Summary: What if Minato and Kushina had two children? What if one of them was Itachi's age and just as skilled? How would it affect the one born under his father's shadow and one under the Kyuubi's shadow? Read to find out.
"I, Hatake Kakashi, recommend Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura, and Uzumaki Naruto to the Chuunin Selection Exams," Kakashi said, his hand itching to rip out Icha Icha Paradise. It had just gotten to the pinnacle of the book where Noriaki confesses his love to Junko, a girl who hates him for being a peeping tom. Kakashi just had to know if they got together or not. Screw his Genin busting their asses to become Chuunin; Junko was an appealing character!
The other two Jounin recommended their Genin as well and Gai behind him said something about being youthful with the Uchiha and Uzumaki, but Kakashi had already taken the slips of paper to let his Genin into the Exams and was turning around, much to…Iruka?'s dismay. Iruka said something about him turning around and '…I know them…my students…not ready…'
Kakashi lazily turned his head a tad to give Iruka a sideways glance. Iruka scowled at the top Elite Jounin who, if he'd forgotten, could kill him before he could glance down at the pool of blood. Kakashi didn't consider it, he simply gave the Chuunin what he hoped was an annoyed look and an expression that read, 'What?'
"They're my students, Kakashi-san! I know they're not ready!" Iruka argued.
"Oh, Iruka, if only you could've seen their excellent performance on an accidental B-Rank, or was it A-Rank mission(?). Naruto and Sasuke are going to be heavy hitters in ninjutsu or taijutsu and Sakura is going to be our genjutsu and medical ninjutsu specialist. Doesn't that sound well rounded to you? Also, they're not your students anymore; they're mine. You've got your own Academy kids to worry about, so don't worry about the ones under a higher ranked ninja, especially me," Kakashi lectured and quickly walked away, his hand in his back pocket, gripping the bright orange and too friendly cover of Icha Icha. His eyes scanned over the book's words and he almost squealed in joy; Junko had actually said yes to his marriage proposal after beating Noriaki to a pulp saying how if he ever peeped on any more women, she'd destroy him. Noriaki took her seriously as he nursed a large bruise on his arm.
Meanwhile, he made his way to the bridge where his cute Genin were waiting impatiently. He walked up, still reading. He threw them the papers at them, which they deftly caught, to his liking. If they hadn't caught it he'd rip them up and leave. Naruto and Sasuke read it over while Sakura squealed in joy.
The Genin ran off, Sakura to brag to Ino while Naruto and Sasuke walked together.
Naruto and Sasuke were very close. They trained together to improve their taijutsu, ninjustu, and genjutsu. Sometimes, Sasuke spied on other teams with his Sharingan to get different techniques. Once he'd watched the taijutsu fight with his kekkei genkai, he'd practice on Naruto and the two would gain a wide range of ways to counter these taijutsu styles.
One of the more difficult styles was the Hyuuga Juuken. Their kekkei genkai was something neither had, so it was hard to practice a style if they couldn't even see the tenketsu points. Still, Sasuke would watch Hyuuga Neji often to gain more insight of how their fighting style worked.
Over the next month, the two Genin worked to improve kunai accuracy, chakra control, and taijutsu skills.
When a month had finally passed, the Chuunin Exams loomed. Sakura complained about being scared but Naruto and Sasuke only saw this as an opportunity to gain power to beat the two nuke-nin who had ripped their lives into shreds.
Sasuke noticed something out of the corner of his eye as Neji approached him, declaring some kind of losing and fate and something like that. Sasuke was barely listening, feeling two pairs of eyes on him. His eyes moved to see three Genin from a village with 友 engraved on it. He couldn't remember seeing a village called Tomogakure, much less having Genin admitted. He dismissed it. If he hadn't heard of them, they weren't of a strong village, therefore likely to be weak and easy to beat.
Two of the three Tomogakure ninja gave him blank looks, while the other, a girl, waved in a friendly way. Sasuke raised his brows and the two males' faces didn't change, as if bored by his existence. Sasuke frowned and confronted them.
"Oi, don't you know who I am? I'm—" Sasuke started.
"Uchiha Sasuke, the last Uchiha whose clan was murdered by his brother or something. Boring," one of the males waved him off, covering up a yawn. He cracked open an eye and saw the Uchiha was beginning to redden in anger.
