Chapter 2 -> Part 2

A week later, a Chuunin escorted me and Kushina from the tiny apartment we had been given to the Shinobi Academy. The small stipend for food and necessities was barely enough for us to buy a change of clothes and two meals a day. It wouldn't be enough to cover much more but I could stretch it far enough.

"Nii-san?"

I wasn't sure exactly when I started off-and-on thinking of Kushina as my sister but I convinced myself it was when that niggling bubble in the back of my head finally burst a few days before. Most of the time, I was successful in ignoring the real Kichiro jabbering on, but sometimes he annoyed the hell out of me.

Nii-san? He said pointedly.

I ignored them both, stubbornly staring straight ahead at the Chuunin's back

"Nii-san? Are you alright?" Kushina asked. My hands clenched when the mocking came.

If you don't say something this second, I swear I'll—

"Nii-san! Listen to me!"

"Um, I'm listening, Kushina, what is it?"

"There's something I really need to tell you."

"Then tell me," I answered simply, putting my arm around her shoulders.

"It's a secret."

"Then whisper it."

"I'll tell you later, okay?"

"Um, okay?"

"Nii-san?"

"What?"

"Look!" She shoved her hand in my face, making me go cross-eyed trying to see what was between her fingers. I grabbed her wrist and held it at a reasonable distance.

"It's a tooth."

"Yeah! I lost it this morning!"

"Cool. Maybe the tooth fairy with visit you."

She gave me an odd look. "Tooth fairy?"

"Yeah."

"What's that?"

"You put the tooth under your pillow at night and then the tooth fairy come, takes it, and leaves a coin behind."

"I've never heard of it."

"If you don't believe in her, she won't come."

"Did she come when you lost your teeth?"

"Yep!" I lied for both me and Kichiro. Small things like the tooth fairy, Easter bunny, and Santa Claus were the small wonders that made a childhood memorable, and happier. If I was stuck taking care of Kushina via Kichiro in my head, I might as well make it a little bit more magical. Besides, kids who didn't get the small wonders never seemed to be very happy.

The Chuunin leading us sent me an odd look, but eventually ignored the conversation.

"You never said anything."

I shrugged.

"You never say much."

I shrugged again and she giggled.

"So she'll come tonight?"

"Sure."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

The Chuunin turned to us and stopped outside the doors of a school building. "Here is the Academy. I hope you remember the way because this is the only time you will receive an escort, kids. I can't tell you where your class is, but it's in there somewhere. I look forward to serving alongside you." At that, he was gone. Kushina lifted my arm off her shoulders and threaded her fingers through mine, squeezing tightly. I led the way through the doors, remembering what Sakumo told me the last time I saw him.

Keep your sister safe, kiddo, and you can start that fight you swore to.

"Uzumaki! Both of you!" Someone called the second we stepped through the doors. "In here!" We were directed into two separate rooms and asked what felt like thousands of innocuous questions before we were reunited and ushered into a classroom a few minutes after the beginning of the class began.

As a real seven-year-old placed in front of a class of my peers, I probably would have been more than a little nervous, but to me, they were just kids, nothing to be afraid of. The teacher quieted the talking with a small bit of killing intent. I pushed the recognition of blatant mental conditioning out of my head and focused on the Chuunin's words before I said something I would regret.

"Alright class, we have two new students. Would you like to introduce yourself and your sister?" He asked me.

I bit back a rude comment about his continuing killing intent while Kushina tugged at my hand. "Please oblige the teacher before I say something I'll regret," I muttered to her so only she could hear. She grinned as I gestured her forward.

"I'm Uzumaki Kushina and my brother and I are going to be the strongest ninja in the village!" She declared loudly.

"Oh really?" A boy in the front row sneered. "Well, you're just a little baby who has to hold her big brother's hand!"

I barely managed to grab her around the waist before her temper led to broken teeth and bloody noses. Thankfully, her temper burned out fast and I managed to drag her to a seat towards the center of the room and sat her down between me and the kid with bright blond hair and blue eyes. He wouldn't pick a fight with Kushina. Hopefully, she wouldn't feel the need to fight with him either.

He bent over his notepad. A moment later he slid a note over to Kushina. She read it, smirked, and passed it on to me.

=I'm Namikaze Minato. Good job pulling one over on the teacher. So what's your name?

I slipped the page under the desk as the teacher dropped a folder of loose paper for notes and assignments, a textbook thicker than my thigh, and two pencils in front of us. I took one pencil and scribbled my response in broken hiragana.

