Author's Note: All ye who enter here, beware, this is a side fic of "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds" and if you haven't read a decent chunk of that you'll be totally confused. Also, this is NON CANON, for obvious reasons.

London, England, 1934

"London? Seriously, London?" The red headed girl, dressed in strange almost oriental clothing, asked dubiously from a cross-legged position on his bed. The bed that, upon appearing out of nowhere in his room, bleeding onto the hardwood of the floor, she'd decided belonged to her.

Well, she'd also decided his best white shirt, which Tom was expected to wear every Sunday for service, was also hers, as she cut it up into strips and turned it into a makeshift bandage to wrap around her rib cage.

Actually it seemed, whoever this strange girl was, she'd decided everything that Tom owned belonged to her.

And if she hadn't appeared out of thin air, and if she wasn't twirling a short oriental blade between pale fingertips, he'd probably have had more to say about that.

As it was he just mulishly glared at her from the chair he was sitting in, not sure how to process this, that there appeared to be others like, well, him… And apparently her.

"Of all the places in the world to end up it had to be bloody London," the girl muttered, sounding perfectly English at least, posher than any of the other orphans at any rate, but when she'd first glared up at Tom with haunting green eyes, suddenly standing, cornering him, and pressing a blade to his throat, she'd been speaking anything but English.

She seemed content to leave it at that and returned to putting pressure against her wound, which was at least bleeding less than it had been and not soaking his bed through like he'd first expected, given the amount of blood that had been pouring out of her when she'd first appeared. Although, to her credit, if Tom was being generous, then she at least had had the decency to clear her own bloodstains off the floor.

With a wave of her hands she'd made the room look like she'd never arrived in the first place…

She was… He'd thought about what the others might look like, if there were others, he'd thought about his father. He'd always pictured something older, something fey almost, maybe a faerie for that matter. Not one of the dumb fairies from newer tales with princes and princesses but the old kind, the dark haunting kind, the kind that Tam Lin had found herself up against.

He'd never pictured anything like her.

Her vibrant red hair, pulled away from her face in a single pony tail, her startlingly green eyes (a green that was almost unnatural in color, as if things weren't meant to be quite that green), her pale face and skin, and even the shape of her face and the leanness of her limbs, maybe that he'd pictured.

The metal headband though, with a leaf etched into its surface, the wooden platformed sandals with dark socks, the dark sleeveless cotton shirt and the dark fingerless gloves, the short metal throwing knives, and even the short skin-tight absurdly short trousers which revealed more of her pale legs than was decent even if she was only a few years older than him… That he hadn't pictured.

Suddenly, breaking his own silence, still glaring at her and trying to decide whether he loathed her, was fascinated by her, or just plain annoyed, he asked, "What's wrong with London?"

"Everything," the girl responded shortly, almost dismissively, a severe almost tired patience in her green eyes as she stared down at him, "London is a genjutsu that is too lazy to go about the process of fooling anyone. Not to mention it's boring, gray, and filled with civilians. I can't think of anything worse."

"What's a…" Tom paused, tasted the word and repeated it, "genjutsu."

"Illusion," the girl responded, head now turned and glaring out his window, looking severely unimpressed by the view of Wool's courtyard and the grayed brick buildings outside of it. He could hardly blame her though, Tom had been unimpressed by Wool's for years.

He felt himself shifting then, almost, strangely, nervous. Here, here was what he'd been waiting for without really knowing he was waiting for it, here was someone else, someone older, someone like him and… And he'd thought about what he was going to say, of course that was to his father or someone much older than him, someone who'd been looking for him specifically, someone who wanted to hear about all of his triumphs…

This girl was none of that and he had no idea to say to her instead.

"You can… How did you get here? And how did you clean your blood off the floor?" it came out sharp, a demand, a willed demand at that, one that the likes of Mrs. Cole or a head doctor would have no choice but to answer.

As it was she turned to look at him, with raised eyebrows and a slight frown, as if she was trying to decide if she was amused or annoyed at him. Finally, she drawled a single unhelpful foreign word, "Ninjutsu."

"I can do it too!" Tom blurted, face flushing from the sheer humiliation and desire for recognition , "I can… I can make people do what I want, move things without touching them, I can talk to snakes…"

"That's nice," the girl supplied dully before adding, "So can Orochimaru-sama, but you don't hear him bragging."

Flushing horribly, he spat, "It's true! I'm not lying!"

"Well, you have enough chakra for it… And here I thought nobody in England even had chakra," finally the girl seemed to see him clearly for the first time, looked about at his surroundings, then back to him, "Don't tell me England's really this useless with everyone… If you have this much chakra and I have a godlike amount of chakra, there must be others… and you're not an academy student, are you?"

"I go to school!"

That didn't seem to be what she meant though as she hummed a small considering note, "You're bragging about basic genjutsu, against civilians, and the Aqua Man of kekki genkai, (I mean, talking to snakes, come on) you would get the shit kicked out of you in a shinobi academy. And besides, you haven't asked about this."

She tapped her headband twice and gave him a rather meaningful look, one which he could only blink at.

Finally, she said slowly, waiting for some reaction from him, some confirmation, "I'm a Konoha shinobi, on your turf."

Then leaning back, "If you were in an academy, or had any kind of training, you'd have long since started throwing kunai at my injured ass and told me to get off your English lawn."

She sighed then and gave him a rather sympathetic look, "I feel for you, gaki, England sucks."

He was… He didn't think he'd ever been that insulted in his life. He wasn't sure what she'd said, not really, but whatever she was saying it wasn't taking him seriously. He felt himself burning, looked at her pretty, thin, fingers and concentrated on them, intent on breaking them with will alone…

A metal blade whizzed past his ear, grazing his cheek and leaving a thin trail of blood behind.

"Watch it," the girl warned, eyes meeting his, another blade appearing in her hands out of nowhere, while the other had embedded itself in the wall.

Then, she sighed, looking more exhausted than anything else, "Look, I'll only be in your hair for a day, at most. I may have gotten shanked by plant zombies on my last mission, and until this wound heals up, I'm not risking teleporting that kind of a distance, even if I do really have to get back to my team… Minato's going to kill me, wait, no, Jiraiya-sensei's going to kill me, oh my god, the nidaime's totally going to kill me."

"Then you'll just… leave?" Tom asked.

"Did you expect something else?" she asked, looking genuinely flabbergasted, as if she had no idea what else he could possibly want from her.

