Brilliant Minds and Black Hearts Chapter 1
Jan. 8th, 2020 07:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckling_ghostChapter 1 – The House
I stepped out my door and walked to my car. I stopped after three quick steps. I was late for work, I was in a hurry. I was also quite emphatically not at all where I was supposed to be. I turned around, kept turning, looked at the door I had just walked out of, poked my head back in. Yep, still the inside of my humble little two room abode in there, but the back windows were gone, something I hadn’t noticed when I woke up with the lights off, and the door was now a wooden one set into the side of a wood paneled wall.
I turned and looked out over the balcony at the city below me and then as I kept swiveling my head, I spotted something that made my brain break a little. Because really, who expects to walk out their front door on the way to work and step into Konoha? Which is not supposed to even be real! My eye twitched and I nodded thinking to myself, Alright, time to just, go back to bed. I’m clearly dreaming and I will undoubtedly wake up before anything good happen…what is that?
I pulled the letter taped onto my door off, this wasn’t here a minute ago… and I started to read.
==
Congratulations! You have just woken up in a Naruto fanfiction where simply having a somewhat viable brain and common sense will be enough to qualify as nearly story breaker levels of awesomeness. Everyone here is lacking in common sense and creativity, apply those things as you please and this world is your plaything! The powers of the gods are…well still pretty dang god like, but you can still beat them with your wit and guile provided they don’t blast you to paste right off the bat!
Oh, by the way, you’re about to physically become a little kid enrolled in Naruko’s class so that you can learn how to function in this world. Your new name is Koga Kurohyou, no other information is available about you to anyone. Your words will be automatically translated into the native language of the listener and you will be able to understand them in return, this also applies to kanji which is what you’re reading now. Consider the upcoming years your tutorial. Now go on, you’d better hurry or you’ll be late! (Map’s on the back)
Sincerely,
The Author
==
I twitched as the world shifted in size. Everything was suddenly a lot bigger. I frowned, thought for a moment, weighed my options and then took off with a big grin, following the map into my new life. Dream or not, I wanted to make the most of it.
==Ten Minutes Later==
I skidded into the classroom and spun upright to my feet with my hands raised in front of me, both index fingers extended in a quirky little gesture as I smiled, “I’m not late am I? Sorry, it took me a minute to find the room.”
A tall man with a large scar and a spiky ponytail who could only be Iruka looked at the clock, “No, you’re actually just in time. What’s your name?”
I smiled as the name that my little letter had given me rolled easily off my tongue, so easily one might’ve almost mistaken it for honesty. The joys of being a fantastic liar in a little kid’s body! Iruka checked his roster and nodded. “Alright, take a seat,” Iruka instructed. I nodded and quickly scanned the room, rapidly deciding to plonk my behind by the really pretty little blonde with the perfect blue eyes in the worn out t-shirt.
I smiled at her as warmly as I could, “Hi, I’m Koga. What’s your name?”
The little girl smiled a smile that seemed like extract of sunshine, “I’m Naruko! Do you want to be my friend?”
I blinked as the name registered and then I wrapped an arm around her and pulled her into a one armed hug, “Best friends!” That was apparently the very right answer because I immediately got a hug and forever after that, Naruko stuck to me like glue whenever she could. As much fun as she was, I didn’t mind in the slightest.
==After Class==
We, or rather I, wound up pulling off that little incident that made Hinata look up to Naruto in canon. It quite surprised me, but even if I hadn’t immediately realized it was Hinata, I like to think I would’ve jumped in and helped out a little girl being picked on by three boys double her size. It was then that I realized I had maintained at least a significant amount of my former strength. Someone my size should not have been able to smack those three around like that. It was the first time I could remember having moved that fast in quite some time, and it felt awesome. The cracking my knuckles over the three fallen bullies and asking what they’d learned about bullying prompting them to all take off and run like hell itself was after them felt pretty damn epic too.
After they had turned the corner, I snorted in their general direction and then turned a smile on Hinata, “You alright Hyuga-chan?”
