Author Notes: If you have an idea from seeing the show that you think I should add just make sure I'm not stealing from somebody else first and then tell me about it. Don't want to take credit for ideas someone else had first. But I'm too much of a parent to allow some of the behavior that goes on in this story.

Disclaimer: Here's the saddest part of all. I don't own Naruto.

Chapter Six

Beginning her Job

The next morning Watarimono got her children off to school and then sat at her kitchen table contemplating how best to get through to Naruto. If, as the reports suggested, he'd been wearing the mask for a long time then first she would have to get him to recognize that he was wearing one. Only then could they begin to work on removing it. Tsunade was right though. If she could not get him to remove the mask himself he was going to remove it when no one was expecting it and then there would be hell to pay for anyone who had ever done him wrong. Once again she saw his expression when Pinky had been insulting him the day before. He definitely wasn't stupid and he knew she didn't like him at all. For most people what Pinky had said would be water off a ducks back but for someone like Naruto ... well there was just too much water running off that proverbial duck and it was gonna drown pretty damn soon if it didn't get out of the pond.

She stood up and fixed herself a cup of tea before going over the medical report one more time. His first hospital admittance was as a thirteen month old. He had come in covered in acid burns from a bath he'd been given at the Orphanage he lived in. He had acid burns over seventy percent of his body and was in the hospital for three days before they finally got around to changing the bandages. When they did he had new skin for each burn that was still tender and pink in color. He was sent back to the Orphanage only to come in again the next day with another bad burn and this time a broken arm. She noted each time he had been brought in by one Hatake Kakashi. Hmm. . . So at least he does care about the child. Or at least he used to.

Over the next several weeks it seemed like the child had done pretty well. At least there hadn't been any more hospital reports on him. The about two months after the broken arm Kakashi had once again brought Naruto to the hospital and the child had once again been admitted with third degree burns covering most of his body. Filed in adjacent to that report was one from the Hokage's office reporting the firing of a nurse for trying to smother Naruto in his sleep. Once again the complainer was Kakashi. He had been standing guard duty as an Anbu on the room Naruto was in when the young nurse had decided to do away with him.

The next report was filed on October eleventh. Naruto had been locked out of the Orphanage for the night and found by a roving mob of drunks looking for a good time after the local festival had ended. They had beaten the child and left him for dead with several kunai still stuck in his body. They had literally thrown the child in a garbage can where Kakashi had found him. This time Kakashi had refused to be moved outside the room while Naruto was worked on to try and save his life. All this crap by the time he was two and it didn't even make a dint in the number of reports in the file. All the reports after that were pretty much the same as those though. Cases where Naruto got the crap beat out of him bad enough to warrant a visit to the hospital and at least an overnight stay in the intensive care ward. What she had noticed was that for every year Naruto seemed to spend October the eleventh in the hospital. The first year he hadn't would seem to have been the year Jiraiya took him away for his training. For the last five years there had been no reports of Naruto being in the hospital at all. Such a detail as the yearly visits could have been easily overlooked in the massive amounts of times he'd been hospitalized but she was looking for commonalities and so of course she had caught it. Another thing she had noted was that his birthday coincided perfectly with the yearly festival. October tenth. She wondered if that had something to do with the beatings he got on that day. She would have to ask Tsunade.

Making up her mind she tidied up and left her apartment, taking the thick book-like file with her. Moments later she was outside knocking on Tsunade's office door. "Come in"

"Tsunade... You have some explaining to do I believe." She handed over the file.

Tsunade looked up in shock. "You read the whole thing in just one night?"

"Yes and I want to know why he was allowed to be treated so poorly. That boy was in the hospital more times than he wasn't and even there he wasn't safe. About half those reports are from this office detailing how someone at the hospital tried to kill him."

"Who you talking about?" asked a young voice from he couch along the wall. Watarimono turned and noticed Naruto for the first time since she had come into the office. Tsunade smirked at him.

"She's talking about you Gaki. I gave her your hospital records to read last night."