Fine, he didn't need her anyway, her or her strange words or her ability to summon herself and objects from nowhere. He was obviously better than her anyway, or would be, by the time he was her age. There really was no point throwing pearls before swine…

"Do you want to learn how to tree walk?"

He looked up found her staring at him in exasperation, frustration, but with an open hand extended towards him in clear invitation. Almost against his will he found himself beaming up at her and taking her hand in his.

"So, if you're from this Konoha then how come you know about England?"

She was currently perched sideways on the one tree in the orphanage's yard, barren in the middle of winter, reading the orphanage's worn copy of "A Tale of Two Cities" with that unimpressed expression while Tom did his best to focus his… chakra into his bare feet, so that he could stick to the tree like she did, it was proving harder than it looked.

As shown by him somehow blowing himself halfway across the yard. She had sworn up and down that nobody would pay attention to him, using that genjutsu term again, and that did seem to be true as no one had bothered to look even with the noise of him crashing into the dirt, but if it wasn't true oh he'd make her regret it so badly…

"Too much chakra," she supplied without even looking at him, just flipping another page, and then, "I was born in England, actually, grew up in Surrey."

She then squinted out over the cover of her book, across the street, "Although, I swear, England didn't look like this the last time I was here."

Walking over, sparing her an annoyed glance and trying again, this time willing a little less of his… will or chakra or whatever she wanted to call it, towards his feet, "When was the last time you were here?"

"When I was four, 1984."

This time, he didn't need any help falling down from the tree in a helpless heap, nearly landing on his head, "What? But it's only 1934!"

The girl considered this, "Oh, well, that would explain some things…"

"You mean, you're from the future?!" he asked, gaping up at her, trying to imagine what fifty years from now would even look like.

"I guess, apparently… Feels a little anticlimactic," the girl finally settled on before returning her attention to the book with a shrug, "Oh well, I guess it doesn't really matter.

He balked up at her, craning his head as he tried to get a glimpse of her face from behind the book, "Doesn't matter? But, what's, what's the future like?"

"Gray, boring, and filled with civilians, I told you," the girl explained with a dismissive wave of her hand, "Nothing's really changed, England's still hopelessly England."

He frowned, breathed out and willed himself to try again, to be as… effortless as she herself was. Magic, chakra, the gift, it had always taken effort, well some had come easier than others, some of it by accident even, but she made it look so easy to just defy gravity like that altogether.

And there was the horrifying thought, wiping away the dirt from hos clothing and staring up at her in exhaustion, that perhaps he was mediocre when compared to the others, that perhaps what he'd been so impressed with had been child's play at best…

Gritting his teeth, he willed chakra to his feet once again, searching for that in between state of too much and too little, then carefully placed his first foot against the base of the tree, only to follow it with the other and stand there, at an awkward angle that should have been unsupportable if his feet weren't sticking to the tree…

Ah, there it was.

Wobbling his way up, one step at a time, but feeling the connection between his feet and the tree, he felt a grin building, "So, what's this Konoha like then, is it in Japan?"

"No, Hi no Kuni, actually, you wouldn't have ever heard of it, I never did growing up," the girl put the book to the side then mused, "Although, I did grow up inside of a cupboard, so I'll admit that my information gathering was hardly stellar in those days. Besides, the Dursleys would have loathed everything Konoha stood for, ninjutsu and the Dursleys, well, it didn't mix."

She shook this off as Tom came even with her, now staring down at her, and past her and down the street into London itself, as if he was somehow standing on top of the skyline, a delicious vertigo overtaking him.

"At any rate, Konoha is a hidden village, so everything there is really based upon it being filled with ninja. I mean, there are civilians there and all, and Konoha nin do have a bit of a reputation as being tree huggers but we're still one of the five great villages so screw all of them," the girl said with a wave of her hand as if these other great villages could go and kiss her ass, something he found himself strangely grinning at, or perhaps it was just the feeling of chakra still at the bottom of his feet, standing on this tree next to someone who was like him.

"You're a ninja, then?"

She nodded and pointed again to the headband, "That's what the headband means, for future reference, but genin if we want to be technical… Soon to be chunin, we're taking the exams in a few months."

"Am… Am I a ninja then?" he asked almost cautiously, but she didn't even seem to notice as she stared up at him with those cold green eyes of hers.

"No," she held up a hand before she could protest this, "You have the chakra for it, and you could be very good one day, hell you got tree walking faster than Minato did. But England doesn't have a hidden village, and you're untrained, which means that whatever you end up being it's not going to be a shinobi."

"There aren't… Others, then, here, in London."

But somehow, he already knew her answer before she said it, had felt it with every year that he wasted away inside of this cold and dreary orphanage.

"No, not that I've ever seen."

She looked at him then and grinned, a grin that was filled with more happiness than anyone deserved, and she asked, "Well, since you've apparently mastered tree walking how do you feel about impersonating Jesus?"

She stayed the rest of that day, and that night, coaching him and demonstrating how to walk on top of water, how to have leaves stick to his skin, as well as how to best punch Dennis in the face without hurting his hands.

At the end, near sunrise, they both sat on his bed, his extra Wool's uniform now replacing his blood-stained Sunday shirt as her bandage, staring out the window into the lightening sky in relative silence, her departure immanent.

"It's Tom Riddle, Tom Marvolo Riddle" he said, as golden light peaked over the horizon and the first taste of morning made its way through London, "My name, I mean."

"Eru, Lee Eru," the girl, Lee, replied.

"I've always hated my name though," Tom confessed, "Anyone can be called Tom."

"What would you rather be called?" the girl asked, taking his words in more stride than he'd ever expected from anyone, but then, he'd never met anyone like her.

"I don't know something grander, unique, that everyone would remember and know to fear," swallowing he said, "Something that says, here's someone who can change the world."

"A true revolutionary," Lee said with a soft smile, one that seemed to tear him out from the inside, because no one had ever smiled at him like that, "Lenin then?"

"Lenin, like the Russian?" He wasn't entirely sure he saw the connection, for all that it seemed to make her smile.

"It suits you," she replied distantly, considering his name, and for a moment he considered it too, this strange Soviet name she'd bestowed upon him…

"Or better, Ren, Ren-nin, the lotus ninja," she said letting the name transform itself and roll off her tongue, "The lotus flower is supposed to last an eternity, since it's always blooming, you know."

He smiled weakly back at her and to his horror, as the light began to flood their room, he found tears spilling over from his eyes, "I don't want to stay here."

