Disclaimer: Nope don't own Naruto, and I never will. I'm only saying this because I'm at gunpoint. I do own Naruto…I mean I don't!
Story: Fem!Naru Minato tells Kushina to flee to Suna, if something were to go wrong in Konoha after his death. Because of this, somehow Naruto is raised in the Sand.
Set as an AU.
Spoilers: …Probably?
Warnings: The usual stuff? I mean, most people who read my stuff are repeated readers, so they should know…otherwise…eh…
Pairings: Yondy!Kazekage/Fem!Naru
Suna no Hoshi
Chapter Five: Team Kickass, Assemble!
Naruto danced and hopped around her apartment, humming to some catchy tune she'd caught the other day.
"Da dada dun~ Da da!" she bopped her head, and after a particularly impressive hop, if she may say so herself, she found her other shinobi sandal she'd been looking for, for the past ten minutes.
"I have a team~" she sing-songed to the tune of the song.
She ran a hand through her short hair and nodded agreeably, grabbing one more item to complete the look. Securing the orange sash around her waist, she flattened and brushed down her clothes, making sure she was completely presentable. Then off she went, after one more quick glance out her window to see the Kazekage.
"Bye," she said cheerily, and then she was off to the Academy.
Once there, she noticed that the closer she got to her soon-to-be old classroom, the noise level was becoming worse and was that…sobbing?
She hurried up and opened the door, sweatdropping to see the utter chaos happening within. Shinoda looked harassed and hassled, like he was at his wit's end as he sat under his desk curled into a ball, gripping tightly to his head and entangling his fingers into his hair.
The rest of the class looked in various states of mourning and bedlam. The whole back row was wearing black, and some of the girls (and some guys) there wore veils as they sobbed into handkerchiefs. There was a corner protesting and having what looked like a sit down protest and holding several signs. She wasn't even going to mention the other stuff going on…
Naruto took a deep breath before coughing lightly, though even that (coming from her) managed to catch all of the attention in the room. Shinoda slowly peeked out from under his desk.
With imploring eyes and a gentle smile, she looked towards the whole class.
"My, my~ Why is everyone acting up today? I was hoping to reveal the news of my graduation and celebrate with my beloved class," her teasing tone in the beginning turned to being slightly sad, and still with that gentle smile, she continued to look at the class with a background full of sparkling roses behind her.
With a burst of energy, Sari and Matsuri separated themselves from the rest of the class and rushed towards her, trying to talk over one another and reassure her that they were very happy for her. The rest of the class followed suit, stampeding towards her with enthusiasm.
Shinoda kept glancing between the background oddly still there and Naruto, shaking his head.
"It's like a jutsu…"
When the class finally settled down, Naruto went around and said her goodbyes, with many going back to being teary, though they were all still congratulatory. When she'd gone back to a slightly (only slightly) less hassled Shinoda, whose hair was sticking out everywhere, she stood in front of him and gently took his hands. Looking at him with a fond gaze, using bright blue eyes, she gave him another of her usual gentle smiles (between her cool and gentle smiles, he always did prefer the gentle ones).
"I'm very sorry for all the trouble, my dear Shinoda-sensei," she said demurely. "I thank you for everything," she said formally, dipping her head and peeking up at him from underneath her front hair.
The rosy background appeared behind her again.
"It's…like a genjutsu," he muttered.
She took his hands still in hers and bent over them, kissing his knuckles sweetly and giving her gentlest smile and accompanied with soft eyes.
"H-hai, Ouji-sama," he said dazedly. "I hope you well as a genin, and luck."
And when she left for a nearby classroom where the graduates were waiting for team announcements, the classroom erupted back into chaos and Shinoda stood stock still in a daze, looking dreamily off into space.
There's something to be said about princes…
In the classroom with graduates, Naruto sat patiently in her seat, while inwardly she was bouncing eagerly in her mental seat. Various teachers and students would pass by her old classroom and hear the pandemonium, wondering what in the world was going on, and eventually shaking their heads and yet nodding in understanding when they realized she and her graduating was the cause of it.
And when Baki passed by it, he had stared strangely at the door for a second before shaking his head and moving along to the classroom he was about to pick up his new female genin at. Gaara would have been there also, having graduated with everyone, but he had probably skipped out on the last class and waited with Kankuro at the usual place, especially as the two already knew who was on their team and the two of them were already together. Which left him to Uzumaki Naruto…
He entered the classroom and called her out, and when a pretty blue-eyed, blonde girl strode over to him, he was torn between thinking she might be trouble after all or that she seemed somewhat normal enough.
