A.N. This chapter's ideal theme song is Battle Theme! Vs Giratina, also the GlitchxCity remix. This chapter was edited with the help of Infamous Storm.

"Never underestimate the propensity for cruelty of the ignorant."

-Professor Samuel Oak

The streets of Konohagakure, the village hidden in the leaves, were always packed with people. The second-largest of the great hidden villages, and by far the most prosperous, Konoha (as its citizens affectionately called it) never truly slept. Ninja, civilians, and the occasional samurai went about their business at all hours, a ceaseless river of commerce.

But on one street, the streams of pedestrians parted like the sea before Groudon. Two people walked in the center of this island of solitude. A small, blonde boy, stuffed roughly into orange t-shirt, dark shorts, and a thick, smooth, deep blue scarf, and a tall woman, clad in a royal purple gown and midnight black corset of the sort that had been retro long before the Six Paths Sage was born. Blood-red eyes burned between a thick, beaked golden collar and hair the same rich color as her dress. Her eyes never left a garish manga volume cradled in her pale hand as she trailed distractedly after the streak of yellow and blue.

Pedestrians walking by first saw and shied away from the boy, then as they turned were blindsided by the woman. The civilians merely felt wary at the boy, and inexplicably uneasy at his guardian. The ninja and samurai noted that though her strides appeared to eat up the yards with ease, no feet ever poked out beneath her flowing skirts, and that her shadow extended several times beyond what it should have been so close to noon. Despite the street's proximity to the clan's land, not a single Nara was in sight, although a few storefronts owned by the clan lay inexplicably vacant. A Hyuga jonin, passing by along the rooftops, missed a step with a strangled squawk as he drew abreast of the pair, and landed head-first in a dumpster below, trailing blood from a burst vessel near his all-seeing eyes.

The boy and the woman noticed none of this; the woman seemed entranced by her book, and the boy more interested in babbling excitedly at his companion. "This is gonna be the best day ever! We get to go to the park! I haven't been to the park in like forever!" He bounced up and down a few times in excitement, "I can go out an' meet new people and maybe some of them won't run away this time! Or maybe, somebody will come back."

"Mhm," The woman murmured, flipping to the next page.

"Nobody's ever come back before," the boy continued, "But I'm feeling really lucky today, auntie G. Well, I'm lucky every day, or at least that's what Uncle Jiraiya says when he takes me to play cards, but even more lucky than that!"

"Mhm."

"And we could play tag, or ninja, or tag or- or-" The boy paused here to think of more games to play, "Uh, not hide-and-go-seek, though. I can never seem to find them again after they hide."

"Mhm."

"And then afterwards," The boy slyly looked up at his aunt before finishing his sentence, "We can get ice cream!"

"Mhm."

"And ramen, and then visit the toy store," He continued hopefully, "And more ramen, and a pony…"

"Mhm."

"And that thing!" The boy thrust his pointer finger at a storefront without checking what it was, dashing towards it. A pale hand lashed out, nails tipped with vibrant, almost dripping crimson, and latched onto the boy's collar below the scarf. He was practically dragged off his feet, but managed to keep his balance with a fair bit of flailing.

"Naruto," The woman's eyes finally left her book, swiveling toward her charge, "If I got you a pony, or that tacky chair, what would you do with it?"

"Wait, you were listening?"

"Of course I was listening," The woman's eyes narrowed, "I am always listening. Now, which of those things do you actually want?"

"Um, can we get ramen for dinner, auntie G?"

"Sure," The woman's eyes flicked back to her book, "You have been relatively clean lately."

"Aw, yeah!" Crowing in triumph, Naruto dashed ahead, into the shady grass of the park. His aunt followed at a more sedate pace, leaning against a tree with a good view of the open areas where a scattering of children ran about. Near enough to intervene if needed, but far enough to keep from scattering the wishiwashi. At least, she was far enough away to keep them from reacting to her.

Most of the other children kept to their friends. They ignored Naruto as best they could, and if that proved impossible, and it frequently did, ran crying to their parents with the sort of cruel glee only children and lunatics can manage. Naruto persisted in working his way around the park, but the adults quickly noticed his path. They moved closer to their charges, warding the blonde off with sharp, hostile glares and their intimidating (for a boy of his age) size. Unwilling or perhaps incapable of admitting defeat, Naruto kept going until he found an unsupervised group. Three girls, maybe six or seven years old, surrounded something or someone on the ground. He couldn't see, because the slightly older girls were all at least a head taller than he was.

Naruto took in a big lung-full of air, ready to make his pitch, but paused to listen to the girls instead. They were saying stuff, but it didn't make a whole lot of sense.

