Author's Notes: This is a rewrite of Door Number Two. The emphasis will hopefully clear up any confusion. Why, you ask, am I rewriting a fic I haven't even finished? Well, the fact is that I am absolutely and irrevocably stuck on DNT. I can't take it any further because even though I know where I want it to go I don't know how to get it there, and that either means that I'm a really bad writer or that DNT was just so riddled with problems that it has finally ground itself to a halt. Not to mention that my laptop, which is still currently refusing to even so much as turn on, contains my most recent musings on DNT. At any rate, this rewrite is intended to do one or more of the following: 1.) Maybe shake loose the rest of DNT from my recalcitrant head; 2.) Give you poor people something to read, even if I can only manage to put one chapter out each month; 3.) Completely replace DNT as a superior examination of the concept and characters (whether DNT would be removed has yet to be decided).

Title: Vis-à-Vis (a.k.a. Door Number Two: Reopened)

Author: Reaper Nanashi (Lady Shinigami)

Pairing(s): Eventual SasuSaku (though nothing of real interest to OTP shippers); parental musings of NaruHina; possibly ItaShin (maybe, if I get around to it and there's interest)

Word Count: 4088 (Total: 4088)

Genre: Drama (Bildungsroman; story of maturation – psychological/moral development – of principal character)

Type: Multi-Chapter (Work in Progress)

Rating: T (bad words, sexual innuendos, blood, violence)

Spoilers: Oh yes (my apologies to those of you who were so appreciative of DNT's non-spoiler-ness)

Date Submitted: 7/10/08

Claimer/Disclaimer: What's mine is mine and what's not mine is somebody else's.

Summary: Naruto was well aware that, at least at one time, he had had parents; he had just never really given it much thought beyond the idle daydream. Depending on his mood at those times, his parents had either loved him or hated him, and the myriad theories on what had happened to them were based primarily on those two choices. But with a man in front of him who could easily have been him in about fifteen years, Naruto realized that of all the musing he had done in years past he had, oddly, never tried to imagine what his parents looked like. Not that I could have ever imagined something like this . . .

The Reasoning Behind It: As you may recall from DNT, I made note of the number of Naruto-gets-a-family fics that were either badly-written, unfinished, or both. The one (at the time) exception to this was QuestofDreams and Lazuli's Parallels, which I highly recommend unless you happen to be homophobic or are otherwise uninterested in boy love, because it's a SasuNaruSasu pairing. Don't say I didn't warn you. At any rate, this fic was written with the intention of giving Naruto-with-a-family goodness to all the fans of our favorite blond delinquent – there's nothing wrong with fics containing homosexuality, of course, but it isn't something everyone goes for, either – so I hope you enjoy!

Chapter 1 – Definite Inconsistencies

A middle-aged blonde woman sat comfortably in an old rocking chair, her first grandchild cradled in her arms. "Once upon a time, in a distant age of magic and mystery, there were two almost identical countries ruled by two powerful and wise kings who somehow looked exactly alike. Death had cruelly separated them and Life had forced their minds to grow apart, but deep down in their hearts they never forgot each other and both kings devoted much of their time and energy to finding that other country with that other king even though neither could imagine what he was really searching for. As a result, Death kept them separated and Life pushed them farther apart every day, but the kings struggled onward. To this day they remain in a subtle limbo, unable to reach one another and thus unable to truly live even as the years pass them by."

"Mom," the woman's son said as he entered the room, "that's a horrible story."

"Oh?" she responded, thoughtful. "You liked it when you were little."

"I remember," he assured her, "but . . . it strikes a bit too close to home."

She sighed. "Perhaps, but it's not like you'll ever tell him about your brother."

He sighed explosively. "Mom! I love you, but it's hardly your business what I tell my son about my family. Besides, hearing about his dead uncle isn't going to do him any good – there's no reason for me to tell him. It's depressing and there are thousands of better things to take up the head space that— . . . Oh, Mom, please don't look at me like that! I'm not trying to disrespect you and I'm not in denial! I just don't see the point!"

Sternly, she reminded her grown child, "Your brother is still part of this family, even dead."

"Of course he is!" her son protested, offended at the implication that he did not care.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of."

