Summary: When both Mikoto and Kushina have twins, the world is drastically altered. Sasuke is not the only one consumed with revenge when the Massacre comes and Naruto knows the love of a sibling. Just how will this change things on top of the fact the Sharingan isn't the only Kekkei Genkai the Uchiha have?

Chapter 7: Coming of Dawn

Sasuke and Noriko stood off to the side in the clearing, leaning against a tree, stunned into silence. They slid down the smooth bark until they sat and linked their arms around their knees.

It was unbelievable. The Kyouzou, said to be undefeatable. But the old hag had to drag them out at unholy hours of the morning to talk about how no, the Kyouzou wasn't all-powerful and how the Uzumaki had a Kekkei Genkai that was a perfect match for it.

Sasuke internally groaned. It wasn't that he had a problem with there being a match for the Kyouzou, but he just hated the situation and how everything he and Noriko did, it seemed, involved the idiotic blonds.

He didn't know when he'd find out who was the wielder or sword, spear in the Uzumaki's case, would prove to be between the two Uzumaki. Apparently, in the past, the Uzumaki teamed up with the Senju against the Uchiha. Despite clearly wiping the floor with the Uzumaki, the Uchiha often sustained severe losses against the Uzumaki's kenjutsu. That was regular kenjutsu with simple silver swords.

However, at some point, the Uchiha joined with an even more ancient clan, and through only one person carrying the Kekkei Genkai, it was passed down through the generations. The screwed up twist was that the person, a female, who had carried down the Kekkei Genkai through the Uzumaki clan had a sister who married into the Uchiha clan and carried it down through the Uchiha clan. This made Sasuke sick.

He glanced over at Noriko and saw she was equally pale.

Naruto and Mei were hugging the old woman and Sasuke strangely felt a jealous pang for a moment before it subsided into annoyance and a few images of his dead parents. Noriko probably was feeling the same, judging from the look on her face as she stared out at the three Uzumaki.

"Now that they've gained knowledge of a power that rivals our own, we must get stronger to defeat them and Itachi," Sasuke said quietly. Noriko nodded.

"Sasuke, I think I've figured out why you said 'Hoki' instead of my name. When you write 'Noriko', the other reading for it is 'Hoki'. The only thing I find strange is that you simply said it. I hadn't even tugged at my chakra to activate the Kyouzou, you simply said the other reading of my name and then I transformed," Noriko said.

"I suppose. We need to find Kakashi to get more information then," Sasuke stood. "And leave those idiots. Perhaps they'll finally leave us alone in the sense that Mei calls me 'Sasuke-kun' and Naruto calls you 'Noriko-chan' if they're with supposed grandmother of theirs."

Just as Sasuke and Noriko were about to disappear from the clearing, they heard Naruto and Mei pester the woman about her daughter, their mother. More jealousy bubbled up in the Uchiha. A few steps forward, already covered by the dark tree shadows, the two Uchiha heard their names being called out.

Sasuke turned to see Naruto tackle him to the ground with shadow clones and Mei tackle his sister to the ground. Noriko easily slipped out of her grasp, only to be caught by the old Uzumaki woman. She hauled Sasuke up in a hug as well, to which the Uchiha were repulsed by.

"Because you two are on my adorable grandchildren's team, you two have some kind of place in my heart," Maki said with a halfway gummy grin.

"Don't touch us, you disgusting old woman!" the two Uchiha said in sync. Blinding pain streaked across their faces and their necks nearly snapped from their heads being whipped so violently to one side.

Their cool hands touched their cheeks painfully to see the Uzumaki woman had done something they hadn't felt for five years: be slapped.

"The only person that could do that was our mother and she was murdered!" Sasuke yelled.

"Just what makes you think you have any right to even touch us?" Noriko finished, anger swirling in her body.

"She was murdered?" Maki repeated. "Don't feel so righteous; my grandchildren grew up without any parents while you two grew up in Konoha's most arrogant, yet powerful, clan. So why do you two feel the need to act so high and mighty?"

"We don't owe you any explanations," the two growled.

"As long as you're on my grandchildren's team, your actions affect the team's outcome in a mission. If you let your childish ideas of keeping to yourselves go on, you'll only kill not only them, but also yourselves. Now, what do you mean she was murdered?" Maki asked.

"Our entire clan was wiped out. We are avengers and our purpose is to kill the man that did it!" Sasuke said.

"You see, that is your problem. Revenge. I've seen many go down that path and none of them survive. If you want to live, then you must relinquish the pain from the wipeout of your clan," Maki said.

