3/4

"That little neko-chan's lucky I've decided to take her on in Keiko-san's place. I'll keep her out of most of it, Minato-kun." The white haired man glanced back down at the figure laying at his feet. "Was she always so protective, or is this something new?"

"It developed in our second year at the academy and didn't really get any better since." The lone Namikaze alive admitted sheepishly as he rubbed the back of his head, probably thinking about how much worse her protective urges would had gotten under ANBU. "And… really?"

"Objections?" Jiraiya drawled, looking at how close the two of them were even with the threats dealt with.

Kushina blushed and hurriedly took a few steps to the side.

"Not from me, sensei." Minato grinned, completely oblivious to the older ninja's suggestive look and happy with how Natsumi-sempai would be added to his genin team. He and Inoichi could keep the girl-woman in the here and now easier if she was with them.

If it would keep the other kunoichi from being in trouble for backing up Namikaze and coming out for her, the redhead was all for it. Though it was kinda annoying how the older girl made the blond boy light up.

"Scram then, the both of you. Once you get to the gates, you'll be escorted to the Hokage's Tower to wait for my return." The Toad Sage surged upright and took off after the ANBU squad he brought with him.

A tug on her sleeve got Kushina moving back to the main road to Konoha, still reeling from the day's events. A muffled cough brought her attention back to the boy walking next to her.

"These are yours." Minato placed a carefully bundled bunch of red strands into her hand, shoving his own into his pockets and looking away. "I've always admired your hair."

(ooo000ooo)

Panther winced when a heavy hand impacted the back of her skull in a slap delivered upside her head when she landed on a branch. She glared at the white haired sannin through her mask, but kept quite as she and the older man fell back from the hunting ANBU squad she had led there chasing the lone Kumo-nin back to whatever transportation the two of them had arranged for Kushina-chan.

The sannin flicked his fingers in standard ANBU sign language as they retreated to Konoha, telling her of what Inoichi did after reaching him and the official story she was to stick to about the kidnapping. He also passed her back the pack she had stored most of her physical possessions in, speeding up a bit to let her sort herself out again as Natsumi a genin kunoichi and not Panther the ANBU assassin.

"So how much trouble am I in? Erm… sensei?" She asked as she reached the man's side again decked out like any ninja of the Genin Corps in kunoichi green.

"You're lucky I like troublemakers, neko-chan." Jiraiya grinned broadly at the girl's twitching blue eye. It was a bit unnerving to see two differently colored pale eyes in her face, but from what Sakumo had told him about her before it was confirmed that ANBU agent Panther was after the kidnappers of Uzumaki she had contacts that would cover that up during undercover missions. He sobered up a bit, and her expression smoothed out to match his serious look. "It would have been worse if you had wanted to remain an active ANBU agent. I'll sell your transference to my team as punishment to most of the shinobi ranks, but unofficially you're being sentenced to sitting on your fellow gakis for taking off like you did and only telling Inoichi-kun. Probably for a few years for this stunt."

Natsumi shrugged, kicking a few stones embedded into the forest path they were on as she accepted that. Forced retirement for reckless behavior wasn't a bad sentence. It would sting anyone's shinobi pride, but it would only mean some time and at least a few recommendations from her superiors before she would see any ANBU work now. "Aa, I still would have done it again."

"Which is why I'll make sure you're only getting a slap on the wrist for this, and not brought up on charges for dereliction of duty. Since you didn't report this to anyone else before following my other blond gaki." The Toad Sage sighed, firmly reminding himself that ANBU or not, Mesuji Natsumi was still an orphaned genin kunoichi now under his care, not a mini adult in charge of her own affairs. "I'm supposed to be lecturing you about the proper chain of command and all that formal stuff you probably know backward and forwards already, so you'll act all properly contrite when we get back to the village. Yes? So in the meantime, tell me what kind of worries you're little friends harbor about your head, hmm?"

"I'm a little surprised they haven't told you themselves yet." The assassin strolling along the forest paths with him admitted after a quiet moment. "I'll let Inoichi-kun tell you, he's better at explaining it than me. Something to do with severe disassociation with whatever and a few other things I don't listen to in defense of my poor sanity. He's most likely going to make me his little pet project now that I've got the time."

