2/2

Natsumi rather freely gave out the diagnosis the hospital had given her. Telling it once to the Hyūga and the older Uchiha, who had actually graduated three weeks early but was waiting around for his proposed genin team to come back to the village, and then again at the Nara compound to Shikaku and company as he pinned her with a mildly anxious look from between the Yamanaka and Akimichi clan heirs.

"High spiritual energy compared to a much lower physical one. That caused the discoloration in my chakra. Usually, it's the other way around."

Although that was normally green, as produced by medics when healing, not purple. That part didn't need to be spread around, Natsumi was strange enough as it was.

Even more quietly she shared the rest with Minato, hopefully out of the recovering Nara clan head's hearing. "If I didn't have the habits I do, it would have been worse."

"Well then, I'm glad to hear that it wasn't anything serious, Natsumi-chan. Would you and Minato-kun like to stay for dinner?"

Natsumi gave Shikaku's mother a wry grin, ignoring the arched eyebrow the shadow-user's father was giving her for her unusual chakra composition and coloration. "We didn't tell the caretakers at the orphanage we'd be later than usual, ma'am. We should probably get going."

"Oh alright. But the two of you don't be strangers now." Aikido smiled down at the only girl friend her son had, and the blond child that had included her.

"Yes ma'am." The girl with mismatched eyes nodded to her and the other boys, giving Nara Shikai a bow. "Nara-sama, my thanks for letting the boys hang around while I was at the hospital with Hokage-sama."

The clan head nodded once in acceptance of her gratitude, but waved a bandaged arm with a slight wince to dismiss it. "Call me Shikai, please. There are way too many Nara around for formalities. And leave off the 'sama', chibi-chan."

"Sure, Shikai-san." Natsumi bowed again and all but dragged Minato out of the Nara compound. She started to fill in the smaller details as they walked back to the orphanage. "Hokage-sama wasn't really alarmed outside of what the coloration would mean for me. Apparently, strange colored chakra pops up from time to time and the only concern is that I need to work on the physical half more. There's even a clan with white chakra somewhere in the village. I do have to wonder if that means there were others who could recall what they had been in another life."

She left out that a higher physical core of energy wouldn't mean jack other than a fitness freak or insane hyperactivity. Which meant she was still the only one to have her unique circumstances in Konoha's medical history.

"Well, that's good, right?" Minato asked as the plain building they lived in came into view. "Means it really wasn't a fluke, or something the Shinigami is going to come after you for."

"That's morbid, Minato-kun. And here I thought my sense of humor was dark."

That was not a consequence she had thought of yet. Damn blonds.

\V/

The second year of academy instruction for Minato and Natsumi was much less exciting. A few birthdays were celebrated and Minato got to pay his taijutsu coach back by helping the girl with mismatched eyes with her throwing stance and grips, although she still had better accuracy than anyone without a dōjutsu. The curriculum became harder, meditation was introduced, the three standard academy jutsu were practiced, and a few inches were added to many a midget.

Other than the kunoichi of their year discovering hormones for the first time, it was almost uneventful.

Natsumi found the fangirls and their talent for multiplying rib-crackingly hilarious, much to the dismay of the boys. They had held out hope that she would at least get annoyed with the encroachment and deal with them before laughing her butt off. Kushina just found them sad excuses for kunoichi and scorned them all. Mikoto, on the other hand, showed them why no Uchiha fangirl had ever succeeded in tempting an Uchiha shinobi with copious Killer Intent especially aimed at the girls gossiping about her recently graduated betrothed.

The three girls soon found themselves lumped together during any practical exercise despite the differences in year level as the other kunoichi trainees allowed their skills to fall by the wayside in lieu of more faux-romantic pursuits. It continued in the same vein for a good few months until Natsumi finally got fed up with the high pitched noises made over half of her boys and the waste of the kunoichi sensei's time.

So she told the boys with the most fangirls how to distract them.

Hey, Inoichi had told her that getting possessive over her friends was normal. A long awaited sign of recovery, right?

Well, something like that anyway.

Hiashi's left eye twitched once Natsumi was finished explaining her plan during lunch in the second year's classroom, as they were eating indoors since it was raining outside. It kept on twitching even as his twin started slamming his already bandaged head against his desk repeatedly. Fugaku, who had had the luck to receive a D-rank mission to fix the academy roof with his new but slightly older genin team earlier that same day, looked as if someone had told him she was a kami reborn and managed to prove it after slapping him in the face. Minato was a laughing heap propped up by his own desk, though admittedly it sounded a bit hysterical.

Slowly raising his head off his usual position over his desk, Shikaku pinned Inoichi with a dark look over his folded arms and behind Chouza's suspiciously shaking shoulders. "Your clan deals with psychological warfare. It's practically their thing. Why the hell haven't they come up with this yet?"

The shadow user refrained from commenting on Natsumi's skills, as the two behind her didn't know about that yet.

The mind walker spluttered around a mouthful of rice, still staring at the lead of kunoichi trio in awe of himself. Progress! A bit later than he would like to see in the girl, but an improvement all the same.

