Chapter 4: Childhood Arc: Three

Disclaimer: Do I have to keep writing about how I don't own Naruto? It makes me sad.

Kaa-san sits me down a few days after the visiting-Cousin-Ashi Incident. "They know you can speak to the dogs, pup."

I tilt my head. Is it really that strange? Didn't Kiba talk to Akamaru all the time? "I strange?" I ask, while absentmindedly petting Ichi.

Kaa-san sighs. "No. You're not strange, Hana." I nod. That's good. I knew speaking to dogs is an Inuzuka trait. "But you are very advanced for your age." Oh, oh no no no. I'm still two years old.

"What Tsume means, Hana." Tou-san comes in from around the corner, his footsteps absolutely silent. "Is that you've always been rather advanced for your age."

I blink. I have? Granted, I didn't know much about babies or being one in general, but surely they possessed inner lives. Surely they thought and laughed and understood. "I is strange." I say, almost to myself. What are they going to do with the oddly advanced child? Hana wasn't anything special in canon besides the fact that she had three dogs.

"No." Kaa-san runs a hand through her hair. "But they do want to enter you into the academy early."

I pale. "Academy?" Have I been marked out as a genius? Is this what this conversation is about? I'm two. I can barely hold a brush, much less make any hand signs. I don't even know if I want to be a ninja. Sure, being one had worked out for Hana the first time around, but this isn't a risk free occupation.

"It's a school for ninja, little nose." Kaa-san sits down on the floor, and Tou-san follows her example. "And if you become a ninja, you'll be able to protect Konoha, like Kaa-san and Tou-san." That...wasn't wrong. If I didn't happen to be two going on nineteen it might even make sense. Unfortunately for my ninja parents, I came to them with my own set of moral codes.

"Konoha?" Don't get me wrong, Konoha is an alright place for most of canon, if one ignores the outright massacre of a clan, Danzo shiftily taking kids in a corner, the massive amounts of emotionally traumatized and combat trained ninja, both kids and adults, and the many, many times it got flattened.

"That's where we live." Tou-san adds, coming to pat me on the head. "It's our home." As much as I had wanted to ask him about Iwa before, I couldn't do it anymore. Wherever he had come from, whatever he had done to get here, he is here now, and he considers Konoha his home, and me his daughter.

"Oh." It is really all I can say to the stunning realization. They really do love me. I'm only Hana to them, and this is the way they've always had me. I'd spent so much time being someone else and thinking of myself as someone else that I hadn't thought that perhaps they'd only ever see me as I am to them, not an impostor or a fake, but just Hana. The thought brings tears to my eyes.

Not for the first time, I'm struck by how young my parents are. I am three going on twenty, at least mentally speaking, and Tou-san is only twenty three and Kaa-san twenty-one.

Kaa-san picks herself off the floor. "Don't worry too much about it, pup. I'm not going to force you to go to academy. I just wanted you to know that you might want to tone down how deliberate you are outside the house." She pats Tou-san's shoulder on the way out of the room. "She gets it from you, Kai-baka. I'm never this deliberate. It's best not to look before you leap."

Tou-san raises one perfectly blond eyebrow at her, and for a minute I consider him based on my memories of characters from Iwa. He doesn't really look like it. Only Deidara was blond from what I can recall, and I'd notice if my dad had mouths on his hands. He doesn't. If I didn't hear my aunt say that Tou-san was from Iwa, I'd never suspect it. I'd have assumed that he had Yamanaka genes with his blond hair and blue gray eyes. "You'll get yourself killed that way, Tsu-chan."

Kaa-san howls with laughter. "And dithering about will get everyone else killed, Kai-baka." It's good to see them happy together. Kaa-san and Tou-san fit together like pieces of a puzzle, and not for the first time, I wondered why Kiba thought that Tou-san had run away.

I'd no way to know until Tou-san either did or didn't run away though, so I put in the box of things to think about later.

But that conversation starts an ever pressing worry in the back of my mind. Did I actually even want to be a ninja? It went against everything I had ever known before. Killing people for money, or because they were out to kill me isn't a part of my moral code. Every fiber of my being screamed at the wrongness of some casually accepted bits of life in Konoha that as a small toddler, I could get away with avoiding. Nearly life threatening injuries are seen as no big deal, if I broke a leg Kaa-san would pick me up and bring me to a medic, but there certainly wouldn't be a fuss about it. Cuts and bruises didn't even merit a mention.

It isn't even like I'm an important character.

I'm not one of the Rookie Nine, and despite what everyone around me seems to believe-now that I've been visiting with various cousins who had oohed and ahhed over my seriousness-I'd been above average in my past life. I had gotten decent grades, but I really wasn't the most athletic person. I hadn't put hours of effort into anything besides writing fantasy novels. I hadn't even applied conscious effort in this life to be understood by my triplets or Kuromaru, they just understood me.

Yet, even though I'm not an important character, Kiba will be. I muse, as I swing my feet back and forth. Kiba will be important, not the most important of the Rookie Nine, but still quite important overall, and what's to say that the choices I make will not affect him?

Besides, despite being relatively safe most of the time, Konoha had still been flattened several times over the course of canon. Could I really survive without any ninja skills whatsoever? Could I doom the world to collapse?

What if, since I'm not a ninja, Kiba doesn't want to be one either? What would happen to team eight? What would happen to the universe?

