Chapter 5 -> Part 5

Sakumo and I didn't take much longer to fall into a routine. Five days a week, a few minutes after sunrise, we would meet on the training ground. For the first few weeks, the first three hours of the day alternated between several different exercises to help with balance and core strength. The ones involving what he called 'rope-walking' and I insisted was 'slacklining' were my favorite, simply because it reminded me of the days with some of my friends in the Army when we would mess around and show off on the weekends. Also, the fact that Sakumo and I had a similar sense of humor often made me forget exactly what I was training to do. The next few hours focused almost entirely on building speed, reflexes, and flexibility. After lunch, I worked on chakra control.

On days he wasn't training me, I guessed that Sakumo took missions, but no matter how innocently or covertly I asked, I couldn't confirm the thought. I wasn't curious enough to stalk him just yet, but occasionally I would catch a glimpse of a bandage under his collar or beneath his gloves, and if I paid attention, I would notice the occasional stiff movements. Either way, while Sakumo was on missions, I spent the days practicing medical Ninjutsu or studying Fūinjutsu. Tsunade had set up a section of the hospital for medics-in-training to work under the supervision of a retired medic-nin.

I was very obviously the youngest person there. Most medics didn't begin training until they were at least Chuunin, simply because few Genin or Academy students had both the chakra capacity and the control necessary to be a medic in the first place. Since I was an Uzumaki, I had the chakra I needed and the daily practice improved my control by leaps and bounds. I was also the only boy, which surprised me. In fact, I found a total of three male doctors in the entire village. They were all civilians.

By the end of the first six months of this routine, I found I had learned nothing about Sakumo's life. Sure, I figured I knew his personality quite well, but I had no idea who his friends were, what his hobbies were (besides training me), or what kind of food he liked. At the same time, he added katas from several styles of stick fighting he planned on teaching me, how to throw kunai, shuriken, and senbon, turn practically anything into a defensive weapon into the training regime, as well as other shinobi skills such as detecting and dispelling Genjutsu (which he was liable to hit me with at any point in the day), making and avoiding traps (which were set up all over the training ground), surveillance, the basics of infiltration, and survival. Before, I had time to make dinner with Kushina (occasionally with Minato as well) and listen to her lectures of what she learned in the Academy. After the rest was added to my training, she spent the afternoon with the blond and several others training, we ate take-out four days a week, and stayed up until midnight while Kushina finished her nightly review and I studied sealing by the light of the flashlight dangling from a hole we made in the ceiling. We both worked on memorizing as much of our clan's history and legal procedures and worked to keep alive as much of the clan as possible, even if it was only the skeleton of its former glory.

By the end of my first year in Konoha, Sakumo still hadn't taught me any Ninjutsu or Genjutsu, besides giving me ideas of which medical jutsu to learn next, and hadn't even started teaching me to apply what I knew about Taijutsu in an actual fight.

As far as I could tell, Kushina's first year in Konoha went great. Her friendship with Minato, the class genius, had deterred most of the bullying I remembered she had to deal with in canon, and she had taken to pulling the 'big brother' card whenever she didn't feel like dealing with it herself. The entire Academy knew that Uzumaki Kushina's older brother was an apprentice to the reasonably well-known Jōnin, Hatake Sakumo, and that deterred the rest of the bullies. The fact that Kushina was the second-best in the class helped as well, though it made her a social pariah to the other girls because their crush, Minato, paid more attention to her than the rest of them, who specifically tried to get his attention and Kushina, the foreign girl who popped out of nowhere, had his attention from the moment she stepped into the room with tangled hair, ragged clothes, and a missing tooth, intent on beating up whomever irked her.

I, on the other hand, had my own problems to worry about. I was never a very social person. I tended to make a small circle of friends and rarely ventured outside of the social sphere. I didn't have the patience for mindless conversation, which made my time working in the training section of the hospital as tedious as it was interesting and useful. The fact I was working with girls didn't bother me as much as the fact that most of them saw me as little more than a cute wannabe medic boy there for them to hug whenever they were in a ridiculously good mood, or order about on gofer work when they were in a bad mood. I lost my temper several times when their bad mood coincided with mine and it turned into a rather impressive shouting match between me and several girls at once.

