Naruto used a shin rake as a softening blow before coming in with a roundhouse to the knee. He brought his arm up and then his elbow down into his opponent’s neck before slipping back into stance. From there he dropped to the ground and swept the enemy’s legs out from under him with his own. He flipped onto his hands, kicked the next guy in the face, landed once again on his feet and immediately grabbed him to pull him down into his knee. Another elbow across the face and a good solid kick to the middle and the last man was down.
He grinned. No imaginary opponent had ever been so beaten up.
He turned to look at Sora where she was standing against the wall of the courtyard.
“Good,” she said simply, nodding her head.
“So I pass on this one, right?” He’d been working on these for months. They were flow drills, long series of techniques put together in imaginary fight sequences so that you could practice each move as it flowed into the next. Each new drill built off of the ones that came before it, requiring the fighter to maintain old techniques and learn new ones at the same time. They continuously got longer and harder to memorize, requiring more stamina as they increased time. You couldn’t stop for breath or to think about what you needed to do next. You simply had to keep going.
Naruto had just finished number fifteen. It was well over half and hour long, requiring well over a hundred different techniques. It was also the last one you learned before the split into the two forms. Passing this one would mean that Sora was done teaching him taijutsu.
She finally cracked a smile. “You pass.”
“So I get to go train with Nori-san now?”
“We’ll leave by the end of the week.” She smiled and pushed herself off the wall. “Good thing too, another month and we would be snowed in.”
She crossed the courtyard to where her other pupil was practicing the same drill. “So... Hinata-chan, are you ready for me to take a look?”
She looked over her shoulder at them and then shook her head. “I want to go over it a few more times.”
“Wanna stop and grab some lunch?” Naruto yelled.
“No, I can keep going.”
“But if you start it again it’ll take another half an hour before you can take a break....” he said.
“Come on Hinata, I don’t think we can deny Naruto his ramen for that long.” Sora added.
Hinata smiled and then joined the two of them as the headed up the stairs into the house.
“I can’t believe that ya’ll are already finishing up fifteen. You’ve been working on this stuff for what almost a year now?”
“Nine months, Nee-chan. We’ve been in this place for ten,” Hinata supplied.
“Geeze, just that long? Sometimes it feels like ya’ll have always been here.”
Naruto eyed her suspiciously. “Oi, it that an insult?”
Sora grinned and reached up to ruffle Naruto’s hair. “Don’t worry, kid. I don’t mind having you around.” He made a whiney noise at having his hair played with and then tried to elbow her in the ribs. She just laughed and bumped him with her hip, sending him off balance.
Hinata smiled. Whatever the whole story behind Naruto’s parentage had been, it had obviously brought the two of them closer together. It was as if they had really become a brother and sister; they still joked and insulted each other but there was an undercurrent of affection in it.
Her smile faded. Why hadn’t they told her what was going on? She knew that Onee-chan had known who Naruto’s parents were but beyond that, Naruto hadn’t told her anything. She hadn’t wanted to pry and ask him about it, but she had thought that he would tell her willingly. But instead he had remained silent for over a month.
And she still hadn’t been able to figure out what had been going on with him when he had first come out of the house screaming at Sora to tell him what was going on. The black stripes down the sides of his face had changed shape and his eyes...she shuttered. His eyes had been yellow and so very, very angry.
What weren’t they telling her?
She shook her head as she realized that Sora was talking. “The thing is it’s amazing enough to find one person who can move at this pace, but for both of you to be able to move this fast is astounding.”
“Are we farther along than you were at our age?” Naruto asked.
She smirked. “Naruto you’re almost 15. When I was your age, I had already completed my Kaze training, the clan had been overturned and I was traveling with Obaa-chan. I started learning this stuff from Nanashi when I was 7.
“Nanashi taught you?” Hinata asked.
“Yeah. She was never much for any type of taijutsu, but she had learned the first ten or so of the flow drills. She was friends with the old head of the clan, which is why she sent me there after she died. She had started teaching me the drills right after I met her. I was sort of dependent on ninjutsu at the time.” She laughed and shook her head. “She and the Fourth used to send Kakashi-no-baka and me off to practice the drills together, although we both knew that she was just doing it just so they could be alone. He was never very good at them and he didn’t have that funky eye yet so he would sulk at-“
“You and Nanashi went to Leaf together?” Hinata said quietly. This was part of it, she realized. Part of the secret they were keeping from her.
Sora froze dead in her tracks. Slowly, turned to look at Hinata and then at Naruto and then back to Hinata. “Naruto didn’t tell you?” she asked.
Hinata looked at Naruto. He was staring at the ground.