He was shaking his head now, no his whole body shaking, and the tears came faster as he thought about this day, easily the best if strangest day of his life, and tomorrow she'd be gone and it'd be like she'd never been there in the first place, and everything would go back to the way it was…

"Ren, a shinobi's life…" she stopped, strailed off, calloused fingers wiping tears from his cheek, "It's not always something to envy."

"You will kill, you will fight and battle and protect, and it will last every day of your life," Drawing him close, whispering into his ear, she said, "And these civilian comforts, a life without death hanging overhead, a comfortable bed you can always rely on, these will be gone."

"You did it, didn't you?!" he hissed out, willing the tears to stop, for his hands to stop clenching at her clothing, but his body itself was betraying him.

"I had no reason to stay," Lee said and there was a thread of darkness in those words, something no sane man would dare to touch, "There was nothing for me in England. And Minato, Minato Namikaze was inside of Konoha and I would burn worlds to the ground for his sake."

He drew back, eyes blazing, staring into hers even as the tears rolled down his face, "I can't stay here, Lee."

Then, with shaking hands, reaching up for her face, bringing her forehead against his, "If you leave me here I'll die."

Not now, no, it'd take years, but England, the cold dreary civilian filled world of England would drain the very life and chakra from him until all that was left was a husk of what he should be. A poison, one he could resist only so long, until one day he would be just as bland as Mrs. Cole and all the rest.

A small laugh against the bridge of his nose, that lazy smile, her eyes seemed to be glowing in the half light as she looked at him with such fondness, "Then, you'd better get used to calling me Eru-san."

And there was a great wrenching, a dizzying sensation of vertigo, colors blinding and everywhere and the feeling of rushing through space and time itself, and then…

Then sudden solid ground, the smell of dirt and the sight of a small archaic village, and a blonde boy with a silver gleaming headband shouting her name and running towards her, followed by a rather indistinguishable boy of the same age and three adults, "Lee!"

And Lee was then pulling him up even as she embraced the blonde, rapidly explaining something, pointing to Tom then and motioning to him even as the others came closer and started yelling, one of the white-haired men going so far as to whack her on the backside of the head.

And Tom, even though he didn't understand a word of it, he couldn't help but feel that after eight years, eight years of worthless solitude in Wool's Orphanage, he had finally found his people.

"So, let me get this straight," Jiraiya started as they made camp for the night, looking at Lee with a thoroughly unimpressed expression that was only matched by the nidaime's. Well, Minato didn't look exactly pleased, but more relieved than anything else, Dead Last looked Dead Last-ish as usual, the legendary Tsunade-sama seemed miffed that Lee had stolen her voodoo necklace in order to get her to Konoha (she seemed to have a bit of a complex), and little Ren just looked confused put out and a little miffed that he was confused, "You got stabbed by plant zombies, after wandering off by yourself like a total idiot…"

"Yup," Lee interjected, which, really, she probably wouldn't be trying that again as she really had been outmatched when multiple plant zombie jonin had made their way out of the woodworks, but it wasn't as if she'd died or anything.

"They managed to stab you through the rib cage after you light one of them on fire…"

"Uh huh," Lee nodded in agreement, although Jiraiya had already pointed out the first time that she'd gotten stabbed, he really was just repeating himself at this point.

"Then you teleport, all the way to England, wherever the hell that even is…"

"It's an island," Lee helpfully pointed out.

"Yeah, Lee, very helpful," Jiraiya said, rubbing the bridge of his nose before continuing, "Anyways, you teleport to England, where you find this random ass English kid with bucket loads of chakra and ridiculous chakra control, teach him to water walk in half a day…"

"He's not quite as shinobi Jesus as I am but he's not bad," Lee said with a slight nod towards Ren, who seemed to perk up a bit at the attention, but then slumped once he realized that they weren't about to switch into English.

"The hell is a shinobi Jesus?" Lee heard Tsunade whisper to her great uncle, but such things seemed beneath Senju Tobirama, who only gave a hapless shrug and a resigned shake of his head.

"And then, you apparently decide to kidnap him, and teleport him back to whatever random village in the Land of Fire we happened to make it to if we still weren't stuck in battle with plant zombies!"

"Kidnapping's a strong word," Lee said, eyes flicking to the boy, who really should have been in the middle of his of his academy training, if England had made any sense at all, "He was perfectly willing."

"My ass it's a strong word, Lee-chan," Jiraiya said before waving his hand and commanding, "Look, take him back."

"What, no, no, I'm not taking him back," Lee said before holding up her hands, "I wouldn't inflict England upon anyone."

Seeing Jiraiya's completely unconvinced expression she pointed to Ren almost in desperation, "Besides, he asked me! I even gave him the whole, 'maybe you don't want to be a shinobi because you'll have to kill people and probably end up with a knife in your stomach and civilians will look down on you in moral judgement forever' and he still wanted to go! I am being a good Samaritan here, sensei!"

Jiraiya turned to Minato, "Minato-kun, ask the kid if Lee kidnapped him."

"Uh, sensei, how am I…" Minato started and then asked, "Tactfully?"

But Jiraiya didn't appear to be in the mood of how Minato was supposed to politely ask an eight-year-old English civilian if Lee had kidnapped him. Which, she totally hadn't, if anything she'd been manipulated, hell he'd even threatened suicide on her.

"Right, well," Minato paused, eyes flickered to the English boy and faced him more fully, then desperately trying not to cringe, asked, "Hello, my name's Minato Namikaze and I'm a friend of Lee's. Lee says you're called Ren?"

Ren just raised an impertinent dark eyebrow at Minato.

Lee had thought it earlier, but there was something almost Uchiha in Tom Marvolo Riddle, he almost had their hair, although his was slightly curlier than theirs usually tended to be, the paleness of their skin, the pale striking blue eyes were all his own, but something in the aristocratic look of him, the pride of his every gesture, that was all Uchiha.

Minato seemed to realize that there was no beating around the awkward bush and decided to just get to it, "Yes, well, I know this is going to sound very abrupt but… Did you want to come with Lee? Did she force you to come here or not ask if you wanted to come? I guess what I'm trying to ask is if you wanted to stay in England."

Ren's other eyebrow raised and he turned his attention from Minato to Lee then Jiraiya, then back to Lee, and in plain strangely well-articulated English for an eight-year-old, said, "You can tell your… sensei, that I would rather rot in hell and be eaten by three headed dogs than be dragged back to England."

Jiraiya just raised his eyebrows in response, looked to Minato, who, with some awkwardness said, "I don't think he wants to go back, sensei."

