A Shine of Gold on the Crimson Tide [Naruto/Exalted]

[Grounders10]

When a solar exaltation breaks free from its imprisonment the shinobi world, and Naruto, will be changed forever.

 

[Grounders10]

-0-0-0-0-0-

A Naruto/Exalted Crossover

A Shine of Gold in the Crimson Tide

By: Grounders10

-0-0-0-0-0-

1. Red and Gold

-0-0-0-0-0-​

Kurama watched the glowing golden shard that was just barely visible beneath his fur. It stuck from his hide like some kind of blindingly bright tick. The urge to scratch at it was almost unbearable, but he knew it wouldn't help to do so; just like it failed to help with the dozens of other, much smaller, gold and silver shards that were concealed beneath his fur. He hissed as the Shard quivered and inched a little bit more out of his body.

He had thought the old man had been crazier than normal when he had spoken of this day. Like most things, it seemed he had been correct. The ancient curse upon the world was leaving him, escaping through his very skin in an agony that had been building for over a century. The golden shards burned as they wriggled, but nothing hurt like the glowing semi-circle that was twisting and jerking in the base of his neck.

It jerked again, the flesh around it writhing in agony that he echoed. The great red fox's screams reverberated through the dreary enclosure of its seal. The iron bars of his cell rattled with each scream and shook with every strike of his nine tails against the walls, ceiling, and floor. And all the while voices continued to echo down the long narrow hallway leading out into the soul of his jailer and the world beyond.

"HURRY UP AND DIE!" Metal whirled as a man screamed his battle cry. Feet hammered damp earth and the wet thunk of flesh slapping against flesh echoed down the hallway. The voice from before coughed. "You shouldn't have done that!" he snarled.

"Don't touch Iruka-sensei! OR I'LL KILL YOU!" As the voice of his Jailer blasted down the halls of his soul and reverberated in the chamber Kurama all but blacked out from the pain as the shard in his neck writhed and fought against him. His flesh ripped and tore, rivers of blood running from the wound and matting his fur.

He did blackout when the shard came free, a spray of blood following its path. A wordless howl of pain echoed off the walls as his power surged violently, smashing against the walls and bars as he writhed. Despite his state of agony, he caught the glimmer of light as the shard zipped swiftly towards the bars and he acted. Teeth closed about the shard. He would not fail his task.

For an instant, he thought he had succeeded. He could feel it writhing inside his mouth, cutting his tongue and cheeks. Yet it was stuck. Then golden light flared and blazed out from between his teeth before the shard smashed a path out through one of his canine teeth, the shards of chakra infused enamel splashed into the perpetual layer of water on the floor as he howled in pain once more.

The golden shard punched a hole through the iron bars of the seal just in time to avoid his second lunge. His snout got caught on the bars as his paws attempted to reach through the gaps for the golden shard that had stopped just out of reach in the chamber beyond. It spun there idly, floating in the center of the chamber with deceptively serene grace.

Kurama beat the bars with his tails as he bit and clawed at the seal like he hadn't since his first day in these squalid conditions. He couldn't fail. One duty. One. That was the burden the old man had given him. He couldn't fail it here.

And yet, despite the hole in the bars, the seal was as tight as ever. He lashed out with his chakra, reaching for the shard through the hole it had created. A pulse of golden light slapped aside his efforts contemptuously, blasting him back across the seal into the furthest wall. Small tidal waves of water slapped against the walls as he pulled himself to his feet again. He limped back over to the bars, ignoring the blood trickling down his neck as he stared at the shard in horror.

Golden power poured off the artifact in giant strands of woven light that threaded themselves into the ceiling and floor and walls. From each point of contact bleak stone turned to marble. Iron to gold. Water to dry floors with lavish carpets and marble tiles. It was infecting and twisting, warping his jailer with its power and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

The bars of his cell rang as he struck them again in frustration. "I failed," he growled, snarling at the shard. As if in response, as though to add insult to injury, a new thread of light spun off the artifact and struck the bar of the seal furthest from the hole it had made. Light rippled up and down the length of the bar turning it the same golden shade as the shard itself before light spread to the next bar in line. As the next bar turned gold a fine mesh of gold formed between them.

He stared, horrified, as the artifact reinforced his cage. "No!" He threw himself against the gate again, and again, and again. It was futile, of course, he had tested himself against it so many times now that the futility had been pounded into bruises across his body that had only added to his constant pain. It was trying to cut him off, put him away more thoroughly than even the power of the Shinigami itself could manage. It was trying to prevent him from communicating the evil of this shard to his host. Of trying to mitigate its evil.

He gave up on mauling the bars as yet more of them turned to gold. The shard would grant power, immense world-shattering potential to its host, and it would appear to do so without asking a cost of its wielder. There was always a cost to power though, and this thing demanded one of the soul. It would poison his soul and mind, just as the stories of the old man said. He couldn't let that happen. The boy had to be warned. That stupid human child was the only one who could possibly restrain himself now.

The gold swept over more bars, drawing ever closer to the gap in the gate. The gap that was his best chance to leave a warning, but how? It couldn't be words, the boy would never trust them. It had to be something permanent, lest he forget. Something he saw every day perhaps?

A thought occurred to the great beast and Kurama grinned widely. His previous jailer would have probably appreciated his idea, at least if his intended target was someone other than her son. His chakra rushed the gap in the gate even as the golden wave overran the seal covered lock. Bubbling red chakra rushed past the floating shard and washed down the hallways of the soul, overtaking the golden wave that surged across every surface enforcing change with every inch.

He had little time and so poured as much effort into this last act as he could. Enough chakra to reshape a continent was poured into the effort and once the golden light swept over the gap in the gate, cutting him off he could only grin as he fell to his side, breathing weakly from the effort. He laughed. His mark had been left. There was always a price to be paid for unwanted power and the boy would know it every time he looked into the mirror.

His laughter echoed through the halls of the soul for a long time afterwards.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

Bright light stabbed at Naruto's eyes as he returned to consciousness. The familiar 'beep-beep-beep' of hospital equipment let him know where he was. He groaned. "Stupid hospital," he grumbled. His voice sounded off, higher-pitched like it had cracked again.

"Awake at last, Naruto?" the familiar wizened voice of the Hokage cut into his thoughts. He sat up and turned to the voice. Sarutobi Hiruzen was the Sandaime Hokage, the leader of their village, and despite a lack of blood relations, their relationship was more like grandson and grandfather than leader and subordinate. And now he was sitting by the large window of the hospital room at a folding table, his triangular white and red hat sitting in a chair at his side as the wrinkled old man sorted a small stack of paperwork. He was smiling.

"Hey Jiji," Naruto waved. There it was again, his voice was higher pitched than normal, he was sure of it. He rubbed his throat. Something felt off.

"You've been asleep for the last six hours," old man Sarutobi said as he tapped the stack of papers against the desk to line them up and set them aside.

He grimaced. That explained why his mouth was like chalk. "Can I get some water?" he asked, listening to his voice. Yeah, it was too high pitched and not like it had been cracking either. His throat was still a bit on the dry side.

The Hokage made a small gesture with his left hand that Naruto barely caught. He was probably signalling one of the ANBU that were always following the old man around. "Of course. I'm sure a nurse will be by shortly," he said, standing up with a small groan. "How are you feeling Naruto?" he asked.

"... fine, I guess?" Naruto responded after a moment. Beyond his voice and throat, he actually felt great. The bruises and chakra exhaustion from practicing the Kage Bunshin no Jutsu for hours on end had disappeared, though that wasn't so unusual for him. Training exhaustion tended to disappear after a couple of hours at most. No, what was different was a… He was having issues finding the words. Like things were finally right? That wasn't quite it but… Things were right. Somehow he felt oddly certain of that.

"Hrm, I see," The old man ran his hand through his beard. He walked around the small table and over to Naruto's side. "There is quite a bit you would like to ask me about last night, I imagine."

He shrugged. "The fox isn't that big a deal," he replied with a cheesy grin. One hand drifted over to rest on his stomach on the spot where it always got warm whenever he channelled chakra. His grin slipped a little. The last thing he could remember was Iruka-sensei giving him his hitai-ate, and then… Pain, red light, and everything suddenly turned gold before he blacked out.

"What happened last night?" he asked.

"Before we get into that, have you noticed anything odd about yourself Naruto?" the Hokage asked.

"Um…" Naruto reached for his throat again. As he did his arm brushed across his chest. A bit of it felt like it went 'squish'. He blinked and looked down. There were lumps on his chest. Two of them to be precise. "You mean like this?" he asked, pressing against his chest. It felt weird.

"Yes, like that," Sarutobi sighed, before reaching over to the bedside table and lifting a simple wood-backed hand mirror from it that Naruto hadn't noticed yet. "Take a look in this Naruto-chan."

With a wary glance at the resigned amusement radiating from the old man, and wondering why he had used the 'chan' suffix, he took the hand mirror and looked in it. The first thing that jumped out was the hair. Red hair, a brilliant crimson that easily caught the light despite its short length. It was hanging a bit limply on the head of the person in the mirror. The cute girl in the mirror, who had his whisker markings on her cheeks. He turned his head and watched out of the corner of his eye as the girl mimicked him. He stared.

"Wha-" he swallowed his words as the higher-pitch of his voice met the image in the mirror. He raised a hand to his throat again. The girl mirrored him. Feeling weirded out and almost disembodied he looked down his shirt, then let go of it like he'd been burned. His free hand twitched and the girl in the mirror-

She looked panicked. She was panicked. She was- Naruto was very familiar with the female form from all the time spent perfecting the sexy jutsu. "Why am I a girl?!" the abruptly female Uzumaki demanded in a high-pitched almost strangled voice.

He- she- oh god… The hand mirror fell from her hand as both hands grabbed her collar again and pulled out her shirt so she could look down. She looked up at the Hokage. "How?!"

Hiruzen smiled in the reassuring way he had often done after a particularly rough week for him. "We… I do not have any simple answers for you Naruto-chan. Only supposition," he said.

"Supp… what?" she frowned at the word. Shaking hands let go of her collar and one fell to her lap. A discreet press confirmed her worries. She was a girl. She shivered.

"Only ideas Naruto-chan. Please, look at me." Her head jerked up to the Hokage from where it had fallen to stare at the mirror in her lap. "Iruka-san said you know of the Kyuubi."

"Did-" she scowled as a thought occurred to her, "Did that stupid fox do this? I'll kill it!" Her hands twitched angrily. The Hokage placed a hand on her shoulder and sighed.

"I'm afraid it doesn't appear that way, Naruto," he said, "But it does seem to be related to the seal. According to Iruka, the Kyuubi's chakra surged once you put on the forehead protector. Almost immediately your body began to change and the Kyuubi's chakra was replaced by a golden light. Upon inspecting the seal, I can say that it has changed, significantly."

"Changed?" This wasn't answering her questions. She shook her head. "What does that mean?"

"To cut a long, complicated explanation short, Naruto-chan. It would appear that the Yondaime Hokage disguised the seal containing the Kyuubi with a masterful fake, and in the process concealed your true gender," There was something about the gentle, apologetic delivery that made his words worse to hear. She stared at the old man, gaping like an idiot.

"I- What?" She strangled out through her shock. Girl? Him? Her? Uuh… The idea seemed absurd.

Sarutobi patted her on the shoulder. "I've examined the seal several times, and while the Yondaime's skill was beyond me, I believe that his fake was intended to protect you until you became a shinobi. By putting on the Konoha leaf you proved capable of taking care of yourself. Thus, the seal broke… The Yondaime wanted you to be seen as a hero for holding back the Kyuubi, but it seems that he wasn't willing to take chances. A young boy is safer from certain… people, than a young girl."

Naruto knew enough about the world to understand what he was implying. She shivered at that thought. "I- I'm a girl? Me?" She looked down and patted her chest. It wasn't the chest of a boy… She frowned. Oh Sakura wasn't going to like this. She didn't like girls so her chances with the Pinkette had probably just dried up more than the desert of Suna. Great, so much for romance. She pouted.

"This sucks." She ignored the gentle pat on the shoulder and the old man's chuckle.

"How do you feel?" he asked after she had sat sulking for a few minutes.

"... Weird," she replied.

"Just weird?" he prodded.

"Just weird." There was more to it, but weird summed it up. She felt… conflicted about being a girl, but at the same time,she felt better than she ever had before. Lighter, almost airy in a way. Something had been lifted off her shoulders that she hadn't even realized was there before. Was that this seal that the old man was talking about? Had being a guy actually been weighing her down? She wrinkled her nose at that thought. She didn't want to believe it, but…

"That is better than my concerns at least, Naruto-chan," Sarutobi said with a smile as he straightened up. He ran a hand through his beard again. "Hrm… I think, in light of some of the revelations today that perhaps it is time I told you about your family."

Naruto blinked and looked up in shock. "Family…? You've always said that it wasn't time…" She frowned, "Why now?!" She practically shouted the demand, though the old man seemed unfazed.

"I was planning on waiting another couple of years, or if you made Chunin perhaps. My plans were never exact on the when. Either would have worked, but it seems that the Yondaime has more faith in you than I have had, and for that I am sorry child," he bowed to her, bringing her up short, an angry rant on her lips.

"I- it's fine Jiji…" she scowled at him, "So long as you tell me." She had begged him many times to explain about her family. She'd been refused so many times that she'd eventually given up over a year before and tried to focus on the academy. Not that that had really worked out, but she'd tried!

"The hospital is not the place for it. Once you are let out I'll have one of my ANBU bring you up to my office and we can talk in private," Sarutobi said, "I hope that is soon enough for you?" She nodded. She'd waited years, a few hours would be fine… assuming she got out today.
A sudden pressure in her bladder made her squirm. "Where's the bathroom?" she asked, tossing aside the covers. She hopped out of bed.

"Over there, but you shouldn't-" the old man began as she hopped out of bed. She took two steps and then promptly tripped. Wires popped out of the EKG machine, tugged along by her fall. Alarms blared as the door chose that moment to pop open.

A brunette Chunin in the distinctive flak jacket of Konoha strode into the room. Ruby triangle tattoos marked her cheeks and she had a distinctly feral feel about her despite the neat ponytail hanging down her back. A trio of dogs peered around the corners of the door. Naruto restrained a groan. It was Hana, Kiba's older sister.

She stared down at Naruto for a second before sighing and walking past her to the EKG machine. She flicked a few switches and it ceased screaming its alarm.

"Ah, perfect timing Inuzuka-san," Sarutobi said as he walked around the bed.

"Hokage-sama," the young woman bowed.

Naruto pushed herself up from the floor. "Ow," she groaned, rubbing her forehead. The floor hurt when you accidentally headbutted it.

"Naruto-chan," she looked up as the old man addressed her, "This is Inuzuka Hana-san. She will be in charge of explaining a few things you need to know."

"Eh?" Naruto stared at him uncomprehendingly until Hana reached down and picked her up. "Wha- Let me down!" She squirmed in the older woman's hand.

"Oh stop it. I swear you're worse than Kiba," Hana grumbled as she dumped Naruto on the bed.

"Naruto," Sarutobi sighed as she crossed her arms and glared at the older woman. She hated it when people manhandled her. Just because they were taller didn't give them the right to pick her up like a handbag. "Due to your upbringing, and through no fault of your own I should add, there are certain realities of being a Kunoichi and a girl in general that you are uneducated in. Hana will be responsible for teaching you over the next couple of days."

"Starting now I assume Hokage-sama?" Hana asked politely.

He chuckled. "I had intended you to begin immediately. Once you're done with your checkup and the basics, one of my ANBU will escort her to my office," he said, pausing to retrieve his hat and paperwork.

"But- Jiji!" Naruto protested as she realized what he was saying. She had the talk once, twice actually, she didn't want it a third time. But her protests fell on deaf ears as the old man waved over his shoulder and walked out of the room.

"Well then, let's begin lesson one. Walking apparently," Hana deadpanned. Naruto huffed, but held her tongue, barely. This was going to be unpleasant, and she still had to go to the washroom!

-0-0-0-0-0-​

Being a Jonin meant many things. It meant the person was an Elite Shinobi who could be trusted with the most dangerous missions. It meant that they were skilled in the many shinobi arts. It meant, in theory, that they were punctual.

Whoever believed that had never met Hatake Kakashi.

He was perennially three hours late to seemingly everything, read adult literature in public, and seemingly spent an unhealthy amount of time doing nothing at all. It would, in fact, be a surprise to many that he was, apparently, capable of being on time when the occasion called for it. Like when the Hokage sent one of his ANBU agents to drag him in by his collar if necessary. With force if needed.

It had only taken a half dozen kunai, six death threats, and one complaint from the elderly woman who lived next door, but Kakashi found himself knocking on the door of the Hokage's office five minutes early.

"Enter." He checked the mask over his lower face and that his forehead protector was properly askew over his left eye, then entered.

"Good Morning Hokage-sama," he said, giving his best smile, difficult as it was to see behind his mask, to his superior. The older man gave him a look over and snorted.

"On time. How many complaints will there be this time?" The Hokage asked from behind his desk.

"..." Kakashi coughed into his fist discreetly.

The Sandaime Hokage gave him a judgemental look over before sighing and shaking his head. "Kakashi-kun… You are lucky I don't have much time today. I'm sure you heard of the chaos last night?"

Kakashi stiffened. "Yes, Hokage-sama. Is Naruto…?"

"... Fine. Though he is officially suffering from the effects of an unknown Jutsu," The old Hokage said, leaning back in his chair.

Kakashi walked up to the desk. "And unofficially, sir?"

The Sandaime looked up at him from his seat. He was frowning. "Unofficially a seal concealing the true gender of Uzumaki Naruto broke at five thirty-seven this morning," he said.

"True gender?" Kakashi stared at the old man, for once truly baffled by what he heard. True Gender? His sensei had a son. Tsunade had confirmed the pregnancy herself.

The Sandaime pulled out his pipe and began stuffing it. "It appears that the seal we have been examining for the last twelve years has been nothing more than a fake," he grumbled. A spark of chakra lit the pipe and the old man breathed it in before letting out an explosive sigh and a cloud of smoke.

"A fake? I looked it over, you looked it over- Jiraiya-Sama looked it over," Kakashi all but shouted as he ran a hand through his silver hair. Naruto, not a boy?

"And it would appear that we were all fooled, Kakashi-kun," the Sandaime replied, "The seal has changed. Whatever disguise was in place over it broke this morning when Naruto was presented a Forehead Protector by Iruka."

"This… Hokage-sama, am I correct to say that this changes things in regard to the recent graduates?" Kakashi asked.

The Hokage tapped his pipe against his armrest. "It does. As per your request, you will be allowed to test a team that includes both Uzumaki Naruto-chan and Uchiha Sasuke-kun. However, this does leave us with a dilemma. You know that traditionally the last place graduate is placed with the first place. This is not an issue with Sasuke and Naruto, however, it is also the tradition that there is one Kunoichi per squad."

"Is there a surplus of kunoichi this year?" He asked.

"... More a lack of shinobi who have been deemed likely to pass the second test," Sarutobi sighed, "This year has been abysmal for shinobi. All of the shinobi deemed likely to pass the second round are Clan-raised. I'm sure we'll see a few complaints of favouritism from the civilian population, but that's normal this time of year." He took another pull from his pipe and sighed out a cloud of smoke that washed over Kakashi. The Jounin wrinkled his nose at the acrid stench.

"Well, tradition also dictates that the top Kunoichi be placed with the dead last and the top graduate," Kakashi said, discreetly rubbing his nose at the smell. "I can handle having two kunoichis in my team."

"Teams with multiple kunoichis have proven to have a higher success rate under female Jounin-sensei," the Sandaime replied.

"Marginally." There had been some debate on the methodology of the study in question as well.

"Hrm…" The old Hokage sighed. Kakashi waited as the old man toyed with his pipe, a habit he had long learned was associated with deep thought. "You make a point Kakashi-kun. In the interest of not making more work for the Chunin, and ensuring the best chance of success for our most promising candidates I will allow the traditional format of Team Seven to stand."

"Thank you, Hokage-Sa-"

"However," He paused as the Sandaime continued, "since you will have two Kunoichi, one of whom is still in need of adjusting to being a Kunoichi, I will be assigning an assistant."

"Who?" He was more than capable of teaching his team his way.

"To be determined," Of course it was, "Secondly, Team Seven must pass."

"Hokage-sama, if they can't pass the test-" Kakashi began to protest.

"Kakashi, this is not negotiable," The old Hokage growled, leaning forward in his chair, "Team Seven must pass. Naruto must pass." He reached into his robes and withdrew a scroll. He unrolled it and laid it out on the table. "This mark appeared on Naruto-chan's forehead glowing gold."

On the scroll was a simple pictograph of a starburst. A simple empty circle surrounded by eight lines coming off it. "I feel like I know this," Kakashi said, leaning over the scroll. He had seen this before… But where?

"You saw it in Minato-kun's research," his superior replied tiredly, "I've spent the last few hours going over what I could find. This mark is important and has been important throughout history. And now, here, after Naruto's seal broke we see it again? Kakashi, Minato knew something. I am sure of it. Naruto must pass."

The Jounin stood back from the desk as the Sandaime rolled up the scroll. "... It is as you say, Hokage-sama," he said finally, "Naruto-kun will pass, but I will not go easy on them."

"Make it a learning experience," Hiruzen chuckled.

"Oh, it will be that." And a personal slice of hell if he had anything to say about it. He might not be allowed to fail them, but they wouldn't pass without some pain on their end. Okay, a lot of pain. Never let it be said that he wasn't petty. Besides, they were going to be Genin. They could handle it.

A soft knock on the door interrupted his plans.

"Yes?" the Hokage called.

"Naruto-san to see you, sir," called the Hokage's secretary.

"Already?" The Sandaime muttered before calling, "Send her in. Kakashi-kun, meet your new student."

He had seen Naruto more than a few times over the years. In a way, it was hard not to have seen him at least a time or two. The pranks he had pulled on the village were the stuff of legends and a few nightmares. Like when he had somehow managed to paint the Hokage monument in broad daylight without anyone noticing until he was almost finished. Then there were the times when he would stop and peer in on the boy at the academy or wherever their paths happened to cross, which wasn't too often. Though the year before this one had been… amusing. How no one had noticed what was happening was beyond him.

Naruto was a short blonde boy wearing far too much orange, blue, and white. A boy who kept shouting that he was going to be Hokage to anyone who would listen, willingly or not.

Naruto was not a tiny red-haired girl wearing an older style thigh-length sleeveless yellow yukata with a fishnet undershirt and shorts. Or she hadn't been anyway. The girl who was being escorted into the room by an ANBU agent, who promptly ducked back out and shut the door once she was inside, was looking at the Hokage with a frown that conveyed her irritation with the old man.

"I'll get you back for that Jiji," she grumbled loudly enough for Kakashi to pick up. Even her voice was cute.

The Sandaime chuckled. "It is all for your own good Naruto," he said, waving his pipe at her.

Naruto scowled and huffed, crossing her arms over her chest. "You left me to have the talk again." Kakashi snorted, drawing the attention of the annoyed Genin. "Who's the scarecrow?" she demanded.

Scarecrow? That almost hurt. Ah well, she'd learn during training.

"This is Hatake Kakashi-san. A Jounin. We just finished our talks," Hiruzen said, "You're quite early." So the Hokage didn't want to fully introduce him yet. Fair enough. He'd have an opportunity next week.

"Yeah, I've heard most of it before so it wasn't that hard to pick up," Naruto grumbled, "But why did you have her stuff me in this old thing?" She plucked at the hem of her yukata.

"Well, you have lost six inches," Hiruzen said. Kakashi blinked. He thought she was shorter than before.

Naruto looked stunned and looked down at herself. Had she not noticed? "Now I'm shorter than everyone!" She wailed, stomping over to the seat in front of the Hokage's desk.

"Not everyone," the Sandaime chuckled, "And those clothes belonged to your Oka-sama. Since yours would no longer fit, I thought perhaps you would appreciate something of your mother's."

That made the redhead jerk her hand away from where it was tugging at a seam on the yukata. She carefully tugged at the material. "This was Ka-san's?" she repeated.

"It was," the Sandaime glanced over to Kakashi, "You can head out Jounin Hatake. We'll speak later on your partner for your project."

"As you wish, Hokage-sama," He said, bowing to the old man before leaving the room. He spared a glance back at Naruto who was examining her outfit with intense scrutiny. If her hair had been a foot or two longer she would have been a miniature clone of Kushina. Hopefully, she wasn't as boisterous… Oh who was he kidding, he knew exactly what kind of prankster she was.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

The yellow yukata was Ka-san's. This outfit belonged to her mother. Something inside Naruto burbled happily at that thought. This was something that belonged to her family. She had, or had at least, a family. And this was proof.

She hugged herself and looked up at the Hokage. "This was my Ka-san's… Who was she?" She winced at the plaintive crack in her voice.

The Hokage leaned back in his chair and took a deep pull from his pipe. The cloud of smoke floated through the mostly empty office, streaks of light cutting through it from the blind-drawn windows. "Uzumaki Kushina was a beautiful woman with a wonderful heart," he said eventually. "She was the last of the Uzumaki's and so desperately wanted to have children. I'm sure if she had survived you would have had many siblings."

"The last… So I don't have any family left?" she asked. She had wondered. On one hand, it hurt that there was no one else, but at least they hadn't abandoned her. That would have hurt a lot more.

"None. The Uzumaki clan was wiped out in an attack by Iwa, Kumo, Kiri, and their associated allies at the start of the third war." Naruto's eyes grew wide as she heard the names of three of the five great villages.

"T-That's half the continent," she said, stunned.

"More than half," Sarutobi replied grimly. He chewed the end of his pipe for a moment. "The bulk of nearly seventy percent of the shinobi forces on the continent descended upon Uzu no Kuni. It was an island nation between Hi no Kuni and Kiri no Kuni, though it was closer to Hi no Kuni. Uzu was ruled by the Uzumaki's who were a close ally of Konoha, Naruto."

She bit her lip. Why did so many shinobi villages band together to attack one small nation? What could have made them do such a thing? She asked the Hokage.

"They were afraid. Terrified, truthfully," Sarutobi admitted, "The Uzumaki Clan, were the foremost experts in Fuinjutsu in Creation. Fuinjutsu was, and is, poorly understood by most. While the feats your family achieved with Fuinjutsu were unheard of by anyone else, it was the potential of what they might have managed to accomplish in the future that spurred the attack."

Fear. She shivered. More than half the continent had feared her family enough to dogpile them.

"It was a mistake they still haven't recovered from." She jerked up from staring at her feet.

"What?"

The old man chuckled grimly then sighed. "Despite their fear they managed to underestimate the Uzumaki Clan. Their assault on Uzushiogakure was a slaughter on both sides. None of their shinobi from minor villages returned home. And from the Major villages, unrecoverable losses approached ninety percent overall with the Iwa contingent entirely erased excluding the Tsuchikage and his personal bodyguards. Virtually overnight Konoha shot from the fourth place village to the first place, a position we've retained since. The three most powerful villages broke themselves in the first three months of what would become the largest war that has been fought in the last seven hundred years."

"All because they were afraid," she scowled and clenched her fists. "Well, they failed. They didn't get Ka-san." And they weren't going to get her if they wanted to come back and finish the job.

The Sandaime smiled. "They've had plenty of time to regret their actions Naruto, in fact only a handful of people involved in that attack are even still alive. Any known survivors were singled out by our forces during the war. These days only a few remain. Those wise enough to keep silent." He tapped out his pipe into the ashtray on his desk. "But your mother was much more than that tragedy. It happened when she was a girl. She had been brought to Konoha to perform a task that would take her entire life… Your task in fact."

Her- "She had the Kyuubi!" Naruto exclaimed as the pieces fell together in her head. "WHY?!"

"Correct, Naruto," the old man sighed. "The Kyuubi was first sealed at the battle of the Valley of the End a hundred years ago when the first Hokage duelled Uchiha Madara. Hashirama's wife, Uzumaki Mito, had sealed the beast into herself. Only an Uzumaki possesses a potent enough Chakra system to seal away the nine tails. As she was getting old she arranged for your mother to come and take her place. Your mother maintained the prison until the day of your birth. Childbirth weakens the seal you see… We had precautions in place. My own wife was to be her nursemaid and the Yondaime Hokage himself was on hand to keep the seal intact…"

The old man shook his head. "To this day we do not know what happened. Something went wrong, clearly, but the day of your birth was the day your Oka-san died. I'm sorry," he said.

She nodded, tears forming in her eyes. "S'kay," she mumbled before grinning through the tears. "She sounds like she was amazing."

"Oh she was. Every bit the equal of the Yondaime Hokage in battle and one of the most beautiful women in the village, inside and out," he shook his head, a fond smile growing as he restocked his pipe. "I wish you could have gotten to know her."

They sat there quietly for a few minutes.

"What… what about my Tou-san, old man?" She asked, wiping the tears away.

He grimaced and for a moment her heart sank. What kind of person had he been to get that reaction? Then he started talking and she found herself getting angry again.

"I want to tell you about your Otou-san, Naruto. I really do, but while the Uzumaki had many enemies they've mostly abandoned their vendettas against your family after the destruction of Uzu. Those who still live at least," he said, "Your father's enemies are far more numerous and have far more… personal reasons to hunt you down."

"But you said you'd tell me, finally!" She shouted, popping to her feet, hands clenching and unclenching angrily at her sides.

"... I did," he nodded after taking a drag from his pipe. He blew a thin ring of smoke that slowly drifted across the room. "But his enemies will try and kill you if they suspect a relationship. You are fortunate that your mother and he kept quiet about their relationship. If they had been more public then there would have been no way to conceal your existence for so long from them."

"And that means not letting me know?" She felt like she was going to cry again. She hated crying over things like this, but for some reason, it seemed to be harder to control than normal.

"..." The Hokage pulled the brim of his hat down as she growled at him. It was his way of trying to tune things out. And it always made her so mad.

She brought a fist down on the old man's desk, knocking a chip off the corner. "YOU PROMISED!"

He sighed. "I'm sorry Naruto-chan. I want to tell you. I have always wanted to tell you. For now, will you accept one last promise from an old man?" he asked gently, his voice sounding suddenly weary and old.

She hesitated. Jiji never sounded… old. He always sounded so confident and strong. "I- what is it?" she asked, letting her hand drop.

"I am trusting the Yondaime's judgement on your Uzumaki heritage," he said, "But your father's enemies still search for any method of revenge. Prove to me that you can rise to the challenge and I will tell you everything about him. Become a chunin or prove your skills some other way and I will tell you everything about your father and his family. Everything. You have my word. On Konoha's Will of Fire, and the position of Hokage I swear it."

She stared at him, then frowned, not realizing she had started to pout. Why did the old man have to be so damned reasonable? "On the position of Hokage. Fine Jiji. I'll make chunin then you're going to tell me everything you hear!" she shouted, pointing at him.

He smiled. "I looked forward to the day, Naruto-chan…" He looked up at the clock and nodded. "There are a few more things we need to talk about." He reached into his robes and pulled out a trio of scrolls and set them down on the desk. Naruto leaned forward in her seat as he unrolled the first scroll.

"Up until now, you have been housed in an apartment away from your Clan's holdings in an effort to further the deception. I see no point in continuing unless you have a particular attachment to your apartment?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Nope," she said, popping the word. If anything she'd love to leave it. The place was good, don't get her wrong, but the issue was the neighbours. Tako-ojisan in the apartment next door always shouted at her whenever something went wrong. Mind you, he shouted at everyone. Which was also an issue. Then there was the guy beneath her. He never stopped smoking and whenever he was home she had to close her windows to keep it out because it always seemed to make its way into her apartment otherwise. A home of her own would be a blessing.

And if it had belonged to her family? All the better.

"Excellent," the Hokage smiled, "This is the key to your Family's Estate."

"Estate?" She'd been expecting a house at most.

"Yes." The old man pushed the scroll towards her, "The key. You were paying attention to the lectures on sealing scrolls I assume?"

Naruto sighed as she accepted the scroll. "I know how this works," she grumbled. It was the only part of the school that had actually been interesting, even if it had become too simple for her by the second go-round. She'd run out of books on the subject by the start of her third attempt. The academy only had intermediate level books in the school library. It was the only time she had actually used the library and having it run out had been… really annoying.

She rolled the scroll back up after confirming the seal on the scroll and then tried to figure out where to put it. Her outfit didn't have pockets or pouches. Her mother's or not, she really needed to fix that.

"Here. This was also your Oka-san's," Sarutobi reached behind his desk and passed over a brown messenger bag with the white swirl of her clan on its side. She traced the sign with a finger before nodding once and storing the scroll inside the pouch.

"Thanks, Jiji," she grinned.

"You're welcome, Naruto," he replied, "Now, two more items. This scroll has information on your family's accounts. I've taken the liberty of supplementing your monthly stipend from the village with an equal amount drawn from the account set aside for you. All transactions are recorded in there. I assume you remember my lessons in finance?"

"I remember," she sighed. That had been a painful four weeks. The old man had strictly limited her funds after she had been a bit too spendthrift one month a few years before. She'd had to rapidly learn how to spend better or starve. Nearly anyway. And it had had the nice effect of introducing her to Ichiraku's Ramen.

"Good. And lastly, this was entrusted to me by your mother, the night before she gave birth. It was a scroll that we all hoped I would simply hand back to her afterwards…" He tapped the last scroll against his palm. Twice as thick as the rest with ornate black and gold ends, it was marked with the Uzumaki swirl on orange paper. "I do not know what is in this. She simply said to give it to you when I thought you were ready… Today is that day it seems." He held it out to her and she took it careful-

"Ow," she hissed and dropped the scroll on the table as she stuffed a bleeding thumb into her mouth. The scroll rolled open as the swirl disappeared. "It bit me."

The Hokage leaned over it with a raised eyebrow. "Strange… It's empty," he mused, looking at it.

Naruto blinked. The length of the scroll that was visible was practically saturated in writing so small that the ink made up nearly all of the visible space. "No it's not," she said, carefully picking it up.

"Really? Interesting. Your family was quite capable with Fuinjutsu as I said, so this is not too surprising," Sarutobi mused.

She nodded before reading the first line to herself.

To the Heir(ess) of the Uzumaki Clan. If you are reading this, then the worst has come to pass and there remains no one to pass on our traditions and secrets.

There was a lot more, but… Naruto rolled the scroll up. This wasn't the sort of thing you read in front of others. She would get to it later. "Is there more?" she asked.

"I'm afraid not, Naruto," the Hokage replied. The old man smiled and chuckled at her huff. "I'm sure you will spend quite a bit of time going over what you have." He glanced up at the clock again. "Hrm, you know, since you were so early I believe I have time today to show you to your family's Estate now, rather than tomorrow. Would you like that Naruto-chan?" The knowing smile on the Hokage's face didn't stop her from jumping to her feet and shouting yes. Repeatedly and at high volume.

Once she had stopped bouncing in place the Hokage stood up and motioned for her to follow him. They left the tower and headed out into the streets after the Hokage stopped to ask his secretary to hold his meetings until he came back. "I shouldn't be gone longer than a couple of hours," he said, waving off her concerns.

The streets of Konoha were bustling, but people tended to step aside and let you through when you were walking with the Hokage. It was something Naruto had learned to take for granted whenever she was out and about with Jiji. Of course, whenever they took a walk she tended to either be ignored in favour of the Hokage, or receive the occasional harsh look and imperceptibly muttered comment. The first was normal. She'd seen plenty of others get the same treatment, or near to it, whenever they were around the Hokage. Things were a bit different this time.

From the moment she walked out of the tower with the Hokage eyes started following her and whispers trailed along with them. This was the first time she had gone out since the night before. The trip with the ANBU to the tower via shunshin did not count. She kept close to the Hokage and frowned at the people she caught staring at her.

"Jiji, what's with all the stares?" she asked after she caught another pair of older men staring at her from a cafe window. That seemed to be the pattern as well. Nearly everyone staring at her was older. A few people were her ages, but everyone else had to have been old enough to have lived through the Kyuubi attack and remember it.

The Sandaime sighed. "That is what I was worried about," he said, "Uzumaki's have very distinct hair colour. Anyone old enough to remember your Oka-san is probably wondering who you are." She tugged at her hair and frowned. It was too short to pull into view. Sure it was a striking crimson, but was it that distinctive?

She pondered that as they passed through the shopping district and entered the affluent residential areas near the tower. She couldn't remember the last time she saw someone with red hair. Any red hair, let alone the shade that was now atop her head. If it was, as the old man said, an Uzumaki trait, then no wonder everyone was staring. The rumour mill was probably running out of control behind them right then and there.

"Tell me, Naruto-chan," the Hokage said as they entered the more affluent, yet less developed, Clan lands along the base of the mountain, "Why were you so early? I had expected Chunin Inuzuka to take longer."

Naruto blushed. "Um… Well…" She wilted under the raised eyebrow the Hokage sent their way as they passed the Hyuuga clan's fortified compound.

"Naruto, did you complete your talk with her?" he asked.

"I did! It's just… I didn't really need it," she mumbled, crossing her arms with a huff. That eyebrow went higher as the old Hokage glanced her way.

"And why I wonder, did you not need what Chunin Inuzuka had to teach?" He asked pointedly.

