Chapter Three - "All's Well that Ends Well"

This'll probably be the last extremely quick update, but I'll still try to update at a reasonable pace. Rise of a Kitsune will also see an update soon.

It seems in the last little bit a bunch of new characters have been added to the FF Naruto Characters database, so now I can properly put Fū in as the second character.

I'd appreciate it if people reviewed. I realize most stories don't start to get reviews until a few chapters have passed unless they're crack one-shots or two-shots, but it's the reviews in the early going that help keep the author motivated! Particularly since I'm going at this fairly quickly, and need to keep it up. That, or me money, though I highly doubt anyone would actually do that :P

Just an FYI for this chapter, Naruto hates Sakura, and doesn't cover this up with the pretense of loving Sakura. He hates her, both internally and externally.

During the time that Mizuki had confronted Naruto and Iruka and injured Iruka before getting a beatdown by Naruto, Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Sandaime Hokage, had been up in his office, recovering from a dose of Naruto's inventive Oiroke no Jutsu, after having sent out an ANBU squad to retrieve all three participants in the battle (they had hung back after showing up, trying to decipher the situation there, before sending Naruto and Iruka to the Hokage's office). It's rather fortunate, mused the Sandaime, that they weren't around to hear Mizuki's declaration of Naruto being the son of Yondaime.

That was something that bore some serious thinking about. He could see Orochimaru having figured out that Naruto was the Yondaime's son. That snake was devious, and had been a genius before he went wrong. What worried him was the treacherous Sannin telling a simple subordinate of his, a spy of little talent, about this. What was he trying to do, letting that fact leak like that?

A wave of dread washed over the Sandaime, as he staggered over, standing up only because his hand was on his desk. "Kuso!" He muttered to himself. Orochimaru was probably trying to cause unrest in Konoha by spreading it around as a rumour. Very few thought to connect the Yondaime and Naruto, but if somebody was told beforehead of their relation, if they took a second look it would begin to make sense to them. If enough people began to believe, the rumours would spread, and it could cause a civil war. And then the rumours would spread wide enough that a spy might catch wind of it and send news off to Iwa, who would send off an assortment of assassins to kill the son of the Kiiroi Senkō.

But the greatest problem of all was Naruto. Even the suppression seal and the hypersensitivity seal that Naruto bore on the back of his head couldn't guarantee his loyalty to Konoha, and so the Sandaime had wished to present the fact of Naruto's tenant to him in a controlled setting, where he could use the hypersensitivity seal again. That Naruto now knew who his father was only made it worse, as he would likely see it as the village betraying him, and his icon, the Yondaime, also having cursed him to a wretched existence, doubly so being his father.

He let out a sigh. When the ANBU squad got here with Iruka and Naruto, he would have to apply memory seals to all of them, then have Mizuki put in the highest-security cell, accessible by only him and Ibiki, head of T&I, so he couldn't tell anyone else about Naruto's heritage.

Naruto woke up, but didn't move or change his breathing or the beat of his heart, trying to get a grasp of his surroundings before he feigned wakeness. Concentrating on the feel and shape of the material of his bed, he realized that it was a couch he was sleeping on. To his left, there were two chakra signatures - one was that of Iruka, and the other was of the Hokage. Now convinced that he was in the Hokage's office, he tried to remember how he came to be in the Hokage's office. He couldn't. Therefore, Naruto concluded, his and Mizuki's plan must have succeeded, and the Hokage had placed a memory seal on him to 'forget' the knowledge of the Yondaime being his father. Then, he read his memories to see how far back he was sealed. He was about midway through learning the Kage Bunshin no Jutsu, and had just managed to make two clones. At that time, he hadn't felt the tingle on the back of his neck, so he would be able to replicate it here without suspicion.

Naruto let out a yawn, and began to get up, stretching his body. Rubbing the whiskers on his cheek, he turned around, and expressed surprise at seeing where he was. "W-wha-? Hokage-jiji, Iruka-sensei, what's going on?"

Iruka just looked forlorn, sitting in a chair oppposite Naruto. The old man in question smiled, letting out a puff of smoke from his favourite pipe. "Well, for one Naruto-kun, I have to ask you some questions." As Naruto nodded his ok blanky, Sarutobi started off, "First of all, did Mizuki ask you to steal the Forbidden Scroll?"

