Sarutobi, the Sandaime Hokage, looked through his crystal ball at the small form of Uzumaki Aiko. The four year old girl was currently lying on the cold ground, somewhere in a forest on the outskirts of the village of Konoha. Her normally unkempt blonde hair came down to her shoulders was wet with the rain that had blanketed the village for the past couple hours. Normally the youngster wore a pair of black shorts that she had to tie up with some rope because they were too large for her body. Her only other article of clothing was a black t-shirt, which was also too large, and she often seemed to nearly disappear into the garment. Both were so caked with mud and dirt that they were nearly unrecognizable.
It was a sad life that Aiko had led in her short time on earth, for you see, she was the human vessel that the Yondaime Hokage had chosen to seal Kyuubi, the nine tailed fox demon into. The fox had attacked the village four years ago, with devastating effects, killing many civilians and shinobi, as well as destroying enormous amounts of property. The Konoha ninja had fought bravely, many sacrificing themselves in an attempt to stop or slow down the rampaging kitsune, but to no avail. The gigantic monster could destroy entire mountains with one swing of its tail, and with another, create shockwaves that would start tsunamis or generate earthquakes of enormous magnitude. The village seemed to be in dire straights, until the Hokage appeared upon the boss of the Toad summons, Gamabunta. The Yondaime had been the youngest shinobi to ever be promoted to the position of Kage, in any of the elemental countries, earning his title throughout the third great shinobi war as Konoha no Kīroi Senkō (Konoha’s yellow flash). His signature technique, the Hiraishin (Flying thunder god) allowed the blond to move at speeds very near, if not at the speed of light itself. When he appeared, the ninja rejoiced, their hero had arrived and would surely save them from the beast. His form was clearly silhouetted atop his summons and partner, so when he began a series of hand seals, it was clear to all that this battle was about to begin. But if they could have seen their Hokage’s eyes, they would have seen deep sadness and regret in his blue irises.
Back in the village, the Sandaime watched over the infant Aiko as a dark spiraling seal appeared on her stomach, entrapping the monster within her for her natural life, at the cost of the Yondaime’s soul. After the battle field had been cleared up, and the death toll counted, Sarutobi took it upon himself to introduce the people to their savior. Their reaction was less encouraging that he had hoped. Upon seeing the thin black lines that graced the cheeks of the curious child, the villagers, and many shinobi had immediately called for the death of the ‘demon’, for that is all they saw her as. Sarutobi had sadly been forced to place the anonymous child in the orphanage and create a law that forbade anyone from telling their children of anyone of the younger generations of the sealing of the fox. The fourth Hokage would go down in the history books as possibly the greatest ninja ever, as well as the victor over the demon, Kyuubi. It had been the Sandaime who had named the girl, as no family came forward to claim the child. He gave her the name Aiko, love child, because even if she never knew her family, the Sandaime was sure that they loved her, even if it was only for a moment. Her surname, Uzumaki, was given because of the seal upon her stomach.
As Sarutobi watched her sleeping, he remembered that the four years that she had lived in the village were not the happiest. She was constantly ignored at the orphanage, to the point that she had to go dumpster dive for clothing, as no store would sell to her, and scavenge in the forest for food. He had seen the effects of the treatment on her face, behind a bright smile she hid four years of pain and suffering. Her blue eyes would often cloud over in sadness as she watched other kids play, or get adopted or just run around and get into the usual mischief that four year olds get into. Her situation grew steadily worse as October tenth approached the anniversary of the Kyuubi’s defeat. On the first anniversary, some drunken civilians had tried to organize a mob and take over the orphanage to kill her, but they were quickly put down by the ANBU. Her second birthday was just as bad, this time the mob formed much more discretely, but they were stopped once more by the ANBU, this time as they were on the precipice of the building where Aiko slept, ignorant to the threat that was positioned against her.
Last year had been the first time that a shinobi had tried to kill her, a newly graduated genin, who had lost his family had tried to slice her throat, this time as she walked through the village on her way back to the village. He was stopped by owner of a local ramen stand, who happened to be a retired ninja himself. This year was by far the most shocking to the old Hokage. A single ninja, a high ranking chuunin, had transformed himself into the form of a child and went to great lengths to gain Aiko’s trust, playing with the girl, when no one else would. As Aiko was leaving towards the orphanage, the ninja dispelled his illusion and grabbed the girl, covering her mouth so she couldn’t make a noise, and escaping into the woods.
Aiko had been so shocked that she just froze, not even trying to move or scream. She just watched as the scenery changed from the village to the walls of Konoha, to the forest on the outside of the wall. For almost an hour she was carried into the forest, until her captor threw her against the trunk of a large tree, knocking the wind from her body. She was quickly set upon by the older man, and tied to the tree, although she couldn’t figure out why. Tears welled up in her eyes as she uneasily began to breathe again.
