4/4

From a few months of dealing with him she knew he was a quid pro quo kind of ninja, like most shinobi ended up being with trading their skills and knowledge before long. She might know the man himself was somewhat decent right now if you tilted your head to the side and squinted, but not in any twisted reality could Natsumi see him becoming a civil right activist or being concerned with the quality of life of a clan he had nothing to do with. He was more likely to simply watch to see how it would turn out, taking careful notes of who screwed up what.

On another matter entirely, why hadn't this all been done in the first place if the Caged Bird Seal was so easy to replace with another?

Well, she couldn't argue with results even if she was near panicking on the involvement of the Snake Summoner.

Hiashi had apparently snuck the new law of the Flight of the Phoenix Seal Kushina made into his clan laws already when he formally took command of the Hyūga clan two weeks ago on his fifteenth birthday, as per the prior agreement of the elders who had held the reins of the noble clan after the twin's father's death nearly ten years before. The switch was done and over with, Hizashi's concerns were now groundless in the seal aspect, and it was likely Neji would still be born since the betrothal contract he was in was going to be kept and held too.

Officially the story was that with fūinjutsu gaining popularity as a ninja art within Konohagakure, Hiashi became concerned that someone outside the village might have enough knowledge of seal work to tamper with the old seal used by the Hyūga clan. He took his concern and gave them in a roundabout manner to Uzumaki Kushina, who had admitted to understanding how the 'pre-Konoha' clan seal worked after a few hours of study.

Seeing as someone in Konoha could possibly unravel the seal to support any suspicion of his that someone outside of the village being able to do the same, Hiashi then commissioned a seal similar but more complicated to work out from the only fūinjutsu user in Konoha at the time. When it was completed, he then took the problem and solution to his clan upon the confirmation of his position as clan head to show the elders he would be a good leader when complications arose in the future.

Unofficially, Hiashi had all but rewritten his clan's laws about seals and branch members because Hizashi had not wanted that kind of life for his future children.

Once someone of the main branch house found out the new seal didn't work like the old Cursed Seal of the Caged Bird shit was going to hit the fan, but it would be far too late to change it back without tempting the branch families into revolting now they couldn't be controlled with the threat of pain and death of their children. The story they would stick to then would be that Hiashi couldn't force the Uzumaki preteen into including that without raising suspicion so it had been left out.

That would be at least three or more years down the road, long enough to subtly change a few of the misconceptions held by the worst of the clan elders.

She still couldn't understand why this hadn't happened in the manga she had read. It had been such a complicated problem by the time Hinata and Neji had been full members of each side of their clan... hell, Neji had it as one of the major hurdles of his life in accepting that not everything was fate even if his birth seemed that way, that Natsumi was almost completely sure it would take some bloodletting and tears before it was solved in any kind of final manner.

What the hell had happened?

Minato poked her in the side after another few moments of her not reacting in any way to the news. "Sempai? Are you alright?"

"I'm just shocked I didn't need to lop anyone's head off."

Inoichi shot her a look, half-worried and half-amused. "I hope your joking."

"Of course I'm joking. But seriously, I'm surprised it was so easy."

Jiraiya snorted as he pulled himself upright by the edge of one of the three beds in the room he was sharing with his male students while they were in Suna. "According to Hiruzen-sensei, it wasn't so easy. That Nara gaki had to run around Konoha like a headless chicken ensuring everything was getting done, because neither of the Hyūgas could be seen together alone with Kushina-chan or the Uchiha gakis without someone getting suspicious of why."

Natsumi blew out a breath and finally started snickering like she wanted to at how neatly the wool had been pulled over the 'all seeing' eyes of the Hyūga clan elders.

Even with unknown consequences she could almost feel bugging her, she had to admit it had been pretty awesome of their friends to pull together like that.

