Here's the second part of the Civilian Years arc.

Remember that when the children don't act like normal children, this is intentional.

Okay, so, I went to Japan between finishing the draft and completing the polishing step. That is part of why this thing took so frakking long. I also ended up splitting off the end of this chapter into another one, which means that the first three chapters are what my original prologue was going to be. Unless that gets split off as well, which frankly, I doubt.

On a related note, people are so polite in Japan, it really hit me how much harsher Naruto would have had it. Receiving rudeness from everyone in America is one thing, but to receive rudeness while everyone else gets that kind of politeness…yeesh.

I want to thank all of my betas, one of whom recently created a profile here under the name of The Killer B's.

I own Naruto. Just by opening this page, you deposited $25 into my bank account. This disclaimer is a legally binding statement. None of the previous statements are true.

Posted: 11/2/13

"But mom!" Sakura whined. "Why not?"

"I said no, Sakura," her mother said inexorably.

"Why?"

"Because I said no," her mother said, anger starting to slip into her voice.

"But why are you saying no!?" Sakura screeched.

"What good have ninja ever done for us? All they do is kill people and destroy property."

"That's not true at all! Besides, Mom, if you feel that way about ninja, why are we living a ninja village?" Sakura asked, sure that her logic would be irrefutable.

Sakura's mom didn't answer audibly, merely muttering something under her breath.

"Well?" Sakura pressed, practically feeling the victory within her grasp.

"That's beside the point!" Sakura's mom insisted, thus showing Sakura once again that logic is powerless against those who will not listen. "I feel that way, and that's that."

"But think of the status that comes with it," Sakura said after a moment, trying a different angle. "You've said that for the five years I've been alive, I've only ever been an embarrassment to you," Sakura said, ignoring the pain gnawing her insides at actually admitting that aloud. "But being a ninja is considered a really respected position here. If I was a ninja, a lot of that would reflect on you…" Looking at the conflicting emotions on her mother's face, Sakura was slightly nauseated at how well the tactic seemed to be working.

"But why would you want to be a ninja, like the ones that just picked you up out of nowhere a couple weeks ago and used jutsu on you?"

"Those were just medic-nin, Mom," Sakura said, barely keeping herself from rolling her eyes. "They're the most prestigious healers in the entire village, and they just picked me out randomly for a free physical." Yeah, they just happened to pick every single one of the Nine, all at once. Even though eleven other children their age had been chosen at the same time, none of them bought that it was a coincidence for a second. Though, nothing had ever come of it, so maybe…no, really, it was impossible, the odds that they'd all be chosen randomly were far higher than she'd been able to count.

Putting it out of her mind, Sakura tried to continue. "I don't know what kind of ninja I would want to be, Mom. I haven't even started the Academy yet. But if I became a ninja, it would bring us a lot of stature, a good reputation—you keep telling me that the shop would be doing better if potential customers didn't dislike me so much, they'd like me a lot better as a ninja. Especially if I do well—you know how 'irritatingly smart' I am, that could really help in the Academy. I might even get a scholarship." Sakura knew she had her when she saw how her mother's face kept shifting from one emotion to another.

"I'll think about it," her mom said finally. Sakura hid her elation. Her mom was just buying time so that it could look like it was her idea.

"Okay mom," Sakura said obediently. Getting what she needed was the important part. Everything else could wait.

"…what do you mean, a lot of my information is wrong?" Naruto said, his voice soft and his eyes shadowed. His apparent attitude was a sharp contrast against the idyllic meadow that was this night's dream setting.

Shikamaru sighed. This was going to be a real pain.

All nine of the Konoha pariah were sitting in the pattern that they tended to default to whenever they didn't think about it: a somewhat elliptical circle, with Sakura and the Ino-Shika-Cho combo along the "bottom" of the circle, with Sakura next to Ino; along the "top" of the shape was Sasuke, Hinata, Kiba, and Shino, in that order. Naruto always sat in the very middle of the circle, only to be laughingly pulled out of the circle to fill the gap on one side or the other, usually ending up sitting between Sasuke and Sakura. Today, since Naruto was giving them all some of the information that he had accrued from his scouting, he got to stay in the middle of the circle. At the moment, that was giving them all an excellent view of his…distress.

"I'm sorry Naruto," Hinata said compassionately. "We've discussed it since the last time you updated us. The information that you got with the rest of the classroom was all correct, that we've been able to confirm, all of it. It's just…"

"Everything that came from private instruction seems to have been deliberately messed up," Kiba said bluntly, his anger clear in his tone. "Every individualized taijutsu form, every handout, every—!"

"Exaggeration or not, what our rather angry friend is trying to tell you, Naruto," Shino, looking like a near-identical copy of his father in miniature, cut in, "is that it appears that the mysterious grudge of the adults against us has unexpectedly overcome even our teachers' professionalism. Why is that surprising? Because teachers are supposed to be held to a higher standard."

Shikamaru's gaze slid over to a downcast Sakura. She had been the one hit hardest by that revelation, by far.

"So it's all a complete waste? Entering two sessions early, missing all of that time with you guys—I just wasted all of those opportunities?"

"Not all of it," Chouji interjected hurriedly, trying to give the situation a positive spin. "There's still plenty of information that they can't poison. And by comparing it against what information we have, you can see what teachers give you sabotaged information, so you will know who to believe and who not to."

"I see," Naruto said flatly. "Anything else?"

There were a few moments of silence. "You began your physical conditioning a year early," Sasuke pointed out. Shikamaru refrained from mentioning that physical conditioning only did so much at this age.

"Yup," Naruto said, his hand clenched over his stomach, where the fuuinjutsu brand that showed up whenever they used chakra was. "Anything else?"

Nobody answered.

"Alright. I'll be right back." Naruto got up. As he stepped beyond the circle, the orange-clad form blurred and disappeared. Shikamaru watched everyone else half-lid their eyes to try to figure out how far he went.

"Well?" Shikamaru asked when their eyes began to open again.

"I'm not sure," Ino said, scrunching up her nose. "Way, way past the limits of Konoha, even from one side of Outer Konoha to another. Maybe…80 km?"

Abruptly, there was a huge flash of light in the direction that Naruto had headed off in. Heads snapped around and eyes widened as a column of flames seemed to reach up to pierce the sky and lightning lashed out in every direction, shattering the mountains around it that rose up, were destroyed, and rose again.

The silence in the group lasted until the rumbling crashes reached their ears.

"85.3 km," Sakura said after a few moments of mental calculation.

"Assuming that sound travels through air in the dream as fast as it does in reality," Shikamaru drawled laconically.

"…well, yes." Sakura muttered, blushing slightly.

"I think he's taking it pretty well, actually," Sasuke said. When he saw their incredulous stares, he just shrugged. "He used up a major favor from the Hokage to get there early, just to make sure that he wouldn't be a burden to us, and now it's not panning out nearly as much as he thought it would. You all know how much Naruto hates asking for handouts."

As they considered this, some conceding the point immediately, Naruto reappeared outside of their circle and walked nonchalantly back to his spot. He appeared perfectly normal, except for the slight smell of smoke that hovered around him. Shikamaru twitched one finger while he focused. Ah, much better, he thought as he took a deep breath of smoke-free air.

"Alright!" Naruto said, sounding like his normal upbeat self, fooling approximately no one. "So here," he said, concentrating, then catching a pile of worksheets that appeared out of the air, "are all of the worksheets that I've been given since I started at the Academy. Once we go through them, we can start putting together a list of teachers stupid enough to hand me proof of their hatred, so we can be prepared for the future."

Even as the rest of the Nine started passing out and looking over the worksheets, Shikamaru just sat, and thought, and pondered, his mind turning and churning at the problems at hand, as it always did, analyzing and dissecting and assessing every piece of information that crossed the claptrap that was his brain, considering how they could use this information to their benefit.

Inuzuka Tsume, a feral-looking brunette kunoichi who was thirty years young, stood in the back of a room with her dog companion Kuromaru, a large black wolfish dog with an eye-patch over his right eye. They were both watching two figures prepare themselves in a dojo centered in the middle of the mid-sized Inuzuka compound. It was a large room with the walls, floor, and ceiling made of chakra-treated and seal-reinforced wood that would withstand a fairly large array of jutsu.

The jutsu that was about to be cast, however, was not the kind that these walls were designed to defend against. Instead, her youngest child, Kiba, was about to try the cornerstone jutsu of the Inuzuka clan, the one that gave the Inuzuka their relationship to dogs and in fact allowed them to come together to form a clan in the first place; the unnamed jutsu that exchanged the chakra of the human and their dog.

It sounded fairly trivial. The trade almost never resulted in more chakra for the human partner, after all, and so on the surface it had very little immediate benefit in battle. In reality, however, swapping the chakra with their ninken was absolutely essential.

Introducing the human chakra into their dog companions had a number of positive effects, ranging from altering their adult size to increasing their intelligence even beyond what generations of careful breeding could manage and more. It even allowed the dogs to use jutsu, though it was limited to either jutsu that their human used a great deal, like the Transformation technique, or jutsu that were deliberately designed to be used by dogs and humans alike, as the majority of the Inuzuka clan's techniques were.

Similarly, it was the dog chakra inside of the Inuzuka that gave them their animalistic features, that helped them understand what a dog's barks meant, and that heightened their senses. The Shikyaku no Jutsu, the Four Legs Technique, was what they had created in order to capitalize on the canine chakra flowing through their bodies, amplifying its effects dramatically. The Four Legs Technique was generally considered to be the most basic Hidden Technique of the Inuzuka clan, but it was nothing without the traded chakra, and every Inuzuka knew it.

It was because of this jutsu that what they had technically wasn't a bloodline limit; though some of it was indeed passed down to one's children, it was hardly a perfect process, as evidenced by Tsume's eldest child, Hana, who was born without any of the clan's distinctive features. Some blamed it on her clanless father—Tsume's nails elongated into claws without conscious thought—which was ridiculous, but had been a problem nonetheless. As clan leader, the tokubetsu jounin had had to defend her position from far too many attacks, mostly political but a few physical, because of that nonsense. The situation improved after Hana had been given her triplet of ninken, the three Haimaru brothers, and had improved even more after Kiba, with all of the traits associated with Inuzuka writ so strongly on his form, had been born.

