Tragedy struck 20 years ago with the horrid death of a promising young shinobi during the sand-sound invasion. Now, a reluctant missing nin is asked by the village he had forsaken to lead them through into the uncertain future. Will he throw off their claims of his obligations and keep what he has grown as his own, or embark on the righteous path to lead these people out of the growing darkness?

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, but it's not like it matters. You can get FREE Naruto just about anywhere, be it manga scans or full-length episodes. So, whoever DOES own Naruto either doesn't care, or is stupid enough to not notice ANYTHING that happens ANYWHERE.

Author's Note: Well, I'm writing this because I want to prove to myself that I can write a long story and commit to it until the end. While I'm fairly confident in my plot development and character development skills, the action scenes may seem a little tenuous until I've got the hang of writing them. But, hey, there's no better teacher than experience, so the more I write, hopefully the better it gets. In here, you won't really have to worry about grammar so much. Both my beta and I are grammar sharks, and we both have quick enough minds so that if I screw up enough, hopefully one of us will notice in time to fix it.

You won't find much Japanese in this one. I find it tedious when I read too much in a fanfic I'm reading, but I'm not entirely sure what too much is, so, better safe than sorry. The only Japanese you should be finding in here is the bloodline names--even techniques, I'm just going to use english names, because it's easier (though not as pretty) to create new techniques with.

EDIT: I'm seperating different scenes by having them start highlighted in bold. I can't, for some reason, put dividers in. I've tried editing the document here on FFnet, tried re-uploading chapters with dividers in, and nothing seems to work. So, this is what you get. Flashbacks will be marked as such, also.

Well, now that that's out of the way...ON WITH THE SHOW!

The Lives We Leave Behind

Chapter 1

Twittering birds sang to welcome the new day to a vast expanse spread out from the newly budding trees. Shadow still shrouded a peaceful scene, but a warm glow and clear sky brought promises of a beautiful day to come on dawn's heels. A two story house made of a newer style made from mud dried in blocks and built up stood a ways away from a dull red barn that showed its age by the pealing paint and chipped wood that belied a tough construction job. All around these buildings lay empty fields which were mostly lined from all the plowing that had gone on in the past days, and which would be put to good use over the coming months to food to feed his family and the nearby townspeople. The only movement was the pecking of chickens in their pen, and a lone mule trudging along the fields with a man pushing a plow in its wake.

"Meeeeerr!" The mule grunted, trudging along with the plow in its wake. A laugh followed from the man behind it, who seemed to be adding his not inconsiderable strength to the chore. On closer look, anyone watching would have commented on the likely but ridiculous notion that he seemed to be doing more to the plowing effort than his mule, but that would make any onlooker shake his head and smirk at the idiocy of such a thought. The man stood, at most, 5' 10" tall, and look like he could barely lift more than three sacks of grain for his fields.

"Come now. It's early. Don't give up yet, unlike that good for nothing son of mine," He raised his voice towards the end, turning his face to catch a younger, similar looking boy of no more than ten relaxing aside the fence holding in the chickens. At the sound of his father's voice, the youth jumped in surprise, quickly vaulting over the fence to tend to the animals, his long blond hair trailing in the wind. The father turned back to the field he and the mule were plowing and shook his head, though his bright blue eyes shown with mirth. What was he supposed to do with that boy?

"Woah, there." The mule stopped, and the man walked around and unhooked the plow from the mule. He patted the mule's nose, then grabbed his reins and lead it back to the farmhouse where it could rest for the night. The mule snorted, and the man laughed as if from an old joke. "Now, now, Daichi does nothing all day, and we've been up for more than two hours. I reckon we can take the rest of the morning off and finish up after lunch what with all the work we've done already."

He led the mule into the barn, and shut the barn doors with a creak and a slam. Walking back up the path towards his home, the man turned to watch as the sun threw a myriad of colors through the sky as it rose to greet the new day. He took off his cap and wiped the sweat from his brow, then turned to go back to the shed on the side of the barn for the grain to be planted when movement caught his attention out of the corner of his eye. He turned quickly and frowned when he saw nothing, then turned back shaking his head in resignation. He opened the door with a creak and immediately took note of the clack of pans and sizzle of food cooking over an open stove. He inhaled the fragrant aromas and felt his mouth water in anticipation. Slowly, he stepped out of his work boots and down the hall, tiptoeing over the boards he knew creaked and through the doorway, into the usual morning scene of his wife cooking over the stove with a well-worn apron tied around her slender waist. He snuck up behind her, and was ready to pounce when a spoon came flying from his side and struck him in the head.

