A change in scenery

Intermezzo – Open your eyes

Anko have had a very strange time during the last few months, a good strange kind of time but strange nonetheless.

When news of the return of her old master and his supposed plan for an invasion had reach her, she was expecting to be put under surveillance or something similar, after all the council had made perfectly clear how much (or how little) they trusted her.

However she hadn't taken into account the blond brat that had barged into her life and refused to leave (not that she really wanted him to leave). The first time she met him, she had been torn between murdering him in a very painful way, taking him to the hospital because she was sure that there was something wrong with his head or letting her curiosity get the best of her, in the end the offer of dango convinced her to give the brat a chance thinking she could always get rid of him later, that was before she figured out how stubborn the brat could be.

Naruto was one of the strangest persons she had ever met, and having been a student to the snake-sannin that was saying something.

Having never met the blond previously she had nothing to base her opinion but the rumors she had heard, obviously she didn't think he was the Kyuubi reborn or any other of the stupid theories she had heard, but she did though he was supposed to be a loudmouthed idiot, with little common sense and desperate for any kind of attention.

Which was half-truth, he was a loudmouthed brat and as far as she could tell he didn't have much common sense (or at least he didn't use it too often), but contrary to popular belief he didn't care much for other people attention, he was close to a genius and he was a ninja prodigy.

She knew that, given her own experiences, she shouldn't put much stock into what people said but since meeting Naruto she had dropped even lower her opinion of the general public, here was a kid that could practically absorb knowledge like a sponge, who learnt new jutsu quicker than she could taught them, who never complaint (at least not seriously), never became arrogant and who always worked hard and never give up, and no one (besides Gai) had bother to give him the time of the day because they had this strange conviction that he was supposed to be a demon reborn.

After Naruto had decided to adopt her as his big sister (never mind her own opinion), she was again forced to review her opinions on certain things, first she had become part of this strange group of people who Naruto had collected as friends, teachers or simply family in various degrees, the fact that this group included everything from academy students to elite jounin didn't really surprised her as much as the fact that none of them seem to care much for her supposed reputation, of course given that it was Naruto who had united them that shouldn't have been as much as a shock as it was.

However she had also come to lose some of the respect she held for certain people, after hearing about Naruto's childhood, seeing him training and learning exactly who his mother was, she couldn't see the Hokage the same way she always did, sure the man was a genius shinobi and in many ways a great leader, but he had made so many mistakes regarding her little brother that she could no longer think of him in the same way she used to do but she still respected the man and knew that he only did what he thought best.

The same could not be said about Kakashi, she had never thought much of him as a man (given his many disturbing habits particularly his constant reading of that perverted book in public) but she had respected him as a ninja and as a warrior, that all changed when she saw his treatment of his so called team and especially of her little brother. At first she hadn't given it much of thought about why was Naruto training with her instead of with his own team, but after learning he was also training with Gai (and on his own) she decided to investigate what was going on.

After learning who was Naruto's Jounin instructor she had been even more confused, after all, why did he needed her to teach him jutsu when his sensei was known to know over a 1000 jutsu? So she did some spying and realized some things: the first was that Naruto always send a shadow clone (or a few) to team meetings and as far as she could tell no one seemed to notice it, in the beginning she wasn't sure of what to think since this was obviously a serious breach of conduct, however after paying attention to how the team interacted she realized why the blond did this in the first place, and she couldn't honestly say she wouldn't have done the same in the situation, in the end who would want to spent his days doing chores, being yelled, ignored and insulted when you could be training (or doing anything else for that matter). So, no she didn't blamed the brat for doing what he did, she blamed Kakashi for making it a necessity and the more she saw the more her respect for the man dropped, however there wasn't much she could do (except letting all of Naruto's other teachers know what was going on) so she just focused her attention on her little brother and dismissed Kakashi as unimportant.

By the time the chunin exams came rolling around she had learnt more secrets of the village that what she even knew existed in the first place, and she, along with almost everybody else that was close to Naruto, was willing to do everything in her power to help him become a chunin, there were many reasons for this, the fact that he was being pursuit by a bunch of dangerous missing-nin, that his team sucked, that he was way above genin level, that the village could use him as a chunin or even as a Jounin, that they could get away with teaching him stuff more easily (as well as telling him stuff they shouldn't) if he had a higher rank and some other technicalities that would made their lives easier.

