Disclaimer: I do not own the Naruto, Naruto Shippuden, or Baruto franchises.
Chapter 4: Reconnecting with old friends
Hinata was at odds with herself, her long time crush and secret friend had just arrived back to Konoha from his team's first C-rank; only he didn't return the same as when he'd left.
His sun kissed blonde hair was now stained with patches of red, his body was noticeably more fit then it had been before his mission, and instead of being the same height as her he was now at least a foot taller then either her or Satsuki, who admittedly was several inches taller then Hinata as well.
Hinata wasn't sure exactly what she had expected to happen to Naruto in the Land of Waves, but it certainly had not been to have turned into the adonis of a male she saw before her. She didn't know how to react. Nor could she shake that funny feeling growing in her stomach as she imagined all the possible ways she could get Naruto's shirt off.
So instead she asked, "What happened to you, Naruto-kun?"
Naruto flinched at the question, but knew he should have been expecting it. Even an idiot would have noticed the changes his bloodline had brought him if he'd gone away as a shrimp and came back like he was now, and the girls in front of him were the furthest things from idiots someone could be.
Naruto felt his throat dry up at the question. He'd never told them of his jinchuriki status after he'd discovered it for himself, and he wasn't sure how he could spin the story without either of them finding out.
Not that he didn't want to tell them, he did, but to Naruto it wasn't the right time. Especially after his changes. He didn't want them blaming the event on Tsudzuro, even if it was a logical conclusion due to his bloodline not being commonly known about.
"For now…" Naruto heard the dragon mummer in the seal. The words brought a strange sense of paranoia to the red streaked blond. Something about what the dragon said sounded oddly eerie. He shrugged the feeling off. He could think about their meaning when he got home; for now he had an explanation to produce for two increasingly expectant looking girls.
"uh….well … you see…" he stuttered, feeling nervous under their gazzes. "It...it turns out I have a bloodline!" he spat out, much to Satsuki and Hinata's shock.
"A bloodline?" Satsuki asked. Her voice portraying the surprise she felt at the announcement.
Naruto nodded, and quickly launched into an explanation of the events leading up to the Draconic Blood's awakening, excluding the parts involving Tsudzuro, and other than that he left nothing out about what he had discovered or been told of his bloodline. By the time he was finished each of the girls had an awed look on their face.
"Wow." Satsuki muttered, awed that such a bloodline existed. 'HA! Take that Sasuke! I told you Naruto-kun was special!' she thought triumphantly, imagining what her twin must have looked like when he'd found out about his teammate's new abilities. As awed as she was from the Draconic Blood, Satsuki was more satisfied that her brother finally had something that would knock his arrogant attitude down a few pegs.
Beside her, Hinata was in a similar state of thought. Her father had always been critical of her, having wanted a male heir instead of a 'weak' female. Hiashi's harshness was always worse when it came to the company Hinata kept. If she strayed and played with regular civilian children instead of other clan heirs and heiresses he criticized her choice of playmates for being of the 'inferior' sort. These criticisms were often accompanied by brutal training sessions where Hinata was left in a heap on the floor, tired and sore from his strikes.
However, when it came to Naruto, Hiashi had been particularly harsh the first, and only time, she'd been caught around him. The training session had been the most brutal Hinata had ever experienced, Hiashi had dueled her into the floor, giving her no warning and no indication of an incoming strike. He'd all but butured her by the time the session had finished, and not even looked back at the bloody mess of his oldest daughter as he'd walked away.
"If you associate with trash, you will be treated like trash." he'd said.
Fierceness burned in Hinata's eyes as she remembered that day. She didn't know why the older generation seemed to hate Naruto, but that day something in her had snapped, and she had decided that they would all regret having doubted her and the boy who had been so kind to her at the expense of his own well being. Since then, and at her own behest once she'd tracked him down and explained what had happened, Naruto and herself had been training in secret, each being the other's source of encouragement and determination.
They'd welcomed Satsuki into their fold the following year after the Uchiha massacre having seen how her brother had treated her during the academy lessons and knowing she needed a friend, and during the following years they played the village like a fiddle. Making the adults, and in Hinata's case her clan, look like the fools they were.
The three of them were the strongest in their age group, but had decided to hide it for the right time. Hinata played the weak and meak girl that she had been before the training session with her father, Naruto acted like the orange obsessed idiot that declared his dream of being Hokage at every chance he got, and Satsuki was the shy twin of the last male Uchiha. The only people who knew of their ruse were themselves, the Hokage, and Satsuki's mother Mikoto.
Now though, Hinata knew things were about to change. Naruto's new bloodline all but assured that, and she looked forward to it. 'Finally!' she thought, clenching her fists in anticipation. It was almost too much to contain, especially once she imagined the reactions of her father and the clan elders.