Naruto could remember that far back, so he jumped up out of the couch. "Yeah, Mizuki-sensei said that if I managed to get the Forbidden Scroll and learn a jutsu that I could pass the make-up exam! Here, lemme show you!" At that, Naruto put his hands together in a cross shape, and yelled out, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" In a poof of smoke, five solid clones appeared in the room.

Sarutobi let out another puff of smoke. Good, at least he wouldn't have to help Naruto for the next hour in finishing up the technique. The memory seal hadn't gone so far back that it totally eliminated the memory of how to do it from his mind. "Naruto," the aged leader began to warn the failed graduate, "Mizuki was a traitor." That froze Naruto in his tracks. "He was planning to get you to steal the Forbidden Scroll of Seals for him, and then frame you for the act."

"W-what happened, then?" Naruto asked. "I can't seem to remember anything after I learned the Kage Bunshin."

Sarutobi already had an answer made up for that. "Iruka found you before Mizuki got to you, but the both of you were knocked out. I believe Mizuki hit the two of you in the head hard enough to make you forget the last hour or so before the incident. Iruka doesn't remember much after Mizuki had intercepted him at his apartment and told him you had stolen the Scroll."

Naruto was beginning to look mortified. "B-but then does that mean I don't graduate?" His shoulders sagging, and his face taking on a look of dejection, he almost looked, amusingly enough, like a wounded fox kit.

Sarutobi shook his head. "No, no, Mizuki was your superior, and I can't fault you for obeying orders. Since you learned an advanced bunshin technique, I'm graduating anyways." Here, he opened a drawer in his desk, took out a brand new hitai-ate (A/N: Sarutobi put Iruka's hitai-ate back in Iruka's forehead, since that whole passing down of the forehead protector 'never happened'), and tossed it into Naruto's hands.

"Alright!" Naruto cheered, dancing around awkwardly as he put on his hitai-ate. "I'm a ninja now, I'm a ninja, I'm a ninja, I'm a-"

"Naruto!" Sarutobi shouted, cutting off his unofficial grandson. "Now that you're a genin, I have something to tell you." Once he saw that he had caught Naruto's full attention, he continued on, "Tell me, what do you know of the Kyuubi no Kitsune?" From behind him, there came a gasp from Iruka.

"Uh, Iruka-sensei said in class that the Yondaime killed the Kyuubi with a super awesome ninja technique, at the cost of his own life!" was the response.

"A lie." Sarutobi said bluntly. "You can't kill a bijuu, so he had to seal it away."

"You mean like into a scroll, or something?" Naruto asked. "Is that why they claim the Yondaime killed it, so that someone doesn't know there's a scroll with a lot of power in it to steal?"

Sarutobi blinked. Naruto was incredibly insightful at times, yet still so far away from the truth. "Not quite, Naruto-kun. Maybe so with a lower class bijuu, but anything above that has to be sealed into a child. A newborn one, at that."

A look of horror began to dawn on Naruto's face. "How new is new, exactly?"

That was an odd question. Sarutobi saw that Naruto was coming on the uptake, but how new did he want it to be. Hmmm, Sarutobi thought, might be in denial. "Any child born within three days of the sealing. After that, their chakra coils begin to solidify too much. A bijuu can't be sealed in them after that, because by then their coils are too used to normal chakra. After that, a bijuu's chakra will be too poisonous, but before that their coils will adapt to containing the bijuu's chakra."

Silence permeated through the room, with Naruto's head down facing the ground until Naruto quietly spoke up, "Then I'm the one the Kyuubi no Kitsune?" A nod from both Sarutobi and Iruka confirmed it. "That's what that seal on my stomach is for, containing the Kyuubi?" Another nod from Sarutobi alone this time. "What benefits do I get from having the fox sealed in my stomach?"

"Well," the Sandaime said, leaning back in his chair, "We're not quite sure, Konoha has never had a jinchuuriki before - that's the term we use for demon vessels, by the way - but what we do know is that you will have a near infinite amount of stamina and more chakra than basically anyone else."