"What'd you do that for Oba-chan? She doesn't need to see those!" For the first time since she had met him Naruto looked angry but she also saw a momentary flash of fear in his eyes before the anger covered it up. So he can get angry, she thought, but only to cover up something else.

"You're wrong Gaki and I told you not to call me that. If she is going to be working with you than she needs to know your history."

"Oba-chan Baa-chan what's the difference? You are old and we both know it so why does it matter what I call you. And those records are private. Besides I thought you said she was working on Sasuke and Kakashi. Kami knows they need the help."

Not more so than you do, my friend, thought Tsunade.

"Actually Naruto, I was hired to work with all of your team. Yes I am going to work on Sasuke. He needs to allow himself to openly feel things and not be ashamed of having them but each of you need help or you will cause a great deal of damage in the not too distant future. Well maybe not Pinky but the rest of you. It's a definite possibility."

"Yeah yeah. That's nothing new. I been hearing that old song all my life. I'm not gonna let it loose to destroy this place and she knows it." He glared at Tsunade. "You just work with Teme and Kakashi and leave me alone. I'm doing just fine."

Now Watarimono knew she could have just left things alone and let Naruto walk out of the office with his mask in place but that wouldn't serve anyone. "Is that so?" she asked just as he reached the door. "If that's true then why did I see a flash of fear in your eye when Tsunade told you she gave me your hospital records to read?"

He froze. Then his head whipped around and he snarled at her. In a deeper voice than he would normally use he said, "Leave the Kit alone. It's under control and I know what I am doing." Then he yanked the door open and fled the building as fast as he could move. People fell down and papers went flying some ending up several levels below where they had begun their flight.

In Tsunade's office both women shivered and neither spoke for several minutes. Finally, Watarimono said, "Tsunade, just what did you get me into this time? I could swear his eyes were red before he went tearing out of here."

"They were and that's why I need your help so bad. That voice wasn't Naruto's at all."

"The Demon the girls were told of at school yesterday?" It wasn't really a question but Tsunade chose to answer it as one anyway.

"Yes. That was the Kyuubi no Kitsune. Otherwise known as the Nine-Tailed Fox Demon." She took a deep breath and continued, "Naruto is the vessel for him and lately it seems that the fox is making his wishes known more and more. I think more than anything that Fox hates this village for the way they treated Naruto when he was too young to stop them but the more the villagers do the more the anger grows and the more Naruto covers it up. It's a vicious cycle but Naruto acts like he doesn't even see the danger he's in."

"He sees it, Tsunade. He just doesn't know what else to do," Jiraiya said from the window sill. "What happened just now? I felt the fox chakra all the way over at the gate house." Next to him were Yamato and Kakashi.

"I made an observation he didn't like," said Watarimono.

Jiraiya raised an eyebrow and waited patiently. His expression told her she needed to explain further.

"Tsunade let me read his files last night and when I brought them back to her this morning I didn't see Naruto in the room. I was pretty angry at the time."

"Yes those files are something to make even the monks cry over," whispered Kakashi.

"So I was sounding off on her when Naruto asked who's files I'd been reading. When she told him I saw fear in his eyes before he covered it with mild anger. He told me to leave him alone and just work on the rest of you. That he didn't need my help. So I called him on it." She paused for breath and to gather her thoughts. "I don't think anyone has ever seen through his mask before or at least if they did they either didn't call hm on it or they're dead already."

"It's cracking," Jiraiya said. "When I first met him he seemed to be just an empty-headed stubborn Gaki of a boy that gave no thought to any minute beyond the one he was standing in right that second. Took me a couple of months to see through it. He always seemed cheerfully angry to me and I got curious so I started poking about and found out a lot more than I wanted to know. The boy may act the ahou but he is anything but. He's got survivors instincts up the ying yang and that mask you are determined to break is one of them."

"You said it yourself Jiraiya-san. It is breaking. Everyday more and more of the real Naruto is breaking free. I need to get him to remove the mask before it's too late and the Kyuubi does it for him. Because if we just stand back and let the mask break into a million pieces the only one that will win is the Fox," said Watarimono.