Intellectually, I was just as good as them. My chakra reserves were a bit smaller and my control a fair bit below theirs, but still passable. I could do my job just as well as them, even better than them when it was put in the context of my 'age' and how long I'd spent practicing. It grated on my nerves when they ignored that bit in favor of the tiny detail that I wasn't even a shinobi yet. Fortunately, the supervisor let me tell them off, then separated us before the girls could have their say. The only reason I got away with telling them off was because the shinobi patients found it amusing and fewer people skipped out of treatment when I was there, hoping to see something degenerate into a fight.

It gave me immense satisfaction when I managed to graduate the program in half the time, before many of the girls who had begun before me.

At that point, Sakumo approached me about becoming a shinobi and joining a Genin team. I was tempted, the routine that we had settled into was a bit boring, but in the end, I realized that the closest I had ever come to a physical fight in this world was when I leapt into the boat to get away from the Kiri Shinobi attacking Uzushiogakure, and I knew I wasn't anywhere near ready. Shortly after that, Sakumo started to teach me how to apply the hundreds of kata I had learned with the sticks, my fists, and Sakumo's bokken.

When I could defend against him paying just enough attention to not put me in the hospital, he started to arrange for me to spar once or twice a week with the Academy class set to graduate that year. After a few false starts and a little bit of ridicule while I got over my aversion to soundly beating little kids, I was easily the best in the class, even though they were all a year older than me.

Over the next year, Kushina lost five teeth and my front four teeth grew in while the next four had come out. I remembered losing my baby teeth the first time and I had no desire to undergo it a second time. Honestly, the second time was much worse. The gaps in my teeth annoyed me just as much as actually having a loose tooth. I suffered through one of them wiggling for a week straight. The next one that got loose was yanked out the second it was no longer useful for chewing. That incident taught me that it was better to let my gums heal themselves than try and heal them with iryo-ninjutsu. I ripped the tooth out one of the days Tsunade was assessing me and she laughed herself to tears when I started snarling at my bleeding mouth and how iryo-ninjutsu sucked at dentistry.

Shortly after Kichiro's ninth birthday and a week after I solidified my position as a better fighter than any of the squirts, Suna declared war on Konoha for 'financial reasons'. Kumo followed suit by declaring war on Kiri. Kiri offered an alliance with Konoha, who rejected it because of what happened in Uzu. Iwa declared war on Konoha and Kumo at the same time Suna declared war on Iwa while making an alliance with Kiri, who declared war on Konoha shortly after. I had no idea why everything exploded at once but I knew things were about to get bad fast.

Three weeks later, any Academy student fit enough to run messages and smart enough to hold their own in a fight was rushed through to graduation. That included Minato and Kushina. A week before their graduation, Sakumo informed me that I didn't have a choice but to take the exam with them, and until the exam was to take place I would be attending Tsunade's five-day class on the role medics would play in the war, then join Sakumo's team as their medic. Somewhere in that was a veiled threat that if I failed, I would be placed in the ROOT program.

I followed orders, but avoided him for the entire week.

The Academy exam was frankly a joke in comparison to the training I underwent with Sakumo. There was a mediocre obstacle course during which at a random point a Genjutsu was placed for us to dispel. We had to be able to critically hit four moving targets with only four of our choice throwing weapons. We were placed in a Taijutsu match with one of the Chuunin proctors and had to survive for five minutes, then were ordered to perform the three basic Academy jutsu as well as one other. I was too lazy to go through all the hand seals for one of the several defensive jutsu Sakumo had taught me, so I just broke my little finger and healed it without any seals. It impressed the proctors and I exempted the written portion of the test, because they figured that if I had the know-how for medical jutsu, it was pointless to have me sit through an exam I'd probably ace without trying. I was only a minute late to Tsunade's last class, but when she saw the brand-new hitai-ate and my team assignment clutched in my fist, she let it slide with a disapproving scowl. I scowled back on principle.

(-_-)

Whenever a new teammate joined an active team, there was a required two-week acclimation period. As such, I was scheduled to spend my first two weeks as a Genin with Sakumo and his three teammates. My very first scheduled mission was a B-rank, which frankly scared the hell out of me. I was slightly comforted by the fact that Sakumo and another of his teammates were full Jōnin, another was a Tokubetsu Jōnin and the last one was a Chuunin. Our first meeting was somewhat interesting.