"Look, you don't even need to start out small. They're idiotic enough to believe anything at this point." Natsumi rubbed her temples in irritation, ignoring the knowing look in Inoichi's eyes. "As long as enough of them hear that you're looking for girlfriends with certain skills that require a lot of attention to develop, they'll be too busy competing with each other to even direct enough brain cells to bother you. They'll leave you alone and the majority of our generation of kunoichi won't be massive wastes of space, a win for everyone. Pick a cardinal point and shout it if you have to. I can understand wanting a distraction, with the war and all, but this is getting a bit much."

"And soon, please." Kushina tagged on with a firm nod, rolling her green eyes in exasperation when a group of whispering and giggling girls tripped their way into the classroom only to stop and glare at the girls already talking to the boys they were fixated on. "This is just embarrassing, you know."

Mikoto nodded along as she chimed in. "The faster this is over with, the better."

"We'll return the favor, honest."

Minato finally caught his breath and peered up at Natsumi. "What do you mean by that?"

His sempai grinned grimly, echoed by both Kushina and Mikoto. "You'll see eventually."

\V/

The end of the second year of the academy gave weight to Natsumi's promise. More than a few shinobi trainees started tagging after Mikoto and even Kushina, offering to assist them with everything much to their shared ire.

They solved that developing problem by cornering Natsumi and asking what she did when presented with persistent suitors. She had a working solution for the boys still in effect, after all.

The girl-woman raised an eyebrow, wondering at the intelligence of the kids around her, when said cornering happened in a closet of all things.

"I'm apparently creepy-looking enough that no one's tried to ask me on a date." The misplaced soldier gestured to her mismatched eyes as if to prove a point even when she knew it had to do with her attitude and not her looks. "Dear old kaa-san is to thank for that. Though I don't expect that to last for long, given the curves I'm developing."

She poked at her own chest and hips in turn to draw attention to the expanding dimensions she was growing. The joys of puberty, take two.

"You know," Mikoto mused, looking at each eye and the separate colors they held, "you could probably use a genjutsu to hide that."

Natsumi considered the possibility, but shrugged the suggestion off. "Why bother? I've got my kouhai and Chouza-kun, and even Shikaku-kun helping a time or twice with a lot of griping, to scare off the beginnings of my meager admirers, and the eyes kind of identify me to everyone else. If I suddenly showed up with two matching eyes, people might think I'm a spy or something."

The boys had actually chased off suitors only because the girl-woman admitted that even thinking about going on dates with them made her feel like she was robbing the cradle. Just a bit.

"Chouza-san, huh?" Kushina's eyes gleamed with a wicked light as she recalled the Akimichi heir. He had started wearing the main parts of his clan's signature battle armor every day, and already had more bulk than the other academy students. If you ignored the fact that he didn't like confrontations and was pretty easygoing unless you insulted one of his friends, he was imposing to look at. "Do you think he would mind helping us out too?"

"Chouza-kun's good like that, just get him a snack of something and he'll help." Natsumi gave them both a lopsided grin. "It could even be store bought and he'll still appreciate it."

\V/

The last year of the academy went even faster than the first two, with the ever looming academy exams and the expectations of assisting in the war effort haunting their dreams. The rumor of Uzugakure's destruction made the rounds in the break between years two and three, with a certain red-haired Uzumaki princess being absolutely shattered for a long time after its confirmation.

Without Mikoto around to bug, bother, and annoy during her free time that year, Kushina started hanging around the only other kunoichi she could stand. Natsumi sympathized with the redhead, seeing as she still couldn't deal with many of their other peers despite Inoichi's best efforts. Many of the girls, and a few boys, wanted to poke and prod at the Uzu shaped hole in the fūinjutsu princess' heart.

Natsumi, knowing intimately how much it hurt to lose that part of yourself, simply listened to Kushina when she wanted and kept silent when she didn't.

The Uzumaki girl also had many chakra control tips which she freely exchanged for Natsumi's taijutsu pointers once the misplaced soldier explained she had higher chakra reserves than most kunoichi did, almost as much as a few of the boys.

Minato tried to ease the other girl into their ever-shrinking group by asking what kind of things the redhead did, only to end up listening with fascination as Kushina extoled the wonders of fūinjutsu. Shikaku slept through it, Inoichi gave up understanding within the first few minutes, and Chouza munched through three bags of sweet rice crackers to keep awake.

It was times like this that made the misplaced soldier miss her other boys and the never-ending sniping between them, but Fugaku was out of the village on patrol with his team while the Hyūga twins were running communications to various sentry posts within Fire Country with their own jōnin-sensei and, surprisingly, Mikoto as their third kunoichi teammate.

Natsumi came back to the conversation when Kushina finished her impassioned speech with the fact that Mito-baa-sama would be taking her on as a fulltime apprentice, and that one of the sannin was coming back to the village to take on a genin team. "Like who?"

That rang a dull bell, something about Minato's next step in his shinobi career.

The redhead looked over to the other kunoichi, pursing her lips.

"From what Mito-baa-sama said to me, the sensei is supposed to be one of the sannin returning to the village. I've got a special 'circumstance' that keeps me from a normal shinobi career, so there needs to be something done with the other two that would have made up one of the genin teams." Kushina scoffed at her 'special circumstances', a worried frown on face. "They were hoping there would be a slightly uneven number of students graduating this year, you know. Supposedly, someone they had thought would fail last year didn't."

