Sadly, I still don't own Naruto. I'm working on it, though. (I jest, of course.)

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After nine long months, her mother went into labour and was taken away, to a 'safer location', a doctor explained to her. She wasn't sure what to think of that, and was automatically suspicious, because she'd always thought her home was very safe. I mean, they had guards and alarms and locks and everything. She was suddenly determined to find out where exactly they were taking her mother. She snooped around, and heard something about a 'ritual'. That was the word people kept on using, and she wasn't sure what it meant. She went to ask her uncle, but he only looked stunned for a moment and then scolded her for eavesdropping.

The next day, her uncle came back home with such a blank, cold, emotionless expression on his face. This was extremely unusual, since he was always so cheerful.

"Hey!" She called out to him, "hey, where's my new little sister?"

He turned to face her, still with the blank look.

"Or brother," she added quickly, "I don't really care that much which. But where is it? I mean, she. Or, no, uh, wait, he. Or…"

Before she could continue her bumbling rant, he walked away from her into his room without answering her question.

The princess had always been a curious child. She couldn't just leave this be! Besides, she hated it when people didn't answer legitimate questions.

She scowled, and went to follow him into his bedroom. Just before she opened the door, though, she swore heard muffled sobs.

What, exactly, was going on here?

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Apparently, she later discovered, the 'ritual' what-cha-ma-call-it thing was a success, and now her baby brother (Yes, it was another boy, she finally knew. Oh well.) was complete. What a weird wording, she thought. How could somebody be 'complete'? Now, she didn't exactly pride herself on her amazing grammatical skills (she was, after all, still only three.) (And a half!) but she knew that calling a baby complete sounded odd. However, she had much more important and much less school-ish things to think about.

Like why her new baby brother was staying with their uncle, and particularly why he didn't seem all too happy about it.

Like why while the new addition to the family was with him, she and the boring, drooly lump of her other brother were to live with the King.

Like why people were so insistent that she live with her father instead of her uncle.

Somewhere early on in this train of thought it had occurred to her that this implied she and her newest brother were not going to be seeing so much of each other.

The princess, needless to say, wasn't so thrilled about this information.

The absolute worst part of the whole situation was the people spreading lies. They kept on saying her mother was dead.

That's impossible, she thought sullenly to herself, I saw mommy not even two days ago!

Now she understood why no one else had been excited. Since her youngest brother's birth, there had been no sign of her mother, she hadn't even met the baby, she'd hardly spoken to her uncle, and her father was 'too busy for visitors right now', even his own family.

She was beginning to think maybe she had been wrong about the whole new-little-brother-thing after all.

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I'm sorry to admit that I think almost the whole story is going to have annoyingly short chapters. I hope no one minds.

Comments are always appreciated.