Naruto: Dreaming of Sunshine

Against danger it pays to be prepared ~ Aesop

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The night before we started the Academy I didn't sleep that well. It might be more accurate to say that I had a nightmare, probably brought on by the nervousness and anticipation I felt. Of red chakra and pure terror and the helplessness of being blind and dumb. I woke silently, the gasp never leaving my lips, eyes flaring wide and darting about my room. For a second, I thought there was someone standing in the corner. But no. there was no one there. My chakra sense told me the only people in the house was me, my brother, and my parents.

The human brain was good at facial recognition. Too good sometimes, because it found faces in other things - shadows as a prime example. It was particularly common during hypnagogia, or waking sleep.

Funnily enough, that didn't really reassure me.

I gathered chakra to my hands. If you get a great enough concentration of it, chakra can become visible. Something like the Rasengan, where it was not only visible but almost solid took a huge amount, more than I currently had, but I could manage a kind of ghostly light easily enough.

I called it up, and held my hands out, reassuring myself that there was no one there. It was bright enough to see by, flickering off the floor and walls. I breathed, shakily, and slid my legs off my bed, flinching at the thought of something shooting out from underneath it to grab me.

Nothing happened.

Just a nightmare, I told myself. There is nothing here.

The house was so silent; I could hear wind rustling through trees, the faint call of the deer, creaking of floor boards. I stood and crept forward, my footsteps making no sound at all, lighting my way with my hands held out stretched.

Shikamaru's room was right next to mine. His door was ajar, and I didn't even have to move it to slink into his room. In the preternatural quiet of the house, his breathing was loud and reassuring. I felt the tension drain out of my back.

As a Nara, I shouldn't be afraid of the dark. It was where we were strongest. But I didn't like to be alone in it.

I paused in the middle of his room, until some sense told him he wasn't alone and he stirred, squinting at me with bleary eyes, then shuffled over. That was as much an invitation as I was going to get.

I doused my light and slid into bed. I didn't fall asleep for a long while, but eventually, between one blink and the next, I fell into slumber.

"Rise and shine! UP, you two!" Someone shrieked at some ungodly hour of the morning. I reached for a pillow to pull over my head, only to find it had been taken, along with all the blankets. Blearily, I looked up, to find mum holding the aforementioned items. Oh well, it wasn't that cold. I curled up, bumping into Shikamaru who had the same idea.

"Oh, no you don't," she said firmly. "Get up! It's your first day at the Academy, you are not going to be late!"

Several moments later, I stumbled into my room and attempted to get dressed, having to repeat the process several times as some items found themselves inside out or back to front. But I managed it, and just in time too.

"If you two aren't down here in the next three seconds…!" Mum threatened. I stumbled out of my room, nearly crashing into Shikamaru, and we slouched downstairs. She hustled us into the backyard. Wait, we were still going to do our stretches? I'd have rather had an extra half hour of sleep. Judging by his face, Shikamaru felt the same.

But we were both too wise to voice that thought.

"I woke up in the morning and saw the mountain there," Mum started, voice ringing out clearly, as she reached straight upwards, back tensing, then pulled her arms down in a wide circle. We copied her, and my voice joined in the song as a hoarse mumble. We'd been doing this sequence for years - it had started short, but grown longer and longer as more verses were added. It took us about half an hour to do, now, which was frankly a crazy amount of time. I could recall many days where I'd done no where near that amount of exercise, let alone, that amount as a warm-up.

Granted, it did do wonders for waking you up. By the time we got to 'I could have been a solider, or a dancer, or a tree. I could have been a farmer, or a merchant, or a queen', (the moves for which were actually quite fun) I was most definitely awake. After we had finished, we went inside and ate breakfast before getting cleaned up. By this time, it was starting to get to a respectable hour to be awake, and it was nearly time for us to leave for the Academy. It was a fair distance to travel from our house, after all.

The Ninja Academy, surprisingly enough, was located next to the mountain in the same building as the Hokage's Office, and Mission Assignment Desk. It seemed some what counterintuitive to have so many young and noisy children next to such a serious work environment, until one realised that it was perhaps the most defensible location in the entire village. In fact the only safer places were inside the mountain itself.

The fact that I even realised that meant that I was far more affected by my new world than I had anticipated.

When we got to the Academy, they had a small introduction ceremony for us. Both Mum and Dad came to watch and sent us off to sit with the other children with an admonished 'be good'. The Third Hokage was there, and he spoke at length about learning and doing well and forging friendships and holding on to the Will of Fire. It was actually a very inspirational speech, but I spent most of it surreptitiously looking over my classmates trying to spot the rookie 9. Everyone was so small.