She was dressed as a shinobi, albeit in a more boyish style with clothing that reminded him of Rasa's usual plain black attire underneath his kage robes, but then there was the strange addition of an orange sash around her waist. He didn't bring it up until they were out of the Academy and heading over to the training grounds he preferred to work in.
"You're wearing…an orange sash."
"Mmhm," she nodded cheerfully. "I love orange."
"It's not a shinobi color. It's…too bright," he said numbly, feeling the creeping "I told you so!" of his inner voice mocking him.
"Ah, but it's burnt orange! It's a dark orange, Baki-sensei!"
He looked at her strangely from the side, though they continued to walk together on the path he was leading.
"It's still not a shinobi color," he pointed out.
She shrugged. "Well…true, yes. But it's still a dark shade, isn't it? Besides, orange is commonly associated with amusement, the unconventional, extroverts, fire, activity, danger, taste and aroma, and the autumn season –my season! I was born in October, you know? It's just totally me, Baki-sensei. In fact, there should be a shade of orange renamed after me. And I'll have you know, it is an important symbolic color of Buddhism," she declared soundly.
Baki looked at her bemusedly. "Shinobi don't really practice religion."
"Heretic," she accused, pushing out her lower lip. "Besides! Orange is the complementary color of azure, the color of my eyes! It just makes sense!"
"I…don't know what to say to that," Baki said truthfully, wondering what he had gotten himself into. Although, according to Rasa, he'd compared her eyes more to the likeness of sapphires, rather than the azure sky blues…
His new student sighed dramatically and pouted the rest of the way, but she had determinedly tightened the sash around her waist defiantly.
He was still debating to himself whether or not his reaction yesterday had been too much.
"About time, Baki-sensei!" he heard Kankuro called out rudely.
He twitched.
"So where is he, Sensei?! I'm bored! I wanna go on missions already, and just…do something!" Kankuro belted out, and Baki irritably pushed the girl behind him forward to meet her two teammates.
Kankuro stared, while Gaara perked up and tilted his head, looking slightly confused before being back to stoic.
"You're the Desert Prince? You look like a girl," Kankuro blurted out.
Baki mentally face palmed.
"I am a girl," she blinked.
"...Oh."
There. Baki decided. He was most certainly sure his reaction yesterday was spot on, and he was going to make sure Rasa knew that too.
Gaara, however, had been ignoring his brother's mistaken assumptions as he continued to observe their new teammate quietly. He was sure she was familiar…She looked familiar and felt familiar, but he couldn't quite recall how. He uneasily noted it, but decided to keep quiet and keep it to himself in the meantime.
"Hey, hey! We're a full team now! Let's call ourselves 'Team Kickass!'" Kankuro said suddenly, and Gaara zoned in back to the conversation, which had seemed had taken another turn already.
"Eh…nah. Let's be 'Team BAMF,'" Naruto eagerly suggested.
"We vote then! Team BAMF," Kankuro said, and Naruto raised her hand immediately, followed by surprisingly that Gaara did as well.
"I vote Team BAMF," Gaara said stoically.
Kankuro cried out, pointing at his brother accusingly. "Traitor! How could you? What kind of brother are you?!"
Gaara hid his smirk.
"Haha! Team Badass Motherfu –" Baki covered Naruto's mouth.
"Team Kickass, it is," he muttered. "Let's go get a mission," he kept his hand over her mouth as he hustled her forward and led the way.
He refrained from the strong urge to massage his head. He'd rather call them Team Headache.
At the missions office, seeing that Rasa wasn't there, Baki assumed that he was still working in his office. Shrugging to himself, he stood forward and got the attention of the mission clerk in charge.
"Team…" he twitched, "Kickass reporting and requesting a D-rank."
He was stared at.
It was Suna tradition that each genin team come up with a name to christen themselves with, and typically they kept to using the name of their sensei, which was usually what was used formally on written forms and reports. And then there were the oddballs…
He would not forget how Rasa forcibly made their team call themselves 'Team Golden' and refused to have it any other way.
"Team…Kickass," the mission clerk blinked. "Um, here."
Baki hurriedly grabbed it and ushered his genin team out, embarrassed about the whole thing. He would have never uttered the name, had he not known that when Rasa heard about it, the man would've demanded he did and laughed while he did so. At least the Rasa he knew before he'd become Kazekage…
Thinking back on team names, there was also the old joke before Temari had been promoted, that she and her brothers' team would be called the 'Sand Siblings.' But since she got the flak jacket, the joke was more nostalgic now.
He wondered what Rasa would have thought about that.