Hinata stared at me in shock and then nodded with a smile, “Yes, thank you!”
I smiled, “Don’t worry about it. It’s what I do.” I turned and strolled off waving over my shoulder as I saw Hinata’s body guard come rushing up, “See ya around Hyuga-chan!”
I walked Naruko home, chatting and smiling the whole way as she told me of all her likes, dislikes and grand dreams. Summed up simply, likes ramen and the Hokage, hates being ignored and wants to be Hokage. Before either of us knew it, we were at a large imposing building which honestly looked more like a prison than an orphanage, and just as soon as we saw it, Naruko’s smile disappeared.
It was an awful thing to see, that beautiful sunny smile just vanishing like that, and the look that replaced it was worse. If I hadn’t been able to guess it was bad, that look of…it wasn’t quite dread or terror, but certainly a strong “never want to go there again but I have to”. I looked at her, “Naruko, what is this place?”
“The orphanage,” Naruko said quietly with her eyes downcast, “I’m an orphan so I live here because nobody loves me.”
I refuse to admit to squeaking with outrage, but I might have squawked. To foster such a mindset in a child, especially one so bright and sunny and as far as I could tell utterly wonderful…If not for the fact that there were probably other kids in that horrid place, I’d have found a box of matches and torched it on the spot. No, I probably would’ve lit up all of Konoha if I could’ve gotten away with it. Naruko looked up at me in hurt surprise and I realized, Oh god she thinks I’m angry at her…
I caught her by the shoulders and looked her in the eye, “Naruko, as my best friend in this whole world, I cannot let you continue to live in a place that makes you so sad. Come with me, we shall gather your things and you can come live with me.”
Naruko looked like she had just been offered a stairway to heaven and oh god it hurt so much to see the effects my simple caring was having on her. Forget tugging my heartstrings, she was pulling them out like loose threads from a moth-eaten sweater, which given the state of my rotten black heart is probably a pretty apt metaphor…
Then she hesitated, “But…what about your parents? Adults don’t like me…”
I hugged her, “I don’t have any, and anyone who doesn’t like you is welcome to go get eaten by piranha as far as I’m concerned.”
That did it. On came the waterworks. She cried into my shoulder for what seemed like a long time before she pulled herself together enough for us to go get her things and leave that awful place. I resisted the urge to flip the matrons the bird on my way out, narrowly. They never said a word to me, but I had, and still have, nothing but hatred so deep I can’t even put it into words for them. Flipping them off with a glare of pure undiluted hate would be the beginning of the equivalent gesture. Burying a kunai between their eyes and storming off without a word would be the rest of it. It wasn’t until after we had grabbed Naruko’s meager possessions, we were able to gather them up in one trip, that she thought to ask me what a piranha was.
When we got back to my…well it had been a small travel trailer since I was always on the road for work, but now it was set into the side of a building so I guess it was an apartment now…for lack of a clearer category, I elected to call it a “dwelling place” at the time…Anyway when we got there, I got another surprise. It had changed since I left.
When I left, there had been two rooms, a larger room with a bed, a table, a sink, oven top, mini-fridge and microwave, plus lots of cabinets, and a small rectangular bathroom with a mirror/medicine cabinet and sink on the left, a toilet in the middle and a shower barely big enough for one on the left. It had also been a complete mess. A lonely bachelor with no social life tends to be a messy person and I epitomized that. My place had been a constant pigsty, dirty dishes and laundry everywhere, books and unopened snacks on one side of the bed in case I got hungry... I had never been called a disgusting pig for my manners or lack of decorum, but my mother had once called me one in a fit of rage after seeing my admittedly atrocious housekeeping.
Now I was stunned as I walked through what I was certain was the same door as before into a sizable room, almost double the size of what my larger room had been. What was weirder was that it was spotless. I looked around and poked my head back outside, looking around to make sure I was at the right beat up wooden door at the top of what looked like a rusty fire escape ladder in an unassuming brick alley. I pulled my head back in as Naruko was oohing and ahhing over how much space I now had and how nice everything was. You’d think it was a grand palace the way she was looking around at it. Granted, it was certainly quite nice, especially compared to that awful orphanage.