The two males sighed and shook their heads, pulling the girl along and the group of three Tomogakure walked through the doors, leaving the fuming Uchiha behind. Sasuke growled and grabbed Naruto and walked through the doors, not bothering to get the annoying pink haired girl to come along. The other Konoha teams filed in and Kiba ended up making a huge announcement that the rookie Konoha teams were there and such. Naruto kicked him and berated him for making such a scene and did he want to be killed first.
The girl of Tomogakure did he part: making friends with Sakura and Ino. The Tomogakure girl's name was Rei. She had caramel colored hair and a smile always shining on her face. The rookie Genin didn't have any experience to know that usually, a shinobi who smiled was either a psychopath or a spy.
As it turned out, Itachi and Kazuki had simply gotten a girl from a random village with moderate chakra levels and put her under a rather powerful genjutsu that would control her actions without her even knowing it. She could perform simple jutsu and two chakra-natured jutsu.
As for their Jounin sensei, Kazuki had made a Shadow Clone to stand in his place for the First Exam. The original Kazuki stayed with the other Jounin of all of the teams who led Genin teams. He had also used a mild henge to change his appearance as Jounin, a different one for being a Genin and Itachi did the same.
Kazuki saw the three rookie Genin Jounin leaders and stayed away, wary. He didn't want to attract their attention; he came with a low profile from a weak ninja village and intended to keep it that way. He reminded himself over and over that he can't interfere with any possibly fatal battles Naruto or Sasuke would be fighting and he can't attract any attention of the Jounin, who were much, much more suspicious of foreign shinobi, especially ones who were of the same caliber.
Kazuki looked at all the Jounin sensei carefully and noticed how the Konoha rookie Genin Jounin leaders were both keeping away from him and eyeing him suspiciously. Kazuki simply turned around and peered out of the window with a contemplative look easily splattered across his poker face, which Itachi had helped him develop.
The tension in the air slowly dissipated. Kazuki looked out at the Yondaime Hokage's stone face and silently sent an apology. I'm sorry, Tou-san. Instead of you or Kaa-san dying, I should've been there using my kekkei genkai to restrain the Kyuubi and then Naruto wouldn't have his life set on killing me. But, I've failed as a brother, failing your last wishes, so isn't it for the best? I'm not even alone in this; I've got Itachi.
Kazuki sighed and noticed how time was almost up for the Genin. According to his clone, multiple teams had already been dropped. He stood to make his way over to the other side of the Academy where his 'team' would be waiting.
Kakashi ended up following him, having the same intention. Kazuki honestly didn't want to be followed by anyone, especially him, but it would look suspicious if he voiced his discomfort.
"What village are you from?" Kakashi asked, having even put his book away. Internally, Kazuki sighed. Kakashi was really putting a wrench in his plans. Kakashi was either suspicious of him or was simply curious. Knowing Kakashi, it was probably 90% suspicion and 10% curiosity.
"Tomogakure. We're really small so we could only send one team. We're lucky to even be here," Kazuki joked. The doors opened and multiple teams filed out, ready to go somewhere.
"Good job. Don't get killed," Kakashi eye-smiled at his team walked hurriedly to wherever they needed to go. Naruto and Sasuke gave him a nod and disappeared. Kazuki patted his clone's and the girl's head. Itachi let a fake smile grace his lips and the Tomogakure team left to go to the Forest of Death.
Within the first three hours of the Second Exam, the Tomogakure team was covered in blood from killed teams. 16 teams had passed the First Exam, four from Konoha, one from Suna, two from Otogakure, one from Tomogakure and some other villages. Itachi and Kazuki wanted to lure all danger to them to keep their brothers safe. It also gave them good practice.
Itachi took out his sword out of an Ame nin's body, which fell to the ground in a growing pool of blood. Itachi glanced at Kazuki, who was sheathing his sword.
"That makes that our 6th team we've eliminated. We've got seven scrolls including ours. The teams we killed, it seems like, hadn't gotten any of the other contestants' scrolls yet. What do you want to do?" Kazuki asked as he put the dead Ame-nin's scroll in his pocket.
"Let's take a look at the Konoha teams," Itachi said. "Let's go, Rei."
"Hai," she stood after grabbing multiple senbon and other salvageable gear.
