Shammy's HP/Naruto mega-crossover, END OF PROLOGUE
Part 1
Part 2
This is it. FINALLY. Part 3, aka the end of the super-long prologue. XDDDD Why did this take so long? Let's just say I have most of chapter 1 already written as well. :P And I was busy! With stuff! (Lots of original fics, Creative Writing can be a pain...)
Over 7,900 words. This was a pain. =_=
When Naruto finally woke up from his sleep that evening after he had been told that not only was Sasuke to be spared and taken back, but that he was now the successor for the title of Hokage, a dream he had been running after ever since he knew what a Hokage was… It was the fastest he had ever gotten up before, never minding that it wasn’t morning and the long sleep was most likely to mess up his sleeping schedule for the next few days; his mood was happier and more carefree than he had been in a very long time.
But no matter how fast he was, it seemed that Sakura was still faster than he and was already pounding on his door by the time he was slurping up the last of his ramen, yelling at him to hurry up.
He yelled out an affirmation before dumping the rest of his food in the sink, and snagged his coat from his chair, stepping into his shinobi sandals at the same time as he was pulling on his jacket, and then tightening the straps around his ankles. He had one last bread roll in his mouth when he opened the door to reveal an impatient Sakura, who had been tapping her foot with her arms crossed under her chest.
“Good morning, Sakura-chan!” Or at least, that was what he had meant to say, but it came out muffled and incomprehensible around the bread roll in his mouth. He caught the chakra signatures of Shikamaru and Neji out of sight, and mentally sighed to know that they were already starting to take their duties about guarding him seriously. Sure, Neji had already been slightly protective of him before Tsunade had said she would train him to be the Rokudaime… but to be at his door before he even got up? That was ridiculous.
Sakura rolled her eyes at her former team-mate. “You shouldn’t talk with your mouth full, Naruto.” She scolded lightly before beaming at him. “We get to see Sasuke-kun today, though!” She held up a fist wickedly. “And I get to give him a ‘welcome back’ for him leaving us for so long.”
Naruto nervously swallowed the last of the bread roll before he stepped out the door, his hands up in a more defensive position. He knew exactly how hard Sakura hit, and really wasn’t ready for the headache and subsequent concussion he would get if he provoked her. He had seen the cracked landscape from her fists, after all.
“I’m sure he’d appreciate the welcome back,” Naruto lied nervously, not wanting to get on her bad side so fast after they had just gotten back home. He gave her a closed eye grin when she turned toward him, though, his mood once again uplifting as he remembered what Tsunade had told them just hours previous. “Hey, hey, Sakura-chan-ten hours count as good rest, right?” His grin stretched wider. “We don’t have to wait until tomorrow if we’re fresh and well-rested; enough to take on Sasuke, anyway.”
“That’s what I’m hoping.” Sakura agreed with him as they walked down the stairs, heading toward the Hokage tower.
Naruto glanced skyward, taking in the brilliant sunset colours and the cooling air. Summer in Leaf village was always a joy, and it had been during his years away from training that Naruto had realized that despite his own stubbornness and the villagers’ discriminations, home to him was the summer nights in Hidden Leaf, the colours of the sunset watched from the top of the Hokage mountain. Home was rushing to Ichiraku’s for a brief lunch before rushing back towards the forest for training amidst the foliage of green leaves and the sound of rushing water from the small creeks and streams running through the forest.
It was almost always warm in Leaf, even during the winters when the air turned cold and people dressed in coats and scarves. People would gather into groups and laugh together, children playing around the village, complaining about school and hoping for snow.
Home was with his friends, either training or insulting each other or playing together. Home was the warmth of eating together, was fighting amongst the leaves and was everything that he had missed. Naruto had hoped that somehow when he fulfilled his promise to Sakura and dragged Sasuke back home, then everything would be alright again.
He smiled, hands behind his head as he and Sakura walked down the streets of Leaf, enjoying the fading light of the sun. Hidden Leaf was a prosperous, peaceful village despite the fact that the main source of revenue came from violent missions and assassinations. Naruto liked to think of the positive side of those missions, though. The violence came from protecting clients… and assassination was based on each team of ANBU and what missions they would take. Tsunade screened the missions very carefully to ensure that all the people who were blacklisted truly deserved what had been coming to them.
“Ne, Shikamaru! Neji!” Naruto called out, not bothering to look where they were hiding themselves from view. It was better not to reveal their locations, after all. “Why don’t we all walk together? It’s not as if the villagers aren’t used to us hanging out-in fact, they might find it suspicious that you guys aren’t here.”
There was barely a shift in the wind, but Naruto understood that it was their way of saying that they weren’t going to appear next to him when they were still on duty-even if it was their duty to protect him. Possibly because it was their duty to protect him.
“Don’t be slow, Naruto,” Sakura said as Naruto slowed down in their walk to try and decipher his team’s message. “The day’s nearly over-don’t you want Sasuke out of that interrogation room by today? The night shift won’t be happy with us if we had to go to Tsunade and then bug the shinobi about it, you know.”
“Yeah,” Naruto agreed cheerfully, already speeding up his steps to catch up to Sakura. “I’m coming!”
**
“This is amazing,” Hermione brought over the few books that she had been looking through, settling herself down next to Ron and across from Harry. The two boys were bored already from flipping through numerous pages of text they couldn’t read, that was barely affected by the translation spells they had to continually cast on the books. Considering that each spell only translated about a paragraph of text, it didn’t take too long for the both of them to be flicking origami at each other.
“Stop that,” Hermione said and swatted at one of the paper airplanes that Ron had spelled to hover behind Harry’s head and poke at him. She gave a wave of her wand and a whispered finite, and all the paper monstrosities dropped onto the table sedately.
“We’re just not made out to live in a library,” Ron complained as he watched all his creations fall apart. Harry continued his folding of notebook paper calmly, not minding that Hermione had destroyed all their previous creations. He could always make more, and make them better, after all. “And it’s not like we’re really helping here since we can’t even read what’s written down! What are we looking for, anyway?”
“We were looking for texts about a strange mirror,” Harry volunteered the information, still focused on his folding. “But considering that I don’t even know what language this is in, I don’t think we’ll be much help here, Hermione.”
Hermione huffed. “If the two of you haven’t already figured it out, the language the texts are written in is an off-dialect of Japanese. “And the Hidden Nations…” she flipped through the book she had placed down, her hands hovering over the words eagerly. “They used to be a part of the wizarding world, did you know? But because wizards who used magic and the shinobi who use chakra used different ways of applying their energies, by the time the children being taught were about eleven to twelve years old, they were incompatible with each other.”
Ron gave her a befuddled look. “What?”
“Oh, you-” Hermione flipped another page, flicking her wand at the text to set another translation spell. English words were superimposed on top of the original text, and Hermione explained, “Children who were raised to be shinobi can’t be wizards, Ron. And children raised to be wizards can’t be shinobi. That’s why we’re supposedly incompatible with each other-because chakra and magic, well, they sort of…” she gestured blankly with her hands, “cancel each other out. Or overwhelm each other. People who are innately strong in magic will cancel out what shinobi call jutsus, or their version of spells. And those shinobi who possess an extraordinary amount of chakra would overwhelm the magic spells we cast.”
Hermione looked up at that point. “This is probably why those shadows that those bandits were trying to manipulate… that’s probably why they couldn’t get past Harry’s shield. It’s because Harry is a lot stronger in innate magic than they have chakra.”
“What?” Ron repeated.
“Can we find a room for the night now?” Harry asked. “Or somewhere to go for dinner?”
Hermione sighed in defeat. And to think, Harry had been so intent on studying before when he was undergoing his unofficial Auror training. But she supposed it was more of a trained reaction to find history boring from the many years of trying to learn under Professor Binns.
“Did you find out where we are, though?” Harry spoke up. “You said that this used to be a part of the wizarding world… so where are we exactly?”
“Well, that’s the thing.” She flipped a few more pages. “It doesn’t say. But it is hinted that centuries ago, true shinobi just disappeared. They took their children away so they wouldn’t be corrupted by our ‘magic’, and just… disappeared off the face of the earth. And apparently, according to these text, it wasn’t them who disappeared, it was us. As if the two really became separate worlds.”
“So in conclusion, we still don’t know where we are, or how to get back.” Harry shook his head, and then pushed his chair away from the table, standing. “Well. I’m ready for dinner and a place to sleep, how about you guys?”
**
There was a point, Naruto thought, where the silence should really get to a person and then they’d snap and kill everyone in their vicinity. At least, that was what Naruto had convinced himself as a child surrounded by silence. And because of that, he had found every possible way he could fill the silence, afraid of that wild madness that might lurk in areas where words and sounds were afraid to go.
His mind wandering back to that foolish childish belief of his made Naruto wonder if the silence had already taken hold of Sasuke, and had broken him. He had Sakura had both talked their mouths off the entire day, trying to fill in the blank silence that Sasuke had represented while they tried to reacquaint him with the village.
It was bad, Naruto supposed, that the villagers they passed usually turned to glare at them-and this time it wasn’t Naruto they were glaring at, but Sasuke. A stark change from their childhoods when Naruto had been the ostracised child and Sasuke had been near revered.
Naruto wondered what the villagers would say when they found out that he was being considered for the Rokudaime Hokage.