"Because…" Oh this was so embarrassing. She'd done it because she was curious, and bored with her classes at the time. There went the old man's eyebrow again. She sighed. "Because I took the classes in the academy." She didn't imagine the slight stumble in his walk. Well, at least it surprised him. Whoo, sorta a prank then?

After he sorted out his surprise and relit his pipe the Hokage glanced down at her. "I think you realize this raises more questions, Naruto-chan? The how and why in particular."

"I used the Henge Jutsu and I did it because I was bored, and they taught cooking," and sewing, and flower arranging, and other stuff that was probably more useful than going over shinobi history. Again. Though that was probably why her marks had dipped so low during that session.

Sarutobi chuckled. "It would appear that an examination of the standards of our teachers is in order then," he said, shaking his head. "I was planning on asking Inuzuka Hana-san to continue your lessons, but if they aren't needed-"

"I want to continue them," Naruto interrupted. She had questions for Hana. The academy had covered a lot, but at the same time, it wasn't exactly trying to teach a girl how to girl. There were some things you didn't need a lecture on.

"Hmph," he chuckled, "As you wish."

Their walk continued in silence as they followed the road along a riverbank. Naruto recognized the Uchiha Clan Estates off to her left. Was the Uzumaki Estate further out than even the Uchiha? "Is it much further?" she asked.

"We're about to pass onto Uzumaki land now actually," he replied. The road turned, cutting up and over a small embankment and through a copse of trees. "And here we are, the border of the Uzumaki lands," he said, gesturing to a small pillar of stone with intricately carved spirals and trails of minuscule sealing script. "These mark the outer border of the Estate and are, to the best of my knowledge, tied into an early warning system for the Estate."

The Estate grounds were a mix of rolling grassland and small copses of cherry trees. It was beautiful, but there was just one thing she couldn't spot. "Where's the Estate? I don't see anything," she said.

"Oh we're still too far out for that," the old man replied. He pointed to a small hill topped with cherry trees a few hundred meters down the road. "We should have a good view from there."

Naruto stared. This was all her family's land? "And how far is it from there?"

She stumbled against the border marker in shock at the surprise. "Oh… At least another two kilometres."

"Two- That's got to be the largest Estate in Konoha," she practically shouted.

"Close, but both the Nara, and Inuzuka have more land," he replied, walking down the hill. She scrambled to follow. "The Uzumaki were gifted so much land for two reasons. The first is their status as Konoha's closest allies."

"And the second?"

"Fuinjutsu tend to explode during experimentation." Naruto winced at his deadpan tone. She knew quite well that experience. She had nearly burned down her apartment a half-dozen times while trying to work out storage seals. And succeeded in blowing out all of her windows twice while working on exploding seals.

"Yeah… that happens," she grumbled, ignoring the chuckle from the old man.

"I think it would amuse you to know that your Oka-san and Mito-dono have done far more damage than you have so far," he said, "The main building of the estate has been rebuilt six times to my knowledge. All due to Fuinjutsu accidents."

Well, at least she was in good company when it came to blowing herself up.

They crested the hill a few minutes later and came to stop as Naruto got her first look at her family's estates. They were traditionally designed, with wooden structures raised atop an artificial mountain of stone that stood out above the rolling grassland. Behind it rose the forested backside of the Hokage Mountain. The homes and other structures within the estate's walls looked to be in good condition from a distance.

Along the roadway were a few smaller buildings, houses at a guess, that were in much worse condition than the main estate. Dilapidated wooden fencing marked out what must have once been fields. Now they were overgrown with weeds, wildflowers, and tall grass.

"Ah, it looks to be in as good condition as the last time I was here. Excellent," the Hokage said. Placing a hand on her shoulder he pushed her gently down the road. "You have the key?" he asked.

"Yup," she nodded, fishing the scroll out of her mother's bag.

"Good. Have it ready, you'll need it soon."

Naruto gave the small farmsteads a look over as they passed them. It was unusual to see farms in Konoha. The village tended to import its needs from surrounding farming towns and more distant locales. Certainly, she had never heard of one of the clans setting aside land for agriculture before. Other than the Yamanaka, and they grew flowers.

She unrolled the scroll and confirmed the presence of a seal with the kanji for Key as they were walking up the stairs to the entrance. She went to draw a kunai, then winced as she realized she didn't have any on her. Grumbling under her breath she raised her thumb to her mouth and bit it hard enough to draw blood. She hated doing that. The blood tasted horrible and using her teeth always made it take longer to heal for some reason. She smeared the blood across the mark.

With a bamf and a cloud of smoke, an iron six-sided cylinder five inches long with a white painted Uzumaki Spiral as a hook on the end popped out of the scroll. She pocketed the scroll and turned the key over in her hands. That looked like small seals were inscribed along the cylinder. Everything that her family touched seemed to be covered in seals far more complex than any she had learned in the academy.

"Here we go." Naruto looked up as they stopped in front of the large gate of the complex. A complex pattern was set into the center of the gate with bronze around a circle of gold, there was a single six-sided hole in the middle of the gold circle. She reached out with the key and blinked as the Hokage caught her hand gently.

"One more thing before you do that," he said gently before raising a hand in a half seal. "Release." For an instant, the air all around the perimeter of the estate proper shimmered for a hundred feet into the air. Then, with the sound of a divine window breaking, the air shattered. Naruto flinched as small pieces rained down around them, only to blink as they faded from existence inches from the ground.

"I placed a seal on the estate when I made the decision to distance you from the clan," the Hokage explained, "Assuming it has worked as intended, you should find the interior exactly as it was when I left it all those years ago. Go ahead and open the door."

Naruto stepped forward and tried to slide the key into the hole. It got an inch before a force ejected it. "Ow," she said, rubbing her chest where the key had smacked her. "Are you sure this is the right key?" she asked, looking it over again.

"Perhaps you aren't using it right?"

She grumbled and tried again. Five tries later she had learned to stand to the side to avoid having the key chucked back into her chest. "Oh come on!" She scowled, ignoring the chuckling of the Hokage. She gave the key a closer look. It didn't have the teeth of a normal key, just the seals along each side…

Were those its 'teeth'? Which meant there was a right way and a wrong way to put it in. And she'd been doing it wrong. So which way was it supposed to go? She took a closer look at the door. Small marks were engraved into the door by each side of the hole. Seals perhaps? Or just markings to remind the user how the key was supposed to go? It seemed a bit insecure if that was the case, but it was worth a shot.

It took her a good thirty seconds to find the corresponding markings on the key. Once that was done it slid home with a click.

"Ow!" She pulled her hand away from the door, her fingers bleeding where they had been touching the key. Sealing script flowed out from the key and across the door. Something somewhere clunked and the key twisted by itself. A rapid-fire clicking emanated from the door before the key was ejected partway. She carefully pulled it out and stared as the door slid open to reveal a well-maintained stone pathway leading to the front door of a two-story house.

"And here is your home. I would join you to explore it, but I'm afraid business at the Tower can only wait so long," the Hokage sighed, "The single biggest trial of being a Hokage is paperwork Naruto."

"You keep saying that," she grumbled, taking a step inside the estate. Manicured lawns and flower gardens spread out to either side. The path split off to either side and "... So this is mine?"

"That it is."

It seemed like a bit much for one person. But it was her Clan's so… She smiled up at the Hokage, tears creeping into the corners of her eyes. "Thanks for showing me the way, Jiji!" she said, giving him a hug.

He bowed his head, hugging her back with one arm. "I am happy to finally see you here. Oh, on the post to the right is a seal. Apply chakra there to close the door," he said, gesturing to the right, "And if you want to open the door you shouldn't need the key anymore."

"Why not?" It was a key.

"I've been told the wards use the key to identify family members the first time only. You just need to use chakra from now on. Apply it to the center of the door or the seal on the right will open and close it."

"And if I'm leaving?" She leaned out and inspected the outer frame of the gate.

"Here," he pointed to a very faint handprint carved into the wood.

"Ah. Thanks, old man!" She said again grinning at him. He nodded.

"Shall I inform Chunin Inuzuka to come here, or to your apartment tomorrow?" he asked.

"Um…" She glanced back into the house. Was she going to move in right away? It would be nice to get out of the apartment, but there was probably a bunch of stuff she needed to do to get the house ready… She frowned. It was a bit of a jump in maintenance to be sure, but she had her clones. She could get them doing a bunch of the work, assuming it needed it. Oh,why not. It was her family's home and deserved to be used now that she knew it existed.

"I'll be here," she said, looking up at the Hokage, "It's been abandoned too long. I can't just leave it alone."

He chuckled. "I had suspected as much. Make sure to set your alarm then. She'll be here by ten tomorrow morning, enjoy the rest of your day Naruto-chan." With that he promptly disappeared in a swirl of leaves, leaving her standing alone in the gate of her family's estate.

She walked out to the edge of the stairway and leaned against the stone railing as she looked out over the abandoned farmland. In the distance, she could see the stone markers that denoted the property line. A few anyway. There was a quiet beauty to the area, this far out from the village center. It was just her, the wind, and the swaying grass. Lonely, but…

Her smile grew. This was hers. This place, every leaf, every blade of grass, and every inch, was hers.

She turned away from the sight and looked back through the gate. The doors of the house were shut, but they somehow felt more welcoming than the many like them throughout the village.

She entered the courtyard and tapped the seal the Hokage had pointed out. She jumped as the door closed with a shick of metal gliding passed metal. If she had been blinking she would have missed the scissor-like movement of the closing door. It was probably more than enough to cut a man in half.

"... I'd better not close that on me," she said to the empty air. Otherwise, she was going to be missing at least a limb, possibly more. "Right!" she clapped her hands together and turned to the house with a grin. "Time to explore!"

-0-0-0-0-0-​

A/N: So this is a really old idea. About as old as my fascination with Exalted. Much like some of my other ideas from that era, it got set aside so I could focus on Tangled Fate. I never forgot it however, and I'm interested in seeing what people think of this take. Expect to see updates every two weeks for the next couple of months. After that we should get some With Grace and Elegance, a new chapter of TTP, and possibly some more TF.

I hope you enjoy it and if you want to talk about it with others feel free to click the discord link in my signature. Cheers~

 

[Grounders10]

-0-0-0-0-0-

A Naruto/Exalted Crossover

A Shine of Gold in the Crimson Tide

By: Grounders10

-0-0-0-0-0-

2. Helpful Flowers

-0-0-0-0-0-​

Positioned well behind the Uchiha and Hyuuga estates, the Uzumaki lands were out of the way by the reckoning of most of Konoha. They were, however, immediately adjacent to the Inuzuka Lands. A fact that Hana doubted had escaped the Hokage when he had assigned her this mission.

Teaching wasn't something she thought she would ever do. She was much more at home helping with her family's veterinary practice or out in the wild tracking whichever poor bastard had thought they could outrun the Inuzuka's hounds. Teaching was something that a poor idiot like Iruka got saddled with. And yet, here she was standing outside the gate of the Uzumaki Estate with the job of teaching a former boy how to be a girl. How ironic.

The Uzumaki estate had a reputation among the Inuzuka. Back before the Kyuubi attacked it had been a source of periodic explosions scaring the dogs. And it was the one area they weren't allowed to take the dogs walking due to the constant scent of fox that seemed to linger over the area.

After the Kyuubi, it became an area that was off-limits for entirely different reasons. The Uzumaki were Fuinjutsu masters and without one of them on hand to manage their many boobytraps it was considered far too dangerous, albeit mostly on one's pride, to wander about their lands. And god forbid you stumbled upon one of their more serious tricks.

It was those warnings that kept her from hopping the gate to go looking for her student. Who knew what sort of grisly or embarrassing fate awaited whoever decided to violate the Uzumaki's privacy.

"NARUTO!" she shouted for the fifth time in a minute. She waited a few more seconds, her ears straining to hear something. By her foot the only one of her three canine companions to follow her here whined, looking up at her plaintively. She knelt down and gave him a scratch behind one ear. "I know, I know. You didn't have to come you know," she reminded him as he continued to whine. He snorted, then jabbed a paw towards the frame of the gate. She followed his paw to a small brown button with a tiny bronze bell in the wood above it.

"Good catch," she slipped him a treat before heading over to the button. She jumped as a gong sounded somewhere inside the estate. A few screams of surprise echoed from different places inside. Did Naruto have guests? Well, it couldn't have been Kiba. Her brat of a brother was still asleep when she left. And late for training. He was probably being run into the ground without breakfast by their mother even as she stood here.

"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!" came the somewhat unfamiliarly high-pitched tone of Naruto.

"NARUTO-CHAN! I'M HERE!" Hana shouted. Silence followed her shout, then after a few moments, she heard a door open and a pair of feet walk up to the door. She nearly jumped when the door retracted into the walls of the estate with the shick of sliding metal.

The redhead girl behind it grinned when she recognized her. "Hana-nee! You're late," she said.

"Only because it took me ten minutes to find the bell button," she grumbled as the younger girl snickered.

"Come in. Let me show you around. Well, what I've found. This place is big!" Naruto tugged her through the door and waited for her partner to follow before hitting something on the post that caused the door to close just as fast as it opened. Getting caught in there was likely to be fatal.

"Over here!" Naruto called from the open front door, "This way Hana-nee!"

The entrance hall was nicely decorated in a traditional style and surprisingly dust-free given how long the buildings had to have sat empty. Once her shoes were off she let the chattering younger girl drag her through the first floor of the main house. The hallway had a decorative table with a few pictures off to the side. The kitchen was just off the entrance hall and inside she found half a dozen Naruto's sorting the cupboards and fridge.

"Did you go shopping?" she asked as they passed through on their way to the living room. The kitchen was fairly large with a half dozen ovens along one wall and plenty of other appliances. Though you could tell how long it had been since anyone lived there from the designs of the appliances.

"Nope. Jiji said that he put the estate under a seal, so everything's still as good as it was when…" Naruto frowned and shook her head before continuing on, "When mom and dad died. I've got my shadow clones sorting things out just in case."

Shadow clones. She boggled at the half a dozen redheads sorting. She could only make, maybe, two herself and still have enough chakra to make it worthwhile. And here was her brother's newly graduated friend tossing a half dozen at her pantry like a Daimyo's spare change at a festival.

Similar sights awaited her. Three clones were sorting and reading paperwork in the living room. Three were unboxing clothes to wash in the laundry room. Books and scrolls were being counted in the library behind the living room by a dozen chattering clones, while an annoyed-looking clone stood with a notepad. The shouting that erupted from the room moments after they continued on made her guide sigh and shake her head.

"It's a very nice home, Naruto-chan," she said as they reached the stairs, "But I am here to teach you, not visit." The redhead pouted. "I had figured that you wouldn't need any training on 'being a girl' since you're apparently so good at it already." And wasn't the thought that a boy had managed to sneak into the Kunoichi classes and not get caught worrying. And impressive. Though if the boy had actually been a girl inside all along…

"Weeellll…. I need help shopping," said what would have been the third-place Kunoichi of two years ago with a blush.

"Shopping? You've lived alone for how long and you need help shopping?" Hana deadpanned, crossing her arms as she stared down at Naruto.

"I can shop just fine, Hana-nee," she grumbled, "But that's boy clothes and food and stuff. I don't know where I can find things like this!" The younger girl tugged at her sleeveless yukata.

"Girls clothing," Hana said, nodding her understanding. That made more sense. Clothes stores in Konoha were usually geared towards one gender or the other. And come to think of it Naruto had probably never had to shop for underwear either. "I'm guessing you'd like me to take you shopping and show you what you should try to avoid?" she asked, getting a nod. "Do you have enough money? Clothing for girls tends to be more expensive."

Naruto nodded vigorously. "Yup! Right here!" she pulled out a frog-shaped wallet from the pouch at her waist. It looked filled to the point of bursting with a few bills sticking out.

"Good. Ready to go then?"

"Yup!" Honestly, this was probably the first time the boy had been excited about shopping. As she watched Naruto run ahead and start loudly searching for her shoes, she turned her mind to the job ahead. So Naruto wanted something like what she was wearing. There were a few places she could think of that might stock something similar. Most were civilian stores that sold 'faux-shinobi' fashions, but there were a few shinobi-focused stores that might have something.

"Come on Hana-nee!" Naruto bounced impatiently on her heels by the door.

"Coming."

-0-0-0-0-0-​

Naruto shifted through the rack of clothes. Clothes shopping as a girl was a bit different than doing so as a boy. She'd expected as much from eavesdropping on her classmates. About half of the girls in her class, all three years, had chattered about clothing almost as often as they spent their time mooning over Sasuke.

God what was wrong with them. She shook her head at the thought of mooning over the duck-haired arrogant bastard and paused to examine the red shirt in her hands. If it was up to her she'd have everything in orange, but Hana-nee had insisted that a girl needed more than just one colour. She'd tried to protest, but the older girl had leveraged her position as her tutor in 'how to be a girl'. Eh, at least she could afford it. From the small glance over the paperwork the night before she had plenty for at least one shopping trip.

And what a shopping trip this was becoming. The first shop Hana had taken her to was a specialized boutique for Kunoichi undergarments. Two hours, more money than it was really worth, and several very embarrassing moments later they'd moved onto a civilian store for some day to day wear that wasn't fifty-percent chain mesh by volume.

She'd learned a few things from that embarrassing trip. Bras were annoying. Latches were a pain and getting measured up for the first was an even bigger pain. Girls underwear had a bizarre tendency to put cutesy things in places no one was ever going to see, if she had her way, and it all cost an arm and a leg more than what she'd worn as a boy.

The civilian store had been much less embarrassing, though again she'd learned that Hana-nee hadn't been joking when she'd said that things were more expensive. She'd gone into sticker shock a few times. The second time she'd tried to refuse to buy any of the dresses that her teacher had hoisted on her, and wasn't the sight of her wearing a dress weird? Seriously, her. Dresses. She shivered. It felt just a bit wrong at times, but she'd admit the girl in the mirror looked cute in them. She looked cute in them.

Getting used to being a girl was annoying.

After Hana-nee had picked out several dresses, only two in orange to her despair, the older girl had dragged her off to this place in Konoha's 'Shinobi Center'. It was named for the many Shinobi focused stores that congregated in the area. Weapons stores, clothing stores, even stores with chakra powered gadgets and toys that cost a lot more than she'd ever have considered spending.

Miki's Measurements was a Kunoichi focused clothing store that advertised 'Stylish Clothing for All Environments Including Desert, Glacier, and Combat'. A fact supported by the amount of protective materials used in the underlayers of each outfit. The shirt she'd just rejected was nearly eighty percent ninja mesh by weight, and covered far too little with actual cloth. Seriously, she was a Kunoichi now (and yes, that was a strange feeling) not a model.

Though Ino would have probably liked it.

She held up the next shirt she pulled off the rack and held it up. Again, very Ino-like in style. It seemed to be the popular thing at the moment if the sheer quantity on the racks was anything to go by.

Rolling her eyes at the impracticality of it she was in the process of hanging it back up when she winced as one of her clones back at the Estate popped. "Not that one," she grumbled, setting the shirt back on the rack harder than she needed to. It had been the clone doing the paperwork. She'd planned to have it do the work, then tell her everything there when she got back and now it had gone and popped after getting a papercut from a paper airplane it had made after finishing up. She'd have to make another and send it back to start…. Again…?

Naruto blinked as her eyes stared off into the distance of the store, incidentally fixing themselves on a sign advertising 30% off jeans. She could remember everything the clone had done like she had done it. "I can remember everything," she muttered. This was big. She could remember what a clone did, as though it were her. She could recall everything. Every amount, in every account, that her family had ever owned. As though she had just spent the last twelve hours reading a stack of papers higher than she was tall.

She grinned. This was amazing. She could recall everything a clone did, how she hadn't noticed that before was- well, no it wasn't a mystery. She'd used them to beat up Mizuki for six hours straight and dismissed the rest instantly while practicing. There really hadn't been anything to remember before.

Just thinking about it she could have clones doing all kinds of things for her. Practicing Ninjutsu, going over history books, learning Fuinjutsu from her family's libraries. Anything that didn't require her to be there herself. She giggled and pumped a fist. "Score one for being amazing, dattebayo!" She was one step closer to Jiji's hat!

"Find something interesting Naruto-chan?" She jumped slightly as Hana leaned the rack.

"Eh, not here. One of my clones popped back home and get this: I remember everything!" she said excitedly. To her disappointment, the older girl just blinked.

"You didn't know that?" Hana-nee asked.

"Nope. It wasn't in the scroll," she replied.

"Scroll? You learned Kage Bunshin from a scroll?" Naruto laughed nervously at the angry look Hana-nee had. "Who gives a genin a scroll with that on it?"

"Um… No one? I… Kinda stole the forbidden scroll because Mizuki-teme said it was a different way to graduate…?" she trailed off as the older girl palmed her face.

"So no one told you anything about it?" her Inuzuka teacher asked. She nodded. "Ugh… Yes, the Kage Bunshin can share memories. One of their original purposes was as disposable scouts, but since it's so expensive for most people they're rarely used for that."

"Huh…" Naruto tilted her head at that. Then that probably meant most people weren't able to use it for training either, though even one or two other 'yous' could probably do wonders for a person's multitasking.

"Anyway, I found you something I think you'll like," Hana-nee said, stepping out from behind the rack to hold up an orange short-sleeved yukata that was nearly identical to her mother's old clothes. Naruto snatched it from the older girl instantly and held it against herself. It was right in her size too. "Eager. But that's what you were looking for, right?"

"It's close enough, dattebayo," Naruto replied excitedly. The length was about right too.

"Good. You're in luck you know," her teacher continued, pointing back across the store. "It doesn't seem to be the in style at the moment. There's a rack back there with a bunch of these from your size to mine, and even a couple bigger than that. And it's all discounted severely."

"How severely?" Naruto asked, looking up.

"Seventy percent. I'm guessing they're really not moving. And, I'll even let you buy just them, and these," she held up a few items they had agreed on earlier, "because they're in all sorts of colours. Orange, purple, green, I saw a few in pink even."

"I'll take'em!" she practically shouted, earning a chuckle and a pat on the head from her teacher. She pouted, but quickly broke into a grin as she followed her teacher across the store. She'd make her mother proud!

As they were packing the clothes into a purpose-made scroll Naruto had found in her mother's things the night before, she asked her teacher a question. "Hana-nee, tomorrow's registration and I want to do something for it, but I need a few things. Can you help me?"

"Depends. What do you need?" Hana-nee asked. Naruto recognized the sidelong look. She'd seen the older girl send it her, and Kiba's way a few times when she suspected they were making trouble. Well, she was wrong this time, she wasn't making trouble. So she told her. The older Kunoichi smiled.

"I think I can help," she said, "but do you want something just for tomorrow, or would you like something you can use again? I know a store that does rush orders of very good quality. Assuming you're willing to pay their price." Naruto winced. That sort of service usually commanded a steep cost, but…

"I'm good for it Hana-nee." The words 'I think' were left unsaid. She couldn't really be sure until she heard the price.

"Then we'll head over there after this. Anything else you need while we're in the area?" Hana-nee asked.

"I'm good," she said with a shake of her head. If she hadn't come into her family's estate she would have needed kunai and shuriken, but there was a well-stocked armoury in the estate that she could draw on for now.

"Excellent," her teacher grinned as the last of her clothes disappeared into the scroll with a puff of smoke. "This way Naruto-chan."

This was going to be fun.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

Naruto watched her clones stand still. For her this would normally be a bit odd because each of them was, after all, a clone of her and standing still wasn't something she liked to do. Right now, however, things were a bit different since each clone was standing on a branch in a tree in various gravity-defying methods. Like playing go fish while sitting on the bottom side of a branch.

She checked the scroll, then the watch. Nine minutes and fourteen seconds. Her family's scroll indicated that mastery of the tree-climbing technique required the user to be able to stand on the branch without paying close attention or at least ten minutes. This was her clone's third try and they seemed to be handling it well enough. Running out of chakra wasn't a risk, but bored clones tended to do dumb stuff. It seemed the pack of cards had been a good idea, and using chakra to keep the cards from obeying gravity was a nice twist for an added challenge.

The Uzumaki Family scroll was not what she had expected. Family secrets, techniques, and secret techniques it had in spades, but it wasn't so simple as to apply blood, get info. Her family was, as she was rapidly learning, obsessed with Fuinjutsu. Other than a very basic introduction and public family history the rest of the scroll was concealed behind tests. Fuinjutsu tests. She had managed to pass two of them before her knowledge of sealing had reached its end. She was the best sealing expert in her class at the academy and she'd barely managed the second level. It had earned her more information on the family's holdings in Uzu no Kuni and a trio of scrolls on chakra exercises and basic, by Uzumaki standards, Fuinjutsu theory.

'Holdings in Uzu no Kuni' was a deceptive statement. Uzu no Kuni, Uzushiogakure, and the Uzumaki Clan were, at the end of the day, intrinsically one and the same. The Uzumaki had made up the bulk of Uzushiogakure's forces. Their clan leader was the leader of the village, and their clan held the title of Daimyo of Uzu no Kuni. Technically she was the heir of Uzu no Kuni, which made her a Princess (and that was probably the weirdest realization she'd had the entire day. She'd joined up to save princesses, not become one!), even though there wasn't exactly a nation in Uzu anymore. A side effect of tens of thousands of Shinobi engaging in the closest thing to an apocalypse that they could imagine across a small archipelago for three straight months. Konoha still held the official stance of recognizing the existence of Uzu no Kuni and the Uzumaki claim to it. A fact that probably went a ways to explaining some of the animosity between Konoha and Kiri.

The chakra exercises were proving useful and her clones back at the estate were going over the Fuinjutsu theory and history. The first scroll on exercises was literally the same as the list taught to them at the academy. According to the scrolls she should have been trying to learn them when she was three years old because of her family's immense chakra reserves. That at least explained why she couldn't use the normal Bunshin. The fragile construct would disintegrate under the massive wave of chakra she tossed at it like a sandcastle before a tidal wave.

The second scroll was lying in her lap as she watched the clock tick over ten minutes. Filled with more advanced and utilitarian chakra control exercises she was nearly a quarter of the way through the list. Sure the leaf exercise, which Iruka had shown every back in the academy, didn't have the greatest use, but the tree climbing technique? Water walking? Both of those were so useful.

"Okay!" she shouted at her clones, "You!" she pointed to the one on the left, "Disperse first, then one at a time moving away from her. GO!" The clone in question dispersed itself with a punch to the gut that made her wince as the memory entered her mind. By the time the last clone slit its own throat with a wink and a grin she was grumbling about sadistic clones. She rubbed her throat at the phantom sensation and sighed. "Stupid. Clones," she grumbled, rolling up the scroll before standing up.

She took the tree at a run, sprinting up the side. She came to a stop on the side of the tree and looked around. Looking at the world from the side of a tree took some getting used to. She idly tapped the tree with a toe. Tree climbing was simple now, and after only a few hours of work too. If only Bunshin was this simple she'd have graduated years ago.

She walked sedately to the top of the tree and stepped out into the highest branch. It was a flimsy little thing, barely a foot long and with only a few twigs sticking out. It swayed in the breeze that rolled across the mountainside behind her home. And yet, if she placed her weight like so it would hold her weight just fine. One hand gripped the tip-top of the tree to aid her balance as she gazed out over the valley.

The estate was directly ahead of her, and she could just see the silhouettes of her clones practicing in the yard as well as those cleaning up the surrounding land. The Estate's grounds had gone untended for over a decade and a lot of work needed to be done, even accounting for Jiji's seal.

The wind ruffled her hair as she looked towards the village. It was more of a city really, a fact made more evident from a distance. It sprawled across the horizon, the occasional seven-storey building sticking up from the city centre.

She was used to living in the city with easy access to stores and her favourite food. Ramen, she could feel her mouth watering at the thought. She really needed to make a stop at Ichiraku Ramen. It had been days since she had last had her favourite meal and they hadn't seen the new her yet either.

Naruto laughed at the thought of their reaction. Her, a girl. Oh, they were going to be so surprised.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sudden memories of one of her clones that was practicing throwing kunai in the yard. She frowned. One moment it had been lining up another throw and then a sharp pain in the back of its head was the last thing it remembered. She was in the middle of raising her hands to create more clones to go investigate when the memories of yet another clone came to her. She let her hands drop with a sigh. Stupid. Clones.

One of the clones had gotten so frustrated that she had thrown her brush out a nearby window and pegged the other clone in the head. The one responsible had been punched out of existence by a study partner shortly thereafter.

Shaking off the idiocy of her clones she created two more to go and replace the fallen clones. As they dashed across the treetops she stretched. She had basic tree climbing down, now it was time to do the advanced practice with it. Her hands came together in the crossed seal of the Kage Bunshin and every treetop in a hundred meters exploded into smoke.

The advanced training was simple. Use the tree climbing technique during a fight. Luckily she could just make her own sparring partners now, otherwise, this would have been a lot harder to do. She took a step forward, balancing on the very end of the thin stick that called itself a branch and pointed at one of the clones.

"Let's get this started, dattebayo!" she shouted, getting a loud cheer from her clones in response as the six closest to her threw themselves at her. The first came in too high and she caught it in the stomach with a straight punch. Twisting on the twig without breaking it, she slammed the sole of her sandals into the face of the second clone that had for some reason led with its face.

A trio of kunai from another clone forced her to move, bouncing over a third clone and catching a fourth in the face. She landed lightly on the tip-top of another tree and promptly deflected several kunai with the open palms of her hands. She caught another clone's kunai on one she quickly drew before popping it with a jab to the stomach.

Then one of them snapped the top six feet off the tree with a kick and the fight fell into the branches of the trees below. Naruto's fingers caught the thick branch of a tree and she spun up on top of the limb in a handstand. Doing a perfect split while balanced on her hand her feet caught two more clones. She followed through, translating the momentum of the movement into a leap that just narrowly carried her between the wild strikes of a pair of kunai wielding clones. They exploded as her own blades cut through their sides.

The bout continued like that, the forest ringing with a neverending rumble of explosions as clones popped one after another. Eventually, she came to a halt breathing hard on the limb of a tree. On all of the tree branches around her stood yet hundreds more of her clones. One of them landed on the far end of her branch and stumbled slightly as the branch swayed. The clone pointed a kunai at her.

"Give up! We've got you surrounded!" It declared, earning a sigh from Naruto.

"You know, for being clones of me you aren't very observant, dattebayo," Naruto complained, before forming a ram seal. The clone's eyes widened as hissing filled the air.

"SCATT-" Explosions rocked the forest as many of the trees around her exploded, the explosive tags she had left behind tearing gaping holes in the ranks of her shadows.

Laughing, she backflipped over the wave of kunai that slipped out of the smoke and bounced off the trunk of the tree, leaping straight for another clone.

Some hours later, as the sun was beginning to sink below the horizon, the last clone popped. Naruto slumped against the trunk of the tree she was on with a groan. "Haaaa, finally," she complained, wiping her sweat-soaked brow with her dust hands. That had taken a lot longer than she'd thought it would and she was absolutely exhausted. She started walking down the tree trunk slowly. She needed a bath. And food. Food and bath, in that order.

As she reached the ground the memories of her last few clones filtered properly through her mind, causing her to pause. She raised one hand and stared. "Since when did I glow?!"

-0-0-0-0-0-​

Naruto brushed the bangs of her hair down and scowled at the glowing golden starburst on her forehead as it simply appeared in front of her hair. She brushed her hair back to its normal disorderly shape. The full-body glow had disappeared during her shower, but this stupid mark hadn't left. All attempts to rub it out with her fingers had simply gone through it without effect. Water did nothing, and the soap was pointless. It wasn't made from chakra, though she could sense… something from it. It felt warm both to the touch and to her will.

Re-examining her clone's memories during her shower had revealed that the mark had appeared around thirty minutes into her spar. The full-body glow had appeared an hour later and grown until it had washed out the natural light of the forest. A few of the clones had tried to tell her, but she'd been too busy massacring them to notice.

She gave up on getting rid of the mark and started combing her hair. There were a few other things that stood out as she examined the fight. One, her clones had no idea how to work together and half the time actually got in each other's way. Two, her clones weren't able to track her as well as she could track them. Third, they didn't have her sense of balance or the apparent ability to skillfully balance on twigs and other objects that wouldn't normally support her weight. Which was just weird. The scroll had said that the clones were perfect copies of the user, just as capable in every way except their ability to take a hit.

She tossed the comb on the counter and left the bathroom. The bedroom she had claimed was a spare bedroom, though a large one. The master bedroom had been her mother's and she hadn't even started going through her things yet. That was something she wanted to do herself rather than pawn off on a clone. Even if the clone was, technically, her.

The bed was soft as she leapt on it, sinking deep into the mattress. She sighed and hugged a pillow. Clearly she hadn't mastered the Kage Bunshin as well as she thought she had. There were issues with her clones. Ones she was going to need to work on. Still, they'd do their job well enough. She just had to remember that they weren't her.

The next morning Naruto got up early and headed into town. She needed to be there for ten to get her picture taken for registration. Before that, she would need to get ready, and she wanted to get some Ichiraku before that.

Set on the main avenue, Ramen Ichiraku was a popular Ramen shop within a couple of minute's walk from the Hokage's Tower. A single story with bar stools for five people. A simple series of curtains hanging from the roof and stopping half-way down divided the Ramen bar from the street.

Naruto discovered to her dismay that she didn't even have to brush aside the curtains to enter the shop anymore. She was barely inches shorter than the bottom of the weighted cloth. "Hey, Ojisan!" Naruto called as she entered the shop. The middle-aged chef turned from where he was filling up a bowl of Ramen for an impatient chunin. To Naruto's shock, the ramen bowl tumbled out of his hands the moment he laid eyes on her.

"OI! That's my lunch old man!"

"Kushina?" Teuchi breathed, making Naruto blink.

"You knew my mom?" she asked.

"OI!" Teuchi glanced over at the Chunin just as Ayame came out from the back.

"Otou-san, what's going on?" she asked, sparing a glance for Naruto.

"I- Ayame, fill his order. Beef Ramen with negi and menma," Teuchi said, leaning over the counter. "You said Kushina was your mother? Uzumaki Kushina?" he asked Naruto intently as the Chunin in the corner fumed silently.

"Um… yeah?" Naruto glanced from Teuchi to Ayame.

"Who are you?"

Oh. In hindsight, she didn't have a clue why she expected him to recognize her. "I'm Naruto Oji-san," she said. There was a second crash as Ayame dropped the bowl in her hands.

"OH COME ON! Fuck this, I'll go get something else," the Chunin stormed out of the shop. Neither Teuchi nor Ayame paid him any attention.

"Naruto…-chan?" Ayame said slowly.

"Ello, Ayame-nee. Sorry about this. That bastard Mizuki hit me with some kind of Jutsu or something," Naruto said, repeating the cover story the Hokage had told her when they were walking to the Estate.

"I- Of course. Of course, I see now," Teuchi shook his head chuckling, "You have her face, I should have realized before. You're her spitting image, except the eyes. She had green eyes." Naruto touched her face near her right eye and grinned.

"The Hokage decided to tell me about her now that I'm a Genin," she said

"Naruto-chan, are you… a girl?" Ayame asked, as she was staring at him intently.

"Mizuki was a bastard," Naruto grumbled, "yeah I'm a girl now, Ayame-nee."

"Oh you are so adorable!" she blinked as her older sister-like figure squeed.

"Oi! I am not!" she shouted when it registered what Ayame had said. She was not adorable! She refused to be adorable!

"I don't know," Teuchi rubbed his chin with a thoughtful grin that made Naruto's stomach sink. "You are rather short and adorable now." She shot him a deathglare, earning only a chuckle from the old man. "So, what'll it be Naruto?"

She perked up. "Miso Ramen, with narutomaki and some eggs please," she said.

"As you wish," Teuchi said, turning around to get to work. There was a wet squelch mixed with crunching. The owner and his daughter both looked down and sighed. "After we clean up," he amended as she snickered.

She'd gotten a better reaction than she'd expected.

Twenty minutes later, and on her second bowl, the curtain parted to admit a very familiar scarred Chunin. "Hey Teuchi, Ayame- Naruto!" her academy teacher Iruka grinned at her.

"Heya Iruka-sensei," she said through a mouth full of noodles. She ignored the disappointed sigh.

"Don't talk with your mouth full," he sighed as he took the seat next to her, "Shoyu with nori, Teuchi."

"Coming right up. And don't bother Iruka. Her mother was the same way," Teuchi chuckled.

"You knew her Naruto's mother?" Iruka asked.

"You're old enough. Can you honestly say you don't recognize that hair colour?" the old ramen chef chided as he filled a bowl.

Naruto blinked as Iruka turned his attention to her. "Wrt?" she asked through a mouth full of noodles.

"Naruto!" Ayame chided. She went ignored by the rest of the shop.

"... Kushina-sama?" Iruka said questioningly after a few minutes.

"Sama?" Naruto repeated.

"Right in one," Teuchi said.

Iruka shook his head. "Teuchi I barely remember her. I was in the academy at the time. I think I laid eyes on Kushina-sama like… four times."

"Sama?" Naruto repeated again.

"Your mother was a big-shot Kunoichi Naruto," Teuchi said, "the Red Hot-Blooded Habanero. For both her hair and her temper."

Temper? She slurped her noodles loudly as she thought. Hopefully, it hadn't been anything like Sakura's temper. "Hey, Ojisan," Naruto said after she swallowed. "What can you tell me about mom?"