"I am not ashamed of something that neither of us could control! But Mom, the only people who absolutely must know about him are you and myself. That's it. Telling others about him serves no purpose whatsoever; no one else had the chance to know him and it would only make them feel awkward to be aware of what happened to him. If you go around telling the whole village, you're only sensationalizing an extremely private tragedy and I will neither appreciate nor tolerate that kind of cheapening of his memory, no matter how little of it there is!"

She looked away from her son to her grandson for a moment. "That's very harsh."

Her son let out a frustrated breath. "Mom, don't do this to him. My brother is dead. Let him rest. I promise that I'll acknowledge him should it ever come up; Naruto may not need to know but he does have a right to, and I will tell him everything I know about his uncle if something ever happens to bring it up."

She pursed her lips, but did not argue. Indeed, her son was an adult and such choices had become ones he had to make for himself, without interference. ". . . All right, have it your way. But I hope you'll be able to tell him without hurting yourself, otherwise you'll frighten him and everyone else who loves you."

"I'll be fine, Mom," her son promised gently. "I've made it this long, haven't I?"

"Were you here all night?"

Sasuke looked up from the white tile floor, his dark eyes suspicious. "They were trying to take him off life support. Why?"

Tsunade shrugged. "How should I know?"

He frowned. "I know you do."

"Actually," she countered, annoyed, "I don't. However, I have a good guess and if it's right then you'll be informed in the event that it pertains to you. It's not important."

"They wanted him to die!" Sasuke snapped, furious that she was so flippant.

"Point out the ones responsible and I'd be happy to . . . have words with them," she said ominously. "Now I assume you were the one who found him?"

Sasuke settled back in his chair, unsatisfied. "Yes. In field nine."

"Were you looking for him?"

"Yes."

"Why?" she probed.

"We agreed to meet for lunch and train in field four. When he didn't show up, I went looking for him."

"Why did you check the fields?"

He shrugged one shoulder. "He told me he had one booked until yesterday. He's so anal about training that it seemed the most likely place to find him."

"Where were you the day before yesterday?" she asked bluntly.

He stared at her blankly. ". . . Are you joking?"

She shook her head. "I have to assume everyone is guilty."

Oddly, that appeared to be a good enough explanation for him. Perhaps his closeness to Naruto meant that he approved of that particular view. "I sparred with Kakashi-sensei in the morning, roughly from eight to fourteen hundred, and then was stalked and nearly molested by Sakura and Ino all evening."

"All evening?" Tsunade pressed.

Sasuke frowned again, more deeply, and explained defensively, "They kept finding me . . ." He noticed her expression and glared. "It's not funny."

Tsunade kept careful control of her face. Even if they ended up happily married to men other than Sasuke, Sakura and Ino would probably continue to swoon over him for the rest of his life, much as he surely tried to ignore them. Still, age had taught the girls subtlety; though they were not perfect at it, they were nevertheless slowly getting better. Eventually it would get to a point where it would be barely noticeable, but until then he would just have to take it like a man. "Was I laughing?"

He scowled violently. "You may as well have been."

"Right," she replied sarcastically, well aware that he hated being talked down to. "Well, I want you to go home and get some sleep for now. I expect a full report on my desk by tomorrow evening. And while you're at it, you better tell Iruka. None of us will hear the end of it otherwise."

"What about Naruto?" he demanded instantly.

"He'll be fine."

"They tried to take him off life support," Sasuke growled.

"Did you ever think," Tsunade pointed out, "that he didn't need it?"

He stared her in disbelief. "Didn't need it? Maybe you haven't noticed, but Naruto manages to shake off virtually everything that hurts him. If he gets to a point where he's unconscious, he needs life support."

She snorted. "Maybe you haven't noticed, but Naruto is hardier than that."

"When I found him," Sasuke grated angrily, "he had no pulse and was not breathing. I had to give him CPR for ten minutes. I think that warrants at least a night's worth of life support."

Tsunade blinked, surprised. "Excuse me?" It was a standard rhetorical question, so Sasuke did not bother to repeat himself. "Why the hell did you find it unnecessary to mention that before?"

"I mistakenly believed you were an iryounin and that you would understand," he said scathingly.

Before Tsunade could completely open her mouth to retort, the readings on the monitors around Naruto's bed began to shift. Rather than flaying Sasuke verbally, she moved to the side of the bed he was not occupying and reported, "He's waking up."