“…and I really don’t think that Sai should have been the one to take the negotiation mission to Hidden Sand, don’t you think so, Naruto?” Sakura was saying as they waited for dinner, the other customers in the restaurant glaring at them in a way that said they didn’t want Sasuke in there with them. Naruto squirmed, even as the Uchiha did not, remembering a time when the villagers would not allow him to eat in the restaurants of Leaf.
“Definitely not.” Naruto agreed on instinct. He was used enough to talking without thinking about it. “He’s just going to manage to insult Gaara, and then we’d have to redo the negotiations between our villages all over again!” He shook his head. “Sai still needs to work on his social skills. I mean… it’s a lot better than it was when we were fifteen, but I wouldn’t have put him on a diplomatic mission.”
“I wouldn’t put you on a diplomatic mission either, knowing you seven years ago,” Sakura teased. “But somehow you managed to convince the Kazekage to join in our fight against Sound.”
Naruto shrugged. In truth, he hadn’t really done anything at all. He had just been honest when Gaara had asked what Leaf needed, and when he requested aid, Gaara had given it to him without conditions. He didn’t quite understand it, but Gaara always seemed to agree to whatever Naruto suggested, no matter how stupid it sounded.
“Hey, hey,” He brightened. “Don’t they have ramen at this joint too?” He scanned over the menu briefly, wincing back just as Sakura leaned over the table to bop his head.
“You need to eat something else once in a while, Naruto!” She admonished as Naruto clutched his head protectively, letting out a pitiful whimper. “Ramen isn’t nourishing, you know!”
“It is so nourishing!” Naruto protested, and then turned to his side to nag at Sasuke. “Isn’t it, Sasuke? Sakura-chan’s just jealous because she’s afraid of not being able to eat ramen or else she’d get fat.”
“WHAT!”
Naruto chuckled as he ducked the napkin Sakura threw at him, his eyes straying to Sasuke, sobering when he realized that Sasuke hadn’t called him an idiot for that comment.
Things were so different now. Maybe Naruto had never thought about how Sasuke would be when they finally got him back home, but he never thought that the older boy would ignore him and Sakura like that. They were the ones who knew each other best, after all, and he was willing to bet that even after all these years, Naruto would be the one who understood how Sasuke thought best.
“Eating all that you do… you’ll be the one who gets fat, Naruto.” Sakura huffed, sitting back down in her seat in an unladylike manner.
“No, I won’t!” He said back with a grin. “No matter how much I eat, I work it off, remember? And I have a fast metabolism!”
Their banter continued on, but both Sakura and Naruto were hyperaware of the fact that Sasuke had not shown any signs of being affected by their conversation. The more that they tried to fill in the silence for Sasuke, the more that it seemed forced and unnatural. Naruto had never thought of it before, having always labelled Sasuke as a broody bastard when they were children, but Sasuke hadn’t been as silent as he had originally appeared. The little smirks and name-calling sessions had managed to diffuse a tension between team seven that Naruto hadn’t even known existed.
“I hope granny doesn’t want to test our team-work skills again,” Naruto said absently. “I wouldn’t want to go through the bell test again… although it’d be fun to have to search for that stupid cat again. Just like old times.”
Sakura smiled. “The bell test was fun.”
Naruto returned the smile. “Yeah, it was.”
Sasuke still hadn’t responded to them, and Naruto thought for a moment that perhaps it hadn’t been the wisest idea to reminisce about events that had happened during the Uchiha’s absence. Although he might not have known that they were talking about the second bell test, and not the first one the three of them had all taken in order to pass their genin examination.
“Well, all you have to do is whine for a better mission, Naruto.” Sakura said, rolling her eyes as a waiter came to take their orders. Predictably, Naruto had ordered the ramen that they had there. “I don’t know why, but it seems to work.”
“That’s ‘cause granny Tsunade looooooves me,” Naruto teased with a grin. When Sasuke hadn’t spoken up about what he wanted to eat (it didn’t help that the waiter didn’t even looking in his direction in the first place, pretending he wasn’t there), Sakura had ordered for him as well, a sushi platter with onigiri on the side. Naruto pointed a chopstick at Sakura childishly, “You just don’t speak up enough, Sakura. If we get bad missions, tell ‘em! What’s the worst that could happen, anyway? Best is that we’ll get a better mission next time and never have to worry about stupid missions again.”
“The worst that could happen would be that you get demoted for inability to listen to authority figures-and stop that, Naruto, it’s rude,” Naruto put down his chopsticks sheepishly. Sakura continued, “You can’t refuse missions now, anyway, Naruto. Especially the ones that you think are boring-most likely your training from now on won’t be on jutsus and fighting, but on how to resolve issues without resorting to violence.’
“Violence can solve a lot of issues!” Naruto protested. “C’mon, Sakura-chan… we live in Hidden Leaf! You can’t claim that violence doesn’t solve most of our issues when we live here.”
“That may be true,” Sakura conceded, “But as Hokage, violence would have to be a last resort.”
Naruto huffed, but let the subject matter go. The waiter was back with their orders, and Naruto marvelled a bit at the service being so speedy, but was glad for it nonetheless, knowing that it was just getting harder and harder to keep up the strained conversation with a silent Sasuke.
“Oh, Naruto,” Sakura scoffed as the blond starting inhaling the ramen in front of him. “You really shouldn’t eat ramen all the time, you know. It completely destroys your stomach lining, and that’s not something I can heal!”
“That’s okay, I don’t get sick outside of injuries!” Naruto boasted, knowing that his former team-mates would know what he was talking about.
“You shouldn’t rely on that,” Sakura said. She was picking through her food, obviously not too hungry they way she was looking at the dish. She sighed and put down her chopsticks, and propped her up elbow on the table as she settled her chin in a palm. “It’s nice to have some time off after all these months working.”
It was true-the past several months had been hectic, with Tsunade knowing and preparing for the eventual war; which only one part was over. There was still Akatsuki, and as long as a Naruto was a part of Hidden Leaf, the village wouldn’t be entirely safe from enemy shinobi.
The best course of action for the village would to be to send Naruto far away… but that wasn’t something that Tsunade could afford now that Naruto was her successor. It wouldn’t due to leave the village leaderless in a time of war if she died in battle. It really was the best thing for Tsunade to declare a successor early even if Naruto knew that he wouldn’t get the position until years later. In times of war, there should always be a successor so that the fighting does not stop when the leader is killed.
“You should eat, Sakura.” Naruto prodded. “You never know when we might be called by granny, the old bag of bones that she is. She would use us to fetch her anti-wrinkle cream or something.”
But Sakura wasn’t entirely paying attention to his words, since her gaze was stuck on Sasuke and his movements to eat. She had a crease between her brows that told Naruto she wasn’t studying the Uchiha beause she was crushing on him like she used to when they were twelve, but instead was probably thinking of something important.
Sakura frowned, and but down her napkin. “You really should have more respect for Hokage-sama, you know. She’s the one who’s gifting you with the position of being her future successor. But,” she shook her head. “I’m surprisingly not hungry at the moment.” She excused herself to the restroom, standing and walking away despite the panicked look Naruto had sent her.
Naruto’s thoughts were frantic. She was leaving him? Leaving him alone to try and carry on this one-sided conversation with Sasuke, the imitation block of ice? A few years ago, this would not have been a problem, as Naruto tended to chat on about anything and everything with little notice to whether the person he was talking to was actually listening to him or not. He could still do that, actually. Heck, he was doing that with his gossip-talk with Sakura.
But Naruto felt he did not know Sasuke well enough to carry on those conversations without it feeling extremely awkward on his end anymore. He used to talk at Sasuke for hours on end when they had been twelve, training together. Sasuke used to have a annoyed look on his face every time Naruto had done that, always telling the blond to shut up and pay attention or he would always be the dead last.
But back then, Naruto had been comfortable talking to Sasuke, even if the other boy might not listen. The blond tended to blurt random things out when he was shooting off at the mouth like that, and he hadn’t minded Sasuke knowing more about him than a normal team-mate would.
But now… it felt like he was sitting with a stranger. A dangerous stranger.
It felt like Sasuke really had cut those bonds of friendship that had tied them together all this time. Or maybe it was Naruto who had deluded himself into thinking that the bonds had been there to begin with. He was optimistic about Sasuke, though-he had never believed that Sasuke would be able to cut those bonds. Not when he had saved Naruto so many times at the danger to his own life, even when the Uchiha still had his goal of killing his brother to fulfill.
“I think Sakura’s just using that excuse because she’s trying to hide her diet.” He told Sasuke conspiratorially, figuring he would stick with the joking and carefully monitor the conversation to make sure it didn’t wander into any serious territory. It was slightly encouraging that Sasuke was eating at all instead of trying to go for that sullen look of his and refuse any attempts to help him.
But then, the Sasuke Naruto had known had existed seven years ago. So much could change in seven years.
Naruto shook that thought off, deciding that no matter how much Sasuke had changed, they knew each other once and always would. The two of them had a bond that not even Sakura shared, one forged of common loneliness and childhood bitterness. Sasuke was important to Naruto. He always would be.