They had all come back with a vengeance, however, after the Yondaime had sealed part of the Nine Tailed Beast inside of her son. Suddenly everything positive that she had done with the clan since she took over seemed to be forgotten, and every muttered complaint was repeated at the top of their lungs. Her pathetic waste of a husband hadn't been able to take the stress and had left her without so much as a note. The only good thing that came from the whole situation was that the escalating challenges against her—because despite the fact that the Inuzuka clan didn't actually rule by whomever was the strongest, strength was still an important factor—had finally pushed Tsume to improve her skills enough to reach jounin rank.

Even with that extra throwing knife in her pouch, so to speak, she still had to deal with a metric ton of crap from her own clan. Which was part of the reason that she was standing here, watching her son try to exchange his chakra with Akamaru for the first time at the age of six instead of four or five. The sheer amount of whining from so many of the members of her clan about what her son would be taught was truly shocking, and in order to keep a bloody uprising from occurring she had to at least appear to listen to all of the reasons why her baby shouldn't get a companion, and then should wait to get a companion, and then to wait even further before actually teaching him that jutsu. It was infuriating, but unless she wanted to duke it out with every hothead in the clan—in a clan that was known for having a lot of hotheads—she had to appear to have an open mind.

Tsume quickly tried to cover her bared teeth as she saw Kiba start to turn towards her; just because the brat was the source behind so many of her problems didn't mean it was his fault. "Well?" she said, anger still roughening her voice. She paused for a moment to try to clear it. "Get on with it."

"Yes, Mom," Kiba said hastily. He turned back to his dog. "Ready, Akamaru?" The small white dog yipped his agreement eagerly. "Alright. Here we go!" He ran through the seals as quickly as he could while making sure that each one was clean and even. It was rather slower than Tsume would have liked, but each seal was acceptable individually. She ran through the seals of a sensor technique, one blunt enough that she could use it, and watched the results.

Good, Tsume thought, half-closing her eyes to focus better on what she was sensing. His chakra flow is fairly clear, Akamaru is cooperating, there's no chakra rejection…Tsume shook her head at the ridiculous amount of chakra her son had—it would have been very impressive for a veteran chuunin, let alone a kid who had barely started the Academy. Exchanging that much chakra with his dog…Akamaru might find it a bit uncomfortable for a while—

Tsume's analysis was interrupted by a sudden howl of pain from Akamaru. Flinching violently, Kiba cut off the jutsu instantly. He gaped in shock as his mom seemed to materialize next to his dog, who was lying on his side, balled up and yowling his agony. Tsume swore sulfurously as she suddenly remembered a tidbit of information that she had received almost six years ago.

"Kuromaru!" Tsume snapped. The huge, largely black dog bounded forward, his single remaining eye filled with worry. "Go find someone to take care of Kiba, explain the situation to them."

"At once," the ninken growled, bounding off.

"I'll take care of Akamaru, Kiba. The Hokage will know what to do." Not waiting for an answer, Tsume picked up the small bundle of pained canine and Body Flickered to the nearest exit, ripping the door open and moving as quickly as she could to save the poor puppy.

The Hokage, an Inuzuka fuuinjutsu-specialist, two Inuzuka veterinarians, and another medic-nin walked out of the operating room and into the waiting room several hours later. Some of them had grim faces, but the Hokage's aged face was creased with relief as he dismissed the rest of the group. The overly anxious Kiba had been banished back to the clan compound less than an hour after he had been brought here by his mother's companion. Tsume was sympathetic, and it spoke very well for Kiba that he was so upset for his partner, but the brat was driving them nuts with his constant movement and self-recriminations.

"Hokage-sama," Tsume said as she got up, bowing to her leader. "Thank you very much for lending your expertise to my son's partner."

"Of course, Tsume-san, of course," the Hokage said genially. "You know that I am always more than willing to help out one of our children when they are in need."

Tsume nodded, knowing that despite his well-known fondness for children, it was for the Nine that he would really go the extra kilometer. "Hokage-sama," Tsume continued, now that the required pleasantries were past. "About Akamaru…"

"There's no need to fear, Tsume-san," Sarutobi said as he lowered himself into a chair, absently waving the Inuzuka clan head back into her chair as well. "Akamaru is fine, and will make a full recovery."

Tsume's shoulders slumped and Kuromaru whimpered his relief. Tsume looked down and ruffled him behind the ears. "Why don't you go run and tell Kiba the good news," she said, feeling pity for her son. "There's no need for him to worry any more than he already has."

Kuromaru looked between her, the Hokage, and the departed professionals for a few moments. "Of course," his gravelly voice finally said. He got up, shaking himself off as he did so, and then loped out of the room.

Tsume waited until the swinging doors stopped moving before she turned back to the Hokage, a glint in her eye. "What else?" she asked quietly.

"Well…" the Sandaime said slowly. "Did you figure out what happened?"

"I assumed that some of the Kyuubi's chakra that's circulating in Kiba was transferred over to Akamaru," Tsume said levelly, hiding her anger at herself for forgetting such an important fact.

"That's correct," the Third said. "Though, there was also some small degree of damage due to the sheer amount of chakra being transferred."

"So then, how did you save Akamaru's life?" Tsume asked.

"It's rather complicated, but essentially I copied a specific portion of the seal on your son and…the others…modified it, and inscribed it on Akamaru. So when Kiba gives some of his chakra to Akamaru, the Kyuubi's chakra will be filtered through the seal, purifying most of it and converting it into Kiba's chakra," the Hokage said. "As for the amount of chakra transferred, well, Kiba will just have to learn to control how much he gives his partner for a while."

"You said 'most,'" Tsume said, her ears twitching. "Not all?"

The Sandaime's face grew grave. "No, not all," he agreed softly. "Its chakra is too potent for that. A small fraction of what is transferred over will remain in its original, demonic form. But it's important to realize what a small amount of demonic chakra this is. Only a ninth of the Kyuubi is sealed in your son; only the most infinitesimal portion of its chakra makes it past the seal; only a small amount of that chakra is transferred to Akamaru through the Inuzuka jutsu; only a fraction of what is transferred will persist despite the seals placed upon the dog. It truly is a miniscule amount of chakra."

"But?" Tsume asked flatly. His face was far too solemn for that to be all.

"And yet," Sarutobi conceded, "we aren't sure what effects that small amount of chakra might have on Akamaru. It could be no more than its effects on your son, but it very well may be more, or completely different."

"I see," Tsume said, considering this. "Do you have any recommendations?"

"Just that Kiba wait for Akamaru to completely heal before he uses the jutsu again, and to try harder not to transfer quite so much chakra next time. Keeping an eye on Akamaru for the next few years would also be advisable."

Tsume nodded at this. "Was my clan-member useful in helping you modify the seal for a canine rather than a human?" Tsume asked.

"Oh," the Sandaime said, remembering. "Yes, she was, but her presence was primarily in order to place the summoning seals on Akamaru, to obscure the existence of the chakra-converting fuuinjutsu." Seeing Tsume's expression go stony, the Hokage raised a hand placatingly. "I am no more able to craft those seals now than I was before the operation, and as I understand that the Inuzuka themselves generally need some sort of corresponding seal before it becomes functional, the choice of when to allow Kiba to learn the Inuzuka summoning is still yours."

Tsume hesitated for another long moment. "Thank you for your aid and your foresight, Hokage-sama," she said. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to return to my son. When may I pick up Akamaru?"

"Now would be fine, though he should still spend a day or two in your veterinarian clinic," the old man said. Nodding respectfully to him, the matriarch of her clan stalked off to pick up the small dog.

Sasuke stood on the roof of the hospital, brooding as he stared down at the village spread out below him. It was starting to get dark, and the lights had begun to go on all over the village. Lights in houses that were actually happy homes, with happy families, asking each other about their day and sharing their lives with one-another.

Or so I suppose, Sasuke thought bitterly. It's not like I ever had one of those.

No, Sasuke's home life had always been much quieter than that. Much colder.

Except for big-brother Itachi, of course. Itachi, the one member of his family that never glared at him in hatred or anger, not even once. Itachi, the one ninja in a clan of them that would take time to show him some shuriken technique tricks since Sasuke had started the Academy this past year.

Itachi, the one who had slaughtered his entire clan in cold blood.

Sasuke worked his jaw; he had been clenching it so hard that it almost locked into place. No, Sasuke's home life had never been ideal, but at least he had had one, and now it was all gone, for better or for worse.

Sasuke heard the door behind him open and close, but ignored it. Whoever it was would leave sooner or later, typically sooner if they saw him. The first few times it had happened, Sasuke was surprised out of his brooding by the feeling that those people practically radiated. Their stammering, the way they had looked at him…it looked like fear. It took him a while to figure out why the hateful glares had turned to fear.

They thought that he had killed his family. They thought that Sasuke, one of the despised "damned brats," was the one that had snapped and slaughtered his family. Not Itachi, the perfect, the genius, the loyal—no, it had to have been Sasuke! It was the only thing that made sense!

For some reason, Sasuke had found this terribly funny, and had begun laughing, hard, then harder, then harder still. Soon, he was whooping loudly enough that it could be heard on the ground. The next thing he remembered after that was waking back up in the hospital bed. Hysteria, he knew it to be in hindsight, and he had been watching himself to make sure he didn't succumb to it again, but so far he hadn't found anything to be funny. Not a single thing.

The person—no, people—on the roof hadn't left yet. Why hadn't they? Wasn't he clearly in view? Whatever, it didn't matter. Sasuke absently reached back and scratched the back of his neck.

After the first day, though, people kept leaving him alone, but they hadn't appeared so afraid. The story must have spread. Was it supposed to be a secret? It would have been nice, not to have everyone know all of his business, but it would really be too much to expect. Even if they weren't as large a part of the village as they used to be, the Uchiha clan was still one of the most powerful clans in the village, and it wasn't like people would just fail to notice their absence.

