The Protagonist System

310 A Bit Of Time

We only openly lived in the Senju Clan house, just to keep up appearances, and lived permanently in the underground base. I made a secret tunnel to it from the Senju Clan compound, just so Yugao, or her new name of Tsuru Uzumaki, could come and go as she pleased.

She had been a little worried about me being discovered as missing from the orphanage, so I reminded her that I couldn't be detected with chakra, which meant only visual confirmation worked. My life-like dummy sure came in handy over the next few weeks.

It was funny that it was so easy to deceive my ANBU watchers by occasionally walking by the second floor window at random times. I didn't even have to go outside or do anything else, as long as they saw me there inside the building and wasn't seen leaving it.

One time I just propped my life-like dummy up in front of the window for an hour, not moving it, and they still didn't catch on that I was faking being there. It was hilarious and made Tsuru laugh every time I told her about it. Her critical opinions of their lack of intelligence made me laugh in return.

Yui visited occasionally when she had a day off, or was running errands for the orphanage, too. Akiko would come by every couple of weeks with her, just to see how I was doing, and both of them looked very happy that I had escaped from the orphanage and no one but them knew about it.

Of course, they would never tell anyone about it and Yui even carried my dummy around like it was me, just so no one would question why she had stopped doing it. The four of us laughed that no one noticed it wasn't the real me, even with it right there in front of them. As thanks for helping me so much, I gave her several hugs and cheek kisses every time I saw her, making her blush.

Just in case, I changed my face whenever we were out in public. That way, no one would associate Naruto with Tsuru after that first meeting. Since she had been so vocal about adopting a kid after trying me out, no one asked her where another kid came from. The best part? A little telepathy and a Confundus spell had all of Yui's previous assets, that she had gifted to me, transferred over to Tsuru Uzumaki without a problem.

It was almost shocking that no one, not the ANBU and no one else from the Hokage's office, bothered to check on the only person living in the Senju Clan compound. Apparently, if you were only a civilian and didn't benefit the village in some way, the shinobi corps didn't care where you lived or what you did, as long as it wasn't a crime.

Even then, it was the Uchiha Clan that handled it and they didn't share information with the other clans, which was why people started believing they were becoming untrustworthy. Also, Danzo was a slippery bastard. He had his ROOT operatives working hard to spread those rumors, as well as the ones about me being the Kyuubi and a danger to everyone.

When Tsuru tried to secretly send word about his underground ROOT training facility to the ANBU, using one of her previous contacts, they place was cleared out well before they gathered the personnel to handle so many of them. It was the proof we needed that there were ROOT operatives inside the ANBU forces, as well as the Hokage Tower. There was no other way for them to know about it.

Of course, since they were already scattering and had to hide until Danzo reclaimed them, it was quite easy for me to take care of each and every one of the brainwashed children and teens. Healing them physically and removing the suicide protocols was easy. Healing their minds? It was almost impossible.

Since they were mostly orphans or runaways, they didn't have much of a life or personality after I erased all their time spent in ROOT hands. We also couldn't release them back into the village all at once, either. That meant we had to use the medical stasis pods that Orochimaru had in his old lab to keep them safe and alive until they could be sent out into the village from random areas, like abandoned warehouses and sewer exits.

It took months to do that, especially with Danzo doing his best to avoid the public to rebuild his missing local forces. He had to recall a lot of his foreign operatives to take over the operation to gain more local assets, which worked out great for our plans. None of them ever reached him and were now regressing into their childhoods.

It was a simple thing to change their appearances and their bodies into children again, too. No one would ever know the new kids that kept showing up were previously deadly ROOT agents and were now innocent kids with no chakra abilities.

Tsuru was quite happy with how things were turning out. It had been her idea to let Danzo stew as his operation crumbled around him and to take him out when he had only a skeleton crew left. It worked, too. No one would ever know that he didn't die of a heart attack inside his own home. My replacement dummy trick was really coming in handy.

“I'm not sure you should keep those eyes, Naruto.” Tsuru said, her voice sad.

“What? Don't you want a Three-Tomoe red tinted eyeball as a souvenir?” I asked her.

“Despite the pain the eye surgery would be, it's the threat of going blind when using whatever power is set into the eye when it was first activated.” Tsuru informed me. “If it's a more powerful ability, then almost instant blindness would be guaranteed.”