“-And then Shikamaru had been talking with Ino when, BAM! Konohamaru just jumps out of nowhere and crashes right into that stand Ino had been working on! So she gets angry and chases him around, yeah? And poor Shikamaru’s left with the broken stand and he has to explain to the client why it was broken and everything.” When in doubt, tell old embarrassing stories. “And he was assigned D-rank missions for two weeks as a punishment! Man, I would hate to have to work under Anko-that woman is a sadist, I swear.”
He chewed thoughtfully on his ramen, thinking. “What is it with Shikamaru and blondes, anyway? First Temari, and now I swear that he’s got Ino chasing after him…” Naruto shook his head. “He has all the luck!”
“Idiot. You’re blond, too.”
“But I’m a guy, so it doesn’t count!” Naruto grinned, “But you have to admit, I make a really hot chick!”
It was only then that he realized that Sasuke had spoken up for the first time since Naruto had seen him that night. The other boy looked entirely too casual about it, as if he hadn’t stayed silent the entire trip to the restaurant and not responded to their questions and attempts at conversation with him.
“Ha! So you can speak after all!” Naruto pointed with a wide grin. “And here I thought you lost your voice because you’re in the presence of the amazingly talented future Hokage, Uzumaki Naruto!”
The boasting was familiar and comforting. Not to mention, it felt a hell of a lot better know that he was so close to his dream. Beside, it made him feet better to be able to boast like he had as a child.
Sasuke turned his face away, but not before Naruto noticed a hint of a familiar scowl on his face.
“…Moron,” Sasuke muttered under his breath, and if Naruto didn’t have his extraordinary hearing, he would have missed the insult.
Naruto only grinned. It felt a lot better knowing that Sasuke had been paying attention to them after all, and that he hadn’t really seemed to change, despite all those years under Orochimaru and all the powers he was sure to have learned.
“I’m not a dead last anymore, you know.” Naruto said cordially, both hands propping up his chin in a surprisingly childish manner. His food had been forgotten the moment that Sasuke had spoken up, since he knew that that the moment he ignored Sasuke for something else, the other man would pretend that he hadn’t said a thing in the first place.
Sasuke didn’t reply to that, only looking away from Naruto, but the blond knew the other well enough (or at least, he assumed that he knew the other well enough) to understand Sasuke’s unspoken response to that.
Maybe you were never one to begin with.
**
Hermione had used a spell to copy off the contents of several books from the library, and was reading them in the small restaurant that they were in, all the menus written in a language that they didn’t quite understand. It was a good thing that Hermione had them use the translation spells on themselves, because otherwise there would have been no way to communicate their orders for food.
Harry was looking around the small restaurant, registering the few customers around them. Surprisingly, about a third of the people in the restaurant had those strange imprinted headbands tied around some part of their body, be it their head or neck or waist or arm.
What was that? He wondered distantly as Hermione muttered to herself, buried in her book, and Ron swirled his drink with the wooden Asian chopsticks they were provided with. Out of the three of them, only Hermione had been proficient in the use of chopsticks, while Harry struggled a bit and Ron couldn’t seem to grasp the concept of it at all (“Why use these two sticks when you have nice forks and spoons?” he had grumbled).
A table in the corner interested him the most, occupied by three people, including a girl with strangely pink hair reminding Harry of Tonks, only more feminine than the spiky locks that Tonks had. She and a blond boy were talking at a speed that the translation spell couldn’t seem to keep up with, while the third of their party looked away disapprovingly.
Harry stared at them a bit as the two at the table laughed merrily, trying to draw the third into their conversation. The village seemed so happy and carefree, yet the atmosphere seemed somehow forced and sober in a way that reminded Harry of the days after Dumbledore had died. Did they just lose a leader? He wondered to himself as their strange and Asian styled orders arrived.
Ron had dug into the food immediately, never minding that it wasn’t anything he was used to. The redhead grumbled for a moment that the taste was too bland, but it did not deter him from the food on his plate. Hermione, on the other hand, had finally looked up from her books to draw her best friends’ attention.
“There’s a leader here that we can go to for help.” She told them in English, not bothering to use the translation spell and let themselves be overheard by others. “They call them a… a Shadow, I think? The translation spell might not be at its best right now, but… basically, each village has its own Shadow, and since we’re in Fire Country right now, that means that we have to look for the Fire Shadow, since there’s only one Shadow in all of Fire Country.”
“That sounds suspicious,” Ron put in. “If they’re leaders, why call them shadows? Seems too dark to me.”
“Apparently,” Hermione answered, flipping rapidly through her book as her eyes scanned the foreign words, “It’s because they’re not the real political leaders of the country. The real leadership is inherited, like royalty… but the title of Shadow is passed on not by bloodline, but by worth. And from what this book hints at, the Shadows are more like the power behind the throne. They are the leaders of the… shinobi? The book doesn’t translate this term, but it somehow sounds familiar… The Shadows are the leader of the shinobi of their village, and basically that means that they’re the leaders of what are considered the elite fighters of the country. That certainly gives them a great deal of power.”
“But does that mean we should go to these shadows for help?” Harry asked, poking at his roll of rice with a chopstick. “Shouldn’t we go to those real political leaders instead?”
“Not necessarily,” the brown-haired girl turned another page. “It says here that shinobi are like mercenaries… maybe we can offer them something for their help. Best case scenario, we offer something good enough that they’ll come back with us and we’ll have a new army for the war.” Hermione’s eyes were piercing when she stared at Harry, and the three of them sobered up at the idea.
The wizarding world couldn’t stand on its own feet, that much was already proven. With the Ministry of Magic so ready to reassure people that they need not participate in the war, those very same people had hidden away in their own homes, hoping that out of sight would mean out of mind.
There was no army to fight their war for them, only a hand full of people who risked life and limb on each and every mission. Even if they were mercenaries, they were a type of magical and just numbers would boost the morale of the people already fighting. It hadn’t help that most of the magical creatures had refused to partake in the war until there looked to be a ready outcome and they could choose a winning side.
“Mercenaries, huh?” Ron mused. “What if they’re offered something better by You-Know-Who? That would completely backfire in our faces.”
Harry pushed away the plate of food before him, folding his arms on the table as his face took on a contemplative expression. “We’ll never know unless we ask. We can bind them with a magical contract if we have to.”
The two others mulled over the thought for a moment, wondering what in the world they had come to that they were thinking about pulling a magical contract on people who might not be able to defend themselves against magic.
**
It was the next day when Naruto was once again summoned to the Hokage office, for what he assumed might be the beginning of his training.
The blond grimaced a bit at the thought. Years and years of training, and now it only led to more training-not physical this time, but in politics. And paperwork. It was something he had been introduced to a few years back during a downtime when he had been running errands for Tsunade-filing papers and fetching scrolls from various people.
Bo-ring, Naruto thought grumpily. He really wasn’t the type to sit still to learn anything, and Tsunade should have known that by now. He needed hands-on experience in order to learn successfully.
But maybe that was what he was getting. The blond brightened at the thought, his steps lighter as he wandered down the long corridors of the Hokage Tower. Maybe he was actually getting sent on some diplomatic mission! Maybe to Hidden Sand, if Tsunade didn’t trust him with the more delicate politics yet. After all, Gaara already knew all about Naruto’s antics and certainly wouldn’t take offence for whatever misdemeanour the blond managed.
Or maybe… maybe! Naruto’s eyes glazed over a bit as he wandered off into his childhood fantasies. Maybe he would be sent to protect some princess or retrieve some super-secret scroll from enemy shinobi!
Well, Uzumaki Naruto was there to serve! He would certainly not let anyone down!
“Idiot. Fire Country doesn’t have any princesses. And you’re here for Hokage training, right? This isn’t a usual ANBU mission.”
Naruto hadn’t even realized he had his fists striking the air in anticipation until he heard Sasuke’s voice behind him. He whirled around and pointed at the Uchiha. “Shut up, bastard! And stop reading my mind!”
“I wasn’t reading your mind.” Sasuke replied amiably, not missing a beat as he stepped past his former team-mate. “You were saying that aloud.”
Naruto huffed, but sped up his steps to once again match the Uchiha’s. “What do you know about the training, anyway? It could have princesses!”
“Politics, dead last. That requires subtlety, which you lack. The Hokage is most likely going to try and teach you to sit still for more than twenty seconds.”
Naruto was good at staying still. People never believed him, but he had learned the skill during his chuunin years, having had a mission where his surroundings had been littered with enemy shinobi and he had to stay absolutely still for an entire day and night before they moved on, thinking that he had somehow managed to leave the clearing when he was in fact twenty meters above their heads. Of course, that was only because he had to stay still. If left on his own, the blond had too much energy to spend any time in one place, not moving.
But what other people didn’t know would serve to his advantages, right? Right! Let them all think that he couldn’t sit still! He would just show them all up when push came to shove!
He nodded with determination as he knocked loudly on the door to the Hokage office, having learned (or better yet, pounded into his head the past several years) not to just barge in without warning when the clients were most likely there and able to get a bad impression of him right from the start.
But still, that didn’t stop him from opening the door wide half a second after his knocks, not wanting to give them too much warning. After all, this was just training and it wasn’t like Tsunade didn’t already know about his antics anyway. Might as well give her a reason to get pissed at him rather than having her mad later and him not knowing what he did wrong.
“Uzumaki Naruto reporting in!” He said cheerfully, stepping right into the office without acknowledging the occupants. “Ready for duty!”