"Yeah, well, what about his parents…"

"He's an orphan," Lee interjected before Jiraiya could even go down the disapproving parents disapprove route he seemed set on, "And he says the matron hates him, the kids hate him, and that I'm the nicest person he's ever met."

"Well that's convenient," the nidaime muttered, eyes landing on the boy, but the boy didn't even bother to look, as if such an action was beneath him.

Jiraiya, naturally, looked flabbergasted by this declaration. Which, Lee had been a little put off by it too, as usually she wasn't described as… nice.

But then, judging by what she saw, he wasn't much better off than she was in a cupboard. He just had the pleasure of having a slightly larger cupboard. If Orochimaru had shown up inside of her cupboard miraculously and even gave her an ounce of attention she probably would have followed him to the ends of the earth.

And what a sad life that would have been.

"Does he even know what it means to be a shinobi, Lee?!" Jiraiya finally shouted, but Lee just leaned forward, more than certain that she had already won this argument, as Ren was already firmly on her side.

And at the end of things, that was what truly mattered.

"Enough," Lee said, "And he'll learn, he'll go to the academy and he'll figure it out quickly enough, he's not stupid, sensei."

No, Ren was anything but stupid, even as young as eight his eyes practically burned with intelligence, it really was a pity he'd been born English because he probably would have made decent company at the academy. Well… And if he hadn't been four years younger than her.

"He only speaks English, he's not going to the academy any time soon," Jiraiya pointed out.

"Good, more time to learn then," Lee said before adding, "I don't see the problem here, I'm getting Konoha another excellent ninja… With blood limits."

"Blood limits?" the nidaime asked.

"He uh… talks to snakes, I guess," Lee said, almost cringing, and Ren had been so proud too, ridiculously proud when, clearly, he'd never seen Aqua Man in action.

"That's… an interesting blood limit," the nidaime finally said after a moment of silence, "He didn't mean summons, did he?"

"No way, Oro's got that contract and his clan has had that contract for generations, not that it's much of a clan anymore but..." Jiraiya started, twisting to look at the nidaime incredulously.

"No, I think he meant actual snakes," Lee interrupted, still cringing on Ren's behalf, because watch him go bragging to the Uchiha clan, 'Oh yeah, you've got death-eyes, well I can talk to snakes, bitch', "Yeah, it's… kind of lame."

"I don't know, that could be useful," Minato mused, "I'm sure it's an excellent way to gather intelligence and send messages, maybe even poison someone if he can convince a snake to do his bidding."

"Minato, he's two steps away from being a fairy princess who summons her animal friends when she's in distress," Lee pointed out, causing Minato to flush and cringe slightly as even he failed to save Ren from embarrassment, "It's super lame."

Ren had the fortune of being perfectly oblivious about this conversation, but even without knowing the language, he seemed to know when it was revolving around him, and unfavorably at that as he glared down at the dirt and seemed to resist the urge to fidget.

"At any rate, he's coming with us to Konoha and he's getting registered as a citizen," Lee said, "End of discussion."

"Lee-chan, I think I decide when we're done discussing things," Jiraiya pointed out, "But fine, whatever, we take him into Konoha and put him through processing and then you and Minato get to deal with him on a daily basis."

"What, us?" Minato asked, eyebrows raising.

"Do you know anyone else fluent in English?" Jiraiya asked, "Besides, Lee's the only person he really knows right now, if we're really integrating him then she's the one who's going to have to play tour guide."

"People on tours don't usually move in with their tour guides," Lee groused, not that she didn't like the kid, but she'd sort of been looking forward to going home and doing the usual ramen thing, not getting stabbed by plants, and well, just not being on duty.

"Yeah, well, you should have thought about that before you kidnapped him." And then Jiraiya decided it was time to sleep, rolling onto his back and nodding at the nidaime to take the first watch, not even twitching as Lee shouted, "I did not kidnap him!"

And that seemed to be that, well, at least she'd gotten him in. Looking at the kid in question she said, "You'd better get some sleep, Ren, we start early tomorrow… Also, when we get into Konoha, after T&I makes sure you're not an assassin sent to slit our throats, you're living with me and Minato… It'll be great."

She didn't give the dumbfounded Ren a chance to answer as she too rolled onto her back, and finally, after far too many sleepless hours, she too, embraced oblivion.

Tom found himself standing, a pair of hands on his shoulders, one hand from Lee and the other from Minato, outside of a rather plain looking apartment. He was still clutching his new papers, given to him after older men had asked him questions with Minato Namikaze to play translator, as a blonde older man had stared eerily deeply into Tom's eyes, in a strangely penetrating way, that Tom couldn't help but wonder if the man had somehow seen Tom's very soul.

The papers declared him as Ren, written with a single unfamiliar character that almost looked Chinese, with his dazed picture (taken just outside of that white room) clipped to the front. And there wasn't a hint of Tom Marvolo Riddle in any of it and… And he didn't think he wanted there to be any.

"Well, this is it," Lee announced with that overeager yet strangely shallow grin that she seemed to wear quite often, "Me and Minato's bachelor pad."

"Is it really a bachelor pad, Lee?" Minato asked, looking at her with something like resigned embarrassment, before he looked down at Ren and explained, "Lee and I have lived here ever since we graduated from the academy. We also lived together in the orphanage."

"You're orphans?" he asked to which they both nodded, Lee as if this was matter of fact, and Minato with a slight hesitance.

"Car wreck back in England," Lee explained with a shrug, "Lived with my aunt, uncle, and cousin until I was four and went to Konoha's orphanage."

"Bandits," Minato said softly, "It was a long time ago now."

Minato Namikaze, Lee had mentioned him, when she'd taken him from England, and Tom wasn't quite sure what to make of him. He dressed like Lee, in a way, he wore white and blue mostly instead of the darker colors she seemed to prefer, but he had the same headband and those same platformed sandals with dark socks. He was blonde though, with pale blue eyes almost like Tom's, but even with all that he still looked almost Asian, something about the almond shape of his eyes and the rest of his features…

He was, softer, than Lee, that wasn't really the word for it but he couldn't come up with another one. He hadn't met anyone like Minato Namikaze at the orphanage either, but then, there'd been no one like anyone at the orphanage. He was beginning to understand what Lee had meant by it being an illusion, because compared to the people he met here, none of them seemed to stick out to him.

"Right, well, let's get this show on the road," Lee said and without further ado, opened the door to reveal a small, but well-kept apartment. Tom stepped in, gazing about, eyes landing on the sofa and a great black box resting in front of it…

"Oh, right, you didn't have that in 1934," Lee commented, "That's television, it's a gift from the gods."