#I'm not a fountain to regurgitate information on command. If you want my name, find it yourself. I smirked to myself.

I covertly slid the paper to Kushina, who passed it straight to Minato.

When he handed it back, Kushina read the answer and scribbled down her own two cents before sending it back to him. I was curious, but not enough to look over her shoulder. At least the real Kichiro was literate and I had inherited that skill from him, as well as language, or I'd be in some trouble. The note landed by my elbow and I scanned it.

=Is that a challenge?

+You can bet your life it is. Kushina responded.

=Accepted. Minato finished and the note landed under my elbow.

#Kushina and I didn't make lunches this morning, so we were going to go the next street over and get something from the market. Want to come?

"Uzumaki the older! Please pay attention!"

"Sir? I was paying attention. You were asking the class to pass yesterday's arithmetic homework to the person on the inside row." I responded as Minato's homework landed in front of me. I held it up as proof I was following directions before collecting the papers handed up to me, put Minato's on top, and handed the stack forward.

"Kindly do not distract your classmates."

I opened my mouth to argue, but Kushina kicked me. I snapped my jaw shut as the mathematics lesson began. It was simple algebra, but something I felt Kushina would need serious help with later, if her confused expression was any indication. Minato seemed to be bored, as if it was already far below his level. Frankly, I didn't give a damn about school, I could pick up the information easily and I doubted the grades mattered in the long run.

Minato scribbled something back and the note landed in my lap.

=Sounds like fun.

I tucked the note into my pocket and passed the assignment the teacher dropped in front of me down the row.

(-_-)

Lunch with Minato went as well as a lunch with two six-year-olds could go. Both seemed to enjoy the sport of seeing how far they could push the other's buttons. For the most part, I let them antagonize each other over ramen, which both suggested the moment I asked. I wasn't surprised.

What did surprise me was when Sakumo sat down on my other side looking quite worn out and ordered food.

"Hello, Sakumo," I muttered to him out of the corner of my mouth.

He slapped the back of my head.

I snorted and poked at my ramen.

"The tooth fairy?" He asked. "I've never heard of it."

"Probably never would have if you hadn't eavesdropped."

"Why would a fairy pay for a tooth?"

"They make fairy dust out of baby teeth."

"If they wanted fairy dust, why wouldn't they just kill the kids and collect it faster, or just take the teeth to begin with?"

"First, that's sick, second," I glanced at Kushina, but she was in the middle of a wrestling match with Minato, and losing horribly. "It's just a story for kids, it doesn't really have to make sense."

"The real world isn't that pretty."

"Well, the real world sucks. Might as well give the kids some happy memories to carry them through the rest of their shitty lives."

Sakumo shrugged and pressed a coin into my hand. "Sounds like a decent plan."

"Thanks," I tucked it into my pocket.

"I was thinking about what you told me."

"You would have to be an idiot not to." That earned me another smack. I half-wished Kushina saw it so she could tear into the man and I could get some satisfaction out of indirect retaliation.

"You said you would 'fight like hell to keep people alive.'"

"I did."

"I was just making sure. Do you have any plan for the future?"

"I don't want to be a shinobi."

"You don't have a choice, kid."

"I'm not a fighter."

"You're still a kid."

"I won't kill."

"Then you'll be killed."

"Then I will die."

A bowl was placed in front of Sakumo. He started his meal before continuing the conversation. "Do I need to add 'suicidal' to your psych evaluation?"

"An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind just as death only leads to more death."

There was another break in the conversation, during which the two kids struggled over a dulled practice kunai.

"Have you ever thought of being a medic?" Sakumo asked suddenly.

"There's a war coming, several wars, and medics are the first targets." I opened my mouth to continue the argument when I considered a potential course of action. "I have an idea but you might not like it."

Sakumo's chopsticks froze halfway to his mouth. "I probably won't kid, but tell me anyways."

"Medics of opposing teams are the first targets in fights, right?"

"Yes, you've said."

"Well, tactically speaking, with less people being healed, there will be less enemies to fight, right?"

"That's generally how it works. Targeting another team's medic decreases the team's chances of returning alive, whether it be from slowing down due to injury, the loss of a teammate, or a combination of the two. Most solo operatives know at least fundamental iryo-ninjutsu."

"What if medics weren't targeted at all?"

"If you think that anything like that could ever happen, kid, you're kidding yourself."