Either way she wasn't particularly surprised when he passed the first test without any problem, she wasn't even that surprised when she noticed he was half sleep and she was willing to bet he had been sleep for the better part of the test, she was completely unsurprised when she saw how exited he was about her test and she even remain unimpressed when Ibiki told her about the warnings he had written in his test instead of answering it, and when she heard about Orochimaru along with being angry with the snake bastard she also had this nagging suspicion that Naruto had found a way of becoming involved with the man, so she wasn't particularly shocked when she found her favorite blond brat fighting with the snake-teme.

She had been scared when the snake-teme use her cursed seal to incapacitate her, especially since she knew that Naruto would do anything to protect her (including getting himself killed), she had been relieved when Gai's brats decided to come and help and was extremely grateful when Naruto had managed to make the seal stop whatever the hell it was doing, and she was kind of gland when the brat told her he already had the scrolls and would go to the tower soon (she noticed the other brats seemed surprised but she decided to ignore it) and she was very glad when he arrived at the tower a few hours later without a scratch on.

After that the rest of the second exams had been conventional, if you ignored Naruto's suspicions about the sand team and his increasing concern about that Kabuto guy, anyway the second test and the preliminaries weren't particularly astounding and she had been happily celebrating and therefor completely shocked when she was asked by an ANBU to report to the Hokage's office immediately.

She was even more astonished when she noticed everyone else in the Hokage's office, particularly certain blond brat who looked like he was trying to come up with an excuse to leave the room, she wasn't startled when she heard how Naruto had rescued Hayate, however she was stunned when she heard about the coming invasion by her old master, and she was only saved of drowning in her depressing and murderous thoughts by certain blonde brat trying to escape from the room, something she wasn't willing to permit, partially since he was the one who dropped all this in their heads and in part because this was the perfect opportunity to force Naruto to share some of his secrets.

So she forced him to share most of which he knew and suspected (never mind that he had already told her all about it) and wasn't in the least surprised when he ended up planning must of their response to the possible invasion.

After that meeting she had been incredibly busy since she was one of the few people in the village who knew exactly what was going on, and everyone expected her to lead a good amount of Konoha's forces during the invasion, which really surprised her since she hadn't thought they would trust her that much, additionally she was also helping to train the genin (except Sakura and the Uchiha brat but she didn't really care about them too much), training herself and helping with tactical meetings since she was one of the very few left that could at least try to guess what the snake-teme was most likely to do with any degree of certainty.

Also about half way through the month, Naruto and Jiraiya had come to tell her that they thought they could reseal her cursed hicky and even if they couldn't completely remove it (yet), they could at least make it so that the snake-teme couldn't use it to incapacitate her, she had readily agreed and they performed a complex sealing process that, left her unconscious for a couple of days and would, hopefully, render the technique of the snake-teme useless.

Now the month was up, the finals were at long last starting and, even with everything else that was going on, she couldn't help but laugh at the effect that Naruto's look was having on the general public and especially on the female part of the audience.

Jiraiya was having a confusing month, an informative, exiting and busy month but more confusing than anything else.

It all started when he had come to Konoha to deliver some sensitive information, check how his godson was doing and do a little 'research'. He had been busy with his work (spying on the hot springs) when he suddenly found himself holding a tearful blond who kept saying how much he missed him along with everyone else, and honestly just the fact that this was his godson kept him from beating the blond into a bloody pulp.

Afterwards the blond tried to play innocent, it wasn't until later that Jiraiya realized that almost anyone else would have been fooled by the stupid act, but Jiraiya managed to force the information out of him, or more like told him he didn't have any other choice and was lucky enough to catch the brat in a bad moment and was, therefor, forced to endure hours of hearing the blond rant and complain while trying to process one of the more incredible stories he had heard.

At first he hadn't known what to think, he was inclined to assume the blond brat had finally snapped, however he seemed to know many things he shouldn't and a few Jiraiya didn't even knew so he decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, the problem was that the more he heard and saw the harder it was to remind himself the story couldn't be real. In the end, after the meeting with the Hokage and hearing the blond brat who was supposed to be the dead last of his class and a social outcast, handling the whole situation like an experienced jounin and more impressive as an experienced commander and tactician, where it was made plainly obvious that the brat was used to planning in advance and having his orders followed, and where it was also glaringly obvious he considered himself at least an equal to everyone in the room, he just couldn't convince himself that the story wasn't true, so he had given up and accepted that this was his godson from a different world. Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction.