Natsumi dimly recalled that the Uzumaki girl inherited her fuzzy, still murderous 'tenant' just before Mito-sama died and a few days after she was kidnapped by foreign-nin, Iwa maybe, and carefully suppressed the pity and pain she felt. Kushina would hate being pitied, after all. The sannin she spoke of had to be the Toad Sage Jiraiya, since Minato did end up signing the Toad Contract before his death at 'fuzzy's' claws, and the sannin supposedly taught him enough fūinjutsu to create the next jinchūriki's seal. The reminder of the ticking clock on her friends' lives had her blinking back tears while staring blankly at the nearly empty room.

Shikaku finally sat up at that piece of information, giving the girl-woman a slightly confused look for her inattention. "You're at the bottom of the class rankings, right Kushina-san?"

"That's not my fault, you know! Stupid buushin clones." The Uzumaki girl muttered to herself viciously, crossing her arms over her chest and pouting. "Stupid E-ranks jutsus!"

Natsumi shook her head once to clear it before shrugging at the shadow user. "That would leave a team with two kunoichi. It wouldn't be sorted that way, Shika-kun. As a matter of fact, I don't think we can count on traditional team sorting while the war is going on."

"Isn't that the point?" Countered the lazy preteen easily. "Who would argue 'untraditional' with a sannin teaching?"

"What way?" Kushina asked with another pout. She was sure her class rank would be brought up again.

"The top and bottom of the class, rounded out by one of the students in the middle. That's one of the traditional team sortings." Quirking a lopsided smile at the redhead, the misplaced soldier chuckled. "There were three of us aiming for that middle position the whole three years, now that I think about it. Shika-kun, one of the Aburame kids, and myself."

"You were aiming for average? Why?" Kushina sounded horrified, probably by the very idea that some of her classmates had sabotaged their own scores.

"It's kind of traditional for the clan, even if everyone already knows we're smarter than we let on." Shikaku shrugged in a boneless way that caught the girl-woman's eye. "A few even went so far as to take the bottom ranks."

Natsumi took an utterly inappropriate moment to wonder if the Nara clan had similar flexibility exercises as she did, and what they could possibly do with that, before turning to the redhead to chip in her own observations built up over the previous two years.

"I did it just to see if I could, but that changed to fulfilling my goal specialty's requirements about half way through the first year here. And I think the Aburame was aiming for intelligence work instead of the usual tracker division." At the incomprehension on the Uzumaki girl's face, the misplaced soldier tugged a hand through her high-tail and tried to explain the convoluted way the wartime academy actually graded the students with for the girl who hadn't seen through the rather horrible and transparent act done during the first month of instruction.

Which had been done to give most of the trainee ninjas a good idea of how to narrow their specializations before the formal graduation.

This was a shinobi training academy, and they were at war after all.

"There is an unspoken but widely known agreement between the Jōnin Commander and the ANBU Division Commander that if a student can dupe the instructors within a certain margin about their real level of skill until the months leading up to the final exam, they could become ANBU trainees right out of the academy. The few trap specialists we have are actually moonlighting as class clowns to display their working knowledge against chūnin-level opponents almost every day and are graded on successful pranks, upkeep of troublemaker covers and alibis rather than regular homework. Homework which I don't think has ever been completed by a successful trap specialist before. I don't know what the genjutsu and iryou-nin specialists do to advertise their skills, but I think the medics just intern at the hospital. That's one of the few more straightforward self-advertising methods I know of, but then again they have almost insane requirements and control just to be able to use medical jutsu. I also know the Intelligence Division take almost exclusively from students that can maintain a nearly exact sixty percent success and a forty percent failure rate, mixing the subjects you fail and pass at, for at least a full year." After wracking her mind for anything else, she turned to the boys still in the classroom. "Did I miss anything else?"

"Hunter-nin and trackers." Inoichi added without missing a beat. "Hunter-nin have these little chakra puzzles and hints scattered around the academy that leads you to them, kind of like a scavenger hunt, but you have to find a part of them first. Usually a team of students try to tackle that on their third year if they think they're good enough. Trackers take the kids who can spot and go looking for them, but those mostly end up being Hyūga, Inuzuka, or Aburame. Then there's what Minato-kun's aiming for." He added with a grin, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at his fellow blond.

Said blond was almost beet red when Kushina turned to him. He blurted it out before she could give him more than a curious look.

"Command. I'm trying for Chūnin or Jōnin Commander, ANBU General, and the Hokage's seat." He waved one hand at the various shinobi in training seated around him. "I have to gather up specialist candidates from more than one division and hold them together without injury or homicidal attempts for at least a year. I've got Intelligence," Inoichi threw a sloppy salute to the red head, "ANBU," Natsumi waggled her fingers discreetly under her folded arms, "general chūnin or jōnin candidates," Chouza and Shikaku both nodded, "the twins for trackers, and Uchiha Fugaku for Military Police… since everyone knows that's where most Uchiha end up."

"Which, now that I think about it," Natsumi chimed in again with a wide, evil grin, "means that Minato-kun's got the largest and longest record ever attempted in Konoha before. Uchiha-sama and the Hyūga twins still keep in contact, even if they've graduated. And more than just a few of us are future clan heads."

She nodded importantly, and then snickered at the future Yondaime's embarrassed expression and slinking posture under Kushina's wide-eyed stare. The misplaced soldier was more than a little sure there was a case of mutual attraction going on there.