Sasuke followed behind him at a leisurely pace, his eyes flicking over the room to take in those he didn’t recognize and the positions of where Tsunade and Sakura were standing at. There were three people who were in the room obviously not dressed as if they were from Konoha. Clients? He wondered. But it would defeat the purpose of Naruto’s training as Hokage-he would have to stay inside the village to learn of its political systems, after all, not wander off on missions outside of Fire Country. Maybe the clients were waiting for another group.
“You’re late, Uzumaki.”
The blond smartened up at hearing himself addressed like that. He was used to Tsunade using insulting nicknames for him, and didn’t expect that it would change throughout his training-probably increase, actually. To be addressed so formally meant that she was trying to make an impression on the clients standing in front of her.
He took a hard look at them for a moment-they were the group that he wouldn’t have given another thought about had he met them on the streets. Two boys and a girl, just like a normal genin team, one of the boys exceptionally tall with bright red hair and freckles, and the other short and with dark hair as messy as Naruto’s, wearing glasses that would have put Kabuto to shame.
The girl was perhaps the most unremarkable of the group, with short fuzzy hair and a contemplating look on her face as she examined him right back.
Tsunade pretended that the exchange hadn’t taken place as she scribbled something on a note behind her desk, rolling it up and then sealing it before throwing the scroll over to Naruto.
“Uzumaki Naruto will be leading your mission for this.” Tsunade spoke to the three strangers. “He is the best that can be spared at the moment, but there will be no action taken until a solid alliance has been set up between your Order and our village.”
The redhead looked like he was going to protest for a moment before he shut his mouth, not needing the prompting of who Naruto supposed were his team-mates.
“Haruno-san will escort you to the missions department to get you signed up.” Tsunade continued, and Sakura stepped in at that moment, bowing slightly to the three strangers before extending an arm out as indication that they should follow her. The three seemed to look at each other for a moment before following her, not without casting a suspicious glance behind them, knowing full well that they were being escorted out so that the Hokage could inform mission details and perhaps other information that they weren’t meant to hear.
Naruto barely waited for the click of the door before he burst out with questions.
“Mission? I thought it was training! Training!” He waved his arms in the air for emphasis, feeling as if he were a genin again, looking for higher ranked missions than finding someone’s lost cat or doing community work. He mourned, “On the first day, too… you really want to get rid of me, don’t you, granny?”
He could see the twitch in her arm that indicated her refrain from throwing something heavy and breakable at him. “This isn’t just any mission, Naruto. I want you to take no action until we figure out the motives behind those three.” She gave a nod in the direction of the door, “They claim to have a mission for us, and an alliance from their country to sweeten the deal, but…” Tsunade folded her hands together on the table, “I have more than a suspicion that they aren’t telling us everything we need to know before heading into missions.”
Naruto sobered a bit. He hated when clients refused to tell the entire story, remembering team seven’s first mission which had been a C turned A. While it had seemed exciting and cool as a kid, looking back he realized that it was a damned lucky thing Haku hadn’t been keen to kill them, or else Sasuke would have died on that mission for sure.
He didn’t like thinking of that mission. It brought back memories of when team seven had been an actual, naïve team; with Sasuke still willing to give his life for his team-mates. Before the betrayal.
Tsunade gave a flick of her fingers, and Neji and Shikamaru both stepped out of the shadows where they had been following Naruto and Sasuke, as silent as they were trained to be.
“While this may not have been the primary mission I assigned you,” the Hokage said to the two ANBU, “I want you to assist Naruto on this mission. The clients are not to know of your presence, but since this is the first diplomatic mission that Naruto will be assigned, I want the two of you to guide him in what to do.”
Naruto gave a brief whine of protest, but knew why Tsunade had assigned it this way. While he was good at winning people over eventually, politics (from what he had garnered of it) was a lot about first impressions-and Naruto never gave out very good first impressions, where as both Shikamaru and Neji came from very influential clans and were more than likely trained for political situations.
“Yes, Hokage-sama.”
Naruto chanced a glance over at his best friend, watching as Sasuke stared blankly out the window, not offering any opinion on the matter. He knew it must have stung the other not to have a assigned role in the mission; for Tsunade to make him out like useless baggage. But still, Sasuke kept silent as if none of what was said in the room bothered him in the slightest, or even concerned him at all.
“Pay attention, Naruto.” Tsunade snapped as she noticed that the blond’s focus had wandered. “Those people are hiding something for sure-they claim to be from a place where all shinobi originated from, but then they refuse to divulge any more information. I’m not assigning a rank to this mission until you get back, as this isn’t exactly a paid mission.”
She leaned forward across her desk, making sure to capture Naruto’s complete attention. “This is your first diplomatic mission, Naruto. You are to secure the alliance that those people are offering Konoha-if! If they are telling the truth, and not a threat to us. You are not to take any action at all here. This is observational. If they are not the type of people that Konoha would ally with, then you leave and come back here. If they do not let you leave… well.” She sat back now. “This is why I’m sending some of my best shinobi on this mission, isn’t it?”
Naruto blinked, and then grinned. “Aw, granny. You do care, after all!”
He had to duck the paperweight thrown at his face, and made a scared expression when it made a large dent in the wall.
“Think of this as your practical, hands on training.” Tsunade suggested. “These people have no affiliation with the rest of the shinobi nations, but they may be important in the future. Don’t fail me on this, Naruto.”
Naruto just grinned in response.
**
Hermione had to try her very best not the fidget when the girl with pink hair led them to a different office, filled with people dressed sharply in dark uniforms-usually black, with white bandages and green vests. The brunette was quite aware of why they had been led away. There was going to be information that they, the clients, would not be exposed to.
A twinge of doubt nagged at the back of her mind. She had done a lot of reading in the past day, or half day, since they had landed in this strange place. It was bad enough she had trouble with her magic in this strange land, but she also read about what the people here called chakra, which was their own type of magic.
If she had trouble with her magic in this land, did that mean that these… shinobi would have trouble when they crossed the mirror back home?
If they could cross back home, that was. But Hermione didn’t want to think negatively on that aspect. She knew her Runes quite well, after all, and the mirror was definitely supposed to be a two-way transportation. She just had to figure out how to activate it, after all. Or if perhaps there was a mirror on this side that would lead them back to their world rather than that gnarled tree in the forest.
How was it that they had crossed the mirror in the first place? She was sure that they weren’t the first to do so, considering that the Minister had revealed the decapitated heads that had been sent back. That meant that there was a way to get back, and that it was through the very same mirror. Hopefully, they didn’t have to be dead in order to cross back again.
“Here,” the girl with pink hair was saying, “is where you fill out a client application.” She briefly thanked a man behind the desk as he handed her a stack of papers. She gave the stack over to Harry, who accepted the papers with a slightly disgruntled expression. Hermione could see Harry’s befuddled look before his features smoothed over.
Of course, it was Ron who pointed out the obvious.
“Um… Miss Sakura, was it?” Ron took a sheet from Harry’s hands, staring at the words on the paper. They might have the translation spell, but that usually only worked for words that were spoken and heard… sometimes for reading small sections from books. But there wasn’t really a spell that would allow them to write in another, unknown language. “Can we get someone to write this for us?”
‘Sakura’ gave them a disapproving look. “I’m unsure how you would expect anyone to know your information, Mr…?”
“Ron Weasley.” Ron shrugged when both Harry and Hermione gave him a look. It never bothered him to reveal his name to other people, like it had with his two best friends. “It’s just…” he gave a lost look to the pink-haired girl. “We’re having a bit of trouble with the language here?”
“We could dictate.” Hermione offered, trying to amend Ron’s previous statement. “We just have trouble with the written language. It’s not that we’re trying to withhold information.”
The pink-haired girl smiled in reply, but Hermione was able to see that it wasn’t a completely honest smile. It made her wearier than before, wondering if the decision to seek help from these people was a good idea after all. They had their separate powers and separate motives. According to the books she had gone through, they were like mercenaries. Who was to say that they would not ally themselves with Voldemort if he offered them better payment?
This is why we’re hiring them first, the brunette reassured herself. Because they can’t break a contract if they’re already allied with us.
Perhaps it was a bit naïve of her to think that, but she would rather believe in the honour of these people. She didn’t know much about them, but from looking through their writing systems they seemed very… Japanese? And she knew that honour was a great system back in Japanese history.
Hermione was broken out of her reverie when Miss Sakura gestured to someone else across the room, startling the group who had not realized that they were surrounded by so many people. How in the world had they not noticed?
She could tell that Harry especially was unnerved, having been trained to detect the presence of anyone trying to hide from him. Maybe it was because they didn’t exactly use magic, though, which allowed them their invisibility.
“If that’s the case, then there are plenty of people who would be glad to help.” The pink-haired girl smiled politely. There was already someone with a pen held ready to the paper behind the desk. “Now… where was it that you were from?”
Okay. The 'Miss Sakura' thing. I know I used Japanese honorifics in part 2, and I will continue to use them when any of the Naruto cast are speaking. Not when they are thinking, not when the HP cast is speaking... nowhere else. Why? Again, I don't want to include too much Japanese, but at the same time- it just doesn't sound right of the Naruto cast not to speak with honorifics to me. To me, it makes a big difference whether Naruto calls Sakura by just her name or adds a '-chan' to her title. Being too familiar and stuff. Yeah.