Sasuke impatiently stood back and let her work, but his dark eyes were riveted on his friend's face. After a moment Tsunade straightened up and unfocused blue eyes cracked open. They slid slowly to either side, blinked just as slowly, and opened a bit wider. Even when they were finally fully open they still looked half closed because of the sheer exhaustion apparent in them. Once more they shifted to either side, but that time when they fell on Sasuke they stayed, and he leaned in as Naruto's mouth moved beneath the mask that had been providing air. The syllables were whispered and hard to hear over the hiss-thunk of the oxygen pump, but when he made them out Sasuke knew that something was terribly wrong.

". . . U . . . chiha . . . -san . . . Pl . . . Please . . . father . . ."

Naruto passed out after that, absolving Sasuke of the need to reply, and the Uchiha heir sank back into the seat he had been in for nearly a full day.

"What did he say?" Tsunade asked.

Sasuke's brows drew together in confusion. "I think . . . I think he was asking me to find his father."

Tsunade stared hard at him. "That was it?"

Sasuke tilted his head in a half shake and said, "He . . . He called me 'Uchiha-san'."

Hearing courtesy from Naruto was wrong on multiple levels. The blond had never in his life been polite to anybody; not even Sandaime or Tsunade, though he had done his best to be civil in front of Sakura. As usual, Naruto did things backwards – he only offered a semblance of politeness after everyone else was polite to him first, though by the time things got to that point people mainly just accepted him and his unintentional rudeness. Not that he could really be blamed, since nobody had bothered to school him in even the basics of socialization until Iruka, and he obviously could have been a total saint and the village still would have hated him. After seeing the village's cruelty, Sasuke hardly blamed him five years later – even in his eyes it would not have been worth it to put in the effort to behave himself in any sense.

Tsunade frowned. After several minutes of deliberation, she said, "Stay here until I send someone."

Sasuke, having been anything but eager to be sent to bed like a recalcitrant child to start with, immediately settled in his chair again and watched the Godaime exit the room.

A week and a half later there was clearly something very wrong, and it was residing in room two-thirty-six of Konoha Hospital.

The thing was, Sasuke had studied Naruto before. It was nothing like a secret fascination or silent affection; he could hardly have helped it because any good warrior examined his opponent at every available opportunity to identify strengths and weaknesses. Since Naruto was strong enough to be one of Sasuke's few recurring adversaries, the Uchiha heir was able to learn more about the blond with each encounter.

One thing was his physical appearance. Where most people blended into a landscape Naruto always popped out of it, even when he was not making the effort to be noticed. It was not simply his clothes, which over time were becoming less orange – though the orange still present was compensating by being notably brighter. It was more his vivid lemon-blond hair in its hedgehog spines, which he kept short – with a kunai, much to Sakura's horror and Iruka's exasperation – because he admitted he would be too lazy to keep it trimmed properly if he let it get longer. It was also his rich blue eyes, which Sasuke had never seen anyone else come close to matching, that grew to a slightly paler shade when he was intensely focused or intensely angry. Despite that, however, Naruto could somehow vanish into any crowd anywhere and not be seen; overall it was probably the most dangerous skill he possessed.

Naruto was simply a walking conundrum, and if anyone ever told him that he would probably be as pleased with himself as he usually was when he learned he had flustered someone. Assuming, of course, that he knew the definition of 'conundrum'.

So Sasuke had studied his friend. Therefore, Sasuke was more than certain that the purple tint the blond's eyes possessed had definitely not been there earlier. He worried that it was a sign of the kyuubi's influence, though he would have been more worried if Naruto's pupils had been vertically slit like he had seen them before. But other than that, his sudden politeness, and some kind of memory problem, Naruto seemed perfectly normal.

Physically, at any rate.

Tsunade rubbed her sinuses. "I'm sorry, Naruto. May we do this one more time?"

The blond sighed tiredly. "Yes ma'am."

"Thank you. Name?"

"Namikaze Naruto."

There was a perceptible shift in the people standing in the room, as there had been every other time.

"Affiliation?"

"Konohagakure."

"ID number?"

Since she had not been more specific with the request, Naruto readily and easily recited both his citizen and shinobi numbers, which were the same ones he had always had but which he had not been able to fully recall just the week before when Sakura had asked for them.

"Rank?"

"Genin."

"Age?"

"Twelve."