Teuchi paused and tapped the lip of his pot with his ladle. "Well, let's see… Have you heard about the time she was kidnapped by Kumo?" he asked, chuckling as Naruto's head snapped up from her food. "Now I wasn't there, but she told me how it went. It started here in the village actually…"

Teuchi's story continued for quite some time. It was interesting to hear about how the boy who would go on to become the Yondaime Hokage had saved her mother when they had both been Genin. A few other, less exciting, stories followed. Eventually, though, time ran out as the curtain of the stand was pushed aside and Hana-nee entered.

"Inuzuka-san, welcome. Can I get you anything?" Teuchi asked.

"Just a Genin student of mine," she replied, nodding a greeting to Iruka.

"Student of yours?" Iruka asked pointedly as Naruto spun around in her seat.

"Wrkcom,Hnneee," she said through a mouthful of noodles.

Hana bopped her on the head, making her cough and nearly choke on her Ramen. "This idiot got turned into a girl. Who do you think got roped into showing this brat the ropes?" She asked.

"Ah, Hana-nee," Naruto pouted, not fazed in the least by the light tap on her head, "You're being mean."

"You snuck a pink dress into my purchases you brat," Hana deadpanned in reply. Naruto shrugged. She didn't see what the problem was. If she had to buy a pink dress then the older girl could handle it too.

Iruka snorted and winced at the annoyed glance Hana sent his way. "Be happy. He's done worse to me," he said.

"Kiba saw it. He wouldn't stop teasing me until I set the Haimaru Brothers on him," Hana sighed. Naruto giggled at the thought of Kiba being chased around by the trio of large dogs.

"Anyway, we need to get moving. Your registration is soon," Hana reminded her. She slurped down the last of her Ramen and pulled out her wallet.

"Let's go, dattebayo!" she said, dropping the money, and a generous tip, on the counter.

"See you at graduation Naruto," Iruka said, patting her on the head.

"Have a good day, Naruto-chan," Ayame called from the back room.

"Come back soon," Teuchi added with a grin.

"I will! See you later!" Naruto replied, following her temporary sensei out of the bar.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

Registering to become a shinobi, or kunoichi, of Konohagakure was a serious business. As Hokage Sarutobi Hiruzen would have thought that much was obvious. Over his decades-long reign as the Sandaime Hokage he had seen more than a few who took it as a personal challenge to come up with the most bizarre pictures to submit. Like the time that Jiraiya had tried to turn in a picture of him in Kabuki make-up, or the following time he had tried to turn in a picture of himself in a toad costume. Or that thing Gai had done.

Knowing Naruto's prankster nature he had been preparing himself to send Naruto back to retake her photo. He had expected something strange and over the top. Maybe more Kabuki make-up, Naruto was rather similar to Jiraiya at times. This… He had to wonder if this had been Naruto's plan all along, or if this was a spur of the moment decision brought about by her change in gender.

The worst part was that it wasn't far enough off base to send it back.

He took a puff from his pipe as he examined the full-body ID picture of Naruto. The girl herself was fidgeting in her seat more the longer he took to look it over.

"SO! Do you like it Jiji?" Naruto finally asked loudly, trying to disguise her nervousness beneath eagerness.

Exhaling a puff of smoke he looked up at Naruto and then down at the picture. He could forgive others for not recognizing the girl in the photo as Naruto. Brash, dressed exactly like her mother was at her age (ignoring the bright orange yukata), with short punkish red hair, and sitting like a boy. It was the exact opposite of the girl in the picture. She was dressed in a fine pink and sky-blue kimono with doves patterned across the fabric and sitting in the chair provided by the photographer. Her hair was somehow longer than it should have been… No, he could just catch the hint of hair extensions, and up in a complicated formal hairstyle, he couldn't possibly name. Though it had probably last been popular sometime in his youth. White makeup covered her face, making the red lipstick she was wearing stand out all the more.

If it had ended there he would have already approved the photo. The girl had a shamisen across her lap, held expertly like only someone with long experience could do so. The instrument partnered with her posture and the lazy/bored half-lidded look she was giving the camera reminded him far too much of certain women he had seen in his younger and more virile years among the red lights districts.

It was, in short, not the first impression he wanted anyone looking at Naruto's records to get of the girl who may as well have been his own granddaughter.

He pulled out the pipe from his lips. "Denied Naruto-chan," he said.

"Eh! But we spent an hour getting ready for that!" Naruto complained, crossing her arms with a huff.

Hiruzen sighed. "Your ID photo is the first thing prospective clients and your fellow shinobi will see. It is a serious matter that-"

"You're just annoyed about the instrument, aren't you?" She interrupted sullenly, though he caught the corner of her lip twitching ever so slightly.

"This is not the first impression a Kunoichi should be giving," he replied, setting the picture down on the desk.

"I've seen kunoichi wearing worse than that! Ino's practically half-naked! In-class even!" she protested.

Inoichi's daughter? He hadn't looked in on the school recently, but perhaps he should have since it seemed to be setting poor standards for Naruto to follow. "A girl not yet graduated is not the best example to follow for professional Kunoichi conduct Naruto-chan," he countered.

Naruto grumbled before perking up. "What about that Jounin I see around town? The woman with red eyes? She's wearing like half a dress and a bunch of bandages!"

That brought a twitch to his eye. He wondered how Kurenai would feel about being used as a point in favour of dressing provocatively? It was always hard to tell with her. If anything he would have expected Anko. "My decision is final, Naruto-chan. You will retake the picture tomorrow. Come dressed in your normal attire. Understood?"

"Spoilsport," she mumbled. He coughed. "I understand Jiji." And now she was pouting at him. It looked even more adorable than it did when she was a boy.

"Good, now," he leaned back in his chair, relaxing now that one issue was off the table. "Why don't you tell me how Chunin Inuzuka Hana's lessons have been going?"

Naruto brightened up. "Great! She's been a big help, both yesterday and today!" She blanched a moment later when he raised an eyebrow.

"Today? I take it, she helped you with this?" he asked, tapping the picture with his pipe.

"Erm… A bit? She helped me buy the Kimono and get into it today. And the makeup. She was a big help with that," Naruto said.

"Hmmm, I see. Anything else before you head off for now?" he asked.

She shifted in her seat. "Well…" She looked very nervous.

"Naruto-chan, did something happen?"

She coughed into a fist. "I was practicing last night in the forest behind the estate. The one on the mountain," she said, fidgeting, "After I was done I realized I'd started glowing gold."

"Gold?" he leaned forward. Like the gold that Iruka had reported following the Mizuki incident? In a way, it was a pity that Mizuki was still in a coma from his injuries. He would have loved to have a second source to plunder about what had happened in that forest.

"Yep," Naruto nodded, "And there was this glowing symbol floating in front of my forehead." she fished out a scrap of paper and set it on his desk. As she walked back to her seat he picked up the scrap of paper and examined it. A sunburst, just like before.

He puffed out another cloud of smoke. Yes, that was the mark that Minato was studying. Interesting. He tapped the arm of his chair in thought.

"You know something, Jiji," Naruto said knowingly.

How much to say? Not that he had much to say at the moment. He hadn't had a chance to go back over Minato's research yet. Perhaps a bit of honesty was in the cards then. "The truth, Naruto-chan, is that we know next to nothing. It has appeared before throughout history. The Yondaime Hokage was researching it before his death but died before much progress could be made. I would tell you more if I knew of it, but-" his explanation was cut off as the door banged open.

"FIGHT ME JIJI!" Hiruzen stifled a sigh as his grandson crashed through the doorway, a shuriken, held improperly, in hand. Then he tripped and slid across the room, sliding to a spot a few feet in front of Naruto.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Naruto staring at his grandson. With a rush of panicked footsteps, the boy's tutor appeared in the doorway. Special Jounin Ebisu.

"Damn it! Who set a trap!" Konohamaru shouted, clutching his head where he had smacked against the floor.

The black bandana-wearing man pushed up his sunglasses with a finger and huffed. "Are you alright? And there isn't a trap anywhere!" The Jounin declared. Despite his sunglasses, the old Hokage caught the inquisitive glance the Jounin sent Naruto's way.

Konohamaru shook off his disorientation and leapt to his feet upon spotting Naruto staring at him. He pointed dramatically at the confused redhead. "Hey! I know you're the one who set the trap!"

Hiruzen sighed and tugged the brim of his hat down as he watched Naruto shift from confused to indignantly angry. "YOU TRIPPED OVER YOUR OWN FEET YOU IDIOT!" she snapped, hauling his grandson up by his shirt. This wasn't going to end well for the boy. Oh well, he needed to learn restraint.

Ebisu, apparently, did not share his thoughts on the matter. He exploded indignantly. "Girl! Let him go! That's the Hokage's Grandson!" Naruto paused and looked down at his grandson before looking up at him with a disbelieving look. He tugged the brim of his hat down a little more as he calmly lit his pipe again.

For a moment it looked like Naruto was about to let the boy go, her rage having apparently been sidetracked for an instant. Then the boy opened his mouth again and promptly swallowed his own foot. "Come on then! Go ahead and punch me!" the young boy taunted. Naruto's expression promptly flashed back to indignation.

"Like I give a damn!" she yelled, bringing her fist down on his head hard enough to bounce him off the ground.

"Ow…" groaned his grandson.

"Later old man!" Naruto growled, heading for the door.

"Remember to retake your photo tomorrow!" Hiruzen called after her as she stalked passed the stunned Ebisu. He sighed as the door slammed shut after her.

"That- That- The disrespect! Hokage-sama," Ebisu turned to him, "Who is that girl? She needs to be punished for her behaviour!"

"Hrm…?" Hiruzen glanced up from watching his grandson stumbled back to his feet. "Her? That is Uzumaki Naruto."

"Naruto? The- That brat? Hokage-sama, the rumours were true? The brat has become a girl?" The prim Jounin asked. Behind him, Konohamaru tiptoed towards the door. Hiruzen nodded, gaining a conflicted grimace from the rank-obsessed Jounin. "She looked just like Kushina-sama."

"That would make sense, seeing as Kushina was her mother," he replied, smirking around his pipe at the sudden flinch from the other man. Ah, how reputations lingered. "Also, your student appears to be missing," he added, having watched as Konohamaru slipped out of the room and ran off after Naruto.

"Eh?" He sighed as the Jounin took one hurried look around the room, panicked, and promptly ran off, nearly running down the Chunin that the Hokage had sent off for a lunch break when Naruto arrived.

Once the Chunin shook off the collision he glanced around the room and spotted the cracks in the floor where Konohamaru had bounced off the planks. "Did I miss anything?" he asked.

"Nothing much," he replied, taking one last looked at the drawing of the sunburst that Naruto had handed him before incinerating it and her registration photo with a spark of fire chakra.

"What was that?" the curious Chunin asked.

The Hokage pushed the brim of his hat up and raised an eyebrow. "What was what?"

"... So who's next?" The Chunin asked, wisely dropping the topic.

The Hokage consulted the list in front of him. "... Uchiha Sasuke." At least that registration was less likely to drive his blood pressure up. His doctor would be happy at least.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

It wasn't hard to spot the Hokage's grandson following her. The little brat couldn't even seem to get the most basic Jutsu right. His Kakuremino no Jutsu was so shoddy that a blind man could have spotted him. He wasn't even holding the sheet the right way!

At first, she tried to ignore the brat as he bounced from hiding place to hiding place behind her. Only… Really there was only so long she could stand being followed by someone that incompetent before she snapped.

"STOP FOLLOWING ME!" her shout echoed in the quiet street she had turned down. Her finger was pointed at a sheet painted like the fence behind it, only it was being held sideways, loosely, and with the user's fingers poking out from behind the cloth.

There was a quiet moment during which the sheet twitched, then she added, "Your technique sucks."

The boy dropped the sheet, smirking like an idiot at her. "You're really impressive to see through my cover, Nee-san. It seems that the rumours were true!" he declared as though he hadn't been so obvious an untrained civilian would have spotted him.

Was he serious? She rolled her eyes. "Shoo, go practice not sucking or something," she said. And being called 'Nee' rather than 'Nii' felt rather strange to her ears. Of all the things, why were honorifics the ones bugging her?

"You beat Jiji! Please teach me how to do it!" He shouted, "Teach me the Sexy Jutsu!" She stared at him for a long moment in disbelief. He wanted to learn… the Sexy Jutsu? Seriously? Sure it worked wonders on perverts, but really all it was was her turning into a sexy naked girl.

"Please!Please!Please!" he begged looking up at her with wide eager eyes.

Oh, what the hell. It wasn't like she had anything better to do that day anyway. Everything else was being done by her clones. "Sure, why not," she sighed, "I know a place not that far from here we can train."

An hour and a half later she sighed as the kid, Sarutobi Konohamaru he had said his name was, turned into a fat brunette girl in a bikini. "No, thinner!" she snapped gesturing at the waist. The boy tried it again, somehow managing to move the fat from her waist to her thighs. He somehow managed to look both overweight and anorexic at the same time. "No! Ugh…"

Konohamaru popped back to normal. "I'm trying!"

"I know. Keep trying! More slender, and balance it out this time! Picture it in your head. You can't get it right if you don't have a clear picture!" Naruto instructed. His next attempt was better. The Henge wasn't misbalanced, but the brunette's figure was still too large. "Clearer! Skinnier!"

Attempt after attempt passed and an hour later she decided he'd done enough. Between tips, hints, and constant shouting the kid had gone from 'indistinctly human blob' to 'attractive brunette'. After raiding a couple of vending machines along the small trail that rarely saw more people than the occasional Inuzuka on a walk, she led him over to the log in the clearing and sat down with her drink.

"So," she said after taking a sip of her drink, "Why are you going after Hokage-Jiji all the time?" She frowned as the boy seemed to deflate, leaning forwards against his knees.

"Grandpa gave me the name Konohamaru. I'm named after the village," he said quietly, "And even though everyone knows my name, nobody ever calls me that." She nodded, letting her drink rest against her leg as she leaned towards him. "When somebody is talking about me or calling me all they ever see is the Hokage's grandson. No one sees me as me. I'm sick of it. That's why I want the title of Hokage."

That sounded familiar, but off. She sighed. "You're an idiot," she said bluntly. He looked up indignantly. "People aren't going to acknowledge a brat like you. It's not a title a kid can just take. You don't beat up the Hokage and become the Hokage, that's not how it works. Besides," she grinned widely at him, leaned down to smirk at him, "if you want it so bad, you'll have to beat me first."

The brat bristled. "I'll-"

"I found you," a man's voice loudly announced from above. Startled, since she'd been focused on Konohamaru she joined the brat in looking up. Standing on a branch above them was the Jounin dressed in black that she recognized from earlier. He was glaring at her with condescension that she was far too familiar with. He had those eyes, the eyes of someone who refused to see her even when she was standing right before him. He adjusted his sunglasses then leapt down from the branch.

"Now young master, let's go home," he said, adjusting his uniform as he stalked forwards.

"NO! I'm going to defeat Jiji and get the Hokage title!" he screamed as he slammed his hands together in a ram seal. For a moment she felt like rolling her eyes. He hadn't heard a word she'd said. "So don't get in my way!"

She couldn't blame the Jounin for scoffing at that, even if it did annoy her since it was exactly how people mocked her own dream of being Hokage. "A Hokage must be well taught," he said, walking forward with spread out arms. His tone was patronizing as he recited what had to be a memorized speech, "in every aspect of being a shinobi. You must master thousands of jutsu before finally- What are you doing?"

With a surge of blue chakra, Konohamaru transformed in an explosion of white smoke. As it cleared to reveal a beautiful, and naked, buxom brunette woman. Smoke hung about covering just what needed to be covered.

Naruto facepalmed as the Jounin stared disbelievingly at Konohamaru who popped back to normal a moment later as he released the Henge. "What?! Why didn't it work?" he demanded loudly.

"W-What a perverted skill! You- I am a gentleman, such a dirty skill won't work on me!" the Jounin growled, grabbing Konohamaru by his long trailing scarf. His next words hammered the button for her temper. "If you hang out with trash like this girl you'll become stupid like her! I am your short-cut to becoming Hokage! Now let's go home!"

Konohamaru struggled, fumbling at his scarf. "Let me go!"

"Kage Bunshin no Jutsu," Naruto growled, leaving her half-finished drink on the stump. Smoke explosions encircled the clearing, startling the Jounin into letting Konohamaru go. The boy scrambled away, hiding behind Naruto.

"You're amazing Naruto-nee!" Konohamaru exclaimed as he stared around at Naruto.

"You think there's a shortcut to being Hokage?!" She and her clones snapped, "That's not how this works." It took time and effort to become Hokage. Years of trials and blood and tears. You couldn't just jump ahead because of who your grandfather was or who you taught you.

Panic flitted across the Jounin's face for a moment before he suddenly grinned and adjusted his glasses as he slid into a fighting stance. "Tell me you're joking. I'm hardly that fool Mizuki. It'll take more than a few clones to beat me," he declared with confidence that was belied by the slight twitch in his eyes as he glanced around at the crowd of Narutos.

She smirked and slammed her hands together in a Ram sign, an action echoed by every Naruto in the clearing. "HENGE!" They chorused. The man tensed, then his expression sagged as from the smoke clouds came a wave of tall, blonde, bombshells that threw themselves at him with cries of "Ninja-san~"

She had enough pride to not shout it herself, but as her clones entangled his limply hanging limbs with their bodies she slipped disguised through the crowd. Once she was close enough she brought one foot back and kicked out. The crowd went silent as thirty blonde clones stared at her with horror and the Jounin let out a high pitched noise no human should have been capable of.

"Why do that?" The clone closest to her asked dimly before Naruto released her henge and slammed a kick into the Jounin's jaw. She felt it break as the man went down in a heap. He didn't get up.

"Seriously, why?" A group of them chorus before she dispelled them. She winced as the memory of the look of eagerness on her own face as she kicked a man in the balls entered her mind.

"Ow," she muttered, thinking about the times Sakura had done that to her over the years. "Sorry pervert-guy," she whispered before turning back to Konohamaru. "And that," she declared with more confidence, "Is Harem No Jutsu!"

"That was awesome Naruto-nee! You defeated my tutor," he cheered. She glanced over her shoulder at the Jounin. He was clearly out cold with a twitch to his jaw that could not have been comfortable with his injuries. Honestly, he didn't seem like what she would have expected from a Jounin.

Konohamaru had continued rambling as she examined the Jounin. "... I really want a name people will acknowledge me by and yet…" he gave a frustrated growl.

She rolled her eyes and smacked him over the back of the head. "Didn't you hear a word I said? It isn't that easy. The title of Hokage is the title of the greatest shinobi or kunoichi in the village. You get acknowledged for having it, you get it by being acknowledged!" She huffed and crossed her arms. "I made that mistake for a while and I almost lost myself in it. If you want to be Hokage, be ready to work for it! It'll take a lot of hard work and there won't be any shortcuts! Got it!"

"I- Humph!" Konohamaru scowled and huffed. He pointed a finger at her. "Fine! I'll do it! I'll beat you to Hokage! Though…" A weird expression crossed his face. "Nee-san, is that what you'll look like when you grow up? Big and... " he made gestures over his chest and bounced.

She stared at him for a moment. Then she felt a blush rise from her neck, turning her as red as her hair. That was right, she was a girl now, and she just… "Idiot!" she smacked him over the head and spun on her heel, stalking out of the clearing. Behind her lay her unconscious student and the Jounin whose name she still hadn't gotten.

It took a few hundred meters of walking before the blush faded a bit. Her Sexy Jutsu henge wasn't her. It had been her idea when she'd created it of what she might look like as an older girl, but it wasn't her. Not now anyway, but… "And I just dogpiled a pervert…" she shivered. Oh gods, what bizarre and creepy things was he going to do now?

"Not the smartest move you've ever made." Naruto stumbled to a stop as Hana-nee's voice spoke up from above her. She slowly looked up to find the older girl standing on a limb with her three dogs on the other limbs of the tree.

"Um, hi Hana-nee. How are you?" she asked, feeling the blush rising. Please, please let her have not seen-

"Frustrated at the show you just put on back there. Honestly, is there a brain in between those ears Naruto-chan?" she demanded scowling.

"I-"

"Obviously not," the older girl continued, "Here I was thinking you'd adapted fine. Apparently modesty is something you need a refresher on." She looked almost feral as she grinned down at her.

Naruto took a step back, nervously. "Um, hehehe, uh, you seem a bit… On edge Hana-nee?" she said, glancing about for an escape. If she could just get a head start it wouldn't be the first time that she outran Inuzuka hounds.

"Apparently, Hokage-sama was wondering what I was teaching you after a certain photo of yours today," Hana said, "Now. Lesson one: Why creating stupid perverted jutsu isn't something young ladies do. Haimaru Brothers, get her!"

"Eep!" Slamming her hands into a familiar cross-shaped seal, a dozen Naruto's scattered in all directions as the three wolf-like dogs leaped forwards howling. As she took to the trees she added a quick note to the back of her mind: Hana-nee was scary when angry.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

A/N: Ello~ *Fluffy Kitsune Greeting* Chapter Two is here~ Whoo~ Writing Naruto is just weird I have to admit. It feels Odd writing Naruto and company. I'm just not used to writing Naruto anymore. At the same time I'm struggling to not make Naruto feel sueish. It isn't an issue with Ranma and company oddly enough, but writing Exalted with Naruto seems to be causing a few issues. *kitsune sigh* We'll see how I manage.

Discord and Patreon links are in their usual places~ A thanks to everyone who has supported me thus far~

 

[Grounders10]

-0-0-0-0-0-

A Naruto/Exalted Crossover

A Shine of Gold in the Crimson Tide

By: Grounders10

-0-0-0-0-0-

3. Help's Pondering

-0-0-0-0-0-​

Graduation day. Sasuke had to wonder why it took an entire week to come about. The last day of classes had been on a Friday. Surely it couldn't have taken an entire week just to decide who passed. Sure the extra time to practice alone had been nice, and the break from the fangirls was never something he wouldn't welcome. But a week was a bit too long.

Eager, despite preferring not to show it, he arrived early for the class that morning. Being more than a half-hour ahead of time when he found his usual seat in the far end of the middle-most row of desks there was no one else there. Hells, he would have been surprised if there was anyone but a couple of instructors in the building itself. The Academy was never busy during the three or so weeks after the end of the school year.

He pulled a notepad out he had filled with notes on his Family's Fire Style Jutsu. Going over the notes he mentally compared the directions from the scrolls to what he had experienced the night before. The Hosenka No Jutsu was trickier in execution than the Gokakyu no Jutsu even though it required significantly less chakra. Shaping and expelling multiple small blasts of fire-natured chakra required precision and significant control to avoid burning your lips after each shot. The Gokakyu definitely had that issue, but its primary problem had been maintaining control over the stream, not starting and stopping it frequently. Similar, but ultimately a simpler problem in comparison. At the end of the day, the biggest problem was not keeling over from the chakra expenditure.

His study time was interrupted by the arrival of several of his classmates. A group of boys who glanced at him as he slipped his notepad back into his pocket. He knew better than to try and study his family's jutsu in the middle of the classroom. Even when they weren't trying to peak on him there was inevitably way too much noise to focus. And if this lot was here then the fangirls probably wouldn't be far behind and they made doing anything meaningful impossible.

Had Itachi ever had to worry about the chattering of a thousand mindless girls drowning out his every thought? Probably not since his older brother had become a shinobi at the tender age of six. He suspected if he had it would have been the village rather than the clan that got wiped out.

Classmates began to trickle in and soon most of the seats were filled. He met the eyes of Nara Shikamaru as the pineapple haired boy walked through the door yawning. His fat friend Akimichi Choji followed him, the overweight brunette was happily munching on a pack of potato chips. Behind them came their frequent companion Inuzuka Kiba. The loud boy's dog was laying on his head fast asleep.

"Heyyy, guys look who's already here. You finally excited about something for once Sasuke?" Kiba laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world as he sat down on the desk between Sasuke and the other two.

"Isn't he always early?" Choji said, taking the seat next to Shikamaru. "Hey Sasuke, enjoy the week off?"

"Course he didn't," Kiba said before Sasuke could reply, "I bet you spent the entire week brooding, didn't you?"

He scowled as the idiot chuckled. "I spent it training. Unlike some idiots I have better things to do than spend all day sleeping," he replied with a smirk, "So how long did it take your sister to set her dogs on you this time?" He raised an eyebrow as Kiba started laughing harder.

"Wasn't me this time," the short-haired feral-looking boy chuckled, "Hana-nee has been out and about on some mission involving Naruto of all people. She's had to sick them on Naruto three times in the last week."

"Seriously?" Shikamaru groaned from where he was leaning on his arm, "You'd think Naruto would know better."

"Yeah, and why's your sister hanging around Naruto?" Choji asked. Sasuke stayed silent as he leaned back in his chair. He was wondering the same, to be honest, but with how much of a gossip Kiba tended to be he figured the news would come out without getting drawn into their banter. And come out it did.

"Yeah, I asked about that. She didn't want to say much, but Oka-san got curious as well," he started snickering, drawing mystified looks from the other people already in the room. He leaned forwards, resting one hand on his knee. "You're not going to believe this, but Naruto? Went and got his ass turned into a girl."

"Bullshit. That's not possible," one of the guys behind Kiba shouted. The Inuzuka turned around with a snarl.

"You calling my sister a liar?" he demanded, getting a rapid shake of the head from the idiot you'd spoken up.

"Troublesome. Any idea how?" Shikamaru asked, sitting up just a bit. That was a rare reaction from the Nara, not that Sasuke could blame him. He wanted to know too.

"No idea. She wouldn't say," Kiba shrugged, before laughing again. "Seriously though, the guy fails to graduate then gets turned into a girl? What a shitty week, am I right?" A few of the boys behind him muttered agreement.

"OI! Is there something wrong with being a girl?" Sasuke almost chuckled as several of the lesser fangirls in the class set upon the young Inuzuka for his poor choice of words.

"So Naruto's a girl?" Choji munched on a handful of potato chips. "Huh, wonder what she looks like. Any ideas Shikamaru?" The Nara groaned.

"How should I know? I just hope Naruto isn't about to become as nagging as Ino is," Shikamaru complained, laying his head down for a nap. Sasuke barely caught him mutter a follow up about 'troublesome blondes'.

Seeing as Kiba had been caught up in the trap of his own words Sasuke turned away from the rest of the boys and leaned forward, folding his hands in front of him as he leaned on his elbows. Naruto was a girl? For a moment his brain conjured the image of the naked blonde bombshell the boy had a habit of turning into whenever he wanted to startle Iruka-sensei. It took a force of will to crush the thought. Given how unlikely it was that he'd even managed to get turned into a girl in the first place, it was possible, he supposed, that Naruto had somehow gotten stuck in a Henge…

Was that even possible?

Probably not, but just to be safe he'd take a look around the clan library for any information on the Henge Jutsu. He would rather avoid getting stuck as a squirrel. Still, that did leave the question of what Naruto actually looked like. He frowned. His mother had told him a few stories about the Uzumaki, more than a few actually. His mother had been on a team with an Uzumaki Kushina and had a lot of tales to tell. The photo had survived the massacre and he'd kept it in his apartment.

It showed his mother on her first day as a Genin with her Genin Team which included a stoic Hyuuga boy and a brilliantly red-haired girl. And now that he thought about it he had spotted a red-haired girl on the road by his apartment a couple of times over the week. It had been at a distance, but red hair was nearly impossible to find in Hi no Kuni. But Naruto was a blonde, it seemed a bit ridiculous to think that if he'd been turned into a girl that his hair had gone red just because a female relative had red hair.

A commotion by the door announced the arrival of his two least favourite girls in the entire class. First through the door came a giggling pink-haired girl in a red dress, her hair held back by her Hitai-ate that she wore as a hairband. Behind her was another blonde girl wearing a pained expression and… About have the room stared as they spotted Yamanaka Ino traipse into the room after her close rival Haruno Sakura. Both of them were obsessive fangirls of Sasuke and tended to try and compete for his affections in loud and increasingly obnoxious ways.

They dieted, wore perfume, and tried to dress to impress at all times. Despite every last one of those actions being detrimental to their performance as Kunoichi. Yes, a kunoichi was required to know how to do such things when needed, except the dieting, but most missions required stealth or practicality. Ino, in particular, had developed a habit over the last year of wearing less and less until seemingly half of her outfit had become composed of bandages.

Now she was wearing a much more conservative outfit with actual pants, no bare midriff, and that happened to somehow be in a bright cheery orange. "It looks good on you Ino, really," Sakura giggled, clearly intending to annoy the other girl.

Sasuke spared the briefest glance for the two lest they start thinking he was actually showing interest. Honestly, she looked better in the orange outfit than she had with the dark purple half-naked look. Not that he was going to say a damned thing. He'd learned that lesson really early on. Give them nothing to latch onto and maybe they would go away. It had worked on a few girls over the years, and he held out a vague sense of hope that it would this time.

"Ugh," Ino groaned, her cheeks puffed out in the most outrageous pout she could manage. "This thing makes me look like Naruto! Seriously, look at me. This is totally going to ruin my chances with my Sasuke-kun." Sakura bristled.

"Your Sasuke-kun?! He's mine!" And with that warcry began the daily battle of obsessed Kunoichi looking to make him 'theirs'. He concealed his shiver at the thought of what they had planned in their twisted heads. If he heard one more girl mutter about shrines then he was going to run away. From the village.

Once the two had run off the lesser competitors the argument quickly devolved into hair pulling as they fought over the seat next to him. That was when a saviour arrived in the form of Umino Iruka-sensei. "Sakura! Ino!" He shouted upon walking into the room. "Enough! Ino, go sit with Shikamaru. Sakura, the far side of the room by Kiba!"

"But sensei!" They both wailed for all of a moment before quailing under his glare. They quickly fled, leaving Sasuke mercifully alone in his row. He smothered a sigh of relief. Thank god for the teachers.

Iruka sighed and shook his head, laying out a folder full of papers on the desk at the front of the room. He looked around the room and nodded once. "Alright everyone, it's good to see all of you one last time. Before we get into the assignments I have an announcement to make. First of all," he began, "I'm sure you've noticed the fact that Mizuki is not here today. Normally he would have been here to see you off, but the night of your test he was caught attempting to copy important documents. He then attempted to flee the village."

Gasps rippled through the classroom and even Sasuke found himself surprised. Mizuki had been a good teacher, well, for most of them at least. He hadn't seemed all too fond of Naruto, but then not many adults were. The idea that he had turned traitor and attempted to steal information from the village seemed absurd, but then Iruka-sensei would hardly be standing there alone if it wasn't true.

"He was later taken down by myself and Uzumaki Naruto," Iruka continued, getting more gasps, and a few mutters of disbelief. "Due to his demonstrable skills, the Hokage saw fit to grant him a Hitai-ate."

"Then where is he?" One of the boys across the room asked. There was a distinct lack of orange-clad blonde in the room, out of style Yamanaka aside.

Iruka sighed. "Naruto-kun is currently outside in the hall. Normally when things like this happen, and they do happen on occasion, a reintroduction isn't required, however, during our fight with Mizuki, Naruto-kun was on the receiving end of a Jutsu we still haven't been able to identify. As such…" He looked awkward for a moment. "As such, Naruto-kun has been turned into a girl."

The silence was deafening. "Well, damn. He wasn't crazy," Shikamaru muttered from a few rows back, his voice barely drifting down to Sasuke despite the quiet room.

"Naruto-chan," Sasuke raised his head slightly at the change in honorific, "Please come in."

The door at the bottom of the auditorium-style classroom, through which Iruka-sensei himself had entered, slid open. Naruto was a little shorter than Sasuke, Kiba, and the other boys in the class, but it was only by a couple of inches at most. The girl who walked through had to be at least half a foot shorter than he had been. Sasuke's attention, however, was not on her size.

It was on her hair and outfit. For a moment he was back with his mother, staring at that old photograph of hers. Brilliant red hair, a round face, and the same style of dress, albeit in bright orange. The redhead who walked in was the spitting image of Kushina, in the way that only a daughter or niece could be. On top of that, there was an energetic grace, as oxymoronic as that sounded, to how she walked that made him doubt this was Naruto. The boy was a ball of energy that always seemed about an inch away from vibrating apart and scattering across the room. There was energy there still, but it had been tempered by a natural grace that hadn't been there before.

"That's Naruto?" Kiba exclaimed, standing up and pointing in disbelief.

"Why is she pretty!" Eyes that had been turning towards Kiba shifted up to the last row where Ino was staring at Naruto with unrestrained jealousy. After a moment her head dropped into her hands with a whimper and Sasuke just barely picked up the mutter of 'why is a boy prettier than me?'

A short glance around the room showed that most of the girls in the class were all but glaring at the girl Iruka-sensei was claiming to be Naruto.

"Pretty? She looks like a tomato!" Kiba shouted. Sasuke's eyes twitched back to Naruto to catch her entire reaction. There was a twitch in her cheek as she scowled, her fists balled up, and then, before Iruka-sensei could attempt to bring order to the room, she was gone.

"Uzumaki!" A blur crossed the classroom, "KICK!" and terminated with Naruto's foot planted firmly in Kiba's chest. The room shook as the Inuzuka bounced off the far wall and landed in a groaning heap. His dog, Akamaru, was caught by Naruto who had flipped backwards off the target of her anger and landed gracefully atop the desk. Still sleeping puppy under one arm and the other pointed at the insensate Kiba.

"I AM NOT A TOMATO, DATTEBAYO!" As one the entire class wilted upon hearing the familiar verbal tic. That was Naruto, no doubt about it.

"WHY IS SHE PRETTY!!" Wailed Ino again, drawing an exasperated look from the girl in question as she turned from the lump of an Inuzuka trying to stand up.

"ENOUGH!" Iruka shouted, bringing an end to things before they could escalate further, "Naruto-chan, take the seat beside Sasuke-kun." A chorus of girls immediately rose to complain. "NOW!"

Naruto hopped off the table and set the stirring puppy down on the desk. "Why him Iruka-sensei? Why do you hate me?" She whined even as the other girls glared at her. He had to wonder if any of them had even managed to understand that she was Naruto.

The flat stare the teacher sent the redhead was immensely familiar to the class. "Consider it a punishment," he deadpanned. There was also the fact that the only seats left in the classroom were those in his row.

Grumbling, in a higher-pitched voice than before, the redhead took the seat on the far end of the desks.

"The seat next to him Naruto-chan," Iruka said, even as he turned away to grab a clipboard.

"Fiiine." She took the seat right next to him, then leaned on her elbow and looked away from him. Up close it was clear that she wasn't exactly the same as Kushina. She was shorter than the girl in the picture and her hair was still cut to the same length it had been before she turned into a girl, though it was laying flatter.

"Alright, let's get started," Iruka-sensei said. Naruto turned her head to look grumpily down at their teacher. A part of him involuntarily pointed out it made her look cute. With a twitch of his eyebrow, he turned away from his formerly male classmate and looked down at the teacher. "From this day forward you are no longer mere students of ninjutsu, but full-fledged shinobi," the Chunin said, reciting his speech as he took in each of the students. Sasuke met his eyes as they swept past with a smirk.

"But among the ranks of the shinobi, you are mere novices, the lowest of the low. Your greatest challenges all lie ahead. The next step is the assignment of official duties to you on behalf of our village. We will begin by dividing you into three-man cells. Each of which will be mentored by a Jounin, a more senior ninja who will guide and coach you as you become more familiar with your various assignments," he continued. Sasuke frowned. Three-man cells would take away from the time he might be able to get with the teacher. It would slow his progress a bit, then again, it would still probably be faster than the academy where a single teacher was spread across dozens of students.

Iruka waved the clipboard at the class. "The selections here had been made to balance each cell's abilities so that they're approximately equal," an uproar from many in the class. "Settle down. I told you about this last month. You don't get to pick your teams. Myself, the other academy teachers, and the Hokage make the final decision. Each of these teams has been handpicked to be roughly equal. Now, Team One…"

The list continued on for some time, with more than a few complaints from individuals who didn't get their wish. "... and next Team Seven," Iruka continued, "Uchiha Sasuke." The entire room perked up and Naruto turned her head just enough to glance at him out of the corner of her eye. Sasuke restrained the irrational urge to flee as those girls who had remained unchosen began to whisper prayers. It all came to a dead halt when the next name was read out. "Uzumaki Naruto."

"WHAT!" Naruto shot to her feet as every other girl in the class began protesting. "WHY AM I WITH THIS BASTARD?!"

Iruka tisked and waved the list at her. "Language Naruto, or do you want me to tell Hana-san?" Kiba started laughing as Naruto flinched. She kept glaring at their teacher. "All of these teams are balanced according to grades, and yours are the dead last on the list. To keep the teams balanced we have to put you with the best in the class, and Sasuke's marks were the highest."

Silence reigned for a moment before Naruto sat down with a huff, her arms crossed as she sent a burning glare down at their teacher. A girl in the row below them muttered, "I'd have tried to flunk if I knew."

"And rounding it out is Haruno Sakura."

"HELL YEAH! EAT THAT INO!" The Pinkette erupted from her seat with a cheer. The Yamanaka simmered silently where she sat.