Sasuke and Noriko were once again, stunned into silence. This woman was perhaps stupider than Naruto and Mei. She clearly didn't see that seeing your own clan murdered over and over was quite the motivator and gave mental scarring. She didn't see that one simply couldn't give up on the one thing they'd breathed for, ate for, and trained for. If they simply let go of revenge, not only would they not be Uchiha Sasuke and Uchiha Noriko, but they'd fall apart. Much like a sword without a wielder can never shine in battle and a wielder can never shine in battle without a sword.

They quickly disappeared from sight of the Uzumaki, leaving the two younger Uzumaki to wince at their teammates. To an extent, they understood that Maki had misspoken and should not have ever said that, but they understood Maki's words; revenge wasn't a way to live.

Then again, the Uchiha twins, after the incident five years ago, had given up on living just as everyone did and lived for one sole purpose: to destroy a man whom the Uzumaki still didn't know the identity of.

"Hm?" Kakashi opened the door to see his two normally cute students. As of now, they looked as if they'd been slapped, both mentally and physically. They pushed past him and sat on his bed. Kakashi sat backwards on a seat and stared at them with a bewildered expression.

"What's gotten into you two?" Kakashi asked.

"Let us see the scroll about the Kyouzou," the two Uchiha said in sync. Kakashi narrowed his visible eye. They really weren't here to talk, were they? They were nothing like their brother; Itachi was a quiet person who would be a good person to talk to for advice and for moral support, even though he often was too busy to attend anything important outside of ANBU.

"Only after you take the Chuunin Exams. Then, I'll see if you're ready for it," Kakashi said. I can't let them see it yet because they might just want to accelerate with their doujutsu and Kyouzou too quickly and might damage their chakra coils to the point where they might just have to give up on being ninjas. Then I'll have a real headache; they'll get themselves killed trying to kill Itachi and even if they don't, they'll be such pains, whining about their lives or something. He saw that didn't go over well with his students at all and almost laughed at their faces that contorted from anger to disbelief to more anger and then something else.

"Chuunin Exams?" Noriko asked.

"Yeah. They're in about two months. The library has information on it. If you'll excuse me, I was busy before you interrupted," Kakashi shoved them out and slammed the door, going back to his tantalizing orange book. He held it fondly in his hands before opening the last few pages and nearly flipped his shit; that was not how it was supposed to end! Junko was supposed to end up with Noriaki! She wasn't supposed to end up with Kousuke! Kakashi looked around in his apartment for things he could possibly crush, rip up, and then burn in vengeance.

Meanwhile, the two Uchiha stalked through the village, heading straight for the library. The librarian said only the first and second floors but her words fell on deaf ears. The two read up as much as they could on the Chuunin Exams and were not entirely pleased with what they'd read. The death rates were crazy high and the percentage of those passing to become Chuunin was declining. Thirty years ago it was 15% and now it was less than 7%. It had dropped by nearly half, making the possibilities of becoming Chuunin looking less and less hopeful.

Did that ever stop Uchiha Sasuke and Uchiha Noriko? No. Of course not. They had a brother to kill and strength to obtain. No petty words from their teammates' grandmother or from pessimistic books could deter the village's number one avengers.

On a brighter note, they did find some articles related to the Sharingan. It was rather vague, but it reminded both Uchiha to go to the Naka Shrine. They briskly walked out of the library to their clan compound, a compound they hadn't set foot in for a long time. Surprisingly, there was no litter or stray animals running around the compound. Well, perhaps it was unsurprising considering it was Konoha's founding clan along with the Senju and respects had to paid to the clan that had been slaughtered leaving only two survivors.

Inside the Naka Shrine, under the seventh tatami mat, was a vast room with candles that lit up on their own when an Uchiha was in the room. Upon their Sharingan activating, they were surprised to be able to read the stone tablet, while not having their Sharingan just made the rock carvings look like random squiggly lines.

Among jutsus and different stages of the Sharingan and what they would grant, it entailed secrets of the Mangekyou Sharingan and how to obtain it. It mentioned the ability to control the Kyuubi and when they read further, it was unreadable.

"Does this mean we need more advanced levels of the Sharingan to read the rest?" Noriko asked, deactivating her Sharingan. Sasuke shrugged.

"I guess," Sasuke said. "We can't be sitting idly around though. Kakashi-sensei said that the Chuunin Exams were near. We know ninjutsu, genjutsu with our Sharingan, and taijutsu. We need to work on the Kyouzou. It's using too much chakra to activate for you and too much for me to fall into the stance and move correctly and recall the memories we received."

