1 Chapter 1: Of Taijutsu and Insanity 1/2

Disclaimer : Naruto and all related characters and settings belongs to this guy in Japan that can draw actual people. Not me. Can't draw worth crap.

Rating : Err … T for swearing and bad language in general? Might make it to M for gore and violence later on.

Author's Note : Woot! Editing in progress… stand by, you might run into bad grammar and horrible sentence structures in the future parts. My wacky English skills were taken on by Memory25, who is also in the progress of helping me with the next parts, with some context aid from New and Old. Be warned, I'm not taking down the prior ANs unless there was something majorly wrong with those.

Déjà vu no Jutsu came out of a vague idea after a binge of Naruto crossovers, time travel fics, and self-inserts scenarios while I was working my crummy gas station job with little to nothing else to do besides think, which is why it's just inching over twenty thousand words long. Half a year of thinking about it, nearly fifty pages in 10 point font, right here.

I'm still of two minds of what happens to Minato and Kushina later on, or what will happen to Natsumi in the very end, so let me know what you think should happen or any other changes. And no, if I screwed up something majorly, I really can't explain why. I've got a vague timeline with this story and I'm good with just that to work with. If you find something wrong with the Japanese, feel free to scream at me. Want to see something especially happen in the story? Let me know, there's no fixed plot for this. I just want to finish it, and get it far past the baby years for crying out loud, since there really are more unfinished stories like this than completed ones. All in all, if you just want to yell at me for not updating my other fics, pm me instead of leaving a review here, please.

One last thing, the answer to the question posed under this section's title will be answered in part two. Then part three will have a question answered in part four, and five, if we have a part five, will be … eh. Something. If you don't like reviewing a story's grammar or contents, try answering that.

Summery : Take one dead, thirty-year-old career soldier, stick in the body of a child during the Second Great Shinobi War. Add a mini-Namikaze Minato, ninjas, chakra, tailed beasts, and shake well. Is it any wonder she thought she was insane? Second/Third Great Ninja War era SI AU.

Part One: Of Taijutsu and Insanity

There's a fine line between genius and madness.

So if you can tell the genius he is mad with little problem, why can't you tell the madman he's genius without awkward questions being asked of your own sanity?

Mesuji Natsumi frowned absently at the slightly younger blond kid standing before her. Namikaze Minato flushed lightly under her stare but continued to hold her gaze steadily. She had to give him credit for the guts it took to do that, because not even the caretakers at the orphanage they both lived in could look her in the eye for long without shying away.

Minato had just asked her to help him with his taijutsu, seeing as she was noted as one of the strongest kunoichi in their year. Not that being best in taijutsu in a group of eight or nine-year-old children was any great accomplishment to be boasted of, but Natsumi saw the intelligence in asking a sempai for help instead of trying to do it all alone and possibly screw something major up. However, her reservations about helping the other kid kept her silent as she mulled the request over thoroughly.

The child known as Mesuji Natsumi, orphaned kunoichi trainee of Konohagakure, was a bit of an abnormality. Something the girl herself would freely admit to. Where most children were happy playing games of ninja all day every day, Natsumi preferred either reading under a shady tree somewhere, working out on her own, helping out the caretakers who looked after the fifty other children of varying ages, or running errands for them to get her out of the crowded building. The other children thought she was stuck up because her now dead mother had been a kunoichi and raised her for the first three years of her life.

In truth, Natsumi had a really hard time equating the woman who may have visited her every few weeks for the first hazy days of her life with her mother.

Her differences from the other children could be narrowed down to one actual reason. Natsumi could recall another life that didn't include shinobi or Hidden Villages. She had been a twenty-seven-year-old Staff Sergeant enlisted in the United States Army and she was reasonably certain she had been killed in action after insurgents ambushed her company's patrolling squad. So she was still rather unsure if she was hallucinating being a kid again or not, since she had followed the Naruto manga storyline somewhat past Shippuden but lost interest around the time her unit was gearing up again for another deployment across the pond.

Natsumi knew the kid before her was going to be the Fourth Hokage, who would have a son that he would sacrifice his life to seal the strongest demon of the Elemental Countries into, that she was attending the academy with the next generations' clan leaders scattered through the three years, and that everything seemed to go to hell in a hand basket after three or four generations from her current point in time now.

The question was: What was she doing here at all?

A hesitant shift drew the young 'girl's' attention back to the blond-haired, blue-eyed academy student still waiting her response. She figured she had better answer him before he wandered off and she got an even worse reputation for anti-social tendencies.

"…reflexes and speed."

"Aa… what?"

Natsumi's lips twitched at the bewildered expression on her classmate's childish face, then huffed a sigh and explained further. She couldn't get the Yondaime killed by advice before his inauguration and impending death, right?

"Train your reflexes and speed first. Katas are good too, but we're not going to remain this size our entire life. So unless you train with someone that's the same size and is just as good as you, you're not going to get a good feel of a real fight's rhythm just yet. Just concentrate on muscle memory for the moment instead of trying to find a way to keep up with someone who outsizes you, since they won't half a decade down the road… and stamina now that I think about it. Staying power." She shrugged, waving one hand to indicate the small stretch of yard behind her where she had been working out before the other child had interrupted her. "Flexibility is also something you would want to develop now, seeing as it's easier to keep up with than start on it out cold later on."

Minato flushed red in embarrassment, seeing as he had interrupted Natsumi's nightly ritual for his request. Stretches that were nearly an entire exercise regimen in itself. A few girls their age had tried to keep up with Natsumi's routine for a while on their own but they gave up after the first few nights, claiming that no one should be able to do all that every night and still rise with the sun to do another different set. To be honest with himself, he really hadn't expected the odd girl almost half a year older than him to humor his request at all. It was well known that Natsumi couldn't stand many of the kids that lived in the orphanage with them, she would frequently get impatient or annoyed with the attitude most had.

What they all didn't know was that the 'girl' was just following a habit of nightly yoga stretches and early morning calisthenics she had established in another life, just much earlier than she had before.

The blond watched the slightly older girl ponder his proposal a bit more. She wasn't much taller than him, but she had flat, wiry muscles under her dark, earth-toned second hand clothing, and even less baby fat than most other shinobi-in-training. She had a kendo-user's back, steady balance, and was light-footed due to the physical exercise and posture she held herself to. She had her mother's eyes, as per what the caretakers whispered to themselves when they thought the academy kids were too distracted to eavesdrop. A curious, mismatched pair of light blue and green. It gave her a bit of an asymmetrical look from a distance, as if her blue eye was smaller than the other. Her hair was frequently up, either in a bun or a high-tail, and it reached the small of her back because the caretakers refused to let her cut it to shoulder length.

