Chapter 12 -> Part 12

It had been three days since I last emerged from the basement of the Hokage tower where the Kyuubi had been sealed inside of me. I spent nearly all that time working on channeling the Kyuubi's strength without killing myself. An ANBU visited three times a day and brought me food and occasionally a scroll on the tailed beasts that had been found in the village archives.

When I finally left for a day, I traded the embarrassment of almost forgetting Minato's birthday for the embarrassment of being the only person who remembered, including the boy himself. When I walked into the apartment with a present in my hands I found the two Genin and the two adults leaning over a complicated seal far beyond my comprehension that covered the entire table with paper. Poor Nagato was flopped over one of the mattresses unknotting a length of ninja wire.

"Happy birthday, Minato!" I said with as much enthusiasm as I could muster.

They shushed me and continued in their debate.

"They been being mean for days!" Nagato told me wisely. It sounded pathetic coming from the boy. "They won't play with me! To-chan always plays with me!"

I felt bad because I had been the one to ask them to make the seal. It made me feel even worse when I realized that Nagato wasn't even old enough to go to school, so he had absolutely nothing to do. The walls were drawn on, some of the doodles were pictures, and others resembled crooked kanji while his fingers were stained with ink. He had pushed the mattresses and appeared to have made some sort of game with the blankets and pillows. I was surprised he hadn't wandered out yet, though that might have been because of the combination of the child-proofing seals and the fact he couldn't quite reach the lock above the doorknob.

"Hey, kiddo, why don't you and I go out for a big breakfast somewhere and then go to the playground?"

"Really?" He jumped up and ran at me, colliding with my knees and not letting go.

"Sure, just let me tell them where we'll be so they don't worry."

"You're the best nii-san ever! You are my nii-san, right? That's what Ka-chan said when we were in that boring building!"

"Um, sure, I'll be your nii-san too," I answered as I scribbled down the note and left it on top of Minato's present, the scooped up the impressive pile of mail on the doormat for something to read later. "I know the perfect place to eat, ready to go?"

Nagato ran to the door and pulled on his shoes. I grabbed one of my old jackets hanging in the closet and slipped it on him. It was January and a little cold for a kid. I could use a little bit of medical chakra to warm myself up.

I was about to open the door when Nagato reached up to me. "Up?" He asked. I crouched down and he hopped onto my back. "Fly! Fly!" He insisted. I glanced back at the table where the three Uzumakis and Minato were bent over the seal. I wanted to pull them out, but Nagato had obviously been bored for days. I have no idea how they forgot about the boy, but he deserved some fun, especially since it was mostly my fault he was being ignored. Once the boy had a secure grip, I leapt to the roof to show him my favorite way to get breakfast in Konoha. Nagato was perfectly happy carrying part of our breakfast and curious as to what I was planning. When we reached the closest market square, I set Nagato on his feet. He immediately grasped my hand and let me pull him through the square to several stands where I bought us assorted fruits and sweets.

One thing I did not miss at all from my world was the grocery stores. In the Konoha market, I knew the people who grew my food and I didn't have to worry about choosing the right things, the stands I was most familiar with knew exactly what I wanted and all I had to do was walk up and they would get it ready with a smile and a little small talk. At the stand that always gave me an extra stick of dango for free, I shared my most recent healing escapades or she regaled me with tales of the time she spent as a medic-nin before a grouchy Iwa nin liberated one of her hands and stole it as a trophy, forcibly retiring the woman. Her daughter made the dango and she sold it. At the cart with the oranges, one of the man's daughters was an aspiring novelist and would run ideas past me and make me promise to buy her book whenever it was published. I liked talking with the civilians because it let me forget about everything ninja and remember what it was like to be a civilian.

Nagato wasn't keen on most of the attention, especially from strangers so I hurried through the market, even though the people I met wanted nothing more than to catch me and beg for news from the shinobi side of the war. I discovered that I had a reasonable fan following as the 'Spirit of the Triage' especially among the civilian children. I couldn't say I was surprised. There was no such thing as a decent role model from the shinobi world. As a rule, shinobi exploits were generally looked down upon by civilians. Theft, torture, and murder just never made appropriate bedtime stories. It made sense as to why everyone seemed to want me to wear my haori everywhere.

Bringing Nagato to breakfast was a good idea to begin with. There was a small playground near the Uchiha compound everyone except the Uchiha tended to avoid. Because of that, it stayed deserted until well after lunch. Nagato and I enjoyed our morning meal in the grass near the bottom of the metal slide. It wasn't particularly healthy, consisting of mostly sweets and some bread, but it was fun, even though the air was a bit too cold to be comfortable.