"This means we can stop hiding right?" Hinata's voice surprised herself as she had not even realized she'd started speaking. Beside her, Hinata felt more then saw Satsuki's questioning if not eager look.
Naruto's smirk was all the answer they needed.
xXx
"Greetings, honorable council." Hiruzen said as the council of Konoha filed in through the door of the conference room and split into their sides of the room.
"Greetings, Hokage-sama." the clan heads returned with nods of their heads. Leaders of their clans as they were, they still respected their village leader. The civilians, on the other hand, only nodded their heads in the barest of acknowledgements to the Hokage.
Hiruzen's smile tightened ever so slightly at the disrespect shown by the arrogant civilians, but he pushed it down as he remembered the reason for the meeting he'd called them to. 'I'm going to enjoy this.' he thought, resisting the urge to smirk at the thought.
The room was full of mutterings and the scrapping of chairs as civilians and ninja alike moved to take their seats in the room. Once they had, Hiruzen cleared his throat to begin speaking.
"What is the reason we've been called here, Hokage-sama?" only to be interrupted by one of the civilian council members, one of the most vocal and power hungry he noted with disdain as he glared at the pink haired woman.
"If you could hold your tongue for a moment, councilwoman Haruno, I was getting to it." he growled, blasting the woman with a miniscule amount of his killing intent. It seemed to work on her as she shrunk back with a scared nod.
Seeing this reaction from their leader, the clan heads smirked knowingly to the civilians, they realized the old man was getting his flame back and gearing up to wrestle the civilians back to their proper spot on the village food chain.
"As I was saying," Hiruzen began again, flaring his intent in case anyone dared to interrupt him again. "I have called you all here today to inform you that a bloodline long thought extinct has resurfaced in one of our genin, during their latest mission outside the village."
Normally, such an announcement would have been met with a course of cheers and questions at the prospect of a new bloodline, but as Hiruzen was still flooding the room with intent no one, especially the civilians, dared to ask a single question about it. The clan heads were content to sit in the silence and wait for their leader to explain more.
"I have spoken with the genin in question, and he has asked that news of his bloodline be kept secret from the majority of the village, however Uzumaki-san-"
The room exploded into roars of denial from the civilian council when Hiruzen said the name of the genin. They were the same as they always were whenever Naruto was mentioned. Calling for his death, the demon cannot be allowed to gain power and more.
The Hokage rolled his eyes hearing all this for the ninth time before once again blasting the room with killing intent, this time however he let far more than he had before loose. He'd purposely let Naruto's name loose, just so he could have an excuse to do what he'd wanted for a long time.
"ENOUGH!" he roared back at them standing from his seat. "ANBU!" he called.
Instantly, there were several bursts of smoke as the hooded figures appeared on either side of the council table. "Yes, Hokage-sama?" the quiet voice of Neko asked as she kneeled before him.
"Escort these fools from this room. I am fed up with their bigotry and power hungry ways." he ordered, despite the sputtering civilians trying to prevent it. "As of this instant the Civilian Council is disbanded." he announced, "they will each be held in prison cells pending the results of audits of their accounts and their comparisons to the village finances."
Hiruzen smirked as every one of the now former council members went white as a sheet. He had a feeling that several of them would be getting escorted to the executioner's block by the end of the week.
"Hai, Hokage-sama!" Neko coursed as she, and her team disappeared with the civilians in clouds of smoke.
During the whole event the ninja side of the room could only smirk, even Shikaku Nara, who was perpetually sleeping whenever there was a meeting as it was too boring otherwise, was awake with a smirk.
Collectively they all shared the same thought. 'About time!'
xXx
Several hours later Hiruzen sat at his desk, a thoughtful look on his face as he went over the meeting that had followed the civilians' exit from the chambers. After the civilians had left, or rather had been forced from, the room, the rest of the meeting had gone relatively smoothly.
Questions had been asked and answers had been given, or at least as much as Hiruzen knew Naruto would be comfortable in telling them, which was as little as possible. Pretty much it had been a standard meeting; something the aged Hokage had not had for several years.
However, as he contemplated the meeting, something nagged at him. Decades of being a shinobi, and even more so of being a village leader had ingrained into him a certain sense of suspicion. Hiruzen knew each of the clan leaders were loyal to the village and him and would die to protect the leaf and all her peoples. However, when it came to Naruto, the Nara, Akimichi, Inuzuka and Uchiha clans were the only ones the elder Sarutobi knew he could trust with the boy.
The thing nagging at him then, was not one of those four clans. Rather, as the meeting had gone on, Hiruzen's eyes had been drawn to the leader of the Hyuga. Hiashi's expression, like always, had been indifferent, but Hiruzen had learned how to read beneath someone's expression. During the meeting Hiashi's face had said it all; he was not happy with the news, not in the least.