She could keep up with a Nara's intellect on occasion, frequently by going off in tangents that Shikaku hadn't gotten around to thinking about yet, and seemed as resigned by the whole academy curriculum as any member of the clan. She could also understand people almost in the same way Inoichi could, but was better at articulating that than the Yamanaka clan heir. She was smart but hated attention, he knew she frequently threw her paper tests and screwed up her own homework to remain comfortably in the middle ranking of their academy class. There were a few rather interesting rumors about who her father could have been... but if she knew, Natsumi wasn't talking.

"If you want to join me, you can." Her childishly high voice brought the current Rookie of the Year back to the present sharply. "But I won't go easy on you. You'll have to catch up on your own."

She tapped one finger against her lips and inspected Minato.

"If you do manage to keep up with me, I'll spar with you every evening."

Minato visibly brightened at that. After all, that was what he had been after when he had approached her.

(ooo000ooo)

Minato cursed Natsumi out in the safety of his mind. He cursed her unnatural exercises and her freaky ability to find and correct just about every error he had made in the last two days with all the eloquence of an eight-year-old. Mostly by calling her stupid.

Natsumi's stretches hurt. They turned muscles to mush, tendons into overcooked noodles, and left the blond in an exhausted heap that he had to drag into bed once the night was over. The girl herself was completely unapologetic when she dragged him out of his futon and out into the predawn light the next day to do another set of movements, exercises, and katas.

Better get used to it now than in the middle of a fight where you're out of chakra, injured, and trying to get your scrawny butt back home out of enemy territory.

Minato frowned into his mattress as the trainee kunoichi's favorite encouragement echoed in his head. She was even odder than he had thought. Natsumi had ignored the girls when they tried to copy her habits, but had efficiently taught him to do what she did. He had never seen her teach anyone else, but after thinking about it he chalked it up to her mother's own teachings.

The woman had to have been worse than her. He spent a moment thanking kami that he was only dealing with the child and not the mother.

\V/

Two weeks later, Yamanaka Inoichi finally managed to corner Minato about what he had been doing the lunch break. "You asked Mesuji-san for help with your taijutsu?"

"How did you know?" Namikaze asked brightly, causing the eavesdropping girl-woman to smirk to herself. She imagined the same smirk was on Minato's face as he played innocent.

"The way you sidestepped that punch this morning during practice," the drawl could only belong to the Nara clan heir, Shikaku, the boy who was confused and intrigued by her on a daily basis. "That was just how she does it, but she's more graceful about it. Almost fluid-like. You both caught the instructor's attention with that."

A huff of sheepish embarrassment escaped Minato. "Rub it in, Shika-kun. But I am learning, and Natsumi-sempai hadn't told me to scram yet."

It was said with an edge of wonderment that caught the woman-turned-girl in surprise. She hadn't been that bad, had she?

"How?" Ah, that had to be one of the Hyūga twins in the year above them. Or maybe the Uchiha heir Fugaku the year above that? Someone with a large stick shoved somewhere uncomfortable with how grated the word had come out. Then again, it couldn't be the younger of the twins, Hizashi, he wasn't as uptight.

"I asked her." Minato sounded so smug about it as he indulged in a bit of childish bragging between friends. Natsumi almost wanted to laugh at the predicable reply, if it wasn't for her curiosity keeping her silent. "She stared at me for a bit, almost if she couldn't understand why. But she finally gave me a few pointers and told me I could join her when she trained in the mornings and evenings." His tone of voice changed from smug to wondering to satisfied, and the girl could almost see it as if the blond kid was standing in front of her. "She also said if I catch up to her, she would spar with me."

"That's… not how the other girls described her." Inoichi mused aloud, almost to himself. He had to be one of the closer ones to the open window she was sitting under. "They told us repeatedly she was standoffish. If that were true, wouldn't she have ignored you?"

There was a splutter, and even before the inhale and high-pitched voice, Natsumi just knew it was one of the civilian girls shoved into the academy without proper instruction or warning, in the hopes that a kunoichi would increase the family's social social standing. Mei, or Mimi, or something inane like that. "She is. You're just being led along until she decides to be cruel to you, Mina-kun! You should avoid-"

Natsumi quickly used the window's edge to haul herself up to sit on the small ledge. True to what she thought, Inoichi was sitting in the desk closer to the window and spotted the kunoichi in question first out of the group still lingering in the classroom. A few others scattered around and in position to see her on the sill gave her an unimpressed look for using the window instead of going around to the door.

"You know…" All the first year academy students who hadn't noticed her yet stiffened at her sarcastic drawl, then whipped around to face her. "I find it fascinating that you know me so well when I'm mostly sure I don't even know your name, girl."

The soon-to-be-eleven-year-old Uchiha Fugaku had been the one to question Minato's efforts, not either of the nine-year-old Hyūgas. Then again, if one of the twins had been present, Natsumi was sure she wouldn't have been able to eavesdrop without difficulty. Damn that clan and their all-seeing eyes.

Mei, or Mimi, started to splutter again, an embarrassed flush rising up her pale, chubby cheeks. "I know you, alright. You're a mean little girl with no talent."

"Yeah!" Another girl came up to Mei's, or Mimi's, shoulder and sneered with all the weight of her eight years. "Shut up, weird eyes! Stop bothering Kyoko-chan."

Natsumi raised one eyebrow in the face of the insults, amused at the shallow attempts of bullying.

"Really." She deadpanned, looking the two wannabe kunoichi over, less than impressed with their name-calling. "… I thought her name was Mei. Or Mimi."

Ignoring the flush of rage going up Kyoko's face, the appalled expression on her friend, the snickering from Inoichi, and the ever-placid Chouza's amused expression; Natsumi tapped one calloused finger against her lips.

"I really can't recall meeting the two of you. Care to explain?" She drawled out with all the commanding edge from another life spent barking orders to unruly soldiers.

Kyoko squeaked, actually squeaked, and dropped a cringing Minato's arm like she had been burned. The blond kid took no time in repositioning himself on the other side of Fugaku to get away from his insistent fangirl, keeping his eyes curiously on what was going on. The Uchiha heir, contrary to the mild rivalry that existed between himself and the first year academy classes' Rookie of the Year, stood firm with a blank face and allowed the younger Namikaze to use him as a meat shield. Then again, Uchihas were rather infamous for hating the inevitable fangirls they collected like used gum, so it wasn't unusual that he was giving assistance to someone else trying to avoid them.

