Chapter 7: Aftermath

*Anya POV*

As I woke up, and looked around, I couldn't recognize the surroundings where I was. It was a dark room, but there was still enough light for me to make out the details of the room. There was 4 beds in total in the room, with a body in each of them. One of those was myself. Next to the bed was a bunch of strange looking equipment, that seems way to modern for the world I am in. From what I can gather the instruments monitor something, probably health related stuff, like heartrate or brain activity. I conclude that I am most probably in a hospital, and as the last I remember was the nine-tails attack, I am probably in Konoha hospital.

The reason the room is so dark, is that its the middle of the night. All the other people in this room seem to be sleeping. There is nothing really immediate that I need to take care of, I assume there will be someone here to talk with me in the morning. If no one else, then probably a nurse or a doctor. It feels like I have been asleep for some time, and I can go back to sleep now. So with nothing much to do, I go over my injuries and body in general.

As I look a my arms, there are no wounds anymore. I assume that they would not use medical ninjutsu on my scrapes and cuts, and since they are gone, some time must have passed. Figuring out how much time has passed, will have to wait for when I can ask someone else. My entire body is sore though, like I just had a whole day of intense training. No broken bones, which must mean that either I was healed, or a long time has passed.

Once I am done feeling how my body is, I try to go over what happened and what I remember from the nine-tails attack.

I remember the attack came as a surprise for me, and I had to react quickly to get away from the giant fox. I remember that my house was smashed, and that I desperately dodged the tail of the fox for as long as I could, until I thrown threw a tree, and I blacked out. I was starting to have a very bad feeling. My mother was home, when we went to sleep. Right now I was hoping that my mother had gone out to somewhere, so she wasn't home when the attack happened. If she was home at that time, there is really no chance she would have survived that. If she didn't survive, that would mean I would be mostly alone in this world. Only my aunt would be there, but she was often gone for missions. If my mother was dead, it would also mean that the last 5 years of preparation and work, would have been for nothing, and I had failed my most important task.

As I was thinking and spiraling into a more and more negative thought process, I was so preoccupied that I didn't notice a nurse opening the door to the room.

"Ah, you are awake?" The nurse asked "There has been several people to visit you, that will be happy to know you are awake again. I will go let them know right now"

Before I could even get a word in, she left again.

I was exited to see who would come, hoping it would be my mother, or even my aunt.

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*Hiruzen POV*

I was notified that one of the survivors of the nine-tails attack, who had been unconscious since the attack, had woken up. It was a 10 year old girl, who has shown some promise as a ninja, thus I decided to go see her myself.

I send an Anbu ahead, to the hospital, to request the student would be placed in a private room. Some of the information we would talk about, might be sensitive.

After about an hours of me finishing up paperwork, I took out all the information, I had about the student. She was 10 year old, and of interest was that she was an Uzumaki. Her mother had chosen to keep her without the last name, but I saw an opportunity here. As I read longer into the file, my face grew longer. It seems like her home and family was lost in the nine-tails attack. Her mother and home was crushed by the nine-tails initial attack, and her aunt had heroically lost her life protecting fellow ninja from the nine-tails. With a sigh I said to no one but myself:

"This will be a very difficult conversation"

I made my way to the hospital. As I was directed from the reception, I found the private room where the student Anya was. I knocked on the door, and entered before I heard any answer from inside. One of the perks of being Hokage, is that I don't have to wait for anyone else.

As I entered the room, I looked over the child in the bed before me. She was about 1,50 meters tall, with long red hair, that flowed all the way down to her neck. She looked 10 years old, still had some visible baby fat, mostly on her face. However it was clear to see that she had trained hard, as her body had started to build up muscle. I was a bit surprised, when I reached out with my sensing, to notice she had about average jonin level of chakra. Another indicator that she was an Uzumaki. Her injuries, when she was admitted to the hospital, was severe, several broken bones and punctures all over her body. Now she looked much better, but she looked very tired, if she didn't have her heightened stamina from the Uzumaki blood, she would still be unconscious. I noted something else in her eyes, when she looked at me. Disappointment and sadness. I think she was expecting someone else, maybe her mother or aunt.

"Hello child, how are you doing" I said to her, try to break the ice, and getting the conversation rolling.

"Tired, but not with any injuries" Anya said "How long was I out?"

"That's good. You have been out for about 2 weeks here in the hospital" I said to her, trying my best to give her a reassuring smile, she nodded.

"Is my mother and aunt dead?" Anya asked, taking me a bit by surprise.

"Why are do you ask?" I said back to her.

"Well, since you are the first one here to visit me, I can only assume that my mother and aunt can come. That would only happen if they were hindered, for some reason. I saw that giant creature smashing my home. I was unsure if my mother was inside at the time, but combined with her not being here, I assumed the worst" Anya said, I observed a quivering in her voice, as she stopped speaking.

"If what you say is true, then why would you assume your aunt is also dead? I asked her

"If my first assumption is true, and my mother is dead, there is nothing, apart from death, that would keep my aunt from visiting me here. I asked the nurse, and no one matching my aunt or mother, has come to visit me while here" Anya said.

I nodded to her, and added an mental note to update the files I had on her. Intelligent, observant and deductive should be added.

"Your assumptions are correct. Your mother lost her life in the initial attack, and your aunt lost her life protecting the village and her fellow ninja. My condolences." I said

I paused for a few moment, before I continued:

"Would you be up for me to ask a few questions about that night? And I assume you would also have some questions for me?" I said and looked at Anya.

She nodded and we continued to talk.