It was a small kitchen by the looks of it. The wall on the left was a bar with cabinets above and below and a sink in the middle, plus an old and kind of beat up looking dishwasher. There was a standalone fridge/freezer combo just across from the door, and an old microwave on the counter. A considerable chunk of the right wall was bookshelf which looked awfully familiar, and as I started reading titles, it looked like every book I’d ever had was there. I looked at the wooden table next to the door and ran a hand over it in numb shock, that was the table my grandfather had made for me when I got an apartment in college…and those were my chairs…
I suddenly froze and looked around, this is the kitchen from my apartment! Right down to the little cactuses in the window over the sink and my dirty blue floor mat! I looked around, starting to get seriously weirded out, what. The EXACT. FUCK? Then I noticed a note on the table and quickly grabbed it to read.
==
As you may have noticed, the house has changed. The house is my boon to you, so that you may never feel uncomfortable in your own home. The house exists in an extradimensional pocket, and the door is just propped up against the wall outside. You can seal it and take home with you wherever you go. The seal that allows this is in the fuinjutsu textbook in your bedroom. The house will change to suit whatever your needs are, but it will always pull from your memories to shape its new rooms. Existing rooms will not change significantly, but they will gain new places in the overall layout of the building. The map is once again on the back, and as you may not have noticed on the other map, both are constantly updating so that you can always find your way home and around inside. Locked doors do not yet have rooms behind them and cannot be opened. Some doors may be missing from where they were in the original room due to the floor plan being different. A compilation of the rooms the house has memory of and can therefore manifest is in the manual.
Yes the dishes are all done, as is the laundry and all the other housekeeping; part of the sealing matrix accounts for housekeeping. It was designed by an extremely brilliant but lazy man who didn’t have time for housekeeping (you will still have to buy groceries though). The wardrobes will be updated and altered based on biometrics taken by the house and personal preferences.
The books and pictures are from a mixture of the memories and knowledge of all past and present residents of the house, with complete versions of even partially remembered texts copied through the sealing matrix’s time-space functions.
Naruko has now been acknowledged as a resident and thus the house will respond to her needs and memories as well.
The house can understand the difference between visitor and resident and will only respond to residents. The house can only be accessed by residents. Anyone else who tries to open the door will find it to be a framed door to nothing except whatever is behind it, example a wall or the other side of the clearing it’s sitting in. All of the instructions for the house can be found in the manual, and the house will periodically drop little hints like this which can be compiled or disposed of as they are completely unnoticeable to anyone but a resident of the house.
==
By the time I was finished, Naruko was reading over my shoulder, which I let slide because I had already gotten to the part about her being a resident just as much as I was.
When Naruko finished she asked, “So…what’s it say?” I blinked and looked at her and then I remembered, Right, six year old orphan. Probably can’t read very well if at all.
I smiled, “Well ‘Ruko-chan, it says that the house has acknowledged that you live here now. That’s why it changed while I was gone. It was making room for you.”
Naruko blinked and then her eyes bugged out, “Wait, the house is alive?!”
I laughed, “No, it’s just a really smart house. The guy who made it was a super genius with fuinjutsu, and he made a house that can tell who’s here, as well as who lives here and who’s just visiting, change to suit their needs and hide itself from anyone else. There’s a map on the back, come on, let’s go check out your room!”
“I have my own room?!” Naruko asked with a delighted smile.
I nodded with a smile of my own, “Yep, come on, it’s right down this hallway.” I walked to what had in my apartment been the door to my bedroom and fought back the disorientation as it opened into the short cinderblock hallway from the second dorm I’d lived in in college. I led Naruko to the second door on the right, “Okay, here’s your room…”
I opened the door and once again tried to blink back the disorientation as the door opened into a bedroom I didn’t even begin to recognize from a completely different architectural style. I forced a smile and let Naruko run past me to jump on the bed with a squeal of delight that quickly turned my forced smile to a real one.