"Alright, kids. Time for our first D-rank," Baki inwardly shook his head of thoughts. "This is what we have to do."
Suna was different from Konoha in many ways. They didn't need a second genin test, seeing as they vetted their genin thoroughly beforehand and the genin went through strict and comprehensive training in the Academy, with high standards. And then there was the manner of D-ranks that Suna genin undertook, in comparison to their Konoha counterparts...
…which is way far from Konoha D-ranks as you can get, as his team had been assigned to having to go out into the surrounding desert around Suna and eliminate a small colony of Sand Scorpions that have been alarmingly multiplying and particularly at a fast rate.
"Okay, Team. Let's see how well you can figure out how to work together. Trial by fire, you three!" Baki ordered, his face straight.
He wouldn't admit that he partly felt vindicated and had just maybe had decided on such a thing for as petty revenge.
"Team Kickass, assemble!" Kankuro raucously shouted, before one of the things actually showed up and he balked.
He watched Gaara stand back and his sand rushed forward, tackling one of the giant scorpions by himself, while Kankuro looked hesitant and then buckled up and summoned out his favorite puppet to work with. Naruto was standing still, staring at the scorpions, but she didn't look scared. Strangely enough, she seemed rather inquisitive.
"Hey…I don't think this is gonna work," she abruptly said, and the two boys looked her way.
"What? Then what else are we gonna do?! There are like a million of these things!" Kankuro shouted.
Gaara listened closely as well, but didn't say anything. He directed his sand towards two of the Sand Scorpions, but a third was coming.
"There's too many of them, they're freakin' huge, and they're actually pretty tough," Naruto grumbled, glaring at the scorpions like they had personally offended her.
She rummaged around her back and took out a scroll, summoning two pouches from it. She tossed one each to Gaara and Kankuro, either catching it with sand or with bare hands respectively.
"What are these?" Gaara questioned monotonously, though his hairless eyebrows scrunched together.
"Special explosive kunai."
Kankuro freaked out and held it away, while Gaara's eyes widened and he thrust it towards some of his sand and had it brought away from him at a distance.
"What the?! Why'd you throw it at us then?!" Kankuro shouted in alarm.
"Psh, you have to charge chakra through them first, Kankuro, and then they have a 10 second delay," Naruto huffed. "I'm not going to get you blown up, you know."
"Better than nothing," Gaara declared, and brought the pouch closer to him again.
He charged quite a few, and between himself and his sand, they'd thrown the whole lot towards the colony and their home quickly. Kankuro only took a second before mimicking him, using his chakra strings in substitute. Naruto was just throwing her own batch by herself, though she was doing so rapidly, as if she was used to and made a habit out of throwing explosive kunai at giant Sand Scorpions on a daily basis.
The explosions were numerous and Baki was pretty sure that this colony would be down for the count. Those things were tough, but not that tough.
When it was all over, Kankuro was yelling victoriously while Naruto cheered and threw a fist into the air. Gaara openly smirked, just the slightest hint of being smug showing through, and reminding Baki all too much of his father.
"Good job, you three. Let's report back and see if we can try to wrangle another mission out, if any is available."
The team reported back and found out, as usual, there was a lack of missions. And, as usual, they weren't going to be paid for this type of mission, as it was considered a service to the village.
Though the three grumbled about it, not too much considering Naruto understood and so did Kankuro and Gaara (especially being it was their father and they knew up close and personal), the team decided they'd have a celebratory meal together for their successful mission and for being an "awesome team" (in the words of Kankuro).
Baki just sighed and finally gave in to the urge to massage his head.
He trekked up further, to where he knew was Rasa's office, and waved off the secretary as he unceremoniously entered Rasa's office. He shut the door behind him loudly and then trudged to the seat in front of the Kazekage's desk, slumping in the chair.
"I hate you, Rasa. Completely."
The red-haired man raised an eyebrow at his friend, wondering what was wrong now.
"Liar. I knew this team was going to be hell," Baki grumbled.
Rasa's eyes lit up and he leaned forward in his chair eagerly. He wanted any news he could get about the team, particularly in regards to Naruto and how she was. He wanted desperately to know the lost girl he'd been looking for all these years, and see if there was anything he could do to make it up to her and her late mother for not being able to be there and help her out like he was supposed to. If anything, he was still upset that he hadn't been able to live up to the promise he'd made to his friend all that time ago, and was hoping that maybe he'd be able to start now.