Naruto began to tremble in slight anger. "Jiji..." he trailed off, "Are you saying that the reason I couldn't do the Bunshin was because I had too much chakra to control the jutsu in the first place?"

Sarutobi stopped, cowed. Kuso! I was hoping this wouldn't come up! "Yes, most likely. That's why you were able to do the Kage Bunshin so easily, and learn it in only a few hours - the technique requires a lot of chakra to pull off. Most jonin take days to learn it because of how easily they tire out in the learning process, and can only use a few at a time, but because of your massive reserves, you can put that technique to a far greater use." Still, it wouldn't do to tell him the side-effect of the jutsu. If he does, then he might become too powerful too fast to continue controlling. "I'm sorry, Naruto, it just never occurred to me that you wouldn't be able to control that amount of chakra for a regular Bunshin technique. I'm beginning to have problems remembering things in my old age, and I simply have too much work to do sometimes to think about an academy student's problems at his basic jutsu techniques."

"That's alright jiji, I forgive you," Naruto said, flashing the Sandaime a grin, before settling on a grim look. "But then...who were my parents?"

The wizened leader of Konoha thought this question might come up again, despite him telling Naruto that nobody knew who his parents were many times when he was younger. "I'm afraid, Naruto, that nobody has an idea of who your parents we-"

He was cut off by a loud cry of "BULLSHIT!" from Naruto, who had raised his face. Sarutobi was caught off guard by the tears dripping from his eyes, and the distraught look in his eyes. "I read the history books on the Kyuubi attack. That monster's killing intent induced several premature births, and you just said that anyone born up to two days before October 10th would have worked! The Yondaime had plenty of newborns who had both parents still living that he could have used. So why, why," Here Naruto choked in the middle of his sentence, eyes bloodshot, nose getting clogged up, while he mentally pat himself on the back for his grade-A acting, "Why did he choose me, an orphan without a heritage? W-was I expendable? Was that why he cho-"

This time Naruto was cut off, as Sarutobi let out a bellow. "ABSOLUTELY NOT!" the Sandaime said, losing his patience for the first time in several years, smacking the wood of his desk with finality. This wasn't going as planned. Naruto was losing faith in the Yondaime. Calming down, Sarutobi began to present his grandfatherly image. "I have no idea why Minato chose you, but he must have had a reason. He wanted for you to be seen as a hero, but unfortunately, the village didn't see it that way." When Naruto looked like he was beginning to protest, Hiruzen cut him off again. "When that occurred, I made an S-Class law stating that nobody could tell anyone who didn't already know about the true result of Minato's battle with the fox, except for me, and you when you came to learn of the knowledge. That way, the younger generation wouldn't grow up knowing of your burden. You have admittedly faced an uphill battle, but you have made friends amongst your classmates, have you not?"

Naruto's tears had begun to trickle up, but he still was sniffing a bit. "Yeah, I guess...Shika and Choji, Kiba and Akamaru, and I guess Ino and Shino to an extent..."

Here, Iruka finally spoke up. "I'm sorry, Naruto." When Naruto looked over at Iruka, he continued. "I have to admit, when you first came into my class, I hated you. The Kyuubi killed my parents." When he saw Naruto begin to pale, he hastily added, "But over the years, I began to see you for you. You're not the fox. You are truly Uzumaki Naruto." Giving him a smile, Iruka got out of his chair, giving a slight wince at the pain in his back from an injury he couldn't even remember getting, and walked over to Naruto. As he spoke, he pat Naruto's shoulder with one hand and gave the blonde a light, affectionate noogie with the other, "Team assignments are in one week. Be there."

Sarutobi began to give a genuine smile, though the reason for it wasn't as he would have Naruto believe. Hopefully Iruka's display of affection would be able to get rid of Naruto's delusions. "You are dismissed, both of you. But, Naruto," he said, watching Naruto's head swing around again, "If you need to talk to me again, my door is open almost anytime."