\V/

Minato had drawn the first match of the final tournament, against one of the remaining Ame genin. He was a little disappointed that the match had been nowhere near as interesting as sparring with any of the chūnin of the noble clans of Konoha he knew. Natsumi's first match had been similarly uninteresting, for some 'unknown' reason the other Ame genin she drew to fight had ran himself into a wall and knocked himself out not three minutes into the bout.

Now watching Inoichi lead his opponent around by the nose, apparently one of the lesser trained Suna genin, he started to plan for his next match after the mandatory fifteen minute break.

It was going to be a lot harder, because he was up against his sempai at the start of the second round.

All the spars they had before would give him a working knowledge of how she fought, but with her new control over her chakra there would be parts of her fighting style he wouldn't know. Jiraiya-sensei had also kept them apart for the month between the second and third stage of the exams, telling each of them they would need some tricks up their sleeves if they faced each other in the end.

Despite knowing she could use the bokken she still had with her, he didn't know how much skill she had with it since she spent a month and a half under the shinobi she called taicho. He also knew seals probably wouldn't work without one hell of a distraction, she would probably identify them before he could use them without one. Straight up taijutsu wouldn't work either, she had done most of the work in helping him develop his style and usually kept the upper hand unless she gave him enough time to outlast her in extended bouts. Natsumi did have a bit of a weakness in ninjutsu, she hadn't had control over her stubborn chakra until just recently. The only problem with that was all the ninjutsu he knew she had watched him learn to use.

To top it off, she had also been ANBU, and had probably worked out some methods to avoiding jutsus she couldn't use when used against her. Then she also had an entire previous life of combat experience to draw from.

Was he going to go full out against his sempai and try for a win, or try to draw with her?

(ooo000ooo)

"Oh, ouch." Jiraiya of the Sannin commented from next to the Hokage.

"Is there something wrong, Jiraiya-sama?" The Kazekage asked politely from the Fire Shadow's other side.

"Naw, not really Kazekage-sama." The Toad Sage rubbed the underside of his jaw in a transparent attempt to hide his amusement. "It's just this next match has sempai verses kouhai."

"Mesuji-chan and Namikaze-kun?" Sarutobi scanned the lineup of matches posted and updated by a few Suna shinobi in the kage box. "Well, how interesting."

"Are you sure about that? Neither had a match that lasted very long before this." Hanzō the Salamander grumped from the other side of the box. He was in a foul mood since his village's poor showing in the exams and form having to respect the traditional non-hostility pact in effect for the chūnin selections. Not to mention one of the three upstart shinobi he had faced in the end of the Second War was sitting in the same room like he had the right to. He couldn't wait to get out of the desert and back to Amegakure.

Jiraiya suppressed his snicker, greatly enjoying the turn of fortune and station in his recent fame. Since a village was considered neutral territory when chūnin exams were held, how else would a village keep good tabs on the rising skills of other villages' ninjas without losing a large amount of spies, any hostile act against the representatives of another village was seen as both an act of war against the rest of the great five shinobi nations and an estimate to civilian patrons of how loyal a nation was to anything like contracts and tradition.

Even with that behind him, Jiraiya wouldn't have been invited to the kage's box to see how his students would do as a simple jōnin sensei if one kage protested, it was only the fact he was a student of another kage and the title of Densetsu no Sannin the kage of Ame had unwittingly given his team that had prompted the invitation despite any protests raised.

If Hanzō attacked him, even the venerable Tsuchikage Ōnoki seated next to his disgruntled ally would be expected to help kill him.

"My team is a bit overqualified for the Chūnin Exams, Hanzō-sama. But poor Natsumi-chan didn't have the time on the team necessary for a field promotion, so they all have to take the exams to get their rightful ranks."

It wasn't a claim of responsibility to the sabotage the other three villages had recently experienced, but it was close enough that all four kages there understood exactly what had gone on. Bored shinobi tasked to things that they felt were beneath them did worse than that all the time.

The Kazekage and Hokage smirked, the other two could only glower.