Finally gathering her wits, the redhead started to sort through the information with what she already knew. "But wait, what about genin teams? If you've already picked specialties, doesn't that affect who's assigned to which team?"

"Pretty much." Shikaku joined in, now that most of the explanation was out of the way. "Special Ops candidates get retired ANBU or hunter-nin as jōnin sensei to keep an eye on their emotional health and pre-training polishing. Tracking teams get either a support-orientated jōnin or a still active hunter-nin since tracking is easier than subduing captives. Intelligence get assigned to generalists teams for field experience before being banished behind desks to deal with the legions of paperwork. Everyone else gets distributed among that line up since they usually end up being support-nin."

Kushina thought about that for all of five more seconds before exploding. "That means I'm out of the running for Hokage!"

"Nope, you still qualify." Natsumi interrupted before they attracted the attention of any instructors passing the classroom, or even the group of students a few chairs over. That wouldn't help her complete the challenge posed to those in her chosen field. "I'm trying for ANBU, remember? They're all known to be a bit quirky, so keeping company with a possible one allows for a wide margin of error. With Mikoto-chan as Military Police or genjutsu specialist and me as your third division candidate in ANBU, you meet the minimum requirements. Especially since we spent most of last year together. If you can keep meeting up with Mikoto-chan while hanging out with us, you're golden."

She snickered as another thought crossed her mind.

"That was how Sandaime-sama managed his candidacy with his teammates, though he had a general jōnin candidate and a genjutsu specialist, so you're just doing the same thing with an all kunoichi team. A Nara's worst nightmare."

Shikaku's eyes widened and his jaw dropped in horror, eyes locked on Natsumi's gleaming mismatched ones.

The redhead gaped at her for all of a minute. Her little rivalry with Minato had waned halfway through second year, but she still tried to beat the boy at sparring now and then. To hear that he was aiming for the same position as she was, even if he hadn't said it outright, rekindled that dwindling spark of competition in her. The boys covered their ears while the dual-eyed girl laughed as she crowed her success on the first step to Hokage as loud as she could, shocking the only unprepared shadow-user off his chair. She then launched into an impassioned speech about how she was going to beat Minato to the hat, no matter what!

The girl-woman expertly ignored her kouhai's betrayed expression at the news. She was getting rather good at that.

Come to think of it, Natsumi mused to herself a little later, as the very late temporary sensei finally got into the classroom to begin the lecture on POW handling regulations only to step on a cleverly hidden tripwire and get a face full of sticky feathers courtesy of a loudmouthed redhead, in a wartime footing both Naruto and Kushina also qualified for trap specialists for their pranking skills as well as combat ninjutsu specialists for their insanely high chakra levels.

Though with how the blond jinchūriki had been outright hated in his childhood, she was sure that those marks of achievements had not been given to the poor kid since Konoha was at peace during that time. There probably hadn't even been ANBU recruiters to pick the best at subterfuge for their own divisions without a war to fight outside of the village's gates.

(ooo000ooo)

She had royally screwed up.

The instructors were trying to catch her out on knowing more than an average academy student should. Natsumi had two encounters of verbally dodging and bullshitting her way through increasingly pointed conversations before she caught on that they were on to her.

She panicked for all of ten minutes before common sense reasserted itself. It had to have been the explanation of the academy's sorting system they had given Kushina that was overheard, though only partly from how they were dealing with her. Thankfully, the instructors only thought that she only comprehended more than she let on and was aiming too high as a result. But that still left the misplaced soldier in a bit of a bind.

There were five more months of the academy to go, and giving up now wasn't an option. She knew ANBU candidates who failed the academy 'test' were given infiltration specialist tags on their records, but she wanted the ANBU one, damn it! Inoichi had told her to pick a goal and concentrate on it when memories of her past life started interfering in her present one, and so she had picked ANBU out loud and Minato and Kushina's survival in her head.

It was something that she had wanted in another life. Special ops appealed to her. But in the US Army, females had not been allowed combat roles. The village was less concerned with a kunoichi's ability to procreate, since they were all started on hormone therapy pills developed by the Slug Sannin herself after graduation that stopped menstruation until the counter dose was taken. Assuming they survived long enough to take it.

Natsumi knew she had been a damn fine soldier in her last life, all gender-bias aside. She didn't argue with orders and marched when told, fought when needed and talked her way through a lot, but there had been a few things her gender had denied her that still grated at her pride. She also knew that she could still qualify for ANBU consideration after graduation even if she failed the challenge, but that would only be after she 'matured' enough to hold a cover identity for long periods of time.

She wasn't sure how much maturing she had left to go before she hit her second childhood. Technically, she was already in it.

Leaving aside taking the infiltration tag for admitting she had been better than her scores said, she could either run or hold her ground for ANBU. Running would mean being fast and slippery enough to prove she had what it took for ANBU, but there was a chance that she would still get infiltration since she would have failed the challenge. The second option was much harder but would guarantee her ANBU candidacy. Holding ground would also cover information gathering and informant turning, something she wasn't all that sure about in the first place. She would have to lead the instructors to the conclusion that someone was playing a nasty trick on her, and that she was honestly bewildered by the sudden attention.

Easier said than done, they were chūnin level.

\V/

…or maybe that wasn't the hurdle Natsumi thought it was supposed to be.

Honestly, for an establishment that dealt with training ninja of all people, why was it so easy to infiltrate?