“Let me go!” She screamed at her abductor, terrified at her situation.
The man just ignored her, but her subsequent attempts at gaining his attention were slightly more profitable, and on the tenth rendition of her previous sentence, the chuunin walked over, and slapped her across the face, silencing her for the moment.
“Shut up you stupid bitch! You should enjoy the last few minutes of your life, so shut the fuck up!” The sheer amount of malice in the man’s voice was enough to silence the child, though her tears continued to gather, until they fell and ran down her cheek.
The chuunin was joined momentarily by two other ninja, another chuunin, and the genin from the previous year.
“Come on, let’s kill the demon and get back, you know how the Hokage gets when it involves the brat.” The second chuunin barked, he was much fatter than either of his colleagues, but original chuunin was taller. The genin was just some punk, who thought he would be doing the village a service on his quest for revenge.
As the trio ascended on her, Aiko knew, instinctually, that she would die here, and no one could save her. The advancing men drew a kunai each, and came up to the crying mass. Taking his kunai, the genin was about to drive it into Aiko’s skull, when the chuunin grasped his arm.
“Hey, don’t get too anxious! The demon has to suffer for everything it’s put us through.”
This time, the kunai descended in a black arc and drove itself into Aiko’s arm, causing the girl to cry out in pain, until another kunai was driven into her other arm, this one closer to her shoulder. For the next few minutes, the three continued their twisted game of pincushion, until Aiko fell silent and limp from the abuse. Readying the final blow, the chuunin grabbed Aiko’s hair and pulled her head up, her eyes snapped open in shock as the once cold metal, now warm with her own blood, was placed along her throat.
“It’s time you died, Kyuubi!” The ninja yelled in victory as Aiko watched the knife being pulled back, before it began to descend in slow motion towards her unprotected throat.
‘I don’t want to die!’ She thought to herself. ‘I haven’t even gotten to make a friend yet, how can I die? At least now, the people will be happy that I’m gone.’ Her resignation seemed to spark something inside her, and in a flash, nearly all of her chakra reserves were released, as the kunai neared her skin.
It was at this point that the Sandaime had found her through his ball; Aiko was bleeding heavily, although it wasn’t life threatening, and had a kunai about to slit her throat, when the most extraordinary thing occurred. Looking at her still form lying on the ground, where she had fallen from the ordeal, Sarutobi wondered why he hadn’t seen it before. For four years he had tried to find Aiko’s family, but to no avail. He had held little hope, for she resembled so much the Yondaime, that his initial reaction was to name her Kazama Aiko, after the fourth, but was stopped because he didn’t know if the fourth even had a girlfriend, let alone a wife or child. Even if they were related, the fourth had no family alive to take in the girl, but their similarities were uncannily similar. Their hair was the same shade of yellow, and was unruly, plus their eyes were near identical shades of blue, one would have to be blind to not think the two were related.
And yet, as he watched the squad of ANBU he had sent to recover the girl, there was the proof that Aiko wasn’t the daughter of the Yondaime, but the offspring of ninja nearly as great. As the captain, one Hatake Kakashi picked up the girl and headed back to the village, Sarutobi was amazed once more at how blind he had been this entire time. For as Kakashi passed the bodies of the three attackers, now impaled through the chest with tree limbs, the obvious resemblance to two of his former pupils was undeniable.
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Jiraiya had always made it a point to never be within a week’s travel of Konoha around the date of the Kyuubi attack. It was too painful to think of his former student, the Yondaime, as well as the loss of his family. They weren’t dead, at least as far as he knew, Tsunade, his ex girlfriend had been carrying his child and the two were very excited about becoming parents, the frog hermit had even agreed to give up his perverted ways so that the child could be raised properly. Not to be out done, Tsunade had agreed to stop gambling, much to the shock of her friends. The child had been delivered complication free on the tenth of October, in a small village far away from the attack. Jiraiya had been there, but had been accidentally punched into the next year by Tsunade during the delivery. He had never gotten the chance to see his daughter, as she disappeared out of the nursery almost as soon as she was placed there.
The loss had driven both sannin even further into their respective vices, Jiraiya pumped out five new books in the span of the first year, much to his own anguish and his readers delight. Tsunade had proceeded to disappear into the wind once more, leaving a stunned Jiraiya alone, before she racked up four debts larger than the bounty that had been placed on the fourth’s head during the war.
Neither realized that their daughter was alive, not necessarily well, but alive in Konoha under the eyes of their sensei. That is, until they both received word from Sarutobi that he had reason to believe that the vessel for the Kyuubi was their daughter. This sent both sannin on a direct course to Konoha, one that would have them arriving in one week.