It surprised me a bit at how many children there were here. I'd kinda had the impression that there was only one class per year. That wasn't true. There were more like five or six. I guess that makes sense, when you think that not all individuals would last to graduation, and not all those would pass. There had to be more that three teams refilling the shinobi ranks every year, or the ninja population would decline very, very fast.

Two teachers called out a class list and led their new classes away before Iruka-sensei took to the stage. He looked so very young and awkward. "Right. With me are: Aburame, Shino…" I listened closely, hoping I was in the same class as Shikamaru. I hadn't even given it a thought that we might be separated - that I wouldn't be with Rookie Nine.

"… Nara, Shikako, Nara Shikamaru…"

I gave a slight smile to Shika, happy we were together. He nodded, and got up to slouch over to where the others were waiting. I could pick out Shino, the first one to be called, and Chouji, obviously. Hinata was easy to see, with her shy demenor even if her bloodline didn't give her away. Sakura was also blindingly obvious with her bright pink hair, though she looked to be just as shy as Hinata.

"… Uzumaki, Naruto," Iruka-sensei's voice hitched, just slightly. "And Yamanaka, Ino. Thankyou. Please follow me."

He led us away, and I looked over my shoulder, to see Mum and Dad wave us goodbye. Several of the parents around them were shuffling uneasily. I had my suspicions as to why.

The classroom we were led to was surprisingly large. There were huge windows set into the far wall, to let in natural light and provide an escape route. Even though Konoha had many things in common with Japan - where houses were small and compact - ninja did not like being in confined spaces, leading to buildings that were larger and more spacious than you would expect. The class room had benches arranged in rows, each slightly higher than the last, auditorium style. The front had a large black board and there was a teachers desk slightly to the side. There were several bland educational posters spread over the walls to try and interject a bit of life into the classroom.

I slouched down next to Shika in one of the back benches. In my old world, sitting at the back of the class was usually a sign of uninterested students, here, it meant that there was no one behind us, which was the mark of a good ninja. It's strange how perspective changes things. It took far longer than it should for the rest of the class to get seated, but that's how working with kids goes, I guess. I watched with half lidded eyes as the other students sized each other up and Iruka vainly tried to keep order.

Most of the morning was spent with the minute of first day at school, assigning text books, making sure everyone had the appropriate stationary, listing the rules and expectations, and making name badges so we could all get to know each other. All perfectly normal first day things that I had gone through more than a dozen times before. It disillusioned me quite rapidly to the fact that this might be ninja school, but it was still school. Oh, joy.

It wasn't that I didn't like school… it was just, well, you've got to be slightly reluctant to go.

Some kids were paying diligent attention to Iruka-sensei - Sakura, Hinata, Shino - while several more had zoned out - Shika was sleeping and Chouji was eating - and I could predict that very soon Kiba and Naruto were going to start causing disruptions.

Luckily, this was the point where the bell for the lunch rang.

"Alright, kids!" Iruka-sensei half-yelled over the sudden explosion of noise. "You have one hour! I want you all back here when the bell rings!"

I poked Shikamaru awake and we both wandered outside, Chouji trailing after Shikamaru, munching on some chips. Only the last year students were allowed to leave the Academy grounds, so we found an empty patch of grass surrounding the main field to eat our lunch.

"Thoughts?" I asked, idly watching the rest of the children find places to sit and eat. Some alone, some in groups. Some of them appeared to know each other, while others were awkward with new friendships. Lunch was divided into year levels, so all the children who had started today were here. The other classes would have lunch at different times.

There was Shino, sitting alone by the trees. There was Hinata. And there… there was Naruto.

There were numerous problems with the Third Hokage's secrecy laws. How everyone had known about it in the first place… Group mentality had shown that the ideals of the group persisted long after any founding members hand left - or the true reasons for the behaviour had been forgotten. It was like the old story with the monkeys pulling each other off the ladder. Not knowing why they were treating Naruto badly wouldn't mean they didn't.

The Gaara situation only became so bad because people kept trying to assassinate him. His instinctive knowledge of moving sand hadn't helped matters, but he hadn't been homicidal before that.

Perhaps it wasn't anything to do with the way people treated him, but to keep Naruto himself from finding out. Uzumaki Mito had invented the Kyuubi seal and she had used it on herself. The seal had been created for a willing vessel, unlike the other jinchuriki in which the vessel was as trapped as the bijuu. I knew he could remove the seal himself and release Kyuubi. Did you want a child knowing that? That all it would take to get back at people would be to remove a tiny piece of paper from a cage? The temptation would be huge.

Did Gaara's seal have that option? I don't know. Clearly his seal worked differently, allowing the use of sand and partial transformations and releases as it did. Naruto didn't have that option. Other than his healing, he gained no tangible powers.

It was certainly something to think about. But I have to admit, Naruto at this age, wasn't what I had unconsciously been expecting. He was young, and quiet and a little sullen. He was easy to overlook. It was very different from the genin that he was in the show. I guess that was the point.