I was five minutes late to our meeting because Tsunade had pulled me aside after the last field medic class to tell me that while my shenanigans in the training program were entertaining, I was now a shinobi and if she heard even a rumor of me breaking any of her medic-nin rules she would pull me off the field and stick me in the recovery ward of the hospital until I learned my lesson. I retorted that she didn't have the authority because all medics with the slightest potential, no matter what rank, in battlefield positions were being discharged no matter what. I left before she could argue.

"You're late!" Sakumo snapped as I dashed onto the field.

"Tsunade thinks I'm a rule-breaker so she felt the need to threaten me," I retorted, earning myself a slap on the back of my head.

"You are a rule-breaker, kid, and a troublemaker. If you told her off for being right—"

I snorted, earning myself another hit.

"He's six!" One on my new teammates exclaimed in disgust. "We can't afford dead weight!"

"I'm nine!" I retorted.

Sakumo clamped a hand over my mouth before I could add an insult to the statement. "He's been apprenticed to me for nearly two years, he won't be a dead weight. We need a medic on our team and he's been certified for over six months even though he only got off his ass and took the Genin exam today. Now, with a medic on our team, we can take higher-ranked missions more often. There is a new policy on medics. They're not supposed to fight unless it's an absolute last resort. As our medic, we defend him. That means he's going to be the one carrying the mission scroll, maps, and any other vital mission supplies, not me." At this, I managed to slip out of Sakumo's grip. "Now, as a medic, even though he's a Genin, he only answers to me, Tsunade, and the Hokage, so haze him at your own risk, because Tsunade doesn't like her medics being harassed and we all know the Hokage almost always lets her have her way. Everyone sit down, we're doing introductions, Inuzuka, you start."

We all sat in a circle of the training ground and a man with spiky black hair scowled as he introduced himself. "I'm Inuzuka Jiro, full Jōnin. My partner is Takumi, also a Jōnin. On mission, he's called 'Dog', no exceptions." He whistled once and a huge dog bounded out of the trees. The creature was covered with thick, midnight black fur and nearly twice my size. "We specialize in my clan techniques, close combat, and Ninjutsu." The dog sniffed at my face and I quickly scratched behind his ear to distract him when he covered half my face with slobber in a single lick. Unfortunately, it only excited the creature and he knocked me backwards to better down me in slobber.

I liked dogs, they were smart, fun to wrestle with, but I preferred the ones that did not resort to licking to communicate their approval of an individual. The dog had more chakra than me and almost completely obscured mine as he lay down on top of me. I smirked as I fended off Takumi's enthusiastic greeting and performed a silent substitution with Jiro. Takumi barked happily the second the switch was complete and Jiro shouted indignantly. The group laughed good-naturedly. My smirk turned immediately into a scowl when I saw Sakumo holding out a hand to the other two teammates, who handed over a sizable sum of money.

"What was the bet over?" I demanded.

"That you would prank Inuzuka within five minutes of meeting the team," Sakumo answered. "They bet you couldn't pull it off."

"You should've told me and I would have thought up something more original."

Sakumo shrugged and slapped the lot into my hand. "That was original enough for me. Here's part of what I owe you."

"How did a kid win a bet against you, Hatake?" One of the others, who looked like a textbook Nara, asked.

"He bet he could beat up one of the Sandaime's students."

"The hell, Hatake? You could've gotten the kid killed!" The person to my right barked. He had light brown hair that wisped across his face, blurring his features.

"The bet was that I could have one of the Sandaime's students beaten up by the end of the day," I clarified as I tucked the money into my short, dark green, sleeveless kimono, which looked like a male version of Kushina's canon outfit from when she was a Genin. I crossed my legs, which were covered by dark green shinobi pants and adjusted the strap of my black shinobi sandals. "So, I told Tsunade that I overheard that Orochimaru had managed to calculate her bra size and was bragging to Jiraiya, so Jiraiya stole one of her bras to try and prove Orochimaru had miscalculated and let the entire thing play out. Tsunade beat up both of them and neither saw it coming. She knew I was lying, but she was mad at them for something else and the Sandaime had forbidden her from beating the two of them up for it, so she used the excuse I gave her. I got the equivalent of my monthly orphan's stipend off him and a week off from Tsunade. Win-win for me."