The only thought in the sannin's head as he turned to watch how this was going to play out, was that it was a good thing he had forbidden any kinjutsu from being used more than once in public bouts or someone would catch on to the rash of bad luck plaguing Kumo, Ame, and Iwa coming from his female student.

(ooo000ooo)

Natsumi smirked at her poor little kouhai. He looked a bit torn about this.

Well, to be bluntly honest, she wasn't. She wanted to know exactly how good Minato was. Seriously.

How often did you have the opportunity to match wits with a legend before he became that legend?

As the two of them waited out the Suna tokubetsu jōnin drone out the rules, Natsumi gripped the hilt of her bokken and slid her feet further apart. Minato apparently took his cue from that, because his trouble expression faded behind an impassive one and he shifted into the ready stance of Konohagakure no Sato's academy standard katas.

The two of them only hesitated a moment, just long enough for the tokubetsu jōnin to get out of the way, before Natsumi darted to her kouhai's right side and attempted to cave in his ribs for a quick technical knock-out.

Can't breathe, can't fight.

Minato bent backwards under that swing, slapping a shock tag to her hands gripping the wooden hilt as he did so; correctly guessing that if he set it on fire his sempai was going to do the same to him later. That forced the ex-ANBU assassin into giving up the bokken for the time being, the tag would eventually run out of power if she read it right, and the girl-woman let go far enough into the swing that it would only hit dirt near about where the Suna-nin proctor was.

The tag was ripped off her when she let go of the hilt, and she had to back flip out of the range of the blond's off hand uppercut to her jaw.

Minato took advantage of the space to fling out a double hand of shuriken, which Natsumi fouled with a few kunai of her own. She knew that slight of hand just as well as him, the Uchihas had a bad habit of relying on that hidden wire trick a lot to guide and bend katon jutsus. Her kouhai had just used his fūton chakra to sharpen them, so they cut a wide swath in the sand around her when they hit.

Intent on the wind boosted shuriken she missed the three senbon he also threw, and they hit in her right bicep.

Senbon were a funny kind of weapon used mainly by kunoichi. They didn't do much damage by themselves unless you had the kind of accuracy she did, but the effects of leaving them in was the point most ninja ignored since they weren't the slicing kind of weapon. Senbon were basically long shafts of metal that pinned things in place, and left in a major muscle they could tear one apart if they didn't slit skin first and you didn't stop using the limb.

Taking the few moments to rip them out cost her time her kouhai used to get in range and position himself. Off step, his taijutsu was a lot harder to counter than normal.

In a straight up taijutsu spar, the winner between them really was the one that could take advantage first.

Kicking out a foot to gain her some space, Natsumi darted back for her bokken. She had planned on using that as a prop for any taijutsu she couldn't last against and her stamina wasn't anywhere near the level her kouhai had.

Gripping the hilt, she only had a moment for her eyes to widen as the second seal placed under the first activated. Paralyzed, she could only move her jaw to speak. "Well… damn."

Minato hadn't escaped without a scratch, he was breathing hard and wiped off the blood drawn by one of her stray kunai. "Give?"

"Hell no, kouhai."

The thing she had learned about paralyzing tags was that they only bound the Yang side of a target's chakra in place. Which was normally good enough, a genin wouldn't have the experience working with separate Yin or Yang releases to work leverage within their chakra to escape one by withdrawing the Yang and pushing the Yin to the surface.

However… she wasn't a normal genin, and she didn't even have to work a Yang release to wiggle out of it.

When she released the hilt of her bokken, Minato's eyes were about the size of saucers. "Let's try that again, shall we?"

(ooo000ooo)

Shit, shit, shit, he hadn't known that was possible at their level.

When this was all over, he was sitting down his sempai and getting how the hell she had done that trick out of her.

Right now he had to- duck!