Saying he was five years younger than he actually was had been strange enough, particularly since he was most definitely not in a twelve-year-old body, but that could have been reasonably considered confusion from a hard – really hard, seeing as it was Naruto – knock on the head. Stranger than that, though, was that when he was asked his address he always gave that of the Hokage's manor above the Monument. No one doubted that his dedication to being Hokage had included knowing that address, but to be convinced he had lived there for most of his life was the part that concerned them.

"Birthday?"

"October tenth."

"What happened on that day?"

Naruto tilted his head and frowned, like he had both times before. ". . . I was born."

"Nothing else of significance occurred?" Tsunade pressed. "Like an attack?"

Naruto's frown deepened. ". . . No."

"All right. Favorite food?"

"Beef ramen."

"Blood type?"

"B. I don't remember the Rh factor."

"Thank you," Tsunade said again, and dropped her face into her hands with a tired sigh of her own.

Naruto looked around at the hospital room and its many occupants. It was rather alarming how he did not appear to recognize most of the people there except as passing acquaintances, especially Sakura and the rest of their immediate peers, who had dropped in briefly to see him. He had known their names and where he remembered them from – academy classes and village encounters, not all of which were accurate, it appeared – but nothing about the chuunin exams or missions they had taken together at various times.

"Hey," Naruto said suddenly, "if you're asking me all of these things about myself, why haven't you asked me about my parents and sister too?"

Iruka made an odd choking noise.

"Tell me about them," Tsunade replied, instantly but genially.

"My mother's name is Hotaru," Naruto began, lightly and mostly cheerfully. "I don't know her surname – I've never been told because Dad said that her father was an asshole and didn't deserve any recognition. My father is Namikaze Arashi, Yondaime Hokage of Konohagakure. The jounin and some of the chuunin sometimes call him the 'Fox Lord' when he's not around, but I don't know why unless it has something to do with Kyuubi-neesan."

Tsunade leaped on that. "'Kyuubi-neesan'?"

Naruto nodded. "The civilians don't know because they might get scared, but one time Dad saved a kyuubi from being attacked and killed by some villagers somewhere to the north. She behaves herself and has helped him out a few times, so he lets her stay in the forests around Konoha."

"She?"

"Yes."

"I see. And your sister?"

Something dark and ugly crossed Naruto's face very briefly, and Sasuke felt an unhappy flutter in his gut. He knew that look quite well, having seen it in his own face.

Jealousy.

With a double-take, though, it was completely gone. Whatever was going on, at least attempting to hide his emotions from others was clearly a tendency that had lingered. "Oh," Naruto said. "My sister is Akiko. She's almost three. Mom wants her to be a lady, but, eh . . ." He rubbed the back of his head in a painfully familiar gesture. ". . . it seems like she'd rather be a kunoichi." He suddenly yawned. ". . . 'Scuse me."

Tsunade stood up. "I thank you for your time and appreciate your patience. Please get some rest."

"'Kay." Naruto promptly relaxed into the propped up bed and fell asleep with his usual speed.

Sakura wrung her hands absently. "Tsunade-sama, what . . .?"

"I don't know," the Godaime replied, not bothering to conceal her confusion. "If this is some prank – which I'm beginning to doubt – then he's doing a damn good job at it, overall."

"Overall?" Sakura pressed.

"There are inconsistencies," Kakashi agreed thoughtfully. "Some more obvious than others. The Fourth did have a nickname, but he was never known as any kind of fox lord even after defeating the kyuubi. His wife's father was a shinobi of a country that no longer exists, and he died in an effort to protect Sandaime-sama not too long after arriving here. Yondaime-sama had not fully assumed the duties of the Hokage at the time but he was in training, so he attended the funeral; that was where he first met his wife, though she punched him in the face because she had misinterpreted something he said."

Sakura rolled her eyes. "That sounds exactly like how Naruto's family would be – fight first, think later." She then stopped and blinked. "Wait . . . Then . . .?"

"Then?" Kakashi prompted, and it was clear that he was smiling under his mask.

"Speaking of assholes . . ." Sasuke muttered.

The jounin made a dismissive motion in his once-student's direction without even bothering to look over.

Sakura's eyes were wide. ". . . Is Naruto really the son of the Fourth Hokage?!"

Sasuke blinked. It was actually a strange thought, which was exactly why he had not considered it himself; he had never known Naruto to be anything other than an orphan. In truth, Naruto was the orphan – Konoha's poster child for the victims of the kyuubi that the fox had not done any physical harm to, as well as for parentless children everywhere else. Everybody knew he was an orphan and Naruto had always taken pride in that – proof that he could get by on his own, whether or not people liked him.