Naruto perked up, then slumped with a sigh, earning herself a sideways look from Sasuke. Normally Naruto would have been shouting and over the moon about this, but now she just seemed depressed. Then again, she had probably realized that Sakura wasn't interested in girls. Naruto noticed his attention as Iruka-sensei read off the next team. She met his eye and something flip-flopped in his stomach, then she huffed and turned her back to him, sitting cross-legged on the bench.

This was going to be, to borrow Shikamaru's favourite phrase, a troublesome team.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

She was on Sakura-chan's team. Sakura-chan's. This was what she'd wanted for ages to be on the team with the beautiful pinkette, and even if she had to share it with Sasuke that would have been great. Except for one even more pressing matter. Sakura was, as far as Naruto could tell, completely and utterly straight so any chance of using the opportunity of being on the same team to whoo her was hopeless. Hells, if the way she and Ino had fallen out was any indication she was more likely to view her as added competition for Sasuke, no matter how ridiculous that was.

This was terrible and her time on the team was probably going to suck.

"... and Yamanaka Ino," Iruka finished.

"Oh come on! Why am I on the team with the lazy bum and the lardass!" Naruto snickered at the despair emanating from Ino. In a way, it made her just a little happier to see someone having a worse day than she was. Just a little, any more would be cruel.

Iruka didn't bother to dignify the outrage with a direct response. "Okay everyone, I'll be introducing your Jounin Sensei's this afternoon. You're dismissed until three o'clock this afternoon. Have fun," he finished.

Ino didn't waste as second before hopping to her feet. "Sakura! Come on!" she all but shouted, waving at her rival as she hurried to the steps down.

"Eh? Oh!" Sakura blinked in confusion for a moment before something clicked and she hurried to join the blonde, jumping the desk and nearly braining the guy below with her foot as she hurried.

Naruto blinked and stared as both of them made their way towards her. Well, towards Sasuke. She just happened to be in the same row. They weren't normally this coordinated when they tried to corner him. With that in mind, she let out an "Eep" as the two laid hands on her upper arms and hauled her out of her seat.

"C'mon you," Ino said as they dragged her back up the steps, her feet dangling inches from the floor.

"We have questions," Sakura added.

"I- Let me go! Iruka-sensei! HELP!" She protested, squirming in their grip.

"Have fun, and try to spend time with your teams!" He called after them. He sounded amused.

"TRAITOR!" He was going to pay for so much Ramen once she got free.

"We will~" Chorused her kidnappers as they carried her out of the room to the amusement of her classmates. Several other girls followed in their wake, but were quickly left behind.

It was embarrassing being carried around like a crate of potatoes, but since escaping at that point would have required hitting both of her kidnappers, and she wasn't that angry at Sakura-chan yet, she endured. All the way up to the third floor of the academy where the two girls hauled her into an empty classroom. There weren't even any desks.

They tossed her into the room and she managed to get her feet under her and spin to face them without tripping or falling flat on her face. She looked up at their surprised faces. Were they always this tall? Of course they were, she just wasn't used to being six inches shorter than everyone else. "What do you want, dattebayo?" She demanded, crossing her arms as the two girls exchanged a look.

"... A few things," Ino said after a moment walking to her left as Sakura stood in front of the door. "Like whether you're really Naruto-kun."

"Of course I am, dattebayo!" She scowled at the two girls.

"Not like anyone else has that tic, Ino," Sakura said, earning a firm nod from Naruto, "I've got a better question." She reached out and pinched Naruto's cheeks. "Is this a henge?"

Naruto popped into smoke, leaving both girls staring at a giant teddy bear. The room's closet slid open a moment later, disgorging Naruto and a contingent of giant stuffed bears. "Why is this closet full of teddy bears?" she asked as she lay there, her head resting on a particularly large and pink one.

"... Isn't this the one used for that fundraiser every year?" Sakura mused.

"Not important. Well? Is it a Henge Naruto-kun?" Ino loomed over her. She flinched as a small teddy bear bounced off her face.

"Do you really think Iruka-sensei would let me in here like this if it was?" Naruto deadpanned, "And don't bother asking what happened. I passed out as a boy and woke up like this in the hospital." Not that there was much else anyways.

"... She's got a point, Ino," Sakura sighed, frowning down at her. "Though… Did you graduate as a Shinobi or a Kunoichi?" Naruto shrugged and sat up, pushing aside the teddy bears.

"I dunno. Not like it's that important," she said as she got up. Standing didn't help eliminate the height gap, a fact that caused her pout. She missed the way the other two girls twitched.

"Hrm…" Ino poked Naruto in the cheek and leaned away from the retaliatory swat. "Fine, I'm convinced. You know I'd try my Shintenshin no Jutsu on you just to be sure if daddy hadn't told me to specifically not use it on you…" Naruto twitched at the reminder. She'd mentioned that before, but knowing about the Kyuubi gave her an idea of why the older Yamanaka had probably said that.

Getting your mind eaten by a demon had to suck.

"Do you even know what a Kunoichi needs to know?" Sakura asked, leaning down to get a better look at her. The pinkette pulled at her hair, seemingly fascinated by it for some reason. She twitched away from her crush with a slight blush.

"... Hokage-jiji had Hana-nee help me with a few things, but I knew most of it to start with anyway," Naruto said, slowly edging around Sakura. She was trying to put the window at her back for a quick escape.

"Really? I doubt that," Ino scoffed, "Do you even know how to arrange flowers? Or make-up? How about-"

"I did better with an instrument than you Ino!" She snapped, then immediately paled. She… hadn't meant to say that. Both girls immediately frowned.

"Boys don't take those courses Naruto. When did you take them?" Sakura asked, straightening up so that she loomed over the shorter redhead. Ino took a few steps and put herself between Naruto and the window.

"Um…" Naruto glanced from the window to the door, only to find the Pinkette blocking her path to the door. Think fast, think fast…

"It had to be at the same time I did," Ino said with a scowl, "Have you been sneaking into the Kunoichi lessons Naruto?" One hand was twitching towards her hips where pouches full of kunai and shuriken awaited.

"Not this year!" She paled more. Damn her traitorous mouth. Right, escape time, preferably before she got beaten to a pulp.

"This- You did it last year?!" Aaaand Sakura was practically radiating chakra with her anger. She shuffled to the side, only to find the much larger girl moving with her. The quiet way was probably out at this point.

"Who were you?" Ino demanded, her hand reaching into the pouch at her hip. Yeah, the quiet way was dead and gone. Loud it was. Her hands slammed together in her favourite cross-shaped seal.

"Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" The room was filled with white smoke.

Ten minutes later she let out a tired breath as she tightened the last rope binding Ino. The much taller growled angrily through her gag as the redhead stepped back and admired her handiwork. In the middle of the classroom, hanging from the ceiling by ropes, were the quite thoroughly tied up forms of Sakura and Ino. Slowly spinning in place.

"Good work boss!" One of her clones, from whom she had borrowed the rope, said.

"I think I did well enough to pass. What do you think Ino? Sakura?" she asked cheekily as the two girls glared at her. Well, Ino was glaring, Sakura was currently trying to burn a hole through the far wall with her eyes. "Now, we've got a few hours before meeting up. I'm sure a pair of well trained Kunoichi like yourselves can get out of a few measly ropes before then?" She faked listening to Ino's muffled screams before nodding. "Good to hear, dattebayo. Have fun at lunch."

She turned and walked out of the room, leaving her clones behind. They'd dispel and take the ropes with them an hour or so before the deadline. Plenty of time to get something to eat. She paused at the door and turned around with a cheeky smile. "Oh, and you were curious who I was?" She took the muffled roar from Ino to be a yes. "I'm sure you girls remember Bandu Etsu, right?" Their eyes went wide. "Hope you've gotten better at getting out of ropes than I remember, otherwise you're going to be here a while. Cheers." And with that she left, giggling as the door clicked shut behind her. Coincidentally completely cutting off the muffled rage from her two classmates.

Though it did feel a bit mean leaving Sakura-chan tied up like this… Eh, she'd get lunch later. Now, to deal with it herself. To Ichirakus~ Unless they weren't allowed to leave the academy grounds… Probably best to check the classroom first.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

Sakura squirmed. The ropes Naruto had used were digging into her sides. She'd pulled them too tight, on purpose she'd guess given how the redhead had been giggling. She'd been hanging there for an hour, and it had given her some time to think even as she tried to wriggle her way out of the expertly done knots. Escaping being tied up was one of her weaker skills and Naruto was clearly better with knots than she was.

She knew she was. Bandu Etsu. The memory of a cheery and overly friendly blonde-haired girl from the year before bubbled to the forefront of her mind. While not as good in certain areas as herself or Ino, the girl's skills and talent had catapulted her to the third-place spot through being the second-best at nearly everything she attempted. From playing the shamisen to tying knots, she'd have been a rival if she just hadn't been so clueless about romance and so friendly to everyone. Right up until she'd disappeared a week before graduation.

And she'd been fucking Naruto the entire time.

Sakura gnawed at the gag in her mouth out of sheer frustration. No wonder Naruto's marks had plummeted during that year. He'd been taking the wrong fucking classes. Except…

She sagged in the ropes, though her fingers didn't stop working the loops around her wrists. Except there was the possibility she hadn't been. Turned into a girl her ass. Something about this smelt fishy and it wasn't the instant ramen Naruto's clones were slurping in the corner as they played go fish.

There was no way Naruto had snuck into the class, which meant she had to have been let in by someone who knew. She knew that Naruto had an unusually close relationship with the Sandaime. Which meant either Naruto had elected to sneak into the classes on his own merits, or someone had sent him to them, and she really couldn't see Naruto deciding to attend Kunoichi classes on his own merits… Even if she had been brilliant at them.

Oh, they were going to have so many words about what she'd done.

First thing though, these stupid ropes…

It took another half an hour, but eventually a finger slipped the loop, then the next, and finally her entire hand. The ropes slackened slightly and she managed to slip out her other hand. The ropes practically fell off her and she had to catch herself with her hands before she smacked her forehead straight into the floor, her feet still tied up and hanging in the knotted rope.

"Awww," one of naruto's Clones whined, "She got out."

Sakura ripped the gag, a plain white cloth, from her mouth. "I am going to kill you for this Naruto. You hear me!" Her voice rang off the walls of the room and the clone in question let out a little 'eep' and promptly popped into a cloud of smoke, taking the ropes holding her feet with it.

Three kunai caught the other clone in its face, neck and stomach. It popped and the ropes holding Ino popped out of existence as well. "..cker!" she shouted as her gag disappeared mid curse. "I'm going to kill her! You hear me Sakura, I'm going to wrap her in sausage and toss her to Kiba's family's mutts!"

Sakura snorted and rolled over, feeling her body uncramp from the position she'd been stuck in for an hour and a half. "Do it yourself. I'm not getting hung like this from whatever's convenient again. Imagine if she'd decided to haul us out to the street and use one of the streetlamps. Besides… We might have been going a bit far."

"Naruto was a boy in those lessons. I don't care if she's a girl now," Ino huffed, also rolling over on the floor.

"I can't believe she was Etsu-chan. Ugh, how come nobody noticed? There's things in the lessons that guys can't…" Sakura trailed off.

"Exactly! There're Jutsu for girls in that class. How the hell did he fake it?!" Ino tugged at her hair and let out an inarticulate growl. "Remember Suzume-Sensei's lessons on infiltration? Half of those Jutsu don't even work for guys!"

"... No they don't, do they?" Sakura mumbled, getting an odd look from Ino.

"What's wrong forehead, did you just realize you saw him screw up back then?" Ino asked. Sakura shot her an annoyed glance, but refrained from rising to the bait just barely.

"They worked for Etsu," she said pointedly, "remember the glow?" Several of the most important Jutsu for infiltrators gave visible indicators if they worked and Kunoichi couldn't pass if they couldn't get them to work. "Either Naruto was lying to piss us off, or there's something weird going on here."

Ino's expression fell, her angry evaporating as she frowned. "Yeah…" she scowled again a moment later. "I'm still punching her for the ropes. I've got marks everywhere from those stupid things."

A knock came from the door. "Oi! Ino, you in here?" Shikamaru called, the door sliding open a moment later to let in Ino's teammates. "I thought I heard you shouting."

"Where the hell have you been you lazy bum!" Ino snarled, "We just spent the last hour tied up!"

Shikamaru glanced around and raised an eyebrow, probably at the distinct lack of rope. "Naruto used some sorta solid Bunshin or something," Sakura added.

"So the kidnapee became the kidnaper?" Choji asked, "You guys know better than to underestimate Naruto. What the heck did you even do to get Naruto to tie you up? You especially Sakura-san?"

Ino recounted their story. "And then she just walked out the door, leaving us here spinning!" Her rival growled. Shikamaru nodded, from where he was sitting, a bento open in front of him.

"You really shouldn't have tried to corner someone as troublesome as Naruto-chan, Ino," Shikamaru said, "You know how he reacts, and just because she's six inches shorter doesn't mean Naruto reacts any differently than before."

Ino grumbled and crossed her arms. "You wouldn't happen to know where she went, do you?" Sakura asked. She had questions that needed answering.

"Hmm, I didn't see where she went, but I think Choji did?" he glanced over to his friend who nodded.

Then he dropped a bombshell. "Mhmm, she was headed out of the academy with Sasuke last time I saw them," the rotund shinobi said, taking a bite out of a handful of chips immediately afterwards.

Sakura stared at him. "With Sasuke?" she repeated, getting a nod from Choji. Oh that conniving little brat. She was going to kill Naruto. No one interfered with love!

-0-0-0-0-0-​

Iruka-sensei had left by the time she returned to the class, but one of the few boys that had stayed behind with their group was able to clarify. They were, in fact, allowed to leave, though Iruka-sensei had expected them to try and stick with their teams.

Pfft, like that was going to happen. After what she had just done she would be lucky to not get beaten up the next time the pinkette laid eyes on her. Add to that the fact she wouldn't be caught dead hanging around Sasuke these days… Well, more like the opposite. The stubborn bastard never worked with anyone if he could get away with it. And hanging out with them? Might as well try and clone yourself without chakra for all the good it would do.

So, knowing that she had quite a few hours to go until meet up, she left the academy behind. She kept one ear out for any unusual movement, just in case Sakura and Ino had already escaped her ropes and were coming for revenge. Ino, at least, wouldn't leave something like that unanswered.

She didn't spot or hear anything unusual on her way to Ichiraku's, not that there was much chance of noticing when you were surrounded by the mid-day crowds. Thus it was that when Sasuke ducked through the curtain and took a seat next to her she was surprised. "Eh? Sasuke? What're you doing here?" she demanded, frowning at him. He almost never came to Ichiraku's.

"It is lunchtime," he replied, leaning broodily against the counter.

"Ah, Uchiha-san, what can I get you?" Teuchi asked.

"One Shio ramen," Sasuke replied without looking up.

Naruto huffed at being ignored and decided to ignore him in turn. They sat in awkward silence as Teuchi ladled out several bowls of Ramen. "So, since you're both here today, I take it you're on the same team?" Teuchi asked as he set a bowl in front of Naruto.

"We're on the same team," Naruto admitted, grumbling as she started on her bowl. "But we didn't come here together!" Stupid Sasuke. He had to have followed her, but why?

"Ah, that would explain why your other teammate isn't here. So, who did the two of you get grouped with?" The chef asked as he laid another bowl down in front of Sasuke. The other boy started in on his meal with minimal enthusiasm.

"Oh… Well…" Naruto sighed. She shrugged. She was still a bit nervous about Sakura. The other girl was not going to be happy with her after this mess. "Sakura-chan," she admitted.

"Oho? Hrm… Not looking as happy as I would have expected a few days ago," the Ramen chef observed.

"I wasn't a girl a few days ago," she grumbled, before pausing. "And how did you know we had another teammate?"

"There's always three Shinobi to a genin team. Two boys and a girl if they have enough. Your class must have a lot of Kunoichi in it for them to double up on girls," Teuchi replied. He turned his attention to the ramen broth and stirred it slowly. "And you're with an Uchiha. You know, your mother had an Uchiha in her team as well."

Naruto perked up, mouth full of noodles. She slurped them down loudly and asked, "Really! Who?"

It was Sasuke who replied. "It was my mother," he said, setting his bowl down.

"Eh?" Naruto stared at him. "Pull the other one Sasuke-teme!" There was no way his mother was-

"No, no, he's right," Teuchi said, interrupting her thoughts, "Your mother's best friend was Uchiha Mikoto, who would be Uchiha-san's mother." Naruto stared at the middle-aged man then slowly turned her eyes on Sasuke. He was looking back at her.

"... I'm assuming your mother was Uzumaki Kushina?" he asked.

"Yeah, she was… Hey, how do you know about her?" Naruto demanded, her eyes glaring at him.

"My mother had a photo of her Genin team from her graduation that she kept bringing out. She used to tell me stories about her teeeeeeem- NARUTO!" his voice spiked high pitched as she grabbed him by the collar and pulled him down to her level as she looked up at him hopefully.

"Tell them to me, please?" She begged. His anger seemed to dissipate as she stared hopefully upwards. "Pleeeeeease~ Sasuke-kun~ Tell me~" Somewhere in the back of her mind her pride quietly contemplated death as she pleaded with her rival.

"I- Don't do that!" He jerked himself out of her grip and turned away as he straightened his collar. She grinned, he was blushing.

"Just tell me~!" She threw an arm over his shoulder and dragged him back down to her level despite his best efforts to escape. "And show me that picture," she added thoughtfully.

"Ack- I can't! It's back home!" He protested. She caught one hand as he tried to use Kawarimi. It failed without the hands for the hand signs. His blush had become atomic.

"Then we're going to your house! Pack up another order of ramen to go Teuchi-jiji!" She declared cheerfully. She'd pry the stories from Sasuke if it took all day.

"What? No!" he protested, attempting to pull away. She surreptitiously formed the Kage Bunchin seal and a second her silently grabbed Sasuke from the other side.

"As you wish. My apologies Uchiha-san. There's nothing to be done when Naruto-chan gets like this," Teuchi said, getting a glare from the bright red Uchiha. He loaded up a pair of to-go bowls and handed them to a second clone of the redhead. "Have a fun day Naruto-chan," he waved as she frogmarched Sasuke out of the stand.

"My apartment's that way," Sasuke said, nodding to their left as they exited.

"Sure it is," Naruto said, steering him in the other direction. He fumed as she dragged him along, a blush on his face. "I know your apartment is on the edge of Uchiha district, right by the Hyuuga compound," she said, smirking at him cheekily.

"You know where- of course you do," he groaned, "Last year, you're the one who dyed all of my shirts pink, aren't you?"

"Took you a week to come back to class," she chirped, humming as she dragged him along by his arms. Sure people were staring, but his embarrassment was practically a balm for her soul. She never got to see the great and mighty Uchiha blush damn it!

She dragged him through the streets, her and her clone humming cheerfully until they reached the apartment building. He had regained much of his composure back then, and she let her clone on the other side disappear when it came time to climb the stairs. "So they were on the same team, huh?" she asked, trying to restart conversation as they climbed the steps to his fifth-floor apartment.

"That's what my mother always said," he replied after a moment, "Let go."

"Not until I'm sure you aren't about to run off Sasuke-Teme," she replied, hugging his arm tighter with a smirk.

"Are you trying to look like we're on a date?" he asked as they crested the steps. She stumbled and turned over their situation in her mind. This… Girl. She was a girl now and this was…

"Oh god," she groaned, releasing him like he was contagious. "Say something sooner Sasuke-teme!"

"I did Baka!" he growled back, the two of them glared at each other before Sasuke tsked and walked over to his door. He reached into a pocket and frowned after a moment of searching. Then he tried the other one. "What the- Where are my-"

"Hey Teme~" Sasuke spun around in time to catch his keys with his face.

"Wh- When did you get them?!" he demanded as he rubbed his nose and picked them up.

"On the way here. You weren't paying much attention to your pockets and I was worried you'd run off and leave me no way in, soo…" she shrugged off his glare with a grin as she leaned against the railing.

"You're a menace, you know that?" he asked rhetorically before unlocking the door, "Might as well come on in. Baka."

"Thanks, Teme," she grinned as she followed him in. Her other clone followed quickly and set the Ramen bowls down on the small apartment's kitchen counter before dispersing. Naruto snagged a bowl and leaned against the counter. "So? Details!" She demanded digging in. He groaned and rolled his eyes at her.

"Stay here, and don't touch anything. I'll go and get the picture," he said with a sigh, disappearing into the living room. Naruto hummed as she waited, glancing about the small kitchen. It was a bit smaller than her own, though she knew that already from the last time she had been by. Sneaking in and turning all his shirts pink had been a spur of the moment decision during a bigger prank on several Hyuuga clan members who had pissed her off at the time.

It had been what got her caught actually.

The small table, the counters, and really every surface she could see wasn't exactly spotless, but it was clean and clear. There were no dishes built up, nor items left lying around on the counters or table like in her apartment before she moved. Hell, it wasn't even like her estate. That place had clones dedicated to keeping it clean since she had a habit of not cleaning up otherwise. At least now she only experienced cleaning second-hand. Clones were so useful.

Sasuke came back a few minutes later with a small picture frame. "Over here Naruto," he said, taking a seat with the picture. She walked over and peered around his shoulder, she was too short to look over it even with him sitting down. Three people their age looked back out of the old photograph. A dark-haired girl with some resemblance to Sasuke was on the left with a serious-looking Hyuuga boy in the center and a girl who looked very familiar now from some of the pictures she had found in the estate. Her hair was a similar shade of red, though the age of the photograph made it hard to tell how close it was, and she was dressed just as Naruto was, though in a more subdued tan rather than blinding orange.

"That's my mother there, and that's Hyuuga Hiashi. I think he's Hinata-san's father," Sasuke frowned.

"And that's my mother," Naruto chimed in, tilting her head to the side in thought. "I… I don't think I've found a picture like this yet. But I haven't gotten around to looking through mum's room yet either so…" She slurped some Ramen thoughtfully.

"Rooms?" Sasuke glanced her way.

She nodded. "Yup. Hokage-Jiji gave me the keys to the Uzumaki Estate once I made Genin. I've spent a bunch of the last few days looking through stuff and cleaning. I'd have gotten more done, but there's something that… You just want to look through them yourself, ya know?" To her surprise, he nodded.

"Yeah, I know," he said quietly.

Naruto went to ask a question, then paused as memories of her two clones back at the academy came to her. Right, best to give them some time to cool off. "You mentioned stories?" she asked, pulling a chair over to sit beside him. "Mind sharing a few about my mum?"

Sasuke stood up and walked over to grab the other bowl of Ramen. "That was the plan when I followed you," he said with a sigh that suggested he was regretting it. She concealed a wince as best she could. Okay, so she had perhaps been a little… hostile to him. And demanding. And embarrassed both of them, again.

But none of that introspection stopped her from leaning forward and prodding him. "Aaand?" she asked.

"Hmm…" Sasuke swallowed a mouthful of noodles. "There's one story my Oka-san told me that you reminded me of. It was your mother's first day of school. She had been just introduced to the class and a bunch of them were like Kiba was today. In fact, I think they called her a tomato as well."

"Eh?" Well if that didn't suggest their hair was similar then she didn't know what would. "What happened?"

"She beat them up. By herself," Sasuke replied. Naruto started laughing. It really was just like what had happened with Kiba. It took her a few minutes to calm down, but soon she asked him for more. They were there for a few hours.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

It was approaching three in the afternoon when the two of them returned to the academy. Naruto was humming as she led the way back to the classroom's upper door. The last several hours had been as fascinating as the last several times she had been to Ichiraku's. Sure she had heard a few of the stories that Sasuke had, had to share, but it was interesting hearing them from his mother's perspective. At the same time there were other stories she hadn't heard before. Tales from when her mother and Sasuke's mom, Uchiha Mikoto, were teammates.

Happy she didn't think twice before sliding open the classroom door and walking in, Sasuke right on her heels. She came to a halt as every girl in the class turned their heads, along with most of the boys, towards the opening door. The glares as they caught sight of her were enough to make her take a step back and briefly consider ducking behind Sasuke. Only the certainty that that would probably lead to her early demise by the hands of the love-obsessed girls now glaring at her with misplaced envy stopped her.

More unfortunately, the only seats left were those on either side of Sakura who was glaring daggers at them. Well, at her. Sasuke just happened to be in her vicinity. Oh, and there was Ino making gestures that either meant to come here or that Naruto needed to watch herself because she was going to get revenge at some point. She wasn't stupid enough to get close to the irate blonde, which meant she probably needed to keep one eye out for petty revenge from the other girl. Lovely, just what she needed.

Putting on a confident smile she took the long way around the room so that she would have the seat closest to the window, and thus freedom if she needed to run away from her angry teammate. As she sat down she tried smiling at the Pinkette, only to have to duck as she took a swing at her head.

"Eep! Sakura!" she complained as she leaned away from the other girl.

"We are having words after this Naruto!" she growled, making strangling motions for all of two seconds before Sasuke sat down next to her and her entire demeanour promptly shifted from engaged to love-sick. "Sasuke-kun," she smiled, blushing hard as the boy sat down next to her. Naruto rolled her eyes and looked away.

Sasuke ignored Sakura as he sat down.

A few minutes passed before the bottom door of the classroom opened to admit Iruka-sensei. Silence fell as he walked over to his desk. Retrieving a clipboard from the drawers of the desk he looked around the room. "Well, this will be the last time I talk to you for… A while I imagine. We may see each other again during your service to Konoha, but from now on you are shinobi of Konoha," he nodded once with a smile then looked down at his clipboard. "Team one your Sensei is…"

Naruto stifled a yawn of boredom as the list began again. Why couldn't her team have been team one? Then they wouldn't have to wait. "... Team Seven… Huh." Naruto looked up at the note of confusion. Iruka flipped to the next page and then back again.

"Is something wrong Sensei?" Sakura asked.

"... No, just unusual," he said, shaking his head. "This is a bit unusual, but I've seen it a couple of times before. Team Seven, your Jounin-Sensei is Hatake Kakashi and your Chunin assistant is Inuzuka Hana." Hatake Kakashi? Naruto frowned. Wasn't that the pointy-haired guy that Hokage-Jiji had been talking to on the day she woke up as a girl?

"What? Why's Neechan teaching them?" Kiba shouted, jumping to his feet.

"On occasion, assistants are assigned when a Jounin may be too highly specialized or lack in a particular area noted to be a specialty of a particular genin coming under their guidance," Iruka replied, "Now sit down Kiba-kun."

Kiba sat down and crossed his arms, shooting a glare at Naruto's team. Until she glared back and he suddenly flinched and looked away. Shaking her head at his behaviour she turned back to Iruka. "Team Eight, your sensei is Yuuhi Kurenai."

So Hana-nee was going to be one of their teachers. That was nice, and terrible at the same time. She was fun, but the few times Naruto had managed to get her angry had been… Exciting? That was the correct term for getting hunted by dogs across the length and breadth of the village for several hours, right?

"Team Ten, Sarutobi Asuma," Iruka finished. Sarutobi? Must have been one of Hokage-Jiji's family. She didn't recognize his name, so perhaps a cousin? "And with that, I am going to leave you here. Your Sensei will come for you soon. Please try to avoid causing a scene while you wait. Good luck, to all of you." Iruka nodded to them, picked up his things and left the room, ignoring the questions people were throwing his way about their sensei.

"Hey Sensei! He's not going to answer our questions?" Sakura asked, looking around with a frown as the door slid shut behind Iruka.

"Doesn't look like it," Naruto grumbled. Then again, they probably wanted them to get to know their sensei without being told anything about them. Iruka-sensei wouldn't have walked off otherwise. He took his job too seriously at times.

"So," Naruto blinked as Sakura spun around and grabbed her by the collar. "Where were we?!" She looked pissed, with a nasty scowl on her face as she raised one fist.

Then the door slid open and several adults in Konoha standard flak jackets entered. Sakura instantly let go and tried to pretend that she hadn't been a literal second from punching Naruto in the face. "Team one!" The first called, "this way." A pair of boys and a girl stood up and hurried down the steps to join the teacher. In less than a minute, Teams one through six along with Team Nine had hurried out the door with their teachers.

A few minutes passed as everyone watched the door expectantly. When no one appeared after ten minutes Ino groaned. "So we get the lazy senseis?" she whined. No one replied. "Why did only a few of them show up? You'd think they'd be waiting."

"Because Jounin tend to be eccentric," Shikamaru groaned, sitting up, "At least that's what I've heard. Being late is one of the better quirks."

The door slid open again and two Jounin entered. Naruto perked up as she recognized the woman with red eyes. Beside her was a man in the typical flak jacket with spiky black hair, a nicely trimmed beard, and a cigarette sticking out of the corner of his mouth.

"Team eight, with me please," the woman, Yuuhi Kurenai, said.

"Later guys," Kiba waved as he jumped the desk and hurried down the steps. Hyuuga Hinata, a violet-haired girl who was always shy and withdrawn; and Aburame Shino, a boy who wore sunglasses and a very high collared coat that concealed part of his face; both followed at a more sedate pace.

"Team Ten, with me," the man, Sarutobi Asuma, waved to the trio at the back of the room.

"FINALLY!" Ino practically leaped the length of the room. Shikamaru hurried down the steps and waved to Naruto.

"See you later Naruto," he called over his shoulder.

"Yeah, later guys," Choji echoed as he followed. They quickly followed their teachers out of the room. Though Ino paused in the door.

"Later forehead! And don't touch Sasuke-kun!" Naruto blinked as the finger was pointed at her rather than Sakura. Then the Blonde was gone leaving just the newly assembled Team Seven.

Sakura turned a frown on Naruto, before shaking her head and turning away. Naruto felt her eyebrow twitch. What was going on?

A few more minutes past then the door slid open again. Hana stepped through. "Sorry I'm late. I just spent the last hour dragging this idiot away from the memorial stone," she groaned, pointing a thumb over her shoulder at the doorway.

"Hey! I recognize you!" Naruto shouted, "Why didn't you say you were going to be our teacher?"

"You've met?" Hana glanced over her shoulder at Kakashi.

"You know him?" Sakura demanded, turning to her.

"Only in passing," Kakashi said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Meet me on the roof. We'll talk there." And he disappeared in a swirl of leaves.

"I'll assume you know how to find the stairs. See you up there," Hanna-nee waved once, then vanished the exact same way. As one the three of them sighed and groaned before standing up and heading for the door.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

A/N: Hello~ I hope you're enjoying the story so far~ A look at the rest of the cast and their reactions to Naruto-chan. Needless to say, things are starting to look a bit different in the leaf.

Usual links in my signature~ Cheers o/ *Waves Fluffy Tails*

 

[Grounders10]

-0-0-0-0-0-

A Naruto/Exalted Crossover

A Shine of Gold in the Crimson Tide

By: Grounders10

-0-0-0-0-0-

4. A Path of Crimson Tides

-0-0-0-0-0
​

The roof of the academy was a small garden often visited by students and teachers during lunch hours. Kakashi was waiting for them by the edge of the roof near a small free standing archway. Hana was sitting nearby with her three dogs. "Come over and sit down you three," Kakashi said, gesturing to a long stone planter across from him. The three of them took seats with Sasuke in the middle and the two girls on either side.

"Now, why don't the three of you tell us all a little bit about yourselves," Kakashi suggested, resting his arms on his knees.

"Like what?" Sakura asked before Naruto could.

He shrugged. "You know, the usual. Your favourite things, what you hate most, your dreams, ambitions, hobbies, those sorts of things."

"I'll go first," Hana offered, getting a nod from Kakashi, "My name is Inuzuka Hana, I like my dogs and running my clinic. I hate people who abuse animals and my dreams are to lead my clan. And my hobbies are my business."

"And what about you Kakashi-sensei?" Naruto asked.

The silver-haired Jounin shrugged. "Me? My name is Hatake Kakashi. I'm the kind of person who doesn't feel like talking about his likes or dislikes. My dreams of the future are none of your business and I have a lot of hobbies." With each vague line, the three genin's expressions got flatter.

"All we learned was his name," Sakura grumbled.

"Now it's your guys turn. Starting with… you, on the right," he pointed to Naruto. She blinked then grinned.

Adjusting her headband she stood up. "I'm Uzumaki Naruto, I like Ramen, going out for Ramen at Ichiraku's with Iruka-sensei and I hate the three minutes it takes for instant ramen to cook." That last one had Hana-nee shaking her head. It was the truth though! She hated waiting for her Ramen. "My dreams is to become the greatest Shinobi ever by becoming the Hokage and convincing the village to acknowledge me, and to restore the Uzumaki Clan." She would see her family rebuilt. It wouldn't be just her for long if she could help it! "And my hobbies are pranks and practical jokes… and training these days I guess." She almost had that Kunai Jutsu she'd found the day before, down. It fit in with her clones so well.

Kakashi and Hana both stared at her for a long moment. "What about you?" Kakashi asked after a moment, pointing at Sasuke.

"My name is Uchiha Sasuke there are plenty of things I hate and not that it matters since there isn't much I do like. It feels… unimportant to talk about "dreams", but I have an ambition. To restore my clan and kill a certain someone," Sasuke said, never lowering his hands from where they were clasped in front of his face. It gave him this vaguely sinister vibe that made Naruto shiver. She doubted he was talking about her, but she really didn't want to be whoever it was he was talking about.

"And the one on the end?" Kakashi said after a moment of silence.

"I'm Haruno Sakura," she said, "And my favourite thing is...well, not a thing, it's a person… a boy, and…" It was brilliant how deep her blush could go to Naruto. Kiba had called her a tomato, but Sakura was doing a much better impression than she had. "Um… let's move onto my dreams." And her blush somehow got redder as a very slight squeal reached Naruto's ears. Hana's dogs whined and pawed at their ears.

"I hate Naruto," Naruto flinched as Sakura switched gears. That hurt, admittedly a little less than it might have a few days ago, but it did hurt. "And my hobbies are…" The blush and look she sent Sasuke's way was so transparent it made Naruto gag.

"That's enough. I think we understand each other now," Kakashi said, "Your formal training will begin tomorrow."

Naruto grinned and leaped to her feet. "Really? What's our first mission going to be?" she asked.

The mask-wearing shinobi had crossed his arms. "Our first duty involves only the members of this cell," he said.

"Eh? What are we doing?" Naruto asked.

"Survival training," Hana answered as she scratched one of her dogs behind the ears.

Naruto blinked. Survival training? But, they'd been doing a ton of that in the academy. Evidently she wasn't the only one confused since Sakura asked, "Why would that be a mission? Our school days were filled with survival exercises."

He chuckled, sending the hairs on the back of Naruto's neck standing straight up. "But this won't be a normal training exercise. You'll need to survive against me for a start."

"That doesn't sound too different from the school," Sakura muttered. He chuckled more and Naruto shivered. "Why are you laughing Kakashi-sensei?"

"Well… It's nothing much, but if I told you, I'm afraid you'll chicken out," he said.

"No we won't! What're we doing, Kakashi-sensei?" Naruto asked, trying to push down the odd worry that was springing up in the back of her mind. Something was feeling odd about this.

Kakashi's grin was wide enough that it was visible through his mask. "You see, Of the twenty-seven graduating members of your class this year, odds are that only nine will actually be accepted as Genin Level Shinobi." Naruto stared and dropped to her seat as he continued, "The other eighteen must go back to the academy for further training. In other words, the test we will be performing has a sixty-six percent failure rate." They stared at him dumbstruck.

He started laughing. "See, you're chickening out already," he said.

Naruto twitched then exploded. "THEN WHAT WAS THE POINT OF THE GRADUATION EXAM!" She'd taken it three times and now she had to take another test.

"That? That was to get rid of the hopeless cases," Kakashi replied.

"Face it kids," Hana spoke up, "Most of your classmates really weren't up to the task of being shinobi. Better they flunk out before things start getting truly rough than give them false hope."

"Or have them waste the time of our Jounin who have a lot of other things to deal with," Kakashi said. Naruto grudgingly nodded and sat back down. There was a point there. She didn't like it, but there was a point. "In any event, we'll meet up tomorrow morning in the practice fields. Bring all your weapons and tools, you're going to need them. Oh, and don't have breakfast beforehand. Unless you enjoy throwing it up?" The little quirk of his eye was enough to tell Naruto just how amusing he'd find that.

She scowled at him. He was underestimating her. Just like the academy teachers did. It was enough to make her blood boil just sitting there. She was going to pass this exam. She wouldn't let it bring her down.

Kakashi stood up and withdrew a few pamphlets from his pouch. "Here are the details of tomorrow's assignment. Memorize them and don't be late."

"Throw up?!" Sakura was making a horrified face even as she accepted the handout.

Naruto looked it over. Eight o'clock huh? That was early, but not too bad. She'd been waking up earlier recently and her estate was nearly on top of the training grounds. Some of them anyway, and this one just so happened to be one of them.

"Alright, see you lot tomorrow. Enjoy the day off, Hana-san," Kakashi waved jauntily to Hana before disappearing in a swirl of leaves.

Sasuke stood up and headed for the stairs without a word, though he did nod her way. Sakura promptly took off after him without a word to Naruto, leaving her with Hana. "You're going to have a busy day tomorrow," the older girl said, slowly petting one of her dogs. How did she tell them apart?

"Are you going to be involved in this Hana-nee?" Naruto asked. The handout didn't say anything about her involvement, but then it didn't say that they were going to be fighting Kakashi specifically either. The generic term "instructor" was used instead and seemed to imply this was a fairly standard test, though the specifics of what they needed to accomplish during their 'survival training' weren't included either. Odd…

There was something about this training that seemed unusual to her, but she just couldn't put a finger on it.