Admittedly, a few of the locks and traps had given her pause, mostly because she had never seen them before and spent at least five minutes checking them visually before deciding to disarm or avoid. She knew she was wasting time carefully checking each and every room for anybody and anything out of place, but hurrying now and screwing up more was a nightmare she had had frequently leading up to this afternoon.

Afternoon, because night was just so cheesy… and she had a curfew. Embarrassing enough on its own, but getting caught outside it? She would never live it down in the orphanage.

It was also easier to hide her body, clad in the darkest clothing she had, in the various shadows thrown by the early evening sun. Slipping by the instructors had been something she played at often enough throughout the last two and a half years that it wasn't much of a trouble to begin with.

Besides, why trip a well-hidden alarm when she could be behind the trap's range before it was even armed?

Luck was with her, as the main sensei for their year had left for the day already. Unluckily, it seemed as if Hiruki-sensei knew what he was doing in securing documents.

Thankfully, she had thought to inform the others what was going on beforehand.

Kushina had been aghast that their freely offered advice, not to mention the Hokage requirement explanation, had injured her friend's chances for her 'dream' and had thrown practically everything she could at Natsumi to help her fix the misstep. Including a few scrolls on f��injutsu that the girl-woman was sure the Uzumaki heiress hadn't intended to give her.

The misplaced soldier felt terribly guilty about not mentioning them to the redhead yet, but she knew Minato didn't learn enough from Jiraiya to make the seal he used on his son. And Jiraiya wasn't a master in the art of fūinjutsu yet. Kushina could have possibly helped, but Natsumi was mostly sure the seal used to contain the Kyuubi no Youko in Naruto had been a rushed hack job, as brilliant as that had been later on.

Minato was smart in his own way, but blind in others. Natsumi intended to learn enough to help her future Hokage find either another solution or not need to sacrifice his life at all, damn it. No one in that family deserved it.

For now, small simple seals were all she could do. Mostly through copying pre-existing seals.

Carefully peeling off the chakra-draining tag she had gotten from Kushina's stores of practice seals, Natsumi drained the chakra from the alarm tag Hiruki-sensei had sloppily copied to seal his cabinet holding the student's records. Once the sloppy tag was inert and simply a piece of paper on the wooden doors, the ANBU candidate carefully peeled it off with a special kunai from Mikoto to replace and rearm later. Checking her gloves given to her by Hizashi to ensure they were tight enough not to slip and snag something or leave her chakra signature behind, she eased the point of the kunai around the edge of the doors, listening for the clinks of metal that would tell her where any hidden traps were.

When all she could hear was a wire trap, probably projectile in nature given the sensitive information that couldn't be replaced easily, Natsumi stuck the kunai back under her left forearm and slowly inched the cabinet doors open. She could see the shuriken launcher only by the gleam of oiled metal deep in the wood's dividers. It was aimed at the general height of the heart on an adult's body, almost overhead for a short academy student.

She could also just see the trigger mechanism and the trip wire on the back of the cabinet door, which looked like she needed a hook with a long reach to prevent it going off. That she didn't have.

Well, maybe wire would work to lift the latch worked into the wood that would pull the trip wire and launch many a sharp spinning thing at her head.

Fugaku had sneered at her for her clumsy error, but forked over a spool of the high quality razor wire his clan favored in battle. Lightweight enough to hide easily, slightly difficult to control, but stronger than standard issue by far. She had it coiled around her right wrist.

Surprising how helpful the Uchiha clan was even if they pretend they didn't care about you.

Loosening the length of flexible, razor sharp metal, she used her left hand to hold open the cabinet door and her right to catch a loop over the trigger. She eased it upwards, not letting up until she heard it click into safety.

There wasn't anything else obvious, and so she eased the doors open the rest of the way, giving a silent breath of thanks to her friends when nothing shot out at her.

Now in, it was ludicrously easy to find her records. There had been a few complaints from a fellow kunoichi trainee, one Kyoko that she only vaguely recalled from the first year of the academy. A note of an exceptional espionage attempt from the same year. Second year only really had one item of note, and that was a confusing one about tactical planning and comprehension in regards to crowd control and a note of merit from the Yamanaka clan member who did the random mental health screenings through the years.

Thankfully, she never had to see Inoichi's uncle about the state of her poor head.

Third year held the report currently giving her a problem.

It hadn't been an instructor that overheard the group, which was a relief. On the other hand, there was no record of the reporter's identity at all. Confused, because other people would have to check her records in the future and that kind of notation left more questions than answers, Natsumi made a split second decision. Deftly taking out Minato's, Inoichi's, Chouza's, and Shikaku's records, she fished out another scroll that Kushina had given her to copy anything written as she glanced at the girl's in question.

Her scroll, like the other clan kids, had her clan's symbol stamped on the ends of the rod holding the paper. Unlike the others, it had elegant script on almost the entire exterior. Knowing the Uzumaki were some of the best fūinjutsu experts around, she had no intent to touch the scroll unless the clan heiress said she could.

Shaking her head sharply to bring her wandering attention back to what she was doing, Natsumi copied the scrolls, rolled them up, replaced them, and started cleaning up after herself.