"Forehead, forehead, big ugly forehead," The tallest girl half-sang at whatever was in the center of the circle, or as Naruto was starting to suspect, whoever, "I heard she threw out all the mirrors in her house because she's so ugly."

"Well, I heard they all broke rather than have her huge, ugly forehead in them," the girl to Naruto's left chimed in, "Break a mirror, seven years bad luck, right? How many years is that?"

"I bet she cries herself to sleep," The rightmost girl added, grinning like a shark, "I know I would if my forehead was that ugly."

A single, choked sob emanated from the center of the circle at about waist height. The girls smelled blood in the water, and stepped closer to whoever it was. "And look at that stupid hair! She combed it over to try and hide her forehead."

"Nice try, forehead," The right girl said in a caustic, sugary tone, "Maybe if your hair wasn't so pink you'd've gotten away with it."

"Couldn't afford hair dye, forehead? What, you roll in a buncha used gum instead? That's so gross!"

"Ewww! Trash hair!" The others eagerly took up the new chant, "Trash hair, trash hair-"

"Shut up, you bastards!" When Naruto's words failed to gather attention, he kicked the nearest bully in the shin, "Hey, hey! You don't get to ignore me!" For once, the boy's reputation worked in his favor. Not one adult was willing to 'abandon' their own children to intervene. "What the heck are you doing?"

"Oh, it's him," The tallest girl scoffed, and they turned back to their victim without a second thought. Naruto kicked her ankle this time.

"No way you don't," The blonde shouted. A low hiss filled the air around him, but too quietly for any of the girls to notice, "Get away from her!"

"Or what?" The left girl asked, "You're already going to be in sooo much trouble from touching us," She added with the surety of the legally invincible, "Nobody ever takes your side, stupid. Go away. We're busy."

Naruto considered this for exactly a second. Then, he grabbed the back of the leftmost girl's shirt and hauled back with all his weight, sending her sprawling. "You think I care, you bastards!? I'm always in trouble," Naruto graced the bullies with a predatory grin, his canines glinting white in the dappled shade. "So what? I'll kick all your butts!"

"There's more of us than there are of you," the biggest girl pointed out. She then raised her hand to the top of her forehead, and moved it out in a line that came nowhere near the top of Naruto's head. "You'd just lose." She moved to push Naruto down, "So mind your own business, loser!"

As her hands drew closer, Naruto's scarf twitched, and a chubby head with fin-like ears emerged. Wide eyes, a blunt, white nose and a pale underbelly were revealed as the serpent raised its face up to the girl's hand, hissing vehemently. "Drati-NI!" The snake declared, opening his mouth wide.

He then proceeded to sink dozens of needle teeth into the nearest enemy hand. The tall girl tried to shake him off, with unpleasant results. Dratini are well-adapted to ambushing and eating fast, slippery fish. Their teeth are extremely sharp and curve back towards the throat, to prevent escape. The girl would have had better luck escaping an Inuzuka pit bull.

With two thirds of his opposition incapacitated for the moment, Naruto threw himself bodily at the final bully, yelling hoarsely. She had height, weight, and reach on the boy, but that meant nothing at the moment. Naruto was filled with righteous fury; he wanted it more than she did.

While the blonde laid into his chosen victim, the girl he'd tripped earlier decided to grab the angry dragon and pull him off her friend. He retaliated with lightning. It was a very small lightning bolt, of course, as he was a very small dragon. But it caused both girls to collapse in uncoordinated heaps while he worried away at the largest one's fingers.

Naruto's chosen opponent quickly had enough, and fled screaming for her daddy. He turned back to the other un-masticated girl, but she was already staggering away, tears streaming down her cheeks. The remaining bully, abandoned by her friends, futilely pushed at the dratini's head as she sobbed incoherently on her knees. "Let her go, Hokori," Naruto ordered, patting the serpent reassuringly, "They're wimps. She's gonna run," He glared into the tall girl's eyes, "Right?" She nodded frantically, and Hokori allowed her to free her hand and limp for safety, the lingering effects of his thunder wave slowing her escape to a painful pace.

Making noises of disgust, the dratini slithered over to a thick patch of grass and wiped his mouth out as best he could. Eating people was bad and gross. Naruto offered the Pokémon a swallow from his water bottle, and Hokori gratefully swished and spit. His partner seen to, Naruto knelt down next to Sakura. Hokori reared up on the other side, stretching to the same eye level without trouble. "Hey, hey!" The boy called out, "I'm Uzumaki Naruto, an' this is Hokori! What's your name?"