"Troublesome," Shikamaru declared after a long silence.

"I like Iruka-sensei," Chouji offered, in between mouthfuls.

I nodded in agreement. "He seems nice."

There was an explosion of noise, as kids began congregating in the middle of the field. They'd finished their lunch and were starting a game of ninja. Chouji perked up.

"Can we go play?" He asked eagerly.

I looked at Shika who shrugged. "Sure." Neither of us were particularly enthusiastic at the idea, but hey, if Chouji wanted to. We wandered over there, to find our old 'friend' directing the game.

"I told you, he can't play anymore!" Youbirin said, annoyed, when we asked to join in.

Chouji slumped, dejected. Shika and I exchanged glances.

"So troublesome," Shikamaru said.

"Never mind, guys," Chouji said. "I'll just… go."

I shook my head. "We can play our own game," I offered.

Youbirin sneered, "There's three of you. I'm sure that'll be fun."

I scowled at him, and he seemed quite taken back. So did Chouji, come to think of it. But then I spied an unmistakable blond head, hovering sadly at the sidelines. Naruto was watching the game. Likely, they hadn't let him play either. I nudged Shikamaru.

"But four of us will be," he drawled, easily catching on, before strolling past Youbirin. Chouji and I followed easily. It was strange that we had made Shikamaru our leader, given that he would rather cloud-watch than play, but since neither Chouji or I could, he had taken the spot by default.

There was a gasp from behind us. "You're going to play with him? Our parents told us to stay away from him!" We ignored it.

Naruto, peering through his bangs, watched us approach with a mixture of sullen hope and distrust.

"So," Shika said, slouching to a stop. "Did you want to play ninja with us?"

The look of joy on his face was kind of heartbreaking.

The rule goes, if you have one person staring at a spot on the pavement, you're a weirdo. If you have two people, there must be something interesting, and others will stop to see what you're looking at. In that vein, as we started playing, more and more people joined in. We had quite a game going by the time the end of lunch bell rang. Both Chouji and Naruto were practically shinning with joy.

After lunch we had taijutsu class a.k.a. PE, the class I had despised above all others before, and one that seemed highly necessary this time. Being a ninja involved a heck of a lot of running and jumping, even if I never specialised in taijutsu. Which meant I was just going to have to suck it up and try.

It went worse than I had feared. I was actually a little baffled at how badly it went. Speed and stamina wise, I was only slightly above Shika, who wasn't even trying. He managed a lazy shuffling jog for about three steps before Iruka sensei went to glare at some body else. I wasn't exactly surprised at coming last - I'd developed 'sports day-itis' on many occasions in order to avoid compulsory athletics days at school because I always came in last at everything - but I was a little surprised at how far behind I was.

It was a little embarrassing to be honest. It certainly put a damper on my wonder and anticipation. It's one thing to know that being a ninja is hard work, its another to have your arms and legs burning on the tenth lap of the grounds when you still have another ten to go. In a world with no cars, this was how ninja got around. Running.

Oh. Joy.

And after running, there was stretching, and sit ups and press ups and an obstacle course… There were slalom poles and games of catch. We were too young to be trusted with actual kunai yet, even blunt or wooden ones, but it we were practicing throwing all the same.

It was incredibly, incredibly tempting to give up. It was hard to motivate myself. Admittedly I had never been particularly hard working before, either. I hadn't been a genius, but I had been smart enough to pick up on things easier than my peers, allowing me to cruise through school with hardly any effort at all. Physical prowess had never mattered before, and I found that I was incredibly unprepared for it to count.

I admit, I started to have serious doubts about my future as a ninja right about then. It was a little disheartening. Certainly it was very humbling. Maybe, maybe, I had been harbouring a small hope that I could be… brilliant. I could be strong.

I had died young. Longer than most ninja were want to live, probably, but still less than a third of my life span, according to the measures of the world. I was close with my parents and siblings, proud of my university degree and content with my job but there had been nothing about my life that ten-year-old me would have looked at and said 'that's what I want to be'. Ten-year-old me had wanted glory and fame and greatness. I? I had been no one special.

Maybe, I wanted that once more.

It was silly to think that the path of a ninja would give that to me. Too much fan fiction, I guess, not enough attention paid to the cannon fodder characters. I had the sneaking suspicion that that was what I was.

But, well… it would be pretty pathetic to give up after just one class.

Thankfully, that was the last class of the day. Iruka-sensei let us go with a half smile and a relieved look, and everyone seemed to gain another burst of energy as they left the classroom. Even Shika looked awake.

"Man, that was so boring!" Kiba exclaimed, barrelling down the hallway. "Freedom!"

"Troublesome," Shika sighed, as a teacher poked their head out of a doorway to yell at him for running inside.