Part 2
This is it. FINALLY. Part 3, aka the end of the super-long prologue. XDDDD Why did this take so long? Let's just say I have most of chapter 1 already written as well. :P And I was busy! With stuff! (Lots of original fics, Creative Writing can be a pain...)
Over 7,900 words. This was a pain. =_=
When Naruto finally woke up from his sleep that evening after he had been told that not only was Sasuke to be spared and taken back, but that he was now the successor for the title of Hokage, a dream he had been running after ever since he knew what a Hokage was… It was the fastest he had ever gotten up before, never minding that it wasn’t morning and the long sleep was most likely to mess up his sleeping schedule for the next few days; his mood was happier and more carefree than he had been in a very long time.
But no matter how fast he was, it seemed that Sakura was still faster than he and was already pounding on his door by the time he was slurping up the last of his ramen, yelling at him to hurry up.
He yelled out an affirmation before dumping the rest of his food in the sink, and snagged his coat from his chair, stepping into his shinobi sandals at the same time as he was pulling on his jacket, and then tightening the straps around his ankles. He had one last bread roll in his mouth when he opened the door to reveal an impatient Sakura, who had been tapping her foot with her arms crossed under her chest.
“Good morning, Sakura-chan!” Or at least, that was what he had meant to say, but it came out muffled and incomprehensible around the bread roll in his mouth. He caught the chakra signatures of Shikamaru and Neji out of sight, and mentally sighed to know that they were already starting to take their duties about guarding him seriously. Sure, Neji had already been slightly protective of him before Tsunade had said she would train him to be the Rokudaime… but to be at his door before he even got up? That was ridiculous.
Sakura rolled her eyes at her former team-mate. “You shouldn’t talk with your mouth full, Naruto.” She scolded lightly before beaming at him. “We get to see Sasuke-kun today, though!” She held up a fist wickedly. “And I get to give him a ‘welcome back’ for him leaving us for so long.”
Naruto nervously swallowed the last of the bread roll before he stepped out the door, his hands up in a more defensive position. He knew exactly how hard Sakura hit, and really wasn’t ready for the headache and subsequent concussion he would get if he provoked her. He had seen the cracked landscape from her fists, after all.
“I’m sure he’d appreciate the welcome back,” Naruto lied nervously, not wanting to get on her bad side so fast after they had just gotten back home. He gave her a closed eye grin when she turned toward him, though, his mood once again uplifting as he remembered what Tsunade had told them just hours previous. “Hey, hey, Sakura-chan-ten hours count as good rest, right?” His grin stretched wider. “We don’t have to wait until tomorrow if we’re fresh and well-rested; enough to take on Sasuke, anyway.”
“That’s what I’m hoping.” Sakura agreed with him as they walked down the stairs, heading toward the Hokage tower.
Naruto glanced skyward, taking in the brilliant sunset colours and the cooling air. Summer in Leaf village was always a joy, and it had been during his years away from training that Naruto had realized that despite his own stubbornness and the villagers’ discriminations, home to him was the summer nights in Hidden Leaf, the colours of the sunset watched from the top of the Hokage mountain. Home was rushing to Ichiraku’s for a brief lunch before rushing back towards the forest for training amidst the foliage of green leaves and the sound of rushing water from the small creeks and streams running through the forest.
It was almost always warm in Leaf, even during the winters when the air turned cold and people dressed in coats and scarves. People would gather into groups and laugh together, children playing around the village, complaining about school and hoping for snow.
Home was with his friends, either training or insulting each other or playing together. Home was the warmth of eating together, was fighting amongst the leaves and was everything that he had missed. Naruto had hoped that somehow when he fulfilled his promise to Sakura and dragged Sasuke back home, then everything would be alright again.
He smiled, hands behind his head as he and Sakura walked down the streets of Leaf, enjoying the fading light of the sun. Hidden Leaf was a prosperous, peaceful village despite the fact that the main source of revenue came from violent missions and assassinations. Naruto liked to think of the positive side of those missions, though. The violence came from protecting clients… and assassination was based on each team of ANBU and what missions they would take. Tsunade screened the missions very carefully to ensure that all the people who were blacklisted truly deserved what had been coming to them.
“Ne, Shikamaru! Neji!” Naruto called out, not bothering to look where they were hiding themselves from view. It was better not to reveal their locations, after all. “Why don’t we all walk together? It’s not as if the villagers aren’t used to us hanging out-in fact, they might find it suspicious that you guys aren’t here.”
There was barely a shift in the wind, but Naruto understood that it was their way of saying that they weren’t going to appear next to him when they were still on duty-even if it was their duty to protect him. Possibly because it was their duty to protect him.
“Don’t be slow, Naruto,” Sakura said as Naruto slowed down in their walk to try and decipher his team’s message. “The day’s nearly over-don’t you want Sasuke out of that interrogation room by today? The night shift won’t be happy with us if we had to go to Tsunade and then bug the shinobi about it, you know.”
“Yeah,” Naruto agreed cheerfully, already speeding up his steps to catch up to Sakura. “I’m coming!”
**
“This is amazing,” Hermione brought over the few books that she had been looking through, settling herself down next to Ron and across from Harry. The two boys were bored already from flipping through numerous pages of text they couldn’t read, that was barely affected by the translation spells they had to continually cast on the books. Considering that each spell only translated about a paragraph of text, it didn’t take too long for the both of them to be flicking origami at each other.
“Stop that,” Hermione said and swatted at one of the paper airplanes that Ron had spelled to hover behind Harry’s head and poke at him. She gave a wave of her wand and a whispered finite, and all the paper monstrosities dropped onto the table sedately.
“We’re just not made out to live in a library,” Ron complained as he watched all his creations fall apart. Harry continued his folding of notebook paper calmly, not minding that Hermione had destroyed all their previous creations. He could always make more, and make them better, after all. “And it’s not like we’re really helping here since we can’t even read what’s written down! What are we looking for, anyway?”
“We were looking for texts about a strange mirror,” Harry volunteered the information, still focused on his folding. “But considering that I don’t even know what language this is in, I don’t think we’ll be much help here, Hermione.”
Hermione huffed. “If the two of you haven’t already figured it out, the language the texts are written in is an off-dialect of Japanese. “And the Hidden Nations…” she flipped through the book she had placed down, her hands hovering over the words eagerly. “They used to be a part of the wizarding world, did you know? But because wizards who used magic and the shinobi who use chakra used different ways of applying their energies, by the time the children being taught were about eleven to twelve years old, they were incompatible with each other.”
Ron gave her a befuddled look. “What?”
“Oh, you-” Hermione flipped another page, flicking her wand at the text to set another translation spell. English words were superimposed on top of the original text, and Hermione explained, “Children who were raised to be shinobi can’t be wizards, Ron. And children raised to be wizards can’t be shinobi. That’s why we’re supposedly incompatible with each other-because chakra and magic, well, they sort of…” she gestured blankly with her hands, “cancel each other out. Or overwhelm each other. People who are innately strong in magic will cancel out what shinobi call jutsus, or their version of spells. And those shinobi who possess an extraordinary amount of chakra would overwhelm the magic spells we cast.”
Hermione looked up at that point. “This is probably why those shadows that those bandits were trying to manipulate… that’s probably why they couldn’t get past Harry’s shield. It’s because Harry is a lot stronger in innate magic than they have chakra.”
“What?” Ron repeated.
“Can we find a room for the night now?” Harry asked. “Or somewhere to go for dinner?”
Hermione sighed in defeat. And to think, Harry had been so intent on studying before when he was undergoing his unofficial Auror training. But she supposed it was more of a trained reaction to find history boring from the many years of trying to learn under Professor Binns.
“Did you find out where we are, though?” Harry spoke up. “You said that this used to be a part of the wizarding world… so where are we exactly?”
“Well, that’s the thing.” She flipped a few more pages. “It doesn’t say. But it is hinted that centuries ago, true shinobi just disappeared. They took their children away so they wouldn’t be corrupted by our ‘magic’, and just… disappeared off the face of the earth. And apparently, according to these text, it wasn’t them who disappeared, it was us. As if the two really became separate worlds.”
“So in conclusion, we still don’t know where we are, or how to get back.” Harry shook his head, and then pushed his chair away from the table, standing. “Well. I’m ready for dinner and a place to sleep, how about you guys?”
**
There was a point, Naruto thought, where the silence should really get to a person and then they’d snap and kill everyone in their vicinity. At least, that was what Naruto had convinced himself as a child surrounded by silence. And because of that, he had found every possible way he could fill the silence, afraid of that wild madness that might lurk in areas where words and sounds were afraid to go.
His mind wandering back to that foolish childish belief of his made Naruto wonder if the silence had already taken hold of Sasuke, and had broken him. He had Sakura had both talked their mouths off the entire day, trying to fill in the blank silence that Sasuke had represented while they tried to reacquaint him with the village.
It was bad, Naruto supposed, that the villagers they passed usually turned to glare at them-and this time it wasn’t Naruto they were glaring at, but Sasuke. A stark change from their childhoods when Naruto had been the ostracised child and Sasuke had been near revered.
Naruto wondered what the villagers would say when they found out that he was being considered for the Rokudaime Hokage.