Jiraiya accepted that for the moment, they were out in the open instead of somewhere that could be monitored for eavesdroppers. He would get his answers, from either his students or the Yamanaka clan itself eventually. "Moving on then, why ANBU?"

"Inoichi-kun said pick a goal to focus on during my therapy sessions, and that was it."

He gave her a sharp look for tying that question back to his original one, but let it go. She wouldn't be able to wiggle out of all of his questions, and damn it all if he walked back to the village in silence like the girl was probably used to. Running after two thirds of his team had bothered the hell out of his injuries, and he wasn't a quiet kind of guy in the first place. "The jutsu you developed?"

She flushed lightly, snatching Jiraiya's waning attention. "That was a mistake. Well, not the developing it into a weapon bit, but when I stumbled into it. The Hawk Eye technique is only supposed to simply increase visual pickup, but I screwed up and overdid it then overcorrected before the spar in low light with Wolf-err, Hatake-um… taicho, and casted it on him instead of me."

Natsumi covered her eyes and gained a bit more color, recalling the incident with some embarrassment.

"I made him run into a wall, and cracked his mask."

The last bit was nearly mumbled into her hands and the Toad Sage grinned broadly. Blackmail! "A wall?"

The girl hunched into herself, shoving her hands into her pockets like another of his brats did when he did something embarrassing. "Then there was Jackal and the light pole, and I got Monkey with it once when I was working out the kinks. He almost took out a window in… well, it was dark and we only passed through that tiny collection of huts. Monkey's a dick anyways. I got Lizard and Crow together after an incident with the showers, Tiger when the ass tried to trap my bunk. After that, taicho figured out it was me behind the rash of 'bad luck' in our sector of the division and they stopped hazing me. I only used it against targets after that."

The sannin snickered, then started laughing as he imagined his friend running into a wall and a stuck up ANBU sabotage specialist tripping through a window.

He really hoped whatever was wrong with Natsumi-chan wasn't anything major, it would be a pity to sentence the girl to the mental ward of the hospital if that was the kind of thing she thought up in self-defense.

\V/

After the worst of the hubbub over Kushina's kidnapping was over Jiraiya dragged his newly configured team plus one to his empty apartment, since it was past midnight and Mito-sama and the Yamanaka clan head agreed to it for the night, and dumped his kids and the add on onto the floor of his barren living room. "Tea, anyone?"

He wanted something a bit stronger, since he had to drop Keiko's new circumstances on her at the Tower, but he didn't think that would go over well with his impressionable brats.

Watching them pull themselves out of the puppy pile always made him smile, especially when young Minato went beet red when he grabbed a part of the redhead's anatomy he shouldn't have by accident. The retribution was also vastly amusing to watch and after the scuffle they finally all agreed, in the case of one cringing blond in a higher pitched voice than normal, to tea.

Natsumi merely smiled at him as he passed her a steaming cup of green tea, but the blond boys were nervous and the redhead clueless about what was supposed to be going on.

Inoichi looked so scared that the sannin highly doubted he would say anything, though from the direction he kept looking in it wasn't him the mind walker was concerned with. Mesuji apparently thought so too, so she started for them.

"Do you believe in reincarnation?"

(ooo000ooo)

Three arguments about life after death, two complete foreign languages written out, one visit from a very ancient and shocked toad to read said languages, another argument of letting the Yamanaka clan heir back into an ANBU's head however removed she was from her previous line of work, and one sealing array jointly worked out by four fūinjutsu users later; Jiraiya would grudgingly admit that it might be possible.

It helped that the seal array was playing out Mesuji's past death for him after a short summery of her previous life's technology after Inoichi's bid to get back in the reincarnated girl's head sparked an idea in Kushina-chan's.

The older man ran his hands over his face, glaring at the early morning sun now peeking out of his unreasonably large and unfortunately unadorned windows. Probably one of the reasons he preferred hotel rooms even when living in Konoha proper. "So, why the hell didn't you go to T&I with this?"

