The Protagonist System

Having an actual ninja show me all of her abilities, tricks, and powers, really let me gauge what a lot of the shinobi in the village could do. I knew she was only one sample out of thousands; but, she was the most willing to accept me for who I was and not for what was supposed to be in my belly.

The funny thing was, she still couldn't sense any of my energy, even after being around me all that time and after upgrading her and her abilities. That was a great thing to know, because it meant that anyone else that was around wouldn't sense me, either. I just had to get past those damn breaching wards without getting caught.

For the next few days, I spent most of my spare time watching Danzo. I hadn't caught him coming or going from any of his hiding places yet, so I had to be patient. I did find a few ROOT agents, only to discover they had someone on the inside that would open the chakra traps for them when they entered or left. That didn't help me and I tried to not let my frustration get to me.

One day when Yui took me for a walk, she brought me close enough to the abandoned warehouse that I created a flying squirrel scout and sent it into the building. The reaction was immediate and several agents appeared and spammed attacks in the general area and ended the squirrel. The worst part about that? They didn't even react to it being a squirrel and cleaned up and went back into hiding.

So, I would have to rely on Danzo himself to give me the secret. He almost always travelled alone, openly anyway, and the places he entered and exited didn't have anyone else in them at the time. That meant he was using some kind of technique to traverse his own protections and I needed to know what they were to avoid a fate similar to the squirrel, as in being discovered immediately.

Life at the orphanage became routine over the next few weeks and I did my best to be the best damn baby I could. I even started warning the workers when I needed the bathroom and saved them from having to wash my clothes as much as the other children.

It was surprising that even the workers that believed the rumors about me being a demon child, were happy I was being so considerate. It didn't change their opinion, though. They were waiting to see what I would do when I finally did show my true nature, which made me laugh whenever I would catch them giving me pointed stares every time I was near the other children, as if I was going to eat them all up.

Maybe when I'm older. I thought to one young woman that was fairly pretty and sent her an image of me as a teenager with my face buried between her legs. She blushed and looked away from me and I thought that was the end of that.

The next morning, there were two older women instead of the young woman and both of them gave me very pointed stares. I ignored them, of course. My little mental slip had been reported and the worker thought she was put under a Genjutsu or was being influenced by the Kyuubi, because of the dirty thoughts in her head when she looked at me.

When they didn't trigger the same effect or response by lunchtime, they left and sent a different and much prettier young woman with blonde hair and a curvy body. I wasn't going to fall for such a simple trick, since I didn't know her and assumed she was an undercover ninja. I didn't dare try to poke her mentally, just in case she could detect it.

After she observed me playing with the other kids for a while, she left. I pretended to be tired and went to my room for a nap, then I watched with X-Ray vision as she reported to the two older women about not detecting any mental powers or any chakra at all from me, which shocked the two older women.

All three of them rushed off and I had to use my clairvoyance power to watch them report to the Hokage about their findings. I found out the young blonde was a Yamanaka, or the clan with a bloodline power for the mental arts, of persuasion, intrusion, and interrogation. They even had techniques for putting a mental representative of themselves into people's heads to monitor their thoughts and possibly influence them.

That was a scary thought and I was glad that my perk Mental Block protected me. I just had to wonder why they didn't try to have her do her techniques on me, or attempt to, anyway. They wouldn't work and might give me away, so I was glad they didn't think about it and reported their findings to Hiruzen.

Watching his surprised reaction was funny. He talked to the three of them intensely for over half an hour as he probed them for anything they could feel or detect, only they hadn't seen or felt anything from me. They even brought in the other worker and had the Yamanaka clan member probe her mind and see for herself what happened.

She blushed and pulled out of the trance and told the two older women and the Hokage what she saw and what the worker experienced. The three of them looked pensive and thanked the worker for reporting things, just like she was supposed to, and dismissed her.

“Can you try to talk to Naruto and see what he thinks of all this?” Hiruzen asked the blonde.