“…and I really don’t think that Sai should have been the one to take the negotiation mission to Hidden Sand, don’t you think so, Naruto?” Sakura was saying as they waited for dinner, the other customers in the restaurant glaring at them in a way that said they didn’t want Sasuke in there with them. Naruto squirmed, even as the Uchiha did not, remembering a time when the villagers would not allow him to eat in the restaurants of Leaf.
“Definitely not.” Naruto agreed on instinct. He was used enough to talking without thinking about it. “He’s just going to manage to insult Gaara, and then we’d have to redo the negotiations between our villages all over again!” He shook his head. “Sai still needs to work on his social skills. I mean… it’s a lot better than it was when we were fifteen, but I wouldn’t have put him on a diplomatic mission.”
“I wouldn’t put you on a diplomatic mission either, knowing you seven years ago,” Sakura teased. “But somehow you managed to convince the Kazekage to join in our fight against Sound.”
Naruto shrugged. In truth, he hadn’t really done anything at all. He had just been honest when Gaara had asked what Leaf needed, and when he requested aid, Gaara had given it to him without conditions. He didn’t quite understand it, but Gaara always seemed to agree to whatever Naruto suggested, no matter how stupid it sounded.
“Hey, hey,” He brightened. “Don’t they have ramen at this joint too?” He scanned over the menu briefly, wincing back just as Sakura leaned over the table to bop his head.
“You need to eat something else once in a while, Naruto!” She admonished as Naruto clutched his head protectively, letting out a pitiful whimper. “Ramen isn’t nourishing, you know!”
“It is so nourishing!” Naruto protested, and then turned to his side to nag at Sasuke. “Isn’t it, Sasuke? Sakura-chan’s just jealous because she’s afraid of not being able to eat ramen or else she’d get fat.”
“WHAT!”
Naruto chuckled as he ducked the napkin Sakura threw at him, his eyes straying to Sasuke, sobering when he realized that Sasuke hadn’t called him an idiot for that comment.
Things were so different now. Maybe Naruto had never thought about how Sasuke would be when they finally got him back home, but he never thought that the older boy would ignore him and Sakura like that. They were the ones who knew each other best, after all, and he was willing to bet that even after all these years, Naruto would be the one who understood how Sasuke thought best.
“Eating all that you do… you’ll be the one who gets fat, Naruto.” Sakura huffed, sitting back down in her seat in an unladylike manner.
“No, I won’t!” He said back with a grin. “No matter how much I eat, I work it off, remember? And I have a fast metabolism!”
Their banter continued on, but both Sakura and Naruto were hyperaware of the fact that Sasuke had not shown any signs of being affected by their conversation. The more that they tried to fill in the silence for Sasuke, the more that it seemed forced and unnatural. Naruto had never thought of it before, having always labelled Sasuke as a broody bastard when they were children, but Sasuke hadn’t been as silent as he had originally appeared. The little smirks and name-calling sessions had managed to diffuse a tension between team seven that Naruto hadn’t even known existed.
“I hope granny doesn’t want to test our team-work skills again,” Naruto said absently. “I wouldn’t want to go through the bell test again… although it’d be fun to have to search for that stupid cat again. Just like old times.”
Sakura smiled. “The bell test was fun.”
Naruto returned the smile. “Yeah, it was.”
Sasuke still hadn’t responded to them, and Naruto thought for a moment that perhaps it hadn’t been the wisest idea to reminisce about events that had happened during the Uchiha’s absence. Although he might not have known that they were talking about the second bell test, and not the first one the three of them had all taken in order to pass their genin examination.
“Well, all you have to do is whine for a better mission, Naruto.” Sakura said, rolling her eyes as a waiter came to take their orders. Predictably, Naruto had ordered the ramen that they had there. “I don’t know why, but it seems to work.”
“That’s ‘cause granny Tsunade looooooves me,” Naruto teased with a grin. When Sasuke hadn’t spoken up about what he wanted to eat (it didn’t help that the waiter didn’t even looking in his direction in the first place, pretending he wasn’t there), Sakura had ordered for him as well, a sushi platter with onigiri on the side. Naruto pointed a chopstick at Sakura childishly, “You just don’t speak up enough, Sakura. If we get bad missions, tell ‘em! What’s the worst that could happen, anyway? Best is that we’ll get a better mission next time and never have to worry about stupid missions again.”
“The worst that could happen would be that you get demoted for inability to listen to authority figures-and stop that, Naruto, it’s rude,” Naruto put down his chopsticks sheepishly. Sakura continued, “You can’t refuse missions now, anyway, Naruto. Especially the ones that you think are boring-most likely your training from now on won’t be on jutsus and fighting, but on how to resolve issues without resorting to violence.’
“Violence can solve a lot of issues!” Naruto protested. “C’mon, Sakura-chan… we live in Hidden Leaf! You can’t claim that violence doesn’t solve most of our issues when we live here.”
“That may be true,” Sakura conceded, “But as Hokage, violence would have to be a last resort.”
Naruto huffed, but let the subject matter go. The waiter was back with their orders, and Naruto marvelled a bit at the service being so speedy, but was glad for it nonetheless, knowing that it was just getting harder and harder to keep up the strained conversation with a silent Sasuke.
“Oh, Naruto,” Sakura scoffed as the blond starting inhaling the ramen in front of him. “You really shouldn’t eat ramen all the time, you know. It completely destroys your stomach lining, and that’s not something I can heal!”
“That’s okay, I don’t get sick outside of injuries!” Naruto boasted, knowing that his former team-mates would know what he was talking about.
“You shouldn’t rely on that,” Sakura said. She was picking through her food, obviously not too hungry they way she was looking at the dish. She sighed and put down her chopsticks, and propped her up elbow on the table as she settled her chin in a palm. “It’s nice to have some time off after all these months working.”
It was true-the past several months had been hectic, with Tsunade knowing and preparing for the eventual war; which only one part was over. There was still Akatsuki, and as long as a Naruto was a part of Hidden Leaf, the village wouldn’t be entirely safe from enemy shinobi.
The best course of action for the village would to be to send Naruto far away… but that wasn’t something that Tsunade could afford now that Naruto was her successor. It wouldn’t due to leave the village leaderless in a time of war if she died in battle. It really was the best thing for Tsunade to declare a successor early even if Naruto knew that he wouldn’t get the position until years later. In times of war, there should always be a successor so that the fighting does not stop when the leader is killed.
“You should eat, Sakura.” Naruto prodded. “You never know when we might be called by granny, the old bag of bones that she is. She would use us to fetch her anti-wrinkle cream or something.”
But Sakura wasn’t entirely paying attention to his words, since her gaze was stuck on Sasuke and his movements to eat. She had a crease between her brows that told Naruto she wasn’t studying the Uchiha beause she was crushing on him like she used to when they were twelve, but instead was probably thinking of something important.
Sakura frowned, and but down her napkin. “You really should have more respect for Hokage-sama, you know. She’s the one who’s gifting you with the position of being her future successor. But,” she shook her head. “I’m surprisingly not hungry at the moment.” She excused herself to the restroom, standing and walking away despite the panicked look Naruto had sent her.
Naruto’s thoughts were frantic. She was leaving him? Leaving him alone to try and carry on this one-sided conversation with Sasuke, the imitation block of ice? A few years ago, this would not have been a problem, as Naruto tended to chat on about anything and everything with little notice to whether the person he was talking to was actually listening to him or not. He could still do that, actually. Heck, he was doing that with his gossip-talk with Sakura.
But Naruto felt he did not know Sasuke well enough to carry on those conversations without it feeling extremely awkward on his end anymore. He used to talk at Sasuke for hours on end when they had been twelve, training together. Sasuke used to have a annoyed look on his face every time Naruto had done that, always telling the blond to shut up and pay attention or he would always be the dead last.
But back then, Naruto had been comfortable talking to Sasuke, even if the other boy might not listen. The blond tended to blurt random things out when he was shooting off at the mouth like that, and he hadn’t minded Sasuke knowing more about him than a normal team-mate would.
But now… it felt like he was sitting with a stranger. A dangerous stranger.
It felt like Sasuke really had cut those bonds of friendship that had tied them together all this time. Or maybe it was Naruto who had deluded himself into thinking that the bonds had been there to begin with. He was optimistic about Sasuke, though-he had never believed that Sasuke would be able to cut those bonds. Not when he had saved Naruto so many times at the danger to his own life, even when the Uchiha still had his goal of killing his brother to fulfill.
“I think Sakura’s just using that excuse because she’s trying to hide her diet.” He told Sasuke conspiratorially, figuring he would stick with the joking and carefully monitor the conversation to make sure it didn’t wander into any serious territory. It was slightly encouraging that Sasuke was eating at all instead of trying to go for that sullen look of his and refuse any attempts to help him.
But then, the Sasuke Naruto had known had existed seven years ago. So much could change in seven years.
Naruto shook that thought off, deciding that no matter how much Sasuke had changed, they knew each other once and always would. The two of them had a bond that not even Sakura shared, one forged of common loneliness and childhood bitterness. Sasuke was important to Naruto. He always would be.
“-And then Shikamaru had been talking with Ino when, BAM! Konohamaru just jumps out of nowhere and crashes right into that stand Ino had been working on! So she gets angry and chases him around, yeah? And poor Shikamaru’s left with the broken stand and he has to explain to the client why it was broken and everything.” When in doubt, tell old embarrassing stories. “And he was assigned D-rank missions for two weeks as a punishment! Man, I would hate to have to work under Anko-that woman is a sadist, I swear.”
