Chapter 8

Long time, no post! I seriously, as you probably already know, have a bad habit of waiting forever to update! Trying to work on that but what can I say? I'm a procrastinator by nature, lol!

On another note, I finally got a chapter with over 2,000 words (yay me!)

"I take it Minato doesn't know about you three?" Kushina asked from her perch atop Naruto. The teen was groaning quietly in pain and seemed to be barely conscious. Katsumi winced in sympathy but made no move to help him. He wasn't in enemy hands and she was not about to get her butt kicked, either. Anyway, she did try to tell him so he brought this on himself.

"No. You and the Hokage are the only people who know, Kaa-chan." Katsumi answered and then froze. "If that's alright that I call you that?"

Kushina opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. "It's fine so long as we're alone, I guess."

"Thanks, Kaa-chan!"

"Ah, no problem. No, what are we supposed to do?"

"We?"

Before anymore could be said, Sasuke interrupted.

"Don't talk about this here."

"Nobody asked you." Katsumi snapped.

"No. He's right. Let me get dressed and then we'll leave."

The abandoned shack was quiet as they waited for someone to begin the discussion they had come there for.

"I guess I'll go first." Naruto finally broke the silence. His bumps and bruises had healed by now but that didn't take away the mental scars. He sat in between Sasuke and Kushina, leaning away from the crazy redhead that was apparently his and Katsumi's mother. His shoulder touched Katsumi's and she sharply shifted her chair away from his.

"Well?" Kushina prompted.

Naruto jumped at the sharp tone and Katsumi snickered. Naruto sent her a brief glare before finally answering.

"Kurama told me something interesting earlier." He started. "He told me that this world may seem like our own but isn't really. He said that worlds may share characteristics but, ultimately, they are their own world and so-"

"So all our planning was useless." Sasuke finished in a blank tone.

"Just great! Now we're basically going into this mess blind and could mess it up worse than the other world."

"There isn't any way that it could end up worse than the other world, Katsumi." Naruto argued.

"How in the hell would you know?"

"Well," Kushina interrupted another argument brewing. "from what I learned from the Kyuubi earlier, Obito was the catalyst to all that happened where you came from."

"Yea. The whole Kanabi bridge thing." Katsumi said.

"And him seeing Kakashi kill that Rin girl." Naruto added.

"I figure that your best bet, regardless of whether the timeline is different, is to make sure that he doesn't die. If not, make sure Rin doesn't die. Does anyone know how she died?"

"Suicide." Sasuke answered shortly.

"I thought you said Kakashi killed her?" Kushina said slowly, looking at each one of them in turn.

"He did but not by his own decision. He told us that Rin jumped in front of him." Katsumi clarified.

"Ah. Did Kurama say anything else?"

"Oh yea! We're stuck here!" Naruto voiced rather cheerfully."

"You're happy about that?" Katsumi asked incredulously.

"I thought you weren't talking to me?"

She sniffed and turned her head away. "I'm not."

"What is going on with you two?"

"Nothing." Both chorused before glaring at each other.

"Alright then...Is that all we wanted to talk about?"

"Are we going to tell tou-san about this?"

"Do you want to?"

Katsumi sighed as she looked down at her lap. "I don't know. I feel like I do but not yet. He doesn't have to know yet, I guess. Unless it comes to a point that we won't be able to keep him in the dark anymore."

"Then why did you let me know?" Kushina asked.

"Well, we were planning on keeping you in the dark but that whole thing in the hot springs happened." Katsumi paused then. Seeming still herself, she turned toward Naruto. "How did you know where I was anyway?"

Strangely, Naruto's face darkened slightly and there was a scowl as he crossed his arms. "Just know that I managed to find you."

"Okay..." She drew out the word but didn't pry.

"Are we done now?" Kushina sighed in exasperation and slight impatience.

"Yes." Sasuke said.

"Yay!" The cheery redhead jumped out of her seat with a cheer. "Who's up for ramen?"

"Me!"

"Hey! Minato!" Kushina called out to the familiar blond man sitting at the ramen booth. Naruto and Katsumi trailed slightly behind her, a good foot apart, both salivating at the smell emanating from the stand. Sasuke had opted to go to the training ground than sit with a family of extreme ramen lovers.

Minato looked up in surprise with some noodles hanging from his mouth. He started to say something but Kushina interrupted.

"Don't talk with your mouth full, you heathen!"

Minato swallowed. "Hello to you, too, Kushina." He looked around her as she settled herself in beside him to see the twins. "I take it you two have put aside your differences?"

"These are the last seats left, Minato-nii." Katsumi answered coolly.

He sighed. He had sincerely hoped but...well, they'd get over it eventually. The Third Shinobi War was looming on the horizon and they didn't have time to be in an argument with each other. However, he decided that that conservation was to be had in the privacy of his own home.

"How do you now these two hellions?" He asked his not-so-secret crush. In fact, it seemed that everyone seemed to know about his feelings except for the beautiful redhead sitting beside him.

"I met them in the hot springs. Two beef ramen, please!"

"Katsumi, I understand, but Naruto?" He asked while trying not to glare at his younger brother. He had obviously failed if the look Katsumi was giving him was any indication. He quickly turned his eyes back to Kushina.