“I could, only he's just a year old and my techniques could damage his budding personality.” The Yamanaka Clan member answered. “Do you want to take the chance he could suffer brain damage at such a young age, especially with the Kyuubi sealed inside of him?”

The two older women gave Hiruzen glares and the old man sighed.

“No, not yet. We can wait until he's older and has a more established personality before you attempt to see if the Nine-Tailed Beast is influencing him.” Hiruzen responded and both older women nodded. The blonde nodded as well and the meeting broke up.

I stopped watching and felt relief that I hadn't tried to poke the young woman to see who she was and what she wanted. She would have detected it right away and I would have given myself away. That meant I needed to be more careful of who was nearby as I tried to keep myself safe and also find any traitors and villains, which proved Cat was right to warn me about using my abilities around others.

Her words resonated with me, actually. She wanted me to be safe and to not have the same life she had while growing up, which I assumed was full of assassinations and fighting other ninja from the other villages. It was a hard life and was especially hard for her, since she didn't really want to fight after all the years of bloodshed and now she was seeing how I was being treated, which hurt her heart.

I looked in on Cat and saw her standing guard inside the Hokage's Residence. That was a bit surprising, until I remembered that was where Hiruzen had moved some of the more important documents and secret scrolls that were too dangerous for normal ninja to have access to. I hadn't realized he needed physical guards for it, though. It was warded up the wazoo and shouldn't need someone there to watch the place.

I did a quick check to see who was around my room and saw no one. Since they knew I was down for a nap and would be there until supper, I had a few hours before my dummy would be discovered. I set it into place, animated it, and equipped my ninja outfit. I still made myself invisible and intangible, just in case, and made my way out the back door.

Well, I went out through the wall beside the back door, since the wards were still in place and the workers could tell when the other kids passed through the doorway. It was like background noise for them and let them keep track of who to look for when they were needed.

Once I was outside the orphanage, I stepped from there to outside the Hokage's Residence. I walked over to it and cast a detect spell. The chakra barrier shimmered slightly and I could see that it was over the whole property, so I wasn't walking through it without alerting the Hokage and his ANBU agents.

I mentally sighed and walked around it to use my X-Ray vision to find Cat standing in front of the door to the vault room. There wasn't a door or window for me to look through to get her attention, so I had to do something else to get her attention. Another squirrel was cast and it chittered at me.

“I'm sure there won't be as violent of a reaction.” I told him and he chittered again. “Only use a single paw and not your whole body. They might miss this time.”

The squirrel gave me a deadpan look before he scurried over to the chakra barrier. He kept the look on his face and stuck the edge of his tail inside it. A second later, a Mouse masked ANBU operative appeared on the roof of the building and threw a kunai, which was an iron spike with a loop on the back end, and it flew through the air like a bullet and clipped the end of the squirrel's tail.

The squirrel squealed and hopped around, a bit of blood squirting out, and the ANBU chuckled. Surprisingly, he didn't throw another to kill it and let it run around. The squirrel crossed the barrier a few times, gave a fake shudder, and collapsed inside the barrier near the wall.

“I've got to tell Bear about the best death I've ever seen.” Mouse whispered and then disappeared.

I cast heal on the squirrel and repaired its tail. “That was smart.”

The squirrel stopped faking and stood up, chittered at me, and ran up the wall. Now that it was already inside the barrier, it wouldn't set off again for him. He found a window on the left side of the building and entered, and I watched through his eyes as he made his way down to where Cat was standing guard.

Cat tensed up when the squirrel scampered into sight, then the squirrel stopped walking, sat up on his haunches, and waved to her. “What the hell?”

I mentally told the squirrel what signs to make with his paws.

Cat gasped and walked over to the small animal and picked him up to look into his eyes. “Naruto?”

I had the squirrel sign that he was a summons and I was outside. This was apparently the best thing I could have done, because Cat left her post and walked over to the door of the building and showed the squirrel, aka me looking through his eyes, exactly how to disable alert wards, trap wards, and detectors.