Dodging the shin on collision course with his head, Minato placed both hands on the sandy ground and tried to sweep his sempai off her remaining foot. She just did that axle kick thing of hers of spinning around in midair and landed facing him in a crouch.

Ah… fuck.

He would slowly gain ground in their taijutsu exchange, he was both more healthy and bigger than she was, but his sempai wasn't a slouch on the tricky side. She had taken a moment to realize he used the senbon tricks she had taught him on her, but now that his second seal card had been played and brushed off Minato didn't know how else to pull a win against the ghost eyed assassin except for continuing to outlast her and somehow avoiding the ANBU tricks she knew to end the match in her favor.

"Suiton: Mizuappa!"

Minato shaped basic fūton chakra blades around his arms to cut the water bullets without letting them impact full strength and break something he would need later. The force behind that jutsu would leave some bruises where the water sprayed when the suiton hit fūton, but it was better than a broken bones or even a concussion.

He guessed that answered the question if his sempai could now use ninjutsu, and why she had been taking frequent sips out of her canteen while they waited for this match to be called. Good thing she only had water as her element, there wasn't much of that in the desert and the ghost eyed girl-woman probably couldn't put that much force behind another one if she could pull it off.

How did one outsmart a former ANBU agent that found a way to use a basic but fully effective suiton jutsu in the desert and a way past his best seal?

He dearly, almost desperately, wanted to do that outsmarting since it wasn't likely he could win now without some miracle. Because it would be like showing the assassin that her hard work on tutoring him was paying off. She hadn't chose any of the kunoichi that tried to copy her to take on and mentor, she had picked him. Aside any theory by sensei about asking being the reason she helped him, he still wanted to prove to her that she had been right to pick him and not anyone else.

Wait a tick, why hadn't she gone back for her bokken and ripped the fūinjutsu paper off it? If she could only break out of a paralyzing tag… maybe it would still affect her? Did she have the chakra to get out of one again after her jutsu or not?

He hid the act of grabbing another prepared sealing tag by throwing more shuriken at her, the one throwing weapon she didn't use. She claimed it was just too weird, even if Minato thought senbon were stranger.

Instead of simply fouling them up again with throwing weapons of her own, Natsumi gripped a kunai infused with her chakra to knock them out of her way as she closed in on him.

He caught her next left handed punch aimed at his jaw with the seal hidden in his hand.

(ooo000ooo)

"I'm proud of you. That was brilliant."

"I was lucky, sempai. I couldn't have planned that."

"Luck is just as much a part of a fight as skill, kouhai."

\V/

Jiraiya was beaming at them. Natsumi thought it was a little ridiculous of the man to be proud of her since she really hadn't been his student for very long. It had only been half a year since she joined the team.

All three of them, and two of the other Konoha genin team, had made chūnin.

Minato looked almost like he had beaten sensei or Sarutobi-sama in a fight, because he was nearly in so much glee of his promotion that his attention was wandering easily into something occupying his head. Inoichi was just smirking, and the other two thirds of the team that came to Suna as well and were traveling back to Konoha with them were only a little less obvious of their pride in the promotion.

She had to admit she was a little proud of herself too, their Hokage himself had congratulated her in her hard work in chakra control paying off. He was impressed with her in being able to use a C-ranked suiton jutsu so easily in her last fight in the third stage, since he knew she couldn't at all nearly four months ago. How cool was that?

Natsumi hummed a little to herself and turned her attention to the sands passing them by as they walked back to Konoha.

It wasn't that it was easier to separate the death of her previous life to this desert that let her ignore the fact she was in a desert to begin with, it was that she admittedly had fun screwing up the chances of other villages for the promotions she and some of the other Suna and Konoha genin got. Well, besides the last Konoha genin.

He was all but pouting just because his match ups in the end hadn't been long enough for a good judgment of his skills before being knocked silly by her kouhai in the semifinals.

Inoichi had been sort of right in that associating something other than death with the desert had helped her out a lot.