"No, I'm not. For the most part in my world, doctors and nurses serve anyone and everyone who needs help, regardless of race, country, and religion."

"Sorry, kid, but that can't happen here."

"Why not?"

"Hypothetically, say you manage to get everyone to agree with this and all medics are neutral. How would they get to the people they need to help? Would they go with the teams? If so, what happens if the medic's team loses the fight? Their teammates are dead and now, because of their neutrality, they have to tend to the injuries of their opponents. I couldn't do something like that and I'm more open-minded than many shinobi. Now, a number of medics are being forced into this position. How does the opponent's team trust a medic who would naturally want revenge for their fallen comrades? Only the most pacifist iryo-nins would be able to treat an enemy, a majority would not. These medics would begin killing the very people they are supposed to treat. Congratulations, you just turned doctors into assassins."

I stiffened and stared down at my half-eaten meal, appetite gone.

Sakumo ruffled my hair. "You're smart, kid, but you have decades of tradition and conditioning working against you."

"I don't want to fight, I don't want to kill, and I don't want to die," I told him. I tossed the pouch with money at Kushina and walked away.

"What did you say to my brother?" Kushina demanded.

"He just has to come to terms with some things," Sakumo responded before I was out of earshot.

Ten minutes later, I was perched at the top of a tree overlooking a playground and wondering if I could figure out the tree climbing exercise to distract myself from the real problem. The time I was due back at the Academy came and went.

Hours later, Sakumo appeared at the base of the tree. "Your sister is waiting for you."

"She can take care of herself."

"She's six."

"Leave me alone."

"I can't do that, kid."

"Um, let me guess: orders."

"Exactly." With a few jumps, Sakumo sat on the branch below me.

"Go away."

"Talk to me, kid."

"Stop calling me 'kid'."

"Then talk to me."

"I don't want to fight, I don't want to kill, and I don't want to die," I repeated myself. "I don't want to be a shinobi!"

Sakumo stood and leaned against the branch I was sitting on. "You don't have a choice."

"Well, from here it seems extremely easy to just fail out. I'm missing class already."

"You have your sister to take care of."

"She's not my sister, she's just a girl who's going to grow up and die at the hand of some psycho with a grudge."

"You don't mean that."

"I am twenty-seven years old. I never had a sibling, I had a drunk for a mother and a father that was too obsessed with his military career to give a damn. I don't care to gain an obnoxious six-year-old as a little sister, especially if I'm going to be forced to screw up her life like mine was."

"So you'll abandon a little girl that looks up to you instead."

"I didn't choose her."

"You saved those kids, don't deny or downplay it. You saved them and they're your responsibility."

I kicked at Sakumo's face. He caught my ankle. "You told me I wasn't responsible."

"That was before I knew you had an adult's head on your shoulders."

"Asshole."

His hand tightened around my ankle and he jerked me off the branch, dangling me upside down over the ground as if I weighed nothing. I started to struggle and kick at his hand. Sakumo stepped further out on the branch. It bent precariously and I knew it should not have been capable of supporting combined weight. I froze as the ground swayed beneath me.

"Lesson one, land on your feet no matter what."

Shit.

"You sadistic homicidal jackass!" I snarled. Sakumo let go and I plummeted to the ground. I managed to twist in the air just enough to land on my side rather than my head. I rolled off my arm and looked down at it. My shoulder was up by my ear and it was certainly not supposed to be like that. Sakumo stood beside me and dragged me to my feet by my good arm.

I groaned and almost immediately sank to my knees, holding my injured arm tightly to my chest.

"Asshole!" I snarled. Belatedly, I realized that we weren't beside a playground, but in the center of what I guessed was a training field. A bad feeling coiled in my gut. "What the hell—" He backhanded me across the face.

With a violent jerk, Sakumo shoved my arm back into the proper position. He grabbed my jaw and forced me to look him in the eye. "Are you paying attention to me now?"

"I have been paying attention to you!" I snarled back.

"Then you'll have heard me when I told you that you will become a shinobi and it doesn't matter what you want. You will fight, you will kill, and hopefully you won't die. You're obviously not listening to me and you obviously don't have any respect because you don't seem to understand the fact."