“Ah, you mean the Mangekyo Sharingan.” I said and she nodded. Those abilities were pretty overpowered and chakra intensive, unless you had two transplanted eyes with it and unlocked the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan. You wouldn't have to worry about going blind ever again... well, if you were an Uchiha and closely related to the eye donor.

“You've seen what happens to people that obsess over them.” Tsuru said and looked down at the decapitated body of Danzo. It had been surprisingly easy to kill him when Tsuru stabbed him through the eye in his head. Perhaps he needed a lot more practice with his stolen powers to work them properly, or he was waiting to create more powerful eyes to be able to save himself.

That explains him setting up the Uchiha Massacre in a few years. Not only would the slaughter of the clan cause a lot more eyes to be created, ones that already existed would become even more powerful before they were harvested from the dead.

That thought gave me an idea and I briefly closed my eyes to check in on Shushi Uchiha. He was happy and didn't have his Sharingan yet, so I had time to stop anything from happening there. In fact, with Danzo out of the way, there was no reason that we couldn't use his same tactic to spread rumors that it was a plot to discredit the Uchiha Clan to remove them from power.

I shared my idea with Tsuru and she smiled, then she pointed at the jars of floating eyeballs. “But, they're so pretty!”

“Naruto.” Tsuru said, sternly.

I sighed exaggeratedly. “Fiiiiine.” I said and touched each of the jars with a black energy sword to dissolve them. I also stabbed Danzo's body and let the sword go, pretty much erasing him from existence almost instantly.

“Thank you.” Tsuru said and pulled me into a hug and kissed my forehead.

I snuggled into her and she let out a happy sound as she picked me up and carried me out of the refurbished lab. She used a pulse of chakra and activated the teleportation circle I had reworked to use any energy, and we disappeared in a flash of light and reappeared in the underground base. We were soon changed for bed and cuddled under the covers.

“I never imagined my life would turn out this way.” Tsuru whispered and held me close.

“I can't say the same.” I responded and she gave me a pointed look. “All I want is to have a family and be happy.”

“You don't want to be a shinobi when you grow up?” Tsuru asked.

“It's too much work and I've never liked having to follow orders.” I answered. “I also don't want to kill people just because some rich noble paid me.”

Tsuru smiled a wide smile and briefly pressed her lips to my cheek. “Only kill the ones that need to be killed.”

“Or people that annoy me.” I joked.

“My ruthless little ninja.” Tsuru said and nuzzled my neck to tickle me and make me laugh.

We stopped carrying on after a minute and we both let out contented sighs, then we dozed off. Our lives were finally going to settle down and we were both looking forward to living a nice and quiet life together.

*

Almost two years later, or three years after the Nine-Tailed Beast attacked Konoha, members of the Land of Lightning, from the village of Kumo, approached the Hokage about suing for peace. However, it was just a ruse to gain access to the Hyuga Clan's heiress. The Kumo's head ninja snuck into the Hyuga's compound, with help from a traitor, and kidnapped the clan head's three year old daughter, Hinata.

Well, he tried to. While the knocked out girl was being carried away, she heard a voice inside her head. She knew to listen to the voice, since it sounded strong, and he encouraged her to wake up and take care of the bad man that was trying to steal her.

Since she was a clan child, she had been taught a few things already, like the basics of her bloodline ability to see chakra points and how to poke them with her own chakra. She didn't have much of hr own, since she was only three; but, she felt empowered when she woke and it was easy for her to reach out and poked the ninja as hard as she could at the base of his spine.

The man cried out in agony as half of his chakra was cut off and then the feeling in his legs disappeared. He yelled again as he tumbled off the side of the building he was running on and fell to the ground. He barely held on to what he was carrying when his back hit the ground and he grunted in pain as he skidded to a stop.

He held in his sigh of relief that he hadn't fallen head first and thanked his luck that he hadn't killed himself or his kidnapping victim, which would have ended his mission just after it began. Her arm did look broken, and he didn't care, because it was the power of her eyes that the Raikage wanted.

Unfortunately, his cries of pain and shock at falling had woken up a lot of people nearby. Several of them rushed over to where he was, as did several shinobi of Konoha, thanks to the civilians yelling about the thief and the Hyuga Clan heir's damaged state. The man never saw the blow that knocked him out.