"You were the one who threw a senbon through my ear!" The girl screeched, making everyone in the vicinity flinch from the high pitch she used.

The Aburame kids, who had been listening in silently over by the corner, winced and exited the classroom as soon as they calmly could, followed by the scrambling lone Inuzuka girl and her two ninken almost on the bug users' heels. Both clans were sensitive to loud sounds, and the civilian girl had just irritated or annoyed the latest shinobi trainees of both clans.

Natsumi snapped the fingers of her right hand, recalling the one and only time she had seen the girl anywhere other than in the classroom. "Right! You were the idiot that questioned Tsubaki-sensei about the effectiveness of precision senbon throwing to the point where she was contemplating throwing you out of the kunoichi classes."

She had hit the girl in the ear with a practice senbon with enough force to pierce the skin, and the sensei had admired her aim out loud first before taking the girl to the nurse station set up in the front of the building, telling her to 'toughen up, it's not that bad' the entire time.

Now Natsumi inspected the deathly pale girl standing in front of her and mused out loud enough to be heard. "I really thought your name was Mei, or Mimi. Or something stupid like that."

Inoichi was smothering his laughter into both hands by this point, blond head bowed to keep his eyes off the two girls and losing his head entirely. Shikaku had a lazy grin stretching his face because this had nothing to do with him and so he could just enjoy the show freely. The others were a mix of studied indifference or sheepish embarrassment, either trying to conceal their chagrin at being caught out gossiping or being spied upon successfully. Except for Chouza, who just kept on eating to maintain his clan's inherited metabolism at peak efficiency as he ignored the drama unfolding before him.

The other girl, whom Natsumi still didn't know the name of, hesitantly spoke up over the Akimichi heir's munching.

This strange eyed kunoichi had never before bothered to do something about Kyoko's rather mean rumormongering, and she didn't quite know what was going on to make the strange girl snap at them. "My name is Mei."

"Right…" Natsumi shook her head after a moment, not at all embarrassed by getting their names wrong. "Still don't care. If you're going to spread misinformation, at least have the decency to do it at least with some kind of skill."

She hefted a painfully fake sigh, well aware that baiting the two girls probably wouldn't do her much good in any popularity contest. But still, it would probably get them to shut up for a bit and cause others to avoid her when the news that she wasn't an easy mark for bullying got out. Hey, she was supposed to be a child, after all. Why not have a bit of fun with it?

"Just because you have no talent in any really practical skills doesn't mean you should sink to toddler-level insults. We're supposed to be better than that."

Kyoko flushed completely red, either in rage or embarrassment, and spun around, only to lose the color again nearly as fast as she gained it.

Looming behind her, probably having moved just that instance with a carefully controlled shunshin so no one was taken off guard by him, was the main instructor for the first year academy students. Hiruki-sensei had carefully blanked features as he watched the girl staring fearfully up at him. "Is there a problem here, children?"

Ignoring the dutiful muttering of 'no, sensei', Hiruki-sensei looked over at the girl perched in the window sill. "Are you sure about that, Natsumi-chan?"

"Yep." Suppressing the grimace at the tag on her name, the misplaced soldier shrugged in false innocence. "Was there something you wanted from us, sensei?"

"Hmm." His dark eyes inspected the faces of the children before him before focusing back on the troublemaker herself. "A moment, Kyoko-chan? I need a word with you."

The girl gulped fearfully, but followed the instructor out of the room. Natsumi just shrugged to herself as she watched the two of them leave the classroom.

Either Kyoko was going to get chewed out for screeching in a room with an Inuzuka and two Aburames nearby without an immediate need, or disciplined for starting damaging rumors about a fellow classmate for personal and petty, therefore wasteful, reasons. Either way, the girl needed it badly.

Now left with about six other kids of various ages, she contemplated leaving. Not that she was anti-social like most thought, she just didn't like meeting new children and trying to figure out how to not insult them unwittingly.

On the other hand, maybe she was kind of anti-social at the moment given her own height.

"Sempai! You're still here!"

Well, there went that idea. With Minato beaming at her with a hint of evil intent around the edges, Natsumi was sure she wasn't getting away anytime soon.

(ooo000ooo)

Minato was still grinning. He really couldn't help it.

Natsumi-sempai was grudgingly getting along with the rest of his friends. Mostly, he was sure, because he hadn't left the sometimes-taciturn kunoichi trainee much choice in the matter.

Tuning out Shikaku's third attempt to explain the rules of Go to the strange eyed girl, he puzzled over the last few hours in his head.

Natsumi had stiffened up when he had introduced her to the other boys, but that rigidity had melted away after a few minutes when Mei finally left to find her friend while the rest of that unbending edge had dissolved once five minutes passed without much of anything said. Now she was just awkward as if unused to making more friends or talking to others.

That made him just as sad to think about as watching Natsumi do her exercises alone every evening at the orphanage. Like the rest of the academy kids with a higher than average intelligence, Natsumi was unused to relating with others her age since most of them couldn't understand her, and vice-versa.

Minato knew he was smarter than average. Not nearly as smart as Shikaku, but the Nara heir could outthink his own father. His own intelligence went along with his ability to remember everything he saw, but that was nothing compared to the shadow user's intuitive intelligence. Natsumi was smart too. Not like the Naras or himself, it was more like she could think on multiple levels at the same time. She saw much more than Minato could at first glance, and normally understood what it all meant in that same moment as well.

Comprehension was what Natsumi excelled at. Able to understand underneath the underneath naturally, really, Minato mused to himself as Natsumi gifted Shikaku with a lopsided, teasing grin and admitted she knew how to play, she just wanted to know how long it would take him to get fed up with explaining the rules to her.

There was something else to her too, almost like the tone of voice the girl had used against Kyoko. Something else that gave her a confidence that was hard to fake.

He wanted to know what that was.

(ooo000ooo)

Bemusedly, Natsumi played three games with the shadow user before bowing out and dragging Minato back to the orphanage for their nightly stretches. She had lost all three, but Shikaku had had to work hard for them. Something that had the Nara heir considering her thoughtfully yet again.

"So?" Her new kouhai asked while trying his third yoga stretch. "What d-do you think about—ah!"

Natsumi grabbed ahold of Minato's leg before he could overcorrect his balance and fall face first on the ground.

"Shut up and concentrate, gaki, or you'll do worse than face plant." She couldn't keep the fond tone out of her voice even as she tried for irritable. "They're alright. Even the Uchiha-baka, and I never thought that was possible."

The blond pushed himself upright with a grin, ignoring the trembling of his limbs as he took a seat on the ground for the next set which she was already on. "Will you hang out with us more often then?"

