(A/N: I would like to apologize for the long wait. I have not been well and recently haven't been able to sit down at a desk for prolonged periods. I'm generally not in good health but sometimes things just aren't possible for me, and other times I can still do a lot. Apology aside, I hope you all enjoy what I'm writing.)
Chapter Six: consequences and time passed;
*Hoarse, Raw-Throated Screaming*"Stop, just stop!" - "You can always leave." "Why don't you do that?" "Yes, leave."
"""You don't belong here meddler, the balance must be upheld!"""
Three sets of eyes from three seemingly unique beings. One infantile, promised everything, One harsh and measured, ensured reality, One old and grey, and also ageless and cruel, welcomed embrace. Three sisters who each wore many faces, as one flowed into the other into the next in an infinite cycle. None of them seemed special. None of them were unfamiliar. All were somehow natural.
Nevertheless, three sisters' eyes glowed as they spoke, and especially when they spoke in unison. They spoke in riddles and tortured the fragment. They pulled the soul apart thread by thread, angry that they could not hold them indefinitely. These threads were not part of the cycle, could not be part of the cycle. These threads slipped from their grasp back to form the anomaly.
"I've respected your domain and kept to myself. I have not touched any of you, none of them know me, and none of them know themselves!"
""How can you know?"" "Yes, how?" ""He is blind as we. He doesn't know anything""
"""What can you know, anomaly? What can you tell us that we haven't ordained? The flow has been threatened, out of balance, set to be corrected yet always off course, and here you are, the foreigner. What Haven't You Done??"""
"I didn't do this. I didn't set you out of balance. I have not threatened the cycle! What's more, there is one dead that refuses to lie still, one living that think's itself many, and many disregarding your rules, pretending to stay within them!"
"""And what of free will?"""
"I have taken none. I've only answered questions, drawn attention, and corrected the wrongs of the pretenders."
"We do not have time for this." "Him neither." "We have decided."
"""Do not overstep again Anomaly. We do not touch the one's we cannot, you better not touch the ones we can. Next time, we'll pay the price. We can't afford needless meddling..."""
Three sisters faded, the connection was restored. The anomaly could feel them again. 'I always hate the correction forces of the universes I visit. If you don't break their rules they can't banish you, and if you aren't there they can't kill you, but they sure do love to tear you apart with what little authority over you they have.'
'There aren't many more suggestions to make, Kushina is fully competent on her own. I shouldn't need to incur the wrath of a natural law again. Now if they'd just do their duty or at least take care of their charges, I wouldn't even be here. Some inspiration and guidance here and there and a lot of unnecessary harm can be avoided.'
---Time skip in Konoha---
(1 Year and 6 Months later)
Naruto was almost four. Only a few more months to go and he would be there. Many things had changed both in his life and in the village. The village was in full conflict with the land of lightning just a year ago, now there was peace. A treaty was signed during that year's winter festival. It wasn't the only thing that happened though.
The Hyuga Affair. During the signing of the peace treaty, as negotiations were closing and the last terms jotted down, an attack occurred. Hizashi Hyuga attacked the Head Ninja of Kumogakure after spotting him as he was scaling the Hyuga compound walls.
Before the attack, Hizashi Hyuga had spotted the man in time to signal Anbu who informed the Hokage. Hiruzen, In his wisdom, called for a break to the negotiations and lead the Raikage on a stroll with a small entourage. On a hill, in view of of the Hyuga compound, they talked before they both watched a bird dive down and expose a ninja trying to sneak in.
It was then Hiruzen reportedly said: "You know, so many ninja forget about the transformation jutsu, call it useless and weak, but the truly skilled can do far more with little than most can do with even A-rank jutsu. The Hyuga are some of our most skilled ninja, and they don't forget much. Care to identify the individual foolish enough to invade a sensor clan while most ninja are home and on high alert?"
The Raikage at the time grit his teeth and denied everything. He implied that with another clan specialized in genjutsu, one famous for insubordination and pursuing its own goals, it must have been really hard for Konoha to even accept the treaty. There had been tensions with the Uchiha, and the Raikage already knew they were sabotaging and maneuvering around each other. The implied meaning wasn't a shot in the dark. Everyone knew the Uchiha weren't cooperating, even their enemies.