"Yes, Hokage-jiji," Naruto said, nodding his head several times. "I know." I know that you've put several seals on me over the years, tried to manipulate me for your own purposes, and hide several secrets behind your so-called 'Will of Fire' that would put Orochimaru's experiments to shame. He left shortly after that with Iruka, who offered to buy him some ramen at Ichiraku's Ramen Stand.

Naruto walked into his underground chamber, having had several bowls of ramen to calm himself down from his display in Sarutobi's office and the nagging fear of having his shadowy dealings being found out. In the central lounge area there sat Mizuki, who was sweating slightly. He didn't have to ask to figure out why - Mizuki was meditating and controlling his clone from afar. Even if your perception of pain from controlling a pain was only one tenth of what it would be in person, some of the interrogation methods really could hurt, such as jamming a toothpick up one's fingernails. He had to hand it to Mizuki for sacrificing his life on the outside world - it had been the most open move that Konoha's Akatsuki had made in it's decade of existence, and perhaps its most pivotal, and Mizuki would pay a high price for it. The least he could do was give Mizuki refuge, and his place had plenty of rooms for one to make a bedroom out of it.

It was here, safe from any attempts at scrying, that he finally took out a mirror, and looked around his body. Eventually, he found a slight black dot on the side of his head that he knew hadn't been there before. A casual observer would have glimpsed past it, but Naruto knew his body well - it was his only defense against seals of a microscopic size, something he would never allow to be put on his body willingly again unless he had to. Quickly, he performed the seal for a Kage Bunshin. The clone grabbed a magnifying glass, and put it up to the seal. After a few minutes of analyzing it, the clone looked up. "It looks like a standard memory seal, oyabun. What should I do?"

"Deactivate it, and redraw a dummy seal over it," Naruto said, gritting his teeth for the oncoming pain as the clone took out a sealing kit. The first was a special solvent used to dissolve the sealing ink that most fuuinjutsu users used when they condensed the application of a seal into handseals. The Five Elements Seal was one example of a seal - it was often used in training exercises for chakra control, but required a lot of work to draw the seal over and over again to apply to a trainee. Over time, several geniuses in justu theory managed to come up with a way to take the mechanics of a seal and translate it into hand seals, and the Five Elements Seal was one of the first to go, but anything complex just wouldn't work.

The clone dissolved a couple of lines, causing Naruto to have a brief spasm as the seal forcibly deactivated, then took some more black ink and drew over the lines that had just been erased. Naruto thanked the clone out of habit (even if it was himself), dismissed it, and then sat down to meditate. The memory seal had cut off two hours of memories, roughly from about halfway through his Kage Bunshin training up to when he first got into the Hokage's office. Even though they were restored, he still had to actually remember them to remember what had happened. So, Mizuki had pulled it off without a hitch. That was good. The Sandaime would be positively frightened that a spy knew Naruto was the son of the Yondaime, and would begin to tighten up security soon, especially once Mizuki 'leaked' news of the invasion to come.

Naruto finally got up, and wandered towards a wooden door. Although nothing distinguished it from any of the other doors in the hallway he was currently in, it was what was behind it that was important. Giving a slow knock on the door, he walked in, only to be ambushed by a cry of "Tou-san!" before something jumped up into his arms and hugged his chest. Naruto let a genuine warm smile adorn his face, the sparkle even making its way into his sea-blue eyes, as he glanced at his adoptive son, Saisei, who was a red-headed boy that looked to be about five. Three physical oddities stuck out that distinguished him from being a human though - two red fox ears atop his head, a single fox tail swinging from the bottom of his back, and slit pupils with red iris.

There was a difference between the seal that Namikaze Minato used to seal the Kyuubi no Kitsune away, and the seals that every other bijuu was being contained in. That was that the Yondaime Hokage had called upon the Shinigami, and offered up his soul to the Death God to contain the Kyuubi. Though the Kyuubi could still break free, it would be a lot more difficult for it to do so.

When he learned of the chakra-draining seal that Yahiko had come up with, the Kyuubi knew that his time was at an end - Minato's seal was still as strong as ever, and he highly doubted he could break it within the five-year time frame it would take for Naruto to fully drain his yokai, particularly when he was losing a tail at a pace of once every three months and would lose bijuu status within three years of the initial application. Knowing that, the Kyuubi made a special deal with Naruto - in exchange for the kitsune lord imparting as much wisdom and knowledge as he could unto Naruto, the son of Yondaime would allow him enough yokai to form a physical body and stay in ningenkai.

