Author's Note:

Shion, the priestess mentioned in the last chapter and the mother of Naruto's weird political-daughter-thing is from the first Shippuden movie. At the end of it Naruto made a promise that he'd help provide her an heir when the time came. I guess they made good on that promise.

Just in case anyone was wondering.

Please enjoy this next chapter. Thank you!
- Rii

Chapter 7 - Red Beacon

It took three days for the blood to be processed.

This is what happened on the first day.

Inou woke up at 5 AM to train by himself, when the sun was just starting to rise and the ground was still wet around his toes.

Nadeshiko had gotten up earlier, when it was still dark, to make him breakfast and then leave the house, keeping it out for him without a word or any other indication that any of this was her doing.

Inou supposed that his mother had made it for him the night before. She knew how hard he worked.

Sasuke didn't notice any of it, since Inou had long since eaten it and cleaned up by the time he was awake.

Sasuke left the house at 7 AM, but Inou left the house much earlier.

(Inou didn't meet with his team until 10 AM, at Shikake's insistence, but he kept himself busy in his own way until then.)

Yukio left the house at 9 AM, after eating breakfast with Naruto, both of them still in their pajamas, hair sticking out at all angles.

"I'm gonna be a little busy next week, kiddo. You think you can manage on your own for a while?" Benio told him, when they met for training, shortly afterward. And Yukio had narrowed his eyes and asked her why, so she explained for him.

Benio had been asked, a while back, to serve as the second chief examiner for the chuunin exams, to oversee the elimination round that went on in the Forest of Death, which she was more than happy to do. Though she'd be happier if they'd just send her a letter or something - seriously, if anyone ever wanted to tell her something, they always managed to somehow catch her right as she was settling down to do something else. But, no, she had to report in person. Oh well.

She'd been doing it for the past few years, anyways, and thoroughly enjoyed it every time. Of course, she wasn't a mean person, but there was just something so cute about seeing the first-time participants squirm in fear, looking up at the trees in Training Ground Number 44 with visions of death in their heads as she handed them the consent forms. But it was all okay. The Forest, she told them, was what you made of it.

Heck, when she was a little squirt of a thing, participating in the exams herself, she went in without fear, scoffing at the stories of spooks and spirits that the older students told her, no doubt to psych her out. That was probably due to Shikamaru-sensei, this confidence of hers. He didn't really believe in ghosts, and neither did she.

(The Will of Fire was another thing entirely, but that stayed out of the discussion.)

But… despite all her confidence, when she went into that forest, she always felt like someone, something was watching her. But she gulped and ignored it, and soldiered on.

(She still felt it, to an extent, even now, as a proctor. That watchful, watching presence.)

(…she liked to think that it was just the giant leeches making her think that. Holy damn, those were scary.)

It wouldn't be weird to say that it almost felt like forest had allowed her to pass, because she showed no fear.

Well, and also because her team worked together and kicked a ton of ass, and so did she, and they weren't complete idiots, of course. You couldn't get through the Forest with courage alone. Guts only got you so far. You had to have skill, too. And teamwork.

Plus, there was a tendency for people who abandoned their teammates to be found, pretty early on into the exams, knocked senseless or nursing a bad poison-moss rash. Or both.

Basically? Bad things happened to people that didn't stick together.

(Though there hadn't been a single genin casualty in the Forest for decades. Just losses of consciousness and direction.)

(The same could not be said of the tournament, but that was for another time.)

The fear thing certainly worked as an excellent metaphor, though! So it was what she told the nervous hopefuls going in, and it was what she told Yukio. All of it, the teamwork thing included. That was just important, okay? Even though Yukio didn't have a team of his own, it was important.

His thoughts? "Neat."

Benio laughed. "Maybe next year I'll be seeing you in those exams."

"You wanna bet on it, Sensei?" Yukio replied, grinning.

(If he even lasted that long.)

One thing that Yukio was really good at was hiding just how nervous he really felt about things. But Benio didn't really know this.

What Benio did know was that his aim with a shuriken was already so good that every seven or eight out of ten thrown would hit the targets set up in the training field. And after only two weeks. Benio was pretty impressed. And she didn't even need to mention his taijutsu skills. She still had no idea where that had come from.

He still had no idea what the hell about anything to do with chakra, but seriously, everyone had trouble with that at first. They'd tackle that later. But the less technical aspects, the strikes and the stances and hand signs, he retained like a second language.

All throughout the afternoon, foreign teams, the little triplets of genin that came with their teachers, poured into Konoha. The paperwork that came with processing their arrivals was overwhelming.

Andou, naturally, was overjoyed by the challenge.

And at sometime between 3 and 4 PM, a strange assortment of individuals arrived at the gates of Konoha; ten, fifteen men in traditional clothing with swords and stony looks on their faces. They had an urgent message to deliver, a request from the head of the Taki syndicate himself: Boss Tensho. The way they said his name, it was clear he was important.

