Hello all! As of 8/24/16, this is a rewrite of the first chapter. I was going back through my earliest postings and cringing at some of my writing...plus, I had a couple corrections to make and wanted to flesh certain bits out.

To my old readers: nothing plot-shattering has been added or taken away, though you will see some story points shown now, rather than just told. New readers: Eh, I just hope you enjoy ^_^

Chapter 1: Home, Sweet Home

Sarutobi Hiruzen watched as two more children were taken to the orphanage. There had been so many this past month who'd lost their entire families to the Kyuubi's attack, but these two particularly concerned him. He wondered if he had made the right call, keeping their relationship classified, treating them like the other children. Perhaps it would have been worth the risk, knowing they still had family, knowing where they came from...no, the danger to them both was too great, both from outside the village, and from the inside. Still, he wished there could have been a better way. He sighed and rubbed his eyes.

A young girl, barely five years old, was being led by her right hand through the village streets. Her face was pale and blank - whether from shock or memory loss, it was difficult to say. She'd been released from the hospital with only a first name, bandages around her head, and a splint on her left wrist.

A sudden cry jolted her out of her shock-induced reverie. She twisted to see its source - a blonde infant in a carrying basket held by another warden for the orphanage. The boys' cries pitched higher, but the wardens seemed not to notice or care. The girl pulled at the hand of the adult leading her, trying to go to the weeping infant. When the warden tried to guide her away, she scrunched her face in frustration. She yelled something at the adults, yanked her hand free, and ran back toward the screaming baby. Both adults stopped, taken aback by her outburst. She reached into the basket, her small arms circling the infant carefully. She couldn't lift him, so she just rocked him as best she could where he was. His cries softened, then stopped.

The Hokage smiled softly at the sight. Perhaps, even without knowing their own relationship, they would look out for each other. Perhaps they would be okay after all.

The Third Hokage looked over the scrolls placed in front of him, then back up at the team that brought them. The three-person squad was clearly exhausted, though they each stood at attention.

"You three did extremely well," Sarutobi Hiruzen said, addressing the team. "You completed it sooner than expected, without alerting any other interested parties."

He nodded to his secretary, who stepped forward and handed each team member a small bag of ryo - their earnings for the mission. "Go rest. You've earned it!"

The three shinobi, two male and one female, smiled and bowed their heads. He watched as they filed out, their postures already relaxing. Date Gorou, Kusato Hikaru, Fuumaki Kaiya - they were shaping up to be the village's best reconnaissance team in years. Gorou was a strong multiform fighter; Hikaru had an excellent mind for strategy and was adept at illusory and deception techniques; and Kaiya was fast and skilled with seal- and code-breaking. Together, the three of them were quick, efficient, and thorough.

They were also still in their teens and had just come off of a three-month-long mission in a sparsely populated region. As they left the Kage mansion, Gorou, the tallest of the three, stretched his tanned, muscular arms.

"Damn, it's good to be home!" He let out a big yawn, closing hazel eyes and mussing his spiky, olive-green hair.

"Close your mouth, you'll start attracting flies with that breath of yours," said Hikaru. A few inches shorter than Gorou, Haruki was also slimmer and less muscular. He adjusted the hem of his sleeves, pulling at an errant thread that had come loose. He'd have to patch the otherwise pristine lavender shirt when he got home. His plum-colored eyes drooped slightly under floppy, light brown bangs.

"Blow me, pretty boy."

"No, thank you."

"'Cuz you'd fall for me instantly?" Gorou said with a teasing grin.

Kaiya had to restrain herself from slapping them each upside the head. "Oy! Give a rest."

Gorou gave a low whistle. "Someone's tetchy! What's up, Kaiya-chan?" he prodded, reaching over to ruffle her crimson hair. She caught his wrist before he could. No one touched her hair.

"I've been travelling with you bickering idiots for almost three months, and I'm ready to knock your heads together! I'm tired, hungry, and dying for a bath, so please," she said, pushing Gorou's other hand away as it reached toward her head, "shut up and STOP touching my hair!"

"I'm not actually touching your hair."

"And I'm pretty sure I'm not an idiot," Hikaru added. "Gorou, on the other hand..."

Gorou grinned widely and threw his arms around his teammates' shoulders. "Eh, you both love me. You know it."

Kaiya rolled her eyes, but grinned back. Even Hikaru smirked as he shrugged Gorou's arm away. Their usual post-mission banter complete for the time being, they continued in comfortable silence.

Gorou stopped at a corner. "This is me. Hotpot tonight?"

They agreed to meet later, separating to reach their homes. After a few steps, Hikaru stopped and called back to his female teammate, "Kaiya! Did you want this?" He held a small, wrapped item from his pack. He'd been holding it for her since that one point in the mission when she'd had to squeeze through a very small corridor, requiring her to remove her jacket and packs.

"Oh - thanks! I almost forgot." She sprinted back to him.

