Chapter Three

In their latest decorative project, as baby Naruko grew, Anko and Kurenai had her nursery ceiling painted over with lifelike replicas of photos of clear, starry Konoha skies, black with white specks for stars. They wanted baby Naruko to grow up thinking the sky was the limit, and it fit nicely with the nature science aura they had tried to cover the house and the nursery with.

Still, they got someone else to do the painting for them. Not many painting contractors wanted to enter the jinchuuriki's fearsome abode, but they eventually found someone willing to do the job. They themselves were a tad busy trying to raise a little girl.

It took a lot, getting used to getting up for a crying baby in the middle of the night five times an evening. When they were together, they took shifts deciding who would get up in the middle of the night to feed baby Naruko. But when only one of them was home, that person had to do all that themselves. They had to do everything themselves, in fact.

Kurenai had a constant aura of being harried, exasperated, and harassed, while Anko often glared into the crib at the crying infant and muttered flatly, "It's a good thing you're cute."

They fed Naruko with soy formula, and then later with organic baby food products in her high chair, and they learned how to change eco friendly diapers. They bathed her in relaxing, warm lavender baths, treating her gently and tenderly. Naruko loved splashing around with toys in water. She quickly proved herself to be both messy and a big eater with a hearty appetite. They encouraged this last bit, wanting her to know it was okay for a girl to love food.

She was also highly mischievous, and as she got older she quickly took to pushing limits to see how far she could go before being punished, throwing food and pushing toys off of her high chair onto the floor.

Kurenai proved an easy target. "No, don't do that," she would say uneasily, picking up after Naruko countless times.

Anko was harsher, and the stricter disciplinarian. "CUT IT OUT!" she would snap, and Naruko would stop whatever she was doing immediately. "See?" Anko would say, turning to Kurenai. "Ya gotta say it like you mean it."

Naruko learned early on - she could worm a lot of things out of Kurenai, but only a fool tried to match wits with Mitarashi Anko. At the same time, however, Kurenai got a lot less annoyed by everyday nuisances than Anko did.

Naruko developed a real, distinct personality as she became a toddler. She was extroverted and happy, cheerful. As she grew into a toddler, she babbled a great deal. She threw horrible tantrums, but calmed down from them quickly if left alone. She loved playing, especially with the cats, who were both curious and gentle with her, as if sensing she needed care.

She was also quite adventuresome, and once she learned to crawl would travel anywhere her hands and knees could take her. Anko and Kurenai would look around, and panic - Naruko would just be gone.

"Naruko!" they would shout, hurrying around the house until they found her. They had to make sure the doors and windows were shut at all times so she didn't escape outside. "She's like a puppy," Anko once commented, exasperated. They bought her a brightly colored play pen and toy rug to try to keep her tethered and distract her with toys to play with.

They read to her every night from children's colorful picture books (Naruko loved a good story and was riveted by romance and adventure and colorful pictures), played jazz and blues music for her often (Naruko loved dancing around, her mothers laughing and pretending to dance along with her), and tried to have matter of fact, adult conversations with her even though the most she could do at this point was babble and say a few words. She was always willing to chatter with them, pretending they were having a conversation. Anko was good for games, playing peekaboo and hand clapping games and hide and seek, laughing and grinning with her. Kurenai, meanwhile, soothed her to sleep each night with whispers and soft sounds, keeping her calm and mellow whenever she got too hyper. From Anko, Naruko learned a playful, good natured sense of humor, teasing, energy, and fun, while from Kurenai, she learned an innate sense of calm.

They were there to congratulate her for everything: the first time she turned over, the first time she sat up, the first smile she gave them, her first word, her first steps. It was easy, they found, to fall in love with Uzumaki Naruko, who had boundless energy and endless babbling words, and smiled for them often. The first time she smiled up at them, that was it - they were hooked. They cheered and got excited every time she said a word, making her grin in pride, saying words to her often as they pointed things out for her, trying to improve her vocabulary. They pointed out different displays of scientific nature around the house and told her about them.

She walked from Kurenai toward Anko across the living room in her first, shaky steps. The minute she got to Anko, she fell. Anko caught her and both she and Kurenai started cheering in pride like a couple of lunatics, "like she'd just made Chuunin or something," Anko would say fondly later.

Naruko always started cheering whenever they did, finding happiness easily infectious even though she didn't understand what was going on. She laughed and waved her toys often, having infectious happiness herself. Her mothers did have visitors, mostly friends of theirs from the forces, and Naruko adored new people and loved being around big crowds of adults, often trying to engage them in pretend conversation or showing them her toys. She quickly came to make a distinction between her two mothers, calling Kurenai "Mother" while Anko got the more casual "Mom."

Her teething was a nightmare. Her incisor teeth were unusually sharp, probably a result of the demon, and they had to buy her so many new toys. She broke through each one she chewed on. In toys and clothes, meanwhile, she didn't seem to make much of a distinction between male and female. Instead, she loved drawing and coloring, and she liked bright colors and loud, interactive toys - no matter what gender they were.