I knocked his hand away from my face and clutched at my throbbing shoulder. Sakumo grabbed my injured arm and twisted it. I clawed at his hand and screamed until he threw me to the ground and kicked the air out of my lungs. I flew a few feet away and rolled to a stop. "Why should I respect a murderer or someone who takes what they want simply because they can‽"

I did not even see him move before Sakumo grabbed the front of my shirt and slammed me into the ground. "You may come from a world where everyone can talk out their problems, but you're not in that perfect universe anymore. The only way you can get what you want is to be stronger, faster, and more ruthless than whoever you face, kid, there's no way around it. Fight back!"

"I won't!" I screamed back in his face.

I probably would have been better if Sakumo lost his temper, or even got the slightest bit angry at me. Then, he would have ended up knocking me out at the very least. Instead, he seemed to have expected my reaction.

I knew he was going to push me until I snapped. I knew it and I knew I could do absolutely nothing to stop it.

"Fight!" Sakumo growled at me, throwing me back to the ground and kicking at my chest,

"I am fighting!" I shouted back, rolling to my feet and retreating. "I won't be you!"

Fight him! Attack him! The real Kichiro ordered. I ignored the kid as Sakumo knocked my breath away with a well-placed punch. I landed on my hands and knees, my head spinning with panic from the lack of oxygen. When I managed to wheeze in a breath, Sakumo kicked me to the side.

His hand closed around my neck and the two of us crashed into the water. I clawed at his hand but we only seemed to sink deeper. I couldn't open my eyes underwater and I was quickly losing the tiny breath I managed before I was submerged. I kicked at where I guessed Sakumo's head was, but he only shoved me against the rocky stream bottom. Sharp rocks dug into my back.

I tried to pull his hand away from my neck, even as I twisted and struggled, but I was getting weaker by the second and my limbs couldn't produce the force I demanded of them. Just when I thought I was about to lose consciousness, I landed back in the grass, I rolled onto my back and sucked in as much air as I could as I wiped the water from my face.

Sakumo dropped to one knee beside me. When I regained some sort of normal breathing, I sat up and turned away from him. "I know what you're trying to do."

"I'm not surprised."

"It's not going to work."

"Maybe."

"Go away."

"Sorry, kid."

I stood up and walked away from him, clutching my stomach and staggering. I barely made it to the tree line before I was forced to stop with a groan of pain.

Sakumo pressed something that crackled like paper against my chest and I didn't even bother to look at what it was. A moment later, something, I figured it was chakra, rushed through my body and soothed some of the pain. When I looked down, I recognized it as a seal, but he pulled it away before I could see anything more.

"I'll meet you here tomorrow at sunrise. Don't be late." He vanished.

I had absolutely no intention of voluntarily seeing Sakumo ever again as I picked myself up from the ground and staggered towards the sounds of the city. Hopefully, I would be able to find my way back to my assigned apartment.

(-_-)

It was nearly midnight before I found the apartment and managed to unlock the door with the key that hung around my neck like dog tags. I tried to be quiet, hoping that I could arrive unnoticed by Kushina. Unfortunately for me, she was waiting at the kitchen table working on something by the light of a flashlight since there wasn't any electric light in the building.

"Nii-san!" She cried and barreled into me the second I closed the door behind me.

I patted her on the head awkwardly.

"I was worried about you! Where were you? Did something happen?"

"Yes something happened," I grunted to her. "Do you think any sane person wants to come home in the middle of the night?" Perhaps that was a bit harsher than it needed to be. I flopped down heavily on one of the two small mattresses in the general living area and dragged a blanket over my head.

She brushed off my less than kind tone. "Nii-san, I have something you really should know."

"What is it?" I asked, doing my best to feign interest. All I wanted to do was sleep and not wake up until noon the next day. There was no way I was getting up for the Academy in the morning.

"Remember the clan's sealing library in Uzu?"

Kichiro's memories appeared in the forefront of my mind. The so-called library wasn't very impressive, it only held a copy of every single seal the Uzumaki clan produced as well as all the instructions for sealing in general. "Sort-of," I responded.

"Well, the morning of the attack I was playing a prank on everyone."

I had a bad feeling about what was about to come out of the little girl's mouth.

"So I sealed the entire contents of the library in this." She showed me a rather fat scroll I had seen her contemplating several times in the past week. "I was going to give it back as soon as they noticed it was missing, but then the attack came." She sat down on the mattress beside me. "I don't know what to do now."

"Don't tell anyone about it." I answered without hesitation. "Carry it with you at all times and never let any of it out of your reach. Memorize and learn as much of it as you can."