He handed her the package. "Who's this one for?"

"Naruto," she replied, placing the item in her own pack.

"The noisy, blond boy?" He raised his eyebrows. "Wasn't the last one for him too?"

Kaiya brushed a bright red lock over her shoulder. "Mm - but I think he's graduating from the Academy soon, so I thought I'd get him something special." She glanced at Hikaru, who had a "I don't want to say something" sort of look. "What?"

He shrugged. "You just seem to...favor him sometimes. I thought you tried to be even with the whole souvenir thing."

She smiled. "Yeah...But I dunno, there's just something about him. I know most of the village thinks he's just a troublemaker...but they don't know what it's like to grow up like he did."

"Like you did, too."

She sighed. "It's different. The villagers just look at him like he's worthless. He's not." Her mouth turned down to a frown. "I don't get it. I mean, it's not like being an orphan gets you a golden ticket anywhere, but most of us just got picked on a bit, maybe looked down on by the big clans. But Naruto…some of the villagers are just plain vicious, while others ignore him when he's right in front of them."

"Sorry," her friend said. "I didn't mean to bring up..."

"No, it's okay," she waved him off. She smiled tiredly at him. "I'm rant-y when I'm tired, you know that. See you later for hotpot?"

He nodded and she turned back down the street. A few more blocks, and she was home. Unlocking her door, she stepped into her small studio and discarded her shoes.

"Tadaima," she called into the empty room. It was a bit dusty from her absence, but still neat. She'd give it a proper clean tomorrow. She went straight to her bed and collapsed onto it fully-clothed, savoring the softness of her mattress.

Before closing her eyes, Kaiya removed her pack and took out the small gift. Unwrapping its protective paper, she held the item between her index fingers and thumbs of both hands: a small, lacquered, wooden frog, ornately carved and painted bright orange, smooth except for a small nick in the side. She'd found it at the market of a small outpost town two days out from Konoha, and had gotten a good deal on it for the nick.

Something about the little frog reminded her of Naruto - his cheeky grin, colorful outbursts, that habit he had of squatting everywhere. She'd started bringing souvenirs from her traveling missions a few years back, cycling through the younger children she'd grown up with. It was something to remind them that someone was thinking about them, and not just as a village burden. She didn't have much money, and only recently started earning a significant amount from her missions, so she stuck with finding or buying one small item per mission for a different child each time.

She hoped that Naruto would like it. Although Kaiya didn't want to admit it, she did tend to favor him. As she drifted to sleep, her mind turned to some of her earliest surviving memories - a crying infant with tufts of blond hair, quieting as she hummed, staring at her with eyes as blue as her own...

"Eh?! Graduation's already happened?"

Iruka nodded apologetically as the two walked down the street. "Sorry Kaiya-chan, it was just after you left. But..." he smiled. "Naruto did pass. Kind of unorthodox how he passed, but then, he is Naruto…"

Kaiya brightened. "I mean, I knew he would - but he's just so tactless, I kinda wondered…"

"I know what you mean!" Iruka laughed. His face turned serious. "Kaiya-chan...I know you care a lot about Naruto. Well, it's about the way he graduated...Hokage-sama asked me to tell you since I was there."

Kaiya stopped walking and turned to face him fully. "What happened?"

"Do you remember a teacher at the Academy named Mizuki?"

She gave a slow nod. "A bit after my time, but yeah, I know of him."

Iruka's eyes darkened. "He proved to be a traitor to the Leaf. He wanted to steal a highly classified jutsu scroll, and he manipulated Naruto into doing it for him. I think he planned to kill Naruto and take the scroll away from the village. Somehow, Naruto actually did steal the scroll…and bless him, he didn't give it up when Mizuki came after him." Iruka's face softened, a hint of pride in his voice. "You should have seen him, Kaiya-chan. He only had that scroll for oh, less than an hour? He figured out the Kagebunshin no Jutsu!"

Kaiya looked at him with wide eyes. "He did that - from a scroll?"

Iruka nodded. "Mizuki attacked him - I was able to shield Naruto, but I couldn't do anything else after that. But Naruto - he did the Shadow Clone jutsu, and he made dozens of clones! I've never seen anything like it - and he couldn't even make one normal one at the Academy!"

Kaiya couldn't wipe the proud smile off her face. "I remember him always having trouble with that one. He never asked me for help, though - he does tend to pick and choose what he wants to try, doesn't he?" Remembering the circumstances Naruto had faced managed to dissolve her smile. "What happened, then? He's okay, right?"

"Yes, Naruto is fine now," Iruka assured her. "He actually beat Mizuki down pretty bad with all those clones - by the time Anbu arrived, they just had to carry the bastard. He's in prison now."

Kaiya sighed in relief. "Good…that's good."

"Kaiya-chan…" Iruka looked a little uncomfortable; his voice lowered. "The Hokage told me…you know about the Kyuubi?"