And the Police Force! What would happen to the Police Force? Virtually every Uchiha ninja had been a member of the Police Force, though not every member of the Police Force had been an Uchiha. In fact, there was a whole precinct that had barely any Uchiha in it, though most of the precincts had a pretty high percentage of them. Would it be dissolved, or would they supplement the ranks somehow?

They were still there? What the hell was wrong with them? Sasuke spun around to glare at the idiots who couldn't see that he just wanted to be left alone, then froze midspin.

"It was about time he noticed us."

"He was aware of us the moment we came onto the roof. How do I know this? Because of the way that he stiffened when the door opened, and his progressive stiffness as we stood here."

"Guys, stop it. He just went through a horrific trauma."

"No, that's exactly why we're doing this."

Sasuke turned away sharply. He didn't want to see them. Not anyone, not even them. Especially not them.

"You're not going to be able to keep us away forever, Sasuke."

Yes I will, he thought.

"No, you really won't."

Sasuke twitched, but said nothing.

"We're not sure how you managed to stop from joining us in the…" the soft voice said some of the randomized gibberish that they spoke when they were signing, to cover up the fact that the signs were the only true communication. Sasuke almost turned around to see which sign she was making, until he remembered that he didn't care. Besides, it was obvious in context. "…but it can't last forever. That night, what we…when we suddenly…we nearly went crazy trying to figure out what happened. Naruto was the only one who made it out of his house, and he was less than half-way to your compound before he mysteriously lost consciousness." Sasuke snorted softly. "And then you didn't join us. If we didn't have the," another word of gibberish, "then we'd probably be tearing apart the village to see if you were alright."

Sasuke just stood there, saying nothing.

"It doesn't matter how much of a pain this whole thing is, we're not leaving you alone up here."

Sasuke's mouth twisted as he stared out over the darkening city. Or was it lightening, with all of the lights turning on? Both at the same time? Everything was a contradiction. Was it lighter in spite of the darkness, or did the light only highlight how dark it really was? Was he any more alone than before, really? Or was he only more alone now because Itachi was gone? Sasuke shook his head, acknowledging that his thought process might really be more screwed up than he had originally thought.

"I'll join you guys tonight," Sasuke whispered finally. Anything to get them to leave him alone. He might even do it, later on.

They were silent, behind him, all eight of them.

"Don't think we'll be so easy to get rid of next time," an uncharacteristically quiet voice said.

Sasuke just nodded, only just catching himself from grunting, the only way he'd communicated between his…debriefing…and this intervention. I need to be careful of that, Sasuke thought to himself, distracting himself as his only friends—his best friends, dammit, his best friends—slowly trooped their way off the roof. Grunting like that could easily become a bad habit.

When Sasuke entered the dream that night—it was a forest glen again, he noticed—he was unsurprised to find the others all waiting for him. They had all gotten good at falling asleep when they wanted to, and Sasuke had taken a long time to decide whether or not he wanted to come. What had finally tipped the scales in favor of coming was the thought that he could always just leave if needed. He knew how not to come, leaving should be just as easy.

There was something of an uncomfortable silence, an unusual occurrence between the nine of them.

"So…" Naruto started, before Ino shoved her elbow into his side.

"Shut up," she said calmly, waving her hand in a manner that somehow expressed apology without regret. How, precisely, Sasuke wasn't really sure, but they had always been able to tell what they were all thinking, in general terms. It was—Sasuke grimaced. He had forgotten that he didn't care again. "Sasuke came to us, he gets to dictate the course of the conversation, at least at first." She gave him a bit of an oblique look. "If he wants to tell us about what happened that day, then we'll listen. If he wants to talk about his favorite tomato dishes, we'll listen to that too."

"But Ino," Naruto whined, blurring over to another part of the group when Ino swung for him again. "I just wanted to ask how he kept from joining—ooph!" he grunted, as Sakura elbowed him from the other side. Making a face at her, he blurred over next to Hinata, the only girl there who hadn't yet struck him that night. He mock-cowered behind her before making faces at the two other girls, drawing laughter from the rest of the group.

Fake laughter, Sasuke noted, before he got too angry at them, for being so normal, on a night that was anything but. They're trying to keep everything normal, to put me more at ease. That they had gone through the effort of preparing something ahead of time helped him in a way that their pretense at normalcy had not. Sasuke took a deep breath. It felt good to be reminded that the others were still here, that they still cared.

"It turns out," Sasuke said quietly, instantly quelling the antics of the group, "that all it takes to not come here is to not want to."

There was silence for a little while. Naruto opened his mouth, then shut it with a snap when both Sakura and Ino glared at him, genuine anger flickering within them both. Sasuke noticed for the first time that he was picking up actual emotions from each of them. They'd never really been able to fool each other, and they had always been picking up subtext about each other that didn't really have any explanation, as he had just done with Ino. But this, this was different. Now he didn't just read the falseness of their laughter in their tone and body language, he could actually feel the total lack of amusement from the group, sense their sadness and their horror and their compassion and their affection and—

Sasuke inhaled deeply. There was more, but there was not the slightest bit of pity from any of them. He let it out, relaxing an inner tension that he hadn't really realized had been coiled within him. He could do this. They deserved to know.

Plagued with the same restlessness as the rest of the Nine, Sasuke chose to end the stalemate by silently slipping into the standard Academy taijutsu stance and starting to move through the kata. By the time he finished with the first, some of the others had joined him. Before he began the third, every one of them was arranged around him, and the glen had been replaced by the Academy work-out field.

They had finished every kata they had been taught twice and were in the middle of a third series when the scene was suddenly replaced by the entrance gates to the Uchiha compound, late in the evening. The full moon was high in the sky. An indistinct figure appeared in front of the group, shadowed around the edges but otherwise transparent; its profile was clearly Sasuke's, especially when they saw the fan that was the Uchiha crest on the back of the high-brimmed black shirt. Some started in surprise, others stopped completely, but all resumed their actions when they saw that Sasuke hadn't even paused.

"I was coming home from shuriken practice," Sasuke said softly, still flowing through the Academy kata. The figure began walking towards the gates, the ground apparently moving under them so that they could keep up without moving. "I had this bad feeling before going in," Sasuke said, "but I didn't think anything of it. It's hardly unusual to feel like someone is watching me with ill-intent; I can't even escape it in the compound. Couldn't, I mean." There was silence until the viewpoint pushed through the gates. "It wasn't until I got inside the compound that I started getting worried. There weren't any lights on. There wasn't any noise. It was late, but hardly that late." Two kunai showed themselves in front of the figure, clearly held in a defensive position. "I explored a little further. Until I found…them." The viewpoint moved around, down one street and then down a cross-street. There, clear even in the darkness, were the bodies of several people. The buildings around them had several slashes running through various areas, and there was a large puddle of blood under each corpse, its coppery smell cloying and thick. "So I ran," Sasuke said. The view spun about with dizzying speed as the figure twisted about and started retreating back to the entrance.

"You ran?" Kiba blurted out, shrinking back at the glares sent his way. The view suddenly froze in place.

"Of course I ran!" Sasuke snapped, stopping his martial arts practice to spin around on Kiba. "I enter the Uchiha clan compound, a place with more protections woven around it than anywhere in Konoha short of the Hokage's tower, to find my clansmen slaughtered. There was no alarm going off, so the attacker had to have avoided setting it off and killed anyone who found out before they could set off the alarm themselves. The bodies hadn't been cared for, so obviously any survivors either hadn't gotten there yet or were too busy trying to survive to do anything with the dead, if there were any survivors at all. What part of that situation makes it seem like a good idea for an Academy student with roughly a year of training to investigate in an area where veteran ninja were dying?" Ignoring how Kiba had backed off as Sasuke approached him angrily, the black-haired youth continued. "Who should I risk myself for? My clansmen? These people?" Sasuke gestured violently towards the figures that had reappeared on the ground. "Uchiha Teyaki and Uruchi," he snarled, pointing to an elderly couple. "Owners of the famous Uchiha Senbei. The first and only time I went to buy some of their famed senbei from them, he spat at me and she knocked me over with her broom." He pointed to a one-legged man even older than the first two, who was lying on the opposite side of the street, the remnants of what appeared to be a cane in pieces next to him. "Uchiha Kagami, a hero of the First Shinobi War. He used that crutch to 'accidentally' crush my foot at every opportunity." He spun and pointed at a trio of corpses clustered together a little further down the street. "Uchiha Yakumi, Uchiha Tekka, and Uchiha Yashiro," he said, naming men who had a topknot, a dot in the center of his forehead, and a shock of white hair, respectively. "Just three more bastards of my clan who wouldn't give me water if I was on fire."

"Sasuke," Ino said calmly, stepping in-between the two boys. "Kiba's sorry, and he won't do it again, okay?"

With an extra glare for Kiba, who was gagging himself with a piece of cloth that Sakura handed him, Sasuke got back into a ready stance and began going through the Academy kata again. Before too long had passed, Sasuke resumed his story.

"So I ran for the gate," Sasuke continued, the figure before them starting to move again. "But…before I could get there…that man appeared."

The gates were in sight when a dark blur flickered out of the shadows, stopping in a crouch directly between Sasuke and the gate. The blur straightened up and each of the Nine could clearly recognize Uchiha Itachi, what with his distinctive cheekbones and fully matured Sharingan eyes. Gone was the gentle smile that used to adorn his face, however. In its place was a cold indifference, in a way more chilling than hateful malevolence.

"Older brother!" the figure in front of them cried out. Sasuke had stopped speaking, stopped practicing his kata. He just stood there, hands curled into white fists, staring at the tableau that was before them. A couple of the others started moving forward, but Shino and Shikamaru stopped them. They exchanged loaded looks but reluctantly returned to their places.

"Older brother!" the figure called out again, hysteria straining his voice. "It's terrible, something's happened, it looked like everyone was dead! What are we going to—?"

Without warning, a kunai whizzed past the oblivious figure, the very edge of the triangular blade slicing a thin line across his cheek. His hand slapped up in surprise, surprise that only increased when he saw the blood on his hands.

"Blood…what…?"

