one.
“Ami-san.”
The sweet girl in question kept her back turned.
“Ami-san. The rain soaked my futon.”
All children had “household” chores to complete in the rooms they shared. Ami-san’s monthly job was dragging the mattresses off the bunks and to the yard outside to air them out. Ami and the other children assigned this job would beat the dust out, and hang them in the sun to kill germs and bleach out stains. The routine household chores assigned to each child were supposed to teach them to run a household and prepared them for living on their own if they were never adopted. At twelve, Ami was the oldest child in the room, so she did the heavy chores.
It rained this afternoon. Ami didn’t drag Ei’s mattress back inside.
Ei waited 3 seconds and tapped out another ten on her arm.
“Ami-san.”
The two other girls in their room were silent as well. They put fresh sheets on their mattresses and folded clothes and flowed around Ei without a word.
Ei did not understand. She was squatted on the floor, looking at her carefully organized piles and the open drawer of diapers. The pile of baby clothes that were too small, separated into dirty and clean. A smaller stack for clothes that did fit, separated into dirty and clean. A folded stack of three outfits that were too big, the smallest pile. Ei brushed her hands up and down her legs and shook her head to clear the buzz out.
Where should Naruto’s clothes go?
In her room, the laundry fell to Ren-san, and it would be all washed together and dried, then each girl folded her own clothes and put them away. Anything that was too small would be passed down to a younger girl, and anything too ratty was added to a pile of scraps to be sorted through. But Naruto only had baby clothes, and he was the only baby in the room. Could Ei take a whole washing machine for one baby’s clothes? Ei looked over her dirty pile of things that still fit and considered.
“No” she whispered to herself and shuddered. Naruto would not wear dirty clothes. Dirty children didn’t get adopted.
Naruto waved his hands and babbled at her from his place under the window. He was old enough to sit up on his own so Ei left him in the patch of sunlight while she took stock of his clothes. Ei smushed her palms into her eyes and whined, Naruto looked over at this and gave a wide sunny smile.
“Dirty kids don’t get adopted, Naruto.” At her quiet admission, the baby stopped smiling in favor of gazing at the girl. Ei kept her eyes closed and rocked back from her squatted position to stretch her legs out in front of her.
Naruto huffed.
“Ren doesn’t put my clothes in the wash anymore.” She whispered.
Ei had thought about it before. Like every girl and boy in the Orphanage estate, she had wondered if she would be adopted, but Ei had never dwelled on it, because like every other young child, she thought that if she was good enough, kind enough, hard-working, and smart, someone would want her. Now in the wake of the Kyuubi Incident, there were too many orphans and too many people that still hadn’t recovered from having their entire lives uprooted. It had been three months. Three months and four kids were adopted. Four.
“You have to be clean. And smart. And good.” Ei felt a hiccup crawl up her throat and her face was hot.
“Why?” She pulled her legs back close to her chest and pillowed her pounding head on her knees.
“Why do we have to be good and smart and kind and clean an- and-” She hiccuped again and pushed her face into her knees. Ei could ask Hisako-san. Later.
Ei stayed in Naruto’s room the entire day and crawled into the crib with him clutched close to her chest. When Naruto fell asleep she talked.
“On viewing days we put on our best clothes and brush our hair, and if the people like us, we can talk with them in the office. If they still like us they visit us again, and again until they take us home.” Her voice was hoarse and scratchy but she continued after counting three inhales.
“Sometimes important people come. Like senseis. Or sponsors from the clans. Sandaime-sama comes sometimes.”
She brushes a kiss on Naruto’s head and exhales.
“He dropped you off.”
The orphanage escaped the Kyuubi attack, but the village had a dent in it. The orphanage was not touched by the attack, but it was close enough for the babies to cry and Ei to choke on the crashing waves of Orange. Close enough for Ei to watch Yellow waver and grow dim.
“The Yondaime used to visit.” This is said like a great secret. Maybe it was, to someone who had no one to whisper secrets to before.
Ei closed her eyes and curled a little tighter around a sleeping boy. The children had wondered. They had thought about the child who was born on the night the market was leveled and thought about the new but old Hokage, whose face already decorated the proud mountain, dropping off a little baby. A baby who got his own room, and the nurses who shook when they held him. They talked.
“The Yondaime grew up in the orphanage. He came back to talk with us, and play, and he showed the genin students how to walk on trees.” Ei spoke in whispers but she was quick now, and Naruto stirred.
“He was called the Yellow Flash. Shinobi called him that. He told us to call him Minato.”
Minato. Ei remembered the Yondaime, but she only remembered Minato, the kind shinobi with ink on his hands and silly hair that you could see from across the yard. She had seen him twice and talked to him once. When he took a group of toddlers to buy grilled mochi in the marketplace. Ei asked him why Lord Fourth visited. Minato took her hand and said,
“The orphanage is one big family! Even if you move out or grow up, you should always visit your family!” His pale blue eyes twinkled and when he looked down at her, it was like she was looking at the light filtering through the branches of the great Hashirama trees.