"You're a little cheat!" Jiro snapped as Takumi finally rolled off him. The effect of his anger was all but neutralized by the fact he was scratching the dog's belly and covered with hair and slobber.

"I ain't winning if I ain't cheating."

"You're a bastard for training your apprentice like that, Hatake," the man to my right laughed.

"Hey! He came like that. Shimizu, introduce yourself next."

The person to my right, who didn't seem to have a problem with insulting Sakumo, spoke. "I'm Shimizu Arata, Tokubetsu Jōnin. I specialize in intelligence, Genjutsu, and traps."

"Nara, you next."

The last person on the team raised a hand. "Nara Saburo, Chuunin. Specialization in long-range combat. I find it unfair that the kid is exempted from dress code, Hatake."

"There isn't a dress code for Genin," I argued.

"How about you introduce yourself, kid, before you start picking fights," Sakumo suggested.

"Uzumaki Kichiro, Genin. I'm a medic, but no specialization yet. Why don't you introduce yourself as well, Sakumo?" I asked pointedly.

"Hatake Sakumo, Jōnin and team leader. No specialization."

"So your student is a disrespectful little cheat," Jiro amended his previous accusation.

"We have an agreement," Sakumo answered before launching into a lecture on the team formation and roles.

We went deeper in depth about individual abilities and Sakumo outlined strategies in the dirt for the rest of the day. When the sun was about to set, Sakumo sent me home to meet Kushina just in time for when we agreed to meet. The second I landed, Minato slammed into me.

"Where's Kushina?" He asked frantically. "She said she'd meet me here an hour ago, but she hasn't showed and there's no note! We're on the same Genin team and she had forgotten something at the training field and said she'd meet me here but it's been an hour and when I went back to the field, she wasn't there and had left this!" Minato shoved the scroll that contained the Uzumaki library into my hands.

Shit. I did not expect her to be kidnapped this soon. If anything, I expected Kumo to kidnap me instead, since I made it clear, even to outsiders, that I did not agree with many of Konoha's policies. In hindsight, I suppose it made sense. Kushina spent most of her time with Minato, who was just a Genin, I just spent almost the entire day in the presence of Jōnin, and frankly, I was a better ninja than her, no matter what my rank said.

"She'd never leave that behind, Kichiro! That's her special scroll! I think she's been kidnapped! Kichiro! Are you listening?"

I shoved the scroll into my kimono. "Yes, I'm listening. You're probably right. The only reason she would leave this scroll behind would be if she was kidnapped. How long has she been gone?"

I wasn't sure Minato heard anything after I confirmed his fear.

"Minato!" I snapped. "How long has she been gone?"

"Less than an hour."

"Right." I leapt up to my door and pulled out a scrap of paper from one of my pockets along with a pencil and shuriken. I scribbled 'assistance required, Kushina kidnapped, Kichiro and Minato in pursuit' onto the paper in the standard Konoha code, noted the time, pinned it to the door, tied one of my hairs around the shuriken, and leapt back down to Minato. "Take me back to the training ground you last saw her at." I ordered.

Minato didn't hesitate to grab my wrist and drag me there. It only took a moment for me to find a clump of her hair by the edge of the clearing.

"Shit! Sakumo never taught me to raise an alarm," I snarled at no one before turning to Minato. "Come on, we're going after her, top speed and I'm taking full responsibility. You know the Inuzuka tracking formation, right?"

Minato nodded.

"Good. Let's go."

Just like that, we were off. I made sure to keep my cursing in my head for Minato's sake. Every time I saw one of Kushina's hairs, I dropped a few of my own on top of it to strengthen the trail. We followed it to a hole in the wall. I did my best to trip every security alarm I could see before we were through the wall. While the people who took Kushina hadn't left much of a trail, Minato and I made sure to leave as obvious of one that we could, not that anyone seemed to be following us, to my immense displeasure. The village was supposed to be at war.