Despite attempts to redirect them by the chuunin posted at the gates, they demanded to speak to the Hokage directly, so that their message might be delivered and the proper actions taken afterward.

They left this statement unvoiced, but one could hear from the steel on their backs and in their eyes the words, "Or else."

Naruto was summoned immediately, and he had the Taki syndicate's representatives sent to his office, so he might help them out.

There'd been a memo about this, hadn't there. Oh dear.

The leader of the band introduced himself as Nobuhiro of the Inaba clan, and explained that he was acting on behalf of the Taki family, and that was where the conversation on his background ended, as far as he was concerned. He had a scar over his right upper lip, like a harelip; the skin was puckered and left his teeth exposed in a near-permanent snarl. Naruto tried not to look at it.

"So here's the story, Hokage," he said, roughly, quickly. "My boss's daughter, Lady Kiine, ran away from home recently, an' we got reason to believe that she's stayin' somewhere in Konoha. You heard anything about this?"

"Huh, really?" Naruto said, and set his eyebrows low, his face growing as stony as the bodyguard's. "No, I've heard nothing about this. When do you think she got here?"

"She ran off about a month ago, an' lemme tell you, we've been running around like chickens with their heads cut off tryin' to find her," Nobuhiro replied. He was playing with a pretty little knife in a black and white lacquer case, sheathing and unsheathing it. Slide, click. Slide, click. "Considering how long it took for us to get here, an' according to the stuff from our… inside sources, she probably got here 'bout two, three weeks ago."

Naruto's eyes narrowed as he looked around at the rest of the guards in their office, carrying identical swords, identical scowls.

Well, except for one individual, a boy, maybe fourteen years old, standing behind Nobuhiro's chair. He wore dusky purple robes, and he held a sword, a stunning piece of work in a white sheath, very tightly, with pale hands. His eyes were downcast, and his dark hair fell into his face.

He seemed very out of place, like a flower growing out of a pile of boulders. Something about him struck Naruto as vaguely familiar, but he couldn't quite place why.

"Sounds pretty serious," Naruto said, nodding, lacing his fingers together on his desk, taking his eyes away from the boy with the sword and back onto the scar on Nobuhiro's face that he was trying not to look at. "So what can I, uh, do for you?"

"Well, we'd rather not rely on the help of ninjas," Nobuhiro said, scarred lip curling, almost in disgust, as he spoke, "but given where we are right now, we ain't got a choice. So we gotta ask for your help. Desperate times call for desperate measures, y'know what I mean?"

Naruto tilted his head a little, mouth lowering. Uh, okay? "Sure, sure. So, what is it I can do to help you? I mean, we're kinda busy on account of the chuunin exams but-"

"What you can do to help us is find my Boss Tensho's daughter as quickly an' as painlessly as possible, you get me?" Slide, click.

"…sure, I totally understand that." And Naruto smiled because, hey, as painlessly as possible, right? "D'you have any photographs of her, or distinctive features we should look for? I can have a memo sent out and-"

"Yeah, s'amatter of fact, I do. Yuki, hand it over."

Silence. Slide, click.

"Yuki. Hand it over."

The boy standing behind Nobuhiro shifted the sword to one hand, dug into his robes, and produced a photograph, handing it to him. There was resistance in the exchange, the boy holding onto it tightly with his fingers, and Nobuhiro glancing at him for a moment with anger, before sliding it across the desk to Naruto.

It was a color photograph, a formal portrait of a girl of maybe fifteen, sixteen years of age, with red hair falling over her shoulders, held away from her face by gold combs. The kimono she wore was obviously expensive, all gold thread and embroidery the color of autumn leaves. Her blue eyes were harsh and almost intimidating, beautifully dangerous, her lips painted a deep and blood-like color.

Naruto tilted his head this way, that way, as he looked at the photo.

…huh.

"I'll have copies made of this and distributed to our staff around the city. We'll all be on the lookout for her by this evening, don't worry," Naruto said, picking up the photograph. "There any more details you can add? To make the search easier."

"She's got a buncha freckles on the back of her neck. And a scar on her left shoulder. That's about it," Nobuhiro said.

"Freckles on the neck, scar on the shoulder, got it. I'll have that included," Naruto said. There was a stack of sticky notes on his desk, and he peeled one off and stuck it to the photograph after writing "freckles on back of neck, scar on shoulder." "You're actually kinda lucky, y'know! We got guys all around doing surveillance work 'cos of the exams and-"

"There anything else you can do for us, Hokage?" Slide, click.

"Honestly, this is about all I can do. I'm sorry, I wish there was more. Plus you guys are still out there lookin' for… uhh…"

"Lady Kiine." Slide, click.

The boy with the sword's hands tightened their grip.