Sora closed her eyes and brought her fingers up to massage her temples. “Nanashi and I traveled through Leaf when I was younger. We knew the Fourth and Kakashi, although I haven’t heard from him in almost 15 years.”
“Oh,” Hinata sighed. Well that must be how she knew about Naruto’s parents. But how would she know when no one else did.
Sora glared at Naruto before turning back to Hinata. “Hinata-chan, would you mind going into the kitchen and starting the water and grabbing some of the vegetables? I need to have a word with your partner here.” She grabbed a handful of blond hair and pulled the boy down the hall.
Hinata stared after them, listening to Naruto yell protests. She sighed and dropped her chin to her chest. What weren’t they telling her? She thought that he trusted her. She thought that they were supposed to be partners; she thought that meant that he told her things. But apparently there were some pieces of information he couldn’t trust her with. She sniffed loudly and wiped her eyes which were just barely starting to get moist, with the back of her hand.
But if he wasn’t going to tell her, he wasn’t going to tell her. All she could do was be the best partner she could. She squared her shoulders and went into the kitchen to start lunch.
Meanwhile, Sora had dragged Naruto down the hall and shoved him into one of the storage rooms before stepping in herself. Running through a set of seals she yelled “Sound seal no jutsu” before planting her hands firmly on her hips and glaring at him. Naruto watched as her chakra covered the walls, preventing the sound of their conversation from leaving the room.
“Whatcha do the seal for?” he asked.
“So I can yell at you without having to worry about Hinata hearing. YOU HAVEN’T TOLD HER YET!?” she screamed, glaring at her.
“Of course not!” he yelled back.
“OF COURSE NOT? I just found out that you haven’t told your partner about the most important thing you’ve ever found out in your whole life and you say ‘Of course not!” She closed her eyes and made herself take a deep breath. She placed one hand out in front of herself, palm flat, to keep the distance between them so that she wouldn’t throttle him. “Okay, Naruto..... why? Why haven’t you told her yet?”
“Because as long as she doesn’t know it can’t hurt her!”
“As long as she doesn’t know! You don’t think that she knows that something is up? You don’t think she knows that you and I know something and aren’t telling her? She freakin’ saw you go all fox like Naruto. I don’t know about the Hinata that you know, Naruto, but the Hinata I know is a smart girl, and smart girls are generally able to figure out that something is wrong when their partner’s eyes turn yellow!”
“Of course she knows something’s up, but that doesn’t mean that I can tell her!”
“WHY THE HECK NOT!?”
“Because her family is made only of suck-up, snobby bastards! They probably hate me even more than the rest of the village! And if they found out that she decided to partner train with the demon fox, I don’t know what they’d do to her!” He was panting for breath, glaring at Sora.
“You are not Kyubi; it is sealed inside of you.”
“DON’T YOU THINK I KNOW THAT!?” He stopped to take a breath. “But they don’t. They’re already hard enough on her as it is; she doesn’t need them yelling at her because she chose to partner with me. As long as she doesn’t know about Kyubi, she has an escape. They can’t blame her when she didn’t know.”
Sora shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way, Naruto. She’s your partner, not your ward. Facing her family is her responsibility and while you can help her, you can’t make her decisions for her.”
Naruto crossed his arms and glared at her. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Nori-san said that you hadn’t told anyone about how my mother died, not even Yasu. She’s your partner, so why didn’t you tell her?”
“It’s not the same thing! Yasu knew I had secrets that I wouldn’t talk about just like she had hers and she trusted me to tell her the things she needed to know. She knew about the things that were going to potentially come up in combat like my bloodline-“
“Which you still haven’t told us about!”
“I’m waiting for ya’ll to guess!”
“Why the hell should we have to?”
“NARUTO! I am really mad right now and it is not the time to be pushing me about my blood limit unless you want to see me demonstrate it on you!”
He gulped. “Does it, umm, have anything to do with you’re eyes turning purple? Cause they’re doing that right now.”
“I KNOW! I’m thinking of all of the things I could do to you to make you come to your senses!” Sora glared at him. Well she’d always heard that family could push your buttons like no one else. “You have to tell her.”
“It’s none of your business.”
“None of my business?” Steam started coming out of her ears. “So then tell me, oh great and wise Naruto, what am I supposed to do if the three of us get in a fight, you have to use Kyubi chakra and she doesn’t know what’s going on. What’s she going to do when you go all demon fox?”
“Eh? You’re doing that thing again! Where you say one thing and then go off and do something else! You’re a, a ...whatchamakalit.” He brain had stopped functioning and he couldn’t remember the word. Sora smirked at him. He growled. “You know what I mean! You’re a big, stupid idiot!”
