Chapter 7
NOVEMBER- 7 MONTHS
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Jiraiya, to say the least, was very confused as to why his student would summon him via toad the moment he entered the village. Minato must have known he had just come back from his mission.
He made his way over to Minato's apartment, mindful of the time as he had yet to report to Sarutobi sensei.
Orochimaru and he had to go collect a scroll from the fire daimyo and to stay on the frontlines to help them in any way they could. The journey for the average shinobi would have been a day there and back, yet it had taken the two sennin less than the allocated time. They had a few run in's with nuke-nin, but they posed no threat.
In fact, Orochimaru was the greatest threat once they had arrived. He was a very meticulous man and did not appreciate their ambush and had made quick yet painful work of them.
Both men had been uninjured and Jiraiya had been silently miffed he had not caught sight of Tsunade. Naruto had told him where she had been, but that did not stop him from hoping to bring the woman he loved back to the village.
He, in his own debatable opinion, was not insane. He knew she had never loved him like she had Dan, yet at the same time, there was a small part of her that had.
He did not ask Naruto what Tsunade had been like when he had died in her time. Far too afraid to hear she hadn't been sad. Too afraid to acknowledge she had felt nothing for him.
Sighing, he knocked on the door, too tired to go through the window. Without fail, Minato answered the door and looked briefly shocked, clearly he hadn't expected Jiraiya to use the door over the window.
After a few seconds Minato had still not recovered so he spoke first, "I have had a very busy day Minato. Could you tell me what's bothering you so I can go home? If Naruto's awake, I'll take her with me." As soon as the sennin spoke the name of the blonde male's sister, his posture grew rigid and his face, shadowed a cold yet fiery look.
Instead of speaking, Minato opened the door and gestured for Jiraiya to sit down, which he cautiously did. Jiraiya showed no outward look of distress or worry yet he felt both, wondering what had caused his student to react like this. He guessed it had to do with Naruto but was unsure as to what it was.
Minato stood directly across Jiaraiya, on the opposite side of the coffee table which was littered with scrolls, ink and cups.
"Why didn't you tell me that bastard made her a jinchuriki?" he asked, no emotion showing on his face yet Jiariya was a sage. He could feel the rage Minato was feeling as if it were his own.
It took Jiraiya a few seconds for him to register what Minato had said. "What makes you think she is?" he asked, unsure if Minato was speculating or informing.
He crossed his arms over his chest yet Jiraiya saw the way Minato's hands were fisted, not liking the way Jiraiya was handling the situation. "She let it loose earlier that she was made into the host of something. My students had no idea what she was going on about but I know. I know what a jinchuriki is and the toll it takes on someone."
He paused waiting for Jiraiya to say something in his defence yet when the sennin said none, he continued. "How could you think it was alright for this to be kept from me?! From Kushina! Both of us are fuinjutsu mast-"
Jiraiya cut his sentence off, a small glare on his face as he looked to his student, "And if I told you, what would you have done? Don't answer that. You would examine her seal, keep a watch on her behaviour, see how she settles, observe how she behaves, teach her the ways of a jinchuriki and thereby robbing her of the childhood she so deserves. I will not have you, nor Kushina, do that Minato. She is a child, and even if she acts like she is older, I will not have her treated in a way I don't see fit for someone her age. So don't make me the bad one in saying I've done you a wrong when I haven't.
"You may be family by blood, but she is more my family than she is yours. Family doesn't end in blood, Minato." Jiraiya was quite shocked by his speech and so apparently was Minato. It wasn't very often he said anything out of a cool and laidback manner yet this conversation peeked his annoyance. He didn't like the way Minato made him out to be the one who had wronged them all. It was no one's fault.
It was very ironic. Here Minato stood calling his father a bastard for sealing a biju inside his 'sister', yet he had no problem sealing the nine tails into his own daughter.
Naruto had lived a harsh life because of the decisions Minato had made. Jiraiya would be damned before he allowed Naruto to live a life like the one she had had the first time.
He may have been stopped from taking in his goddaughter, yet no one could tell him what to do with his daughter. Not even her 'brother'.
Minato looked conflicted, unsure what to say next. He opened and closed his mouth, single words coming out yet no sentence came. He seemed at a loss for words.
