Haku smiled as he stowed his knitting in his bag and jumped out of the tree he'd been perched in. Today had been quite interesting. He for one didn't doubt the Uzumaki's time travel story as the boy knew things that were either top secret or secrets that only he or Zabuza knew. Quite a bit of it made sense. There had been legends of Seal Masters bending time to their will and cautionary tales of Seal Masters who tried and failed spectacularly. If the man who had used seals to travel long distances instantaneously and managed to seal that which had been considered unsealable had left his writings behind for his son, who knew what could have been amongst them. If he himself had been given the power to change things, he would have done so in an instant.
The story about Madara controlling the Mizukage fit, as when Zabuza-sama had tried to assassinate Yagura, he'd been forced to flee from someone who'd stepped out of the shadows, someone who had been controlling Yagura's actions somehow. The explanation for the Uchiha Massacre fit as well, considering the things he'd heard from Zabuza. In the last years before the massacre, the Uchiha had become increasingly scarce on missions of a more critical nature and, their presence on missions above a low A had practically vanished altogether in the final year. If they had been planning a coup, it would make sense to remove them from missions on which they could conceivably cause harm to Konoha's future, or for them to remove themselves from missions which were likely to kill them and reduce their clan's number of able fighters for when the time came. The Uzumaki could only have known how he viewed himself as Zabuza's tool if he heard it from him himself however.
Hearing that despite how he acted towards him, Zabuza viewed him as something more than a tool had warmed his heart. Zabuza was more than a mere master to him, and he wasn't willing to give his life to just anybody. To learn that his admiration for Zabuza-sama was at least partially returned increased his determination to remain at his side and in his service until his dreams were fulfilled.
From what he overheard, it would seem that the Uzumaki's dark haired teammate was willing to turn traitor to his village and aid those who would destroy it and therefore was a dangerous person to keep around. Why did the Uzumaki spare his teammate when he knew the boy would become a traitor though? Did he see something salvageable in him? Or was it for the Uchiha who had been loyal to Konoha and sacrificed everything to keep it safe, the Uchiha who had done all he could to keep his younger brother alive despite the fact that said brother was completely unworthy that the Uzumaki had stayed his hand? He could hear the Uzumaki's respect for Uchiha Itachi despite his words and his almost mocking mention of the Uchiha's desire for "suicide by younger brother".
Deciding to muse on this and other things such as Gato's planned betrayal later, he made his way back to where he and his master were staying.
Momochi Zabuza sat polishing his sword as he prepared for a battle he would much rather avoid but couldn't afford to. That's what he got for being stupid enough to actually sign a contract however.
"Master Zabuza." Haku said, getting the swordsman's attention.
"What?" he asked.
"Uzumaki Naruto once again thanks you for his new pet, and says that he will not harm us if we do not go after his team, his friends, or interfere with his current mission." Haku replied, apparently very carefully choosing his words and quite possibly trying to feed him a half-truth based on his expression.
"He also gave us some useful information in good faith. It seems that Gato has hired a large number of thugs that will arrive at Tazuna's bridge roughly a week from now, and their orders are to kill us as well as the Konoha shinobi as Gato does not plan on paying us. The Uzumaki will allow us to deal with these thugs if we so choose. The Uzumaki also gave us the names of several people we should avoid dealing with in the future if it is at all possible. At the top of the list is the Akatsuki which is led by the madman Uchiha Madara who had been controlling Yagura, has twice tried to destroy the village he helped found, and has on multiple occasions killed infants and small children for reasons other than the fact that it was part of a mission. Another name is that of Shimura Danzo who is willing to manipulate anyone if it benefits him or supposedly benefits Konoha. A third is that of Orochimaru whose perverse fascination with Kekkei Genkai has led him to kidnap children and adolescents with such abilities and experiment on them. He experiments on ordinary ninja as well, trying to turn them into monstrosities." Haku continued.
"How did the Uzumaki come by this information?" he asked genuinely surprised that the Uzumaki child would give him something as valuable as what he appeared to have in payment for a small rabbit.
"He earned it through experience. Uzumaki Naruto's father, the Fourth Hokage, was a Seal Master of unparalleled skill, reputed to have been able to bend space and time to his will. Things in the future got to the point that the Uzumaki became desperate enough to use his legacy which would have more than likely killed him rather than sent him back if the story I heard from one of my teachers about a lesser Seal Master who had tried was true." Haku replied.
"What?" he yelled as he shot to his feet, dropping his sword in the process.