"He was looking for Kushina and crashed through the wall." She said through a mouthful of noodles. He raised a brow at her and she rolled her eyes in response. He shook his head with a smile.

"What did you do?"

"Kicked his ass, of course." She answered with a haughty tone of voice.

It was silent for a moment before they both broke into laughter.

"And he survived?" He was finally able to ask.

"He has pretty good healing, strangely enough. Almost as good as mine."

Minato's eyes widened in shock. Kushina's healing skills were pretty amazing, whether they were her own or the Kyuubi's and for his brother to have the same?

Weird...

"Another pork, please!"

"Stop ordering so much! Kushina-nee is payin for this!"

"But it's so good!"

"Stop!"

There was a smack and a whine.

"...Fine."

Minato rolled his eyes at his younger siblings.

"Are they really fighting?" Kushina whispered as she, too, looked at the twins.

"I think they have to remind themselves that they're still fighting." He whispered back.

This got a quiet, beautiful laugh out of her and he smiled in return.

Sasuke panted heavily as he sat in the middle of the training ground, the three posts in front of him all blasted apart and deep gouges in the ground. He had spent a good six hours here and it was now midnight. Six hours of intense training and he couldn't even lift his arms to wipe the sweat from his brow, much less get up and try to walk to the Uchiha clan.

Just thinking about his clan, especially Itachi- just the name caused a burning to begin in his eyes. The last time he had seen him was when they had their last fight and he had died. To see him once again alive and happy, it shocked him and made him all the more angry at Konoha, and even his clan, for what they had done to his brother. His clan had tried to force him to turn his back on his village but it had backfired. They had never realized that his love for this village was greater than his ties to his family and so he had become a double agent. All his efforts to help to his clan from the path of self-destruction they were on was for naught when Danzo ordered the Uchiha clan's eradication. In the end, Itachi did it if only so Sasuke's life was spared in the end.

He remembered that night from hell a lot more clearly than he would have liked. He remembered the distinct smell of blood in the air and the deathly quietness that had taken over the compound. He remembered the shock and the horror of seeing his fellow clansmen dead and mutilated all around him. He had run then, crying out for the safety his family only to receive more shock and pain when he found his parents dead. Then, Itachi had stepped into the room and, for one second, he had been happy at the sight of his older brother; that is, until he saw the bloody katana in his hands and his blood-red eyes.

It was that night, the cold look and the even colder words, that had stared his hatred for his brother. A hatred and a thirst for revenge that lasted 8 years until he had finally killed his brother. That action didn't relieve his thirst for revenge, however, as he had learned that it was all due to Danzo (i.e. Konoha) that what happened to him had happened. Instead, he turned his hatred to Konoha and it's inhabitants, regardless of whether or not they had anything to do with the Clan Massacre.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, in Naruto's case), he had failed and now he was here, the last place he wanted to be and with people who flared the long-buried pain deep in his heart.

Seven the next morning found future Team 7 stood in the Hokage's office along with Kushina.

"Is there a reason we're here so early, jiji?" Naruto yawned.

"Obviously." Sasuke scoffed, earning a glare from both Katsumi and Naruto.

The Hokage coughed. "You are to discuss your standing within this village due to certain...circumstances." The look he cast toward Kushina caused the red-haired woman to snort.

"I already know about them, jiji." She waved him off.

"Well, that certainly makes things easier. The Chuunin Exams are coming up."

The three genin blinked in surprise. Well, he certainly got right to the point.

"It's that time of year already?" Kushina asked with a certain wistfulness to her voice. "When, exactly, is it and why am I here?"

"Wait?!" Naruto interrupted. "We have to take the exam again? Isn't one time enough? can't you use your power as Hokage and just go ahead and make us Chuunin?"

Sarutobi sighed. "No. That wouldn't go over well with the council considering that you are, to them, strangers here. No, if you want to go higher than a genin then you will have to take the exam."

"This is some bullshit! Ow!" Naruto yelped.

"Watch your tongue." His mother snapped.

"To answer you question, Kushina, the exams are in two months and you are their jounin instructor for the time being."

"What?!"

"We don't need an instructor! We already know what to expect in the exams." Katsumi and Kushina said at the same time.

"I'm going to assume that the chuunin exams in your time was no during the war-time, correct?"

Katsumi nodded.

"These exams are going to be more difficult because we can only afford to have the best of the best to help with the upcoming war. Therefore, you will have a jounin instructor or you can stay genin, understand?"

"Yes, Hokage-jiji." Katsumi muttered sullenly.

"If I'm their jounin instructor, I can do whatever, right?" Kushina questioned with a weird smile on her face.

The three teens, even Sasuke, were filled with unexplainable wariness.

"Yes..." Sarutobi eventually answered.

"So, you wouldn't mind if we took a little field trip to Akagahara then?"

"I don't see why not."

When Kushina turned to them with a wide grin and an evil chuckle, they couldn't help but want to run away.

Hope you liked this chapter even though, once again, it took forever! Don't forget to review, favorite and all that good stuff :)

Random fact again!: Every two minutes, we take more pictures than all of humanity in the 19th century! (It's all those selfies!)