Her purple eyes flashed. Well if that was what he wanted... “You want to see my bloodlimit, Naruto? FINE!”
And suddenly, Naruto found himself in the grasp of Silence no Jutsu. And Leg Bind no Jutsu. And some other genjutsu which was making his body heat up as if he had been popped into an oven. He fell backwards, just barely catching himself with his hands, silently gasping for breath as he fanned himself with his hands.
Sora took one look at him and let out a long string of colorful curses. Naurto felt the hold of the jutsus loosen and then vanish. He shook his legs then looked up at her. She was leaning against the wall, heals of her hands pressed against her eyes.
“I know, I know, I’m sorry.” She sighed and let her hands fall to her side. “I lost my temper again.”
“What did you do?” he asked.
“I put a few jutsus on you. Nothing bad and I’ve released them all so you should be okay now.” She shook her head. “But maybe I need to be reported to Child Services” she muttered.
“But you didn’t do anything. No seals, no speaking, nothing.” He jumped up and ran over to her. “How did you do that? Can you teach me?”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “Naruto think about it. What just happened?”
He furrowed his brow in thought. But then suddenly he realized what was going on and his face cleared. “Your blood limit. You don’t use seals.”
She smiled. “Finally. Come on, let’s go find
Hinata. I’ll explain everything.”
Unfortunately for Hinata, she was the only one who was going to eat the vegetables she had cut up. Sora had entered the kitchen and declared that if she was going to have to have this conversation, she was having chocolate ice cream for lunch. Naruto had decided that if she was going to eat ice cream for lunch, he was just going to eat ramen. Hinata sighed, feeling rather ridiculously sensible. But she couldn’t think of anything she wanted for lunch that was bad for her. She sighed and picked up her tray of traditional, sensible food and went to sit at the kitchen table.
Sora took another heaping spoonful of ice cream and stuck it in her mouth. She was eating directly out of the carton, pouring extra hot fudge strait into the package.
“So, Naruto has finally guessed what my blood limit is. Wanna take a shot, Hinata-chan?”
Hinata shook her head. “I think you used it that first time when you looked at the cream I had made, but I’m not sure. But you’re eyes changed color and that is generally a sign of a bloodlimit. I thought it was a scanning trait, but that doesn’t fit into the umm...match you had with Naruto.”
Sora grinned. Match. The girl always found the best way to talk around things. “You were on the right track. I was scanning the cream, but I was using a scanning jutsu to do so. A good one too, I’ll have to have Yasu teach it to you.”
Hinata’s brow furled in puzzlement. “But you didn’t use any...” And suddenly she realized what it was. It wasn’t a question of what Sora had been doing, but how she was doing it. Or rather, how she wasn’t doing it.
Sora grinned. “Bingo.”
“But no seals at all, how does that...”
Sora dismissed the question with a wave of her hand. “Not ‘no seals at all’. Just not seals with my hands.”
“Huh? What are you talking about?” Naruto asked.
Sora chuckled. “Okay, lets start from the beginning, shall we? People use seals to mold chakra into more complicated forms, correct?”
“Yes, and?” Naurto said, trying to figure out what she was getting at.
“But sometimes people don’t use seals. Hinata doesn’t use seals to turn on her bloodlimit anymore. Neither of you have used seals to do henge for a long time.”
“Of course not. Those are easy to do.” Naruto said.
“But if you don’t do the seals, how do you get the chakra to form into the right pattern?”
“I don’t know. You just sort of remember how it goes.”
Sora rolled her eyes. “One of these days I’m going to get you to know the technical stuff, Naruto, I swear. Hinata, you take swing at it.”
Hinata looked shyly over at Naruto, not wanting to up stage him. But he looked like he was genuinely hoping that she knew the answer. She bit her lower lip and then started talking quietly. “Your mind remembers it. Like when your body remembers the way a flip or a solid kick is supposed to feel. After you do it so many times, your mind is able to remember.”
“Exactly. If you use a technique a lot, you can get your mind to remember how it feels. However, you have to repeat a technique hundreds, maybe a thousand times before you can memorize it.” She sighed and leaned back in her chair. “My blood limit accelerates that.”
Naruto leaned in over the table. “You mean you don’t have to do it so many times before you memorize it?”
She snorted as she scooped up another spoonful of ice cream. “I only have to do it once.”
“NANI!” Naruto yelled, accidentally tipping over his cup of ramen.
Sora’s voice was perfectly clam as she continued to eat her ice cream. “I only have to do it once. Kinda like the ability of the sharingan to store jutsus.”