I looked around and as Naruko rolled around on the bed giggling with glee I looked at the picture on the dresser and my breath caught, “Ruko-chan, look at this.” I handed her the little framed picture as she sat up.
All the breath went out of her in an instant and her eyes went wide, “This…Is this…”
I picked up the piece of paper that had been under the picture and read aloud, “A picture of Naruko and her parents, Minato and Kushina.”
Naruko’s breath came out in little hitching sobs as tears welled in her eyes, “My…my daddy was… the Fourth Hokage?”
I smiled gently, “Judging by the picture, I’d say you definitely have his hair and eyes, and how could someone as wonderful as you be anyone less than the daughter of a Hokage?” Naruko’s lip trembled for a moment and then she burst into tears. I bounced up onto the bed and wrapped her in a hug, “Hey…hey…what’s wrong? I thought the Fourth was your hero.”
“He is!” Naruko wailed, “But why does my dad have to be dead?! If he were alive people wouldn’t hate me!”
I tightened my grip on her and took a firmer tone that cut through the sound of her sobs, “Naruko, stop. And. Think. Nobody hates you. They’re trying to protect you.”
Naruko actually stopped and looked up at me with big watery eyes, “W-what? But, but they all…”
I smiled softly at her, “Think about it. The Fourth wasn’t without enemies, and if people found out he had a daughter and he wasn’t around to protect her, they’d come after you. If people let on that you were the Fourth’s child, then they might be placing you in terrible danger. What if some other shinobi village found out the legendary Yellow Flash had a daughter? They’d want to kidnap her and force her to be a ninja for them wouldn’t they? By pretending to not care about you Naruko, they’re shielding you from the eyes of outsiders. If they don’t seem to care, why would anyone else? They’ll think, ‘surely Konoha would care about the child of their great hero and praise that child to the high heavens right? So this little girl who nobody gives a second glance surely couldn’t be that child! We can move on and leave her alone without having to worry about her growing up to be as strong as the Yellow Flash!’ and then...”
I smiled gently, “Years from now when you are all grown up and the greatest Hokage Konoha has ever had, everyone can admit who you are, because you’ll be strong enough that nobody can threaten you. Right now, everyone has to lie and pretend not to care, that you’re just another orphan from the night of the Kyuubi attack, but one day Naruko, you’ll be able to shed your anonymity and everyone will be able to love you openly. I know it’s hard, but until you’re stronger you have to hide who you are alright?”
Naruko looked up at me with so much hope and trust in her eyes that it almost hurt me, because as far as I knew every word out of my mouth just then had been a colossal lie. All except for the bit about her needing to hide who she was and get stronger. It wasn’t wrong though, she needed to hear it, right? I tried to tell myself that, but it still felt wrong somehow, using her trust to manipulate her like that, even if it did strengthen her resolve and would help her grow into a more formidable and loyal shinobi.
“Also,” I added, “A lot of people probably don’t know who you are. Lord Third has probably gone to great measures to keep your identity secret for your protection. I’m sure there are probably laws in place forbidding anyone who knows about it from talking about it or acting on it in obvious ways. I’m sure there are people who know though, and those people are always keeping an eye out for you from the shadows ‘Ruko-chan, I’m certain of it, and while they watch over you from the shadows, I’ll be right there by your side, watching your back, and may Kami have no mercy at all on the souls of whoever tries to get at you while I’m around,” I declared with a rueful grin and then, “Does that sound alright ‘Ruko-chan?” I asked with a smile.
Naruko looked up at me like I was her own personal guardian angel or fairy godfather or something to that effect, and as she wrapped me in a hug and cried happy tears into my chest, I decided that damn it all I was going to be. I might have been a cold rotten calculating ball of explosive malignance, but I was a cold rotten calculating ball of explosive malignance with a sense of honor dammit! This little girl was putting her trust in me and if it killed me I’d damn well be someone worthy of it.