"Why?" She really couldn't understand his motives. Natsumi was mostly content with continuing as she had been, there really wasn't a reason to get a friend she would have to lie to. The whole lived-another-life thing could get her sent to the mental hospital at best, a one-way trip to T&I at worst. Not really anything she really wanted to risk. Besides, she still had to figure out what the hell was going on.

"Cause you're lonely." Minato puffed out, pulling one leg up as far as he could and wincing at the sensation of pulling tendons and ill-used muscles flexing. "I could see it, heck, even the caretakers could. Where's the harm?"

Natsumi eyed the angle the blond was bending, ignoring his description of her for the moment. "Why do you care?"

"You're a comrade." Her fellow academy student shot back, unperturbed at the rude question. All geniuses had quirks you ignored if you wanted to get along with them. Shikaku's were laziness and strategy games. Apparently, Natsumi's included rudeness.

The supposed girl's mind was wrenched back to the soldier's memories and the many nights she had spent with the others of her unit either just screwing around drinking or playing some kind of multi-person shooter game. She had to admit she missed that kind of closeness while stuck in the body of a kid in wherever the hell here was. "Fine."

\V/

Natsumi turned into a bit of an unwilling friend after that.

She stopped objecting to the blond's insistence on including her, and it was becoming less of a rarity for her to seek out the boys when they had some free time. The Hyūga twins, or at least half of them, were indifferent to what the mismatched eyed girl did and didn't do. Hizashi tried almost as hard as Minato to include her, but had only half the succession rate the Namikaze kid did. Unless she managed to win one of their irregular shogi or go games, Shikaku didn't react at all except to eye her like he was trying to puzzle something out. Following along with the Nara heir, both Inoichi and Chouza would try to include her every now and again. Uchiha Fugaku simply focused on maintaining his silent rivalry with Minato, the two years between the boys notwithstanding, which took a bit of a hit when he was told Natsumi could have had the title but didn't want the attention, forcing him to acknowledge the girl as something other than an annoyance.

Minato didn't mind when his sempai wandered off on her own for a while, seeing as she was less lonely than before and kept up with training with him every evening. After all, she always came back.

Sometimes though, she would come back and throw in a comment or two that would turn their thoughts on their heads instead of keeping her opinions to herself like she usually did.

Inoichi had been complaining to the rest of them about the mandatory field excursion for their year, which was more like a week-long field trip to one of the farthest Training Grounds that was still inside the walls of the village. "I was going to ask tou-chan about training me in the next level of our clan techniques. Why can't I skip this trip?"

"Brainwashing… or mental conditioning. One of the two."

The flat reply had all the boys spinning around. Natsumi had an odd expression on her face as she quirked a grim smile at them all.

"Your clan does mind-walking jutsus and specializes in reverse psychology and psychological warfare in individual combat outside the village, right?" At the platinum blond's nod, the girl cracked her neck before sitting down with the rest of them and pulling out her lunch. "Think of it this way. If social expectations and pressures can form a mob mentality you can direct to violence from just the impression of an insult done to them from a specific controlling group, why wouldn't the stigma attached to killing in civilized society be as easily ignored or worked around in a similar group mentality with the right encouragement or leading? You do recall we're training to be killers, right?"

Inoichi blushed a bit as he worked it out in his head, though he was sure she wasn't irritated at him for overlooking that angle, pulling his bento box closer to his body. He just hadn't thought of that, too caught up in learning to read another person's mind with his clan's jutsus. Chouza patted his friend on the back, commiserating with him since it seemed none of the others had had the same thoughts, offering a chip from his ever present bag to the blond.

The Nara heir snorted from the Akimichi's other side, giving the girl a long, sideways look. "So you think this is only to get the hesitation of a kill out of the way."

"Unless there's going to be a surprise attack by bandits or nuke-nin that somehow evaded the village's security," here she gave a nod of recognition to Fugaku as part of the Uchiha clan controlling the main chunk of Konoha's internal security by the Second Hokage's decree, "not so much getting the hesitation out of the way as making us kill at least one animal and associating the death with something else besides the socialized stigma of murder. Like say, a pleasant camping trip with friends."

At the blank looks on their faces, she huffed in exasperation.

"Did no one else read the notice? We're expected to hunt our own food. That would include killing and preparing it. There are some people that can't even bring themselves to harm the local wildlife much less another person, you know."

There was an almost wordless inhale of comprehension from the others. Minato acquired an unusual expression as he studied the girl's fading expression of cynicism, but Natsumi figured she would be grilled about how she understood that much later that night at the orphanage. For now, she turned her attention forcibly back to what drew her over to them in the first place.

"Do any of you know that new redhead girl in the first year classes? She apparently showed up this morning, but I wasn't here to hear what's going on."

"Why weren't you here?" Hizashi eyed the bandages that covered the girl's forearms, noting one was a bit more bulky than the other. "Pull something?"

"Sprained my wrist this morning, actually. The workers over at the orphanages panicked over it." She shrugged the concern away idly, accepting the sympathizing nods from the rest of them and the sympathy potato chip Chouza automatically handed to her with a slight, quirky smile. There hadn't been a week yet where they didn't have some kind of injury, ranging from cuts and bruises to even a broken rib once in Hiashi's case. "Well?"

"Uzumaki Kushina, Mesuji-san." Fugaku supplied, sneering at her. The sneer was ignored by all reflexively now, the clan's famous superiority complex was rumored to be a genetic trait along with their kekkai genkai. Kind of like the Uzumaki's verbal tic and their insane stamina. Quietly, of course. "Loudmouthed little girl from Uzugakure claiming that she is going to be the first female Hokage."

It hadn't been difficult to overhear that, given how boisterous the girl was.

"Huh." Natsumi tapped her chopsticks against the edge of her store-bought bento as the name rang a loud bell, idly thanking the kami that she had learnt how to eat rice with them from fellow soldiers in her previous life. She found that any skills she didn't already know before were harder to grasp with a child's motor control and attention span. Damn throwing skills, she still needed to work on them. "Just to let you know, Uchiha-sama, Uzumaki-san latched onto Mikoto-san as a sempai with a death grip and has given no inclination that she's going to let go."

Fugaku blanched, temporarily forgetting his Uchiha stoicism in light of the warning and the consequences it would have for him. He didn't really care about the odd kunoichi Minato had offered friendship to either way, and she was thankfully similarly indifferent to him, but she would give him tips about his legion of fan girls and any rumors linked to his clan in return for his tolerance of her presence when she showed up.

"Dear kami-sama, please no."

