Chapter 2

Pale lavender eyes snapped open as a rush of memories and a tail worth of chakra poured into her body from the time stream. Her young body arched as her mind travelled to her mindscape. There she watched with wonder as a woman looking like an older version of her appeared in a whirl of crackling chakra but what truly was going on with her she was not able to comprehend because she was too young. The young Hinata watched as the older woman smiled at her and spoke in a voice that was cold yet melodious, "I want to help you my dear Hinata. Tell me do you desire power to protect yourself or your family? Answer me truthfully and I shall help you."

"Yes. I do want to be strong. Can you help me? What I must do? " Asked a Painfully shy and young Hinata to her older counterpart.

"Ok. Accept me as you and we will merge. My skills and knowledge will become yours but some changes will be there, that I must warn you about. Think carefully as we two will become as one. And let me tell you about myself and why I am here... "

"Yes, I accept your proposition." replied an ecstatic Hinata after talking with her counterpart for few hours. Unknown to both this declaration had sealed the fate of one Naruto Uzumaki-Namikaze and his rise to prominence that would eclipse that of the any shinobi. A light erupted from the body of Hinata as both the old and young became one. Her body aged by a few months and unnoticeable to others including her clan members, her chakra became more potent instead of increasing as the older counterpart had feared. Taking control of her new body, she got up and began meditating in order to accumulate her memories into her mind seamlessly and using the mindscape techniques learnt from one Ino Yamanaka she hid them from view of any mindwalkers and as a precaution, hid the entrance by making the mindscape more childlike. More she thought about her plan, she removed several plans due to the fact that Sandaime Hokage would catch on them and not even including the Hyuuga council and the Village Civilian Council that though stupid were very observant if it pertained anything to Naruto.

"Sorry Naruto-kun, it seems you have to suffer the village hatred for a few more years. Though they would teach you your morals and get rid of your naivety. Till then, I will try to get the samples for experiments that will make both of us stronger." thought Hinata while gazing at the moon and flaring her Byakugan periodically to get used to its strain while doing stretches trying to get a feel for her body. Several extra plans and hidden gifts for her beloved were planned as she did not want him to be the same naive fool that had allowed others to walk over him and became the cause of his untimely death. Till then she would plan and plot while keeping eyes on the village that had no idea that a vengeful Goddess was going to rain hell upon them.

4 Years Later

The last few years had not been very different for Hinata and by extension Naruto. Though for Sandaime Hokage, a puzzle had appeared and he had been no closer to solving it since the day that Kumo Ambassador had been caught by a three year old Hinata Hyuuga who had been almost kidnapped by the same man and had been almost sold to Kumo. Till this day no one knew what really happened but the basic gist from what they had managed to recover from the man's damaged mind was that when he had entered the room to kidnap the sleeping Hyuuga heiress, the girl was not asleep and sitting at the balcony gazing at the moon. Cursing his luck, the Diplomat had tried to grab her before she raised any alarms but there had been an explosion of uncontrolled chakra around the girl and she had leapt at him while unleashing what seemed to be a hand covered in dense chakra strong enough to cut through metal. She had torn off half his face and an eye before the other Hyuuga's arrived and subdued the attacker. Sandaime himself had seen the face of the Diplomat and had managed to stop himself from wincing from the brutal mangling of the man's face.

The girl had become cold and withdrawn after that day and seemed to look at the world with a frozen outlook that seemed to be on par with the Ice Queen of Konoha, one Kurenai Yuhi. She had not calmed down when the attacker had been subdued and had even attacked her own father using the same technique that had been dubbed by others as Hakke Tamashī tanken [Eight Trigrams: Soul Dagger]. Hiashi Hyuuga had entered the room of her daughter immediately after hearing the cries of the Kumo Diplomat and tried to stop Hinata from further attacking the man. The Girl had leapt at him with a mad look in her eyes and managed to score a palm slash across his face giving him permanent scars in the form of five diagonal lines while thankfully not damaging his eyes. Hiashi had managed to knock the girl out and save his dignity or whatever had been left of it. Hiruzen himself had snickered at the annoyed look on the face of the Hyuuga clan head when he had given his report.