*

When the Hokage tried to order that the envoys from the Cloud Village from the Land of Lightning be released without punishment, and to accept their sham of a peace treaty, none of the clan heads agreed. Hiashi Hyuga was the most vocal about the treatment of his Clan's heir and that Hiruzen would lose his support if he dared to ignore what happened.

Not surprisingly, the other clan heads also stated they would no longer support a coward if he would allow their enemies to kidnap their heirs without punishing them for it, since the envoys knew about the plan and would have stayed behind to sacrifice themselves to stop the Konoha shinobi from followig the head ninja back to the Land of Lightning.

Hiruzen had no choice but to announce the truth and arrested the envoys of Cloud Village for kidnapping and breaking the law during peace negotiations. That severely angered the population of both villages, which was exactly what Hiruzen was trying to avoid. If they had just swept it under the rug and ignored it, no one would have been upset about it. The kidnapping hadn't been successful, after all. Why make things worse?

Needless to say, tensions rose and cracking down on foreign spies was stepped up, thanks to the Hyuga Clan offering extra rotations to join in on the Uchiha police patrols to find any new faces or oddly acting known ones. They found many of them, giving the T&I operations a lot more work to do, and they found quite a few of the different lands were actively spying on Konoha.

They even found ones from Orochimaru, Akatsuki, and surprisingly Danzo. The first ones killed themselves as soon as they were caught, both Orochimaru's and Akatsuki's, so they couldn't be interrogated. The last ones being the few ROOT members that had been out on long term no contact missions as they returned home, only to find out that their boss was dead and they had no one to report to.

This only reaffirmed the policy of checking any new faces and ensured that the village of Konoha was safer than it had ever been before. It also brought the Uchiha back into the limelight and they started earning back the respect they had lost after the Kyuubi's attack.

*

Hinata was five when her mother was going to give birth again. It had been a difficult pregnancy, one fraught with pain and sickness for her mother. However, none of them let it get them down, because there would soon be another Hyuga in the family after so long.

For some reason, despite her father ordering the attendants to monitor her around the clock, everyone in the house fell asleep at the same time that night. It wasn't until early morning that a crying baby was heard and everyone woke up and rushed into the room where her mother had been resting.

Both the mother and baby were fine, somehow, even though no one was there for the birth. There was also no blood, afterbirth, or even a mess on the blankets, which surprised everyone but Hinata. In her head, she heard that voice again.

He reassured her that he couldn't let her mother die in childbirth and that both she and her new sister Hanabi deserved to have a mother in their lives, just like all children deserved. She only doubted his words for a few seconds, because her father asked her mother what the baby's name was and confirmed the voice in her head had told the truth.

“Hanabi.” Her mother said and hugged the baby. “Our second miracle birth.”

Thank you. Hinata thought, grateful that there was someone out there looking out for her and her family.

*

I was six years old and it was time to head to the academy. I had wanted to skip it, except the Dog ANBU had shown up early that morning at the orphanage and set off the alert ward I had placed in the trees. He was fully expecting me to head to the academy from there and I couldn't disappoint him.

Yui met me in my room and she gave me a sad smile. “Are you ready to head out for your first big day to start learning as a big bad ninja?”

I laughed and waved my hand over myself to change my normal clothes into a mostly grey and black ninja outfit that covered me from head to toe. Yui laughed when she saw it and pulled my hood down to reveal I had a cloth tied over my face as well.

“Sneaky.” Yui said and pulled it down to let it hang around my neck. “Let's go.”

I took her hand and she led me out into the hallway and down the stairs, in clear view of Dog, and we left the orphanage at a casual stroll to head over to the academy building. There were a lot of kids and parents there, so Yui and Naruto didn't stick out, except for how he was dressed. It made a few people chuckle when they saw him and that was why he wore it.

“Gather 'round, gather 'round.” An older voice said. “We usually separate out the clan kids from the civilians, since the clan kids can already use their chakra. But, this year we're mixing up the classes and everyone needs to be tested, just to make sure no one that doesn't belong here, gets in.”

Not one single person missed what that meant, especially me. Tsuru had been right and they were going to try and exclude me, just because they thought I was the Nine-Tails. It wasn't gong to be difficult for them, since they couldn't sense me at all when I used my powers. They were about halfway through the prospective students when the examiner called out my name.

