Ninja Doorman

Chapter 5

"Did you hear me, Gaki?" Anko repeated with her hands on her hips. I swallowed again as I slowly started to back away. Fear was running through me. I didn't know why. Anko was a good person, and I have to admit she was one of my favorite characters in the anime. But why was I like this? I was afraid… somehow. As I inched back, Anko's face changed from anger to realization. I started to let out small hiccups as water formed in my eyes. "Hey… hey… don't cry…" she held her hands up nonthreateningly while crouching down to my level.

It was clear she didn't know what to do.

"I'm not mad!" she panicked while waving her hands in front of her. I heard her mumble something under her breath about annoying kids and mentally laughed. But even though I found the scene hilarious, the other part of my mind was afraid of getting in trouble. "Are you hungry? Is that it?"

'I'm not a baby!' I yelled in my head.

"Kids…" she mumbled. Her eyes widened in realization followed by her hands going through seals after biting her thumb. Next thing I know a tiny green and brown striped snake slithered out of the woman's sleeve.

The impulse to cry was replaced with a sense of awe. In most circumstances a child would start freaking out if he or she saw something wiggly and possibly slimy. Luckily I was not a normal kid. I used to have a pet bearded dragon in my past life. I love reptiles. They amaze me. This fascination with reptiles started with my love for dragons in mythology and seeing as they did not really exist; lead to me loving the next best thing. But now that I think about it, is there a dragon summoning contract?

She turned her hand palm up so the both tiny and skinny, but also long, snake wrapped around her hand and rested most of its body on the palm.

"This is Banji." She introduced the serpent that started swaying side to side lazily above her hand. When she saw my wide eyes and amazed appearance she smiled. I would guess not a lot of people in Konoha liked snakes much after the skeletons in Orochimaru's closet became public knowledge. So running into someone in the village who also liked the serpents could be rare.

I was just assuming.

"You want to pet him?" she asked me while holding her hand out more.

I lifted my hand fast but froze when a thought hit me. This snake is a summon, and by extension it could be intelligent. And on top of that I was moving way to fast. Depending on if this was a surface or an underground snake, it could have poor eyesight. So something big moving at it at a high velocity was just begging to get bitten.

So I slowed down a bit and touched the top of its head with the tip of my finger.

It ducked down a little as it looked up at my finger before moving back up and nuzzling my hand. I felt its tongue slither out to smell me. The weird but familiar feeling made me giggle a little as I kept rubbing the top of Banji's head.

Don't look at me like that. I'm four! I can get away with giggling.

"That's better." The smirk turned into a smile. "You're from the orphanage, right? You're wearing the colors."

I mentally raised an eyebrow. 'There was a reason all of us wore nothing but brown and blue?' What I happened to have on was a brown shirt and blue shorts… interesting color choices. We received donations every once and a while, but they always got dyed one of the two colors shortly after arriving.

"Y… yes." I stammered and looked at the ground.

"Hmm… Does anyone know you're here?" I froze at that. She must have noticed because I heard her snicker. "Why are you out here all alone?"

"We can't… leave the orphanage." I mumbled aloud. "I wanted to see the village."

"Really?" she asked before her eyes darted in a direction.

Anko made sure not to let me notice, and it would have worked if I was a normal four year old. Was someone watching us? He visited every once in a while, but I never considered that Hiruzen could have some Anbu watching me?

At least I hope it was Hiruzen.

"Are you hungry?" Anko asked me for the second time, snapping me out of my thoughts.

Banji wrapped around my hand, making me giggle a little more as I thought of an answer.

I didn't want to make Anko pay for my food. There was no way I would be able to pay her back until I was old enough to get a job.

But I did not get a choice. My stomach grumbled at the thought of food, making Anko laugh as she got up and placed a hand on me back.

"Let's get some Dango!" she cheered as she pushed me forward.

I kind of figured the situation would be easier if I just went with the flow. As we walked I kept my head down to avoid eye contact as I felt my cheeks warm up. I knew I was older than Anko… at least mentally, but the kid part just didn't understand what to do if a pretty lady was talking to you. Sounds weird, I know. Imagine how I feel.

And as hard as I tried I could not stop myself from acting shyly.

So I looked down at my snake covered hand and pet it with my other one.

"He likes you." I heard Anko claim as said reptile nuzzled my other hand. "He may look long, but he is only a few days old."

That was weird. I thought it was a kind of small garden snake or something.

"How big is he going to grow?" God it felt good to make full sentences.