The girl raised her face from where it had been buried in her arms, revealing blotchy, tear-stained green eyes partially hidden under a ragged fringe of shockingly pink hair. "Har-Haruno Sakura," She gasped through a tight throat, ingrained reflexes carrying her partially through a bow that her posture aborted. "Thank you. B-but you should run now. They'll come back with their mommies and daddies, and nobody ever believes me about-"

"They will," A dark shadow, unaffected by the tree boughs above them, fell chillingly over the children, "He is mine. They have no power here." Sakura stared blankly up at the looming figure, more tears welling up, and she threw herself onto Naruto, wailing with fright. The blonde, utterly unprepared for this, stiffened, eyes wide with confusion.

'What do I do?', he mouthed helplessly at Hokori. The dratini answered by slithering up to the kids and wrapping himself around their middles in a tight hug. Across the park, a man in a chunin vest started towards the group, accompanied by his bruised, limping, but wanly smiling daughter. When he got within a few hundred feet of Naruto's guardian, he grimaced, shuddered, and reversed course, dragging the injured girl by the hand and murmuring about a hospital visit.

After enduring the hug for as long as he could, Naruto pried Sakura off of himself, not without difficulty. "Um," the blonde cast about for something to say, "You wanna play?"

"…What?"

"How about tag?" Sakura tilted her head to one side as she considered this, until Hokori slapped Naruto across the wrist with his tail, and slithered off with a taunting squeak. "Hey! No fair! I didn't say go!" Naruto stood up for a diving tackle, and Sakura slyly stuck an ankle in front of him. The blonde face-planted instead, and the girl shot off. "Why you-"

The woman got comfortable against the nearest tree like a well-fed cat, raising her manga to her face again. But her burning eyes tracked Sakura and Naruto as they dashed about, the trials of minutes earlier disregarded by the resilience (and short attention spans) of youth. "I wonder if she will come back…"

"She didn't come back," Naruto sniffled, but swallowed his tears. Crying never made things better. "She promised she was gonna come back." The park was just as packed this day as the day before, though the trio of bullies were nowhere in sight. "She promised, auntie G."

"… Ice cream?" The woman offered her nephew, a faint note of uncertainty bleeding into her voice. Naruto slumped to the ground under a tree, hugging his knees to his chest.

"I wanna wait here a while," He said quietly, "Maybe she's late." The woman inclined her head thoughtfully, her thick hair obeying gravity a few seconds after she moved.

"Stay in the park, Naruto," She ordered, "I have business to attend to."

"You're going to leave me?"

"I will not be long," The woman's strides ate up the yards as she moved toward one of Konoha's nicer civilian residential districts. "This shall not take much time at all."

"My lady, I sure hope you have a really good reason for leaving Naruto alone in the park. Especially after that disappointment."

"Of course I do, Minato," The woman scoffed at the very idea. She took her responsibilities very seriously. "He will not be alone for long. That Haruno girl did not seem like the type to break a promise, and she is almost as desperate for friends as my nephew if those bullies are as regular an occurrence as their behavior suggests. An external factor is involved here."

"You think her parents got involved," The ghost ninja deduced, floating along next to his liege, invisible to everyone else. "I guess it wouldn't be the first time."

"I suppose it could be Father punishing everyone I associate with in tiny ways," She acknowledged, "But if He knew of my activities, I doubt He would be this subtle. He has never seen the need before."

"Ugh, I thought I was paranoid before I knew about the all-powerful space llama of endless self-righteousness," Minato lamented, drawing an amused snort from his companion with his blatant heresy, "Knowing that He's out to get you has a way of warping things. But it's a lot more likely that Sakura's parents are the cause. Don't go borrowing trouble, my lady. Or invading the wrong home. The last thing the Old Monkey needs is more stress."

"I have rarely needed to borrow trouble," The purple-tressed woman pointed out, stopping before a small, well-tended house. The building looked rather like an enormous, square strawberry mochi on a bed of greens, being bright pink, frosted with white trim, and surrounded by a painfully neat garden. "And I found their address in the phone book. This is the place? Remind me to check if any exeggutor owe me a favor," She murmured as she strode to and through the front door, despite the fact that it was closed and locked. She and her ghostly companion were beyond such plebian concerns as physical barriers. "That garden could use some life. I think it is hot enough to sustain the Alolan variant here…"

"What the- What are you doing in my house?" A stern-looking man with incongruously pink hair stepped into the foyer, "I've already called the police, but if you run now you might get away."