This was absolutely unbelievable. Not only was the Uzumaki an Uzumaki, but he was the bastard offspring of the only man who had had a Flee-on-sight order issued only for him and him alone and not the rest of his family as well. The people in Iwa were going to shit themselves when they found out that Namikaze Minato had reproduced. As it was, he was barely keeping himself from doing so.
"From what I could interpret of what he had allowed me to overhear, the Uzumaki traveled back in time to save Konoha from one of his teammates who turned traitor to the village in the near future and joined Orochimaru who he then betrayed before joining Uchiha Madara who tried to destroy the village with the Kyuubi which the Fourth Hokage ended up sealing inside him." Haku said.
"His teammate is a Jinchuriki?" he screamed. If things were bad before, this just made them worse.
"No, the Uzumaki is." Haku replied.
He sat back down before he fainted. He was contractually obligated to go up against a time-traveling Uzumaki who was also a Jinchuriki! If there weren't severe penalties for breaking the contract he had signed with Gato, penalties that would have bounty hunters and hunter-nin from every country on the continent on his tail, he would have run for the hills and beyond. Because he'd been less than careful about who he took a job from, he'd had the misfortune of being pitted against the one Uzumaki who'd been given a double dose of crazy, Namikaze Minato for a father, and the freaking King of Demons to boot.
"Please tell me you were lying." Sakura said.
"About what?" Naruto asked.
"About Sasuke eating people." She replied.
"I wish I could, but...You know how it is, ancient custom, the origins of which are lost to the mists of time, but continue to be practiced because that's how it's always been. The Uchiha have eaten their dead for centuries, something about those who passed nourishing the clan and living on in future generations. Eating someone from outside of the clan was seen as a sign of extreme respect. Most people never said anything about it because it was just another one of those "Clan quirks", like with the Inuzuka and how when a member of the family dies, all of that person's dogs are buried with them, even the ones that were alive at the time of the person's passing. I think some scholar traced the source of the Uchiha tradition back to the early days of the clan when they got stranded somewhere inhospitable during a particularly hard winter but, I'm not one hundred percent certain. Part of Sasuke's problem with Itachi was that he didn't come back to help properly tend to the clan dead, and the village didn't seem to understand Sasuke's duty because the lot of them were cremated for health reasons while he was in the hospital which is seen as a bad thing for a Uchiha as it is a sign of being considered an outcast, not worthy of nourishing the clan and so forth." Naruto said.
She turned green. When she had decided that she wanted to be Mrs. Uchiha, she had never considered the traditions she would be bound to follow after she married Sasuke. She had just seen herself in a romantic future with her incredibly handsome Sasuke, and with a family name that had been known amongst the shinobi for centuries and was practically considered royalty. What other secrets did the Uchiha hide? What about the other clans?
Now that she was hearing the things that nobody really bothered to comment on for the sake of village unity, she started to understand why her parents had attempted to dissuade her from pursuing Sasuke and tried to get her to find a nice boy from one of the civilian families instead.
Kakashi wondered what crawled up the traitor's ass to make him storm into Tazuna's house the way he did when he returned from training, and was still wondering when he watched Naruto lead a rather ill looking Sakura up the path and into the house.
"Naruto, did you offer her any strange mushrooms?" he asked.
He really needed to have a serious discussion with the boy about the consequences of offering potentially poisonous "food" to his friends. He'd caught Naruto eating Deathcaps twice during training but had left him to it since it apparently hadn't been hurting him. The same could not be said for Sakura if she were stupid enough to eat the same.
"No, I think she's sick because I told her about Uchiha funerals and stuff." Naruto replied.
"I'm surprised that you remembered, considering the only one you attended was the one for your mother's friend Haku when you were three. The only reason they let you in was because it was specified in his will. Considering the fact that only a Uchiha can eat a Uchiha there was some controversy until Fugaku named you as one of the few adopted outsiders. You're listed on a couple of documents as Uzumaki-Uchiha Naruto. That didn't stop them from sticking you back in the orphanage after the funeral when nobody wanted to take you in though." he said.
He remembered his own experiences with the Uchiha funerary traditions and the sad facsimile of a Uchiha funeral that what was left of his team and Obito's father had given Obito after he had been posthumously cast out of the clan for giving him his eye. It had been difficult, and he, Rin and Minato-Sensei had to keep telling themselves that this was what Obito would have wanted to keep from puking.
Edited 11-3-12