Itachi and Kazuki turned with Rei following to the trees and jumped up, going at a moderate pace with their eyes, ears, and chakra sensing abilities at work to find any teams. They'd passed a few other foreign nin teams who wanted to fight them, but the Tomogakure team were in no mood for playing along with their chase.
The shadows in the forest were growing longer than the two nuke-nin had anticipated. However, it was a forest filled with not only lethal animals, insects, and foliage, but fearful, angry, or hurt Genin. Most likely, those kinds of emotions were going to set in within a few days. No one would be safe from those emotions. Except perhaps the whole Tomogakure team. Rei was under a genjutsu so she really wasn't processing the information until it was all over and Itachi undid the genjutsu that basically put a fog in her mind so she couldn't really tell much of anything. The two males were simply unsurprised by the shinobi world's ways.
Kazuki didn't want Itachi to send out waves of chakra looking for their brothers since they 1) might recognize their chakra and end up blowing their cover and 2) it might catch the eye of the people who watched the Exams, like other Jounin sensei or the Hokage and 3) there might be teams that posed a threat, a real threat.
Itachi nodded in acquiescence, his face slightly pained. Kazuki put a hand on his shoulder and forced air out of his mouth with clenched teeth.
"At least he liked you, right?" Kazuki asked.
"Yeah," Itachi looked away, not wanting to say anything about Kazuki's trouble with his brother.
Within a few hours, night had completely fallen. Itachi helped Rei catch fish while Kazuki put up barriers. He took out a slip of sealing paper and ink, carefully inscribing the correct kanji he wanted. Once he was done, he applied them in a hexagon shape around the small camp. Those who wanted to enter would have to either load the seal capacitors with so much chakra they'd break the seal or Kazuki would use some of his own blood, usually from a bit finger, and chakra to put down a part of the seal. However, most teams wanted to either show off to a large hidden village's team or they were just intent on passing. So, wasting chakra on a no-name village like Tomogakure was a waste of time.
Kazuki put back his ink and sealing papers in his other pocket and started a fire with a weak fire style justu. He glanced over at Itachi and Rei and saw that they were cutting off the fish heads and descaling them with a kunai and a makeshift cutting board: a flat rock. One they'd properly prepared the fish, they stuck thin sticks through them and angled them over the fire to cook.
The aroma of cooked fish was enough to bring some hungry Genin out of the forest into Tomogakure's line of sight. Rei looked up first, followed by Itachi and Kazuki. None of the three looked particularly scared or nervous or surprised for that matter by a certain pink haired kunoichi.
"I'm sorry to ask like this, but do you have any leftover fish?" Sakura asked quietly, tapping the seal curiously.
"Where are your teammates?" Kazuki shot back.
"T-they're not so good at catching fish so I thought…" Sakura twirled a piece of hair nervously. She could tell from even the seal and the six fish that were roasting that this team had some substantial skills. Her mind was working on overdrive and fatigue was getting to her, so stupid things were bound to come out of her mouth.
"Do you want to ally with us?" Sakura squeaked.
"That's no skin off our backs. Bring your team over then," Kazuki said. "We've got more fish."
Sakura's features brightened significantly and she ran off to tell her teammates the news that they'd gained an ally.
Naruto and Sasuke raised their brows at this but had no choice but to agree since not eating today would affect their performance over the next day and so on. Sasuke saw this as also a perfect chance to get a scroll. In a lethal place like this, you could never be too early to escape death. Naruto and Sasuke sighed and had Sakura lead them to the Tomogakure team. Sakura nodded enthusiastically, glad she was finally of help.
Kazuki looked up as he threw the stick that had stabbed the fish behind him. He casually got to his feet and bit a thumb. Over the kanji he'd written, he wrote a very similar kanji over it in blood and the seal went down for a few seconds before it stabilized again. Team 7 stepped in quickly and they took a seat by the fire, trying to warm up.
Naruto and Sasuke had tried to catch fish but all they had gotten was wet clothes. Seeing how this was their only pair they'd brought, they were forced to strip and lay their clothes on the rocks close to the fire to dry. Sakura looked away from the two of them, choosing to talk with Rei.
Kazuki could feel the color draining from his face and his stomach suddenly turning violent. His heartbeat screamed in his ears and his fists clenched until his fingernails drew blood. His chest burned from lack of oxygen and he turned and ran to the stream to vomit.
Naruto and Sasuke turned away from the sight and Itachi was sitting by Kazuki, trying to calm him down. Itachi forced Kazuki to look him in the eye and gave him a hard look.