Keiji has said he remembered seeing his genin team when he was little, Nori said he remembered seeing the Uzumaki Princess drag him by the ear when he was late for a Hokage meeting. Ei didn’t remember a princess, but she remembered a Red Pink hug that beamed like the rubies on a noble lady’s fingers.. Midori said the Uzumaki Princess was loud and kind and asked all the girls to call them Kushina-nee.
Ei wasn’t old enough to know Minato as he was when he was a chunin, but she still knew Minato. Minato sat outside in the grass, with his Hokage robe in the dirt, and told stories to the children. He never ignored the kids.
The funeral was private. He didn’t have a grave, and the gentle sunlight and crackle of Minato was a name on a cold gray stone next to a thousand others. Kushina, the last Uzumaki Princess, was nothing.
Yellow that crackled and gleamed and Red that settled around you as if it knew you already. Orange that wrapped around you and warmed your skin like summer.
Naruto snorted in his sleep and Ei’s eyes shot open. She huffed and tugged a light sheet over them both and faded into sleep.
Replacement Shift, Approaching Left, Finch signed from the branch next to him.
Acknowledged.
When the next pair lighted on the roof with silent feet, Anbu Dog straightened his spine and leaped into a shunshin back to Anbu headquarters. In no time at all, he was in the lockers and he could organize supplies for a week on border patrol. Most people thought of Anbu as silent creeps that followed you around and did Konoha’s dirty work, and they did. But they were also shinobi. And the shinobi world runs on gossip. Hence why Kakashi stayed behind a bit to listen around, see which kunoichi dropped out, which shinobi got moved deeper into black ops, and which masks were back in circulation. So he was a little surprised when his eavesdropping was ruined by a loud bang.
Finch groaned and mumbled, “..v...r..gain.”
“Sorry, I didn’t catch that.” Kakashi deadpanned.
“She's so LOUD!” Finch dragged their hands over their mask and dug their thumbs into temples.
Kakashi hmm’d to push Finch to continue.
“The girl! Her chakra! She constantly flushes it through her body, constantly. ”
“And?” Kakashi slumped over. He knew this. Every Anbu on the Jinchuriki guard knew this, it was a source of increasing annoyance. Every time the chakra increased around Naruto it had them on edge, but it was just a little girl. A very competent little girl who had taken a shine to Naruto.
“There’s just no reason for it! Why does she have to be that loud? It's not like she’s trying to steal the container, or trying to scan for anything! She just sits there and lights herself up like a beacon!”
Finch sat heavily on the bench to lean against the lockers while they unbuckled their forearm bracers, and Kakashi scooted over to distance himself from the loud shinobi. The pause in conversation grew longer as Finch waited for a reply and Kakashi decided not to.
Went unsaid was the fact that the girl had already been background checked, and that Naruto’s Uzumaki-Bijuu chakra was too bright to be outshined by a civilian child.
Kakashi considered if he cared enough to continue. Would he take the bait and carry on the conversation? An untrained girl in a shinobi village flashes her chakra when she was annoyed, this wasn’t new. An untrained girl flashes her chakra too much around a black ops guard surrounding the Kyuubi Jinchuriki, son of the Yondaime- his sensei. The allure of shinobi gossip won out.
“The academy starts at 7 years old.”
“Perfect!” Finch clapped their hands together and stood. “Throw her in the academy, teach her enough to show her how loud and RUDE she is, and no more chakra headaches at two in the morning!” The anbu masks filtered voices to keep them monotone, so the quick chipper speech being forced through the vocal filter seals on the ceramic made an awful sound. “See you in a week, Dog.”
Kakashi sighed, which didn’t make it through the vocal filter, but it was implied in his body language. Role in the shinobi gossip mill finished, he nodded to Finch and started the rooftop dash home.
Ei pushed through market crowds and quickly made her way into the forest boarding the Naka river. A quick path back through the woods, worn by many small feet returning to the orphanage dorms and she was back home and there. There it is.
A crackle, like energy hanging in the clouds before a storm. It was back. Ei thought it was Naruto, his sunset orange, but it wasn't. Ei knew it was something. People didn’t change like that. Hisako-san was always blue. Ei was always green. Naoki was always like smooth stones. Naruto shifted and swirled and crackled and why?
It made Ei nervous, this change. All of it did. Ei washed her clothes and didn’t air out her mattress. It always came in the mornings but with the blur that was the dorms she couldn’t be sure. But here in the forest, where it was just her and Naruto, and she knew.
Chakra flux, 3 clicks ahead.
False Alarm, civilian, target secure.
Affirmative, Disengage.
Tense muscles relaxed - the anbu equivalent of a sigh - and the shadows settled back into calm but alert positions.
Loud.
A forceful sign was thrown in the direction of Anbu Dog’s mask.
Affirmative.