Hinata was astounded. “So when you were fighting with Naruto...”
“I used it to turn on the Chakra Bind before Naruto could summon anything, exactly.” She grinned at the two. “It’s great fun when you want to play pranks on people in public places because as long as no one knows your real eye color, they don’t realize you’re doing anything.”
“No special conditions? Like, saying the name of the technique?” Hinata asked.
Sora shook her head. “Nope. Once I see the way the patterns are formed, I can copy them no problem. Plus, I’ve learned how to tweak things a bit to make sure they do what I want them to. Oh and more than one at a time.”
Naruto’s eyes went wide. “How many more?”
She looked up at the ceiling. “I think the most I ever managed was six.”
Six? Shit. Naruto was astounded. Most jounins could only do three at once.
“Now,” Sora said. “Before you start thinking this is some miracle technique, let me make sure you understand the full story. One, this drains more chakra than simply using the seals; you end up expending a lot of extra energy. Two, this doesn’t mean I can just to whatever I want with chakra. I can memorize patterns, but I can’t just think of what I want the end result to be and call it up. That’s one of the key reason’s I joined up with Yasu. The woman is the best creator of jutsu’s I’ve ever met.”
Naruto sat back in his chair. “That ROCKS! Ha, wait till the others back in Leaf get a load of how cool my Onee is!”
Hinata looked over at him. It was not the first time that he had used the word Onee to describe Sora in a way that made her think that maybe he meant something more than the original ploy. It had started right after the fight. She sighed. One more secret she couldn’t figure out.
Sora grinned at Naruto’s words. “Yeah it’s cool.” She sighed. “Pity my clan wasn’t cool when they were alive.”
Suddenly the joy around the table died and the empty air was filled with a heavy silence. Finally Hinata spoke. “So, every one of them is dead.”
Sora leaned back and closed her eyes. “Yep. A few weeks after I was born.”
“But...how do you kill a clan that’s so powerful?” Naruto asked in wonder.
“You poison them,” Sora said, and her voice was filled with an emotion that neither Naruto nor Hinata had ever heard before. It was hatred. Pure, unabashed hatred.
She opened her eyes to look at them intently. “A man wormed his way into my family home and put the extract of a plant called Fading Flower into our water supply. It causes people to just sort of waste away. It can take anywhere from a year to a few months, but once you have it in your system death in inevitable. The plants are rare and almost impossible to grow, but if you can figure out how, you have it made. Unless the victims are looking for it specifically it is virtually undetectable.”
Motherly instinct surfaced once again in Hinata and she reached out to grab Sora’s hand. It was still gripping the spoon, white knuckled. Sora looked over at her and gave a small smile. Slowly her hand began to relax.
“How did you survive?” Naruto asked quietly, head bowed.
“I was a baby. The poison doesn’t get into a mother’s womb or her breast milk. Everyone was dead before I was weaned.” Her voice was calm, betraying no emotion. It was as if she wasn’t talking about herself, wasn’t talking about her family, but some almost gotten incident buried in a dusty textbook.
“That’s horrible!” Hinata cried, gripping Sora’s hand more firmly.
Sora gave a sad laugh and shook her head. “It’s not that great of a loss, Hinata. They were some of the most ruthless people in the west. They were obsessed with gaining power for themselves through whatever means necessary. One of the key motives why I don’t tell anyone about my blood limit is because I don’t want myself associated with them. It is going to die with me.”
“Die with you? But what about children?” Hinata asked.
Sora snorted at that. “Come on Hinata, do you think I’m really going to have kids? Do you think I’m even going to get married?” She reached over to give Hinata’s hand on her’s a squeeze. “Sorry hon; I’m the last in my line. But don’t let it bother you.”
She pushed away from the table and went to throw her empty ice cream container. Hinata and Naruto continued to stare at each other across the table in stunned silence. Both of their lunches were basically untouched, minus Naruto’s knocked over ramen.
“Come on kids, let’s get back to practice.
Hinata’s got to get through drill fifteen and then we have to
pack for the trip down.” The message was clear, even to Naruto:
the subject of Sora’s family and heritage were now closed from
discussion.
“Pajamas?”
“Check.”
“Toothbrush?”
“Check. Why do I have to do this?”
“Because I don’t trust you not to forget anything. Scrolls Yasu wanted?”
He glared at her. “You were in charge of bringing those.”
She scratched the back of her head. “Oh, yeah. Check. Kunai?”
“Check.”
“Reading for the winter?”
“Why do we have to bring all these books down? They’re heavy!”
“Because I refuse to have you sitting around doing nothing at night. The 100 essential skills scroll?”