"Jiraiya-sensei, it took all night to convince you we weren't lying." The girl who had previously been a dead woman pointed out dryly, inwardly very thankful she had never gotten through to the Hokage if this was how all older shinobi would react to her past circumstances. "How likely do you think a chance to convince someone in Intelligence that I wasn't crazy with a story like this?"

The other kunoichi grunted from her slumped position on the newly retired ANBU assassin's shoulder, slipping back to sleep when nothing further drew her out of it. Inoichi was as out of it as the redheaded kunoichi, flat out on his back with what little worldly possessions Natsumi had to her name under his head. Only Minato remained upright with the two of them, but he was flagging just as fast as them now that everything was settling down.

The sannin took another look at the scroll playing out the blood spattered desert scene again. Half of the seal was his, a third was Kushina's, and the rest was cobbled together with Minato's skills at decrypting his sempai's words and Natsumi's knowledge.

It really did explain much of the girl that was a little off, if it was true.

The Toad Sage closed his eyes, defeat squeezing through with the thought. As much as he didn't really want to believe it, he had no choice for the moment to at least take the explanation as is. Overlooking the obvious was practically a cardinal sin in their profession, after all.

He made a mental note to burn the scroll before he passed out cold, since he knew the mangled, hodgepodge seal now anyways.

Pa Toad had understood the written language the ex-ANBU agent had handed over, remarking before dismissing himself that he hadn't seen the like since his own tadpole days. That was the most damning evidence the sannin had seen or heard all night. If even his own Summons believed the girl, then he really had to accept that his new kunoichi student was actually older than him by two decades, all years of her lives total.

Kushina hadn't had much of a problem past Minato confirming that the girl wasn't bat shit insane, and the three genin and one former assassin had then turned their attention to convincing him.

Now he found himself in the same position as she did, and who wouldn't say he would have the same initial conclusions as her?

Insane or delusional, with the additional question if a delusion called you sane, were you?

Most of all, the majority of his questions found themselves answered if he judiciously took in that reincarnation was actually possible.

"Alright gakis, bed. We'll continue this later."

Or never. He really wanted that drink about now.

\V/

Jiraiya probably saw more of the future clan heads than he wanted to over the week following the Uzumaki kidnapping attempt, but Minato wasn't as concerned about that as he thought he should be.

With his sempai back in the village indefinitely, he could make Inoichi keep an eye on her recovery from ANBU even if their sensei told them they couldn't ask about her stint in the black ops division, on the grounds of keeping village secrets. They could catch up with the others more easily with the official end of the Second Great Shinobi War not too long after the reincarnated soldier's return to the village.

With the stunt Kumo pulled at the end the Hokage all but neutered them for a good while, and with rumors of Kiri turning in on itself from suddenly silent borders it left Iwa and Ame the only real threats to Konoha's strength since Suna remained firmly on their side of conflicts.

A group spar with all the skills they had learned in the war probably wouldn't do much for their sensei's blood pressure, but it had been too long since they had held one with everyone there. Not that everyone was participating, but with Chouza refereeing as usual and Shikaku napping in the shade to critique the spar later it was just like they never left the academy but better; with Jiraiya, Mikoto, and Kushina there instead of off on their own.

"Alright!" The Akimichi heir boomed out, ignoring the crack in his voice. "Nothing lethal, Natsumi-chan. Nothing to do with kekkai genkais, Uchihas and Hyūgas. NO ninjutsus! Taijutsu and genjutsu only!"

Giving a slightly more effective admonishing glare at the combatants than he was able to during their academy years, Chouza dropped his hand to signal the start of the general melee and got the hell out of the way.

If they hadn't listened to the rules before this, it was highly unlikely any of them would follow them now.

Like they had never stopped sparring with each other every day during the war, Natsumi darted to Minato's side and they took on the Hyūga twins as Inoichi turned on the Uchiha heir with Mikoto's and Kushina's help.

Jiraiya's laughter echoed in the background of Training Grounds Three as they divided and conquered the stuck up clan kids.

It was always more fun when his sempai had the time to cheat for them.

Rather, as she maintained, if you weren't cheating to begin with you weren't trying hard enough.

(ooo000ooo)

Fugaku was nearly cross-eyed by the time Jiraiya got him to stop running into the trees with the Nara's help, but Natsumi was not helping matters by failing to contain her giggles. The other Uchiha there had more sense, Mikoto was leaning on gleeful Kushina as she waited for the nausea to pass.