Rearming the shuriken trap was the only part she was unsure about, but the cabinet apparently automatically armed that when the doors were closed. Checking herself over, the five scrolls of information she had stolen, the tools her friends had willingly given her, and the office one last time; she then reapplied the seal to the front of the cabinet in the same crooked way it had been slapped on. Setting Kushina's chakra leeching seal on top, she let out the small store of Hiruki-sensei's chakra to rearm the tag.

One last look around, and Natsumi slunk out of the office through the window that only opened with a certain jutsu Fugaku just happened to have acquired with his recently activated dōjutsu that same morning and passed on to her, since the door was now armed to alert ANBU of any intruders. She had a date with a certain Nara's backyard.

(ooo000ooo)

Sarutobi Hiruzen chuckled softly as his crystal ball showing the academy instructor's office went dark. There wasn't anything else to see now that the girl had left. "I see now why you brought this to me. She's a remarkable little kunoichi. Quite an array of talents cropping up these last few years."

The Sandaime puffed on his dying pipe as his guest nodded once.

"She's one of my hopefuls, and with that neat and clean operation right there I have no objection to her eventual introduction to ANBU." The man in the bear mask on the opposite side of the desk replied as he took his eyes off the crystal ball and locked gazes with his Hokage. "I take it you don't have an issue with us taking her and a few others a few months before graduation?"

"I would wish for them to undergo at least six months of genin team exercises, but I have a sneaking suspicion both you and the war won't let me do that to them."

"They won't disappear into our world without a squeak, Sarutobi-sama. I'll make sure they keep up with their little friends for the first two years." The man took off his clay mask and seated himself in the chair normally reserved for visiting dignitaries. A lopsided grin stretched his scarred lips up on one side of his face. "But you wanna know something interesting? She's the first one to complete the AnBu academy challenge in the last five years. Knowingly at that."

Hiruzen paused in filling his pipe and blinked. "There are children able to do that without knowing?"

The Hokage was supposedly all knowing and unflappable, but Sarutobi wasn't against Bear knowing he was surprised in this instance. They had worked together for a long time now.

"The Nara clan." The burly man grunted out as the Hokage lit his pipe. It was both identification and reason, and the Sandaime's disbelieving expression turned into one of bemused understanding. "They all admitted to hiding skills, though. ANBU's too troublesome for them. Nearly all other ANBU candidates run, hide, or bullshit their way through and are dropped or reevaluated depending on how bad they do at it. Last candidate to hold their ground and try to find a way to answer the final test like her, was me."

"So you want her to replace you."

"Do you blame me? Mesuji-chan is good for an academy student."

The man gestured in the direction of the Nara clan compound with an impatient frown, knowing the girl was there with Namikaze's little clique of friends and her prospective ANBU captain, Wolf, shadowing her and the information she had stolen from the academy. Wolf was one of three ANBU tagged for discrete mentoring for eligible students, and the only one to draw a student who won the academy challenge. Bear foresaw bragging rights to Wolf on behalf of the little kunoichi if she passed the questioning portion. He continued on, ignoring the amused expression on the Hokage's face as the Fire Shadow deuced the path of his thoughts.

"She can fully admit when she screws up, she can plan good missions if that was any example of her talent for it. Halfway decent stealth skills and mid-mission improvisation. Good taijutsu, adequate chakra levels, could work on her chakra control more, damn good aim if somewhat bad throwing habits with anything other than senbon and kunai. Methodical, quiet, and damn protective and possessive of her friends." Here he paused, a flash of his canines peeking out in a grin. "I could go on, but that would make me sound like a stalker. Point is, Hokage-sama, we've been watching her for most of her second year. She'll be a good ANBU operative in time and an even better ANBU General with enough help."

"I noticed you didn't say anything about the other children."

"They're okay. A few need some serious help getting their skills up to par for trainees, but no one else has Mesuji-chan's potential. There were a few others, but they're clan kids. Need special permission for them." The career ANBU agent grunted irritably. Clan kids normally made up the top ranks of all academy years, simply because they had extra training and mentoring. Unless the less trained kids pulled together a group of friends like the Namikaze kid did, the ranks were usually skewed towards clan children. "But while we can use normal protocol for easing the others into ANBU, Mesuji-chan will just see through it. We'll have to use prodigy protocols for her."

The older man blew out a lungful of smoke and a regretful sigh before reaching for the girl's actual records on his desk. Konoha did need more and better assassins, with how many the war effort ate up. Mesuji Natsumi would make a good one, able to hide under the cover of her young age and gender before taking out a target. The Sandaime Hokage's only regret as he handed the updated files to the current ANBU General was that it was likely he would never see how good a ninja these children would make.

They would either die in the shadows of the special ops division, or start hiding more than just skills when not behind a painted clay mask.

(ooo000ooo)

"Okay, that's strange." Nara Shikaku remarked out loud, for the benefit of the shadow Natsumi seemed to have picked up during her break in of the academy.

Hizashi noticed the shinobi following her when the girl came into sight, and had alerted the others before the ANBU trainee could reach them. Natsumi herself hadn't noticed until Hiashi drew her attention to the extra set of eyes. She had gone a bit pale, but divvied out the tools she had on her to the ones that gave them to her and the records she had snatched. Depending on how long her shadow had been there, the ninja would have already known that she had stolen the records and with the tools of an active duty nin.

Now they were all bent over Natsumi's records after a quick look over their own, trying to puzzle out what had happened to risk the girl-woman's chances at ANBU.