“We’ve already mastered all the skills, why do we have to bring that?”
She rolled her eyes. “Because. How about a positive attitude?”
“That’s not on the list!”
“Yes it is.”
“No it’s not!”
“Naruto, I wrote the list. Look towards the bottom.”
“What the? What’s that doing there?”
“Never question she who made the list.” He glared at her. “Hmmm, well guess we can’t cross that off of the list. Is that the last of it?”
“There’s something here about Nanashi manuscript.”
She snapped her fingers. “Oh yeah.” She rummaged through her bag until she found a large book, which she tossed to him. Catching it, he started leafing through the pages. It was handwritten, crossed out and written over, corrections made in different colors of ink.
“Eh, what’s this?”
“It’s your mother’s book.” He looked up at her, startled. She shrugged. “She was never able to get it to the point she wanted, so she never tried to have it published. It’s her original manuscript, so it’s kind of messy, but you should be able to read it. Plus it sounds like her, so you might be able to get a feel for what she sounded like.” She grinned. “She wrote most of it while she was up here pregnant with you.”
Naruto ran his hand over the cover of the book reverently. It was her book in her hand. An actual link to his mother.
“In any case,” Sora continued. “You’ve learned enough politics that you should be able to benefit from it now. Just remember that if she refers to someone named Sweetie, its your father and if there is suddenly someone else’s handwriting it’s your father.” She paused as if thinking about something, and then shrugged. “And if it’s something in your father’s handwriting that’s then crossed out, it something she didn’t agree on. She used to tell him to write his own damn book.”
Naruto laughed softly under his breath, eyes still wide and hand’s still clutching the book. He looked up at her and grinned. “Arigato.”
She grinned back and tousled his hair.
That was how Hinata found them; her own back packed and slung up onto her back. Once again she wondered what had happened that had caused this sudden change between the two of them.
“All packed up, Hinata?” Sora asked, moving to close her bag.
“Hai,” she said quietly. Naruto quirked an eyebrow at her voice and was about to ask her what was up when Sora interrupted.
“Great. Lets go!”
“Nani? You’re not going to go through the checklist with her?”
“Nope, I trust Hinata to bring everything she needs.”
“But you don’t trust me?”
“Hey, you’re leaving even though you know you’re forgetting something.”
“What?”
She grinned. “Your positive attitude.” .
As they emerged from the trees into the farmland, Hinata spotted a village. It was small, only about 50 buildings or so, nestled between the rolling hills. The houses were all short and squat with green tile roofs and white walls. It looked like something out of a picture postcard.
“Bucolic, isn’t it?” Sora said, rolling her eyes. “I suppose after years of traveling around hell holes with me, she wanted to settle down somewhere pretty.” She started walking down the hill, Naruto and Hinata following behind.
“Where exactly do they live?” Hinata asked.
“A bit out from the village. The houses you can see from here are all part of the center of town. They support the local farms, and the farmers, like Nori and Yasu, live out on their farms. People don’t really go out there very often. They handle most of the work themselves and go into town fairly frequently so there is no need for anyone else to make the drive.”
“What do they grow?”
“I think they’re part of some sort of rice co-op?” She definitely did not sound sure. “You’ll have to ask them about it. The whole farmer thing still weirds me out. I generally try to ignore it.”
They reached the edge of the village, but didn’t go in. “Sorry guys, it’s getting late and I for one would like to be tucked away in Yasu’s kitchen with a nice hot cut of tea before it gets too dark and too cold.”
“Ha, first reasonable thing you’ve said all day!” Naruto yelled. The three moved on down the road. They walked along the road awhile until Sora suddenly turned and started walking down the rows of raised earth between the rice patties. The mud rose up over the edges of Naruto’s sandals and squished between his toes.
He looked up ahead of him, at the backs of Sora and Hinata. Hinata’s ponytail had slid out from underneath her jacket and now fell from her hat down her back and over her backpack. It had grown again, he realized. It fell five, maybe six inches below her shoulders now. Would she go back to wearing it short now that she could find someone who knew how to cut it? He found himself scowling at the idea. He would have to talk to her about it.
He sighed and scratched the back of his head. OK, so he had to tell her about the Kyubi. But what was that going to mean to her parents? What was it going to mean to her? And how the hell did he go about doing it anyway? He had never told anyone this; he had never wanted anyone to know. Hell, he still didn’t want anyone to know! He would be perfectly content if Hinata lived her whole life thinking he was a normal human being.
Stupid demon fox ruining everything. If it wasn’t for him he would be living in Leaf right now, son of the Yondaime. Then everyone would have treated him differently. Then he would have been able to be Hinata’s partner without her parent’s protesting. Then he wouldn’t have to keep secrets.