The aforementioned Uchiha girl was a year younger than him, and Mikoto was rumored to the leading candidate for the position of his wife on the elders' lists. That meant if she did become friends with Uzumaki Kushina, the loudmouth red-headed kunoichi would become a familiar headache to the Uchiha clan heir sooner or later. He ignored the Akimichi's offer of sympathy and Hiashi took it instead. No use in wasting good potato chips.

"So what brings you back to your fellow humble students, Natsumi-sempai?" Minato cheerfully asked the dark-haired girl, smirking when she gave him an odd look.

"Must you continue calling me that? You're making me feel old." The sole kunoichi muttered without venom, used to the title after four months of continually being called that despite her protests, "And nothing, really. I was getting kind of bored."

She shrugged, concealing the gleam in her eyes by narrowing them. It was a bit too late, as the shadow user and her kouhai were both eyeing her worriedly.

"I've a question. What is a large group of shinobi called? A flock, a mass, or a murder?"

Fugaku understood it first, excluding Shikaku's groan and slump since he was a Nara. The raven haired shinobi-in-training managed to fix his sneering mask. "That was horrible. Kindly cease attempting to jest, Mesuji-san."

Chouza boomed out a laugh half a second later, while the Hyūga twins bore identical expressions of stoically pained tolerance as they too understood the joke she was trying to make. Inoichi shot a glare at Minato, as if his fellow blond was solely responsible for the girl's horrid sense of humor.

Natsumi's fellow orphan had a hand over his eyes and so, didn't notice the Yamanaka's ire. "You know, Natsumi-sempai, if I had known about your pathetic attempts at making jokes beforehand…"

"You probably would have asked me for taijutsu tips anyways." The lone kunoichi of the group shot back, ignoring the exasperated tone and posture. "How you managed your standing with only the academy style under your belt is beyond me, especially before you started working with me on it."

Minato shrugged without care and uncapped a bottle he had brought along to take a sip. "I either outlasted or outthought most of my opponents. The ones I couldn't outthink didn't care and the ones I couldn't outlast didn't really want to fight a friend."

He waved his own chopsticks at the terminally lazy shadow-master-in-training who was pretending that he was alone and staring up at the sky since it didn't look like the others were going to be quiet today, and the forever-eating walking mountain that was the Akimichi heir.

"Now though, with the speed and reflexes I have, I think only you and the clan-taught kids can keep up with me."

Natsumi had to give him that as she chewed, both on her food and over her kouhai's logic. She had her previous life's combatives that most thought was merely an unfinished style her mother had favored, a mash of many different martial arts unknown to Konoha and combined by the soldiers of her last life into a very effective offensive style, and Konohagakure's academy style, which was more defensive than offensive.

Minato had refused to learn anything more than flexibility and strength training, however, explaining that it was a point of pride for him to excel only at the style taught to the pre-genin of Konoha.

Stupid, stubborn blonds.

Then the bell rang.

\V/

"So, want to come with me?" Minato asked cheerfully, ducking under the punch from his sempai that would've loosened a few teeth.

"Whose birthday is it again?" Natsumi asked in return instead of answering his question. She wasn't even breathing hard as she caught the blond's returning punch with her left and swung him around by his arm to knee him in the back and knock the breath out of him before he could compensate for the reversal of his person.

The last Namikaze wheezed painfully between clenched teeth and hit the ground face first, rolling to the side to avoid the drop kick that impacted just after he hit the dirt.

He just knew that his back was going to bruise, and he thought again that it was horribly unfair of her. Since the girl had been exercising for so long already, she was rarely out of breath during their spars even though he would start flagging around the middle. His stamina was getting better, was better than most of the children in their year, but the girl with mismatched eyes had been doing her exercises for so long that she was leagues ahead of him.

So far, at least.

His sempai had confided that in the long run, he would trump her in stamina simply because he was a boy the same way she would him in speed as a girl. Which meant that, in the future, she could still get in some really good hits before the end when the spar tipped into his hands.

Natsumi really didn't want to go to a birthday party, heck she couldn't even recall her last one in either life, and she had no desire to see how it the present would differ to previous experience. Probably less alcohol, though. Although, she was mildly impressed with herself for recalling both dates of birth.

Of course, this was if the blond was really inviting her to a birthday party.

Minato coughed as he pushed himself up to his knees. "Damn, Natsumi-sempai. That one hurt. And it's Shika-kun's."

With a short glance at the newly emerging stars to check the general time, the displaced woman in a girl's body shook her head and motioned for them to start their cooldown stretches. "Do I want to spend a night being challenged to Shogi or Go games and being guilt tripped into playing with Shika-kun's clan when I don't want to?"

Her fellow academy student blushed at her dry tone.

"Really, Mina-kun. Your actual reason, please."

"Umm…" Ignoring that Natsumi only called him 'Mina-kun' when she was starting to get irritated with him, Minato mustered his courage and promptly quailed at the glare the girl was pinning him with. "W-what do you mean actual reason?"

"Because before it was Shikaku-kun's, it was Inoichi-kun's. I heard that from the twins. And before that, Chouza-kun's birthday. From Shikaku-kun himself. Remarkable that they were all born on the same day, huh?"

Minato slapped a hand to his forehead and squeezed his eyes shut. Apparently they hadn't coordinated as well as they thought they had, "Well… that's just… damn."

"Just ask the question that's been bothering you, would you? You're starting to worry me." Natsumi threw up her hands in uncharacteristic exasperation, stopping mid-stretch and glaring at the other child in a similarly alarming deviation from her normal routine. "I've answered all of the ones you've asked, right?"

The future Yondaime Hokage flushed in shame, taking in the stress that lined the face of his only female friend's from his and the others' subterfuge. He supposed he and the rest of their little group had done the girl a disservice, since she didn't lie to them. And any question they had asked of her were answered… just not fully.

Shikaku had been the first to catch on to the girl's quirks. The cynicism aimed at the instructors' methods of teaching, her inability to deal with large groups of people, her skill at a game Minato had admitted he had never seen her play before. She was blasé to the extreme in some aspects but touchy about others. Inoichi had been the first to bring up that she may have been a spy.

But if that were true, why would she bother them with her horrible jokes? If she was aiming to get close to the future clan heads, why go off on her own so much? She never disappeared, just kept herself at a slight distance, and lost herself in whatever was occupying her mind. Even Fugaku had been skeptical when the possibility had been brought up. Besides, why would she give the time of day to a nameless orphan?

"Aa, sorry." Minato held his hands up at her irritated glare. "Really! Just, okay." He rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "Not very well done, huh?"