That night (after teasing the brat about his so called plan of staying a genin) he had gone to bed but not to sleep, his brain was far too busy trying to come to grips with everything he had heard.

First it was the obvious fact that there was more to the Kyuubi attack than anyone realize, after all his godson was right: one time could be attributed to bad luck, but twice…well that was something he needed to investigate, however his main concern wasn't necessarily the attack but the consequences of said attack.

From Naruto's remarks he realized that the Konoha of the other world was far more powerful than their Konoha, this could be easily explained in some cases but not so much in others.

The other Konoha had the 'yellow flash' as their leader, not that Sarutobi-sensei wasn't a good leader, but he was tired and he simply didn't have the energy he once did, while Minato was young, powerful and full of energy, so it was easy to understand why the other Konoha seemed to have a stronger attitude, the other Konoha still had the Uchiha clan, which was surprising and confusing, he had been sure that Itachi had lost it and nothing anyone did could change that, but apparently (according to his godson) Itachi was, in fact, one of the stronger Jounin of the village and more importantly one of the more loyal.

Kakashi, Tsunade and even himself, were fairly easy to understand, apparently the loss of the yondaime affected them more than they thought, Naruto had said as much during his rant, seemingly they simply were weaker than their counterparts, but there other things that he simply didn't get.

According to Naruto most of the people his age were weaker than he remembered them, and also with worst personalities but that wasn't so important, even the Uchiha brat who was supposed to be the strongest of his class was supposed to already be a chunin from what Naruto said, so what had changed?

However what worried him more was Naruto, not necessarily this Naruto since he seemed to be doing well, but the other one, he had always loved his godson but after seeing his father sacrifice himself he just wasn't up to dealing with raising him, and he was more interested in leaving the village as fast as possible, he had though (at the time) that Sarutobi or even Kakashi would deal with the baby until he felt he could do it, but apparently he wasn't the only one feeling overwhelmed and in the end Naruto was left alone when he needed them the more.

During the years after that Jiraiya had heard all the rumors and had decided it was for the best that Naruto didn't found out the truth about his parents, since he didn't seemed like the best person to deal with that kind of secrets and had finally decided to wait until the kid made it to chunin before getting directly involved, that had, apparently, been a mistake.

The present Naruto didn't even knew everything from his old life, but he knew enough to paint a clear picture of how it had been, however having years extra of experience made it almost impossible for him to feel the way the other Naruto did, even if he could relate.

As far as Naruto could explain the original Naruto was almost consumed by loneliness, to the point where he decided to create a mask to protect himself from a village where he was normally either ignored or abused, that in itself was bad enough and Jiraiya was kind of glad that due to this strange set of circumstances Naruto wouldn't be forced to deal with many of the emotional scars, however as much as this affected him on a personal level it was nothing to how he felt dealing with the ninja side of things.

The original Naruto had been, at twelve, the dead last of his class and was barely capable of doing the replacement and Henge techniques, and even that much was more due to luck than to any real training, the original Naruto didn't had any sort of taijutsu style and genjutsu was something he hadn't even heard about.

The other Naruto, at twelve, was an elite Jounin included in the bingo books of cloud, Iwa and Oto, he was already considered a master of genjutsu, had his own style of taijutsu and had enough power to defeat the Kyuubi no kitsune, all in all it was difficult not to question himself on what made the difference in the first place.

And of course there was the progress of the present Naruto since he had arrived at this dimension, which was a little over 6 months, he had trained to the point where he could use his taijutsu style effectively, had developed his chakra control enough to use a few genjutsu which given his level of reserves was nothing short of impressive and had even managed to defeat a couple of A-rank enemies and had even his own entry in a bingo book.

Of course one could attribute much of the differences to having the Kyuubi sealed in him, but not in the way most people would assume and definitely not in its entirety, sure the Kyuubi had shot Naruto's control to hell, making learning even the more simple Jutsu a hard endeavor, and had cost the kid his parents (or at least his dad), which in itself brought another set of complications, but again that was just a small part of the problem.