I pulled out two slices of off-season watermelon I managed to buy without Nagato noticing. We had fun as I showed the boy how to spit seeds. I had never been good at it in either life, but Nagato happily picked it up easily enough. When the sun finally reached above the treetops, it started to warm up.

At first, there was only two clan kids, an Inuzuka and a Nara a bit more than a year older than Nagato, whose mothers dared to come so close to the Uchiha compound. They were joined shortly after by two Uchiha mothers and three other children around the same age, plus an infant. I remained sitting on the grass while Nagato played with the other kids. Five civilian kids of varied ages and clearly all related, dragged a harried, two-man Genin team to investigate the ruckus. By the time lunch rolled around, there were twelve children running around the playground, all under the age of seven.

Until then, only Nagato ever came within arm's reach of me. Kids were generally taught not to get too close to a shinobi without permission. I amused myself by covertly watching the two Genin who hung uncertainly in the tree-line and flipped through the mail. They recognized me, I was sure of it. One had even hidden a Bingo Book behind his partner's back to check. I noticed one of the letters to be extremely official-looking, and tucked it into my pocket to look at later when I could concentrate. Kushina's clever sealing that had been applied to my kunai pouch had also been applied to my pockets, though it only fit approximately six square inches of things.

One of the mothers brought a lunch basket filled with food for all the kids, which was unexpectedly kind. The group of mothers somehow wrangled the Genin into distributing the food. I felt bad for them as the children attacked the two boys, but not enough to stand up and help them, it was good training in situational awareness as well as self-control.

I didn't move when Nagato plopped himself down in my lap, a sandwich clutched in his hand. Ten minutes later, the entire group was back at play and the Genin finally found the nerve to approach me, presumably to ask if I was the Spirit of the Triage. If I was reading the conversation between the mothers properly, they had figured it out a long time ago and now the two Genin were the main topic of conversation, and if I wasn't mistaken, a few bets.

With the pretext of bringing me some of the leftovers from the lunch, the older Genin came over.

"Are you on a mission?" He asked as he held out the small sandwiches.

"No." I responded curtly.

"Then why are you wearing a uniform?"

"The Hokage told me to." That was not the answer he was expecting.

"Who's the boy you're here with?"

"My new little brother."

"Why are you here?" He sat down in front of me.

"His parents are working with my other two siblings on a project and he was bored." I made a mental note to complement the boy's interrogation skills. They were nearly Chuunin-level, and if I didn't know exactly what information he was after and felt like making him work for it, it would have accomplished its objective very quickly.

"Aren't Chuunin supposed to dress like civilians when they're off-duty?" He asked, the slightest amount of accusation in his voice as he dug dirt out from under his nails with a kunai. He might've looked intimidating if he was about ten years older with twice the muscle.

Clever, he was trying to put me on the defensive and make me want to explain myself. Well, tricks only worked if you fell for them. "I already told you, the Hokage, and my sensei, told me to stay in uniform even when I was off-duty."

"Right." He was definitely frustrated. "Why did they tell you to stay in uniform?"

I threw him a bone. "It seems to me you've already figured it out when you were going through that Bingo Book."

"So, you are the Spirit?"

Never mind, I was going to screw with his head. "What are you talking about?"

"Are you the Spirit of the Triage?"

"What are you talking about?" Of course, my scam had to be upended by a stupid kid.

One of the kids screamed in pain, followed quickly by one of the women racing towards him. When I finally found the kid, who had fallen while trying to walk on the monkey-bars, the woman had already fallen to her knees beside the boy.

"Don't touch him!" I shouted before the mother could pick the boy up. In a second I was on my feet and running to the kid. The mother glared at me while the boy screamed. "I'm a medic-nin," I explained, "May I give treatment?"

If she had been a civilian mother, I wouldn't have bothered asking, but considering she was the Inuzuka boy's mother and had a kunai in her hand, I figured it was in my best interests to ask first.

"Go ahead," she told me and sat back on her heels. Nagato grabbed a fistful of my haori and buried his face in my back. I ignored him and ran two fingers down the boy's spine, which was thankfully unharmed, even if he had a depression fracture in his skull from hitting something on the way down. I fixed the boy's head first, trying not to look at the nasty compound fracture in his upper arm.

Unlike most medics, I had enough chakra to do full healings, and I didn't care about whether I should or not.

I wanted to show off a tiny bit, so I put the bone back into the boy's body using just chakra. Luckily, I remembered to sever the boy's pain receptors in the process, otherwise it might have been much more painful to the ears.