NEXT CHAPTER
I stepped out my door and walked to my car. I stopped after three quick steps. I was late for work, I was in a hurry. I was also quite emphatically not at all where I was supposed to be. I turned around, kept turning, looked at the door I had just walked out of, poked my head back in. Yep, still the inside of my humble little two room abode in there, but the back windows were gone, something I hadn’t noticed when I woke up with the lights off, and the door was now a wooden one set into the side of a wood paneled wall.
I turned and looked out over the balcony at the city below me and then as I kept swiveling my head, I spotted something that made my brain break a little. Because really, who expects to walk out their front door on the way to work and step into Konoha? Which is not supposed to even be real! My eye twitched and I nodded thinking to myself, Alright, time to just, go back to bed. I’m clearly dreaming and I will undoubtedly wake up before anything good happen…what is that?
I pulled the letter taped onto my door off, this wasn’t here a minute ago… and I started to read.
==
Congratulations! You have just woken up in a Naruto fanfiction where simply having a somewhat viable brain and common sense will be enough to qualify as nearly story breaker levels of awesomeness. Everyone here is lacking in common sense and creativity, apply those things as you please and this world is your plaything! The powers of the gods are…well still pretty dang god like, but you can still beat them with your wit and guile provided they don’t blast you to paste right off the bat!
Oh, by the way, you’re about to physically become a little kid enrolled in Naruko’s class so that you can learn how to function in this world. Your new name is Koga Kurohyou, no other information is available about you to anyone. Your words will be automatically translated into the native language of the listener and you will be able to understand them in return, this also applies to kanji which is what you’re reading now. Consider the upcoming years your tutorial. Now go on, you’d better hurry or you’ll be late! (Map’s on the back)
Sincerely,
The Author
==
I twitched as the world shifted in size. Everything was suddenly a lot bigger. I frowned, thought for a moment, weighed my options and then took off with a big grin, following the map into my new life. Dream or not, I wanted to make the most of it.
==Ten Minutes Later==
I skidded into the classroom and spun upright to my feet with my hands raised in front of me, both index fingers extended in a quirky little gesture as I smiled, “I’m not late am I? Sorry, it took me a minute to find the room.”
A tall man with a large scar and a spiky ponytail who could only be Iruka looked at the clock, “No, you’re actually just in time. What’s your name?”
I smiled as the name that my little letter had given me rolled easily off my tongue, so easily one might’ve almost mistaken it for honesty. The joys of being a fantastic liar in a little kid’s body! Iruka checked his roster and nodded. “Alright, take a seat,” Iruka instructed. I nodded and quickly scanned the room, rapidly deciding to plonk my behind by the really pretty little blonde with the perfect blue eyes in the worn out t-shirt.
I smiled at her as warmly as I could, “Hi, I’m Koga. What’s your name?”
The little girl smiled a smile that seemed like extract of sunshine, “I’m Naruko! Do you want to be my friend?”
I blinked as the name registered and then I wrapped an arm around her and pulled her into a one armed hug, “Best friends!” That was apparently the very right answer because I immediately got a hug and forever after that, Naruko stuck to me like glue whenever she could. As much fun as she was, I didn’t mind in the slightest.
==After Class==
We, or rather I, wound up pulling off that little incident that made Hinata look up to Naruto in canon. It quite surprised me, but even if I hadn’t immediately realized it was Hinata, I like to think I would’ve jumped in and helped out a little girl being picked on by three boys double her size. It was then that I realized I had maintained at least a significant amount of my former strength. Someone my size should not have been able to smack those three around like that. It was the first time I could remember having moved that fast in quite some time, and it felt awesome. The cracking my knuckles over the three fallen bullies and asking what they’d learned about bullying prompting them to all take off and run like hell itself was after them felt pretty damn epic too.
After they had turned the corner, I snorted in their general direction and then turned a smile on Hinata, “You alright Hyuga-chan?”
Hinata stared at me in shock and then nodded with a smile, “Yes, thank you!”
