48 A trip down memory lane.

DARK CHAPTER. EMOTIONAL AND SOCIAL ABUSE OF AN EXTREMELY YOUNG CHILD. BULLYING.

Sitting at her desk working through the reports on individual classes and their progress Naruko would raise an eyebrow as Sai came in. "Yes?"

"Mistress, it's getting late and I'm leaving. Would you like to eat dinner with me?" She'd blink at the offer, staring at him. 'Aah, not romantic. Good, that would be awkward y'know!' 

"I'm afraid not Sai." She would wave towards the reports as if explaining why.

His eyebrows would furrow slightly. "I see. Why is it that I have observed the only time you go into the village is to eat Ramen and with Hokage-sama Mistress?" 

Naruko frowned. 'Is that... true? It is isn't it.' She'd sigh looking back on her memories, before realization struck her. 'I had almost forgotten. I've truly tried to push it away and to the back of my mind, huh?' "Are you sure you want to know Sai?"

"Of course, Mistress."

For a few moments, she'd stare at him before slowly nodding. "I developed a way to seal my memories temporarily to show them to people after I learned the Yamanaka's Jutsu. I'll show you that way."

Standing up she'd begin to walk over to him. "Are you sure?"

"Of course Mistress. My job is to understand and help you." Frowning slightly, she'd inevitably sigh.

"Very well then." She placed her hand on him, and Fuinjutsu script would scrawl off of her and onto him. Focusing she'd form a singular handseal. "Fuinjutsu: Memory Body Transmission"

They were both sucked into her memories, their feet landing on the road of main street Konoha. "Watch carefully Sai, what do you notice?"

A little girl about 3 years of age wandering the streets, looking around with big-bright blue watery eyes. Looking confused and lost. "Is that you Mistress?"

"Yes."

Every time the girl tried to talk to someone - tried to get help, parents would pull their children away, ignore her, or even walk away themselves. One person even spat in front of her.

Their vision blurred as a young girl sat in a back alley head between her knees as her stomach rumbled and silent tears crawled down. "At this point, I hadn't eaten for two days." At the edge of the alleyway, one could see a restaurant open, occasionally a waiter would look out staring at her with a sneer.

The vision blurred again, and the same girl wearing tattered clothes was at a river trying to catch fish, but she kept failing time and time again with her sharpened stick. Until, inevitably she fell in. Only pure luck lets her survive.

Memory after memory, until one time that girl caught that fish. Then she caught a rabbit. Then a bird. "It's only now that Gramps sent people to check on me, having not realized I was gone. It had only been a week and a half after all, and no one reported me missing. I was unaware that I had stuck to the civilian sectors of the village, and that multiple times I had barely missed being seen by Shinobi."

Sai remained silent, entrapped in the memories that passed by. "Eventually Gramps found me with his Crystal Ball, and that's when I got my ANBU Guard. They tried to send me back to the orphanage but..."

The memory shifted, and a new matron looked warily at her, the kids hiding and running. Whispering about how the monster had gotten the last matron 'taken'. "But that wasn't the worst of it. Two weeks later, one of the ANBU that I had thought where going to be my friends. Maybe they were shy? After all, they didn't run away from me. I heard one of them saying..."

The memory shifted again, of a shadowed tiny room with a tiny basically toddler cuddled up under the thin sheets sniffling while asleep. Then a voice echoed out silently. "They're right to fear her. She got matron Aimaya killed."

Naruko spoke up again towards Sai, even though he hadn't responded once. "They didn't know I was awake. Whether through incompetence, or the fact that Gramps was overworked, he didn't realize that one of the ANBU that had been regularly scheduled to guard me, his parents was friends with the old matron. The next day was the first time Hide and Seek happened."

Memory after memory, of young Naruko constantly being snubbed. Children being told too not to play with her. Whispers of monster, beast, or even demon followed her around. "Eventually I got my own apartment. Where those voices couldn't be heard. But that was almost worse. The ANBU refused to speak to me, and so - slowly I began to crave that silence. For if the only people that were willing to be in my presence willingly were silent, should I be too?"

Memory after memory, of young Naruko going days without speaking, or even making noise. "But I realized that didn't help. So I tried something different." Flashes of memories of Naruko having outbursts, and then going silent and disappearing. The panic, and the attention she gained afterward.