This had resulted in a cold war with Kumo due to their refusal to believe that the diplomat had been caught and had practically demanded from Konoha that they hand over a Main Branch Hyuuga or in their words the person responsible for the attack on their honourable Diplomat. Kumo had even the gall to threaten Konoha with war if their demands had not been met. Before the Sandaime would have done anything to prevent the war but one look at the girl's scared and dead looking face and Sandaime had broken all talks and himself had went to Kuminari no Kuni with Danzo and Jiraya and told the Damiyo in no uncertain terms what he thought of Kumo and their demands. He even had challenged the Raikage with his bluff of war and told him that Konoha was waiting. The cold war situation had increased and only since the last year when the new Raikage had taken office the tensions lessened if not vanished.

Sandaime Hokage had also a different source of headache. One Uzumaki Naruto, jinchuuriki of the nine tailed fox, Kyuubi no Kitsune. He made a mistake in announcing the council Minato's wish to see Naruto as a Hero for keeping the Kyuubi at bay but the people of Konoha blinded by their anger and hatred disregarded those wishes and soon he was trying to keep Naruto at arm's length from people who would do harm to him. The decision of informing people backfired and Naruto became a social pariah in the village. People in their hatred and anger attacked the young boy and soon the boy became a goofball and a socially inept child making him a target due his ignorance. Abandoned by those whom he could count on him to teach him something, Naruto was made to suffer untold cruelties and hardships. Kicked out from the orphanage at the tender age of four, Naruto was found in by Hiruzen himself scrounging the trash for food full after a year of his abandonment while he was going to visit Hinata Hyuuga so as to check on her after the traumatising incident.

Hiruzen appalled by the callousness of the people of his beloved village had went into a towering rage whose effects were still felt by all including the Village Council, especially by the Civilian side and his advisors including the War Hawk, Danzo. He himself had broken the arms and legs of seven drunks who had assaulted Naruto in front of him while the boy had been eating from the trash. The poor boy had passed out from the KI exuded by the angry Shinobi no Kami, and he had executed three of his ANBU, seven Chunin and two Jounin publically, who had falsified reports of Narutos welfare and his finances as a warning to all. He had gotten the boy an apartment and then sent one of the best ANBU, Tenzo and Neko who were assigned to teach the boy social skills and techniques needed for his survival. He had also introduced Hinata to the boy in order to get him a friend in his age group. To his delight both had become friends even though Hiashi had first protested the decision but seeing the cold, unfeeling Hinata smiling slightly in the boy's presence had forced him to reconsider his decision.

The people of Konoha had been warned by the Sandaime had taken to ignore the boy silently but they had never untreated him badly or glared at him due to the fear of Sandaime who had tightened the reins over the village getting grudging respect from his rival Danzo.

Both Naruto and Hinata had decided to fast track from the Ninja Academy taking only a course of three years instead of the standard five years but they had put the condition that they would start the academy when they were ten years old so that they may get to know the children their age and not be put on same teams so as to prevent the Sandaime to be showing favouritism to them until they had no choice but to be paired together. Sarutobi Hiruzen was a old man and a veteran of three shinobi wars but he did not know that he had been manipulated by a girl who had only one thing in her mind, a certain blond haired boy whom she had already decided to spend her entire life and make sure he lived to a ripe old age unlike his previous one.

Hinata's Prospective

The day had come for Hinata who had waited and trained for this day and carefully manipulated her plans since the day she had arrived in the past. She had trained rigorously and brutally such that even her father had asked her to lay of training for a while so that she would not damage her body. Also the cold, unfeeling persona had worked wonders in making her the entire Hyuuga Council nervous as hell around her so that she would get no chance to damage them like she had done to the Kumo Diplomat and her father. Hinata had in order to put her act more solid and to take the heat of her had decided to take the route of a getting traumatised even though she had not anticipated the effects her actions had on the world politics. She had also made trips to the Root headquarters using the seals remembered by her, engraved on her clothes and had even raided the Orochimaru Labs in the village. Her quest to get the DNA of First Hokage and Madara Uchiha had gone of successfully but she had been unable to get the DNA of Kushina Uzumaki and Mito Uzumaki as their crypts needed the blood of a Uzumaki along with freshly given blood willingly so as to open them.