I smiled, “Don’t worry about it. It’s what I do.” I turned and strolled off waving over my shoulder as I saw Hinata’s body guard come rushing up, “See ya around Hyuga-chan!”
I walked Naruko home, chatting and smiling the whole way as she told me of all her likes, dislikes and grand dreams. Summed up simply, likes ramen and the Hokage, hates being ignored and wants to be Hokage. Before either of us knew it, we were at a large imposing building which honestly looked more like a prison than an orphanage, and just as soon as we saw it, Naruko’s smile disappeared.
It was an awful thing to see, that beautiful sunny smile just vanishing like that, and the look that replaced it was worse. If I hadn’t been able to guess it was bad, that look of…it wasn’t quite dread or terror, but certainly a strong “never want to go there again but I have to”. I looked at her, “Naruko, what is this place?”
“The orphanage,” Naruko said quietly with her eyes downcast, “I’m an orphan so I live here because nobody loves me.”
I refuse to admit to squeaking with outrage, but I might have squawked. To foster such a mindset in a child, especially one so bright and sunny and as far as I could tell utterly wonderful…If not for the fact that there were probably other kids in that horrid place, I’d have found a box of matches and torched it on the spot. No, I probably would’ve lit up all of Konoha if I could’ve gotten away with it. Naruko looked up at me in hurt surprise and I realized, Oh god she thinks I’m angry at her…
I caught her by the shoulders and looked her in the eye, “Naruko, as my best friend in this whole world, I cannot let you continue to live in a place that makes you so sad. Come with me, we shall gather your things and you can come live with me.”
Naruko looked like she had just been offered a stairway to heaven and oh god it hurt so much to see the effects my simple caring was having on her. Forget tugging my heartstrings, she was pulling them out like loose threads from a moth-eaten sweater, which given the state of my rotten black heart is probably a pretty apt metaphor…
Then she hesitated, “But…what about your parents? Adults don’t like me…”
I hugged her, “I don’t have any, and anyone who doesn’t like you is welcome to go get eaten by piranha as far as I’m concerned.”
That did it. On came the waterworks. She cried into my shoulder for what seemed like a long time before she pulled herself together enough for us to go get her things and leave that awful place. I resisted the urge to flip the matrons the bird on my way out, narrowly. They never said a word to me, but I had, and still have, nothing but hatred so deep I can’t even put it into words for them. Flipping them off with a glare of pure undiluted hate would be the beginning of the equivalent gesture. Burying a kunai between their eyes and storming off without a word would be the rest of it. It wasn’t until after we had grabbed Naruko’s meager possessions, we were able to gather them up in one trip, that she thought to ask me what a piranha was.
When we got back to my…well it had been a small travel trailer since I was always on the road for work, but now it was set into the side of a building so I guess it was an apartment now…for lack of a clearer category, I elected to call it a “dwelling place” at the time…Anyway when we got there, I got another surprise. It had changed since I left.
When I left, there had been two rooms, a larger room with a bed, a table, a sink, oven top, mini-fridge and microwave, plus lots of cabinets, and a small rectangular bathroom with a mirror/medicine cabinet and sink on the left, a toilet in the middle and a shower barely big enough for one on the left. It had also been a complete mess. A lonely bachelor with no social life tends to be a messy person and I epitomized that. My place had been a constant pigsty, dirty dishes and laundry everywhere, books and unopened snacks on one side of the bed in case I got hungry... I had never been called a disgusting pig for my manners or lack of decorum, but my mother had once called me one in a fit of rage after seeing my admittedly atrocious housekeeping.
Now I was stunned as I walked through what I was certain was the same door as before into a sizable room, almost double the size of what my larger room had been. What was weirder was that it was spotless. I looked around and poked my head back outside, looking around to make sure I was at the right beat up wooden door at the top of what looked like a rusty fire escape ladder in an unassuming brick alley. I pulled my head back in as Naruko was oohing and ahhing over how much space I now had and how nice everything was. You’d think it was a grand palace the way she was looking around at it. Granted, it was certainly quite nice, especially compared to that awful orphanage.