She nodded. "It was a while ago - five years? Six? Something like that..."

12-year-old Kaiya carefully sifted through files in the previously locked cabinet. The lock hadn't been all that hard to figure out, even with the seal on it - Kaiya absently thought that Konoha administration should really reconsider the formulas they were using. Anyone with a decent knowledge of how those locking seals worked could break these; it's like they weren't even trying!

Finally, she found what she was looking for: the only written record in the village of a terrible tragedy from seven years before. The only way she even knew about the attack was from closely listening to adults when they spoke - always in hushed tones - of the incident that took the village's Fourth Hokage. Piecing together the information she gleaned, Kaiya realized that the timing of the tragedy almost exactly coincided with her arrival at Konoha's orphanage. No one spoke openly about the incident, though, and Kaiya had never been able to find any public records for the fall when she'd lost her family.

Kaiya herself had almost no recollection of her family, having sustained a head injury that affected her memory. She had a name - Fuumaki - but that never turned up any results in the public records, either. Given that the Third Shinobi World War had still been raging at the time, she supposed she could have been a refugee; there would have been fewer records, and if her parents were civilians, well, fewer still. Konoha's records were mostly on the shinobi the village trained. Kaiya's clearest memories now only dated back to when she'd woken up in the hospital, head bandaged and wrist splinted, with bruises all over her body.

Well, that was about to change. She'd found her way into the classified archives in the administrative offices, and Kaiya was determined to find out everything she could about that night, and about what happened to her parents, the Fuumakis. She pulled the file and sat with it on the floor. What had happened that night, anyway?

Her eyes widened as she read the report. A nine-tailed demon fox…hundreds of shinobi and civilians killed…

"Kaiya."

She jumped, closing the file and putting it behind her back - though even she knew that was pointless. The Third Hokage had probably been standing behind her for a few minutes, at least.

Still, Kaiya put on her best, most innocent smile. "Hokage-sama! I was just…" She stopped. She had no excuse, she realized. She was in a classified archive room without permission, after hours, with only a small flashlight to provide light. It was obvious she had broken in.

The Hokage held out his hand. Kaiya sheepishly took the file from behind her back and handed it to him, looking at the floor. She braced herself for a sentencing: would he withdraw her Genin status? Imprison her for breaking in? Banish her from the village?

But he just sighed when he saw the contents of the file. "Come with me."

He led her down the hall to a small meeting room. "Sit." She did. He took the seat across from her. "What were you trying to find out?"

Kaiya looked up at the old man in surprise. There was no admonishment in his features, only gentleness and sympathy. Somehow, that made her feel even more ashamed. Her eyes lowered to the table. "I wanted to find out about my parents - how they died, why I got hurt…" She raised her head again, her expression imploring. "I'm sorry - it's just that there's nothing in the public records, I've checked all of them, and I know something happened around that time, it's when the Fourth Hokage died, but no one talks about it - "

"Kaiya," he held up a hand, cutting her off. Kaiya snapped her mouth shut. "You should not have broken into a classified area. However, I understand your need to know. I will tell you what happened that night, and what I can about your parents."

"He told me about the Kyuubi's attack, and that the Fourth had saved the village by sealing the demon inside a newborn," Kaiya finished. "I figured out it was Naruto because the date - it's his birthday, and it kind of fits with how a lot of people treat him. He wasn't able to say much about my parents, though - just that their bodies had been found in the same collapsed building I'd been pulled from. They were civilians, just in the wrong place at the wrong time." She sighed. "I guess that's why I could never find anything on them - there aren't many shinobi records about civilians unless they were being investigated."

"I'm sorry, Kaiya-chan," Iruka said. "I can't imagine not knowing. I miss my parents, but..." He trailed off without finishing - at least he still had memories of them. No wonder she tried to watch over Naruto and the other kids…like so many of the orphans, Kaiya had no real reference point for her existence.

Time to change the subject, he thought. "So! Isn't this your day off? Why are you going to Hokage's office?"

"I'm bored."

"Eh?! Didn't you just get back from a long mission?"

She smirked, ticking off her fingers. "Well, I already cleaned my apartment, got some groceries, did some training, washed clothes, finished the last scroll I borrowed...I'm kind of out of things to do for the rest of the week. I'm planning on getting some new scrolls from the Hokage's library."

Iruka felt a sweat drop trail down his forehead. The girl had only gotten back the day before, and now it was just after noon. "What are you studying?"

Kaiya smiled brightly. "Sealing techniques! They're so fascinating..." She proceeded to detail the dozens of sealing techniques she'd already researched, the ones she was looking forward to reading up on, the seals she'd successfully mastered so far - he was quickly lost, but smiled and nodded, the teacher in him reluctant to put a stopper on her enthusiasm. She stopped when they reached the mansion and parted ways - she to the library floor, he to the Hokage's office.