"Foolish little brother," Itachi said coldly. "Have you still not realized it?" He slowly raised his right hand. When the light shown on the appendage, it clearly revealed a sword, a katana that was of good make but otherwise was quite unremarkable, except for the amount of blood that stained the blade. He flicked the sword in front of him, leaving a trail of blood splattering between the two brothers. The figure before them took a step or two back in horror. The blood was fresh. "Ah," Itachi said, still in that cold tone of voice. "I see you finally comprehend."

The figure before them hurled one of the kunai that he held in his hands. Without waiting to see if the throwing knife hit, he spun on the spot and took off down the street. He was keeping them quiet, but the Nine could clearly hear the stifled sobs escaping from the figure.

Feeling a little awkward, a few of them turned behind them to see how close Itachi was and then were reminded that this was a recreation of a memory; nothing that Sasuke hadn't seen the first time was visible here, except for basic outlines on buildings that he knew hadn't moved. They looked back just in time for the figure to round a corner and almost run into the silently standing Itachi.

The figure nearly bowled over when he was struck by a spike of killing intent, the sheer force of Itachi's intention to kill him freezing him in place. It went above and beyond anything any of them had felt, even from the angriest of their tormentors. With this sensation replicated like any other in the dream, the rest of the Nine shuddered, feeling the murderous intention all the way to their bones

"Not yet, little brother. I won't let you escape just yet. First you must see." The shinobi knelt down to look the figure directly in the face, almost absentmindedly deflecting the kunai that darted for his throat. He looked deep into the figure's eyes, and then something inconceivable happened.

The fully mature Sharingan, bloodline limit of the Uchiha clan, looked like three black comma-like tomoe arranged around the original pupil of an eye with a red iris. Itachi, it was well known, had had his mastered at eight, younger than many Uchiha even had it activated. But now, as the tomoe spun around the pupil, their shape distorted, the gentle curves elongating and merging together in a manner that was supposed to be impossible, until they were all combined into a single shape, that of a three-bladed pinwheel.

"Experience the ultimate genjutsu," Itachi intoned, closing his right eye. "Tsukuyomi."

The scene around them shifted madly, twisting in impossible directions until it finally settled. The indistinct figure, disoriented by the illusion shifting around him, fell to his knees. They were at the edge of the Uchiha compound, but the colors were all wrong. It was like all of the colors were reversed and then darkened, and the sky was blood red, dominated by a grotesquely huge moon of the same hue.

While Sasuke resumed moving through the kata, his eyes firmly closed, the rest of the Nine watched with confusion at what appeared before them. None of them had ever been stuck in a genjutsu before. Not from lack of trying; it was just that genjutsu never really seemed to stick for even a few seconds, if it affected them at all. But even without Itachi's words, that was clearly what had just happened.

It was clearly a scene of the Uchiha clan before they had been slaughtered—except that it only just before the slaughter. Even as they watched, a shadowed shape that was clearly Itachi blurred into visibility just long enough to strike down one of the clansman with a katana. Almost before they realized what had happened, Itachi faded back into the shadows just long enough to sneak up on another Uchiha, slaying her while she ran to see what had happened to the first to fall. The scene continued like this for some time, Itachi descending upon some hapless Uchiha group or individual, killing them with brutal efficiently and a complete lack of mercy. Even after some of the clan became aware of what was wrong, they never managed to sound the alarm before they were silenced forever.

Throughout it all, the Nine were treated to a constant bath of killing intent, spiking with every kill, marinating them in fear and terror and horror as the blade flashed and the blood sprayed and the gore flowed.

Hardened though they were trying to be, as any assassins-in-training should be, Chouji still had to turn away from the constant scenes of torture in front of him before half of the Uchiha were dead, followed swiftly by Hinata and Sakura. Ino, Naruto, and Kiba weren't too far behind them, though Sakura kept trying to turn around to examine it, only to turn away, focusing very hard on not throwing up. Only Shikamaru and Shino watched the entire thing from beginning to end, though Shikamaru was looking rather green and Shino was hiding deeper inside his coat than usual, a muted buzzing coming from beneath his clothes.

Sasuke, even with his eyes closed, flinched at the double swish-thunk that was his parents being killed, which was swiftly followed by a merciful, peaceful darkness. The rest of the Nine heaved deep breaths of relief, only for the air to freeze in their throats when the scene started up again and the killing intent returned. Only, this time it was different. The angle of the view on the first group of Uchiha was…off, somehow. Shino let out a muffled grunt when he realized what was different about the angle.

Before any of the others could ask a question, the view before them blurred, resolving directly behind the first man that they had watched die. With gaping mouths they saw a katana blur into view, slicing through the man as if he was a ripe fruit. They could smell the spilled blood in the air, almost feel the hot blood splash on their faces, before the view slipped away again. It paused for a second, then slid forward to eviscerate the woman who ran to her relative.

"Of course," Ino whispered, nauseated. "These are his real memories…first-hand memories of slaughtering his entire clan." She looked over at Sasuke, who was steadfastly going through his exercises, as though he could be focusing on anything else when he was manifesting this recreation. "So not only did you see Itachi killing the clan while you are unable to do anything, he also made you live it through his own eyes, as if it was your hands that killed them." Sasuke turned his head away with a sharp jerk, interrupting his kata for a moment. "He didn't let you look away, did he?"

Sasuke was silent for a long few minutes, his movements slowing. The others alternated looking between Sasuke and the hazy shape that was his representation in the reconstructed memory, but it was getting too blurry to really make out as Sasuke's concentration broke. "No," Sasuke said hoarsely. "The image turned with me."

Ino nodded; it was an obvious and easy feature that was standard in a lot of upper level trauma-oriented genjutsu. "And shutting your eyes did nothing?" she asked.

"Actually," Sasuke rasped out, stopping completely and allowing the image around them to collapse into cloaking darkness, ceasing the killing intent as well, "If I kept my eyes closed for more than an instant, I would feel my eyelids ripped from my face."

Ino swallowed. That…was definitely not standard.

"How many times did he make you watch it?" Shikamaru asked, his voice grim. He ignored the others that looked at him in shock and revulsion, focusing completely on Sasuke.

Sasuke's jaw tightened. "Over and over again, switching between the two versions, until about a day had passed," he ground out. "Maybe a little more or less."

Despite themselves, most of the others recoiled, their minds rebelling at the thought of being forced to relive such an event so many times, for so long. Sasuke said nothing, just facing away from the rest of them. The darkness that they stood in thickened even further, prompting some of the Nine to reflexively generate some light, just to keep themselves from being blind. Some of the darkness burned away, but some was just highlighted, parts of it wrapping around Sasuke like a second skin.

Ino started forward again, only for Shikamaru to grab her arm to stop her. Ino knew multiple ways to break the hold, just as Shikamaru knew counters to the breaks, and Ino knew counter-counters, so on and so forth. But instead of starting anything physical, Ino just locked eyes with Shikamaru. Shikamaru had his obscenely analytical brain on his side, one that never stopped trying to break things down and understand them; when it came to solving a problem, Shikamaru was usually a safe bet. Ino had her own brand of intelligence, of course, but more importantly at this moment, she grew up in a clan compound full of people who knew how the human mind worked, and she had training atop the kind of personality that that gives a person. Shikamaru looked away first, a grimace crossing his face as his hand dropped to his side.

Ino stepped forward, the light that she was generating evaporating a little more of the darkness that Sasuke was wrapping himself up in. Ino lifted one hand and, pausing for a moment, she laid it gently on his shoulder.

Sasuke, withdrawing into himself and positively radiating loss, confusion, and rage, felt the soft touch. Trained for more than a year at the Academy and reacting to years of hostile contacts, his hand snapped up, ready to grasp the offending limb and to throw his weight into twisting it, hopefully snapping at least a few bones. But Ino was used to negative reactions herself, and withdrew her hand the moment she felt Sasuke react.

Feeling the miss, Sasuke spun around, moving backwards even as he fell into a defensive posture. Ino did not move, merely staring worriedly as the shadows swirled around him.

"It's okay, Sasuke," Ino said quietly. "We're here for you, however you need us. If you've had enough for the night, that's fine. You can go, or we can talk about something else. If you want to finish the story, we're right here for that, too."

Sasuke stared at her blankly for a few moments, emotions only visible in his churning eyes and in the shadows roiling around him. Slowly, the shadows calmed down, motionless but present, as his emotions stilled somewhat.

"No," he said finally. "I started it tonight, I'll end it tonight." He turned back away from the group, and the collapsed scene regenerated. If the odd reversed colors were shaded darker than they were before, if the picture grew blurry every so often, if the murderous intention was skittering throughout them, nobody commented on it.

The image stretched and distorted again, parts unfolding out of nowhere, finally stopping on the same image that had been showing before the genjutsu first came into effect, with all of the right colors in place. The figure of the remembered Sasuke was curled into a fetal position, lying in a puddle of vomit and sobbing incessantly. Itachi stood just before him, in the same spot that he had been when he had used the Tsukuyomi genjutsu, the kunai laying forgotten at his feet.

"Why?" The figure groaned out through the sobs. "Why would you do this, brother? Was it…?"

"I had not known you were quite that foolish, little brother," Itachi said tonelessly. "This had nothing to do with you. I was merely measuring my capacity."

The figure's sobs became softer. "You were…what?" Sasuke murmured. "Just to test your capacity? Was…was that it? You did…everyone…"

"For it to be a true test, that was essential," Itachi said, his eyes half-lidded.

The figure slowly gathered his legs beneath him. "This…ridiculous, completely insane…"

"I have spared you for one reason, and one reason alone," Itachi said, completely ignoring the figure's muttering. "That is because the potential that lies within you might one day prove to be a challenge."

The figure stared up at the traitor, his mouth moving soundlessly. He abruptly gagged, one hand clapping over his mouth and the other pressing against his side. He held that position for a few moments as he heaved. The hand pressed against his side slipped inside his belt pouch and then his wrist flicked, hurling a pair of shuriken at Itachi. The figure lurched back down the street he had come from, drawing his other two shuriken from his pouch as he went.

Without so much as a flicker of forewarning, Itachi appeared before them again. "It is for this reason that I have spared your life," Itachi continued.

The figure threw the two shuriken, one aimed for Itachi's face and one aimed at his groin, and then ducked into the adjoining alley, pulling out his last weapon, a kunai.