He sighed. But if the Kyubi hadn’t come, there probably wouldn’t have been any partner training to do. Sora never would have traveled to the west and studied with the Kizu clan. He and Hinata would have never been sent off with her to study.
Would he have become friends with Hinata had they both stayed in the village? He didn’t know. He should have realized how neat she was when they had talked before the final part of the Chuunin exam. She had been so...nice. He should have realized that she was cool.
It was sort of like the way Nee-chan had taught them to break downwards. All but the more powerful strikes could be absorbed; defenses were designed to work against those. You had to carefully insert layer after layer of chakra into your opponents shield until you had worked your way through. Somehow she had gotten into his subconscious. Sometimes when he was trying to go to sleep at night he could all he could see was her soft pale eyes in his mind.
He shook is head. What was happening to him?
“Here we are,” Sora said, interrupting his thoughts. She was pointing off ahead of her and when he leaned out to look around her he could see lights in the distance.
“Finally,” he muttered, as they headed towards the lights.
The exited the fields and started across a wide flat meadow in front of the house. Halfway there, they were met by a deep bark and the sound of splashing water. Sora laughed and reached down to pet the dog on the top of the head and scratch him behind his ears.
Naruto and Hinata stared. “What is that?” Naruto asked incredulously.
Sora looked up. “It’s a dog. You know, of the Canis family?”
“Nani?! That’s the strangest looking dog I’ve ever seen!” he yelled, pointing at the little brown...thing standing next to Sora. It was all disproportionate; its legs looked like it had been cut off at the knees an it’s ears were huge an stuck strait up. He didn’t have a tail. What sort of dog didn’t have a tail?
Sora scowled at him. “It’s a corgi. Yasu loves them and they only breed them in the west. I trucked this puppy hundreds of miles as a first birthday present for Miki-chan. He is not strange looking, he’s cute!”
“But he has no tail!” He stopped when he realized that Hinata had picked the dog up and was scratching the little dog under his chin. “Hina-chan!”
“Isn’t he too cute for words!” Hinata giggled as the dog lolled his head against her shoulder. She looked up at Sora. “What’s his name?”
“Dango,” she said, waling over to join Hinata in scratching the dog. “It’s Miki-chan’s favorite food and it was one of her first words. She used to yell it whenever she wanted some and the dog would come, hoping she would drop some. We used to call him something else, but whenever we said Dango, he would come. It just sort of stuck.”
“Awe, that’s so sweet!” The two of them giggled and continued to pet the dog.
Naruto sighed and rolled his eyes. Women.
“Aun’ Sowa!” Miki called out from the poarch, running towards the group.
“Hey Miki-chan!” Sora reached down and tossed the little girl into the air before settling the girl onto her hip and walking towards the house. Hinata smiled. The little girl in a kimono was being carried by a woman in leather pants and enormous black jacket. It made an interesting picture.
“Aun’ Sowa, Okaasa said you were goin’ to live with us!”
Sora ginned. “Hai, Miki-chan, Hinata, Naruto and me will be living hear for at least the winter.”
“Hinata, Naruto and I,” Yasu corrected from the doorway. The sleeves of her kimono were tied back and she was drying her hands on a dishcloth. “Please don’t teach my daughter your appalling grammar.”
Sora ginned as she climbed the steps up to the porch. “Aw come on, Yasu. You don’t want her to turn into a proper sick in the mud like you.”
Yasu shrugged. “I can’t say I would mind. Come
on in, I have tea ready.”
“HE’S WHO?!” Yasu yelled.
Sora sighed and thanked heaven that she had remembered to put another sound ward up. It was late at night and Miki, Naruto and Hinata had long ago been sent to bed, but she wasn’t about to put it above either one of them to spy on her and Yasu.
The three of them were sitting around the kitchen table, glasses of sake in their hands. Sora had her stockinged feet propped up on the table and Yasu had been laying with her head against Nori’s shoulder. Now however she was sitting up in her chair, staring intensely at Sora.
Sora looked back at her over the rim of her sake glass. “He’s Nanashi’s son.”
“And you didn’t tell me this why?” Yasu yelled.
Sora shrugged. “I thought he deserved to know first.” She let her head loll back on her neck. “It just took me a while to get up the nerve.”
Nori shook his head. “I didn’t know Nanashi had a son. I don’t understand how Nanashi could have a son.”
“Well the three of us, Naruto and that Kakashi-no-baka are the only three who know.”
“Kakashi-no-baka?” Nori asked, one eyebrow raised.