He groaned from the floor as giggles came both from the four year old culprit sitting at the table he hadn't seen and his wife, Isaribi, standing over him smirking. "Still such a sneaker that you can't sense Hitome hiding in wait for you to turn the corner? You ought to be ashamed of yourself!"

The man quickly recovered and pulled his wife down on top of him, and with a startled gasp and a squeal from his infant daughter he attacker her mercilessly with tickles until she collapsed begging for him to stop while laughing uncontrollably. He brought her around until they were face to face as she breathed hard from the onslaught of tickles until he planted a kiss full on her lips. She returned it and for a couple of moments they shared in a passionate embrace until they heard a tentative cough from the doorway. Turning away from each other, they both blushed as their nine-year-old son stood there giving them his patented, you'd-never-catch-me-doing-something-that-disgusting, look. His mother stood up, blushing, and turned back to finish breakfast, while his father stood quickly, scratched the back of his head and gave his son a silly grin. His son rolled his eyes and turned to the kitchen table, hiding his own grin, where his sister blew him a raspberry, gurgled and threw another spoon at him. He pulled back a chair and the spoon hit it, before clattering noisily to the floor.

Hitome laughed and clapped her hands when Daichi made a silly face at her while he sat at the table and pushed his chair in. His dad pulled out the chair across from him and gave him a wink. Quickly, his mom brought breakfast to the table and took a seat across from his sister and in between him and his dad, who quickly piled food onto his plate and started to feed Hitome from it, who continued to giggle at him as he made funny faces while feeding her.

Isaribi turned to her son, "After school today, your father's going to pick you up and take you for a checkup."

Daichi groaned. "Aw, mom, Nariko, Washi and I were going to hang out after school today."

His mother fixed him with a baleful stare. "I told you about this last week, so you have no excuse. Be outside when your father picks you up, or else." Her eyes hung on him as he sank woefully down in his seat.

His father's lips twitched, hiding the mirth from his face as he spoke in a flat tone, "Listen to your mother, Daichi. Three thirty sharp, you hear?"

"Yes, sir." He sat sullenly. "May I be excused?"

His mother rolled her eyes at his half-empty plate. "Are you sure you don't want any more?"

As she finished, a blob of food came flying from his right and went splat on his plate. Daichi glanced at his mom out of the corner of his eye and drawled, "Well, I dunno. What do you think?" in a sarcastic tone of voice.

Isaribi pursed her lips and stared at him as he got up and ran to his room to prepare for school. She sighed as a smirk appeared on her husband's face. She threw a spoon at him and he fell off his chair in faked agony, and she and her daughter shared a laugh at this. "You're too easy on that boy, Naruto."

Daichi let the door to the house slam behind him as he left for the day. He was very upset; he had wanted to try out in that tournament. Sure, he hadn't learned any taijutsu since he was a little child, but he had practiced what little his father had taught him almost every day. He would wake up extra early to practice, and do so for hours on end. The only reason why he hadn't been found out was slightly confusing to him. Some days, he would leave the woods where he trained most mornings to take a shower and would pass by his dad. His dad would glance at him once and look away, going back to do whatever he was doing that day. Daichi often wondered why his father would not even ask what he was doing; he suspected that he knew, though why he wouldn't tell his mom was something that Daichi simply counted himself lucky for.

He walked past his father on the way to his school before he called for him to stop. Daichi turned back and waited for his father to catch up. He had shaved his head after breakfast, an odd ritual he performed every time he needed to go into town. His mother was always exasperated when she saw that he had done it again; she loved his short, spiky blond hair. "You don't really have a doctor's appointment later."

Daichi blinked and fixed his dad with a confused stare. "What? Then what did you tell mom that for?"

His dad's face filled with another of his infamous grins, and he leaned in, motioning for Daichi to do the same. "You didn't think that I wouldn't know about you entering in that taijutsu tournament in town, did you?"

Daichi froze. How could he have known about that? Daichi had been especially careful to not let anything slip, what with his parents being so overprotective. What would happen now? Would his parents punish him for signing up for this? He shrunk away from his father in anticipation of something...well, something not good.