"Wait, he's from where?" Minato asked as he shut the door behind them.

"When, Minato, Ren's from fifty years in the past, well, England's past." Lee said before musing, "Jesus, you haven't even been through the second world war yet… Nazi references will be totally lost on you."

"Fifty years in the past?!" Minato spluttered, making Tom feel slightly better, because apparently Lee really was this blasé about everything.

Lee didn't even seem to notice as she pointed into the kitchen, "That's the refrigerator, it keeps food cold so it spoils slower, it's also a gift from the gods. And that's the microwave, it cooks food ridiculously quickly using science, it's also a gift from the gods. And that's the stove… Pretty sure you have those in 1934."

"Lee, you never said you traveled in time and…" Minato was clutching at his golden hair, an extremely vibrant yellow almost the color of sunshine, and appeared to be having some sort of mild panic attack.

"English time, Minato, I'm pretty sure we're not on the same plane of existence, or something."

"That doesn't even make any sense!"

"Does it have to? I mean, the universe doesn't try to make sense any other time, does it?" Lee asked, but more rhetorically than anything else, as if this was a familiar argument that she was saying for the sake of saying, "I mean, I'm just going to chalk this up to another clear and undeniable sign that the universe is a patchy genjutsu in the process of falling to pieces."

Minato then responded rapidly in the other language, and Lee switched into it right along with him, and neither seemed to pay him much attention at all.

Tom moved past them, looking down at a round table without chairs, much lower than any table he'd ever seen, at a height where he could sit on the floor, on the small cushions beside it. He stepped past it and towards the window, staring out to see three faces carved into the mountainside, one looking like one of the white haired men, the smaller one, who'd travelled with them on the way back… Tobirama Senju, the honorable second, Lee had called him.

A hand fell on his shoulder, "You alright, Ren?"

He looked up to find Minato staring down at him, looking at him like… Not as if he didn't know, didn't know exactly the kind of freak Tom Riddle was, but with a soft sort of smile that had been in the vein of what Lee had worn when she looked at him.

Then he found himself glowering, he didn't need these people's pity, he knocked off Minato's hand watching as the boy blinked at him in confusion, "I'm fine."

"You just looked a little preoccupied," Minato noted before looking out the window with him, "That's the hokage monument, by the way, all of those men up there at one point or another have been the leader of the village."

"Hokage, you mean?" Tom asked.

"The shadow of fire," Minato responded, before pointing, "The first is Hashirama Senju, the second who you met is his younger brother Tobirama Senju, and the third and our current hokage is Hiruzen Sarutobi."

Then, an idiot's cheerful smile, "My dream is to become hokage one day."

Tom felt himself staring dully back, sneering, and repeating Lee's own dismissive words that she'd launched at him when they'd first met, "That's nice."

Something sharp entered Minato's eyes then, something that gave Tom slight pause, but it faded as fast as it came and Minato's smile shifted into something sly and almost amused, "Yes, it's a very nice dream, I think at any rate."

Tom's eyebrows raised slightly, Minato inclining his head, that smug smile just growing as Tom began to see red (and if he was in England he would break this boy's fingers and…)

And a throwing knife, out of nowhere, whizzed past his ear again and cut once again across his face, embedding itself into the wood paneling of the window.

"I thought I told you to watch it," Lee said, "Jesus Christ, if you were taller and a bit more lethal I'd take your killing intent seriously, but in the body of an untrained civilian it's just kind of sad, Ren."

"Lee," Minato said chidingly, shaking his head, as if not at all concerned that that thing had almost embedded itself in Tom's skull, "he's just gotten here don't be…"

"If he thinks you're soft he will walk all over you and he will not appreciate you kicking the shit out of him to show him who's boss," Lee said even as she yanked her knife from the wall and repaired the hole with a mere wave of her hand. Then, eyes landing on Tom, giving him a truly unimpressed expression, she said, "You're not in the land of civilians anymore, try to break people's fingers, and you will probably die. Save that shit for the enemy nin… Or spars."

Minato cringed but then sighed and said, "Look, Ren, Lee has… a point. If you start using jutsus in public, with comrades, they'll take it as a signal that you're ready for them to dish out jutsus of equal strength. That's not a fight you're ready to win right now."

Tom felt himself flush, tried to tamper it down, and shouted, "What would you know?!"

"You just got here," Lee pointed out dully, which only somehow added to the boiling of Tom's blood, because he'd never, never been this underestimated, and if he had then they'd always regretted it and he'd shown them…

"I have powers I have… jutsus too!" He then turned to Minato, focused his will, "Stand on one leg."

Minato's eyes dulled for a moment, he looked down at Tom as if considering, a dull look crossing his face, then just as suddenly he crossed his arms and shouted, "Kai!"

And Tom, faster than he could even see, was backhanded by Lee, "Minato's off limits, harass Dead Last if you must win some territorial pissing contest."

Dazed, he stared at the floor for a moment, blinking and trying to figure out what happened and how she'd even moved so fast, but also trying to sort his emotions and…

"Lee!" Minato said, looking appalled, "He's just lost everything he's ever known, left his home, no one here even speaks his language…"

"You didn't see me going sending everyone into genjutsus for the hell of it when I got here," Lee said, hands now casually entering her pockets and looking down at Tom with… With exasperation of all things.

As if he was some mildly irritating pest that she was being coerced into dealing with.

"You did exactly that!" Minato shouted, "You've been doing that for years!"

Lee for a moment looked stunned, large eyes blinking, then said, "…That was for far more legitimate reasons. Uzumaki insulted your honor."

"And this?" Minato said, motioning to Tom.

"He also insulted your honor," Lee said, "Besides, better to sort this out now then have the entire village beating him up for being an arrogant civilian born upstart."

Minato, along with Tom, seemed to be wordless, even as Lee seemed to think nothing of it as she said, "Right, anyways, over there's the bedroom, and that's the bookshelf filled with a bunch of English stuff… Add to it if I've missed anything I guess. And that's the apartment, it's great."

Then Lee announced, "And now, I'm tired… I'm going to go take a nap, you two go bond or something."

And with that, she walked into the bedroom, shutting the door behind her, leaving Minato and Tom, Tom with a red hand print still across his face, to stare at each other.

"So, Ren, do you want to go get ramen?"

The boy, Ren, stared at the ramen as if he wasn't quite sure what to do with it. Then again, he'd been staring at everything as if he wasn't quite sure what to do with it. He was still wearing his foreign, English, civilian clothing… It looked much different than Lee's had, hers had been far more colorful, her shoe bulkier. This boy was dressed in gray, in what looked like some kind of uniform, his shoes thinner and almost worn through in some places.