Sora waved her hand dismissively. “Naruto’s teacher in the Leaf. He was also a pupil of Naruto’s Father. Didn’t tell Naruto a thing about who his parents were, just left it all to me. I have half a mind to go to Leaf and beat him up right now.”
Yasu held up her hand. “Wait... the three of us, Naruto and Kakashi? Not Hinata?”
Sora shook her head. “Nope. He hasn’t gotten the nerve up.”
“But wouldn’t he be happy to be able to tell her who his parent’s were? Especially considering who is mother is I would have thought he would want to tell her.”
She raised her glass in a toast. “Ah but you see, if he tells her that, he has to tell her the rest as well.”
“There’s more?”
Sora’s laughter was saturated with irony. “Oh there’s more. The fact that he’s Nanshi’s son is just the beginning. But it’s his choice to tell.”
“WHAT!? You mean you’re not going to tell me?”
“Sorry, Yasu. I wish I could but...” She sighed and ran a hand through her hair. “If it was just my personal secret I’d tell you, but now I need to wait for him to be ready to tell people.”
Yasu rolled her eyes. “I don’t believe this.” She leaned onto the table. “Look Sora, I agreed that you could keep your secrets about where exactly you came from and what exactly happened with Nanashi as long as it didn’t affect what we were doing. If his secret is potentially dangerous...”
Sora sighed. “There are people after him because of this secret. But he effectively disappeared ten months ago and from what Obaa-chan’s spies can gather, they decided to head into the west. Plus no one back in Leaf knows where we are: I’ve purposefully been keeping them in the dark just in case the message was intercepted. So literally everyone who knows where we are is in this house right now. No one comes out here in the winter and the kids know not to go into the village without transforming first. There shouldn’t be any reason for the men to come through this area and if they do there shouldn’t be anyone who could tell them about us.”
Nori shook his head. “I don’t know Sora... Why isn’t Naruto in a more secure area?”
Sora smiled. “Leaf apparently has a lot on its mind right now. They’ve got another boy who’s been pursued by the leader of Sound, Orochimaru, and they’re still trying to recover from sneak attack by Hidden Sound and Hidden Sand. They’ve sort of got their hands full. So Obaa-chan called me.”
“Without knowing that Naruto is Nanashi’s son?”
“Nori and I ran across her just after we left the Kizu clan. I remembered her from Leaf, but I never told her I had been to the village.” She shrugged. “There was no reason for her to ever thing that I had been. I’m good at keeping under the radar, so when she needed to keep the boy hidden, I was brought in.” She snorted. “Plus I think Obaa-chan enjoyed the idea of throwing the two of us together considering we were bound to clash.”
“But is this secret dangerous?”
Sora’s voice was firm. “Not to you. He was hated in the village because of it, but he’s never hurt anyone innocent with it and he has yet to kill anyone. He doesn’t think that he can tell people and still be accepted because all the adults who know have treated him like shit. I want to tell you because I know that once you know everything you will be able to accept it. But he has to be the one to tell. I’m already putting as much pressure on him as I can to tell Hinata and once he does that we can all sit down and go over everything. But right now I need you to trust me.”
“His whole village hated him? All of them?” Yasu said with wide eyes.
“All the adults know. They’ve been keeping it from the kids in Naruto’s generation, but their hate has spread to most of the kids. He didn’t even do anything; it’s something that was done to him.”
“And they didn’t give him foster parents or anything?”
“Nope. He was raised in an orphanage until he was judged old enough to live on his own.”
“How old was he?”
“Ten.”
Yasu gasped. “The bastards!”
“I know! That was my reaction too!” Sora shook her head. “Between the Leaf Bastards and Kakashi-no-baka, it’s a wonder that the boy turned out reasonably balanced.”
Yasu smiled. “From what you’re saying, seems to me like he turned out just like his mother.”
Sora grinned. “Yeah, he did, didn’t he?” She dropped her legs off the table and sat up. “Listen, I have one more favor to ask.”
Yasu raised one eyebrow, indicating she should continue.
“Naruto thinks that his birthday is October 13th. That’s the day he’s always been told, which sucks because it is an official day of remembrance in the Leaf. It’s the day the Kyubi attacked. No one is about to celebrate a birthday on a day of remembrance and considering he was living with the Leaf Bastards, I can pretty much guarantee that he’s had crappy birthdays all his life. But fortunately for him, he ran into me who know that his real birthday is actually the 10th.”
Nori smirked. “Tomorrow.”
Sora grinned and pointed at him. “Bingo.” She
folded her arms on top of the table and leaned in. “So, who’s
going to help me make a cake.”