"You don't say?" Natsumi gritted out. "Where do you want to ask, Minato?"

The blond sighed tiredly and fell back into his own cool down routine. "The Nara's clan compound. Shikaku-kun got us permission to camp out for the night in the forest behind his house."

(ooo000ooo)

Shikaku had his head buried in his hands when the two orphans finally showed up. Obviously, he had already discovered the miscommunication. He waved off Natsumi before she could comment. "Yes, we screwed up. Shut it, Natsumi-sempai."

The woman in a girl's body shrugged, offloading her academy-issued sleeping bag onto the ground before approaching the campfire Chouza had started and was still feeding firewood to. "So," she began for the uneasy group as she took a seat next to the Uchiha heir, "you couldn't just come out and ask me what was going on?"

Inoichi blushed beet red, not looking at the girl. The twins exchanged looks, and then shrugged. Fugaku kept his attention on the roasting rabbit as Minato took a seat next to Natsumi. Chouza was the only one to speak up, though he was more focused on the rabbit than the girl they had gathered to question. "I told them to, Natsumi-chan. But they like the conspiracy theories better."

"Really." The dry tone she used had all the boys wincing with various levels of shame. Natsumi scoffed at the automatic reaction from the males around her. "I'm not going to remain the only girl to hang out with you all. Better get used to it."

That had expressions of distaste crossing their faces, and the kunoichi cackled at them all. Ah, the wonders of foreknowledge. All of them procreated in the story she recalled, and that held a potential treasure trove for blackmail.

"Yeah, but they won't be as scary as you, Natsumi-chan." The shadow user grumbled just loud enough to be heard, lifting his head enough to see the girl clearly. "Now will you tell us what's going on?"

Natsumi shrugged and nodded to their collective surprise. She had chewed the questions in her head thoroughly, but was still unsure if she was actually concentrating on the important parts. Maybe telling someone would help, though she wasn't expecting it to do much good. "Sure. I'm trying to decide if I'm insane or hallucinating."

They were obviously confused as they exchanged looks before turning back to her. Those were not the words they had thought would come out of her mouth.

"Insane?" Inoichi prompted, looking fascinated. Everyone else around the campfire just looked uneasy.

Natsumi eyed him and his eager expression, snorting quietly to herself. Figures it would be the mind-walker that would take that declaration in stride.

"I can recall about twenty odd years of another life. Seeing as I'm not twenty-something, and I'm mostly certain I've died once already—being gutted hurts by the way—that leaves me with only a few options left for what's going on. Insanity, hallucinations, you know." She glanced to the stone-faced Uchiha at her side staring at her as if in anticipation of her pulling any tricks. "Though, if I am dreaming in a coma somewhere or hallucinating, there must be something really wrong with my head."

Cue genetic Uchiha sneer. Fun.

"Twenty-odd years?" Shikaku asked, sharp eyes taking in the relaxed posture Natsumi had as she made the claim. Body language alone told him that the girl was unconcerned about their opinion of her mental state. "I can see why you're thinking insanity."

She pulled a sour face in return for the scrutiny and the comment. "Funny thing is, Shika-kun, about seventy percent of that is mind-numbingly boring guard shifts and deployments. For it to be insanity, you would think it would be more interesting than that."

"Deployments? Which village and conflict do you recall, Natsumi-san?" Hizashi asked next. The woman turned girl was mostly certain that the forehead hidden behind the bandages was furrowed as the younger twin tried to imagine the headache of living two lives.

"None of them from current history, which would mean the last thousand years at least. I looked. Also wasn't a kunoichi before, I was just a soldier." She waved a hand dismissively, thinking back to the effort she had mustered to find anything she could recognize when she had been five. Just before she tripped over the whole 'ninja' thing and promptly started panicking about comas and hallucination. "As a matter of fact, I nearly had a heart attack the first time I saw a map of the Elemental Countries. Looks nothing like what I can remember from mission briefs."

Then the roof hopping ninja that triggered her one and only panic attack. She couldn't forget that ill-fated walk to the library if she wanted to.

When Minato finally spoke up, it was with a hint of incredulity lacing his voice as he stared at her. "Is that where you learned to fight then? Your style doesn't match anything in the village and there are the occasional times you overcorrect when training with me, like you're used to more reach."

Shikaku sat bolt upright at that reminder, having thought through and discarded many doubts about her sanity already. "You fight too well not to know your style inside and out. Even the academy instructors agree with that. Is that from your past and not from your okaa-san?"

"Yeah. We called it combatives back then." Natsumi shrugged idly, unsure where this tangent was going but willing to humor them. "It was taught to all the soldiers in the army I belonged to before my death. It was a mash of a lot of other styles of martial arts used around the world at the time. And no," she pulled a weird face at the reminder of her second mother, "kaa-san didn't really teach me anything before she died."

"And that's where you got the habit of going out at dawn and dusk to train?"

Natsumi eyed the blond on her right skeptically. "Yeah, and?"

"It's a possibility then, though not a very good one." Shikaku mused almost to himself, taking in the bewildered girl with mismatched eyes across the campfire. "Think about it—what if your previous life was before the Sage of Six Paths? Reincarnation is said to take a minimum of five hundred years. How would anyone know that if no one recalled their previous lives before? Legend does hold that there were super powered nations a long time ago, and the world might have changed over centuries. You said you could recall dying, right? What if you were reincarnated with memories intact?"

"Shikaku-kun, I haven't discarded the possibility that I'm hallucinating all of this." Natsumi threw her hands up in disbelief, rather unwilling to go along with that particular assumption of her mental state. She opened her mouth to ask the resident mind-walker a question but was derailed by the look of almost absolute manic glee on the blond's face. "What- Inoichi-kun?"

"I'll be able to tell! We're trained to catch that kind of detail when looking through someone's mind." The blond leaned forward, intent on proving it either way with his clan skills. "And I'll be able to tell if you're just suffering from delusions or badly implanted memories."

"Or flat-out insane." Huffed Hiashi, but was ignored when the Yamanaka got up and practically threw himself on the ground next to the girl.

"Look me in the eyes and concentrate on your past life."

(ooo000ooo)

The other boys milled around, thinking about Natsumi's little revelation while Inoichi explored the girl's mind. The rabbit was rescued from charring and eaten, a portion saved for the two distracted members of the group.

Their attention was drawn back sharply to the Yamanaka heir as he hurriedly scrambled for the bushes; leaving Natsumi to groan in pain, lurch upright while listing to the side, and lunge clumsily to catch the other eight-year-old's longish hair before it ended up striped with the blond's lunch on the forest floor. "I already said getting gutted was a bad experience, what the hell were you thinking, exploring that memory?"