He chewed thoughtfully on his ramen, thinking. “What is it with Shikamaru and blondes, anyway? First Temari, and now I swear that he’s got Ino chasing after him…” Naruto shook his head. “He has all the luck!”
“Idiot. You’re blond, too.”
“But I’m a guy, so it doesn’t count!” Naruto grinned, “But you have to admit, I make a really hot chick!”
It was only then that he realized that Sasuke had spoken up for the first time since Naruto had seen him that night. The other boy looked entirely too casual about it, as if he hadn’t stayed silent the entire trip to the restaurant and not responded to their questions and attempts at conversation with him.
“Ha! So you can speak after all!” Naruto pointed with a wide grin. “And here I thought you lost your voice because you’re in the presence of the amazingly talented future Hokage, Uzumaki Naruto!”
The boasting was familiar and comforting. Not to mention, it felt a hell of a lot better know that he was so close to his dream. Beside, it made him feet better to be able to boast like he had as a child.
Sasuke turned his face away, but not before Naruto noticed a hint of a familiar scowl on his face.
“…Moron,” Sasuke muttered under his breath, and if Naruto didn’t have his extraordinary hearing, he would have missed the insult.
Naruto only grinned. It felt a lot better knowing that Sasuke had been paying attention to them after all, and that he hadn’t really seemed to change, despite all those years under Orochimaru and all the powers he was sure to have learned.
“I’m not a dead last anymore, you know.” Naruto said cordially, both hands propping up his chin in a surprisingly childish manner. His food had been forgotten the moment that Sasuke had spoken up, since he knew that that the moment he ignored Sasuke for something else, the other man would pretend that he hadn’t said a thing in the first place.
Sasuke didn’t reply to that, only looking away from Naruto, but the blond knew the other well enough (or at least, he assumed that he knew the other well enough) to understand Sasuke’s unspoken response to that.
Maybe you were never one to begin with.
**
Hermione had used a spell to copy off the contents of several books from the library, and was reading them in the small restaurant that they were in, all the menus written in a language that they didn’t quite understand. It was a good thing that Hermione had them use the translation spells on themselves, because otherwise there would have been no way to communicate their orders for food.
Harry was looking around the small restaurant, registering the few customers around them. Surprisingly, about a third of the people in the restaurant had those strange imprinted headbands tied around some part of their body, be it their head or neck or waist or arm.
What was that? He wondered distantly as Hermione muttered to herself, buried in her book, and Ron swirled his drink with the wooden Asian chopsticks they were provided with. Out of the three of them, only Hermione had been proficient in the use of chopsticks, while Harry struggled a bit and Ron couldn’t seem to grasp the concept of it at all (“Why use these two sticks when you have nice forks and spoons?” he had grumbled).
A table in the corner interested him the most, occupied by three people, including a girl with strangely pink hair reminding Harry of Tonks, only more feminine than the spiky locks that Tonks had. She and a blond boy were talking at a speed that the translation spell couldn’t seem to keep up with, while the third of their party looked away disapprovingly.
Harry stared at them a bit as the two at the table laughed merrily, trying to draw the third into their conversation. The village seemed so happy and carefree, yet the atmosphere seemed somehow forced and sober in a way that reminded Harry of the days after Dumbledore had died. Did they just lose a leader? He wondered to himself as their strange and Asian styled orders arrived.
Ron had dug into the food immediately, never minding that it wasn’t anything he was used to. The redhead grumbled for a moment that the taste was too bland, but it did not deter him from the food on his plate. Hermione, on the other hand, had finally looked up from her books to draw her best friends’ attention.
“There’s a leader here that we can go to for help.” She told them in English, not bothering to use the translation spell and let themselves be overheard by others. “They call them a… a Shadow, I think? The translation spell might not be at its best right now, but… basically, each village has its own Shadow, and since we’re in Fire Country right now, that means that we have to look for the Fire Shadow, since there’s only one Shadow in all of Fire Country.”
“That sounds suspicious,” Ron put in. “If they’re leaders, why call them shadows? Seems too dark to me.”
“Apparently,” Hermione answered, flipping rapidly through her book as her eyes scanned the foreign words, “It’s because they’re not the real political leaders of the country. The real leadership is inherited, like royalty… but the title of Shadow is passed on not by bloodline, but by worth. And from what this book hints at, the Shadows are more like the power behind the throne. They are the leaders of the… shinobi? The book doesn’t translate this term, but it somehow sounds familiar… The Shadows are the leader of the shinobi of their village, and basically that means that they’re the leaders of what are considered the elite fighters of the country. That certainly gives them a great deal of power.”
“But does that mean we should go to these shadows for help?” Harry asked, poking at his roll of rice with a chopstick. “Shouldn’t we go to those real political leaders instead?”
“Not necessarily,” the brown-haired girl turned another page. “It says here that shinobi are like mercenaries… maybe we can offer them something for their help. Best case scenario, we offer something good enough that they’ll come back with us and we’ll have a new army for the war.” Hermione’s eyes were piercing when she stared at Harry, and the three of them sobered up at the idea.
The wizarding world couldn’t stand on its own feet, that much was already proven. With the Ministry of Magic so ready to reassure people that they need not participate in the war, those very same people had hidden away in their own homes, hoping that out of sight would mean out of mind.
There was no army to fight their war for them, only a hand full of people who risked life and limb on each and every mission. Even if they were mercenaries, they were a type of magical and just numbers would boost the morale of the people already fighting. It hadn’t help that most of the magical creatures had refused to partake in the war until there looked to be a ready outcome and they could choose a winning side.
“Mercenaries, huh?” Ron mused. “What if they’re offered something better by You-Know-Who? That would completely backfire in our faces.”
Harry pushed away the plate of food before him, folding his arms on the table as his face took on a contemplative expression. “We’ll never know unless we ask. We can bind them with a magical contract if we have to.”
The two others mulled over the thought for a moment, wondering what in the world they had come to that they were thinking about pulling a magical contract on people who might not be able to defend themselves against magic.
**
It was the next day when Naruto was once again summoned to the Hokage office, for what he assumed might be the beginning of his training.
The blond grimaced a bit at the thought. Years and years of training, and now it only led to more training-not physical this time, but in politics. And paperwork. It was something he had been introduced to a few years back during a downtime when he had been running errands for Tsunade-filing papers and fetching scrolls from various people.
Bo-ring, Naruto thought grumpily. He really wasn’t the type to sit still to learn anything, and Tsunade should have known that by now. He needed hands-on experience in order to learn successfully.
But maybe that was what he was getting. The blond brightened at the thought, his steps lighter as he wandered down the long corridors of the Hokage Tower. Maybe he was actually getting sent on some diplomatic mission! Maybe to Hidden Sand, if Tsunade didn’t trust him with the more delicate politics yet. After all, Gaara already knew all about Naruto’s antics and certainly wouldn’t take offence for whatever misdemeanour the blond managed.
Or maybe… maybe! Naruto’s eyes glazed over a bit as he wandered off into his childhood fantasies. Maybe he would be sent to protect some princess or retrieve some super-secret scroll from enemy shinobi!
Well, Uzumaki Naruto was there to serve! He would certainly not let anyone down!
“Idiot. Fire Country doesn’t have any princesses. And you’re here for Hokage training, right? This isn’t a usual ANBU mission.”
Naruto hadn’t even realized he had his fists striking the air in anticipation until he heard Sasuke’s voice behind him. He whirled around and pointed at the Uchiha. “Shut up, bastard! And stop reading my mind!”
“I wasn’t reading your mind.” Sasuke replied amiably, not missing a beat as he stepped past his former team-mate. “You were saying that aloud.”
Naruto huffed, but sped up his steps to once again match the Uchiha’s. “What do you know about the training, anyway? It could have princesses!”
“Politics, dead last. That requires subtlety, which you lack. The Hokage is most likely going to try and teach you to sit still for more than twenty seconds.”
Naruto was good at staying still. People never believed him, but he had learned the skill during his chuunin years, having had a mission where his surroundings had been littered with enemy shinobi and he had to stay absolutely still for an entire day and night before they moved on, thinking that he had somehow managed to leave the clearing when he was in fact twenty meters above their heads. Of course, that was only because he had to stay still. If left on his own, the blond had too much energy to spend any time in one place, not moving.
But what other people didn’t know would serve to his advantages, right? Right! Let them all think that he couldn’t sit still! He would just show them all up when push came to shove!
He nodded with determination as he knocked loudly on the door to the Hokage office, having learned (or better yet, pounded into his head the past several years) not to just barge in without warning when the clients were most likely there and able to get a bad impression of him right from the start.
But still, that didn’t stop him from opening the door wide half a second after his knocks, not wanting to give them too much warning. After all, this was just training and it wasn’t like Tsunade didn’t already know about his antics anyway. Might as well give her a reason to get pissed at him rather than having her mad later and him not knowing what he did wrong.
“Uzumaki Naruto reporting in!” He said cheerfully, stepping right into the office without acknowledging the occupants. “Ready for duty!”