All of a sudden, his father let out a great bark of laughter, causing him to jump in surprise. His father laughed again at the look on his face, one showing his surprise, and kept laughing for a few moments, before stopping and wiping a few tears from his eyes. "Oh, come on, Daichi. I've seen you practicing, and while you've..." He paused, then sighed and shook his head, "Well, you've done what you could. Anyway, I've decided to teach you a bit of something today. Go put your books in the shed, and I'll show you a little something." His grin was back on his face, and Daichi was hard pressed to match it. His dad smiled wistfully as he watched his son run with rare enthusiasm, to be quickly replaced with the weight of memories long buried. He shook his head to free him of the images brought to him. Today, he was going to teach his son the basics of one of the lesser known taijutsu styles in the world.

Daichi breathed in and out in a very deliberate way, trying to hide his nervousness. There must have been close to a hundred people out there, around the ring where he was going to fight. He could see his dad, up in the third row of the small stadium, the overhead lights gleaming off his shaved head. He sat next to a couple of other farmers from around their farm, all talking about this and that and laughing, enjoying themselves. What he was most nervous about was disappointing his dad; what if he wasn't good enough to fight with the simple taijutsu he knew? Daichi tried and failed to swallow down the lump that had been growing in his throat in anticipation of this match.

Despite his nervousness, though, he felt an overwhelming sense of calm coming from the back of his mind. It flowed through him, telling him not to worry, that he would do fine, and somehow, despite the fact that it was almost like a voice speaking to him in his mind, he wasn't afraid of it. He could feel it there, a comforting presence, and it soothed him.

He was jolted back to reality by the announcer signaling the start of the next match. His face set, his mind calm, Daichi stepped into the arena and into the fighter's circle.

The first match was against a boy roughly a head taller than him at 5'8", and who must've outweighed him by about 30 pounds of muscle. To think that he was, at most, twelve years old, would have thrown most fighters into fits of hysteria. He had small, dark eyes and a pug nose, and he was giving Daichi a smug grin of superiority with a condescending look as he cracked his knuckles in a fist. His shirtless upper torso showed signs of what sort of powerful body-building regiment he put himself through every day--it was obvious that no boy could get muscles like that by simple farm work. Daichi, by comparison, wore a sleeveless white shirt that did nothing to flatter his physique, although if you look closer than the people in the stands could see you would find wiry muscles pulled taught, rather than a body that radiated raw strength. The smaller body was one best suited for speed.

While this was obvious to Naruto, who had himself seen more than enough evidence that wiry frames held more potential than well-muscled ones, most of the people watching were acting as if this was already decided.

"Jeez, who'd let a runt like that into a tournament like this? He's gonna get pounded by that kid!" A man in front of him exclaimed. Naruto only smirked and folded his arms over his chest.

"I wouldn't count my son out of anything just yet. He knows how to fight."

The man in front of him turned around, astonishment on his face. "That's YOUR kid out there! Jeez, what sort of parent are you? That's Toriyaku Amichi out there! His entire family has always dominated this tournament!" He shook his head and turned back to the ring, where the referee was giving the fighters their final instructions. Daichi's dad just chuckled and shook his head.

"Fight three of round one! Daichi versus Amichi! To knockout or surrender! BEGIN!" The referee chopped his arm down in between the two fighters, then leaped back to his position out of the ring. The two fighters began circling each other, Amichi smirking and look predatory towards Daichi, who kept a blank expression on his face. It would have been expected of anyone, now, when going up against a mammoth such as Amichi, that in the mind of any opponent would be found terror and panic. In Daichi's mind, however, there was only that ever present feeling of calm that had descended upon him before the match. He felt no fear, and the only thing going through his head was a calculating series of taijutsu techniques he would use to take out his opponent.

It was at this moment, as Daichi was coming to a conclusion on how he wanted to fight this fight, that Amichi decided to try intimidation. "Well, well, well, who do we have here? You look like you're barely out of the crib! What's the big idea, having someone enter you into this tournament?" He faked forward, expecting Daichi to cower in fear, or at least flinch, but Daichi surprised him by ducking down and throwing his fist into Amichi's gut. Amichi stumbled back, anger showing on his features, as Daichi continued to circle, no emotion showing on his face. "What...you punk! I'm gonna kill you! You're gonna regret ever showing your face here!" He started breathing heavily, then rushed forward with an enraged cry.

The calm sensation suddenly turned to ice cold fury in Daichi's mind. Kill him? No. Daichi evaded an incoming punch thrown by Amichi and swept his feet out. The look of surprise on his face didn't last long as, before Amichi struck the ground, Daichi swung full around and gave him a kick under his jaw that sent him bouncing into the expensive seats, knocked out cold.