"You know what this means." He had said, as he walked away. The Raikage officially demanded the Uchiha responsible be found and handed over like the treaty stipulated. Official emissaries could not be touched, a stipulation that had already been agreed to and signed.
The Uchiha protested the accusation and even swore to increase their contribution to the war if negotiations fell out over this, which had no positive effects because they still didn't give in to the bogus investigation. People even believed they may have controlled the head ninja of the village hidden in the clouds. The Uchiha were not well trusted.
The Hokage of course knew the Uchiha hadn't done anything, but this was a political matter and he couldn't declare the Uchiha innocent without calling the Raikage a deliberate conspirator to the attempt to kidnap a Hyuga. Instead, Hiruzen only said that they could find no evidence of any Uchiha involvement and let the ninja spread their own doubts about the Uchiha risking the village's safety by organizing an attack on the Hyuga.
Still, according to the treaty, someone needed to be handed over to the Raikage. It wasn't until several weeks after the event that people had learned that Hizashi Hyuga had been killed and turned over to Kumogakure, as a sacrifice to pay for the ninja's death. Though Hiashi was the actual Man to put the kidnapper down, Kumogakure could not complain, They weren't on stable political ground themselves, and even they wanted time to raise the next generation before another war. So, a treaty set to hold for twenty years was signed and while Konoha mourned, they still celebrated the end of the war and the return of many ninja, both prisoners of war, and those on regular deployment.
A few weeks after the treaty and after the funeral of one Hizashi Hyuga, Naruto met a young girl alone at night...
"What are you doing?" Naruto had asked, approaching the girl crying on the ground, her yukata soaked by the snow, her hands and feet red from the cold.
"If you keep crying, how am I supposed to find out? Where's your house?" The little girl just shook her head and held her yukata tight. She hadn't paid attention and she was lost.
Naruto wasn't blind though. The blanket of snow was thin, and it was barely snowing at all, so her footprints were clearly visible. He simply reached down and grabbed her hand. It took no effort at all to pull her off the ground and lead her away hand in hand. Nothing but her tiny sandal imprints to guide them.
Naruto had talked to her about many things. Mostly, he just spoke, filled the air to drive back the silence. He smiled at her and told her about the kids at the orphanage. He had just been there, to read to the kids and help Lady Iwako out. He told her of the excitement they all had when they found out Ichiraku from Ichiraku's ramen was coming for a feast.
The important part was, the girl wasn't crying anymore. She didn't know why he was being so nice to her, but she could tell he was talking to her to distract her. She was very shy, and she didn't want to talk, but he helped her, for no reason at all. It didn't take long for Naruto to lead her back to the gate, but she was there and she'd wished it could have taken longer.
It wasn't often that people were nice to her, or helped her. Her dad always had her fighting Neji, her cousin, training in the gentle fist, hoping to beat her older cousin. Her dad always praised Neji, but Hinata had never thought less of her dad or jealous of Neji. She was the Hyuga clan princess, she needed to be strong, so she tried her hardest to catch up to him, but she never resented him for being strong. She never even wanted to fight.
Her father had never acknowledged her. To him, she was a disappointment, and he told her all the time. She had private tutors, and training, and even a little time to herself, but her dad was always distant, putting duty first, and her mom obeyed her dad. Hinata liked Naruto, he was so openly nice to her and paid attention to her without even knowing her, and she wanted to be his friend.
"You live in a big house like this, and you're crying?" Immediately Hinata had been pulled out of her thoughts of longing for a friend. Her lips parted slightly in what was probably the most expressive she'd been around him, and it was in surprise.
"I don't have anyone, and I never cry." Naruto then chuckled and said goodbye, running off as her father retrieved her from the gateway. He had not greeted her, or even said he was worried, just admonished her for not thinking about the family and running off. It was the first of many of her lessons on her duty to her family. Hinata only thought about the kind boy and what he had said.
Kushina had been so proud of her son, he felt warmer from it for weeks when she told him... Until she beat him up in his own dreams for getting full of himself and pulling back from training. Naruto had already learned the weak body bind seal, and Kushina had taught him the academy three, though he just couldn't use them without his mother's help, which meant he couldn't use them at all since his mother only set a little time aside for practicing it.
The weak body bind seal just stopped tied up targets from molding their chakra and made it harder to loosen the ropes. Naruto had also learned two new seals in the time that had passed. The poison containment seal, and the restful sleep seal.