“Naruto Uzumaki!” The man shouted and the crowd immediately started whispering about not allowing me into the school, which made the man smile. He had called me by my first name and not my family name, gaining me all of the attention that he assumed I didn't want.

“I think we can all assume he has chakra.” The Hokage's voice said and the crowd parted to reveal the old man. People started complaining to his face about not letting me learn how to kill them faster.

I wasn't going to let him derail my plans, so I stepped up. “What's chakra?”

Gasps came from everyone but Hiruzen and they all missed Yui's muffled laugh.

“It's the energy that all living things have within themselves.” The examiner said.

I pointed at the last failed student that was crying and being comforted by her mother. “She doesn't look dead.”

The examiner sighed. “Not everyone has the capacity to use that energy.”

“Oh. Then how do I use it?” I asked and he showed me a simple sign for a very basic chakra use. I did it and nothing happened.

“You need to try harder. Reach deep within yourself and push your energy into what you want to do with it.” The examiner explained.

I scrunched up my face, as if I was going to have an epic dump, and did the hand sign again at the same time that I used my ventriloquist power on my butt and released an epic fart instead.

*PFFFFTTTT-blurble!*

“EEEWWWW!” All the girls yelled and covered their noses. Sone gagged from the smell, even though there wasn't any. I wasn't cruel enough to fake the smell, too.

The boys on the other hand had laughed and a few of them let their own farts go.

“Always eat your vegetables!” I said, proudly.

“You might need to check your underwear, young man.” Yui said with a chuckle.

The examiner looked like Christmas had come early. “That wasn't what I meant.” He said and glanced at the woman standing next to him, whom shook her head. He grinned and looked back at me. “I need you to punch this piece of wood as hard as you can.”

I glanced at him, the piece of wood, and back at him. “Are you sure I have to do that? I've never been allowed to hit anything before.”

“Everyone else has to do it.” He said, reassuringly. His thoughts were all about me breaking a knuckle or even a finger, or with some luck, split my hand open and have lots of blood squirt out.

He really doesn't want me as a ninja, does he? I asked myself and stepped up to the table and took a horrible stance for fighting, since I was pretending I had no clue what I was doing, and I threw the worst punch ever seen by anyone. My hand bounced off of the corner of the wood block and a loud crack made a bunch of people wince. A few of them looked at the wood to see if I had split it.

I couldn't let them think that, so I gripped my hand and started wailing as I let my pinkie finger dangle freely. “WAHHHHH! WAAAAHHHHH!”

“Oh, no!” Yui gasped and scooped me up into her arms and let everyone see my dangling finger. It had been easy to pop the joint out with my power and it looked really bad. A few of the parents looked sick and some of them looked happy, as did the examiner.

“I don't think we need him to run a lap around the courtyard or throw a shuriken.” The man said with satisfaction and didn't look apologetic at all about what he said next. “I'm sorry, Naruto Uzumaki does not meet the minimum requirements to attend the Academy.”

Hiruzen sighed. “Surely an exception can be made? He needs to be trained...”

“He can't handle even the simplest generation of chakra, Third Hokage.” The man interrupted. “How can you expect him to keep up with his classmates?”

He doesn't. I thought as I softened my cries and Yui mothered me as much as she could without giving too much away.

“I'm sure arrangements can be made for him to stay around his peers.” Hiruzen said.

The examiner chuckled. “His peers will be much too busy learning to defend the village.” The examiner said and looked at the next name on the list. “Uchiha, Sasuke.”
Yeah, that wasn't a setup or anything. I thought.

Sasuke ignored the simple instruction and used a clan technique to blow a small fireball into the air, making the crowd 'oo' and 'ah' appropriately. His punch actually did break the wooden block and a lot of people clapped. He ran the lap in only a few seconds, impressed the crowd and the examiner, and then he nearly hit the tiny center of the large target with the shuriken.

Nope, not a setup at all. I thought as Sasuke was hailed as the next prodigy and he rejoined his family to be congratulated and hugged by his mother as his older brother patted him on the head.

“Let's go home.” Yui whispered to me and carried me away from the academy.

Surprisingly, no one followed us, not even Dog, and it was his job. He was too focused on Sasuke, just like everyone else was, and I was perfectly fine with that.