Yet there was still an English, a Lee-like, look to him. In the texture of his hair, the shape of his eyes and nose, and maybe even his eye color itself, that cold and sharp blue that was paler than even Minato's.

"Don't mind Lee," Minato said, "She sometimes has no tact at all, and she means well, most of the time."

"She slapped me," Ren noted dully, not particularly hurt by this, but instead sort of stunned, as he'd been stunned the entire walk from the apartment. Like, not that he was surprised that Lee had slapped him (well, he was), but that she'd been capable of touching him like that.

But, well, Minato had seen her point. The boy was good, especially for being untrained, and even seemed to have some of the talents that Minato had always assumed were Lee's and Lee's alone… But he'd been a big fish in a small pond, and it'd become clear that he'd expected both Lee, then Minato when Lee had proved indomitable, to fall in line and let him reign like a king.

And one of these days, if he kept that up, he was going to piss off someone who had no compunctions leaving him in a crater.

"Wherever you come from," Minato started slowly, trying to find the words to express himself even as he started, "You were the best and brightest, weren't you?"

The boy's eyes widened but otherwise his expression didn't betray him, all the same Minato calmly added, "Anyone who challenged you or got in your way was easily dealt with, either by genjutsu or ninjutsu, and even adults didn't have much authority over you I imagine. You were in a village comprised of civilians… You are no longer inside that village."

Minato folded his hands, "I was the second best in my class by a mile, and only second best because Lee was in my class, and you picked a fight with me. More, after witnessing Lee teleporting, an easily S-ranked ability that spells the death of ninja who have been training for decades, you picked a fight with her. And you did it for no real reason, but rather, to assert authority you don't have in a place you're completely unfamiliar with. Lee was trying to stop you before you got yourself killed."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Ren said petulantly into his ramen, stabbing at it with his chopsticks, appearing to be just as unfamiliar with the utensils as Lee had once been (though, in Lee's defense, she'd picked up the use of them absurdly quickly).

"Not everyone is as nice as me, or Lee, for that matter. If you go pissing off Orochimaru, you'll probably find yourself in the hospital or a shallow grave," he paused then and considered the flushing Ren, "Shinobi are, we're warriors, Ren, we've been trained to fight since the age of six and sometimes to kill. Fighting us head on, just to try and prove you're better than us, it's not a smart idea."

Minato waited for the boy to turn to him, but it took a painfully long time until Ren finally met his eyes, "A shinobi, a smart shinobi, listens, and he waits. He analyzes his situation, he gathers intelligence, and he prepares himself for battle only after assessing his own strengths and weaknesses and the strengths and weaknesses of the enemy. And he recognizes that it will not be his own village that will stab him in the back."

"Then who will, stab me in the back, that is?" The boy asked.

"Kumo, Iwa, Suna on a bad day, Kiri, nuke nin, take your pick," Minato said waving his hands as if to illuminate the countless enemies of Konoha, "Don't worry, there will be plenty of violence, and plenty of chances to gain renown in your own right. That's your dream, isn't it? Recognition?"

The boy's eyes flew wide open, and it was almost funny, how Ren thought he was hard to read.

"I've always been good at that sort of stuff," Minato said with an easy smile, "Now, you should eat the rest of that ramen, because honestly, I'm kind of tired too. We can get started on teaching you something other than English tomorrow."

The boy nodded, quickly finished his noodles and hopped down from the table leaving Minato to pay the bill (not quite willing to hold debt over Orochimaru's head as eagerly as Lee was). Before they could head back though, Minato noted, almost casually, "By the way, Ren, if you try to gut me in my sleep I will kill you."

And with that out of the way, they were off once again, back to the apartment, and the same apartment that Lee's stray Ren would now get to call home.

Ren, being one of three English speakers in the village, and as far as the nidaime was concerned the only reliable native speaker they had, had been put to task along with Minato and Lee on translating Lee's rather unwieldly collection of English books and translated screenplays for pittance D-rank pay.

Of course, Ren seemed to be flabbergasted he was getting paid for anything at all, even something as simple as flipping through a bunch of Lee's old journals. Especially since he, only having been in Konoha a few weeks and barely managing to get himself through present tense conversation without sound like a half-wit, was still illiterate and could barely write his name and thus was being paid to, 'get up to speed' before Minato and Lee were dragged off on permanent D-rank duty to come up with some English curriculum.

Since England was now a patented thing, as it had produced both her and Ren, even if they were fifty years apart.

(Tobirama Senju seemed utterly convinced that there was some secret hidden English village that operated on totally different means and goals than Konoha's, to which Lee cried out bullshit, because what kind of a stupid village would let not only Ren get poached by enemy nin but also Lee herself.

Still, the nidaime hadn't been convinced by that argument, and thus, English lessons.)

"Blade Runner… I haven't heard of half of these," Ren said, blinking at the book Lee had just set aside, now moving on to translating 'Total Recall' into something a shinobi would probably find utterly horrifying (the idea of having been placed under genjutsu, as an enemy nin, and not being able to tell whether you were a double agent and which side you were truly on, was far more pressing to a shinobi than it was to a civilian).

"Bit beyond your time," Lee said, reaching for a stick of pockey as she opened to the first page and began to choose her words to recreate the opening dream of Mars.

Ren blinked at that, then returned to his own paper, his name written over and over again in wobbly and then slightly less wobbly calligraphy.

Lee had to give him credit, he worked quickly, not quite as alarmingly fast as she had picked up everything, if she thought about it, but he was far from slow. However, this thought slipped from her as she continued, Minato working on his translation of 'Lord of the Flies', and they continued like this until Ren interrupted them again.

"Mrs. Cole would be horrified by ninja, I think," Ren mused, and it was musing, not really accusatory in any fashion but more than an idle thought.

"Mrs. Cole is a civilian," Lee responded, glancing up from her work briefly to meet his eyes, "Civilians in general squeeze themselves into moral knots when it comes to ninja."

"You kill people," Ren said, and here, Minato's pen stalled as well and for a moment there was a tense silence among the three of them.

"Shinobi walk in the shadow of death," Lee said slowly, "Those kunai aren't for show, Ren."

"Mrs. Cole thought I was a demon because she thought that I hurt people sometimes," Ren added, "But I never killed anyone."

"You had entirely too much free time on your hands in that orphanage," Minato muttered, before rubbing a hand through his hair and breathing out and looking at Lee, stating in his own native tongue, "I wonder if Orochimaru-sama was anything like that when he was younger."