Apparently, Hyūgas with their bloodline active were immune to the modified genjutsu the ex-ANBU agent had developed for her assassinations, but not Uchihas with their kekkai genkai active.

Natsumi had set the sort-of genjutsu of hers on all four clan members with eye based bloodlines before the spar had started, and when both Mikoto and Fugaku disregarded Chouza's warning against using their sharingans it caused a large number of major mistakes in the Uchihas' three-on-one spar. The Hyūga twins lasted longer once they started using their bloodline when they caught sight of the crimson flashes of the Uchihas' activated sharingans and escaped the worst of the consequences of the soon to be labeled ANBU assassination technique, but really only because the separation between the orphans had caused a fair few number of differences between Minato's developing academy style and Natsumi's brutal ANBU styled taijutsu.

Both Hizashi and Hiashi admitted to Shikaku in letting their taijutsu go in favor of expanding the range on their byakugan for tracking missions, something they intended to address before their next spar.

After the Uchihas' went down, disorientated to the point of turning green, Inoichi and Kushina tested each other then started up seriously when it became apparent that neither Uchihas could continue. By the time the orphans took out the Hyūga twins with a mix of standard ANBU sabotage tricks and Minato's speedy reflexes, the redhead had been ready and waiting for them.

Kushina had almost lost, but she pulled out a win against the two orphans suffering the effects of the Hyūgas' Gentle Fist style of taijutsu in the end. Now there was another set of rules the Akimichi heir needed to announce before any spar. No ANBU assassination techniques, and absolutely no fūinjutsu.

Jiraiya was managing his amusement at the Uchihas' discomfort better than his kunoichi with the odd circumstances, though he made a note to polish the girl-woman's taijutsu up once everything settled down. He wasn't giggling like little neko-chan as he wanted too, but the broad grin had yet to leave his face. "It would make sense that the byakugan is immune, since it simply sees through a lot. There isn't enough it can't to be affected. A sharingan just does what your little jutsu does naturally, so it increases the effects."

"I could have told you that." Shikaku drawled lazily from the shade, stretching out like a cat. Now that he knew what was going on, the genius had retreated to his previous position after freezing the Uchiha heir in place so Jiraiya could fetch him before Fugaku lost too many brain cells. It won him a lot of points with the Toad Sage. "It also won't work on an Aburame, they'll trust their kikachu over their own eyes, and those that can fight blind."

"You're not going to add Inuzukas to that?" The sannin asked lightly of the shadow master in training as he watched the newest member to his genin team reverse what she had done to the Uchiha's prized heir so he would be able to at least see straight.

"They still use sight to identify obstacles, but you couldn't use that against one to make them turn on their ninken. Their sense of smell would keep that from happening, but it would still confuse the hell out of them even so."

The Toad Sage hummed lightly, silently agreeing with Sakumo that the girl-woman used her weird purple taint to her chakra for the jutsu, and making another mental note to find out what the hell it was with Pa and Ma's help.

What the Nara heir concluded wasn't much of a flaw in the technique, given the likelihood of Natsumi-chan fighting Hyūga or Aburame clan members in a life or death situation or anything remotely approaching the damn near all-seeing shinobi clan or bug wielding ninjas. The blind fighting might throw a bit of a monkey wrench into things, but that was so difficult to grasp and use in shinobi encounters that the chance of it was small. The only real trouble the girl sized former ANBU agent would have with assassinations in a few years were those who also relied on another sense to help them separate fact from fiction, or possibly those with hypersensitivity to their own chakra networks.

"Well, this is cozy."

The light tone of his female teammate snapped the sannin back to the situation at hand.

Tsunade and Orochimaru had finally dragged themselves back to the village again and had sought the last member of their team out. The Snake Summoner was inspecting the remains of a tree that fell prey to Kushina's over the top explosive tag, and the Slug Princess was looking over the survivors of the spar and their collections of injuries with an arched eyebrow.

Even genin ranked ninjas' and retired ANBU agents needed warning labels, apparently. These brats were vicious.