"You can awaken the same eyes I have," Itachi intoned, materializing before the figure once more. "The same power I have."

The figure threw the kunai straight into the older Uchiha's face, then his fingers flew together while Itachi's view was blocked by the blade and his deflection. Before he could finish, however, the older male had taken a single step forward, arm sweeping up and knocking the hands apart, took another step and then planted his foot behind the figure's feet, the same arm flowing forward to push him over. The figure fell backwards with a grunt, one that quickly became a growl. Without pausing, Itachi hooked one foot around the underside of the closest leg and dragged the figure closer to him, the friction making his black shirt ride up his torso.

The view got blurrier as the figure snarled and lashed out at Itachi. The older male responded by lifting one foot and bringing it down hard on the figure's stomach, right over his bellybutton. The entire scene flashed white with a piercing whistle and blurred beyond recognition. A few of the Nine kept an eye on Sasuke while the others tried to make out what details they could. When the scene settled down, Itachi had moved a step closer to the downed figure, the same foot still squarely on the figure's stomach.

"But there is a requirement," the traitor said, continuing as though he hadn't been interrupted. "To obtain this power, you must kill your closest friend."

Abruptly, every member of the Nine froze in place, even as the scene itself stopped moving. Eight heads snapped over to Sasuke, whose head was determinedly aimed at the ground. A few started moving towards him before the shadows that had surrounded him erupted out of the ground, forming a wall between them. The closer they got, the taller the wall grew, eventually drawing everyone back so that they could still see Sasuke.

Not that that was going to stop them.

"Sasuke," Chouji began. "None of us believe—"

"Shut up," Sasuke rasped. "Just…shut up."

"My…my best friend?" the figured choked out, everyone falling silent as the scene picked up right where it left off. "Kill…I won't!" he shouted abruptly, anger overcoming his shock. "This is bullshit!" He was cut off by Itachi's foot pressing more firmly on his stomach as he leaned forward.

"You say this now," Itachi said levelly. "I thought the same, once. Shisui's death gave me such power, however…you will not regret it once you do so."

The figure's face twisted at hearing of Itachi's best friend, thought to have died of suicide six months ago. "Didn't you hear me?" the figure grunted. "I won't do it."

Itachi straightened up somewhat, appearing to lose interest. "At the main temple of the Nakano Shrine," he said, "on the far right side, under the seventh tatami mat is the clan's secret meeting place."

The figure gave no response, merely continuing his efforts to get away.

"There you will find what purpose the doujutsu of the Uchiha clan originally served…the real secret is hidden there."

The figure finally stopped struggling, conserving his strength as he stared up at his older brother.

"If you open your eyes to the truth," Itachi said, something odd entering his previously empty tone. His mouth started stretching in a grin that was…the figure shuddered. It was nothing like the smiles he had known. It was incredibly creepy. "If you do, then including myself, there will be two people who can handle the Mangekyou Sharingan."

He pushed his foot against the figure's stomach, wringing a grunt from the supine boy. "If that were to happen…" Itachi giggled. He giggled. Itachi never giggled, ever. It was just so wrong. "In that case, there would be a reason to let you live. As for right now, though," he said, disturbing humor dropping from his tone as he dug his foot further into his brother's stomach, "it would be worthless to kill someone like you…

"Foolish little brother." The killing intent hit the figure again, renewing his struggles to escape, his hands scrabbling pointlessly against Itachi's leg. "If you want to kill me…curse me! Hate me! And live an unsightly life…run away, run away, and cling to your pitiful life." The traitorous elder brother bore down, knocking the air from the figure completely. "And some day, when you have the same eyes as me," he said, his face drawing close to the figure's as his eyes shifted and warped once more into that impossible pinwheel shape. "Come before me." There was a long moment of fear and agony as it felt like the killing intent was burning him up from the inside, and then Itachi was gone.

The Nine watched the figure scramble to his feet and speedily stagger back towards the front gate, tripping and falling once before the scene dissolved into nothingness, the sensations that Sasuke had been projecting onto them fading with it.

There was silence among the Nine for a bit.

"So…did you go to the shrine?"

Sasuke turned and gave Kiba a scathing glare, noting absently that the gag had disappeared. "Of course I didn't," he snapped. "That man just proved himself to be a traitor threefold, not to mention completely unstable. For all I know, he saved me just so he could kill me with an explosive note in the shrine. I'm not going near that place until I can get in without risk, just in case this is all one big sick joke."

There was a brief pause. "You didn't say that you didn't go because you weren't listening to said traitor," Shino pointed out slowly. "Why do I mention this? Because its absence implies the opposite."

There was a long, terrible silence.

"Sasuke-kun—" Hinata began.

"No—" Sasuke rasped again. "Too much of what he said makes sense. Itachi progressed faster than anyone around him, faster than people twice his age, and in his whole life he only had one friend, Shisui—and after he killed him, he just got more powerful. It's clear that having friends just slows you down."

"You're mistaking correlation for causation—" Sakura said.

"No!" Sasuke interrupted. "You're all just going to hold me back! I don't need—"

"No," Ino counter-interrupted calmly. "You're just afraid that you'll follow the rest of his advice, about killing us."

Sasuke froze, then turned away, solid darkness raising up, leaving now that they were warned—

There were blurs around him—

Sasuke jerked back in shock, shadows erupting around him—

Only to be burned away as the Nine tackled him from every direction, ninja training flying out the window as eight preadolescents hurtled themselves at their friend, the nine of them collapsing into a tangled pile.

Sasuke thrashed and snarled and thrashed some more, trying to get out from under them, to no avail. They refused to be moved, latching on and gripping with every limb, any arm loosened just replaced by three more. Sasuke stopped, realizing his error, and then closed his eyes to muster the concentration needed to remove himself from the dream.

An extremely hard object slamming into his head flattened his concentration an instant later. "Dammit, you bastard!" Sasuke heard vaguely through the haze of pain. "Don't you dare leave! You're not going to kill us and you're not going to withdraw from us and you will open your damn senses and realize what we're feeling! We won't let you!"

It was like a dam broke within Sasuke. All of the feelings, all of the emotions that Sasuke had been feeling earlier in the dream but had tuned out, all of them went straight through the walls Sasuke had thrown up and hit him in a single rush.

He felt their love. Real love, not some empty platitude-mouthing imitation. Love that he never got from his family. Sasuke shuddered all over and suddenly he wasn't fighting the rest of the Nine, he was hugging them as tightly as he could, huge sobs racking his body.

Fuck his family and that man along with them, he didn't need any of them, he had his family right here with him. He'd hunt the traitor down and kill him, for violating his mind, for making him feel so helpless, for trying to get him to turn on the rest of the Nine, but the rest of his former family could go rot for all he cared. He had all the family he needed right here.

Chouji slowly shifted into the best Akimichi combat stance the eight year old could manage. Across the way from him was Shikamaru, doing the exact same thing with his own clan's taijutsu style.

Both boys were in the middle of a dream-based reproduction of the stadium that was used to host the tournament for the Chuunin Exams. All of the clan brats had been there to watch in the latest fight, and thought that it would be a fairly cool place to spar against one another, though they didn't bother with the mass genjutsu projection in the air above the arena. It was a nice change from the forest vales, not to mention the streets of Konoha and the warren of tunnels below them that they had used before. They used all kinds of set-ups: free-for-alls, various team configurations, with normal abilities, extraordinary abilities and doing anything they could imagine.

They didn't do that last one very often, because Naruto kept coming up with completely insane ideas that actually worked in their dreams.

For now, however, they were just sparring one on one, and restricting themselves to what they could do in real life. It was the closest they could get to actually being able to train together outside of the Academy, and Chouji could tell, it was really helping Sasuke, letting him feel like he was getting strong while keeping him from withdrawing too much. The only difference from reality that was allowed was that instead of going through the hand seals, something that would reveal the sequence to outsiders and could get them in a lot of trouble—lying to parents was one thing, but lying to parents who also happened to be ninja was something altogether different—they merely had to place their hands together for the requisite period of time. Right now the fight was between Chouji and Shikamaru, obviously, and the referee and commentator was none other than…

"Ladies and Gentlemen! Thanks for coming to today's Tourney of the Nine! Trust me when I tell you that you're going to really enjoy the show!"

…Naruto. Of course it was Naruto, the large ham took the job every time he could.

Up in the stands surrounding the stadium, the empty facsimiles of the crowds that the others created began cheering hollowly, the best they could manage when creating lots of people. Kiba couldn't even copy Akamaru that well, though Shino managed to make decent copies of his insects. He did mention that it was getting increasingly easier to imagine them there, and that they started to appear without a thought, exactly as they were in life…Chouji put the stray thought aside as Naruto, modifying the dream to be even louder than normal, continued with his grandstanding.

"In this corner! At almost 130 cm and 28 kg soaking wet, we have our first contender! He's small! He's wiry! His genius is only matched by his laziness! It's…The Shadow Shogun!" Naruto pointed dramatically to Shikamaru as the faux crowd cheered loudly. Chouji could see Shikamaru roll his eyes and mutter, but he couldn't make out the words from across the arena. Chouji could feel the annoyance mixed with amusement clearly, however.

"And in this corner! Last measured at 133 cm and more than 38 kg, we have our challenger! He's large, he's in charge, and he's ready to crush his opponent! It's…The Mighty Juggernaut!" Chouji just smiled at his friend's antics before squaring off against Shikamaru.

"Oh, look at that, folks! The Mighty Juggernaut's ready for some action! Shall we let them get at it?" The fake crowd roared, rising to their feet to show their approval. "You heard them, shinobi. Ready…fight!"

Even as Shikamaru reached into his oddly-placed equipment pouch, Chouji slammed his hands together for four seconds—the fastest he could make it through the seals for the Multi-Size Technique right now—before his torso swelled up into a large ball. "Baika no Jutsu!" he yelled as waves of chakra expanded away from him in a spherical pattern, partially obscuring him from view. Before they dissipated, Chouji had already begun the second jutsu in the sequence, the Human Bullet Tank. "Nikudan Sensha!" His head, arms, and legs were all withdrawn from sight, replaced by visible jets of chakra and leaving the Akimichi's body a perfect ball, which began spinning before it even reached the ground.