It was, of course, impossible for Naruto to exist if he had not had parents at some point, but Sasuke had just not given it any thought. He realized then, with a pang of self-recrimination, that he had never even bothered to find Naruto's parents. Sure, Naruto – at least supposedly – had no idea of their names or faces or whether they were alive or dead, but certainly they were surrounded by people who would know or would have access to records that would be able to say one way or another. Though, on the other hand, Naruto had not really expressed much of an interest in knowing, and that was mostly why Sasuke had not made the attempt; with the blond not harping on it, searching for something never mentioned had not exactly been on Sasuke's to-do list.

In the end, Sasuke still might not have believed had he found the truth. It was extremely difficult to equate Naruto in any way with the Fourth Hokage, who had been hailed as a genius despite having no kekkei genkai to rely on. Naruto, on the other hand, was anything but a genius aside from the few painfully unrelated leaps of intelligent strategy Sasuke had witnessed. Age and experience had allowed him to feign genius, but that was all.

"Yes," Kakashi said in response to Sakura's shrill guess, with a level of calmness and a muted evil delight that should have put him in prison, the bastard.

Sakura made a high-pitched sound reminiscent of air leaving a balloon.

Sasuke shot to his feet, furious. "Why the hell didn't you ever tell him?!"

Kakashi's expression flattened in disapproval. He had definitely not missed Sasuke's unspoken accusation of the deliberate withholding of information. "The Fourth left two standing orders before he died. The first was that Naruto was to be seen as a hero for his sacrifice. The second was that Naruto's heritage was to be kept from him as well as the rest of the world until such a time when he had established himself as a person, to protect him from both enemy shinobi and the shadows of the Fourth's own accomplishments."

"What sacrifice?" Sakura asked blankly.

"A sacrifice that allowed you to live the life you currently have," the jounin hedged artfully.

Sasuke glanced at the rest of the room to make sure their peers were not present. Sai was there, but he had already been told by Danzou, who had not cared about the Third's proclamations of silence. "The kyuubi."

All of the adults turned to him as Sakura blinked and said, "Ohhh . . . Duh."

"Who told you that?" Tsunade demanded sharply.

"Nobody who should have," Sasuke snapped back angrily. "I've been in Naruto's head with him; I saw that thing trying to screw him up."

Tsunade turned to Sakura, who explained calmly, "When we went to retrieve Gaara after he was abducted by Akatsuki . . . Naruto takes a lot on his shoulders, but he seemed to be a bit more torn up than was necessary over a friend's death. 'Bijuu' and 'jinchuuriki' . . . He didn't seem to like those words all that much. Add to that the fact that the kyuubi attacked and was subdued all on October tenth, the village's dislike of him, the strange way his eyes would turn and change when he was mad . . . It wasn't all that hard to put together, even before he admitted it to me." She shrugged. "I just forgot until now."

"Forgot?" Shizune asked incredulously.

Sakura shrugged again, philosophically. "Well, he's always had it, right? And the difference between them is obvious; it almost never crosses my mind."

"Who else knows?" Tsunade questioned.

"Shikamaru," Sakura replied. "But I think that he was told because it was considered a requirement as the leader of an assignment, and he's both too lazy and smart enough to not blurt it to everyone without reason. Other than him, nobody I know of."

Sai raised his hand. "Danzou told me."

"That doesn't surprise me in the slightest," she muttered, and massaged her sinuses for what seemed to be the millionth time that day. "All right, well, now that you know you should also know that the Third Hokage penned a law stating that the kyuubi's whereabouts are never to be discussed freely, even amongst those who know. I'll let Naruto decide that last part, but as for the other you have two choices: be silent, or be silenced."

"Yes ma'am," Sakura agreed dutifully.

Sai said nothing while Sasuke snorted. "What, like he doesn't get spit on enough as things are?"

"Just don't," the Fifth Hokage growled.

Sasuke sighed and rolled his eyes in annoyance until they fell on not-Naruto. ". . . His eyes are purple, like the fox's chakra is right under the surface."

"I saw it," Tsunade snapped. "Unfortunately, he doesn't even think it attacked Konoha, so I seriously doubt he knows anything about it. The only thing we can do is question him when he wakes up. Yamato—"

"I'll stay," Sasuke argued firmly. When she stared at him narrowly, he said only, "It was originally under the guardianship of my clan, wasn't it? And he barely seems to be able to recognize anybody else anyway. It would probably be better for him to wake up to somebody he at least thinks he knows."