Hinata stood in front of the mirror and tugged at her obi. Yasu had protested that her clothes were once again too small and lent her a kimono to wear until they were able to get her her own clothing. It felt strange to be wearing one again, after almost a year of not wearing one at all. She used to have to wear one at home when she was not training. She had two choices, plain white with the Hyuuga family seal on the back, or plain black with the Hyuuga family seal on the back.
The kimono she was wearing now was a warm peachy pink color. While her eyes still looked white with the shadow of an iris in blue, her pale skin now appeared to have soft glow to it. At home her hair had always been short so there wasn’t a question of what she should do with it. Now that it was long, she wasn’t sure if she should put it up or leave it down. Finally she decided to pull it into a low tail, wrapping a white ribbon around the hair at the nape of her neck. She smiled at her image in the mirror and headed downstairs for breakfast.
As she approached the top of the stairwell, she could hear Sora and Naruto laughing in the kitchen. She was only halfway down the stairs when something made her stop and listen.
“Well I figured that finding out that your birthday was not on a village wide day of mourning would be a pleasant surprise.”
Hinata could hear Naruto cheer. “Woo Hoo! My birthday is October 10th, my birthday is October 10th!”
Sora laughed. “Hold on, bro. Have you told Hinata yet?”
The aforementioned girl’s heart stopped. So she had been right. There was a secret they were keeping from her. Or more specifically, he was keeping from her.
“No.” She could hear the pout in his voice.
Sora sighed. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t know.”
“Don’t know what?”
“I don’t know what’s going to happen if I tell her.”
So that was it. He didn’t trust her. He didn’t trust her with his secret. She felt like crying. Maybe she should have gone with her first instincts with the partner training. Maybe they shouldn’t have signed up for the whole partner training thing. Obviously, he didn’t think she was someone he could trust and confide in. Without that, what was the partnership, really? Once again she was less than she needed to be.
She could still here Sora’s voice coming through from the kitchen. “So what are we going to tell her? We can’t just move your birthday and hope that she doesn’t realize it. It’s exactly the kind of thing she would notice.”
“Don’t worry about,” Naruto said. “I’ll... think of something.”
He was going to lie to her, she realized. He was going to lie to her in order to keep this secret that he had with Yasu.
It was too much. Too much for her to handle.
She bolted down the stairs and out the door across the rice fields. She just wanted to get away. Tears glittered down her cheeks.
Both Naruto and Sora started and the sound of the door slamming shut. They turned their heads to look out the window. Naruto’s eyes widened as he saw Hinata running along the paths in the rice fields, kimono sleeves fluttering.
He looked at Sora, who looked back at him with her arms crossed and one eyebrow up. “Did you ward the room?” he asked.
“Nope.”
His eyes went even wider as he stared at her.
She shook her head. “Baka.”
Author’s notes: Wow you guys, thank you so much for all the great reviews! Once again I have a few things people brought up in reviews that I want to address. There are quite a few of them, so I’m putting them under subject headings. Read if you want.
Corgis: For those of you who haven’t seen Cowboy BeBop, corgis are herding dogs from Wales. If you haven’t seen one, you can take a look at this website (www.corgi.gr.jp/e1/index.html) for the Japan Corgi League and click on the photo gallery link.
The Fourth’s name: I sidestepped giving the Fourth a given name and used Uzumaki for a reason. I would feel weird giving him a name and then finding out it’s really something else. Plus, Nanashi (which means ‘without name’) has always been a pseudonym in my mind and I liked the pattern it formed. As for Uzumaki, there was a rumor that in one of the episodes you can see paintings of all the hokages and the Fourths has Uzumaki written underneath it. I don’t speak Japanese, so I can’t confirm it. But I like it enough that I am more than willing to accept that it’s true.
Sora’s History: Someone caught that Sora said her clan was killed when she was born, but that Hinata’s father reminded her of her own (kudos to you!). Yes, that was on purpose. The man whom she refers to as her father is the one who raised her from the death of her clan to when she left with Nanashi.
Fighting styles: People keep complaining about my description of the soft hand style and all the stuff Sora said about being a mountain. I think I’ve addressed that fairly well in previous author’s notes and don’t want to discuss it again, but I will once again put out the disclaimer that, while I do have some experience in martial arts, I am by no means an expert so you’ll have to cut me some slack.
Length and the Return to Leaf: This story
keeps getting longer and I am not where I thought I would be by
chapter 15. I originally thought 25 chapters and now it is
looking more like 30, even though I a moving to fewer, longer
chapters. Don’t hold your breath waiting for them to go back to
Leaf.
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