"What's wrong?" Itachi asked.
"I…I can't do it," Kazuki mumbled, his eyes distant.
"Don't say that. Then everything you've done will be in vain. I don't like this at all either and I wish I could kill myself right now and be done, but we must answer for our crimes some way or another. Don't leave me alone here. We need each other," Itachi reminded him.
"Y-yeah," Kazuki said, his eyes cast downward.
"Hey, everything okay?" Naruto asked, munching on a fish along with Sasuke. Sakura nibbled on hers, looking concerned for the Tomogakure ninja.
"Yes," Kazuki answered, his voice devoid of emotion or inflection. I've got to do everything to protect him. Itachi's right.
Naruto narrowed his eyes but didn't say anything. Sasuke half expected Itachi to vomit or something, but the disguised Uchiha revealed nothing. Sakura saw that everything was back to normal so she simply kept talking to Rei about Konoha and what is Tomogakure like and so on and so forth.
Kazuki turned and walked back to the fire, the firelight illuminating his clothes and face. His face was still pale but that wasn't what fascinated the Konoha nin. To be more precise, it scared them and confused them.
"How many scrolls do you have, anyway?" Sasuke narrowed his eyes.
"Why do you ask?" Kazuki asked, his henge brown eyes twinkling with humor.
There was a tension in the air before Sasuke responded.
"There were 16 teams that passed. It's only been a day since the exams began. You look as if you've been enough fights to be bathing in killed Genin's blood. Exactly how many scrolls do you have if you took down so many teams?" Sasuke asked, his voice angry.
Kazuki's lips quirked into a tiny smile. He glanced at Itachi and smirked. Itachi gave a mock glare and responded to Sasuke's question.
"We're a small village, but we concentrate our skills in staying hidden until the last moment to strike. Most of the teams were either too proud of simple jutsu or had emotions of fear or arrogance that they didn't sense us coming. We have taken down 6 teams. None of those teams had two scrolls. So, we have seven scrolls including our own," Itachi responded, his black eyes and white hair glinting in the flickering firelight. The Konoha team sat in shock, not believing what Itachi was saying. Sakura looked fearful but her male teammates looked miffed.
"It's true. My teammates are rather exceptional," Rei offered, her eyes calm.
From that point on, the Konoha team didn't necessarily trust the Tomogakure team. Naruto and Kazuki stayed up to keep watch for any dangerous people around. Kazuki looked at Naruto carefully to see if he had any bruises or scratches or broken bones. His eyes narrowed as he saw how the way Naruto was positioning his hand.
Naruto noticed how Kazuki was watching him and glared.
"What do you want?" Naruto asked harshly. Kazuki feigned a look of hurt but Naruto seemed to take it seriously. A twinge of guilt flashed on the Genin's face and he looked away. Kazuki was about to say it was okay, but Naruto cut him off.
"Sorry…" Naruto mumbled. "I didn't want to tell my team because then I'd be a dead weight. I want to be strong, so I can't let a broken wrist stand between that need and me."
Kazuki let out a smile, a true smile. His eyes softened and his brows lifted a little. He turned his head towards the moon and let out a soft laugh. Kazuki instructed Naruto to hold out his hand as Kazuki pulled out a storage scroll and unsealed some healing cream and medicinal bandages. He expertly wrapped his younger brother's wrist all the while smiling.
"Thanks," Naruto let out his signature smile. Kazuki flinched but didn't look away. He's just like Tou-san…but at heart he's like Kaa-san. I wonder what you two would think, if you were here?
Kazuki suddenly unfurled most of the scroll and unsealed a necklace. Naruto cocked his head in confusion.
"This holds special chakra. This chakra is sealing chakra and you can also use it for combination jutsu. Among other people's chakra, it's mine. I have fire natured chakra and I get a feeling yours is wind natured. Right?" Kazuki carefully put the necklace around his brother's neck.
"Yeah. That'll be really cool then. Thanks, for all of this," Naruto said, examining the necklace. He held it up to the moon to get some light. With his eyes squinted to see the engraving, he tried to see it.
"Who's…Kushina?" Naruto turned to Kazuki. But by the time he turned to look at Kazuki, the Tomogakure nin was already walking into his tent to change places with Itachi. Naruto frowned and shrugged it off. Probably some brand or something.