"We should work on our speed as well. We're too slow if even with our Sharingan we couldn't dodge those senbon against Haku. Do you think we should go back to the library to see if they have anything on increasing speed?" Noriko tilted her head as the two walked back up the stairs into the main part of the shrine.

"Yeah," Sasuke said.

"So, what was our dad like?" Mei asked, her grey eyes wide with curiosity.

"Bah, I wouldn't know. Kushina and I had a fight and we didn't talk after that. The next I hear of her, it's that she died in the fight restraining the Kyuubi presumably along with your father. He must've been a wimp if he couldn't protect my kid," Maki sneered, looking out the window to see the Hokage monument.

In truth, she didn't know whom Kushina had married. Of course, the fight was a lie because the truth was that Maki had left Kushina's side a year after she was inducted into the Konoha shinobi ranks to search for more Uzumaki. When she came back to Konoha, all she found was a grave.

It was Jiraiya who had found her. Jiraiya had been simply wandering and stumbled upon the woman. Maki honestly hadn't really known the man, but knew that he'd been the teammate of her daughter's sensei, Orochimaru. The two talked over sake and Jiraiya had been the one to tell her of her daughter's death and how she had two children before she'd died.

Maki almost cringed at the memory. She'd sobbed for hours, blaming herself for not being there for Kushina. Still, at least looking after Kushina's kids and giving her kids a few pointers and techniques wasn't a bad idea. It would ease the guilt, just a bit.

Maki knew that Mei wasn't close to unlocking her Kekkei Genkai. Neither was Naruto. She decided to go with something that wouldn't involve putting the two of them in danger, well, not immediately anyway. Fuuinjutsu.

Fuuinjutsu was a great asset, being that it was simply one thing being put inside another object. It could be used to hide things, ship things off, sealing things off, trapping someone (grabbing their chakra and holding onto it like a genjutsu but without the illusion but if the Uzumaki twins were anything like their mother, Maki knew that it would simply sail over their heads), and so much more.

It was seen as a lost art because patience is a luxury no shinobi has on the battlefield. They're either running away from something or running towards something. It took up time, effort, ink, and chakra. Most shinobi didn't have such vast chakra reserves as the two children that looked at her with palpable curiosity.

Maki pushed her thoughts aside as Naruto began to ask another question.

"Everyone thinks that the Uchiha clan is so great. The Uzumaki clan is great, isn't it?" Naruto asked.

Maki's eyes glazed over a bit. "The Uzumaki clan was great."

Mei tilted her head. "Was?"

"Yes. During the Second Shinobi World War, the village of Uzushiogakure was destroyed with survivors scattered across the world. At the time, Konoha and Uzu were allies and Kumo and Iwa took advantage of this and Uzu's weaknesses at the time and destroyed the whole island," Maki said. "Enough history. I'm going to go over the basics of fuuinjutsu."

A stupid grin spread on their faces until it faded into confusion. "What's that?"

"The ninja art of sealing. The Uzumaki were famous for it," Maki said. She pulled out a scroll.

"Fuuinjutsu's base is kanji. If you two are anything like your mother, this is going to be extremely difficult. However, if you can manage just two or three very simple seals, then you'll be okay in the Chuunin Exams. You don't want to fall behind your Uchiha teammates, do you?" Maki grinned devilishly.

"Of course not!" Mei scowled. "That Noriko, taking up Sasuke-kun's attention…"

"Chuunin Exams?" Naruto asked. "What?"

"The exam to get a higher rank in the shinobi ranks. Your sensei is a Jounin, two ranks above you. The Hokage, technically, is three ranks above you. This test will push you to the limits against other Genin from other countries. There is a low chance of passing and if you want to, then you're going to show all the daimyo and Kage watching that you're worth it," Maki said. She laid out the scroll and in a puff of smoke after applying a bit of chakra, two scrolls came out. Mei and Naruto cautiously unfurled the scrolls to find that it was kanji practice. They blanched, seeing the squares in which to practice.

Maki almost laughed at their amusing display.

"Now, I'd like for you to practice this list for the rest of the day. If you don't, you won't get dinner and if you try to sneak something in the middle of the night, you're going to find yourself wishing you were dead," Maki's eyes glinted with sadism.

Mei and Naruto took her seriously and looked at the list of two hundred kanji to practice. They wanted to simply rip up the list after the first few kanji, but with Maki watching them like a hawk, they couldn't be tempted.

"Sorry, we don't sell weights," the man behind the weapons store counter said.

"Do you know any other place who sells weights?" Noriko asked. The man shook his head sadly.

The two Uchiha briefly looked up at a hawk that was screeching overhead and turned to look at one another. It was a shared look of resignation and disappointment. The path was forking into two at an intersection up ahead. It was the last part of the merchant district.