"Well? Come on now, Baki. Tell me all about it. Tell me about the team, how Gaara is managing in the team, if Kankuro is alright with the arrangement…if Naruto is fitting in…"
Baki didn't notice Rasa's hesitation at the end, and had instead groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose as he lay back in the chair. But he did tell Rasa everything he'd asked about, particularly how Gaara was actually getting along well and that Kankuro was as boisterous as ever, though even he seemed to not mind the team or the new team member as much as he had before when first learning about her. Naruto was doing just fine and fit seamlessly into the team, and had even gotten them to work a solution to successfully complete their first D-rank. And then he reiterated from the beginning everything that had happened, detailing more about his first meeting with Naruto, up to the end where the team had actually amiably left for a group meal.
But Rasa, for some reason, still didn't seem satisfied.
He was beyond thrilled that the team had worked out, and even more so was a natural fit and looking to eventually be a tight-nit group. He was happy his sons were doing well, and happier still that Naruto seemed to get along and like his sons well enough.
But he wanted to know more.
After managing to get Baki out, he stared at what was left of his paperwork. He frowned and glanced out of his window, before coming to a decision. He pushed aside what little he had left to do tomorrow, and cut his time there early. Surprising his secretary when he left through his door before the usual time, he told her he was leaving early and that she could leave as well. He took a detour home and shoved off his kage robes, stuffing his hat somewhere where he didn't have to look at it, and looked at himself in the mirror.
He straightened out his outfit and ran a hand through his wine-red colored hair, and bit his lips nervously.
'Okay, Kushina. Here I go.'
He thought it would be best to seek her out himself, and hopefully get to know her or at least find out for himself how she was doing. Even if he couldn't get her to leave her current life and just go on to what he had been hoping to offer and help her out, he could at least know where she lived and keep tabs on her in hopes to make sure she was doing okay and she didn't get into trouble.
But he was going to meet her under the guise of a regular shinobi. He wasn't too sure she would be too comfortable or would be shocked that the Kazekage was personally inquiring after her, and might even be bothered or worried about it. It would probably be easier to get her to talk to him if he was just a normal jounin or something.
Thanks to his veil, his face wasn't as widely recognizable as it used to be, especially amongst younger generations. That is to say, that there wouldn't not be some record of it anywhere, or that people could still probably know him anyway…but time passing and his rare traveling outside made it less possible to know him from the next person. It probably didn't help that when on duty and working, he usually wore his kage outfit without fail, while he was keen on and preferred to go around the village as himself and in regular clothing.
So this made a perfect opportunity.
He would only need to locate her, and he was able to actually rather quickly. She was sitting at a noodle bar, chatting quietly to the cook. She looked even prettier in person, and seemed lively and animated as she talked. She was wearing similar clothing to him, aside from that dark orange sash around her waist that Baki harped about to him earlier, and he once again remarked that her eyes looked like sapphires.
Between Minato, Kushina, and Karura, he could admit they were right that he liked to put value into things, and that comparisons to precious gems was almost habitual. He wasn't even going to comment on the fact he drew likeness from her hair to gold, as he knew gold would just be yet another too precious a material he got caught up in, especially what with his Gold Dust (and he could hear Minato remarking that it would be a point of narcissism for Rasa, and the ensuing snickering he would have endured from them all about this whole thing).
He strode forward quickly and took a seat beside her, ordering quickly. At the height of nervousness, a thing he acknowledged he hadn't really felt in years, Rasa realized that he didn't know how the hell he was going to approach her.
"Hi there," she kindly greeted him.
Well, that took care of that.
Inwardly relieved, he gave her a strangely carefree smile (something he'd not done in years either).
"Hello," he gave a casual, lazy two-figured salute from the hand that was against the side of his face and what he'd been leaning his head against, as he propped his elbow on the counter.
"I haven't seen you here before," she noted curiously. "Are you new?"
"Isn't it polite to introduce oneself first, before asking questions?" he smirked, and it surprised him so much that he almost straightened and gave away his surprise of himself outwardly.
She flushed red slightly, before grinning. "My bad, my bad. I'm Uzumaki Naruto!"
"I'm…T-Tenoh," he hesitantly said, avoiding his actual name for the time being.
"Well, Tenoh, it's nice to meet you," she grinned impishly.
A genuine smile crossed his face.
"It's…nice to meet you too, Naruto-san."
Started 4/28/13 – Completed 4/28/13
A/n: Hohoho! That chapter was fun to write. So everyone meets finally! And the team is formed and taking action! Next chapter, Baki and training. Sort of. Mostly just 'poor Baki-sensei.' XD I hope everyone enjoyed, and please remember to review!
To Madi: Sorry this chapter was late! I try to update this every Monday, though sometimes I push passed the day.