"Shouldn't I tell a ninja or the Hokage about it? It could help them. I heard one of the shinobi complaining that they had now lost all the knowledge of the Uzumaki clan and that it could be very bad."

I sat up and looked her in the eye, not feeling the slightest bit of kindness towards Konoha. "Let me tell you a story. Years ago, one of the founders of this village turned against it. He managed to summon a creature called the Kyuubi against his will to murder the other founder and destroy the village he helped create. To stop the creature's rampage and subsequent anger at being forced to act, the Uzumaki princess, who was married to the founder who did not betray what he built, was forced to use her talent with those seals to seal away the Kyuubi inside of herself. She's still alive, but she's getting old, so eventually the Kyuubi, who didn't have a choice in any of this, is going to be resealed into someone else. Only people of the Uzumaki in conjunction with their seals can safely contain the Kyuubi, the most powerful of his kind, inside of themselves. If you give those seals to the village, they will use them to keep sealing away the Kyuubi and his brethren, sentencing the creatures to confinement and torture and the people they are sealed within to being hated and feared."

"What make you so certain?" She asked. It wasn't a challenge, she obviously believed me and clutched the seals to her chest.

"You remember the story of Uzumaki Mito?" I asked her as the Kichiro kid inside me pushed memories of the orphanage to the forefront of my mind. It was distracting, but at least he volunteered something of use and I didn't have to make an active effort to ignore the kid's annoying commentary.

"Of course! She's a hero!"

"Yeah, well look at the story from the Kyuubi's perspective. Both sides were mean to him because of things he couldn't control. Is she so much of a hero now?"

Kushina's eyes went wide with horror as she shook her head.

"I didn't think so." At the righteous anger filling her expression, I decided to do a tiny bit of damage control. We were stuck in the village after all and I had enough of a conscience not to make it harder on her than it already would be. "Don't tell anyone or let anyone know in any way that you know about any of this. I know you can learn the seals and use them properly, but I don't trust anyone else to. At least not yet. It'll be your secret kunoichi skill, okay?"

She beamed but it quickly faded. "You said only the Uzumaki can hold the Kyuubi inside of them. Mito-sama is getting old and she's going to have to seal it inside one of us orphans because we're the only Uzumaki left!"

Damn, she was smarter than I thought. "Yes, she will," I responded patiently.

"Who is it going to be?" She chewed on her finger and drew her knees to her chest.

I saw no reason to give her a nice, comforting falsehood. "It will be one of us. The other children aren't strong enough, I heard the Tsunade woman say as much."

A second later I had a six-year old girl clinging to my chest and crying.

As I thought about it, I realized I could at least do something to stop a tragic future. "I promise they won't seal the Kyuubi inside of you, okay? I promise. You'll get to determine if you want people scared of you and it will be your actions and decisions that determine whether you're loved or hated by people, not someone else's. I promise."

She smiled slightly. The joys of children and not understanding that someone else would end up with the Kyuubi sealed in their gut. At least I wouldn't let it be me either.

"Ow, Kushina, not so tight!" I gasped as her arms tightened around some of the poorly-healed bruises.

"What happened?" She demanded, concerned and lifting my shirt before I could push her away. "Who did this to you?"

"Sakumo," I spat out the name. "If you see him, avoid him."

"I will," she promised. "I can fix the bruises, if you want."

"How?" I snapped out scathingly.

"I've already started learning stuff from the library when you haven't been looking. I got the idea when I couldn't help the other kids on the boat so I started learning healing seals."

Who would have thought? Little Kushina was a genius at seals.

"I can fix bruises, some broken bones, scrapes, and something called dislocation, but not much more. There were lots of pens and special ink and extra paper in the library when I sealed everything."

That was damn convenient. "Knock yourself out," I told her as she dashed to the table and grabbed a stack of something. Honestly, I half-hoped she would blow me up so I wouldn't have to deal with anything else. Unfortunately, I knew the girl was too good at sealing. "Um, use the seal for dislocation on my shoulder, I'm going to sleep."

"Wait a minute! Take off your shirt first so I can see where to put the seals!"

I did as she asked before turning away.

"You were limping when you came in, let me see."

I bit back an annoyed remark and pulled up my pant leg so she could see the bruise blossoming across the outside of my ankle and then the second bruise covering my knee. I didn't give a rat's fart about what she planned on doing, I just let the exhaustion dragging at my ill-fitting body take over.

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Check out the OG author in the synopsis.

Drop a power stone if you feel like it, it's much appreciated.