(Well, they did both love snakes…)

Ren's eyes narrowed, and, as usual, he had the nerve to look insulted (he really was incredibly touchy), "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that it's sad that you beat up civilians for fun," Lee said, and as usual, when Lee bluntly told it like it was, Ren flushed beat red with embarrassment (which, really, he should have known better, because that was apparently exactly what he'd been doing for years).

"I don't beat up…"

"No, you didn't even do that," Lee said as she eyed him, "Your taijutsu's nonexistent, you used paltry genjutsu tricks and limited ninjutsu, to beat up civilians for fun."

"It was not for fun!"

"Then why?" Lee asked, in all seriousness, taking Ren in piece by piece and dismantling him and trying to see the truth of him, "What could you possibly gain from punching a bunch of civilians with what amounts to parlor tricks? Surely, it wasn't respect."

Lee, in her days with the Dursleys, had never gone out of her way to torment Dudley though she could have swatted him like a fly. There had been no point, Dudley wasn't even a person, his opinion less than inconsequential, to waste her time on him was to humor the absurdity of the universe itself.

Apparently, judging by the way Ren was gritting his teeth, it was respect, which, well, that was maybe even sadder.

"Regardless," Minato cut in before Ren's volatile ninjutsu could set the kitchen on fire accidentally again (as he'd already done three times since moving in), "You're going to have to get yourself some new hobbies."

"Why?" Ren asked, now the accusing glint of steel in his eyes, "I thought that's what shinobi did, hurt people."

"In Konoha, we believe in shinobi existing to protect our comrades and the village," Lee said with a shrug, "Sometimes that means hurting people, usually other village's ninja, other times it doesn't, it all depends. Either way, you really need to get over this incessant need to prove yourself king of the hill."

The last time Lee had pointed this out, Ren had tried to set her shoes on fire, in retaliation, she'd kicked him so hard he'd flown through the drywall of their apartment. Ren, while prideful to a fault, apparently was not stupid enough to try again. So, instead, settled for moody glaring and practicing his calligraphy with an almost demonic diligence, leaving both Minato and Lee to stare at him with raised eyebrows.

"You know, Lee, I always wanted a younger sibling," Minato commented as he stared across at Ren, "But I'd hoped for one that wasn't an emotional wreck of a sociopath."

Lee paused, tilting her head, "Can sociopaths be emotional wrecks?"

With a rather resigned look as he stared down at Ren, Minato cast her an exhausted smile, and said, "Judging by our little roommate and friend, yes, I think they can."

"When am I going to this academy anyways?" Ren asked, breaking into Lee and Minato's conversation, the look on his face saying he was perfectly aware they were gossiping about him again.

"When you can write more than just your name," Lee said, "Which, given the speed at which you're going, I'd say next year."

"And they'll teach me everything you know?" he asked, and there was the eagerness in his eyes, that almost alarming eagerness which he'd directed towards Lee when she first crash landed in his room (well, when he hadn't looked murderous, frustrated, or almost pitifully sad).

"The academy three," Lee said, "And you'll probably get a chance to pick up a little bit of whatever you have some talent in, if that's what you mean. I honestly wasn't paying that much attention at the time, you'll have to ask Minato."

"Why weren't you paying attention?" Ren cut in before Minato could even open his mouth, which was rather typical of Ren, actually.

"Because I am the god of ninjutsu," Lee said with a wave of her hand, as if this was inconsequential, which it was in the sense that anybody who was anybody already knew this. Lee's ninjutsu was nothing to be sneered at by anyone.

"You'll do fine," Minato finally said, "And don't worry, you'll learn plenty, besides if you pass your academy exams and become a genin, then you can be placed on a team and learn under a jonin sensei, like Jiraiya-sensei for us."

"But you're taking the chunin exams soon," Ren said, as if repeating information heard a while back.

"In a few months," Minato responded, "And sometimes, if a genin shows potential after that, they're placed under a jonin as an apprentice to learn more practiced craft."

"And then, one day, you take your jonin exams."

"Not everyone does," Lee said with a wave of her hand, "There are lots of genin who never pass their chunin exams, plenty of career chunin, and actually fairly few jonin especially if you're not including the specialized jonin."

"But you both plan to," Ren pointed out, and for a moment Lee and Minato just looked at each other, and blankly considered a world where either Namikaze Minato or Eru Lee somehow wouldn't end up jonin, and both ended up laughing hysterically.

"Good god, Ren," Lee finally said, wiping her eyes after she'd calmed down, "Sometimes you just slay me."

It wasn't like the orphanage.

Tom didn't know how long it took for that to really sink in, he'd though he'd known at first but… But it was nothing like the orphanage.

He found himself dumbly sitting by himself at the ramen booth, escorted oddly enough by the nidaime of all people (who sometimes made it a habit of visiting the apartment, usually to harass Lee or Minato into getting translations done or working on that English curriculum, but sometimes apparently just to visit Tom, or Ren, as everyone called him).

Everything was different, at first he'd thought he could count on some things being the same, or things being different only at the surface, but the people themselves were different. Lee was a complete mystery, raw power in human form that seemed sometimes only vaguely amused by humanity's antics and the inconsistency of her world, and Minato…

Sometimes he loathed Namikaze Minato, for reasons that weren't entirely clear even to himself.

Actually, it was clear, it'd just taken him months to even admit it to himself. Minato was better than he was. He was older, more compelling, more experienced, closer friends with Lee, and maybe even smarter than Tom was. And there was this ease with which he approached things, everything, that Tom just didn't have anymore.

And everything Tom had prided himself in, his…. His ninjutsu parlor tricks! They were all counted as worthless here, cute little talents to amuse and frighten civilians at will, but useless in his untrained hands.

To Lee, even to Minato, probably to the entire village, Tom was just like a moody little crying Billy Stubbs after realizing that his rabbit wasn't as invincible as he thought it was. And Tom hated that.

"So, Ren-san, Minato and Lee say you've been progressing in our language."

Tom looked up to find the nidaime looking speculatively down at him, with those alarming red eyes, that seemed somehow both cold and hot at the same time.

"Yes, sir," Tom responded carefully, and for a moment, Tom swore he saw the man's lips twitch almost in amusement.

"You've probably realized why I've asked you here today, even when team seven is on another one of their horrifying C-ranked missions," the nidaime said, this last part like it was some sort of ironic joke.