No one in the arena could believe that such a small kid could defeat that favorite to win the match. The sat in awe of what they just saw, or thought they saw, as he was moving so fast that some of his moves seemed to be blurred. The only one in the stands who wasn't in awe was Daichi's dad, who, a grin once again splitting his face, gave a bark of laughter, then clapped and cheered for his son. That seemed to snap everyone else out of it and like one they all stood and cheered for the underdog.

Daichi seemed to snap out of the state he was in and notice that everyone around him was clapping and cheering in a fervor the like of which he'd never seen. He stood, mouth agape, at everything around him; he remembered the feeling he had when he was fighting, all of his petty insecurities and worries vanishing with the feeling from the back of his mind, the intense calm that seemed to take hold, allowing him to use his taijutsu quickly and efficiently without hesitation. It felt great!

Naruto caught the look of excitement on his son's face, and when their eyes met, they each shared wide, face-splitting grins with each other.

Four fights later, Daichi was set to fight the championship fight. He had had breaks in between each fight where his dad would come down and exclaim energetically all about the last fight, and succeeded in making them seem like extravagant bouts of skill and style beyond the short length they usually were. Each time, when his dad would return to the seats, he'd be sitting a little closer to the ring.

His opponent had excelled through the tournament much the same as Daichi had, with lightning fast moves and powerful techniques. Both Daichi and his dad were attentive, though only Naruto knew that this fight would most likely expand past the parameters of the ring, unlike the previous fights. He gave a mental shrug; he'd deal with any of that sort of nonsense himself if it came to it. The opponent was a few inches taller than Daichi's own 5'3", and built much the same, thin but strong arms and legs. He had short brown hair and pale green eyes, wore a green vest over a fishnet-style shirt, and dark green cargo shorts, and an attitude of reluctance and resignation.

"Jeez. What a waste of time, this is. I didn't even want to be in this tournament."

Daichi's dad, who was sitting in the front row this time, heard this and snorted in amusement.

Daichi said nothing as the calm settled over his mind again, only this time it came with a sense of anticipation, as if it could tell that something interesting was going to happen in this fight. He settled into his stance, only to notice that his opponent seemed to be in a much similar one. Daichi would normally question this, but under his fighter's calm, he merely accepted how this match would be very interesting.

The referee stepped up and looked at each contender for a brief moment. "Final Round. Daichi vs. Nara Hoji. Knockout or surrender. Ready...fight!" And with a chop of his arm, the fight was on.

Unlike previous fights, where he would wait for his opponent to make a move, Daichi drove into the other fighter immediately, some part of his mind recognizing that this fight was more between fighters on an equal level. He threw his right fist forward, which the Nara batted away and quickly threw his own at Daichi's head to reciprocate. Daichi managed to dodge to his right, twisting and launching a kick at his opponent in one smooth movement. The young Nara brought his forearms to bear the most of the impact, but there was no pause in Daichi's onslaught. Daichi landed after the block and lunged forward, throwing punches and the occasional kick at him, forcing the Nara into focusing his attention on blocking and dodging, although he couldn't block all of Daichi's punches. A few got through to land glancing blows on his opponent's body, and a miscalculation by the Nara almost caused Daichi to land a solid punch to his nose. He dodged the majority of the hit, but was cuffed on the chin and landed hard on his back. Daichi paused in his fight, his emotionless mask waiting for him to get up.

His opponent sighed, rubbing his chin and rolling his eyes at his situation. It figures, Hoji thought, that I would get stuck with this job. But while no one on my team excels in any particular aspect of hand to hand combat, at least the others have good observational skills. He sighed, propping himself up on his elbows and glowering at Daichi, who still stood waiting with his face an emotionless mask. No, it wasn't really a mask; the Nara could sense that there was no real thought going through the mind of his opponent--Daichi, he remembered. Hoji sighed again, standing back up slowly, a resigned look on his face. This is all so...troublesome. He didn't have any time to think much, after that, forced to rely on his instincts to avoid getting pummeled.

In the shadows of the topmost row of seats in the little arena, three figures crouched out of view under the cover of a mild genjutsu--not a serious one, but one that tricks a person's mind to ignore where the genjutsu was placed. It wasn't a very powerful genjutsu, especially when you considered the number of ninja in Konoha with bloodline limits that helped them see through it, or at the very least tell them that there was a genjutsu there. However, in a small town with no ninja population, it was more than enough to guarantee that whatever it was placed under would go unnoticed.