"It wasn't that bad," Chouji offered, pulling out a bag of chips.

I 'hmmmed'. "We met Naruto."

Said boy perked up at the sound of his name and looked over at us. Outside the Academy building there was a crowd of parents mingling and waiting to pick kids up from their first day at school. I noticed quite a few look at Naruto, before shuffling their kids away from him. It wasn't quite a glare, but it was definitely not friendly. He noticed it too, and glared at the ground.

"There's dad," Shika said, bumping my shoulder and slouching off towards him.

I hesitated, then turned to Naruto. "See you tomorrow," I said lamely.

His returning smile was brilliant. "Yeah! We can play ninja again, right?"

I nodded, and ambled off. Dad had most definetly seen our conversation, but I couldn't tell what he was thinking.

He didn't say anything about it immediately though, swinging me up on his shoulders and Shikamaru on his back. Trying to walk us home would take probably five times longer than carrying us, since I was tired and achy, and Shikamaru's normal speed of movement was approximately a crawl.

"How was school?" He drawled.

"Troublesome," Shika answered. I giggled. It was just such a typical answer.

"It was fine," I said. "Iruka-sensei is nice. And we met some new people."

"So I saw," Dad said softly. "Like that blond kid you were talking to?" He raised his voice.

I nodded, even though he couldn't see it. "His name is Naruto. He's okay. Do you know… people treat him weird." I changed my sentence midway through. I didn't want to give away too much.

He didn't react. He was far, far too good a ninja for that. But I think he was still a little surprised, more that we had brought it up than that we had noticed.

"You should do what you think is right," Shikaku said. I'd like to have said that I would continue trying, even if he'd forbidden me, but I don't know if I could have. I disliked disappointing people, particularly my parents.

But they were big on letting us think for ourselves. We made our own choices, and our own mistakes. I pondered. "What does daddy think is the right thing?" I asked.

It struck me then that people weren't afraid of Naruto per se, but of him letting the Kyuubi out. Some people must have known that Kushina was the vessel. It cant have been an absolute secret, not in a village of ninja. But if the weakened seal during birth was a secret… that meant they had no idea why the Kyuubi had gotten loose. The Third was in a lose-lose situation. Knowledge of the weakened seal would endanger the jinchuriki and cause panic, but if he didn't say, then people could only wonder why?

She had been too close to Konoha to have been killed in battle. Which left the assumption that she had let it out willingly.

And if Kushina had, a fully grown, capable Shinobi, then a child… would he do the same?

Of course, Jinchuriki got a bad rap. Whether it was undeserved or not, caused or not, it was still fact that many of them were homicidal and unstable. Keeping your distance from someone like that was just common sense. And telling your children to, doubly more so.

"Why do you ask?"

"Because Daddy knows things I don't," I answered, not missing the fact that he had dodged the question.

He chuckled. "Daddy knows many things you don't. What do you think of him?"

I petted his hair absently. The way it stuck up made me assume that it was coarse and harsh, but it was surprisingly soft.

"He's annoying," I said truthfully. "But so is Kiba and no one tells us to stay away from him."

He chuckled, maybe recognising the name. I wouldn't be surprised if he did.

"Do you know who Naruto's parents are?" I asked.

He didn't tense, he was too good for that, but there was a careful note to his voice that I would have missed if I hadn't been listening for it. "Why do you ask?"

"Because you're old," I said promptly, well aware that that wasn't what he was asking. "And because everyone says to Shikamaru," I sighed heavily and theatrically. "'You're just like your father,' then they leave him alone, because they know you're awesome." I nodded. "So did Naruto's parents do something bad?"

I knew Shikamaru was awake, but he opened his eyes for that.

I probably should have felt bad about putting him on the spot like that, but I didn't.

"No one knows who his parents are," Shikaku said carefully.

"But he has a last name," I objected. Some orphans didn't, case in point – Tenten. How hard could it be to go Uzumaki-Uzumaki?

"It could be an honorary name," Shikaku said. "After someone who died the day he was born."

Translation – he could have been called Uzumaki because he was the vessel, not the vessel because he was an Uzumaki. Which, actually, was perfectly plausible. If people hadn't known that she was pregnant at the time. I suspect people didn't like to think of it.

I 'hmm'ed thoughtfully and let the topic drop. It was, after all, a conversational minefield. It had certainly given me things to think about.

That was really all it took to befriend Naruto, a game and a goodbye. In the morning, as Iruka-sensei tried to bring the class to order, he approached us hesitantly with wary hope in his eyes. I had no idea how many times people had become distant from him after their parents had had a word with him, but as far as I could see, he was canon Naruto. He wasn't dangerous. I kicked out the chair next to me and his face lit up with such joy that it almost hurt to look at.