Minato scratched on cheek and looked around at the pale or tense faces. "Maybe we're thinking too hard?"

"How hard should we be thinking? We're talking about chūnin, Minato-kun." Chouza reminded the blond orphan, hand frozen halfway to his ever present bag of snacks. "Natsumi-chan already said it was kinda easy to get in, so they probably already knew she would try for her records. The instructors were probably trying to gauge her skill level with this."

The silence continued for a bit until Fugaku suddenly growled, drawn features shifting to irritated in a flash of crimson eyes. "What if this was Natsumi-san's final test?"

There were blank looks all around until the shadow-user nodded sharply in agreement. "Everyone knows the ANBU candidates get tested before everyone else, and anyone hearing the tail end of the ANBU challenge would automatically think of the three months of review before graduation, not half way through third year. We're still learning combat tactics for elemental jutsu for the moment."

"But that's unfair." Kushina interjected, scowling. "That would mean anyone trying for ANBU has less instruction than anyone else graduating the academy."

"That would be the point, Uzumaki-san." A deeper, gravelly voice broke in before the redhead could continue, making all the preteens whirl around and scramble for weapons they did or did not have.

A man in a red streaked, snarling wolf mask knelt right behind where Natsumi had been before she had practically launched herself out of her own skin. The figure cocked his head to the side at the panicked reactions, causing a few embarrassed blushes, before continuing in the same mono-toned voice.

"In ANBU, you may not have the training or skills needed for a mission and anything could go wrong on infiltrations. We needed to see what Mesuji-san would do when confronted with that scenario before deciding if she passed or not."

The misplaced soldier blinked at the man. Her heart was still pounding and her nerves were stretched taut at how easily the ANBU agent had snuck up on her and the others, and how close he had gotten before willingly revealing himself. That was an unreal level of skill. "So… are they in trouble for helping me or not?"

"You're not going to ask if you passed?"

Natsumi blinked again, then sneered at the figure in frustration.

"That's not important right now. Why the hell would I care if I passed or not when they might be in trouble-!" She cut herself off mid-shout and studied the figure before changing mental tracks as common sense reared up over the panic in her head. "How long have you been following me for?"

The masked man snorted once. "Good answer. Now I need Mesuji-san to follow me, and bring the information she managed to steal from the academy with her."

Fugaku took it upon himself to gather the records up, flashing his sharingan to record each of them with his back to the ANBU agent before returning them to the girl. Natsumi took the pile of scrolls from him with a nod of thanks. "Ready, Wolf-san."

The wolf mask bobbed again and the man rose to his feet in one fluid movement. The misplaced soldier saw how much better the man was at it than her, and could finally see how the ANBU managed to sneak up on Hyūga of all people.

The extreme of the extreme athletes, Natsumi mussed to herself while adjusting her armful of scrolls. I'm almost one myself, career soldier and all. And Minato has gotten even farther than me in turning into that kind of ninja, for all that he's been doing it for a far shorter time.

It had to be how most ninja developed that kind of skill and talent, with chakra only helpful in preventing most of the wear and tear heaped on the body. Problem was, the girl-woman was now mostly sure she hadn't been doing near enough to condition herself for this kind of life. The exercises she had were based on a life without that kind of spiritual and physical augmentation, for a job more reliant on overall endurance and stamina as needed physical skills than developing the strength of individual muscle groups and fine muscle control needed in the sort of pitched battles ninja fought.

In short, the girl growled to herself and took the hand of the ANBU for the shunshin, this is going to be a bitch and a half just to survive.

\V/

Mesuji Natsumi was in the hospital, according to the instructors when asked about her. She returned to the academy two and a half months after that botched meeting, paler and thinner than she had been the last time the others saw her. The only reason the Uzumaki girl knew the other was still alive was because her missing fūinjutsu scrolls had been returned to her one month after Natsumi had disappeared with the ANBU agent Wolf, which she finally recalled lending to the girl with mismatched eyes in the hopes they would help her keep her ANBU candidacy.

Even before Minato and Kushina managed to effectively kidnap the girl out from under the nose of the worried and fussing chūnin sensei, hilarious as that was to watch, it was apparent that the misplaced soldier was beyond simple exhaustion.

The redhead slapped down a privacy seal she had worked up under Mito-sama's teaching, mostly to prevent the same situation of being sneaked up on like last time, before turning to the girl already sprawled out in a boneless manner on the ground and exploding with all the panic and worry she had felt for the last two months. "What the hell happened to you, Natsumi-chan?"

"Nng."

"Well… that was descriptive." Chouza remarked lightly as he pulled her upright by a firm hold on one of her arms.

Natsumi gave an aborted wave, sagging into the Akimichi's grip as she became lightheaded from the change in position. "Good news, bad news."

"I'd think we'd like the good news first, Natsumi-chan." A pale Shikaku stated quietly as Chouza gently lowered her into a proper sitting position.

A nod and a huff of breath answered him, a hollow mockery of the bark-like laughter so common from her before the start of their third year at the academy. "Good. Yay ANBU, 'n not trouble."

"I think she means she made whatever requirements for ANBU candidates and we're not in trouble, I hope." Minato translated for his sempai after a period of confused silence.

"And the bad?" Inoichi prodded one thin arm, wincing at the bruises decorating every square inch of the girl visible.