What the Kyuubi didn't tell Naruto until about six months before he finished absorbing his yokai was what would happen to him because of the Shinigami's seal. Unlike the other eight bijuu, who would only experience a bit of pain when their souls were ripped apart from their vessels, Kyuubi would have to forfeit his memories. Essentially, he would be forcibly reborn, and reborn he was. His last condition was that Naruto would adopt the reborn kitsune.

Naruto had dubbed him Saisei, who had recently turned two. There were a few things that freaked him out at first. While he had gotten Saisei fixed on a healthy diet, the kitsune also needed to feed on chakra, something which all young demons needed to consume from their mother until they were old enough to gather it on their own. Naruto had gotten pass that by sustaining Saisei's hoshi no tama, pumping it full of his chakra once a month. The other was his stage of growth - Saisei had quickly grown from a newborn to the equivalent of a human four-year-old within eight months, but had slowed down after that. Consulting with the then-wandering Roshi, Naruto learned that the quick growth was a defensive maneuver against predators in Makai, but after that, slow growth would occur from there on in. It wouldn't be for at least another few years that Saisei could defend himself when his chakra reserves grew enough to use kitsune bi, and another twenty years before he would be able to drift away from his tou-san's loving side.

Naruto could honestly say that he loved Saisei as a son. His presence was about the only thing that kept him going on during some of the dark days in Konoha, playing the fool, with nearly the entire village against him. He held his son for awhile longer there, content with the purring sound that a kitsune could give off when content, before putting him to bed.

"Naruto, what the hell are you doing here? Only those who graduated last week are supposed to be here."

That question came from Nara Shikamaru. Normally, he would've found it too troublesome to even ask a question like that, but Naruto's question during class yesterday had had him interested, particularly from one with a reputation for being the dead last in class, and he actually went to look through the records after his mom had finished planting kisses on his forehead for graduating. Naruto was right - never once did the graduation exam use the same ninjutsu two years in a row for the last thirty years, and yet the Bunshin no Jutsu was repeated last year, and this year made it the third in a row. The only thing that could get Shikamaru really interested was something that involved thinking, such as strategy games, puzzles, or mysteries, and this was definitely something that belonged to the latter two categories.

Naruto thankfully had already had something to cover up for that question, a half-truth given to him by the Sandaime, which he knew would have come from someone eventually. "Eh, after I failed last week, Iruka took me aside and found that I had an unnatural amount of chakra, even more than Sasuke, despite my lack of any notable heritage that could have given me this chakra. He determined that I simply lacked the chakra control to use it, and because they cut out the chakra control exercises from the curriculum before we ever saw them, and I have no guardian who could teach me them, I simply wasn't cut out for being able to use it. So, I got a scroll that shows how to do a more chakra-intensive Bunshin technique that requires less control, and managed to get it done before the week, which worked as a make-up test."

Shikamaru blinked. He had always assumed the reason Naruto couldn't do the Bunshin was because he had too little chakra. There wasn't anything in Naruto's actual performance that would indicate he had too little or too much, but considering they were only twelve, he had assumed it was too little. Now that he thought about it, that was flawed thinking - the amount of chakra a shinobi had was usually proportional to the amount of stamina they had, and Naruto had oodles of the latter, as he often outlasted the rest of the class when they went outdoors for exercise, barely panting after an amount of running that left most of the kunoichi-in-training and some of the boys on the ground.

It was getting more troublesome by the moment, but bore thinking about. It seemed almost as if there was a conspiracy of sorts against Uzumaki Naruto. What could his classmate have done that would be so troublesome? Maybe he would ask his dad later tonight, if he could remember to do so. For now, though, he had just latched onto a stray thought, remembering something else he had seen while reading through the archives. "Hey, Naruto, did you graduate as the dead last then?"

Naruto frowned, knowing exactly where Shikamaru was going with this. "Yeah, unfortunately. While I would've gotten extra points for being able to use an advanced version of the Bunshin, because I graduated through a make-up test I was automatically put at the bottom of the class. Why?"