It was a small kitchen by the looks of it. The wall on the left was a bar with cabinets above and below and a sink in the middle, plus an old and kind of beat up looking dishwasher. There was a standalone fridge/freezer combo just across from the door, and an old microwave on the counter. A considerable chunk of the right wall was bookshelf which looked awfully familiar, and as I started reading titles, it looked like every book I’d ever had was there. I looked at the wooden table next to the door and ran a hand over it in numb shock, that was the table my grandfather had made for me when I got an apartment in college…and those were my chairs…
I suddenly froze and looked around, this is the kitchen from my apartment! Right down to the little cactuses in the window over the sink and my dirty blue floor mat! I looked around, starting to get seriously weirded out, what. The EXACT. FUCK? Then I noticed a note on the table and quickly grabbed it to read.
==
As you may have noticed, the house has changed. The house is my boon to you, so that you may never feel uncomfortable in your own home. The house exists in an extradimensional pocket, and the door is just propped up against the wall outside. You can seal it and take home with you wherever you go. The seal that allows this is in the fuinjutsu textbook in your bedroom. The house will change to suit whatever your needs are, but it will always pull from your memories to shape its new rooms. Existing rooms will not change significantly, but they will gain new places in the overall layout of the building. The map is once again on the back, and as you may not have noticed on the other map, both are constantly updating so that you can always find your way home and around inside. Locked doors do not yet have rooms behind them and cannot be opened. Some doors may be missing from where they were in the original room due to the floor plan being different. A compilation of the rooms the house has memory of and can therefore manifest is in the manual.
Yes the dishes are all done, as is the laundry and all the other housekeeping; part of the sealing matrix accounts for housekeeping. It was designed by an extremely brilliant but lazy man who didn’t have time for housekeeping (you will still have to buy groceries though). The wardrobes will be updated and altered based on biometrics taken by the house and personal preferences.
The books and pictures are from a mixture of the memories and knowledge of all past and present residents of the house, with complete versions of even partially remembered texts copied through the sealing matrix’s time-space functions.
Naruko has now been acknowledged as a resident and thus the house will respond to her needs and memories as well.
The house can understand the difference between visitor and resident and will only respond to residents. The house can only be accessed by residents. Anyone else who tries to open the door will find it to be a framed door to nothing except whatever is behind it, example a wall or the other side of the clearing it’s sitting in. All of the instructions for the house can be found in the manual, and the house will periodically drop little hints like this which can be compiled or disposed of as they are completely unnoticeable to anyone but a resident of the house.
==
By the time I was finished, Naruko was reading over my shoulder, which I let slide because I had already gotten to the part about her being a resident just as much as I was.
When Naruko finished she asked, “So…what’s it say?” I blinked and looked at her and then I remembered, Right, six year old orphan. Probably can’t read very well if at all.
I smiled, “Well ‘Ruko-chan, it says that the house has acknowledged that you live here now. That’s why it changed while I was gone. It was making room for you.”
Naruko blinked and then her eyes bugged out, “Wait, the house is alive?!”
I laughed, “No, it’s just a really smart house. The guy who made it was a super genius with fuinjutsu, and he made a house that can tell who’s here, as well as who lives here and who’s just visiting, change to suit their needs and hide itself from anyone else. There’s a map on the back, come on, let’s go check out your room!”
“I have my own room?!” Naruko asked with a delighted smile.
I nodded with a smile of my own, “Yep, come on, it’s right down this hallway.” I walked to what had in my apartment been the door to my bedroom and fought back the disorientation as it opened into the short cinderblock hallway from the second dorm I’d lived in in college. I led Naruko to the second door on the right, “Okay, here’s your room…”
I opened the door and once again tried to blink back the disorientation as the door opened into a bedroom I didn’t even begin to recognize from a completely different architectural style. I forced a smile and let Naruko run past me to jump on the bed with a squeal of delight that quickly turned my forced smile to a real one.