Tsunade frowned, looked out the window at the star-speckled sky, then at the clock on the wall to her right. "Fine," she decided, "but don't be a macho smartass. You've been watching him for two days. If something happens and you can't handle it, call for help. Yamato can get its chakra in a bind."

Sasuke nodded solemnly, though he was confident in his control. That and Naruto had reported once that the fox seemed to view him – however irreverently – as big medicine despite that he had not made any serious effort to put it down for something. "I will."

Which was the truth, because if Sasuke could not stop the fox then Naruto would never forgive himself if the kyuubi used his body to destroy Konoha, and Sasuke did not want to be the one to reveal that not everything that could have been done had been. Worse, the idiot probably would not bother to think about his spur-of-the-moment plans before he attempted something infinitely stupid to atone for the perceived failure, like jumping from a cliff or committing ritual suicide. Naruto was truly his own harshest judge, and he had to be protected from himself just as much as – possibly more than – anyone else in the world.

To be continued in . . . Chapter 2 – Lucid Dreaming

Oh, swell, Sarcasm hissed. Sarcasm was generally drowned out by Kyuubi, who was more than scathing enough for Naruto's needs, but whenever Kyuubi did not bother to speak up, Sarcasm was right there waiting to take up the reins. Sarcasm was not quite on the same level of vicious bitterness as Kyuubi, though, so Naruto had less trouble with it than the fox. And he could simply tune out that part of himself, while Kyuubi's imposing presence was a bit harder to dismiss. No wonder you're such a superb shinobi!

Answers To Questions You Didn't Even Know You Wanted To Ask:

Title: Vis-à-Vis (a.k.a. Door Number Two: Reopened)

In a review I received ages ago, someone mentioned that s/he would have read DNT a lot sooner if s/he had not thought that "Door Number Two" meant the fic was a game show. The summary obviously does not convey the idea of a game show, but I myself have very often searched for interesting fics by title first, and only read the summary if the title caught my eyes. Besides that, with the way Kyuubi explains things, the parallelverse could actually be Door Number 187,456,394,563 for all we know.

When I initially began rewriting DNT, I added "Reopened" for the sake of telling the two apart and to be subtly but still obnoxiously clever (Get it? Door Number Two has been Reopened). I have since decided to change the title entirely to Vis-à-Vis (pronounced: "veez-ah-vee(z)"), which is a French phrase defined in my prehistoric dictionary as: "prep. 1) face to face with; opposite to 2) in comparison with or in relation to" as well as: "n., pl. 1a) a person who is face to face with another b) one's opposite number or counterpart". This is not a perfectly appropriate name for the fic either, as not everything in parallelverse is exactly the opposite of canonverse, but the two Narutos are quite opposite of each other and readers of DNT already know how they actually get along.

Interestingly, vis is also Latin for "force" and/or "strength", which is probably how the French ended up using it in the above context (if that doesn't make any sense, you're going to have to look up the etymology of the word on your own – I don't have the room to explain it here – and consider the type of people who generally spoke Latin).

———

"I sparred with Kakashi-sensei in the morning, roughly from eight to fourteen hundred … "

I have decided that shinobi operate on military time. This is hardly an invention of mine – I've seen it in dozens of other fics – I've just jumped on the bandwagon. For those of you who might not know, military time operates on a single twenty-four-hour period rather than two twelve-hour periods. So what is 9:00 a.m. to a civilian is 0900 (hours) military time and what is 9:00 p.m. is 2100 (hours) military time; the military day begins at 0000 or 2400 (a.k.a. midnight) and ends at 2359 (a.k.a. 11:59 p.m.). The basic math behind this is the number twelve: before 1200 hours, a civilian can more or less determine the time because it's only a matter of there being an extra zero and no colon; after 1200 hours, all someone has to do is add civilian time to twelve to get military time – i.e. 1:00 p.m. plus twelve is 13:00 or 1300 hours, 2:00 p.m. plus twelve is 14:00 or 1400 hours, 5:00 p.m. plus twelve is 17:00 or 1700 hours, and so on.