Natsumi knew she hadn't been much of a traveling companion on their way out to Suna, and right after they had gotten there she had another series of nightmares of how she had died before. Frustrated and exhausted, it wasn't until that Kumo genin had gotten in her face that she found an acceptable, for her, outlet for her ill-humor.

Minato had probably noticed the lessening amount of frustration in her when she had caused both Kumo teams to fail with her kinjutsu, and had found another outlet during the second portion using the orders the Sandaime probably intended for the final tournament.

He had them disarm and delay all but one team out of Iwa and Ame, stripping them of their part of the third of the map they were supposed to be completing and distributing it out to any other Suna and Konoha genin they came across by the assassin's more dubious skill set. With Inoichi planting a different memory of the incident and a genjutsu set to lead them out after they woke, Minato had placed a timed sleep tag on each of them. Then they got the hell out of dodge before anyone could catch them doing it.

Natsumi had started laughing not too long after that, between being confirmed to pass the second test and telling sensei what had gone on during the testing.

She did have to wonder if that made her sadistic. Or a good ninja. Hey, orders.

Yeah, she was going to stick to that excuse. Orders.

\V/

A week after the newest promoted chūnin returned to Konoha, Natsumi was finally confronted with what she wanted to do now she had her promotion.

The former ANBU assassin was of the opinion it was vastly evil of her sensei to spring that on them during the next bi-monthly meeting. This time Senju Tsunade had hosted them all in her clan compound due to inclement weather, only minimally griping about hospital work keeping her busy while everyone else was off having fun without her, with catering supplied by the Akimichi clan because Chouza had been that happy everyone was finally home.

At the moment all attention was on her, everyone wanting to know if she was going back to the shadow ranks and disappearing again or staying chūnin out in the visible ranks with the rest of them.

Even Sarutobi Hiruzen didn't even blink when his student brought up returning to ANBU to his own student during the meeting, having realized that all of the chūnin gathered had already figured out the girl with mismatched eyes had been part of that division before, between disappearing from their academy days and her showing up again as one of the Toad Sage's students half a year later. There were even a few pithy glares being tossed Sakumo's way because he had been her captain while in ANBU, obviously when you considered what Natsumi called him in casual conversation, and not all from the younger generation sitting in a loose circle in Tsunade's sitting room. Orochimaru just rolled his eyes at the last Hatake over the glaring blonde sannin's head.

One of the hazards of having halfway decent shinobi around was their incessant curiosity over anything and everything under the sun, and absolutely everything not normally visible to the casual observer. It was incredibly difficult to keep any kind of secret out in the open when you trained individuals in ferreting them out in the name of ensuring village security. Especially if said secret was about the period of time a mutual friend was missing for.

Finding out some shinobi was either ANBU or a Hunter-nin wasn't officially punishable, because usually you found out trying to ensure ninja A was actually ninja A and not ninja B who was really an infiltrator from another village, but it was still a nasty shock if you were not expecting it.

It was also ridiculously easy to spot those that belonged to the shadow ranks of the shinobi corps if you knew how to do it. You just had to watch the way they moved and pick out those who had the same attention grabbing hair color or style, curious habits, short build, limp, or body scar as the ANBU agent whatever. You could also figure it out by noticing the silent conversations that go on between masked members and realizing you've seen that hand sign used before by such and such ninja the last time you ran a mission with them. Sometimes you found out by finding a rather stark black ANBU tattoo somewhere on their arms after a spar, training session, or patching injuries up on one.

They were also the ones that couldn't give the real reason for missing birthdays, holidays, or some planned event; claiming a mission you'd never hear about because saying I'm really sorry I wasn't here but this one guy had to die because we were being paid a lot to do it for this fat, jealous, and corrupt merchant in Lightning Country wouldn't really go down well at all.