"She's just as loud as I always assumed a boy would be," Kurenai commented, amused and pleasantly bewildered.

Naruko soon grew into quite a pretty little girl. She had honey blonde hair a deep gold color, electric blue eyes, and a round, curving, heart-shaped face decorated with whisker cheek markings (another sign of the fox demon sealed within her). Her skin color was a deep, golden tan. Based on pictures, she had her father's brilliant coloring, but looked much like her legendarily beautiful mother. She had her father's bright cheer, with her mother's wide infectious grin. She took, after taking steps, to toddling around the house, her hair up in pigtails decorated with shiny baubles, wearing a brightly colored dress, an eco friendly diaper, and tiny little shoes. Kurenai and Anko helped her dress every morning, but let her pick what she wanted to wear - even if it seemed absurd and made her look like a clown.

"It's only us who will see anyway, and she should have a choice in what she wants to play with and the way that she looks," Kurenai mandated fairly.

Aside from loud, brightly colored, interactive toys, Naruko loved dress-up: everything from wearing strange costumes to trying out one of her mother's makeup. Outside, meanwhile, taking a fascination with nature from her house, Naruko loved picking up and collecting strange leaves, stones, feathers, geodes, and fossils. They had a whole shelf for her collection built into her room. She had no real scientific idea of their value yet - she just liked the way that they looked.

The only exasperating part was how quickly she could get dirty while outside in the back garden. It earned her many a despairing scolding. They did, however, teach her how to swim, climb trees, and search for tadpoles at the pond down the road. They preferred this over an obsession with technology, which they had not let her touch as of yet.

She was fascinated by watching the progression of anything her mothers did. She watched their ninja training in a kind of awed trance. She could watch with wide, interested eyes for hours as Anko made a flower arrangement, liked making ink handprints on calligraphic paper, and enjoyed sitting through tea ceremonies even though she would often interrupt to point, squirm, laugh, or babble. She also enjoyed watching Kurenai do gourmet cooking, though she often threw in ingredients of her own, not based on how they'd taste but based on how they looked with the rest of the ingredients. Sometimes she accidentally ruined meals that way.

Once she started eating solid foods, they fed her healthy, organic gourmet foods and sometimes calming, non caffeinated herbal tea. She proved herself to be a picky eater at first, but here Kurenai put her foot down.

"You're not leaving the table until you eat a little of everything," she would mandate, pointing at the food to get the idea across to Naruko. Naruko would pout, and even shout or throw a tantrum, but that got her nowhere with Kurenai when it came to bedtime or healthy eating, and in this Anko remained calm and never intervened. Naruko would eat healthy, and she would have a bedtime routine and a secure bedtime and naptime - even when she didn't want those things.

Naruko learned health, and she also learned that when it came to being healthy, losing her temper got her nowhere with her mothers. So from an early age, she learned there were some cases where she could weasel something out of Kurenai, but overall in most things fits of anger got her nowhere in life.

Some of the adults became prejudiced against Anko and Kurenai, once they learned who the two were raising. Naruko wasn't old enough to go outside much yet, but there was still adult prejudice against her parents, and Kurenai and Anko had to learn how to be defiant, to not care, to even take it in stride. Naruko was worth it to them, they decided.

"You know," said an opinionated mother, walking up to Anko in the grocery store one day, "that little thing you're raising, she doesn't deserve everything she's getting from the council."

"I don't give a shit about that," Anko snapped. "She's a helpless little kid and she deserves parents and a happy childhood, and that's what I'm providing for her."

The mother sniffed, but stayed silent. Anko stalked off down the aisle, pushing the cart a little harder and faster than was necessary. Anko was better for sharp barbs and retorts, but Kurenai was eerie because she could give off the staring, deadpan impression of not caring at all, sometimes severely freaking out Konoha villagers. Each woman had her own way of dealing with the prejudice directed toward their little girl back home.

Occasionally, Naruko did have to go shopping with them, sitting in the child's seat of their shopping cart. Usually she was oblivious to the cold glares of adults left in her wake, babbling cheerfully along and playing with her toys. Anko and Kurenai tried to minimize conversations with other adults - and this was not difficult - because Naruko would try to talk with and show her toys to any adults they stopped to interact with, her babbling slowly forming into more actual words. If the adults snapped at her or gave her cold glares, she could start crying and get very confused and upset.

Kurenai and Anko most of all tried to treat Naruko with love. They made sure to tell her they loved her and cared about her often - even Anko, who was not usually gentle or affectionate. She grew up in her first years secure in a big, comfortable crib and house, learning affection and kindness.

They knew the lesson stuck, because she often copied the affection and kindness she learned to their pet cats, taking care of them in the same way she was taken care of. She never had a problem with sharing, either - Naruko learned to love sharing her toys and food with other people, even other adults, open and friendly.

As she got older, Naruko would have to interact with others more, be taken to school and the playground. But for now, they could provide a kind of bulwark, protect her from the outside world.