, they seemed to go out of their way to let all the other clans know that they invited them over and that they thoroughly enjoyed it. The ANBU did the same thing as the Nara, only they were non-clan ninjas and gave Mikoto and Sasuke a bigger variety of people to talk to. Itachi thought it was interesting that for the first time in Konoha's history, there were more non-clan ninja in ANBU than there were clan ninja. He would definitely keep that career option open.
The way the other clans and ninjas treated Sasuke annoyed Itachi. He wished they would either hate Sasuke or support him. Most of the time, they stood by and pretended that Sasuke was not even there. They didn't hurt him in any way, but neither did they help him when other people hurt him.
The villagers, Uchiha and Yamanaka made Itachi sick. When ever they saw Sasuke, they tried to hurt him, and some of them tried to kill him. If it wasn't for Mikoto, Kushina, the Nara and the ANBU, he probably would have be dead by now.
Sasuke was the last person Itachi focused on. He was amazed at how perceptible his younger brother was. He had always known that he was different than everybody else and had been trying to find out why just as long. He had long ruled out that it was because he was a kid, a Namikaze and because he didn't know who his dad was. When he couldn't figure it out himself, he asked the few adults around him. When that didn't work (he knew they knew something about it and were lying), he decided to wait until he got more information, but he was constantly thinking about it. Itachi hoped he would overlook the fact that he was born on the day of the Kyuubi attack and that the Uchiha had called him a demon.
When Sasuke wasn't trying to figure out what made him different from everyone else he was using his time to gather whatever information might be useful to him when he became a ninja. When he and Naruto started chasing each other to the Hokage tower, he some how managed to get Mikoto to let him see the ANBU map of Konoha. He quickly memorized all the secret passageways, sewers and hideouts the ANBU used as well as the streets everybody else used. When he went over to the Nara's, he took advantage of their countless books on strategy and learned how to play shogi from the Nara. When his mom invited ANBU friends over to dinner (he was not allowed to listen to what they were talking about), Sasuke would sneak up to the door to listen to what they were talking about. By now Itachi thought he was probably a low B-rank security threat.
Through it all, Sasuke hoped that the reason people treated him differently was good one. If it was a good reason, he had decided that he would be okay with the way people treated him. If it was an unseasonable one, he had decided that he would get revenge on them for the way they had treated him. This was the one time that Itachi could see that Sasuke was Fugaku's son; he hoped for Konoha's sake that Sasuke would not grow up to be like him.
All of a sudden, the memories stopped and Itachi saw nothing except the labyrinth of Sasuke's mind. He leaned against the wall, breathing hard. After he had caught his breath, he looked around to see where he was. Behind him was the cave that he had come out of. Before him was a corridor leading away from Sasuke's memories. Itachi got up and went through the corridor.
The corridor led him out of the cave and onto a valley ringed with cliffs. Itachi was shocked. It's even more forbidding then the labyrinth is. A black moon hung low in a blood red sky. Ragged gray clouds were scattered across the sky and moon. The cliffs around the valley were steep and craggy. Every few feet there was a cave at the base of them. Itachi looked back at the cave he had come out of and saw that above it was the kanji for memory. He looked at the other caves and saw that each of them had a kanji above them as well. In the middle of the valley there was a shallow stream of some dark gray liquid. Itachi began to walk up the valley towards the source of the stream. As he did so he felt a tremor in the ground that increased in intensity as he went up the valley.
The monotony was broken when he came to a cave that looked as if it had collapsed from the inside. The mouth was blocked with rocks that spread out into the valley and stream. Itachi went closer to look at it and froze when he saw the kanji above the cave. Kekkei Genkai. After staring at it in anger for several minutes, he turned and walked up the valley.
After what seemed like hours, Itachi turned a corner and gasped. There was a break in the cliffs on one side of the valley. It was not an ordinary break; it looked as if someone had used a powerful doton jutsu to carve a ragged hole in the cliff. It was here that the stream split. The stream coming from the valley's normal course was filled with a clear liquid, while the fork coming out of the break was pitch black. When they met, the stream turned into the dark gray that it had been for the entire length of the valley. The side valley formed by the break was also where the tremors were coming from; Itachi could see the cliffs on either side of it vibrate. Itachi decided to take a chance and went through the break in the cliffs.
The side valley was not very long. Almost as soon as Itachi entered it, he found himself facing a large cave that looked as if it had been torn out of the rock the same way the side valley was. It was from the cave that the stream and the tremors came from. Itachi got closer to the cave until the only way he could go further was to stand in the stream. As soon as he put his foot in the stream the tremors stopped and a glowing red eye snapped open five feet above Itachi's head. There was a loud rumbling and the eye rose until it was three stories above Itachi. For a moment there was silence. Then with a roar of chakra, a tremendous rumble, and a whirl of fire, the Kyuubi no Kitsune revealed itself in all its glory.
Omake
Sasuke Becomes A Low B-Rank Security Threat
"Why can't I eat dinner with you guys?" Sasuke pouted.
"Because it's just me and a couple friends from AN- work who are going to be discussing boring work stuff. That's why. Now go to bed." Mikoto shooed Sasuke into his room.
Something tells me that if they are discussing Kaa-san's work it's not boring. Just because she said I can't be in the room with them doesn't mean I can listen to them outside the room. Maybe if I'm really quiet by the door...
Sasuke waited until they had all started talking downstairs and then sneaked downstairs to listen from the crack between the door and the wall.
"...like Iwa's assassins aren't up to scratch," someone said. "That's the third attempt they've made on you this year and you didn't even have to use your eye or chidori to take them out," an unfamiliar voice said.
Sasuke giggled. And she said they would be discussing 'boring work stuff'.
"Yeah. What was that? Are you sure that no one can listen in on us here Mikoto?" said a second unrecognizable voice.
"Yes. For the last time, they wouldn't be able to get beyond the seals on the wall." That was Mikoto.
"But what if they were inside the compound already? You've got enough background chakra coming from the wall seals that if they were quiet and masked their chakra that you couldn't feel them at all." That was the second voice.
"Believe me, nobody could be listening in on us. The seals would identify someone who wasn't keyed into them already. That's why we had these types of meetings here in the first place."
"Well, okay," said the first voice. "You'd know best seeing as you live here. I wouldn't mind having this type of set up around my office at the T&I department that's for sure."
Sasuke didn't bother listening to the rest of the conversation. He was too happy. As long as I don't make any noise, I can completely get away with this. He went back to bed.
In the coming years, Sasuke heard about who the ANBU had captured, the torture methods they used, who was on their hit list, who they had quietly caused to disappear and how they caused them to disappear, and the many missions the ANBU unofficially did. For her part, Mikoto wondered why her son had gone from being a morning person to someone who slept in late and blamed it on a growth spurt.
AN: Name recognition in my next chapter if you can guess who Mikoto is talking to in the Omake and please tell me what I can do better on. Thanks for reading!