"Ah, sure, sorry. Lady Kiine, right." Naruto nodded, committing the name to memory. Hopefully. He smiled. "We'll be doing our best, Nobuhiro-san!"

"Yeah, you'd better," Nobuhiro said, and got up. "We'll be checkin' in with you tomorrow, after we do some diggin' of our own. C'mon, boys, let's go."

And they did.

Though the boy with the sword glanced at Naruto, for a moment, before leaving. He had brown, brown eyes, and his face was hauntingly beautiful.

(It serves to be said that any other person would have mistaken the boy for a girl, at this point. But Naruto just knew otherwise, though he couldn't quite place why or how he knew. Call it a hunch.)

Their eyes met for only a moment, and he was just as quickly there and gone, ducking behind Nobuhiro and his posse.

Naruto glanced at the photograph on his desk again, blue eyes meeting blue eyes.

He shivered from the déjà vu, not quite identifying what had caused it, the photograph or the boy.

By 5 PM, copies had been made of the photograph of Taki Kiine, and distributed amongst the Konoha staff, proctors and teachers and guards alike.

Andou confirmed that, yes there had been a memo about the Taki syndicate. Three, in fact, since the initial reports of Kiine's going missing.

Crap, had there really?

Yes, really.

Crap.

Naruto could only remember two. Sort of.

…crap.

By 6 PM, complaints were already coming in about the Taki syndicate's representatives.

The thugs - always described as thugs or goons or hooligans, by the people making the complaints - were being a nuisance, snooping around and being generally antagonistic to the chuunin guards around the city, refusing to answer any sort of questions. Heck, the closest things they gave to straight answers were akin to "We're lookin' for Boss Tensho's daughter, what have you done lately?"

They were freeloading food, saying they'd "pay for it later." They were scaring away business from other shops, by hanging about with nothing better to do, "on surveillance."

And, as one concerned mother reported, they were corrupting the children.

"'Yer in a useless profession, kid.'" Her impression was a bit exaggerated, but Naruto managed to keep himself from laughing. "Can you believe that? Saying that to my child? He's eight!"

The terrified eight year old in the useless profession peered out from between his mother's arms, looking more frightened at the prospect of losing oxygen from her grip on him than the prospect of continuing in a career with no future.

Naruto comforted her, like he did with all the others, and assured her that he'd do something about it when he met with Nobuhiro-of-the-Inaba-clan in the morning.

Sasuke got home at 7 PM, after training with his team, meeting with Takeru along the way; he had been away on a mission of his own all day.

("Surveillance work, Father, can you believe it? I'm better than this.")

Inou went home at 8 PM, after training with his. He had lost his breath, and spent most of the evening trying to find it. Takeru kept shooting him glances across the table, when they convened for dinner, as if his efforts disgusted him.

Karai was waiting at home for them, with her mother, helping prepare the fried tofu for most of the evening, talking to her without words, practicing, worrying about Inou. If she could find his breath for him, she gladly would. She'd asked to be excused from training with her team early, so she could help out at home, and her sensei said he understood and let her go.

Hajime had gone out for the night.

Nadeshiko was somewhere.

Naruto didn't go home until well after 10 PM.

He entered the house, ready to apologize, when he saw that Yukio was asleep at the kitchen table, two empty instant ramen containers on the table, a third half-filled with cold, congealing noodles. His broken chopsticks were still in his hands.

Naruto's smile was tired, but it was genuine for the first time in hours. He walked over to the boy, reaching out a hand to rouse him, before noticing something odd.

There, on the back of his neck - what was that? A ring of mottled red marks, like someone had bitten him there.

It looked… familiar. But where had he seen it?

Sleeping on the couch, afternoon sun falling over their…

Wait, hadn't someone said something about…

Yukio stirred awake before Naruto could fully recall. "Mmwhassgoinon…?" he mumbled.

"You didn't have to wait up for me, y'know. You tired?" Naruto asked, smiling again.

"Mmyeah." He sat up, rubbing his eyes, yawning. "Training went long…"

"I understand. You go get your sleep, okay?" Naruto said.

"Mmkay," said Yukio, and stumbled a little as he tried to get up. Naruto caught him.

"Think you'll be okay?" There were no words in the reply. "All right, all right, c'mere."

Together, the boy and the Hokage went down the hallway, and into Yukio's room.

Yes, it really was his room, now, wasn't it? There was his rucksack, on the chair. That was his bed. The room no longer really smelled of the girl it used to occasionally belong to. It smelled, in a strange way, like him.

Yukio sat down on the bed and tucked himself into the sheets without taking his clothes off. "G'night…"

Naruto smiled. "Night, Yukio."

Naruto had no homework that night, though he could not sleep for quite a while, his mind swimming with images and half-remembered things.

Especially faces.

From the bedside table, he could almost hear his mother's voice in the dark.

"How do I work this thing, again?"

But for some reason, she spoke with Yukio's voice.