"Sorry!" Inoichi gasped between heaves. "Just-urk!"

Natsumi made a face and closed her green right eye as she propped herself up against the tree the mind-walker was next to. Her sense of balance was shot, and neither the pounding headache nor the blond now dry heaving into the bushes was helping to dull the horror of her last life's final moments. "That was… extremely unpleasant. Let's never do that again."

"I made you feel the memories, too. Wasn't supposed to happen." Inoichi muttered dazedly, his face a mix of severe nausea and sincere regret. "Didn't really realize that if you recalled being killed, I'd feel what it felt like to be gutted too. But I don't know enough about my clan's jutsus to keep either of us from experiencing that again."

"Inoichi-kun? Natsumi-chan?" Shikaku's concerned voice drew their attention back to the others. The Nara had gone pale under his tan and the rest looked no better off. Natsumi was distantly proud of herself for putting that gaping fish expression on the kekkai genkai users' faces. "Is she sane or not?"

"She's not crazy!" The blond whooped suddenly, all but jumping upright and startling the girl into taking a few steps backwards in case he started laughing manically and demanding all their dango, or else. With how this night was going, she wouldn't put it past the Yamanaka heir just yet. "I mean, yeah, not entirely working with a full-length of ninja wire, but given what happened to her that's almost to be expected."

Natsumi took offense to that. "Oi! I think I'm doing well enough for being on my own, thanks."

He waved a hand in the air as if to dismiss her words. "You need some serious therapy, now hush."

The mind walker staggered his way back to their little circle of friends, grin still affixed to his face as he rapidly listed a crude summary of what the girl knew and what he now knew she knew.

"Thousands of years of history, Shika-kun! Three different languages, working knowledge of a few others, countless hours of schooling in military-related matters of the time, even years of combat leadership experience!" The grin only slipped as Inoichi reached the memory that had thrown him out of her head. "Definitely needs some kind of therapy, not the same we give for traumatic physical injury and losing teammates, but something all the same. She's just suffering from a severe case of survivor's guilt, disassociation with reality, and a few other major things. Since Minato-kun's pulled her out of the worst of it just by asking for her continued company, she's been working through the issues she could identify. And now I can help her with the rest!"

She flipped him off with a scowl, stubbornly ignoring her deathly pale and very concerned kouhai on her right as she sat down again to keep her knees from shaking. Damn the mini mind-shrink ninja and screw his therapy to hell. She was fine, damn it.

She suppressed the reminder of her frequent nightmare of desert nights, the smell of blood, throbbing pain and ohmygodisthatmyspine!?

Okay, not fine. Not even remotely… but she was still working on it!

Everyone else now looked less like someone had whacked them upside the head and beat them bloody with a frozen fish, Chouza even started snacking again as he considered the mentally unfocused girl while Inoichi all but gushed about her past life and the psychology she had studied.

Not crazy or insane, but the hallucination angle was still possible. Again, if someone you hallucinated said you were sane, were you?

Natsumi bit her lip and stared into the small camp fire, struggling with her own head and feelings as the others pressed Inoichi for answers. There had to be a problem with that logic. Not that there was any real logic to finding something you read as a hobby to be truth, but if she was hallucinating or in a coma somewhere in the desert she thought she died in, how could she tell without killing herself here?

She always did hate how Minato's kid had been treated in the manga. Would saving her little blond kouhai and his soon-to-be wife get the littler gaki killed later on down the line, or solve most of the problems before they became S-class threats to Konoha? Was it even a problem?

"Natsumi-chan? You alright?"

Minato's worried voice called her back to the present, and to the little niche she had carved out for herself here, insane or not. Blank, mismatched eyes slowly refocused on worried, bright blue.

"Yeah, I will be eventually." She risked a quick look to Inoichi, not at all surprised to see the knowing look in his lavender, pupil-less eyes. "Inoichi-kun will help me see to that."

\V/

Natsumi did eventually write out the choppy, bastardized, military-style psychology she had been taught for Inoichi to all but devour in return for her 'therapy'. He did, after all, come from a clan of shinobi that dabbled in psychology on the side when not in the interrogation department of T&I.

In a world of hired mercenaries and killers, the triggers and warning signs of an unbalanced mind in their ranks should be somewhat similar to her own experiences.

She did so only with the understanding that if he wanted to use any of it, he wasn't to mention her past life to anyone.

He only agreed because the reincarnated girl was uncomfortable enough with only the few of them knowing of her past life. No matter how blasé she was, the only reason she had shared her secret with them was because she had decided she wouldn't be getting much farther on her own. Having keenly felt the uncertainty in the girl-woman's mind just before he brought up her earliest memories, it wasn't too difficult for him to agree as long as she abided by his advice.

The Yamanaka heir had insisted on weekly therapy at minimum to work through her issues, much to the girl-woman's horror. Said therapy would happen whenever the group managed to get one of the academy student accessible training grounds for themselves through their clan influence, since Natsumi was not comfortable telling the current Yamanaka clan head why she needed therapy to use one of their sound-proof rooms.

Which the girl was still certain she didn't need.

At all.

There was a twenty-seven-year-old career soldier inside her sneering at the thought of shrinks and barking to drop a pair and move on, soldier! Crying about it won't help shit! Mental health checks had always been dreaded in her past life.

They refrained from going through her mind again, which Natsumi was pathetically thankful for. She wasn't sure how Inoichi had missed all her thoughts on the storyline, but didn't want to risk the scare she had after she realized what it would mean for a mind-walker to stumble upon them later that night.

Hizashi was the one to bring up informing the Hokage about her knowledge first, since it could be considered prior command experience if you tilted your head to the side and squinted.

"I tried, for the first year I could coherently string together a solid thought." Natsumi blithely informed them all one afternoon, a week after their camping trip in the Nara's backyard/training grounds. Class was out and they had gathered in the empty practice grounds for taijutsu sparring, with Shikaku taking a nap and Chouza playing referee, since anyone going up against the Akimichi clan heir was just asking for a broken bone.

Currently, they were stretching for a free-for-all which would be followed by pairing up for what practice they could fit in the remaining time. "But consider the difficulty of convincing Hokage-sama that I wasn't a spy of some sort, given the war going on outside the gates. Remember, I wasn't even sure I was sane at the time—still not so sure—so it was probably a good thing his secretary didn't take me seriously and never let me through."