Underneath this genjutsu, the tallest of the three watched the fight progress. She didn't do more than brush back a lock of shocking pink hair behind her ear as her student was knocked onto the ground; he was a ninja, though only of genin rank, and he could take such a mild blow, though she was bound to hear twice as much complaining about it later. She turned to one of her other students who had veins protruding from around his pale, pupilless eyes. "Tell me what you see."

The student answered without turning his gaze, it maintaining a studious appearance, but there was a notable feeling of awe in his voice as he spoke, "I don't think that I've ever seen any chakra system like this. I've watched fights between hundreds of ninja, from genin to jounin, and I've developed my Byakuugan enough to see the pathways that chakra travels. However, I've never seen anything like this. It's like--I don't know, but I think that there's more than one chakra system in his body. I know it sounds ridiculous--"

"It's not ridiculous. If that's what you see, then that's what's there. Continue."

He gave a nod and continued speaking. "Well, if I have it right, then one of them is filled with circulating blue chakra, which is completely normal. However, this second system...I don't understand. It's red."

"Red? You mean filled with red chakra?" His sensei's voice was tense, even though she showed no tension on the outside of her body. Neither of her students showed any visible reaction, but both of their minds were reeling; in their two years under her tutelage, their sensei never showed any emotion except when in a life or death situation, which was fairly rare, even on C or B level missions.

"Yes. This chakra system is separate, but seems to mirror the blue chakra system. However, it appears that this system is more closely integrated with the lower, animal brain functions than the higher ones, like the blue chakra. And he's been accessing both of them in his fighting in all of his matches so far."

His sensei nodded her head stiffly, as though she had suspected something like this. "Thank you, Hishinoi. You may stop if you wish. We have completed the parameters of our mission. As soon as Hoji is finished, we will head back for Konoha."

Her students' eyes met, and the one that had remained silent throughout spoke in a quiet voice just above a whisper, "Why did you have Hoji fight if Hishinoi could see the red chakra from the start?"

Their teacher hesitated before answering this time, "Reports we have are that a former ninja of Konoha was able to access similar red chakra only when confronted with times of great stress. We weren't sure of what we may see if these moments of great stress never took place, so Hoji was inserted to attempt to force this...Daichi into a stressful situation to try and draw this red chakra out. However, if it is already circulating normally, then it was irrelevant to have him enter the tournament, something which he'll be sure to let me know for a while." The last bit was said in a sarcastic tone, which caused both of her students to smirk.

Daichi stood still in his stance as he watched Hoji stand up. He knew deep down that there was something missing from his opponent's fighting, a lack of serious desire to fight, and it annoyed him. It almost took the fun out of fighting; thankfully, fighting was its own reward. He lunged forward once again to strike, only to have his latest punch swiftly blocked and countered. He took a glancing blow to his shoulder and grabbed Hoji's arm at the wrist before he could retract it. He pulled and twisted it, feel the muscles and tendons underneath the skin strain against the unnatural way of moving. Hoji grunted and spun with his wrist, twisting away from Daichi and landing away from him, holding his injured wrist lightly in his other hand. His left eyebrow twitched in annoyance. How troublesome. And even more troublesome that I'm starting to think like my dad. Mom would flip out. A sudden smirk lit his face at the thought of his angry blond mother standing over his lazy dad and shouting things at him while he ignored her; it would likely be very disturbing if he didn't know that they loved each other so much.

The crowd was, at this point, cheering enthusiastically, with cries of "You show that punk kid, Daichi!" and "How did he DO that!" being the most commonly heard of all the shouting around the arena. None of the villagers or outlying farmers had ever seen any sort of fight like this before, but Daichi's dad simply stood still, silently watching his son fight with a smirk on his face. He watched as Daichi grabbed the kid's wrist and twisted, and applauded when Hoji went with it to minimize the damage to his arm. He knew who would win the fight, but Naruto was already preparing himself for what would happen later.

Daichi burst at his opponent before he cold recover from his last attack, thrusting his elbow into Hoji's gut. Hoji's eyes went wide before he was flung a good ten feet from Daichi, where he landed in a heap and did not get up. A groan was heard from the boy, and the referee went over, looked at him for a long second, and declared, "Hoji is unable to continue! Winner of the fight is DAICHI!"