"Eventually I learned to just occasionally go missing. So that people could actually remember I exist - thus Hide and Seek. Then I was enrolled into the academy."

Memories shifted and churned, too a barely six-year-old Naruko practically buzzing in glee as she skipped towards the Academy. "But it was the same. At first, I was sent to the 'civilian' class in our semester." 

Memory after memory of being ignored, of everyone refusing to play with, or eat with her. "But then Taijutsu came. They feared me because I was better than them naturally. I am an Uzumaki Jinchuriki after all, none of them could hurt me physically, I was too fast, too strong, and my stamina was too great. So it got worse. Actual, physical bullying picked up. I enjoyed it. Because I was finally getting attention."

She sighed as the memory flashed by, of a young Naruko smiling as someone pulled her pigtails, or someone threw her stuff away. "Eventually, it got so bad someone finally told the Hokage what was happening, and I was moved to a different class."

The memories shifted again, of Naruko in a different classroom - the class full of clan heirs. "This one was different. They didn't ignore me per se. It's just that most of them weren't willing to talk to me. Those that were simply just didn't like me - bar Shino who at the time I was too afraid to approach."

Memories shifted to a young Naruko looking at Shino, who looked back before she quickly fled. "I fled from the one person that could have been my friend, a fellow outcast." Memories shifted and shifted.

"Finally, one day. Something snapped in me." It didn't show in the memories - but that was the day that both her older half and younger half merged. "That day everything changed, I focused on training. I approached Shino, and I even made a friendship with Ami. But, things didn't change in the village. They didn't see that I was dedicated to becoming a Shinobi - a guardian. They only saw the person they felt fear and hatred towards becoming stronger. The looks increased, but the whispers stopped as they grew afraid."

Naruko sadly chuckled. "I once saw a person pass out in fright you know?" Finally, the memories ended, and Naruko and Sai were stuck in a blank white space. 

She turned towards Sai, only to find tears rolling down his face, but face blank. "You okay Sai?"

He shook his head for a moment wiping away the tears with his sleeve. "If - if it's alright Naruko-sama, I'll eat in your office with you?" She froze for a second before a smile appeared on her face.

"Alright Sai, I'd like that." As the seal ended and Sai disappeared, she stayed in that blank white space for a moment all alone.

She brought up another set of memories and sadly sighed as she watched the day after her 'Operation' against the ANBU, of her subconsciously hoping it would've been better, only for it to be even worse as news about her 'shenanigans' across the village where spread.

Shaking off the negative emotions with a small sad smile Naruko forced herself out of the seal. 'Humanity at some of it's darkest... But Darkness can only exist because the concept of Light does as well.' 

She opened up her eyes to the real world, noting that Sai had begun to lay out his dinner on her desk.

"So, what are you having for dinner tonight Sai?"

-????-

"You didn't tell me it was that bad." The mature voice spoke as its clone hidden in the Academy popped. It was filled with wrath as it barely prevented its chakra from lashing out.

"I didn't know. You know as well as I did how busy we were after the Kyuubi attack and Minato died."

"BULLSHIT HIRUZEN SARUTOBI! EXCUSES!" 

He slumped putting down his Crystal Ball. "The ANBU guard I had on her originally was grieving and didn't send in proper reports. Many of the background checks had to be redone on all of our ANBU as we lost most of them in the attack. We didn't realize the matron had lost people until we tortured her. Most of all - I was an old retired man forced to pick up an entire nation on the threat of a war we would have lost."

"I understand. But in the end, all it is excuse after excuse Hiruzen."

He slumped. "I know. I failed her. I failed them. I failed this village." He shook his head. "But at the same time so did you. So did he. So did Danzo. So did everyone involved - we all failed in the wake of the Kyuubi attack, the nearly two thousand Shinobi we lost, and over ten thousand civilian deaths. I take the blame. But never put it all on me Tsunade."

Tsunade fell back into her own chair. "I know. I know sensei. But if I knew it was this bad I would have-"

"You would have what? Come back? We both know you only even sent that gift because you were for once sober enough to realize it was her birthday. That you only have come back now because of the war."

There was silence in the office.

"I don't know what I would have done sensei. But I would have done something."