Kushina had been focusing on practical Fuinjutsu for Naruto, as slow as he was to learn the art and as much as he hated it, she wasn't going to waste her time teaching him Fuinjutsu to make things grow or to paint a surface a different color, though the next seal would create perfectly blended camouflage, and the next after that would be the odor concealment seal. Each would be useful in ordinary life, but also as a shinobi.
The Seal he was learning now was the common repair seal. The reason why he'd struggled with it was different from the other seals he'd learned. The common repair seal, had to be adjusted on the spot, and he had to examine the object that needed to be repaired to properly visualize it or else the repair would be at best shoddy and at worst damaging to the already damaged goods.
When he'd started learning the seal 4 months ago, every attempt did more damage than it helped. Kushina had showed him how some damage needed new material to repair smoothly, but she also told him that unless he perfected the seal, using it would always weaken the object he was trying to fix. It was because of this seal, that Naruto got the idea of buying discarded and broken kunai and shuriken, trying to repair them. Today, Naruto could repair small objects imperfectly.
Today, Naruto also left the house less often. With the ending of the war, many ninja came home, and missions outside the leaf were shorter. It was far more often that Naruto was yelled at outside. He had picked up a wallet for a man who Kushina knew had dropped it on purpose and he had smacked it out of Naruto's hand calling him a thief. From there, rumors spread and people with nothing else to hate except him fueled the flames.
Pretty soon, public sentiment about Naruto was that he was a thief. Nobody had seen him pick up the wallet, at least nobody that made it their business to come forward and speak up. But plenty of people had seen him next to the man and seen the wallet slapped out of his hand. On top of that, other rumors had flown around about him being a dirty thief.
Naruto found himself facing the distrusting faces of shopkeepers he used to be friendly with. When it was pointed out he was an orphan without a job, people started questioning how he paid for anything. The only people that didn't give him that disapproving glare were people he already knew, like Lady Iwako, Ichiraku Takeuchi, and Dairoku the comic books shopkeeper. Lady Iwako actually glared at him sternly to confront him about the truth but she trusted him when he told her about the misunderstanding and the money he found on the ground.
There were people that hadn't heard the rumors, or acted like they hadn't, but the bad experiences were far more memorable than the times he was treated like any other kid. The bait and tackle shop owner still liked him but Naruto caught and sold worms to him and bought his fishing pole from him so Kushina couldn't tell if in that slow shop Naruto was just good business or if the owner was actually a good person.
Then, there was his training. Naruto was still doing the leaf sticking exercise as his control expanded over larger and larger portions of his chakra. He had thought the exercise would get easier since it was the same thing every time, but the higher his chakra pool he'd use for the exercise, the harder it got because of the proportionally smaller amount of chakra he'd have to use out of the total.
He had developed a method to train it easier that started by sticking many leaves at once to his body and moving his chakra to flow over all of them. Then he would progressively pull more and more leaves away one by one and get used to the smaller amount. Then, he'd start over and get used to rapidly removing groups of leaves together to get accustomed to sudden changes in chakra flow. If he didn't react fast enough, he'd shred the rest of the leaves. If he reacted too fast, they'd fall. Eventually, Naruto would get it down to one leaf and rapidly add and subtract leaves in different areas as fast as he could until his mom increased his allotted chakra pool.
Kushina called it his monkey leaf technique, teasing that only a monkey grabs more leaves than they need and starts playing with them and exaggerating the things people show them how to do. Also, she said he sticks so many leaves to himself it looks like he lives in the trees.
Naruto's chakra pool had doubled three times over the year and a half, and he could control nearly 4-5% of his total chakra reserves according to his mother. At this rate, by the time he was six, he would achieve genin level control over his entire chakra pool. His mother said sooner, but that something else would get in his way and he'd have to learn to control that too, soon.
Naruto had actually tried to make a little money using the restful sleep seal, but the seal wasn't that rare and Naruto gained the reputation of a swindler in the groups that already hated him. Not one of them entertained the thought he could make a competent restful sleep seal. The doctor's, at least, understood that it was a basic public Fuinjutsu that every medical-nin learns how to make, they just had neither the need nor the disposition to hire a three year old boy for it.