The crowd roared its approval, with Daichi's dad leading the applause and laughing heartily. Daichi turned to see him clapping, and, a grin splitting his own face, threw his arms up in victory. "YEAH! Dad! Did you see me? I nailed him! Just like you showed me!"

As the referee grabbed Daichi's arm and held it up high in a victor's salute, the crowd's yells cascaded over him. What made his day was that his dad was there to see him, and with everyone around him cheering, he allowed himself to be carried off in style.

Daichi was grinning as he and his father trudged down the dirt path that lead to their farm. He couldn't help but notice the pride on his father's face as he turned to grin down at him. Daichi's dad put his arm around his shoulders and laughed. "I'm so proud of you! You did great out there. Tell me about how you felt." Daichi was too happy to notice that his father's eyes were a little tense, despite his warm smile and relaxed attitude.

"It was amazing! Before the first fight, I was really nervous, but then I just felt this calm coming form the back of my mind and...well, I didn't worry about anything anymore!" His smile was lopsided as he remembered the feeling of fighting, being in complete control of himself and showing that he was better than all the rest. "It was like, everything I felt bad about just disappeared while I was fighting all those kids. And when I fought that last guy, It was like I knew that it would be a different kind of fight, almost like it being some sort of instinct, and it was fun!" They shared a laugh then, although he noticed that his dad hadn't put his all into it. "Is there...is there something wrong, dad? Did I do something wrong?" He looked guiltily up at his dad, whose surprised gaze was directed down at his son.

Naruto laughed, though it was more reserved than his usually barks of laughter. He sighed, and brought a hand up to rub at his eyes wearily, the wrinkles underneath them crinkling, the only signs of his age Daichi could see. He turned his head to their right, away from Daichi, and appeared to be looking intently into the woods on the side of the road. He turned his head to look at Daichi, meeting his worried eyes with contemplative ones of his own, and seemed to come to a decision right then. He pulled from his pocket what looked like a knife, though one that Daichi had never seen used on the farm. Then, suddenly and quickly, faster than Daichi could follow, he flung the knife into the trees. Daichi expected to hear the thunk of the knife hitting a tree, but instead was shocked to hear a clank of metal against metal. What had his dad thrown the knife at? "Dad...what're you--what's going on?"

His dad had turned to face the direction he had thrown the knife into, standing tall with an aura of power about him that made Daichi's breathe catch in his throat. The man who was his father had changed in the few seconds from when he had thrown the knife. Before him stood a man with the calm visage of a warrior; the feel of barely suppressed killing intent irradiated from him, enough to scare the wits from any normal person. Daichi paled in fear for who his father had become; gone was the strict but kind demeanor, and here stood ready a fighter--no, a killer, who Daichi had never known.

Moments passed before four blurs dropped in front of Daichi and his dad, eliciting a gasp from Daichi. They solidified into four people, three slightly older than him and one about his Dad's age, and he recognized one as the one he had fought in the last round of the tournament, only this time sporting an odd headband the same as the others in the group wore. It featured a metal plate with a spiral design resembling a leaf which caused his dad to tense quickly before relaxing. He still stood like the four ninja did--which was obvious by their speedy entrance--prepared for a fight if need be, but he no longer seemed to be holding back a desire to kill them. Daichi let out a breathe he hadn't realized he'd been holding when it didn't seem like there'd be any sort of fight. He took this as an opportunity to study the ninja.

To the right of the one he had fought, Hoji, stood a boy slightly shorter than him, wearing a white shirt with several pockets built in and matching shorts. Around his left leg was strapped a small satchel, while his right leg and arm were wrapped in bandages. He sported open toed sandals that went up to his ankles, an odd look that all four of them shared. What really made him stand out were his eyes, which under long, violet bangs were not only an odd pale, nearly white hue, but contained no real pupils. Daichi gulped at the look of concentrated anger adorning his face, which gave the impression that on the drop of a pin he would consider it a privilege to tear someone limb from limb.

Standing to the left and slightly behind Hoji stood a girl with long black hair wrapped tightly in a bun. Her face resembled Hoji's enough that Daichi considered that they might be related in some way. Her dark chocolate eyes stared into Daichi's, giving him the impression that he was being examined like a piece of meat, and that she was somehow satisfied by what she saw. She wore a similar vest as her lazy teammate, over a sleeveless black shirt with matching shorts revealing slim, well-muscled legs wrapped entirely in bandages. Daichi wasn't sure if this meant anything past some sort of bizarre fashion statement, as it didn't seem that she had any injuries that handicapped her noticeably.