———

"I apparently mistakenly believed you were an iryounin and that you would understand,"

For the confused, an iryounin is a shinobi specializing in medical techniques. Tsunade is an iryounin, as are Shizune and Sakura (later).

———

"Konohagakure."

For you who are somehow blissfully uninitiated, Konohagakure is a shortened form of Konohagakure no Sato, which translates to "Village Hidden in (the) Leaves". Konohagakure would, then, mean "Hidden Leaf/Leaves". Konoha, by itself, would then be "Leaf".

———

"B. I don't remember the Rh factor."

In the blood-type-and-personality profiling I've read up on, Rhesus factors are never mentioned. This is presumably because the factor is either a) too small to significantly affect one's personality, or simply because b) the factors were not discovered before the profiling was drawn up. Or, for that matter, a) could be considered a result of b). I do think it should be considered, though, because the Rh factor determines how blood types interact physically, and that could theoretically influence individual people of the same blood type. If you don't understand why I say this, go look up "Rh factor" in your favorite search engine and notice that there is a potential for trouble.

———

"My mother's name is Hotaru," ; " … My father is Namikaze Arashi," ; "My sister is Akiko … "

For those of you on the edge of your seats just waiting to tell me what Naruto's parents' actual canon names are, please CHILL OUT. I already know. Thank you.

Fans of DNT probably recall that Naruto's little sister's name was Nyoko. I wanted to change it to something with a little more meaning, then to something more related to the Fourth, but my efforts didn't turn out well. Then I reread the chapter, and with that in mind I decided that Hotaru would technically be the one to name Nyoko/Akiko, and she would not necessarily give the Fourth all the credit. So Nyoko is now Akiko, and depending on how it's written it can mean "Sparkle Child", "Bright Child", or "Autumn Child".

———

It was, of course, impossible for Naruto to exist if he had not had parents at some point, but Sasuke had just never thought about it … but certainly they were surrounded by people who would know or would have access to records that would say one way or another.

Am I the only one who has ever wondered about this? I mean, if this part has any kind of canon truth miraculously lurking in it –

Though, on the other hand, Naruto had never really expressed much of an interest in knowing, and that was why Sasuke had not made the attempt.

– then okay, but Naruto definitely has the lungs to get something like that looked into if he was really curious. Even if he wouldn't be allowed into a record hall then surely he could badger someone he knew into doing it for him, unless his lack of concern led to this:

It was a strange thought, which was exactly why he had not considered it himself; he had never known Naruto to be anything other than an orphan. In truth, Naruto was the orphan – Konoha's poster child …

Really, why haven't Sakura or Sasuke, in particular, tried to find an answer to this? Canon!Sasuke is so jealous of Naruto that it would be one of the first things I'd look for, if I were him and first thought Naruto was too stupid to function only to find out how powerful he actually was. If Sasuke's such a genius, then why the hell did I think of this first?

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'Bijuu' and 'jinchuuriki' (and '(K/k)yuubi')

For the uninformed, bijuu are the tailed beasts – including Shukaku and the kyuubi – that the manicured goth members of Akatsuki are looking for. They are all very powerful manifestations of chakra and Kyuubi is said to be the strongest. A jinchuuriki is someone, such as Gaara and Naruto, who is harboring one of the bijuu in his or her body.

Kyuubi means "nine(-)tails", and – obviously – refers to the number of tails Kyuubi has (Shukaku, for example, is the ichibi, the "one(-)tail", and one tail is all he has). Ultimately, because "Kyuubi" is obviously not Kyuubi's true name (which is currently still unknown and may never be revealed), my capitalization of this word will depend on how it's used in a sentence. If someone is referring to Kyuubi directly then he will be addressed as "Kyuubi", but if he (or another nine-tailed fox) is being referred to simply as a creature with nine-tails, then he will be "the kyuubi".

———

Worse, the idiot probably would not think about his spur-of-the-moment plans before he attempted something infinitely stupid to atone for the failure, like jumping from a cliff or committing ritual suicide.

Please don't jump on me about how out of character this might be. Whether or not you think Naruto would actually do either of these things, no matter the scale of the failure, is irrelevant – Sasuke is only being hypothetical and, as is typical with him, overly dramatic.

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It's time to play a quick game of Draw Your Own Conclusion! Everyone is more than a little on edge right now and are the ninja equivalent of "trigger-happy". If you review, you cannot fall victim to this unfortunate circumstance. Draw your own conclusion.

~RN (LS)