A surprising source of income was actually his repair seal. A lot of kids had toys break at the playground ranging from toy ninja tools to just plastic shovels and balls. Naruto couldn't charge much for it, and the other kids knew the repairs weren't perfect, but he got paid in snacks and small change allowances.
Kushina had told him that when he got skilled enough with the seal, he'd be able to form it from his chakra directly without using any tools and that's when he'd know he had mastered it. When he asked why she hadn't made him do that for the weak body bind seal, or the Obake masks, she told him it was because mastery didn't have such drastic effects on those seals' end products, and because they were object seals, and not effect seals, they could be prepared ahead of time, so perfect mastery just wasn't needed.
Yesterday had been a bad day for Naruto. A certain chunin had spotted him hanging out with his friends at the park and decided to pay a visit. One of Naruto's friends was his nephew. He brought his nephew to the side and told him to avoid the orphan, and even told him about a few of the rumors going around Konoha. Then he just left with a disapproving glance at the boy for playing with him.
For the rest of the day he wouldn't play with Naruto. When he talked to the other kids they got awkward around Naruto as well. At the end of the day they all confronted Naruto together. His problems had finally reached his friends.
"Naruto, you shouldn't steal." - "Come on guys! Is that what this has all been about? You know me. I didn't steal anything. It's just rumors!"
"My uncle said you were caught red-handed! One time you took a mask without paying for it, and even cursed at the old man running the shop!"
"I didn't do ANYTHING! I asked that man if I could buy it and he just pushed me to the dirt! So what if I yelled back at him! What kind of person does that?" - ""Really? He just pushed you?""
"I've never seen any adult push a little kid down, and apparently this was almost two years ago when we first met you! What about the guy that slapped that wallet out of your hand? My uncle swears he was there and that a lot of other people saw you with that wallet in your hand."
"Then your uncle is just like all those other people! They only turned around when the man yelled at me! I picked it up off the ground! I was trying to hand it back to him!" - "Really? You're not lying? You're not a liar then Naruto?"
"No! I'm not a liar!" - "Then you're also not an orphan then, are you? My uncle called you an orphan, but you always said your parents were working late. We've never seen your parents, and you never come near to talk to ours. Why do we never see them?"
"I- Guys, I am an orphan, but what does that have to do with anything? I'm not a thief! I just didn't want you guys to treat me differently. I live on my own, not even at the orphanage!"
"My uncle also told me to think about something... Naruto, where do you get your money? I know you buy ramen at Ichiraku's every week, and you bought that fishing pole a while back. Both winter festivals you had money to spend. My uncle says the village only gives you enough money to live and eat, so...How are you buying stuff?"
"I find money on the ground, I sell worms to the bait and tackle shop, and I repair toys for kids. I didn't steal it." - "Maybe you're right Naruto. But who are we supposed to believe? We've seen the way ninjas look at you. Most of them look at you like you're trouble. I don't think we can be friends anymore."
""Sorry Naruto, but you lied to us.""
That started Naruto's first day alone at the park. The other kids would still ask him questions or even go to him to ask him to repair their toys, but they weren't friends anymore. In the future, they would only play together if they absolutely needed someone else to play the game. Naruto would come to spend less and less time at that park. When their parents came to pick them up and they heard about what happened, none of them glared at Naruto, but none of them stuck up for him either.
Kushina had put off his training for the day and spent the whole night reassuring Naruto that his friends were just kids. Like everyone else, or perhaps more so, they would follow what everyone else told them. People listen to people, and unfortunately, they don't listen to certain people when a lot of other people disagree with them.
That didn't mean Naruto was wrong, just that other people didn't know who to trust. They weren't there, they didn't see anything, so most people just listened to whoever had the loudest voice. Naruto understood. He would believe people over others too, but his mother told him this was an important lesson for him as a future shinobi. He promised to remain skeptical when two people told him very different things. The biggest mistake he could make was assuming the first person to talk to him was right, or that they were wrong. He'd need to learn who to trust, and even then to keep in mind at the back of his head, people can always be wrong.
Today, Naruto was preparing. Tomorrow, Naruto was finally going to strike back. He was going to punish those ninja for lying about him. He was going to pull his first real prank, and his mom was going to help him. Today though, he needed to gather rope, paint, and something to make a sign. Naruto was going to announce to the village that he wasn't going to take it lying down again. He knew just who to target.