Basically all of the problems that Kyuubi brought could be easily fixed with knowledge, training and time, something that the new Naruto had already proved, and as far as Minato went, sure the man had probably done many things that helped Naruto's training, but even Naruto admitted that he wasn't one of his main instructors and he basically focused on the basics or the clan techniques and let the main part of Naruto's training in the hands of his other teachers most of which were also available in this dimension, so no, he didn't thought that they could put the blame solely on the Kyuubi.

Their reactions to the Kyuubi, that was another matter entirely, however even those only accounted for so much, after all most of the Jounin and even a few of the chuunin didn't believe that Naruto was the Kyuubi reborn or any other stupid story like that, so why didn't anyone did anything?

After expending hours trying to warp his head around everything that Naruto told him in the end he succumbed to a troubled sleep without anything resembling an answer.

However the rest of the month was anything but relaxing, not only was he busy trying to prepare the city and the shinobi forces for an attack without attracting much attention, but he was also forced to train a bunch of brats (who cares if he technically offered to do it) than in itself was bad enough and let little time to anything else (including his research) but there was also a certain blond brat who finally found someone to whom he could ask his questions without being suspicious and who simply didn't take NO for an answer.

What made everything even worse was that the brat had an instinct for trouble and seemed to enjoy causing as much havoc as possible. Point in fact, take the Namikaze name, Naruto kind of relented on taking his real last name until he made it to chuunin (which wouldn't take long if the way everyone treated the blond was anything to go by), although he made a point to mention how useless it was to try to keep the secret since Tai already knew the truth and at this point he had probably already told it to everyone who was interested, curious or simply passing by at the right moment.

Of course even after agreeing to keep his current last name and apartment Naruto was still adamant that he should be allowed to used his clan archives and techniques, never mind that Jiraiya was almost sure that Minato hadn't allowed it, Naruto insisted that it was his right as the last Namikaze, honestly Jiraiya though it had more to do with the fact that Naruto was curious about what was inside than anything else, either way it took him weeks, to convinced the brat to wait until after the invasion to go in there and even then Naruto only agreed after Jiraiya let him sign the toad contract.

And now after all that Naruto still decided to show up at the exams like a small copy of his father, simply because he liked how he looked and wanted to see how everyone reacted.

Hatake Kakashi was having a very difficult year.

It all started when he was assigned a genin team, not a big deal he was assigned a team every time and he always failed them, there was not any reason why this time it should be different, except that it was different, for starters he had the last loyal Uchiha in his team, and to make matters worse he also had certain blond Jinchuriki and a girl named Sakura who was just very lucky, because he couldn't fail that team, he knew it, the Hokage knew it and the council knew it, however his new 'team' didn't so he decided to have a little fun with them, of course that was before he actually met them.

When he first met them, he was tempted to ask the Hokage what had he ever done that it was so bad because that wasn't a new team, they were ghost of his old team and that scared crap out of him, since he was honest enough to admit (even if only to himself) that he hadn't dealt with the ghosts of his past and now he didn't have much of a choice about it.

However he had forced himself to deal with them but beyond the strictly necessary he didn't pay much attention to Sakura or Naruto, each for different reasons.

Sakura at the beginning reminded him of Rin, she was very smart and had excellent chakra control, which meant that she could easily have a future as a medic-nin. However that only lasted for a couple of weeks before he realized that the pink haired girl was much more interested in pursuing her black haired teammate than to actually do anything for herself, however he simply decided to give her time and to hope that she grew out of it and in the mid-time he was only focusing on improving her control even more.

Naruto was another matter entirely at first he had reminded him of Obito so much it almost hurt to look at him, and even then he couldn't avoid thinking of his sensei whenever he saw him, thus he practically ignored Naruto in order to avoid additional pain, which wasn't really easy since the blond was always demanding extra training which Kakashi simply didn't believe he was ready to get, at least according to the general opinion and his academy teachers, so he simply gave him the same training that Sakura and spent the rest of the time pretending he didn't have a blond student.

But even then the wave mission came along and he was forced to confront the fact that Naruto was a lot more powerful than he thought and that no matter how many times Naruto had requested his help, he didn't actually believed the man would offer any, and no matter how much he had tried to ignore the kid, he couldn't help feeling hurt that the son of his sensei didn't trusted him or even like him much for that matter.