Senju Tsunade swiped a glowing green hand over the Uchihas' foreheads, then turned to deal with Inoichi's twisted ankle and still gushing broken nose with the same efficiency Jiraiya had frequently seen on the frontlines. "Nasty genjutsu work. Who's was it?"

Natsumi just blinked up at the busty blonde woman, until a sharp elbow courtesy of one of the limping Hyūga twins prodded her forward. "Mine, Tsunade-sama."

"Who did you develop it under, girl?" Sharp gold eyes took in the waif like appearance of the former assassin holding onto her probably sprained or cracked ribs, already thinking of a diet to put something on the girl's bones other than her own skin.

"Sakumo-taicho's." Natsumi promptly replied with only a minor amount of wheezing, having already decided on the proper manner of address for her old ANBU captain who had the habit of checking up on her while her old squad was waiting on her permanent replacement.

Tsunade turned on him, and the Toad Sage waved his hands to stall the lecture he already could see coming as she switched brats to deal with Minato's mild concussion. "I got her last week, hime."

"She needs to eat more." The Slug Princess scowled darkly at him then frowned at Natsumi, who kept blinking her ghost eyes back up at the blonde innocently.

Jiraiya wasn't fooled, he knew that the girl-woman knew that just as well, but ANBU field rations were not the healthiest thing out there and that was probably the only thing she had been eating prior to the war's end. Six months on a diet of basically protein energy bars and the occasional rabbit would be difficult with an adult's body size and weight, on Natsumi-chan's it probably just added insult to the injury of being orphan thin to begin with.

"What the hell was she doing before if you only got an academy graduate last week?"

"Playing hide and seek." Neko-chan answered readily, forestalling the fiction Jiraiya had been about to give about KIA teammates and horrible brats.

Well, it was sort of true, and he was sure the majority of the kids there knew without anyone saying what the girl-woman had been doing prior to showing back up with him. Hard to believe that the Uchiha and Hyūga brats weren't somewhat upset with it, but he had caught them giving the stick figure of the assassin's an alarmed look recently, and figured they didn't want to pay that price for something they wouldn't be able to brag about to each other.

Tsunade easily saw right through that, leaving the white haired man's male students to grab the young looking kunoichi's arm and run a medical diagnostic without hand signs. She was too good of a ninja to show surprise, but Jiraiya could see her lips tightening in the corners when the woman got to the chakra etched ANBU tattoo on the back of her left elbow.

"Perfect. You go anywhere without some kind of snack on you while you're still under a hundred pounds, I'll hunt you down and force the nastiest herbal concoction I have for weight gain down your throat."

Natsumi beamed at that, and the Toad Sage could only shrug at Orochimaru's own raised eyebrow over the forest of short heads standing around.

Retired ANBU assassin, stood to reason she wasn't all there anymore if she wasn't all there to begin with.

\V/

Senju Tsunade wasn't a butch woman, really.

She was too much of a kunoichi for that to be true, still able to lead a man around by the balls in the traditional role of a female shinobi. Although, she probably would crush them with an 'unfortunate' muscle spasm at the same time.

She had the same hard-ass core to her Natsumi knew from lifelong female soldiers in her previous life. Added to the fact the medical genius was one of the more effective kunoichis the ghost eyed girl-woman had ever seen or heard, gave life to a minor amount of hero worship.

Totally ignorable.

The fact the Slug Princess had no problem punching the Toad Sage through a wall or two when he got perverted on them the last two weeks since the sparring incident was just icing on that cake.

Really.

Tsunade didn't know about the possibility of reincarnation or bloody desert nights or shadow laced assassinations, though she probably suspected the latter, and that made her safe in the way Jiraiya-sensei, her kouhai, and now even Kushina were not. Natsumi tagged along after her still new sensei's teammate more and more often when she was at a loss to do during her free time when the man said no more training and she didn't want to be with the teenagers of her own physical years, so she was treated to the totally bemusing prospect of being dealt with like the underweight teenager she looked like.

She even met Senju Nawaki.

For someone Naruto supposedly acted much like, he was small and snotty.

Probably because the kid was still in his toddler years.