I looked around and as Naruko rolled around on the bed giggling with glee I looked at the picture on the dresser and my breath caught, “Ruko-chan, look at this.” I handed her the little framed picture as she sat up.
All the breath went out of her in an instant and her eyes went wide, “This…Is this…”
I picked up the piece of paper that had been under the picture and read aloud, “A picture of Naruko and her parents, Minato and Kushina.”
Naruko’s breath came out in little hitching sobs as tears welled in her eyes, “My…my daddy was… the Fourth Hokage?”
I smiled gently, “Judging by the picture, I’d say you definitely have his hair and eyes, and how could someone as wonderful as you be anyone less than the daughter of a Hokage?” Naruko’s lip trembled for a moment and then she burst into tears. I bounced up onto the bed and wrapped her in a hug, “Hey…hey…what’s wrong? I thought the Fourth was your hero.”
“He is!” Naruko wailed, “But why does my dad have to be dead?! If he were alive people wouldn’t hate me!”
I tightened my grip on her and took a firmer tone that cut through the sound of her sobs, “Naruko, stop. And. Think. Nobody hates you. They’re trying to protect you.”
Naruko actually stopped and looked up at me with big watery eyes, “W-what? But, but they all…”
I smiled softly at her, “Think about it. The Fourth wasn’t without enemies, and if people found out he had a daughter and he wasn’t around to protect her, they’d come after you. If people let on that you were the Fourth’s child, then they might be placing you in terrible danger. What if some other shinobi village found out the legendary Yellow Flash had a daughter? They’d want to kidnap her and force her to be a ninja for them wouldn’t they? By pretending to not care about you Naruko, they’re shielding you from the eyes of outsiders. If they don’t seem to care, why would anyone else? They’ll think, ‘surely Konoha would care about the child of their great hero and praise that child to the high heavens right? So this little girl who nobody gives a second glance surely couldn’t be that child! We can move on and leave her alone without having to worry about her growing up to be as strong as the Yellow Flash!’ and then...”
I smiled gently, “Years from now when you are all grown up and the greatest Hokage Konoha has ever had, everyone can admit who you are, because you’ll be strong enough that nobody can threaten you. Right now, everyone has to lie and pretend not to care, that you’re just another orphan from the night of the Kyuubi attack, but one day Naruko, you’ll be able to shed your anonymity and everyone will be able to love you openly. I know it’s hard, but until you’re stronger you have to hide who you are alright?”
Naruko looked up at me with so much hope and trust in her eyes that it almost hurt me, because as far as I knew every word out of my mouth just then had been a colossal lie. All except for the bit about her needing to hide who she was and get stronger. It wasn’t wrong though, she needed to hear it, right? I tried to tell myself that, but it still felt wrong somehow, using her trust to manipulate her like that, even if it did strengthen her resolve and would help her grow into a more formidable and loyal shinobi.
“Also,” I added, “A lot of people probably don’t know who you are. Lord Third has probably gone to great measures to keep your identity secret for your protection. I’m sure there are probably laws in place forbidding anyone who knows about it from talking about it or acting on it in obvious ways. I’m sure there are people who know though, and those people are always keeping an eye out for you from the shadows ‘Ruko-chan, I’m certain of it, and while they watch over you from the shadows, I’ll be right there by your side, watching your back, and may Kami have no mercy at all on the souls of whoever tries to get at you while I’m around,” I declared with a rueful grin and then, “Does that sound alright ‘Ruko-chan?” I asked with a smile.
Naruko looked up at me like I was her own personal guardian angel or fairy godfather or something to that effect, and as she wrapped me in a hug and cried happy tears into my chest, I decided that damn it all I was going to be. I might have been a cold rotten calculating ball of explosive malignance, but I was a cold rotten calculating ball of explosive malignance with a sense of honor dammit! This little girl was putting her trust in me and if it killed me I’d damn well be someone worthy of it.
NEXT CHAPTER