Shikamaru grinned, not knowing that his class-mate and part-friend already knew what he was going to say, but would put on a show for the sake of keeping up pretense anyways. "Troublesome." Oh Kami, how he loved using that word, except for around his mom, who would often hit him with a frying pan as if it was a four-letter euphemism around her household. "Did you know that historically the dead-last is put with the rookie of the year and kunoichi of the year?"

Naruto stood there, detached for a few seconds, as if puzzling out just who the rookie of the year and kunoichi would be. When he figured enough time had passed, his eyes widened and jaw dropped, as he clutched his head in between his hands, and yelled out "NOOOOOOO!", scaring a few students who were close by.

For his part, Shikamaru got a kick out of it, but he had seen for the briefest of moments a flicker in Naruto's eyes, of anger, before he had gotten the shocked look. So Naruto already knew who he was most likely to be paired up with. Something didn't add up. Naruto suddenly asked an intelligent question in class yesterday, and had more chakra than most people did. Was he hiding some of his abilities like Shikamaru himself did along with Shino? Shikamaru could accept that, but still, why would he have failed? Couldn't he have independently figured out he needed better chakra control and gotten a book from the library on exercises? This was getting too troublesome, and so he laid down, head in between his hands, and dozed off again.

Naruto took a seat besides Shikamaru, who would be flanked later by Choji on the other side when the Akimichi showed up. Looking around, he noticed out of the corner of the eye a lavender-eyed Hyuuga in the back let out a small eep when he caught her looking at him, and sink down into her chair. He noticed the hitai-ate around her neck, and barely restrained a growl.

Although he publicly despised Sakura, deep down, he absolutely hated Hyuuga Hinata. She was as meek as they came. He had heard that she was kidnapped when she was young, but really now, she had only just turned three at the time! Most children don't gain much cognitive sense until they turn four, though he had been an exception at three and a half (most likely the Kyuubi's yokai overpowered the suppression seal in early development in some aspects), so she probably didn't remember it at all. Some might think it harsh judgement of his, but even if she had brief flickers from it, all she would remember is being taken from the security of her room out into the cold, being shoved into a bag, and some yelling as her father killed her kidnapper. That was more tame than some of his early nightmares. Never mind that he had been kidnapped when he was five! (Yes, he found it a boon when he finally found out why, but for those first few hours when nobody eplained why he was chilled to the bone)

From the history he had gathered from the branch member Nagato had recruited in his early days, Hinata's father, Hyuuga Hiashi, was a tough-love father, training her harshly, constantly reprimanding her. That he was acceptable of, he couldn't really imagine somebody who was such a major part of your world constantly degrading you (though he knew what it was like to be betrayed by someone who was your whole world), but it was her sibling relationship with her younger sister Hanabi that had his blood boiling. From what the branch member theorized, Hinata's mother, who had died shortly after giving birth to Hanabi, asked Hinata to take care of Hanabi.

Apparently, that meant to be hesitant and weak when fighting against her sister in Jyuken duels, possibly with the intended end result of Hanabi being designated the clan heiress and not receiving the curse seal. Could Hinata not see that she was causing her sister to become overconfident and arrogant? Taking care of somebody meant that sometimes you had to cut them down to make them become stronger, just like he had learned with Saisei. Was Hinata trying to set her sister up to go out on a mission and die, thinking that because she could always beat her older sister up that she was invincible?

Then, Hinata had apparently realized that she was too weak, but instead of trying to find the will within herself to get stronger, she began stalking him. From what he could deduce, Naruto believed that Hinata had seen him when he was young, hitting a tree over and over, doing laps, some sort of physical training, and later on, saw a clone of his try to do a Bunshin no Jutsu and fail when he needed to pretend that he was training hard to be able to do the Bunshin. Pathetic. Instead of trying to get strong on her own, she was trying to leech off of him. What made it even worse that with her Byakugan, she should have been able to realize he was using too much chakra and needed more control, but she wouldn't even overcome her fear to try approaching him. Maybe she deliberately didn't want him to overcome that stumbling block? Certainly, if this were an alternate universe where he actually was having trouble with the Bunshin, as soon as he managed to do it successfully he would have been able to turn his attention to other endeavours, and become stronger at a rapid pace that would have left her even further behind in his dust.