It was almost midnight when Minato started to fall behind. I stopped and motioned him over to me. Within a minute, I healed the aching soreness in his legs that slowed him down, and we were off again.

I guessed it to be almost two in the morning when we finally caught a glimpse of Kushina. Minato and I stopped abruptly. I started to sign instructions to him, but he just looked confused. I signed them again and he shook his head. Right, Jōnin normally taught their teams the signs and Minato hadn't learned yet. I grabbed his arm and dragged him out of earshot.

"Um, I'll jump in front of them and distract them. You neutralize the threat from behind, got it?"

Minato nodded once and I took off. In less than a minute, I landed just inside of a standard attack range and dramatically pulled my sticks from where they were secured to the small of my back.

"Give me back my sister!" I demanded loudly. The last syllable of 'sister' masked the sound of Minato knocking out the Jōnin in the back and lowering him to the ground without a sound.

"Oh really, little boy, we could use another Uzumaki. How about you take her from us?" He walked towards me, just as Kushina took out the second Jōnin's knee with a vicious kick and Minato knocked him out before he could make a sound. I didn't wait for the Jōnin to launch his attack, I leapt forward. He threw a kunai and everything seemed to slow as I twisted in midair to avoid the blade going straight into my heart.

Just as I felt the blade press against my kimono, a giant hand closed around the handle while the other shoved me backwards and out of range of any stray attacks. I landed on my feet and crouched defensively as the new arrival turned to me.

"Sensei!" Minato and Kushina cheered.

I recognized Jiraiya in a heartbeat, but Sakumo had stressed the fact that I always needed to confirm identity when in the field.

"Easy, does it, kid, you alright? You're Hatake's apprentice, right?" Jiraiya tried to placate me. The fact he still had a kunai in his hand did not help.

Confirm identity. I signed to him in the little bit of the Jōnin sign language I knew from Sakumo. It looked like I was just readjusting my grip.

Jiraiya didn't respond. It could have meant one of two things, first and most likely: Jiraiya thought I was just adjusting my grip since I was a Genin and probably shouldn't know any of the Jōnin signs. The second option, which I went with just to be safe was that he was an extra member of the Kumo team.

"Kumo teams operate in standard groups of four. The entire Academy knows I'm apprenticed to Hatake." Confirm identity.

Jiraiya holstered his kunai and tapped his right thigh with four fingers then all five digits, the current sign for a Konoha Jōnin. I responded by putting away my sticks and adjusting my hitai-ate with my second finger and thumb, the sign for a Konoha Genin.

"Hatake's taught you well, kid," Jiraiya commented, straightening from his defensive crouch. "But Kumo infiltration teams—"

"Operate in teams of three, as do the abduction teams, I'm not an idiot. You could have just responded the first time, Jiraiya."

"You are extremely disrespectful for a puny, day-old Genin."

I stuck my tongue out at him. "No medic takes any special care to respect you in particular." I brushed past him to where Kushina was leaning heavily against Minato and holding her ribs. "Tell Tsunade I said thanks for the week off."

Jiraiya's face turned red. "You're the squirt who—"

"Yes, I am," I answered while I crouched and pressed a hand against Kushina's side. It took me almost ten minutes to heal the fractured ribs. When I finished and stood, Kushina hugged me tightly. After a second, she pulled Minato into the hug as well. I took the opportunity to use a bit of medical Ninjutsu to check for any further injuries on them.

I patted them both on the head and pulled away, turning to face Jiraiya with a question. "I know you're supposed to be reporting in three and a half hours, kid," he stated firmly before I could say a word. "And you may not go on ahead and try and make it. Kumo was after a Uzumaki. You're staying with me until we're back in the village."

Minato and Kushina looked between us in confusion at the sudden tension. They may have missed the threat, but I got it. Minato and I were in trouble for leaving the village without permission. Well, at least I promised him I'd take responsibility. Better I get in trouble than the future Yondaime to have a black spot on his record. Besides, it's not like I hadn't tried to draw attention to myself as I was leaving. I couldn't do a thing about it now, so I just picked up the smallest of the Kumo nin by an arm and a leg, hefted him onto my back, and started marching back towards the village. Kushina leaned on Minato, Jiraiya hoisted the other two Kumo nin, and so the long walk back began.

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