"Bad… yay ANBU. Inoichi you teme."

Shikaku barked like she used to, except his was a laugh as worried as it was cynical and devoid of actual humor, startling a listing Natsumi into completely falling over. "Bit late for second thoughts, Natsu-chan."

Giving up on being vertical for the time being, the woman in a girl's body simply opened one green eye and glared at the shadow-user from the ground. "Know that, Shika-kun. Means not enough time."

She blinked, shifting only a small bit to get into a better position, one that put less pressure on her myriad collection of busies.

"And ow. Can't forget ow."

Kushina fluttered around, still worried and not at all confident that touching the other girl was a good idea. "Um, should we take you to the hospital? You don't look too good you know, Natsumi-chan."

"I've got… free time now. Sort of." Since lying down seemed to have given her a fourth wind, so to speak, Natsumi pushed herself back upright carefully. Her bruises had bruises, she was a little surprised that was actually physically possible. Who knew? "Stupid academy. Worked my tiny ass off trying to get free to tell you guys what happened, and I gotta go to school too? Unfair."

"Sempai? I think we would like a full answer now." Minato took hold of the girl's bruised shoulders and made her look into his eyes. "Please, Natsumi-chan."

"Mmm kay, Mina-kun. Wolf-taicho took me to Bear-san 'n a few other students. Bear-san said good work, but you screwed up. 'M chakra sensing 'n control poor, situational awareness also sucked." Squeezing her wrenched shoulders when her exhausted mind wandered was as unfair as schooling and ANBU training the same day. "Then got to work. Pre-mornings with Squirrel-san, taijutsu 'n reflexes. 'N mornings with Wolf-taicho, throwing weird 'n stuff. 'N Crane-san 'afor lunch, meditation 'n jutsu. Lot 'o other things, theory 'n med-medical, after lunch. In masks. Rinse 'n repeat. Two months, kouhai."

'Wolf-taicho?' Shikaku mouthed to himself. Then his brain started to work again and kicked him upside the head. "Wait, you've been training these last few weeks? With others? With ANBU?"

"Mmm." Natsumi managed another bleary nod without tipping over. "Improve to return. Had to hold ground ina spar with Wolf-taicho. And ow. But I'm back now."

Inoichi frowned at the wreck of a girl as the others finally let her pass out. The girl-woman still didn't really care if she lived or died, not entirely sure her reality despite his best efforts. Something he couldn't blame her for, not after having seen and felt what she had seen and felt once upon a time. That meant she was probably being more reckless than she would have been otherwise.

Up until she had admitted to him in their last therapy session that she was starting not to care whether this was a strange dream or not, since she liked them all and genuinely didn't want to see any of them hurt—even Uchiha-sama—he would have labeled her partially suicidal. She probably still was to a degree, but he worried at the kind of damage ANBU would heap on her already cracked mind.

Or maybe it would help? He could understand her calling him a teme, it was his suggestion to pick a goal that landed her in this mess.

It was her own drive, however, that let her work pass the obstacles in her way. Would something more demanding than her old life tighten her grasp on reality, or make her slip back into bad habits?

\V/

The academy was slowly emptied of the more skilled students during the last three months of their third year.

As soon as a division of the shinobi corps felt that one or two of their candidates could no longer benefit from a class setting, he or she would be yanked out and slotted into preexisting teams and rush into the battlefields for field experience. Sometimes they came back to the academy bone white and silent, and sometimes they didn't. Not all of the civilian-raised kids noticed that the students on 'medical leave' were actually already graduated and moving on with their shinobi careers, but the last month of academy classes were echoingly empty and rumors were hard to ignore.

Mesuji Natsumi had been yanked a full two months before graduation, only to be seen once or twice around the village with a hitai-ate around her left bicep and a harried, exhausted expression on her face.

Uzumaki Kushina left the academy for the last time a month and a half before the final exam, rumored to be studying under Mito-sama herself for some urgent reason.

Namikaze Minato was yanked by the arm by a certain famous white haired sannin along with Yamanaka Inoichi and a kunoichi neither knew that well three days before the last month preceding the final exam.

Nara Shikaku and Akimichi Chouza were the only ones to actually take the academy exams that year in their group. They and the passing career genin or jōnin candidates were divvied up and sent out after their classmates into the rumored last few years of the Second Great Shinobi War.

AN#2 : I will freely admit Natsumi is more than a little f#$%ing crazy and slightly cracked in the wrong way. Who wouldn't be in this situation? No, it won't really get better either. She'll always have that sliver of doubt just under the surface, she'll just manage it a bit more every chapter. Before you yell that no SI was supposed to tell the others that they were aware of the future because of a fantasy story they heard/watched/read, Natsumi didn't do that. She did recall a manga she read during her limited off time, but that wasn't the focus of Inoichi's mind diving. Her actual life was, and her preoccupation with the Naruto verse only occurred right before her last deployment. Yes the little she knew later became a driving force behind her actions, but it was something distant to her when she still thought she was either insane or hallucinating during the camping bit. And Inoichi was a bit distracted by her painful death to notice her off duty activities at the time. He really didn't have that long in her head before that came up. Why doesn't the others report our little nut job? I don't quite know yet, but it was mostly because she has been helping them, even when she really thought they were fragments of her shattered or drugged out mind.