To an AnBu or a Hunter-nin, it was highly discouraged to voluntarily reveal your actual line of work to anyone under chuunin rank and it was really bad to get identified by genins. However, the only times being identified was punishable was if someone outside the village managed to put the right name to the animal mask.

Although it was accepted practice to generally ignore that part of their lives if you knew any ANBU or Hunter-nins when they were unmasked; retired from service, benched for medical or personal reasons, or simply off-duty at the time; there were some situations where discussing it was allowed or even encouraged. One, when you had some kind of problem or issue with established procedure and needed the advice of a older teacher; or two, when being asked if you wanted to continue in either branch of the black ops divisions by a superior.

"I would like to be reinstated-"

"NO!"

Natsumi blinked at the uproar that came out of not only her old genin team, but Kushina and a fair few of the clan shinobi gathered around. Trying to listen to most of it was giving her a headache.

Jiraiya silenced them all with a look, surprising in itself because the sannin really was kind of a perverted jokester at heart and only occasionally got serious about anything. "Continue, Natsumi-chan."

"I would like to be reinstated as an available assassin if needed, but I want to complete my kenjutsu apprenticeship with taicho before I consider going back full time."

Like in two years when the Third Great Shinobi War starts, and after I try to save taicho's life.

The Toad Sage nodded his shaggy white head, probably having expected that from her. "You know your taicho's not going back for a good while, right?"

"Yeah, he's got his new lady love now." Natsumi faked sniffing back tears. "He's leaving me for another woman, sensei!"

Sakumo, who had been sitting some ways behind her to place her between him and the glaring, all but choked on air. "How do you know that? And what the hell?"

Jiraiya threw a smirk at the silver haired man even as he scrambled out of Tsunade's reach. "Your problem now, old friend!"

The assassin smirked back at her spluttering taicho, who would always be her taicho. On the bench for the moment or not.

(ooo000ooo)

Minato set the last box of his things from his old genin apartment down in his new chūnin apartment harder than a box of inanimate objects deserved. Natsumi went out on a deductive twig and sighed. "He gave you enough to work through that you'll probably still be working on it when he gets back."

"Yeah, but… Jiraiya-sensei is still going to be more outside the village than in for the next few years, sempai." Her blond kouhai sighed himself, slumping down onto the couch in the main room that the chūnin apartments had that the genin apartments didn't. "I was kinda expecting…"

"…it to be like how it was when I joined the team? A little less of me and Inoichi-kun, but all of us there in some way anyways?" The reincarnated soldier stopped sorting the other chūnin's stuff out so he could put it away later, no real interest in sorting his clothing any more than she did usually when they switched doing mission generated laundry so someone didn't have to always do it. She sat down on Minato's actual bed in what they were assuming was the bedroom and not the closet because of the little clue of the bed.

The best part of being promoted so far? Definitely the raised bed.

Screw her reinstatement to the ANBU bench and the higher paying missions available, her nearly numb ass was loving the switch of traditional floor futons to supported western styled beds even when not on missions and rooming in an inn for the night. Damn it all, even the ANBU on-duty barracks had cot-bed thingy types of cushioning for the rear.

The apartments issued to independent chūnin were not much bigger than ones for genin without alternative means, but they had the same minimalist layout. There was a main room where Minato was, it contained a bit more of a kitchen and dining room with the living room the misplaced soldier was mostly sure it was used for. It could also possibly be a library/study thing… maybe. There was an actual shower stall crowded in next to the toilet in the bathroom instead of the bucket powered shower/drain thing they had before.

The bedroom had a bed in it, had that been mentioned yet?

"Well, yeah."

Her kouhai was not that far from her, cramped as the apartment was. From her to the blond the assassin would estimate about six or seven feet.

"Wanna screw off unpacking for the rest of the day and go do something more fun?"

Minato pushed himself up slightly to check how evil his sempai's grin was. "Go stalk your old taicho so you can laugh at him some more for dating some civilian lady?"

"…you suggested it, not me."