Finally after what felt like an eternity he sighed, head lowered with his bangs shadowing his eyes, "I don't know what to do sensei. The brother part of me wants the same as you do for her, yet the shinobi in me that is a fuinjutsu master wants to check her the way a jinchuriki is checked, to observe her like I have been informed Kushina had…"
"She's - I've not told sensei she's a jinchuriki and I intend to keep it that way for some time. She doesn't do anything that ascertains to her being one so no one should suspect. However if you go about it the way you think a shinobi would, you'll put her into a lot of trouble. She'll be removed from my care and placed into an orphanage. So don't say a word." His tone of voice and facial expression told Minato to obey no matter what.
Jiraiya knew he was asking a lot from his student, yet at the same time he wasn't. This would be the recompense for what he did, or will do, to Naruto.
Minato finally took a seat on the armchair and sighed, running his hand through his hair and tugged a few locks of his hair. "Very well… sensei. But know I don't appreciate not knowing this sort of thing about my own sister… Can I at least know which one she is the jinchuriki of?"
He looked Jiraiya in the eye and had the sennin been a lesser man he would have caved under the forlorn eyes Minato was giving, "No. The less you know, the less likely you are to get in trouble if word got out."
Minato looked as if to protest yet held it back, knowing Jiraiya was right and as stubborn as Kushina.
Jiraiya went home not long after, having checked on Naruto and saw she really was asleep, not wanting to wake her up. He informed minato he would come after breakfast to pick her up and take her to the academy.
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FEBRUARY- 10 MONTHS-
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Naruto was very unhinged one day when in the middle of class she had been summoned to the main office to have a meeting with the headmaster.
She stood in a room with many shinobi and kunoichi, all chunin or above. She caught a glimpse of Orochimaru's eyes in the back of the room, hidden in shadows yet chose to ignore him.
She also saw an Uchiha she often saw, Shikaku Nara and Inoichi Yamanaka, the latter two often seeking out her brother which often resulted in either them joining for food or a shorter training session.
When she had first laid eyes on them, she felt a chorus of emotions run through her. These men had given their lives for 'the greater good' during the first war, neither flinching nor allowing death to make them cower.
In their occupation death was common and expected, but it was another thing to know you would die within minutes. Shikaku had given those on the frontlines advice and Inoichi had transmitted it.
She didn't allow any of her emotions to show. In fact, when she first saw Shikaku she had thought it was Shikamaru, the resemblance between the two was truly uncanny especially since his face was unscarred.
The headmaster and her homeroom teacher were also there, as well as the teacher for the class Iruka sensei was a part of.
Everyone looked directly at her causing her to shift on her feet, she had never been one for being stared at despite always seeking everyone's attention as a child.
"Naruto… It's been petitioned by lord Jiraiya, Minato, Shikaku, your sensei and several other people that you be moved up a year. I wholeheartedly agree, you are a very bright child whose intellect is on par with your own brother. Truthfully, we would give you a test and make you a genin if it hadn't been for the simple fact that physically you are not on par with other genin, and that would essentially kill you. This form-" he raised a document and faced it towards herself and she managed to make out signatures, "has been signed by everyone in this room as well as your brother and adoptive father. If you agree to move up a year, you would have to sign this. Everything else has been taken care of. Of course, should you choose to stay in your year you will be given the option to move up whenever you wish, on the condition that you take an exam. What will you do?" he placed the paper back down on the desk and folded his hands in a similar manner that the sandaime does.
Naruto knew what she would choose, to move up a year. Whilst the theoretic side would bore her slightly, the practical side would keep her up to par with her plans. Training in her own time or when she was taken out of school by minato or jiraiya would not be enough. Yet she dreaded how fatigued she would be at the end of the day.
One would think that being an Uzumaki would give her a lot of stamina, and it did. Just not to the extent of what Naruto was doing to her six year old body.
"I'd like to go up a year." She stated, trying to hide her nervousness, reminding herself that she would have to get up the ranks quicker in order to change all the bad that had happened.
The headmaster nodded and handed her the paper and a pen in order to sign. Fifteen minutes later she was all set and stood outside the door to her new class with her ex homeroom teacher with her.
Whilst her new class was still boring but there were certain people who she recognised; Hayate from the chunin exams, Mizuki the traitor, Doto from the Akimichi clan and her personal favourite Iruka sensei. Overall, everyone varied with their age.
Iruka sat two rows in front of her and as soon as the break alarm sounded, they immediately hit it off. It seemed he was very much like how she had been as a child; a loudmouthed troublemaker.
Placing two loudmouthed troublemakers together was not a wise idea, the only difference between the two of them was that Naruto was able to control herself, much to her classmates and teachers relief.
There was one other person in the class she had previously been trying her hardest to discreetly avoid, yet could no longer do so.