"Look at that, folks! The Mighty Juggernaut is already showing you all how he earned that title! Oh, but the Shadow Shogun isn't standing for it, readying some kunai to throw at him from a distance. What will happen next?"

Even as the crowd gasped, the ball touched down, taking off towards Shikamaru. Ideally, some tricky chakra manipulation would be keeping it floating in place while it built up speed, or even reaching full speed before he fell back to the ground, but unfortunately Chouji didn't have nearly that much control yet. Instead, repeating "roll" continuously under his breath, he just starting rolling at a 45 degree angle to Shikamaru, spinning faster and faster, the rotation more than enough to deflect all of the throwing knives that Shikamaru hurled at him. Ignoring them for the moment, Chouji just began circling Shikamaru, getting two full revolutions before he was at his optimum speed. Inside the ball that his body had become, Chouji grimaced. We really need to start sharing more of those chakra control exercises.

Grunting from the effort, Chouji shifted his trajectory, getting closer and closer to his friend, who thus far had declined to move from his starting spot. Some would call it laziness—and they'd be right—but it was also a method to keep Chouji from knowing where he was. What people often didn't think of was that with his head withdrawn like it was, he couldn't see anything. In fact, the members of the Akimichi clan were trained from a young age how to use this technique so that there would be enough time to learn how to navigate around by remembering where things were before they used the technique and detecting their surroundings through vibrations made by movement. Chouji was also lucky enough to have a large enough pool of chakra to be able to detect all of the chakra around him for a couple meters, but an Akimichi could get around without that just fine. By standing still, and suppressing his chakra, Shikamaru made it that much harder to be found while Chouji was using this jutsu. But not hard enough! Chouji thought as he finished a turn and began barreling straight towards where Shikamaru had to be.

Shikamaru stood his ground as his friend barreled towards him, looking like he would just let him grind him into the ground. At the last moment, Shikamaru leapt to the side, hands pressing together for a few moments before his shadow lashed out, merging with the shadow of the large ball of Akimichi that just barely missed him. "Kagemane Jutsu, connected," Shikamaru said, his tone satisfied.

"What is this, folks? It looks like the Shadow Shogun has used his clan's signature technique, the Shadow Possession Technique! But he already knows that since the Mighty Juggernaut is propelling himself with chakra and not his body, the jutsu is useless! What is he thinking?"

In the middle of his technique, Chouji couldn't help but wonder the same question as well. He could clearly feel Shikamaru's chakra spike, and even the odd sensation of having his friend's shadow connect with his own, but Shikamaru knew that his limbs were locked into this position while the jutsu was active, that he couldn't cut off the technique with Kagemane, and that he didn't even really use anything more than momentum and chakra to move, so what was he up to?

He found out shortly. Chouji could turn around over a very tiny distance, relatively speaking, but not without sacrificing a good deal of his hard-earned speed. In order to preserve his momentum, Chouji swung wide when he looped around for another run at Shikamaru, Shikamaru's shadow stretched to the limit in the process. Through the course of the broad turn, the rolling Akimichi drew close to the wall of the stadium, and that is when the Nara struck.

Just as the Human Bullet Tank got near the wall, Shikamaru activated the third part of his jutsu, the one that allowed him to control his opponent's body. Even as Chouji started to flinch, Shikamaru flung himself to the side, hard. Before Chouji's path could curve away from the arena's side, he suddenly found himself leaning sharply to the side, grinding him into the wall and completely ruining all of the momentum that he had managed to build up.

"Oh my goodness! Folks, would you look at that, the Shadow Shogun managed to find a way to use his technique after all! But will it be enough?"

Chouji grunted as he tried to right himself, but it was pointless. Too much of his speed was gone. At this point, he'd be better off cancelling the technique and then restarting it. Before he let the Nikudan Sensha jutsu lapse, he felt some tugging on his arms from Shikamaru's Shadow Possession, and waited until it ceased to return to normal, his form deflating to normal. Even as he brought his hands together to restart the technique, he felt a blinding pain and then blackness.

"Holy crap, folks! Shadow Shogun has done it again! I thought that the Human Bullet Tank was immune to the Shadow Possession technique, but it looks like I was wrong! And to throw the kunai from all the way across the arena and still hit the Mighty Juggernaut so precisely; amazing! What an upset! Well, I guess that's it. Winner, Shad—"

"Nikudan Sensha!" While the crowd was focused on the commentator's speech, Chouji had shaken off the pain, the wound already clotting, and had restarted his family's technique.

"Whoa! I take it back, ladies and gentlemen, the Mighty Juggernaut is back in the game! I should have known better than to doubt him. Let's see what happens now!"

Though neither realized it, both Chouji and Shikamaru had identical grins on their faces as the spar continued.

Aburame Shibi stood silently beside the bedside of his son, Shino. The doctors had said that he shouldn't wake up for quite a while, but it was with no surprise whatsoever that he saw his son purposefully stir several hours ahead of schedule.

"Father," Shino acknowledged as he stretched out a hand for his sunglasses, his eyes still firmly closed.

"Son," Shibi nodded, pulling the combat-rated glasses out of his pocket and handing them over.

There was silence.

"How did the operation go?" Shino asked. "Why do I ask? Because it concerns my future."

"The doctors informed me that it went off quite well, despite its…unorthodox…nature," Shibi said calmly. "That is because there were no complications, and you are healing very quickly."

"I see." A short pause. "What is being done with it?"

Shibi raised his eyebrow. "Why do you want to know?" When he received no answer, Shibi mentally filed the information away. "After it was removed, the body was returned to our clan, for dissection and destruction."

Silence.

"How many times has a kikaichuu queen died after implantation in an Aburame that is not an infant?" Shino asked.

Hesitation. "This is the first. How do I know? Because such a thing would be within our records, and it is not."

Silence.

"Will you tell me why my situation is unique?" Shino asked, his voice devoid of hope. "This also affects my future."

Longer hesitation. "I cannot. Why is that? I cannot tell you that either."

"You cannot." It was not a question. "You cannot tell me why I have three starter colonies and one special colony right now, when I should only have a single starter colony; why each of them is producing large numbers of stillborn kikaichuu, with the highest producer only recently reaching a 50% average survival rate; why the number of my kikaichuu that have mutated far surpasses statistical expectancy; why I was selected to receive yet another colony so soon, of primarily flier-type kikaichuu; or why every single beetle of said colony died shortly thereafter. Which of those can you not tell me about?"

"All of them," Shibi said stiffly, "as you well know. How do I know this? Because we have had similar conversations before."

"I see," Shino said again.

A much longer silence.

"When will I be allowed to leave the hospital?" Shino asked tonelessly. "Why do I want to know? Because I desire to get back to training."

"You should be allowed to leave within the next day," Shibi said, hiding that he relaxed at that question with the ease of long experience. "That is because you are healing very well." That wasn't the only reason, but that was something else they would not talk about.

"I see," Shino said. He closed his eyes behind his sunglasses, and said no more.

"Begin!"

Instantly, Hyuuga Hanabi, Hinata's younger sister, charged forward. Hinata falteringly leapt to the right, but she didn't get far enough to disengage, so she was forced to trade blows with her little sister, chakra flashing from their palms as they clashed. Externally, Hinata was a shivering wreck, barely able to keep up with a child who was only half of her ten years. Inside, she could barely keep herself from sighing in exasperation.

The Hyuuga had established a system within their clan that was widely considered barbaric by everyone who wasn't in charge of it. They divvied their families into two parts: the Main family, which was in charge of the clan as a whole, and the Branch family, charged with serving and protecting the Main family. The Main family was kept from swelling in size by ruthlessly culling family members from the Main family and relegating them to the Branch family; perhaps the most striking example of this course was that of the current head of the Hyuuga clan and Hinata's father, Hiashi, who was born mere seconds before his identical twin brother, Hizashi. And yet despite the tiny difference in birth, Hiashi led the clan and Hizashi was sealed as a Branch member.

But that wasn't the whole story. What was truly considered barbaric about the arraignment was not segmenting the clan, as that was fairly common across the Elemental Continent. No, what was barbaric about the clan's structure—what Hinata could not bear to think of without her own feeling of deep shame—was that the Branch family members were branded like cattle with a cursed seal, directly upon their forehead.

It wasn't some pointless cruelty. This seal, the Caged Bird Seal, was designed to keep anyone from stealing their bloodline limit, as heritable mutations that were limited to specific bloodlines were called. The Hyuuga bloodline limit was called the Byakugan, and it was a doujutsu, a term used to refer to bloodline limits that were centered in the eyes. It was characterized by having pupils the same color as their white irises, though slight variations like Hinata's pale lavender eyes weren't unheard of. Furthermore, when activated, it would provide nigh-360 degree vision and the ability to visually perceive everything within a certain radius, including chakra. It was the all-seeing eye, one of the three great doujutsu in recorded history, and many desired it desperately.

It was for this reason that the Branch family were marked with the Caged Bird seal, which would only fade with death. Once a Branch member died, their eyes were automatically destroyed; attempts to remove the eyes with the Hyuuga still alive would destroy the eyes themselves just as surely; even attempts to breed the Hyuuga would meet with failure every time.

Such marvelous protection came with a price, of course. Main family members were taught a particular hand sign that, if used, could be used to trigger pain, eye-destruction, or death on those with the Caged Bird. Branch members were taught the same seal, which they could only use on themselves; they were expected to use it in the event that their situation was considered untenable, in order to prevent enemy forces from having a chance to examine the seal. And the reason that attempts to breed the Hyuuga met with failure was because the seal kept them all sterilized, something that could only be countered for a very limited period of time and by a wholly different hand seal, one that could not be applied by anyone with a Caged Bird seal or without Hyuuga blood.

In short, the Branch family were all slaves to the Main family, living under constant fear of pain or death, unable to even choose the time of their own procreation.

And Hinata was determined to join them.