I made myself visible and solid when the door opened and Cat stood there with the squirrel on her shoulder. “Hi, Kitty.”

“What are you doing here?” Cat asked and she was only curious, not angry or accusing.

“I met a Yamanaka today.” I said without pretending I could only speak like a baby.

Cat sucked in a sharp breath. “Quick, get in here and tell me about it.”

I used shunshin to appear next to her and she hugged me and closed the door, reactivated the chakra barriers, and carried me back to her post.

“Use a Genjutsu to show me.” Cat said and looked into my eyes.

I faked it and used telepathy instead to show her exactly what happened.

Cat sighed and then chuckled. “So, they found out you're a chakra null.”

“A what?” I asked.

“No one can feel it when you use your abilities.” Cat said and patted my belly. “I'm a much stronger sensor after you healed me and I still can't feel that you have the strongest chakra beast sealed inside of you.”

I gave her a confused look and pretended I didn't know what she was talking about. “What beast?”

“The Nine-Tailed Beast.” Cat said, as if I should have known. She saw the confusion didn't fade from my face and sighed with resignation. She knew them that no one had told me anything and she had let the cat out of the bag, as the old saying goes. “I just told you an S-Class secret.” She whispered. “My life is over.”

“Why?” I asked.

“It's against the law to tell anyone about the beast sealed inside of you.” Cat said, sadly. “When you break that specific law, the penalty is death.”

“What beast?” I asked again, blatantly hinting that she needed to check.

Cat sighed again and put her hand on my belly briefly. “Lift your shirt and push your energy into it. It should reveal the seal that the Fourth Hokage used to contain the Kyuubi.”

I lifted the shirt and did as she asked. The seal lit up and revealed itself, only there was no accompanying chakra burst. I could tell that she had expected one and was shocked when there wasn't. She put me down and did several hand seals to perform chakra sensing and she got nothing. She did a different one, a medical one that was the same as the one Akiko used to check me every week, and there was still no result.

“By the spirit of the first Hokage, I can't detect any of the fox monster's chakra.” Cat said, astonished. “Naruto, you need to go home and change into your normal clothes. When my shift is over here, I'll come by to visit and I'll check you over officially. When I do...” She paused and looked into my eyes. “You giggle and laugh and do not do any special moves or show that you can, okay? No matter what anyone might do to you afterwards, do not show that you have any abilities. At all. Please.”

“Kay.” I said and walked over to the door to the vault.

Before Cat could stop me, I deactivated all of the protections on the door and opened it, slipped inside, and stored everything into my inventory. Once I had it all, it was easy to use my copy power to make copies of it all and put the originals back.

“What did you do?” Cat asked me when everything reappeared.

“Saved copies.” I told her and closed the door and reapplied the seals and protections. Once I knew the secret on how to do it, the rest were just variations on the same technique and easily disabled. That was funny to me, because that meant there was almost no innovation to make new or different seals or barriers.

Cat sighed and scooped me up to hug me. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Quit and be my sensei.” I said without hesitation.

Cat looked surprised and then huffed. “You won't need me if you gain access to the town's library and then the library at the academy.”

“That's years away!” I told her.

“Yes, it is.” Cat said and put me down again. She ran her hand through my hair under my ninja hood and I could feel her smile behind her mask. “Now go do what I said.”

“Kay.” I said and used shunshin to go to the wall, disabled the chakra barrier and the alert ward, and then stepped to the other side of the wall. I heard her shout of surprise and giggled, reset the barrrier and alert ward, and then stepped back to my room.

I stored my dummy and equipped my normal baby clothes and climbed into bed. I should have plenty of time to nap before Cat would visit and I hoped my plan kept working. With her knowing there was no Kyuubi chakra inside the seal or inside me, it might stir up things enough for me to take care of a certain older man before he could set the entire Uchiha Clan up for a slaughter to harvest their eyes.

Now I had to wonder how long that was going to take and if they really would find out the truth. There was no longer a Kyuubi for them to keep control of.