Shisui no shunshin was sitting right in front of her. She had been trying to avoid him because for whatever reason, her eye which was actually Shisui's left eye, kept trying to activate.
It made very little sense and a lot of control from Naruto to stop it from activating and having to answer many unnecessary questions. Every time she within a certain radius of the Uchiha, her left eye would burn and the kekkei-genkai would want to activate. There had been several times where it had and she managed to play it off by closing it and pretending there was something inside it. So in the end, she made a short fringe over the eye which reached till her nose.
When she had been questioned about her sudden change of appearance to Minato, Jiraiya had taken to saying she suffered from some sort of eye disease when in contact with too much pollen. (A/N Not hay fever but similar.)
Her new homeroom teacher had also questioned her new look and had asked her to change it back, however a quick visit by Jiraiya and Minato had made his mouth shut.
She was sure some sort of rumours about favouritism and such were circulating the academy yet she couldn't care less. In her own time, far worse rumours had been spread. These children weren't nearly as creatively brutal with their choice of words.
Of course, due to her eye, she had made sure to talk very little to the boy sitting next to her, which she found wasn't quite easy when he seemed to be very jovial.
Naruto seemed to run into quite a few Uchiha with that personality and often wondered where they had all been before the massacre, since she couldn't remember any Uchiha being lively and smiling carefree. Unless it was Itachi dying by his brother's hands, in which case she had seen an Uchiha smile.
She had also seen Sasuke smile, 93% of the time his smile was in fact either a smirk or a cruel and sadistic smile that made one stiffen and shiver at the same time. In her time, only Kakashi had been able to ignore that smile.
Another thing she didn't like was how the teacher liked to pick her constantly when she wasn't paying attention. No matter how many times she was able to answer with essay like answers, he never seemed to learn and seemed to be waiting for the day in which she wouldn't know the answer.
That day would never come, however, as she had learnt a lot about the previous kage during the war and the laws, current and old for her kage training that Tsunade had put her through.
She had learnt about the five nations during her two year training trip with Jiraiya and about clans from Sasuke before he had defected. Once he had Jiraiya had taken over and the clan members of the rookie nine had filled in any gaps that were remaining.
Overall, she had had many people teach her several things that this man, whom she believed dies sometime during the war, could only dream of knowing.
The only useful thing she was gaining from the academy was even more training than what her guardians were giving her.
Her muscle memory was absolutely useless since she had such short and weak limbs which she couldn't do much about without damaging her growth.
The one thing she was getting better at was throwing her kunai and shuriken, before they would land several meters from the target, and now they could hit the rings. Whilst it wasn't perfect, it was clear progress and Naruto wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth.
All in all, the academy was okay but could be better, yet she couldn't do anything about it. She had to be a big girl about it, as Jiraiya liked to say. It wasn't until group projects ensued that she knew she was screwed.
The project was to be placed in groups of two for a survival plan. Each group were given a scenario and they would have to make a plan of the various ways out of it, then select one of those to present to the class. Your partner was the person sitting next to you.
The second project was to make a timeline of Konoha from as far back as they could research. It had to include the three hokage and Madara Uchiha's timeline. Naruto felt this one would be easier than the first. Despite everything she was still not very good at strategy. Again the person next to you was your partner.
The third and last project was to stay in the home of the other partner for twenty-four hours. The catch on this one was, the guardian was not allowed to know you were there. There was some leeway, allowing you to be found three times, however each time you were caught, ten marks would be deducted from the overall test. Once again the partner was the person sitting next to you.
Naruto was dreading all of these as they required her to spend lots of time with the Uchiha and thereby lots of eye gauging pain to resonate from within her very skull. She was very much looking forward to the day Kurama woke up in order for him to advise her like he always did.
It made her realise how much she relied on the fox and made her appreciate how he always did so. Never again would she take the fox for granted.
Both partners had agreed that Naruto would try to hide in Shisui's house since everyone at her home had some form of high sensory abilities and he would be at a great disadvantage. However they would do that on Sunday and they would start their other two projects of Saturday. They would then do a section of each project on their own and compile them together and finish the last of them during the lunch break of the next Wednesday.
They did have two weeks to complete their assignments, but there was a class field trip the following week that was for three days on the outskirts of the village. She assumed they would try to be quick about it as Konoha was on the brink of the third war.
They were currently walking over to hers and Jiraiya's home and as soon as they walked in, a kunai flew to them, causing Naruto to unconsciously activate Kurama's shield.