"And if that mask should break like that the fox will take vengeance on everyone who has ever done the slightest thing wrong to Naruto in his entire life. Foxes are very protective of their young but what's worse is from my reading even Demons don't mistreat their younglings," said Yamato.

"Then is it possible that every time Naruto has been treated in a way that should have hurt him or at least made him angry the fox has been taking that emotion away in an effort to protect him?" asked Kakashi.

Everyone's eyes got wider as the thought slowly slipped into their brains. "It could explain what the fox said," said Tsunade.

"What exactly did the fox say?" asked Yamato.

"He said and I quote, "Leave the Kit alone. It's under control and I know what I am doing." unquote," said Tsunade.

"Well," said Jiraiya, "I don't know about the rest of you but I intend to do what the fox suggested and leave the kid alone until I see more evidence that the fox has an agenda that isn't good for him."

Yamato and Kakashi both looked troubled but seeing as how they could think of nothing to do that would in any way help the situation they decided to leave. "Jiraiya-san, I can't help but wonder if what the fox is doing is gathering all Naruto's negative feelings together to make some big push at over-coming the seal." Tsunade looked worried and so did Watarimono but Jiraiya shook his head.

"That wouldn't do him any good. Naruto has been steadily absorbing the fox's chakra for years now. Since his birth actually and the fox doesn't have much time left before he gets completely absorbed into Naruto. I think these cracks we are seeing are the fox's attempt to allow those feelings to escape so that once he is absorbed Naruto won't be swamped by them."

"Are you sure?" asked Tsunade.

"A few months back the kid talked to the fox in his head and when he came out of his trance he said the fox is really small now. He said the fox told him that in another year or so he wouldn't be there at all." He paused and thought for a couple of minutes. "It seems to me that what began as an effort to protect the child Kyuubi knew Naruto to be snowballed into a major problem once the fox realized the effect of the seal. Taking Naruto's hurt and anger had become habit but now that he knows he doesn't have long left he has to give back some of it so that Naruto learns how to deal with it appropriately. That would explain why he doesn't want you to interfere, Wata-sama. He's giving them back in small amounts that Naruto can handle and absorbing the amounts he can't."

"But won't there be a backlash when he finally does go away?" asked Watarimono.

"I don't think so. I think since he has been taking them since Naruto was old enough to feel them they have become his now. Naruto has always said his feelings and the Kyuubi's aren't the same. That the Kyuubi has one way of looking at things while Naruto looks at them differently. There are only a few times when they both see things the same way. Usually when the town or Naruto's precious people are threatened."

"What about when he is threatened?" asked Watarimono.

"Even then they don't see it the same way. Except for one day that is. Which reminds me. Where are you sending him this year, Tsunade?"

"What?"

"On the tenth. Where is he going?"

"Oh I hadn't thought that far ahead yet. I think his friends will be very angry if he isn't here for the festival."

Jiraiya gave her a look that said she had rocks in her head while the look on Watarimono's face didn't give her much more credit. "Have you lost your mind, Tsunade?"

"If what I saw in those reports is true, then making him stay here for that festival is asking for someone to find and kill him," seconded Watarimono.

"His friends have planned a surprise for him. If I make him leave town they'll kill me and Naruto is strong enough now to protect himself from drunken fools."

Jiraiya shook his head and said, "You're loosing it old woman. The Gaki doesn't ever want to be here on that day because he knows he won't be able to bring himself to hurt those villagers. You make him stay in town and your just as bad as they are."

Watarimono said, "Well, you know the situation best but I think I'll stop by the hospital and make sure they have an open bed. I'll remind them he's in town this year and of what happens every year at this time."

She turned and calmly walked out of the door. She shut it quietly and made her way out of the building.

Only when the door had shut so softly did Tsunade understand just how angry her friend really was. When Watarimono got angry she was the exact opposite of Tsunade. Where Tsunade would tear great big gaping wholes in the landscape, Watarimono would go super quiet. And while you might think that was nothing to worry about she was a mind manipulator by trade. She could give you nightmares for weeks with one word.

Author Notes:

Only one word to define for you and some of you may already know it. Ahou means fool. Anyway please review so I can get better and better and better.