Oh, on the surface, she had a decent chance of being confirmed as the heir. She was older than her sister by a full five years, after all. She was genteel, noble, consisting of many of the traits that were valued in their society. She had a frightening amount a chakra, a boon in a notoriously chakra-heavy fighting style. And her Byakugan was amazingly well-developed, as even her detractors would say that it was nearly on par with that of Hyuuga Tokuma, a distant relative who was reputed to have the best Byakugan of the clan at present.

But with large chakra comes weak control, and in the Hyuuga fighting style, Jyuuken or Gentle Fist, control was far more important than mere reserves. After all, what did it matter if one could make a hundred strikes that missed, when a single pinpoint strike could shut down an enemy's limb or rupture their heart? And with Hinata's frighteningly large reserves came frighteningly poor control. Though this control improved markedly in the years since she was first tested, particularly after she began secretly practicing all of the chakra control techniques from six other clans in addition to her own, her lack in the beginning was held against her. Moreover, she had begun her life with a great deal of compassion and semi-crippling shyness. Her shyness had eased, in great part due to her interactions with the others of the Nine, but the compassion did not, and both were counted against her. Most importantly of all, there was this mysterious prejudice that all of the adults seemed to hold against all of the Nine, which was more than enough to counter the acclaim that her eyes would otherwise have earned her. Her family was no exception to that rule, the disfavor growing markedly worse after her mother died on a mission, and as soon as Hinata fully understood the implications of that, she decided to take a fall, so to speak.

What was the point of striving? Of fighting her hardest against something she absolutely knew would never happen? The rest of the Nine didn't like it—Naruto, especially, nearly exploded at hearing that little piece of reasoning—but that was only part of the issue. The central reason behind her choice was her little sister, Hanabi. Hanabi, who was only one year old when her mother died; who looked so much like their mother that Hinata had had serious trouble actually trying to fight her when their spars began; who would grow up her entire life fearing that she would be branded with the Caged Bird seal, all for naught, since Hinata was completely certain that that would be her own fate. Why let Hanabi suffer pointlessly under constant terror of that fate when Hinata could just make it obvious from the start that she wasn't in danger? Why let fear warp a young girl's mind when another option was so clear in front of her?

So Hinata made sure to lose against her little sister every time she sparred. This wasn't particularly difficult for her family to accept, as she had been genuinely losing from the beginning, but after she made this decision, she only tried hard enough to make it look good. When she had trained, she would still give it her all, like she always had. Buoyed by her decision—knowing and accepting what would happen was marvelously freeing, she found—Hinata began progressing through Jyuuken at a faster rate than before. Nowhere near as fast as her cousin Neji, who was already widely hailed as a prodigy of their clan, but noticeably faster nonetheless. And yet, still no one blinked an eye when she lost every match, seemingly incapable of using the techniques and abilities that she appeared to have mastered when sparring against dummies. Why would they? It was no different from how she was before the rest of the Nine had drawn her from her shell.

As the years dragged on, Hinata began to grow weary of the subterfuge. It was irritating to have to pretend to be so weak, but their inability to see through her act—and from a clan that touted its ability to pierce any curtain of secrecy, to see anything that was kept hidden—had corroded her respect for them. And as for her sister…well. Dear, sweet little Hanabi had become twisted anyways, just in different direction than the one that she had feared. Growing up surpassing her elder sister at every turn, with every member of the clan other than her father and grandfather bowing to her whims, and seeing the respect she received from total strangers, that sweet little girl had turned into cold arrogance personified. When Hinata saw that, she tried to temper that in their fights. She still had to lose, or else all of her work would be as for nothing, but she allowed herself to appear to improve a little bit at a time, until Hanabi had to actually work a little to win.

And so it was now. Even as Hanabi's arms lashed out, seeking the contact that it would take to make a decisive Jyuuken strike, Hinata had to work not to trounce her. Oh, the younger girl's form was textbook-perfect; their father would hardly accept less. But she wasn't as fast as she thought that she was, and she was so rigidly set on fighting against the Gentle Fist style that she would often respond to her partner's actions before they had even begun. This was very useful when used against an inflexible style like Gentle Fist, but it would get her killed in the real world.

Acting on impulse, Hinata abandoned her ostensibly frantic defense and sidled forward and to the left. Hanabi, expecting her sister to continue the proscribed blocks and counters, had already committed herself to her attack and so was taken completely by surprise by the unorthodox move. Before she could correct herself, Hinata's arm darted forward and, placing her palm squarely upon her sister's shoulder, delivered a Jyuuken strike.

If Hinata aimed properly and had sufficient control of her chakra, then she could send a sliver of her chakra into her opponent's keirakukei, or chakra network. She would have to aim very accurately to hit one of the 351 tenketsu, or chakra pores, that covered everyone's body, which were the only way to insert one's chakra into the keirakukei, just as the enhanced vision granted by the Byakugan was the only way to actually see the tenketsu. Once her chakra was inside Hanabi's body, she could use it to do any number of different actions, including damaging an organ that was close to that particular tenketsu, damaging the flesh around the insertion point in general, or creating a blockage in the chakra network that would reduce the younger girl's ability to use chakra. Blocking the right points, specifically the junction points for the chakra network, would cause the entire surrounding muscle to cramp up. Joints like the shoulder were rife with these junctions, and so with one opening caused by complacency and breaking form, Hinata could temporarily paralyze her opponent's dominant arm.

But Hinata kept her head about her, and flinched as she struck, misfiring the strike. Her one attack amounting to nothing, Hinata was forced on the defensive as an icily furious Hanabi redoubled her offense. In seconds, Hinata was sprawled out on the floor of the dojo, more than half of her body unresponsive and throbbing with pain.

"Stop," Hiashi finally said, well after it was clear that Hanabi had won once again. He gestured to his prostrate daughter. "Revive Hinata, Hanabi."

"Hai, Father," Hanabi said. Bending down, she slapped her palm against Hinata, using more Gentle Fist strikes to prematurely break apart the blockages that she had created. She was not gentle in her actions. Almost a minute later, Hinata was standing up next to Hanabi, her posture marred only by the slump of her spine. Hiashi merely stood there, with his eyes closed. One minute dragged on to two, then more. Hinata hunched over even more as five minutes became ten, and even Hanabi's posture was starting to quiver by the time that ten became fifteen.

Finally, he let out an almost imperceptible sigh and, his left hand twitching, he opened his eyes. "Hanabi," he started, "congratulations on your victory."

"Thank you, Father," Hanabi said proudly.

"That said," he continued as though he hadn't been interrupted, "I'm very disappointed in the both of you." Hinata flinched as though she had been struck, and Hanabi looked completely stunned. "Hinata, not only did you lose yet again, you broke form. That would not have been acceptable even had it actually accomplished something, which it did not. And Hanabi," he said, turning to the daughter that he normally doted upon, insomuch as he appeared capable of doting. "You have obviously become far too complacent in your spars, as you were completely taken in by Hinata's actions. If you had been reacting properly, then such a trick would have been useless. Both of you will think long and hard about what I have said today."

"Hai, Father," both daughters said.

The Hyuuga clan head was silent for a while longer, long enough for the girls' nervousness to grow once more. "Dismissed," he said finally, closing his eyes once more. Hanabi left so swiftly—managing not to break decorum while doing so—that a civilian might have been forgiven for thinking that she had disappeared. Hinata, more used to being verbally dressed down, merely bowed and left.

As she headed back to her room, she pondered her father's strange actions. Making them wait was unusual, but not surprising when considering his disappointment. Keeping his eyes closed for so long was very strange, however, and a movement so undisciplined as a twitch was even more out of character. Hinata pondered further on this as she slid open her door. In fact, it almost looked like—

Hinata abruptly came to a halt. Her room, always kept rather spartan, was completely packed up. It was completely neat, but she could see everything from her fading portrait of her mother to the small flower that she kept in the corner of her room to every article of clothing in her closet was—Hinata activated her Byakugan, enabling her to see through virtually anything and making chakra visible to her—currently packed into a single large suitcase out of sight in the back of her closet.

Even before her attention fell upon the three Elders behind her, Hinata knew what this meant. For a moment, she felt a flush of anger at the presence of what were obviously guards around each corner and outside of her bedroom window—or rather, the window to what used to be her bedroom. But by the time she turned around to bow to the Elders, she was serenity itself. She would not let their disgraceful opinion of her touch her.

"Esteemed Elders," Hinata said softly, her spine straightening and her stutter gone in the compound for the first time. "It appears that it is finally time for me to join you in the Branch family."

"That's so, child," one of the youngest of the Elders said, her voice perfectly neutral.

Hinata tilted her head slightly. "Are my father and grandfather unable to join us?"

"They are not answerable to you, now less than ever," a different Elder reprimanded levelly.

"Of course not," Hinata said, bowing her head to concede the point. She took careful note of the slight twitches in the eyebrows and mouth, respectively, of the two more senior Elders present. "Shall we proceed?" the disowned former-heir asked.

Throughout the long walk from the Main family section of the compound to the Sealing Room, Hinata kept her back straight and her head up. Even as the seal was branded into her forehead, an invasive yet surprisingly painless action, she held onto her pride.

There was no need to hide anymore, after all.

Ino went through the weapons section of the ninja supply shop, taking her time, carefully inspecting each and every shuriken and kunai that went into the store's basket she was carrying. Throughout the process, she completely ignored the sales clerk that hovered suspiciously just over her shoulder without even giving her the half-meter of distance that would allow both of them to pretend that he wasn't there to catch her stealing. Ino had a brief impulse to steal something anyways—as if a normal civilian would be able to tell—but it passed swiftly. She wouldn't drop to their level, and doing exactly what they expected of her would hardly help their case. Besides, part of the reason she was in there in the first place was because they rather strongly suspected that the Konoha Military Police Force was tailing them, so stealing now would be beyond foolhardy.

Shaking her head, Ino finished her selections and went to the front of the store to wait in line. She did a few simple chakra control exercises to calm herself when the man insisted on calling anyone and everyone to his register before her; she knew better by now than to complain. Finally, there were no more customers in the store, so the clerk reluctantly called her to the checkout.