Still, it ticked him off with her obsession over him, and how she followed him around, to the point that some days he couldn't even get in a proper training when he couldn't ditch her with a clone. He had received word from one of the chunins who gophered in the Hokage's office that Yuuhi Kurenai had struggled to get him put on a team with Hinata under herself, hoping to satisfy the obsession her spiritual daughter had with Naruto. That was the only thing he was glad for with the current team set-up - that he wasn't with Hinata.

But it was how she wore her hitai-ate that absolutely infuriated Naruto. Hinata's reputation said that she was fairly compassionate, if shy, and that she wanted to abolish the Caged Bird Seal that separated the Branch Family of the Hyuuga Clan from the Main Family when she became the head (a position that was quickly leaving her grasp). Yet, she showed up wearing the hitai-ate around her neck, as if taunting all the Branch Family shinobi who wore the hitai-ate around their foreheads in the traditional manner to cover up the hideous seal. It was supposed to be a tradition amongst the main family to wear their hitai-ate while on active duty around the neck, yet she wouldn't even start standing up against a minor tradition while she wanted to abolish a major one? He was beginning to wonder if she was just blowing hot air about wanting to abolish the Caged Bird Seal so that her estranged cousin wouldn't treat her with such hostility, but even that didn't work.

Naruto sighed, and began to let his mind drift away from his body, into a frame of mind between sleep and awake - he could observe his surroundings, able to respond at an instant to any threat, but instead lost himself in his thoughts. He didn't particularly wish to watch half a dozen kunoichi throw themselves at Uchiha Sasuke. Despite that he had rejected them every day of every week for the last three years, they still thought that he would give them a chance today when they professed their 'eternal undying love'. He gave a snort at that thought when it came up. He knew what love was - it was what him and Fū shared, and the absense they felt in between meetings truly did make their hearts stronger.

He came back down to Earth when Iruka came into the room, obviously distraught over his friend's betrayal from the night before, but with his memories erased of the actual incident, he wasn't in quite as much of a shock as he might have still been. Iruka let out a cough to shut the room up. Normally, it would take him a while to get everyone to be quiet, along with a special technique that enlarged his head and heightened his voice that many affectionally dubbed the 'Demon's Head Technique', but today was team assignments. Everyone wanted to know who was going to be on their team with them (with all the girls rooting for Sasuke except for Hinata, who wanted her Naruto-kun). Naruto nudged Shikamaru with his elbow to wake up the lazy genius for the team rosters, before leaning forward on his desk. Even if he was bound to hate the team he was going to be put on, he could still derive some entertainment from all the sobbing girls who didn't get their Sasuke-kun on their team.

The first six teams went by fairly quickly. When Iruka got to Team 7, he suddenly froze up, a look of dread plastered onto his face. Watering his throat with saliva, he started to speak, "Team 7...Uchiha Sasuke..." Here, three of the four remaining kunoichi who had yet to be called (Hinata being the odd one out, with her still holding hope because neither her or Naruto had yet been called) held their breath, hoping against hope that their deepest desire would come true, "Haruno Sakura..." those who thought fast enough plugged their ears with their fingers as Sakura screeched out in glee, and Naruto swore that he saw a crack form in the window next to him, while all the other kunoichi began screaming.

Iruka was also prepared, but he quickly lost his patience with the kunoichi's bickering, and activated his Demon Head's Technique, and yelled at the kunoichi, "SHUT THE HELL UP!" Once he had been sure that he had cowed all the kunoichi, he picked up his clipboard again with the team lists, and read out, "...and finally, Uzumaki Naruto."

"Iruka-sensei!" Sakura screeched out again. Looking around, she saw Naruto sitting two rows up with Shikamaru and Choji, then turned around and shook her fist at the instructor. "Why does that Naruto-baka have to be on our team with me and Sasuke-kun! He didn't even graduate!"