"I'll go down the left path; you go down the right," Sasuke said and stalked down the left path. Noriko pushed a strand of hair out of her face and walked into the first out of twenty shops on this path.

There was another Genin in the shop, examining the nunchaku and testing their weight. Noriko thought nothing of him and walked up to the clerk who was sitting on a chair behind the counter, reading something with one hand and fanning himself with the other.

"Do you have weights?" Noriko asked.

The man looked up and narrowed his eyes. "No."

Noriko turned on a heel and walked out to the neighboring shop. After she was in the tenth shop, her hope dwindling, she began to feel as if she was being watched, but when she'd turned around, there was no one there.

She made a hand seal with one hand to focus her chakra and unsurprisingly, there was a person following her.

"Come out; I know you're there," Noriko commanded.

A Genin, the Genin from the first shop came out sheepishly. She narrowed her eyes.

"You've been following me this whole time. What for?" Noriko asked, placing her hands nonchalantly in her pockets.

She had an assortment of bombs in her pocket and a few shuriken and the Genin seemingly didn't underestimate her, his posture slouching a bit, as if going into a taijutsu stance the moment she did anything threatening. This didn't do unnoticed by either of them. She jerked her head to the path outside the shop.

She walked outside and the boy followed and Noriko narrowed her eyes at the strange boy wearing a ridiculous outfit.

"Why have you been following me?" Noriko demanded.

"I could tell you were looking for something and I'd be more than ecstatic to be of any service to you," the boy's eyes burned with fire and determination with his bowl haircut and green spandex.

"That doesn't answer my question," Noriko said. "You know what, never mind. You want to help me? I need weights, two sets."

"That is a very youthful training idea! I also train with weights and as a result, I have many sets that would be extremely useful to both you and your brother, Noriko-san!" the boy said.

"How do you know I have a brother? And how do you know my name? Just who are you?" Noriko asked cautiously.

"You and your brother are students of my sensei's rival, Hatake Kakashi. Also, you two are very famous. The last Uchiha, correct?" he asked. "And, my name is Rock Lee. I am very honored to meet you, especially without your brooding brother."

Noriko, if she weren't asking for a favor, would've normally lashed out. She held back her tongue and simply settled for a cold glare. Lee flinched.

"Did I say something wrong?" Lee asked.

"It's nothing," Noriko walked past him towards the other path where Sasuke was. Lee followed curiously, beginning to form questions in his head to ask her.

"What is your favorite color? Flower? Food? Memory?" Lee asked, his cheeks a slight shade of pink being so close to the Uchiha Noriko. He'd heard of her and her brother, Sasuke, from Gai. Lee had been curious to see who these other Genin were and often saw them walking with their twin. The blondes seemed more outgoing and loud, while their dark-haired quiet teammates seemed distant and cold. When Lee first saw Noriko, he wanted nothing more than to pull her out of the cold and icy aura she had (he'd assumed from Sasuke).

"Blue. Lilies. Tea," Noriko answered. "Why do you ask?"

"What about memory?" Lee asked.

"I don't have any good ones," Noriko said, her black eyes glinting with the coldness that Lee hated to see on her face. "Why do you ask?" her eyes flitted up to him with suspicion.

"Because I want to get to know you," Lee said. The book in the library said not to admit your love to a person when you first meet them. That is very difficult!

"Hn," Noriko looked back to the path and saw Sasuke standing, glaring at a man with spandex and a Jounin vest on. Sasuke saw Noriko and a look of relief washed over him as he stood close to her, still sending out glares as harshly as he could at the Jounin.

"It is very youthful! Lee, I see you were successful!" Gai grinned as his teeth reflected the light with a chime.

"Who's this guy?" Sasuke asked to Noriko.

"He's going to give us weights. He's awfully strange and honestly I don't want anything to do with him but since he didn't ask for money and seemed to be just nice, I'd let it slide. He did ask a few strange questions though, like what my favorite color, flower, food, and memory were," Noriko replied.

Sasuke's eyes widened. "Seriously?" Then, his eyes narrowed dangerously.

Noriko nodded, a bit confused. Did Sasuke somehow take offense at the questions? They were simple questions and harmless so Noriko was bewildered.

"Congratulations, Lee!" Gai said. "I will do the preparations while you give them what they are looking for."

Lee nodded as Gai disappeared in a puff of smoke. He turned to the Uchiha and clenched his fist as if to control himself as he looked at Noriko and his strange expression deepened as he led the way to his apartment. Sasuke noticed and glared even harder, making Noriko more confused. Were they trying to have a competition over who could be stranger?