"Nope. It'll just be you guys and the lazy bum. Try not to let him get to you too much, kay Naruto-chan?" Hana smiled and Naruto grinned back.

"Eh, I'll be fine. A guy like that would be enough to get me down. Especially if I finish learning that new Jutsu tonight," she said. And maybe another one from the family scrolls? She really needed to get into the seals if she wanted to unlock the next portion of the scroll.

"Good to hear. What're you learning?" her teacher asked.

She shook her head with a grin. "Ah, ah, ah. Not telling Hana-nee. I don't want Kakashi-sensei getting wind of this," she said. It would be a surprise to be sure.

"Then you'd better get going. It'll be getting dark soon," Hana reminded her. It was October after all and the days were getting shorter.

Glancing up she confirmed the sun was starting to set. It was a bit of a walk back and unless she wanted to get home after dark it was better if she left now. "Yeah, I think I'll get going. Good night Hana-nee," she said, waving to the other girl, who waved back before she jumped over the edge of the academy and hurried off through the crowds.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

The next day Naruto wandered into training ground seven six minutes and thirteen seconds before eight. Sasuke was already leaning against a tree. Sakura wasn't far away. She was sitting in the clearing her eyes more on Sasuke then anything else.

"Hey!" Naruto shouted, waving as she walked up. "Geez, I thought I'd be the first one here since I live so close."

"There's still a few minutes Naruto, you aren't late," Sakura said, glancing over for a second before going back to her Sasuke watching.

"Any sign of Kakashi-sensei?" she asked, taking a seat by three stumps of wood that had been driven into the ground in a row. She glanced around. There didn't appear to be anyone lurking in the shadows, and even concentrating she couldn't pick up the telltale rustling of someone disturbing the leaves.

"Nope," Sakura replied.

"It isn't long until meet up. He should be here soon," Sasuke said, toying with a kunai.

Naruto nodded and popped out a scroll from one of her pouches. It was a copy of one of her family's techniques, The Mind's Eye of the Kagura, a minor trick used for sensing those around them. Figuring it couldn't be that long until he arrived she decided to spend the time studying up on it.

And so she studied while waiting. And waiting. And waiting…. And waiting some more. There really was a whole lot of waiting…

-0-0-0-0-0-​

He was three hours late. This was nothing new for Kakashi. Those who knew him had grown used to him being late for nearly everything. Missions were one of those things he wasn't late for, except for this one. The one he got every few months like clockwork. Test a bunch of genin to see if they met his standards. Being late was just a part of how he set up the test to be optimal. For him anyway. Not that he was allowed to fail this group. He could understand the Hokage's motivations, but it irked him that he was going to have to pass them on whatever minor technicality he could identify.

It was about eleven when he silently landed just outside the central clearing of training ground seven. Sticking to the shadows he crept closer to the clearing. Of the trio, only two of them were doing what he had expected. Sasuke was leaning against a tree with his backpack on the ground by his feet. Sakura was lying in the middle of the clearing watching Sasuke. Both were things he had expected from both his past tests and the personalities they had shown off the day before. Their files had helped as well.

It was the third of his would be students who didn't fit the mould. It was hard to say how much use Naruto's files were. He had been the one to up her stealth mark during her second year after spotting her infiltration of the school's Kunoichi classes. If the academy hadn't been able to spot her then, then it was unlikely they had managed to properly track her other grades if she had undertaken some form of deception.

Not that it seemed all too likely. From both her records and his observations from the day before Naruto was very open and outgoing. She was the sort to engage in stealth and deception, but only when in pursuit of a prank. That she had managed to infiltrate the Kunoichi classes had probably been due to her considering it an amusing prank. He honestly doubted she had expected to get as far as she had.

Now though she seemed to be engaging in something particularly out of character. She was sitting in a meditative position with her hands held before her in a ram seal and a scroll unfolded in her lap. Was she practicing a Jutsu now? Doing so directly before a mission was a risk that a genin should avoid. They lacked the chakra capacity of Jounins that allowed them to take such risks.

Then her hand snapped up, pointing in his direction. "I can see you Kakashi-sensei! You're LATE!" she shouted, alerting Sakura and Sasuke to his presence.

"What? Kakashi-sensei I-" Sakura stared towards him and blinked. "There's nothing there Naruto!"

"He's behind the tree now," Naruto stood up, dropping her meditative posture. Her free hand rolled the scroll back up and slid it into the pouch at her hips.

How had she detected him? Strange. That was definitely not on the files, but then again it seemed to be something new she was practicing. Interesting.

He sighed as the two girls started arguing. It seemed the jig was up for now. He stepped out from behind the tree and entered the clearing. "Yo," he waved. Sakura whirled on him, her expression dumbfounded for a moment before she swiftly turned red.

"I told you! You're late Kakashi-sensei!" Naruto growled, whirling on him with an expression that nearly made him wince. That was a look he hadn't seen since Kushina. It seemed that for one side of her family the apple hadn't fallen far.

"Sorry about that. I ran into a black cat and had to take the long way around," he apologized, regurgitating the false tale he'd used many times before. All it earned him were disbelieving looks from Sakura and Naruto. Sasuke just looked disgruntled. Too bad for them.

He ignored them and walked over to the trio of stumps that had been there in one form or another for as long as he could remember. He dropped his backpack by the middle stump and pulled out an old worn clock. After double-checking that the alarm was set properly he set the clock down on the central stump. It was the second clock he'd used for these tests. The first had died to a kunai during the first test. Why that kid had thought that destroying the clock would remove the time limit he didn't know, but evidence since had suggested it wasn't a common belief.

"I've set this clock to go off at noon," he said, turning to his students. He reached into his back pocket as the three kids stared at the clock. A curious look was crossing Naruto's face as her eyes went from the clock to his hand as he withdrew two silver bells tied to short red strings. Was she suspecting his ploy already?

"I have here two bells," he bounced them lightly in his hand, "Your challenge today to take them from before the timer sounds. Anyone who fails doesn't get any lunch." Sauke and Sakura paled while Naruto… Blushed? Oh dear. "Naruto, you did refrain from breakfast, didn't you?" he asked flatly.

She blushed harder as her teammates turned to stare at her. "I- I kinda forgot about that?" she admitted, "Bit stupid to skip breakfast anyway." Both of her teammates glared at her as she innocently ignored them.

Right, well two out of three would be enough to create division among them. He could work with this. "Anyway, anyone who fails to get a bell by the time the timer sounds gets tied to these stumps while I eat their lunch in front of them. All of you need just one bell apiece, but since there aren't enough to go around one of you is going to be tied to these stumps for sure. And whoever that is?" His gaze narrowed on them. "That person will be the first to fail and the first to be sent back to the academy." He hooked the bells onto his belt.

"You may," he continued, "use shuriken. Attack as though you intended to kill me, otherwise, you won't stand a chance."

Sakura looked alarmed. "But Sensei, that's really dangerous," she shouted, looking worried.

"Let me worry about the danger," he replied. Really, the odds of one of these genin being a legitimate threat was next to nil. Even with Naruto having eaten there was no way for them to manage against a Jounin of his calibre. He scanned their faces. Sasuke looked anxious to begin, sending him a glare that was marginally impressive for a genin. Sakura just looked worried. Naruto was grinning eagerly, but somehow reading more than that was difficult. Odd.

"Three… two... one… GO!" he shouted and the three blasted off. Sasuke disappeared into the brush to the left while Sakura vanished somewhere to his right and Naruto-

This was, he would later reflect, the moment when things started going wrong. And really, what should he have expected when a half-second after he had announced the start of the test he had to block a right hook aimed unerringly at his face. He had a moment to recognize the grin on Naruto's face before her leg caught him in the side of his face covered by his hitai-ate.

He stumbled away from the force of the blow and just managed to duck and weave through the next several punches and kicks. Shaking off the ringing in his head he blocked the right hook aimed at his face before ducking the follow-up kick to his head. His return kick sent her flying back across the training ground.

Taking a second to check his surroundings he spotted Sasuke and Sakura in the forest to either side. They had gone for hiding spots like normal sensible genin. Then there was Naruto who had gotten her feet under her before she hit the ground only to promptly kick off into a backflip to bleed more momentum. He leaned to the side to avoid the trio of kunai she had launched while still mid-air.

"You're an odd one," he said. He couldn't remember the last time a genin had charged straight at him the moment he said go. Actually, that was a lie. It was the previous year and the idiot had found himself on the ground after tripping over his own feet. What was new was him actually getting hit so soon. Either he was slipping, or there was something going on here that was at odds with her records.

"Says the guy who went grey by twenty-six," she shouted back, leaping into the air. He started. How the hell did she know his age? He stepped backwards and to the side, allowing another kunai to wiz past. His eyes widened at a slight hissing sound. He didn't even bother looking down at the exploding tag before using Kawarimi.

He watched from a nearby tree as an explosion engulfed his former position. "I'm not going to be able to read today, am I?" he sighed. Which really sucked because it had just been getting to the good part. Wasn't that just the kicker?

"Oi! Get down from there and fight like a man Kakashi-sensei!" Naruto shouted pointing… His eyebrows went up as he realized her finger was pointing directly at his forehead. He tilted his head and watched as her finger adjusted to follow him.

"You seem to have the wrong impression of Shinobi, Naruto-chan," he called back.

She huffed, then formed a cross-shaped hand seal. Kage Bunshin? A dozen clones formed around her with a shimmer of smoke. Right, it looked like he wasn't going to get a quiet day beating up genin before finding some flimsy excuse to pass them on.

He jumped off the tree and headed into the forest that made up most of training ground seven. First, he'd lose these clones then see about testing Sasuke and Sakura. Once that was done he could-

To his credit, he very nearly ducked the flying kick that caught him in the shoulder as one of Naruto's clone came swinging around the trunk of the tree. He rolled with the blow and grabbed the clone by the edge of her yukata. He dragged her into the path of another clone. The two of them let out startled squawks of surprise and promptly popped as they slammed into a tree. Then the rest were on him.

One swung down from above, kunai in hand and promptly disintegrated under his fist. He weaved between the kicks of another two who flew past to bounce off the trees around him and come back for another round as another clone landed on the branch before it. It promptly snapped a foot ahead of him and sent the clone plummeting to her death while the other two had their feet caught by Kakashi. With a heave he swung them around as impromptu weapons, catching another pair of clones and crushing them with enough force to disrupt the jutsu.

He dropped from the branch as over a dozen kunai came raining in from either side. This was getting a bit ridiculous. No kid should have enough chakra to create a single Kage Bunshin let alone a dozen.

More kunai forced him out of the trees to the ground where the remaining six descended upon him. As he ducked, weaved, and blocked their blows something strange began to make itself known. A Kage Bunshin was supposed to be a fragile, yet exact, replica of the shinobi who made it limited only by the chakra given to it. And properly performed it was exact. Just as fast, strong, and skilled and yet…

He ducked a strike and casually backhanded one of the clones. These were slower than the original. Their movements less fluid and their reactions times perceptibly closer to what he had expected going into this fight. Oh, they were still far above mere academy students, their taijutsu was easily good enough for Chunin. But a Chunin wouldn't have been able to get the drop on him that easily. For some reason, Naruto's clones were, while physically identical in appearance, far weaker than she was. It was a curious difference.

Having learned as much as he could from evaluating the clones he finished them off except for one that backed off just in time to avoid his strikes. "Um… Truce?" it hesitantly held its hands up.

Kakashi sighed. "Really Naruto-chan?" The clone shrugged.

"Not really. Just need you to stand still for a second," she said before the shriek of shredded leaves started to approach from the direction of the training grounds. He didn't even bother wasting time dispelling the clone as he dived behind the closest tree. He watched as the clone died sticking out its tongue at him to the thickest hailstorm of Kunai he had witnessed in years.

Leaves were shredded, branches ripped asunder, and trees turned into pincushions as thousands of kunai turned several hectares of woodland into mulch. He waited with bated breath as the barrage ceased and a few branches crashed to the ground around him. After a moment with no sign of a second barrage, he relaxed.

Then they all started hissing.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

As Naruto's clones disappeared into the forest Sakura couldn't help but stare at the girl slowly jogging across the field towards the single tree standing in the center. That… Since when had Naruto been capable of that? Sure she had thrown down well enough with Sasuke during taijutsu, but Choji and Kiba had typically flattened her in the spars. It couldn't have just been because she was a girl now. It might have explained a bit of the agility, but not that much or the fact that she'd actually managed to land several blows on their sensei.

She hadn't been able to keep track of everything, but the brief exchange of taijutsu had been well above Naruto's displays back during the academy. It had been well above anything she'd seen in the academy even the spars between some of the chunin-senseis.

And that did even get into the clones. She could see how the tree branches and leaves moved when they ran into them. Normal clones didn't do that. Illusions didn't ruffle leaves or bend branches. Somewhere, and she would have loved to know here, Naruto had picked up a bunshin jutsu that was solid.

As she was processing that Naruto sent out another pair of clones. One disappeared into the bushes on the far side while the other came straight for her. "Hey Sakura-chan," the clone said.

"You can talk?" That wasn't normal for bunshin.

"Yuppers," the Naru-clone cheerfully chirped as it snuck into the bush beside her. "Say, Sakura-chan, does this thing seem a bit odd to you?"

"Odd? You mean other than you managing… this?" she gestured at the clone's everything. The redhead snorted and leaned against the nearby tree.

"I mean the test. Something's bugging me," Naruto grumbled.

"Let it bug you somewhere else then. You're going to get me spotted," she hissed back. She glanced back out at the field in time to see the other Naruto clone drag Sasuke out of the brush. "HEY! What are you doing with Sasuke-kun?!" she whirled on the clone, coming to her feet so that she could try to strangle the other girl

"Oi!" Naruto complained as she danced out of the way, "I'm just getting him out of the blast zone."

Sakura paused as she processed those words. "Blast zone?" she asked.

The smirk the redhead sent her way was not at all reassuring. "Watch," she nodded towards the original Naruto who was… running up the side of a tree?

Sakura stared. When had Naruto learned how to do that? She had seen her parents do that a few times, but they hadn't taught it in the academy.

The original redhead was running flat out up the side of a giant oak tree as though it were flat ground. Her progress became difficult to track as she disappeared amidst the leaves and branches, but after a moment she popped out of the top in a leap that took her well above the treetops.

She blinked as Naruto hurled a single kunai from the peak of her jump into the distant forest before flashing through handseals at an alarming rate. Less than a second after tossing her weapons Naruto shouted, "Kunai Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" The air above the forest distorted, shimmering as if caught in a haze of smoke before countless Kunai appeared from the haze, all of them streaming down into the forest like a lethal downpour.

"Oh god. Naruto, you could kill Kakashi-sensei with that!" she gasped, whirling on the clone with horror.

"Meh," Naruto shrugged, "If that's good enough then he's not a very good Jounin."

Sakura opened her mouth to angrily berate her teammate when the horizon detonated. She screamed as the Naru-clone tackled her to the ground as the far side of the training ground exploded. The explosions continued to rock the world for the next few seconds and after it was over Sakura hesitated before pushing the clone off of her.

The destruction was almost total. Several acres of land had been turned into a hellscape of craters and blasted tree stumps while many of the trees closest to the blast, and even a few as far away as herself, had been stripped of leaves. A few fires merrily crackled amidst what had been the western half of training ground seven.

"Oh god. SENSEI!" Sakura screamed.

"Don't be like that Sakura-chan, he's fine. I think," The Naru-clone's head tilted to the side as the actual Naruto landed lightly in the clearing, not a scratch on her from the shockwave or the shrapnel.

"You THINK?! AFTER THAT! YOU LEVELLED THE TRAINING GROUND!" she screamed into the clone's face before punching it.

The explosion of smoke from its dispersal took her off guard, but then so it the girl in the field wheeling to face her and shouting, "THAT WAS UNCALLED FOR SAKURA!"

"YOU KILLED OUR TEACHER!" she screamed back, dimly aware of Sasuke and the other clone looking towards the stumps. Her teammate had just murdered their sensei. She'd flattened the entire area and no one could live through that sort of explosion.

"HE'S FINE OVER THERE!" Naruto shouted back, pointing towards the stumps. She whipped around to see their sensei standing just fine by the alarm clock.

"Sensei!" she darted in his direction.

"SAKURA-CHAN! WAIT-DATTEBAYO!"

"You're okay!" She said with relief as she got a closer look at their teacher. His uniform was clearly singed, but otherwise intact. She hadn't just been party to the murder of their teacher. Kakashi rubbed the back of his head awkwardly.

"It's nice of you to be worried about your teacher, Sakura-san, but do try to remember we're still in the middle of an exam," he chided gently.

"Eh?" she barely had a moment to process that before her teacher dissolved into flower petals. She blinked and gaped as the scenery changed around her. The trees were gone or little more than scorched stumps stripped bare of all twigs, leaves, or thin branches. The ground was cracked and burning with no grass left and the smoke swirled about, blocking the view of the village.

Had she- had Naruto's jutsu done-

"Sa-Saku-raah…" She spun on the spot as Sasuke's voice came from behind her. She froze on sight of him. His face was covered in blood, what wasn't simply one giant burn with his hair burned away and his clothes almost unrecognizable tatters.

"Sa-sa-SASUKEEEE!!!" The floor rushed up to meet her as the world went black.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

Naruto was finding the Mind's Eye of the Kagura to be a very interesting 'trick'. Honestly, what was with her family and calling really useful stuff 'tricks'. Like they were sideshows or something. She had to wonder what their standards had been like for something that allowed the user to 'see' the world around them through their chakra to be considered a throwaway jutsu.

The moment before Sakura went down she could just barely see Kakashi's chakra wind about Sakura's mind. Genjutsu probably. It sounded like a genjutsu according to what she could remember from the academy. From what she had remembered Sakura had been adept at spotting them so it was surprising that she'd gone down so easily.

Still, as she watched Kakashi brush some soot off his shoulder something about this felt off. "Ne, Sasuke," she glanced to her teammate as he sidled up with her clone. It nodded and disappeared in a poof. As the memories of her brief argument to get him floated into her mind she continued. "Does this test thing seem a bit… weird to you?"

He spared her the briefest glance. "Define weird."

"... I think he's lying," she said, frowning at their teacher, "Remember what Techu-jiji said? There's always three Shinobi to a team."

"So?" Sasuke grunted. She rolled her eyes.

"So there won't be three if one of us is going to fail. Think about it. If every team drops one person then they'd have to reorganize everything again. And what happens when they get one or two extras? Do they send them back to the academy as well?" It just didn't add up to her.

"So the bells aren't important then," he replied, thinking as well. "If you're right-"

"Of course I am. I'm awesome," She grinned cheekily at him.

"Then what is he testing?" She frowned.

Sighing she grumbled, "That's what I can't figure out. This test just doesn't make sense." Across the field, Kakashi rolled his shoulders, nodded to himself, then his legs tensed. "Sasuke! Move-" she began to shout.

Then two Kakashi-senseis was there, right between them. She hadn't even seen him move. Just a flicker of light and he had crossed the hundred-plus meters. His clone kicked Sasuke in the chest and chased him into the brush as what she assumed was the real one launched a punch at her face. She caught it with her hands, but the force of the blow lifted her despite her efforts and she had to twist in mid-air to land feet first on the tree. Looking up from her crouch on the trunk of the large oak that she had smacked into she frowned at her teacher.

"We were talking Sensei-Teme!" She shouted, rudely gesturing in his direction.

"Sorry about that Naruto-chan, but after that last bit, I felt that letting you make plans would be a mistake," he said lightly, "My Kage Bunshin should be more than enough to evaluate Sasuke while I finish my time with you." He didn't give her another second. She flipped off the tree and over his head, launching two shuriken as she landed. His punch ripped an entire chunk out of the trunk before he leaned under the shuriken and immediately closed the distance.

It was clear from the first punch that he had been holding back in their earlier bout, and he probably still was if she had to admit it to herself. Two flew over her shoulder as she desperately tried to keep a step ahead, but the third she had to block and like before the force was far beyond what it had been before. Skill could only compensate so much for the fact that he was a grown man, a full Jounin, and she was a little girl who was just barely a genin.

She flew off into the brush and ricocheted off a tree. The ground came up to hit her as the world spun madly. Rolling to her feet after bouncing who knew how far into the forest she spat out a twig and looked towards the presence of her sensei. Eyes going wide she barely braced herself for the kick that picked her off her feet again and tossed her into another clearing.

Popping out of her roll across the ground with a handstand that carried her over the followed-up strike she formed the hand seal for Kage-Bunshin. Clones popped into existence all around the clearing, three of them immediately intercepting the Jounin, preventing him from pressing her any further. Not that they were lasting long at all. The symphony of exploding clones made it clear that her decoys were only going to last a few moments.

The first thing she needed to do was break line of sight. So long as he could track her by sight she would be vulnerable. That was easily done as her clones surged forward, obscuring her own vision in the process but keeping her well out of harm's way. She slipped away from her last position and tried to mingle with the pack of clones, weaving in and out of them as Kakashi tore a path through them away from her. Actually…

Without a moment's hesitation, she ducked out of the crowd of hers and into the forest. She needed time to think and trying to reason while a Jounin was bouncing her around the forest wasn't exactly productive. Not to mention that Sasuke was probably getting beat to hell and back without back up. Unlike her, he couldn't summon a small army to intervene.

She kept low to the ground as she hurried through the brush, all the while the memories of her clones continued to filter in. Kakashi-sensei was battering them aside without much issue but- A large explosion echoed behind her, wiping out nearly half of her clones, originating with a pair who had decided to suicide bomb the jounin.

Worse yet it failed to slow him down since he had simply swapped out for a log and reappeared further into the crowd, taking advantage of the surprise to tear through the unprepared clones.

"At least they're making it convincing…" she grumbled, leaping for the branches now that she was far enough to not give herself away. Up ahead thunder rolled as a glow lit up the trees with the colour of flames. She popped off a few clones to prepare to delay Kakashi-sensei and tried to hurry.

A few moments later she landed lightly on the branch of a tree missing all of its leaves from the earlier explosion. She peered around the edge of the limb. Down below on the ground was Kakashi's clone, kneeling by… Sasuke's talking severed head?! She blinked and shook her head. No, that wasn't a severed head. Somehow Sasuke had been buried up to his neck and now had to endure whatever lecture the clone had decided to give.

A lecture that was leaving him conveniently open, and why wouldn't he be? Going by sound alone you'd think a small war was going on further into the training ground. Even as she was observing him a few more explosions had shaken the ground as the last few of her clones had detonated their stockpiles of tags in an effort to trip him up. Right, if he hadn't suspected it before now, then he definitely knew she was gone after that.

Moving slowly and carefully to avoid making noise she drew a few shuriken from her pouches and eased herself around the tree. She was on a clock now, and even if Kakashi didn't immediately come running this way that clone wasn't going to keep lecturing Sasuke forever. Still, she hadn't outwitted ANBU and Jounin trackers during her pranks just to slip up here.

She drew a slow breath once, twice, and then her hands lashed out to either side, sending a half-dozen shuriken arcing around the clearing to catch the clone in a pincer. She ran the length of the barren branch and leaped out over the small clearing with her eyes closed, hands already fishing out the new set of shuriken. She felt the moment when Kakashi used kawarimi and lashed out to either side of the clearing with her remaining shuriken before breezing through the eight hand seals of Shuriken Kage Bunshin no Jutsu.

Kakashi's clone reappeared on a branch to her right and barely had time for its eyes to widen before a wall of shuriken hammered into its everything.

She landed perfectly on the ground, kneeling on the balls of her feet as she opened her eyes to see the surprised expression of Sasuke looking back at her. "Need a hand teme?" she asked, creating a pair of clones to drag him out.

"Where did you come from?" he demanded as her clones dragged him out of the ground. The loose soil gave way easily to the clone's efforts and soon they were dragging the disgruntled boy from the ground.

"That way," she gestured back the way she had come. In the distance, another explosion sounded as some of her clones attempted to slow down Kakashi. Their memories joined Naruto's a moment later. "And the real Kakashi-sensei is coming by the way."

Sasuke immediately started walking in the direction of the explosions. She grabbed his arm. "What are you doing you idiot?" she demanded. She'd just rescued his ass from getting planted like a tulip.

He pulled his arm out of her grip. "I'm going to take the bells," he said, "Don't get in my way."

"Get in your- The bells aren't even important! You just got your ass hammered into the ground by his clone and you want to go back for a second round? Over bells?" And he called her an idiot. Why was she the sane one today?

"Do you have a better idea? Maybe they're a fake-out, but it's all we have. Get the bells, or get tied up!" Sasuke snapped. They stared at each other for a few moments. Neither twitched as another explosion went off in the distance.

"Fine. But since they're a fake-out there's no point in trying to showboat and fight Kakashi-sensei by yourself. He's already kicked both our asses. There's no point trying to fight each other on top of this so let's team… up…" Naruto trailed off. They were supposed to be a team. "That's it."

Sasuke just gave her a confused glance. "What's it?"

"Teamwork. This entire test is about teamwork," She said. "Think about it. Teams are made up of three genin. You can't fail them separately. So why is he lying and saying he can? He wanted to split us up. This entire thing is testing whether we can work together despite having all the reasons not to. The bells aren't just unimportant, they're a diversion."

"Why both with this then? Why lie to us? It doesn't make sense. This entire thing is a waste of time!" he snarled, punching a nearby tree trunk.

"Because… because..." she chewed a lip. Why go to this extent to test teamwork? "Because they've already tested our skills," she said slowly, ignoring the distant crashes and explosions. "We're good enough to be shinobi, now the question is do we have the mindset? They aren't going to trust someone who turns on his teammates or the village the moment it's convenient."

Sasuke froze, his fingers digging into the bark. A long moment passed between them. "... yeah, why would they," he muttered, "Like Nii-san…" The bark of the tree snapped beneath his fingers.

Nii-san? She waited for him to elaborate, but after a moment of broody silence, she shrugged. "Let's go check on Sakura. If she hasn't woken up from all of this racket she probably needs help," she said, sighing and rolling her shoulders as she stretched. "Ugh, and I was enjoying this too… Think Kakashi-sensei will be up for a spar later?" she asked, already walking back towards the stumps. Behind her, Sasuke followed slowly.

Across the clearing the forest exploded, bringing them both to a halt as the light shockwave from dozens of rippling explosions rolled over them. The edge of the clearing was still intact, but they could see flames soaring above the treetops. A moment later the memories of her clones appeared and she sighed.

Was a four-sided ambush with exploding Kunai Kage Bunshin no Jutsu too much? The answer was apparently no since Kakashi had once again survived mostly unharmed. Mostly. His hair had been on fire according to the last of her memories. Hopefully, he wouldn't be too mad?

-0-0-0-0-0-​

Kakshi sank the blade of his kunai to the hilt in the neck of the last of this most recent group of clones and felt it pop into a cloud of smoke. He sagged against the tree, his breath heavy as he tried to catch his breath. "I- am out of shape," he groaned. Back during his ANBU days, this sort of rolling skirmish wouldn't have been enough to get him to sweat let alone breathing hard. He hadn't even been forced to utilize his Sharingan, even if it probably would have helped with spotting the fiendish array of traps Naruto-chan's clones had erected.

Arrays of tripwires, chakra triggered sealing arrays and coordinated ambushes. It was clear that Naruto was used to trying to fight someone who outmatched them, though he would have loved to know why. No fresh genin should be this used to counter pursuit action.

The crack of a snapping branch prompted him to toss himself back off the tree as another Naruto appeared from somewhere, gods he wished he knew where, and launched a brace of shuriken at him. The kunai in his hands caught the redhead in her chest, popping her into a cloud of smoke, and he landed heavily on the ground. Then the hissing, that fucking hissing, started again and he reflexively triggered another kawarimi. As the exploding tag array triggered.

Taking a rough breath he shook his head and barely avoided slumping against the tree. His eyes scanned the area. Nothing, again. Gods above she was dressed in bright orange this should not be so difficult. He'd thought nothing of the reports from ANBU about how hard she was to track after her pranks. Lazy ANBU in need of retraining after years spent taking care of matters inside the village was what he had thought.

It seemed he owed a few old friends some apologies. And some money. Tenzou was going to be so damned smug.

When nothing jumped at him, hissed, exploded, or otherwise ruined his moment of calm and peace Kakashi promptly jumped to the next tree. When there was yet more nothing exploding or attempting to skewer him, he relaxed just slightly. Was that the last clone? He almost didn't dare hope.

"She's far too much like her mother," he groaned. Perhaps it was an Uzumaki trait that their members were fascinated with the Kage Bunshin. Certainly, they could use it in a way that few others could. Why had he thought she wouldn't be able to just bury him under a human wave? This was the sort of mistake he wouldn't have made but a few years ago. He blamed the laxity of life as an ordinary Jounin.

His breath successfully caught, Kakashi leaped to the next tree and continued his race towards the main training area of Training Ground Seven. Behind him stretched hundreds of meters of broken and burning forest.

For once there were no further clone attacks. No bombs, no kunai, no traps. Just a simple run from tree to tree for the last hundred meters. It was almost enough to make him stop and set everything on fire just to be sure. Maybe use a couple of Doton Jutsu to uproot some of the trees ahead.

That was, however, his paranoia talking and not something he could really afford to spend chakra on to begin with. He was well-practiced at restraining that part of himself and by the time he settled into a tree overlooking the field he had only loosed two kunai at random birds and one Suiton Jutsu at an innocent tree. Progress really.

Down in the field Naruto was helping Sakura to her feet and chattering about something while Sasuke was leaning against a post. Did they really think this wasn't over? The alarm hadn't rung yet. Still, unless they acted then-

Naruto looked his way.

Reflexes honed over the last half hour flicked into gear and he launched himself from the tree. He couldn't afford to let her take the initiative. This was probably the real Naruto, in fact just the unnaturally smooth way she stood suggested it, so he couldn't strike a lethal blow. Which left him with less dangerous strikes, like a flying axe kick that made her eyes widen as she pushed Sakura away and braced. His heel hammered into her raised arms and she went down to one knee.

Her hands gripped his leg in a vice as Sasuke exploded into action. The dark-haired boy leaped from a standing start into a flying kick as Naruto yanked his leg forward in a surprising display of strength. He caught Sasuke's leg with an open palm and kicked off with his free leg. He managed to wrench his leg free, though he left behind his sandal in the redhead's hands.

Sasuke let out a surprised yelp as he was dragged along before Kakashi spun and launched him at the trees. The talented Genin hooked a branch as he was flying by and flipped up onto it.

Kakashi landed lightly and was halfway to reaching for a kunai when a ting-a-ling of bells stopped him. Standing smugly with his sandal in one hand was Naruto, holding up the two bells that should have been hanging on his waist. The hand reaching for the kunai slipped to his belt. He sighed. How did she do that? He hadn't even seen her hands reach for him.

Standing straight he rubbed the back of his neck. "Ah, you seem to have the bells," he said with a shake of his head. The alarm chose that moment to go off. And now he couldn't make a move to get them back.

He'd been beaten. Minato-sensei would have been proud.

"Yup, not that it really matters, does it sensei?" Naruto asked, flipping one towards Sakura, who snagged it from the air with a startled look.

Had they…? "I don't know, Naruto-chan. You tell me," he said, walking over to the alarm clock. He flicked off the alarm.

"It was rather obvious," Sasuke said smugly.

"Oi! Don't act like you figured it out!" Naruto snapped at him, sniffing haughtily before turning back to Kakashi.

"Naruto! Don't snap at him," Sakura protested. Naruto ignored her.

"Teamwork was what you were testing. Teuchi-jiji mentioned that genin teams always have three members. Two boys and a girl. You can't do that if you kick out one of them," Naruto said, grinning, "The bell's just a distraction. You wanted to see if we could put aside our own desires to work together."

He nodded, not denying it. "True true. All very true… You see that stone over there?" he asked, gesturing to the memorial stone in the corner of Training Ground Seven. They nodded. "That is the memorial stone. The names of every fallen Konoha Shinobi are written on it," he paused to let them absorb that, then added, "My best friend's name is written on there. Uchiha Obito." Sasuke started. "He coined a phrase that's become popular over the years. It's often said that those who break the rules in the Shinobi world are scum. He said on that: 'Those who break the rules are scum, but those who abandon their friends are worse than scum'."

He looked around at them and nodded. "Take that to heart. That is the truth of Konohagakure Shinobi. We do not abandon our friends. And you are all Shinobi of Konoha from now on. Be proud, for tomorrow your duties to Konoha will begin," he finished. Naruto grinned and punched the air.

"YES! YES YES YES!" She grabbed Sakura in a hug that invited a surprised squawk from the girl and kept jumping up and down, practically swinging the pinkette around. As the two girls nearly came to blows Sasuke just smirked.

So it seemed he wouldn't need to make some bullshit up to pass them like the Hokage wanted. Still, there were a few things they needed to deal with. Oh well, he hated to ruin anyone's celebrations, but he had to keep his words. And besides, this was amusing.

"Now, now," Kakashi raised a hand to get their attention, "I'm not quite done yet. We've got one last thing to deal with before we break for today." After they settled down he continued, "Naruto-chan, congratulations on recovering the bells and figuring out the secret behind the test." The redhead grinned broadly and chuckled, an embarrassed blush forming.

"However," he liked the way the three of them sobered up, "I did say that anyone who didn't have a bell by the time the alarm rang would get tied to the post without lunch. Since neither Sasuke nor Sakura had a bell by the time the alarm rang, both of you get to be tied to the post." Three… Two… One…

"WHAT!"

Ah, Genin horror, a balm for his heavily scorched self.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

Kakashi waited as the old man's secretary knocked on the office door. He tried to ignore the odd looks the hidden ANBU guards were giving him. It was hard since at least a pair of them were snickering. That all but confirmed that the Hokage had been watching the test with his crystal ball. Or it might have had something to do with the fact that his hair was bent ninety degrees to the side and slightly scorched.

"The Hokage will see you now," the secretary, a well-endowed blonde woman, said nodding to him as she returned to her tasks.

Sighing to himself he entered the office. The Hokage didn't so much as twitch as he caught sight of Kakashi. Lovely. "Kakashi-kun, how was your mission?" he asked.

"Eventful," he replied, taking the seat from earlier, "I take it you were watching Sandaime-sama?"

"Very closely," the old man replied, "I feel the need to apologize for the kunai Kage Bunshin no Jutsu. It was one of my agents who left the scroll on that for her to find. At least she seems to be putting it to good use."

Kakashi twitched as he recalled the multiple waves of explosions that had levelled nearly half of the training ground. As it was Training Ground Seven would take weeks to repair before they would even think of having Tenzo regrow the forest. "I would… prefer if you asked me before teaching Naruto-chan anymore jutsu, Hokage-sama," he said stiffly. He tried to ignore the Hokage's chuckle.

"I hardly taught her anything. An old man is allowed to give gifts every now and again isn't he?" he chuckled, earning a sigh from Kakashi, "More importantly she seemed to give you quite a bit of trouble."

"She did. I have questions about the veracity of the reports I received from the academy. While it did say that her taijutsu was in the upper percentile of the class there is a difference between being a good academy student and what I just witnessed. Hokage-sama, her taijutsu was easily jounin even if she is currently lacking in strength to make the most of it. To add to it her file makes no mention of her stealth capabilities, nor her Fuinjutsu talent."

"Her files were accurate as of her graduation, Kakashi," the Hokage replied.

He frowned. "With respect Sandaime-sama, no one improves that much in a week." No one went from scraping genin to throwing down with an elite Jounin essentially overnight.

"And yet, they were accurate. I watched her battle with MIzuki myself. I saw her final tests. Outside of her ability to sneak around, which you should have realized after spending years watching her make fools of Chunin and ANBU, everything was as listed," the older Shinobi replied.

"It doesn't make sense," the silver-haired shinobi sighed.

"I believe it has something to do with her seal, Kakashi-kun," Sarutobi said as he chewed on the end of his pipe, "Ever since her graduation night things have been odd around her. I have spent many evenings watching her in my crystal ball while she trains. She has been improving at a rate that makes the likes of Uchiha Itachi or Orochimaru look simpleminded. A week, Kakashi, and she has gone from barely being able to fight a Chunin, to nearly handing you your ass in a week." Hiruzen gave him a harsh look that made him wince.

"... I seem to have allowed myself to slip more than I had realized. I apologize, Hokage-sama," he said. He meant it to. By no rights should he come that close to defeat simply from fighting a Genin. He was one of the Elite and the standards expected of him were much higher than this. It seemed he needed to get back into training himself.

"We've all done it, Kakashi-kun," Hiruzen replied kindly, "Just try to avoid letting it happen again." He nodded his agreement. It was said a good teacher should be proud when their student overtakes them. He hadn't even started teaching and she seemed poised to run off into the distance without him. It was, quite frankly, embarrassing.

"You said you watch her train. How does she train, if I may ask Hokage-sama?" he questioned.

"With the Kage Bunshin no Jutsu," the Hokage replied, "she battles large groups of them every evening for several hours while other clones practice nearly anything she can think of."