"You have not called anyone," The woman dismissed his threat instantly, "And they are no danger to me if you had. But fear not; my goals do not include harming you this day. Let us speak instead of your daughter." Blood slowly drained from the man's face at the change of subject. "Haruno Sakura promised my nephew that she would meet him in the park today. She made that promise in good faith, and had no intention of breaking it at the time. So, why is Uzumaki Naruto alone in the park today?" As the woman glared at him, the Haruno patriarch shuddered, ice-cold sandpaper rasping up and down his spine.

"Kizashi? I hear voices. Why didn't you tell me we had company?"

"No, Mebuki! Stay back!" The living man, eyes wide, shouted at the speaker, a middle-aged blonde woman who'd poked her head curiously into the room. Invisibly, underneath her beaked collar, Naruto's 'auntie' smiled coldly.

"Oh, no. I believe you are both involved with this," The unearthly woman purred. Her already large shadow expanded, a thick ribbon of blood-tipped darkness lashing out toward each living human with lightning speed. When they reached the Harunos, the shadows erupted from the ground, winding a smoky tentacle tipped with a very solid, crimson claw around each of them without quite touching either. "Again I ask. Why is my nephew alone?"

Mebuki, her eyes wide and panicked, began hyperventilating as she stared at her captor. Not even a minute later, they rolled back in her head, and she passed out. The tentacle surrounding Sakura's mother gently caught and supported her, lowering the insensate woman carefully to the ground. Kizashi, evidently more resilient, stayed on his feet, although he started sweating despite the chilling temperatures that Naruto's 'auntie' brought with her. "What did you do to my wife?" He shouted, fear and anger on her behalf having overcome any sense of fear for himself. "You won't get my little girl, whatever you are!"

"Thrice I ask and done. What did you tell Sakura?" The woman in the ancient gown spoke clearly as ever, but far more slowly, in the talking-to-toddlers-and-morons voice that every parent and teacher has.

"We told her to stay away from that Uzumaki brat!" Kizashi finally exclaimed, "And I stand by it, if things like you are his companions! No child of mine will go near demons and freaks like you! That monster pretending to be Uzumaki killed my father! I wouldn't expect an uncivilized beast like you to understand, but I'll lose no one else to him." The visible parts of her face like stone, the unearthly woman rocked back on her nonexistent heels, her shadows becoming hazy and indistinct. Her eyes were wide, but they did not see, as she was assaulted by a fragment of memory, distant yet still raw.

"I FORGIVE MUCH, MY DAUGHTER. BUT YOU HAVE GONE TOO FAR THIS TIME. IF YOU WOULD ACT THE UNCIVILIZED BEAST, THEN FOR THE SAKE OF ALL YOU MUST BE PENNED AS ONE. FOR WHAT LITTLE IT IS WORTH, MY CHILD, I AM SORRY. IF YOU HAD BEEN BORN WITH LESS POWER, YOU MIGHT HAVE SAFELY ROAMED FREE. BUT AS YOU ARE YOUR RAMPAGE WOULD DESTABILIZE THE VERY FOUNDATIONS OF REALITY. I DECLARE YOU EXILE. I STRIP OF YOU YOUR TITLES, YOUR DIVINE MANDATE, AND…" A choked sound broke through the relentless voice, but the speaker did not waver. "YOUR LIFE AND ITS VIBRANT POWER, THAT YOU MAY NEVER COURT DISASTER AGAIN. NOW BE GONE! THUS I HAVE SPOKEN! THUS IT SHALL BE!"

The woman's shadow abruptly went solid as iron, two more pairs of razor-tipped tentacles extending from its angular planes to hover menacingly over the mortals. The woman's form itself wavered like an image in a malfunctioning television, before pulling itself back together in haphazard stages, a leg here, a chunk of hair there. "I suggest you choose your next words with utmost care, mortal. If Sakura became an orphan, I might feel sorry for my nephew's only human friend."

"You want your nephew to play with Sakura?" Kizashi squeaked, droplets of what he desperately hoped were sweat running down his leg. "I- play date. Yes. Whenever… Whenever you want!"

"Good enough," The shadows retracted to their original, less menacing state, the tentacles vanishing into the bulk of the darkness.

"Daddy? What's going on? I heard loud noises," Sakura, a pencil tucked behind her ear, looked into the room. "Eh? Daddy? Did you have an accident? I thought you said big boys and girls used the potty."

A million light-years and many eons distant, a lone being sobbed quietly on an asteroid, a thousand-yard stare fixed on a point that had been so recently occupied. "MY DAUGHTER, MY BEAUTIFUL MORNING STAR… MY GIRATINA… I AM SO, SO SORRY."