He was really impressed with how advanced Naruto's training was and he couldn't help that feel a little jealous of whoever was helping him, so he vowed to spend more time with the blond and hopefully earn his trust, but then the bridge attack happened and if that wasn't bad enough Tai showed up out of nowhere and it probably took him only a couple of seconds to figure Naruto's true identity and having heard of the man he knew that he would waste no time at all in sharing the information with anyone that cross his path.

All in all is completely understandable that he was more than a little relieved to finally be back to Konoha and, once he was sure that all of his students were safely back, he wasted no time to inform the Hokage of what went on in the mission, even so, he was only finishing his story when Anko arrived demanding to know what was being done to keep Naruto safe and berating him for going along with the mission once he realized how dangerous it was, she was still in the middle of her rant when Gai showed up demanding to know why a team of genin was forced in an A rank mission and why they weren't doing anything to protect Naruto, to be honest at this point he was completely shocked since he didn't even knew that Gai and Anko had met Naruto much less that they were that concerned for him or how in the hell did they found out so quickly what had happened, in the end it took him and the Hokage a couple of hours to calm them down and even then it was only after they agreed to let Naruto move to a new apartment close to Anko where he could be easily protected.

When Naruto arrived he didn't appeared to be surprised by the presence of the other ninjas and seemed quite happy to move near Anko, in fact he seemed more than confortable in her presence which confounded and upset Kakashi if he was being honest.

After the meeting his team was given a couple of weeks to rest, and he spend most of that time thinking of what he should do next, his original plan was to immediately increase his team training in case they were forced in to another situation like the wave mission, however the more he thought about it the more he dislike that plan, on one hand Sakura wasn't really ready for a more serious training and on the other hand he wasn't sure Naruto was either, sure the boy had proven that he was in very good condition and that he wasn't the complete idiot everyone though he was, but then again he was also keeping dangerous secrets and Kakashi was honestly concerned about his attitude and his ego, which he was sure was only going to grow bigger if he started to give the blond special training.

In the end he decided to focus on helping Sasuke develop his sharingan and having the other two working on their control, hopefully by the time Sasuke was done, he would be at the same level that Naruto which should help to keep him in check (Naruto not Sasuke) and in turn would push Sakura to train harder. After making up his mind he immediately put it into practice and decided to start training Sasuke immediately.

Originally he thought his plan was working pretty well, but a couple of months later he was seriously starting to wonder if he was missing something. First of all he couldn't shake the constant feeling that everyone knew something he didn't and that wherever he went there was always someone talking behind his back, which was making him more than a little paranoid, then there was the way he was being treated by the other jounin instructors and even some of his old friends, even Gai had stop challenging to his stupid contests and instead was trying to avoid him whenever possible, and to top it all there was Naruto reaction to their current training, if he thought things where bad before there was nothing compared to the way their new relationship was, to be honest Naruto was treating him how he treated Naruto in the beginning keeping their interactions to the minimum possible and ignoring him the rest of the time.

Either way by the time the chuunin exams came around he was half tempted to simply go back to his original plan and start training all of his team, at least then Naruto would be forced to interact with him, in the end he decided to put all of his team in the chuunin exam which would hopefully be enough to give them the push they needed and if that didn't work he could always decide what to do later on.

The chuunin exams where surprising in themselves, sure he was impressed with how fast his team completed the second test and more than happy with Sasuke's victory despite having received the forbidden seal from Orochimaru, he was also a little ashamed of Sakura's fight since she didn't seemed to be able to do much of anything and a little concerned by how happy Naruto seemed to watch one of his teammates defeated, but what really concerned him was Naruto's fight, sure he was expecting a victory for Naruto, given what he had seen of his strength, however he wasn't expecting such and easy win and even less the reaction, or more precisely the lack of reaction from almost everyone else watching the fight including the genin from the other teams, in fact as far as he could tell they were pretty much expecting it and wasn't that concerning on its own?

In the end he decided to ask Ebisu to help with Naruto's training for the third part, and have a long chat with the boy before leaving him with Ebisu, of course all of his plans where based on Naruto actually asking for help which didn't happen and it only caused more concerned, however he needed to start Sasuke's training if the boy was going to have any chance against that Gaara kid so he left while vowing to himself that he would talk with Naruto as soon as possible.

By the time the exams rolled around he was confident that Sasuke was ready to face that Gaara kid and even if they were running a little late he was sure they would bend the rules a little for the last Uchiha so he wasn't all that worried.