Title: Into the Smoke

Summary: Suzuki Shou disturbs a butterfly. Naruto gets a slightly different team.

Notes: Heavily features three OCs. Basically, what would happen if Naruto had supportive teammates from the start, and if Sasuke wasn't a major facet of his storyline.

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Prologue

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"It has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly's wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world." –Chaos Theory

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Suzuki Shou kept his eyes closed and his breathing deep, even as he became hyper-focused on his surroundings.

He could tell that it was early morning, but the lack of light shining through his eyelids meant it was before sunrise. Next to him he could hear his wife snoring, the sound familiar after almost thirteen years of marriage. He shifted his attention to his chakra sense, easily picking out the gentle hum of his daughter's chakra. He extended his senses further, feeling the telltale thrum of the property's protective seals. Aside from his family, there was no one in the house.

There was a tapping at the window, the unmistakable sound of talons against glass—a messenger hawk.

'I'm getting good,' he thought, trying to be positive. 'Knew that bird was coming even before it showed up. They may as well start calling me Oracle.'

The joking didn't make him feel better. It was way too early to deal with shinobi bullshit, ANBU or otherwise. The sun wasn't even up yet!

Unfortunately, this wasn't the first time he'd been summoned at such an hour, and it wasn't likely to be the last.

'Maybe Inoichi and Mei had the right idea. I could retire to help Hisako open a storefront, and then sleep till noon every day...'

But, no. He was a shinobi through and through. Any other job would drive him mad, because Shou was the kind of man who wanted to know things. The civilian life, peaceful though it may be, was a life of ignorance.

Also, civilians didn't typically get to blow things up.

Shou lived for cool explosions.

He rolled out of bed, taking care not to disturb his wife. He moved with the silent grace of a seasoned shinobi, never once causing the wood flooring to creek. He removed the message from the bird's leg, letting it take off once more. The message was guarded with a blood seal, so he sliced the outside of his thumb with one of the senbon he kept hidden on him at all times.

The message—written in standard ANBU code—was unsigned, but he could tell it was written by Raccoon because it read something like: 'Good morning, you fantastic stud of a man. We finally got the chick Gai brought in to talk, and let me tell you, this is one hell of a mess. The transcript is on your desk. Report in ASAP, this shit is crazy.'

Which, on one hand, was fantastic news, but on the other, was absolutely terrible.

The woman that Gai brought in was part of a group of missing nin that ANBU had been after for a while. No one was sure what their motive was, but they had been hunting down genin teams and massacring them. It had been kept under the radar, since the Hokage hadn't wanted a panic, but all of the higher level shinobi had been after these guys. They would've been caught faster, but one of the members seemed to have great skill in masking the presence of the entire group, so they'd been at a standstill until the group decided to go after Maito Gai's team, expecting an easy take down, but the woman they sent hadn't gotten anywhere near the genin before Gai had her seeing stars.

Since then, T&I had been having a hell of a time trying to get her to break—no one was sure whether the group was isolated or if it was part of a bigger plot. Judging by the message, it was the later.

That meant there were more of those guys out there somewhere.

In one world, the man called Shou donned his ANBU gear and disappeared from his home without a second thought, but that world was not this one.

Here, he found himself thinking of his own daughter. Thinking of her prompted him to go check on her, and checking on her prompted a discovery that would ultimately save his own life.

Suzuki Setsuna had calculated her chances of passing the secret second test, and, knowing that she would fail, had unplugged her own alarm clock.