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*Anya POV*

I had talked to Hiruzen for some time now. Mostly me retelling what had happened that night. Hiruzen supplementing what he felt he could tell me about what happened after I was blacked out.

After we got through that part of the story, there was a natural lull in our talk. After a few moments I asked:

"What will happen to me now. I have no home and no family?" I asked

"We can find some temporary housing for you, until we have rebuild your home. And while you are technically an orphan, I get the impression, that you would be able to take care of yourself. So until you graduate, the Hokage office will supply you with a monthly stipend." Hiruzen said

"That sounds reasonable" I said

"I do however have another request to make of you Anya" Hiruzen said

I motioned for him to continue.

"Although I can't go into specifics about it. I would like for you to start to use your last name" Hiruzen said

I had expected this to happen at some point, but expected it to be later. With others of the Uzumaki name, Naruto would not be so alone in the world, even though it would only be in name at least. I think Hiruzen was hoping that Naruto would be more attached to the village if there were other from his clan here as well. This could only mean that Hiruzen is already expecting some animosity from the village towards Naruto.

"That is fine with me. Although I don't want my father to be revealed, I can start to use my last name from now forward." I said to answer Hiruzen

He nodded looking happy.

After some further discussion, more about the practically par of my life going forward, Hiruzen left.

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*Time skip to end of 5th year in academy*

I was in the hospital for an additional week, and it took me about another month to get back into shape again. During the week in the hospital, with nothing to do, I started going over what I had been doing since I got to this world, and what my next goal should be.

My only goal so far, had been to survive and make sure my mother survived the nine-tails attack. Now that that is over, I need to find myself a new goal. And although it is cliché, I never want to feel that powerless again or loose someone like that again. Thus my goal now, is to get more powerful. If I am powerful enough, I can pretty much protect anyone I want, even the whole world, as is evident with powerful forces like Kaguya.

I have also been thinking a lot about the Ninja system and the village system. At least 4 ninja world wars, because the villages don't cooperate between each other. And as one village attacks an other village defends, life will be lost on both sides. They would get so much more work done if they worked together. Take for example the village hidden in the sand. They will attack Konoha in the future, because they are poor, and lack food. But just one or two ninja that can use water ninjutsu, would be enough to make the desert fertile again, with no need for them to attack any other. While there are not many water release users in the sand village, if the cooperated with the mist village, there should be plenty of water available. But the solution for all problems in the ninja society, always seem to be attack someone else and take their stuff.

My conclusion is that the village system does not work in their current state, nor will it work in the future. Thus to really change the, there needs to be a revolution. And the more I think on it, the less likely that the revolution can happen from within the village itself.

After my week in the hospital, I went back to the academy, and started training again. I had lost some progress from my almost month long stay in the hospital, and over the first month, I worked myself back into physical shape again, while keeping up with my chakra training.

During this month, I also visited my house. Luckily the had not gotten to this part of town yet, so the houses ruin was still there. This visit had two purposes. One I wanted to pay homage to both my mother and aunt, where they lost their life. Two I wanted to look through the ruin, to see if there are some memorabilia that I could take away from my first home in this world.

While I was going through the ruin, I quickly realized that most of the house and whatever was in the house, was crushed to atoms. A fire during the fight, has also ensured that anything that could have survived a crushing from a giant fox, did not survive the night. I did though find one item, that surprisingly both survived the fire and the fox. The small black book, I got on my fifth birthday, from my father. While going through the rubble, I had cut my hand on something, so when I found the book, some of my blood dropped onto the book. To my surprise, this had a reaction from the book, and for the first time the book opened.

I was very exited to read what was in the book. So after finding it, I quickly left to my lodging, for reading through it.

While most of the book, was fuinjutsu, way above my current level. On on of the last pages, I saw something that made me smile:

Fujinutsu: Adamantine Sealing Chains

Not only that, but there seemed to be different variation and techniques derived from the Adamantine sealing chains. While it was way above my current league, I now have access to one of the most powerful abilities in the ninja world.

During my month, I also reconnected with my friends, Shira and Yugao. While they were not directly affected by the nine-tails attack, they were still part of the collective loss of Konoha.

We talked about what happened, and as we had talked about, we all wanted to graduate from the academy this year. Thus we applied for early graduation, to be at the end of the current year.

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And here we are. Last day of ninja academy, and those who are set for graduation have just started the written test. There is about 30 potential ninja for this test, and after an hour the practical test will begin. We were told that the practical test for this year, will be the transformation jutsu. I would have been ok, with any of the 3 basic jutsu, so didn't really matter what test it was.

After the testing was over, me, Shira and Yugao met up outside the academy. All three of us were sporting shiny new forehead protectors, with a leaf motive in the middle. We all three wore the forehead protectors on our forehead. I saw a bunch of the other newly graduated were wearing around their neck, arms or legs. But most wore it around their forehead.

The 3 of us were having small talk, until Shira asked:

"Should we do something to celebrate our graduation?" She asked

"Yes, but we must remember, that we have to be back at the academy again tomorrow, to be divided into teams, and met our new teacher" Yugao said, with a face that showed almost no emotion.

"That's a problem for tomorrow. I vote we visit "Grandma's Old bakery", they have the best chocolate cake" I said, perking up at the idea of cake, and exams being over.

"What's wrong with the "Tom's bakery"? Isn't that were we usually go for cake?" Shira asked.

"I made a measurement, of the amount of cake. And "Grandma's Old bakery" has 75g more cake compared to "Tom's bakery". Thus making "Grandma's old bakery" the superior choice." I answered.

That convinced the other two, and we went on our quest for a well deserved cake. Tomorrow we will have to be back again for the next step of the ninja journey.