When I finished, my head ached just like it always did whenever I had to repair nerves. Nagato clung to one of my legs as the mother held her kid while he cried, even though I knew he wasn't hurt at all.

"Thank you," she said earnestly.

"You're welcome," I answered politely and picked up Nagato. A second later, I was mobbed by little children who suddenly thought I was the coolest thing since candy.

"You are the Spirit of the Triage!" One of the Genin accused.

"Um, yeah, but, you know—"

The younger Genin interrupted, "You're the Habanero's brother!"

"What?" Well, Kushina never told me about that nickname.

"You're Uzumaki Kichiro!"

"I wanna go to a different park," Nagato murmured in my ear. Well, I had no idea how to respond to the instant-celebrity status, so different park it was.

"I have to go, um, have a nice day," At that I shunshined out of the park while the mothers giggled quietly at my predicament.

I brought Nagato to a playground on the other side of the village. "Sorry about that, Nagato-kun," I said as I set the boy down on a less-full playground.

"It's okay, Nii-san, you were just helping. They were being mean and screaming about it."

"You can go play, I'll wait on that bench, okay?"

"Okay!" He ran off to make new friends.

I sat down on the bench and pulled out the official letter. It was a notice that one of the Uzumaki orphans attending the orphanage had gone missing several weeks before. I put the letter away, perturbed, and forced the issue out of my mind. There was absolutely nothing I could do about that particular problem, though I had a hard time believing that Orochimaru's experiments had started this early.

Ten minutes later, a group of Academy students came looking for me. What the hell? I didn't sign up for being stalked by children!

"There he is!" One of them shouted. I ran over to Nagato, picked him up and shunshined home as fast as I could.

Double-dead-bolting the door jarred the four people obsessing over the seal out of their trances. Nagato ran over to the window and locked it as well.

"Um, Nii-san? What happened?" Minato asked.

"I'm being stalked by children."

The Genin started laughing.

"It's not funny!"

"Actually, it is, Kichiro-kun," Ise chuckled.

"Nagato, back me up!"

"It's not funny!" The boy insisted. "They were all screaming and running at Nii-san and they tried to jump on him and-and—"

"And it's funny!" Fusō smirked. "Anyways, when did you two leave?"

"I left a note and took Nagato out for breakfast; he was bored here."

"Oh! I'm sorry, Nagato-chan!" She cried and scooped the boy into a hug, finally noticing all the evidence of a toddler's boredom around the room. "Did you have fun with Kichiro-kun?"

"Nii-san's the best!" Nagato clapped and started to tell her about everything we did. I peered out of the peephole of the door and was glad to find no one there. "—and then this boy fell and got hurt really, really bad and Nii-san healed him real-quick-like and it was so cool and before that I was playing with all the other kids and before that Nii-san showed me how to spit watermelon seeds—" This earned me a disapproving look from Fusō. "—and he took me to the market and there were so many people but it was a little scary because everyone liked to look at us and I'm really tired right now but I want to have a fun day with Nii-san again, can I? Can I? Please? Please?"

"Of course, you can, Nagato-chan—"

The boy cheered and leapt out of her arms and ran to me. "Nii-san, can we do it again tomorrow? Please? Please? Please?"

"Um, sure, if you want to."

"Yay!"

Minato and Kushina were still laughing at me. Faster than anyone in the room could track, I dashed behind them and slapped the back of their heads like Sakumo seemed to enjoy doing to me then zipped back to my spot by the door.

"Hey!" They shouted indignantly and advanced threateningly. I picked up Nagato and held him between us.

"Watch the kid!" I warned them, laughing.

They split off to flank me. Shit. I forgot they were ninjas as well and I wasn't exactly sure who was the bigger threat. I dodged Kushina's lunge, only to find out it was a feint and have Minato's leg sweep from behind. Still, I was a Chuunin and they were just Genin, so I jumped over the sweep and tossed Nagato at Kushina, leapt off the wall, and broke the rules of physics to jump on Minato's back and hijack the brain signals to his limbs so he went plowing towards Kushina, cursing. She had a choice to save Nagato or herself. She chose Nagato and Minato collided with her and they went tumbling onto a mattress. I crouched beside Nagato and gave the boy a hug.

"Good job, Nagato-kun!" I praised him.

"That was fun! Can we do it again, please? Please? Please?"

"I don't know, have my dear little siblings learned not to laugh at me?" I looked over at Kushina, trying to disentangle herself from Minato, who was temporarily paralyzed.

Fusō took pity on the struggling Genin and helped them untangle themselves while the paralysis wore off.