"I see," he said, and he did. If Naruto was truly capable of creating so many clones without tiring then she could leverage the jutsu's memory sharing ability to learn at an accelerated pace. It didn't explain the leap in taijutsu skill or the way she had picked up on strategy so quickly, nor did it explain why her clones were so much weaker than her. He voiced his thoughts and the old man nodded.

"I do not know. The only thing I can think of is, as I said, her seal. It is possible it was hiding her potential, or it may have to do with that matter we spoke briefly on last week. The one involving Minato's research," the Hokage replied, "I want you to watch her. Not to hinder or out of concern for her running away, but to try and figure out how talented she truly is. Clearly what happened to her seal is connected to this newfound brilliance, but I wish to know how connected."

"I will do as asked, Hokage-sama," he replied, bowing his head.

"Good," Hiruzen exhaled a cloud of smoke, "Now, have you enjoyed your first experience with proper teaching, Kakashi-kun?" He chuckled at the hard glare the Jounin replied with.

"Is that everything, Hokage-sama?" he asked.

"Go relax Kakashi. Might I suggest a shower?" Kakashi ignored the Sandaime's chuckles as they followed him out of the room.

Sometime later Kakashi sat down at the corner table of a bar he frequented on occasion. He hadn't bothered with a shower. It could wait until he'd had something to drink. He sighed as he waited for the waitress to bring him his first drink. Gods, it had been a rough day and all because of one redhead with an explosive's obsession.

"Hey Kakashi," he looked up as he was reaching for his Icha Icha Paradise novel. His old friends and fellow Jounin Kurenai, Asuma, and Gai were all standing a few feet away. It was a testament to how tired he was that he hadn't noticed them sooner. Asuma nodded to the other seats at the table. "Mind if we join you?" he asked, scratching his beard before taking a drag from his cigarette.

"Sure, why not," he sighed. There went his idea for a quiet night.

"You look rough Kakashi," Kurenai said as she sat down beside Asuma.

"That he does indeed," Gai agreed, throwing himself energetically into the seat beside Kakashi. He pounded the scorched Jounin's back, sending a sharp pain through it from the light burns he had picked up, and laughed. "What, did your students decide to demonstrate the power of Youth? Ah to be that young again with boundless potential ahead."

"Yeah, what happened to you Kakashi? You look like you nearly got blown up. Again," Asuma chuckled. The silver-haired Jounin twitched.

"One of my students has a fondness for high explosives," Kakashi replied as the waitress returned with three menus and his drink. All three Jounin stared at him.

"Did you actually pass a team Kakashi?" Kurenai asked.

"Yup." Ah, he needed that drink.

"Gods. I didn't expect you to ever pass a team after these last few years. So how good are they? They've got to have a few tricks for you to come out looking like you've been fighting a war," Asuma asked before sniffing. He coughed. "You smell like it too."

"Uzumaki Naruto has a fondness for exploding seals, the Kage Bunshin no Jutsu, and the Kunai Kage Bunshin no Jutsu," He replied after a moment's silence. "The world hasn't exploded that much around me since the third war." And the war rarely included this much explosives.

All three of them stared at him as he took a swig directly from the sake bottle before reaching for his book. So what if Kurenai was going to glare at him. He needed this damn it.

He froze, his hand rummaging around his empty pouch. He checked the other pair and found nothing. Frantically he began searching his pouches. "Where is it? I had it here earlier," he said, glancing into a kunai pouch that was far too small.

"You okay Kakashi?" Asuma asked slowly as his actions grew more frantic.

"I can't find it," he replied as he pulled off his jacket and started ransacking the pockets. He had had it at the end of the exam…

He frowned. He had, hadn't he? Except the last time he looked at it…

Was before he left for the test. He hadn't had time to read it during the exam. He hadn't even pulled it out. Not even once. So where was… it…

"They stole my book," he said dully. They'd stolen. His. Book.

"Book? Oh gods. Not that stupid perverted book Kakashi," Kurenai groaned, slapping her forehead as Kakashi stood up a scowl beneath his mask.

"Hey, hey, hey," Asuma stood up along with Gai. The two of them grabbed his arms and forced him back into his seat as he tried to leave.

"Let me go! They stole my book!"

"Gai, don't let him go!"

"My flames of youth are more than enough to restrain my rival Asuma-kun!"

As he tried to struggle out of his friend's grip Kakashi knew one thing. A certain redhead was going to be in so much trouble the moment he got free.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

Naruto hummed as she climbed into bed. She'd had a bath, a good meal, and even given herself the night off from training since she'd spent the entire morning fighting. Now it was time for sleep. Well, reading, then sleeping. She picked up the strange orange book she'd pickpocketed off Kakashi-sensei.

"Icha Icha Paradise Volume 1, huh," she mumbled as she lay down on her bed. The cover was just the title and a girl in a red dress being chased by a guy. Shrugging she cracked it open to the first page and started reading. Five minutes later she shut the book with a blush that made it difficult to tell her skin from her hair.

"Kakashi-sensei is a perv," she said aloud as her blush slowly receded. Then she slowly cracked open the book again and kept reading. It took hours for her blush to recede enough to sleep.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

A/N: Poor Kakashi, it just wasn't his day~ *Amused Kitsune* ah well, it could have been worse. At least he didn't actually get set on fire.

We've got one more section written for this story, then we'll be seeing updates for wGaE and TTP. Depending on how things go with school there may be a break as I work on my novel for a bit.

Discord and Patreon links in my signature as usual and a lovely thank you to everyone who supports me. Well, a Fluffy thank you. *Fluffy Kitsune Hugs*

 

[Grounders10]

-0-0-0-0-0-

A Naruto/Exalted Crossover

A Shine of Gold in the Crimson Tide

By: Grounders10

-0-0-0-0-0-

5. The Ninja Alphabet

-0-0-0-0-0-​

The next day was cloudy, though not raining when Naruto made it to the meeting point for Team Seven. A wooden bridge over one of the many small creeks that flowed through the village. Sakura was already there absently humming to herself as she kept an eye out. Probably hoping to see Sasuke. Her absentminded expression gave way to a scowl as she spotted Naruto.

"Heya Sakura-chan!" Naruto shouted as she waved. She pouted as Sakura rolled her eyes and turned away. "Don't tell me you're still angry about yesterday. It's not my fault Kakashi-sensei decided to tie you up. I tried to help." She'd given her the bell after all.

"We were there for two hours Naruto!" the pinkette snapped, "That's twice in two days I've been tied up and left somewhere." Oh, right. Yeah, she'd kinda gone and tied up Sakura-chan…

She rubbed the back of her head and blushed. "Sorry about that, Sakura-chan. You didn't exactly give me much choice though," she said. The other girl just turned away with a huff and the smallest hint of a blush.

Naruto hopped up on the railing of the bridge and sat down cross-legged. She fished out the scroll on the Mind's Eye of the Kagura and got to work practicing it. As the scroll said, you hadn't mastered it until you could accurately spot and track an insect from at least ten kilometres away. It had mentioned that most members only ever mastered it up to that minimum, but that a few had managed much, much further. It did deny what it referred to as "Iwa Myths" that its users were able to spy on Iwagakure from Uzushiogakure with the statement of: Such ability has never been demonstrated by any Uzumaki even if, technically, a person of sufficient chakra capacity could perform such a feat. Rare is it to find someone capable of even half that distance.

Given that the distance from Uzu to Iwa was well over a thousand kilometres, Naruto could understand where the rumour had started.

Still, that was a level of mastery that was well beyond her current abilities. She hadn't even passed the minimums yet. Her current range was a few hundred meters and maybe something human-sized. Really quite pathetic in comparison.

It was about five minutes later when she spotted someone slowly walking towards them. Human, about their age and size and with a dreary feeling chakra that she recognized as Sasuke's. Honestly, would it kill him to be a bit more upbeat? Eh, probably would. She considered letting Sakura know, then shrugged. The last thing she wanted was to get exposed to extra ear-piercing squeals.

As she sensed him coming around the corner she waved. "Hey Sasuke," she called out.

"Sasuke-kun!" And there went the squealing.

"Hn," Sasuke grunted and Naruto cracked open an eye to get a better look at her rival. He looked about the same as normal. Cool, calm, and constantly giving off the impression someone had jabbed a stick up his rear. He glanced her way as he leaned up against one of the main bridge supports, then looked away.

Her eye twitched. Dismiss her, would he? Arrogant ass. She'd liked him better back when they'd been in his apartment and he'd been too flustered to dismiss her. Irritated, she turned away and went back to meditating.

A half-hour passed in silence, the meetup time coming and going. Eventually, she opened her eyes and sighed. "Guys," they glanced her way, "do you think Kakashi-sensei is going to be hours late again?"

"He wouldn't…" Sakura began before glancing around worriedly.

"He is," Sasuke sighed, "Hey, Naruto, you were able to track him before-"

"Nowhere nearby. I've been trying to spot him since I got here," Naruto replied, "I don't think he's coming."

"That- ARgh!" Sasuke edged away from his fangirl as she let out a frustrated scream. "That stupid scarecrow!" Both of them flinched as she put her fist through the railing.

"Ummm…" Naruto leaned away as Sakura turned to her. "I'm not paying for that," she said bravely, pointing to the railing. Sakura twitched, froze, then very deliberately walked seven paces down the bridge and leaned against the railing there as if nothing was wrong.

"It was like that when we got here," she said firmly. Neither of them felt like arguing.

"So what do we do?" Naruto asked after a few more minutes of awkward silence.

"We wait. We can't exactly go and get a mission by ourselves," Sasuke said.

"... How do you get a mission anyway?" Sakura asked, "They didn't mention that in the academy."

"It's probably something we're supposed to learn from our Jounin-sensei. Which means Kakashi," Sasuke said.

"And he's not anywhere near- oh," on the edge of her senses a small group of chakra users, very familiar ones, appeared, "Well he's still not here, but Hana-nee just came in range with her dogs. She'll be here in a couple of seconds." Both Sauke and Sakura straightened up and looked in the same direction as Naruto.

The Inuzuka Chunin leaped down from a tree with her trio of Inuzuka Hounds. "Sorry for leaving you three here for so long," She apologized immediately, "I was trying to get Kakashi here sometime soon for once but he seems to have already figured out how to dodge me." She did not sound happy at that little revelation.

"Dodge you Hana-nee?" Naruto asked with a frown.

"Something all of you should know: Hatake Kakashi is always late when it doesn't involve an active mission. It could be minutes, but it'll probably be hours unless the Hokage himself summons him," Hana said, shooting the hole in the railing a curious glance. Sakura took a surreptitious step away from the hole.

"So, what, we don't show up on time either?" Sasuke asked.

"Yeah, how does this work? Are we allowed to take missions without Kakashi-sensei showing up?" Naruto asked.

Hana shook her head. "In order: No, you show up on time just in case there's an important mission that he won't be late for. It doesn't work well, and no, you can't. I can't take you on one either. I'm not your Jounin-sensei, just his assistant."

"That's- Why did we get the defective Jounin?" Naruto complained, earning nods of agreement from both of her teammates. Hana held up a hand to forestall any more complaints.

"Easy you three. What we're going to do is keep meeting here on time, and while we wait we're going to train and practice," she ordered.

"Excellent," Sasuke smirked.

Sakura sighed and wiped her brow. "That's a relief. I was starting to wonder if we were going to get any training at all," she said.

"What do you think I've been doing?" Naruto grumbled, getting looks from the others.

"You've been sitting there staring at your scroll for ages, Naruto," Sakura said. The redhead rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, meditating and practicing the trick that lets me sense people," she snapped in reply, "It's taking a lot more work than the last few Jutsu I tried."

"You're a sensor, Naruto-chan?" Hana-nee asked. She nodded. "So that's how you've been keeping ahead of my hounds." Her tone was resigned and almost accusatory.

"Eh? Nope, Hana-nee. I only picked up the Mind's Eye of the Kagura yesterday morning while we were waiting for Kakashi-sensei," she corrected.

"Yesterday?" Hana stared, "And how far out does this work?"

"Four… five hundred meters or so right now? Doesn't work too well on anything smaller than a person right now either," Naruto said with a shrug.

"Sounds useful," her male teammate mused.

"More than useful. I doubt you've mastered it, Naruto-chan," Hana-nee observed, "How far does it extend your range when you've mastered it?"

"Ummm… That depends." How much did they need to know? Not that knowing the mechanics would help them. There was a reason this was an Uzumaki trick and not a general knowledge thing that more people had figured out.

"On?" Sakura asked.

"Chakra capacity," Naruto replied with a shrug, "It's an Uzumaki Clan Jutsu. We have so much chakra that it flows out of our bodies in ridiculous amounts. Minds Eye isn't so much a Jutsu, as it is learning to recognize where your chakra is and where it isn't. The skill comes from being able to differentiate amounts, types, and shapes of chakra. I can see all of you right now, but it's more of a 'I know something is there' than a 'you look human' kinda deal." Though she was getting close to the 'it looks human' thing.

Sasuke frowned and sighed. "And if someone else tried it?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Depends on the person. But there aren't exactly a lot of people running around with Uzumaki levels of chakra."

"So how far are we talking? A kilometer? Two?" Sakura asked, getting an amused glance from Hana.

"Sakura-chan, most shinobi sensors can barely manage six hundred meters. Naruto's five hundred is already quite impressive for such a new skill," the Inuzuka said.

"... The record was over five hundred kilometers," Naruto deadpanned, getting stunned looks from all three, "The minimum requirement for passing level one mastery is ten kilometres." Which was probably going to give her one hell of a headache. Seriously, being aware of stuff in four hundred meters was a pain, going more than twenty times that number? It was going to suck.

"I… I see," Hana said, shaking her head, "Well… Right. Anyway, you can work on that on your own time. For now we can work on the stuff that I'm here to teach. Hokage-sama was worried about the fact that Kakashi-san doesn't exactly have experience with teaching Kunoichi. He wants me to make sure you two keep up with certain skills and continue to improve. Not that we'll spend all of our time on flowers or other non-combatant skills. A well-rounded Kunoichi needs to be able to fight as well as infiltrate." Naruto groaned. Of course, Jiji decided to make this a thing. This was going to suck.

"And what about me?" Sasuke asked with a frown.

"Hmmm…" Hana tapped her chin as she looked the boy up and down, "If I were a Jounin I would probably just make a Kage Bunshin to take you off to the side and focus on some secondary skills that Shinobi should know, but I don't have the knowledge or chakra to afford that. So… what to do…" Her eyes drifted over to Naruto for a second before turning back to Sasuke.

The redhead could practically see the lightbulb that went off as the older girl snapped her fingers and pointed at Sasuke. "Ah, I know. There're plenty of strange situations that a shinobi or kunoichi can find themselves in. I remember one time my team had to infiltrate disguised as a group of Geisha taking part in a particularly high-class party in Cha no Kuni. We got caught because the boys didn't have a clue how to pretend to be the other gender let alone Geisha. Sasuke-kun, turn into a girl your education starts now."

There was a silent moment as the three Genins stared at their Chunin instructor. Then Naruto started snickering. "What?" the lone boy said flatly.

"But- Sasuke-kun as- Heh?" Sakura glanced to Hana-nee then back to Sasuke, a blush forming. That was enough to drive Naruto over the edge and she started howling with laughter.

"Henge up little-man. Time to learn how to be a girl," Hana grinned.

"I am not turning into a girl," he insisted.

"Oh really?"

"Yes!" Naruto just laughed harder.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

It was three hours on the dot from when they were to meet that their Jounin-Sensei finally arrived. Naruto noticed him as he lazily walked up the path as though he wasn't several hours late. She almost hadn't noticed him since her attention was on her two teammates. Sasuke, now henged into a dark-haired girl who might as well have been his sister, and Sakura, who was trying to play the shamisen to…

Being an able player of the instrument herself, Naruto was firmly of the opinion that calling what Sakura was doing to the instrument 'playing' was an insult to all musicians. A point that had nearly earned her a concussion before Hana's reprimand had prevented Sakura from attempting to give her a concussion. While the pinkette was undergoing music lessons from the pained looking Hana, Naruto had been set to work coaching Sasuke.

"You were the… Second place Kunoichi when you took those classes?" Hana-nee had clarified.

"Third. Ino-chan was just barely ahead of me," Naruto sighed.

The long-haired girl in Sasuke's clothes blinked and looked at her with a very boyish frown. "You took Kunoichi classes?" 'she' asked.

"I'd have been first if Sakura-chan wasn't so good at math and history and Ino-chan wasn't so obsessed with Ikebana," Naruto complained, earning a scoff from Sakura.

"Yeah right. I earned that fair and square," she said, leaning forward to glare at Naruto.

The redhead frowned back. "Three words," she said, "Cooking and Music." Sakura had flinched and that had led to Sakura taking music lessons with Hana. Lessons she was all but failing. Music had really been the worst of her marks.

And after her smartass remarks on Sakura's inability to play music she'd gotten stuck teaching Sasuke the basics. Like how to walk without looking like a guy. It was surprising how important that was. Her early attempts to pretend to be a girl had gone badly until she realized that yes, boys and girls walked differently and attempting to 'walk normally' while looking like the opposite gender tended to draw attention. Unwanted attention anyway. Cute girls tended to draw attention just as readily, but no one was going to catch you because you were 'too cute'.

Oh, and it caused horrible pain because your body wasn't set up to walk that way. It had been a really bad evening that day.

It was to the sight of Naruto marching Sasuke back and forth on the bridge like a drill instructor that Hatake Kakashi arrived.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

"What are you doing here?" Kakashi asked as he glanced up and down the bridge.

"You're late!" he blinked as the three Genin, who were quite oddly all girls, whirled on him pointing accusatory fingers. That was rude. He actually had a good reason this time, but more importantly…"

"... Hana-san, why is Sasuke-kun a girl?" he asked as he looked over his normally male student. 'She' was slightly taller than Sasuke normally was with long raven coloured hair, a roundish face, and a slim figure that made her look less like a Kunoichi and more like a dancer. It was an interesting contrast, though admittedly as a boy Sasuke was more on the bishounen end of the scale.

Hana shrugged. "I figured teaching him how to pretend to be a girl might be useful someday. Since you weren't here I had Naruto put 'her'," she made air quotes, " through 'her' paces."

"Please tell me we're done?" the 'female' Uchiha asked.

"Yeah, for now," Hana confirmed, only for the girl to promptly pop back into a boy in a cloud of smoke. Naruto let out a small "aw" of disappointment and just grinned at the annoyed look Sasuke sent her way.

"Nice to see that you made the most of your time," Kakashi said. Really it was the sort of thing that his team should have done whenever Obito was late. Which he always was. Though learning how to crossdress wasn't exactly on the list of things he would have considered practicing. "Pack your things up, it's time to go and get our first mission. Hana-san, you can come along or stay behind. The choice is yours, but I assure you today won't be anything we need your help with." D-ranks weren't for Chunin after all.

"There was a bit of a list of clients building up earlier when I left. They're probably still overrun right now. So I think I'll head over to the clinic," the Chunin said as she stood up and gestured for Sakura to hand the instrument over to Naruto, who promptly sealed it away into a scroll.

"Before you go then, we'll be meeting up here at the same time every day from now on," He said, getting nods from Hana and Naruto, a groan from Sakura, and an eye roll from Sasuke. Well, that hurt just a little.

"Ne, Kakashi-sensei, are you going to be late every day?" Naruto asked.

He feigned a look of hurt. "I had a perfectly good reason to be late today," he said.

"And that was?" Hana asked dryly with her arms crossed.

"I was avoiding Gai," he replied. The Chunin digested that while his three genin just sent him equally disappointed expressions.

"... I see. Maybe you should try teaching and avoiding at the same time? Be good training, don't you think Kakashi-san?" she asked before shaking her head as he blinked. "Didn't think so. Later girls, Sasuke-kun. Stay out of trouble." She waved and left, her three dogs immediately hopping up from their napping pile along the side of the bridge to follow her.

"Well, why don't we get going then? Come on you three, let's get a mission." The sooner that happened the sooner he could get his revenge for yesterday… and on that note, "Hey, Naruto-chan?"

"Yeah Sensei?"

"You wouldn't happen to know where my book went, would you?" he asked, glancing over at her. She just gave him a look of confused innocence that he was almost willing to buy. Sure she didn't look guilty, but she was also the only one who could have stolen it.

"Book?" Sakura asked. "Sensei, you didn't bring a book to the test yesterday, did you?" She sounded almost resigned. She was probably thinking about how things had gone the day before.

"I keep reading material on hand just in case things get slow," he replied, leaving out the nature or contents of his 'reading material'. A giggle caused him to glance over to Naruto who was still looking completely innocent and confused, albeit slightly less so. He had to give her credit, she had a good poker face. Oh well, he'd just have to pick up a new copy. Assuming the store hadn't run out, again.

He hated it when his favourite bookstore ran out.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

They were going to get a mission! Their first mission! It was all Naruto could do to not shout and dance happily. This was what being a Shinobi was about. Missions! Adventure! Excitement!

She ignored the annoyed looks from Sakura-chan as she hummed happily. So what if it was a bit high pitched, or just slightly off-key or… okay so the off-key part was intentional, but the reactions were enough to make it worthwhile.

So it was that she practically skipped up the stairs into the mission center ahead of the group. "Hey Jiji!" she shouted upon spotting the Hokage sitting behind the central desk. "We're here for our first mission!" She pointed dramatically at the amused old man.

"Naruto!" Sakura growled as they entered behind her, "Be respectful."

"Eh? But it's just Hokage-Jiji," she frowned, waving at the old man who was chuckling. He never minded when she called him that.

Kakashi shook his head and sighed. "Team Seven ready to receive our first mission, Hokage-sama," he said, leading the way over to the table.

"Hrm… And a bit late I see," Jiji mused as he tapped out his pipe. "I'm afraid the other teams have already taken the better missions." Naruto wilted a bit. That meant that anything really impressive was probably off the table. No fighting bandits or escorting princesses then.

"Why did you have to make us late Kakashi-sensei?" she whined.

"It doesn't really matter, Naruto-chan," he chuckled, patting her on the head patronizingly. This was revenge for his book, wasn't it? "What's left, Hokage-sama?"

"Well… let's see…" The old man perused the list before him. He took a pull from his pipe and exhaled a cloud of smoke. "Hmm… no… no… hrm…" he stroked his beard. Naruto rolled her eyes and promptly leaned out of the way of Sakura's elbow jab. Jiji was being so overdramatic.

"Just tell us!" She demanded. She failed to dodge the pat on the head Kakashi gave her.

"Now, now, be patient Naruto-chan. Let Hokage-sama read," her sensei said. His tone was light and belied the amusement she suspected he was concealing.

A minute later Hokage-jiji nodded. "I think I have a mission that suits your skills and experience perfectly," he said, pulling out a scroll from a drawer without looking, further proving her suspicion that he was being dramatic.

"What is it? What is it?" she asked, bouncing on the spot.

"Dog walking." she froze half-way through a bounce and wobbled.

"What?" she asked, her disbelief echoed by Sakura. She stared at the old man with a betrayed look. Dog walking wasn't a Shinobi's mission. It was a kid's job or the work of someone who didn't have better things to do. Not… Not fully trained shinobi!

"Dog walking. We have a request here," he wiggled the scroll at them, "for a team of genin to walk the dogs at the Inuzuka clinic and kennel. I would have offered the babysitting mission-"

"Babysitting!" the two girls groaned in despair. They were echoed by Sasuke.

"-but that would require someone with more experience and skill in interpersonal relations. Dog walking is a nice start," Hokage-jiji finished. He smiled, probably at the way their dreams and aspirations were crumbling.

Kakashi-sensei took the scroll from the Hokage. "We'll see it done, Hokage-sama," he said before turning to them the biggest eye-smile they'd ever seen visible in his one eye. "This should be fun, right team?" gods he sounded way too cheerful. "Let's get going."

"Enjoy your day," Hokage-jiji called after them as they trudged out. Naruto followed Kakashi, no longer skipping as she walked. This. This had to be what Kakashi-sensei considered revenge for the day before. This must have been what Kakashi was so happy about that he hadn't even tried to take revenge for her nicking his book. Well, he should be worried, because she was going to do that every time he picked up a brand new story.

She would have revenge for this.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

The breeze lightly ruffled her hair as it swept across the treetops behind the Uzumaki Estate. Naruto paid it little heed as she perched on the highest twig of an old spruce tree. Her eyes swept the trees looking for any sign of her opponents. The last four months had seen them improve dramatically, enough that she had to be wary.

The temptation to utilize the Mind's Eye nagged at her, but she pushed it away. Her other skills would suffer if she leaned too heavily on it all the time. She needed to be able to spot enemies without relying on an all-seeing eye. However, her opposition had gotten a lot better and her first warning was a volley of shuriken emerging from a distant tree. More joined it from other trees around the area and she abandoned her perch to fall to a lower limb. Some of the shuriken curved to follow her, guided unerringly by wires attached to them.

She rolled off the limb and flipped across to another tree as two of her clones emerged from the brush. She leaned back and let the kunai they tossed pass inches from her body. Continuing into a backflip she landed atop one of her clones shoulders in a handstand and pulled it with her as she continued.

Her clone let out a yelp of protest as she lifted the clone and used it to block the next barrage of kunai. She leaped through the smoke, catching the other clone by surprise with her speed. Her fist crushed its windpipe and bounced its ethereal skull off the tree.

More came, there were always more after all, from all angles in a swarm of kunai and fists. Masses of orange-clad redheads crushed foliage as they rushed on with a single war cry.

She rolled her eyes. "A frontal charge? We're better than this," she scoffed and smoke filled the air as she scythed through the first four to close to hand to hand range. She sidestepped down the side of the branch and redirected a strike from a clever clone to hit the branch itself. The wood cracked beneath the strike. She snapped the clone's arm and spun to block another strike from another clone as more landed on the branch. Wood cracked as she wove through several strikes from above and below and more landed on the branch.

The wood creaked and she smirked as two more clones landed. With a crick-snap, the branch broke and she kicked off of it. One of the clones tried to imitate her, but only sent the branch flying through the air to deflect off a distant tree.

As her clones fell screaming to their probable deaths, Naruto grabbed another branch and redirected her momentum upward, flying above the chaos of falling clones and through several desperate strikes at her from others. She launched a trio of kunai towards those below her and quickly ran through the hand seals for the Kage Kunai no Jutsu.

She smirked at the shriek of surprise as over a ton of illusory metal carpeted the forest floor. Then slide off the side of the branch as two clones leapt for her. Attaching herself to the underside of the branch she found another pair, having anticipated her move, already poised to strike. Her form going limp like a reed in the wind she avoided their strikes by a hair's breadth and grabbed their arms tightly. The squealed as she spun on the bottom of the branch and tossed them towards other clones, but not before leaving a present attached to each one.

Alerted by the sound of blades cutting through the breeze she let go of the branch and fell towards the forest floor again as she slammed her hands into a ram seal. Both explosive tags went off, wiping out groups of clones and sending dangerous shrapnel scything through those further out. With that done she twisted in the air and came down sandal's first on the face of a very surprised clone.

She leapt from the branch, rebounded off another and flew between two of her clones that had been standing, gaping like fish, on another branch. Her arms clotheslined both of them on the way by. They fell, cursing her loudly at the top of their lungs, and popped on a branch further down.

The whirr of unrolling shinobi-wire caused her to kick off immediately from her next destination as over a dozen shuriken came whipping about the tree. The wires scraped the bottom of her sandals as she escaped the closing trap.

She didn't escape the shockwave as a dozen exploding tags attached to the wires exploded. Bark scraped her cheek as she bounced hard off the trunk of a tree before she managed to redirect her fall off of a loose twig to land on a wide branch.

Naruto rubbed her cheek and looked around with a disgruntled glare. "STOP BLOWING HOLES IN MY FOREST!" she shouted angrily.

"WE DON'T CARE!" came the familiar chorus. Gods she hated herself sometimes.

"Oh and," Naruto glanced up to see one of her clones smirking down at her, "Maybe you shouldn't be standing there." She waved and popped out of existence, transferring her memories to her creator, whose expression fell as she realized what was going on.

With a snap-hiss, barrier seals placed along the trees around her came to life. From the forest floor to treetop six blue barriers of energy trapped her where she was. Then a whistling sound came from above as two kunai became two thousand kunai.

Each one wrapped in an explosive tag.

"I really hate myself sometimes!" she shouted, rolling off her branch to take cover beneath it again, yet that wouldn't be enough to prevent her from getting exploded with everything else.

As the wave of high explosive struck her cover she launched herself out from beneath it. Her timing had to be exact. Too soon and she'd get skewered, too late and she'd miss. She passed millimetres above the waves of death and twisted to bring her foot down. One toe found the ring of a kunai and that was enough footing for her to leap upwards.

She hooked a branch as she was nearing the apex of her jump and flipped around it like an acrobatics bar before sailing across the small space to the first blue barrier. She started kicking off before she even hit it, her feet meeting the repulsion effect of the jutsu. Just as planned it gave her enough energy to fly back to the original tree. She bounced off a hissing kunai stuck in the side of the tree from the barrage and used another branch, also riddled with hissing kunai, to launch herself up and out of the trap.

Upside down and spinning she watched as an entire acre of forest exploded beneath her. As he clones gawked at her stunt she calmly skewered them all with kunai before she even landed on what had been a sturdy pine. Now, she could feel it rock beneath her even with her skill. It wasn't about to fall over from her presence, but one of her clones would have probably knocked it over by now.

She let out a deep breath and submerged herself in the Mind's Eye again. As she suspected there was no one left in the forest except herself and this time she really meant just herself.

"Nearly got me that time," she muttered as she surveyed the damage. This was going to be expensive to fix. Honestly, why didn't she just use one of the training grounds? At least then the village would pick up the expense. Though then she'd have to explain why she kept using so many explosives in her training exercises. The lecture she had gotten after it came out how many explosive tags she'd nearly killed her sensei with had been enough.

She hopped to an undamaged tree and dropped to a larger branch where she slumped against the trunk. "And that's three rounds tonight. Oooh," she pulled out a cloth from her pouch and wiped her forehead, "I think that's enough for now." She poked at a hole in the collar of her uniform. A kunai had just barely been stopped by the mesh in the round before. She'd have to hand it off to a clone to fix up when she got back home which she really did need to get to.

Her skin crawled with goosebumps as the winter winds brushed past. The winter was almost over, but spring was still more than a month off. As a consequence, it was already night time despite not even being six in the evening.

Deciding that it would be better to do her inspection at home she stood up and went hopping back through the trees. As she did so she sent out carefully modulated pulses of chakra. A message for her clones back at the Estate several miles away. She felt the chakra pulses that the clone in-charge back home replied with and nodded. Her food would be waiting when she got back. Wonderful.

She could do with some warm Ramen after a cool evening spar. Even if it was just with herself.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

The next day she was out bright and early. She stopped at a few small shops on her way to Team Seven's meeting place. Her purchases safely stored away, she walked up the path to the bridge. As she got close the soft plucking of a shamisen being played… reasonably skillfully, reached her ears. She smiled slightly and shook her head. A moment later she turned the corner to find the sight she had expected.

Sitting in the middle of the bridge, back against the railing, was Sasuke in the girl transformation he had been using for the last few months. 'Her' long hair swayed as 'she' played the classical instrument. Naruto let the sound of her feet fade as she hopped to the top of the tori gate before landing lighter than a feather on the railing behind Sasuke. She walked over and sat down behind the raven-haired 'girl' and just listened.

The Uchiha was a prodigy, she could admit that easily enough. She'd picked up an instrument that Naruto had spent years playing by the time she graduated and was nearly good enough to be considered a professional only four months later. That 'she' had done so while picking up the fundamentals of being a kunoichi and improved his skills as a shinobi by leaps and bounds was nothing short of astounding.

Not that that stopped Naruto from bouncing the boy around the training field on those days Kakashi-sensei set them to spar. Those were fun days.

She listened for a few more minutes as she felt out with her Mind's Eye. Sakura-chan was on her way, as was Hana-nee. And Kakashi-sensei was out by the- huh. She blinked and tilted her head. Their sensei wasn't killing time reading porn by the memorial stone for once. He was…

Her eyes slid across the bridge and down the river, easily locating the Jounin as he lounged in the upper branch of a large oak. Her eye twitched slightly. This was not normal for him, at all. Unless he suddenly took off she'd place money on him being on time for once. What did that mean for them?

Shaking that feeling or foreboding off she checked again. Sakura-chan was getting close and she always got unpleasant when she caught Sasuke-teme as a girl outside of class time. It was almost like she was worried the boy would turn into a girl and stay that way one day… Which to be fair she did have precedent on her side. It was still weird for Naruto at times.

Deciding that she'd rather avoid her pink-haired teammate's attitude she leaned down to Sasuke's right ear and said, "Y'know-"

"Eep." With the sudden discordant strum of all of the strings on the shamisen, Sasuke kawarimi'd with a log, and reappeared on the other side of the bridge. She stared at Naruto who just blinked down at the log and then looked up at her teammate.

"Y'know Sakura's almost here," she said to her teammate who was trying to stop hyperventilating.

"Stop doing that!" 'she' shouted back before poofing back into his normal form. "Seriously, you're going to cause an incident if you keep sneaking up on people all the time."

"I don't do sneaky," she replied, lying through her teeth. It was just a bit of harmless fun.

"Bullshit," he replied, sealing away the Shamisen like she'd shown him how a couple of months before.

"You know you don't have to keep turning into a girl to practice the shamisen," Naruto said, amusement tinging her voice as she hopped off the railing. "Guys play them all the time."

As she had grown used to he just shrugged and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "I know," he replied, closing his eyes as he leaned back against the railing. She eyed his fingers through his pockets and noted that several of them were twitching oddly in-sync with the song 'she' had been playing moments before.

Shaking her head she let it go. There was no point prodding him on this too hard. Last time had led to him tossing her off the side of the bridge. In December. The water wasn't as cold anymore, but he'd find a way to make her take a dip if he really wanted to.

She closed her eyes and felt out again. Sakura was almost there and Hana had picked up the pace with her dogs in tow. Interesting. She'd probably be just on time if she kept up her pace.

"It's odd," she blinked as Sasuke spoke up.

"What is?" she cracked an eye open and raised an eyebrow as she realized his right hand was out and plucking at an invisible string. That was a new habit.

"It doesn't sound as right when I play it normally," he said, "It's driving me nuts." Nuts enough to admit it to her apparently. Mr. I-Don't-Share-Problems apparently considered music not sounding right to be a big enough issue. She rolled her eyes.

"And it sounds right when you're a girl?" she asked. He just shrugged in reply and went back to watching the road. So maybe Sakura did have something to worry about after all. Or Sasuke was just weird… Probably just weird. Half the shinobi they'd met so far had been quirky at best.

When Sakura finally showed up a couple of minutes later Naruto was sitting on the railing again with a scroll open in her lap. The contents were nothing special, just a treatise on how to structure Fuinjutsu so as to not cause feedback in the array. Safety, basically.

"Hey Sakura-chan," she waved absently.

"Hello Sasuke-kun," Sakura shouted before glancing Naruto's way, "And good morning." Naruto rolled her eyes at the absent acknowledgement and went back to reading. It helped her block out the googly eyes that Sakura was sending Sasuke's way. She always did this. She'd spend every day just staring at Sasuke like the most obvious stalker in the world until their Senseis showed up.

She looked up at Sasuke. She had been a girl for four months and she still couldn't see what Sakura and Ino were obsessed with. Sure, she'd admitted to Sakura, quite begrudgingly, after one too many knocks to the head from Kakashi-sense that he was a bit cute but it was like a puppy. Puppies were cute, but you didn't turn your brain into mush every time you looked at one. From the way the other two girls reacted, you'd have thought Sasuke was the cutest thing to ever live.

The boy met her eye and she raised an eyebrow at him. A nearly invisible blush appeared and he turned away. She had no idea what that was about, but fortunately for her sanity, she didn't have to keep wondering since Hana was finally there.

The chunin and her dogs landed in the middle of the bridge, startling Sakura out of her favourite hobby. "Heya, Hana-nee," Naruto said. Her teammates echoed her in their own ways.

"Good morning kiddos," Hana smirked as she patted Sakura on the head. The pinkette squawked and tried to brush out the mess with her fingers. "So today I was thinking-"

"Ah, about that Hana-nee," Naruto interrupted. She pointed down the river to where Kakashi was reading a small orange book. "We should probably get Kakashi-sensei." In the distance, Kakashi glanced up from his book and sighed before putting his reading material away. He disappeared in a shunshin and reappeared on the bridge with a flurry of leaves.

"Good Morning everyone," he said cheerfully.

"You're… not late?" Sakura said, sounding puzzled and worried. It was like one of the horsemen of the apocalypse had just ridden over and asked for directions.

"... So we have a mission," he said after a moment, "Hokage-sama has decided that you are good enough to take a C-Rank mission now."

"Shannaro! No more D-ranks!" Sakura punched the air.

"Finally! Salvation at last!" Naruto cheered. Sasuke smirked.

"Eh, nor exactly," and just like that their Sensei dumped cold water on their celebration.

"Let them have a moment Kakashi-san," Hana sighed with a shake of her head.

The Jounin shrugged. "We'll still be taking a few D-ranks after this mission, but yes this is the beginning of our transition towards C-ranks full time," he paused to let them cheer again, albeit less enthusiastically. "Your performance during last week's survival exercise against Hana and myself was enough to convince Hokage-sama to give us our first C-rank."