Apparently, Tsunade-sama's parents had died in the field not too long after her brother's birth and she was availing herself on the Sarutobi clan's offer of help in caring for him while she had been fighting the war and Mito-sama was occupied with 'other things'.

There was some kind of emergency that day, so the former ANBU agent found herself tasked with a comparable D-ranked mission on her lonesome… and an armful of toddler.

Little Nawaki was chewing on her sleeve instead of his rubber kunai, drooling all over it and giggling in that addictive way of the young almost babies, and Natsumi finally got around to thinking through the turns in her recent life as she let the toddler soak her shirt in spit.

Panther the ANBU assassin didn't have a past, any kind of future, no age group to deal with, skills only useful in killing people, and no friends aside of the squad mates she respected at most and a captain she would follow into hell at worst. It was a lot easier for her to be Panther than Natsumi.

ANBU was just there, more wraith than human, impersonal and probably as nutty as she was without the past life screwing them up. That was an addiction she wasn't sure she would ever get over, to disappear into ANBU without a backward glance. She could now somewhat understand what a fourteen-year-old Kakashi had felt when he joined up after his sensei's death, the complete desire to forget you knew what it was like to come to terms with losing everything that mattered and the mechanical obedience of the truly emotionally numb. If Minato hadn't grabbed her with both hands and dragged her along after him when he thought they were both eight, giving her something to concentrate on besides the guilt of leading a platoon of soldiers to their death, she was sure that any attempt to remove her from the ranks of the assassins would not have gone over well with her.

Natsumi had friends, a very twisted kind of past life, knew some of the future without her in it, an overly difficult chakra network, and was way too young.

She had the temptation to join the unborn Hatake in burying her head in the sand, but she just couldn't do it if the kidnapping of Kushina-hime was any measure of her standing back and watching events work out on their own. She had thrown away the chance to continue working for ANBU occasionally on the possibility of a threat to one of her friends, one she knew would have worked out okay without her. Then there was the niggling idea that she didn't have to lose everything again battling against the stubborn thought that none of it was real anyways so why did it matter if she lost them?

There was a whole lot of possibility in her new circumstances.

Hatake Sakumo had been her ANBU captain, and once ANBU always ANBU. Retired or not. He would be her kenjutsu master as well, given a few years. Jiraiya had snatched her out of the shadow guard to assuage his curiosity and to replace an ineffective member of his cell, which made him her sensei too. There was a lot she could do with that, keeping her kouhai alive, the Toad Sage informed of Naruto's home life if that wasn't possible, and stopping her taicho's guilt ridden suicide before it had a chance to happen and scar his five-year-old genius of a son.

If this was a dream or delusion there really wasn't a harm in trying to change things, but it was the fraction of an idea that this was real Inoichi implanted in her head that held her in place in terror of messing something up.

Uzumaki Naruto had been so lucky in his life, not with how he had been hated in his childhood but the sort of slowly escalating opponents that he matched wits with. The blond jinchūriki had also fulfilled the promise of his birth as foretold by the Toad Summons, uniting the five great shinobi nations and countless smaller ones in a continent wide battle against Uchiha Madara. If she kept someone alive that had been dead without her interference, would that change and protect him or would the littlest blond brat die before he had a chance to be what he was supposed to be?

Blowing out a breath and removing her still way too long hair from the toddler's grasp, Natsumi weighed the possibility of her screwing everything up against the worth of her friends' lives and happiness.

Unsurprisingly, her friends won out hands down. She would have to grit her teeth and ignore that stabbing fear in her gut about Naruto's future circumstances.

She needed a plan to keep that silent promise she made to her future Hokage back in the academy. A very, very good one if what she dimly recalled was going to be of any use.

One, she had to stop avoiding her friends.

Minato was starting to get suspicious of how long she spent following the Slug Princess around, especially since she would never have enough control for a few years yet, working on it extensively to the exclusion of everything else, over her obstinate chakra system to use any iryou-nin jutsus. Even Inoichi-kun was starting to ask what she was doing while training with Jiraiya, and the Toad Sage himself when the team was doing the completely inane D-ranks. She didn't want to hurt them with her avoidance, but she couldn't really think when they were so hypersensitive of any mental backsliding she might do in 'progressing forward' and she hadn't been able to think pass the mission they were on while in ANBU, leaving a lot of things to catch up on.