This had been surprising to the aged Hokage, as he had thought Hiashi would have been one of those that could understand Naruto's position since the man's clan used the Caged Bird Seal.
"Apparently not," he muttered, deciding he would have to watch the Hyuuga head closely for the foreseeable future.
'For now though,' the Hokage gained a mischievous look in his eyes as he reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a bright orange book.
For the next few hours the room was filled with the man's giggles as he read his student's book.
xXx
"How did this happen?" Tsudzurao asked in bemusement at his host's predicament.
'Satsuki,' Naruto thought back, weeping quietly at his state as he made his way back to his apartment and Haku.
If one were to look at the young man right that moment they'd be forgiven for thinking that he'd just been put through a meat grinder, inside a volcano, and underwater.
His clothes were shredded to pieces and damp in some places but smoldering in others. Naruto looked down at his pants and mentally wept, picturing the particularly large and hot fireball Satsuki had almost got him with. The cloth of one of legs ended at the knee when he'd not been fast enough to completely dodge it with a substitution.
Tsudzuro sighed in exasperation; Naruto was quickly developing an aversion to fire. Not completely unreasonable considering the company he kept and their use of the stuff, but still one would think with his new bloodline Naruto would be more tolerant of it.
"And what did we learn?" the dragon asked; remembering exactly what had led to his hosts condition.
"Never let a girl sneak up behind you?" Naruto thought back, causing Tsudzuro to sigh.
"Baka." he muttered, then thought better of it as Satsuki had technically snuck up behind Naruto and caught him by surprise. "Close enough."
The two turned their attention to the outside world, and those that had begun following Naruto. "How are you going to deal with them?"
"Like I told the old man earlier," Naruto replied, running a finger over the blade of a kunai in his pocket. "They're trying this shit again. I'm gonna make them think twice before doing it again."
He made a sudden left into an alleyway and the sizable crowd behind him hurried to follow after him only to be left gapping when they found their target gone, and only a wall standing where he should have been.
"You know," a voice said from behind them; "I haven't even been back a day yet and already you guys try this." Naruto said, his arms crossed and a scowl present on his face.
The crowd of villagers glared at him and several readied mallets, or pipes or even pieces of wood. "This is the end for you, Kyuubi brat!" one of them yelled.
"Wow." Naruto's voice dripped with sarcasm and venom. "Going with that old line. Haven't heard that one in a while."
The villagers either didnt care or were too stupid to notice that Naruto wasn't cowering like he normally did. Several of them moved to ready themselves, but a sudden feeling of dread washed over them and stilled their feet.
"I've gotten real tired of being chased and beaten by you idiots." Naruto said summoning a trio of shadow clones. "So let me give you this warning, your only warning." together, the four Naruto's activated the Ryugan. Their golden eyes spelled horrible and gruesome deaths for each of those in the crowd.
"Come after me again and you'll die."
He turned to walk away, but something whizzed by his head; thrown at him by one of the drunks in the crowd. "Don't you turn your back on us, Kyuubi! You must pay for what you've done!"
"What I've done?" Naruto whispered, his voice seemed to carry much further than it would have normally. It sent shivers down the spines of several of the civilians as Naruto turned back to the crowd. "All I have ever done to you is ask for a little recognition! All you do is see what the yondaime sealed into me, not me; the one saving all your sorry asses!"
His eyes glowed with rage and his blood was boiling as the civilians stood frozen. He took a deep breath in order to reign it and his intent in. "Think whatever you like." he scoffed "I'm done giving a damn."
He turned again and disappeared into thin air. But a whisper rang out for them all to hear.
"You've been warned."
Slowly the civilians managed to regain their mobility and work their ways out of the ally to do whatever it is they do.
xXx
"He has some incredible control over his emotions, that's for sure." Kurenai Yuhi muttered to the other two jonin with her.
"Yeah, pretty amazing, I wouldn't have blamed him for beating them all to a pulp though."
"Why the hell did he? I would have summoned my snakes to rip them a new one!"
"Of course you would have, Anko." the second voice said with a tone of exasperation to the third. "I would have sicked my hounds on them if it got to that point."
"Anko, Hana, enough." Kurenai said, before the two could carry on any further. She knew they both loved watching a good fight, or joining in on a good fight either worked for them. "We should just be happy things didn't escalate any further than a bottle being thrown."
The two groaned but neither said anything as they all disappeared in a whirl or leaves and smoke. One of the three hesitated for just a second longer. Taking that time to breathe in the dominating scent of the red streaked blonde and sighing in longing.
'Soon, Naruto-Kun.'
-CUT!-
Thats a wrap for this chapter. Just some filler to move the story along. Next time we get some training and the start of the Chunin Exams.