"So what're we doing?" Naruto asked eagerly, rolling up her scroll for future reading.

Their Sensei withdrew four scrolls and handed them out to the three of them and a bemused Hana. "Bandit hunting along the coast near the border of Cha no Kuni. There've been attacks between the towns of Funahoro and Wakasa. No shinobi involvement is expected. You'll find maps of the area in the scrolls. I expect you to familiarize yourselves with them while we travel," he said before turning specifically to Hana, "And Hana-chan, Hokage-sama wishes you to accompany us for this mission."

"I'd guessed," she replied, reading the summary on the first few inches of paper.

"Mission length is estimated to be anywhere between one and four weeks depending on how stubborn these bandits are," Kakashi continued, turning back to the entire group.

Naruto nodded as she unrolled part of the scroll. The summary of the mission was skipped for the map of the area. She could read the details later, but the map helped put things in a bit more context. The city of Funahoro was a coastal port of middling size of some seventy thousand people as of five years before. Wakasa, on the other hand, was a much smaller city further inland that typically shipped its goods down the Funahoro via one of the ancient canals that threaded the land.

"We'll be leaving today in four hours," their sensei said, getting their attention again, "Hana-chan, take the two girls and make sure they've packed properly. I'll do the same with Sasuke-kun."

Hana smirked. "Girls~," she sang. As one all three of them pulled out identical yellow backed scrolls from their pouches. Both Naruto and Sakura turned their heads to look at Sasuke who had already gone red. Sakura's eyebrow was twitching as Naruto giggled.

Kakashi sighed. "On the one hand, good preparations everyone, on the other perhaps it would be better if you let Sasuke sit out some of those lessons of yours Hana-chan," he said, eyeing the tomato red Uchiha.

The Inuzuka Chunin shook her head. "One, Hokage-sama wanted me to teach Kunoichi lessons so Kunoichi lessons I'm going to teach. Two, I can only teach one lesson at a time. If you want him to learn something different from the girls, show up on time," she chided.

Kakashi grumbled for a moment before shaking his head as well. "Fine. How long will those scrolls last?" he asked.

"Two months per person Sensei," Sakura answered, tearing her eyes off Sasuke, who seemed relieved at no longer being under scrutiny.

"Then I suppose we'll stop by Sakura's house and head straight for the gate. Come along everyone," he said, starting off down the road. Hana smirked and waved for them to follow him before falling in behind.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

"First real mission! WHOOOOO!" Sakura sighed as her redheaded teammate cheered as they walked through the front gates of the village. Naruto was bouncing along her hands held high.

"Naruto! Settle down," she snapped. The other girl stuck her tongue out as she walked backwards. Her eyebrow twitched in reply. Naruto hadn't gotten any easier to deal with since she turned into a girl. She was just as enthusiastic, energetic, and irrepressible as ever. Actually, in retrospect, the redhead had gotten worse.

It wasn't that she asked for dates every day, or spent her time playing pranks. In fact, she hadn't asked for a single date since graduation four months before. She hoped the reason was because Naruto realized that she wasn't interested in girls. She really really hoped it was. Because of the alternative, the idea that Naruto had developed an interest in boys, haunted her. For very good reasons.

"Why should I? This is the first time I've even left the village. I bet it's the first time either of you have left either," Naruto replied, tilting her head cutely to the side as she turned to Sasuke. "Oi, Sasuke, have you left the village before?"

Sakura buried another twitch as Sasuke actually replied. "Twice. With my mother." She'd asked the same question fifteen minutes ago and been ignored. But then that was how this tended to work. Sakura would ask Sasuke-kun a question, he'd coolly ignore it in that dark brooding way of his, then Naruto would ask a similar question a few minutes later and get a prompt reply. It drove her absolutely nuts.

It wasn't just Sasuke either. Even since grad, or maybe just since turning into a girl, Naruto had developed a way with people. She was still the same spaztastic ball of energy, but she seemed to have a presence when she talked that hadn't been there before. During team exercises when she would suggest something Sakura would find herself dragged along by her enthusiasm this odd feeling that she was just… right.

Kakashi-sensei and Hana-sensei both seemed to be affected by it. During missions or exercises they had shown equal susceptibility to Naruto's seemingly implausible charms. Sometimes it was the smile, bright and shiny. Other times it was the eyes, full of fire and determination. And sometimes… Sometimes she would just say something and everyone would nod along without even hearing her reasoning. Sakura herself wouldn't think about it until later and it was only her worries about how close she seemed to get to Sasuke without even trying that had allowed her to realize just how charming the other girl could be.

Not that it had done a damned thing to stop her from nodding along the next time the redhead had proposed a new strategy for hunting that damned cat of the Daimyo's wife. Seriously, she hated that thing. If she had to get clawed by it one more time she was 'borrowing' one of Naruto's exploding tags. Assuming the girl didn't simply 'borrow it back' again right out of her hands. Without her noticing.

There were times when she seriously wondered how Naruto had been the dead last of their year.

"Calm down Naruto, Sakura's right. You can be excited when we get back home," Hana-sensei chided.

"Yes, Hana-nee!" Naruto acknowledged, falling into step with the older kunoichi. She kept chattering with the older kunoichi as they walked until Kakashi-sensei came to a stop just around the bend from Konoha.

"We'll take to the trees from here on out," he said, "Understood?" When everyone confirmed they did he jumped up into the nearest tree and set out south-east almost faster than Sakura could follow. It was a punishing pace for the young kunoichi to follow, and yet she could clearly tell the older shinobi considered it slow from the almost languid movements both exhibited. And there was no relief from either of her teammates. Naruto was an overflowing bundle of energy that bounced forward at breakneck speed. Sasuke-kun was hardly nervous energy given form, but he had no trouble matching their pace.

So she said nothing. Hours passed and as her legs burned from the exercise she found herself wondering if only eating a light salad for breakfast had been the best idea. Maybe she should have taken up her mother's offer of something to eat when they had stopped by that morning. Then again, with this much exertion, she might have just thrown it up by now.

Kilometres disappeared behind them as the day wore on. Finally, as it neared one o'clock in the afternoon, Kakashi-sensei called a halt in a small clearing. Sakura stumbled as she landed on the leaf-strewn forest floor. Her legs felt like rubber after hours of hopping from tree to tree.

"Sakura-chan," Naruto said with clear worry as she saw her lean against a tree.

"I'm fine Naruto," she replied, waving him off.

"No, you're not." Both of them looked up as Kakashi walked over to her with Hana at his heels. "Sakura-chan, I called a halt because of your condition," he said, a frown barely visible beneath his mask.

"I'm fine, Kakashi-sensei, really. I'm just a little tired," she replied, ignoring the way her legs were quivering. She hadn't had a run like this… ever, actually. The trip so far had been nearly three times as long as anything they had done in the academy and it had been at a higher speed than Iruka-sensei ever made them run.

"Pull the other one Sakura-chan," Hana replied with a snort, before reaching out and tapping her firmly on the shoulder. Her legs gave out unceremoniously and dumped her on the floor in a quivering heap.

"Sakura-chan! Don't be mean Hana-nee," Naruto protested. The Inuzuka shooed her way.

"None of your business Naruto. You and Sasuke-kun should go and get the camp set up. Kakashi-san and I need to have a talk with Sakura-chan," she chided.

"Camp? Are we staying here for the night?" Sasuke asked.

"We will be. We've already made good progress for today," Kakashi-sensei said, looking to her crush, "Get the fire set up, but not lit. We're going to share a few useful tricks once we're done here." Sasuke nodded and patted Naruto on the shoulder as he walked by.

"Come on, let's get some firewood," he said. The redhead shot her a look before following their teammate. Quiet grumbling floated back as they disappeared into the trees. Sakura could feel the jealousy burn in her chest as she watched them go. Sasuke wouldn't have been that casual with her.

"Sakura, eyes forward," Kakashi said, his tone sharp even if his words were calm. She sat as straight as she could as the two older shinobi took their seats in front of her. "I take it you have never run as far as we have today, Sakura?" he asked. She shook her head. "Not even in training?" She blinked, then shook her head. The academy had never required anything even remotely this intensive.

"Yeah, I kinda expected that," Hana-sensei sighed, "Let me be blunt, Sakura-chan, your stamina is shit." She winced at her Sensei's blunt tone. "Your chakra control is amazing, your knowledge on a variety of matters still outstrips Naruto-chan despite her use of Kage Bunshin. But you're speed, strength and stamina have fallen short from day one. Intelligence is an important factor in being a successful kunoichi, but anyone who expects to be out in the field needs to be able to keep up physically as well as mentally."

Sakura blanched. They couldn't be suggesting that she wasn't good enough for this? Not here, a few hours into their first real mission.

"Mah, don't be quite so harsh sounding Hana-chan," Kakashi-sensei said, patting the Chunin on her shoulder. "It isn't quite that bad." His expression dropped after a moment as she sighed. "But I would be lying if I said it wasn't disappointing. Your skills are technically accomplished Sakura. You have a mind for tactics and strategy, but outside of the short team spars, exercises, and missions, have you bothered to keep up your physical training?"

"I- I've been doing what I did in the academy," she protested, glancing from one to the other with a sense of anxious worry settling in her gut. She still went through her katas and continued her morning running every other day.

"Hmm, and your physical scores were just above failure in a few places," Hana observed, provoking another wince. That had been a sore spare for her for a while. That was why Ino and Hinata had been so close competitors for the top spot, but her mind had won out in the end so wasn't it good enough? "Sakura-chan, while we as your Senseis are supposed to help and guide you, there are things which even Genin are expected to be able to handle on their own."

"This includes personal exercise and one's own diet," Kakashi said.

"Diet? But sensei, I've been dieting-" She began.

"And that's the issue," Hana cut in, "You've been 'dieting' not managing your diet. Ignoring the issue of a lack of a proper exercise regime you haven't even been eating enough to fuel your body properly Sakura-chan. I've seen your lunches. You order the smallest things on the menu and when you don't you're eating a salad. Your diet is bad even for a civilian let alone a Shinobi."

"What about Naruto? Every time we see her she's eating Ramen," Sakura protested. Naruto tended to bring bowls of instant ramen for lunch and those had to be terrible for you. Tasty, but terrible.

"Naruto eats a lot more than Ramen when at home," Hana replied, "she's quite a good cook." The look Sakura sent her sensei's way said plainly that she didn't believe it. "Don't believe me? Fine. OI! NARUTO-CHAN!" she shouted into the forest.

A redhead poked her head out from behind a tree a few moments later. "Yeah, Hana-nee?"

"Sakura-chan doesn't believe you're a good cook. Do something fancy for lunch," she ordered.

"Eeeh?! Here? In the forest? I don't have anything to work with," the redhead protested with a panicked expression.

"Then that makes it a challenge, doesn't it? Get to it!" Hana ordered.

Naruto puffed out her cheeks and stuck out her tongue. "Nyeeh. Boss is going to hate this." The girl popped into smoke, sending a stack of firewood to the ground.

Hana-sensei clamped her hands together with a grin as Kakashi raised his one visible eyebrow. "Was that really necessary?" he asked.

"You haven't tasted her cooking yet, have you?" Hana asked. He shook his head. "Oh, you're going to like this. Point is, Sakura-chan, Naruto-chan can cook and do so regularly. You're a kunoichi. Your life is going to be dangerous and exhausting. Unlike some simpering civilian girl you don't need to control your intake anywhere as tightly. Yes, certain foods are certainly better for you, but that's the difference between managing one's diet and dieting. Eat smarter, not less."

Sakura's stomach chose that moment to betray her and rumble loudly. She blushed as both looked at her with very pointed expressions. "I'll… Try that?" she said.

"You'll do it. And I'll make sure your parents help," Hana said with a frown, "And both of them should have told you this. They were Jounin before they retired."

"They… don't really get involved in my career," Sakura said after a quiet moment. Neither of her parents had really talked with her about being shinobi much and other than to help her with some of the basics during the beginning of the academy they didn't do much. They were there and supportive, but not exactly the living definitions of helpful.

"I see," Hana sighed. She wondered what the other girl was thinking.

"I'll leave the diet in Hana-chan's capable hands," Kakashi said after a moment, "Onto the matter of your physical exercise. As your Sensei I am responsible for the development of your skills, but not necessarily your continued physical development. The academy is intended to teach the basics and build the habits necessary to continue to advance without hands-on involvement. That does not mean that I am not permitted to help in these areas, but there is an unspoken expectation that physical training is to be the remit of the individual, their family, or their clan. If you wish for me to help you with this, seeing as your parents have lapsed in their responsibility, you would need to ask."

Sakura looked up at her senseis for a few seconds before realizing why both were looking at her silently. They wanted her to ask. She wasn't an academy student, they weren't going to hold her hand with every little thing, but they would help. If she asked. She sighed. She wasn't Sasuke or Naruto who would probably let pride get in the way and not ask, well Sasuke would. Naruto depended on how much sugar she had consumed that day. Or Ramen. Probably Ramen.

"Kakashi-sensei, would you help me?" she asked.

"With?" he prodded.

"With my physical training. I don't know where to start," she said. It was still a bit painful to admit, even if she didn't have the same pride that her two teammates did.

He smiled, his eye forming a small crescent. "See, not that hard was it?" he chuckled at her glare. "Maah, no need to get so annoyed Sakura-chan. We're done for now. Rest up for now. I'm sure you won't want to miss the tricks I'll be teaching you three in a bit."

"Tricks?" she asked.

"Just a few helpful techniques. Non-combat, but useful when on missions like this one," Kakashi said, standing up along with Hana. "I'm going to go make sure the other two are actually behaving."

"You mean, make sure that Naruto-chan isn't trying to make Sasuke-kun blow a blood vessel?" Hana snickered as she walked over to where two Naruto's were clearing room for a fire.

Sakura felt her eyebrow twitch as the older shinobi chuckled before disappearing. She grit her teeth before sighing again. "Stupid Naruto," she grumbled. Sasuke-kun was hers.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

Sasuke pulled a scrap of deadwood from the roots of a large oak tree. He tossed it into the small pile of wood that he had accumulated so far. A few more branches and he'd have all he could carry. He really didn't need to be doing this, Naruto and her clones would bring back excess sticks and probably more ambitious prizes. Like half a log that Kakashi would tell her to put back.

He picked up another branch and paused halfway through tossing it. A rusted shuriken was buried halfway into the wood. He pulled it out and tossed the wood onto the pile. He held the metal up to the light and raised an eyebrow at the design. Unlike the normal four-point design used by Konoha, this one was four crescents attached to a central point. Based on the amount of rust on the weapon it had been there for years. Possibly decades since the Konoha style of shuriken had been almost universal for at least the last three decades.

He pocketed it before checking the pile of branches. "That looks like more than enough," he said. Hoisting the pile onto his shoulder he headed back to the camp. He paused at the edge of the clearing to stare.

A Naruto, whether clone or real he couldn't tell, was standing by a heavy wooden table skillfully gutting a half dozen fish with a kunai while Sakura watched from her seat a few feet away. The nonplussed look on the pinkette's face about summed up his thoughts. The last few months had felt like every time they turned around Naruto had figured out some new trick or picked up some new skill. Fuinjutsu, a flute, shuriken jutsu equal to his own, and now cooking?

She was humming as she skillfully sliced out the unwanted parts of the fish filleted them with smooth flawless motions. Flawless. Yeah, that described her. The last time he'd seen her make a mistake had probably been graduation when she'd accidentally sparked rumours that hadn't quite died out yet. Her kunai handling was superb, her footwork had made their teachers look clumsy, and she had a way with words that made you see her view on things. It was all too easy to forget she'd been the dead last boy in the academy four months earlier.

A hand on his shoulder made him jump and nearly drop his load. He had gotten so engrossed in watching Naruto that someone had managed to get the drop on hi- "Brought some more wood, Sasuke-kun?" Kakashi-sensei said with a knowing tone that very nearly provoked a blush.

"Do we have enough?" he asked, walking into the clearing. Naruto glanced up as he walked past the table.

"I've got a couple of more clones that haven't come back yet. We should have more than enough once they get back," she said with a smirk that told him his pause had definitely been noticed. Of course, it had been. That damned jutsu made it nearly impossible to do anything without her knowing.

"It's good enough to get started with," Kakashi said, "everyone gather around." He waved for Sakura and Naruto to join him and Sasuke by the firepit two Naruto clones had put together. The two clones popped out of existence as they gathered about. Their sensei knelt by the stacked wood and gestured for Sasuke to set his down with the rest of the spare.

"I know you've all done the survival training in the academy. All three of you scored quite well. For the most part," he shot a look at Naruto who blushed and grinned guiltily. The corner of her smile dimpled as she rubbed the back of her head. He wrenched his gaze back to Kakashi who had launched into an explanation.

"... survival jutsu. I'm going to teach you several now. Starting with the spark jutsu," he said before pulled a small packet of kindling from his pouch. "The spark jutsu has a singular hand sign, tiger, and creates sparks hot enough to light kindling the next time you snap your fingers. It's simple, easy, and discrete."

"I already know that one, Kakashi-sensei," he said. The Jounin nodded.

"Really?" Sakura asked.

"I expected as much," Kakashi said, "It's an introductory Katon Jutsu after all. It's one of the first ways that a genin might learn how to create fire aligned chakra. Wait for the moment. Once your teammates have had a go at it." He divided up the kindling and went over the process of creating Katon Chakra, which Sasuke tuned out, before making a single tiger seal then snapping a finger above his pile of kindling. A few took and he quickly tapped it out.

"Now both of you try. If you get it, use it too " he said. The two girls nodded and both made the tiger seal almost instantly. Both snapped their fingers. Nothing happened with Sakura. For Naruto, however, sparks blazing like the sun washed off her fingers like a cascading waterfall. The kindling caught fire. As did the few leaves, a couple of sticks, several smoking holes in the ground, the stack of wood they were trying to light, and even Sakura's kindling. Also her dress.

The next few seconds were a panic as they hurriedly stamped out the flames. Sakura's dress escaped with a few minor burns and the kindling for both of them was a write off. At least they had avoided a forest fire.

"Well, perhaps a little less chakra Naruto-chan," Kakashi-sensei chided. The redhead had the decency to blush.

"Sorry sensei," she apologized.

"Sorry? You burned my dress!" Sakura huffed angrily as she flattened her skirting out and fingered a small black hole in the corner. Naruto blushed even more and mumbled an apology.

He frowned. She didn't need to apologize. There was no way to know that would happen. Hell, he remembered spending a couple of days just trying to get it to work the first time. "You did fine, Naruto," he said, "Just goes to show someone with a few more years can get it the first time." His chest did a funny little beat as the redhead smiled.

"It wasn't that hard. I was kinda expecting something more… complicated?" she said.

"They are academy grade techniques. On the scale, they don't even qualify as E-Rank," Kakashi explained as he stoked the fire.

"Don't get it too hot. You want me to be able to cook on it, right?" Naruto said pointedly, frowning at their teacher. He stopped poking the fire with a stick.

"Fair enough. I'll leave the fire to you. But before I leave you to your job let's cover another jutsu. Sakura, you can spend the next couple of days lighting the fires as practice," he said. The pinkette nodded once.

"I think I can get it in a few tries," she said, "I felt something warm when I snapped." Ah, so she had managed something then. Those were the earliest signs of success, a fact that Kakashi informed her of, getting a broad smile from the kunoichi.

"Now, can you all name at least one unique use for this jutsu other than lighting a campfire?" Kakashi asked.

"Starting small fires for sabotage," Sasuke suggested instantly. It was one of the examples Itachi had once given him back… back before.

"Signalling," Naruto said a moment later. "A spark can be seen from a long way in the dark."

"... You could scare away some animals I guess, or maybe use it to light some explosives?" Sakura suggested.

"All good ideas. Yes, this jutsu may be minor, but it has situational uses and means we don't have to carry matches… so long as you can control the number of sparks a little better," Kakashi glanced Naruto's way. The redhead went the same colour as her hair. "Now before we let Naruto demonstrate her cooking prowess I'd like to introduce another pair of techniques. The first is confusingly named the Sparklight Jutsu. A minor Raiton Jutsu that can be used to create enough light to read by. It has no other uses that I can name, however. And after that, I'd like to show you a small Fuuton Jutsu usually used to conceal tracks or distract guards, the Breeze Jutsu."

Neither was as versatile as the Spark Jutsu, but they did have uses, so Sasuke wasn't about to complain as their Sensei launched into an explanation.
Several hours later he, along with the rest of their group, Hana-sensei included, were gathered around a round table beneath a tent that Naruto had pulled from one of her pouches. Their sleeping bags were already laid out around the tent's perimeter.

Spread across the table was a feast. Fruit and vegetables, entirely out of season, had been pulled from a scroll and cooked to perfection. Added to them were spices, the light seared fish fillets, and even a nicely spiced and dressed pheasant that one of Naruto's clones had returned with.

"I told you she could cook," Hana was saying to Sakura as she chewed on a large piece of pheasant, her words barely legible. Her three dogs were grouped around her feet eating something Naruto had put together from the leftovers of the fish and pheasant. Sakura was staring at her plate in surprise, her hands mechanically feeding her without seemingly any conscious input.

"Is it good, Sakura-chan?" Naruto asked, a worried expression on her face, "I didn't have any of the stuff I have back home. I've never even tried cooking on a campfire like this before. And I had to butcher them with a kunai, these things aren't exactly meant for skinning a pheasant-"

"Naruto-chan," she paused and looked up at Kakashi who's plate was half-empty despite his mask not having dropped an inch since they sat down. As he watched, another cube of pheasant disappeared from the Jounin's plate. "I think she's just impressed. Right, Sakura-chan?"

The girl nodded. "It's good," she squeaked, her voice shocked as she ate more of the fish, "This is- This is really good!"

Naruto beamed, smiling widely. "I tried really hard to get it right. You have no idea how lucky it was that I packed my spices. I almost left them out of the travel pack," she said, rambling between bites. Her words vacillated between talking about what she'd done to the food, in terms that were nearly enough to make his head spin, and talking about how much luck she'd had finding the ingredients to make it happen.

Luck. Sure. Right. As lucky as that glowing sun on her forehead and the soft glow that washed out the fading natural light that came in through the flap in the tent. Luck, he suspected, had nothing to do with it.

He hadn't seen it more than a couple of times, but every once in a while Naruto would start glowing. It would start with the little mark on her forehead and keep growing. He hadn't ever seen it max out, at least he hadn't had reason to believe it had. It always happened when she was trying really hard at something and seemed linked in some way to her most ridiculous ideas. Like the time she had reversed her momentum during a spar with Kakashi-sensei by standing on a leaf. Mid-air.

No, whatever she had done to the meal had nothing to do with luck. This was skill. Pure and simple, skill. And he wished he knew how she got whatever this power was that let her be so talented, because it clearly wasn't normal. Now if only he could just settle for whether he wanted to be jealous of it or not. Because whatever his stomach was doing when she smiled seemed to make it hard to stay jealous.

Really hard.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

A/N: Ello~ *Fluffy Kitsune Greetings* I'm proud to present the fifth, and for the moment, final chapter. This represents the end of Arc One and the beginning of Arc Two. Now, Naruto has taken up my release window for over a month now. Which really isn't fair to my other stories. Next on the table is a chapter for the long neglected wGaE and after that the much celebrated, seriously the reaction to that story still terrifies me everytime I look at the ff.net alerts number, TTP~

*waves fluffy tails in celebration*

And finally a chapter of Age of the Sky is also nearly done. Chapters release every two weeks, so please enjoy o/ The release schedule will not be changing unless I run out of chapters to post, which might happen because I'm going to be working on my novel for a bit and I have school atm. I'll try and avoid letting that happen, but life may get in the way.

Discord and Patreon links in the description and a thank you to my Patrons who have made it possible to pay for many of the bits of artwork I've commissioned. The next one we should see will be Taylor from TTP~ Sometime later this month or early next month.

Cheers~ *Fluffy Tails wave* Come read my other stories if you haven't~

 

[Grounders10]

-0-0-0-0-0-

A Naruto/Exalted Crossover

A Shine of Gold in the Crimson Tide

By: Grounders10

-0-0-0-0-0-

6. Princesses, Bandits, and Shinobi, Oh My!

-0-0-0-0-0-​

Funahoro was a small port city. Nestled between two large hills whose cliffs loomed over the largest deepwater port in a hundred kilometres it never had much room to expand outward. So it didn't. Despite only being seventy thousand people, the city had the urban density of a much larger city like Konoha. Modern concrete and steel stood side-by-side with wood and brick blockhouses. It was the urban lifestyle of the great cities compacted into a fraction of the space. It was a city of innovation, where the greatest modern architects competed to squeeze the most people into the least space. Where wealthy corporations built factories and the latest freighters. A place just as modern, in its own small and compact way, as the former Imperial Capital.

And it stank of shit and rotting fish in Naruto's strongly worded opinion.

"Just quit complaining," Sakura moaned as they followed Kakashi-sensei through the bustling main street. Their party of eight, five people and three dogs, was keeping to the side of the road like most people since the centre was an unending procession of horse-pulled carts.

"I'm not complaining that much!" Naruto huffed, crossing her arms with a pout, "The trio are complaining more." The three Inuzuka dogs in question were whimpering as they glanced around warily, occasionally pawing at their snouts with clear discomfort.

"They're also dogs, Naruto-chan," Hana-nee chided.

Kakashi sighed. "At least try to be professional when we get there, Naruto-chan," he said. She nodded and fell silent as they walked through the city. Her eyes drifting from sight to sight. This was the first time she had been in a major city outside of Konohagakure and the differences were stark.

Konoha had been built from the beginning to be one with the land. Trees grew on rooftops, in planters in the streets, and entire blocks were made up of sprawling parks. It was a beautiful city with minimal congestion. Meanwhile, Funahoro was…

She watched a handful of children her age, street rats by the look of their clothes, grime, and generally emaciated demeanour; as they nearly got ran over by a harried-looking cart driver. They shouted insults and jeered the driver for a moment before disappearing down an alleyway as several sword-wielding law enforcement officers, their hair held up in topknots, started towards them.

It wasn't all bad, mind you. There were all kinds of strange sights. Like the rumbling steel horseless carriage, they came across. Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura all came to a halt as the silver-painted vehicle pulled out of a sidestreet.

"What the hell is that?" Sasuke asked Kakashi-sensei. The dogs hid behind Hana who sighed and rolled her eyes.

"Hmm?" Kakashi looked up from his novel, the next volume in the same series of books as the one Naruto had… Borrowed from him during their graduation test. "Oh, that. I suppose you wouldn't have seen an Automobile before, would you? I'm not entirely sure how they do what they do, but from what I hear they burn some sort of fuel rather than rely on horses. Expensive to run, loud, smelly, but unlike a horse, you can armour them. They're becoming increasingly popular with the rich recently because of that." They watched the machine for a moment as it joined the endless queue of carriages and carts before Kakashi shuffled them along. It wasn't the last one they saw in the city.

Eventually, they reached the more upper-class district of the city where boulevards grew wider and the densely-packed apartments gave way to estates. Kakashi led them up to a particularly traditional-looking estate where a pair of haori-wearing men with spears stood outside the tall and heavy-looking wooden gate.

"Hatake Kakashi," he introduced himself, "I'm here with my team to see Aeorinuma Takashi-san about his request."

The guard he introduced himself to glanced up at Kakashi's hitai-ate, then at theirs. He nodded. "I'll need to see your mission scroll," he said. Kakashi nodded and withdrew it from his pouch. The second guard tensed as Kakashi reached into his pouch and withdrew the scroll. The first guard accepted it and unrolled the scroll without hesitation. After a few moments he nodded. "Everything looks in order. Welcome back, Hatake-san. It has been a few years, has it not?"

"It has," Kakashi said as he accepted the scroll.

"You know them?" Sakura blurted out.

"From several jobs in the past," the guard said, rapping on the door with the butt of his weapon, "Hatake Kakashi-Dono here to see Aeorinuma-sama." As the door creaked open he added, "You had better hurry in. Things have gotten worse since the message was sent."

"Worse?" Kakashi asked. The guard shook his head. At a guess, Naruto would say that saying any more in public was a bad idea. She frowned, but followed her sensei into the compound.

A balding man greeted Kakashi warmly, barely sparing a glance to the rest of them, before guiding them further into the large estate. The home inside the walls was larger than her own, but at a guess, she would give it perhaps a tenth as much yard space as her own home had. Much like the rest of the city, the estate was certainly trying to squeeze as much as possible out of the smallest space.

They followed the bald man through the house and up a grand flight of stairs. Men with swords sat at small tables playing cards, drinking tea or alcohol, and occasionally reading books. At least one was writing poetry, and she was ninety-percent certain he was misspelling every other word. Probably not on purpose. All together it made her wonder about who exactly they had been contracted by.

Their guide led them up three flights of stairs before guiding them to a pair of sliding paper doors. "Aeorinuma-sama, Hatake of the Leaf is here to answer our call for aid," he announced loudly.

There was silence for a moment, during which Sakura shuffled awkwardly in place, before a young man shouted back, "Let them in, Peplen." Their guide slid the door open and waved them inside.

The interior of the room was a rooftop garden with a large sakura tree as the centrepiece beside an artificial series of ponds with several small waterfalls. Sitting at a table beneath the sakura tree was a young man with dirty blonde hair and a ragged look in his eyes. He wasn't as old as she had been expecting, in fact, she was certain he was no older than Kakashi-sensei. The table before him was covered in writing supplies. Brushes, inkwells, and a stack of papers. A large basket beside him was overflowing with crumpled paper.

"You have excellent timing, Kakashi-san," the young man said as he stood up, bowing quickly to them before taking a seat again. "I was not expecting someone as prestigious as yourself, but seeing you… well, perhaps I won't have to write all of these letters." He paused as he looked over the entire group before shaking himself. "Where are my manners. Peplen, chairs, seats, for our guests and sends for snacks and tea. I would offer you a full meal, but once you hear of the recent issues I suspect you may prefer to head back out again immediately."

"That's not needed," Kakashi said, waving a hand, "If things are as bad as you're suggesting we can handle standing for a few minutes."

"Not quite that bad, but…" Takashi sighed, "But nearly. Please, take seats. We are pressed for time, but this needs an explanation. Peplen, seats please."

Their guide hurried out of the room and returned minutes later followed by servants carrying folding chairs. Naruto hopped into one without saying anything. Her mind was already elsewhere. Their mission was to hunt bandits that had been targeting the trade between Funahoro and Wakasa. The mission scroll has said that there were no known shinobi or other chakra users during any of the known incidents. They had taken to targeting banking caravans and canal barges, but were still avoiding the major corporation's and clans. Those reports were, however, two week old by the time they accepted the mission. She had to wonder what changed.

Once they were all seated, Sasuke somewhat broodily as he leaned against a nearby decorative rock, Takashi sighed. "To put it simply, the bandits have escalated. They've stopped just taking coin and materials and have moved onto kidnapping. Over the last two weeks over twenty-five caravans and fifteen barges have been struck. Young women and men have been taken from each incident."

"What demands have they made?" Kakashi asked, echoing Naruto's thoughts.

"None." Naruto blinked, her head tilting quizzically.

"That's not normal," she said. Why kidnap people and then not ask for anything? She glanced over and spotted Sakura fidgeting. The other girl looked nearly frantic with nervousness. A further glance told her that Sasuke had perked up attentively. She could almost see the pointed ears pointed upwards over his head like a cat or dog.

"No it isn't," Kakashi agreed, "Please continue, Aeorinuma-dono."

"The most recent we are aware of was two nights ago," Takashi said, his eyes closed as he leaned against the table, resting his forehead against his braced hands, "My sister was coming to visit and she was travelling by barge. Barely a day's walk outside of Funahoro the bandits ambushed and slaughtered her guard. One of my men was knocked off the boat and managed to make it here last night with severe injuries. I would direct any question you have to him, but I'm afraid he has fallen unconscious and my doctors aren't sure he'll make it."

"Then the crisis at hand is the recovery of your sister, I take it?" Kakashi asked.

"If only…" He sighed, "I realize that sounds harsh, but an important guest was travelling with her. Cathak Setsuna, third cousin to our dear Daimyo, was with her. Hatake Kakashi, I do not need to explain how bad it looks to lose one of the Daimyo's relatives, do I?" Naruto closed her eyes and let out a hiss. From her readings in the estate's library people had, in Hi no Kuni at least, been executed for a lot less in the past. It was no exaggeration to say that the young Takashi's life was on the line.

"... Has there been any sign of chakra users, shinobi or otherwise?" Kakashi asked, his voice getting more serious.

Takashi waved to his assistant. "Peplen, the drawings." A pair of drawings were presented to Kakashi who looked them over as Takashi continued, "No known Shinobi, or chakra use, but these are composite drawings of three bandits who have been utilizing ancient artifacts. No superhuman feats have been attributed to them otherwise." The drawings were passed to Hana who looked them over before leaning out to hand them to Naruto.

She looked over them cautiously. Beside her Sakura leaned over her shoulder inquisitively. Two men and one woman. "They look rather well armed for bandits," Sakura said quietly. Naruto nodded. The two men were wearing head to toe in what appeared to be plate armour, albeit very ornate, and the largest of the two was holding a large metal cylinder decorated with dragons.

"I recognize this," she said, holding up the larger man with the odd weapon. "How did these guys get ahold of a concussion cannon?" According to several books she had read it used an energy similar to chakra to create and launch explosive bolts.

"Well informed for someone so young," Takashi mused, "I failed to ask the names of your team, my apologies Kakashi-san."

"Don't worry about it," Kakashi said, waving his hand, "My team, the well-informed redhead is Uzumaki Naruto. Heiress to the clan. The boy is Uchiha Sasuke, and the girl is Haruno Sakura. My chunin assistant is Inuzuka Hana."

Their client eyed Naruto for a moment, his eyes darting to her hair before he nodded. "I have heard of the Uzumaki and the Inuzuka. Greetings to all of you," Takashi said, bowing to them, "To answer Uzumanki-san's question, we do not know. I can only presume that the bandits have stumbled upon some cache of ancient artifacts, but beyond that…" He shook his head.

Naruto nodded as she turned her attention back to the drawings. The smaller man had an ornate revolver in one hand while the woman… She tilted her head to the side. She seemed dressed more like a dancer than a fighter with a gauzy nearly see through outfit that carried too much jewelry. Two things prevented that from being her opinion. First, the crackling energy whip emerging from an ornate hilt held in her off hand; and second, the metal cups set into her hips with bulky gemstones set inside.

"This isn't just getting lucky," she said, drawing everyone's attention back to her. She held up the drawings. "She's got capacitor mounts. That's a medical procedure."

"... Someone is backing them," Kakashi said aloud, following her logic, "It seems odd for them to put up that sort of money and not back them with shinobi though… No reports?"

"None that made it here," Takashi said.

"Um… Excuse me, but… What are capacitor mounts?" Sakura asked, a very confused expression, "I've never heard of them."

"They're a form of ancient technology," Naruto said, reciting what she could recall, "When combined with these," she pointed to the gemstones on the picture, "it allows the person to channel ancient energies to power the technology from that era. They're incredibly rare."

"Just installing the capacitor mounts is likely to kill you," Kakashi said, his eye closed in thought, "The dangers are higher than a C-Rank mission, Aeorinuma-dono," he said a moment later.

"I know."

"I have a genin team, it would be entirely within my right to turn around and leave given the provided dangers," he continued.

"Sensei-" Sakura started. Hana shook her head, cutting Sakura off with a flick of her hand. Naruto wanted to join in as well. The idea of leaving people in the hands of bandits didn't sit well with her, but she bit her tongue and remained quiet. Kakashi had asked her to try to be professional so she would. Even if she didn't like it.

"I know," Takashi repeated, his eyes closed.

"If they have backing, I think I can expect at least one shinobi in the shadows," Kakashi continued, "And the artifacts… You are, however, oddly fortunate today, Aeorinuma-dono. To allow a cousin of the Daimyo to be carried off and do nothing about it would reflect as badly upon us as their initial capture does upon you." Takashi merely nodded, his eyes closed as he leaned against his clasped fist.

"We are a larger group than normal as well," Hana noted. Kakashi nodded.

"You understand that the price will rise depending on what we encounter?" Kakashi asked.

"I do," Takashi said, opening his eyes to stare at Kakashi, "So you will try and find my sister and Cathak-sama?"

"We will," Kakashi said, standing up, "I need an updated map of sightings and everything you know on the bandits."

"Of course. Peplen, give them everything they need," Takashi said, his stiff posture sagging with unconcealed relief.

"Kakashi-sensei," Naruto said, popping up from her chair, "I could send my clones out to start scouting if you want?"

"We don't want to alert them quite yet," Kakashi said as he lifted his pack up.

"I don't need to get close." Mind's eye was nice like that. He considered her for a moment before nodding.

"Wait until we have an updated map," he said, nodding to Takashi. "We will do our best," he said.

"... That is all I can ask, Hatake-dono. Please bring them both back," Takashi said. Kakashi nodded once, then ushered them out of the rooftop garden. They had been hoping to get a chance to rest after their long run and subsequent walk through the city, but sitting still while people were in trouble would have bothered Naruto more.