I knew I shouldn't think about it as though I held the lynch pin of the universe. Theoretically that's the yet to be born Naruto. However, I still had some form of self preservation. Having died relatively young by lifestyle standards in my previous life, I had no desire to die again for no reason at all than simply existing in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I had to be better equipped to protect myself than the average civilian at any rate. So I just have to survive the end of the war, which is very likely as I have no impact on that, the Sand-Sound invasion, in which I'll be eighteen or so,-and isn't it a sad thought older than when I died the first time around-Pein's flattening of Konoha, the rest of the Akatsuki, Danzo's brief reign of terror, and Madara. I hadn't watched the anime's ending, but there was something about a rabbit and the moon...but I don't even know if that is a part of the universe that I'm in, and if I survive that long I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.

The thought of Danzo brought me short though. Everything else had been external factors, but Danzo, now Danzo is extremely close to home.

He took the genius children. From what I'd remembered about Shino's brother, and Itachi, the clans were ill equipped to stop him. I couldn't even mention him to anyone else, because they wouldn't take me seriously. Who'd believe that the Honorable Elder Shimura is a kidnapper?

And I'd already been noted as a bright child who stayed home alone with only three puppies. He wouldn't right? As an Inuzuka, I wouldn't mean much without my dogs, and I'd be too noticeable with them.

The thought is no comfort whatsoever. I have to keep a low profile.

In the end, I don't tell Tou-san and Kaa-san that I want to go to academy. Instead, I dither and learn to read and write instead. I become a rather common visitor first, in the children's section of the library, where surprise surprise, ninja stories were extremely common and depictions of ninjas as brave and heroic were also the positive norm, and then, shortly after I pass my third birthday, in the adult section as well.

I want to learn about chakra techniques. Having survived until three without even noticing chakra usage in daily life, I started questioning if I am even capable of the task. I mean, I'm not technically Hana, or even someone whose first birth was in the same universe. What if I don't have any chakra at all?

So after having learned how to read, I venture towards the adult section to try and find any description of chakra I could get my hands on.

Unfortunately, due to frequenting a civilian library, there's not much of anything on chakra, and most of it can be found in the fiction section.

Tou-san poofs into existence behind me on my walk back from the library one day, a few months after my third birthday. "What are you doing out here by yourself, Hana?" He doesn't sound cross with me, just vaguely amused and I am again struck by how different ninja parenting is. If I'd run around about town when I was three in my previous life my parents would have thrown a fit. He picks me up and balances me on a hip when I reach up for him and pout. I am going to enjoy being carried while I still can.

"They wouldn't let Ichi, Ni, and San in. No pets." I grouse, with a fistful of Tou-san's flak jacket. Walking down the street with Tou-san had an unwelcome side effect though. Almost everywhere we went, people whispered. I suppose it isn't everyone, but the old women who would nod and wave as I trudged down the street alone went suspiciously tight-lipped and angry eyed when Tou-san is walking with me.

"Where wouldn't they let you in, Flower?" Kaa-san liked to call me Little Nose more than she liked to call me flower, but Tou-san was the exact opposite. Granted, the Kanji for my name is actually flower, so the nickname is unoriginal at best, but the man is trying. I let it be.

"The library, Tou-san." I nod angrily to myself. "No pets in the library." There was only one chewed up book that one time. Tou-san is spared from having to try to commiserate with me, he isn't very good at it since he doesn't understand how much the Triplets mean, not being an Inuzuka and all, but left to his own devices he'd try and fail. I only have to be myself with them, and they'd never judge. If I think something strange or something I wouldn't know yet, they wouldn't think it strange at all.

A man with a high tail taps Tou-san on the shoulder and he whirls around. "Relax. It's only me, Kaito." I study the man curiously. He has a long face, and dark green smudges under his eyes and he is wearing the standard issue flak jacket.

I tug Tou-san's arm. "Tou-san, who this?" He must be a Nara, there's no way that he isn't, but which Nara? He doesn't look like Shikaku, but maybe he's going through a face paint phase? He looks about the right age for it, but his hair isn't bushy either.

"This your flower, Kaito?" The man smiles languidly. "Nice to meet you, little one, I'm Ensui."

"S'good to meet you, Ensui-san." Tou-san sets me down, and Nara Ensui laughs. "A polite one, huh. She must get that from you." Not Shikaku then. Not everyone is a main character.

"Yes, my flower is quite polite, Ensui." Tou-san pins me with a stern look. "Go straight home, okay? Konoha is too big for you still." His concern is touching, and I nod.

"Uh-huh." There'd be time to puzzle out why a Nara looked for Tou-san and seemed to be on good terms with him, later. Right now, I had to devise a way to see if I had chakra.

A.N. And so we meet another character, Nara Ensui, who is surprisingly, not an OC. He shows up in Kakashi's fight at the end of the Fourth Shinobi war. What he wants with Inuzuka Kaito nearly eighteen years before that is up for debate.

I've tried to include as many background characters from the actual manga and anime as possible, to cut down on the number of original characters. Narutopedia has become my best friend and worthiest ally in this frightful endeavor.

A special thanks to my sis, for reading this story and leaving me a review. It makes me happy. Also, a shout out to everyone who's favorited and followed since the last chapter, you guys all rock, and let's keep this train rolling.

~Tavina