While the exchange between the pink-haired girl and the chunin went on, Naruto mumbled to Shikamaru, "This is one of those traditions I really wish didn't pan out. They're putting a hate-possessed avenger together with a kunoichi whose singlemindedly obsessed with the avenger and only got that far based on her brain alone, along with somebody who hates both of them and is hated by both of the first two in return? With my luck, I'll get a sensei who lacks punctuality and won't give a crap at all about his genin team but will be forced to pass us anyways in the secondary test because the Uchiha is on the team."

"Troublesome," Shikamaru agreed, while taking note of how Naruto had mentioned a secondary test. He had seen references to those while looking through the records. It seemed Naruto was smarter than he had given him credit for.

Meanwhile, Naruto might not be a psychic, but he was able to get a general idea of people's emotions on their body language. Hinata was reacting so strongly that he could tell she was distraught, even with his back to her. Good. A weak heiress meant a weakened Hyuuga clan, which meant a weaker Konoha. A minor thing, but a bunch of minor things can add up. Now if only Sakura could just shut up already so Iruka could continue announcing the teams.

You might note that a lot of the dialogue tends to be a bit different than what you might remember. There's a reason for this - I remember roughly what the characters say in canon, such as Shikamaru saying that only graduates are allowed in the classroom, but I write down the dialogue first before going to see what exactly they said in the manga. This way, while the lines are similar, they don't give off the feeling of deja vu because they aren't copied straight from the manga (as far too many fics are wont to do).

Hinata. Some of you might drop out of the story right there, but I think that her character bears a legitimate look at. In the Chunin exam preliminaries, she depends way too much on Naruto. Naruto's a bit stupid there too, cheering her to go on until the end, but really now, your body has been almost completely shut down, and you egg your opponent on just because your crush is cheering you on? Really? Also, it's implied that Naruto and Hinata basically never talked to each other before their graduation, and Naruto only has talked to her I believe twice after that (before the chunin exam finals, and right after he comes back from his three-year training trip). Yet she still claims she loves him. Why? Because she watched him from afar for so long? She doesn't actually KNOW him at all beyond what she's observed of him. It's my belief that it's more of an obsession than love.

That, and she fucking stole Naruto's nindo. I don't care whether Naruto doesn't really show any reaction there, but even in canon, away from all the 'oh he's been beaten up and tortured his whole life and nobody likes him blah blah blah' fannon crap, he's been an orphan his whole life, one who doesn't know who his parents were and who was shunned and only learned why when he graduated. He doesn't exactly have much to call his besides his apartment, and she stole his nindo, which was practically his only higher possession. I might be a bit heavy-handed here with how Naruto portrays Hinata (in reality I only dislike her mildly, part of that coming from how many damn times she gets paired with Naruto), but a person like Hinata is somebody this Naruto would hate with a passion.

Also, I'm not too sure just when the Cloud kidnapping occurred, but it definitely ain't like how some fanon authors want it to be when she's six or seven and gets rescued by Naruto and oh suddenly NaruHina. No, when she turns three Neji gets the Caged Bird Seal put on, and the kidnapping occurs shortly thereafter, which is why I have that she barely turned three here.

Saisei won't play too much of an actual role. He's mainly there to anchor Naruto's humanity, and a bit of fluff. I needed something to bumrush my way through having a seal enforced by the Shinigami, so rebirth instead of simply being exorcised worked.

I apologize if a few scenes seem a bit disjointed at times. I tend not to write chapters from beginning to end - instead, I usually have an idea of the scenes that I'll be writing at the beginning of the chapter, and bounce back and forth between scenes, write out a scene partially before going on to another one, complete one there, work on another here, and so forth. For example, in this chapter, I completed Naruto's talk with Shikamaru immediately, then got through part of Hinata's rant, left that for later, wrote the part with Iruka assigning teams, then wrote Naruto's introspective with Mizuki, getting rid of his seal, then completed the Hinata rant, then worked on and completed the scene with Saisei, and then did the two scenes with Hiruzen.

Next chapter: Team meeting, and bell tests. Not sure if I'll cover the whole bell test next chapter. If I rush out a chapter within the next days, probably not, but if I begin to actually start taking time with these chapters, likely the whole thing will be included.