Two, she had to at least pass a brief mental health check so the Yamanaka clan heir would feel alright with letting her out of his sight for at least a week, even if she was excused from the genin mandatory ones since she went ANBU for half a year. Bullshitting 101, since there really wasn't any other hope for her.

Three, Namikaze Minato needed to survive.

If she was going to do this, she wanted to do it right. October tenth, the year after the end of the Third Great Shinobi War and his first year of being Yondaime, was one of the dates that loomed over her head, knowing as she did the postulated death date of her favorite little brat and the love of his life. With her kouhai was his wife, Uzumaki Kushina. In keeping with the happiness of the closest thing to a little brother she ever had, she was one hell of a hot blooded lynch pin. She didn't know what kind of couple the two of them made, but looked forward to finding out with a kind of breathless anticipation that confused her some days.

Four, the Uchihas had to remain part of the village and not, you know, dead.

Selfish of her, but it was a good back-up plan to catch or bandage anything that went wrong after hopefully keeping her Hokage alive, or taking care of Naruto-kun if she couldn't. If she didn't let Fugaku get too wrapped up in clan politics, probably by badgering him to handing a lot of it over to Mikoto since she was indefinitely better at it than him even at this age, the teenaged boy she was familiar with now would make a good shinobi clan head if not a politician. Without an unbending line in the sand in regards to Danzō's meddling, the Uchihas wouldn't lose so much ground in the village in the eyes of the shinobi ranks. Keeping Itachi company might keep the kid from having to choose to kill his entire clan or his brother, since she would be a pipe to the Hokage, hopefully her kouhai, and an Namikaze linked influence on the Uchiha heir Danzō wouldn't like.

The arrogance in the Uchihas were apparently limited to the main line of the clan and most of the Military Police, the lesser branches and civilians of that noble clan were a hell of a lot easier to get along with even if they rarely got out of that massive compound of theirs.

She would know, since after that general melee Fugaku had, very politely, asked to work out a method of countering her not-genjutsu with Mikoto and the gob smacked look on his face when she cheerfully agreed went a long way to convincing her the Uchihas were already closing ranks a little. Not to mention the frequent interruptions by varied clan elders that popped up occasionally to watch them work on the ANBU assassination technique she was credited with, she was sure they were looking over her shoulder and ensuring she was really working on it with the clan heir and his intended.

Finally number five, there was a very long list of people she had to save or salvage to make a large enough impact on the future in any direction. That was the worst part as far as she was concerned, because the idea that saving someone now would displace some of the key people as she knew them in an incident later where they were one of the reasons her precious people survived was nightmare inducing. Who could she save and who could Konoha afford to lose?

Ideally, she wanted to save everyone that meant something to her and her kouhai, but she only knew of the first incidents that lead to their death. If something happened after that point, she would be in the dark as anyone else about it, and what good they might have done then would be moot to what kind of damage a worse death would do to them and the people around them. The occupation she was in now had a very low life expectancy, around sixteen years was the average lifespan of a shinobi factoring in the war that just ended, and there was no telling how a lot of the shinobi she would attempt to influence would jump after a certain point.

She had though over all the ways to pull lynch pins and foul secondary plans up ever since she was five, and she had a good idea of what to do with the Intel she had now. However, if she learned anything in the short stint in ANBU and her past life as a platoon sergeant of one of the largest militaries of her last life, it was that plans never kept together in the face of the enemy and you could always have better Intel.

Many things would shift and twist with the presence of one extra, including herself. If she did make a dent in her captain's life, her plans would need revaluation damn near weekly.

There probably were a lot of holes if anyone saner than her could see what she did, mostly in the ranking system she had for the value of the people around her. Natsumi didn't like delusions, and she knew she would cheerfully murder anyone that threatened her life here. She had a lot of plans to kill certain threats before they became threats, but she would also need her ANBU rank back so she could move and investigate freely as a member of the shadow guard and not a supposedly carefree genin.

She would use who she could, kill who she couldn't, and guard her future Hokage's back from the machinations of an ancient Uchiha clan head and their own village elders until he had the rank and experience to do it himself.