"Not sure." She confessed. "I know he will get a little wider then my arm, but you never really know how long his kind can get. Right now he is… what, fifteen inches?" I looked up and saw her squinting at my arm before looking ahead. "Yeah. His kind is known to grow quite a few feet. You know he is an adult when a small horn grows on his nose."

"Back already Anko-kyaku-sama? A new record." a man asked when we entered the dango shop.

"Had an accident." She summed up. "I'll have the usual." Anko then looked down to me. "What do you want?"

I squinted at the board. The orphanage had a decent educational system, but that would start when someone became five in the orphanage. I was smart for my age and can learn quickly. However that did not mean I could read well. And even if I could read the board, I never ate dango before.

"I… don't know…" I mumbled.

"There is Chadango, Kuri, Bocchan..." Anko named while looking at me.

"What do those taste like?"

"W… wha…" Anko looked like someone had just slapped her with a fish. We just looked at each other, me in confusion, and her with a bewildered expression that slowly changed into a look of horror and outrage. "You… you never had dango before?!" her raised voice caused everyone in the establishment to turn to us, making me feel self-conscious and fidget under the gazes as I slowly shook my head. Even Banji stiffened. "I, Mitarashi Anko will not stand such injustice!" declared Anko as she lifted a shaking fist into the air that then was used to point at the man behind the counter. "Give me a dozen Hanami dango sticks!"

A few minutes after Anko's outburst we were sitting on the bench outside of the shop with a plate with dango stacked on top between us. Anko was staring at me intently with a stick of dango in her hand she was pointing maybe two inches away from my face.

"Open." She firmly commanded with her eyes unblinking.

My eyes widened as a blush formed on my cheeks. I stared between the dango and the shinobi's eyes. If you had ever thought Anko was most frightening in combat, you were wrong. I swear the snake mistress in front of me couldn't have been anymore scarier if the dango were replaced with a chainsaw.

So I had no choice but to take my earlier advice and just go with the flow. I opened my mouth and not even a second later the first dango ball was inserted.

"Chew." was Anko's next order.

And I chewed.

Anko let go of the stick when she was sure I wouldn't drop it and picked up one of her own. But the whole time she never took her eyes off me.

I grabbed the other end of the skewer and continued to chew the gooey and syrupy pink ball as my face lit up.

Ever since that event the staff of the orphanage called the great sauce incident, everything I ate tasted even blander then before. The pink dango was a little plain, but the texture was new.

I swallowed and looked down at our plate and noticed the small bowl filled with a brown syrupy substance. I'm just guessing it is syrup since I can smell a sweet scent from it.

So I used my finger to slide the white dango to the end of the stick and completely submerged it, almost making the bowl overflow. When I lifted it out I waited for it to stop dripping before putting it in my mouth.

And what I tasted was heaven.

Anko snickered and leaned back against the wall behind us as she stretched out her legs. She had a smug smile on her face as she chewed on her dango.

"So what's your name?" she asked me before stuffing her face again. Using chakra must cost a lot of energy. I can't think of any other way for her not to gain weight from all the dango she eats.

"Hgmmmcreee." I mumbled with a mouthful. She laughed a little and I blushed again. I swallowed.

"What was that?" she asked with an amused smile.

"My name is Hajime." I introduced myself and picked up the next skewer. I took a bite and chewed. After a few seconds I noticed Anko had not reached for another stick. "Anko-san…?"

When I looked at her I noticed her eyes were on me, wide with fear. She had dropped her dango and some beads of sweat started to form on her brow. The hand that had dropped the dango was on her neck, where I knew was the Cursed Seal of Heaven.

"Anko-san… Are you alright?" I asked, worried.

I reached out my hand hesitantly. She looked as if she was frozen in place, so she didn't pull away when I touched her hand.

It took me a few seconds to feel her chakra, and when I did the kanji on my chest started to burn. Not physically, but mentally like an old scar flaring up. The stick in my hand dropped as I bolted out of the seat. I gritted my teeth as my hand clenched the front of my shirt.

Other than the burning sensation on my chest I felt a sense of confusion and fear at the old memories coming up.

The whole time Anko was staring at me, unblinkingly.

I didn't know what this was. My head started to pound, making my other hand grab a handful of my hair. All that I knew was this woman; the woman in front of me was bringing up the pain I tried so hard to repress.

This realization made me come to a conclusion.

I have to get away.

So I turned from a still shocked Anko and ran. I maneuvered through a sea of legs and turned the first corner I saw.

"Hajime!" I heard Anko yell from a distance.