Lee's apartment wasn't far from the ninja tools district. In fact, it was only about thirty seconds of walking, including the steps up to the second floor of the apartment building. Lee finished the steps in a split-second, his body blurring. Sasuke made a sound of annoyance and to compensate for Lee's show, Sasuke had his shoes off faster than Lee did.

In the few minutes the Uchiha had arrived into the Genin's apartment, it had turned into a heated competition. Noriko and Sasuke were led to a room where there were perhaps a hundred weights on the walls, ceiling, and shelves. Sasuke picked the white weights and Noriko the dark blue ones.

"The dark blue one is my favorite weight! I am glad it will be in the care of you, Noriko-san," Lee said. Noriko took a step back, sweatdropping. She smiled awkwardly as his eyes burned again with fire and he frowned deeper in some sort of strange determination.

Then, everything in the room darkened to be pitch black. The windows also seemed to be blocked of letting in any light and Noriko yelped as an arm suddenly grabbed her arm.

"It's just me," Sasuke said.

"Oh…sorry," Noriko said.

When the lights turned back on a minute later, an agonizingly painful minute later, Noriko saw that Lee was on her arm and Sasuke was holding Lee's arm. Both Uchiha jerked their arms back from the eccentric spandex Genin and gave him scathing looks.

"Thanks, Lee, for the weights. Sasuke and I are going to be leaving," Noriko said as she slipped on her shoes and walked out the door as quickly as she could. Lee looked devastated; all the hard work Gai had just gone through of making the preparations for Lee to ask Noriko out and to separate the two Uchiha, seeing how Sasuke was protective over Noriko to some extent, was ruined. Lee cried out in frustration and Gai appeared and sobbed with him as well.

"Do not falter, Lee! You must try and try again before Noriko is lost to someone!" Gai said, clenching his fist.

"Hai, Gai-sensei!" Lee yelled.

Sasuke's chest heaved up and down, his legs and arms feeling like lead. Noriko was in the same position next to him, weights on her wrists and ankles. They had put the weights on for only about 5 pounds, but after practicing their taijutsu and ninjutsu without their Sharingan for five hours until the sun was beginning to set, it felt like 100 pounds. They struggled to sit up and turned their heads to one another.

They both smiled a little.

Their speed would eventually increase to its original speed once their bodies had gotten used to the weights. Then, they would increase it to 10 pounds and start all over again. It was an old-fashioned training method that had quickly lost its glamor after the first few years of its inception because so many shinobi that weren't geniuses or weren't from clans wanted to be strong now and they had no patience to wait for tomorrow.

As a result, it was difficult to find. However, the library, being an untapped ocean of knowledge, had said that weights were a good idea if one wanted to increase and had the time to do so. At first, Sasuke had wrinkled his nose at the idea of it, but Noriko convinced him that speed, even if the shinobi knew no jutsu, could be a deciding factor in the outcome of a mission, or more relevantly, the Chuunin Exams.

So then they met two spandex idiots.

Noriko sighed loudly and glared at her hands, a raw pink color from training and grabbing tree trunks and being grazed by fire rom Sasuke's jutsus.

"Ne, Sasuke. You're a guy so I suppose you'd understand what Lee was getting at. Just what game was he playing at, asking me all those questions, cutting off the lights, grabbing my arm, and all that?" Noriko gave her brother a sideways glance.

Sasuke scowled. "If he does anything like that again, you are to tell me and I'll deal with him. As for your question, I'd say he wants your power or something. He's creepy, to say the least."

Noriko laughed a little at that. Sasuke smirked in response and stood. He held out a hand to help her up and she took it. The two Uchiha stood for a moment, enjoying the silence for a moment before heading towards their apartment on the other side of the village.

As they walked, they noticed, as always, people occasionally looked and pointed at them. Noriko and Sasuke were used to being stared at. Unlike their teammates who were stared with contempt, they were looked upon with awe.

The two turned into a restaurant that sold grilled eel over rice. The scent of grilled eel was intoxicating and it had been over six years since they'd eaten something this expensive. Still, it was good to splurge every once in a while.

A few minutes later, they were given cups of water and they sipped it every so often. Once the eel arrived they ate it ravenously and despite the fact they wanted to order another round, they knew they didn't carry enough pocket money to cover it. Even as it was, they barely managed to cover the bill.

Later that night, Noriko and Sasuke didn't get nightmares. It was only when they saw Itachi's reflection in the mirror did they realize that. With the sudden panic gone, they set out in the early hours of the morning to train with their new weights.