In front of the three stood the stoic form of who must have been their teacher. She wasn't very tall, only about 5'6" (slightly shorter than his dad), wearing a forest green vest with many pockets over a fishnet-style t-shirt (not doing well in hiding the ample chest--Daichi blushed briefly here and quickly moved on in his examination) and a short skirt revealing well-toned legs. What was captivating about her, though, wasn't immediately apparent, as while her face was certainly attractive, the look was somewhat ruined by chin-length hair, in a bright--no, shocking was more appropriate-pink. This made Daichi stop his examination of them short and simply stare in morbid fascination at how blindingly pink her hair was--wasn't there some sort of rule against ninja having hair this so...obviously pink!

"It's been a while, Naruto," the woman spoke, and here through her voice he realized suddenly what was so captivating about her after all. It wasn't her look that drew the eye, it was the way she conducted herself, as though she was extremely powerful and knew how to use that power in the most efficient way to achieve what she wanted. He stared at her eyes, which had softened somewhat from what he had initially seen upon their arrival. She was staring into his dad's eyes, who was meeting her gaze with his own stony mask.

Naruto stood still for several moments through an uncomfortable silence. In the next instant, a massive grin split his face, though if you looked into his eyes you would see a stony calm permeating through his mind, and the swirl of something unimaginable just underneath the surface. "It has been, Sakura! I haven't seen you in, what, how long?" His voice was jovial, hiding his distaste for the circumstances of their reunion. Only someone who knew Naruto would notice the forced feelings behind the words; those being both Daichi and Sakura. She looked a little downcast at what she noticed as him being upset at her arrival.

"Almost sixteen years now, I think. That's about how long since I've last seen you. And we never really talked since four years before that, before you left, after--"

"And I'm most glad that you've decided, now, to say hi! I really am! It's fantastic. You must have just been passing by and seen me, and wanted to stop and reminisce about the good old times! Well, let me start." Naruto paused for a moment. "Well, wasn't that fun? I guess you'd better be going, then?" he suggested, as his grin remained icily in place, an obvious mask of the darker emotions brought to the surface by seeing this woman. She flinched at his response, obviously because she could sense his true emotions hiding under the surface. "Now that you're here, and you said hi, you can go! Don't you feel so much better?" His grin stretched so that his eyes closed and the skin around them crinkled. His fists clenched tightly, and his arms started shaking slightly from his anger. Daichi took a tentative step back, and the kids behind the pink haired woman did the same, getting into slight fighting postures. Naruto noticed Daichi's uneasiness and relaxed slightly, dropping his grin and turning his head to meet Daichi's eyes. "No? Still want to talk? Fine, I'm a reasonable man. Daichi, go home and tell your mother that we'll be having four ninja for dinner. She'll understand. I'll be back with them soon."

Daichi stood still for a few moments, trying to comprehend the complete 180 his father had taken. He kept his eyes meeting with his dad's, a little afraid, as he hadn't ever seen him this angry before. Then, he turned and ran back down the trail towards his house. What...just happened?

Naruto watched until he couldn't see Daichi through the dim light cast by the setting sun, then turned back, his mask gone, anger showing through. A frown set on his face, and it was then that the four ninja noticed that three lines had shown up on his face, in an imitation of whisker marks. He faced them without moving for almost a whole minute, staring into Sakura's eyes, her meeting his gaze unflinchingly, her own face a mask of stony calm, the only emotion showing through a glimmer in her eyes. He turned suddenly, facing the path that his son had disappeared down. "Now then. Let's get going. The sooner we get there, the sooner you can leave."

Sakura flinched at his harsh words, then nodded to his back and motioned for her students to follow behind her. Naruto started down the path with the other four a short distance behind him.

End Chapter 1

Questions? Comments? Complaints? Just so you know, I won't be taking a lot of time explaining my reasoning behind what I do. Many of the questions on 'why did you do this?' or 'why does so-and-so act this way?' are either already answered or will be later. If there's a particularly good question that I think needs to be addressed, then I will, otherwise, just try and think back to previous chapters.

Most of my updates will probably be around 8-10 pages long (as I understand it, this chapter is something around 6000 words). Updates every week or two, or something. I am a college student, you know, and I have about 2 months left of college.

DarkSov