Her plan of getting Naruto attention from Sandaime had taken a while but she had managed done so after careful plannong and considrration. All she had to was to cast a small genjutsu on Naruto that made him wander the alley she knew Sandaime frequented from asking him to get her Cinnamon Buns that were available from only one shop in Konoha and it was even more easy to get those drunks to beat up her beloved but no true gain comes without pain, she reasoned to herself. She had under a henge gotten them to drink a lot and then gotten them to lie in wait for Naruto and egged them till they were literally seeing red. She had winced when one of them had smashed a bottle on his head and another had used a pipe to bash him in the ribs but Sandaime had responded immediately and she had shed several tears that night at her actions but then told herself to suck up. The bonding had made her emotional balance out of whack and she needed to reach the teen age to be a true master of her emotions.

Getting Sandaime to meet Naruto had been easy as she had mentioned the incident to him and even commented that the boy was like her. The Hokage had been over eager to get them to meet so as get Hinata a hold on her sanity and in the process, Naruto a friend. The old man's guilt made him easy to manipulate. Sentimental old fool! His actions had nearly divided the village into numerous factions before he had gotten it all under control.

Then it was easy to get Naruto to open up to her. All she had to do was to make him shed away the mask and he bared himself to her. That day she decided that she would never break his trust. She got him several books on Psychology, Etiquette, Calligraphy, Human Anatomy, Emotional Control, Politics and History. The Sandaime had issued him an apartment in the Shinobi District near her caretaker's apartment of one Kurenai Yuhi. He had also gotten security seals engraved so as not to take chances. To make Naruto read those books had been easy. All she had to was to make him understand that they were necessary for a Hokage to know such things throughly and he had been hooked into them. Also she studied with him and then subtly pushing him towards books that were needed for a shinobi and she had then introduced him to Maito Gai, the Taijutsu Master of Konoha. Before leaving him in the Jounin's care she had taken him aside and threatened him with making him an eunuch if he turned her beloved Naruto into his mini clone. The man had shivered at the mad look in her eyes before she had managed to rein in her KI so as not to make anyone suspicious. Say whatever you want to about Maito Gai but he was one clever ninja if one managed to overlook his eccentricity and weird fashion sense.

The most difficult and mind numbing tasks that Hinata found she had to undertake was to break that stupidity and naiveté out of Naruto who believed that ninjas were a group of cool people who saved princesses, defeated bad guys, helped the poor and all that rot. This thinking had led him into an early death and she would be damned if she allowed him to develop that attitude again. And boy wasn't that hard. The first task she had done was to give him the Rabbit Test. He had blinked cutely at her when she had given him a rabbit as a pet and asked him to care for it for six months. At the end of his time she had given him a knife and told him to kill the rabbit. Poor Naruto had cried and whined and tried every single thing his seven year old brain had managed to come to stop the killing. She had gotten very frustrated in order to make him understand what being a ninja entailed and giving him several of those tests had managed to break his naive and childish persona while exposing him to the dark truths of the world. He had gone into shock when he had killed the rabbit and it took him three weeks to get rid of his fears and shaking. Hinata had in clear words told him what was going to happen to him if he allowed himself to be delusional to the truth of the world and even though it was cruel of her to say as such, she made him remember what the villagers had done to him when he was younger.

The Naruto that emerged from that talk was a serious one and had cold look similar to what Hinata had cultivated. Both of them understood , especially Naruto who had been made to read several journals of ninja including First and Second Hokage. Naruto had learned several things and Hinata had made sure he had lost his exuberance, inability to stand in one place and his hyperactivity. She had introduced him to meditation to calm him and Shogi to sharpen his mind. Also she had gotten him books on strategy and tactics. All in all Hinata in the period of four years had changed one Naruto Uzumaki into a boy fit to be called a leader of a clan with a very sharp mind and several ninja skills with extremely good basics. In all it was what she wanted but now she wanted Naruto to know about his heritage and that entailed a trip to the ravaged grounds of Uzu no Kuni and Uzushiogakure. But even Sandaime would know if Naruto simply disappear for a year. She needed to persuade him when she remembered the letter from one Uzumaki-Senju Mito to her great Grandfather. Smiling devilishly to herself, she went to her room while her mind began to plot for the upcoming meeting with the Sandaime Hokage next afternoon.