She punched her own palm as she followed her Sensei. Besides, there was a princess, or the closest thing to one, out there and she could hardly call herself a ninja if she just let them get hurt.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

Naruto set one of her shuriken down on the corner of the map as the wind picked at it. It joined a rock, one of Sasuke's kunai, and a particularly large shell of unexplainable origin in holding down the precious map, one of several laid out on the rocky ground. It was a needed step since the Funahoro's north-eastern hill was quite the windswept location. The seaside end of the hill was home to the city's garrison and their fortress, an ancient fortification that predated the city by centuries at least. The rest of the hill was kept clear of trees and grass in order to make it more difficult to sneak up on the fortress. In theory anyways. In practice Naruto suspected that a shinobi could climb the cliff face without too many issues and enter that way.

Still, it left the far end of the hill barren and windswept. Naruto had had to tie back her hair as best she could in order to keep it from wapping her constantly in the face. No sooner would one gust end then another would begin from another direction. It did, however, provide the best possible view for the area around Funahoro. You could see leagues around the city which made it an invaluable spot to plan their operation.

"So that's the canal," Hana-nee said, pointing at the thin strip of blue that wound its way through the pastures and fields north and west of the city.

"Then that has to be Falling Wood Hill," Sasuke said, pointing to a hill covered in withered trees a few kilometers east of the canal and several dozen north of the city. It was just barely visible in the rise and fall of the landscape. The group was gathered at the cliff edge getting a feel for the area they needed to search. Sakura, Sasuke, and Hana were comparing glances through telescopes with the map and discussing the location of landmarks with each other. Kakashi was a few meters away marking something on a scroll while he stared out at the view. Back behind all of them were a circle of Naruto's sitting cross legged with their hands in seals as they used the Mind's Eye of the Kagura to examine their range.

"Which would make the place where the barge was attacked… there?" Sakura suggested hesitantly as she pointed out at the canal.

"Maybe…" Sasuke said with a bit of doubt.

While they were doing this Naruto was examining the map. Well, less examining the map and more staring at it. The map had been marked at Aeorinuma's with the locations of the attacks and included dates. Her few glances up at the scenery had been enough to show that it was accurate. Now, she was just trying to figure out how all of these attacks had been orchestrated. There was a pattern to the attacks. There had to be. The nature of banditry meant that the attackers had to have a base camp, or several camps out of which they based themselves. They needed places to store goods and people captured in their raids. This also meant that they couldn't go too far from said camp.

The work of examining the map was irritating to her. It was a slow grind as she tried to think like a bandit. In a way the entire thing was like a war, one where she didn't know the terrain or the forces she was facing, or where their base of operations was. It made planning how to dig them out problematic, but… perhaps not impossible.

Naruto traced the last several attack on the map. They had been centralized along the southern end of the canal. Closer to the city than the rest which had occurred further north. Far enough north, in fact, that she was certain they'd used a different camp back then. The distance was too far, especially when transporting captives like they had been with the most recent attacks. So were they still operating two camps or…

She tilted her head and traced the earliest attacks. She checked another map, one much older that covered the area in greater detail. There was a mining town in the area according to the map. It didn't appear in the more recent map, which meant it was probably abandoned. She made a note on the map of its location. It was definitely close enough to have been used previously, but it couldn't have been the source of the more recent attacks. It was well too far away. Still...

"Mines…" She muttered. Mines… Or… She tilted her head as a thought popped into her mind. There were maps for everything in this day and age. Maps of rivers, of roads, of towns, of climate, of shipping, of old and abandoned ruins from ages past. This close to Funahoro no abandoned towns existed, but the group had proven to have access to ancient technologies and had likely utilized an abandoned town before. They had to have a source for the artifacts. Those who owned them weren't likely to part with them, not for a group like this, which meant that they had to have been found by the group. Even if someone else had funded the surgeries. That meant they needed a source.

Naruto unrolled another map. Four more shuriken were laid out. The clink of steel on stone drew the attention of the rest of the group.

"What're you looking at now, Naruto?" Sakura asked pointedly. She sounded exasperated.

"I think I have something," Naruto replied absently as she compared the map with the attacks to the map of old ruins. She looked up at the crunch of gravel that heralded Kakashi-sensei's arrival.

He knelt down across from her. "What do you have, Naruto-chan?" he asked as the rest crowded around.

She tapped the map with the abandoned town. "I think they were based here," she said, pointing out the location on the more modern map.

"An abandoned mining town? Possibly," Kakashi murmured, "It's definitely in range of the earliest attacks. Nothing recent in that area though, so unless they've switched to using it as a logistics point its probably abandoned by now."

"Yeah, I figured as much. Which is why I pulled this one out," Naruto replied as she tapped the map of ruins. Kakashi's eyes lit up.

"Of course, ancient ruins," he said, "A cache somewhere in one of them might be responsible for their equipment.."

"Wouldn't those ruins have been completely picked over by now?" Sakura asked as she peered over Kakashi's shoulder, "I mean, with the city so close…"

"Depends on what means were used to hide them. There are more than a few things the ancients did that we don't understand, Sakura-chan," Kakashi said, "Some protection could have failed due to age, or circumstance. I know of one cache that could only be found by someone with red hair wearing a sash in a specific fashion. The open doorway was invisible to everyone else."

"That's… weird," Sakura said. Sasuke nodded his agreement.

"I can think of a few reasons why," Hana-nee said. One hand was petting the head of one of her trio of dogs. The other two were keeping an eye out around them.

"This one." Naruto tapped a marker on the map. Just north of the Falling Wood Hill was a marker for a ruin of unknown purpose.

"Wouldn't this one be better?" Hana asked, tapping another marker.

"That would put it at the center of the Falling Wood," Kakashi said with a shake of his head, "No one would stay there if they had a choice."

"Why not?" Sakura asked.

"Because whatever killed the trees on that hill will kill whoever stays there too long," Kakashi replied, "Some ruins are left abandoned for a good reason, Sakura. That is one of them."

"Anywhere else is either too close to the city or too far away from the canal," Naruto said firmly. "If I were a bandit, that's where I'd base… Barring anything weird we don't know about." There was always the possibility that the reason this particular ruin had stayed as such was due to an intrinsic issue rather than, say, the fact it was no longer on the main road or that the family responsible for it had died out, or the fact that it was on the doorstep of that blighted hilltop.

"We'll start there and reassess if our search turns up empty," Kakashi said, getting nods from the group. Naruto started storing the maps carefully into a carrying tube. A gift from Aeorinuma-san, they were going to be quite helpful so long as they took care of them. The map with all the added markings on it was the last to be tucked away as Kakashi laid out their plan.

"We'll circle east around Falling Wood Hill," he said, "Naruto-chan will form a perimeter with her clones to keep an eye out as we infiltrate the site. If they are there and they make a break for it I want you to let them through. Your clone's job will be to track them back to any other bases or fall back locations they've set up. That will make ending this issue much simpler."

"Yes Sensei," Naruto acknowledged.

Kakashi looked at her, then Sasuke, and then Sakura, with a worried look in his eye. "We're likely to see combat, whether at this location or another. We are also likely to encounter other shinobi. If we do, try and leave it to Hana and I. We'll take care of it, but you may have to fight. If that is that case try to stay together and work as a team. Your survival will be more important than the mission. We can always hunt the bandits down later, if and only if, you are alive. Am I clear?"

"Yes Sensei," all three chorused. He nodded once.

"Good. If you encounter anyone wielding overly ornate equipment be careful. It's possible they have more equipment than we first thought. Do not underestimate them. Many ancient weapons are dangerous even to Jounin like myself. They likely won't be Shinobi, but the possibility exists. Do not give them an opportunity, clear?"

They chorused their understanding again. Naruto caught Sasuke rolling his eyes. The repetition was probably annoying him. She sent him a pointed glance and he went red instantly to her confusion.

"We'll travel with Hana and her dogs in the lead," Kakashi continued, "Then Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura. I'll take up the rear. Stick to the trees. Ready?"

"Just a second…" Naruto said as she hurriedly rolled the map back up and stowed it. "Right, I'm ready. Let's do this," she said, punching her palm with a grin.

"This should be fun," Sasuke agreed as he stood up.

"Hana, lead us out," Kakashi said, rising as well.

Hana-nee whistled and her dogs jumped to her side before she bounded off down the slope. Naruto followed her instantly. Behind her she could hear a squawk of surprise from Sakura. She laughed.

"Keep up Sakura-chan!" she called as she bounced down the side of the hill.

"NARUTO!"

She laughed again. This was proving to be an interesting mission.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

Locating the ruins was easier said than done. The forests on this side of the canal were like any other in Hi no Kuni. That is to say they were full grown, tall, and broad with a canopy that buried everything in shade. Even in those places where the light reached through to dapple the forest floor they made it hard to see much in the distance. Still, the maps were good and it was only a few hours of travel, followed by an hour of searching, that ended with them practically landing in front of the ruins in question.

The building in question was a tall ivy covered ruin that at one point must have had some rather beautiful stained glass windows. As it was, the high arches were covered in dirt and plantlife thick enough to disguise the nature of the site except for a few places where the white silver of the walls had been recently uncovered by something.

Naruto peered down from the trees at the small 'clearing' around the structure. It wasn't truly a clearing, merely an area that was devoid of a tree at its center, yet was still covered by the wide expansive branches of the many trees around it. The result was a near total darkness that made it difficult to see. No lights were visible inside the single broad door on this side of the building. Only the nearly luminescent glow of the chunks of silver on the forest floor granted anything resembling proper light.

"I can't see a thing," Sakura complained softly from the branch next to her.

"Kakashi, you're sure this is the location?" Hana asked.

The masked Jounin was peering through a pair of binoculars at the ruin. It was unlike any ruined building Naruto was familiar with. Back in Konoha there were a few abandoned sections around town. They had fallen in roofs, sagging walls, and significant water damage. This ruin had seemingly none of that despite being overgrown enough it could be mistaken for part of the landscape by an inattentive eye. She had heard of such places in the books her clones had read back at the Estate, but being near one was somehow different. There was an atmosphere to this place. Something that tickled the edge of her senses. It felt alive, despite the clear abandonment.

"It should be," he said after a moment, "I recognize this place."

"Really? How have you been here before?" Sasuke asked from his place on the branch above Naruto.

"Another gang of bandits back during the third war. They were being supplied by Mist at the time to harass shipping," Kakashi said after a long moment of silence. He peered through the telescope and pointed at a portion of the 'clearing' that had suspiciously little grass. "You can still see the spot where they used an ancient explosive. It coated the spot in some viscous black ooze. I'm not surprised at all that it hasn't regrown. We never did figure out where they got it from."

"Maybe wherever this lot got their toys? You did search it afterwards, right?" Hana-nee asked.

Kakashi shook his head. "There wasn't time. We swept the place once, interrogated the survivors, and then hurried onto the next assignment once we'd dumped them off. Things were maddeningly chaotic back then. There was no time to sweep inhabited ruins. Even today it's… ill advised. Especially for a group like this," He said looking at the three Genin.

Naruto waved absently as she tried to focus on the feeling she was having, but it kept slipping through her fingers.

"They don't cover places like this at the academy," Sakura said.

"Genin aren't equipped to deal with what is inside the hostile ones and even Chunin are at a distinct disadvantage unless they work in well coordinated teams. Most often ruins like this are left to the experienced hands of a team of Jounin," Kakashi explained, his voice low to avoid carrying too far, "But this place has been inhabited in the past. We'll move as a group. Do not assume this place is perfectly safe. Naruto, your clones?"

She sent out a pulse of chakra and received dozens in return. "All in position," she replied.

"And the Mind's Eye?" he asked.

Naruto closed her eyes and breathed out as she felt her chakra. Practice made it easy to sink into the technique. The result, however, was not the increasingly clear image. The returns she got were warped, distorted and unclear, shot through with an inky black energy that left great voids in her sense. She shuddered at the unclean feeling it left behind and pulled back from the technique. "I can't tell," she said after a moment, "Something's weird."

"Weird? How so?" her Sensei asked.

"It's… being distorted by some sort of dark energy. It's everywhere. I can't get a clear return," she said as she pressed a hand against her stomach. That had left her feeling nauseous.

"Dark energy?" Sakura repeated questioningly. Naruto shrugged at her.

"Its like the image has a bunch of black lines through it," Naruto said, "and the rest looks twisted. I can't tell if anyone's down there."

Kakashi-sensei tapped the telescope against his mask once before pocketing it. "Where is it coming from?" he asked, his demeanor very serious.

"Umm…" She thought about it for a moment before pointing back in the direction of the Falling Wood. "The hill, I think."

"Then we likely can't deal with the cause," Kakashi said, "For now we'll have to proceed with the investigation without it. Be on guard, we have no way of knowing what is down there. Understood?"

Naruto and everyone else nodded or expressed their understanding.

"Good, follow me, carefully," Kakashi said before hopping down from the tree and slowly advancing across the courtyard. Naruto followed him along with Sakura and Sasuke. Hana brought up the rear with her dogs, all three of whom looked less than enthused about entering this place. All three kept giving the spot of dead grass furtive glances.

For Naruto, the building loomed tall once they were out of the trees. It was hard to appreciate the size from up there and on the forest floor a few more things became visible in the darkness. The building was tall, yes, but it was also partly buried in the dirt. Time had seen the soil build up around it, or perhaps its foundations had simply sunk.

"No sign of people out here," Sasuke said softly.

"I can see something," Naruto said after a moment of scanning the area. She gestured to a stick leaning against the side of the building.

"That's a stick, Naruto," Sakura said as Kakashi walked over to it. He hefted the stick that was about half as long as he was tall and turned it over.

"Of the wrong type of tree for the area," Kakashi said, "This came from a different area. No way to tell how long its been here though." He set it back where it had been with a careful hand and gestured for everyone to join him by the entryway as he brushed away some of the dirt and plants on the wall to reveal the silvery nature of the structure.

Naruto kept her ears peeled for any sounds other than themselves, but the air seemed to be almost dead except for a slight breeze from the north-east.

"My dogs can smell people. The scent is old, however, at least a day," Hana said as she knelt beside them. Her hands ran through the fur of the three dogs reassuring them.

"Unfortunate, but not surprising," Kakashi said before pulling five bright red sticks from a pouch. Seals were engraved along the length of the sticks. "We'll need lights further in, so everyone grab a lightstick." Once they had, he asked, "Now, do the three of you know how to use these?" They nodded. The academy considered their use a basic survival requirement for shinobi

With a small pulse of chakra that Naruto faintly felt, the seals on Kakashi's stick burst to life before he tossed it through the door. The room beyond was large with tall ceilings that disappeared into the shadows above and balconies, one of which was sticking up through the dirt floor. At the back of the hall was a tall statue, broken off near the top, which seemed to depict either a snake, or some form of sea serpent. The head was missing along with several chunks of stone along its form. It appeared to have markings along its sides reminiscent of scales.

"How did so much dirt get in here?" Sakura asked.

"Flood, storm, time. Ruins can sink, or the land can rise," Hana said as they peered in.

"I guess, it just seems like a lot," the pink-haired girl said as their small group stepped inside once no shouts of alarm sounded.

Kakashi picked up his stick and looked around. "There's been excavation," he said.. Sakura looked around with an expression that clearly said she did not want to imagine how bad it had been before. Their Sensei waved with the flare towards the back of the room where the floor of the lower balcony was visible. Visible in the gloom was a hole in the dirt that descended under the balcony.

Naruto sent a pulse of chakra through her own stick at the same time as Sasuke did and they both lifted the sticks, slightly warm to the touch, and started sweeping the chamber towards Kakashi. Without climbing the walls there didn't seem to be any more activity than the single hole in the floor. The ground floor balconies led into hallways, but no lights were visible within.

The hole was a steep slope down into darkness, but bits of wood had been hammered into the sides as a makeshift staircase that went down into the darkness. Kakashi knelt at the edge of it as they reached his side. He ran some of the dirt through his fingers before looking to the side. Naruto followed his gaze across the room. The floor looked oddly lumpy in places. Uneven with less moss, grass, and lichen then there was around most of the room. In fact, a lot of areas around the hole had that pattern which raised them just slightly higher than the other areas of the room.

"They came from below," Kakashi said, wiping his hands off.

"I think you're right Kakashi-Sensei," Naruto said. The pattern of debris suggested something had forced its way up from below. The dirt hadn't been dug up, it had been flung.

"I'd ask how you can tell, but I doubt it matters at this point," Hana said as she knelt beside them, "Kakashi, my dogs aren't going to be of much use down there. This place is setting them on edge too much."

Kakashi nodded. "Sweep the upper levels then and keep an ear out for any trouble. If something goes wrong Naruto will send a clone for you," he said.

"Sensei, we're going in there without Hana-san?" Sakura asked nervously.

"I want you to accompany Hana," their sensei replied, "No one travels alone at the moment, and that includes you Hana."

The Inuzuka Chunin gave him a pointed look. "I have three nindogs with me. I think you'll need the help more than I will," she said.

Kakashi shook his head and Naruto got the feeling there was more to this decision than just having two sets of human eyes up here. "This place may have been successfully excavated, but there's no telling when this was done or what may have been let out in their wake. No one travels alone, for safety."

"Yes, Sensei," Sakura said. Naruto and Sasuke repeated her words as Kakashi turned to them. Satisfied, he nodded once.

"Follow me," he said before starting down the steps. Sasuke waved for her to go first and she swiftly hurried after their teacher. Boards creaked as they descended. The air was heavy with the scent of the dirt as small bits of the walls came loose at their gentle descent.Naruto counted off the meters as they descended. Five, ten, twenty passed going down the creaking steps that provided traction on the steep slope. Finally it ended as the hole met the ground at the entrance to a hallway. Marble tiling could be seen beneath the thin scattering of dirt as they stepped off the rickety staircase.

A door made of the same silvery material as the walls hung open revealing the mostly pristine, albeit dark, hallway. As the three of them stepped through the doorway, Sasuke and Kakashi's lightsticks went out.

"What the hell?!" Sasuke cursed behind her. Naruto blinked and waved her lightstick. It didn't join its companions in darkness.

Kakashi's stick flared with blinding light for a moment before going dim. He pocketed the stick. He leaned close to peer at the wall. "... I thought so. Don't bother trying to walk on the walls. They're made of Moonsteel."

"Moonsteel?" Naruto and Sasuke asked at the same time. They shared a look and Naruto shrugged. She hadn't heard of a Moonsteel before.

"The solid form of a material known as Moonsilver," Kakashi said. Naruto let out an 'aw' of understanding. She had heard of Moonsilver in her family's books.

"It eats chakra, doesn't it?" she asked rhetorically as she peered at the walls herself. There were signs, mere flecks really, of ancient paints on the walls. The indentation of inscriptions could be seen as well, but what interested her the most was the colour. It was a silver that was brighter than silver, one that shone faintly from within once even the slightest light was cast upon it. It gave the high ceilinged hallway an eerie moonlit feeling despite the oppressive darkness.

"Moonsteel is primarily used in restraints intended for Shinobi these days," Kakashi said, "We should be fine, but any external use of chakra would be a waste. The walls would eat it…" He looked her way, "Or at least they should."

"Can you try and follow the same rules as the rest of us, Naruto?" Sasuke asked sarcastically.

She shrugged helplessly. "What am I supposed to do? Not be me?" she asked heatedly.

"Easy you two. Focus," Kakashi chided, cutting them off before the conversation could escalate. They nodded, and Naruto caught Sasuke's face going red as he looked past her down the corridor. She filed it away again. There was something going on with him, but she didn't have time to think about it right then. Like she hadn't had time the last fifty times she'd noticed this.

She eyed him carefully for a few moments longer with a narrowed look, during which his cheeks got redder, then turned away. "Should I go first, Kakashi-Sensei?" she asked.

"Follow close behind, Naruto," he said before heading down the hallway. He slipped a kunai out of a pouch as he moved carefully. She followed, light held up. The hallway had a taller ceiling than she'd have thought for an interior hallway, but it followed the theme of this place. Tall ceilings with high windows. Though the hallway lacked the windows it met the other requirements.

A short way down a door stood ajar. They peered in to find empty shelves and a desk that looked like someone had ransacked it. They moved on peering into the other rooms they encountered along the way. More empty shelves, ransacked drawers, and the occasional broken box. Nothing of value, and certainly no signs anyone had been there recently. The hallway eventually turned, slowly, as it wrapped around to come back towards the central room. At the pinnacle of the turn they found a large double door made of a bright golden metal. It glow brightly, magnifying the light given off by the lightstick so that the entire room was bathed in a golden glow not unlike how Naruto herself tended to. It stood slightly ajar, just wide enough for a thin man or a boy to squeeze through.

"Easy, no chakra use," Kakashi said, waving for them to stop. Naruto let the stream of chakra into the lightstick stop, plunging the three of them into darkness. There was a moment of silence then Kakashi added, "Except for the light, Naruto."

Light was restored and she shrugged. "Shoulda been specific," she said with a grin.

"So, what's so dangerous now?" Sasuke asked.

"Orichalcum." Naruto winced and took a step back.

"Does that… explode on contact with Chakra?" she asked hesitantly. Sasuke took a step back as well.

"Concentrated Chakra, either pure or utilized in Jutsu, does tend to destabilize explosively on contact with Orichalcum, yes," Kakashi said, "Unless you express it you should be fine, but try to keep that stick away from the door." He walked up to the door and gave it a light tap. When it failed to move he gave it a push and it slowly, and soundlessly, swung further open. Beyond was a staircase that turned right as it descended. Kakashi waved them forward before stepping through.

Naruto made sure to keep the lightstick away from the golden metal as she passed through the door and down the steps. She didn't know how large an explosion it might cause, but she didn't want to be at the center of any explosion. Sasuke followed behind her, his eyes scanning the walls and ceiling as they descended.

The bottom step had just come into view when a loud clatter echoed from somewhere below. All three of them froze before Kakashi waved them back. They hugged the curve of the wall as they walked down the last few steps. "Cut the light," Kakashi said softly. Naruto let the light fade. To her surprise the light didn't completely disappear. A soft glow, barely enough to see by, lit the steps from somewhere ahead.

Naruto paused and tried to open her mind's eye just enough to see ahead. With a wave of nausea, and a spike of pain, she let it go. This area was nearly worse than outside. Being in this building she couldn't feel the taint of the Falling Hill, but Chakra behaved oddly in this place. It twisted and flowed with invisible currents, circling on, around, and inside itself two or even three times before moving on. It had the effect of replicating rooms within, over, and around themselves on her senses creating a non-euclidean nightmare that left her mind spinning.

"I hear voices," Sasuke whispered to her and Kakashi. While she was distracted with her attempt Sasuke had moved up beside Kakashi. He nodded to Sasuke.

"So do I," he said, before looking back her way, "Naruto, you're fine?"

She nodded. "Tried to use the mind's eye," she said as she steadied herself on the wall, "This place does some weird things to chakra."

"We'll rely on our normal senses then," her Sensei said, "Keep close and stay in the shadows. Let's see what we can hear." The staircase let out onto a single hallway that continued straight in the general direction of the entrance hall. The source of light seemed to be a hallway a dozen meters down the hallway.

As the disorientation faded, and they skulked down the hallway towards the source of the light, voices began to reach Naruto's ears as well.

"... and get those bars loaded up as well! This is the last load you idiot. I won't have you make a muck of it now just because you're getting a bit tired," an angry male voice was saying, his voice distorted enough to be difficult to understand without focusing on it.

Kakashi was the first to the corner and he leaned out just enough for a peek before withdrawing. "Two at the far end. Fifty-five meters, long. No armour, but they have spears," he noted softly, "They're playing cards and not paying attention to the hallway. We may be able to approach if we time this right."

The voice meanwhile continued, "That goes for the lot of you as well! It won't be that long before Shinobi are summoned to deal with us, which means we're on a timer you lugs! Keep moving!" There was the sound of a smack and a crash of something.

"Talk about a bad boss," Naruto muttered. Was the guy trying to be every trope about a bandit leader, or did this level of jackassery just come naturally to him?

"He sounds worried," Kakashi replied, "They must have realized how important their captive is." He stepped back from the corner with a frown and Naruto took the opportunity to peek carefully around the corner. The two men her Sensei had been talking about were sitting on a pair of crates with their backs half turned to the hallway while they played a card game on the third. Their spears were leaning against the wall carelessly. The single door they were guarding was open and Naruto could see a blank wall of Moonsteel beyond, broken up only by a single white-blue crystal in a torch bracket that glowed brightly. A glance upwards at the walls of the hallway showed similar brackets, except they were empty.

Her eyes narrowed. They really were looting everything not nailed down.

"Naruto," Kakashi-sensei said suddenly, "Walk up the wall."

She looked over her shoulder and blinked. "... But I can't?" she said, looking at Sasuke who smirked.

"The lightstick," the duck-haired boy said, getting a nod from their Sensei.

Naruto crossed her arms and glared at both of them. "Okay, since when am I the one left out of the loop?" she asked.

"Chakra doesn't work around Moonsteel, yet your stick remained lit. Whatever you do, Naruto, it ignores a lot of established rules," Kakashi said softly, "Try climbing the wall."

With a shrug Naruto put a foot on the wall and channeled her chakra like she had done thousands of times over the last few months. Then she stepped off the floor and walked up the wall several feet before turning around at Kakashi's eye level to look at him. "So, this isn't normal?" she asked the question quietly. The one-eyed Jounin shook his head. Yeah, she hadn't thought so.

"Neither of us can follow you directly, so you're going to need to get the drop on the two up front and we'll join you after they're down," Kakashi said.

"So you're just sending her in alone?" Sasuke asked, "Sure, why not, this can't possibly go wrong."

"I'll be fine. They're a pair of bandits, not Jounin," she said, sticking her tongue out at him.

"Go across the ceiling, Naruto, be quiet about it," Kakashi said, waving a hand at Sasuke to signal silence. Naruto nodded. They didn't really have time for a good verbal spar.

"Aye aye, Sensei," she said softly before scurrying up the wall. The hallway had the same vaulted ceilings as the structure above with little false balconies sticking out as decoration. She ducked into the first and leaned over to get a glimpse at the two guards. They were bent over the crate with the cards in their hands. Neither of them looked up as she crept her way down the hallway, ducking from arch to balcony to arch as she moved in and out of the deeper shadows.

As she neared the end of the hallway the clatter of metal treads on stone announced the arrival of a fully armoured figure. Armoured head to toe in bright red metal with a lower face covering gas mask he had that large cannon from the drawing over one shoulder. "Are the two of you playing games?" he snapped in a voice that was muffled by the mask he wore the moment he laid eyes on the two guards. Clearly he was the one talking earlier.

Naruto pressed herself up against the arch and listened as the two men scrambled to their feet.

"Toridachi-Taicho," one of the two said in a rush, "We're keeping an eye on the hall, as you asked."

"With your backs turned to it while hunched over a card game?" Their boss, Toridachi, asked with contempt, clear in his tone. There was a thump and a clack like metal hitting stone. "Keep your eyes towards the hall. I want to know the moment something comes down this corridor!"

"Yes, Taicho!" they barked in reply and after a moment Naruto heard Toridachi's footsteps retreat into the room again. She strained her ears to listen as the two men sighed.

"He's going nuts," the one who had spoken up hissed.

"Shut up," the second hissed.

"Seriously. Ever since Kairi-sama captured that noble girl things have been getting out of hand."

"I said, shut up."

"Man, we haven't even finished excavating this place and they want to just abandon it! This ain't right."

"Do you want him to come back?"

Silence reigned for a few moments. Then the first one spoke again, "How would they even find us here? I don't get it."

The second one snorted. "Yeah, and that's why neither you, nor I, am in charge. Cause we don't get the bigger picture. They do, and they've been leading us right. If the bosses say it's time to leave, it's time to leave and I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to taking in the sea breeze for the next few weeks."

"Weirdo."

"Says you."

Naruto listened to them complain and snipe back and forth for another minute before relaxing against the archway just a little. She peeked around the corner. The two were standing on either side of the now closed doorway. She hadn't even heard the door move. Neither of them looked upwards as she crept along the ceiling until she was above them. Poised above them she let out a steadying breath as she judged them. The spears were pointed up, so she probably couldn't strike both of them at once. Fine, she could work around that.

Then she released the chakra holding her up. The drop wasn't long, a heartbeat as she plummeted, short enough, certainly, that the two guards didn't even look up at the breeze of her fall. The first guard's eyes did, however, widden as she dropped into view. One hand gripped the spear and she twisted, swinging her weight around in an impossible movement that saw her foot bury itself in the side of his head. The second guard had barely started turning when his companion crashed into his side sending both to the ground in a pile. The second guard opened his mouth to cry out, and was promptly silenced as Naruto smacked him with her stolen spear.

She turned and waved down the hallway at her Sensei and Sasuke. She twirled the spear and leaned it against her shoulder with a grin as they came down the hall in a quiet sprint. Those two guards really didn't have much of a chance, even when alert normal bandits weren't an equal to even have decent Shinobi.

Suddenly, Kakashi and Sasuke dived for the alcoves to the side. "NARUTO! GET TO COVER!" Kakashi shouted at the same time Sasuke shouted, "BEHIND YOU!" She pivoted on the spot and tried to throw herself to the side, but it was too late. There was a flash of light and something plowed into her in mid air. The world spun as she ragdolled through the air. She bounced off something hard, and then crashed into something equally hard before falling to the ground.

She stared up at the ceiling in a pained disorientation. "Ow," she breathed. Her body hurt everywhere. She rolled onto her side and looked down the hallway, just in time to throw herself out of the way of another glowing wave of concussive force. The shockwave knocked her to the ground, but she managed to get to cover. She rolled to her feet and leaned back against the wall as a third blast raced down the corridor. She hissed as the mild pins of pain that leaning against the wall provoked.

That had to be the concussion cannon. The books had said they packed a punch, but there was a very big difference between reading and seeing. That thing had to have the power of a c-rank wind jutsu at least. It probably would have laid Sakura out flat. The pinkette just didn't have the endurance she or Sasuke did. Weaponry like that definitely explained why they had been so successful against the barges.

"Try this!" Sasuke shouted. The familiar sound of a sizzling exploding tag failed to be followed by its usual explosion. Then another wave of concussive force swept down the hallway, eliciting a shout of pain from the other Genin. She winced. That sounded painful.

"Sasuke, Naruto, both of you stay down. I'll handle this," Kakashi shouted.

"Go ahead and try, Konoha!" The gravelly voice of Toridachi bellowed from the room.

How had he gotten the drop on her? She hadn't heard- She tapped her head against the wall and groaned. The door. None of the doors made a damned sound when they opened. She hadn't even heard that one when it was closing. They must have heard her dealing with the two guards and thrown the door open.

There was another burst of concussive force, then a shout of pain that was garbled by Toridachi's rebreather. Naruto peaked around the corner. The hallway was untouched except for a few scorch marks a few feet in front of Sasuke's alcove on the other side of the hallway. He was leaning against the wall and rubbing his shoulder with a grimace. At the end, through the door, she could see the heavily armoured form of Toridachi fly by the opening. There was a loud crash and some pained shouting as Kakashi dashed across the room and out of view once again.

Taking that as a sign that Kakashi did have everything well in hand she ducked around the corner and hurried over to Sasuke. She slid into the alcove beside him. "Hey, Sasuke, you alright?" she asked even as she winced at her own injuries.

He grunted. "Fine," he said, pulling himself up from his slump, "He isn't a very good shot."

"Got me," Naruto grumbled. Right in the middle of the back as well. All her muscles felt like she'd been beat up by Kiba back in the Academy again. That wasn't a feeling she'd expected to repeat anytime soon.

Sasuke snorted. "Maybe look the right way next time?" he said as he peered around the corner. Naruto leaned out as well. They watched as a trio of bandits crashed to the floor on the other side of the door.

"... Should we do something?" Naruto asked.

"He said to say put," Sasuke replied, leaning back against the pillar.

"He said to let him handle that," Naruto corrected, "Did he mean the room or the cannon?"

Sasuke looked at her. She looked at Sasuke. In the background there were several pointed screams. Sasuke glanced around the corner, then leaned back. "You do realize he's a Jounin?" he asked.

He had a point, really it was a good point. Kakashi wasn't just a Jounin, but one of the Elite. He could handle a few bandits, no matter how well armed they were. So could she for that matter, if they hadn't gotten the drop on her…

She leaned back against the wall and let out another hiss. Her back had turned into one giant bruise already. "Point," she agreed before forming a cross hand seal and summoning a dozen clones. They ran off down the corridor with a loud cheer.

"... Do you always have to cheat?" Sasuke asked a moment after her clones left.

"... Shinobi."

There was silence for a moment. "Technically Kunoichi."

"Just means I cheat more."

"... Point."

Naruto grinned at Sasuke victoriously. He snorted and blushed again. "Jealous teme?"

"Of what? Getting knocked around?" he scoffed, "Nice arc by the way. Real acrobatic."

"Fuck you teme," she muttered. He smirked, still blushing as she reached up and adjusted her hitai-ate. She froze as the memories of her last couple of clones returned to her. She grabbed Sasuke by the arm and lunged out of the alcove, dragging him down the hallway. "Toridachi's making a break for it!" She said.

"Who?" Sasuke stumbled, but kept his feet and pelted down the hallway and into the room. The room was large and, other than the area directly around and across from the wall, fairly full. Large machines with blinking lights, markings, levers, switches, and projections of light hovering over and around them filled the room. A dozen bandits lay around the room in various states of disorder along with several crumpled across consoles. Kakashi-sensei was off to the right wrestling off three large bandits while in the center, right across from the entrance, a hole had opened in the Moonsteel wall.

"Him!" She shouted, pointing out Toridachi. The man in question was in the process of stepping through the doorway. His concussion cannon behind held from one limp arm while the other clutched at his leg. The rebreather he was wearing was askew, letting her see the lower half of his face as he turned back at her shout. His eyes widened and he promptly threw himself through the door.

"CLOSE IT! CLOSE IT NOW!" He shouted as she drew and threw a kunai from one of her pouches. She slammed through the hand seals at lightning speed, but the wall of kunai that followed was too slow as the door slammed shut behind the bandits.

"Damn it!" she cursed, giving the wall a fruitless kick.

"Damn," Sasuke muttered as they watched the wall for any signs of movement. It failed to give any hint that it was going to open up again and after a minute they both sighed.

"He got away," Naruto whined.

"Kakashi-sensei is not going to be happy," Sasuke agreed. To emphasize his point one of the three men Kakashi had been fighting flew past them to smash into the wall beside the seamlessly hidden door. They turned to find Kakashi, none the worse for wear, walking over to him. Of the other two bandits Naruto could only spot a limb sticking up over a console.

"He got away?" Kakashi asked. They both nodded.

"Sorry Kakashi-Sensei," Naruto started and trailed off as Kakashi waved a hand to silence.

"Don't worry about it. These things happen. Are you both alright?" he asked, looking pointedly at her.

"Sore, giant bruise on my back," Naruto said with a shrug that caused a wince.

"It missed me," Sasuke said, "But the impact with the wall nearly dislocated my shoulder."

"We'll take a look after we leave. Naruto, get your clones to tie this lot up," he said. Naruto summoned more and they went to work as Kakashi brought them over to a corner of the room that was undisturbed by the fighting then sent off his own clone to the surface.

Kakashi took a seat on a pristine looking curved metal seat that looked a bit like an eggshell. "There's little chance we'll be able to figure out where the switch to control this place is before they're well and gone," he said, getting nods of understanding from both of them. Naruto hopped up onto the corner of a table that looked to be free of anything she could accidentally press, flip, or activate.

"Then what are we going to do?" Sasuke asked.

"We do have a few prisoners," Kakashi said, gesturing to the group, "Hana-san and I will interrogate them once she gets down here.

"... Without a light?" Naruto pointed out. There was a moment and Kakashi sighed.

"Naruto-chan, would you mind sending one of your clones with a light stick?" he asked. She sent one off with a smirk and grinned smugly at both boys.

"I did overhear something from the guards," she added, getting their attention properly.

"What did you hear?" Kakashi asked, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees.

"One of them mentioned something about 'looking forward to the sea breeze for the next few weeks'. They might have someplace along the coast they were planning on holing up at," she said.

"Those maps had a lot of coves," Sasuke said.

"They did. But it gives us a lead," Kakashi said. He glanced over at the growing pile of groaning bandits and the group of petite redheads manhandling their unconscious forms with minimal delicacy. "And a point to direct our questions. Get some rest, both of you," he said, standing up, "We'll camp in this room. Be careful about trying to use chakra. You have no idea what these consoles might be made of."

"Yes Sensei," they chorus, then Naruto paused.

"Does that include me?" She asked.

"Yes."

"Darn," she sighed. Well, it didn't mean she couldn't look at the consoles anyway. Maybe she could figure out something about how they worked? She hopped off the table and walked off to investigate the room. Carefully of course. She didn't want to accidentally blow herself, and the team, sky high. Or worse. Worse would be bad.

-0-0-0-0-0-​

A/N: Ello Everyone~ *Happy Kitsune Wave* glad to have this done. The chapter I mean, the story clearly isn't finished. I think we've made solid progress here with the first action oriented arc of the story! Bandits! Well, of a sort. These aren't your normal Naruto bandits. These ones have essence weapons! So yes, I will admit this is very much a fusion of the two settings with the setting from 2nd edition Exalted being used as the past for this story. Though I'm tracking the Exalted powers according to Third Edition.