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That week was the longest of Aiko’s relatively short life. She had awoken just two days after the ordeal in the hospital, dressed in the standard white gown and a rather sizeable headache. There was no one in the room, not that she really expected there to be, but she had hoped that the Hokage would be there. As if answering her thoughts, the old man walked into the room, a smile grew on his face when he saw that she was awake.
“How are you feeling, Aiko-chan?” He asked, sitting next to the blonde, who sat up in bed when the old Hokage walked in.
“I’m…I…” She just couldn’t say much. She was still processing and reliving the events of the past, she had never been so close to death.
“I know that it is tough to talk about it, I can’t really imagine how scary it must have been, but you need to know that if you want to, I will always be here, you can talk to me about anything.” Sarutobi instructed softly, watching Aiko’s facial expressions. They were one part fear, one part anxiety, and now one part relief.
“Am I really the Kyuubi?” Her voice was so quiet that Sarutobi thought it might have been the wind, but years of being the Hokage had afforded him the gift of picking up weak voices amongst many stronger ones.
“Of course you aren’t the Kyuubi.” He replied sweetly, but with force enough to sound authoritative.
“But, everyone’s so mean to me…they call me names and –and the orphanage stopped helping me…I must be, or else so many people wouldn’t hate me.” She was trying to rationalize her life, not carry on a conversation, but the Hokage took her words as an attempt at debate.
“Do you feel like the Kyuubi? Do you feel evil?” He asked, trying to break through the mental wall that Aiko had erected in the past couple days.
There was a pregnant pause as the girl just stared at the sheets of her bed.
“No, I just feel like…me. I don’t feel any other way, how could I?”
“See, you are not the Kyuubi, you are your own person; you are Aiko!” He replied; smiling at the blonde, who raised her head and with a new determination, smiled back.
“I have some good news for you.” He dangled that bit of information out like a worm for a fish.
“Really! What is it?” Now Aiko seemed to be back to her energetic ways, and was as loud as ever.
“Well, ever since you were born, I’ve been trying to find your family, but I haven’t had any luck. While you were asleep, I managed to figure out that I had been barking up the wrong family tree. It turns out that both of your parents are alive, and are going to bee here in about five days to see you!”
Aiko’s eyes grew to the size of dinner plates as this information slowly permeated through her mind. Just as the last bit sunk in, the ramifications hit her, and she promptly fainted in shock.
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Since she had found out about her parents, Aiko had been worried that she had or would somehow offend them, and they would leave her to the village again. She had pestered the Hokage about them, but hadn’t received enough information to calm her wrecked nerves. She had been living with the Hokage and his wife until her biological parents came and picked her up, and was glad for the change. They treated her humanly, unlike her previous experiences.
Finally, the day of reckoning…or perhaps, wreckoning, depending on Tsunade’s mood, dawned. Aiko was going to accompany Sarutobi to his office and wait for her parents. She didn’t have to wait for long.
Just around nine o’clock, the door was knocked down by Tsunade, who immediately scanned the room for her daughter. Aiko was sitting in a rather tall chair, reading a book that she had borrowed from the Hokage when the door was busted down. Looking at the ‘intruder’ she looked at her mother for the first time.
Tsunade instantly recognized her offspring, Aiko had inherited her blonde hair, but it behaved like Jiraiya’s. Quickly running over to Aiko, Tsunade wrapped her daughter in a tender hug. Aiko initially froze up, but quickly melted into the hug. She could see where she got her hair from, but it all seemed so insignificant now. She had family!
“Good to see you, Jiraiya.” Sarutobi greeted his other student, causing both girls to look at the doorway.
Jiraiya nodded in recognition, before making his way to the mass of blonde hair that was his family. Aiko took a moment to size up the white haired man that just walked in. He was definitely her father, from what she had been able to pick up from the Hokage and his wife.
Tsunade let go for a moment, allowing Jiraiya to see his daughter for the first time, having been unconscious and in the next town over when she was born. She definitely had his hair, spiky and unruly, but the rest of her build reminded him of Tsunade when she was younger.
He too embraced Aiko, before beginning to cry, the gravity of the situation getting to him.
“Why don’t I give you three some time alone?” The Hokage had a grandfatherly tone to his voice, but both his students saw through it.
“You just don’t want to do the paperwork.” Tsunade bit back, but continued to smile after being reunited with her daughter.
Sarutobi smiled and disappeared in a puff of smoke anyway. All of the plans were already set, as far as the old man was concerned. He knew that Tsunade and Jiraiya wouldn’t stay in the village, but it didn’t really matter. He would rather see Aiko with her family than as a leaf ninja, but if they came back for the genin exams, then all the better for the village. Tonight they would stay in the village, but tomorrow they would be gone, just as always. Except this time, they would have an extra person to tag along with them.
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