Tom tried to keep his face impassive, although, he'd learned quickly enough that his tells were quite loud to ninja, even genin, and even if he kept his face still something gave him away every single time.

With a raised eyebrow at Tom's confusion, the nidaime said, "As you may have realized, Lee is a somewhat… fallible resource when it comes to information on her home country."

"You want to hear about England," Tom finished for him, then winced, realizing at once that it was entirely too informal for someone like the second honorable shadow of fire. However, Senju Tobirama hardly seemed to mind, seemed a little amused if anything.

"In due time, you probably aren't ready to answer all the questions I have yet," he said, "Instead I wanted to ask you something that maybe you can answer, or attempt to find the words to. A strange, blood soaked girl, who threatens you with a knife to your throat, enters your room claiming to be a warrior from a land you've never heard of. There you are, an English boy, with English prospects, and yet you choose to throw it all away and instead take this girl's hand and follow her into a life that many would describe as being filled with pain and suffering. Why?"

Because he hated England, as Lee hated England he too hated England, he'd taken her own hatred and contempt and burned it into his own so that their thoughts on the place almost matched entirely…

But no, it was more than that, he realized the nidaime wasn't asking him if he hated England or not, but instead, why did he come here. He could have gone anywhere, in theory, on leaving the orphanage he could have gone anywhere in the world. So why come here? Why decide to become a ninja?

"I… I want to become a ninja," he started, "I want to be trained and…"

And he thought of Lee and even Minato, their easy smiles in the apartment, the way meaning seemed infused into their very lives and the unwitting glow that surrounded them, and the unwavering certainty that theirs was a life worth living.

"I want to protect something," he paused, looked the nidaime straight in the eye, "I want to protect Konoha."

"Interesting response," the nidaime mused, "Although, you forgot terms like 'precious people' or 'the will of fire', but still, you know, I think the academy will make a Konoha shinobi of you yet, Ren."

"I'll remember that for next time," Ren responded with a grin, the kind that would have had Mrs. Cole reaching for the belt, but just had the nidaime offering him a somewhat amused smile in response.

And there would be a next time, he'd crawl his way to the top here, surpass Namikaze Minato himself, perhaps even Eru Lee while he was at it, and he'd be the best damn ninja Konoha had ever seen.

He guaranteed it.

London, England, 1936

"Oh, goddammit!"

Fifteen-year-old Namikaze Minato, fourteen-year-old Eru Lee, fifteen-year-old Uzumaki Kushina, and eleven-year-old Ren collapsed onto the floor after having been hurtled through time and space itself as Lee, once again, started bleeding out even as Kushina, Minato, and Ren picked themselves up off the floor.

"I hate plant zombies!" Lee cried out, clutching at her ribcage in a scene that was painfully reminiscent to Ren, and one he could have lived without seeing given that this was his first mission as a chunin on a the overly powered, if younger, fuinjutsu specialist team.

"I hate plant zombies so damn much!" Lee cried out again, cursing as she poured chakra into the wound in an attempt to heal it (although, how this was even possible, when Ren had studied medical jutsu diligently and it went against everything he'd ever been taught, was anyone's guess).

"Minato, I am sick and tired of this plant zombie apocalypse!" Lee insisted, finally breathing out as Ren reached over and took over for her.

"I'll be sure to tell the plant zombies that the next time we run into them," Minato noted rather drily, "And that I don't appreciate them interrupting while Uzumaki and I are tampering with highly volatile seals."

"Yeah, guys that's all great, I hate zombie plants too, but I think we've got company."

Everyone turned at Kushina's words and found themselves blinking at a middle aged auburn-haired man in a hideously English, canary yellow suit, looking at them in complete and utter bewilderment.

For a moment, none of them said anything, Ren instead took this moment to inspect their surroundings and then found himself paling as it began to look eerily familiar.

Lee spared Ren a glanced, raised eyebrows, "Don't tell me we're in…"

"Wool's orphanage," Tom finished for her.

"…Shit," Lee surmised, and for once, he actually agreed with her understatement of the century.

Well, none of them quite knew what to say after that. Or at least, not until the man held out the letter, towards Ren, and asked in clear English, "You wouldn't happen to be a Mr. Tom Marvolo Riddle, would you?"

Ren blinked, blinked again, then slowly, "Why do you ask?"

And a… a spark entered the man's eyes then, a tiny twinkle of blue, and he said, "Well, I have a letter addressed to a Mr. Tom Marvolo Riddle, inviting him to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

There were no words, he felt his eyes turn, almost unwillingly towards Lee, who was mouthing a single word back at him as if this was the only explanation he needed, "Genjutsu."

Only this time, he was halfway inclined to believe her.

But he had a bit more tact than that, if only a little, as he lamely responded, "You don't say?"

"Would you like to see it?" the man asked, and here Ren paused, the man was… not a civilian yet a civilian at the same time, his stance was that of an aging man, but there was more than enough undisguised chakra in him to be wary of.

"You read it," Ren said instead, fingers shifting in front of him slightly, readying to begin hand seals at the slightest moment. The man, though, merely opened the letter, with enough warranted caution when facing four high ranking ninja, and began to read the most absurd thing Ren had ever heard in his life.

To the point where all four of them, Uzumaki more than proficient enough in English to understand the gist, were staring at the man in utter bewildered confusion, as Ren, a chunin of Konohagakure, was offered enrollment into England's shinobi academy for sorcerers.

And then appeared to be legitimately waiting for some sort of an answer on Ren's end, eyeing the blood dripping from Lee, the dark red stains on all of their clothing, and the weapons at their belt with a clear wariness…

"I'm bleeding too much to deal with this bullshit. I vote we force the nidaime to handle this," Lee said, finally, when the silence had just stretched on too long for anyone to bear.

"Yeah, I second that decision," Uzumaki responded, "You object, flakey bastard?"

Minato's eyes narrowed at Uzumaki but then shrugged, "Well, these aren't ideal circumstances anyways, and we're hardly a team of diplomats."

And with that, and a wild grin, Lee summoned the letter from the English shinobi's grasp and offered him a wave, "Unfortunately, it seems we'll have to consult our superiors before impressionable Ren-kun here can make any sort of decision, so, until then, ta."

(And Albus Dumbledore was left standing in an empty room, the blood on the floor the only hint that these four strangers had ever existed.)

Author's Note: Written for the 400th review of "The Unwinding Golden Thread" by Fireabovefirebelow who asked for a story where Tom Riddle is found early on by Konoha and trained to become a shinobi. So we have this.

Thanks to readers, reviews are most appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Harry Potter