I leapt to my feet and went to grab Minato's present from where I left it. "Guess what!"

"What?"

"It's Minato's birthday!"

"What?" The entire room exclaimed.

"Happy birthday!" I held out the present.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Kushina demanded of me.

"What? Why are you accusing me? It's his birthday."

"Wait, are you sure it's already my birthday?" Minato demanded.

"Well, today's the day you put on your ninja registration." I shoved the poorly wrapped package into Minato's hands.

Ignoring everyone else, I watched him open it. It was a half-set of what would become his signature kunai. When he opened it, he frowned. "What is it?"

"What is what?" Kushina demanded and snatched it out of his hands. "Yeah, what is this?"

I grinned and grabbed his wrist, politely waiting for him to hand the gift to Kushina. "You keep getting hurt here and here," I pointed to the scars on his hand from where an opponent's kunai had slipped down his own and bit into his hand, and then pushed up his sleeve to reveal the several chunks missing from his forearm where a blade had slipped off his block. "At the very least you're going to lose a few fingers if you don't start using some kind of guard while you're fighting melee, especially since you only seem to fight melee." I grabbed one of the blades and put it in his hand and pulled out my own kunai and slashed at his head. He yelped in surprise and automatically blocked. I twisted my blade and it stuck in between one of the prongs. "See?"

Minato got a look in his eye that told me he was about to do something tricky. He twisted his wrist and jerked the kunai out of my hand, but by the time it fell from my hand, I had immobilized his wrist.

"Nice try." Kushina used to complain to me about all the tricks Minato would use on her in spars, so there wasn't much the boy could do to surprise me, not even with a sneaky knife to the ribs, which I blocked with one of my sticks. "You're going to have to get up earlier than that to pull one over on me."

"Can you spar with me, please?" Minato begged. "I want to see how they work!"

"Sure," I agreed. I didn't spar with them often, but I figured now would be a good time, considering I hoped to be headed to Suna sometime soon. I needed to keep up my skill somehow.

"I wanna watch!" Nagato bounced. "I wanna see Nii-san beat up the evil boy!"

"Your awesome Nee-chan will take you!" Kushina exclaimed.

"Well, you're a bad Nee-chan," Nagato said matter-of-factly.

I ruffled the hair of the two Genin, much to their annoyance. "It's okay, you just need a bit of practice to be better big siblings. You'll figure it out pretty quick."

I let the retaliatory double punch to the gut land, because I kind-of deserved it.

"Don't hurt my Nii-san!" Nagato protested.

"Lesson number one: don't beat up people your little brother or sister likes!" I wheezed. Fusō and Ise seemed to be dying of laughter in the background.

"You beat up Sakumo-sensei and we like him!" Minato protested.

"I've hit him a total of one time, and that was before either of you said more than a sentence to him," I deadpanned. "Besides, once you're the best nii-san, you can get away with almost anything. Minato, you want that spar or not?" Nagato hugged my legs.

"I'll get my stuff," Minato ran into the designated 'ninja room' with Kushina on his heels.

"You two want to come?" I asked the two adults.

"No!" They both waved their arms and took a step back.

"You kids have fun, and don't get hurt," Ise said. "Spend the rest of the day out, we're going to work on making this place actually livable, and clean up the blood-splattered and bug-ridden mattresses."

"They're not that bad!" I protested.

"No, they're worse, but for two kiddos living alone, you've done a wonderful job." Fusō crouched in front of me and placed both hands on my shoulders. "You've got someone to take care of you now, so relax and have fun."

For a minute, I stood there stunned. In my old life, I had seen my father only once or twice a year, he always seemed to be out of the country for one classified deployment or another, and my mother had died at some point while I was in fourth grade. She was a shameless drunk and rarely gave a damn what I did or where I went, as long as I showed up at five o'clock sharp for dinner. Besides that, I was on my own, and only the fact that I was scared shitless of my father, who treated me more like a soldier than a son, stopped me from ending up in a jail cell before I turned fifteen. It might have been more due to the fact that I lived on a military base under the influence of a bunch of future Marines that I stayed on the straight and narrow, but I guess I'd never know.

Now, to have someone who all but abandoned their calling for a kid and a few unwanted orphans promising something of a real family for the first time in my life—I leaned forward and hugged her, appreciating the sentiment. Slowly and deliberately, she hugged me back. "Thank you—Ka-chan."

"You're welcome."

"We gotta find a bigger place though. I don't wanna sleep on that little bed forever with Minato and Kushina."

"Certainly. The clan is still alive after all, even if you're all children right now." She kissed the top of my head. "Now go enjoy your spar."