The misplaced soldier was mostly certain that both Fugaku and Hiashi still thought her completely insane, whatever the Yamanaka clan heir said or not. Fair enough was all Natsumi could say to that, because she had had the same doubts the first nine years of this life and sometimes even now despite Inoichi's frequent reassurances. The Yamanaka didn't have all the parts to her mind puzzle, after all.

Thankfully, before the blond could repeat himself for the umpteenth time or prod her for more information, a certain red-haired girl and self-proclaimed rival of the current holder of the 'Rookie of the Year' title came screeching to a halt in front of a bemused and exasperated Minato. "I challenge you to a spar, Namikaze!"

It was always amusing to watch the two of them argue, but this afternoon Natsumi risked missing something potentially hilarious to share with Naruto, if she survived long enough to, to observe Mikoto, who was splitting her attention between her reluctantly acknowledged best friend and her all but confirmed betrothed.

With her newfound if questionable 'sane' status she really didn't know what to make of the girl. The girl who would apparently abandon her best friend's child to the orphanage and later the streets, while she played house with her husband and ignored how Naruto was the splitting image of Minato. She occasionally had the same thoughts about Fugaku even before Inoichi took a dive through her head. "So, anything new with you, Mikoto-san?"

The physically older girl gave the other kunoichi a small smile, starting out as polite and 'formally distant Uchiha' as ever but relaxing to something approaching pleasant near the end. "Not really, Natsumi-san. Kushina-chan has stated fūinjutsu lessons with Mito-sama, which leaves me with a bit more free time than before."

"I heard the Uzumaki clan is really good with seals." Natsumi looked back to the red streak that was Kushina, admiring the shade of crimson the future jinchūriki's cheeks were turning. "I imagine it would be difficult getting her to sit for calligraphy lessons with that kind of energy, though."

Most of the boys' attention was on Minato's attempt to turn down Kushina's challenge. Only the Nara heir could have claimed to hear them and he really couldn't have cared less about the topic of discussion.

Mikoto was a bit surprised that the slightly annoying girl who had all but welded the two of them together had that kind of clan history. "They are?"

"What, you didn't look up her bloodline and kekkai genkai the moment you knew her clan name?" Natsumi gave the Uchiha girl a lopsided grin. If it was a bit sharper than normal, eh. She wasn't that good at hiding when she was irritable or upset yet. There wasn't much of a point at the moment. "Uzumaki is one of the major bloodlines from Uzugakure, and a few of their women have married high ranking shinobi from our village. They're known for fūinjutsu and have a vitality-based kekkai."

Slapping a hand over her eyes, Mikoto sighed heavily as her shoulder slumped. "Damn, and here I thought she was unique. You're telling me there's more like her?"

Natsumi nodded faux-importantly with a barking laugh, "And all of them are rumored to be just as hyper as her. Hard not to be, when they have high chūnin or low jōnin level chakra reserves by this age bracket."

The girl winced at the mere thought before turning to the increasingly-incensed redhead. "Kushina-chan! We're going to be late to Mito-sama's!"

After checking the sun's position in response, Kushina screeched in alarm and all but vanished in a streak of red with her friend in tow.

Leaving a bemused blond, a gaggle of indifferent boys, and one smirking kunoichi. "Well, that was interesting."

"I don't know why she keeps doing that." Minato rubbed the back of his neck, looking in the direction the girls had left in. He liked Kushina, but she always wanted to spar instead of hang out and they really only had so much time before the clan kids had to be home for their family training sessions.

"Pigtail pulling." Natsumi offered, far too innocently to be believable as she fell into a ready position with Fugaku across the field.

Inoichi was the only one to laugh, in hysterical bursts that brought him to the ground, and the rest decided they didn't want to know after a good look at Natsumi's 'innocent' grin.

\V/

The rest of the academy year went by easily with a few hiccups and the occasional struggle that the group resolved by heavily abusing Natsumi's prior-combat experience. She was oddly amused by that, especially the few times the twins and the Uchiha heir asked for her advice on their homework.

The few times the girl-woman tried to avoid her sessions, Minato would drag her back, and said therapy would happen anyway.

Natsumi tried only once to completely remove Inoichi from being able to force her into talking about her other life, and the blond boys got the Hyūga twins to block her tenketsu points while the Nara heir trapped her in a full-body bind. However, that did mean that Hizashi, Hiashi, Shikaku, and Minato got to hear the gory details of how she and her patrol had died her first time around for themselves. They abandoned the rest of that day's therapy and clan training just to screw around and cheer up the 'walking dead' girl. Fugaku and Chouza were informed later that same night so they wouldn't bring up any bad memories by accident.

The end of the first academy year was dedicated to unlocking chakra coils in the clan-less students while the clan kids were set up with beginner chakra control exercises. It was one of the few areas that the misplaced soldier's prior life knowledge didn't cover, and so she was slightly nervous about it.

Minato had maybe five minutes to panic over the idea that Natsumi wasn't born with enough chakra to activate her coils while the kunoichi struggled to prove it wrong. The end of those five minutes gave him another reason to worry over as the flair of chakra that proceeded the unlocking of the ex-soldier's coils became visible—meaning that she had more than enough chakra—but with a color unlike the norm.

Natsumi's chakra, although in a higher volume than any other girl's except Kushina's, was a light purple.

She was rather indignant about the lilac color once the group managed to gather before the winter break, and was still muttering vile things about her unknown father, the only prospect they concluded that could have affected her chakra in any manner.

Her final comment about the oddity was, "What good is purple chakra anyways?"

"We would like to know that as well, Natsumi-chan." An affable, but gravelly voice answered from behind the group as they wandered around the marketplace that was where they split up for their various compounds or homes. The mid-sized group of academy students turned nearly as one to see the war-strained Sandaime Hokage smiling down at them from under his wide brimmed hat and over his smoking pipe. Next to him was an unknown shinobi, whom they figured to be some kind of medical specialist from the way he was dressed in a mix of scrubs and ninja gear. "Would you mind letting us take a look at your chakra system?"

The girl with mismatched eyes inclined her head to their village leader, turning to look at the rapidly paling blond at her side with a crooked grin. "Of course, Hokage-sama. Oi, can you tell the caretakers I'll be back much later, Minato-kun?"

"Actually, I've been meaning to invite you two over again." Shikaku announced suddenly, wide eyes still on the patiently waiting Hokage. "Come to my clan's compound later, Natsumi-chan."

(ooo000ooo)

It would have been funny at how worried the boys were for her, even the two sticklers holding out on deciding her sanity, if it hadn't been for the scare all of them had been given recently.

Not that they were doing anything wrong, there weren't any laws on keeping one's past life from your Hokage after all, but being snuck up on by said Hokage wasn't a laughing matter.