Without a word, Ino placed her basket on the counter, then took each item out to hand to the clerk. The clerk, a fairly nondescript man in his late twenties with dark hair and a scowl apparently etched into his face, went through the items that were set on the counter, placed them into the multi-layered paper bags, and then put said bags back up on the counter. Then, smirking—oh look, Ino thought idly, that scowl wasn't permanent after all—he quoted a price that made Ino's eyebrow arch.

"Really?" Ino said in faux-surprise. "I find that quite startling, really, since I was in here a mere week ago with my father, bought virtually the same thing from this very establishment, and yet it was about half as many ryou. Isn't that interesting?"

"If you just bought these exact same supplies, then why do you need to buy them again a week later?" the clerk asked snidely.

"Oh, I'm quite careless," Ino said airily. "I must have misplaced them. Lucky you, though, that you get my business twice! Now, why the price increase?"

"New taxes," the clerk said, smirk widening.

"You don't say?" Ino said musingly. "That's so odd; my father is on the council, I'm sure I would have heard if there had been a tax that added a full 100% mark-up to the cost of ninja supplies, and I haven't heard a whisper. It's also odd that all of those people who coincidentally got called in before I did didn't seem to pay anything of the kind."

"They were full ninja, not a mere academy student like you," the man came back with after a few moments.

"Three customers ago was Ami-san, a kunoichi-in-training like me. In the same class as me, actually," Ino said immediately. "Though, she was clanless. I suppose that could be it; is it a new tax on clans?"

"Yes," blurted the clerk angrily, clearly not thinking it through. "It is, now pay up or get out, you're holding up the line."

Ino looked behind her to the empty store pointedly before she spoke again. "Well then, I still can't imagine why my father wouldn't have mentioned a new tax on clans, given that he's our clan head in addition to being on the council, but I suppose he might have neglected to mention it. Very well, just write out the itemized receipt and I'll pay you."

The clerk's smirk vanished in an instant. "Itemized?"

"Of course," Ino said seriously. "I'll have to show my father precisely why this is costing so much more than expected. Once he finds out that you're charged more than double than you were just last week, I'm sure he'll look into these new taxes right away. Of course, if he can't find them, then he'll probably just have to forbid any of our clan from coming to this store, since that would mean that the clerks are overcharging poor, innocent eleven-year-olds in hopes of lining their own pockets. Then he'd have to tell his old teammates, the clan heads of Akimichi and Nara, and they would have to forbid everyone from their clans from shopping here too—oh, that would be quite harmful to this business, wouldn't it, losing the purchases from three of the major Konoha clans?"

The clerk was looking a little pale at this point.

"And then of course he would have to begin the fraud investigation, in order to prosecute such horrible people." Ino paused for a moment and ran her eyes up and down the clerk, clearly memorizing his features. "But I'm sure that you don't have anything to worry about, right clerk-san?"

"Oh, silly me," the clerk ground out after several seconds of strangled silence. "I appear to have miscounted the number of supplies that you were purchasing."

"Oh, do you mean it?" Ino gushed with false delight. "You mean there's no mysterious new clan tax?"

The clerk shook his head, his teeth gritting audibly behind his insincere smile.

"Well, that's quite the relief. Then," Ino said, reaching for the bag. "I'll—"

"Hey!" the clerk snapped. "You still have to pay for that!"

Ino just blinked at him. "Of course I do. I'm just checking the bag to see that you didn't happen to accidentally give me faulty or flawed merchandise that you were inexplicably keeping behind the counter. You'd be surprised how often that happens," Ino said innocently, noting how his eye twitched. "While I'm doing that, you can go ahead and write up an itemized receipt anyways. Just to be careful, you see."

His face reddening steadily, the clerk jerkily gathered the supplies that he needed to make out the receipt—as required by law, though only on demand—while Ino double-checked the supplies that she was trying to buy. None of them had been switched, but…

The clerk finished writing out the receipt and not-quite slammed it on the counter. "Here you go," he said angrily. Ino picked it up and looked it over.

"Oh, clerk-san!" Ino said cheerily. "There seems to have been a mistake—my bag is lacking some of the merchandise that I gave to you to purchase, but I know that I couldn't have made a mistake, because you have the right amount here on the receipt. Could you please check to see if you happened to drop any of them behind the counter there?"

Ino started laying mental bets as to what would pop first, a tooth or a vein, as the man made a show of looking behind his counter for the bag with all of her missing supplies, 'finding' it after a few seconds.

After inspecting these new items as carefully as the rest of it, Ino paid the man—not one ryou more per item than she had last week. With a happy smile and a wave, Ino strode out of the store, head high. Once she rounded the corner, however, her demeanor shifted, happy smile becoming an angry frown and her strides becoming stomps. Several blocks away, out of the commercial district and near the Inner Wall—and subsequently, the boundary between Inner and Outer Konoha—she turned into a side street, then another, then finally turned into a small alley.

"Oh, there you are," the person waiting for her said.

"Yeah, here I am," Ino sighed, leaning against the wall.

"I'm really sorry about this," the other said apologetically. "Did they give you a lot of trouble?"

"It's not your fault, Sakura-chan," Ino smiled at the rosette. "And it was nothing I couldn't handle," she said, flipping her blonde hair over her shoulders.

Sakura giggled softly. "Here's the ryou for the Academy supplies," she said, holding out an envelope. The two kunoichi-in-training exchanged packages and hugs, then left in different directions so that they wouldn't be seen together. No one could really object too much to them associating while they were at the Academy, but outside of Academy hours was another matter altogether.

Both of them would rather Sakura be able to buy her own supplies, but when the stores tried to gouge Sakura, she didn't have a stick to threaten them with. Ino, with her clan's influence, did have such a stick, and a fairly big one too, so she typically did the important shopping trips for Sakura. The equally-clanless Naruto, though his reduced funds often meant that he would pick up less than the others, usually had his big shopping days covered by Sasuke, who was a full clan head in his own right after some prick in the Hokage's administration had tried to have the Uchiha compound flattened and sold to a land developer. The man was currently serving a life sentence in the Konoha Jail for fraud and attempted theft of ancestral land, but it had required some timely intervention from the Hokage; since then, no one had tried to break the law against the Nine like that, though it didn't stop them from…misinterpreting some of the rules to their advantage.

At first, when the problems with purchasing supplies had cropped up, Naruto had grit his teeth and bore it until he was taught the Henge jutsu. After he had it down, a frustrating amount of time later, he transformed into a fictitious boy that looked nothing like him. He had even come up with a name, complete with backstory, and practiced with the rest of the Nine to make sure that his act was perfect. It would solve so many of their problems that he just couldn't afford to mess it up.

None of his preparation had mattered. He had no more walked up to the register before a member of the Konoha Military Police Force had appeared out of nowhere and arrested him for the use of ninja techniques against a civilian.

The charge was a crock, of course. Designed to give civilians a sense of protection against the vast assortment of abilities that the super-powered individuals that inhabited the same village could use against them, the law opted for vagueness rather than comprehensiveness, boiling down to forbidding anyone, but particularly official ninja, from using ninja techniques of any kind against civilians, be it the hand to hand combat of taijutsu, the illusions of genjutsu, or the catch-all term that was everything else of ninjutsu. With a law that broad, virtually anything could apply, which is exactly what the Police Force had counted on.

Naruto had fought against it, obviously. The only time that the use of the Transformation jutsu had been considered a violation of the law in the past was when it had been used to imitate someone specific, either to commit fraud—a reason why establishments of serious financial weight, such as the banks, had paid to have the incredibly expensive Disguise Destruction fuuinjutsu stones installed, to prevent people from using genjutsu or Henge to fraudulently make transactions under a different identity—or defamation of character. Naruto argued that not only had he not been imitating anyone real, eliminating the possibility of a character assassination, but he hadn't even had the opportunity to try to set up a tab, the only other way for him to be breaking the law, considering that the money in his pocket was real and he had enough for his purchases.

It hadn't mattered. The civilian council, the ruling body in charge of him until he graduated from the Ninja Academy, had disregarded his arguments. If a vindictive civilian who had been there when Naruto was taken hadn't come to Yamanaka flowers specifically to upset her with news of how one of "you damned brats" had finally been arrested by the police, Ino wasn't sure what would have happened. As it was, she had managed to make it to the Third Hokage in time for him to intervene—his notice had "mysteriously" been lost somewhere in transit—something that he did swiftly, quashing the tribunal completely.

After the third time this happened, however, the last arrest occurring before Naruto had even managed to leave the streets, the Hokage had taken him aside and explained that while he understood the difficulty that Naruto was having, the blond needed to find some other way to deal with it, since it was using up his "political capital" to bail him out time after time. The Third hesitated only a moment before offering some of his ANBU to do the big purchases, at least, but Naruto had turned him down flat. The whiskered member of the Nine had had no problem telling the rest of them that their annoyance when they heard this news was nothing compared to the look of pride on the Sandaime's face. Even Ino had to admit that the leader of their village was their greatest ally, and it was better to be on his good side. After all, if he hadn't been as positively inclined to them as he was, he might not have taught them that chakra suppression technique specifically designed for ninja with large chakra reserves after all of the Academy versions proved inadequate. And so, their current arraignment was born.

Ino just sighed and rubbed her midriff as she headed back to her clan's compound. What on earth could all of us have done to warrant hating us enough to brand us like cattle?

Ginfu's nine bloody hells, but I hate the Massacre. This would have been up months ago without that scene, but it's too damn formative to skip over. I'll try to work on that.

Also, the only active-duty ninja mom we know of for certain in canon and she's a tokubetsu jounin while all of the fathers are jounin? What the hell, Kishimoto?

The next chapter should cover everything else up to all of the Nine becoming genin. It was supposed to be a part of this chapter, but I'm already at 17k, gah. So a good chunk of the next chapter is mostly written, and I now know better than to try to give a time limit on this sort of thing. What can I say? Grad school and work on top of my nasty reading habit keep my writing slow. Also, and I cannot emphasize this enough, the Massacre was a bitch and a half.

The second recommended fanfic is The Empty Cage, by Rathanel. In it, the Dead Consuming Seal takes Naruto's life with it, leaving the Kyuubi behind to control the body. Even more awesome than it sounds.