Sasuke followed behind him at a leisurely pace, his eyes flicking over the room to take in those he didn’t recognize and the positions of where Tsunade and Sakura were standing at. There were three people who were in the room obviously not dressed as if they were from Konoha. Clients? He wondered. But it would defeat the purpose of Naruto’s training as Hokage-he would have to stay inside the village to learn of its political systems, after all, not wander off on missions outside of Fire Country. Maybe the clients were waiting for another group.
“You’re late, Uzumaki.”
The blond smartened up at hearing himself addressed like that. He was used to Tsunade using insulting nicknames for him, and didn’t expect that it would change throughout his training-probably increase, actually. To be addressed so formally meant that she was trying to make an impression on the clients standing in front of her.
He took a hard look at them for a moment-they were the group that he wouldn’t have given another thought about had he met them on the streets. Two boys and a girl, just like a normal genin team, one of the boys exceptionally tall with bright red hair and freckles, and the other short and with dark hair as messy as Naruto’s, wearing glasses that would have put Kabuto to shame.
The girl was perhaps the most unremarkable of the group, with short fuzzy hair and a contemplating look on her face as she examined him right back.
Tsunade pretended that the exchange hadn’t taken place as she scribbled something on a note behind her desk, rolling it up and then sealing it before throwing the scroll over to Naruto.
“Uzumaki Naruto will be leading your mission for this.” Tsunade spoke to the three strangers. “He is the best that can be spared at the moment, but there will be no action taken until a solid alliance has been set up between your Order and our village.”
The redhead looked like he was going to protest for a moment before he shut his mouth, not needing the prompting of who Naruto supposed were his team-mates.
“Haruno-san will escort you to the missions department to get you signed up.” Tsunade continued, and Sakura stepped in at that moment, bowing slightly to the three strangers before extending an arm out as indication that they should follow her. The three seemed to look at each other for a moment before following her, not without casting a suspicious glance behind them, knowing full well that they were being escorted out so that the Hokage could inform mission details and perhaps other information that they weren’t meant to hear.
Naruto barely waited for the click of the door before he burst out with questions.
“Mission? I thought it was training! Training!” He waved his arms in the air for emphasis, feeling as if he were a genin again, looking for higher ranked missions than finding someone’s lost cat or doing community work. He mourned, “On the first day, too… you really want to get rid of me, don’t you, granny?”
He could see the twitch in her arm that indicated her refrain from throwing something heavy and breakable at him. “This isn’t just any mission, Naruto. I want you to take no action until we figure out the motives behind those three.” She gave a nod in the direction of the door, “They claim to have a mission for us, and an alliance from their country to sweeten the deal, but…” Tsunade folded her hands together on the table, “I have more than a suspicion that they aren’t telling us everything we need to know before heading into missions.”
Naruto sobered a bit. He hated when clients refused to tell the entire story, remembering team seven’s first mission which had been a C turned A. While it had seemed exciting and cool as a kid, looking back he realized that it was a damned lucky thing Haku hadn’t been keen to kill them, or else Sasuke would have died on that mission for sure.
He didn’t like thinking of that mission. It brought back memories of when team seven had been an actual, naïve team; with Sasuke still willing to give his life for his team-mates. Before the betrayal.
Tsunade gave a flick of her fingers, and Neji and Shikamaru both stepped out of the shadows where they had been following Naruto and Sasuke, as silent as they were trained to be.
“While this may not have been the primary mission I assigned you,” the Hokage said to the two ANBU, “I want you to assist Naruto on this mission. The clients are not to know of your presence, but since this is the first diplomatic mission that Naruto will be assigned, I want the two of you to guide him in what to do.”
Naruto gave a brief whine of protest, but knew why Tsunade had assigned it this way. While he was good at winning people over eventually, politics (from what he had garnered of it) was a lot about first impressions-and Naruto never gave out very good first impressions, where as both Shikamaru and Neji came from very influential clans and were more than likely trained for political situations.
“Yes, Hokage-sama.”
Naruto chanced a glance over at his best friend, watching as Sasuke stared blankly out the window, not offering any opinion on the matter. He knew it must have stung the other not to have a assigned role in the mission; for Tsunade to make him out like useless baggage. But still, Sasuke kept silent as if none of what was said in the room bothered him in the slightest, or even concerned him at all.
“Pay attention, Naruto.” Tsunade snapped as she noticed that the blond’s focus had wandered. “Those people are hiding something for sure-they claim to be from a place where all shinobi originated from, but then they refuse to divulge any more information. I’m not assigning a rank to this mission until you get back, as this isn’t exactly a paid mission.”
She leaned forward across her desk, making sure to capture Naruto’s complete attention. “This is your first diplomatic mission, Naruto. You are to secure the alliance that those people are offering Konoha-if! If they are telling the truth, and not a threat to us. You are not to take any action at all here. This is observational. If they are not the type of people that Konoha would ally with, then you leave and come back here. If they do not let you leave… well.” She sat back now. “This is why I’m sending some of my best shinobi on this mission, isn’t it?”
Naruto blinked, and then grinned. “Aw, granny. You do care, after all!”
He had to duck the paperweight thrown at his face, and made a scared expression when it made a large dent in the wall.
“Think of this as your practical, hands on training.” Tsunade suggested. “These people have no affiliation with the rest of the shinobi nations, but they may be important in the future. Don’t fail me on this, Naruto.”
Naruto just grinned in response.
**
Hermione had to try her very best not the fidget when the girl with pink hair led them to a different office, filled with people dressed sharply in dark uniforms-usually black, with white bandages and green vests. The brunette was quite aware of why they had been led away. There was going to be information that they, the clients, would not be exposed to.
A twinge of doubt nagged at the back of her mind. She had done a lot of reading in the past day, or half day, since they had landed in this strange place. It was bad enough she had trouble with her magic in this strange land, but she also read about what the people here called chakra, which was their own type of magic.
If she had trouble with her magic in this land, did that mean that these… shinobi would have trouble when they crossed the mirror back home?
If they could cross back home, that was. But Hermione didn’t want to think negatively on that aspect. She knew her Runes quite well, after all, and the mirror was definitely supposed to be a two-way transportation. She just had to figure out how to activate it, after all. Or if perhaps there was a mirror on this side that would lead them back to their world rather than that gnarled tree in the forest.
How was it that they had crossed the mirror in the first place? She was sure that they weren’t the first to do so, considering that the Minister had revealed the decapitated heads that had been sent back. That meant that there was a way to get back, and that it was through the very same mirror. Hopefully, they didn’t have to be dead in order to cross back again.
“Here,” the girl with pink hair was saying, “is where you fill out a client application.” She briefly thanked a man behind the desk as he handed her a stack of papers. She gave the stack over to Harry, who accepted the papers with a slightly disgruntled expression. Hermione could see Harry’s befuddled look before his features smoothed over.
Of course, it was Ron who pointed out the obvious.
“Um… Miss Sakura, was it?” Ron took a sheet from Harry’s hands, staring at the words on the paper. They might have the translation spell, but that usually only worked for words that were spoken and heard… sometimes for reading small sections from books. But there wasn’t really a spell that would allow them to write in another, unknown language. “Can we get someone to write this for us?”
‘Sakura’ gave them a disapproving look. “I’m unsure how you would expect anyone to know your information, Mr…?”
“Ron Weasley.” Ron shrugged when both Harry and Hermione gave him a look. It never bothered him to reveal his name to other people, like it had with his two best friends. “It’s just…” he gave a lost look to the pink-haired girl. “We’re having a bit of trouble with the language here?”
“We could dictate.” Hermione offered, trying to amend Ron’s previous statement. “We just have trouble with the written language. It’s not that we’re trying to withhold information.”
The pink-haired girl smiled in reply, but Hermione was able to see that it wasn’t a completely honest smile. It made her wearier than before, wondering if the decision to seek help from these people was a good idea after all. They had their separate powers and separate motives. According to the books she had gone through, they were like mercenaries. Who was to say that they would not ally themselves with Voldemort if he offered them better payment?
This is why we’re hiring them first, the brunette reassured herself. Because they can’t break a contract if they’re already allied with us.
Perhaps it was a bit naïve of her to think that, but she would rather believe in the honour of these people. She didn’t know much about them, but from looking through their writing systems they seemed very… Japanese? And she knew that honour was a great system back in Japanese history.
Hermione was broken out of her reverie when Miss Sakura gestured to someone else across the room, startling the group who had not realized that they were surrounded by so many people. How in the world had they not noticed?
She could tell that Harry especially was unnerved, having been trained to detect the presence of anyone trying to hide from him. Maybe it was because they didn’t exactly use magic, though, which allowed them their invisibility.
“If that’s the case, then there are plenty of people who would be glad to help.” The pink-haired girl smiled politely. There was already someone with a pen held ready to the paper behind the desk. “Now… where was it that you were from?”
Okay. The 'Miss Sakura' thing. I know I used Japanese honorifics in part 2, and I will continue to use them when any of the Naruto cast are speaking. Not when they are thinking, not when the HP cast is speaking... nowhere else. Why? Again, I don't want to include too much Japanese, but at the same time- it just doesn't sound right of the Naruto cast not to speak with honorifics to me. To me, it makes a big difference whether Naruto calls Sakura by just her name or adds a '-chan' to her title. Being too familiar and stuff. Yeah.