But by that time I was already half way down the street and turning around the next corner. I could feel all six of my chakra cores adding more power in each step, increasing my speed.

They may only be able to produce a quarter of the average amount of chakra a core produced each, but I could already feel myself tiring. I don't think I had that much chakra to begin with.

Already I could feel my legs begin to burn as I ran into a small group of trees. When my foot hit a root I tumbled down the hill into a bush.

Tears were already going down my cheeks before I crashed.

I could feel scratches on my exposed arms and legs. They burned and made me scream and thrash around to untangle myself. It felt like hours, but a managed to free myself and sat on the ground with my knees hugged against my chest.

I was sitting in a space between some bushes and knew it would be awhile before anyone noticed me. There was no reason to come over here.

So I used this new found privacy to cry, to pound my hands into the dirt with both frustration and to lessen the pain I was feeling.

It was when I opened my eyes and looked at my hands that I started to feel the sting.

The sun was an hour away from going down when I ate with Anko. I must have been running for a while since the sky was now dark. The trees blocked any stars and the moon from my field of vision.

I continued to whimper on my side and curled into a ball. For some reason I wanted to be smaller then I already was.

When I felt something slowly slither out of my sleeve I was too tired to see what it was. To tell the truth, I didn't care.

Something small tickled my nose, making me crack open my eyes. I didn't even notice Banji was still on me. He just looked into my eyes as his tongue continued darting out to smell me.

I half-felt the rest of his body wrapping around my hand. Slowly I held the hand close to my chest and felt Banji rest his little head on my temple.

Even though I was cold I started to dose off. But the snapping of a twig pushed away the sleep from my eyes, replacing fatigue with small doses of fear.

I remained frozen as multiple footsteps slowly approached my hiding place, maybe three or four people.

A small branch from the bush I was under was moved to the side, revealing two eyes that looked right at me.

A few seconds went by with us just looking at each other before more of the brush was removed to reveal the eyes belonged to Anko.

She looked down at me with what I guessed was sadness and relief. One of her hands went out to her left, as if signaling someone to wait before slowly reaching for me.

I gave no resistance as her hands went under my arms and lifted me up and drawn in close to Anko as she rested on a knee.

My arms wrapped around her almost automatically. I was freezing and tried to hug her as tightly as I could to try and warm up.

One of her hands was on my back while the other smoothed the hair on the back of my head.

"It's alright. Your safe." She whispered into my ear. I continued whimpering into Anko's mesh shirt. I didn't want to be alone. "Thinking of… days after mid-summer holiday…" she sang quietly into my ear, although it was easy to tell she was not that great at it. "Then flurry of cold snow continues, and a baby's repeating cry…" I slowly started to relax as she started to rock me gently back and forth. "Even coming holiday, what is so joyful… No clothes and no sash to attire…" I could clearly feel two forms of chakra from her. "The baby is so irritable to cry, that baby's crying annoys me…" the first was dark and terrifying. But the other shielded me from the dark chakra's vile nature. "Baby-sitting for a whole day, that makes me getting so skinny…" And that's when I noticed it. "Wishing to get back home in a hurry across the border…" This situation. "That's my parents' home which can be seen far away…" why this song was so familiar. Why her voice was cracking like… last time. Why her chakra felt so familiar. "That's my parents' home which can be seen far away…"

Before I went to sleep I realized what about the chakra felt so familiar.

It reminded me of rain.

You guys did NOT see that coming!

The song is Takeda no Komoriuta, also known as Takeda's Lullaby. It is, if you had not figured it out, a Japanese lullaby I hear is fairly popular over there and has been around for a while. As for how long, I do not know. What was in this chapter is the translated version, but the original Japanese sounds far better if you ask me. It would not make much sense for it to be in Japanese in this chapter, because Hajime now understands the language.

In case you guys want to know, my name is not Pete. This may be a self-insert, but Pete, now Hajime, is an alternate version of me. There will be things we both experienced, but there will be differences. An example is in Hajime's past life he once had a pet bearded dragon. I on the other hand have a female map turtle named Fred. Keep this in mind throughout the story please.

Anyway, I hope you guys liked the chapter.

Don't forget, those of you who followed me from The Wildcard, I love well written Self Inserts. If you happen to know of any, please let me know. It does not have to be Naruto, but it would be awesome if the categories were video games, Mass Effect being at the top of the list, and anime, but not Pokémon.

This would be much appreciated.

Now if you don't mind, I have to go kick Plague's ass out of bed so I can work on the next chapter of The Wildcard.